The Life and Times of 'Dean'

This slab of text was a draft version of something I was going to put in a book but decided to leave out, I figured I'd put it here.

In the heart of Tangier's Ville Nouvelle, a few minutes walk from the Grand Socco with its cafés and bars, lies the small church of St. Andrews. This curious whitewashed building stands in an odd-shaped plot of land concealed from the street by a dense stand of trees. It was built in the late 19th century to serve the town's small but prosperous British community, whose decision to use the skills of local craftsmen resulted in a building that looks strangely like the work of an Islamic architect who has had a church described to him, but never actually seen one. Inside, it is adorned with the keyhole arches and clean, smooth lines of Morrocan mosque architecture. Continuing this theme, the decoration is limited to the text of the lord's prayer in arabic, carved into the arch above the altar like the koranic inscriptions of a mosque.

Outside, in the shade of date-palms and cypress trees, there is a small graveyard, where a select few British residents of the town have their final resting places. Here you find the graves of the writer Walter Harris (1866–1933), the soldier Sir Harry Maclean (1848–1920), and Emily Keane (1849–1944) an adventurous English woman who married the bandit king of Ouezzane. The most interesting of these graves, however, is also the simplest—tucked away in a shady corner of the graveyard. On the small stone, now broken in half and laid flat on the ground, is the following inscription

Dean

Missed by all and sundry

Died
February 1963

The city of Tanger knew Dean as a barman, an unflappable Rick Blaine type who served drinks, white suited and proper, at Caid's Bar in the Hotel Minzah. Later he opened his own bar, the imaginatively named "Dean's Bar," and his clientèle migrated with him. He had appeared in the international city at some point in the early 1930s (no one is sure exactly when)—just one of the many people who came to Tangier offering no details of their previous life, and stayed because no-one asked. In the 1930s and 40s he sold drinks to a disreputable army of refugees and deserters, spies, gunrunners, and thieves. They came first from the Spanish civil war and later from the war that raged almost to his doorstep. They all spoke to the friendly barman, and he, in turn, passed on the more interesting pieces of information to the British spies who also came in for drinks. After the war his bar was a favorite hangout of writers and poets, artists and musicians—everyone, in fact, apart from William Burroughs, whom Dean flatly refused to serve. A decision that some would say speaks highly of his ability as a judge of character.

It was not until 1992 that Marek Kohn, a journalist studying the birth of the British drug underworld stumbled across the identity that Mr "Joseph Dean" had sought to leave behind. While researching the moral panic that swirled around London following the death of lovely Billie Carleton, an up-and-coming west end actress, from a cocaine overdose in 1919, Kohn began digging up details about the disreputable crew implicated in giving her the drugs. It was a veritable who's who of 19th century criminal archetypes. There was Brilliant Chang—a mysterious Chinese restaurant owner, Edgar Manning—a black Jamaican jazz musician, Reginald de Veulle—a hedonistic transvestite fashion designer, and lastly, there was Don Kimfull—a swarthy Anglo-Egyptian rent boy and hustler.

The last figure in this rogues gallery, Don, was a cross dressing protégé of Reginald de Veulle. He was a man who could get Reginald's guests what they needed, whatever that might be. He dealt stolen goods, procured ladies (and boys) for his guests, and, most importantly, kept them supplied with cocaine. Don was, unsurprisingly, a popular member of Reginald's social circle. When Billie Carleton was found dead in her dressing room, Don Kimfull was implicated by the papers as the man who supplied the drug (the legality of which was in something of a grey area at the time). Both he and his patron were demonised as the depraved sexual deviants who, with the help of their unsavory accomplices (a chinaman and a negro no less!) corrupted a fine young lady. At the inquest, Reginald was found guilty of manslaughter and sent to prison, as much for his lifestyle as for any connection with Carleton's death. Don Kimfull was also summoned to court, but feigned illness and slipped away into the ether.

Here the trail goes cold for ten years—he was an anonymous looking man with underworld connections and a charming, confident personality. In the shattered cities of post-war Europe, with so many people displaced, so many prisoners of war and deserters, it was not hard for such a man to vanish. He probably settled himself in the chaotic black-market economy of a city like Berlin and kept a low profile. No more putting on dresses and hosting grand parties.

