Free Josh Wolf

You may remember me blogging on the dreadful plight of Josh Wolf, persecuted by the Bush Junta and his Gestapo agents of fear (for the protection of all of course). I thought this poem posted to his blog while he is incarcerated for no crime was worth repeating here:

My pen is a knife
Stabbing at the bitter truth
My camera is a gun
Shooting reality at 30 frames-per-second.
And my voice is a cannon
Booming into the night, a rallying cry.

I am a prisoner of war.
Captured in the campaign to destroy the press.
A political prisoner accused of no crime,
Another casualty in a civil war for civil liberties.

I've practised with both pen and the sword over the years; much as I enjoyed my foil and sabre duelling the pen has always proved to be by far the more flexible weapon for defence and offence. Heart, eyes, thought, writing, opinion: the most powerful force in creation. Those who would take our liberties fear us because they have none of these qualities. Their heart was replaced by an oil filter, their eyes are electronic and ever-watching yet see nothing real, thought is replaced with ideological mantra to save the chore of considering their own actions and responsibilities, writing is the dull scripture of dead men and modern weasels who say nothing but pour bile and opinion is what they are told. In the long term our weapons will prevail.

Pull my finger

Coverage of the Bavarian Finger Wrestling Championships. I kid ye not. I wonder if this is the same folks who do the annual beard and moustache championship in Germany?

Charlie Jade

My mate Matt put me on to the very cool SF series from South Africa, Charlie Jade. Its a future noir dealing with techno-corporate greed (very Bill Gibson) spread over three parallel Earths: the Alphaverse, Betaverse and Gammaverse. I think I mentioned it here a while back - it is very unusual (especially the South African angle) and I've really been enjoying it. I found a this video of clips from the show on YouTube:

The Big Cheese

My mate Jeff has a brilliant post about pungent cheeses being left under the hotel pillow of his and his wife Ann's room in France. The things which award-winning writers get up to on tour.

Who Hugo

The new Doctor Who proved to be more than just a hit with UK audiences, picking up a Hugo Award at this year's Worldcon. And to make we geeks even happier Joss Whedon's movie Serenity picked up a Hugo as well - doubly nice since both are partly the result of the loyalty of fans who kept the interest in and demand for the shows alive.

Gap? What gap?

The Scotsman has an article reporting on the earning discrepancies between male and female graduates. It seems bizarre that in 2006 different genders could still be on different salaries. That said I'd be bloody happy to be on the 'lower' average earnings; in fact I'd be happy to be close to that so-called lower average for graduates. Much as I dislike the idea of unscrupulous employers paying women differently from men I think the pay gap between what a lot of us earn compared to the averages quoted in the press is more important.

More Film Festival

I really can't face trying to write up different short reviews of the same films, so I'm going to be green and recycle this set of three of the more fantastic genre flicks from this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival for both the Woolamaloo and the FPI blog:

Well that’s another Festival season coming to an end and the finale of the 60^th Edinburgh International Film Festival – where did the time go? Among the diverse films I managed to catch at this year’s Film Fest there were a number of interesting genre pieces drawing on comics and the fantastic genres, not least among them being a new collaboration between director Terry Zwigoff and the Most Excellent cartoonist Dan Clowes; the pair had previously created the movie version of Dan’s Ghost World, which by coincidence I first saw at a previous EIFF. Their new movie, Art School Confidential (which I think is due for general release relatively soon in the UK), expanding upon the original short comics strip which appeared in Eightball.

A somewhat directionless young man decides to attend the art department of his college (where he has the brilliant John Malkovich as a jaded and bitter lecturer). He knows (or thinks he knows) that he wants to be a great and famous artist but has no idea how to create his own voice or style; advised by a lecturer to experiment with different styles he is later castigated by the same tutor for having work which is too diverse and without focus. The film fillets the pretensions of many artists and students and the notion of art itself, set against a backdrop of (possible) romance and a serial killer loose on the campus (the arrest of one art student by over-zealous campus police mirrors recent events in the US where campus police arrested an English student who had written a story about a murder and thus became a murder suspect in their eyes, so not far fetched!). The film mixes a jaundiced eye on human nature and art and a bleak philosophy with Clowe’s usual mixture of misanthropy mixed with humour; it is unlikely to convert new fans but anyone who loves Dan’s work will get a huge kick out of Art School Confidential (I loved it).

Joon-ho Bong’s Gwoemul (aka The Host) is a million miles from Art School, being a Korean SF-Horror monster movie. I can’t resist a good monster movie so along I went and disappointed I was not, especially as Bong put in an appearance to talk about the movie as a bonus. Recent Korean genre flicks, especially crime, thriller and horrors, have a tendency to be somewhat over the top in terms of the scenes and the actual scenario (not that this stops me watching them of course); Bong said he specifically wanted to get away from that sort of Tartan Asia Extreme kind of film and although he delivers plenty of major monster moments as a mutant emerges from Seoul’s Han river the focus here is really on the dysfunctional family attempting to save their youngest sibling trapped in the creature’s nest.

Along the way Bong draws a picture of utterly ineffectual Korean authorities, both unable to deal with the monster which emerges from the river and unwilling to listen to the family as they try to save their youngest member from a nasty fate; this is apparently a deliberate parody of events a few years before when an American officer told a local assistant in a US Korean base to dump toxic chemicals down the sewer and the Korean authorities proved utterly unable to prosecute the officer. The dumped chemicals, in the best horror tradition, are the cause of a strange mutation in the river, which begins as a curiosity, glimpsed briefly in a montage of scenes as Bong builds up the anticipation until finally unleashing his river monster on a crowd of Seoul citizens as it suddenly displays legs and leaps from the water to begin chasing screaming people across a riverside park. It’s a pure romp of a monster movie but one which has a nice family theme as its focus rather than simple gross-out horror effects (although there are some nice scenes on that score too). Not a masterpiece perhaps, but a hugely enjoyable Asian monster movie.

Wristcutters: a Love Story is a movie which caught my eye in the EIFF programme early on – the story of a young man who commits suicide only to wake up in a purgatory which looks rather like living world (except duller, more run down and no-one can smile) sounded familiar to me; in fact it sounded like the plot of the graphic novel collection Pizzeria Kamikaze. There was a good reason for this – the film is sourced from the same short story by Israeli writer Etgar Keret that illustrator Asaf Hanuka collaborated with for the comics. In fact at a post-screening Q&A session writer/director Goran Dukic explained that not only had Etgar approved of the variations on the story he had made for the movie version he had called Goran during the making of the movie to explain about the graphic novel and how he thought certain parts of the graphic novel might benefit from some of the adaptations made for the movie.

After committing suicide at the start of the movie (following a bad break-up with his girlfriend) Zia finds himself in purgatory, holding down a job at the Pizzeria Kamikaze. The world looks just like the real world, but the colour is washed out, everything is worn out and no-one can smile; the music on the radio and the diner’s jukebox are all by bands who had members who killed themselves, such as Joy Division and Nirvana. In fact it is a depressing place, but what can you do? Commit suicide again? What if that meant waking up somewhere even more depressing? After bumping into a former friend who had arrived after killing himself, Zia finds out his ex had also taken her own life a few months after his suicide. Now that he knows she is in the same purgatory Zia finds a form of purpose as he and his new friend, crazy Russian musician Eugene (who topped himself by pouring his booze over his electric guitar on stage – rock’n’roll!) embark on a road trip to find her, picking up hitchhiker Mikal (the gorgeous Shannyn Sossamon from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and Rules of Attraction) along the way.

