If you’re thinking about starting a blog, don’t. Paul Boutin says the "Age of the Solo Blogger" is over:
“Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.”
Muskets at dawn, Boutin. 'Cos that sounds like fighting talk.
Friday 31 October 2008
Thursday 30 October 2008
Happy Hallo-weiner.
My little sister Ceri is quite obsessed with the paranormal – she’s keen on ghosts, spirits and aliens. She also believes in these three things, based she says, on two ‘experiences’ she had when she was younger. Whenever she starts to talk about these ‘experiences’ and express frustration in my lack of belief in either ghosts, aliens or spirits, I assume what must be a frankly odd facial expression (very wide ‘Gosh’ eyes, slightly pursed ‘hmmm’ lips, and nod sagely, while muttering “It sounds like a very personal experience, hmmm”). Anyway, as part of this and the highly unfortunate scheduling of the modern calendar, I moved into her house just prior to Most Haunted Live Week. I have now logged close to eight hours of watching MHL with her, as they are in the middle of a week-long investigation special, which runs until Midnight on Friday - the commercially dubious Halloween.
MHL revolves around Ex-Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding, and her cameraman husband Karl. Ceri hates Karl with a viciousness which is far more interesting and rewarding to observe than anything which happens on screen. Her watching of MHL is punctuated by almost-fit like spasms of screaming “Fucking Karl! I ‘ate ‘im! Hes such a fucking faker!” and her quite wonderful "Karl being fake-scared by spirits" impressions. Yvette and the dreaded Karl are joined by the shows presenter, a round little man named Paul who looks like a builder dressed up in a shiny suit, and is personable and almost sweet; their ‘guest demonologist’ Brian; a sketch artist who draws the spirits in the room (whose name I cant remember), and a very frightening blonde historian lady.. This weeks investigation is taking place in an abandoned mental asylum in North Wales. The building is in a pretty serious state of decay, and looks, from the cutaway shots which pre and succeed each 15 minute live segment, pretty cool and darn scary. It is located in a simply huge village-type- complex area, as at one time the asylum was mostly self sufficient, and its out-buildings included chapels, blacksmiths, mills and barns. MHL goes on for HOURS. The premise behind MHL is to gather a studio audience of goths, chavs and stupid people, who in this case are seated in the asylums former ballroom, with Paul presiding over them, emcee-style, regailing them with snippety bits of history, and a hell of a lot of re-capping “We’ve heard noises, we’ve heard whispering, we’ve heard doors slamming” (he speaks just like that, lots of repetition of three and no adjectives) and a whole lot of build up to the nights experiment. Now, the experiments of the past three nights have included putting what looks like an oversized outdoor heater into a room and blasting out electricity, an experiment with a voodoo doll, and putting Karl (cue Ceri “Oh not fucking Karl!” into an isolation cell to commune with gosh knows what. Anyway, the build up and palaver goes on forever, before the investigation team venture off into that evening’s part of the building to... I don’t even know. Investigate. Which means they run around while we watch on nightvision cameras, while Yvette implores various spirits to
“Make some noise! Throw something! Copy me! Tap twice!” indispersed with moments where she shouts “Shh!! Did you hear that? What was that?” and it inevitably is the noise made by a camera or someone’s feet or a car outside.
So there is a bit of background to this most awful of shows. And here is the good news, I have been dutifully recapping during my hours spent watching this atrocity, and as part of a mighty Halloween blogathon, will aim to put up some highlights/best bits, and of course reveal any personal changes I may have made during this most eye-opening of personal experiences. But for now I leave you with this happy exchange
Ceri :“Arrgghhh!! Not Karl!! He always ruins everything. Nrrrgggh!
Beth : “Yeah. He’s a total berk. Let’s write to Yvette and tell her how unhappy he makes you. Lets kill him!! Let’s break into his house and spook him! Lets...”
Ceri : “Shhh!! Look, we missed a noise… that was… a noise! You’ve got to take this more seriously. OH SHUT UP KARL I HATE YOU!”
