lundi 31 janvier 2005

Nothing like a bit of Total Recall Nice film too, though it'd suit me better if the leading male wasn't the guy an Amazon UK critic calls the "Austrian Oak" ('Total Recall'). I'll watch a good movie with Arnie in it despite him, wishing they'd chosen someone a little less ... I dunno where to begin! Seems they nearly did and that's by the by. Bill Wallo's shared his ideas about a heap of 'Mind Hacks' (Blogcritics), compiled by one Matt Webb: "Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, or some scientist has proven that we only use about 10% of our brains. And if only we could learn to harness the remaining 90% of that untapped potential, there's no telling what we would be capable of doing. Right? Er, well, actually - no." Thanks to the genius who's just sorted out my facial cavities, now I've had a couple of decent nights' sleep, with a promise of more to come, and find it nice occasionally to turn off that "untapped potential" Bill mentions. Weird Stuff is going down in my life. For starters, synchronicity has become so routine for weeks now it's become a game I play with one or two friends as to where it sprouts up next. Even better is the way my memory circuits have switched back on. OK, It's scarcely "total recall", but more than enough to surprise family and good friends. Never mind exactly how accurate these memories are. Most people know, like the brighter cops who've taken a close interest in me for reasons legal matters prevent me from exploring, how unreliable memory can be. I especially enjoy ones about women and wild and wicked adventures shared with several of them since the 1960s and bet those recollections are pretty close to the mark! Long before it's too late, I rejoined the ranks of the Quiet Revolutionaries (QRs), with every intention of Changing our Minds about the best and most entertaining sides of life. The LP (the 'Lotus Project' screenplay) is wrapped up for a while, now I've fully realised that the film's all about the Quiet Revolution. The seeds planted, until spring I'll simply be keeping my eyes and ears wide open for QRs, since they're still there by the scores and often in unexpected places. Rediscovering this and finding some of my friends and even the Kid are among them has been been part of what I regard as "extensive audience research" before I plug on with the LP any further. However, one or two of my mates have been irritated by "nebulous" hints about the White Goddess (WG), whatever she is, who seems to have taken charge of my life and of the LP itself. To end any confusion, I'd say chances are the woman's both a sub-atomic particle -- I kid you not -- and what a feller named John Elder calls, along with others, the "Great Mother". He's scarely alone, people have rabbited on about her for ages. And ages... "Magic is the art and science of changing consciousness at will," Elder suggests astride his intro to the lass, portrayed as one of our ancestors sculpted the 'Willendorf Venus' around 25,000 years ago. I'd go along with Elder more if I saw so little need to drag "magic" into it! Much groundwork for the LP has meant making the most of the strange and less bizarre science I've found stashed away in my head and like to keep up to date on. Moreover, real "witchdoctors" I've had the luck to meet, among heaven knows how many charlatans, have been quite as down to earth as your average man and woman in the street. Often more so, since they've got less reason to run away from "reality". They don't talk mumbo-jumbo, just get on with it! "Luck" did I say, and "chance"? I did, but don't mean it, because 'Probability Theory' is far more interesting. It's pure coincidence, doubtless, that the "layman's guide" I've just found you on that stuff also happens to be by a man called Webb, Peter this time. There's no escaping the weave and warp of the web! No doubt I'm being as clear as mud about the WG, but that's how it'll stay for a good while except for a few since the LP is, after all, nothing if not a thriller. As soon as I left it to germinate for a bit, Ana Gracey -- you could look this fine musician up in the search engine here if you fancy -- and a couple of others chanced to throw e-mails at me asking essentially, "Where the heck are you with it? We're still interested, you know." That's great, because it's going to be a shared project. When I can, I leap back and forth between the '60s I now vividly remember and around 2040, because the LP's also "sci-fi". I have rude words for people who tell me SF isn't real fiction, since this is such an absurd received idea and prejudice. When a decent SF writer tells a story about rounded and real-life people, where do you draw the line? For me, there isn't one. What's Orwell's '1984', for instance, if not an SF novel and one which happened to be alarmingly right about some of what we have to put up with today? To list more titles from the "mainstream of classic writing" is a waste of time. Hence here's one of my least favourite pictures of me, hopefully improved. I went for what was meant to be a quick lunch at the