day2

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40119562007-07-12T15:04:55.650+01:00day2 DRAWING and COMICSMikeBlogger448125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-31465540559630004902007-07-12T14:26:00.000+01:002007-07-12T15:04:55.679+01:00DISAPPEARANCE ALERT! I'm packing my bags: I will h...DISAPPEARANCE ALERT! I'm packing my bags: I will happily send new comics pages to anyone who asks (e-mail pwis@lycos.co.uk) ...Thanks for all the supportiveness and amusing/sardonic comments from everybody, especially all at Cinestatic, and especio-specially Mr. Forrest (you can pull the plug whenever you like, Mike!) Bye, PetePetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-85744025782530222222007-06-26T18:22:00.000+01:002007-06-26T18:26:27.574+01:00Okay, this is really ffuukkdd... but I love to bas...Okay, this is really ffuukkdd... but I love to bash my head against a wall... No, I don't know how long it'll take me to put this page right!!!Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-7014701216838247162007-05-31T13:04:00.000+01:002007-05-31T13:05:54.009+01:00Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-27960956679670604502007-05-24T11:22:00.000+01:002007-05-24T11:23:47.629+01:00PHEW! PHEW! Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-44591090896134820502007-05-14T14:26:00.000+01:002007-05-14T14:27:20.635+01:00Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-91180576061833149142007-05-08T14:31:00.000+01:002007-05-08T14:34:13.887+01:00Right, back on it, two years to go... Right, back on it, two years to go... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-72030936189269624792007-04-30T14:21:00.000+01:002007-04-30T14:25:45.349+01:00Here are all 5 pages of SILAS PLANKTON... Here are all 5 pages of SILAS PLANKTON... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1174815774581879562007-03-25T11:37:00.000+01:002007-03-25T11:42:54.596+01:00music music Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1173692356210947042007-03-12T10:37:00.000Z2007-03-12T10:39:16.226ZOkay, here are all three pages of 'our pigeon'... ...Okay, here are all three pages of 'our pigeon'... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1173101518891726142007-03-05T13:25:00.000Z2007-03-05T13:31:58.906ZPage 3 of 'our pigeon' is on the way, but Friday w...Page 3 of 'our pigeon' is on the way, but Friday was a day for being outside so this is from my most portable sketchbook: Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1171286263333643742007-02-12T13:16:00.000Z2007-02-12T13:17:43.356ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1170685778978194412007-02-05T14:27:00.000Z2007-02-05T14:29:38.996ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1170249364219286402007-01-31T13:12:00.000Z2007-01-31T13:16:04.236Z ...and... ...and... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1169471672904686282007-01-22T13:09:00.000Z2007-01-22T13:14:32.920ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1168866935831171202007-01-15T13:12:00.000Z2007-01-15T13:15:35.850ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1168260912320235582007-01-08T12:53:00.000Z2007-01-08T12:55:12.340Z [I shouldn't BE here!] [I shouldn't BE here!]Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1167743381777617962007-01-02T13:07:00.000Z2007-01-02T13:09:41.796ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1167304145243867042006-12-28T11:07:00.000Z2006-12-28T11:09:05.260ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1166447143703947002006-12-18T13:01:00.000Z2006-12-18T13:05:43.720Z ...and that's very most probably likely it until ... ...and that's very most probably likely it until next year...Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1165843058537414622006-12-11T13:16:00.000Z2006-12-11T13:17:38.556ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1165242868696014572006-12-04T14:33:00.000Z2006-12-04T14:34:28.723ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1164719153724263092006-11-28T13:02:00.000Z2006-11-28T13:05:53.886ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1164042672609751682006-11-20T17:09:00.000Z2006-11-20T17:11:12.670ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1163514634017341522006-11-14T14:27:00.000Z2006-11-14T14:30:34.036ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1162231571433842182006-10-30T18:04:00.000Z2006-10-30T18:06:11.450ZPete

infinite thought

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66869952008-07-05T08:49:09.169Zinfinite thØughtithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comBlogger875125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-967812291280552492008-07-05T06:32:00.001Z2008-07-05T08:49:09.206Zk is for kapital<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-eleven-007-751851.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-eleven-007-751305.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />[my collection of small change in piratey-type box, taken at a really rubbish angle. Obviously 'kapital' is not necessarily best <span style="font-style:italic;">represented </span>by money, but you know, the first form of 'the appearance of capital is money' as Karl notes in er, <i>Kapital</i><span style="font-style:italic;"></span>. Plus I couldn't find anything else to fit in the light-box].<br /><br />Discussing money is like talking about dreams; nauseating and boring in equal measures, because, on many levels, rather important. The very material consequences of the real abstractions of money (and dreams) conflict with our self-perception and those of people around us: 'I am not the number represented by my bank balance, I am a free man!' The way money both allows you to do certain things and prevents you from doing others forces us to become certain kinds of people. There is no existentialism here, or only for the very rich, who can of course be whoever they want. It's a shame that they almost always choose to be totally disgusting.<br /><br />At the age of nearly 30, I have never had more than £600 positive money. Like everyone else, I live in my overdraft, have credit card debt, owe my Ma several hundred pounds and own nothing of a value above £300 (so, probably not worth stealing anything from me). Since the age of 18 I have spent between 25% and 40% of my income on rent every month, and I can't imagine ever owning any of the following things: property, a car, furniture. I spend my income on bills, eating out, drinks, books, other people and the odd vintage dress. I live slightly beyond my means and I never save anything. How very 21st century!<br /><br />If I ever did have any significant capital, I'd pay off my debts and that of all my crew, and set up a publishing company. I suspect that about 80% of my friends would give the same answer. Perhaps I will run a 'what would you spend a million quid on competition'. The prize could be the piratey box!ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-24841390767785692192008-07-04T12:04:00.001Z2008-07-04T12:07:34.467Z<a href="http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/51286/Untitled" title="Wordle: Untitled"><img src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/51286/Untitled" style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://wordle.net/">wordle</a> is fun. Thanks Dominic.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-8973129910037011882008-07-04T11:38:00.004Z2008-07-04T11:41:48.385Znu-language watchOf all the many stupid, irritating pieces of nu-language in the academy, the phrase 'speak to' (or, sometimes, 'talk to'), as in, 'I'll speak to this document in a moment' is enjoying a particular prominence at the moment. You can speak to a piece of paper all you like, but it's unlikely to ever give you a useful response.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-25161279912243051642008-07-03T16:38:00.004Z2008-07-03T16:47:37.408Zkino fist: red space<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/rpm-738727.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/rpm-737673.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The next Kino Fist will be on the theme of RED SPACE, and will be held at 2pm, 20th July, in the <a href="http://www.eventnetwork.org.uk/about/visiting">E:vent Gallery</a>, 96 Teesdale Street, Bethnal Green, London E2 6PU. The films we will be showing are: as the cartoon, Khodataev & Kollektiv's 1924 short <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSE14cMsDtY&eurl=http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/search?q=interstellar+revolution">Interplanetary Revolution</a>, as the main feature, Iakov Protazanov's Martian Constructivist-Trotskyist blockbuster <a href="http://blog.voyou.org/2007/08/12/101/#more-101">Aelita</a>, from the same year; and as our B-Movie, Harry Horner's magnificently ludicrous McCarthyite farrago <a href="http://www.conelrad.com/conelrad100/c100.php?id_num=71">Red Planet Mars</a>.<br /><br />Anyone who wants to contribute anything from 500 to 6000 [6000?! Owen, are you sure?!] words on the general themes of science fiction, cinema and socialism is encouraged to fling it in our direction to infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk, no later than 13th July. To get you started, here's China Mieville's <a href="http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/50socialist/full/">50 Fantasy and SF works every socialist should read</a>.<br /><br />By the way, Kino Fist are looking to start screening short non-commercial films before the main feature. If you would like to send us something you've made (no dead animals) for potential screening (preferably 20 minutes or shorter and related to the general themes that KF are into), then send an email to infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-80320108060733200762008-07-01T14:45:00.002Z2008-07-01T14:51:18.307Zthinking nothing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/thinkingnothing-750678.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/thinkingnothing-750672.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://parrhesiajournal.org/">PARRHESIA</a> - A Journal of Critical Philosophy and <a href="http://www.urbanomic.com/">COLLAPSE</a> - Journal of Philosophical Research and Development present a one day symposium:<br />THINKING NOTHING - the void and its resurgence in contemporary thought<br />From the emergence of empty set as a basis for ontology, to materialist negative theology, to Metzinger's 'nemocentric' destitution of the subject, contemporary thought seems to be obsessed with nothing. But the politics of this nothing seems drastically different from its earlier existentialist and postmodern nihilistic incarnations. This symposium seeks to explore the problem of nothing in contemporary thought, asking precisely how the postulation of an inherent negativity as a productive realm of philosophical discourse has come to characterise our intellectual landscape, and how the contemporary void relates to those of Ancient and Modern philosophical traditions.