The last few months have been a whirlwind of desolation that saw the utter collapse of my family, my relationship and one of my lungs. I remain however, scarred and alone but still here and with a new home and job too.

I thought I'd mark my return by spending a bit of time on one of the issues closest to my heart: lovely, lovely cannabis.

Before I start I should probably 'declare my interests': I've smoked cannabis for a dozen years, just under half my life; she is the sacrament of my faith and, I believe, the saviour and future of all mankind.

I could, and am currently fighting hard not to, write all day and all night on this subject, her 10,000+ non-somking uses, her biology, her chemistry, her 10,000 year history, her sociopolitics, but I won't.

If you're left wanting after this one, or feel you need more clarification on something below, check out 'Prohibitive Costs' via the tags on the left.

This was an article I wrote a few years back that was nationally serialised and covers my position on drug use in much more detail.

Today I'll limit it to a neat little threesome, (by this point do you really expect anything else?(1) ) inspired by the recent coverage of cannabis and her potential re-re-classification.

'reefer madness' : brainchild of bigots

Regular readers will be familiar with my penchant for provocative titling and summarising. For all you hysterical polarisers(2) out there I'm not suggesting that everyone who buys into the reefer madness idea is a bigot.

In then 10,000 year recorded history of the relationship between humans and cannabis the earliest instances, (that I'm aware of,) of so called reefer madness were the use of the idea by white authorities to control non white populations.

Namely the British in India toward the native populous and the US in the southern states toward Mexican workers.

In both instances cannabis use was something common and accepted among the non white populations but pretty much unknown the white.

This being the case, making possession illegal was a very handy way of using the 'law' as a club with which to 'beat the darkies', ie. control movements or just kick bloated insecurities and the bigotry they fuelled into sharp relief.

In both cases the justification for these measures was the claim that cannabis use made the non whites pose an increased threat to the whites.

Cannabis use, it was claimed, drove the non white users from their minds and gave them superhuman strength as well as vicious and irrepressible sexual and homicidal appetites.

The myth has mellowed a little to fit the times, 'scientific proof' is cited instead of 'eye witness accounts' and the homicidal-red-eyed-devil-mania has been rebranded with the more sophisticated labels of 'schizophrenia' or 'mental illness'.

Now I'm not saying that cannabis has no negative effects, or even that she can't in some cases exacerbate certain pre existing mental health problems.

What I am saying is cannabis is in no way unique in this potential and that there are plenty of things far more dangerous in this way than cannabis that are not only legal but actively encouraged such as junk food, war, alcohol etc. (and yes they are 'encouraged', political propaganda and corporate advertising are the most prevalent and powerful sources of information in the modern world.)

As research for 'Prohibitive Costs' I corresponded with Professor (& Baroness) Susan Greenfield of Oxford and Professor Heather Ashton of Newcastle, both experts in their fields of, (if I remember correctly,) psychopharmacology.

I found both to be very pleasant and rational people and I am not suggesting that people such as these who support prohibition from a scientific standpoint are bigots or even parts or puppets of a bigots' conspiracy.

My point is that the prohibition of cannabis has ALWAYS been a political decision and that the scientific evidence is used to justify a decision already made.

If the political decision were different the exact same scientific evidence would be dismissed or ignored as so much is every single day on so many other issues.

there's no such thing as skunk

The media have been telling us that 'new and stronger skunk' type cannabis is being developed since long before I was born.

So first off some tips from the scene: pretty much everything you hear in a drug deal is a lie. Some of the most common lies told by dealers are: "I'll be there in five minutes," "this is the best I've ever had," and "this is Skunk/Purple Haze/Northern Lights..."

Now the last three names dropped there were indeed, once upon a time, strains of cannabis available for purchase at some black market outlets.

These strains have long since disappeared however and while many claim to be the original, there is no way to prove that any of them are. This is just the way the scene works, you both know it's bullshit, it's part of the ritual, the deal is done.

Secondly, the word skunk has come to be a more generic term for 'powerful' cannabis, the problem here of course is that encountered by any straight attempt to dissect, classify or record counter culture language.

The same words can mean many different things dependent on context, geography and time. Skunk is so loosely defined a word as to be meaningless in any accurate statement of national affairs.

Finally, and the crux of matter, the average 'strength' of cannabis is quite simply impossible to measure.

For a start if you've never never smoked cannabis in your life and we share a joint, (hey, you're always welcome ) you can be damn sure that exactly the same weed is going to feel a hell of a lot more 'powerful' to you then to me.

Secondly, the argument is made that modern growing techniques allow cannabis to be grown with a much higher THC content.

While this is true the variety from which cannabis enters the black market mean that it's neither her nor there.

If you buy some weed on the street I guess she could have come from a pro grow room and have a higher content but it's far more likely to have come from a basic outdoor, agricultural setup in some distant land or from a criminal grow room focussed on quantity rather than quality.

I can state without hesitation that I've never smoked anything in this country anything like the pro gear sold in Holland. In fact my own personal experience of the 'power' of gear available on the black market in the UK is that is actually pretty crap.(3)

The point is though that due the variety of sources and, be definition, the impossibility of getting thorough, accurate data from an underground market means that the claims of 'killer skunk undoes all the arguments of yesterday' are utter shashpaps.

sat down and not counted

OK maybe this one should have been first as it's by far the most important and maybe more people would read it that way but then I wanted to end with it for impact so tough.

Statistics, statistics, statistics.

Having a masters degree in physics and astrophysics and working in performance monitoring and statistical analysis, means I have some idea about statistics.

Basically they're bullshit.

They can be incredibly powerful and useful only if sufficiently restrained by context. When let loose in the media and the subsequent scrum of 'common knowledge' however, statistics tend to collapse into hysterical gibberish very quickly.

So how many statistics have you heard about cannabis in your lifetime? How many times are you told about 'signs' or 'indications' or 'reports'?

There's a great deal of 'data' out there apparently that documents the negative effects of cannabis.

Despite my habitual sarcasm I'm not actually casting doubt on that, what I am doing is stating that every single piece of that data is fundamentally flawed in exactly the same way.

Where do you think that data comes from? Where, in everyday life, does the authorities knowingly come into contact with cannabis users and therefore record information?

Two places people and two places only: the criminal justice system and the healthcare system.

100% of the people included in those so-very-damning statistics have fallen foul of either ill health or the law, do you begin to see the skew?

Stoners such as myself who live productive lives, contribute to society(4) and who have never been in trouble with the police for weed or had any weed related health problems simply do not exist within those stats.

The simple fact is that for as long as the man is willing and able to lock you in a concrete box for years at a time for the simple possession of cannabis(5) no-one who tokes without incident is going put their hand up, and why should they?

So there're your three, glad I've finally got them out of my head.

Now you may have noticed that there was no mention of the re-re-classification of cannabis and this is mainly because I'm really interested. To be honest it has very little to do with me, I'm still outside the law, forced to choose between funding organised crime of giving up my lifestyle and faith.

Re-classification had zero impact on my life or my drug taking habits so I see no reason why re-re-classification should either. I think everyone, even the BBC for goodness sake, recognises this as a political move, a nod to the right from Brown and nothing more.

One message this re-re-classification will send, if it goes ahead, is a big FUCK YOU to the House of Commons Select Committee that proposed the original re-classification, (to which I submitted evidence by the way.)

Brown will basically be saying that the MPs, experts and members of public involved in that Committee were wrong and that their time was wasted. Cheers Gordon.

The only re-classifying required here is to make lovely, lovely cannabis local, legal and licensed. She's been with us for 10 millennia and we shut her out in the cold less than half a century ago:

RELEGALISE CANNABIS, EVERYBODY WINS

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footnote

(1) for those new to vftcs, a passion of mine beside cannabis is the number three and most posts consist of main three sections

(2) polariser: someone trapped by the evil of the number 2, ie. being incapable to think beyond the framework of: if something is not white it must be black etc

(3) please, please, please NEVER buy cannabis resin in the UK, at least with buds you can see and learn to recognise exactly what you're getting, black market resin is ALWAYS cut with non cannabis mixer simply because it can be, these mixers can be anything from glue (ie. solvents that can KILL YOU) to faeces (I kid you not )

go to Holland sometime and see the real thing, the texture and effect, you'll realise the difference, that nasty UK 'soapbar' shit can fuck you right up and sullies the good name of cannabis!

(4) I'm an internationally published astrophysicist, journalist and author and hold work at a senior level in my local city council, I have also suffered serious depressive and suicidal episodes since early childhood,
I'm not blowing my own trumpet or fishing for sympathy here but pointing out that I have been able to achieve and overcome these things BECAUSE OF rather than in spite of my cannabis use,
FACT: If I had never smoked cannabis I would not have lived this long.

(5) the idea that the government has been taking a 'softly softly' approach to cannabis use is another myth, people still get sent down for weed all the time and if you care to look up how many of the people in our overflowing prisons are there for weed I suspect you'll be sickeningly surprised...

Comments

In the mean time you could:

READ MY WORK

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

watch the amazing video below or browse the archives.

Comments

go to www.Avaaz.org for more.

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Man is a sponge.

Profound no?

What I mean by that is that we're are constantly awash with things that influence every aspect of us, our moods, views, health etc.

Recently I've felt like a puppet with a few dozen different bastards all pulling my strings at once, as if just about everyone has some kind of control over how I feel, what I think and how knackered I am, except me.

Food and sleep, of the lack thereof, the breakdown of emotional relationships, both mine and that of my parents, all these things have dragged me down and down.

Now it simply is the case that this is how our lives work, we are subject to influence whether we like it or not. You can't very well stop interacting with everything completely, (well obviously you can but the Samaritans have talked me out of that three times over the last couple of weeks.)

Instead you can only chose to limit the negative influences as much as possible, (by ignoring your ex with whom you have to live for another six weeks!) and maximise your exposure to the positive.

Over the last few weeks I have found that by far the greatest positive influence, even more so than, dare I say, my beloved cannabis, has been that of friends.

Other people can grind you down into nothing but equally they lift you right back up again too.

I have a rock of a buddy here in Leeds with me, a stand up guy who I take for granted and rarely mention on here but he's the man none the less

There are also, of course, all my most excellent friends from the blogging community. I love you all and thank you for all the support and kind words you've thrown my way recently via comments and emails. You're all brilliant

I've also been lucky enough to find myself back in contact with a couple of other friends from my past recently, the rekindling of who's relationships could not have come at a better time for me.

There's my good buddy in Cali who emailed me out of the blue to great effect, easy now my mentalist friend, and then there's an old work colleague of mine who just happens to be the coolest person I've ever met.

This second is in New Zealand at the mo but thanks to the miracle of modern technology we've been sharing scars and work, (she's an artist as you'll see below.) There's nothing quite like someone who really gets you y'know?

Now my ex wasn't big on me having close female friends, (though there were no guns involved so I can't absolve myself of responsibility,) and subsequently I never spent as much time or had as much contact with this mate of mine as I would have liked.

As it turns out of course my ex had several all too close personal male friends of her own, hence the split leaving me free to do as I please.

ANYWAY...

In the interests of celebrating my friends who mean so much to me and have been such a great help to me recently I wanted to share with you all some of my mate's work which I just can't get enough of, so here's a shot of a work in progress plus a few close ups on some of the detail:

Amazing aint it? Comment and opinions please and any prospective buyers, agents, media types etc please contact me through my email, (find on my profile,) to be put in touch with the artist herself.

Secondly I need a favour from all you lovely blog reading people.

My buddy has also been sending my photos of her time in NZ including this one:

Now she tells me this is a beautiful and elegant looking statue with a great Moari legend behind it. While I dig the story and the meaning I have to say that I find this photo to be one the creepiest things I have every seen in my life!!!

I'm not entirely sure why, but it just scares the shit out of me. My good buddy insists it's beautiful though and so this is where you guys come in.

Comments please, CAST YOUR VOTE!

is this statue:

a) HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL (running total: 2)

or

b) JUST FUCKING HAUNTING! (running total: 1)

Answers below please and if there's enough of a response I'll tally up the votes and announce the results in a few days.

(C'mon, look how spindly it is! It's as creepy as fuck and you all know it! I know that's cheating but it's my blog so tough )

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

So I'm still off work, Got myself in on Monday but my manager sent me straight home again so here I am, just bumming about waiting for test results and wheezing.

Had a pretty rough weekend emotionally, sights and stories regarding my ex (who I'm still stuck here with for the next few weeks and fuck me is it dragging,) really sticking it in and breaking it off but feeling stronger this week thanks to a bit more sleep and lots of support from friends near and very, very far.

As I'm not allowed to do anything physical I've been putting in some hours on the XBOX360, a bit of reading, bit of writing and watching DVDs.

Got myself the first series of The Thick Of It, which is totally worth the pain in my side when it cracks me up. It is damn funny

Also been down the cinema a fair bit. For some reason, ventilation, shape of the seats, I find it really uncomfortable in their at the moment, sets my lung off a treat. However, I love being in there so much that the psychological good it does me makes it worth it.

I'm a big fan of film but not, generally, big ass cinemas. The Hyde Park Picture House however, self described art house cinema, is old school, cosy, and mint. Pretty much ever since I moved to Leeds I've been a regular visitor and I can't recommend it highly enough, check it out:

http://www.hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk

Anyway I've seen four films over the last few days and thought I'd note down a few thoughts about them, so here we go.

Sunshine

Wasn't sure about this one. Looked a bit too big budget and cheesy to have any depth but just wanted to get out of the house.

As it turns out I was actually very impressed, (despite some pretty dubious astrophysics here and there, but not so much that I couldn't suspend disbelief.)

So here's the setup: our sun is dying, gradually fading away and with it any chance of survival for mankind.

Seven years previous a crew was sent in the Arthur C Clarke style ship, Icarus, to deliver a vast nuclear device, (the size of Manhattan,) to the heart of the sun to reignite and save us all.

It didn't work and they never came back.

Now everything mankind and the earth has left has been put into one last ship and one last bomb, the imaginatively titled Icarus 2.

It's all or nothing, they succeed or we all die.

I found this to be a classic sci fi film in the true sense of the word. Not derivative or unoriginal, but just sci fi as it was originally, a microscope cast on mankind against the awe inspiring backdrop of the inconceivable hugeness of space.

As the mission proceeds not all goes to plan, especially once they get so close to the sun that they can no longer communicate with earth and promptly pick up a distress beacon from the first ship!

Tough decisions and tragic sacrifices abound as the old lesson that man is at once his own worst enemy and yet his own greatest saviour is retold with subtlety and confidence.

I found myself really giving a shit about these people and their mission. When things went wrong I was cringing, desperate for hope, any hope at all. When things were pulled round I was genuinely relieved. Then back to despair, and back to hope etc.

In short it was a rollercoaster that managed to swing me back and forth without becoming irritatingly regular. I'm tempted to put this down to the fact that it's a film adaptation of a book but that's not necessarily the defining factor.

Despite the incredibly limited cast and scenario, (you can't exactly have long lost relatives or mysterious government agents popping up out in space can you,) the film manages to surprise and produce unexpected plot twists.

Things seemed to fray a little towards the very end and I felt a few minutes could have been shaved off to make it a bit punchier. Also there's a character or two that I felt were just thrown away in the end as if they ran out of time to bring their stories to a conclusion.

Overall though I found it a rewarding experience and would watch Sunshine again.

This Is England

I fucking love this film! Made me laugh, made me cry, it is a beautiful piece of cinema that everyone should see. Just brilliant.

I loved it so much in fact that I've been back to cinema tonight to watch it again!

It's a shame that the way the film's been marketed gives completely the wrong impression as I suspect this will mean it ends up being seen by far fewer people than it deserves.

Looking at the posters and the trailers you'd think it was another skinheads-battering-asians Romper Stomper style piece.

We seem to have a bit of a middle class obsession with skinheads. They're the monsters we just love to hate aren't they?

Full of all the visceral violence part of us secretly longs for we love to see them go then, after the excitement, tut and shake our heads, condemning them utterly and feeling so fucking good about ourselves up in our ivory towers.

Well if that's the kind of trip you're looking for you will find yourself entirely unsatisfied by This Is England. In fact if that's the trip you're looking for you will find yourself distinctly disturbed by this film as you will, I guarantee, leave the cinema feeling both affection and sympathy for the booted, tattooed 'thugs' you'll see on screen.

I cannot think of a film that lives up to it's title more accurately.

This Is England attempts to paint a picture of what it was for certain sections of society to live under Thatcher in the 80's and succeeds gloriously.

Against the backdrop of conflict in the Falklands, much of the commentary on which sounds sickeningly familiar to our current involvement in Iraq, we follow Sean, a twelve year in a small coastal Yorkshire town.

Still grieving for his father, who we gather died fighting Mrs Thatcher's war in the South Atlantic, Sean is miserable and alone.

At first the story seems both familiar and sinister. Outcast from society and simply craving those things that all human beings do, to be loved, respected and to belong, Sean finds everything he wants in a local skinhead gang.

Here however This Is England breaks with convention and, instead, paints a picture much more controversial but realistic in two key ways:

joining the gang is a hugely positive thing for Sean,

the gang, including a young Jamican lad called 'Milky,' may be suited, booted and tattooed, but has no interest in racism or far right politics,

It's not until an old acquaintance of the gang is released from prison that the more traditional skinhead cliche is fulfilled.

Even at this point however, where the viewer think: finally, right, here we go, it never really happens.

As things darken there is no great build up to a spectacular or brutal climax, just the far too common petty agonies of ordinary people and terrible mistakes that are made far more shocking by the fact that they're so unimpressive they could be real.

If you want middle class race hate snuff go elsewhere.

If you want to really feel the futility of a society that ignored huge swathes of it's own people; if you want to really understand the dull, grey truth behind violence and hatred and if you want to really know what England is, this is it.

Fast Food Nation

So how do you make a fictional film from a non fiction book? How do you describe all aspects of a monolithic industry from top to bottom in graphic detail while maintaining a personal, one on one connection?

Well, you get the almighty Richard Linklater to do it!

Ever since was mesmerised by 'Slacker' as a kid, (a film in which nothing happens, the camera simply floats around a town listening to people's conversations,) I have been fascinated by Linklater's work.

In fact, earlier today I purchased A Scanner Darkly on DVD, yet another of his triumphs.

What blows my mind about the guy is his approach to film making. Almost every project he approaches breaks the mould in one way or another, be it a real time film set in a single room (Tape,) or using a cross between live action and animation to create a literal dream world, (Waking Life) so Fast Food Nation is not such a surprise after all.

As I left the cinema, having been moved and shocked even though I long since stopped going to burger chains, I was trying to put my finger on what it is the Linklater does.

I realised that his talent is in creating another reality as opposed to a film. Despite the star studded cast, (you're bound to recognise at least half the people in their, from Bruce Willis to Avril Lavigne!) you find yourself thinking you're watching real people have real conversations.

