[so cal fires] firemen killed, evacuations continue

Courtesy AOL

Maildotcom are now acknowledging it.

[late evening listening] it wasn't all rock 'n roll

Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich - annoyingly, they cut off the end of the song:



Tommy James and the Shondells - new version but quite good:



Moody Blues - yes:



Procol Harum - the best sound has the naffest vid, this is the best compromise:



Animals - difficult finding a vid with good sound or youtube not causing trouble:

[august bank holiday monday] overcast here

What did you do on this day today? Eat? Go to a garden? Nudge nudge, wink wink? Go swimming? Go to the beach? Blog? Prepare for the upcoming year? Sleep? Go for a walk? Have convivial company for an ale and a natter? Try to survive the street? Have a drink at the club?

[political compass] revisited

I just took the test again:

[monochrome monday] with a little help ...

[the great lie] now enshrined in british law

Women in same-sex relationships can now register both their names on the birth certificate of a child conceived as a result of fertility treatment. Female couples not in a civil partnership but receiving fertility treatment may also both be registered. The law change applies to female couples in England and Wales who were having fertility treatment on or after 6 April 2009.

WTF?

I want the names, now, of all who conspired to get this mentally deficient piece of tosh in to law, those names to be put up in a public place to warn people whom to avoid dealing with in any future context.

It's Loretta all over again.

I'd like to examine the minds of people so into PC that they can ignore basic biological realities and try to create a destructive and dangerous society where Great Lies are able to be enshrined in the fabric of a nation and used to achieve who knows what, to the ultimate perversion of children no longer able to recognize fact from fantasy, truth from distortion.

This law is so wrong, so based on evil that it absolutely boggles the mind. It is, quite simply a lie for one partner to have her name on a birth certificate if she was not the parent. The state is acting here to condone an untruth on an official document, a document which requires, of the signees, that it is the truth to the best of their knowledge.

Here is how low society has now sunk.

[the making of myths] the devil's in the details

The spin and the lies of Nu-Labour are not just a strategy, there're a time-worn system and we'll judge the Tories against this when next May comes.

Many people have written on how no one accepts responsibility in politics and even in society anymore. There are no Nu-Labour scandals, in Nu-Labour eyes, simply because Brown doesn't accept that there can be guilt in relation to his administration.

Therefore, spin replaces what used to be calls for a Minister's resignation. The Profumo affair today would result in some guff about how the media is biased and how the current global economic crisis, caused by factors outside our control, has impinged on a fine Minister whose private life is his own, by the way.

Or something like that.

Integrity and decency have been devalued. They're talked about but they don't exist at Westminster to any great extent and genuine MPs get swamped by the others, the whole package being labelled shopsoiled. Is it the curate's egg, good in parts or is all rotten right through?

The real nature of human interaction

In any interface between human beings and between humans and pets, there is a struggle - a struggle for preeminence, the taking of the high moral ground, the acceptance of the projected image, the need to be seen as right, baggage from previous interactions, the carving out of a living space within which we're comfortable, the setting up of defensive mechanisms to protect what we've carved out and so on.

In even the most benign relationships, especially where love is in the equation, there is a power struggle going on and the interaction which works best is where each knows his or her place and doesn't buck the system. I'm not arguing for this but it is the actuality. Phillip McGraw, in his Lifelaw N8, said that there is no reality, only perception.

I think that there are some immutable realities. If someone says he was doing x and it is explained with backup, then it is likely that his intention was x, as stated. Another person's inability to accept that is his/her own problem. Through these sorts of things comes all the conflict in the world and the bottom line is, the reason why anyone carries on like this is - to get one's own way.

That's all it is and all it's ever been - you want it your way, I want it mine.

The trouble is:

1. not everyone recognizes this;
2. some like to alter the equation by imparting spin to the intereaction.

The art of spin

One of the commenters at this site quoted Adams - they care, we don't, they win.

A party dedicated to spin, to constructions placed on the public record, to obfuscation and sleight of hand is always going to initially defeat a victim whose focus is elsewhere.

