More freebies



I got a last minute invite from my chum and former flatmate Brendan late on Friday as I finished work. His new print and design business - the Fourth Craw - was having a launch party on Friday evening. It's a few minutes from my place so I skipped right past it on the way home from work and right in to join them and help them guzzle some booze - especially the champers - and the nibbles. Last time I saw it was the week before opening, when the painters and joiners were still hard at it. Now it looks so cool. One spare room painted white is being used a a gallery space while the main room is full of gleaming new designer Macs and the life-size Hobbit standees I gave Brendan after oru Lord of the Rings event a couple of years back. he has a remarkable resemblance to Sean Astin's Sam. The back room could be awfully dull. Instead it's been turned into a lounge and informal meeting place with two rectangular 'windows' which are actually just light boxes with colour transparencies mounted on them, giving the illusion of a well lit room (very nice, especially at this time of year when we get perhaps 6-7 hours of sunlight or less).

Happy Saint Andrews Night



Yes, it is the 30th of November which means it is Saint Andrew's Night, the patron saint of my beloved Caledonia. In many ways he is an odd choice - he never visited Scotland in his lifetime. His remains were brought here - or at least his alleged remains as there was a lot of fabricated holy relics around - to Saint Andrews centuries later. He was crucified and said he was not worthy to be crucified in the manner of his Lord, so he was crucified instead on two beams crossed like an 'X'.



But why Andrew and not someone who had a more direct influence on Scottish early history, such as Columba or Ninian? These holy men not only brought the mixed blessing of Christianity they used their influence as a tool to help this unified worship be a method for creating a single nation by allying church with the king.



No-one really knows why the Saltire, our national flag, is the way it is. The legend tells us that before a great battle between the massive Angle army from the south and a united Pictish-Scots army. Before the battle as King Hungus prayed for victory for his people. In the sky the clouds formed the shape of a Saint Andrew's cross against a blue background. Bouyed by this the Celtic nations fought a ferocious battle and secured their freedom. The king vowed to make Andrew the patron saint of the land ever after, and so he has been. After this it is a matter of historical record that reliquaries with remains of the saints would be carried before Scots armies before battle for centuries afterwards. Today they

march behind a piper, but the idea is not so very different.



Well, that is the legend. As no bugger actually knows what really happened it is as good a tale as any, and all legends have some small truth in them after all. All nations have their creation myths, even modern ones like America have mytholigised the reasons leading up to the Revolutionary War and the events which came after, most happily ignoring the actual historical fact. If that can happen to a recent event - and we reckon time differently in this ancient land, to us 1776 is modern history - then is it any wonder the distant past from the so-called Dark Ages should be so mytholigised? It's in the same vein as the exploits of Wallace and the Bruce, both of whcih have more historical documentation behind them than the Saltire, but which now belong as much to mythology as to history, as Vercongetrix does to the French people. Roland Barthes has a lot to say about mythologies and the space they fill in human requirements. Myth is not just tales of the Scylla, or Odin, myths invest our entire way of seeing the world. The myths of our goodness and democracy, the myth of our united land - we pick and choose all sorts every day in order to function as a community; myth really is a vital part of our being. No doubt it is one of the reasons why we are so drawn to stories, ebing yet another example of myth making. And as stories go the great cross in the sky before a desperate battle is a bloody good one.



This site has more information for anyone interested.

Tartan celluloid



Alex and I off to another freebie junket. Again in the vaults under South Bridge, sandwhiched between a massage parlour and the ghosts of the haunted Undercity where we were for the Iain Banks whisky book launch. Hosted by the List - a what's on mag for Glasgow and Edinburgh - it was to mark their free supplement on the top 50 Scottish movies. Myself being a big-style movie buff and someone who studiued film at college am intrigued to see what they have as I doubt there actually are 50 great Scottish movies!



