some stuff, and most likely some things too.

When I started university last September, I discovered there was a Photographic Society, so I joined up. One of the things they do, as well as practical workshops, is show films relevant to photography, such as a screening of an Annie Leibowitz documentary. I went to see a film the other night, that I’ve never heard of before, and at first glance, didn’t seem particularly ‘photographic’. Called ‘Born Into Brothels’, it is a documentary film shot in a red light district in Calcutta, India. Photographer, Zana Briski, had spent time there, living amongst the woman in order to gain their trust enough to document their everyday lives and situation, and became friendly with a group of the children living their with their mothers. She decided to teach the children photography, and was pleasantly surprised by the results. The children took to it really well, producing some really amazing results.

I have never seen a more depressing documentary film, and I’ve seen a few. The poverty and destitution these families live in is inconceivable to someone from a relatively wealthy country, the worst of it being that pretty much every single female child there was destined to ‘join the line’; that is, become a prostitute. Zana became heavily involved in trying to get the kids away from this lifestyle, most of them were clever and articulate, but lacked any sort of education. Most local schools would not take them as they were the children of sex workers, and when she eventually managed to secure places for four of the girls at a boarding school it was on the proviso that none of them were HIV positive. Thankfully, none of them were.

Of all the children, one of the most naturally talented seemed to be Avijit. He described what he saw/felt from photographs in such a way that you could really see what he meant. He sounded like he’d been a photographer for years. He was selected to go to Amsterdam as part of a children’s photography event, and the hoops that had to be jumped through to get him a passport were unbelievable. I felt so pleased for him when he eventually made it to the event.

As I said, all very depressing, yet altogether an extremely watchable film. The word ‘enjoyable’ is entirely inappropriate, as it is frequently upsetting, yet I would urge people to watch it. It gives an insight to a world I never even knew existed. I mean, I’m not naive, I know prostitution exists all over the world, but I’ve never realised what it would be like in such a poor country. The women still stand on the street, just like any Western country, but they take clients back to their ‘room’ (their house, basically), and the rest of the family just carries on with their normal life whilst the ‘business transaction’ is going on. The women’s husbands, elderly relatives and children come and go as normal, fetching water, cleaning, cooking, usually only separated from the sex act by a thin curtain. Most of the children are well aware, even at very young ages, exactly what is going on. You can’t feel anything but utterly helpless as the girls talk about how they will end up like their mothers, and some of the young boys say that they don’t want their friends to be forced into the life. Some of the other women living in the buildings were anything but understanding of the prostitute’s situations, frequently verbally abusing both the women and children, even beating the children on occasion. Another thing that struck me was the fact that whilst there were women dressed in what we would recognise as ‘street’ clothes, i.e. the short skirts and high boots, most of the women stuck to the traditional Indian style dress of sari’s and scarves.

There are some glimmers of hope, which I won’t go into as it would spoil the film if you intend to watch it. It’s not a popcorn film, I came away from it feeling a bit empty, yet would watch it again in a heartbeat. One thing I will say is that Zana Briski now runs a charity, Kids With Cameras, in order to try and help the children still in the brothels, although, probably not a good idea to look at the website before you watch the film, as it’s a spoiler of sorts. Go watch it, step outside your comfort zone.

http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388789/

I’m becoming increasingly tired of picking a book which has glowing reviews on it, or I’ve heard good things about from friends, only to find it’s at worst a pile of dross, or at best mediocre. I don’t stick to just one genre either, it’s happened over a broad series of books in the past year. Authors that people rave about such as Christopher Brookmyre, I read one of his (Country of the Blind) and was utterly underwhelmed. Books with praise heaped upon them, like Moshin Hamid’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, turned out to be 200 odd pages of basically nothing. Philip Pullman, author of my much loved ‘Northern Lights’ trilogy said, “The author has managed to tighten the screw of suspense almost without our being aware it is happening, and the result is a tale of enormous tension.” Nothing happened!! Absolutely nothing!! I never got to a point where I understood his fundamentalism, as the book just wasn’t convincing enough for me.

Even in my preferred genre of sci-fi, the dross is present. Andrew Robert’s ‘The Snow’ is a perfect example.  Glowing reviews? Check! “Intriguing, convincing and well thought-out” (Simon Withers SFX magazine) The plot? Snow started falling & didn’t stop. Millions of people died. All sorts of theories abound. Guess what? Aliens did it. Fucking aliens. How entirely unoriginal. Some of the conspiracy theory’s the characters in the story came up with were much more plausible & more entertaining than fucking aliens! Seems I am not alone, the customer reviews of this book on Amazon seem to be of a similar opinion to mine. It was so bad that I have been put off reading any of his other work. Or indeed anything! I didn’t read a book for almost 3 months after getting so fed up with everything I read turning out to be rubbish! Eventually I picked up Charlie Brooker’s  ‘Screenburn’ and started enjoying books again.

Just for wearing trousers!! Which, apparently are ‘indecent’ clothing in Muslim law. How the hell trousers can be considered indecent I just don’t know!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8182658.stm

This came to my attention through a piece in Sunday’s Independent, in which the journalist was asking ‘Why is the Sisterhood silent on Sudan?’ As far as she could see there was no great public outcry about the issue, especially from women’s groups, and British politicians were not even commenting on it, caught up as they were in Harriet Harman’s comments about how men can’t be left to run things. (Surely there’s a connection there?) I’ve certainly not heard about this issue until now, and it seems a lot of people haven’t. The trial has been adjourned for a month (till the furore dies down? Officials say it’s simply to allow time to investigate if indeed Lubna Hussein will be immune from prosecution due to her job as a UN Press Officer, which she has resigned from in order to allow her trial to take place) but there have been heated protests in Sudan, where riot police have been involved. It’s a stark reminder of how women are still subjugated in our so called modern civilised world.

