You've seen the movies now visit the set!

Come to the US of A

.
And so Christmas has passed and the contents of the adverts on TV have changed with it.
.
We are now into the realms of New Year's Sales and where to go for next summer's holiday.
.
I think it's fair to say there won’t be many ads for vacation destinations around the Indian Ocean for the time being but the void on our screens is partly filled by a new ad plugging the USA as the place to visit in 2005.
.
The gist of the ad is to play a series of scenic shots accompanied by an appropriate title from a famous movie and the relevant film score …

• Chicago
• Sweet Home Alabama
• Viva Las Vegas
  Etc

The tagline is 'You've seen the movie now visit the set'
.
Nice idea.
.
But, speaking as a veteran of many trips to the US, I think they've picked the wrong movies. My choice would be something like …

• Deliverance
• Mississippi Burning
• Goodfellas
• Scarface
• Taxi Driver
• any Chevy Chase movie, say, Fletch

which would make an altogether more visceral and compelling advert.
.
AI Artificial Intelligence was on TV last night. We hadn’t seen it before. If there ever is a Film Abortion movement in the future this piece would be Exhibit A in the case For. This film licks donkey nuts - in fact at least ten donkeys' worth.
.
Aside from its sheer awfulness, AI Artificial Intelligence is notable for being a recent addition to the long and illustrious list of movies that had their titles changed because a large portion of the American domestic audience couldn’t deal with it. The original title was AI, but market research discovered that many Americans read that to be A1, a popular brand of steak sauce. Consequently the title was amended to the tautological AI Artificial Intelligence. Having now seen the film I think I actually would much rather it had been about the zany adventures of a bottle of condiment.
.
Reasons for changing film names in the USA include:

1. To make the content of the film more explicit. Consequently, the vaguely commie sounding Leon becomes The Professional
   .
2. To cash in on a craze. Hence my much beloved Witchfinder General became The Conqueror Worm, named after an Edgar Allen Poe short story because Drive-In movie fans in the late 1960's wanted to see films based on EAP's works. Amusingly, Witchfinder General has nothing to do with The Conqueror Worm except for the sound of Vincent Price reading an extract from the story over the credits; tacked on as an afterthought as part of the renaming process.
   .
3. A huge number of Americans cannot understand big words. And so Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone becomes Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and the James Bond film Licence Revoked becomes Licence to Kill. Yes, the American general public understand the word Kill but can't handle Philosopher. That says a lot doesn't it.

Aside from being extremely annoying when searching for film reviews on the web, this retitling thing shines a light on the human psyche, particularly the American and, latterly, the British psyche. After all, it's not just films that get a title makeover is it?
.
Wars and politics are ripe for application of 'more appropriate' titles; Mercenaries become Independent Contractors, Freedom Fighters become Insurgents become Terrorists, Civilian Casualties become Collateral Damage, War Departments become Defence Departments and so on. Personally, I'm a purist in these matters and prefer sticking with the original titles and language, subtitling where necessary, but reading and watching pictures at the same time is so hard, isn't it.
.

Tsunamis shatter celebrity holidays

mmmm ...

The Global Catastrophe Lottery

.
The coverage of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean continues, relentlessly.
.
It's almost as if there's a bidding war taking place between the news networks; 11,0000, 23,000, 45,000, 80,000. Eventually, one of the networks trumped the others by estimating a final figure of 100,000+ and all the others joined in immediately. As if a death-toll that works out as being some even multiple of the number of digits on our hands is somehow more meaningful than any other number.
.
Whatever the final number is, the thought that thousands of people, thousands of individuals with their own personalities and dreams, were reduced to nothing more than a collective health hazard in an instant is truly horrible.
.
And throughout it all, there's the ever present nationalistic chauvinism:

.
'The final death toll may exceed 100,000, including at least 50 Britons ...'

.
at least 50 Britons, must be serious then.
.
Throughout the coverage of the first couple of days after the horror, I couldn't help noticing how much less crowded and nicer the hospitals the European victims were being treated in were. They contrasted very favourably with the hospitals treating the native casualties, which looked a lot more like railways stations in rush hour than treatment stations.
.
Then there were all the human interest stories. I use the term 'human' in the narrowest sense of the word, as the UK news channels have focused exclusively on the fate of European nationals. I felt more than a little uncomfortable listening to them. Some had lost friends and family and that was harrowing enough, but the most disturbing accounts came from those who hadn't been touched by death. Without exception, all of them made reference to the fact that they had lost their 'stuff'. Very few made any mention of the horrors they were privileged enough to be able to leave behind; very many bellyached about the holiday clothes and video cameras they also left behind.
.
I should be careful about making generalisations at tragic times like this but, personally, I feel little connection or empathy with people who are rich enough or so disconnected from family and friends back at home to spend Christmas day on a tropical beach. Listening to people moan about losing holiday luggage, after they've survived a disaster that killed tens of thousands, numbs me even more. These are the people willing to pay £100 to spend a night in a beach hut in 'Paradise', waited on by people earning a dollar or two a day. It's strange how all these 'paradises' end up looking like either Disneyland or a shanty town after a few years of development. The problem is, of course, the people visiting these places to 'get away from it all' are bringing their infection with them.
.
This is a personal thing. I've travelled a fair bit but have always, wherever possible, passed on opportunities to visit undeveloped countries. I don't like being waited on by people who live like sh*t. I don’t feel comfortable indirectly supporting exploitative development through my presence. I think it's daft and wasteful to travel 11 hours on a plane just to experience a mundane beach holiday that could be had much nearer to home. Clearly, there are thousands of Europeans with no such hang-ups but they are worried about what's happened to their 'things'.
.
It's not their fault the TV coverage is as skewed as it is but what I have seen has made me feel uncomfortable, for all sorts of reasons. Not least of the factors that leave me feeling uncomfortable is the nature of the 'humanitarian' reaction from certain quarters.
.
First off, there's the UK Government. Apparently it has pledged £15m in aid. In the scheme of things that's biff all. Compare £15m with the £25,000m we spend on 'defence' every year or the £3,000m+ we take in annual arms sales to countries like Indonesia.
.
I've just finished watching a feature on BBC 24 reporting that Scottish Water was sending 18 tons of water to the Maldives with the assistance of First Choice Airways. The water was surplus to Scottish Water's requirements, First Choice were flying a plane out to pick up stranded tourists anyway and 17,000 bottles of water isn't enough to hydrate the spectators at a football match but, hey, both companies grabbed five minutes of favourable TV coverage didn't they? Those loveable, fluffy companies.
.
And so it goes on. Tracy went to work today and an email had been sent to all offices in the global law firm she works for. To facilitate collection of donations for disaster relief, the company is nice enough to offer to consolidate of all its staff's contributions. Consolidated into one big cheque with the company's name at the top and, presumably, a photograph of a nice presentation ceremony to go into next year's annual report.
.
Don't get me wrong. For all the cynicism I see in the World, I also know that there are genuinely good, compassionate people out there and that mechanisms for delivering aid are in place. Most crucial of all, is the role of the much-derided UN. I can quite happily picture a World without George Bush's administration. I wouldn’t want to think of a World without the United Nations. But the cynicism is out there nevertheless.
.
ITV News has been flashing up a phone number for the:
.

The Disasters Emergency Appeal Help Line

.
which viewers can call to make their donation. ITV is not telling us who's collecting the money or how it will be disbursed and, as a nice touch, the number is a 0870 fee-charging number. For all I know the operation may be 100% legitimate. It's the nature of the transaction that disturbs me:

.
Horrible Catastrophe = Massive TV Coverage = Viewer Guilt = Instant easing of viewer guilt through contribution to poorly defined money collection service

.

There's an underlying hypocrisy and dissonance to all of this. From an individual victim's perspective, what is the difference between being struck down on your own or at the same time as 100,000 other people? Thousands of people die all over the World from lack of basic essentials every day and no-one's reporting that as a pressing humanitarian crisis on prime time TV.

.
As a small example of what I trying to say, consider the firemen killed on 911. The families of firemen who died on that day received $4m+ in payments from funds gathered after the disaster. Families of firemen, no less brave than those who lost their lives on 911, who were killed on other days get nothing. Is their families' loss somehow less because their loved ones didn't die during the course of a big media event?

.
The same nonsense is going on right now. In the scheme of global suffering or the scale of total human population, 100,000 is a pin drop. There are roughly 6 billion people on this planet; a very large proportion of which lives very badly indeed. Something like 200,000 people die every day from all causes. Even if the death toll from the tsunami tops 100,000 that's still a mere 50% blip on a single day.

