Gravity, not gravitas

Gravity

A feast of special effects. Hyped beyond belief. Sold as some sort of metaphysical philosophical sci-fi, probably to counteract the predictable claims that it is nothing much more than a vehicle for the special effects boys to do their thing.

At the start of Alive!, there's the plane crash (sorry to spoil that for anyone). Without the plane crash nothing much that follows would make any sense. It isn't a short sequence, and it involves the tail bit falling away from the rest and loads of stuff and people flying around and skidding around on the snow and stuff. Then, actually, the film starts.

Luckily, I had an idea that Gravity wasn't going to start. So I wasn't disappointed. There were a series of those plane crash scenes, not separated by too much in the way of boring bits (boring bits that now, always, have me picturing DLL saying “what, exactly, is this film about?” in her best spoilt American teenager cadence – first used to make it clear that she didn't think much of Jim Jarmusch's rock 'n' roll vampire flick, Only Lovers Left Alive). The thing is that, at least on my (very) small screen, and not in 3D, and probably helped by it being stupid o'clock in the morning, the effects are very good, and they drive things along well, and the premise isn't too improbable.

Not that improbability has any negative impact on my enjoyment of anything.

It's a disaster movie, made with the kit at disaster movie maker's disposal in 2014. Instead of burning skyscrapers, there's malfunctioning space-hardware (some of it burning, actually, but more carbon-dioxide extinguisher size than Steve McQueen's burst the water tanks inferno) and the (small) cast are weightless for most of the time.

The 3D trailer, in 3D, gave me a headache and looked a bit retro. Back to early days of overdoing it and sending everyone home via the chemists for Anadins and anti-seasickness pills. 2Ds were plenty enough for me. Three would've been overkill.

Somewhere, someone with a sharpened poison pen will have written about the glorious three-dimensional effects, and the not-so-glorious one-dimensional characters. It isn't always characters that drive things along or that hold the attention.

In the negative corner, this is an action film even DLL (who has inherited my non-critical genes, at least in terms of action films) does not fancy.

On a positive note, what's wrong with a slightly longer rollercoaster ride than usual?


Given the chance...

...I'd vote for independence. For the region, for the county, for the town, for the parish. I'd vote in favour of independence for our road. For our house, in the middle of our street, our house, in the middle of our street...

Not on the basis of any mature thinking or reasoned debate. Just as a way of saying up yours to the centralised government telling us how to live our lives. While they claim £39 breakfasts on the taxpayer, because they can.

I guess it's just too forelock-tuggy for my eastern european side to take, being told how to live by a bunch of Westminster suits. The Westminster suits that make up all of the parties that steal over 95% of the vote.

Hell, I'd vote for the independence of the room I'm in (as long as I could strike up a trade deal with the kitchen when I'm hungry).

Irate debate

Knives out for Richard

Dr Giles Fraser is priest-in-charge at St Mary's Newington. I don't know what that means, exactly. I don't know what that means, vaguely. He writes a Guardian column, and, regularly, that column is all about Richard Dawkins. Fraser has a hard-on for digging out the absolutely dig-out-able Dawkins.

Has the doctor got professorship-envy?

Dawkins has descended into a marginal, aggressive atheist world where his one-trick pony proclamations became tedious years ago. The most apt and ironic description is preaching to the choir. Then preaching to them some more, then even more, and more...

Tony Adams, in Addicted, describes learning the lesson along the way to recovery, along these lines:

“Tony. You can't say that!”

“But you say you want absolute honesty.”

“There's absolute honesty, and there's the brutal truth.”

Dawkins has become the Mastermind contestant, specialist subject, the brutal truth. I'm black and white by nature, and I like to see high-horse, high moral ground types who bang on about the importance of truth squirm when confronted by the inescapable facts that yes, their bum does look big, not just in that, or today, but in whatever, whenever. I'm right in Jack Nicholson's corner in A Few Good Men:

“I want the truth!”

“You can't handle the truth.”

In the war of words between Dawkins (blue corner, hardline repeat brutal truth offender) and Fraser (red corner, god-bothering secret lovechild of Dara O'Briain and Bill Murray), it's interesting to compare and contrast the approaches:

Hard science, disdain for the politics and popularity contests of life from Dawkins. Lots of facts and numbers. A disturbing ability to be right and cheese 99% of people off at the same time.

At the pulpit, the equally indigestible Fraser, who comes out with gems like this:

“It so happens that, when it comes to eugenics, religion has a much better track record at defending the human than science or leftwing progressives.”

Which may be the case. When it comes to eugenics. Which is a pretty narrow field of operation.

