Budget

Spending too much time this morning thinking about modelling prisoner's dilemma on children's robots to really take the time to write what I had intended to write.

Another budget and another confused set of tools will emerge. Bertie had his supposed 'road to damascus' when he discovered the ordinary people had begun to blame him for the neoliberal ruin that was emerging and the huge disparity in income that is developing and so claimed he was 'the last socialist in Ireland'. This budget will be another set of giveaways; institutional giveaways to the very rich and corporate greed that will see the bifurcation in Irish society entrenched; and handouts to the poor to buy votes - increases in social welfare for groups (like the elderly) that his electoral machine is afraid of losing. The cynicism of this clientelle politics is really sickening. It's also deeply infuriating as their hypocrisy is damaging for the country. In reality the key economic policy of this government is croneyism rather than the neoliberalism of Charlie McCreevy (though of course he was guilty of cronyism as his tax breaks for billionaire horse pimps shows). They rub shoulders and create a corrupt business environment for their billionaires they worship in the Galway Races hospitality tents and up a few shillings (bread and circuses again) for the excluded's dole rather than seeking an economy where the rising tide raises all boats. Many of the boats have holes in them and handing out life jackets isn't the best use of public money.

Not that the best use of public money is something this government has shown the slightest understanding of.

White shirt, red mist

Early in Zidane, a 21st century portrait there were two images that spoke volumes about football and Zizou's place in it. The first two names visible after the opening montage, largely abstract of closeups of CRT TV, blurry players in white decomposing into tricolour blobs, were on the back of two Real Madrid players: Zidane and Pavon. This, I think shows the extent to which editing and shot selection are inherently problematic in a film like this (though I think only if you come to it with an assumption that you will see the match "as it really was" rather than just another version). The next was after five minutes sweating already and spitting and hawking out snots as he did the whole way through he is bobbing around, pointing at the ground and shouting for the ball to no avail. Reminds me of childhood.

For me it works best as a semi-abstract film. Rather than an attempt to impose another coherent narrative on the match from the commentators and TV's version (which I would suddenly like to see) we see the match in claustrophobic confusion. Thumps and bumps and runs. I think they were quite lucky that Villareal, judging by the number of dribbles Zidane did and the number midshots in which Zidane was alone, didn't man-mark him at all. Perhaps the twilight of his career was the time to do it and his years of delaying were part of a plan... It was interesting to see how much of his game involves trapping with his chest and stomach and cushioned headers. There were sequences when he didn't touch the ball with his feet. But when he did, ball at feet, turning defenders inside out before lobbing a cross over the keeper into the path of one of his teammates requiring only any kind of touch to be a goal...

He didn't say must. Just loads of 'hey's the odd 'aqui', a subtitle told us that he said to the referee 'you should be ashamed' after a dodgy penalty award. Shortly before the end Roberto Carlos (the player he had most interaction with) said something funny and Zidane laughed and kept the smile on his face a long time, the way you do in a time when you have had no human communication. But did he smile any other time? Was it lost in the edit? This is no dogma style document that promotes its purity. I guess that they did edit the film as near as they could to real time using the synchronised timecode but even at that the choices mean that this one smile could simply be the one they left in. Around about then I noticed the soundtrack began to foreground the thumps of people hitting each other. Zidane had been clattered to the ground early on, earning a Villareal player the first booking. There had been a couple more but in general the physical power of Zidane's game was a constant presence and he muscled his way on to several balls. Forlan got sent off (he also missed a sitter disproving the notion that he bangs them in for fun in Spain) and the camera made a big deal of him pushing Senna. And then (was it Raúl?) was bustled off the ball at the byline and Zidane barged in swung a punch and grabbed some guy. Game over and the film makers must have been glad he got sent off in the final.

Funny thing is, he was only a cameo but, the player showing mastery and artistry and consummate genius in this game was not Zidane: it was Casillas.