It wasn't until more than a decade later that he reappeared behind a bar in Tangier as "Joseph Dean." According to some, he had not entirely shake off the habits of his youth—Tangier rumor had it that he was a secret drug addict, which may have been the reason for his violent aversion to the known junkie William Burroughs. Although he was rumored to be a homosexual (not that unusual in 1930s Tangier) not even the most salacious rumors make any mention of him cross-dressing in his later years. Interestingly, there was one rumor, possibly started by Dean himself through an indiscreet outburst during one of his notorious drinking binges, that he used to be a big shot in London society, but had to flee when some flapper went a little overboard with the naughty salt and died.

These dark clouds were not particularly remarkable in the international city, however, and were no impediment to being accepted. He was a warmly appreciated member of the expat community there—as far as one can tell the epitaph on the gravestone was justified. It's interesting that when his friends came to order the gravestone, they didn't bother to include his phony first name, nor attempt a guess at a date of birth. They ordered a headstone for the man they knew, and didn't bother to speculate as to who else he might have been in another place or another time.

Finshed

Well, nearly.

I've put some of the hardware back, and some of the electronics have been put in place. I've run out of shielding foil, so I'll have to wait a few days before that arrives (along with the new knobs). For the moment I'm going to post up flattering pictures of my work, I'll do a proper critical examination of it soon though, because there's plenty to criticize.

See the Future!

The other day I was aimlessly wondering the internet, reading about Mr Linus Torvalds, when I came across a very strange article. It was written in June 2006 for CNN's 'Money' website and was a list of people who had no power, or that they thought were on the way out. It was called the 10 People who Don't Matter. Linus Torvalds was on the list, because, as he gave away his greatest creation, he isn't someone business people have any interest in.

It's all pretty dull and uninteresting to someone who has no interest in business, with the exception of this marvellous bit of punditry from the list.

Mark Zuckerberg
Founder, Facebook
In entrepreneurship, timing is everything. So we'll give Zuckerberg credit for launching his online social directory for college students just as the social-networking craze was getting underway. He also built it right, quickly making Facebook one of the most popular social-networking sites on the Net. But there's also something to be said for knowing when to take the money and run. Last spring, Facebook reportedly turned down a $750 million buyout offer, holding out instead for as much as $2 billion. Bad move. After selling itself to Rupert Murdoch's Fox for $580 million last year, MySpace is now the Web's second most popular website. Facebook is growing too - but given that MySpace has quickly grown into the industry's 80-million-user gorilla, it's hard to imagine who would pay billions for an also-ran.

.....

I just looked it up, and as of July 2010, Mark Zuckerberg's personal fortune is around 4 billion dollars, while Facebook itself has been conservatively valued at 12 billion dollars.

....

A few weeks ago I read about the interesting history of the Wall Street Post's Dartboard Column. A venue where experienced investment managers make two stock picks, and then the paper's office intern makes two stock picks (by throwing darts at a copy of the nasdaq index). At the end of the week their values are compared. It was started in the early 1990s as a joke, but it has become a closely scrutinized experiment among those economists who believe the market is ultimately unpredictable. A few years back someone actually examined the data gathered from this column and found that while the investment managers did do better than the dartboard, it was only slightly better, not much more than the level of success you'd expect from chance.

Maps

We tend to think, in these days of Google Earth and GPS, that we've filled in all the blank spaces on the map, but in the last few days I've come accross a fascinating exception to this, an area that appears to be exempt from the attentions of cartographers and also, it would seem, from the normal rules of space-time.

For reasons that I can't go into (shop) I've been doing a lot of research on the city of Tanger (or Tangier, or Tanja, or Tangiers) in northern Morocco. We had a problem with a piece of text, namely that it contained a wealth of information about the fascinating history of the place, but very little about the city today. As part of my research I found myself firing up google earth, so I could get an idea of the layout of the city. Since most of the interesting history involves the Medina (old walled town) and its environs, I was curious to know where things were. I drew a blank. Literally. Google Earth has no streets marked within the medina, and only a fairly low resolution image of the town. I've you've ever seen a medina before, you'll know that aerial photography is not going to be much use. The streets are so narrow, so overhung with balconies and walkways, clotheslines and wires, that it's impossible to figure out where one building ends and the next begins, let alone chart the course of a narrow alleyway. I then went in search of other maps of the medina. I found a few. The first was an old 1930s map that a literature professor had unearthed while researching William Burroughs (who came to Tangier for the low cost of living, but stayed for the plentiful opportunities for pederasty and heroin). It had lots of streets marked on it, but the street names were all in French and, with names like "Rue Joan D'Arc" and "Rue Charlemagne" it seemed unlikely that they would have survived the departure of the colonial administrators anyway. I then found several other maps of the medina. Mostly in travel guides and from Moroccan tourism promoters. The reason why I gathered so many was because I was hoping to spot some sort of pattern. While they agreed on size and shape of the medina, as well as the location of a few major landmarks (such as the Petit Socco and the Kasbah) they disagreed on pretty much everything else. Sometimes they even disagreed with themselves, putting the same landmark in more than one place. The roads didn't just have different names, there was a completely different road layout in each book. I kept looking at the maps, then scrutinizing the aerial photography, but no one road layout seemed any more plausible than any other. Perhaps they were all correct, perhaps they just selected different roads to highlight and mixed them names up in a tombola.