Of course there was much twisting of what was actually Scottish to make some round peg movies fit into a Caledonian square hole. Obviously Trainspotting, Whisky Galore and Restless Natives were in there. Rob Roy and Braveheart too, although both are actually mainstream Hollywood productions and neither features a Scots actor in the lead role and both mangle Scottish history, but what the hell. There were others in there that I wont go into that were really just clutching at straws. Nice to see some classic documentaries in there too though, such as Watkin's 60s classic Culloden (which I watched recently aftger bumming a copy off Alex) - the same man who gave us the equally classic and groundbreaking War Game. Also mentioned John Grierson. Who? The Scottish film-maker, especially active during the 30s who is now viewed by many film academics as the father of the modern documentary.



Unusually there was no presentation. At any launch there is always a moment where some brief speeches are made or a presentation given to highlight the supposed reason we're all gathered there. Not last night though, oh no. Nice big plasma screens showing loops of Scottish films, but no talk, no presentation, just lots of folk in the stone-lined vaults drinking free booze and eating free hors d'oeuvre. Which ain't bad! I tried to persuade Alex to create a diversion while I slipped one of these slim screen TVs udner my huge winter coat (a grat 1940s cut black heavy black wool number, perfect for Scottish winters and for lurking in shadows in the Old Town), but he wouldn't go for it.

This week's word association from Subliminal:

1. Concert:: piano
   
   
2. Sydney:: opera house
   
   
3. Shower:: golden
   
   
4. Patterns:: chaos
   
   
5. Market:: farmer
   
   
6. Chair:: table
   
   
7. London:: smelly
   
   
8. Reception:: free drinks
   
   
9. Republican:: areshole nazi bastard
   
   
10. Cough::excuse me
    
    

Beatles



Isn't it terribly ironic that the Beatle's album Macca has decided to re-engineer is Let it Be when he plainly couldn't? Let it Be? Wouldn't Let it Lie more like. There's nothing you can do that can't be redone... There's no album recorded that can't be respun...All you need is a remix, dah dah dah da dah...

Word association



Got this link from my dear chum in California - or New Arnold Land as they now call it - SweetRouge's blog. It's a form of word association she uses often on her blog and I thought I'd give it a bash. He says... Then you think of... Easy, huh? Remember, don't take time, first thing that comes into your mind! So...

1. Plan B:: From Outer Space
   
   
2. Seattle:: Frasier
   
   
3. The lady wore:: nothing
   
   
4. Upsetting:: typesetting
   
   
5. Tampon:: messy toilet
   
   
6. Celebrity:: wanker
   
   
7. Baja:: Blofeld's lair in Diamonds are Forever
   
   
8. 64:: million ways to die
   
   
9. RGB:: Romanians Guzzle Beer
   
   
10. Milkshake::chocolate with lots of ice cream, please
    
    

Try it weekly on subliminal.lunanina.com

Tardis Time!



As the 40th anniversary of cult British SF show Doctor Who approaches the BBC have unleased the animated version on BBC-I featuring none other than Richard E Grant as the errant Time Lord. Having grown up with the show as many folk have I'm reminded of my age this week. Looking at the lovely hardback official 40th anniversary book I recall being given the 20th anniversary one for my birthday (Hogmanay) way back in 1983... Guess that's a collectable now - not sure if I am mind you. But I guess there's a few regenerations left in me yet. The massive turnout for Tom Baker's tour a few years abcka dn the books we still sell and the hundrends of thousands of hits on the previous BBCI serial just shows how this show will not go away. Kids who were not born before the show went off the air (damn you Michael Grade you wee short arse fucker!) still know that a blue police box is actually a Tardis. In Glasgow's Buchanan Street one of the few surviving examples has a light-up lamp and makes the Tardis take-off sounds.



I'm still wondering if Grant will do a Withnail and I Doctor. Camberwell carrot in the Tardis console room, anyone? Doctor covering himself in Deep Heat to get warm then downing some lighter fluid? Cool! For a show which nearly was cancelled before it began due to the assassination of Kennedy it's come a long, long way to become utterly embedded into our national culture.

The Evil Digger



Did anyone else get those cold chills that warn you of the approach of cold, calculating pure evil? Yes, it was Rupert Murdoch in the news again. Ostensably here to bully.. sorry persuade his British stockholders to let his boy run the company here he got into the headlines by making a public statement to the effect that Blair couldn't take the support of his media empire for granted in the next election, but neither could the tories. Support from the formerly tory newspapers like the disgusting Sun are credited with helping swing the last two elections for Blair's New Labour.