<br /><br />Speakers (TBC) to include:<br />Justin Clemens (University of Melbourne; Author of The Mundiad, Avoiding the Subject [with Dom Pettman], and coeditor/translator of Alain Badiou's Infinite Thought)<br />Ray Brassier (Middlesex University; Author of Nihil Unbound, Translator of Alain Badiou's Saint Paul)<br />John Sellars (University of the West of England; Author of The Stoics and The Art of Living)<br />Robin Mackay (Middlesex University; Editor of Collapse, Translator of Alain Badiou's Number and Numbers)<br />Iain Hamilton Grant (University of the West of England; Author of Philosophies of Nature After Schelling)<br /><br />Please contact Alex Murray (a.w.murray[at]exeter.co.uk) for further details or to register.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-34965144024385483002008-07-01T11:57:00.003Z2008-07-01T12:07:15.585Zwhy i really must finish my book on feminism part 9000'There has always been resistance to feminism - the backlash that Susan Faludi chronicled in her 1991 book of the same name. But there is also the satisfaction of arguments won, rights enshrined, respect ensured, the sense that the central feminist project - the fight for women to be treated as human beings, no more, no less - is inching along. In fact, reading a recent piece by US feminist writer, Katha Pollitt, headlined Backlash Spectacular and charting the ways in which North American culture is regressing on women's rights, I felt smug. Thank God that's not happening here, I thought, sinking into my seat and reaching for another chocolate.' (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/01/gender.women">Kira Cochrane</a> in today's <i>Guardian</i>)<br /><br />What is it with the f*&%ing chocolate? Do you think it's cute? Suggestive of a slightly naughty non-po-faced feminism of the most modern kind? Does chocolate constitute your very identity? If you could choose between chocolate and, say, the right to vote, how long would it take you to make up your mind?<br /><br />I noticed with a kind of resigned horror a new line of chocolates the other day. The following three images sum up the ideology of chocolate in the most obscene way:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/oral-pleasure_LRG-728737.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/oral-pleasure_LRG-728734.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/marital-bliss-714094.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/marital-bliss-714091.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/bochox-701555.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/bochox-701550.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-68642532061894507752008-06-29T19:24:00.002Z2008-06-30T12:06:25.582Zj is for judgement<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-ten-004-709251.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-ten-004-708705.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />[Some books on judgement leering ominously at you]<br /><br />Judgement frightens me. Far from being the 'free-play' of the faculties, as Kant would have it, I think of judgement as something like a slab of finality, a giant irreversible lump of doom. Although it happens all the time, I refuse to believe that people ever really revise their opinion of someone after the first time they've met them. Or if they do, they merely add new information that covers over, but doesn't entirely remove, the initial judgement. It's like a palimpsest! Yes, indeed, all personal relations are a giant palimpsest of revised and revisable opinions written on a single surface. This is why getting drunk around people is a bad idea, as the <i>scriptio inferior</i> comes to the top and you fixate on one little thing, and think that that's them. 'You're so bitter!', 'you're so funny!', 'you're so complicated!' etc.<br /><br />I like to think there's a qualitative difference between being critical (useful, important) and being judgemental (scary, dubious). But I often mistake criticism for judgement, taking light, easily-fixable comment for absolutist, ontological assertion. So a remark like 'you could change the wording of the third paragraph to make it more readable' becomes 'everything you've ever done is rubbish, everything you do or will do is rubbish, and besides, you don't even <span style="font-style:italic;">deserve </span>to use letters, you uppity little imp'. I think it's a confidence thing... <br /><br />At one point, I really did receive a weight of judgement against me (all unfair, obviously). I used to dream of courtrooms and trials and the anguished pointlessness of trying to defend oneself, confusing value judgement with legal judgement like some kind of oneiric numpty. Last night I dreamt I was a CSI though, so things are looking up. <br /><br />The free-floating judgement of contemporary life, the Big Other made flesh through the channelling of tabloid condemnations (love rat, irresponsible role model, bad mother) is designed to put barbs in your head that extend far beyond the realms of mere sex, drug use and child care: <span style="font-style:italic;">but what do the others think?</span> is the anxious motto of our age - the Big Brother house is the attempt to get a concrete answer to the unanswerable question: 'what do people really think of me?' The Facebook aps that ask you to 'compare people' or to 'say what you really think I'm like' are vain attempts to get closer to the 'really think', the impossible idea that there really is a space in which all opinion of you resides, and more to the point, that it is all true.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-40758166850506175652008-06-28T10:22:00.004Z2008-06-28T16:00:30.182Zi is for imam (hidden)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-nine-011-792929.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-nine-011-791644.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />[Couldn't use flash here, as the picture is covered by glass]<br /><br />This image is from an antiques market in Tehran. As far as I know it 'represents' (in so far as a blank-faced image can represent) the Hidden or Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who has been hidden since 874 AD and will reappear when the world has fallen into chaos and civil war. (But it might be Muhammad too, as he is surrounded by fire, like many of the pictures in the site linked below.)<br /><br />According to my top Shi'ite cultural attach&eacute; in London, he is holding Ali's sword, a deadly bifurcated weapon. His face is perhaps absent because no one yet knows what he looks like (see <a href="http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_face_hidden/">this</a> discussion of edicts against the representation of Muhammad, with a brief discussion of the Hidden Imam at the end). <br /><br />There are many murals in Tehran, many to martyrs, some to more recent historical memory (on one visit, paintings of the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photographs lined one of the main motorways). One striking mural, which I unfortunately didn't have time to take a picture of, as everyone drives about 900 miles an hour, was of the Hidden Imam, his face covered by a sheet. It resembled nothing so much as Magritte's <i>Lovers</i>. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/magritte-761074.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/magritte-761070.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I wonder if there is some connection, whether Magritte knew of the sheet-faced Imam, or whether it was mere coincidence (or something to do with his mother's drowning in her nightgown). Either way, something deeply troubling and intriguing about the representation of the non-representable, as Lyotard once almost sort of said.<br /><br />UPDATE: Joel informs me that Etienne Decroux might be of relevance here with his idea of 'corporeal mime'. Decroux defines his socialist, modernist, mime thus (extract):<br /><br />"The dancer's body pulls thought after it. The mime's thought pulls the body<br /><br />8. Unlike so-called "expressive" dance and "Isadoraesque" dance, we do not express our feelings with our arms, but rather with the trunk. The arms, in mime, must only act concretely: to fight or to work.<br /><br />9. As opposed to nineteenth-century pantomime, we do not seem to be trying to explain something to the audience. We express ourselves despite ourselves.<br /><br />In addition, while this nineteenth-century pantomime used lots of facial expressions, we use only the body and are usually masked."<br /><br />Here is a picture of him:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/decroux_1950-788899.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/decroux_1950-788896.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-11874131995295866132008-06-26T07:32:00.004Z2008-06-26T08:07:09.589Zlotta continua1. <a href="http://davidharvey.org/">David Harvey</a> has this site dedicated to a reading of Marx's <i>Capital</i> in which he looks like a ninja with a whiteboard.<br /><br />2. There's <a href="http://www.frif.com/new2003/fin.html">this</a> on Saturday - if you liked <i>Blue Collar</i> you should definitely be interested:<br /><br />London Free Film show: Doc on Revolutionary black unions in Detroit 1970's<br /><br />Free Film show: FINALLY GOT THE NEWS<br /><br />Saturday 28th JUNE, 8pm Pullens Centre, 184 Crampton St, London SE17<br /><br />Followed by discussion and chat. With speaker Brian Ashton, an ex-car industry shop steward.<br /><br />Hosted by <a href="http://www.56a.org.uk/">56a Infoshop</a> and <a href="http://www.metamute.org/">Mute Magazine</a>ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-42356653412792836222008-06-25T14:22:00.007Z2008-07-03T06:46:33.155Zfree badiou extractAlthough translations of Badiou have been fairly extensive and increasingly speedy, his fiction remains an unknown continent to most of his readers. In a way, it is understandable - his novels are extremely tricky, with massive modal shifts in tone, content and style. But I'm surprised no one has done any of the plays (or have they? Info to the usual address).<br /><br />UPDATE: Susan Spitzer tells me she is currently working on <span style="font-style:italic;">L'Incident d'Antioche</span> for a volume called <span style="font-style:italic;">Paul and the Philosophers</span> edited by Ward Blanton and Hent de Vries. Excellent.<br /><br />This story is taken from <i>French Writing Today</i>, ed. by Simon Watson Taylor (who also translates the story) (London: Penguin, 1968). The original reference is: Alain Badiou, 'Histoire de Duphort' from <span style="font-style:italic;">Almagestes</span> (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964). Other writers in the collection include Queneau, Ponge, Michaux, Beckett, Char, Genet, Ionesco, Robbe-Grillet, Vian, Duras and Sollers.<br /><br />The biography for Badiou reads as follows:<br /><br />'Born 1937 in Rabat, Moroco. Graduate of the Ecole Normale Sup&eacute;rieure in Paris with a degree in philosophy. At present lecturer in philosophy at the University of Reims. The short text printed in this volume, an extract from his first novel, <i>Almagestes</i> (1964), written between 1956 and 1960, must not be considered particularly 'representative' of an extremely diffuse and complex work. the second volume of what is intended to be a trilogy, <i>Portulans</i>, started in 1960, appeared in 1967. Badiou's critical articles include 'L'autonomie du processus esth&eacute;tique' (<span style="font-style:italic;">Cahiers Marxistes L&eacute;ninistes</span>, September 1966), and a long essay on the Marxist philosopher L. Althusser (<span style="font-style:italic;">Critique</span>, May 1967).' <br /><br />[click on the images to enlarge them. Any problems, email me and I'll send you them]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/badioustory0001-709659.