Independent Idiotic: not news I suppose

Well I got into trouble with one of the kids yesterday for slagging off the Irish Independent. I picked up one from the large piles teetering unread that they give out free and laughed at the strapline 'Ireland's best selling newspaper'. "who'd buy this shit?". The kid replied that a quarter of a million copies were sold everyday. You, I, and the whole world know that newspaper's sales figures are, at best, wishful thinking. So I said, assuming they do, why? You can pick it up for free all over the place. Anyway, the kid said he and all his family bought copies. Don't you love the loyalty? Even if I don't need it I'm going to buy this low grade sheet that publishes dubiously reported propaganda at the whim of its owner. Maybe his da works for it, but he's maybe 19 or something - he should be hating his da if he has any grit in his soul at all.

So today's headline "Death crash bus driver is cleared: verdict puts pressure on Dublin Bus to find cause of accident". And lots of stuff about compensation - this from a paper that regularly accuses this country of being obsessed with compensation. Let's get it straight. The prosecution made a mess of the case and gave the defence incorrect figures to work on. The defence concocted a case based on the tachograph from a South African bus - it was a weak case as it happens but this is irrelevant as it was based on an entirely different bus. During the trial this mistake was discovered - the prosecution had the figures from the correct bus and no 'power surge' was on it. So the Independent - front page 'Power surge key to verdict' is absolutely wrong. The chain of evidence and the presentation of evidence by the prosecution is the key to the verdict. Absolutely no evidence of a power surge was adduced in court. None. That said the defendent had to be found innocent: would you like to be convicted in a case where the prosecution was so sloppy with the evidence? But, crucially there is no need for Dublin Bus to find the cause of the accident. There is no suggestion that there was anything other than driver error.

This is a distasteful comparison but there you go. OJ Simpson had to be found innocent due to the prosecution's actions, the police do not have to go looking for the real killer of his wife. The defendent had to be found innocent, I think, but that does not mean the search for the cause of the accident goes on. The Irish Independent - up to the usual lofty journalistic standards of the Independent group - has covered the story with profound ignorance of the law.

More web 2.0ness

I made a post the other day being enthusiastic for some kind of web 2.0 application- to be deluged with the response that it did exist. So now I'm trying to be officially enthusiastic for web 2 so on my sidebar where what should be my blogroll resides you might notice - if you haven't been here in a while - that there is a technorati link and a new social networking aggregation link. This is provided by elgg.

When will they learn?

On the way up to work this morning walking through the Tenters and what do you know it but the cherry blossoms are out already. Obviously they come out weeks later on the Northside where I grew up. But I've been walking past these cherry trees for years and while the urge to start singing Sakura rose up in me as strong as it would in any man I had to ask myself: when will these trees ever learn? Yes it's been mild the last few days, Saturday was warm and sunny (yesterday was, well, let's forget yesterday) but winter lasts long these years. Last year it only started in January and while everyone thinks it was a warm summer it was below ten degrees and pelting down in July: May was horribly cold. Winter goes on and on. November and December tend to be pleasant. These trees will never produce cherries while this goes on.
They produce cherries on the Northside you know.
Anyway, I stop to say hello to a cat with some weird facial deformity and the poor thing runs away. This is quite unusual as cats tend to lose their timidity around me. Honestly, since I was a kid. I mean I always thought if I had to choose I was a dog man (though it's a bit like 'are you a breast or a leg or an arse man? Yes! No which? YES, YES, YES!') but cats prefer me. Though I do seem to remember they preferred me when I was hairier - kittens had a thing for big beards and actual cats tried to nest in my big hair. Then I remembered a snippet of a dream I had last night which involved me violently picking up a cat and throwing it away (with extreme prejudice - I think I must have been affected by that US doctrine I read about yesterday, known as the 'Ledeen doctrine' of 'throwing some shitty little country up against the wall once a decade just to show we mean business' HUH! YEAH! I met that guy (who no doubt is even weedier and nerdier than me or I wouldn't dream of threatening. Actually, why deny the internet. He, like most of the hawkish neocons really is even weedier than I) I would throw him repeatedly against the wall. Call it socratic dialogue mofo. No really Messrs Ledeen and Goldberg, I really, really, would throw you repeatedly against a wall if I met you. It's odious. But perhaps you might realise what dreadful little people you were and how you were giving succour to dreadful little people with violent little minds.) which is really unusual. I don't really go for violent dreams. Actually, I don't remember them largely as they are so dull they send me into deep sleep. A friend and I used to, about a dozen years ago, email each other in the morning with our dreams. Pretty soon I had to make them up: my conscious imagination is less hide-bound, conventional and dull (maybe) than my dreams. It's a bit like kids really - they're supposed to be these imaginative 'don't they say the durndest things' kind of people when in fact, in my rather limited experience, they tend to crave repetition and conformity. Once they have a concept they judge everything by it if at all possible.

