Democracy in action
Hurrah! The people of Iraq are now officially free! No more occupation!!!! Well, except for 160,000 foreign troops and who knows how many foreign fundamentalist fighters. And behold, you who scoffed at Saint Tony and his cowboy pal, Sheriff George - now the cute little people of Iraq have a democratically elected government which truly represents them. Just like in America, where they have a government which was properly elected by the people and fore the people… Oh, hang on a minute… Oh, yes… Er… Hmmmm.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Spare a thought?
Our monthly meeting of the SF Book Group met this evening to discuss Michael Marshall Smith’s rather groovy novel Spares. I haven’t read any MMS for ages and really enjoyed it - he has a wicked sense of humour which appeals to me (surprise) and has some excellent descriptions which I have stored away for future use as put-downs (such as ‘the bartender looked like three kinds of shit in a one shit bag’). It’s interesting going back to this after Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. Both feature veterans with moral and psychological hangovers from their service days, there is a real Noir gumshoe mojo going on and both novels feature often amoral anti-heroes in a convoluted world. Coincidentally both authors have had film options taken out on their work (as a sidebar, the new SF Crow's Nest has a brief chat with Richard Morgan talking about his third novel which will be set on Harlan's World which is something most of us fans have been hoping to see)
Couldn’t help but think the title Spares is misleading though, and so did most of the group. It refers to the rather nasty business of rich people having clones of themselves made. These clones - known as Spares - are kept hidden away from most human contact in a darkened and locked space so they never develop speech or thought. They are medically cared for and fed by robots but that’s it. They are living organ and limb replacements for their original. Sure, you could use DNA to manufacture new limbs or organs but that takes too much time for the rich folks, so they just keep the poor Spares around and lop bits off as required. Nasty.
Shame he didn’t bring in either some form of pro-life group into the situation or even an underground railroad rescue for them as there was for runaway slaves before the Civil War. But this is because the Spares are actually a McGuffin - pretty much a device to get our main character moving back into places he doesn’t really want to go back to (New Richmond, Virginia, a former flying mega mall which is now over the ruins of the original Virginia - I asked him about that once at an event and he said it was because Richmond was the most awful city, so he exacted literary revenge on it). It’s still a good book but as I said it does make the title misleading since it isn’t really about the Spares. And the general consensus was that the ending was a bit sloppy and rather Deus Ex Machina, as if he didn’t quite know what to do at the end. Certainly well below the standard of such a fine writer. This said, it’s still a damned good read in my opinion, as are all of MMS’s novels.
Next month it’s classics time as we take on Ursula le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. Was to be John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos, but we had to cancel it for the second time due to the publisher, Penguin, being utterly disorganised right now and unable to give us a delivery date. They are relocating their warehouse, which for such a huge publisher is a big undertaking and one sure to give some disruption. However, Penguin - arguably the best know of all publishers - also invested in an untried new automated system which didn’t actually work when they tried to use it. Some of their books are being sorted from a hastily erected marquee as we speak. As you can imagine this has left the entire UK book trade struggling to obtain Penguin titles. Customers look bemused that they cannot find famous writers such as James Joyce. We’re losing customers and sales and so are all other booksellers. Penguin itself is estimated to lose around £30 million according to this week’s Publishing News an the sales of their large range of travel guides alone are down by an entire third at what should be their busiest time of year for such titles.
So, you’ll understand that as we sat with the group members tonight discussing what future titles we wanted we had to stipulate that we couldn’t use any Penguin authors for the next few months. Luckily we still had plenty of suggestions - one of Diana Wynne Jones’ kid’s fantasies, a Sandman selection (hurray!) and for our late October meeting we wanted a spooky title for the Halloween season and settled on a good Scottish classic, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, which should be great. I suspect most folk are only really familiar with the movie/TV versions which often simplify the text into a good man fighting his evil half for his soul, which is not at all what RLS wrote or intended (Mattoti's excellent graphic novel version has the idea).
Our monthly meeting of the SF Book Group met this evening to discuss Michael Marshall Smith’s rather groovy novel Spares. I haven’t read any MMS for ages and really enjoyed it - he has a wicked sense of humour which appeals to me (surprise) and has some excellent descriptions which I have stored away for future use as put-downs (such as ‘the bartender looked like three kinds of shit in a one shit bag’). It’s interesting going back to this after Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. Both feature veterans with moral and psychological hangovers from their service days, there is a real Noir gumshoe mojo going on and both novels feature often amoral anti-heroes in a convoluted world. Coincidentally both authors have had film options taken out on their work (as a sidebar, the new SF Crow's Nest has a brief chat with Richard Morgan talking about his third novel which will be set on Harlan's World which is something most of us fans have been hoping to see)
Couldn’t help but think the title Spares is misleading though, and so did most of the group. It refers to the rather nasty business of rich people having clones of themselves made. These clones - known as Spares - are kept hidden away from most human contact in a darkened and locked space so they never develop speech or thought. They are medically cared for and fed by robots but that’s it. They are living organ and limb replacements for their original. Sure, you could use DNA to manufacture new limbs or organs but that takes too much time for the rich folks, so they just keep the poor Spares around and lop bits off as required. Nasty.
Shame he didn’t bring in either some form of pro-life group into the situation or even an underground railroad rescue for them as there was for runaway slaves before the Civil War. But this is because the Spares are actually a McGuffin - pretty much a device to get our main character moving back into places he doesn’t really want to go back to (New Richmond, Virginia, a former flying mega mall which is now over the ruins of the original Virginia - I asked him about that once at an event and he said it was because Richmond was the most awful city, so he exacted literary revenge on it). It’s still a good book but as I said it does make the title misleading since it isn’t really about the Spares. And the general consensus was that the ending was a bit sloppy and rather Deus Ex Machina, as if he didn’t quite know what to do at the end. Certainly well below the standard of such a fine writer. This said, it’s still a damned good read in my opinion, as are all of MMS’s novels.
Next month it’s classics time as we take on Ursula le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. Was to be John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos, but we had to cancel it for the second time due to the publisher, Penguin, being utterly disorganised right now and unable to give us a delivery date. They are relocating their warehouse, which for such a huge publisher is a big undertaking and one sure to give some disruption. However, Penguin - arguably the best know of all publishers - also invested in an untried new automated system which didn’t actually work when they tried to use it. Some of their books are being sorted from a hastily erected marquee as we speak. As you can imagine this has left the entire UK book trade struggling to obtain Penguin titles. Customers look bemused that they cannot find famous writers such as James Joyce. We’re losing customers and sales and so are all other booksellers. Penguin itself is estimated to lose around £30 million according to this week’s Publishing News an the sales of their large range of travel guides alone are down by an entire third at what should be their busiest time of year for such titles.
So, you’ll understand that as we sat with the group members tonight discussing what future titles we wanted we had to stipulate that we couldn’t use any Penguin authors for the next few months. Luckily we still had plenty of suggestions - one of Diana Wynne Jones’ kid’s fantasies, a Sandman selection (hurray!) and for our late October meeting we wanted a spooky title for the Halloween season and settled on a good Scottish classic, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, which should be great. I suspect most folk are only really familiar with the movie/TV versions which often simplify the text into a good man fighting his evil half for his soul, which is not at all what RLS wrote or intended (Mattoti's excellent graphic novel version has the idea).
Trying Ryan
The utterly gorgeous Queen of the Spacebabes, Jeri Ryan, is in court according to this article from the Smoking Gun via the SF Crow's Nest, alleging her then husband kept taking her to night clubs which turned out to be sex clubs where he wanted her to go with multiple partners. Gee, suddenly I feel a little guilty for my Seven of Nine, T'Pol and Aeryn Sun fantasies... Although I'd have reckoned Jeri was enough woman for any man to deal with as it was so her hubby was obviously a bit of a diddy. And you'd have to imagine if your lovely wife says no to a saucy suggestion then it probably means she doesn't fancy it and trying it again is probably not the best move... Well, Jeri, my sympathies to you and just to let you know I am still single if you're going to be dating again soon.
In an interesting response to the article there is a counter-claim that this is old news and was only brought up in courts recently because her former hubby, Jack Ryan (presumably not Tom Clancy's hero) was trying to run for office (as a Republican, so he is obviously a bastard) and the scandal cost him his chance.
The utterly gorgeous Queen of the Spacebabes, Jeri Ryan, is in court according to this article from the Smoking Gun via the SF Crow's Nest, alleging her then husband kept taking her to night clubs which turned out to be sex clubs where he wanted her to go with multiple partners. Gee, suddenly I feel a little guilty for my Seven of Nine, T'Pol and Aeryn Sun fantasies... Although I'd have reckoned Jeri was enough woman for any man to deal with as it was so her hubby was obviously a bit of a diddy. And you'd have to imagine if your lovely wife says no to a saucy suggestion then it probably means she doesn't fancy it and trying it again is probably not the best move... Well, Jeri, my sympathies to you and just to let you know I am still single if you're going to be dating again soon.
In an interesting response to the article there is a counter-claim that this is old news and was only brought up in courts recently because her former hubby, Jack Ryan (presumably not Tom Clancy's hero) was trying to run for office (as a Republican, so he is obviously a bastard) and the scandal cost him his chance.
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Copyright this!
As a very frequent movie-goer I get rather tired of having to put up with the long, two-part bloody copyright signs that come up before each and every bloody film. Like, yeah, 99% of people world wide know they ain't supposed to sit there with vid equipment bootlegging the movie and the 1% who are going in with the express intention of doing so are unlikely to be put off by these boring and overlong captions. I'm getting so annoyed with having to sit through them several times a month I'm almost tempted to vid a movie just to get my own back on the bastards!Some now come with warnings that the staff are equipped with night-vision goggles to spot bootleggers for smeg's sake! Anyway, saw this on Boing Boing - out of the mouths of babes, as they say:
"Sunday, June 27, 2004
Three-year-old commentator on pre-movie (c) warnings
James took his three-year-old to see Shrek 2 yesterday and when the copyright warning came on at the start of the picture, his son responded appropriately.
I went to see Shrek 2 today with my son Edward who is 3 next week. He was very excited, he loves going to the cinema. However when the copyright warning about taking pictures and video appeared (the one that Cory Doctorow takes pictures of) he said in a very loud voice "blah blah blah blah", which had me in hysterics if no one else. "
Which sums it up. Although I'm glad I wasn't actually there as 3 is a bit too wee for a movie as almsot no kid can stay still and quiet through a movie at that age. I've been to a few daytimes showings where folk bring in under-5s with them who then make noise continually. Or in last week's case the kid wasn't too bad once the movie started but his mother had to lean over and explain everything to him loudly every few minutes. I could have strangled the bitch.
