vendredi 30 janvier 2004

'The Joy of Letting Women Down': too good for mere words Many pages would serve well as a scan from Natalie d'Arbeloff's handbook, but I chose this pair because you can see both telling illustrations and the instructive text in blood bold and even sometimes CAPS to make some of her points. Natalie's notions of how the 'Worshipped Male' might set about juggling the "Primary", "Regulars" and "Temps" among the lays in his life were also the part of her work that provoked the most interesting real-life horror stories and criticism when I let a friend or two loose on her book in the Canteen: Since Ms d'Arbeloff might be curious to know what the likes of François, Tony and Jacques made of some of her observations, let it be said that if I've learned anything from 'The Joy of Letting Women Down: Secrets of the Worshipped Male' (Robson Books, 2000) it is, just for starters, to tell her that their informed opinions are Absolutely None of Her Business. In a pocketful of liberally illustrated pages, Natalie has herself already revealed more than enough. Just take some of the wretched whistle-blower's chapter headings: 3 The Management of Female Lust and Jealousy 8 Sleeping Together 9 Time-Management and Excuses 12 Guilt, Contrition and Loveability. In all, there are 15 such revelations, including accurate and splendidly politically incorrect sketches of the various "types" of women and men to be encountered in the "sex war". The trouble with Natalie, quite apart from this bare-faced lack of discretion on matters worthy of the Vatican's Index Librorum Prohibitorum, is that she claims to have "been an expert on the subject of this book for most of her adult life and doesn't regret a minute of it". She further lays claim to a "serious side", as if the above wasn't seriously bad already. If you want to know how a 'Worshipped Male' (WM) functions and can manage to exist at all, you will have to read this handbook which takes the following contradiction as its starting point: "Most women want a man they can worship. Most women want a man they can rely on. It's a fact of life that these two things are incompatible (...)". In further sweeping statements, practical examples of outrageous successes and bloody disasters, and reckless disclosures, Ms d'Arbeloff (her place) does what you could pay many psychoanalysts to do but would usually be wiser to trust your few real friends in providing for free. With elegance, wit and irony, she holds you up a mirror in which, male or female, you're almost bound to recognise part of yourself if you're honest -- and irrespective of whether you agree with the woman. If my friend in London is telling the truth about having lived much of what she writes, then she's a braver and bolder person than I am, because if I were a woman and had endured even the half of this lot, I think I might be a quivering wreck by now. My own experiences with women, however, especially in the last decade or so, have unremittingly taught me that I possess virtually none of the requisites to be a 'WM' and have instead almost incessantly erred down the paths of alarmingly predictable reliability, blind loyalty and phenomenal naïvety. It's no wonder that virtually my every bid to get lovely creatures who drive me half insane with lust to take their clothes off and allow me either to screw them or be laid by them has ended in variations on that balls-breaking theme I will stomach no more: "Yes, I'll 'go out' with you as long as you just want to be good friends." Yet any number of the most selfish, ugliest, mentally impoverished and total bastards I know among my own sex seem capable of arousing intense female desire virtually at the drop of a hat. Sometimes they achieve this and sate their own lust without even the polite prelude of, say, buying dinner first and pretending to be seriously interested in any more than the bits tucked away under their bras, knickers and, occasionally, veils. Regrettably, I also have a feminine side -- a pronounced one according to all those tests you can have fun with on the Internet -- and realise that Ms d'Arbeloff's immensely readable account of many things I unconsciously knew perfectly well but am happy to see written down is also of as much interest to women as it is to we men, the weaker sex. She puts it better herself than I might: "(The manual) is not suggesting that being a WM is a good thing. It is a very bad thing which, like many bad things, is also a lot of fun. This book reveals why this bad thing is fun and precisely why this fun is bad." With consummate insight, Natalie sent me this slender but invaluable tome not for review but out of mercy as a New Year's gift in the immediate wake of my last documented disaster, which left considerable dents in my ego and my intended holiday budget for 2004. To pretend that I regret any of my extremely unpleasant lessons to date would be as much of a mean-minded insult to the women I have desired -- and sometimes still like -- as it would be fruitless indulgence in self-pity over wasted years. I should also note that sometimes I've given quite as bad as I've got, proving a uncharitable mirror to some women myself, given sufficient provocation. I haven't resolved with the turn of the year to be "bad", nor will I reveal some conclusions I have drawn with Natalie's helping hand. However, I remain unsure only whether it's still naïf of me or simply fair warning to inform the next gorgeous creature to tell me just what a "wonderfully kind, adorable man" I am that there is a price to be paid for the already tear-drenched shoulder I shall offer them, such being my nature, to weep on. Ms d'Arbeloff's funny contribution to one of life's most eternal and intriguing mysteries will probably be among the most wisely spent investments in hard-won wisdom (Amazon UK) many who stumble across this review could make. 8:25:54 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 29 janvier 2004

Body blows revisited: just how bad has sunk in! Rewrite: Jan 30 - still sick at heart! Eric Olsen blundered in where angels and devils alike fear to tread in yesterday's 'Blogcritics' editorial, 'BBC Spanked Soundly'. Eric's links are good ones, but -- ridiculously swift to use his reading of the Hutton report to grind an old axe -- our American friend calls the Beeb "anti-war, anti-Blair, leaning way to the left"! This is absurd, superficial and smug. I can only imagine Eric doesn't very often listen to the BBC and certainly knows far fewer of the people who work or have worked for that vast institution than I have. And I'm rewriting this entry, because though I woke up once again with a sledgehammer headache, it's eased off a little today, leaving me more clear-headed to say that I find Eric's trans-Atlantic punditry irritatingly complacent. The BC editor has of late included in a 'New Year's Resolution' poll the options to: Pick fights with other Blogcritics. Post, comment, link more, More, MORE DAMMIT!!! I wouldn't vote for either of those, but since the list reads suspiciously like an editorial rant or a party whip at work, I'd like to suggest that if Eric is going to write more provocative editorials, he'd do better to start by knowing what he's talking about. Before returning to Hutton, the two other blows I mentioned yesterday were waking up with a really unwanted dose of whatever's going round. So did many people in Paris, going by the state of the Canteen's clients at lunchtime, Sam's plea for paracetemol as he served us all, misery in the Métro and the throbbing skull of one of the doctors I kept an appointment with today. The second blow, this one below the belt, sent Natalie's 'Secrets of the Worshipped Male' to the top of my reading list. Certain recent events were elucidated when the concierge knocked on my door with a very big packet. I have no desire to be a "WM", but my first experience of being the man who is sent back gifts he gave a woman, without so much as a note, isn't one I would wish to repeat. I'm still not quite sure that Nat's book should soon be reviewed rather than burned, as I've already noted, as a manual far too revealing -- and extremely funny -- to be bestowed on the public at large. Getting back to my relief that blows usually come only in threes, I really have now read through the Hutton report (BBC). And rather more than just skimmed it, though I didn't re-read all the evidence in its hundreds of pages. It is frightening! If this outrageously one-sided document is British justice at its best, then may all the gods help that country of my birth, because it's in a very bad way. My friend Tony told me he hasn't "seen so much TV since 9/11, but then journalism's my trade". He thought, in a note, that the only people really likely to wade through all that stuff are we journalists. Fortunately, he's wrong. Even if they're not all ploughing through the report itself, it's pretty clear what a lot of Brits think if this 'Have Your Say' page is anything to go by. If I risk seeing Tony for lunch as planned -- since I really don't think he needs the foul bug I've got on top of his other reasons to trek to this part of town for a medical appointment this afternoon -- I shall be strongly contesting his conclusion that the departure of BBC director general Greg Dyke (BBC story on what I listened to this morning) is a "good thing". It's true, as Tony contended, that under Dyke the Beeb has been guilty of "dumbing down" on occasion.< However, in the wake of the Hutton bombshell, the former chief executive at the corporation and a lot of its staff have behaved with an honour and integrity conspicuously lacking on the part of the country's "Teflon prime minister" and many of his mates. One of the very few bloggers I managed to find in the newsreader last night who have already managed to stop either crowing or vomiting their disgust over Hutton and what it means for the media at large, not just the Beeb, is Hetty Litjens. 'Heli', who goes on this morning to put up a quick interesting link asking 'Who is Hutton?' ('Heaven and Hell'), had already managed yesterday to begin writing some intelligent analysis of what it all means. I was just too damned disheartened. Yesterday was one of those days when I really couldn't think how I still often succeed, after three decades often at the hot end of journalism, in believing any politicians any of the time. This whole appalling and "extremely shabby" episode, as Tony just summed it up on the 'phone, saying he is prepared to risk my bug to discuss it all further at the Canteen. Tony, who as regular visitors will know is now retired after a working lifetime in the press, needs cheering up as much as I was this morning by happier developments in life. I have very rarely known him confess to depression, since he's a very gutsy man, but he tells me that this Hutton business and its implications for "the old country" put him in the blackest of moods he's known in a very long time. It's not a "spanking" the BBC has had, Eric! The whole institution has been rocked to the core by a shameful collision with squeaky clean politicians that should be scaring the shit out of any of us who lay claim to being professional journalists and, above all, editors. Throughout the months of the inquiry, I retained some faith that Lord Hutton might use his admittedly restricted brief to come up with something other than what does, indeed, read very dangerously like the "whitewash" some are calling it. I was wrong. 10:18:37 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 28 janvier 2004

How Hutton sent me in search of the muse "Six bulletins. Six! Tu te rends compte?" So clucked an old hand on the "French side" at the Factory this evening once all the fuss was over: a fuss my veteran friend, soon due for a well-merited retirement, considered to be over-excited coverage of the Hutton report, Blair's gloat over its findings and the resignation of BBC chairman Gavyn Davies. I had other things to do myself than count how many bulletins and urgents shot out into cyberspace from AFP on the English "wire" as the drama unfolded, let alone in French and other languages. But as I told my colleague, if he thought putting out six red-print bell-buzzing bulletins in French about this latest twist in the tragi-comedy of British governance was excessive (and if indeed that's how many there were), "just imagine how many Reuters may have sent! That's today's media world." As far as I can tell, it's that other big news agency which has for a decade or more now taught journalists to hit the "news flash" priority range of buttons the most often and hardest in the game, lending it all the sense of competitive urgency I'm increasingly convinced is bad for business and in nobody's interest. Now that I know a good fellow named Laurent in Abidjan to be among the Faithful Five ¾ -- "I check out your blog almost every morning," he astounded me by disclosing -- I should apologise for so much boring focus here on the return of the Condition in the past few days and weeks. Nevertheless, today's well-handled furore gave me the textbook example of the Condition at work! As the noise levels from TV sets pouring out live coverage of events rose around the editorial floor, along with the electric tension and effort most people were engrossed in to turn round the Factory's own raw news from London as fast and as well as they could, my brain began to reel and it became so hard to concentrate on Africa that I stuffed the iPod earphones into my head and switched out all the racket inspired by the story of the day with a remark to Karin, my partner: "If anybody needs me, just knock! I'll catch up on this lot tonight or in the morning." Perfectly inappropriate though my gut reaction to all the organised frenzy was in a news agency journalist, this mind of mine was extremely busy exchanging irritating signals with my bowels which had me rushing twice to the toilet in quick succession... Intestinal order and a focus on the African news on my own screen were soon restored by Patricia Kaas in her 'Piano Bar' -- an uneven album where the remarkable French singer (PK official site) makes an excellent and original job of several "golden oldies" and an unmemorable mess of one or two, like 'La Mer'. When it came to going-home time, though, my system needed the kind of purge kindly provided (now that some of the Kid's tastes have begun to give as much pleasure to her dad) by a very loud dose of 'Absolution'. I've become deeply attached to Matthew Bellamy's often pretentious, over-the-top lyrics, Dominic Howard's manic brilliance with a drumkit, the cheerful plagiarism of Rachmaninov and other romantics, some wild basslines and the sheer energy of Muse (note: the clever Flash version and the generous freebies on the official site are probably too much for people with slow connections, but there's an HTML version and a range of download options). That cleared my head of the Factory. While downloading a QuickTime video or two, I found further agreeable distraction in this sort of thinking: "Unless you are a British football fan with a summer house in Rwanda and a harem of lingerie models and more groupies than the Rolling Stones, there is no way you should have seen enough sex and violence that it should be boring. "These are two of the most basic triggers hardwired into our DNA." Or so Patrick LeClerc thinks in an editorial about writing at 'Quantum Muse,' which has just joined my ever-growing list of sci-fi and "alternate literature" sites to keep an eye on. Frankly, I find such matters, weighty or otherwise, more interesting by the day -- infinitely more so than the making or undoing of Tony Blair and the likes in the "headline" news. There's plenty of violence, and most of it saddening, in the affairs that have kept Lord Hutton so busy since August, but precious little sex, which remains of far more abiding interest and sells infinitely more paper and creative work than any "sexed-up" event. I do have a professional interest in reading what Britain's Guardian newspaper chooses to make of it all after it late in September so bluntly spoke of "10 ways to sex up a dossier". Whenever I hear anybody at AFP or any other news factory (since it happens pretty much everywhere) ordering some poor wretch to "sex up" a story, however "senior" they may think themselves in the hierarchy of such institutions, that particularly loathsome trend of our times grates on my ears and triggers the most unpleasant of responses in my guts. There are, of course, good and bad ways of writing a story, but if it needs "sexing up", then it's definitely not news. 11:47:46 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 26 janvier 2004

