view from the cheap seats

Having a laptop is mint. Still being all cosy in bed with tunes and a pipe is no longer an excuse not to write, so here we are:

There's a whispered line in a rage against the machine song that says:

anger is a gift

Now while I can certainly agree with this in principle it's a gift I generally try to avoid in practice.

What with my depression and the variety of things that drive it, my getting truly angry tends to result in an explosive loss of self control and some new scars for my collection.

There is however, as always, a middle ground, and that's the smouldering, seething rage that bubbles away somewhere just above my stomach for much of the time, including now.

For many years I have visited an apparent theoretical impasse and every time I have shrugged and walked away, irritated at my inability to find a way through. (I'll get it one day though, or die trying.)

Tolerance and understanding have been the foundations of humanity's journey from beasts to slightly cleaner, more talkative beasts.

Clearly however human attitudes are heterogeneous, diversity being another essential component of our nature.

The problem is then, that those who are tolerant, those who seek to understand are always going to be shafted by the intolerant and ignorant.

Those who live in the direction of progress and improving the world through these fundamental channels will always suffer while those who actively oppose happiness through their own selfish mindset will succeed.

Add to this my relentless belief that for any social system to be truly successful it must be 100% inclusive, ie. you can't just shoot all the bastards, no matter how tempting it may seem, and it's an absolute fucking pickle.

How do the tolerant and inquisitive humans avoid getting shafted by the selfish and ignorant throwbacks, without joining them?

Clearly this is abject polarisation, something I regularly rail against, but it's recognised as such and so, with the caveat of it's definition in place, can be a useful tool.

Now I've banged on before about 'my' culture, about how across the globe and throughout the history of humanity, groups of scruffy people have popped up who have rejected material wealth and the power structures of religion and politics, choosing instead to make peace and happiness the focus of their lives.

I've also whinged on about how each resurgence of this counter culture, (which I believe to be the next step on the evolutionary ladder by the way,) has been persecuted out of existence.

Well it's all still true and I'm still really fucked off by it all. My trip to the Dam was a wake up call for me because I felt like, in a small way for a brief time, I was somehow freer to live according to my beliefs, to be myself without relentless compromises of convenience.

So here are three examples of flames that boil my blood:

fuck the kids

Now it's no secret that I'm no fan of organised religion and the Catholic Church have kindly provided me with quite a few reasons to sustain this view recently.

The latest example of their delusional tendencies, (sorry guys, no mater how fancy your hats are, your reign of world domination is long since over,) concerns same sex couples raising kids.

There's been a fair bit of Christian protest about new legislation opposing discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and it makes me want to puke.

listen to what's being said:

I believe that homosexuality is wrong, they say, so I'm entitled to express that belief by refusing to treat gays with the same degree of respect I would anyone else.

look at what that really means:

Of course because this is a 'religious' belief, it's seen by many as inviolable. And yet if you change the context even slightly the abject absurdity becomes clear.

I'm sure that many BNP activists truly believe that it is absolutely wrong that people with slightly darker skin should live in the UK.

Do they then have the right not to serve Asian people? To refuse to take the custom of black people? Of course not.

stop the madness:

We're all entitled to our beliefs, and entitled to express them. We are NOT entitled to enforce our beliefs on other people however.

If you believe homosexuality is wrong I suggest you don't have sex with people of your own gender. That's it, end of.

If you don't like my beliefs, and find yourself incapable of exposing yourself to things you don't like, then I suggest you don't read my blog.

If you find a TV programme offensive then I suggest you change the channel.

What makes religion worse than other forms of fascism(1) is the quite unbelievable arrogance.

The inherent assumption behind the argument of religious types that they're entitled to hate these people and abuse those I that their point of view is unequivocally correct.

To correct myself in fact what i should have said when quoting them above was not 'I believe homosexuality is wrong' but rather 'homosexuality IS wrong'.

Basically they're saying, my definitions of right and wrong are absolute and everyone else in the entire world must bow down and respect them.

Can anyone seriously tell me that these people aren't delusional mentalists of the worst kind?

The Catholic Church's most recent attempt to blackmail the government basically says, if you make us treat same sex couples like everyone else we will instantly close all our adoption agencies and turn our backs on the children they serve.

