Dunno if you've noticed...

A caricature from a few years ago, that didn't get submitted for publication.

...but after more than a few years of comparative rarity,  political caricatures have made an instant come back. In the UK we had a quite active tradition of occasionally biting, usually cruel satire that has suffered quite a bit from censorship and a circumspection that is understandable taken in the light of the French experience.

Private Eye our erstwhile most prominent organ in the field of satire, has been for a decade or so, occupied with the more cosy coffee table type of material. Slightly ironically,  the kind of material that used to be the source of such contempt from Private Eye when that form of humour was practiced by Punch. The Eye's still worth a read though because, ironically again, it's become Britain's last real newspaper.

This resurrection of a passed art form has arrived courtesy of one political figure, who by happy coincidence, not only shares his christian name with a prominent cartoon character, his surname also happens to be transposable with some onomatopoeia and--he has a ridiculous hair style. It's game on for the caricaturists I think.

BTW, no I didn't draw the above on soiled bogroll, it's chip paper marked with a ring from a mug of tea. If you want to submit cartoons for publication, my advice is that political caricatures are treated like breakfast at the captain's table, you have to be invited first. As such you only see that kind of caricature from established contributors, all other topics are fair game though.

Politics

I've been thinking these last few days, mulling solemn events of more than a little significance. Wondering if there's finally a chance that certain people will finally have to face up to some reality. Realistically I have to put the odds at no better than 1 in 10, and the odds that some justice will be administered even lower, at least though there's a chance now. I'm not talking about e-mail servers, I'm not talking about Syria or the fictional distinction between good insurgents and bad insurgents. I'm not even talking about Iraq, I'm talking about where it all began, the Balkans. So long ago now it seems more than a lifetime and for more than a few, it has been exactly that.

The Balkan conflict in the former Yugoslavia is significant because it's when we started lying to ourselves. It's point the marks the departure from partisan bias in the media and the transition to state serving propaganda. And you know what, it's been a fucking trial living with it but at least now, I have that extra bit of insight into what living under an autocratic regime feels like; even if my level of comfort and safety has been maintained far above the level of those burdened by such circumstance. That's the irony really, it was done in the name of my benefit and for those in other nations and yet would the twin towers still stand had the a certain foreign intelligence agency, not been busily doing business with individuals like Osama in the Balkans? Would I be able to travel across the Atlantic without getting my privates groped?

A cynic would say: hens coming to roost, I am a cynic but those words are too bitter and too callous for me and the implication is not true. Consequences follow inevitably but the price seems always to be enacted upon the innocent, men and women at work. Of course, none of us are so innocent any more, the taint of guilt runs deep, it marks the complacent and acquiescent in equal measure. It seems fitting that like those without conviction in a significant cause, we're left chasing flags of no meaning in purgatory, as our culture decays into paltry divisions.

Maybe there's a way out, I dunno I don't have a crystal ball but here's hoping.

Master and Commander

Even though it's a slightly bowdlerised adaptation, What a fantastic film Master and Commander (The Far Side of the World) is. Somehow this particular clip seems very appropriate today.

Light the blue touch paper and then retire,
Another choice is also to be found
I talk of a worm that crawls through the ground
Not the crow that surmounts the lofty spire.
There's so very little for to us admire
When thieves stake their claim 'pon hallowed ground.
Trouble follows soon and I'll be bound
There'll be just a few illusions to expire.

We've seen it all before, maybe though this time,
We should take break to ponder why
It will be that Donald or Goldman's bank
That drives that nation down to the tank.
Who'll be the 'man' to make dead pilgrims cry
Speak, have your say, soon that'll be a crime.

Tackle

The Rocket Fishing Rod

The Rocket Launcher Fishing Rod

With the videos above it's a case of spot the parody, the original Rocket Fishing Rod and its associated promotion, seem to me to be a particularly cruel hoax to spring on the naive. It's a case to ponder just how embarrassing it must be to turn up at a water, all bright eyed and expectant, with what is essentially a toy. Facing down the ridicule and coping with the concomitant disillusion, is not something I think children should be subjected to, neither should their unfortunate, possibly gullible, parents. None the less, The Rocket Fishing Rod became a bit of a cult item, with more than a few of us anglers, eager to seek out this bizarre artefact. When I tried to track one down, I found it was unavailable, either withdrawn or out of stock. A MkII version made a brief appearance on the market a couple of years later, with an extendible section, complete with plastic rod rings but by then my interest had waned and I wanted the original, in all its gaudy faux plastic awfulness.

Australia's Alvey Reel

Fishing and the tackle concomitant with the practise, is an interesting subject to ponder. The means methods and equipment we use to catch fish, are subject to culturally acquired notions and as such, the variations in such culture are reflected in the differing equipment favoured by differing cultures. A good indicator of such divergence, is the esteem in Australia held in regard for the locally produced Alvey Reel. The Alvey seems a bit of a monster to eyes such as mine, seemingly crude even by comparison with to the long expired patterns of yesteryear's reels. But those are my culturally acquired notions at work, to be honest, British anglers are prone to displaying some bizarre tackle preferences when taken in the cold light of practicality. Such an example would be spending close to £300 on a custom built Abu or other multiplier to pursue flounder, when you could really get away with a old wooden Lincoln centrepin, the sort of thing that used to run a fiver at a junk shop. If you think fishing is about catching fish though, then you've probably never been fishing. You could spend all day pulling out fingerling pollack in Weymouth harbour if you want to catch fish and after pollock number 3,458, there's a chance you'll begin to understand.

I do have a collection of Australian fishing magazines from several decades ago, the Alvey features reasonably prominently in the articles concerned with beach angling, although even then, some of the more exotic equipment is evident. Since then, I believe the Alvey star has faded somewhat but they're still taken seriously as options. They've even produced geared reels to enhance their performance but the quoted 2:1 retrieve ratio is cause for slight concern.  I think possibly, a lack of engineering finesse is betrayed there, because a 2:1 gear ratio will not be optimised for wear according to the hunting tooth principle.

A 'pimped' reel

Into this cauldron of culturally acquired notions and expectations, there enters Jamie and his business of 'pimping' reels. Pimping in this case, essentially means adding magnets to assist braking on multiplier reels, along with some other bits and pieces. To be honest, I'm not really sure what magnets are for on multiplier reel, other than for fulfilling the task you should be using your thumb for that is. I've heard a few people moan about getting their thumb burnt as they brake the spool with it but seriously, are you kidding me, just how frail are you? Even the leader knot doesn't smart if it catches your thumb, yet you still hear this persistent myth, perhaps it's gay thing, 'Ooh no, ma poor thumbsie'. On second thoughts, I shouldn't cast aspersions upon our gay angling brethren, not least because distance casting is certainly a hairy chested, full on butch endeavour for any angler to undertake.

You'll encounter the term pendulum in reference to distance casting and as a technique I can tell you it works, I'm not so sure about the prescribed equipment though. And I say this through dint of experience, I do constrain my efforts with the pendulum because it's just such a beast to unleash and that whine it elicits from the reel is truly alarming as you think, when will it flippin' stop? The idea though that you need a tricked out reel is a bit misleading. I recall a trip just west of Selsey, a sandbank lay sullenly some distance off shore. 'I'll aim for that sandbank,' I said somewhat wryly and my quip was received with a yeah right look. I had in my possession, probably the jokiest reel in the world with which to attempt such a feat, only slightly less embarrassing the rocket fishing rod. A reel I purchased in state of crass naivety, an Abu AG Seven. Replete with level wind and sans ball races, it had just the bare bronze of plain bush bearings to facilitate the task. So I make my effort and... about a minute and a half later the lead hits water, the gentle sound of a distant splash belied the torrential fountain of water that accompanied the feat. I tried hard to remain sanguine, yeah like I do that every day but it was just impossible, my reaction was more like: what the fu... just happened?

I don't quite recall if I caught any fish that day, maybe some black bream after we'd moved back towards Selsey, The sandbank location had been a spot explored in the quest for a daytime tope, the huge bait required for such a quest, probably accounting for the distance during casting. The received wisdom concerning tope, states that they're only catchable at night or during the low light of dawn or dusk but I'd since had one steal a chum bag while fishing at a location where the ebb draws a current perpendicular to the shore, a brief mania to catch one during the day had taken hold.

The media is a key vector in establishing our broader culturally acquired notions, we rely on news gathering institutions for a great deal of the information we base our view of the world on. The same mechanism is at work on a smaller scale with angling and the press that services that interest, only if you thought the broader media was jaundiced by bias, then wait till you get hold of an angling periodical. It's not quite so bad today as it was a decade or so ago but they're still pretty much just dedicated to selling you tackle or promoting some personality who--wants to sell you tackle. Just how pervasive the bias and misrepresentation is in the angling press is, was brought home to me during a period when I was skirting its periphery and became aware of a notable contributor who it seems was entirely ghost written. Ghost writing is associated in the broader world, with personalities promoting their image rather than their ability, people concerned with looks and style, film stars and such like. It was something of a surprise to me that the individual of concern here was not writing his own material because--well, he's was no film star.