This wouldn't have been quite so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the blog posts and travelogues I found about tangiers gave wildly contradictory information about the location of specific places. Different people would give completely different addresses for the same museum, for example, or give directions that made absolutely no sense. They all railed at the fact that none of the maps or travel guides were correct, and expressed confusion at the layout of the place. Several of them remarked that giving up any hope of figuring out where you were going was the only way to find anything.

There are only two explanations for this. The first is that Tangier's medina makes use of extra dimensions, disobeys the rules of the universe. This would explain the church that seems to wash up and down a hill with the tide, and the historic diplomatic building that is simultaneously next to the Kasbah and down by the Petit Socco. There is another, perhaps more plausible explanation. As part of my research I discovered that Morocco, specifically the hills around Tangier, produces around half of Europe's cannabis. Seriously massive quantities of hashish make their way down to the docks in Tangiers every day, to be shipped to the needy stoners of Europe. Of course, some of it never leaves the country, enough for the stuff to be cheaper than tobacco and easily obtained. Although none of the cartographers or travel writers mention this, I suspect they may have done their investigations of the city while baked off their tits on hash. This would explain the apparently baffling geography of the old town, as well as the inordinate amount of column inches travel writers devote to "these like, fucking amazing little stands that sell these enormous sugary pastry things..."

Two Poems

Two poems by Jamie McKendrick, whose work I first became aware of through the Poems on the Underground program. They're a brilliant example of how poetic doesn't have to mean vague and ignorant or science, none of this Keatsian Negative Capability crap.

On Nothing

I do not think it is absurd for you to say that nothing is something,
since no one can deny that ‘nothing’ is a noun.
                                                        -- Anselm of Canterbury

If nothing is the opposite of something
then it too is something and not nothing.
Or is that just language rushing in
to fill what makes the intellect recoil?

It’s us not nature that abhors a vacuum,
though in frictionless space there’s still a fraction
more than nothing, if not enough of it
to slow the planets in their orbits.

But the full moon hides its emptiness
and every plenitude its opposite;
the present buckles into nowlessness

that lasts for never as a dark star draws
downward threads of light. There nothing exists,
crouching like a sphinx among the rubble.

Out There
If space begins at an indefinite zone
where the chance of two gas molecules colliding
is rarer than a green dog or a blue moon
then that’s as near as we’ll get to nothing.

Nostalgia for the Earth and its atmosphere
weakens the flesh and bones of cosmonauts
One woke to find his crewmate in a space suit
and asked where he was going. For a walk.

He had to sleep between him and the air-lock.
Another heard a dog bark and a child cry
halfway to the moon. What once had been

where heaven was, is barren beyond imagining,
and never so keenly as from out there can
the lost feel earth’s the only paradise.

Graphic Design, 1930s style

I found this poster while roaming a strange and obscure corner of the internet the other day.

I remember passing the flying-boat dock and its elegant, if decaying, reception building when I was on a boat tour around manhattan. There's something deep-down awesome about flying boats, just like there is with zepplins. Their bulky and awkward shapes make them seem somehow bigger than even the most mahoosive of superjumbos. They suggest a mode of transport that wouldn't leave you yearning a chemical-induced coma after about an hour.

The Shard

It goes up

Guitar Refinishing: Starting over

I've got high hopes that I'll be able to make it work this time. As you can see from the strange way that different layers showed through in different places when i sanded it down, the surface at the end of the first round wasn't exactly flat. Most of those problems seem to stem from the wonky application of the primer right back at the beginning.

whoa now

I was in Halfords the other day, buying some paint, when I saw this.

Are we doing woman-murder humor in auto-parts stores now?

yikes.

Refinishing, Book 1, epilogue

It's been another week or two since I last mentioned the guitar. In that time I completed the color coat and applied the clearcoat, buffed it to a shine and admired it... Then sanded off the clearcoat and reapplied the color coat, reapplied about half the clearcoat but then ran out, got more clearcoat, sanded off and reapplied the clearcoat, patched color, and reapplied clearcoat again.

