Abstract thoughts

I just sent off an abstract for a collection of essays - it's from the fourth chatper of The Thesis so wasn't too hard - still a new experience and took far more psychological space than it should have, or than I have space for right now! The intro is just not going to be done for Monday. I still over-estimate my ability to write, forgetting than when I did write 2000 words a night A) I was about 19 and B) they were mostly crap.

We watched Children of Men the other night. It was terrifically disappointing possibly because I had really high hopes for it. First off, while the title sounds all 'ooh...how evocative and traditional and poo like that' it begs the question: is the problem with the future related to the fact that they are relying on men to reproduce the species? I simply will not buy the aesthetic argument that 'children of humankind' is 'clunky'. Honestly. A friend pointed out that there are also some fairly disturbing comparisons made between the black heroine and livestock. The sexual politics of the thing were just all over the place and the end turns into a video-game. No there really is never a question that Kee and her daughter will survive, but they could have done something more interesting with the premise of the thing. Another thing, how is one baby going to solve the infertility problem of the whole planet? Shouldn't they be more interested in Kee and whoever the father is? I suppose one reason for the silly title is that, in the film, women have obviously spectacularly failed at our one single biological task: reproduction. Maybe the film is actually suggesting that we hand that over to men and see how they do (Theo, our hero, dies by the way, but not until safely handing Kee and baby over to other men). Okay so the entire world is more or less united in mouring the whole no children thing - but the fault is tacitly or otherwise placed with women. And another thing, (which my friend also pointed out), I didn't care about anyone in the film - which, I appreciate, is not exactly a solid criticism, but I think I was supposed to. Particularly our hero, whose tangled past just bored rather than intrigued and whose rather pathetic attempts to be indifferent and avoid the whole plot were kind of laughable.

Blah.

Another sure sign of spring: the end of the tax year. And the budget travelling in its very special little red briefcase from No.11 to parliament and from there onto the front pages of every newspaper in the country. Guess what? For those of us down here, nothing changed.