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/badioustory0001-707566.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/badioustory0020001-746899.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/badioustory0020001-744844.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-18182517996268136962008-06-24T13:25:00.003Z2008-06-25T14:05:51.026Zh is for hell<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-six-003-778907.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-six-003-778231.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />[my, these objects are cheery. Instead of a golden, humanist organ beaming rays of hope to the world, anyone would think I had a dead, shrivelled rat for a heart]<br /><br />This woman is burning in hell as part of an extended Nativity scene. I bought her in Naples, but her head fell off a couple of years ago. She is a <span style="font-style:italic;">presepe,</span> a curious combination of Catholicism, animism and craft that demonstrates just what is up with both demented forms of religion and representation in general. Of course, for slightly pasty Northern Europeans (particularly those apparently allergic to the sun), Naples is a deeply alarming place, filled with skull-heads on posts and kitschy death on every corner. It's a far cry from the disinfected passing aways and the quiet phone-call of puritan finitude.<br /><br />Whilst most <span style="font-style:italic;">precepi</span> are characters from the Nativity, many are more secular icons: politicians, celebrities. The woman burning in hell (has she committed fornication? And/or used a condom? Forgotten to thank her Mother-in-Law for the pasta she made?) is clearly not someone you would shove next to the Baby Jesus in a touching celebration of the virgin birth. Figures like this one appear in little glass boxes around Naples, usually accompanied by burning Priests, who have presumably been very, very bad indeed. <br /><br />I am always amused and impressed by the optimism of the human spirit when I read that more people believe <a href="http://www.deliriumsrealm.com/delirium/blogview.asp?Post=383">in heaven than believe in hell</a>. Does anyone these days think they are destined for an eternity of sulphur-showers and being eaten by devil-worms? Cinema's obsession with apocalypse might indicate that whatever 'hell' is, it'll probably be brought on by us rather than waiting there for us, which would make us all Horseman trying to mount our own backs.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-43562175308440510172008-06-24T08:41:00.003Z2008-06-24T08:54:43.546Zwho countest the steps of the sunAs if I weren't ontologically goth enough already, it turns out I am allergic to sunlight. After spending a couple of hours outside on (ironic-now-I-think-of-it) <span style="font-style:italic;">Sunday</span>, I broke out in rashes and felt terrible. Now I have to take steroids and stay indoors. It's as if the world wants me to spend all my time on the computer and occasionally flicking through books, or something. Bah.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-3610191559729496132008-06-22T20:47:00.005Z2008-06-23T10:37:45.991Zanother sunday, another thames walkAccompanied by <a href="http://leniency.blogspot.com/">Leniency</a> and his lady, we slowly made our way to Greenwich. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-004-731665.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-004-730976.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />From a crack in the wall, the Village appears to be under siege. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-006-738195.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-006-737539.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Boxes of aliens seem more numerous than before.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-008-778086.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-008-777441.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />This land is not your land. And if you hurt yourself on it, it's not our fault.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-019-715093.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-019-714366.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Ravensbourne College, back. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-026-715622.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-026-714959.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Ravensbourne College, front. That spike there by the Dome - every time I see it, I can't but think of someone being impaled on it, like a little person kebab.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-034-747740.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-034-747047.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Blinded by geometry.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-039-735614.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-039-734913.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Some rubbish makes a desperate bid to escape the Peninsula on a life-raft.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-041-743056.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-041-741859.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Mmm...Contaminated post-industrial wasteland. Having said that, I wake up this morning with some kind of weird allergic reaction. Perhaps I should lay off playing with plague-trash and heavy-metal deposits.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-048-746479.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-048-745356.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />The horror of the Dome becomes all too much for one poor soul.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-060-774030.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-060-773292.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><i>choses refoulées par la mer</i><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-063-776191.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-063-775522.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Life finds a way. The bastard.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-070-723432.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-070-722283.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />If I had a boat I would tie it to this chain.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-074-733209.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-074-731651.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />We find a large, half-rotting dead fish on the path.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-76794594394590828102008-06-22T20:14:00.002Z2008-06-22T20:30:03.038Zparadise most definitely lost<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-075-731688.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-seven-075-730949.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The Sulphurous Hail<br />Shot after us in storm, oreblown hath laid<br />The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice<br />Of Heav'n receiv'd us falling, and the Thunder,<br />Wing'd with red Lightning and impetuous rage,<br />Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now<br />To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.<br />Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn,<br />Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe - John Milton<br /><br />.................................................................<br /><br />Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned - Milton Friedmanithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-31391038228932249272008-06-22T10:24:00.007Z2008-06-22T12:05:19.212Zthe biopolitics of babies: hive uterine communism<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/communal-768054.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/communal-768050.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/21/usa">This story</a>, concerning a supposed pact between a group of US teenage girls, is interesting, far less for the scurrilous details (they used the same 24-year-old homeless guy! We blame Juno!), than for the conditions of the pact. This was not merely a bid to individually break the boredom of adolescence, but a desire to raise the babies 'collectively'. Aside from any supposed moral repugnance at such a project, this isn't actually such a stupid idea. If you're going to have kids, you must as well have them young, and you might as well divide up the labour. What's the point of individually washing 1 sick-covered baby outfit when you could wash 20 at once? And the madness of the nuclear-family-sleep-pattern-broken-by-baby. My Ma still can't sleep well, and she had her last kid more than quarter of a century ago. How much better it would be if one took it in turns to get some kip.<br /><br />When girls at my school started getting pregnant, at 14 and 15, the reasons they gave themselves were almost all universally heart-breaking: 'I want someone to love me', 'but I love [the father]', 'school is boring'. If you were middle class, you had an abortion; if you were working class you kept it, in some kind of Dickensian mixture of Tiny Tim-humanism and pre-destroyed aspiration. But there is a moral/biological paradox here: physically it makes much more sense to have a kid when you are still relatively fit. 30/40-something mothers with decades of boozing, dieting and stress may be better placed financially, but they sure as hell aren't as able to bounce back from weeks of sleeplessness like a 15-year-old netball playing girl would be. But no nice middle class parent is going to put university on hold for the kid of their kid. Just as the school superintendent said of the girls in the pact: "They are young white women. We understand that some of them were together talking about being pregnant and that being a positive thing for them." The horror! But, but...they're white!...And they want to do it! It's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the death of the nuclear family...<br /><br />UPDATE: Bill sent a link to <a href="http://www.time.com/time/community/pulitzerinterview.html">this</a> 1989 Toni Morrison interview which includes the following very interesting exchange:<br /><br />'Q. This leads to the problem of the depressingly large number of single-parent households and the crisis in unwed teenage pregnancies. Do you see a way out of that set of worsening circumstances and statistics?<br /><br />A. Well, neither of those things seems to me a debility. I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.