The unpalatable truth Fraser chooses not to share is that in just about every other field, religion's track record's poor. The Inquisition tortured and murdered plenty of people, among them some that dared to be right about the earth actually orbiting the sun. Fanatics persecute artists, writers and musicians, because their god tells them to.

Of the two, Fraser's writing is easier on the blood pressure. But his position: choosing to believe in made-up stuff, and made up stuff that makes people live in misery, that promotes suffering, bloodshed, poverty, and inequality, isn't a starting position from which winning is possible.

So: just what is smart casual?

Smart casual – an oxymoron?

The thing about middle-aged office bods, is they get all excited about smart casual. It's an underpinning principle in the worlds of:

• Gordon Brittas
• Corporate paintball
• Corporate go-karting
• Corporate team-building, generally
• Dress-down Fridays

I was late in being exposed to the dreaded 'smart casual', the dress code for a corporate evening of bowling / afternoon of treasure hunting in the City of London / murder mystery puzzling / table football tournamenting (delete where non-applicable).

I was in an absolute panic.

I had two suits, and everything else was sports kit, or had paint on it. I went emergency shopping, and improvised. I needn't have bothered. There, in rebel corner, were three or four blokes in the same black suits they always wore. Their concession to 'smart casual' had been to remove their ties.

“We've got these suits” they said, “and all our other clothes have paint on.”

Talking of middle-aged...

...with her typical lack of bull:

ME: I'm not middle-aged.

BLISS: Not no more you're not.

She's also recently said the following:

“You've not scoffed all those painkillers already?!?”

“I'll get up in the loft. We haven't got all day. You're too slow and creaky.”

The thing is...

...stuff ceases up, goes wrong, stops repairing itself. Like:

Indoor kickabout with MM's lot back in...well, some time ago...an innocuous bump, and my shoulder's still giving me proper gyp.

Right knee: sudden night-time agony, out of nowhere, no knock or fall or stress, just a joint deciding to give the owner (okay, the demanding owner who has failed to look after it particularly well) some pain and discomfort, right out of the blue.

The eyes. So recently 20/20. Now about one and a half / the square root of bugger all. No glasses at all to a collection of the things. Lost without them now, I have to hide emergency pairs here and there in case I'm caught out without any and unable to read.

The brain. DLL just said: “what was I doing over here?” “Welcome” I thought, “to my everyday habitat.”

Rock Bottom

Rock Bottom

The cover on my copy of the album, the original artwork.

Rather tragically (I think) Rock Bottom has slipped a bit in the league table. Dropped down the rankings. The Wikipedia page says this:

“Pitchfork rates Rock Bottom as the 98^th best album of the 1970s.”

If I remember rightly, it was once (rightly) at the top of the all time NME list.

The later version cover, also by Alfreda Benge.

It's one of those mythical things, this album. Wyatt started writing the songs, composing what he considered his first real solo album, then fell from a third storey window and was paralysed, using a wheelchair since that night.

He released Rock Bottom in 1974, the year he married Alfreda Benge, who contributed lyrics, vocals, and the original cover art.

I was sixteen in 1974, and I didn't get it. Musically, lyrically, every whichway it was a mystery to me, and I was properly baffled by the high esteem it was held in.

Now I listen to it as much as anything else.

What you have are six songs, loosely flowing around the album, about forty minutes in all. It's jazzy in places, dreamy, melodic. It's uneasy listening at times. I know I've written this before, but at first Wyatt's voice, just, somehow, tantalisingly not quite there, a little reedy, English, lisping inflection, seems a weakness. After repeated listenings, you realise what an essential strength it is. The album is a thing of immense beauty. If you discount Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, mostly composed by others, it was 1985 before Wyatt released another solo album.

Sort your kit out

Too much stuff...way too much stuff

We sorted out the cricket gear, BLISS and me. It took too long. We reached some conclusions:

BLISS' conclusions:

• There's too much cricket gear.
• There's way too much cricket gear.
• There's way, way too much cricket gear.
• Did I mention the surfeit of cricket gear clogging up the garage's arteries?
• What, exactly, is all this stuff for?
• I've heard of a dog with two cocks but why have you got three boxes?
• Do you really need all this?
• Do you need even a small fraction of all this?