Infamous - or at least not famous

Somebody said, when the subject came up "I don't know why anyone would make a film about Capote when there was one just out". I'm not a producer so I neither can answer, nor am I interested in answering that question. I can however offer a perspective on why you might go and watch it. The main reason is that it is a fine film with a balanced script and a set of excellent performances: Dobby the House Elf utterly outdoes Philip Seymour Hoffman's smug Hollywood turn. Sandra Bullock is an even less likely comfortable shoe wearing Harper Lee than Katherine Keener - looking like she is about to corpse every time Capote opens his mouth down South adds great charm to the movie. James Bond is a rounded, believable, frightening Perry. The whole film has many charms: in this we can see why Capote was popular as well as the fact that artists are monsters cannibalising life. The relationship with Perry is very believable rather than the coy cut to the next morning of the previous film. The supporting cast is huge - Sigourney Weaver as a grande dame best mate, Peter Bogdanovich (I'd prefer he directed instead, we went to see his last film 'the cat's miaow' and it was a perfect ensemble piece), Isabella Rosselini...

All I remember liking about the other Capote film was the film emulsion. Normally most cinematographers seem to go for a chiaroscuro effect: doesn't matter if you're in a hospital ward the shadow side of your face will be pitch black. It's sort of the equivilent of the overenthusiastic foley artist in my book. In this however the print was undersaturated and the emulsion had a greeish hue: it looked like a late 50s early 60s Life magazine spread. The kind of thing where they followed Kennedy's campaign trail. I particularly remember in the jail scenes the dark of Hofmann's face being green.

As an actor pointed out to me: you can't really blame Hofmann for the facile part. All he did was an impersonation. Nothing else to the film really. Which reminded me of the other film I saw that same weekend last year: Walk the line. Again nothing but impersonation. Somebody said to me this week that the music made the film worthwhile. Buy the records. I don't need some actor doing them.

Both those films were deeply philistine: mimesis as the highpoint of art. Infamous, on the other hand was a real film. It added something to the world. Not the greatest film ever. But it was a piece of art.

Starbucks

So I got a coffee in Starbucks the other day. Or ThreeBucks as they should call it, well ThreeBucksTwenty is what my coffee cost. Not the same ring to it though I suppose. It's not that I made a huge conscious decision to avoid it before but the thing is I pass it every week. Early in the morning on a Saturday. And I need a coffee but I don't go there as it's ten minutes walk to where I'm going. And I'm usually carrying a computer (why don't laptops weigh as much as lapdogs? In fact spidery little legs for self locomotion and fur would make nice additions to laptop design. They could sort of purr maybe during use. Anyway.) so I don't bother. But, there is no coffee shop between College Green, past the copshop on Pearce Street, down past Westland Row to the far end of Pearce St. Chef shops, kitchen gear, yeast retailers, fundaligionist creeepy fucked up fambly friendly young earth creationist Christian Worship Centres yes. But no coffee shops. I think to myself is this some kind of 21st century version of Joyce's game 'can you get from a to b in Dublin (in his mind, in Zurich or Trieste) without passing a pub (and no doubt a bracing restorative imaginary glass of wine)' except now it's a coffee shop. And you'd be doing it on google earth / maps.

Does absolutely everything have to have a web 2.0 interface now?

Needless to say we had the 'hilarious' I'm too stupid to talk to them thing. 'Large black coffee to take away please'. Fool! 'What kind?', 'oh you know, normal, black, americano, whatever you call it', 'normal or Americano?''Americano''With milk?' 'no black' 'large whateveryadadyadaddaa no room to go'. And there was no room in this giant litre vat they served me. So I spilt a bunch on the way to where I was going, soaking my hand in scalding coffee and soaking the cardboard sleeve that should keep your hand from getting too hot when holding it and the vat, when half full, toppled over and spread an oilslick a metre square on the carpet.
I read about WalMart's gallon jars of pickles (who wans a gallon of pickles?) now I saw it in action.

I'll make my own in future. It's at least as good, costs pence, isn't a two litre tub, and won't go all over the place.

I mean to put these up in a more timely fashion. From Get Your War On