Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Live from our man in Torridon

I'm sitting by a driftwood fire, miles from the nearest people, thirty feet from the sea, my tent pitched on the dunes behind me. I'm drinking red wine from the bottle (hey, if I can be bothered to carry it...) with two dogs curled up a few feet away (they did 22 miles yesterday, and spent most of today in the sea) and I haven't seen so many stars above me in a decade. The lighthouses on the Hebrides are glowing across the Minch, and, for now, all is well with the world. N.B. The Blackberry does not necessarily enhance one's sense of isolation.

Book lists

From Tabula Rasa, my annual meme.  Based on some list of 100 popular books (or ones that people pretend that they have enjoyed in order to impress the survey-taker), the point is to bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you loved, italicise the ones you intend to read and strike out the ones you have no intention to read (or to read again, if bolded).  However, my blog does not support the deprecated strike-out tags, and I have no intention to mess about with inline css, so I've indicated these with a  "[NO]", instead.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling [NO]
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman [NO]
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens [NO]
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare(well, including the sonnets but barring several of the more obscure plays: people who say otherwise are lying!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell [NO]
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens [NO]
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [NO] (well, I could read bits again, but I'd rather read three other books!)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll [NO]
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens [NO]
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres [NO]
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden [NO]
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown [NO]
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood [NO]
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens [NO]
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding [NO]
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens [NO]
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt [NO]
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens [NO]
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton [NO] (I'm a little old...)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks.
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl [NO]
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [NO]

I'm interested by a couple of patterns: I'm pretty widely-read in the "greats", but less so in modern literary works.  Thus, I have read all but six of the first thirty. This is largely because of a deliberate decision to read "the canon".  There are three books on here that I have never heard of (82, 86 and 95).

I dislike Dickens, as will be aparent from all the "[NO]" tags.  I'm also not a huge fan of the wilfully downbeat ending that so delights the ladies, and so The Handmaid’s Tale, Memoirs of a Geisha, Gone With The Wind and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin are all doomed to make one less sale each.  And I had to watch a friend, whose opinion I trust, grind her way through A Suitable Boy, and am not at all convinced, from her description, that it is worth the time out of my life needed to read it.

I was already aware that there are weaknesses in my reading, particularly among Russian and French authors, which I am remedying.  However, I suspect that TR is right to suspect that this is from the BBC's "Big Read", as English-language books are heavily over-represented.

Finally, I wonder if the list has been a little altered in transmission?  Hamlet, for instance, appears at number 98.  This despite the appearance of Shakespeare's complete works 80-odd places higher (laughably enough: even I have not read the lot, and I doubt if 0.5% of people have, even in his native country).  I suspect that an "official" list would agglomerate such entries.

And no, I have not underlined the Bible, despite my religion.  It would be mere duty that made me claim that I enjoyed much of it as a book.  Have you ever read Leviticus, after all?

The French Military are Back in Business

The French military, desperately short of good results recently, launched a new offensive today ...and shot seventeen of their own fans.

The fact that so many stationary targets were injured but none killed does point up worrying problems with weapons training.  On the upside, I think we definitely have to count this as a French military victory.  After several centuries, it looks like they're back on a roll.  Unless a German in the audience promptly ran out and beat crap out of them in response.

Hills and Hurricanes

Yesterday saw me complete the Ben Lawers group of mountains, with an ascent of Meall nan Tarmachan - the Hill of the Ptarmigan - at the western edge of the range.

A look at the map in the link above will reveal that the hill has crags and cliffs all along its eastern side.  Those become rather taller and nearer in the mind when the wind is a westerly force 8, gusting as high as force 9 or even 10 at the very top and leaving one very aware of being near such a perilous lee shore.

It was typical Scottish mountain weather: a week after midsummer, and we (I had both dogs with me) set off in drizzle.  This became heavier and heavier rain as I neared the subsidiary summit to the south-east of the Munro itself, and the heavy cloud cover descended as low as 500 metres, leaving visibility at only twenty or so metres at times.  On the lower, 923 metre hilltop I met some English girls, well kitted-out for the weather but a bit nervous in the worsening conditions, who asked if the peak would be dangerous, and what the weather would do.  If they thought that a person alive could predict the weather on the Scottish high tops then they were clearly new to the experience.  I told them that, in the next hour, they would probably get snow, glorious sunshine, driving rain and heavy fog in roughly equal quantities and, if sleet counts as snow, then I was proven quite the prophet.

