day2

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40119562007-07-12T15:04:55.650+01:00day2 DRAWING and COMICSMikeBlogger448125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-31465540559630004902007-07-12T14:26:00.000+01:002007-07-12T15:04:55.679+01:00DISAPPEARANCE ALERT! I'm packing my bags: I will h...DISAPPEARANCE ALERT! I'm packing my bags: I will happily send new comics pages to anyone who asks (e-mail pwis@lycos.co.uk) ...Thanks for all the supportiveness and amusing/sardonic comments from everybody, especially all at Cinestatic, and especio-specially Mr. Forrest (you can pull the plug whenever you like, Mike!) Bye, PetePetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-85744025782530222222007-06-26T18:22:00.000+01:002007-06-26T18:26:27.574+01:00Okay, this is really ffuukkdd... but I love to bas...Okay, this is really ffuukkdd... but I love to bash my head against a wall... No, I don't know how long it'll take me to put this page right!!!Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-7014701216838247162007-05-31T13:04:00.000+01:002007-05-31T13:05:54.009+01:00Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-27960956679670604502007-05-24T11:22:00.000+01:002007-05-24T11:23:47.629+01:00PHEW! PHEW! Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-44591090896134820502007-05-14T14:26:00.000+01:002007-05-14T14:27:20.635+01:00Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-91180576061833149142007-05-08T14:31:00.000+01:002007-05-08T14:34:13.887+01:00Right, back on it, two years to go... Right, back on it, two years to go... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-72030936189269624792007-04-30T14:21:00.000+01:002007-04-30T14:25:45.349+01:00Here are all 5 pages of SILAS PLANKTON... Here are all 5 pages of SILAS PLANKTON... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1174815774581879562007-03-25T11:37:00.000+01:002007-03-25T11:42:54.596+01:00music music Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1173692356210947042007-03-12T10:37:00.000Z2007-03-12T10:39:16.226ZOkay, here are all three pages of 'our pigeon'... ...Okay, here are all three pages of 'our pigeon'... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1173101518891726142007-03-05T13:25:00.000Z2007-03-05T13:31:58.906ZPage 3 of 'our pigeon' is on the way, but Friday w...Page 3 of 'our pigeon' is on the way, but Friday was a day for being outside so this is from my most portable sketchbook: Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1171286263333643742007-02-12T13:16:00.000Z2007-02-12T13:17:43.356ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1170685778978194412007-02-05T14:27:00.000Z2007-02-05T14:29:38.996ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1170249364219286402007-01-31T13:12:00.000Z2007-01-31T13:16:04.236Z ...and... ...and... Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1169471672904686282007-01-22T13:09:00.000Z2007-01-22T13:14:32.920ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1168866935831171202007-01-15T13:12:00.000Z2007-01-15T13:15:35.850ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1168260912320235582007-01-08T12:53:00.000Z2007-01-08T12:55:12.340Z [I shouldn't BE here!] [I shouldn't BE here!]Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1167743381777617962007-01-02T13:07:00.000Z2007-01-02T13:09:41.796ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1167304145243867042006-12-28T11:07:00.000Z2006-12-28T11:09:05.260ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1166447143703947002006-12-18T13:01:00.000Z2006-12-18T13:05:43.720Z ...and that's very most probably likely it until ... ...and that's very most probably likely it until next year...Petetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1165843058537414622006-12-11T13:16:00.000Z2006-12-11T13:17:38.556ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1165242868696014572006-12-04T14:33:00.000Z2006-12-04T14:34:28.723ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1164719153724263092006-11-28T13:02:00.000Z2006-11-28T13:05:53.886ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1164042672609751682006-11-20T17:09:00.000Z2006-11-20T17:11:12.670ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1163514634017341522006-11-14T14:27:00.000Z2006-11-14T14:30:34.036ZPetetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011956.post-1162231571433842182006-10-30T18:04:00.000Z2006-10-30T18:06:11.450ZPete

infinite thought

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66869952008-07-23T13:15:20.455Zinfinite thØughtithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comBlogger893125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-62232608133074125802008-07-23T11:40:00.003Z2008-07-23T13:15:20.470Zwomen and work<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/womenjobs-730488.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/womenjobs-730456.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />There is a great link on <A href="http://pervegalit.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/ugh/">Perverse Egalitarianism</a> concerning women and the economy. Nicole rightly states: 'I'm insulted. It took them ten years to figure out that women would drop out of the work force for the same reason as men?!?!?'<br /><br />From the NYT article she cites 'Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy':<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">...the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.<br /><br />When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.<br /><br />But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follows the women’s story through the end of 2007.<br /><br />After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/womenwork-750859.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/womenwork-750855.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />One of the main factors cited by feminists and egalitarianists everywhere in favour of the 'still some way to go' argument is the disparity between men and women's pay for the same job, and women's heavy presence in part-time and badly-paid jobs (regardless of whether they have children or not - which argument always assumes the primary burden of care lies with women anyway, which is evil). <br /><br />Laura Kipnis, among others, has argued that this persistent pay disparity actually masks a greater economy horror story - that 'equity' can mean just being 'equally screwed over'. She points out in <i>The Female Thing</i> that men's wages stagnated or dropped during the same time that women's pay rose: 'In other words, women's wages are up to 80 percent of men's <i>because</i> male wages are down.' You see, it's <a href="http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/07/22/helpful-advice-from-fucking-americans/">even</a> <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-dont-they-simply-bring-back.html">more</a> <a href="http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-yer-bike.html">depressing</a> than you think!ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-4823953661774584972008-07-22T18:00:00.004Z2008-07-22T19:06:26.371Zkino fist: red space articles<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/spacestamp-745415.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/spacestamp-745406.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Kino Fist 'Red Space' articles are now up.<br /><br />Martin Gittins from <a href="http://newsfeed.kosmograd.com/">Kosmograd</a> on <a href="http://kinofist.blogspot.com/2008/07/road-to-stars.html">'The Road to the Stars'</a>.<br /><br />Robert Barry on <a href="http://kinofist.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-happened-to-future.html">what happened to the future?</a><br /><br />And IT on <a href="http://kinofist.blogspot.com/2008/07/when-earth-is-colonised-by-capital-what.html">when the earth is colonised by capital, what use is the cosmos?</a><br /><br />UPDATE: See also this <a href="http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/1302/lost-in-space.html">Fortean Times</a> article on Russia's missing cosmonauts, and Jeff tells us of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sun_of_the_Desert">'White Sun of the Desert'</a>, a curious Western which cosmonauts traditionally watch before entering space. <br /><br />The next Kino Fist, scheduled for September, will be on the theme of 'Apocalypse'. Films yet to be finalised, but if anyone would like to write on the general topic, let me know.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-77058480615129768452008-07-22T10:32:00.002Z2008-07-22T10:55:09.326Zhow much is that doggy in the institut für sozialforschung?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/barking-795221.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/barking-795179.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />'Anyone who knew anything about Horkheimer would have known that he was capable of howling like a dog; according to witnesses, he was as likely to display this disconcerting talent in the streets of Manhattan as at Frankfurt Central Station. Such behaviour was of course inconceivable in Adorno.' - Detlev Claussen, <i>Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius</i>, p, 221.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-68131891337669268552008-07-21T14:19:00.031Z2008-07-23T12:49:43.247Zinfinite alphabetsBecause I like making up games and their rules, and because I like alphabets, I have decided to start TWO new alphabet series to go along with the as-yet-unfinished photo/object series. One will be an alphabet of names, and the other will be an alphabet of anything-at-all. So if you want to read me on ANY name or topic of your choosing, send me an email (infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk) and I'll gradually fill in the blanks. Of course, it might be the case that no one wants to read me on anything at all, in which case I'll just fill them all in myself and no one will ever know, ha ha! I'll use first names in parenthesis alongside each request, but if you'd rather be anonymous let me know. I estimate it'll take me five months to get through both alphabets. <br /><br />UPDATE: Filling up fast! Thanks all. Hopefully the blanks are obvious enough. More suggestions needed!<br /><br />UPDATE 2: Blanks are filled in order of emails received. If there is crossover, the earliest suggestion will be taken.<br /><br />UPDATE 3: Refinement of rules! Topics/names covered extensively on IT will be removed in favour of topics/names that IT is unlikely to have written about before. To that end, more obvious topics will remain until bold until such time as replacements are found. If no replacements are found, the topic/name will remain.<br /><br />UPDATE 4: Further refinement of rules! Only one entry per alphabet per person. I will choose between them if offered multiple suggestions.<br /><br />UPDATE 5: It's getting hard to tell what's left. Here is a list:<br /><br />Concept: B, M, R,<br />Name: I, L, Y<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Concept........................................Name</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A </span>Autonymy (Alex)..........................Antoine de Saint Exupéry (Christopher)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">B</span> ..........Thomas Bernhard (Ben)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">C</span> Coprophagia (Carl)..Martin Creed (Jon)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">D</span> Dialectic (Bat).........Theodore Dalrymple (Jay)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">E</span> Ekphrasis (Jon)...........Ethelred the Unready (China)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">F</span> First Love (Andrew)...Flintstone, Fred (Andrew)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">G</span> Goth bands of the nineties, Wilhelm Reich's influence on (Roger)..Jean-Luc Godard (Alberto)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">H</span> Historical enquires pertaining to the accurate assessment of the height [in feet and inches] of the Virgin Mary (Martin)....Hector (Hector)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">I</span> Independence (Hector)...........................................