- I am machine.
- Day one:new-cycle:repeat
- Bright cold and grey as slate the day begins with a task, then another, then another, then more.
- I am machine
- Day two:new-cycle:repeat
- Stretching out in front
- Infinity contracting:walls closing in - the sky descends
- Machine, I am
- Day three:new-cycle:repeat
- Analyse structure:fault found:resolve - error:functionality impeded
- Reset
- I am machine
- Day one:new-cycle:repeat
- Bright cold and grey as slate the day begins with a task, then another, then another, then more.
- I am machine
- Day two:new-cycle:repeat
- Stretching out in front
- Infinity contracting:walls closing in - the sky descends
- Machine I am
- Day three:new-cycle:repeat
- Analyse structure:fault found:resolve - error:functionality impeded
- I am machine… rm -r machine error
- machinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachinemachine
- Log report:Reset
Showing posts with label Maudlinity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maudlinity. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 March 2015
I
Friday, 6 March 2015
A True Story from the Stone Mountain
I grew up in South Wales on a blue hill; my bedroom looked north towards the mountain of stone and Mynydd Twmbarlwm -the twmp. When I was a child the twmp of Twmbralwm occupied a special place in my young psyche. Looming above the valley below drawing the horizon into the forground -dark and haunted as the sun sank, green and verdant when it beat down from the clear summer sky.
As I grew I asked about the strange shape of the far/near horizon. The general theory amongst the kids my age was that it was a Norman fort or a prehistoric burial mound, some also said that it was where the Romans kept an eye on the subjugated but ever rebellious Silures -the tribe who gave their name to the nearby Roman fort of Isca Silures (which later became the birthplace of Arthur Machen, Caerleon). It turned out that all of these theories were right and that the site had been in use from the Iron Age through to the Norman invasion. Until relatively recently it was still a site of a pilgrimage of sorts for local people on Good Friday.
Whilst I found the history of the site interesting my young mind was turned more and more by the folklore surrounding the mountain. Folklore that was, in its entirety, dark and grim and therefore of great fascination for a prepubescent boy such as I was. When I was 10 my mother, who worked in the giftshop of the local museum, brought me home a pair of books by local author Alan Roderick: Ghosts of Gwent and Folklore of Gwent. I was thrilled by these books and read them until the binding crumbled and they were but a collection loose leaves. The volume on folklore had plenty to say about Twmbarlwm.
According to Roderick in the early 1800s (the exact date escapes me though I think it was the 1830s) a local antiquarian led a team of navies up the mountain to excavate the mysterious mound. It was a clear summer's day as they climbed from the village of Risca yet as they approached the summit the sky rapidly darkened as storm clouds rolled from all directions. As the team neared the summit lighting began to strike the ground all around the twmp causing the superstitious navvies to flee and the excavation to be abandoned. To the best of my knowledge there still hasn't been an archaeological investigation into the mound itself.
Some years after the aborted excavation it seems that people noticed that the number of honey bees in Britain had dropped drastically. Their whereabouts were soon discovered when thousands upon thousands of bee corpses were discovered to be covering the twmp and the top of the mountain. As if all the bees in Britain had migrated their and fought to the death.
Then there were also the tales of missing children on the mountain. In stories dating back to, at least, the 18th Century children playing on the slopes of the mountain hear the sound of music, and no I don't mean Julie Andrews, drifting on the breeze. One of the children inevitably goes to find the source of the music and is never seen again.
Like I said, dark stuff.
As I grew into a teenager the place continued to dominate my mental landscape and, as a young teen, friends and I would cycle up the mountain and go camping on its slopes. Then I grew older and discovered the various alternative subcultures that thrived in the local area I began experimenting with all the usual things that kids experimented with at that age -drink, drugs, and as much sex as possible.
Being as this was South Wales one of the main recreational drugs that we experimented with were the local mushrooms -Psilocybe semilanceata or Liberty Caps. 'Camping trips' soon became a regular feature of autumn and early winter for me and my friends. We would spend days wandering the fields picking mushrooms in order to make insanely strong 'brews' from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the strange little mushrooms. We would then go camping in the coniferous woodlands below the twmp and spend an evening expanding our consciousness. In fact I had my most powerful and vivid hallucinogenic experience on that mountain, at a friend's bachelor party, which had me seeing clockwork maggots crawling red hot from the embers of the fire, stars swirling in the night sky above our clearing and figures on horseback ducking impossibly through the trees around us.
These experiences were all fun and games as I completely understood that the things I was seeing and hearing around me were the product of imagination and Wales' most famous botanical product. However one evening we did have a genuinely strange experience. An experience that has many explanations, none of which are satisfactory.
It was maybe 17 years ago that this occurred and it was right at the end of mushroom season so it would have been early November. We had the last of our super brews bottled and were just waiting for an excuse to indulge. Just such an excuse cropped up, though I forget what it was, and so we decided to drive up the mountain one Friday night. Five of us drove up the mountain to start setting up the camp at around 9 o'clock in the evening. Four of us got a fire going, gathered enough firewood so that we wouldn't need to gather any whilst we were altered, and the fifth returned to town to pick up the last of our party who had been working in a local pub.
Well, it turned out that our bartender friend had gotten home from work and fallen asleep on the sofa. Our driver having something of a crush on her decided to wait, rather creepily now I think about it, outside her house until he could wake her up.
Whilst we were waiting we opened a beer and those that smoked rolled a couple of spliffs to pass the time. After a while of sitting around chatting we inevitably experienced periods of quiet where our gazes were drawn hypnotically to the fire. It was during one of these lulls in conversation that we heard twigs snapping in the forest around us. Now bear in mind that it was approaching midnight in November and we were a good half an hours walk away from the nearest houses. So the sound of multiple people walking in circles around our camp did unnerve us slightly.
We shone the one torch we had into the narrow gaps between the oh so straight trees around us but we couldn't see anyone, even if we shone the torch where just a moment before we had heard a twig snap. Over and over this happened and then, as we were starting to get seriously freaked out and called into the night "Hello, hello, who the fuck's there?" We heard it. A child giggling -first to one side of us, then the other. A high pitched giggle that would sound right and natural on a primary school playground but at midnight in November far from the nearest houses sounded decidedly unnatural.
Those giggles were the final straw and we poured water over our fire and struck out for the road. As we walked in single file following Ryan, the only one of us who had thought to bring a torch, the sounds of people running around us continued, as did the giggling. It would get nearer then farther making us jump and urging us on until we were as close to running as we dared in the dark.
It was such a relief when we finally cleared the trees and bundled out into an open field bathed silver by the moon. We walked rapidly away from the woods glancing back over our shoulders at the giggling woods as little voices rang out "Goodbye! Goodbye!"
That was the last time we went camping on Twmbarlwm.
As I grew I asked about the strange shape of the far/near horizon. The general theory amongst the kids my age was that it was a Norman fort or a prehistoric burial mound, some also said that it was where the Romans kept an eye on the subjugated but ever rebellious Silures -the tribe who gave their name to the nearby Roman fort of Isca Silures (which later became the birthplace of Arthur Machen, Caerleon). It turned out that all of these theories were right and that the site had been in use from the Iron Age through to the Norman invasion. Until relatively recently it was still a site of a pilgrimage of sorts for local people on Good Friday.
Whilst I found the history of the site interesting my young mind was turned more and more by the folklore surrounding the mountain. Folklore that was, in its entirety, dark and grim and therefore of great fascination for a prepubescent boy such as I was. When I was 10 my mother, who worked in the giftshop of the local museum, brought me home a pair of books by local author Alan Roderick: Ghosts of Gwent and Folklore of Gwent. I was thrilled by these books and read them until the binding crumbled and they were but a collection loose leaves. The volume on folklore had plenty to say about Twmbarlwm.
According to Roderick in the early 1800s (the exact date escapes me though I think it was the 1830s) a local antiquarian led a team of navies up the mountain to excavate the mysterious mound. It was a clear summer's day as they climbed from the village of Risca yet as they approached the summit the sky rapidly darkened as storm clouds rolled from all directions. As the team neared the summit lighting began to strike the ground all around the twmp causing the superstitious navvies to flee and the excavation to be abandoned. To the best of my knowledge there still hasn't been an archaeological investigation into the mound itself.
Some years after the aborted excavation it seems that people noticed that the number of honey bees in Britain had dropped drastically. Their whereabouts were soon discovered when thousands upon thousands of bee corpses were discovered to be covering the twmp and the top of the mountain. As if all the bees in Britain had migrated their and fought to the death.
Then there were also the tales of missing children on the mountain. In stories dating back to, at least, the 18th Century children playing on the slopes of the mountain hear the sound of music, and no I don't mean Julie Andrews, drifting on the breeze. One of the children inevitably goes to find the source of the music and is never seen again.
Like I said, dark stuff.
As I grew into a teenager the place continued to dominate my mental landscape and, as a young teen, friends and I would cycle up the mountain and go camping on its slopes. Then I grew older and discovered the various alternative subcultures that thrived in the local area I began experimenting with all the usual things that kids experimented with at that age -drink, drugs, and as much sex as possible.
Being as this was South Wales one of the main recreational drugs that we experimented with were the local mushrooms -Psilocybe semilanceata or Liberty Caps. 'Camping trips' soon became a regular feature of autumn and early winter for me and my friends. We would spend days wandering the fields picking mushrooms in order to make insanely strong 'brews' from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the strange little mushrooms. We would then go camping in the coniferous woodlands below the twmp and spend an evening expanding our consciousness. In fact I had my most powerful and vivid hallucinogenic experience on that mountain, at a friend's bachelor party, which had me seeing clockwork maggots crawling red hot from the embers of the fire, stars swirling in the night sky above our clearing and figures on horseback ducking impossibly through the trees around us.
These experiences were all fun and games as I completely understood that the things I was seeing and hearing around me were the product of imagination and Wales' most famous botanical product. However one evening we did have a genuinely strange experience. An experience that has many explanations, none of which are satisfactory.
It was maybe 17 years ago that this occurred and it was right at the end of mushroom season so it would have been early November. We had the last of our super brews bottled and were just waiting for an excuse to indulge. Just such an excuse cropped up, though I forget what it was, and so we decided to drive up the mountain one Friday night. Five of us drove up the mountain to start setting up the camp at around 9 o'clock in the evening. Four of us got a fire going, gathered enough firewood so that we wouldn't need to gather any whilst we were altered, and the fifth returned to town to pick up the last of our party who had been working in a local pub.
Well, it turned out that our bartender friend had gotten home from work and fallen asleep on the sofa. Our driver having something of a crush on her decided to wait, rather creepily now I think about it, outside her house until he could wake her up.
Whilst we were waiting we opened a beer and those that smoked rolled a couple of spliffs to pass the time. After a while of sitting around chatting we inevitably experienced periods of quiet where our gazes were drawn hypnotically to the fire. It was during one of these lulls in conversation that we heard twigs snapping in the forest around us. Now bear in mind that it was approaching midnight in November and we were a good half an hours walk away from the nearest houses. So the sound of multiple people walking in circles around our camp did unnerve us slightly.
We shone the one torch we had into the narrow gaps between the oh so straight trees around us but we couldn't see anyone, even if we shone the torch where just a moment before we had heard a twig snap. Over and over this happened and then, as we were starting to get seriously freaked out and called into the night "Hello, hello, who the fuck's there?" We heard it. A child giggling -first to one side of us, then the other. A high pitched giggle that would sound right and natural on a primary school playground but at midnight in November far from the nearest houses sounded decidedly unnatural.
Those giggles were the final straw and we poured water over our fire and struck out for the road. As we walked in single file following Ryan, the only one of us who had thought to bring a torch, the sounds of people running around us continued, as did the giggling. It would get nearer then farther making us jump and urging us on until we were as close to running as we dared in the dark.
It was such a relief when we finally cleared the trees and bundled out into an open field bathed silver by the moon. We walked rapidly away from the woods glancing back over our shoulders at the giggling woods as little voices rang out "Goodbye! Goodbye!"
That was the last time we went camping on Twmbarlwm.
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
White, Straight, Cis, Male Authors
Over on XOJane K. Tempest Bradford issued a challenge to readers, particularly genre readers, to excise straight, white, male authors from their reading lists for a year. Needless to say this has caused something of a minor internet hoo-ha (a shit-squall perhaps?) as some people get all upset and start stating with considerable vigour that "You'll take my straight, white, male authors out of my cold dead hands!" at the oppressive black woman who had the temerity publish an article on the internet. Some people seemed to get upset about the photograph used to illustrate the article too.
I mean, seriously, how can you not tell that the picture is tongue in cheek?? Bradford looks like she's about to crack up laughing for Christ's sake!
Aaaaanyway, I, being of the left, obviously have some quibbles with the article -there's a rule that once you've read the Communist Manifesto a couple of times you're required to have an argument with your breakfast cereal, but they're not really here nor there right now. I may write something about liberal privilege politics at some point and the way they have skewed the modern anti-racist/discrimination discourse at some point but that shit's bad for my blood pressure. I shall, therefore, stick to the challenge itself.
I mean, seriously, how can you not tell that the picture is tongue in cheek?? Bradford looks like she's about to crack up laughing for Christ's sake!