This film is not yet rated

Hey, it's turning into movie review city. We saw this at the documentary festival on in Dublin last weekend and it was a hoot. The US has a very different system for censorship compared to most of Europe: it's privatised. It's not called censorship, it's called a ratings system to help parents protect their children. We have a more paternalistic state run system. It's called censorship and they simply won't release films with extreme sex or violence except through porn and mail order outlets. If a film gets an NC-17 rating the theatre owners are theoretically free to show the film. They won't however. The US non-censorious "censorship" is remarkably effective at stopping films being seen. I've been thinking a fair bit recently about what is done well in the US privately and bad by the government and what is done badly by Europe privately and well by the government (no one sector fits this exactly but you can say European public health is good, US private education is good...). Funnily enough most US citizens would scream blue murder if their government had half the censorship power that they gladly cede to an unelected cabal at the service of big business. In Europe the opposite is the case. And I do think that in this instance we are right. If the government applies ratings it has to do it in an open, transparent, and legally challengeable way. You have to be able to take them to court. The appeals process in the US system is that you appear before an anonymous board comprised of members of the organisation that convened the first panel and you are not allowed argue any precedent. This is huge. Forget denying constitutional rights. This is bigger: the common law is explicitly denied you. There is no presumption that you should be treated fairly.

Dick exposes the inevitable result of this: homophobia, anti-women, pro-violence films in the theatres. Kevin Smith argues that the censor should come down hard on misogynistic violence: it is disproportionately the lazy plot device of the intellectually neutered hollywood violence movie. Can't argue with him on that one. Do we really need to see women raped or in fear of rape constantly? What's better and less worthy of protecting children from seeing that or normal, bog standard sex between two people? The British censorship board draws a distinction between pornography and cinema with actual sex acts filmed in it. It reminds me of Negativland's distinction in copyright law between theft and artistic appropriation of a sample: they argued that ordinary people could tell the difference. You can. So why not do that, in public, and with right of appeal?

The censorship system in America won't be destroyed by this film: it's an embarrassing anachronism already. This film will only be seen by many people because this is already the case. The question is what will fill the void of its collapse? A free for all of violent women hating pro gun homophobic porn? A snide self serving censorship by new media which will serve to deny access to customers for smaller media organisations but do nothing to stem the tide of misogynistic gung ho violence that pollutes our channels? The US government needs to take control of this issue but is too weak to do so. I figure another century of hypocrisy is on the way.

As a postscript I feel I must link out to the in evitable far right wing blog which describes the film as "shameful". The Kirby Dick film talks about a film which was initially given an NC-17 and later downgraded to 13. This film is Gunner Palace, this fact is discussed in the film. It is entirely in context of the US censorship system that a film full of violence and what is hilariously called "dropping the f-bomb" should be passed rather than a film with normal activity like sex. Most of us don't go invading foreign countries and killing civilians.We do engage in enthusiastic sex.
The "f-bomb", have you ever heard anything so peurile? And their mammies* weren't even with them as far as I can tell.
I'd sooner we dropped the motherfucking f-bomb all over the fucking place than cluster bombs all over Southern Lebanon.

*mommies

Little Miss Sunshine

We're making a habit of going to see films on their last day of release. Last week it was Volver, Almadovar's best since 'all about my mother'. Loved it. Last night we went to see Little Miss Sunshine which was mighty fun. I often worry about US "indie" (it's on Fox) films. They often have the same tendency to be Joseph Campbelled and Syd Fielded to death with heroic story arc and all that wank. You start noticing all the plot holes, mcguffins, clumsy expositions, and shitty dialogue. But only if they don't hold your attention. This film built our interest in the characters rather than assumed it and gradually brought us to the point where the entire cinema was hooting with laughter. I think it helped that the small screen in the IFI was jammed with people: the documentary festival was just starting so anyone who walked in off the street ended up in the small screen. I was worried also that the film would feature lots of cute hollywood kids that would make me want to throw up. Fortunately it was about a bunch of freaks. But the kids reminded me of this book . And that made me think that I wanted to make a list of my favourite photography books of the past few years.

