Convers(at)ion

I really like thinking. I enjoy thinking actively, although sometimes passive unintended thinking can be a little disturbing. I enjoy thinking because I can do it on my own - I take pleasure in the relation that it gives me to myself as an inventor and originator of ideas. My best thinking starts as feelings and other fuzzy forms and inclinations, which then slowly articulate themselves into ideas. Then I write those ideas down in words and those written words reflect and reinforce my ideas - and my sense of creativity and of self - and at the same time slightly changes everything. It makes it all sharper, clearer, more accute, but also less personal... more defined, determined and accomplished. I like reconsidering my ideas in a new light and interacting with myself through my thoughts; crossing out, scribbling over... deleting, amending, adapting. Sometimes it is as though I am having a conversation with myself. I like having conversations with other people too. But then I always have to happen at the same time as my words. More often than not, the words take over. Sometimes they precede me and my thoughts, as heralds or revelatory unfurlings; self-makings. But sometimes they march me headlong into untested regions that I'd not have dared so uncarefully. When I speak me all at once, it is usually because I feel obliged to say something. That's the oppression in the dialogic nature of conversation between two people who can presume each other only in their words.

Chromehoof @ Offset 30/08/2008

Chronic, and cataclysmally dazzling. Mighty Chromehoof slew us, with a broadsword to the heart, then conjured the shards of our shattered souls from the dust with a devastating disco beat. I never knew that I could jump and headbang like that at the same time. Magnificent, supreme.

Climate Camp 2008

I’ll admit that I did have some serious reservations about the idea of the climate camp in general, mostly in the form of prejudices about the sorts of people that I was likely to encounter there; namely middle-class, middle-age, white hippy liberals, out for a nice camping weekend[*] ; an impression if not formed then at least confirmed by the sorts of media coverage (of this years camp and last) that starts

“Sitting in a teepee in the peaceful Kent countryside, surrounded by campaigners from across the UK mulling over the future of renewable energy and swapping vegan cake recipes, you could be forgiven for temporarily forgetting the outside world and its many woes.”·

Of course this is the extreme end of the prejudice spectrum that counters that other favourite stereotype of the hardcore violent ‘anarchist’[†] contingent hell-bent on enacting their twisted world-view on an innocent public through such horrific means as stabbing police horses with forks. But whilst the media swings illogically between these two contradictory caricatures, the reality is that there was no typical sort of attendee. The diversity of people who had come to talk with each other and work together – from very young to very old, to local kids and residents, to seasoned activists and others who were new to the idea – was reflected in the representation of a diverse spectrum of interconnected issues, ideas and activities throughout the week’s workshop programme.

If the planned action itself of trying to shut down the power station for a day was somewhat tokenistic (the potential endlessness of our possible agenda was made clear in the closing considerations of where we could go next), it provided us with a focal point and objective that was clearly positioned within the wider sphere of all the myriad issues tackled that weekend: the goliath, Climate Change, and the endlessly intricate structure of social change that would necessarily support its defeat. 1500 people recognised the need for and effectiveness of doing things for ourselves. We realised the futile unblinking subservience of the law to corrupt business interests and understood our power to create real situational catalysts for concrete change through its transgression. And we effectively co-ordinated a huge direct action despite having a cop per head to match us and our plans publicised for months in advance. We managed to retain a firm anti-capitalist agenda despite the politicians and the journalists. And we had so much fun. It was fun in the planning of our action, it was fun in the doing (apart from the confrontations and arrests obviously) and loads of fun in the celebrating afterwards.

Perhaps a bunch of people were radicalised by the wholly overblown and aggressive policing. The constant intrusive helicopter drone, the video cameras and binoculars, the blanket stop-and searches and the dawn wake-up alerts as vans of riot cops turned up at the gates were particularly frustrating and ridiculous. Certainly when in the main tent on the Saturday night, someone projected altered footage and photos onto the ceiling along with the drum n bass, it was only a little while before the uniforms and dumb expressionless faces started to exert a silent oppressive presence and everyone slowly stopped dancing and started looking uncomfortable. And the eventual critical stance of the media (for the most part) - even if our protests were only regarded as legitimate once expressed through the voice of an MP who found himself on the frontline knocked down by riot cops, or else articulated in terms of economics and ‘taxpayer's money' - was crucially helpful to our cause. But the narrow focus of the coverage in no way reflected the substance or the spirit of the camp, which for the most part managed to transcend these disappointingly inevitable inconveniences.

