Wednesday, April 30, 2003

The war photographer's most fervent wish is for unemployment

Robert Capa

One day I will own this book.

'Hypocrisy' claim over gun amnesty

Extend this to mines, cluster bombs and anything else that the diseased minds of the manufacturers can dream up. If you had the technical knowledge to invent these things, would you not step back and think "If we can invent that, then why not invent something equally clever but beneficial." I can hear the red-necks saying we have always had arms but that is a lie to justify the trade. The person who invents the 300 MPG carburettor will be as famous as Barnes Wallis - probably more so. Equivocate the past? Who? Me?

Soundtrack for today is Aluminium Tunes by Stereolab. Power Pop for Power Programming. Thought I'd invent a sound bite though of course it takes no effort to do so. Where is the love?

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

A dictionary of Fairies and other extra-natural phenomena in Worcestershire

If compiling a VB program which has to include references to 4 other .dlls which are also someone else's source code means anything to you then please have some sympathy for me. I hate other people's code especially when it has no comment other that 'I wrote this so there' in it.

A long weekend and still nothing to report other than a local fascination with a dead cat. Yesterday, the poor animal was finally removed by whichever 'directorate' of our local government handles such things and still there were groups of small boys gathered around the spot, having left one of their number to mind the Jumpers they were so obviously using for goalposts. Am I turning in Nicolson Baker? I refer of course to 'Mezzanine'. I am currently sitting in my lunch hour observing things though I cannot work out how Baker could get a book out of one hour.

I did listen to a bit of 70's folk rock this weekend and indeed I have two of the albums with me at the moment the clues to which are :-

Produced by Anthony H Wilson
Guest appearance by Peter Sellers on Acoustic Ukelele (Though he calls it a Banjo)

Of course the big thing we are waiting for is the 2003 re-recording of Tubular Bells - Sample here. Sadly my Daughter already recognises the tune and is therefore about to join the ranks of tank-top-dom to which engineers and other geeks aspire. Or maybe it is just a great piece of music. Only a month to go. Now the decision is whether to just get the new recording or the flashy complete Tubular Bells box set with the bonus DVD of special mixes at 50 quid. I hate marketing.

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Last Year's Troubles

I didn't like to say anything while I was there, but I thought that the Mel Gibson-a-like statue at the foot of the hill on which stands the Wallace Memorial in Stirling was actually a bit naff and more of an insult to the true memory of Wallace. This did not stop my daughter posing on it for photographs and generally behaving cutely for all the Americans/Canadians there. The statue has already been defaced and is actually locked away behind a metal grill at night to stop it being damaged further. These attacks come not from angry Englishmen but from Scots who agree with me. Is this a case of Woad Rage? (Yes I know he never actually wore woad but who said Mel's performance was a bit woaden?) My daughter happily climber all the way to the top of the tower but got a bit frightened coming down. Even an American/Canadian saying that she was the Princess of Scone didn't cheer her up much until she was back down and recovered enough to have her picture taken with the man dressed up as Wallace at the door. Pictures on the eleventh - possibly. Stirling Castle was much more interesting. My daughter has the I-Spy book of Castles and she could double her points for finding out who was born in the castle in 1430. The guides were slightly unsure though we worked out that James II (of Scotland of course) was six in 1437 which may have been about right but all the books say he was born in Holyrood except one which says that the historians were confused about this because he was baptised at Holyrood. James III was born at Stirling but that was in 1451. Mysteries. Every time we go to Scotland we find a mystery. We went to the Abbot House and saw the mural which was only half there and we couldn't work out what the picture was of. It seemed to be a sixteenth century image of classical Rome or Greece. Also at the Abbot House is a recreation of the long-lost jewel-encrusted head-shrine of Saint Margaret of Scotland. The real shrine is rumoured (well by me anyway) to be somewhere on the European mainland - probably in the keeping of someone who know exactly what it is and is just not telling anyone. Put the word out friends and if you know where it is, then tell the authorities in Dunfermline. Of course the real Stone of Scone is in some cave up in the Mountains somewhere as my daughter should know being the Princess of Scone itself (a Stewart at any rate). Us boring old commoners have to get back to work tugging our forelocks and generally kow-towing.