Now this organisation that claims to be the embodiment of the teachings of Jesus which, (and yes I have read the New Testament actually so bite me,) are all about tolerance and common sense.(2)

From reading the same book as them I have to say i do not think Jesus would be cool with people saying, in his name, these people are sub human and we hate them so much we'd rather see innocent children suffer than include them in our mindset.

Oh but they can't change, they're practices are age old and absolute.

Only that's not true is it? The Spanish Inquisition, slavery, both fundamental aspects of the Catholic Church that they have since admitted probably weren't that cool after all.

Anyway, I could bitch about this all day but this is only the first example.

prison works

The words of the man who ensured that Jamie Bulger's killers were released early.(3)

So our prisons are full, we're using police stations and army bases and even letting people off custodial sentences altogether.

listen to what's being said:

The government are frantically trying to find more prison places mainly by looking to buy two more prison ships.

They're also bragging about how they're locking up more people and for longer, taking a firm stand against crime etc etc.

look at what that really means:

Does it strike anyone else as odd that there is no discussion within all of this as to why so many are breaking the law in the first place?

The inherent assumption behind all this is that criminals just appear, they just are, a fact of life.

Murderers, rapists and, worst of all apparently, drug dealers, just fall from the sky. A plague over which we have no control, we just have to deal with as best we can.

Now no matter how impressive the soundbites may feel, this is the truth behind them and it's insane.

stop the madness:

So we don't have enough room in our prisons.

Well it's a metaphor I've used before but it's no less true nor fitting here:

If you're in a rowboat and it's sinking what do you do?

Do you just bail the water out until fatigue floors you and you sink, or do plug the fucking hole?!

Yes criminals chose to break the law and are responsible for their actions, but society plays a significant part as well.

There are quite clearly myriad contributing factors but I feel a significant one is, of course, consumer capitalism.

A fundamental aspect that system is the creation of a privileged minority and a needy majority, winners can after all only be defined as such by the existence of losers.

Stress, inequality and hardship will inevitably lead to criminality, especially when central legislator represents only the interests of the privileged minority.

what must they think of us?

listen to what's being said:

Between overflowing prisons and looters on the beach what must the rest of the world think of us?

This has been a popular refrain of late, people ashamed of what this country has become. Red faced in the eyes of the world that our fellow citizens choose to behave in such a way.

look at what that really means:

Well firstly there's the hangover from empire, the assumption that anyone else in the world gives monkey's about us or what we get up to.

More significantly however there's the idea that any kind of judgement we do receive from the rest of the world would be defined by issues such as these.

Aren't there perhaps other things, other contributions we make to the state of the world that might have more influence?

stop the madness:

You know what makes me ashamed of my country? The fact that we're helping to kill Iraqi children in the most horrific ways possible EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Not to mention the vast number of other ways we aid death and across the globe via both direct military intervention and, more commonly, financial interests.

The fact that this goes on, funded by our taxes and, through the pretence of a representative democracy, in our names every day and yet we're worried about what people will think of us nicking some stuff off a beach screams volumes about the blinkered nature of our society.

And so the struggle continues. Living my life surrounded by people who habitually mistake tolerance and forgiveness for weakness, people who are instinctively suspicious of any concept that cannot be expressed in three words or less.

The wilfully self centred who wear their ignorance on their sleeve like a badge of honour, those who would joyfully destroy everything and take us all with them if they felt it was in their interests.

My trip to the Dam was inspirational. I still haven't found a way past this obstacle to our evolution but an idea is starting to form.

The system has to be inclusive, I have to tolerate the bastards, but that doesn't mean I have to give my life over to the service of mentalism.

I can carve out a space for myself, in fact I must, a vital bubble of personal mental space to save me from drowning in their bile.

This blog is a start, a loft in the Dam would be a major enclave, hopefully I can get from one to the other by way of writing and refusing to jump through quite so many hoops.

grrrrr...

footnote

(1) fascism is elitism and, by definition, organised religion includes the creation an elite, beware all forms of silly hats, they tend to sit on heads full of intolerance and violent insecurity,

(2) as much as it sounds like a T-shirt, I do believe that Jesus was a hippy, basically another eruption of the counter culture that's been horrifically corrupted and wilfully misinterpreted over time.