It's another story about real lives and real people presented with a marked lack of cinematic convention or comfort.

A rancher who won't sell his beef to the meat packers, illegal Mexican immigrants working at the meat packing plant, the suburban teenagers working behind the counters and the marketing executive on a mission to find out why "there's shit in the meat".

By dipping in and out of the lives these and various other people, and delighting in very subtly crossing their paths, Linklater builds up a picture of the industry as a whole. While maintaining an unavoidably human perspective on the whole thing.

Engrossing, moving and occasionally genuinely shocking, Fast Food Nation is worth a look even if you don't feel you need / want to be saved from the Big Mac.

Amazing Grace

As with Sunshine I really wasn't expecting much here it was just something to do away from this here pressure cooker. Not sure this was a great film as much as a great story.

I think you would have to work pretty hard not to make this a moving and ultimately uplifting film. To be fair it wasn't as cheesy as i was expecting and features some truly great performances from several of the cast.

I was a bit miffed that the story of slavery was presented as a classic Hollywood 'one man's struggle against the evil British Empire' style yarn when one of the main things about the British abolition of slavery was that it was the first real popular political movement, ie. the first time a change major political change came about because so many people wanted it! rather missed that point out I felt.

Was also a little pissed that William Wilberforce, the hero in question, showed absolutely no traces of his Yorkshire heritage. The fact that he hailed from my very own beloved White Rose county was actually mentioned only once, and then only briefly in passing.

It was what it was I guess, a Hollywood blockbuster. My old hack of father often reminds me of the journalistic maxim: "never let the truth get in the way of a good story".

I was interested and uplifted, moved and amused, but couldn't shake the feeling of sticky violation.

What I tend to find with a lot of mainstream cinema is that it plays to the back of the brain rather than the front.

Instead of challenging and engaging your mind, requiring some effort from you, as the films described above do to varying degrees, Hollywood tends to just ram it's thick, clumsy fingers straight into your chest to pluck your heartstrings or into your groin to tickle your fancy.

I welled up in places but resented it because I knew I was supposed to, it felt like someone tapping your knee with one of those little hammers, as if my body were watching the film and I just happened to be there.

Of the four I'd probably have to place this last but that's not to say it's actually a bad film by any measure. It's worth watching, just bear in mind that it's popular entertainment rather than a history lesson.

So there you have it, four in a row.

Coming up at the Hyde Park Picture House are various great films but I'm intending to see the following over the next few weeks:

Zodiac,
true story of the failed hunt for a San Francisco serial killer,

After The Wedding,
Danish drama I wasn't sure I fancied until I saw the trailer, main reason I was tempted was because Mads Mikkelsen is the lead. Best known for his recent role as the bad guy in the latest Bond film Casino Royale, (which I loved btw,) I saw him in a Danish black comedy called Adam's Apples (absolutely brilliant!) at the Leeds Internationl film festival before last and he just blew me away!

El Topo
apparently insane 'western' with huge cult following,

Magicians
from the writers of Peep Show think Mitchell and Webb as rival magicians, I'm sold! oh and it's got Jessica Stevenson from Spaced in it too!

Can't wait!

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

I am pretty fucking miserable today. Not in the grandiose, suicidal manner of earlier in the week, seemed to have got a bit more of a handle on that now, (thanks in no small part to many people's kind words of support for which I thank you all ) no I'm just fed up.

My chest is really hurting again today for no good reason and being stuck in the house all the time is really starting to get on my tits. Something v cool did happen yesterday though that picked me up a bit. Received an email out of the blue from a mate I'd thought I'd lost contact with about ten years ago!

Turns out my mentalist Californian cyber chick as was is now a Californian wife and mother of two, still pretty mental though by the sounds of it! (hello there if you're reading this ) So that was pretty cool, well timed too.

Anyway I was tempted to write a post about Bliar finally fucking off but after watching about ten minutes I decided that I was already sick of people banging on about him and that I didn't want to add to the melee that is no doubt making his head swell even further as you read this.

Let's just say this, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out Tony you utter shit and hopefully we'll see you in the Hague one day soon to answer for all that blood on your hands.

Instead I thought I'd distract myself by writing up a post I've had planned for ages, nice and abstract about the effects of technological 'progress'. And so here are you three:

homo urbanus

According to a recent article in the Economist(1) at some point over the coming months humanity will finally reach the tipping point wherein for the first time in our history more than 50% of the human race will live in an urban rather than rural environment.

For the first time the majority of us will live in man made environments rather than our 'original' natural habitats. Now many would take this as a positive sign of progress, of the advancement of the race and I have to concede, city dweller that I am, that it is not necessarily a bad thing in of itself.

What concerns me however is the inherent assumption that underlies this opinion, namely that technology is always better than nature. It's worth bearing in mind that when the urban environments we're talking about here are not, for the most part, the great shining cities we like to get all misty eyed about when thinking of human progress.

What's tipping the balance are the vast and increasing numbers of people living in abject poverty amidst gargantuan megaslums as it is no longer safe, viable for them to live in more rural areas. This move has less to do with dragging us all into a golden age of silver towers and more to do with industry and warfare displacing whole populations of people.

Be it by choice or compulsion, more and more of us are insulating ourselves from nature, from the 'real' world and wrapping ourselves in a pretence of our own design. I've written in the past that a fundamental floor in democracy, (and most other social systems,) is that people are detached from the consequences of their actions.

It's a limitation of humanity that we cannot feel the same about something by hearing about it as we would by experiencing it. Now apply that to our relationship with this planet which, as much as people may like to scoff at hippies such as myself, is in fact the only tiny fragile bubble within which we can exist in the entire known universe

Is it any wonder that we fail utterly to recognise the damage we are doing or, more importantly, the potential we are wasting when we have so removed ourselves from nature? It's worth remembering that this shift in social circumstance has happened in the relative blink of an eye.

For the vast, vast majority of our existence mankind has had no choice but to be unavoidably connected to the natural world around us. A deep and detailed understanding of where our food comes from and how everything fits together and impacts on one another has been, until recently, an essential survival trait.

Hiding behind our technology however, ignorance has now become possible. And this is the point, we like to think of ourselves, and of our 'progress', as being a gradual accumulation of knowledge.

Day after day, millennia after millennia, we're gradually adding to a vast stockpile of information and building from it. Is this actually the case however? How long would you survive without modern amenities? What would you do if you fell and broke your arm without doctors and hospitals?

The argument would be, I suppose, that this knowledge is now superfluous, free to be replaced by more important things, like how to text and order things from the internet. Again though there is a disturbing assumption behind this seemingly acceptable answer.

The assumption is of course that our technology and societies are indestructible, that they will be here forever. This is an understandable assumption of course, given that it has been effectively true of our original environment for most of our existence.

Anyway, next time you're cursing the weather as an alien enemy invading the smooth running order of our society maybe it'd be worth questioning which was here first and which, let's face it, will be here longest.

drugs glorious drugs

Now I've written at length before about how great I think drugs are. While I do have deep and detailed arguments(2) to back this up I like to express this opinion in a more flippant and controversial manner simply to drive back against the anti-drugs rhetoric and propaganda that swamp modern society.

Basically as I've researched and written in the past, drug use is an inherent part of human culture and was, I believe, the catalyst through which we evolved from animals to people.

Drug use was one of the most fundamental ways in which we connected with our environment and with ourselves. Before the written word, (see my last post for details of the 'mirror of the self' properties of writing,) the only way to gain anything approaching an external perspective on ourselves was to change our perceptions.

Besides just enjoying getting fucked up, drug use played an essential role in shaping and our maintaining our society. Hand in hand with our withdrawal from nature has been our rejection of drug use.

Vast sums of knowledge and experience regarding drug use have been brutally exterminated moving us back to a level of understanding probably lesser than that of prehistoric man.

Instead we have replaced this direct connection with ourselves and the planet with systems of social control based on the imaginations of individuals.

which brings us nicely onto....

sun worship

Now few things are seen as more primitive than worshipping the sun as a god. The idea conjures up images of people with flint spears in animal skin loin cloths and rough stone monoliths. A dim and distant age, utterly alien and removed from our civilisation so noble and advanced.

Looking at it objectively however it's not quite as ignorant as it first appears.

Personally my own 'religious' or 'spiritual' faith lies in humanity. I don't believe in gods or souls or spirits, I believe in people, here and now, and what they choose to do to one another.

If you are going to project your faith onto some external body however i think you could do a lot worse than the sun.

I've written many times that I believe that religion is responsible for more pain, death and suffering than pretty much anything else there has ever been, and that the damage it does infinitely outweighs any positive benefits it may well have.

The main problem with religion, it seems it me, is that there is simply no room for manoeuvre. It's the ultimate get out of jail free card for any argument. The response of 'because god says so' cannot be rationally argued with.

Of course everyone's god is different and says different things, yet because they are god they are infallible and so cannot be wrong. So much conflict in the world today comes down to this fundamental disagreement about who god is.

Now when you look at how people's ideas of god have formed you generally find that they have been shaped by cultural and geographical history.

Now it seems to me that one benefit of worshipping the sun is that it is one of very few things that is universal to all humans. It's real, it's right there for everyone to see and share.

Also, again taking a footing in solid reality, the sun actually is the source of all life. Even those rare sea creatures don't directly take life from the sun take it instead from super deep ocean floor geysers fuelled by the molten core of our planet.

That molten core was formed as a by product of the formation of the sun. It really is top of the tree for absolutely everything that is, ever has been or ever will be.

Finally, one thing that we get very excited about with our technological advancement is the shrinking of the world. The fact the people anywhere on the planet can read my words here is cited as a sign that we are conquering our world, gaining a global view and thereby stepping up.

The thing is that within that we dismiss the sun as a ball of burning gas and so don't really recognise it.

In fact, by recognising and valuing our relationship with our star our ancestors, knowingly or not, were taking their place not in the global scheme of things, but in the solar system!

Would it really be any crazier to worship the most physically significant and universally recognised physical object in the know universe than to worship some unseen magical being who appears differently in the imaginations of each believer?

It would certainly make for a more peaceful world I'm sure.

Anyway, in conclusion, and for the benefit of those of you still locked into the whole polarisation game, I am not for a moment suggesting that we should cast off all our comforts and achievements and go back to living in caves.

I'm simply suggesting that there are many things we could make great use of and many problems that could be solved by repairing and maintaining the relationship with our planet that we've so recently turned our backs on.

Technology is great, I write online and have science masters so I'm certainly no technophobe, I just feel that it should be a tool rather than an end in itself and that we have a machine all around us that has been through so many hundreds of millions of years of 'beta testing' and refinement that we would be abject fools to ignore it's potential.

footnote

(1) 'The World Goes to Town' The Economist 03/05/07

(2) Find my article 'Prohibitive Costs' in the tags list for a full breakdown of my position here.

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
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Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
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Well it's been a while.

In my defence however, I have a bit on. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is without a doubt the most stressful time I have ever experienced in my life.

We'll get to the details later however, seamlessly integrated as they will be with the more philosophical content of this post.

A few things came together to inspire this one, all around the theme of us not simply being ignorant but actually somehow coming to believe the exact opposite of what's true.

Funnily enough the three for this post fit nicely into my own personal category system: mind, flesh & metal.

I find these three to be a useful system of looking at pretty much anything but people in particular.

The definitions are loose and open to interpretation but roughly speaking it goes like this:

mind: you, the unique bits of you that make you you, the you that's reading this right now,

flesh: your body, the bits of you that you share with everyone else, the eyes in your head that are reading this right now,

metal, us, the ideas and creations of us all, the things that hold us together as a society, the words you're reading right now and the technology you're using to read them,

If it helps clarify this concept a bit I tend to think of life on earth as breaking down into these categories quite nicely:

Plants are just flesh, purely responsive with no central information processing.

Animals are flesh and mind, being aware of themselves and the world around them.

Humans are all three with the metal, mainly in the form of sophisticated communication, distinguishing us from the rest.

Anyway, on with the post, ignorance and self deception:

mind

We had a training session at work some weeks back in which we were asked to discuss the idea of communication. What does it mean, how does it work etc.

Now clearly this particular subject is one of my favs and I could have banged on about it in the most abstract ways for days on end.

The workplace isn't exactly the right venue for my own brand of endless hippy ramblings however so I kept it to a minimum.

Now at one point we were asked to come up with some Golden Rules of communication and one of my suggestions was: 'know what you're talking about'.

This was pretty much dismissed as a given but I fought to explain that this really isn't as obvious as it sounds.

I love the written word. It is, in my opinion, by far the most significant invention of mankind, fire and the wheel can fuck right off, nothing is more powerful or significant.

Aside from the communicative uses of writing it also allows us to hold up a mirror to our minds.

It's amazing but you can really believe you understand something, you can think about it, talk about it, and be entirely confident that you have a solid grip on it. Then you try to write it down and suddenly you find there are gaps.

The thing is that when thinking and talking about things you can hide those gaps from yourself with phrases like, 'y'know' and assumptions.

There is nowhere to hide however when you come to put it down in black and white.

I have to admit that, while it's neither the only nor a foolproof way, academic education does help you realise ad address this.

I regularly encounter this problem at work when I need a piece of information from someone. They'll give me their explanation of a situation but omit the specific detail I need.

I ask for that specific bit and just get the same explanation over again because they don't recognise that there's a gap in their knowledge.

I also do this to myself when writing. I'll think about a piece and feel it's ready, I know where I'm going with it, but then find when I sit down to write it I can't actually find any words.

This is almost always because, despite my conviction to the contrary, I don't actually know what I want to write.

I find this a bit scary to be honest, it shakes my trust in myself a little.

The most difficult / dangerous thing about this kind of ignorance is people don't address it because they don't realise they need to.

My faith in the written word, ie the 'metal' however sees me through because, as already stated, it provides a mechanism by which to gain external perspective on ourselves.

If you think you understand something you can check to see if you really do by trying to write it down in full detail.

flesh

This one may be a bit more familiar, basically the idea of your emotions convincing you of something that is utterly false.

I've got a whole tangled raft of these at the moment, let's start with a summary of my current circumstances:

been looking for a single job to replace the two I work now, (had a successful interview the other day,)

been looking for somewhere to live, (luckily found somewhere the other day,)

spilt up with my girlfriend, (and found she'd been seeing someone else for a while behind my back,)

found out my parents are getting divorced, (and had them both lean on me for support,)

still periodically caring for my Grandma, (who doesn't know who I am anymore,)

had an emergency medical exam yesterday for a suspected collapse lung, (not collapsed, just enflamed, lots of meds and no Mary )

So now I'm laid up, unable to smoke with every single aspect of my life, family, work, relationship, health, turned upside down, every solid object turned to sand.

Hurts when I move, hurts when I breath, just forced to sit about popping pills secure in the knowledge that my ex (who I still have to live with for a few more weeks until my new house is ready by the way,) has 'gone away for a few days' (so said the text,) presumably with her new bloke, bonding, falling more in love and no doubt fucking like bunnies.

Like she also said in her text though, my lungs and I aren't her problem.

Bitter? Well yes, I am to be honest, just a bit.

One at a time I might have been able to handle these things but all together I'm in bits.

More relevance less whinging I hear you cry, fair enough.

So let's pass by the obvious ones, my assumption that my girlfriend loved me and wasn't fucking someone else, that my family would always be there, that whatever happened I could always escape to Mary's sweet embrace.

I 'knew' these things to be true and yet clearly they were all just lies.

The biggy came a few days ago when after another exhausting night of horrendous nightmares, (a familiar sign that my depression is in full swing,) I woke to find that the real world was far worse.

Now the previous night I'd done a little tour of my local shops. When I was in my teens it was easy, you could buy paracetemol by the hundred. Then they introduced this law that you can only by them 16 at a time.

Luckily for me not one of the retail outlets round here paid any attention to that and so after buying a few packets from each shop I had a decent stockpile.

At the time I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, just wanted the option of escape to hand I think.

Waking to a text from my ex telling me she'd spent the night with this guy however was the straw that broke my back and enough to make me need to get the hell out of here once and for all.

And herein lies the rub. My 'mind' in the sense described above, didn't want to die (and drove me to call the Samaritans who eventually managed to talk me down,) but my 'flesh' just couldn't bear any more pain.

Quite obviously life will go on, quite obviously 'this too will pass' and everything will be better in just a few short months.

In that darkest hour however every instinct in me, every fibre of my 'flesh' knew with unwavering certainty that this was my life forever and so I had to escape.

A metaphor for my depression that I thought of ages ago has never been more apt. Those times are like holding my hand over a lit match.

I know if I just hang on the match will burn out and my hand will heal, but everything in me is screaming to pull my hand out of the flame, myself out of life.

The problem is that what the emotions of the 'flesh' lack in reason and rationality they more than make up for in intensity.

I guess it's like someone trying to convince you that black is white. It's obviously not true, but if they tie you to a chair and scream it in your face for long enough you will end up believing them.

The solution here? Well I guess it's faith in the 'mind', belief that, contrary to every single sign, the sun will rise again.

The 'metal' can help here too as no-one else is feeling what you're feeling about your life and so everyone else has a better perspective on it than you do.

Trust in yourself an others would seem to be the key. This is no easy task though and, to be honest, there must be some kind of limit.

I don't know exactly how much pain I can take but it would seem I haven't reached my limit yet. As I said to a good friend the other day, I always seem to stagger through these things and come out the other side, dazed and unsure how I got there, but there none the less.

metal

Couple of examples here. Firstly the non-sensical but almost universally accepted belief that democracy and capitalism are the only possible methods of running a society.

The concept that there is any single idea that will fit all the billions of people that make up the human race for all the billions of years that will make up the future is quite obviously laughable nonsense, and yet it had become a universal 'truth'.

What makes this really crazy to me are the daily and horrific examples of how these systems fail us.

I started thinking about this in relation to this post after the recent shootings at Virginia Tech and NASA.

My initial reaction was distaste at how mortified we are by such events while at the same time being so apathetic about the thousands and thousands of people we are paying to have slaughtered elsewhere in the world.

Beyond this however the following occurred to me:

we're told that the literally hellish death and suffering in Iraq is due to the lack of a capitalist, democratic society, if only they were 'civilised' like us they'd be happy and safe,

at the same time however, the most recent US shooting sprees are clearly the result of the exact same system,

We're sacrificing our children and breaking our backs to pay for a war in order to spread a social system that, as we see on our own doorsteps, creates people so unhappy they turn to dramatic, televised murder.

How does such a dichotomy go unrecognised?

I think the source of the self deception here is the other edge of the sword I mentioned above. Trusting in other people is vital however not questioning the people around you can also be fatal.

The 'mind' is our defence here. Instead of just passively accepting information presented to us we can use the most powerful computer known to exist in the universe (your brain!) to analyse and contrast that information.

I believe the 'flesh' can also help here too.

Some people would describe it as some kind of non-physical spiritual magic, I believe it's the result of natural selection because it works, but either way when you see something and instinctively feel it's not right, then it probably isn't.