<br /><br />Two parents can't raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community -- everybody -- to raise a child. The notion that the head is the one who brings in the most money is a patriarchal notion, that a woman -- and I have raised two children, alone -- is somehow lesser than a male head. Or that I am incomplete without the male. This is not true. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for white people or for black people. Why we are hanging onto it, I don't know. It isolates people into little units -- people need a larger unit.<br /><br />Q. And teenage pregnancies?<br /><br />A. Everybody's grandmother was a teenager when they got pregnant. Whether they were 15 or 16, they ran a house, a farm, they went to work, they raised their children.<br /><br />Q. But everybody's grandmother didn't have the potential for living a different kind of life. These teenagers -- 16, 15 -- haven't had time to find out if they have special abilities, talents. They're babies having babies.<br /><br />A. The child's not going to hurt them. Of course, it is absolutely time consuming. But who cares about the schedule? What is this business that you have to finish school at 18? They're not babies. We have decided that puberty extends to what -- 30? When do people stop being kids? The body is ready to have babies, that's why they are in a passion to do it. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.<br /><br />Q. You don't feel that these girls will never know whether they could have been teachers, or whatever?<br /><br />A. They can be teachers. They can be brain surgeons. We have to help them become brain surgeons. That's my job. I want to take them all in my arms and say, ''Your baby is beautiful and so are you and, honey, you can do it. And when you want to be a brain surgeon, call me -- I will take care of your baby.'' That's the attitude you have to have about human life. But we don't want to pay for it.<br /><br />I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black -- or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about. We don't care whether they have babies or not.<br /><br />Q. How do you break the cycle of poverty? You can't just hand out money.<br /><br />A. Why not? Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich get it handed -- they inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network. That's shared bounty of class.'ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-8038136865979201502008-06-20T14:48:00.000Z2008-06-20T14:49:13.165Ztomorrow's protestStop the Fascist BNP<br /><br />March and carnival parade against fascism and racism including floats with top artists performing, marching & samba bands and trade union & student union banners.<br /><br />Saturday 21st June 2008<br />Assemble: 12 noon, Tooley Street, London SE1<br />(behind Greater London Assembly building, near Tower Bridge, nearest underground stn London Bridge).ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-7503705833094050352008-06-19T11:10:00.002Z2008-06-20T14:25:28.019Zg is for ghost<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-five-006-777847.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-five-006-777203.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />(Or Playmobil does Hauntology)<br /><br />It is clear that the real ghosts haunt the city, not the countryside. Walking around London - the Greenwich Peninsula, the Docklands, the pre-Olympics East - the spectres of all the other Londons, the poor London, the plague-ridden London, the revolutionary London of Wat Tyler massing troops on the Heath - hang in the air, poisoning attempts to make the whole city resemble the yuppie flats and commercial plazas of the regenerators' dreams. <br /><br />The city is haunted, not only by the poverty that just won't tuck itself nicely away and the resistance that rears its head in protests and strikes, but by more mundane, yet more painful ghosts - the memories of shared walks, illuminated flashes of past conversations with people who have now disappeared for good, in death or in life. Getting off the bus or a tube in a infrequently visited locale, one is consumed by the ambient recall of a person and that place for a few seconds, a kind of <span style="font-style:italic;">socio</span>-geography of the heart, a curious spasm of memory-pain.<br /><br />The house in the countryside I grew up in was built in the 1600s, and bought by my parents for £7000 at the end of the 1970s. Cheap because it was ruined (my parents spent 13 years fixing it up), its previous tenant was an elderly blind women who lived solely in the kitchen. The house always scared me, even when my spirit medium great-grandmother and my exorcist great-uncle (I promise I'm not making them up) both declared that all the spirits there were friendly. As a child, interested in the macabre history of the British Isles, I would write letters to this great-uncle, who spent most of his time when not chasing spirits being a priest. One response I remember particularly well, written in red ink and lots of capital letters, he warned me not to meddle in the SPIRIT WORLD for fear of UNIMAGINABLE HORROR. That frightened me far more than the ghosts that I never, in fact, managed to see. My brother later claimed to have seem lots, but I'm sure he would have told me at the time, were that true.<br /><br />We found lots of things in the house - a political document from the time of King James I that later disappeared, a perfectly kept Victorian child's shoe that Ma hung over the spiral staircase, the dessicated corpses of mice and once, even a bat, trapped behind a heater with all its fur intact. I kept it in a box and have it still. Early on, my parents found a circular slab of marble buried in the garden which they used as a cheeseboard, and some of my most enjoyable Sunday afternoons were spent trawling nearby fields for pieces of old blue china, which I would then bury in the copse for self-keeping, only never to find them again. There was a kind of desire for ghosts (of a containable kind), if only because the world itself couldn't be as boring as it seemed.<br /><br />It is not perhaps, then, a question of believing in ghosts so much as constructing them. The airbrushed city of the future will need a whole army of them...ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-72605630339050770872008-06-18T12:05:00.005Z2008-06-19T09:17:04.499Zwhat is a university for?[an unfinished piece that I'm not going to use for anything else - enticing, eh? There has been quite a lot of stuff recently about falling standards, grade inflation, crises in the Humanities, etc, most of which is true...]<br /><br />Called into to speak to his tutor about non-attendance of classes on a Thursday morning, a student responded in the following way: 'but there's a disco on in the Union on Wednesday nights! How does the university expect me to attend classes if they put these events on?' Whilst we might chastise the student for failing to put his priorities in order, his confusion about the segregation of play and work in the contemporary university speaks of a wider set of concerns about the function and role of higher education, and the student's role within it. Just what is a university for these days? <br /><br />Ask a student and you'll get a series of mixed answers: 'to get a degree', 'to have fun', and even occasionally 'to learn something new'. All of these things may be happening (despite the best efforts of university management) but it is increasingly clear to anyone who goes near one that the contemporary university is riddled with conflicting economic demands and suffering from a serious identity crisis. Old-fashioned Enlightenment ambitions for the university as a place to freely express secular and scientific ideas have become buried in a morass of bureaucracy and relentless audits. As another generation of nervous A level students prepare to take out a lengthy series of loans to make an 'investment' in their future, the time has come to ask: whatever ever happened to the aims and hopes of the modern university? Of learning for its own sake? Of allowing students time to explore subjects that may be not be of any use to them in future – and all the better for it? The time has come to propose some alternatives to the current university in the name of proper higher learning. And perhaps even to think without universities altogether.<br /><br />In his recent work on education, <span style="font-style:italic;">Against Schooling: For an Education that Matters</span>, Stanley Aronowitz charts the steady encroachment on both sides of the Atlantic of the corporate university, a place more concerned with balancing books, meeting the demands of future employers and hosting corporate conferences than expanding young minds. Aronowitz is a long-time activist, humanist, teacher and sociology professor who lives and works in New York, and the book is peppered with personal reminiscences about attempts to set up genuine centres of learning for adults, including New York's Free University in 1965 (Aronowitz is currently working on plans to set up a new higher education institution in New Orleans). Nevertheless, there is the sense that one is fighting a losing battle – that the complete corporate and bureaucratic takeover of the institution has already happened and that students and teachers are merely performing a poor imitation of pedagogy, on the one hand, and enthusiasm on the other. <br /><br />It is mark of the dreary cynicism of our age that there now seems no way back from university fees, even though it wasn't so long ago that full grants were given to students from working-class backgrounds. Fees coupled with massive expansion leave students (and staff) increasingly unsure about their status. Is the student a client (as the university brochure assures them) or a subject to be (potentially) criticised? Already universities are afraid to fail students for fear of legal action against them. After all, hasn't the client paid for a product? And isn't the customer always right? <br /><br />What universities need is less consultants and middle managers indulging in 'blue skies thinking', the outcome of which is <span style="font-style:italic;">always </span>that universities become more like businesses, and more self-critique. The celebritisation of academia - the guest star-lecturers, the honorary degrees, the bid to get a by-line in a national daily - must stop. Knowledge is anonymous and universal or it is not knowledge at all.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-74405349543659439742008-06-18T10:04:00.003Z2008-06-18T11:49:48.074Zf is for feather (boa)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-three-027-782877.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-three-027-782358.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />[Jenny kindly donated this particular example at the weekend. A weekend which included plans for the inauguration of the 'Arthur Schopenhauer Adoption Agency' and the collective conclusion that there is nothing wrong with gay incest, so long as everyone is having fun]<br /><br />I never really got the whole Manics thing. Obviously the whole glamour and reading books thing was eminently commendable, especially when the alternatives at the time were so monstrously thick - Britpop: the musical equivalent of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_ejaculation">retrograde ejaculation</a> with its relentless heterosexism, its thuggish worship of all things trad, male and dun-coloured, was confirmation that we were indeed living at the end of history, and it was going out not with a bang, but with a whimper (that smelled like lager to boot).