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Thursday 20 November 2008
The pursuit of Solitude is an interesting thing. Every weekend I have this plan to retire into the flat and not see or speak to anyone - it's not like a desperate need or anything, just something I want to do for a change. But inevitably, it doesn't happen. I don't know what it is that causes the mismatch between the desire for alone time and the willingness to give it up. Most odd.
Entertainingly (yes, *more* Big Brother), right at this minute, Sophie is the most popular housemate, according to the ratings entered on the Big Brother website.
Well over a dozen people have arrived here having searched for some variation on the phase "Jade Big Brother Pig Picture or Photo", and I'm starting to feel quite guilty that they've been disappointed.
So to make up for it - here is one.
A few observations in the wake of last night's Big Brother task (I know - I'm sad and obsessive....).
First off, it having been noted that the team just needed to get one question right in order to have the additional chance to get the divide down, am I the only one who thought Dim's joy at answering correctly was all about him getting to 'live rich' and nothing to do with the team objective?
I tried to name the housemates in order at the same time as Kate, and freakily, I missed out exactly the same ones that she did.
Afterwards, the generally supportive attitude towards her was noticably broken by Alex, who smugly announced that he could have done better. I've never been that keen on him, but now I'm starting to get decidely annoyed.
Still, it's nice to see that (at long last) it's looking like everyone is wising up to Jade. I reckon she'll be nominated and evicted this week.
Not taking unexpected shifts in the model by Big Brother into account, I reckon the final four will be Jonny, Kate, Adele and Alex. At the moment, I'm feeling the most kindly-disposed towards Jonny or Kate to win, but that'll probably shift again in the weeks to come.
I had a dream last night, after watching the highlights of Greg Rusedski's match against Andy Roddick, that this year's Wimbledon Men's Final was an all-Brit Henman/Rusedski affair. It seemed curiously possible.
Watching the way 'Tabby' Tim is playing today, it seems *far* less likely.
Big Brother - Hmmm. Well, inevitable as the departure of Sophie was, it would have been nice if there'd been a slightly closer margin. I will be interested to see what she has to say when she emerges though.
Right - the Scrabble's back to normal because that swath of pink was really starting to trouble me. But I'm going to keep the rest of the pink for now, just for a change - I've been thinking about a new colour scheme for a while, so I might as well keep this one while I consider other options....
801: Lots of good stuff up at the Apple Trailers site at the moment. Check out the very cool looking Start Trek:Nemesis trailer. Also, Daredevil is looking promising, and Steven Soderbergh's new one, Full Frontal, though not exactly 'looking' good from the trailer (you'll see what I mean) is one I have high hopes for. I like its site too.
Update - Dave, Mike and Steve (who is assuredly not 'Stephen') are all feeling a little pink today too.
UPDATE UPDATE - So is Chris.
UPDATE Cubed - This is the 800th posting on this blog.
UPDATE:RESURRECTION - Anton goes his own way :-)
Picking up on Dave's suggestion/comment on last night's posting, I've decided to be a little gayer today. Hence the pink.
Don't worry - it won't last....
Also, Dave has a survey on this very subject up - as the man from Big Brother would say: "You Decide".
I've been engaged in an email dialogue with someone who would rather not be named, but who is a regular reader and occasional commentator here - in my usual effort to be fair-minded, I've let him read this posting before I've made it public, to be sure I'm not misrepresenting him. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to adopt the pseudonym 'Stephen' for him.
The essence of Stephen's initial contact was that this site generally, and this blog specifically, aren't gay enough. By which he meant that I don't reiterate as frequently as I should that the perspective presented is a gay one, and that the matters discussed are not often enough specifically gay. At first, I'll confess, I was tempted to reduce my reply to a simple "there's more to me and my opinions than just being gay”, but upon reflection, I felt that to do so would not only be somewhat rude, it was also a bit disingenuous. So I embarked upon what has been a very interesting discussion with Stephen, still ongoing, but having hit a few conclusions which I think I'm ready to share.
To begin with, in principle, there categorically is more to me and my opinions than just being gay - and there is a very wide range of subjects in which I'm interested that would not be defined as 'gay-related'. But I'm aware (and possibly increasingly so) that much of my view of myself and by extension the world is profoundly affected by my sexuality. In a sense it's impossible that it should be otherwise - I'm not one whose acceptance of their homosexuality was particularly painless (*are* there such people? I don't think I've met many, if so.). I spent years, in a period of my life that was turbulent anyway, trying to deal with being 'different', and not doing so terribly successfully. I forget when the specific realisation first struck - I can *never* remember fitting into the typical gender groupings and behaviours at school, for instance - but it was certainly a lot earlier than I ever verbalised it to anyone. (And yet weird how other kids pick up on difference - I must first have been called a poof at the age of about 10 - maybe it was just the generic term of abuse at my school.)