The final ascent of Tarmachan is, however, well-protected from westerlies: a snug - if rather fierce - chimney leads up below the ridge, and then only the last hundred metres or so are exposed, as one doubles-back to the south to gain the summit.  Thus, I went from tranquil, misty peace to roaring, sub-hurricane gales that threatened to pluck me off the hill and grant me a more rapid descent than I desired.  After hanging around on the peak for as long as was bearable, optimistically waiting for the clouds to break, the weather cleared when I was a mere twenty metres below the hilltop: frustrating since the view from the top is, you just know, always going to be the best one.  I then realised that both the dogs and I had, when on the summit, been a mere six or seven metres upwind of three sheep without so much as suspecting their presence.  To get an idea, here are some other people on the same hill, in only slightly better visibility:

Most of Tarmachan is, in fact, sealed off from sheep and deer and the benefits are beginning to show, with arctic flowers and montane birch beginning to flourish here and there.  The more immediate advantage of this is that the hounds got to run free for hours, sprinting up and down the grassy slopes with their usual zeal.

Oh, and by the time I got off the hill it was beautifully sunny, and I spent the evening outside, relaxing with a well-deserved bottle of Hoegaarden.  Scotland: if you don't like the weather, just come back in fifteen minutes.

As mentioned, I've now been up all eight peaks in the Lawers range in the last six weeks or so, and loved the experience.  I adore the Perthshire hills: generally grassy or mossy mountains, often surrounded by crags.  Where now?  Mheal Glas and Beinn Cheathaich, just twenty miles south-west, offer a decent challenge together from the south-eastern approach, requiring a 30km hike by the time one returns to the road-end.  Or, if I ave less time, perhaps the short, sharp shocks of Stuchd an Lochain or Meall Ghaordaidh to the west will do.  And I still have to return to the two hills that have so far defeated me: Schiehallion (which I will wait and hopefully again climb in snow, to whittle down the numbers on the hill) and craggy Stuc a Chroin, which I will not, this time, attempt from the bealach in dense fog.

Meall Buidhe - A Walk in the Park

Since I had the pleasure of my wife's company for this weekend's climbing, I decided to tackle one (and only one) of Scotland's easier Munros: Meall Buidhe.

The hill is a bit too easy by itself, so we took a circular route up to it, over a couple of subsidiary peaks.  The sheep were all in the glen for the shearing, so the dogs were able to run free for the full ascent and descent (collies are a bit more interested in sheep than the sheep really enjoy).  In fact, they found a fawn at one point, hiding in the heather in the Coire Beidhe while its mother watched nervously from a couple of hundred metres away: it was absolutely beautiful, and the dogs were no more than curious, pointing from a few metres away (collies can be trained to do just about anything if you find the right encouragement), but I called them away in seconds and made an uncomfortably rapid ascent of the corrie to our left, so as to let the mother return quickly.  The fact that it was remaining hidden in the heather and grass while its mother was away means that the fawn was less than a week old: until then the mothers leave the young in order to feed, although the fawns, none too keen on being left behind like this, sometimes have to be pushed to the ground by the mothers to stop them attempting to follow.

Anyway, from there it was up Meall a Phuille, itself forty or so metre short of being a Munro, but which gave a wonderful view of the Meall Buidhe ridge, lined with crags and cliffs to the east and stretching for over two kilometres to the isolated summit of Garbh Mheall to the north. A short descent across rolling, mossy moorland and then it was a brisk little climb up a subsidiary, unnamed peak and onto the ridge proper.

The wind was gusting heavily from the north, and we could see weather sweeping along on either side of the ridge: sheeting rain in vertical pulses a hundred or so metres apart within a kilometre to east and west, but we had a dry walk along the ridge, a gentle slope falling away to the west into the Rannoch Moor and more dramatic views to the east into the corries.  As we reached the summit itself, the clouds broke and we had wonderful views of Schiehallion to the east, the forbidding profile of Ben Alder's cliffs to the north, and Buchaille Etive Mor to the west, guarding the entrance to Glen Coe.  From here, we were able to plan a possible hike into Rannoch Forest for later in the summer, pointing out possible camping spots on the banks of the Duibhe Bheag as it winds through the woods.