<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">J</span> Jazz (Alberto)....Jonathan Meades (John)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">K</span> Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Owen)...Ernest Kahane (Marc)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">L</span> Love (Bobby)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">M</span> ......................Octave Mirbeau (Andy)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">N</span> Noddy and his relation to Marxism (David).......Vladimir Nabokov (Carl)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">O</span> Ogopogo (China).......José Ortega y Gasset (Bat)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">P</span> Participation (Mark).........................Perfect Pig (David)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Q</span> Qualia (Karim)....................Raymond Queneau (Dominic)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">R</span> .................................Richard (Richard)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">S</span> Sentimentality (Marc)........................Britney Spears (Roger)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">T</span> Theopoiesis (Jay)......John Tyndall (Martin)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">U</span> Utopia (Angus).....Midge Ure (Owen)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">V</span> Very Cold Weather (Brian)....Vy (Jeff)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">W</span> Women Surrealists (Andy)....Scott Walker (Brian) <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">X</span> xenodocheionology (Andrew)...Charles Francis Xavier (David)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Y</span> You (Zane)<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Z</span> Zoos: animal prisons or breeding grounds for dissent? (Martin)....Louis Zukofsky (Karim)ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-91991294478592454932008-07-21T07:32:00.001Z2008-07-21T07:58:48.439Zn is for nude<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-four-012-777275.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-four-012-776620.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />There's been a bit of slippage in the self-imposed rules of the object photography, and I fear I've fallen foul of Marcuse's critique of identifying the thing with its function:<br /><br />'The "thing identified with its function" is more real than the thing distinguished from its function, and the linguistic expression of this identification (in the functional noun, and in the many forms of syntactical abridgement) creates a basic vocabulary and syntax which stand in the way of differentiation,separation, and distinction. This language, which constantly imposes <i>images</i>, militates against the development and expression of <i>concepts</i>. In its immediacy and directness, it impedes conceptual thinking; thus, it impedes thinking. For the concept does <i>not</i> identify the thing and its function.' - Marcuse, <i>One Dimensional Man</i><br /><br />Ono! I've managed to impede thinking. Again. <br /><br />Anyway, this is a postcard of a nude woman reading a book. It manages to combine two of my representational interests, namely women reading and early pornography. She also has a lovely posterior. I bought the picture in Greenwich market. The gentleman who sold it to me told me that lots of people like to put old pictures of naked women in their toilets. I don't know how he knew that, and I don't know what the link between naked women and toilets is. Perhaps they are comforting in small, animally spaces.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-23636590324392193722008-07-20T23:08:00.001Z2008-07-20T23:10:20.703Zsecond correctiveFrom Roger:<br /><br />'Britain's higher ed institutions have a much different history than America's - and even now, American higher education is a triumph of America's secret social democracy. Since WWII, the state has poured money into higher education, partly through the huge military industrial complex, to reap a number of benefits - one of which, of course, is to absorb unemployed youth, always one of the big drivers behind education. Big colleges and a huge jail system both address that problem. As James Galbraith points out in the Predatory State (which I'm reviewing, so I can handily quote it), higher education in the U.S. consumes 2.75 percent of the GDP, which is about a percentage over the European norm. European nations, including the U.K., scandalously underresource higher education. It is a bit inexplicable to me - huge increases in h.e. would take care of millions of unemployed youths, who would be unemployed still, but we can pretend they aren't and they get to have more fun, too. If you want to create a docile generation of consumers, and who doesn't, build more universities. <br /><br />In the golden sixties and seventies, when the U.S. made a big effort to develop the kind of horrifying weapons and all the paraphernalia of warmongering at any price, money flowed like wine into the universities. There's a reason that the first encounter with LSD by most of the 'counter-culture' leaders - Keasy, Ginsburg, Robert Stone, Leary, etc., etc. - came under the aegis of one government grant or another - it was a very tiny tiny part of the money that went into every part of the academic system, from the humanities to psychology. The humanities was important in the cold war. You might not see why at first, but ... well, take something like anthropological field work among the Yanomami. That wouldn't seem of military importance, but when Napoleon Changnon first went there in the early sixties, he went there on a grant to collect blood. Why? Because the people in the AEC were getting a little freaked out by one of the results of testing nuclear weapons - everywhere they tested in the world, people had way elevated levels of an iodine isotope in their blood. The U.S. and Russia had accidentally performed the greatest experiment in history, since never before had there been a distribution of a radioactive isotope throughout the human race, once which nobody had before. Is that cool or what? A new chemical in the human system, with unknown potential effects. It was a big oopsy moment when this sunk in, and - contrary to myth - some people in the U.S. government were a little concerned that they may have given the world's population something that would make them chronically ill or even kill them. Call them softies, but that's the kind of responsible people they were. So that was why this young prof just off his PH.D dissertation was in the jungle of Venezuela, taking blood samples. Oh, and they turned out to have the isotope in their blood too. But you'd never know that from Changnon's writings, because he took advantage of the grant for his own purposes. All the academics did.'ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-12987333609194342152008-07-19T23:25:00.002Z2008-07-19T23:31:28.207ZcorrectiveIan Birchall sent me this very good email in response to my last post:<br /><br />'I saw this title on Lenin's Tomb, and followed the link, thinking "I was there". I have to say that Ms Millett's experiences bear little relation to mine in Britain. My memory of the 1970s is endless struggles against cuts imposed first by the Tories then even worse by Labour. What was happening was that an older world of academic "professionalism" was being replaced by a sort of proletarianisation. The older model of professionalism wasn’t very attractive - precious few new courses at all, and precious few syllabuses that went beyond 1914. At the first ATTI (forerunner of NATFHE/UCU) meeting I attended in about 1965 I mumbled something about trade unionism, and was promptly told “we are not a trade union – we do not engage in trade”.<br /><br />The positive side of proletarianisation was a rise in trade-union consciousness – we had some good strikes from 1969 onwards. The management's main aim was to improve productivity through something called "staff-student ratios". Sorry we didn't "try harder" – but really success didn’t depend on us; from 1968 to 1975 there was an upturn in working-class struggle, and academics were carried along. When that wave was smashed, by Labour’s social contract and then Thatcherism, the ability of academics to resist was minimal, though some of us did keep on kicking.<br /><br />I have every sympathy with your criticisms - when I see what is going on in higher education I am so glad to be out of it – it almost compensates for mental and physical decay. I have found intellectual work outside higher education far more rewarding than it ever was inside.<br /><br />So if you really want to get sacked good luck to you – though I suspect the holidays are still better than in other jobs. Pick your issue and cause a scandal that can produce a campaign. The only problem is if you win. [I had a friend once who took a job on a building site for a few weeks before going on holiday. He was sacked and the whole site struck in support of him. So he missed his holiday.]'ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-82220814196813316922008-07-18T10:25:00.004Z2008-07-18T11:18:37.437Zfor a 70s academia<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/sita-756055.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/sita-756036.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Recently I read Kate Millett's 1977 lesbian memoir-of-sorts <i>Sita</i>, which I purchased for 50p at the National Trust second-hand bookshop at Felbrigg Hall. Mainly I bought it because it was 50p at the National Trust second-hand bookshop at Felbrigg Hall. Because I am a fan of incongruity I found this amusing, although I do not generally find National Trust properties in the least bit amusing. In fact, I hate them, with their pointless over-staffing, their passive-aggressive instructions 'this way, please! [don't touch anything, you filthy pleb]', their lavender-scented chachki shops and the hordes of identikit middle-class, miserable bastards that hold their car-parking membership rights closer to their heart than their own children (er, probably).<br /><br />Anyway, what is most striking about this largely-forgotten memoir, as intense as all the highly-emotional sex is, is Ms Millett's relation to an academia that <span style="font-style:italic;">could not be more over</span>. When Millett moves from New York to California to be with Sita, post one nervous breakdown or another, she decides she'd quite like to teach a course at the university. She does, and then she doesn't. She gets it cancelled a week before term starts and then decides she'd actually like to do it after all, so it goes back up and she starts teaching. Reading this, you think, on the one hand, 'how nice! How wonderful it would be to teach a course on anything you like, just one, how much work you could put into it' and, on the other, 'what the hell?! What about all the course outcomes she was supposed to write months in advance? The year it takes to get a new course approved? The authorisation required to approve the assessment for the course?' <br /><br />It's amazing - most, if not all, of the reason Millett can have such a rich emotional life, to be such an <i>individual</i> is because she (or anyone else at the time, one assumes) didn't have to do all this bureaucratic stuff, to know all these pointless little rules about how someone does x or y. I realise, in a sense, that I have come <i>too late</i> to academia, that this creeping audit-culture and over-administration has been worming its way into Higher Education for years. It was probably happening when Millett wrote <i>Sita</i> too, though she was too busy being interesting to notice it. <br /><br />Still - academics - good God, couldn't you have tried a bit harder to stop this? It is a horrible truth that the ability to be a 'good academic' is basically now synonymous with being 'a good administrator', and perhaps there is a symbiosis between the kinds of techniques suited to certain kinds of research and the flashy, polyvalent grant-getting-media-friendly model of the desirable academic. The conformism of the diligent reader meets the conformism of the business-minded university worker. Where once reading and thinking might have been oppositional in their very practice, now they are merely colonised by the following kinds of imperative: 'what kind of grant can I get for this project?' 'what names can we get to attend the tie-in conference?' 'will the Times run a by-line on this if we make it sexy enough?' <br /><br />Ha! I am <i>so</i> going to get myself fired.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-30304278112463760282008-07-17T11:30:00.011Z2008-07-17T17:35:46.634Znil scrap value: silvertown[A photo-essay by IT and Owen. Pictures taken by IT yesterday]<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-002-784286.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-002-783716.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />We left on the Woolwich Ferry, one of three free boats named after a local Labour leader. We wondered whether the alcohol ban on London transport extended to the ferry, not that we wanted a drink at this time. Words written in tar greeted us at the exit on the North Woolwich side.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-005-715467.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-005-714544.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Unfortunately the Teleport did not live up to its enticing description.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-010-735633.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-010-734904.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Silvertown, and the Royal Docks it was built to serve, begins as London's unofficial zone. Because it was officially outside of the city boundary it took in all the noxious heavy industry which was no longer acceptable in the capital.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-015-772877.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-015-770951.