Aaaaanyway, I, being of the left, obviously have some quibbles with the article -there's a rule that once you've read the Communist Manifesto a couple of times you're required to have an argument with your breakfast cereal, but they're not really here nor there right now. I may write something about liberal privilege politics at some point and the way they have skewed the modern anti-racist/discrimination discourse at some point but that shit's bad for my blood pressure. I shall, therefore, stick to the challenge itself.
The "Reading Only X Writers For A Year" a challenge is one every person who loves to read (and who loves to write) should take. You could, like Lilit Marcus, read only books by women or, like Sunili Govinnage, read only books by people of color. Or you could choose a different axis to focus on: books by trans men and women, books by people from outside the U.S. or in translation, books by people with disabilities.
After a year of that, the next challenge would be to seek out books about or with characters that represent a marginalized identity or experience by any author. In addition to the identities listed above, I suggest: non-Christian religions or faiths, working class or poor, and asexual (as a start).
Whichever focus you choose, it will change the way you read and the way you go about picking things to read. When I settle in to read a magazine now, I read in order of stories I think I'll like best. And if I do decide to read one by a new-to-me author who appears to be a straight, white, cis male, it's usually because I trust the editor and the magazine. My reading sessions are filled with much less stress these days.
Aside from the inclusion of working class on that list of marginalised identities and experiences (seriously, I've developed a rage-tic from seeing middle class liberals do that) I do wonder how certain of these categories can be identified by those wishing to take part in the challenge. For starters how to tell someone's sexuality or the gender they were assigned at birth if they're not out about being gay/bi or trans? Even using the might of Google will not reveal these things. Then we have other factors like publishers still being wary of publishing women in certain genres (SF I'm squinting at you here) and so hide their gender by initialising their names. These however are problems with society and the publishing industry rather than the challenge itself and are, I suppose, some of the things that will make it a challenge for those engaging in it.
I say "for those engaging in it" as I don't intend on doing so myself for a few reasons. First, and foremost, I have a fucking huge 'To Read' pile that built up whilst I was at university and which I'm not in any danger of working my way through any time soon -unless that is someone wants to fund me taking a few years off work in order to read, in which case the Pay Pal button's to the left ;) Secondly; I think that my reading list is already pretty diverse as it is and, finally, I absolutely suck at these sorts of challenges. :D
However, as I said, my bookshelves aren't the sea of WASPyness that one would expect of a genre fiction fan so I'm going to pick a handful of titles of my shelves to offer up as suggestions for those picking Ms. Bradford's gauntlet.
Short Fiction
- Women Writing the Weird edited by Deb Hoag
- Women Destroy Horror edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton
- Women Destroy Science Fiction edited by Christie Yant, Rachel Swirsky, Wendy N. Wagner, Robyn Lupo, and Gabrielle de Cuir
- Women Destroy Fantasy edited by Cat Rambo
- Engines of Desire by Livia Llewellyn
- Bull Running for Girls by Allyson Bird
- Finnish Weird edited by Toni Jerrman
- Children of No One by Nicole Cushing
- I am the New God by Nicole Cushing
- The Year's Best Weird Fiction edited by Laird Barron (features a number of non WASPy people)
- Octavia's Brood edited by Walida Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown
- Cassilda's Song edited by Joe Pulver (Forthcoming 2015)
- Dreams from the Witch House edited by Lynne Jamneck (Forthcoming 2015)
- She Walks in Shadows edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles (Forthcoming 2015)
Long Fiction
- Kindred by Octavia Butler
- Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
- Vellum by Hal Duncan
- Ink by Hal Duncan
- The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan
- The Drowning Girl: A Memoir by Caitlin Kiernan
- The Cipher by Kathe Koja
- The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin
- Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
- The Woman at the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
Saturday, 28 February 2015
Gay Marriage and Why They Want to Stop It
Legalising same sex marriage is a slippery slope so we are told repeatedly, loudly, and obnoxiously by large sections of the Christian right, or bigots as we like to call them in our house. In fact they say it with such frequency that there has to be something to it. There has to be some underlying logic to support their case and I think I finally understand their logic and why they use this argument with such ferocity and regularity.
If we allow gay marriage, so the argument goes, then we have to allow for ALL kinds of marriage and so pretty soon we will have fathers marrying daughters, mothers marrying sons, dads marrying sons, men marrying goats, and camels marrying horses! To which my usual reaction is: "Yeah? And? So? What? If there's no coercion involved and all parties consent then what's the issue with whoever wants to get married getting married? Though I'm not quite sure how a camel or a horse are going to be able to sign the marriage register, let alone fill out all the paper work or pay for venue hire and all the other bullshit that goes with a wedding."
Still, I think I now have a grasp of why the Christian right oppose so vehemently two people of the same sex engaging in a social ritual to celebrate their love for one another. The logic of the Christian right is a logic of absolutes that stems from the moral argument that without God, and therefore the prospect of divine punishment or reward, there can be no morality and so all bets or off.
So, if we follow this logic then allowing gay marriage would allow for a dog to marry a cat or, perhaps, a duck to marry a crocodile. Now if a duck were to marry a crocodile then there is the potential for the loving couple to have a child and that child would be... a crocoduck!!!! Which would, therefore, prove evolution and in doing so disprove God. Ipso facto.
So we see that the battle against gay marriage isn't inspired by bigotry and hatred but it is the final battle in the existential war against God. Which explains why they keep trotting out the same old argument ad nauseam expecting it to carry far more weight than it actually does.
If we allow gay marriage, so the argument goes, then we have to allow for ALL kinds of marriage and so pretty soon we will have fathers marrying daughters, mothers marrying sons, dads marrying sons, men marrying goats, and camels marrying horses! To which my usual reaction is: "Yeah? And? So? What? If there's no coercion involved and all parties consent then what's the issue with whoever wants to get married getting married? Though I'm not quite sure how a camel or a horse are going to be able to sign the marriage register, let alone fill out all the paper work or pay for venue hire and all the other bullshit that goes with a wedding."
Still, I think I now have a grasp of why the Christian right oppose so vehemently two people of the same sex engaging in a social ritual to celebrate their love for one another. The logic of the Christian right is a logic of absolutes that stems from the moral argument that without God, and therefore the prospect of divine punishment or reward, there can be no morality and so all bets or off.
So, if we follow this logic then allowing gay marriage would allow for a dog to marry a cat or, perhaps, a duck to marry a crocodile. Now if a duck were to marry a crocodile then there is the potential for the loving couple to have a child and that child would be... a crocoduck!!!! Which would, therefore, prove evolution and in doing so disprove God. Ipso facto.
So we see that the battle against gay marriage isn't inspired by bigotry and hatred but it is the final battle in the existential war against God. Which explains why they keep trotting out the same old argument ad nauseam expecting it to carry far more weight than it actually does.
Saturday, 21 February 2015
In Laws and Old Stuff
The In Laws have been up visiting this week and so we yesterday took them to see the Hunterian museum at the University of Glasgow. I was rather miffed that the Pictish carved stone balls seem to have been removed from display as I think they are probably the most enigmatic artefact in the museum's collection. :(
As C's mam is a nurse we also went to see the anatomy museum but I'm not going to share the pictures I took there (a two headed baby and the testes of an "imbecilic dwarf"), don't worry. :D
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As C's mam is a nurse we also went to see the anatomy museum but I'm not going to share the pictures I took there (a two headed baby and the testes of an "imbecilic dwarf"), don't worry. :D
[gallery type="circle" columns="2" ids="1045,1044,1046,1026,1027,1028,1029,1030,1031,1032,1033,1034,1035,1036,1037,1038,1039,1040,1041,1042,1043"]
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Snow Business Like Being Underemployed on a Day Like This!
OK, so it is properly doing my head in being as underemployed as I am (to the point that I'm actually starting to apply for jobs in Edinburgh despite that being a 3 hour round trip every day.) but despite that it does mean that I get to go and play in the snow when C is off to work and Little Ms. X is away to school. It also means that I get to take some absolutely lovely pictures of the local kirkyard in the snow.
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[gallery type="circle" ids="923,924,925,926,927,928,929,930,931,932,933,934,935,936,937,938,939,940,941,942,943,944"]
Monday, 12 January 2015
He Gave This Homeless Man $100 and Followed Him, What Happened Next Will...
...be none of your god damned business.
I've seen a number of videos going around Facebook and Twitter over the last couple of months where an individual will give a homeless person a sum of cash, usually $100, and they will then follow the person to see what they spend it on. The assumption being that they are going to spend it on alcohol of drugs. Then, I assume as I've never clicked on the links, there is some heart warming story where they spend it on someone else or on, shock horror, food or something. These videos really grind my gears because it is no one's business what a person spends their money on. If you buy your groceries is it your business what the person on the check out spends their cash on? For all you know they may be double dropping acid every night and smoking crack to get out of bed in the morning, it's none of your business though. The same goes for homeless people as for everyone else.
Added to this is that these videos help to cement the notion of the deserving and the undeserving poor. Homeless person X is obviously deserving poor as they sent the money to their elderly mother (or whatever) whereas homeless person Y is undeserving (Boo! Hiss!) as they spent it on drink/drugs. It doesn't matter that the $100 meant that their lives were a little easier for a short time and that it meant that they had a brief reprieve from having to beg, borrow or steal in order to get through the day.
I was homeless and living on the streets for a number of years and got by through begging, busking and selling the Big Issue and if someone had given me £100 back then I would have been able to take a few days off trying to make money on the streets, and would therefore have been free'd from the threat of violence, the dirty looks, the random abuse and the condescension of the general public for a while. I wouldn't have spent my money on something that would gain the approval of these video makers, I would most likely have gotten shit faced drunk and probably bought a new pair of boots. And you know what? It wouldn't have been anyone's business but that would have drastically improved my life; even if for a short time.
Grrrr.
OK, rant over. Normal service to be resumed shortly...
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="361"]
The author in his glory days[/caption]
I've seen a number of videos going around Facebook and Twitter over the last couple of months where an individual will give a homeless person a sum of cash, usually $100, and they will then follow the person to see what they spend it on. The assumption being that they are going to spend it on alcohol of drugs. Then, I assume as I've never clicked on the links, there is some heart warming story where they spend it on someone else or on, shock horror, food or something. These videos really grind my gears because it is no one's business what a person spends their money on. If you buy your groceries is it your business what the person on the check out spends their cash on? For all you know they may be double dropping acid every night and smoking crack to get out of bed in the morning, it's none of your business though. The same goes for homeless people as for everyone else.
Added to this is that these videos help to cement the notion of the deserving and the undeserving poor. Homeless person X is obviously deserving poor as they sent the money to their elderly mother (or whatever) whereas homeless person Y is undeserving (Boo! Hiss!) as they spent it on drink/drugs. It doesn't matter that the $100 meant that their lives were a little easier for a short time and that it meant that they had a brief reprieve from having to beg, borrow or steal in order to get through the day.
I was homeless and living on the streets for a number of years and got by through begging, busking and selling the Big Issue and if someone had given me £100 back then I would have been able to take a few days off trying to make money on the streets, and would therefore have been free'd from the threat of violence, the dirty looks, the random abuse and the condescension of the general public for a while. I wouldn't have spent my money on something that would gain the approval of these video makers, I would most likely have gotten shit faced drunk and probably bought a new pair of boots. And you know what? It wouldn't have been anyone's business but that would have drastically improved my life; even if for a short time.
Grrrr.
OK, rant over. Normal service to be resumed shortly...
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="361"]
The author in his glory days[/caption]Writing Excuses 10.1 & 10.2
Being a person who is aspiring to be an aspiring writer I regularly listen to the Writing Excuses podcast with Mary Robinnette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells. It's a great wee 'cast and I've picked up some great advice over the last couple of years. For the start of the new year, and the beginning of Season 10, they have modified the format of the 'cast and this year is going to be along the lines of a writer's workshop/master-class with writing prompts and exercises coming in each episode. I'm going to try and keep up with the 'cast and will post my exercises here. Unless what I write is frickin awful that is. :D
We're on week two now so here are my exercises from both weeks.
Episode 10.1
[audio http://www.writingexcuses.com/podpress_trac/web/4501/0/Writing_Excuses_10_1_Ideas.mp3 ]
Write down five different story ideas in 150 words or less from these five sources:
1. Three old people are sat on a train. They are on a long journey across the country, going on holiday at the same spot they have visited every summer for years. People get on and off the train, young and old, and the train ends up rather crowded. They normally reserve a seat for their departed friend/spouse. However the train pulls in at a lonely station and a single passenger boards their carriage. He's an old man, and as dishevelled as the station he boarded from. There are no other free seats and so after brief discussion they offer their spare seat to him. The train continues its journey the number of passengers thins; leaving the four of them alone in the carriage. He doesn't leave their table as he is in the middle of telling them his horrible story. His story involves human sacrifice, dark rituals, ancient rites and evil beings summoned. They of course don't believe him. He alights at the stop before theirs. As they depart the train the slate sky and the wan silhouette it casts of the standing stones stop the nearby hill take on an ominous cast as they recognise them from his horrible tale.
Source: Ok, so that's slightly more than 150 words but wevs. :) I got this idea from a conversation I had with Little Ms. X on the train to Glasgow one day. She was rather perturbed by the sight of a small group of old people being rather loud and raucous. She is only a teen remember and 'old people' are still very much an alien category to her at times. :)
2. A team of student archaeologists take part in a summer vacation project to survey the Abbey of Thelema, as used by Aleister Crowley and his disciples for occult practices on the isle of Sicily. As the project goes on and they carry out standard building surveys and map the painting on the walls they begin to have strange, phantasmagorial and psycho-sexual dreams involving rituals, orgies, and worlds behind worlds. What they find there threatens to tear the world apart.
