Curb Your Enthusiasm

My brother, who lives in China, has just returned for his annual 10 days in the UK. This time, as part of his aid package from the Orient, in amongst the knock-off dvds is an absolute gem, the 5^th series of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I often wonder what exactly it was that I did when I lived in Sydney. Yes the Olympics were on when I was there, although inexplicably I didn’t go to any events. The opening night was fantastic as I remember. I had a job in a bank in the middle of Sydney – St.Georges Square – and it was a dull job which earnt me money, and I lived in a house with 9 others, two dogs and lots of cockroaches, but it only cost me $60AUS per week, which is nothing. I wasn’t short of cash. I made some good friends too, an Irish girl and a Glaswegian guy, and now that I really think about it, I smoked an inordinate amount of weed. I went to the odd bar too, and the odd beach. I went to Manly, and Maroubra and Byron but Sydney beaches were weird affairs. The sea was dangerous with really big surf which is crap for swimming and the sand was packed with lots of people which all in all is a far cry from Thailand. Back to the subject, so I smoked loads of hydro which our next door neighbour usefully grew and sold to us. And when we all came in from work, Seinfeld would be on tv, and we’d all watch it, and it was one of the funniest tv shows I had seen. I used to watch Sex and the City too but I can’t remember why.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is absolutely brilliant. It follows Larry Sanders, who wrote Seinfeld, go about his daily life in LA, and it plays out in a pseudo reality-tv fashion. Poor Larry has such a terrible time. In a Woody Allenesque manner he goes through life getting angry over the most insignificant things, whilst being surrounded by gruesome people, and while having the worst luck in the world. And its not like the people that upset him so are even that bad. They seem to me to be entirely normal in a Californian kind of way. Its just he sees something and it upsets him, and he’s not entirely rational and then circumstances are rarely in his favour. So in two days I’m 10 episodes in. That’s how good it is.

No.3, the Psychopath and top billing

Its ok, I'm mad

From Russia with Jaws

I watched Jaws on tv at the weekend. Amazingly I watched it on itv and there were hardly any advert breaks – I counted only one in the last hour. That’s beside the point. Its huge fun that film, but one of those films I wish I had seen at the cinema first time round, rather than on tv. It must have been pretty scary stuff. The thing is, is that like Star Wars it the supporting cast that I like the most. After years of Star Wars I suddenly realised that R2D2 is the best character. And in Jaws, its not Brody (Scheider) the police chief or the shark (“Bruce” – apparently named after Spielberg’s lawyer), or even Hooper (Dreyfuss) but it is Quint (Robert Shaw) that steals the show for me. ‘From Russia With Love’ was on on Sunday night and there he is again as the hitman out to kill Bond. This time he’s a younger fitter assassin with that Ayran look that Spectre (or was it Smersh?) were so fond of. The picture shows him next to No.3 (!) Rosa Klebb, she with the venomous spike in her shoe who is dealt with by the until then completely useless but stunning Russian honeytrap. Bond’s line: “I think she’s had her kicks…”. Shaw’s character has a name in this film but it doesn’t really matter who he is, other than being the ruthless silent psychopath who kills anyone that crosses him. Shaw’s undoing is not unlike that of David McCallum’s in The Great Escape. His use of language betrays him – Shaw’s expression of calling Bond ‘old man’ is, even in 1963, an outmoded expression.

Skip forward twelve years takes us to 1975 and Jaws. Shaw has certainly lost his looks, but the murderous look is still in his eyes. He looks half dead too, which could be due to make-up and the rigours of filming on and in the sea with a shark that became known as ‘The Great White Turd’ due to its inability to do anything other than sink. Quint (Shaw) only turns up in the latter half of the film, when Brody charters him to go out and hunt down the Great White which has been so successfully savaging Amity Island. One of the most celebrated scenes of the film is when the hapless hunting party are comparing scars, and Hooper points out a scar on Quint’s upper arm. Quint than recounts this horrific tale of the sinking of his ship the USS Indianapolis at the end of WW2 and then being in the water for 3 days with 1100 men being viciously attacked by sharks, and at the end only 300 being rescued. Its already been well established in the film that Shaw is the old seadog, Brody as the landlubber and Hooper as a rich college kit with lots of toys but no sea-sense. What this scene does is provide an insight into the gleam of madness in Quint’s eyes. I’m sure that if I had read Moby Dick and would be able to draw some kind of comparison with Ahab. But I haven’t so I can’t. What I can say is that Quint makes this film for me. He’s unhinged for sure, but he knows what he’s doing, which now I think about it could be applied to both Hooper and Brody too. So then Jaws in 4 words: Killer Shark, Mad People.

