Diamond Joe Quimby

I feel like a heap of crap today. I've for some reason spent the entire day feeling like I'm about to blow chunks - I don't mean I've been feeling nauseous, not in the slightest, just that I've had that weird tickly feeling in the back of your throat you get when you're about to barf. It's not been fun.

Today, I was researching JFK for an article. Which was a bit of an eye opener. It's impressive, i mean, Clinton was a womaniser, but JFK was something else, a womaniser to the point where it looked like some kind of mental illness. He'd shag absolutely anything with boobs, really. I'm not whether that makes him a bad president, after all, if being a complete jerk disqualified you from office then America would have, er, theodore roosevelt? perhaps Jimmy Carter? and neither of them are exactly loveliness incarnate.

The most interesting part of these researches though, was a strange tangent which brought me to the story of Vaughn Meader. Born in Maine, Abbott Vaughn Meader trained as a soldier and musician. When he was 27, he rose to fame for his uncanny impressions of the then President, John F Kennedy. He made an album of satirical sketches of life in the Kennedy white house that sold millions, nearly 8 million copies in fact. He made appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, and just about every national TV station and newspaper wanted a piece of him. Kennedy himself used to tell jokes about him, and gave out copies of the album to friends as christmas gifts. His star was in the ascendant right up until bits of Kennedy's brain got splattered all over the seats of a Lincoln Continental.

After that, unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to hear him. All possible follow ups dropped away - people weren't even interested in hearing him exhibit any of his other comedic talents (which, by all accounts, weren't many). He spiralled into depression and drug addiction, wandered the south, getting more and more out of control, with heroin and homelessness. After a while, it seems, he managed to get himself back together and ended up returning to what he was doing before his brush with stardom - living with his wives (there were a few of them), and playing bluegrass in pubs around New England. He refused to ever imitate Kennedy again.

It's fascinating, the way that someone can rise to such high fame, and then plummet down to nothing in such a short time - it seems that it was possible even before the days of pop idol and big brother.

-Ben

Today's musical links. Ian Dury and the Blockheads, the best jazz/funk comedy band ever to come out of Essex. Dig Hit me With Your Rhythm Stick or Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Also, on a wildly different note, this performance of Close Your Eyes by James Taylor and Carly Simon, which is probably one of the most mesmerising things on youtube. Oh, and David Bowie and Mick Ronson doing Queen Bitch live.

Games and Sex

An interesting little lecture, makes some interesting points. It's a topic I've never been quite sure about myself. Personally I think it's one that wont be overcome until more and more decent writers become attracted to games as a valid narrative format. As it currently stands games (when they aren't just written by members of the coding team) are generally written by people who have more experience of computer games than they do of narrative or, well, life*.

Until Matt made me play System Shock 2 I'd never really considered games to be a format particularly compatible with good stories. After playing that game though, I was converted - the story isn't particularly great, but the way that it is told, the experience of being a part of the story whilst the context is gradually explored and understood, that made me interested in what else could be done.

I do take issue with the lecture on one significant point, however, and that is the identification of film as the narrative form that games should seek to emulate. This is stupid, games can occupy the audience for anything up to about 60 hours. That places the narrative possibilities way beyond that of the 3 hour film. Games writers would be better off looking to the depth and complexity of novels for their cues on characterisation and plotting.

Ugh. I've just realised that I'm writing about sex outside of work - and it's not even something covered by the book.

-Ben

*I know it's mean, but there's definitely some merit to the suggestion that those who play computer games enough to want to become part of the industry generally don't have the most mature or developed attitudes to sexuality.

Lord Ben of Plumstead, protector of the peas

I love the anonymity of the internet. Today I one of the writers I've been corresponding with gave me the title 'Dr.' when he was writing to me. Obviously it was just an academic habit, developed to avoid offending the tenured and tetchy, but still, it made me smile. Although I think if I'm going to affect a spurious honorific I'd go for 'Colonel' (which seems to be the military rank of choice for such purposes*).

Also today I learned that all British legislation starts with the following phrase:

BE IT ENACTED by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

I'm not generally much for tradition, but I love that shit, especially the way that 'the lords spiritual and temporal' come before the commons, despite the fact that neither the lords (spiritual or otherwise) nor the queen have had anything to do with the drafting of laws in a long time.

-Ben

* See Here and Here

EDIT: In an strange little postscript to this, when I politely explained to the writer that I didn't have a Ph.D they told me that they didn't either. I completely forgot that I too, was just giving them the title Dr. at a guess.

feerta

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber'd here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend;

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearned luck

Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,

We will make amends ere long;

Else the Puck a liar call:

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.

Today I finished work at about 5:30, as usual, and wandered off to the tube station. Everything went pretty much as normal, I read my book and listened to my loud shouty music. The difference from every other Thursday came when I walked out of London Bridge station and walked down to the southbank to meet my family at the Globe. I'd completely forgotten about this until I was reminded this morning, but yes, tonight I went to see the Globe theatre company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I was a little apprehensive about this play because, whilst it's hard to go wrong with it, the last play I saw at the globe was really appallingly bad* and I was worried that they would mess this one up too. There was no need to worry, there was the correct number of actors to do the play correctly, with the actors playing Theseus/Oberon, Hippolyta/Titania, Puck/Philostrate, doubling up, as they should.

It was, most importantly, really fucking funny. I laughed so hard that my face still hurts whilst I'm writing this. I could go on for hours about why it was so good but, and this is I'll never be a critic of anything, I can't really evoke it in a way that would make any sense to someone who hadn't also seen it. Suffice to say that it was very good; fantastically acted, staged, and accompanied by beautiful music.

The setting in the globe really does add something to those plays I think. I love the way that you can clearly see the rest of the audience, seeing them creased up with laughter makes the jokes even funnier. I love the way that the actors wander in and out of the audience, directing lines and asides to certain figures in the crowd. I think, if nothing else, there's just something energetic and lively about it all that isn't there in normal theatres. When they want to get the audience's attention for the beginning of the play, for example, a man and a woman come out with massive drums and do a very impressive, and extremely loud, percussion set whilst the stragglers settle in. The whole thing just feels like fun somehow, you watch in attentive silence (when you aren't laughing) not because you're afraid of being tutted and frowned at, but because you are completely engrossed in the sound of unamplified voices declaiming centuries-old poetry over the sound of the modern city.

-Ben

*Imagine, if you will, a production of The Tempest played in its entirety by three actors. Who never changed costumes, and often played more than one part in each scene. Sometimes carrying on conversations with themselves. It was annoying, they were fantastic performances, but essentially just a bit of acting virtuosity for the benefit of those who know the play off by heart already.

Brainfarts

I've been waiting on some unifying train of thought to group some of the ideas that have been floating around in my head this week, but such a thing does not seem to be forthcoming, so I'm just going to have to write a strange page of babble. Such is life.

Something unusual happened to me today. This will be familiar to anyone who has visited London, or any other city, probably. You know when pigeons get scared by something and, after running away for a few seconds, remember that they have wings and launch themselves into the air in a panicky tangle, with their wings slapping together and breadcrumbs flying everywhere? Well, this is a pretty common occurrence, and I've often wondered, when dodging out of the way of some beady-eyed vector of disease, whether or not they'd actually hit you if you didn't duck. I mean, think about it, they're birds, they can see you're there and, stupid as they may seem, surely they have a reasonable about of skill at flying. right? Wrong. I decided to test this, and took a pigeon to the face today. Dry feathers and hard little bones, scraping across your cheek. It's not a nice experience, let me tell you.

