Thursday, 23 October 2003
head here, for (fairly offensive and vaguely puerile) all good fun, put up in the event of all work-related systems being down for over a week at work as we await, a-quivering, the rollout of Siebel v1.2, going live, ooh, any day now [note: please know i'm not responsible for any of the writing or phrasing on the site, that is a colleague's brainchild; indeed, i was also assigned roles, if i was choosing myself, i would have preferred other directions, still we all suffer for our art, and this is my equivalent of provincial panto work before i'm off to Broadway and TONY glory eh].
today he wasn't biting (that is, answering his phone to any calls, all day), which is a shame, as i had a fantastic largely freestyling narrative germinating in my head about an Irn-bru factory in Stranraer and the machinations of the English Institute for Scottish Drinking, that would certainly have been the most rambling yet {note, i have never been to Stranraer and don't even know if they have an Irn-bru factory there. nevertheless}.
if you look hard enough, you'll even find a picture of yours truly there in one of the subpages (warning, my GINGA hair needs the barbers EVAH so!, one takes shit photos {look like a skinny football hooligan}, and this is the worst spot week for fecken years, truthfully)
~
god, i feel dirty for posting that. very solipsistic (hey, i care about spots, i must read HEAT...) and American homepage-like (fortunately you're spared my shit poetry and pseud thoughts). ;)
apologies. it's an occasional attempt at levity heh-heh.
P.S.
an IDM fan no less, his first move to see if Autechre would come out to play, do you see?!
today he wasn't biting (that is, answering his phone to any calls, all day), which is a shame, as i had a fantastic largely freestyling narrative germinating in my head about an Irn-bru factory in Stranraer and the machinations of the English Institute for Scottish Drinking, that would certainly have been the most rambling yet {note, i have never been to Stranraer and don't even know if they have an Irn-bru factory there. nevertheless}.
if you look hard enough, you'll even find a picture of yours truly there in one of the subpages (warning, my GINGA hair needs the barbers EVAH so!, one takes shit photos {look like a skinny football hooligan}, and this is the worst spot week for fecken years, truthfully)
~
god, i feel dirty for posting that. very solipsistic (hey, i care about spots, i must read HEAT...) and American homepage-like (fortunately you're spared my shit poetry and pseud thoughts). ;)
apologies. it's an occasional attempt at levity heh-heh.
P.S.
an IDM fan no less, his first move to see if Autechre would come out to play, do you see?!
just taken delivery of the latest, sumptuous & 40th anniversary issue (no less!) of the nyrb.
sorry, but this has always been my favourite magazine in this ballpark, well surpassing any love for the lrb or the tls; also in the literary avenue, here are google magazines and papers, magazines and e-zines, and good old-fashioned journals.
right, shortly i'm off to the bog, new edition in hand.
expect me to emerge around November 12th.
sorry, but this has always been my favourite magazine in this ballpark, well surpassing any love for the lrb or the tls; also in the literary avenue, here are google magazines and papers, magazines and e-zines, and good old-fashioned journals.
right, shortly i'm off to the bog, new edition in hand.
expect me to emerge around November 12th.
[of course one's comments here shouldn't be read as me knowing what's up before the facts are in, and i'm hardly one of those no smoke without fire types] but it is a little puzzling, personally, how some of the chattering classes have taken al-jazeera to their collective bosom in such a way {do luv Garzon, to be fair}
Wednesday, 22 October 2003
Friday, 17 October 2003
Let me take a stab at the question posed in your Oct. 6 editorial "Our Friends the Serbs." You ask, "Who'd have thought that the Serbs would turn out to be better friends of America than the French." The answer is "anyone with a sense of history."
During World War II, after the collapse of the French, the Serbs fought valiantly against their Nazi occupiers. Many American airmen owed their lives to Serbian resistance fighters who faced brutal German retribution for aiding American pilots. The Serbian people suffered both civilian and military casualties because of their heroic efforts to protect our servicemen during the war.
Going back further in history, the entire conflict in Kosovo is a remnant of battles fought centures ago when the ancestors of the Serbs halted the Muslim invasion of Europe. So it should come as no surprise that we should find the Serbs allied with America in the war on terror.
The French of that age produced Charles Martel. The French of today boast Jacques Chirac.
