i just voted for the Amnesty International UK elections to the board 2004-2007. it was really difficult to pick the first three (you mark down four). i put Dawson at 4 but choosing between the other 3 was hard and eventually 3 was Usher. Siddall and House both sound good but some of House’s professionalism ideas and that she’s been the Vietnam researcher for Human Rights Watch swung it.
posted by s at 12:24 PM

Qasim and i are out later on, getting pissed. a load of his mates might turn up.
we're meeting at Toms chop house for a few scoops, Landlord ah! i love Landlord.
posted by s at 12:23 PM

i think loaf and oliver and body parts (the end?) and G all are legend boss blogs.
posted by s at 12:13 PM

you can say what you like about the Daily Express (and i’ll certainly be slagging it off later on) but look at this free CD with today’s paper, of 80’s pop, all sheer classy (to use footballmanagerspeak)

1. Bangles ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ (19 years after the fact this sounds really modern, Electrelane could have knocked this one out last week, they could crank it up a bit and take it to some sugary loafs with great big slabs of a chorus/3 Colours Red/terrace yob anthem vibe)
2. Cyndi Lauper ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ (not heard this properly for ages but what an unimpeachably perfect song, it’s so effervescent: hey perhaps i can write music reviews for a living: THIS IS A GOOD BAND WHO TAKE EARLY MOGWAI AND GODSPEED AS THEIR TEMPLATE AND ROCK OUT A LITTLE &c….)
3. Men At Work ‘Down Under’ (Brandenburg Concertos, a soaring Pie Jesu, ‘Piece of my Heart’, this, there’s nothing to add)
4. The Weather Girls ‘It’s Raining Men’ (how saucy, when you’re 7 the line about getting wet doesn’t have the same resonance)
5. Europe ‘The Final Countdown’ (still better than any Johnny Come Latelys for air-guitar of course)
6. K.C. & The Sunshine Band ‘Give It Up’ (i know ostensibly it doesn’t sound like either but this tune always reminds me of a Dinah Washington/Monguito Santamaria collision)
7. Paul Young ‘Love Of The Common People’ (if Pete Seeger were making hit parade songs in 1983 it might just sound like this)
8. Jennifer Rush ‘The Power Of Love’ (if you don’t like this you’re a meanie)

there we are then, all superb, anyone that says there’s a bad year any year for music isn’t listening.

posted by s at 12:04 PM

coimbra a e fado
posted by s at 12:03 PM

SOUNDCLASH STYLE! SOUNDCLASH STYLE! SOUNDCLASH STYLE!
East St Louis BANGER (via Osaka) FURIOUS STYLES.

posted by s at 12:02 PM

SOUNDCLASH! SOUNDCLASH! last night i dreamt some bloke in spectacles (actually it was Ekow Eshun) and myself had an argument about the relative merits of Sarah Vaughan and Tito Puente in a bar in Coimbra. Amalia Rodrigues was, of course, on the jukebox.
posted by s at 12:01 PM

i think we should engineer a very naughty video of all of the Donnas frolicking with all of Mayhem (or Emperor, or someone like Brutal Truth: see how i mix up my hardcore punky things with your metals ooh). other SOUNDCLASHES that would be good would include Sir Bernard ‘I’ve Got A Fucking Nerve’ Ingham having a rub with Dame Shirley ‘I’m a Fucking Cheeky Bitch’ Porter. SOUNDCLASH STYLE.
posted by s at 12:01 PM

Music is created by the people, we artists only arrange it

__Glinka.

posted by s at 11:05 PM

that post below doesn't really say anything does it?!
posted by s at 11:02 PM

i see what Simon is saying completely in his 'slight touch of inverted snobbery at play' thinking aloud.
and it certainly seems you could read it that way, perhaps, with the right sort of magnifying spectacles.

but i don't think SR has any need to fear that worthier than thou fascistic SWP dullard tendency here (and i know he's not really, it was just a lickle aside before tackling 'standard' semantics).
ruinationalism was all that Mozza slightly worrying olde Englande crap praps sure (there again wasted elegies for elegant old tings can be all aestheticism etc innit see Robins World End & Undercurrent) but really on a practical level individual kinks are quality and the 'hard politics/hard arteries' line seems a little, well, harsh.
standardisation of production, hygiene etc. is all good, also standardisation of image can be very helpful, good for the consumer body politic yadda yadda.

howEVAH, i fear a bottom line is not our of course overegged and for a larf Pret is bad eggs vibe, more the difference between wonderful not to be downtrodden individuals taking on the wearyingly corporatist chain approach.
i realise Simon knows all that, and appreciates it (i know he likes this kinky little Vietnamese restaurant in NYC Chinatown) but because chain colonisation is really starting to kick in in the UK the last several to few years i spose it's what we're thinking about.

he's further ahead where he lives but also missing something.
also he's gone soft living in New York...;-)
posted by s at 11:01 PM

i should point out, i spose, that there are many fine takeaways and such of many stripes and hues in Gorse Hill, i'm just saying around the Thomas Street area (a very largely residential road) Orianne's Deli House, Fran's Caff, and that unremembered the name of Chinese, are all delightful.
posted by s at 10:49 PM

actually a lot of the best soul food in mcr is to be found in places like old trafford.

in gorse hill, near fran's caff (celebrated greasy spoon takeaway) there's a bang on jamaican caff that is quality. the triad of good takeaways near there is brought up at the rear with a bang on chinese.


posted by s at 10:34 PM

Carey update (courtesy QPR John)

he has moved to Longsight and is in good spirits (had been living in the Moss for time).
he says hello.

posted by s at 10:29 PM

my bruv is making the speech at our mate Miguel’s wedding on September 4th [stag do in Brussels, come on...]. FUCKING HELL, to quote ‘some wag’ {actually, my mate Qawa and me are being the chief ushers at my man Shackleton’s do in Aout}.

some points, then.

- rather feeling any half-decent version of ‘The Irish Rover’ (see also ‘Seven Drunken Nights’)
- Jasper ‘I’ve got a great big cricket box’ Carrott – genuinely brill – at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena. Big up ya chest Second City.
- rather feeling positron records p.50 mention in the latest kerrang magazine.
- the Neps say they’re wanting to stop so much of their trademark sound, tone down the keyboards, go in other directions. to this my mate (underground fan; overground concessions to Slick Rick and Ultramagnetics) shouted GOOD NEWS FOR ANYONE WITH EARS.
- (sincerely) rather feeling Katie Melua’s dress sense.
- Jamie Cullum (likes guitars, resembles – well – a bit like a consumptive Gareth Gates, has visited Gay Paree) and Norah Jones (she’s Ravi Shankar’s daughter doncthaknow! she’s got beautiful eyes! she’s a jazz singer! people who like Diamanda Galas and Diana Krall like her!) should perhaps work together. it would do, ahem, well, it would work.
- rather feeling postcards from Budapest or Cuernavaca.
- Keane are cute aren’t they. they’ll get their trews wet howevah.
- rather feeling Cathal McConnell, as one has been since about the age of, ooh, 17.
- there are some fine looking women in the video for ‘Hey Ya’.
- rather feeling Cormega.
- I know a few niggas sniff coke’ it cause seizures
- rather feeling Toss the Feathers, as one has been since about the age of, ooh, 15.
- my mother thinks Raghav is QUITE fine (“I like his coat, the main one in the middle, not the hip-hop guy going up and down”).
- rather feeling Grey Goose vodka.
- my father (as do i) mourns Wham!
- rather feeling the Ink Spots (shout to Indy).
- Busted were fabbydoo, i say. their covering the Undertones sounded a bit like Lagwagon covering the Undertones. Posh Totty vox sounding like NoFX’s Fat Mike (or whatever he’s called)! Busted over Franz Ferdinand or the Von Bondies or the Strokes or the Scissor Sisters or Four Tet or Yes (apart, possibly to be fair, from when pissed in an indie club) please! [not, Busted over Tangerine Dream back in the day, to clarify, to be reasonable]
- rather feeling The Lusiads
- outKast “Atlanta Georgia” callnresponse oh yes, looking grate THIS IS HOW IT FEELS, boss it, THIS IS THE ONE.
- rather feeling ‘verbal intercourse’.
- 0161.

posted by s at 9:52 PM

'cool for cats' was playing on the wireless and i had to tell my mam who squeeze were. old folk today huh (she favours radio 2 like all the other hepcats/"uncut" readers and is not actually that old, having had me when she was about 27)!!

~
i wonder how many times, say, a month, Prince has a wank?
and does he beat his meat more or less times in that period than Anthony Kiedis?
~~

oh and YET MORE greatness from Maff, that is certainly useful i'd say. i will say i do like daddy kool a lot but then us provincials are easy to tricksy with those big city lights. i was appalled when i went in sister ray, full of old skinny puppy compilations on dodgy Slovene labels and people in front 242 t-shirts.
lovely street map tho. where does he source all this??

i would actually go to london on the train for the day purely to go in the new and improved soul jazz store, how sad!
P.S.
not too sure about Marcello feeling Amoeba over the Smoke, i liked Amoeba a lot the one (very nice and quite lenghty) arvo i spent there, but have been more impressed by certain London places.
P.P.S.
outkast are on top of the pops now, i like tim kash actually, a lively sense of fun and a nice smile i'm sure, he looks like he enjoys a pint. i bet he wanks before the show to help nerves. if he does.
P.P.P.S.
i had beans on toast (two rounds) for my tea. later i may eat a couple of pieces of fruit.
posted by s at 6:54 PM

wow [via k-punk]
posted by s at 2:09 PM

new blog from silverdollarcircle's mate.

looking good.
posted by s at 2:07 PM

Simon is right, standardisation is fair enough, a tinge or lament for the old country?

heh-heh...
posted by s at 2:06 PM

interesting

(& background, of sorts, from the village voice)
posted by s at 2:05 PM

HIP-HOP DON'T STOP

one album that needs more props is black moon's enta da stage.

one emcee that needs more props is royce da 5 9
posted by s at 2:01 PM

i'll say one thing for Clare Short, and that is that she's as embittered as any former minister (see, e.g., Glenda Jackson).
posted by s at 2:00 PM

Oliver was gentlemanly enough not to mention that the vigilante and paramilitary forerunners of today's AUC were only outlawed in 1989, the likes of Pablo Escobar's Muerte a Secuestradores getting training and munitions from the miltary throughout the 1980s.
posted by s at 9:03 AM

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions._Lillian Hellman.
posted by s at 10:48 PM

France has called for outside intervention in Haiti
posted by s at 1:06 PM

RIP Boris Trajkovski.
posted by s at 12:52 PM

ok, so am not atheist myself (am an agnostic, which i suppose you could decry as practically the same), but this made me practically (and perhaps strangely, or perhaps not...) 'proud to be British' and i don't know because 'liberals' like me don't often enough engage with religion on a respected one2one level (tho' one respects all different faiths & yadda yadda yadda etcetcetc.)
posted by s at 8:30 AM

actually Luke's not far wrong.

the other day was 'Should dogs be allowed on beaches?' following some - admittedly infuriating to victims of crime but i mean c'mon... - story about a dog that got into difficulties on a beach that had lots of attention from the authorities whilst some people wait hours for plod to turn up.

will waffle about the express here (and the stuff i said i would do last night but didn't) when have time.
posted by s at 8:28 AM

i wuv Robin Carmody
posted by s at 8:23 AM

good
posted by s at 8:20 AM

here and here are two sets of (big) photos of barcelona, on a livejournal style (which the lovely companion is a bit into, so she showed me the URLs). some nice little indie girl from mcr has taken them actually, including some great ones of her meals.
they are good and illustrate a few things about why everyone loves (or should if they don't) barca.
posted by s at 10:11 PM

now there goes a good defence.
posted by s at 12:59 PM

Before going to sleep, Andreas thinks of the prosthesis the head doctor has promised him. It will be a perfect prosthesis, as good as Captain Hainigl's. With him, you wouldn't even know he'd lost a leg. The Captain walks through the room quite unaided, it just looks as though he has one leg longer than the other. Artificial limbs are an enlightened invention, an example of the trouble the government will go to. There's no denying that.

_Rebellion, Joseph Roth.
posted by s at 12:53 PM

shame on you Mr Bush
posted by s at 12:41 PM

to be fair to Luke he emailed me again pointing out facts were facts, it's what you do with them that counts he says (which i agree with and i realise i'm about to make a breathtakingly terrible analogy but the case of, say, revisionists such as David Irving demonstrates sometimes the facts have to be known before we can 'do' something with them).

in starting to make a point about mortality rates in the D.R.C. but not finishing what i had intended to write one did look half-arsed. but i was not trying to offer an analogous opinion by proxy on the invasion of Iraq (as i replied in email to him) and if it perhaps looked like i was trying to analogise without offering an opinion (or only doing so stealthily and under the cover of weasel words), then that's bad and cowardly. i assume that's what he thought i was doing.
Luke says he'd be interested to view my perspectives on things (and i know i don't know what i'm on about - Luke generously seems to think otherwise - and so if anyone is reading this thinking 'what a load of whining shite' don't worry i'll post about Art Blakey or someone soon) but specifically just re. conflict in the D.R.C., there's really not much to say is there? i'm not an international relations expert and we all only want what everyone wants, an end to the vileness. intervention different to and other than the current MONUC would be a start.
biases should be borne in mind but if someone is making statements on "Africa's world war" i'll assume they're not Leopold come again and want what everyone wants.
#
in the meantime, Joe recommended this and, it is.
posted by s at 9:11 AM

there was recently a letter in the paper from a Zoe Stow of RoadPeace, NW10. it read
The case of Kamel Kadri has attracted a great deal of media attention but for all the wrong reasons.
Yes, Mr Kadri was an illegal immigrant and he was not insured but the light sentence for a fatal collision had nothing to do with immigration status. Any driver who is charged with leaving the scene of a fatal collision or of failing to report it will face a similar or, much more likely, lesser sentence.
The fault lies entirely with the law, which treats this conduct, ‘hit and run’, as a trivial matter to be determined by lay magistrates – with a maximum sentence of only six months. There is no other charge available.
In a case last year, a driver who left the scene of a fatal collision to avoid being breathalysed was charged with perverting the course of justice but the Court of Appeal decided that this much more serious charge could not be made. Both the law itself and the way it is interpreted trivialise death and injury on the roads, even when the driver acts in a way that most people would find abhorrent.
There is a growing number of people prepared to drive while uninsured, disqualified or unqualified, particularly in our cities, and they pose a terrible risk to the public. If they are involved in a crash, they are likely to drive on to avoid being identified and their victims’ injuries may be much worse or even fatal as a result of the delay in obtaining treatment. Their victims will also have a much harder struggle to avoid compensation.
As members of the national charity for road traffic victims, we are only too aware of this situation and its terrible effect on those who suffer as a result, and their families. A change in the law, better enforcement and a greater visible police presence on the roads are all needed as a matter of urgency, as well as public support for a tougher line on hit and runs.

a sensible letter then. the Daily Express’ recent excellent campaign to highlight the dangers of uninsured drivers on British roads is one thing. our moral compasses are surely sophisticated enough and ourselves adept at navigating complexity to not need the Express’ occasional insinuating headlines about uninsured asylum seekers.
that is quite another thing.
it is inevitable that – yes, perhaps many – of the uninsured drivers on British roads, there will be some with migrant status (also criminals &c.).
but our political orienteering does not need villainous soap opera to help make our minds up when the end result of what we are discussing is tragedy, broken families, and grief. a change in policy does not have to flow from such vaudeville villainy, ‘just’ a report of the facts.

posted by s at 7:08 AM

Aborigines, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.



