The Bum Diary

Platitude attack!

2010-06-12T16:58:00.011Z

Platitudes are all bollocks. "Seize the day"? Have you tried that? How are you supposed to do that, practically speaking? Wave your arms about and grab at the air? Rip a page off a calendar? I hope this half-arsed motivational toss makes the people who spout it feel better, because it does shat-all for me.

How about, "Live each day as if it's your last"? I tried that once, I spent the day curled up in the corner, rocking back and forth mumbling "i don't want to die i don't want to die i don't want to die" That's a design for life is it? If you're a twattock, maybe.

Stupidest to me, is "Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse." Well, that corpse will look good for a few days, until putrefaction kicks in. Unless you're going to have yourself stuffed, that shit's going to rot in the ground, or get flambéd. So for your troubles you'll have left either a dull looking pile of ash, or a necrotised slime puddle in a box. Well done.

I've been honing some more realistic phrases to live by, and some of them are quite catchy, some, err... not that catchy. AVANTI!

"Live fast, die young, hope the mortician's not a necrophiliac."

"Die in early middle-age, leave a fairly presentable corpse."

"Die during menopause, leave a corpse that's as good as you can expect, but probably won't look good naked."

"Live slow, die really old, who's got the last laugh now?!?!?"

"Live slow, die young anyway, what a pisser!"

"Live fast, sit in an adiabatic demagnetising refrigerator so you achieve the lowest possible mass which will cause time to move more slowly. This would achieve the inverse of time dilation so whilst your life would appear to move at a normal rate you would in fact age more quickly. Although the effect may appear marginal and it may be more effective to speed up everyone else to a significant proportion of C, relatively ...and leave a good looking corpse!"

"Live fast, experience time dilation, find everyone you knew has died while you were orbiting Alpha Centauri"

"Live weird, die bizarre, leave your corpse to science."

"Live fast, die old, leave a good looking widow."

"Die old, leave a corpse."

There's something achievable for everyone there. Well, apart from that Alpha Centauri one, that just not realistic.

What's a fair price for an ebook? (POLL)

2010-05-29T20:42:00.010Z

If one question has kept popping up this year, it has been "What is a fair price for an ebook?" Publishers have been putting their case for the prices they're asking. Writers have been explaining how cheaper ebooks are boosting their sales. Readers have been asking why there aren't bigger savings with no physical product to make, store and distribute?

So I've set up a poll on the Victor Finch Book blog, here, to get as many opinions as possible on what is a fair price for a digital book. Please take part and tell as many people interested in books and reading as you can.

Thanks.

Sleeeeeeeeepknooooooooooooot!

2010-05-25T18:38:00.001Z

Apparently some fella from Slipknot is dead. Here's to him, with one of Half Man Half Biscuit's finest songs.

Side-endian

2010-05-17T12:51:00.002Z

Hey, Jonathan Swift, screw you!!

Minister Grimsdale! Minister Grimsdale!

2010-05-15T09:27:00.022Z

It wasn't the most decisive election in the history of Britain, but there's no doubt the electorate finally decided to put us out of Gordon's misery. And yet, there he stayed, under a lie that he was constitutionally required to remain Prime Minister until it was clear who would be taking over at Number 10. Under this contrivance, he was subject to greater and greater indignity, all the while being told by Labour mouth-pieces how incredibly dignified he was being.

Across social media, this ever escalating perversion of the will of the electorate was accompanied by a bewildering array of support and seeming affection for the fallen leader. The leftist media-luvvie wanketeers can lead a strong narrative of bullshit if it's in the cause of sabotaging a change of government (I swear they'd sing the praises of Pol Pot if he could keep the Conservatives out of Number 10). But, the tone of affection really surprised me.

Why would a dismal, failed premiership, as lacking in achievement as it was filled with vicious in-fighting, fiscal incompetence and complete lack of vision; what's more, one characterised by a fatal ineptitude of interpersonal skills, inspire such warmth and sympathy?

It finally clicked. With a starting point of Vince Cable's observation that the now ex-Prime Minister had morphed from Stalin to Mr. Bean, this was the final stage of his metamorphosis. Here he was, a man who is useless at his job, beset by incidents born of his own clunking ineptness and the slings and arrows of clumsy fortune; yet a sizeable group of people were rooting for him to succeed, to win through against all the odds. No matter how useless he is, no matter how spectacularly he fucks up, they're there, willing him to win. In this humiliating electoral limbo, he became Norman Wisdom!

He already gone from the clunking fist control freak, to being the oddball, alienesque, socially retarded weirdo, before finally becoming the hapless, luck-proof, well-meaning but ineffectual tit. In the mind's of New Labour apologists he was now the pratt-falling, serendipitous nicampoop that the folks want to win the day!

"She was just some sort of bigoted woman!" Oh, Norman, you still had your microphone on! You've done it again! Ho ho ho! You big silly!

"Minister Grimsdale just resigned, saying we'll never get re-elected with me as Prime Minister." Oh my sides! What whacky thing will happen to Norman next!

"Oh dear, I came last in all 3 of the television debates." Stop it, Norman! You're killing me!

This affection crystalised when he finally admitted he'd lost the election, and resigned as PM. As he departed Buckingham Palace, in a car now devoid of Police outriders to escort it on it way (a stark illustration that he doesn't matter anymore), the hashtag #thankyougordon sprang up on Twitter.

With the damage he wrought on our economy, and the duplicity and deceit he used to excuse and conceal his poisonous and destructive influence, I personally found this uncritical gushing pretty nauseating. He wasn't Norman Wisdom, blundering about to comic effect; he was consistently fucking up and lying through his teeth every time he got called on it.

I didn't want to just let this stream of bullshit flow uninterrupted, so I decided to inject some reality into proceedings, adding my own thanks for a job bad done. I reproduce them here so they aren't lost in the flow of text that springs from novelty island. There's a few extra for good measure.

#thankyougordon for robbing my parents' pensions

#thankyougordon for turning our economy into a pyramid scheme, then acting surprised when it fell apart

#thankyougordon for selling our gold reserves at a quarter of their value

#thankyougordon for promising a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, then sending David Miliband scuttling off to sign it without the nation's say so

#thankyougordon for letting cheap debt drive house prices far out of reach of first time buyers

#thankyougordon for the culture of cheap debt that turned property market into the preserve of buy-to-let profiteers and quick-buck property developers

#thankyougordon for creating a necessity for 40 and 50 year mortgages, 100% mortgages, and for people to lie about their earnings to be able to buy

#thankyougordon for looking at an out of control property boom and the inevitable housing crisis it caused and seeing only more money for the treasury

#thankyougordon for allowing a culture of reckless borrowing that had the population racking up mortgage level debt on their credit cards

#thankyougordon for announcing the same money again and again and again, to make it sound like you were investing 3 times as much as you really were

#thankyougordon for incentivising indolence, failure and bankruptcy, and punishing success, wealth creation and job creation

#thankyougordon for having opposition members arrested for uncovering government incompetence, then denying all knowledge (Mugabe and Ahmadinejad would be proud of you)

#thankyougordon for underfunding our troops and then lying about how much you'd spent to keep them safe

#thankyougordon for PFI schemes even the Conservatives wouldn't have run, locking local authorities into expensive service contracts for buildings they don't own

#thankyougordon for giving up on nationalising industry, and nationalising the workforce instead, with 1 in 4 people of working age employed by the public sector

#thankyougordon for leaving office with higher unemployment than you inherited form the "evil" tories

#thankyougordon for a bigger gap between rich and poor than you inherited from the "evil" tories

#thankyougordon for over 8 million people who are classed as economically inactive

#thankyougordon for bringing the repeatedly disgraced Peter Mandelson back into government, continuing Blair's legacy of cronyism and giving vast power to someone the electorate can't remove

#thankyougordon for fighting an election campaign against the Conservative party of 30 years ago, and getting the same result as the Labour party of 30 years ago

#thankyougordon for fighting the ghost of a woman who's nearly dead, and losing

#thankyougordon for trying to stitch-up an electoral system that would mean only Labour could ever win again, when you had just spectacularly lost

#thankyougordon for sending your unelected minions to pervert democracy and lay claim to the votes of 7 million Lib-Dem voters, many of whom despise your government's actions in office

#thankyougordon for taking Labour back to childish, nasty, poisonous, divisive, envy-politics that kept Labour out of power for a generation

#thankyougordon for post defeat election shenanigans that make Florida 2000, Zimbabwe 2008 and Iran 2009 look reasonable

#thankyougordon for unleashing your attack dogs, McBride, Balls and Whelan on Alistair Darling for being honest about the disastrous economy you'd created

#thankyougordon for trading on a reputation as a safe pair of hands built on a false, bubble-economy that grew more dangerous the more you shored it up with unsustainable borrowing

#thankyougordon for inspiring me to come up with the saying "When the going gets tough, the weak get lying"

#thankyougordon for going into hiding while mass-murderer al Megrahi was given early release from prison

#thankyougordon for allowing the release of al Mehgrahi so BP could get oil development programs in Libya

#thankyougordon for never achieving an electoral mandate, even within your own party, yet still attempting to cling to power after being rejected by the country

#thankyougordon for abolishing "Boom & Bust"... oh, wait...

