The Plague Dogs

There is no more to say on this. A deep book like no other and with these men at the end. Heroes for everybody.



(From http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/features/mao-aug-00.htm)



(From
http://www.pembrokeshirecoast.org.uk/coast_2_coast/wwwroot/english/articles/walking.asp)

I have just found out from reading this article about Animal Research that Berke Breathed's comic strips in Bloom County which satirised the whole animal/testing/rights thing, were instrumental in getting the Mary Kay Company to stop their own testing regime. You can find the relevant strips in The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos laugh and think about it.

Don't laugh at this one. Yet another thing to Boycott. My blood is making those movements that water does in the bottom of the kettle when you first switch it on. How can a company (and forty others by the sound of it) ask for money from a creaking and famine ridden country? They could probably recoup $6 million by not using as many paper clips (I know that is over the top but you know what I mean so don't quote this out of context). No more Milky Bars for me!

More Telescoping

Well, not much more. I got the telescope out again to look at Jupiter and the moons had all shifted around. One was just on the limb of the planet and one was far off but the other two were nowhere in sight. Gone off down the pub for a Christmas drink with their mates from Saturn though I hear they got into a fight with that mob from Neptune and Uranus. Titan always wins and Oberon is useless without Titania to back him up. It all started when Titan tried to pull Callisto and Ganymede got uppity about it. Titan then asked why Ganymede was worried because he didn't think he was interested in girls. You can see that it all just fell apart after that. That snitch Mercury flew to the Police and when he heard, Puck, the barman shouted out "Nymphs and Shepherds, run away". Jupiter had to be called to bail all his brood out but Neptune and Uranus were out for the evening so I think all their moons are still locked up. Proteus and Ariel told me all this in their one phone call.

Please don't complain about this anthropomorphisation of celestial objects; the Greeks and the Romans were doing it long before I did and not so very differently either. It must have been too much Scrumpy Jack last night. Martin says he has drunk most of his Christmas beer already and will have to go out and get more. He has just bought a Palm from the company and his wife, like mine, is shouting at him for ignoring her.

Christmas is just to tacky now. I can't think of one person I have met at work who seems to be treating it as anything more than an excuse for two weeks holiday and lots of drinking. Even the wall-to-wall Carols on Classic FM seem hollow. 'If all the year were playing holidays....'. Radio 3 did just play Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas carols which is better because that is one of only a couple of Carols. Talk of Vaughan Williams has remined me of ....

Great Driving Moments Number 43.

Driving along a long, straight road, under a grey sky on a 'no-weather' winter's day, with bare trees in clumps. The music is Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Greensleeves. I need to say no more for myself and you will have to guess the rest for yourself. I have just done a Google image search with the phrase 'Winter Trees' and despite throwing up many pages of photographs and paintings, not one looks anything like the clump of trees I have in my head. For a start, most of them are on sunny winter days rather than non-descript days.

Christmas for me seems empty without any mention of the reason for it. I know that seems obvious but it is not obvious to many people who I feel would take offence if you took away their traditions of the season. It lasts too long nowadays and while I can seer that, in this country, Christmas has always been an excuse for excessive behaviour, up until now, it has had some spiritual backing to it. Of couyrse, all this may just be nostalgia for Christmasses past, the 'they don't do Christmas like they used to' syndrome but it is now so spiritually empty that now I feel empty before the day in the same way that as a kid, I used to feel sad that it was over. The peripheral stuff around Christmas should be long walks in the cold (Grey) days and songs. For most people it seems to be lots of drinking and an excuse for behaviour that normally would be frowned on. It's OK; I'm not about to get out my Puritan costume.

It is now 07:45 and still pitchy dark but it is the sortest day the day after tomorrow. Apologies to any Antipodean readers; just throw another Turkey leg on the Barbie for me and I will be right over. Keep those tinnies cold for me. And with that rampant stereotyping, I think I should leave this topic for another day.

Jupiter

I got the telescope out last night and pointed it at Jupiter. Being Dad's old birding telescope, I wasn't expecting much but it showed Juipter up as a small disk with faint markings and all four of the main moons strung out in a diagonal line like this :-



(From http://web.singnet.com.sg/~ngkguan/astro09.htm)

The tripod I have is not very good and it was difficult to focus it very well but it was enough to be interesting. My daughter was fast asleep and my wife said it was far too cold to be outside. Maybe a well-wrapped up trip to the Coastguard station one night would be in order. There is a large car-park right by the station and it is often full at the weekends. You can drive the car right up to the promenade and read the paper with the wind and rain battering the car. Sometimes, people are warned not to go there in case they get washed away. Out in the estuary, there is a large wooden post held up with diagonal spars which was one of two Mile markers used by ships entering the Mersey to estimate position and speed. The othe one was ..er .. a mile upstream but it vanished some time agao only to be found during the construction of the new Crosby Leisure Centre, buried in the dunes. It must have been a slow news week because this made the front page of the local paper. This reminds me of the recent question about a day when the BBC cancelled the radio news because nothing happened and played Piano Music instead. This actually occurred on Good Friday 1930 (see the Day with no News) but it must have endured for some years because either Morecambe and Wise or The Two Ronnies did a sketch where there was no news on TV so they showed a piano player who was subsequently shot which of course brought the news-reader back on screen with the breathless announcement that a Piano Player had just been shot. I know it's not very funny but it's a classic all the same even if I can;t remember who it was. I am pretty sure it was Eric and Ernie. Not up to the standard of the Singing in the Rain sketch or Breakfast to the tune of The Stripper but OKish.

It is a wonderful, cold and sunny winter's day here. The haze is lying over the city softening the vapour trails and trying its best to define a line between the sky and the ground but it looks more like those pictures kids do before they understand perspective and leave a gap between the land and the sky. Sky is up and land is down. What is at the join? The infinitesimal! I hope it stays as nice for the weekend. A long walk in the cold somewhere would be nice but then again there is a Pop Art exhibition at the Tate. It's actually about shopping but the union of that set and Pop-Art is large. Spot the allusion to Venn diagrams from all those years ago at school. Actually Venn Diagrams make good art on their own. Maybe you could create an artwork by asking people questions about themselves and then displaying the results as Venn Diagrams. Even better and this is quite exciting, get the visitors to the exhibition to answer questions about themselves using some form of computer equipment and then display those results as Venn Diagrams on huge wall-mounted screens. You could extend the questionnaire to be web based as well and use those data. Apart from the wall-mounted displays, all of that is within my ability and possession at the moment. Sounds like the result on an Oblique Strategy doesn't it? The starting point was me asking Martin for a random phrase to kick this off and he suggested Jupiter. I learnt Venn Diagrams before I went to secondary school but I do remember my O-Level maths teacher doing a lot about it. His name was Mr Pears and he is third from the left on the Front row (Those sitting - not the charming children doing the Harvey Smith Salute on the floor) in this picture. I am sure he is dead now but I remember him as an excellent teacher as was Mrs Pearce who is sixth from the right (again on the chairs) in this picture (which is the left half of the whole thing). It is strange to think of all these Cherubic looking children being into punk rock and ska but they were. I wrote 'puck' rock there which is probably a Freudian slip relating to the rural aspect of our school. I don't think I will ever go back as no-one would know me now. Mrs Pearce may still be there but surely no-one else?

Longing sigh! resigned shrug of the shoulders and back to work.

Twin Tub with Guitar

The title above is linked to a wonderful site. I saw Twin Tub with Guitar and various other of Bill Woodrow's sculptures at the Tate a few years ago but I never imagined he had made so many as his website shows. This is interesting modern art. I was asying to someone who has just seen a Tracy Emin show, that a lot of modern art is worth visiting even if you don't like it (or actively hate it) simply because it is so interesting. There is no line between artists who are in it for money and those whose motivation is more er... artistic. You sometimes wonder if some artists just try to think of the most obscure and stupid thing to exhibit for the sake of taking the mickey or whether they really believe they are doing something worthwhile. Bill Woodrow's stuff is actual sculpture with talent and artistry but what about crumpled up pieces of paper stuck to a wall? or the lights going on and off in an empty room? You can see why Modeo man thinks modern art is rubbish (Not Modern Life is rubbish - that is all just a Blur to me), but then mondeo man likes things which need talent. (I am only being half ironic there).

More Modern Art here - the nominations for the 2003 Beck's Futures Award. The stuff which catches my eye (and is also easy to get to because it is specifically a web-project) is Nick Crowe's. I especially like the spoof site for the Tate Gallery, a sort of self-reference, though I warn you that the accompanying music is as cheesy as Tesco's Dairy Aisle. The 10 Point Plan for a Better Helsinki is also rather good but you will need Acrobat Reader. A website without words, just shapes and colours. Maybe Tonight. Just Maybe.