So we had a clear goal (the action), an immediate common adversary (the cops), a context and a vision (the world and everybody in it being fucked over and that not being the case) and an understanding of the need to act for ourselves; then, there, and with one another. Facing the same destiny, fixed on the same objectives, we became a working body: connections developed immediately spontaneously and horizontally between us. From the moment we were welcomed across the gate, stepping over the straw-bale stile, from one world to another, we connected to one another as whole people, supporting one another to work together towards a common end. The community structure occurred spontaneously in all of our activities: in mutual education, in our planning and eating together, in the processes of consensus decision-making with which the camp operated, in our assumption of working roles according to skill and volition and without hierachy.

The will to work - for ourselves and with one another - was strikingly pervasive throughout the activities of the camp and the driving force of its operation. By my third day there I felt desperate to contribute towards the daily tasks of its running (my attempt to help carry beer in the day before had been thwarted by the infuriatingly slow stop and search procedures: by the time I got through the gate and to the drop-off point everything had already been collected) so I did a marathon washing-up session after dinner for the Anarchist Teapot tent. I have worked before washing dishes on minimum wage and every single shining plate was tinged nonetheless with my secret resentment, but this time I enjoyed it: I felt a sense of value in my work and people thanked me as they added their plates to the mountainous stack. But the work took lots of different forms. Discussion: thinking, sharing, educating, arguing, brainstorming tactics and ideas, was central to the operation of the camp, and took place within the greater framework of our action. Spaces of exchange and confrontation were created within, enabled by and supported the working body as workshops, planning and decision-making occurred throughout the day across the centre of the site whilst others held the fort at the gates.

A critically important aspect of the week was the outreach work done by workers groups, leafleting and visiting local pubs to engage the miners in dialogue and to contextualise the specific objectives and arguments of the camp within the fundamental wider considerations of people: their lives and livelihoods. From our far perspective on a hillside with its long grass and scenic views, it could have been tempting to look out across the landscape to the tall chimmney belching sooty black smoke into the sky and concentrate our vitriol in its image. But of course for many it represents jobs and sustenance, not to mention the retro industrial patriotic appeal that coal production seems to have gained in public perception. And it seemed as though many of the workers may have understood our quest as being blinkered in this way: there had been talk of local protests against the camp and despite the visit of Arthur Scargill on Monday for the purpose of debate and dialogue, there was still very much an ‘us vs. them/making the other side see’ sort of attitude. The task was to involve and associate the local working community with our struggle in a way that brought to light the common ground between ours and theirs, and not just in the superficial terms of facing police repression[‡], but rather our need and right to live and work now in a way that is self-sustaining and is coherent with our being as both fundamentally social and future-orientated.

Which was a principle expressed in all sorts of useful practical ways in the final workshop that I attended put on by the ‘Treesponsibility’ group: ‘Creating Autonomous Livelihoods: Moving Beyond the Job Economy’. Crammed into an A3 straggly spider-diagram was a blunt analytical overview of our lives as they could be but weren’t yet, helpfully categorised into key areas of need, want and means. Inspiring in the simplicity and obviousness with which it put everything into perspective (…damn these credit card debts). My other outstanding workshop was the first that I went to upon arriving onsite on ‘Confronting Male Privilege’: extremely well-attended by people of all genders and with a quiet atmosphere of vital importance. Before we left on Sunday we walked around for half an hour trying to collect litter and managed maybe a quarter of a bag-full. And then eventually, reluctantly we left the site with the strains of RJD2’s ‘Ghostwriter’ following us in vague trumpet fanfare down the hill on the wind. Drawing back into a bleak and dismal London landscape on the train I was feeling distinctly underjoyed to be back, amongst the developers’ cranes and dirty black brickwork, with the rain speeding along the window and a pathetic fallacy grey sky. And then we noticed the rainbow: solid and vividly distinct, rising gloriously up out of the housing estate, with a faint double-arc just above it. And then we saw it out of the other window too and we laughed at our ourselves and our ostensibly hippy sentiment as our train ran through the middle of it: a massive perfect arc spanning the breadth of the city. And it seemed to somehow articulate the meaning of the struggle, and remind us that this was our home, and that work had to be done here to.