MHL revolves around Ex-Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding, and her cameraman husband Karl. Ceri hates Karl with a viciousness which is far more interesting and rewarding to observe than anything which happens on screen. Her watching of MHL is punctuated by almost-fit like spasms of screaming “Fucking Karl! I ‘ate ‘im! Hes such a fucking faker!” and her quite wonderful "Karl being fake-scared by spirits" impressions. Yvette and the dreaded Karl are joined by the shows presenter, a round little man named Paul who looks like a builder dressed up in a shiny suit, and is personable and almost sweet; their ‘guest demonologist’ Brian; a sketch artist who draws the spirits in the room (whose name I cant remember), and a very frightening blonde historian lady.. This weeks investigation is taking place in an abandoned mental asylum in North Wales. The building is in a pretty serious state of decay, and looks, from the cutaway shots which pre and succeed each 15 minute live segment, pretty cool and darn scary. It is located in a simply huge village-type- complex area, as at one time the asylum was mostly self sufficient, and its out-buildings included chapels, blacksmiths, mills and barns. MHL goes on for HOURS. The premise behind MHL is to gather a studio audience of goths, chavs and stupid people, who in this case are seated in the asylums former ballroom, with Paul presiding over them, emcee-style, regailing them with snippety bits of history, and a hell of a lot of re-capping “We’ve heard noises, we’ve heard whispering, we’ve heard doors slamming” (he speaks just like that, lots of repetition of three and no adjectives) and a whole lot of build up to the nights experiment. Now, the experiments of the past three nights have included putting what looks like an oversized outdoor heater into a room and blasting out electricity, an experiment with a voodoo doll, and putting Karl (cue Ceri “Oh not fucking Karl!” into an isolation cell to commune with gosh knows what. Anyway, the build up and palaver goes on forever, before the investigation team venture off into that evening’s part of the building to... I don’t even know. Investigate. Which means they run around while we watch on nightvision cameras, while Yvette implores various spirits to
“Make some noise! Throw something! Copy me! Tap twice!” indispersed with moments where she shouts “Shh!! Did you hear that? What was that?” and it inevitably is the noise made by a camera or someone’s feet or a car outside.
So there is a bit of background to this most awful of shows. And here is the good news, I have been dutifully recapping during my hours spent watching this atrocity, and as part of a mighty Halloween blogathon, will aim to put up some highlights/best bits, and of course reveal any personal changes I may have made during this most eye-opening of personal experiences. But for now I leave you with this happy exchange
Ceri :“Arrgghhh!! Not Karl!! He always ruins everything. Nrrrgggh!
Beth : “Yeah. He’s a total berk. Let’s write to Yvette and tell her how unhappy he makes you. Lets kill him!! Let’s break into his house and spook him! Lets...”
Ceri : “Shhh!! Look, we missed a noise… that was… a noise! You’ve got to take this more seriously. OH SHUT UP KARL I HATE YOU!”
Wednesday 29 October 2008
Pack up your troubles, come on, get happy...
There really is nothing like a good poster child, whether for a cause, a movement or a whole generation. And now we have one! Falling nicely into the cause category, the lovely Debbie Purdy is the new poster-girl for assisted suicide. And she is literally made of awesome. Debbie has MS, and is well aware that her quality of life, physical, mental and emotional states may, in the future, deteriorate past the point where she could say “Well huh, my boss hates me, they’ve discontinued my favourite lipstick shade and I can’t believe they’ve cancelled Alias, but at least I have my health”. So Debbies been in court recently, not really asking for much at all. In fact all Debbie wants from the courts is that they clarify the laws pertaining to assisted suicide. Clarify, not change. Debbie, quite rightly, is worried that when she makes her trip over to Switzerland to stock up on cuckoo clocks, munch some really good chocolate, and kill herself, her husband will be arrested on his return to England for breaking the law by assisting her peaceful death. Now, committing suicide is not illegal in this country, but the law is pretty clear that a person cannot help another person kill themselves.
In this case, Debbie, wanting to make sure she acts inside the law and wanting to also protect her husband, is simply asking the Director of Public Prosecutions to clearly set out all the circumstances in which a person may face prosecution; which a court today ruled was not going to happen. Currently, after an act is committed the courts review the actions and decide if they will prosecute. Come on, that’s totally lame. All Debbie wants is to be able to stay within the law and protect her family – but the law is stopping her do those things. Crazy. Now, the law, passed in 1968, had its last big moment in the spotlight in 2006, when a UK bill which would have made "physician-assisted suicide" legal was thrown out by the House of Lords. The debate over the issue was heightened (at the time) by the case of Diane Pretty, a motor neurone disease patient who fought a legal campaign to make her husband safe from prosecution should he help her to die. Not only did she lose her case, but the European Court of Human Rights ruled on 29 April that the refusal of the British courts to allow Diane Pretty's husband to help her to die did not contravene her human rights.