Worry

I’ve been lucky in life, not having very many worries. Some people go through life wracked by worry as some are natural worriers and some are naturally unlucky. The expression that you make your own luck can not be applied to all people as there are some less fortunates who are prone to poor luck. I wonder if they worry? Or maybe they are fatalistic or perhaps cynical enough to realise that their poor run of luck is life’s way of having a laugh at them, and that they in turn can derive some kind of black humour from it. I would hope that they would be able to laugh at their continuous runs of misfortune.

So one goes through life without worries, then some really serious worries come along and you realise how meaningless and trivial your everyday concerns are. I find that just as themes and film have plot runs so too does life. Films may well be predetermined in a way that life is not, but there are plots that run through both, and in life these plots are opened up, I find, in a series of revelations and slow dawnings. Not unlike a film then, except luckily life lasts longer then films. An example of this is ageing. I’m 32 and I had a mini-revelation last night that I’m nearly mid-way through my life. This revelation came as a response to my thoughts on mortality. Life, as with everything has its peaks and troughs, and you can be going along quite smoothly then all of a sudden a spanner of particular evilness is thrown in the works, and what is most alarming is that this spanner seemingly appears from nowhere, although on reflection there are always little insidious sign of the approaching nightmare. I have two uncles on my father’s side of the family, and one of them is days away from death. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer about a month ago after suffering kidney failure and was given 8 weeks to live. It turns out that he hasn’t been well fro some time. You see, he was quite distant from the family having cut himself off about ten years ago. There’s no need to go into details as families are funny things, and though I don’t feel devastated I feel some guilt at having not gone and visited. His hospital is in Sherbourne which is about an 8 hour return trip from London. I was going to go and visit him with my brother when he comes over from China but it seems he won’t live that long.

That’s a weird thing, that someone won’t live that long. That this time in two months he’ll be gone forever. He’s had his troubles in life and I know now that not only is he philosophical about the turn of events, but that he is now apologising to those that he has hurt during his life. But though he cut himself off from the family, the family have been to see him, and are still with him now. It is just terribly sad and my father, who stood by him and supported him is terribly upset by it all, more so than even he thought he would be.

I’d got my head around this element of mortality. That a swift sudden death is a better way to go than a lingering painful decline from cancer. I’d made my peace with this concept, and so it was that I emailed my brother yesterday with the sad news that this uncle was now on a push-button administered morphine drip and that this is the final stage of palliative care.

Then came the second piece of devastating news and the stimulus to the very long collection of words. One of my cousins rang last night and told my father that his second brother had collapsed at the weekend and was now semi-conscious in hospital with a ‘growth’ around his pitiuary gland. This gland is at the top of the spinal column where it connects with the brain and is about the size of a pea. What this growth is, we don’t know but anything happening in the body that causes a collapse is not a good thing. The test results are due back today.

And so I come back to worry again. I find that it comes in waves. Here I am sitting at my desk at work, not having done any work at all as I can’t seem to concentrate at all. You may wonder how it is that I am still able to write, but it is like having an entirely one-sided conversation. Still, it is making me feel marginally better by distracting me. This worry comes in waves. One minute I’m completely ok and working on something or doing whatever it is that I normally do and the next is like that dreadful feeling of butterflies before an exam or almost like the waves of panic that I get in the underground sometimes. I then have to sit back and look elsewhere as I can not concentrate. Twice this morning I’ve felt like making my excuses and going home for the day. This morning I was asked to swap desks for the day and I felt close to tears at this. And I have it now. I feel something rising at the back of my throat and I find myself staring into space. I’m not looking at anything and I’m trying not to think of anything. I know what this feeling is. It is dread. It is akin to that fear of some of the teachers at school, or of bullies. It’s the fear of the unknown.

I’m going to go for a long walk at lunch and see how I feel after that. I’m expecting a phone call from my father about the news. The longer that I don’t get that call the more I’m drawn into the conflict of ‘no news is good news’ versus ‘there’s been no news, this is bad news’. And somewhere in the middle is the quiet voice of moderation but it is losing its battle right now.

I thought that writing would make me feel better – it usually does – but its made no difference.

Work out your carbon footprint!

The government have just set up a flash-happy website with an almost cuddly carbon calculator to help you increase your ever burgeoning guilt over destroying the environment with every breath. Pedantically speaking it should be the C02 Footprint as we don't actually have a problem with too much graphite or soot.

I was pleasantly surprised that my footprint is small at some tonnes (or whatever) and that my annual travel in a plane completely outweighed all the benefits of recycling et al. There aren't any outright hints on what a carbon footprint is, and how it matters and indeed if it really matters at all.