This one, Ricas y famosas features the trophy wives of Mexican rich socialites and daytime soap stars and their incredibly tacky, yet incredible houses and outfits. It' s fairly camp to be sure. But stunning darling. The gold! The heels! The makeup! The pools! I think Pierre et Gilles may have had a bad influence on me many years ago.


If that was camp, well, this is simply the gayest book ever to cross my threshold. Wow. Who would have known the Taliban are queer, but they sure are. Here the army of lovers pose for their identity photographs (photography having being banned but security being important a contradiction arose in the state) kohl rimmed eyes stare out from whitened faces with rouged cheeks, touched up pouts and jet black hair. Conspicuous consumption in the form of flaunted watches and mobile phones, guns taped up with bright coloured tapes. Guys mock killing each other in front of Swiss chalet backdrops that look like they long to set up home sweet homestead, put on the blonde pigtail wig 'who shall wear the apron today habibi?'

This book 'Ghetto' (or gee-tow as Timmy Hillnigger would put it) is compiled by the editors of Color magazine. Or ex editors, I think they called it a day to make this book. The cover image is from a portrait project in a Cuban mental hospital and much of the book is even grimmer than that.

Anna Karina

And now on to Godard's early 60s muse and her work with Gainsbourg. I'm not sure what I consider to be his best form: the late 50s early 60s jazz chanson. The excursions into soundtrack jazz and latin. The string of hits with Jane Birkin. Or maybe, just maybe, the string of hits with pop moppets like BB, Gall, and Karina, which continued well into the 80s with albums from the likes of Isobel Adjani. Here is some Karina anyway.

Gainsbourg pour vouz

Thailand

You see, the problem with Thailand isn't their politicians: they're as corrupt as you let them be. Which is quite a lot. Thailand is a seriously corrupt place both internally and internationally. It's the bunch of chancer arrivistes calling themselves the Thai royal family. They deal with every corruption, every manifestation of the sickness in Thai politics and Thai people pretend to themselves that their are hands clean. They are the cancerous heart of Thailand's body politic. While they are 'the voice of the people' like the tzar was father of the peasants democracy can never work in Thailand. Look what happened to Cambodia for a chilling endgame to the relentless politicking of a royal family removed from any consequences.

We were in Thailand nearly three years ago when the government decided to admit there was a war on. It had been waging for years but they'd just sent ten policemen or something to the axis of the unwilling, coerced, or were caught in when they were pretending to be out behind the sofa and couldn't avoid sending in some token unarmed nobodies to Iraq. But anyway, they thought this was an opportunity to pretend that their little problems with predominately muslim ethnic minorities (they don't look like Thai people either: but then Thailand is a mixture of many different looking people) was part of a global war on 'terror' rather than yet another example of Thailand's centrifugal force. I remember being in Pai in Northern Thailand (lovely place up around there) and somebody was talking of going on a trek to see the hill tribes and I said 'why not just go to the shop?' Almost nobody around there is ethnically Thai: but it's better being there than across the border in Burma. I'd love to visit Burma. The people are even nicer than Thais if that's possible and the massages are even better. I digress.

Royal families everywhere are chancers and arrivistes. Two generations out of the saddle living in yurts on yaks yoghurt and the Chinese royal family lived in the forbidden city surrounded by castrated guards and a cult of personality unrivalled by the current US mysticism surrounding the job of president. Our history is as full of the madness and sickness of kowtowing to royalty as it is of deferring to religious fantasy. Ancient Egypt is particularly interesting in the relationship between the two.

Are we inherently infantile? Can we not just take responsibility for ourselves?

Syd Barrett

is dead I hear. Nobody is saying how he died, other than having diabetes (the epidemic of the old). I've been watching videos of him taking acid. And a home film slowed down and cut to solo music of his. I'll link to that as his music's gentle melancholy suits my mood better.
you and i, and domino. days go by.