The concept of discreet culturally acquired attitudes is reasonably well recognized, as is the problems associated with it. It's so well recognized that a certain abuse has arisen in regard to it. I'm thinking of the terms bandied so thoughtlessly in the media and by politicians, terms like knife culture. My assurance has let me down again because I'm not really sure what knife culture is it supposed to mean, there's a group of people occupied with the adoration of knives or something?

At the moment, I'm saving very hard for my special reel, I'm not too sure I like the term pimped, sorry Jamie, good luck selling those reels. I'm not a pimp, though perhaps if I were I could afford one of your reels. Hey, maybe I could buy an Alvey, get one shipped over from the land of Oz. I'd need to work on my biceps but perhaps if I shared some tips on audio recording with the sales manager, I could swing a discount.

Things they don't tell you

We had a bit of barney in the papers and news media this weekend, the Russians are coming, or rather they came and went their way through one of the world's busiest shipping routes. The headlines engaging this topic were just a teensy bit bizarre, I'm not that sure how often war ships are spotted in the English Channel but it wouldn't be too much of a surprise to learn it was something like, every bloody day. Of course this is a special case because while we're not exactly at war--yet, with the Russians we are engaged in a degree conflict because we're allied to the powers trying to bring down the Syrian state, while the Russians on the other hand, are Syria's ally. I suppose there's something to be grateful for in the fact that the conflict with Russia, at present, takes the form of an exchange of stern words rather than anything more dangerous. It has though, been a certain cause for bewilderment that the credibility of the public pronouncements accompanying episodes such as this, is quite so tenuous, or is it really such a surprise?

Just suppose for a moment that uncle Vlad was every bit as bad as implied by our politicians and the media. That he circumvented and suppressed democracy in his country and held on to power by the most brutal means. One of the means would be a clandestine paramilitary force associated with the ruling party. While the association would be close and the loyalty of that paramilitary group unquestioned, it wouldn't be wholly financed by Vlad or his party, rather it were left to its own devices to raise funds for both its own activities and Vlad's party. Such means would include blackmail, extortion, drug trafficking, prostitution and murder. What a shocking state of affairs that would be, how do you think it would play in the British press? I'm thinking we'd be hearing about it a lot, every day in fact, with accounts of this abhorrent behavior emblazoned across the newsstands.

Of course there's been no such paramilitary involvement in mainstream European politics since Nazi Germany has there? Oh really, well let me tell you about an organization you've never heard of: Service d'Action Civique. You've never heard of 'em because--well not a very convenient fact to be bandying about in the media really. Thankfully this organization was consigned to history, when the voters in their country, France in case you hadn't guessed, got fed up with the party ruling their country since the end of the war and voted in someone else. Thing is though, this paramilitary group was alive and kicking through the 60's, 70's and into the 80's, merrily going about their business and how did the British government react? Were there any trade sanctions or angry speeches in the house of commons? Er no--what the government in fact did was get into bed with Frenchy and open up the British market to his industry and agriculture.

So how does this relate to the current difficulties in our relations with Russia? My explanations is that, all sins are forgivable (if not publicly so) if there's something in it for the lads. So uncle Vlad, yeah he probably isn't someone you'd want to annoy and he is, let's face it, a politician so he's subject to the same circumspection we should reserve for all politicians. As for the other stuff, the things that're hinted at, like political rivals at home and abroad being subject to threats and assassination, well who knows? What I do know is though, if he were French and he were doing it in 1964, everything would be just fine.

After the flood

I saw something today which although not a particularly uncommon sight, I've never actually been in a position to observe such an event in its entire splendour before, a rainbow. It caught me unaware as I stepped through the door and it's fair to say that its beauty startled me for a second. I just couldn't stop looking at it, it seemed to make that autumn sky, usually so encroaching and opaque, just so enormous. It was the same feeling you get when you're on the coast and horizon opens up, the world suddenly becomes so much bigger. I could see so much of the sky, not just the underside of a few clouds.

As I walked past a house, my eyes fixed upon the vivid hues, a mother stepped through the door with her child, 'It's a rainbow' she said. The child's first I imagine by the tone of her voice, she pronounced rainbow with that sense of awe mother's reserve for their children. I've no firm Idea how old the child was, my attention being focused elsewhere, I got the sense that she was holding a bundle just under toddling age. I'm wondering how the sight seemed to that child, will they be looking for another rainbow tomorrow or were they too young to perceive it properly? Who knows but I think that mum will remember their child's first rainbow.

Fatal misconceptions

This is actually not a bad video, albeit a bit light on detail, what it does illustrate though is the power of ill conceived notions. There's a process through which information is disseminated and acquired that is a bit like Chinese whispers: send three and fourpence we're going to a dance. It occurs where there's a common exchange of information that is generally accepted as fact but the information of concern, was acquired without sufficient insight or context to apply it effectively. Generally the consequences of such activity are insignificant, people just go around with a bunch of notions in their head that are not connected to reality. Big deal, that happens all the time, read a newspaper or watch the a television news bulletin and you'll find a bunch of folk making their living ensuring that condition is maintained. This particular notion though, the Spitfire's fatal flaw, is an exception; unfortunately it's been implicated as a contributory factor in an accident that lead to the death of two people. I call this process of flawed information exchange, eavesdrop acquisition, which seems to aptly summarise it because the information of concern is often overheard during a casual encounter and the peril of eavesdropping is the lack of relevant context.

The details of the early iteration of the Spitfire's fuel system and its performance during negative g relayed here are essentially correct, it's just that the implications drawn are misleading. Weapons like the Spitfire are essentially solutions to engineering problems, because they're used in conflict the effectiveness of such solutions is subject to an intense imperative. Practical engineering is a process involving compromise and trade off, the fastest aeroplane you can make, wont be the one with the highest climb rate so you settle upon a compromise between those two goals. In the meantime, you do your best to ameliorate any negative impact of such compromise. When it came to designing the Spitfire their solution was, let's get as much power out of this engine as we possibly can. Maybe as a consequence of this urgent imperative, the negative g performance of the Merlin's fuel system, seems to have been overlooked or even placed on the back burner, it being seen as not of immediate significance. Unfortunately that all changed rather catastrophically when Johnny French adopted waving white flags as his national past time.

When Fritz spanked Frenchy and sent him to work in the cheese factory, one of the consequences was they captured a number of intact Hawker Hurricanes. The Hurricane's engine and fuel system were essentially identical to the Spitfire's and what did Fritz find when he put this booty through flight test? Yep, look what happens when you put the thing into negative g. So the flaw in the Spitfire wasn't so much the compromised fuel system, it was the fact that the Germans knew about it and were able to exploit it. They also found a number of other significant flaws with the Hurricane, not least its header tank situated on the cockpit side of the engine firewall, just behind the pilot's instrument panel. They must've laughed their nuts off when they found that howler. Incidentally, after testing the Hurricane, the German opinion was almost universally derisive. Which must've been a great relief to them because the Me 109 had been, rather hastily, rebuilt into a much larger aeroplane after a panic at the German air ministry prompted by the Hurricane's introduction.

So why didn't the Germans win The Battle of Britain then? Well although the negative g performance of the early Spitfire's and Hurricane is a significant flaw, it's only really exploitable in a head on confrontation or against an inexperienced pilot. It doesn't work while you're being chased by a Spitfire because your opponent has ample opportunity to avoid negative g, all he has to do is bank his aeroplane and pull back the stick. It works head on because you can just gently nose down your 109, the Spitfire can't bring his weapons to bear and goes sailing over your head. The flaw caused enough concern though, to prompt hasty remedial action. The video's account is reasonably accurate in this regard, Miss Shilling's orifice, followed by successive more effective solutions. So in short measure, poor ol' Fritz found himself sauntering through the sky thinking he'd dive to safety, only to find himself facing eight angry machine guns, that must've been a bad day.

So how does eavesdrop acquisition prove to have fatal consequences in this case? Well the misconceptions around this topic aren't just related to the means by which the Germans acquired knowledge of this issue and were able to exploit it. Perhaps because of the rather colourful term associated with Miss Shilling, the tale of the Spitfire, negative g and the orifice in question had become a bit of common banter; raised whenever the topic of conversations turns to The Battle of Britain, the Spitfire, the Merlin engine or aerial combat in general. And so 'knowledge' of the Spitfire's and Merlin's negative g flaw, permeates the broader collective consciousness. So when two pilots noted intermittent problems with one of the engines on their Merlin engined Mosquito bomber, they drew upon their common understanding to attribute it to this flaw. The simple fact that the negative g flaw had been diligently and systematically eradicated from all Merlin engines by a process of managed and recorded modification, as is standard practice in the aerospace industry, was lost upon them. As a consequence they missed a vital clue to the condition of the engine after faulty maintenance.