In a relationship I fell into some years back, I learnt what spin really was and how dishonesty gets a toehold and then grows. In any relationship, one is the active partner, concerned with the fine detail and the analysis and the other is usually focussed on something else, for example the workplace, the current project, the bit on the side or the hobby e.g. the car restoration or whatever.

This latter person is naive because he or she [and I'll refer to it as "he" for convenience only] is being shafted and doesn't know it. There is a type of person, a spin-doctor who always has to be right, never wrong. One never hears of his mistakes, only of his triumphs. Any error which, in the light of his current circumstances, is too glaring to deny, is passed off lightly, heavily laden with spin.

Rule N1 - no one likes to admit guilt or error;

Rule N2 - if confronted with this, everyone has his way of acknowledging/moving on;

Rule N3 - any attempt by the victor to look away with a triumphant smile or insist the other acknowledge the error verbally will be met with anger on the part of the admittee and both become intransigent.

Rule N4 - never admit a wrong if you are not wrong, simply on the grounds of:

a. being outmanoeuvred;
b. being weak willed;
c. for the sake of peace;
d. because it is a storm in a teacup and you don't care anyway.

This last point, d, is the crucial one. From bitter experience in the workplace and at home, I've learnt that the moment you allow them or her to do a slide where a certain incident is seen in a certain erroneous way, that erroneous interpretation then:

1. goes down on the record uncontested;

2. contains only the spin of the other party;

3. is reintroduced later in conversation with third parties as a given fact, a given truth, when it is anything but;

4. is spun to others in a way which accords with other people's general perceptions of the one spoken of and though it is wrong, those hearing it are not sufficiently analytical nor care enough to delve into this truth or not and therefore nod on in agreement with the oh so plausible teller of the untruth and pass it on in the form of rumour, out of earshot of the accused.

This is the true evil of the slide and the actions of the person who likes to employ it. It's employed in marriages and relationships to gain the high moral ground, to exonerate the actions of the party of real guilt and to pyschologically defend that person from any taint of being seen to be in error.

Often it's one way.

When both do it, then there is a volatile relationship which cannot last.

Where one employs it and the other refuses to play along, then there is also the end of the relationship.

This was so with someone I was once in a relationship with, some years back. The difference was that forewarned is forearmed and my antennae, honed by blocking a former spin-doctor I'd known prior to that, now picked it up straight away and blocked the spin.

It was a very minor point - that I had not supported her sufficiently in an argument she was having with a friend. If I had said nothing because it was uninteresting to me and it was uninteresting, truly, then the assumption, very subtly put: "You don't support me sufficiently [general rule]," had had its first piece of uncontested evidence placed next to it.

It was now a fait accompli and next time this distortion was used, the gameplayer could point to the previous evidence of the "the type of thing you do".

Stratagems and spoils

If you are awake to these sorts of people, you are still not out of the woods because then you get this:

1. The same spin is reintroduced patiently at a later time, often carefully reworded and usually timed to perfection, when you are either incapable, through illness or about to do something or when your mind is focussed on something else. The whole aim is to get the tacit acceptance established - and lack of fighting from your corner is tantamount, in this person's mind, to admission. It will do for now.

2. If the assertion is blocked this time, then the asserter drops it for now and plans to reintroduce it later. It's part of the gameplan that the admission must be made. This is Irish Lisbon 2 in a nutshell. Wrong result, try again and again and again until you wear them down.

3. If the untruth is blocked at every attempt by you, then the gameplayer has a problem. The next strategy he uses is to assert the exact opposite of the truth, in such a plausible "we're men of the world" manner that the Lie, [for that's what it amounts to], finally attaches itself and once attached, it can't be erased.

4. There is a whole panoply of strategies and this person is now so far down the line into stratagems and spoils that actually having a life does not occur to him and being focussed on something healthy is so far in the past that this Gollum can't go back [although Gollum did re-emerge as Smeagol for a time].