I like tests though and this is a wonderful inclusive pc test where nobody is right and nobody is wrong, and it has pretty colours and never once shows you the consequence of producing too much carbon (dioxide).

The Best Website in the World

Holy Moly is, with Facebook, how I get through the working day keeping hold of my sanity. They do a mailout on Friday afternoons without the pictures.

A Really good album

I bought this at the same time as that Calvin Harris pap. Its a great album. Calvin could learn something about how to make music by listening to this. The Guardian said that it was the Chemical Brothers' best album since Surrender. Surrender was a good album and I'm only on the second listening of this one but its really enjoyable.

A pretty moderate album...

I bought this the other day from Virgin thus earning myself a stamp (see below). He didn't create disco. What he did do was take a catchy hook and repeat it for 4 minutes without introducing any new sounds. Its a bit like the really moderate tracks on Daft Punk's first album which start off really well then never go anywhere and turn out a bit dull. I bought this off the back of seeing him (on tv) at Glastonbury, and on reflection his 'Acceptable in the 80s' song wasn't particularly inspirational but I thought I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.
Its not a particularly good album.

R.I.P. Fopp

I’m genuinely saddened by the closure of Fopp as it was my favourite music shop. I work near the Tottenham Court Road ‘Flagship’ shop and every day there is a little gaggle of people furtively trying the doors or just gazing forlornly into the darkened ‘pantheon of the £5 punt’. Where will I buy my £1 books? Where will I go to spend £20 on five or six completely random CDs? Is there no justice in the world? HMV I would gladly see closed. Not only is it the B&Q of music retail right down to the warehouse setting it is also too expensive. Worst of all they have no loyalty scheme. Fopp induced loyalty because of not only the price, but also the range, the marvellous décor, the music, the whole ambience. They had no loyalty scheme apart from having a great shop. HMV have no loyalty scheme and have a shite shop and deserve to go buy bust. Problem is that if HMV do go bust they’ll drag Waterstones down with them.

Virgin have a loyalty card where for every tenner you spend you get a little stamp, and for every ten stamps ‘earned’ you get a tenner off your next purchase. Economically it makes no sense as invariably things are priced 50p below the tenner threshold and you end up spending more just to get an extra stamp. But I keep going back for more.

And for the last word from Fopp:

'It is with great regret that we announce the closure of Fopp.

Our store chain is profitable, well regarded and loved by our loyal customers and staff. However we have failed to gain the necessary support from major stakeholders, suppliers and their credit insurers to generate sufficient working capital to run our expanding business.

We would like to thank staff and customers for their support over the past 25 years.'

I Feel a Campaign Coming On

I feel a campaign coming on, a campaign to tell the world about the truth about Global Warming. The truth is that ‘we don’t know’. We have our suspicions but nothing is certain. I think I may well scream if I read another report stating ‘likely consequences’, ‘possible temperatures’ and all the other vague adverbs around. In amongst all the crap that comes into my work inbox a really good one dropped by the other day with this link, which I should stress is a draft:

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4007935

I don’t expect anyone to read all this, it being a policy paper. The interesting part (the bits I have read) is Part 1, the introduction to Global Warming. It gives a good overview of what its all about. I’m attempting to write a critique of part of it as someone has requested I do. The bottom of page 18 is really annoying me. There’s an inference that the author suggests should be ignored which I think is rather important.

I’ve just been scrolling through this document and it really is rather interesting. So the introduction has a sentence that makes me irate, but later on Page 22 there’s a rather frank statement regarding the rise in sea levels. Observing that sea levels have “risen by between 10 and 25 cm over the last century” the author asks, “How much of this anticipated climate change can be averted by reducing greenhouse gas emissions? The short answer is ‘some, but not much’”. Even if we achieved the targets set by the non-ratified Kyoto Protocol it would, “reduce future global warming by at most 0.2C.”.

I had never realised that Kyoto was talking in fractions when we’re thinking of whole numbers. 2C warmer is the 22^nd Century scenario. And that’s if we reach the Kyoto target by 2010. The other thing I learned is that warm oceans take up more space than cold oceans of the same mass. Not something I ever thought about, but we’re predicted to have lots more warm water in the future.

So the name of my new party is, “We’re Too Late – Even the Government Says So”.

Time to start building an Ark.