Source: A few years ago I had the idea of carrying out an archaeological survey of the Abbey but there's no way I could have gotten funding for it. It also occurred to me at the time that the project sounded like the beginning of a really clichéd horror movie. :)
3. The motorways of Britain are mirrored in another world by huge rivers of surging, raging water. These rivers carry the dead of a million worlds, including our own, on towards the heart of the meta-universe where they are devoured by the all creator. A being, beast, machine, that is beyond the comprehension of any mortal creature. We are little more than a small part of a self sustaining eternal entity's means of sustaining its own existence. As individuals we are beyond insignificant. The protagonist is sensitive to these flows and as he looks deeper into what it is that he feels he discovers that we are all actually sensitive to the final path we take to being consumed, hence our works and buildings following the path of these extra-universal currents.
Source: On my way to and from work I have to cross a footbridge that spans the insanely busy M8 motorway. As the cars flow past below me it always seems as though there is something tugging me in the direction of the traffic flow. It's probably something to do with the motion I see out of the corner of my eye but it is certainly a spooky effect.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="597"]
That footbridge right there. (It's busier than this when I'm going to and from work)[/caption]
4. In the Highlands of Scotland a blinding light turns night into day and causes the emergency services to scramble. When the police, fire brigade and ambulances arrive they find a small village has appeared and there are a group of just over 5,000 people there with no memory of how they got there and only dim recollections of who they are. The area is first quarantined and then they are ferried off to a variety of military bases in the Highlands. As the story develops it is discovered that they have disappeared at various points throughout human history, some may even be from the future, only to reappear now. They were abducted by a parallel sentient universe which is about to collide with ours, the impact potentially destroying both universes in a new big bang. The sentient universe has figured out a way to allow the universes to meld rather than impact. Only when all the returned are together and touching can the sentient universe communicate, in a way, with our universe.
Source: The 4400, a pants American genre TV Series that could have been really good. That smooshed up with a heap of vaguely understood, misunderstood and totally misapplied brane theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wey_sso-fk
5. A woman is walking through an inner-city area in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. She ritualistically touches items about her person, clothes, jewellery, and so on, each of which tells a story about how she came to be where she is, like stations of the cross on her body. Each story is connected to the object and tells a different tale, some supernatural –some not, of joys and sorrows, missed opportunities and moments where she has excelled herself. She slowly sheds these items til she is naked. People in the street avert their eyes and move reverently out of her way as she has the air of the sublime about her which makes her terrible and awesome to behold. At her journey's end her scars are all bared and she meets her apotheosis in a bare room in an abandoned tenement building.
Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAeTywPiP4
Episode 10.2
[audio http://www.writingexcuses.com/podpress_trac/web/4514/0/Writing_Excuses_10_2_I_Have_an_Idea.mp3 ]
Using last week's five story ideas:
Take two of them and combine the into one story.
I'll do this with numbers two and four.
As the student archaeologists carry out their survey they get the detestable dreams as in the original however as the dreams grow in intensity they realise that they are all sharing the same dream and that the figures they see in the dream are trying to communicate with them. The figures are the disappeared and they are seeking a way back into our universe. The students discover a pattern in the paintings on the walls of the temple that depict a ritual, a configuration, that may allow this to occur. They carry out the ritual and at the climax the personalities of all 5000+ of the disappeared are plunged into the students minds. They become part of this gigantic collective consciousness that is able to communicate with the sentient universe and so they become part of the plan to merge the two universes in order to save both from destruction. They have scant years to prepare the population of the Earth for the coming change. They come to realise that this is also occurring on every planet with sapient life in the universe and slowly they begin to share consciousness with the beings on these other planets. A foreshadowing of the merged universe that is to come.
Take one and change the genre underneath it.
I'll do this with number five and that is the one that I feel doesn't have the most clearly defined genre so rather than changing the genre I'm going to try and change it into a genre story, a fantasy story.
The basic premise is the same. A woman walking a ritual path towards apotheosis, using item about her body as talismans to allow her to relive events from her past. In this story though she is walking along a marble black and white chequered path that cuts across a desolate moorland. Above her the stars wheel through the night sky as time accelerates and the world nears its end. She has been a warrior in her life and now she has to walk this path on a final battle with her past deeds in order to stop the cataclysmic events that are unfolding all across her world. There is a magical apocalypse occurring and reality is being undone. She is blessed and cursed in that she has become immune to the effects of magic, ironically through a magical battle many years in her past, and so is one of only a handful of people who can walk this path between the realms of the magic and the mundane. Her talismans and the ritual of remembering her past, which has involved a plenitude of both the magic and mundane, allows her to keep the balance needed to stay on the path.
Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it.
I'll do this with number one though swapping the genders makes little difference though.
Three young people, not long out of school so late teens-early 20s, are on the train to a remote location in Northern England. The boy/girlfriend of one of them has recently died after a sudden illness and so the remaining couple are taking their friend away to get away from their home town and all the things that remind him/her of their loss. They take up a table and put a carrier bag of beer on the spare seat to stop anyone else sitting down. The train rapidly fills up. The train pulls up at a small run down station in the middle of nowhere and a young woman carrying a small baby boards. There are no seats left so they move their bag of beer to let her sit down.
She introduces herself and refers to the baby as 'Kid'. She has a strange air about her. She looks completely normal, wearing sports clothes and is about the same age as the three however there is something off putting about her. She takes a beer from the bag and starts telling them the story of her family and the father of her baby and how she's taking her baby back to it's father, she points out of the window to a mountain in the distance saying that he lives in the highest house on the mountain and that he's going to devour both her and the baby. She seems pleased by this.
She gets off at a station at the foot of the mountain leaving the three talking about how her story was obviously nonsense and she is probably a 'care in the community' case. Before they reach the next stop however they decide to get off and take the next train back the way they came to see if they can find her just in case either she is going to do some harm to herself or the baby or, though none of them say it, in case her rambling story was true.
Hi-jinks, no doubt, ensue.
Take the last one and have the character make the opposite choice
So, this is number three. I know number three would probably have gelled quite well with number four but that would be too easy.
The protagonist is aware of this strange energy that is connected to the motorways but chooses to ignore it, tries to put it out of mind. The feelings grow stronger though and as the feeling grows he finds it occupies his dreams and all his waking thoughts. Eventually he takes to drink to try to numb the feeling and begins to drink himself into oblivion every night. He then begins blacking out and starts waking up on the side of the motorway. A couple of times he wakes up in police cells after having been picked up walking down the hard shoulder of the motorway. The feeling grows until he can see, when he looks at major roads and motorways, these rivers of corpses flowing eternally onwards in a great wave of death and decay. One day he can't take it any more and walks into the river.
We're on week two now so here are my exercises from both weeks.
Episode 10.1
[audio http://www.writingexcuses.com/podpress_trac/web/4501/0/Writing_Excuses_10_1_Ideas.mp3 ]
Write down five different story ideas in 150 words or less from these five sources:
- From an interview or conversation you've had.
- From research you've done.
- From observation.
- From a piece of media.
- From a piece of music.
1. Three old people are sat on a train. They are on a long journey across the country, going on holiday at the same spot they have visited every summer for years. People get on and off the train, young and old, and the train ends up rather crowded. They normally reserve a seat for their departed friend/spouse. However the train pulls in at a lonely station and a single passenger boards their carriage. He's an old man, and as dishevelled as the station he boarded from. There are no other free seats and so after brief discussion they offer their spare seat to him. The train continues its journey the number of passengers thins; leaving the four of them alone in the carriage. He doesn't leave their table as he is in the middle of telling them his horrible story. His story involves human sacrifice, dark rituals, ancient rites and evil beings summoned. They of course don't believe him. He alights at the stop before theirs. As they depart the train the slate sky and the wan silhouette it casts of the standing stones stop the nearby hill take on an ominous cast as they recognise them from his horrible tale.
Source: Ok, so that's slightly more than 150 words but wevs. :) I got this idea from a conversation I had with Little Ms. X on the train to Glasgow one day. She was rather perturbed by the sight of a small group of old people being rather loud and raucous. She is only a teen remember and 'old people' are still very much an alien category to her at times. :)
2. A team of student archaeologists take part in a summer vacation project to survey the Abbey of Thelema, as used by Aleister Crowley and his disciples for occult practices on the isle of Sicily. As the project goes on and they carry out standard building surveys and map the painting on the walls they begin to have strange, phantasmagorial and psycho-sexual dreams involving rituals, orgies, and worlds behind worlds. What they find there threatens to tear the world apart.
Source: A few years ago I had the idea of carrying out an archaeological survey of the Abbey but there's no way I could have gotten funding for it. It also occurred to me at the time that the project sounded like the beginning of a really clichéd horror movie. :)
3. The motorways of Britain are mirrored in another world by huge rivers of surging, raging water. These rivers carry the dead of a million worlds, including our own, on towards the heart of the meta-universe where they are devoured by the all creator. A being, beast, machine, that is beyond the comprehension of any mortal creature. We are little more than a small part of a self sustaining eternal entity's means of sustaining its own existence. As individuals we are beyond insignificant. The protagonist is sensitive to these flows and as he looks deeper into what it is that he feels he discovers that we are all actually sensitive to the final path we take to being consumed, hence our works and buildings following the path of these extra-universal currents.
Source: On my way to and from work I have to cross a footbridge that spans the insanely busy M8 motorway. As the cars flow past below me it always seems as though there is something tugging me in the direction of the traffic flow. It's probably something to do with the motion I see out of the corner of my eye but it is certainly a spooky effect.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="597"]
That footbridge right there. (It's busier than this when I'm going to and from work)[/caption]4. In the Highlands of Scotland a blinding light turns night into day and causes the emergency services to scramble. When the police, fire brigade and ambulances arrive they find a small village has appeared and there are a group of just over 5,000 people there with no memory of how they got there and only dim recollections of who they are. The area is first quarantined and then they are ferried off to a variety of military bases in the Highlands. As the story develops it is discovered that they have disappeared at various points throughout human history, some may even be from the future, only to reappear now. They were abducted by a parallel sentient universe which is about to collide with ours, the impact potentially destroying both universes in a new big bang. The sentient universe has figured out a way to allow the universes to meld rather than impact. Only when all the returned are together and touching can the sentient universe communicate, in a way, with our universe.
Source: The 4400, a pants American genre TV Series that could have been really good. That smooshed up with a heap of vaguely understood, misunderstood and totally misapplied brane theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wey_sso-fk
5. A woman is walking through an inner-city area in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. She ritualistically touches items about her person, clothes, jewellery, and so on, each of which tells a story about how she came to be where she is, like stations of the cross on her body. Each story is connected to the object and tells a different tale, some supernatural –some not, of joys and sorrows, missed opportunities and moments where she has excelled herself. She slowly sheds these items til she is naked. People in the street avert their eyes and move reverently out of her way as she has the air of the sublime about her which makes her terrible and awesome to behold. At her journey's end her scars are all bared and she meets her apotheosis in a bare room in an abandoned tenement building.
Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAeTywPiP4
Episode 10.2
[audio http://www.writingexcuses.com/podpress_trac/web/4514/0/Writing_Excuses_10_2_I_Have_an_Idea.mp3 ]
Using last week's five story ideas:
- Take two of them and combine them into one story.
- Take one and change the genre underneath it.
- Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it.
- Take the last one and have the character make the opposite choice.
Take two of them and combine the into one story.
I'll do this with numbers two and four.
As the student archaeologists carry out their survey they get the detestable dreams as in the original however as the dreams grow in intensity they realise that they are all sharing the same dream and that the figures they see in the dream are trying to communicate with them. The figures are the disappeared and they are seeking a way back into our universe. The students discover a pattern in the paintings on the walls of the temple that depict a ritual, a configuration, that may allow this to occur. They carry out the ritual and at the climax the personalities of all 5000+ of the disappeared are plunged into the students minds. They become part of this gigantic collective consciousness that is able to communicate with the sentient universe and so they become part of the plan to merge the two universes in order to save both from destruction. They have scant years to prepare the population of the Earth for the coming change. They come to realise that this is also occurring on every planet with sapient life in the universe and slowly they begin to share consciousness with the beings on these other planets. A foreshadowing of the merged universe that is to come.
Take one and change the genre underneath it.
I'll do this with number five and that is the one that I feel doesn't have the most clearly defined genre so rather than changing the genre I'm going to try and change it into a genre story, a fantasy story.
The basic premise is the same. A woman walking a ritual path towards apotheosis, using item about her body as talismans to allow her to relive events from her past. In this story though she is walking along a marble black and white chequered path that cuts across a desolate moorland. Above her the stars wheel through the night sky as time accelerates and the world nears its end. She has been a warrior in her life and now she has to walk this path on a final battle with her past deeds in order to stop the cataclysmic events that are unfolding all across her world. There is a magical apocalypse occurring and reality is being undone. She is blessed and cursed in that she has become immune to the effects of magic, ironically through a magical battle many years in her past, and so is one of only a handful of people who can walk this path between the realms of the magic and the mundane. Her talismans and the ritual of remembering her past, which has involved a plenitude of both the magic and mundane, allows her to keep the balance needed to stay on the path.
Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it.
I'll do this with number one though swapping the genders makes little difference though.
Three young people, not long out of school so late teens-early 20s, are on the train to a remote location in Northern England. The boy/girlfriend of one of them has recently died after a sudden illness and so the remaining couple are taking their friend away to get away from their home town and all the things that remind him/her of their loss. They take up a table and put a carrier bag of beer on the spare seat to stop anyone else sitting down. The train rapidly fills up. The train pulls up at a small run down station in the middle of nowhere and a young woman carrying a small baby boards. There are no seats left so they move their bag of beer to let her sit down.
She introduces herself and refers to the baby as 'Kid'. She has a strange air about her. She looks completely normal, wearing sports clothes and is about the same age as the three however there is something off putting about her. She takes a beer from the bag and starts telling them the story of her family and the father of her baby and how she's taking her baby back to it's father, she points out of the window to a mountain in the distance saying that he lives in the highest house on the mountain and that he's going to devour both her and the baby. She seems pleased by this.
She gets off at a station at the foot of the mountain leaving the three talking about how her story was obviously nonsense and she is probably a 'care in the community' case. Before they reach the next stop however they decide to get off and take the next train back the way they came to see if they can find her just in case either she is going to do some harm to herself or the baby or, though none of them say it, in case her rambling story was true.
Hi-jinks, no doubt, ensue.
Take the last one and have the character make the opposite choice
So, this is number three. I know number three would probably have gelled quite well with number four but that would be too easy.
The protagonist is aware of this strange energy that is connected to the motorways but chooses to ignore it, tries to put it out of mind. The feelings grow stronger though and as the feeling grows he finds it occupies his dreams and all his waking thoughts. Eventually he takes to drink to try to numb the feeling and begins to drink himself into oblivion every night. He then begins blacking out and starts waking up on the side of the motorway. A couple of times he wakes up in police cells after having been picked up walking down the hard shoulder of the motorway. The feeling grows until he can see, when he looks at major roads and motorways, these rivers of corpses flowing eternally onwards in a great wave of death and decay. One day he can't take it any more and walks into the river.
Thursday, 8 January 2015
Free Speech? What's That?
There is no such thing as free speech.
After the horrible slaughter in Paris yesterday there are many people crying out that this is an attack on free speech and that we must support Charlie Hebdo in the aftermath of this assault. There has even been the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, I am Charlie, trending on Twitter. There has also been #KillAllMuslims but fuck those people, seriously, fuck those racist jerks right in the ear.
People have been commenting all day today about the importance of freedom of speech and how it is one of the highest values of western civilisation. I have some major issues with this –and not just that the notion of there being a 'western civilisation' is ridiculous.* No, it is the notion that despite the fact that all actions have a cost the act of speech is somehow free of cost. So, there. There is no such thing as free speech.
I know that this is a highly unpopular notion given the reverence with which liberals, and some on the left, treat free speech but I just don't see how it is anything other than a pipe dream, and a dangerous and defacto pro-fascist one at that.
I suppose I should explain myself somewhat as I can hear the gasp of horror as both my readers clutch their hands to their chests and faint with shock.
OK.
This may meander slightly.
In the UK we have a number of far right fascist groups that have got varying degrees of visibility, activity, and popularity. Chief amongst these are the British National Party, the National Front and Combat 18/Blood and Honour. All of these groups were formed to use violence as a way of imposing their political ideology and starting a race war in the United Kingdom. A large part of their tactics was to dominate the streets through marches and beating those of opposing political ideologies who attempted to put their argument across on the high street -through selling papers and handing out leaflets, you know the kind of thing, and through spreading terror amongst non-white populations.
They were prevented from doing this in the UK as militant trade unionists, communists, and anarchists met them with force on the streets and basically beat them back under the rock from which they crawled. There's a really good documentary on this that you can watch here(LINK).As a result of this the BNP decided to change their tactics and attempted to become a regular political party.
Now that probably sounds ideal to your average liberal type, you know the sort -wears cardigans, eats cheese, listens to Radio 4, as now the frightful beasts would have their awful ideology exposed to the light of open debate and it would be shown to be nothing but vile fear and hatred. Rational debate would soon put an end to such dreadful things as racism and people being all loud and uncouth on match days.
Yeah, well, we don't live in this liberal la la land and unfortunately our society if riven with racism and bigotry. Admittedly most of this isn't the hateful racism of groups like the BNP or new kids on the block Britain First; it's more your casual common or garden racism that thinks “[Racial Group X] are just different, got nuffink personal against 'em like. Know what I'm saying?” No, and these people, your Combat 18 and National Front sociopaths, didn't go away and nor did their ideas. They may not have been able to organise openly until recently but they are still there and amongst these people there is a sliding scale of fuckwittery.
Now, about five years ago the British National Party were trying to canvas in Glasgow for the upcoming European Elections and at every turn people in Glasgow would jeer at them and hound them off the streets. Sometimes slightly more physically than others. Either way it was made clear that they weren't wanted. When I was talking about this on Facebook some of my more liberal friends were claiming that people doing this were curtailing their freedom of speech and so were in the wrong, or, as some fine people put it, “You're just as bad as the fascists for doing this.” Which, to me, is just plain offensive. Just, I'm sure, as it would have been offensive to people like the 43 Group who were Jewish veterans of the British Army who took the fight to the British Union of Fascists on their return from WWII.
You see, what the 43 Group understood, as did those who beat the National Front, BNP and co. off the streets of the UK throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, is that if you allow fascists to openly spread their hatred and bigotry people die. It doesn't go directly from a group like the BNP having a stall unopposed on the local high street to their being Jews rounded up into ghettos –human society is far more complex than a simple action film narrative allows for.
What allowing fascist groups to practice their 'free speech' does is it gives confidence to others on the far right, it allows them to feel that their views are acceptable and widely held. This gives them the confidence to act upon their convictions. This then leads to people getting beaten, to homes being burned out, to people being murdered. Speech is not free, sometimes the price of it can be people's lives.
From this it may be presumed that I would therefore support calls for the government to legislate against certain groups –to curtail their freedom of speech in order to protect lives. This is something I am opposed to completely. The interests of the state and the people who live beneath it are rarely aligned, something that should be patently obvious if we look at the raft of austerity measures presently plunging huge swathes of the population into desperate poverty and driving others to suicide. No, I do not feel that real politics happens at the level of government or the state. Real politics happens in our communities and our workplaces. That is the arena where fascists must be denied their 'free speech' and where work to prevent their fear and hatred must take place. Unfortunately the community and the workplace as a place of politics has been arena seemingly abandoned by most for a long time now with lefty groups preferring to organise on university campuses (student loans filling party coffers through subs and freshers fairs) or to arrange rally after rally about things happening halfway around the globe(whilst rattling collection buckets all the way).
So I won't be changing my Twitter profile pic to a picture of Mohammed in the name of free speech. Not because I have any problem with annoying Muslims or poking fun at Islam –it's a religion and all religions are equally bloody absurd, but because it would be a pointless gesture aimed squarely at annoying people who had fuck all to do with this violence and who are, in all likelihood, utterly repulsed by it. Why on Earth would I want to do that? I'm a, reasonably, nice person! Nor will I be claiming to stand in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. It's a shit rag that punts racism, sexism, and homophobia as edgy humour. Nor will I bleat about attacks on free speech as there is no such thing as free speech, something the fuckwits with the machine guns patently understand.
Anyway, I feel sorry for those people who have suffered and who have lost loved ones because of these bastards. I feel anger at the bastards who are using this as an excuse to attack mosques and to further the fascist agenda. And I feel exasperation at those bleating over free speech as they are maintaining the delusion that there is such a thing and that we live in a liberal fairy tale rather than a complex, dirty and confusing cluster fuck of a world.
Also. Why the fuck is my first post of 2015 about something like this? Sod this, I'm off for a fag.
*I'm of the opinion that civilisation is a process of developing social and cultural complexity.
After the horrible slaughter in Paris yesterday there are many people crying out that this is an attack on free speech and that we must support Charlie Hebdo in the aftermath of this assault. There has even been the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, I am Charlie, trending on Twitter. There has also been #KillAllMuslims but fuck those people, seriously, fuck those racist jerks right in the ear.
People have been commenting all day today about the importance of freedom of speech and how it is one of the highest values of western civilisation. I have some major issues with this –and not just that the notion of there being a 'western civilisation' is ridiculous.* No, it is the notion that despite the fact that all actions have a cost the act of speech is somehow free of cost. So, there. There is no such thing as free speech.
I know that this is a highly unpopular notion given the reverence with which liberals, and some on the left, treat free speech but I just don't see how it is anything other than a pipe dream, and a dangerous and defacto pro-fascist one at that.
I suppose I should explain myself somewhat as I can hear the gasp of horror as both my readers clutch their hands to their chests and faint with shock.
OK.
This may meander slightly.
In the UK we have a number of far right fascist groups that have got varying degrees of visibility, activity, and popularity. Chief amongst these are the British National Party, the National Front and Combat 18/Blood and Honour. All of these groups were formed to use violence as a way of imposing their political ideology and starting a race war in the United Kingdom. A large part of their tactics was to dominate the streets through marches and beating those of opposing political ideologies who attempted to put their argument across on the high street -through selling papers and handing out leaflets, you know the kind of thing, and through spreading terror amongst non-white populations.
They were prevented from doing this in the UK as militant trade unionists, communists, and anarchists met them with force on the streets and basically beat them back under the rock from which they crawled. There's a really good documentary on this that you can watch here(LINK).As a result of this the BNP decided to change their tactics and attempted to become a regular political party.
Now that probably sounds ideal to your average liberal type, you know the sort -wears cardigans, eats cheese, listens to Radio 4, as now the frightful beasts would have their awful ideology exposed to the light of open debate and it would be shown to be nothing but vile fear and hatred. Rational debate would soon put an end to such dreadful things as racism and people being all loud and uncouth on match days.
Yeah, well, we don't live in this liberal la la land and unfortunately our society if riven with racism and bigotry. Admittedly most of this isn't the hateful racism of groups like the BNP or new kids on the block Britain First; it's more your casual common or garden racism that thinks “[Racial Group X] are just different, got nuffink personal against 'em like. Know what I'm saying?” No, and these people, your Combat 18 and National Front sociopaths, didn't go away and nor did their ideas. They may not have been able to organise openly until recently but they are still there and amongst these people there is a sliding scale of fuckwittery.
Now, about five years ago the British National Party were trying to canvas in Glasgow for the upcoming European Elections and at every turn people in Glasgow would jeer at them and hound them off the streets. Sometimes slightly more physically than others. Either way it was made clear that they weren't wanted. When I was talking about this on Facebook some of my more liberal friends were claiming that people doing this were curtailing their freedom of speech and so were in the wrong, or, as some fine people put it, “You're just as bad as the fascists for doing this.” Which, to me, is just plain offensive. Just, I'm sure, as it would have been offensive to people like the 43 Group who were Jewish veterans of the British Army who took the fight to the British Union of Fascists on their return from WWII.
You see, what the 43 Group understood, as did those who beat the National Front, BNP and co. off the streets of the UK throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, is that if you allow fascists to openly spread their hatred and bigotry people die. It doesn't go directly from a group like the BNP having a stall unopposed on the local high street to their being Jews rounded up into ghettos –human society is far more complex than a simple action film narrative allows for.
What allowing fascist groups to practice their 'free speech' does is it gives confidence to others on the far right, it allows them to feel that their views are acceptable and widely held. This gives them the confidence to act upon their convictions. This then leads to people getting beaten, to homes being burned out, to people being murdered. Speech is not free, sometimes the price of it can be people's lives.
From this it may be presumed that I would therefore support calls for the government to legislate against certain groups –to curtail their freedom of speech in order to protect lives. This is something I am opposed to completely. The interests of the state and the people who live beneath it are rarely aligned, something that should be patently obvious if we look at the raft of austerity measures presently plunging huge swathes of the population into desperate poverty and driving others to suicide. No, I do not feel that real politics happens at the level of government or the state. Real politics happens in our communities and our workplaces. That is the arena where fascists must be denied their 'free speech' and where work to prevent their fear and hatred must take place. Unfortunately the community and the workplace as a place of politics has been arena seemingly abandoned by most for a long time now with lefty groups preferring to organise on university campuses (student loans filling party coffers through subs and freshers fairs) or to arrange rally after rally about things happening halfway around the globe(whilst rattling collection buckets all the way).
So I won't be changing my Twitter profile pic to a picture of Mohammed in the name of free speech. Not because I have any problem with annoying Muslims or poking fun at Islam –it's a religion and all religions are equally bloody absurd, but because it would be a pointless gesture aimed squarely at annoying people who had fuck all to do with this violence and who are, in all likelihood, utterly repulsed by it. Why on Earth would I want to do that? I'm a, reasonably, nice person! Nor will I be claiming to stand in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. It's a shit rag that punts racism, sexism, and homophobia as edgy humour. Nor will I bleat about attacks on free speech as there is no such thing as free speech, something the fuckwits with the machine guns patently understand.
Anyway, I feel sorry for those people who have suffered and who have lost loved ones because of these bastards. I feel anger at the bastards who are using this as an excuse to attack mosques and to further the fascist agenda. And I feel exasperation at those bleating over free speech as they are maintaining the delusion that there is such a thing and that we live in a liberal fairy tale rather than a complex, dirty and confusing cluster fuck of a world.