5. The penultimate stratagem is, if all the aforementioned fails to attach the Lie to the teflon accusee, to press others into the service of the Lie, to "Jim Jones" a bunch of women or men and weave the web of charm to the point where they'll go off and do the dirty work for him, often with scant knowledge of the truth but with assertions of long time acquaintance and therefore knowledge of the truth. It's pure propaganda.

6. The final stratagem, if the Lie still fails to stick and in 99% of cases, it does attach itself, through sheer persistence and through other's weariness with the whole issue so that they throw up their hands and say, "Whatever you want," then there is only one option left - destroy!

They go back, patiently, through everything that person has said or written, comb it for possibly negative connotations which can be placed on an out-of-context quote or whatever and slowly construct a snow job on that person, being careful to only suggest that which most are willing to believe, that belief emerging from their careful, subtle email or phone campaign of drip, drip, drip of poison over the months and years, until something is now accepted as lore which, in fact, had no original basis at all.

In summary, you are dealing here with a psychopath, a person who might not even know his spin is spin but probably really believes it is the truth, just as a method actor does because to believe it is the truth is the only possible hope of plausibly persuading others.

What an honest person would do

The premium you, yourself, place on the truth has nothing to do with how good you are at methods of propaganda or how plausible you come across as and it often can't stand up against good spin.

Any salesman can be plausible.

If there is a difference of opinion, if both sides are honest, then each puts his point of view, hears the reply, corrects the errors as far as he sees them, has his errors corrected in turn and the process goes on for a week, a month, after which it is over. Both perceptions sit on the record and people can then make their own mind up by reading one then the other.

The honest person, even if he drags it up months later at a gettogether, says something like, "John's not going to agree with me here but ..." That's the honest way because it acknowledges that there is another point of view.

When there actually is only one truth

Sometimes though, one side is simply not honest and why this is particularly dangerous is because most people believe that there have to be two sides to every story, that where there's smoke there's fire and that everyone conceals something.

When something comes along which actually is one-sided, it is not not accepted as possible.

If you, yourself, are meticulous with the truth, if your method is to assert, be attacked, go back and review what you said, retest the links, assert again, be attacked, repeat the process, always on the basis that you might have made an error [because everyone does and noone's infallible], then when you come up agaisnt a truth-slider such as described above, it is well-nigh impossible to have your attitude of integrity and his attitude of non-integrity seen for what it is.

Everyone will want to balance up the two sides by saying you might be in error a bit and the asserter may just have something there, when it is really not so. The self-actualizing process in most people's minds, especially those hearing something and not really engaged with the issue, is to balance both sides more or less evenly. Anything which hits buzz word triggers reinforces in people's minds that what the speaker is saying "rings true", when in fact, it might not be so.

Goebbel's vilification of the Jews followed just such a pattern.

What to do

Unjust as it may seem, the only real option is to get out of that situation with those people but to carry on with your own life and your own responsibilities.

The forces arrayed against you are so far down the track that no one is going to either be interested in the truth, if it doesn't relate personally to them or they're not going to think it out with any clarity. Most people just haven't he time.

This is what the gameplayer and spin-doctor is banking on.

If your side of the issue is on paper and his side is on paper, then that's the best you can hope for, in terms of the actuality. Your own psychological state now comes into it, your own mental health.

Staying sane

You have responsibilities, maybe to your family, maybe to your department or to your firm. You have to be in good condition to face that each day and getting dragged down into slanging matches, slurs and spin is the ultimate destroyer. You have to say, if necessary over and over, "I've had my say, it's on the record, take it or leave it."

You have to protect your life and your health in the end. Phillip McGraw's Lifelaw N9:

Lifelaw 9 - There is power in forgiveness.

If someone hurts us, either that person never knows he’s hurt us or else he just goes away and leaves us to suffer.

Where once we were going along happily, now someone has made us angry, depressed and seeking revenge. This then makes us bitter.

Does this person pay for his crime against us? No way. Do we pay for his crime? Yes, every time, through loss of balance, loss of mood and loss of health. In the end, he wins and we lose.