.
Most of us who aren't world leaders or Corporate CEOs don't think about these kinds of numbers. Like contemplation of stars in the sky, the thought that there are 6 billion other individuals out there; all with their own hopes, ambitions and consciousness equal to our own, boggles the mind.

.
Many of the victims of this week's catastrophe will have been children. There are a lot of children in the 3rd World. There have been much worse tsunamis in the past but the impact of this one has been as large as it has because of the explosion in global population over the last 40 years. There are more people available to die. Many of these people are drawn to coastal areas because that's where the Westerners and their tourist dollars are waiting for room service.

.
On a much more mundane level, we've had increasing trouble in the UK with recently constructed houses being flooded during winter storms. Population pressure has meant that building is being undertaken on places where our ancestors would never have considered constructing housing. Our indigenous population isn't rising. The pressure on housing is due to fragmentation of families and us choosing to import poverty, in the form of immigrants, rather than exporting solutions to poverty to their home countries.

.
There's an underlying question behind the population and poverty issue that is never asked ...
.

What are we all here for and how many of us should there be at any one time?
.

I'm not going to pretend to know the correct answer. I'm not even sure that there is one. Unlike environmentalists, whose underlying message is that people are an infection whose numbers should be controlled, I believe that there potentially is no practical upper limit to the number of people who can be. We are a clever species and have always managed to increase output in line with population. There's no reason to believe that we won't have the means to support 9, 12, 15 billion people on this planet.
.

... assuming we organise ourselves properly, share our production fairly and, equally importantly, figure out what we're all playing at.

.
What's the game plan? What's the point? What is our collective purpose? Where's the vision?

.
Heard any answers to these questions lately? Have you heard anyone discussing the questions, let alone the answers, lately?

.
Or are we no more than a bunch of rabbits but with slightly better technology. Breeding for the sake of it with no greater sense of purpose than a reproductive urge.

.
As it happens, global population, if left unchecked, will possibly level out at something like 9bn. Population growth will slow down as countries like India and China develop, get rich and acquire a declining birth-rate in the process. Assuming the Earth doesn't choke before then.

.

.
Whilst I was typing this a BBC journalist, covering the aftermath of the tsunami, surpassed herself and said:

.
'It may take a generation to recover from a disaster on this scale'

.
The news channels continue to vie with each other to reach new levels of empty hyperbole. Cobblers like that don't help or inform anyone. People are tough, resilient and resourceful creatures. The damage will be repaired within a year and, as is usually the case, they will probably take the opportunity to build something bigger and better out of the ruins.

.
Until the next time.

.

The Holy Blood and The Holy Mole Poop

An inspiring tale for our times

.
To write a best-selling work of fiction many authors will spend years observing the human condition. In their minds they will weave intricate plots and sub plots to delight and entertain their readers. They will write 200,000 words or more of skilfully crafted prose. Fascinating and compelling characters will be conjured up and a tangible sense of place magically communicated through the simple medium of paper and ink.
.
Alternatively, they could write an illustrated children's story about a mole with a dog turd on its head.
.
Yes, The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business.
.
Eat your long-dead hearts out, Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl.
.
I have never heard of this book before yesterday, when someone gave a copy to my little niece. This was a 10th anniversary edition of the 'much loved children's story that has sold over a million copies world wide'.
.
The book tells the heart warming story of a mole who wakes up with a pile of poo on his head. The mole goes on a quest to find out who did this to him by comparing the poo on his head with poo from a variety of new animal friends he meets on his travels. This classic tale reaches its thrilling climax when the little mole eventually discovers that he is wearing a hat made from dog turd.
.
I hope I haven’t spoiled it for anyone by giving away the ending.
.
Earlier on in my blogging career someone, from the Mid West of America I think, made a comment that I should try and use the word poop rather than shit in my blogs. I've compromised by using the word turd as often as I can instead. I appreciate that some people who run into my blog may still find my chosen word offensive and skip away from my blog as a consequence. Which would be a shame.
.
It's only a word though. I do find it strange that someone can publish a book about animal shit and illustrate each page with different pictures of cute animals taking a dump and get away with it. The secret is to use euphemisms like 'business' or 'poop' and no-one seems to mind. Reviewers on Amazon love it …

.
Amazon Reviews
.

The last time I came across an author becoming a millionaire through writing about turd was, of course, Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code.
.
A gang stole £22m from a bank in Ireland last week and I remember thinking 'Dan Brown has escaped with four times that much money and he isn’t even being hunted by the police'.
.
The good news is that he is being sued by the authors of the books he most shamelessly plagiarised in coming up with his Masterpoop.
.
By my reckoning, Brown lifted material wholesale from three books in particular. He arguably stole plot elements from Lewis Perdue's not very good novels The Da Vinci Legacy and The Daughter of God and DEFINITELY ripped off all of his 'meticulous background research' from Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh's The Holy Blood and Holy Grail.
.
Leigh and Baigent's solicitors are currently sharpening their knives. There is much wrong with The Holy Blood and Holy Grail and amusingly Dan Brown has copied material from the earlier book without realising that much has been discredited by subsequent research. If Brown had done a simple Google search before copying wholesale chunks out of THBTHG it might not now be so blatantly obvious who he was ripping off. He is onto such a loser.
.
It will also be interesting to find out how Brown explains away the fact that the key baddie in his novel is called Leigh Teabing. The name Leigh Teabing is an anagram of Leigh and Baigent while his physical description, he walks with the aid of crutches, is presumably based on the third author, Henry Lincoln, who walks with a limp.
.
Once that case is over I hope someone else takes out a follow-up class action on behalf of the English language for severe and unjustifiable adjective and adverb abuse. It’s not just children and animals, words have feelings too.
.

Finding Nemo 2 available in North London

I've got something you haven't got

.
I've just gotta get myself some children …
.
I had a pretty good haul of presents this year, probably my best for some time and almost entirely due to Tracy. My swag bag included …

• The Producers Special Edition
• The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Special Edition - including several lost scenes redubbed by Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and a Lee Van Cleef impersonator in the 1990s. The deleted scenes are all rubbish but we fans always want more, even if it detracts from the overall quality of the film
• A 600 page book of the best pictures from Life magazine; including some awesome work from the days of Martin Luther King, The Great Depression and The Second World War. Lots of expressive faces of people undergoing real tribulation or doing real things with their lives, all in artistic black and white. Marvellous.
• A tea diffuser
• A bottle of Campari to help me with creative dreams
• An ashtray

My girlfriend is a princess and knows what pleases a man.
.
My mother was also in cracking form and was blatantly regifting left and right without the slightest sign of remorse. At one point she handed me a wrapped copy of Apocalypse Now Redux. I opened it and she asked me if I liked my present. I said yes, it was one of my favourite films. She smiled approvingly and said she thought as much. Smelling a rat, I asked her to name any one of my other favourite films, at which point she clammed up. Looking her in the eye, I asked her if she had really bought that DVD with me in mind. She looked back at me squarely and said yes, yes she did.
.
She was, of course, lying through her teeth.
.
Myself, Tracy, my brother and my sister in law puzzled the night away trying to figure out how a conservative 62 year old woman, who hadn’t been to a cinema since 1963 and never visited a record shop in her life, had come into possession of a still-wrapped, collector's edition DVD of a psychedelic war film. We are still unsure.
.
My mother is a good person but the ruthlessness she displays at Christmas would have embarrassed Genghis Khan. In addition to the merciless regifting, she was frantically gathering fragments of discarded Christmas crackers and present wrapping. Somewhere in London she's operating a Christmas present chop-shop, staffed by a team of wetback Mexican mechanics. Right now they're stripping down and modifying this year's presents to such an extent that she'll be able to return them to the people who gave them to her originally without them ever suspecting a thing.
.
Anyway, I've got to get myself some kids. They get such interesting presents.
.
My brother is 34 and, like me, managed to hack his way into his thirties without assuming any real responsibility whatsoever. Then it all came crashing down. First he got married. The came the baby. As a consequence, he's going the way of all fathers and rapidly losing touch with popular culture. This time next year he'll be wearing a cardigan, dancing like Elaine from Seinfeld and listening to Perry Como LPs.
.
How do I know David's losing touch with popular culture? Well, him coming home with a DVD copy of 'Finding Nemo 2' for starters.
.
The Chinese have pretty much cornered the pirate DVD market in the UK. When they're not selling them directly, they're supplying them wholesale to other people who do. Product quality is good and surprisingly consistent, as is the price; £5 per DVD.
.
However, even though the DVDs are of a pretty high standard, you do not always get quite what you bargained for. So, even though there actually is no sequel to Finding Nemo, my brother found himself buying one as a family treat from a Chinese person for £5. Technically he hasn't really been ripped off though. It's not as if he can say it isn’t a DVD of the real Finding Nemo 2 is it?
.
So there I was with my 15 month year old niece on Christmas day watching a Japanese made cartoon about the adventures of a group of fish friends dubbed into Mandarin. My niece loved it.
.
But that wasn't the only jealously-inducing present my little niece received this year. She also got a copy of The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business …
.