[*] None of which traits I object to in themselves you understand – with the possible exception of liberal – but they do tend to converge together to form a specific sort of persons who, when they get together with other people of their sort in expressedly political contexts, can be a little stifling to your objectives.
· Caroline Lucas, Green MEP, writing for the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/kingsnorthclimatecamp.climatechange
[†] In a wilful abuse of the term.
[‡] "There are similarities in that they are people who are demonstrating for what they believe in and they are doing so in a way that draws attention to them from the media and from the forces of the state. I find it offensive and obscene that you can have police in the numbers that you had at climate camp, particularly riot police, stopping people entering the field. They are stopping and searching people going inside and asking for their names and addresses. It cuts across their civil rights…The people at the climate camp have my sympathies in that they have a right to demonstrate."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/888279.html

Colour Ride @ The Windmill

furies of frenzy bolt from the blue poppy shirt fields of death black blue filth beating sax-sweat ensweetened surrender. in pants. in a hole in a room. (hell and people).

"i can't do it". tache and cape pseudo pidgin-pop parody. mental monkey-chicken-rib oriental. swarming scrum.

heavy heavy space-invader flashing bleep annihilation. lemming-lemming-lemming-doom. didnintendo crush 'em all? blip. (blp).

Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno @ Corsica Studios

I have a nagging ringing in my right ear every time I close my jaw. The point where my skull meets my neck is vaguely aching. Yesterday I went to see Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno in Elephant and Castle. In front of a chunky stack of amps on the right-hand side of the stage guitarist Kawabata Mokoto radiated effortless metallic glory shredding relentlessly like the demented old uncle of Herman Li from Dragonforce. I don't think I saw a single drop of sweat come off that guy's forehead and when near then end he thrust his guitar up with one muscled arm to deflect the laser into the crowd amidst feedback and fuzz it felt like it might have been ultimate energy. Adorned with long wizard sleeves and silver beard Higashi Horishi swayed high over crowd and keyboard like a mystic poplar of portent, clearly illuminated by the divine cosmic connection that reveals itself to you after three bottles of red wine. Effortlessly immense and relentlessly fun, two hours and the tiny dark den of Corsica Studios couldn't contain the universe-inspired rock resplendence of these willowed old masters. And perhaps it was the wine, but they seemed in top form. "Perhaps you don't remember him .. last time we came he was thin: now he is very fat" joked Makoto of bassist Tabata Mitsuro, later professing unashamedly to capitalist tendencies as he entreated us to give up all our money at the (overwhelmingly equipped) merch table: turns out the poor guys had been taxed £600 to send everything over from Japan. "Please Queen help us" he beseeched. With drummers Shimura Koji and Pikachu ("Like father and daughter" joked Makoto) feeding perfectly into one another to add extra layers of minute detail to the underpinning rhythm, and a pretty constant undertone of screeching fuzz, A-M-T raised a holy hell-storm of metal prog-psych of interplanetary proportions, light-year speed and zen endurance.