__'The Devil's Dictionary', Ambrose Bierce.~
posted by s at 10:41 PM

Luke emailed me to tell me his friend - who is Craner's critic in that debate Craner is having on his blog - wrote it off the top of his head and so (my words not Luke's) i should not be so churlish and nitpicking about details (war deaths in the D.R. Congo).

that is absolutely right really.

i don't know what i was thinking of in being so bloody heartlessly statistical.
it's a bit of an affront. it's a bit like that doctor in South Africa who speaks out about statistics being compiled on AIDS death tolls by saying the international community/international science/&c. are overrepresenting the number of AIDS deaths [of course just because he is saying something politically unpalatable and perhaps even offensive to a lot of people does not justify character smears etc. but that's another issue] as a whole in sub-Saharan Africa.

of course it'd be more justified (justified in fact, to an extent, but you have to earn your stripes in cases of argumentative flourish) in my case if this blog had a lot of personal opinions and stuff (as opposed to my angsty whey-faced whining).

i emailed Luke back to explain that the IRC is really the only main source of information on mortality sources for the lengthy (five year long) 'chief' D.R. Congo war, although you can find medical or humanitarian or human rights agency, organisations. etc, figures that discuss mortality rates [just re. a situation that has significantly escalated since last summer] concerning the corner of hell that is Ituri.

anyway i was trying to make a point, in a stupid roundabout way, but it will have to wait until tomorrow night.
posted by s at 10:35 PM

perhaps not as surprising as you'd first think.

posted by s at 2:55 PM

here the Refugee Law Project discusses some problems with the return of refugees (to Rwanda)
posted by s at 2:05 PM

After they had cut off the sexual organs, they walked away with them. They took the victims' blood in flasks
posted by s at 1:49 PM

incidentally, re. a couple of things from Oliver's correspondent (see link below), they write What about the Congo? 3million people are estimated to have died in the conflict there last year. 3 million, 3 million, 3 million in one year (Saddam's death toll is no where near).

presuming they wrote that to Craner this year (an eminently reasonable assumption i think you'd agree), they are therefore referring to 2003 when they say last year.

an IRC mortality survey conducted in 2002 found approximately 3.3 million war deaths between August 1998 and August 2002.
why would one need to exaggerate? is the above not horrible enough?
'the highest war-death toll documented anywhere in the world during the past half-century'
posted by s at 1:47 PM

there's plenty more i shouldn't be so mean in singling out ones i guess when i get some links knowledge maybe i'll get a sidebar
posted by s at 1:38 PM

wonderful individuals careering off into their own universe, neurons firing, pregnant with possibility, unfettered, people with their own interests like everyone else, circles of friends you care for and socialise with, oh it's all marvellous
some blogs i've been getting into lately

- incertain plume
- :::nostress:::
- Notes from the Dovecote
- ikastikos
- THE TOFU HUT
posted by s at 1:35 PM

much as i ended up basically agreeing (why ever not?) with that clap clap comment furore that me and abot 2 others cared about, and although i did like the film pop life pointed out this interesting take on 'lost in translation'
posted by s at 1:26 PM

is the net really closing around bin Laden?
posted by s at 1:24 PM

Oliver w' some good points
AND
a fine CV post.
posted by s at 10:16 AM

ack
posted by s at 9:04 AM

the enjoying the controversy Mike Clap and his chum Harm (quality blog, especially on the money about Gorgeous George)
who do a nice line in throwing toys out of pram in comments boxes...

might be intrigued by this Auntie programme about 'American soft power'.

;-)
posted by s at 9:03 AM

much as i like a fair bit of Wheatcroft criticism, incidentally, here is he being wrong again.
Or, if they do, they apply no more than with innumerable other tyrannies, some far worse and Our own ex-communist warriors ought to recognise that, on all of their own arguments is what he boils it down to and the former especially is one that in a perfect world would probably be a valid stopper. alas.
well fine if everyone who was a liberal hawk was an ex-communist yadda yadda but clearly not mr wheatcroft (who was a strong supporter of attacking Afghanistan to be honest)
I may at least question whether any war that is unnecessary can be deemed to be just that is a endlessly reasonable and disturbing question to check ya though but of course he's quoting John Bright
posted by s at 8:58 AM

cheers to Joe for the mention.
but now I think that absurdist approach might just be making me feel ever more nauseous is what he thinks and i maybe agree.
bigging up Juvenal aside (as one often sez) the craft of a well-turned eloquent essay (be that eloquently angry, or whaterver, or etc.) seems more gripping and powerful these days, endless lampooning does make one feel a bit queasy.

that said, as somedisco has said about nine time in the past,
Geoffrey Wheatcroft was wrong to criticise 'life is beautiful' (whatever your views on its aesthetics) for hard-headed reasons.
posted by s at 8:52 AM

cor blimey!

only weeks after we saw Maff sneaking into the library with some Demosthenes under his arm, he's now quoting Africanus!!

that chap etc.

incidentally here is a blog where the URL is demosthenes.blogspot.
posted by s at 8:29 AM

note to tabloid editors:
the 'Guantanamo Five' - during over two years in captivity - were not ACTUALLY CHARGED WITH ANYTHING.

you may wish to rethink your 'no smoke without fire' policy, at least for a bit of time, as if i wanted half-arsed half-baked comment i'll go down the pub.


cheers.

posted by s at 11:05 PM

Jon is currently helming the Adelaide Fringe Festival. it all sounds incredibly inspirational, but especially performances from the likes of the magical Annette Krebs and Andrea Neumann.

we like when everything changes and the 'vortex' \"re-imagines" you etc.

currently listening to horace parlan's 'going home', some random Scando jazz samplers (but not enough Polish stuff round here it's true) and that first new orleans funk comp soul jazz put out, not the second one entitled 'saturday night fish fry' on it but the other one like. definitely need to find out more on Chuck Carbo (as opposed to just googling him or getting some piecemeal info' off AMG, which is what one usually does...)

the other day i saw two robins on some rhodedendrons and was spellbound.
Luke has been seeing some wrens apparently. i told him about ring ouzels (sorry Luka!).
i like jays.
i've not sen a buzzard for time.
buzzards.
posted by s at 10:09 PM

Other Music presents:

KEITH ROWE (guitar)
Rare solo UK appearance by one of the founders of the European free improv
movement, originator of many techniques for preparing and playing the guitar.

plus

MARTIN ARCHER & PAT THOMAS (keyboards and electronics)
Other Music regulars promise a "duo set of lo- and hi-fi rhythm n'skronk" ...

At The Grapes, Trippet Lane, Sheffield
Bus: West St/Rockingham St or City Hall
Tram: West St or City Hall

8:30 p.m. Wednesday 3rd March
£5/£3, all tickets on door.

More information about all these musicians can be found at the European Free
Improvisation web site:

here
posted by s at 9:48 PM

another thing kanye west ain't very good on the mic at all. why can't people just keep to what they're good at.
not feelin the rappin so much.
posted by s at 1:06 PM

Dan with an early contender for quote of the week
he makes Vanilla Ice look like Nas
not feelin Chingy
P.S.
that's Manchester Dan btw, not the lovely (but not very rappy) Stockport Dan
posted by s at 1:04 PM

although did you see their thread on Suge quotes recently? i can't find it but the chap comes out with some undeniably classic stuff.

posted by s at 1:01 PM

best thread ever
posted by s at 12:57 PM

actually kanye west is from chicago isn't he.
posted by s at 12:55 PM

re. that guardian article below there are certainly some problematics in there.
Hackney, in east London, is supposedly gentrifying, but greasy spoons speckle its streets like enduring blemishes on a much-pitted face might be a nice bit of poetism but it certainly sets the tone in that negative way.
specials crudely penned onto coloured cardboard taped to the glass
well excuse us!!
An updated variation on this view, suitably laced with irony, is exemplified by an excellent website, Classic Cafes, which is devoted to documenting British greasy spoons and mourning those wiped away by history
who says it's laced with irony? maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but this reminded me of Angus once having to point out his love of 'buffy the vampire slayer' (though not saint-marie) was not ironic.

however, the biggest load of old rope is That is largely the extent of the menu, as it is, for that matter, of British cooking
traditional indigenous cuisine or whatever etc., i.e., white folk stodge (and who says it has to be, you may not approve of a lot of the modishness of the ubiquity of 'Modern British' but there's some good stuff there),
are soups and stews really that awful?
yeah yadda yadda tell us something we don't know but instead of being a trendy cynic recognise that, e.g., London is the most culturally and ethnically diverse city in Europe and one of the most ethnically diverse cities on earth. and that - in a healthy freaky trigger way, a new inclusive localism and all that, being it's not where you're from it's where you're at - restaurants such as Edgware Road's excellent Mandalay (run by a couple of friendly Arsenal fans) can be considered the nu-British maybe.

a lot of sniffy critics - out of the 'great cuisines' - still take French (and maybe Italian) as a model, over and above even Indian or Chinese, let alone say Sudanese fare.
this invariably colours views, the French way of eating a meal together en famille w' bottles of plonk bleh bleh, it sounds to me that that guardian writer has taken a few doses of this narrative.
oh, and writing as someone who is sometimes narked by the arselicking that goes on surrounding the Michelin, this was an interesting story (though of course he may have an axe to grind).

posted by s at 12:54 PM

astonishingly snobbish article from the guardian on greasy spoons here.
the writer tries to qualify what looks like snobbishness to me by the 'think of the proletariat' line near the end, but i'm not having that. i really don't want to be lumped in the same boat as Julie Burchill, but this reads like a character assassination, extraordinarly mean-spirited with a sprite-ish invective.

i go in greasy spoons quite often and the quality of food is always excellent, hygiene standards always uniformly as you'd (hope to) expect from an eatery, i.e., faultless.
the relentless rise of the chains is at least as big a 'problem' (in the language of the journo concerned) as anything else.
posted by s at 9:40 AM

there has been a suicide bombing this morning in Kirkuk.
posted by s at 9:06 AM

information about clashes in Casanare province and other Colombian locations over the weekend here,
here
posted by s at 9:05 AM

Richard May, the judge in the Milosevic case, is to resign
posted by s at 9:00 AM

when Dave Stelfox waded into the caff fray, namechecking k-punk~,
blissblog~,
& undercurrent~
hopes were high.
and indeed he doesn't disappoint.
i think Simon will find much to agree with in Dave's analysis, as he's all about the issues of class thingummy (a bit anyhow) but While, as Simon contends, it is possible to see the fetishizing of this particular aesthetic as stemming from a Morrissey-like, nationalistic yearning for a disappearing England, the very fact that they have been in business a long time would also appear to point to the fact that they do have something to offer, both as culinary experiences and hubs of the community was the crucial point of contention.
it's so true about maccyDz that They're rubbish and they know they are. Pret and Starbucks are an entirely different proposition, though, and one I find resolutely offensive. If mass-market burger restaurants correlate with the sanitised global pop of Justin and Britney, these places are the equivalent of The Beautiful South... tolerable, with a veneer of respectability, but bland as you like.
don't the starbucks people all out admit this in interviews? i'm sure i read a lengthy one on it once, can't find the URL but it's out there i fink.
there's nowt wrong with all this of course it's business and all but in a puerile manner it sometimes does almost irritate me yah.
but there we are.
posted by s at 8:59 AM

the ribbon trend had not been accompanied by a tangible increase in charity donations
posted by s at 8:47 AM

following yesterday's suicide bombing aboard a Jerusalem bus, a televised news report showed an eye-witness speaking.

the man described the horrible scenes he had just seen, saying that he'd watched as "people" flew out of the bus windows, glass whizzing everywhere.
he then checked himself, as it were, and corrected himself by saying that the people were "bodies".

posted by s at 8:46 AM

RIP John Charles.
posted by s at 1:39 AM

Dear Mel,

Alas.

Your father is a tool.