There's free speach and there's free speach

Christ taking a wrong turning and ending up on the Farrindgon Road

.
I made an entry a few days ago about a violent Sikh demonstration that closed down a play in Birmingham last week. The Sikhs weren't too happy that the play featured a rape taking place in one of their temples.
.
This was reported as being an example of an intolerant religious mob suppressing the right of free speech in this country.
.
OK. That's clear enough.
.
Later on in the week there was another story that reported that at least a quarter of British schools had scrapped their traditional nativity plays because the local authorities did not want to offend people of non Christian faiths.
.
No prizes for guessing where I'm going with this one.
.
As mentioned in the original post, there's free speech and there's free speech. In my country in the 21st century a story of a child born out of the Love of our Creator should not be played out, but a story about someone being raped by a priest in a temple should be staged as a matter of principle, regardless of who it might offend; even if it is one of the most well integrated ethnic communities in the country.
.
As it happens I have never heard anyone of another faith speak out against nativity plays or Christmas in general; not personally, not in the media. I don't actually ever expect to. Why should I? Traditionally in the UK, Christians do their thing. Non Christians do their thing. People may even sit politely through plays featuring other people doing their thing. It's all about tolerance and respecting the truth that all of the main religions seek to answer the same questions and usually come up with pretty similar advice and answers.
.
Nativity plays aren’t being cancelled by people of faith. They're being cancelled by people of no faith. This year Christmas, next year Ramadan? The year after that Diwali?
.
Cancel nativity plays? Wouldn't it be better to encourage children of other faiths to celebrate their stories instead?
.
I listened to the Christmas messages from the Pope, The Archbishop of Canterbury and The Cardinal of Westminster yesterday. All three of them seem pretty much agreed that violence won’t solve the World's problems, particularly in Iraq, and that the money would be better spent on bringing comfort to unfortunate people around the World.
.
Which pretty much means that those devout 'Christians' Blair and Bush score nil points as far as the leaders of the Christian World are concerned. Maybe they'll go to Hell. I do not profess to be a devout Christian and I didn't order a murderous, futile war of aggression under the cover of lies. However, I would be bold enough guess that if I did possess these qualities I'd be more than a little concerned that the leaders of the Catholic and Anglican Churches both thought I was a prick.
.
As an aside, one story that touched me over Christmas was the news that families of US soldiers killed in the assault on Fallujah had raised $600,000 to buy humanitarian aid for people in Fallujah. Some of the family members were planning to hand material over to the Iraqis today. It's difficult to be cynical about acts like that but I couldn't help thinking that $600,000 wouldn't buy half a cruise missile and the US Government had pumped those babies into Iraq as fast as it could procure them. Those families are peeing in the wind.
.
Back home, I've noticed the development of a new argument concerning our attitude to Christmas this year. Every year many people decry the commercialisation of Christmas and say that we should go back to celebrating a more spiritual festival, but this Christmas I've noticed a lot of other people laying down the following argument:

1. Christmas was originally a pagan festival hijacked by Christianity
2. The reduction of the influence of Christianity over Christmas in recent years means that we're moving back towards a more Pagan festival; basically a huge piss-up at the darkest time of the year
3. This is a good thing

The CEO's of Sony, Time Warner, Nike and GAP must rub their grubby little fists with devoutly pagan glee to hear arguments like that bandied about.
.
Mmmmm, I think someone cool made this case at some point in the recent past as I've come across quite a few muppets in the media, real life and the web who've parroted this argument, almost word perfectly, as if it is some brilliant flash of inspiration they came up with themselves.
.
The one flaw with this argument is that it is complete cobblers.
.
Yes, Christmas is a pagan festival. This is not news. Actually, the original festival was largely unchanged except for the names. The Christian version features a sacred Earth Mother and a Divine Son of God undergoing a cycle of birth/ rebirth for the sake of humanity, both familiar concepts to your suave, sophisticated pagan about town.
.
Yes, most religions share common myths and themes. There may be some differences in administration and the occasional pope may take out the opposition every now and again, after all they're only human, but the underlying message of almost all religions is the same.
.
That's why I can be pretty sure that pagans wouldn’t have approved of the way Christmas is going either. The prospect of multinational corporations chopping down all those scared Oak Groves and pissing dioxin in the Waters of Mother Earth, so that they can mass produce shit for a spiritually numb global population manipulated by greed, insecurity and fear probably wasn't top of the Druid Yule time shopping list.
.
And, yes, the nativity story is almost certainly a myth but so is Santa Claus, Wallace and Grommit and Mary Poppins but I don’t hear anyone saying they should be cancelled because they're offensive.
.
Next time you hear anyone commenting that it's great that Christmas is becoming more like a pagan feast, please do the whole World a favour and yawn. Loudly
.

Awful, just awful

.
Still taking in all that footage from the Indian Ocean. It's awful.
.
And without fail, as usual, the UK media has displayed its astonishing chauvinism by coming out with lines like 'hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by the tragedy including many British tourists'.
.
This may be a personal thing, but at times like this I for one don't rate a British tourist's life higher than any other human being. It shouldn’t matter where the victims come from and it shouldn’t cross a reporter's mind, not for a second, to distinguish between them when covering such a story.
.
The other thought that strikes me is that, in the scheme of things, this particular wave wasn't very large. The last 100 years or so have been relatively benign when it comes to natural catastrophes and MUCH larger tsunami's have hit the Indian Ocean during the span of human history. People have the most peculiar habit of settling in large numbers slap bang on top of potential disaster zones; on the margins of the Indian Ocean, along the San Andreas fault, across the Ganges Delta and on the slopes of Vesuvius. Sooner or later, all of these places will be creamed and creamed badly; Los Angeles, Naples, Bangladesh, Japan, very possibly in our lifetime. There are some places that people just aren’t meant to live. For some reason, Nicaragua comes to mind; earthquakes, hurricanes AND malaria. People just don’t seem to get the hint.
.
Of course nobody expects it to happen to them. I'm a smoker. I understand.
.

It's time for some mawkish sentimentality

Sentiment Porn for Stefs

.
It's Christmas, well almost.

I took the picture at the top of this post a few years ago in a mall in New Orleans, with a then 'State of the Art' 1mp digital camera. Sometimes I wish it had come out better.
.
But, for my purposes, it is good enough.
.
I have taken tens of thousands of pictures. Some of them are quite good. Most of them are technically better than this particular frame.
.
The thing is, for some bizarre reason, this picture hits my sentimentality button in a way that will certainly be inexplicable to anyone else but me. That's not going to stop me trying ...
.
The key components of this picture are that the central character are:

• Black
• overweight (the suit wasn't as padded as it might first appear)
• dressed as Santa Claus
• smiling in a good natured way
• in New Orleans

When I look at that picture I feel for the fact that this guy is doing a shitty, low paid job, serving The Machine. The odds of him reaching old age are severely reduced by the fact that he's Black, in the South, poor and fat (yes, we starve them to death in the 3rd World and lard them to death in the developed World). He's not looking for much from life but the chances of him getting even that, for even a short period of time, are slim. One day he'll be dead. One day we'll all be dead. What was the point?
.
But he's still smiling. The bugger is smiling. And it wasn't a fake smile.
.
Nope, I haven't explained it right. It's come out all trite and ickily patronising.
.
Anyway, I come across this picture on my hard drive every now and then and it reminds me of the importance of humanity, and doing the right thing, and that most of us want a World where we can just get by. Gay shit like that.
.
For a short time, that picture of the fireman heading UP the stairs in the WTC on 9/11, with a haunted look on his face, had a similiar effect on me. Then he spoiled it all by not being dead. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely pleased that he's not dead but the power of the photograph was lost.
.
Yup, some people get off on classical music, others read poetry. I look at a picture of a tubby Black Father Christmas ...
.