And so I'm afraid, that's how the fatal consequences followed. I suppose there's a lesson there; be careful of the wisdom you bestow, make sure it is actually wisdom.

Shoes

There was this Scottish guy called Allen and he says to me 'Are you left handed?'. To which I reply in the negative, I was going to follow up my response with something like; why would you think I'm a cack-handed freak? but prudence got the bettor of me. Just as well really because he informs me that he's left handed and it's not too wise to jibe your superiors with such banter. It becomes apparent though, he's got a bee in his bonnet because he pursues  the topic, 'Are you sure...' yeah like that makes sense, someone not knowing which hand they favour. So to placate his curiosity I inform him that my dad was left handed, and that he was a tailor so it was something that he had to accommodate with special shears. 'I've noticed you do lots of things left handed' he continues, 'can you write your name with your left hand?'.

'I dunno, never tried.' I tell him. Anyway he passes me a pen and scrap of paper and I write my name left handed, which to my eyes, looks like the trail left by spider who's just escaped drowning in ink; Allen though, is pretty impressed by it. I invite everyone else seated at the table to have a go, we were at lunch by the way, but no one else seems inclined to try. And so the incident subsided into history, just another piece of inexplicable trivia from the past. Until that is, I had trouble with a new pair of shoes, the laces just wouldn't stay done up. So I tried to solve the problem by investigating reasons why laces would continually work loose and I came across this video: You've been tying your shoe laces the wrong way.

Right a new way to tie shoe laces, this has gotta be worth checking out I think; isn't it amazing what interest in trivia the internet arouses? Something seems very wrong though as I watch the video, the guy seems to be demonstrating the technique the wrong way round, as if he were left handed. Not another cack-handed freak I think, what the hell makes him think he's a suitable person to instruct normal people? So I find another video, same problem but this time I manage to work out these people are demonstrating the same method of tying laces that I use, just the wrong way round. That's a strange co-incidence though I think, two videos and two lefties, what can be up? Then a disturbing possibility dawns on me, hastily I check out other lace tying instructional videos and everyone is tying their laces the wrong way round. Eventually the penny drops and I realize that dad taught me how to tie shoe laces left handed. Armed with this new insight my attention returns to those troublesome shoes, the ones with the recalcitrant laces. Doesn't it make sense that the nap on laces would be arranged for right handed people, I think to myself, so I reverse the laces and guess what, it works.

So if you've got a pair of shoes where the laces keep undoing, forget the new way to tie laces, it's most probably the way you tie 'em already anyway. The problem is probably, that you're either a freaky left handed aberration or that the laces have been threaded incorrectly. It only seems to be a problem with very flat tape laces too, the ordinary round ones work either way.

Next stop: Rhamnous

It's hard I know, because there are so many folk only too ready to test your patience but the most important attributes to foster in professional life are civility and honesty. By professional life, I mean in the broad sense, very few of us are literal professionals and those that are, seem to spend all their time circumventing the ethical standards administered by their professions with little or no consequence. The rest of us though, have to get by and so I will relate a cautionary tale of, not exactly woe but a not so minor degree of misfortune for a particular individual. It's not woeful because he never knew about it, for him there was no gnashing of teeth or sour grapes to contend with, all that he knew of it was the phone just didn't ring.

There was this meeting, a fair few years ago now, during which a few potential creative resources where mooted. Only we get to one name and I'm afraid I must've let my guard down for a second and let one of those looks out, you know the rolling eyes and the fidgety head because everyone stopped talking and looked at me. 'You know him?' the boss asked.

'Er--no, I've had some... er I've encountered him,' would approximate my reply. I would've been trying hard to change the subject but to no avail because then the interrogation started, what's he like, is he reliable, that kind of thing. I pretty sure I didn't actually say the word arsehole in response to these queries but it would've been hanging in the air during the lengthy pauses between my words. I tried really hard to be fair, not to condemn him in literal terms but my feelings on the subject got the better of me and were betrayed by my countenance. My equivocal vocal response didn't help matters and he was quietly removed from the discussion.

I felt a little guilty because it was a case of personal animosity, I'd encountered him while I was touting for work and he was a little, how can I say this, um--obstructive? As I mentioned, I felt guilty but I didn't feel bad about it, someone else would benefit from his misfortune and they'd be buying a new house on the coast or boozing it up in Thailand in their favourite lady boy bar. In the end, we went for a guy who'd been quite a well known name from a decade or so before. He was an occasional visitor to the building, having some dealings with an agent on another floor. From his demeanour and attire, I gather he'd hit hard times so perhaps it's just as well.

I'm not quite sure why the unlucky party had given me such gip during our encounter, at the time I thought it was a wrong side of the river thing. Since then though, I have seen him interviewed and you know what, he does come across as a bit of an arsehole. I don't think he ever moved out of that flat south of the river though.

Waiting for dinner

There was this time I was waiting in an airport departure lounge in Boston. I bet you weren't even aware of any airports in Lincolnshire. Ho ho, got you it was Boston Massachusetts, I don't see a need to flee Lincolnshire by jet, not unless there's a prospect of being chased by mutant mangleworzles. Anyway I was scouting for food and tripped into an eatery where they were selling sea food, I think I might've bought a sandwich but they had in there, this tank.  In this tank there were a bunch of live lobsters, they had their claws bound with elastic bands but were otherwise quite aggressive with each other. It was something of a sight to see this little drama, a kind of mini wild life show depicting the aggressive behaviour of wild animals; I was quite engrossed for a while. Then the relevance of my perspective dawned on me, I was inhabiting the domain of what draughtsmen used to call, the divine aspect, looking down upon these creatures in the manner of dispassionate Grecian deity. Soon their fate would be decided by someone like me, external to the concerns of their little world and yet those lobsters were not equipped to comprehend any of it; makes you think don't it?

Tunnel vision

Yesterday I was having a bit of a mare, migraine all bloody day, blazing sunshine with the sun low in the sky and no sunglasses. Even squinting was no use because my eyelashes fell out years ago. When I was a kid, migraine was so unbearable, the pain so excruciating that it's easy to appreciate why sufferers are occasionally discovered with their head in the oven. Happily, the pain hasn't been so much of a problem in adulthood--touch wood, uncomfortable yes but reasonably tolerable. The main practical problems being you just can't flippin' see properly and when your eyes are open, you just want to vomit and you incur the danger of the more severe symptoms, i.e the pain, occurring.

Unfortunately I had to be out and about for a while and it was evident from their reactions, that people thought I was an utter lunatic. Of course they did, a blinking (literally blinking) idiot who kept his eyes covered while he spoke is bound to draw some suspicion. You've probably heard about the weird lights blah blah, one of the most acute problems though, is the tunnel vision, which can really catch you out when it occurs. It's quite hard to describe because there is no actual tunnel, it's just that visual perception becomes confined to what you're focused on. So you're walking along the road and a woman with a pram appears out of nowhere, bang! You get an earful from an irate mother and if you're really unlucky, the threat of assault from some chav, either older son or irate boyfriend, that's accompanying her.

Something sweet is was what cured it yesterday, I grabbed a pecan pastry with treacle and I kid you not, it subsided almost as soon as the pastry hit my stomach and was gone within a few minutes. You know what's odd, the pastry tasted absolutely fantastic. It's as if it were ambrosia born from Olympus on a silken cushion and wafted to the earthly domain by a bevy of nimble, rather scantily clad goddesses. Marvellous what a little deprivation does to enhance the senses.

While recovering from this episode, I cast my mind to the subject of the previous post. Even for a politician of questionable ethical standing, it is possible to feel some sympathy when that person is enduring some physical distress. If that distress should prove to be the as the result of some serious condition, which at the moment I think is quite likely, what questions arise about the role of the media in such circumstances? I've seen enough to indicate that a certain degree of acquiescence, even collusion must be present. I suppose that's hardly a surprise but surely in this instance,  should events take their natural course, they are going to be difficult to reconcile. In a way though, that's already happened, there was no media footage of the incident in New York that brought this issue into the public arena, it was a guy with a phone or some such. So sometime after those shots of her face in the crowd at ground zero, someone must've said, 'No pictures' or something like it. What's interesting there, is that so far it seems they obeyed their instructions, not just one or two of 'em but all of them. Not a single dodgy snap from an agency bod nothing at all, except for what Joe Bloggs caught on his phone.