Then again I feel like that about anyone who makes noises in the cinema (at least kids have the excuse of being kids, but adults?). At a midnight screening one night friends and I were driven to issuing threats to a group of Asians who had brought along friends who obviously didn't know English and were kindly translating every single line for them throughout the film... At a recent movie a couple of German students were doing the same for a friend who obviously didn't have as good English skills. While I am impressed with their multi-lingual skills their lack of awareness for others around them wasn't so impressive. I'm going to have to start carrying a taser into cinemas I reckon. And those bastards who noisily crunch crap tortillas with that rubbery melted 'cheese' which looks and smells (and I imagine tastes) like warm cat sick are second on the list.
As a very frequent movie-goer I get rather tired of having to put up with the long, two-part bloody copyright signs that come up before each and every bloody film. Like, yeah, 99% of people world wide know they ain't supposed to sit there with vid equipment bootlegging the movie and the 1% who are going in with the express intention of doing so are unlikely to be put off by these boring and overlong captions. I'm getting so annoyed with having to sit through them several times a month I'm almost tempted to vid a movie just to get my own back on the bastards!Some now come with warnings that the staff are equipped with night-vision goggles to spot bootleggers for smeg's sake! Anyway, saw this on Boing Boing - out of the mouths of babes, as they say:
"Sunday, June 27, 2004
Three-year-old commentator on pre-movie (c) warnings
James took his three-year-old to see Shrek 2 yesterday and when the copyright warning came on at the start of the picture, his son responded appropriately.
I went to see Shrek 2 today with my son Edward who is 3 next week. He was very excited, he loves going to the cinema. However when the copyright warning about taking pictures and video appeared (the one that Cory Doctorow takes pictures of) he said in a very loud voice "blah blah blah blah", which had me in hysterics if no one else. "
Which sums it up. Although I'm glad I wasn't actually there as 3 is a bit too wee for a movie as almsot no kid can stay still and quiet through a movie at that age. I've been to a few daytimes showings where folk bring in under-5s with them who then make noise continually. Or in last week's case the kid wasn't too bad once the movie started but his mother had to lean over and explain everything to him loudly every few minutes. I could have strangled the bitch.
Then again I feel like that about anyone who makes noises in the cinema (at least kids have the excuse of being kids, but adults?). At a midnight screening one night friends and I were driven to issuing threats to a group of Asians who had brought along friends who obviously didn't know English and were kindly translating every single line for them throughout the film... At a recent movie a couple of German students were doing the same for a friend who obviously didn't have as good English skills. While I am impressed with their multi-lingual skills their lack of awareness for others around them wasn't so impressive. I'm going to have to start carrying a taser into cinemas I reckon. And those bastards who noisily crunch crap tortillas with that rubbery melted 'cheese' which looks and smells (and I imagine tastes) like warm cat sick are second on the list.
Spam-o-matic
Bloody spam, bane of many a web-users life.
"Hi there customer of Barcloyds Bank, our tech department have the problem computerlogical with your database and we are needing your account and password details please. As a thank you we are also giving to you our friend a chance to win money from the Nigerian State Lottery for only the small arrangement fee of £1000 to facilitate the transfer you have already be winning £2506789302048575638. This will also help you to enlarge your penis, win more money, see farm girls being shagged by chicken with strap-on dildos, get you an interest free government loan that they don't want you to know about and did we forget that your bank be broken - like our English - and we need your details again?"
Just to make things better, some scuzball AOL tech copied custoemr details, used them to spam folks then sold them on to other spammers... Nice. Then again if you are stupid enough to us Arseholes Online you pretty much deserve everything you get...
Altogether now: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam WONDERFUL SPAM, WONDERFUL SPAM"
Bloody spam, bane of many a web-users life.
"Hi there customer of Barcloyds Bank, our tech department have the problem computerlogical with your database and we are needing your account and password details please. As a thank you we are also giving to you our friend a chance to win money from the Nigerian State Lottery for only the small arrangement fee of £1000 to facilitate the transfer you have already be winning £2506789302048575638. This will also help you to enlarge your penis, win more money, see farm girls being shagged by chicken with strap-on dildos, get you an interest free government loan that they don't want you to know about and did we forget that your bank be broken - like our English - and we need your details again?"
Just to make things better, some scuzball AOL tech copied custoemr details, used them to spam folks then sold them on to other spammers... Nice. Then again if you are stupid enough to us Arseholes Online you pretty much deserve everything you get...
Altogether now: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam WONDERFUL SPAM, WONDERFUL SPAM"
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Mirror, mirror...
Also on Neil's blog which I haven't had time to check as much recently was a link to SOny Pictures and the official website for Mirrormask, the movie from Hensons that Neil and the wonderful Dave Mckean are working on. Not much to see yet though. There's also a link to the Hellboy official movie site. It's been a couple of weeks since I mentioned Hellboy you know.
X
The X Prize for the first successful couple of private flights into space came a little closer. For the first time in history a private group designed, built and flew their own spaceship. I'm not expecting holidays on the moon for the masses in the very near future, but it's still pretty impressive. Hopefully they will be able to beat the problems which showed up on Monday's flight.
Also on Neil's blog which I haven't had time to check as much recently was a link to SOny Pictures and the official website for Mirrormask, the movie from Hensons that Neil and the wonderful Dave Mckean are working on. Not much to see yet though. There's also a link to the Hellboy official movie site. It's been a couple of weeks since I mentioned Hellboy you know.
X
The X Prize for the first successful couple of private flights into space came a little closer. For the first time in history a private group designed, built and flew their own spaceship. I'm not expecting holidays on the moon for the masses in the very near future, but it's still pretty impressive. Hopefully they will be able to beat the problems which showed up on Monday's flight.
Fair and balanced
I found this article on Guardian unlimited via a spot on Neil Gaiman's blog. With Murdoch's Sky cable-satellite service now also carrying the odious Fox News UK viewers are being treated to the endless spewing or right-wing bile completely devoid of a basis in fact our journalistic integrity. Now they are broadcasting to the UK they decided to have a go at the BBC:
"The Fox presenter, John Gibson, said in a segment entitled My Word that the BBC had "a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism that was obsessive, irrational and dishonest"; that the BBC "felt entitled to lie and, when caught lying, felt entitled to defend its lying reporters and executives"; that the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, in Baghdad during the US invasion, had "insisted on air that the Iraqi army was heroically repulsing an incompetent American military"; and that "the BBC, far from blaming itself, insisted its reporter had a right to lie - exaggerate - because, well, the BBC knew that the war was wrong, and anything they could say to underscore that point had to be right". "
After the article I posted last autumn on Al Franken's excellent book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them dealing with Fox and the other right-wing Nazi shock-jock hate-mongers (and Fox's own goal when they tried to sue him but inly pushed the book to the top of the NY Times bestsellers) I found this particularly interesting. Glad to see that at least in the UK the regulators will not just sit back and let these wankers dress up what are almost neo-Nazi rants as 'news'. Guess this means Anne Coulter won't be getting a daytime show on UK services then, eh? For shame.
I found this article on Guardian unlimited via a spot on Neil Gaiman's blog. With Murdoch's Sky cable-satellite service now also carrying the odious Fox News UK viewers are being treated to the endless spewing or right-wing bile completely devoid of a basis in fact our journalistic integrity. Now they are broadcasting to the UK they decided to have a go at the BBC:
"The Fox presenter, John Gibson, said in a segment entitled My Word that the BBC had "a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism that was obsessive, irrational and dishonest"; that the BBC "felt entitled to lie and, when caught lying, felt entitled to defend its lying reporters and executives"; that the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, in Baghdad during the US invasion, had "insisted on air that the Iraqi army was heroically repulsing an incompetent American military"; and that "the BBC, far from blaming itself, insisted its reporter had a right to lie - exaggerate - because, well, the BBC knew that the war was wrong, and anything they could say to underscore that point had to be right". "
After the article I posted last autumn on Al Franken's excellent book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them dealing with Fox and the other right-wing Nazi shock-jock hate-mongers (and Fox's own goal when they tried to sue him but inly pushed the book to the top of the NY Times bestsellers) I found this particularly interesting. Glad to see that at least in the UK the regulators will not just sit back and let these wankers dress up what are almost neo-Nazi rants as 'news'. Guess this means Anne Coulter won't be getting a daytime show on UK services then, eh? For shame.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
What dreams may come
I had a nice dream a few nights ago. Along with Alex, Ariel, Vegar and my mate Gordon we had set up our own c-operative SF book and comic store. All ours, with row upon row of excellent books we had picked, a bar and even a broom handle for chasing James Lovegrove away from the comics section (it's not a library you know!). And it was our, pardon the pun, ‘dream bookstore’. Not only was it like the one in San Fransciso (the name escapes me) where the only books stocked were ones picked by the staff as good books, we also had discerning dream customers. No-one ever asked us how to get to Edinburgh Castle and none of our book browsers ever, ever asked for the next instalment of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (this is when you realise you’re having a dream). As an added bonus Harvey Pekar came by (and why not?) and decided our lives should be immortalised in comic form in a mixture of American Splendour and Box Office Poison. Naturally we sold issues in the store too. Alt.EdReality Bookstore was famous, with our favourite writers coming in to do events and our favourite bands wanting to do gigs in the bar area. Alas, tomorrow sees a return after a nice weekend off (first whole weekend off in about 6 or 7 weeks) to Bastardstone’s. Oh well, a boy can dream.
I had a nice dream a few nights ago. Along with Alex, Ariel, Vegar and my mate Gordon we had set up our own c-operative SF book and comic store. All ours, with row upon row of excellent books we had picked, a bar and even a broom handle for chasing James Lovegrove away from the comics section (it's not a library you know!). And it was our, pardon the pun, ‘dream bookstore’. Not only was it like the one in San Fransciso (the name escapes me) where the only books stocked were ones picked by the staff as good books, we also had discerning dream customers. No-one ever asked us how to get to Edinburgh Castle and none of our book browsers ever, ever asked for the next instalment of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (this is when you realise you’re having a dream). As an added bonus Harvey Pekar came by (and why not?) and decided our lives should be immortalised in comic form in a mixture of American Splendour and Box Office Poison. Naturally we sold issues in the store too. Alt.EdReality Bookstore was famous, with our favourite writers coming in to do events and our favourite bands wanting to do gigs in the bar area. Alas, tomorrow sees a return after a nice weekend off (first whole weekend off in about 6 or 7 weeks) to Bastardstone’s. Oh well, a boy can dream.