#thankyougordon for a smile that could curdle milk

#thankyougordon for not being Prime Minister anymore, you slack-jawed incompetent, power-clinging, mandate-lacking destroyer of our economy.

I didn't even start on the things that happened under Tony Blair. Thank fuck that's over.

Considerations for Lib-Dems who favour a piecemeal deal.

2010-05-09T01:32:00.009Z

My political philosophy is to vote against any Government that has been in power so long that it thinks it belongs there. I am not a tribal voter, but I am not a floating voter either. I am always open to debate, and responsive to sound arguments, but I will already know who I will vote for at least a year before an election takes place. Party political broadcasts, fatuous celebrity endorsements, funny photoshops and election posters will never sway me. In the interests of debate, I offer the following observations about coalition government.

There are two parties which consistently voted against 90-day detention, control orders, secret trials with secret evidence, ID cards, DNA records retention for those charged with no crime, and many other, ultra right-wing database/surveillance state measures that New Labour introduced.

There are a lot of foul authoritarian works to be undone. Labour in coalition cannot possibly consider allowing a party with a double-digit seat tally to dictate to them a reversal of years of their legislative works.

There is also the deficit, which Gordon refused to tackle in case it further harmed his poor chances of re-election. A coalition with Labour would require a disagreeable multi-party arrangement to achieve a workable majority, with Scotland and Wales angling for big cash sweeteners at a time of deep financial crisis.

Propping up a discredited and roundly defeated government would do immense harm to the democratic credentials of the party. Especially if it were to result in a hastily concocted electoral system that assists a failed and rejected Government returning to power.

Labour has consistently stolen Lib-Dem votes through tactical voting wheezes which are never remotely reciprocal in size and effect. Labour activists have spent the period since the election claiming Lib-Dem votes belong to them, being proxy "anti-tory" votes, and therefore de-facto votes for Gordon Brown continuing as Prime Minister.

They promised electoral reform 13 years ago, and apart from some frivolous dallying with the House of Lords, nothing has been achieved. Fool you once, shame on them... you know the rest. Their crassly cynical promises now propose an ATV stitch-up that would have them in power forever, knowing that in most cases 2nd preference votes from Lib-Dems would go to Labour; and leaving libertarian minded people who oppose statism and Big Brother snooping with nowhere to cast a 2nd and 3rd vote.

Even when it has left the Conservatives hugely electorally disadvantaged, they have always espoused the integrity of a representative democracy of local, and locally elected, representatives. Even if you don't agree with it, it is impossible to deny that this a principle position, and has never been about short-term advantage.

Labour cynically offers and withdraws support for electoral reform, with no principle involved, merely self-serving political expediency. It considers its first duty in power, not to govern well or wisely, but to deny power to the tories. Anything that achieves that infantile, tribalistic goal is justified.

They perpetuate a childish, poisonous, divisive and reductive "Heroes & Villains" narrative in British politics that is every bit as instrumental as FPTP in shutting Lib-Dems out of elections. This is where your Cleggmania surge disappeared to.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron are self-evidently "new politics"; Gordon Brown is a 20th century politician, flinging totemic images of Thatcher around to scare voters; Labour are still fighting the battles of 30 years ago, and it's no coincidence that doing so delivered similar results to Michael Foot's endeavours.

That is not "progressive" politics, it is regressive politics. Blair's New veneer has been rubbed off and we're left with a party that's stuck in the 1980's fighting the memory of a now frail old woman, yet it still clings to power after a devastating electoral defeat.

Supporting that situation is not a place that any political party that wishes to retain the respect of the electorate should be positioning itself.

The Conservatives will shoulder the unpopularity of public spending cuts, yet the Lib-Dems can have some say in where they fall. One party a lightning rod for the unpopularity of the cuts, the other a conscience in how they are implemented, and neither party in the restrictive thrall of unions who would put their own interests before the financial future of the nation. After nearly a century out of power the Lib-Dems can demonstrate they have the chops for governing, and show there is an alternative way for ordinary left-leaning Britons to vote without getting dragged into ugly, divisive politics of Lab-Con confrontation.

There is every chance Labour will soon be riven by a war of Blairites vs. Old Labour union stooges. Balls and Whelan want to take Labour back to the 70's; whereas Mandelson will be angling to return the party to election winning ground with a Miliband, or some other leader who doesn't revolt the middle-classes that Blair wooed in the 90's. Gordon lost those voters in the noughties, and they'll be very hard to get back.

The centre left is up for grabs and the Liberal Democrat brand is not tainted with toxicity of an illegal war, facilitating torture and financial incompetence. Joining a failed Labour party in government could only stain the Lib-Dems. With a dodgy jigsaw coalition that Labour would need, that would make an Autumn election very likely. Tainted by Labour, and lacking the huge cash reserve the Conservatives have in their war-chest, the Lib-Dems would be quite likely to do even worse, as the Labour vote firms up in the pain of opposition, and the general public feel betrayed that Labour have been allowed to remain in government after defeat.

If ever the Liberal Democrats are to be seen as a party worthy of power in their own right, they must break the abusive relationship with Labour, and demonstrate the country's needs are a much higher priority than partisanship. Electoral reform is clearly needed, but PR has as many failures in the world at large, and aside from the great necessity of WWII, the history of coalitions in Britain is a history of failure.

Huge reform of the way boundaries are set and altered, removing the tectonic lethargy and balancing the catchments, is vital, but as a one time advocate of PR, I have gradually become very cautious about its ability to deliver effective government. The situation we have now, of a man who has lost the only attempt he has ever made to seek a mandate and yet remains in power, is a foretaste of what PR is most likely to deliver. As this goes on, I'm not sure the wider public will have a taste for it. If it comes to a referendum, it may well fail.

Fundamental electoral reform must not be rushed through to benefit a failed government in time for a run-off 2nd election. It must be explored, considered, scrutinised and debated. As someone who is fully behind thorough electoral reform, I hope the offer will be made. I hope it will be accepted.

2010-05-06T14:43:00.006Z

Guhh! Managing to revise about one chapter a day at the moment, painful. I'm trying to avoid melodramatic electoral bullshit as it appears around the webzoens. The commentary is mind-meltingly crap. Not worth participating, not worth arguing, not worth discussing. A wall of cognitive dissonance, protected with puny rationales.

I'm caffeine loading for tonight, although with 20 or so seats not declaring until tomorrow, the all-night election coverage could be a bit futile, as those late declaring seats could be the decider between a hung parliament and a majority government.

I'll be watching urban Labour marginals carefully. Some have razor thin majorities, and huge numbers of new, unscrutinised postal votes. Any of the seats that produce unexpected Labour wins against the Uniform National Swing... well, let's just say, the illegal revelation of Kerry McCarthy's postal voting numbers told a very disturbing story about massively disproportional vote tallies. Expect more criminal investigations in the coming months.

***UPDATE***

Bethnal Green and Bow declares, 14% swing, way out of line with other election results. Majority up from 800 to nearly 12,000. Just sayin'

Gordon's gift to the BNP.

2010-04-29T10:07:00.013Z

"Immigration, understandably, and legitimately, generates strong feelings, and people have a right to talk about these issues and what they mean for them. As politicians in that mainstream, in the centreground of British politics, we have a duty to listen and engage with these big issues, because if we don't people will listen to whoever does." --- Gordon Brown, 31st March, 2010

Interesting day, yesterday, as much for what people said about it as for what Gordon Brown actually did. I've covered in detail the thin pretence we have of freedom of speech these days. From thin skinned, reactionary, professional-victims, to those who dress themselves in the moralistic finery of patronisingly defending others from having to hear nasty things. Both groups which will leap to fling ugly insinuations around at the merest hint of an off-message phrase.

