Is This Thing On?

All in all, a lovely weekend. Saturday was one of those rare gorgeous sunny days when everything is just perfect out – it was only slightly marred for me by getting caught up in the rugby crowd around Twickenham on my way over to Clapham for a barbie on the Common (oh and nearly breaking my back slugging the cooler around). However, we managed to overcome the difficulties (find ice, find beer, try to find cold beer, fail to find cold beer, find ice in Iceland, make warm beer cold…) and spent a lovely afternoon drinking and eating half cooked sausages (and leaving a couple of small black scars on the grass – yes I know it says to use the disposable BBQ on a “heat-resistant surface”, but, c’mon, who reads instructions?).

Also, appreciate the comedy value of the packaging for Tesco disposable BBQs. They are labelled as “the complete barbeque in one box”, with the caveat, in block letters, of “FOOD NOT INCLUDED”.

Sunday completed the full selection of seasons for the weekend, by providing us with Winter, Spring and Autumn as we wandered round Greenwich in the rain/sun/rain/humidity…

And I almost forgot to talk about last night’s TV. Somehow I found myself watching the Jamie Theakston-narrated “documentary” Shops, Robbers and Videotape last night. This hour of unquestioning pro-CCTV propaganda wasn’t exactly balanced journalism, of the kind you might, foolishly, expect the BBC to generate. More a cheap homegrown version of all those police camera car chase shows that Channel 5 get from the states.

No, this was the kind of program that was quite prepared to use the term “Big Brother” in connection with the state of the art integrated CCTV system installed in Soho that provided most of its material, but, unfortunately, it clearly meant “Big Brother” as in the TV show, not as in 1984.

Anyway, I felt rather uncomfortable about the way the program accepted CCTV as a thoroughly good thing, without bothering to question whether there might be a downside (taking the “if you haven’t got anything to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about” point of view so beloved of compulsory ID card advocates).

Setting aside the fact that Jamie Theakston was narrating (surely someone averse to having his picture taken without his consent), there was also something very Brass Eye drugs episode about a lot of the footage.

Combine that with the somewhat over-zealous policing on display (I can’t be the only person who feels slightly uncomfortable about the way the talking heads from the force admitted that they enjoy going after people spotted on the CCTV because it’s exciting, and “gets [them] out of their daily routine”, and then having to watch four of them pile on top of some guy they suspected of dealing drugs). Then there’s the fact that they didn’t seem to actually catch anyone (except the odd handbag thief and someone who’d just bought Cannabis – and you could hear the disappointment in the WPC’s voice when she told us that it was only Cannabis).

Anyway, like the idealistic fool that I am, I’d like to see a bit more balance, but then why would you expect the BBC to bite the hand that feeds it, when there’s hours of cheap, sensationalist TV footage available for just the price of interviewing a couple of policemen?

Oh, there’s more privacy-related news in this week’s Need To Know…

Oh, and speaking of anniversaries…

Hypocrisy is a wonderful thing. The third leader in today’s Guardian bemoans the curse of what it refers to as “premature anniversitis” (anniversaries being noted in the media at length for weeks around the actual event, as with recent coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Everest ascent). The column goes on to remark that “a little leadership by example is in order”, “anniversaries will continue to be duly and arbitrarily marked – but only on the right days”.

So we can expect The Guardian not to copy the activities of other papers, where “Everest anniversary articles have been appearing everywhere for months; and ‘William at 21’ is already in full flood, even though the happy day is still more than three weeks away…” Oh, so, you mean articles like the one on page 13 of today’s paper, then, about Prince William, on life at St Andrews and, um, turning 21?

There’s much to write about today – the line-up, last night’s TV, six months ;), Blair in Kuwait and the missing WMDs, the backpedalling of the Bush administration over WMDs, the interview with Salam Pax in the Guardian… where should I start?