Also. Why the fuck is my first post of 2015 about something like this? Sod this, I'm off for a fag.
*I'm of the opinion that civilisation is a process of developing social and cultural complexity.
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
Twenty Fourteen to Twenty Fifteen
This year has been a good year. A hard year, but a good year.
I handed in my dissertation, on the application of situationist psychogeographical techniques to studying archaeological landscapes, and sat my final exams in April/May. That was a proper slog. As C hadn't been able to find a proper job (seriously, someone around Glasgow must want to hire Cambridge graduates. I mean, WTF?) and so I had to work 25-35 hours a week as well as studying full time and working on my dissertation. It's a wonder that there's not more grey in my mane right now! :)
So I'm now an archaeologist. Which is to say that I'm, for the most part, underemployed and not working in archaeology... I probably could find a job in archaeology but most beginning jobs are for people to work on excavations and I have a terrible loathing for excavation and, to boot, I'm not very good at it. I've also got crap knees so crawling around in the muck all day scraping away layer after layer of mud isn't really that appealing a prospect. If anyone happens to want to hire an archaeologically trained office monkey though -I'm your man. :D
This year was also the year that I finally, thanks to finishing uni, found the time to both read a whole heap of the fiction that I've been building up over the course of my studies and to start actually writing some.
I've completed one full length story, The Sable Masque, which is currently sat in the slush pile at one of my favourite short fiction magazines awaiting rejection. It's a short tale of a man who wakes up one morning to find that the world around him has changed dramatically, and horrifyingly, yet only he seems aware of the change. It's also quite heavily metaphorical for the alienation of the worker under capitalism and all that jazz. Well, it seems heavily metaphorical to me.
I also won second prize in a wee flash fiction competition for a piece called The Dolly Doll which was nice.
I've currently got a whole host of works in progress.
I have nearly finished a King in Yellow inspired story called Scheme, which was formerly known as Schemes of Grey and Yellow, which I posted an excerpt from earlier this month. I'm also making slow but steady progress on my novella Dolorosa which I'm hoping to have finished, well -ready for redrafting, by spring.
I'm working on a small collection of King in Yellow related stories that I'm hoping to release as an ebook this summer to celebrate the anniversary of both the birth of Robert W Chambers and the publication of his King in Yellow collection. Currently there are three works in progress including Scheme. One follows a young unemployed man and his encounter with a secret institution in Glasgow that uses Lethal Chambers to allow the poor and unemployed to voluntarily cull their own ranks. The other is a letter from a prisoner awaiting trial in Barlinnie Prison following his accusation of having committed a string of murders for which he blames a certain 19th Century document...
Added to the Yellow stories are Sally's System -a story about family tradition, holidays, and murder most foul; To the Mountain -a kickstartered expedition to an anomaly on Google Earth turns rather more interesting than the participants imagined; and Our Clouded Hills -a novelette set in near future Britain.
I've also become slightly more active with regards the Lovecraft Ezine public message board and even managed to catch a live show a few weeks ago. Which is a first due to my work patterns and time zones. The Sunday show doesn't air until 11p.m. on this side of the pond and given as I work Sunday and then generally have to be up at 6a.m. the following morning I don't really get the chance to watch live. Hopefully I'll get more chances in future. I also really want to help out with the Ezine now that I have some free time as I think it's a really important project. To my mind the Ezine is replacing the gap left by the clusterfuck that Weird Tales has become since the change in management.
On the home front Little Ms. X continues to impress me as she continues to grow into a fabulous young woman working out the world around her. She's so much more clued up than I was at her age, she's amazing and makes me so happy and proud in equal measure. Even when she's in full blown angry teenager mode. I can't wait to see what happens next even though it is also terrifying given the bullshit and nonsense that comes with being a teenager. I also have the growing urge to kill every teenage boy within a 20 mile radius of the village. Just to be on the safe side, you know?
As we move into 2015 I'm not going to make any new years resolutions as I always seem to break them almost immediately. There are some goals that I am going to set myself however which I may be able to achieve.
Firstly I'm going to knock smoking on the head. Again. C and I are both going to switch across to those e-fag things as a stepping stone to getting off the evil weed. I'm also going to try and put out a piece of free fiction every month with the first pieces, probably, being Sally's System and Our Clouded Hills which will be, again hopefully, going out in January and February,
Also, hopefully, there will be a less dead end job for me to find early in the new year. Fingers crossed eh?
Lists!
Everyone loves a good old end of year list so here are a couple of mine.
Never Again: A collection of weird fiction against fascism and racism containing a brilliant variety of the Weird.
A Season in Carcosa: Edited by the King in Yellow himself, Joseph S Pulver Sr. this is a fantastic anthology of tales inspired by Chambers' King in Yellow series. Very highly recommended.
The Weird: I actually bought this a couple of years ago but it is a massive tome and I've been slowly dipping in and out of it for a long time now. This is probably the defining volume when it comes to Weird fiction.
Cthulhu 2000: I bought this specifically so I could read Black Man with a Horn by T.E.D. Klein which I reviewed a few months ago.
The Red Tree: An utterly fantastic novel from Caitlin Kiernan. If you haven't already read this you should. Now. It's probably one of the best works of Cosmic Horror that has been produced in the last couple of decades. Absolutely brilliant.
The Spectral Link: The long awaited, and stunningly presented, new tales from the dark master Thomas Ligotti. I reviewd it when it came out, you can read that here.
The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies: John Langan's collection of long shorts. Another wonderful collection from a master of the weird.
Celebrant: This novel by Michael Cisco is a confusing one. I don't know whether to read it extremely closely or to just let the sumptuous text wash over in. Cisco manages to maintain a highly strange and surreal prose style throughout this novel that makes this one of the most gorgeous things I've ever read.
The New Uncanny: An interesting anthology looking at Freud's notion of the uncanny. This is well worth picking up if you get the chance.
Cthulhu Cymraeg: It's true that the Welsh language may look and sound something like Aklo but this volume is in English so that even I could read it. The few stories in this slim volume cross the spectrum of the weird including some bizarro works and more traditional, and chilling, cosmic horror.
The Dark Domain: Stefan Grabinski is a singular Polish voice. Writing at the beginning of the 20th Century his work belies an unease with the increasing speed of industrialisation and mechanisation of the world around him.
American Supernatural Tales: A brilliant collection put together by S.T. Joshi in a series curated by Guillermo Del Toro. This book features fiction that spans nearly two centuries and features some of America's finest writers of horror fiction from Washington Irvine through H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and on to Thomas Ligotti and Caitlin Kiernan.
The Thomas Ligotti Reader: A collection of essays looking at Ligotti, his work, and his influences. For the true cosmic horror nerd.
HP Lovecraft The Complete Fiction: A beautiful collection of HPL's stories put out by Barnes and Noble of all people.
Banshee Chapter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhrYDiaSo_s
Oculus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYJrxezWLUk
Absentia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa1UJLqYeBU
Pride
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZfFvsKDuUU
Dead Snow 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glIoXwTcG60
True Detective: Yeah, there was the whole shenanigans with the plagiarism of Thomas Ligotti but it was still a fantastic show. I just wish the creator was a bit more honest about his influences.
Gotham: A bit of a silly show but that emerged into a nice mob vs. the police show with some nice tips towards the Batman universe that even a non-Batfan like me can appreciate.
Constantine: A bit of a let down to be honest but I'm still hoping that it will develop into something more fitting of the name. The Welsh dude that plays Constantine is brilliant in the role so hopefully it will move away from the monster of the week pish that has defined the fist episodes.
Supernatural: Because if I want a monster of the week show I go to the Winchester boys. :)
American Horror Story: I didn't really think that much of Freak Show but Little Ms. X loves it and I pissed myself laughing when she pointed out that "Murder House had ghosts, Asylum had aliens and a serial killers, Coven had witches. Freak Show has an entitled rich white boy because there's nothing more terrifying." :D
The Walking Dead: Probably the most tense show on TV. Every time someone does something dangerous, like walking down the road or having a poo, I'm convinced they're going to die a bloody death at just that moment. Proper edge of your seat horror.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Despite starting slow this has just grown better and better as it has gone on and I'm chomping at the bit for the next season.
The Wire: Yeah, I know. But C only just managed to get me to watch it this summer and wow! It's one of the best bits of television ever produced.
Radical Dance Faction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUsx4iEe8HU
Joan Osborne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAeTywPiP4
Faith No More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJR2Ab-DIkA
The Baghdaddies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68W-QFg5czs
Tansads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZotfSiLInx8
Ned's Atomic Dustbin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxVMfBfQDY
Leatherface
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYQBUyL0ips
[spunge]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbH50Bv31l8
Leftover Crack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unxrRffd9iY
Star Fucking Hipsters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAqRHaQxStU
I hope everyone has had a great year and I hope that we have a better one over the coming 12 months.
I handed in my dissertation, on the application of situationist psychogeographical techniques to studying archaeological landscapes, and sat my final exams in April/May. That was a proper slog. As C hadn't been able to find a proper job (seriously, someone around Glasgow must want to hire Cambridge graduates. I mean, WTF?) and so I had to work 25-35 hours a week as well as studying full time and working on my dissertation. It's a wonder that there's not more grey in my mane right now! :)
So I'm now an archaeologist. Which is to say that I'm, for the most part, underemployed and not working in archaeology... I probably could find a job in archaeology but most beginning jobs are for people to work on excavations and I have a terrible loathing for excavation and, to boot, I'm not very good at it. I've also got crap knees so crawling around in the muck all day scraping away layer after layer of mud isn't really that appealing a prospect. If anyone happens to want to hire an archaeologically trained office monkey though -I'm your man. :D
This year was also the year that I finally, thanks to finishing uni, found the time to both read a whole heap of the fiction that I've been building up over the course of my studies and to start actually writing some.
I've completed one full length story, The Sable Masque, which is currently sat in the slush pile at one of my favourite short fiction magazines awaiting rejection. It's a short tale of a man who wakes up one morning to find that the world around him has changed dramatically, and horrifyingly, yet only he seems aware of the change. It's also quite heavily metaphorical for the alienation of the worker under capitalism and all that jazz. Well, it seems heavily metaphorical to me.
I also won second prize in a wee flash fiction competition for a piece called The Dolly Doll which was nice.
I've currently got a whole host of works in progress.
I have nearly finished a King in Yellow inspired story called Scheme, which was formerly known as Schemes of Grey and Yellow, which I posted an excerpt from earlier this month. I'm also making slow but steady progress on my novella Dolorosa which I'm hoping to have finished, well -ready for redrafting, by spring.
I'm working on a small collection of King in Yellow related stories that I'm hoping to release as an ebook this summer to celebrate the anniversary of both the birth of Robert W Chambers and the publication of his King in Yellow collection. Currently there are three works in progress including Scheme. One follows a young unemployed man and his encounter with a secret institution in Glasgow that uses Lethal Chambers to allow the poor and unemployed to voluntarily cull their own ranks. The other is a letter from a prisoner awaiting trial in Barlinnie Prison following his accusation of having committed a string of murders for which he blames a certain 19th Century document...
Added to the Yellow stories are Sally's System -a story about family tradition, holidays, and murder most foul; To the Mountain -a kickstartered expedition to an anomaly on Google Earth turns rather more interesting than the participants imagined; and Our Clouded Hills -a novelette set in near future Britain.
I've also become slightly more active with regards the Lovecraft Ezine public message board and even managed to catch a live show a few weeks ago. Which is a first due to my work patterns and time zones. The Sunday show doesn't air until 11p.m. on this side of the pond and given as I work Sunday and then generally have to be up at 6a.m. the following morning I don't really get the chance to watch live. Hopefully I'll get more chances in future. I also really want to help out with the Ezine now that I have some free time as I think it's a really important project. To my mind the Ezine is replacing the gap left by the clusterfuck that Weird Tales has become since the change in management.
On the home front Little Ms. X continues to impress me as she continues to grow into a fabulous young woman working out the world around her. She's so much more clued up than I was at her age, she's amazing and makes me so happy and proud in equal measure. Even when she's in full blown angry teenager mode. I can't wait to see what happens next even though it is also terrifying given the bullshit and nonsense that comes with being a teenager. I also have the growing urge to kill every teenage boy within a 20 mile radius of the village. Just to be on the safe side, you know?
As we move into 2015 I'm not going to make any new years resolutions as I always seem to break them almost immediately. There are some goals that I am going to set myself however which I may be able to achieve.
Firstly I'm going to knock smoking on the head. Again. C and I are both going to switch across to those e-fag things as a stepping stone to getting off the evil weed. I'm also going to try and put out a piece of free fiction every month with the first pieces, probably, being Sally's System and Our Clouded Hills which will be, again hopefully, going out in January and February,
Also, hopefully, there will be a less dead end job for me to find early in the new year. Fingers crossed eh?
Lists!
Everyone loves a good old end of year list so here are a couple of mine.
Books I've read (Not counting books for uni, obv.)
Never Again: A collection of weird fiction against fascism and racism containing a brilliant variety of the Weird.
A Season in Carcosa: Edited by the King in Yellow himself, Joseph S Pulver Sr. this is a fantastic anthology of tales inspired by Chambers' King in Yellow series. Very highly recommended.