The relevance of this apparent digression is to underscore the fact that I spent *years* self-analysing and questioning some extremely fundamental aspects of myself, and I would challenge anyone to emerge from that kind of activity without its conclusions affecting one's perspectives at a fundamental level. By my early twenties, when I'd resolved many of these issues and moved on to other concerns, it was regularly remarked that I had a great deal of self-confidence for someone my age. I used to suggest that it was actually self-knowledge, based on all those years of introspection and self-study - several of my gay friends from around that time made similar points about themselves and their own experience, so I suspect it's a broadly-felt sentiment.
So that's where the acceptance of my 'gayness' informing my perspectives and opinions comes from - it's no different than the way my maleness affects them, for instance, but because of all that thinking time, I'm (far) more aware of myself as a gay person than as a male person, or a Londoner, or a [fill in as appropriate].
And yes, therefore, I categorically have a gay perspective on things, and interestingly, I tend to think that it's fairly obvious. But then, I also tend to think that people should instinctively pick it up from me when they meet me, and am constantly surprised when they don't, so what do I know? Perhaps in the same way it's nowhere near as apparent in writing as I think. It's definitely there though.
As to my subject matter (though I could expand on the above quite a bit further and probably will at some point), well, there, I and Stephen are having some disagreements. Register first of all what I tend to think of this site as being; a home for some critical writing, and for this journal are the primary ones - other things are useful add-ons. Taking each of those in turn: critically, I tend to write about the things I've chosen to read/view and as such, they reflect the range of subjects that catch my interest, so some are gay and some are straight. The latter predominate because there are just more of them, but that said, I've recently picked up a copy of L.I.E. which I'll review as soon as I've had a chance to sit down and view it, plus my long-awaited copy of David Ehrenstein's book on gay Hollywood, Open Secret just arrived, and I'll be doing likewise when I've read it. This may shift the balance in favour of Stephen's stated preference that I spend more time dealing with gay media. In any case, I'll continue to review everything from a 'gay perspective', no matter its provenance.
In this journal though, things are less straightforward. There's a split here between three basic types of content:
1) Interesting/useful/funny links that I've come across.
2) Discussions of topics that are exercising my mind.
3) Actual 'journalling' of what I've been doing and how I feel about it.
Among the first, there are probably a smattering of gay-themed things, among the second, a larger number, and among the third, actually not that many at all.
The reason for this latter is that I'm living the life of a gay man - I'm not sure I'm living a gay life. The reason that there are next to no descriptions of my trips to gay bars or the various dates I've been on is simply that I hardly ever go to those bars and I don't go on dates.
Either one of those is subject to change, and would certainly be different had I started this thing ten years ago, but just at the moment, and for the lifetime of this journal so far certainly, that's not what's been happening. Stephen points me to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern (a pub I haunted regularly in my early years in London) and the fact that not only is it very popular, but that there's a whole blogging community who go there and then blog about it. "Why not go along?" he asked. "Why go along?" was my glib reply.
It's a fact that at this point in my life, the large majority of my friends are straight, and when I socialise, I tend to do so with my friends (shock!). I'm by no means saying that I'll never go to another gay bar, though actually, based on recent experiences, I'm far more likely to do so when I'm away from London than I am here. Equally, if/when I start a new relationship, if my new partner has a 'gayer' social life than I, I'll inevitably end up sharing in it. At that point, you might start to see references to gay bars, etc on a regular basis.
Or equally, if no eligible young men stumble upon this site and decide that I'm their soulmate, when the time comes that I decide actively to seek a new partner, getting back into the bar scene might be a part of the gameplan. At that point, this would almost certainly become a more overtly 'gay blog'.
More on this subject will no doubt follow, but in the meantime, here are a few related links that have had some impact on the ongoing discussion.
Philip Hensher article - Gay Art Lite
Swish Cottage Vauxhall Tavern A-Z
And just to round things off for the minute, here, coincidentally, is a gay link that I was going to post anyway: Rusty Is A Homosexual [Via various places.]
And today's the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, by the way.
Wimbledon Question II: Just how cool is it, on a scale of 1 to 10, to see Martina Navratilova playing on the Centre Court again?
I'd give it a 15.
Wimbledon Question: If Tim Henman gets booted out somewhere along the way, but Greg Rusedski continues on, does 'Henman Hill' become 'Rusedski Rise'?
I've not been journalling so much lately, because I've been doing a fair bit of my 'tending to the sick' routine (pity I don't suit grey serge), and also, I've been a bit low, and tend not to want to impose that on the world. I can't work out entirely where it's coming from, because I think it's compound reasons. No doubt it will pass.