Deep Blue
No, not the supercomputer which beat Kasparov in decidedly dodgy circumstances, but a film from the makers of the BBC’s excellent Blue Planet series. We can all carp about the decline of quality broadcasting but one thing the BBC still does extremely well is natural history. Actually, I’d go so far as to say no other broadcaster can match them anymore. With most TV franchises these days around the world being subsumed into larger conglomerates who pump out maximum drivel for least expenditure the few quality programmes are produced by small, independent companies for sale to the bigger ones.
This leaves pretty much the BBC with it’s unique funding system as the only independent who has the resources and budget to fund multi-part documentaries like Blue Planet where it involves filming on several continents and ocean (and under those oceans - far, far under) over a period of years. Even National Geographic can’t match this. Anyone who has watched series like Blue Planet or Attenborough’s ground-breaking Life on Earth is likely I reckon to agree nto only with this view but also agree that is in our best interests that such programming continues to be made, not only to fight dire ‘reality’ TV shows and other cultural rot but also because of the beneficial effects. They are educational; they explain and show us the world around us in a way that adults and children alike can understand and present it in such a way as to make us marvel. A child who has watched these documentaries is one who will grow up to question why we allow corporations to rape and plunder the natural world and poison our own environment.
As with any such years-long endeavour there is a lot of extra footage which didn’t make the cut in the broadcast series. Deep Blue takes a lot of that footage and presents a kind of digest form of the series. Obviously a couple of hours of film can’t match a ten-part series narrated by Attenborough for information content, but that’s not really what Deep Blue is about. This is about taking some of the most spectacular footage of our marine environment and displaying it on a movie screen where the only thing you can do is marvel at it. Some of the imagery from Blue Planet was superb - some shots of whales took years to capture - but here on a big screen it is quite simply stunning.
Starting with an aerial view accompanied by narration by the excellent Michael Gambon we move through enormous, rolling breakers and into the blue ocean itself. The content is similar to the series but the makers have realised quite rightly that this film version if principally a visual feast and Gambon’s narration is minimal - the camera work and the natural world are the stars here. As cinema is above all a visual medium I have no arguments with this. And for anyone who says there should still be some sort of narrative structure to any film - newsflash, NO, there doesn’t have to be, it depends what you’re making - here we have birth, life, death and rebirth. We have gentle giants and the smallest organisms on the planet, soft-eyed seal pups and dangerous Orcas all set against the source of all life on planet Earth. Now that’s a narrative, if you know how to open your eyes and read it.
The great undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau once said the ocean is the source; the beginning of all life. I have a lot of respect for Cousteau - I adored his programmes when I was a boy and I learned much from them. Not just facts about the natural world but also respect for our environment and, equally important a sense of wonder at the amazing variety of life we have on this little globe we call home. As a boy watching Cousteau I was struck by how similar deep-sea exploration was to my other great interest, space exploration. Dark, mysterious realms both - often hostile to human life yet both important to us as a species and both places only small groups of us have had the chance to explore. As Gambon observes in the film more humans have been into space than have reached the deepest depths of the world’s oceans. A well-loved writer of SF and a fervent proponent of manned space exploration is also a keen diver and lover of our undersea world: Arthur C Clarke. Clarke, a passionate diver of many years once remarked that ultimately we all came from the ocean. We still bear that birth in our very body structure, he went on - our bodies are mostly water and our skins like a spacesuit which allows us to live out of the water.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons so many are fascinating by the deep oceans. A deep ancestral memory from untold epochs past which still whispers in our head and reminds us where we came from. And after all, we all begin our loves on this planet in a warm, liquid environment. Perhaps that’s why we feel so comfortable swimming, floating in water’ ancestral memory and personal memory of the womb combining. Add to this an incredible abundance and variety of life. Tiny plankton, bizarre, alien-looking creatures from the crushing depths, sleek sharks, playful dolphins, corals, living structure of beauty and fragility which can spread for hundreds of kilometres. Fish, squid, octopi, seabirds, reptiles and even mammals - pretty much every form of life on Earth has it’s representative in our seas. Including the Blue Whale. The largest animal in the entire five billion year history of Planet Earth. Bigger than the largest dinosaur with the greatest heartbeat of all animals; veins running from that heart are practically big enough for a human to swim down. Like us, a mammal; warm-blood flows in those veins as this creature with a huge heart and huge brain moves effortlessly through deep waters.
Deep Blue is limited release only, but I commend it to any and all of you. Just sit back and let his incredibly beautiful imagery wash over you like an ocean swell. This is something marvellous and the images from the deepest ocean floor (Blue Planet not only captured some deep-ocean creatures for the first time on film, it also found species new to science) are remarkable - you have to remind yourself that in all the thousands of years humans have sailed the seas it is only the recent coupe of generations who have seen these sights. The Marianas Trench was as mysterious as the Dark Side of the Moon was until Russian probes photographed it only four decades ago. We’re the first people in history to see these marvels - deep, cold, lightless depths where no sun ever reaches. There should be nothing here, but instead there is life in abundance. Every niche in our magnificent world has been colonised by life. This was beauty. This was wonder. If you are depressed you will feel uplifted. Remind yourself just how remarkable our world truly is.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to resurrect my ocean-themed poem, Blue. I wrote this - or more accurately it wrote itself almost - in my head a couple of years ago while stressing out dealing with Xmas shoppers one December in the bookstore (a most hideous experience). I started thinking on a calm, blue ocean to keep myself sane and within a few minutes the poem just grew from a single image. My friend Sarah liked it so much she made a painting of it in the style of a cover of a children’s book (Sarah writes and draws her own) and gave it to me (I still have it on the wall - the words swirl around in the deep blue surrounding a mermaid).
B l U e
Blue,
Deep blue,
Pulsing currents,
The sea moves
To a rhythm,
Like the blood,
Like the heart.
The salt water,
Ebbing, flowing,
Do the tides
In my veins
Mimic the oceans,
Or do they mimic me?
High and low tides,
Troughs and peaks,
In waves and souls,
The oceans speak.
I float serene,
Amidst the blue,
It whispers gently:
This is where
You came from.
This is where
You find peace.
No, not the supercomputer which beat Kasparov in decidedly dodgy circumstances, but a film from the makers of the BBC’s excellent Blue Planet series. We can all carp about the decline of quality broadcasting but one thing the BBC still does extremely well is natural history. Actually, I’d go so far as to say no other broadcaster can match them anymore. With most TV franchises these days around the world being subsumed into larger conglomerates who pump out maximum drivel for least expenditure the few quality programmes are produced by small, independent companies for sale to the bigger ones.
This leaves pretty much the BBC with it’s unique funding system as the only independent who has the resources and budget to fund multi-part documentaries like Blue Planet where it involves filming on several continents and ocean (and under those oceans - far, far under) over a period of years. Even National Geographic can’t match this. Anyone who has watched series like Blue Planet or Attenborough’s ground-breaking Life on Earth is likely I reckon to agree nto only with this view but also agree that is in our best interests that such programming continues to be made, not only to fight dire ‘reality’ TV shows and other cultural rot but also because of the beneficial effects. They are educational; they explain and show us the world around us in a way that adults and children alike can understand and present it in such a way as to make us marvel. A child who has watched these documentaries is one who will grow up to question why we allow corporations to rape and plunder the natural world and poison our own environment.
As with any such years-long endeavour there is a lot of extra footage which didn’t make the cut in the broadcast series. Deep Blue takes a lot of that footage and presents a kind of digest form of the series. Obviously a couple of hours of film can’t match a ten-part series narrated by Attenborough for information content, but that’s not really what Deep Blue is about. This is about taking some of the most spectacular footage of our marine environment and displaying it on a movie screen where the only thing you can do is marvel at it. Some of the imagery from Blue Planet was superb - some shots of whales took years to capture - but here on a big screen it is quite simply stunning.
Starting with an aerial view accompanied by narration by the excellent Michael Gambon we move through enormous, rolling breakers and into the blue ocean itself. The content is similar to the series but the makers have realised quite rightly that this film version if principally a visual feast and Gambon’s narration is minimal - the camera work and the natural world are the stars here. As cinema is above all a visual medium I have no arguments with this. And for anyone who says there should still be some sort of narrative structure to any film - newsflash, NO, there doesn’t have to be, it depends what you’re making - here we have birth, life, death and rebirth. We have gentle giants and the smallest organisms on the planet, soft-eyed seal pups and dangerous Orcas all set against the source of all life on planet Earth. Now that’s a narrative, if you know how to open your eyes and read it.
The great undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau once said the ocean is the source; the beginning of all life. I have a lot of respect for Cousteau - I adored his programmes when I was a boy and I learned much from them. Not just facts about the natural world but also respect for our environment and, equally important a sense of wonder at the amazing variety of life we have on this little globe we call home. As a boy watching Cousteau I was struck by how similar deep-sea exploration was to my other great interest, space exploration. Dark, mysterious realms both - often hostile to human life yet both important to us as a species and both places only small groups of us have had the chance to explore. As Gambon observes in the film more humans have been into space than have reached the deepest depths of the world’s oceans. A well-loved writer of SF and a fervent proponent of manned space exploration is also a keen diver and lover of our undersea world: Arthur C Clarke. Clarke, a passionate diver of many years once remarked that ultimately we all came from the ocean. We still bear that birth in our very body structure, he went on - our bodies are mostly water and our skins like a spacesuit which allows us to live out of the water.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons so many are fascinating by the deep oceans. A deep ancestral memory from untold epochs past which still whispers in our head and reminds us where we came from. And after all, we all begin our loves on this planet in a warm, liquid environment. Perhaps that’s why we feel so comfortable swimming, floating in water’ ancestral memory and personal memory of the womb combining. Add to this an incredible abundance and variety of life. Tiny plankton, bizarre, alien-looking creatures from the crushing depths, sleek sharks, playful dolphins, corals, living structure of beauty and fragility which can spread for hundreds of kilometres. Fish, squid, octopi, seabirds, reptiles and even mammals - pretty much every form of life on Earth has it’s representative in our seas. Including the Blue Whale. The largest animal in the entire five billion year history of Planet Earth. Bigger than the largest dinosaur with the greatest heartbeat of all animals; veins running from that heart are practically big enough for a human to swim down. Like us, a mammal; warm-blood flows in those veins as this creature with a huge heart and huge brain moves effortlessly through deep waters.