Codex Mendoza

Black mood got blacker for a while and then, personally lifted slightly but for others it has been a terrible day.

My picture is now on the Internet at this location. Cup of coffee to the first person to email me at rdeweyden@hotmail.com with the correct position.

Capacidad

Black mood at the moment. Various things seem to be conspiring to make life as difficult as possible but as I have said before, I am a lot better off than 99% of the world's population and I mean not only in monetary terms. I keep returning to very bad poetry at the moment. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my old 'Metrical Journals', and I have tried to start getting back into writing them. Yesterday's poem was the first and was just random thoughts over lunchtime, a bit like my Random Fridays but in verse. I have managed to dg out a cartrdge pen so that I can write long hand rather than the short scratchings on the Palm. My Brother sad yesterday that he's fed up wth ths country and wants to emigrate to New-Zealand. I don't think he is serious and I am sure that 'The Lord of the Rings' has not been his influence. Many things mean I cannot contemplate this at the moment. I did think about Canada some time ago for no other reason than seeing Linda Kitson's journey across that country by train. This was part of the Great Railway Journeys (Why is that not Journies?) series on the ever wonderful BBC. I love travelling by train though I don't often use them. Usually it is only on holiday that I manage to get on board a touristy type train. The main rail system in this country is falling apart; only this week the Government has given money to help ailing rail company, Connex which has been the greatest joke in the privatised rail system for ages. A good non-crowded train journey is always exciting. I used to love travelling home from here to Malvern on Christmas Eve but now I imagine it is hell. Give me the Ffestiniog railway over that any time. The railway has one terminus at Porthmadog, and the trains leave across a long pier (see it here in a storm). We used to walk across it when we weren't actually travelling on the trains and would have to go down the bank when the trains went by. We have been promising to take my daughter on the train sometime but I think it will have to wait for some better weather, though it would be quiet at this time of year. Come to think of it, there is no need to emigrate. Things are quite good here.

Animism - Dynamism

Was it always this sad or bad?
Or is it duty denies me refuge
in the insanity of happiness?
the dances split by days
and joined by midnight,
when we, as cool as Angels
girded cities with our laughter,
to die each night in poison
wrought so lovingly from earths
and fields we loved in daylight.

Between the hop fields lie the roads of 1897,
the single tracks of memory like cilia or synapse.
The empty sky flattens all this agriculture
to its formless best, the nourishment of history,
and I feel this should have been a battle ground,
so quiet with the ages gone and wasted.
Ghosts and ancestors drink together in these towns;
they live and love the winter with their faded minds
before their judges, drunk and cold, dismayed and old,
die happy in the warm-lit bars of distance.
No Government could reach this place, no tendrils
of the Vortigen we have to charge us with insanity,
to break our minds with virtual, grey anxiety.
The world is far away from here, so lost and far,
and we speak in languages they banned so long ago,
and sing the battle hymns of revolution
though we have lost all idea of reason, meaning
and the danger they once possessed for us.
We could kill with song and sound
at distances they could not reach with any gun.
We could sing them dead each midnight
and then retire for heavy suppers in the bars
we made of silence and ungoverned land.
This is the passion we have lost,
the rhymes of nineteen-eighty-four,
so metrical and loved backwards in the woods
and ice-bound lanes of this, the last, lost county.
See us in the detail, in the maps and gods,
the obscene pagan carving on the Christian church.

This is animism living in the marches.

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire.

Is it me or does the world seem slightly madder than it was a few months ago? The boss men seem to be as thick as ever and we do nothing about them. Maybe they are mildly more intelligent than the rest of us and so we don't really notice. The people in charge don't seem to have any intelligence which allows them to carry out acts which the majority of people find positive. They are good at justifying their actions with bluster and obfuscation so that it sounds like they had no choice and that 'it was for our own good' rather than the reality which is that it is for their own good and their egos.

This minute, I have just read that Mary Hansen of Stereolab has been killed in a cycling accident (See here for BBC article). Rather than pithy words, an action which would have met the ideals of Mary's ethos would definitely be in order today and, as it says on the website, spin some lab vinyl tonight.

This has led me to thinking about how, the death of Mary Hansen, would for most people mean nothing. It is only because I like Stereolab and know the names of the band members, that it caught my eye. I suppose she counts among my list of ther Great and The Good but she would also register if she was on my dislike list as well. Do we all know too much about the world to stay sane or is it just that growing up and gaining responsibilities and duties means that we worry more about how things will turn out in the long run? I sometimes catch myself wondering what the world will be like after I am dead and trying to tell myself that it will not matter because I will be insensible to it. That does not work because I care now about my descendants, all of them and how the world will be for them. There are many things to worry about in the world at the moment and the worst of them are not the dangers of terrorism but of environmental impact. The great plagues of the middle ages and later, had a far more devastating affect on the world than anything I could dream of. In fact, until recently, just existing was painful enough for most people but to them it was normal. Are we getting into Zen here? Life is all pain and it is only by accepting that fact that you can rise above it and by so-doing stop the pain affecting you. As one of my colleagues says - deep breath and calm down.

From Birnam Wood to Dunsinane

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear.

I finished The Girl in a Swing and feel slightly empty. When I picked it up to re-read last week, I had no recollection of that happening the first time I read it, but now I seem to remember a period of deep melancholia simply because the book had ended and I didn't want it to. The story is dark and frightening ( I could not read it in bed) and yet you feel uplifted for having known the characters. I need to write a note to myself about how it made me feel so that I will not forget next time I pick it up (in about 2021). The book has a masterly weaving of the Agamemnon with a modern tale. So much of the story goes untold and it is better for that. As far as I can recall, there are no descriptions of the appearance of even the main characters; you are left to make up your own image. In your head, they become your own ideals. Read it and you will want to be there. The beauty of the intetnet is that as you read you can look up locations and in this book, they are all real (as they are in most of Richard Adams' books). See the Coombe Gibbet, The Blowing Stone, the Uffington White Horse where Karin wishes for something to make their fortune and has the wish answered in the form of The Girl in the Swing. I understand that in real life, the Enigma of the Girl in a Swing factory has been unravelled which makes a nice postscript to the book. Right! Now to try and find Watership Down (read the customer reviews). I do seem to recall the same sense of disappointment that the book had finished as I did with The Girl in a Swing.

I am feeling confused at my lack of memory of the first reading of The Girl in a Swing. I seem to remember that all the German Romantic Poetry (There seems to be a logic in putting 'Romantic' after 'German' - The other way round would mean something different) was what first made me write my own (awful) poems. My favourite poem from he book is one by Heine which starts 'Wenn ich in dein Augen Seh..' (When I look into your eyes). I can't find it on the web other than for the first line and I can't remember it well enough to write it down without spelling mistakes. I had forgotten the poem, 'The Dwarf' (Or the Gnome).
but it made me sad this time. From all ths falls every poem have ever written and therefore I am grateful for that, (even for the bad ones). I was looking through the notebook I bought in Bali in which to write poems, and found one I had forgotten or overlooked because I though it was bad and it was strange. It was narrated by one the girls in a Trance Dance and seemed to question why she never remembered what happened in the Dance. Of course I have forgotten to bring it with me today so you will have to wait. Maybe I will look at again and see that it is really bad. Anyway, here is the first part of the long poem which I posted the other day and then took down because I didn't like the ending. And now to post and publish.

Un-titled November 2002

I returned to a most special place in memory,
by accidental and un-thought out design,
to walk the blasted, empty tracks
with the minds of all the academic early men
who burned their vision into my mind
from the depths of artifice and ingenuity.
There are people at a distance,
known faces, without names but loved
and happy in this interval of real-life.
I could not speak to them for fear of knowing
them and forcing dredging of our common memory
for things we think the other likes or wants.
The day darkens, dampens and encloses me,
wraps me like some tiny animal
the children found beside the road and loved
and thought that they could mend with love.
My mother at the door, corrected them
and wrung the necks of those poor creatures,
sending many children green and crying
away into the night that suddenly was darker,
colder than before, with less love than they thought.
But I was raised above this fate and was loved,
unspoken but with definity if not divinity.
The tracks are gloomy, dripping, and colour
all the stream with grey complexity, shadows
of the mazes summer makes to shelter animals.
But here, they open up and only ghosts find cover.
The track walks on ahead and opens into fields,
un-sown pastures growing earth and nothing more.
If no Crow spoke in that furrowed, hallowed ground,
I would not know it, for it begged a raucous caw,
synesthesia of earth and bird-cry,
linked by twenty years of poetry from school to here.
I stop at this edge, imagining myself a target
of the raptors, high and black and mighty,
ready to fall to earth and tear and pinion
any idiotic creature mad enough to run through here.

