Death to the "Normal"

(Originally posted Monday September 15th 2008)

Like most people I tend to have something going on in the background whilst I'm working, either some music, BBC Radio 4 or a historical documentary on the tv. Yesterday I'd settled upon a programme called "Britiain's Worst Home", because I have to admit that there's a part of me that loves the aggro you can get on a reality show where someone is deliberately having their buttons pressed.

On the surface this one looked like a good bet, showcasing the homes of some eccentric people around the country and trying to help them overcome their issues as relates to decor. Firstly there was a woman who had filled her home with pictures, books and other crap all relating to the royal family. She had a lifesize cutout of the queen with a sleeve and glove attached to it so that one might simulate the experience of shaking the royal hand, a disturbing doll that looked more like Chucky than Prince Willam as it was supposed to, but not one picture of her own children.

Next came a man who had spent the last decade filling his flat with the rubbish other people threw away. He had a room full of airfix models, mountains of cardboard boxes and compoments from almost every model of home computer marketed in the UK over the past thirty years.

But the next woman was a mother of two whom the voiceover described as: "Still proud to be a goth". Now that should have set the alarm bells ringing and had me expecting the usual mess of ouijia boards, black candles and inverted crucifixes. But it was not the case in the slightest.

The woman's front room was filled with shelves full of "Living Dead Dolls", the line of dolls that look like a cross between an average doll and Sadako from Ring. Not my cup of tea, but nonetheless a line of products that I think are both original and appealing in their design.

Next we were shown the murals she had painted on the walls of the house: a well executed Egyptian style piece on the corridor wall, an excellent blue dragon in the kitchen and an evocative white and painting of a gothic mansion and female vampire (on the wall of the toilet!).

The voiceover mentions in a smug manner that a meeting of the local resident's association was once held there and never again since. Then we are treated to the opinions of the head of said association as he wanders around this woman's house commenting that he would: "Bury the dolls in the garden" and moaning constantly as he asks the question: "Why can't she have something normal, like a clock on the shelves?"

Now this was comming from a portly man with a shaven head who was fast approaching his middle years and seemed to have as much dress-sense as a slice of roadkill.

I recount all this because it has never failed to amaze me the number of boring and quite sad little people who seem to want to force anyone who thinks, acts or dresses in any way differently to themselves to submit to them, surrender their individuality and become "normal".

Often I imagine the programmes these sad bastards would come up with, somewhat like the "Re-Neducation" centres in the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode, where men will be shaved of all hair and forced to wear shirts, jeans and watch football whilst drinking gassy lager.

Women on the other hand will be brainwashed with fashion magazines and tattle-rags, made to listen to the Pussycat Dolls and Girls Aloud and develop vapid and shallow personalities.

My point is that these people are seemingly so sad and insecure that they can't deal with difference or diversity in any way, shape or form.

Please understand them for the pathetic and laughable creatures they are.

And don't pick up a gun against them as has happened in the past.

Just pity them, for they are weak, pathetic and insignificant in the extreme.