Neither is the lingering smell.

Musicwise, this week I've mostly been listening to the unclassifiable strangeness that Matt sent me, and various folky people. Although I've been taking time out from this gruelling schedule to dance around like a wazzock to Metronomy (Their Kate Nash remix is especially fine) and singing along like a crazy person to Weezer on the tube.

I discovered a very funny website recently, which made me laugh until I made unhealthy gurgling sounds. It's called ship of fools and it reminds me of various family friends I remember from when I was younger. People like my grandfather who made me laugh, think, and didn't carry their faith around like a big stick. It's run by a couple of english christians who derive much of their humor from, er, the slightly stranger fringes of christianity (which are many and populous). As I'm obviously doing my strange slightly jesus flavoured thing (raised in liberal christian stylee, but don't really buy into the big beardy bloke argument) I thought I'd link The Drum Major Instinct which I read a month or two ago. It's a pretty long bit of writing to read online, and suffers a little from the fact that it wasn't written with the intention of being read but heard, but it's powerful stuff. It made me go and buy the complete non-fiction of James Baldwin, which I promised myself I'd get when I had the money, back when I was at uni.

For some reason I've started to feel the need to grow my Jazz mane back again. I don't think I will though, I don't think I can take spending 6 months looking like a complete moron. I'm also considering learning to play the upright bass for some reason. I think my money must be going to my head, seeing as I can barely play a fretless bass with cheater lines.

-Ben

Folksounds

I've been in a bit of a folk music mood recently, when the sun comes out I feel the need to put my bass down, grab an acoustic and go and play in the sunshine. This is someone I came across through his work with Roddy Woomble (yes, amazingly that is his real name) the singer from Idlewild who came over all folk a while back. Anyway, have a listen, and dig that double capo playing.

-Ben

Scanner

I was looking through an old notepad I found the other day and discovered these two things which I found interesting. The first is this - it's a sort of rosetta stone, you can look at all the words in handwriting that can be understood and decode my bizarre scrawl.

It'd be interesting to do a study, double-blinded, to see if people can guess the gender of a person from handwriting. I rather suspect that you could, there certainly seems to be a certain neatness in Lucy and Sarah's handwriting that isn't in the others.

The other scans are the the manual and warranty for the guitar I rebuilt for Ed.

It really is as complicated as it sounds, I couldn't make head or tail of my own circuits when I was at Ed's house recently. But he asked for a Frankenstein guitar, and I don't do half arsed when I've got my soldering iron out.

This is the Warranty, featuring a strangely incorrect signature.


Anyway. That's enough of that. I'm going to go and shower, because I smell even more than normal

-Ben

Chris TT

I first heard Chris TT years ago when someone played '100,000 turkeys' on the radio. I searched around, but couldn't get hold of any of his music, other than one track that I managed to find on napster. Yes. It was that long ago. He's kept going for the last few years, seemingly maintaining his low-profile cult status, occasionally releasing stuff on wee small independent record labels. Thanks to the advances of the internet, it's now possible to actually find some of his music online, and know when and where he's going to be playing next.

He plays a damn fine Stylophone solo as well.

Mr Ben Digs

Just the one link today, but I expect that it's more likely to actually get listened to if it's on its own.

Karine Polwart
Scottish folk singer songwriter, she writes good songs and sings them with a lovely voice. Sort of like an improved Kate Rusby, but from a bit further north. It occurs to me that now I've put that link to Kate Rusby's site in, I've got two links. It's more for reference than recommendation, though, so I don't think it counts.

I was rather dreading listening to those songs on Kate Rusby's page, because her song 'underneath the stars' was inextricably linked to the last time I saw my sixth-form girlfriend before I went off to uni. I just listened to it though, and it didn't have any effect on me whatsoever, which is encouraging, I think. It either proves that I'm capable of forgetting that which is long dead and buried, or that after sleeping in an empty bed for so long, I'm officially dead on the inside.

-Ben

Bad Medicine 2

I don't really have anything to add, other than this link.

which is interesting

eh?

I've not really got anything to say other than to drop a few links. The first one, which is a Youtube video, really needs to be watched. You should sit yourself down with some headphones and marvel at what I will confidently say is the worst performance you're likely to find on the internet. Really. It's that bad.

I've had the dubious honour of seeing these two perform live at various folkclubs around south east london, and believe it or not, she's actually worse on her own. Since seeing them the first time I now always carry a crosshead screwdriver, just in case I see them again and have to perforate my own eardrums. You wouldn't believe how far from the correct pitch someone can go. It really is an education, afterwards everything, even the shittiest of pop, seems like joyous musical beauty.

That said, they are quite funny, and seem to be nice people, fully aware of how bad they are, which makes me feel a little bad about finding them so completely unlistenable. I think they may have the makings of an internet meme.

The other two links are profiles of two interesting figures from american history. People who weren't great, or that bad, when compared to the gallery of famous historical figures*. Nonetheless people who achieved a certain notoriety in either their own time or ours for being, well, a bit nuts.

The first of these is an old favourite of mine, Mr John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of corn flakes and a man whose faults and neuroses woudln't fit on the back of a cereal packet, even if you wrote them really fucking small. His recommendation that girls should have their clitorises burned with carbolic acid to stop them from masturbating is a pretty representative example of his thinking.

The second is Reverend Rufus Wilmot Griswold who is notable for making a career out of being exceptionally unpleasant about other people's books, notably describing Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as being filled with "a degrading, beastly sensuality, that is fast rotting the healthy core of all the social virtues." He also inexplicably devoted the last ten years of his life to posthumously slandering the reputation of Edgar Allan Poe in anonymous obituaries, snide articles, and largely fabricated memoirs.

*Which, it has to be said, includes mass murderers, warmongerers, slave traders and more rapists than you can count

Bad Medicine

I've been writing about sex a lot recently, which isn't nearly as exciting as you might think, in fact, my job often involves removing anything that's too interesting, if you get my drift. It's mostly been articles about every sexually transmitted infection under the sun, and how they can be caught from doing so little as thinking dirty thoughts about people. Which makes you think that you might have some of them... until you look at the pictures, scream and realise that no, you don't. The closest to interesting I've read was probably the really rather detailed article about the physiological phases of the female orgasm, which did nearly make me gnaw my own arm off (it has been a while).

Anyway, I'm aware that I'm probably talking shop, but what I actually wanted to write here was a rant about the pharmaceutical industry. I need to write it here, otherwise I'm going to end up putting it into the Female Sexual Dysfunction article. Which brings me round to my point.

After the roaring financial success of treatments for erectile dysfunction, like viagra, cialis, and levitra, drug companies across the world realised what quacks and everyone else realised long ago - sex sells. After tapping the male market (selling sexual enhancements to men is like shooting fish in a barrel) they decided to try and get a foothold in the other half of the population.

One problem, women don't have penises to go floppy or to be self conscious about.

But aha! They find a market - some surveys indicate that a large proportion of women, especially older women, really don't enjoy sex. They then tack on the same Freud derived bullshit that's been kicking around for years - about the clitoral orgasm being a juvenile stage and the vaginal orgasm being the sign of a grown woman, and shazam! You have an illness that you can peddle the cure to. Never mind the fact that a woman not enjoying penetrative sex is a symptom of nothing more than the fact that she doesn't enjoy penetrative sex, or that a lack of sexual desire is more easily explained by, er, I don't know an ugly and inconsiderate partner?

