Those (French) Teenage Kicks right through the night...
My chum and freelance writer PJ has posted an excellent and extremely enthusiastic review of a band called The French Kicks and their album Trial of the Century which sounds totally groovy.
Monday, May 31, 2004
River walking
Went walking with Gordon and his dog Bruce this afternoon and decided to follow the Water of Leith in the other direction. After a long, meandering path through more leafy trees we eventually come out at the Visitor Centre which sits below a huge viaduct which the main Glasgow-Edinburgh rail line runs on and, parallel and only a few yards away an equally impressive aqueduct for the canal, enormous arches spanning the valley, 60, 70 feet above our heads, wide enough and strong enough to carry express trains and thousands of gallons of water respectively. Say what you like about our Victorian predecessors, but those guys knew how to build and how to build to last. We repaired to a nearby beer garden at the Tickled Trout and sat outside sipping cool beer beneath a shady tree listening to the river flowing by. Nothing to do and all day to do it.
Climbed the stairs from the river up to the aqueduct and walked back home along the canal towpath (the view from the aqueduct is amazing). This runs right by my home and I cycle along here regularly. Once it was overgrown and messy but now it has all been fixed up as part of the Millennium Projects. Closed sections are reconnected and you can now cycle along a wide, even path all the way to Glasgow (right past my parent’s home actually). And now traffic has returned to the water. Where before the only boats there belonged to the University’s rowing team now narrow boats ply their way along almost into the centre of Edinburgh for the first time in decades. Right along from my house there’s an entire dock for them where only five years ago all you could hire was a rowboat. A very pleasant piece of regeneration that everyone can enjoy.
Went walking with Gordon and his dog Bruce this afternoon and decided to follow the Water of Leith in the other direction. After a long, meandering path through more leafy trees we eventually come out at the Visitor Centre which sits below a huge viaduct which the main Glasgow-Edinburgh rail line runs on and, parallel and only a few yards away an equally impressive aqueduct for the canal, enormous arches spanning the valley, 60, 70 feet above our heads, wide enough and strong enough to carry express trains and thousands of gallons of water respectively. Say what you like about our Victorian predecessors, but those guys knew how to build and how to build to last. We repaired to a nearby beer garden at the Tickled Trout and sat outside sipping cool beer beneath a shady tree listening to the river flowing by. Nothing to do and all day to do it.
Climbed the stairs from the river up to the aqueduct and walked back home along the canal towpath (the view from the aqueduct is amazing). This runs right by my home and I cycle along here regularly. Once it was overgrown and messy but now it has all been fixed up as part of the Millennium Projects. Closed sections are reconnected and you can now cycle along a wide, even path all the way to Glasgow (right past my parent’s home actually). And now traffic has returned to the water. Where before the only boats there belonged to the University’s rowing team now narrow boats ply their way along almost into the centre of Edinburgh for the first time in decades. Right along from my house there’s an entire dock for them where only five years ago all you could hire was a rowboat. A very pleasant piece of regeneration that everyone can enjoy.
Statues
I had a very pleasant Sunday afternoon’s gentle walk with Melanie and Gordon along the nearby Water of Leith. A small river which runs right through Edinburgh and, as the name suggest, goes all the way to the port of Leith. Once upon a time it was home to many mills with the river turning the water wheels of the industrial revolution. Now it is a long, forested river walkway. Gently running water (except during the floods), and centuries-old massive trees arcing over your head, the summer foliage creating a leafy canopy, softly filtering the strong summer sunlight. We walked along from nearby my home, passing right by Murrayfield Stadium the home of Scottish Rugby Union (League does not count as real rugby, it is heresy). Along past very expensive homes backing on to the river for a long, peaceful amble, then across a nice little wooden bridge and up some very steep cobbled steps cut into the side of the river valley which bring you up through heavy foliage and out eventually into a clearing behind the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, with a Henry Moore sculpture right there at the top of the stairs as your reward.
An enjoyable walk through the ground of the Gallery of Modern Art then across the road to the Dean Gallery opposite. The Dean Gallery is a recent addition to the National Galleries of Scotland and houses a large amount of work by the Edinburgh Scots-Italian artist, the magnificent Eduardo Paolozzi. At the moment it is also running a retrospective on the six decade career of Paolozzi just now and the entire gallery is awash with his multifarious works. Sketches, paintings, montages and, of course the amazing sculptures for which he is so famed. Right from his early work in the 40s and 50s there is a strong association with films and with science fiction in Eduardo’s work. The wonderfully colourful and starkly powerful graphics of Astounding Tales and other SF&F magazines and comics are a rich source of inspiration to the young artist. Now in his 80s Paolozzi retains this sense of child-like sense-of-wonder, still collecting magazine and film images, rummaging through the toy section of Woolworth’s or small markets for objects which take his fancy, spark his imagination. If you look around the fabulous recreation of his studio it is littered with found objects that his magpie eye liked, from 50s Italian scooters to a model Millennium Falcon.
His sculptures and his busts often have a semi-mechanical overtone to them. Not so much biomechanics like H R Giger more like an almost natural organic confluence of technology and art. Some bronzes are made form impressions of found material in old junkyards and all give the impression of organic growth, that he hasn’t just made a shape but that the shape has grown as he find new shapes to add to his work as he goes along. Even the semi-symmetrical busts have an SF overtone to them, recalling Maria from Metropolis and prefiguring C-3P0 and the Terminator. Many of them are fantastically tactile sculptures and the desire to touch then, feel the outlines and texture is almost overpowering. In fact it occurred to me that an exhibition should be arranged especially for the blind and visually impaired that allowed them to do just this. With these phantasmagorically twisted bronzes there is no reason a blind person could not touch them, feel them and enjoy the art as those with eyes do. I’m tempted to email the galleries and suggest this although I suspect the insurers would not be too happy about people touching the exhibits. Coming out afterwards I’m left with the impression that Paolozzi is still, at heart, a child, taking delight in all that is unusual and wonderful in the world. I suspect this is why his work is still so vibrant and fresh in a way that the victims of the Brit-Art fire last week can only dream of.
We walked back over to the Gallery of Modern Art afterwards and relaxed for a little while in the peaceful environs of the award-winning Landform natural sculpture. I’ve watched this take shape over the last year or two, from raw earthen mounds, to sculpted shapes, to grass-covered earth sculptures with water. The long swoops and curves recall both the mazes of formal gardens in country houses and also the spirals which figure so prominently in the artwork of our Celtic and Pictish ancestors. The stepped embankments seen from the far side are reminiscent of more work by our ancestors, resembling Iron-Age hill forts, such as Trapairn Law near Edinburgh (famed in legend and poetry and also, along with the rock fortress of Dun-Eidin (where Edinburgh Castle now sits) one of the mythical homes for Arthur) while the still water mirroring the sky above suggests the Celtic belief in bodies of water as portals to the Otherworld. You can take all this from Landform, or you can just admire the curves and nature of it, or you can just lie back on the green bank and stare at the sky while the earthen curves hold you or you can, like some young children nearby, take the simplest of delights by sliding down the grassy bank with your dad.
Naturally the day was finished by some outdoor drinking.
This bronze in the gallery gardens is called Master of the Universe. Someone before us had placed a daisy right in front of his pointing finger :-)
I had a very pleasant Sunday afternoon’s gentle walk with Melanie and Gordon along the nearby Water of Leith. A small river which runs right through Edinburgh and, as the name suggest, goes all the way to the port of Leith. Once upon a time it was home to many mills with the river turning the water wheels of the industrial revolution. Now it is a long, forested river walkway. Gently running water (except during the floods), and centuries-old massive trees arcing over your head, the summer foliage creating a leafy canopy, softly filtering the strong summer sunlight. We walked along from nearby my home, passing right by Murrayfield Stadium the home of Scottish Rugby Union (League does not count as real rugby, it is heresy). Along past very expensive homes backing on to the river for a long, peaceful amble, then across a nice little wooden bridge and up some very steep cobbled steps cut into the side of the river valley which bring you up through heavy foliage and out eventually into a clearing behind the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, with a Henry Moore sculpture right there at the top of the stairs as your reward.
An enjoyable walk through the ground of the Gallery of Modern Art then across the road to the Dean Gallery opposite. The Dean Gallery is a recent addition to the National Galleries of Scotland and houses a large amount of work by the Edinburgh Scots-Italian artist, the magnificent Eduardo Paolozzi. At the moment it is also running a retrospective on the six decade career of Paolozzi just now and the entire gallery is awash with his multifarious works. Sketches, paintings, montages and, of course the amazing sculptures for which he is so famed. Right from his early work in the 40s and 50s there is a strong association with films and with science fiction in Eduardo’s work. The wonderfully colourful and starkly powerful graphics of Astounding Tales and other SF&F magazines and comics are a rich source of inspiration to the young artist. Now in his 80s Paolozzi retains this sense of child-like sense-of-wonder, still collecting magazine and film images, rummaging through the toy section of Woolworth’s or small markets for objects which take his fancy, spark his imagination. If you look around the fabulous recreation of his studio it is littered with found objects that his magpie eye liked, from 50s Italian scooters to a model Millennium Falcon.
His sculptures and his busts often have a semi-mechanical overtone to them. Not so much biomechanics like H R Giger more like an almost natural organic confluence of technology and art. Some bronzes are made form impressions of found material in old junkyards and all give the impression of organic growth, that he hasn’t just made a shape but that the shape has grown as he find new shapes to add to his work as he goes along. Even the semi-symmetrical busts have an SF overtone to them, recalling Maria from Metropolis and prefiguring C-3P0 and the Terminator. Many of them are fantastically tactile sculptures and the desire to touch then, feel the outlines and texture is almost overpowering. In fact it occurred to me that an exhibition should be arranged especially for the blind and visually impaired that allowed them to do just this. With these phantasmagorically twisted bronzes there is no reason a blind person could not touch them, feel them and enjoy the art as those with eyes do. I’m tempted to email the galleries and suggest this although I suspect the insurers would not be too happy about people touching the exhibits. Coming out afterwards I’m left with the impression that Paolozzi is still, at heart, a child, taking delight in all that is unusual and wonderful in the world. I suspect this is why his work is still so vibrant and fresh in a way that the victims of the Brit-Art fire last week can only dream of.
We walked back over to the Gallery of Modern Art afterwards and relaxed for a little while in the peaceful environs of the award-winning Landform natural sculpture. I’ve watched this take shape over the last year or two, from raw earthen mounds, to sculpted shapes, to grass-covered earth sculptures with water. The long swoops and curves recall both the mazes of formal gardens in country houses and also the spirals which figure so prominently in the artwork of our Celtic and Pictish ancestors. The stepped embankments seen from the far side are reminiscent of more work by our ancestors, resembling Iron-Age hill forts, such as Trapairn Law near Edinburgh (famed in legend and poetry and also, along with the rock fortress of Dun-Eidin (where Edinburgh Castle now sits) one of the mythical homes for Arthur) while the still water mirroring the sky above suggests the Celtic belief in bodies of water as portals to the Otherworld. You can take all this from Landform, or you can just admire the curves and nature of it, or you can just lie back on the green bank and stare at the sky while the earthen curves hold you or you can, like some young children nearby, take the simplest of delights by sliding down the grassy bank with your dad.
Naturally the day was finished by some outdoor drinking.
This bronze in the gallery gardens is called Master of the Universe. Someone before us had placed a daisy right in front of his pointing finger :-)
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Googlewhack
According to an email I received from Chris Wood the 'ole Woolamaloo Gazette is a Googlewhack. Does this mean Dave Gorman will come make a show about me?!?!?! heheh. So I tried it myself and actually got several results for 'Woolamloo Gazette'. Only one proper hit for the actual site however, the rest were sites which either had links to the Woolamaloo or mentioned it, from other chums and random hits from people who had read a particular article. Does that count in Googlewhack or does it have to be only a single, unambigous result?
On the results I found there were alos utterly fraudulent ones such as financetime.co.uk which has nothing at all to do with me or the site, cheeky smeggers! They best beware less they feel the wrath of my sarcastic tongue and suffer a sever lampooning at some point in the future. There's a hit on a page dealing in magic tricks because of my ripping the piss out of that twonk David Blaine last year. Another details quotes from reviews of MJ Simpson's Douglas Adams biog I wrote for the Alien. A page detailing, of all things, sites of interest in Cleveland, Ohio has me listed. I wondered why then realised it was because of my mention of American Splendour. Another is a list of reviews for Ashok Banker's Ramayana cycle.
Interesting the little ripples we make in the hyper-linked virtual reality of the web, isn't it? And as an aside, if you just try 'Woolamaloo' on it's own you get almost the same thing except you also get this Pythonesque link.
According to an email I received from Chris Wood the 'ole Woolamaloo Gazette is a Googlewhack. Does this mean Dave Gorman will come make a show about me?!?!?! heheh. So I tried it myself and actually got several results for 'Woolamloo Gazette'. Only one proper hit for the actual site however, the rest were sites which either had links to the Woolamaloo or mentioned it, from other chums and random hits from people who had read a particular article. Does that count in Googlewhack or does it have to be only a single, unambigous result?
On the results I found there were alos utterly fraudulent ones such as financetime.co.uk which has nothing at all to do with me or the site, cheeky smeggers! They best beware less they feel the wrath of my sarcastic tongue and suffer a sever lampooning at some point in the future. There's a hit on a page dealing in magic tricks because of my ripping the piss out of that twonk David Blaine last year. Another details quotes from reviews of MJ Simpson's Douglas Adams biog I wrote for the Alien. A page detailing, of all things, sites of interest in Cleveland, Ohio has me listed. I wondered why then realised it was because of my mention of American Splendour. Another is a list of reviews for Ashok Banker's Ramayana cycle.
Interesting the little ripples we make in the hyper-linked virtual reality of the web, isn't it? And as an aside, if you just try 'Woolamaloo' on it's own you get almost the same thing except you also get this Pythonesque link.
Troy
Went to see Troy on my day off. I suspected that as a mega-budget Hollywood take on one of the world’s oldest works of literature that it may take certain liberties. Then again, the director was Wolfgang Petersen who is the man who gave us the powerful Das Boot, which is famed for its accuracy. Well, right from the off it was obvious that it was bye-bye to pretty much everything except a few keys scenes from the Iliad. Right from the prologue history, or at least mytho-history, was re-written. Depressing - then again if Hollywood directors and writers consider they are able to re-write Shakespeare then watch chance Homer? Hey, he’s only the father of modern Western literature, responsible for the most important root myths of our culture…
Yep, a few scenes aside Troy is about as accurate and responsible as Braveheart or the 1950s sword’n’sandal epics which inspired Gladiator and Troy. It even cribs from modern ‘epics’ - the opening where the narration talks about men then as now being afraid of eternity and wondering if their name will echo though history is right out of Gladiator: “What we do echoes in eternity.” A later scene borrows from both Gladiator - ‘in this world or the next’ and Last of the Mohicans - ‘I will find you’. Agamemnon is recreated as a cartoon, power-hungry empire builder and Achilles is remodelled to fit current Hollywood expectations of heroism. The actions of the gods are absent. Talk about hubris, rewriting Homer.
That said, if you accept the lack of accuracy and respect for the source material and actual history - triremes centuries before they were ever designed and sailed! - it is an enjoyable spectacle. Brad Pitt does largely deliver a half-decent Achilles - a magnificent warrior but brooding, moody and obsessed with his own prestige. Eric ‘the Hulk’ Banna’s Trojan Prince Hector is pretty much spot on - a decent man, who doesn’t really consider himself a hero but who never shirks his duty to family and nation, playing his doomed hero with elegant understated ease so you feel huge sympathy for him. And wait, don’t moan that I just let slip Hector died! If you didn’t know that before seeing the film then don’t complain about me spoiling it - instead shame on you for not having read the Iliad! Why haven’t you?