Yours sincerely,
Scott.
posted by s at 7:34 PM

stellar~




posted by s at 7:20 PM

bravo Dave!
posted by s at 3:12 PM

it's all very 'homepagey' here today innit.
posted by s at 3:07 PM

the spreadsheet is saying query, 0 DBSELECT DISTINCT a.apar_id,a.agreeref as agreeno, a.type, a.regno as product,a.tot_amt as amount, a.lastupdate,a.filename_ref FROM [table] a where apar_id = [custid] AND a.agreeref = '[agreeref]' and a.type like 'M' and a.tot_amt != 0 order b.

apparently it isn't au fait with the command STEP THE FUCK BACK TO DODGE, SHAWTIE
posted by s at 3:06 PM

i expect he owns a dishwasher.
it's hard to go wrong with one of those beauties.

choices can be made that mean mistakes inevitably result but - what it is - you've got to be on less than top of your game for it foul up.
if we all had one, well, just think.
posted by s at 3:05 PM

actually, i wonder if he does the dishes after every main evening meal, or leaves them to rack up?

posted by s at 3:01 PM

i wonder where David Hare lives?
posted by s at 3:01 PM

as Joe has it, hurrah!
Taylor Parkes has returned.

the mind boys are on form too, a poignant bittersweet memoriam for youth lost AKA they went to see NERD and the crowd had lost the mad luv of old, i suppose the usual suspects (e.g., the JT effect over-saturation in a crowded market etc.) will be blamed.
posted by s at 3:00 PM

obviously when i'm dictator everyone will wear NHS spectacles and beige or scarlet twill-linen Nehru suits.
hair styles will be modelled on either the Monks or Bob Marley during his old grey whistle test days.
posted by s at 2:31 PM

all this formica influence is good and all; i wonder how much of a generation growing up in the 1970s/80s in the UK found them really nourishing, both spiritually as it were, and materially?

i can just picture the likes of jarvis cocker leaning his gawky elbows on a lightly-addled-w'-baconfat-surface, reading his Marshall McLuhan or Pushkin or whatever.

kids today ("kids today" hah!) can pop along to starbucks for their peppermint mochas or whatever it is, which is all well and good.

maybe the conservative old England impulses of the Britpop generation (the ones making the music, not the younger ones consuming it), forged as they were in a strangely beguilingly quiet and dull landscape of ostensibly shit, grim caffs - hang on it's all getting a bit Britain before punk round here - produced such mainly rugged individual iconoclasts (though the music itself left a lot to be desired which is where the dull bit comes in i guess although you'd a thought their music would be better given it was about escaping all that).

whilst today's ubersleek&shiny chains (they're all the same) could - with their bland unleavened non-concessions to quirky difference - help explain the popularity of such superficially enticing, ultimately homogeneous cultural phenomena as Louis Vuitton bags (real or fake), carrying bottles of mineral water as you're photographed leaving the gym, Burberry scarves and caps (real and fake), the Black Eyed Peas and young girls who wear baseball caps when they've not washed their hair because their hair is minging. not that i'm complaining.
even in shit interbred northern towns there should be no excuse for the above.

posted by s at 2:29 PM

speaking of Orwell, didn't he definitively maintain Britons should say 'caff' and not 'cafe'?
posted by s at 1:44 PM

greasy spoons/propah caffs are the bees knees .
there's one in Warrington where 2 quid buys you two sausage, a black pudding, an egg, two huge slabs of toast, beans, two bacon and some 'shrooms. oh and a brew.

my favourite evah greasy spoon is either this one on Wakefield High Street, this one in Altrincham bus station, innumerable ones in inner Manchester, this one near the train station in Bournemouth (bit of a moody part of town but great), Birmingham's legendary Mr Egg or this one in Brockley, SE4 (the Jack is a great boozah) that does one of the three best bubble and squeaks ive ever had. truss me, that's saying a LOT.
posted by s at 1:42 PM

world of real coffee - intriguing.
posted by s at 1:30 PM

purely as a mark of respect, here is a link to k-punk on "ruinationalism".

out of all the chains, starbucks does just about the worst on most indicators. don't get me wrong i go in because i don't have any interest in naomi klein and the way the cream is poured on the (piping) hot chocolate is a good strategy. but i've tried most caffeinated options in the chains and can honestly say (heck it's only opinion and i'm hardly this chap) that coffee republic, lavazza, o'briens, even costa coffee and probably caffe nero is the best (i don't think benji's has escaped london yet and if there's any other big chains that i'm missing then i am remiss); well, their coffees are generally just not as good.
i rate.

this is interesting about Java, the local Mancunian mini-chain (there's also a national chain called Java isn't there?), which is an award-winning 'best cafe', according to the Cafe Society anyway.
feed the five thousand and history are some other good local manc indie but i must sound like a turncoat and register that i fink the best local caffs in mcr city centre are not the host of (excellent, admittedly) 'classic' greasy spoons but poncier affairs like love saves the day, oklahoma's And caff and Cafe Pop.


posted by s at 1:29 PM

this sounds interesting.
posted by s at 1:10 PM

there are now fears bird flu can easily jump between different species
posted by s at 1:08 PM

you go 007
posted by s at 1:08 PM

mouth-watering, especially the MacMillan.

posted by s at 1:06 PM

the gallery website seems a little, well, lacking in updates, but the Philips Contemporary will be showing - among others, and as part of their just opened new show - James Naughton's grand takes on the land and the sky.
can't wait
posted by s at 1:01 PM

the Goldberg Ensemble are playing the RNCM tonight and Sunday. among other pieces, tonight they will do Geoffrey Poole's 'Crossing Ohashi Bridge', on Sunday they will be performing Anthony Gilbert's 'Palace Of The Winds'.
sounds like that could be all quite brilliant.
posted by s at 12:57 PM

i think Sean Acid has been excellent since the start. similar in kinship to tufluv it seems (many congratulations on the new job fella).
tufluv was superb about Matthew Parris in Newcastle's Scotswood the other week (sorry, can't do permalinks for some reason!).
anyway, i also just wanted to tell him that re. encountered some wanker skinhead zulus in the pub (white birmingham semi-hooligan boneheads) singing england football songs at a black friend, the 'leader' of the Zulus is a black bloke called Cuddles from Small Heath.
nothing should of course be inferred about my views on football hooliganism &c. here, i'm just saying, is all...
~
incidentally, i found this quite (retrospectively) interesting.
posted by s at 12:16 PM

just a thought~
what was david blunkett doing on 'celebrity mastermind' last night?
i'd always just assumed appeasing tabloid editors was a 24/7 kinda job.

this is the blunkett policy generator. critics might carp it's not the true home office website (which is here) but it's arguably mired in about as much reality.
posted by s at 11:35 AM

this is how denuded of grace the 'big debate' is - at least according to the moral majority at certain tabs etc. - at the moment, that reading over my post below i end up feeling like an infantile foo' for stating what should be the obvious.

George Orwell to thread &c.

posted by s at 10:35 AM

i honestly can't think of any other widely held narrative infolded in british political/social life - that should be, and indeed is, easy to dismiss - as the insidious (sometimes "invidious" feels more accurate) currently flavour-of-the-month trope that is the 'asylum-seeker/racist problem'.
that is, the line that roughly has it you (white Britons, etc.) can't make any critical noises about regrettable (or far worse) behaviour from them [asylum seekers &c.; e.g., to use a vile example, harassment and worse, of a local girl by a gang of young Afghan men] for fear of being labelled 'a racist'.
this narrative isn't being challenged - at least, not in the mainstream - for not entirely honourable reasons.
or so it seems from here, anyway.
posted by s at 10:33 AM

from the ILM post below, dave q on the sadly unmistakeable tang of recognition tip w' btw I do find the editorial depressing. In a 'fuck, not another one' kind of way. Lately people I know who never ventured an opinion before on anything are coming up with 'swamped' type of shit, it's worrying.

any British readers: do you have acquaintances like that?
fucken TOO RITE alas~
posted by s at 10:09 AM

FWIW, here is the best ILM thread so far this year.
posted by s at 9:48 AM

He is drawing flak for stating what the vast majority of reasonable people know instinctively, that the unregulated flow of migrants through a discredited and sclerotic asylum system is fuelling racial tensions
from the telegraph (see earlier link; though the 'instinctively' there is problematic, seems to me).

yes, true, but the British media is - with a few honourable exceptions - not asking the sufficiently complex questions, engaging in the self-probing and so on, that should be required of itself (and i don't think we need to hang "ideally" on to that; i write this as the most pragmatic sort of political realist in my personal beliefs after all) : to realise that their role is not entirely helpful (the sunday telegraph seems less bombastic than its sister paper, at least judging from a recent editorial) would be a start; to acknowledge it publicly and renounce some aspects of their coverage would be welcomed.

oh here's that editorial from last sunday's paper, of course there's a few things in there disagreeable but the tone at least is certainly more even-handed than the daily telegraph (on yesterday's evidence) and far more than certain tabloids. etc.

The looming immigration crisis sparked by the imminent accession of 10 new EU members in May has caused, quite suddenly, near-panic inside the Government. Britain is a haven for economic migrants, with the English language, a flexible labour market, a plentiful supply of jobs and no identity cards to prevent illegal immigrants from taking them. The Prime Minister is now having waking nightmares about the potential influx of 74 million such people and is living in fear of headlines portraying an "invasion" of gypsies, itinerant workers and benefit claimants. The Chancellor is staring in horror at the potential impact on the benefits bill. And the Home Secretary is worrying that the subtleties of his intended immigration policy - tough on bogus asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, but liberal on legal immigration - will be shattered by panic-mongering tabloids.

As if that panic was not enough, the death of 19 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay has given the whole question of economic migration terrible poignancy.

None of this is in the least bit surprising. For all the complications, the political rows and the newspaper headlines last week, the fundamentals of the immigration issue are straightforward. Milton Friedman, as is his habit, summed the whole problem up years ago, in just 10 words: "You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state".

The notion of free movement, enshrined as the very foundation of the EU, is what makes the problem posed by the new members' accession so explosive. As we know from our own population, offer those without work the chance to live on social security and many will do just that. The same logic applies to migration: if the opportunity exists to move from an area paying negligible benefits to one paying relatively lavish benefits, then it will be taken. The issue is made more complicated by the technicalities of the transition arrangements. Although we have not joined the other 13 EU members in imposing travel restrictions on the citizens of the new member countries, freedom of movement does not, for the new members, mean full freedom to work - not, that is, until 2011, when they gain full employment rights. Hence the dispute as to whether EU law, which obliges members to offer full benefits to any resident who is eligible to work, applies.

But sensible debate on immigration has become impossible because we confuse those who want to work - who move in order to better themselves - with those who merely want to take advantage of better benefits, and we damn both groups equally.

Economics and rationality tend to fly out of the window when confronted with immigration. This is not a new phenomenon. Back in the early 1990s, the Government refused to grant visas to the Hong Kong Chinese because of the political calculation that the public would not stomach another mass influx of immigrants. Yet that was, on any calculation, an economic blunder. Vancouver, which welcomed 230,000 people from Hong Kong between 1991 and 1996, has reaped the rewards ever since. It is the British economy which lost out, not the migrants.

In this context, the Danish election of 2001 is fascinating. The political climate there is much like ours, in that there is a deep and growing fear of immigration. The centre-Right Liberal Party focused on immigration as the main election issue. But it turned on its head the main concern of electors - that immigrants are somehow a leech on the state - and in doing so won an unexpected victory. Denmark, it said, should welcome immigrants. But for their first seven years they should receive no state benefits of any kind, other than schooling for their children and emergency health care. And that, more or less, was that.

Such an approach squared the immigration circle. It permitted the gains which the right type of immigrants can bring to a country; it dealt with the problem of benefit leeches (as the party leader, and now Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, put it during the Danish election campaign: "Denmark must not be the social security office for the rest of the world"); and it neutralised the far-Right. Since immigrants could only prosper by their own efforts, and the economy would prosper with them, there would be no rational reason not to welcome them.

The problem with current discussions of the subject is that the word immigration serves no useful purpose on its own, since wrapped up in it are two wholly different concepts: the productive and the unproductive immigrant, to which our approach should be very different. If immigrants really are committed to a new life and want to better themselves, wonderful: we will all benefit from their industry. But if they want simply to take advantage of a better reward for doing nothing, there is no reason - moral, practical or legal - why we need to give them anything, least of all a welcome.

posted by s at 9:38 AM

what a wonderful blog
posted by s at 9:07 AM

unpicking the bluster behind Michael Howard's speech~

also the independent with a good story, including The Tory leader's arrival also elicited the first Combat 18 graffiti in months on local Asians' homes, she said.

maybe we're cynical round here but i can't see why we should be cheerleading a mainstream leader saying what should be obvious things, e.g., fuck the BNP basically. of course it is to be applauded, and maybe one should put up (we have to be grateful, as the Guardian leader above eloquently asserts), it's just that the words of local Labour man Shahid Malik [though the telegraph seems almost disingenuous there, perhaps; clearly we're not disputing the basic common-sense he outlined, for that Thank you Mr. Howard...but their criticisms are practically offensive to people that article is mildly critical of, such as Mark Oaten, this inference that everyone bar the Tories is not bothered or somesuch guff about basic liberal truths]
that
We've got 90,000 people living here and 57 asylum seekers. But ask people why they voted BNP and many will say because we're swamped with asylum seekers.
keep echoing in my head.
~
posted by s at 9:04 AM

you don't know how beautiful you are

and fierce stripes

some cheeky monkeys

and kitties
posted by s at 8:52 AM

BEAT THAT, BELGIUM

i don't care what anyone says, chips are British
posted by s at 8:48 AM

quite, quite startling
posted by s at 8:47 AM

dare we
posted by s at 8:47 AM

~stunning.
posted by s at 11:39 PM

we were far from home and very tired
posted by s at 11:37 PM

speaking of editors of the wire (or former thereof) as a big fan of Rob Young's lovely euphoric liner notes for rough trade electronic 01 (though his attack on Nick Hornby in a recent editorial was a tad churlish to say the least) the following is disappointing, perhaps even a tad adolescent [from this month's wire, discussing clouddead (of course i love their self titled effort)]:

Like the breakbeat brats a few years ago (Squarepusher, u-Ziq, Autechre et al), the laughing stock of 'true' Junglists, it takes mavericks and those from outside the tradition to point up how hidebound the tradition really is...

hmm.
yes.
but.
posted by s at 11:25 PM

bloody hell, you can tell that the free CD with the latest wire [celebrating the domino festival] is a wire affiliated thing eh?
Lali Puna, Einsturzende Neubauten, Man's Best Friend, Lars Horntveth, Polmo Polpo ha-hah!

{no disrespec'}

mind you, they've had some good covermounts in the past. recent gems have included that raster noton one and the rune grammofon bit was okay (that one was compiled by Anne Hilde Neset).
possibly one of the finest freebies in recent times was (bearing in mind i've only been reading it for about the last four years) the Elektrotehnika Slavenika comp.
in fact the first issue i bought was August 2000 (Merzbow cover); one month before Simon's fine dub'n'roots essay (Ryl Tx cover).
new ed Chris Bohn seems a bit rockist judging from his message eh who'd a thunk.
posted by s at 10:53 PM

The Telegraph are calling the Donald Judd show at Tate Modern one of their "most beautiful shows ever".

You have to look and understand, both. In looking you understand. You look and think, and look and think, until it makes sense, becomes interesting.
_Donald Judd.


posted by s at 12:46 PM

S/FJ

the thermals, he writes.


the way he marshals his words to always always make me piss my pants is nothing short of tremendous.

i love his lackadaisacals. boy got some lift on his Air Force Ones, and a nice little downtime package down the seat of his Corvette. the chap is a diamond and i adore the way he rhymes stuff. it's all faberge.
posted by s at 10:39 PM

Luke's right there, great film.
posted by s at 10:33 PM

what is sad is that John Kerry hardly has the most progressive views on gay union etc. innit
posted by s at 10:29 PM

also there's the national aquarium for the USA in Baltimore.
they have a wonderful site, with a cool URL, here
posted by s at 10:24 PM

Laura Bush says gay marriages are "a very, very shocking issue" for some people, a subject that should be debated by Americans rather than settled by a Massachusetts court or the mayor of San Francisco.
~
pull the other one love, interracial couples are a shocking issue for some people.
posted by s at 10:21 PM

gay marriage in San Francisco, Chitown mayor approving of this, conservative opponents in Cali mobilising against this, somewhere i read today (sorry, forget where!) that in 30 years time it could be that opponents will look like segregationists today.

that is to be hoped, make their views ridiculous not just repellant.
posted by s at 10:19 PM

if i ever had any cred i'm sure it's getting run down, Madge NOT electro etc.

music like loud farts it's marvellous.
posted by s at 10:17 PM

Greg Maddux is going back to the Cubs apparently which is nice. he pitched for them late 80s/early 90s apparently.

i mean this isn't what i know, i'm being fed this info ygetme.
posted by s at 10:15 PM

on the subject of follicles etc. Eno carries off the slaphead look well, few people do.

