humour: The Elfish Gene

I really enjoyed this memoir, Mark Barrowcliffe is a great story teller and comedian. 

This was a great trip back into the wrold of RPGs. It's loaded with subtle humor and details the life that many wargamers knew growing up. 

I recommend this book to anyone who has had an interest in RPGs or anyone who has known a gamer

(www.amazon.com Customer Review)

Not only is very funny (I was in tears at a couple of points), but he also paints a interesting picture of a rather grey childhood grow up in a comprehensive school in the 1970s Coventry. However his parents sounded great.

I choose this memoir as:

• I need more laughs 
  
• My boyfriend is a big fan  of RPG (Role Playing Games)
  
• Mark now lives in Brighton
  

memoirnoun1 a touching memoir of her childhood account, history, record,chronicle, narrative, story, portrayal, depiction, sketch, portrait,profile, biography, monograph.2 (memoirs) : he published his memoirs in 1955 autobiography, life story, memories, recollections, reminiscences; journal, diary.

librarians and stress

This story has always stuck in my mind, my image of being a librarian was not a high-stress job, libraries are normally very calm and peaceful places and just how much stress and responsibility could looking after books be.

However these were opinions were not based an really detailed analysis, just my gut feelings. More careful research has found that possibly counter-intuitively that being a librarian is a very high-stress job:

Delegates at a conference of the British Psychological Society in Glasgow today will hear the results of a research project which suggests that being a librarian induces more stress than working for the emergency services, driving a 125mph express, or teaching a class of ill-behaved children.

One obvious problem is a degree of repetition and going stir-crazy:

Librarians, he found, were more significantly unhappy with their workplace than anyone else. “It seems they are sick of being stuck between the same shelves of books all day. They also found their work repetitive and unchallenging, and overall had very little job satisfaction.

One interesting idea I heard at the time was that librarian are regularly harangued by aggresive and impatient people, a key part of the problem is that they are often juggling a long list of unfinished tasks?

harangue |həˈra ng |nouna lengthy and aggressive speech.verb [ trans. ]lecture (someone) at length in an aggressive and critical manner : the kind of guy who harangued total strangers about PCB levels in whitefish.

Stonewall - a tribute

This was a fascinating program, talking about the gay rights campaigning group Stonewall. The more I learn about Stonewall the more impressed I become.

Listening to me made quite angry at times, in particular when right wing started banging on about as homosexual as a bunch of sodomites try to pervert young boys... or how they hoped and expected us to be wiped out by AIDS. These moments in the program made me very angry and sad.

Sue brings together the men and women who founded the gay rights campaign group, Stonewall. She is joined by Sir Ian McKellen, Matthew Parris, Lisa Power, Michael Cashman and Olivette Cole-Wilson.

In 1989 a small group joined forces in a campaign against a law now known as Section 28. This law banned councils from 'promoting homosexuality' or 'promoting the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship'.

The gay rights scene at the time was radical and activist and there were no campaign groups engaging both gay men and lesbians together. Stonewall aimed to create a professional lobbying group that would fight against the discrimination of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. Dubbed Stonewall to signal doggedness and to commemorate the New York riots in which gay protestors had fought back against police brutality two decades before, it called for full legal rights, which still seemed a loony-left pipe dream.

Stonewall's moderate tone attracted criticism from more radical veterans of the gay rights movement, but also lent its advocates greater media respectability and a hearing from government ministers.

Since its inception, Stonewall has led the way with an impressive number of reforms, pressing ministers and taking test cases to court. These reforms include the repeal of Section 28, equalising the age of consent, permitting civil partnerships and overturning the ban on gays in the military. Another legacy has been to allow gay and lesbian politicians into the mainstream - not just demanding equal rights, but as representatives of the wider community.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mpmm4

To me Stonewall represents the intelligence and tolerant side of the English culture. Whilst I understand the frustration of the more militant elements of gay-right campaigners, Stonewall is highly effective and is building bridges so that the LGBT community is not perceived as "sick minority" (pitied but tolerated/decriminalised), no we are a colourful-jewel of modern society :)

My favourite moment was when the Stonewall paid homage to Peter Thatchel as an A* ground-breaking political activist. There was a good comparison with the more radical elements of the "suffragette movement". We need campaigner's like Peter, in the last couple of years I have been particularly impressed with (1) his campaign against "murder music" (a British Consular in Jamaica was killed last month... the police found the words "batty boy" scribbled beside his bed) and (2) within the UK legal system (a) religious beliefs are in some way mitigation against

and discrimination on grounds of sexuality and (b) apposed new legalisation in the UK where discrimination on grounds of sexuality is not treated in the same way as other types of discrimination... these are hard problems and if we don't fight our corner we will slip back...

suffragette |ˌsəfrəˈjet|

noun historical

a woman seeking the right to vote through organized protest.