Today I sat down in the garden with the offending instrument and checked it over properly. After about an hour of staring at it in the evening sunshine I concluded that it was back to the drawing board time. This post isn't really an update on the progress, more a post-mortem. That doesn't mean I've given up, far from it, but I want to make sure that I've catalogued and understood all the ways that I cocked my first attempt before I have another go. My pride compels me to add that the following pictures make the guitar look a fair bit worse than it actually does.

Sanding
When I started I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the guitar. I didn't know what it looked like under the paint, and I was curious to find out. Looking back, I don't regret that—it might have looked awesome under that black paint—but I do regret sanding such a large area of paint away completely. The section that was stripped completely (which can be seen in the original post) covered most of the bottom half of the guitar. More specifically it covered the rough, open end of the grain where the wood was cut. This surface proved extremely difficult to cover with primer, and there were still traces of the rough texture of the underlying wood visible even after the colorcoat had been applied. This would have been ok, but it wasn't consistent, even after the clearcoat was put on the front, it was still possible, in the right light, to see the boundaries of the area that was stripped completely.
   In future I will assume that wood covered by opaque paint is not worth seeing unless I have good reason to think otherwise. If I really have to check, then I'll sand away a small area of the guitar, preferably on the belly-cut at the back. Sanding the wood away here would let me see a cross section of the guitar's construction—whether it has laminates on the front and back, that sort of thing—without leaving an area of completely unfinished wood somewhere important.

Priming
Firstly, I didn't make any attempt to fill the dings and dents in the guitar's body before I started. This wasn't particularly to do with laziness or inexperience, I just completely forgot about it.
   The problems I encountered at this stage were the result of a combination of bad materials and bad technique. The first can of spray lacquer I used was frankly rubbish, and was completely emptied long before the guitar was ready for the color coat. Lesson learned. I'll make sure to get decent stuff next time I do that, stuff that is specifically intended for priming wood.
   As regards the technique problems, these were rather inevitable when you consider that I'd never so much as held a can of spray paint before I started this project. I've since learned the very real importance of those "thin, even coats" people talk so much about.

This image shows more problems that I'd like to admit; visible primer, cracked clearcoat, bleugh.

Color Coat
This stage actually went largely without a hitch, so I'll instead take the opportunity to talk about the more general causes of shittyness in this project. The first was that, at least at first, I had no idea how long spray paint takes to dry. The stuff I'm using is typically tacky-dry after a few minutes and completely dry to the touch after an hour or two. What I didn't realize though, was that it takes much, much longer than that to harden properly.

If you look closely at this picture you can see the indentations left when the guitar was left leaning against some fabric for a few hours, a day or two after the finish was applied.

   As the guitar has a set-neck I didn't really have anywhere I could hold the guitar that didn't involve touching the paintwork. On days when I'd been working on the neck this inevitably meant fingerprints from carrying it up to the attic at the end of the day. On the first day or two of work, I left the guitar resting on a tabletop, not realizing that this would leave all sorts of strange imprints on the finish. I figured out a precarious arrangement after a few days that left the guitar propped up using blocks resting on the fretboard and inside of the pickout rout. This allowed it to dry properly, but required a great deal of manhandling to get it in place (usually resulting in yet more fingerprints) and was quite worryingly unstable.
   Towards the end of the project I made a hook from a bent coathanger that allowed me to hold the guitar without touching it and hang it up to dry. If I'd had this from the start, I'm pretty sure things would have gone a lot better.
The second big issue was that of masking. I did the masking right at the beginning of the project and, to be quite frank, ballsed it up something horrific.

 You hear that sound? Yes, that's baby jesus crying.

   I used regular (and very old) masking tape, which didn't mask as well as I might have hoped. It didn't give a clean edge, and paint seeped through in places, forcing me to sand the paint off those areas. Worse than the failings of the masking tape, however, was the cack-handed way I put it on. Rather than a sharp, clean edge, it was a sort of meandering, rough line that veered from the edge of the frets to about a centimeter off the fretboard. I uncovered this horror after the first round of clear coating. As an experiment in desperate damage management, I tried painting over the edge of the neck completely, to hide the monstrous join, but this looked just as dumb.

 Oh, the Humanity!