The Weird: I actually bought this a couple of years ago but it is a massive tome and I've been slowly dipping in and out of it for a long time now. This is probably the defining volume when it comes to Weird fiction.
Cthulhu 2000: I bought this specifically so I could read Black Man with a Horn by T.E.D. Klein which I reviewed a few months ago.
The Red Tree: An utterly fantastic novel from Caitlin Kiernan. If you haven't already read this you should. Now. It's probably one of the best works of Cosmic Horror that has been produced in the last couple of decades. Absolutely brilliant.
The Spectral Link: The long awaited, and stunningly presented, new tales from the dark master Thomas Ligotti. I reviewd it when it came out, you can read that here.
The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies: John Langan's collection of long shorts. Another wonderful collection from a master of the weird.
Celebrant: This novel by Michael Cisco is a confusing one. I don't know whether to read it extremely closely or to just let the sumptuous text wash over in. Cisco manages to maintain a highly strange and surreal prose style throughout this novel that makes this one of the most gorgeous things I've ever read.
The New Uncanny: An interesting anthology looking at Freud's notion of the uncanny. This is well worth picking up if you get the chance.
Cthulhu Cymraeg: It's true that the Welsh language may look and sound something like Aklo but this volume is in English so that even I could read it. The few stories in this slim volume cross the spectrum of the weird including some bizarro works and more traditional, and chilling, cosmic horror.
The Dark Domain: Stefan Grabinski is a singular Polish voice. Writing at the beginning of the 20th Century his work belies an unease with the increasing speed of industrialisation and mechanisation of the world around him.
American Supernatural Tales: A brilliant collection put together by S.T. Joshi in a series curated by Guillermo Del Toro. This book features fiction that spans nearly two centuries and features some of America's finest writers of horror fiction from Washington Irvine through H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and on to Thomas Ligotti and Caitlin Kiernan.
The Thomas Ligotti Reader: A collection of essays looking at Ligotti, his work, and his influences. For the true cosmic horror nerd.
HP Lovecraft The Complete Fiction: A beautiful collection of HPL's stories put out by Barnes and Noble of all people.
Films I've enjoyed
Banshee Chapter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhrYDiaSo_s
Oculus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYJrxezWLUk
Absentia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa1UJLqYeBU
Pride
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZfFvsKDuUU
Dead Snow 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glIoXwTcG60
Shows I've enjoyed
True Detective: Yeah, there was the whole shenanigans with the plagiarism of Thomas Ligotti but it was still a fantastic show. I just wish the creator was a bit more honest about his influences.
Gotham: A bit of a silly show but that emerged into a nice mob vs. the police show with some nice tips towards the Batman universe that even a non-Batfan like me can appreciate.
Constantine: A bit of a let down to be honest but I'm still hoping that it will develop into something more fitting of the name. The Welsh dude that plays Constantine is brilliant in the role so hopefully it will move away from the monster of the week pish that has defined the fist episodes.
Supernatural: Because if I want a monster of the week show I go to the Winchester boys. :)
American Horror Story: I didn't really think that much of Freak Show but Little Ms. X loves it and I pissed myself laughing when she pointed out that "Murder House had ghosts, Asylum had aliens and a serial killers, Coven had witches. Freak Show has an entitled rich white boy because there's nothing more terrifying." :D
The Walking Dead: Probably the most tense show on TV. Every time someone does something dangerous, like walking down the road or having a poo, I'm convinced they're going to die a bloody death at just that moment. Proper edge of your seat horror.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Despite starting slow this has just grown better and better as it has gone on and I'm chomping at the bit for the next season.
The Wire: Yeah, I know. But C only just managed to get me to watch it this summer and wow! It's one of the best bits of television ever produced.
Music I've listened to
Radical Dance Faction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUsx4iEe8HU
Joan Osborne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAeTywPiP4
Faith No More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJR2Ab-DIkA
The Baghdaddies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68W-QFg5czs
Tansads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZotfSiLInx8
Ned's Atomic Dustbin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxVMfBfQDY
Leatherface
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYQBUyL0ips
[spunge]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbH50Bv31l8
Leftover Crack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unxrRffd9iY
Star Fucking Hipsters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAqRHaQxStU
I hope everyone has had a great year and I hope that we have a better one over the coming 12 months.
Friday, 26 December 2014
What a Day
Wow, yesterday was rather good for me and mine and I truly hope it was good for you too.
C and I got to spoil Little Ms. X, and one another, absolutely rotten. It was also really nice to see that the most excitedly expectant look on Ms. X's face wasn't when she was opening her own presents but when C was opening the Tremors collection we had gotten her. She's a good kid so she is.
I'm presently laying bed nursing something of a hangover after having rather over indulged in one of my more liquid presents..
I do like a wee tipple of Laphroig so I do.
I've been laying here in bed for the last half an hour or so wanting to crack into one, or some, of my other gifts from C and X but you know what? I can't decide which to delve into first! I have options paralysis! Oh the humanity!
As an added bonus this also turned up in the post on Xmas Eve.
So I have a rather wonderful amount of reading to do over the next few months if only can decide where to begin. :D
C and I got to spoil Little Ms. X, and one another, absolutely rotten. It was also really nice to see that the most excitedly expectant look on Ms. X's face wasn't when she was opening her own presents but when C was opening the Tremors collection we had gotten her. She's a good kid so she is.
I'm presently laying bed nursing something of a hangover after having rather over indulged in one of my more liquid presents..
I do like a wee tipple of Laphroig so I do.
I've been laying here in bed for the last half an hour or so wanting to crack into one, or some, of my other gifts from C and X but you know what? I can't decide which to delve into first! I have options paralysis! Oh the humanity!
As an added bonus this also turned up in the post on Xmas Eve.
So I have a rather wonderful amount of reading to do over the next few months if only can decide where to begin. :D
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Libraries Gave us Power - Save the Machen Collection in Newport
Libraries gave us power, then work came and set us free.
So goes the opening of the Manic Street Preachers' song A Design for Life, the line "Libraries gave us power" was taken from the inscription above the old Carnegie library in the Pillgwenlly area of my home town - Newport in Gwent. The old Carnegie library is no more and the residents of Pillgwenlly have to make do with a tiny library/resource centre better suited to being a corner shop than a font of learning and education.
I left Newport more than a decade ago, truth be told, I rarely visit. I haven't returned there for around three or four years. I do still however have a certain pride at coming from Newport. The city is, or maybe was, known for its thriving music scene -mostly thanks to the fantastically grimy TJs venue. It was a place where there was always something creative happening. That was always thanks to the people of Newport though, never the local council.
It seems that the local council have always had an aversion to the arts and to the heritage of the town. When a medieval ship was uncovered on the banks of the mighty River Usk it took a concerted campaign by local people to stop the council from simply building on top of it. Recently the council destroyed a marvellous mural celebrating the people of Newport's role in the Chartist Uprising of 1839 and the struggle for working class representation in parliament to make way for a new shopping centre. Friends of culture the council are not.
Now, under the guise of austerity, the council are wanting to close the city's central library, art gallery and the city's museum. The library was like a second home to me when I was a youngster. I would always spend my Saturday afternoons reading in the library or exploring the museum -which shares a building with the library and the art gallery. When I discovered the reference section of the library at the age of 9 or 10 I was in hog heaven. So many wonderful old books! I could easily lose myself there come rain or sun on a weekend.
The library is about as central to the city of Newport as it's possible to get. The building stands on John Frost Square, named for the leader of the Chartist Uprising, right in the heart of the city. It is a place that is accessible to all the people of Newport and, so far as I'm concerned, is vital to the essence of the place. A library is a place of collective self education and betterment. That this library shares a building with the art gallery and museum makes it even more of a hub for the heritage and culture of the city.
Added to that Newport library is also the home of the best collection of material by, and related to, the lauded author of the fantastic, Arthur Machen. The library houses rare items donated by family, friends, and fans of Arthur Machen and it is vital that this collection is protected. More than that it is vital that this son of Newport (Caerleon, Machen's birthplace, is separated from Newport by a couple fields is all) is celebrated by the city.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="259"]
Machen c.a. 1905 Wikipedia[/caption]Machen had an immense effect on the fantastic literature of the 20th, and 21st, Centuries. He has influenced the works of HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, China Mieville, and many, many more. His literary influence has spread beyond the world of literature though and has also been felt in the multi-billion dollar movie industry. Newport City Council should be celebrating this heritage and using it to promote Newport. They should not be slashing and hacking at the services that the people of Newport deserve and stripping future generations of the heritage and culture they too deserve.
So, what can be done?
Well, I'm sure that the people of the 'port will not be taking this lying down, they can be a feisty lot when their dander is up. However those of us that are in places rather distant from mae hen wlad fy mamau can still show our support and highlight to the council the international significance of the Machen collection.
There is a form on the council website asking for feedback on the proposed cuts. It asks where in Newport you live but you can leave that blank and then tell them that you are from elsewhere in the world on page 2 of the form. You can access the feedback form here.
You could also write to Bob Bright, the current council leader
Bob Bright
Leader of Newport City Council
80 Allt-yr-yn Road
Newport
South Wales, NP20 5EF
or contact him via the council website.
I would also recommend getting in touch with the local media. The local newspaper for Newport and the surrounding area is The South Wales Argus and you can write to them here. the lcoal radio station is Capital, South Wales and you can contact them on 02920 942940(news room) or 02920 949494(studio) or use the email form here. Local television comes from ITV Wales, who can be emailed via wales@itv.com and contacted on Facebook(click), and BBC Wales who can be contacted on 02920 323 255(news room), emailed on newsonline.wales@bbc.co.uk, or via their Facebook page(click).
Newport also has two Members of Parliament, Paul Flynn and Jessica Mordin.
Paul Flynn can be contacted on 01633 262348 / 020 7219 3478 and emailed at paulflynnmp@talk21.com.
Jessica Mordin can be contacted on 01633 841725 and emailed at jessica.morden.mp@parliament.uk
Newport also has two members of the Welsh Assembly, Dame Rosemary Butler and John Griffiths.
Dame Butler can be contacted on 01633 222 523 / 0300 200 7104 and emailed at Rosemary.Butler@assembly.wales
John Griffiths can be contacted on 01633 222 302 / 0300 200 7122 and emailed at John.Griffiths@assembly.wales
(Note: for all phone numbers replace '01, 02 or 03' at the beginning with +442 if calling internationally)
Hopefully if enough people, nationally and internationally, kick up a stink it will help those people in Newport who want to stop this happening.
Thanks to the good folks at Wormwoodiana for spreading the word about this.
Saturday, 6 December 2014
NaNoBustMo
Well I never made my NaNoWriMo target; which was set at 35,000 words rather than 50,000 as that's the ballpark figure for where I see my novella heading. I did get about 15,000 words of it written though. I also managed to get a few thousand words down on a few short stories I'm working on. I know that having a few different projects on the go isn't exactly the best working practice but I have so many bloody ideas I have to get them at least partially written down so that I can come back to them later.
The short story I have done the most work on is provisionally titled Schemes of Grey and Yellow and riffs off Chambers' King in Yellow mythos. It's set on a nameless housing scheme (that's a council estate for people down south or a project for my occasional American reader) in the west of Scotland. Dolorosa, I'm actually rather firm on that title, is set in Glasgow and follows the tragic events that beset a young working class Glaswegian woman after her family has a chance encounter with the unknown. You can read brief excerpts from the first drafts below. I expect them both to change rather considerably in the rewrite.
One thing that I have managed to do though is come up with a couple of cover designs for Dolorosa. Productive procrastination for the win eh? I'm not sure which one I prefer though, which is a pain. I may put it up for a vote when the book is ready to be released.
Hope you like what you read. :)
The short story I have done the most work on is provisionally titled Schemes of Grey and Yellow and riffs off Chambers' King in Yellow mythos. It's set on a nameless housing scheme (that's a council estate for people down south or a project for my occasional American reader) in the west of Scotland. Dolorosa, I'm actually rather firm on that title, is set in Glasgow and follows the tragic events that beset a young working class Glaswegian woman after her family has a chance encounter with the unknown. You can read brief excerpts from the first drafts below. I expect them both to change rather considerably in the rewrite.
One thing that I have managed to do though is come up with a couple of cover designs for Dolorosa. Productive procrastination for the win eh? I'm not sure which one I prefer though, which is a pain. I may put it up for a vote when the book is ready to be released.
Dolorosa(Excerpt)
Soft greys and whites bleed across the sky. The world below is awash with greens, purples and cold serrated granite scratching at the clouds. The mountains are emblazoned with flashes of green grass and the purple of the heather, their slopes both sheer and gentle sink into the wide flat bottom of the glen. Two veins of water, sparkling silver below the washed out sky, merge into a wide river tracing its way through landscape. At the far end of the glen, beside the wide river, sits a small town - little more than a village really. A flat topped church steeple looks over the town, the old winding streets and the newer, more linear and regimented, housing developments giving the town a patchwork look. The glen is dotted with small collections of farm buildings and everywhere the signs of an industrial agriculture winding down in the autumn months.
Higher up the sides of the valley are sheep worn meadows, heather, gorse. In a well shorn meadow stands a woman. She stands by herself, not quite in the middle of the meadow. She is dressed unsuitably for both the time of year and the environment in which she stands. Her jacket looks better suited to dashing between the shelter of shops on a Saturday afternoon in a town somewhere. It is so completely soaked that it appears almost black where, when dry, it is grey. Her hair, shoulder length and brown, has been whipped around her face as though by a storm and stuck there by the rain. Yet the air here is still. Still and, but for the soft hum of the ever present insects, quiet. There is no wind to carry the sob. The deep gulping of air is swallowed by the silence spread between land and sky.