Nurse with Wound @ London Fields Lido (Wet Sounds) 19/07/08

Sound affects you differently in the water. Things seem more distant; more tinny and echoed, but also more immediate. Underwater, things sound more watery. Which sounds obvious but is strange if you consider that water is a tangible thing and sound is not, and the one shouldn’t really be able to take on characteristics of the other. But this wateriness of sound is really just descriptive of the way in which we are aware of being in an element other than our own. The curious mixture of muffled distance and interiority with which sound reaches us underwater is our awareness of the element across which it has travelled; and of our being physically immersed within that element. Nurse with Wound’s set was perfectly suited to this slow, strange and dense sort of atmosphere. Swells of enveloping resonances, deep creaking pulses, indistinct strains of a lilting French tone suffused and surrounded; ethereal yet wierdly omnipresent. Shaking a rattle into a microphone struck you as a series of disappearing clicks, like an invisible shoal of tiny darting fishes. And it was the less earthly higher-end frequencies that seemed to filter through best: sounds that were muffled and confused above surface hit you with a strange clarity underwater – through the skin and in the stomach. Swimming in water that carries an audible dimension is immensely pleasurable. Noise surrounds you physically. It is both highly individualising as you are wholly immersed in your own senses without the possibility of communication, and extensive as it carries your awareness out across the expanses of your environment. Your physical processes interrupt as your breath becomes bubbles and the continuity of sound is continually broken by the necessity of coming up for air. The disparity was heightened by the unsociable July weather. To keep diving deep was by far the best way to keep warm and each time you surfaced you were assailed by a harsh wind that cancelled out the sunshine and, creeping ominously up one side of the sky, an oppressive sheet of grey cloud. Fortunately, that also meant that the lido was empty enough to swim around in. Exploring sound through a co-ordinated fluid, weightless movement. I suspect that it was rather like being in the womb. Or like being some kind of giant marine mammal: a blue whale picking up other whale song. Or maybe a giant squid. A sense of experimentation – of a new experience and way of doing things made for a collective triumphancy at what would have always been a great gig anyway, and at the end of the set Steve Stapleton listened to feedback from the small gathering of stoic listeners and thanked us for being their guinea pigs and we all clapped like seals. On the way home we stopped for fish and chips, and when we stepped outside again the bleak grey clouds had flushed pink.

Guapo @ ULU (Supporting Red Sparowes) 08/07/2008

Guapo are four guys who are very talented and probably a little unhinged. They play prog proper, of quirkily compelling character and of plenitudinous proportions. The wandering journey of a long song (or was it several?) that formed their set was an ongoing exploration of the strange and complex textures that their respective instruments could weave together: an epic interplay of guitar, drums, keyboard, bass, each spinning its own private spiritual path around the others - always in balance and never quite touching - to create a sound at once naive and deep, intricate and whole, organically electric. More than anything these guys knew how to draw the essence out of their battered instruments; pedals and keyboard effects seemed to unmask rather than distort their true character. The hunched keyboardist hammered at the keys as though he were prophesising on a vast organ in a lonely cathedral; the drummer carefully tinkled a little string of bells around his drumkit using nothing but space and air to gain new perspectives on a sound; the curly bassist pulled a clipper out of his jeans pocket to slide ethereally up and down the fretboard. Complete with sparkling lycra shirts, Guapo are all the visionary insight of the old prog masters made present as an intuitive understanding of their own powers of creation and of their connectedness with one another; with their audience; with earth and cosmos; and with the more mischevious and darkly magical forces in the universe that like to lead us astray once in a while.