Sean Bean is used sparingly but still manages to convey the craftiness for which Ulysses is rightly famed. Heavyweight Scottish actors Brian Cox and the always excellent James Cosmo add some seriousness to the proceedings although in truth neither are called on to do much more than be caricature characters but transcend this simply because of who they are. Special mention, of course, must be made of the legendary Peter O’Toole. It may have been a long time since he was Lawrence of Arabia, but O’Toole still knows how to play a heroic character, bringing the right mixture of dignity and tragedy to King Priam. The scene where he begs Achilles for the return of Hector’s desecrated corpse (a hideous thing to do to a Greek of the time) is one of the scenes to make it from the Iliad and retains the emotional punch of the original poem. And yes, ladies - and some men too I imagine - all of the leading young men (Bana, Pitt and Bloom) spend a fair few scenes in little clothing. For once a Hollywood movies has far more toned male flesh on view for voyeuristic enjoyment than female.
Use of CGI is both sparing and well-utilised. Despite some little acrobatic flourishes to his movements, the combat, even with Achilles, is free of wire-fu, gravity defying nonsense and grounded in more reality. Well, mostly - Bronze Age warriors wouldn’t do so much fencing as bronze swords aren’t up to it (indeed most weapons of the time are often almost un-edged - theses swords are stabbing weapons primarily) and Greeks of this period - and later Classical period Greece - would prefer to use their javelins more. And Hoplite style formation fighting is centuries out of it’s time period.
All in all, accepting the alterations/tinkering and remodelling of characters, compressing a ten year war into a few weeks etc I’d still have to say Troy is immensely enjoyable and well worth going to see. It’s still a gripping, powerful story of hubris, love and tragedy and the visual spectacle is stunning on the big screen. There’s even a small attempt to have individual stories as in the Iliad. Limited by the medium obviously but at least the attempt is made - I always considered the fact that the poem treats no character as disposable was one of it’s great strengths; each action or death scene is accompanied by details of the man, his age, his family, his past - the soldiers who die in the Iliad are not faceless canon-fodder, Homer makes you care about them and the people they leave behind when whetted bronze sends them to the Underworld.
Watching the landing scene, where a thousand Greek triremes beach themselves on the shores of lofty Ilium I was reminded of another titanic battle of more recent vintage and one which is much in the news due to the approaching 60th anniversary: D-Day. Once the Iliad and the mighty walls of Troy themselves were thought to be myth. As someone who has spent decades fascinated with both mythology, fantasy and history - Classical Studies at school allowed me to combine all of these (and win the School Prize, little swot that I was) - I am well aware that modern historians reject myth and folkloric traditions at their risk. There is no such thing as ‘just legend’. Exaggerated? Perhaps. Over-layered by centuries of re-telling and embroidering? Sure. But there is always an actual basis to all myth and legend.
But back to the point - watching the landing scenes made me think of D-Day. Surely one of the greatest - and riskiest - undertakings of any age of history? The largest fleet in human history and hundreds of thousands of ordinary ‘citizen soldiers’ who accomplished the impossible. These men were not scions of an immortal god, imbued with supernatural strength. They were ordinary folk who did the extraordinary. And I wondered, will people look back at D-Day in a few centuries and imagine it is mostly an inflated myth, based on a much smaller actual event? Would they believe the scale of the undertaking? As the 60th anniversary approaches and the men who took part slowly fade away into old age and death I’d argue that they are already well on the way to becoming legend, even to us only six decades later. We know it really happened and yet is already the stuff our national folklore and the ordinary men who did it seem, with each retreating years, to take on the stature of giants.
Was it this way once with a real Trojan War? Was there ever an Achilles or is he just an invention by the epic bards, added to real events to give a narrative edge to their oral re-creation of history? These events were ancient when Homer - if he really existed - wrote down these poems and almost certainly re-interpreted them for his contemporary audience. Actually viewed in that light perhaps modern tinkering with the Iliad is not without precedent, is it? Will a future writer create a future Achilles storming Gold or Omaha Beaches? So we give birth to legends. Our collective folklore moves in the modern world still - witness another epic battle of WWII, the Battle of the River Plate. One of the British warships who fought doggedly against the superior German pocket battleship Graf Spee was named Ajax. Even when we don’t know it we live in myth.
Went to see Troy on my day off. I suspected that as a mega-budget Hollywood take on one of the world’s oldest works of literature that it may take certain liberties. Then again, the director was Wolfgang Petersen who is the man who gave us the powerful Das Boot, which is famed for its accuracy. Well, right from the off it was obvious that it was bye-bye to pretty much everything except a few keys scenes from the Iliad. Right from the prologue history, or at least mytho-history, was re-written. Depressing - then again if Hollywood directors and writers consider they are able to re-write Shakespeare then watch chance Homer? Hey, he’s only the father of modern Western literature, responsible for the most important root myths of our culture…
Yep, a few scenes aside Troy is about as accurate and responsible as Braveheart or the 1950s sword’n’sandal epics which inspired Gladiator and Troy. It even cribs from modern ‘epics’ - the opening where the narration talks about men then as now being afraid of eternity and wondering if their name will echo though history is right out of Gladiator: “What we do echoes in eternity.” A later scene borrows from both Gladiator - ‘in this world or the next’ and Last of the Mohicans - ‘I will find you’. Agamemnon is recreated as a cartoon, power-hungry empire builder and Achilles is remodelled to fit current Hollywood expectations of heroism. The actions of the gods are absent. Talk about hubris, rewriting Homer.
That said, if you accept the lack of accuracy and respect for the source material and actual history - triremes centuries before they were ever designed and sailed! - it is an enjoyable spectacle. Brad Pitt does largely deliver a half-decent Achilles - a magnificent warrior but brooding, moody and obsessed with his own prestige. Eric ‘the Hulk’ Banna’s Trojan Prince Hector is pretty much spot on - a decent man, who doesn’t really consider himself a hero but who never shirks his duty to family and nation, playing his doomed hero with elegant understated ease so you feel huge sympathy for him. And wait, don’t moan that I just let slip Hector died! If you didn’t know that before seeing the film then don’t complain about me spoiling it - instead shame on you for not having read the Iliad! Why haven’t you?
Sean Bean is used sparingly but still manages to convey the craftiness for which Ulysses is rightly famed. Heavyweight Scottish actors Brian Cox and the always excellent James Cosmo add some seriousness to the proceedings although in truth neither are called on to do much more than be caricature characters but transcend this simply because of who they are. Special mention, of course, must be made of the legendary Peter O’Toole. It may have been a long time since he was Lawrence of Arabia, but O’Toole still knows how to play a heroic character, bringing the right mixture of dignity and tragedy to King Priam. The scene where he begs Achilles for the return of Hector’s desecrated corpse (a hideous thing to do to a Greek of the time) is one of the scenes to make it from the Iliad and retains the emotional punch of the original poem. And yes, ladies - and some men too I imagine - all of the leading young men (Bana, Pitt and Bloom) spend a fair few scenes in little clothing. For once a Hollywood movies has far more toned male flesh on view for voyeuristic enjoyment than female.
Use of CGI is both sparing and well-utilised. Despite some little acrobatic flourishes to his movements, the combat, even with Achilles, is free of wire-fu, gravity defying nonsense and grounded in more reality. Well, mostly - Bronze Age warriors wouldn’t do so much fencing as bronze swords aren’t up to it (indeed most weapons of the time are often almost un-edged - theses swords are stabbing weapons primarily) and Greeks of this period - and later Classical period Greece - would prefer to use their javelins more. And Hoplite style formation fighting is centuries out of it’s time period.
All in all, accepting the alterations/tinkering and remodelling of characters, compressing a ten year war into a few weeks etc I’d still have to say Troy is immensely enjoyable and well worth going to see. It’s still a gripping, powerful story of hubris, love and tragedy and the visual spectacle is stunning on the big screen. There’s even a small attempt to have individual stories as in the Iliad. Limited by the medium obviously but at least the attempt is made - I always considered the fact that the poem treats no character as disposable was one of it’s great strengths; each action or death scene is accompanied by details of the man, his age, his family, his past - the soldiers who die in the Iliad are not faceless canon-fodder, Homer makes you care about them and the people they leave behind when whetted bronze sends them to the Underworld.
Watching the landing scene, where a thousand Greek triremes beach themselves on the shores of lofty Ilium I was reminded of another titanic battle of more recent vintage and one which is much in the news due to the approaching 60th anniversary: D-Day. Once the Iliad and the mighty walls of Troy themselves were thought to be myth. As someone who has spent decades fascinated with both mythology, fantasy and history - Classical Studies at school allowed me to combine all of these (and win the School Prize, little swot that I was) - I am well aware that modern historians reject myth and folkloric traditions at their risk. There is no such thing as ‘just legend’. Exaggerated? Perhaps. Over-layered by centuries of re-telling and embroidering? Sure. But there is always an actual basis to all myth and legend.
But back to the point - watching the landing scenes made me think of D-Day. Surely one of the greatest - and riskiest - undertakings of any age of history? The largest fleet in human history and hundreds of thousands of ordinary ‘citizen soldiers’ who accomplished the impossible. These men were not scions of an immortal god, imbued with supernatural strength. They were ordinary folk who did the extraordinary. And I wondered, will people look back at D-Day in a few centuries and imagine it is mostly an inflated myth, based on a much smaller actual event? Would they believe the scale of the undertaking? As the 60th anniversary approaches and the men who took part slowly fade away into old age and death I’d argue that they are already well on the way to becoming legend, even to us only six decades later. We know it really happened and yet is already the stuff our national folklore and the ordinary men who did it seem, with each retreating years, to take on the stature of giants.
Was it this way once with a real Trojan War? Was there ever an Achilles or is he just an invention by the epic bards, added to real events to give a narrative edge to their oral re-creation of history? These events were ancient when Homer - if he really existed - wrote down these poems and almost certainly re-interpreted them for his contemporary audience. Actually viewed in that light perhaps modern tinkering with the Iliad is not without precedent, is it? Will a future writer create a future Achilles storming Gold or Omaha Beaches? So we give birth to legends. Our collective folklore moves in the modern world still - witness another epic battle of WWII, the Battle of the River Plate. One of the British warships who fought doggedly against the superior German pocket battleship Graf Spee was named Ajax. Even when we don’t know it we live in myth.
Bonfire of the inanities
A huge fire has consumed a building where Tory lickspittle Charles Saatchi was storing a large amount of his modern, so-called ‘Brit-Art’ collection, including works by Hirst, Emin and Turk. Tracey Emin’s beach hut and the tent listing the names of her former shags are gone as is ‘floater’, an empty Perspex box with chewing gum wads stuck to the top. Dear Lord, how will the art world ever recover????
At the risk of sounding like a philistine I can’t help but think this is no loss whatsoever to the world of art and is a disaster only to those blatant charlatans like Damien Hirst who have no artistic ability whatsoever but do have a prodigious flair for self promotion and pure bullshit. Turk on Channel 4 News bemoaned the fact that some of these artists may have been the Turners of the future generations, which strikes me as both ridiculous and utterly immodest in a breath-taking way. In fact it sums up much of modern Brit-Art for me - pure arrogance and little talent.
And before anyone has a go at me for attacking modern art, I am not - I’m attacking a bunch of self-obsessed wankers. Let’s face it - most of those gits may as well wank off over some fabric then nail it up in an installation piece. Come to think of it (no pun intended) Tracey Emin is probably considering mounting an exhibition of a new tent created from squares of fabric over which each of her former lovers has ejaculated.
Now if the fire had been in the Dean Gallery, across the road from the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in gorgeous Dean Village it would have been a disaster. Especially since they are now running a special exhibition taking a retrospective of the work of the excellent Italian-Scots artist Eduardo Paolozzi. The Dean already features his massive metal man sculpture and a wonderful re-creation of his studio (which is full of interesting toys he liked the colour or shape of, including a Millennium Falcon if you look closely). His work is irreplaceable whereas much of the art destroyed in the fire is symptomatic of the modern culture which produced it - hollow, meaningless, disposable and easily replaceable. Indeed some are already talking about recreating the same items again.
A huge fire has consumed a building where Tory lickspittle Charles Saatchi was storing a large amount of his modern, so-called ‘Brit-Art’ collection, including works by Hirst, Emin and Turk. Tracey Emin’s beach hut and the tent listing the names of her former shags are gone as is ‘floater’, an empty Perspex box with chewing gum wads stuck to the top. Dear Lord, how will the art world ever recover????
At the risk of sounding like a philistine I can’t help but think this is no loss whatsoever to the world of art and is a disaster only to those blatant charlatans like Damien Hirst who have no artistic ability whatsoever but do have a prodigious flair for self promotion and pure bullshit. Turk on Channel 4 News bemoaned the fact that some of these artists may have been the Turners of the future generations, which strikes me as both ridiculous and utterly immodest in a breath-taking way. In fact it sums up much of modern Brit-Art for me - pure arrogance and little talent.
And before anyone has a go at me for attacking modern art, I am not - I’m attacking a bunch of self-obsessed wankers. Let’s face it - most of those gits may as well wank off over some fabric then nail it up in an installation piece. Come to think of it (no pun intended) Tracey Emin is probably considering mounting an exhibition of a new tent created from squares of fabric over which each of her former lovers has ejaculated.
Now if the fire had been in the Dean Gallery, across the road from the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in gorgeous Dean Village it would have been a disaster. Especially since they are now running a special exhibition taking a retrospective of the work of the excellent Italian-Scots artist Eduardo Paolozzi. The Dean already features his massive metal man sculpture and a wonderful re-creation of his studio (which is full of interesting toys he liked the colour or shape of, including a Millennium Falcon if you look closely). His work is irreplaceable whereas much of the art destroyed in the fire is symptomatic of the modern culture which produced it - hollow, meaningless, disposable and easily replaceable. Indeed some are already talking about recreating the same items again.
Monday, May 24, 2004
New Who
News on the Beeb's website that bloody Billie Piper is to be the new Doctor Who assistant. Oh gods, no.... Suddenly my hopes for a glorious new interpretation of a Brit classic for a new generation are sinking fast... What are they playing at?
Blake
A few days after shaking hands with a real life astronuat (see excited blog below!) I served Gareth Thomas on Friday - Blake from Blake's 7 of course. So this week I met a man who sailed into space in an early ship which was little mroe than a flying tin can then a man who ran around a cardboard BBC set of a fictional starship. Cool. Yes, my job is still crap and dreadfully underpaid but occassionally it can be fun. I wonder if I'll bump into Sylvester McCoy during the Festival again this summer? He was quite friendly - he was in a good mood because Kath, our kid's buyer had found him exactly what he wanted when he wasn't too sure of his information. I was loathe to mention the 'B' word as I've heard he gets pissed off that after decades of acting that show is all anyone ever mentions. However, he was okay with it, saying he doesn't worry about it now since, when he reflects back on it, it gave him recognition and job security. Nice to meet him.
News on the Beeb's website that bloody Billie Piper is to be the new Doctor Who assistant. Oh gods, no.... Suddenly my hopes for a glorious new interpretation of a Brit classic for a new generation are sinking fast... What are they playing at?
Blake
A few days after shaking hands with a real life astronuat (see excited blog below!) I served Gareth Thomas on Friday - Blake from Blake's 7 of course. So this week I met a man who sailed into space in an early ship which was little mroe than a flying tin can then a man who ran around a cardboard BBC set of a fictional starship. Cool. Yes, my job is still crap and dreadfully underpaid but occassionally it can be fun. I wonder if I'll bump into Sylvester McCoy during the Festival again this summer? He was quite friendly - he was in a good mood because Kath, our kid's buyer had found him exactly what he wanted when he wasn't too sure of his information. I was loathe to mention the 'B' word as I've heard he gets pissed off that after decades of acting that show is all anyone ever mentions. However, he was okay with it, saying he doesn't worry about it now since, when he reflects back on it, it gave him recognition and job security. Nice to meet him.