Clearcoat
At first, I thought that the clearcoat went on fairly easily. The truth, however, was in the drying. Coats that looked fine when they first went on, started to look progressively more shit as each day went by. The finish on the front cracked like a playing field on a hot summer and the finish on the back developed strange deep grooves, which were probably the result of cracks forming in the layer below. Kristen suggested that these problems were caused by the coat underneath not being fully dry, which sounds right to me, given what can remember of the order in which the coats when on.

 Eeeew. Gross.

Wobbly, Wobbly.








Another big mistake was not putting enough clearcoat on. It's a simple thing, but I didn't realise that you need to put on far more than you think the instrument could possibly need. Extra care should be taken to build up the coats on the edges and on cutaways with really thin layers. Where the viscious, semi-dry paint is likely to flow away from the edge.
   If the paint is put on too thick then the hardened top layer will crack when the lower, gooey layer shifts away from the edge.

Tectonic Paint Movements

This post may sound gloomy, but I'm actually in a good mood about all this. Once I'd got over the initial frustration of having cocked it up, I've become excited about the chance to try it again, better. If this was an instrument I had a burning need to play right now, then I'd be really annoyed by this setback, but as I'm an apathetic guitarist at the best of times, so I'm not in any real rush.

Interesting

I came across an interesting book while doing research today. It's called British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car by the American travel writer Thomas D. Murphy (1866--1928). It was written in 1908, when motor cars were still something of a novelty and not exactly the most practical of vehicles, but it's a well-written and interesting travelogue nonetheless. He covers a quite astonishing amount of ground considering the limitations of the technology and shittyness of the roads. His main problem, even in the wilds of scotland, was not mechanical issues, or poor roads, but the weather. Of which he notes


There is little danger of being supplied with too many clothes and wraps when motoring in Britain. There were very few days during our entire summer's tour when one could dispense with cloaks and overcoats.


For the most part, his descriptions conjure up an image of an England very similar to the one I live in now, occasionally though there's a really jarring reference to something that is very much not there anymore.


His description of canterbury, for example, is pretty hard to distinguish from a description of the city today. It took him longer to get there from london, obviously, but the route the road takes hasn't changed a great deal since Roman times. The city, equally, is fairly unchanged -- although it is a strange thing when he refers to victorian edifices as recent additions to the city.

By comparison, the description of Coventry, which I've copied below, is a eerie glimpse of a city that hasn't existed for a long time.

Coventry, with its odd buildings and narrow, crowded streets, reminded Nathaniel Hawthorne of Boston—not the old English Boston, but its big namesake in America. Many parts of the city are indeed quaint and ancient, the finest of the older buildings dating from about the year 1400; but these form only a nucleus for the more modern city which has grown up around them. Coventry now has a population of about seventy-five thousand, and still maintains its old-time reputation as an important manufacturing center. Once it was famed for its silks, ribbons and watches, but this trade was lost to the French and Swiss—some say for lack of a protective tariff. Now cycles and motor cars are the principal products; and we saw several of the famous Daimler cars, made here, being tested on the streets.

---

Other things I've learned today include what must be one of the most strangely named streets in Britain (up there with Whip Ma Whop Ma Gate in York), "Bullet Loan" in Kelso, Scotland.

 

Refinishing Part the second

I've been meaning to update this for a while now, but I've been busy painting, working, and playing Red Dead Redemption. I've done a lot to the guitar in the week or two that has elapsed since the last post, and I'm probably not far from finishing the job (the painting part of it anyway -- the new electrics are another job entirely) After sanding away the paint to look at the wood, I decided to do a more sensible job on the rest of the guitar.I worked with a succession of lower and lower grades of sandpaper and wet n' dry. By the end the guitar was as smooth as a teflon dolphin. In the process of sanding it down I was able to confirm something I'd noticed when I first got it.

That little black dot is the filled-in remains of a hole drilled for a left-handed strap button. This means that at some point in the last 30 years, my guitar was owned by a left handed, but not hugely picky guitarist. This is one of the things I love about getting an old guitar -- there's more mystery, I feel like a musical archaeologist.

The first coat of primer didn't go on very well. The patches of bare wood just seemed to drink it up. I ended up using the entire can without getting it anywhere near smooth enough to put the color coat on. I think the paint (made by Keen) was not very well suited to the task. I went out at the weekend and bought some more white primer -- this time by a company called "painter's choice" -- from homebase. I've never bought spray paint from a shop before. I had to ask someone to go and unlock the case they keep them in, and got eyeballed by the cashier when I went to pay.