(3) whilst Home Secretary, Michael Howard got such a hard on from the power he had that his brain was deprived of oxygen, subsequently he responded to concerns that the sentences handed down to the two child killers were too light not by going through the proper motions but instead just tacking on a few more years,
this insane act of despotism was, quite necessarily, over turned by the European courts and so the killers escaped what the people of the UK felt was an appropriate sentence,

This week's been a bit of daze. I was 27 on Friday and by 7:20pm I was on my way to Amsterdam with my good friend GeordieKieth.

Our three nights in the Dam were absolutely mint, just like all the nights I've had there. One of the best places we visited was the Dampkring, one of the special breed of coffeeshops we were hunting, a chilled one with a bar.

Also attended my first book launch last night. 'Ideas Above Our Station' is a new collection of short stories, including 'Reading Into' by yours truly, published by Route, a Yorkshire based, indie publishing house.

get it here:
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

That's a pic taken with my phone as I've finally managed to connect it to my laptop, the idea being to illustrate these blogs with some real life examples of things. Not sure how that'll go but we'll see.

Anyway, the launch was a great success, which was good, and I spent pretty much all of today in meetings, thereby avoiding any actual work. So here I am, a week since I left for the dam and not a post in sight!

Spent a lot of time talking a lot of shit with GK and the odd complete stranger last weekend but thought I'd just pick three random things that I thought about and explore them a little.

D eeper differences...

Despite having visited the Dam a few times before, it still took a day or two to get used to smoking in public. As we couldn't smoke in the room however, (not until the last night anyway ) that was pretty much the only kind of smoking we did.

Turns out laws of the land leave quite a mark and it takes a while to fade. For UK tokers there's an inherent causal connection between the lovely stuff and criminality.

Whether in your face or at the back of your mind, you're always aware that you are coming into contact with dodgy people and dodgy places, however remotely.

Now as I say, that took a couple of days to fade, and by the time we were heading back on Monday I felt much more comfortable with the whole thing.

The thing is that toking in of itself is an intimately familiar thing to me so it was only really a circumstantial shock.

The other famous vice which so unfairly dominates Amsterdam's reputation is of course sex.

I've always seen Dutch legislation regarding prostitution as a twin of their soft drug laws and approved accordingly.

I can find no solid ethical argument against prostitution. As long everyone's there through choice and no-one's getting hurt I don't see the problem. At least that's the theory.

Walking through the Red Light district with this in mind however, makes it a bit weird. Being in the reality of a social policy is a significantly more intimate experience than thinking or debating it.

As I write this it occurs to me that I have come to feel like this because I have committed the economist's sin: I have neglected the human aspect.

Whenever I've considered the issue of prostitution I have never thought about what it would actually be like to walk past it in the street.

Another, more invasive example of experiencing political policy made flesh was forced upon me much earlier in the trip however...

A ctually, my bag was picked by pixies...

We do love to queue don't we? Well one queue I did not enjoy was security leaving the UK at Leeds/Bradford Airport.

Yes I got picked out of the queue, and body searched and then yes, my bag got opened up and the contents removed.

Now you might expect me to bitch on a bit here about unfair it is that I was singled out just because I'm a scruffy hippy, maybe a whining rant about how morally wrong profiling is and racism and fascism and waving a big flag...

Well I'm not going to, partly because I can't be bothered but mainly because I don't need to. There is nothing I can say about these people that they cannot trump with their own actions, check this out.

I took my clothes in the same rucksack I use for my shopping and walked out the house wearing the same coat and clothes I always do.

Subsequently the guy found a pen knife in my bag. It was a corporate gift my dad got years ago, with a bottle opener and a corkscrew etc. I hadn't packed it, it was just always in that pocket of my bag, handy and that.

So I could either give it up or go back into the airport, post it to myself, and then start the whole security process again. Who cares yeah? Fine mate, you keep it.

Anyway, I get to the Dam and realise that I have just taken the following objects, for the most part unwittingly, on an international flight DESPITE BEING 'THOROUGHLY' SEARCHED AND MY BAG EMPTIED OUT!!!

pressurised gas lighters from my jeans pocket x 3

another penknife from my jacket x 1

a tube of toothpaste (aka a prohibited liquid) x 1
from a compartment in my bag that the guy didn't find!

See what I mean, how can I be angry with those guys? They suck!