The Condition (ii): self, science & fictions. Progress?! Well, it was snow. Of that dirty-city sleet kind driven by a biting wind which turns every corner straight into your face... The Inuit (Eskimos) must have a singularly horrible word for this sort of slush, which left me drenched and bone-chilled in the 15 minutes it took to walk to the Mind Juggler's place. Now I know why some Brits mentioned on the Beeb at the weekend that they planned to call on the Canadians for some expertise about "Arctic conditions imminent"! Far from further rest and relaxation, Dr F. again proved radical in her latest recommendations regarding getting shot of the Condition. We're in for another bout of intensive mind-body sessions, since she reckons I've more than assimilated Round One, for all my misgivings (this morning's entry). She even thinks I should go to the Factory rather less for a while and work intensively on the recovery plan we're formulating! That, I can see, is going to go down as well at AFP as a couple of tonnes of bricks... But I suppose it does make some kind of sense, since it's now clear that "social integration" is far from the issue. Facets. Did I mention facets before? Sort of, certainly in 'Where There's Will, there's a way' back in May ... those were the days, when I could parody Shakespeare about the Condition, geez! I didn't know then just what I was launched into and how darned long it would take. The Mind Juggler and I have begun to argue. Constructively, but it's an argument nevertheless, in which one of the few things we agree on is that the harder I can work with her now, the better it'll be and the quicker the whole process will be over! What this really boils down to is that your correspondent is going to have to push harder at the breakthrough point(s) I confusedly suspected we were approaching by this morning. I've already learned the "learning paradox" for myself ("paradox" being one of her key words today): the fact that learning anything is not a steady uphill path for any of us, but rather something we accomplish in a series of "jumps". That's to say, it's often precisely at those moments when you often feel that you are more confused about whatever it is you're learning than ever, when you feel you've been treading water for a while, that your brain's doing the really hard graft for the next level "up". This is a phenomenon I've observed particularly when it comes to learning languages or related skills, and also in the creative process. I'm going to have to devise a "work schedule" for putting all the fragmented facets together; those facets of self that appear to have splintered at around the same time as the guts fell apart. We've discussed elements: creative writing (more of it, not less, reckons the MJ) musical expression (and expression about music) "educational" wordcraft family matters sexuality (she is a shrink, and there's been a lot about that of late, quite self-revelatory too) senses of guilt and duty (ditto) "religious" outlook (if that's the appropriate term for my renewed waxing interest in "Oriental thinking", Zen, the Tao and all that) sciences and science fiction, writ large(*) the Factory (which is supposed to go down my list of "priorities" at the very time I'm beginning to settle back into the place. That's one of the matters where we can't see quite eye to eye). Yes. Well, I think that'll do for starters. Fuck me! I really thought this lot was going to be sorted out within two or three more weeks at most... Even if I know well enough that the accomplishment of self-realisation is a lifelong task. And probably, usually, an unfinished one. _______ (*) From a collection of definitions by the intriguing Neyir Cenk Gökçe (Gökçe's 'Science Fiction Page'). These are but a handful of many Neyir has gathered on the wide-ranging site of a Turkish mechanical engineering student. I post them first because I find them interesting, and secondly because they're an excellent example of the danger of trying to label and pigeon-hole things, Western-style: "By challenging anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, science fiction throws open the whole of civilization and its premises to constructive criticism." Alvin Toffler "In fact, one good working definition of science fiction may be the literature which, growing with science and technology, evaluates it and relates it meaningfully to the rest of human existence." Bruce H. Franklin "A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method. To make this definition cover all science fiction (instead of 'almost all'), it is necessary only to strike out the word 'future'." Science Fiction: its nature, faults and virtues, in 'The Science Fiction Novel', Advent, Chicago:1969 Robert A. Heinlein "A revealing way of describing science fiction is to say that it is part of a literary mode which one may call 'fabril'. 'Fabril' is the opposite of 'Pastoral'. But while "the pastoral" is an established and much-discussed literary mode, recognized as such since early antiquity, its dark opposite has not yet been accepted, or even named, by the law-givers of literature. Yet the opposition is a clear one. Pastoral literature is rural, nostalgic, conservative. It idealizes the past and tends to convert complexities into simplicity; its central image is the shepherd. Fabril literature (of which science fiction is now by far the most prominent genre) is overwhelmingly urban, distruptive, future-oriented, eager for novelty; its central images is the 'faber', the smith or blacksmith in older usage, but now extended in science fiction to mean the creator of artefacts in general--metallic, crystalline, genetic, or even social." Introduction, 'The Oxford Book of Science Fiction,' (Oxford, 1992) Tom Shippey "Science Fiction is that class of fiction which contains the currents of change in science and society. It concerns itself with the critique, extension, revision, and conspiracy of revolution, all directed against static scientific paradigms. Its goal is to prompt a paradigm shift to a new view that will be more responsive and true to nature." 'The Cosmic Dancers' (New York, 1983) Amit Goswami If you've got more Neyir hasn't listed with these and his others, he'd be glad of a heads-up, he writes (spotted via a recent 'Science Fiction and Religion' post at Kuro5hin). 10:52:20 PM  link   your views? [] 'Avalon': deadly reality, now on a 'fave list' The outstandingly gifted Japanese musician whose photo I've pinched here is Kenji Kawai, whose compositions played a key role in that Manga turned cult movie, 'Ghost in the Shell,' which I briefly mentioned here last August 24. Along with 'Avalon'! Kenji -- who works with Macs, bless him (profile at 'kenjikawai') -- pursued his musical partnership with the fabulous writer & director team, Mamoru Ishii and Kazunori Itô, on 'Avalon' (2001), such a strange Japanese-Polish co-production of a film that when the Kid and I first saw it on the big screen it really needs we both emerged quite stunned. I wasn't sure whether I'd just seen the most virtuoso piece of sluggish nonsense or a chef d'oeuvre. All I knew was that I needed to watch this movie again, so utterly was I drawn into its bleak, mainly sepia-tonal world. It was gone in a couple of days, my chance lost, but it's one of the very few films to have haunted me at a deep level since; and not least Kenji's astounding musical score, which you can just about still find on a Virgin France CD, ranging from electronica to oratorio. 'Ghost' (Amazon UK) is easier to track down. Like Kenji's soundtrack, which takes on such crucial importance in the closing scenes of 'Avalon' that to say more would be a spoiler, "ghosts" play a key role in this film too. Summed up in a line or two, 'Avalon' is the story of Ash, chilled out "warrior" who makes a living playing an illegal virtual reality war game set, with the help of the Polish military, in some near future reminiscent of a hungry, hopeless Cold War bloc '1984'. Ash has become one of the game's few solo players since her team, the Wizards, cracked up in a clash which left one of her partners brain-dead and hospitalised. In a world that offers precious little else, for her and a few others the game -- and the explicit parallels it draws with recurrent aspects of the Arthurian legends -- has become more than life itself. On its release, this extraordinary fable of realities was swept into the shadows by the massive box office hit of 'The Matrix,' with which 'Avalon' was initially compared by several misguided critics. Well, last night I saw it again. Once and a half times... My own Mac has been so badly behaved under Panther (Apple's new operating system) when it comes to the built-in CD drive that I cracked and finally acquired -- yes, DVD: a darned good external CD and DVD read-and-write drive. The same me who has long cursed both the horrors of television and the whole home movie thing. No doubt about it this time: 'Avalon' (Amazon Fr.) is a masterpiece, one that I've even decided to buy second-hand as a very strong candidate for my own list of all-time Top Ten Films -- that good! I see that in the past year or so, this film too has won serious cult status at the IMDb, where those who considered it one of the most turgid and tedious bores of the year on release are now massively outnumbered. Malgorzata Foremniak is terrific as Ash: ice-cold, except where her dog is concerned, and the rest of a largely unknown (in the West) cast are all good. It is a slow movie, but one that merits several viewings. First time round, I was so taken with the music and the stunning photography (a subtle interplay of reality and virtual reality in itself) that I missed half the subtleties of a deceptively simple plot, wherein Ash decides to aim for gameplay level Special-A, the mysterious innards of Avalon. At the risk of life itself. Press reviews last year could scarcely have been more varied: "If Hungarian miserablist Bela Tarr ever remade The Matrix, it might look like this, but I don't think Tarr would have made it quite so boring. It's a futuristic fantasy whose undoubtedly impressive computer-generated effects are occluded by being mostly presented in a kind of sepia monochrome, as if the film has been developed in cold tea. For all its many bizarre moments, it can be an extraordinarily grim and frankly tedious trudge," wrote Peter Bradshaw (Guardian). "...the live-action debut of the Japanese animator Mamoru Oshii is a hypnotic science-fiction picture made in Poland and set in a dystopian near future (...) The picture concentrates on one contestant, the cool, good-looking Ash, and her progress of mysterious self-discovery, and it's beautifully designed and lit, most of it in a golden sepia. At times the use of music is reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski (jyjung71), but the pictures it most closely resembles in mood and appearance are Chris Marker's 'La Jetée' and Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Stalker'," Philip French wrote (same website! for the 'Observer'). Being a "gauche" and right-brained person, I didn't know quite what to make of somebody's comment at the IMDb where they described 'Avalon' as "a very right-side-of-the-brain experience", unless they meant that a lot of the way the film "works" is subliminal, non-rational. But there is a story to it, a very intriguing one which I grasped on second viewing, taking advantage of the new computer toy to run one or two scenes through again for closer inspection. What some have taken for "repetitive" isn't, in fact: such scenes are like keys, used and understood differently each time round. And since I admire both Tarkovsky and Marker, of course I'm going to agree not only with Philip French but with all those who contend that to compare this film with 'The Matrix' trilogy is absurd, superficial and idiotic. I still reckon, as I wrote back in August, that 'Avalon' is a "love it or hate it" movie, but now I know which camp I'm in! The only real parallels one might draw with 'The Matrix' are the questioning of the nature of reality itself -- especially in a world where the "real" really hurts (there's some clever use of colour in the sepia shots of food which take on some importance here) -- and the way Ishii and Itô draw on myth and legend that are pretty important to the points they succeed in making. It deserves "cult status". It was a movie far ahead of its time and very different mind-fodder from most of the unmemorable gloss and dross that came out of Hollywood that year. But I think it also deserves a second chance on the big screen circuit! DVD is OK. But it really isn't the same thing, not if you've got the devil's luck like I have to live in an adventurous art-movie paradise like Paris, where some of the best cinemas still have the committed support and audience to go on taking risks. zzz Also revisited in the past few days, thanks to the rental shop, and another sure candidate for my "eventually buy as part of the Top Ten list": a very different, and exceptionally moving, kind of musical film, Giuseppe Tornatore's 'La Leggenda del pianista sull'oceano' ('The Legend of 1900'; IMDb, 1998). But that -- and despite the title it's a movie in English with outstanding performances notably from Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince and an indispensably gorgeous Mélanie Thierry -- is a very different story. Some other time. ____ 'Avalon' photo credits: Cinévia Films; Kenji: no credit given at source, apart from OPhoto. 7:29:49 PM  link   your views? [] The Condition (i): groundshift? Mindshift...? On the 12 strokes of noon, I've the latest appointment with the Mind Juggler, but I'm deeply confused as to where we go from here. We've not had a session together for 10 days now, which was exactly the way it should have been. It gave me almost enough of the time needed to let my mind, both conscious and quite clearly unconsciously, assimilate and make some sense of all that "work" we did during the last intensive set of meetings. But maybe not enough... This December, January and early February period has always been an appalling time of year where nearly every day is one big battle for clarity, lucidity and indeed, some kind of sanity, against the really black dog blues! With the exception of a couple of days, last week at the Factory was mostly mercifully quiet on the African news front and there weren't the other events happening which last year -- as an accumulative effect of constant battering on several fronts -- finally tipped me over into the Condition by the time the spring arrived. But something's going on. I hesitate, as ever, about blogging it, but fight off the inhibitions because I now accept the fact that this struggle of mine to stay ... well-tempered, in Bach's sense of the term perhaps, against the rage of clinical cyclothymic "disorder" is of genuine interest -- and possibly even of help! -- to some who read it. So they tell me. Whatever, this is the first winter I can remember when I seem to have kept a really serious depression at bay, managing to stay generally cheerful, while my brain is functioning like a G5 multi-processor Mac. Just so much to take in: information overload even when I make every effort to avoid it from the outside world. It's what's happening inside that's driving me half-crazy, so much long-forgotten data surging up into consciousness from decades back; whole new ways of seeing and being and feeling I'm trying to make some sense of in what Dr F. and I have now firmly agreed is not the once posited problem of social integration, but an ongoing reconstruction of self! My bowels have been seriously out of order again since Friday, to such a degree that it was a near disaster when Sam saw me heading for the toilet in the Canteen a couple of days ago and broke the dire news that it was broken and he couldn't repair it before the morrow. But that's not really the point. A year ago, as those who have followed this online experiment for the past 11 months will know, living with the Condition, however awful, seemed at least straightforward as the long search for purely physical causes of the gut collapse began. Today, with the ever deepening understanding -- I hope! -- of psycho-somatic medicine that has been foisted on me, it's become really hard going to sort mind from body, in so far as they can be "separated". Which they can't. To accept and absorb the tough facts the specialists have been chucking at me since the autumn. "Are we going too fast for you?" the Mind Juggler asked last time I saw her. "No," I said. "I agree that we need to press the pause button for a good week or so, but what they need of me at the Factory and everywhere else is someone together. Whole. Stable!" And still I'm asked for a big comeback on the humour front, that zany sense of the absurd and the outrageous people seem to enjoy so much... Well, frankly, folks, I can't promise that right now. But it will come. It's already coming, but you can't force that kind of outlook. Today, it is pissing down out there. Rain out front, and what looks far more like would-be snow out back. This frequent ability of the weather to do one thing on the street side of the flat and another on the garden side is something I've never understood. But Sunday did bring a small miracle. Sunshine. Lots of it, for hours on end. So I had people to see and other things to do than write. I've got an odd but deep feeling about this coming session with the Mind Juggler, along with the realisation that we're not going to be through with each other quite as quickly and expeditiously as I'd at first envisaged. We're getting to the heart of the matter! Today's going to be important. But why? Your guesses are as good as mine... Did this make any sense at all? 11:27:34 AM  link   your views? []

samedi 24 janvier 2004

Inequality. Time. Networks FAQ... "So here’s what I do believe: inequality is inevitable, and that being for or against it makes no more sense than being for or against the weather. "Now there are many ways to treat inequality as inevitable — you can adopt such a posture because you are or have become cynical, worldly wise, passive, or an adherent of realpolitik — but I have a very particular way in which I believe inequality is inevitable. I believe that wanting large networks without inequality is like wanting mortar without sand. Inequality," argues Clay Shirky at 'Many2Many', "is not some removable side-effect of networks; inequality is what holds networks together, inequality is core to how networks work." Via David Brake -- who's also one of only too few people to give decent blogspace to sometimes "depressing" African studies at 'Blog.org', I've been following Clay's thoughtful piece about inequality in the blogosphere and the very considerable feedback it has generated. Shirky focusses mainly on weblogs as part of a look at the workings of "power laws" in general -- one of the kind of things, I'd think, to interest Natalie and her fellow Bloggers Parliamentarians. A cracking debate has been under way among some of the "first among equals" of the blogosphere -- a term I choose since participants include several "founder bloggers" -- since Joi Ito asked 'Are Blogs Just?' on January 6... Part of the recipe behind such rich food for pondering minds is an essay on RSS (Boston Globe) by Hiawatha Bray. On this blog(*), like so many others, the Faithful 5 ¾ see an 'RSS feed' each time you drop by -- quite likely, for some of you, without having a clue as to what it is. My own 'RSS' feed is the orange oblong marked "XML" under the "Connect" heading to the right. It's the direct link to the "URL" -- http://radio.weblogs.com/0120356/rss.xml -- that you can simply stick into one of those internet newsreaders I often mention to fetch headlines, and usually the text, without using an Internet browser. While Bray's article doesn't go into the technicalities of explaining how RSS works, he tells you why it's so useful more succinctly and better than I could. "This time," he wrote of the technology, "the idea doesn't carry a simple, catchy name like push. Instead, we get an acronym -- RSS, or really simple syndication. With RSS, any Internet user can automatically receive the latest updates from thousands of websites. (...) Quietly, without any fuss, CNN, The New York Times, the BBC, and many other leading news organizations have set up RSS feeds that provide constant updates to subscribers. Syndic8.com [for example] lists over 20,000 RSS feeds, ranging from top newspapers to obscure weblogs run by Internet hobbyists or political activists. Indeed, RSS is a far more democratic technology than the old push approach, because anybody can create an RSS feed by adding some special code to his or her website." Never mind what a "push approach" was and still is. What matters to me in all this hoo-ha are two things. First, it's all part of a massive, unfinished, permanent debate on the Net. Is the Internet, yes or no, the wonderful tool for equality among peoples, races and nations the idealists hoped it would be when it burst out of the academic and military spheres into the general public's awareness and lives? Secondly, RSS is not only a relatively new feature of the ever-changing (and increasingly commercialised, "hijacked for business") Net of our day. It's also a considerable time-saver. Commenting on one of my recent posts about Time, a vast subject ever more frequently in my thoughts, Natalie says: "The problem is time itself, there isn't enough of it. If you have any tips, tricks or treats to suggest to deal with this problem, speak now." RSS, Natalie, luv. There's one for starters! The real treat would be to tell you and everybody else who spends a lot of their time online how to use it, but the ubiquitous Dave Winer (blogrolled by me and a zillion others in the blogosphere) made a very good job of that in his RSS 2.0 Specification page and links for Harvard Law School. It all looks rather intimidating at first glance. Well, here's a bit of encouragement: maybe six years ago, I knew almost nothing about computers. One year ago, I scarcely knew what HTML meant, let alone how to be relatively at ease in it on a daily basis. Today, with no help from anybody but people and tools I've found on the Net, I use RSS as often as I use a browser. If you've got the motivation, it isn't so difficult; and the motivation stems from what you really want to do with your time. As for that first issue -- the Net, democracy and equality -- it's one I despair about on a bad day. But in a more cheerful mood, I'd say that "Yes, I've seen the Internet helping to make life better for people in Africa, offering new opportunies, new connections." It really depends not only where, but how you look. Clay Shirky, Ross Mayfield with his 'Ecosystem of Networks', Liz Lawley -- in her recent 'defining blogs' (entry at 'mamamusings' ; b'rolled) -- are among interwoven clusters of people bringing their own wheres, hows and whies to the matter of the Net and equality. But one of the most powerful and effective time-savers I know is something we all have to learn sooner or later. In my own profession as a journalist, you can no longer hope even to survive if it's not a skill you've mastered with experience, but the same goes for any creative activity I can think of -- except, perhaps, sex. The single best way of learning to save time, I think, is to learn how to ask the right questions. Once you can do that, then your brain's headed for the second half of the job faster than you can say "encyclopaedia" or "search engine". Once you know what your right questions are, you're already well on the way to knowing where to find the answers. _____ (*This is the post where I drop, once and for all, the artifice of putting an apostrophe in front of "blog". Though, like 'phone, it's short for something, I really should stop being such a pedant!) 10:46:36 PM  link   your views? [] Apple: a day for a big bite of healthy creativity! "Get your hands dirty with the Webkit API" -- the what? It's something built into modern Apple computers, but don't switch off quite yet -- and even "build your own browser" is the MacDev Center's recommendation of the day. With several browsers already open, I'm not going to start making my own internet navigator, thanks all the same. When it comes to creativity, though, it's generous of the O'Reilly people to offer Mac users a 56-page 'Mini Manual' for iLife (direct .pdf 1.5 MB download) as a promotion for a book about Apple's hugely raved over music-making, photo-editing, movie-making iLife (Apple UK) suite. At $49 (£39 -- and 49 euros, since bad greedy Apple still pretends to be oblivious to the fact that a dollar hasn't been worth a euro for months), I understand why everybody who has played with GarageBand is writing that this toy alone is worth that much in its own right. When I was around 16 or 17, I'd already invented GarageBand in my head, never imagining that anybody would ever put a computer programme like that well within the budget range of your average teenager in the rich countries. That career, however, was for the parallel life where I became the composer, conductor and musicologist I'd dreamed of being in the early '70s. Thirty years later, the best I can do is tell anybody who lives for that kind of ambition: "Scrimp, save, get a Mac and go for it!" At this foul time of year when I'm getting so much reading done, I find myself mentioning O'Reilly so frequently -- especially what I'm learning online at a most reasonable monthly cost in that Bookshelf of theirs -- that the works of Tim and his colleagues are getting direct front-page publicity henceforth, along with my admirable MacMusic friends. Their logos duly stolen, the MacDev Center and the Safari Bookshelf are now part of the clickable furniture here, above the Amazon links. I've also tweaked the HTML there and elsewhere on this home page, so that such pages should automatically open in a new window. Something else the more technically minded in the Mac-using blogosphere can't escape right now is the Big Apple anniversary: "Apple introduced Macintosh 20 years ago today," trumpets MacDailyNews. Even at the 'Daily Mirror', columnist Shiraz finds it a day for a "Pat on the Mac"! And so, of course, it is. Yesterday, for the really interested, I discovered that a fellow named Uriah Carpenter has done something exceptionally big-hearted. Most Mac lovers have heard of the legendary '1984' commercial and some of the more recent incentives to Think Different. Uriah's gone a step further. If you're lucky enough to have a fast Net connection, you can watch that advertisement and even download it, along with the rest of the best, at Carpenter's 'Apple Quicktime page'. My own generosity will extend to saying nothing unkind about Steve Jobs today. 7:24:09 PM  link   your views? [] Isandlwana and winter: winning and losing Sizwe was unusually quiet the morning after Isandlwana. And it was hot, God it was hot, though we both preferred open windows to the air-conditioning the car offered. The three of us -- the Kid, me and our driver from Soweto -- had spent a sweltering afternoon trekking round two of the most famous fighting grounds in South Africa. Today, a couple of armies will be re-enacting the battle in which King Cetshwayo's warriors dealt Queen Victoria's soldiers the most resounding defeat sustained by colonial British troops in Africa, 125 years ago ('Zulu War' by Peter Schwartz). The battleground is set around a hill which looks like a broken tooth. A couple of cigarettes calmer, Sizwe stopped fuming and told me what had made him so bad-tempered. Sure, since Nelson Mandela became the first president of a democratic South Africa, the striking memorial (pictured above) to the warriors of Siwze's Zulu people who also died at Isandlwana has been built. But that's all there is, he protested, while the whole battlefield is studded with white marker stones set at the sites where different units of the British army fought and fell. Lists of names, accounts of heroism. "My people still get a raw deal," Sizwe said. "It'll be a long time before there's real reconciliation! Not before the other side of the story is told." "Oh come on," I said. "You've got to admit that the historian couldn't have done a fairer job of it. He told the Zulu side of the war and he told us how much better their military strategy was than the Brits', didn't he?" "Yes," Sizwe agreed. "He did, that's true. But I do not think that there are many people like this man." Regrettably, I can't remember "this man's" name. This is what the elderly fellow looked like, though, making his way with the Kid from the chapel at Rorke's Drift to the very building Stanley Baker, Michael Caine and their co-stars defended against overwhelming odds in 'Zulu' (1964; IMDb), which I first saw when I was 10 ... a film which was, of course, among the reasons I asked Sizwe to take us to the battlefields. Marianne was far less interested, her main priority before we got there to find something really cool to drink or, even better, swim in, until the historian grabbed even her flagging attention. What fascinated the Kid most wasn't the excellent museum at Rorke's Drift (there's nothing nearly so informative at Isandlwana), but the old man's tales of his own childhood, peppered with stories his grandparents told of the battles. He'd grown up with Zulu children, almost oblivious to apartheid before the evils of it were codified into increasingly brutal legislation during the decades after World War II. This meant that I'd spent part of the day rendering translations of what he and Sizwe told me of their conversations in Zulu from English into French for Marianne (most of the English she could follow herself, but with French her first language, she found the several tongues we heard during our trek round northern South Africa pretty tough going). zzz Aaah, to be there right now, enjoying an African summer again! A friend in Jo'burg has got the idea: he's due to finish his long posting there just at the most perfect time of year to swap hemispheres and begin his retirement in southern France. Winter? What winter? I've 'blogged nothing for a while because as Lauren, the Factory's latest newcomer to the Abidjan bureau, succinctly summed things up on the 'phone after a long haul the other night: "It's really been a fuckshit day!" A succession of them, indeed. Since that most apposite vulgarity was new to even my vocabulary of "filthy" expressions, I looked it up, to find it rarer than most -- and it took me to a site which I'll certainly bookmark along with other online reference works. The UrbanDictionary ("not appropriate for all audiences") is a most interesting place which seems to be put together by users. "Define your world," is its goal. While mild, grey and rheumatically damp weather persists, I've been in deep hibernation mode, quietly visiting my Safari Bookshelf a lot. My latest borrowings from that library include books on how to write for the web! 1:25:22 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 20 janvier 2004