For all that work though, it was much better paint. I had to learn a different technique for applying it, as it was much thicker and more runny than the other stuff. The first time I tried to use it I got runs and drips all over the guitar which essentially meant I had to sand away everything I did that day. I found the best way was to apply it in short sprays, adding more layers every 20 minutes or so. Over several evenings during the week I used this technique to get a good, even coat over the whole guitar. After a week of spraying the finish was nice and smooth and covered the texture of the wood effectively.
 
One thing that it didn't occur to me to do, which I will certainly do next time I'm working on a guitar, is to get some kind of woodfiller or glue and fill in all the dings and dents before I start finishing. Although the thick layer of paint has covered up the smaller dents and scratches, the big ones (which has guitar has more than its share of) are still noticeable.

Today I had a go with the green spray paint. This was the same brand as the fairly useless white primer -- so I was worried that it wouldn't be enough to cover the guitar properly. It seems these fears were unfounded though, as it covered the guitar brilliantly and fast. In fact, if rain had not forced me to bring the guitar in before it was properly dry (putting some smeary fingerprints on it in the process) I think one coat would probably have been enough.

I don't know if the weather is going to cooperate tomorrow, but if it does, I plan to get the color coat finished. I wont bother putting the clearcoat on yet though. That can wait until later in the week. I need to get some rubbing compound too, or it will not look sufficiently shiny.

The color looks a little strange in this picture, almost metallic. It's a trick of the light -- in reality the color is exactly like this, which is the look I was going for.

Graphic Design, 1800s style

"I need it to look exciting and eye-catching"
"hmm. How about I use every typeface and dingbat I have?"
"Won't that make it a little busy looking?"
"nah, it'll look great"

A Microcosm

From the talk page associated with this Wikipedia subject sidebar

The template is fantastic, but I have a bit of a concern about the picture of Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal was built by a Mughal ruler out of love for his wife. The Taj Mahal is not a mosque and it is more of a symbol of love, and has got little to do with Islam. I suggest this be replaced with the picture of the Ka'aba or other more prominent Islamic monument as the picture of the Taj Mahal is misleading. -- Shijaz 12:39, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

This isn't about Islam, it's about Islamic culture, what Muslims have done because of the influence of Islam, even in non-religious areas. If you read about the Taj Mahal, it is considered one of the greatest representations of Muslim art and architecture in the world by historians. The Kaaba is religious not cultural, it isn't considered a part of Muslim art. --Enzuru 03:24, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I fail to understand how culture is any different from religion - when it comes to Islam (which is a 'way of life')! -- Shijaz 10:20, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Refinishing

I like to tinker with my guitars, this is well known, but I'm never really done any refinishing. The closest I've come is the very silly artwork I doodled on a guitar a while ago, but that wasn't so much refinishing as messing around. I've decided to take the plunge today, after umming and erring for a while. The instrument that is getting the treatment is my 1980 ibanez Studio ST-50. It's a nice instrument, but its age is showing badly. The pots are worn and crackly; the hardware is filthy; and the finish (none more black) is covered in cracks, chips, dents, and weird blistered patches (it looks like a previous owner spilled some kind of industrial solvent on the back).

I bought a load of sandpaper, a few cans of spray paint (white primer, racing green paint, and clear laquer), and decided to have a go with it. Firstly, I had to dismantle the electrics and take off the hardware--which didn't take very long, but did leave the guitar looking very weird.

There's something really unsettling about a headstock with no tuning machines.

After that I started sanding off the paint. I'd done a fair amount of research on my guitar and figured out that it was one of the last of its model line made. It was probably cobbled together in 1980 out of parts left over from the previous year's models. While it is ostensibly an ST-50 (the entry level-model), it has a few features (the swanky tuning pegs and brass truss rod cover) that only usually featured on the more expensive models. This meant that I wasn't certain what I'd find when I stripped the paint off. I figured it was worth a look to see if it would look good with just a natural finish.

As you can see from this, the wood doesn't look that great. I'd guess it's a maple cap on the top and bottom with a core of laminated mahogany. It confirms something I'd figured out a while ago -- if a guitar has a solid opaque finish, then it's there for a reason. This guitar, with its mismatched laminates and big ugly join, would not have made the natural finish cut. That's not to say it sounds bad, or it's generally bad wood, it's just not very pretty. I did a quick test with the white primer on the back of the guitar and it doesn't seem too difficult to do (famous last words) as I'll probably only do a plain solid finish. I've run out of daylight today though (hangover stole most of the daylight hours) so I'll have to continue my experiments tomorrow.

The first Rule of Editing

Putting jokes in the Dummy text?