In the meantime, though I will be doing a proper review of it, I'm quite convinced that most people don't read the comics reviews on here, so I'm 'foregrounding' this. I discovered an absolutely unique, self-published series called Strangehaven last week, and I'm glad I did. You can get some details from its creator's site, but the key information you need to know is that 14 issues have been published to date, and the first 12 have been collected into a pair of trade paperbacks, Arcadia and Brotherhood, and that you should all go out and buy copies immediately. Seriously - right now. I'm not one who gushes by nature, but I'll gush for England on this one. Go on - what are you waiting for?
And on a related subject, three search terms that brought people here over the last 24 hours or so are: jade big brother pig photos, jade pig big brother picture, and on a different front altogether, amazing 3 way lesbians
Jade: "My arse has got so frigging fat."
Direct quotation. Oh my god. Did she actually think it was slim and gorgeous in the first place????????
I know that recently I've become a bit of a Metafilter Whore, posting links there and commenting like never before, but on days like this, I almost reach the point of getting too depressed with it to keep bothering.
Not much point in doing a Wimbledon Watch, given that it's all over the news: Goodbye Andre, goodbye Pete, goodbye Marat. Quite the day. I can't help but think that the highlights will be well worth watching.
"George Bush is demanding that Palestine become Sweden before it can become Palestine....This is George in Wonderland stuff."
Jonathan Freedland, erm, disagrees in principle with many main points of Dubya's Plan For Peace in the Middle East. It's not just me, is it? The Leader Of The Free World(tm) really is a raving loon.
So think about it:
It's 1940 and you're the United States of America. You're embarking upon a highly secret and highly risky series of experiments designed to create a serum to turn regular men into super-soldiers. There's no guarantee that the experiments will even leave their subjects alive, never mind deliver results. And you're already in the habit of experimenting on the unknowing underclass of your society. So, is the first person you try this experimental serum on;
a) A blond-haired, blue-eyed WASP. or
b) A member of said underclass?
Those who recognise the details of Captain America's origin will be familiar with the history started by answering 'a'. Marvel Comics will shortly be embarking upon the history that started with the possibly more realistic answer 'b'.
And a right fuss they've kicked off too.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir David Calvert-Smith, has declared that the British people are 'institutionally racist'. Hugo Young makes the case that he's talking rubbish. And makes it very well, I think, especially insofar as it's a way of diverting responsibility away from the people with the power to do something about *actual* institutional racism.
So, on the Big Brother front, Jonny and Sophie are up for eviction - I think it's Jonny's turn, just in order that Spohie's continued presence can get right on Jade's tits. And actually, of the two, she's far less annoying. Jonny's eviction number is 09011 15 44 02.
ICQ Nickname (10:21 PM): Hi. I was looking at your site. Can I ask you a question?
Jon (10:21 PM): Sure.
ICQ Nickname (10:21 PM): I've been trying to get my head round PHP and I notice that you use it.
Jon (10:21 PM): I do, though at the moment I'm not much further with it than getting the server side includes to work.
ICQ Nickname (10:22 PM): It seems very useful though, ots of potential.
Jon (10:22 PM): So I gather from my programming friends.
ICQ Nickname (10:22 PM): do you not regard yourself as a programmer then?
Jon (10:23 PM): Believe me, *no one* regards me as a programmer, so if it's a technical question you have, I'm probably not the best person to ask. (Actually, 'probably' shouldn't even be in that sentence.)
ICQ Nickname (10:24 PM): It wasn't a technical question as such, though it seemed a good opportunity to ask how you were getting on with it.
Jon (10:24 PM): Well, considering I'm very non-technical, I've found the basic principles relatively easy to get my head round - I have a goal to get the site working dynamically through templates and a database, using PHP to drive it.
ICQ Nickname (10:25 PM): I see. that's very reassuring.
Jon (10:25 PM): Glad to help.
Jon (10:27 PM): So did you have an actual question that you wanted to ask?
ICQ Nickname (10:27 PM): Oh yes sorry I forgot.
Jon (10:27 PM): That's okay.
ICQ Nickname (10:28 PM): Do you have a big cock?
First Wimbledon Watch of the year - I was working from home today, and inevitably had Wimbledon on in the background. Nothing too gripping so far - The Arrogant Squad weren't in action, most of the British contingent were exactly as bad as would be expected, and Sampras is looking as good as ever (and his tennis was okay too).
In the glamorous world of the Big Brother house, I'm getting royally pissed-off with the continual juvenile sniping about Sophie from far too many of the others. Lord, but it's coming to something when Jade is complaining about someone else's personality.... Inevitably Sophie's going to be one of this week's nominiees, but I really hope she doesn't get evicted, just to piss off Jade and Dim.
Meanwhile, Dim is clandestinely shaving his chest. What a prat.
After participating regligiously for several years, this is the second in a row when I've been scheduled to be out of town on the day of the Walk For Life. I hope that everyone who walked had a good time - it's been a nice day for it anyway. As it transpires, I've been in town after all, because I've been doing my ministering-to-the-sick routine all weekend, so I wouldn't have been able to walk anyway.