Is it just me or does this whole thing make your blood run cold? Why should any individual have this power to use the mass media to push their own agenda? And we already know you will push your agenda regardless of politics, Rupert, because you were only too happy to fuck up the BBC news on your Asian Star satellitle services to keep the Communist Chinese tyrants sweet so you could do business with them after previously pissing them off by bragging about the mass media bringing down non-democratic regimes. He'll do business with anyone and will use the seriously huge resources at his disposal to increase that business. Democracy is a fucking game to this man, he plays with our civil rights that our forefathers had to fight and sacrifice in blood to keep for us.



Why is is legal for print media to be so blatantly biased? Because if any government tried to have the balls to ban them and make them comply with the rules of unbiased reporting that broadcast media have to in the UK then Murdoch would use his empire to ruin them, so they don't dare.



One day when I have power he will be dealt with. In fact I plan to have him cloned so I can have him slowly killed many times. And then show in on pay-per-view for fifteen bucks!

I eat cannibals...



...it's incredible...they bring out the animal in me, I eat cannibals, you see... Okay, cheap musical link to a great story here on the descendants of some islanders on Fiji trying to lift a curse on their village caused by the boiling and eating of a Christian missionary by apologising to his descendants. I'm sure Alice Cooper could get a song out of this.

Books, glorious books



A fine week’s haul on the freebie front at work this week. Blood Canticle, the new Anne Rice vampire novel, arrived for me. Notably thinner than some of the previous entries in the new Vampire Chronicles, which is not a bad thing. Dante’s Equation arrived from my chums at Orbit - mixes Torah and the search for hidden numbers and names in the text with modern physics. Sounds interesting (or it could be a thriller built around some of that Bible Code bollocks of course). Bloomsbury finally sent me a copy of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s children’s book the Wolves in the Walls.



An accidental freebie ended up in my grasping paws today as we were sent books we didn’t order from a US distributor. It wasn’t worth the cost of shipping them back so they told us just to keep them. As we weren’t charged for them we can’t actually sell them that would be fraud, so hello… A gorgeously illustrated colour hardback on the artwork of Alex Ross, one of my favourite illustrators (Uncle Sam, Kingdom Come). My American colleague Kate passed on a book she just finished and loved for me to read. You’re an Animal, Viskovitz! By Alessandro Boffa from Edinburgh’s prize-winning Canongate. It explores feelings through short vignettes of animals - a snail with two sexes, a dormouse with erotic dreams, a lion in love with a gazelle. Yes, I think you can see why Kate thought it may well appeal to me! And since it is a form of fantasy I’ll no doubt be doing a review of it for the Alien’s mainstream section - or whatever we will be calling that section by then since we’re debating it right now amongst the Crew (personally I think we should just have a symbol and refer to it as the review category formerly know as mainstream). Or we could put up the picture of Ariel’s tribble instead.



Unfortunately I really need to try and finish re-reading China Mieville’s damn fine Perdido Street Station before it is the subject of our next SF Book Reading Club on Tuesday 18th before I can get into these. Fab novel, very different and one that really marked China out as one of the fast-rising new voices in Brit SF which has been making waves around the global SF community along with others like Justina Robinson, Jon Courtenay Grimwood and our Edinburgh’s own Charlie Stross and his performing beard. I read Perdido when it first came out and loved it - the descriptions are so incredibly detailed, rich and vibrant. Since that was a few years ago I thought I better brush up on it before the club meeting, but forgot just how smegging big it is at 848 pages! D’oh! I hope the other members have stuck with it though, since it is a damned good book and we wanted to get them into the new and very cool Brit SF pack.



And while we’re on the literary theme, I thought I’d share this one with you. No, not another silly title - it’s actually quite prosaic being Songwriting for Guitarists - but the name of the author is quite wonderful - Rikky Rooksby. Ain’t that great? And you guys think I make up some silly nonsense? I can’t compete with the real world!