The worst part is that they don't even develop new drugs for it, the two that they are pushing hardest are Bupropion (an antidepressant that they're also marketing as a treatment for obesity and ADHD) and Viagra - which is supposed to make the clitoris bigger, which it does, but this is in turn supposed to make sex better, which it might, er, they think...

Mind you, there is a funny side. One of the drugs being researched as a possible cure was Bremelanotide, which did actually appear to be very effective (it isn't going to be marketed though, because it also raises your blood pressure dangerously high). The funny part is that bremelanotide was first developed as a tanning agent.

Which it did very well, but it also gave men spontaneous erections, and made both genders really fucking horny. Which possibly isn't the best thing for a day on the beach. Not ones to admit defeat, they just tried to develop it as a drug that made you horny (and also gave you a sexy tan, I guess).

-Ben

Iron and Wine

I was first shown the meaty goodness of Mr Sam Beam by Matt, to whom I am eternally grateful. With his new album he's gone electric, but oh man, it's so tasty. Like his backing band is made up of Four Tet ultra and Zombie Jeff Buckley.

Mhmm.

-Ben

We're a Winner

I decided to go to Oxford Street after work today, to see if there were any clothes there that I liked. I’ve been thinking I should get some new clothes for a while now, as only about half my clothes were bought in the last year or two – which means that half of my clothes are too big for me, and the other half look tatty because they’re the ones that I wear regularly. So anyway, I got to oxford circus station and had the usual couple of minutes of complete disorientation (oxford circus station has four exits, one on each corner of a junction, and no signs telling you what’s what – which means that you have no idea which way you’re going once you come out). I looked in a few shops, in a bored and unenthusiastic sort of way (shopping for clothes makes me depressed and cranky) and then came across a large police roadblock.

Some inconsiderate person, who, lets face it, had a much worse day than me, seemed to have ended up under a bus. So it goes. The police had about 100 metres of the road cordoned off and I didn’t much feel like rubbernecking, so I turned down the street on my right and decided to take a diversion through Soho.

When I reached the first junction I realised that I was on Berwick street, and remembered that there was a really good independent record shop about five minutes’ walk down the road. I spent a while looking around the place, trying to find CDs by the various artists I like who are too obscure to be available in the normal places (it occurs to me now that I didn’t think to look for the new Ted Leo album, silly me) I didn’t find any of them – they’re probably there, they just have a rather idiosyncratic filing system – but I did find ‘The shepherd’s Dog’ by Iron and Wine and a Curtis Mayfield best of, that had a few tracks that I know, as well as a load from Superfly (which I have). The Curtis Mayfield was only a fiver, so I figured I may as well.

I wandered around London for a while, not finding anything interesting – I’d pretty much given up on even trying to shop for clothes by this point, the motivation had evaporated – and made my way home; which took much longer than I was expecting, because of some kind of railway-related-knobbery.

When I finally got home, and put the Curtis Mayfield CD on the stereo I realised that the guy in the shop had put the wrong CD in the case when he was getting them from the stockroom. What I had was not the best of Curtis Mayfield, but the Best of The Impressions – the old soul group he used to be in.

I was a little miffed, but actually, this CD seems to be really good – excellent sunshine music, all pop-soul and funk, and the lyrics are imbued with that sort of exuberant optimism you get in soul music between the passing of the civil rights act and the assassination of Martin Luther King. It’s probably better summertime music than the Curtis Mayfield best of, which belongs to the darkness of the 1970s pusherman and ghettochild, despite its funkyness.

So yeah, thank you fate, fatality, and incompetence – I have discovered some more good music that I didn’t know before.

-Ben

EDIT: As ed pointed out, I now know it wasn't someone getting hit by a bus, but in fact someone being stabbed to death in a gang brawl outside McDonalds.

Oh yes. London is precisely that classy.

summer

The sun is shining, and it is really warm. Even though I can only see windows from a distance in my office, I'm still walking around with a big smile on my face. I find that people just get friendlier when the sun shines, strangers chat, and it becomes possible to distinguish women and men by more than just the colour of their coats and the length of their hair. The only downside is this year's strange fashion for sunglasses the size of hubcaps - I saw a girl today with sunglasses whose lenses actually reached down below her nose, and nearly up to her hairline. This is fair enough, Islington women have to have their expensive trinkets, but really, I saw a couple of blokes on the underground this morning who were wearing giant black sunglasses that looked like those ones that elderly blind men wear.

Which is obviously necessary, what with all the dazzling sunshine on the tube.

I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this, my brain's just kind of surfing now*. I've been listening to Tapes 'n Tapes' new album for the last few days - tis very good, more noisy and loud than their last one. In the newly discovered music there's these people, who have written one good song, at least, and this geezer, who plays a damn fine bluestronica. There's also this lot, who have been around for years and probably aren't new to anyone but me. And, er, a strange rambling song-monologue by Noël Coward.

-Ben


*I've been accidentally quoting the streets a lot today, not sure why

warm breeze

It was the first warm and summery night of the year tonight - or at least the first that I've noticed. Seeing as I can pretty much walk normally now (although I do periodically get stabbing pains in my left Achilles tendon) I decided to go up to the top of the hill and watch the pretty lights flick on as the sky darkened. Sunsets can be pretty anywhere, you see, but a view like the one from the top of shooters hill is something uniquely urban, and I like that for some reason. During the day, the city is all pretty faceless, individual buildings are impossible to pick out unless they're really big, and therefore uninteresting. Once the sun sets, however, you see the city as a swathe of a million pinprick lights, each one a house, a window. The big blobs of yellowlit officeblocks, the glimpsed halogen blinks of cars flicking in and out of sight. It's like you can suddenly see all the life than you're too far out to notice by daylight.

I tried taking some pictures, but my camera can't take high enough resolution pictures, and I can't keep it steady enough to render each little dot of light, so they're no use to illustrate what I'm talking about. The one below, however, does sort of give an impression of night time in London.

tuesday misc.

My favourite joke

Two muffins in an oven. One turns to the other and says
“it’s a bit hot in here isn’t it”
The other shouts
“Holy fuck! A talking muffin!”

My dad’s Favourite Joke

A man is going on a charity skydive – he sits in the plane, nervous and worried to bejesus. Eventually the call comes, and he jumps out of the plane. He falls for a while, the roaring of the wind the only sound in his ears, until the time comes to pull the cord. He pulls. Nothing happens. He pulls again. Nothing happens. He pulls the cord for the reserve parachute, nothing happens.

“oh dear,” he thinks

Then he sees a man flying up through the sky towards him:
“excuse me,” he asks “do you know anything about parachutes?”
“no, sorry,” replies the other man “do you know anything about gas-fired boilers?”

-----

Today, I have been reading Jorge Luis Borges stories on the train. I recommend this to everyone – not necessarily the train part, though, it’s not particularly comfortable. They’re short, readable, and always make you feel brainy, rather than thick, which is my normal reaction to books with big words and small print. Fictions is what I’m reading at the moment, but The Book of Sand, and Labyrinths are just as good.

-Ben

When the tubetrain fills, the people, jammed tessellate, shift into the unfilled air. But some the fullclothed crush repels. They wait. For another train, with other spaces more their size. Fearing the face-in-armpit intimacy of overweight strangers.