Made on a shoestring, singer/writer/artist/actor (dammit, no-one should have so many talents!) Tom Waits came on board early on which Goran said helped out no end in managing to get the film made, while Goran’s producer Mikal P Lazarev also acted in the movie as Nanuk, a throat-singing mute Eskimo (no, I’m not explaining that, its best experienced). As the movie progresses we often get little flashbacks on different characters, showing how they killed themselves, interspersed with some simple but brilliant imagery. Despite what could be a very depressing subject matter (everyone is dead by their own hand and stuck in a morose limbo world) Wristcutters is quite brilliant; funny, intriguing, romantic and ultimately a life-affirming and upbeat movie, albeit in a delightfully weird way.

Between the philosophical musings, the inherent humour in the characters and their situation (for example a ‘black hole’ under the car seat where everything dropped gets lost evolves to be an actual black hole), the bizarre but loveable characters and the road trip, we have ourselves a damned fine little movie here; think a combination of Jim Jarmusch with Donnie Darko and you start to get the idea. And like Donnie Darko I have the impression that this could easily be a sleeper movie, bypassing a lot of the mainstream media but building itself a real audience when it finally gets released (no UK date yet, alas, so keep an eye out for any film festivals). Wristcutters has been my favourite movie of the whole Film Festival this summer and one of the quirkiest and frankly best movies I’ve seen this year; now I need to go back and read the graphic novel version. Ain’t It Cool News gave it a 5 out of 5 rating and the film has been creating a big buzz on the film festival circuit; I reckon a lot of you would love it too. Meanwhile you can check out more not only on the official site but also on the MySpace blog (set in Afterworld, USA) along with some clips of the film.

Also in Film Festival news Kevin Smith's Clerks II picked up the Standard Life Audience Award this weekend, with movie and comics writer Smith making a rare UK appearance as part of the Fest's Reel Life feature.

The Lothian Chainsaw Massacre

Well, thankfully not an actual massacre, but this story of an ordinary bloke who just suddenly seems to have gone stark raving bonkers sounds like something from a horror movie; after coming home from a function with his wife he went outside and was all of a sudden throwing a slab through the bedroom window of some nearby children as they slept then rampaging around with petrol and a chainsaw, cutting through doors, threatening police and even dousing them with petrol and waving a lighter at them before being brought down. Yikes.

On a much less nasty bit of lawbreaking I was almost run over by an arse who tried to drive through a red light near my home as I used the pedestrian crossing. He did stop - just - and gave me a look as if to say, how dare you cross when it is your right of way and the green man is on. I was barely halfway across when he accelerated and drove right through the red light, despite the fact there was a game on at nearby Tynecastle and the street was busy with other pedestrians, some still crossing. I turned round outraged and he mouthed something rude over his shoulder at me.

Four yards later a policeman who was watching all of this as he was on crowd duty for the game steps into the road and stops him. I turn to watch thinking good, at least he will get a bollocking from the officer and maybe he will be less inclined to be such a dangerous wanker in future. But no, the copper simply stopped him for a second to let another car turn into the side street, then waved him on. Bang up job, Lothian police, nice to see you protecting the citizens and doing your bloody job when people break the law right in front of you as you watch and you do bugger all. A while back, again on a game day, I saw a bloke just dump his car in the bus stop so he could save himself a few yards of walking to the ATM. He shouldn't be parked there anytime and on a game day the official police no parking cones are out on the street too. As he gets out of the car he suddenly realises that on the corner five feet from him are two motorbike cops with their visors up looking at him.

He gives a start and a "oh hell, I'm busted" look appears on his face; alas the lazy coppers shrugged, flicked down their visors and rode off without a word. Man smiles then saunters cockily over to the ATM while his car blocks the buses. I don't think the council needs to add more rules for motorists in Edinburgh, I think they just need to make sure police and traffic wardens do the bloody job we pay our taxes for them to actually do - especially when they do this sort of thing in front of people who pay their wages, it clearly says we can't be arsed to do anything. Er, so why are we paying you? And no wonder so many wankers park illegally when they know they can get away with it time and again.

I loved an old Judge Dredd short story where he teaches a rookie judge how to deal with bad parking - no, don't ticket him or get him towed, this is Mega City One, home of instant justice - Dredd takes a sledgehammer to the car and starts wrecking it while shouting "no parking!". Hmmm, more of that I think! If someone dumps their car on a crossing, parks on the pavement etc perhaps we should allow citizens to punish them on the spot by putting bricks through their windows (especially since the police obviously don't care - I mean upholding law and safety, that's nothing to do with them, is it?).

Pigeon Man

There is a character I've dubbed Pigeon Man; he's one of those characters you see regularly around town and I suspect a lot of folk in Edinburgh have seen him since he seems to get around all over the city. He's a tall man in his late 50s or 60s, gray hair and beard and always but always clad in a Duffel coat, regardlress of the weather. I've seen him everywhere from my street to Arthur's Seat, city centre, he gets around and wherever he goes he pulls out bread crumbs to feed the pigeons. Which is great because obviously we really need even more of these flying, disease-ridden rodents around urban areas crapping all over the place and trying to rip open bin bags. I've noticed him several times strewing around the bread crumbs near the huge wheelie bins so the residents end up with even more bloody pigeons and screaming, scavenging seagulls than usual, which does inspire me to wallop the senile old fool over the head with a frying pan.

But I've never talked to him, he's just one of those repeating characters you see around town - every city has some variation on them. That changed this week though when I was on the way to yet another Film Festival screening and saw him strolling down the road in his Duffel coat (all buttoned up on a summer day of course, nature's way of saying 'freak alert'). As he passes me he suddenly stops, lunges in on me until his silver beard is inches from my face and mumbles "accept Jesus" while rolling his eyes. Then he straightens up and walks on as if nothing had happened, so I run up behind him and shout "only if you accept Lucifer" which he ignored. Gee, if I didn't already hate organised religions that's the sort of spokesman that would make you question your faith. Oddly I have never had an agnostic or aethiest or Wiccan or Buddhist run up to me in the street like this (more disturbing than the old loonies like this are the earnest young believers who start off by asking an innocous question like directions to someplace then suddenly they are inviting you to prayer meetings and these smegheads seem unable to grasp the notion of "no" as an answer or indeed the notion of personal space as they always lean in as close as possible to you).

Oh well, been ages since some holier-than-thou, I-Know-Better-Than-You type has come up to me in the street and try to introduce Jesus to my life (if I wanted a 30-something Jewish man in my life I'd hang out at accountants conventions). Still, my favourite street preacher was another silver-bearded rambling, foaming the mouth nutter who used to parade up and down Princes St with "the end of the world is nigh" signs; during the height of the summer tourist season he was on Princes Street with a number of radical Christian youths who had tied a number of boards to the railings explaining to us all why we would all be going to Hell except him. And being touristy Edinburgh he had the same board repeated in a variety of other languages! Only in Edinburgh...