Diagram



Yep, it’s that time of year when Bent’s Diary in the book trade journal The Bookseller announces the 6 books on the shortlist for the Diagram Prize. As some of you may know it is one of the more unusual literary awards, chosen from submissions by members of the book trade. All genres and styles are allowed, the common theme is that it must be a real publication from that year and it must have the silliest title.



Last year’s winner, as I’m sure you all recall, was Living With Crazy Buttocks (Penguin Press). Other notable past entries have included Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (University of Tokyo Press) and Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (Hellenic Philatelic Society).



This year’s shortlist:



277 Secrets Your Snake Wants You to Know (Ten Speed)

The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (Kensington) - we’ve had this one in our store with its wonderful Russ Meyer’s-style cover and sold them!







Celtic Sex Magic: For Couples, Groups and Solitary Practitioners (Inner Traditions)

Design for Impact: 50 Years of Airline Safety Cards (Princeton Architectural Press)

Hot Topics in Urology (Saunders)

The Voodoo Revenge Book: an Anger Management Program You Can Really Stick With (Sterling). This has been the favourite amongst our booksellers so far.



You can vote for the oddest title of your choice by emailing bent@bookseller.co.uk or at the Bookseller online - closing date is 28th November, winner announced on 5th December.

G-g-g-g-g-ghost ship?



Today the EPA - the Ectoplasmic Protection Agency - continued the legal argument over the arrival of the so-called ‘ghost ships’ from the US Navy. Due to be broken up in a dock in Hartlepool the commercial contract has stirred up trouble when environmentalists raised concerns over the pollution that may be caused by this process. Because these decommissioned old vessels are ghost ships they have been in extensive contact with the inhabitants of the Otherworld. As such the fabric of the ships have been saturated with supernatural elements which could be troublesome if not actually outright toxic to living organisms. The EPA has withdrawn its original license because the company contracted to break up the ships is now not thought to have the correct facilities for safely dismantling the toxic areas of these ships and for storing these elements securely to prevent them polluting the local living biosphere. Should these supernatural elements leach into the local water table for instance there would be an enormous increase in the number of apparitions in the area as well as outbreak of possession and poltergeist activity.



However, all may not be as it seems. One group of independent investigators into the supernatural who travel around in a vehicle they dubbed ‘the Mystery Machine’ have claimed that the ghost ships are not in fact really supernatural at all and that the spectral captain of the lead ghost ship is in fact Old Man Petersen. A spokesperson for the EPA said this was utter nonsense and the decrepit fleet posed a real environmental threat to the UK, adding that they would not let those pesky kids get away with this.

11-11-11



Remembrance Sunday. The canon fired from Edinburgh Castle, booming out across the city, the smoke slowly dissipating over the ancient battlements in the following silence. After a period of years when the national silence seemed to have been relegated to the history it was designed to remind us of it is good to see most people now observe it once more. Apart from a couple of loud Scandinavian tourists who probably didn’t know what was going on, the people in our bookstore fell quiet, early Christmas shopping forgotten for a moment. Most people still wear poppies to show their respect, the first flower to bloom in the fields of Flanders after the slaughter of the Great War, almost as if the blood of so many young men had stained the very flora of the earth.



I’d like to share something with you. And old friend I often think of at this time of year, a very dear old man called George Deary. George was an old yet spry man when I was a young boy in the 70s. Semi-retired, George liked to do a little work in the enormous family garage my father worked in then (how large - well they made coaches from scratch, so pretty big). He was a very gentle, endearing and genial old man and he and his lovely wife doted on me and I loved visiting them and hearing their stories. This quiet, modest, unassuming old man who looked like he'd never handled anything more deadly than a bowling ball had once been something remarkable, even in a time of remarkable deeds. He had been a Commando.



Like most old soldiers George never really spoke much about his experiences, except in the most general terms. If they do speak of the events they experienced, they most often do so to others who have shared them. The rest of us simply don’t have the right frames of reference for them to discuss it. The fact that we don’t is due in no small part to the fact that people like George sacrificed so much so we would never have to experience what they did. Occasionally little bits would slip out.