Saw Monsoon Wedding last night - what a great film. An interview with director Mira Nair revealed that she wanted to try and capture some of the energy and the sense of continual activity in her home region, and I think she did that admirably. Beautifully-acted, well-shot, and with several interweaving stories, it was a very enjoyable experience - I'd recommend it.
Most of the domain shifting seems to have gone through, but I'll leave things 'til tomorrow to be on the safe side.
So....bye bye Spencer. I'm glad the odds were beaten with that Big Brother eviction, not just because I actually prefer seeing Alex in the house, but also because when he came out, what kind of a spoiled brat bad loser was Spencer? Talk about lacking any kind of style or charisma or charm. Good riddance, I say. Best part of the eviction was the banners in the crowd. I loved the one that said "Dim Tim, Get rid of him."
Channel 4 slipped up badly during the later 'live' show though. I know there's a theoretical couple of minutes transmission delay so that they can keep an ear on what's being said, but at the start of the live programme, they were on one scene, then they cut back to a point about 15 minutes earlier that led up to it. And they were tagging all of it as 'Live'. Very bad. Plus, the choice of very boring shots (Sophie in bed) while the others in the room were moving about and talking seems calculated to make people pay for the additional feeds, which is just a bit too cynical for my liking.
Metafilter has been a source of interesting world cup discussions.
From the post-England defeat thread, a good perspective, I think:
"Hey, look at the astounding progress England has made in the last two years. It's not fair to judge this young, newly-managed team in the abstract. They did very, very well. They'll be fearsome come 2004 if you can keep your heads about you(do the whole Kipling thing)and not go into your usual, suicidal fits of negativity, self-pity and reckless revisionism."
Yesterday's Guardian, as always, contained some interesting comment:
What a pity that Cherie isn't PM by David Clark, on the topic of Mrs Blair's greater willingness than her husband's to say what she really believes.
The real target of our poisonous press is the euro by Hugo Young, on what's really behind the ongoing assaults on the government. I heard some similar comments expressed on Question Time last night.
A great many of the new artists that have made it into my musical awareness in the last couple of years have come courtesy of the fine taste of the Buffy producers. Presently on my 'currently listening to' list is the latest - Michelle Branch. Her album The Spirit Room arrived a couple of days ago, and I'm loving it. For Buffy viewers, Michelle performed her gorgeous Goodbye To You over the scenes of Tara leaving Willow at the end of Tabula Rasa. One of the other highlights is the opening track, Everywhere, but the whole album is full of good stuff. Highly recommended.
Dave and I were pondering exactly why this year's Big Brother is so much more continually gripping than the last two, when the housemates this year are, to a man and a woman, unpleasant, immature and boring. It's very strange.
I'm watching this evening's programme as I'm typing, and getting even more irritated than I already was (is this possible?) with the dreadful Dim, who was smirking so bloody smugly when being told off for giving away World Cup info that I wished I could smack him one. I really hope that Alex beats the odds and survives tomorrow's eviction, and my current hope for the final winner is Adele.
Sometime tomorrow I'm going to start the migration of this domain to a new server. While I'll keep the versions on the two servers in sync, there's no way of knowing which version anyone will be seeing, which means comments could go all over the place. So....until I can be reasonably sure that the change has fully propagated, I'll stick a "Please don't comment" warning up once I start the switch. This is just an early warning.
I've been meaning to mention AvantGo for ages.
It's a very useful tool that allows you to add channels (effectively web pages) to your PDA, so that whenever you sync it with your computer, you also get the most recent version of any channel you've listed. So I get portable versions of BBC News and Guardian Unlimited every day to read on the tube, or wherever I happen to be that's not my main machine. It's a brilliant utility, and both of those suppliers produce a dedicated AvantGo version of their content with things like images, etc taken out.
The reason it's finally come into my head to mention it is that by way of my continuing experimentation with Movable Type, which allows blog content to be output to as many different page templates as you like, I spent part of last night creating an AvantGo compatible version of this journal. Note that it's just the journal, not the rest of the site (though I might add links to the other stuff at some point). I've also had to leave off the comments, as including them made a version that was too big for my own PDA to display, and I'm assuming mine is pretty typical.
There's even a handy tool in AvantGo that outputs 'sign-up' URLs for just such custom channels - here's the one for mine. (You need to have signed-up with AvantGo and installed the software, of course....)
Feel free to ignore it completely
Once upon a time , I lived in Guisborough.
Guisborough has its very own website.
I quote from Guisborough's very own website:
"In addition to its own stunning surroundings, interesting shops and lively nightlife, Guisborough is ideally situated as a base for exploration of the North East, North Yorkshire, or indeed ANY area of the UK."