Too little time to kill? Think different Until the white goddess or one of her kin decided it would be otherwise, I intended last night to 'blog about Time (making the best use of). One Dave Pollard has been writing about it. So has Rainer, over in Brazil. In the Factory today, I found a brochure in my pigeon-hole. "If the locals only knew what they offer you here" at AFP HQ, said colleague Gerry, back from Chicago and other adventures, shaking his head. Yeah. Well. What "they", managerial types up in their stratosphere, offer we more permanent fixtures is annual training, paid for by the company and on working time. But some of the courses! I can tell our bright "local hires" and short-term contract employees that you're probably not missing much. Every recent year, they've included such gems as these (rough hewn to make more sense): learn to master the workplace console (one half-day) learn essential editorial skills (one half-day) learn to speak in public (two days; I always thought that one was slipped in there by some union guy as petrified as I used to be of the microphone at big meetings) learn to organise your Time (two days) analyse your current use of time learn to plan your priorities etc. If memory serves me right, there used to be one called "Learn to Organise Meetings" -- three days! Or was it just two? That was back in the days of a managing director who adored holding weekend meetings, flying people in from far and wide. Before he got the boot. Time has become one of my most valued "commodities", always at a premium even on the days I'd rather hibernate. Unlike Dave 'How to Save the World' Pollard, I don't find 'blogging "an ordeal, especially when I am plagued by deadlines or a heavy workload." The answer then is "Don't 'blog. It's not an obligation!" But Dave deserves many "trackbacks" for the "time-savers" he posted last month, 14 of them. I only spotted these recommendations a couple of days ago (via Rainer, now he's released Zingg! for Panther) because I already observe Dave's idea n° 2, "Read what you do read less often." With two or three exceptions, I check out the favourite people in my 'blogroll about three times a month at length, like catching up on friends. That's why the occasional deceased link can go unspotted for a little while. And if these writers have RSS.XML feeds, they certainly go into my newsreader so that I can keep more frequently up to date on their headlines. I've also learned not always to have NetNewsWire update automatically at selected intervals, since this can prove, with experience, to be a false time-saver. Do that, and you're at risk of jumping on to a blogosphere bandwagon every bit as insane as the other rat-races of life, determined to keep up with the pack, even be competitive and get ahead of it. I'd rather be "late" and have something possibly interesting, even analytical, to say, than turn 'blogging into an echo of the deadline pressures we agency journalists and many other people face every day at work. Being ridiculous, absurd, irreverent and funny is fine, as long as people really find you more entertaining than boring. Experimenting is fine, as long as you don't mind when it doesn't work out. But being shallow or superficial is what I'd call the CNN style of 'blogging. Flashy, but without depth, understanding and, ultimately, any significance. It took me many years to learn the paramount importance of what Dave makes his last idea, which I'll quote in full: "Give yourself time to think, to experience offline, and to think creatively. This is the most important time-saver of all. Don't just react to what you read and see in the news. Get away from reading and your computer and other media, take a walk, do things that stimulate your creativity and give you unique material to write about, talk to people to get different viewpoints and ideas, clear your mind, think about what's really important to you, what you really believe, what you think needs to be done and said, and then write about that. The time you spend in unencumbered thought will be saved many times over in the process of reading and writing: you'll know exactly what you want to say, your enthusiasm and creative energy will make your writing easier, faster and more entertaining and valuable to readers, and you'll find it much easier to say 'no' to wasting time reading and writing about things that are suddenly much less important." To that I would add this: If being "confined to quarters" for six months with the Condition last year taught me anything, it was that I valued my solitude. Even when my guts were getting me down or giving me physical hell, I relished my freedom of mind, the time to sort out my priorities and say "hallo" to the many important aspects of life I'd buried in the name of the Job and career. Paradoxically, the more time I had, the more quickly it seemed to pass. But Dave's also right on the ball with this: "do things that stimulate your creativity and give you unique material to write about, talk to people to get different viewpoints and ideas." Though I couldn't stray far from this immediate part of town, when I was not alone I found myself talking to people and listening to them as almost never before, really getting to know a mixed and lively neighbourhood I had resided in for almost 10 years, previously just skating over its surface. Without that kind of feedback and the sense of community, this log would be very different from what it's become and would reflect far fewer interests. Never one for small talk, I still learned that even this and gossip, both apparent time-wasters, can stimulate creativity in the most unexpected ways. Time invested in a bit of polite chit-chat with strangers can lead on to extraordinary discoveries and much reward, if you find that they turn out to have interesting interests. In conclusion, but for fellow Mac-lovers only, I'd add that Zingg! and other contextual menus now available in Mac OS X 10.3 amount to substantial time-savers when you add up all the little short-cuts they allow. There are lots of clever people like Rainer out there who have thought of things Apple hasn't. And of late, I've become a big fan of the "Services" menu. The one in the screenshot. It takes a little while to learn -- and to remember -- to make the most of what you can now do with it, in an ever-increasing number of applications. But that too is time well spent. 10:40:34 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 19 janvier 2004

Metropolitan mishap "Merde!" the Kid said, glancing at a clock. "I've never cut it so fine before. Kisses, kisses!" The embrace done, backpack on, she was leaping down the stairs last night, heading for her other home. And back in 10 minutes. "Forgotten something? Now you have missed your train." "Métro's all closed," she gasped. "Somebody jumped in front of a train. I can't get to the station." "I'll walk you there." "I called Mum, she wants to bring the car and fetch me." "That's kind of her." "Why did they have to jump in front of my Métro?" "It is a bit unseasonal," I said. "Normally, the suicides don't start again until February. After a batch in November." "It's a horrible way to do it," said the Kid. "Yes, it is." "They were bringing something out on a stretcher. There were firemen, everybody." "On this line, often they choose Gaîté" (one station further up), I told her. "Gaiety! Oh ha-ha, Dad!" "No, but it's true, love. I must have told you about the one I saw." "No. Never. Do tell!" Ah, her current teenage taste for gore. So I did, and she asked for details of carbonisation by electrocution, blackening and how the skin pulls back from the teeth in a death smile. "Yuk! And you saw it?" "Oh, yes." "Wasn't it horrible?" "The body really doesn't look much like a person any more." "What did you do?" "Helped people calm down the ones that were screaming, waited for the emergency services, and then walked to work." "It's so selfish to do it in the Métro. Why don't they cut their wrists in the bath or something?" "The ones I feel most sorry for are the train drivers who hit them. You see it coming and you can't stop. That must be really horrible." "What kind of noise does it make?" "That's enough." The Kid's tale reminded me of another. And also that half of my favourite poetry books are still piled on the floor, where they've been for three years while everybody argues about who's going to fix the hole in the roof that leaks rain on to my shelves, who's going to pay for it and when it should be done. Last I heard, it was early this month. Lunacy. Sending anybody up there on to wet sloping slates in January! So many poems have been written about the Métro since Fulgence Bienvenüe's Line One opened on July 18, 1900, that many have been collected into an excellent anthology, 'Les Transports Poétiques,' by Bernard Lorraine (le cherche midi éditeur, 1994). Extracted from something more substantial, here's one in English, though, about what the Métro public announcements speakers still rather coyly call an: 'Incident de voyageur' Two hours in those tunnels for nothing. I’m disheartened. What use ? Good for nothing ! I so much wanted to talk with her of verse and ... But gone, gone she was, the wrong hour tolled, heart fell apart & that was called la floraison du mal. I tried to set the clock back. Clic-clac, speaker overhead. « This is your driver speaking. Please be patient for a few more moments, the service is perturbed : un incident de voyageur. » Yes, you can say that again and it’s hot ! This sweat, the getting there... will she show tolerance ? What use am I here ? Clic-clac, speaker overhead. « This is your driver speaking. » Already a quarter of an hour and old people, standing, begin to ask for seats from the young, heads between walkmans. « You make me shit, old cow ! » one adolescent mutters as he cedes his place & my thoughts run free. Paris, city of light, you’ve just seen it, my heart. « ... line is blocked between Saint Lazare & Brochant. » C’est brûlant ! Jesus, this ! Clear, a clochard, Place de Clichy, undoubtedly. Will she wait ? Will she wait for me, so late ! Best foot, stop tapping, listen instead to the astonished words of the fat-assed American tourist and his wife, who is crushing my arm. Do we inform him where he might get off, dear heart, squeezed in bleak anticipation ? Or absurd, do we let them stew, you and I ? We shall be set forward ! When ? Clic-clac, speaker overhead. Is this our pilot speaking ? Third time. Who does he think he is ? We’re stuck! Where are the hostesses, the plastic trays of horrible food ? It’s bloody hot. Where are the wings as they collect the remains of the anonymous victim ? Somebody’s dead. She wasn’t even home. Back underground again at Etienne Marcel to ride on to market - les Halles, much changed, the cattle human now in the glass & steel shopping forum where drug-pushers ask « You want some ? » I’m on a trip of my own, the mind already blown. She’s vanished. How smoothly we glide on to Châtelet - long live small castles ! Task those who didn’t want a Channel tunnel with just one sceptic question about their sceptered isle : « Why ? » Cité ; but no City of London. By what irony does England demand that the French train stops at Waterloo ? Napoleon wanted a Chunnel. England expects a lot today, but not from me, Lord Admiral, except in the estuary. Duty ? Cité. My weeping heart, are you still there ? The thought-police are based round here, above our heads la préfecture. Saint Michel. Cry pity ! Odéon. This is odious ; not even half an hour, & gone she was. Odéon... Odéon. No explanation, this driver kicks his heels in silence, while his train is stalled on rubber wheels. She let you down. At Saint Germain, one revives with blazing intent, after that broiling where the theatre lies. Germain is certainly germane. Next stop is literature, Saint Sulpice. If you please, no more wars ! Saint Placide. O my heart, is that how you are ? Montparnasse-Bienvenüe. Welcome, Montparnasse ! We all get off, toreadors ready for the corrida. For me comes change : Gaîté, Pernety, Plaisance. Imagine being gayous ! The names are evocative despite lack of pertinence & the corridors at Montparnasse are very long. But I live across line 13, the rumbling starts before dawn ; & she, she is close to line 4. That bygone muse whom still I adore. Her line is a panoply of saints. I pray to all of them, to others also, my gods, am startled : « Heavens, what is that noise ? » It’s the doors opening - whoosh ! Change trains. Directions. Bang ! « - Gaia, I thought her thighs parted... - She departed. Cette nuit te laisse voyageur? » 11:32:57 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 18 janvier 2004