My conclusions:

• Oh. Look. There's the last shin pads I ever wore. It was an end of season double header, two 30 minute each-way back-to-back games. We had a full back shortage and I was well out of position against...what...eh? Oh.
• Those are not my spikes. They are MM's spikes.
• One of those boxes is MM's, too.
• That jumper's way too small. No, it wasn't always too small. It is now, though.
• That has some sentimental value. Not very much, but nevertheless.
• Just how many small, bright yellow rubber ducks have been smuggled into this kitbag over the years?
• BLISS looks very alluring in that pink “Slappers on Tour” baseball cap (the 'Talking Bollocks' tour hat, awarded in perpetuity, sort of like Brazil and the Jules Rimet trophy, just not quite as keenly contested. Frankly I'd always take the talking of bollocks over the dropping of catches and scoring of ducks (the other hats available – I think the hat avoidance hat was mythical.
• Just the one sock? No! They were my best ever pair, really comfortable and padded on the sole of the foot, loose, no tight elastic, and...yeah, right, enough about socks, already.
• Look I'm bored now. Yes I know we're less than halfway through the job but I'm starving hungry...

The actual conclusions:

There's a big cricket bag, but it's the old team bag, and it is, on reflection, too big. Unless you want to smuggle a couple of people into the changing room.

The other bags are: (1) too small; (2) too damaged, zip-wise; and (3) too small and too damaged. Bag (1) will do for the wicket-keeping gear and sundry overspill items, and bag (2) will do for the other overspill items. Bag (3) is for disposal, as is the current duffle-style kitbag (see reason (1)). An online bargain procurement initiative will be launched, kitbag-wise.

Amounts of clothes will be thrown away. Others will be rehabilitated into the drawers and wardrobe, found creased but serviceable after years at the bottom of the bag.

I will try to keep it all tidy, and keep on top of it all, from now on.

That's something destined for a failure of new year's eve resolution proportions.

Prince of Darkness, July

PRINCE OF DARKNESS JULY SPECIAL

Peter Mandelson (Mandy), AKA The Prince of Darkness, storms

into the kitchen. He is wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a

brightly coloured tee-shirt. He is brandishing a copy of the

Daily Mail. His Man Friday, Terry, is sitting at the kitchen

table, smoking a cigar, drinking a tin of Fosters lager, and

listening to Test Match Special.

MANDY

Terry! Have you seen this? TERRY!

TERRY

Hold on boss, I think Jimmy's just

got a wicket...

MANDY

Eh?

TERRY

Jimmy. Jimmy Anderson.

MANDY

Who?

TERRY

Jimmy Anderson? Our opening bowler?

MANDY

Sorry, Terry. You've lost me.

TERRY

(Singing)

Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy...Jimmy Jimmy

Jimmy Jimmy Anderson...

MANDY

Does sport comprise your only

interest in life, Terry? Really

I...

TERRY

Yes.

MANDY

Eh?

TERRY

Yes. Yes boss, it does...

MANDY

But that's...that's...

TERRY

Absolutely normal, boss. Just not

where you come from.

MANDY

And where do I come from, Terry?

Just where do you think I...

TERRY

Nowhere normal, boss.

MANDY

Oh nevermind. Terry! Have you seen

this!

Mandy waves the copy of The Daily Mail, animatedly.

TERRY

The Daily Mail, boss?

MANDY

The Daily Mail, Terry.

TERRY

Never touch the stuff.

Terry turns away and puts his ear close to the radio's

speaker.

Mandy continues to wave the newspaper around.

MANDY

They're back to their old tricks,

Terry.

TERRY

Sure are, boss. Good lad!

MANDY

Eh?

TERRY

Moen Ali, boss. Another wicket.

G'wan my son, get in!

MANDY

What on earth are you...

TERRY

Moen Ali, boss. The beard to be

feared. Haven't you...

MANDY

No I have not. I've been busy

reading yet another hatchet job,

accusing me of all sorts including

being in bed with Putin...

TERRY

Sush, boss...

TERRY makes the palms-down keep the noise down gesture.

TERRY

Tuffers is talking...

MANDY

Who?

TERRY

Phil Tuffnell...

MANDY

Who?

TERRY

Forget it, boss.

MANDY

That's just it, Terry. I can't

forget it. Every time they start

digging everything back up...

TERRY

What's with the surfer look,

anyway, boss.

MANDY

Oh. You noticed. Well, if it works

for Cameron...

TERRY

What? Your going after the

surfer-dude vote? Hold on? Not

another one. There's a proper

collapse going on here, boss.

MANDY

A proper what?

TERRY

It's turning into a procession.

MANDY

What? Oh just forget it, Terry.

I'll never understand...

TERRY

No boss. I don't think you ever

will.