Seeing Gordon Brown facepalm when hearing his own words played back to him has broader electoral consequences than his own, already blighted political future. As I said last October, the expectation of political properness in language is used to bury uncomfortable truths; but it's a shallow grave. Everybody knows where the grave is, everybody knows what is in the grave. But nobody is allowed to talk about the grave.

Yesterday, Gillian Duffy asked about that shallow grave. Yesterday, Gillian Duffy went to the shops, and, while about her business, became aware of the close presence of the Prime Minister. She wanted an opportunity to ask about some very important matters (I think we all would). Taxes on pensions. Student tuition fees. The budget deficit. Immigration.

The first 3 demonstrate an intelligent, working class woman who clearly has a solid grasp of the state of the nation, but the last one makes Gordon nervous. You see, she talked about the grave, and what was in it. The shallow grave nobody is supposed to talk about; that everyone is supposed to ignore unless they talk about it in a certain way.

People must couch their questions and statements with adequate equivocation, like "We all know that immigration is a benefit... but", "We welcome immigration and the richness immigrants bring to our culture... but" (is this sounding familiar?) You know the rest. Once they've donned their proper linguistic armour, we can hear what they actually have to say and then decide if we can shout "Racist!" at them. Without these front-loaded caveats, you don't even need to listen, there's no decision to be made, it's automatic. Racist. Bigot.

This was powerfully in evidence on Twitter yesterday. Gordon was horrified, and apologised, then went back to apologise in person. All the time that was happening, this impolitic woman, this un-nuanced woman, this spin-free, real woman, who exists outside the world of mealy-mouthed politic-speak was being ripped to shreds by the Twitterati. Celebrity power very quickly had the #bigotgate hashtag relegated from trending topics, to be replaced by the anti-Duffy #bigotedwoman accompanying many funny tweets, and many downright obnoxious tweets. All of which were completely on the side that Gordon Brown had already abandoned, the side that believes if you say anything remotely critical about immigration levels, you're a racist.

Gillian Duffy is not a politician. Her concerns, whether realistic or not, are the concerns of hundreds of thousand, if not, millions of people in this country. It is a matter of record that immigration levels spiking massively under New Labour was no accident. Andrew Neather, a former Government advisor revealed last year that it was a covertly implemented policy to throw open the doors to all comers. This was not altruism. Their tacit goal was to ram multiculturalism down the throats of the opposition, and if they complained about it, to brand them as racists in order to gain political advantage. Moreso, the goal was an infantile desire to inflict pain on rivals. The goal was tribalistic, childish, partisan, political spite.

If you think the immense rise in the popularity of the BNP during this period - gaining council seats, and even seats in the European Parliament - is a coincidence, or was simply inevitable, or follow the line that "all political parties must shoulder the blame for letting this happen", think again.

The rise of the BNP is due to an act of deliberate Government provocation. A gauntlet thrown down on the ground in front of anyone who dared defy their multicultural ambitions. Middle-class guilt about not being poor, not being meek enough, fretting about whether that Indian couple who moved in down the road will think you're racist if you don't smile enough at them (or smile too much at them); that will keep a lot of the population in line with this piece of maliciously motivated social engineering.

But the working class aren't raised to feel guilty, that's the job of the middle class. When the working class see how open-door immigration overloads local housing, local infrastructure and local services, they want to know how this was allowed to happen. They want to know why grubby partisan politics in the Westminster village is indifferent to the strain unchecked mass immigration places on their lives and their communities. So too do builders and tradesman who are being undercut by cheap overseas labourers. They aren't trained in nuanced politic-speak, and they don't deserve the derision and dismissal of the political classes, the chattering classes and the Twittering classes just because they speak like real people. Nor do they deserve the crass, childish, invective tantrums on display in social media yesterday.

While the earnest, comfortably-off and worthy chattering classes back-slap themselves and each other for being better people than Gillian Duffy; being pleased with themselves for the "enlightenment" that comfort allows, indulging themselves in right-on snobbery; people with real problems, who are sick of being castigated for expressing honest views will think they're as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. If that's what the insulated, ignorant political class thinks, why not turn their Labour vote into a BNP vote?

Pathetic whining about Sky News this, and Murdoch that, completely miss the point of what happened yesterday. We know who Murdoch wants to win the election this year, just like we knew in 1997. Congratulations to the people just now waking up to his toxic influence! Well done, what fucking rock have they been living under for the last 30 years?

For all the influence Murdoch has exerted on these elections (ironically, usually resulting in worse polling for the Conservatives) Rupert Murdoch didn't make Gordon Brown say what he said. Didn't conspire for him to reveal the contempt the Government have for the sort of people who have supported the Labour party from its very birth as a political movement. What Gordon Brown did was not just insult an old woman, it was to dismiss millions of fair-minded people in an offensive and offhand way. I doubt Nick Griffin has ever had a better day than yesterday. They may even get an MP out of this one.

I deliberately did NOT couch this post with an introduction stating I'm not racist, or stating I have nothing against immigration, or any of the other cowardly caveats anyone daring to discuss these topics is supposed to use. Anyone who thinks I needed to, or in absence of them assumed that I must also be a racist or a bigot, they are NOT combating bigotry, they are perpetuating it, and escalating it. You're not a righteous warrior for racial and ethnic tolerance, you're the reason people turn away from mainstream parties towards the only people with nothing to lose by telling awkward truths.

If you participated in the sustained attack on someone who just asked a fair question, then you are not the answer to intolerance, you are the problem.

2010-04-27T09:06:00.000Z

All work and some play make Jack somebody I've never met.

2010-03-29T00:07:00.007Z

I seem to be tolerably on course for this short story collection that I plan to publish later in the year. January was collecting all of my years of short-story ideas, and whittling them down to things that were still topically relevant and that hadn't been done by other writers between me thinking of them and actually setting about writing them.

I wound up with about 22 story premises worth writing, and 9 that have enough development to be actual stories. I spent most of February working on the first story, with the words coming like near-frozen treacle a lot of the time. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, but it still needs fleshing out and trimming. I reached the end a week ago last Friday, and I've set it aside so I can come back to it fresh after a few weeks.

The next story I started on Monday and finished at 4am on Friday morning (or Thursday night, I tend not to call a day by its name until I've woken up to it) and have spent Friday honing it. That's the fastest I've ever written anything like that. It's just over 7,000 words now, so I'll probably do a cut down version to send out for anthologies and competitions, and keep the longer one for my collection.

Writing is coming naturally for the first time in quite a while, and the usual distractions aren't. TV, internet, meals, dog walking, they get done but so does the work. That said, the story I just finished has been one I've been thinking of since about 2003, so it was 4 days in the writing, plus 7 years in the thinking. I'm relieved it all just came out exactly how I wanted it, and the ending, which I'd never actually thought through in all that time, came about naturally and is better than I could have hoped.

With both stories at over 6,000 words, 9 or 10 stories should make a very decent length for a story collection, so if my brain stays in this effective state and I can get the stories out, all seems set for a good product. Best part is, both times I've finished a story, I've wanted to start the next one straight away. When it comes, you have to use it.

Olympians

2010-02-26T22:55:00.020Z

Like a cow, I've been ruminating, and farting, but that's not relevant, just the ruminating, focus on that. See, the Winter Olympics doesn't get the fuss the Summer games do. I'm not just talking post Torville & Dean British malaise either, most of the world thinks of it as the other Olympics. This shit needs some hot-sauce!

Allow me to apply the Tabasco...

Firstly, this one I've been saying for years. Biathlon. Amazing sport, cross-country skiing for kilometers, then having to get it together and aim a rifle, calm and steady and pop off five tiny targets, then go round and do it all again and again. Amazing athletes? Yes. Exciting to watch? No. The solution is easy: Get rid of the targets, let them shoot at each other! Imagine it! One skier lurking in the trees, rifle ready, another, trying to langlauf his little socks off. The echoing report of a gunshot! A spray of blood on the snow! THAT'S SPORT! I suppose they could use paintballs, if you want to be boring about it.

"Tango down."

Now, no disrespect to dead Georgians, but, lunatic activities though they are, I still don't think luge or skeleton are exciting enough either. They can stick around, but I want an extra event. No tea-tray, just dudes and wimmins, in their lycra, loaded into a great big cannon and fired down the track. Picture it, take a moment. I've said enough.