Books, 'blogs and Benson's bright idea The New Year couldn't be allowed to steal in damp and chill without a little tweaking. The "on the shelf" column at the end of the b'roll to the left comes to you courtesy of 'All Consuming', a fine initiative launched and maintained by Erik Benson. If what you're reading is at somewhere like Amazon, Erik's "library" site offers the means to 'blog it, with the kind of community spirit that can sometimes mark Anglophone undertakings from Internet forums to waging war. Should you be both an avid reader and a 'blogger, All Consuming rewards close inspection. Erik's site checks recently updated weblogs hourly to see who's reading what and pursuing the book links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites. I was gratified to see that the mechanics of it don't track US bookstores only and the whole place makes far more sense to me than BlogShares, where I appear to have made fictive thousands since discovering my name there. If I started playing at the latter, I'd waste time, so it just does its own thing. By contrast, if you join, Benson's book listing tells you who's into the same kind of writing and reading as you are. Since I've already met new and likeable people in flesh and blood as a direct outcome of this 'blog, Eric's site is a welcome addition to the front page. The man, like almost everybody I know, self included, occasionally finds a need to reorganise all his composite bits and pieces. Hence, on his own weblog, one entry about the 'Month of Mecember'... 8:46:14 PM  link   your views? [] Fast food for thoughtful digestion "Dear Mr. A, First off all I don’t like you and you don’t like me. But I am sorry that you had a heart attack. I hope you get well soon. And I like your sandals. I am sorry your wife left you in this time of sorrow. And I don’t like you and I don’t like you and I heard you don’t like me. You remind me of Mr. V. Anyway get well soon but I know this letter means nothing to you. I also don’t know what to write and good luck with the yoga" This is but one of a batch of letters penned, apparently, at the behest of a substitute teacher by a US 8th grade school class. The others at '::America is a state of mind...' are no less kind. zzz "McDonalds is very proud that other employers like to employ people who have had successful periods of employment with McDonalds. This is actually true. Employers know that if someone comes from McDonalds with a good reference then they have been through the boot camp. It is like a badge that simply says ‘I will put up with shit’, it’s a certificate that indicates your spirit has been repressed, that you have shown obedience. These are the sort of workers capitalism requires in the greatest number and these are the sort of workers the McDonalds experience is designed to produce. Fortunately, it very often fails." But then: "McDonalds is able to keep screwing us over because they do everything in their power to stop us organising. For decades they've used myriad tactics, both legal and illegal, to try and stop their massive workforce from organising itself and putting an end to the exploitation that keeps the dollars rolling into McDonalds profit bank. They know that if we were organised they wouldn't get away with paying us such crap wages to work in such crap conditions. Now the tide has turned. McDonalds Workers Resistance is their worst nightmare." How to raid the tills. How to have sex with co-workers on the job. How to survive the shift. This rebellion seems to have spread from Glasgow and a like-minded association even has an online forum (WRAM). Yes. I've been reading the Cruel site listings again. zzz At DeadBrain, one of my favourite articles so far this year explained why 'Bush orders military occupation of the moon'. This included some fine quotes: "'The Yanide States o' Merica,' he said, 'will not and cannot let the terrists set up operations on the moon, which we consider is US territory anyway, since we're the only ones that ever went there. So applying the Bush Doctrine I have today ordered that the moon be taken into protectional US custody, and a permanently manned and womanned base be set up there as a matter of extreme national urgency.' 'And I don't want to hear any complaints from the U of N, especially the French and Germaniums,' he said. 'This is a logical step and Americans, including I, are not prepared to wait for resiglution after resiglution.'" On January 4, still way off home ground, Malcolm Drury offered us 'US probe lands on Mars, begins search for WMD.' 4:58:58 PM  link   your views? [] Trash and the Kid (second refrain) "Bombsite Marianne!" "Blitzkrieg Kid!" She knows I mutter such things. She knows that what she can do in seconds to a small apartment is appalling! But when she'd watched eight episodes of 'Friends' and performed a minor explosion because the video rental store had shut nine minutes before she could rush down for the rest and relief from a cliff-hanger, she eventually clambered up into her bunk. Soon afterwards last night, I saw that a packet of Comté cheese still sat on the table. The butter was on top of the electric rings. As for the bread, it was safely wrapped. But on the floor. By the time I slid into bed with Natalie -- one of her books anyway -- the Kid was already lost to the waking world. As usual, I got up at least an hour before her and beheld the rest of the debris. Perilously close to her computer, empty yogurt pots were carefully posed one on top of another like the beginnings of some contemporary sculpture. Another yogurt pot was behind a cushion on the sofa, fortunately the right way up and leaving no stains. A green bottle of what had been apple fizz lay so close to the waste bin that there might even have been a half-hearted attempt to put it inside. In the bathroom, biscuit wrappers. Another big empty bottle, iced tea this time, stood on the Kid's bedside shelf. Behind a plate of unfinished ham-studded bread from Paris's second best bakery and chunks of semi-gnawed cheese. Clothes were ... everywhere. Yesterday I found two smelly socks underneath her pillow. "What are you doing here?" she reproaches me as I pass by the place where she is simultaneously watching the 'Friends' DVD again and chatting with her real friends via the Net. "Looking!" I grimace, picking up a damp towel hurled into a corner. Getting angry almost never works. Neither does any other kind of talking, pleading, arguing, explaining ... nor punishment. Amenable to stern parental authority in every other domain, here the Kid has a huge Blind Spot. Where some teenagers are conventionally sloppy and grouchy, Marianne has made an art form of the Making of Mess. Perhaps. It's amazing that she almost invariably leaves for her other home taking everything she brought with her, given some of the virtually inaccessible places I've occasionally found discarded underwear and other vestiges, as if they were deliberately hidden. Her mother thinks this is pure laziness and lack of consideration, and says so loudly and sharply. I'm beginning to wonder. It would be art of a kind if the Kid showed any signs of being aware that she's doing this! She was quick to inform me that last night I snored and had to be thumped with a pillow, but ignored the remnants of mess I'd purposely left lying around to see whether she might complete the clearing up. Einstein reportedly said that an untidy desk is a sign of an untidy mind, but the Kid's brain is perfectly well organised. She's got the eyes to see the needle in the haystack, notices details of people's appearance which pass me by, draws far better than I ever could, stores away images for ready subsequent recall of the kind I can only manage in dreams. And when she gets bored with the grunts that go with her age, she can be extremely articulate. But remember the big bright red waste bin I bought? It might as well be invisible and possibly is to her, 95 percent of the time. I'm now at a loss to explain to the mess and how she can stand it, unless she is quite genuinely oblivious to it. Is there a cure? It's not a feller she'll eventually be needing: it's a walking vacuum cleaner of a valet. Meanwhile, she has won me over to aspects of her taste. Korn and most other hurlers are still mainly banned within my earshot, but I've now acquired albums by Muse ('Showbiz' is grand) and Type O Negative. The latter's 'Life is Killing Me', torn between sex and morbid matter, features much noise but plenty of melody and black humour too. If this is "Gothic metal", I like it. Radical additions to my own already eclectic musical world are also in part the doing of 'Les Inrockuptibles,' a contemporary culture weekly so good that I finally realised it would be cheaper to subscribe to that along with my other regulars. Their website (Fr., evidently) has free mp3 downloads I'll tell the Kid about. Once she's learned that trash is not only something you listen to and watch. 1:11:29 PM  link   your views? [] Lenses for the new year's focus on genocide There was more on Zavos, the fervent would-be clone scientist, and indeed on the Rwandan genocide on 'Sunday,' my main weekly feed for what's happening in the world's organised religions. Both topics remain troubling and I began this morning determined to banish bleak thoughts and do my best to ignore the foul weather that I couldn't persuade the Kid to brave even once yesterday. Just two more links, however, for it's in the first week of April that the world will be commemorating the start of 100 days of madness in the densely populated central African country when at least 800,000 people were massacred a decade earlier (the government puts the figure at one million). Paul Merlino, a journalism and international affairs student at the University of California in Berkeley, won a fellowship last July to look closely at the "Gacaca" community courts. These tribunals, consisting of locally elected "people of integrity", bring some traditions of pre-colonial African justice to efforts to speed up the trials of scores of thousands of suspected killers jailed in a nation no bigger than Wales. Very touchy Rwandan authorities, we know only too well at the Factory and as Paul initially found, don't make "objective reporting" from their country easy. Journalists can come under considerable pressure. That's one reason why I've recently been reading Merlino's despatches and found them every bit as good as the work of more experienced reporters and sometimes more lively too. 'After the Genocide' at 'FRONTLINE/World' was published in December. An award-winning US public service television and Internet venture, FRONTLINE/World (home page) brings rarely covered cultures and societies into American and other homes. Paul is among several students to have been granted reporting fellowships in a joint FRONTLINE/World-UCB scheme. Gacaca justice is also being filmed by the Aegis Trust, a genocide research centre established in Britain "to help understand this terrifying phenomenon and to provide some guidance for lay people and professionals alike". Worth exploring like FRONTLINE/World, the Aegis Trust has a good website (apart from a dead link or two), and sets out via television and the net to study the prevention of genocide as well as documenting instances and accounts of it by survivors. 10:48:54 AM  link   your views? []

samedi 17 janvier 2004

Gender gaps, stats and sociable browsers "Italy and Spain have the largest gap between men and women who are online (...) Twenty-one percent of urban Internet users in China say the Internet helps them increase contact with people who share their political interests. The next highest was also a totalitarian state, Singapore, at 8.6 percent of all users. Italy and the United States were both at about 8 percent. Across the board, Internet users in the surveyed countries watch less television." So says a survey by UCLA, according to AP (Yahoo news). That comes after a week in which we learned what a friendly, outgoing bunch we net freaks are: "The typical Internet user -- far from being a geek -- shuns television and actively socializes with friends, a study on surfing habits said Wednesday. The findings of the first World Internet Project report present an image of the average Netizen that contrasts with the stereotype of the loner 'geek' who spends hours of his free time on the Internet and rarely engages with the real world. Instead, the typical Internet user is an avid reader of books and spends more time engaged in social activities than the non-user, it says" (Reuter, also Yahoo). This whole World Internet Project thingie is a brainchild of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy and academic partners in Italy and Singapore. "Potentially the Internet represents change on the order of the industrial revolution or the printing press. Believing this, our Internet Project is designed to get in on the ground floor of that change and to watch and document what happens as households and nations acquire and use the Internet." Reassuring. Isn't it? 11:08:35 PM  link   your views? [] The Zavos claim: a hell of a tough choice A new claim that 'Doctor "implants cloned embryo"' (BBC Health) glued my ear around dawn to a heated debate (Listen Again, RealAudio clip, 11'27" and worth the time). Professor Richard Gardner, a fellow of Britain's scientific Royal Society who's done pioneering work in developmental biology and got up early to have his say, has strong views on why "reproductive cloning in the human should not be undertaken at the present time. While many within these communities share similar ethical concerns to other professionals and to the public, their call for a moratorium, or even an outright ban, of this mode of cloning is motivated primarily by unresolved issues of risk that have become apparent through its application to other mammals. Nevertheless, statements of intent to clone humans, and even claims to have succeeded in this endeavour, have been made recently, but invariably through the media rather than the scientific press. The originators of such statements have not exposed to peer-review either their justification for embarking on human cloning at this juncture or, indeed, evidence of their competence to undertake it" (from a paper at Cardiff Centre for Ethics, Law and Society). The man declaring that it's too late to argue with the inevitability of progress is Doctor Panos Zavos, founder of the Andrology Institute of America, who got his initial degrees at Emporia State University in Kansas and a Ph.D. from Minnesota. Zavos was hoping to see a cloned baby born last year, Rachel Rivera wrote at Gene-Watch in October 2002: "The United Nations has initiated groundwork for an international treaty to adopt a global ban on reproductive human cloning, but its 191 member states have yet to agree on the extent of the ban. The president of US-based human cloning firm Clonaid [founded by 'His Holiness Rael'], which is linked to a UFO cult, said Wednesday that it had implanted cloned embryos in several host mothers and that viable pregnancies were in progress. Zavos dismissed Clonaid's claims as 'a farce' to promote their Geneva-based cult, known as the Raellians. Raellians believe extraterrestrials populated the earth with clones of their race and that it is incumbent upon humans to continue the tradition of cloning. Zavos also discounted previous announcements by Italian researcher Severino Antinori that he had implanted cloned human embryos that ended in miscarriages. He said unlike the other researchers, ZDL [Zavos Diagnostics Laboratories] would provide proof of its results. According to Zavos, cloning is the only choice for infertile couples when artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization fail to produce results." The issue is tough enough even when you leave religion out of it. The cloning debate tends to be reduced by people on both sides to a battle between science and ethics, which it isn't. Some potential ramifications of cloning were imagined in Michael Marshall Smith's disturbingly good novel 'Spares' (which I briefly reviewed in March). Numerous other "sci-fi" writers have tackled the prospect intriguingly. But right now, the technology may be outstripping the moral debate, though there's no lack of the latter. A Google search on the "ethics of cloning" will give you more religion than anything else, but a news aggregator known as 'Surfwax' gives you headline coverage. It also links to more about ethics than anybody could sanely read. Micro-biologist Gina Kolata got good reviews for her accessible introduction, 'Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead' when Penguin published it in 1998. Five years later, Britain's Science Museum said "Goodbye Dolly". She had a progressive lung disease. But then, so do other sheep. She had arthritis at six-and-a-half, "barely 40 in human terms" (Guardian report). "Improving success rates is not going to be easy," reckons the Roslin Institute in 'progress AD (After Dolly)' -- part of an excellent scientific read by the people who "made" Dolly, technical but accessible. I'm no expert. But they are. Gardner is. Maybe Zavos is. The only safe prediction is that if Zavos or anybody else "births" a human clone and proves it, all hell is going to break loose. There may be no fence left very soon for any of us to sit on. 10:35:47 PM  link   your views? [] 'Hotel Rwanda' - grim subject for a good film in the making? Actor Don Cheadle (IMDb) on 'Hotel Rwanda', due to start shooting in South Africa in March: "'I see many scripts every year and most of them are dreck. If I'm lucky two or three have genuine quality and two of those usually go to Will Smith. 'But this is a love story and a thriller that will keep audiences entertained. Too many films try too hard to educate the audience and that's a turn-off. 'This is a story with real-life lessons and emotional situations we can all recognise, but it sweeps you up into a drama that makes you understand the truth of what happened in Rwanda and the evolution of that tragedy.' Director Terry George, who made In the Name of the Father (Rotten Tomatoes), said he wanted to make a film that 'conveyed the hopelessness, fear and frustration' of African wars. 'Rwanda was Africa's Holocaust and most people have no idea what really happened there,' he said." That's part of a story in last week's Johannesburg 'Sunday Times' (sometimes slow to load; via 'allAfrica'). George, from Northern Ireland, has written and directed more for TV than the big screen. 'In the Name of the Father', which in fact he co-produced, was Jim Sheridan's very good 1993 film about wrongful imprisonment, based on Gerry Conlon's 'Proved Innocent' (MouthShut). Big star Nick Nolte, according to George, will play "the UN commander whose force could have halted the conflict in the first month, but he was ordered by the UN not to do anything and it escalated into the fastest genocide in modern history." He means Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire ('Canadians.ca'; with good links), who retired from the Canadian army in 2000, and went public in July that year about the nightmare of the "peace-keeping" operation that disintegrated because of inaction by the United Nations. Such foreign assignments, Dallaire said, were "dangerous and at times devastating operational missions where Canada is not at risk, but where humanitarianism is destroyed and the innocent are being literally trampled into the ground" (BBC Africa). Given the credentials of those involved, I reckon 'Hotel Rwanda' may be a much better film about a recent African tragedy than Ridley Scott's 'Black Hawk Down' (those Tomatoes again). That was a well-made war film; it gave virtually none of the background to the disastrous made-for-CNN US intervention in Somalia -- the very event that made the sole superpower and key UN Security Council member so strongly opposed to lifting a finger over the Rwandan genocide. There has been worse than 'Black Hawk Down': had it got the everybody dies ending the film-makers planned for it rather than what Hollywood felt would suit the public, last year's 'Tears of the Sun' (IMDb) might have been less awful. 'Hotel Rwanda' may prove to tell an appalling tale, but it's the best chance for western money to invest in a decent big budget movie about Africa I've spotted in a long time. And that's increasingly important given the continent's current place on most people's maps of the world. 8:29:06 PM  link   your views? [] Silence became golden No entries of late because on Tuesday night my intestines turned into painful knots and a few other old friends among symptoms of the Condition were back. Life was arduous. It seems all this was mainly an allergic reaction to one of the treatments. I had to extend my absence from work for an unexpected couple of days. Apologies to all affected. Nevertheless, when I could get out, plenty got done, especially with the Mind Juggler. We've completed the batch of closely spaced, intensive sessions, which called for much "homework" on my part with considerably more laughter on hers. The "programme" included deepening my passing acquaintance with the views of D.W. Winnicott, along with Native American worldviews and shamanism. Then a wee bit of reclusion and the sound of silence did me further good as my insides began to sort themselves out. Meanwhile, guess who made a sudden reappearance in my life and perhaps consequently -- we shall see -- in the blogosphere? zzz As for Natalie's 'Secrets of the Worshipped Male' (Joy review page), I'm extremely hesitant about reviewing it myself. I might yet, but doing so would be very dangerous. My friend in London lets far too many cats out of bags, while making me more acutely aware than ever of the almost unfathomable depths of my own ignorance, obtuseness and stupidity. 1:52:34 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 13 janvier 2004