Richard O'Brien most definitely but i'm struggling other than.

Vin Diesel i suppose but the only half-decent thing he's surely ever been in is 'pitch black'
posted by s at 10:12 PM

incidentally the lovely companion who i adore (craving her kisses gluttonously, catching each other's caresses like kids with jam jars, eager for fireflies) informs me that it always rains in Baltimore, at least according to the lyricism of one Adam Duritz, frontman of that Counting Crows band she likes.

personally i don't think white men look too hot with pineapples on their heads but i'm now listening to the immaculate collection so will shut up about Eno &c.
posted by s at 10:11 PM

incidentally solo Eno albums can have some ineffably lovely end trks, i cite the title track on here come the warm jets and 'mountain of needles' on my life... as compelling evidence.

the final (fourth) part of ...airports is quite special too.
posted by s at 10:07 PM

one of the things i particularly like about my life in the bush of ghosts is track 2, 'mea culpa', there's risings and fallings there that can be traced down to boards of canada. it's nice to hear it all.
the frenzied preacher types reminds one of nothing so much as various old field recordings from Baluchistan that you can get on the cleaned up british library these days their topic label (not the folk label, the global label) and i know there's little linkage between them, i just find the tones of the voices of said frenzied gentlemen to resemble the gluey rutting of an archaic string instrument, some primal violin.
some of the sources on 'moonlight in glory' are like a glorious cross-pollination of zora neale hurston-style oral histories of poor broken-backed, broken-down brownstone districts of Baltimore, the women on their scrubs, scrubbing the doorslabs down.
big zesty container boats of yellow soap and volcanic lather, proud calloused hands, fag ash lil if they were in britain.
it's a cliche about Baltimore and clam chowder (also john waters and barry levinson and Poe) but it's one of my favourite American cities. i admit it started off all because of the detective show 'homicide: life on the street' which is - granted - a fairly half-arsed way of getting interested in a town, i suppose.
but still.
but also on 'glory in moonlight' it sounds like - and i realise i'm hearing this one wrong most likely - old Irish oral histories, strugglers and planters, fighters and drinkers of old day old milk, tinkers and cussers, people that went over from Limerick and settled in Nebraska, some small town in the way, or went down along to the Labrador fisheries. i don't know (clearly!) but this is what it seems like.

the one time i got really angry with the times in my sixteenth year (think it was then anyway) was reading their telly reviews and they'd reviewed homicide and the bloke had written (paraphrase, but this is very roughly it) "students of political correctness might like to note that the top three people in the Baltimore P.D. are a black, a woman, and a black" (they definitely wrote 'black' like that, in that manner).
well Baltimore is a majority black city you ignorant twat so it doesn't surprise me.
perhaps if you used any brain cells you might have you wouldn't look like a fucking tool now would you. cock.
[that was a rough precis of my views, internally]
posted by s at 10:04 PM

Copenhagen targets imams
posted by s at 1:23 PM

i just found some photos of the Chitown neighbourhood where the the lovely companion lives.
~
i love you Chelle.
posted by s at 1:05 PM

putting aside all ethno-national, religious, political differences etc. to one side for a moment seriously,

the one thing we can all agree on is that Benzino and Eminem should have stopped chatting shit about each other a long time ago.
what the people say
posted by s at 1:02 PM

oh Jamie the trouble happens when you open your mouth

Ja Rule said Fiddy should stop talking about his wounds all the time, he does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing them to be fair.
posted by s at 12:54 PM

not as crazy as that (also BBC)

- the largest school in Gabon has been closed down is what that story is all about.
bars serving booze, prostitution and roaming gangs?!
posted by s at 12:52 PM

if someone held a gun to your temple and FORCED you to choose between 'deliverance' and 'southern comfort' - both fairly similar after all in a lazy characterising way of me i'm not wanting any intellectual movie fan critiques etc. just a general pub monologue style level here OK - what would you do?
there's not much in it so i'd have to go for ostensibly minor reasons such as 'southern comfort' because i like the drink of that name, or 'deliverance' because i'm a big fan of 'homicide: life on the street' and (ned beatty's in both of course) that.
crazy when you think about it.
posted by s at 12:51 PM

that barrel-chested mofo' (c. Maff) saw Larry Clark's 'Bully' the other night.

i never thought that much of 'Kids', Caspar the friendly ghost and those little tokers, fairly true to life, casual homophobia, sex, violence, a gang of bored kids, and the listlessness is the point etc. bleh bleh but i just don't think too much of it. Chloe Sevigny is good of course.
posted by s at 12:46 PM

of course k-punk's fine Brits summary is best, but am i the only one who likes the darkness, and just that? i don't think they're being ironic or taking the piss or are funny or whatever, i just like a couple of their songs. i don't have these visceral reactions (i know by the royal 'we' that isn't the best thing to use i just mean generally small geeky corner of this bit of blogging that have heard of ILM and Marcello Carlin basically; that is my rubric [if that's the word] for it; so no, not the overall record buying public).

i got love for Busted of course too.
sounding like a right teenybopper!
posted by s at 12:43 PM

if there was a watchdog for this blog (bear with me on this pompous exercise any patient reader) they would have to conclude it's a failing enterprise. too many links in place of actual content, too much false modesty (arguably), too much cheesy and wearying flagellation, too much generally pretentious verbiage and shite.
so this blog's resolution is to actually be more like a blog and start to write more about stuff i think etc. and be more like blogs i read and admire like, say, Jim.
thanks for reading (if you did)_
posted by s at 12:39 PM

startling (Red Cross criticises the Israeli fence)
posted by s at 12:30 PM

this is a lovely site, first told about it by my wonderful mate Jess, that girl should post on her blog more though!
and you all know about that right?
pray/whatever Iranian train explosion
posted by s at 12:29 PM

god, what a pompous graceless self-absorbed cunt i am! who do i think i am, a foreign correspondent?!

i'm just some bloke in a call centre...;-)
posted by s at 9:56 AM

you see, much as i wanna respec' this perspective, Lapid deserves bigging up merely for wanting to delink the Orthodox and overbearing political power.
posted by s at 9:54 AM

the Israeli government and all its ministers - bar, incidentally Lapid - believe Israel should boycott the current hearings in the Hague about the legality of the security fence. the Bush administration is not the only government to be concerned about the court's legitimacy to judge what is perhaps a political, not legal, issue; as
this shows.

posted by s at 9:46 AM

also, lets all 'bravo' 4 Tommy Lapid
posted by s at 9:11 AM

that film is certainly some way better than 'lost in translation'/'the dreamers'/'elephant'/blah blah etc.
well done Marcello we say.
posted by s at 9:04 AM

you appreciate Mr Sharon has to support his people, but one's moving towards feeling the 'left-wing critics' position on the cash for settlements story (item here)
posted by s at 8:59 AM

the premier Irish gallery is defending itself.
reason? is your Caravaggio authentic?
posted by s at 8:53 AM

a girl quite round my way recently went missing. there have been allegations it might have been her parents that 'disappeared' her. now a local news item suggests her body might have been found
posted by s at 8:49 AM

'breaking news'
posted by s at 8:48 AM

once again, Craner is right.
posted by s at 11:11 PM

now that is interesting.
posted by s at 3:23 PM

man, this girl got bare chops.
posted by s at 2:49 PM

Eppy far more clinically dissects Momus' 'Lutheran Letter' [subject: the film Lost in Translation] than my earlier vague flapping of some approval and some distancing for Momus' views.
expect i'll be haunting his comments box for some time to come on this one...;-)

posted by s at 2:45 PM

wow
industrial festival good eggs~

oh, we wuz hipped to that fine and instructive Very Mild Peril blog b4 by Freaky Trigger's Do You See?.

ta Tom Ewing!
posted by s at 2:39 PM

as liberal hawks reconsider their views on the Iraq war (myself included), it seems that the fellows at slate just come across as, well, plain less dumb than David Aaronovitch's hand-wringing...
here's an Amnesty newsrelease.
posted by s at 1:31 PM

sounds like interesting reflection
posted by s at 1:08 PM

navigating your way around an actually important news story (what to think):

original story, where the Observer and BBC accuse Pyongyang

-IHT
- the FT has its doubts
-Jersualem Post
-Radio Free Asia
-Anne Applebaum unpicks the bluster
posted by s at 12:37 PM

So he, like, fuck it, what can he say, right?
posted by s at 12:23 PM

let's be fair to mr kerry
posted by s at 12:21 PM

sobering reading
~
&also statement of Bishop Gregory

posted by s at 12:20 PM

of course whatever we say about Mr Bush in this instance, it's nowhere near as bad as Mr Blair's continuing 'pals act' with Mr Putin
posted by s at 11:44 AM

President Bush has made some speeches in the past that contain soothing words and nice flourishes about the status of women in Middle-East societies, etc., about democratisation in the region, etc. and that is to be applauded.

of course, we all know the gap between rhetoric and reality can sometimes be large.

so i suppose we can hope that Mr Bush will say something, but we'll not hold our breath
posted by s at 11:40 AM

Paul Keating's promise
The Age
ABC
SMH
posted by s at 8:59 AM

maybe someone later down the thread said 'hold on, those are all from LA. sunny!'
i don't know, i don't read ILM very much.
posted by s at 8:53 AM

maybe i am missing something and i don't want to secondguess anyone and i realise it's not my place but really here, i mean is Memphis a code-word for New Orleans?

i can tell myself - and i know nothing about southern rap - that most of them are from Nola, and the others, well you can find out a lot are from N'awlins. i apologise is this is not my place and maybe the guy meant to write New Orleans and besides it's a tad churlish, puerile even of me to complain cause those are some good tunes.
some are obviously so, like Lil Wayne, Big Tymers, Soulja Slim (who died last year), etc.
and even less famed ones such as fifth ward weebie (fifth ward is a neighbourhood in N'awlins right, just like Magnolia).
anyone, i shouldn't be making an issue of it, it's just the tunes.
just struck me as a bit odd, is all.
posted by s at 8:51 AM

TESTING TESTING NEW ENTRY (a.k.a. HOW we CHANGED OUR MINDS and the west was ONE)

if there is a finer post to a blog than this here, i would quite like to know about it.

P.S.
although in the furious freestyle archives there is a good bit about his mate hijacking the P.A. to inform people of his Wu Tang instructions.
=
here are some lyrics, transcribed.



posted by s at 8:42 AM

Hey, hip-hop is the new indie, except it's actually popular and worth hearing~
haha!

and yet underneath the humour, truth is there too.
posted by s at 8:34 AM

there are only shades of grey
posted by s at 4:36 PM

i must just go and shave this voluminous beard that has sprouted, all the better to soothe my troublesome itchy chin.
posted by s at 3:00 PM

millwall to progress against cup team tranmere and a scraped-through against the cottagers hammers to beat united, then the two to draw in the semis that would be a headache for the Metropolitan Police. eh.
i would like Hammer Luke to comment come on Luke get rid of your 'flowers of evil' dog-eared copy, rub down your copy of the latest 'over land and sea'!
posted by s at 1:55 PM

quite aside from Robbie Fowler's duds pissing his life away at Old Trafford my Saturday was made even more rotten by this {sorry but to paraphrase Jess this IS a blog and all}

OH YEAH
posted by s at 1:47 PM

and let us be fair,
Gareth Southgate has been having a good season
posted by s at 1:24 PM

cricket~
FABERGE eggs
posted by s at 1:21 PM

also good - my brother's girlfriend is his cousin, dontcha know.
posted by s at 1:20 PM

rugby~
good eggs
posted by s at 1:20 PM

also good

posted by s at 1:19 PM

oh, the reason i know about Sarah Cracknell (and apparently she's "still fit too"), is down to QPR John. explanation?
~
his Saturday was hideously drunk by the beginning of the afternoon and involved "scary looking Bees fans" and violence.
alas, the violence round our way was sickening, i'm afraid to say.
football rivalries, bored young men, alcohol, the manchester derby, people that have been inside for murder anyway, drug dealers, closeted busy pubs, stabbings and assaults on police officers, it ain't good.
posted by s at 1:17 PM

Big Ron in speaking sense shockah!
posted by s at 1:14 PM

good~
been one of my favourite young Englishmen for some time now.
posted by s at 1:13 PM

existentially informed, spiritually nourishing, that's what we like
&also

and HAIL TO THE (one of the) CHIEF[s]
aka Yazoo
i didn't know there was a Slim Smith that wasn't a reggae man!

posted by s at 12:58 PM

although she's actually from Chelmsford
posted by s at 12:50 PM

apparently Sarah Cracknell is a Brentford fan!
posted by s at 12:49 PM

via the rambler, that is thoughtful and good (the rambler's also OTM about the miserable, miserly words of Paul Morley).
posted by s at 10:04 AM

two sets of awful awful pictures:

- Sydney riots

- Moscow tragedy

&also
posted by s at 9:59 AM

musically speaking, i suppose Jon is the best blog.
(well, him and spizzazzz and skykicking)
he's right about Sydney of course.
the best Australian cities (in descending order) are
- Sydney
- Melbourne
- Adelaide
- Perth
- Darwin
- Brisbane
- Hobart
- Newcastle (go Silverchair woo!)
- Gold Coast

note i've never been to Oz in my life...;-)



posted by s at 9:57 AM

actually when scarlett gets on the subway and sees a young chap reading manga porn (manga porn! so can we please have a high profile Japanese indie flick of urban anomie that plays in the US, showing our Japanese heroine getting on the new york subway and the first thing that happens is she sees an incredibly obese man reading a "THICK NEO-CON PAROCHIAL FUCKWIT PRIMER TO THE REST OF THE WORLD aka INFIDELS 101" pamphlet please??), i was expecting another sweaty Japanese geek to try a spot of rubbing up against her, perhaps try and snip off a lock of her hair.
yeah, i think that's (the sort of thing) the vocal critics of 'lost in translation' mean...
posted by s at 9:40 AM

on another note, there's this
posted by s at 9:30 AM

bafta winners
-
i'm glad that bill murray won his best actor gong, and although anne reid was the best actress in those categories right? (her performance seemed far more _out_ than johansson's, even though 'the mother' was really not as good), it's hardly upsetting that scarlett johansson won best actress. but i was reading on another blog (i can't remember where it was, sorry!) that they thought ribisi was better than either of the two leads in 'lost in translation'. this seems entirely supportable (much as i want to marry the entirely lovable and weary murray in 'groundhog day', and scallops to andie mcdowall's character).