Heaviest post of the week

.
OK, one more long-winded, far too serious, post and then I'll devote myself to finding more pictures of rocks shaped liked tadgers and other, more 'surfer-friendly', material …
.
I'm still pondering upon a comment made on one of my posts yesterday. Because of a certain negative posture I was assuming, the guy making the comment assumed that I was a consumer of the Right Wing newspapers.
.
Like countless millions of people out there the guy is labouring under the mistaken delusion that such concepts as Right and Left wing politics still exist in the World.
.
Baaarrrrrr. Wrong.
.
In the good old days you could pretty much know what position an individual would take on any issue, based on their stated political beliefs.
.
It's not so easy these days is it?
.
Take the Iraq War for instance. Is a pro war stance consistent with Left Wing or Right Wing politics?
.
Or the adoption of a single currency for Europe? This policy has been embraced by some Left Wing politicians but others see it, rightly, as paving the way for further globalisation; enabling exploitation of workers and populations by facilitating the easy movement of capital.
.
Or compulsory identity cards in the UK? Surely Right Wingers would love them? Nope, many British Conservatives see them as a threat to individual liberties. As do many Lefties.
.
GM Food? Nope, many UK Conservatives reject that as well. As do many Lefties.
.
And so on. And so on. Individuals who would previously have been described as Right and Left Wing have acres of common ground and share opinions on a wide range of issues. In many ways, the old distinctions are virtually meaningless.
.
The real political battle of the future is between globalised corporate power and individuals and their communities. Does a few pence on the rate of income tax, up or down, and redistribution of a little national wealth to the poorest income groups really mean very much when stacked up against questions of globalisation, the environment or the freedom of the individual? Not really.
.
The social changes that are now taking place across the World benefit only a tiny number of people. To pull it off, they have the con the rest of us on a gigantic scale. And, so far, they're doing a really excellent job.
.
The ultimate goal is to breed a readily manipulated population of consumers and workers; only just smart enough to operate their television remote controls, use a credit card and nothing else. One day, one bright glorious day, we will all be forged into a single, homogenous, slab of material, the properties of which will be known to the highest precision; like cast iron, or bubblegum.
.
That is why we have witnessed onslaughts on organised religion, family life and social institutions, and a dumbing down of education and the media. Diversity, True diversity, must also be suppressed. It's easy enough to identify the institutions and belief systems that have been smashed or discredited over the last fifty years, but it is much, much more difficult to identify any benevolent institutions or frameworks that have been put in their place.
.
F*ck it. I endured Catholic schools for 13 years and, even after that, I'd choose the Vatican over Accenture, or Halliburton, or Nike, or The New Labour Party, any day. If you're dealing with priests rather than corporate types, there's at least a small chance that one of them isn't a bastard.
.
The techniques employed are numerous and diverse. A little bit of fear; Commies one year, Fundamentalists the next. A vision of liberation from past inequalities. The chance to own some toys.
.
But life doesn't get any better. Not really. We consume much more but we're no happier. The fear never goes away. The toys are out of date almost straight away and the liberation of women seems a hollow victory when you consider that households now need two incomes in societies where, in the past, one income would do. The kids don’t see their parents much.
.
And that's why the developed World is gobbling increasing amounts of Prozac every year.
.
Marx didn’t really have much to say about anything like this.
.
I was watching a film about the evacuation of Dunkirk yesterday. What struck me most was the underlying theme of social cohesion that came across. I'm not about to glamorise past inequalities or pretend that the past was perfect, but the plain fact was that British people shared common ownership of certain beliefs and institutions.
.
What do we share now? A lot of us shop at Tesco's and watch Big Brother but that's about it. Our society is now extremely fragmented and I do not believe that we are better off as a result. Do many of us now believe that there are any ideas or institutions worth risking our lives for? Breaking a finger nail for?
.
I read an academic paper a few weeks ago that drew a connection between social cohesion and welfare systems. America has a high proportion of minority groups, something like a third of its population, and consequently has a poorly developed welfare state. Sweden is full of Swedes and has a famously generous welfare system. The conclusion of the paper was that populations will support a welfare system, through taxation, as long as they believe 'people like them' are drawing from it in times of need. The paper estimated that this consensus would break down if 25-30% of a population is composed of alien groups. The authors of the paper have a left-wing, liberal background.
.
The ethnic minority population of London is now somewhere just above 40%. I know of nowhere else in the World that has so many people, from so many different places, all thrown together in such a short space of time. We're talking less than ten years here.
.
While I buy into the general thrust of the social cohesion argument, I don't think it is something that can be readily quantified. Decent people will readily see people as 'being like them', regardless of their race, creed or sex, provided they share common values. London could be composed of 100% ethnic minorities and still work fine; provided those communities occupied enough common ground to feel that they all shared fairly in supporting and being supported by common institutions.
.
Hands up any Londoners (real Londoners) who think that's going on in London right now?
.
Different communities in London share little common ground. Strong, self-reliant, faith-bound communities feel under threat, either from the Government or the 'progressive' media, and many of those in work and paying taxes, whatever their race, think they're being ripped-off to support a growing population of spongers.
.
The fact that everyone shops in Tesco's and watches Big Brother is not enough to keep it all together in the long term. Shared values? The multitude of different communities represented, say, in my part of London don’t even talk to each other. There also seem to be a lot of people here just long enough to pick up some tax free cash earnings and free medical treatment, paid for by those of us who have declared their earnings, before buggering off back to wherever they came from.
.
And I really can't blame them. Uniquely amongst developed countries, British society is permeated with a self-loathing for its institutions, history and indigenous culture that I find hard to believe or stomach. We've been taught to be embarrassed by own flag, our past, our system of government and our laws. National pride is associated with xenophobia and racism. If that sounds extreme, pick up a Britsh newspaper, watch a British current affairs program or listen to a British politician and listen to what they are saying. Why should anyone settling in this country buy into that?
.
Personally, I love the vision of a common community composed of individual vibrant, self-confident ethnic groups, all covered by and buying into a shared umbrella of traditional British values of justice, tolerance and compassion. We were on track for something like that 10 or 15 years ago. What we're working on now is a huge, resentful, insecure mush. The big companies and politicians must be loving it.
.
So. Left Wing or Right Wing? I know a lot of people who feel extremely nervous discussing these matters for fear of being labelled a racist. Am I being racist? If so which race have I criticised? All races? Particular races? If so which ones?
.

Drive-by stabbing in NE London

Bemused American tourists jabbing the Diana Memorial Fountain with sticks

.
A knife wielding schizo-boy cut down six people at random today in North East London. The attacker was car-based and seemed to be modelling his technique on the classic American drive-by, only with a knife rather than a gun. So far, one of the victims has died and the others are critical. Reading through the initial accounts I was struck by this line …

.
Chief Superintendent Simon O'Brien said the first victim was a man who was walking to the station to go to work. "He had just left his girlfriend when he was stabbed a couple of times in the back. He thought he had been punched and carried on."

.
That says so much about life in London. 'Oh, some random stranger has punched me in the back. Never mind I'll just carry on to work. Oh, I'm bleeding, maybe I should do something about it after all.'
.
A friend mentioned that someone spat on him from a car a few weeks ago, apparently just because he was wearing a work suit. In hindsight, he should count himself lucky.
.
Earlier in the week, a shop keeper was stabbed to death in the same part of London over the theft of a couple of bottles of spirits. Looking over the current 'Christmas Special' issue of the South London Press this week, the only Christmassy elements I have identified involve knife attacks and rapes in the vicinity of seasonal decorations. As a general rule of thumb, we're looking at one particularly nasty knife murder in London every week, in a city where such things were once a novelty. People got cut up, sure enough, but not killed.
.
Have I mentioned elsewhere in this blog how much I love what London has become?
.
I think I probably have. I'm quite sure because someone commented on one of my anti-Olympic postings earlier on this week. He said that it was sad that someone like me was so negative about the city in which I live; one of the five great cities of the World. He was very polite and tried his very best to counter my point of view without wanting to seem aggressive or judgmental. I respect that and I won't give him too much shit.
.
However. He deserves a small pipette full of shit. The implication of the comment seemed to me that I was at fault, not the changes that have overcome my home town.
.
First off. He appears to be Manchester-based, which means he doesn’t know what it's like to live in London and isn’t looking forward to paying out hundreds in extra tax to pay for the Olympics.
.
Secondly, he suggests that my negative outlook is the result of falling under the malign influence of the Two Ugly Sisters - The Daily Express and The Daily Mail. For those not familiar with these two newspapers they are a) Hysterical and b) So Right Wing that they occasionally feature articles that criticise Hitler and General Franco for being too soft.
.
No. I don’t read that dross. Nor do I read the equally deceitful and disgraceful Guardian, so beloved of middle class liberals, either. All newspapers are rubbish and the only time I open one is to look at the TV listings or if I'm working with glue.
.
I know London has become a terrible place to live in because I have lived here, on and off, all my life and it has become a terrible place to live in. I don’t need some middle class tosspot journalist of either persuasion to tell me what's going on outside my front door. Actually, what's currently going on outside my front door is that junkies have been shooting up outside my bedroom window for the umpteenth time this month.
.
I was listening to a talk radio show a few weeks ago and the topic of conversation was 'Advice to give young American women moving into London'. I think some movie star or another was talking about buying a flat here. The advice form the callers was wide-ranging and featured such sarcastic tips as:
.
'Don’t go jogging in Victoria Park'
.
'Don’t use public transport in Richmond'
.
'Don’t walk along any canals near Kings Cross'
.
'Stay at home'
.
… in memory of some of the succession of now deceased foreign young women who have seen 'Notting Hill' once too often, moved into London and carried on under the mistaken impression that a very large proportion of this city is not really scary and really dangerous.
.
But if the rise in violent crime doesn’t deter the budding Wannabe Cockney, how about some corruption and mismanagement?
.
I know the Olympic bid is corrupt and, if successful, destined to become a colossal white elephant because every public project in London in recent years has been a corrupt white elephant. I've watched the Millennium Bridge wobble. I've gazed at the empty Dome and the multi-zillion pound and equally empty tube station that went with it. I've scoffed at the Diana Memorial Fountain and the dozen staff that have had to be employed to stop people breaking their necks on it. I've also helped pay for it all; my property taxes have doubled in six years, it now costs me just under five pounds to travel three stops on the Tube and back, and I now have to pay just under four pounds for the privilege of having someone park outside my front door, etc etc.
.
The whole management of The Tube has become particularly surreal. Tube drivers earn £30-35,000 pa (roughly 50-75% more than a nurse or schoolteacher) plus extras and get 52 days holiday a year. They're going on strike over the holiday period. I don’t need to read the Daily Mail to help me make up my mind about what I think about that bunch.
.
Nobody in London has been given a chance to vote on whether they want the Olympics here, even though it is being underwritten by us and, unlike the Athens Olympics or the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, the cost is not being spread outside of London. I have yet to speak with a Londoner who wants the Olympics here or believes that it would be a success. Yet, once again, public concerns are ignored.
.
My local MP, Kate Hoey, was on television last week talking about the Olympic bid. She's a Labour MP and presumably doesn’t read the Daily Mail or The Daily Express:
.
"The inevitable thing over the next six months will be the hype about London's bid and how we're going to win by miles - the inevitability is Paris will win,"
.
"Longer term we should host an Olympics sometime but not at the moment because I don't think we are ready.
.
"We don't deserve it and Paris does."
.
"If we want to regenerate London, regenerate London, but don't wait for 123 IOC members to decide we're going to regenerate it,"
.
"I think the Olympics should be the icing on the cake of a wonderful sporting infrastructure in the country. We don't have that yet."
.
I love you Kate Hoey.
.