<br /><br />Aside from a couple of tracks, though, the Manics just sounded a bit AOR to me. But lots of people I like (and still like) liked (and still like) them, so perhaps I missed something. Anyway, the boa thing. Well, we used to go to discos. I used to play at discos, in fact, most memorably in Coventry, at a giant cavernous place called the Colosseum. We got the small room on the side, and I got the 8.00-8.30 slot so no one would have to hear me play stuff from Sonic Youth's 'The Whitey Album' and other, erm, much less good things. The vodka tasted peppery.<br /><br />Whilst I now dress exclusively in vintage clothes and wear impeccable make-up (heh, well you can't see me to tell, can you?), in those days I mostly dressed rather mannishly in buttoned-up shirts and moleskin trousers and boots. But the boa-girls were pretty! And feathers would get everywhere. I'd wake up in the morning and find feathers in my pockets and on the floor. I used to keep them occasionally like little whispers of decadence, but in the past few years they have all seemed to vanish...It's a sad life...ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-17805622970662941732008-06-17T19:44:00.002Z2008-06-17T19:49:21.322Zdata analysisAll these government ministers leaving sensitive information on trains, unattended laptops for stealing, huge mounds of private data sent by 2nd class post only to be lost...There's only one explanation: they want to do it! The collapse of the Nu-Labour project has taken its revenge in little acts of linguistic carelessness, slips of the structural tongue that say 'help us! We're rubbish! Look how useless we really are!'ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-2411844931785163682008-06-17T08:51:00.003Z2008-06-17T14:04:56.104Zjune was not over<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-013-795408.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-013-794878.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-015-739942.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-015-739416.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><del>Riefenstahl</del> I.T. takes pictures of the cranes building the new Ravensbourne 'Design and Communication' college next to the Dome. According to their website:<br /><br />'The idea of a college comes of age in a building designed for flow and integration. A place where skills and talents merge and mingle; where expertise is a bridge not a boundary.<br /><br />A building that is big, bold and utterly beguiling. A fluid, supple space where new ideas will emerge through meeting and mixing, engaging and connecting.<br /><br />In this innovative building Ravensbourne’s vision will come to life. We’re creating a college that looks outward, a place that will make a major contribution to the development of the digital age. Where education combines with enterprise and students are treated as professionals from day one. <br /><br />We are going to remove the walls between departments - literally. Instead there will be landings and lobbies, wide-open spaces and quiet corners. Social spaces, galleries, workshops and technology hubs. Design studios and production suites. Virtual environments and digital technologies that enable Ravensbourne’s enterprise and innovation activities to be sourced by collaborators around the world.<br /><br />The new Ravensbourne will no longer be solely a college but a resource for students and professionals, integrated into the local community. Not just an ideas incubator, but a place where the abstract becomes concrete and creativity is celebrated.'<br /><br />'We are going to remove the walls between departments', 'ideas incubator'?! Nu-language <del>heaven</del> hell, that website. Anyway, hopefully I can get a job there when it's done teaching, oh I dunno, Ballard studies (with field trips around the Peninsula wasteland!). Carl can teach Ubu studies and Owen can fulminate against regeneration from within its pulsing black heart.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/Ravensbourne-723845.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/Ravensbourne-723802.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />This is what the college will eventually look like, apparently. Mmmm, cheese-gratery.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-090-760144.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-090-759583.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />On Sunday Bush was in town. This was towards the end of evening when the cops were hanging around beating up random protesters as a kind of training exercise. I hear that someone manage to steal a truncheon (impressive) and that one of the people charged was a old lady who indecently exposed herself. Fuck Bush, indeed.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-094-781811.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-four-094-781194.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />As we disconsolately walked away from Parliament Square, we stopped to pay our respects to the monument to the International Brigades in Jubilee Gardens.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-45449004991109909442008-06-16T14:10:00.002Z2008-06-16T14:19:27.567Zno useless leniency<a href="http://leniency.blogspot.com/">No Useless Leniency</a>: horrah! Finally Ben has entered the blogmos.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-9821611183907755672008-06-15T04:29:00.004Z2008-06-15T05:13:58.814Ze is for eee<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-two-013-726754.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-two-013-725785.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Computer porn! [must remember to stop using phrases that lead to horrible searches. Go away you wretched people, using google to look for dirty pictures. I mean, way to stereotype yourselves, internet users!].<br /><br />The eee just about managed to get in the lightbox. I knew it would. I like the fact that the eee was developed so that every kid could have a computer, and that it cost less than £200. The keys take a bit of getting used to, and I have to clip the trotters if I'm going to use it for any period of time. But overall, it's just brilliant. It even has some sort of penguin skiing game, which I've not yet played, but pleased that the future somehow holds so much promise.<br /><br />Despite the fact that I now spend, erm, <i>some time</i> on computers, I hated them for far longer than I should have, being confused in a rural sort of way as to what they <span style="font-style:italic;">meant </span>and what they <span style="font-style:italic;">wanted</span>. Growing up in a field inculcates primitive forms of hermeneutics and animistic suspicion of things that don't necessarily perish when struck by lightening. But even dear old Infinite Ma got broadband last year after they wired some cables through the cowsheds, although I'm not sure she ever really uses it for anything beyond looking at recipes, which she could probably still use magazines for, just as she used to. <br /><br />After repeatedly finishing my work early I recall being allowed to play on the one BBC Acorn our primary school owned. There was a game involving pigeons. I think it had something to do with some educational programme about 'the North', which was perhaps supposed to foster a sense of national identity but probably merely alienated field-dwelling from city-dwelling pupils yet further (although I remember all those cars coming for raves in nearby fields...oh, if only I hadn't been ten at the time!) The closest I got was watching that <span style="font-style:italic;">Inspector Morse</span> episode where the girl takes a drug that makes her love everything so much she, er, tops herself. Oh Morse! If only you and I had taken such a pill together...how the world would have unfurled before us like a whisky-soaked feather with Mozart playing in the background and cryptic crosswords for tea.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Anyway</span>...erm...computers, good. Really small computers, better.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-8513401047989160492008-06-13T16:14:00.002Z2008-06-13T16:16:44.319Zma in european philosophyThere's a new <a href="http://blog.urbanomic.com/urbanomic/archives/2008/06/new_ma_course.html">MA course</a> in European Philosophy at UWE, which looks good. It's there or Middlesex really if you want to read any interesting philosophy - and Bristol is probably still marginally cheaper than London. Plus it'll probably be just like 'Skins'. Or something.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-71806663236179905502008-06-13T14:34:00.005Z2008-06-13T15:06:59.118Zworking for wal-martRecent blog <a href="http://cabinetofsimplicity.blogspot.com/">New Plastic Ideas</a> has an <a href="http://cabinetofsimplicity.blogspot.com/2008/06/wal-mart.html">intriguing</a> post about working for Wal-Mart: <br /><br />'...I have to admit, I was grotesquely fascinated by the prospect of working for one of the world's most rapacious corporations, notorious for its unique internal "culture." The ideological saturation job the company does on its employees was evident from the day I went in to interview.'<br /><br />The author may feel himself to be 'pulling something of a Barbara Ehrenreich', but I hope he carries on with this series. There's a dark fascination with the inner workings of these corporations. Like most people in most jobs, my position is currently somewhat precarious. Perhaps I'll jump ship before the rats devour my unpleasantly academic corpse and pursue a similar venture out of a combination of financial necessity and ugly curiosity.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.com

political peccadillo