Friday, April 11, 2003

We've Got Owls

We certainly have. Bats and Owls and everything. Whole squadrons of 'em in formation over the town squawking and squeaking as loud as they can. Bridge!

Well I once saw a Bat and I think I saw an Owl. It might have been a pigeon with attitude I suppose. Pigeons are very boring because there are so many of them and here most of them are pretty shabby - one leg battered or feathers all over the place.


There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.


Take off the bandages and your whole body will fall apart, bits of organs everywhere. There is no hope for anyone in that situation. Take of the blinkers and your whole mind will seep out of your eyes and on to the floor where it will evaporate in seconds (A mind being dissolved by spirits). She is going to be Ok. She's talking to herself. All Rock is War against a War. Guitars, Guns - no difference. Take away the exclamation marks and grow up before you start regressing. Reversion - I hate reversion. Thank you Peter; no more plings and dashes though I would die without the semi-colon. That is what what my dad has and still is braver than anyone I know. Gutless is what you are. Sit tight under that mountain, lord of rock and steel and inaction, of misrule, of misrule, of misrule. Addicted to an empty space. We see it every day. Your face with all those red marks across it - do you even know who speaks like that - the world is your playground. They sold you all that stuff at cost and fell twitching at the though of all those explosions and JDAMs. Wire guided, Precision Guided, Laser Guided, Laissez Guided, blocks of concrete flying like a brick. Enterprise would win a race between it and a brick. I want music, gentle medieval lutes and flutes and harps. In the garden, a walled garden quiet and light but always with music. Escape the world here. On the fold of the map, it was never surveyed and never moves through time. Walk in one side now and walk out the other without ever seeing it. We travel through time and wait for nothing because it all happens at once. We will never die because we just are - existing from the beginning to the end of time and beyond, looping back to start the cosmos over again but never spotting the loop. I will live forever. Spin the bottle. In a bunch of movies, really stupid movies. Dali and Brunel, the surrealist Bridge builder (Yes - I know how to spell it really) went to the movies once to see a film about bluebottles and wasps but Dali thought it was just very odd and slightly too strange for his liking. Brunel said that all bridges should actually start 10 metres away from the banks just to keep everyone on their toes and that they should be made of local vegetable matter if at all possible. Which is why today, no Spanish bridges are any use whatsoever. Canon Lawyers are always on hand to decide what is legal. They are still arguing over the ten commandments and whether they missed one. What if we had twelve fingers? Why ten commandments and seven deadly sins? What was the editing process that got it down to ten or seven? Which ones got left out to make the magic number or, worse still, which ones are just there to make up the numbers? Were there two commandments which they could not decide between? Of course, all of this is in the divine process and has no meaning. It is all a black box and we will never open it to collapse the wave equations. It is a divine comedy but we never hear anyone laughing. Of course you are born again and think you will be sucked up. I have news for you. I got no Idols. Suck music from your ears. What music do you like? We could have guessed. Goodnight Gaza.

Thursday, April 10, 2003


You get sucked in forever

Technology allows us to see historic moments. All of us here saw the statue toppled yesterday and yes it was moving but it does not change my mind on the correctness of this war. This is too complicated to say "I was right and you were wrong" but ... you were wrong and I stand by this.

The news broadcasts seem to have moved on to silly season stories already, but we should not forget that people - many people, are still going to die in Iraq and indeed the rest of the world. I was going to write that 1000 people were massacred in the Congo last week but I see from the BBC that this figure has been revised downwards to 150-300 though this does not make it alright does it? One death like this is one too many. War over oil makes news. Poverty, disease and famine do not. Back to the safety of the Intifada. Eyeless in Bermondsey.

How to enrage hundreds of thousands of square miles in one go. The calm that exists now is but a lull.







