Drunken Pumpkin

In one of his Discworld novels Terry Pratchett said if you give a dwarf some simple tools they can make anything. Because with simple tools you can make complex tools and with complex tools you can make more complex tools until you have some incredibly complicated and specialized tools that will get you just about anything.

I’ve noticed that the same can be said about most people in prison. These guys have pretty much nothing, but they can manage to turn it into something pretty impressive. Let’s say, for example, you have a cord, a paper clip, and a pair of scissors. From that you can create a rather rudimentary soldering iron/ cigarette lighter. And with that you can now start working on electronics, say, building a tattoo gun, or rewiring a DVD drive to be a DVD player for your TV.

I also think that prisoners and dwarves have a lot in common considering both have this odd aversion to light and windows. I always have to turn the lights on whenever I walk into a room, even if it’s full of people. I never have sorted that out. Personally, I can’t stand to sit in a semi-gloom of an institutional building, but they seem to like it. I guess you have to take your happiness where you can get it.

So, the next time you see a heavily tattooed man linking in the sun with weird bits of wire in his bag, you might not trust him with your wallet, but he can fix your tv with nothing.

This gender thing is history. You’re looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.

If “this gender thing” is a thing of the past, then why can’t I take Ru Paul seriously?

Sexual, racial, gender violence and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture.