Saturday, December 15, 2007

[blogfocus saturday] of higher things


1. You want to see an interesting site, through the eyes of the artist? Norman explains:

St. Ives harbour. The beach at low tide. Pencil drawing on 150 gsm cartridge size 10 x 10 cm. I took a small pocket sized sketchbook with me to St. Ives. A handy size when working outside in an Atlantic gale.

I took with me my usual four clutch pencils; HB 0.5 mm., 3B 2 mm., 6B 3mm. and 4B 6mm. This latter functioned as a sort of graphite stick. I had a chunk of putty rubber and a collection of servietttes gleaned from the various cafés I visit.

2. Dabrah can say something not too many others can:

The thing about skiing in Dubai is the contrast between the extreme heat of the desert and the coldness of the ski dome. In Lebanon, nature provides this contrast for free. I can remember, in my youth, snow skiing in the mountains of Lebanon in the morning, and water skiing in Beirut in the afternoon, all on the same day! I do not exaggerate.

3. Mousy meets some intelligent people in his medical work:

One of the paramedics phones to say they're at a students' Christmas party with a buffoon who has drunk some bubble bath for a bet. They're wondering if it's dangerous and they actually need to bring him to hospital, or if they can safely leave him there. I explain that there should be no need to bring him, as, generally speaking, ingestion of detergents isn't harmful (the exception to this is dishwasher detergent, I might add).

4. Lady MacLeod is buying action heroes for Christmas, which is only meet and right:

I found a special vehicle (kismet I tell you) for "President Arnold S" (one of the main characters) - it is the Mr. Freeze auto that I am given to understand he drove in the Batman movie and the package included that car of the same genre, the Batmobile - which is now the vehicle that will convey our hero on his sojourns around the globe in the name of ...well I am just not sure of his motives yet as he is a Captain in SOCOM and being 28 years old he is embodied with the earnestness of youth.

5. Colin Campbell has always been one to go against the flow:

The story here.

That is an incredibly powerful instinct at work. I can remember watching bears catch fish in Alaska. They would just sit on the falls and wait for a big juicy one to try to jump up the fall. These guys are jumping into a flowing pipe so that they can go 50 metres into the river where the water is coming from. That is a lot of power.

[aw shucks] is this sweet or is this sweet?

[st. george] scourge of islam and the eu monster

Sigh:

FC Barcelona shirts sold in Saudi Arabia have had their club emblems altered to exclude the St George's Cross, the municipal flag of the Spanish city, according to reports in La Vanguardia newspaper.

The alterations have supposedly been made due to a fear of offending Muslims through the cross' connotation to the Crusades during the 12th and 13th centuries when English soldiers adopted the St George's Cross as they attempted to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule.

[independent boys] know when they're not wanted

Looks frightening for the parents:
When Connor Wilson was turned away from after-school care because his name wasn't on the list, he took matters into his own hands and decided to walk home - all 15km. Police found the six-year-old walking along Geelong's busiest road, the Princes Highway, more than 6km into his journey to his Whittington home.
Quite apart from the issue of the inadequate care provided and the mother's possible guilt as well, I'd like to focus instead on the resilience of the child - of any child that age.

I remember such situations well:

Age 4 - I'd pick up my raffia case with cut lunch [not being up to preparing my own sandwiches at that stage] and would nip round the corner to my girlfriend's place, collect her and walk her to kinder, just under a kiklometre away. There was only one dangerous corner but I'd been trained for that. Naturally, I had no idea who was observing - I just thought it was my job.

Age 8 - We were in the High Street, doing Christmas shopping. In one store, maybe Woolworths, my mother told me to wait by the "snack bar" for her, while she went to get something further into the store. So, I went looking for "a" snack bar, not realizing I was actually beside "the" snack bar she was referring to.

Not having any luck here, I went outside onto the footpath and asked a lady if she knew where "a" snack bar was. To think that my choice of the indefinite article could have been the catalyst of all the troubles.

She did know where "a" snack bar was. It was about a hundred metres further down the street and it had a big sign "snack bar".

No problems.

Down I went and waited dutifully beneath the sign until my mother found me, distraught - she was distraught, not me - I was more concerned with what had gone wrong with my mum.

Age 11 - Don't know if I should mention this one. My father took me to the football but because for some strange reason, I had a membership card and he didn't, he explained in detail where I'd go in and he'd watch me in, then I had to turn left and follow the tunnelway to the barrier, where he'd be waiting.

No problems.

I went in but there were two tunnelways, so I took the one that looked as if it would lead to a mesh fence and it did. However, he didn't appear. I waited for half an hour but as the game was about to start, I gave it away, determined to go looking for him at halftime.

I managed a spot down by the touchline and had a good first half. Now it was time to find him. I asked officials about the layout of the ground, about where he probably would have come into the ground if I'd come in where I had and so on.

No luck. My dad had got lost.

OK, well there was a damn good game on, so I settled down for the second half and it was well worth the money I'd never paid. Now it was time to find him - I'd have to pull out all stops in this endeavour but the huge crowd pouring out of the ground made it difficult.

I went round that ground three times and was getting tired so thought it best to ask a friendly policeman if he'd seen a stray father. Nope but the policeman now had some questions for me I don't remember.

The upshot was that they took me to the station and when I saw one of their guns, the desk sergeant let me check it over. I'd given my address and phone number already and so they now reported that all was well. My father had been found and was safely at home.

The biggest problem was calming my mother down on the phone but once that was done, it was into the car and they even gave a blast of the siren for effect and we stopped off at a chippy and had supper. I still remember the fun that evening.

Then the boys in blue delivered me home - door to door, mind - no walking at all and my mother embarrassed me by embracing me in front of them. Don't remember much else.

So I understand wee Connor completely - it's what any boy would do under the circumstances. They don't want me? OK, I go home. No money? Well, nothing to be done - I'll just have to walk.

You have to like young Connor very much. Check out the photo - is he in tears or is he angry?

[banksy] let us spray in bethlehem

It appears that Banksy has gone seasonal - he's made it to Bethlehem and is graffitiing in the Manger Square:

One colour mural on a Bethlehem wall shows a little girl frisking an Israeli soldier in combat gear. A downtown gable end is decorated with a silhouette of an Israeli soldier checking a donkey's identity card. Elsewhere, one of Banksy's trademark rats brandishes a catapult at a watchtower set in the wall.

I'd like to know your view on Banksy and graffiti in general. He certainly does it well, the authorities would like to catch him, I've seen a possible photo of him and he brings a smile to the face.

But is he right for somewhere like Bethlehem?

Another of Bansky's supposed works


[top 25] popular musicians and singers since the 50s

This is the last musical post for a little while.

What does "greatest artists" mean? This is my attempt at a workable definition:

1. Technically excellent;
2. Heavily influential;
3. Internationally acclaimed [not just in the U.S. or the U.K.];
4. Leaving a substantial legacy of recordings or sheet music;
5. Memorable for far more than one song.

We then get into the problem Rolling Stone found - that of different generations revering different sets of artists so that should perhaps give N6 - cross generation. On that basis, my Top 20 non-classical musical artists since the 50s would comprise:
1. The Beatles 2. Elvis Presley 3. The Rolling Stones 4. Led Zeppelin 5. Bob Dylan 6. Michael Jackson 7. The Doors 8. The Eagles 9. Abba 10. Roy Orbison 11. Van Morrison 12. Sex Pistols 13. Bruce Springsteen 14. Elton John 15. The Beach Boys 16. Simon and Garfunkel 17. Eric Clapton 18. The Drifters 19. Joe Cocker 20. Pink Floyd 21. Creedence Clearwater Revival 22. Queen 23. Rod Stewart 24. Tina Turner 25. The Shadows
What changes would you make to the above list? Don't forget that they must transcend generations and continents. For example, Aretha Franklin was largely U.S. and the Hollies were largely U.K.

Run DMC or Patti Smith are too specific, as are Joy Division and there must be a legacy people still sing today all over the world. On the other hand, Prince is just a prat and I wouldn't put him on any list.

Also, you couldn't put in virtual illiterates like, Spears, Lavigne or Martin. They have to be artists who've actually achieved something.

Don't forget either that these are not the 25 best [I'd put in Touch 'n Go] but the 25 greatest.

Friday, December 14, 2007

[russian track] you might like to listen

boomp3.com

If you'd like to hear another, I can post it tomorrow. It's by group Hi Fi who were big in 1999/2000. Their music is quite variable but most tracks are excellent.

Strangely, they're not that popular with Russians themselves and I'm still trying to find out why. Maybe they're too inventive for the new generation, I don't know.

Be warned the file is big.

[gifts] the thought is everything

JMB [am I imagining it or is she blogging fabulously lately?] and the estimable Political Umpire have been debating not only wine but the whole ethos of giving and receiving:
I always take a nice wine to friends X, because I know Mrs X is a wine buff and appreciates it. They never open it, however, but offer either non-alcoholic drinks or, occasionally, a very cheap supermarket wine (I do not believe Mrs X, with her evident knowledge, is unaware of this).

Should I continue taking nice bottles, but unsubtly hint they open it, take an inferior one (the contrast with previous offerings would be noticed), or take a different gift the value of which would not be evident (thus enabling me to economise discretely if I so wished).
Going off at a tangent, as is my wont, the whole art of present giving has been lost to many people these days, as far as I can see.

One Christmas will forever stick in my memory. There were three families at the gathering. Now, as two of those families had children, it went against everything I stood for to give one present to cover the entire family. I didn't wish to but it involved, therefore, about 11 presents.

Now there's a certain reputation to uphold here and I do like people to think some thought has been put in. For example, I used to receive a batik calendar, hand-made by an elderly couple, replete with photos. It mattered not how many they'd produced [they had the time]. They still had to make it and that's what counted with me.

It's the Japanese approach, the Japanese seriousness accorded the process which is nice. And the Japanese are the first to say that the gift wrapping is equally, if not more, important. I felt that the wrapping paper, the ribbon and the way the colours inside and out coordinated was pretty vital.

I wouldn't say my presents were awe-inspiring but they were certainly thought out and the wrapping was as classy as I could make it. At the risk of being an ingrate, I came home that day with one bottle of cheap plonk which I knew that family would never have drunk themselves, one box of handkerchiefs and the third family had forgotten about me entirely.

So we come to what presents are - they are a statement of what you think of that other person and as two people always put the other not entirely on the same level, then imbalance results, by definition. One present will always exceed the other. I love the idea of presents but presents themselves are fraught.

So it seems to me we either go the Japanese way of keeping a log of all presents given, past and present, with meticulous attention paid to the level of the present - or else we dispense with them entirely, except within the immediate family, e.g. our kids, where no reciprocation can ever be expected.

One alternative for those who can't do that is to work out our Christmas list, make special cards over a couple of months, 2 or 3 a night perhaps and then there is no "level judging" possible. These are given close to the day. The effort put into making them shows the other you care but there is little monetary value attached.

The more extreme solution, of course, is to announce, ahead of time, that from this Christmas and onwards into the future, we are dispensing with all gifts and cards, so please don't give anything. To unexpected cards received through the post, a pleasant letter of thanks will be forthcoming in the New Year.

To assist with this, maybe we could write a little notice on a piece of card and carry it with us throughout the danger season. Every time someone wants to involve us, we could say our ultra-polite little piece and show them the card, show them that this is a blanket thing we're doing, nothing personal.

Then it's a case of people respecting that.

[end of britain] it's official

The hated monstrosity in all its ignominy

Here it is at last - the traitors have done it and it took an American to say it:
Britain Surrenders

I'm sure all of my Brit friends have had a bad day if they've kept abreast at the news. No one I've talked to actually believed that Britain would actually sign the EU Treaty, but they have done it.

The EU is becoming a country, slowly but surely; this is the latest step in depriving the citizens of the countries of Europe of their ability to govern their lands.

Click for the rest of the story
Since 1066 they have tried and failed. Napoleon failed. Hitler failed. Now the quislings within the borders have seized the highest offices, courtesy of a credulous public in the early 90s, swayed by a pretty face and fine words - and the result is here for all to see.

Sad, sad day indeed. My, your, grandparents and parents fought against precisely this - the blitz, the blackouts, the rationing, the wasted millions of lives - all for what? For a Scot to be in a position to sign away the rights of England forever. They must be chortling up there but it will be short-lived.

One of the first jobs in the inevitable English fightback is for the gallows on Tyburn to be rebuilt and for Blair, Brown, Milliband and the whole crew on both sides of politics who took the Euro to meet their grisly fate, at English hands. Better get in before the pan-EU army gets well and truly moving.

There is another aspect which must have crossed the minds of those loyal to England. We are now officially insurgents. We are challenging an officially ordained state of affairs, signed into being by an elected member of parliament and a PM within the conventions. And what is the basis of the insurgency? That England is England, Scotland is Scotland, Wales is Wales and Ireland is Ireland. That is our treason against the EU we're now officially part of.

And insurgents get rounded up. Look at the legislation in place to do so.

Let me finally quote Holmes:
The Englishman is a patient creature but at present his temper is a little inflamed and it would be as well not to try him too far.
Conan Doyle did not appear to me to be given to hysteria or wild words. He simply stated it as it was.

Rest in peace, Britain. It was a great idea whilst it lasted. England, your time has come to fight back.


[ageing] gracefully or disgracefully

My younger girlfriend and I brought up the topic in 2000 when we were planning to marry.

I said that if something happened and we didn't marry and if we actually parted, then she'd have been my last girlfriend. Rubbish, she said and she was arguing from what she'd observed but she wasn't counting on the `'flirt but that's all" philosophy.

She once said it was impossible to just "go out" in this country, "one-on-one "- by definition it meant far more and a man buying you a meal was tantamount to the sack.

My time with her brought three things home:

1. Many girls do, whatever you say and however you are outraged by this, bring it on themselves. Provocative dress, highlighted beauty and a roving eye do attract the men like flies [and I mean men in her case, not boys]. She was a man's girl.

She thought it was a great compliment to me that I was able to hold onto such enticing beauty which she devoted all her waking hours to. I thought it was a pain in the butt to be constantly fighting off a steady stream of men until I realized that she could have ended most of it with a certain attitude, a certain way she carried herself, if she'd wanged to, that is.

2. For my part, it was a strange state of mind. Post boomer but early Gen X, I really wasn't attempting to stay young; I wasn't attempting anything - one doesn't in the middle of living life to the full - reflection comes later.

In Northern England, one sweet lass of 17 asked me why I was "trying to dress young". It was a shock, that comment. I hadn't thought that I was dressing young; perhaps it was that I had aged beneath it. If pressed, I'd have said I was trying to dress with a bit of style. It was just that I knew some people who sold Sonetti gear and I liked it very much, including a jacket which was eye burning on one side but reversed to Italian treated silk on the other.

Immediately reversing the jacket to it's less outrageous side, that was the start of dressing more appropriately. One of the first steps was to discard the trainers/sneakers for leather shoes and Higham had now moved into a new phase.

I really do think that some things look ridiculous [in the full sense of the word] on certain ages and with certain degrees of hair remaining on top. Even posture does alter, no matter how gradual it becomes, a paunch is unavoidable and takes longer and longer hours to quell in the gym and the skin gets softer and less elastic as you go on - training, cosmetics and botox notwithstanding.

3. Age can't be disguised, certainly from a younger person and to rage against age and spend the hard-earned trying to reverse the process is stupid. Having done botox once in recent years, I can't think why I was so stupid at the time; I'm now dead against botox - think you should just be yourself and attract those of a certain age, forgetting the younger set.

But there's something psychological, powerful, refusing to let your mind come to terms with age - it's a state of mind beyond reason, tying in vanity and who knows what else. That there are girls who also ignore the obvious in a man for their own reasons [or perhaps they don't reason it out] - that makes it all the more difficult. Especially when they are all around us.

Men bemoaning how they no longer attract the "prize" young lady should count their blessings. What have we got to offer a young lady anyway, apart from money [and don't say it's our loving heart]? Methinks it's more difficult for the ex-motorcycle rider, the ex-Lothario, the ex-everything, to come to terms with reality - Pierce Brosnan springs to mind.

And yet we look across at others of our age, also coming to terms with it all and don't wish to see a mirror image of ourselves ageing - so our eyes sub-consciously filter through only younger people and somehow rationalize that those younger people are going to be remotely interested in us. But strangely, there is a grain of truth in it - the less interest we show in them, the more it seems to attract them.

But we need to think it through. For what to go around with a younger person? Maturity and wisdom can only be taken so far and then it begins to look increasingly ludicrous - unless we're wearing Armani, it looks pointless. We can't cut it in the sack to the same extent - we just can't and our whole mindset and bodyset are different. Young people bounce, we glide or stumble. They like us but they're not hot for us. It's a zero sum game. Besides, they've their own agenda in life and ours is different for our last few [mobile] decades.

Drawing it together, perhaps we should pitch ourselves just a few years short of our true age and get the best of both worlds. That's the age anyway, from where our partner should be coming from. As for many younger people's constant desire to put the older in their boxes on the shelf - the "your time is over" syndrome - that's equally ridiculous.

These days the 70 year old is going to rage far into the night and why not? If you have the energy, why not? Why allow yourself to be put out to pasture? As long as you're not trying to cut it with younger folk, what's the problem?

Attention from someone younger then becomes a nice little compliment, rather than anything to be taken up.

Have a lovely Friday.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

[tramvai of dreams] the joke's on me

Sometimes I just love this country.

Item 1

Yesterday received an urgent call to come to the uni today and see the Dean. Never happened before.

Today, my friend comes over for his regular Thursday morn coffee so we thrash it out. Could be a conference next week they want me to speak at, could be all my absences due to illness this semester, could be the complete reorganization of the uni and the election for rector.


Could be something more dire - my registration within the country [the tit-for-tat thing going on vs Britain at the moment]. We settle on it being a big request and so I get a taxi into there, due to the seriousness of it all.

Turns out to be the office wanted my signature on the summer leave application although why I even need to do this, given that I'm part time, I don't know. Still it gives me holiday me, which is good..

What!!! All the panic, all the long faces everywhere.

Item 2

Tram. After experiencing the greatest concentration of honeys in one place ever [the cafe], it was down to the tram. Missed one but it was a 7 and so it didn't matter. There are four going past this stop - the 7, 20, 11 and 19. The first two are useless as they go elsewhere, the latter two are good.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter, we often get this and it's still peak hour so it's OK.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter, they were obviously banked up somewhere down the track and a 19 will come soon.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter but it's now getting a little chilly, minus 9 and time for the gloves and hood.

Now there's a gap of around 40 minutes [the other trams came at 2 minute intervals], during which the gloves prove themselves inadequate and the corduroys are stuck to the legs. Time to walk vigorously up and down.

Next tram which comes is a 7. No matter, I wait for the door to open and ask if there are no 19s today. Driver shrugs.

Next tram which comes is a 7. I've noticed approximately 30 buses going past on the road 200 metres away and a constant stream of cars. Door opens and I call out for the driver to open the inner door. Passengers are staring at me on the roadside. "Where's the bloody 19?" I swear in Russian. They close the door in my face.

Next tram which comes is a 7 and I'm weeping by now but too cold to go up to the road for a car. memories of the other evening flood back.

Next tram is an 11 - it'll do. Huddled in one corner, the only task is to get some feeling back into the extremities.

Item 3

One of the fun things is to predict the temperature outside and then check it against the television temperature in the top corner of the screen in the cafe.

To do this, it's necessary to wear the heavy beanie first - no compromise here. Most people have a range of jackets but I have two - one down to about 12 degrees below and the other from about 15 downwards. I try to wear the lighter one and regulate inner temperature by wearing t-shirt and shirt or a jumper in rare circumstances. Usually I'd just opt for the heavier coat in that case.

All right, out of the uni and in two minutes, check the hands. If everything's neutral it could be anything from 0 to -5. If there's a freshness to the hands, it could be - 6 to -10. If it really needs gloves, it's below -10.

Today the hands were a bit fresh.

Next, check the grit on the snowy road. If it's working and the mud is slushyish, it's warmer than -10. If the powder snow is crusty, it's below -7. If the ice is hard and slippery, it's below -8. So, this puts it this evening from -7 to -10.

Next, the face but this depends on the wind. Today was a light icy breeze so it altered the calibration a bit. Usually you don't get bite to the face until -10 to -12 but with a breeze, you can lop 3 or 4 degrees off that.

I took a stab at -8 and went into the cafe. It was -9. I'd compensated too much for the breeze.

By the way, there's another fun game - drop the hanky in minus 30. Now we haven't had this for a few years but when it was around minus 32 or 33, the trick was to drop your handkerchief and the shape it was in when it hit the ground is the hanky sculpture it freezes into.

And don't kiss anyone in those temperatures.

[genetic engineering] of mice and men

My only question is: "Why?"

The age-long animosity between cat and mouse could be a thing of the past with genetically modified "fearless" mice that Japanese scientists say shed light on mammal behavior.

Using genetic engineering, scientists at Tokyo University say they have successfully switched off the rodents' instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats -- showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.

The findings suggest that human aversion to dangerous smells like that of rotten food, for example, could also be genetically predetermined.

That's nice, isn't it? Developing a new species of humans, wired against bad smells. Dr. Mengele never did complete that study on twins either because of the pesky end of the war [unless you believe he made it safely to America].

So much unconstrained human experimentation to try out and so many more serfs about after 2012 to experiment on. A scientist's paradise.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

[john cale] white light, white heat

This blog has covered JJ Cale a number of times but the Cale tonight is just John Cale, a musician heavily influential on other musicians but virtually unknown to the general public. An unattributable yet excellent profile of him says:

Trying to categorise Cale's music has always been tricky, encompassing as it does so many diverse musical styles. Not really a rocker nor a full on avante gardiste, much of what he produces falls between the two headings.

He draws heavily on his early classical training; he was touring the country with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales from his early teens, while still listening to the burgeoning cult of rock and roll in his bedroom at night.

His break came while studying experimental music at London University in the early '60s, he met American classical composer Aaron Copeland, who got Cale a scholarship to study with the Boston University Orchestra.

In the fall of 1963 Cale relocated to New York and began performing in various avante garde music projects before hooking up with vocalist/guitarist Lou Reed, with whom he founded the legendary rock band the Velvet Underground in early 1965.

He was heavily involved with Andy Warhol.

Playing bass, viola, and keyboards, Cale was largely responsible for the band's droning sound, while Reed wrote the lyrics. This was the most accessible he'd be to the public and to get an idea of his style, listen to Velvet Underground Live 1969 [as distinct form the studio album produced after he'd been forced out].

Cale today

White Light White Heat, Heroin, Ocean - these were typical of his sound and Reed's lyrics and singing.


On his own he went mellow and classical until he switched in 74 and released two amazing albums - Fear and Slow Dazzle, with other Island artists like Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno of Roxy Music, and Chris Spedding. I haven't heard the third so can't comment.

Tracks on Fear like Fear is a Man's Best Friend, Barracuda and Gun were quite frankly unique with their gritty, dark, driving, relentless feel, especially given the era in which they were produced. He'd contrast it with catchy, melodic tracks at odds with explicit lyrics like The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy.

His voice is difficult to describe. Imagine Leonard Cohen and Tom Jones, deep, rich, masculine but aggressive and that was part of his appeal - he was a very dangerous man or so it seemed and could shock you to the core. His motif was dark.

This was so in the finale to Slow Dazzle which I can't describe on a family blog like this. One of his greatest songs, his reworking of Heartbreak Hotel as you've never heard it before, was on this album and a return to hard, driving rhythms with Guts, which was about just that.

With Nico

At this point
I was drawn into the gay, warholesque inner city party scene [which will come as a shock, given my ultra-orthodox sentiments on this blog] but as the scene fragmented and many went over to punk, I went over to pseudo-punk like the Ramones, the Stranglers, Wreckless Eric and never got back to this scene again.

[blogfocus wednesday] strange but possibly true

1. Would you entitle your post:

Res Op Mandate training minutes 121107

and just show the pic above?

2. The Rev. Dr. Incitatus remembers the celestial aspects of travelling to St. Louis:
I remember weaving between tornadoes down I-55 from Michigan to Missouri, one evening, when I looked to the west and saw Heaven and Hell. Hell looked prettier than Heaven, as I remember it. Maybe there's a metaphor in that?

It was a beautiful thing, either way, and I pulled over to ponder it for a moment. But then the hail caught up and proceeded to chase me all the way to St. Louis. Perhaps there's a metaphor in that, too?

There was a moral behind this post, but it escapes me at present.

3. Rob, at The Broadsheet Rag, ran into a frightening phenomenon:
I’ve started a new job recently, down Westminster way. Anyway I was out on my daily wander around Victoria — when I got a shock.

Hazel Blears was walking straight at me. I’ve always had a thing for Blears. I’ve always felt there was something wrong with her. No, not that she’s a Labour MP. That she looks odd — she smiles too much.

So, she was walking towards me and I noticed something. She didn’t move her head it stayed perfectly still — it seemed almost artificial. And that smile of hers didn’t even flinch. It was almost demonic.

There can be only one explanation for this. Hazel Blears is a robot from outer space.

4. Dave Hill has a sticky problem just now:
My littlest daughter came home from a school trip with this one - not the cuppa, that's mine - the other week. I've never really gone for toffee apples. My daughter's one reminded me why. They're hard to unwrap, hard to eat, bloody hard work all round. You'd think after more than a century someone else might have worked that out too..

[strange accidents] waiting to happen

What are the strangest accidents which have happened to you? Now, I don't mean those which were waiting to happen, such as the ones in the pics nor do I mean automobile accidents. I mean this sort of thing:
1. Cut by a piece of steak. Piece of frozen meat taken from the freezer - slashed the side of my palm;

2. Burnt by toast - not the toaster, the toast;

3. Finger cut today by a coffee bean - when cleaning the grinder. Not cut by the grinder.
I like this one from long ago:
Lisa Colman, 23, of San Diego, was sitting in her car with both hands behind the back of her head. Someone asked her if she was okay, and she replied that she'd been shot in the back of the head, and had been holding her brains in for over an hour.

The paramedics came and found that a Pillsbury biscuit canister had exploded from the heat and a wad of dough had hit her in the back of her head. She felt the dough, thought it was her brains, passed out, recovered and held her brains in for over an hour until someone noticed and came to her aid.

And, yes, she was a blonde.

[steroids] humans or robots

Predictable really:

The International Olympic Committee has stripped sprinter Marion Jones of her five 2000 Olympic medals after she admitted taking banned substances.

Looking at the issue more broadly, remember this?

1988: Johnson stripped of Olympic gold Sprinter Ben Johnson has been sent home from the Seoul Olympic Games in disgrace. The Canadian has also been stripped of his 100m gold medal after testing positive for drugs.

He ran the 100 in 9.79 seconds. Now it's held by Asafa Powell, of Jamaica, in 9.74 seconds. Who's to say the latter's not on an undetectable drug? Who's to say Carl Lewis wasn't? I'm not saying anything, for fear of libel laws nor am i intimating anything. But I am asking how we can know.

Does it matter? Probably yes, for a whole lot of moral and pragmatic reasons. Does it mean Johnson didn't run that time? Of course not. Johnson ran 9.79 - he was timed. The only vague question then was whether he was a human being or a cheetah, perhaps.

He looked pretty human to me when he ran that time. Sad but he ran it. He was therefore the fastest in the world. Lewis was not.

[Comment on photo policy on this blog: Photos are either linked or not. If not, then assume they are iether from my own collection or else from Wikipedia, under the name of the subject in the photo.]

[child mentors] oh dear, here we go again

The logo itself sounds the warning bells.

I really don't wish to make too much of this and have to confess I didn't actually know it was going on but do you see something mildly worrying about a semi-governmental body calling itself Friends of the Children or Western Wellness [with the tagline Best Friends] compulsorily taking your child once a week for "mentoring"?

Wouldn't you feel it was the teensiest, weensiest bit presumptuous of them attempting to make your child "well" again?

Of course, some will say they only target children form dysfunctional families or families where the parents see this as a way for their child to escape poverty. In other words, children where the parents are neither going to say no nor put up any resistance to the move.

Now, if you google "child mentors", you'll see, page after page, how rampant this thing is across the United States. In other words, thousands and thousands of children are getting government "mentoring" to make them "well" again.

Is it the merest coincidence, just a quirk of fate, that in April 1972, in his keynote address to the Association for Childhood Education International, Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, said:
"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being. It's up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future."
In one school where I once taught, there was a 30ish woman who was the Special Needs mentor. Uh-huh, so the idea was that we selected the children from our class who needed extra help - let's call a shovel a shovel - remedial help and they went to her twice a week.

Now she and I did not see eye to eye. She thought I was altogether to harsh and I thought she was full of s--t. My reason for this latter were the reports she'd compile, using statistical "percentiles" and quoting authorities in remedial education and the whole thing was unreadable to the average teacher.

I showed one of her reports to a colleague and asked him if it was me that was the moron but I, for the life of me, could make neither head not tail of it. He laughed and said no one understood what she wrote and that was the general idea - she was justifying her position in the school.

Trouble was - she had a twice weekly meeting with the boss and was one of those who didn't let her professionalism stand in the way of getting her dig in about those she didn't like [the boss told me this later]. She was one of those who smiles a lot and says little to the person she's commenting on later.

So, one boy we'll call Matt went to her and in the first week or so, all was well. Then, slowly, I noticed a change in him. He'd been dying to get to my class for a year and so there was an initial connection between the two of us.

Now I'll play fair here, for the purposes of the post and say that I was and am strict. The work has to be done and I've no time for stirrers, who are a waste of space. So I'm always going to have trouble from that quarter. On the other hand, the remainder reported, through their parents, that they enjoyed my class. That's about all that can be said on that.

To cut a long story short, Matt slowly changed and eventually became disruptive, sullen and withdrawn but adored going to Special Ed. I visited her a couple of times and there was a most definite conspiratorial silence when I did, as if I was spying on them.

I raised it with the boss and he told me, with a big grin on his face, thank goodness, that it was being reported to him that I was a tyrant, that everyone hated my lessons and that I was unfair to Matt in particular. I suggested that Matt be shifted to the parallel class if that was the case but it seems that neither the boy nor his parents wanted that.

Now the woman's not here to defend herself but a couple of colleagues warned me not to antagonize her as she could make considerable trouble for anyone who got on the wrong side of her. Well, that cuts both ways - I can do that too. So I went to her and invited her to come into a couple of lessons and see for herself how tyrannical my lessons were.

She never did but she was mightily surprised that I'd utilized that term "tyrannical".

I'm not going to tar all "mentors" with the same brush as this woman but I am going to say that these people do have a certain mentality which I didn't understand way back then but now, in the light of last year's blogging, I understand it perfectly well.

All I can say is that, unless it was legally compulsory, I wouldn't let one of these people within speaking distance of my child. Whether that is right or wrong, surely it's a parent's prerogative.

[zep concert] we did it, ahmet

Some comments:
A truly amazing concert. The band all performed with awesome energy for two and half hours, it blew everyone away. If these guys rock like this at 60 years old, I wonder how amazing they were in their prime! Anyway, it was worth every penny. This was the best concert I have ever seen! [Paul, London]
Quite simply the greatest gig I have ever had the pleasure of attending. 'Kashmir' and 'Dazed...' were the highlights of an outstanding set list. £83k a ticket? Worth every penny I'd say... [Mark Franklin, Witney, UK]

Straight from the groin, no messing about, and no playing safe. They did it without a net and proved they are THE best band ever. I just hope they don't do it again.
[Bert Priest, Kidderminster, UK]

They were a great band, but now they're old men. Plant can't hit and hold the same notes, Page looks like old father time. Please don't play another gig. Don't ruin your legacy (like the Stones have).
Wess, Notts
Champs will always be champs but I wonder when it's time to hang up the plectrum? Watching dinosaurs like Nazareth, The Boss and Rod Stewart and self-parodies like the Stones today strutting around to the horror of the younger generations, should they say to the youngies: "Stuff you!" and just keep strutting or should they move into more mellow music, more befitting their years?

Don't get me wrong, there's the rager inside me which breaks out all the time and I think the little ladies like it in small doses as a break from the usual fare, so maybe Zep did it right - coming back for a one off, which I don't believe was just for the money.

Perhaps, in the end, the only criterion was whether people felt they had their money's worth and whether they came home afterwards feeling satisfied. To hell with the detractors.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

[happy birthday] lil bit

[the grand tour] now a gap year

Way to go in the 1880s

The Grand Tour was really something. Poor transport, impassable Alps, the food question and also:

The Grand Tour was also well known as a chance for its participants to sow their oats as they were "generally young, healthy, wealthy and poorly, if at all supervised". Due to the rampant spread of venereal disease, sexual exploits while abroad were frowned upon by those back home, but regarded as just another aspect of the trip.

And yet it was cultural and the young men did not return wholly ignorant. The 1800s opened up rail travel but the idea of a long tour was still for the rich, such as with the exciting Orient Express, which I've walked past but not been on:

The original route, which first ran on October 4, 1883, was from Paris, Gare de l'Est, to GiurgiuRomania via Munich and Vienna. At Giurgiu, passengers were ferried across the Danube to Rousse in Bulgaria to pick up another train to Varna, from where they completed their journey to Istanbul by ferry.
Incidentally, this excellent article on the various trains bearing the name shows that the Orient Express, in one of it forms, still runs Paris to Istanbul, if you have the money for it.




There's something about those days never to be recaptured, even so. Fast forward to modern times:

... the first 'Gap Years' actually started in the UK in the 1960's when the baby-boomer generation in the midst of the 'Swinging sixties' headed off to India on the infamous Hippie Trails, inventing the 'independent travel market' ...

Now it's become far more mainstream and even desirable to have taken that year:

“It's important to differentiate yourself in today’s competitive graduate job market,” says Paul Lyons, the managing director of recruitment specialist Ambition. “And a gap year lets you do that.”

According to Lyons, apart from helping you stand out from the crowd, a gap year also has the professional advantage of demonstrating your life skills and positive personality traits.


“For example, a self-planned, self-funded year spent canoeing down the Amazon is likely to be better regarded professionally than a structured year, funded by parents, spent learning Spanish in Barcelona.”

I never did it like this - I suppose I was a Bill Bryson type "flashpacker". That pack is sitting under the cupboard here now as I type and it does bring back pleasant memories. But all my travelling was done well after uni days when I was earning my own crust and I confess I was using a first class eurail pass.

Finland was the closest I ever got to being a bona fide backpacker when for one night I stayed at a dreaded hostel and was appalled by the whole scene.

Next day I marched into the info place in Rovaniemi, asked for a billet with a family, hired a bike and tootled across the river and visited the people. They just happened to possess a 25 year old unmarried daughter of nordic beauty who invited me to use her sauna so that was far more my thing.

No need to mention breaking my wrist two days later on the luge.

Of course, it doesn't have to involve travel - there might be other things you'd do. Did any of you have a gap year and what did you do?

[economic forecast] not from me

You can always trust a banker.

Would you like my economic forecast for the west 2007 through 2011?

No, I don't blame you for your reticence - I'm an amateur, after all. Would you read one from Morgan Stanley then? They appear to know what they're talking about. They conclude, in the final paragraph:

One risk is that both our outlook and the Fed’s are too optimistic, because they pay too much attention to the economic resilience of the past, and not enough to the future effects of financial and economic headwinds and the dynamics of the downturn. Dramatically slower growth in domestic demand leaves it vulnerable to shocks.

Insufficient Fed action could again threaten a deeper economic slowdown. A contrasting risk is that we’re swayed by Wall Street pessimism and that things may be better on
Main Street.

In our view, downside risks still dominate.

[yorkshire europe] are we missing something here

John Trenchard has latched onto this - click on each pic below, one by one, to enlarge it:


Excuse me? Yorkshire and Humber Assembly? A funded legislature? And getting its funding from whom? Oh, it's a Regional Assembly - but they all died, didn't they, when the British people fought and rejected them? Click on the pics below to enlarge:



What the F is going on here? As John says:

2010 appears to be a deadline of sorts. And the mention of "Regional Ministers" is interesting. I wonder who'll they'll be reporting to.

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things


Quite frankly, there is so much that I'm not very good at that one tends to avoid these things like the plague.

Weak, I know but there it is.

Playing tennis, dancing, suffering fools gladly [which is a bit rich because I've done so many foolish things in my time] - these are just a few. For example, I've always underestimated the human capacity to overcome the direst of circumstances and adapt or win against all odds; it's often turned out I was wide of the mark.

Perfect example here is predicting football results or betting on a horse - better I just don't try.

But in other aspects of human nature and group behaviour, especially if not emotionally involved with the person and abandoning all modesty here - I'm rarely wrong [the Poirot inside] and this can be put down to a Miss Marple quote in A Christmas Tragedy:

[How few people] ever stop to think. They really don't examine the facts. Surely, the whole crux of the matter is this - how often is tittle tattle, as you call it, true. I think if, as I say, they really examined the facts, they'd find it was true nine times out of ten. That's really what makes people so annoyed about it!

"The inspired guess," said Sir Henry.

"No, not that, not that at all. It's really a matter of practice and experience. An Egyptologist, so I've heard, if you show him one of those curious little beetles, can tell you by the look and feel of thing what date BC it was or if it's a Birmingham imitation. And he can't always give a definite rule for doing so. He just knows. His life has been spent handling such things.

And so, you see, superfluous women, as you might put it, get to become what you might term experts. Now young people nowadays, they talk very freely about things that weren't mentioned in my young days but on the other hand, their minds are very innocent. They believe in everyone and everything. And if one tries to warn them, ever so gently, they tell one that one has a mind like a sink.

... My nephew Raymond tells me that I haven't a shadow of proof but I knew ...

As a superfluous man, with a certain amount of the feminine in the psyche, certain things have always been so obvious and when I've discussed them with people, expecting they'd find them equally obvious, I've been amazed that something simply stops them seeing it. Or else they have an agenda in not seeing and accepting unpleasant truths, especially about those they revere.

Me, I have no sentiment this way, as Miss Marple didn't. Anyone can be foolish or crooked, no matter how high or low. Unfortunately, this breeds a certain distrust and often people are reticent to talk, for fear of what it will reveal. That was especially so as a Headmaster. I'm sure they realized I'd never make use of it, except to try to help but still - they'd be trying to put certain constructions on things which were quite simply not so or else missed the main point.

And they'd resent that I didn't accept their constructions and they'd often quite savagely turn on me as if to say: "Well, what makes you so special? Why should truth reside in you and not in me?"

It doesn't.

As Holmes might say: "You see just as far as I, Watson but you don't observe." Arrogant bstd? Not at all. There's just a history of keen interest in and the honing of these particular skills, that's all. You do it in your field, I do it in mine. But you'd call me a smug bstd, all the same.

Tangentially, there's one thing I know to be an absolute lie and one of the cleverest lies ever perpetrated on the world. And that's that there is and must always be, a dualistic "balance" between good and evil in the world. The idea is so simple and combines a number of universal truths but in a most destructive, twisted cocktail.

This theory long ago ingratiated itself into and is integrated into certain Eastern religions, drawing on what is a truth - and the Australian koori know this full well - that there must be a balance of eco-systems, of the earth and its inhabitants and that people must continually aspire to wisdom and nirvana.

Then, in that spirit of balance, tolerance and compromise, laced with religious terminology and an all-seeing pseudo-wisdom, there is introduced a single evil thought - that there must also be war to "balance" peace, that there must be cruelty to "balance" kindness and that there must be perversion to "balance" purity.

They can point to ancient, frail texts to support it all but it's a lie just the same, simply because of the eventual fruits of the idea - the idea does not promote harmony on earth at all but seriously unbalances the environment and eco-systems and why? Because this particular dualism takes the metaphor out of context, takes the analogy too far into unsupportable and unsustainable territory and relies on its debunking being so complex and difficult.

Because to debunk this notion, one must unravel each thread, one by one. One must refer to a model of living which does not and never has been given a chance to exist because the other model, being childishly simple to grasp, is thus grasped by barely sentient young people who find it much easier to come to terms with than the truth. And then they grow older and tacitly pass this model down.

You can test the truth out in a micro-environment. Put one thousand people in one square kilometre. Every time one feels like berating another or issuing an ultimatum, don't. Do a kindness instead, though it goes against the grain. Do the hard thing each time and then, as with physical exercise, eventually the hard thing becomes easier and easier to do.

Realize there are just too many people in that square kilometre and that a spirit of compromise is the only sustainable way. Take your destructive urges out by breaking a stick or kicking a rock but these become less and less anyway, the less you utilize them.

Every time you need something, ask if it is really necessary. Every time you need a kilo of this, buy 0.7 of a kilo instead. Practise a certain frugality but not in generosity. On the road, if there is one space and two cars going for it, hold back and let him have it. And so on. In this model there is no "balance" between good and evil.

There is simply no evil.

And what of the rogue element who doesn't play by the spirit of the game? Nothing - as long as everyone else is tenaciously clinging to the model, knowing full well that happiness and security only come through a spirit of give and take, the rogue element will eventually die off.

And this brings us to the second thread - no compulsion.

Disdain is your strongest tool here, non-inclusion of the destructive behaviour, not of the person himself. Every parent knows that you don't dislike the child - you dislike the behaviour. No need to incarcerate, no need to attack, let the rogue element dash itself to pieces on the rock or else come to its senses and rejoin its mates. Always hold out the olive branch and always hold up the sustainable model to follow.

And where are excitement, fun and really wild things under this model?

Here is another lie to debunk - why can't there still be rollicking fun and raucous laughter? Dost thou think there'll be no more cakes and ale? Even a bawdy joke - for goodness sake, is no bad thing. We're sentient, sensual beings, we're sexual. Physically towards one woman because the ultimate pleasure is growing into and upwards with one another, though we notice many others along the way and have a laugh. We are passionate - so let's act passionately. What's the problem?

The problem is the lure of obsession and excess.

You think I don't know deep anatomical exploration, paralytic drinking, tangerine dreams of penguins at dawn and psychic paradise, the thrill of speed and black humour? You think these words are coming out of a sheltered churchgoer? The thing is, there are even higher things than these and the exquisite pleasure in these depends on your ability to regulate your intake of everything, in your capacity for finesse and passion at the one time.

So if a person urges you to indulge your libido or your anger without limit, to substitute substances for higher pleasures, then he's twisting the human quality of constraint and sufficiency, suppressing the equally human qualities of loyalty and trust and seriously unbalancing the psyche. The road he's leading you down leads only to a weakening of the character and eventual desolation.

It's the law of diminishing returns, the law of excessive consumption demanding greater and greater kicks to get the same buzz. Or greater and greater perversion of the real balance in one's life. It's the Emperor Palpatine urging, urging, urging Vader and Skywalker to give way to the misnamed "dark side".

Misnamed because there are no "sides". Again, this suggests a balance between two equal and opposed forces, whereas, in fact the sustainable model is quite different.

The true balance is between all living things and inanimate things in the world [Australian aborigines again or if you prefer - Dirk Gently's fundamental interconnectedness of all things] but humans need to regulate themselves, hone their hardness and ability to survive, through self-denial, through exercise, through controlling the will, through pleasure - just enough of it and once or twice too much, for artistic effect.

Passion should be poured into projects rather than destructive behaviours, anger should be directed at those who would nobble this model, rather than at fellow humans.

In a species which has the capacity to overcome its base instincts and has the capacity to reach for higher things, what then will rein in it's excesses? There has to be something.

In this model of the world, evil is seen for what it really is - not a glorious counterbalance but a sad, tacky cancer entering from without, making its home in the human host [like in Alien], a virus trying to nibble at the edges of a powerful model - simple affection - and trying to pervert it.

It's a wolf trying to separate the lamb from the flock, it's a mentally sick entity trying to turn everyone else into equally mentally sick entities and gaining some short-term comfort from doing so.

So the person calling for all people to give way to their worst excesses and urging them to call it pleasure, this person has become a sad shell, his humanity suppressed [whereas he believes it is shining]; he's being used by a powerful force for its own purposes and ends up calling white black and black white].

There's no reasoning because shells can't be reasoned with.

But the door's always open and this human is always welcome back, if only he will come. I'm referring to NO one person here but to a type, all too common these days. I'm referring to an idea which has taken root [to switch metaphors] and is spreading like a vine across the world. I'm referring to a false model which, as Miss Marple indicated, if people would just sit back and think it through, they'd see through.

But more positively, it is presenting a different model, a more sustainable one and one more appropriate for this time of year.