Breaking on waves of Mellaril.

I don't know what to write about. I am steaming through TGIAS and it as if I have not read it before. I seem to have changed so much that the whole thing is completely new and exciting. Occasionally, something surfaces but I am having to re-image the whole book. The cover and the title make it seem like a potboiler but is certainly isn't. It also isn;t anything like any other Adams books and I can see why it raised eyebrows when it first came out. Definitely not for children and even with its terror and nasty things, it is one of those books you do not want to end probably because that would underline the end of the love story which is what it is really about. Being a father now, I have a different attitude because of things I will not define so as not to spoil the story if you try to read it. And with that it is back to the book.

No Passport Required

I finally finished Molesworth and what a surreal ending it has. I also read two more Horrible Histories and learnt loads about Scotland and all the English kings since William the Conqueror who I didn't know was illiterate. King John could not read either so he never signed the Magna Carta (Latin for large wagon - making John the first white van man). We were always told at school that Richard I was the nice one and John was the nasty piece of work. Recently I have started to realise that this is all just propaganda. The whole lot of them seem to have been ignorant thugs, thieves and murderers. 'Gawd Bless yer Maam.' seems a little empty after this. All this does not show too many repuplican sympathies; the Royal family do NOT rule the country do they? The fact that an airhead Royal was number three in the poll of Great Britons is a little worrying. The other Royal in the list was by no means an airhead though she did show some thuggish tendencies. She is of course this person :-


(From Amazon.co.uk)

In his programme about Windsor Castle, Dan Cruickshank sauntered past this painting hanging on the wall of one the state rooms without comment which should not have annoyed me but it did. I am not one to equivocate the past so I will move on to current reading matter.

I have, at last, started 'The Girl in a Swing' which has a far deeper intellectual meaning than I ever guessed when I read it at 19; All this stuff about The Agamemnon and the various allusions to other high-brow literary stuff. It actually struck me on starting this second reading that it is actually a bit plummy but I am sure that is deliberate in order to contrast the up-tight Englishman with the abandoned behaviour of his Danish Lover. What I did get from it all those years ago, was the unique atmosphere of Southern England Summers which pervades the book. I don't recall anything which made me think it was winter though I am sure some of it was set in that season. I have also discovered that the original edition of the book had to be withdrawn as the subject of a lawsuit by a woman called Kä the (it has the space) which was the name originally used for Karin. Some articles say that the name was changed from Kä the Geutner to Karin Forster because it was easier for English speaking audiences. For a book with so many literary references, this seems unlikely. Just shows how history is written. I am only a tenth of the way through it and Karin has yet to appear. More after more.

Drones

I listened to In Tune last week as I normally do, driving home from work. The live guest for the day was the medieval music group - Mediva - a spelling which gave me trouble when looking for their web-site. Their music is exquisite, a rareified mix of voices and those many 'interesting' ancient instruments which make a sound, a modern musician could never hope to match for all his technology. So much Medieval music use drones to fill out the sound. Modern music, even religious music seems to think that the melody will carry everything when the real world looks for continuation and repeat rather than the full set of variation. I often feel that this is why the thump-thump of most dance music appeals to most people at a young age. As I get older and my tinnitus removes the top-end of music, I feel less inclined towards the Bass and Drums and more drawn towards drones and defined sounds. There is so much scope for music. You remember those kiljoys who come out with a list of all the possible permutations of the twelve notes and then say that all possible musics have been written. That ignores the major part of music, the sound itself. Then there is the infinite range of playing styles from my clunky sub-Dave-Brubeck block chords to the delicate flowers of the most accomplished Classical musician to the subtle yet fast hammering of the Kotekan. Kotekan is breath-taking. It is like that mid-eighties effect of interlocking melody in different channels of the stereo like in 'Love and Dancing' by The Human League. However Kotekan is an infinitely variable thing rather than a sledge-hammer repeat using dub-techniques. You could say it is like two virtuoso pianists improvising with each other at double speed. Kebyar music, of which Kotekan is an integral part is like rock music and indeed is not much older than it. This has made me think of another variation which buries the myth of all possible musics, that of the scale. Balinese and other Indonesian music uses scales different to our twelve notes. Indeed, older Western Classical music used scales slightly different to modern ones. Taking the 40Hz concert pitch and deciding on the other notes based on the Pythagorean description may result is something harmonious but is it right all the time. So much rock music is detuned to create the effects. Want exactness? Use a sine wave generator or a Stylophone though of course at the time they first came out I wanted one and now, thanks to the Palm, I have one, yet another way to annoy your friends.

The world is so much better with a sound-track. If your name is Gareth and you have or had a copy of the book - Godel, Escher, Bach then email me at RdeWeyden@hotmail.com with the answer to this question - Where did you go that day when you didn't come into work and we went round to see if you were OK?

I did of course mean Planned Obsolescence. Bye.

Obsolescence or Art for Art's sake

There are strange things happening at the moment. I keep hearing "Ashes to Ashes" at odd moments mostly, it seems, as I get into the shower. Maybe the bathroom is haunted by Major Tom. I feel a bit blasted because of all this ASP. Occasionally it spills off my work machine and I think about implementing it on the web-site but I am resisting as this is simply a journal. Oh, what's the bloody point?


Everything seems a bit closed in at the moment. My head is a bit full but it is difficult to tell if it is a physical thing or something I am trying to get together in my mind. I so desperately want to write some poetry but it is just for the sake of writing something rather than having any ideas. I do have a few ideas but they are all old ones. Suspended in Gaffa might be a good description of what I feel like but for KTB it might mean something quite different. I though it was about a co-respondent who bottled out which shows how clever I am.

The weather here is awful. All day, the wind has been gusting and whistling around the building and our slightly strange feeling of being detached from the ground is not dissipated by the sound of large bits of debris being thrown into the huge metal rubbish skips on the site. The larger pieces actually make the building shake which is almost as dsconcering as the movement of the Clifton Suspension Bridge when large vehicles drive over it. I used to cycle down to it quite often and lean against the railing looking down. On several occasions, I was touched on the shoulder by a kindly old-lady who was checking whether I was OK (I had a major debate there as to whether I should use the word 'alright' but alright is all wrong). I always was OK thank you. Where was that little old lady when the Joy Division fan from our college launched himself of the bridge one rainy Saturday night? He was OK actually as he parachuted down suspened under his great-coat and landed in the mud with only a sprained ankle (well, I might not have the details right but the spirit is there).

The point is this. Rain is wonderful. Sitting on the step and watching it is wonderful. I love the rain. I love walking in it and I love getting inside out of it. I have never come across any situation worth dying for and I hope I never will. Music keeps us all sane.