Apart from the fact that I can't help but doubt its 'interesting shops and its lively nightlife', I'd just like to point out how entirely un-ideally situated it is for exploration of, say, Kent. Or Cornwall. Or The Shetlands. Or basically anywhere north of Newcastle or south of York.
What seems like no time at all after AnthroBlog was pondering whether someone should produce a London Bloggers Tube Map in the style of the New York Subway version....
....someone has.
[Via SwishCottage]
Forgot to post this yesterday - even with the RIP Act changes now postponed, it's worth reading for its basic points about not trusting Government. By Hugo Young, in The Guardian.
Several people are doing this, and having given it a go, I quite liked the entertainment value provided, so:
Jon is:
... 17 years old
... or was doing music for "The Practice"
... also a contributor to the forthcoming David Holmes album
... without doubt one of the top Latin artists of the 90's
... a member of the ACM and the Internet Society
... an 18 year old male from Upstate New York
... Basque for John
... a taxpayer, which serves him right
... pathetic
... the photo editor for the Lakeshore Weekly News
... also a contributing editor to Videography magazine
... a master of pop
... an idiot
... seeking more sponsorship in and out of the industry
... OSA's second online-only peer-reviewed journal
... examined and certified at the international standard by the AMGA
... most recently the author of Kylix: The Professional Developer's Guide and Reference
... an excellent writer whose witty observations are most enjoyable
... now working for Intel's Mobile and Handheld Products Group
... happy there
... gay
... without any doubt
... HOT
... in his home country
... an ideal television guest
What's particularly freaky is how well some of these hang together - but apart from a couple of foreign language ones I left out, this is the exact order they came up in.
I know I shouldn't, but I can't help the odd gloat when it's deserved, and I feel like gloating at the moment, because it is:
DAVID BLUNKETT ADMITS HE WAS WRONG
The Mirror has proclaimed itself "The Official Anti-Big Brother Newspaper", and contains a brilliant assassination of new housemate Tim (hereafter to be referred to as 'Dim') today. Sadly I can't find it online, but among the nuggets of wonderfulness included is the following:
"I would hate to be either ugly or not wealthy," declared the attractively modest new boy. "Neither of which I really have to worry about."
and
Hair by Velcro, this podgy man-breasted bore has quickly proved that (allegedly) coming from the upper classes does not mean that you are necessarily going to be intelligent.
Hasn't it been a glorious day?
Round-up of all sorts of things (gosh The Guardian's been full of stuff today):
Roy Hatterseley, a politician of a type we could well do with bringing back, makes a few pointed observations on the subject of 'New' Labour's relationship with the traditionally Tory press.
And the extent to which the border-free internet can be held accountable to an individual country's law is examined by Geoffrey Robertson in a piece about the current attempts by Zimbabwe to prosecute Guardian Online.
Elsewhere, the debate about the extension to the RIP Act (see postings passim) has been delayed - but not cancelled.
There was a BBC Reputations programme about Frankie Howerd on Saturday night. Nancy Banks-Smith reviews it, and includes this wonderful anecdote (tell me you can't just hear Howerd saying the line):
"A man I knew encountered him once in a sauna, a slightly hazardous place to meet Howerd. Sweating heavily, he admitted to being a TV critic. Frankie peered closely. "I hope you're not that Nancy Banks-Smith." "
Things I did at the weekend and forgot to mention:
Did the promised review of Ruse - it's in Opinion - I'm working on at least one more review to get posted tonight.
Got my New York photos organised and online. I've made a small pop-up gallery for ease of viewing.
So there's a new Big Brother housemate - Timothy, from Thornaby in Cleveland. He thinks he's going to bring some class and a bit of an up-market touch to the otherwise plebian housemates. He doesn't strike me as very impressive on first viewing. In fact, he strikes me as thoroughly unpleasant.
And as for class and up-market....he's from *Thornaby* for gods' sake! Have you *seen* Thornaby? Because I have, and neither class nor up-market are words that immediately come to mind.
To nobody's greater surprise than my own, I found myself watching the latter parts of the Ireland/Spain match - is it just me or did Ireland much more deserve to win than Spain?
Turning over to the final of the tennis at Queen's Club, I discovered that (possibly to no one's greater surprise than his own) Tim Henman had taken the first set from the King of The Arrogant Squad, Lleyton Hewitt. Anyway, things are back to normal now, Hewitt's 4-0 up in the second set.
UPDATE - and even more back to normal, that standard of performance continued into the third set. Ho hum. I'm guessing that any sporting glory for the United Kingdom this summer won't be happening in South West London....
Absolutely best time imaginable to go to an otherwise perpetually-packed supermarket?
About 1.30 this afternoon, actually.
I gather we won.