One strange feature of the ridge is that its northern end - a full fifteen metres lower - seems to loom above the actual summit.  I would have sworn that the two heights were reversed, if I didn't have a map and compass.

At this point, the clouds closed in on us, and we had to turn back before tackling the most northerly subsidiary top, the isolated dome of Garbh Mheail to the north.  This is a shame, as it is a lovely hill, surrounded by crags for about nine-tenths of its flanks, but a hill with only a fifteen-metre-wide escape route and with cliffs in every other direction is not the place to get caught in low visibility, and especially not with two dogs intent on exploring every steep plummet in search of their beloved patches of snow.

Sure enough, we were assailed by rain and hail on the way back off the hill, although it lasted only for ten minutes or so, and barely had time to make me regret wearing shorts before it stopped again.  By the time we got back to the car for the hundred-mile drive back to Edinburgh I was dry, and not particularly tired.  After the multi-peak odysseys of previous weeks, my legs weren't even a little stiff the next day.  But my accumulated ascent for the last three outings has been almost exactly 3,300 metres, so I am a third of the way to my target for the year.  Next, I think, it will be back the Ben Lawers area for the final peak in that range: Meall nan Tarmachan.

Five Munros in a Day

In Scotland, the highest mountains - those over 3000 feet (914 metres) in altitude - are known as Munros.  These 288 (it varies, depending on revisions of the list) tops range in difficulty from gentle (Ben Chonzie) to decidedly unpleasant (ascending the Great Stone Chute in Corrie Lagan).  After doing a few walks in the borders while on holiday last week, I had a hankering to climb a Munro again, after failing to do so at all last year.  Having initially considered a second attempt on Schiehallion, from which I had to turn back in heavy snow last time when only a few hundred feet from the summit, I plumped for Ben Lawers, the tenth highest mountain of the lot.

Feature creep began to set in at this point.  Although it is possible to ascend Ben Lawers by itself, by using the track in Coire Odhar, that is a dreary trudge compared to first climbing Bheinn Ghlas (1103 metres) then following the ridge over to Ben Lawers (1214m) itself .  Then, a third Munro can be added to the list by crossing the subsidiary top Creag an Fhithich (1047m) and grinding one's way up the pyramidical An Stuc (1118m).  At this point, completionism sets in, and the slightly exposed scramble down An Stuc's north-eastern crags to regain exactly the same height on Meall Garbh (1118m) seems bearable when, as the crow flies, the distance between the two peaks is only about 700 metres.  Finally, another few hundred metres of descent and ascent in order to bag Meall Greigh (1001m), only a little over three and a half kilometres to the east, appears more palatable given the gentle, rolling nature of the climb in contrast to the craggy, steep nature of what went before.

So it is that the walk grew to almost 25km and five Munros in the end, and that is why I thought I would have to wake up Seileighe, my collie, with a glass of cold water to the face, such was her exhaustion.  She had been delighted by nine hours spent racing up slopes, eyeing up sheep, standing terrifyingly close to cliff edges and gambolling excitedly in snow banks (the current pictures are not mine - I'll replace them with my own ones later -  but the second was closer in terms of snow cover), but it turns out I am a better judge of my own limits than her.  A proud boast: I am better at long term planning than a 22-month-old collie.

Typically for the Scottish hills, I set off on a bright, sunny morning and found myself finishing the second peak in snowfall.  Such were the exertions involved in almost 1.7km of vertical ascent over the full circuit, however, that I spent most of it in only two, ultralight layers, despite the sub-zero conditions.  I cannot pretend not to have been encouraging the dog to drink heavily and often from the water I was carrying for her: the extra couple of kilos of water for the two of us seemed awfully heavy by the time I reached the midway point of the ridge.

The worst part was the return slog: I had no fellow-driver to leave a car in Lawers, and so was necessarily committed to 12 kilometres of return on foot from the summit of Meall Greigh, following the line of old shielings below Lochan nan Cat, Coire Cireineach and Creag Dhubh.  A centuries' old track could be traced along the hill for the last hour and a half, but it was soaked and boggy, features exacerbated by the fact that I had decided to break in a new pair of boots on this hike.  By the time I crossed the Edramucky Burn and the car park by the mountain rescue post had come into view I was leg weary and (as Seileighe could testify to) in a foul mood.