If I had been a terrorist evil-doer, (I do have a beard, maybe I am one and just don't know it!) I could have had me a nice tube of explosives disguised as toothpaste, a detonator or two disguised lighters and a knife disguised as, well, you see what I mean.

So you can throw all the arguments about civil liberties and personal freedoms out of the window, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.

As much as those arguments mean to me and many others, they're just not even on the radar with so many people that they're never going to be effective tools for changing minds.

And changing minds is what's required to rid ourselves of social policies and structures that do nothing but make things worse.

Again, it's an opportunity to howl about nature UK airport security policy, I now have a much more effective blunt instrument however, the practical approach:
IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!

Everyone can get on board with that I think.

M aybe not today, maybe not tomorrow...

Did I mention I loved the Dam? Well despite what some of you maybe thinking it wasn't just the gear. We saw the controversial BODIES(1) exhibition one day and a few Rembrandts the next.

So much of the city looks old and quaint in a European fairy-tale kind of way, and yet the ultra modern is all around as well, seamlessly woven into the fabric of the city.

You're stood in front of yet another big impressive old Dutch building but you're looking at an absolutely enormous plasma screen hanging on the side that, for some reason, seems to spend most of the day showing a road busy junction in Japan.

You're stood there waiting for a tram, one of the slightly rickety looking contraptions that rattle back and forth all day.

To your right there's a billboard poster for a new film on the side of the tram stop. All perfectly normal and oldschool, apart from the fact that this billboard has a plasma screen built into it that's showing a looped trailer!

The vibe is great too. There's a genuine if-you-don't-fuck-with-me-I-won't-fuck-with-you thing going on.

We sat with a Dutch student on the flight over and she was mocking us as a nation for our politeness.

This had come about because I'd pointed out how ridiculous it was that the Dutch word for please has three syllables.

Turns out no-one really says it, in fact the only time I heard it was during announcements at Schipol airport, ie. a formal context.

Somehow however, this didn't feel rude, as if there was a kind of inherent assumption of mutual respect.

The city just looks and feels so cool, with plenty of interesting stuff going on all the time.

Due the brief nature of our stay the mission was obviously to take full advantage of the opportunity to get wasted and ridiculous. I did get a flash however, of how it might feel to be there all the time.

The new dream then, is:

become successful novelist,
move to Holland,
around mid morning each day go for wander,
get paper or book,
stop somewhere, read it,
have a bit of a smoke and a think,
wander back,
write like an infinite number of monkeys at one typewriter,

bitching no?

Who knows, in the future I may be writing this blog from my local coffeeshop having long since forgotten about being a civil servant or stressing about families, realtionships and the future.

That sounds a bit optimistic for me I know but I think I'll let Ian Clayton, one of the Route authors who read at the launch last night,(2) explain it for me.

Via his reading he told us about a trip he taken to Cork in October many years ago.

He and his friends had noticed that the christmas lights were all up and lit and so quizzed their taxi driver.

The driver proceeded to explain that bin men of Cork had been on strike for some time.

In response to this, the town had decided to turn the lights on early to get people to look up at the pretty colours, rather than down at the shit at their feet.

footnote

(1) check out the BODIES exhibition here:
http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html

(2) check out Ian's new book, 'Bringing It All Back Home' here, it sounds ace:
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=316

So, it's been a while.

I've been distracted over the last few weeks by a wide variety of things:

XBOXLive, depression, weed, crazy busy full time job, online radio, novel writing, avoiding celebrity snuff, (and I don't mean B fucking B!), more XBOXLive, planning a trip to Amsterdam, another crazy busy full time job, lots more weed, shitty shitty public transport, physical exercise, depression and XBOXLive.

No, you're bleary old eyes do not deceive you, the words physical exercise did feature in that list.

Doing really badly with the whole managing-depression-via-diet thing since xmas so started working out again as that's supposed to be another effective tactic. Has slowed the slide somewhat, might stick at it for a bit, see what happens.

The celebrity snuff mentioned was of course the proud and civilised throttling to death of human being Saddam Hussein.

Plenty of people got bent out of shape about the second video, ie the one with the hostile live studio audience, but it was the what not the how that sickened me.

The guy was a shit and one of the main things that made him a shit was that he killed people.

He deserved to be held to account for what he did, but seeing the cold fear in the guy's eyes as he approached the noose just reaffirmed me that killing someone, anyone, is an utterly abhorrent thing.