And there lies the irony, it's the measures taken to keep unbidden attention at bay that are so telling. The men in dark suits that block camera viewfinders so promptly, that faithful attendant who's somewhat evocative of the Nubian eunuch stereotype. He certainly seems to know his job, never flustered or indeed even surprised, he directs his more frantic underlings with an enviable assurance.

There are two things that arouse my curiosity, what kind of memos are the journalists getting in their in boxes and just what is in those handy palm size devices, those attendants are always getting out of their jacket breast pockets too soon.

Reflective millinary time

So I caught this video on YT, it's one of those live feed ones, so it sent my browser into a fit. The video itself concerns the political contest currently waging on the other side of the pond, specifically speculation on the health of one of the candidates. So it's not a normally a video I would naturally attribute much credence to. Politics in not a game noted for its honesty after all and the general climate of mendacious fiction permeates throughout the factions.

Or that's what I thought, just for the giggle I tried to gain further insight into the rumour this particular video was circulating by performing a Google search.  It's no surprise that a bunch of loony conspiracy theories featured prominently in the search results. Right I'll try the Google News search then--oh dear, more loonies but there's one thing here on The Huffington Post. Click--it's been pulled, happily though Google's cache provides me with the gen.

After reading the item the partisan slant is quite obvious but it did raise some awkward questions so I decide to re-examine the Google news search list. Among the luminaries featured in the search results are such august news gathering organisations as: Charisma News‎, The Inquisitr‎, Liberty News Now, The Hayride. Okay, so maybe not a story I should take seriously, except isn't there something missing in this list? That's right, nothing and I do mean absolutely nothing, from any of the major news services, not even a: ho ho ho, let's laugh at the conspiracy theorists and that shiny head gear. Okay so it's Sunday evening and the weekend lag might be causing a bottleneck with news copy but a total blank on the story? That's starting to make me wonder.

The strange case of Tim, Richard and Alf

While I'm still in the mood to exploit the bountiful vein of workplace characters I've encountered, let me tell you about Tim. How can I describe Tim I wonder? Not an easy task because he was something of self parody but he was Pete's immediate successor as the workplace oddball. If Pete was annoying, Tim was insufferable, he was a bit of a new age moralist, continually pressing his judgements on those around him. So he dug himself into the same hole Pete had, only rather more quickly and more profoundly than Pete ever had. Despite his protestations about women's issues, together with his other right on views, he found himself particularly unpopular with the women in the studio. It was for this reason he was exiled to an annex adjacent to the dark room, so the rest of the staff could gain respite from the continual offence he so blithely aroused.

Tim was hard to completely dislike though, he had something about him a kind of naivety that mitigated his peremptory attitude and his arrogance which annoyed the girls so much, seemed ironic in the light of his meagre ability. He was active in political life, always going on marches to protest the fascist threat, educating those around him about Thatcher's menace; all the while of course, taking home about four times the average wage packet under her terrible regime.

Alf was something different, not an oddball at all, in fact I was the oddball in relation to him. Alf had arrived and taken up a prime position in the studio, a position that I'd been trying to manoeuvre into. They chose to go with Alf  because he was, you know qualified and had the relevant experience, while I was a complete chancer. Alf wasn't as demonstrative about his political leanings as Tim but I gathered enough to infer there was some common ground between them. Alf was something of a character too, he had an equity card so you'd see him in front of the camera on occasion and he also had a minor but reasonably lucrative musical career.

Enter Richard, the third player in this little drama, Richard was someone you wouldn't want to be around for any length of time. He was a bit of child catcher in looks and demeanour. He worked quite closely with Alf and had regular contact with Tim, myself I never had much to do with him and Alf but it seemed that Richard was reasonably competent at his job.

Things had moved on a bit from Tim's arrival and the whole studio had been re-organised. Alf and Richard had moved to a separate site and they took Tim with them. Partly, I think because Tim was so universally loathed and Alf was the only one who'd work with him. We'd get news across the grapevine of Tim's outrageous behaviour and his constant attention seeking, culminating in the episode were he came out as LGBT; which wasn't much of a surprise to anyone except me, I thought he was a vegetarian and wouldn't touch McDonald's.

One day the news arrived that Tim had been let go and while I though it was news that was well passed its due date, there was some surprise that he'd actually been fired. He'd spent so much of his time being a total prick, the natural assumption was the he'd remain because people had just got used to tolerating him. Not long after this news, there was an after work beano, a chance to meet and greet the new boss, some bint from Utah, who could've done with some plastic surgery, I think it must be the climate there that shrivels up faces like that. Anyway her prune like features didn't stop me trying to chat her up, and while under the influence I even got matey with Richard which was something I really wouldn't normally consider.

Richard seemed to be responding to the attention I was giving him quite well and even went so far as to let his guard down regarding his love life; which I would discover was conducted mostly during weekend ferry trips to Amsterdam. And so it with some regret, I must confess that what happened next, was again partially my fault. I'd made such a good job of buttering Dick up that he started to open up about matters of policy at work. It was while in this mood, he announced with some hubris, that his voice had been the important factor in the dismissal of Tim. Apparently the Tim problem had surfaced on the agenda of a weekly meeting and he'd been the one to insist that Tim should go. Better buy him another drink I thought, after that news.

Troubled ensued when the pub whispers carried the news to Alf's ears and when I say trouble, I mean the fist into face kind of trouble. It all flared up while I was back trying to chat the boss up, I was doing quite well too only to find we were both being chucked out the pub because of the disorder our party had been responsible for stirring. Being a yank, it was all too much for her and she was off in her Merc in a flash. Dick and Alf were still at it but it's fair to say that Richard was never coming out of that contest without a few bruises.

Alf was lucky, he was on staff so they couldn't get rid of him without a tribunal but he spent some time on probation over the incident. It wasn't until months later I learned that it was the news about Tim that had caused it, Alf told me himself while we were in the pub again. Then two French bints enter the pub, 'Que heure tile?' I says.

Pete and his Mini traveller

After the most recent post here, I got to thinking about Peter and his Mini traveller and how that incident embodied our interaction. The dodgy clutch wasn't the only problem he had with his Mini. I recall one time he, was relaying his adventures exploring the electronics of his vehicle and couldn't understand why it wouldn't start in the cold because he was geting, 'A good spark across the points'. The old Mini used contact breaker condenser coil ignition, like most cars did then. Of course the lt circuit is energised by the battery which acts as a kind of super condenser, so that the actual condenser (the coil) gets an even current. Inside the distributor there's another little condenser (they call 'em capacitors these days) to even out the current still further, the idea being to reduce the risk of spark across the points. So I say to him, 'You need to replace your condenser, it'll cost about four pence'.

Now to explain Peter's reaction, we need to illustrate his and my demeanour with some explanation. Peter was one of those guys who was under the impression he had insight into subjects or topics that he was in fact, completely ignorant of. He though he understood how electricity worked, so to him a spark across his ignition points seemed absolutely natural. It didn't matter how much I tried to explain the principle of a condenser coil, it made absolutely no impression upon his conviction on the topic. Thing is though, I have to take some of the blame for this particular incident because it illustrated one of my shortcomings. That shortcoming would be, no one took anything I said seriously. Honestly, it could be a topic with far more serious consequences than dodgy electrics on a banger, with everyone clueless except for me and all I would get was that, yeah right look when I would offer my insight. On this occasion though, my remonstrations where backed up by another guy with a senior position in the studio but even though his relevant credentials included a stint working for the AA, the damage had been done. There was no talking sense to Peter, he'd made his mind up on the topic and he'd be splashing a ton at his local bodger.

Pete did quite well at the studio, he held something of an ascendant position, well for a while at least. Unfortunately for ol' Pete, his undoing was his presumption of his own competence again. He'd angled a position by offering to do the photo transparency processing in the studio. You could do that with the old Ektachrome stock and we had pretty good darkroom facilities so it seemed to make sense. Then one day something went badly wrong, very badly wrong. He was asked to process some film as a favour and it came out of his process tank blank. After some hair pulling and general consternation, 'let's have a look at the film canister,' asked the guy who'd been my compatriot during the condenser coil incident. When we saw the label on the canister, we just looked at each other, Kodachrome.

I made an attempt to explain, 'That's Kodachrome, processing is pre-paid, you send it to a lab in Eindhoven'. It was an awkward moment because Peter couldn't accept it, it got worse when he discovered just how basic  his error had been over the course of the afternoon. That incident marked Peter's decline in standing in the studio, the film did belong to someone in a senior position but it wasn't particularly valuable. What caused the damage was the fact that his bluff as the photo processing expert had been exposed, so confidence in his competence in other areas waned.