Trust and belief in yourself is the key.

So there you have it. We're all walking round in our own little dream worlds, our perceptions of what's real, right and true utterly and unavoidably skewed; each of the three aspects that comprise us fatally flawed and deceptive.

Before we all start buying pain killers in bulk however, let's remember that if we can balance the three, counter each one's weakness with another's strength, it is actually possible to gain some idea of just what the hell is really going on.

balance the three and keep on keeping on

what else is there to do?

Comments

So there were your three.

To summarise, democracy is wrong because it requires it' participants to be driven by personal motivation rather than the greater good; it only represents an elite, albeit a larger elite than other systems; it invariably results in incapable people being given positions of responsibility.

As I always say however, if you're going to bitch you should really have an alternative to offer.

To that end let's consider what would need to happen to make democracy work, to actually achieve that ideal.

In each case having a population of individuals, all capable of critical thinking and articulation, seems to be the solution.

Now I believe it is possible to achieve such a society and that any suggestion that there will always be 'some types' who are 'just no good' should be consigned to history along with Hitler and the rest of the fascist mentalists.

Every single human being has the potential to do something amazing. It's society's responsibility to provide a structure within which individuals have the opportunity to recognise and develop their potential.

Now the issue of how to achieve this is one another post but I will say I feel that escaping the systems that benefit from our current trend of mass ignorance and consumption, eg. capitalism, would be an essential step.

Putting this to one side however I'd like to finally get to the whole point of this very long post:

IF THE CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH THE IDEAL OF DEMOCRACY WOULD FUNCTION WERE ACTUALLY ACHIEVED, WE WOULD NOT NEED DEMOCRACY!

If we had a nation of individuals, all engaged and invested in society, all equipped with the basic skills of critical thought, articulation and empathy(1) why would we need leaders?

If there was a problem in your community who better suited to resolve it than those directly affected by it, those who fully appreciate the consequences of not dealing with it, or dealing with it badly?

I envisage the next step along our journey as being a step away from any kind of centralised power, the end of governance by elites. People running their own lives with their own hands.

Suddenly the people making decisions are no longer isolated from their consequences, apathy isn't a problem because you see the benefit of being involved played out positively in front of you every single day.

Now there are those who would argue that this is a step back into the past, a breaking down into the local that will inevitably build back up to the national.

There is an element of truth in this in that many of the new ways would be benefits of the past retrieved. What would make the difference however is communications technology.

Instead of a state infrastructure of governance, the infrastructure would be one of communication:

Myriad local communities, doing their own thing, finding perfect tailored solutions to their own unique problems and then sharing their experience with everyone else building up a vast database of knowledge and experience.

So when your community faces a problem or wishes to make an improvement, you have the benefits of a local level but can start by saying:

...right, what have other people done in similar situations? how can we adapt that to suit us, these people have half a solution over here, let's get together with them...

Endless collaborations, interactions, agreements of mutual help tying the nation together by individual communities being connected to one another.

No rhetoric, no empty philosophy or baseless theories fobbing people off while they just about get by, just people solving practical problems with one another and moving forward.

That's my idea of how a society should run itself.

Now some people would call it anarchism, implying that loosening the bonds of our current social structure would release the mighty ape and we'd all slip back into mindless chaos.

Well I mentioned above the many things I don't believe in, god, life, death, a soul etc and while some people, probably the same people, would see this as bleak and empty, it isn't because there is something I do believe in:

humanity

My faith lies in every single one of you, that, as a race, we have it in us to get past all the nonsense, all the riches and the bloodshed and suffering, and actually get on with LIVING!

The end of history? We're not even out of the starting blocks yet people! We're still packing the car and trying to work out the map.

Everything so far is mere preparation for what is to come, for once we finally get ourselves sorted and unified there is simply no end to how far we will be able to travel.

footnote

(1) it is my belief that the ability to think logically about complex ideas and then effectively communicate your conclusions should be absolute basic skills for every single person, in the same way as counting to ten and writing your name,

Comments

Here're the rest of your three:

REPRESENTATION

problem

Globally speaking the UK is a pretty small place. Our population of 60 million is fairly poultry compared to many and yet we share a political system with many of the countries larger than us.

Now is it really feasible that the lifestyles, ideals and principles of 60 million unique individuals, let alone more, can be neatly divided into two, possibly three, camps?

I say no.

Further to this I think it is safe to say that in our supposedly great and holy democracy, the majority of our population are not represented in either our government or our parliament.

Looking at the people running our country you do not find a pattern of diversity parallel to that of society. In fact you find a terrifyingly elitist trend of white guys from similar backgrounds and the same schools / universities.

And so the fundamental tenet of democracy, the idea of self governance, is found to be lacking. The result of our democratic system is actually just another elite, albeit a slightly broader one than in the past.

The impact of this is that those people making decisions are invariably insulated from many of the consequences of those decisions.

Being so specialised and similar in their backgrounds, they can have no appreciation of how their actions affect large parts of society and are thereby rendered incapable of deciding wisely.

example

I register to vote but do not. The reason I do not vote is because none of the boxes on the ballot paper represent me or my views. I have no voice within our democratic system because there is no-one to speak for me and there is no facility to allow me to speak for myself.

Now I have to admit that I do dwell on the fringes of society. My daily drug use makes me a perpetual criminal, I don't believe in democracy, capitalism, religion, life, death, money or the human spirit.

So maybe it's just the freak unique that are locked out, just a tiny minority while most of society, the proper, upstanding, respectable bit of society, is just fine.

Unfortunately the number don't stack up that way. I believe the current Labour government won the last election with just under a third of the vote.

Now let's be generous and call it a third, (because it makes the maths easier!) and let's also be even more generous and suggest that 42% of eligible voters cast valid votes.

This being the case, only 14% of eligible voters actually wanted Labour enough to tick a box. No matter how you carve it, that is a mandate for absolutely fuck all.

The other, more significant issue here, is that more than half of eligible voters didn't actually cast their vote!

Now luckily for our politicians, we refuse to record the reasons why people don't vote, so they can blame it all on apathy.

Instead of considering why people refuse to engage with the supposedly best and only hope for the political future of humanity, we simply trot out the spiteful little 'in-it-to-win-it' argument.

"If you don't vote you can't complain about the result..."

"You have to be part of the system to change it..."

If you don't like chewing gum, if you find everything about it unpleasant, does it matter whether I offer spearmint or mango and passion fruit? No, it doesn't.

This spurious argument serves only to perpetuate a deeply flawed system by attempting to make it socially unacceptable to question or challenge the basic assumptions on which our current system is based.

You may as well be saying:

"Play the game or shut your face, I don't care if you can't feed your kids."

solution

Again, a titanic shift in the attitudes of voters would be required to nullify this problem. If people knew their own minds, if they were furnished, as standard, with the skills to locate and analyse pertinent information, and if people refused to vote for anyone other than those who truly represented them, this problem would disappear.

Knowing exactly what you want, being able to articulate it and being able to identify the person best suited to deliver it. Again this would provide a kind of natural selection for politicians so that only those capable of actually making progress would be afforded the opportunity.

Of course this would mean the end of the dominance of our political scene by the major parties. As more points of view were accurately represented and the true vastly broad base of society encompassed, there would be no room for the monolithic party structures.

QUALIFICATION

problem

Popularity contests do not tend to result in the most able candidate being chosen. Our own form of political popularity contest tends to result in the election of the most believable candidate, rather than the one who can actually do the job.

Our obsession with the sacred nature of democracy then compounds this flaw further as we afford ultimate status to the elected just as we did before when we the bitches of kings and holy men.

Because someone is elected, conjuring up an image of the noble masses floating behind them; because they are a tool of the people, (cuts both ways that one, I like it ) they have righteousness on their side and so must be correct.

example

Another example from my day job involving councillors and the odd MP. Clearly we have a responsibility to both our tenants and the tax payer to spend public money as responsibly and effectively as possible.

To this end we don't repair and improve houses simply on request. If someone wants a new front door a qualified and experienced surveyor will attend the property and assess whether the situation meets various criteria.

There's the decent homes standard, a minimum standard of living set by the government to be achieved by 2010; there're Leeds City Council's own standards on what's acceptable for people living in their social housing; and then there's the on-the-ground opinion of the surveyor as to whether it's reasonable for someone to live with that door etc.

Only when, in their professional opinion, a surveyor decides that all criteria have been met and a new door is required will public funds be spent on replacing it, and it doesn't end there.

In order to stretch that money as far as possible we don't just run out and fit one door after another. Instead such replacements are organised into schemes so that they are bought and fitted in large numbers, thereby reducing the unit cost.

Now many people have genuine grievances about the service they receive from their city council. There's always room for improvement and things do go wrong. There are people however, who complain simply because they haven't got what they wanted.

It is not uncommon for someone who wants new doors, windows, a new kitchen or bathroom in their council house to complain bitterly when they are told that because they do not need such a replacement the council won't pay for it.

The problem arises when such complaints are directed at councillors and MPs. We have had instances where councillors have demanded that they accompany surveyors while they reattend inspections.

In one instance a surveyor stood his ground and stated that the window in question did not need to be replaced. The councillor, holding no qualifications or experience in the field, disagreed with the surveyor and overruled him.

Of course it's not good enough for the window to go into a scheme in the usual way either, it has to go to the top of the list.

This simply results in other tenants not getting their replacements, which were actually deemed necessary, until a later date, possibly the next financial year if we run out of money.

This is something that drives me absolutely crazy and led me to confront one such councillor over the phone. I was informing him that if he wanted a replacement doing I would have to arrange for a surveyor to look at it first.

"I've seen enough doors and windows in my time," he told me, to which I enquired did he mean he was a professional surveyor by trade before entering politics?
(This may have been the case, I didn't know this guy's background, it was a little tongue in cheek though )

"I don't need to be a surveyor," he roared, absolutely outraged, "I AM A COUNCILLOR!"

It was hilarious though I managed not to laugh until I was off the phone. What a cock.

And yet it's also very depressing too because this is another consequence of democracy: the people making decisions are NOT QUALIFIED TO DO SO!

solution

I guess you could say people not being selfish and wanting something for nothing could solve this but to hope to change that is, even by the standards of this article, is a little far fetched.

People recognising ability before charisma is perhaps a more appropriate notion. In order to recognise ability people would have to understand the requirements of the job and thereby the workings of the system.

Again, allowing and encouraging people to become rational, informed, thinking individuals resolves the problem as dickheads like the guy described above wouldn't get a foot in the door.

More tomorrow...

Comments

In the interests of making that communication as successful as possible, ie. avoiding being drowned in a tsunami of hysterical rhetoric and bile, I'll start by laying out a few caveats.

Seems to me that since we stopped being a race of individual animals and stepped up to become inherently interconnected through abstract thought and communication, that our social structures have moved, slowly and overall, in one direction.

As we've gradually got to grips with our communicative abilities we've slowly moved away from the fascist dictatorships of religious and / or aristocratic rule, communism and / or military tyrants.

The elite at the top, the lucky few who have the knowledge and the skills, has swollen over time to include more and more of society. Now I freely admit that democracy may well be an entirely necessary step along this road.

It's the first instance where there is, in theory at least, a genuine attempt to allow people to govern themselves. One of the main problems with democracy however, is actually a much wider sickness, infecting many areas of our current culture.

I've written about end time thinking before, usually referring to capitalism. This is the notion that we are at the end of history, that we have arrived and that the systems we have today are final and everlasting.

The notion, somehow universally accepted within the mainstream, is that capitalism and democracy are not perfect but that they are the only possible ways of running our lives.

Six billion people, millennia after millennia past and more to come, and somehow we think there's just one single idea, one path only. Madness, utter madness.

So the initial proposal here is not that democracy is 100% evil, or that parliaments should be burned in favour of silly hats, but rather that our journey is not over.

There are still great and unimagined things over the horizon and if we ever wish to reach them we must keep pushing. It is my belief that democracy has several inherent and terminal flaws which should serve to drive us toward the next step on our journey.

What follows are descriptions of three major failings of democracy as a political system, real life examples to demonstrate the problems and then proposed solutions.

It should be noted that the solutions as posed are not practical suggestions of how to fix democracy today, but rather abstract ideas of how society would need to be for that problem not to be an issue.

Each of these solutions focusses solely on the ways on which the eligible voting population would need to be different. the reason for this is that, by definition, the burden of validity for democratic system lies with the people.

If such a political system is overrun with scumbags and tricksters, perverting it to their own ends and those of their friends, it is only because the voter in the street has given them the power to do so.

So here's the first of your three:

MOTIVATION

problem

It's important to note that none of this is about individuals. We're talking about democracy in the context of the human race and all of humanity's past and future. The nature of the system is on trial here and over such scale the personal intentions of individuals are evened out to become irrelevant.

No matter whether a prospective politician wishes to make the world a better place or line his pockets the question of motivation is the same. Neither wannabe MP can achieve anything without actually being in power.

Getting, and remaining, elected therefore must always be the single overriding concern of any politician.Whatever is required to stay in power, even if it is directly opposed to their core beliefs, must be done for the greater good.

example

I have long had serious doubts about democracy, ever since attending my local MP's surgery at age 18 and being sickeningly patronised, but it's the last year or so of working in local government (1) that has finally driven me to reject it utterly.

A common example of elected officials putting votes before anything and anyone else is when local councillors become involved in complaints from tenants.

Pretty much without fail the councillor will demand that some course of action be undertaken to appease the aggrieved tenant that will come at the expense of dozens of other tenants.

Nor is it uncommon that councillors insist that, when informing the tenant of the special treatment they are to receive, we make it absolutely clear that they are only being favoured due to the intervention of their current or would-be councillor.

At face value this seems counter productive as the councillor is actually reducing the level of service delivered to most voting council tenants.

This service failure however is too removed from the councillor's intervention for the two to ever be connected and the tenant's taking a back seat are left to assume that the council as a whole is simply failing them.

Of course this actually allows the councillor to tout for their vote too by promising to improve the situation they helped create!

I encounter the culture of 'look-after-my-mate-so-he'll-vote-for-me-and-fuck-everyone-else' on a regular basis, usually from councillors as there are a lot more of them about, but occasionally from MPs as well.

solution

As outlined above we can't really blame the elected for acting like this. They may have grand and noble plans to make the world a better place but if they don't keep the voters sweet they'll never be anything more than plans.

So what fundamental switch could we flick, what basic change could we make to our population to remove this stain from democracy's holy character?

Well if our population were, as a whole, informed and engaged; if we, en mass, understood the realities of running a country and appreciated that good things take time and commitment, then politicians would be given the room to devise and implement genuinely robust policies.

Also, those politicians who make their way solely by greasing hands would be recognised as the conmen they are and promptly ousted. Only those presenting practical, feasible solutions to our problems would be given positions of dominion over us.

More tomorrow...

footnote

(1) I work as an Assistant Information Officer in the Repairs & Maintenance Team of one of the Leeds City Council ALMOs responsible for managing social housing.

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Ever get that feeling like, every time you pick yourself up you just get kicked in the nuts again?

I've been on a mission over the last few weeks to take some direct, positive action towards not feeling quite so shit all the time. Moved into the spare room, did some writing, even started building myself a bit of a social life.

The various weights of a soul destroying day job, dying grandparents, a stalling live in relationship, old scars and recent pains were all hanging fairly evenly from my depression and I felt I was starting to get the balance.

Now funnily enough I was starting to feel a little bit weird again last week. Back to not being able to sleep, then endless mentalist nightmares when I do.

Thought I'd just ride it out however, so the spontaneous drink and drug fuelled bender on Saturday night courtesy of a visiting GeordieKeith, (easy bro ) was a welcome distraction.

After a lot of consumption and very little sleep however, I was rudely awoken by the phone and my mum telling me that she's leaving my dad. They are done.

Nice huh?

I don't think it's really sunk in yet, and I'm sure there's plenty of mileage in this one yet, but to be honest it just feels like one more shovel load.

Having to take my dad's car back later that day after just a few short hours kip wasn't brilliant but fuck it. It's shit and it hurts, what else is new?

I'll be alright, or at least I'll be about the same. It's just one more reason to become a hugely successful novelist and tell everything in my life to fuck right off.

A warm house surrounded by green in which to smoke, write and party. That's the dream peeps, that's the dream.

Apologies for the prolonged and whinging preamble here but just as this blog spans a multitude of topics it also serves a multitude of purposes, one of which is to serve as a vent for me

So anyway, I have notes for about half a dozen blogs on hold here on my desktop. Just trotting out cold ideas doesn't feel right for here somehow so I either write about it straight away or wait until something inspires me to explore an idea further.

This is one I've had sat around for ages but only had two examples. The third fell into my lap today however and so here we are.

Finishing a long, breakless day at the office, everything was sitting on top of me and I was feeling pretty grey as I headed for the outside.

As I stepped out into the car park however, something happened. The sky was violently blue and the sun painfully yellow and for an instant there was nothing else.

Glorious, glorious sunshine made me feel utterly free and at peace, just for a few moments.

Walking on to the bus I reflected on this experience and got a feel for where the liberating aspect of standing in the sun stemmed from.

It seems to me that that experience is one that we can share with every single human since before humans were humans, not to mention most animals too.

A deeply primal thing, these few simple seconds can reach right through the trappings of our 'civilised' society and into the backs of our brains.

Grabbed by the stem, we are animals once more and, as with animals, there is no concept of material things as we, and everything else, are just parts of the world.

You may say hippy nonsense and I may say bite me, but the fact is we're nowhere near as far away from our ancient 'pre-Eden' selves as we love, or hate, to think.

Second up there's another seemingly universal feeling, (is there anyone out there who has never experienced this?) the whole, jumping-awake-because-you-feel-you-are-falling thing.

That jolt is not just a mild unconscious scare, but is apparently a hang over not from before we were humans, but from before we were even upright! It is reportedly an instinct we developed to stop ourselves falling out of trees as we slept.

Now I can't remember where I heard that so I can't reference it. Whether this particular point is true or not though I find it fascinating to recognise how much we still share with ancestors we thought so distant.

The third is the whole feeling-that-someone-is-watching-you sensation. Sometimes there is someone, sometimes there isn't, or at least you don't see anyone.

It's a bit creepy, especially when you feel there's someone watching you from behind, ie. you're not seeing them out of the corner of you eye, you can just feel it.

Well apparently this is another appendix, another evolutionary hangover. Back in the mists of prehistory the was a time when our ancestors were not kings of the earth but prey just like everything else.

The purpose of this sensation then, be it the result of normally imperceptible sensory stimuli or just an occasional random feeling, was to protect us from things with big fuck off teeth.

Not only do these things remind us of how connected to our past and the planet we are but they also demonstrate the kind of timescales within which evolution operates.

Is it any wonder then that the more technologically advanced our society gets the more a strange pervading sense of alienation, disorientation and isolation grows among inhabitants.