Canteen today. It wasn't swift since the company was so good, including the occasionally mentioned Jacques the Ripper of Wrong-headed Ideas, who makes sure nobody sits in Nick's Seat until I manage to show up. He accused me of having become "philosophical". This "annoys" me, it happens too often, and "cerebral" is worse! Still, "fuckinfilosofy", as the WG calls it, interests me no more now than politics, except for sexual ones, unless put to good use. The LP's about Applied Science, among people, and I can scarcely wait for the War... You might notice I've updated the reading list on this page (which is one of the extras which makes the log load a bit slowly sometimes, but if you're interested, please be patient about these other people's costly net servers and I'd rather keep those links). Blake, now in it, is very much a case of "forward to the past". My first insights into the Revolution came when a bunch of we Brits took a fresh look at William Blake (an archive) once most of the Sixties had swung by and understood what the feller was saying. True, lots of us were keen on "fucking the rules", but that man and "his" woman -- not that he was silly enough to believe people belong to each other -- were far better at it than most and had a fine time doing the most frightful things not merely to the Establishment but everything else they could lay their hands on. Quite a legacy! Today, I'm a bit miffed to find that 'Children of Albion: Poetry of the "Underground" in Britain' has long been out of print when my own copy's been repaired so often. How can a book like that be allowed to sink into oblivion when the shelves are so full of nonsense? But never mind. The potty poet and Blake fan who flung it together and let anarchy reign at some of the funniest reading evenings I ever enjoyed, Michael Horovitz, is still going strong, it seems. The "Underground", as then it got called, is more out in the open in 2005. One of the best places to keep an eye on it is ... the underground. So many people have plugged a part of it into their heads and Apple's done its bit by helping fill the subways of many a city with them. When I start chatting to a stranger in the Métro -- I frequently do -- some are appalled, of course. For them, the idea is to shut the world out, go away! But for others, "turning on and tuning in" simply means something a little different from the way a few of us remember it. That War I mentioned? Well, we'll have to see, but once some of the more powerful dinosaurs who reckon they're in charge of things now and want it to stay that way get worried about what's going on, the counter-revolution will be quite something. One battleground where I reckon we'll see it happening and take sides is right here. On the web. It is already. The first place I thought I might take a look in the blogroll today was chèz Pollard. Well, knock me over with a feather from the WG's cap. Dave's on about 'Universal Values, Relatively Speaking' (How to Save the World). Among thoughts he tosses into a salad, he serves up this: "What is interesting about [a] 'if we're all the same we'll get along' rationale is that it is imperialistic and utterly ignorant of the anthropological reasons why such cultural heterogeneity arose in the first place. Indeed, most anthropologists argue that man is already astonishingly culturally homogeneous already, and that cultural imperialism and cultural homogeneity have grown in near-perfect lock-step with the scale of human violence and war. "In hunter-gatherer cultures, both human and animal, there is little cultural homogeneity between communities, and inter-mixing between communities is rare. Anthropologists are astonished at how tribes living just a few miles apart had rituals, beliefs, religions and even diets that were completely alien to each other, almost unimaginably different. Our civilization culture's expansion, imperialism, and language impositions have compromised these differences enormously, but they are still somewhat observable. Even after several hundred years civilization culture is so utterly alien to North American First Nations people that they have proved almost impossible to integrate and assimilate." Scarcely a closet QR, our Canadian friend? I wonder if he realises the not too terrible truth about anthropologists I've just remarked on to a friend (I think, but did I send that bit or not?); to wit, when I thought I'd be an ethnomusicologist, it wasn't simply because music is lifeblood to me like for many others. The required study of anthropology hadn't got far before I realised any decent one is a raving sex maniac! There's nothing more instructive than the way other people do it. It can even ... change your mind. It's wonderful to get your head round the Big Bang and realise you never ever were any "better" than people who said it's all about sex in the end, since they're quite right. As for the Squip, 'Wackiness' is 'Dusting My Brain' for her, and why not? "You cut deals, you change minds, you make things happen. You would prefer to be liked than" ... but don't be lazy, check it out if