Dry history
I'd have to agree with Ariel that far too may historians, in the elusive quest for 'respectable, heavyweight' histories can veer too far into detail at the expense of readability. Regardless of how accurate your historical facts or how insightful your theories, if no-one reads the book, it is useless. Personally I attribute this, at least in part, to the fact that many academics - in many fields, not just history - write books as if they are writing for a peer-group reviewed journal. Having worked through mroe than a few of those in my time as well I can say some of them have two main problems. The first is that they are so worried their peers will find holes in thei arguments or, worse still, consider them 'lightweight' that they drag in far too much detail an an effort to draw on overwhelming evidence to back up their viewpoint. This has the unintentioned effect of boring the reader to death and rendering the prose unreadable. Couching far too much in 'academese' rather than plain English does not help.
The other problem is a much simpler one - many of these people simply don't know how to write! Not everyone can do this well and all too many history books have grown out of a well-researched but poorly written doctoral thesis. Since one of the first rules of all kinds of writing is to know what audience you are aiming at, the author should know to make alterations from a document meant for academic research, to be read by a few experts on a panel and a book which many are meant to read. In modern academia there is an enormous pressure to publish. This has, along with the DTP revolution, lead to an explosion in the number of specialised journals and the articles to fill them, then even mroe articles refuting those articles by other academics. Indeed half of academia seems to spend it's time refuting the other half in print. I'm all for peer review in specialise journals but certainly in my academic field I foudn it was becoming ridiculous - lecturers were publishing for the sake of publishing, not for valid academic reasons.
If you look at most job decsriptions for academic posts now you'll see that they almost always expect the applicant not only to have a good degree or higher, research skills etc (teaching ability is low down the list - you only have to study to teach at secondary level, not higher it seems) but preferably (ie you better have it) a record of having been published. Once this meant only in said journals, of which there were many. Now it also means in book form, which frequently takes the form of basically publishing your doctoral thesis with a few pictures and hopefully a catchy title. While I am all for a range of books on many subjects and at many levels I have to say I think an awful lot - and not just vanity publications - are published for the wrong reasons and with too little editorial oversight.
I'd have to agree with Ariel that far too may historians, in the elusive quest for 'respectable, heavyweight' histories can veer too far into detail at the expense of readability. Regardless of how accurate your historical facts or how insightful your theories, if no-one reads the book, it is useless. Personally I attribute this, at least in part, to the fact that many academics - in many fields, not just history - write books as if they are writing for a peer-group reviewed journal. Having worked through mroe than a few of those in my time as well I can say some of them have two main problems. The first is that they are so worried their peers will find holes in thei arguments or, worse still, consider them 'lightweight' that they drag in far too much detail an an effort to draw on overwhelming evidence to back up their viewpoint. This has the unintentioned effect of boring the reader to death and rendering the prose unreadable. Couching far too much in 'academese' rather than plain English does not help.
The other problem is a much simpler one - many of these people simply don't know how to write! Not everyone can do this well and all too many history books have grown out of a well-researched but poorly written doctoral thesis. Since one of the first rules of all kinds of writing is to know what audience you are aiming at, the author should know to make alterations from a document meant for academic research, to be read by a few experts on a panel and a book which many are meant to read. In modern academia there is an enormous pressure to publish. This has, along with the DTP revolution, lead to an explosion in the number of specialised journals and the articles to fill them, then even mroe articles refuting those articles by other academics. Indeed half of academia seems to spend it's time refuting the other half in print. I'm all for peer review in specialise journals but certainly in my academic field I foudn it was becoming ridiculous - lecturers were publishing for the sake of publishing, not for valid academic reasons.
If you look at most job decsriptions for academic posts now you'll see that they almost always expect the applicant not only to have a good degree or higher, research skills etc (teaching ability is low down the list - you only have to study to teach at secondary level, not higher it seems) but preferably (ie you better have it) a record of having been published. Once this meant only in said journals, of which there were many. Now it also means in book form, which frequently takes the form of basically publishing your doctoral thesis with a few pictures and hopefully a catchy title. While I am all for a range of books on many subjects and at many levels I have to say I think an awful lot - and not just vanity publications - are published for the wrong reasons and with too little editorial oversight.
Headsplitter
On a Sunday which lived up to it’s name I spent several happy hours walking along the beach all the way from North Berwick to the neighbouring village of Dirleston. Sipping some beer on a long, sandy beach with an arching sky of blue above you must be one of life’s simple pleasures. A 99 cone and shucking your shoes for a spot of paddling in the surf add to the pleasure. Warm sand underfoot contrasting with cool tidal water from the Forth and North Sea washing over my tootsies, sloshing over and back, little grains moving between my feet. How deep can you wade before the waves hit the bottom of your shorts? Always a fun game. Then lounging like a wee lizard on a rock to let the sun dry off your feet.
Today I am paying the price for spending far too many hours in the bright sunlight. Nope, no sunburn - I had slathered on sunblock all over before leaving the house and my shorts-encased legs are still the pale blue-white (Daz legs!) they were before I left. No, I found my eyes were very tired after nearly five hours of beachcombing. I figured last night it was a combination of lots of fresh air, miles of walking, sand getting in my eyes (the breeze blew dry sand across the wet in fascinating patterns) and the glare of bright sunlight from sea and sand.
But this morning my eyes were still rather painful. When I opened the blinds the early morning sunlight was like hot pokers in the eyeballs. I made it as far the end of my road but even the morning light, filtered through my very dark shades, was causing me a lot of pain. And I could feel the pressure building up in my head, like a balloon inflating behind my forehead. Fearing a migraine I retreated back to my flat and phoned in sick before entombing myself in my little boxroom study/library. Having no windows I could sit in total darkness surrounded by the scent of hundreds of books. All the better to watch the fascinating spirals and zigzag patterns which played out on my eyeballs… Major ouch. Alas, nothing to do but ride it out like a storm. It didn’t last too long but as any migraine sufferer will tell you, you’re washed out for hours afterwards. Even when I could venture back into my living room which is very airy and light I had to wear my shades as my eyes were still far too sensitive. Now the sun has finally gone down and my eyes feel a lot better. Who needs vampiric blood to be overly sensitive to bright daylight? You just need Celtic blood. Still, it was a fun day the day before, so it was worth it.
As I watched the coloured patterns play out on my eyes during the migraine though I was reminded of a passage in Stephen Baxter’s challenging Evolution. An early modern human suffers from migraines, but obviously her primitive hunter-gather tribe have no medical knowledge. She begins to attribute the images the headaches cause to spirits and gods and begins drawing the spirals and patterns in the dust, then later in ink on her face. Before long others too begin to copy these basic tattoos and it becomes a cultural signifier, showing who belongs to their group. Pure supposition but it would be nice to think the pain would cause some good.
On a Sunday which lived up to it’s name I spent several happy hours walking along the beach all the way from North Berwick to the neighbouring village of Dirleston. Sipping some beer on a long, sandy beach with an arching sky of blue above you must be one of life’s simple pleasures. A 99 cone and shucking your shoes for a spot of paddling in the surf add to the pleasure. Warm sand underfoot contrasting with cool tidal water from the Forth and North Sea washing over my tootsies, sloshing over and back, little grains moving between my feet. How deep can you wade before the waves hit the bottom of your shorts? Always a fun game. Then lounging like a wee lizard on a rock to let the sun dry off your feet.
Today I am paying the price for spending far too many hours in the bright sunlight. Nope, no sunburn - I had slathered on sunblock all over before leaving the house and my shorts-encased legs are still the pale blue-white (Daz legs!) they were before I left. No, I found my eyes were very tired after nearly five hours of beachcombing. I figured last night it was a combination of lots of fresh air, miles of walking, sand getting in my eyes (the breeze blew dry sand across the wet in fascinating patterns) and the glare of bright sunlight from sea and sand.
But this morning my eyes were still rather painful. When I opened the blinds the early morning sunlight was like hot pokers in the eyeballs. I made it as far the end of my road but even the morning light, filtered through my very dark shades, was causing me a lot of pain. And I could feel the pressure building up in my head, like a balloon inflating behind my forehead. Fearing a migraine I retreated back to my flat and phoned in sick before entombing myself in my little boxroom study/library. Having no windows I could sit in total darkness surrounded by the scent of hundreds of books. All the better to watch the fascinating spirals and zigzag patterns which played out on my eyeballs… Major ouch. Alas, nothing to do but ride it out like a storm. It didn’t last too long but as any migraine sufferer will tell you, you’re washed out for hours afterwards. Even when I could venture back into my living room which is very airy and light I had to wear my shades as my eyes were still far too sensitive. Now the sun has finally gone down and my eyes feel a lot better. Who needs vampiric blood to be overly sensitive to bright daylight? You just need Celtic blood. Still, it was a fun day the day before, so it was worth it.
As I watched the coloured patterns play out on my eyes during the migraine though I was reminded of a passage in Stephen Baxter’s challenging Evolution. An early modern human suffers from migraines, but obviously her primitive hunter-gather tribe have no medical knowledge. She begins to attribute the images the headaches cause to spirits and gods and begins drawing the spirals and patterns in the dust, then later in ink on her face. Before long others too begin to copy these basic tattoos and it becomes a cultural signifier, showing who belongs to their group. Pure supposition but it would be nice to think the pain would cause some good.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Blues
Gotta say, the Blues series on BBC Four - utterly top stuff. Modern practitioners and classics Blues right out of the Mississipi Delta in the 30s. Born of Jazz, the Depression and racial intolerance a fantastic, blue-collar music, accessible to listen and to play for ordinary folks on a mass scale for one of the first times in history, spreading on new-fangled recording devices and early radio stations. Without it there wouldn’t be any Elvis and rock’n’roll. That means no Sixties revolution of pop and rock and without that would we have had the Sixties social revolution? Doubt it. No punk, no rock and the self-empowerment these home-made musical movements gave to kids. Just as well some guys decided to head down to that crossroads at midnight, isn’t it?
Brings back memories of a fantastic Blues concert I went to with some mates years back in Glasgow. The legendary Bo Diddley with his famous square geetar. Now Bo was getting on a bit by then, so he had brought along on tour a whole bunch of other, younger Blues players to play sets - three or four bands for your money, pretty good value and a good way for an old master to give young newbies a chance on the tour circuit.
It was in the City Chambers in the Merchant City part of Glasgow. This old arena had been converted into a venue and had a weird stage design which had steps which lead directly from the end of the overhanging gallery right down to the stage. We were sitting on the gallery, practically hanging over the performers. Next to us, seated next to the steps down were an older lady, some younger ladies and a bunch of kids. Bo’s family as it turned out. In between his sets he’d wander up the stairs to sit with them and watch his younger comrades stomp out some kickass Blues. And he chatted away to us, asking us what we thought of the performers and the music; a Blues legend just sitting there enjoying his family, the music and shooting the breeze with some music fans. Goddam cool.
The series is a collection filmed by famous directors - Wim Wenders tonight - including Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorcese. The Beeb's web page on it has times, dates and even record listings.
Justice for once
Bush’s government has been trying to fight the environmental movement again. They used a trumped up charge using a law from the 1800s to try and make Greenpeace responsible for the actions of a couple of members who had already had a trial for their actions intercepting a ship with illegal hardwood on board. The idea is that if they were found guilty as a body they would go on probation - every violation would involve new court cases and automatic fines. In other words Bush’s lackey John Ashcroft, the Principal Denier of Civil Rights in America (used to be the Attorney General’s office - how Bob Kennedy must spin in his grave after the civil rights they fought for in that office 40 years ago being used thus today) would effectively shut down Greenpeace’s ability to stage protests. A dirty trick to silence all opposition to the corrupt regime in Washington, just like the one exerted on Disney to pull Michael Moore’s new film from US distribution. Except the bastards didn’t win for once as a Florida judge (brother Jeb’s home no less) found it ridiculous and it was dismissed. The fight goes on.
Gotta say, the Blues series on BBC Four - utterly top stuff. Modern practitioners and classics Blues right out of the Mississipi Delta in the 30s. Born of Jazz, the Depression and racial intolerance a fantastic, blue-collar music, accessible to listen and to play for ordinary folks on a mass scale for one of the first times in history, spreading on new-fangled recording devices and early radio stations. Without it there wouldn’t be any Elvis and rock’n’roll. That means no Sixties revolution of pop and rock and without that would we have had the Sixties social revolution? Doubt it. No punk, no rock and the self-empowerment these home-made musical movements gave to kids. Just as well some guys decided to head down to that crossroads at midnight, isn’t it?
Brings back memories of a fantastic Blues concert I went to with some mates years back in Glasgow. The legendary Bo Diddley with his famous square geetar. Now Bo was getting on a bit by then, so he had brought along on tour a whole bunch of other, younger Blues players to play sets - three or four bands for your money, pretty good value and a good way for an old master to give young newbies a chance on the tour circuit.
It was in the City Chambers in the Merchant City part of Glasgow. This old arena had been converted into a venue and had a weird stage design which had steps which lead directly from the end of the overhanging gallery right down to the stage. We were sitting on the gallery, practically hanging over the performers. Next to us, seated next to the steps down were an older lady, some younger ladies and a bunch of kids. Bo’s family as it turned out. In between his sets he’d wander up the stairs to sit with them and watch his younger comrades stomp out some kickass Blues. And he chatted away to us, asking us what we thought of the performers and the music; a Blues legend just sitting there enjoying his family, the music and shooting the breeze with some music fans. Goddam cool.
The series is a collection filmed by famous directors - Wim Wenders tonight - including Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorcese. The Beeb's web page on it has times, dates and even record listings.
Justice for once
Bush’s government has been trying to fight the environmental movement again. They used a trumped up charge using a law from the 1800s to try and make Greenpeace responsible for the actions of a couple of members who had already had a trial for their actions intercepting a ship with illegal hardwood on board. The idea is that if they were found guilty as a body they would go on probation - every violation would involve new court cases and automatic fines. In other words Bush’s lackey John Ashcroft, the Principal Denier of Civil Rights in America (used to be the Attorney General’s office - how Bob Kennedy must spin in his grave after the civil rights they fought for in that office 40 years ago being used thus today) would effectively shut down Greenpeace’s ability to stage protests. A dirty trick to silence all opposition to the corrupt regime in Washington, just like the one exerted on Disney to pull Michael Moore’s new film from US distribution. Except the bastards didn’t win for once as a Florida judge (brother Jeb’s home no less) found it ridiculous and it was dismissed. The fight goes on.
Purple rain?
Nope, powder! Yes, I know (he says, adopting serious expression) this has serious implications for the security of our elected representatives (or those smegging arseholes as they are more commonly referred to). But let’s be honest, it was also funny as hell! I’ve heard of Purple Rain but this was ridiculous. Perhaps it was, as one commentator quipped, a case of Purple Haze? From the same militant father’s action group who brought you a bunch of middle-aged guys in Superman and Batman costumes on top of a suspension bridge. Groovy.
Nope, powder! Yes, I know (he says, adopting serious expression) this has serious implications for the security of our elected representatives (or those smegging arseholes as they are more commonly referred to). But let’s be honest, it was also funny as hell! I’ve heard of Purple Rain but this was ridiculous. Perhaps it was, as one commentator quipped, a case of Purple Haze? From the same militant father’s action group who brought you a bunch of middle-aged guys in Superman and Batman costumes on top of a suspension bridge. Groovy.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
French film
After extolling the virtues of French cinema a few days ago (see earlier) I had the pleasure of watching Bon Voyage the other night, the new film from Jean Paul Rappenau. He only makes a movie every few years because he takes so long to pick and set up what he really wants to work on, so it's always an event for cineastes. Rappenau, of course, directed my favourite film and best movie of all time, Cyrano de Bergerac back in 1990 as well as The Horseman on the Roof with my beloved Juliette Binoche.
