Monday, March 31, 2003


EVERYBODY IS SHOUTING AT ME

Long delay there I know. I have been away on a course in London for two whole weeks and it was a real slog, being in a hotel and eating out at the company's expense. Unfortunately I have a cold and my voice has gone. I am having to whisper. It was quite weird watching TV yesterday because I was expecting everybody to have to whisper just because I was. Anyway, expenses are more important at the moment so see you later.

Wednesday, March 12, 2003


Some Friendly Voices

Soundtrack - Free, 26 track Punk CD - Then and Now

In two minds about this one. I didn't really hear much punk when it first hit the UK, though everyone else at school seemed to be into The Sex Pistols AND Led Zeppelin. Of course a lot of that was because it was 'dangerous' - well the Sex Pistols were. They used to bring the records into school just to show that they were cool because there was no way of playing them. I am thinking now of them listening to 'Never Mind The Bollocks' on their parents' gramaphone, anxiously poised to remove the needle when anyone approaches. I was lucky in my limted listening that I never had to play any records furtively probably becaise I didn't listen to anything controversial. Having just had a go at the little darlings, I have to say listening to punk in Worcestershire in the 1970s probably was quite dangerous. I am reminded of the reaction to the Castlemorton Rave. Anyway, the current album is a mix of old and new punk records - The Clash, The Hives, The Adverts, The Strokes. All 'The something'. Twenty five years is enough to make all that angst and terrible behaviour the norm. Are we generally more forgiving of the bad attitude or is it just that we all have it? We are onto the Undertones now. Teenage angst and playful obstinence rather than any political anger. What did you expect? I'm not Jon Savage or Griel Marcus. I may be a situationist and then again I may not. I don't actually know what one is but I suspect it has something to do with PostModernism. No-one actually knows what situationism is because they everyone falls asleep within 2 seconds of starting to read a 'text'.

Submission by The Sex-Pistols is so un-punk and so mid-seventies. What were they angry about? We know now that John Lydon actually likes Led Zeppelin so it is not surprising that the Pistols sound like them. Punk is not a Genre; it is an attitude. Ahh. Hong Kong Garden. I would say new wave but then again, I would have been beaten up for saying it.

When does not being able to play become being able to play. There are NO records where no-one has no musical ability at all. Not punk ones anyway. I used to listen to John Peel in the late seventies and early eighties when radio one was still on AM only and you had to tune it exactly or you got Radio Moscow interfering. He used to play the Comsat Angels a lot from what I remember and a lot of Reggae. Even then it was difficult to reconcile the mild-mannered janitor voice of Peely with the extreme records he played. But even in these far-flung outposts of musical incompetence, there was nothing as bad as some of the atonal rubbish they were playing on Radio 3 at the same time.

I was always on the brink of buying a Sleater-Kinney record and now I am hovering over the abysss like Daffy Duck waiting for the realisation of his predicament before gravity kicks in. Watch all spaces.

Monday, March 10, 2003


Extra link for the juvenile in all of us.


Are you still quibbling about the two percent difference in our DNA?

I read 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' again yesterday. I am still trying to work out how I ever got into TS Eliot. It wasn't Cats though Cats is certainly worthy of any praise which might have been diverted towards Prufrock or The Wasteland. Eliot always strikes me as a very technical poet, a literary draughtsman rather than a great artist. The emotions which are present are always negative ones, often of deep despair and worry about not having done enough in one's life. Eliot for the head, Plath for the heart (and everywhere else), though Sylvia Plath seemed to have the same internal engine of destruction which was only quieted by achievements though they both also seemed not to recognise how brilliant they actually were. Most of us are relatively happy with what we manage to do with out lives (though sometimes there is an overwhelming urge to do something which your father never quite managed).