Sometimes he’d do things which reminded you of what he had been. Once he laughed at bragging young apprentices all trying to show off in front of each other, as young all-male groups often will. George simply tapped one on the arm with his finger and paralysed his whole arm for ten minutes. He didn’t need to posture or boast about what he could do. I once saw this wee old man take an egg from a pan of boiling water with his bare hand. What the hell must this man have been in his youth? I saw only a genial old man in his twilight years but these little glimpses would make me wonder about the things George had done. Needless to say he was one of my childhood heroes. I don’t doubt for a second that George would never have thought of himself as a hero. Perhaps in the classical meaning he wasn’t. He was a perfectly ordinary man. But one who had accomplished extraordinary feats, not to be a hero but because it had to be done. Now that is heroic.



Looking at all the old men parading past the war memorials the breadth of the land I think of what these people saw and had to endure decades ago. We see only old men, because they have grown old while their comrades who fell are fixed eternally in the youth which was taken from them "they shall not grow old as we who are left grow old... At the going down of the sun we will remember them...". Their Herculean efforts secured for generations to come a free world. There are fewer each year now - after all next year will see the 60th anniversary of D-Day; men who were 18 on that remarkable day are now nearly 80 - and it is a shame more have not told their stories, that they will be lost with them. There are many fine histories of course - Keegan and Beevor spring to mind - but the experiences of the actual folk who went through them should be recorded before they are lost. I think I learned as much about WWII from reading Spike Milligan's memoirs as I did from my more orthodox histories. Maybe if more of the current US leadership had fought for the nation instead of draft-dodging in the 60s they wouldn't be so keen to engage in more warfare.



George has been gone a long time now, but I still think of him. I still think of the things this little old man once did which gave me a peaceful and free country to grow up in. And I feel terrible every time our leaders decide we have to use military might to accomplish our goals because it feels like each time we do we betray the very goals George and his generation fought so ferociously for. Flanders was nearly 90 years ago now, but that iconic line of blinded soldiers, stumbling across a mauled ridge, arm on the comrade in front of them, are still with us. They march invisibly through every conflict since that awful war and their bandaged eyes see every atrocity. They shake their heads and wonder is this what we gave our lives for? One day that image will be just an image in a history book and there will be no more conflicts for their haunted souls to walk through. That would be the finest tribute we could possibly build.

Banking on booze



Another excellent Scottish book launch last night as Alex, Fiona and I headed off into the murky depths of Edinburgh’s haunted Undercity by the glowing light of a full moon. In one of the vaults of the Old Town we attended the trade launch of Iain Banks’ new book on whisky, Raw Spirit. Iain was in ebullient form and the uisge betha flowed like the water (of life). Great quantities of the tipple Iain had selected as his perfect dram were consumed - if you have to know before you read it, it was a 21 year old Glenfidich. Actually I had only a couple of glasses. Of course, that glass was topped up several times… Ahem…



Bloody good night was had by all and now we have some invites to another launch in the Malt Whisky Society’s environs in a few weeks courtesy of a small publisher who creates CD and DVD ROMs of Scottish history and guides, Heehaw productions. They’ve just created a DVD on whisky and invited us along. Iain’s publishers refused to let them send an invite to him, so I slipped a spare ticket to him at his own launch and he seemed quite happy with the idea. I love it when a plan comes together. Especially when it involves free whisky. I have a fine collection of single malts but will still happily attend an event offering more free drams. I mention these events out of interest and not just to make Ariel jealous :-)



At least I made it to work today; unlike certain people (must have been a bug or something).

Always know where your towel is



Just watched Sanjeev of Goodness Gracious Me and the Kumars at No. 42 fame promoting the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the final 21 of the BBC’s Big Read (don't forget to vote!). He was amusing, as you’d expect from one of Britain’s most gifted humorists talking about one of British literature’s funniest novels. He was also quite passionate and I couldn’t help but identify with him when he told the audience just how much HHGTG has influenced him, his outlook on life and his own work. Even the address for the Kumars came from Douglas Adams.