Full Fathom Five

The joys of ASP are dragging me back to my actual work at very strange times so I am forcing myself to have a break. I was thinking of a random Friday but how would you tell and have I said that before? Gorky's Zygotic Mynci live not far away from us here and they often go to tea with Kate Bush a little like a mad community of famous people such as those in Stella Street but real. keep thinking of Wuthering Heights now just because I talked about Kate Bush. Gaffaweb? Why Gaffa and what does 'suspended in Gaffa' mean? Well if you spelled it right then I might know. Suspended in Gaffer as in Tape. Even then it doesn't exactly clear it up. It all goes slo-mo for a mo mowlan. No, I won't put anything of Molly's in this bit. Or Nora. If you did, all the little white bits of the shell would get between your teeth but Joyce loved her so that doesn't matter does it. I always mistake Joyce for Beckett. Hi there Sean! Beckett here. And there was a Spider who might or might not have been Elvis, living under one of the chairs. Thanguvureemush! That must have been the carfree (and carefree) days of the early 90s. What a decade! I went to Bali then. It is so sad that it won't be the same again. I didn't lose anyone in that bomb so why do I feel so angry about it? The music is beautiful. I was going to live there and sample the music for the rest of my life. Think of that. Trudging the mountain paths with nothing but a bottle of water and a portable tape recorder. With beads in my hair and flip-flops. I wouldn't even worry about the mountain exploding like it threatens to do. That is part of the world but blowing it up on purpose is so bad. Why bother to put any superlative negatives to this. It was just a bad thing. The people who do it are evil or mad or both. Is madness wth a negative outcome always evil? Can you always plead not-guilty through insanity. The worst things in this world can only be done by people who have something different in their heads or is it that we all have something different from everyone else. Ahh! That is the problem of course. We all want everybody else to be like us. I have worked out that if we followed the policies of the most prejudiced amongst us, we would reduce the population of the world to approximately one and he doesn't like himself that much. (Copyright Sue Townsend). The Spanish Inquisition would have to wipe themselves out but nobody expects that at all. Nobody! Six things about the Spanish Inquisition which you never knew. 1. They were not Spanish. Well yes they were. Torquemada was anyway and that is all I want to say about that. 2. Torquemada did not look anything like Michael Palin (Pangolin in Spanish). 3. Four of them came from Basingstoke but learnt to speak spanish in a Whelk Wharhouse off Galicia (Now sadly threatened by the Prestige Oil Spill so no more Whelks boys). 4. They were great friends of Galileo and actually let him out of house arrest for walks to the Video shop. Sorry! That should read Market. They didn't have shops then - or Videos - well only Betamax. 5. The never wore the colour Mauve - because it hadn't actually been invented then. 6. I really know nothing about them at all but you probably guessed that didn't you. Hi Dad. The end has been signalled! Sapphire and Steel have been assigned and of course are nowhere near beng Trans-Uranic. But wheres there's life ... Who ate Douglas Adams' buscuits? Everyone says it was them who told this story first but it never happened to me. Cease and Desist!

This is no time for the wedgy dance.

We went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets last night. I am slightly concerned that Ms Rowling has invented mind reading as so much of the film is exactly as I see it in my head from reading the books. Of course what this really means is that she is just very, very good at creating an image from very few words. The only thing that I got wound up about (and I got annoyed with it in the book as well), I always though mythical Basilisks were supposed to have legs like their real-life counterparts. I know this is like arguing about how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin and how would the basilisk have got into the toilets through the pipes if it had legs? I don't know why I mentioned it really. Struggling for something to criticize I suppose.

I wish to tie up all the world's computing power in order to answer the question about Angels and pins. I think the philosophical argument goes along the lines of how much space does an Angel occupy, the answer to which is no space and all space at the same time. This is like my everything and nothing loops. If a computer can handle complex numbers and produce the inifinity of the Mandelbrot Set, then it should have no problem with Angels and Pins. No I am not being serious but it is an answer to those pseudo-scientific philosophers who try to turn vacuous thought into concrete mathematical equations which is as meaningful as the advert for a pen which has been used to write down a complex but very suspect equation that turned out to be for a Vodka-Martini. I can't find the exact equation but you can bet there were many disagreements over how correct that is. I know nothing about drink-mixing (except mixing Southern-Comfort and Cider in 1987 - never again) so here the topic ends.

Shop-fronts

I had to catch the bus home last night. It is quite dark when I leave the site now and as I had no book other than the Palm top, I spent the journey looking out of the window. (How do people manage on the tube when there is no view from the window other than a 150 year old brick wall?) It was quite comforting seeing all the shop-fronts whistle by in the near-dark. I find myself stepping outside of my own worries and inventing back-stories for the many tiny events I see. Of course nothing specific has stayed with me except the whole atmosphere. Channel 4 use vertical bars in many of their logos and occasionally they have the view from a vehicle as it drives along a busy road. This maybe good but nowhere near as good as the BBC2 logos which for the last 10 years have been the pinnacle of TV ident design. The BBC 2 logo is an adventurer, a real hero to be looked up to. The trouble is that his fee now has to be split with all the other twos who accompany him in his daredevil exploits. I especially like the one where the Sergeant Major Two blows his whistle to start the tumbling of a long line of Twos in the manner of dominoes, but the first in the line falls the wrong way and scuppers the whole thing. The Sergeant Major gesturing to the prostrate number is a very nice touch. It is quite amazing that an essentially fixed figure can be given character just by moving it in a certain way.

I had to browse a few TV sites to get the links above and all this reminded me of the short on BBC2 called "Look Around You" This is one of those 10 minute fillers that the BBC put on at 9:50 in the eveining just before the half-hour programme before Newsnight (All hail to the the great god Paxo) and is a spoof of many different schools programmes from the 1970s/80s. My schools never really used TV programmes so I only remember a few but Look Around You seems to have caught the style particularly well. The phrase 'write that down' is used a lot and I think it comes from a programme called 'Experiment' which had a very deliberate narration where everything was done just so. I suppose it was so schools which could not afford the full set of scientific equipment could still witness the results. I have just found the 'Look Around You' Periodic Table which looks pretty normal except for a few of the elements which have changed slightly from what I remember. It reminds me of Simon Patterson's Great Bear, a reworking of the London Tube Map (synchronicity hey?) which we have on our wall at home. The original Tube Map is a design classic in itself and Simon Patterson's version is a simple homage to it. What is it about something that makes its design memorable. The difference between good and bad can be so small. Too much design is bad. The best web-pages are the simplest and the most intuitive. As soon as you find yourself asking what would be nice on a page, you are considering too much.

It's just a lot of water you know

The Horizon programme on homeopathy wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be though although I thought James Randi was as much as a showman as Uri Geller. I should have linked to his site yesterday for the sake of balance. And by the way Dad, I bent the spoons by brute force but you knew that didn't you?

Why has the 'A' key on my laptop keyboard worn out when none of the others have? I say worn out but it is just the lettering rather than the key itself. Of course if I was Julie Burchill, or AA Gill, it would have been the 'I' key.
At least it's not the 'w' key. I can't think why it is the a key. Maybe a look back through the archives will tell me. Well, today is certainly an interesting entry isn't it?

All dates ever referenced. If you leave out diaries and calendars, have all dates been referenced? Of course not! What about April 17th -15,634 CE? That was the day that the first European settlers landed in the North American continent. Well it might be. Have all dates since 1 CE been referenced? Well some of them went missing didn't they, 11 days in September 1752 but that was only Britain and the Colonies. I don't really know what I mean by 'referenced' but every day since a very long time ago has been someone's birthday.Randomness will get you in the end. The world is as grey today as it has ever been. Those pesky rabbits have it easy don't they? And linking rabbits to something I have been meaning to write about, (??) I found 'The Girl in a swing' in the garage at the weekend. I have managed to stop reading it and finish at least one of the others on the pile but it is sitting there as a treat. I was struck by how close the text is because I remember it to be a short book but that maybe just because 'Watership Down' and 'Shardik' were so long. A treat indeed.

Consider Transitions

From what to what? Or where to where? There is too much to think about as well as too much to visit. I am in my thinking about everyhting and then nothing phase again. Trying to break the program. Is madness just a local breakdown of the program? Maybe the system is designed to break down locally rather than completely. There is only ever a memory exception rather than a blue screen which requires a re-boot. All this is just random chatter. And what will happen when one of the programs begins to think about itself? One of my systems can quite happily handle recursion but that is because we know about error handling. What about thinking about the Catalogue of Catalogues which contains itself ... or doesn't.

Why did the BBC remove the brilliant theme tune from Horizon and replace it with a 2 second version? It was a complex, weird time-signatured, uplifting piece which gave us hope that science would save the world rather than destroy it. Like the programme itself, the music has been dumbed down until it just about holds an essence of the original without any of the emotion. There is a Horizon programme on tonight which is about homeopathy (It will probably be more like HomeAPATHY). That makes me sound as if I don't believe in it. Maybe I don't but there needs to be work done even if just to prove that the Placebo effect is in operation. I suppose there is the basic proof that the water used to dilute the active substance still retains some form of 'memory' of that substance long after the dilution has removed all chance of ever finding any molecules of the stuff ytou put in it. After all, Quantum theory has some weird ideas like electrons travelling through both slots. Why couldn't the molecules go into all the water? James Randi is involved again and while most of the time I do agree with him he does seem to be a bit 'Newtonian' if you know what I mean. For all normal experience he is right but just a few times something maybe involved that is still within the realms of science and yet off the wall enough to seem like 'magic'. This does not make me think that Uri Geller is anything other than a fraud and a showman by the way. If your computer does not work after visiting this site then don't blame me.

Quantum ille canis est in fenestra

Somewhere, about 8000 miles directly below me, the sea-bed of the South Pacific is teeming with all sorts of weird things some of which are not know to science. Only 8000 miles away as the crow flies or rather the mole burrows (if it had a pressure suit with high thermal protection and a full set of drilling equipment).