Adbusters have spent years describing this weird and terrible feeling. Check them for more.

The point being that the technology and practices we are developing are evolving far faster than we can cope with. The more we try to move away from our roots in Eden, instead of embracing them, the more lost we become

Seems like you can take the man out of the garden...

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

For anyone who's interested there's a petition here:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SFOruleoflaw

demanding that the Government allow the Serious Fraud Office to reopen their enquiry into BAE's dealing with Saudi Arabia. It'll take less than a minute of your life, what else are you going to do with that time that's so important?

Had a pretty good day today. Slept all morning then bounced about to some monstrous tunes before spending the whole afternoon at lunch with a mate, having a friendly toke and heading home to read some manga and write this.

After so many pleasant hours it's harder than usual to summon my regular bile and outrage, but I'll try, just for you Here's your three:

First up a dream I had a few years ago that pretty much sums up the today's particular vibe to be explored. Vivid as fuck, full colour, all senses, went a bit like this.

Everything on the earth is mud, except for the people trudging through it back and forth, heads down, clothed in brown rags. Everything above the horizon is dark, sheet metal grey, brooding and grim.

Everyone has somewhere to be, hurrying along, pushing past each other. I've just found myself here, I don't know what's going on. I have nowhere to go.

I look around at all these grubby, pissed off looking people, it's all a bit weird. Then I look up and what do I see?

An enormous ball of flaming rock, tearing through the sky and bearing right down on us. Well fuck me, I think, probably best get out of the way of that.

So I start to shout and point and grab people. Only nobody cares, they shrug me off and curse me, not a one raising their eyes from the swill.

The rock's getting bigger and I'm starting to freak. No-one's listening, there're more and more of them. Because I'm standing still everyone's knocking into me and eventually I get knocked to the floor.

One step at a time I get trampled down into the mud, everyone's shows are solid steel. They tramp on over me, still not looking up until I'm buried except for my face and all I can see is the rock in the sky getting bigger and bigger.

Nice huh?

The point here is the hopeless feeling of seeing impending doom but being unable to repel it alone or convince others to help.

So let's move from the unconscious to the barely conscious, ie. the office. Work's been pretty frustrating of late. As of April 1st the ALMO(1) I work for will cease to exist, along with the five others in Leeds.

In their place will emerge three new ALMOs. I won;t going to things in great detail here, (I've spent all day bitching about this in one way or another,) but let's just say this change has not been managed quite as efficiently as perhaps it could have been.

Basically it's an absolute fucking shambles. Now I've recently been tasked with compiling some stats that are supposed to benchmark the ALMOs against one another.

Some bright spark senior manager came up with what he apparently felt was a good way to go about this. Namely pick ten examples of a job, (eg. changing a tap,) and just average out the price.

Now a lot of these managers have spent most of their working lives in the building trade and I wouldn't dream of telling them how to put a house.

By the same token however I feel that the certificate on my wall that reads Master of Physics & Astrophysics entitles me to point out that this methodology is the most spurious bullshit I've ever come across.

In our ALMO alone we raise about 50,000 jobs a year meaning that the ten job sample constitutes 0.02% which, according to long held theories of classical mathematics, is representative of fuck all.

The slightest anomaly in the price of just one of those jobs would be sufficient to render the resultant average utterly useless.

I've tried to make this clear to various managers via various examples of scale such as this which I included in a report I submitted last Friday:

"..this methodology is comparable to taking census data from one tenant in each of our 12,000 properties and using it for the 60,000,000 population of the UK.. "

It's all to no avail however. The various concerns my line manager has raised regarding serious failings in the use of the IT systems have been similarly ignored, partly because she's not fro the trade, partly because she's not a senior manager but mainly, I suspect, because she's a woman.

Frustrating? You don't know the half of it! There can't be may things more demoralising in the work place than seeing things falling apart and being actively prevented from doing anything about it.

Still, maybe that's just an isolated incident. Surely central government, heads of state even, don't act like this.

Well I think anyone such as myself who watched the Trident debate and vote on Wednesday and was utterly sickened would, I'm afraid, dispute that.

If I can just take a moment here to ask a simple but pertinent question:

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

As my good friend and lunch buddy said earlier today, 'we're all just insane children'. The world and everything in it are in the hands of madmen.

We are committed to disarmament and the non-proliferation treaty, but before we can get rid of the nukes we have to get some more.

In order to get rid of something we need to get more if it.

Doublespeak anyone? Next they'll be telling us peace is war.

Anyway, we're getting our nukes. Our proud and noble elected representatives kept us in the running for annihilation by roughly four to one, shower of bastards that they are.

So sorry all you kids who need operations, people who need somewhere to live and something to eat, our 'civilised' society has better things to spend money on.

At the end of the day the fact is we hate the needy so much we'd rather gamble on getting wiped out all together than dirty our hands by helping them. (Yeah, I reckon the bile's back don't you?)

I don't believe we can solve any of these problems individually, meaning both that we can't solve them one at a time or on our own. What we need is a titanic cultural shift to a whole new way of life.

Out of the question you say?

Well that's just what the people staring into the mud, the wilfully ignorant managers and the scumbag politicians would say.

Turns out titanic cultural shifts are what we're all about. One such shift, the move from hunter / gatherer to farmer made us what we are. More recently the industrial revolution changed western Europe beyond all recognition.

Change is easy, even the greatest changes take no effort at all, all you need is a better idea than the current one. Got one? Me neither, not yet anyway but it's coming, and if not from me then from someone somewhere.

In the meantime however, here we are, in our heads, at our work and in our country, just watching it go.

footnote

(1) ALMO: Arms Length Management Organisation, there are currently six of these in Leeds, private companies completely owned and run by the City Council to manage all social housing, I've worked for one of them as an Assistant Information Officer for just over a year now.

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

An old friend and former bandmate of mine is currently drumming with local success story Silverlode.

The launch party for their new album is at Bar Coco on Sunday 15/04/07 and I'll be down there with some mates.

Anyone in the Leeds area, head down from 6:00pm onwards and I'll see you there!

Everyone else check out www.SilverlodeOnline.co.uk.

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

So this is how it was supposed to go down:

You have an elected elite to run the show within a larger one that creates the laws.

You then have an independent, qualified elite to put the law into practice.

This is all cool because the people under the law control it by electing the people who make it.

The sinfully undemocratic non-electedness of those enforcing the law is begrudgingly accepted because they only carry out the wishes of the elected, not to mention the fact that they actually have the knowledge and experience to do the job.

In a country the size of ours however how can the all empowered voters possibly be sure that these elites in their distant towers are indeed doing the jobs they were chosen to do?

Bear in mind that, in terms of population, we're a pretty small country. Of course it goes without saying that every single one of us wants the history-ending panacea of democracy to saturate the globe, (either that or we're terrorists.)

Again, how can so many people be accurately informed of the actions of so few, thereby ensuring that society progresses in the direction best for all?

Well into that breach step another proud and noble elite. The fourth part of the equation, the people who provide that vital link, the defenders of our very freedom, they are...

...the media.

That's right, these people are essential to the very existence of liberty and civilisation, or so the story goes.

And it is a story, an inspiring work of fiction.

I find it a bit depressing when I realise I'm writing the same things on here over and over but for some strange reason all the worlds ills just refuse to disappear. Anyway, before I get onto a familiar rant about the media, just let have a quick familiar rant about polarisation.

Thanks to polari-fucking-sation I've ended up on the same side of arguments as the BNP in the past and none of the three examples that follow leave a better taste in my mouth.

First up let's talk about 'the injunction'. Both the BBC and The Guardian got very excited about being gagged regarding the contents of a paper drafted by a No 10 aide.

The gagging itself became the story and you see they were loving it. Freedom of the press is one thing but it's not very noble or exciting. Seems like you can only feel like a real, full sized journalist if people are telling you to be quiet.

Maybe they're jealous of all those journalists around the world who regularly risk torture and death to record and communicate the truth. I guess on the west running the risk of getting sacked or prosecuted is a kind of fat free version.

Anyway, what pissed me off here, other than the fact that they've caused me to side with Bliar and his greasy bastard mates, is that this was nothing unusual and it was entirely in the public interest.

Now regular readers may be surprised to hear me advocating any kind of censorship but I wrote recently about how it's not what we're entitled to know, but when we're entitled to know it.

The media are prevented from publishing information every single day, and for very good reason.

What happens if someone has been charged with, but no convicted of a crime and the press print a huge full colour picture of him along with his name and the fact that he had motive and opportunity?

What happens is the guy goes free whether he did it or not. There's no way he can have any kind of fair trial, therefore he can't be proven guilty, therefore he has to be assumed to be innocent and walks.

Is anyone bitching about this? Is anyone saying that our individual rights to be informed take precedent over the systems the keep society ticking over? Well probably a few but fuck 'em, let's stick to the sane in the interests of keeping this relatively brief.

In this instance it is my understanding that the police requested the injunction because they felt that if the contents of that drafted paper were made public it would reduce their chances of getting a conviction.

So why all the bad noise? Nobody's saying we're not ever allowed to know, the 'secrets' will be presented as evidence at a public trial for fucks sake!

Personally I think this is about the only way we're ever going to get anywhere near Bliar and his mates actually facing any kind of justice.

Next up let's look at that infamous CCTV of a copper apparently beating a teenage girl while he and his mate sat on top of her.

Yet again you're going to be shocked but I'm finding it tough to get all high and mighty about the 5 0 here.

Yes I've been harassed, threatened and and even knocked on my arse by our boys in blue in the past. I am certainly not the biggest fan of our state foot soldiers.

That said however, the media have yet again pushed me into bed with particular unpleasant fellow.

When talking about this in terms of right and wrong we have to be very careful. There's your own personal view of what's cool and what isn't and then there's what's by the book and what isn't.

Where the police are concerned we, (technically, through the magic of democrazy,) write that book. Their powers are set out in laws that we create by proxy.

In this light I think there are only two questions to be answered:

was he using official techniques?

was he in control?

As damning as that footage appears to be, I believe the guy was actually using a recommended technique for police and prison officers.

As I understand it the procedure goes like this: if someone's kicking off to a violent degree and needs to be subdued you get four people, (or as many as you have,) to grab hold of them and you try to get them into handcuffs.

If they make it impossible for you to put the cuffs on you twat them in their upper arm until it goes dead so that you can.

Now regardless of how humane that sounds it is a technique we've prescribed for their use. To be fair getting a dead arm is better than getting shot or gassed or electrocuted or sprayed or just getting the living fuck beaten out of you which seem to be the other options available.

With regards the second question however, I believe the officer in question lost his temper and was not in control.

My basis for this belief is his quoted statement in which he details the extreme provocation he was presented with, ie. a reason to lose his temper.

Then the fact that he reported hitting her once and then twice more, when in fact the CCTV shows four blows instead of two, suggests that he actually did lose it.

I don't think the guy was lying when he said that, I think he genuinely didn't realise how many times he hit her because he had lost control.

Now I couldn't be a copper, I'm not up to physically nor mentally. Keeping your cool when it's all kicking off, even when you're in serious physical danger, is no mean feat and I do respect people who can pull it off.

If you can't do that however, you're probably not in the right job. Another officer was quoted that he witnessed the girl foaming at the mouth during the incident suggesting that, rather than resisting the coughs she was having a fit.

How did the guy sat on top of her not notice that? Maybe because he was seeing red.

Now these are exactly the kind of stories we need a fourth estate for. This is precisely where the media are supposed to ensure that the people and the elites they've put in place above them are singing from the same hymn sheet.

For the most part however, the media reported this complex story simply as the UK's answer to Rodney King. Fascist bastard police beating a black person, a teenage girl no less. Juicy, exciting, more at eleven.

Finally I wanted to share the contents of a New Internationalist article on Iran that I found exceedingly interesting. Just have a think about that nation, it's president in particular, and a couple of strong recurrent themes in the media.

How about the fact that he said Israel should be wiped off the map, or his desire to have a big red button to match ours?

Well, according to NI, who I'm inclined to favour, both these items of common knowledge are untrue.

Just to pre-empt the polarisation disease let's make something clear: Iran's president is a shortarse fascist fuckwit cut from the same cloth as Hitler and Bush. This doesn't alter the accuracy, or lack thereof however of the 'facts' listed above.

Let's start with the Israel thing. It is suggested that the 'wiped from the map' comment was in fact a slightly giddy and very biased translation.

A more accurate version, apparently, was as follows: 'the regime running Israel should disappear into the pages of history'.

Now I'm not suggesting that that's a great deal better, it is vitally different however. Instead of calling for the outright annihilation of a nation he is suggesting that a standing government should be toppled for the greater good.

Clearly western voters learning that this little psycho is puking the exact same rhetoric as Bush and Bliar would be bad news for both respective scumbags.

But fuck it, our media is there to make the politicians answer to the people right? To ensure that the power is still in the hands of the masses. So what went wrong?

What I found far more surprising was the whole nuclear issue.

Now the fact that Bush is the guy with his finger on the button is a long held source of stress and despair but then he's the president and that's what presidents do.

Or is it? In our efforts to take ignorance to new and dizzying depths we have all somehow agreed to assume that Iran is just like the US.

For some reason the guardians of out liberty have not chosen to point out to us that in Iran the president is not the head of state and, if they ever did get the bomb, would not be the guy with his finger on the button.

Iran has a supreme spiritual leader above both the parliament and the president and this is the guy who would do any button pushing should it come to that.

This is also the guy, it turns out, who has issued decrees stating that it is not in Iran;s interests to have nuclear weapons and is also one of the many people who really doesn't like the president.

It would seem that the president is part of a relatively obscure Islamic sect and this doesn't sit well with the supreme leader. Other people who don't like him are most of the people who voted for him.

Like most successful fascists he got himself elected by telling people the easy answers they wanted to hear and making promises he couldn't keep.

As has been pointed out recently, the price of tomatoes in Iran is probably going to solve the problem of this weird little man before anything more drastic is required.

So why isn't this common knowledge? Why are we walking around with a dangerously inaccurate picture of this country in our minds? Why does the media give the appearance of serving political interests at the expense of ours when it should be precisely the other way around?

Because they're a shower of bastards is an easy answer and to be honest, about as useful a one as you're likely to get.

Now I poured scorn on the 'big plan' at the start of this blog and that was mainly due to the way things have worked out. To be fair it does look good on paper and whether we like it or not we're in it now.

I've often said in the past that it's no good bitching if you've no better ideas so here's mine.

It's a golden oldie but just like with capitalism, don't fight the media, just ignore it and sort things out for yourself.

If you're reading this blog then you have access to pretty much all the information the media do, it's called the internet.

We can't rely on our fourth estate to protect us, they have become utterly compromised and worse than useless to us now.

The only option then is to keep ourselves informed.

By all means use the media, I do, I watch BBCN24 all the time, just don't trust it, find out for yourself. In fact why don't you go find something out right now? There's nothing more going on here today and the porn will still be there when you've finished

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

I've discovered something strange: 72 hours is the exact length of time it takes for me to completely readjust to not being at work.

A weekend isn't quite long enough, for the first two days I'm just in a daze. Three days however is sufficient for me to forget all about work and fall back into my dole scum routine.

Coming to the end of my week off now, the prospect of returning to the office is looming over the horizon but I don't feel too bad. I've got quite a lot done so can't say that I've wasted my time I'd just rather spend the rest of my life sitting here writing than sitting there working.

Speaking of which I've also encountered something else a bit weird. I've been meaning to write a short story for a lit mag and have just finished it. Took me a couple of days, which isn't unusual, but the deadline is still over a week away, which is.

Normally I write shorts quickly because I've left them until the last minute. I was quite excited about this one however and, to be honest, a bit bored so I got on with it and now it's done, save for a bit of editing.

A major source of boredom has been the fact that pretty much everything I see on TV at the moment seems utterly shashpaps. In fact I've probably watched less TV this week than I would during a normal working week.

Maybe it's because I'm not so ground down by the day job that I demand a more satisfying standard of entertainment.

Who knows, the fact is, as no doubt everyone has said at one time or another, there are more and more channels and yet less and less worth watching.

It must surely be true that we, in the decadent west, are exposed to and have greater access to more information than any human beings throughout history.

From an evolutionary point of view this may present a problem. As with most technological advances, this change has come about too quickly for us to adapt as a species.

We have never had to process such volumes of information before. Is it any wonder then that so many people choose to withdraw into apathy?

A few examples of this phenomenon of info overload have become apparent to me lately, provoking this post:

Firstly there's the G2 cover story from ages ago that I've quite managed to forget. This related the results of a study suggesting that more western toddlers recognise McDonalds than know their own name.

The point is that when overloaded with info you just can't take it all in so, at some level, you select what you perceive to be the most important bits.

When you consider how much time parents are able to spend communicating with their children and compare that to how much time companies communicate with those kids through advertising it becomes clear who has a greater influence.

Secondly was the story of the reported discovery of the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. There were so many things that pissed me off about this story that I'm not even sure where to begin.

How about the fact that several media outlets kept referring to the tomb as potentially being that of Jesus Christ? The point being that if that is his tomb then he's wasn't the Christ was he? He was an ordinary bloke who died and stayed dead.

As I say, there were lots of things that annoyed me about this one but by far the worst was the omission of the single most important piece of information by every media outlet I encountered.

The key to the whole story is surely whether or not the Jesus they've found was the Jesus. Now there was more than one body in this tomb, the others reportedly being those of Mary mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene wife of Jesus and Judah son of Jesus.

There was some mention that a statistician had been employed to calculate the likelihood of the tomb belonging to a different bunch of people with the same names.

His findings were reported as stating that it was almost certain that this was the Jesus and his crew. I had to go online however to find out what he actually said.

This guy stated that the odds were 600-1 that it was someone else. The point here is that this stat means nothing without telling us how many people were living in the area at the time.

If there were just a few hundred families knocking about then then it looks like they may well have found the J man himself. If there were millions of people there however suddenly it doesn't look so good.

This number was the single most important piece of information in this story and yet it was just about the only thing we WEREN'T told amid mountains of crap.

So much information and yet not a bit of it useful for anything more than idle conversation at the water cooler.

The third and final example of quantity over quality came to me when watching BBC2's The Conspiracy Files regarding the death of Dr David Kelly.

A fairly interesting series, this programme doesn't stick its neck on the line. You get half an hour of conspiracy theories, then half an hour of debunking and then a final shrug of 'who knows?'.

Anyway the point that stuck out in relevance to this issue was the effective outing of Dr Kelly by the media. For whatever reasons the media couldn't actually come out and announce his name, (I'm unclear as to whether they didn't know or weren't allowed.)

What they did do however, was enter into their usual competition as to who could provide the most information about the mysterious man.

In their rabid fervour to supply the greatest number of facts they basically gave so many clues that anyone in the know would know exactly who the 'leak' had come from.

