Staircase wit

The cold snap that traditionally accompanies paddy's day has just ended, proof that while god doesn't exist he does hate us so very much, and the spring birds are singing merrily. And is that early chicks I hear in the attic space above me? And we just discovered that the only way Ireland would win a cricket game against a test nation is by foul means. Not necessarily ours - but this is the foulest, most sordid sports story I have ever encountered...

Anyway, watched "the consequences of love" the other night and really enjoyed it. It had a sedate, hypnotic pace and only became less good in the last third when things started happening. The director wasn't so good at that. Then again Tarkovsky was no John Woo and that's no bad thing. Other people have compared it to Sophia Coppolla, and my Beloved and I both thought of lost in translation but it was far less crass than that film. And deliciously morbid too. And a powerful argument for the quotidien blandness of days going by, endlessly, pulling you into the future.
Perhaps we enjoyed it so much partially as it began with pictures of escalators (or more properly moving sidewalks) and blank industrial spaces and bland hotels and we had just been to see Thomas Demand's L'esprit d'escalier exhibition at IMMA. He makes sculptures out of paper, mdf, plastic and photographs these sculptures into luscious huge prints. The subjects are frequently semi-industrial bland areas: a stock office in a warehouse, a stock room for a shop, a lift, an indescribable yellow machine in a factory. At first the pictures look like the real thing and then you notice that the steel stairway spiralling around the machine is painted on; that while the untreated MDF shelves are real the office is in fact largely paint, and the phones sitting on the desk lack buttons and numbers; the balconies coming out of the building are simply corrugated cardboard.

Don't bother with the Alex Katz New York exhibition on at the same venue - NY toffs drawing pictures of each other. They should print them in the New Yorker. Or something. In case you didn't know I despise as contemptible the graphic style of the New Yorker and it old world pretentiousness "from our correspondant in Tallinn". Ick.

Kennedy assassin: the long wait for a culprit ends

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said in a transcript released by the Pentagon. The transcript goes on to detail the many chilling murders he was behind. It seems "It also makes clear that al-Qaida wanted to down a second trans-Atlantic aircraft during would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid’s operation." (MSNBC News)He was behind the first bomb in the World Trade Centre, the attempt to shoot down and El-Al plane ("or other jewish airliner" wow, airplanes can now have a religion. I live in strange times) in Kenya and the Bali nightclub bomb. "Other plots he said he was responsible for included planned attacks against the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building and New York Stock Exchange, the Panama Canal and Big Ben and Heathrow Airport in London — none of which happened." (MSNBC news again).

As for the procedure itself, he said he had no objection to the tribunal process, it was in fact "okay by me"he also said that he was responsible for dirty bombs and biological weapons on US soil in a 31 point confession of activities.

It seems likely, if and when the Pentagon releases the redacted portions, that we now know the identity of the Lindbergh baby kidnapper, Jack the Ripper, and quite possibly the Bogey Man himself.

You really should pop over to the transript itself.

Ministry of Space

While this book may be slight, it's beautiful. And I really can't stress too much just how beautiful the artwork in this book is. I'm sure (and I know it had a slightly troubled history, the last issue was delayed three years) that the artist spent a huge chunk of his life for comparatively little pay doing it. It was worth it though. Though my word for it is suspect as I deeply fetishise retro-futurism. It's like Dan Dare meets modern repro and digital techniques. Each frame is bursting with colour and detail.

As for the story: it's an alternative history of the late twentieth century. British imperialism rules the skies. The satire, while not gentle, is subtle and pervasive. These two reviews are interesting as both the authors
a) don't know what a mcguffin is, and
b) bought the mcguffin with extra chips to go
so maybe the satire is a little less pointed than I had thought. The source of the funding for the Ministry of Space is the mcguffin by the way, not the plot. The real story is something rather different and by choosing Britain as the target of the satire the author makes some positive points about the US while at the same time exposing the imperialist project for what it is.

I thought it was a tiny bit expensive for such a small comic, but it is so beautiful, so extraordinarily beautiful, that I bought it anyway. Then I thought that if I lent it to a friend of mine I wouldn't be able to accept it back as the art is even more up his street so I went and bought another copy for him. You should buy one for your friends too. This little gem is worthy of our support.