Gallhammer @ The Water Rats 12/03/2008

Arriving at Kings Cross’s theatrically chandeliered little venue, the Water Rats, through horrible winds, the heavy stagnant atmosphere of hair and battered leather was almost comforting as we walked in. Tonight’s headliners – Tokyo’s all-girl doom metallers, Gallhammer – have been signed to Peaceville for a while, which might help explain the rather classic aesthetic of the crowd gathered for their first UK gig. There’s none of the self-righteous ‘new-band’ buzz in the air here then tonight; the excitement is purely anticipation of what everyone already knows can’t fail to be a damn awesome show. Openers ‘Leech Woman’ were three guys chugging hard to a heavy industrial backing track that sounded at times like it might have come from the musical ‘Stomp’ (metal poles and dustbin lids and all of that). Their unconvincing grimaces, especially from the munchkin-faced pink-dreadded vocalist, kept us totally entertained as they worked their way from ‘cunt’ t-shirts to bare chests. And it was the sense of fun and entertainment the whole way through that justified their presence when really they could have just recorded and looped themselves along with the percussion track for the same musical effect. And if nothing else, as an opening act, they were really reassuringly Loud. The Sontaran Experiment were louder. And their nearly vein-popping snarls and maniacal grins seemed alarmingly real. Their sound was alternately dense, soaring and frenetic, as tortured apocalyptic vocals (“there is no hope left for us”) were contorted and transformed into horrific artificial screeches through wierd machines and frenzied outburst of twisted prog solos were enveloped by feedback. I could literally feel my eardrums rattling: it felt like we were trapped inside a dark box as soundwaves shot through us and bounced off the walls again in all directions... in fact I felt like the autistic kid in the red room in Cube. No real need to elaborate on Gallhammer’s set then. Satisfyingly amazing, like a plan coming together... you couldn’t help but bang your head and clench your fists, but then you noticed that everyone around you was doing it too, and everything was fucking great. The only let down was the lack of encore when it should have been on the cards.... but what can you do? The music stops, people become aware of their surroundings, and the creeping ghost of London nonchalance starts to infiltrate the crowd and no one bloody keeps shouting. Disappointing, but we still left as stupidly grinning and happy as kids from a sweetshop, full of metal like it was made of e-numbers and sugar.

Wonders of Nature (Worm Sex, Slug Sex)

From Engels On The Family:

"If strict monogamy is the height of virtue, then the palm must go to the tapeworm, which has a complete set of male and female organs in each of its 50-200 proglottides, or sections, and spends its whole life copulating in all its sections with itself."

(In your stomach I presume).

Amazingly beautiful grossness:

I'm Not Your Customer

I find the training of staff to refer to the users of public and government services as 'customers' increasingly disconcerting. It happened to me most recently at the job centre when, trying to explain that it would have been useful for someone to tell me that I had to file my reimbursement claims before travel when informing me of the scheme, I was curtly told that "the onus is on the customer to find out." In what sense am I a customer of the job centre? If so then they are certainly failing in their 'customer service' (which presumably is the idea in at least some of these cases; 'we treat and value people as though they had money to spend with us' etc.) by apparently not providing any. If I was a real customer, then I would have the choice to take my 'business' elsewhere, but I don't. I have no choice but to deal with these petty bureaucrat assholes. They don't respect us precisely because for this dependence.

A job that I applied for recently (and didn't get) with a company with a large proportion of government welfare-to-work scheme contracts also referred to those that they helped into work as their 'customers'.* Well yes, these companies do receive disgracefully large sums of money from the government for placing these people in jobs. But the 'customers' themselves aren't paying. They are not choosing to enter into any economic contracts. Tagging people under the label of 'customers' places them involuntarily into an economy of exchange and in doing so undermines the seeming human motivation within the role of the advisor of helping people out.

The same goes for the supporters of charities. We do not buy your services. A charitable donation is precisely that. "Q: If I sponsor a child, what will I get in return?" asks an ActionAid ad. Is this really a question that needs to be asked? Are people really only buying bi-annual letters and a sense of their own morality? Conversely I seem to remember being instructed once in one of my waitressing jobs always to refer to customers as 'clients' as this term seems to make more discrete the cash-for-services implication (which is of course exactly what dining out in a restaurant is). I suppose that the seeping of business-speak into every aspect of our lives is just symptomatic of the commercialisation of everything in general. But I can't help but feel that this use of 'customer' is not so innocuous as to be just a reflection a business-based society: it is prescriptive; it alters the way in which we relate to one another, specifically it determines the nature of our human relations as one of economic exchange and in doing so subtly precludes our ability and desire to just to help one another out. Which perhaps goes some way in explaining the unhelpfulness of the job centre staff?