Her head is thrown back. Her eyes closed but her mouth open. A dark O set against her sickly pale skin. Her arms hang at her sides. Her hands opening and closing, opening and closing. Clenching. Grasping at nothing. She sinks to her knees. Her head bowing as she gulps and releases another sob. Slowly she folds herself over her legs, her head pushing into the cold grass. Her arms stretch out before her. Hands clutching handfuls of emerald blades. Fingers digging into the soft brown earth. Clawing at it. She sobs again and begins to tremble. Her back heaves as sob after sob escapes her convulsing body. Louder and louder, faster and faster until she is crying uncontrollably. She lifts her head and screams. Rage and sadness shatter the silence of the glen. Her scream crosses the vastness between earth and sky. If it could, her scream, would sunder the world; set the heavens aflame til naught remained but ash. Ash and sorrow.
Schemes of Grey and Yellow(Excerpt)
The scheme was grey. Everywhere. Every house, every shop and commercial unit, every block of flats. Grey. The uniform grey of the Scottish housing scheme. Low cost housing that mirrored the perpetual slate sky above. The choice of colour scheme, ubiquitous around the country, seemed a cruel joke played by the powers that be on the powers that don't. The most dreichit country on earth and it mirrors the miserable bastard weather in its miserable bastard housing.
Leon waited outside Satish the Paki's shop for Black Martin. Satish wasn't a Paki, his parents had come to Scotland from India long before Leon was born. Still didn't stop his shop being called the Paki shop. People aren't always blessed with the greatest amount of either intelligence or originality at times thought Leon.
Black Martin wasn't black either. He had just gone through a goth period in school, listening to the Cure and Joy Division, dressing all in black, and in doing so had earned himself the now redundant, and wholly unimaginative, nickname.
Black Martin came out of the shop laughing and waving back at Satish of whom Leon could see slices between the posters advertising fizzy drinks and loaves of bread which were spread haphazardly across the windows of the store. Martin waved him over and tossed a can of juice at him as he approached.
"Satish gave us 'em on tick til tomorrow, giro day innit?"
"Nice one!" Leon waved back through the glass at Satish.
"He gave us some baccy an' aw. Want one?"
Martin stripped the small green pouch of its plastic wrapping and began to roll a cigarette before passing the pouch and the slim blue packet of rolling papers across.
"Where d'you fancy going then?"
"I dunno, Weird Malky's?"
"The paedo?"
"Aye, well he's always got booze in and, for the record, he ain't a paedo. That's just shite talked by folk 'cos he's a bit odd is all."#
Just behind Satish's shop lay Fairmount Park, a sad looking stretch of patchy yellowing grass with a square of concrete littered with broken glass which used to hold climbing frames and slides. The sign beside the sorry looking grey square proudly proclaimed a new park opening soon funded by some company or other in partnership with Glasgow City Council. The sign looked as sorry as the rest of park; it having stood out in the elements for the best part of five years. Leon and Martin had still been in high school when they had pulled down the old play equipment citing "safety concerns" and promising to replace the equipment with modern, up to date "safe" equipment for the children of the Scheme. Now all that remained was an old bench which, for reasons unknown, had escaped the attentions of the supossedly safety conscious city council. Upon that bench now sat Cameron Wiley, one of the local drunks, his head bent low so that from behind he appeared to have been the victim of an amazingly bloodless decapitation. Sat beside him were two large yellow labelled green glass bottles.
"Check it." Leon gestured towards the old drunk. "Shall we go keep the auld cunt company?"
"Aye, why no?"
Leon had always had a soft spot for Cameron Wiley. Before he had screwed himself up on the booze he had been a decent guy. He was only in his late 40s but looked far older. Once, when Leon and Martin had been wains Wiley had saved them from getting collared by the cops when they were playing truant. He had done so by picking a fight with himself outside the shop causing the cops to lose interest in the young lads trying desperately to hide bottles of tonic wine in their jackets. As soon as the cops went to deal with the screaming and shouting drunk the boys had fled. Leon had glanced back as they rounded the corner away from the cops and as he did so he saw Wiley wink at him and smile.
"Afternoon auld yin." Martin and Leon stood over the derelict. He smelled like he had spilled more booze over himself than he had drank since the last time he changed his clothes, which may well have been some time ago. "Whit ye on wi' Cam'?"
Cameron Wiley jumped as though wakened from a deep sleep. A thin black booklet slipped from his hands as he looked up at the boys. His eyes paler than Leon remembered, the colour washed out.
"Wha? Who? Is it? Naw!" Cameron slurred the words and wobbled as though unsteady on his feet, despite being sat down. Placing one grubby hand on the back of the bench he pushed himself up and on to his feet.
"Is that you? Naw, naw, naw. You're lads, no lassies. Are you here?"
Martin, grinning, slapped his hand onto Leon's shoulder. "Auld yin's wrecked. Surprise!"
Wiley glanced at Martin, then at Leon, his eyes narrowed as though trying to focus on the boys.
"You're, you're no, um, you're no him or her. You're no even here." And with that he staggered off back the way the boys had walked.
"Don't think I've ever seen the old pissheid so wasted before." Leon watched as Cameron Wiley wove his way along the cracked and overgrown path. Snatching occasionally at invisible insects in the air about his head.
"Never mind that" Martin lifted the two, unopened, bottles of Buckfast Tonic Wine in either hand. "Score! Screw going tae the paedo's house the now. Let's have these first."
Leon sat in the spot that Cameron had just vacated and took a bottle from Martin. "One fer you, and one fer me!". Leon opened his bottle and took an enormous swallow. An heroic swig as Martin may have put it.
They sat awhile watching the empty park; the occasional ray of light bursting through the clouds and dashing across the park as though the light itself was in a rush to get away from this place and its grey hopelessness. Leon said as much to Martin.
"If there's a bright centre to the universe, my dear Leon, you're on the scheme it's furthest fuckin' from." Martin cackled to himself. "I'm away for a piss." He stood, taking his mostly empty bottle of wine with him. "And I'll be takin' this. I'm no havin' you tanning it whilst I'm at me most vulnerable."
With that he swaggered in the direction of some nearby sickly looking bushes. Leon had once been playing with James Donaldson in the park, when they were 10 or 11 years old, and they had found a huge stack of porno magazines in those same bushes. By the looks of the bushes the wages of sin did not pay well. They had paid Leon and James Donaldson well enough when they had sold the magazines to the highest bidders at school the next day.
Glancing at the floor between his feet he noticed the black booklet that Cameron Wiley had dropped. It had the pattern of the sole of his trainers stamped on the cover in dirt now but was otherwise fine. He picked it up.
Le Roi en Jaune. Leon didn't remember much in the way of French from school but he recognised the word for yellow. Flipping it open he saw that the words inside were in English.
"What's that then?" Martin dropped himself down next to Leon on the bench.
"Fuck knows. Cam' dropped it. Look like a play or something." He passed it to Martin who looked at the cover and passed it right back.
"I can't read French man, can youse?"
"Naw, it's in English inside. Just called something about yellow in French on the cover. Anyway," he rolled the booklet up and stuffed it into his back pocket, "shall we head over to drink some of Malky's booze?" With that he drained the last of his bottle, dropped it on the floor and got to his feet.
"Aye, come on then." Martin stood finishing his wine in a single gulp. "Though if he starts touching me I'm calling Child Line!"
"He's not a paedo! And besides, if he was I think you would be safe from him. You're ugly as fuck an 'aw. I wouldn't nonce you up if were a paedo."
With that they headed across the park towards Malky's flat in the high rise blocks.#
Leon awoke lying on the floor of Malky's flat. The sun, bereft of heat but blinding nonetheless, streaming through his curtainless windows and punching holes of screaming agony straight through his eyes and deep into his brain.
"Aw, my fucking God."
He rolled over and flung his arm across his face to protect himself from the golden needles of fire that were trying to embed themselves deeper and deeper into his head. After laying there for ten minutes groaning and praying to anyone that would listen for either the pain to go away or for someone to kill him outright Leon sat up.
Malky the Paedo's flat was in an even worse state than it normally was. Things appeared to have gotten especially messy last night. Their visit to Malky the not-a-paedo had been well timed as he had, that morning, gotten his sick money and so Martin and Leon had generously offered to go to Satish's for him, thus saving him the effort of walking all the way across the park to pick up booze. Of course they paid themselves a purple can of Tennants Super for the effort and drank that on the way back. After which there had been vodka. Lots, and lots of vodka. Followed by another trip to Satish's just before 10 o'clock for yet more vodka. Then Martin had pulled the booklet Cameron had dropped from Leon's pocket and started reading aloud from it in a pompous faux English accent. Because, so far as Martin was concerned, only English people liked plays - posh English people at that. He had then passed it to Malky who continued reading, and even sang some of it. Leon had taken a turn and then the bottle was passed around again and after that things just went black.
Slowly, very slowly lest he throw up, Leon got to his feet and went for a piss. After he had finished, and assured himself that he wasn't going to throw up, he went back to the living room and checked all the vodka bottles for hair of the dog. Empty, every last one of them. He poked his head into Malky's bedroom and there were Malky and Martin sleeping top and tail in Malky's bed. He tried to take a photograph to send around to everybody but the battery on his phone was completely dead. "Piece of shit", he put it back in his pocket and pulled out a ten pound note. Malky's change from the final trip to Satish's last night. He put it back in his pocket, grabbed his coat and Cam's weird black book and quietly let himself out of the flat.
Leon shut the door quietly behind himself, put his coat on and walked towards the door to the lifts, his trainers squeaking on the cheap tiled flooring. Pulling open the heavy green fire door the stench of piss and stale alcohol hit him bodily and made him retch, bend double, and almost vomit. Standing on the landing, staring directly at him, was Cameron Wiley. A black moth the size of his face fluttering about his head.
"You got here then, aye?"
Leon's hand slipped from the door as his body reeled and he threw up the remnants of the previous night's excess. His mouth and eyes burning from the vodka, tonic wine, and God knows what else that now lay splashed about the floor before him Leon dry heaved once more and then stood straight -his head swimming. He pulled the door open. The landing was empty.
"Cam?" He poked his head through the door. There was no Cameron, no bloody big moth. Not even the smell that had set his stomach churning. Cautiously, one hand on the door frame the other holding the door open, he walked out onto the lifts landing. There was no one there. Opposite the lift doors was the drying area, used more for people storing crap they didn't want to have to take down 14 floors to throw away than for the drying of clothes, into which Cameron could have ducked. The door to the drying area hung slightly ajar.
"Cameron?" Leon reached out and gently pushed the door with the tips of his fingers letting it swing open under its own weight. Stepping into the half light of the drying area he could see that there was no Cameron Wiley in there. Just a worn out sofa, a broken pushchair and a few mouldering cardboard boxes.
Confused and trying to remember if he done anything besides drink too much the previous night Leon backed out onto the landing and called the lift.
Leon leaned against the tarnished checkerplate of the lift wall and closed his eyes, blotches of technicolour static swam in the darkness behind his lids. Each small side to side movement of the lift felt like the carriage was swinging wildly free of the confines of the enclosing lift shaft. Grateful that he had already thrown up his stomach contents Leon opened his eyes. The lift had already reached the ground floor and the doors had opened without him realising. Beyond the doors the entrance hallway was dark, the normally harsh neon strip light in the ceiling was dimmed to a sickly orange-yellow colour and beyond the hallway, through the reinforced glass window of the heavy green metal door Leon could see that the world beyond was dim.
"Fuck this." He hit the door close button and the doors juddered back together. The lift shook for a moment and the doors opened once more onto the dim hallway. Once, twice, three times he tried the door close button and each time the same result. The lift juddered and the doors opened. He backed up to the rear wall of the lift and slid down until he was sat on the floor staring disbelievingly at the tepidly illuminated hallway and the greyer than usual world beyond.
Remembering the staircase Leon rose cautiously to his feet. He may not like the thought of walking up 14 floors, 28 flights of stairs - two per floor, back to Malky's flat but he liked the thought of venturing beyond the confines of the tower block even less. Placing one hand on the door jam he leaned slowly out from the lift looking first to his left and then to his right, the hall was deserted, the door to the staircase was a mere fifteen feet to his right and beyond that the climb to safety, if not sanity, fourteen floors above.
Leon stepped from the lift, the carriage juddered as he stepped onto the the tiled floor of the hall and the doors creaked closed once more. From beyond the closed doors he heard the sound of the lift beginning its ascent.
"Oh, for fucks sake man!" Leon threw his hands to his head before hurriedly pressing the lift call button. He hammered on the button but to no effect. The lift continued its climb and the doors remained closed. Considering whether to wait for the lift or begin his ascent a glance behind him at the unnatural twilight beyond the main door made his mind up for him. He would climb.
Hope you like what you read. :)
Wednesday, 3 December 2014
Be a Bastard this Christmas
That's the message of some homelessness charities and local councils this festive season anyway.