'Lost in Translation': delectable understatement 'Lost in Translation,' written and directed by Sofia Coppola for a splendid Bill Murray, perfectly teamed up with a very bright young Scarlett Johansson, is a touching, intelligent, melancholic comedy about a brief encounter far from home. The centre of the opening shot is Johansson's pretty backside wearing knickers on a bed and for some reason the girl spends quite a large part of the film bare-legged, staring at one point out of a hotel window so high some would get vertigo! She, as Charlotte, has been married for two years, and Murray, as actor Bob Harris spending a week in Japan to make whisky commercials, for 25. Their ships-in-the-night time together mainly in ultra-modern Tokyo is wonderfully acted. Some of the reviews at the IMDb are among the most brainless I have read in a long time! First, the bit about mid-life crisis and buying a Porsche was a joke. Joke! Irony, it's called. Secondly, the movie was not in the least bit "racist" against the Japanese, as somebody else thought. It was partly about culture shock and amazement, in a lovely, low-key kind of way. And whoever wrote that must have been snoring through the several scenes where Charlotte visits temples and "old Japan". Others found that there "wasn't a story", but of course there was a story and a delicious one at that. Two people meet, they have a good time and they ... well, no spoilers. I must have been living in Paris and spoiled by good movies for too long. Karaoke plays its clever part and fax machines contribute to the gentle comedy. With excellent, rich photography and an admirably appropriate musical score put together mainly (I believe) by Kevin Shields, this is an easy 8/10. Indeed, it was so much a better film than the other woman director's movie of the week, 'In the Cut,' that I'd be tempted to slash a half-point off my vote for the latter. But to each the mood of the day, and it's unfair to compare the incomparable. (Stolen photo credit to Yashio Sato, Focus Features) 9:07:27 PM  link   your views? [] Meeting your readers: another name to drop... Tony can usually be relied on for the short cut that didn't spring immediately to my own mind. A very old-school British fellow, looking only a little the worse for the years since he first stormed the literary world, was being interviewed for TV when I dropped into the mainly American Brentano's (who need to get an anglophone to proof-read their website). After five minutes I tut-tutted slightly because the writer was answering idiotic questions in front of my favourite shelves and access to much of the bookshop was barred by people trying to talk to him in the reverent way that immediately puts my back up. I dived downstairs into the children's section instead and had a chat with the woman in charge down there, whom the Kid has promised to send book reviews. By the time I emerged, the crowd round the author had thinned. "I didn't know you'd taken to writing science fiction!" I remarked. "Science fiction?" asked Frederick Forsyth with amused astonishment. "You're sitting in front of rows of the stuff," I told him. "Aah," he said. "No." I've only read 'The Negotiator', but, on that basis, was able truthfully to say "I do admire your work" as I passed on to my selection. Since he'd mentioned 'The Day of the Jackal' just last weekend, before leaving the shop, I asked Tony on my mobile, "Would you like a signed copy of Frederick Forsyth's latest, 'Avenger'?" "Why, because it'll sell for a lot?" "Tony! Because I happen to be in Brentano's and so is he." "Oh dear," said Tony. "No thank you. Once you've reached that awful signing stage I think you're in a bit of trouble!" "Would you like me to pass that on?" Mean, mean. Personally, I think that when you're world-famous and made wealthy by those who like your work, the odd bit of suffering at the hands of your admiring public can't do any harm. (No, I didn't introduce myself and no, I didn't buy a copy of the book.) 8:49:11 PM  link   your views? [] 'Revelation Space': admirable intro to a tough 'opera' (This review went up at B'critics (b'rolled) yesterday, with links to Amazon US. Here, I've concluded by adding a link to the author's site.) "There was a razorstorm coming in. Sylveste stood on the edge of the excavation and wondered if any of his labours would survive the night." With three tempting novels on the review shelf, it was 'Revelation Space' by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz, 2000; paperback 2001) which just beat the others past a "first lines and in at the deep end" test. We're on the unfriendly surface of the planet Resurgam, Delta Pavonis system, the year 2551. Battling the misgivings of his team with an obstinate logic and bloody-mindedness, Dan Sylveste persuades most to stay with the dig. If the alternative is to evacuate and risk losing all trace of the site for years to come, the archaeologist would rather batten down against the tempest and unearth more of a civilisation wiped out 900,000 years earlier. What killed the Amarantin and why? Does it matter? Few other scientists share Sylveste's obsession with a long-dead and not particularly sophisticated alien race on an inhospitable planet. Even if the secret is there to be unriddled, it's scarcely likely to mean much to humanity, which has better things to do now that its vast lighthugger ships are travelling to more profitable parts of the known universe. Reynold's big first book, ambitious and confident, won him immediate praise and almost instant comparisons with superstars in the space opera genre like Dan Simmons, Peter F. Hamilton and Stephen Baxter. It's black, bleak, extremely well written, with an undercurrent of menace and increasing danger, and it's a thriller to keep you turning the pages until you lose sleep. Barely one of the main characters -- alive, dead or in between -- is likeable, but their lives and their emotions grab hold of you and sustain the interest through some extensive and inventive hard and believable future science. One good question Reynolds tackles concerns humanity's solitude in a universe which seems increasingly likely to host many possibilities for intelligent life. A professional astronomy research scientist in his day job, the Welsh-born writer forgets any religious or mythical assumptions to ask not "Are we alone?", but "Why are we so very alone?" The Amarantin are one of more than half a dozen long dead alien civilisations humans have found by the 26th century. A smaller handful of very different races survives, including the Pattern Jugglers and the Shrouders. They can do strange and very dangerous things to people's minds, but they are far from genocidal. Dan Sylveste is the only person to have gone to a shroud and come back sane. Amid power struggles on Resurgam, Sylveste's fascination with the Amarantin finds him a buried and largely intact city, with linguistic clues he can just about grasp and a colossus of a statue which could hint at the secret of extermination. But forgetting politics for the sake of his obsession costs Dan his position and his freedom. Part of the answer to the mystery of obliterated civilisations haunts a starship called the Nostalgia for Infinity. This old, battered lighthugger carries a strange cargo of powerful ands inhuman weaponry, only partially mastered and understood by the sole crew member to stay mainly awake, Ilya Volyova. And what Ilya wants is a gunner. Her last one went mad. The perilous Chasm City, Yellowstone, in the Epsilon Eridani system, is home to a likely candidate. Ana Khouri, a hardened soldier embittered by loss, now pursues the career of contract killer. That Ilya's going to pick her up is inevitable. The lives of Dan, Ilya, Ana and others come together in a quest to make sense of one of the most original and terrifying artefacts in recent science fiction, a deadly threat from an immensely distant past to any sentient and space-faring species. 'Revelation Space' is a tense, taut and rewarding book, and also the first SF novel I've reviewed in a while that is decidedly of a genre, part of no mainstream and none the worse for that. It's also the first of a series pursued in 'Redemption Ark' and 'Absolution Gap', which was published last November; and Reynolds has written a novel about 'Chasm City'. Teased by accounts of the more recent work, I preferred to begin at the beginning. I'm very glad I did. This remarkably busy man also keeps a website of his own going, which makes for a good read: meet Alastair Reynolds. I see the fellow appeared to have liked a description of 'Revelation Space' as "gonzo cybergoth"! Yeah. That's one way of putting it! 1:17:37 PM  link   your views? [] Brain food: lucky strike and jelly update No doubt on my next working day in the Factory, I'll suddenly stop waking up first thing in the morning. But I did. Again. And feeling so odd with left-over dream fragments that it was clear my unconscious had been churning away merrily after last night's meeting with the Mind Juggler. Yikes, it's hard and exhausting going! Worth it, though. My mates on the desk, especially chief Jo, have been very decent: I have a large number of vacation days stashed up and until staffing thins out again on Thursday, they've let me use a handful of these while I'm doing this batch of intensive sessions with Dr. F. I appreciate that because it calls for a lot of "homework". By the way, that name I've given the psychotherapeutic expert in brain-body phenomena, the Mind Juggler, is in part a tribute to the writer whose first book gets reviewed in my next entry. I caught the tail-end of 'I Should be So Lucky', which was fascinating 15-minute episode of a BBC series exploring luck: why some people seem to get all of it and others are just plain unlucky. This week, talking to psychologists and taking a test, Martin Plimmer learned that luck is in good measure a matter of attitude (direct link to RealAudio clip). In the last programme at 0930 GMT next Tuesday, Martin will be asking how we can change our luck. Given the invaluable resource now available, here's the Radio 4 Listen Again page where all the online recordings of such programmes are listed in one place. You need a fairly fast Net connection to make best use of this fabulous store of broadcast material anywhere in the world, while the Beeb opts mainly for RealPlayer rather than QuickTime, but the quality is excellent. So here's the link to the BBC Radio digital "portal". Most of the hundreds of programmes available get stored for the week after broadcasting, but some are permanently archived. As for the player, I use RealOne for OS X. Real Networks is known for "burying" info on the free versions of their products in small print, but they do have a Real free download page for all the major computer operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix and mobile devices). Finally, the latest Jelly Report: Some two months into it now, I find that most of the claims made for the real thing, small and expensive jars of Royal Jelly (Draper's aviaries) are true. This stuff is no placebo. While scientists remain divided about it (and some say it's of no interest at all) the jelly is not, in my experience, the anti-depressant some of a multitude of websites, mostly sales outlets, make it out to be. However, my ability to sustain mental energy, swift thought, processing and linking ideas, clarity of mind and concentration have all certainly and, probably measurably, increased. Including on days when at this foul time of year I'd be as close to waking hibernation as possible. After 40 days or so, I also found that my short-term memory had improved. Some things I still shut out, but I can recall whole conversations for longer and have become a bit better with numbers. The jar pictured here comes with a tiny spoon and I was told to start out on two of those each morning while still fasting. I find that my optimal dose is three. If you overdose, it's bad news. I tried it once and the outcome was a mind running away with itself -- what my buddy Jean-Paul would call "excessive multi-processing" -- and feeling super-hyped! The dreams that followed were wide-screen, vivid nightmares. Like Vitamin C, it's also a bad idea to take it late in the day. Jean-Paul also recommends, from his own considerable experience, laying off after four months, five at most. You can read more at the Draper's page, which I chose because it's one of the few sites that sells anything other than freeze-dried capsules, which you can easily find in parapharmacies. Capsules are a rip-off, if you want all the active ingredients. I know because I tried them for a month and noted no effects. I then went to the French Beekeepers' Society, which sent me directly to one of the very few specialised retailers in Paris. The real thing costs 32 euros (41 dollars) for a jar which lasts about a month. It took a week to start having any effect. 12:56:49 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 12 janvier 2004

Wind, sex, mind, sex, calculation, sex: gusts of unreason [Sarah Marchant wrote to me on Feb 15: "I'm Sarah, not Susan. That's my Mum!" Thanks. I've set this to rights.] WARNING: Ramble and thickets ahead. The more observant of the Loyal 5 ¼ will have spotted how sex is rearing up again on this log. There was Meg Ryan's film -- clearly not the exploration of feminine sexuality one or two reviewers thoughts it was (Rotten Tomatoes for a rich mix). There've been hints here, after events. There was a brief encounter yesterday with a young stunner who quite turned my head (though it was my head that said "Don't be silly!"), while last night somebody called me a womaniser. Me! And there's just been a latest session with the psychosomatic Mind Juggler, who has inevitably brought it all up; more of that only too soon. Sublimate, sublimate! I woke up very early again, felt hungry for once, would have loved to have been brought a light breakfast in bed or even made it for somebody then equally keen to spend a happy hour or three having sex. And instead there was nothing but the radio and more sleaze from Washington, with 'O'Neill's careless talk?' (BBC). Even such dull crap and cleaning up last night's heavy thunderstorm legacy via the hole in the roof failed to calm the ardour with which I longed to put recent insights to the test, like at once and virtually anywhere! Unable to work out how and with whom I could do this, I sighed after lunch and decided to face last year's accounts and the 2004 forecast, a very cold shower guaranteed! I figured it would take less than two hours. But my bank's year-end statements differed impossibly from my computerised version by all of four teeny cents of a euro. It took nearly 50 minutes, almost seeing stars instead of columns of figures by the end, to track down two tiny mistakes. Yet I was obsessively compelled to find the error! All the mental arithmetic I excelled in at school vanished in my 30s, leaving me dazed by the Kid's homework. My accounts went on to computer in 1998 and are also backed up obsessively, for fear of being cast back into nightmare years when doing the sums could take me the best part of a day. The absurdities got me thinking of 19th-century banking, Dickensian clerks and ledgers and how much was achieved in the physical sciences with the calculating machines available before the advent of the computer. With last week's discovery that scientists until recently lacked the computing clout to make the models now used to monitor and forecast global warming, I've enlarged my online Safari Bookshelf to artificial intelligence, nanotech and the interaction between human beings and machines. As the wind began to rise this weekend, Jacques the engineer gave me instruction at the Canteen in plumbing, a trade rendered trickier by stupid things. Apart from that ceiling leak I'm not legally allowed to fix as a mere tenant, some piping needed work. Jacques was made half-mad by T-joints, where the gauge of parts which need screwing together is routinely measured in fractions of inches, while the variable sizes of the thread of the screw bits is in millimetres. I couldn't credit this nonsense until he dumped the evidence on the table. "In Germany," he said, "it's not quite so bloody insane!" Jacques used to work for Caterpillar motors. I was soon being told how US automobile engineers have also adopted an absurd precision mix of metric and "imperial" or other measurements. It's the storm wind, however, that gets to us most. My street runs north-south. Weak sunshine was coming in from the east at last, encouraging me to air the flat, but out of the western windows all was dark cloud. Papers and light objects went flying across the apartment as often they do on such days, but the place needed refreshment. It was Jacques who told me about the Föhn. I have heard before of dry, violent Foehn winds given different names worldwide as they rush down the leeward side of mountains. Surf the Net and you'll find material asserting that people affected may be prone to deep-vein thrombosis. You'll even find Mike Ryding's 'Whirling Winds of the World'. But it would seem that the original Föhn has Romansch from Latin roots, sweeps down eastwards from the Alps in winter and is one of those winds that can make people mad. Austrian musician Hubert von Goisern -- "a denigrator of my own country" -- made an album called 'Fön' and did the 'Fön Interviews' (English; tied in with Wienweb & others, Ger.) to talk about his loves and hates. What I can't yet find is proof of the wonderful tale Jacques told me. I would love to believe it. When thousands of Napoleon's soldiers took control of this part of Europe and occupied it, there were crime waves at the height of the Föhn, between December and February, he says. Still apparently are. The French troops hated the season and the loss of reason that it brought. Yet, just as France enjoyed a reputation for turning a lenient eye to crimes of passion, Jacques claims that crimes committed during the Föhn were systematically pardoned, put down to insanity brought in the wind. Much foul-tempered jostling ruined the streets yesterday just around the most evil wind-trap in Paris, the black Tour Montparnasse. Wherever you turned, chill gusts of rain slapped your face in that whirlwind place, exacerbating madness brought on by January sales, the big stores open on Sunday. Eyes got poked, umbrellas cracked inside up, heavy shopping bags thumped shins. I'd thought of dropping into a record store on my way to the cinema, but changed my mind. There was wickedness in the air. Whether weather like that really makes people go barmy, I don't know. The Mind Juggler thinks it's a matter for Jacques Brel songs, poets and writers. She doubts there's been a detailed psychological study, because accumulating the statistics would be very expensive. As for Von Goisern (the stage name of Hubert Achleitner), his very mixed feelings about his homeland set him dropping his band, the Alpinkatzen, and travelling far abroad, to Africa and Tibet. The site about this adventurous artist has been put together by Sarah Marchant (now (July 2004) on Dreamdust, no less), a young English woman fan -- "not unique, but certainly unusual." This is much more interesting than the search for WMD (a wonderful page if you've not seen it already). If I have no immediate inspiration regarding my tests, at least I have the consolation of Liane Foly on the iPod: two CDs which are not copy-protected (Dec 21 protest entry). This superb singer is very sexy indeed on 'The Man I Love,' especially in some of her own work co-written with Andre Manoukian. She also makes an amazing job of 'Put the Blame on Mame' and ... 'Stormy Weather'. 11:01:03 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 11 janvier 2004