bill nighy a better supporting actor than either tim robbins or paul bettany [or the daddy of albert finney who deserves an award each year for playing it how he did in 'miller's crossing] is a misjudgment surely (but 'love actually' had to win something of course...).

re. 'lost in translation' whilst it seems that momus is of course being a bit too overstating his case an' all you can sorta see what he's getting at, but there again this wonderfully eloquent homage to the film didn't quite convince me with its Also, it’s not entirely about being lost in Japan, but of being swept up in the chaos of cities in general. You go somewhere you don’t know the rules and norms, it’s hard to function without getting stressed. Try being a tourist in London in the rush hour – don’t even think about looking at the tube map on a station platform.
it seems there is a little something there that the dismissals of the film - couched in the cliched terms of reference you'll be familiar with - articulate.
BUT one'd also argue there's a little something of an undercurrent in the film that is, well, a tad dodgy.
i've only read 2 or 3 interviews where the director expounds upon a discussion of the, er, 'Japan issue' but she's not been persuasive for her cause at all, in any 'defence'.

that some folks are trying to do this {via Pop Life} is fair enough but i think regrettable, but that's only because i'm a supposed aestheticist, although i can see there's enough cause for concern to do that. anyway, i'm not a concerned asian-american so i should bacdafucup.
that said, the opening scene where murray sees himself on a billboard and some of the karaoke scenes were incredibly affecting (but that opening scene i found the most powerful and transformative in the entire film; never mind pseuds discussing what he whispered in her ear at the end! ooh, we are in a bitchy mood this morning...); some of the scenes where she 'engages' with trad arr Japanese culture especially worked quite well.
anyway, it's a superior effort to 'the virgin suicides' and even if it does flatter to deceive ultimately, it's got tongues wagging about it, so Coppola deserves some recognition for that.
-
on another note, it's nice to see two good British films winning something at the baftas. 'touching the void', ignoring sniffy critical comments about technical talk and all that, was pretty bloody strong stuff.
and very pleasing that 'in this world' (further proof of the catholic curate's egg of a director that is michael winterbottom: don't forget he was the man finally responsible for the mangling of the reality-wringer that was '24 hour party people') gained some acknowledgment. the best film to win anything on the night, for my money: indeed, the best film to be nominated full-stop perhaps. startling.
posted by s at 9:25 AM

An ICM poll last month in Britain found that one in five Britons would oppose a Jewish prime minister, while one in seven believed that the Holocaust was exaggerated.

__Rajeev Syal in today's Telegraph.

we're clearly not just talking about disingenuous (or breathtakingly cynical, for that matter) witterings, or riffs on the 'numbers game' (sic; yeah, we were too) here, but something far more insidious...
posted by s at 9:35 PM

the new statesman has been made to look silly -
posted by s at 3:39 PM

to make up for the godawful self-absorbed whining of below, i'll hopefully recoup some goodwill (NO-ONE CARES YOU SOLIPSISTIC MERCHANT BANKER hoho) there is a fascinating page about Papiamentu here. basic, but one didn't know half this stuff.
posted by s at 2:57 PM

still what do i know, i work in an RAC call-centre.

HINT;
go the aa instead...
posted by s at 2:25 PM

that Des Moines article (see below) is of course something which everyone is surely sympathetic to but the problem with an endless critique like that to me is a bit's like what i'll term the Jeremy Hardy Syndrome.
Jeremy, top bloke, top comedian, heart in the right place, but even the fairly outontheleft friend i saw him with once tired part-way into the routine with Jeremy's insistence that his criticisms of government policy, the status quo, etc., didn't have to come with qualifications. the 'what's the alternative' gag you'll have heard if you've ever seen Jeremy Hardy do stand-up, i'd say (this is the only independent item i could find about it online so will have to suffice).

so even though that somewhat bolshy sounding chap below could of course be critiqued (and probably wildly, if one was going to set about him) himself in response to his criticisms of the DesMoines Register column, the pragmatist in the general reader would presumably let it slide.
on reflection, the 'at least the trains run on time' dig from the self-professed hardcore libertarian perhaps isn't so harsh...
posted by s at 2:23 PM

how to write a restaurant review

dunno bout you, but found this completely gripping
posted by s at 2:06 PM

god! don't i flagellate! typical fucking straight white liberal fence-sitting male.

help help
posted by s at 2:04 PM

there's also
Will U.S. actions turn back clock on Iraqi women?~

DID read all of it, -alas-
Whatever else can be said about Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq - and plenty of terrible things can
lets it down, i'm afraid.
OK, so this guy is probably not my school of politics in general, but i'm gonna sit with him as a bedfellow on this critique.

no doubt, it's a cheap (and nasty) shot to headline Yes, But the Trains Ran on Time..., as this bloke does however.
posted by s at 2:01 PM

P.S.
the comment could have been inferred as doubting the honesty of Mr McGuinness.
ahem

posted by s at 1:57 PM

i linked to this story before and made a 'actually, i probably did intend that as sarcastic aiighht' comment that could have been interpreted as either straight-faced (that would have been my get-out clause) or sarcastic.
i deleted it which is the first time (as far as i can recall) i've ever deleted anything at somedisco. so now i thought i better post it in the interests of honesty.
there is this in mitigation, however.
posted by s at 1:57 PM

Eppy, Dominic in Eppy's comments box, our boy esp.; we luv you all, you're all rite.
!
posted by s at 1:54 PM

clap clap on chris rock
i like chris rock cause of his quotes on the front cover of that nelson george book, if nowt else. to borrow from the jam tribute album, FIRE & SKILL.
posted by s at 1:52 PM

yes am an evil capitalist whore i know.
posted by s at 12:57 PM

i want u i want u i want u
posted by s at 12:52 PM

sounds reasonable
posted by s at 12:21 PM

god, do like staropramen me. a fave easy-to-get-hold-of continental. a lot better than bigname Belgians you get clueless foos' in black roll-necks going for in arthouse cafes cause they feel it's so superior to wifebeater (or whatever; gosh, i'm not reading my own bigoted values into things today am i?!). Leffe, the ordinary one for instance, is no great shakes in the slightest.
here is a website. The Triple is lovely though.
incidentally, without sounding like a fucking arrogant cock (though undoubtedly i do) i know a little bit about Belgian brews, if not least because this place is one of my locals.

here's Michael Jackson (the beer hunter, not the telly personality or the, er, personality)
great pub lunch
great banter
great scot
onlyfinebeer

well its hyperlinks city today eh man.
posted by s at 12:18 PM

this chap is staying in Prague, drinking the local produce.
he is the winner, i feel.
posted by s at 12:05 PM

DO YOU BET?

if yes, it might be worth looking here.

Scholes to open the scoring in a 3-2 home win is good odds at 80-1.
posted by s at 11:58 AM

sorry i'm such a grumpy no-mark today, obviously i know Bertolucci and the actors in the dreamers are nine times the people i will ever be yadda yadda blehblah so never fear i was similarly mystified after all about the fuss over 'apocalypse now redux' thus invalidating my cinematic views for ever i don't doubt!
posted by s at 10:39 AM

Pete Baran sticks it to 'The Dreamers' well.
quite frankly i am getting a tad narked with the adverts for it in the papers, praising its 'jouissance and fluidity' (Neasden Examiner), 'sense of sexual daring' (Miles Kington in the Independent), 'filthy wickedness that may bring down the Royals' (Mail on Sunday), and 'masterpiece' (Telegraph, i hope it wasn't my beloved Sukhdev Sandhu that wrote that).

i mean like i said, wanking for Graun readers innit.
gah/
posted by s at 10:35 AM

how have i not seen Pop Life before now?
GENIUS.
posted by s at 9:18 AM

oh yeah Mcr does indeed have the strongest visual arts scene in the UK outside of Edinburgh or London but it's really only the Smoke you need. that said, in the interests of wossnames, here are some links to the better galleries etc (i.e., not too poncy esoteric types) or just the odd ones i particularly like (i.e., there's actually only about 30 or so galleries in town, a few more in the inner city&Salford& = AFAIK = and loadsa them are little poncy wallpaper/frieze reader type places, oh i'm kidding i love ya really). anyway
:-
MAG
The Lowry
Cornerhouse
The Whitworth
CUBE
Richard Goodall
Castlefield Gallery

oh and special mentions for
that at Urbis
and the Spencer at IWMN CURRENT.

posted by s at 9:10 AM

this is from mt. disappointment's other half.
it's fascinating and wonderful and my favourite post of the year thus far, quite possibly. i dunno why. it's kewl.
now Jon might have the Art Gallery of South Australia and the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, and Cathy might have The AGNSW and The MCA to go to, but all dem wondeful Melbourne headz have National Gallery of Victoria; i.e., the finest city art gallery in Australia.

oh, this is a great site.
here's the daddy, of course.
the reason for all this is a favour i gotta ask Angus later (i don't think Tim or certainly Keith read this page; sorry, i don't know if there's any other Melbourne bloggers that i read given that i don't know where you're from but anyway i'll stop waffling etc.)
so yeah Gordon! OI i'll get back to yous.
posted by s at 8:57 AM

when i work out how to do links bar bare bloggin gettin hipped to ya getme
posted by s at 8:39 AM

this peep is also premier league.
posted by s at 8:38 AM

Talent in a Previous Life

yet another new top draw blog, i especially enjoyed this
praise be to our resident cybernetic Forest fan for drawing our attention
N.B.
alas i am a fellow ginga-minga Nicola, never fear.
N.B.B.B.
surely most people fancy Nadine? perhaps Cheryl at a pinch.
posted by s at 8:38 AM

i think that from Luka is probably the best manifesto i've ever read.
posted by s at 8:33 AM

day in day out, they are premier league.
sorry i'm a spread the love vybez peace n bizness ting today.
posted by s at 8:31 AM

top bloggin
posted by s at 8:30 AM

Craner is, of course, correct.
posted by s at 8:30 AM

aww
posted by s at 7:25 PM

the greatest magazine cover in the world
posted by s at 5:12 PM

fascinating
posted by s at 5:10 PM

shouldn't speak {oh i am! what a tosser...} but this news might not be the best.
the family have - rightly - in the past argued that scapegoating this single solider is not good enough. here's something explaining their fears about a culture of impunity within the particular part of the IDF they're concerned with (what a wordy sentence!).

posted by s at 5:07 PM

this is an interesting wrap-up.
also from the guardian: this (not normally one for critiquing personal politicking etc, but the stories about President Bush's military service in his youth are too juicy to ignore...)
posted by s at 5:02 PM

on the other hand, this chap could probably do with a few inappropriate smileys right now (has there been a more unsuitable segue before?)
posted by s at 4:09 PM

it's possibly quite demeaning an emoticon had to be dropped in the previous post but, well, yunno, whatever, nevermind.
posted by s at 4:07 PM

also via Dave Stelfox, his mate's new blog here, which looks quite tasty. pray continue with your lists, o master of the Cali retinue!
posted by s at 4:02 PM

Superpitcher adores Carlton and the Shoes

things seem better after this.
posted by s at 4:00 PM

hmm
posted by s at 1:41 PM

recently

but what about the
babies?

&
posted by s at 1:00 PM

bollocks scallops and fishes
posted by s at 12:58 PM

go east
ALSO
Kowloon, I LOVE YOU.
posted by s at 12:57 PM

The Rambler

is:

a Cumbrian called Tim Johnson, a Carlisle United fan, set to wed this year.

also is:

a BOSS blog.
i read him every day.

quality.
nice i up
posted by s at 12:46 PM

inspired
posted by s at 12:39 PM

the boy is a legend (that, and the grime round up Luka hips to)
posted by s at 10:54 AM

i don't know. these rowdy chicagoan yahoos.
posted by s at 10:49 AM

it was an appalling tackle - as bad as little Stevie Gerrard's accident (sic, and we were at Houllier's defence) on Naysmith in the Merseyside derby.
posted by s at 10:11 AM

look, look

interesting final para analogy from man himself &
also&
also&
also
posted by s at 8:57 AM

i like this guy.
and i, well, wow (apologies. that one's late).

interesting

bollocks
posted by s at 8:55 AM

i find this piece of modern pop-cultural refusenik-ism from Kyle Gann (an actual famous person! with a blog!) strangely moving.
hear hear.

link via here, some chap called Rob who appears to be a chum of Ramblin Tim.

looks like a promising start to me.

posted by s at 8:46 AM

silverdollarcircle

more people should big this boy up, the NW language, the stream of consciousness intended or otherwise, it's all SUPERB.
i fink.
plus he and i were raised about 20 miles apart from each other, which is, er nice.

but what i wanted to say was there's this bit awhile ago where he wrote "once i heard an MC say over this track, in a voice that suddenly sounded very lonely, 'ok, we're going to war, reinforcements are on their way...' and it was just incredibly moving."
and don't ax me to justify why, but i just found that an incredibly affecting sentence in itself, ie. Simon talking about the thing on the radio (never mind the radio thing itself, which sounds poignant to silverdollarcircle) like i say i dunno why, it just him me, just so, so BIG UP. i just thought it was powerfully simple, and simply powerful (sorry fella, that was crap)
posted by s at 8:03 PM

P.S.
i actually find all three destiny's girls equally foxy.
in a music-cum-attraction-collision-trope vein i can confirm the lovely companion has eyes for pete yorn, ryan adams, strokes frontman i believe, random indie boys, and, er, some more pete yorn!

so 'my three at a pinch' (i.e., totally crass somedisco losing any goodwill anyone ever had by saying three musicians i think are fit meaning that if i ever discuss their music it will look suspect and possibly not just on musical grounds as it should be but oh well) will be, hmm, i dunno actually.

i think mutya sugababe is really cute (well, all the sugababes are foxes let's be frank) and i've read some really nasty things about her, people calling her terribly ugly.
not so nice about it.
posted by s at 8:00 PM

incidentally, how damn fine did Beyonce look at the Grammys the other night?