More wrongness

The wrongest thing I predicted about this world cup was that France wouldn't get out of their group. When they did I didn't figure them for beating Spain - but I didn't figure Spain for being set up so STOOOPIDly. I had very few doubts about them giving Brazil a proper hiding however: Brazil were badly shown up and France got to play exhibition football. The closest Ronaldo got to a goal was a hilarious swan dive towards the end: way to go Ro! The camera shook as you hit the ground. As it happens I didn't think Spain could have exposed Brazil, and certainly not the way they were set up against France. Porugal have left two of the last three tournaments with fistfights and long bans. Considering their jammy diving, hacking, ill-tempered, dour progress so far and the fact that France is a grudge match after Euro 2000 I expect more of the same here. Really think Scolari is the man to take English football on a level to winning professionalism? Yeah right.

At least I was right about Germany doing well. Once they get out of the group you begin to feel they are very hard to beat (and an easy group didn't hurt), so predicting a penalties win against Argentina isn't too unusual. I suspect most people expect a France Germany final with Germany winning. Maybe I'm wrong (I don't have a vestige of anti-German sentiment in my body) but I think most people won't dislike that as much as they have in the past. The Germans have run a fun tournament with good football and played like ambassadors for the sport. Frings and Ballack have been excellent. Klose has been inspired and looks like he could unlock the toughest of defences. The toughest defences? They're Italy and France right?

Surprised by how wrong you can be...

At least I am surprised by how wrong I can be. Never figured France for winning the match last night. In fact if truth be told I never figured France for getting out of the group. I thought the sides that drag you down to their level (the Switzerlands and Koreas and Irelands of this world)would triumph. But instead they played their first good game in fully six years and were good for their victory. I don't think they'll meet two worse full backs in the tournament though. Spain made a mistake. Or several - playing the high offside line with Zidane to supply through balls and Henry to run was stupid. Not playing with wingers was merely ill-advised for two reasons. Firstly if you progress you want to be comfortable with playing a team selection that can beat the selecao, with nothing down either flank you play into Brazil's strength (plus you play the high line like Ghana did and you will get hammered) and secondly their full backs were so weak you needed something to take the French wings minds off attack. They didn't and Sagnol and Ribery took them apart. Sagnol looked like a worthy heir to Lizarazu - which he has never looked before. This was Ribery's only effective match in the tournament and he was marvellous. Hell, even the deeply average Malouda looked good. Too many of the same players turned out for Spain. Xabi, Xabi Alonso, Cesc Fabregas, and on the bench Iniesta and Senna. Okay, there is no team in the world that wouldn't like to have some passing midfielders, but just because you have five of the best doesn't mean you have to play them all: see England and the Lampard/Gerrard axis of feeble. They needed a ballwinner in there and didn't have one. Raul wasn't needed - that is until he was taken off when the new formation would have suited him and you'd have had him there rather than Luis Garcia.

* I meant to say - why didn't they play a decent full back like Asier del Horno? Is it because he is black or something?

What the civil war denied us the joy of...

News that the lovely people at the progressive democrats have fallen out with each other (and why wouldn't you? You have a viper in your midst.) has been greeted with glee tempered with dread round our way. Mary Harney has many faults - chief of which is being leader of a party which defends privilage and as morally correct and capital as something, the operation of which is beyond human interference - but I don't think she is a crypto fascist. McDowell is. That's not to say he personally believes in scientifically outmoded racial inferiority doctrines (for those not paying attention for the last fifty years or so the notion of a race among human populatios is derided by geneticists) but racist is as racist does and his constitutional referendum that he slipped by used the race card and people's fear of race. It redefines citizenship in a way which is not appropriate for a republic but one which is for a nation: in this situation McDowell chose not to follow the progressive model of the US but is instead heading the direction of Serbia. This is particularly ironic given the Minister for Justice is a disciple of all things American including their failed criminal justice system and their barbaric, expensive, and useless prisons. It seems to be no coincidence that a media panic about gang wars opens up on his watch. During all this the minister has an ever lengthening Criminal Justice Bill which will solve all problems. He just doesn't have any legislation passed ever. His bloated incompetence is further demonstrated by his aloof sang froid as the courts had no option but to reveal the unconstitutionality of our statutory rape laws. Their illegality is not his fault - it was pointed out to us in college about 18 years ago - but what is his fault is his failure to react when cases were in progress as had never happened before. So, we have a Minister for Justice that single handedly created a racist nation, failed to protect children from child abuse, who by his own admission is minister for justice during soaring gang crime that he believes needs much legislation to crack down on but who has introduced no such legislation (just reamended and deamended drafts) - in other words as abject a failure as a minister as has ever held a post in this country. Why should anyone worry? His stop-start career, built on media whoredom should be over. Unfortunately Harney had the nerve, the balls, the chutzpah, to take the post of Minister for Health - perhaps the most underfunctioning department in the government. She was always going to fail there. Her stock is crashed.