Reality is hypertext

Manly Kebabs, available in Sydney

.
Following on from my synchronicity post of a couple of days ago, discussing possible non-boring explanations for synchronous 'coincidences', I have a new possible explanation …
.
7. Reality is a hypertext document
.
Yes, we are all subconsciously reading and writing cosmic html. That would explain why sometimes, for example, I will be discussing the evolutionary implications of black cats then go home and few hours later and watch a TV program that discusses the evolutionary implications of black cats. The two events are hyperlinked, and my consciousness is the link.
.
I came up with this concept whilst having a filling replaced in the dentists this afternoon and I tried squinting really hard to see if I could spot any available hotlinks in the surgery. It didn't take my mind off things very much.
.
I'm one of those people who's really terrified of visiting the dentists. It's not the pain. It's never about the pain. It's the cost. After stinging me for the the filing, my dentist suggested that I might like to consider an implant to replace a smashed tooth at the back of my mouth. I asked her how much that would cost and, without blinking or giggling, she said 'Oh, just a little over two thousand pounds'. I spluttered and told her, as a joke, that I could have someone killed for two thousand pounds. Unfortunately, I don't think she noticed the humour and the rest of our session fell rapidly downhill from there.
.
But I digress.
.
Even though I was unsuccessful hotlinking my way to free dental treatment, I wrote the failure off as being the result of being in an unsuitable state of mind. I have a well stocked drinks cabinet at home which can easily be used to rectify that weakness.
.
I like this concept a lot and will run with it. If reality really is hypertext then, with the right mental tools, I should be able to do mental Boolean searches for pretty much anything I want …

.
FIND "lost house keys" AND ("buried pirate treasure" AND/OR "rich nymphomaniac I could score with") AND "secret of eternal youth"

.
When you think about it, that's what prayer is all about really; just one long search string cast into the Search Engine of Eternity, only without the pop-ups and, in my case, fewer pornographic results.

.
Oooh, I've come over all profound.
.

David Blunkett's Organic Porridge

Blunkett's Porridge Oats - You'd have to be blind not to see how good they are

.
Once upon a time there were three little bears; UK Home Secretary Bear, Journalist Bear and Husband Bear.
.
"Who's been stirring my porridge?" asked Husband Bear
.
"Who's been stirring MY porridge?" asked UK Home Secretary Bear
.
"Who's been stirring MY porridge?" asked Journalist Bear
.
The answer was, of course children, that they'd all been stirring each other's porridge.
.
As the very wonderful Matthew Parris said this week ...
.

"It has to be asked: Should heterosexuals be permitted to occupy important or sensitive posts in our country?"

.
I'd like to point out, for the record before Kimberley Quinn's diaries are published, that I am one of the handful of heterosexual men living in London who hasn't stirred David Blunkett's porridge or intends to fight a custody battle with him over the paternity of his 'natural' children. Maybe we should form a club.
.

Let's all have a pop at the Sikhs

There's a Pilipino party taking place somewhere along my street tonight! And there was me all confused as to whether to use the word Filipino or Philipino when all along it was Pilipino

.
In my World, Sikhs and their culture score exceptionally high marks.
.
Sikhs are a proud people with a capital P and have a shared history with the British that goes back over 150 years. Sikhism emphasises qualities such a staunchness and service, resulting in a long-standing tradition of military service amongst Sikhs. More than 80,000 Sikhs died fighting for the Allies in the two World Wars and they picked up Victoria Crosses like they were confetti. Going back a bit further during the battle of Saragarhi in 1897, 21 Sikhs, armed only with rifles, held-off then were eventually overcome by 10,000 marauding Afghan tribesmen. Yes, marauding Afghan tribesmen. Yes, 500 to 1.
.
Viscount Slim, one of Britain's more enlightened generals, once said "You are never disappointed when you are with Sikh", which was arguably an understatement.

All things considered, these guys are definitely the strong, silent type and it really isn’t advisable to f*ck with them at any time of the day or night.
.
If these qualities seem a little old fashioned and conservative there's also the food to consider. Punjabi people are a robust people with robust appetites and their food is like the Punjabis themselves, straightforward, sizeable and hearty with no unnecessary frills or exotic accompaniments. It’s unnecessary. Tandoori cooking is brilliant. Even something as simple as their bread is great. Food is an important cross-cultural bridge and I remember thinking after eating my first plate of Tandoori-style nibbles 'This is brilliant. I must learn more about the people who make food like this'. Really.
.
Without going into a full rehash of Sikh culture and tradition it's useful to bear in mind that their religion is important to them and that their temples constitute an important focal point in their life. A few highlights from the Sikh creed …

• Live a householder's life: honest, simple and family oriented. Know your responsibilities and honour these.
• Contribute to the well being of society by offering selfless service without receiving payment and give ten percent of their net income to a charity, poor person or worthy cause
• Avoid the five evils: Pride, Anger , Greed, Attachment to Worldly Goods, and Lust.
• Treat every person as an equal irrespective of caste, creed, gender, profession, social status, age, race, or ability
• Do not be cruel; nor have a negative outlook on life. Always have a Positive Attitude