Planets can go up as well as down

The real estate market was aghast at the news that following on from the International Astronomical Union's redefinition last week on planetary or smaller bodies in our solar system they are now looking to take Pluto out of the main planet league, with suggestions that it should be redesignated a "dwarf planet" or "orbiting body of diminutive stature" for the more politically correct. Everyone always picks on the little guy. A spokesman for the Federation of Islamic Fundementalist Astronomers described this as a typical Western infidel bullying tactic against the weak.

To qualify as a planet a body must now:

"be in orbit around the sun

be large enough that it takes on a nearly round shape

have cleared its orbit of other planets."

Since Pluto's orbit overlaps with Neptune it is disqualified, thus confirming that even in space there is a serious snobbery over properties which are only semi-detached. The news has caused a slump in property prices on Pluto. However it isn't all bad news - J-Lo's arse has now officially under the new rules been recognised as a planet, while Dolly Parton's breasts failed narrowly to qualify because they interfere with each other's orbits.

The IAU will have a follow-on meeting where they will discuss how the remaining planets will be graded and described, principally along the lines of which cool movies they have starred in. So it is thought Mars will obtain a very high "mega cool planet" status from IAU scientists because it has been in so many cool stories and movies, while Earth will likely end up with the simple description "mostly harmless". Moves to have the planets Kronos and Vulcan added were narrowly defeated when it was pointed out they only existed in Star Trek.

Goldman virtual shop opens

Dan Goldman, noted Man With Beard, purveyor of frilly evening shirts and excellent comics artist on the bloody brilliant Shooting War webcomic (and the eventual print version next year) tells me he has set up his own virtual shop online where you can buy limited edition prints of his work, including some from Shooting War (just waiting on Dan and Anthony to finish that last chapter and post it up).

Hocking and Pack(ing)

The Silvereel draws my attention to the new blog by former head buyer from my one-time employer. It is interesting to read it, especially given Scott Pack's postings on why he left Waterstone's and the way the buying team took much of the public flack for some fiasco when it was obvious that they were simply having to follow the decisions made by the senior management. I seem to recall commenting to that effect many months ago - despite my problems with the way the company had been going the buying team was not a crew I had difficulty with, quite the reverse - unlike upper management (or sometimes even branch management) they actually listened to suggestions and replied to them, even if it wasn't something they could use. Then again, most of them actually read a lot of books, so we had that language in common.

As an interesting sidebar there is a link to an interview with Scott by Ian Hocking; Ian was the first author I interviewed on the FPI blog after being kicked out of the W. It is indeed a small world and the literary one is even smaller; if you don't know someone in it chances are you know someone else in the biz who does. Aside from the bit on W I'd recommend having a look at Scott's new blog as it is a pretty good read (especially on the book front).

Music of the (battle) stars

In the second season of the excellent new Battlestar Galactica there is a scene where Starbuck finds herself back on her homeworld, now occupied by the Cylons after much of it was devastated. After eluding the machine menace she finds her way back to the abandoned building where her apartment was before the war. Finding some batteries she powers up her stereo, puts in a disc and sits back for a few moment of pre-war style almost normalcy. The music she listens to is a piece I recognised from my own collection, part of the piano-based Metamorphoses by minimialist contemporary composer Phlip Glass.

Although I love this piece (hey, I have a copy myself) I remember being a bit annoyed at it cropping up here; this is supposed to be a human civilisation light years distant who have never had contact with Earth (or if they have it was so long ago it is now mythical) so playing a piece of contemporary music from our own culture broke the illusion for me for a moment. Later scenes also annoyed the hell out of me for the similar reasons - they proceed to use cars to move around occupied Caprica, including several recognisable ones such as a Humveee. Again, since this is an alien culture it bugged the hell out of me to see them used in the show in this casual manner - obviously it would be damned expensive to design fake alien cars for a few short scenes, but if you can't then you should just avoid using the cars for those scenes rather than break the 'reality' of the show.

The messianic and religious themes also annoyed me a bit, but I'm prepared to take those as part of a mirroring of the strong religious currents in American society, especially in the aftermath of trauma. Small niggles though since I generally think the new BSG is bloody brilliant, down and dirty drama which doesn't normally dish out easy answers and instead offers moral quagmires for the characters (oh and I totally want to snog Grace Park who plays Boomer). This last week I have been listening to the soundtrack for the second season of BSG and it made me realise why the Philip Glass piece had appeared; Bear McCreary's soundtrack music, now that I hear it free of the actual show, clearly has been largely influenced by Glass' work, with similar movements such as simple themes which repeat throughout with increasing variations.



Its actually a pretty enjoyable soundtrack (especially if you already like Glass) and I realise now how much of it had passed me by during the actual show (but then the incidental music is meant to help the story along, not to be the main attraction), so it is nice to hear it properly; I especially love the use of the percussion in some of the battle scene pieces, reminiscent of Taiko drumming and just ever so slightly Crouching Tiger-esque.

Global temperatures continue to rise

The average temperatures around the world continue to rise and not all of it is coming from my body temperature when Lucy Porter walks past on the way to her Fringe show. Science has been divided over the issue of global warming, roughly falling into two camps: real scientists with a brain capable of interpreting observational evidence and stooges in the pay of oil companies or working for Bush who continue to deny the obvious like a stuck record of Ann Coulter. Now both have finally agreed on one of the principal cause of global temeperature rises: Dell laptop batteries.


Festivals

Which brings me to some of those unusual shows on this year's Edinburgh Fringe, such as the Dell-inspir(on)ed musical Goodness, Gracious, Great Bytes of Fire. The Cartoon History of Islam has been drawing in huge crowds, although mostly rampant mob crowds outside the show/exhibition demanding mass beheadings. Spank That Monkey is a show which decries the Fringe and all modern art as a 'bunch of old wank' and so put on a show where they spend an entire hour tossing off on stage to illustrate this; still I've seen worse on the Fringe (the Oxbridge am-dram crowd spring to mind). There was a show people found to be the funniest in town, a cutting satire on Edinburgh council's woeful transport policy. Then unfortunately we found out it was actually just a presentation of the real transport plans from the council...

The Film Festival had a sell-out retrospective of forgotten British director from the 20s and 30s, Windsor Smythe-Sponkington, including his silent masterpiece, the 1926 murder-mystery set in Lower Eccles "The Sparking Mystery of the Kipper and the Black Pudding". His first talking movie, "Pearly Queen of the Drains", is one of the gems of British film history, thought lost to posterity until it was found in a disused chicken shed on a farm in Norfolk four years back and lovingly restored by the British Film Institute. It is thought to be the first movie musical in British cinema history and stars such now-forgotten leads as Daisy Meadows ("Britain's favourite singing grandmother"), Alf Brasspenny and Knobby Garnett singing such hit songs as Flushing My Hopes Down the Sewer and "My Old Man's a Dustman, My Mum's An East End Hoor".