The train rumbles off. Those left behind do not move away, because they know where other doors will be. They stand, with their music, or newspapers. Or else stare, bored, at the advert on the other side of the tracks - a picture that they’ve seen every morning for a month. The picture of the girl drinking the coffee. Fancy coffee. Tiny cup. A picture I cannot stand. Hennaswirling facepaint combines with the dust and grime of the underground: The postersize girl looks beaten and bruised, the sexy smirk on her face twisted into something other; bitterness and brittle toughness, the eye contact disquieting. I look at my feet.

Some mornings I’m spared her stare. I reach the platform just before another train. Those left behind by the last are still standing there under her eyes, in scattered little bunches, remnants of the crowd. Burialmounds of halfmelted snowmen in green fields.

-Ben

geetar

There's a little shop down a side-street near Angel station, I pass it on my way home from work everyday, that I bought a new guitar from the other day. It's one of those places, like X-Electrical in Canterbury, that sells pretty much anything that looks cool and falls into the category of 'audio-visual'. Unlike the place in canterbury though, the guy who runs it has a really good eye for bargain guitars. He buys instruments that are really nice, and often quite old, but, either because of where they were made, or their appearance, aren't likely to become expensive collectables anytime soon. He's got an especially fine collection of quite old Japanese made guitars.

I bought one of his old guitars on wednesday - a 1979 Ibanez Studio - for about the same price that a godawful 'beginners guitar' would cost me new. It looks like this.



it sounds like pretty.

-Ben

Facts

I was editing a book about Jamaica today, and in the course of my fact-checking started reading a few pages that discussed Jamaican Patois -- the 'Creole' language spoken to some degree, by a large number of Jamaicans.

Creole languages are fascinating, because at first glance they appear to be fairly simple, just a broken up dialect of standard English (or Spanish, or French.) The more you look at them, however, the more you realise just how little they have to do with English. It's not just the different words, or drastically different pronunciation -- it's the whole syntax, the construction of the language. Creole languages are essentially one language's words with another language's sentence construction. Jamaican Patois, for example, is widely believed to be a mixture of English vocabulary and syntax derived from various west African languages (like Twi, for example, from which it gets the word 'duppy', meaning ghost.)

The best demonstration of how different it is from standard English is by trying to understand the lyrics of Jamaican singers. Not Bob Marley, as generally he sang in slightly rasta-ised English, but someone like Pluto Shervington. 'It's indecipherability is just down to not getting the pronunciation and the recording', you think, but when you read the lyrics you realise that Patois bears about as much of a resemblance to standard English as Dutch, or Chaucer's English.

It's a good song though, about a rasta trying to buy some pork (which is not Ital)

---

Favourite fact of the day:

-- Cleveland was originally called Cleaveland, but the local newspaper couldn't fit the word on the front page masthead, so Cleveland it is.

Favourite book quote:

-- "As an industrial city, Cleveland had always experienced problems related to pollution. The city hit a low point, however, in the summer of 1969 when the Cuyahoga River, which flows through the city, caught fire."

-Ben

"God's Turban and Tutu! Do I need a dair of the hog!" - Henry Rawlinson

Snow

My friend Howie just posted up these pictures of the 'snow angel' made by Dave, Hannah, Howie and myself a few weeks back when london was gifted with unexpected snow. I'm reproducing without permission, because I'm a bastard like that.


And here's the dog, sculpted by me, Dave and Hannah. Which Hannah aptly named 'snowy'



In other news, the next few weeks are going to be unhealthy ones -- The unfortunate knackering that my Achilles tendons received from walking for miles in the snow mean that I can't walk very far, and the anti-inflammatories I've been given to make them better require me to eat stuff all the time, otherwise they make my stomach hurt (I know this because I've been prescribed them before.)

-Ben

Bleep Bleep Bleepity Bleeping Bleep!

I am a very, very angry person today.

I mentioned in a post last week that, after months of hobbling around I've finally got an explanation of what caused my left knee to completely fuck up (beyond complete repair, it seems). This wasn't a particularly huge cock in my face, as I don't like running much and can get by without doing it.

For the last week (I first noticed it on Monday) I've been suffering from some rather unpleasant feelings in my Achilles tendons - sort of ouchy and uncomfortable. I figured that this was caused by the boots I'd been wearing in the snow rubbing against the back of my ankles, went back to wearing my trainers and waited for it to go away.

It hasn't.

In fact, over the last few days it's got worse. A lot worse. Like 'I've lost most of the movement in my feet and can barely walk because of the searing pain' sort of worse. It took me about twice as long to walk from the station to my house this evening. Wincing and swearing and limping (with both legs, which isn't for beginners, let me tell you) every fucking metre. It feels like someone has replaced my tendons with a frayed bundle of dried out and crispy old elastic bands.

So there you go. I've been trying to get fit, but even walking, it seems, is completely out the question for me now. Perhaps I should just buy a pair of elasticated waistband jeans and be done with it.

Just... aagh... fuck you nature, fuck you right in the eye. I'm still getting thinner, more out of spite than anything else - I normally wouldn't bother putting this much effort into it, but this feels like a fight to me now and I'm not backing down.

-Ben

Antoine Dufour, Andy McKee, Craig D'Andrea

You would have thought that putting that much awesome in one room would cause some sort of fusion reaction, or at least a rift in the space time continuum.

-Ben

New Bass

After two week's wait, I collected my new bass from the workshop on friday afternoon. I'd been getting a little worried in those two weeks, concerned that perhaps it wasn't as wonderful an instrument as I initially thought. But no need for worry, it makes my old fretless feel and sound like a load of rubber bands on a plank of wood. It's amazing the way that a high quality instrument feels and sounds, they're just so much more lively - they respond to changes in attack much more easily and bring out subtleties in your playing that you never realised you had.


Phwoar! nice rack, etc.

-Ben

Bookthink

Today at work I had to compile a further reading list which included a section on American Fiction - by American authors, about America or American people. I had to include some ethnicky literature and was trying to avoid including texts that were commonly taught at school level (which was hampered rather by the fact that I didn't go to an American school).

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Grove Press, 2005.
Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. New York: Penguin Classics, 2001.
Carver, Raymond. Where I'm Calling From: The Selected Stories. New York: Vintage, 1989.
Doctorow, E L. The Book of Daniel. New York: Random House, 2007.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage, 1995
Faulkner, William. Light in August. New York: Vintage, 1991.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1999.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York. Simon & Schuster, 1996.
James, Henry. Washington Square. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
Sallinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Penguin books, 1994.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2002.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dial Press, 1999.

With the exception of The Crucible and The Grapes of Wrath — Which were put in on the suggestion of others — these books are all from my bookshelves. I'm putting it up here because I know you're a fairly literate lot so feel free to add anything glaring I've missed out, or just mock me for my choices if you want.

Oh, and Another thing. I know that this will mean nothing at all to you, but I'm just going to say it anyway. The London Mayoral candidate most likely to get my vote in the next few weeks will be the first one to stand up and say this:

"Contrary to what my speeches have so far suggested, I am actually aware of the existence of London Boroughs south of the River Thames"

Seriously, that's all.

-Ben

Science

Just a little post to share this wondrous piece of scientific research with the world. I'm afraid it's in .Pdf format (which is always annoying if you aren't expecting it), but hey, it's a journal article available to the common people - so you can't be too picky.

Shazam!