But there are many great delights to climbing.  One is the view from the top, accompanied by the world's best-tasting sandwiches.  Another is the sense of achievement.  Most important, however, is the heavenly sequence of post-walk events: changing from boots into trainers; perhaps dabbling bare feet in a burn; remembering you had soup in a thermos in the boot; getting home and sitting in a comfortable seat; sinking into a hot bath; blessed sleep.

I feel great now: a few blisters and decidedly sore knees (that's three hundred and fifty-odd games of rugby for you), but almost no stiffness at all.  I'm already eyeing up my maps and Cicerone guidebook and planning Sunday's ascent.

My New Moneymaker

I have had harsh things to say about L. Ron Hubbard in the past, but I was perhaps too quick to judge.  So what if he made up a bunch of dreadful space opera sci-fi, slapped the title "religion" on it, and profited from the gullibility and desperation of society's less bright individuals?  He was a canny businessman, and that appeals to the thrifty Scot in me.

However, Scientology has always had a limited appeal in Scotland, perhaps because our smaller population must by necessity have a smaller pool of people with IQs below 70 for them to draw upon.  But my own feeling is that the American-style, new-age language used by the Scientology movement sits ill with the dour Scot on the number thirty-one omnibus.  What is needed, therefore, is localisation.

I am aware that the Church of Scientology is fiercely protective of their name and materials: any money-driven organisation needs to protect their IP, no matter how pernicious or fictitious that is.

It is therefore with great pride and a hungry desire for profits that I announce the foundation of the "Kirk of Physicsology".  Our uniquely Scottish approach promises you that you can become a super-powered Operating McThetan, but that you probably won't because you don't deserve it.

We will teach that originally everyone had the awesome mental abilities that we offer, but that Margaret Thatcher had them shut down in the 80s.  And that they were invented by a Scot, just like steam engines, televisions and dragons, but that the bastarding English went and stole them from us.

Our auditing procedure for assessing the readiness to ascend to new levels will consist of aggressive demands as to "why you think you're so bloody special?  What makes you better than anyone else?" with assessments reading "Honestly, who does she think she is, anyway?  Ah kent hur faither."

Eventually, neophytes will be told that they are cleared, and that they now have powers equivalent even to Tam "Wee Man" Cruise.  However, they will be warned immediately that should they use them then they'll doubtless pay for it later.

Like the scientologists, the Kirk of Physicsology hopes to make some high-profile recruitments in media and films.  I can reveal that we are in talks with the Krankies, and that we have high hopes to snag one of the Jimmy Shand ensemble in the near future.  On the promise of influence in the industry and easy access to funding for bad films, the entire cast of Take the High Road signed up some time ago.

Shame on Brown and on England

Those who know me are aware that my views are hardly those of a right-on, Guardian-reading liberal.

However, to turn on the television today and see Gordon Brown whoring out the city of London to the single most murderous regime in the world today - China - in order to run propaganda for their brutal state and its oppression of Tibet live on rolling BBC news was sickening.

I knew Dr Brown, the father of our current Prime Minister.  He was a quiet, caring and principled minister in the Church of Scotland.  And while I am sure that he would be tremendously proud of his son's achievements, I wonder just what he would have thought of Brown's decision to give his stamp of approval, grinning on the steps of Downing Street, to an oppressive state run by geriatric killers and corrupt military-industrial concerns.  A decision informed not by principle but by import-export agreements, political prestige and by mutual back-scratching over London's 2012 chance to feed at the same trough.

And useful idiot after useful idiot is wheeled out to stand against a background of dancing morons in fancy dress to proclaim that "politics shouldn't interfere with the Olympics."  No politics, please... while Prime Ministers and ambassadors for murderers bare their teeth in ugly smiles for the cameras.  And a team of tracksuited Chinese Ministry for State Security  thugs are allowed to parade throught the heart of our capital, while their colleagues round up monks and peasants in a small, faraway country of which, it seems, Brown knows little.  And cares less.  While the BBC - the BBC - tightens the focus of its cameras each time crowds of protestors would otherwise be in shot on this jolly tour of old London town.

Never forget that the Chinese communist party has killed tens of millions of its own citizens since taking power.  Hitler was a lightweight pretender next to the Communist Party of China.  Even the Holocaust pales compared to what Mao and his successors have done.  Does that seem like hyperbole to you?  Then your historical knowledge is lacking.  Does it seem tangential?  Then you must love sports a very great deal to wish to banish all thought of how they are being used.