The law is in place for a reason, that’s for sure. Its there to help vulnerable people who risk becoming coerced into an assisted suicide. That seems fair enough. And yes, I guess the majority of laws are in place to protect vulnerable people, but sometimes the lines can become a little blurry (the classic Who Was at Fault? Humbert, Dolores, or Dolores crazy mother..?). Also Anti-euthanasia campaigners are worried that a change in the law might not only be abused but that it might lead to resources being diverted away from palliative care (the bit of medicine focused on alleviating the suffering of terminally-ill patients). But how about poor Debbie? She’s looking to end up in a really awkward position, where her choice is to either risk getting her husband locked up when he returns from taking her abroad to die, or taking the trip under her own steam, which means deciding when she has become ill enough to want to die, but not so ill as she requires assistance with, you know, carrying her bags or hailing a taxi.
Crazy. Anyway, although Debbie didn’t succeed in court today, she has been granted an appeal hearing, which at least shows an acceptance of the overwhelming public interest factor to the case.
Oh, and if you haven’t heard about Debbie today, it’s not your fault. All the worlds’ media has been taken up by Public Outrage, due to Russell Brand and Jonty Ross being Rude and Offensive. Now, lets be clear here 1) The BBC are not going to sack Russ and J-Ro, they make the BBC far too much money. 2) It wouldn’t make any difference if they did. Those two grinning loons would just carry on their infiltrations of our conscious on some other broadcasting frequency, with the added bonus of being so super-edgy that they were sacked from the BBC. 3) I honestly don’t care either way; I just didn’t want anybody to feel bad that they didn’t know about Debbie. Although it’s always fun to speculate how the BBC will tackle a public apology, a’la Richard Bacon.
In this case, Debbie, wanting to make sure she acts inside the law and wanting to also protect her husband, is simply asking the Director of Public Prosecutions to clearly set out all the circumstances in which a person may face prosecution; which a court today ruled was not going to happen. Currently, after an act is committed the courts review the actions and decide if they will prosecute. Come on, that’s totally lame. All Debbie wants is to be able to stay within the law and protect her family – but the law is stopping her do those things. Crazy. Now, the law, passed in 1968, had its last big moment in the spotlight in 2006, when a UK bill which would have made "physician-assisted suicide" legal was thrown out by the House of Lords. The debate over the issue was heightened (at the time) by the case of Diane Pretty, a motor neurone disease patient who fought a legal campaign to make her husband safe from prosecution should he help her to die. Not only did she lose her case, but the European Court of Human Rights ruled on 29 April that the refusal of the British courts to allow Diane Pretty's husband to help her to die did not contravene her human rights.
The law is in place for a reason, that’s for sure. Its there to help vulnerable people who risk becoming coerced into an assisted suicide. That seems fair enough. And yes, I guess the majority of laws are in place to protect vulnerable people, but sometimes the lines can become a little blurry (the classic Who Was at Fault? Humbert, Dolores, or Dolores crazy mother..?). Also Anti-euthanasia campaigners are worried that a change in the law might not only be abused but that it might lead to resources being diverted away from palliative care (the bit of medicine focused on alleviating the suffering of terminally-ill patients). But how about poor Debbie? She’s looking to end up in a really awkward position, where her choice is to either risk getting her husband locked up when he returns from taking her abroad to die, or taking the trip under her own steam, which means deciding when she has become ill enough to want to die, but not so ill as she requires assistance with, you know, carrying her bags or hailing a taxi.
Crazy. Anyway, although Debbie didn’t succeed in court today, she has been granted an appeal hearing, which at least shows an acceptance of the overwhelming public interest factor to the case.