Not much has really happened to me that's worth mentioning - well, not that's worth mentioning in any detail without photos to go with it, and I don't have a camera. Suffice to say I spent Sunday making a giant transvestite snowman in the park, and have a new custom Warwick Corvette fretless bass, which is so nice it makes me wish I could play it properly.

-Ben

(The paper was from Badscience)

Classification

In the world of cargo shipbuilding there are two classifications - Suezmax and Panamax - which describe a ship design (of no specific shape or construction) that fits within the maximum dimensions that can still fit through either the Panama or Suez ship canals) . This isn't the sort of information that most people bother to remember, I know, but it's a pair of pleasing words that could be useful in a life or death game of scrabble.

This came to mind today when I was standing on the tube, reading my paper, listening to my music, and observing the quite visible discomfort of many of those in the carriage with me. I propose a new standard, one that will definitely come into force when people can genetically modify their children.

Tubemax

This would be the maximum size a person can be and still travel in a reasonable level of comfort on the tube. I think it would be around my size - that is, around 6' and 180lbs - as any taller and your height would mean you'd be all crumpled up, and any fatter and you'd be all sweaty and uncool all the time.

Another thing - Supergrass rock hard.

-Ben

Knees

Today I had my long awaited appointment with the knee injury specialist at the local hospital. I went along a little worried about the fact that my knee isn’t particularly bothering me at the moment, and that perhaps the specialist would just dismiss it as some minor, passing thing, only to have it recur weeks later.

I got the bus to Queen Mary’s and sat around in the waiting room, lorded over by the ubiquitous NHS crone*. I was impressed by the way that, with the exception of a very pretty woman (who I tactfully refrained from staring at) I was the only one in the room who wasn’t either A: over 200 pounds or B: over 200 years old.

The consultation was relatively quick, I was poked, prodded and generally jiggled about for about ten minutes, punctuated by occasional

‘does it hurt when I do this?’

‘no’

‘does it hurt when I do this?’

‘yeahowfuckstopit’

And asides to the medical intern who was sitting in, like

‘note the abnormal range of movement of the joints’

‘get me some tea’

At the end of these ineffable medical manipulations he explained to me that the cause of my pain wasn’t a strained ligament like the GP had guessed, but something called Hyperlax ligaments – this means that my ligaments are all stretchy - way more than usual - which is why, amongst other things, I can bend my knees both ways. The side effect of this is that if I were to go running a lot (as I did) my ligaments can’t hold my joints in place properly. The clicking and pain in my knee was caused by damage to the cartilage and bone of the joint. Damage which is, apparently, permanent.

I’ve got to see a physiotherapist a few times over the next month or so, and I’m absolutely forbidden to do any running. Ever.

-Ben

*I’m not sure whether these women are unique to the English healthcare system, or if they’re an international thing - but whenever there is a desk in a medical establishment then the person behind that desk will be in their mid to late fifties, grey haired, and seem to be permanently irritated with you

Mr Ben Digs

Mhmm. It's that time again. I've been listening to the Tom Robinson show a lot this week, and here is my musical harvest.

Johnny Flynn
Continuing my strangely folk/bluegrass bent of late, I've been digging this geezer's twangy goodness.

Shellsuit
As above, but less bluegrass and more like your standard unusual indie (if you see what I mean)

That's about it for new discoveries for me, although you should get some Future of the Left in your head, as it makes everyone sexier.

-Ben

Raoul Wallenberg

Most of the information I deal with at work is things that I either already know, or don’t much care about (it’s hard to be enthused by the major exports of South American countries), but every now and then I find myself editing something that I find genuinely interesting.

Take for example, the story of Raoul Wallenberg. I’ll give you a quick summary here, although I recommend you read the full article at some point.

His early life is fairly unremarkable; he was born into a very rich family, gifted with languages, and was, by all accounts, very charming and likeable. His life becomes interesting in 1944 when, at the age of 32, he was sent to Hungary to co-ordinate the diplomatic efforts to save as much of the country’s Jewish population from the death camps. He is partly responsible for saving the lives of thousands of people, through cleverly exploiting the fact that pretty much the entire Nazi military establishment was, by this point, either bent, disillusioned, or terrified of what was going to happen when what they’d done caught up with them. He tricked and conned, bribed and threatened, and, sometimes, just waved enough official-looking paper around to spread confusion.

He was, in some small and completely non-violent way, a hero.

However, as is often the way with the real world, and probably the reason why no-one has made a blockbuster film about him, he never lived to see his achievements recognised. In January 1945 he left Budapest to meet some Russian Army officers, and was never seen again.

No-one really knows what happened to him, but the most likely explanation is probably that he was falsely accused of espionage, and executed in prison by the KGB in 1947.

-Ben

Sorry about the rather second rather genocide-fixated post, it's just the way my work's been leaning recently.

Eugenics

I came across an article about this man today. Read it, it’s interesting.

It’s strange to think, when you look at that article, that it wasn’t so long ago that Eugenics was considered by many to be a legitimate avenue of scientific study. These days, when you hear the word ‘Eugenics’ you think of Hitler’s goons measuring Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies with callipers, but, whilst it’d be nice to pretend that subscribing to such an unpleasant idea was the preserve of the batshit-crazy, it was considered an subfield of evolutionary theory for a long time.

It’s my scraps of knowledge on this subject that always make me rather frustrated by Richard Dawkins and his ‘Religion = root of all evil’ argument. Just look at how evolutionary theory was manipulated and twisted by oppressors worldwide to justify and excuse the killing and marginalisation of millions of people and ask yourself, how is this different from people interpreting “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”* as “kill the unbelievers with the pointy stick of divine justice!”.

I wouldn’t count myself in the god fan club, but the fact is that people will look to whatever authority they can find, whether it is scripture or science, to justify their murderousness – the source they choose to cite is normally as much of an innocent bystander as the people that end up in the ground.

This has all reminded me of ‘English Passengers’ by Matthew Kneale. Which is a damn good book.

-Ben

*Matthew 7:12, I make no apologies for the archaic language, I like the KJV – it just doesn’t feel like proper religion if it doesn’t include the second person singular pronoun.

Topsy-Turvy

The project I'm currently working on (let us call it El Projecto for reasons of not wanting to talk shop) involves me emailing and phoning up the army of freelancers and experts we have commissioned to explain the various topics covered by El Projecto.

Now when I say experts, this usually means academics from that field. The following is the general gist of a conversation on the phone between me (a recent graduate) and an academic:

Me: Do you have article?
Prof: No, I do not have article yet, but I'm nearly finished
Me: Well, I'm afraid that the deadline was a few days ago
Prof: Oh dear! I'll work hard, really, I just got a little distracted
Me: Well, I suppose I could extend the deadline a little, another week or so.
Prof: Thanks, I'll really try and finish it by then.

The giggles started when I put the phone down and thought:

'wait, that conversation was like university, but backwards.'

-Ben

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

Today lunchtime found me standing in front of the war memorial on Islington green. I was eating my sandwiches while the weather caught its breath; before it tried to soak me again. It’s been one of those days where the world appears to have been placed behind a sheet of dirty glass, like looking out the window of a grimy train. I was standing in front of the war memorial because it was too wet to sit down, but too windy to stand out in the open. With that peculiar curiosity that comes with sufficient bread for a few minutes thoughtful chewing, I was examining the war memorial, taking in every detail.