Posters like the one above are becoming regular features of many town and city centres around the UK and that absolutely sickens me. There was a similar campaign against beggars in Leeds about 11 years ago which asked "Would you give a junkie £1 towards his next fix?". Completely ignoring the cold hard fact that by no means all people who are homeless have drug or alcohol issues. One wag in Leeds also highlighted another serious flaw in campaigns against street begging when they defaced the signs in Leeds so that they also read "Or have them mug you later in desperation?"
If someone has gotten to the point in their life where they have to ask for money on the street then the ins and outs of how/why they are in that situation should not be of any concern to us. What should be our concern is helping alleviate the situation of our fellow humans. If someone has to ask for money it should be of no concern why they need it just that we are in a position to help them. What they spend their money on is no more your concern than where your local bar man, doctor, or school teacher spend their money.
At the moment we are facing some of the worst attacks on the living conditions of ordinary people that we have seen in decades. Not only is homelessness skyrocketing, there are nearly 100,00 homeless children in the UK, and the government has criminalised squatting in England and Wales. So now homeless people no longer even have the recourse to shelter in abandoned buildings -a right won by those made homeless due to the bombing campaigns in the Second World War. With the ongoing cuts to benefits and the ever increasing number of people who are finding themselves sanctioned by the Department of Work and Pensions (being denied access to benefits for 3-6 months or more for usually minor infractions or mistakes with benefits claims) we can expect to see more and more people driven onto the streets. Driven to desperation.
I'm extremely poor and am massively underemployed, we somehow manage to scrape by month to month, but from now on, when I can afford it, I'm definitely going to give money to beggars. (Not that I don't already do so, but I'm going to do it more now) I don't care if they spend the money I give them on soup, special brew, strippers, or smack. It's none of my god damn business. What is my business however is the scum bags who are carrying out these attacks on us. They wallow in luxury and decadence* and laugh and jeer whilst they strip away everything we have won from them over the last century.
Seriously. How many more people have to be killed by sanctions or take their own lives due to the prejudices and sanctions of the benefits/housing system before there are politicians hanging from lamp posts all over Whitehall?
My kindness couldn't kill. Their hatred most definitely fucking does. >:(
Posters like the one above are becoming regular features of many town and city centres around the UK and that absolutely sickens me. There was a similar campaign against beggars in Leeds about 11 years ago which asked "Would you give a junkie £1 towards his next fix?". Completely ignoring the cold hard fact that by no means all people who are homeless have drug or alcohol issues. One wag in Leeds also highlighted another serious flaw in campaigns against street begging when they defaced the signs in Leeds so that they also read "Or have them mug you later in desperation?"
If someone has gotten to the point in their life where they have to ask for money on the street then the ins and outs of how/why they are in that situation should not be of any concern to us. What should be our concern is helping alleviate the situation of our fellow humans. If someone has to ask for money it should be of no concern why they need it just that we are in a position to help them. What they spend their money on is no more your concern than where your local bar man, doctor, or school teacher spend their money.
At the moment we are facing some of the worst attacks on the living conditions of ordinary people that we have seen in decades. Not only is homelessness skyrocketing, there are nearly 100,00 homeless children in the UK, and the government has criminalised squatting in England and Wales. So now homeless people no longer even have the recourse to shelter in abandoned buildings -a right won by those made homeless due to the bombing campaigns in the Second World War. With the ongoing cuts to benefits and the ever increasing number of people who are finding themselves sanctioned by the Department of Work and Pensions (being denied access to benefits for 3-6 months or more for usually minor infractions or mistakes with benefits claims) we can expect to see more and more people driven onto the streets. Driven to desperation.
I'm extremely poor and am massively underemployed, we somehow manage to scrape by month to month, but from now on, when I can afford it, I'm definitely going to give money to beggars. (Not that I don't already do so, but I'm going to do it more now) I don't care if they spend the money I give them on soup, special brew, strippers, or smack. It's none of my god damn business. What is my business however is the scum bags who are carrying out these attacks on us. They wallow in luxury and decadence* and laugh and jeer whilst they strip away everything we have won from them over the last century.
Seriously. How many more people have to be killed by sanctions or take their own lives due to the prejudices and sanctions of the benefits/housing system before there are politicians hanging from lamp posts all over Whitehall?
My kindness couldn't kill. Their hatred most definitely fucking does. >:(
Saturday, 29 November 2014
Kids Today eh?
What is it with kids today eh? With all their Snapchats and video games and YouTubers. It's like they don't care about the world around them or about the things going on in it. Isn't it?
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152806752352088
Warning, the above video is full of the colourful British vernacular which some viewers may find offensive.
Well said. Very well said indeed.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152806752352088
Warning, the above video is full of the colourful British vernacular which some viewers may find offensive.
"Who's side are you on?"
"We live in the 21st Century, don't be a racist cunt!"
Well said. Very well said indeed.
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
It's Oppression, Not Privilege
The notion of White Privilege is one that I have had some issues with since I first heard about it about 5 years ago. It's a recent import into left wing, particularly liberal-left wing, political discourse from the USA into the UK. There are a number of reasons that I think that the notion is harmful to anti-racist work, and more broadly working class organisation, in the UK. I'll come to those in a moment.
[caption id="attachment_779" align="aligncenter" width="470"]
Source removed because the original poster is probably completely lovely and I wouldn't want to send douche bags her way.[/caption]
A good friend of mine shared the image above on Facebook today as a reaction to the disgusting goings on around the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson in the USA. I understand what the person is saying here but I don't think that it's an appropriate response.
I, rather flippantly I must admit, commented that rather than being white privilege it's also a case of 'being black anywhere aside from the USA' privilege. There is nowhere else in the world, that I can think of, where the racist murdering of young black people by the state is such an endemic problem. In the UK you are more likely to be murdered by the police for being, or sounding, Irish. And Irish people are, generally, white. Certainly all those murdered by the British police are anyway.
It most certainly is true that, in some areas, young black people are stopped and searched, assaulted, and generally fucked with by the police on a massive scale. However in areas that are less diverse we see young white working class people going through the same harassment and violence that black young people go through. Basically the police seem to hate working class youth and target them as automatic suspects. I know that when I was young we got an inordinate amount of hassle from the police. Stop and searches, getting roughed up and so on.
Racism in Britain seems to work differently to how it works in the USA. In the UK we didn't have segregation, we don't have the recent history of slavery (despite British capitalists getting fat and rich off the slave trade), and racism tends to be as directed to non-British Europeans as much as it is against non-white British people. We have disgusting levels of racism against Polish people and other Eastern European migrants, against Gypsies and travellers, against Irish people. Hell, I've even had someone in the South East of England try to assault me because I'm from Wales. I've also been denied medical care because of how and where I've lived (as a traveller).
So I don't feel that the concept of white privilege can be transposed to this island as the context in which racism occurs is completely different to the USA. I can't comment on how useful a conceptual tool it is in the USA as my knowledge of the States comes purely from the media/internet. It may well be that, due to the recent history of segregation, the concept has a value there that it does not here.
My other issue is wit the wider notion of privileges vs oppressions. The way that I understand the world is that we are the working class. Our class status is defined by our relationship to the means of production and so you're either proletariat or bourgeoisie. We all also experiences our own oppression, both as individuals and communities, in particular ways. So a black person or a traveller or an Irish person is likely to experience the oppression of capitalism differently to a white English person, a woman to a man, a gay person to a straight person and so on. This is because the ruling class encourages the fracturing of the working class through the promotion of bigotry and hatred. Using them as weapons against us. Oppressing us with them. It isn't a privilege to not be the subject of a given oppression.
Which bring me on to my next point. Class struggle should promote unity within the class by seeking to destroy the weapons with which the ruling class divides us. The politics of privilege turns the direction of the focus towards the individual rather than outwards towards society. It is concerned with the individual 'checking' their privilege rather than working to address issues in society. It is navel gazing and narcissistic. It doesn't matter a jot if all the liberals and lefties of the world recognise their privilege as there is nothing that they can do to address it. How does one give up being white? Or male? Or straight? Or cis? It isn't possible.
The divisions that permeate society, and which are used by the ruling class to divide us, need to be addressed and recognised for what they are. Are symptom of hierarchical class society. They can not be done away with without doing away with capital and the state and capital and the state can not be done away with without doing away with these oppressions.
The politics of privilege, however, has little to do with the creation of a fair and just world. It attempts to change the nature of these oppressions, warping them into a tool that reinforces and encourages these divisions. Which should be of little surprise as it is a politics born of academia.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, all these things need to be addressed head on. They need to be destroyed by working class organisation that ignores these divisions and treats us all as workers who all share the same interest.
We shouldn't be worrying about whether X has Y privilege or how that makes their experience of capital worse than Z's. It isn't a competition. As workers we should focus on that which unites us because, at the end of the day, that's the only way we're going to be able to do away with the forces of oppression.
…
Oh, and one more thing. It also bugs the hell out of me that white privilege seems, from what I've seen online, to be a way for white people to turn the focus of the discussion of the experience of racism back onto themselves. Rather than actually engaging with people it seems that the modern white proponent of white privilege wants to make sure that it is acknowledged that they are acknowledging their whiteness and LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME! So, with the picture at the top, we see yet another white person who chooses to, rather than showing solidarity with the people of Ferguson, make it all about herself.
Gah. And so, that was reason 47645 that I decided to have naff all to do with the left...
[caption id="attachment_779" align="aligncenter" width="470"]
Source removed because the original poster is probably completely lovely and I wouldn't want to send douche bags her way.[/caption]A good friend of mine shared the image above on Facebook today as a reaction to the disgusting goings on around the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson in the USA. I understand what the person is saying here but I don't think that it's an appropriate response.
I, rather flippantly I must admit, commented that rather than being white privilege it's also a case of 'being black anywhere aside from the USA' privilege. There is nowhere else in the world, that I can think of, where the racist murdering of young black people by the state is such an endemic problem. In the UK you are more likely to be murdered by the police for being, or sounding, Irish. And Irish people are, generally, white. Certainly all those murdered by the British police are anyway.
It most certainly is true that, in some areas, young black people are stopped and searched, assaulted, and generally fucked with by the police on a massive scale. However in areas that are less diverse we see young white working class people going through the same harassment and violence that black young people go through. Basically the police seem to hate working class youth and target them as automatic suspects. I know that when I was young we got an inordinate amount of hassle from the police. Stop and searches, getting roughed up and so on.
Racism in Britain seems to work differently to how it works in the USA. In the UK we didn't have segregation, we don't have the recent history of slavery (despite British capitalists getting fat and rich off the slave trade), and racism tends to be as directed to non-British Europeans as much as it is against non-white British people. We have disgusting levels of racism against Polish people and other Eastern European migrants, against Gypsies and travellers, against Irish people. Hell, I've even had someone in the South East of England try to assault me because I'm from Wales. I've also been denied medical care because of how and where I've lived (as a traveller).
So I don't feel that the concept of white privilege can be transposed to this island as the context in which racism occurs is completely different to the USA. I can't comment on how useful a conceptual tool it is in the USA as my knowledge of the States comes purely from the media/internet. It may well be that, due to the recent history of segregation, the concept has a value there that it does not here.
My other issue is wit the wider notion of privileges vs oppressions. The way that I understand the world is that we are the working class. Our class status is defined by our relationship to the means of production and so you're either proletariat or bourgeoisie. We all also experiences our own oppression, both as individuals and communities, in particular ways. So a black person or a traveller or an Irish person is likely to experience the oppression of capitalism differently to a white English person, a woman to a man, a gay person to a straight person and so on. This is because the ruling class encourages the fracturing of the working class through the promotion of bigotry and hatred. Using them as weapons against us. Oppressing us with them. It isn't a privilege to not be the subject of a given oppression.
Which bring me on to my next point. Class struggle should promote unity within the class by seeking to destroy the weapons with which the ruling class divides us. The politics of privilege turns the direction of the focus towards the individual rather than outwards towards society. It is concerned with the individual 'checking' their privilege rather than working to address issues in society. It is navel gazing and narcissistic. It doesn't matter a jot if all the liberals and lefties of the world recognise their privilege as there is nothing that they can do to address it. How does one give up being white? Or male? Or straight? Or cis? It isn't possible.
The divisions that permeate society, and which are used by the ruling class to divide us, need to be addressed and recognised for what they are. Are symptom of hierarchical class society. They can not be done away with without doing away with capital and the state and capital and the state can not be done away with without doing away with these oppressions.
The politics of privilege, however, has little to do with the creation of a fair and just world. It attempts to change the nature of these oppressions, warping them into a tool that reinforces and encourages these divisions. Which should be of little surprise as it is a politics born of academia.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, all these things need to be addressed head on. They need to be destroyed by working class organisation that ignores these divisions and treats us all as workers who all share the same interest.
We shouldn't be worrying about whether X has Y privilege or how that makes their experience of capital worse than Z's. It isn't a competition. As workers we should focus on that which unites us because, at the end of the day, that's the only way we're going to be able to do away with the forces of oppression.
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Oh, and one more thing. It also bugs the hell out of me that white privilege seems, from what I've seen online, to be a way for white people to turn the focus of the discussion of the experience of racism back onto themselves. Rather than actually engaging with people it seems that the modern white proponent of white privilege wants to make sure that it is acknowledged that they are acknowledging their whiteness and LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME! So, with the picture at the top, we see yet another white person who chooses to, rather than showing solidarity with the people of Ferguson, make it all about herself.
Gah. And so, that was reason 47645 that I decided to have naff all to do with the left...
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