Don't.

Ever.

It's a pretty simple rule, but surprisingly hard to follow. I wonder how many people get fired every year for stuff like that.

Mixed Messages

 From the Wiki page on Denatured Alcohol.

It's a nice bottle, not very... industrial though, is it?

In Poland, where this bottle is from, the additives they put in denatured alcohol are not toxic, just disgusting.

Under "Upload Information" in the file page, it says simply "Own Work. Own Bottle"

The Farewell Sermon

The other day I found myself trying to find an authentic source for a text that is repeated on Muslim websites from across the english-speaking world. It is a full version of the last sermon of Muhammad, commonly known as the Farewell Sermon. I found examples of it here, and here, and here, and here.

I've read a fair amount of Islamic scripture over the last few months, and this doesn't read like anything I've encountered before. I don't get the impression, from the scriptures he left behind, that Muhammad was a man inclined towards lengthy prose compositions--he seemed to prefer epigrammatic pronouncements and verse poetry. The reference to "black" and "white" as ethnic groups struck me as a little anachronistic, but it could equally just be an unorthodox translation. There are other things that made me suspicious of this text from the start, the biggest one was the fact that these texts are almost identical, they've got the same caps or boldface for emphasis, the same phrasing, and the exact same words. To me this smells of unthinking copy pasting, like an endlessly forwarded email.

The second thing that bothers me is the citation that most of these texts have at the bottom. It goes like this --

See Al-Bukhari, Hadith 1623, 1626, 6361
Sahih of Imam Muslim also refers to this sermon in Hadith number 98.
Imam al-Tirmidhi has mentioned this sermon in Hadith nos. 1628, 2046, 2085.
Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal has given us the longest and perhaps the most complete version of this sermon in his Masnud, Hadith no. 19774.

The references are fascinating. They look authoritative at first glance---they mention real Hadith collections and are formatted in the right way---but if you subject them to a moment's scruntiny they undermine the authenticity of this text more than they preserve it.

Hadith collections are not exactly scripture, they're probably best described as reasonbly trustworthy anecdotes about the prophet for use in a theological tiebreaker scenario. Where Chrstianity has Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Islam has the major hadith scholars. Both sets of texts were compiled a long time after the events they describe, and both are fourth- or fifth-hand information. The big difference between the two is that people like Muhammad al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj documented their sources and didn't make any claims that their texts were, ahem, gospel. As a result, hadith collections are huge and messy. For the sake of completeness, Hadith scholars often include several versions of the same story, sometimes dozens. Each version has a different chain of narrators (known as an isnad) and reached the collector from a different source. What this means is that three separate hadith about the same event, even it they're from the same collection, are likely to differ. Sometimes this difference is minor -- just a few words changed -- but quite often it's a completely contradictory account. If there was just one citation, perhaps two, then this might be authentic, but this many suggests that, at best, the text has been cobbled together and inferred from several fragments.

All of this, of course, assumes that the hadith contain a full or even partial text of the sermon. The last reference, interestingly, says that one of the hadith is "perhaps the most complete version," suggesting that the others are just fragments or passing references. Hadith collections include all the information that the hadith collector thought seemed authentic enough, regardless of whether it was interesting or useful. This means that some hadith document amazingly banal everyday conversations with no obvious theological importance other than that one of the speakers was Muhammad. They also include incredibly vague narrations. It is quite possible that a hadith that "mentions" the farewell sermon may consist of something like:

Narrated Big Dave
"I heard someone say that the prophet gave some sort of sermon when they all went to Mecca. I have no idea what he said though, sorry."

The last, and most important part of this is the Hadiths actually say. (It took me a while to track them down because not many online hadith collections sort them by number. As a result, I'd written the previous paragraphs without knowing the content of the hadiths. I would go back and rewrite the whole thing, but I'm lazy and that feels too much like work.)

Here are the sources mentioned, and what they actually say --

Sahih Bukhari 1623. Narrated Ibn 'Umar:   

Allah's Apostle (SallAllaahu `Alayhi Wa Sallam) (got) his head shaved after performing his Hajj.

Sahih Bukhari 1626. Narrated 'Abdullah:

The Prophet and some of his companions got their heads shaved and some others got their hair cut short. Narrated Muawiya: I cut short the hair of Allah's Apostle with a long blade.