The story is a simple one of a poor working class girl who lives with her impoverished but chirpy and cheeky cockney family in a London sewer, dreaming of a better life and enough money to buy a steak and kidney pie big enough for the whole family to live in; the scene where the mother, now too poor to buy even rancid jellied eels to feed the family after father has spent all the housekeeping on on drink and whores, is forced instead to eviscerate herself and use her intestines as filling for the eel pie. Oh how we laughed. Personally I was most taken with his working-class version of the classic "The Red Shoes", "The Green Wellies", which sees an overweight famer's daughter from Yorkshire (perfectly played by Dora Cabbagelard) who dreams of dancing ballet among the turnip fields and, as far as I know, is the only movie to feature a supporting cast of singing and dancing whippets (which appear in the gran finale at the country fair as our heroine in her Wellingtons dances among the prize marrows, a truly unforgettable movie moment).

Messing around by the water




Walking home along the nearby canal on a warm, summer evening, people feeding the ducks and swans, cycling and jogging on the towpath, mucking around on boats while the floating restaurant on a barge is preparing to get up steam for an evening's cruising and dining. Me? I just turned a ten minute walk home into a long, meandering, I-ain't-in-no-hurry walk on a fine summer eve, sounds of the city falling away to peace and relaxation. Wasn't planning it this way, it was just one of those things that happened, slow, peaceful walk, evening light, green trees leaning heavily over the water, ducks scrounging for bread...



That time of evening, with the light starting to go golden from the sun going down slowly into twilight and the light just right for these reflections on the water, disturbed only by the occassional passing barge or some ducks taking their evening consitutional.





Some old winding mechanism, with a new bike lock on it so presumably still used by someone, perhaps they lower and raise new boats along the slipway near it.







The old boat house - check out the odd looking rowboat moored alongside, it is actually two rowboat, a damaged one with a split prow sitting atop the other.



Stone, steel, rivets and water.



Any bread, guv?






Some holiday-makers tootling around on their barge. I love the fact this is all a few minutes from my door. I used to cycle along the towpath out to one of the villages, Ratho, just outside the city - great pub lunches at the inn right on the canal there. Eventually after going past the Falkirk Wheel you can go through to Glasgow this way - the other direction terminates right at Tollcross in the city centre of Edinburgh, right round the corner from the student flat Mel and I used to share years back; the whole area was semi-derelict and is now regenerated with new flats, bars and restaurants (the ones I posted up here ages ago) with more of the canal where the former brewery next to be redeveloped (which is going to make my end of town even nicer).



Time to tie it up for the evening. Once this would have been a damned busy place of work when the canals were still major arteries of commerce; now after years of neglect they're being regenerated like many down south, the towpaths cleared and mended for walkers and cyclists (forming great off-road cycle networks across the country), holiday barges, rowboats for hire, floating restaurants, the university's rowing club all using it more and more and also a nice route for locals to take in and out of town - makes a nice change from walking on a path next to a busy road at rush hour, doesn't it? Hmmm, could wander on home now or could just sit here and watch the world going slowly by.

Flogging

Comics site Newsarama is one I check regularly to see what's going on in the four-colour biz. Most Excellent scribe Paul Jenkins has a semi-regularly (as he says, 'regularly' means whenever he manages it) column called Flogging a Dead Horse, which I always read. This time round he describes excrutiating faux pas at a comics convention amongst others, while earlier columns have covered touching little family dramas such as the time he picks up his missus, Nigh Perfet as she is known, from hospital, talking in tongues and loud outbursts as she is still full of post-op drugs while he is on a hands-free conference phone in the car trying to take part in a radio interview for a major Marvel project as Nigh Perfect raves loudly in the seat next to him and occassionally shouts at passing cops.

Seriously, this is a comics column you can read if you never read comics, its just bloody brilliant and you should treat yourself to some good guffaws. Adrock, for some reason I'm thinking you especially will enjoy Flogging a Dead Horse for some reason.

Hey, Monkey Boy!!!

New Scientist has depressing but not terribly surprising news that the number of people in the United States who don't believe in Evolution is increasing, with the recent survey finding that the number who believe in Evolution has fallen from an already paltry 45% in 1985 to 40% today. This puts the United States barely ahead of Turkey.

I'm with my patron saint, Bill of Hicks on evolution, when he is teasing some fundamentalist Christians who believe in the literal truth of the Bible rather than seeing it as metaphorical. If the Earth is 6, 000 years old and everything that existed then exists now then what about dinosaurs, asks Bill. Pretty big omission from the Good Book, surely? "And lo the disciples came running unto Christ saying 'there's a big fucking lizard down there, Lord'. And Jesus removied a thorn from the Brontosaurus' paw and the two were firm friends."

Bill goes on to say that the usual answer by these numpties was that God had put the dinosaur skeletons there to 'test their faith'. Now, as Bill remarks, if this were true it would be even more worrying because it indicates that God thinks he is a bit of a prankster, running around during those six days burying fake dinosaur skeletons in the Earth to mess with people's minds and to leave layers of fossils in different strata which clearly indicate from their remains that creatures have changed - evolved as we say - from less primitive forms into more advanced ones over the eons.

But this cuts no ice with the growing ranks of the ignorant and not all of those are fundamentalists. It is all but impossible to argue with such groups because they do not subscribe to reasons, falling back on that tired argument of the weak-minded that it is the will of the creator moving in mysterious ways and a matter of faith (which means, conveniently, they can ignore evidence and avoid reasoned argument). It is doubly ironic that a nation which prides itself on being one of the most advanced technolgocial countries on the planet should be so ridden with weak-minded, ill-educated, supertitious fools who really need to be transported back in time to the Middle Ages. And sure, they are are entitled to hold their opinion as I am; the difference is that the are complete morons and I'm entitled to say they have the intellectual capacity of watered down porridge as they are to burn my effigy and decry me as a servant of the Horned One (or Stan, as I call him). Oh dear, did that opening to 2001 not achieve anything in the US?

Cyberned

Top Glasgow-based fantasy author Mike Cobley (of Shadowkings fame) dropped me a line to say he wasn't letting Jeff VanderMeer have it all his own way on the SF&F authors who do videos front and he and his mate had posted Cyberned on YouTube - is it just me or does Mike look like a cross between Holly from Red Dwarf and a Glaswgian Max Headroom here? Boing Boing certainly liked it.

My Country, My Country

Tonight I caught a quite fantastic documentary at the Edinburgh Film Festival, My Country, My Country by Laura Poitras. Laura spent eight months in Iraq, filming on her own without a crew, exploring the spiralling events in the lead up to the election. While she took in the US military and some of the private contractors (including a great bunch of Australians) the main part of the film follows Dr Riyadh who she met while filming around the notorious Abu Ghraib where American saved prisoners from the tortures and deprivations of the Saddam regime by, er, torturing them…

Dr Riyadh allowed Laura to follow him around, even as far as staying at his home with his wife and children. As well as working as a doctor in a neighbourhood desperately in need of such help he was involved in politics, running for a seat in the new government at one point before his Sunni party decided to boycott the elections. Being with Riyadh obviously opened doors for Laura, as he said herself in a Q&A after the screening, so we get to see a fair bit of life and politics in the divided city of Baghdad (to think one of the world’s most ancient cities, one of the cradles of civilisation itself is so reduced).