Exit MANDY, waving the paper and muttering. Terry settles

back down to the test match coverage, and the Guardian

crossword.

dondestan

dondestan        robert wyatt

• CP Jeebies
• N.I.O. (New Information Order)
• Dondestan
• Sight Of The Wind
• Shrinkrap
• Catholic Architecture
• Worship
• Costa (Memories of Under-Development)
• Left On Man
• Lisp Service

If I could only listen to one artist from now on, it'd be Miles Davis. If I was alowed two, it'd be Miles Davis and Robert Wyatt. I wouldn't even cheat (well, not necessarily, were there a chance of “Robert Wyatt recordings in all his various bands, collaborations, side projects and incarnations” being a goer, it'd be a no-brainer not to push for that, but, if it came to the crunch, just Robert Wyatt it'd have to be).

Originally recorded in February 1991, my dondestan (revisited) copy, re-released in 1998, has the following sleeve notes:

Matt Kemp had already recorded this beautifully at Chapel Studios but I overran the budgeted recoding time and the final mix was done, I realised retrospectively, in an exhausted rush. Nobody else's fault, but since this is one of my few recordings of which the original mix tapes still exist, I thought I'd get Jamie to help me have another go at the last hurdle. (My ideas have changed a little, too: this time I went for the contrasting detailed moments rather than the earlier goal of seamless consistency. However, it's still the same old whine, with a little more bottle). Robert Wyatt, August 1998

The sparseness of the music and songs makes everything perfectly clear. Dondestan is mostly just voice and drums. Shrinkrap mostly just piano, voice and drums. Without this and some of the rest of Wyatt's albums, I'm sure bands like Vampire Weekend wouldn't have the idea or the nerve to go for their crystal clear, paired down recorded sound.

Privatise
the sea.
Privatise
the wind.
Don't just tinker
with unseeded cloud, you got to
sell
weather itself.
Set it free.
Don't waste good air, breathing isn't paying its way.

(From N.I.O)


Dondestan:

Palestine's a country
or at least
used to be.

Felahin, refugee
(Kurdistan similarly)
need something to
build on
rather like
the rest of us.

Palestine's a country
or at least
used to be.

Felahin, refugee
(deportees similarly)
need something to build on
rather like the rest of us
got.

Perfectly beautiful, and beautifully perfect. Intelligent and brave.

Swapping not stopping

Going it alone

Up until a few days ago, I was, as a matter of routine, walking through the door after an already long day, laden with papers to process, and carrying a computer itself carrying any number of emails to answer, reports and spreadsheets to complete.

I'm now a lot happier and calmer and more relaxed.

I have, however, just swapped those reports and spreadsheets for others. These are business plans and cashflow forecasts, SWOT analyses and half-developed templates and consultancy agreements.

Lead me think about...

The Grass Arena

John Healy's book has been inexplicably out of print for a while. Inexplicable when every day sees the publication of the Daily Mail.

This is a book everyone should read.

Certainly, before expressing an opinion on anyone down on their luck, before judging anyone visiting the off-licence before sunrise, this is absolutely essential. Healy won a number of awards. There's a 1991 film that somehow passed me by, and the book is back out.

Healy was a decent boxer, decent to the point where he had little time for anything else.

Things went awry, and he ended up an alcoholic, homeless, living rough.

He then became decent at chess. Decent to the point where he was doing that thing grand masters do: playing numbers of simultaneous games against good local players and prodigies who hadn't lost a game since they were three years old, and stuffing them all out of sight.

It didn't make him any happier. It was just an exchange of obsessions and addictions: boxing for drinking and drugs for chess, as far as he was concerned, in the concluding chapters. An absolutely devastating ending for the reader hoping for an upbeat finish, redemption and atonement, with Alright Now playing in the background, alternating with Things Can Only Get Better – belied by brutal truth from the author, honestly assessing himself and addressing his ability to find true serenity and happiness.

Our governments, national and local, would be better equipped (and infinitely more interesting) with more Healys and fewer Ruperts, Jeremies and Tristrams. Less privilege, and fewer who think it could never happen to them.

It's a long time since I read The Grass Arena, MM's read it since me. But it's written in a plain, factual way, and should be enough to make anyone without the hardest and coldest of hearts take a different look at those who've hit a wall in terms of coping.

I'm sure each successive cohort has said that there's more to cope with now than there ever was before. I'm not sure that's the case. I am sure that there's never been enough compassion from the powerful for the powerless, and that understanding that but for the grace of god there go I is the starting point for understanding per se.

Supa-hot chickpeas, now there's a challenge

A Challenge

Popular media changes language. I was trying to find an alternative to 'chenges' that have negative implications, but failed. 'Distorts' kept popping back into my mind. I don't even know this for sure, but I think the 'challenge' in ice-bucket challenge comes from those reality / jungle / celeb / game-show things.