Oh, and if you haven’t heard about Debbie today, it’s not your fault. All the worlds’ media has been taken up by Public Outrage, due to Russell Brand and Jonty Ross being Rude and Offensive. Now, lets be clear here 1) The BBC are not going to sack Russ and J-Ro, they make the BBC far too much money. 2) It wouldn’t make any difference if they did. Those two grinning loons would just carry on their infiltrations of our conscious on some other broadcasting frequency, with the added bonus of being so super-edgy that they were sacked from the BBC. 3) I honestly don’t care either way; I just didn’t want anybody to feel bad that they didn’t know about Debbie. Although it’s always fun to speculate how the BBC will tackle a public apology, a’la Richard Bacon.
Tuesday 28 October 2008
In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck.
In Dubious Battle is John Steinbeck’s second novel, finished in 1936. It is the story of fruit pickers in Southern California, who organize a mass strike of the seasons transitory apple pickers, with the hope that their demands for a more reasonable wage will not only be recognised by the apple growers, but also by the cotton farmers whom they will be working for after the apple season. It’s a fairly manly book, which charts the political development of its characters, and the physical and emotional struggles they face surviving in their strikers’ camp. I love John Steinbeck. The man actually managed to write two of my favourite books in the whole world – Sweet Thursday – which is just awesome, and Tortilla Flat – which contains one of my favourite scenes in all literature. The books hero, Danny, is thrown a party which is so magnificent that he gets completely, amazingly drunk, challenges all the men in the village to a fight, and then dies falling down a cliff. I cant remember the actual quote, buts its something along the lines of “Whenever people remembered and talked of that party, the stories got more fantastic and more incredible, until it was widely believed that on that night, wolves had bayed at the moon, the earth had exhaled and clouds had split and written Danny in blood across the sky”. That’s total paraphrasing though. Well beyond paraphrase in fact. Sorry Steiners. It also has a great description of Henri the Painter, which runs somewhat along these lines “Henri the painter was not French, and his name was not Henri. He was also no longer a painter, for he had so long schooled himself in the schisms of the left-bank – eagerly embracing each movement as it emerged – that before long he had given up paint entirely”. Awesome. Anyway, Stieners managed to write two of my favourite books, although these are considered by critics to be his “fun” books, and far inferior to his “not-fun” books like The Grapes of Wrath and the much less popular In Dubious Battle. Although, the majority of Steinbeck’s work deals with the same themes, in the same settings – I mean the man writes almost exclusively about conflict and struggles of working man in 1920’s Southern California. He certainly hasn’t written any books about, oh I don’t know, a mad inventor who builds a ray which accidentally shrinks down his children and next-door neighbours, not only resulting in a missed fishing trip and family bonding session, but in a near-death encounter between his anaphylactic-shock-prone son and a giant bee – so if the subject matter is mainly the same, then I guess taking out all the colour makes something a “not-fun” book, and therefore “better”. That’s not really fair though, the difference between the sets of books is that the protagonists in the “fun” books are not prepared to make sacrifices in order to improve their lives, where as in the “not-fun” books they are. I have been happily working my way through the Steinbeck’s over the years, and am generally delighted by them all. In Dubious Battle is a staggering, powerful book. It’s fairly bleak, and is basically a very, very long conversation between varieties of 40-year-old men of various vocations, but it’s still pretty darn amazing. Oh, and the title comes from Paradise Lost, courtesy of Mr Milton.
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign,
and, me preferring,His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook His throne.
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign,
and, me preferring,His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook His throne.
Monday 27 October 2008
The Good Life (movie)
So I was interested in watching this film for a couple of reasons...
1) It stars the very sweet Mark Webber, who wrote and produced and possibly directed Explicit Ills, which features the heart-wrenchingly beautiful Paul Dano, who I am ever so slightly in love with.
2) It was written and directed by Steve Berra, who was (possibly still is) a proffesional skateboarder who used to skate for Toy Machine and DVS. The Good Life was screened at Sundance in 2007, which means Berra is (so far) the only professional athlete ever to have written and directed a film that was accepted into competition at Sundance. Well done Steve.
I appreciate that these are kind of stupid reasons to search out and watch a film, and a waste of time I could have spent watching Hogan Knows Best reruns and eating cheese spread, but since I went to all this trouble, I guess I could mention a few things I thought about it.
Its a nice film. Its certainly well directed and without exception the performances are pretty outstanding. The script is kind of lame in places, in a slightly cringy, cliche ridden way, but real life conversations are often like that anyway. Its a film that should have a seriously awesome soundtrack, but if it does I didn't notice it. Its the sort of film girls would like, but the female characters really don't get represented in the most positive of lights.