Peter was quite an annoying guy and I did reciprocate by doing my best to annoy him back. One evening while working late, he approached me for change for a pound, he needed some for the coffee machine. I could only stump fifty pence but I needed to buy milk for the evening and I didn't want to break a note. So I tell him to give me the pound and he could have the change. Next day he's on me, 'Where's my fifty pence?' he says, none too graciously. The following day I've got a surprise for him, I wait for him to ask again, then I reach into my pocket, 'Here you are'. I hand him a hundred half pence pieces, that I'd had fortuitously stored in a yoghurt pot at home. The best part about that was, they were being taken out of circulation at the end of the month.

Super powers

Super powers as a device in the context of fiction and dramatic narrative, provide a number of interesting questions. Just what is their purpose within a narrative, why are they such a common element in fiction, where is the delineation between a super power and extraordinary ability. I think I can answer that last one, extraordinary ability is equivalent to a super power when it exceeds natural expectations or is unique to an individual. Therefore it is with some pride, that I can announce I DeadSpiderEye, possess a super power; yeah see, what do you think of that? Of course now that knowledge has been promulgated, I'll need to take better care of my secret identity.

Unfortunately my super ability is confined to a rather specific context and is not one that lends itself to engaging on a crusade against crime and corruption. As a consequence, I'm afraid the possibility of bringing to justice, those flagrant individuals whose malfeasance seems unassailable and immune the common standards of decency and morality, remains remote. There's not much chance of me exclaiming things like: 'Take that Keith Vaz... eat the fiery fist of justice Batmanghelidjh!' or, 'it's over Phillip Green!' any time soon. There is though, the slight possibility I might save the odd person some embarrassment, if they're in the market for a second hand car. You see my superpower entails the ability to detect a failing clutch friction plate on a car, purely through the sense of smell.

Doesn't sound particularly super I know but you'd be surprised just how extraordinary that ability proves to be in practical terms. I recall a trip in a mini traveller on the way to a lunchtime excursion to a pub, 'Your clutch is on the way out,' I says to the guy, Peter his name was. Good grief man, you'd think I'd exercised the clairvoyance expected of a charlatan at some passing fair from the reception my insight got. Incredulity quickly gave way to ridicule when I tried to explain that it was the smell coming from the transmission but that wasn't the oddest thing. No the oddest part of the episode occurred the next week, Peter missed a day at work and when he came in the next day, guess what the reason was; yep, his clutch had failed on the way into work, oops. Never missing the opportunity to say, I told you so, I reminded Peter of my prediction; he responded by insisting that it was merely a coincidence and my prediction remained specious. That's when I knew how Spidey feels to be so unappreciated but that's as far as the similarity between us goes. With great power... is not an axiom that resonates in this case and just trying to explain the odour thing is just too much trouble.

Fiction

I don't know quite how I missed it but I found out something interesting only the other day; something that provides an insight into the minds, if that word is pertinent in this case, of our legislators. I suspect the reason I missed it, may be because the fact in question is a little embarrassing, indeed it would provide a significant challenge for even the most ardent publicist to dress up as sane. In such circumstances I can imagine the topic being hastily rescheduled as a news item, so that it didn't draw too much attention.

The fact I'm alluding to is that there is a de jure ban on the sale and distribution of... zombie knives in the United Kingdom that came in to effect in January. Uh--yeah I know there has been this focus in the entertainment industry on the zombie genre, quite an intense one it has to be said, but it doesn't matter how intense the fictional activity may be, it remains er--fictional. I'm impressed, whatever they're smoking in the palatial environs of Westminster is doing the job of turning the grey matter to snot.

So what is a zombie knife? It's a knife for dealing with the zombie threat of course but wouldn't just any knife do for such a task? Ah no see, a zombie knife might have a green handle, a bit like the one in your kitchen might have a green plastic handle, or it might have a serrated blade, you know a bit like your bread knife, or it could have a coating to protect the blade from corrosion, a bit like the coating that comes on some higher quality kitchen knives. What if it has all three of those properties? That would definitely be a zombie knife then... or maybe a fillet knife.

I don't know why the go to all this bother, just ban everything sharp, we don't actually need our cloths sewn together, they can use staples for that. Just sell meat and vegetables as puree, you know like baby food, then we can eat our meals with a plastic spoon.

erdn4pu43h2

The doodle files

That head took on a bit of a life of its own, getting redrawn on the desktop over a few days, probably as I was drinking tea. Slightly odd perspective, I think maybe because I was slouching back in the chair or it could be the camera, probably a bit of both. I keep meaning to make up a drawing surface that emulates the texture of the desktop it has a nice tooth that gives a good stipple with the pencil, although I think it could do with being a bit courser.

The cat, well his head's a bit of a cartoon, I think I might have another go at that one.

Better joke

There's an impression that emerges from interviews and various citations, that as a body, artists and writers working in the US comic industry weren't particularly pleased with the 60's Batman television series. In fact more than once I've read something like, I  hated that show, in connection with the topic. This attitude must be tempered, I would've thought, by some appreciation of just how much interest in the Batman character and comics in general, the show stirred amongst the broader public.

Any successful entertainment enterprise will draw the attention of the moral entrepreneurs and the Batman television show was bit of a 60's phenomenon, so there were a fare few such individuals scrambling for attention on the back of that success. So it's one of those ironies, that what actually killed the show was not the moralising of its critics but rather the weight of its own success. By the second season a case of cameo infestation was apparent, the most notorious of which is probably the Otto Preminger incident.

Catwoman disappears by the the third season or at least the real Catwoman, but the Lycra quotient is maintained by the advent of Batgirl. And what a marvelous job Yvonne does in that department, flippin' 'eck Yvonne Craig in Lycra, even I think that should be illegal or at least tightly controlled in the manner of a dangerous narcotic.

Opps, how did that get there?

Despite Miss Craig's--er talents, the batman television show couldn't quite negotiate the pitfalls of the the third season curse. The plethora of showbiz notables drawing their cheques, was no match for the more modest but earnest efforts of the not quite so illustrious staples of the cast that made the show a success.

I think it's fair to say that many Batman readers and creators working with the character, find the legacy of the television series a bit of an embarrassment. After all it's quite hard to reconcile the flouncy, possibly closet gay Batman of the series, with something like the hard nosed possibly psychotic individual, in something like The Dark Knight Returns. That's a bit of a shame really because when it worked, the series was quite a faithful adaptation of the character and the flavour of the comics. So it is with some anticipation that I greeted the news the television Batman would be returning this autumn, in the guise of an animated feature with the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward as the principle characters. It should be a bit of fun I reckon and it's got to be a lot better than the recent Killing Joke. Let's face it though, pretty much anything is going to be a better prospect that the animated Killing Joke, even the predicament facing the dynamic duo in this trailer.

Twilight Zone

Take a careful look at that picture, notice anything unusual? That's right the bridge appears to be broken just at the point where it would collapse at a later date. Is this eerily prescient image a indicator of supernatural forces at work? Um--probably not really, more likely to be an artefact from the Google Street View mapping process. What extraordinary fact this image does prove though, is that we are living in the Twilight Zone because apparently our bridges are designed and built by trained gibbons. That apparent curvature of the bridge is not just a trick of perspective, they actually built it like that.

Notice that the fabric of bridge seems to be in a state of distress in this image too. Mmm I wonder--do you think it might've been hit by a passing vehicle before or is it just that gibbons have trouble mixing concrete? It must be those little hands of theirs.

Predator and prey

Some days seem to have a particular theme running through them, the one that surfaced today was predator and prey. I encountered a kestrel pouncing on something about fifty yards ahead of me on the pavement as I walked into town. Later, on the trip back, there was a girl petting the cat that hangs round by the mill on top of the hill. That was something unusual because he's not a particularly approachable cat, having something of the beast about him, his garnet eyes incandescent with a fire that seems unearthly. She tootled on her way as I approached and the cat was going to retreat into the undergrowth, that was until something caught his eye on the other side of a fence. Zip, he was on it in a flash, he almost tangled himself in the wire he was that careless. I was almost on top of him by this time and I could see what he'd captured, some little mouse or shrew. As I sauntered pass, he was full of suspicion and warned me off with some of that fire that burns in those eyes.

The Nightmare world

Channel 4 are a bit precious about their catalogue of material, apparently it's too good to be leached by bloggers. Consequently there's no option to embed their videos from YT, so I've opted to link to the video of interest with this screen shot.

The interviewer, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, has a habit of pressing celebrities for answers to questions outside the appropriate context. A notable instance occurred at a press junket for Avengers Age of Ultron. Murthy tasked Robert Downey Jr. to ruminate on some issue by prompting him with a mention of an episode from his past that Mr. Downey would probably prefer forgotten. Not a particularly friendly thing to impose on an actor but journalists don't make that many friends. Here, he tries a similar trick on Samuel L Jackson who instead of calling foul, does him the favour of running with the ball.