* An article on indymedia a couple of days ago revealing the Christian foundations and ethos of one such organisation (at least not a private company this time) 'Working Links' (from whom I also got rejected) opened my eyes to the ideologies behind these schemes. I realise now that going on about an understanding of social barriers and holistic approaches in my cover letters wasn't going to get me any interviews. According to an advertisement on Reed, welfare-to-work is one of the fastest growing sectors of graduate employment. It seems to me that money would be far better spent training those employed by the government to actually help people who want it into work that has some meaning for them and that they might stick to rather than bullying them into the first minimum wage job that comes along, instead of handing out lucrative contracts to private businesses.

The Statue at St Pancras

I paid the new station a passing curiousity visit today. It was all very impressive and generally quite pleasant (ignoring the crowds milling about the champagne bar). The statue, however, is a hideous abomination. Called 'The Meeting Place' and also widely referred to as 'the lovers', allegedly "reflect(ing) the romance that train travel used to have" (sculptor - Paul Day). The heartache of long journeys, desperate departures and ecstatic arrivals? I failed to find any romance whatsoever in its ugly towering form. His posture is overbearingly coercive, his oversize hands groping at her flesh through conspiratorially compliant layers, the pressure of his fingertips leaving dimples in her clothes, pushing and directing her with his knee. Hers is sickeningly sincere. The shape of the 'embrace' is determined by tensions; they touch at the hips and at the forehead, his bearing down on hers and hers rising unnaturally up into his. Her calves and feet are monstrously proportioned, rising up from eye-level through horrible skewed perspectives, her left leg slightly open, inviting you to look up her skirt from beneath. The creases in her skirt around her huge flat jutting bumcheeks demonstrate the force of her pelvic thrust; his is attested to by the way the fabric of his suit seems to bunch up into his ass-crack. His suit and leather backpack combination (leaving both hands free for the grasping?) is inexplicably comical and repulsive, whilst her lack of luggage belies her seeming business attire. If I saw this particular couple indulging in this particular unsightly embrace on the platform edge I would look away in disgust.

Polar Bear @ The Stables

Well I was going to use this post today as a space of catharsis to vent my inutterable fury at the absolute blind incompetence and arrogant pomposity of those cretinous bureaucrats at the job centre, which, given that as soon as I think about it I become consumed with outrage, could only have resulted in long inarticulate ramblings with the words ' fucking twats' interspersed at frequent intervals. But since then, two nice things have happened to me. First, a lovely young man at the bank (he was probably new) gave me an extension to my overdraft with Minimal Fuss. I just went in and asked for some money and he gave it to me. I got the bus home instead of having to walk in the freezing rain. Then tonight, by way of celebration, I went to The Stables MK, where I haven't been for a very long time, to go and watch Polar Bear. Who were quite wonderful. So I have now pocketed my rage and can instead write about the gig.

Despite the relative emptiness of the tiered auditorium (anything to do with the £15 ticket price I wonder?), a common air of unpretentious appreciation managed to join the crowd across all the empty seats to give the gig a good sense of intimacy. They started off quietly, with several more ambient numbers, blending quite beautiful fluid saxophone melodies with soft-spoken melancholy bass lines, underpinned by a depth of assorted noises, echoes and intensifying resonances coming from Leafcutter John's laptop and other surrounding instruments, including a howling cymbal channeled through the coaxing threads of a violin bow. As the pace started to pick up, proceedings were kept laid back by the soothing voice of the quite lovely and strikingly hirsute Seb Rochford, linking the set together with clearly entirely unpremeditated explanations of songs. The second half (a gig with an interval!) was altogether a little more hectic, with the chaos pad whipped out in the corner. Obviously the cue for someone up in the lighting department to start swirling the spotlights around excitedly around as though someone might mistake them for strobes. At times the artifice of the noise did seem a little mismatched with the unembellished raw chaos of the other instrumentation, particularly when it went all out on the final enlivening 'King of Aberdeen', although elsewhere sampled loops and feedback echoes added a touch of brilliant madness to tortured saxophone solos and shadowy bass lines. The polite persistence of the crowd's encore request seemed to encapsulate the demure enthusisam of the occasion, and the upbeat eccentricites of 'Beartown' left everyone feeling happliy worn out.