No secrets:

I think television is a horrible, evil thing. I think it is used by the powers we should all be fighting to misinform, control, and keep us plebs in line. I think television saps, wastes and destroys more man-hours (I've seen 'person-hours' used, but there's only so much HSE literature you can absorb until some sort of natural rebelliousness rises up) than cancer, road traffic accidents, strokes, heart attacks and all the rest combined.

Naturally, in terms of having some iced water doshed over your head, I'm scratching my head about that 'challenge'. Is that like the 'opening the fridge door to get the chilli pickle out challenge' or the 'catching the tube going in the right direction' challenge', or the 'remembering to load the toothbrush with toothpaste and not rancid fly-infested dogs turd challenge'.

I'm taking it to be wholly ironic usage. Challenge, meaning no challenge at all, unchallenging.

To steal and misquote lines from a recent Arseblog post, it would be a challenge, and one worth watching, were the ice-bucket actually a cauldron filled with acid and dragon-phlegm, burning oil and e-bola. Particularly if the victim were a celeb of choice.

However, in the interest of clarity and good order, I would like to expressly state that:

A cauldron of acid, dragon-phlegm, burning oil and e-bola is way too lenient for the likes of Cowell, Clarkson, Ant, Dec, and the like.

A rat

I should've smelled a rat. I should've smelled a giant smelly rat who had run out of armpit spray a number of weeks ago. BLISS and DLL eat in their room with the telly, and I eat in the kitchen / diner, at the table. When they said: “shall we eat at the table”, that's when I should've smelled a giant, smelly rat.

They sabotaged my chickpea curry.

It already had six small, hot, green chillies in it, added at the right time, early in the cooking process, so that they give up their heat to the dish as a whole.

The giggling should've been a giveaway.

They'd added a further six chillies (either all at once (the intercontinental ballistic alternative) or in easy stages (the death by a thousand chillies principle)) to my dinner. But they were added after the liquid (lemon juice and coconut milk) went in, so they didn't give up their heat to the dish as a whole, but remained within it like little depth-charges of superheated chilli blasts.

I should've smelled another rat when they went a bit quiet and even, possibly, guilty, when I slathered my plate in chilli pickle, ramping up the heat further still. Or was I mistaking smirking, nudges and sly looks for guilt?

Apparently, watching an old fat bloke sweat, redden, and cry while eating his dinner is amusing beyond belief.

Swan's Way

Mr Asbo, and Abs-son

Not members of a large and notorious sink estate family.

Swans.

Mr Asbo was a famously stroppy swan, given to fits of hissing and pecking (if anyone dared to get within pecking range). His boy, Abs-son, is, apparently, even worse-tempered and hissy-fit-prone.

I had an absolutely lovely conversation recently. It went like this:

“Thanks for the ticket [to the game], if you don't want anything for it...”

“No. I insist...”

“Then I'll drop a few quid into your preferred charity.”

PAUSE

“We only do animal charities.”

“All the better.”

“I work with people all the time. I hate them.”

Here I looked at the table he was with, and glanced at DLL.

“Present company excepted, of course.”

There's those urban myths:

“Watch out for those swans, son, they can break a grown man's arm with one blow of their wings.”

Not unless they've studied Kung Foo, they can't. Maybe an extremely small man's arm. If he has brittle bones. For such beautiful, serene-looking creatures, they have an awful reputation for bad-temperedness, yet they always seem able to peacefully accept some plastic white bread without taking my fingers with it when I hand feed them.

The simple fact is that, left alone, the swans would be quite happy. They don't need, in advertising industry terms, our input. They'd probably rather we stayed the hell away from them and let them be. We nick their habitats, force our attentions upon them, then go on about how uppity they are. Why on earth are they not pleased to see us? Us! God's chosen children.

It is a brave thing to say, about supporting only animal charities. I copped bit of a lecture from one of BLISS' friends' husband about that. He'd recently lost his father to cancer, and didn't think money should be given to anything else until advances in diagnosis and treatment were funded and made. I didn't argue. It seemed too raw a nerve, and I wasn't going to change his mind in a million years. There was the uproar last year when the RSPCA spent big on prosecuting a fox hunt. What the papers and the popular media (the BBC included) didn't promote as particularly newsworthy was that the taxpayer funded and supposedly politically neutral agencies, the police and the crown prosecution service, repeatedly let hunting go on, turned blind eyes, and said that they'd never get a conviction in court. The RSPCA are one for one in that respect, blowing the assertions of the cops and their prosecution service out of the water, and giving grounds for doubting their neutrality and bias. Lets face it, the boys in blue will always support the red-coated inbred unspeakables, and rush to give a beating to the muddy hippies in the combat greens, whether they're protesting about hunting, the new motorway, or shooting badgers.