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">'You took me behind/a disused railway line/and said 'I know a place where we can go, where we are not known'/and you gave me something that I won't forget too soon'</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-018-711327.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-018-710737.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />A grey scarf tied to the bridge over the disused railway speaks of a peculiar kind of loss.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-016-797905.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-016-796688.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-023-722307.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-023-721648.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />'...the Henley Arms has not been geographically blessed' according to one pub review website.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-025-746806.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-025-746099.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The railway bridge surprises with its dogged persistence. One could stand up here and watch the non-trains go past forever.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-028-754559.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-028-753164.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />A pagoda looms strangely by the side of the disused railway. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-034-761887.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-034-760544.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The sign was in better shape than the clinic.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-036-764847.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-036-764331.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The Silvertown rocket is not often mentioned in the official history of the British Space Programme. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-047-765834.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-047-765316.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Silvertown was one of the most heavily bombed areas of London. Graham Sutherland's paintings of blitzed East End streets were based on studies made in the area. It never fully repopulated after the war.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-058-757909.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-058-757218.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />We pondered for all while whether the bricks replaced windows, or whether newer bricks had replaced older ones. From a distance the warehouse looked almost transparent.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-061-770588.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-061-769906.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Rather unusually, the Tate &amp; Lyle factory still produces Golden Syrup. The image on the tin of a dead lion surrounded by bees refers to a Biblical riddle: 'out of the strong came forth sweetness'. The factory was mostly rebuilt in the 1950s, after Tate and Lyle had narrowly escaped nationalisation. The company were enthusiastic anti-nationalisation campaigners, and in the late 1940s all packets of sugar featured 'Mr Cube', a talking sugarlump who cautioned about the dangers of socialism. </span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-063-700214.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-063-799615.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This was once the Tate Institute, a social centre built for workers in the Tate &amp; Lyle complex: an example of how the sugar magnate pioneered the use of culture as a means of social control (see also: the Tate Gallery he founded several miles upriver at Pimlico). It's unclear what exactly the symbols on the second floor refer to. Rumours that the institute will be redesigned by Herzog and De Mueron as a daring brick and razorwire structure to be called 'Tate Silvertown' have proved to be unfounded.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-072-729483.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-072-728794.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Despite the best efforts of copious amounts of blue paint, 'Cundy's Tavern' closed earlier this year, apparently after the landlord illegally rented out the eleven rooms upstairs without a licence.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-073-753455.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-073-751974.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The Tate & Lyle Factory dominates the area both visually and olfactarily.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-093-796955.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-093-795162.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Simulacra pubs feature on the wall of the Brick Lane Music Hall, the only dedicated music hall left in the country.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-094-718217.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-094-717610.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />I'm sure Derren Brown has used the Music Hall in one of his shows. Indeed he has: filling the hall with masks on sticks, he disturbs a man into thinking he's a ventriloquist's dummy.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-099-725788.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-099-725076.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">'A hard punch right in the guts...imploded, savage inward raids into the heart's essence, an architectural imagination the size of Blake's. The church is the nearest thing to a mystic's revelation that London has.' (Ian Nairn, Nairn's London)</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-103-772283.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-103-771540.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />This lorry wears its GPS on its sleeve.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-104-793788.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-104-793219.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The Newsflash vans bring news to the informationally starved. They are stored just next door to the Music Hall.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-108-716019.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-108-715266.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-109-719180.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-109-718618.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-115-744453.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-115-743310.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Local re-enactments of scenes from <i>Crash</i> end in finely-tuned disaster.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-119-769275.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-119-768612.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Judging by the 0181 dialling code, Newham Council 'acquired' this site more than 10 years ago. Newham is one of the poorest boroughs in Britain, and has had at its disposal since the early 1980s a huge amount of derelict</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">land - the Royal Docks encompass an area the size of central London. This land, when leased to property developers, has since become a conference centre, the University of East London, many luxury developments and soon, the Olympics site. This will 'bring prosperity to the area'.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-121-789981.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-121-789427.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />You could call either of these countries if there was still a phone left in the box.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-123-708843.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-123-708233.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Georges Diner sits on the site of what will soon be Britain's biggest aquarium. It will be designed by the architect of the Mi6 Building and is to be named 'Biota!'</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-126-700963.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-126-700246.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The 'Graving Dock' Tavern looks very grave indeed. A graving dock is a dry dock where the hulls of ships are repaired and maintained.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-127-725896.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-127-725332.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The '01' number indicates that these submersible pump specialists might well be retired by now.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-129-752918.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-129-752386.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />This box on the lamppost is measuring something, though now I can't remember what it was. Air pollution, possibly.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-134-739815.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-134-739192.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />A 2-bedroom flat in Barrier Point will set you back £359,000. 'The detailing is very poor' says Owen.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-142-789080.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-142-788076.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-156-783276.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-156-782328.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Of all the things we see today, this image is the one for me that most indicates the apocalyptic nature of the current conjuncture. The recent theft of metals from public places (churches, schools) is a desperate realisation of both economic and material finitude. A bronze sculpture by Lynn Chadwick was recently stolen from my workplace, 'almost certainly' to be melted down for scrap. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-164-702664.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-164-701957.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Despite their centrality and magnificence, the Millennium Mills are almost impossible to capture. Although you can't see it here, some bastard car company has plastered a giant ad on the back of the building.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-176-724718.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-176-723955.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The Thames Barrier Park. Doug once described this place as the closest thing to Corbusier's <i>Ville Radieuse</i>. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-177-746975.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-177-745562.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The cafe here is wonderful, all the more so for its total isolation and complete emptiness. You can sit and stare at the Thames Barrier in all its alien beauty. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-184-769279.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-184-768731.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />An elderly couple sit on the wavy stone seats under this rectangular canopy.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-194-771020.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-194-770182.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />They've been among us since 1974.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-201-768442.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-201-767408.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-204-745716.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-204-745043.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The site of the Silvertown explosion is wasteland, 90 years later. </span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-207-771050.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-207-770288.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />I have no idea what this is.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-216-788355.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-216-787649.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />A memorial to those who died in the Silvertown explosion.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-217-792086.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-217-791513.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />'At 6.52, there was no chemical works'.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-222-721478.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-222-720131.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The green on this ragged factory was discussed, briefly.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-224-789406.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-224-788876.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Kierbeck are the largest independent fabricator of cut and bent prefabricated steel reinforcement supplying the UK construction industry.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-230-708106.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-230-707564.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />I don't know what this little zebra strip does. It was attached to one of the concrete pillars supporting the DLR track.