Deep Blue is limited release only, but I commend it to any and all of you. Just sit back and let his incredibly beautiful imagery wash over you like an ocean swell. This is something marvellous and the images from the deepest ocean floor (Blue Planet not only captured some deep-ocean creatures for the first time on film, it also found species new to science) are remarkable - you have to remind yourself that in all the thousands of years humans have sailed the seas it is only the recent coupe of generations who have seen these sights. The Marianas Trench was as mysterious as the Dark Side of the Moon was until Russian probes photographed it only four decades ago. We’re the first people in history to see these marvels - deep, cold, lightless depths where no sun ever reaches. There should be nothing here, but instead there is life in abundance. Every niche in our magnificent world has been colonised by life. This was beauty. This was wonder. If you are depressed you will feel uplifted. Remind yourself just how remarkable our world truly is.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to resurrect my ocean-themed poem, Blue. I wrote this - or more accurately it wrote itself almost - in my head a couple of years ago while stressing out dealing with Xmas shoppers one December in the bookstore (a most hideous experience). I started thinking on a calm, blue ocean to keep myself sane and within a few minutes the poem just grew from a single image. My friend Sarah liked it so much she made a painting of it in the style of a cover of a children’s book (Sarah writes and draws her own) and gave it to me (I still have it on the wall - the words swirl around in the deep blue surrounding a mermaid).
B l U e
Blue,
Deep blue,
Pulsing currents,
The sea moves
To a rhythm,
Like the blood,
Like the heart.
The salt water,
Ebbing, flowing,
Do the tides
In my veins
Mimic the oceans,
Or do they mimic me?
High and low tides,
Troughs and peaks,
In waves and souls,
The oceans speak.
I float serene,
Amidst the blue,
It whispers gently:
This is where
You came from.
This is where
You find peace.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Here be dragons
There is an excellent series on the History Channel on Sundays at the moment on cartography and the great age of exploration. This week decided to spurn the more (unjustly in my opinion) famous Columbus for the scholars of the Saint Die school who were not only master cartographers of the age (and this is an age when maps are state secrets because, like words, they have great power) but radical intellectuals, pushing the barriers of human knowledge in a time when it could be dangerous, even heretical, to challenge the status quo (read Catholic Church) view of how the world was.
They took charts from Amerigo Vespucci, a great explorer almost unknown to most folk today, who is almost certainly the first European explorer of that age to land in mainland America (beat to it by the Vikings, but they didn't come back and by the Sinclair lords of Orkney in Scotland who did and left carvings of New World crops in Roslin Chapel to remember them by). He was the first to realise this land mass was a continent, unlike Columbus (who never set foot on it) who still assumed he had found a far western archipelago of the East Indies...
Only one fine example of this amazing map, called the Waldseemuller Map has survived in a German collection. Eventuall, after a century or so of trying, the US Libray of Congress finally secured it for their collection. Why such perseverance? Well, look at the map. Look at the name of the explorer. Amerigo. Continents were then normally given feminine namings, which lead to 'America'. And there it is on a distorted map which nevertheless still has some parts of Florida recognisable. The first time it is drawn, the first time it is named. How little they could have known then that they were naming such a vast land.
I don't know about anyone else, but as a boy the tales of the great explorers were amongst my favourite reading. The tales of adventure, daring, danger and wonder astonished me. They still do. Many of thsoe explorers disappointed me in later life when I grew up and found many were greedy men out for gold and power, but some still inspire, like James Cook. An explorer a fine sailor, amazing navigator, a man who looked after his crew in days when many did not and also a scientist. This series covers the time when our world was largely unknown to us. It is hard today when we all see a satellite view of our home on the TV weather to realise that once we simply did not know what the world looked like. Was it flat? Round? What lay out inthe great Atlantic ocean? Were there really lands with giants? The wonderful embellishments on those maps then were partly decorative but principally they were a way of marking the limits of the cartographer's knowledge. 'Here be dragons' is perhaps something of a cliche nowadays, but once those dragons were real. They were dragons of darkness and ignorance of our own planet and like the mythical dragons they had to be challenged to relinquish their treasures. Imagine sailing out into the unknown in a small, wooden sailing vessel, literally sailing off the edge of the map, truly going where no-one had gone before. When people argue today that the space programme is not worth the money or time I point out that without this urge, this need to explore and to learn our civilization would still be in the Middle Ages. Exploration is in our blood. It drove us from the trees, across continents and then across vast oceans and one day, across the stars. Oen day someone will look back at our generations and marvel at their early star map and basica rockets and the achievements they created with them and wonder about our great age of exploration.
There is an excellent series on the History Channel on Sundays at the moment on cartography and the great age of exploration. This week decided to spurn the more (unjustly in my opinion) famous Columbus for the scholars of the Saint Die school who were not only master cartographers of the age (and this is an age when maps are state secrets because, like words, they have great power) but radical intellectuals, pushing the barriers of human knowledge in a time when it could be dangerous, even heretical, to challenge the status quo (read Catholic Church) view of how the world was.
They took charts from Amerigo Vespucci, a great explorer almost unknown to most folk today, who is almost certainly the first European explorer of that age to land in mainland America (beat to it by the Vikings, but they didn't come back and by the Sinclair lords of Orkney in Scotland who did and left carvings of New World crops in Roslin Chapel to remember them by). He was the first to realise this land mass was a continent, unlike Columbus (who never set foot on it) who still assumed he had found a far western archipelago of the East Indies...
Only one fine example of this amazing map, called the Waldseemuller Map has survived in a German collection. Eventuall, after a century or so of trying, the US Libray of Congress finally secured it for their collection. Why such perseverance? Well, look at the map. Look at the name of the explorer. Amerigo. Continents were then normally given feminine namings, which lead to 'America'. And there it is on a distorted map which nevertheless still has some parts of Florida recognisable. The first time it is drawn, the first time it is named. How little they could have known then that they were naming such a vast land.
I don't know about anyone else, but as a boy the tales of the great explorers were amongst my favourite reading. The tales of adventure, daring, danger and wonder astonished me. They still do. Many of thsoe explorers disappointed me in later life when I grew up and found many were greedy men out for gold and power, but some still inspire, like James Cook. An explorer a fine sailor, amazing navigator, a man who looked after his crew in days when many did not and also a scientist. This series covers the time when our world was largely unknown to us. It is hard today when we all see a satellite view of our home on the TV weather to realise that once we simply did not know what the world looked like. Was it flat? Round? What lay out inthe great Atlantic ocean? Were there really lands with giants? The wonderful embellishments on those maps then were partly decorative but principally they were a way of marking the limits of the cartographer's knowledge. 'Here be dragons' is perhaps something of a cliche nowadays, but once those dragons were real. They were dragons of darkness and ignorance of our own planet and like the mythical dragons they had to be challenged to relinquish their treasures. Imagine sailing out into the unknown in a small, wooden sailing vessel, literally sailing off the edge of the map, truly going where no-one had gone before. When people argue today that the space programme is not worth the money or time I point out that without this urge, this need to explore and to learn our civilization would still be in the Middle Ages. Exploration is in our blood. It drove us from the trees, across continents and then across vast oceans and one day, across the stars. Oen day someone will look back at our generations and marvel at their early star map and basica rockets and the achievements they created with them and wonder about our great age of exploration.
Hat's off
If you fancy a laugh and to be reminded of the ridiculous absurdity of the upper classes then have a look at some of the dreadful millinery sported by the wealthy and inbred members of upper-crust Brit society at Royal Ascot here.
If you fancy a laugh and to be reminded of the ridiculous absurdity of the upper classes then have a look at some of the dreadful millinery sported by the wealthy and inbred members of upper-crust Brit society at Royal Ascot here.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Cover story
As a sort of coda to my mate Vegar's recent ruminations on book covers I overheard two 20-something female customers remarking on the jacket designs for Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries from Orbit. They thought they 'looked silly' and 'like kid's books', a charge a couple of magazine reviewers have also raised, all though their reviews were generally as favourable as my own on the Alien.
I like the cover design for these books. They reflect a big attempt by major publishers to do something about the jacket design for titles, especially for genre work such as horror, SF&F or crime. Orbit, the UK publisher of Sookie have been revamping their entire stable with mostly rather good results in my not very humble opinion as a reader, reviewer and professional bookseller. Their make-over of one of my favourites, Comrade Ken MacLeod's entire range has given both good-looking jackets and also a uniformity to the series - they've actually designed them not only individually but together because they know readers will often have a range of an author's work and that they like to have them look good on their shelves.
I liked them so much I actually sent a message to Uncle Tim Holman, head of Orbit to tell him that I thought the new covers were quite refreshing. I thought the Sookie ones were great - fun, light-hearted and yet with a comedy-laced form of Gothic not unlike Charles Addams or Ed Gorey or Richard Moore. But these girls didn't like them, so I guess that proves you can't please everyone, can you? On a more positive note, I received my UK edition from Orbit of our local lad Charlie Stross' Singularity Sky. It too has a pretty cool cover and a nifty looking smaller hardback format. I'm re-reading it right now to see how it comapres to the much earlier draft I read about 18 months back when it was still called Festival of Fools (it has a sly dig at the Edinburgh Festival in a way most non-Edinburgh dwellers won't really get but made me smile) and as Charlie himself observes, he's been working and pushing it for a fair few years to get to this stage. Looking forward to interviewing Charlie soon for the Alien and recommend the book to anyone - a chance to get in on the ground floor before his new book deals in the states elevate his name. And how can you resist a book which begins on a backward colony world of a 19th century-style Russian Empire society with a rain of telephones falling on their cities from orbit?
As a sort of coda to my mate Vegar's recent ruminations on book covers I overheard two 20-something female customers remarking on the jacket designs for Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries from Orbit. They thought they 'looked silly' and 'like kid's books', a charge a couple of magazine reviewers have also raised, all though their reviews were generally as favourable as my own on the Alien.
I like the cover design for these books. They reflect a big attempt by major publishers to do something about the jacket design for titles, especially for genre work such as horror, SF&F or crime. Orbit, the UK publisher of Sookie have been revamping their entire stable with mostly rather good results in my not very humble opinion as a reader, reviewer and professional bookseller. Their make-over of one of my favourites, Comrade Ken MacLeod's entire range has given both good-looking jackets and also a uniformity to the series - they've actually designed them not only individually but together because they know readers will often have a range of an author's work and that they like to have them look good on their shelves.
