I feel like I win when I lose...

For many years, Abba left me utterly cold.  I can actually remember the very tail end of their career, and songs like "Super Trouper", "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme (a man after midnight)" and "Voulez-Vous".  There wasn't much music in the home when I was growing up, but somehow Abba found a way in.   I think the damage was done by "Dancing Queen" when I was a student.  Not the song itself, so much, as the ridiculous hysterical reaction it got whenever it was played.  I particularly hated the guys who, as with "I Will Survive", seemed to think that knowing the words to this song and enthusiastically joining in when it was played would help them attract women.

Maybe it worked.  What I do know for certain is that standing on the sidelines scowling *definitely* didn't work.....

It wasn't really Abba's fault, but I've sort of hated the band ever since.  "Muriel's Wedding" was alright because it was about a lot more than just the music, but I certainly wasn't about to go out of my way to watch "Mama Mia" (although, to be fair, that's about it being an obviously awful film rather than particularly about the music.  I'm sure plenty of Abba fans dodged that bullet too).

Initially, lost in a world of heavy metal and then The Smiths, this dislike wasn't really much of a problem... but as my appreciation of music began to broaden and to deepen, I became aware that Abba weren't just another crappy pop band, and that they were actually some of the finest exponents of the art of the pop song.  Perhaps it was even true that their songs often had depths beyond the melody.

I knew this, but still couldn't bring myself to open my ears to them.

Well, I'm older now, and I'm better able to put ridiculous preconceptions and prejudices behind me.  I'd been toying with the idea for a while, but finally went ahead and bought "Gold".

It's brilliant, of course it is.

I've been listening to Iron Maiden all week, but today I cycled to work listening to Abba.  It was a miserable, damp morning.... but you know what?  I felt FABULOUS, and I don't care who knows it.

FABULOUS.

More proof, if any more were needed, that young me was an idiot.

(don't fear the reaper)

It's been a little over a year since Jack Osbourne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.  I wrote about it at the time, so I won't go over it all again now.  I will repeat this bit though:

"I've got MS and although I'm relatively lightly affected compared to many, I still wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's a shit condition. I don't care how rich or famous Jack Osbourne is, or how he chose to tell the world about his diagnosis, it's still a shit condition".

MS seems to affect everyone differently: Jack Osbourne experienced problems with his vision, and I woke up one day with a numb hand.... we both have MS, but I should think that we both experience it differently and are differently affected.  There seems to be a slightly unfortunate tendency amongst people with MS to compare symptoms; to try and work out who is worse affected; the harder you are hit, the more you WIN.  Ridiculous, but there you are.  I've spoken before about how I feel as though I'm being assessed by every other patient in the waiting room when I go to an MS clinic, but you can see the same thing online too.

There are lots of people who blog about MS; people who talk about it far more than I do.  That's okay.  It's a very frightening experience to develop symptoms like these and to be given such an awful diagnosis by a doctor; to be labelled for the rest of your life with a chronic, incurable condition.  That there are lots of people around sharing their experiences, and hopefully showing that life goes on and that you are not alone is certainly a good thing.

Stumbling in Flats is one of these bloggers.  We appear in the same section ("MS Bloggers N-S") of the Carnival of MS Bloggers, so we're practically related.  She mostly writes about her MS, but she tries her hardest to laugh at it and to share her triumphs and her disasters.  She's fearless and funny.  She blogged yesterday about how she has been receiving some criticism in emails from people who think she's not taking this condition seriously enough and that you shouldn't belittle our suffering by laughing at it.  Well, that's just bollocks.  Apart from anything else, it's her blog and she can write what she damn well wants.  If people don't like it, then no one is making them read it.  What fucking right do these people have to tell someone how they should react to their own condition?  MS is a bomb that has gone off in this girl's life; it has paid no heed to her circumstances or to her dreams.  It pays her no respect, so why should she respect it in return?  To my mind, laughter is the only sane response.  Fuck MS.  Laughter is the only response it deserves.

Back to Jack Osbourne.... I was reading another MS blog the other day (honestly, I don't make a  habit of this as many of them are just depressing, self-pitying wallows, but there are some really good ones).  This one had a picture of a People Magazine cover from last year showing Sharon Osbourne's reaction to her son's diagnosis.

Look.  I'm accustomed to people getting the wrong end of the stick about how MS works and the likely disease progression, but this is ridiculous.  You won't let your son die?  Um..... do you want to tell her, or shall I?  Actually, let's leave it - on bass guitar - to the Duke of Spook, the Doc of Shock, the Man with No Tan.  Please say hello to Death himself... The Grim Reaper!

"You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper".



Everyone dies, you idiot... no matter how rich or stupid.

What is it that Gaff says at the end of Blade Runner? "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?"

Who does.

"Be seeing you real soon...."