So why the stalled leadership bid? Harney is a link to the old school: to a time before it would have been acceptable for a man with the moral stink of McDowell to run for public office. His kind would be seen as the kind of beast that rose in central and Eastern European countries: no decency about him. The PDs under him could mutate, slightly, from the party of capital and privilage into an actual racist extreme right wing party thus able to, possibly, garner a popular vote (it currently has no sizeable electoral base and weilds power in great disproportion to its support) and move up a gear. What would possibly unite the very rich and the very poor other than having a classic old school extremist right wing party like we never had in Ireland? Naive class self interest is rampant in this country. Comments like "I'm a builder/nurse/pensioner Haughey looked after us", laughably naive (he gave back a bit of what he stole, like a porcine Robin Hood), are common stock. The poor are under the cosh. Their jobs have not got better wages and conditions over the last decade. They see them being taken by better educated immigrants who will move up and move on or just work like, well whatever hard working people work like these days, and take the money and spend it in another country where it's worth something. That is how they could give their allegiance to the party of the divine right of capital which has stolen their futures from them.

It is quite funny that the PDs were founded to break us out of civil war politics and they may just succeed. It's difficult to explain Ireland's political parties to someone from abroad. I usually say that left and right is only one axis. There is also the y axis of socially liberal and conservative. Then there is the z axis of republican versus unionist. The independence/ republican/ nationalist axis was at its most extreme socially liberal and left wing rather than fascist like in the rest of Europe so we never had an all out fascist party due to our civil war politics. McDowell's PDs, if he gets to run them, may change that. Finally a break from civil war politics will allow the creation of a fascist party that so many in this state will benefit from. In the old days he would have needed religious support for this. The beauty of the state we now live in where our rights are defined by our nature as consumers rather than as citizens and our aspirations by consumption rather than production is that this is no longer necessary.

He serviced some state

So he's dead then. And why should we speak ill of the dead? Because we can. Because his censorship of dissent by threat and writ is over. His control over a craven media is finished and the backlash is audible today. Because I can honestly think of nothing positive to say of him. I'm a dog in the streets from North Dublin in a town the size of the whole of Longford with a wee country road and no buses. His corruption polluted the whole of the country. I'm not saying the country was great before him, but it was much, much worse with him. There is no legacy. When people try to convince me of his 'presidential' qualities they usually mention the tax exempt status for artists that allows the multimillionaire Bono to lecture at me about helping the poor. It strikes me as symptomatic of his seigneurial contempt for the plain people of Ireland. We should be indebted to the great and the good and be glad to fund their lifestyle.

Panis et Circensis

And so the global spectacle begins. The sport beloved of dictators and racists everywhere. Even if Franco didn't actually like the damn thing - into his horses like a proper aristocrat apparently - he like the rest saw the power. Think of the government of colonels in Brazil, the military junta in Argentina, all of the Soviet bloc. Okay so maybe it's not all that global, China isn't there - yet. India isn't there or interested - yet. And the US hasn't dominated it and sold it back to us with added sugar and a drug habit - yet. I see the US winning the world cup before an African nation.