While we're at the ice tube: bob-sleigh, still kind of exciting, but imagine a nitro-league version. Strap a rocket to the back of those tubs and you've got yourself a show. It could be the last event, so it doesn't melt the ice for everyone else, obviously. My schedule would be Luge, Skeleton, Man-Cannon, Two-man Bob, Four-man Bob, Rocket-Bob.

Ski-jump? Well, you've got yourself a potential clay pigeon shoot there, in fact, this could double up with the Sniper Biathlon, you could get double points for bagging a ski-jumper.

Now, the ski racing is getting more interesting, they've got 4 man events now a bit like the Board-cross stuff, with kind of a Giant Slalom-ish course with jumps and suchlike. This is a great development, but suggests its own future evolution. See, it's like a James Bond mountain chase, so they should throw some Ski-Doos in there, chasing after them with Uzis. I appreciate there's kind of a gun heavy theme going on here, I have to tell you, I don't really give a shit.

If Infinity Ward get the next Winter Games license, I'm in.

Now, get this. These sports-people all train months and months of the year, this is full-time for them, so where's the aspirational aspect? Sure, there's Curling, which any menacing Glaswegian house-frau seems able to excel at, but there has to be more than flinging rocks to make this thing a bit more egalitarian? Well, I've got a sport for you, that you will be amazed wasn't always in there. A sport ANYONE can do. Snowball Fighting!

Olympic Snowball Fighting. Why has nobody thought of this before? Imagine one day your grandkids find an Olympic gold medal in a shoe box in your wardrobe. "WHAT DID YOU WIN THIS FOR GRANDAD/GRANDMA!" (they would probably know which you were without hedging their bets, gender wise). You'd nod sagely, with a look of quiet satisfaction and tell them, "Snowball fighting, kids. Snowball fighting."

Actually, you could probably buy a knock-off medal from somewhere and just say that anyway, with some of the stupid shit that gets to be demonstration events at the Olympics, who'd know the difference that many years down the line? Not kids, kids are stupid.

Say you got one for snowman building while you're at it. "I won the freestyle Triple-Stage Snowperson gold medal in Sarajevo in '84, people forget the importance of picking the right carrot."

Calvin & Hobbes type should have its own category.

Well, that's all I've got events right now, but don't think I'm done, there's still spice to be had. In ancient Greece Olympians all competed naked, I don't need to explain where I'm going with this. I know it's cold, but these are hardy people. They train in the cold they compete in the cold. It's a bloody WINTER Olympics. COLD! They're used to it. I appreciate men might be reluctant, you know... shrinkage, you all know about shrinkage, right?

The other advantage (apart from super-pert nipples) might at first seem like a disadvantage (like being poked in the eye by super-pert nipples). What would happen to the fine, and incredibly violent sport of Ice hockey if it was played naked? It would be a lot friendlier is what!! They'd either have to drop all that high-speed body-check-into-the-wall stuff, or just let really fat people play so the impacts are cushioned (I wouldn't want to be the naked goalie, mind, puck to the balls! OOF!!). It would also be pretty funny that this ruff-tuff game would pretty soon look like the most homosexual sport ever conceived, giving the macho-impaired male figure skaters a much needed machismo buffer.

Speaking of which, Ice-dance would also take on an interesting new dimension if performed naked. Yeah, that's right.

Caption contest? The jokes write themselves.

Anyway, if they ARE going to remain clothed for ice-dancing, the least they can do is up the entertainment factor. I keep seeing a huge missed opportunity, there's no comedy category. Artistic impression, technical merit, blah blah blah, where's the laughs? Sure it's funny when they fall on their arse, but specific moves could be added to the compulsory programme. All I have in mind at this stage is wedgies. See, the fella lifts the girl over his shoulder, she grabs his pnats waist-band, then when he goes for the overhead lift, so does she, right up his crack, over the top of his head and over his eyes. Not sure how the girl could be wedgied? Those outfits are kind of one-piece, they could design something especially though.

Well, I think these suggestions would make the Winter games vastly more exciting, and I can only hope the IOC will take note and introduce some of these improvements.

WINRAR!

2010-02-04T20:44:00.004Z

I won second prize in that microfiction contest! 10 years writing and I never bothered entering a contest before, then I'm a prizewinner on my first shot. Maybe I should do a bit more of this?

If you're too lazy to scroll down it was the story "Escapology" I posted last month. When you're working on a 100 word budget, it's more about what you leave out, and what people read between the lines than the few words you actually put up there.

I'm working on a collection of short stories that I'll self publish on the newly open Amazon-Createspace platform, as they'll be rolling out a 70% royalty system. I'll post some of the stories here, maybe, as and when they're finished.

Err, wait, I found a thing, wait a minute...

2010-01-15T21:35:00.003Z

This actually survived the loss of over 200 notes I'd made on my iProd, which were wiped when the 3.0 firmware upgrade deleted all my preferences, playlists, emails, game saves and so on, which were supposedly "backed up" each time I synced the thing. Apparently not.

Looks like I'm as guilty as everyone else of bringing on the New Dark Age. 200 notes for dialogue, story ideas and such like, gone; as a writer, that's a real fucking pisser. Anyway, one thing I had transferred to my pen & paper notebook was this word association thing I did for my own amusement. More a phrase association I suppose.

Shut up Hughes.

Here it is!

Zeppelin
Hippodrome
Nandrolone
Robot Drone
Fruity Scone
Sminky Pinky
Rinky Dinky
Chunky Monkey
Tequlia Squealer
Poker Dealer
Harriet Wheeler
Bender
Fry
Chicken Pot Pie
Kitty
Cartman
Bartman
Stupendous Man
Hobbes
Transmogrifier
High Flier
Fly by Wire
Spare Tyre
Ginger Minge
Have a good whinge
Take the plunge
Dunk in gunge
Wakka wakka wakka
Pukka pukka pukka
Pika! Pika!
Pizza, pizza!
Lager! Lager! Lager! Lager!
Mega mega white thing!
Choose life
Choose a wife
Buy a knife
Live in Fyfe
Dundee cake
Easy bake
Garden rake
Pickled hake
Jump in the lake
Emmerson, Lake
Crosby, Stills
Holsten Pils
House in the Hills
Pay the bills
Lava Lamp
Muscle cramp
Eat your greens
Laser beams
Dandruff soup
Mobius Loop
One dimension
In suspension

Well, out of that lot I found "Eat you greens, Laser beams" slightly amusing. Good name for an album. "Lava Lamp, Muscle cramp" is the runner up. What the fuck am I talking about?

Attempts to not bore self.

2009-12-19T20:51:00.003Z

I've been boring the shit out of myself this last month or two. Getting together submissions, poring over bios, synopses, sample chapters, introductory letters, everything outside of that has been functionary at best. The thoughts are there, but they've come out with all potential pizazz spent; used up elsewhere.

I've entered a few comps in the interim, microfiction, nano fiction, and even an attempt at a humourous poem for something or other. The microfiction has a one hundred word limit, the nanofiction is submitted by text message, so that's 160 characters minus room for "STORY " at the start, so that a story in 154 characters. The poem wasn't really restricted.

ESCAPOLOGY:

I suppose you could say I've found him. We're always being told we are our ID cards, that we are no one and nothing without them, so here he is, lying in a cold, gritty puddle in an underground car park. All six, square, laminated inches of him. Could they really tell me I'd let him get away? Not by their own rules. Not that they'll see it that way. Is that blood in the water? Here they come. That engine, Benedict's car, no mistaking it. He won't be happy. Safety off. I'm not taking the blame for this.

SNOW:

Tonight's is soft. Last night's crunchy, nearly slush before it froze again. Beneath it all, a starry nights' ice, diamond sheer. Sorry, car. Sorry, tree.

Furtive

You've got a tiresome habit
of being where I want to be,
when I want to do things
I don't want you to see.

“I didn't know you came here?”
is what you always say.
Whatever I am planning
you're in the bloody way!

Everywhere I turn to,
I see your stupid face,
catching me at filthy things,
much to my disgrace.

Drinking at a lapdance club
ogling lady-bits,
up on stage, it's bloody you!
swirling your massive tassels.

My trousers round my ankles,
a magazine in front,
you burst in without knocking,
you annoying bloody cow!

I thought of hiring a hitman
to end it once and all,
but I know you'd walk right through the door
if I tried to make the call.

Do people know your new address?
“Kant Keep, Ewart Bay,
Rue de Interruption,
Inn my Bloody Way.”