Murthy makes the perennial assertion of moral entrepreneurs, that being that entertainment should conform to a wholesome template. A template dictated I imagine, by folk such as himself, the enlightened, those blessed with the appropriate insight to guide the masses--yeah! Well there's a couple of problems with that notion but it doesn't stop people like Murthy trying or indeed exerting the influence, to extend their ideals into reality.

There's a means of forcing those intent on pressing untenable ideals on the world, to face their illusions, it works every time without fail; give them what they want, then watch the destruction ensue. Unfortunately it's impossible to be insulated from the consequences of this light blue touch paper and retire approach. You can never put enough distance between yourself and those striving for the celestial grace epitomised by their vision of the perfect world. Imagine the scene, here you are Krishnan, welcome to Gruinard your very own island where you can impose your prescribed values on on literature and art to your heart's content.

The island is never enough, isolation offers no consolation if knowledge of something greater exists, it becomes a prison. That's not because there's an intrinsic need to travel beyond the hill that rises on some distant vista, it's because you have knowledge of what's on the other side of that hill. Who knows what that would be in Krishnan's imagination, probably a world populated by desolate souls, misguided and led astray by Mr. Jackson's talent. What I do know, is that these kind of extra-territorial grievances fall into two categories:-

1. It's your fault, you the unbeliever are to blame for all my woes and privations. You don't have to speak to me, interact with me in any way, you just have to be alive and have more than me.

2. Verily thou sinneth largethly, the god of [insert ideology here] commandeth me to smite thee down.

The common factor between those categories is comparison. If you live on an island and you're the only islander with a bike, you're the wealthiest person on the island. If that island is your world, you're the wealthiest person in the world, so how do you feel when you see a boat in the harbour for the first time? It's cultural rivalry, the folk on Krishnan's Gruinard can't be content with their regime in isolation, they need to assert their moral superiority. That need, the imperative to express a sense of superiority, is related directly to the level of cultural impoverishment but it's not a linear relationship. The difference doesn't have to be that great, it just has to be something evident, something that promotes envy, even if the cause is trivial.

Karl Marx travelled to England to see what the fuss was about and to get away from people trying to lock him up. While here he couldn't quite come to terms with the reality of Britain's prominence in the industrial age. His homeland, Europe's seat of learning and philosophy for hundreds of years, while prosperous, was lagging ever so slightly in comparison. So he came up with an ideology, something to explain why those goofs in England were lording it over the world. It was an ideology rooted in the Prussian tradition of state primacy practised in his erstwhile homeland but with an extra moral dimension. It was something called capitalism that was to blame, a morally bankrupt insidious institution that corrupted the natural order.

Marx invented capitalism but it was like one of the works of science fiction that impact on the reality of actual science. His negative conception of capitalism actually moulded how his ideological opponents conceived themselves, in a manner something like this: If Marx is bad then what he says is bad must be good. This kind of negative feedback is extendible in principle to any ideology with a moral imperative. Witchcraft and the devil are ideas conceived by the pious then practised and adulated by the wicked. It's one of the reasons why you can never put enough distance between yourself and the zealot once you've lit the blue touch paper. The very act of distancing is self defeating, there cannot be an idealogical vacuum in such circumstances. If something is so egregious it must be moved beyond the pale then its inverse must take its place.

I always find the views expressed by Murthy in this video a little difficult to understand, just what is the justification for this desire to prescribe entertainment? Do they really believe they're going to build a better tomorrow and how exactly to they prevent the intrusion of reality into this delusion? What happens to them when they're faced with actual evidence, do the eyes gloss over, is there a temporary loss of cognisance and the memory of the encounter consigned to oblivion? Perhaps the clue lies with perception, people with the desire to extend control over a chaotic systems or events, must perceive some direct, easily manipulated and homogeneous relationship between cause and effect. To such an imagination, an event perceived must have a cause intrinsically related to the nature of that event. So if a person is beaten or stabbed, wouldn't the natural assumption be that the perpetrator was prompted into such an act through the fictional examples portrayed in entertainment? Thankfully, reality diverges from this conception quite sharply, otherwise we'd all be in real trouble and bored snotless every time we opened a book or watched the telly. Imagine that world, the one where behaviour portrayed in fiction is relayed into reality with absolute fidelity, what a burden it would be for writers and artists, what a boon for despots and dictators.

I'm not like Samuel L Jackson I don't deny a link between fictional portrayal and events in reality, I just know that it's not one you can ascribe cause and effect to. The link is not direct, it's chaotic, by chaotic I mean complex beyond any metric or analysis. That means it's something we don't really understand and when people don't understand things, there's a temptation to fall back on intuition and guesswork. Intuition is influenced much more by symbolic association than is rational analysis and the symbolic link between fictional violence and violence in reality is one that is trivially identified. It may be forgiveable to resort to intuition when it's your only option, forgiveable that is, until you tried to apply it a dozen times only to fail on each and every occasion. We may not have a proper understanding of the problem of violence and aggression within a social context but there are a few clues, there's a disparity between cultures that is cavernous in scope. We can deduce that living standards are a factor and that crime is not necessarily related to the severity of the penal system but more through social sanctions. It seems that the fact that your mother won't talk to you is a greater deterrent to potential criminals that gaol time. There are dozens of other correlations, most of 'em probably not causally significant: the level of obesity, a seafood diet, the length of your wife's hair, whether you wear shoes indoors, how close the shops are, how much time you spend travelling to work. The bad news for Krishnan is that the level of violence portrayed in film, television and literature doesn't adversely correlate to the level of violence in a social context. In fact, the really very bad news for Krishnan, is that the correlation that has been identified, goes in the other direction.

But this symbolic link, it just persists doesn't it, over and over again it comes up. It receives the same level of consternation and credulity, the same attention seekers rally to the cause, the fall out creates the same contraction in cultural life. The interesting thing about it is that it's periodic in nature and as a form of social/collective behaviour, it bares analysis much more easily than the problem it purports to address. The focus on violence is the first aspect that needs to be understood because it doesn't actually have anything to do with violence or violent behaviour. The purported concern over violence, is actually just a focus on a form of socially abhorrent behaviour and the reason for that is, that almost other forms of behaviour once widely considered abhorrent, are off limits to those who wish to prescribe our behaviour. The other thing to understand is that this moral outrage is cyclic in nature, it reoccurs consistently and that re-occurrence is unrelated to the kind of material being subject to scrutiny and criticism. What that means is that if Krishnan got his way and he successfully ended the career of Quentin Tarantino, that the next cycle of moral outrage wouldn't be deferred. Instead the cycle continues, only the now the focus rests on the relatively impoverished material that arose from the censorship of the last cycle.

There's a marvellously transparent demonstration of the recurring nature of the moral outrage cycle in the James Bond franchise. How often have you witnessed it expressed, that Bond represents a abhorrent attitude towards woman and that he doesn't fit in with current values? Has that notion only just been expressed in the last decade, or perhaps controversy over Bond's attitude to women goes back a bit further, twenty years ago, say around the end of the nineties, no? Further than that, eighties, seventies, sixties, did that penny drop yet? There has never been a time when Bond's attitude to women wasn't a source of controversy. Bond was controversial when Fleming wrote the first book, Fleming was under and acquiesced to, constant pressure from his publisher to moderate Bond's persona. Yet there's this fictional past where Bond resides in the imagination of the moral entrepreneurs, where his dalliances and promiscuity are free from sanction. Fictionalising the past is vital to sustaining the moral outrage cycle. This reconstruction comes in two forms and those forms correspond roughly to two main types of moral entrepreneur; the progressive and the defender.

There's distinction between progressive and defensive moral entrepreneurs that seems trivially identified. If we wanted to categorise Krishnan, we'd call him a progressive, if we wanted an example of a defender we'd cite Mary Whitehouse. It's a fortuitous distinction because I've always wanted to use a particular term, this distinction is an example of a—wait for it—false dichotomy, ah that felt so—good! It's false because the motivation remains consistent between categories and the distinction commonly drawn between progressive and defender is one that depends upon context. The reason we draw this false distinction is because of the manner in which these two groups treat the past. To the progressive the past is the stone age, its ideals and manners should be consigned to history. To the defender it's the opposite, the decent into savagery is what's ahead, if the values rooted in the past can't be salvaged. So both groups, progressives and defenders, perceive a linear progression, the difference being orientation.

Fictionalising the past is vital because it's intrinsic to the moral entrepreneur's self image as a moderator of standards and ideals. It's not tenable to perpetuate the failures of the past, so the process of self deception needs to be facilitated by either ignoring or denying them or restructuring the context in which they occurred. This process can be quite elaborate and utilises a variety of techniques to moderate thought. One of the most important of these techniques is the use of language, new terms of expression are created, in this manner it's possible to create a disassociation from discredited or unfavoured notions but this is also used to redefine parameters. Terms like: sexism and sex object arise, they dissociate the concepts they encompass from terms like, loose morals and promiscuous. Parameters are redefined in both those examples, with sexism the meaning is extended to cover misogyny and sex object implies a deferral of personal volition for feminine participants.