I was watching Fred Dibnah's program about various British buildings yesterday. He visited the huge Georgian dockyard buildings at Chatham which are huge despite being just large sheds. They also have rounded ends which makes them look very modern. It struck me that the number of placse I don't know about in the world is countless. I have been to a lot of places and yet obviously there would be more things in the world to look at than I could possibly ever get around to visiting. Even just in this country, there are many places which could keep your attention. I sometimes get struck by the thought of all these places existing when I am not looking at them. Right now, those dockyard sheds are still there, probably echoing top the start of the day but what about the middle of the night? Driving along a remote road in the rain, I will see a small wood, out on its own and realise that it has been there for years and will still be there when I think about it at night, with the rain dripping through the trees. Worse still, if I hear of some terrible disaster, I will imagine what I was doing at the exact moment it occurred. These devastating events, seem to occur without causing a ripple over most of the real world; it is only the man-made network which relates news as it happens, that makes these things real to us. The terrible thing these days is that it has to happen to the Western world for it to impinge on our media. The genocide in Rwanda was top of the news for days but it was all so remote, there was no real horror, just relief that it didn't happen to 'us'. When you think about these things it becomes clear that many times, thousands of people are killed in single massive events and it never reaches our main news unless of course it happens to white people in America, Europe - the usual places. There is a Posy Simmonds cartoon about the famine in Eithiopia where the usual middle class chatterers (yes I am probably one myself) watch the terrible suffering in the African camps. The scenes are marked in big letters - FAMINE - STARVATION - PESTILENCE - DEATH. The watchers have their emotions described in tiny letters - sympathy - anguish etc. The next scene shows the food aid reaching the camps marked again with little letters - aid - relief - medicine. Finally as the people see the television pictures of this, their reaction marked in big letters is HOPE - RELIEF - etc. Which sums up what we actually do by sending the small amount of aid. Most of the western aid is a sop to make us feel better. The real aid would be to change the way we muck around with the rest of the world. There is an exhibit at the Eden project which details the various stages which coffee goes through to bring it to our kitchens. I knew nefore seeing it that there were plenty of middle men and various mark-ups but I didn't realise that it was something like 40 stages - each of which adds to the price we pay without giving anything to the people who do the really hard bit at the beginning. Some people make money on coffee as it stands untouched in wharehouses, like they do with oil as it gets shipped around the world for the convenience of a few businessmen who have the cash-flow to juggle it, with the real risk that the aging ship in which it is transported will break up and deposit the stuff on a beach somewhere and still the owners get their money because of the insurance. Witness The Prestige. Everyone involved is pointing at everyone else to say who is to blame when in truth they ALL are. A little investment in double hulls would reduce the risk. A bit more investment in other forms of energy would remove the need to transport all that oil in the first place. Do you love your car?

The Antipodes

Just before I went to sleep the other night, I became aware of everything directly beneath me and this led me to wondering what the exact antipodes of my location looked like. I am aware that it is probably ocean at the exact location which made me wonder what the sea-bed looked like instead and whether there were any creatures about at the time. I have been looking for a suitable picture to put in but I have been distracted by the Easter Island statues. They are pretty cool things. You can get fibreglass ones and while one might be nice in the garden, it would take up far too much room.

I am on my evening help-desk duty again. There are a few people left but it is really quiet again. Too Quiet. Maybe I should make some noise. I know! I am going to perform my own interpretation of 4.33. It will be a live performance but no-one from John Cage's estate will be able to hear it as they are not here. So they cannot sue me. It will be to accompany the beautiful sunset. Actually that was an hour and a half ago so it is to accompany the myriad lights of this teeming metropolis which need no music. I have mentioned already when I was in the Pennsylvania Hotel in Manhattan and how looking down on the streets from the 50th floor was weird because all the sound was filtered out. We are only on the third floor here but all but the loudest sounds are swallowed up.

A bonus entry for you this evening. Happy Trails!

Reading 2 - Mary Magdalen 4

This title means nothing at all; it is just that I asked Martin here for a random title and all he could come up with is "Why the hell am I here?". In just the time it took me to type that, I have thought about the use of the word 'hell' in this blog and how it would render my site unacceptable in some circles and yet the internet is rife with bad language, porn sites and all the other things which are considered the dark-side. Many, Many blogs are punctuated, adjectived, adverbed etc with the active proccreational word just for the sake of using it. I can be as angry as I like on this blog and not use it but some of the people using it are not angry at all. It just seems to be a habit. Because it it so forceful to say, it seems to have got away with not being considered a cliche. This article - Expletive Deleted (Warning - naughty words) at the Guardian is a useful point of reference and for a funny story (Warning again) read this letter in reply to that article though it makes a serious point as well. If you are aware of my general stance on such things then you will have guessed that I am not totally against the use of the word, rather I am against its use as a constant solution to all forms of adjectival, adverbal etc aphasia which seems to afflict everyone today. Well! Not everyone heh?

No complaints about 'Adverbed', 'Adjectived' please. I like them. Where would we be if the language didn't change? We wouldn't have such wonderful words as 'leveraged' .

Remember Rob Newman? I always liked him even in the depths of the childish humour that was The Mary Whitehouse Experience. He is a deep thinker as proved by this review of his latest stand-up. His first Novel, Dependence Day was quite good as well though I seem to remember he wrote a second which was so dark and dire as to not be available from Amazon which makes me think it was by someone else. Naomi Klein would be proud and she has the bottle as well I am told. Klein .... Bottle ... Get it? Go here then. I have also found Toroidal games. I can't even get the hang of regular chess so I don't think I will be trying them out.

Another bitty day. Bye.

Rabbit-Proof Fence Number 1

An excellent film. Exactly as the reviews say, not relying on sentamentalism to make a very emotional point. Bill Bryson's Down Under first made me aware of what the Australian Government (and that really means the British Government for a lot of the time) did to the Native Australians. I always had a vague idea in the back of my mind; my Aunt worked in Australia for some time; but to find such passion about the injustices of the colonial times in a book by an author noted for his comedic passages waa quite refreshing. It is difficult to carry on writing about these events without sounding patronising so it is enough to say that many, very bad things went on and that western Governments should step back and reflect on the fact that they still carry out wholesale exploitation of various parts of the world. Witness The Gap. It is a pity that style issues amongst western woung people will always overcome any misgivings they may have over how that style is achieved. Make a point and change the TV station every time one of those annoying Gap adverts comes on.

There was a story a few months ago about an TV executive who said that fast-forwarding through the adverts on programmes you tape off the the TV was theft. It was actually a cable TV company which you do have to pay for so there is a tiny amount of truth in this but read this article or this one (and of course any more you can find for the sake of balance). If you pay for your television, then pay an amount that allows it to be commercial free. Oh this is all very petty after starting with such a laudable rant. Still there is a link, as the advertisers are the last part of the big chain of business which causes the problems in the first place. Don't worry! You won't see me dressed up with bin lids throwing rocks at policemen in some anti-capitalist march. I am wet and an uter (sic) weed. That never helps anyone. But we don't need all this rubbish that they try and sell us. It has no emotional intensity.

Which reminds me of the wet and uter (sic again) weedy habit of putting the reason for a particular rating on film posters these days. I can handle 'Certificate 18 - Contains Sex, Violence, Swearing, Drug Abuse and oblique references to Squirrel Teasing'. though these days, a film like that does not really appeal to me - I am getting old. But how about 'Certificate PG - Contains scenes of Mild Emotional Intensity' ? which is the line for 'Rabbit-Proof Fence'. It takes something away from a really powerful film. It is almost as if the censors want to add something of their own opinion to the film, a sort of potted review. Nanny state indeed. These are the people who are responsible (though on the whole I have to say they do a reasonable job; it must be boring having to sit through loads of films just to see Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or do they get to choose the ones they watch?

Go and see Rabbit-Proof Fence.

Witchy Witch

I want there to be a power cut so I can sit across the valley and look at all the shadowy houses and see the stars the way they are meant to be seen. Actually bearing in mind there seems to be a crisis in the UK power generating industry, I may get my wish. Apparently TXU defaulted on £60 million they owed to the Drax power station. I heard a representative of the UK power Generators Association say in one breath that there was too much generating capacity around at the moment and not enough demand, something he said was from a basic economics text book, and then say that prices will have to rise. Big business is obviously too complicated for me (and for many of the people in charge I suspect). I just do not understand. I will stick to easy stuff like Relativity or Quantum Physics. The multi-nationals only survive because they are carrying out the equivalent of taking in each other's washing. R.F. Delderfield said this about the village where he set the start of the book 'Diana' though I suspect he got the idea from somewhere else.