Friday, March 07, 2003


Food Processors are Great

I was going to link you to the paper airplane simulator but that seems a bit trivial. Oh go on then. The Paper Airplane Simulator. So much of the web does seem trivial but them so much of life is just so. I now sound like the gently spoken vicar on thought for the day - "I saw a skinhead balancing a cabbage on his nose while whistling the overture from Giselle the other day. Life's a bit like that isn't it?"

I was listening to 'Just a Minute' the other day. Bill Bailey was on for the first time and used the phrase 'Village to Village' which was obviously buzzed as repetition. Tony Hawks said that this was nothing as on his first appearance, the topic was Cilla Black and he used the phrase 'surprise,surprise'. Bill Bailey then went on to insist that 'err' was a word evry time he was buzzed for hesitation.

An end to water cooler conversations. A plaque on triviality.

All Fired Up

The ducks have returned to the site ponds. A female Mallard was sat on the tint pier which juts out into the big pond which I pass every morning. It was quacking away almost continuously while a male floated oblivious just a few feet away. I clapped my hands and they both looked at me for a few seconds before the female carried on with her serenade! The pond has some new fixtures now. A safety ring has been installed on the 'pier' and notices about how slippery the wood is have gone up. I know that a few inches of water is more than enough to drown in but there are plenty of unfenced areas of deep water in this city with no safety equipment and no notices. It seems a bit silly to put up such stuff on an ornamental pond. The canal that runs a mile from our house has no fences and no notices. In the winter, if it freezes over, it is covered with kids daring each other to walk across. We are having ridiculous regulations imposed which mean that we have to rely on the 'state' - Local Government - various unelected bodies - to tell us what to do and how to be safe. It is much better to educate people on how to be safe so they can make decisions for themselves. Litigation, Litigation, Litigation. Confrontation, Confrontation, Confrontation. Rock and Roll will never save the world. Common sense may do.

Sountrack today is ABC Music again. There is something about the John Peel Sessions which ensures a more enjoyable listening experience. The sessions are always 'live' recordings. The difference between studio based recordings and live recordings is, I suppose, analagous to the difference between digital and analogue. I have noticed the emotional response invoked by old vinyl recordings is more intense than that from CD recordings of the same songs. Of course, I am listening to the sessions from CD so what would they be like on Vinyl. Stereolab are very much into vinyl but I don't actually own any; all my recordings of them are on CD. We don't actually have a record player at the moment which is a pity as I have boxes of 45s and albums all unplayable at present. Now the BBC have started broadcasting all their national radio stations on the digital TV airwaves, I have started picking up a lot of stuff I have missed over recent years. Radio 6 is the highlight of the line up. It seems to be a version of what Radio 1 evenings were like a few years ago. Interesting fact: Phil Jupitus who is on air right now, was in the video for Happy Hour by the Housemartins by virtue of the fact that he was their press officer. If you want to see who is actually hosting the Radio 6 show at this minute go here.

A band I heard the other night on Tom Robinson's show were M.A.S.S. who were excellent though maybe I am a little old to be a real fan.

Back on heads.

Thursday, March 06, 2003


Glowing with Pride

I do realise that the title of the last entry seemed to suggest I was going to write about human genetic modification. I know of course that nobody is openly working on engineering a human but I assume that it would be technically possible to do so, for instance by inserting the bioluminescence gene so that a human would glow in the dark. When it happens you will know - when it is dark of course. In looking for some stuff on biolumninescence, I found this article about plankton revealing the whereabouts of submarines though Peter Herring of the Southampton Oceanography Center suggests it could be a joke. The bit about the U34 being sunk after it disturbed plankton is true though.