I liked them so much I actually sent a message to Uncle Tim Holman, head of Orbit to tell him that I thought the new covers were quite refreshing. I thought the Sookie ones were great - fun, light-hearted and yet with a comedy-laced form of Gothic not unlike Charles Addams or Ed Gorey or Richard Moore. But these girls didn't like them, so I guess that proves you can't please everyone, can you? On a more positive note, I received my UK edition from Orbit of our local lad Charlie Stross' Singularity Sky. It too has a pretty cool cover and a nifty looking smaller hardback format. I'm re-reading it right now to see how it comapres to the much earlier draft I read about 18 months back when it was still called Festival of Fools (it has a sly dig at the Edinburgh Festival in a way most non-Edinburgh dwellers won't really get but made me smile) and as Charlie himself observes, he's been working and pushing it for a fair few years to get to this stage. Looking forward to interviewing Charlie soon for the Alien and recommend the book to anyone - a chance to get in on the ground floor before his new book deals in the states elevate his name. And how can you resist a book which begins on a backward colony world of a 19th century-style Russian Empire society with a rain of telephones falling on their cities from orbit?
Ladies, you thought the dashing, multi-barrelled-monickered cook was only good for slaughtering his own livestock and cooking it up. But now ‘meat’ the all-new, sexed-up Hugh Fearningly-Whittingstall, or ‘Dick Whittingstall’ as he is now known.
In the pages of his new Kama Sutra Cooking book, the River Frottage Beat Your Meat recipe book, Hugh shows you how to have a juicy big sausage, what to do with a giant marrow, the correct way to stuff a lamb, how to wring your chicken neck yourself and just what countryside chefs do with a big bit of meat on their hands. Learn how to beat your meat with Hugh. Even more exciting than Jamie Oliver’s the Naked and Oiled Chef. And Nigella Swallows. Yes, folks, TV cooking is the new sex.
In the pages of his new Kama Sutra Cooking book, the River Frottage Beat Your Meat recipe book, Hugh shows you how to have a juicy big sausage, what to do with a giant marrow, the correct way to stuff a lamb, how to wring your chicken neck yourself and just what countryside chefs do with a big bit of meat on their hands. Learn how to beat your meat with Hugh. Even more exciting than Jamie Oliver’s the Naked and Oiled Chef. And Nigella Swallows. Yes, folks, TV cooking is the new sex.
Friday, June 11, 2004
Cassini Division
No, not the excellent novel by Ken MacLeod, but the space probe which is fast approaching the ringed planet. Before the - hopefully - spectacualr fly through the rings of Saturn and the largest moon landing there will be an encounter with the smaller, somewhat mysterious moon Phoebe. As readers may well guess this erratic and odd little moon is named after the character Pheobe Buffet from Friends. Alas, the flight path will not allow for close examination of the other moons Monica and Rachel. Flight engineers said they could not accomodate all three into their plans due to fuel-weight issues and denied they were not taking high-res photographs and scans of Rachel because Brad Pitt had threaten to beat the crap out of them.
No, not the excellent novel by Ken MacLeod, but the space probe which is fast approaching the ringed planet. Before the - hopefully - spectacualr fly through the rings of Saturn and the largest moon landing there will be an encounter with the smaller, somewhat mysterious moon Phoebe. As readers may well guess this erratic and odd little moon is named after the character Pheobe Buffet from Friends. Alas, the flight path will not allow for close examination of the other moons Monica and Rachel. Flight engineers said they could not accomodate all three into their plans due to fuel-weight issues and denied they were not taking high-res photographs and scans of Rachel because Brad Pitt had threaten to beat the crap out of them.
Where is the microfilm, Mister Bond?
Once upon a time a superspy had to conceal his microfilm of secret KGB plans taken with a tiny camera the size of a fag lighter from Q branch. Now organisations and insitutions are getting worried about the spread of camera phones and the uses they could covertly be put to. Olly and others with fancy new comms device take note!
Once upon a time a superspy had to conceal his microfilm of secret KGB plans taken with a tiny camera the size of a fag lighter from Q branch. Now organisations and insitutions are getting worried about the spread of camera phones and the uses they could covertly be put to. Olly and others with fancy new comms device take note!
Down, down, deeper and down...
Caught this wonderful story earlier this week then was reminded to share it with you all when I spotted Charlie Stross mentioning it on his blog. A bloke used a JCB earth-mover to get into a former top-secret Cold War nuclear bunker in Scotland, which is now a museum. If I had run a Woolamaloo article on this you'd all have sniggered and remarked that poor old Joe was off his medication again, but it's true!!! No matter what you come up with as a writer some event in what we laughingly called real life will go one better... Even better the man's name is Ronald McDonald. I kid ye not, boys, girls and assorted penguins.
Caught this wonderful story earlier this week then was reminded to share it with you all when I spotted Charlie Stross mentioning it on his blog. A bloke used a JCB earth-mover to get into a former top-secret Cold War nuclear bunker in Scotland, which is now a museum. If I had run a Woolamaloo article on this you'd all have sniggered and remarked that poor old Joe was off his medication again, but it's true!!! No matter what you come up with as a writer some event in what we laughingly called real life will go one better... Even better the man's name is Ronald McDonald. I kid ye not, boys, girls and assorted penguins.
Tuesday, June 8, 2004
BOP!
Creamy graphic novel goodness in the store today. We received a consignment of McSweeney's as extolled by Alex, the cycling Manga character, on Monday which is resting on the dislocated SF table and the temp graphic novels shelves (refit hassles, everything everywhere... Putting shelves back together and cleanign them form builder's dust and dirt at 7.30 am this morning,. new aircon not in so all of us hot, dirty and sweaty before we even opened at 9... Nice to know my 4 years at colelge weren't wasted, eh?). Still we got it in and it looks a nice package. Also a couple of BOP!s - Box Office Poison - in stcok through our mates at Red Route. I'm a latecomer to this series, but it totally rocks. And for some reason the scene with the staff in the bookstore imaging customers as hideous, evil aliens attacking htem by asking damn foola nd annoying questions like 'do you work here' while imaging blasting them with a ray gun and jet-packing outta there does kind of hit close to home...
Creamy graphic novel goodness in the store today. We received a consignment of McSweeney's as extolled by Alex, the cycling Manga character, on Monday which is resting on the dislocated SF table and the temp graphic novels shelves (refit hassles, everything everywhere... Putting shelves back together and cleanign them form builder's dust and dirt at 7.30 am this morning,. new aircon not in so all of us hot, dirty and sweaty before we even opened at 9... Nice to know my 4 years at colelge weren't wasted, eh?). Still we got it in and it looks a nice package. Also a couple of BOP!s - Box Office Poison - in stcok through our mates at Red Route. I'm a latecomer to this series, but it totally rocks. And for some reason the scene with the staff in the bookstore imaging customers as hideous, evil aliens attacking htem by asking damn foola nd annoying questions like 'do you work here' while imaging blasting them with a ray gun and jet-packing outta there does kind of hit close to home...
Staked
Last ever episode of Angel on Sky tonight. Dammit!!! Interesting choice for an ending. Won't ruin it for those who haven't got cable or downloaded it, but let's just say it had some Kurosawa/Peckinpah overtones to it. Very cool and not the predictable finale you might expect, but then again it is written by Joss Wheddon, so expect the unusual.
Shame to see it go and hideous that dross like Charmed and, even worse, Andromeda still get churned out while Angel leaves us. Then again five seasons for what was s spin-off of a cahracter from another show is pretty good going. No more Buffy, no Angel, no Farscape (although movie version on the way, ditto Firefly),no Friends, no Frasier... Damn, too many good shows coming to an end. Then again two new ones have seriously tickled my fancy these last few months - Dead Like Me (which is renewed for another season, hurrah!Pouting star Elen Muth is interviewed in the new SFX) which I've raved about already and can tell you all is seriously weird, quirky, slightly Gothy and funny. The series based on Tremors confounded my expectations and is seriously good too. Very sassy with some macabre humour thrown in from time to time, looking forward to more of it. Now if only someone would pick up Carnivale in the UK.
Last ever episode of Angel on Sky tonight. Dammit!!! Interesting choice for an ending. Won't ruin it for those who haven't got cable or downloaded it, but let's just say it had some Kurosawa/Peckinpah overtones to it. Very cool and not the predictable finale you might expect, but then again it is written by Joss Wheddon, so expect the unusual.
Shame to see it go and hideous that dross like Charmed and, even worse, Andromeda still get churned out while Angel leaves us. Then again five seasons for what was s spin-off of a cahracter from another show is pretty good going. No more Buffy, no Angel, no Farscape (although movie version on the way, ditto Firefly),no Friends, no Frasier... Damn, too many good shows coming to an end. Then again two new ones have seriously tickled my fancy these last few months - Dead Like Me (which is renewed for another season, hurrah!Pouting star Elen Muth is interviewed in the new SFX) which I've raved about already and can tell you all is seriously weird, quirky, slightly Gothy and funny. The series based on Tremors confounded my expectations and is seriously good too. Very sassy with some macabre humour thrown in from time to time, looking forward to more of it. Now if only someone would pick up Carnivale in the UK.
Sunday, June 6, 2004
Recollections
In a week which has seen so many recollections by veterans of the Longest Day one story struck me in particular. A former Scottish solder, now a full 100 years old, being presented with the Legion D’Honoure, the highest decoration the French Republic has for his part in D-Day. Quite a few veterans were being honoured in this manner. What made this one a little different was that as he was being interviewed on one of the beaches later on he was joined by his nephew, himself now an elderly veteran of that day. His nephew was a sailor and in a remarkable coincidence actually realised as he watched from the deck of his ship that one of the landing craft going ashore in front of him contained his uncle’s regiment. He actually saw it land and his uncle storm his way up the beach at Normandy. Of the thousands of vessels and tens of thousands of men he just happened to be in the right place to see his own kinsman. He watched anxiously as long as he could to make sure his uncle made it up the beach. Utterly remarkable. There was also the stories of a British and a German veteran. The British soldier - Patrick Churchill who was presented also with the Legion D’Honoure today - went on to befriend a young German woman who lost most of her family in the terrible Allied fire-bombing of Dresden. He went on to marry her. The young German soldier was taken prisoner after D-Day and taken to a camp in Britain. He later was befriended by an English woman and they too married. From such small acts are ruins rebuilt, redemption sought and peace returned.