I'm willing to bet that not one person reading this will be even remotely interested, but nevertheless:
Marvel Comics publish a title you might have heard of - The Fantastic Four. The upcoming issue 60 of that title, published in August, will mark the debut of a new creative team, headed by writer Mark Waid (trust me - he's great - check out the review of his Ruse that I swear I'll get up here this weekend). To promote it, Marvel have announced that the cover price of this issue will be 9 cents (beating DC's 10-cent Batman of a few months back). Ideally, this will both generate much-needed publicity for comics generally, and encourage some people who wouldn't otherwise pick up comics to do so.
Waid is interviewed regarding his take on the series here - as always with these things, disregard any semi- or non-literate comments in the thread that follows.
I've gone a bit Metafilter-mad in the last day or two. I've posted about eight or nine comments and two new links in what seems like no time flat. This coincides with a chain of postings here which caused Mike to observe "you've got very political over the last few days ..." (though my response was that I've always been very political). I'm not sure what's kicked me out of my apparent inaction, but whatever it is, I hope it continues - I think I'm a person of strong opinions and feelings, and it worries me that in this place of all places I haven't been seen to be that.
And I know that it's horribly self-indulgent to do this, but that Spider-Man thing has triggered the most-responded-to thread of any Metafilter link I've posted.
Bits and pieces:
The British Board of Film Classification is getting its knickers in a twist over the Spider-Man film, leading some local authorities to exercise their powers to change its certification and allows children to see it unaccompanied. The BBFC claim that:
"The violence is set in a modern urban setting with a clear message that the use of violence is the normal and appropriate response when challenged."
Excuse me - I've seen it - if it has one, the film's 'message' is that the use of a jet-powered personal glider and armoured exo-skeleton is the normal and appropriate response when challenged, which I somehow think will make the likelihood of copycat behaviour a little less likely. Unless of course they're talking about the school bullying scenes, which are so tame I'd suggest that most kids will have seen (or experienced) far worse by the age of about seven.
Consignia are to receive an almost £2billion cash boost from the Government, and have unveiled a plan to return to profit which includes, among other things, changing its name back to The Royal Mail, and scrapping second deliveries. I'm not going to dwell on the name change thing, because it's too easy, but I will ask "Am I the only one who thought they'd scrapped second deliveries years ago?" Certainly I've never been aware of a second delivery anywhere I've lived in London.
And Metafilter pointed me towards the report that 'homophobia' is actually a misnomer, and that much that is called homophobic is actually about hatred, not fear. I think I'll echo the Metafilter poster and say "D'oh" to that one. Of course it's a misnomer - though as is pointed out in the thread, most of the alternatives are worse. I go with the sentiment that we should call hate what it is, in any context. And as far as I'm concerned, the idea that gay people are to be feared ties in a bit too closely to all of those claimed 'homosexual panic' defenses for hate crimes.
I've been watching The Hunt For Britain's Paedophiles on BBC Two - I missed the first part last week, and in some ways I'm pleased, because this evening's continuation was pretty grim viewing. The behaviour of the people responsible for these acts is unbelieveable - not only the sheer arrogant conviction that they haven't actually done any harm, but also the fact that they were willing to be filmed while being investigated. The man primarily focused on in this programme turned up for every interview with a photocopied manifesto to raise issues he felt 'ought' to be being investigated, like female circumcision. This was an issue involving 'real' cruelty, he claimed, unlike anything he'd done.
The final jail sentences these men receieved once the two year investigation was finished seemed laughable, with the six year sentence for primary man being the toughest. This man had been sexually assaulting young girls for years and years, but maintained that he wasn't a rapist, that he'd never intentionally hurt anyone, and that he was "the non-psycho kind of paedophile". He acted throughout like he was somehow being victimised (largely by the media). Quite incredible, and representative of the kind of in-depth journalism that the BBC is so rightly famous for. Next week's programme tells the story of a case that started with the discovery of a child pornography videotape and ended with the discovery of a body....I know it'll disturb me horribly, but I know I'll end up compelled to watch.
Cherie Booth/Blair gave a speech last night organised by the Institute of Contemporary History and the Wiener Library on the establishment of the International Criminal Court and the US's self-chosen exclusion from it.
The Guardian extracts it today.
Someone asked me how to find out which additional work individual MPs do - the online version of the Register of Members' Interests is where you need to look.
Also, (not that it's the middle of the night and I'm bored or anything), The Big List in this week's Big Issue pulls up some statistics arising from the World Food Summit in Rome - a few gems:
A shopping basket of healthy food in the UK costs 51% more than its unhealthy equivalent.
A single man living in the UK needs to spend between £25-30 per week on food to remain healthy - a figure which is impossible to achieve on benefits.
One in every five people in the developing world is chronically undernourished. That's 777 million people.
£55,110 per annum, not pro-rated, for a part-time job. Any takers?
This week's Big Issue contains a comment piece about the number of MPs who have other jobs besides looking after Parliamentary democracy in the UK. And it's a pretty shocking number.