i think the answer you're looking for is QUITE.
posted by s at 7:56 PM

OH YEAH THIS IS REAL LATE
but, to quote Martin Archer of Discus Recs
"Wednesday 11th February 2004
VOLCANO THE BEAR
Two set extravaganza from this highly rated and unique rock / improv / performance ensemble
The Grapes,Trippet Lane, Sheffield
8.30 pm. £5 full / £3 concession, all tickets on door"

posted by s at 6:55 PM

of course that's a subject up for discussion, as is 'the fence'
posted by s at 5:08 PM

re. the RadicalJew before (see earlier link), whilst the one-sidedness of their prose attack was not helpful, they were at least OTM in the respect of calling out (rasta far i) the double standards goin' on with the Al-Saud fence, as evidenced by the independent here ~
posted by s at 5:07 PM

reminder

here's his indictment (amended)
posted by s at 3:26 PM

absolute dynamite - if true
posted by s at 3:22 PM

i think all nyc-based bloggers should declare their residential interest
posted by s at 1:36 PM

see you hear what they're saying here but, basically, they're too shrill and disagreeable on some points. NEXT!
posted by s at 1:04 PM

i find that quite interesting.

i don't like the sound of that.
you may or may not like the telegraph but even those who don't like it would possibly admit it's preferable to the express (or the mail, for that matter).

as someone who - just about - prefers the telegraph and the times to the guardian or the independent, i must say, i'm bloody concerned about that.
this article claims that richard desmond has a hand in editing the front pages (not that there's anything wrong or indeed surprising about that; it's his paper after all - it's just worrying).
posted by s at 12:51 PM

for some time now (months anyway) she's reminded me of nothing more than Thatcher's delusions in her final weeks.

of course what i know and understand about Sri Lankan political affairs can be written on the back of a penny black.
posted by s at 11:05 AM

non-williamsburg-hipster-mainstream-yankee-source takes to dizzee ras
posted by s at 9:06 AM

his heart is full of hate, detractors sing! to be positive, i'd like to say how good water is. to drink.
posted by s at 9:02 AM

or, whatever like.
posted by s at 9:02 AM

purely from, yunno, a writerly point of view.

i'm a fairly happy-go-lucky optimist sort of chap but it's all about the psychogeographic-tone-prose-poems round here.

and another thing, pseuds, proper literary intellectuals (e.g., Beckett or Pessoa or Rilke) have the right to say daftly impenetrable things that if the average person in the street said you would say 'you daft twat' but because they say it it's okay. there should be a law though, that's what i rate. but i'm not so sure about people that haven't earnt their stripes doing so, you just need some books you don't need to travel etc. to travel, all that, that's all very well, but write us a masterpiece to convince us of your poetic rectitude first.
posted by s at 9:01 AM

FWIW, on poptimism, i find k-punk best.

's'all.

dunno what to think, just sayin.
posted by s at 8:57 AM

as was sleeping soundly sigh
posted by s at 8:48 AM

I'm not a crusader or campaigner for the North and I don't put on a flat cap when I sit down to write. But it is very important. I don't think I live in the provinces - I think I live in the centre of the universe.
_Simon Armitage.
god save us from professional Yorkshiremen!

granted, the centre of the universe is where everybody lives, as everybody lives in the centre of their universe and it would be nice to strive for an inclusive localism (god, this is a pseuds corner sentence innit) that becomes bigger than the sum of its parts extending to the margins and the whole (or whatever, blah blah, nearly done now) but really - parochialism like that is just...(yes i know i just contradicted oneself but hey-ho) hmm, irritating.

posted by s at 12:59 PM

The Rambler surpasses himself following the "pop" debates (k-punk [wicked pictures of late!] and Joe also).
as it's a school-masterly type air that some of those involved have been taking, my links today are of surnames.
==
Poptimism: half-time analysis
- it was Carlin's masterly summary of the year 1985 that started 'it' off, wasn't it?
thoroughly researched and definitely not light reading. great things are expected of this young pup.
- Ingram appeals to all the softies, such as myself and the boy Stelfox. Ingram doesn't have to try too hard apart from when he's doing his lavishly illustrated full-length essay pieces (though he can sometimes be a little too alert to criticisms from his peers which affects his delicate sensibility unfavourably - an awful shame), and we wish him well. he is asking for a transfer to the Visual Art class anyway as of September.
- Ewing is one of the great conciliators of the form. always alert with a quip and a smile, a wildly popular figure, and work informed by hope. let's not get all shawshank redemption on each other, but a cheery young cove when on form. well done.
- Barthel transferred to the class from overseas and sometimes it seems his American ways rub the others up the wrong direction. typically American 'can-do' endeavour mean this boy is a hard worker and some future successes are predicted, as long as Barthel can rein in his intermittent squabbling with the form's troublesome remedial pupil.
=
-- all in all, Johnson has the last word on the subject. well done Johnson.
P.S.
- whilst the boys are all out yapping, it should be noted that this pupil is actually sailing ahead of everyone.
P.P.S.
- the pupil known as somedisco has been held back for next semester again after a serious disagreement with the normally placid Dale where it was alleged Dale had his yoghurt (strawberry) pot stolen by somedisco, who then refused to return it, screaming about dowagers and artichokes.
posted by s at 12:25 PM

breaking news
posted by s at 11:16 AM

see her?

my mate works here.
they're doing a feature on her at the moment, some big thing for schooltrips. very interesting.

two of my best mates are from Handsworth and when i get my arse in gear i'll be doing a big up Brum post.
for now, check here (and here, of course).

also Dan and Iain - digital WM folk.
big up ya chest, Birmingham
posted by s at 10:59 AM

amnesty international uk criticises the home office on asylum decisions
posted by s at 10:42 AM

who to believe
posted by s at 10:36 AM

i'm lovin it
posted by s at 8:56 AM

people like Jason Dodd are surely going to respond, well, not the best.
they'll have to live with it, but really....you gotta get your dressing room in order.
posted by s at 8:56 AM

you know me and my budda Farndale were discussing shame earlier, well that is shameless basically innit.
small time if that goes through.
Kinnear to Forest apparently.
posted by s at 8:54 AM

before i wade into all this whole fray (bentos) that Luka has been, like, propping (and i'm okay cause i'm a fellow blagger, this is why luke sends the crumbs from his Ldn. table up to Mcr, he appreciates that), can we just note that it's so nice to be reading about Holderlin and not, say, Dave Eggers all the damn-straight-as-mustard time.
posted by s at 8:52 AM

much as i've been enjoying S/FJ's thoughts on that Ashbery reading
it was his whole take on all that 'NYT sex-slave' hullabaloo (he also links to some of the main music-actually-but-they're-like-all-humans-n-that playas discussing this whole affair, including Hua Hsu and Doug Wolk making a bit of a reefer madness out of it all.
you can follow the links and all, what struck me was S/FJ's original response (follow it from lacunae).
interesting.
posted by s at 8:45 AM

they got it bad, and that ain't good.
posted by s at 8:36 AM

re. this-

i tell you what i really enjoyed in all the letters to the editor on this debate of late, what i really liked was all the good liberals reminding us of poor human rights records in mostly Muslim states, yeah, that's a great reason to ban headscarves, perhaps we could stop nuns dressing like they do because of the Irish potato famine.
give yourselves a big pat on the back.
posted by s at 8:32 AM

{with apologies to [late lamented, dear departed] josh blog}

"...a huge tray bearing coffee and milk, toast, a sugar bowl, perhaps some cherry preserve or marmalade, a slice of dark grainy quince paste, a sponge cake, brioches with a fine crust, crunchy biscuits, or slices of French toast, those scrumptious luxuries served in hotels. We shall soon learn if the Braganca goes in for such extravagance, because Ricardo Reis is about to sample his first breakfast."

AKA second-gen luvva of the funcked-up funcky beats downs tools. my very good mate Qas: he knows a great joke about a dog in a country village and it was he that told me that pineapple contains an enzyme that can tenderise lamb (i didn't know that; cheers Q!)
P.S.
to be fair to nuts magazine (can't be arsed to link 'em tho') they have some funny features in there (i didn't buy it i was idling today at work on my break and someone left one on my call desk...)__but quite right yes.
P.P.S.
what is the problem with schnide own brand kettle chips? i had some last night with a load of whisky and beer and was belching like a duffelpud (if they belch, they can certainly FUCKING HOP BY LOR). i blame the gravy, it looked like smokers catarrh (sp).
posted by s at 10:42 PM

New warning Britain will be hit by massive tax bill
GYPSY CRISIS
Britain was warned last night it faces a massive benefits bill to pay for the looming influx of immigrants, including gypsies, from eastern Europe….many of the new immigrants, including Roma gypsies, could become a “burden” on the benefits system.
The Express continues in the same vein; Roma are mentioned one more time.
i don’t know what the hell is going on at that place, i really don’t. could they be done for incitement? it’s possibly not so far-fetched...

Underneath the black eye-patch, this man was essentially a loner, strangely turned in on himself – an odd trait in someone others looked to for leadership and it makes him a very modern hero.
David Pryce-Jones on Moshe Dayan.

do you think Ben Kingsley will win a statue for his performance in ‘house of sand and fog’? my mate told me the bookies have got quite decent odds on that one. he was overlooked in ‘sexy beast’ after all, and that was okay.

“However, despite a resurrected Anglophone lexicon of Eurasian pivotalism and advanced Great Game theory, the dross reality of Texas-style chicken-friend empire – George Bush imperator, sprawling Sun Belt mega-churches instead of Gothic Westminster, Bible-thumping Virginia ayatollahs, Pentagon intellectuals-in-residence, doctrines of preemptive war, and Texas Ranger unilateralism – quickly sent serious historians reaching for less flattering analogies.”
I love the use of the word “serious” in that so-called sentence.
_Michael Portillo tears into Kevin Phillips’ (no, not the Southampton striker) American Dynasty: How the Bush Clan Became the World’s Most Powerful and Dangerous Family.

justice for james miller.

One of the indubitable masterpieces of his later years is the pitiless Self-Portrait in a Dressing-Room Mirror (1923-4). He stands in his studio, its walls ablaze with yellow, pictures all around him like the ghosts of all his memories. His face is an eloquent blur, turned to the light but eyes that look almost sightless. The former Nabi resembles an Old Testament prophet, gone blind.
_on the new, scaled-down, Vuillard show at the Royal Academy (larger versions of this show have been glimpsed in Montreal, Paris and Washington, D.C.).

brilliant headline for an interview with (Sir) Roy Strong: A look back in languor. haha!

A present from the local undertaker…a severe man, always telling me my funeral eulogies are over-generous.
_The Reverend Alice Goodman, of St Mary’s Kidderminster, acknowledges some chocolate biscuits.
Alice is also a Harvard-educated Jewish-American girl from the plains (to be precise, same state as Bobby Dylan) who wrote the librettos for both Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer.

‘Mr Abley scorns Noam Chomsky’s belief in a universal grammar underlying all languages.’

was trying to think what was so strange and a tad – well, frankly – creepy almost about just the trailers for ‘the dreamers’. then the foregrounding of the girl’s body (Green) hits you. thinking ‘fairy nuff like, it is old Bernardo, after all Maria and Marlon and the butter…’, but this was still well put from kinofan Jenny McCartney (and OTM too, methinks) “Still, it will no doubt be a godsend to male teenagers, who have been patiently waiting ever since Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue for another arty film about a mad French bird who strips off at the drop of a chapeau.”
how right you are Jenny, how right you are!

If they uproot me, I won’t be able to believe any more in the moral basis of this Jewish state….Thank God, the people are strong even if the leadership is now weak.
_Avi Farhan, resident in Elei Sinai.
Arik Harpaz, with a monument to his 19 year old daughter Liron – killed by gunmen – on his land (“Her blood seeped into this ground…I don’t know if I can leave”) admits For true peace, I am ready to leave…but I believe this is a bad step.

was it that Amy Studt who covered Sheryl Crow? that wasn’t very good was it. and that Amy Winehouse is a bit rude, calling superior songs to her fare rubbish (slagging off Blu Cantrell’s ‘breathe’ f’r instance).
and another thing, why do nearly all the very negative reviews of the latest Courtney Love album i’ve seen of late do a not very good job on the music and tend to go for Courtney the personality in a hatchet job? okay, she’s a larger than life character, but it’s half-arsed and unfair. NEXT PLEASE!

I despise hypocrites who sport huge beards in the name of religion and hinder the passage of justice in the name of Islam.
- Haroon Tanoli.
Haroon’s son Abid was an ordinary student at a Karachi madrassa when – aged 14 – he was horribly scarred (for life) in an acid attack perpetrated by one of his teachers and three assistants. The reason? Abid had resisted his teacher’s sexual advances. Haroon managed to get Abid to a hospital but their family cannot afford the operation to save the boy’s sight.
Haroon is in hiding.

Shame needs an audience and is about what other people think of you. It is about public humiliation, losing face, and violating a common trust. Guilt is about what you think about yourself, about failing in your own eyes. Guilt is, ultimately, self-serving.
Aristotle said that the inability to feel shame is the ultimate proof of a wicked character. The word “character” could nowadays be substituted with “culture”.
- Nigel Farndale.
obviously a bit unsure about his closing sentence but as a zippy opening paragraph, that first bit is quite fun.

The main courses, on the other hand, were dreadful. My duck leg confit (£16) was perfectly crispy, yet the meat itself was staggeringly flavourless – quite an achievement with the planet’s finest meat market a 90-second walk away.
_Matthew Norman visits Vivat Bacchus, on Farringdon Street, EC4.

actually my old man told me he went in the boozer i was ripping the other day and it’s 2.22 a pint of lager (fuck me, it’s not rice wine). the same lager in his club is 1.34 (i think it was). huh!