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-233-731095.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-233-730398.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Reinforcement EXPRESSED!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-236-797140.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-236-796589.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-237-790274.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-237-789213.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Iron Mountain specialise in off-site data protection. If everyone gets blown up in Canary Wharf, company records will all be safe here. One of my students once did a project on the company. She informed me that their data storage site here is the most surveilled area of land in the country. Given that we are the most surveilled country in the world, that would make this location very well-watched indeed. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-238-707875.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-238-707316.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />SunChemical trucks overlook Lyle Park. Here we watch a group of young cadets being taught how to erect a tent, and three young boys play football in the background. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-243-721910.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-243-721231.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The varnish factory appears to be set in some kind of rural idyll. The stench is unbearable. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-248-726755.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-248-726037.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />A picturesque for the 21st century.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-256-715785.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-256-715233.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a>#<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-262-726401.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-262-725651.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />This free-standing gate bears the legend 'Harland and Wolff'. These were originally the entrance gates to Harland & Wolff Ltd, ship builders, ship repairers and engineers, which opened in 1924 and closed in 1972. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-269-713354.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-269-712357.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-281-768838.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-281-768137.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />The flag assures us that there are many business opportunities to be had in the area.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-296-777813.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-296-777055.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />We speculate that someone tried to steal the wire fence. More 'nil scrap value' signs may be appearing presently.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-303-743671.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-303-742807.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The main reason for the closure of the London Docks was Containerisation, which made the large workforces of the docks obsolete. Instead, the boxes are collected by the automated port at Tilbury. Within Trinity Buoy Wharf is 'Container City', where the boxes that decimated the London working class become a fun and imaginative urban living solution for young creatives.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-305-744987.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-305-744257.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br />Nobody tells me what I can and can't photograph.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-306-755171.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-three-306-754164.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This luxury development abuts Robin Hood Gardens, which is scheduled for demolition and replacement with a 30 storey tower. Any similarities to East German Plattenbau are purely coincidental.</span>ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-79699883343971011912008-07-17T07:19:00.004Z2008-07-18T10:09:24.316Zpc papa<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/popecop-708378.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/popecop-708361.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I think Foucault might have liked this picture in a kind of 'see, I told you so' kind of way.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-85425237036735045392008-07-16T12:14:00.001Z2008-07-17T00:27:20.465Zm is for monkey (educated)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-two-005-729193.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-two-005-728657.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><i>"CONSUL", THE EDUCATED MONKEY</i> <br /><br />Again, like seemingly all of my objects, this one is broken. The maths monkey's left foot has come unhinged and is now basically useless as a calculating device. Not that I ever used him for that anyway. <br /><br />I used to write a lot more about monkeys, didn't I? For a while naked mole rats, monkeys and pigs vied for my affections as favourite beast. The pigs won it, with their vast unblinking intransigence. One day I'll explain in great detail 'why pigs', but not now, not now. So what about the monkey? I bought him in a museum shop in Berlin, I think. There was an exhibition about robots. One of them gave me a pen. It was strangely exciting.<br /><br />I like the educated monkey. He wears a suit, he does maths and his tail forms part of the simple mechanism. There's this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7lWMSHJGY">video</a> that reminds me of the educated monkey ('monkeys whose brains have evolved to such an unmanageable size that it's pretty much impossible for them to stay happy for any length of time'). Although I am not keen on biology, or living things as such, I enjoy thinking about our partaking in the animal kingdom, and how upsetting this is for (almost) everyone. I also like taxonomy, and the drive to taxonomise, which does seem like a strange way for any animal to spend its time. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />regio <br />regnum <br />phylum <br />classis <br />ordo <br />familia <br />genus <br />species </span>ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-46373965628477216002008-07-16T10:28:00.003Z2008-07-16T10:41:04.447Zthe mathematics of novelty<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/sgcover-747339.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/sgcover-747336.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.re-press.org/content/view/42/38/">Sam's book</a> is out. It's also available as a <a href="http://www.re-press.org/book-files/OA_Version_9780980305241_Gillespie.pdf">pdf</a> from the wonderful people at re.press, as part of their Open Access project. The appearance of Sam's book owes almost everything to Sigi J&ouml;ttkandt, who has worked tirelessly to ensure that Sam's work gets the recognition it deserves.<br /><br />It'll be five years this August since Sam died. Simply - I miss him.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-86910487782698813902008-07-15T20:46:00.003Z2008-07-17T10:49:13.151Zkino fist: red space<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/redspacecover0001-715299.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/redspacecover0001-715214.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Sunday 2pm for c. 2.30 start, <A href="http://www.eventnetwork.org.uk/">E:vent Gallery</a>, Bethnal Green, £2 for films and magazine.<br /><br />Short: 'Inter-Planetary Revolution' (1924)<br />Long: <span style="font-style:italic;">Aelita </span>(1924)<br />.................................<br />Short: 'Ajapeegel' by Jeremy Millar (2008)<br />Long: <span style="font-style:italic;">Red Planet Mars</span> (1952)ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-70416771051031509292008-07-14T19:33:00.003Z2008-07-14T21:42:31.382Zl is for light<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-one-173-716536.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/july-one-173-715870.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Now this one really is bad, but being an occasional fan of self-referentiality, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of one of the lights I fixed up for the lightbox. The use of only one light explains the shadow on the left side...<br /><br />Despite being a fully paid-up member of the 'external world...what's that?' club, I am nevertheless quite handy at building things, fixing things and hanging out in DIY warehouses. I even have powertools. In the past couple of months I have fixed a record player using a rubber band, unblocked a sink and put these 500w security lights together, which included cutting and stripping cable and wiring plugs. I'm like a poster-girl for <span style="font-style:italic;">proper </span>feminism, ha ha ha. And I can't cook! Pass the jack-hammer and call me Rosie the Riveter... <br /><br />I originally wanted proper work lights for the lightbox, but they use a voltage far too great for domestic electricity, and would have required a transformer which would have cost £70. So I bought these £8 security lights instead and put them on their 12 minute setting so I don't have to keep waving anything in front of them. They are clearly very much not designed for indoors usage and they get unbelievably hot, so I rest them against little wooden boxes I also designed for the task (this is thrilling, isn't it?). <br /><br />On the topic of referentiality, I used to have a big thing for Nabokov's <i>Pale Fire</i>. I learned the first two lines by heart, but turns out Carl learned four.<br /><br /><i>I was the shadow of the waxwing slain<br />By the false azure in the windowpane;<br />I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I<br />Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.</i> <br /><br />I probably would still like Nabokov if I could get round to reading it again. Because I am currently feeling, how shall I put, <i>a bit fragile</i>, I have returned to a certain kind of novel. That is to say, the oversexed-middle-aged-American-male-writer. It used to be Updike, now it is Roth. This has absolutely nothing to do with the light, I realise, but the whole object series has moved rather unevenly between thing and concept anyway. I've got to get some sleep: last night I dreamt I was <span style="font-style:italic;">trying </span>to get to sleep in a dark cave which harboured a giant monster. One shouldn't dream of trying to get to sleep, it seems counter-productive. Nor of giant monsters, for that matter.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-80672410382128736542008-07-14T08:35:00.005Z2008-07-14T09:13:20.315Zwe do napoleonStephen Bayley in yesterday's <a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/architecture/story/0,,2290605,00.html">Observer</a> writes:<br /><br />'Academies must respect key stage testing, but do not have to follow the national curriculum. This ventilates both the style of teaching and the plan of the building. The way it was explained to me was: we don't do French language and history, we do 'Napoleon'. This way, pupils learn about motivational leadership and acquire French language and history at the same time.'<br /><br />and:<br /><br />'The cant expression is: education must be competence-based, not subject-based'<br /><br />Ventilates? Motivational leadership with a smattering of French and history on the side? Why not just fit all students with USB ports in the back of their heads so they can download ideology directly to their cerebral cortex? <br /><br />The contemporary rhetoric of 'competence', well analysed by Virno in particular, demonstrates that education well understands that its role must be purely formal, and must avoid engaging the subjective will of its pupil under any circumstance: keeping the communicative, linguistic and numerical capacities ticking over, but for God's sake, don't put anything in there - what if they start making comparisons between the past and the present? The present and the future? The 'competencies' they're supposed to possess and the structure of the job market? <br /><br />It occurs to me that we may seriously and increasingly need to turn to well-organised extra-curricular forms of education, using Illich's basic model of the learning network. Reading groups, discussion groups, free history classes, I don't know - anything, anything. The isolated reader is a start, of course, but not enough: communication itself must be reclaimed from its repetitious exploitation in business-speak, call centres and rote conversation.