So anyway, I'm down with the circuses big time. And beer is bread right?*

So who to watch? Everyone says it's hard to look past Brazil, so lets do that. Lets face it if Kevin Gallacher of Blackburn Rovers and Scotland could make Roberto Carlos, at his peak, look ordinary what would an international standard winger do to him? Nobody could beat Brazil. Save Argentina, Mexico and Paraguay in about the last year in competitive matches. Argentina giving them a proper stuffing too. Last world cup they were lucky that when using the rather useless Ze Roberto as a full back against Holland he didn't have to face the injured Overmars. Holland would most likely have beaten them. I can't see that this time: though the team may not fight each other it seems to lack geniuses. I groan every time I see Cocu on their team sheet. Tidy. They were always a better team with Seedorf playing. Still has his pace too. Though they do have the mighty, or mightily named and popular with the kids round here for replica shirts van Hennegoor of Hesselink. Or Jan as they call him no doubt.
The Czech republic are rated 2 in some quarters (FIFA rankings are absolute bollocks) but this team is too old this time. Sorry guys, you were robbed by dreadful refereeing in the last two Europeans, but not this one. The Crouch template at the top can't run any more - people forget that they used to say of Koller that he was remarkably mobile for such a big man. Now he's only remarkably mobile for a big man who has been dead two days. Same for France - save the robbed bit: too old, too old, too old. Guy Roux was offered the French job before the last world cup and said he'd only take it if he could take apart the team and start again - a few of those playing for the Ivory Coast this time would have been a good idea - that was six whole years ago for the Zidanes and Thurams.
Talking of robbed the USA were robbed by dreadful refereeing last time round against the eventual finalists Germany. Unusually with the officiation at the last tournament there doesn't seem to me to have been any direct advantage handed to the hosts (oh, by the way that's the answer to Korea and Japan's chances - no corruption, no semi finals. Plus Korea'll be in Switzerland's group and they have a secret lifeforce sucking weapon that removes the zest from any of their opponents. And Japan are fourth best in their group) so maybe the Germans were glad handing... Anyway this time round they'll struggle to escape a rotten group. And fail.

Oh Spain Spain Spain. Why do you do it to me? I always head into the World Cup and look to you. And you always let me down. (ditto Portugal until I copped on one day that any country still banging on about a team that won underage championships 15 years later - even we stopped that and had considerable success with the underage teams, more than Portugal in fact - was a country with a team of losers. Time to go all the old guys. Once that's done a team that might win might be fashioned). What can you say? The young midfield players like Iniesta, Barcelona's best player by some distance in their European cup semi final, not the anonymous Ronaldinho who gave a nowhere pass that Giuly latched on to with sublime pace and anticipation and lashed into the net from a difficult angle first time and did absolutely nothing else in two matches, and Fabregas have beautiful balance unlike two of the greatest midfielders in the world manning the centre of England. They can tackle and track and cover. And boy can they pass. And Iniesta makes great runs. Joaquin was easily the best winger at the last Europeans. Raul is... found out? No pace, no dribbling, no great shot, just the lethal cold bloodedness in front of goal. No nerves at all. I'm not convinced by Torres either. And the defence looks like it has goals in it. So sadly no.
England my England, obsessed with a bone that only English soccer players seem to possess. If Rooney plays and he's as fit as Beckham was for the last European championship they will get nowhere. While it is the squad that wins the world cup (who knows what stand in left back you'll have come the business end of the tournament when, really, anything could happen) it isn't good to be delving into it right from the get go. Not that they had too many attacking options to bring along. Why don't Lampard and Gerrard perform for England like they do for their teams? Makelele, Sissoko, Hamman, that's why. Pure and simple. Neither is remotely a complete midfielder. Neither can tackle (and some of the ones Lampard does you only get away with in the premiership if you are an England international), neither can defend. Gerrard is a headless chicken with no tactical sense without the ball. But with the ball... he strikes it as beautifully as anyone. Better than Lampard. Though the new balls may suit Lampard. Bear with me. Watch a typical Lampard goal from behind the nets. He strikes through the ball harder than anyone else, keeps it down and on target. But that's it. Other than that he has no idea what's going to happen next. Thing is the ball deforms when he hits it and moves eccentrically through the air. Keepers often say it moved at the last minute and with him that is in fact the case. It behaves like the off centre striking point is a strange attractor. Gerrard places the ball with serious velocity. Like quite a few teams England are good enough to win it: I'm not sure they're the team to beat Brazil though - they lack ball carrying wingers to exploit Cafu and Carlos Brazil's greatest weakness