“Fragonard senior died on 22 August after quite a short illness. He was 74 and a half years old and extremely fat.”
- obituary for Jean Honore Fragonard, painter of The Fountain of Love (among other works), that ran in the Nouvelles des Arts, in 1806.

here is a letter from someone in Wolverhampton, replying to that other letter from the councillor in Liverpool.
Chris Lenton’s combat against the European Commission, bureaucracy and centralism is all very well, but I think we are all missing the point here: Ryanair and other so-called cheap airlines are using unfair market tactics and have been for years.
They intimidate small airports (who are victims of Ryanair, not of the European ruling) and play the game of ‘Let us land for free, or we’ll go and land somewhere else and take all our British tourists and money to another city’.
Now think of your local French airline paying a fortune to use the runways. Do you really think it is fair on them? How would you feel if you owned a small airline business and had to pay £3,000 per landing to use a runway, only to find out Ryanair gets the same for free, just because of their name?
Also, we need to think of the airports. They need money to survive, particularly small airports not subsidised by big cities such as Paris and London. Many have already told Ryanair and friends to go away if they are not prepared to pay the normal fee.
Okay, this is an inconvenience for us, living in the UK. We all love visiting small towns in France, Italy and Austria – but does our comfort really come first? Or should it be the fairness of trade in a market already badly affected by September 11? I’m glad such commissions exist, or else who would make sure companies trade fairly?

here’s a couple of other replies, firstly from a Green Party man in north London, and then someone in the east of our fair capital.
Green bloke writes: I think Chris Lenton misses the point about the Ryanair judgment. This was a small step towards ending the economic mollycoddling of the aviation industry.
The UK air transport industry alone gets a £9billion annual tax break. Because it’s the most heavily polluting mode of transport, aviation has huge hidden costs, including its share of the bill for pollution-related ill health and climate change.
These hidden costs amount to almost £4billion a year for UK aviation alone, and about £15billion for EU aviation as a whole. The economic playing field is currently tilted in favour of the most environmentally damaging form of transport with the greatest hidden costs. We need to tilt it the other way, towards more environmentally-friendly rail travel that could replace half of European air trips, while improving social inclusion.
meanwhile, some chap with his eye on the prize writes:All residents of all countries to which Ryanair flies are in a position to benefit from the marvellously cheap fares it offers. Europe has really been opened up by them and other low-cost airlines and long may that continue. Trading fairly? We are in a common market – sell your product as well as you can and let the others catch up. For once, the paying customers are getting something that they want.

i don’t really want to say anything here but will note that as recently as 1999 when Air France had the monopoly on flights between London and Strasbourg you could be charged £540 (540 pounds!! you can fly from northern England all the way to New Zealand for about seven hundred pounds!) for a ticket between the two cities. in 2001, Ryanair could offer you that flight for ten pounds. a French court ruling has since restored the state carrier monopoly on that route. the complaints against Ryanair of late have included disquiet emanating from an Air France subsidiary that is in direct competition with Ryanair. in 1994, the European Court of Justice ruled a £2.4billion state subsidy to Air France was not legal. the rules were changed by the commission so that this subsidy effectively became legal.
well, it makes you think anyway (it was certainly hard not to laugh recently when Kevin Myers wrote, of European Commissioner Loyola de Palacio announcing Only genuine competition is truly capable of safeguarding consumers’ rights, that “…this from a representative of the EU, which runs the world’s largest cartel, otherwise known as the Common Agricultural Policy.”).

posted by s at 10:16 PM

i like Mali.
posted by s at 3:01 PM

incidentally, if you were reading that particular ATFF post from a few weeks ago, you might be interested to see the - now infamous - Dallaire fax here.
posted by s at 1:23 PM

i'm all for it
posted by s at 1:15 PM

this decision is mine
~
posted by s at 1:36 AM

suppose, since i've been away, just to (semi, ha-) publicly state it, i will miss joshblog like few others.
posted by s at 1:35 AM

stockport dan the lovely one that will show you the way and he also does some of his working out on the side, little slate chalk cuts, that's what i like about his site that and his pieces to accompany a sideshow but you don't realise thinking it's the main show (what a pseud i am haha!), he's on dj martian's A-Z also included in my blo.gs updates now, which is good. cause his stuff is nice tamales.
posted by s at 1:20 AM

my brother was in the pub and cristiano ronaldo the footballer and one of the girls aloud were in the same pub tonight, but he didn't see them.
posted by s at 1:15 AM

it goes without saying i've been finding it all enormously good.
posted by s at 1:14 AM

this must just be me, but yes, i found that funny too.
also Luka, you can tell Pete i've no quarrel with Anelka getting sent off in that game but Cole and Edu should have gone too (of course).
also when you link to Luke his URL is proper, see what i mean/
i mean, look, it's linked there it is all well and good like and it's a particular point in time yget me.
posted by s at 1:12 AM

now i feel bad for being mean about franz ferdinand jim has the right idea, he's nicer.
posted by s at 1:09 AM

hot tubs: are they just giant sex aids?
the telegraph gets straight to the point.

following on from the Morecambe Bay tragedy this morning’s Daily Express seemingly cannot resist a flourish in its leader column, in its closing words, spitting that These appalling deaths highlight what both ill-informed liberals and the Government must take on board: that there is nothing humanitarian about a softly-softly approach to immigration and asylum.
i agree with some of this formulation but this is a completely disingenuous approach (completely offtopic why have we started capitalising Government? it’s like Leftwing or Techno in the wire).
and does the express leader writer genuinely think a representative sample of express readers – assuming (a grand assumption, granted) they get their information on this ‘debate’ mostly from the express, and there alone – does the express leader writer truly think that this Joe is more informed on migrant issues, asylum seekers than someone who gets more of their information on this arena from broadsheets? where is this near-mythical coterie of PC fascists, bruschetta eaters in Islington, this liberal intelligentsia seeking to do down the ordinary bloke on the omnibus (though the guardian’s jobs section is top-heavily full of depressingly Neasden Polytechnic-type jobs, admittedly)?
i mean, really. someone needs to have a word with themselves.
ill-informed re. asylum seeker/immigration issues is certainly something you are if you take the express seriously (why am i naively bothering to write this claptrap i don’t know…).
Freddy Forsyth was in the express yesterday moaning about Keith Best [(check the quotes when they ask him what he thinks of Mr Blunkett’s much publicised media policy of supposedly combating the far-right by trying to clamp down on public fears – dynamite!) and secondly there’s an interesting knobbling job on Mr Best on the BNP website here (classic BNP slogan – “Building a future for British children”, let’s be honest mate it’s ‘Building a future for white children’)] mouthing off about the dangers of policies being formulated off the back of pandering to ‘daily express readers’ (now i’m clearly not defending Best’s foolish choice of words if he did say that in public). opposition to the “shambles” that is the asylum policy of her majesty’s government can legitimately come from any position, lifeboat theorists, or out and out xenophobic sorts (i’ll be honest with my editorialising language dear reader because this isn’t face to face), or ‘bleeding heart’ (apparently!) classic-cum-social liberal collisionists (sic) like me (it’s all free trade ain’t it cries my Tory MP after he hailed me for “astutely identifying me as a fellow liberal”) but for the express to imply that those like myself – that sometimes do, yes, feel disappointed with the tone of their coverage (have you been reading it lately about all these FERAL SLOVAKS WILL TAKE OUR WOMEN AND GREEN BUT NOT THE PROPER SLOVAKS OH NO NOT THE SOPHISTICATED ONES THAT OUR DAUGHTERS FUCK ON THEIR GAP YEARS AS THEY’RE ZIPPING AROUND BRATISLAVA, YOU KNOW, THE OTHER ONES…) and would choose another path – for them to imply that we are all a nonsense, our collective-head-in-sand (truly no grim pun intended but the phrasing fits) approach the worst thing for both migrants and the British taxpayer; well, - to quote SR (in a radically different context, he was talking about Squarepusher fans) – it beats me. do bleeding heart liberals want unlicensed gangs exploiting poorly paid workers? it doesn’t work like that, but that’s honestly what the express seems to be implying. don’t bleeding heart liberals want migrants to be able to work etc. earlier, legitimately, offering what they can not under cover of backhanders and waiting around in the morning for a rusty old LDV? who can say, but for the express to parrot this malign tripe suggests either someone is not doing their homework at Desmond’s gaff, or some sort of campaign agenda (other than the obvious very friendly to migration watch thank you very much) is underway, to discredit those who disagree. The express, on this issue, is living in its own reality.
how can a paper which so laudably campaigns to rid us of the scourge of unlicensed drivers (following this horrific tale where the driver shouldn’t even have been in the UK, by legal right) allow its own rhetoric to overheat so often to near-poisonously so levels, then it just starts flicking shite from its acidic pipettes everywhere, all over the shop, and pretty soon we’re all getting demeaned.
truly, a sorry state of affairs.
this morning’s economist called the language of some of the said above tabloid’s coverage of late “repellent”. strong words for them, agreed?
accurate though, frankly.

incidentally i don’t often agree with Alasdair Palmer but even i had to laugh the other week when i read him calling David Blunkett a ‘tinpot authoritarian’ or suchlike.

BLUE CHEER ANYONE?
Such is their shock and awe repute, they’re jostling for position as the world’s loudest live band ever.
_Neil Davenport on Explosions in the Sky, that exciting new Texan quartet (or whoever the fuck).
moi? grumpy?
to be fair to Davenport he can get away with filing loads of journo-speak so you know fair dos like.

The beauty of short stories is that they’re pared down, more like a poem. Writing in Scottish wasn’t a conscious decision, it was how the voices in the stories came to me.
Anne Donovan.

jolie holland’s catalpa [anti/epitaph] sounds alright, first newish rootsy release, you’ll be back to reading MOJO like the 17 year old me then hahahahaha! also jj milteau’s blue 3rd {emarcy}

best evah?
Dogbert: I PLAN TO OPEN A GAMBLING CASINO FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE EXTRAORDINARILY BAD LUCK.
Dilbert: How can you tell who has extraordinarily bad luck?
Dogbert: THEY WOULD BE THE ONES THAT GO TO MY CASINO.

Ana Mantronic (yo se yo se yo se yo se) of Scissor Sisters (the album keeps falling by the critical wayside innit into a pulpy body in bath mush of gloopy aspirational warmth but it seemed to one here that the single was actually alright; that franz ferdinand single was okay too really although – not that this is their fault but down to reading the NME – having been excited to buggery by the descriptions of their wares was somewhat, well, near underwhelmed with the finished product on top of the pops the other week; they were alright but it was a case of, er, nice enough but is there, er, you know, anymore??) lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn. fair enough like. there was one silly moment in a recent interview though where we all had cause to shout ‘er, NO luv, that’d be London’ when she foolishly bigged up New York (last year curated a show in New York which questioned whether a country that prided itself on freedom of information actually did access that information freely. The response from the public was disappointingly apathetic) as the Daddy.

i can’t be the only one mystified with the critical reception to the dreamers? (so be it one’s only seen a trailer for it). granted it’s a homage to the New Wave & that, we get plenty of old films to lovingly gawk at, like recreations of Godard and the like, it starts with a bang and has a punchy ending and Bertolucci likes his sixties eggs. and of course it cleverly and philosophically looks about all the big questions to do with ’68 bleh bleh; they’re enjoying themselves in a steamy and intoxicating style pontificating about it all as the other kidz do battle on the barricades yadda yeah. Bertolucci is making his points about, er, ooh, revolutionaries and politics and all that, yunno. and even on a base issue, just the sexual aspect, well threesomes are good (never had one myself but quite a few mates have, mainly male mates with two girls but two boys and a girl would be equally good but i’ll stop before Dale calls me for being a dowager…) dreamy sex and all that it’s good ain’t it. certainly on a fantasy level excellent eggs. Faberge even.
and dazed & confused and hotdog and even sight&sound (i.e., all respected publications) like it a lot (wait! is that Luka sniggering at my usage of the word “respected” with ref. to a certain ‘style’ mag…), judging from the bumf on the press adverts. the telegraph even says “a masterpiece”, apparently.

but it just looks like wanking (frigging at a pinch too, although you might want the screenplay for that though really it would be slim pickings one supposes) for guardian readers to me.
god! what a hate-filled screed i sing!
no positivity, only criticism.
excuse me mother.

posted by s at 1:07 AM

somedisco awakes properly!!! nursing the most beastly hangover!! (like a miniature kraken waking up; if only we knew the flashing html…)

JOY & DIVERS ALARUMS AS PALM FRONDS ARE SPREAD IN THE STREETS AND ALL THE URCHINS SMELL OF THE MOST FRAGRANT JASMINE; MUGGERS CEASE THEIR FOUL BUSINESS TO JOIN IN THE GENERAL CAROUSING AND MUCH CHEER ATMOS THAT NOW PREVAILS; BREAD ROLLS, PRAWN VOL-AU-VENTS, BESPOKE SAUSAGES AND THE LIKE ARE THROWN ABOUT AS GOOD HUMOUR AND A EPICUREAN FINERY WINS THE DAY AND HOUR; WELL DEVELOPED SOPHISTICATES OPEN THE GATES OF THEIR PRIVATE REVELS TO ALL BUT THE SMELLIEST PAUPERS; THIS HAPPY OCCASION SOUNDTRACKED BY NONE OTHER THAN THE STEREOPHONICS feat. DR JOHN and HERBIE HANCOCK (with a live P.A. from MC Shystie plus support from the Zutons on the Second Stage)

well well well, look who it isn’t, ‘tis i, returned from The East – well actually, just one too many extended karaoke sessions, where one was always asked to simply desist as a whole (winks at Matt, pushes a large bottle of Remy Martin off the Ingram sideboard into German army coat’s voluminous pockets for solitary snifter later…) – ready to spread award-winning vibes over the area (perm three of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, Sydney Morning Herald and a well-known Jakarta daily all recently clamouring for my services – YES, that’s MY services there, MINE o dread Claiborne, NOT YOURS, MINE haha! {note to readers: Claiborne is one of my many foul enemies, dread [as noted] in all aspects, timorous when away from his natural cave environments, a veritable troglodyte emissary of PURE EVIL yes EVIL i tell you}) in deed and word. that “haha!” above, incidentally, to be said in a loud Public Enemy style (be grateful one didn’t write stylee, to SORT OF paraphrase Alan Rickman in the Kevin Costner Robin Hood – WHERE IS THE MAID MA-RYE-ANN?? etc.).
yes yes please calm yourselves, there is much business as usual to discuss though should just here quote man like QPR John “The Darkness would have to come from Lowestoft wouldn't they” and a spade is still a spade. incidentally, QPR John (who works in Salford) went to see his lot get tonked 4 nil at Southend, now that’s what i call dedication! someone asked me why he’s called QPR John, they were told ‘he’s called John and he supports QPR’ how simply eloquent do you wanna take it (see also tall paul that ain’t the DJ, big mat, fat tim, etc.etc. and lots of others you can do your own examples i’m sure)?!
FIRSTLY john holt ‘ali baba’ --------- dr alimantado shooting the barber, ital galore, it’s a vital ting
ital vital I got it galore
ital vital I got it by the store (can’t remember if that’s accurate but ‘it’ll do’, if he’d added some puerile line about dicks would have been good tho’ eh) my mate and i practically came to blows once over which was ‘best’ – Alimantado or the Fugs until a wiser peer prevailed, pointing out to enjoy both apples and oranges and not fruitlessly (sorry that was awful) debate the superiority of two different equally nice things to the other.
EXCELLENT
SECONDLY
where there is life there is hope, as one must observe with reference to the cases of Zahra and Fatemeh Hosseinzadeh, and Shahrbanoo Mazandarani, and indeed that chap known only as ‘Jalil’, in Bam, a month or more on.