He again uses the magnificent Gerard Depardieu as a cabinet minister taking up on an affair with the incandescent beauty of Isabelle Adjani (well into her forties and still one of the most stunning women on the planet - can't believe her perfume house dropped her for a younger woman. Good complexion always wins out regardless of age). Adjani plays a femme fatale movie star who manipulates the men around her but finds events moving too fast as France lurches into war and finds itself over-run rapidly by Hitler's forces in a matter of weeks.
Rappenau re-creates a glowing nostalgiac vision of the 40s, without being syrupy, beautifully photographed with, as always, great attention to detail and mise-en-scene. A secondary plot has the lovely (where do the French find these actresses???) Virginie Ledoyen (best know to English-speakers as the girl from The Beach) as a gamine, nerdy student assitant trying to help her professor to escape to Britain with his heavy water experiments while the fleeing French government, including Depardieu's minister, flail around in panic and ghastly German agents move amongst them... Utterly wonderful and the sort of film that everyone will love and come out feeling great after. In Hollywood hands it would have been syrupy, but Rappenau is a master and working with the best.
After extolling the virtues of French cinema a few days ago (see earlier) I had the pleasure of watching Bon Voyage the other night, the new film from Jean Paul Rappenau. He only makes a movie every few years because he takes so long to pick and set up what he really wants to work on, so it's always an event for cineastes. Rappenau, of course, directed my favourite film and best movie of all time, Cyrano de Bergerac back in 1990 as well as The Horseman on the Roof with my beloved Juliette Binoche.
He again uses the magnificent Gerard Depardieu as a cabinet minister taking up on an affair with the incandescent beauty of Isabelle Adjani (well into her forties and still one of the most stunning women on the planet - can't believe her perfume house dropped her for a younger woman. Good complexion always wins out regardless of age). Adjani plays a femme fatale movie star who manipulates the men around her but finds events moving too fast as France lurches into war and finds itself over-run rapidly by Hitler's forces in a matter of weeks.
Rappenau re-creates a glowing nostalgiac vision of the 40s, without being syrupy, beautifully photographed with, as always, great attention to detail and mise-en-scene. A secondary plot has the lovely (where do the French find these actresses???) Virginie Ledoyen (best know to English-speakers as the girl from The Beach) as a gamine, nerdy student assitant trying to help her professor to escape to Britain with his heavy water experiments while the fleeing French government, including Depardieu's minister, flail around in panic and ghastly German agents move amongst them... Utterly wonderful and the sort of film that everyone will love and come out feeling great after. In Hollywood hands it would have been syrupy, but Rappenau is a master and working with the best.
Groovy
Groove on some Goldfrapp tunes while watching animated 'toons on Atom Films
The Angry Young Wanker
Another mini-flick on Atom Films. Angry Kid in the irresistibly-titled Angry Kid: Wanker. You know you want to watch it! A chance for our American cousins to find out exactly what a wanker is and why we Brits treasure it as one of our finer terms of abuse. Or should that be self-abuse. Just watch your mouse doesn't get clogged up from your hairy palms.
From missions to the moon to animated discussions of wanking, all in one evening. Am I diverse or what, people?
Groove on some Goldfrapp tunes while watching animated 'toons on Atom Films
The Angry Young Wanker
Another mini-flick on Atom Films. Angry Kid in the irresistibly-titled Angry Kid: Wanker. You know you want to watch it! A chance for our American cousins to find out exactly what a wanker is and why we Brits treasure it as one of our finer terms of abuse. Or should that be self-abuse. Just watch your mouse doesn't get clogged up from your hairy palms.
From missions to the moon to animated discussions of wanking, all in one evening. Am I diverse or what, people?
Giant steps are what you take…
…Walking on the moon. So sang Sting and the Police back when I was but a bright-eyed young lad. This afternoon at work I met a man who really did take giant steps on the moon when I was a boy. Mister David Scott, multiple degree holder, ace fighter pilot, astronaut and commander of Apollo 15. He dodged death flying with Neil Armstrong on Apollo 8.
He’s just co-authored a book, the Two Sides of the Moon, with legendary Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space. And when I say walked, this was as basic as it got - no fancy MMU (Manned Manoeuvring Unit - that’s a jetpack to you and me) in those days. Alexei basically clambered out of a tiny tin can and dangled by a rope miles above the Earth, travelling at thousands of miles per hour. When the phrase ‘the right stuff’ was coined to describe the pioneers of space exploration in the 60s and 70s they weren’t kidding. Alexei was training to be the first man on the moon, but obviously the NASA lunar missions beat them to it, despite the enormous (and for many years secret) efforts by the Soviet’s astonishing Chief Engineer (a man who the fictional Scotty would gladly have shaken hands with I think). He was, however, honoured by the great Sir Arthur C Clarke by having the Russian spaceship in 2010 (the sequel to 2001) named after him.
Both men came together in the 70s when the NASA and Soviet space programmes briefly united during the Cold War, their ships meeting in Earth orbit and docking, a procedure which sounds pretty simple to most of us but is fraught with problems. Two completely different engineering systems and training systems which have to meet and link 100%. Any failure of the docking collar could mean death for all onboard. And these craft have to manoeuvre miles above the planet while orbiting at thousands of miles per hour. Still sound easy? It was a potent symbol of international co-operation between explorers and scientists during a period when east and west faced each other with thousands of nuclear warheads primed for a few minutes notice. And it pioneered the way for the present space station being built by several nations. No longer just a matter of national prestige this sees humans going into space as representatives of their species, not as flag-waving nationalists, slowly turning the staged but noble rhetoric of the original Apollo missions into a reality: “we came in peace for all mankind.”
I would have loved to have time to talk to him, to ask him what it was like, but his schedule only allowed him some brief moments to sign some stock and chat quickly while he did so. Naturally I’ll be having one of those signed copies for my collection and I’m sure I’ll have a review in a few weeks on the Alien. I’ve met many people in my years in bookselling, from relatively unknown local writers to 20th Century cultural icons like Quentin Crisp. But this was something else, something remarkable, exciting. These men and their comrades were my heroes when I was a boy. Today I had an enormous privilege. Today I shook the hand of a man who walked on the Moon. Today I shook the hand of one of my boyhood heroes.
Yes, you could say I was over the Moon.
…Walking on the moon. So sang Sting and the Police back when I was but a bright-eyed young lad. This afternoon at work I met a man who really did take giant steps on the moon when I was a boy. Mister David Scott, multiple degree holder, ace fighter pilot, astronaut and commander of Apollo 15. He dodged death flying with Neil Armstrong on Apollo 8.
He’s just co-authored a book, the Two Sides of the Moon, with legendary Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space. And when I say walked, this was as basic as it got - no fancy MMU (Manned Manoeuvring Unit - that’s a jetpack to you and me) in those days. Alexei basically clambered out of a tiny tin can and dangled by a rope miles above the Earth, travelling at thousands of miles per hour. When the phrase ‘the right stuff’ was coined to describe the pioneers of space exploration in the 60s and 70s they weren’t kidding. Alexei was training to be the first man on the moon, but obviously the NASA lunar missions beat them to it, despite the enormous (and for many years secret) efforts by the Soviet’s astonishing Chief Engineer (a man who the fictional Scotty would gladly have shaken hands with I think). He was, however, honoured by the great Sir Arthur C Clarke by having the Russian spaceship in 2010 (the sequel to 2001) named after him.
Both men came together in the 70s when the NASA and Soviet space programmes briefly united during the Cold War, their ships meeting in Earth orbit and docking, a procedure which sounds pretty simple to most of us but is fraught with problems. Two completely different engineering systems and training systems which have to meet and link 100%. Any failure of the docking collar could mean death for all onboard. And these craft have to manoeuvre miles above the planet while orbiting at thousands of miles per hour. Still sound easy? It was a potent symbol of international co-operation between explorers and scientists during a period when east and west faced each other with thousands of nuclear warheads primed for a few minutes notice. And it pioneered the way for the present space station being built by several nations. No longer just a matter of national prestige this sees humans going into space as representatives of their species, not as flag-waving nationalists, slowly turning the staged but noble rhetoric of the original Apollo missions into a reality: “we came in peace for all mankind.”
I would have loved to have time to talk to him, to ask him what it was like, but his schedule only allowed him some brief moments to sign some stock and chat quickly while he did so. Naturally I’ll be having one of those signed copies for my collection and I’m sure I’ll have a review in a few weeks on the Alien. I’ve met many people in my years in bookselling, from relatively unknown local writers to 20th Century cultural icons like Quentin Crisp. But this was something else, something remarkable, exciting. These men and their comrades were my heroes when I was a boy. Today I had an enormous privilege. Today I shook the hand of a man who walked on the Moon. Today I shook the hand of one of my boyhood heroes.
Yes, you could say I was over the Moon.
Saturday, May 15, 2004
KLF photos
The Kangaroo Liberation Front has issued a statement saying that it did not in fact offer $100 dollars for each US hostage taken in their fight for marsupial rights.
It was $50. They're not bloody worth anymore than that, mate, explained Drongo McThumper, spokes'roo for the KLF. President Bush has meanwhile told Congress that he requires 45670850 billion dollars to continue the war against the KLF, who he decries as 'evil terrorists' despite the fact the kangaroo peoples only started hitting US targets after Halliburton started ruining their drinking water by drilling for oil in the Australian deserts. In the meantime allegations by the Red Cross of systematic abuse of kangaroos held illegally in camps by US forces continue to surface. Donald Rumsfeld has so far failed to comment on the photographs of two US guards forcing captive KLF members to don red gloves and box each other to a bloody pulp for their amusement.
The Kangaroo Liberation Front has issued a statement saying that it did not in fact offer $100 dollars for each US hostage taken in their fight for marsupial rights.
It was $50. They're not bloody worth anymore than that, mate, explained Drongo McThumper, spokes'roo for the KLF. President Bush has meanwhile told Congress that he requires 45670850 billion dollars to continue the war against the KLF, who he decries as 'evil terrorists' despite the fact the kangaroo peoples only started hitting US targets after Halliburton started ruining their drinking water by drilling for oil in the Australian deserts. In the meantime allegations by the Red Cross of systematic abuse of kangaroos held illegally in camps by US forces continue to surface. Donald Rumsfeld has so far failed to comment on the photographs of two US guards forcing captive KLF members to don red gloves and box each other to a bloody pulp for their amusement.
Clarke
Just found out via MAtthew's blog that Neal Stephenson's astonishing Quicksilver has won this year's Arthur C Clarke Award, arguably the SF world's equivelant to the Booker Prize in terms of respectability. I'm surprised that the first book in a series would win this - I thought perhaps he may win in a few years with the final part, although we all would know it was really for the whole series. Jon Courtenay Grimwood's loose trilogy won the BSFA award last month for Felaheen, although again I suspect it was as much for the entire trilogy as that particular book.
Very happy with the prizes this year on the SF front, generally speaking (still think it was ludicrous and unfair to include Gaiman and McKean's Wolves in the Walls in the Short Fiction category since it patently was not short fiction bu a complete kid's illustrated picture book). I've blown the trumpet for Quicksilver and the following book in the Baroque Cycle, The Confusion on a number of occassions and, I am glad to say, sold lots of them in my bookstore (despite being distracted by a nasty little colleague who is an utter bitch and drives most of the staff mad and tried to make life harder for me this week, but I won't waste my blog space on the little spoiled princess). Matthew has of course been sounding the Quicksilver trumpet even longer and if it is to the detriment of his studies then at least he should know a lot about Restoration period history :-).
Just found out via MAtthew's blog that Neal Stephenson's astonishing Quicksilver has won this year's Arthur C Clarke Award, arguably the SF world's equivelant to the Booker Prize in terms of respectability. I'm surprised that the first book in a series would win this - I thought perhaps he may win in a few years with the final part, although we all would know it was really for the whole series. Jon Courtenay Grimwood's loose trilogy won the BSFA award last month for Felaheen, although again I suspect it was as much for the entire trilogy as that particular book.
Very happy with the prizes this year on the SF front, generally speaking (still think it was ludicrous and unfair to include Gaiman and McKean's Wolves in the Walls in the Short Fiction category since it patently was not short fiction bu a complete kid's illustrated picture book). I've blown the trumpet for Quicksilver and the following book in the Baroque Cycle, The Confusion on a number of occassions and, I am glad to say, sold lots of them in my bookstore (despite being distracted by a nasty little colleague who is an utter bitch and drives most of the staff mad and tried to make life harder for me this week, but I won't waste my blog space on the little spoiled princess). Matthew has of course been sounding the Quicksilver trumpet even longer and if it is to the detriment of his studies then at least he should know a lot about Restoration period history :-).
Boldly going
The race to be the first private person to travel into space just came a lot closer as this privately constructed spaceship proved by soaring to an altitude of 64KM. Will we be getting day trips to the Moon within our lifetime? Well, I, along with all the other SF geeks from my era were promised abck in the 70s that we would have all that by now, so I'll take it with a pinch of salt while wishing them good luck. I suspect if and when it does become available for us to take commericial flights into space for ordinary folk it will only ever be the rich who can afford it, which is a great shame, since some of us have been dreaming of it since first picking up an Arthur C Clarke book, or watching the original Star Trek or the late and sorely missed (he'd have given Bush such a drubbing for his debasement of science to support his politics) Carl Sagan presenting us with Cosmos (remember that Vangelis music?).
A more recent example would be the Planets series on BBC, which sometimes veered to the lightweight on the commentary front but the graphics, some real images from probes and satellites, others CGI, were always stunning. Which brings us nicely to the Cassini probe which has just returned some fine new images of the ringed planet, Saturn. Ken MacLeod's Cassini Division in living imagery. How wonderful it would be though to see all of this with your own eyes and not second-hand through a probe. Could you imagine looking out of a window to see Saturn filling the sky before you? The spokes and bands of the rings turning with slow majesty, the ice particles amongst the drifting rocks glittering in the night, illuminated by a distant sun, looking like a Cartier diamond necklace on an elegant lady's bare neck.
The race to be the first private person to travel into space just came a lot closer as this privately constructed spaceship proved by soaring to an altitude of 64KM. Will we be getting day trips to the Moon within our lifetime? Well, I, along with all the other SF geeks from my era were promised abck in the 70s that we would have all that by now, so I'll take it with a pinch of salt while wishing them good luck. I suspect if and when it does become available for us to take commericial flights into space for ordinary folk it will only ever be the rich who can afford it, which is a great shame, since some of us have been dreaming of it since first picking up an Arthur C Clarke book, or watching the original Star Trek or the late and sorely missed (he'd have given Bush such a drubbing for his debasement of science to support his politics) Carl Sagan presenting us with Cosmos (remember that Vangelis music?).
A more recent example would be the Planets series on BBC, which sometimes veered to the lightweight on the commentary front but the graphics, some real images from probes and satellites, others CGI, were always stunning. Which brings us nicely to the Cassini probe which has just returned some fine new images of the ringed planet, Saturn. Ken MacLeod's Cassini Division in living imagery. How wonderful it would be though to see all of this with your own eyes and not second-hand through a probe. Could you imagine looking out of a window to see Saturn filling the sky before you? The spokes and bands of the rings turning with slow majesty, the ice particles amongst the drifting rocks glittering in the night, illuminated by a distant sun, looking like a Cartier diamond necklace on an elegant lady's bare neck.
Vive la France
Opening this year’s Cannes Film Festival the president of the jury, Quentin Tarantino, opened his spectacularly large mouth to ruminate on the decline and fall of the British film industry. Not a subject that Tarantino has any personal experience in whatsoever, but this did not stop him pontificating upon it. I won’t go over his somewhat simplistic and uninformed opinion again. However he went on to remark that the world now only had three places where a sustainable movie industry was possible: America, Hong Kong and India.