And how fitting, therefore, that the "eternal Olympic flame", like the tradition of the relay of the Olympic torch, was invented not by Greeks but by Hitler's National Socialists.

I'm a Scot, and one of my countrymen once spoke about far away trouble, using China as an example.  Read what economist Adam Smith said, and each time he speaks about an earthquake in China, think instead of state-run murder in Tibet.  And each time he talks of losing a finger, think of Brown worrying about his precious 2012 Olympics:

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

Playing with music - Bach, Tool and more

I listen to a lot of music, by a lot of bands.  Every now and then, every few years, a song truly strikes me, to the extent that I (with my butterfly's attention span) can listen to it dozens of times in a week, finding new twists, harmonies, intricacies of rhythm and nuances of lyric.  It's quite a 17-year-old thing to do, I suppose, but one I am glad not to have grown out of in the decades that have followed.  I think that the songs that have attracted me like this down throug the years tend towards several features: playfulness, complexity and length (never mind the quality, feel the width!)  They tend to be in minor keys, often with either a drone (it's the influence of the bagpipes, I tell you), repeated figures, or a middle-eastern feeling.

I suppose the first one I can remember was when I was 10 or 11, and was Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.  Not a bad place to start, I'd say.  And yet this apparently complex piece is (while technically gruelling to play and often astonishingly modern in its use of chords and shapes bordering on atonalism) strikingly simple to understand, even if you know nothing much about music and can't read a jot of notation.

One fun way to see the trickery and complexity of this piece, without needing to read music, is to look at this version of it.  Here, you can see a visualisation of each note, of the figures and patterns Bach uses, and spot where they reappear, transposed or reversed.  You can see the shapes of the music, especially in the fugue section.  It starts at around 2:50, and then you immediately see the same figure (series or pattern of notes) repeated with the right hand (the top rows, in brown) seconds later.  Then again at 3:13 in purple, and again and again throughout.  Look at 3:46, where the bottom pattern (played with the feet, here) lies under a variation on the same shapes being played simultaneously with the right hand (at the top).

See how striking the patterns are when displayed in visual form: the human eye can see the curves, twists and sinusoidal patterns of the sounds, and understand them better: look at the flowing falls in the notes at 4:06, or the transpositions of the regular rise and fall at 4:22.  And if you ever wanted to understand suspended notes (where a chord sounds like a dischord - jarring and incomplete, then resolves itself into something complete and pleasing) then go to 8:07 and watch the slowly resolving series of chords.

The same formalism and mathematical playfulness of the music that attracted modernists like Berg to Bach also make it easier to see just what he is up to in this format.

Anyway, more to come.  I don't want to make this too terrifying a wall of :words:  Next up, Tool's 10,000 Days (Wings for Marie Pt2) and A Perfect Circle's Judith.  Can you possibly wait?

Old Joke Time

Since it is topical again, an old joke

The scene is Kimberley, South Africa, and we fnid our protagonists far below ground, mining for precious metals in a four-foot seam, amidst stultifying heat and horrendous working conditions.  The two - Makhenkesi and Thabo - have known each other for years.  Suddenly, the roof of the tunnel collapses, and a huge boulder crushes Thabo's leg, damaging it beyond repair.  His friend struggles to drag him clear, and the two slump against the wall of the cave.

"I'm finished," says Thabo to his companion.  "My life is at an end.  Who would want a one-legged gold-digger?"

Suddenly, another miner runs up. "Thabo!  Come quickly!  Paul McCartney is on the phone for you!"

...or, "Why My Way is Better Than His"

Life happens the wrong way round.

If life happened the right way round, I would have remembered my cat Piglet for all my life, ever since my old age.  Today would have been a special day that I had looked forward to all that time, and I would have watched in joy as the vet drew the massive dose of anaesthetic out of her little paw, replaced the fur where the needle had gone in, and presented her back to me with a smile.

I would have taken her home, laughing.  The first couple of days would have been a bit unpleasant, as she bled from her mouth within minutes of getting back from the vet, and was sick with blood last night, but I would have known that the cancer would slowly shrink and disappear over the following months, until she was right as rain and the discomfort gone.  She would still have been quite old, but I could have watched in pleasure as, with passing months and years, she moved more and more freely, growing younger and more kittenish, healthier and stronger.