<br /><br />The future of education increasingly resembles the factory-line producing cans of nothing - 6,000 students on a single course called perhaps 'Studies Studies', sponsored by McDonalds, Blue Arrow and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. They could then take their cut: top 'Studies Studies' students could work in the city, middle 'Studies Studies' students could do clerical agency work and lower-end 'Studies Studies' students could bear the brunt of customer ire in the fast-food joints of our miserable cities. Everyone will feel terrible, but never work out why, and the end of history will plough mindlessly on until there is no longer anything to say.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-68695370724000998422008-07-12T07:20:00.012Z2008-07-12T12:45:46.124Zivan illich's internets, blogs, arrogance, women & c.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/dsoc-767999.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/dsoc-767996.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><i>Good, radical stuff! Now there's a cover blurb...something to aspire to, I think</i><br /><br />[warning, unusually long and rather blog-introverted post follows. Shorter, less navel-gazing posts in the (fibre-optic) pipeline, hopefully]<br /><br />I recently re-read Illich's <i><a href="http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html">Deschooling Society</a></i>, which is the very model of a short, focussed polemic, were one to be interested in such things (oh, and I am, how I am). Illich suggests, among other things, that the 'hidden curriculum' of schools instils in pupils the faulty belief that increased production will provide a better life. Hard to shake, this mind virus, the one that would rather see a factory producing cans of nothing, forever, than people frolicking in the fields. I've always been interested in arguments that the structure and segregation of subjects in the curriculum maps on to forms of alienation in working life (9am maths, 10am English....2pm sorting tins, 3pm packing tins). But it's clear that an increasing polyvalency in working life (social <span style="font-style:italic;">and </span>physical capacities, affective <span style="font-style:italic;">and </span>repetitive labour, the working day <span style="font-style:italic;">and </span>the working night) might require more general kinds of courses - and, in fact, with cuts in smaller modules this is exactly where universities (not sure about schools) are heading: giant, compulsory courses that cover everything and nothing in 12 weeks. More specific topics, ones that aren't 'cross-listable' enough, are cut, despite their past success or inherent interest. But one must be cautious: it is overly paranoid to assume government and universities know what they're doing, of course, as if all academic qualifications are a mere cynical template for the requirements of the job market. In fact, it's quite clear that there's a massive gap between what universities are doing and what companies want - that's why businesses are always complaining that graduates are not up to scratch and universities are running around like headless bureaucrats sending each other on business secondments to see how offices 'really run'. <br /><br />Illich has several fine ideas, one of which prefigures the internet (or at least a certain kind of use of the internet): <br /><br />'I will use the words "opportunity web" for "network" to designate specific ways to provide access to each of four sets of resources. "Network" is often used, unfortunately, to designate the channels reserved to material selected by others for indoctrination, instruction, and entertainment. But it can also be used for the telephone or the postal service, which are primarily accessible to individuals who want to send messages to one another.'<br /><br />If someone wanted to discuss an article, a book, a theorem or even simply a word, they could enter their interest and details onto a database and make matches. Illich conceives of these meetings taking place in coffee shops during lunch-breaks or after work, but it's clear that the internet goes further than this, by allowing the discussion to take place in the very domain in which the initial desire is announced. Blogs remove the need for meetings, although in the past four years I've in fact met a significant number of bloggers which was both unexpected when I started out and <span style="font-style:italic;">in every single case</span>, a real joy. Of how many other encounters can one say that?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/pigpc-738638.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/pigpc-738548.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><i>IT filtering comments in the days when she had them</i><br /><br />I occasionally get asked why I don't have comments any more. It would be good, and in the past they were only really plagued by one or two irritating bastards (someone keen to constantly accuse me of 'immaturity' and the odd disturbing sex thing). But I suspect that, unlike perhaps Owen or Dominic, who have loyal commentators keen to discuss the details of post-war architecture or contemporary poetry, I get a relatively wide (well, wide for a blog that attempts to fuse philosophy, pigs and frivolity in a black-yet-light melange of excessive hyphen-use and oddly mixed metaphors) range of readers, keen to disagree with each other as much as me. I just couldn't keep up with it. There is also the woman thing, which I suppose must bother the unhappy occasional man in some unspecifiable way, but I don't know. <br /><br />I originally planned to write <i>sans bits</i>, hence the generic (if <span style="font-style:italic;">terrible</span>) blog name, but it became increasingly difficult to pretend that I wasn't actually a really existing person who also wrote really existing other things in the really existing world, so there seemed no point in not occasionally mentioning it, if it was relevant. I'm still ambivalent about women bloggers making a big song and dance about it, putting 'girl' or 'bitch' or 'woman' in their blog names, as if this was the most interesting thing about them, but, well, as long as they don't witter on about how much better chocolate is than thinking, I suppose it's fine.<br /><br />There are have been a couple of interesting posts about attacks on blogs lately. Is a war being waged on them in America? Adam's post on <a href="http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/2008/07/arrogance.html">arrogance</a> is excellent, and gives an answer to the woman blogger question: 'The very act of stepping into the public square, the very demonstration of even the most minimal degree of self-assurance, is an unpardonable sin. We must all be humble agnostics - so it's no wonder that woman bloggers are subjected to greater harassment and vilification, given cultural expectations of female passivity.'<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/arrogant-727271.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/arrogant-727269.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Perhaps it is this. Certainly, when I have fought with people about things I've written in the past the 'arrogance' claim has reared its head: I've been accused of trying to influence what people think (if only!), of speaking 'out of turn', that old thing. Who deserves to write? The vexed question of confidence and social position rears its head again and again in the blogmos - the debates about class last summer proved what an explosive topic that was - newspaper columnists sneer at the uppity little bloggers, but it's hard not to see this as a burgeoning sense of insecurity. There are many people out there who write well and didn't get the 'job' because of who their daddy was or who they went to school with. And they're doing it for free: bloggers are undercutting the labour of those whose very linguistic persona depends upon thinking that they are one of the only people who could do this job, that their little anecdotes and reflections are inherently more interesting than those of anyone else. I've said it many times before: bloggers are the anti-columnists.<br /><br />There's a faintly related discussion at <a href="http://keithgessen.tumblr.com/post/40752965/writers-and-the-underground#disqus_thread">Keith Gessen</a>'s site about the literary 'underground' which says this: <br /><br />'There are a couple of writers in every generation who go straight from being hot-shots at their college literary magazine to a staff job at the New Yorker or a book deal with Random House. Updike did this. Jonathan Safran Foer, in my generation, did it. Everyone else—and I really mean everyone else—has to go out into a world that doesn't give a shit.'<br /><br />I suspect the stakes are much higher in the US, where a book placement in, say, Barnes & Noble means an extremely geographically diverse and a very large potential audience, and living on nothing but your own authenticity would be very much harder than here (for various reasons). Helen DeWitt (of <a href="http://www.paperpools.blogspot.com/">Paperpools</a>) in the comments wonders if blogs like mine, k-punk and Owen might constitute a kind of underground without the overheads of print, although we might not meet Gessen's criteria as 'they've published in a wide range of journals'. It's an interesting point and a critical one too, reminding me of something Carl once said, that he was surprised that we would want to be published in mainstream magazines. Why, he asked, weren't we setting up our own magazines and publishing ventures (hey, there's always Kino Fist...)? This would certainly seem to be more in keeping with the blog ethos, whereby you can write more or less without any of the classical restraints: word-length, tone of the publication, slander laws (well...). I think Carl is right, there is something weird about it, wanting to be asked to write for a world that might like something about your style, but wouldn't want to have much to do with the thrust of your meaning, or your politics, or your real desires. I can only say that perhaps I am a kind of coward, and that the sense of approval one gets from being asked to write for something is hard to give up on. I wonder though, if this is a terrible path to travel down, that there could never be enough approval in the world for something so fundamentally laced with insecurity (I'll never be able to write well again! This piece is shit! Why didn't I get asked! I could have done that better...or could I?). The radical gesture would be to refuse all writing that wasn't on our own terms: just the blog and the magazine. Of course, I'd be in danger of losing my teaching job if I didn't publish in academic journals, but perhaps this is something I should be facing up to anyway...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/demoschool-748997.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/demoschool-748992.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><i>A demolished school, yesterday</i><br /><br />Anyway, Illich. I spend a lot of time reading material that argues me out of a job, which is probably a bit perverse (do scientists sit around reading Irigaray? Do pig farmers spend their free time reading Vegetarian Society literature?). The Foucault-reading surgeon who once talked to me about the society of control while I sat in an arseless-gown awaiting surgery was probably an exception. I hope. Anyway, Illich makes this rather acute point:<br /><br />'Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets.'<br /><br />I think something like this is at the heart of all those student crushes - the lecturer knows something about a subject that I love, I must get closer to it! It is an eminently dangerous fantasy, this one, that there is a hidden kernel of knowledge that could be unlocked if only one had the right key. If blogs prove anything it might be this: that there is no secret. There are things one can learn about, given time and will, and there are people who have the skills to teach them, but there is no necessary relation of hierarchy (you could teach me how to make a box using dovetail joints and I could tell you how to make a roast dinner - well, I couldn't actually, but you get my point). The planning of educational institutions must begin, llich argues, not with the question, '"What should someone learn?" but with the question, "What kinds of things and people might learners want to be in contact with in order to learn?"' Ranciere takes this abolition of mastery even further when he argues (in <i>The Ignorant Schoolmaster</i>) that one can learn together something that one knows nothing about: '[Jacotot] proclaimed that one could teach what one didn't know, and that a poor and ignorant father could, if he was emancipated, conduct the education of his children, without the aid of any master explicator. And he indicated the way of that "universal teaching! - <i>to learn something and to relate it to all the rest by this principle: all men have equal intelligence.'</i> Gender pronouns aside, this is obviously right, and good, and true.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-46247355340469411982008-07-09T14:36:00.007Z2008-07-10T09:20:35.011Zbaby boomers[This blog has taken on a rather personal tone lately. I'm not really sure why.]