I’m old enough to remember listening to the adventures of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent on their first radio outings. On one level it was something totally unique - Douglas often said that he wanted to create a new radio show that was produced to sound like a rock album and boy, does it show. But the humour, although distinctly Adams, had that very British, eccentric, left-field humour that drew on Monty Python, Spike Milligan and the Goons right back to Lewis Carroll. It was only years later that I found out that Adams had written with the Pythons in their final TV years. Sanjeev hit it right on the head when he said that this was one of those peculiarly British types of humour that millions from other nations love but no-one but we eccentrics here in these rainy islands could quite come up with.



I really don’t know how many times I read those short little novels. Listened to the show, eagerly awaited the television show edition. I still have the original cast albums from the early 80s. Yes it influenced me enormously and along with like-minded chums we’d do Adams-style skits in much the way he and his friends had done Python-style skits. We did Goon shows and Silly Walks. We realised lots of other people thought we were very silly for this. We realised lots of other people didn’t, and we would mutter about towels and 42 while imploring people not to mention life. Two decades and a technological leap in home entertainment later and I’m looking at the Hitchhikers on DVD. Treating my self to it, sitting down to watch and just loving every moment as much as I did twenty years before, raving about it in the Alien. Reading MJ Simpson’s excellent biography of Douglas was like remembering a dear friend. I doubt it will win to be honest, but it’s nice to be reminded just how many of us who still smile wryly when presented with the number 42 in any context and always, always know where our towels are.

VC



Jeremy Clarkson - not one of my favourite people - presented an interesting programme on BBC2 about Major Cain, a Manxman who won the Victoria Cross during the ferocious battle in and around Arnhem (the famous/infamous ‘Bridge too Far’). Trying to look for a common theme to the winners of this most famous of medals all they could really find was extreme gallantry and also humility - most of them never talked about it. In fact it turned out Clarkson had married the major’s daughter (after his death in the 70s). She hadn’t known her father had won the VC until his memorial. The sheer bravery of these men is breath-taking, more often than not undertaking Herculean efforts in the face of the enemy to save their mates.



I have nothing but admiration for these ordinary men who performed super-human feats and am very aware of the enormous debt our society owes t them and their comrades who were not so decorated. Passing the little poppy-covered garden of remembrance in the shadow of the Scott Monument in Princes Street it’s not something you can forget, nor should we.



However, it would be nice to see a similar programme and other awards, such as the George Cross, being given in honour of other heroes who are equally modest but save lives. Why is it we do not so honour firefighters more regularly? Men and women who rush into a blazing inferno to save people. Ambulance crews? Often working in horrendous accident conditions, dealing with situations which would leave the rest of us traumatised with horror, yet they calmly get on with their job, trying to preserve human life. What about the folk who risk their health and life working in faraway countries trying to bring aid to those in need? The person who can make a well of clean drinking water is saving countless lives. What about teachers who inspired us? I can think on some I owe a debt too. Why don’t we honour the folk who give up their time to counsel people in their hour of desperate need? There are a million times the heroes in our everyday world than there are on battlefields and they are no less deserving. I strongly suspect many of those modest VC winners who were often simply trying to protect their comrades and mates would agree.

Thanks for the memory



Fascinating article on the BBC about the information explosion. More data is being produced per person in the last few years than in the whole of human history combined. Being a communication studies graduate I'm not surprised. Since the first exo-somatic memory inventions - that is memory which exists outside the human brain, such as writing - we've been on a steady path of knowledge accumulation. Gutenberg, coupled with increasing literacy took this to a whole new level. This helped to lay the foundations for the Industrial Revolution because new knowledge and inventions could be transmitted great distances and shared amongst many. Can you imagine science existing without journals and books?



In this, this Information Age, we've taken a step almost as big in it's way as Gutenberg's first printing press. Massive amounts of information on tap from books, CD-ROMs, the Web, interactive television, radio, newspapers... More than we can deal with, isn't it? And some are arguing here that this is a problem - too much information. We can't use it all, we can't undesrtand it all. One person commented that the amount of information now in existence made it harder to have people of genius - the sort of innovators we had in say the 1800s who knew everything about chemistry, botany and engineering. Nowadays you struggle to master one small piece of one of those disciplines. It has been suggested this means we don't get people looking at the big picture.