By America he means Hollywood, which for a director who is supposedly steeped in underground and obscure movie lore, not to mention a man who started out as an Indy film-maker (along with his mate Rodriguez, who wrote a book on guerrilla movie making) is a dreadful simplification and ignores the independent film making in the US. Perhaps he feels he is now too big and cosy with being an auteur in the major studio system and those who make shoestring films to show at Sundance no longer count?
However, there was a far more glaring omission from his opinionated remarks - he missed out the French film industry. Given that he is currently in Cannes on the French Riviera and that the name of his production company is an Anglicised version of a name from a Truffaut film this is a very odd omission. As a cinephile myself I rank the French film-makers as amongst the finest in the world, with an output ranging from outright, big-budget farce like Les Visiteurs to the opulent period drama/fairy tale of Cyrano de Bergerac and from the mould-breaking directors of the New Wave to the Postmodernist vagueness of Luc Besson. A most odd omission, especially since some of these have been direct influences on Tarantino himself.
Meanwhile the red carpet procession at Cannes was brought to a halt as French journalists cheered Michael Moore's arrival. As some may be aware Bush's good friends at Disney have pulled the plug on his new film Farenheit 911 (the temperature at which truth burns) and are refusing to distribute it in the US. This means a US film about (largely) US problems is not being shown in the USA but will be shown around the rest of the world. So much for freedom of speech. But then if your family and political/business friends can subvert the law to put you into the Oval Office then what's attempting to block a pesky little film, eh? I don't always agree completly with Moore (although I often do) but I will totally and utterly back his rights to say what he needs to say.
Opening this year’s Cannes Film Festival the president of the jury, Quentin Tarantino, opened his spectacularly large mouth to ruminate on the decline and fall of the British film industry. Not a subject that Tarantino has any personal experience in whatsoever, but this did not stop him pontificating upon it. I won’t go over his somewhat simplistic and uninformed opinion again. However he went on to remark that the world now only had three places where a sustainable movie industry was possible: America, Hong Kong and India.
By America he means Hollywood, which for a director who is supposedly steeped in underground and obscure movie lore, not to mention a man who started out as an Indy film-maker (along with his mate Rodriguez, who wrote a book on guerrilla movie making) is a dreadful simplification and ignores the independent film making in the US. Perhaps he feels he is now too big and cosy with being an auteur in the major studio system and those who make shoestring films to show at Sundance no longer count?
However, there was a far more glaring omission from his opinionated remarks - he missed out the French film industry. Given that he is currently in Cannes on the French Riviera and that the name of his production company is an Anglicised version of a name from a Truffaut film this is a very odd omission. As a cinephile myself I rank the French film-makers as amongst the finest in the world, with an output ranging from outright, big-budget farce like Les Visiteurs to the opulent period drama/fairy tale of Cyrano de Bergerac and from the mould-breaking directors of the New Wave to the Postmodernist vagueness of Luc Besson. A most odd omission, especially since some of these have been direct influences on Tarantino himself.
Meanwhile the red carpet procession at Cannes was brought to a halt as French journalists cheered Michael Moore's arrival. As some may be aware Bush's good friends at Disney have pulled the plug on his new film Farenheit 911 (the temperature at which truth burns) and are refusing to distribute it in the US. This means a US film about (largely) US problems is not being shown in the USA but will be shown around the rest of the world. So much for freedom of speech. But then if your family and political/business friends can subvert the law to put you into the Oval Office then what's attempting to block a pesky little film, eh? I don't always agree completly with Moore (although I often do) but I will totally and utterly back his rights to say what he needs to say.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Only following orders
Well, pretty much as I predicted recently, Private English, the West Virginia gal grinning happily in the Iraqi torture pictures is on the news tonight saying they couldn’t have done anything wrong because - you guessed it - she was only following orders. Well, as I observed earlier both Nuremberg and later courts on crimes against humanity (which the US is almost alone in not signing up to) made very clear that everyone is responsible for their own moral judgement, so that feeble excuse does not let you off the hook. Besides which in the armed forces of every democratic nation an illegal order is totally invalid regardless of the rank of the officer issuing it, so there is no impetus to obey it.
Even more sickening than this sociopath private trying to wriggle clear of her moral liability was the sight of the smegging idiots in the Pentagon (who must take much of the blame for all of this) giving Donald ‘Someone Take this Giant Lemon out my Arse’ Rumsfeld a bloody standing ovation for his leadership!!!! Right after being grilled over his inability to manage his post as secretary of offence - sorry, defence - by the public, the senate and international opinion. Way to convince the rest of the world that not all US forces are psychopathic, trigger happy nutters following rabid hate-mongers, guys! That was a great image to show the world after what’s been going on. But then again, since when did America care about the world? Like the idiots who video taped a defenceless civilian hostage while they decapitated need any more encouragement.
Xenophobes unite
Following on from his recent forced resignation from his long-running BBC show after penning a frankly racist article on Arabs for a British rag of a newspaper Kilroy has moved to show that he’s not some Xenophonic little twat by standing up and campaigning for the UK Independence Party. For those who don’t know, this is a bunch of fringe eejits who say they are against the European Union, but really are a meeting club for one of those most British of past-times, let’s have a go at foreign people. Has anyone told these shag wits that Queen Victoria is dead and the Empire is long, long gone? Didn’t Kilroy make a big enough arse of himself - even by his standards - on his recent appearance on Have I Got News For You?
Big headlights
The video for Powder’s new song, which has a hilarious superhero theme is groovy! Especially enjoyed the super heroine/lead singer who’s costumer includes giant headlights right where you’d expect them to be J. The presence of a scantily clad super heroine woman with big headlights in no way influenced my opinion.
Well, pretty much as I predicted recently, Private English, the West Virginia gal grinning happily in the Iraqi torture pictures is on the news tonight saying they couldn’t have done anything wrong because - you guessed it - she was only following orders. Well, as I observed earlier both Nuremberg and later courts on crimes against humanity (which the US is almost alone in not signing up to) made very clear that everyone is responsible for their own moral judgement, so that feeble excuse does not let you off the hook. Besides which in the armed forces of every democratic nation an illegal order is totally invalid regardless of the rank of the officer issuing it, so there is no impetus to obey it.
Even more sickening than this sociopath private trying to wriggle clear of her moral liability was the sight of the smegging idiots in the Pentagon (who must take much of the blame for all of this) giving Donald ‘Someone Take this Giant Lemon out my Arse’ Rumsfeld a bloody standing ovation for his leadership!!!! Right after being grilled over his inability to manage his post as secretary of offence - sorry, defence - by the public, the senate and international opinion. Way to convince the rest of the world that not all US forces are psychopathic, trigger happy nutters following rabid hate-mongers, guys! That was a great image to show the world after what’s been going on. But then again, since when did America care about the world? Like the idiots who video taped a defenceless civilian hostage while they decapitated need any more encouragement.
Xenophobes unite
Following on from his recent forced resignation from his long-running BBC show after penning a frankly racist article on Arabs for a British rag of a newspaper Kilroy has moved to show that he’s not some Xenophonic little twat by standing up and campaigning for the UK Independence Party. For those who don’t know, this is a bunch of fringe eejits who say they are against the European Union, but really are a meeting club for one of those most British of past-times, let’s have a go at foreign people. Has anyone told these shag wits that Queen Victoria is dead and the Empire is long, long gone? Didn’t Kilroy make a big enough arse of himself - even by his standards - on his recent appearance on Have I Got News For You?
Big headlights
The video for Powder’s new song, which has a hilarious superhero theme is groovy! Especially enjoyed the super heroine/lead singer who’s costumer includes giant headlights right where you’d expect them to be J. The presence of a scantily clad super heroine woman with big headlights in no way influenced my opinion.
Manchester bound
No, not the title of an S&M novel from Nexus; I was off yesterday morning to the Deansgate Waterstone’s in sunny (yes, it was) Manchester, into Ariel’s old stomping ground (SF section with space I can only dream of now run very well by Mike Rowley). I had an interview for a head office position running the Fiction Core Stock range, which luckily you can do from a branch and don’t need to do at the head office. Very fortunate since that is in the miserable suburban mire of Brentford, famous for being the home of Robert ‘Mad? Me?’ Rankin and for… Er, well nothing really - it is a dismal place you pass through quickly.
Started off badly. My bus got caught in a huge line of buses because someone broke down across a main junction and caused a huge tailback. Had to get out and run for Waverley train station, but made it, sweaty but in time. Except there’s no Manchester train on the departure boards. Check again. Nope, nothing. Only a few minutes to go, so I rush to the info point and they tell me where to go. Arrive at platform, no train yet. Running late already and I’m not even on it yet! Ah, British train travel… Spot nearby ATM and decide to get cash out, not being aware if they had such machines in Manchester (also took bottled water in case you couldn’t drink the local stuff, always a wide precaution). ATM jams with my card inside and swallows it. As the money doesn’t come out until you take your card that meant no money either. Train pulls up and I have to leg it with a whole £4 in loose change to get me through the whole day. Not the best way to start, especially when you’re going for an interview.
Get a text message from Ariel who points out that perhaps this gets all that bad juju out of the way before the interview, which was a better way of looking at it. Anyway, had a reasonably nice trip after that in a pretty comfortable Virgin train (no, not a train with onboard catering for thirsty vampires - the Richard Branson Laughing Gnome variety). Been a while since I’ve taken the train anywhere apart from Glasgow and it was pretty good. Power points at each seat so you can recharge your phone or plug in your laptop. A shame then that I left my laptop at home since I was only gone a day and didn’t bring my recharger for my mobile or MiniDisc. Another nice touch was the Quiet Coach, where you can’t use mobiles or have loud personal stereos. Nice idea, especially if you’re going to do over 7 hours total there and back.
Arrived much later than I should have and was worried about getting to a location I had never been to in a city I’d never visited as an adult. But thanks to my good sense of direction (it’s the inbuilt chip which lets the sanatorium know where I am at all times), an A-Z and directions from Ariel I walked there in fifteen minutes and arrived early! Oh well, chance for a nosey round Deansgate branch then.
Lucked out afterwards when I was hit with the idea of using my bonus points in a nearby Boots to buy some sandwiches and grub to keep me going (no Switch card, no ability to use the ATM or to debit purchases, a real bugger - made more ironic by the fact the first bank I saw right outside the doors of Piccadilly Station was a Royal Bank of Scotland!). Wandered around town for a while taking pics of interesting buildings, of which there were some very cool ones (see the building with the Triffids on it!). Met up with Ariel who nicely diverted his homebound trip after work to take me off for a nice pint of Boddingtons (hey, when in Rome). As a bonus he brought along TAO’s resident sea-side dwelling Viking, Vegar, who I’ve known for a while but never actually met, so it was cool to be able to sit back and share a few ales with them before heading home (although the boys had to buy so I owe them some fine Caley ale when they are up here). As it turned out Vegar’s train was right behind mine on the same platform, so I was pretty much seen off right from the platform, which was very nice. This is Ariel (left) and Vegar (right) as we left one pub for another. The bizarre, Chad-like creature peering over the corner is me. Ah, self portraiture. Big thanks once more to Ariel and the V-Man.
The journey back gave me a sudden stab of nostalgia since the train came up and stopped at Lancaster station, right in the shadow of Lancaster Castle. My parents used to keep a caravan in nearby Morecambe (before the oldsters Mafiosi who took over turned it into a ghost town by shutting everything fun so no-one would visit) when I was a kid and I well remember enjoying tours of the dungeons of the castle. Yes, I was a Gothic freak of nature even then. A few minutes later and the track runs only a few yards from the huge sweep of Morecambe Bay, which was enjoying one of its trademark spectacular sunsets. A glowing copper disc slowly burning its way below the horizon. With the tide far out the sand of the beach was turned to a shimmering, warm gold. The only drawback to train travel of course is when you see something like this you can’t just stop to watch… I lucked out again when I discovered the train stopped at Haymarket Station which is only ten minutes walk from my flat. I came in on a line I hadn’t travelled before which actually goes right past my house before Haymarket. I could actually see my flat going past - pity you can’t just get them to stop then and there and let you out (now wouldn’t that be a great bit of customer service!). 7 and 1/2 hours on the train, but at least I got hours of reading time in uninterupted.
No, not the title of an S&M novel from Nexus; I was off yesterday morning to the Deansgate Waterstone’s in sunny (yes, it was) Manchester, into Ariel’s old stomping ground (SF section with space I can only dream of now run very well by Mike Rowley). I had an interview for a head office position running the Fiction Core Stock range, which luckily you can do from a branch and don’t need to do at the head office. Very fortunate since that is in the miserable suburban mire of Brentford, famous for being the home of Robert ‘Mad? Me?’ Rankin and for… Er, well nothing really - it is a dismal place you pass through quickly.
Started off badly. My bus got caught in a huge line of buses because someone broke down across a main junction and caused a huge tailback. Had to get out and run for Waverley train station, but made it, sweaty but in time. Except there’s no Manchester train on the departure boards. Check again. Nope, nothing. Only a few minutes to go, so I rush to the info point and they tell me where to go. Arrive at platform, no train yet. Running late already and I’m not even on it yet! Ah, British train travel… Spot nearby ATM and decide to get cash out, not being aware if they had such machines in Manchester (also took bottled water in case you couldn’t drink the local stuff, always a wide precaution). ATM jams with my card inside and swallows it. As the money doesn’t come out until you take your card that meant no money either. Train pulls up and I have to leg it with a whole £4 in loose change to get me through the whole day. Not the best way to start, especially when you’re going for an interview.
Get a text message from Ariel who points out that perhaps this gets all that bad juju out of the way before the interview, which was a better way of looking at it. Anyway, had a reasonably nice trip after that in a pretty comfortable Virgin train (no, not a train with onboard catering for thirsty vampires - the Richard Branson Laughing Gnome variety). Been a while since I’ve taken the train anywhere apart from Glasgow and it was pretty good. Power points at each seat so you can recharge your phone or plug in your laptop. A shame then that I left my laptop at home since I was only gone a day and didn’t bring my recharger for my mobile or MiniDisc. Another nice touch was the Quiet Coach, where you can’t use mobiles or have loud personal stereos. Nice idea, especially if you’re going to do over 7 hours total there and back.
Arrived much later than I should have and was worried about getting to a location I had never been to in a city I’d never visited as an adult. But thanks to my good sense of direction (it’s the inbuilt chip which lets the sanatorium know where I am at all times), an A-Z and directions from Ariel I walked there in fifteen minutes and arrived early! Oh well, chance for a nosey round Deansgate branch then.
Lucked out afterwards when I was hit with the idea of using my bonus points in a nearby Boots to buy some sandwiches and grub to keep me going (no Switch card, no ability to use the ATM or to debit purchases, a real bugger - made more ironic by the fact the first bank I saw right outside the doors of Piccadilly Station was a Royal Bank of Scotland!). Wandered around town for a while taking pics of interesting buildings, of which there were some very cool ones (see the building with the Triffids on it!). Met up with Ariel who nicely diverted his homebound trip after work to take me off for a nice pint of Boddingtons (hey, when in Rome). As a bonus he brought along TAO’s resident sea-side dwelling Viking, Vegar, who I’ve known for a while but never actually met, so it was cool to be able to sit back and share a few ales with them before heading home (although the boys had to buy so I owe them some fine Caley ale when they are up here). As it turned out Vegar’s train was right behind mine on the same platform, so I was pretty much seen off right from the platform, which was very nice. This is Ariel (left) and Vegar (right) as we left one pub for another. The bizarre, Chad-like creature peering over the corner is me. Ah, self portraiture. Big thanks once more to Ariel and the V-Man.