More than this though, we get to see family life – some is frighteningly bizarre as we see one woman trying to swat an irritating fly while explosions and machine gun fire crackle loudly outside. Other parts would be recognisable in any nation, such as the teen daughter proclaiming loudly that she voted for her dad in the election and since she did shouldn’t she get some kickback in the pocket money department? Dr Riyadh himself came across as that rare thing, a decent man in a bad situation, trying to make things better but with the weight of event wearing him down.

Of course, Laura, Riyadh and his family were taking a huge risk, having an American staying in his home in a Sunni region of Baghdad. And even daring to take part in the election could be enough to get him killed – many involved, from would-be politicians to ordinary workers simply handing out the registration papers were targeted for murder. In fact the film can’t be shown in Iraq right now as Laura has talked with the doctor and frankly it is too damned dangerous and could get someone killed. When asked how dangerous it was for her personally she didn’t downplay the dangers but did point out that unlike most of the people she was filming she could leave at any point.

I was deeply impressed with My Country, My Country; events in Iraq are in danger of becoming a mix of statistics (xxx civilians killed in bombing today, xxx soldiers now died) and politicians who talk only in grand, strategic terms of great plans and schemes. Neither of these addresses the fact that these events are happening to actual people. Laura’s work takes its place alongside blogs like Baghdad Burning, (Riverbend's last blog post there about more people being forced out of Baghdad by the Madhi army is simply terrifying and leaves me wondering how Dr Riyadh and his family are coping) or the webcomic Shooting War (written by Anthony Lappe who has reported from there) as part of a growing amount of different media which is putting a more personal face on what is happening, which is a good thing in my book. It is too damned easy to become inured to events when mostly all we hear are general statistics and political rhetoric.

It is also worth bearing in mind how instrumental the media coverage of the Vietnam War was in changing the US public opinion and ultimately the government’s policy. I also found a section where a US officer is talking about making the election a success but not being bothered about certain sections of Iraq, such as Fallujah, which are unlikely to be US friendly, not really having a chance to be in on the election to be interesting; it made me think immediately of the tactical way in which entire sections of the electorate in Florida were systematically denied their chance to vote as Dubyah’s brother did everything he could to fix it for his little bro to win the election (and even then it didn’t work, Fox had to sort it all out for them).

Dr Riyadh is on a CIA list of potential troublemakers they would like to arrest, because he dares to question and to use the democratic process of debate which the US Coalition purports to be there to give to Iraq; gives you a good grasp of the mindset of Coalition intelligence, where violent terrorists are classed as a similar risk to a family doctor who dares to speak out and seems exactly the sort of decent man they should be embracing and the sort the country desperately needs. These are the same intelligence communities which keep demanding more powers and less oversight to spy not only on foreign terrorists but on our own citizens. Hmm. I highly recommend catching this documentary if you can – it is strong stuff but fascinating and very human.

As a final recommendation, Laura told the audience that she had no problems from the authorities while shooting the work, but since completing it and going home to New York she has found herself placed on the suspected traveller list by the US Homeland Security (“War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength”) which means each time she flies now they have to stop her, phone the Homeland Gestapo mob and get clearance before she can board a plane. Yes folks, last week books were dangerous, this week making a documentary film is; so glad we are fighting to preserve our democratic freedoms. Frankly I think that is a blood fine endorsement of Laura and her film. A shame neither Tony Blair nor Dubyah is likely to sit down and watch this.

Half woman

A chum sent me the link to this YouTube video which is a very cool variation on one of the oldest magical illusions in the book.

Film Festival online

Had the fun of my first movie of the 60th Edinburgh International Film Festival this week. Busting is a part of the They Might Be Giants retrospective of unusual hidden gems of movies from the 70s in America, a period any film fan knows to be a rich one, giving us Scorcese, De Palma and more. They Might Be Giants is looking at the movies which don't usually make the lists of greatest movies of the period but which are being touted here as great examples of (often independently made) movies which pushed the film-making evnelope in both terms of technical expertise in the innovative ways movie makers found to shoot scenes and also the subject matter.

Busting is an almost archetypal buddy cop movie; two guys with no life outside the force, partners and best mates, the only honest cops in a world of gangsters and bribed, corrupt cops. It is an early Peter Hyams movie with Elliot Gould and Robert Blake, along with an early screen appearance by Antonio Fargas at one point (yep, the man who would be Huggy Bear in Starsky and Hutch). It was an absolute blast of a film, with some innovative camera shots and use of low, ambient street light sources for the night shots, years before Michael Mann would do the same to such stunning visual effect for Collateral and Miami Vice. Like any modern buddy movie which descends from it, Busting has its share of humour with the two laid-back vice cops although today it has some unintentional humour in the 70s styles - Elliot Gould's perm and droopy moustache brought a lot of giggles from the (packed) audience; he looked like a cross between the 118 188 advert guys and Rangers-era Graeme Souness (not a great look really). The film now looks to be full of cop buddy movie cliches, except of course these scenes were not cliches when the movie was made. Its still a hugely enjoyable movie and the car chase finale between two ambulances is brilliant; in a classic case of what comes around goes around I find the anti-authority message and theme of distrust in corrupt systems which is common to 70s era US movies (not surprisingly given Watergate and Vietnam protests) actually fits so very well with the 2000s.

The Film Festival website announced today that they will be working with the BBC to make available a package of online videos covering clips from some of the movies along with interviews and other material after the Gala opening of the film. You can also catch some short movies being made for BBC Film Network celebrating fresh talent (including my beloved animation genre), so if you aren't lucky enough to be here you can still check out some of the Film Fest. One of the first movies stars Johnny Lee Miller and Billy Boyd in The Flying Scotsman, a biopic of the great Scots cyclist hero Graeme Obree. Its a nice touch to the site I think; even though I am here I didn't get into that film, although I did see the red carpet being rolled out in preparation for it as I went into another one, so I get to catch up with it then watch a cool animated short afterwards too! You can access the material on the video section of the EIFF site.

YouTubing

Love this simple but clever sequence on YouTube where an artist has taken pictures of herself daily then montaged them together on video.

'Grass'ing up - writer was only following orders

The Nobel Prize winning German author Gunter Grass, an author with a heavy international reputation, much of it built on his famous anti-Nazi work The Tin Drum, has belatedly confessed that he served for a few months in the Waffen SS during the closing period of the war in Europe. It has, understandably, caused a bit of controversy, with some demanding that a writer who has effectively been a part of the post-war German conscience should now return his Nobel Prize while Lech Walesa, himself a Nobel winner, has demanded Grass return his honorary citizenship of the Polish city of Gdansk.