I don't hold with that at all. We have to concentrate in certain narrower fields now because we have built upon what those with a wider knowledge in times past laid out for us. But so did those genuises of the 1800s. It's jsut we did it faster. And the knoweldeg is far more democratic in that it is far mroe widely available to all. Besides which I remind these people of a maxim I have tried to live by, uttered by the immortal Sherlock Holmes, who said that a learned man should carry in his head that knowledge he is likely to require in normal everyday life. For the rest of the time he should keep a good library.

Roy of the Drovers



I'm indebted to Ariel for sending me this link on a new book on Rob Roy. I actually read it in the papers this morning then promptly forgot by the end of work, so this was a handy reminder to come in to. David Stevenson has written a new history of the famous historical figure (who probably looked nothing like Liam Neeson) which brings up the negative aspects of his legend which has often been ignored in favour of the Walter Scott romanticised version (always one to fuck up the Scottish past by romanticising it, something we're still dealing with today - see the earlier blog on Tom Devine).



His allegations that Rob Roy was not a heroic figure but was in fact a bit of a scoundrel aren't actually new to those of us who know Scottish history. He was after all a man who did a fair bit of droving - a Highland cattle drive with tartan instead of stetsons - and was happy to indulge in cattle rustling as well. He also got in debt to a landowner then changed allegiances to another to avoid the debt (not the noble cause portrayed elsewhere). Some of his business documents till sruvive in the National Library of Scotland and they don't make him look too good. If he's been around in the 20th century he'd have been one of the Thatcher era wide-boy enterpreneurs in a stripey suit. No wonder one book on him is entitled Rob Roy - Highland Hero or Rogue?



However, Stevenson goes further and alleges Rob Roy was a traitor - proclaiming his allegiance to the Jacobite cause in 1715 then changing his mind when it suited him. I'm not overly convinced by the evidence of this myself, but it wouldn't be out of character to be honest, given what I described above. Mind you, only half of Scotland - if that - ever supported the Jacobites. Again it's been romanticised into the alst gasp of plucky, outnumbered Scots against the evil, Auld Enemy, England. Utter bollocsk of course, it was partly a political thing, partly economic and largely a Protestant-Catholic matter. As with William Wallace however, people will believe what they wish to believe. The difference of course is that Rob Roy is, at best and seen through rose-tints, merely a memorable character. Wallace is a towering, heroic figure (and almost certainly didn't look like Mel Gibson and must have been much taller - hell his sword is bigger than Mel!). A mixture of romantic myth and historical fact (and farce), the legacy of the post-Scott history, now thankfully being addressed in a number of very fine Scottish history books. Still, the legend is fun, isn't it? Anyone who isn't sure should read Blind Harry's Wallace - Slaine in medieval Scotland.

Bashing the bishop



Or:



Here’s to you, Bishop Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you can know, oh whoa whoa whoa…



Pity the same can’t be said of your Christian brethren. So nice to see them practising the tenets of the man who they take their religion’s name from. I may have little time for organised religion, but at least the message Jesus is attempting to convey is one of loving everyone, even your enemies. Naturally a lot of Anglicans know better than Jesus what is acceptable Christian behaviour… Right up there with their (and the Catholics) dislike of women clergy for pure, unadulterated bigotry, if not outright hatred of those who don’t conform to their narrow parameters. So much for love and peace.



Although I am bamboozled (isn’t that wonderful word? Must use it more often) as to why a gay person would want to be part of a religion which has persecuted them for millennia. Ditto why a woman would want to be a priest when Christianity, like many organised religions, has been a major tool for the suppression of women throughout history, helping the patriarchal elite keep them in their place. And the poor, female or male. And the gypsies. And the deformed. And the… Well, you get the picture - these modern Anglican Christians are part of a rich cultural heritage of hatred and bigotry. Now there’s a fine message to teach your children in bible class in between burning Harry Potter and Philip Pullman books.

Happy fiftieth



Reminding us that human nature is not all hatred, bigotry and violence, the Samaritans celebrate their 50th anniversary today. Taking their name from the character in the biblical parable who could not pass by even a stranger in need of help, they started as a small group of people on a phone line for desperate people on the edge of suicide to talk to - a safety net for the soul. Now thousands of them help people everyday as do thousands of others in other organisations (step up my good chum Bobby and his wife M.A. who have worked for Childline for many years, my hat is off to them).