<br /><br />I like my parents a lot. They're both perky and interesting and funny. Unlike most people, I don't even mind the idea of them having sex. In fact, I think it would be quite sweet for them to have lots of sex as they really do just <i>get on</i>, so <span style="font-style:italic;">getting it on</span> would be only appropriate. <br /><br />My parents are, in many ways, classic baby boomers. My Ma was the first in her family to go to university (a 2:2 in geography from Swansea), and resisted the expectation to return home afterwards to work on her own in Cardiff and Bristol. For some reason, she ended up working for companies that deal with cream, cheese and yoghurt, despite the fact that she is incredibly allergic to cows milk. My brother and I spent the summers working in the local cream factory whilst Ma worked in the office. The thought of the smell of all that cream churning in giant vats (jarred clotted cream prepared for export), the horrible hot stench of it...well, I can't think about it for too long. I was rather a good factory worker, though, far better than my brother, who used to routinely drop the thin glass jars we had to fill, cap, pack and label. The problem with production lines, even if they move you around every two hours, is the way the repetition of the external process induces second, interior repetition of thought. Say if a bad thought comes to mind - a jealous memory, a social guilt, a minor anxiety - you end up having the thought again and again, without change. The machine really does dream through you, but the dream is usually a nightmare. <br /><br />Anyway, so Ma and Pa. They work very hard (my father is an NHS dentist who sees 40 patients a day. The private dentist in the town sees, on average, seven). They are not theoretical people, nor are they particularly political people. They don't really need to be because they are basically socially-minded and fair without having to read books about it - that's my job, hmm. One thing they are that I am not, though, is extremely pragmatic. They just love organising things, fixing things, doing projects and tasks and generally running around being active - my Pa's favourite mode of relaxation is to go cross-country running in the dark. He returns covered in scratches and cuts. It's a bit strange.<br /><br />So, pragmatism. I'm eating dinner with them the other night. They get a call from the hospital - my Gran's there again. She got confused and pressed a fire alarm. Someone comes and she can't speak. It's probably another little mini-stroke. My parents are used to this by now: it's the kind of thing that happens a lot to them and their friends, these doddery, unhappy, isolated parents drifting on forever and ever. The conversation turns to age. I say something like 'Your generation is richer than any before or after it. You are much more successful than your parents' generation, and it's unlikely that our generation will ever be as well-off as you were.' My parents agree. 'Yes, we were very lucky'. They were, weren't they, these post-war pioneers: grants for study, jobs to pick from, houses they could afford to buy and probably most all, a sense that they were doing this all themselves, this strange combination of historical good fortune and existential determination. <br /><br />They tell me they don't want to end up like their parents, nor do they want to ask my brother and I for any help when they get old. 'So what,' I say 'you've made a suicide pact?!' 'Don't call it suicide, that has the wrong connotations,' my Ma replies. 'Eh?' I say. I'm confused - they explain. 'We've discussed it with our friends. We don't want to give up on the good things, so we're all going to make living wills.' This sounds a bit like the thing people say, usually in black jest: 'oh, just switch off the machine!' But I'm impressed that they've gone so far. And so pragmatic. And so sure that death is whatever they think it is - a simple termination that bookends a hard-working life. I'm a bit rattled too though, as this sounds like it could be a kind of mini-Jonestown in Wiltshire, a revolutionary suicide of the rural middle classes. I wonder what Ballard would make of it. <br /><br />'Are you sure?' I ask them. They really are. Not for them the nursing home, the slow and sorry curses and regrets of a prolonged dotage. They laugh at the fact that they now have free bus passes, though there aren't very many buses where they live to use them on. I don't want to ask them at what point the decision would be made, what diagnosis or prognosis would occasion such finality. It's not clear. All they know is that when quality slips into quantity, they want no more part of it. We drink more wine and watch <i>Father Ted</i>.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-49209040667499582442008-07-08T23:12:00.005Z2008-07-08T23:35:39.058Zamongst the norfolkWent to visit ma and pa infinite in the flatlands briefly - they don't live there, they were just on holiday. All the houses are made of some sort of brittle pebble shoved at 90 degrees into concrete, to make walls. All the cows look like seals. People eat some kind of seaweed called samphire. Edgar says in <i>King Lear</i>:<br /><br /><i>Come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. How fearful <br />And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! <br />The crows and choughs that wing the midway air <br />Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down <br />Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!</i><br /><br />Shakespeare is f%^&ing good, isn't he? I think this a lot lately. I mean, it's not like he's some obscure, overlooked writer in need of bigging up. But still, yay for iambic pentameters and really well-written soliloquies. Related: In a bookshop today, there was a section entitled 'country matters'. Funny, practical <i>and</i> rude - everything I like at once. A-heh heh heh heh heh heh.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-967812291280552492008-07-05T06:32:00.001Z2008-07-05T08:49:09.206Zk is for kapital<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-eleven-007-751851.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-eleven-007-751305.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />[my collection of small change in piratey-type box, taken at a really rubbish angle. Obviously 'kapital' is not necessarily best <span style="font-style:italic;">represented </span>by money, but you know, the first form of 'the appearance of capital is money' as Karl notes in er, <i>Kapital</i><span style="font-style:italic;"></span>. Plus I couldn't find anything else to fit in the light-box].<br /><br />Discussing money is like talking about dreams; nauseating and boring in equal measures, because, on many levels, rather important. The very material consequences of the real abstractions of money (and dreams) conflict with our self-perception and those of people around us: 'I am not the number represented by my bank balance, I am a free man!' The way money both allows you to do certain things and prevents you from doing others forces us to become certain kinds of people. There is no existentialism here, or only for the very rich, who can of course be whoever they want. It's a shame that they almost always choose to be totally disgusting.<br /><br />At the age of nearly 30, I have never had more than £600 positive money. Like everyone else, I live in my overdraft, have credit card debt, owe my Ma several hundred pounds and own nothing of a value above £300 (so, probably not worth stealing anything from me). Since the age of 18 I have spent between 25% and 40% of my income on rent every month, and I can't imagine ever owning any of the following things: property, a car, furniture. I spend my income on bills, eating out, drinks, books, other people and the odd vintage dress. I live slightly beyond my means and I never save anything. How very 21st century!<br /><br />If I ever did have any significant capital, I'd pay off my debts and that of all my crew, and set up a publishing company. I suspect that about 80% of my friends would give the same answer. Perhaps I will run a 'what would you spend a million quid on competition'. The prize could be the piratey box!ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-24841390767785692192008-07-04T12:04:00.001Z2008-07-04T12:07:34.467Z<a href="http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/51286/Untitled" title="Wordle: Untitled"><img src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/51286/Untitled" style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://wordle.net/">wordle</a> is fun. Thanks Dominic.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-8973129910037011882008-07-04T11:38:00.004Z2008-07-04T11:41:48.385Znu-language watchOf all the many stupid, irritating pieces of nu-language in the academy, the phrase 'speak to' (or, sometimes, 'talk to'), as in, 'I'll speak to this document in a moment' is enjoying a particular prominence at the moment. You can speak to a piece of paper all you like, but it's unlikely to ever give you a useful response.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-25161279912243051642008-07-03T16:38:00.004Z2008-07-03T16:47:37.408Zkino fist: red space<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/rpm-738727.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/rpm-737673.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The next Kino Fist will be on the theme of RED SPACE, and will be held at 2pm, 20th July, in the <a href="http://www.eventnetwork.org.uk/about/visiting">E:vent Gallery</a>, 96 Teesdale Street, Bethnal Green, London E2 6PU. The films we will be showing are: as the cartoon, Khodataev & Kollektiv's 1924 short <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSE14cMsDtY&eurl=http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/search?q=interstellar+revolution">Interplanetary Revolution</a>, as the main feature, Iakov Protazanov's Martian Constructivist-Trotskyist blockbuster <a href="http://blog.voyou.org/2007/08/12/101/#more-101">Aelita</a>, from the same year; and as our B-Movie, Harry Horner's magnificently ludicrous McCarthyite farrago <a href="http://www.conelrad.com/conelrad100/c100.php?id_num=71">Red Planet Mars</a>.<br /><br />Anyone who wants to contribute anything from 500 to 6000 [6000?! Owen, are you sure?!] words on the general themes of science fiction, cinema and socialism is encouraged to fling it in our direction to infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk, no later than 13th July. To get you started, here's China Mieville's <a href="http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/50socialist/full/">50 Fantasy and SF works every socialist should read</a>.<br /><br />By the way, Kino Fist are looking to start screening short non-commercial films before the main feature. If you would like to send us something you've made (no dead animals) for potential screening (preferably 20 minutes or shorter and related to the general themes that KF are into), then send an email to infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-80320108060733200762008-07-01T14:45:00.002Z2008-07-01T14:51:18.307Zthinking nothing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/thinkingnothing-750678.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/thinkingnothing-750672.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://parrhesiajournal.org/">PARRHESIA</a> - A Journal of Critical Philosophy and <a href="http://www.urbanomic.com/">COLLAPSE</a> - Journal of Philosophical Research and Development present a one day symposium:<br />THINKING NOTHING - the void and its resurgence in contemporary thought<br />From the emergence of empty set as a basis for ontology, to materialist negative theology, to Metzinger's 'nemocentric' destitution of the subject, contemporary thought seems to be obsessed with nothing. But the politics of this nothing seems drastically different from its earlier existentialist and postmodern nihilistic incarnations. This symposium seeks to explore the problem of nothing in contemporary thought, asking precisely how the postulation of an inherent negativity as a productive realm of philosophical discourse has come to characterise our intellectual landscape, and how the contemporary void relates to those of Ancient and Modern philosophical traditions.<br /><br />Speakers (TBC) to include:<br />Justin Clemens (University of Melbourne; Author of The Mundiad, Avoiding the Subject [with Dom Pettman], and coeditor/translator of Alain Badiou's Infinite Thought)<br />Ray Brassier (Middlesex University; Author of Nihil Unbound, Translator of Alain Badiou's Saint Paul)<br />John Sellars (University of the West of England; Author of The Stoics and The Art of Living)<br />Robin Mackay (Middlesex University; Editor of Collapse, Translator of Alain Badiou's Number and Numbers)<br />Iain Hamilton Grant (University of the West of England; Author of Philosophies of Nature After Schelling)<br /><br />Please contact Alex Murray (a.w.murray[at]exeter.co.uk) for further details or to register.