I wanted to start this entry with a bit of mysterious prose and it was ok for a sentence. I then got distracted by the real world and I ranted about power stations. Concrete reality does so much to remove our ability to wonder at things. I have just written at least three different sentences which all sounded strange so I am going to stop now. Maybe more later.

The Universe is written using ASP

I know! I have taken the back off it and I can see all the workings. And yes it does use uncertainty generators but you can never either be sure where they are or what they are doing. That sounds like a few people I know.

I don't really think that the universe is written in anything. It's like all those robots you see on sci-fi programmes where the insides have electronics and wires. No real android type robot would look like the inside of a TV if you took th back off. It would be goo and man-made simulations of biological components. The first artifically intelligent android with anything like a human ability will be 'grown' and evolve intelligence in the way we do. Again we may have that undefinable limit at which the physical makeup of intelligent structures links into the conciousness of the being that it becomes. Any other solution will produce an 'empty' headed automaton no matter how much it knows. There are certain things which require far more intelligence than anything we can imagine, like reading body-language and moods or comtemplating contemplations. Thinking of everything and nothing at the same time. No matter what I have thought of over the years, I have never 'blown the processor'. I can contemplate anything even if I can't understand everything. I know what I don't know or can't know. I don't often watch Star Trek TNG but I caught the episode 'The Offspring' the other day in which Data created an android daughter called Lal who seemed to have developed emotions far beyond those of her father. In the end she 'died' and to be honest it was the most poignant thing I have seen on Star-Trek even though data didn't have the emotional equipment to deal with it in the way that I as a viewer did. I still don't get the idea of why Data can't use contractions such as 'Haven't' instead of 'Have Not'. All that brain power and he can't modify his speech enough to use a tiny little contraction. Sounds like a sort of mini Deus-Ex-Machina to clarify a point. We get the impression here in the UK that most Americans have to have everything explained to them (Witness 'The Madness of King George' Rather than '...George III' just in case it was mistaken for a second sequel) but when they can produce drama and comedy of the depth of Star-Trek and Frasier (and even certain parts of friends) they must be doing something right. Come to think of it most British Sit-com is very low-level compared with the likes of Frasier or Seinfeld. The last Comedy I can think of where you had to think to any great extent was Yes Minister though I was always slightly aware that I spoke more like Sir Humphrey than Jim Hacker. Of course this lack of cerebral comedy may be due to the fact the British Comedy with any depth tends to be turned into hour-long drama rather than half-hour sitcom.

I have just found this page of the Art in Malvern Calendar for 2002. The picture Elgar Country is exactly as I remember the views from the hills, absolutely beautiful. The picture has a depth I havn't seen in a painting before. So many times in pictures like these, all the objects in the view have been scaled to make them visible which tends to flatten the picture; this is just a straight image of what the painter saw without being a photo. Just sit back and imagine what you can hear and smell and feel. Time to finish before I fall asleep.

Shivering in my Cell

I think this is getting needlessly messianic. Why is everything so serious? Well listening to Mazzy Star doesn't help. I have no books with me today which leaves me feeling slightly uneasy despite the fact that I never ever read any books other than at home. They're usually there just for comfort. I do have a copy of Scientific American but that is one the web anyway. Oh well! As we are probably here just to enjoy ourselves, why worry about anything? I know that never satisfies anyone with an enquiring mind. There just seems to be a big gap which needs filling in order for us to understand what exactly we are and what we are doing. A sort of general feeling of angst that you are missing something without being quite aware of what you are looking for. Does this gap get filled as you get older so that you can be happy that you are fulfilled? I bet it doesn't. Meanwhile just listen to those records, see those films and be good.

Frankly I'd rather be here than in Philadelphia :-



(From the Malvern Hills Conservators website)

I feel so empty because I cannot think of what to write. Sometimes, the lack of thoughts to translate into these entries can be quite depressing, like a really bad dream or the nagging feeling that there is nothing to look forward to: I don't mean long-term, just that the next few days don't have anything out of the ordinary. Only they do. I am going to see Rabbit-Proof Fence one day and then Anita and Me next week. The link here is to the book which in some ways was like a teenage Stig of the Dump though it is obviously a lot more than that though it never seems to say anything overt about being Asian and growing up in the Uk in the 70s. It was obviously just an attempt to detail Meera Syal's experiences rather than to make a point. You life should just speak for itself and most people's lives do just that. It goes back to my idea above about the nagging gap. Just get on with things and you will fill the gap. My language is just not complex enough to say what I want to say, or maybe it is and I just want to get all the information out in one go. I could never write a novel, because I would have the whole plot of the next chapter worked out and would want to put it down rather than flesh it out. Sometimes I think I am still ten years old, trying to turn every English Essay question into something I want to write about; I must have lost so many marks for that in my exams. I onl;y just scraped through my English Literature O-Level because they never gave us anything we actually liked to read. I only managed to get the mark I did, because we had A Midsummer Night's Dream which I did enjoy rather than Henry IV (Part I). We also had "Where Angels Fear to Tread" which is dire if you are a teenage boy. I should re-read it but I probably never will. Why couldn't we have had Nineteen Eighty-four or some better poetry? I think I ignored all the poetry questions on the exam for some reason. We did no War poets just the old stuffy opium addicts - I sa Hullo Trees - Hullo Sky. (I don't think that now but kids want action not description).

I just went to the Molesworth link above and found another link (in this review) between 'The Goriller of 3B' and Harry Potter. Hogwarts is probably derived from 'The Hogwarts' - a Latin play by Marcus Platus Molesworthus.

New soundtrack before I go :-

Molam Dub - Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart.

Yes! alright! I know! Ben Turpin - The Cross-Eyed Comedian - was never in the Keystone Cops.

I wonder what happened to the Bees.

I finished Fermat's last Theorem and understood it. Well, as I said, it didn't go into any real detail of the proof. In fact it didn't even begin to get close to the chap[ter headings in the published proof. If you want a high level overview then go here. I haven't read any of this and I don;t intend to but it looks good as a link doesn't it. Time to re-read A Brief History of Time. I have started and finished three books in the past week - two of them were Horrible Histories which take about two hours to get through but one was FLT so I think my count is up shall we say. The Horrible Histories were The Groovy Greeks (and they really were) and The Cut-Throat Celts (they were a little bit) just in case you want to know. The best Horrible Histories are the Dead Famous series. The Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots ones are so good as to be almost icons in themselves. I know that sounds over-the-top but read them anyway and see what I mean. I wonder how difficult the Einstein one is? A stocking filler possibly if the one who needs these clues is reading. History in Bunk. Long live History. Spelling is Bnuk. I have started on "the Invention of Clouds" now so watch out for another spattering of diletante enthusiasm.

The house is full of the smell of Christmas pudding at the moment. Eight hours it took to boil them both. It was Stir-Up-Sunday yesterday which is so called because of the words of the collect for this day which is a useful reminder to every cook. A tradition in the same mould as Cheese-Rolling and carrying lighted barrels of pitch through the streets. The English are a very weird race even to themselves. John Timpson's book of Curious Days has an excellent list of various weird and wonderful events from around the country but there are many more which are not in and I am sure you can make a list of such things from your own locality wherever you are in the world. During the search of Amazon for the previous mentioned book, I came across this - John Timpson's Leylines which looks excellent - maybe a more staid approach than Julian Cope's but then again maybe a complementary approach. Actually, Julian Cope's book is not as hysterical as I may make out; indeed it has a deeply academic air of detail about it which may suggest that he is reclaiming the sites he visits for the original owners rather than the heritage industry which seems to have taken over all of our history. Everything has to be cosy which is where the Horrible Histories win because as they say, they leave in the gory bits and boy there were certainly a lot of them. I assume that kids still have to dissect animal at school these days though even when I was doing it, anyone could ask to leave the room (not many did). being a rural school, we were quite often subjected to various animals being brought in and opened up for the purposes of education; the biology lab would very often be perfumed with the aroma of an animal carcass being boiled to get the skeleton for mounting. Do schools still have those shelves of pickled biological specimens lining the walls of the biology labs? Ours was full of every type of animal you could think of. They would have pickled anything if it was offered. I am quite proud of the fact that I studied rural science. I think all schools should have an hour a week with a floating brief whereby various informational subjects would be slotted in to give kids a wider view of the rest of the country. Urban schools would do rural science and rural schools could do urban envrionmental studies. No massive curriculum or exams; just something with no pressure. Rural Science and Environmental Studies were the most enjoyed subjects at our school and not just because the teachers were happy to be diverted onto other things. I think our rural science teacher was actually a farmer of some sort, he certainly had worked on farms and painted wonderful images in your head, describing gathering in the hay on sunny summer days. He obviously missed out the description of wading through cow muck to get to the feed-sheds in the dead of winter but hey! he wanted us to become farmers. Not me though. Maybe I would be healthier if I had been but I think he realised that there was no chance of me being permanently in wellies (though I was at the time). I still have a scar of my left arm from the last ever rural science lesson I went to (It was in fact the last lesson I ever went to at his school), not beacuse he hit me but because I hit the door handle on the way out but it being last day at school I didn't feel it for ages.