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55505282007-06-13T21:55:00.180ZPolitical PeccadilloBruceBlogger112125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-89975348627530888422007-06-11T20:15:00.000Z2007-06-13T21:54:54.719ZFuck off down the Shatt"The Shia round up and kill Sunni suspects; the latter respond with market bombs, in addition to their rising attacks on the coalition. Unable to make headway against the Shiite shites, with figureheads like Al-Sadr experienced at manoeuvring around unseen after oppression from the Saddamite, and ex-Baath psychopaths, the coalition is locked into a costly game of managing the status quo". Four Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-6954324815188327432007-05-22T22:31:00.000Z2007-05-22T22:35:44.147ZDestructive processesPalestinian targets are being pounded in Gaza and north Lebanon, in a grim reminder that, apart from the Lebanese army's new show of strength, nothing has changed from recent conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-64389117007158970472007-05-01T22:42:00.000Z2007-05-01T22:47:49.552ZHarry will need houdiniThe chief of the British Army, Dicky Dannatt, a man who once told it like it was when he said that coalition forces do not help the security situation, has decided that the prince must serve in the ongoing occupation of Iraq. These were some of his reasons why…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1176414996922422312007-04-12T21:51:00.000Z2007-04-12T22:02:22.503ZAdjust your cameron"The electorate is not exactly bovvered in Blair-appropriation speech by these trivial issues" "It was the sound of a man from Surrey living in Mumbai in 1912 commenting on the hot temper of the natives" "The suggestion that the Tories are electable because they’ve got a professional cream dispenser in charge is still laughable" Dave may appeal to Dagenham but bringing his rejuvenated party toCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1174345752547208142007-03-20T00:05:00.000Z2007-03-20T00:09:12.556ZTristunt"The PM was again dependent not on his own party for policy sign-off but the Tories, who once again played auxiliary tough guys on the real issues. Eighty-eight nays were nary enough to stall the nuclear bill. How this sits with Camers’ plans to get nearer to the public given that a majority do not want a new nuclear deterrent system is not clear, but the Cam-Can would go down with the Kursk if Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1173831572357969572007-03-14T01:16:00.000Z2007-03-14T01:20:40.760ZMacrosoft OfficeStarfucks, halls of hell, everything bolted down, bonhomie go home; a Brazil-like life here we come – welcome to my new office...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1171054855419625732007-02-09T20:53:00.000Z2007-02-09T21:00:55.433ZSense bombThe latest take on developments in Britain's war on terror, a nasty brew of 'plots' on squaddies, detention without trial, the release of details to the press and needless backbench stirring. All of them lead to John Reid's head on a stick.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1170436249782700242007-02-02T17:01:00.000Z2007-02-02T17:10:49.806ZRPP RIP The other side launches a campaign to expose the opportunist pig Jeremy McClintock – perhaps the only political auteur capable of talking about homosexual monkeys in the context of the new terror laws. As Linda Smith said of Jeffery Archer, we’re quite keen to deny him the “oyygen of oxygen” as well as the “oxygen of publicity…”Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1168970987786005442007-01-16T17:56:00.000Z2007-01-16T18:09:47.796ZSomalians - the next nongratas Somalia is a non-country whose violent despotism has sent us violent, Muslim asylum seekers that we can all safely detest and stereotype at our arrogant leisure. It's a relationship that we would not want to jeopardise, surely? Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1166646005717836232006-12-20T20:17:00.000Z2006-12-20T20:20:05.726ZUnited KingdomsRiyadh told London to cease and desist from their nasty investigation into arms deals done 20 or so years ago, and a fetid tale developed of government connivance in perpetuating the military-industrial complex...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1165485543243052812006-12-07T09:54:00.000Z2006-12-07T09:59:18.220ZBritsh Import-Export Holding Company"This idealistic highgrounding also extends to formulating policy and parliamentary communication. The following two gems also tried in vain to search for appropriate language for an unprecedentedly repressed policy..." In the new immigration era, it's all about the 'bad people'.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1164236032756253692006-11-22T22:50:00.000Z2006-11-22T22:56:13.413ZUnfunny, and offensive"...Parochial whingers all love Peter Kay because they can see enough small mindedness in the jokes/jibes (especially in the shameful adverts for plastic bitter) and you are certainly not required to think. The message (and there always is at least one) is to not take anything seriously, especially the things vaguely hinted at by these Manning-lites..." Not just Kay, but Gervais, Carr and Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1160264462420131762006-10-07T23:39:00.000Z2006-10-07T23:41:02.433ZPolitical correctness and multiculturalismLetter to the BBC about Skid ‘Mark’ Easton Click on to Cull for a wider view on Straw’s veil views and the right not to defend the Israeli embassy I am writing to complain about the dangerously simplistic and rancorous content of Mark Easton’s conflated report on British Muslims in the 10 o’clock news last night. The piece dealt with Jack Straw’s comments on his request to Muslim women wearing Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1159628260205548632006-09-30T14:53:00.000Z2006-09-30T14:57:40.216ZState IT in a stateA sorry tale of corporate crapulence in the much-vaunted modernisation of the health service.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1159101710098156382006-09-24T12:40:00.000Z2006-09-24T12:41:50.106ZLowdown on the next Labour PM70s Scottish socialism, barneys with Galloway and Brown, plenty of dram, Defence of the realm, Karadzic, rightist arguments in leftist language… Saturday Guardian profiles Comrade Reid.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1158492019508630472006-09-17T11:19:00.000Z2006-09-17T11:51:24.653ZWindows on the whirl"In the end it is merely commonsense to suggest that there was a narrative of action, as well as inaction (ie, failure to arrest Bin Laden) that influenced the attack" – Cull finally gets round to commemorating the casus belli…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1157495142674280752006-09-05T22:21:00.000Z2006-09-05T22:25:42.686ZHome helpEver enthusiastic, the Home Secretary Right Honourable Dr. J. John Reid PhD MP’s has contributed to the British citizenship ceremony, by releasing a single on Hubris Recordings… [to be sung by all successful immigrants and lyrics to be kept with passport at all times and to be presented at police stations during times of possible terrorist attacks] "Oh, do the multi-culti; Oh, do the Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1157198322952164942006-09-02T11:56:00.000Z2006-09-02T11:58:42.963ZPoly Race Like ‘political correctness’, ‘multiculturalism’ is only defined by the terms of the user. Officially, only loose definitions can be found… Cull wants Britain’s diverse culture to be about more than food and music…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1156676842891853872006-08-27T11:04:00.000Z2006-08-27T11:07:22.903ZRadio Solent on the Issues that Matter With Jeremy McClintock and William Shawcross on the panel, there’s surely no reason to ignore the transcript of a historic debate on democracy recently held on the south coast.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1155160047353442692006-08-09T21:39:00.000Z2006-08-09T21:47:27.430ZAt last, somebody stands up to be countedAs our Caribbean Queen of a PM heads for his hols, a Scottish Blairite MP resigns over Prestwick refuelling and the govt's pursuing of a policy on the 'middle east crisis' that the majority of Britons oppose... Elsewhere: Israeli Arabs get scant protection; Yes, the levelling of Lebanon was planned well in advance. Also, continue to check Cull on the subject, and check our original piece on Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1154551453683403442006-08-02T20:43:00.000Z2006-08-02T20:44:13.696ZIsrael's war - West's policy meltdown The leaders of the free world, so keen to promote stable market-centric democracies in the Middle East, allow Israel to do what it likes for those causes, as well as the complimentary war on terror. And if it doesn’t work they just carry on talking… ...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1154271604280284422006-07-30T14:50:00.000Z2006-07-30T15:00:04.310ZHelp - We are a safe haven for Islamist paedos!A dream story for the tabloid muckrakers - Asian Briton had a long beard so we thought he was a terrorist when we raided him, but the contents of his computer make him an alleged pederast too! What's that in your suicide bomb or are you just pleased to see me? This simply won't do, so come on Tony for the sake of the chil-d-ren create a new register of the Fiddlers of Al-Qaida. The police, the Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1153065598634818332006-07-16T15:56:00.000Z2006-07-22T20:34:40.336ZUpdate - Army of God against the Eretz Yisrael crewThe latest on the invasion of Lebanon over there... As Lebanon burns, we've had a thoroughly contemptible response from the leaders of the free world! But not Cull...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1152782614126064862006-07-13T09:21:00.000Z2006-07-13T09:23:34.140ZPrep Talk“Sane people ask each other the question – "will America really attack Iran?" And the reply is "no it wouldn't go that far". But the very insane Snow, Cheney (snr and jnr), Rumsfeld and co are pushing their twisted idea of appropriate measures into public discourse, buttering us up for another energy grab. Accordingly, Bush's lickspittles, British pro-war parliamentarians, are doing their best toCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1151688253632183572006-06-30T17:21:00.000Z2006-06-30T17:25:37.293ZPeddling delusionary lines"The Israeli invasion and completely illegal kidnapping of democratically elected Palestinian government officials mock selective commentary. No one in the international community will do anything about it..." Cull wades through the fog of occupation in the Middle East...Culla

meeja hoors