In a week which has seen so many recollections by veterans of the Longest Day one story struck me in particular. A former Scottish solder, now a full 100 years old, being presented with the Legion D’Honoure, the highest decoration the French Republic has for his part in D-Day. Quite a few veterans were being honoured in this manner. What made this one a little different was that as he was being interviewed on one of the beaches later on he was joined by his nephew, himself now an elderly veteran of that day. His nephew was a sailor and in a remarkable coincidence actually realised as he watched from the deck of his ship that one of the landing craft going ashore in front of him contained his uncle’s regiment. He actually saw it land and his uncle storm his way up the beach at Normandy. Of the thousands of vessels and tens of thousands of men he just happened to be in the right place to see his own kinsman. He watched anxiously as long as he could to make sure his uncle made it up the beach. Utterly remarkable. There was also the stories of a British and a German veteran. The British soldier - Patrick Churchill who was presented also with the Legion D’Honoure today - went on to befriend a young German woman who lost most of her family in the terrible Allied fire-bombing of Dresden. He went on to marry her. The young German soldier was taken prisoner after D-Day and taken to a camp in Britain. He later was befriended by an English woman and they too married. From such small acts are ruins rebuilt, redemption sought and peace returned.
D-Day
Yes, I’m chipping in my tuppence worth even although it has been all over the media this week. And rightly so - this is something that should be all over the media. Every school child should know about this moment. I’m certainly not one to glorify war, as I think most folk who read this will know. I often despair that in the 21st century we still use warfare to ‘solve’ problems (of course it rarely does). But this is something else.
From this distance, even to those of us familiar with history, it looks like a hard-fought but inevitable victory by the good guys over the forces of darkness. It wasn’t. Overwhelming force there certainly was: walls of attack aircraft roaring almost unchallenged over the French coast, thousands of ships from landing craft to the leviathan battleships of the Royal Navy and tens of thousands of men. They came from every corner of the British Isles. Men from the Highlands of Scotland to the rugged coast of Cornwall. Ulster men and Londoners. Men from Manchester and Yorkshire, from rural Britain to the industrialised Midlands. From all over the British Commonwealth and Empire. From Canada to New Zealand. The American G.I.s came in their thousands, most untested in combat but gung-ho nonetheless. When it came to the crunch on Omaha and Utah beaches that brash optimism was bloodied severely but those men from rural Pennsylvannia and downtown New York stood their ground. And there were those who had come to Fortress Britain to add their weight to the fight. The Free French were there. So too were Poles, Czechs and Norwegians and so many others.
Imagine for a moment. The cool of a summer morning dawning around you. The breeze from the sea brings you a tang of salt, the sound of seagulls screeching, driving away the odour from too many men in an enclosed space, many badly seasick. The early morning mist is ripped apart by the sudden onslaught of multiple rocket launchers and the heavy thunder of the enormous guns of the greatest fleet in human history opening fire. The landing craft lurches to a halt and the door falls down. A rush forward into the surf - if your lucky it’s up to your knees, for many it was over their head. The metallic ‘spang’ as bullets bounce from metal, the soft thud as it rakes wet sand and the obscene sound as they rip through human flesh. Your mates going down around you, maimed, killed, screaming for their mothers. And still you keep going and so do thousands of others, charging the beaches into a hail of fire, heading right for the centre of the inferno.
What sort of courage moved in the veins of those men? How on Earth can anyone dare to undertake deeds like these? But they did. Last week I compared the mythologizing of the war of Troy into the Iliad to the D-Day landings. Look at the deeds these people wrought and tell me that they are not now legend.
We are guilty in Britain of looking back at the Second World War sometimes with too much nostalgia, reliving what Churchill with is gifted rhetoric called ‘our finest hour‘. But I think on this special occasion we should allow ourselves some small measure of indulgence. There are few nations who have been tested in fire in quite the way the British of that period were. The United Kingdom has never been so united as it was then. Gardners ‘digging for victory’ over the land, women taking on jobs in factories, miners bringing out record amounts of coal, merchant sailors braving U-Boat waters, sailing ships built by the men of Glasgow and Newcastle. People sacrificed railings to be melted down to make weapons, whole towns saved money to sponsor their own Spitfire. When the Supermarine factory was bombed Spitfires were soon being built in other places, even biscuit tin factories. The Nazis could not believe how quickly the British workers could replenish the lost aircraft. Ordinary civilians suffered dreadful bombings; London blitzed, Glasgow’s Clydebank firebombed, Coventry almost wiped from the map. And they took it. It seems almost unbelievable to us, but these people just would not break. The men who stormed those beaches on Normandy fought for them with that same determination not to fail, not to break. They also fought for us, the generations who came after them. Their blood and bayonets shaped the free world we grew up in. They walked into fire and shattered a monstrous evil through Herculean efforts. Men charging the beaches, sailors raining down fire to support their comrades and the Great British Boffins creating the unbelievable spectacle of floating harbours - known as Mulberries - to sail across the Channel. Incredible bravery backed with desperate ingenuity.
I found it worrying however that a viewer’s poll on the dreadful Channel 5 found that the bulk of their viewers thought that the German Chancellor should not have been invited to the anniversary in France. One of the less inspiring attributes of the British, our xenophobia (although our French cousins are pretty good at it too). Now, apart from the notion of forgiveness and the fact that many young German boys lost their lives too there is the fact that Germany is one of the main nations of the European Union. I am pretty far from being a fan of the EU, but one function it has fulfilled is in uniting a continent which had been at war with itself for centuries. If the EU never achieves anything else except to keep the nations of Western Europe at peace then it will have done a good job. Free, democratic people from the Orkneys to the isles of Greece. Just look at the Europe which is today celebrating this occasion. Of course it is far from perfect, but for the most part it is peaceful, prosperous, democratic and free. Now that is a wonderful tribute to those who fought and those who fell.
However, as we consider the great events of 60 years ago it is too easy to get carried away with the literally awesome undertakings. It is important that the veterans of the day are allowed to tell their story; history is not a sequence of great events after all, it is people. Ordinary people make history; ordinary people are history. And how many were there who played their part, did their bit but were never on the beaches of Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah and Omah? How many anonymous agents from SIS died in an ambush or in a Gestapo torture chamber preparing the ground for Operation Overlord? How many brave Commandoes scouted out the defences in advance on cold, moonless nights? How many men and women of the French Resistance suffered and yet struggled on to do their duty for freedom when the BBC uttered the Invasion code-words to Occupied Europe: ‘wounds my heart with a monotonous langour’?
I found myself wondering this week what part my old chum George Deary played on this day. Some of you may recall me mentioning George before here. He was a cheery wee, old man when I was a boy. Semi-retired he did a bit of work still where my father worked. He and his elderly wife doted on me and I loved visiting them. George used to put young apprentices in their places when they boasted of their physical prowess or toughness by simply tapping their arm with his finger. The arm would be paralysed for half an hour. George learned that during the war. George was a Commando. Like most veterans George never really talked much about his wartime experiences. Partly it is a characteristic modesty of his generation - they simply didn’t consider themselves to be heroes - and partly it is because we can’t understand what they went through, only those who were there can really know. Personally I always considered this to be one of the distinguishing marks of the peace these men made - the fact that the vast majority of people in the West do not know, even in these troubled times (and what time isn’t?) is the result of their efforts. Isn’t that one of the things they fought so hard for? To save their children and their children’s children from ever having to suffer the way they had? Well, they did it. Think on that next time you see an elderly man like George playing bowls or reading his paper on the park bench - think about what that man may have done in his prime. The historian Niall Fergusson in his history of the British Empire, when summing up the bad points and good points of that globe-spanning history came to the conclusion that there was one good point that was beyond question: the fight against the Nazis. It took the resources of a global Empire for this fight and every resource was used and used willingly, almost as if every part of it’s history had been leading to this point, to this magnificent show of defiance in the face of evil and tyranny, making its most astonishing contribution to the world even as these actions effectively ended it.
Taking pictures in my local boneyard recently I came across a simple headstone. I almost passed it by, being more interested in overgrown, Gothic angels and crumbling tombs. But I stopped for a moment and looked at it. A simple cross with a regimental badge on it, the emblem of the Royal Scots, one of the most elite regiments of the British army. I looked closer and read the names. In case you can’t read it in this picture, the top name is: “Private James Allan, Royal Scots, 22ND December, 1915, age 29.” James Allan died in the War to End All Wars. Below the cross on his simple grave is another name: “Pipe Major James Allan, his son, asleep in Jesus.” Only two decades after his young father died in the War to end all Wars his son died in combat, also aged just 29, fighting in France. Pipe Major Allan didn’t make it to D-Day. He met his fate during the fall of France in the summer of 1940.
The professional men of the British Expeditionary Force who were so spectacularly rescued from Dunkirk after the devastating Blitzkrieg were his comrades. It was they who returned to a battered Britain where they trained tens of thousands of ordinary civilians to turn them into what the American historian Stephen Ambrose called ‘citizen soldiers’. These are the men who went on to fight at Normandy. I also thought it was worth reminding us all of the personal cost of war to families. These were just two, father and son, who fell. Dear old George survived but I wonder how many of his friends he lost. We must never, ever forget that those awe-inspiring statistics, those thousands of men, ships, planes, tanks, are not just numbers. They represent men who were individual men. They were fathers and sons, husbands, uncles, brothers. Each one with people he loved and who loved them. With their hopes and dreams, which far too many sacrificed for a future they would not live to see but would lay the foundations of. Let us hope these enormous sacrifices are honoured for as long as memory endures. Let us hope that so many people from so many lands and from so many classes can once again unite for a more noble purpose than war. Perhaps one day they will move Heaven and Earth once more but to end poverty, disease and hunger and so create a world fitting for the sacrifices that were made on our behalf one day on a beach on France.
Tonight, when the late summer dusk falls over Scotland I’ll light a candle for George and his mates and drink a toast to their memory. Friends, I invite you all to do the same.
Yes, I’m chipping in my tuppence worth even although it has been all over the media this week. And rightly so - this is something that should be all over the media. Every school child should know about this moment. I’m certainly not one to glorify war, as I think most folk who read this will know. I often despair that in the 21st century we still use warfare to ‘solve’ problems (of course it rarely does). But this is something else.
From this distance, even to those of us familiar with history, it looks like a hard-fought but inevitable victory by the good guys over the forces of darkness. It wasn’t. Overwhelming force there certainly was: walls of attack aircraft roaring almost unchallenged over the French coast, thousands of ships from landing craft to the leviathan battleships of the Royal Navy and tens of thousands of men. They came from every corner of the British Isles. Men from the Highlands of Scotland to the rugged coast of Cornwall. Ulster men and Londoners. Men from Manchester and Yorkshire, from rural Britain to the industrialised Midlands. From all over the British Commonwealth and Empire. From Canada to New Zealand. The American G.I.s came in their thousands, most untested in combat but gung-ho nonetheless. When it came to the crunch on Omaha and Utah beaches that brash optimism was bloodied severely but those men from rural Pennsylvannia and downtown New York stood their ground. And there were those who had come to Fortress Britain to add their weight to the fight. The Free French were there. So too were Poles, Czechs and Norwegians and so many others.