Wednesday, April 09, 2003


Failing Badly

A lot of pictures of very dusty streets at the moment. Was it all just for this? It is good that he is gone but did we have to do it this way? War is always chaotic and I am not going to say I support this war just because it is successful and appears to be going better than anyone hoped. The "conventions of war" is a very sick concept. Even if your supposed result is done for what you think are justified reasons, when it is achieved using this sort of military domination it can only cause trouble in the long run. All of this will rebound in the years to come.



How do we justify this? I must stress that neither of these people are dead or injured as far as I know. Don't give me any abuse about the complexities of this situation. This should not happen.

Abrams Dolphins

The grey and chevroned military, the gods of war,
have turned aquatic in their lack of fight.
The ammunition melts and falls as microbes,
through the dusty air to earth.

We failed the day the first troop left her homeland,
a parts-clerk nearly killed on camera,
stepped off the boat in sun and died
before the networks found her bleeding.

This child, younger than the war knows no invasion,
knows no troops of either side,
and never hears the melting, marching black boots
before her cry has faded, fed upon the plains.

And given water, this man, his son asleep returns,
an enemy regained for all time by this captivity.
What conventions lie in unread folders,
hidden in the packs of grunts and rabble.

The seventh protocol, the lost conventions, fail us,
all these men, un-uniformed, are enemies.
A misheard statement of the end of war
has led us all the time to a fourth war of gold.

Monday, April 07, 2003


Remote Control War

There is a website where you can control a webcam mounted on the roof of the clubhouse at St Andrew's. I have just been watching an almost live feed of the US tanks outside a Presidential palace in Baghdad and I kept wanting to use the mouse to move things around as if they were just entities inside one big computer game. To the US, it seems like this is just what they are. Keep all these casualty figures as just numbers and it doesn't matter. After all the whole thing is just one 'live' arms fair for a lot of people. Think of the boards of the big arms companies wetting themselves evry time they see one of the own 'little' bombs going off. I dreamt of a computer controlled mortar last night, which you could position and aim using a computer mouse. The worry was that when it had been fired there was no control of the projectile; it just went where it went and if that meant a room full of civilians then there was nothing you could do. And now every box of Persil discovered in Iraq comes under scrutiny as a possible chemical weapon. The real chemical weapons in this world are those pumped out by the industrial nations into the sea, into the atmosphere, into every possible corner of the world. More people will die of respiratory diseases then will ever die through deliberately releases. Short-termism is everywhere. I am a product of this world and my reasonably comfortable lifestyle is in part, a result of its excesses. However, I know that we can maintain this lifestyle through intelligent use of resources without damaging the planet. It just takes a little thought but not the massive turnaround which the 'men' will insist is required for this happen. The Emperor's New clothes. The President is naked.

My daughter was listening to Classic FM as she went to sleep last night and she suddenly started calling to us in distress. I went up expecting her to have heard something on the news which she didn't like. She said that the music was beautiful and would I listen out to see what it was called. As I waited, I felt very lucky to be able to sit in the dark listening to beautiful music. It was Sister Monique by Couperin. There are some people in this world who think that Clasical Music ends with The Ride of the Valkyries and we all know what propaganda that is. Think of all those helicopters powered by that one pice of music.