Others have defended the writer, pointing out that he was 17 at the time, raised on over a decade of Nazi propaganda. His writings since those few months, they argue, shows his true feelings and of course those feelings may well have been shaped by his disillusionment between the fiction of Nazi propaganda and the reality of the brutal warfare practised by the SS. Certainly there is no suggestion he was involved in any war crimes or atrocities, he seems guilty only of being young and eager to serve and perhaps guilty of keeping quiet about his SS service for so many decades.

Still Nazi-era entanglements don’t seem to have stopped the careers of Kurt Waldheim or the new Pope. I’m inclined to give Grass the benefit of the doubt since he was not involved in war crimes and his actions since the war speak of a deeply felt repentance and these have been read by millions in many languages around the world (although not on UK flights recently of course). I do find the timing of this belated confession a little curious however, coming as it does just before his war time memoirs are due to be published…

Terror books

A few days ago I joked with colleagues that I was going to spend my break setting up my new business: taking a henna pen and writing short stories and poetry onto passenger's arms and legs in order that they could have something to read on flights now that books and magazines are officially Weapons of Mass Literature and verbotten on flights out from the UK. Today on Boing Boing I read an article about printing out some copyright free text of a classic from the excellent Project Gutenberg onto a long scarf, since clothing (so far) has not been banned.

Some people have commented that we shouldn't rubbish these draconian new flight rules because they are there for our safety. Personally I don't completely buy that - I do think the authorities are trying to stop bombers on aircraft, but their methods are slipshod, reactive, illogical and often contradictory. You need to have your shoes scanned but the scanners used often are not able to detect explosives if indeed you had some hidden there. All liquids are suspicious, except a few days ago they were not. Liquid explosives have been used for years by terrorists so why was it suddenly a no-no for a few days? What about liquids taken onto the plane by crew? Seems to me that if you were a determined bomber trying to avoid the new hand luggage restrictions you would infiltrate the catering company and conceal liquid bombs in among the drinks being taken onboard.

Phones are a no-no, yet as we saw in the news the other day a passenger on an incoming flight left their phone behind on a plane which later rang during the outgoing flight, forcing the captain to return the flight to the airport. So we've banned phones from outgoing flights here but people are flying in with electronic equipment and sometimes leaving them behind while no-one even during the heightened alerts notices this is on the plane. Does reinforce the impression that the new security measures are there to make it look as if the government is doing something to protect us rather than actually doing so in reality.

Meantime Blair's hard-nosed enforcer John Reid tells us all the authorities have foiled at least four large-scale terrorist campaigns since 9-11. Well perhaps they have, but since we only have the government's word for that and no evidence I don't see why I should believe them. Especially considering he trots this out during a crisis, the timing of which makes me think it was designed to shut up those critical of events and make is all grateful to the government for protecting us all. And then there is the level of credibility - no evidence has been brought forward, no big trials held, yet we are expected to take his word for it that they have saved us time and again. I'm not daft - obviously some material is too sensitive for the public and would give away intelligence methods, but if four attempts have been foiled what happened to the perpetrators? Are they being held without trial in Bellmarsh? Are they too be tried? What were the targets and methods (the public deserve to know that, plus they need to know it in order to be more vigilant surely - they are happy to tell us about liquid bombs last week but nothing about these other alleged successes, again an utterly inconsistent approach).

Considering this is the same government who changed their reasons for taking us into the war in Iraq time and time again with solid 'intelligence' which proved to be wrong or even falsified repeatedly I really don't believe a damned word any of the cabinet says unless they can produce evidence; they have zero credibility. And if the threat was indeed so dire why the hell was parliament not recalled from the summer recess and the Prime Minister return from his holidays? This threat was so dire we left John Prescott in charge of the country? Yeah, must have been really serious. I can just picture Prescott in his controversial gift cowboy outfit, sitting in Tony's office with the desk turned over to make a fort, firing his toy six guns at imaginary bad guys...

And then there are the books and magazines. Now obviously I am biased being a serious reader and a bookseller, but why the hell were books and magazines banned from flights? I read a lot of history and am unware of books being used as deadly weapons in either small-scale guerrila warfare or large-scale battles. I can almost understand jitters over electronic media such as palmtops and Ipods but books???? Then again reading tends to create more neural pathways in the brain, a process we technically call 'thinking'; reading expands both knowledge and the cognitive tools required to utilise that knowledge by asking questions and expecting logical and coherent answers; reading can be dangerous because it enhances your ability to detect pure bullshit.

Fringe Sunday



First mimes of the day, warming up



No idea who they were, but as Gordon pointed out with those costumes they look like they are the Burger King marching band.



Time for a bit of audience participation in the 'ole juggling act



Some live music of course



Live music of a different type - when we passed they were playing a world music-style version of the theme from Last of the Mohicians (all together now "I will find youuuuuu"). One of Mel's favourite movies, sat through it so many times I recognise the theme after a couple of notes.



Last of the Mohicans with the Last of the Marshall Amps. Well, okay, not really





Music and dance this time



Some escapology



More mimes



Loved the puppets




Bunny girls and escort





Up, up and away

Fringe time

It's Festival time in Edinburgh; the city is absolutely jam-packed and indeed marmalade and a number of other preserves-jammed as well. A busy city all the year round for tourists it is incredibly busy over the summer months with visitors and language school camps from around Europe setting up on deserted summer campuses of the various universities. Then the Festival comes along - Book Fest, Film Fest, Fringe, the official Festival, the Jazz and Blues Festival - the entire city goes mad with so many tourists and Fringe luvvies in town even going to Piemaker at lunchtime takes three times as long. There are shows going on almost round the clock, hundreds of shows from street jugglers and singers to full-on opera, movie events from big names like Sigourney Weaver in conversation to the debut of a first-time movie maker from some part of the world you probably never even heard of, much less saw a film from before.

It can be a bit maddenign when you are working, simply trying to get around your normal day past huge crowds who seem to forget that there are some folk who actually are living and working in the city, that it isn't (despite the appearance) a giant tartan theme park but a real place where people are trying to get on with things - even getting on the bus home can be a pain as crowds take up the entire pavement waiting to get into a Fringe show, oblivious to the fact they are blocking the way for rush hour commuters and even the bus trip home take longer because countless tourists keep stopping the bus to ask the driver if he goes to the Castle.

Luckily I am now off for two whole weeks (the first time I've taken 2 weeks off back to back since I started this job and its a nice, relaxing feeling to know I have two weeks of chilling and Festing to indulge in) and so I can just let it wash around me like a noisy, colourful surf. First booked Film Festival screening is for tomorrow night and, very nicely, the first one is also one Mel is going to with me, which makes it even better. Looking through my tickets I realised I will be going to each of the cinemas taking part in this year's Film Festival, which is also a nice, if accidental, touch.

I've got documentaries, classic movies, foreign movies, British movies and more to watch, on top of using my pass to go and catch up with some more general releases I've not seen yet. And since the cinema I have the pass for takes part in the Film Festival I get the concession prices on all of them, which is even better. Anyway, I am about to head off to take in Fringe Sunday, where many performers set up in the Meadows to show their wares and entice people along; it is one of the few parts of the Festival which is really aimed at the actual people who live in Edinburgh and usually a wonderfully colourful day. Meantime here are some pictures of folks setting up for the madness that is the Fringe.