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-34965144024385483002008-07-01T11:57:00.003Z2008-07-01T12:07:15.585Zwhy i really must finish my book on feminism part 9000'There has always been resistance to feminism - the backlash that Susan Faludi chronicled in her 1991 book of the same name. But there is also the satisfaction of arguments won, rights enshrined, respect ensured, the sense that the central feminist project - the fight for women to be treated as human beings, no more, no less - is inching along. In fact, reading a recent piece by US feminist writer, Katha Pollitt, headlined Backlash Spectacular and charting the ways in which North American culture is regressing on women's rights, I felt smug. Thank God that's not happening here, I thought, sinking into my seat and reaching for another chocolate.' (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/01/gender.women">Kira Cochrane</a> in today's <i>Guardian</i>)<br /><br />What is it with the f*&%ing chocolate? Do you think it's cute? Suggestive of a slightly naughty non-po-faced feminism of the most modern kind? Does chocolate constitute your very identity? If you could choose between chocolate and, say, the right to vote, how long would it take you to make up your mind?<br /><br />I noticed with a kind of resigned horror a new line of chocolates the other day. The following three images sum up the ideology of chocolate in the most obscene way:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/oral-pleasure_LRG-728737.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/oral-pleasure_LRG-728734.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/marital-bliss-714094.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/marital-bliss-714091.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/bochox-701555.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/bochox-701550.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6686995.post-68642532061894507752008-06-29T19:24:00.002Z2008-06-30T12:06:25.582Zj is for judgement<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-ten-004-709251.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/uploaded_images/june-ten-004-708705.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />[Some books on judgement leering ominously at you]<br /><br />Judgement frightens me. Far from being the 'free-play' of the faculties, as Kant would have it, I think of judgement as something like a slab of finality, a giant irreversible lump of doom. Although it happens all the time, I refuse to believe that people ever really revise their opinion of someone after the first time they've met them. Or if they do, they merely add new information that covers over, but doesn't entirely remove, the initial judgement. It's like a palimpsest! Yes, indeed, all personal relations are a giant palimpsest of revised and revisable opinions written on a single surface. This is why getting drunk around people is a bad idea, as the <i>scriptio inferior</i> comes to the top and you fixate on one little thing, and think that that's them. 'You're so bitter!', 'you're so funny!', 'you're so complicated!' etc.<br /><br />I like to think there's a qualitative difference between being critical (useful, important) and being judgemental (scary, dubious). But I often mistake criticism for judgement, taking light, easily-fixable comment for absolutist, ontological assertion. So a remark like 'you could change the wording of the third paragraph to make it more readable' becomes 'everything you've ever done is rubbish, everything you do or will do is rubbish, and besides, you don't even <span style="font-style:italic;">deserve </span>to use letters, you uppity little imp'. I think it's a confidence thing... <br /><br />At one point, I really did receive a weight of judgement against me (all unfair, obviously). I used to dream of courtrooms and trials and the anguished pointlessness of trying to defend oneself, confusing value judgement with legal judgement like some kind of oneiric numpty. Last night I dreamt I was a CSI though, so things are looking up. <br /><br />The free-floating judgement of contemporary life, the Big Other made flesh through the channelling of tabloid condemnations (love rat, irresponsible role model, bad mother) is designed to put barbs in your head that extend far beyond the realms of mere sex, drug use and child care: <span style="font-style:italic;">but what do the others think?</span> is the anxious motto of our age - the Big Brother house is the attempt to get a concrete answer to the unanswerable question: 'what do people really think of me?' The Facebook aps that ask you to 'compare people' or to 'say what you really think I'm like' are vain attempts to get closer to the 'really think', the impossible idea that there really is a space in which all opinion of you resides, and more to the point, that it is all true.ithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10565403340913552852noreply@blogger.com

political peccadillo

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55505282007-06-13T21:55:00.180ZPolitical PeccadilloBruceBlogger112125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-89975348627530888422007-06-11T20:15:00.000Z2007-06-13T21:54:54.719ZFuck off down the Shatt"The Shia round up and kill Sunni suspects; the latter respond with market bombs, in addition to their rising attacks on the coalition. Unable to make headway against the Shiite shites, with figureheads like Al-Sadr experienced at manoeuvring around unseen after oppression from the Saddamite, and ex-Baath psychopaths, the coalition is locked into a costly game of managing the status quo". Four Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-6954324815188327432007-05-22T22:31:00.000Z2007-05-22T22:35:44.147ZDestructive processesPalestinian targets are being pounded in Gaza and north Lebanon, in a grim reminder that, apart from the Lebanese army's new show of strength, nothing has changed from recent conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-64389117007158970472007-05-01T22:42:00.000Z2007-05-01T22:47:49.552ZHarry will need houdiniThe chief of the British Army, Dicky Dannatt, a man who once told it like it was when he said that coalition forces do not help the security situation, has decided that the prince must serve in the ongoing occupation of Iraq. These were some of his reasons why…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1176414996922422312007-04-12T21:51:00.000Z2007-04-12T22:02:22.503ZAdjust your cameron"The electorate is not exactly bovvered in Blair-appropriation speech by these trivial issues" "It was the sound of a man from Surrey living in Mumbai in 1912 commenting on the hot temper of the natives" "The suggestion that the Tories are electable because they’ve got a professional cream dispenser in charge is still laughable" Dave may appeal to Dagenham but bringing his rejuvenated party toCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1174345752547208142007-03-20T00:05:00.000Z2007-03-20T00:09:12.556ZTristunt"The PM was again dependent not on his own party for policy sign-off but the Tories, who once again played auxiliary tough guys on the real issues. Eighty-eight nays were nary enough to stall the nuclear bill. How this sits with Camers’ plans to get nearer to the public given that a majority do not want a new nuclear deterrent system is not clear, but the Cam-Can would go down with the Kursk if Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1173831572357969572007-03-14T01:16:00.000Z2007-03-14T01:20:40.760ZMacrosoft OfficeStarfucks, halls of hell, everything bolted down, bonhomie go home; a Brazil-like life here we come – welcome to my new office...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1171054855419625732007-02-09T20:53:00.000Z2007-02-09T21:00:55.433ZSense bombThe latest take on developments in Britain's war on terror, a nasty brew of 'plots' on squaddies, detention without trial, the release of details to the press and needless backbench stirring. All of them lead to John Reid's head on a stick.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1170436249782700242007-02-02T17:01:00.000Z2007-02-02T17:10:49.806ZRPP RIP The other side launches a campaign to expose the opportunist pig Jeremy McClintock – perhaps the only political auteur capable of talking about homosexual monkeys in the context of the new terror laws. As Linda Smith said of Jeffery Archer, we’re quite keen to deny him the “oyygen of oxygen” as well as the “oxygen of publicity…”Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1168970987786005442007-01-16T17:56:00.000Z2007-01-16T18:09:47.796ZSomalians - the next nongratas Somalia is a non-country whose violent despotism has sent us violent, Muslim asylum seekers that we can all safely detest and stereotype at our arrogant leisure. It's a relationship that we would not want to jeopardise, surely? Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1166646005717836232006-12-20T20:17:00.000Z2006-12-20T20:20:05.726ZUnited KingdomsRiyadh told London to cease and desist from their nasty investigation into arms deals done 20 or so years ago, and a fetid tale developed of government connivance in perpetuating the military-industrial complex...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1165485543243052812006-12-07T09:54:00.000Z2006-12-07T09:59:18.220ZBritsh Import-Export Holding Company"This idealistic highgrounding also extends to formulating policy and parliamentary communication. The following two gems also tried in vain to search for appropriate language for an unprecedentedly repressed policy..." In the new immigration era, it's all about the 'bad people'.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1164236032756253692006-11-22T22:50:00.000Z2006-11-22T22:56:13.413ZUnfunny, and offensive"...Parochial whingers all love Peter Kay because they can see enough small mindedness in the jokes/jibes (especially in the shameful adverts for plastic bitter) and you are certainly not required to think. The message (and there always is at least one) is to not take anything seriously, especially the things vaguely hinted at by these Manning-lites..." Not just Kay, but Gervais, Carr and Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1160264462420131762006-10-07T23:39:00.000Z2006-10-07T23:41:02.433ZPolitical correctness and multiculturalismLetter to the BBC about Skid ‘Mark’ Easton Click on to Cull for a wider view on Straw’s veil views and the right not to defend the Israeli embassy I am writing to complain about the dangerously simplistic and rancorous content of Mark Easton’s conflated report on British Muslims in the 10 o’clock news last night. The piece dealt with Jack Straw’s comments on his request to Muslim women wearing Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1159628260205548632006-09-30T14:53:00.000Z2006-09-30T14:57:40.216ZState IT in a stateA sorry tale of corporate crapulence in the much-vaunted modernisation of the health service.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1159101710098156382006-09-24T12:40:00.000Z2006-09-24T12:41:50.106ZLowdown on the next Labour PM70s Scottish socialism, barneys with Galloway and Brown, plenty of dram, Defence of the realm, Karadzic, rightist arguments in leftist language… Saturday Guardian profiles Comrade Reid.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1158492019508630472006-09-17T11:19:00.000Z2006-09-17T11:51:24.653ZWindows on the whirl"In the end it is merely commonsense to suggest that there was a narrative of action, as well as inaction (ie, failure to arrest Bin Laden) that influenced the attack" – Cull finally gets round to commemorating the casus belli…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1157495142674280752006-09-05T22:21:00.000Z2006-09-05T22:25:42.686ZHome helpEver enthusiastic, the Home Secretary Right Honourable Dr. J. John Reid PhD MP’s has contributed to the British citizenship ceremony, by releasing a single on Hubris Recordings… [to be sung by all successful immigrants and lyrics to be kept with passport at all times and to be presented at police stations during times of possible terrorist attacks] "Oh, do the multi-culti; Oh, do the Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1157198322952164942006-09-02T11:56:00.000Z2006-09-02T11:58:42.963ZPoly Race Like ‘political correctness’, ‘multiculturalism’ is only defined by the terms of the user. Officially, only loose definitions can be found… Cull wants Britain’s diverse culture to be about more than food and music…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1156676842891853872006-08-27T11:04:00.000Z2006-08-27T11:07:22.903ZRadio Solent on the Issues that Matter With Jeremy McClintock and William Shawcross on the panel, there’s surely no reason to ignore the transcript of a historic debate on democracy recently held on the south coast.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1155160047353442692006-08-09T21:39:00.000Z2006-08-09T21:47:27.430ZAt last, somebody stands up to be countedAs our Caribbean Queen of a PM heads for his hols, a Scottish Blairite MP resigns over Prestwick refuelling and the govt's pursuing of a policy on the 'middle east crisis' that the majority of Britons oppose... Elsewhere: Israeli Arabs get scant protection; Yes, the levelling of Lebanon was planned well in advance. Also, continue to check Cull on the subject, and check our original piece on Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1154551453683403442006-08-02T20:43:00.000Z2006-08-02T20:44:13.696ZIsrael's war - West's policy meltdown The leaders of the free world, so keen to promote stable market-centric democracies in the Middle East, allow Israel to do what it likes for those causes, as well as the complimentary war on terror. And if it doesn’t work they just carry on talking… ...