Imagine for a moment. The cool of a summer morning dawning around you. The breeze from the sea brings you a tang of salt, the sound of seagulls screeching, driving away the odour from too many men in an enclosed space, many badly seasick. The early morning mist is ripped apart by the sudden onslaught of multiple rocket launchers and the heavy thunder of the enormous guns of the greatest fleet in human history opening fire. The landing craft lurches to a halt and the door falls down. A rush forward into the surf - if your lucky it’s up to your knees, for many it was over their head. The metallic ‘spang’ as bullets bounce from metal, the soft thud as it rakes wet sand and the obscene sound as they rip through human flesh. Your mates going down around you, maimed, killed, screaming for their mothers. And still you keep going and so do thousands of others, charging the beaches into a hail of fire, heading right for the centre of the inferno.
What sort of courage moved in the veins of those men? How on Earth can anyone dare to undertake deeds like these? But they did. Last week I compared the mythologizing of the war of Troy into the Iliad to the D-Day landings. Look at the deeds these people wrought and tell me that they are not now legend.
We are guilty in Britain of looking back at the Second World War sometimes with too much nostalgia, reliving what Churchill with is gifted rhetoric called ‘our finest hour‘. But I think on this special occasion we should allow ourselves some small measure of indulgence. There are few nations who have been tested in fire in quite the way the British of that period were. The United Kingdom has never been so united as it was then. Gardners ‘digging for victory’ over the land, women taking on jobs in factories, miners bringing out record amounts of coal, merchant sailors braving U-Boat waters, sailing ships built by the men of Glasgow and Newcastle. People sacrificed railings to be melted down to make weapons, whole towns saved money to sponsor their own Spitfire. When the Supermarine factory was bombed Spitfires were soon being built in other places, even biscuit tin factories. The Nazis could not believe how quickly the British workers could replenish the lost aircraft. Ordinary civilians suffered dreadful bombings; London blitzed, Glasgow’s Clydebank firebombed, Coventry almost wiped from the map. And they took it. It seems almost unbelievable to us, but these people just would not break. The men who stormed those beaches on Normandy fought for them with that same determination not to fail, not to break. They also fought for us, the generations who came after them. Their blood and bayonets shaped the free world we grew up in. They walked into fire and shattered a monstrous evil through Herculean efforts. Men charging the beaches, sailors raining down fire to support their comrades and the Great British Boffins creating the unbelievable spectacle of floating harbours - known as Mulberries - to sail across the Channel. Incredible bravery backed with desperate ingenuity.
I found it worrying however that a viewer’s poll on the dreadful Channel 5 found that the bulk of their viewers thought that the German Chancellor should not have been invited to the anniversary in France. One of the less inspiring attributes of the British, our xenophobia (although our French cousins are pretty good at it too). Now, apart from the notion of forgiveness and the fact that many young German boys lost their lives too there is the fact that Germany is one of the main nations of the European Union. I am pretty far from being a fan of the EU, but one function it has fulfilled is in uniting a continent which had been at war with itself for centuries. If the EU never achieves anything else except to keep the nations of Western Europe at peace then it will have done a good job. Free, democratic people from the Orkneys to the isles of Greece. Just look at the Europe which is today celebrating this occasion. Of course it is far from perfect, but for the most part it is peaceful, prosperous, democratic and free. Now that is a wonderful tribute to those who fought and those who fell.
However, as we consider the great events of 60 years ago it is too easy to get carried away with the literally awesome undertakings. It is important that the veterans of the day are allowed to tell their story; history is not a sequence of great events after all, it is people. Ordinary people make history; ordinary people are history. And how many were there who played their part, did their bit but were never on the beaches of Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah and Omah? How many anonymous agents from SIS died in an ambush or in a Gestapo torture chamber preparing the ground for Operation Overlord? How many brave Commandoes scouted out the defences in advance on cold, moonless nights? How many men and women of the French Resistance suffered and yet struggled on to do their duty for freedom when the BBC uttered the Invasion code-words to Occupied Europe: ‘wounds my heart with a monotonous langour’?
I found myself wondering this week what part my old chum George Deary played on this day. Some of you may recall me mentioning George before here. He was a cheery wee, old man when I was a boy. Semi-retired he did a bit of work still where my father worked. He and his elderly wife doted on me and I loved visiting them. George used to put young apprentices in their places when they boasted of their physical prowess or toughness by simply tapping their arm with his finger. The arm would be paralysed for half an hour. George learned that during the war. George was a Commando. Like most veterans George never really talked much about his wartime experiences. Partly it is a characteristic modesty of his generation - they simply didn’t consider themselves to be heroes - and partly it is because we can’t understand what they went through, only those who were there can really know. Personally I always considered this to be one of the distinguishing marks of the peace these men made - the fact that the vast majority of people in the West do not know, even in these troubled times (and what time isn’t?) is the result of their efforts. Isn’t that one of the things they fought so hard for? To save their children and their children’s children from ever having to suffer the way they had? Well, they did it. Think on that next time you see an elderly man like George playing bowls or reading his paper on the park bench - think about what that man may have done in his prime. The historian Niall Fergusson in his history of the British Empire, when summing up the bad points and good points of that globe-spanning history came to the conclusion that there was one good point that was beyond question: the fight against the Nazis. It took the resources of a global Empire for this fight and every resource was used and used willingly, almost as if every part of it’s history had been leading to this point, to this magnificent show of defiance in the face of evil and tyranny, making its most astonishing contribution to the world even as these actions effectively ended it.
Taking pictures in my local boneyard recently I came across a simple headstone. I almost passed it by, being more interested in overgrown, Gothic angels and crumbling tombs. But I stopped for a moment and looked at it. A simple cross with a regimental badge on it, the emblem of the Royal Scots, one of the most elite regiments of the British army. I looked closer and read the names. In case you can’t read it in this picture, the top name is: “Private James Allan, Royal Scots, 22ND December, 1915, age 29.” James Allan died in the War to End All Wars. Below the cross on his simple grave is another name: “Pipe Major James Allan, his son, asleep in Jesus.” Only two decades after his young father died in the War to end all Wars his son died in combat, also aged just 29, fighting in France. Pipe Major Allan didn’t make it to D-Day. He met his fate during the fall of France in the summer of 1940.
The professional men of the British Expeditionary Force who were so spectacularly rescued from Dunkirk after the devastating Blitzkrieg were his comrades. It was they who returned to a battered Britain where they trained tens of thousands of ordinary civilians to turn them into what the American historian Stephen Ambrose called ‘citizen soldiers’. These are the men who went on to fight at Normandy. I also thought it was worth reminding us all of the personal cost of war to families. These were just two, father and son, who fell. Dear old George survived but I wonder how many of his friends he lost. We must never, ever forget that those awe-inspiring statistics, those thousands of men, ships, planes, tanks, are not just numbers. They represent men who were individual men. They were fathers and sons, husbands, uncles, brothers. Each one with people he loved and who loved them. With their hopes and dreams, which far too many sacrificed for a future they would not live to see but would lay the foundations of. Let us hope these enormous sacrifices are honoured for as long as memory endures. Let us hope that so many people from so many lands and from so many classes can once again unite for a more noble purpose than war. Perhaps one day they will move Heaven and Earth once more but to end poverty, disease and hunger and so create a world fitting for the sacrifices that were made on our behalf one day on a beach on France.
Tonight, when the late summer dusk falls over Scotland I’ll light a candle for George and his mates and drink a toast to their memory. Friends, I invite you all to do the same.
Golfing memoirs
Scotland’s First Minister, Jack ‘Furtive’ McConnell has now announced a U-turn over his incredibly foolish decision not to accept an invite as leader of the Scottish government to the D-Day celebrations. Why would any statesman turn down such an invite? Well, he had already accepted an earlier invite to the anniversary of the Saint Andrew’s Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Yep, he considered a bunch of upper class twats talking about golf and wearing clothes like 1970s New York pimps to be more important then honouring the veterans of D-Day. Despite the fact that Scotland, traditionally the backbone of the British Army, suffered disproportianetly in terms of casualties he didn’t anticipate the storm of protest he caused amongst veterans and ordinary Scots. How amazingly stupid can this man be?
Picture this: a darkened room in a stately home in Southern England. It is 1944, the early hours of June 4th. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, the man tasked with the unenviable decision of if and how to launch the assault to free Europe is talking to Field Marshal Montgomery. We have a two day window of weather when the tides are right. Do we dare to go, boys? Monty considers this. Pauses in his familiar thoughtful manner, looks at his diary and answers, hmmm, the 6th isn’t good for me, I have a game of golf scheduled…
Scotland’s First Minister, Jack ‘Furtive’ McConnell has now announced a U-turn over his incredibly foolish decision not to accept an invite as leader of the Scottish government to the D-Day celebrations. Why would any statesman turn down such an invite? Well, he had already accepted an earlier invite to the anniversary of the Saint Andrew’s Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Yep, he considered a bunch of upper class twats talking about golf and wearing clothes like 1970s New York pimps to be more important then honouring the veterans of D-Day. Despite the fact that Scotland, traditionally the backbone of the British Army, suffered disproportianetly in terms of casualties he didn’t anticipate the storm of protest he caused amongst veterans and ordinary Scots. How amazingly stupid can this man be?
Picture this: a darkened room in a stately home in Southern England. It is 1944, the early hours of June 4th. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, the man tasked with the unenviable decision of if and how to launch the assault to free Europe is talking to Field Marshal Montgomery. We have a two day window of weather when the tides are right. Do we dare to go, boys? Monty considers this. Pauses in his familiar thoughtful manner, looks at his diary and answers, hmmm, the 6th isn’t good for me, I have a game of golf scheduled…
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
Greatest Generation the Next Generation
After pissing off many veterans of World War II last week by comparing his illegal foreign adventures to the fight against the Nazis Bush showed his profound understanding of history and the feelings of those vets by re-iterating the same point again. There is no lower step this mass-mudering bastard will not sink down to attempt to justify his insane actions.