Of course, I am taking these pictures to show you the preparations going into setting up just one Fringe venue, the Smirnoff Baby Belly. And not just snapping a pic of a girl with an incredibly hot bum. No, sir. Really. Although she does have a very cute bum. Perhaps I could set up a Fringe show, the Bums of Edinburgh? Wouldn't be any worse than some Fringe acts I've seen.







Up goes the entrance canopy frame and lights.







The lights are on, the showtimes chalked up on the boards and the fliers festoon the walls. It's showtime!

Duane Michaels

Pottering around in my little study, looking through some items I haven't looked at for a while. I say study, it is really a long, narrow boxroom which I made into a study, two walls covered from floor to (high Victorian) ceiling with bookshelves, the third wall is my Movie Wall, covered in cinematic prints and portraits while strings of coloured lights hang over head between shelves. Everyone needs a quiet space to retreat to and although everywhere in my flat is technically my space this little jammed study really feels like mine. There is something very comfortable to me in having books shelved so high I need ladders for the top rows, towering over me, castle walls made of literature for my little space. I'm sure a therapist would make a lot out of that; personally if they did I would just hit them with a hardback. More therapists need that sort of brusque therapy I think.

Tons of SF as you can imagine but also history, myth (you might be surprised how often Myth and History interact and intertwine, one an attempt to create a narrative of who we are and how we come to be, the other a more emotional but no less true description of why we are. I find they work best together) science, travel, reference, art, architecture, classics, graphic novels and, of course, poetry. Sherlock Holmes once remarked that a man should keep so much useful information for day to day use in his brain and for the rest he should keep a well stocked library. I think I've followed that all of my reading life (which goes back to before I began school, I just can't stop reading, be it a Beano annual or a history of the Spanish conquest of the Incas).

I also have several volumes of photography; it probably isn't any great surprise to learn someone who loves literature and cinema is also fascinated by the 'pencil of nature'. The use of nothing more than light, shadows and chemical reactions (or today digital processing) to create images frozen in time into which we can read so much, creating entire little narratives around a single still image. I'm not sure I always agree that a picture is worth a thousand words, mind you - it depends very much on the writer or the photographer or painter. Squeezed between two hardback photography collections (one a Magnum collection, the other American Memorial Photography - that's pictures of the dead to most of us) I found a small catalogue from an exhibition I saw years ago at the old Portfolio gallery in Edinburgh.

I had heard the name of the artist, Duane Michals, before and had come across a few of his pictures in magazines and books, but only a few. In I wandered not knowing really what to expect and found a delightful range of single images, series and prints with poetry - in some cases Duane gives both a picture and words, a mixed media of senses overlapping, the eyes drinking in imagery, the brain processing it with one section while another decodes language and that indefinable part of the brain we call imagination combines them and creates that wonderful sense of emotion that good art always rouses in us, an inanimate object becomes the interface between artist and viewer, connecting them without ever meeting, exchanging emotions, memories, ideas...

Art is always interactive, never passive; we have to engage with it on different levels of emotion and intellect and memory and experience otherwise all we are doing is looking at an object and then we know our imagination has atrophied which is the first symptom of the decay of the soul. Oh dear, here I was ready to simply mention Duane Michals and show a couple of images I scanned in from this old exhibition catalogue and instead here I am talking about books, imagery, poetry and the way our memories and emotions filter and shape those works (and vice verse?). Oh well, it is my blog and if I feel like rambling on why shouldn't I?



The exhibition had a number of works, some singular, some part of series, which I later found is a recurring theme with Duane - in one series he had persuaded Richard Gere to pose as a 40s style gumshoe for some Noir-esque images in a series around the walls which were like looking at individual movie frames. You know frames, those little rectangles of still images which flicker past a projector lens so fast we believe we are seeing true movement. Walking past them on a wall I could follow a genre tale but I was also aware very much of how that tale is constructed and how we view that construction as I looked. The Madame Schrodinger's Cat image from below is part of a longer sequence which mixes humour with scientific philosophy and also manages to feature a cute cat.


Other images were on their own or sometimes Duane had combined his love of poetry and philosophy with the image; I wondered sometimes which came first, the photograph and then the lines or did some lines in his imagination spark the idea for the image? So I scanned in a couple to put on here; I do like the dream imagery of this one with the rather lovely poem while the one above with the crucifix 'gun' is an image which once I saw it years ago has stuck in my imagination ever since; simple but effective and one which invites the viewer's mind to conjure up all sorts of little narratives around it. I hope you like them.

Red Alert

So the UK has stepped up to Red Alert; as all Red Dwarf fans knows this is a serious step because it involves changing the bulb first. Naturally as a good citizen I have been alert all day for suspicious characters. Alas in Edinburgh during the Fringe there is almost nothing but suspicious looking characters around, so I have up and had a cuppa, the standard British repsonse to any crisis from a traffic accident to global warfare.

I am, cynical bugger that I am, more than a little suspicious of all of this supposedly thwarted attack. I'm not saying there was no threat to be dealt with - since we have almost no details it is impossible to really know that. However I am deeply cynical because it seems almost every time Blair's government is in trouble either over their Middle Eastern policy or resistance to their continuing plans to do what the Nazis could not and turn us into a police state by imposing more controls and reducing our liberties 'for our protection' a large terrorist scare suddenly materialises. Remember the infamous army tanks around Heathrow a few years back? How many high-profile sweeping arrests have we had from Edinburgh to London, people held for days, major intelligence lead ops only to end up with little to show for them at the end of it? Always just after the government has had trouble over their foreign policy or been thwarted in their attempt to force draconian new legislation through. And yet although the nation is in such crisis the Prime Minister is still on holiday and parliament has not been recalled from recess - gee, must be really serious.

None of this is to say there isn't a real threat of course; only an idiot would assume that. But the powers that be do have a vested interest in keeping the populace scared - a scared populace is less rational, less thoughtful and more likely to be more easily manipulated to go along with certain programmes. We only have to look at the way we were continually lied to about WMDs and the imminent 45 minute danger to us from Iraq to see the lengths the buggers will go to in order to herd the mass of the populace into the sheep pen of their choosing (while making sure those few who raise suspicions are villified as 'friends of terror'. Now a mere day after the government's hard man John Reid (who always reminds me of some nasty boss in an old British gangster film) tells us we must be prepared to sacrifice more liberties to fight terror we have this enormous action.

No, not suspicious at all. When politicians talk about the enemy within they mean lunatics like the London bombers, people who are British but so brainwashed by funamentalism they will committ atrocities. While this 'fifth column' use of the term is legitimate I also tend to think that the enemy within is anyone who threatens our traditional way of life: our freedoms, liberties, legal protections and democracies. By those terms quite a number of those politicians count as the enemy within. What did we use to say in the 90s? Trust no-one and the Truth is out there. Just don't expect the government to set up any public enquiries to tell us the Truth.