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1154271604280284422006-07-30T14:50:00.000Z2006-07-30T15:00:04.310ZHelp - We are a safe haven for Islamist paedos!A dream story for the tabloid muckrakers - Asian Briton had a long beard so we thought he was a terrorist when we raided him, but the contents of his computer make him an alleged pederast too! What's that in your suicide bomb or are you just pleased to see me? This simply won't do, so come on Tony for the sake of the chil-d-ren create a new register of the Fiddlers of Al-Qaida. The police, the Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1153065598634818332006-07-16T15:56:00.000Z2006-07-22T20:34:40.336ZUpdate - Army of God against the Eretz Yisrael crewThe latest on the invasion of Lebanon over there... As Lebanon burns, we've had a thoroughly contemptible response from the leaders of the free world! But not Cull...Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1152782614126064862006-07-13T09:21:00.000Z2006-07-13T09:23:34.140ZPrep Talk“Sane people ask each other the question – "will America really attack Iran?" And the reply is "no it wouldn't go that far". But the very insane Snow, Cheney (snr and jnr), Rumsfeld and co are pushing their twisted idea of appropriate measures into public discourse, buttering us up for another energy grab. Accordingly, Bush's lickspittles, British pro-war parliamentarians, are doing their best toCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550528.post-1151688253632183572006-06-30T17:21:00.000Z2006-06-30T17:25:37.293ZPeddling delusionary lines"The Israeli invasion and completely illegal kidnapping of democratically elected Palestinian government officials mock selective commentary. No one in the international community will do anything about it..." Cull wades through the fog of occupation in the Middle East...Culla

meeja hoors

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55506452008-02-06T23:12:23.856ZMeeja HoorsBruceBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-45067573656839203432008-02-06T22:56:00.000Z2008-02-06T23:12:23.898ZGhost Blogwhat do you do with a blog that is technically spent? well, remark at that plan for retail to colonise the traditionally-close-for-the-sabbath City. An invasion of capital by capital no less. The city was an interesting and walkable place on sundays but now they want it to be oxford street east. Should be handy for the returning Olympic watchers. there are enough strips of shops in this capital Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-61723718727547591352007-08-07T22:28:00.000Z2007-08-07T22:30:27.422ZValidating every moment"There's nothing to do round here, the kids cry. Except prepare for a life of getting an erection over a detached house" Cull back after unjustifiable hiatus with comments on the pixel nation.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-82996469089633607472007-07-25T21:29:00.000Z2007-07-25T21:31:30.098ZComedy skirting meaningStewart Lee is back on tour after more conspicuous times in the public eye as Springer opera man and the usual detours into writing, TV comedy and, also, artifact curation. Naturally, the appearance of someone with a track record ensured a packed crowd in the culture-free environs of SE23, at the newly airbrushed Honor Oak by the south circular (he’d originally been down to play the more Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-64400127088237058282007-06-26T18:50:00.000Z2007-06-26T18:54:20.571ZThey're corrupt sportsmen, not jihadisCull puts down the surprise at the natural causes verdict for Bob Woolmer's death as a blatant example of Islamophobia in the play-fair world of international cricket.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-66414986443146079752007-06-13T21:59:00.000Z2007-06-21T21:59:26.913ZAs the Mirror Says - Chemically Castrate the PaedosA grim conclusion is being reached in the search for the stolen child, but that doesn't mean the ex-editor of Children Now reeling off some home truths about slack parenthood.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-23432590376873203172007-06-07T21:01:00.000Z2007-06-07T21:14:32.261ZHow Mitchell and Webb look to the PC mogulsMicrosoft's Gates and Apple's Big Jobs were interviewed by two techy bloggers on stage a few weeks ago. During the course of their back-slapping the Microtoss Pista man and Apple's Big Jobs mentioned the little Brit comics who star in the Apple adverts, Robert Webb as Mac and David Mitchell as PC Interviewer I: Although you know what? I have to confess, I like PC guy. Interviewer I: Yeah, he’s Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-83103217968377289712007-05-24T21:57:00.000Z2007-05-24T22:02:39.828ZNaming and shamingYou'll have seen on Truth that we recently had a debut screening for our Jeremy McClintock comedy, and it went ok. Half the problem in the run-up to the night was getting the name right, and I'm not sure we achieved that. The guys parked their fat arses round their virtual table and came up with a list of about 150, and here is 20 or so of the more interesting from that long list. Any comments Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-7461313014139224422007-04-25T22:01:00.000Z2007-04-25T22:05:08.219ZMarket forces"These guys, if not the marketing, are the marketeers, marketing to market as much as they are remarking to market, and marking to market" Go to Cull for moreCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-37170966854071185732007-04-20T19:23:00.000Z2007-04-20T19:26:01.663ZPay-as-you-go-deceptionOrder your media pack on Iran through these Israeli backers. Middle East common sense assuredCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1172660112667253552007-02-28T10:49:00.000Z2007-02-28T10:55:12.710ZLuvvy stuffQueen star props the Queen, and more gongs from institutions are likely.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1170093822748269762007-01-29T17:59:00.000Z2007-01-29T18:03:42.760ZBlood sacrificesDaily Mail editor Dacre tries to influence his readers like a politician but he isn’t. Dacre calls the BBC monocultural but it isn’t. Dacre says he’s not confused but he is..Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1169248635663349042007-01-19T23:09:00.000Z2007-01-19T23:18:15.860ZCelebrity Big Brother Racehategate: “It’s ok, it was all a misunderstanding and the evictee has apologised” Except it isn’t, and this casual racism has to stop Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1168005233678463452007-01-05T13:51:00.000Z2007-01-05T13:53:53.693ZPeople are change“All the ideological euphoria of New Labour is exhausted, and the only thing that matters is the self. As Warren puts it: ‘Arguing about the war is so last season’” Pete Clark’s smoking guns were unusually on target in the Standard, but Cull went several louder in its review of This Life’s trite 10-year-anniversary retreatment…Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1166183137621224452006-12-15T11:44:00.000Z2006-12-15T11:45:37.633ZThinking must be outsourced and accountableCull with some apercus about the consultants infiltrating Westminster.Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1164403413200349512006-11-24T21:19:00.000Z2006-11-26T21:01:10.243ZThe ghost of Alf Garnett this is a reply from two Cull readers to an article orginally flagged up in Political Peccadillo, but we've now moved it to this section, while belatedly digesting the news about the racist act from the ex-Kramer man... Wrong-com is an interesting article, if a little po-faced. But then that’s half the problem, isn’t it? Taking things ‘too seriously’? hmm? It’s only comedy after all. Just a Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1163456628141884562006-11-13T22:22:00.000Z2006-11-14T10:23:37.396ZChilds in timeslight return… Mark Foley was a republication representative from Florida that knew a thing or two about coveting minors. And this link shows while protectors of his ilk should not protest that they are gay or straight – his “immature sexuality” makes him a paedophile plain and simple. Quite amusing reactions to the article, particularly the stuff about “30 per cent of males get aroused when Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1163164936854384352006-11-10T13:20:00.000Z2006-11-10T13:36:33.416ZEngland capital’s captain – a racist? After the dismissal of stiff-upper-chest-and-bent-face England captain JT, the message boards have been replete with manna from rumour mill heaven. It is alleged that Jaytee told Ledley King to 'shut up you lippy black monkey’ before getting sent off against the Spurz. This would explain why King went mad in an otherwise harmless-appearing incident; why Chimbonda went berserk and had to be Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1161104148037520302006-10-17T16:53:00.000Z2006-10-17T17:01:20.313ZDifference be damned Three series into Peepshow – a fourth is on the way – and now with their own comedy series, this is Robert Webb and David Mitchell’s moment. After years behind the scenes writing for others, taking bit parts and presenting their own radioshows, they’re now due their place on Jonathon Toss’ sofa. Get your laughing gear round them. Or don’t. Despite their years of experience, lame Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1161025910229980762006-10-16T19:06:00.000Z2006-10-17T10:32:03.980ZCorporate adventurism must pay offFollowing on from the recent look at Elephant residential conceits, two new projects have landed up the road in SE1, around Bankside and near Blackfriars, as if from average Space. This Southwark Street façade has coloured windows frames and outdoor shutters exposing the internal structure and maybe shifting shape and position like the diaphragms of Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe. But it is a Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1159198514359636252006-09-25T15:19:00.000Z2006-09-26T09:51:33.210ZThe embryonic advisory (brought to you by Smuggies!) * Despite antenatal worries about whether you will be a responsible parent/love them enough/do your best by them, soon you will become besotted by their every move and willing to preserve them from the harshness of Mundo Exterior with formaldehyde, if necessary. Because you own them like an insurance policy. * You will develop a long list of nicknames – some Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1157494951612747932006-09-05T22:21:00.000Z2006-09-05T22:22:31.623ZIt's your Shawcrosses...Cull reasons that to let writers like Billy boy off the hook now would be nothing short of appeasementCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1157113986662319002006-09-01T12:28:00.000Z2006-09-01T12:39:21.980ZErsatz gentrification of Elephant continuesNew and recent flat developments on Wansey Street and Steedman Street. The marine latter, ‘South Central East’, looks pretty exclusive, and visually gauche, while the former is a tangerine dream of wood facading next to Southwark library and museum. With the wider area, including parts of Blackfriars to the north, one of the last central zones to be colonised by people in search of an Cullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1156524562878355982006-08-25T16:48:00.000Z2006-08-25T16:52:39.313ZAnatomy of an atrocity Thatcher thuggery analysed again, and again Manchester City’s blind scrote of a left-back, Ben Thatcher, was thrust into disgrace on Wednesday night, after clattering Portsmouth midfielder Pedro Mendes in an ‘X-rated’ elbow-and-body clean-out. Mendes needed hospital treatment, during which time the moral opprobrium was ratcheted up big time within the soccer community. Initial response fromCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1155938149216292332006-08-18T21:55:00.000Z2006-08-20T14:05:16.850ZTerror on War News“Security notice from John Reid, Home Secretary, Friday the 37th…” Vigilante update: ..and such a good job has been done of instilling fear in white Britons that men of muslim appearance were forced off a plane at MalagaCullatag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5550645.post-1152656472395229102006-07-11T22:17:00.000Z2006-07-11T22:21:12.403ZAlt ctrl escape? Cull takes a long look at the role of drugs through the false paradigm of control and surrender, offering a perhaps idealistic take on their potential… Culla

sonic truth

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54998322008-07-18T10:35:32.792ZSonic TruthBrucenoreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-32175130183299571922008-07-17T19:20:00.008Z2008-07-18T10:35:32.810ZFive and still aliveLike many others this blog has its five-year anniversary in 2008. Five years and crinklechrist knows how many posts. In that time blogs have become my main go-to inspiration, my main education even, as one click leads to another and you build up through truly interactive push learning. My workday routine – start surfing prior to lunch, pick out articles to read and print one on recycled paper forCullanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5499832.post-24141691736586022462008-07-06T19:23:00.003Z2008-07-06