Only we should choose how we feel. Forgiveness is the way to say:

"Nobody is going to hurt me and control my feelings, even in his absence. I make the choice whether to be hurt or not. In the end, he is the unfortunate one, not me."

By rethinking the meaning of forgiveness, we can become emotionally freer, calmer and generally a more pleasant person. Power over oneself is the key to a calmer, more balanced life.

One aspect of this power over oneself is to block any attempt to slip a piece of spin over you, no matter how seemingly innocuous, no matter how much you care for that person, no matter how unimportant it might seem.

To fail to do that right form the start is to teach the other what works and what doesn't work. It's the road to destruction, the thin edge of the wedge, whatever metaphor you care to employ. We must not allow the Nu-Labour spin to stand as the actuality, we must patiently show, in our blogs, the way it really is. Then, anyone form outside who comes in can read your side and the spin-doctors' side and make his or her own decision.

Here endeth the sermon.

[so cal fires] why isn't anyone covering them

It's amazing that Google News, the American news service, did not carry the Southern Californian forest fires but things are pretty grim down that way. One correspondent got a message out to yours truly:

We had ash falling all day yesterday. The wind has shifted so it's not so bad at the moment. We're on stand by to help evacuate horses from friends' ranches. so have had to do the dog shuffle.

The LA Times says:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today urged residents in fire evacuation zones to flee as firefighters predicted another difficult day battling a wildfire that has burned 35,000 acres and threatened more than 12,000 homes from Acton to Altadena.

With temperatures expected to reach the mid- to high 90s today in the fire areas, officials said they were anticipating extreme fire conditions, mirroring Saturday’s, when flames leapt as high as 80 feet and spread at a rate of about 2.5 miles an hour.

Now, with that sort of action going on, where is the world press? Where is the British press? Where is anyone?

You can keep updated on the current fire situation at this site and on the extent of the damage here. I emailed a friend I know from a distance away and this was the report I got back:

The whole Mountain was on fire! It was incredible! All the clouds in the pics are smoke only. The sun had already set, and the moon (in the pics) was giving us light. As it got darker, splotches of red, and the glow of red increased on the horizon of where the mountains are. We were only just able to get into the area that we were, as it was starting to be evacuated.

[late evening listening] dearieme presents bix

This is beginning to become quite a feature now, this 8 p.m. music spot and I, for one, am enjoying it immensely.

I had a collection of Bix, along with Jellyroll Morton and others, some from original pressings and anywhere I went, people wanted copies. Gone now, all gone. The tape was filled out with pieces from the Palm Court Theatre Orchestra and a jazz orchestra doing teens, 20s and 30s stuff in the 80s, when it had fallen out of fashion. Can anyone remind me of the name of this British jazz orchestra? Like the Palm Court but just can't recall the name.

Dorsey's clarinet was superb in Singin' the Blues and I get a picture of Dearieme's penchant for the purity of the instrument. I quite like the frenetic harmonies too and here's the one which did it for Bix Beiderbecke - this is the best clip I could find:



Where there's jazz, in my book, there have to be the wimmin, Dearieme, we might differ on this, I don't know. Anyway, here are some of them wimmin:



Jellyroll Morton is not a purist in some eyes but he ushered in the modern era and yet some of his material is quite old. This is from 1905 [original tune]:



Obviously we can't see a recital from those days but here's a quite a fun modern rendition of Tiger Rag:



Late addition by Dearieme - better it goes here, as it will be some days before we go jazz again:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens?

Tom Paine, of The Last Ditch, Top 100 blogger, returns after a too lengthy absence with a piece which stirs the soul. Dearieme's late evening music, coming up at 8 p.m. would seem to complement this post as well:

My first "favourite thing" was a toy Mercedes “gullwing.” My father still has it, restored and in a display box with my other childhood motors. If you would like a real one, Bernie Ecclestone’s old one (pictured) is currently for sale. Here’s the link.