The Damnable Scrumpers.

2009-11-08T21:09:00.012Z

The Intelligence Squared debate on Catholicism has made it onto YouTube (viewable here). I'd read about it, and the devastating turn from moderate negativity or indifference about the Roman version of the Christ mythos, to an overwhelming, humiliating vote against the church's "positive" influence.

The ongoing evils, such as the lies they tell Africans about condoms spreading AIDS, are doctrinal, and will never end. The sin of Onan, wasting "seed" in a prophylactic is considered a greater loss than the millions of deaths the spread of AIDS has caused. It's the same thinking that causes objections to life-saving treatments we could get from stem cell research. By the logic that drives these objections, a woman should hold a funeral every 28 days for a child that will never be, and the act of masturbating should be followed by a trial for mass murder. Those who call themselves "holy" in the RC tradition value spermatozoa and embryos more than living people.

I'll confess to feeling no small amount of glee when religion receives a nut-punch. It feeds on and encourages ignorance, and devalues this life by promising a much better one once you're putrifying in the dirt. It has a long established tradition of thuggishly subduing any knowledge and learning which contradicts, and highlights the contradictions in, holy texts. It is also a wilful partner in intolerance and sectarianism, both feeding, and feeding on base and malign instincts. Claiming to be the source of human morality, yet fuelling some of the most immoral, inhuman acts in history.

I've never believed in God, but only when I first stumbled upon a Creationist debate online, 8 or 9 years ago, did I give it any real thought. It wasn't something I felt any need to discuss, or even consider; but the inherent preposterousness of the argument from Creation genuinely shocked me. Every science contradicts the Young Earth view, geology, palaeontology, archaeology, biology, astronomy, astro-physics, genetics, carbon dating the list goes on. Each one devastates the notion of a young Earth.

Biblical literalists lump all sciences in with Evolution; anything which contradicts the notion of a young Earth created in 6 days, because the monkey idea gives them an unpopular hook they can use to try to drag down the entire scientific edifice. Darwin's dangerous idea did not involve the Big Bang, the red-shift, accretion discs, geological strata or any of the other things that offer indisputable proof of the ancient nature of the Universe and this world.

Darwin's notion was so simple it's a wonder it took so long for it to be recognised, and it is so easy to grasp that it is an act of pure willful ignorance to deny its reality. Mutations and variations in the genetic lottery which we can observe constantly within single families in a single generation; and the propagation of advantageous and neutral mutations and the decline of detrimental ones through natural selection. Both parts of the evolutionary process are observable, logical and undeniable.

Darwin's work has been subjected to hostile public reaction, hostile press coverage, hostile peer review and hostile court proceedings and stood unwithered by the most excoriating invective the forces of ignorance could fling at it. It has withstood every test thrown at it for 150 years, under the sort of scrutiny which leaves biblical "truth" lying in tatters.

Under fierce debate it always emerges that objections to Darwin are not actually based on scriptural adherence. The real difficulty with evolution boils down to vanity. Given the choice of being made in the image of God, or being a bald monkey, you can see that evolution knocks the glamour off the human condition a little. Personally, given a choice of being a clever monkey who can make his life what he chooses, or a guilt-ridden wretch who must constantly atone for the sins of a man and woman who ate a fucking apple, I'll choose the banana. Having the same face as God seems like a shitty trade-off for condemning humanity to an eternity of guilt because thousands of years ago a couple of naturists went scrumping.

Like the infantile objections to the fact of our simian ancestors, when reality and rationality has torn away all of religion's nebulous obfuscations, vacuous vagaries and smug sophistry, the final, last-gasp appeals routinely fall on what would be taken away if God weren't there. Hope for the underprivileged and downtrodden, the comfort of a guiding spirit and the hope of an eternal, post-mortem reward for a life of self denial. The infantilism of these appeals reveals itself by virtue of the fact it's impossible to make them without sounding exactly like someone explaining why you shouldn't tell a child there's no Santa Claus.

Removing the invisible, magic spaceman from the equation will make people less inclined to settle for a crappy lot in life, to take responsibility for their own fate and actions, and commit to making this, the only life we will ever have, worth living.

BUT

2009-10-23T12:41:00.011Z

Funny word, "but". Not as funny as "butt". Heh, "butt".

It's a handy word to insert just before you completely contradict a view you just espoused. Sandwich it between a popular notion and an unpopular one and you can delude yourself you're softening the blow.

Two cases in point, one famous; one not as famous.

"I'm not a racist, but..."
"I believe in freedom of speech, but..."

It's common knowledge what the first one means. It means "I'm a racist". Maybe not a burning-cross-in-the-garden string-'em-from-a-tree racist, maybe not even the sort who sends everyone in his phonebook "harmless" racist jokes. Just someone who quietly simmers with impotent envy when a they see a nice looking blonde girl with a big black guy, or when they see an asian in a much nicer car than they themselves can afford. The quintessence of the casual racist. It's not a way of life, just something to do in an idle moment when they think nobody's looking. Like panty sniffing.

The second is more insidious. We can all think of things we're "not supposed to say", and without much of a stretch we can probably all think of things we'd rather never hear. The principle seems easy to erode on a case by case basis, because freedom of speech sounds like one of those nice principles you can bend or ignore when it doesn't suit you. "I believe in freedom of speech, but holocaust deniers shouldn't be allowed to air their views" has a strong veneer of properness to it that "I'm not a racist, coons and jews are fine, I just fucking hate pakis!" isn't ever going to be able to match.

It must be understood that "I believe in freedom of speech, but..." is every inch a confession of the exact opposite as the claims of casual racists to be nothing of the kind. It shows a woeful ignorance of the principal of free speech, that that which is spoken openly can be challenged openly. More importantly, those who believe you can pick and choose free-speech are directly to blame for the rise of the open racism which is now common.

Linguistic interventionists have been compromising freedom of speech gradually and consistently for a couple of decades, at least. In doing so they provide weapons to anyone who needs uncomfortable truths in which to swaddle insidious lies.

Criticizing factual crime statistics that show certain ethnic groups are more likely to commit crimes. Calling anyone who objected the the brazen political irresponsibility of unchecked immigration a racist. Branding anyone who objects to the undemocratic, cronyistic upper-echelons of the European Union a "little Englander". Every time legitimate discourse is branded as bigotry people become fearful of speaking their minds.

Only those who are already castigated and ostracised can say these things, because they have nothing left to lose. When Nick Griffin is armed with truths that everybody knows, but mainstream politicians dare not speak, he has the perfect sheep's clothing in which to gain mainstream appeal and credibility.

Those who are most shrill in their protests at the rising success of the BNP are the ones who are to blame, and their attempts to stop Nick Griffin's pathetic bigotry and squirming distaste at being confronted with his past from being exposed to public view this week, shows that they have learned nothing.

In the short term, his appearance on Question Time should sober the opinions of a few on the wisdom of sending their protest votes his way. In the longer term, unless people are given back true freedom of speech, including the freedom to offend openly and therefore be challenged openly; unless those in the mainstream are brave enough to speak uncomfortable truths without resorting to ugly Daily Mail bombast; and conversely, unless the shrill Guardianista class learn the ultimate danger in suppressing mature debate with cheap political opportunism, this is a problem that will only get worse.

4 minutes for Fox News to say "Fascist", a record?

2009-10-10T19:41:00.006Z

I had a looksie at Professor Richard Dawkins being interviewed on the O'Reilly Factor, and to be fair to Bill, he was actually letting Richard occasionally speak this time, whereas on his last appearance he may as well have been tied to the chair with his mouth duct-taped shut. Maybe not being in the studio helped. Anyway, Richard had the wild idea that sticking "God did it" in science lessons anytime science hasn't found the answer yet, was maybe not a great idea. Here's the vid...

I thought I'd send Bill an email, he likes that kind of thing.

Hey Bill,

I watched your interview with Professor Richard Dawkins and am hugely disappointed that it took so little time for you to have to resort of the grubby tactic of a shouted accusation that he is a fascist. This for his simple proposition that science classes should only teach evidence based science. Such a reactionary and simplistic verbal assault is a pitiful level of discourse. Ad-hominem attack is no substitute for a reasonable cut & thrust of debate. Frankly, it's debate at the level of the village idiot, and the ugly outburst showed how swiftly you had run out of intellect, and sabotaged any of the prior points you had to make.

regards,
C.A. Hughes.