It’s unusual, you see, no lists of names, no campaigns fought. There are four stone slabs set into the ground – air, sea, land, home – and a giant granite ring, 4 metres in diameter and as thick as an old tree, propped up against the low stone wall like a wreath. It’s obviously a modern creation, and a discreet tablet set into the grass nearby mentions that it replaced an older, probably crumbling memorial, probably at great expense. I like it, though. Despite its modernity, it manages, though being enigmatic in its minimalism, an appreciable likeness of the stomach churning impact that those old crosses, covered from base to tip in names, tend to create.

I’m fascinated by things like this, with the mechanics of mass grief. I know it’s a little macabre, but it’s such an interesting area of study. The struggle to memorialise the lost has created, perversely, some of the most beautiful artistic and symbolic statements humanity has managed, tokens of collective remorse for mankind’s many sins. Also, these memorials speak volumes about the society in which they stand (the best example of this being the Neue Wache.)

What I find interesting is the point in history when these memorials took their current form in the aftermath of the First World War. First of all, though, a little context is needed. Every British schoolchild is told the figures, but I don’t think many people really sit down and think about how they compare. The total coalition losses in Iraq since the invasion, for example, probably add up to less than the casualties of the first five minutes of the battle of the Ypres. American losses in the entire Vietnam War equal less than half those of the first Battle of the Somme. At its worst the British army suffered one hundred thousand casualties a month.

When the armistice came, the problem, essentially, was one of scale. When you consider how long it takes life to return to normal after bereavement, you realise the task facing a country that was one million men poorer than it had been just four years earlier, and encumbered countless more scarred and damaged survivors.

If you look at the war memorials of earlier centuries, you see the names are arranged, as in life, by rank and importance – usually only the officers, sometimes only senior officers, get their names on the alabaster; the enlisted dead are recording with a number, footnote-like, at the bottom of the plaque.

With the ones that sprang up on every village green and town square in the years after the armistice, however, the design is different. Each person’s name is recorded, with the same spacing and same font size as all the others regardless of their standing amongst the living. This uniformity is important, both because it gives each life an equal mention, but because it allows the broader scale of the loss to be more easily understood. A mother might look at her son’s name on the stone slab, in writing one inch high, and be able to stand back and look at the list, 10 feet high, and understand that every inch of that represents a loss as great as hers. It provides a visualisation of the numbers, making the loss less abstract.

The origin of this style of memorial is fairly blurry. One explanation I’ve read states that they started with wooden signs found in northern mining towns, as proud roll-calls on street corners, recording all the young men who’d joined up to fight for queen and country. As fewer and fewer came home with each battle, however, the significance of the names listed began to change, and at some stage these lists were simply repurposed, the survivors’ names taken off and the inscriptions changed. It’s a nice idea, yet I think that the truth of the matter was rather less organic.

In the years that followed the armistice, the countries of Europe found themselves in a situation that no one really knew how to deal with. There wasn’t a precedent or established procedure for understanding and remembering the violent, early deaths of 20 million people. Society, as a whole, had to figure it out from scratch. The traditions of mass mourning that we are familiar with today – the minute’s silence, the tomb of the unknown warrior, the uniform lists of names – are in fact, mostly the result of the ideas of single people, of clergymen and poets, statesmen and soldiers, who had to invent a way for the country as a whole to quantify and comprehend their loss.

The most interesting of all of these ways is the aforementioned unknown warrior. His story is covered in more detail than I have space for here. He is, most importantly, more than an unknown soldier – because he is unknown, he could be any of them, and therefore, with a sort of quantum logic, he is all of them. This was so important because the unknown soldiers of a war of choking, liquid mud and easily corroded dogtags are still dug out of Flanders fields to this day.

Nonetheless, the living need to live, and the easiest way for them to do this is to mark their respect on appointed days but, for most of the year, block the whole experience out. It is in this context that the blind eye turned to the Third Reich for so long becomes more understandable. Modern eyes can look at see the inevitable descent into war that was so little opposed by the world’s leaders, but at the time, the spectre of another war, of another generation lost, was more than most could bear to consider.

I look at these memorials and can't help but think that if there is a god, then his relationship with humanity must be similar to that of an abused spouse and their partner. We commit these terrible, unforgivable acts, and he readies the thunderbolts and floods - ready to give up and start over, but then we are so eloquent in our remorse, and sincere in our resolve never to do it again that he's mollified. At least, until he sees the next mountain of skulls, and it starts all over again.

-Ben

Mr Ben Digs

Today I have been rather enjoying the shins-esque sounds of Throw me the Statue.

In other news I've had one of the most incredibly sundaytacular sundays in ages - it felt like the 'long dark teatime of the soul' lasted damn near all day. Seriously boring.

So er, yeah, not really got anything else to say, excepting a mention to this Onion article which made me giggle much, but unfortunately probably wouldn't be so funny if you'd not written 4000 words on the book that is being referred to.

-Ben

Mr Ben Digs

Architecture in helsinki - #58.1 -Heart it races
by lablogotheque

The song proper starts about 2:40, but the preamble is quite entertaining.

-Ben

Also, it has an electric thumb piano! how cool is that?

Whinging

We can never know what to want,
because, living only one life, we can neither
compare it with our previous lives
nor perfect it in our lives to come.

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being*

I had an interesting journey to work today. There was a ‘customer incident’** at Lewisham station, which meant that I had to get the bus (or buses as it turned out) to North Greenwich tube Station and make my way into London from there. It was a little arduous two-hour commute, my MP3 player went flat midway there, and I got very wet in the process as it was pissing down with rain.

That is, I think you’ll agree, not exactly a description of a smooth journey. And yet, whilst listening to my fellow commuters moaning and whinging about it on the train this evening, I could summon no indignation of my own. I couldn’t even really summon a nasty word to say about the unknown corpse who so effectively sabotaged my journey to work. All around me, nonetheless, the stiff was called all manner of rude words, the railways and the government were blamed, plans to move to the country or, better still, another country entirely, were discussed in wistful tones.

I looked away from this scene to read my paper, only to remember that the free papers use a lot of ‘user generated content’. It’s a cheap way of filling the gaps between the pictures of celebrities looking the worse for wear and the extraneous pictures of pretty women illustrating irrelevant stories. I learned quite soon after I started reading these papers (they’re a good way of making the journey home pass by largely unnoticed) that the sort of people who write for them, as with the content of just about any public forum, seem to be permanently outraged about something.

I’m often faced with this sort of avalanche of righteous indignation - the worst is if you read the comments on the ‘have your say’ section of the BBC website*** - and I’m never quite sure how to react to it. It’s like when someone decides to vent at me about something, I’m always completely lost for words. I’m unable to make the necessary empathetic noises but at the same time I don’t really care enough about the subject to argue. It’s like if someone launched an angry tirade about having only one nose – I just don’t know what to say to outraged people.

It’s in this atmosphere that I start to think that I’m seriously socially aberrant – I can’t recall ever being outraged about anything. Honestly. I think the closest I’ve ever got to outrage was after the 7/7 bombings, but they upset me more than they made me angry – way more so than I could have expected.