Colours nailed to the mast on the royals

Useful royals

I'm just listening to King Sunny Ade. That's the sort of royalty to admire. There's been no end of Kings of Rock 'n' Roll. There's Prince Buster, and just Prince.

So. Not all royals are freeloading anachronisms.

I don't know what our lot would produce, musically. They probably slap their lederhosen in time to 'God Save the Queen' (and not the proper sex Pistols' version), played on the bladder pipes, backed by the bierkeller brass ensemble, while Phil the Greek smashes some plates and Zorba-dances in the background.

Why can't we sack them off (they're only there on he strength of who their mums and dads are – that's patently absurd and not meritocracy thinking) have a revolution and instate Suggsy as King and Bjork as Queen?

Among other titles there's Da Boss, the Godfather of Soul, and in the officer's mess there's Captain Sensible and Sargent Pepper, and Commander Cody, and the Lost Planet Airmen (there's Google if you don't believe me).

We've tried all manner of personnel running things. The educationally sub-normal heading up the schools, we routinely have people who've never crawled around a stranger's house unable to see their hand in front of their face at three in the morning with their arse alight make decisions about our fire services, and without a scrap of success to boast about. Why not give musicians a go?

Just when you start letting up on them...

...one of the royals remind you just why they have to go. Last in line was the one with the face like a horse, who pitches up to the rugby, at least, spouting off about 'humane' gassing of badgers. Like she's some sort of leading world expert in bovine TB.

Humane would be to let them alone. Humane would be to preserve their habitat. That would be humane.

We are just mammals. As a species, we've developed the capacity for thought and reflection. Unfortunately we've then developed the conviction, among a sizeable proportion of the population, that we're something special.

Apparently, were insects to disappear, the world as we know it would cease to exist, unable to recover from the impact on the ecosystems. Were we to disappear, no-one would notice a thing. Well, maybe the badgers would celebrate the extinction of the genus that included Owen Paterson and a princess who wanted to gas them. And maybe the whales would celebrate the end of the whaling industry, the rhinos would appreciate no longer getting slaughtered for their horns, the dolphins (and the tuna) would love the end of the tuna nets...and so on. I don't think, if they did notice our passing, any other of the world's species would do much in the way of mourning.

Ultimately, the system's absurd. Utterly and totally. Would you have a brain surgeon's son operate on you, just because his father's a brain surgeon? He's twelve years old / he's a graphic artist / he has shaking hands and suffers from near-terminal clumsiness. That's what you buy into supporting a royal family. It seems like some special madness to me.

Were gassing badgers to death to be humane, then so were Auschwitz and Belsen and the rest.

We're paying this woman a fortune a year and she wants to gas badgers. I won't be singing that national anthem anytime soon, matey.

Music, or god? That's a microsecond decision.

Mali

I don't know the details. I'm sure they're available online somewhere. There's some unholy (holy) alliance in the north of Mali. A combination of religious and political fundamentalists (mentalists) who have issued a jihad on music. That's worth coming out against strongly isn't it? I can imagine the mental (in both senses of the word – Oxford English and street definitions) processes behind that one:

Now, what shall we target?

War? Famine? - Nah. Too cornball. Hackneyed. Obvious.

Financially obsessed drug companies? - No.

Child exploitation? Even adult exploitation? - Nope.

What about the banks and big corporations? No more shall...then a camel...through the eye of a needle and all that? - Been done, that.

Animal cruelty? - No can do, have you seen our rules about ritual slaughter?

I know...

Music.

We'll declare war on music. After all it represents everything us religious folk hate, to whit:

Normal humans doing normal human stuff. All that rubbish about us just being mammals, we're god's chosen.

They dance to it.

And worse!

It's beautiful and primal and therefore very scary. They'll be running from our sermons to the dancehalls if we're not careful.

Yes.

That's it.

Kill the musicians.

So the guys responsible for some fantastic, energetic, beautiful sounds have had to flee, to go underground, to leave their country, to do their jobs. All because some nutters have their knickers in a knot.


Meanwhile, in the We Hate Foreigners xenophobia zone

The authorities are doing their best to ruin two lives.

There's a petition here:

http://t.co/E5XUxQY2OS

Bung our very own fundamentalist nutters a quick email. It may do some good, after all.

No. No I'm not interested. Thanks.

They've come a long way...

...computers.

There's one of those urban myths...