Although Bill has a lot of obnoxious views, if you look you can generally see there is a chain of thought that led to them. I wonder what he doesn't get about the idea that if you shove God in a gap in scientific knowledge, then there is no reason to explore that gap scientifically. The entire problem with the notion of "Creation Science" is that it is an anti-science; science seeks to answer questions by investigation, creation "science" tells you not to look, because the answer is ALWAYS "God did it", and that is ALWAYS supposed to be enough.

If it was enough, we'd still believe the Sun orbited the Earth, people wouldn't understand why the first anti-biotics didn't work anymore and go back to dying from simple infections, the mentally ill would still be treated with exorcisms. The list goes on. Whatever you believe, "God did it" is simply replacing one mystery with another, it precludes investigation rather than advancing it, it will never be a good enough answer in the quest to understand the world, the universe, or the workings of our own bodies.

Welcome to sCUNThorpe.

2009-08-16T11:21:00.029Z

Scunthorpe dwellers have a hard time saying where they live in some places on the internet, automated anti-swearbots are constantly scouring the webtubes looking for textual sexual naughties, and the name "Scunthorpe" contains the naughtiest of naughties.

Automated censorship is becoming an increasing problem, as evidenced by this iTunes listing Peter Serafinowicz posted on Twitpic this morning, for the nursery rhyme "Cock a Doodle Doo". Or, as infants are all familiar with obscene genital slang and must be protected from the correct name for a male chicken "C**k a Doodle Doo". (I note they don't mind the "Dick" in Hickory Dickory Dock)

It's kind of funny, but also not remotely funny. Censorship needs measured judgement and oversight. Automating it, and letting it loose on the world at large with a quite obvious lack of "common" sense in the equation really just winds up pissing on a lot of people's strawberries for no good reason. It's not just words with 2 meanings either; I've encountered forums and games where you can't type the word "happened", because it contains the letter sequence "pene", which is spanish for penis.

If this isn't stupid enough, the profane and bigoted filth-bucket arena where teens give vent to their ugliest instincts, XBox Live, has given rise to a "much too late to the party" effort on the part of Microsoft to police the in-game-chat of their system. Their response to the abuse has been directly proportional to the rank horrors of adolescent bile, which means it's been equally ridiculous.

Last month they proudly spoke of their hard-working censorship team. Desperate to be seen to doing something after years of neglect, which have led to a Lord of the Flies style ecosystem. They not only censor actual swear words, racial and religious epithets, references to sexual activity and gender orientation (somewhat famously blocking the account of my old alt.digitiser pal Richard "Gay"wood purely because of his name), these days they actually ban phrases which contain no swear words, but have been co-opted as surrogate sex-talk. They even ban made up words used to substitute for swear words, like BSG's fuck-tastic "Frak!" (presumably the game called "Frak" won't ever be appearing on XBLA either)

If it was just things like "blowjob", a portmanteau word made from two non-obscene words, you could understand, but just how many people do they think know what a "Cleveland Steamer" is? Anyone who knows would probably be too busy laughing to care, and those who don't would be none the wiser. They are actually proud that they trawl the internet all day looking for phrases which "could" have a sexual meaning. Proud of their dictionary of thousands of things that people aren't allowed to say.

I've been on the internet for over a decade, and right back at the very start I discovered that there was next to nothing you could type into a search engine without getting a porno result for it. When my lawnmower broke down and I was looking for a new one, a prodigious number of the results presented to me were for photos and websites dedicated to women attending to their pubic coiffure. This was just the tip of the iceberg.(Fnarr!)

At an estimate I would measure the language offers a lexicon where anything up to 85% of the words could be used in a smutty double entendre (made up statistic). Anything shaft like can be used in a penile metaphor; anything featuring a cavity or slot can be a vaginal counterpart; anything hairy, fuzzy, downy, grassy, thatched, wiry or curly can be a surrogate for pubic hair; and anything involving a liquid can double for semen, ideally alliteratively, "man milk", "baby batter" "Lady lube" etc.

Essentially, this Dictionary of the Forbidden goes for anything that could have a sexual second meaning will probably soon preclude any communication whatsoever, except platonic comments about amorphous objects with no long protrusions or cavities. I believe this is actually all policed manually, for now, but it still a fucking stupid policy. Policing the spawning of new double entendres is as useful an activity as trying to strike matches on mashed potato.

With so much of the internet now being social media, user generated rather than delivered by accountable content providers, policing the vast amounts of amateur sourced material driving the web economy will be impossible to achieve manually, so automated censorship is bound to grow and grow. Maybe it will work and clean up some potty mouths, or maybe it'll just make people more creative? People are very, very creative.

As it stands, Facebook and Twitter, don't censor updates. People with friends ranging from 13 (like they can enforce that age-limit) to geriatrics, all have equal access to any filth you feel like updating with via their FB newsfeed Equally you can say pretty much anything you like in tweets. That's now.

Twitter recently decided to prevent the #quantickstesticles hashtag from trending, presumably because it featured the word "testicles" which is a non-profane anatomical word. This was probably manually censored, not automatically, as it had been trending strongly for a while before it, and the tweets using it vanished from the search string. Whether Twitter did this at someone's request, or whether they did it pre-emptively was never explained.

On Facebook I've seen elderly relatives complaining about friends swearing on their young relatives walls, internet worlds and real worlds are colliding. The pressure to censor at source is likely to grow as networks spread across generational divides.

Maybe the internet was unfettered for too long? There's no real way to say how old someone is online, so protecting young ears and eyes from the foul language it's been awash with for so long seems like good idea on the surface of things. Fact is though, I knew more swear words, sexual euphamisms and lewd innuendos than my parents did by the time I was 8 years old. Kids swear, and they like it. They are voracious for things their parents wouldn't approve of and don't understand, and they have so much energy and imagination that censorship will never keep up, let alone outrun them.

lbd

2009-05-26T20:19:00.003Z

Well, I've started a new book, unfortunately my hate of the second draft process is making the attempt to get a first draft close to final draft quality is making for slow progress. Trying to address tone and choose flowing prose while keeping unnecessary exposition and inelegant descriptive shit to a minimum while still getting across the feel I want for the story, it's so slow.

The screen of my Powerbook is utterly phuqqed, so I'm working exclusively on my shiny Samsung NC10, with the main advantages being that I don't need to keep an eye on the battery life, and the LED screen is bright enough to use easily outside, which is a big bonus over the PB, which was almost impossible to see outdoors on any but the dullest day (when you don't really want to be outdoors)

I also now have a "Delete" key. What the hell were Apple thinking not having a delete key on what became the writers' machine of choice? I'm quickly breaking the habit of having to take care where I put the cursor because of "Backspace only" restrictions. My main problem is being back in Windows. XP is a mature and well rounded environment now, but there are still the nags of working with Windows after the freedom and speed of a Mac. All the little things it keeps doing, like an idiot who is so desperate to be helpful that they just keep getting in your way and making life harder. It's like trying to work with somebody standing in front of you, waiting for you to ask them to help, when you don't need any damned help.

I've bypassed most of this by stuffing it with high quality, non-Microsoft made freeware. After years of using Word, I've found Open Office to be very accessible, and fairly similar in terms of keyboard shortcuts and such.

I had to use IE at first, until I'd got Firefox installed. I can't believe Explorer still doesn't have tabbed browsing? maybe I missed something, but I found no way to do it, and it's not something you should hide. Who the phuqq still wants to open every damned link in a new window? That's the only reason I can figure that some sites still thrust this target="_blank" shit on you, this very blog hoster among them. The only other reason for forcing people to open a new window is if you're desperate they shouldn't navigate away from your site. If your site is any good, they'll come back, quit the new window shit you annoying bastards. Tabbed browsing has been around for bloody years now, I don't want 2 dozen windows shat all over my screen.

Anyway. My friend Kellie, aka "tiny_little_me" back from the dj days left a 4 page suicide note about a month ago, and hasn't been seen since. Her car has been found, but no trace of her has. She was really smart and funny, and had a great heart. The world seems to lose so many of the sort of people it could use more of. Hateful shitwads seem to live almost forever. I don't get worked up about these things though. The last year or more has left me kind of numb to a lot of things.