Golly gee whizz, yet another monotheistic religion that encourages self-reliance, duty and compassion. Are these guys out of touch with the real world or what? Buy shit. Hope your parents die young so that you can sell their house and have a nice holiday. That's where they should be at.
.
Almost all Sikh men are named Singh, which means Lion, and carry the 5Ks. I mention this because, back in the dark days of the 1970s, Sikhs stood out like sore thumbs on the streets of Britain. I can’t remember what the K's stand for but they are Sikh words to describe the five things that baptised Sikh men just have to wear at all times - uncut hair, a comb, a bracelet, a natty pair of shorts and, ahem, a sword.
.
OK, maybe not a sword as such but a good-sized chopper, up to 9 inches long, nevertheless. This is worth remembering if you ever feel like giving a Sikh a hard time.
.
The long hair requirement means that Sikh men wear turbans to keep things nice and tidy. The turban wearing thing is so habitual that it has become an integral symbol of Sikh culture.
.
So, there we were in Britain in the 1960s and1970s confronted with, what seemed at the time anyway, a huge influx of migrants from India. The small proportion of my countrymen who had spent time in India or the military had a fair understanding of what Indians were all about and the respect that came with it. The majority however did not. As far as they were concerned all people from the Subcontinent were simply 'pakkies' - Hindu Indians, Punjabi Sikhs, Muslim Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, even some Arabs, they were all the same. They were 'pakkies'. They all had the same names as well; Singh, Patel, what was the bloody difference anyway?
.
Quite a lot actually. As an exercise in colossal ignorance, and that's what it was, ignorance, the lack of understanding shown by the British to Indians was remarkable. To different peoples with their own, unique identities and with what they saw as a long history of coexistence with the British in their home country, this must have been extremely offensive. The use of the word 'pakkie' is now restricted to only the most racist of people and understandably so. I get the impression that Americans still use that word when referring to Pakistanis. I'd advise them to drop it.
.
I mention all of this because a group of Sikhs took exception to a play being staged in Birmingham this week and several hundred stormed the theatre. The play has now been cancelled on the grounds that further violence was expected and the Birmingham Rep didn't want to run the risk of anyone else being hurt.
.
That such a thing could come to pass in a city as well-integrated as Birmingham has come as a shock to many people, including myself. I lived in Birmingham for a few years and enjoyed the atmosphere immensely. The restaurants that line the Ladypool Road indisputably constitute the finest spot on Earth, including India, to have a pint and a curry and the Indian community has given off a sense of being 'settled' for as long as I can remember. Indians of all persuasions and the British have coexisted side by side whilst retaining their own cultures for a long time now; first in India itself and now in the West Midlands and elsewhere. It must be said that the Indians did most of the running. The idea of Indians, particularly Sikh Indians cutting up rough is unthinkable and quite scary. The last time they did that was back in 1857 and it was messy.
.
The offending play was written by a young Sikh woman and depicts nasty goings on in a Sikh temple, including a rape. Local Sikhs, particularly older or more conservative Sikhs, were outraged and offended. Their culture gets little airtime in the arts and media and it doesn’t help if what little coverage they do get is unfairly negative.
.
The night the play was cancelled I found myself defending the actions of the Sikhs to Tracy. I wasn't doing a very good job and Tracy isn't awed, as I am, by Sikh history and tradition. She maintained that, at the end of the day, a violent protest had triumphed over the long-held tradition of free speech in Britain.
.
And she was right. They were being arses. And I'm gutted to admit it.
.
I don't believe for a second that we have anything like genuinely free speech in this country. It's easy enough to produce a play that dramatises a fictionalised rape in a Sikh temple but how easy would it be to stage a production based on the amusing fact that both Hitler AND Mussolini were committed vegetarians or that many of the founders and intellectual backers of the Nazi party were gay? Nope, there's an agenda out there and it's focussed very firmly on discrediting particular groups or social attitudes whilst, at the same time, even the mildest criticism of other particular groups or mindsets is strictly verbotten.
.
But that's no excuse to start a fight.
.
Those outraged Sikhs shouldn’t have launched a violent protest. Let's face it, the play was probably rubbish anyway. Most liberal 'entertainment' is. The Sikhs could have protested politely outside, canvassed theatre goers with leaflets and invited them to an open day in their local temple to see the truth of what their culture is all about.
.
Nope they trashed the place. And threatened to trash it some more if they didn’t get their own way.
.
I understand. I really do. As with many decent Muslims and Christians, Sikhs are grappling with a secular threat to their way of life. Maybe their culture isn't perfect, maybe there are some bad apples but they've taken a look at the secular, materialist alternative and don't like it very much. The very things that make them what they are are under attack from the soulless and materialistic forces that seek to turn us all into dumb, spiritually dead consumers. Sikhs have a proud religion and culture and some of them feel strongly that they should fight back against people taking cheap shots at that culture and trying to tear it down in the name of progress.
.
I know how they feel.
.
I feel the same way every day.
.

A reading from the Gospel of Catch 22, Chapter 25, Verse 46 …

'What difference does that make?' Colonel Cathcart demanded, and then smiled amicably. 'Corporal Whitcomb brought me this basic form letter that takes care of just about every situation. Listen "Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action." And so on. I think that opening sentence sums up my sentiments exactly.

.
Yup, truth is more twisted than fiction, or sometimes truth just borrows from twisted fiction. Even though Catch 22 was written in 1954, all you need to do to bring it bang up to date with 2004 is slap this at the end of Colonel Cathcart's letter …

And you’re away

Son' Dur' Com' Un' Sas'

Natural Wonders of New Zealand you won't see featured in any tourist brochure or The Lord of The Rings No.46: Limestone outcrop, Castle Rock, South Island

.
I think my spam email is becoming increasingly tailored.
.
A few days ago I wrote a blog about a local expression from my Mum's part of Italy:
.

Son Dur Com Un Sas

.
In my mum's region this expression means 'I'm tough like a stone'. In Milan, as I found to my cost, the same expresson means 'I have a rock hard erection'.
.
So, I write the blog entry and next day I get this in my inbox:
.
Enquire within for...Brand new TADA_LAFlL s0ftabs for R0CK l.NSTANT ERECTlON.S
Just put half a dose under your tongue 10 mins prior to desired time of play,for results that last all day long.
RRP price per dose: $19/dose
.
Pay for erections!!? I'm due to turn 40 in a few months and I still have more erections that I know possibly know what to do with. It's been such a problem lately that I've been actually thinking about paying someone to take them away. Christ, if there are people out there really willing to pay $19 per boner they can have some of mine at a fraction of the cost. I need never work again.
.

The weirdest s*** I thought of this weekend

Snow tiger, Leicester Square

.
I'm a synchronicity bore. With tedious regularity I notice events in my life, often trivial events, that appear, to me, to be connected in some mysterious, non causal way.
.
Today's example:
.
We slept over on Saturday night at some friends' house. They provide food and lodging to a pair of huge, black Persian cats. The cats are brothers from the same litter. One of the cats is extremely friendly with people. The other spent the weekend upstairs, hiding from us.
.
Round about lunchtime, I was chatting with one of our hosts about owning pets. I got onto one of my favourite subjects and I said …

.
'I'd love to have some pets but we can’t manage it where we live. I think it's good to have other living things around us. It reminds us that life is diverse and special. Look at your cat. How can science explain where your cat came from? I really can’t believe it originated from a pool of lifeless mud. And why is it that your two cats are so different in personality? If they're so evolved wouldn’t they both be born with the same, best-adapted personality?'

.
I have never discussed issues of creation and evolution with cats as an example before. I only mentioned cats because I was staring at one at the time. He was licking his own whatsit with great relish. I recall feeling jealous.
.
A few hours later, we were back at home and watching a science documentary. A mathematician was discussing the origin of things. He said:

.
'People say maths is difficult. I say no it's not. Maths is easy. What isn’t easy is a cat. Where do cats come from? Why do cats do what they do? Why do some cats come out different to each other?'