...see also: Yanks spend billions on space-pens, Russian astronauts equipped with pencils; Yanks spend billions on stealth planes, Russians go back to valve technology (there's a theme developing here, isn't there...lets break that now...); Army stand in for fire brigade during strike, rescue cat from tree, then run it over; [add your personal favourites here]...

...about the early days of computers in banking:

Everything was going well, until the software came across the first double-barrelled name, whereupon it ground to a halt, trying to subtract the 'Jones' from the 'Smithers' in Smither-Jones.

Now, there's no question of that happening.

Now the concern is that they're getting too clever and too intrusive.

Yet...

...but not far enough...

...to avoid continuing to make schoolboy mistakes.

Even as they gather information: whereabouts you live, what sites you regularly visit, your online shopping moves, all that stuff...

...they fail to process it properly and actually learn anything...

...otherwise...

..why would I be getting communications telling me:

Grab Richard Madley's The Way You Look Tonight

...when, clearly, the only phrase I can think of that includes Richard Madley and 'grab' also includes 'nuts' and 'vice'.

Apparently, the bastard lovechild of Killroy-Silk and Nigel Havers, when he isn't busy shoplifting or being on the telly is churning out competition to *spits* Lord Archer of Slimesville.

I'll admit to a problem with telly.

Similar to the problem I have with giant, steaming piles of walrus pooh. That is, I'd rather not be in the same room, if at all possible.

For telly, as opposed to daytime telly with the likes of Richard and Judy, read giant steaming piles of walrus pooh, as opposed to giant steaming piles of rancid pooh from a colony of walruses. Walruses who have had a night out on the curry and beer. And dysentery.

Google-Ads. Kobo bookstore. Waterstones online. Amazon. eBay. Are you listening? For cristal clarity:

Richard Madley = steaming piles of post-vindaloo and Guinness walrus crap.

No, thank you.

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

A girl on the run from South Africa. With (due to a post-room failure) an atomic bomb. Twin brothers only one of whom exists, officially. The mad girlfriend of the officially existing twin.

There's not many dull pages.


(The Lack of) a Welcome Mat

It never ceases to amaze, although it shouldn't, in light of experience. The dreariness and lack of imagination, of outside the box thinking, the political classes are capable of.

Were you living in a cave, munching on a squirrel or rat half raw, half burnt over the fire that is smoking out your sleeping quarters and stinging your eyes, admiring the wife's cave paintings while shivering in your lioncloth; and you looked over at your neighbours:

Your neighbours with their hi-fi, wi-fi, like something out of sci-fi. Their glass-walled house, clothes, beds, appliances, cookers, fridges. The smell of your neighbours' curries, their pizzas, their Singapore noodles sizzling away in those...those...what is that stuff? Metal?

Were you the cave-dweller, might you not, at some stage, say: “guys, look at those dudes over there. They not just ahead of us, they're, like, light-years ahead. We've got some serious catch-up to play here.”

Or would you bury your head in the sand and just shout louder and louder than anyone who dared to dispute it that:

“This is the way. This is the only way. Ours is the one and only way to (delete the non-applicable) economic stability / health and happiness / salvation...for this is the way of (delete where non-applicable) the tory party / the labour party / the other party / the lord.”

While technology, science, art and literature continue to evolve, to amaze and astound with wonders anew, elsewhere, nothing changes.

By way of example:

Gove buggered about with 'his' education department, desperately trying to make a name for himself by turning the clock back fifty years or so, cheesing off anyone who really cared enough to be cheesed off in the process.

Meanwhile, coders somewhere produced the 'slap Gove' app, that ended up on any number of phones and andriod devices, bringing pleasure to thousands (thanks for letting me have a go, Mr Naughty, and very satisfying as well as amusing it was, too).

So Baroness Warsi leaves the tory party and says their stance on ethnic minorities will cost them a chance of retaining power. What posessed her to hook up with them in the first place?

My family arrived here, by chance as much as by any other way, after their men fought on the same side, expecting a welcome, and receiving more cold shoulders than warmth and love.

Over 60 years later, and because some UKIP numpties succeed in winning the hearts and minds (what there is of them (minds, that is)) of the hate-filled Daily Mail readership, the three other parties jump on the same easy vote winning bandwagon.

Not one says “hold on, calm down, lets look at this differently”.

All of them talk about control, about foreigners as if being foreign is, in and of itself, a bad thing, about stronger barriers at the borders to repel the nasty invading barbarians heading this way.

All of them.

That's not democracy, reasoned debate and listening to opinions that differ to yours.

That's a bunch of bullying sheep, incapable of original thought. In their caves. Doing the same stuff the senates did thousands of years ago, and the wars still rage, the displaced still suffer, and huge numbers of people still starve while others throw food away.

