Insomnia

Not usually a problem for me (I love my sleep, and am good at it), but I was out late dancing to Northern Soul last night (i.e. Friday), slept too late and have fucked my circadian rhythm. I thought dancing was supposed to promote rhythm, not desynchronisation. But then I've never been a great dancer, though this doesn't stop me.

Some of the insomnia may issue from the fillum seen tonight, The Machinist. It's not a happy-ending, feelgood kinda movie, so don't go to see it if experiencing wobbly reality or the verge of a psychotic episode. But it did interest me because its principal plotline is that Our Man hasn't slept for a year, and I'm professionally and personally aware of how sleep deprivation can mess up your brain function. The protagonist, played by Christian Bale ( 'America Psycho') ate one tin of tuna and one apple per day to acheive a weight loss of 63 lbs (30 kg), rendering him Belsen-like. Without giving too much away, there's a mysterious ?hallucinatory character involved and the three of us who saw it all had a different explanation of what he represented, and what were the real or psychotic events. Thought-provoking, at any rate.

The plan is to see Ring 2 tomorrow, if up to it. The preview for Sean Penn's latest, to be released next week, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, (a trueish story) looked purty good too. What did he see in Madonna?

Other items, with no theme or agenda:
1. A UK men's clothing outlet (Officer's Club Ltd) is advertising a sale on 'pants' by which they mean trousers. This is highly offensive. If I wanted to to live in the USA, I would, so please spare me. The 'pants' advertised were 3/4 length, which makes the image provoked yet more preposterous.

2. Abu Ghraib has had a massive 'insurgent' attack (20 US troops wounded at the least) on the same day that Scotshit Publications speaks of an endgame on insurgency. Right....

3. Picked up the Jewish Chronicle today (sub required, so no link) to read David Aaronovitch's comments on an invitation (refused) to interview as Editor of JC. What struck me was some of the labelling language used to explain his rejection of this honour. The really very good Jews San Frontiers covers the main thrust, but I was pretty appalled at the generalisations that DA dived to to explain declining the invitation, including this:

'...Jews are just too rude. In fact they are incredibly, astonishingly rude... The idea of Jewish children not showing off and of their parents not making a fuss is, of course, absurd. Jews are disputatious, argumentative and obstreperous.'

Nice work, DA. Does that make you one of those 'self-hating types' like Finkelstein or Chomskers? I despair at the double standards.

4. Travellers/ Gypsies
Mad Mel's diary entry yesterday, 'Politically correct plods' was not I think an April Fool. MM has never struck me as suffering from excessive humour. She's right on Michael Howard's side.

The priority for the police appears no longer to prevent offences, but rather to prevent the giving of offence. Thus Cambridgeshire police have just spent £10,000 on CDs encouraging travellers to take legal action over incidents they claim are racist or discriminatory.

I've previously recommended Isabel Fonseca's 'Bury Me Standing' as an ethnographic study/journal of her contacts with middle European Roma/Cintii. I've also recently read these simple, human and moving autobiogs of two Scottish traveller girls, both storytellers, growing up a generation apart last century in Scotland: Betsy Whyte's 'The Yellow on the Broom' and Jessie Smith's 'Jessie's Journey'. Both had me in tears during the reading, which may reflect a degree of sentimentalism, but left me in no doubt (unlike Mad Mel) of the value of diversity of cultures, and not a monoculture like advertising trousers as pants. In fact, 'pants' is pants.