Of course the media, the mighty fourth estate, has a responsibility to inform the public and thereby keep the executive, the legislator and the judiciary in check.

That being the case however, how much of that information about Dr Kelly did we actually NEED to know? Was the public interest served by divulging all those little details?

I can already hear people crying censorship and state control of the media etc but that's really not the point.

A good example of one of the few instances in which we get this right is when one of our servicemen dies overseas.

As part the electorate responsible for sending them into harms way it is essential that we are informed of such losses.

We do need to know about this as soon as possible, we do not, however, need to know his name, at least not until after his family have been informed.

The point is that it's not actually in anyone's best interests for us all to know everything. As demonstrated by the examples above the problems with this are as follows:

we simply can't handle being told everything,

sheer volume of info distracts from the what is actually relevant and important,

the desire to communicate such volumes of info blinds people to the very purpose of that communication,

It's funny but this often happens. I'm writing what I think is an original post only to find myself on familiar ground.

I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again. This does not have to come down to a polarised choice between all info and no info.

What's required is effort on the part of the media and the public:

The media need to grow a pair and start reporting what needs to be reported rather than just competing with one another over numbers.

The public need to start developing skills of discernment to recognise the value, or lack thereof, of the information put before them.

This is also the only way for the public to recognise when vital info is not being released and subsequently be able to demand it.

There is, as always, another thorn on this rose however. The explosive expansion of the western media, 24 hour rolling news channels etc, has been sold to us in the name of choice.

The ideal seems to be that eventually you'll over ever watch things you want to see, be told things you want to hear. The media will be personalised to your individual needs.

Unfortunately however there are, and always will be, things that people need to know but don't want to hear.

Encouraging people to withdraw into bubbles within which they hold dominion can have no positive consequences for anyone except those coining it in at the other end of the wire.

It's tough I know, standing up to the perpetual torrent of shit, but it has to be done. The Egyptians knew that whoever writes history controls the present and subsequently the future.

It's up to us to decide where control of our society's information, and hence it's future, lies. Your hands or theirs, it's up to you.

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Holy shit! Where does the time go?

Life's been a bit of a blur since I last posted but amidst the craziness I did find the time to have a bit of a ponder about the nature of communication.

Now I've written many times in the past regarding the defining significance of sharing information to humanity, ie. it's what makes us what we are.

Seems like accurate communication, or the lack thereof, lurks at the heart of most problems facing the mankind so maybe a bit more exploratory thought on the subject would prove helpful.

In order to encompass as many, if not all, forms of communication some abstract thought tools wouldn't go amiss. How about thinking of communication as having three aspects:

source - location of info before communication

info - the information to be communicated

process - the system of communicating the info

Now each of these aspects can act on the other two, giving us six relationships to consider. In order to concentrate on three of them, obviously, let's plough through the first few nice and quick.

source > process & info > process

Both the nature of the source and of the information itself define the most appropriate and effective process to use.

info > source

While initially it would appear that the info held by a source can't change it, because the source has already received the info and reacted to it, the process of communicating the info may reveal previously unseen aspects that can then further change the source.

The second three are, I think, a bit more interesting and relevant:

process > source

Now the last couple of posts have had what you might call a darker tinge too them, feeling a bit down as I was.

I find this blog very useful for venting and exorcising my demons but often find myself feeling guilty after doing so.

The paradox is that sharing my pain makes me feel better, ie. it lessens it. So while when I tell you guys that I'm feeling shitty I'm not lying, the very act of telling you makes me feel less shitty.

So I'm sometimes left feeling a bit embarrassed that I've kicked up such a fuss and actually don't feel so bad. Of course if I'd kept it to myself I'd still feel so bad so it's the lesser of two evils.

The information being communicated is not being changed, it's accurate at start of the process. It's just that by the time the information has been received, the situation it describes has altered.

Here the process itself actually alters the source of the information, rendering the information inaccurate without actually changing it.

Another example of this is the study of sub atomic particles. One of the more well known concepts in modern physics is the idea that you can't observe something without altering it.

The majority of us take sight for granted and never give it much thought. Instinctively we know that we 'see' the things around us.

It's worth remembering though that what we actually 'see' is not the object itself but light that has bounced off it.

In the case of sub atomic particles no mater how little light, (energy would be a more appropriate word but that's not really important here,) you shine on the particle, it's enough to alter it's nature.

Again the information coming out of the source isn't corrupted or changed, it's inaccurate because the source itself has been altered.

There's not a great deal can be done to counter inaccuracy in communication due to this relationship. However just being aware of this fact at least allows the inaccuracy to be considered.

source > info

Now this is probably the most familiar relationship and, if I didn't enjoy rambling on so much, it could be summed up in two words: Chinese whispers.

Basically the information is inaccurate because it is corrupted by the source. Both politicians and media professionals are experts in this, ie. saying something that, while is technically true, gives a false impression the furthers their own needs.

This can be overcome to a certain extent by understanding the nature of the uniform bias applied to any information so as to be able to account for it.

For example if you were to read coverage of the same news event in both The Daily Mail and The Guardian you'd be likely to find two very different stories.

Taking into account the open political bias(1) of each however the two together could actually provide a more accurate picture.

Such a correction is limited however. The problem with bias, with the source altering the info, is not so much with the bits of info subtly twisted or changed, but more with the bits left out.

Things left out because they are deemed either irrelevant or harmful to the source drop out of the communication process completely.

Inaccurate information is always better than none as something can always be at least implied or deduced. You can't do much with a blank page, believe me.

process > info

Has this ever happened to you? You're filling in some form or questionnaire and you're faced with a multiple choice question.

Unfortunately none of the answers provided are yours and there isn't an other box.

You, the source, are unable to communicate accurately due to the system you are forced to use.

Instead of supplying an answer that describes your situation you either have to choose something outright wrong or not make a selection leaving compete ambiguity.

I find myself in this position quite often at work. I am asked to produce some report or other to monitor some aspect of the business, only I have to do it in line with an existing format to allow cross comparison.

Basically I have to present the figures via a method designed by somebody else. Unfortunately the method is pants and renders the info, at best, difficult to access and, at worst, downright useless.

One example of this was a benchmarking exercise wherein I was asked to arrive at an average cost for a selection of common repairs to council houses.

The number of jobs carried out over the considered period would be tens of thousands and yet I was directed to work from samples of ten jobs because this is what other teams had done and the figures needed to be compared.

Ten jobs out of tens of thousands? That's less than 0.1%, ie. in no way any kind of representative sample.

Regardless, I still have bust my ass to produce figures that I know don't really mean anything.

A slightly less self indulgent example would be a retelling of our first idea with the questionnaire.

When you, as a free citizen of free democracy with FREEDOM, (sorry, let me just wipe the rabid spittle from my chin,) cast your vote in an election what happens if you don't feel represented by any of the available options?

Due to the lack of a NON OF THE ABOVE box,(2) you are left either supporting a party you don't actually like or sending an ambiguous message to the politicians that can interpret in the way most useful to them.

When people talk about voter apathy they base it on the number of people who didn't vote.

Such a statistic has very limited usefulness however because there is absolutely no way to determine how many of those that didn't vote did so due to apathy or lack of representation, or any other reason.

So overall it's not a great picture in terms of our ultimate aim of perfectly accurate communication.

All humans feel angst at some point in their lives, (do correct me if I'm wrong,) regarding a desperate need to be truly understood by somebody else.

Turns out though that the deck is well and truly stacked against us. The six relationships above have been briefly considered in isolation.

Each one presents an obstacle to accurate communication and we haven't even considered the reality, ie. that actually all six relationships are constantly impacting on each other.

Why is it so hard? There's a bit in the bible about how in the beginning humans all spoke the same language and that god mixed it all up so that we wouldn't be able to understand one another.

From the picture painted so far it might actually be quite tempting to believe that somebody somewhere doesn't want us to communicate.

Before we all start throwing ourselves on the floor and hating gay people though let's take a minute to consider the wider context.

Since when did communication need to be accurate?

Most of the processes in the universe that fall under our broad yoke of communication are actually mechanical processes intended to provoke some physical response.

When photons tear around the universe smacking into stuff neither they, nor the particles they hit, care about how any information they may exchange is distorted and they're certainly not interested in what that information may suggest about the opposite party.

It's just another transfer of energy.

The point is that we're the only ones to whom such accuracy is important. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned if it gets the job done it's good enough.

So we're fighting against the natural order of things, but with good reason. The more sophisticated our systems of communication have become the more capable we've become of delivering a higher standard of living.(3)

There is another reason why accuracy is so important to us, namely the perception of time.

Everything else in the universe, from sub atomic particles to animals, lives in the moment. Even when animals draw from memory they're still doing so in response to some immediate stimulus.

We, on the other hand, perceive something called time, or rather its passage.

Perfectly accurate communication would be, in effect, a form of time travel. Everything is a state of constant flux, but by communicating something perfectly you would be recreating a past instant in time.

Communication is the technique we have, quite unconsciously, developed in order to overcome time.

Instead of being trapped on our own one way road through time communication allows us to see the view from other routes and places and thereby build up a wider picture.

So where've we come to? Communication, it's hard but it's worth it. Guess that about sums it up really.

Just a point of interest: maths is a system of perfect communication.

This statement can very easily be misinterpreted and is on a daily basis by many of the most powerful people in the world,

It does NOT mean that anything proven by maths is perfectly true. The accuracy of any maths is inevitably restricted by the accuracy of the data being used.

Maths is a system of perfect communication in another, quite different way.

The reason perfect communication is, apparently, impossible is due to the constantly changing and interactive nature of the universe.

In maths however an incredibly basic, non-physical world has been constructed which is utterly static.

The point here is that 1 is always 1, and to write 1 is to perfectly communicate the nature of 1, etc.

It's a kind of backwards cheat if you like. I can't run twenty six miles, I'll die, so instead I'll just change what a marathon is, twenty six feet sounds better.

I guess that final thought here is that, thanks to the nature of communication, many of the concepts I've tried to take from my head and make available to yours here will be lost, fallen by the roadside, never to be seen again, with just scraps making it through the gauntlet to you guys, panting and ragged.

Thing is we've been getting by like this for a fair while now, and we haven't done too bad from it either, know what I mean?

footnote

(1) I don't think there's anything wrong with political bias in the media as long as it's stated up front and opinion isn't presented as fact; I would in fact be far more suspicious of a media outlet claiming to have no political bias whatsoever as I'm not sure that's actually possible,

(2) I've been informed that they do have such a box on electoral ballots in Holland; the Netherlands was also recently announced to be the best place, (ie. safest with most opportunity,) for kids to grow up in, all this with brilliant public transport and legal access to weed, what the hell am I still doing living here?!

(3) notice I say 'capable' of delivering a higher standard of living, we are currently quite capable of clothing, feeding, housing and employing the entire human race, we simply choose not to,

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Still off work, still feeling shitty, but the fever's broken and I'm feeling strong enough to be irritated by my lack of energy.

Been thinking recently about a big assumption on which we've chosen to base our society, namely that things are always getting better.

The present is always better than the past and the future will be better than the present.

This is of course closely tied to the development of technology as shown by our blind faith that more, newer technology is always better and can solve everything for us.

Before our obsession with contemporary technology however this same assumption reared its head in other ways.

Most of the big organised religions have at their heart, albeit twisted almost beyond recognition to their own ends, the story of how a funny walking ape became a human.

Whether it's the Judeo-Christian story of Adam & Eve taking the apple or the Buddhist story of the monkey stealing the peach, somehow we as a race passed the story of our birth on verbally until written language appeared and it could be recorded.

Most of the power structure religions also interpret this tale in a similar way, namely that our new thinking aspect is utterly superior, (or holy as they'd like to call it,) to the ignorant beast aspect of before.

Newer is always better than old therefore considered thought should always override primal instinct.

Now before you poor polarised peeps out there start getting all hot under the collar let's just establish that I'm not then suggesting that the opposite must be true.

What I am increasingly coming to think, is that there just shouldn't be a hierarchy, that both these aspects have great strengths and weaknesses and that if we want to make the most of them we have to choose when to rely on each.

So here're three examples of such a conflict:

Firstly, a few weeks back I was talking to a guy at work who served in the first gulf war(1) and he told me that when they thought they might be in danger from chemical weapons they had to sleep in protective suits complete with gasmasks etc.

A guy then had to sit in each tent all night with one job: to grab hold of people and sit on them if they woke up.

Why? Because the first reaction, even of highly trained, disciplined and accomplished soldiers, when waking up in a gas mask is to rip it off and take a lung full of 'fresh air'.

Now clearly, under such circumstances, this instinct could get you killed. I thought I knew vaguely how that might feel from my own experience of scuba diving.

The first dive I did was fantastic but did feature about a second and a half of abject panic. Just as I got to the bottom I looked up and saw the ten meters of ocean sat on top of me.

Just for a moment everything in me was screaming to rip the gear off and get to the surface as quick as I could. Of course considered thought then took over and instead of drowning I had a really good time.

Secondly, depression. Really been kicking my arse of late, and to be brutally honest it's only an abject lack of energy that's kept me from doing something 'stupid'.(2)

My favourite metaphor for this kind of situation involves holding your hand over a lit match.

Considered thought tells you that the match will quickly burn out and so the pain will stop, or at least lessen significantly, very soon.

Beastly instinct however, screams at you to remove your hand and will even do it for you if you're not careful.

(Just to spell things out, in this instance, removing the hand from the flame = removing yourself from the world, ie. suicide.)

The big D has a wide selection of hooks to get in you, like a perpetual loop about how you girlfriend couldn't care less whether you lived or died, or a relentless, infinite cringing over some past faux pa or even the absolute conviction that you have a serious illness.

The 'trick' if you like, is to recognise them as irrational, as symptoms of the depression and not make decisions based on them.

Instead you have to trust in considered thought that if you grit your teeth and ride out the agony the match will burn out.

Again, forcing yourself to go against your beastly instinct keeps you alive.

It's worth noting that the irrationality of those thoughts doesn't necessarily mean they're not accurate, (I do believe the first of the three examples I gave to be true,) their irrational nature can simply blow them out of proportion.

Finally, this all seems to be going one way doesn't it? Well here's some counterbalance.

Had my big job interview on Monday, got the call yesterday, didn't get it, big shock.

I coughed and spluttered through the interview, kept forgetting what I was saying, the whole thing was a phlegmy mess basically.

Turns out however that it came down to a photo finish between myself and one other candidate. My written test was the best but they did better in the interview.

If I'd been on form I'd have pissed all over it.

What's this go to do with anything? Well besides me just being a bit pissed off about it the point is that impressing people at job interviews is all about enthusiasm, convincing them not only that you can do the job but, more importantly, that you want to.

Clearly I managed to do this, the thing I don't want a job, not that one, not any one.

(I don't consider writing to be a job, it's just something I am regularly compelled to do to release the pressure in my brain.)

How many of us do things every day that make us miserable? We follow considered thought and ignore beastly instinct to chase the things we don't want and neglect those we do.

The assumption is that it's always best to follow new considered thought because beastly instinct is outdated and ignorant, useless to us in today's modern world.

Beastly instinct however, if we can hold our noses and have a good look, got us a hell of a long way before considered thought came on the scene.

Fair enough in our first example we're right not to listen, though it does give us an essential reminder as to the risks we're taking.

The second example is, I feel, actually a halfway state. Fine, maybe the solutions my gut suggests, disappearing or dying, are not the most constructive, but it's telling me that things are not ok, that something needs to change or I will eventually break.

The third example is pretty much the same thing I guess, only in a much more insidious, calmer, everyday way.

Considered thought is an incredibly powerful tool but one that, if not understood and used with care, can blind the user into accepting a life of pain and disappointment that beastly instinct would never have allowed for a moment.

So are you a brain or a beast?

I'm sure we're both but can't deny it's damn hard line to walk.

footnote

(1) although that's a useful term to communicate where and when I'm talking about it does rather suggest that we stopped being at war with the Iraqi people before 2003 which, sickened to say, just isn't true, we've been killing them and their kids in one way or another ever since,

(2) the definition of 'stupid' in this context is entirely relative I assure you, ie. you think it is, I don't,

Comments

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Will somebody, anybody, please come round my house and kill me.

Been off work since Wednesday with flu and just cannot even begin to describe how insanely rough I feel.

Everything hurts and, until the last few hours or so, I have been completely out of it.

Having a fever is like free acid, only the trip's always bad.

Had a whole bunch of mental dreams / trips yesterday and last night and no real idea what was going on.

Most of it was so crazy that even though it felt real I know it can't have been. One bit did throw me though.

I can remember, with absolute clarity, my girlfriend dumping me. There was a whole complex conversation and I can recall all the details but, as it turns out, none of that actually happened.

She wasn't even here last night!

All very unsettling, but she assured me earlier today that it didn't happen and that almost all those details were way off.

I say almost because, of course, she has dumped me, just now, and this time I know it's real because I still have the text.

It never rains eh?

(04/02/07: turns out I misunderstood that text and wasn't dumped after all, not really sure what's going on to be honest, watch this space.)

It's funny but you'd think that'd trigger my depression big time and yet I feel strangely calm.

I can only assume that the fact that I only just about have the energy to make it upstairs for the occasional piss means that I just don't have it in me to plummet to the depths of despair right now, as fun as that would no doubt be.

Anyway, what better way to distract myself from my health, former relationship and the big job interview I have on Monday, (that's right) than by examining the nature of consumer capitalism.

global warming, (not fucking climate change,)

Subtle rebranding can be very effective if not recognised for what it is. The phrase climate change suggests, to me anyway, a local change in no specified direction.

'Global warming' however makes it very clear exactly what's happening and to whom.

Now I was reading the Guardian's coverage of the IPCC report online earlier today and when I got to the bit where they were talking about how to avoid, or rather minimise, the various impending doomsday scenarios, I couldn't help but think about consumer capitalism.

The simple fact is that capitalism, by definition, must lead to global warming, and no actions within that system can reduce the impact of that process.

I admit that's a fairly sweeping statement but hear me out.

Capitalism is based upon the concept of material value, that all raw materials, goods and services have a, usually monetary, value.

Clearly these values are in constant flux, prices are always changing, but what is it the controls the direction and magnitude of these changes?

Abundancy.

Quite simply, the rarer something is the more it's worth, and herein lies the rub: the whole thing relies on limited availability.

Fossil fuels are a perfect example of this. Again, by definition they are finite, the time scales for their creation being so much longer than the time scales within which we can excavate them.

It's important to note here that I'm not really interested in the intent of the individuals involved, be they philanthropic or malignant, because they don't really make any difference.

Try to think of this in terms of natural selection. If a system, such as capitalism, is successful it will continue to exist and to spread itself.

The less fossil fuel we have, the more it will be worth as the capitalist system feeds itself.

Now in my utopian vision, every community is surrounded and served by small fields of hemp.

We use it as the basis of just about everything, particularly for generating electricity and fuelling vehicles.