And then, one day, quite unexpectedly, she would vanish.  But I would not yet have known her by then, so I couldn't have any regrets.  Not when I was busily looking forward to meeting my grandfather for the first time in only a few months.

I would have known of her for exactly the same amount of my life, but as a treat to be anticipated, and not a loss to be mourned.  Not a source of tears.  Not a joy gone forever.

Instead, today is the last day I will ever have stroked her or held her, and I could do nothing to save her or to make her better.  And that is why my way is better than God's.

Gimme Free Stuff Amazon kthxbye

I just received an entirely welcome email from Amazon, which boiled down to "we wish to give you three free things a month".  OK, not quite free.  But close.

I sometimes review stuff on Amazon, and people, in the main, seem to find what I say in my reviews to be fairly useful.  People can vote on a review to say that they find it helpful or unhelpful, and I've got something like a 97% "helpful" rating.  I'm moderately confident that the couple of people who have said "unhelpful" simply disagreed with my critical reviews of their favourite bands' latest releases.

Anyway, it turns out that once you reach a certain threshold Amazon checks your postings and might invite you into their Amazon Vine program.  In Vine, you get sent a catalogue or products - books, DVDs, games, electrical goods etc - every month.  If you see anything you fancy, you can order up to three of those items and they are sent to you, completely free.  This happens every month.  Amazon, in return, asks that you review the items, and promises that your review - good or bad - will be spotlighted, without editing or alteration.

Given that I like free stuff, that I enjoy writing reviews, and that I can knock out an edited five-hundred word review inside 40 minutes in my lunch hour, I fail to see the immediate downside.

Your Ears Will Thank Me

I've paid my dues.  I've written lengthy articles often enough.  Now I get to make some nice, content-lite posts about stuff I think is awesome.  There's my justification.  First up, music.  Plus, I watch my search logs: this will easily reach 4000 direct hits in the month after I publish it, and sometimes a boy likes an audience.  So, a bunch of songs I think are particularly fine, and which I can find on YouTube.

Stinkfist - Tool.  Some of the most beautiful music I know of being made right now, tied as closely as  anything i can think of to as over-arching design element in their sound, videos, live sets and more.  I know someone who once watched a stack of four or five of these on MTV2 late one night, and says that she began to have a grasp of just what they were about.  In the morning, however, this sanity-blasting knowledge was gone.  If someone was to sit down and watch all Tool's videos in one sitting the effect would probably be not unlike reading the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Al'Hazred, with super-explanatory Cliff notes.  Why not give it a try?  Aenima.  Parabola.  Schism.  Vicarious. See the odd one out there?

FEAR - Ian Brown.  Could so easily be Golden Gaze, or the Be There [edit - fuller version now] collaboration with Unkle (who also worked with Brown when remixing FEAR).  Ian Brown has an incredible, outstanding record of work, whether it is solo, in the Stone Roses, or in collaboration with others.  I'm not a huge fan of some of his album-fillers, but he can create pure gold in singles.

An Eye for an Eye - Unkle.  Yes, I couldn't keep him out.  He is usually provocative in his videos (see Be There, above, or Rabbit in Your Headlights, with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke) but this is in another league.  I don't usually like stuff as unrelentingly sad as this gorgeous but disturbing video, but it is too wonderful for me to eschew.

Dayvan Cowboy - Boards of Canada.  I harbour more fondness than most for Leadburn and Howgate, but this beautiful, poignant instrumental piece is exactly what you don't expect to spring from the Penicuik area.  But the band are indeed based out of a refurbished nuclear bunker in the Pentland Hills.  From their Campfire Headphase album.  The first footage is from the .  The shot of the dolphin playing in the surf at around 3:15 onwards gives me a cold rush of joy every time I see it (and alienates me a little more from Japanese fishermen with each viewing).

Devil's Eyes - Buck 65.  I bet the record company begged them not to put in the first minute of this video.  As it was, almost no TV channel played the first part, skipping instead to the song proper.  And yet Michael 'Boss Cracker' Jackson gets that weird bit of him on top of the car played?  I ask you...

Call the Ships to Port - Covenant.  They used to be mad-eyed goths.  Now they are cool, techno-goths.