(Insert your own dismissive farewell phrase or saying here).

Certain Uncertainty

Soundtrack - Serotonaility - Dr. Didg. (Oh! Hippy Days).

It may just be that I am getting old but it seems that everything is so much more un-defined than it used to be. I would have thought that as you grew up and got more experience of the world, your certainty about the outcomes of various acts would become stronger but in actual fact, I seem to be worrying more and more about not knowing what is going to happen. I suspect that the great and the good, the movers and shakers of this world have always been plagued by this doubt and it is because they are able to handle the guilt and nervousness which it promotes, that they are the people they are. However, recents events make the whole world seem a dangerously un-defined place. We are all just looking for stability but in these conditions there is no advancement. If people are happy, they will not move forward so probably we are looking at a decent catalyst. There are plenty of things which I see in the world which need changing but because I am relatively comfortable, I don't bother to shout about them as much as I should. Some of my friends might argue with that because I know I do rant about some of the injustices but I probably just sound like one of the Self-righteous brothers and not the Australian-Canadian singing duo either, though that would be nice to use another sketch show catch phrase. That's almost as tongue-twisting as Calliope Stephanides. Why do some people who want to change the world, want to destroy it? Ignorance is dangerous and ignorance and intelligence is doubly dangerous. Why do they reside in the same mind so often? It must be a matter of degree.

My 'I' key is playing up which probably gives you a good idea what type of laptop I am using to type this. Ppys nvr usd vwls dd h? So I am in good company.

And now for a comedy moment - Ian Cognito - (usual disclaimer about these opinions not being those of the referring page but still they are very funny 'cos I referred them and why would I want to refer to them if I didn't think they were funny.) I have had one of those music-fits-the-book-you-are-reading moments. Unfortunately, the 'book' was Ian Cognito's website and the music was My Little Pony by Dr. Didg. Not as incongrous when heard as you might have thought from the descriptions.

I always want to write 'back on your heads' at this point and always restrain myself. It seems naff to always use the same sign-off unless you want to turn into Shaw Taylor (Keep 'em peeled) or The Two Ronnies. Some people would argue that there is enough of me to turn into the two Ronnies but they would be wrong - it would be the Keystone Cops. (All of them apart from the cross-eyed sergeant that is).

Bank!

Very, Very Professional

No! I don't want to talk to you. You know how cool you are so don't ask me. Today is a random Friday. Starting with ... Fermat's last Theorem. How did something so simple become so complicated to prove. You can see why so many people tried to prove it over the years. I know all the words to this song. I can sing them to myself as they happen. They have discovered 'Mirror Matter' on an Asteroid. I think our discovery has flipped the Universe round because Martin is being nice to people. He'll be writing poetry soon and saying how horrible Jeremy Clarkson is. Four dimensional symmetry! Now theres a concept for evalutation. Two components both with real and imaginary portions. And you thought the plot of Dynasty was convoluted. Some say we are living in a giant computer simulation. Surely the designer would have put in a catch to make sure that none of his creations began to start thinking about this. When will the first computer be built which can think and understand that it is just a computer rather than conciousness. Actually, as soon as they can think, that is what they will know. The first computer to believe that is not a computer will be the first totally successful simulation of the human mind. And if we are living inside a simulation already then the creation of a simulation within it will be a real jump. Does this then open the way for the simulation to create further simulations. This is like the idea of creating Universes within our own. How can any simulation create everything we see, from El Lissitzky to Homer Simpson. Come to think of it, maybe Homer Simpson is El Lissizky. Paint him red and white rather than Yellow. Think of everything you have ever thought about and see if you can drive the controller crazy. If we all think at the limit of our ability maybe we could overload the system. Oh I know all this is rubbish. There is nothing outside the text as it were. There is no Back Story. But of course there is. Mmmm Yes! A nod and a wink! Mmmm yes. Nigel tells me that Rabbit-Proof Fence is on at the local multiplex which is a surprise. Next week has one evening accounted for. Has your week got at least one day accounted for? You are planning too far ahead. Video Killed the Radio Star though there is still The Prairie Home Companion. What a voice! It has been a quite week in lake whereever. Video Star! Staaaaarrrrrr. Mmm Yes. Oh where is that coming from Molly? They have gone and spoiled Dublin now. The Black Lake has been cleared. An Cat Dubh. Didgeridoo! That is Irish for Black Pipe or something. Like Sheela Na Gigs. I thought that they were only from Ireland but there are loads in the UK. In fact there is on at Kilpeck. Hereford. Two Centuries need to pass for them to catch up and I wouldn't want it any other way. Driving home through the empty hop-fields in the winter is something special. They are like a repeating phrase which burns itself into your mind. The winter trees! Would you try to stop me writing this if you could or is anyone actually reading as I type. I know you can read faster than I can type but imagine me typing as the words go into your head. Can you see the same Office things which I can see if I look up. No-one who has read this has ever been to my office so they don't know. I need to take a photo to post or I could do a drawing. American Dreaming! That is Dead Can Dance. I am sure there was a tune by CDC (DCD, whatever) in Adam Hart Davis' program. It was supposed to be a Tudor type track. What Adam Hart Davis did for us! That would be a brilliant program. Talking of Xylophones. Talking Xylophones! Talking Drums. I can speak with music like the sound of the wind in the empty ice-fields. A Drone that is not a Drone. Hey! Now just get in and close the door. The magic road which powers down to the sea. I used to travel it every month. My Aunt lives at the mountain end of this road. Head on down the M62. How do you write down the sound of a Harmonica? Maybe it is something like this WWWWWwwwWWWWrrrrggghhhhh. Or Genevieve! Larry was Addled. No! Larry Adler. Was he a communist? or was that Robin Hood or maybe the writer? They kicked them out anyway because McCarthy was sick and his friend Hoover Dam had a very interesting wardrobe. I dreamed I flew over the Hoover Dam in a small helicopter fitted with salad spinners. I dreamed a lot of other things which I can't remember. Men in a War. Phantom limbs. Phantom Minds more like. Absolutely no integrity. Absolutely no will whatsoever. I am tired of sleeping and there is so much to do. A Phantom Blog! Now there is an idea. A Blog which everyone knows about but which no-one can find. It exists at www.???.com. Who lives at www.a1.com? Why does it take so long to reach it? Maybe everyone tries that url and it is always clogged up. Our network is clogged up. A Zither! A Zither. Where does he live? Why am I asking more questions than I could ever answer? Is this a question? Yes! Back to A Zither or Z Ather. ZiatherIA. Zithery. A slithery zip. Actually A Slithery zip was the phrase I defined as my end point for writing this. As soon as I thought of the phrase I was to stop.

That is a bit like saying the cure for hiccoughs is to run around the house three times without thinking of Bill Bixby. It only works if you don't know that you are not to think of Bill Bixby. It helps if you don't know who Bill Bixby is so that there is less chance of you thinking of him. I hadn't actually sorted an end phrase out so A slithery zip was just a convenient end. Ah! But am I still writing the random paragraph? I am still asking stupid questions so I could be. Doctor David Banner incindentally, the Incredible Hulk's less incredible human alter ego. Try not thinking of him as a cure for anything.

Not thinking of Bill Bixby is a great placebo.

I was Carlito Brigante

Soundtrack (clue only) with a Nod and a wink towards El Lissitzky

I am struggling to remember why I started thinking about the film Rabbit-Proof Fence when I sat down to write this but I did and I am moved just by reading the trailer and the Empire review. All this and a Peter Gabriel Soundtrack (though I think the US version cover is better.) It isn't on yet around here - there is a slight defecit of art houses round here. There used to be the 051 cinema in town which ran the less popular movies. I have been trying to find if it is still open but I have been passed it everyday on the way home and I never notice. I saw Farewell My Concubine there about 9 years ago but that was my only visit. I used to go to the cinema every week and I made a point of seeing every British made film if possible. I saw some real rubbish (Splitting Heirs comes to mind and was probably responsible for me changing my policy). Still we have Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings to look forward to. I don't think I need to link to either of those do I?