The use of biofuels is one of the the recommendations of the IPCC report unfortunately capitalism's self preservation instincts cannot let this be.

If hemp were grown on the scale I envisage, ie. an effectively infinite source available locally everywhere, then hemp would have zero, monetary, value.

How could a capitalist society have as its basis a commodity with no material worth? It doesn't work.

Capitalism requires the destruction of something which cannot be replaced, ie. a planet that can support human life.

fat kids

We have probably never been so obsessed with our own personal health and yet at the same time we've probably never been less healthy either.

Let's compare a super healthy lifestyle with a super unhealthy one and consider how capitalism gains, or not, from them both.

We're all aware of the 'five a day' veg target, but it's worth noting that how fresh the veg is is just as important as how much you eat.

Super healthy would be to eat veg that's barely out the ground, ie. either grown yourself or grown locally.

This means however, no packaging, no storage, and no transportation.

How much money is there to be made in those industries do you think?

There is a direct correlation between food that comes in shed loads of packaging, each component of which has probably been made using oil and then stored, (usually refrigerated,) and transported thousands of miles using even more oil; and food that's really bad for you.

Getting out of the house is also pretty healthy, physical exercise and a break from urban environments are both proven to be hugely beneficial for the human body.

Being out the house means you're not in front of the TV however, and being out of town means you're even beyond the reach of billboards.

The fact is that an unhealthy lifestyle is a profitable one. Just as with global warming, our obsession with the pursuit of material wealth is at the very heart of the problem.

It's a vicious circle as capitalism has established itself as being the god of all gods. If the healthy lifestyle described above was adopted on mass we'd be fucked as it would lead to massive job losses.

So no matter how many ad campaigns or other government initiatives are attempted, we can't escape the slide toward being big fat bastards as long as capitalism is the foundation of our society.

what is it good for?

A quicky to finish, as I can't really be arsed anymore, (sorry!)

What is the single most profitable industry in the history of mankind?

Well I must admit I don't know for sure, but I'd put my hard earned sick pay on it being the business of war.

Talk about disposable produce. A scared enough public will write you a blank cheque to develop more lethal technology.

Once you've built it, you smash the fuck out of it, or just wait a few years until your 'duty' compels you to do it all again.

There's a book called 'Pentagonism' by Juan Bosch explains this better than I ever could and is well worth reading.

It amuses me, in a bitter kind of way, when people struggle to understand the US's obsession with warfare.

They're a country born of war and war has been the foundation of their economy and ideology ever since.

Let's not forget that we UK taxpayers have only just now finally paid off our WWII debt to the US. They made an absolute mint out of that one.

I once read an article that stated so much money was tied up in illegal activities that if you could flip a switch to turn off crime across the globe, every economy and stock market in the world would instantly crash.

If the common dream of world peace could be achieved by the flick of another magical switch I believe exactly the same would happen.

Capitalism requires need to exist and so creates need through destruction, whether it be boiling the seas, expanding our waistlines or blowing up children.

We're doomed to carry on down this greasy slope for as long as we refuse to open our eyes to other possibilities.

Comments

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,

Comments

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

Comments

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?

Comments

Thought I might as well do this instead as I haven’t posted for a while and subsequently have a bit of a backlog of posts getting in the way of other things in my head. Also, the fact that I’ve finally got myself a shit hot little mac laptop, instead of that clunky old PC, means I don’t actually have to get out of bed.

So who enjoyed their Christmas(1)?

I hope you all did, personally I’m just glad it’s over because, and here we reach somewhere approaching a point, I hate Christmas.

Now the vague point currently shimmering ahead is that that statement is kind of a lie.

I generally find myself feeling pretty shitty at this time of year and there are a whole host of reasons for that. This year and last I’ve spent Christmas Eve and Day looking after my Grandma, who has dementia and watching my parents get even more stressed out than usual.

So you see maybe it’s not Christmas’s fault. I do recognise that it’s a great time for a lot of people and I’d even go so far as to recognise that maybe in the future it will be for me.

Down at the bottom of this hole however, the one I’ve been digging all my life, I just can’t seem to shake those three words: I hate Christmas.

They feel true, even though I know they’re technically not so the question is, is that a lie?

I sense some debate regarding the nature of intent looming over the horizon. Unfortunately, as the gut instinct nature of the feeling in question means that I have no clue as to what my intentions are when it comes to that little bit of Scrooge, there’s not a great deal of mileage in that one.

How about a whole other kind of lie?

If we’re talking about lies and liars we may as well turn to the pros.

Do any of us really expect a single word that falls from a politician’s lips to be truthful? Well if you do I afford you the same exasperated and bitter respect I lend to religious types. That relentless insistence, that insanely blind faith in something that patently cannot be true, even at the daily expense of children’s lives.

Anyway, let’s be clear here. The standard, outright, black = white bullshit on which our society is founded is not what I’m getting at here.

Just to clarify consider Blair the other day, explaining via his trademark self righteous arrogance exactly why the Serious Fraud Office was required by our Attorney General to drop their investigation into BAE Systems.

It wasn’t a case of the Saudis clicking their fingers and our government backflipping like a little bitch, no, no. Prosecutions only proceed in this country if they are deemed to be in the public interest, and apparently this one wasn’t.

Everyone knew this was a lie, though how many knew that the international legislation we endorse and insist third world countries observe states very clearly that national interest can never take priority over a corruption investigation.

I’m assuming this is because said corruption will always be against the national interest in the long run and, just perhaps, because said corruption generally kills children one way or another, albeit brown children far away, (which apparently seems to be not quite as bad.)

So now we’re clear on which point isn’t being made here let’s get back to what is.

The fundamental flaw in the democratic system is that a politician’s overriding priority can only ever be getting elected. Regardless of how good or noble they may be, they can’t put any of it into action without power and so the acquisition of power supersedes everything else.

It’s with this caveat in place that we arrive at the second flavour of lie.

When politicians tell you how much money leaves this country to aid needy people elsewhere in the world I think they probably do generally believe it.

Unfortunately it turns out that for every US$ received from the west by a struggling third world nation, four US$ leave that country headed for the west, usually via multinational corporations, thanks to the corruption that is standard working practice across the globe.

Again the issue of intent raises its head hopefully, is it a lie if you honestly don’t know it’s untrue? Considering this specific circumstance in isolation I’d be tempted to suggest that the responsibility they have to ensure they are informed turns the lack of intent into negligence but wait, there’s something else going on here.

So we’ve had don’t know if it’s a lie and we’ve had don’t know it’s a lie, where to go from here? How about knowing it’s a lie but believing it anyway?

Sound crazy? Well it is really, but I bet you’ve done it today.

Telling yourself you don’t have a choice when quite clearly you do, that’s a damn lie.

Intent? It’s entirely intentional, in order to motivate yourself to do something you don’t want to do, you convince yourself that you don’t have a choice. ‘I have to go to work,’ would be a very common example of this.

So there we have three icy flavours of lie, a Neapolitan of deception if you like.

The fact is that, one way or another, pretty much everything you eve here will be some kind of lie and the traditional interpretation of this assessment would be to suggest that the world is simply a terrible place.

Before we all start buying the Daily Mail and blaming asylum seekers for our missing odd socks however there’s another question to ask.

What’s really at fault here; the world, or our perception of how it should be?

It’s really very simple: question and ponder everything, or least the most you can manage, because at the end of the day you are responsible for who you are and what you do.

If I tell you you can fly and you jump off the roof, then sure I’m a liar, but you’re the one with broken legs.

footnote

(1) the Mass of the Christ makes me uncomfortable, not because it carries any spiritual connotations but precisely because it does not, very little of Christmas tradition has anything to do with Christianity, (the date for example happens to be at the same time as the far, far older traditional mid winter festival,) and very little of Christian tradition has anything to do with Christ, (but generally quite a bit to do with the politics of the middle ages,)
for me the whole thing smacks of the long since forgotten but highly successful conquering of our souls by the monotheistic elite, the uprooting of our grassroots faith in our own ability to survive and the laying down of grey, grey concrete power structures and guilt,
I love the idea of celebrating the winter solstice, it really means something to me on several levels, I just hate that it’s still being held hostage by the dream of a brat in a barn,

Comments

Thought I might as well do this instead as I haven’t posted for a while and subsequently have a bit of a backlog of posts getting in the way of other things in my head. Also, the fact that I’ve finally got myself a shit hot little mac laptop, instead of that clunky old PC, means I don’t actually have to get out of bed.

So who enjoyed their Christmas(1)?

I hope you all did, personally I’m just glad it’s over because, and here we reach somewhere approaching a point, I hate Christmas.

Now the vague point currently shimmering ahead is that that statement is kind of a lie.

I generally find myself feeling pretty shitty at this time of year and there are a whole host of reasons for that. This year and last I’ve spent Christmas Eve and Day looking after my Grandma, who has dementia and watching my parents get even more stressed out than usual.

So you see maybe it’s not Christmas’s fault. I do recognise that it’s a great time for a lot of people and I’d even go so far as to recognise that maybe in the future it will be for me.

Down at the bottom of this hole however, the one I’ve been digging all my life, I just can’t seem to shake those three words: I hate Christmas.

They feel true, even though I know they’re technically not so the question is, is that a lie?

I sense some debate regarding the nature of intent looming over the horizon. Unfortunately, as the gut instinct nature of the feeling in question means that I have no clue as to what my intentions are when it comes to that little bit of Scrooge, there’s not a great deal of mileage in that one.

How about a whole other kind of lie?

If we’re talking about lies and liars we may as well turn to the pros.

Do any of us really expect a single word that falls from a politician’s lips to be truthful? Well if you do I afford you the same exasperated and bitter respect I lend to religious types. That relentless insistence, that insanely blind faith in something that patently cannot be true, even at the daily expense of children’s lives.

Anyway, let’s be clear here. The standard, outright, black = white bullshit on which our society is founded is not what I’m getting at here.

Just to clarify consider Blair the other day, explaining via his trademark self righteous arrogance exactly why the Serious Fraud Office was required by our Attorney General to drop their investigation into BAE Systems.

It wasn’t a case of the Saudis clicking their fingers and our government backflipping like a little bitch, no, no. Prosecutions only proceed in this country if they are deemed to be in the public interest, and apparently this one wasn’t.

Everyone knew this was a lie, though how many knew that the international legislation we endorse and insist third world countries observe states very clearly that national interest can never take priority over a corruption investigation.

I’m assuming this is because said corruption will always be against the national interest in the long run and, just perhaps, because said corruption generally kills children one way or another, albeit brown children far away, (which apparently seems to be not quite as bad.)

So now we’re clear on which point isn’t being made here let’s get back to what is.

The fundamental flaw in the democratic system is that a politician’s overriding priority can only ever be getting elected. Regardless of how good or noble they may be, they can’t put any of it into action without power and so the acquisition of power supersedes everything else.

It’s with this caveat in place that we arrive at the second flavour of lie.

When politicians tell you how much money leaves this country to aid needy people elsewhere in the world I think they probably do generally believe it.

Unfortunately it turns out that for every US$ received from the west by a struggling third world nation, four US$ leave that country headed for the west, usually via multinational corporations, thanks to the corruption that is standard working practice across the globe.

Again the issue of intent raises its head hopefully, is it a lie if you honestly don’t know it’s untrue? Considering this specific circumstance in isolation I’d be tempted to suggest that the responsibility they have to ensure they are informed turns the lack of intent into negligence but wait, there’s something else going on here.

So we’ve had don’t know if it’s a lie and we’ve had don’t know it’s a lie, where to go from here? How about knowing it’s a lie but believing it anyway?

Sound crazy? Well it is really, but I bet you’ve done it today.

Telling yourself you don’t have a choice when quite clearly you do, that’s a damn lie.

Intent? It’s entirely intentional, in order to motivate yourself to do something you don’t want to do, you convince yourself that you don’t have a choice. ‘I have to go to work,’ would be a very common example of this.

So there we have three icy flavours of lie, a Neapolitan of deception if you like.

The fact is that, one way or another, pretty much everything you eve here will be some kind of lie and the traditional interpretation of this assessment would be to suggest that the world is simply a terrible place.

Before we all start buying the Daily Mail and blaming asylum seekers for our missing odd socks however there’s another question to ask.

What’s really at fault here; the world, or our perception of how it should be?

It’s really very simple: question and ponder everything, or least the most you can manage, because at the end of the day you are responsible for who you are and what you do.

If I tell you you can fly and you jump off the roof, then sure I’m a liar, but you’re the one with broken legs.

footnote

(1) the Mass of the Christ makes me uncomfortable, not because it carries any spiritual connotations but precisely because it does not, very little of Christmas tradition has anything to do with Christianity, (the date for example happens to be at the same time as the far, far older traditional mid winter festival,) and very little of Christian tradition has anything to do with Christ, (but generally quite a bit to do with the politics of the middle ages,)
for me the whole thing smacks of the long since forgotten but highly successful conquering of our souls by the monotheistic elite, the uprooting of our grassroots faith in our own ability to survive and the laying down of grey, grey concrete power structures and guilt,
I love the idea of celebrating the winter solstice, it really means something to me on several levels, I just hate that it’s still being held hostage by the dream of a brat in a barn,

Comments

Thought I might as well do this instead as I haven’t posted for a while and subsequently have a bit of a backlog of posts getting in the way of other things in my head. Also, the fact that I’ve finally got myself a shit hot little mac laptop, instead of that clunky old PC, means I don’t actually have to get out of bed.

So who enjoyed their Christmas(1)?

I hope you all did, personally I’m just glad it’s over because, and here we reach somewhere approaching a point, I hate Christmas.

Now the vague point currently shimmering ahead is that that statement is kind of a lie.

I generally find myself feeling pretty shitty at this time of year and there are a whole host of reasons for that. This year and last I’ve spent Christmas Eve and Day looking after my Grandma, who has dementia and watching my parents get even more stressed out than usual.

So you see maybe it’s not Christmas’s fault. I do recognise that it’s a great time for a lot of people and I’d even go so far as to recognise that maybe in the future it will be for me.

Down at the bottom of this hole however, the one I’ve been digging all my life, I just can’t seem to shake those three words: I hate Christmas.

They feel true, even though I know they’re technically not so the question is, is that a lie?

I sense some debate regarding the nature of intent looming over the horizon. Unfortunately, as the gut instinct nature of the feeling in question means that I have no clue as to what my intentions are when it comes to that little bit of Scrooge, there’s not a great deal of mileage in that one.

How about a whole other kind of lie?

If we’re talking about lies and liars we may as well turn to the pros.

Do any of us really expect a single word that falls from a politician’s lips to be truthful? Well if you do I afford you the same exasperated and bitter respect I lend to religious types. That relentless insistence, that insanely blind faith in something that patently cannot be true, even at the daily expense of children’s lives.

Anyway, let’s be clear here. The standard, outright, black = white bullshit on which our society is founded is not what I’m getting at here.

Just to clarify consider Blair the other day, explaining via his trademark self righteous arrogance exactly why the Serious Fraud Office was required by our Attorney General to drop their investigation into BAE Systems.

It wasn’t a case of the Saudis clicking their fingers and our government backflipping like a little bitch, no, no. Prosecutions only proceed in this country if they are deemed to be in the public interest, and apparently this one wasn’t.

Everyone knew this was a lie, though how many knew that the international legislation we endorse and insist third world countries observe states very clearly that national interest can never take priority over a corruption investigation.

I’m assuming this is because said corruption will always be against the national interest in the long run and, just perhaps, because said corruption generally kills children one way or another, albeit brown children far away, (which apparently seems to be not quite as bad.)

So now we’re clear on which point isn’t being made here let’s get back to what is.

The fundamental flaw in the democratic system is that a politician’s overriding priority can only ever be getting elected. Regardless of how good or noble they may be, they can’t put any of it into action without power and so the acquisition of power supersedes everything else.

It’s with this caveat in place that we arrive at the second flavour of lie.

When politicians tell you how much money leaves this country to aid needy people elsewhere in the world I think they probably do generally believe it.

Unfortunately it turns out that for every US$ received from the west by a struggling third world nation, four US$ leave that country headed for the west, usually via multinational corporations, thanks to the corruption that is standard working practice across the globe.

Again the issue of intent raises its head hopefully, is it a lie if you honestly don’t know it’s untrue? Considering this specific circumstance in isolation I’d be tempted to suggest that the responsibility they have to ensure they are informed turns the lack of intent into negligence but wait, there’s something else going on here.

So we’ve had don’t know if it’s a lie and we’ve had don’t know it’s a lie, where to go from here? How about knowing it’s a lie but believing it anyway?

Sound crazy? Well it is really, but I bet you’ve done it today.

Telling yourself you don’t have a choice when quite clearly you do, that’s a damn lie.

Intent? It’s entirely intentional, in order to motivate yourself to do something you don’t want to do, you convince yourself that you don’t have a choice. ‘I have to go to work,’ would be a very common example of this.

So there we have three icy flavours of lie, a Neapolitan of deception if you like.

The fact is that, one way or another, pretty much everything you eve here will be some kind of lie and the traditional interpretation of this assessment would be to suggest that the world is simply a terrible place.

Before we all start buying the Daily Mail and blaming asylum seekers for our missing odd socks however there’s another question to ask.

What’s really at fault here; the world, or our perception of how it should be?

It’s really very simple: question and ponder everything, or least the most you can manage, because at the end of the day you are responsible for who you are and what you do.

If I tell you you can fly and you jump off the roof, then sure I’m a liar, but you’re the one with broken legs.

footnote

(1) the Mass of the Christ makes me uncomfortable, not because it carries any spiritual connotations but precisely because it does not, very little of Christmas tradition has anything to do with Christianity, (the date for example happens to be at the same time as the far, far older traditional mid winter festival,) and very little of Christian tradition has anything to do with Christ, (but generally quite a bit to do with the politics of the middle ages,)
for me the whole thing smacks of the long since forgotten but highly successful conquering of our souls by the monotheistic elite, the uprooting of our grassroots faith in our own ability to survive and the laying down of grey, grey concrete power structures and guilt,
I love the idea of celebrating the winter solstice, it really means something to me on several levels, I just hate that it’s still being held hostage by the dream of a brat in a barn,

Comments

Executive Koala (Japan, 2005) 3*

Every single Japanese film I saw at this years’ fest was utterly mental and had this had been my first introduction to Japanese cinema I would have been left with the distinct impression that the land of the rising sun was also one spilling over with dangerous nutters.

Executive Koala is a parody of ridiculously shit TV movies that comes so close to actually being a shit TV movie the only way for the director to maintain ironic distance is to have a few of the characters played as human sized animals.

Our lead, a high flying executive whose girlfriend is mysteriously murdered, also happens to be a koala, while his boss, obviously, is a particularly evil looking white rabbit, (it’s the pink eyes I think.)