I Knew All That Reading Dictionaries Would Come In Useful One Day

This is my new favourite game.
I like it even better than Countdown.
Especially now that its hosted by Des O'Connor.
I suppose I haven't sold it very well.

Frameworks of Freedom

Thank goodness it looks as though the present media brouhaha concerning the review of the UK abortion laws (specifically, the possible reduction of the cut-off date from 24 to 20 weeks) is going to come to nothing. It has been utterly dismaying to witness a gathering storm of public righteous indignance being ruthlessly aggravated by a manipulative media, more intent on stirring up easy emotions than portraying a fair-sided debate. Thus a public opinion poll, cited (and possibly conducted) by GMTV's 'This Morning' this morning, put those in favour of a bringing forward of the cut-off date at an immense 95% - which would be a conclusive outcome for any issue for which public opinion had any real consequence. This figure is the inevitable result of the absolute irresponsibility with which the recent lifelike 3-D scans of foetuses (not "babies" - as the developer of this technology frequently said - the lax use of misleading language equally as irresponsible) in the womb have been cynically (mis-)used to incite natural human emotions and then harness them for the support of essentially unrelated politically dogmatic points of view (none moreso than in the deplorably unbalanced and cynically timed 'Dispatches' documentary last week, which also showed footage of abortions and aborted foetuses). As has been pointed out by many within the debate, the pictures add nothing to what we knew before. They are unscientific, unpolitical, inconclusive, and irrelevant to and obstructive of meaningful, measured debate. A picture speaks a thousand words. A moving 3-D picture of a baby conquers the possibility of discussion - of unprejudiced reasoned thought - in advance. Thankfully, despite all the shock-publicity, this is, and never should be, a matter for the general public to decide. It concerns only an extremely small number of extremely vulnerable women - whom the law must support and protect. The task of the legal system, as a system, is to accommodate, not to exclude and inhibit. Such devastating choices must be made within its bounds, not precluded by it.

Haven't You Got Anything Useful To Do?

A little comment in a paper that I picked up yesterday ridiculed the redundancy of a new report disclosing the unshocking-by-virtue-of-its-patent-obviousness news that UK students drink too much. Or rather inadvertently revealing, in the writer's opinion, the shocking news that today's students drink far too little at only a few units over the recommended weekly allowance. I disagree with the attribution of the useless-investigation-into-the-unremarkable award to this study though - a couple of weeks ago I found a whole centrepage spread (one part of a serialisation I think) in the Mail revealing cocaine use at Boujis nightclub. Following a lengthy undercover investigation by the reporter herself:

"Revealed: The Royals' favourite nightclubs and a culture of rampant drug abuse."

Obviously she must have realised that the article was wholly un-newsworthy and that this was best disguised by using overblown investigative journalism cliches to rouse the geriatric right-wing readership into automatic grumbles about moral decline. The opening line:

"At a darkened London nightclub at 2am on a Wednesday morning, a crowd of twenty-something partygoers are dancing with utter abandon to the thumping beat of a fashionable rap song."

Seriously, that's actually what it said.

Desperate Brew

I have to say that I am very much enjoying this decaf tea that I got from the British Heart Foundation stand at the charity fair. I can drink endless cups in quick succession without feeling jittery (although it doesn't do much for the problem of needing a piss every 5 minutes). I can take a cup up to bed with me if I wish. Another lonely last bastion of my misguided sense of personal integrity readily brought down by minute and insignificant new creeping pleasures.

Mastodon are Scary

“There was definitely no selling out whatsoever.” Troy Sanders told an Illinois magazine after signing to Epic. Today I received the following blog post on Myspace:

"Exclusive Mastodon Halloween Merch Now Available!"

Awesome. These T-shirts are both glow-in-the-dark... That's gonna be even more impressive in the crowd at Wembley Stadium 5 years down the line than a battered gig shirt from 1995. By far the best rock t-shirts since Pelican's gold-foil Rose Nylund design earlier this year. Available from their website... make sure you order yours in time for Hallowe'en. Definitely a more stylish costume than this incredible abomination and this strange Fork costume.