.
The camera panned from the mathematician and zoomed in on a large, black, Persian cat.
.
The program was not a repeat and I have never heard someone discussing issues of creation and evolution with cats as an example before; except for myself earlier that same day.
.
This kind of synchronous coincidence happens to me with almost tedious regularity. The rate of occurrence even appears to be increasing. Most of the time I have witnesses, so I doubt that I'm mad.
.
Earlier on this evening I sketched out a few possible explanations for what is going on; using the cat story as a specific example. So far I've come up with the following:
.
1. Coincidence - possibly assisted by the fact that I talk about and consume media based on related topics
.
Hark! Do I hear the sound of the God of Large Numbers riding into action yet again?
.
Admittedly, I am witness to thousands of events each day and, arguably, over a period of a few days there's a good chance that any two of those thousands of events may appear to be related in some way, even though they're not. This phenomenon would be enhanced if I am particularly observant and selective in my memory.
.
The God of Large Numbers would also point out that, in a global population of 6 billion people, on any single day, week or lifetime, one person will witness more coincidences than any of the others. From that person's perspective the whole World will appear to be driven by coincidence. From the perspective of the rest of us, his experiences will just be a statistical inevitability.
.
I don’t buy this argument. My coincidences are too frequent and far too specific. I also sense that they have meaning and significance. It's just that I'm too stupid to understand what the meaning is.
.
The God of Large Numbers is a terrible explanation for the World around us anyway. The God of Large Numbers could support the reality of a Virgin Birth or that one day, given enough time, I might find Chevvy Chase or Billy Connolly funny. Big Numbers are just science's way of blowing off stuff it cannot explain. Besides, what is there to lose by hypothesising that dumb coincidence isn’t at fault then seeing where further thought takes us? This approach was once referred to as having an open mind. Not a lot of open-minded thinking goes on these days. It started dying out roughly about the same time that Western Science finally vanquished, then supplanted, Institutional Religion.
.
2. I subconsciously control and shape the Universe
.
Too egotistical
.
3. I can predict the future
.
Certainly worth putting in the list but, in my experience, most of my synchronicities do not require knowledge of future events. They simply connect existing knowledge at a future point. For example, when I was talking about the cat the documentary about the cat had already been filmed.
.
4. I can tap into existing knowledge through some, as yet, unrecognized medium
.
Possible and worth following up.
.
5. God / Zeus / Athena / My Guardian Angel / a mischievous Goblin or personal Daemon are winding me up for some reason
.
Also possible and worth following up.
.
6. I witness occasional screw-ups in the normally smooth-running Matrix that controls us all
.
Already been covered in a movie. The sequels were terrible and I must therefore conclude that they do not relate to some fundamental truth.
.
7. ???
.
I've written about this subject before and still don’t have any answers. I'm planning to spend more time on this question and will probably need to drink a lot more alcohol than I am at present. The key factor to bear in mind, whilst mulling over this, is that I am not responsible for the fact that our friends own Persian cats or that Persian cats were mentioned in the documentary. From my perspective these are fixed factors over which I have no control. I did, however, connect these two pre-existing variables by making the comment that I did. I'll also throw in the fact that when making the comment I felt consciously uncomfortableat the time, as I had never considered cats as an example before. It was almost as if I was compelled to say what I did.
.
It is conceivable that the contents of the TV documentary and my being with the cats today were DIRECTLY connected in some way and I only made the comment I did because I, in some subconscious way, became aware of the connection.
.
This is getting a bit convoluted now but the point is that maybe, just maybe, what appear to be totally unconnected events may really be connected in some, as yet, totally unexpected fashion. If true, and someone cracks the nature of this connection, it is conceivable that a person could control World events without ever leaving the house. Like Chaos Theory but much, much freakier. The simple act of arranging cutlery in a certain way or watching a particular television program could affect the weather in Peru or the outcome of a coup in West Africa.
.
How cool would that be?
.
There's a novel in all of this somewhere.
.
The same documentary that featured the cat also claimed that there were limiting physical factors to the capability of organic intelligence and that the next quantum leap in intelligence would come through the evolution of computers rather than organic brains.
.
Yes, that old chestnut. It’s been repeated so often it's more or less accepted as being true. AI is the way to go baby.
.
Wrong again.
.
Even the most sophisticated contemporary supercomputer is fundamentally no different to those crappy little Sinclair DIY computers I first played with 25 years ago. Except for the provision for a stored program, they're not much different to a 3,000 year old abacus. They just work faster.
.
For example, speech recognition and language translation software was rubbish 15 years ago. It's still rubbish now. The only way people will ever make that stuff work is by compiling colossal databases of every conceivable variation in language and tone of voice. The computers won’t be thinking any differently. They won’t be thinking at all. They'll just be accessing a shed load of data.
.
The human brain, on the other hand, is much more adaptable and capable of improvement. What restricts our thinking is not the physical limitations of our brains' capacities. It's the limitation of the thought systems we impose on them. Want to restrict what your brain is capable of achieving? Easy, just accept the blind dictates of religion or science that tell you how to think and what to think. Just let a man in a white coat or silly robe tell you that THEY know what is, or isn't, possible. That should f*** up the most marvellous, potential-packed object in the Universe good and proper. That, or watching shag loads of reality TV.
.

The God of Very Large Numbers

My glow in the dark Virgin Mary

.
I went to Catholic schools. Mindful of the blow to its credibility caused by 500 years of scientific discovery, the Catholic Church is exceptionally careful about explaining gaps in scientific knowledge as being attributable to the Hand of God. Unlike the Catholic Church of the past, kids of my generation were not preached the Gospel of the God of the Gaps. Sensible advice. In future, the Church will absolutely not position itself in such a way that it would be discredited by any future scientific discoveries. The Catholic Church actually mildly endorses Big Bang Theory as it is in keeping with current scientific beliefs AND consistent with a Creative Event instigated by a Creator Being. Regardless of what many people choose to believe, the Catholic Church is surprisingly moderate and progressive on matters of science and sees science as the honourable task of seeking to understand the beauty of God's Creation.
.
Born-again, fundamentalist Christians are a lot less cautious about their attitude to modern science and frequently choose to tackle modern scientific beliefs aggressively and head-on. Science has responded by developing its own fundamentalist belief system, the belief in the God of Very Large Numbers.
.
The God of Very Large Numbers is an extremely potent deity indeed. Is evolution a particularly hard idea to swallow, backed as it is by a complete absence of hard, unequivocal evidence? Don’t worry, we have 4,500 million years to play with. Lots could have happened in 4,500 million years. Do some of the explanations of the formation of the Universe and its contents not quite add up? No problemmo, 14,500 million years is yours to fill with imaginative and unverifiable thoughts.
.
For most of the history of geology and biology, the fundamental principle that all past events could be explained by reference to events that take place today held sway. This principle, the principle of Uniformitarianism, is intellectually dishonest rubbish and was only invented as a weapon against religious belief. Any events explained away by catastrophic Acts of God in the past could be dismissed as being unscientific because they could not be observed taking place today. Even though Uniformitarianism is fundamentalist scientific crap it was still taught when I was a University student in the 1980s and probably still is.
.
Uniformitarianism is demonstrably nonsense because our very existence depends on a series of events that cannot be observed today; the creation of the universe, the formation of our solar system, the beginning of life, even evolution itself. None of these are supported by any hard, contemporary evidence. If anyone does spot the spontaneous creation of a new universe or life springing from inanimate matter please tell me. I'd love to know.
.
(PS If any geologists came across this blog and take issue with my claim could they please write and tell me where on Earth limestone or evaporite beds are currently being formed or, failing that, a workable theoretical explanation for their formation. Yes. You've sketched it, You've hit it with your hammer. And No. You haven't the faintest blinking idea where it came from).
.
Anyway, there was a program on television last night modestly titled 'What we still don’t know'. Apparently, the humble answer is not very much. We know how the universe formed, where life came from and why we are what we are today.
.
There are a couple of flies in the ointment however.
.
One of the biggest flies is that literally dozens of scientific constants appear to be fine-tuned to support our existence. This observation is known as The Anthropic Principle. If any of these constants; the force of gravity, the charges that bind atoms, were as little as 1% different we simply couldn’t exist. The traditional explanation from science was that if those constants weren't the way they were we wouldn’t be here to ponder about them. As explanations go this isn’t very useful but scientists embraced it, as the alternative was to acknowledge the existence of a Creator.
.
Then someone discovered a new constant, the Cosmological Constant. The cheeky thing about the Cosmological Constant is that if it was different, either way, by as little as 10 to the power of minus 120 we wouldn’t be here. This means that, to all intents and purposes, it is pretty much impossible for the Universe to have been created at random.
.
Oops, it was looking like science might have to accept the probability of a Creator after all. However, never fear, the God of Very Large Numbers is here.
.
Last night's program explained that our Universe only appears to be fine-tuned for the existence of life because there are zillions of other universes to choose from. If you postulate a Multiverse packed full with an almost infinite number of universes then the existence of one fine-tuned universe isn’t remarkable at all. The very eminent scientists explaining the concept of a Multiverse talked about the concept as if it were a fact, largely because even though as an idea it's completely insane, the alternative is to recognise the probability of a Creator. Scientists would much prefer to make up lunatic crap rather than ever do that.
.
Sadly for the cause of atheistic scientists, if they choose to make stuff up, Bill and Ted style, I can play the same game. I can just as validly postulate:

.
'In a Multiverse filled with an almost infinite number of universes it is possible that, in another universe, a super intelligent life form has evolved. For purposes only known to that life form it has decided to model our universe and we are just constructs of an enormous computer simulation. This super intelligence is in fact our Creator'

.
F***, we're back to the scientific possibility of God again.
.
Of course, there's no way of proving my postulation but, of course, there's no way of proving the Multiverse theory, so they're equally valid.
.
People have grappled with what is scientific and what is religious thinking for centuries. To date, our best definition of a scientific statement is a statement that is open to disproval by experiment. If I say something that is not open to be proved false then it's not science, it's a statement of faith. I could claim that our entire universe, complete with all our memories, was created 30 seconds ago. This statement might be very well true but, because it cannot be disproved, it is not scientific. On this definition, pretty much everything that constitutes modern, cutting-edge science, hitting documentary TV, popular science books and in-flight magazines is actually religious thinking. That includes Big Bang, The Multiverse, The Origin of Life and Evolution.
.
Really.
.
Think about the claim that we actually live in a Multiverse composed of a huge number of universes all governed by different physical laws and constants. How could we ever conceive of observing those other universes? We can't. We physically couldn’t be able to. This isn’t science
.
it's bollocks.
.