On a lighter note

This is cited as the Worst Music Video ever, but I think that its the best. Introduced by the Jazz Club presenter from the Fast Show its a classic slice of Finnish pop from the 1970s or 80s. The lead male looks not unlike He-Man with a medallion before his 'I am the Poweeer' moment. I think he was called Adam when he wasn't his alter-ego. The lead girl is a bit Kylie before she met Michael Hutchinson and learnt new ways of enjoying the world. The dance troupe are something else altogether.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPnGPIMUnus

I’m bored with Climate Change

Before I start I’ll say, if you haven’t already noticed, I'm a cynic and a pessimist. I’m a cynic because I live in London and the place breeds cynicism. I’m a pessimist because it means that I’m never disappointed. I’m not really a pessimist but I’m more pessimistic than I am an optimist.

Being bored with Climate Change is a very off message comment. I almost feel ashamed saying (writing) it. Its old news now except it’s the kind of news that just won’t go away. Come to think of it it is recorded in the newspapers but as it isn’t even new news how can it be described as news? Still, that isn’t my gripe with it. Here are my Climate Change gripes:

1) Seen it, heard it, experiencing it

Haven’t got the t-shirt but when I buy a hemp one I’ll let you know.

2) Its too late

What’s too late? We’re too late. The scientists are too late.

3) Human Nature can’t be changed

We all know that wars are bad and yet we carry on having them. Through history one of Man’s many defining achievements has been his affinity with war. Its something that we do a great deal of, its something we do well, its something that some of us enjoy a great deal, and we as a collective whole make a great deal of money out of it. Somewhat perversely it also provides the catalyst for our greatest inventions and entertainment. To fight amongst ourselves seems to be human nature.

So for this fight against Climate Change we’re expected to draw together as some kind of homogenous non-competitive happy family and say ‘no’ to C02, to curtail our industrial growth (I’m looking at you China and India) and say ‘yes’, the planet’s health is more important than modernity and all that defines modernity? As part of this mass pissing on bonfires we’re also expected to change radically how we carry out our daily lives, turning our backs on our entire history – no more ‘me, me, me’ and instead ‘oooh, save the planet’.

And we’re expected to do this preferably in the next 8 years (UK government) and at most by 2020. I need to check these target dates, and those of the beached whale that is Kyoto.

We’re also meant to do this in an environment which is changing rapidly around us, where fuel prices are going through the roof, and fresh water is becoming a scarcity whilst there’s going to be a big problem with the saltier stuff.

4) We’ll war before we tackle the environment

Frankly I reckon there will be a war before that happens. The good news is that we’re well practiced at war. The bad news is that it isn’t really the answer this time. It’ll help decide who controls the natural resources that are most important (I’m looking at you freshwater), but in the big picture we’ll still all be screwed. Just for the record, I reckon that the war will start somewhere in central Asia and will involve the stans, Iran, India and Pakistan. It’ll be to do with limited water resources as there are only two major supplies in the area (Himalayan meltwater and the Caspian Sea and the rivers that flow from it), and a whole swathe of countries depend on them. And if climate change is going to continue the way it is predicted then these resources are going to be radically reduced.

5) Climate Change is a 21^st Century Millenium Bug

i.e. its all a load of crap. Climate Change (CC) is all a bit of a cult. Dare to say that CC is a myth and that nobody really knows and you’ll be slated as some God-fearing intelligent design believing Texan oil megalomaniac, which is absurd. There is so much supposition in all these dire warnings of what ‘might’ happen in the future if we don’t mend our ways. Articles are full of ‘may’ and ‘could’ but nobody ever says ‘we don’t know for sure’ as that would cast doubt on their findings. And might it not be the case that all these pronouncements of the imminent green holocaust are only coming about because nobody has ever bothered to investigate this part of science before?

Denouncing Climate Change is a Thought Crime.

6) Solar Flares

Blame it on the Sun. The sun is getting hotter, and all the other planets are getting hotter, so it stands to reason that that is why we have global warming. I have absolutely no evidence of this as I have done no research on it but it sounds like a good argument to me. Of course I’ll do some research and probably find out that Exxon sponsored it and then I’ll be torn between the inter-galactic answer and the no less partisan Friends of the Earth conclusion.

7) The need to fear

Its good to be scared: we thrive on it, except we’re a bit short of things to be fearful of. We’ve had in the last century: War, Nazis, War, Communism, lots of wars, Terrorism, Globalisation (how quaint), Millenium Bug, Terrorism, Environment.

[Aside: notice how the anti-capitalist anti-globalisation movements collapsed when we realised that a) we liked the internet and b) cheap stuff comes from China]

We now need to be scared of the environment. How else are the mega-corporative military industrial complexes going to foist new exciting green ways of driving cars. Look, it runs on bio-fuels. No more being nasty to the environment. Hope the factory it came from was green and powered by sustainable sources. Robots do need a lot of electricity.