Dubious Science

The front page of The Independent today reports the outrage at Nobel (although its controversial) scientist James Watson's outrageously racist assertions that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites. And that (I'm paraphrasing) our social policies are all erroneously constructed and bound to fall short in their non-reflection of this fact. Its always a bit shocking when an academic of respected standing comes out with this sort of thing. Although its not entirely rare. I remember similar outrage at my uni last year when a member of the psychology dept (Dr. Philippe Rushton) came out with some similiar crap on gender - he was already well known in the controversial scientific studies stakes for having reached the same conclusions as Watson via psychological methods... something about it being a trade-off between brain size and penis size. Watson's new outburst comes not to announce the results of any fresh scientific evidence but rather the release of his new book. In which, as quoted in the Independent, he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically." Leaving aside the complex problematics of the term 'intellectual capacities', and the problems of drawing such implications from whether or not there is 'firm reason to anticipate' anything, yes of course there is biological difference between races of people that evolved apart. Strikes me though that all the responses which try to rubbish the possibility of scientifically 'proven' racial difference in such areas miss the key point - which is that, on Watson's own terms, this is totally irrelevant. If we are talking on a social level then we are talking about human beings in social terms - as members of society, as citizens. This is the framework within which the term 'intellectual capacities' gains its meaning. To talk about genetic difference of races in such terms has no valuable meaning - that concerns human beings as a species, as animals. If we are to credit human beings with human intelligence - with the ability to exist as part of a society, with the power of choice - then we are no longer talking of humans in animal terms. They are two incommensurate perspectives. Only by considering human beings from the first perspective can you have compassion, morality etc. etc. ... can you draw conclusions about the structure of society. Probably all best just ignored I think. Although I imagine that with regard to his imminent UK lecture tour the opposite will now be true.

Bit of 'Tache and Tickle

Oh no. I appreciate that this mid-life-crisis-as-a-new-musical-direction thing had the double advantage of providing a viable coping mechanism for both the music and the ego, but I feel that this is just going too far. I'm sure if this photo was just a little more frontal we'd see some clumps of hair poking out of that shirt. How am I to maintain a sensible zero-tolerance stance on moustaches when even my long-time heroes are indulging in such revolting frivolity? Is all the world against me here? This has gone way beyond ridiculous hipsters trying to outdo each other in their poorly understood sense of irony. There's no winks or half-smiles left in it any more, irony is never so ubiquitous. Its gotten serious. Serious enough to constitute a viable image-reinvention choice for an aging Master of Aesthetics - desperate salvation through sleaze. What was wrong with just being suave?

Suits & Sweets

This weekend I went to two job fairs in London - one for the charity and not-for-profit sector and the other one for graduates. Neither of them were particularly useful - the charity one had a bunch of organisations that I’d love to work for but who wouldn’t have me for my lack of experience and the grad one had a bunch of companies that would have tried to lure me into their offices with a trail of free sweets if they could have done so but all of whom there’s no way in hell I’d ever dream of pledging my services (and probably my soul) to. It struck me as a pretty sorry state of affairs that as a graduate you have to fight hard against the current not to just be channelled into dedicating yourself to the forces of evil for the indefinite future. Which likely means being unemployed. Surely certain organisations are kicking themselves in the foot by letting all the smartest/most skilled of the new generations go to work for the corporations that they are constantly pitting themselves against? For example, I attended the London demo in solidarity with the Burmese protests last weekend. Probably about half of the placards being waved about had Amnesty’s sign on them, a lot of them were protesting the continued presence of foreign business in Burma, especially Total Oil. Jobs with Amnesty are nigh on impossible for anyone of my lowly unworldly graduate stature. There were several global oil companies at the grad fair. It took several minutes of listening to one grey-faced, grey-suited twenty-something rep whose stall was declaring amazing travel opportunities before I managed to ascertain what it was that the company actually did - working with the governments (or dictatorships) of politically and economically unstable countries to promote them as attractive investment opportunities to foreign business. I politely expressed my disinterest and went to find some free humbugs to quell my rage. Something’s very skewed here. And I still have no job.