The journey back gave me a sudden stab of nostalgia since the train came up and stopped at Lancaster station, right in the shadow of Lancaster Castle. My parents used to keep a caravan in nearby Morecambe (before the oldsters Mafiosi who took over turned it into a ghost town by shutting everything fun so no-one would visit) when I was a kid and I well remember enjoying tours of the dungeons of the castle. Yes, I was a Gothic freak of nature even then. A few minutes later and the track runs only a few yards from the huge sweep of Morecambe Bay, which was enjoying one of its trademark spectacular sunsets. A glowing copper disc slowly burning its way below the horizon. With the tide far out the sand of the beach was turned to a shimmering, warm gold. The only drawback to train travel of course is when you see something like this you can’t just stop to watch… I lucked out again when I discovered the train stopped at Haymarket Station which is only ten minutes walk from my flat. I came in on a line I hadn’t travelled before which actually goes right past my house before Haymarket. I could actually see my flat going past - pity you can’t just get them to stop then and there and let you out (now wouldn’t that be a great bit of customer service!). 7 and 1/2 hours on the train, but at least I got hours of reading time in uninterupted.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Bite me
Van Helsing has to be one of the dumbest and silliest movies I have ever seen. Sillier even than The Mummy Returns. And nothign original - every (frantically paced) scene is a crib or sometime straight steal from something else. Notably the classic Universal monster movies of the 30s, of course (nice bit where the Universal globe at the start catches fire then dissolves to a burning brand carried by revolting peasants) but also Blade, Batman, various westerns and even Looney Tunes... The liberties taken with characters, settings and the timescales is staggering. And the thing is that despite all of this I really enjoyed it in a switch off brain at door kind of way. Big and dumb and fun, like a sleazy date with a drunken gal in Blackpool.
And Kate Beckinsale in tight pants and corset. Oh yes. Oh yes indeedy.
Van Helsing has to be one of the dumbest and silliest movies I have ever seen. Sillier even than The Mummy Returns. And nothign original - every (frantically paced) scene is a crib or sometime straight steal from something else. Notably the classic Universal monster movies of the 30s, of course (nice bit where the Universal globe at the start catches fire then dissolves to a burning brand carried by revolting peasants) but also Blade, Batman, various westerns and even Looney Tunes... The liberties taken with characters, settings and the timescales is staggering. And the thing is that despite all of this I really enjoyed it in a switch off brain at door kind of way. Big and dumb and fun, like a sleazy date with a drunken gal in Blackpool.
And Kate Beckinsale in tight pants and corset. Oh yes. Oh yes indeedy.
Vamping around
Just found the web site for Charlaine Harris, author of the fabulous Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries - see the Alien for reviews of the first two (third on the way soon). Only annoying thing is that the web site does something very irritating and it's a mistake she makes in the beginning of her third book, Club Dead. She refers to Britain as 'England'. As in my new book has just been released in England. How very odd, I seem to have some here in the barbarous wasteland of Edinburgh, Scotland :-). A lot of foreigners do that and it drives everyone from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland mad....
Still, off on a raid over the border tomorrow morning as I head down into England and off to Manchester for an interview of a higher post in Waterstone's doing the Fiction core range for the company. Means about 7 hours on the rails unfortunately, but at least it means I can sit back on the train and crack on with some books. Guess I'll find out the endurance of my little MiniDisc player too. Luckily I have several hours of music on there with the NetMD software. I suspect the batteries will exhaust before the music does.
Looks like I will have a few hours to kill until the next direct train back home after the interview, so I'm grabbing the chance to meet Ariel on his way home from work for a couple of pints in a Manchester hostelry, so that's a nice wee bonus.
Just found the web site for Charlaine Harris, author of the fabulous Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries - see the Alien for reviews of the first two (third on the way soon). Only annoying thing is that the web site does something very irritating and it's a mistake she makes in the beginning of her third book, Club Dead. She refers to Britain as 'England'. As in my new book has just been released in England. How very odd, I seem to have some here in the barbarous wasteland of Edinburgh, Scotland :-). A lot of foreigners do that and it drives everyone from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland mad....
Still, off on a raid over the border tomorrow morning as I head down into England and off to Manchester for an interview of a higher post in Waterstone's doing the Fiction core range for the company. Means about 7 hours on the rails unfortunately, but at least it means I can sit back on the train and crack on with some books. Guess I'll find out the endurance of my little MiniDisc player too. Luckily I have several hours of music on there with the NetMD software. I suspect the batteries will exhaust before the music does.
Looks like I will have a few hours to kill until the next direct train back home after the interview, so I'm grabbing the chance to meet Ariel on his way home from work for a couple of pints in a Manchester hostelry, so that's a nice wee bonus.
Saturday, May 8, 2004
Muffins - a short history
After perusing my fellow TAO crewmember Vegar’s blog recently I thought perhaps his historical interest would be piqued by research by Professor Bruce Ambrosius McFoster of the University of Woolamaloo’s Department of Arcane Historical Facts.
It is well-know that Vegar’s ancestor’s, the Vikings, were, when not busy pillaging coastal communities, outstanding sailors, explorers and traders. They travelled vast distances - as far as the Mediterranean - making the sea truly the super-highway of the time, carrying both goods and ideas. Or in some cases both.
The new research showed that a group of Viking traders were once blown off course from what is now the French Mediterranean coast and were forced to the shores of North Africa. Never ones to miss a chance to turn mishap into opportunity, the Vikings soon found new goods to trade for in the soukhs of North Africa. While recuperating there, they found a local foodstuff which these hairy-bottomed Norsemen enjoyed immensely; a small cake, sweet and filling, with enough calories for an entire afternoon’s pillaging. Being unable to wrap their rough-bearded mouths around the soft-syllabled name the locals gave the delicacy they named it after the market where they first found it: mhou-a-fian, which, in the language of the time meant ‘There is no God but Allah, but a good cake comes a close second’.
The returning Vikings brought back both samples of the cake and the recipe with them from their trip. They introduced it first to the south of France, where it became know as ‘la mouaffine’, which roughly translates as ‘those pesky Arabs are Godless creatures but they make a bloody good cake’. Travelling the sea highways of the Dragon Ships and the slower rural rutted roads of Europe the idea spread slowly over the succeeding years. By the time of the Enlightenment coffee shops were de rigeur and Samuel Pepys and Daniel Waterhosue were often to be seen supping the devilish brew from the New World while eating the perfect accompiniment to it, ye Muffine. A trend had been set which continues to this day.
This much the Professor has uncovered with his diligent research which has taken him to cake and pastry shops on four continents. His last point is, admittedly, only conjecture however: he believes that the Norse expeditions to Vindland, or what we now know of as the new World, were actually a deliberate attempt to find coffee beans to have with their pastries. Many brave Vikings died in this noble quest. Sadly the Professor is now added to this list since his overly-diligent research has taken a toll on his health. The stress and strain of years of hard academic detective work, the ridicule by some of his peers (who support the competing fairy cake hypothesis) and thousands of miles of travel all conspired to destroy the man’s health as he pursued his dream of knowledge. Well, that and heart failure brought on by eating 652,419 muffins and associated cakes, all accompanied by coffee. Farewell, professor - we honour your name and your commitment to academic truth and the advancement of human knowledge (and waistlines).
So next time you enjoy a muffin, pause and think about the unlikely confluence of historical accidents, inter-cultural exchanges and linguistic borrowing which brought us to the modern muffin.
Next week Doctor Hagar from the University of Woolamaloo’s Department of Historical bearded People explains his new hypothesis that Norse culture was not broken by the advancement of Christianity, like Imperial Rome, but because the Norse raiders became too porky on a diet of seal blubber, mead and muffins to go raiding anymore.
And now we shall speak no more of this subject since poor Vegar has been taking a fair bit of stick over itand has been a good sport :-). And he's spot on in his new piece on the blurb on books cover - and yes, it is very nice when you see quotes from one of your own reviews being used on the cover to help sell a book by a writer you really enjoyed. And since the TAO crew do it for the love of it rather than for cash, it is nice to know we do perhaps make some difference.
After perusing my fellow TAO crewmember Vegar’s blog recently I thought perhaps his historical interest would be piqued by research by Professor Bruce Ambrosius McFoster of the University of Woolamaloo’s Department of Arcane Historical Facts.
It is well-know that Vegar’s ancestor’s, the Vikings, were, when not busy pillaging coastal communities, outstanding sailors, explorers and traders. They travelled vast distances - as far as the Mediterranean - making the sea truly the super-highway of the time, carrying both goods and ideas. Or in some cases both.
The new research showed that a group of Viking traders were once blown off course from what is now the French Mediterranean coast and were forced to the shores of North Africa. Never ones to miss a chance to turn mishap into opportunity, the Vikings soon found new goods to trade for in the soukhs of North Africa. While recuperating there, they found a local foodstuff which these hairy-bottomed Norsemen enjoyed immensely; a small cake, sweet and filling, with enough calories for an entire afternoon’s pillaging. Being unable to wrap their rough-bearded mouths around the soft-syllabled name the locals gave the delicacy they named it after the market where they first found it: mhou-a-fian, which, in the language of the time meant ‘There is no God but Allah, but a good cake comes a close second’.
The returning Vikings brought back both samples of the cake and the recipe with them from their trip. They introduced it first to the south of France, where it became know as ‘la mouaffine’, which roughly translates as ‘those pesky Arabs are Godless creatures but they make a bloody good cake’. Travelling the sea highways of the Dragon Ships and the slower rural rutted roads of Europe the idea spread slowly over the succeeding years. By the time of the Enlightenment coffee shops were de rigeur and Samuel Pepys and Daniel Waterhosue were often to be seen supping the devilish brew from the New World while eating the perfect accompiniment to it, ye Muffine. A trend had been set which continues to this day.
This much the Professor has uncovered with his diligent research which has taken him to cake and pastry shops on four continents. His last point is, admittedly, only conjecture however: he believes that the Norse expeditions to Vindland, or what we now know of as the new World, were actually a deliberate attempt to find coffee beans to have with their pastries. Many brave Vikings died in this noble quest. Sadly the Professor is now added to this list since his overly-diligent research has taken a toll on his health. The stress and strain of years of hard academic detective work, the ridicule by some of his peers (who support the competing fairy cake hypothesis) and thousands of miles of travel all conspired to destroy the man’s health as he pursued his dream of knowledge. Well, that and heart failure brought on by eating 652,419 muffins and associated cakes, all accompanied by coffee. Farewell, professor - we honour your name and your commitment to academic truth and the advancement of human knowledge (and waistlines).
So next time you enjoy a muffin, pause and think about the unlikely confluence of historical accidents, inter-cultural exchanges and linguistic borrowing which brought us to the modern muffin.
Next week Doctor Hagar from the University of Woolamaloo’s Department of Historical bearded People explains his new hypothesis that Norse culture was not broken by the advancement of Christianity, like Imperial Rome, but because the Norse raiders became too porky on a diet of seal blubber, mead and muffins to go raiding anymore.
And now we shall speak no more of this subject since poor Vegar has been taking a fair bit of stick over itand has been a good sport :-). And he's spot on in his new piece on the blurb on books cover - and yes, it is very nice when you see quotes from one of your own reviews being used on the cover to help sell a book by a writer you really enjoyed. And since the TAO crew do it for the love of it rather than for cash, it is nice to know we do perhaps make some difference.
“The horror…The horror of it all.”Colonel Kurtz (Brando), musing on the amorality of a supposedly honourable soldier’s actions during war.
Watching Rumsfeld squirm tonight in front of the Senate committee investigating the torture and abuse of POWs in Iraq - at times by non other than former First Lady Hilary Clinton - was interesting and disturbing. What was more disturbing was the reaction of the small, rural West Virginia town where the female soldier grinning in many of the photographs lives in a trailer park. A lot of the rank and file of the US army comes from poor towns like this - they don’t get much of a shot at the much-vaunted American Dream and the forces are a way out for many. Understandably this leads to many of the locals in these areas being extremely loyal to their fellows in active service.
However, when the BBC crew interviewed many of these folk most were of the opinion that she hadn’t done much wrong as was just being scapegoat by her superiors and that the blame lay further up the chain of command. While I would agree that the blame should indeed run right up the chain of command - all the way to the top, especially since the Commander in Chief had already alluded to disregarding the Geneva Convention which every civilised nation adheres to after 9-11. But this does not excuse our poor country gal from her actions either. Look at those pictures - she’s bloody laughing at the misery she and her fellow grunts are inflicting on other people. She’s enjoying it. Saying the blame lies only with those in authority above them is like the tired old defence of the junior demons at Nuermberg: I was only obeying orders. In other words, I ain’t responsible for my own actions…
Now while I want to see those above these folk castigated and charged for breaching human rights this in no way excuses our West Virginia girl, regardless of how sweet her family say she really is. Only following orders is no excuse when they involve illegal actions. And as was quite deliberately shown by the Allies - including, ironically, America - at Nuremberg, and then later in the Balkans, everyone who commits these offences will be due to stand in front of a human rights court, from heads of state and generals to police and prison guards.
One of her home town citizens commented that it would all blow over. He actually said that hey, look at all the bad things in WW1 and WW2 - no-one show pictures of those any more or talks about them. Well, except for a mountain of books, thousands of hours or documentaries… All this in the anniversary of D-Day - no-one talks about those times anymore! In other words, he is saying bugger it, everyone will forget about it if we let it go.
This is worrying in two ways. First of all because I fear all too many people, especially the bigoted and ignorant, don’t follow history, just as he says. One of the main reasons, I suspect why we end up repeating so much of it again and again. The second is because one of the things that creeps like the British National Party do is to try and eradicate and deny horrific human rights abuses from history to make their own bigoted viewpoint appear more justified and palatable. Amazing what some people will do in the name of ‘right’ and ‘patriotism’.
Meanwhile those of us who do still read history realise speaking softly and carrying a big stick may no longer quite cut it.
Revenge fantasies
Warm weather. Ah, one of the drawback of warm, sunny days of spring and summer - the noise-polluting wanker brigade. Noisy neighbours seem worse because their windows are open, your windows are open, the music is much louder… And as for fucking wankers in cars with the DUM DUM DUM DUM mindless repetition of bad dance music blasting at full volume from their cars. Usually a crappy wee car with the stereo turned up very loud as if to compensate for the paucity of the vehicle and the spotty young Herbert driving it (usually with a baseball cap). And with the windows all open it is soooo fucking irritating to everyone they pass. But what do they care? Consideration of others is not something that has ever entered their psyche.
Don’t get me wrong, I like loud music - I’m a rock fiend for Alice’s sakes! But I try not to blast it too loud around other folk because it’s not right to inflict it on everyone else against their will. A little consideration. So the slow-moving traffic I walked past tonight on the way home with the baseball-hat wearing Ned with the most dreadfully unoriginal dance music thumping out of his windows pissed me off. And I couldn’t help but look at those open windows and think, why not make them work for me? And so I decided to add CS gas canisters to my Utility Belt. Pull pin and toss through the window…Ah, sweet revenge fantasies, how they help me make it through the day...
Watching Rumsfeld squirm tonight in front of the Senate committee investigating the torture and abuse of POWs in Iraq - at times by non other than former First Lady Hilary Clinton - was interesting and disturbing. What was more disturbing was the reaction of the small, rural West Virginia town where the female soldier grinning in many of the photographs lives in a trailer park. A lot of the rank and file of the US army comes from poor towns like this - they don’t get much of a shot at the much-vaunted American Dream and the forces are a way out for many. Understandably this leads to many of the locals in these areas being extremely loyal to their fellows in active service.