* my beloved used to make real bread from live yeast and in the morning after eating loads of it the smell coming from the toilet bowl was like you'd been out on the almighty batter with the beer the night before. Quite strange.

More Property Porn

+

It's official - google trends has us down as a bunch of property obsessed wanker knobheads.

And I'm still the pedant hater that cringes every time I hear the word property used when someone means 'a house' or 'realty'. To be fair though, property is marginally less popular than sex, but only in Dublin and London is it even close. Sickos. Interestingly, free stuff is much more popular than property (way to go India!), but in many places free stuff is much more popular than sex, others it's the other way around. Property is just as popular as mp3s in Milton Keynes.

And if google says it, it must be true. It's uniquely democratic Right?

Prop'tay Porn

Indulge me. I've a report running on a database and a few minutes to spend. I'm not picking on the English here, well I am but any brain dead trend in England or the US will be taken up with enthusiasm here. Sadly that can't be said of interesting or exciting new developments. Our TV schedule is dominated, it seems to me, with 'property porn' shows. Some airhead presenter will go abroad with some people with money and ask them to compare "prop'tays". It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and Blue Peter would be on and they'd be talking about their sticky-back-plastic and cutting out "pattons". For the life of me I couldn't figure out what a "patton" was. Was it some kind of template? I didn't realise that English people can't pronounce an r after a schwa sound unless the schwa is at the end of a word and not followed by an r in reality. So 'Africa' is pronounced 'Afriker' and 'water' as 'watah'.

Anyway, the jarring pronunciation just highlights the word which is my problem. They'll be standing there in front of a house and saying things like 'so what do you think of this proptay?'. When did the word house cease to mean a house? At whatever dimwit school they went to were they taught the alphabet with 'p is for proptay' and a picture of a house on the wall? Anglo-American-Irish obsession with the price of residences has made a whole generation of people who cannot distinguish between a pile of bricks and a set of rights that you can enforce against other people. Our greed is sickening. Not only that, but unlike say stocks and shares, we have three societies devoted to nonproductive assets. I should point out that this applies less to the US than England and particularly applies here. We are pouring the wealth of the country into something which will swallow it up and never give it back. We have largely leveraged our capital to disenfranchise anyone under 30 already in this country and we are moving abroad like the rapacious carpetbaggers we are. The massive increase in disposable capital in this country has produced no rise in innovation, no amelioration of poverty that is supposed to be expected when the tide rises, and development that is so skewed to the construction industry and the rising value of a nonproductive commodity that the future seems almost as scary as it did in the 1980s. When we had no money and we were all miserable and we all emigrated. I wonder has the 'leave this country' gene been wiped out by a decade and a half of full employment? Will twenty somethings start thinking to themselves that they have no chance of a decent quality of life, of fair and reliable tenancy (as buying is a mad dream for most of them) in this country and up sticks like we all did?

Or will the 'soft landing' the credit institutions and government are desparately propagandising about turn out to be a rough and catastrophic one? With every extension of leniency on credit the banks, in the interest of quarterly returns and the ultimate morality of shareholder value, risk the whole confidence trick of this economy.

I'm worried. I like it here. I feel too old to move out again. It's home and I want to stay here but if the arse falls out of the economy I migh be forced out. Mind you, if it does those with capital after the deluge will be able to make out like bandits (or those who multiple bought in the 1990s).