The Alhambra was designed by and for intellectuals with mystic inclinations.

___Robert Irwin.

they could give us all nicknames, Cozen could be the Lone Tati Sloth Gangster, Luke the Zoots Suits Man, i could be The Pompous Kid (think about it, i could even get a deal with Milky Way!) etc.etc. incidentally Cozen seems to be calling Gus Van Sant’s Elephant wrong, the correct way would surely be to take to task this bold but somewhat ill-formed soufflé, yet Cozen is a brave stylist so fair dos like. needless to say, it didn’t receive much joy round here. too much wrong with it. very much enjoyed Marcello’s take {here} on said fillum.


somedisco – with its worrying and pathetic manner of referring to itself in the third person – intends to return to show just how out-of-touch and obsolete it is by – get this!! – posting its 2003 lists only now(ish). well, that’s not all clearly it’s more of an experiment in things. shocking, we call it, it’s all part of a plan much like Maff will insist of everyone bar himself (he does no research, oh i’ve seen you down the BM reading room ‘Prof’ (sic, and indeed we were Sir, rottenest scound in Christendom!) Woebot, the learned journals and a yellowing copy of Demosthenes’ On The Crown in hand) to actually gracelessly artlessly hammer away at it until your sentences make no sense. less the crying of lot 49, underworld or la chartreuse de parme, more tabloid surrealist column. oh, the pomposity, oh the pretence, oh the stained-and-teak-varnished-running-free artifice of it all, in a rotting Elizabethan candy shop way (as one listens to stuff you like like superpitcher or ‘loveless’; listening to superpitcher or loveless when you need a dump is a bit like going to Margate with only a tenner in your pocket – it’s just not adequate prepping as the senses will overwhelm you and you’ll be sat there like Fever Pitch’s obsessed Gooner as he [invariably] rewinds video tape of a stuck in his own mess Arseman playing AGAIN and AGAIN championship footage).

mogwai interlude sponsored by many people i respect such as mates
one of the few mogwai tunes i love with all my heart – like, really – is SUMMER – one supposes – they being the board of directors, make of that what they will – mind you, quite a lot of the ten rapid collection is nice (the track immediately after that one is quite glorious for instance; and on another tack entirely ‘christmas song’ is plain nice but even more beautiful is that prom girl one you know the one we mean), just not a fan of their studio albums or owt much at all despite many conversations with people attempting to persuade me of their beauty. that, as per, is one’s loss. there is much beauty, but there we are.
that punk quiz that was on Jon Dale’s and one other well-known music blog (apologies, i forget which one in that case), well Jon’s a punk, i’m avant-garde DAMNIT! (being a predictable type and probably answering Can instead of the Kinks at the band question stage is what gets you a picture of everyone’s favourite jazzer at the end yas – rather than be a sensible sort and admit that monster movie and ege bamyasi, and, indeed tago mago can only be taken so much and not at a cost of disowning ‘waterloo sunset’ and ‘autumn almanac’ and ‘she’s got everything’, let us be honest and now praise good women).

i tell you what else is good about Hull, they put paprika rather than salt and vinegar on the chips in the chippies, and they ax yous if ya want ‘chip spice’ they call it. rolled up meself to some chippy at about 4 or so having spent the night in a (very good) club, and at this time of the early morning, chip spice is truly nothing short of revelatory. i swear it, these walls have eyes etc. also the pubs are cheap and no one ever died of that (well there is cirrhosis of the liver which when it’s not being probably misspelt is bad for you but hey whatever nevermind).
TRUE DAT
TRU DAT
true DAT

that’s tru, that is.
although you can purchase Louisiana Cajun Seasoning from Waitrose, 79p for 227g.
apparently. and that is quite similar for a “powerfully peppery, smoky” taste of the south.

My sister Lubna went to Hull Uni and I remember getting fish and chips there having just turned 16 and being upset that the fish had skin on it. My sister than rang up for a pizza and I was very pleased as I'd never had pineapple on a pizza before and I really liked it. Pineapple is an amazing fruit, it's so versatile, and pineapple upside-down cake is probably one of the nicest things I've ever had, what I'd do for a good woman that can make that properly.
Why did we evolve noses if just to punish Asian men?


so sez Q. you can now read him direct! see more on that later…once again though it has to be said casuOHL browsing KREW, LOOK ALIVE, ALIVE YE SHALL LOOK etc.etc.etc. i’m really doing a pre-publicists job here, except with less of the odious aspects of Max Clifford’s craft (one hopes; stop us if it’s too technical)

Thursday night, 6 while 10, the deal is 5.99.

for this a pint of Fosters, a *big* bowl of Singaporean noodles (a vegetarian choice as it happens), decorated well on the sides with various strange herbs and seasonings, one small but
fucking *delicious* GREASY (greasy = goodgood) spring roll, and several *fine* prawn crackers. the noodles were good to cut up and be using the crackers as scoops. they were nice and slightly moist.

wolfed the bowl down basically, and then had a Banks and hot apple pie with custard (that's off-menu, so to speak). but as for the actual deal itself - well, clearly, more expensive than the Indian night. but still worth it. the noodles didn’t actually last long, but that's because they tasted very nice and were just incredibly moreish. you'd like them.

the other dishes all also come with egg-fried rice, as well as the spring roll and prawn crackers (big bastards, these crackers). the reason the noodles came on their own is cause they're a big enough
equivalent suppose.

anyway, there's also sweet and sour chicken (obligatory dish of course), Szchewuan pork (excellent sounding red meat option), and finally, a chicken with black bean sauce dish. that
last one sounds the nicest thing on the menu but chicken the night before. so four choices, three with rice.

again, the drink disclaimers applies, but have developed something of a taste for Fosters of late (it's certainly cheaper than wifebeater) and the zing of the lager went well with the zest of the flavoured noodles.

there were only two other people as far as we could see enjoying this deal - there'd been a good dozen people that seen the night before enjoying the previous deal - and they seemed to be eating the chicken dishes each, which were generously sized.

One of my locals has been taken over and the price rises are nothing short of a national disgrace, why, etc.
2.30 for premium lagers and guinness, over nearly 1.90 for best bitters. But the well examined and varied Indian meal deal on a Wednesday (pint, main, poppadum, nan, mango chutney, rice for about 4 quid) and aforementioned Chinese cuisine options are better. Oddly enough the one other notably overpriced for drinks boozer round my way has also had a refurb of late, and does excellent food, a Goan curry catching one’s eye during a visit yesterday lunchtime it must be said.

actually they changed it from an Indian night and a Chinese night to an Indian night and a Mexican night.

interesting letter in the paper the other day from a Liberal councillor in Liverpool. it read:
The decision by the European Commission against Ryanair and the Walloon regional government is another blow for local diversity, decision-making and independent regeneration policy.
Providing low fees to stimulate Ryanair’s use of Charleroi has meant an otherwise disused airport has become a motive force for the regeneration of an area high in unemployment and deprivation.
It seems that the commission does not favour democratically elected bodies making successful and ingenious interventions into a policy area it wishes to dominate.
The politicians of the Walloon region should be applauded for using their authority for the public good. Instead, the commission finds this minor state intervention is unfair and compromising to the operation of the free market.
The truth is that the commission detests local diversity and democratic legitimacy. It would prefer to see regeneration left exclusively in the hands of the unelected centralists in Brussels and the corporate interest they favour. This ruling is a victory for a distant bureaucracy over democratically elected authorities acting in the public good.
There was actually a letter in riposte which i shall post later tonight if you want, which was equally interesting.

A key ingredient in gumbo, okra is originally an African vegetable. It produces a deliciously gloopy juice when cooked.
With the consistence of sloppy polenta, grits are a taste worth acquiring. A perfect start to the day with cheese or salty butter.
Black eyed peas: these nutty sounding beans are a staple of Creole and Cajun food, used in jambalaya and gumbo.
Cornbread is best made from medium-grain meal mixed with eggs, buttermilk and baking soda.
Pecan pie: this traditional pie, with just one layer of nuts on top of a sticky, extremely sweet filling with a hint of vanilla, is eaten all year round, not just at Thanksgiving.

SOME BLOKE GOES ON AN EXPLORATORY DRINKING EXPEDITIONARY FORCE with other blokes TO YORKSHIRE’S POSH BIT.
set us back 40 notes. indulged in some fine boozers. Went to the York Brewery pub first, "The three legged mare", does all that "Centurions Ghost" type beer, but disgracefully had a pint of Grolsch instead-being a flaming homo. Then went on to the "Guy Fawkes" right in the shadow of York Minster it was, roaring fire, church bells pealing and a pint. This was at about 4:45 on satday anoon, so double delight when I had found out we had tonked the Bury Giro Squad gobshites 4-1 and had moved up into the all important 13th, bring on days out in Worcester and Stafford please, Northwich too by the look of things.
This pub with the fire, next to the Minster was so good it necessitated a pretentious text to Dave. After this we moved on the world's best ever Hogshead, just off the main shopping street. Forgotten its name, but underground cellar type setting right next to the York City Council Offices-was majestic-had Hoegaarden on tap to boot-splendid. Finished up with a pint in the splendidly named "Hansom Cab" pub, which was recommended to me, by De Burgh's missus herself Vicky. Was a Sam Smiths pub, so cheap scoops all round, which in York city centre is great, cos its a damn sight more pricey than Hull for ale - average 2.40 for a lager in York centre.

LET US ALL PRAISE EVERTON DaSILVA ONCE AGAIN.

i think my fave badtaste Shipman txts are not the ones about enjoying his nans during the meal or having no patience, but that triad of the lethal jab for the prison boxing team, foreigners at the weekend, and the old deer hunter.

Hahah Kate Melua works with the same guy that wrote for the Wombles, the one and only Mike Batt.

Have you seen the new Simply Red video for 'You make me feel brand new'? It's possibly one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Mick Hucknall looks as if his head's going to explode whilst he screams out the song and the audience look quite frightened. He's got a bulbous head anyway and his face is crimson red when he sings it, well screams it. You almost feel sorry for the girl that it's sung for.

more from the man himself, look alive casual browsing crew for later (baiting of Kate Melua, musings on chip barms, photos of the ODB and the like) ON (&on&on&on…) it’s coming it’s coming, a bit like THE THIRD PLACE…etc.

big ups:
undercurrent robin
k-punk
loaf said he’s off for some big name fare, mainstream shows are usually good, so LONDONERS!! here and here are WHERE IT AT

The chatty informality is particularly disastrous at the denouement, when the characters take turns addressing the camera in Central Park, giving the audience unneeded pep talks and emanating the smug pride of New Yorkers who feel that just by being New Yorkers they’re at the action centre of history, progress and the world – hardy survivors hipper than the rest. Angels wears a crown of self-congratulation, but its halo is tilted.
_James Wolcott on Angels in America.

two reasons – well, recent clippings – to big up the literary editor of the sunday telegraph, mark sanderson. he is one of my favourite literary journalists (i.e., he enthuses, reinvigorates, makes one want to check out) for his eloquent little arrows of love bombs, sugar dust and sometimes a slight tarpaulin snarkiness (well, that’s a euphemism for clear overtones of snobbery, call it elitism, call it depth criticism if you want or will, but there we are…).
firstly, referencing Cormac McCarthy, this from a review of Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Last Crossing:
McCarthy’s novels ferociously subvert the myth of the American West: a tree of dead babies, for example, still lingers in the mind of this reader 15 years after finishing Blood Meridian.

discussing Bristol’s Great Bristol Reading Adventure (Treasure Island last year, The Day of the Triffids this) he notes that “Get London Reading” could arguably have been better chosen –
The dozen works all feature the Great Wen in some way but the list could have been more imaginative. While Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital and Gilda O’Neill’s My East End might seem natural selections, do Zadie Smith’s White Teeth or Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity really need any more publicity? Maureen Duffy’s Londoners, Michael Moorcock’s Mother London and Geoff Nicholson’s Bleeding London, to pick just three examples of books not on the list, deserve to be read far more widely. = warming to his theme = he continues that:
Nick Hornby also figures on one of the shortlists for this year’s National Book Critics Circle Awards in America. However, he does not appear on the fiction shortlist: Songbook - published here as 31 Songs - has been nominated as a work of criticism. Perhaps eyebrows should not be raised in this no-brow age. But listing one’s favourites tunes is not the same as, say, identifying seven types of ambiguity as the critic William Empson did back in 1930.
--
my own (cause obviously i’m dead important like) views on 31 Songs are one supposes there was a lot of snobbery around about it – that incredibly overheated and somewhat harsh attack on it in the editorial pages of the wire when rob young was still at the helm, for example, springs readily to mind – but that said {inevitable ‘some of my best friends are…’ commentary ahead} one did skimread someone else’s copy and it’s pretty poor really. pedestrian, not much cop at all. his best stuff is still Fever Pitch. he was not arguing for anything in this latest one, well, maybe he was, but he doesn’t deserve to get slagged off by a tool like me, but it’s just sooooo well, not much there innit, why does one use pedestrian as an insult, it’s all ‘safe’ or ‘banal’ ah well there we are. it’s about as good as Tony’s Wilson’s book of the Boyce screenplay for the Factory Records film about how Shaun Ryder kills pigeons (seriously ain’t it). that ain’t very good, it’s like Tony and Lester B. in convo or something, plenty of heat and light about the Buzzcocks and Poly Styrene and the Hacienda and localisms and punk and Greil Marcus and the like, but too much swearing frankly (never thought i’d write that) for me to take him seriously.

big changes afoot at dis heah blog, more on nature and literature/art and observances/perspectives one fears, less on shitely writing views on pop choons (three chords and the truth being as difficult for me to articulate well as the appeal of travel, or sunlight catching dappled leaves, so figured may as well go for the latter; ‘tis the somedisco resolution!). also more bigging up the wonder of fellow human beings (i’d like to thank me old man) and any science and maths and cookery and woodcraft and philosophy/theology (if we knew ‘bout that).
and if you believe that…

MORE LATER, inc. links galore (doubtless) and, well, more later (one’s idiosyncratic – c. Reynolds – take on the lists meme, f’r starters like) ‘kay?

posted by s at 9:29 PM

football eh? bloody hell.

[back to hibernating]
posted by s at 8:57 AM