Every time the news seems to promise nothing but violent acts by one human against another and even those who follow a religion of love preach hatred I think on these people. I think on the evil scum who attacked the Red Cross last week, or the war lords who would kidnap Oxfam workers in Ethiopia. But every year when stupid leaders decide to drop bombs these are the people who volunteer to move in and pick up the pieces. Often at great risk to themselves as last week so sadly showed. And yet they and tens of thousands like them around the world organise, collect funds and deliver humanitarian relief to their fellow beings. Not for a political goal, most not even for a religious reason, simply because it is the right thing to do.



I give a small amount of money to a few of them every month. I don’t mention this by way of trying to make myself look good, please understand. It’s the smallest I can do and I know it helps a little. I also know while that salves my conscience slightly that I am doing very little - it’s these volunteers who take that money and do the hard work with it, often under horrendous conditions. The fact that the last century of history has given us more human-made horrors on our own kind than all of the other thousands of years of human history put together and yet it has also seen the greatest number of people form nation upon nation volunteering themselves at great pain and risk to heal wounds and save lives is one of the reasons why I sometimes think we’ve still got some hope as a species. It’s just a shame that it is the blood-drenched cheats of the world who get to hold office and not these people.

Kill Bill



You know, the more I think about Kill Bill (vol 1) the more it kind of reminds me of the time I had to fight 100 singing ninja kangaroo assassins during a transvestite karaoke in a bar in Okinawa. You know what I mean?

Porn to be bad



I know you all consider me to be a dirty bugger and a right old perv. I suspect my reviews of Philip Jose Farmer's Blow and the adult graphic novel Boffy the Vampri Layer have only enhanced this reputation, which, frankly, I revel in. In order to continue this reputation but also to deliver serious information and debate to you involving naughty matters I've been surfing away and found a fascinating article.



Nielsen, the people who do the TV ratings for the USA have conducted a survery of web porno browsers. Gee, guess what? Some women like it too. A surprise to no-one who has ever studied censorship, as I have. I found it amusign that some of the feminist academics in the US in the 90s campaigned against all porn as being demeaning to women. They arrogantly assumed they spoke for all women naturally, just as the 70s women's movements were lead largely by middle-class, college educated women who assumed they spoke for every woman but actually knew bugger all about the thoughts of say, a single coloured mother living in one of the projects in Chicago. Clare Short made the same arrogant mistake here when she campaigned against top-shelf mags in the UK, again claiming to know best for all women. Well, it's bollocks.



The academics I mentioned at the start were so damned sure all women hate porn and it is bad for them that they even shacked up with the right wing, Republican and Christian organisations. Yes, the same ones who despise feminists and would see all women shackled to the sink and not allowed to vote etc. They also split themselves as liberal members said they still didn't approve of porn but it was a matter of free speech and it was up to individual adults to decide what they wanted and did not want. A few even said they liked porn. They often ended up stigmatised like film academics who studied horror and action flicks and said they actually enjoyed them. Tut, tut - pontificate on them but not enjoy them! Shudder. Lesbian feminist academics were particularly pissed of because they argued they not only liked porno, they used it regularly and didn't want their 'sisters' to get it banned.



Anyway this article shows that millions of women do surf for porn. I certainly know several female friends who enjoy it, although their tastes often vary from what men enjoy, but then the web is there to appeal to all tastes, isn't it? But these findings have pissed off the right wingers (it's okay to rape the environment and bomb another country but not to watch a phot-shoot of a blowbjob) and the bloody Christians (the two are often synonmous in the US). In fact they decided that these poor, misguided women who had the temerity to express themselves sexually were addicted to porn in the way a drug abuser is addicted to crack cocaine. This neatly wrapping up the evils of drugs and sexuality as one big manifestation of evil for these simple minded cretins. Have you ever found a bunch of people who really, badly need a fucking joint and to get laid? More fascinating sexual tidbits from the World Sex news site.