you like Cindy as much as I do (my italics of course). I'll ask her about LPs and QRs -- without mentioning that the film's bursting with sex and includes several great stories about how somebody was a wretched an idiot about it for far too long, because once that's over it's really funny (don't tell Ana either, she only lets it all hang out in her songs). Sorry to be rude and even skip the wackiness test tonight, but if I were to pursue this further, the neighbour will be banging on the wall since I'm in a mood for a good movie ... without something plugged into my ears. Finally, there's an addition to the blogroll. SF led me to Mervius's Fantastica Daily, which is a pretty good way of summing up life, but for this guy it's not just a blog, he's quite a site! 11:37:34 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 27 janvier 2005

Quick snatches... ...and as brief as possible it will be. My screenplay project is coming on just fine, but very slowly. For about a week now, I've had very little sleep, but more because of my nose than something which now has the working title 'Sting in the Lotus' (LP for short). The usual wintertime breathing problem became so bad last week that the time's come to sort out my lifelong mess of sinuses for good. Today I met the best specialist ever to probe them. He closely inspected parts others never reached and used disquieting instruments to pull yucky stuff out of my skull you don't want to read about. Then he sent me away with a whole new recipe for undoing years of ruin. This, I reckon, is the story of my life right now. To celebrate, chunks of the Mac got a new look and an overhaul too. Flowers are in, so here's how it wants to start the year: When blogging really resumes I dunno. The doc didn't promise a decent sleep overnight and said miracles take a while, but Factory work resumes in the morning. Maybe you'll get a chance to meet the new desk chief since I'm just about to myself... In recent weeks I've been catching up with family and friends close to home far more than in the blogosphere -- and reshaping relationships where it was needed -- but still I've a few tidbits from my travels. The Paris tube is as music pod-crazy as New York's subway with Xmas behind us. If you're quick, you could learn the most recent pathetic excuse for being late for work in 'Entangled by Ear Buds, and Other Musical Mishaps' (New York Times) before you need to register to read Kayleen Schaefer's sorry tale. [Ed: now it costs. Too much, so forget it unless you've got a subscription or spare cash. Feb 2.] And take a tip from someone who's wrecked more ear buds than most: I now wear the wires under my clothes and don't wander around looking quite as silly and at risk as an Apple ad. Regulars at this infrequent place will know that the Wikipedia (blogrolled) is my favourite source of shared info. So Jon Udell made me happy by taking the Heavy Metal Umlaut to show us how it's done. Be warned: click this Infoworld gem of his and you'll open a talking, walking webpage. MarsEdit suits me to deliver great stuff like that, but for an open mind some insight into what's new with 'RSS and Tabbed Browsing in Safari, Firefox and Camino' and more besides comes from Wei-Meng Lee at the MacDevCenter. This particular kind of news is good for everyone who's told me lately they plan to get a Mac and stop messing around, and some who already did. Finally, one piece of Mac help I've handed out lately caused wicked problems for somebody who should have listened properly the first time. Unless he eventually gives back an absolutely vital CD I lent him without so much as a fingerprint on it, after already getting it almost catastrophically stuck in his disk-eating slot, he'll be buying me a new one and that'll learn him. Meantime, both our skins may be saved with an easy "how to" on 'Make a Bootable OS X Emergency CD with BootCD' at LowEndMac. Now it can be done, that's on my list of weekend "what to dos". Another is to turn this log -- which has been "mine, all mine" for far too long -- into wide open house. But that you'll know about when I've done it. 11:54:52 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 4 janvier 2005

Ownership, brats and crumpet Some people gave me severe dressing downs about those Diktats on being a good news agency journalist I sent to colleagues in Africa on New Year's Day. Indeed, a note went out telling people to "disregard" an unauthorised "personal initiative". I'll take the flak for what I did and send no more service notes written like blog pieces, but can't be blamed for the crackdown note sent to lots of people who never received the Diktats, thus drawing more attention to them! International companies where various people "play the system" with very different methods work in mysterious ways. I also have a soft spot for bosses who confess they hate being one. My utopian anarchist outlook is long since blogged, but after a remark I repeated today about property -- I like having and using some but detest ownership -- a snide remark at 'Blogcritics' drew my amused attention. "Aren't