And as Boing Boing and others noted, this emergency measure of denying people from taking even small hand luggage onboard planes is deeply illogical - if this is indeed necessary to protect flights then why wasn't it necessary before? Liquid chemical explosives are not a new development after all. And what about after this emergency? If someone carrying on a small rucksack with a bottle of contact lens solution is a potential danger today then when will it ever not be? But can you imagine airlines not having it rescinded when it pisses of passangers and hurts business? And what the hell is with banning books and magazines??? Are the worried some terrorist will clobber the aircrew over the head with a hardback bestseller? Or are they reminded of the wave of mid-air hijackings during the 70s where Arab terrorists took over TWA planes using rolled up magazines? I wonder, do you think Tony Blair will be allowed to read a book on his flight home? Actually perhaps we should ban certain books and round up writers and members of reading groups just in case, eh?

Oh, and one little note to the authorities protecting us all by stopping folks carrying on books and spectacle cases onto flights: those plastic bags you are giving people to put the few bits they can have with them are more dangerous, that's why all plastic bags have big warnings on them. If some mad fundementalist (or just irate flier who cracks under this shit) sticks a poly bag over a pilot's head, don't say I didn't warn them. Hmmm, come to think of it are we sure the pilots and cabin crew are safe??? Blimey what about their personal baggage? What about those mini cans of drinks they have on board, couldn't that contain explosives? And I heard that some engineers filled a 747 with a highly explosive liquid (they used the euphimism 'aviation fuel' I believe - very dangerous stuff).And let's not get started with the dangers of in-flight peanuts. And those sharp edges on the pilot's wing badges. Blimey it is a miracle we're not ducking falling aircraft everyday.

Thank goodness there is a new Armano Iannuci show to take give us a giggle on BBC2 (and so soon after his new radio show, excellent).

Just 1 Page - charity comics

Just 1 Page is a comics anthology where a number of artists each contribute a page on a general theme (this year's issue is football, the previous one was team-ups) and is one of the independent titles added on to the FPI site recently. Along with an auction of original art (from fresh talent and a number of established artists like Charlie Adlard) the money raised all goes to help Childline, so you can get comic goodness, bid for some cool original art and help a good cause too. More details and some of the art are over on the FPI blog.

Free Josh Wolf

We've all read about blogging reporters and journalists in repressive regimes like China and Iran being imprisoned and worse for speaking out on their blogs. Well it appears our much-vaunted Western democracies are no better - not happy at bullying employers trying to control what folks blog and do in their own time the American government has stepped in an imprisoned a blogger. Josh Wolf refused on principle to hand over footage demanded by the Gestapo... Sorry, Federal authorities of trouble at a G8 protest he covered in San Francisco so he has been imprisoned. Thus perish all enemies of the regime... We must maintain respect for authority (best said in a Cartman voice)... We must maintain discipline in the citizenry... We must all obey orders...

Personally, crude though the wording may be, I prefer Rage Against the Machine's retort "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" - especially when you keep trying to take bites out our freedoms. Funny how police authorities love using video technology to film the public, protestors and others but aren't so keen on it being in the hands of others (can you say Rodney King, boys and girls?). These numpties forget how linked the world is today. Josh's blog can be found here. The revolution will be televised. Then webhosted around the world. Spread the word.

Trekking Camelot

I picked this link up via Teardrop to a video mash-up of the Camelot song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (I mean of course the ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaiiilllll) as sung by the classic Star Trek crew - brilliant!

Woody

Pretty quiet but relaxing weekend; there's something so nice about lounging around in the garden, drinking, reading, chatting, tickling Dizzy's tummy then thinking, mmmm, time for some dinner, hey, it is still light, still warm, let's have the food out here too. And more drink. Ate and drank outside until dusk fell and the bats came squeaking out, flying overhead with that disctinctive, leathery flapping sounds they make (doesn't sound remotely like a bird) - Mel hates them, I, of course, love them. Finally head back inside(except for Dizzy who has been dozing inside the open window sill for ages but not decides she needs to go out and explore the dark garden), finish stuffing ourselves with yummy cheesecake, more wine and watching Annie Hall on Mel's new LCD TV.

Brilliant movie, it has a classic Woody Allen moment where he tires of listening to a too-loud boor in line behind him at the cinema trying to impress his date with his knowledge of media theory. Woody eventually tells the man he is a fool, the man smugly declares he teaches a class in this subject at a prestigious school. So Woody turns round and declares "I just happen to have George Marshall McLuhan right here, why don't we ask him?". McLuhan tells the man he is a fool and doesn't understand his books at all. Woody turns to camera "wouldn't it be great if real life was like this?" Love that scene (plus McLuhan was one of the few mdea writers I respected during my college years).

I had forgotten about the blink and you miss him appearance of a young Jeff Goldblum in there (and apparently Sigourney Weaver, who is a guest at this year's 60th Film Fest in Edinburgh, is in there too, but I must have blinked and did miss that). Also has the priceless scenes where adult Woody not only has flashbacks to his childhood, but actually walks into the scenes, including the one where he kisses a girl in class then argues with the teacher. Teacher in flashback telling off young Woody as old Woody exclaims he was only manifesting an honest interest in sexuality. That's not normal for a young boy that age the teacher points out; it was for me, he replies. With him there, it was for me too, although I sometimes worry I peaked at that tender age; still at least I haven't married my own step-daughter. How snoggable is Diane Keaton in that movie?

Day of the Jackal

There is a famous scene in Freddie Forsyth's thriller Day of the Jackal (the film version having the ultra-upper class Edward Fox in it I think) where the international assassin shows how ridiculously easy it is to obtain fraudulent passports. Teardrop kindly sent me a link to this piece on the Register that he was blogging about which shows that, far from protecting us, the new biometric passports governments like the UK and US are shoving down citizen's throats (for their own good of course) as about as safe as a Kosher butcher in Beirut. And since this is the first wave of the tech Blair etc want us to have in our ID cards it blows yet another hole in that scheme, not that this will discourage a government which has made its decision and will stick to it no matter how many citizens tell them to stop and how many IT companies tell them it won't work...

Meanwhile the Sunday Herald has a great story about Lebanese folks living here in Scotland who are getting assistance from the Lebanon government's legal affairs folks to try and have charges brought against Tony Blair for war crimes by aiding and abbeting the supply of weapons to Israel. The revealtion that the UK was allowing the US to supply weapons to Israel via Scottish airports the other week caused a lot of outrage here (and was swiftly moved to RAF bases further south, but still allowed to continue, which kind of misses the point) and from my limited understanding of legal matters may well put the government into a dodgy area of international law, supplying or aiding the supply of weapons to one side in a conflict where civilians are being targeted. I doubt it will actually come off but I wish them the best of luck with it - it would be nice to see the swine held accountable properly.

Especially since the main airport involved - Glasgow Prestwick - was recently mired in the US's rendition flights moral morass and also because some of the weapons being shipped via there include the bunker buster bombs Israelie forces used to deliebrately target and murder UN observers with recently (mistake my arse, you don't shell someone for hours while they are phoning your HQ to tell you they are UN, while you have a map which show UN locations and then when shells don't get the saftey bunker call in an airstrike with a bunker buster to finish it off by mistake. Then shell the rescue party for good measure. Mistake my arse, bloody murder, plain and simple in my opinion.)