As ever, with the line-up, it’s the clashes that stand out. I mean yes, I can’t miss the essentials, like the Manics on Sunday, The Flaming Lips/Radiohead double header on Saturday night, but hang on, what about the three way Radiohead-SFA-Lamb clash on Saturday night? Doves or Moby? Can I catch The Libertines on Saturday afternoon and still make it back to the main stage for Polyphonic Spree/Turin Brakes/Supergrass/Flaming Lips/Radiohead?

Oh, and, on a technicality, what’s John Cale (off-of the Velvet Underground) doing playing in the “new” tent?

Anyway, excuse me while I go off and start circling bands in the paper like a kid at Christmas with the TV pages of the Radio Times (oh, and maybe do some work). I’ll be back later. In the mean time, I found this (now removed) page rather amusing: “NME.com will reveal the line up tomorrow [er… just as soon as we’ve bought The Guardian or Q and copied it out of there]”

It was “only Brit in the room” territory again last night, when I went to see Melbourne’s Something For Kate at the Mean Fiddler.

To be honest, never having heard either band before, I think I got more value from the support, The Mutts (lazy pseudo-music critic generalisation: BRMC meets The Music, er, backstage at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig). Having said that, Something For Kate’s brand of inoffensive guitar rock was, well, inoffensive enough. You know, sounds like the sort of thing I normally like.

I also appreciated the comedy value of arriving at the venue to find that all the touts were touting for the gig next door (“Ben Harper. Any spare tickets for Ben Harper. I’ll buy or sell…”)

Something like the second sentence that my mum said to me when I finally got back home to Southport on Friday night, after the long day at work and the three hour train journey in true Virgin trains comfort (complete with complementary drunk bloke singing loudly from Crewe – and nearly-as-drunk scouser telling him (almost) to “calm down”), was “we’ve got a bit of a surprise for you…”

I knew what she meant as soon as she said it – they’ve been threatening to do it for a while now. Then she took me upstairs to what used to be my bedroom to show me how they had completely redecorated my room without telling me!

It could be worse, I suppose, they could have thrown all my stuff out (see March 2, 2003 entry towards the bottom).

And don’t get me wrong, it does look very nice now, it’s just not “my” room any more. It felt like I was staying in the guest room. Oh well, there goes my childhood. Ripped out and replaced for a very reasonable price at IKEA.

The rest of the weekend was very nice though. Popped into Liverpool briefly, got slightly sunburnt, ate extensively, avoided both Big Brother and the Eurovision nul points incident, and returned to London more tired than I left.

Excellent.

Now that I have that off my chest, I can remark on the fact that it’s Friday. woo, and indeed hoo! This week seems to have absolutely flown by.

Now that the hangover has cleared up, I’m looking forward to a relaxing bank holiday weekend in sunny Southport.

If there’s one thing worse than all the spam I get, it’s the spam I get from real people. The other day, I was sent a forwarded email that I was sure to find funny and interesting. It wasn’t, and I didn’t.

It was an email that is currently doing the rounds that purports to be Robin Williams’ “Plan For Peace”. It isn’t, by the way, as snopes reveals here, it was just attributed to him because at some point someone appended a Robin Williams quote to the bottom, and it was then interpreted as indicating his authorship of the whole list. Ironically, the quote appended to the bottom seems to present the diametrically opposed viewpoint to that expressed in the rest of the email (unless the whole thing is supposed to be ironic, but I doubt it).

But I digress. The thing that intrigued me about this email, and the reason for writing about it here, was the assertion at the top that it is “hard to argue with [the] logic” of this “plan for peace”. Well, actually, I don’t think it is hard to argue at all. Anyway, that sounds like a bit of a challenge to me, so here goes…

The version of the email I was sent is the one shown on snopes; the original – slightly different – usenet posting is here.