66% of Conservatives, 28% of Liberal Democrats, and 8% of Labour MPs have at least one other paid job. Note that 'at least': Quite a few have more than one - Conservative Treasury Spokesman Howard Flight gets a salary from no fewer than sixteen privates companies.
Chris McLaughlin, the author of the piece, notes with an entirely appropriate tone of outrage that not only is the Government doing absolutely nothing about it, they actually allowed MP Peter Bradley's bill to put a stop to the practice to be sabotaged by the Conservatives (who, surprise surprise, have the most to lose).
So let's get this clear: These people earn well over twice the average salary for a job that this year will give them eighteen weeks off actual attendance at Westminster (a thirteen-week summer recess? WTF?), and yet can't fill their time with running the country and representing the needs of thousands of constituents? (Actually, they probably could if they paid their attention to it - moonlighting MPs take part in over 30% fewer parliamentary votes than those not on the make.) Oh, and we pay their theoretically main salary.
We're being taken for a ride.
I recovered a couple of boxes of comics from Chris's attic at the weekend, and checking through to see what I've been without for the last few years, I found some old issues of Zot!. I've mentioned this one before in connection with the online Zot story Hearts and Minds (today's Link of the Day, coincidentally). The issues I was looking at are from the black and white run, which came a couple of years after the original colour series. One of the letters welcoming the series back was from a man called Jim Bricker, who was the creator of a fabulous series called Open Season, which I used to own, but which were lost when a load of my comics vanished with the person who was storing them for me about 10 years ago.
Open Season was, in style, more like a comic strip than a comic book. It was the story of three flatmates in (I think) San Francisco, and was a 'funny book' in every sense of the phrase. Not a typical comic by any means, it told the story of the slightly surreal lives of this rather mismatched trio with a huge amount of wit, humour and intelligence. I loved it to bits, and I curse that my copies aren't with me any longer. It only ran for about six issues, but they were six wonderful examples of the comic-creating art.
Just one of those fond little memories that occasionally get triggered.
By the way - Teresa at Making Light also demonstrates her admirable erudition in her recent comments on the subject of Amazon.com's more twisted errors of attribution.
Dear old GW Bush - having apparently demonstrated that he didn't know there were black people in Brazil in conversation with the Brazilian President, he's provided an excellent opening for this lovely observation on Making Light.
[Via Sore Eyes]
Just in case you haven't picked up on this:
The Government is in the process of pushing through a new Statutory Order which will widen access to telephone and internet records to a large number of new organisations. The Guardian's story is here, and their leading article on the subject here.
Under the terms of this order, organisations as varied as your local authority and the Food Standards Agency will have the right of access to your communication records. Companies holding the information can appeal to an 'independent tribunal' if they don't want to provide it of course. Oh good - now I feel so much more secure....
Courtesy of some of the coverage this has had, I've discovered the very useful FaxYourMP.com, which is a web interface allowing you to enter the text of a letter to your MP and have it faxed to them. Why fax and not email? Check out their FAQs.
UPDATE: From a Metafilter thread on this subject - wish I'd written this:
"Britain has been dealing with regular terrorist attacks on its home turf for more than 30 years. In that time we have tried: sending in the army, internment without charge for suspects, a hardline policy of non-negiation, arresting and imprisoning groups of men whose only crime seemed to be having an Irish accent, wire tapping and other undercover operations plus idiotic tactics such as not allowing members of Sinn Fein to use their own voices on TV. In all those years what did we learn? None of it worked in any way at all. Only when compromise and negotiation was tried did we get somewhere. But now, after a terrorist attack in another country, we're acting like terrorism is something completely new to us. Blunkett scares me. I expect to see ID cards pretty soon. Or 'entitlement' cards as they're being called."
Possibly my only posting on the subject of World Cup results (unless by some miracle a team from these islands wins, and even then possibly not):
As the news this morning kept describing it, France have 'crashed out' of the World Cup (cue dull statistics about reigning champions not making it past the first round). The reason I'm regarding it as noteworthy is a personal one, which is that I happened to be in Paris on the night four years ago when France won the Cup at the Stade de France. I think I can safely say that I've never experienced an event like it for the sheer spontaneous exuberance of the reaction. We went right into the city centre and the crowds were amazing - I've never been hugged and kissed by so many complete strangers outside of a Mardi Gras before. And particularly amazing was the positivity of it all - in the circumstances, that's obviously to be expected, but in similar circumstance in London, I can't imagine it going off without some overt aggro, where all I saw in Paris was sheer happiness. The fact that it was two days before Bastille Day and so everyone was in holiday mood anyway probably helped....
Well, Six Feet Under got off to a flying start, and looks as though it's going to live up to the hype. HBO continues to produce interesting, intelligent, creative TV (and yes, I know it actually started two years ago in the US.... )
Just a couple of observations:
Is it just me, or is the Big Brother website absolutely crap? Not the content so much as what they've got driving it. I've never seen so many broken images and page display problems on one site before.