The plots twists get crazier and crazier and the visual spectacle of a six foot koala doing anything, from answering a mobile phone to a slo-mo kung fu battle, just doesn’t seem to fade.

The Beach Party At The Threshold Of Hell (USA, 2006) 5*

A fantastic post apocalyptic romp, ‘Beach Party” is set almost a century into the future in the fledgling New America, wherein pockets of survivors are beginning to leave their bunkers and rebuild their world.

Tex Kennedy, descendant of JFK, leads the weirdest cast you could want to come across in his mission to find and crown the rightful heir to the throne of their new country.

The plot twists in ugly and unexpected ways, entirely in keeping with every other aspect of this piece, with each new, interested faction more freakish than the last.

Refreshingly original Beach Party doesn’t take itself in away way seriously and is subsequently released to be as insanely creative as it can be.

Entertaining throughout, the only limiting factor is that Beach Party is set to be the first of a trilogy, (funding allowing, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.)

The whole thing is predominantly scene setting and introduction and left me wanting a whole lot more from this newly discovered, super cool, burnt out universe.

Beach Party was made on a small budget and yet the production quality doesn’t suggest this at all. In fact the only real give away that this wasn’t a big studio project is the fearless freedom with which the film dives into its own crazy realm.

Kick ass, can’t wait for more.

Unrest (USA, 2006) 3*

The sixth LIFF horror allnighter kicked off with what was later described by one of the humorous hosts of the evening as the pilot for Scrubs.

Set in a cheesy US hospital, Unrest follows a group of cheesy US med students through a cheesy story about the mysterious Jane Doe they’re dissecting.

Predictable and funny in the wrong way, Unrest showed the beauty of horror films, ie. even when they’re bad they’re good.

To be fair there were some good jumps, some nice creepy vibes and a good idea for a horror film. Unfortunately these isolated successes were not tied together into a quality film.

Entertaining but not particularly memorable, Unrest was a good warm up for the long night ahead.

Broken (UK, 2006) 5*

Now this is a horror film.

I was a little concerned about Broken, mainly because it had received quite a build up over the course of the fest.

It had been shown as part of the Horror Weekend a week earlier, (and had provided me with a chance to go home and grab some sleep at the time,) and we were told during the introduction that someone had actually fainted at that screening.

Luckily, kind of, Broken lived up to its hype and was genuinely disturbing.

Nutter in forest kidnaps women then puts them through a whole heap of shit, everything from cleaning and gardening to fighting for their lives until finally, when he asks yet again, “do you wish to continue?” they choose to die.

Of course we follow the women whose story runs a little differently.

Awaking from her everyday life to find herself in a coffin, our heroine must dig herself out of her shallow grave before starting her new life of perpetual pain and fear.

A surprisingly early scene sees her undergo one of the most gruesome tasks this films, bad haircut nutjob has to dish out:

Again she awakens, this time to discover that she is bound to a tree trunk by her throat and balanced atop a small block of wood.

Teetering back and forth if she slips she will hang, becoming a mirror for the bloated corpse tied in exactly the same way beside her.

Seeing the corpse she realises, to her absolute horror, that her only chance to survive is to slide her fingers into the deep wound she finds in her abdomen and remove the razor blade left therein from among her guts.

She can then use the razor blade to work through the hefty rope.

Perhaps the difference with our heroine is that the rough sleeping loon has also taken her six year old daughter, though we don’t discover her fate until the final scene.

Quite relentlessly dark, Broken manages to be both savage and horrifying while maintaining a genuine philosophical enquiry into just how much a person can take.

As the film progresses the rolls of captor and captives are subtly skewed and even possible the darkest ending to any film ever carries with it a powerful message, ie. the relentless human ability to endure.

Expiry Date (UK, 2006) 2*

There are lots of very positive things to be said about independent, low budget films but the fact is that, as with any kind of film I guess, sometimes they’re just shit.

Not a bad concept. A cursed necklace, just oozing desire for material wealth, changes forms down the centuries so as to better carry out its lethal purpose, coins etc until finally being reincarnated as an evil credit card.

A schoolboy, your standard bullied loser type, comes across the card and is, inevitably, drawn to try and make his and his friends’ desires come true, obviously with ultimately lethal consequences.

Wild Zero (Japan, 2000) 5*

Shown the 2001 allnighter Wild Zero became a LIFF favourite and received an enthusiastic welcome back to the fest.

A now classic Japanese zombie movie with lashings of cheesy humour and rock and roll, you know the deal, random English phrases like: “Number 1!” accompanied by a thumbs up.

Great fun and, to say it’s now over half a decade old, still stands tall above contemporary competition.

So that was another fantastic Leeds International Film Festival, I’m looking forward to next year all ready.

Geek that I am I’ve totted up all the stars I gave out and can’t say I’m surprised to say that my average rating, out of five, for this year’s films was a very impressive four.

My favourite horror film, and this was very close, was Gruesome.

My favourite non horror film would have to be Jam.

And my favourite, if that’s the appropriate word, doc was The Empire In Africa.

I can’t recommend the LIFF highly enough. There were literally hundreds of films I didn’t see this year, indeed hundreds more than it would be possible to see, and that’s because there’s just such an array of films to see.

Whoever you are and whatever you’re into there’s something for you at the LIFF so next November get your arse down to the cinema!

Comments

Analife (Japan, 2005) 3*

This was the one film of the festival that I actually took time off work to see. Apparently the story of three people saturated by modern consumer culture I was well up for this, all very Adbusters or so I thought.

The brochure did mention that the three ultimately cross paths in the protologist’s office but I hadn’t give that much thought. Right from the off however, I realised that this wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting.

First person we meet is a guy. Woozy, ambient visuals matched well with his flat, monotonous narration. He describes how numb he feels, how removed and isolated he feels the world around him.

He tells us about a childhood song to which he can’t remember all the words. A little girl in a forest encounters a bear. She flees in fright, dropping something in her haste to escape.

The bear calls after her but she runs and runs, terrified until she is utterly lost in the forest. He can’t remember how the story ends and so instead begins to describe the one that lets him feel alive.

Rape.

He takes us on a intricately detailed journey from victim selection through to getting away with it. As he does so he somehow manages to maintain the image of a boring, ordinary guy who happens to rape, rather than stereotype demon rapist.

Finally, having thoroughly explored this extreme behaviour to which it is implied he is driven, he describes, in the same deadpan fashion, how he is gang raped by three guys.

Eventually, unable to bare the pain anymore, he is forced to seek medical help and visits the protologist’s office.

New story, new character.

This female photographer is equally detached and numb though over the course of her story we also learn that she has suffered a great emotional trauma.

As she hides behind her camera we get another excellent representation of the numb feeling of isolation within the gaudy bustling colour of consumer capitalism.

One day she comes across a murder, as you do. A local serial killer wanders about, jamming his knife in behind people’s ears before watching them bleed to death.

She watches him do his thing, then watches as he walks towards her. He has sex with her, she doesn’t really mind, it just happens.

It becomes a regular thing. He kills, they shag, she photographs the corpse. Again it’s only in the absolute extremes that she can find sense of life or reality.

Finally he decides to strangle someone instead of stabbing them. Then, in another change to the scheduled programme, he kneels behind her as they have sex.

Suddenly the ‘dead’ guy pops back up and stabs a rusty old pipe right through his would be killer and right into her unfortunately exposed arse.

Eventually, unable to bare the pain anymore, she is forced to seek medical help and visits the protologist’s office.

Last story, last character.

Another lonely guy, lost and confused. No communication, no connections, just his one, all consuming hobby.

Other people’s rubbish.

By sifting through people’s refuse, using everything, reading everything, he sees the most intimate details of their lives and this is the only intimacy he has.

By comparison with the first two this guy’s ‘thing’ seems almost normal and yet it really, really isn’t.

He finally has to face this when a home enema kit he tries out goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Eventually, unable to bare the pain anymore, he is forced to seek medical help and visits the protologist’s office.

So here’re our three, all alone, victims of the society they inhabit, drowned in information, senses deadened by relentless messages.

Finally confronted by two mysterious men, they find themselves lost in the forest for real and forced to sing the song that haunts them all but that none can fully remember.

But then, under pain of death, they do remember.

The little girl turns and faces the bear, who returns the tiny, delicate earring she dropped.

And so they are released to the world, refreshed and awake once more.

Classic Japanese mentalism, disturbing and inspiring in equal measure.

I especially liked both the portrayal of that desensitized, detached feeling and the message that even though society may be to blame, it’s up to the victim to pull themselves out of it.

Jam (UK, 2006) 5*

When the director of this film, Angelo Abela, introduced his film he described it not as a low budget film but as a no budget film.

No-one involved got paid and the filming itself was done for almost nothing. Despite, or perhaps even because of this, Jam was one of my favourite films of the festival.

Amid a horrendous traffic jam we explore the stories of the occupants of a dozen or so of the stationary vehicles including a van full of guys on a stag night, a funeral procession and a very randy couple.

With no grand special effects this whole piece relied entirely on the writing and the acting. Luckily both were excellent and the result was a mostly hilarious and occasionally moving cinema experience.

Leaving the screening it occurred to me that this was not only a great film but a perfect example of great British cinema. Very clever, very funny and sporadically filthy, I felt it summed up what we’re all about really.

The various stories overlap and echo through one another and somehow, via just snatches of conversation, we gain a genuine insight into the wider lives of all the characters we meet.

A fantastic film that, unfortunately, is unlikely to receive a very wide release. Should you get the opportunity I can’t recommend seeing this enough.

Friday 10/11/06

The Empire In Africa (USA, 2006) 5*

Holy shit.

This year’s film festival allowed me to prove beyond doubt how utterly spurious the idea of ‘desensitisation’ is.

Having watched an entire weekend of violent and disturbing horror films, (plus many years of the same,) my ability to react appropriately to real life suffering should have been well and truly eroded.

“The Empire In Africa” however, an extremely graphic documentary about Sierra Leone, was quite literally traumatic viewing.

The senseless knots of Sierra Leone’s recent political history were made accessible through a solid narrative, interviews and stock news footage. Unfortunately this newfound understanding carried with it a sense of despair.

This was all background however, to the documentary footage that shoved the grim reality of all those facts. For the few days after seeing this film I found some of these images burned into my retina.

Life is dirt cheap in this labyrinth of political conflict. Casual execution on the streets, piles of bits of bodies and common place amputations of hands and feet among young and old alike.

I have never before in my life felt the urge to actually walk out of a film mid screening but, seeing a real guy’s real head actually fall apart as he’s shot to death in the street, my body wanted to look away, wanted to walk out.

But looking away and walking out is exactly what has allowed things like these to happen in the first place.

Not for the faint hearted but a worthwhile trial, this doc brought home to me that before we can set about righting the wrongs of the world we first have to look at them and that in itself can be a huge task.

Comments

Sometimes three nice neat points just roll along and pile up in my head. These kinds posts almost write themselves really, though I wish they actually would as there are about a million other things I ‘should’ be writing instead.

So anyway, here we go, here’s your three:

First up the whole BA, cross wearing extravaganza. It’s been a long time since such an irritating story has been kicking about. The fact that almost all of the arguments AND coverage are so deeply flawed, thus rendering the whole thing a nonsensical waste of breath, time and ink, serves to truly infuriate me, when I let it.

So let’s clear a few things up:

I’ve noticed various media outlets referring to the offending piece of jewellery as a crucifix. The item shown in the various photographs etc is NOT a crucifix, it’s a cross.

There’s a big difference(1) which, given that the whole beef about this is story respecting other people’s religions, you might have thought would have been recognised.

Secondly, and most importantly, the comparison between the cross and the hijab or turban is simply NOT valid.

As I understand it BA forbid the wearing of any jewellery outside uniforms, religious symbol or otherwise, to avoid giving violent passengers something to grab hold of.

Headgear is a completely different category of dress and if Christians had traditional headgear they’d be allowed to wear it, ie. everyone IS being treated equally.

This woman’s real complaint, though she doesn’t seem to realise it, is that Christians don’t have their own brand of silly hat(2). Now whose fault is that? No-one’s but their own I say.

And here we have hit upon the central artery of this post: Christian jealously of other religions, but we’ll come back to this with a vengeance soon enough.

The third and final point on this particular issue is to mention the response of the Church of England.

The Arch Bishop of Canterbury, who I normally find to be pretty reasonable, has thoroughly disappointed me by throwing a world class hissy fit.

It has been ‘suggested’ that BA rethink it’s policy, which is shown above to be perfectly reasonable and fair, on pain of the CoE selling the tens of millions of pounds worth of BA shares it owns and introducing an Anglican boycott.

As much as the church loves to give itself airs and grace, to set itself above the rest of society as being divine and of a higher purpose, in the end it wields a big financial stick just like any other professional gang of elitists.

Despite winning the initial court case and an appeal, BA has committed to review its policy in fear of such divine retribution. To be fair to them however, their suggestion that religious symbols may be allowed as pin badges on lapels does seem like a sensible solution.

The second news item that rolled on up to fit in nicely did so a few weeks back when the government were considering legislation that would force faith schools to include 25% of ‘non believers’ among their student body.

Again, let’s start with the horrendously misleading media coverage. This whole issue was presented in terms of ‘integration’ and ‘multiculturalism’, the suggested aim being to stop ‘certain communities’ isolating themselves from wider, secular society.

In the current climate it’s hard not be drawn by these vibes towards the assumption that the problem being addressed here is that of Muslim radicalisation and of trying to build better relationships between Muslim communities and ‘mainstream society’.(3)

A brief, throwaway statistic I happened to catch towards the end of one report on this issue however, puts this assumption right on its arse.

Apparently Muslim schools already take 25% non believers, they do it voluntarily and have done for a long time.

The problem here is actually with the Catholic schools, ie. it’s not so much a problem of the fringes not wanting to come to the centre but actually the centre resisting such attempts and integration.(4)

As you may or may not be aware this legislation was actually ditched at the last minute, supposedly because a voluntary agreement had been reached among all faiths.

What wasn’t admitted to was that the Government had actually just forgotten what it meant to fuck with the Catholic church.

Again the guys in silly hats and sillier dresses flexed their muscle and the suits bent right over. You can have your democratic systems and rational procedures for the most part, but when we don’t like what you’re doing then you’ll do what (we say) god says bitch!

Let’s not forget that, for a long time, these religious nutters held absolute power over most of the planet and despite the march of technology, capitalism and secular society, they won’t give up their grip on power without a dirty and bloody fight.

Finally let’s turn away from the petty, decadent religious morays of the west. If you want to get to the heart of religious madness, to the real blood-in-the-streets faith, where better to turn than the good old Middle East?

The recent assassination of Christian government minister in Lebanon has served to pour petrol on an already raging fire. Outraged by what they see as the hijacking of their country by Muslim extremists, Christian militias are now arming and organising in Lebanon.

The next time the Muslims decide to take their country to war with the Jews, they say, we’ll be there to stop them.

Yes overall it seems to me that Christians are getting well and truly fed up with Islam and Judaism getting all the attention.

They’re seeing much passion, press coverage and public interest go to their rivals while they watch the cancer of apathy spread from the secular world into their flock.

Time to up the ante, time to get tough, time for the servants of Christ to jump in and kick some ass!

It’s funny, in a dead children kind of way, but when I usually write about the three great elitist menaces to humanity, religion, politics and economics, I tend to think of them as past, present and future respectively.

Looking back over this post however it seems like the latter two could potentially be swallowed up by a global holy war.

Choose your sides, there’s a few millennia of history to tell you which you’re on, and if you’re not on any then you’re in the middle, getting fucked.

The US already slaughters millions ostensibly in the name of god, if the Christians pick this ‘persecution’ riff up and run with it things could get even uglier very quickly.

Now to wrap up I’d like to be a smug little bastard and refer back to one of my favourite chains of thought, summarise by the somewhat flippant sounding mantra:

religion is the only evil

The thinking runs thus:

the abstract concepts of pure good and pure evil are religious constructs, ie. they only exist thanks to religion, eg. personified as god = good, devil = evil,

these concepts cause no end of pain and suffering by enabling people to believe that there are fundamental differences between themselves and others, eg. us vs the evildoers, and that they have some ultimate justification for whatever they choose to do, ie. god’s work,

this blinding of people to empathy and reason is the closest thing to actual evil that there is and so:

religion is the only evil

Outraged? Offended? Well don’t worry, if you’re right and I’m wrong then I’ll burn in agony for all eternity while you blissfully gloat over my suffering from on high that is, after all, what it’s all about right?

footnotes

(1) a crucifix is a cross with an image of the Christ nailed to it, this is the symbol of Catholicism as it represents Jesus’s great pain and sacrifice for which we should all feel eternally guilty; an empty cross is the symbol of Anglicanism as it represents the miracle of the resurrection, ie. the ‘proof’ the Jesus was the Christ for which we should all feel eternally smug,

(2) is it just me or is the entire history of the human world dominated by silly hats? think about it, tribal leaders / monarchies, religions, militaries, the common denominator is the enforcing of respect for silly hats, what’s that all about? maybe there’s actually an archaic global conspiracy among the hatters, was Lewis Carroll trying to tell us something? hmmm...

(3) spot the racist, it’s a game I like to pay when listening to political leaders and public figures talk about Muslims, intentional or otherwise talking about a singular Muslim community or making the assumption that Muslims are, by definition, outside the mainstream of society is inherently racist,

(4) cf. the myth of ethnic minorities ‘taking over’ urban areas and ‘driving out’ the local residents when what actually happens is that the white people choose to move out because they only want to live next to people who look like they do,

Comments

Anthropology 101 2*

I was quite up for the double bill of alternative media politics that was billed for Monday night. Unfortunately I found this opening short to be, quoting my notes from the night:

"Pretentious cack of the worst kind,"

The two stars I gave this piece were in recognition of the concept, which I liked.

The three stars I didn't give it were in recognition of what was done with that concept.

So it's an alien beginners class in the fall of humanity, a kind of educational documentary about our planet and us.

Now this could be a very interesting way of trying to hold up a completely objective mirror to the world, a way to let you look in from outside.

Unfortunately I found myself continually irritated by the familiarity of everything I heard. It's as if this unseen alien race learned everything they knew about earth from hanging out with white, western, middle class pseudo-radical-wannabe teenagers.

I'm the first to admit that I'm being pretty hard on this piece, particularly as, in the great scheme of things, I probably am actually on board with most of the ideals behind the work.

The reason this film wound me up so much is this:

for any of the issues highlighted in the film to be successfully addressed popular support has to be established,

this kind of pretentious, unoriginal reiteration achieves nothing other than turning people off the important issues,

which brings me nicely on to...

On Air (France, 2006) 4*

...a relief!

Also a little pretentious this much longer study of the alternative media landscape of the US shone by letting the people involved do almost all the talking.

Those people involved were the best thing about the film in more ways than one.

While what they had to say was very interesting and even exciting to me, the fact that they didn't all agree was somehow even better.