'In the Cut': sex, mess, blood and thin ice Sex, yes, plenty of that; but erotic? Depends what turns you on... Thriller? Well, yes, if you're into suspense that starts to slide off the rails halfway through and is rolling down a steep embankment long before the end! I'd partly agree with that IMDb viewer's comment I quoted before going to see 'In the Cut' (Pathé site; Fr, with media in English): "Don't watch it for the plot/story. Watch it to get a sense of what it feels like to live in New York, or lust after someone who's not really your type but intrigues you anyway. It's a very non-linear, artsy, right-brained exercise..." ('kellang'). Bright, mixed-up, sexy woman in her 30s (Meg Ryan) first meets clever, mixed-up police detective (Mark Ruffalo) when he questions her about a gruesome murder, falls for him, begins to wonder if he's a killer, but then it could always be... The story by Susanna Moore, contains nothing spectacularly novel. Those who think the film a poor rendering of Moore's book might note that she co-wrote the screenplay with director Jane Campion, who gives us a competent, moderately good film. Some have compared this with the late Andy Pakula's 'Klute' (IMDb), which I saw back in '72 and vaguely recall for the hot pairing of Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland with a dark decadence which would undoubtedly be dated today. I'd venture that in 30 years' time, 'In the Cut' might be less dated and less memorable. As in 'Klute', you don't see the murders -- or "de-articulations" -- but the blood, body parts and yuk! they leave in their wake are very much of our gory times. Ryan plays Frannie, an English literature teacher who stumbles blindly into the most dangerous of dilemmas, driven by lust. I squirmed for her, though, in the train scenes where she spots lines of those subway poetry ads that mark modern métros -- and reads the stuff out loud. Ouch! For the rest, the movie somehow glides round most of the gaping clichés lying in wait and there were sufficient gasps in a packed house to indicate that not everybody saw some of the twists in a rickety plot well in advance (now out in France, soon on DVD). For two old dears sitting too noisily next to me the passion was evidently hardcore porn; I found Ruffalo and especially Ryan satisfactorily steamy, sometimes erotic, and about as well matched as the couple in 'Klute' when intensely emotional moments demanded some fine acting. Equally good was Jennifer Jason Leigh playing Frannie's sex-starved half-sister Pauline. The two get some well-written scenes which are intimate and touchingly convincing. However, as a whole the movie is too fearfully erratic to be moving or even very successful, despite some fine camerawork and editing, atmosphere laid on by the bucket-load, and valiant efforts by some of the secondary characters who never really get a chance. As a slice of life, I suppose Campion's New York is as good as any I've imagined, but for a would-be detective and serial slasher thriller, she'd have done better to brush up her police homework and make it even halfway believable. If it's profound things about women's sexuality or even the "struggle of the sexes" the New Zealander is trying to portray, this movie comes nowhere near the standard of 'The Piano' (1993; IMDb again). But then that was about repressed sexuality, not routine lust. "Non-linear", as 'kellang' put it, was a nice way of saying very uneven, while if 'In the Cut' is "artsy", then it's pretentiously so and symbolically studded for a popcorn Saturday night, where some might find some dodgy sepia ice-skating flashbacks and a nightmare moment artistic. That ice was very thin. The storyline fell right through it. The music was fine, but nothing special and again of its time, but the film is never less than good to look at. Even the moments where you feel sorry for the cast. My vote: 4.5/10. 11:48:53 PM  link   your views? [] Hesitation, deviation ... diversion "Don't watch it for the plot/story. Watch it to get a sense of what it feels like to live in New York, or lust after someone who's not really your type but intrigues you anyway. Its a very non-linear, artsy, right brained exercise." That's 'kellang', commenting on 'In the Cut' at the IMDb. Jane Campion's latest movie is out here this week, with reviews as mixed as in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. I'm in the mood for a sex thriller with Meg Ryan, bad or otherwise. That's the afternoon plan. A brief bout of exhaustion has set in, especially since seven o'clock was no time to wake up on a Sunday. With another batch of e-mails done, and apologies to those still waiting, I'm packing that in for a BBC comedy panel game. Two nice ones: "They say that from the Great Wall of China you can see the moon," and: "If there's one thing more boring than staring at the Great Wall of China, it's being the poor sod who built it, one brick on top of another, year after..." When it comes to one-liners, have you checked out 'Tube Gossip' (The Man Who Fell Asleep collects it once a week)? 1:45:45 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 10 janvier 2004

How a friend ends an increasingly alarming cycle of seasonal strife A surprising sequence of disputes, flare-ups, misunderstandings and ruptures between men and women in the past two to three weeks was beginning to merit serious attention. The Kid and I were due to spend the Sunday before Christmas with a friend and his daughter. This was prevented at the last minute by my buddy's estranged wife, who arbitrarily decided that the child's latest school results were bad enough for her to be deprived of her day with her father. Yet normally the relationship, though not always easy, doesn't entail such drastic measures as the cancellation of the daughter's eagerly awaited weekends with her dad, which struck me as mean-minded double punishment. Having reported two turns in the twists of my own life, I was granted a true confession at the Canteen by somebody who does not wish to be named. A pointless but sudden row with his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, which led to her walking tearfully out on a party, began with her remarking on the way that he was wearing non-identical socks and had lost a button on his overcoat. These observations were the first heavy drops in a verbal hailstorm. At least that pair have since kissed and made up, but he says neither of them can quite understand what happened or why. Then Tony left my 'phone a message on Wednesday with all the pith of his brief e-mails: "I'm back from Switzerland after a visit between squalid and grotesque. See you, chum." He promised me the details once I saw him tonight after a day in the Factory. While there, I kissed a previously unsighted French colleague a very "Bonne Année" and all that, only to be told, "It can't be much worse than the start of it!" Her New Year's Day, she explained, had begun with the revelation by her long-time partner that he was unceremoniously packing her in for somebody else. All this is not to speak again of similar occurrences linked to as part of last night's entry here and spotted during my cruise of the 'blogosphere. Enough already! When I arrived at Tony's, I was too tired to let him waste money on a dinner he wrongly thinks he owes me for some minor surgery required by his Mac, but while I fixed up the computer he regaled me with his Swiss adventure. I've said before that I greatly admire this man in his '70s for making arduous and fairly regular train journeys to see far-flung members of his family in Britain and the other side of the Alps. He arrived in Lausanne after a four-hour trip from Paris's Gare de Lyon, which I know from experience to be the city's only horrible one even for finding your train because of bizarre platform numbering and lettering and a lack of panels and helpful staff. In the holiday season, the place is a manic hell which can exhaust even the youthful almost before they have left. The person who was supposed to be meeting him in Lausanne was nowhere to be found. So rather than hanging around in that station's deep subterranean tunnels forever, Tony pursued his rail trek as far as Bern. Where his ailing eyes fairly swiftly made out three people awaiting him. Including the woman who had been due to fetch him at Lausanne. She was so vexed at whatever mishap must have occurred that she disappeared on sight, without a word. Leaving him with the other two. "After that," he said, "I felt like a packet being delivered from one household to the next." Meditating on these various events as I returned from Tony's, I began to wonder if it's more than coincidence. Has this latest season of peace on earth and goodwill among men been singularly ill-fated? Could it be in the special foods people gorge themselves on or has something got into the water? Are those nonsensical "astrologers" who lump whole months' worth of us together in their annual forecasts actually right about the dark workings of Saturn? Worse, how long is it all going to last? Then I got home to a miracle. A handwritten note in my letter box on the ground floor said: "Mr Barrett. There is a small packet for you, tucked away under your doormat. The postwoman." Now this girl is a friendly and cheerful creature, but never before in all the years has she clambered up four flights of stairs to leave me a parcel! When she's particularly well-disposed and the gardienne is in, she'll let her sign for it to avoid leaving me the standard form requiring me to queue for ages at the post office to get it. If she did climb all the stairs in every building, her daily rounds would take her a week. The packet from London contained that book by and from Natalie I mentioned: 'The Joy of Letting Women Down: Secrets of the Worshipped Male.' A second, unannounced tome was included: 'Augustine's True Confession.' Both have every appearance of being most entertaining and informative satirical reads. Not only am I very grateful -- thank you, Ms d'Arbeloff! -- but you appear to have broken the increasingly inexplicable cycle I have seen in inter-sexual relations. After all, had I been the post girl, I would have been sorely tempted to delay delivery of a package containing such instructive delights until I had devoured them myself. Let alone climbing 81 wooden slats to leave it right outside somebody's front door. Especially on a Saturday, which is when Madame la gardienne puts such a bright sheen of polish on those stairs that they become almost as slippery as a Swiss ski-slope. 10:54:26 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 9 janvier 2004

What the women are writing about Lee-round-a-few-corners has been having attractive man trouble and enjoying almost every minute of "the perfect occasion to prove to myself that I'm so over that, that I'm so cool now, that even if I were to have to join the single world again (ach!), I'd be so on top of it." Until ... she went all quiet again at Odessa St after giving us the story-so-far with scarcely a blush. Strictly between you and me, Lee's a far hotter chick than she thinks. For heaven's sake, don't tell her I said that. I'm not suicidal. She might instead have tried the "suave and sultry oracle of passion that will iron out your emotional panties", otherwise known as the 'Love Test' at TheSpark, a place whose online inquisitions interest either millions of people or the same person millions of times. That's via Trish, who's still In a Mood because "with windchill it feels like -32C or -25.6F in Oakville, Ontario." And still she posted a pic of a naked lady this week...) The 'unpredictable ... occurrence' said "now that I know I'll have a good chance of actually being able to blog, I might do so more often". That was on Thursday, Oct 30 at 'Vagary'. And still I'm keeping her in the blogroll! Dr 'Sydney' is getting extremely exercised because "a few of those who happen to be in the (US) military are trying to derail a vaccine that could make a difference between victory and defeat in the war on terrorism". That war again. The thing is, though, when the 'medpundit' tackles anthrax vaccine, she sets about it with the energy and rigour of an investigative journalist! Last night was Diablo's "first time at the Luxe as a spectator, and it felt very surreal. I've stripped at the Luxe more than any other club in this town, and just looking up at the neon signage on the facade of the building made me feel tired. Too many memories of shaking my can from evening 'til sunrise, doing nude arabesques for an empty room because it was 4:45 a.m. and the mustachioed managers were too greedy to close before 5." The planet's "best stripper" apart, you could read about Diablo Cody's new nipple rings and their possible effect on airport security devices at the 'Pussy Ranch'. That's courtesy of Belle de Jour, who's indeed to be proving a readable -- adult-rated -- replacement for the Reverse Cowgirl, and who's also been into inter-sex upsets so early in the year. Elsewhere: "This man I loved told me I was perfect. I had always wanted to be perfect and here was this person telling me I already was. I didn't feel perfect. I certainly didn't act perfect. I certainly was not perfect. But, he thought I was and that was enough. And isn't it true that we are all perfect really? Exactly as we are right now, this very second? Even with our flaws and ugly bits and self-destructive ways and unhealed wounds, aren't we all exactly wonderful and lovable and beautiful and perfect, just the way we are? I read that somewhere. He must have read the same thing because he spread that shit around like fertilizer. I met his friend Danika" (and the plot thickens at 'Womanchild', read on, Jan 7). Who today is posting a dire need of jokes. I know that feeling. Augustine, the angel, has promised to send me a copy of 'The Joy of Letting Women Down (secrets of the worshipped male)' by Natalie. Augustine's intuition must have perceived an emergency so important that I may even interrupt my plans to get into 'Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for an Ultimate Theory' for it. Oh yes and by the way, MK this week (at the Factory) finally told me what a "metrosexual" is. It was less interesting than I had imagined. If you're American, it's apparently been a buzzword since the summer of 2002. But not according to the 'Word Spy', who traces it back to 1994, and quotes the following (and more) from Alexa Hackbarth in the 'Washington Post': "At dinner the other night, my date listed the calorie count of the main entrees, raising an eyebrow at my chicken Alfredo selection after he had ordered a salad. I saw him check his reflection in the silver water pitcher three times. During dessert, he looked deeply into my eyes and told me he thought what we have together is very special. It was our third date. It was then that I realized why my dating life has been as mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle since I arrived in Washington." 10:51:18 PM  link   your views? [] Style points: moan of the week Most of us have linguistic bugbears. Roland Piquepaille looked to answers this week, rather than gripes: The difference between a *correct* and an *incorrect* word can send your text directly in the trash without having been read. And even this is valid for every kind of writer, it is even more true for a blogger who doesn't have an editor to help him clarifying his thoughts and to pick the appropriate word. So I want to thank Darwin Magazine for this new guide about avoiding mistakes in English, 'What Are Words For?'" That was at 'Technology Trends' (b'rolled). I've forgotten to ask Tony whether he's yet sent a certain missive to the Beeb about broadcasters' quirks that drive us both mad. At the Factory, I slap my hand every time I catch myself using "in terms of". Recently I heard that three times in one sentence on the radio. What it means is "err, I'm thinking" and can almost invariably be left out. I send rude notes to people who confuse "epidemics" with "outbreaks", especially if they call them "endemic". That's as common an error as the misuse of a word whose Latin origin is "one in 10", and if Merriam-Webster really thinks it's fine to write "firebombs decimated large portions of the city", I'd ask for my money back if the dictionary weren't free on the Net. I use elastic bands to shoot stinging paperclips at people who write "underway" instead of "under way". Unless they're reporting about boats or using it as an adjective. But I'm the first to admit I use too many of those! 7:52:13 PM  link   your views? [] What's more dangerous than terrorism? Look to the skies The BBC on LW rudely cut short the interview to go to Westminster where upstanding and Honourable Members were giggling over some new sex gadget. So I missed what Sir David King had to say about that buffoon in the White House who'll pretend there's insufficient evidence of global warming until his arse catches fire. Still, you can always catch up with the UK government's chief scientific advisor at Today's Listen Again (RealAudio clip 3'58"). "Global warming is 'the biggest challenge to governments for this century (...) the degree of warming that we've had to date, of course, is very small compared to that which is predicted over the coming century, so this is a problem of massive proportions (...) 'We all recognise that this is a problem that crosses national borders and requires international action,' King told John Humphrys. 'What exactly is your charge sheet against George Bush?' 'There isn't a charge sheet; (...) what we're seeking from the United States is to join with us in taking effective action to deal with this major threat and of course also to take a leadership role with us in seeking for international action... (That the Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol) is of major concern to us'." A small media storm about how King laid into Bush was started by an article he wrote for the latest Science, but you have either to buy it or subscribe to read it all online. In fact, the senior scientist has been arguing for months that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism. King said as much last November in Ottawa, addressing Canada's National Research Council: "He pointed to the almost 30,000 people who died in heat waves that broiled Europe this summer, and warned that more such natural disasters will occur as global warming progresses. 'We have an effect that is bigger in its manifestation than any terrorist action that has taken place.' The global climate today is warmer than at any time in known history, Sir David said. Scientists of the International Panel on Climate Change believe Earth will continue to heat up, warming as much as six degrees over the next century. The cause of the rapid warming lies in the Industrial Revolution, when humans began burning massive amounts of coal, oil and gas to power factories, electrical generation plants and vehicles. By burning those fossil fuels, humans today are pumping six million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every second, Sir David said" (report at SPEC, from the 'Ottawa Citizen'. In five weeks, King's set to address the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Human induced climate change could result in the extinction of more than a million terrestrial species in the next fifty years," reckons the World Wildlife Fund. Last month's 'Science et Vie', a magazine so first-rate that I've taken out a subscription, ran a 70-page dossier on climate change which Bush might do well to read when he's not busy chasing terrorists. Like each of the magazine's monthly specials, it tackles this alarming topic from all angles under a range of headings, too detailed to sum up. I learned many intriguing new things. European architects, for instance, are doing far better -- as they think back to last summer's killer heatwave which we'll see many more of this century -- largely to forget air conditioning and consider rooftop gardens instead. While the former is a costly panacea that actually worsens the global warming problem with its by-products, nature itself can offer a relatively inexpensive and aesthetically pleasing solution. The Japanese, Germans and residents of Chicago are apparently learning that eight centimetres (3.15 inches) of earth and lawn on the roof can slash the temperature inside a one-storey building by up to 25 percent. Oh, and it stays warmer in winter too. Go on, plant a flower! Grow a park! On the health front, the malaria belts are expected to have broadened potentially to affect two-thirds of the world's population by 2050. Yellow fever may reach parts of Europe. That ferocious storms, heavy floods and murderous mudslides are on the increase and will remain so is a matter of banal fact for anybody who keeps even a sporadic weather eye on the multitude of websites less obtuse than Bush & Co stuck up their gumtree. What interested me most of all, however, amid the details and maps of rain and temperature forecasts, the hot spots in cities and shifts in ocean currents is that scientists worldwide have at last got a coherent, working model of Planet Terra to use as a basis for analysis, prediction and recommendations. But that statement is an over-simplification: the global scientific community still has about a score of models, which climate expert Jean-François Royer of France's National Meteorological Research Centre says "reflect the variety and uncertainties in each individual approach." Scientists from countries on several continents tell the magazine that now humankind finally has the sheer computer power needed, to combine all these models into one -- of immense complexity, of course -- is a kind of Holy Grail sought by researchers. At present, however, "we'd rather retain the 'biodiversity' of the models," as Royer put it. When it comes simply to global warming, many sites like the US Metropolitan East Coast (MEC) Assessment refer you to two principal models, the "Canadian" one and the "Hadley one" (MEC). It was to Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research that Sir David King referred in that interview I finally heard this afternoon. I've in previous entries spoken of the world's key reference forum, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose site I check out from time to time, but when it comes to a user-friendly website, as rich in content as it is helpful with links, you could do far worse than to start out at Hadley. Their site alone covers much of what you always wanted to ask but didn't dare for fear of looking as wilfully ignorant and pig-headed as Dubya, from exactly what ozone is and does to such apparently difficult subjects as "thermohaline circulation". "What circulation?" I hear some cry. You shouldn't be put off by big technical or jargon words. If you read a few paragraphs, you'll learn that it's all about heat, salt and seas. Little words with immense implications when what we get up to in our everyday lives begins to affect the way they all interact. Mr Bush has other ideas. But when it comes to his announcement due next week that he plans to send Americans to Mars (BBC Science), I really wouldn't like to see him or any of his kind anywhere near the list of candidates. At the moment, I note that the vote -- I speak not of next year's US presidential election, but of whether it's a "good idea" to launch a manned mission to Mars -- stands at four-to-one in favour. Myself, I think it's a splendid idea, but then I've always had my head in the clouds. If I had my naïf way and the power, I'd ensure that the first bunch of human beings to set foot there would include men and women from every continent. Not me, though. It's bad enough in Paris. Mars is far too bloody cold, but not increasingly damp every winter! If I tell you about this month's 'Science et Vie' in due course, the teaser is in the title of the dossier: 'Le singe, l'homme, et après..." ("the ape, man and after..."). You'd think a subject like that would need a question mark. 6:56:49 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 8 janvier 2004