you glad most of your income comes from investments?" asks a sarcastic Prometheus 6 for a bit of Bush-beating. Me, I'm glad I've got none. Spare me taxation tomes and give me freedom from property any day. And the private abolition of Xmas was so complete that my mum told me my godmother wants the generous cheque in her card back. Morever she'll get it back, but with thanks all the same. I'll make it up to the Kid... Ellie, while the Christmas sprite is supposed to linger in the air till Twelfth Night, gave me seven minutes and six seconds of 'Sedaris Returns as Crumpet the Elf' (NPR; RealAudio or Windows Media player required). If you get through the goo without throwing up, it's a gem of a resurrection worth recommending to all mean spirits. p.s. Some earlier entries have been edited tonight in accordance with the gist of one Diktat to be "disregarded": if news of no use bores you before you report it, please refrain from inflicting it on anybody else... 9:09:08 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 2 janvier 2005

Amiable nonsense "It's Sunday, you sod!" my flatmate grey wolf protested. "So what?" "Are you working?" "I've got a day off. Just the one." "Why on earth wake me up, then? Want a hand with more 'Lotus' or what?" "Not today, thanks." grey wolf's taken to to doing most of the talking when the Kid's not around, before she started chatting to her friends instead and usually tells me to go away except for meals. "Going to the Canteen later?" he asked, once he'd seen what a sunny morning it was. "Just look at the weather, I can't believe it." "Doubt it. It's Sam's Sunday off, so I'll keep season's greetings and that for Baudier and the others until next weekend. I've too many 'phone calls to make." "You're done with Diktats?" "Yup." "Good. Spontaneity Rules OK. It's high time you started a year with a headful of that." "Isn't that a Diktat?" "Not when it's what everybody wants. I presume you've finished hacking them." "Who?" "People, idiot. By the way, why's my name in italics? There's nothing sideways about me." "I can't put you in inverted commas and if I use caps people might start mixing you up with me." "I see. Here's an idea, if you're through cleaning up your act. It's my turn. You've put the X-Files in order, so why should I be expected to live in filth? It's not fair. You know I'm too heavy to get out much. I have a hard enough time talking to the mice, they're so damned dirty as well." He had a point. When the sun comes out in winter, the pigeons are happy and I could see what a state he was in. Halogen lamps only light up some of the grime, sun days have to be housecleaning ones. "Fine. What's the deal?" "Give me a hand and I'll give you a hand. And get out the booze." "Haven't got any." "There's a bottle in the bathroom, alcool à 90°. If you give me plenty of that, first I'll help you do last month's sums, even last year's accounts, by lunchtime. You can't put it off any longer." "You've got a deal. Maybe that's why I got up so early. If we're finished by noon, I'll --" "You'll shut up. Being spontaneous means no 'ifs' and 'buts'." Then he let me have it: "You know what really bugs me? If you're being a drag about how you got sorted out, Mr Heart-on-Sleeve, maybe you hope people might feel lucky you took out the worst on me. Me! You've hacked me to pieces so often I help you practice "great dialogue" for 'Lotus'. Now you can see it, look at the mess on my keyboard. I'm not the colour I used to be either." "I'm sorry." "So you should be. At work, you never treat a Factory keyboard like mine but, dammit, that stuff needs Windows just to work. You say I'm a Rolls-Royce and expect me to face the daily grind with less respect for me than you show a common or garden hybrid helpmate!" "That's mean. Your insides are fine and fast. I turn your keyboard upside-down and thump out the crumbs, and I don't spill my lunch over it." "Only because your keyboard at work works better if you grease it with yoghurt and drop bits of red fruit tart on it. It's a miracle the techies have let you keep it so long." "All right, all right. Give me a hand with the bank stuff then I'll unplug all your bits and clean you up. What colour do you want to be?" "The one I was born with. Some of your friends, like the Eagle, haven't got a favourite one. I don't waste my time and circuits on silly questions like that either, so you'd better take me as I come and look after it." A deal's a deal. grey wolf got cleaner living conditions once he'd told me the bank's happy and has sums which agree with ours. The bank manager pretends to prefer black to red, though he takes lots more money if it's red and says it's a matter of interest. The sun made me scrub the rest of the mess and make the most of a vacuum. I hereby certify that 2004 is deceased under this leaking roof. The flowers look great. I'm proud to have the liveliest and most colourful window-boxes in sight apart from someone else's, probably because we listen to Olya the florist rather than pay the slightest heed to the calendar and instructions on the back of their bottle