Combine the fact that I rolled in drunk around 2am on the Saturday night/Sunday morning, therefore staying in bed til well past midday, with the fact it’s still too damn hot at night and you get the picture. Not sleepy enough to sleep and too hot to anyway. The worst thing about this kind of night isn’t so much the lack of sleep (although that obviously sucks too), it’s the bizarre dreams you have when you do occasionally drift off. Exact details of the dreams are mostly forgotten within 10 minutes or so of waking up but certain things stay with you.

For instance, I had been reading various articles online that afternoon with reference to philosopher and author Alain de Botton and his reaction to an unfavourable review of his latest book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. It interested me as he had personally commented on the blog of a colleague of mine who was rather unimpressed with the book. She said this to which he replied (first comment under the blog)…”blogs like yours make me want to be sick, you ignorant vindictive and mean-spirited person”, which seems a tad over the top to me. Seems like he makes a habit of offending total strangers, more evidence in the comments section of this Guardian article and the comment with regards to New York Times book reviewer Caleb Crain’s blog . Totally childish overreaction or perfectly justified response by an author worried that a negative review will adversely affect his book sales? The former, in my opinion. He is, in his own words, an author with 9 books published in 25 countries. Surely he has a well established fan base, a following if you will, who will buy his work no matter what various reviewers or critics say about it? Surely the man who wrote ‘The Consolations of Philosophy’ can be confident enough in his own abilities to brush off a negative review every now and then? And all this begs the question, how does he find this stuff? Fair enough, he probably reads blogs of well established reviewers such as the NYT, but my colleague’s blog is hardly the Guardian, or even the Metro (excellent thugh it is!). So, does he sit at home and Google himself? Well here’s the test, I’ll add ‘Alain de Botton as a tag to this entry, and if he finds it somehow it’ll just be proof that he’s a sad case with nothing better to do than search for mentions of himself on the interwebs. And in the interests of fairness I will read his book before passing judgement on it.

But what does this have to do with my dreams? Well, in one of them de Botton was in my work throwing a hissy fit, shouting at my colleague that she’d ruined his career, and was being forcibly removed from the premises by security. I don’t remember much of the details but I remember a real sense of aggression. Then after waking up a few times and drifting back off again I had one of those ‘I’m late for work’ anxiety dreams, where I’m convinced something is preventing me from getting to work and I have no way to contact them. I dreamt I’d missed St Enoch somehow so got off at the next station, which was Bridge Street. But the way I come in to work on the subway means Buchanan Street is the next one, not Bridge Street. Also, it looked totally different, in that way that places in dreams do, yet you know where it’s meant to be. There was a big motorway overhead and a huge shop, a HUGE shop, that sold nothing but cheese, crackers and wine & I couldn’t make up my mind what to get. So when I woke up I was a tad confused as to what time it was, but thankfully I wasn’t late. Still, lack of sleep & so many weird dreams left me a bit discombobulated for the first few hours of my day.

(And if you’re interested, Times Online wasn’t keen and the Daily Mail wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it all, but felt de Botton was ‘sneering’ at low paid workers. )

Some Glaswegians would say it’s bad ettiquette to call it the tube. The clockwork orange, even worse! But ever since that nefarious sandwich shop arrived on our shores I’ve gone with ‘the tube’ over ‘subway’ just to avoid confusion. Whatever you want to call it, I love travelling on it. However, there are a few things that get on my wick from time to time. The usual, one circle is off so everyone has to pack in like sardines and go round more stations than they wanted, the up escalator is off so you need to climb the stairs…these are annoying but unavoidable. What really gets me is the behaviour of some passengers.

There’s the folk who see people coming up from the platform & decide to rush down to try & catch the train, even though it’s very likely the train will be gone by the time they get there. They barrel through everyone without an ‘excuse me’ or a ‘sorry’ then looked surprised when they see the train already halfway out the station.

Then there’s the people who get on & stand in the doorway even though there’s plenty seats. They then have the gall to glare at anyone who wants to get on or off as if they’re the ones getting in the way! And let’s not forget the in-a-crazy-rush people who just can’t wait to get on the train & so force their way on before most people have had a chance to get off. It’s bad enough at the busiest stations, St Enoch & Buchanan Street, but Hillhead is by far the worst for it. It doesn’t get you anywhere quicker, so why do it?! A bit of common courtesy goes a long way!

Jenny McCarthy. What exactly is she famous for? Let’s see, oh yeah, getting her tits out. So what makes her think she’s some sort of medical whizz kid all of a sudden? She’s spreading fear and panic, and ultimately, although technically not personally, costing lives. The ‘vaccines give you Autism’ ‘link’ has been proven to be bogus, the doctor who first posited the ‘theory’ has long since retracted his ‘findings’. Yet this woman will not shut up about it, and everywhere she goes she is gaining support.

http://tinyurl.com/c6wrju

Irony? My Aunt and Uncle were against the MMR, didn’t give it to their kids, and just recently, in his late teens, my 2nd youngest cousin has been diagnosed with Aspergers.

Sad but true.

Walking down Buchannan St after I finished work, I noticed a woman sitting on a bench, taking her boot off. She had one of those typical Glesga jakey ned faces, difficult to describe if you’ve not seen it. I presumed she had a stone in her shoe, then she took off her sock too, and pulled a wad of paper money out from inside her sock. Interesting place to keep your money but I can’t see it being very practical. For one, she’s sat there with one boot on, one off, if any speedy thief were to grab her money and run she’d have no way of catching up with him. Also, wouldn’t your cash smell a bit funny?