Human Genome Project

Well, now we know everything about us humans, what can we do to change ourselves? I worry greatly about the changing about of Genes and things. The argument from most pro-GM scientists is that lay-people just don't understand how GM works and then they trot out the old get-out that evolution in general is just a form of GM. Firstly I consider myself to understand the process behind genetic modification a bit better than most and I am still unable to accept that it is safe. The other argument about GM just being accelerated evolution is rubbish as natural selection is just that; a fitting of an organism to its environment by the processes of mutation. GM takes very artificial processes and applies them to organisms where such processes would never occur in nature. GM at the very most should accelerate the evolution of beneficial characteristics but in reality what the scientists are trying to do is create wormholes through the whole process, to make shortcuts to link species together. I always mention chaos theory at this point, ie that changes which have no effect now because they are so small will multiply over time until they create situations which are so far removed from the initial desired outcome that they create dangerous organisms. My understanding does not go as far as being able to make up a particular specific example but I am sure there are ones out there. The bottom line is that GM is really carried out to make money rather than for any altruistic reasons whatever the scientist/executives say. The world is perfectly capable of growing enough food to feed everyone without having to resort to this dangerous tinkering. I don't know if the EU still destroys food and I suppose you could argue that if food is not consumed soon after harvesting/slaughter, it becomes useless and there is no mileage in sending the food to where it is needed, but if we grow so much extra that we have to destroy it, then the planning is wrong. The supermarkets shave the prices they are prepared to pay; which probably is partly responsible for this over production. Food is not difficult to produce, even in areas which you might consider agriculturally challenged. With a little traditional technology, everyone can be fed. No need for GM. We should not do things just because we can. Remember the rice? The world is silly. Despite any imminent conflict, the world is changing from one where the injustice is not created by war but by managers who create ludicrous processes.

Tuesday, March 04, 2003


Aardvarks on my mind, Wallabies in my pocket

Last night's entry had no title for some reason. Its lack of title has no meaning and neither does this sentence.

Everything seems a little fractured at the moment. There is no direction and a great deal of uncertainty without any specific reason for it. Do you know that feeling you get when you have no immediate worries and also no immediate things to look forward to. Of course, a pessimist like me begins to fill the emptiness with worries rather than the thought of positive opportunities but there you go; that is me. I can't even think of anything to write but I don't want to get back to work with half an hour of lunch remaining.

I accidently brought my daughter's single-use camera in to work with me today so I have taken a new picture of the view out of the window. Watch this space and it is a space isn't it? I was going to write about the silence of the office again last night but I got distracted. What made me think of it was a walk we took last week, alongside the Severn at Tirley. (This is a view from Haw Bridge across the River there). It was totally silent. Occasionally a car would go across the bridge but even then the sound got swallowed up by the space. Wonderful. All this has made me look for a picture of the bridge itself and here it is. My dad worked on this one which is south of Worcester though not in the hard-hat and cement sense.This bridge is quite unusual as it slopes up; it may not be obvious from the picture but the bridge goes from the low-level of the plain, over the river up to the high bank on the Eastern side of the river. The plain is the site of the Battle of Worcester by the way. Anyway, all these bridges are on a site listing all the bridges across the Severn.

Strangely, I did find a picture of Haw Bridge on the Google image site but was barred from going to the site itself by our Company Web-sense. I am trying to find out why the category for this was sex. I did once consider writing a book called 'Sex and Bridges' but I don;t think I ever told anyone. Bridges are Sexy. They are the exciting bit of Civil Engineering. Buildings just go into space and don't reach anything. A bridge has to link two things together often with a curvaceous and very attractive shape. The function of a bridge defines its form and the form is always good, even those rusty old girder bridges have a 'rightness' about their shape, just the correct amount of steel to do the job but not enough to overload the form. I am now anthropomorphising bridges! Too much Chess before bed. Or should that be too much cheese?