of food. "What next?" I asked grey wolf. "Stop boring people with good humour," he said. "When was the last time we took a look round the blogosphere to see what everyone else is doing?" "Oh heavens! At least a couple of weeks ago." "More like a month. So I'll show you after you've been out in the sun for a while. If we spot any fun, we'll pass it on. If anyone's going to notice you're back, you'd better share their stuff too." "Right. Thanks." "For what?" "The dialogue practice." "Forget it. It's not much cop anyway. What you and 'Lotus' need is out where everybody else lives, remember." "See you around then. Any plans?" "I'm going straight back to sleep and if you wake me up to write about this, I won't let you do any more blogging without hyperlinks. TTFN." "Must you?" "Just to say thanks. Joe's on about Bubble Wrap." "Makes a change from women, doesn't it?" "There's one in it." "What about Rainer?" "He's handing out source code." "Better than Diktats, but keep your own to yourself. Unless what's good for the goose, etc. How about the Squip?" "She thinks 'a combo platter of disruption (especially after my peaceful, nighttime cold medicine-induced sleep) should really take place any day but Sunday'." "Me too! Anyone else?" "There's 212 of them. Unread." "I know. Here's an Edict: stop quoting me back at myself. I'll get bored." 6:06:27 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 1 janvier 2005

Diktats Now somebody's decided what day it is, I'll pretend to believe in calendars, wish everyone a Fine Old Time and hope your only hassles in 2005 are ones you need. Mine began with a dream about being in a "New Age" campsite with the Kid which was so awful I'm very glad the alarm clock rang me out of it and off to work. If thumps come my way on Monday, it'll be because having dispensed with Resolutions and done some stories, I delivered Diktats to Africa as planned. The Factory's never seen the like before and if people do again, it won't be my doing. The 'Diktats' weren't orders, but summing up what life's taught me so far about being a journalist and the best books I've read took nearly 1,900 words; I hope they're useful (and entertaining) in suggesting what news people want to read -- and never want. That done, I resolved to keep other resolutions and be done with Diktats too. Better a vast internal note than 'phone calls nobody can afford. My bank's banned international chit-chat beyond January 1 "hi, how are you?" words to family and friends. François Joseph de Kermadec has joined those suggesting Mac OS X users scupper the big bills with Skype (MaCDev Center). His "Hands-On Approach" to using your Mac as a cheap international telephone is as good as any I've read in a French Mac rag, but for now you get to the end of it to find he's not wrapped it up with Part 2 yet. Still, he's explained how it works and how to do it clearly. In "wringing out the old" to find the best often remains new (Henry Wickham Steed's totally modern 1938 book on 'The Press' got a mention here last August), it dawned on me this remains true of Genesis. The band back in the Peter Gabriel days, not the Book. 'Nursery Cryme' left me so desperate to hear 'Foxtrot' and 'Selling England by the Pound' again that some money forbidden for 'phone calls went instead to the iTunes Music Store. The way we remember unheard music and lyrics for decades so well your mind sings along when it first listens to them escapes me, but I love this stuff and it sounds superb on an iPod. Someone last year felt like writing the rest of what doesn't need saying about 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' (Ground and Sky), apart from "Listen if you haven't. Chances are you'll like it." One of my friends analysed its musical complexity so much when it came out, his thesis got him into music college. But nobody needs that unless interested. If you've yet to see 'Black Hawk Down' (like me last night because now I'll watch almost anything Ridley Scott's done), my mates in Africa who said "You won't learn much about Somalia" are right. The film tells you no more about the appalling mess that country just may be able to put behind it this year than was known by the US elite troops who tried to sort it out in 1993. They couldn't and found this out pretty much the way the movie tells the story. I doubt Scott had any plans to do much more than make a fine job of this as he does, so won't add my name to the list of those who've accused him of simplifying the issues or being one-sided. If it's "the news" you want, 'Black Hawn Down' is simply a good movie which says a cinema can be a fine place to start looking, that's all. In the film, a Somali explains what's often wrong with Diktats. When Washington tried that in Somalia, it cost a fortune and left more than 1,000 people dead in the name of trying to get it right. The movie shows many of the people sent to try deserve great respect, so I just hope that now the United States is all over Africa again because of oil, this year those giving the orders get the place less wrong. 8:39:36 PM  link   your views? []