I’m not evangelising about my approach to life, or at least I'm trying not to. I am aware, however, that I'm probably smug as hell about it, because that's how I am and I like it - same reason why I like being from London, it's because I'm not from anywhere else, so I like it by default. Still, to evangelise would be to suggest that it was something about which I made a conscious decision, or that I’ve got any experience of living any other way. That’s what always amuses me about self help books; the idea that you can, through conscious will, effect some kind of change in your fundamental self. Personalities change, but the idea that this can be done deliberately is ridiculous, like suggesting that you can grab your ankles and lift yourself off the ground. I think that most of the dissatisfaction that people feel with their lives or lifestyles comes not from choosing the wrong approach to life, but from trying to choose one at all.

-Ben

*I know this quote from 'Where I'm Calling From' by Raymond Carver, I've never actually read the book it's from

**‘One under’ if you catch my drift. A fatality, or so the rumour goes.

***Consider that a warning, really, don’t look, it’ll just make you want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Phun

I've not got round to downloading it yet, but it looks interesting.

Via Bad Science

-Ben

EDIT: I've just downloaded it, and yes, tis awesome. Very cool although it uses computer power like the beastliest of games. I'm guessing that's because it was programmed in some esoteric academic's programming language and the code hasn't really been optimised, what with it being a one man job.

Tonight, I feel stupid. Not because I’ve done or said anything I regret - doing that usually just leaves me feeling guilty - but because I’ve been operating to close to my limits. I always feel stupid, in effect, after I try and do or say something really smart.

Tonight I was trying to write something about visual art, I walked past the tate modern and I remembered how strange it is that I, a generally fairly cultured bloke, can’t look at the stuff in there without giggling. I was trying to make some kind of intelligent point about authorship and interpretation, but my argument just writhed around, getting longer and longer, each sentence gaining more and more clauses and sub clauses, until it finally wound round, bit itself on the arse, and collapsed under its own weight. Like writing a fifty word sentence with 6 commas about how annoying it is when you write long sentences.

I’ve always been a little baffled by the reception that my writing used to get at university. Lecturers would use words like ‘lucid’ and ‘articulate’ to describe prose that looked, to me, like a pale, fumbling imitation of the fluid ideas that I could never quite put into words. That sentence, for example, doesn’t really cover it. It makes it sound like I’ve got amazing ideas in my head that I can’t put into words. That’s not it. Ideas are words. I’ve realised that, for me at least, there’s no abstract firmament from which I pluck the raw inspiration for what I write or say. I think in English, usually poorly punctuated, inarticulate English, and what comes out in writing and speech is really as refined as my ideas get, sad though that is. What I meant was that the writing always looked like a pale imitation of the words of others who thought in much clearer English than I.

Now I’m dethinking myself, in the hope of being able to get to sleep, by writing this dense little Blog post. A post which, if it is coherent in the slightest, is only coherent because it’s the same line I’ve been wheeling out over and over again in an attempt to make myself sound brainy, by pointing out how inarticulate I am in the most flowery language I can manage.

I’ll probably post the arty ramble when I’ve talked to my dad about it, and plundered his ideas to fill the gaps in my own thinking.

On a lighter, less emo note. Devon Sproule is rather good. Even if she does have a really weird name.

-Ben

Sorry about this

But I'm about to share something really disgusting with you, dear reader.

This evening I came home from work on a later train than usual, because I'd stayed behind at the office for a while to make up for a doctor's appointment in the morning*. I was in my normal commuting trance, listening to my music (Björk - which makes for a rather floaty and ethereal commute) and not really thinking anything. As always I was watching people; people talking, thinking, just generally being people and therefore fascinating. There was a man in his 50s-ish standing in front of me, standing facing away from me, but at an angle, so I could see his face. He was reading a newspaper and occasionally checking his watch. Brown coat. Shirt and tie. Briefcase. A generic London office gent.

He had one of those funny little ticks, you know, like how people play with their hair or fiddle with their keys when they're concentrating on something. What he was doing was sort of like that - with one hand he was holding his paper, you see, but with the other I noticed that he was, er, jiggling (boinging?) a big, gelatinous polyp thingy on his neck with his index finger. For a few seconds I just stared at it, transfixed. He'd flick it with his finger and it'd wibble about for a few moments, all floopy and quivering. Then he'd do it again.

BOINGwobblewibblewobble... BOINGwobblewibblewobble

He turned round and looked at me just after I noticed this, so I'm guessing that the choked gagging noise I made whilst trying not to be sick wasn't audible just to me.

Bleugh.

Very sorry for spoiling your day like that, but I had to tell it to someone, and none of you can be sick on me when I do.

you know what is cool though? An overspeeding wind turbine.

-Ben

*didn't have to, I just, er, did. odd that.

Earthquack

Last night, at 12:56, there was an earthquake in the Midlands that measured 5.2 on the Richter Scale. Unlike last time I was actually awake when this one struck. Although, I have to say that 'struck' is rather a strong word, I'm a pretty long way from the epicentre.

I was reading in bed ('Go Tell it on the Mountain' by James Baldwin, fact fans) when all the doors and windows started to rattle, one of my guitars fell over, and lots of stuff on the desk either rolled off it or fell over. It lasted about 10 seconds and was hardly a dazzling display of nature's awesome power, I've done more damage by farting, but it was certainly noticeable. The thing I find strange was that my reaction was simply to think 'hmm, that was odd.' and go back to my book. I didn't think it was an earthquake, I didn't have any idea what it might have been, but I felt no need to try and find out what it was.

-Ben

The Checklist

This article is very interesting, very long, but very interesting.

-Ben

Women in Computing

I noticed this when I was collecting material for a worthy tome on computer science, reading the biographies of computer scientists. It seems that in computing, like at Creative writing societies, the men are usually dull and introverted whilst the women are anything but. I submit to you, dear reader, three women who were pioneers in the field.

Firstly, Ada King, Countess of Lovelace

Widely regarded as 'the first programmer' Ada Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage in his Creation of the Analytical Engine. She developed a program that, had it been built, would have calculated er, something mathematical*

Secondly, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

She was one of those people who, in military research offices, grappled with punchcards and valves, trying to harness the power of computers the size of houses with the processing capability of digital watch. she was also rather senior in the US navy. odd that.

and lastly, Hedy Lamarr

the co-inventor of the Spread Spectrum - a way of protecting radio signals from being intercepted or corrupted - used in anything wireless these days.

-Ben

*I'm interested in this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean I understand it in the slightest. I'm a humanities graduate with rather limited interests, sorry.

La Blogothèque

I meant to check this site out ages ago, when I saw all the performances they recorded with Beirut. I finally got round to it today and greatgreasyjesus! that's a big site o' sexy.

If in doubt, I refer you to their takeaway shows (concerts a emporter) These are cool acoustic performances (with character, not just dull rehashes of electric songs) from most of the good unusual music around at the moment. Artists like The Spinto Band, Tapes n' Tapes, The Divine Comedy, The Shins, Jose Gonzalez, Loney, Dear, and the Arcade Fire.

It's in french but it's easy enough to navigate, even with the torn shreds of my memory of the language.

-Ben

Futureshop

For the last few days at work I’ve been going through a lot of old books on contemporary technology – robotics, computing, communications, medicine, and so on. I won’t bore you with explaining why this is (I realise that this post is borderline ‘shop’ as it is) but I’ve been pondering the problems inherent to anyone or anything that tries to make predictions about the way in which technology will progress.