So it's about time I wrapped this one up, is our mate Krishnan and are those folk like him ever going to disappear? I would guess probably not but it's a question that needs to be considered in the context of motive. As I've mentioned, I find the motive to be Impenetrable given the nature of reality but that assumes a degree of sincerity on behalf on moral entrepreneurs that may not be applicable. The stated motive is always the same, a better tomorrow and so is the means by which we get to that tomorrow, control over media and entertainment. What if it was the means to the ostensible goal, i.e. the control, that was the real motive? That's something I can start to make sense of.

Bumble

There's a nettle patch in the garden I let grow a bit; only this spring I let it get a bit out of hand so when I cleared it out, I found two bumble bee hives. It's not the first time I found bumble bees nesting in the garden, one winter a few years ago I dug into the ground, only to hear a sound that I couldn't quite make out, I looked to the sky to see where the aeroplane was but found only empty sky. Empty sky a first that was, soon it was full of bumble bees, bumble bees in the winter I thought, what going on? Then the penny dropped, loud buzzing noise -- bees, oops, I looked down to the hole in the ground, to find it seething with slightly upset bees. I got out of there pretty sharpish.

One slight problem when relaying the bees in the garden story, is that I encounter some incredulity.  Apparently the received wisdom states that bumble bees don't over winter in numbers and that it's only queens that survive. Well what can I say, it happened, attribute to my account what credibility you see fit.

My tip for hosting bees in the garden, is to build a loose compost heap with twigs and the fibrous stems of plants. Alternatively let the nettles, and mint get a bit wild, the network of roots, loosens the soil and lets the bees create voids more easily.

I'm not the only person with bees in the garden, a neighbour has them nesting in holes on the edge of her lawn. They're not bumble bees though, they look more waspish.

Is this the funniest video on YT?

Oh yeah it's a broad sword, it's called broad because it's broader that a sword that isn't as broad. I don't about you but I was laughing my knuts off while watching this. Highlights of this monologue include: '... a term that was far more common for this type of sword was simply sword' and a referral to another video titled, Were all swords just called sword? If those don't crack your ribs wait till you get to the bit about Scottish broad swords, you'll need a trip to hospital to recover.

Ten thousand views, that's pretty impressive and look at the glowing endorsements in the comments. I'm not quite sure why this video appeared in my to view list but I'm glad it did, it's nice example of inside the fish bowl perspective. To illustrate let me tell you about this colleague, Terry (a different Terry). Terry was a train spotter and he came out with this term peculiar to that fraternity one day, chuff nuts, which I like to spell as chuffnutz. A chuffnut defined within the train spotting community, would be an individual with a particularly ardent preoccupation with the hobby and often focused on steam engines.  I tried to explain to Terry, that to a non train spotters, all train spotters are chuffnutz, alas he couldn't see it. Likewise if you call a bird spotter a twitcher, you will get a response that goes something like: 'Oh no that's just those people with Kangols and gunner's mittens who hang upside town from the branches in trees to catch sight of the Lesser Spotted Thrumpty Bunting'.

To anyone outside the bowl, everything in the bowl is a fish.

The Dick problem

There's an interesting review of Heinlein's Stranger in Strange Land on Amazon, it's starts off with something like: not a bad book even if it is badly written. Which, you know, struck me as kinda odd, because how do you make such a statement so unselfconsciously, without any citation or providing any explanation, that is: it's badly written because...

I think it likely the person who wrote that review, was acquiescing to received opinion on Heinlein's merit as a writer, which in case you're not aware can be quite disparaging. Now this is where I have a problem, Heinlein's a pretty decent writer, bordering on brilliant when he's not in pulp mode and although it's been a very long time since I read Stranger in a Strange Land, that particular work is the seminal cross-over from science fiction into mainstream literature. So where does this quite widely held opinion that he's crap come from? Well my answer to that conundrum would be that it's a question of reputation, he's reputed to be a bad author by some quite influential opinion, there's a particular culprit I have in mind as the chief progenitor of that notion. This person would be a pretty decent writer himself, with a large following amongst science fiction readers but he never had the mainstream impact that Heinlein managed to attain. He never wrote the cult work and he didn't achieve Heinlein's broader influence, that incidentally, is not constrained to Stranger... but can be attributed to his work on projects like the film Destination Moon.

So a motive emerges, one that is not particularly edifying, that of professional jealously, which is why I've not identified the author in question. The usual response to that notion is one of incredulity, authors like the person in question are not that petty, they're nobler with lofty ideals. Oh yeah really, well history is not on your side with that argument because the examples of such motivation are numerous; the one I'll cite here is Giovanni Baglione's critique of Caravaggio and the disinformation following from it that still persists today.

So the Dick problem, how is that relevant? Well it refers to Philip K. Dick. Dick has, what I would call, an ascendant reputation. Plaudits abound in relation to Dick and an his works, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Man in the High Castle. The question I ask in this regard is, have you ever tried to read one of those books? If you did, did you think they were well written? Did the pages and pages of bald exposition seem well crafted, what about that omni-cognitive third person narrative, with its flawless insight, did that dazzle you? I'm guessing that you probably haven't read them or at least, like me, you didn't finish them. In truth, Dick is not a particularly engaging author or skilled at rendering narrative. Prose-wise, he's like a lot of folk from his background, centred on stream of consciousness, a consciousness that seems largely spiked by the use of pharmaceuticals. In that regard, he's playing catchup with James Joyce.

Now that doesn't mean Dick is a bad author, it just means he's difficult to read but the question arises, would that guy on Amazon describe a book by Dick as badly written?  I'm thinking no he wouldn't, he either couldn't bring himself to highlight the terrible narrative structure, the terrible prose, the awful plodding exposition, or he wouldn't have the critical faculty to make those observations. So what makes a book either well or badly written? Is it the actual words on the page, or the reputation of author? That's not such a facetious question as it might seem because perception is formed by opinion much more than it is by reality in certain circumstances. Personally, it's a question I can't resolve easily, because all creative works reside within their cultural context. It's their relevance to that culture, the recognition of them that derives from that context, that makes a creative work notable.

A really really bad day

So you've heard the news about the animated version of Batman Killing Joke and you're a little incredulous that anything could surpass Snyder's Batman and Robin in it's level of rubbishness? Well don't be, it really is that bad, it's so bad, that even after watching it, you're left doubting your own senses. There's the extra bit of course, which takes up a full half hour and bit of the, just over one hour, sixteen minutes running time. And my god, is the added material awful, it's not just tedious, it's a travesty, a festering appendix begging the immediate attention of a rusty scalpel blade. It not just that I'm afraid though, when it came to the actual Killing Joke part of the animated Killing Joke film, you know the bit that actually deals with the story from the book and not something spawned from the mind of a juvenile after they've awakened from a wet dream, is wholly inept. They couldn't even get the most basic elements right, those visual mnemonics that link the flashbacks are missing or unrecognisable; how does that happen for flip's sake?

Something went badly wrong here, the prologue embodied in the new material is so badly plotted and scripted, it's almost as if it's a case deliberate sabotage. I don't just mean the editorial interference, which is just so woefully evident and completely undermines Alan Moore's narrative but the execution is like an episode of Scooby Do or something you read on the back of a chewing gum card. No one writes that bad, not unless they're an underpaid scribe chained to a desk in the cellar, who only gets to see daylight once a year.

The iconoclasm is unrelenting, they don't even leave the ending alone, there's that little respect for the source material. Those responsible for this catastrophe should beg the forgiveness of everyone who ever bought a copy of The Killing Joke, just before being stripped naked and beaten with birch twigs that have stood marinating in chilly for a year.

Vroom

Seems like he's having fun, except the old Panda was a bit of handful, not just on corners but with any kind of steering. How can I put this I wonder, how about chronic under-steer in all conditions? The example I had was a bit of an earlier model, so I suppose they might've made some improvements but mine was very fatiguing to drive. You'd be bouncing the steering wheel back and forth to avoid the snap after a corner, which would make the car roll back and forth like a drunken girl scout, ugh. If you did get caught out and found yourself with a snap on your hands, you needed to be really quick to get it sorted, otherwise you'd be on the roof or wrapped round a lamp post.

The Peugeot 205 is the car notorious for the same problem and I do have a friend who found herself travelling down the motorway on the roof after she took avoiding action, when she was cut up by another diver. I'm told the sparks were quite spectacular, I think I'd have been quite spooked in such a circumstance. One quite maligned small car that didn't manifest the same problem was the Austin Metro, which would steer quite sweetly but that hydrolastic suspension, well it was quite firm shall we say, in fact it wasn't much more than a scaled up skateboard.