The 'alternative media' was not presented as that single label may suggest. What I found fascinating and refreshing was learning about a scene that, at times, does indeed seem to move as one, and yet, on the ground, is actually made up of lots of different groups with different goals and agendas.

Despite the various figures and episodes that demonstrate how tight the grip of big business around the throat of the media is in the US, this was ultimately an uplifting film.

Something commented upon towards the end of the film is the lack of popular movements and there is even comment as to suggest that this may be, in part, due to an inability to communicate effectively, (see above!)

What really excited me however was the suggestion, when talking about current protest and struggle for change, that no, it isn't like the sixties now, however it is like the build up to the sixties.

All that's missing is for the radical to move back into the mainstream as more and more people become disillusioned.

It seems that there are people out there, keeping the candles burning at the fringe so that, when we recognise the folly of our ways, we do in fact have somewhere to go.

Another large scale re-emergence of the counter culture? I can but hope...

Tuesday 07/11/06

Splinter (UK, 2005) 3*

I was quite excited about this film, a low budget, British sci fi thriller about thoughts being laid bare.

Another very nice concept, (there seems to be no shortage of good ideas out there!) wherein a couple of scientists create a machine that can read people's thoughts.

Also some great performances, genuinely funny, exciting, disturbing etc. as we see the whole gamut of human experience played out in an office block.

I felt ultimately disappointed however as I found myself waiting for the film to get going all the way through.

The plot was slow, occasionally twisting for no apparent reason.

Yet again you can everything else right but if it's not written well, you're fucked.

Hammer & Tickle (France / Canada 2006) 4*

A documentary detailing the history of Russian Communism from the revolution through to the end of the cold war, sounds like a right barrel of laughs doesn't it?

Well, looking back once more to the comments regarding communication above, the best thing about this film was that it was exactly that.

The simply premise here was that the jokes told in a particular time and place provide a unique insight into what's happening there and then.

They tell you what people were talking about, and how they regarded different people and things.

The jokes come animated, sounded over stock footage and even told straight out by the wide array of experts and witnesses interviewed and all to great effect.

Turning material that is at best terribly dry and at worst terribly dark into something accessible and even fun is grand achievement indeed.

I laughed a lot and I gained a whole new perspective on both Russia and the Communist system.

And yes, I'll repeat one of the jokes, this one seemed to be resurrected for every leader but we'll start with Jo:

Two guys are standing line waiting for bread.
First guy says, "I'm sick of this, someone should do something, I'm going to kill Stalin!"
He storms off.
The second guy continues to queue for another hour of so until he sees the first guy coming back.
"So," he asks the first guy, "did you kill Stalin?"
"No," answers the first guy, "that queue was even longer."

And so on.

Comments

Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man With The Plan (USA, 2006) 5*

A half hour monologue from a guy sat alone in a white room with a mirror. Sound good?

Well it wasn't good, it was fucking brilliant!

Armed with a series of camcorders, phones and alarm clocks our lead plans to expose the lethal nature of a sinister and mysterious ornate mirror.

As he summarises his research pertaining to the mirror for posterity we start to realise that he has more than just a professional interest in this supposedly murderous curiosity piece.

The gruesome stories that make up the past history of the mirror are genuinely chilling and build an unsettling tension that just won't quit.

The performance is utterly engrossing as we witness a gradual shift from calm and rational thinking into increasing agitation and confusion.

Is the mirror unleashing it's fiendish and archaic powers or is it all in his head?

A grimly magical tale that hints towards something both epic and evil.

Apparently this 'long short' was intended to be the first of a reverse trilogy but the director is now hoping to make it the first of a nine unconventionally ordered part series.

Can't wait for the next instalment, whichever chapter it may be!

The Call Of Cthulu (USA, 2005) 4*

I was VERY excited about this film.

HP Lovecraft occupies a spot on my very shortlist of favourite writers and the creation of the Cthulu Mythos is surely his greatest work.

Now there is an unwritten rule which had, to my knowledge, never been broken before this film, namely that every single film based on an HP Lovecraft story was utter cack.

It seemed that somehow HPL's work was just untranslatable onto film. While I suspect this has something to do with the fact that his writing is so purely literary in style I have always held out hope that someone would manage to break that rule.

And this film did, kind of.

Filmed in Mythoscope, this piece is an utterly convincing silent black and movie. It absolutely looks eighty years old this seems to help it capture SOME of the essence of HPL.

The festival programme describes this film as "the most faithful and authentic adaptation of a Lovecraft story ever attempted," a statement with which I whole heartedly agree.

The scraps of information from obscure sources providing just enough of a glimpse to suggest something truly awful lurking just out of sight; the stuffy innocence of the late nineteenth century and the dreadful hopelessness of it all.

This is definitely a faithful attempt at filming HLP and deserves credit for being such.

HOWEVER, you'll notice I only dished out 4* here so here's why The Call Of Cthulu only just broke the rule.

It wasn't shit, certainly not, but equally it just a vague echo of the literature it was attempting to animate.

The one aspect of HPL that was conspicuously absent from the screen was the horror.

What HPL did was to tap into the most primal of fears, the things in the dark that are beyond our ability to understand.

His horror was always very subtle and yet incredibly powerful, creating a creeping dread that washes through. Reading HPL is like doing a jigsaw without knowing what it's a picture of.

Right up until you put the last piece in you thinks it's going to be something pretty ugly, but as you place that final tile you realise it's not what you thought, but something infinitely worse!

None of this made it to the screen but, to be fair, it would appear that this is an impossible task so it seems a little unfair to bitch.

The Woods (USA, 2006) 4*

I should say from the start that this is a 3* film.

There is one reason and one reason only that this film ended up getting 4* and that reason's name is Bruce Campbell.

This is an entertaining but entirely unoriginal horror story about a girl being sent to a spooky boarding school, uncovering something sinister and eventually having a symbolic final confrontation.

Set in the fifties, (for absolutely no reason that I could see whatsoever,) the film opens with Heather being driven to the school by her parents.

After about three seconds of looking at Bruce Campbell I knew exactly what was going on with this family. Why hasn't this guy had more work? He fucking rocks and his lack of major roles has been our loss.

Anyway, the film was another string of wasted opportunities. The most was not made of the spooky woods, the sinister back story was confused and flat and the one impressive twist was brushed by so quick you'd miss it if you blinked.

And at one point there were killer trees.

Now that's got to ring alarm bells right there.

The fact is that the infamous Evil Dead 'tree rape' set the bar so damn high for killer trees and creeping branches that if you're going use that device you'd better do it fucking well.

They did not.

A decent enough film but without Bruce Campbell's minor role it would have been nothing special.

Severance (UK, 2006) 5*

I love the Leeds International Film Festival, (and I get absolutely nothing for saying that mores the pity,) not least because the organisers always try to make it more interesting than just showing a bunch of films.

It's not uncommon for films to be introduced by directors or for there to be Q&A sessions after the screenings.

And on Sunday 05/11/06, for the first time ever in the UK, (I think,) they showed Severance with a live director's commentary.

Director Chris Smith stood on stage in front of the screen with a microphone commentating on his film and answering questions.

To be honest I wasn't sure how this would work but it was actually a fantastic couple of hours, mainly because Mr Smith was a pretty funny guy with plenty of cool stories to tell.

Shot partly in Hungary, Severance follows a group of British office workers on a team building trip into the wilderness that goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Any recent British horror comedy is inevitably compared to the fantastic Shaun Of The Dead but such a comparison is not really valid in this case.

Shaun Of The Dead billed itself as a Zom Rom Comedy, ie. a romantic comedy that happened to have zombies in it.

Severance is quite definitely both a comedy and a horror film and Chris Smith explained that one of the most difficult parts of making the film was striking the balance between the two.

For my money he managed perfectly and created a brilliant film which I would highly recommend.

The commentary gave the film a whole new dimension for and was a lot of fun.

If you see it, and you should, take note that most of the stunts are done by Hungarian stuntmen who really don't give a monkeys.

The coach crash for example was undertaken at double the speed asked for and the guy knocked himself out cold doing it.

All the guns you see in the film are real and Chris Smith had to put his foot down to stop them using live ammo for the filming!

A brilliant film and a brilliant screening.

surprise screening (?, ?) 4*

I must admit that I was hoping for something old and rare as the surprise screening but over recent years the Fanomenon section of the festival has moved away from celebrating classics and towards supporting the contemporary scene.

I can't complain about this and I can't really complain about the choice for this mysterious film.

I had "ils" (THEM in French apparently,) down as a three star film right up until the end when it managed to chill me so effectively that it crawled over the line.

We start in some Romanian woods where a mother and her teenage daughter swerve off the road to avoid a mysterious figure. They are swiftly toyed with and executed by an unseen group of assailants.

Cut to our heroine, a French teacher who lives out in the woods with her writer husband.

Pretty much the whole film from here on in is these two being stalked and terrorised.

First off in their big old house, which unfortunately seems to fall foul of a classic horror mistake, namely making the place seem infinitely large, I mean she runs a hell of a long way without going outside, know what I mean?

Anyway, they escape the house and a hunted through the woods before eventually finding some underground chambers and tunnels to be hunted in instead.

To be fair this single, feature length chase is done well. You can really feel the panic and desperation and the scares are delivered well.

As I say, thus far I was not hugely moved by what was happening but I was impressed with how it was being done.

What chilled me was the finale of the piece wherein the identities of the hidden killers was revealed.

SPOILER! SKIP AHEAD IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

It's a bunch of kids!

Not feral children nor members of an evil cult, just ordinary, bored, hoody wearing urban youths.

As the sun comes up and we see them running to catch their school bus, having successfully slaughtered the long suffering couple, a caption tells us that the film is based on a true story.

A French couple living in Romania were hunted and killed by a group of youths aged 10-15.

This worked very well at bringing the horror off the screen and into the real world, which is after all the secret of truly great horror.

And so that was it, the horror weekend, twelve features and god knows how many shorts. I took Monday off to recover but still managed to catch a couple of films in the evening.

The week saw a break from horror and a change to political docs and more independent film.

They say a change is as good as a rest and they're wrong. Still by the time the second weekend of the festival came around I was up for some more scares and so attended the annual ritual that is the Horror Allnighter.

All these will be reviewed in due course, watch this space.

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Isolation (UK / Ireland, 2005) 5*

The fact that this was director Billy O'Brien's first film made it all the more impressive and while it wasn't my personal favourite film of the weekend it seemed fitting that it won the Silver Melee competition.

Each year a handful of genre shorts and features from the Fanomenon section of the fest vie for the Silver Melee Award. The winners then go into the international Golden Melee comp.

Anyway if this year‘s fest tells us anything about film making it seems to be that less is more. Here we find a cast totalling six on a small and very muddy Irish farm.

Somehow however, by the opening credits alone set an incredibly dark tone, establishing a tension that O’Brien amazingly manages to maintain throughout the film.

We discover that some high powered scientist has paid the struggling farmer, (who bares a striking resemblance to Greg Mulholland, MP for North West Leeds weirdly enough,) to experiemtn on his livestock.

It’s not long before we realise that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The whole thing gave a subtle nod to ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, I felt, with the isolation of the rural setting and the uncomfortable focus on animal slaughter.

When one of the freak calves is finally born and the vet botches the merciful execution, the inhuman squealing made me squirm way more than any glitzy Hollywood gore fest.

The fact that we never fully see the monster that ends up on the loose, and the claustrophobic interiors used resurrected the classis ‘Alien’ vibe for me too.

These echoes of horror classics, (and yes Alien was horror set in space, not sci fi,) did not detract in the slightest however from what was a great, original modern horror film.

A feeling I took from it, which gave it a more contemporary and original feel, was one of a world in decay and despair.

Everything’s old and dirty. The farm is clearly knackered and the money from the scientist is a last ditch attempt to keep the family farm going.

Also, the couple who turn up in a filthy caravan are on the run from their respective families, driven out into the cold.

This feeling of a world falling apart, of people being driven into dark and unnatural places, was uncomfortably familiar and gave an extra dimension of power to the film by linking it so subtly to the real world outside the cinema.

A brilliant piece of work.

Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (USA, 2005) 5*

I loved the concept of this film. In fact I loved it so much that I ended up giving the film 5* despite the fact that the concept was delivered via the medium of lame American cheese.

We follow a documentary team, two camera men and a female presenter as they meet Leslie Vernon, self proclaimed serial killer to be.

In this world Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kreuger and Michael Myers were all real killers and Leslie Vernon shows us, step by step, how he intends to follow in their footsteps.

Initially hilarious, we see the charming Vernon explaining his back story and working out. As he explains he will have to do, “that thing where they‘re running away and you just look like you‘re walking but you keep up with them.”

This painstaking dissection of every element of the slasher horror film makes ‘Scream’ look like the piece of ignorant crap it is.

The tone starts to darken slightly when the crew follow Vernon as he starts to stalk his “survivor girl”. The crew, who are by this point becoming close friends with the killer-to-be, are increasingly caught up in the thrill of the ‘work’ and even start helping out.

I was instantly reminded of a BBCN24 bit I saw recently where they filmed a new recruit to the Royal Marines having one last meal with his family before he sets off to the middle east.

BBCN24 are going to follow his progress and update us etc to give a unique perspective on the conflict. I couldn’t help thinking at the time how good it would be for the BBC if this guy died.

Now that would be some compelling television right there and don’t tell me no-one at the Beeb has thought the same.

Anyway things continue to darken as the night of mass slaughter approaches and the crew’s resolve starts to waver.

SPOILER! SKIP AHEAD IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

As the night begins to unfold exactly according to every tiny detail we’ve spent the last hour or so becoming familiar with, the female reporter decides that Vernon must be stopped.

Once the crew start to interfere however they find that the plan is shifting under their feet, things are not happening as expected.

We finally realise that the crew, and the audience, have all been duped. The whole documentary has in fact been part of Vernon’s plan and his “survivor girl” is none other than the reporter herself.

The crew are finally sucked into the horror, becoming victims rather than observers and playing out exactly the scenes that they had set out to parody.

A beautiful little touch comes during the credits, after everyone’s been killed except for the reporter who crushed Vernon’s head in a vice and set him on fire.

he credits roll over a CCTV scene of an autopsy room where some doctor is preparing to examine Vernon’s charred corpse and, of course, while his back is turned the corpse, very slowly, sits up!

I am all about blurring the lines man, I love this stuff!

Gruesome (USA, 2006) 5*

Without a doubt my favourite film of the fest so far. Not only truly disturbing but brilliantly written.

We follow Claire, a young American living in a small town, working nights at a convenience store. The whole thing is so flat and dull that the illusion of boring reality is utterly compelling.

Claire herself is absolutely gorgeous but not in a traditional movie starlet way. She still looks life someone who would meet on the street, her and the rest of the cast genuinely feel like a real people.

This flat, everyday background then also serves to bring the horrendous violence into sharp relief.

Basically Claire leaves work one morning to find a stranger waiting for her in her boyfriend’s car. Unsure, she lets him give her a lift home and seems to get in and safe ok until she finds the back door open.

He drags her into the cellar before torturing and murdering her with a particularly vicious looking little knife.

The violence is incredibly disturbing possibly because you don’t really see it. Almost everything is implied and left to your own imagination.

The fact that a friend of mine from work has the same name and bares a striking resemblance to the lead character made this even more uncomfortable for me and somehow I found the brutal punches to the face worse than anything else.

Anyway, the scene now set, Claire awakes to find herself at work, again.

Now no description of this film would be complete without a reference to “Groundhog Day”. This is the basic setup, Claire is apparently doomed to relive her brutal murder over and over.

As the film progresses her grip on reality is gradually loosened by a combination of disorientation and abject terror. Fighting hard however she strives to discover what is happening to her and why.

Another aspect of this film which I loved was the respect shown to the audience. Particularly rare for an American film, things are not shoved in your face, but rather the journey is a gradual one, with information subtly drip fed to build up a picture.

Little things like the fact that the killer was shot dead by police weeks earlier, that she can never get a signal on her mobile and that the priest is nowhere to be found hint upon hint to the truth of the situation.

I was loving this film anyway but the end blew my mind!

SPOILER! SKIP AHEAD IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

Towards the grand finale we realise that Claire is in actually hell.

Wherever she turns for help she cannot escape horrific murder. With each repetition we are shown a little more, turns out he beats her and cuts the skin off her face before killing her and burying her out in the fields.

Running to her best friend for help she thinks she may be safe only to hear her friend letting the killer in and asking if she can watch while he does his thing.

In the final scene her own mother lures her down to the dreaded basement and actually holds her down while the killer towers over her.

At this point you feel like you’ve got the twist but don’t understand it. OK so she’s dead and doesn’t know it ala “Sixth Sense” but why is she in hell?

As the blade gleams in the gloom she asks this very question for us. I had no clue as to where this was going, just an overwhelming feeling of outrage that this innocent was being so horrendously punished and betrayed over and over.

Why me? she pleads, what have I done? I’m the victim!

But no, she’s not.

Claire is not Claire.

Claire is dead.

As the camera snaps back to the figure kneeling under the knife we see for the first time that we have not been following Claire through her last day, but in fact it is the killer who is forced to walk in Claire’s shoes for all eternity.

The shock of this last minute revelation drew something out of me: relief.

The instant I realised what had happened all I could think was, “oh thank fuck, it’s him not her, that‘s ok then.”

The very next instant, as the film closed, I was sat there thinking, “whoah, hang on, IS that ok?”

That degree of suffering, so relentless and utterly awful, just shouldn’t happen to anyone. Retribution has no value and violence is always wrong.

I know these things to be true and yet this film showed me a part of myself that was ready willing and able to accept those horrific acts as being not only acceptable but even deserved!

An absolutely brilliant film on every conceivable level.

Meatball Machine (Japan 2005) 3*

There are certain phrases that I like so much I try to save them for those special occasions when they are truly apt so as not to wear them out.

Walking out of the cinema at around 7am after watching “Meatball Machine” I found myself able to use one such phrase, taken from the brilliant “Modern Toss” magazine and later TV show.

“What the jeeping fuck?”

My notes for this film read as follows:

?!!

To be fair I did start to nod a little during this one but I’m not sure I would have really got what was happening had I been fully awake.

So basically there are these little alien things that use machines called necroborgs to take over human bodies and turn them into fighting machines. The aliens then pilot the subsequent bizarre result, half man, half vacuum cleaner, with huge blades and drills for good measure, in fights to the death.

OTT gore and quite insane fight scenes, I felt this film wash over me but couldn’t get a handle on it.

Over the past few years I’ve looked abroad, and particularly to the far east, for art that was fresh and different. I’ve come across some really great and valuable cinema, animation and literature but this was Japanese mentalism to the extreme.

At this point I walked back up the hill from the city to my home. I sat on the loo and smoked a joint in a bit of a daze before grabbing another few hours in bed. The final mile lay ahead with just five more films to go.

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