So... whats the stupid film about? According to IMDB, its "A story about a mostly normal young man who makes the most out of fitting in when he obviously doesn't.
Plot: A young man (Mark Webber) is encouraged by a new friend (Zooey Deschanel) to cope with living in a town where he doesn't necessarily fit in".
So there. Well done Steve. And you're a brave man for marrying Juliette Lewis, even if it was just for a while. Well done Steve.
1) It stars the very sweet Mark Webber, who wrote and produced and possibly directed Explicit Ills, which features the heart-wrenchingly beautiful Paul Dano, who I am ever so slightly in love with.
2) It was written and directed by Steve Berra, who was (possibly still is) a proffesional skateboarder who used to skate for Toy Machine and DVS. The Good Life was screened at Sundance in 2007, which means Berra is (so far) the only professional athlete ever to have written and directed a film that was accepted into competition at Sundance. Well done Steve.
I appreciate that these are kind of stupid reasons to search out and watch a film, and a waste of time I could have spent watching Hogan Knows Best reruns and eating cheese spread, but since I went to all this trouble, I guess I could mention a few things I thought about it.
Its a nice film. Its certainly well directed and without exception the performances are pretty outstanding. The script is kind of lame in places, in a slightly cringy, cliche ridden way, but real life conversations are often like that anyway. Its a film that should have a seriously awesome soundtrack, but if it does I didn't notice it. Its the sort of film girls would like, but the female characters really don't get represented in the most positive of lights.
So... whats the stupid film about? According to IMDB, its "A story about a mostly normal young man who makes the most out of fitting in when he obviously doesn't.
Plot: A young man (Mark Webber) is encouraged by a new friend (Zooey Deschanel) to cope with living in a town where he doesn't necessarily fit in".
So there. Well done Steve. And you're a brave man for marrying Juliette Lewis, even if it was just for a while. Well done Steve.
Something for everyone...
Jeffrey Lewis is a pretty cool guy. He does lots of things which I like... he takes photos, he makes documentaries and he released the album 12 Crass Songs, a collection of songs by the legendary anarchist punk band Crass, reworked into folk, rock, psychedelic, orchestral and electronica productions. The other thing he does well is comic books - particularly "Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World" which you can still buy, here -http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1844675254/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1/103-9766775-4160607?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
Its pretty expensive, but still cool.
Its pretty expensive, but still cool.
Sunday 26 October 2008
I'm getting the hang of this, I believe.
I like this..
(From Jurassic Park) A custom system with millions of
lines of code controlling a multimillion dollar theme
park can be operated by a 13 year old who has seen a
Unix system before. Seeing an operating system means you
know how to run any application on that system, even custom apps.
What OS was it really running?
(1) "These are super computers". A CrayOS?
(2) "Quicktime movie, Apple logo, trash can." MacOS?
(3) "Reboot. System ready. C:\" DOS?
(4) "Hey, this is Unix. I know this" Unix?
The computers in Jurassic Park were Cray supercomputers running
the MacOS as a graphical shell of DOS all layered on top of a
Unix base.
Its from here - http://nand.net/~demaria/hollywood.txt
Oh the possibilites... and pictures too.
Hey it can do pictures too... I like this picture. Its two setlists from two bands that I love love love. I saw them cuddled up together on the corner of the stage the morning after a gig. (the setlists, not the bands in question).This seemed like a good idea at the time..
My friend Simon seems to have a new blog. So in admirable "anything you can do/hey whats that cool kid got I want one!" I now have one too. I used to keep a blog of sorts on the myspace, where I wittered on about bands and shoes and transcribed conversations I had had with people - and now I can do that again! Here! Hazzah!
Also I now live with my sister and her 3 year old daughter, whose name is Cadence, and I have to look after her a fair bit, which I've never done before and I guess in the spirit of new experiences, I could throw caution to the wind and try out a bit of blogging again.
But mostly I'm doing this because someone else I know did it first.
Also I now live with my sister and her 3 year old daughter, whose name is Cadence, and I have to look after her a fair bit, which I've never done before and I guess in the spirit of new experiences, I could throw caution to the wind and try out a bit of blogging again.
But mostly I'm doing this because someone else I know did it first.
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