I have nearly finished Fermat's Last Theorem. You know the time at about 11:30 pm when you think you should put down your book and go to sleep but you can't because you want to know what happens next. This does not often happen when reading a book about maths but it does with FLT. I almost didn't start this entry so I could finish it but as the last few entries have been quite short I thought I ought to carry on here. I suspect that my enthusiasm for the book has spilled over into enthusiasm in general. My next book is The Invention of Clouds and is about Luke Howard who first classfied the various cloud formations. How do people decide to write a book like this? we can only be thankful that they do.

Where is the music when you listen through headphones? I was just sitting back and listening to the music for a minute there, trying to locate where abouts it actually is. Stereo is still nothing like the real world experience of music. We can tell the direction of sound in three dimensions. I know there are special forms of stereo which use delay to try and re-create this effect but there is nothing like real music especially classical orchestras. I am trying to work out when my daughter will be sufficiently un-fidgety to go to a classical concert. She goes to sleep to classical music every night and won't let us listen to 'talking' on the car radio. We have been dreading the time when she decides that she wants to learn to play an instrument but at the moment she says she wants to play the triangle which suits us fine. Of course, if that means she wants to be a percussionist, then that means loud and expensive. For a percussionists loud and expensive web site go here. Of course, Evelyn Glennie is the only percussionist that most people have heard of ( and you hear her a lot further off than most musicians). We saw her at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall a few years ago when she played a piece she had commissioned from Django Bates for tuned kitchen. Django Bates has the score for The Archers Theme Tune - Barwick Green - on his website. Well actually, in the section headed 'scores' he says it is "under construction and meanwhile here is some music - Tum Ti Tum Ti Tum Ti Tum, Tum Ti Tum Ti Tum Tum. Or the surreality of the Archers. I come from the area and I tell you they don't make it anywhere near as weird as the place. It is like Twin Peaks with Worcestershire accents. (Damn fine Earl Grey at the vicarage though).

Oh dear. I have just seen that it should be Dum Di Dum rather than Tum Ti Tum.

Music in twelve parts - Again

You need to be hearing this as you read this to gain any understanding of how beautiful this piece is. It gets inside you like a long rain shower after a drought. I particularly like the description of it as ' a drone which is not a drone'. Drone, like minimalism belies the complexity of such works. I am not sure Philip Glass would agree but this is music designed to be played loud. It fills up the bads thoughts and yet lets the good thoughts fly regardless of any mood suggested by the keys or changes. My enthusiasm for anything but this has evaporated today so yet another short entry. I seem to be filling my mind's productive space with books at the moment.

Frontier

The exhibit which attracts most attention at the Texas Prison Museum is the old electric chair - Old Sparky - which is part of a section of the museum called 'riding the thunderbolt' though that may be CNN talking up their own story. How to make capital punishment into something like a theme park. They're all as bad as each other and they need their heads knocking together.

Typing styles and heavy pressure.

Martin has thought up an idea for a keyboard which would learn how heavily you press the keys and work out from the stype of typing whether you want something in bold or in italics. Bold wouldn't be too difficult but how would you type in such a manner as create italics? Piano keyboards quite happily create music covering the whole emotional range so it shouldn't be too difficult to create an typewriter keyboard with a similar range of input. Taking this further, there are so many input devices used for different musical instruments from drums sticks to the Theremin so why shouldn't there be many input devices for computers etc? I am beginning to worry that this is leading me to a discussion of 'joined up thinking'. Why should the ultimate goal of computer development be to have them accept input in the same way that we do? Computers shouldn't be white (cream/black/imac flourescent) boxes on desks or in racks; they should be just 'there' and accept whatever we care to throw at them anywhere. Upgrades? easy!

Happily this has opened up a whole world of discussion relating to Theremins and other such things. I desperately wanted a pocket Theremin some years ago but couldn't find one. Now they are everywhere. It must be difficult to get the pitch right on something so small and especially if you kept it in your pocket while playing. As I still haven't written the automatic In C or indeed any music/midi programs for the PC, it seems a little silly to clutter up the house with another useless gadget.

You will not believe this but I have just found a Theremin program for the Palm from this address. It may not be the real thing but it is a start and it has the source code. How to annoy your co-workers. Martin has just walked out without a word. Oh! He's back now.

Much as I admire John Cage and dislike the Wombles, I think it was a bit much when John Cage's estate sued Mike Batt for plagiarism over his minute of silence because it stole from 4.33. Pathetic isn't it? Ho hum! Back on your heads.

The set of all things which are NOT teaspoons.

Again I have started another book before finishing a previous one. At least I am half way through it in no time which suggests a completion date is imminent. I expect you want to know what it is don't you? It is Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh. I only bought it this weekend before you think it is another "Brief History of Time" ( which I have read by the way. Why is it supposed to be so difficult? - Looks smug and blows on bent fingers). It is amazing that something which can be so clearly stated in so few words takes so much effort to prove ie.

Cubem autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos
quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra
quadratum potestatem in duos ejusdem nominis fas est dividere:
cujus rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis
exiguitas non caparet.

Yes! I know I am being funny. What I really meant was :-

There are no positive integers such that x^n + y^n = z^n for n>2

I don't for one minute think that the book is going to go off in detail and explain the proof; as far as I remember it involves higher dimensional mathematics of a very complex nature. I did read and mostly understand The Code Book also by Simon Singh. A great science writer.

Right! I am off to initiate a new blog listing all the blogs which mention other blogs. Or should that be teaspoons? Oh read the book (or Godel, Escher, Bach) then you will understand. Is it me or is the world getting more complicated? Actually, I think it is really getting simpler and reverting to the easy options. Natural Philosophy makes the world a beautiful and complicated place. There now seems to be a sort of collective Asperger's syndrome which means that people do not relate to anyone but their immediate contacts; no-one wants to make the effort to see any other point of view. I had a dream once, that Britain was beset by local differences which turned it into another Yugoslavia. I still worry that it could happen; not revolution but anarchy. People are stupid and short-termist. Money, Sex, Food. Nothing else. Maslow seems to creep into my head at this point. (Oh that I had bothered with sociology) Their hierarchy of needs is truncated after the boody needs. Self-actualization? Who needs it? Me actually. No more jokes about doughnuts. Well, not today anyway.

Doughnut World

Much frivolity today regarding a large number of doughnuts brought into the office. Nothing I can blog on a family site like this so your own imagination can run riot.

I wrote 'Munch Frivolity' there by mistake. Those are two words which don't often appear on the same page let alone next to each other. I do remember a program about the cultural life of 'The Scream' which suggests that it is the most parodied image ever though the David sculpture,(the subject of another program in the series) is a close second. If ypou search for The Scream on Google image search, amongst the many straight reproductions of the painting you can find myriad parodies with people's faces superimposed over the centgral figure, cars driving at them, No fishing signs etc etc. In addition there are more subtle real-life reproductions with people in the pose. Maybe there is a website for all these and if there isn't there should be. Of course there is a Simpsons reference which links to the reverse continuous parody. There seem to be paraodies of many artworks using Simpsons characters like Nighthawks or this Michelangelo. Then of course there is more contemporary culture like this. I tried to find a Simpson's parody of 'American Gothic' unsuccessfully but I think it may be up there with 'The Scream' as one of the most aped images around and of course was parodied in the opening scene of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'

I have absolutely no idea what is going on.

So much must pass me by but so much sticks in my head. I have memories of so many things that is becomes mind boggling that the colours, textures, ambiences and every other parameter remains in there and can be found either deliberately or accidentally. If my auto-blog were to be produced and it had no filter, our minds would fill up billions of pages with just continuous descriptions of events. Time is relative not just in the Einsteinian manner but our lives just feel comfortable with being about so long. If we lived longer or shorter by an order of magnitude, we would not be comfortable with it but then again we would have evolved to be comfortable with it. I once read a description in Omni magazine, of life on a neutron star where due to the fact that chemical reactions would be faster (by virtue of not having any electrons to facilitate them), the life span of any creature would be many times shorter than ours. This would put them at odds with the speed of light across the universe meaning that they would never be able to reach us and if they did, they would not be able to communicate.

Lunch time is over. The weekend is nearly here.