Wired sets a powerful puss set among Mac pigeons An intriguing challenge to the smug Mac user, who -- like me -- tends to curse Window$ and stick sign$ in the names of its parent$: "Apple Computer's Macintosh turns 20 years old this month. To mark the occasion, Wired News is running several stories this week about the groundbreaking machine, the people who created it and the Mac's impact on computing and culture in general. Over the years, one company has stuck by Apple through thick and thin." I'll bet 'Apple's Unlikely Guardian Angel' (Wired) will unleash a lot of virtual ink splashed over the Net this week. 8:37:07 PM  link   your views? [] Reality check: self, social appearances and Networks of being This place has seen much "self-reflexion" of late, along with entries about a couple of women demanding difficult judgement calls, and some fine reading last night provoked even more of it: a new meeting point of behavioural notions for me, and as ever, I hope, of much wider interest. I've written almost more than enough about Sunday's incident with the Kid's mum, Catherine, which surprised me as an unprovoked aberration, most uncharacteristic from a woman who has much changed, as do we all, over the years and whom I like very much and respect. But she's explained what she herself describes as an "outburst" in a letter where she also generously grants me "all latitude to protest". In fact, I have no protesting to do and indeed go along with some of her observations. Such anger as I felt was almost as short-lived as my immediate response in slamming that car door; I'll not do her the disservice of quoting her here, since everybody has their own "gut reactions" as the past year has taught me once and for all. Hers include a "malaise" regarding the Internet and my use -- or might she say "abuse"? -- of it. Many people still see the Web as little more than a research and communications tool and remain very uneasy about what's it done and is still doing as far more than that, a recent technological development with far-reaching social implications. These implications, when you think of it, are almost too recent a social phenomenon for anybody to absorb, analyse and, above all, forecast. The Net, as a daily reference point for ever-growing millions of people in the general public, is scarcely a decade old. Britain's QE II, the monarch in person, sent her first email as way back as 1976, but the Internet Society (ISOC) wasn't founded until 1991, at around the start of four crazy years which saw the Net mushroom beyond academic, scientific and military circles. The best timeline for all this, from the start to today, is the one by Robert H'obbes' Zakon (at Zakon.org). Most of what Catherine wrote is between ourselves, but she raises a couple of questions: the importance people accord to appearances (which, in my case, is generally known to be no more than a social minimum); and more essentially, the nature of and the prominence we individually give to what socially passes for "reality". I mean the workaday world of our lives, loves, jobs and acquaintances as contrasted with the growing importance more and more brains -- from psychologists and sociologists to writers, graphic artists and philosophers -- accord to "virtual realities". Regarding the latter, my ex-wife is understandably alarmed that I've come to give it far too big a place in my life, presumably at the risk of divorcing my self from any kind of real world as she perceives it. This development -- which, frankly, I've seen far more manifest and indeed worrying in several other people: a new channel of alienation which has further cut some of them off from, say, Catherine's world -- sets off frantic alarm bells in her mind. I'm at a midpoint in what is proving to be gruellingly hard work with Dr. 'Mind Juggler' F., for whom my respect and admiration strengthen with each session. I understand what her next step will be, and -- as "homework" -- took what could have been some rather embarrassing time out this morning to 'phone a bunch of well-placed AFP colleagues as well as friends, seeking the most honest responses they were prepared to give me regarding progress in what the doctors began to call my "social reintegration" several months into the onset of the Condition (my partially psycho-somatic serious gut disorder). Reassuringly, after two or three weeks of flak fired my way from various quarters, the answers were invariably positive, and far more so than I'd dared expect given recent emotional upheavals. What they're waiting for at the Factory, it would seem, is for me to get a bit more speed back, less shyness in my renewed personal interactions -- and the return of my sense of humour, joking and irreverence in all its awful glory! Professional head-shrinkers take note: If I've taken a particular liking to the Mind Juggler, it's only partly because I happen to score highly on her scale as a "social animal": a rebellious one, perhaps, and a hater of most group activity, but no less a moderately well-oiled cog in the mechanism of society. We get on primarily because she's only the second practising psy-anything of rather too many I've had dealings with to treat me not as a "patient" or "in-valid" case, but lucidly -- one the preliminary sessions were over -- as a "normal person". The last shrink to do that, seven years ago, had to withdraw -- because I reminded him, he confessed uncomfortably, far too much of himself and his own problems at the time! Moreover, she's not interested in "schools" or "god-games", finding exploration infinitely better than lectures. The biggest "truth" to hit home about AFP since I resumed work at the Factory is that -- perhaps like most big organisations -- the place functions and survives precisely because of the vital day-to-day social and professional interaction among journalists and technicians. And not because of its top management. While we've all known far worse than the current bunch, a lot of them still live on other planets. French media reports sometimes dub the news agency a ship riding stormy waters. If that metaphor's true, then I can only publicly write that it's one which sails rather more successfully when most of those on the bridge and the upper decks leave the workings of the engine-room well alone! The institution will still be paying the price of previously incompetent senior officers for years to come... But that's just an aside. Last night, I almost finished what I wanted of one my "library volumes" taken out at the Safari Bookshelf (O'Reilly - a place which gets five more stars, by the way, for the courteous way they have just dealt, in well under 24 hours, with a customer service problem of mine). At the end of the book, "accidental revolutionary" Eric Raymond's superb overview of "open source" matters in 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' (Open Resources abstract; later revised, 2001), this seeker of originality (Linux Today) makes some most interesting points about the psychology of a hacker. His Appendix I includes some good "dos and don'ts", along with some "points of style" far removed from mere appearances in the domain of the flesh and its appareil: "...to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help. They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of hacking. Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of hackers (including all the best ones I know of) are able writers. Read science fiction. Go to science fiction conventions (a good way to meet hackers and proto-hackers). Study Zen, and/or take up martial arts. (The mental discipline seems similar in important ways.) Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar kinds of music. Learn to play some musical instrument well, or how to sing. Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay. The more of these things you already do, the more likely it is that you are natural hacker material. Why these things in particular is not completely clear, but they're connected with a mix of left- and right-brain skills that seems to be important (...)" Oh Eric, neatly put. Ah, Catherine! Where does this leave us, not just me, you and our generation, but the Kid, poor soul? Marianne fits more than half of that profile already; I, for my part, given a renewed interest in Zen, as well as the Tao and the good old I Ching, am doomed beyond redemption! The Mind Juggler's task, to be further pursued in about a couple of hours, has far less to do with helping any social reintegration than giving me a little more assistance with the process of putting my selves back together again, including the revived bits brought back to life during the worst of the Condition and accompanying mental transition my malfunctioning bowel system reflected by way of red alert warning bells. Worse, now that I have further explored what this means, you might have to consider the option that the Kid has at least the makings, even, of a geek!! But that's neither as freaky or alarming as it sounds as soon as one opens one's mindset to 'Geek: a definition' as admirably expressed not in your average dictionary but by Craig at 'Ye Olde Foole's Tavern'. Craig is, like Eric, somebody who makes the crucial web-savvy distinctions between being a hacker and your damned Net nuisance of a "cracker", and a geek and your real social misfit, the "nerd". All of what Craig says is worth reading for people uncomfortable with the Internet, but he makes two fundamental points high in his definition: "A geek is someone who spends time being 'social' on a computer. This could mean chatting on irc or icb, playing multi-user games, posting to alt.sex.bondage.particle.physics, or even writing shareware. Someone who just uses their computer for work, but doesn't spend their free time 'on line' is not a geek (...) [There's rather more to it than that, but also:] "The unwritten geek credo states that originality and strangeness are good, and that blind conformity and stupidity are unforgivable." Just as dressing sloppily or seeking out 'ec-centricity' for its own sake, if one has the choice of doing otherwise, are indeed signs of serious social maladjustment. "A nerd is a person with no social skills, usually obsessed with science or technology (geek is more computer specific). Nerds are known for their pocket protectors, taped glasses, and plaid shirts. Many nerds are also geeks, using the net as a safe screen to hide behind while practicing their social skills," writes Craig, while: "the term (hacker) is overused in the popular media, and therefore is no longer much used among 'real geeks'. Hacker also has negative connotations related to cracking, or illegally obtaining access to computers and accounts." As for the integration and understanding of self, while I'm happy to have encountered the Mind Juggler rather late in life, better late than never; and I expect no miracles of our meetings to come. The multitude of "online adventures" I've had in the past year, as well as a few in the "real world", convince me more than ever that self-realisation -- and especially "waking up" -- are nothing less than lifelong tasks. I don't think anybody should get too alarmed or upset at the time today's youngsters spend at their computers, given any intelligent parental precautions and sufficient attention to what they're doing. Such children have simply become fellow makers of an extremely interesting future, where the boundaries between worlds -- what is "real" and what is "virtual" -- have already become as blurred as is daily reflected in the art, literature and film of our times. There's nothing wrong with having a head in the clouds as long as the feet stay on the ground. It's still a prospect which scares many people, but in what passes for the "developed world" especially -- and at the risk of serious global social upheavals and conflicts the pathfinders have already begun to consider -- the day is undoubtedly coming when those who are labelled misfits and ill-adjusted will, like it or not, be the increasingly marginalised individuals who are not web-savvy and fear not only what the Internet already is, but what it's likely to become! 6:11:29 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 6 janvier 2004

Out on a spree, but safety first "When in doubt, leave it out," will always be an excellent journalist's maxim and holds no less true for the 'blogosphere. For a day, I left almost everything out (apart from tweaks to the previous entry), and caught up with replies to mails. The rest of my mental equipment was engaged in quiet semi-conscious preparation for the first hefty session with Dr F., who shall henceforth be known as the Mind Juggler, in deference to her sense of fun, her patent skills and gifts (and some ... entities in the next book eventually up for review, 'Revelation Space,' by Alastair Reynolds). At last, a shaman of a psychotherapist in her way, with whom I feel increasingly at ease now that we've cut the crap and begun some real work. Better, she doesn't adhere to any school and is open to exchange rather than some of the rites I've endured in the past. "Juggler" because I also like the word's etymology: "Middle English jogelour, from Old English geogelere jester, from Old French jogleour, from Latin joculator, from joculari" (Merriam-Webster Online). "When getting over a downer, indulge yourself in a shopping spree!" That's a rather more risky favourite maxim, perilous indeed before I learned to keep track of every single cent in and out with an accounts computing programme. I got a very friendly welcome at the 'Village Voice' (Parler Paris for a change), notwithstanding the substantial backlog of credit they owed me from an error last time, and decided that instead of just recalling Gurdjieff's contribution to my mindlife, it'll soon be time to read 'Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson' again. I also acquired one of the most highly praised translations of Lao Tzu's 'Tao Te Ching' (Amazon US) and physicist Brian Greene's 'The Elegant Universe', since after last year's introduction to the issue from neighbourhood Webwiz François, in 2004 I'd like to wrap my neurons round "superstrings" and "hidden dimensions". Finally, apart from a little more sci-fi, the time has come when I want a first-class reference work on consciousness and all that, and the 'Oxford Companion to the Mind', after 45 minutes' perusal, struck me as about the most comprehensive on offer. So while it's not exactly all light reading for 2004, this 'blog seems set to take some novel further turns. People with no qualms about shopping for books, music and video online might, by the way, need alerting to the fact that the linked Amazon sites here (UK and France) and the US one have all launched their January sales. In an extensive look at the lot over the weekend, I found a lot of dross (to my taste), but also a handful of real gems going for almost unbeatable prices. In the past few months, moreover, I've occasionally made use of Amazon's "more buying choices" option and have so far had excellent dealings with third-party vendors, but it's worth having the patience to double-check their ratings before you part with cash for what can be some astonishing bargains. I know a sufficiently large number of people who do still have strong reservations about using their bank card over the Internet to suggest that if you're wavering, Shopsafe (UK) or Safeshopping (American Bar Association) are wise places to drop by. Both sites include tips which are useful reminders even for those of us who do it fairly frequently. Touch wood, I've only been really badly stung once in several years of online purchasing. It was the devil's own job, calling for considerable ingenuity, to track down the fraud to source. I was lucky, managed it, and recovered nearly all that had been pinched, but that nearly successful sting taught me to look before leaping once you go for it. 12:17:00 AM  link   your views? []

dimanche 4 janvier 2004

So strangely whipped and the moon not yet full... (Further edited on January 8. Having moved on in an extensive and, I hope, useful 'blog-essay today from the minor mental seismic shift occasioned by some inhabitual behaviour, I see no reason to leave what could wrongly be read as personal criticism sitting on the "front page". If anybody's really interested in one of the triggers for today's reflections, details of an unfortunate episode and of the misunderstanding I think can be wreaked when somebody knowledgeable drags Freud into bear on it all, the full post remains at the linked page. And...[*]) What happened this morning left me befuddled! Marianne's mum had invited me to lunch, offering to fetch us by car at the end of the Kid's week here. When she 'phoned to ask how we were doing, I said "Fine, but Marianne's still fast asleep and the place is a mess." Her bags remained unpacked, her stuff strewn all over. It was 10:15, I saw no rush and the conversation was as friendly as ever. My only problem -- not worth mentioning -- was that the Condition had caused a sudden, unstoppable accident with my last clean, decent trousers. They too had to be pre-scrubbed and then bunged into yesterday's wash. Such incidents have been rare since August. I've regarded them as sufficiently revolting (and embarrassing the three times it's happened in public) not to 'blog. But Friday's mess was my downfall! Neither angry nor upset (unless I deceive myself), I find some particularities in behaviour so odd that I'll 'blog these things to try to make general points. If I were cross with Marianne's mother, I wouldn't be writing. That local "literary lion," Baudier, and I would agree that discourse regarding singularities, the often banal details of a life, are of interest to nobody but intimate family and friends. Not that is, until you're ready to use particularities as a launching point for reflections conceivably of broader and all-too-human interest. For all that has befallen me lately, and still emotionally sliced up by the break with the Wildcat (just as I unhappily believe that she must be), I've realised something important since I began this "experiment". Then, I had no conscious plan to "go online" with matters as intimate as some of those I have disclosed over with the months: occasional reflections on my own and our "selves", psychology, the heat of sex, desire ... human "natures". Yet it's just such 'blog-posts -- entries I'm never sure of the wisdom of publishing -- that have brought this journal by far the most responses, rarely as comments but often as e-mails, out of the blue, from people whom I had no idea I've been touching or provoking echoes and fellow-feeling in with my ramblings. Those mails I answer and much appreciate, though often in some amazement! If what I write is of genuine help and cause for reflection in the lives of others, then I accept such thanks with gratitude, much encouraged to pursue the experiment. Too long for the "front page" (and your RSS newsfeeds), here's another such discourse: 'A tongue-lashing brings forth the lion on tired old Freud.' ([*]January 5: The linked thoughts fail to mention another option put to Baudier: the important possibility that what Marianne's mum did had nothing to do with me and was "triggered" by something quite other in her world or her morning... Baudier's so sure of his intellectual astuteness, if not his emotional life, that he brashly dismissed this! But I remain unconvinced, though I still find his approach to the "problem" sufficiently intriguing to share. Finally, a key point: he's one of just two people who have expressly given me carte blanche to write anything I like about them. When it comes to others, I will not stray on to their personal territory or publish anything about it. Some say that "your fences are in a different place from mine", but I make every effort to respect such barriers, especially when dragging real people into this experiment in understanding and sharing. If anybody directly concerned considers I've breached that cardinal rule of both 'blogging and journalism, I will immediately make changes and amends as they may request.) 11:57:45 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 3 janvier 2004