Monday, March 03, 2003


Another day, another help desk duty. I hate this. Why did I volunteer to do it? Someone of my intelligence and wit (if not my spelling ability) should not have to sit answering phones regarding why a phone line in Finland won't work (probably because of the pickled herring wedged in the adapter). I could be writing my book I suppose but you'll have to wait and see about that. I could write some poetry but I am in one of those 'nothing I write is any good' phases which is generally interspersed with ideas which I imagine are going to be the best ever poems in the history of word-smithery. I want to write a poem about trees which I consider among the most beautiful things on this planet. Look at them with a new eye and you will see how strange and wonderful they actually are. I remember reading somewhere that if an alien came to this planet, the strangest things for them would be the trees. Of course that is only for an alien which comes from a treeless planet and maybe the writer was trying to say that they thought that trees were uncommon in the universe but how could they know. Maybe the evolutionary processes for trees are that much more complex from the other myriad types of life on earth and therefore relatively unlikely amongst the life which the writer suggests may exists elsewhere in space. I am adding all sorts of conditions to this writer, none of which have any reality because I cannot remember anything about the piece I read other than the fact that trees would appear strange to an alien. Well they are so there.


A right Throw and Throw

A Kristin Hersh CD and a Throwing Muses CD on the same day. Someone likes us a lot. Go here for info. Do you really believe I like this stuff. Well I do and I have every Kristin Hersh/Throwing Muses record to prove it. Unfortunately, it was Dizzy from the album Hunkpapa which started me off but apparently Kristin Hersh hates that one.

It is like the 2000's never happened - oh that it were true. Squally guitars and distorted drums. Lovely.

What are squally guitars and am I getting too old to worry about it?


Norman Bates with a briefcase

Return to Liverpool.

We have just had a great week back in Malvern and while the weather was sometimes atrocious we did manage a walk up to the top of the Worcestershire Beacon, well a walk up half of it from the car park at the Wyche Cutting. My daughter started out complaining that her 'little legs' were tired but there was plenty of distraction and she made it up quite happily. We phoned her Grandmother from the top so that she could stand out in the Garden of the house in Malvern and we could wave to her. I think I saw her through the binoculars (I forgot the telescope) but it was too windy and cold to stand for any length of time. There used to be a cafe at the top but it burnt down in 1989. Talk about Pavlov's dogs but I was getting a real desire for an ice cream because that was what you always got at the top of the Beacon. My sister said the same thing when we told her about the walk later. There is nothing there now, not a sign of where the cafe used to be. A good point for any local business people maybe.

We wanted to go up The British Camp as well but on several days, the entire ridge of the hills was lost in the mist. We told my daughter that they had been loaned to the Americans though I am not sure she believed us; she now replies that a great deal of what we tell her is silly even when it is true. Maybe we should go into politics where everything sounds silly at the moment. The web is just one element in a great wool-pulling exercise. There is no definite truth anymore except for the most basic of facts; Colin Powell was in China but that is all the truth you can get. Reporting of events and conversations and spin just seems irrelevant these days. I was looking at a picture of Mountbatten discussing his plan for partition with the future leaders of India and Pakistan and it struck me that his entire plan for the future of a billion people was contained in a few sheets of double spaced foolscap. You couldn't see that these days; even the agenda for the steering group to decide on the timetable for discussions about setting up an investigating body would take up many volumes. And what in all those volumes would represent the truth? Probably just the watermark in the paper being used. Everything has to be spun so that no-one gets hurt emotionally. It is alright to deny all those men at Guantanamo Bay a full set of international rights as long as you leave them enough chain to turn to Mecca and provide them with Halal meals. Isn't that sick? especially when it seems that there very little proof that any of them were any more than the Taliban equivalent of Grunts. English men do not get steamed up about the Cricket any more; there are too many important things to get angry about.

I have just finished two more books, Tragically I was an only twin which is a collection of the Comedy of Peter Cook and One Hit Wonderland, the latest of Tony Hawks' books based on an obscure bet. Read the details to find out what the bet was but I have to say that 'What does a Pixies Do?' is brilliant. Having finished these I am now onto something a little more heavyweight - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I suppose I should read The Virgin Suicides as well. I have just noticed the 'Customer who bought this also bought ...' and Sylvia Plath is in there. I only know the plot of the Virgin Suicides from the review of the film and straight away I though of The Bell Jar. Anyway, Middlesex is already a cracking read so more later. Films to watch include Frida.

Back to the grind.