Minds stuck in the stoneage.

Utopia and gratuitousness

Utopia

I have a telly aversion. There's always a whole, long list of other things I need to be doing. I watched the first series of Utopia almost back-to-back, start to finish. Not such a great feat. There's only six episodes.

As with most suspenseful and violent films and television, there's a lot of laughs along the way too.

I've caught up to episode four of the second series. After the first one uses documentary and news footage cut between the action to provide some context for the first series and for what's to come, the same cast as before continue the conspiracy theory story line. With more bad language, distressing and violent scenes, adult content, all that stuff the woman with the posh voice warns you about just before it kicks off, leaving you thinking “good...what's not to like about all that, then?”.


The nature of violence

All violence is senseless, needless, and gratuitous, isn't it?

I mean, I don't want to sound like Morrissey or nothin'...but...that's the case,'aint it?

I read some reviews of Utopia:

Ofcom got complaints from humourless, anally retentive folk as follows: violence, offensive language, and child actors being involved in scenes of adult content. Guys? There's the off switch, right there. Your remote's on the Bible, next to your chastity belt and barbed self-scourging kit.

Aidan Smith (The Scotsman) appreciated the astonishing visuals, as well as the astonishing violence. Astonishment is in-built to violence, Aidan. Love and marriage, sister and brother, they go together. Unastonishing violence don't exist.

Tom Sutcliffe (The Independent) like the great visual style but questioned whether the violence was really necessary. Why, Tom, of course it was justified. If it made just one of you question whether it was necessary, that's all the justification anyone could ever ask.

Sam Wollaston (The Guardian) raved about a work of brilliant imagination, a 21st Century nightmare that looks beautiful, but had problems with the gratuitousness of the violence.

Mark (good name, dude) Monahan (The Daily Telegraph) got it. He described it as a “dark, tantalisingly mysterious overture”.

Here's how it works: our great and good law-makers tell us that, no matter what, we must find a way to settle our differences other than taking it out to the pub car park for a set-to. That's against their laws. We must, without their resources, a huge paid diplomatic core, more experts than taxpayers can afford, come to an amicable settlement, or have our collars felt and risk a custodial. The great and the good, on the other hand, for centuries, have gone to war (or sent their minions to fight their wars) at the drop of a hat.

All violence is gratuitous. That's the point.

What Aidan, Sam, Tom and the anals didn't like, in all probability, was that the violence occurred and erupted without too much chat and preambles. As it would naturally occur. Nothing. Bang. Footsteps.

The Booker Prize - long list

The Longlist's out

The Booker prize judges have settled on:

• Richard Flanagan – The Narrow Road to the Deep North
• Paul Kingsnorth – The Wake
• Niall Williams – History of the Rain
• Richard Powers – Orfeo
• David Nichols – Us
• Howard Jacobson – J
• David Mitchell – The Bone Clocks
• Siri Hustvedt – The Blazing World
• Joshua Ferris – To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
• Karen joy Fowler – We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
• Ali Smith – How to be Both
• Joseph O'Neill – The Dog
• Neel Mukhurjee – The lives of Others

Apart from Howard Jacobson (almost everything) and David mitchel (Cloud Atlas), these are all new to me. Unless Joseph O'Neill is MM's mate who's career has taken an unexpected turn. That's absolutely wonderful, because the annual (usually partially successful but aborted) attempt at the long list; and the following (usually completed) read through the short list is normally pretty rewarding.

Thankfully the board of judges that wanted to dumb the Booker down to sub-reality TV levels haven't left a lasting impression (at least not a good one) and there's been no repeat of Stella Rimington's bad influence. Quite what the selection committee were thinking about that year beats me.

I'm looking forward to the David Mitchell and the Howard Jacobson on past experience, and eager to get started reading the others, because experience suggests that there's going to be some real gems and some new authors with back catalogues to dig into.

If you're a betting type – the bookies are normally pretty good at predicting the Booker, and the favourite or second favourite normally scoop the prize.

Lunatics running asylums

They've put the guys who profit from killing bees in charge of save the bees research.

Blimey.

Unbelievable. If that's true, why, then:

Next we'll have a climate change denying badger killer running the environment, and a paedo heading up the anti-paedo initiative.

Then we'll have government commissioned scientific research that simply gets ignored if it does not agree with what they're hell-bent on doing in any case.

You could even have the companies and individuals paid to write the long, needlessly complicated and intricate tax laws left free to earn huge fees from the big corporations for the inside info on exactly how to dodge those taxes.

Oh.

Right.