'Master and Commander': great acting and perfect helmsmanship If any actor really drenches himself in the parts he plays, it's Russell Crowe, who gives us yet another magistral performance as Capt. Jack Aubrey of HMS Surprise in Peter Weir's magnificent 1805 seafaring adventure 'Master and Commander' (official site). This latest war movie from the genial Australian director and screenwriter ranks very high for another tremendous piece of acting by Paul Bettany as Dr Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and captain's confidant, conscience ... and partner in violin and cello duets! Yes, 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World' is of course the naval action movie -- set off the coasts of South America during the Napoleonic Wars -- that has only just been released in France after reaping high praise for some weeks in the States and elsewhere. Newly arrived visitors from Mars with some notion of Terran history may care to be told that it tells the tale of an English frigate sent in pursuit off Brazil of a powerful French corsair, Acheron, which threatens to carry the European war to the other hemisphere and wreak havoc among merchant trading vessels and isolated whaling fleets. After a first bloody and fiery encounter out of the fog with a foe which massively outguns him, 'Lucky Jack' -- but is his seamanship and fortune still up to the nickname he enjoys? -- has to choose between what he regards as his duty and the immense risk to his crew of pursuing the chase. That "what England expects" wins out is obvious, otherwise there'd be no film, but this is one of the slowest paced of the action sagas from Weir ('Gallipoli,' 1981; 'The Year of Living Dangerously,' 1982; 'Witness,' 1985...). This lack of haste, the doubtless extremely expensive attention lavished on splendid vessels, period naval detail and shipboard life and the depths given to the range of characters caught up in the chase are among the strengths of the movie. Maturin is a reluctant warrior, indeed essentially a man of peace and a dedicated naturalist, quite a contrast to his cultured, increasingly obsessive but always outgoing friend and captain. That the two will eventually clash is inevitable and both actors bring great conviction to their roles. Bettany reminded me occasionally of a young Anthony Hopkins back in the 1970s of the BBC's staggeringly good 'War and Peace' (IMDb). When the adventure takes HMS Surprise through the ferocious seas off Cape Horn and up the Americas' coast to that extraordinary natural realm of the Galapagos Islands, Weir makes the very most of some fine location filming and the story line to drop us more than a hint of Darwinism and the 'Origin of Species' (BBC educational site) in the making! It's both the workings of unusual beasts and the man of science, moreover, that finally give our intrepid captain his clue as to how he just might take on the Acheron and even overcome the American-built battleship. Insects of one sort or another play almost as important a part in this maritime saga as a good and almost exclusively British cast, apart from Crowe (a New Zealander). From the slow ship-time sense of a very long voyage to action scenes of tremendous ferocity, realism and near chaos, Weir sheds the considerable dross of a frankly often tedious book (Chad Orzel's BC review) by the late Patrick O'Brian. Spilled guts and blood get just enough attention to send shivers down our spines -- the Kid's writhing in the seat next to me reminded me of my own childhood imaginings of seagoing amputations without anaesthetics! -- but Weir doesn't linger on the gore any more than he ventures near the swashbuckling clichés of Hollywood and the waves. As with some of his other films, there's sometimes a documentary feel even to this one, while I've never seen anything to match tempests like his apart from one mind-blowing real one off southern France to the cinema seas of 'The Perfect Storm' (Flash site). Oh yes. A largely period (or more modern but fitting, with no fewer than three composers' credits) musical score helped make an excellent movie, as do some of the younger actors in the near child-sailor posts of the era, Billy Boyd not the least among them. 11:57:43 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 2 janvier 2004

Boring into Janus "The most popular query of the year? I'm sad," John Walkenbach (J-Walk) says, "to announce that it was britney spears." Checking out Google's 2003 Year-End Zeitgeist, as John suggested, I'm sorrier still to find that a whole continent and nobody from it get a single mention in any one of the Top Tens. The makers of one of my favourite (Mac-only) browsers, the Omni Group, have announced a major rival to Safari in the shape of Omniweb 5 (Insanely Great Mac). It won't be free -- the upgrade alone, due out as a public beta on February 2, will cost almost 10 dollars (eight euros) -- but I shall be heading down that road. The screenshots make it look very cool indeed (via the MacDevCenter). There's some good comment piling in -- and some bloody stupid ones -- at MacNN. zzz ..... zzzzzzzzzzzzz "I accept this as an endorsement of the spirit of the Web; of building it in a decentralized way; of making best efforts to keep it open and fair; and of ensuring its fundamental technologies are available to all for broad use and innovation, and without having to pay licensing fees." The man generally credited for "inventing" the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee (W3C), got a gong from Her Majesty the Quoog. Heck! He's the same age as me and Steve Jobs and that Gates chap for that matter... Late as ever, I'd note that the Mirror could have done better than 'Sir-fing the Net,' but their story says it all. 2003 must have left at least one of their editors with a bad hangover. The Kid and I are having a quiet day at home, both often at our screens. Also on the OS X front and forever catching up, the discovery of 'AppleScript for Absolute Starters' by Bert Alternberg, could be a recipe for a more efficient 2004. It's the first primer I've seen that doesn't unnerve me. The reason for staying in to catch up on this kind of thing is in the picture. With its Paris forecast, the Weather Underground seems to be making, as ever, the only convincing prediction I've read today. If you've got any appetite left for last year, the best -- and worst -- of 2003 wrap at Blogcritics has been as good a read as any. I'm delighted to learn that my "hour has arrived! It started in 2003 and continues with increased momentum this year. This is your time of harvest, where you'll reap the fruits of what you have planted since 1980. "For most, this year means success in what you want most." Georgia Nicols, the Chicago Sun-Times stargazer responsible for those splendid tidings for Libras, doesn't appear to dare do what Raymond Merriman risks with his brag about what he claims to have got right. But she made for a more cheerful read than Baudier, who last night proclaimed at the Canteen that 2004 would be "l'année des tous les desespoirs" ("the year of total hopelessness"). He must have been reading Something Awful too. As for resolutions, my 2003 one was that I wasn't going to make any more. "I will not use 409 to clean the toilet seat ever again" was what Tom Johnson managed at unproductivity | journal. The only noteworthy dirty discovery of a laundry day when nobody has anything particular to say was that of 'Belle de Jour'. Perhaps this London call girl who keeps nothing to herself will prove a worthy bogroll blogroll read in the wobbly stead of the lamented reverse cowgirl. We defrosted the fridge. The laundry I can't face till sometime when it seems likely to dry. Today's socks'll be good through till April. Oh yes. I almost forgot the implosion at the truly British Beeb, sparked by Today's bid to make a change from the usual man or woman of the year vote. "It was trailed as a 'unique chance to rewrite the law of the land'... (ed: and indeed it wonderfully was!) "But yesterday, 26,000 votes later, the winning proposal was denounced as a 'ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation' - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament" ('The Independent'). Thanks to John Robb for reminding me of the year's best miffed quote heard so far: "The people have spoken -- the bastards." 7:15:32 PM  link   your views? [] Jackson and that 'Ring': reflections on mastery Genius? No. A major landmark in the history of cinema? Yes, assuredly. A masterpiece? Now that we've seen the whole, most certainly yes, and one which people will keep watching as long as film and DVD exist in anything like their current shape. 'The Return of the King,' all three hours of it, appears to have silenced all but the most querulous and argumentative quibblers Internet-wide regarding the brilliance and depth of Peter Jackson's effort in bringing Tolkien's ' Lord of the Rings' to the big screen. For all my minor objections to a handful of aspects of the New Zealand director's (IMDb bio) opus, if I could vote for the trilogy as a whole, it's one of the very few achievements listed at the Internet Movie Database to which I'd award an almost perfect 10. 'The Return of the King' (on "official" site) is an epic in its own right, from its admirable opening scenes on Smeagol still as hobbit and his transformation into Gollum by the workings of the ring of power to the final battles in the war for the fate of the world. What I should now like to see is some first-rate Paris cinema (and others elsewhere) pluck up the commercial courage to treat us to the three-year trilogy in one stupendous go, all nine hours in a day. Knowing the way this town operates cinematically, I'll be surprised if no movie-house director or chain decides to do this in the next year or so. No fan of small screens, television or home video, I see no other way to give hardened big-movie buffs a chance to enjoy the sheer consistency of excellence which Jackson brought to his vision of the vast and richly layered tale: a vision with which he managed to inspire the whole of his cast and the big film crews, teams of artists and special effects experts who joined in his very personal dream of how the story might be given flesh, light and sound. "Return of The King is the most enjoyable because in the structure of the movies, it is nothing other than pay-off, there is no more setting up to do, no more exposition, no more introducing characters. The pay-off is very character-based. It is action-orientated as well, but all of our characters have been pushed to a point where their life and death depends on what happens in the third movie. It is very emotional, and from an actors' point of view it is very enjoyable to work on, because they were able to play some pretty intense drama. From my point of view it was always great, because we were heading toward an ending, a climax which we never had in the other two." This "pay-off" -- as Jackson himself put it in the above quote lifted from the IMDb -- is singularly rewarding because 'The Return of the King' is the film that pays tribute to the extremely hard work the leading members of the cast put into the difficult task of character development throughout their years spent on the trilogy as a whole. The film features some of the most spectacular sets and finest camerawork, using New Zealand's magnificent mountain scenery, in the whole of Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings'. For anybody seeking one of the best bunch of picture (computer "desktop wallpaper") places, there's a treasure trove at Minas Tirith ('Ship of Dreams' site*), while the IMDb links to many others. I read a host of reviews of 'Return of the King' after seeing it, and some interesting comments all over the Web, whence it struck me that almost everybody who didn't enjoy or admire the film took issue either with Jackson's view of Tolkien's tomes or with weaknesses and thin areas in the work of the South African-born professor of Anglo-Saxon (Tolkien.co.uk) itself. But I haven't revisited 'The Hobbit' or 'The Lord of the Rings' for such a long time that I can no longer say whether the trilogy is strictly faithful to the books. When I did read them as a child, I found them hard, sometimes turgid, with long and very tedious bits which Jackson certainly left out of his films, and yet still a great piece of literature. Some people, like "systematic theology" scholar J. Ligon Duncan III, find the whole thing "shot through with redemptive metaphors, Christian virtues, veiled references to divine providence and Christ-analogies" (Christianity.com). Tolkien loathed allegory, as Duncan himself points out, and I wouldn't push the Christian case very far myself. But Bradley Birzer, in his 'J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth' (Townhall review by Tim O'Bryhim) even saw it all as a "theological thriller"... When Jackson's work first hit the screens, I saw "explanatory" bullshit drawing direct parallels with contemporary history and particularly the fundamentalist Bush administration's crusade against the so-called "axis of evil". Take this, for example: "...there's a profound parallel between this fantasy tale and what's happening in America today. We all know this one: A brutal terrorist attack shocks a kind but self-centered people into the wide-eyed realization that their nation is the target of intense hatred that's crept up on it for years. (...) "Lecture topics include (...) how unseen astral forces amplify and manipulate global conflicts in an all-consuming battle of darkness versus light" ('Destiny of America') -- always so reassuring to know! That the 'Lord of the Rings' was profoundly marked by the last century's two World Wars strikes me as evident, but I wouldn't read too much even into that. Anybody who does care to seek out a myriad sources and parallels can have several field days starting by buying the 'Proceedings' of a 1991 Tolkien Centenary Conference (Mythopoeic Society). Bringing such a wealth of resources to the cinema and making a darned good yarn of them struck me as an impossible task before Jackson tried it. You may not agree with his vision, you can find holes in his direction or the acting. The Kid, for instance, adored Andy Serkis (warning: music ... of sorts) as Gollum, particularly the schizo dialogues, but thought Frodo as portrayed by Elijah Wood was a wet-eyed wimp, constantly looking as if he was about to burst into tears. But unless one has no interest in fantasy at all, and I know plenty of people who've avoided the whole trilogy for that reason alone, I think we owe a very great deal to Jackson and the whole team for making these films, going through hell at times in so doing (as a host of sites describe, including the excellent QuickTime movies at the official one) and signally failing to screw it up beyond belief! When I saw that the French edition of National Geographic magazine had joined the dozens of periodicals devoting a special to 'The Lord of the Rings', my imagination boggled. But why not? Just how long need we wait for the 'Playboy special: Women of the Rings' (nude feature)? _____________ *They don't want any direct reproduction of or "hot-linking" to the pictures there, so I won't. The pictures I have stolen are credited, in order: © Metropolitan FilmExport; totally unattributed by 'outnow' (Swiss/German); and Pierre Vinét - © 2003 New Line Productions. 2:53:15 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 1 janvier 2004

On being the wrong side of the Equator The big wet plonks in a corner of the bedroom ceiling were again the first thing I heard when I woke up. Several letters, one of them registered, and call after 'phone call over three years have done nothing to get the "syndic" responsible for the upkeep of this building to fix the hole in the roof over my flat. Books remain piled on the floor rather than being exposed to more damage in the next rainstorm, but as a humble tenant I'm not allowed under French law to get the repairs done myself. The landlord would be quite happy to do so, but the simple task requires the agreement of everybody else who owns apartments in this part of Losserand Street. Four audits have been done since 2000, the sole concession by the syndic, who's entitled only to three anyway. The most competent fellow to climb through the trapdoor on the landing outside told me it would cost about 550 euros (700 dollars). The last bunch of layabouts who "mended" the chimneys one baking summer forgot to cap them properly and there are also hairline but serious cracks in the concrete seating of the chimney-stack. I was in the top bunk, which is the Kid's when she comes, but last night she moaned that it was too hot up there to sleep and made me swap. I could have killed her this morning. Switching my brain on takes a good hour at the best of times, but in the living room it was freezing and in the bathroom my teeth were chattering when I shaved. The little monster! I told her last night that she could turn the heating right down, but I did not say she could switch it all off. By the time she emerged, a couple of hours later, the temperature was back to endurable. But that's how she is. As capable of taking a cold shower in midwinter as she is of luxuriating in what she calls a "Norwegian bath" in August. Above, she's enjoying one of the world's most unusual pools, and it's a very warm early March morning. That was in KwaZulu-Natal almost two years ago, when we spent one marvellous night and day at what may be one of the most expensive lodges in South Africa's most impoverished province. There is a protective barrier, because the water plunging out of the pool falls down an almost sheer cliff-edge, hundreds of meters deep. One of her problems with Africa now is that it's far too hot for her, she says. All of it. In this other picture, she's loving the aftermath of the most ferocious storm Senegal ever threw at us, in August 1997. It was very hot that month and the peasant farmers of the region were rejoicing at that rain, which came after months of drought and proved to be the harbinger of the salvation of their crops. The rains were weeks later than usual -- or what used to be usual before global warming really started wreaking havoc from there right up to the French Alps. When I finally ventured to open the curtains and face the grey drabness outside, it was a surprise to find that January 1 has brought the first Parisian snow of this winter. And the harder it snows, the less frequent are the thuds of drops on the ceiling in the corner. I'll keep my promise to take Marianne out into those currently totally deserted, shut-down streets to see 'The Return of the King' this afternoon, being every bit as keen to see the last part of 'The Lord of the Rings' as she is. And 'Master and Commander' finally came to town for the weekend. But I've warned her that there's no question for me of queuing for an hour in the cold outside the Max Linder, and we'll have to settle for one of the city's second-best screens and sound systems at the much nearer Gaumont Parnasse. I'm not in the mood for snowball fights and if she so much as dares to unload almost a bucketful of the stuff down inside my warmest coat, like she did last time we were in Picadilly Circus (Montparnasse) in the snow, there will be no film. Around midnight, she was asking me to give her ice cubes to rub over any exposed bits of her fevered flesh and drop a couple down the back of her nightdress. The photos here come from my growing collection of pix of "Marianne and the Swimming Pools and Storms of the World". From the moment she had her first bath in a kitchen sink, it was pretty clear that she was a dolphin in her last incarnation. But I've changed my mind. An Antarctic penguin is more like it. By the way, I haven't completely forgotten. If 2003 was a horrible one, then I sincerely wish you the reverse in 2004, in inverse proportion to the awfulness of the "Year when the Cold 'War on Terror' got Hot". And if you've had a wonderful time over the past 12 months, then I wish you even better in the dozen to come. Whether this is your summer or winter, thanks for passing by! All the best to each and every one of my visitors! 1:02:18 PM  link   your views? []