Friday, April 04, 2003


The Return of Random Friday

Steely, playful Bob Milligan entered the tower discreetly, carrying a large towel which looked as if it had travelled half way around ireland inside a fridge. Tony Hawks did that didn't he? Pete McCarthy didn't take the fridge but it does appear that he was accompanied by a Nun who liked Guinness. I had a friend when I was ten who was anemic and he was prescribed a bottle of Guinness every day and he hated it. I wonder where he is now? Probably drunk under a bridge somewhere. I like beer but only one or two at a time. How can someone drink ten pints and still be enjoying the last one? The bubbles rise and that is enough to blow up any bridge. Why is the water holy? Maybe they do something to it or maybe it is just like transubstantiation. As Joyce says in Ulysses, that sounds a bit like canabalism. Why is that good? My father was taught how to blow up bridges and then how to build them again. Those stately devices of transportation across the ravines and valleys and rivers are the most noticeable of our engineering successes. Where would we be without them? On the wrong side of the river of course. The brilliant sunlight bounced off the head of the most notorious gangster this side of Cairns. His black heart pumped the black oil that passed for blood and he slumped in despair at the thought of the evil he had catalysed in his life. The evil! That is in all of us but so is the height of goodness. Some of our leaders are just madmen. How can you gas people and be sane? There are many in that religion who do not believe. It is as if they say that they are absolutely right and that everyone else is wrong. How can that be? Oh! An alarm going off and close by. Get rid of it quick. Monkey in the Middle. Fat Man was one of the first Atomic bombs. The other was Little boy. You could get earrings, one shaped like each of them. Sick and sicker. Walter the BORED. That seagull means something you know. Sir whatsisname Gull! He was the one what did it Guv. The only person I know it wasn't is me. Oh this afternoon is dragging like a dead ox behind a dray cart. Fresh meat. Chop the horns off and drag it through a warm room to its end. Can you bring yourself to eat an animal you have reared and killed yourself? I had a girlfriend once! Oh! I hadn't finished the sentence. I once had a girlfriend who kept goats and exhibited them at the Three Counties Show and though she was a vegetarian, she seemed happy (well not bothered) when the animals were killed. Maybe she was so sad and I never noticed. Sacrifice is everything and nothing. Marines and Sailors. The army is here but where are the airforce? Are all their planes made of flour sacks and string? Like the Wright Flyer on that windy day at Kitty Hawk. Nearly a hundred years and what have done with it? Bombs and guns and troops and gases. We could fly to the moon but we already have. Been there - done that. I have neither been there nor done that as someone yellow once said. Nerve gas is not a toy and I can only hope that anyone who thinks so will soon be turning yellow and black and blue and earthy. We have not seen anyone for days on these Grand Banks. The wind has dropped and the fog has come down like a velvet gag to muffle anything we say. I love to sit on the gunwale and shout out my name to the other cutters who I think may be there. I always knew it was gunnel and not gun-whale. I got told off in school for calling gunnel when we reading some nautical adventure that bored us all to tears. I wanted to read A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich and all they gave us was this rubbish. Of course it was in our school library because it was important and all our teachers were socialists but the one who was communist was very quiet about it. He played us the speeches of Lenin in our general studies classes and we took offence. Know your enemy my wife says but we were there to learn and listening to a boring old Russian talking about things which we considered irrelevant to 17 year old West Midlanders was a bit off. My friends were very vociferous about this. I loved them for it because I was shy and would not say when I agreed with them. I lived on Army and Navy sweets. We were told that they had chloroform in them and we guzzled them to get low or comatosed when our love affairs fell apart. Back to the Army and Navy. The military are busy here as they are in all corners of the world upholding the conventions of war which allow them to blow someone's brains out with a sniper rifle at 100 yards but not with a pistol at one yard. Someone sat down and worked all this out and then they sat down again in Geneva and all the decent people of the world signed it in blood. War is war and snakes are a useful anti-personnel weapon, or should that be anti-Human-Resources weapon? It was the diet of the Vietcong which won the war for the North. They had conviction in all that rice and rat while all the bright n-n-n-n-n-nineteen years olds were full on hamburgers and coca-cola and other types. Lookin all cool with their cigarettes in the bands they stretch around their helmets. The heart of Darkness indeed. Nostromo! Funny! I always thought that Nostromo was the name of the ship in Heart of Darkness or is that the spaceship in Alien? We live in space. Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space. Sophie's world is our world or is it just a pretend world in someones head? Bizarro! I don't think the Nostromo was the whole ship - just the tug bit at the front. That and Blade Runner - great films - like the world should be in the future rather than the red-tape of what it will really be. Only fifteen minutes and we're free of this for two days and then free for ever. So little aid across the border. Emergency aid. Emergency aid should be a decent chance at life rather than the impossible mess that exists at present. We are all a bit lefty here. Maybe that is why they won't talk to me. We need to do something but not this. You know what I mean. The voices in my head are just me and not anyone else. Bi-polar? Us? Multiple Personality. Cluster bombs of the mind are what we are. I could do that if I wanted to but we choose not to because it is wrong both legally and morally. The Ten Commandments are half-and-half enshrined in law. Adultery is not illegal in this country; never has been as far as I can tell. Doesn't mean it is right though does it? Bi-polar? That will do nicely sir. Only one of us need accompany you to you end. You would never try to escape would you sir? The end is here and has no code phrase today - see I have passed it by without stopping and I will go on forever or until we are stopped. That is not my voice. I have an interloper in here with us. I will finish while we sort him out.

