information about clashes in Casanare province and other Colombian locations over the weekend here,
here
Monday, 23 February 2004
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.
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.
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".
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".
Friday, 20 February 2004
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
apparently it isn't au fait with the command STEP THE FUCK BACK TO DODGE, SHAWTIE
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
can't wait
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.
sounds like that could be all quite brilliant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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~
any British readers: do you have acquaintances like that?
fucken TOO RITE alas~
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.
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.
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.
~
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.
~
Thursday, 19 February 2004
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, 18 February 2004
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.
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.
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.
that is to be hoped, make their views ridiculous not just repellant.
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]
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]
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
i got love for Busted of course too.
sounding like a right teenybopper!
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)_
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)_
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.
this shows.
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
Tuesday, 17 February 2004
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...;-)
expect i'll be haunting his comments box for some time to come on this one...;-)
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!
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!
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.
here's an Amnesty newsrelease.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
haha!
and yet underneath the humour, truth is there too.
Monday, 16 February 2004
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'!
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'!
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