Game of Throbs

So they ditched the nudey and umpty bumpty, not quite as quickly and as completely as the notorious Stargate SG1 but for the most part it's gone. The incidents that remain seem a bit like, cue the naked ladies, but it was always a bit incongruous. I can't quite get over how soapy the whole thing feels, you find yourself engaged in a story line, to find it ditched for four episodes; by the time it resurfaces, it's a case of, oh yeah I forgot Jake Plod was about to be eaten by snowmen.

There's something that's been bothering me though, something that no one else seems to have noticed but was apparent right from the first episode, here's the opening title music.

Here's the opening title from another show.

You might notice that the second clip is not consistent with the details on the continuity board.

Chunky lady fest

You know the kind of winsome willowy chick that is supposed to be the ideal of physical beauty? Well they're nice but there's just something about chunky ladies and did you ever meet a winsome willowy chick that wasn't a total bore? Okay  I know Lee Meriwether seems like fun but what are the chances of bumping into her?

I'm not sure what the current scene is like but this is a video from a few years ago, reminds me of a night out on the pull from my youth when the girls were getting a bit competitive. In fact it's so evocative, i can almost hear the conversation, 'I'm going for the one in the purple--if she's still concious after they've finished'.

'Na, you've no chance while she's still awake'.

Crikey man, this is a long wrestling match, those ladies are working really hard, I hope they get paid well.

Dog days

So there's this news story I came across, 'Rocky the orangutan apes human speech in knockout study'. I noticed the pun of course but it serves a duel purpose in this instance, it's also highly equivocal. A fact that is rather unfortunately demonstrated by the video that accompanies the story. Alas Rocky doesn't speak in the video, he doesn't even ape human vocalisation, what he in fact does, is grunt. Ape grunts, doesn't quite have the same impact does it?

This isn't the only case of attention seeking I've witnessed in the field of animal studies lately. Recently there was a story that could be summarised as goat stares, masquerading as somehow a relevant incident for media attention. It was supposed to be fantastic because the goat in question, wanted something from the person he was staring at. Yeah well domestic animals interact with humans that way a lot, hens will even tug your trousers if they think you have a treat for them, in way not dissimilar to kid pestering a parent for ice cream.

So how come this stuff gets into the media, well I put it down to another story that isn't newsworthy: humans are stupid.

Twin tub

You know there's those gender stereotypes of the guy who's competent with mechanical devices and the chick who can't understand them. I do have a certain empathy with that notion because, more than once, I've tried to explain to a female how to change down in a car and honestly, it was like talking to a rabbit. I just got silence, a strange look and the absolute certainty that no meaningful communication passed between us. The thing is though, those stereotypes rely on a false assumption, that assumption being, you need to know how something works to use it effectively. Yes it's true, women go through clutches on their cars like a baby on a prune diet goes through nappies but they still manage to get from A to B on a regular basis. The real proof of this concept though, is the automatic washing machine, have you seen how effortlessly women use those things? Put a guy in the same position and you're talking either Vesuvius or the deluge in the kitchen. Why should this be I wonder, well I put it down to something called the black box concept, although in this context white box would probably be more appropriate.

A black box in science or engineering terms, is a device which has an opaque mechanism. You put something in one end and something else comes out the other, you don't bother to look inside to see what's happening. Automatic washing machines epitomise the black box, you put soap powder and dirty laundry in, presto chango, clean laundry comes out. I don't know about you but as a guy, that all seems all perfectly reasonable, so how is it I can never get the thing to work properly? I've done all the research, I know about water hardness, temperature, low foaming detergents, suffocants, the lot and yet about 20% of the time it's a complete disaster. I'm not the only one either because I've noticed, there's a distinct preference for twin tubs with guys who do their own laundry and of course, this being the case, twin tubs are pretty much impossible to buy. This is because they stopped making them, or rather, they stopped making them here but--this is not the case everywhere. If you live in Asia, the middle east, South America pretty much the whole of the world except for Europe and North America, you can buy the modern equivalent of a twin tub, yeah thanks for that.

In truth, there a few modern twin tub washers available as grey imports, the problem being, importers have been bringing in the cheapest and lowest quality items, in effort to get a decent return on their outlay. So guess what's happened as a consequence--yeah that's right, classic twin tubs, the Hotpoints and the Hoovers, now command a premium on the second hand market. You're talking about £160 for a working example, so my advice to you, is if  you got a twin tub, don't throw it away.

Trident

Something a bit serious now because I'm going to talk about the pending decision on Trident renewal. Let's start off by pointing out something that might seem incongruous, Owen Smith, one of the hopefuls in the struggle to wrest the Labour Party leadership from Jeremy Corbyn, has mysteriously come out in favour of renewal. Why should an erstwhile member of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) be performing such an apparent turnabout I wonder? Well the answer, or half of it, is pretty much transparent, Smith is a politician and I doubt very much his ostensible conviction in the principle of nuclear disarmament was in the least bit sincere. Quite why persons such as Smith have been getting away with this kind of mendacious behaviour for so long, is just one of those eternal mysteries, let's just put it down to the wilful gullibility of the party faithful.

So we have another faithless politician and while it's possible to reconcile Smith's inconsistency, with the insight we share into the character and moral turpitude of our politicians, it's not really a complete answer because it doesn't provide a motive. So what could the motive be I wonder, mmm... let me think, what would the cause of such a spectacular about face. What else do we know about Owen Smith, well he's hinted that despite European Convention's requisite on democratic governance, it would be legal to ignore the result of the recent referendum and that he might do so, were he in a position to cast such a decision. What I wonder, does Trident have to do with the UK's relationship with the EU and the prospect of leaving it?

In an effort to answer that, let's examine some relatively recent developments that didn't make it to the front pages. In 2012 the UK's treaty commitments to keep forces on German soil expired. In 2014 the British government announced the intention to withdraw its forces from Germany by 2018. In 2015, oh what happened then--well mysteriously for some completely unknown reason, a war kicked off in The Ukraine, throwing up a threat to European borders and surprise, surprise, renewed tension between the western powers and Russia. Mmm, I wonder if those are connected? Well let me give you a hint there, these sums are a little out of date but they serve to illuminate the subject. In 2011 the annual cost to the UK of the deployment on German soil was in excess of £2 billion annually. The estimated benefit to the German economy from household expenditure alone, was also in excess of £2 billion annually. Now factor in the cost to the German economy if they were to make up withdrawal of British troops with their own forces. And none of this expenditure, takes into consideration the cost of Trident. I'm thinking we're talking of a sum in the range of 10's of billions annually, imagine the German tax payer waking up to that. You think they're gonna be quite so happy to keep those BMW's on the roads of California and Massachusetts, when they're working for half the take home pay?

Ah you say, but Trident, it's for the defence of Britain, oh really you know what the flight time of Trident missile is? No you don't, nobody does it's a secret, I got my estimate by examining the flight time of Alan Shepard's Mercury flight and extending it with a 50% error. Following that method I get 15 minutes plus 7 1/2, which is 22 1/2 minutes, which by an astonishing coincidence is just 30 seconds longer than most published estimates. Now I don't know about you but if I were a Russian leader, I'd take that threat very seriously. And yet Britain maintains this nuclear armed fleet as a deterrent for what exactly? Oh right, invasion from the Russians because that's gonna happens some time soon isn't it? That march across Poland and the Baltic states, the relentless hordes pillaging through Germany, then trampling over France until they reach the coast. Finally, as they gather their forces for the final assault, their goal in sight, as they peer through their binoculars, focused beadily on the white cliffs of England. Yeah that sounds perfectly realistic.

Nope, what I think Trident is for, is to deter any incursion on mainland Europe. Originally to protect the German border from a quite credible threat, now extended to cover Poland and other territories, from a not quite so credible threat. So why exactly is the British tax payer, paying to protect Germany and Poland? Why indeed, why would a sovereign government give up enviable global trade relationships to narrow its trade relations with its recalcitrant continental neighbours, could the two facts be related in some way? And indeed they are, or least that's what I conclude because with Britain tied to Europe for trade, it means that Britain is invested in the defence of Europe in a very intimate fashion. Now does the fuss Brexit caused start to make sense, is it apparent why the most vitriolic reaction came from quarters, that you would expect had little invested in the outcome? Does it suggest a motive for Owen Smith's statement on Trident?

So what's gonna happen, are they going to renew Trident?  I think probably not if the Brexiteers have their way but I think also, there will be some equivocation, some kind of deal to obscure intent. After all, there are other players in this game and we've seen what happens abroad, in those nations that displease too frequently.