Shipping out Marmite to the Middle East

The intelligence of anyone in control is now in question - Misguided Communist ideology - Greed-driven Fascism - any ism you care to think of. Of course we need a civilized society though our western definition of that is open to some interpretation. Who is right? de-Bono would say he is or like you to say that you are and everyone else is wrong. While I admire De-Bono ideas he does seem to be a bit of a control freak - witness his statement that the Aborigines have been playing the didgeridoo wrong for 3000 years. (You will have to read the whole article to get the absurdity of this statement). Unfortunately Mr de-Bono has become very rich, based on such ludicrous statements, which is depressing. SO many people became very rich charging the US military $500 for simple hammers because of the complexity of the ordering processes. Now you could not get away with this today so the rip-offs have been propagated into the complexities of software provision. Functions which are so simple to do on computers that the source code for them is often available free on web-sites is supplied to companies at huge prices because the suppliers rely on the fact the the people procuring the software ofetn have no real knowledge of what is and is not possible and how much effort is required to do the work. STOP IT.

Thursday, April 03, 2003


Spiky Island

Life goes on. Why are we not more concerned about things like the Hedgehog cull in Uist? It was stupid to introduce the animals to the island in the first place but I suspect the reasons for the official decision to cull the Hedgehogs rather than transport them is do do with money rather than concern for the animals' welfare. (Transporation is apparently cruel).


The deep-deep Irony of Edwin Starr

What do you need to do to become comfortable with everything? I always say I want to go and live on an island and I don't mean a sunny, South-Pacific, palm-fringed paradise. I suspect there is some element of being able to control everything if you can walk round all the land available to you. There is an analogy with being rich. Rich people always seem unhappy and want more money. People in power always seem to want more power. No-one seems satisfied with what they have. I know that is a generalisation and that many lottery winners simply retire and live quite normal lives without having to worry about anything but why do the super rich wan't to carry on working? Of course all this is rubbish compared to other things going on at the moment.

However we view the current conflict in Iraq, we like to think that our own leaders (political and military) do not lie or spin. We think they will always do the right thing. I am sure we are wrong. I am not saying there is wholesale dishonesty about events in the Gulf, but there does now seem to be a lot of reporting which 'proves' how bad the Iraqi regime is. I should really stop commenting about the war as the blanket coverage and 'rolling' (a euphemism for repeating) news reports have made me switch over the news everytime it comes on. I still read the BBC website news. At least I can choose how long that kind of broadcast lasts. Any teenage obsession with military hardware has gone. My aunt is a seasoned peace campaigner and it must have really annoyed her when my brother and I persuaded her to take us on a tour of various airbases near where she lived so that we could look at the planes. Having said that, I suppose I do still get quite excited by the roar of a jet taking off but I am now able to link this with the actual operations which these craft carry out when they reach their destinations. Everytime a fighter bomber takes off, remember that in the distance it will be dropping disgustingly efficient weapons on real people and killing them.

The recent outrage about the treatment of the 'coalition' POWs has got me bothered. There is talk about the disregard for the conventions of war as if we sanction the cruel killing of people by Daisy Cutters and snipering as being in someway 'legal' under the Geneva Convention. It is not nice to be paraded on TV but I find it more disgusting that this world has sat down and created a 'specifcation' for war. War is always a break down of civilization and while there can be just wars, it strikes me as a rather 'corporate' view of the last resort of any dispute. I seem to remember than the sequel to Catch-22 was set in modern times and propagated the mindless absurdities of the war into a corporate environment. I will find out and even if that is not the case it should be.