1) The US will apologize to the world for our “interference” in their affairs, past & present. We will promise never to “interfere” again

So no more installing puppet dictators and/or tyrannical regimes around the world in accordance with the needs of the prevailing US foreign policy of the day then? Let me see, Pinochet, Hussein, the Taliban… I could go on, but somehow I don’t think that this kind of interference is quite what they are referring to.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave. We’ll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of who or where they are. France would welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 day visits unless given a special permit. No one from a terrorist nation would be allowed in. If you don’t like it there, change it yourself, don’t hide here. Asylum would not ever be available to anyone. We don’t need any more cab drivers.

It’s depressing enough to hear this kind of right-wing, not-in-my-back-yard attitude expounded in this country by little-England Daily Mail readers et al., but coming from a country of immigrants, it rather smacks of hypocrisy. Of course, if that’s what you want, why doesn’t everybody in the US who can’t trace their roots back to the native Americans pack up and head back to their countries of origin. If the last person out could just turn out the light, that’d be great.

Oh, and no one from a “terrorist nation”? How are you defining that, then? I suppose St Patricks’ Day is going to be a quiet one next year.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self sufficient energy wise. This will include developing non polluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.

Well, what’s the point of conserving areas of outstanding natural beauty when Soccer Moms have SUVs to drive…

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don’t like it, we go someplace else.

First, perhaps this link might help explain how prices for commodities, such as crude oil, fluctuate according to supply and demand.

Secondly, the obvious fallacy in logic here is that, if you’ve already offered all the oil producing countries $10 a barrel, how are you going to go “someplace else”?

I could go on, but I think I’ve probably made my point by now. Don’t get me wrong, none of these comments are intended to be anti-American in any way, or anything like that. I just object to the circulation of this kind of ignorant, racist, right-wing nonsense and felt the need to respond.

Rant over… for now ;)

I’ve been having a bit of a mare today.

It started around 7.30 when the alarm went off and I couldn’t really believe it was time to get up already.

Then I broke the shower. Well, I say “shower”, but I use the word in the loosest sense of the term. It’s really just a crappy piece of white plastic stuck onto the taps that redirects the water through the hose. At least, it used to be. Now it’s a crappy piece of white plastic half stuck onto the taps that sends a jet of boiling hot water shooting across the bathroom when you turn it on, and that looks like it’s going to fall off due to the pressure at any moment.

Somehow, in spite of various problems on the Victoria line (and the 20 mins I spent trying in vain to screw the shower attachment back onto the taps) I made it to work on time, albeit in my obviously un-ironed shirt.

Still, it’s not all bad. Today in my email, amongst the spam, I found a short story that’s someone in Washington DC has submitted to Paste (that’s only the second time ever that someone random from the InterWebNet has actually sent something in. Hmm. Probably shouldn’t say that, should I?) I’ll be putting it up on the site at some point today when I get a spare moment.

Oh, and we’re off to a comedy club tonight, which looks like fun.

I’ve talked about Metro before, and, as I said then, I really shouldn’t bother reading it. The letters page, however, continues to provide a rich source of comic material. If ever there was an illustration of the insidious right-wing obsessions of middle England, this is surely it.

In today’s edition, under the headline pregnant moaners, there’s a series of letters responding to an earlier missive on the subject of giving your seat up on the tube for pregnant women. Astoundingly, most of the correspondents writing to today’s issue seem to be of the opinion that, if you’re pregnant, you deserve everything you get, shouldn’t be travelling on the tube, and have no more right to a seat than anyone else. Here’s some quotes: “Mr Pinstripe didn’t tell you to have a baby, and it is unreasonable to expect him to be inconvenienced because you are unfit for train travel”; “Jo Collier [writer of initial letter] [wasn’t] forced to become pregnant… she probably nagged her partner for years about having a baby and now she’s got what she wanted, she needs something else to moan about.”

It’s one thing being a heartless bastard, but I’m amazed that people feel the need to write to a shabby paper to let everyone know they have no respect for other people. I look forward to next week’s editions telling me why, say, the elderly deserve everything they get (“it’s not my fault they’re old, why should I be inconvenienced?”) and will have to fight for that seat if they really want it. It’s a jungle out there, kids…