knee deep in static

From a friend of mine:

Two days ago, I received a text message from my father. It was a forwarded message that he had received from his friend Mads, a Norwegian doctor currently in Gaza. The message made a very strong impression on me, and after pondering on it a few days I feel I have to share it with as many people as possible. The text message is obviously in Norwegian, but I’ve translated it for you.

“They bombed the central vegetable market in Gaza city two hours ago. 80 injured. 20 killed, everything is coming to Shifa. Hades! We are up to our knees in death. Blood and amputated parts. A lot of children. A pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything this horrible in my life. We are now hearing tanks. Spread the message, forward the message, shout it out. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We’re living on the pages of history right now.
Mads G. 3.1.09 13:50 Gaza, Palestine”

He has also been interviewed by CBS, this turned up in my RSS reader today:
http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/its-hell-in-here-they-are-bombing-15.html

Another interview with Mads:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=80685§ionid=3510302

I hope you understand why I can not sit here with these messages from my father’s friend and not show everyone. I’m safe and comfortable in my own home, and it’s so easy to close your eyes and ears to what is going on out there. Don’t close your eyes. Read. Watch. Listen. And most importantly – talk about what’s happening. Don’t let it be ignored.

Today I went to the matinee performance of Oedipus at the National Theatre starring Ralph Fiennes. Obviously, being entirely about the whole Oedipus Greek myth, it’s fairly grim and very heavy going.

On the other hand, it’s also really enjoyable watching the whole unfolding of the reason that Thebes is cursed and Oedipus’ journey towards discovering the truth about his origins and what all of that subsequently means. And of course, wrapping your head around the idea that his children’s mother is also their grandmother and that he is his own children’s brother…

Well. It makes for imagining an interesting looking family tree.

Ralph Fiennes was really good – the character of Oedipus seems to be a very… hard-going role to play and he really carried it off, especially the more horrified and disgusted with himself Oedipus became. Clare Higgins as Jocasta was actually made of awesome. Her distress at the memory of having her baby son taken away from her was incredible to watch and then later, her desire to deny what she didn’t want to believe was true was very believable. The chorus were really good too – their diction was spot on and I could hear every word that was being sung – nothing was lost and the effect of the discord later on really reflected the whole downturn of events well.

So yeah. It was good.

A new addition to the hate list. Zenith Windows are officially rubbish. They were rubbish when they originally fitted our front door, messing us around no end when we wanted to know about new handles for our windows (which they fit for us like a billion years ago) and now they are even more rubbish.

When my dad passed away, the police had to break into the house to find him so they had to go through the front door. Fair enough. It’s the only way in.

So the door is irreparably damaged and will need replacing. That was nearly two months ago now and Zenith Windows said that we would have a new door after 4 – 5 weeks.

Obviously, that was a blatent lie. We still don’t have a working front door. You would think, that at least they could contact us to say “hey, sorry we don’t have it yet” or something – my mum has been calling pretty much every week only to hear “Oh. Yeah. We’re waiting for the door to arrive.”

I don’t get it. We’ve paid for half of it already. The man came to measure the door and even with the whole Christmas season, it shouldn’t take this long.

This is an example of appalling service. You might think that they would hurry things up a little for a recently bereaved family or at least, not offer such a poor service that I’m now adding them to the hate list and will be dissing them to everyone I ever meet who I happen to talk about double glazing with.

Admittedly, double glazing isn’t exactly a burning topic of conversation, but it is the kind of thing that you listen to someone else’s experience of when you are considering it.

So, in summary, Zenith Windows are lame, rubbish etc. and you shouldn’t use them.