Of course the videos in question, which I have successfully avoided viewing again since that first glimpse, spread across the globe almost instantly thanks to this imaginary space we're currently occupying, the internet.

You'll notice that many of the distractions listed above involve being online and while I haven't been blogging I have been making good use of my new broadband and laptop.

While spending all this time online I've noticed a few, well three obviously, things that sent me off on minor tangents, so here we go.

evolution

Technology is evolving at such a pace we can't keep up. I've mentioned this before, citing the body's remarkable ability to handle being pierced but utter vulnerability to high speed impact.

Getting stabbed is something that's been around so long our organs have evolved so that they are loose enough to be pushed aside rather than being held fast and penetrated.

The speeds we can now travel at in all kinds of motorised vehicle are absolutely novel in evolutionary terms and so we've had neither time nor opportunity to adapt.

Well, this point was demonstrated to me quite graphically while playing on XBOXLive with my good friend, (and soon-to-be-travelling buddy!) GeordieKeith.

(For those unfamiliar with online gaming, players have headsets that let them speak to one another.)

So we'd taken a break and both retired to relieve and restock ourselves. I came back first and was waiting for GK to get his skinny arse back in the game.

Sitting there I realised I was watching the door to upstairs, as if GK was about to come down my stairs having been to my loo.

Even weirder, when GK finally did return, the first thing he said to me was that as he had re-entered his own front room he had glanced over to the sofa expecting to see me sitting there!

Putting time in on the consoles side by side is something Gk and I have done for years. The sudden insertion of a good stretch of the M62 between us, without removing the ability to chat and play, was beyond the basic understanding of both our bodies.

Thinking about this blog on the way home from work today, I noticed another example of this. A woman at the bus stop was talking on her mobile and waving her hands all over the place.

Everyone does it, you can't help making the gestures even though the person in question can't see them.

something = stomach

Being online 24/7 has revolutionised my listening habits too.

The dangerous ease with which individual tracks can be purchased through itunes means that I have a small but growing collection of songs by bands I wouldn't normally listen too.

One such track is When The Sun Goes Down by Arctic Monkeys. I have a lot of respect for the AMs, they're just not quite my thing. That track however is like some kind of musical opiate.

As mad as it may sound I get a real kick out hearing a successful, mainstream, respectable band singing in a real Yorkshire accent.

I love the utter dirth of h's, the glottal stops instead of t's and the fact that the following words actually rhyme beautifully when said the White Rose way during that song:

something = stomach

Mondeo = anything

Honest, listen to the track, you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, thinking about that thrill I realised that through the online world a vast diversity of cultures can be put on a more level playing field, including my own!

This great big thing, possibly the biggest thing we've ever made, gives us the room to let even the smallest pockets of tradition and lifestyle thrive.

special interest

Following on form this last point a good friend of mine recommended I look into online radio. As outlined above there's so much room, and such low overheads, that there's a specialist radio station for just about any kind of music you can think of.

StonerRock.com run K666 which has been playing through laptop pretty much constantly since I found it.

It's like my own personal radio station and yet I've never heard of the vast majority of the bands being played!

Seems like the internet really does know everything, even what I like before I know I do!

Unlimited freedom, space and possibilities, sounds like a step almost on a par with the creation of the written word. It certainly carries with it the potential to completely change our nature to a similar degree.

Unfortunately this process will take time. We need time to adapt, to feel our way toward that potential, to get our eye in, find the zone etc.

Time may not be something we have, long term, however as the first steps are now been taken towards regulating the net.

I read an article in the current New Internationalist about some third world nation where, in the past, every available square inch of surface in public space was covered with posters.

The posters concerned everything from political campaigning to local bands. It was a way of life, an incredibly complex organic network that was actually incredibly efficient at it's purpose: communication.

The article closed by relating the changes that came with tourism. Being, by definition, non uniform and home made, posters were ugly and dirty.

The posters were swiftly removed and replaced with?

Of course, ADVERTISING.

All that public space that had been put to such good use while not actually being owned or policed by anybody was gone.

In it's place was gaudy clone after gaudy clone of homogeneous, western, consumer capitalist bullshit.

Now that's possibly the thinnest metaphor I've ever written, does it really need explaining?

Let's enjoy what we have right now, just keep checking the horizon every so often yeah?