However, when the BBC crew interviewed many of these folk most were of the opinion that she hadn’t done much wrong as was just being scapegoat by her superiors and that the blame lay further up the chain of command. While I would agree that the blame should indeed run right up the chain of command - all the way to the top, especially since the Commander in Chief had already alluded to disregarding the Geneva Convention which every civilised nation adheres to after 9-11. But this does not excuse our poor country gal from her actions either. Look at those pictures - she’s bloody laughing at the misery she and her fellow grunts are inflicting on other people. She’s enjoying it. Saying the blame lies only with those in authority above them is like the tired old defence of the junior demons at Nuermberg: I was only obeying orders. In other words, I ain’t responsible for my own actions…
Now while I want to see those above these folk castigated and charged for breaching human rights this in no way excuses our West Virginia girl, regardless of how sweet her family say she really is. Only following orders is no excuse when they involve illegal actions. And as was quite deliberately shown by the Allies - including, ironically, America - at Nuremberg, and then later in the Balkans, everyone who commits these offences will be due to stand in front of a human rights court, from heads of state and generals to police and prison guards.
One of her home town citizens commented that it would all blow over. He actually said that hey, look at all the bad things in WW1 and WW2 - no-one show pictures of those any more or talks about them. Well, except for a mountain of books, thousands of hours or documentaries… All this in the anniversary of D-Day - no-one talks about those times anymore! In other words, he is saying bugger it, everyone will forget about it if we let it go.
This is worrying in two ways. First of all because I fear all too many people, especially the bigoted and ignorant, don’t follow history, just as he says. One of the main reasons, I suspect why we end up repeating so much of it again and again. The second is because one of the things that creeps like the British National Party do is to try and eradicate and deny horrific human rights abuses from history to make their own bigoted viewpoint appear more justified and palatable. Amazing what some people will do in the name of ‘right’ and ‘patriotism’.
Meanwhile those of us who do still read history realise speaking softly and carrying a big stick may no longer quite cut it.
Revenge fantasies
Warm weather. Ah, one of the drawback of warm, sunny days of spring and summer - the noise-polluting wanker brigade. Noisy neighbours seem worse because their windows are open, your windows are open, the music is much louder… And as for fucking wankers in cars with the DUM DUM DUM DUM mindless repetition of bad dance music blasting at full volume from their cars. Usually a crappy wee car with the stereo turned up very loud as if to compensate for the paucity of the vehicle and the spotty young Herbert driving it (usually with a baseball cap). And with the windows all open it is soooo fucking irritating to everyone they pass. But what do they care? Consideration of others is not something that has ever entered their psyche.
Don’t get me wrong, I like loud music - I’m a rock fiend for Alice’s sakes! But I try not to blast it too loud around other folk because it’s not right to inflict it on everyone else against their will. A little consideration. So the slow-moving traffic I walked past tonight on the way home with the baseball-hat wearing Ned with the most dreadfully unoriginal dance music thumping out of his windows pissed me off. And I couldn’t help but look at those open windows and think, why not make them work for me? And so I decided to add CS gas canisters to my Utility Belt. Pull pin and toss through the window…Ah, sweet revenge fantasies, how they help me make it through the day...
Dress Dwarves
One of my regulars at the SF Book Group and a chum of Charlie Stross’ was in yesterday buying one of the excellent Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries from me. She explained she had missed the recent meeting because she is knee deep in wedding preparations. As she is having a Victorian period dress made it somewhat limits her range of movement and she thinks a short walk down the aisle is as much as can be managed in one of those dresses.
I explained to her, using my vast historical knowledge, that she had misunderstood Victorian dress design. She is not supposed to walk - the voluminous basket hoops of the huge skirt is designed to allow space for a concealed dwarf. The lady is mounted on an early form of roller skates and the hidden dwarf pushes her along under her enormous skirts, signalling the dwarf directions by twitching her right or left leg muscles.
Naturally this gave a graceful, floating motion to Victorian ladies. Gentlemen of the time assumed that Ladies of Quality were obviously superior, graceful creatures and the ladies and their dressmakers maintained the illusion by concealing the secret of their locomotion (and the dwarves). Of course, the ladies had to take great care not to sit down while the dwarves were still underneath them.
As the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian era the dress design changed once more and the dwarves soon found themselves out of work in large numbers. This period coincides with the mass emigration of a goodly number of dwarves from Britain and the Empire to America, where many found gainful employment working for P T Barnum. Their descendants today have often found themselves back under heavy clothing once more as they don costumes for various George Lucas movies, but it seems unlikely that fashion will see a return to dwarf-powered roller-skating ladies in large dresses.
All of which historical curiosities brings me neatly to a new book released by HarperCollins this week called Mutants. It is a history of human genetic mutations and has on the cover one of the famous 16th century ‘wolf children’ - a little girl in period costumer at a Royal Court who, along with her family, were entirely covered in hair, even more than Robin Williams. This is thought to be one of the sources of the werewolf myth. The book also contains other charming tales, such as the lady with a supernumery breast (a spare one on her thigh, apparently). Sounds like my kind of book. Still, for a history of mutants and freaks I still think you can’t beat Tod Browning’s 1932, little-shown Freaks. The director of Dracula had started his career as a carnie working the freak shows traversing America in the early and mid 20th centuries and used a number of his old chums, all real-life freaks, in the film. It is not often shown today, probably because TV and cinema managers are worried they may offend someone, which is a shame as it is a classic. Altogether now: “one of us, one of us, one of us” (chanted as the freaks take revenge on the trapeze artist who mocked them by disfiguring her and making her too into a freak).
One of my regulars at the SF Book Group and a chum of Charlie Stross’ was in yesterday buying one of the excellent Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries from me. She explained she had missed the recent meeting because she is knee deep in wedding preparations. As she is having a Victorian period dress made it somewhat limits her range of movement and she thinks a short walk down the aisle is as much as can be managed in one of those dresses.
I explained to her, using my vast historical knowledge, that she had misunderstood Victorian dress design. She is not supposed to walk - the voluminous basket hoops of the huge skirt is designed to allow space for a concealed dwarf. The lady is mounted on an early form of roller skates and the hidden dwarf pushes her along under her enormous skirts, signalling the dwarf directions by twitching her right or left leg muscles.
Naturally this gave a graceful, floating motion to Victorian ladies. Gentlemen of the time assumed that Ladies of Quality were obviously superior, graceful creatures and the ladies and their dressmakers maintained the illusion by concealing the secret of their locomotion (and the dwarves). Of course, the ladies had to take great care not to sit down while the dwarves were still underneath them.
As the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian era the dress design changed once more and the dwarves soon found themselves out of work in large numbers. This period coincides with the mass emigration of a goodly number of dwarves from Britain and the Empire to America, where many found gainful employment working for P T Barnum. Their descendants today have often found themselves back under heavy clothing once more as they don costumes for various George Lucas movies, but it seems unlikely that fashion will see a return to dwarf-powered roller-skating ladies in large dresses.
All of which historical curiosities brings me neatly to a new book released by HarperCollins this week called Mutants. It is a history of human genetic mutations and has on the cover one of the famous 16th century ‘wolf children’ - a little girl in period costumer at a Royal Court who, along with her family, were entirely covered in hair, even more than Robin Williams. This is thought to be one of the sources of the werewolf myth. The book also contains other charming tales, such as the lady with a supernumery breast (a spare one on her thigh, apparently). Sounds like my kind of book. Still, for a history of mutants and freaks I still think you can’t beat Tod Browning’s 1932, little-shown Freaks. The director of Dracula had started his career as a carnie working the freak shows traversing America in the early and mid 20th centuries and used a number of his old chums, all real-life freaks, in the film. It is not often shown today, probably because TV and cinema managers are worried they may offend someone, which is a shame as it is a classic. Altogether now: “one of us, one of us, one of us” (chanted as the freaks take revenge on the trapeze artist who mocked them by disfiguring her and making her too into a freak).
Tuesday, May 4, 2004
Hellboy
Yes, more Hellboy! Have I blogged too much on Hellboy these last few weeks? Nah.... Well, while we have to wait months for the movie for no decently explained reason we can have a look at a very good review on the SF Crow's Nest by Frank Ochieng.
Yes, more Hellboy! Have I blogged too much on Hellboy these last few weeks? Nah.... Well, while we have to wait months for the movie for no decently explained reason we can have a look at a very good review on the SF Crow's Nest by Frank Ochieng.
Rant
Apologies for getting into something of a rant below on the Live Aid article. Just something about injustice that drives me on to my High Horse and makes me spur said horse into a gallop. Still, better such things still revolt and anger me. It's when you numbly accept that it's the way things are and always will be that you know you've given up on yourself and on others.
Apologies for getting into something of a rant below on the Live Aid article. Just something about injustice that drives me on to my High Horse and makes me spur said horse into a gallop. Still, better such things still revolt and anger me. It's when you numbly accept that it's the way things are and always will be that you know you've given up on yourself and on others.
True or False?
Great little article in this month's SF Crow's Nest. Comrade Ken MacLeod puts those pesky Brits in their place by showing that it's not just 'dumb Yanks' who often think fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes were real but Hitler a movie character. Fun and a little disturbing!
Great little article in this month's SF Crow's Nest. Comrade Ken MacLeod puts those pesky Brits in their place by showing that it's not just 'dumb Yanks' who often think fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes were real but Hitler a movie character. Fun and a little disturbing!
Live aid
Almost 20 years since the astonishing event that was Live Aid, Tony Blair has tried to reclaim some of his humanist political mantle by bringing Africa and the continent’s dreadful suffering to the fore of world politics. Will it be like past such declarations? Lots of nice headlines, photo-opps with Saint Bob of Geldof? But then prove to be like George Bush’s promises on Africa and Aids assistance last year - hollow and largely untrue; what there actually was had already been in place and came with many strings attached. In short will there be real action - will the ‘advanced’ nations actually do something?
On the BBC tonight images of dreadful suffering in the Sudan once more. Government troops, Arab militias, warlords - all fighting each other with the civilians in the middle once more. So dangerous what aid is available from charities and the UN cannot reach those who need it because it is simply to dangerous for their people to travel the land. Why is it that we can commit tens of thousands of troops and enormous resources to dubious wars but we cannot commit to fight the most insidious evils that have plagued our planet for century upon weary century? If we are to put British troops in harms way then at least make it for a good reason. These little local warlords lord it over a terrified, starving populace, waving their Kalshnikovs over their heads. I’m sure plenty of our soldiers would be all to happy to get into a situation like that to twat them and let the needed relief columns through.
Odd how we can continue to commit so much to our illegal war and occupation of Iraq but it would never cross the government’s mind to give the UN command of a pile of our troops and say to them, here you go - use them to protect those who have no protectors. Am I being naïve for thinking that this simple idea is a good one? Yes, I know it wouldn’t solve all their problems right away, but until these murdering bullies are dealt with - and there is only one way to deal with a bully - no charity or UN group can start to help the population of countries like the Sudan to recover and rebuild. And don’t you think if this was the sort of foreign military adventure we had embarked upon we may have really been making a better, safer world? Don’t you think we’d be making friends, creating goodwill with other nations when they saw we were prepared to endure hardships and struggle to help the helpless? Wouldn’t warlords world-wide be terrified that they would be next? That they would be brought to account? Wouldn’t it be nice to think that people being harmed by hooligans with guns, starved and ill would have hope again? Hey, you may say I am naïve. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
On a personal note though, I have to say it is worrying to realise that I work next to some people who weren’t even born when Live Aid rocked the world to feed the planet. Obviously that means there is something wrong with them - can’t be me… Surely it can’t be me getting… older… And worse than getting older, losing my hair and realising that the future isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be is the fact that 20 years later, in the 21st century people are still facing famine and civil wars in Africa. Does anyone remember the cartoon of the little starving African child sitting on top of the EU’s food mountain, remarking “ from up here I can almost see Africa”. When governments didn’t do it the ordinary people of the planet did move mountains - it must have been on the most positive vibe days ever in our little world. So much good will around the globe, so many working to help people they didn’t even know. So galling to think 20 years later little has changed.
But rather than end on a downer you have to look at the positive. For each of these awful situations there are still many people out there who risk their health and sometimes their lives to help people they don’t know. Oxfam, Save the Children, Medicins San Frontiers… It’s a long list of good people and because there are always people like this prepared to try to help for the simple reason that it is the right thing to do I do still have a little faith. It’s hard to hold on to when you see news stories like these, but you have to remember there are good people struggling to help total strangers. Why can’t governments follow these fine examples?
And what can we do? You and me on a personal level? We may not be able to do much, but we can make little differences. Buy Fair Trade where you can. Visit the Hunger Site every day. Set up a direct debit for one of the charities. It doesn’t matter if its just a few quid a month, the fact they know they get it every month allows them to budget more effectively and plan aid than relying on one-off campaigns. I do this myself and one day, if I ever escape Waterstone’s and get a job which pays a real wage I’ve promised myself I’ll up the amount each month. It’s the least I can do. And I mean that literally - all I did was fill in a direct debit form - some other folk do the hard things. They have to organise food, transport, carry it to people across all sorts of terrain in dangerous conditions. But it still makes good sense to me to do it, because if thousands of others are doing this tiny act each month then we help. We help someone we’ll never know. We make a small ripple of good will in the pool of the world, which is magnified by other ripples until one day it will become a wave breaking over the shores of despair and sorrow and wash them away forever. Perhaps I am naïve. But if I am then I am content to have the naivety.
Almost 20 years since the astonishing event that was Live Aid, Tony Blair has tried to reclaim some of his humanist political mantle by bringing Africa and the continent’s dreadful suffering to the fore of world politics. Will it be like past such declarations? Lots of nice headlines, photo-opps with Saint Bob of Geldof? But then prove to be like George Bush’s promises on Africa and Aids assistance last year - hollow and largely untrue; what there actually was had already been in place and came with many strings attached. In short will there be real action - will the ‘advanced’ nations actually do something?
On the BBC tonight images of dreadful suffering in the Sudan once more. Government troops, Arab militias, warlords - all fighting each other with the civilians in the middle once more. So dangerous what aid is available from charities and the UN cannot reach those who need it because it is simply to dangerous for their people to travel the land. Why is it that we can commit tens of thousands of troops and enormous resources to dubious wars but we cannot commit to fight the most insidious evils that have plagued our planet for century upon weary century? If we are to put British troops in harms way then at least make it for a good reason. These little local warlords lord it over a terrified, starving populace, waving their Kalshnikovs over their heads. I’m sure plenty of our soldiers would be all to happy to get into a situation like that to twat them and let the needed relief columns through.
Odd how we can continue to commit so much to our illegal war and occupation of Iraq but it would never cross the government’s mind to give the UN command of a pile of our troops and say to them, here you go - use them to protect those who have no protectors. Am I being naïve for thinking that this simple idea is a good one? Yes, I know it wouldn’t solve all their problems right away, but until these murdering bullies are dealt with - and there is only one way to deal with a bully - no charity or UN group can start to help the population of countries like the Sudan to recover and rebuild. And don’t you think if this was the sort of foreign military adventure we had embarked upon we may have really been making a better, safer world? Don’t you think we’d be making friends, creating goodwill with other nations when they saw we were prepared to endure hardships and struggle to help the helpless? Wouldn’t warlords world-wide be terrified that they would be next? That they would be brought to account? Wouldn’t it be nice to think that people being harmed by hooligans with guns, starved and ill would have hope again? Hey, you may say I am naïve. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
On a personal note though, I have to say it is worrying to realise that I work next to some people who weren’t even born when Live Aid rocked the world to feed the planet. Obviously that means there is something wrong with them - can’t be me… Surely it can’t be me getting… older… And worse than getting older, losing my hair and realising that the future isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be is the fact that 20 years later, in the 21st century people are still facing famine and civil wars in Africa. Does anyone remember the cartoon of the little starving African child sitting on top of the EU’s food mountain, remarking “ from up here I can almost see Africa”. When governments didn’t do it the ordinary people of the planet did move mountains - it must have been on the most positive vibe days ever in our little world. So much good will around the globe, so many working to help people they didn’t even know. So galling to think 20 years later little has changed.