Vive la revolution... or at least we'll have a strike

Just came back from over a week in France, in Toulouse and Carcassonne. Had a great time, bought a load of records, went to a match with my da for his seventieth birthday and it was great, came home later than expected. I love France, and in general, I love the French people. Though the civil service there seem to get their only thrill in their stunted, joyless, impotent lives by being arseholes. Off work they're probably fine.

I was sitting in Carcassone castle enjoying the sun and reading 'House of Leaves' by Mark Danielewski (extraordinary book - David Foster Wallace's 'infinite jest' is the major reference that comes to mind. But without the smug annoying self satisfied onanistic backslapping on its own cleverness and with terrifying voids of horror and emotional damage)and I met some nice Americans while I was having a glass of wine. They insisted on buying me a glass - no other nationality would have in that circumstance, Americans are actually, genuinely much nicer than Europeans. One thing that struck me as odd was that they were genuinely annoyed by French people going on strike. I was kind of 'why do you care? I mean it doesn't hurt your economy...' Which is kind of my attitude to incomprehensible things that you can't change and don't really effect you. I often find it funny when people in Europe get heated about US domestic issues. It's not like you can vote. Anyway I was saying that they had a revolution so that they could do this and if they were the same as everyone else why would people come to France? We were sitting, as I said, in a beautiful huge castellated medieval city. If it was in Ireland every tourist image of the country would have it. But the more I thought about that issue the more the revolution came into my head. Revolution often fills my head. When I was in school I remember writing a parody of Hopkins called 'that nature is a Hegelian dialectic and of the comfort of the revolution'... Anyway. I think the reporting of the current French strikes and protests against the law to 'liberalise' the youth employment market misses the point. The protestors are the children of petit bourgeois, functionnaires. The French revolution was a petit bourgeois revolution. It was unnecessary in England as merchants ran the country rather than aristocrats. The US revolution, by contrast, was a revolution of aristocrats and oligarchs avoiding paying tax to the English. As a result France is run by and for the petit bourgeois: the US is run by and for the ultra-rich who don't pay tax. Where does that leave us? I've said before that we took the Canadian option when we were run by our local version of the US revolutionaries: rich landgrabbing Anglos that didn't want to pay tax to England. And then we had a revolution. Or did we?

Godzilla

Put on the new, restored, clean, old version of Godzilla for a film society last night. I've never seen the version that has normally been shown in English language countries. Apparantly it is bowdlerised with all the references to nuclear weapons taken out and a Basil Exposition style American reporter shoehorned in to make sense of the plot (those ker-azy Japanese!) when its point has been removed. It's an interesting film. Its pace is very different to what you might expect, more measured than a shocker. Right from the titles there was tension with the overture having surprisingly good manipulated concrete monster noises all over it. As the tension was being built up people on trains and on the street alluded to the misery of the Japanese war experience 'I can't be killed by Godzilla, not after my escape in Nagasaki', 'Tokyo will be evacuated' 'not again'. My favourite was the one-eyed mad scientist with an eye patch. When told by a reporter that their man in Switzerland had heard from his friend in Germany that he had a weapon that would kill Godzilla he took a step back, hand clutching something to his breast while his eye darted wildly around the room 'I have no friends in Germany...'

As expected the special effects weren't great. They weren't bad either. The rubber suit was surprisingly good and some of the model making, particularly of large buildings as they came apart, shedding masonry, was extraordinarily good. It's just that the movie became a spectacle movie two thirds of the way through and that is the kind of film that lasts the shortest before it seems dated. I didn't mind it but one of my companions found the devestation scenes boring.

Anyway, Gojira was destroyed by an alternative to a nuclear weapon invented by the mad scientist. So as an anti-war and anti science supporting war film it was a touch flawed. The mad scientist had the sense to self immolate in the act of killing the monster - V for Vendetta style - at the end. Those with the ability to destroy monsters have no place in a monster free society.