Stef plays the Race Card

Lower Marsh, London

.
I haven't blogged for a few days now. There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, I've been struck with a wave of IT glitches. My PC has taken to locking up and, more insidiously, my Palm Pilot has acquired a loud, high pitched buzzing noise that, after only a few minutes use, leaves me with a headache and vulnerable to suggestion. The cure for the Palm Pilot issue was a tad surreal. After searching around on various forums I found that this is a common fault that is not acknowledged by the makers. In response to a forum suggestion, I downloaded a Palm Pilot system utility application which includes the following option in its preference dialogue:

.
'Stop Annoying buzzing sound'

.
I ticked the box and the noise went away immediately. It was that simple. This opens up a whole new vista of possibilities. Could it be that for all of life's problems there is a straightforward tick-box solution? The trick is, of course, finding it. Right now my PC sometimes decides to take 10 minutes loading-up applications. The PC has been intensively screened for viruses and such and is clean. We've all been here before. The fact is that somewhere, hidden amongst a baffling array of menus and sub-menus, there is an option entitled 'Randomly hang computer YES/NO'; only it won’t be called that exactly and there's no clue to where I can find it.

.
But that's not the main reason why I haven’t blogged. I haven’t blogged because my mind has been filled with ugly, impure thoughts. Right wing thoughts.

.
In themselves and properly managed, Right Wing thoughts are arguably positive things. When conceived in carefully controlled doses, Right Wing thinking adds spice to one's sense of humour and love life. In the words of PJ O'Rourke, no-one has ever fantasised about being taken roughly by someone dressed as a liberal.

.
Consider this joke …

.
What's the difference between a INSERT MINORITY GROUP OF YOUR CHOICE and a pizza?

.
The pizza can feed a family of four
.

or

.

Why don't INSERT MINORITY GROUP OF YOUR CHOICE like blow jobs?

.

INSERT MINORITY GROUP OF YOUR CHOICE don't like any kind of jobs

.

Liberal humour just can’t compete, which is why comedy in the UK isn’t funny any more. Unless you find jokes about the cost of polenta in expensive West End restaurants or yet another tedious feminist routine about periods or eating too much chocolate to be particularly rib-tickling.

.
However, if uncontrolled, Right Wing thoughts can become very ugly indeed. Whilst looking for details of a particular news story this week I came across some Ultra Right Wing US and European web sites. I didn't like what I saw. Not one little bit.

.
The news story I was researching was about this year's British National Party Christmas party in Central London. Apparently, someone had accidentally booked a Black DJ and quite a few people walked out. However, a lot a people stayed and boogied on down. No-one said or did anything unpleasant to the DJ and they even removed potentially offensive material out of their speeches in case they upset him. The quote of the week came from the guy who hired the DJ, 'Well, he sounded White on the phone'.

.

The BNP is having a difficult time at the moment as half the membership want to allow ethnic minorities to join and the other half don't, on the understandable basis that theirs is a White Supremacist party. Or is it? Apparently, an Indian guy is prosecuting the BNP for racial discrimination because they won’t let him become a member.

.
Given that our No.1 fascist political party is currently debating whether or not to include ethnic minorities I find it hard, really hard, to be constantly told by the media that the UK is a racist country. .
The television and papers are full of it and there has been a noticeable 'spike' over the last week or so. The message is clear. Britain is institutionally racist and radical reform is needed. To help with the enormous task of keeping up with the almost infinite number of incidences of racial discrimination, various web sites have been established to report stories in real time as and when they occur. I particularly enjoy this page hosted by the Independent Race Refugee News Network

.
http://www.irr.org.uk/london/

.
The most recent story on that page opens with the line 'Afshin Azizian, 36, an Iranian asylum seeker who has been homeless in north London since his appeal failed 18 months ago, is refusing to cut his hair until the Home Office reconsiders his case' ...

.
I also enjoy The Voice, 'Britains Best Black newspaper'. Their site is here:

.
http://www.voice-online.net/index.php

.
Strangely, for such an institutionally racist country, nobody has seen fit to publish or to read a magazine that proudly proclaims itself to be 'Britain's Best White newspaper'.

.
I'm dwelling on these issues because on several occasions over the last few weeks I have witnessed Black guys giving my local Indian corner shop owner a very hard time indeed, apparently on the grounds that he's rich enough to have stock in his shop. This reminded me of an incident about five years ago when a black teenage boy and two girls forced themselves pass me into my parents' shop as I was leaving it. It was a Saturday afternoon and the shop was closed. They demanded to be served and I politely told them the shop was closed. The Black guy accused me of refusing to serve him because he was Black and he pushed his way to the back of the shop saying that he was looking for a knife so that he could 'cut me'. He then took off my glasses, jabbed his fingers an inch or so from my eye and insulted me.

.
I learned a few things that afternoon. As well as myself, Tracy and a friend of mine were standing in the shop. We could more than easily have kicked the shit out of this little wanker but we were rooted to the spot. Why? Because we were afraid that we would be prosecuted. So, I stood there with this guy forcing his way onto private property, threatening me with a stabbing and committing technical assault. We edged him out in the end, mindful of the extreme need to avoid anything that could be construed or misrepresented as a blow.

.
Why do I tell this story? Is it because I believe Blacks are worse behaved than other races? No, not particularly. My problem is that particular little twerp knew he had the edge on me and could, and did, behave appallingly. Or were his actions justified on the basis that I'm white and I deserve to put up with a little crap because of the sins of my race? Off the top of my head I am unaware of any plantation owners amongst my ancestors. Which is a shame as I wouldn’t have grown up in a tiny airless flat over a poxy sandwich bar in South London. Racist country? Balls. Anyone who genuinely believes that is more than welcome to try and find somewhere less racist. They won't.

.

This week our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, resigned from his position. Lots of left-wing types have gone on the record to say good riddance to what they see as an exceptionally hard-line politician, who pursued a repressive policy on immigrants and ayslum seekers. And why did he resign? Because he was caught fast-tracking a visa application for his lover's Filipino nanny. Actually, it wasn't a visa, as described in the media, it was an 'Indefinite Leave to Remain' which is unlike any visa I've ever been issued with. The irony of a supposedly ultra-hardcore, right wing, anti-immigrant Home Secretary resigning because he arranged a bent visa for a Filipino has been lost on everybody. As stated previously, Lefties have no sense of humour whatsoever.

.

A few months ago the newspapers were full of the story that the UK police force was stopping and searching a disproportionate number of Muslims in the search for Islamic terrorists in this country. Now call me silly but isn't that the idea? I personally believe that the scale of the terror risk has been wildly overstated for political reasons but, assuming that there is a significant Islamic terror threat, what sense would there be in questionning non-Muslims just to avoid accusations of racism? Once again, the story was reported without the slightest sense of irony or even common sense.

.
Having said all that there's the story this week of a 38 year Latvian who was wounded with a screwdriver in Salford this week. Apparently he was attacked by a group of local youths because he was speaking Russian. That's not good. OK, Salford is a run down area and it's probable that the locals are resentful that, for some reason, what little they have to go round has to be shared with half of Eastern Europe but that's still no cause to stab someone.

.
But is it accurate to describe an attack like that as being racist, as is being done in the papers? The victim was white. The attackers were white. When I think of the term racist, my understanding is that racism is based on a belief that people are inferior because of their genetic differences. Attacking someone because they have a different language or upbringing is culturalist behaviour, not racist. I'm not being pedantic. This deliberate confusion of race and culture issues serves a particular political agenda and obstructs honest consideration about what needs to be done to improve the situation, for everyone.

.
The use of a screwdriver in this assault raises another interesting question. There has been much talk about the rise of knife crime in this country and there are rumblings that’s stricter laws against carrying knives will be introduced. At present it is illegal to carry a folding a blade longer than 3 inches and even smaller implements can be classed as offensive in certain circumstances. Many years ago, a guy I used to work with in a bar was arrested by the police in Russell Square. He was utterly off his face and was just a teensy weensy bit abusive to the police. On his person they found a 'waiter's friend'; a combined corkscrew and foil cutter. Even though it was a necessary tool for his job and the foil cutter blade was less than an inch long, he was still prosecuted for carrying an offensive weapon.

.

So, the Government is thinking about banning knives. Presumably forks, screwdrivers, pens (Joe Pesci in Casino anyone?), pieces of string long enough to wrap around someone's neck, bricks, metal framed spectacles (Godfather III anyone?), camera flash units (give me one of those and a multi-tool and I can make something very naughty indeed in a few minutes) and banana skins will follow in due course. Yes, we'll all be eating pre-cut food with a spoon and writing in crayon but it'll be worth it. We'll all be safe at last.
.