Let me be clear. Slobodan Milosovic (sic) is likely to be convicted of war crimes in the Hague. He ran a brutal regime in a brutal part of the world. A fair reading of the Balkans would suggest that one could find individuals from all parties in the conflict who are candidates for war crimes trials.
_Ron Lawson, Houston.
from the wall street journal, thursday, october 9, 2003, letters to the editor.
unfortunately, i cannot find the original editorial in question; the journal site is mostly all 'subscribers only' on yo azz.
anyone with a sense of history should be applauded (apart from revisionists, who should be argued with).
and this is mostly fair enough.
it's kind of amusing he misread the Kosovo/a aircampaign like all those letters to the Daily Mail back at the time did, from old pilots, do you remember any British readers, e.g.,
'it is appalling that the present day RAF is joining with our mortal foes the Luftwaffe to rain down death on the noble Serbs, historically good friends to Britain' (i PROMISE i read one letter pretty much like that once, it HONESTLY referred to the contemporary German airforce as the Luftwaffe!)
i assume all the stuff he's referring to about Serbs fending off an Islamic invasion of Europe is the sort of narrative that culminates in that now almost mythical battle at Kosovo polje. it's interesting he mentions a chap who'd been dead for several hundred years by the time that rolled around, if what he's alluding to is what i've assumed it is. still, history that far back kind of does boil into one big story eh (it's also kind of interesting that his historical parallel should be a figure known for, among other things, driving back the spread of Islam across mediaeval Europe; i realise he must want it 'within context', but for an alternative laudable historical French figure, try Villon or Joan of Arc).
the only problem i really have with this letter - and being a nerd enough to type it up and inflict my woefully ill-informed haranguing on anyone reading - is the tone of some of it.
i'm hardly a fan of Jacques Chirac - you only have to understand how Gaullism is preprogrammed into his political DNA to appreciate why he can be so stubborn and self-serving - but it's more the general 'woo! Islam' atmosphere. mainly that So it should come as no surprise that we should find the Serbs allied with America in the war on terror. line.
and it's true that a "fair reading" of the conflicts in the Balkans could support his final paragraph, of course (among other things, including Croatian abuses and crimes against ethnic Serbs obviously, i wonder if he's thinking about a meeting between Tudjman and Milosevic to talk about carving up Bosnia-Hercegovina?).
but i hope it doesn't sound like he's under the impression that the most horrible, and longest lasting, of the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s wasn't mostly about anything other than an attempt to drive out, to displace, to kill if need be, in large number, Bosnian Muslims and to make an ethnically pure Greater Serbia construct.
During World War II, after the collapse of the French, the Serbs fought valiantly against their Nazi occupiers. Many American airmen owed their lives to Serbian resistance fighters who faced brutal German retribution for aiding American pilots. The Serbian people suffered both civilian and military casualties because of their heroic efforts to protect our servicemen during the war.
Going back further in history, the entire conflict in Kosovo is a remnant of battles fought centures ago when the ancestors of the Serbs halted the Muslim invasion of Europe. So it should come as no surprise that we should find the Serbs allied with America in the war on terror.
The French of that age produced Charles Martel. The French of today boast Jacques Chirac.
Let me be clear. Slobodan Milosovic (sic) is likely to be convicted of war crimes in the Hague. He ran a brutal regime in a brutal part of the world. A fair reading of the Balkans would suggest that one could find individuals from all parties in the conflict who are candidates for war crimes trials.
_Ron Lawson, Houston.
from the wall street journal, thursday, october 9, 2003, letters to the editor.
unfortunately, i cannot find the original editorial in question; the journal site is mostly all 'subscribers only' on yo azz.
anyone with a sense of history should be applauded (apart from revisionists, who should be argued with).
and this is mostly fair enough.
it's kind of amusing he misread the Kosovo/a aircampaign like all those letters to the Daily Mail back at the time did, from old pilots, do you remember any British readers, e.g.,
'it is appalling that the present day RAF is joining with our mortal foes the Luftwaffe to rain down death on the noble Serbs, historically good friends to Britain' (i PROMISE i read one letter pretty much like that once, it HONESTLY referred to the contemporary German airforce as the Luftwaffe!)
