The Angry Exile: More un-denormalisation.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Wednesday, 16 June 2010

More un-denormalisation.

Hot on the heels of a positive character smoking on TV comes more bad news for the Righteous. Best they sit down for this, because it seems that the news for pregnant women is not only that alcohol might not boil their unborn babies alive in their own wombs but it might even be beneficial.

New evidence has emerged that pregnant women who indulge in one glass of wine a day in their first trimester may have better behaved children than those who abstain from alcohol or drink heavily.

In a study of more than 2300 mothers, Perth researchers found pregnant women who drank light to moderate amounts of alcohol had babies with fewer emotional and behavioural difficulties.

But fear not, Righteous types, because...

The team from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research set the "moderate" consumption limit at one alcoholic drink a day.

Pardon me for asking, but if the findings are that light to moderate consumption correlates with fewer emotional problems in the children down the road and a moderate amount is just one drink a day, then what the fuck is light consumption? One every other day? One a week? Having a full Shiraz by your side all day long but only inhaling the fumes? I ask as a non-drinker with Y chromosomes and therefore no personal axe to grind as regards to drinking during pregnancy.

And also cheering the Righteous is this:

... study leader Dr Monique Robinson advised pregnant women to stick to national guidelines, which recommend expectant mothers abstain from alcohol, and to speak to their doctor.

She said that child behavior was "just one of many outcomes that might be assessed with regards to alcohol consumption during pregnancy".

"While our study found light drinking during pregnancy was not associated with increased risk for the child, national guidelines recommend the safest choice is to avoid alcohol once the pregnancy is known."

Pardon me again, but don't women frequently conceive and not know about it right away? I've known women who said their cycle was pretty irregular and assumed they'd get the first hints if they fell pregnant from throwing up rather than being late. Even the regular ones could expect a couple of weeks or so of the oven being on before realising there's a bun in it, and if they also enjoy alcoholic drinks will almost inevitably have a few sherbets while their poor ~~child~~ ~~baby~~ ~~foetus~~ ~~embryo~~ zygote gets pickled with them.

Oh, the humanity!

Actually, this is kind of the point.

Dr Robinson said the research would help alleviate any guilt for women who had drunk alcohol before they found out they were pregnant.

"Women may be drinking alcohol in small amounts prior to recognition of the pregnancy and we feel these data highlight that it is unlikely that this has harmed their unborn child's mental health," she said.

On top of that it's worth noting that as always correlation doesn't prove correlation, and no mechanism has been suggested by which a glass of splosh a day for the first three months after the drunken root on the kitchen floor that got you that way in the first place will help little Jonny or Joanna concentrate in class and keep their room tidy. Maybe light to moderate drinkers could be relatively higher earners and more able to get their sprogs in good schools or some other effect. Or that women who drain a bottle of meths every night are likely to become hopeless derros who just can't look after a child. Pure speculation on my part but all I'm really saying is that this study has found nothing more than a statistical connection that need not necessarily have any medical or physical connection at all.

I suspect the long and short of it is that getting completely off your dial every night to the point that you hospitalise yourself with alcohol poisoning is very likely to be a bad thing for unborn babies, which is obvious enough to be somewhere in the fucking Saville Report. But the good news is that a few vinos is not going to ensure that your baby will be born unable to stand, incapable of speech and with no control of it's bodily functions beyond a tendency to sit screaming in its own filth. The bad news is that you know that's going to happen anyway, so you might as well enjoy a nice red and spend the next few months making up cravings to send your other half up the wall.