Tomorrow will be Day 4 of the new book, hopefully I'll pick up some speed as my mind gets back in the habit of writing. I'm not even managing a thousand words a day, which is really the minimum I expect of myself, but my mind feels clumsy right now, so if I were working at that pace I'd just have 3,000 words I mostly hate, rather than the beginnings of something small that feels right all the way through. Oh, one other thing, I can feel the Ctrl+S twitch coming back. I never feel safe in Windows, I've lost too much work to it's flakiness before. Ctrl+S is my safety net.

The internet is shit at being an archive.

2009-05-01T15:04:00.007Z

I have no special intent behind this post, I've trod that ground before. Here's something that was very popular when I first got started internets.

They were simpler times.

2009-03-01T20:47:00.000Z

This walking on water shit is easy.

2009-01-01T16:28:00.001Z

Volcano base is go!

2008-12-06T17:23:00.006Z

Tristan da Cunha sits 2,816 kilometers from the coast of South Africa, and 2,430 kilometers from its closest neighbor, the island of St. Helena, where the Emperor Napoleon lived out his final days in exile. The main island of Tristan da Cunha does have a small permanent population: roughly 270 people living mostly in the capital city of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas.

Now that's the sort of place you could get up to nefarious shit. Build Death Rays, or a Tsunami machine, make a clone army from the DNA of Joe Pasquale, play the stereo really loud. Mortgage rates are 2% now, there's never been a better time to buy.

I need to draft a want-ad for some henchmen.

Hoff is the new Shat.

2008-11-04T20:47:00.006Z

It occurred to me today that David Hasselhoff is the new William Shatner.

They both starred in once highly popular, high budget shows, that are now considered the pinnacle of cheesiness. They have both had comical music careers, The Shat with his laconic chatty style, utterly unburdened by bothersome musicality; The Hoff with his Cheese-Rock, so beloved of Germans, Austrians and other Arian nations.

They both suffered from career lag and credibility dive in middle age, and they both have made new careers of taking the piss out of their old careers. Fake self-deprecation that leaves vast egos undented, and self-reinvention as caricatures of themselves seems to be a successful formula.

If Baywatch was Hoff's T.J. Hooker, now all he needs is his own Boston Legal.

morning noise

2008-10-12T22:45:00.002Z

one "U" two "R"s three "G"s two "H"s two "!"s is how I spell that

daily

2008-10-05T18:04:00.002Z

Anyway, aside from crypticisms, I bought another blank notebook (I can see 15 other, older, equally blank ones lying around, from where I'm sitting), my brain just went 24 hour AWOL. Doctors, veehickles, pictures, people who weren't there, phone calls I missed due to hospital-induced silent phone mode, money, coffee, chicken, candles, bullshit, reading old things and already being able to see the horrific smoking crater that would be left if that particular bomb ever goes off. Some good plans been made though. That's what my mind says today was. I doubt this will make sense to me in a week or two. Not sure it does now.

Banned from the Ranch

2008-08-14T20:38:00.007Z

Wow! I went to work, to see if the site was still up, having being told yesterday the site was finished with and that all the staffers, and freelancers (myself included) were no longer required. Here's the cheery message that greets me...

vBulletin Message

You have been banned for the following reason:
None
Date the ban will be lifted: Never

Amongst the scattered text and broken jpeg symbols on the white screen was the option to log myself out, which led to a 404 page. I had Firefox open too, so rather than fart about deleting the GU cookie I just C&P'd the URL in there and, lo and behold, the site loaded fine.

My account isn't linked to my work one, so the "ban" isn't based on my being former staff, it shuts out anyone who is subscribed to the site. People who just happen across it can see all the reviews/previews/news, but anyone who was a regular visitor is shit out of luck. Pretty strange way to treat your clientele, really. Some people actually paid for their subscriptions to this thing (although none in the UK, that I know of) so I can't imagine they're happy.

The only thing missing is the forum (and any new content), but as the staff were the only people who used that, and we only used it then at the repeated urging of the management, to try to make the place look busy, it's no great loss.

Freelance writing is a pretty fickle existence, so it's not a huge issue for me, in fact I felt mostly a new sense of freedom when my editor sent the group email to all the staff letting us know what had happened, as I only accepted the job reluctantly anyway. I did enjoy it though, especially the Brian Blessed obsessed staff meetings. I never missed a deadline, and was never disappointed with the quality of what I wrote, even on days when I'd rushed to get done. I won't miss that shitball, cock-ended, spazz-knacker of a Content Management System though.

Nerdgasm

2008-07-31T16:47:00.004Z

This keeps getting deleted from everywhere else, but I doubt the russkies care about copyright issues, so it should be safe for now.

DO WANT!

As they say.

A LION TAMER!

2008-07-22T16:26:00.003Z

Well, I finally corrected my profile. Maybe one day I'll know why Blogger decided to start telling people I was an accountant, unless it felt it ought to tell people something about me, and that was just first on the list. I am a fan of Arthur Pewty though.

I have forever (hopefully) left behind my life as an amalgam of Basil Fawlty and Norman Bates, this makes me shorter of jokes about my profession.

I have nothing further to add on this topic.

2008-03-01T21:33:00.004Z

I accidentally deleted this post, now I can't remeber what it was about.

I bet it was really good too, you know, like all the others are.....

Rosebud!

2008-02-22T20:59:00.004Z

I had the fire, I had the sledge, what the hell else was I going to do?

I wish I'd been filming when I threw on that old firework I found. JESUS FUCK!

Death approaches.

2007-10-12T22:00:00.007Z

It must be a measure of what an old fart I'm becoming that I'm seriously considering buying a Jag.

I want something quiet, quick and qomfortable, where before I've always owned raucous, noisy, stupidly fast cars that return miles per gallon in the mid-teens.

Maybe I have a secret desire to be Inspector Morse? No, that seems pretty unlikely.

LEWIS!

The internet is backwards.

2007-09-14T12:23:00.001Z

This is new. This is at the top, regardless of merit.

Even if what I post next time is even worse, it will be at the top, and therefore better.

As an archive, the internet is worthless. I was vaguely aware of it on deadjournal, years ago, where, even though you could choose to have your oldest posts first, it would still only reverse the latest 25, so they'd still be the newest 25 entries on the first page, the next newest a page back, and so on, meaning if you want to find something, or remind yourself of something you wrote or did, you have to go through your own life backwards.

As it was a localised phenomenon at the time, I didn't pay it much mind, and it also softened me up slightly to the gradual creep of the novelty-led presentation that was taking over almost all sources of online information.

It impacted on me late last year, when I was in bed with a headache one evening. Everything on the radio was shit, so I thought I'd try listening to something from librivox.org, which as online audio library of public domain books read by members of the site's team. I'd entered the XML address into my PSP's podcast feed earlier in the week, and I chose a book I fancied and started downloading it, one chapter at a time. Before too long I had the whole book. Unfortuantely, as the means of distribution is an RSS feed, it came out backwards.

RSS (Real SImple Syndication, if you didn't already know) is the king of novelty fascism, newest is best! So, as the Chapters had been recorded sequentially, the final Chapter was the latest Chapter, and therefore the book had saved backwards. Try as I might, every time a Chapter finished, it would start playing the preceding Chapter. So instead of being able to drift off to sleep having my headache soothed away by gentle voices, I had to skip backwards 2 Chapters to get to the next one (back to the start of the one I'd just heard, and then back again to the next Chapter).

I actually tried downloading a couple of Chapters again, starting saving the last chapter first, then next the second to last chapter, but when I tried to listen it would STILL play them in reverse order. When I plugged my PSP into my laptop the next day I discovered a hidden audio library file had been created, which forced the Chapters to be played backwards. Newest is best, you must have that first, and the last chapter is the newest. Such is the way of things.

RSS feeds, web-forums, blogs, journals, all promote the primacy of novelty. Merit and context can go fuck themselves. And the major news media, struggling to drag their dinosaur carcasses up to the speed of the information superhighway (it really is one you know!) are happy to take online rumours and bollocks as trusted sources, because getting information first is more important than getting information right.

There is a cult of stupidity across the board in news media these days, one which makes the excesses of Chris Morriss in "The Day Today" - that seemed so laughably over the top a few years ago - seem like a huge underestimation of the cretinous, fatuous, half-arsed, ill-informed, specualtive, worthless shit that passes for news broadcasting in the 21st Century.

Of course the news has always been about novelty, that's the point of news, but it also used to be about being accurate, and fact checking. Fact checking gets in the way of being first though, and unless you're first, you might as well not bother.