i assume all the stuff he's referring to about Serbs fending off an Islamic invasion of Europe is the sort of narrative that culminates in that now almost mythical battle at Kosovo polje. it's interesting he mentions a chap who'd been dead for several hundred years by the time that rolled around, if what he's alluding to is what i've assumed it is. still, history that far back kind of does boil into one big story eh (it's also kind of interesting that his historical parallel should be a figure known for, among other things, driving back the spread of Islam across mediaeval Europe; i realise he must want it 'within context', but for an alternative laudable historical French figure, try Villon or Joan of Arc).
the only problem i really have with this letter - and being a nerd enough to type it up and inflict my woefully ill-informed haranguing on anyone reading - is the tone of some of it.
i'm hardly a fan of Jacques Chirac - you only have to understand how Gaullism is preprogrammed into his political DNA to appreciate why he can be so stubborn and self-serving - but it's more the general 'woo! Islam' atmosphere. mainly that So it should come as no surprise that we should find the Serbs allied with America in the war on terror. line.
and it's true that a "fair reading" of the conflicts in the Balkans could support his final paragraph, of course (among other things, including Croatian abuses and crimes against ethnic Serbs obviously, i wonder if he's thinking about a meeting between Tudjman and Milosevic to talk about carving up Bosnia-Hercegovina?).
but i hope it doesn't sound like he's under the impression that the most horrible, and longest lasting, of the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s wasn't mostly about anything other than an attempt to drive out, to displace, to kill if need be, in large number, Bosnian Muslims and to make an ethnically pure Greater Serbia construct.
"The Census Bureau reports in a September 18 press release that as of July 1, 2002, Cook County had the largest population of black people in any county in the country - 1.4 million. The top county for Native Americans, Asians, and Hispanics was Los Angeles."
[source: Chicago Reader, October 17 2003].
{ed. note, on a thrust of populist cliches, i wonder if San Francisco had the second biggest Asian population? we all know that Vancouver and San Francisco are the biggest Chinese/ethnic Han/say what you want/ cities outside the Pacific Rim countries, rite}.
so i just read that in the paper, and so given that Los Angeles has more Native Americans, Hispanics and Asians living there than anywhere else in the USA, and that Chicago remains the capital of black America, i was just idly wondering outloud which city had the most white people.
me: It's probably New York, i suppose, if only through sheer numbers and the size of the place.
the lovely companion: (quick as a flash, adopting scarily realistic huckster drawl) Topeka, Kansas.
[source: Chicago Reader, October 17 2003].
{ed. note, on a thrust of populist cliches, i wonder if San Francisco had the second biggest Asian population? we all know that Vancouver and San Francisco are the biggest Chinese/ethnic Han/say what you want/ cities outside the Pacific Rim countries, rite}.
so i just read that in the paper, and so given that Los Angeles has more Native Americans, Hispanics and Asians living there than anywhere else in the USA, and that Chicago remains the capital of black America, i was just idly wondering outloud which city had the most white people.
me: It's probably New York, i suppose, if only through sheer numbers and the size of the place.
the lovely companion: (quick as a flash, adopting scarily realistic huckster drawl) Topeka, Kansas.
(some of today's) BIG UPS
found magazine
chicago wilderness
ho-chunk constitution
bustan l'shalom
nomy lamm
found magazine
chicago wilderness
ho-chunk constitution
bustan l'shalom
nomy lamm
America as the apex of post-fordist, post-modern (or, at the very least, we're into high modernity with its baubles and bear-traps; no, not that bear market, for instance, neither meaning a, yunno, actual bear [e.g., sun, Kodiak, polar] either), largely untrammeled, furiously inventing and uninventing and redoing and rethinking, consumer-driven but corporate-protected hyper-capitalism, the world on a stick, in a shaker.
i know this because yesterday, in a gift shop, one sighted a child's doll that was actually a Sigmund Freud ACTION FIGURE. there is not much left.
i suppose we can now turn to the
malls of Dubai, or something.
P.S. The fountains at this place, literally, astonish.
P.P.S.