But rather than end on a downer you have to look at the positive. For each of these awful situations there are still many people out there who risk their health and sometimes their lives to help people they don’t know. Oxfam, Save the Children, Medicins San Frontiers… It’s a long list of good people and because there are always people like this prepared to try to help for the simple reason that it is the right thing to do I do still have a little faith. It’s hard to hold on to when you see news stories like these, but you have to remember there are good people struggling to help total strangers. Why can’t governments follow these fine examples?
And what can we do? You and me on a personal level? We may not be able to do much, but we can make little differences. Buy Fair Trade where you can. Visit the Hunger Site every day. Set up a direct debit for one of the charities. It doesn’t matter if its just a few quid a month, the fact they know they get it every month allows them to budget more effectively and plan aid than relying on one-off campaigns. I do this myself and one day, if I ever escape Waterstone’s and get a job which pays a real wage I’ve promised myself I’ll up the amount each month. It’s the least I can do. And I mean that literally - all I did was fill in a direct debit form - some other folk do the hard things. They have to organise food, transport, carry it to people across all sorts of terrain in dangerous conditions. But it still makes good sense to me to do it, because if thousands of others are doing this tiny act each month then we help. We help someone we’ll never know. We make a small ripple of good will in the pool of the world, which is magnified by other ripples until one day it will become a wave breaking over the shores of despair and sorrow and wash them away forever. Perhaps I am naïve. But if I am then I am content to have the naivety.
Monday, May 3, 2004
Word games
This week's from Subliminal:
This week's from Subliminal:
- Sexy:: do you think I'm...?
- Clique:: twat grouping
- Pledge:: furniture polish
- Carbs:: hey, Atkins! Fuck you!!
- Dream Job:: I dream of it...
- Sweeps:: me off my feet
- Soundtrack:: to my life
- Hero:: that bird from Much Ado About Nothing
- Shave:: not for a long time now
- Christina:: Ricci. Oh my goddess, I'm not worthy...
Good
Finding out my dear chum SweetRouge has had the question popped to her by her new man.
Neal Stephenson's The Confusion. Fabulous writing, rich narrative, good banquet for my brain.
Comix - The Underground Revolution by Dez Skinn. Not just a chronology of Crumb etc, but an art book, a culture book, a book on freedom of expression and social change/conflict. Fucking brilliant stuff. Expect the review on the Alien soon.
Richard Morgan winning the Philip K Dick award for his stunning debut, Altered Carbon - well done, mate! Next time you're in town I'll let you buy me a beer to celebrate :-)
Praying for Absolution by Muse. Good song, but fab SF video to go with it. High production values, good effects - not sure what it has to do with the song, but hey, so what? Ending has definite Planet of the Apes overtones, but with a British twist.
Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. Good guitar licks and cool video of a constantly moving montage, complete with skelton warriors right out of Jason and the Argonauts. Plus the drummer babe is a total hottie. Am I watching too much Kerrang! on cable? Who cares?
Postcard from Alex on his Edinburgh-London cycling trip - a postcard from Lougborough!!! Classic four-panel view with the washed out 50s-style colours, including images of Woolies on the high street... Nice to know he is seeing the great sights our islands have to offer :-)
Bad
Too many bills, evil council who put the council tax up every single year by more than the rate of inflation (and more than my weak-ass wage increment, so I'm actually worse off each year - nice). Seriously considering going on to some Fundamentalist web page and leainv anonymous message saying Edinburgh Council Revenues Dept all say the Prophet was a wussy fag just so they all get a Fatwa up their evil, money-grubbing arses.
Having to work too many bloody weekends and late shifts at Waterstone's.
Having to work at Waterstone's actually, come to think of it.
Women. And the contradictory things they do to you. Can't live with them, can't dismember their bodies and dispose of them in a quite, secluded place. On the other hand... Where's my shovel?
The Beltane Fire Festival now being ticket only entry (to a public place!!!), making you leave early to comply with license by evil Edinburgh council (wouldn't be that of it was a festival for mostly tourists and not locals I bet), keeping the noise down at it and getting folk to leave by 1-2am instead of staying to see the dawn (the whole point of Beltane)- what is the fecking point??
Tru Calling - formulaic, predictable, weak. Wanted to like it because of the luscious Eliza Dushku from Buffy, but nope, it sucks demon ass - avoid it. Will wait instead for return of Dead Like Me.
Having to wait months to get bloody Hellboy since the studio suddenly decided for no good reason to put back the UK release. Wowing audiences in the US according to Empire.
Saving democracy by torturing people. Well, I guess it goes along with the mass slaughter of civilians. No, not Saddam's regime - us. Fucking bastards. Bush and Blair shake their heads and go tut, tut, but let's be frank the sons of bitches should be in the Hague standing in the dock next to Milosivic. Everything that has happened is their personal responsibility; all of this blood is on their hands. And, I fear, all the blood that is still to come from the events they set in motion.
Undecided
Kill Bill Vol 2. Don't get me wrong, it ain't bad. It just isn't as good as the first one. Seriously sags in places and shows that it was originally designed to be part of one long film, suddenly chopped into two. Like I said it isn't bad, it is worth seeing. But it plays like the third act which isn't good when it is supposed to be a second half. Maybe they got taken in by the idea of multi-part movies a la Matrix, LOTR etc and thought, hey, let's make it into two. Double the box office, double the DVD sales - actually more than double since there will be the inevitable 'special edition' after the two are released singly. Badly paced, not as well structured as normal for Tarantino - would have been better as one, long film I reckon.
Still, enjoyable enough and more Spaghetti Western than Kung Fu - anyone else notice the straight lift of Ennio Morricone's music (think it was from the final gunfight between Eli Wallach, Eastwood and Van Cleef in Good, the Bad and the Ugly) in the scene between the Bride and Bud? And the damaged hand and cemetery references all right from the original Sergio Leone/Eastwood movies.
Finding out my dear chum SweetRouge has had the question popped to her by her new man.
Neal Stephenson's The Confusion. Fabulous writing, rich narrative, good banquet for my brain.
Comix - The Underground Revolution by Dez Skinn. Not just a chronology of Crumb etc, but an art book, a culture book, a book on freedom of expression and social change/conflict. Fucking brilliant stuff. Expect the review on the Alien soon.
Richard Morgan winning the Philip K Dick award for his stunning debut, Altered Carbon - well done, mate! Next time you're in town I'll let you buy me a beer to celebrate :-)
Praying for Absolution by Muse. Good song, but fab SF video to go with it. High production values, good effects - not sure what it has to do with the song, but hey, so what? Ending has definite Planet of the Apes overtones, but with a British twist.
Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. Good guitar licks and cool video of a constantly moving montage, complete with skelton warriors right out of Jason and the Argonauts. Plus the drummer babe is a total hottie. Am I watching too much Kerrang! on cable? Who cares?
Postcard from Alex on his Edinburgh-London cycling trip - a postcard from Lougborough!!! Classic four-panel view with the washed out 50s-style colours, including images of Woolies on the high street... Nice to know he is seeing the great sights our islands have to offer :-)
Bad
Too many bills, evil council who put the council tax up every single year by more than the rate of inflation (and more than my weak-ass wage increment, so I'm actually worse off each year - nice). Seriously considering going on to some Fundamentalist web page and leainv anonymous message saying Edinburgh Council Revenues Dept all say the Prophet was a wussy fag just so they all get a Fatwa up their evil, money-grubbing arses.
Having to work too many bloody weekends and late shifts at Waterstone's.
Having to work at Waterstone's actually, come to think of it.
Women. And the contradictory things they do to you. Can't live with them, can't dismember their bodies and dispose of them in a quite, secluded place. On the other hand... Where's my shovel?
The Beltane Fire Festival now being ticket only entry (to a public place!!!), making you leave early to comply with license by evil Edinburgh council (wouldn't be that of it was a festival for mostly tourists and not locals I bet), keeping the noise down at it and getting folk to leave by 1-2am instead of staying to see the dawn (the whole point of Beltane)- what is the fecking point??
Tru Calling - formulaic, predictable, weak. Wanted to like it because of the luscious Eliza Dushku from Buffy, but nope, it sucks demon ass - avoid it. Will wait instead for return of Dead Like Me.
Having to wait months to get bloody Hellboy since the studio suddenly decided for no good reason to put back the UK release. Wowing audiences in the US according to Empire.
Saving democracy by torturing people. Well, I guess it goes along with the mass slaughter of civilians. No, not Saddam's regime - us. Fucking bastards. Bush and Blair shake their heads and go tut, tut, but let's be frank the sons of bitches should be in the Hague standing in the dock next to Milosivic. Everything that has happened is their personal responsibility; all of this blood is on their hands. And, I fear, all the blood that is still to come from the events they set in motion.
Undecided
Kill Bill Vol 2. Don't get me wrong, it ain't bad. It just isn't as good as the first one. Seriously sags in places and shows that it was originally designed to be part of one long film, suddenly chopped into two. Like I said it isn't bad, it is worth seeing. But it plays like the third act which isn't good when it is supposed to be a second half. Maybe they got taken in by the idea of multi-part movies a la Matrix, LOTR etc and thought, hey, let's make it into two. Double the box office, double the DVD sales - actually more than double since there will be the inevitable 'special edition' after the two are released singly. Badly paced, not as well structured as normal for Tarantino - would have been better as one, long film I reckon.
Still, enjoyable enough and more Spaghetti Western than Kung Fu - anyone else notice the straight lift of Ennio Morricone's music (think it was from the final gunfight between Eli Wallach, Eastwood and Van Cleef in Good, the Bad and the Ugly) in the scene between the Bride and Bud? And the damaged hand and cemetery references all right from the original Sergio Leone/Eastwood movies.
Saturday, May 1, 2004
Centralised
I sympathise with Ariel's blog on the predictable nature of the centralised London events calendar. Several of the publishers I deal with very nicely send me invites to launches and parties or to visit them at a convention etc. Pity they are mostly in London. Similarly jobs I would love to do in publishing are all mostly located in London. And quite frankly I'm not prepared to move there. Too big, too smelly, too expensive and the pubs shut far too early :-). And it doesn't stop at AF events and launch parties. The bulk of major national galleries, stadiums etc are always placed in London. Why? It's remote from most of the other citizens of the UK and is expensive to get to and stay in. If it's a national institution why should it not be located somewhere more central? York, Manchester or Leeds would put a new attraction pretty much in t he geographic middle of the UK, making it more accessible. Why should folk from Dundee or Manchester or Penzance have to travel all the way to London for each game in the so-called national stadium?
There is also the benefits to consider - with this centralisation London gets jobs, investment and related service industries to the attraction - all from the public purse. I think when Ken Livingstone indulged a coupel of years back in his disugtingly racist jock-bashing, claiming London subsidised Scotland and indeed the rest of the UK (oh yeah, how many oil fields have you got, Ken?) he forgot that because everything automatically is given to London it pulls in others industries and coroporate headquarters, so effectively that means the UK tax payer, because of this centralisation, is subsisdising London. The kicker here is I'm sure someone in Lerwick is probably saying something similar about Edinburgh :-)
Oh well, at least we have the SF WorldCon in Glasgow next year.
I sympathise with Ariel's blog on the predictable nature of the centralised London events calendar. Several of the publishers I deal with very nicely send me invites to launches and parties or to visit them at a convention etc. Pity they are mostly in London. Similarly jobs I would love to do in publishing are all mostly located in London. And quite frankly I'm not prepared to move there. Too big, too smelly, too expensive and the pubs shut far too early :-). And it doesn't stop at AF events and launch parties. The bulk of major national galleries, stadiums etc are always placed in London. Why? It's remote from most of the other citizens of the UK and is expensive to get to and stay in. If it's a national institution why should it not be located somewhere more central? York, Manchester or Leeds would put a new attraction pretty much in t he geographic middle of the UK, making it more accessible. Why should folk from Dundee or Manchester or Penzance have to travel all the way to London for each game in the so-called national stadium?
There is also the benefits to consider - with this centralisation London gets jobs, investment and related service industries to the attraction - all from the public purse. I think when Ken Livingstone indulged a coupel of years back in his disugtingly racist jock-bashing, claiming London subsidised Scotland and indeed the rest of the UK (oh yeah, how many oil fields have you got, Ken?) he forgot that because everything automatically is given to London it pulls in others industries and coroporate headquarters, so effectively that means the UK tax payer, because of this centralisation, is subsisdising London. The kicker here is I'm sure someone in Lerwick is probably saying something similar about Edinburgh :-)
Oh well, at least we have the SF WorldCon in Glasgow next year.
Evolution
New evidence shows that early proto-hominid ancestors of modern humans were capable of making and using fire long before previously thought. It is quite remarkable how earlier hominids are proving to be far more able than we gave them credit for. Still, it does beg the question, if a homind from 790,000 years ago could use tools including fire, why is it that Neds/schemies/scallies still haven't mastered the art of walking upright successfully? Or perhaps they are from a subspecies?
New evidence shows that early proto-hominid ancestors of modern humans were capable of making and using fire long before previously thought. It is quite remarkable how earlier hominids are proving to be far more able than we gave them credit for. Still, it does beg the question, if a homind from 790,000 years ago could use tools including fire, why is it that Neds/schemies/scallies still haven't mastered the art of walking upright successfully? Or perhaps they are from a subspecies?
Long weekend
Of the wrong variety, since I have yet another full weekend shift at Bastardstone's Books this weekend. Only the 3rd full weekend shift in 6 or 7 weeks. And in between those Saturday shifts as well. How to keep you staff happy, make them work all the fucking time and pretty much every weekend for a pittance (and no extra pittance for working weekends and evenings). And this week there was an article in the Herald and Post (free Edinburgh paper) with tourist chiefs complaining that waiters/waitresses, hotel staff and shop staff gave poor service and put off tourists... Gee, here was me thinking they come over for the millennia of history, culture and architecture... It never seems to occur to these wankers who moan about poor service that the people they are moaning about are among the poorest paid in the UK and have to work the longest anti-social hours and put up with rude customers who treat you as if this were the Victorian era and you are a lowly serving serf, beneath their notice. So next time you think your waiter isn't being ultra-fab or your bookseller seems a bit grumpy when you insisted on chatting on your cellphone all through the transaction and you tosse your card over because why would you hand it to them jus think on that. And please don't give me all that 'this is your job shit'. Most folk in service areas do their best, but we have to put up with a lot of rude bastards for fuck all money and work evening and weekends to keep the fucking public happy and we're expected to have the fixed smile of a chat show host? Bollocks.
Still to pass the time I will nip down to our basement occassionally to torture some Iraqi dissidents for fun.
Of the wrong variety, since I have yet another full weekend shift at Bastardstone's Books this weekend. Only the 3rd full weekend shift in 6 or 7 weeks. And in between those Saturday shifts as well. How to keep you staff happy, make them work all the fucking time and pretty much every weekend for a pittance (and no extra pittance for working weekends and evenings). And this week there was an article in the Herald and Post (free Edinburgh paper) with tourist chiefs complaining that waiters/waitresses, hotel staff and shop staff gave poor service and put off tourists... Gee, here was me thinking they come over for the millennia of history, culture and architecture... It never seems to occur to these wankers who moan about poor service that the people they are moaning about are among the poorest paid in the UK and have to work the longest anti-social hours and put up with rude customers who treat you as if this were the Victorian era and you are a lowly serving serf, beneath their notice. So next time you think your waiter isn't being ultra-fab or your bookseller seems a bit grumpy when you insisted on chatting on your cellphone all through the transaction and you tosse your card over because why would you hand it to them jus think on that. And please don't give me all that 'this is your job shit'. Most folk in service areas do their best, but we have to put up with a lot of rude bastards for fuck all money and work evening and weekends to keep the fucking public happy and we're expected to have the fixed smile of a chat show host? Bollocks.
Still to pass the time I will nip down to our basement occassionally to torture some Iraqi dissidents for fun.
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