These problems all seem to boil down to not wanting to look thick in front of your future self; it’s one of those situations where you can actually hear futureyou laughing derisively. You don’t want to complete miss out the possible future developments, because you don’t want to look completely blinkered and trapped in the present/past. If you make a prediction that goes wrong, however, you end up looking like a pillock. I mean, who can forget the bloke from the US patent office who, in the late nineteenth century, declared that everything that could be invented had been invented – or when Bill Gates stated that he couldn’t see why a home computer would ever need more than 256k of RAM.

With the technology books the writers are afraid of making predictions that look stupid, but leaving out ideas (or technologies) that are known but unproven runs the risk of looking ignorant, which makes the book look out of date pretty much from the moment of publication. These fears manifest in a peculiar focus, not on technologies on the cusp of success, but on technologies so far advanced that they are hypothetical at best. These ideas don’t easily look out of date – odds are, they suppose, that talking about quantum computers, or Tokomak Fusion Reactors, as ideas that haven’t been realised yet, isn’t going to make your book look dated anytime in the next 30 years.

The problem is that these fantastical technological ideas either look dry & uninteresting on the page, or get eclipsed by more mundane developments in the near future. Virtual Reality, for example, is held up as the future of human-computer interactions in pretty much all of these books – despite the fact that, after 20 years of hype and predictions, all that VR has managed is to make a lot of people feel really nauseous*. Meanwhile Nintendo and Apple’s developments with touch panels and motion sensors have completely blindsided all of these books.

It seems to me that the best idea is just to go for a scattergun approach – mention everything that looks vaguely plausible (if that’s possible) and hope that people only remember the ones you got right.

-Ben

*Yes, I’m aware that I just sort of made a prediction about the future. I don’t care, futureme thinks I’m stupid anyway.

--

And finally, a little link (well, actually it’s a pretty big link). This is a well written and interesting article about how philosophy – and equally, all intellectual disciplines - should shun technical jargon and buzzwords in favour of expressing their ideas in everyday English. The idea is that if they do that then the intelligent layman will be able to read their stuff all the way to the end. Needless to say I got to about the fourth paragraph before I got an urge to listen to ‘the village green preservation society’ by the kinks, and lost my ability to take anything in.

A few links and pieces

First off, this cool short film:



Via Why, That's Delightful!

Second, I found this image when I was rummaging around in Wiki today (I'm researching a book on robotics, I was looking at Bomb disposal robots) It's a British soldier walking towards a suspected IRA bomb in northern ireland, back in the days before the robots.



It's not the highest quality, but a powerful piece of photojournalism.

The last point of order for tonight is This man.


Do I look like a killer to you? it's just that today, when I was out walking (in the sunny cold - so sunglasses and hat) I reached into my inside coat pocket to take out my MP3 player and a girl walking towards me flinched away with a momentary look of complete terror.

-Ben

I was going to try and take a better photo but then I realised that the overexposure is probably a pretty good emulation of the low winter sun.

Valentine's Day

Today the first inkling I had that it was valentines day was when I was coming home from work. I noticed that loads of the besuited gentlemen at London Bridge station were holding bunches of flowers - they were everywhere, sticking out of carrier bags, wrapped in brown paper, even the odd bunch peeping out of a backpack. Once I'd figured out why this was, I found it quite touching. It confirmed to me, that these people aren't dead inside, they are happily loafing around in their own heads, just like me, and carrying tokens of affection (real or affected) for someone (unlike me). Even Miss Orangeface Greencoat and her friend Pointynose Tallbird were carrying big bunches of dead plants.

I'm guessing that this must be the one day of the year that allows florists to pay the rent for the coming months.

-Ben

But all was not love today, the normally laughing and good natured sikhs were split into two pairs, walking apart from each other - the purpleturbanned pair were striking off ahead, leaving whiteturban and greybeard behind.

Sunshine

At my work I don't exactly have the sunniest of views. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that I don't have a view at all - just the back of the monitor of the person working opposite and some fluorescent tubes overhead. I'm not hugely bothered by this. I've found over the last few months, rather to my surprise, that when I'm at work I like to work - doing anything else makes me feel awkward and bored.

It does, however, seem to have some kind of effect on me. The sun shining into the train in the morning makes me smile, and I enjoy my walks during my lunchbreak, though the sights I see when outside the office are scarcely more edifying.

You can imagine, then, how good it felt to come out of work this evening and see that the sky was not dark and starry. The sun had set, yes, but the light was not gone from the sky. Which means that soon I'll be able to come home in daylight. Smiling in the sunshine.

-Ben

Andy McKee

bugger practicing, it takes too long, I'm going down to the crossroads



-Ben

Linkeo Mucho!

Now that I've got my blogging hat* on again there are many other things I'm thinking of. I think I'll try and space out the big rambling posts, more for your wellbeing than mine, but here are some links.

Wordlustitude
A fansmurfingtastic clusterspork of ephemeral and esoteric single use linguistic odditites.

Lucy Kitt
she's posted up some new songs which show that A. she's getting even better ('gone' is an especially awesome song), and B. that Atkin guitars are better than some good n' dirty nasal sex with beelzebub's hot daughters

Metronomy
They are bleepy, and kinda 80's sounding. But I can't get their songs out of my head. Which is proof that they're either really good, or I've gone badly wrong.

Four Hands Guitar
I've linked this video before, but I really must stress just how much joy it will bring into your life.

Kukuburi
Ramon Perez's Latest Artistic Venture, very pretty art. Especially the moustachioed blue flying otters.

-Ben

*I stole it from someone on the tube

We are a beautiful cosmos, you and I

As you all probably already know, I’ve finally left the happily snoozing ranks of unemployed graduates. I’ve hung up my headphones, taken all the guitars out of my bed, and started the morning walk to the station with everyone else. I’ve worked before, but this time it’s not as a temp, but as a proper salaried member of staff. I have a desk, a phone, passwords for the servers, and a work email address.

And I like it.

I’m not sure whether this means I’ve sold out, or that I have an interesting job, or just that after 6 months of dull unemployment, anything would seem good. I suspect it is a combination of the three.

The most surprising thing I’ve found is how very calming and meditative commuting is. I don’t find it stressful, even when I’m running late, or getting shoved about. Many people (including myself) have said that commuters move like automatons, just unthinking drones, but now that I’ve been doing it every morning I see things from the inside, which gives you great insight. I give no more thought to my commute than I did to my walk to school, but, importantly, this doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking. My feet know the way, my hands know when to take the card out and pass it through the machines, leaving me to sit back in my own head and think about whatever the hell I want.

It sounds weird, but I really like watching all the people on the tube - people in their thousands, all consumed in their own thoughts or chatting with all their friends. There is something about the completely, unavoidably public nature of the tube, which, combined with its anonymity, creates a peculiar sense of uninhibited privacy - people will gladly chat away as if they were in their own homes, because they know that no one knows, or will ever know, who they are. I don’t ever listen to what they say, I’m not really interested in that, my music provides my sound, but I like to watch faces and expressions, marvel at how people can look so incredibly different and yet all share the same recognisable expressions of anger, happiness, affection, etc.

So that’s how I spend my mornings, inescapably fascinated by the mute lives of complete strangers, collecting irrational dislikes or crushes on women who I will only see for a few busy minutes of my life.

-Ben

Also I think I have the coolest intimate strangers* ever – four big Sikh men who come out of the station together and walk down Grangehill Road at about 8:15 every morning. I have named them Purpleturban, Blueturban, Whiteturban and Greybeard. I wonder who they are…

*people you see everyday with clockmaker regularity, but never speak to