And am I the only one who's noticed the huge increase in paid charity fundraisers roaming London's streets? You know the ones, the rather-too-bubbly-to-be-allowed-to-live young men and women in the charity-logo'd bibs holding clipboards and craving your bank details so that they can set up standing orders from your account. They seem to be all over the place at the moment.
I've been organising the photos from New York, but I haven't had a chance to sort them into a proper display order. I'll try and get them up tomorrow evening. In the meantime, a few highlights from the trip:
Like very many other people, I've indulged myself in making a South Park Character of myself.
No. You can't see it. Make your own....
Weh-Hey! Will and Grace is back. Yes, I know it was back last week, but I was away, so I only just got round to watching the first and second episodes together. I could never work out why it wasn't picked up by Channel 4 much earlier - it's a very natural fit there, and I've never understood why it's not regarded with the same reverence as Friends or Frasier when they were both at their heights.
My favourite exchange from the first two episodes:
Jack (when Will's date has just called to say he's running late): Oh Will, have you forgotten? "I'm running late" is gay for "I'm standing you up".
Will: Hmmm. And what's gay for "Get out"?
Jack: That would be "Good morning".
The bar downstairs in our office building is showing the England/Argentina match. Which means I'm very effectively able to follow the flow of play just by listening to the rise and fall of the crowd noises from downstairs. Suffice it to say, I'm here by myself just at the moment....
The other thing I did last night was write down my thoughts on what might be called "The World Trade Center/Ground Zero Experience":
First, some context for those who don't know: I used to live just a couple of blocks from the WTC - the 1 and the 9 subway stops underneath were my standard route to Chelsea, I bought books in the bookstore, clothes in the clothes stores, food from the farmers' market, and drank in "The Greatest Bar On Earth" whenever anyone came to visit. I've even stayed in the hotel that back then was a Vista, before it became a Marriot and had its car park bombed. Even before that though, from my very first trip to New York (out of more than I can remember), the WTC has been one of the defining elements of 'my' New York.
So when Alison and I walked down Broadway one week ago today and reached a corner which would once have afforded a view of the towers, we stopped dead and just stared. There's too much sky there now. Sky that should be hidden by those huge, overpowering towers that made you look up and up so that you never thought you'd get to the top. Something that I think I'd forgotten last September, when my primary image of them was replaced by one of them scarred and then falling, is that they were beautiful. They had clean and simple lines and a power that went beyond their sheer size and into sheer icon-dom. Looking across what used to be Liberty Plaza to where there used to be buildings and just seeing space affected me more than I can say. I just didn't understand why I was seeing the space I was seeing. My brain kept trying to edit the image of the buildings (all of them, not just the towers) back into the picture, and failing.
I'm not doing a very good job of conveying the really primal effect that seeing this space had on me. I wasn't thinking at all about what the world lost that day, nor even much about the lives that were lost at the same time. I was just confused that in the midst of all that loss we'd regained that expanse of sky. And I found that I didn't want it. I wanted my icons back.
Forgot to post that one of a couple of things I did manage to do last night was write up a review of the Spider-Man film, which we saw last weekend. It's in Opinion.
I'm back, and having had a post-flight shower, feeling surprisingly refreshed. Though as the flight was a short one, and no sleep was had, I doubt that will last beyond this evening.
Good trip though - very relaxing, cool to catch up with so many people, and I've done a few touristy things that I hadn't done before in New York, which is a pleasant experience after so many trips.
I took loads of photos, a selection of which I'll stick up in a gallery of sorts, though probably not before the weekend. I'll try and note a few highlights before then though.
Anyway - hope all's well with everyone. I guess I can go and read a bunch of blogs and find out....
1045 local time
Alison and I have had a couple of days out of town in Vermont - small-town America in a major way - so no internet access. I have however been taking photos and keeping a general track of the trip, so I'll do a full posting somewhere along the way. We're having a couple of 'treat ourselves' nights in a rather more swanky hotel than the first few nights in town, so the temptation to stay in is quite strong....but we're forcing ourselves out to do some shopping.
Hope everyone's had a great Jubilee weekend - we certainly have by being slightly over three thousand miles away.
Local time: 0115
Just got in from a night out with a bunch of former workmates, Lara, Rosemary, Joey and Ori, plus someone Alison used to work with and another friend of Rosemary's. Was good - I drank pints and pints of cider, and appear to be not even remotely drunk.
We spent this morning downtown, so that Alison could catch up with her work colleagues. We took in the spaces around where the WTC used to be, and I took several photos, which I will post, but I'll need to be brighter and more awake than I am just at the moment. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, so I think I'll leave the staggeringly insightful comments for now.
Having fun so far - it was brilliant to see the people again.