Sahih Bukhari 6361. Narrated Abdullah:

Allah Apostle said in Hajjat-al-Wada, "Which month (of the year) do you think is most sacred?" The people said, "This current month of ours (the month of Dhull-Hijja)." He said, "Which town (country) do you think is the most sacred?" They said, "This city of ours (Mecca)." He said, "Which day do you think is the most sacred?" The people said, "This day of ours." He then said, "Allah, the Blessed, the Supreme, has made your blood, your property and your honor as sacred as this day of yours in this town of yours, in this month of yours (and such protection cannot be slighted) except rightfully." He then said thrice, "Have I conveyed Allah's Message (to you)?" The people answered him each time saying, 'Yes." The Prophet added, 'May Allah be merciful to you (or, woe on you)! Do not revert to disbelief after me by cutting the necks of each other.'

Sahih Muslim 98. Narrated Tamim ad-Dari:      

The Prophet of Allaah (may peace and blessings be upon him) observed: Al-Din is a name of sincerity and well wishing. Upon this we said: For whom? He replied: For Allaah, His Book, His Messenger and for the leaders and the general Muslims.

I can't look up the citations from the Sahih at-Tirmidhi because the only translations I can find go from hadith numbers 1-360 and another from 5000 to the end. I can't find the Masnud of Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal anywhere. The only references to this work appear to be repetitions of the Farewell Sermon text, and the one link that looked promising is in Arabic. Ahmed bin Hanbal was a real, and significant, Sunni scholar, however, so I'm sure there must be some actual collection they're referring to.

As you can see, only one of these sources actually makes a direct reference to the Farewell Sermon, and that one tells it as a brief call and response between Muhammad and his followers.

My guess is that this isn't mentioned in the citations I couldn't read either. I think it's most likely an example of Muslim glurge, something which I suppose must spread quite quickly among the many Western Muslims who are separated from the bulk of their religious texts by a pretty inpenetrable language barrier. I'm surprised though, by how often it gets repeated. I mean, Muhammad was quite adamant that anyone who put words in his mouth would get an everlasting arse-kicking for it (See Sahih Bukhari Volume 4, Book 56, Number 667)

I should have realized, I think, when you got on the train. Like.You were talking on your phone, cradling it against your shoulder while manhandling your bag into the luggage rack. Like. It would have been easier to put the phone down while you did that, but you didn't even stop talking. You know, like. That should have thrown up a red flag, I should have run away down the train in search of somewhere else to sit. Like. Even so, it soon became apparent that you were a Dynamic, Proactive Person, whose time had to be spent Constructively.

Once in your seat you were able to straighten your neck out and speak in your normal voice. Like, you know. Your clear, loud, and above all penetrating voice. From Oxford to Reading, you informed your friend, me, Kristen, and anyone else within about 5 rows of you how your weekend went and how life was going, generally. Like. You weren't shouting, not being deliberately obnoxious—your voice carried because you were Assertive and Proactive and Dynamic. You know. These very same traits, after all, had just earned you a Role at a Media Consultancy. It was only a small Role, but it would allow you to Network and gather Contacts in The Media. Like. You weren't going to ask for less than Twenty-Three Grand a Year, of course, because you were the Outstanding Candidate after all, and less would be Taking The Piss. You know?

If you'd stopped talking just because you were eating your lunch then that would have been Boring. Like. I mean, who cares about talking with your mouth full these days? We're Modern Dynamic Trendsetters, we don't mind the wet smacking sounds of your mouth while you chew, or the grunts and meaningless noises you make when too full of crisps to manage even a muffled response. You know.

It was terrible when you lost signal just outside Reading, really annoying, you know? There was nothing to do but look out of the window and watch the sunny countryside move by. To sit in silence and think. To rest. Time Wasted. Terrible.

Mr Sheen

Righteous indignation does not come easily to me. I'm generally too lazy and apathetic to get worked up about anything, even when I probably really should. I think that it's something I'll take it up when I get older, you know, as a hobby. I'll get laser eye surgery in one eye, take to wearing a monocle, and make sure that it falls into my tea everytime I see a picture of a young lady doing something indecent in the sunday papers.

Nonetheless, every now and then I see something that is sufficiently tasteless and offensive that even I'm shocked. When I saw this advert in the Metro today, for example, my future monocle fell right into my lap.


Bleh. I can't be bothered to explain all the things that are wrong with this. Just bear in mind that Two and a Half Men is a show in which Charlie Sheen plays a character called Charlie Harper. He's pictured with lipstick on his face, mud and rips in his shirt, and a halo...

You see what they did there? They've used Charlie Sheen's notoriously violent conduct towards women to promote their show! Oh how very nice.