Yeah, George, it's just like WWII. We've got a country we invaded which has been bombed into fragments, with no infrastructure left and massive casualties from the bombing of civilian targets while the survivors try to eke out a miserable existence between the ruins while wondering what the future will bring to their ravaged land.
Coming in the week of the D-Day anniversary when we will be remembering the titanic struggles made by thousands of ordinary people to protect us from the most insidious darkness the man is once more utterly sickening.
After pissing off many veterans of World War II last week by comparing his illegal foreign adventures to the fight against the Nazis Bush showed his profound understanding of history and the feelings of those vets by re-iterating the same point again. There is no lower step this mass-mudering bastard will not sink down to attempt to justify his insane actions.
Yeah, George, it's just like WWII. We've got a country we invaded which has been bombed into fragments, with no infrastructure left and massive casualties from the bombing of civilian targets while the survivors try to eke out a miserable existence between the ruins while wondering what the future will bring to their ravaged land.
Coming in the week of the D-Day anniversary when we will be remembering the titanic struggles made by thousands of ordinary people to protect us from the most insidious darkness the man is once more utterly sickening.
Vonnegut
I'm indebted to my good mate Linus in Michigan for this link to an article by the great author Kurt Vonnegut called Cold Turkey. The meaning of life, politics, philosophy, war and human abuses (and that's just Bush's foreign and domemstic policies). You know you need to read this.
Elsewhere on the same site (Common Dreams) there is an article by Scottish MP George Galloway (probably the most litigious parliamentarian around - helps pay for the big house in sunny Spain and the fancy, expensive foreign car - hey why buy British, right?)). Not my favourite person. Actually I think he's more than a little full of himself and get the feeling a lot of what he does is carefully constructed for the media, but he does say some good things sometimes and has been very outspoken on the war. Here he ridicules - deservedly - those right wing wankers in certain outlets of the Brit media who in turn ridiculed those who marched against the war last year and made fun of them. Now, boohoo, they all say they were 'hoaxed' - note they don't admit they made a mistake nor do they apologise to those of us who spoke agaisnt the war. Tony Parson, we're talking about you you little talentless Spiv tosser (by the way his novels are even worse than his right-wing journalism). Perhaps this gives the impression I don't like Parson much. That's not true you know. I bloody despise the wee wanker.
I'm indebted to my good mate Linus in Michigan for this link to an article by the great author Kurt Vonnegut called Cold Turkey. The meaning of life, politics, philosophy, war and human abuses (and that's just Bush's foreign and domemstic policies). You know you need to read this.
Elsewhere on the same site (Common Dreams) there is an article by Scottish MP George Galloway (probably the most litigious parliamentarian around - helps pay for the big house in sunny Spain and the fancy, expensive foreign car - hey why buy British, right?)). Not my favourite person. Actually I think he's more than a little full of himself and get the feeling a lot of what he does is carefully constructed for the media, but he does say some good things sometimes and has been very outspoken on the war. Here he ridicules - deservedly - those right wing wankers in certain outlets of the Brit media who in turn ridiculed those who marched against the war last year and made fun of them. Now, boohoo, they all say they were 'hoaxed' - note they don't admit they made a mistake nor do they apologise to those of us who spoke agaisnt the war. Tony Parson, we're talking about you you little talentless Spiv tosser (by the way his novels are even worse than his right-wing journalism). Perhaps this gives the impression I don't like Parson much. That's not true you know. I bloody despise the wee wanker.
Dummies
Customer: “Excuse me, is this a library?”
Me (regarding the massive sing which says ‘booksellers’ and numerous other company logos all around): “er, no, this is a bookshop.”
Later that same day…
Elderly gentleman complete with cravat: “I’m looking for a book. I don’t know the name of it but I think it is a biography by Steven Coe about Brian Johnstone.”
Unable to find such a book I ask if he is certain of any of these details. Hmm, maybe it’s Bryan not Brian? Nope. Stephen Coe not Steven? No. Find a biography of Brian Johnston the cricekt commentator. Nope, not it. Okay, need more solid information to help you. Book is just out. No, I need actual information to search for you. Old eejit now tells me he is going to a launch for this book and needs a copy because his preview hasn’t arrived from the publisher. This is of course, my fault. Is miffed I don’t know what he doesn’t bloody know, as most idiots are. He then ponders it and thinks it may be written by Sebastian Coe. Er, the former Olympic athlete turned Tory politician? This is when you realise your customer know nothing, is guessing and won’t admit it.
You’d think if you were reviewing the book and going to the launch you’d know what it was bloody called and who wrote it, wouldn’t you? Is that too much to expect? He makes a call after wasting my time for ten minutes and it transpires he is after a new book by Jonathan Coe called Fiery Elephants, a life of B.S. Johnston… How do you forget a title like Fiery Elephants???? Anyway, I check the new info and find it is due to be released the end of this week and neither we or our other Edinburgh stores have received the book yet. He nods then asks where we keep it. I explain once more the book is not yet published and we do not have it in yet, adding it should be due in the next few days. He nods again, fingers his cravat (which can get you arrested in some parts of Tennessee you know) and asks which section we have the book in… Took four times of re-iterating the same sentence to get him to understand, at which point he moaned that we did didn’t have the latest books… I tried to point out that the book isn’t published yet, which is further evinced by the fact he is going to a launch for the book in a couple of days, an event which, in bookselling terms, means a party when the book comes out… He shakes his head with disgust and buggers off finally…
Large, middle-aged, fat American man (with very loud and fat wife who bellows to him right across the bookstore - decorum rating: nil): “Where have y’all got the books on whisky at?”. They’re in the Drinks section at the end of Cookery on the first floor. He looks puzzled, wrinkles his Neolithic brow and asks “drinks section?” Yes, there is a section on drinks at the end of the Cookery books section. “Drinks?” he asks again, clearly astonished. Where does he expect books on whisky to be? In the children’s section? Okay, maybe he’s from Kentucky or something and that is where they keep them. He chews it over for a further moment then seems to realise that I have actually told him how to find what he’s looking for and lurches off, laughing to himself and saying ‘drinks’ repeatedly before hollering at the top of his voice to his fat wife on the other side of the bookstore that he’s going upstairs. She naturally has to bellow back that she’s going to wait here. Very kind of them to let most of Princes Street know that.
And to round off the day, a customer in is late fifties or so being served by my Virginian chum Kate as I come behind the till. Being a nice chap I bag their books while she rings them through the till. First ‘gentleman’ (I use the word advisedly) remarks loudly to his friend and to Kate ‘what is that?’ while looking at me. Now you can imagine this sort of thing would bug most people. He then goes on to say that ‘in his day’ bookseller looked very different and were smarter in shirt and tie… Thought about remarking that the Victorian era ended over a century ago and that in my day people were free to be different without rude people commenting so crassly. Then again, maybe I was brought up more politely. Instead favour the old arsehole with stern and disapproving look which he doesn’t like, but he can kiss my magnificent Celtic ass.
Oh, I love working with the public. And people wonder why do I want a new job? How could I give all of this up?
Customer: “Excuse me, is this a library?”
Me (regarding the massive sing which says ‘booksellers’ and numerous other company logos all around): “er, no, this is a bookshop.”
Later that same day…
Elderly gentleman complete with cravat: “I’m looking for a book. I don’t know the name of it but I think it is a biography by Steven Coe about Brian Johnstone.”
Unable to find such a book I ask if he is certain of any of these details. Hmm, maybe it’s Bryan not Brian? Nope. Stephen Coe not Steven? No. Find a biography of Brian Johnston the cricekt commentator. Nope, not it. Okay, need more solid information to help you. Book is just out. No, I need actual information to search for you. Old eejit now tells me he is going to a launch for this book and needs a copy because his preview hasn’t arrived from the publisher. This is of course, my fault. Is miffed I don’t know what he doesn’t bloody know, as most idiots are. He then ponders it and thinks it may be written by Sebastian Coe. Er, the former Olympic athlete turned Tory politician? This is when you realise your customer know nothing, is guessing and won’t admit it.
You’d think if you were reviewing the book and going to the launch you’d know what it was bloody called and who wrote it, wouldn’t you? Is that too much to expect? He makes a call after wasting my time for ten minutes and it transpires he is after a new book by Jonathan Coe called Fiery Elephants, a life of B.S. Johnston… How do you forget a title like Fiery Elephants???? Anyway, I check the new info and find it is due to be released the end of this week and neither we or our other Edinburgh stores have received the book yet. He nods then asks where we keep it. I explain once more the book is not yet published and we do not have it in yet, adding it should be due in the next few days. He nods again, fingers his cravat (which can get you arrested in some parts of Tennessee you know) and asks which section we have the book in… Took four times of re-iterating the same sentence to get him to understand, at which point he moaned that we did didn’t have the latest books… I tried to point out that the book isn’t published yet, which is further evinced by the fact he is going to a launch for the book in a couple of days, an event which, in bookselling terms, means a party when the book comes out… He shakes his head with disgust and buggers off finally…
Large, middle-aged, fat American man (with very loud and fat wife who bellows to him right across the bookstore - decorum rating: nil): “Where have y’all got the books on whisky at?”. They’re in the Drinks section at the end of Cookery on the first floor. He looks puzzled, wrinkles his Neolithic brow and asks “drinks section?” Yes, there is a section on drinks at the end of the Cookery books section. “Drinks?” he asks again, clearly astonished. Where does he expect books on whisky to be? In the children’s section? Okay, maybe he’s from Kentucky or something and that is where they keep them. He chews it over for a further moment then seems to realise that I have actually told him how to find what he’s looking for and lurches off, laughing to himself and saying ‘drinks’ repeatedly before hollering at the top of his voice to his fat wife on the other side of the bookstore that he’s going upstairs. She naturally has to bellow back that she’s going to wait here. Very kind of them to let most of Princes Street know that.
And to round off the day, a customer in is late fifties or so being served by my Virginian chum Kate as I come behind the till. Being a nice chap I bag their books while she rings them through the till. First ‘gentleman’ (I use the word advisedly) remarks loudly to his friend and to Kate ‘what is that?’ while looking at me. Now you can imagine this sort of thing would bug most people. He then goes on to say that ‘in his day’ bookseller looked very different and were smarter in shirt and tie… Thought about remarking that the Victorian era ended over a century ago and that in my day people were free to be different without rude people commenting so crassly. Then again, maybe I was brought up more politely. Instead favour the old arsehole with stern and disapproving look which he doesn’t like, but he can kiss my magnificent Celtic ass.
Oh, I love working with the public. And people wonder why do I want a new job? How could I give all of this up?
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