The half life of information is about 2 months, you can reliably expect news media to ignore anything older than this, and for most people to have forgotten anything older than this; there is simply too much vital and new worthless shit popping up every second of the day for anyone to be expected to remeber, you can't expect people to contextualise events when you're actively promoting goldfish levels of memory retention. They don't actually need to cure Alzheimer's, because soon they'll have longer memories than regular people. Much like that R2-D2 impersonator with Tourette's on Big Brother last year, his sickness was obviated by virtue of everyone else in the house being such foulmouthed scum his occasional outburst made him seem a model of verbal restraint. I suppose it's all part of the grand plan, drag everyone down to the same level and nobody seems abnormal.

Too much rambling.

Time to consign this to an ever decreasing level of importance.

Right now though, the moment I click "Publish Post", for just a second or two, it'll the most important thing on the internet.

bout and anout

2007-08-25T22:41:00.000Z

I defeated my customary indolence and recalcitrance this evening, to visit one of my Brother's events. I'd planned to go to the Conwy River Festival last week, but was basically "fagged out" (a WWII era term for tiredness, having nothing to do with the American term "faggot", which, to any right minded Englishman (or Welshman, but that doesn't sound the same) is a mystery-meat sphere, heavy on onions and gravy, and probably containing animal parts too gruesome to mention.) so it never happened. Tonight, I left the fucking house, so in the custom of blogs and online journals everywhere "GO ME!". Me go-ed to Hendre Hall, and to SNOGFest.

First band of the evening was the Santa Cruz River Band, out of Tuscon AZ, now hanging out in a barn near Bangor. Not very country, thankfully, but very accomplished, and with a VERY appreciative and mixed crowd. Quite wistful and soulful for three bearded old men with ukuleles and cowboy hats. My brother ushered them off stage and tried to encourage some of the audience to maintain their high by going to the next hall to try Salsa dancing. How many did? I can't be sure because...

I was drawn to an acoustic sound by a big fire, and found Carl, lit like a hippy, but with fairly contemporary dress sense, tap dancing his feet over a bewildering array of effects pedals whilst eliciting a variety of drum sounds, from bongos to bass by whacking his guitar in strategic locations, which a repeat pedal would duplicate in perpetuity for the duration of the song. Self-accompanying in this fashion he replicated the sound of a whole band, setting up percussion and rhythm guitar on top of which he could solo and sing. His sound was mostly like Led Zeppelin's forays into funk driven slow-rock, quite impressive for one man, with one guitar, and a bucket of effects pedals. I did manage to capture his cover of Pink Floyd's DSotM opener, Breathe, on my phone camera which may appear later.

The variety act for the evening seemed to be led by Gaius Baltar opening with a screeching fiddle which he alternated with a wailing song delivery. A non-descript guitarist had no chance of competing for memory space with this or the topless look-a-like of a young Noel Edmonds beating the shit out of his drumkit. The pain in my ears when they finally stopped suggested that, as far from rock as their pre-fame Adam and the Ants sound was, their amps went up to 12. Pure comedy. Possibly not intentionally so.

I narrowly avoided being dragged into a beginner's Salsa class and removed my immaculately dressed self from the uniformly scruffy revelers, observing some 40-something slappers pogo-ing to classic Prince tracks in both a room, and a world of their own.

I wish I could have stayed, but having to get up at stupid-o-clock in the morning precludes me from going to bed at stupid-o-clock at night. Such follies remain in my past, along with 3 day hangovers and driving to work still drunk from the night before.

Oh, YouTube finally got around to degrading the already poor quality video, in that special way that they do. I'd skip the first minute though, as the end of tehe previous song just sounds a tinny mess through the phone's microphone.

Help! My fwagile wittle mind!

2007-08-14T11:37:00.000Z

Now, clearly I'm very naive, because I always assumed the idea of having an inflatable rubber girlfriend was as a substitute when one couldn't obtain sexual favours from a real woman, so this costume baffles me somewhat.

She looks like Cesar Romero as the Joker in the second pic.

Perturbing.

"I'm gettin' too old for this shit!" and other cop movie cliches.

2007-08-04T12:08:00.000Z

For some reason I just got unaturally excited at the thought of owning a pack of Top Trumps cards. I haven't actually seen Top Trumps since 2001, when my friend Rachael's sister was visiting her with her kids Ben and Thomas, who had got some Motorbike based Top Trumps. Within a couple of minutes playing I had most of the deck, so, being a nice fella I decided to try to lose some. It's harder than you think, especially when the kids choose daft stats to lead with, like a 1000cc bike with 190bhp, and they try to trump you on fuel economy. Even at the age of 9, I hope I was smarter than that.

I was quite late to discover a lot of people use the word "Trump" to mean "Fart", so to them the game has a whole other layer of amusement.

I struggle to imagine a Top Trumps that could be as good as Steev's home made Doctor Who monskers set though.

I have also just remebered what a strange word "murmur" is. Strip away the meaning and just listen to the sound. murmur. I suppose it's onomatopoeic. Lounge is another weird one, say lounge a few times and it sounds like it's from another language. Lounge. Lounge. Lounge. Lounge. Lounge.

Lunge is alright. Lounge is just weird. It's a noun and a verb, which is always cause for suspicion.

I'm going to think of an alternate word, and get the dictionary to swap it in.

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Peado!

2007-08-02T16:40:00.000Z

The bloke from the Crown Prosecution Service heading the Chris Langham trial is on BBC News 24 right now, he looks like Hitler.

jpegs/mpegs to follow later, possibly, if I can be arsed.

Shiny shame!

2007-08-01T13:29:00.001Z

I seem to have caused some kind of mini-disaster on UK:R, with what I shall now call "Shiny-gate". Shattered illusions are tough for people, I always suspected a lot of his readers assumed his "deeply awkward tit" style was just a post-ironic put-on. Nope.

It's all got a bit ugly. Still, selling out gets a bad press, you can't buy a loaf of bread with YOUR SOUL!

Names that shouldn't have faces.

2007-07-27T19:49:00.001Z

This seems like forever ago.

Funny things is, a lot of them I have no fucking idea who they are.

I mean, who hell he?

Tiny D-Day

2007-04-28T22:26:00.000Z

The morning air was thick with dandelion seeds,
slung underneath their feathery white parachutes,
drifting gently in the breeze,
like a thousand paratroopers
dropping behind enemy lines.

I write poetry like fire reads the newspaper.

Big Train

2006-11-02T22:08:00.001Z

I got a bit bored of the first series, so I never watched anymore, but I caught an old one last night and nearly injured myself laughing at this.

See an "N"

2006-09-24T11:13:00.000Z

If I put CNN on late of an evening I can catch Kristie Lu Stout presenting from the Hong Kong studio, which is always a mixed blessing. I find her very attractive, but her voice sounds exactly the same as ginger topped thumbsucker, Chuckie from Rugrats.

Imagine being in bed with this...

and when you shut your eyes what you see is this...

Perturbing.

2006-09-01T10:54:00.000Z

Okay, who do I have to kill to get me one of these?

Scunthorpe, Bitchfield, TWATT!

2006-08-29T10:29:00.000Z

I am easily amused today.

BEARDZ!

2006-08-03T18:06:00.000Z

Mirror, Mirror! On my TEEVEE! Right now! OMFGZ! Spock with his beard, that's how you can tell he's evil you know.

Nimoy. Accept no substitutes.

2006-07-31T21:14:00.000Z

I suffer from random tune head-poppage. That is, random music appearing in my brain for no apparent reason. Today, it's been Stan Ridgway's bizarre 'Nam epic, "Cam-oh-flarzjjjzjjej"

Whoah-oh-oh-ohhhh Camouflage,
things are never quite the way they seem,
whoah-oh-oh-ohhhh Camouflage,
this was an awfully BIG marine!

WTF was the guy on? More to the point why did THAT jump into my brain at no invitation or external prompting? I should know better than to ask. It's just one of life's mysteries, much like the song itself. I wonder what Stan's up to these days?

I care enough to find out. Holy Crap! He had a song in Rumble Fish, which is one of my favourite films! Fancy me not knowing that. IMDB is so handy. They seem to have started putting little thumbnail photos of actors next to their names in cast lists now, how.... something.

Peter Graves is in this episode of House I'm watching. With everything he's done, I can still only see him in the cockpit of Airplane, asking the young lad if he likes gladiator movies. Is Airplane the greatest film ever made? Of course it is.

Thinly veiled excuse for posting muck in other places.

2006-03-23T20:47:00.000Z

Like I'll ever post in this thing.