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55506452008-02-06T23:12:23.856ZMeeja HoorsBruceBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-45067573656839203432008-02-06T22:56:00.000Z2008-02-06T23:12:23.898ZGhost Blogwhat do you do with a blog that is technically spent? well, remark at that plan for retail to colonise the traditionally-close-for-the-sabbath City. An invasion of capital by capital no less. The city was an interesting and walkable place on sundays but now they want it to be oxford street east. Should be handy for the returning Olympic watchers. there are enough strips of shops in this capital Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-61723718727547591352007-08-07T22:28:00.000Z2007-08-07T22:30:27.422ZValidating every moment"There's nothing to do round here, the kids cry. Except prepare for a life of getting an erection over a detached house" Cull back after unjustifiable hiatus with comments on the pixel nation.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-82996469089633607472007-07-25T21:29:00.000Z2007-07-25T21:31:30.098ZComedy skirting meaningStewart Lee is back on tour after more conspicuous times in the public eye as Springer opera man and the usual detours into writing, TV comedy and, also, artifact curation. Naturally, the appearance of someone with a track record ensured a packed crowd in the culture-free environs of SE23, at the newly airbrushed Honor Oak by the south circular (he’d originally been down to play the more Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-64400127088237058282007-06-26T18:50:00.000Z2007-06-26T18:54:20.571ZThey're corrupt sportsmen, not jihadisCull puts down the surprise at the natural causes verdict for Bob Woolmer's death as a blatant example of Islamophobia in the play-fair world of international cricket.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-66414986443146079752007-06-13T21:59:00.000Z2007-06-21T21:59:26.913ZAs the Mirror Says - Chemically Castrate the PaedosA grim conclusion is being reached in the search for the stolen child, but that doesn't mean the ex-editor of Children Now reeling off some home truths about slack parenthood.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-23432590376873203172007-06-07T21:01:00.000Z2007-06-07T21:14:32.261ZHow Mitchell and Webb look to the PC mogulsMicrosoft's Gates and Apple's Big Jobs were interviewed by two techy bloggers on stage a few weeks ago. During the course of their back-slapping the Microtoss Pista man and Apple's Big Jobs mentioned the little Brit comics who star in the Apple adverts, Robert Webb as Mac and David Mitchell as PC Interviewer I: Although you know what? I have to confess, I like PC guy. Interviewer I: Yeah, he’s Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-83103217968377289712007-05-24T21:57:00.000Z2007-05-24T22:02:39.828ZNaming and shamingYou'll have seen on Truth that we recently had a debut screening for our Jeremy McClintock comedy, and it went ok. Half the problem in the run-up to the night was getting the name right, and I'm not sure we achieved that. The guys parked their fat arses round their virtual table and came up with a list of about 150, and here is 20 or so of the more interesting from that long list. Any comments Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-7461313014139224422007-04-25T22:01:00.000Z2007-04-25T22:05:08.219ZMarket forces"These guys, if not the marketing, are the marketeers, marketing to market as much as they are remarking to market, and marking to market" Go to Cull for moreCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-37170966854071185732007-04-20T19:23:00.000Z2007-04-20T19:26:01.663ZPay-as-you-go-deceptionOrder your media pack on Iran through these Israeli backers. Middle East common sense assuredCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1172660112667253552007-02-28T10:49:00.000Z2007-02-28T10:55:12.710ZLuvvy stuffQueen star props the Queen, and more gongs from institutions are likely.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1170093822748269762007-01-29T17:59:00.000Z2007-01-29T18:03:42.760ZBlood sacrificesDaily Mail editor Dacre tries to influence his readers like a politician but he isn’t. Dacre calls the BBC monocultural but it isn’t. Dacre says he’s not confused but he is..Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1169248635663349042007-01-19T23:09:00.000Z2007-01-19T23:18:15.860ZCelebrity Big Brother Racehategate: “It’s ok, it was all a misunderstanding and the evictee has apologised” Except it isn’t, and this casual racism has to stop Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1168005233678463452007-01-05T13:51:00.000Z2007-01-05T13:53:53.693ZPeople are change“All the ideological euphoria of New Labour is exhausted, and the only thing that matters is the self. As Warren puts it: ‘Arguing about the war is so last season’” Pete Clark’s smoking guns were unusually on target in the Standard, but Cull went several louder in its review of This Life’s trite 10-year-anniversary retreatment…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1166183137621224452006-12-15T11:44:00.000Z2006-12-15T11:45:37.633ZThinking must be outsourced and accountableCull with some apercus about the consultants infiltrating Westminster.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1164403413200349512006-11-24T21:19:00.000Z2006-11-26T21:01:10.243ZThe ghost of Alf Garnett this is a reply from two Cull readers to an article orginally flagged up in Political Peccadillo, but we've now moved it to this section, while belatedly digesting the news about the racist act from the ex-Kramer man... Wrong-com is an interesting article, if a little po-faced. But then that’s half the problem, isn’t it? Taking things ‘too seriously’? hmm? It’s only comedy after all. Just a Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1163456628141884562006-11-13T22:22:00.000Z2006-11-14T10:23:37.396ZChilds in timeslight return… Mark Foley was a republication representative from Florida that knew a thing or two about coveting minors. And this link shows while protectors of his ilk should not protest that they are gay or straight – his “immature sexuality” makes him a paedophile plain and simple. Quite amusing reactions to the article, particularly the stuff about “30 per cent of males get aroused when Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1163164936854384352006-11-10T13:20:00.000Z2006-11-10T13:36:33.416ZEngland capital’s captain – a racist? After the dismissal of stiff-upper-chest-and-bent-face England captain JT, the message boards have been replete with manna from rumour mill heaven. It is alleged that Jaytee told Ledley King to 'shut up you lippy black monkey’ before getting sent off against the Spurz. This would explain why King went mad in an otherwise harmless-appearing incident; why Chimbonda went berserk and had to be Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1161104148037520302006-10-17T16:53:00.000Z2006-10-17T17:01:20.313ZDifference be damned Three series into Peepshow – a fourth is on the way – and now with their own comedy series, this is Robert Webb and David Mitchell’s moment. After years behind the scenes writing for others, taking bit parts and presenting their own radioshows, they’re now due their place on Jonathon Toss’ sofa. Get your laughing gear round them. Or don’t. Despite their years of experience, lame Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1161025910229980762006-10-16T19:06:00.000Z2006-10-17T10:32:03.980ZCorporate adventurism must pay offFollowing on from the recent look at Elephant residential conceits, two new projects have landed up the road in SE1, around Bankside and near Blackfriars, as if from average Space. This Southwark Street façade has coloured windows frames and outdoor shutters exposing the internal structure and maybe shifting shape and position like the diaphragms of Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe. But it is a Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1159198514359636252006-09-25T15:19:00.000Z2006-09-26T09:51:33.210ZThe embryonic advisory (brought to you by Smuggies!) * Despite antenatal worries about whether you will be a responsible parent/love them enough/do your best by them, soon you will become besotted by their every move and willing to preserve them from the harshness of Mundo Exterior with formaldehyde, if necessary. Because you own them like an insurance policy. * You will develop a long list of nicknames – some Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1157494951612747932006-09-05T22:21:00.000Z2006-09-05T22:22:31.623ZIt's your Shawcrosses...Cull reasons that to let writers like Billy boy off the hook now would be nothing short of appeasementCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1157113986662319002006-09-01T12:28:00.000Z2006-09-01T12:39:21.980ZErsatz gentrification of Elephant continuesNew and recent flat developments on Wansey Street and Steedman Street. The marine latter, ‘South Central East’, looks pretty exclusive, and visually gauche, while the former is a tangerine dream of wood facading next to Southwark library and museum. With the wider area, including parts of Blackfriars to the north, one of the last central zones to be colonised by people in search of an Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1156524562878355982006-08-25T16:48:00.000Z2006-08-25T16:52:39.313ZAnatomy of an atrocity Thatcher thuggery analysed again, and again Manchester City’s blind scrote of a left-back, Ben Thatcher, was thrust into disgrace on Wednesday night, after clattering Portsmouth midfielder Pedro Mendes in an ‘X-rated’ elbow-and-body clean-out. Mendes needed hospital treatment, during which time the moral opprobrium was ratcheted up big time within the soccer community. Initial response fromCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1155938149216292332006-08-18T21:55:00.000Z2006-08-20T14:05:16.850ZTerror on War News“Security notice from John Reid, Home Secretary, Friday the 37th…” Vigilante update: ..and such a good job has been done of instilling fear in white Britons that men of muslim appearance were forced off a plane at MalagaCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1152656472395229102006-07-11T22:17:00.000Z2006-07-11T22:21:12.403ZAlt ctrl escape? Cull takes a long look at the role of drugs through the false paradigm of control and surrender, offering a perhaps idealistic take on their potential… Culla

sonic truth

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54998322008-06-28T14:08:44.465ZSonic TruthBrucenoreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-54954624325395561012008-06-28T14:06:00.002Z2008-06-28T14:08:44.522ZI Said Worthy Farm I Can't Hear You! (pause, silence)With literal hours to go the liberal disquiet still grows at Jay Z’s imminent performance on the fields of our very own Avalon – Glstnbry. Like the Roc-a-fella himself, they have invoked the commercial imperative, this black man is not cricket and has inspired poor ticket sales (nothing to do with complete festival saturation then). Of course, in curtain-ruffling England the new breed of culturalCullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-14634936835182028422008-06-16T21:32:00.004Z2008-06-16T21:45:37.667ZScorching backMy Bloody Valentine returned to live performance on Friday 13 June with a rehearsal gig for their few UK comeback dates. They did an expected set of purely 87-91 Creation albums and EPs. The a-side of the awesome 1990 ep, Soon and Glider (repetitive sliding technicolour bursts precede industrial dystopia) is represented. Agree with Bliss that a favourite is the grungey e-bounce of Slow on the 88Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-48714663073197344942008-05-30T14:43:00.002Z2008-05-30T16:44:40.844ZLet's balk about sex“I don’t want to employ the services of a beautiful Chinese call-girl. I’m quite happy to stay ‘out of the game’, thanks very much. I have no desire to act on desire.” This was the situation 22 I found myself in on another ‘business’ trip to Singapore - if being holed up in an office robot-editing stories for three days can be called corporate travel (and next time I’ll just get up early and doCullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-55104437347197350662008-05-14T21:41:00.006Z2008-05-15T12:20:23.201ZStrewth-via-Sonics***Update, it turns out MC/r council themselves were only prepared for the pseudo event of celebrating football, etc, and not the reality of 100,000 Rangers fans pissed out of their mind and irate when a) one of the main screens went off b) they lost 2-0 and a significant minority used the city centre site for a rampage. MCFC.co.uk, of course, fails to mention this side of the occasion at all in Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-88501399516906361662008-05-07T21:31:00.005Z2008-05-07T21:49:15.268ZMorphing the munglistsBack to rave last week. Czuk and I landed in some stereotype nu jungle jump-off in ghetto rave venue/pubclub Goldsmiths Tavern, a night made palatable by an enthused local crowd even as the music made a standard out of its own bog. Yes the mood was better there than last time, what with laydeez free and the still-liberating deshackler of the madfast jungle, put on by Kings of the Nu School and Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-27744586905522888492008-04-28T19:19:00.003Z2008-04-28T19:37:02.462ZGeoff Barrow: Mark Ronson is to Soul Music...... what Shakin Stevens is to Rock 'n Roll" Saw this in Mojo over a man's shoulder while on the 8:30 to Sutton and had to laugh. Ten seconds looking at images of the Brit New Yorker funking his guitar off, or indeed walking back to Amy-Lily-Sadie-Kate's at 4am, and the rock-soul man's sheeny oeuvre begins to grate. You know how serious producers disdain to mix business with pleasure, Marky Mark. Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-20054256806803997492008-04-26T23:17:00.004Z2008-04-27T12:03:57.824ZSpiriting raveI’m adding to the noise around the 20th anniversary of rave, the summer of 88 generally credited with its birth as a mass movement. Twenty years, that’s a lot of anthems. By going overground and then splintering into a million different if not mutually hostile factions, dance music was able to constantly regenerate and replicate, keep going without lapsing into a cult. Hip-hop may have lasted a Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-82526106162905923042008-04-09T20:33:00.006Z2008-05-07T21:44:34.881ZA trip to Texas(changes wanky headline, corrects beer jerky to beef jerky) A week back from a work trip to Houston and San Antonio, Texas, and I've finally been able to blog the experience. This attempt at covering What I Saw during those four nights and five days is a dwarf in comparison with Nina’s regular, real-time and photo-supported travelogues. With audio and video to hand and a bit of space on a Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-16943282827404643882008-03-19T21:54:00.000Z2008-03-19T21:55:25.656ZReal music by humansThe sonic truth is that while I piss around in digital jetsam as the Djkeyll or analysing techno timbres, it’s my wife who is in the studio as I type. Well it’s not a studio but some film soundtrack guy has brought down his machines to record her accordion playing, and hopefully it will make the cut. MP3s of the tracks or at least her Citano riffing inna eastern European roma style to hopefully Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-10218903706907173782008-03-18T22:16:00.004Z2008-03-19T13:33:37.547ZTop end theory: in praise of the empha-tick***Warning – this discussion of the components of sonic architecture may not be for naturalist music lovers, who like to see a song as a miraculous whole pumped direct from Mark Ronson’s muse to live stage, where brass, guitars, voice and real drums work in perfect harmony I have probably used this anecdote before but one of my mates once said he didn’t like dance music because it was all ‘Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-5598517883012445252008-02-18T21:58:00.002Z2008-02-18T22:02:31.646ZAllez Allez: Allez-y encore!I wouldn’t have picked a cold night in New Cross among the students to be my best night out in years (I’m not quite old enough to be their father etc) but then picking implies prior arrangement and pre-ordained nights aren’t usually the best either. The Allez Allez DJs have been nicely building up their reputation and their night at the refixed Amersham Arms has also been developing a followingCullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-29144813655306031942008-02-17T22:34:00.003Z2008-02-17T22:46:51.473ZNew Coldplay albumEcosexual politician Jeremy McClintock has apparently claimed a musical exclusive - first hearing of the tracks on the new Coldplay album. On a simulated change forum tour for troubled kids in Innsbruck, Jez's buddy Chris Martin turned up and whacked off a few tunes from the follow-up to X&Y, tentatively titled 'Kofi's Dream'. Early reaction from Coldplay's legions of fans is available here...Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-88786596700898601172008-02-11T22:36:00.000Z2008-02-12T10:02:47.103ZOn cloud 9, floating around a Blue Moon – United 1 City 21:29pm, Denmark Hill South London. We were running late after filming some McClintock. Rich and I tuned in to 909 in the car and thought the reception was out because we couldn’t hear anything, like a Big Brother transmission where birdsong replaces profanity. But it had happened – Blues “observed” the minute’s silence and from then on moral right was on our side (I told anyone who would listen Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-76025653667933051392008-02-06T22:38:00.000Z2008-02-06T23:14:34.663Z: Temporal headstates examined >>>Or ‘the past was yours but the present’s mine’ “I don’t like looking back. I want to be in the present looking forward. It’s hard having been in this group with this story, but really for me once something is done it’s time to move forward. “The past is like a dream, it’s like it never existed. The present is something you can touch, feel, smell… By now I’ve dealt with whatever I needed to deal Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-12783703032780143372008-01-31T00:01:00.000Z2008-01-31T10:21:41.709ZChild performProof were hardly further required but another example of club culture’s atrophy has been the appropriation of hedon’s space by the breeders. The newly-parent, media-organiser whordes are taking over some of the country’s leading autonomous spaces with their precious offspring, and getting down. Re-re-re-wind, says the annoying toddler and the funny yummy mummy. Now you and yours can Dance Like ACullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-16503204804451347372008-01-04T21:52:00.000Z2008-01-06T16:17:06.935ZHouse music all era longBlackdown’s ‘funky’ convention raised so many issues which I'm addressing from my perspective as an aged raver on the margins occasionally dipping his toe in. It didn’t just discuss Wot Do You Call It?, although I would agree it probably needs to be denominated ‘funky’ for it to be specified away from mainstream ‘funky house’, if the main movers really believe it to be different. It also raisedCullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-57497799995584444712008-01-01T22:42:00.000Z2008-01-04T23:07:07.460ZWriggling on in 20eightSome or all of these beats were going through my head during the recent ambulations, as i formed my short-but-sweet highlights of 2007: Retina It – Zucchine Alla Scapece. Glitchy ambience from the Hefty electronica label builds up to a nice suffusion. Joachim – Lonely Hearts. The French producer’s reputation built over the year – Drumtrax was on Simian Mobile Disco’s Fabric comp – and it was Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-43156699891558073562008-01-01T20:56:00.000Z2008-01-04T23:08:39.064ZHampshire Follies 1 Suffolk Vistas 1You’d expect a 218-foot tower to dominate a rural skyline, but that’s not the case with Sway Tower, Judge Peterson’s late Victorian spiritualist folly. The surrounding New Forest area undulates, trees and hedges are grown out and the roads bend round so that one minute the Victorian unreinforced concrete ‘scraper may be staring at you, the next it has disappeared. Not only does its full bearingCullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-79191713050165489892007-12-12T22:47:00.001Z2007-12-13T09:30:13.381ZTalking moderately and saying nothingOccasionally I find my mouth stepping up to the plate marked mid-30s father of two and making reassuringly meaningless comments, glib entreaties, petty complaints about why ‘they’ have done such and such, “wouldn’t it be nices?”, etc. I almost convince myself I do want that fast moving consumer good the media are talking about. The sheer frustration and anger at others dissipates and I join in Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-71582616240156767152007-11-30T20:40:00.000Z2007-12-05T13:19:11.131ZUse your web legsJust a couple of cullings to mention on the other side. "Who'd be a manager?" - the problem is everyone already is. American Gerrald Nicksen manages his life off in between hilarious stints at inflating the commodities markets. This trader, who uses capitalism as his mask but also his support system for his constant need of deviant stimulation, is always open for business, oh yeah.Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-14670746331161278082007-11-16T22:04:00.000Z2007-11-17T11:48:22.450ZMusic reboundMy musical setting has been better. Little more than a year ago, I had functioning CD-ripping Macs at home and the office (you’ve edited the special report; now finish with disco), opportunity to go through any amount of music with mates, to personalise and compile and, at home, time to make idiot musick that was satisfying then. It was a time of unashamed bourg technoconsumerist indulgence, Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-37117594837380628432007-10-24T21:26:00.000Z2007-10-24T21:32:38.663ZHot track of the weak!The Skiddly t€ngs – Boncing Reviewed by: Zane Kool “When I go to work at Xfm of a morning I don’t usually expect to rely on a tune with as much delicate greatness as Boncing from The Skiddly t€ngs, a hot new band out of the Sheffield/Leeds border. These guys have been gigging fifthly, and are selling up to 7 downloads and 6 old skool a-vinyl copies a week on their own label, Phuckerie RecordingsCullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-39611474265239748692007-10-13T18:31:00.000Z2007-10-15T12:34:49.358ZUpdate: Faulty transmission****Well I went to see Control last night and liked lots of it, with the overall impression being created one of a dark romantic who, perhaps too young, did not react well to multiple changing circumstances, including those that his earlier romantic impulses - get married and have a kid - ironically bought him closer to line with the honest/working Macc culture. Corbijn is suggesting that Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-18745598799298921502007-09-19T21:51:00.000Z2007-09-19T22:09:16.658ZCrowd pleasingWedding DJ time again last weekend. Or more precisely wedding dj while the main hires want a break. So once again not an opportunity to squeeze Isolee and Squarepusher into a set where Jeff Beck and Come on Eileen are expected, but at least it does allow for a condensed mix concentrating on just classics; the all killer no filler axiom. It’s just how you link them. The early bouts were funky Cullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-45999934554483968152007-09-05T21:16:00.000Z2008-01-31T00:10:28.286ZMcClintock to build ideas bank with EditorsSelf-styled ‘ecosexual’ party leader Jeremy McClintock today announced a pioneering brain swap scheme with leading indie rock band Editors, where each party can download the other's big ideas from a massive server in the countryside. "I shit ideas, and I know the Editors too," says McClintock. "So it makes sense not to waste them on lesser schemes." The deal, which comes hot on the heels of Cullanoreply@blogger.com