There are, of course, unfortunate side-issues related to such matters as, well, the likes of Banana Republic and the similar types currently have several suits pending against them, from Latino or Asian or black prospective employees who were turned away on, essentially, racial grounds. there is a distinct Hilfiger Hamptons look at play there, of the blandly cheery and not very good looking but technically is, let's be frank, whitebread scene (TBH, Hilfiger himself, and in his shops and adverts, even if you are of the qualified opinion his meandering is loathsome shite [which 1 does not, not subscribing so much to the adbusters perspectives these fine days], would not stand for such despicable and unacceptable behaviour in hiring practices, but some of this Abercrombie & Fitch type-nonsense really does have to be seen in its natural mall-rat habitat to be, well, almost believed {as it were}).
finally, my brother's football analysis of Manchester City against Lokeren has the air, it is true, of the stereotypically arrogant Manc (Ian Brown swagger, and suchlike), but here it is, reproduced below: =
Yeah City's display last night wasn't great to be frank but
professional (i.e. very boring to watch but were in the next round
so who cares). Telling in the Sun and Express today that Us,
Scousers and Toon got full page reports on our Euro games but Saints
and Bburn got small bits at the bottom of the page, support,
tradition and general importance will always see the likes of us
rise above those two nobodys.
~
i know this because yesterday, in a gift shop, one sighted a child's doll that was actually a Sigmund Freud ACTION FIGURE. there is not much left.
i suppose we can now turn to the
malls of Dubai, or something.
P.S. The fountains at this place, literally, astonish.
P.P.S.
There are, of course, unfortunate side-issues related to such matters as, well, the likes of Banana Republic and the similar types currently have several suits pending against them, from Latino or Asian or black prospective employees who were turned away on, essentially, racial grounds. there is a distinct Hilfiger Hamptons look at play there, of the blandly cheery and not very good looking but technically is, let's be frank, whitebread scene (TBH, Hilfiger himself, and in his shops and adverts, even if you are of the qualified opinion his meandering is loathsome shite [which 1 does not, not subscribing so much to the adbusters perspectives these fine days], would not stand for such despicable and unacceptable behaviour in hiring practices, but some of this Abercrombie & Fitch type-nonsense really does have to be seen in its natural mall-rat habitat to be, well, almost believed {as it were}).
finally, my brother's football analysis of Manchester City against Lokeren has the air, it is true, of the stereotypically arrogant Manc (Ian Brown swagger, and suchlike), but here it is, reproduced below: =
Yeah City's display last night wasn't great to be frank but
professional (i.e. very boring to watch but were in the next round
so who cares). Telling in the Sun and Express today that Us,
Scousers and Toon got full page reports on our Euro games but Saints
and Bburn got small bits at the bottom of the page, support,
tradition and general importance will always see the likes of us
rise above those two nobodys.
~
Thursday, 16 October 2003
Wednesday, 15 October 2003
here's one, then two interesting articles from the guardian. oh, and here's a general good eggs article at bbc football.
inabit, i'll have that letter up from the wallstreetjournal i was bitching about, some uninformed comment about edward said, and doubtless one or two other matters.
can i just say that, seconding k-punk, the utter rightness of Nick's feverish holding forth on the Suicide de-but album here is an invigorating treat-and-a-half, whilst - don't ask me to say why, cause i don't know - emerald daze's essex salty-tinged flats piece starts with, for me, the most sheerly enjoyable opening two sentences i think i've read anywhere thus far this year. strange huh.
the fact that the lovely companion is enjoying her copy of Graham Swift's startling 'Waterland' really doesn't have anything to do with it, i feel (incidentally, that Swift link is labryinthine and quality, check it out do if you're at all arsed about that book).
inabit, i'll have that letter up from the wallstreetjournal i was bitching about, some uninformed comment about edward said, and doubtless one or two other matters.
can i just say that, seconding k-punk, the utter rightness of Nick's feverish holding forth on the Suicide de-but album here is an invigorating treat-and-a-half, whilst - don't ask me to say why, cause i don't know - emerald daze's essex salty-tinged flats piece starts with, for me, the most sheerly enjoyable opening two sentences i think i've read anywhere thus far this year. strange huh.
the fact that the lovely companion is enjoying her copy of Graham Swift's startling 'Waterland' really doesn't have anything to do with it, i feel (incidentally, that Swift link is labryinthine and quality, check it out do if you're at all arsed about that book).
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