Conservapaedia (sic)

I thought you might be interested in a new wiki project to correct the anti-christian and anti-american bias of wikipedia. for example they have a list of biases in Wikipedia. Here's number one

"1 Wikipedia allows the use of B.C.E. instead of B.C. and C.E. instead of A.D. The dates are based on the birth of Jesus, so why pretend otherwise? Conservapedia is Christian-friendly and exposes the CE deception."

How right they are. I don't know if you've read an academic book on ancient history or archeology recently but they do it too! The whole world isn't utterly compliant with fundaligionist christians. This must be fixed immediately and wikipedia is unworkable with.

The anti-american bias of Wikipedia, and the evidence of it, is even more damning, try this -

9 Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English-speaking users are American. Look up "Most Favored Nation" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts the spelling to the British spelling "Most Favoured Nation." Look up "Division of labor" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts to the British spelling "Division of labour," then insists on the British spelling for "specialization" also.[9] Enter "Hapsburg" (the European ruling family)
and Wikipedia automatically changes the spelling to Habsburg, even though the American spelling has always been "Hapsburg". Within entries British spellings appear in the silliest of places, even when the topic is American. Conservapedia favors American spellings of words.

We should insist that this be changed immediately, or until it is changed, insist that everyone use the Conservapedia.
Lead Kindly Light!

I should point out that their page on the bias of Wikipedia is a great advertisement for the corrective nature of wikipedia itself - many of the points that seem to exhibit bias have indeed been changed and others effortlessly withstand the conservapedia criticism. For example: the US no longer uses, according to Wikipedia, the term "most favored nation", and has replaced it with, rather sensibly it has to be said, the term "Normal Trade Relations". The GATT treaty itself also spells in in the non-US English way (can't bring myself to say British English).

I'm not particularly a fan of wikipedia by the way - I just lambasted a student for writing an article in a student newspaper lifted from the wiki only yesterday. But the Conservopedia is a particularly funny example of the uneducated but increasingly powerful religious lunatic. The conservapedia page itself, sadly, is a rather fine example of selective use of evidence, circular argument, peurile name-calling, base anti-intellectualism, non-scientific pseudo reasoning, and pure simple utter madness. I might note that they link to the Religious Tolerance website to lend credance to their view that the majority of Americans disagree with evolution. This is not what their page on the subject actually says. It says that 44% of Americans (overall) believe in some form of young earth creationism, that god created man inside the last 10.000 years. 49% believe in either theistic or non-theistic evolution. That would include the two largest Western faiths by the way. Not that wikipedia as an international document should necessarily reflect majority American opinion.

One last point about largely uneducated religious crazies, whether they be christian, muslim, jewish, or buddhist: to suggest that a scientific article, or an encyclopaedia (non-american spelling, so sue me) should include crazy young earth creationism when writing about evolution and suggesting that it is worthless and biased for not doing so, is much like pointing out that the bible, or koran, or whatever is worthless and biased for not writing about scientifically valid evolution.

And we wouldn't have that said would we?

The Polical Compass

This has been the buzz around the office for the last couple of days: we've been having fun with the political compass. We were at a seminar about critical thinking in students and one of the suggestions was a tool to help them perceive the bias they approached a subject with.

Its central premise I take to be self-evident: that the axis of left and right is unsatisfactory for plotting political convictions and that another of authoritarian vs. libertarian is needed. This, obviously, doesn't work for Americans who like to confuse 'liberal' with 'left' when they are not the same thing. This is part of the reason why former lefties (say Wolfowitz et al though for all their trumpeting of SDS leadership I've never seen them mentioned in anything on the SDS) end up with a very right wing government.

I have long argued that Irish political parties are only comprehensible if you have a three dimensioal axis including both these measures and nationalism and unionism. The lack of a major fascist party here is partially attributable to strong nationalism being associated with the left a bit more than the right. DeValera would have been a willing fascist but his fellow travellers would not.

By the way, I score somewhere between Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.

From people at work's score I suspect that most people's politics, when not considering which of their limited parties to vote for, are far less authoritarian than the options offered them. And probably quite a bit left too. Howard Zinn noted that about polling the US people rather than the options they are offered

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

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?