A car is more than transport. It’s both a symbol and an instrument of freedom. When I fire mine up and the computer tells me my range, I like to consider not only where I am going, but all the places I could go. All without having to tell anyone else, hang around in a public place at the convenience of others, or trust a stranger with my life.

The car is to the train as John Stuart Mill is to Marx. Though I fondly remember my childhood train set and a steam-powered trip to the seaside with my late grandmother, I hate trains as much as I love cars. I hate the lowest common denominator experience, where all must live for a while the life of the nastiest person in the carriage. I hate the higher cost and greater inflexibility; all with a car still necessary at either end to make the whole farce possible.

The forerunner of another favourite thing of mine was a Tissot watch my father gave me as a teenager. It was an old one of his, which he replaced with an Omega. It lasted until my train-using grandmother bought a new one for my 18th birthday.

While I love technology and hate nostalgia, I still prefer a mechanical watch to more accurate electronic types and now have a small collection. The best I have is a “Grand Complication” that took Patek Philippe's craftsmen months to make. There are models that take four and a half years, apparently! It doesn’t tell time as well as the sturdier one I wear on my holidays (so I can swim) or even a cheap quartz one, but it is a delightful object. It has proved a better store of value than more “sensible” investments and is an heirloom for my yet-to-be-born (no pressure, Misses Paine) grandson.

I wore it every day for the first year I had it, but now reserve it for “Sunday best.” I see it every day I am at home and confess it and its companions give more pleasure than is quite proper.

An artist will know and care about brushes and canvasses so it’s not surprising that a writer (however humble) should care about pens and stationery. Not that I go crazy buying pens any more. Like umbrellas, more are lost than are ever worn out. I have put many fine pens into circulation that way and can only hope they are appreciated, somewhere. I like to have an attractive one to look at while pondering what to write. My interest in stationery makes little sense when most of my writing is pixellated. Still, I can’t pass a quality stationers without looking around and am ridiculously tempted by high quality paper for which I have little use. Even my nice pens are mostly used for marginal notes and corrections on the writing of others.

I left books until last, but they were first. I have an intense working life, am studying a new language and now spend online much of the spare time I used to reserve for books. As I type, there is a reproachful pile of improving literature on a windowsill crying “hypocrite” at me. Yet everything good about my life flows from my boyhood reading.

I was not a great student, but I will claim this. I never took my teachers at their word. I strongly believe no pupil was ever meant to do so.

I went to a series of mediocre state schools with Labour-voting teachers and a Redbrick University where the only openly right-wing lecturer was so eccentric, ugly and ill-dressed that he might as well have been engineered to discredit his thought. The teachers and lecturers mostly didn’t tell us how they voted, but they didn’t need to. The conventional thinking of the Left underlay their every utterance.

If it were not for the town library and the relatives I gently conditioned to regard books as appropriate gifts, how else could I have checked my teachers’ opinions? How else could I have found another view? Not that I knew what I was setting out to find. I expected my reading to explain why my teachers were right, but that’s another matter. Reading is a road, not a destination.

I don’t buy as many books as I used to. Mrs Paine is a voracious reader of modern literature and does most of the buying. She has led me out of the dusty classics I reared myself on and into the modern world. As is always the problem with reading moderns (the bad authors of past ages are out of print) she is disappointed with much of what she reads. She kindly passes on only the good stuff to me.

I therefore only buy books these days in the form of well-crafted objects to treasure. The literary iPod seems close now, but when my daughters’ everyday reading is electronic, I still want them to have beautiful books as the literary equivalent of my mechanical wrist-watches.

I was delighted to find a first edition of Middlemarch for one of Miss Paine the Elder’s birthdays. In a few years, she will have her whole library with her at all times just as I have all my music with me now. Still, I hope that copy of her favourite novel, in the form George Eliot herself imagined, will catch her eye from time to time and make her smile.

Isn't that what “favourite things” are all about?

[Guest blogger, Tom Paine, usually lives at The Last Ditch]