8) The Earth has a blowing hot and cold cycle

It gets hot and then it gets cold. When it gets hot things dry up, and when it gets cold it gets icy. Not much we can do about it. Maybe this should be slotted in the inter-galactic category.

9) Carbon Footprints

Not something that Father Christmas leaves on the carpet but the big new phrase. I’m terribly worried about my carbon footprint but I allay this fear by fastidiously recycling my newspapers and taking public transport. The irony is not lost on me that my recycling is carted off in a great big diesel powered truck and put on another great big diesel truck and taken to the coast where its put on a great big heavy fuel powered ship and carted off to China to be turned into loo roll in a great big factory powered by a great big coal burning power station and is then put on another great big heavy oil fuelled ship and chugged all the way back to my loo roll holder via more diesel powered trucks before being wiped on my bum, flushed down the loo, processed in a nuclear powered filtration place before being chucked in the sea.

And I only take public transport as I don’t have a chauffeur driven Mercedes to cart me to work and if I could afford a Mercedes I would probably instead have a Hummer just so I could sneer at all the other less fortunates stuck in the bus all thinking what an oil-guzzling bastard I am whilst conveniently forgetting the energy expended in making sure their bums were kept clean and their consciences clear.

Conclusion

We’re screwed. Its too late, we’ve missed the boat, and even if we hadn’t missed the boat (which by all accounts we’ll be needing) we would still miss it. There is no way in hell that we are going to achieve the targets we have set for ourselves. This doomsday scenario that the eggheads keep on telling us is incoming will happen, and will happen when they say it will. I just don’t have faith in the human race changing its ways before it is too late. This opinion doesn’t even take into account the opinions of most of the big industrial nations. China is starting to think seriously about its polluted water-ways and lack of drinking water but play this off against the new coal power station it builds every week and the resultant industrial revolution it is undergoing. India too has a rapidly expanding economy. That’s just two countries that are expected to stop right now and think of a green way to do it. I mean come on, its just NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Oh, and if does all turn out to be as threatening as a circus clown (subliminally frightening but overtly harmless) by then we’ll all be tootling about in electric hover mobiles with wind vanes on our heads and at least we’ll be greener, and no harm can really come from that…

Chuck Norris: Before the Beard

Giant Car Bumper Cock

Too much text

There's too much text here, so here's a picture. I googled 'silly picture'.

Coffee without sugar tastes of coffee

Bit of a revelation this: Coffee tastes really good without sugar. Amazing! The best instant that I've found is M&S Fairtrade Cafe Gold which really truly smells like coffee and tastes like coffee. I know I'm getting old now. I like mustard, I like coffee and I don't like sugar (as much as I used to).

Star Wars geekery

There's a Star Wars exhibition opening in London tomorrow for 6 months and I can feel myself being drawn inexorably towards it. I just know it will be full of Phantom Menace crap and stupid merchandise that I will just have to buy. I think a Yoda mug will do. I'm sure George Lucas will try and sell me the new version of Star Wars where they're all in drag except Chewie who's had a Brazilian. Same plot and special effects though.
Peep Show on tonight. Quality.

Rumsfeld Poetry

Why I don't like poetry:

It rhymes, it has iambic pentameter, its written in a stupid way without sentences which makes it harder to read - the only way to read Milton's Paradise Lost is to read it like a normal book without all the verses.

When poetry is recited the reader sounds all maudlin like their cat has just been run over and they're trying not to cry.

I can never remember poems.

They just... irritate me.... But still, here's some stuff from Donald Rumsfeld which works better when written in verse. This I can handle because I know who he is. Poets I can't handle because I don't know who they are. Neither do they. That's why they write poems:

(Lifted straight from Guardian Online)

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession

Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.

May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

The Situation

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Clarity

I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

Glass Box

You know, it's the old glass box at the
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But

Some of you are probably too young to remember those
Those glass boxes,
But

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Firefox add-ons

One of the best things about Mozilla Firefox are the customisation aspects. There are some real beauties in amongst the crap. These are all for Firefox 2.0 – go to Help>Check for Updates to get the latest version.

Then go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ to find these:

Fasterfox: Noticeably speeds up page load times
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269

Google Preview: This is excellent. It inserts a preview picture (thumbnail) of any given page next to the text description in google.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269

Customize Google: This removes the adverts from Google and as the name suggests gives you far more options for how Google works than google does.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743

PDF Download: Throws up a box when you click on a pdf icon asking if you want to save or not. Very useful at work.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636