Another Body Murdered - Faith No More and the Boo Ya Tribe.  I honestly think that the original soundtrack from this dreadful, dreadful film (Judgement Night) nonetheless played a not-insignificant role in the rise of nu-metal with its theme of rap/metal crossover.  Each song was a collaboration between one guitar band and one rap act.  Anything that can bring the Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul onto the same album as Slayer and Cypress Hill has to be worth a listen.

My Kingdom - Future Sound Of London.  I've loved this silly, ultra-modernist video for years.  It always felt very Gibsonian.  I kinda like the imagery around the 1:30 mark onwards: it is rather like I imagine an encounter with UFOs on earth actually would be: utterly foreign and alien, incapable of interaction, unaware of any human ideas of hiding or graduality: just there.   I also always wanted to start a tribute band called Future Sound of Harthill.

The Mercy Seat - Johnny Cash.  This is one of the series of cover versions that Cash did in the last few years of his life where, merely by performing a variety of great songs by modern writers, he revealed startling new sides of each.  This is, of course, one of the more obvious of the tracks he chose.  Contrast Nine Inch Nails' track Hurt with Cash's cover: a heartbreaking piece featuring he and June Carter shortly before their deaths.

Aisha - Death in Vegas.  This is a superb song.  The voiceover (slightly accelerated in this video version, unfortunately) is by Iggy Pop, and his voice is wonderfully fitting.  The video got banned in an age when such things are very hard to achieve.

Teardrop - Massive Attack.  This is another collaboration, this time between MA and the vocalist from the Cocteau Twins, Elizabeth Fraser (another Edinburgh link in the list!).  As such it is something of a rarity, in that Liz sings in English, as opposed to the personal made-up dialect she used in the bulk of Cocteau Twins songs, and which sounded deceptively like English but, on closer examination, never was. As an aside, the "black flowers blossom" line presses quite the button with me, since it reminds me of the Gaia-explanation in Edge of Darkness, from when I was a child and a nuclear war and winter was a terrifying, entrancing possibility.  Teardrop edged out Karmacoma, featuring Tricky on vocals and a far better video.  But only just.  Also recommended: Inertia Creeps and Angel.

Vagabonds - New Model Army.  After all these tremendously expensive videos (I never knew where the money for FSOL or Unkle extravaganzas came from) here is the absolute opposite of the scale, from a band named after after Cromwellian military reforms and who in the late 80s were already standing in the ground only now occupied by today's anti-capitalist movement.  Not that I hold with all that grebo-hippy nonsense...

Why I am Unwelcome at the Party

Ticketmaster, who apparently do something magical with tickets to justify a 20% increase in price from what is printed on the bit of paper itself, just emailed me to "invite [me] to book tickets for Marilyn Manson's autumn tour of the UK".

There are two difficulties here.  The first, and most obvious, is that Mr Manson will be playing at the Braehead Arena, which has the misfortune to sit on the periphery of that drug-laden hive of scum and villainy which history will later judge harshly, simply for being Paisley.  I like every single one of the tires on my car.  I like them as individuals, and have no desire to donate a single one to Jimmy Skeng of 27a Crapheed Road, PA3 2EJ.

Perhaps more importantly, I have no desire to attend a soiree at which I would be patently unwelcome.  You see, dear reader, Marilyn (I feel I can call him that, after all that we went through together) and I share a dark episode in our conjoined lives: one of which he has never spoken, and which I only now feel able to share with the world.  I only hope that he can forgive me for breaking our bond of silence.  But the time to tell this story has, I feel, arrived.

It is necessary, gentle friend (for I look on you now as the closest of bosom-friends, in whom I can confide even this inglorious tale), for me to to take you by the hand and lead you up through the years.  Back we wander, leaving behind us the traumatic experiences of 9/11, into a gentler world concerned mainly with plaid shirts, Starbucks coffee and how to get a midi-based Spice Girls ring tone for their Nokia cellphones.  For any Americans present, this was far, far in the history of your country: very nearly in the fabled days when OJ Simpson and Tonya Harding stalked the earth.

In this one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-sixth year of our Lord, I found myself in the royal borough of Glasgow: not something of which I am now proud, but my twenties were an experimental era, and experimentation implies mistakes.  Do not judge me, please.

To be exact, I found myself in The Garage, there to hear an exciting young popular beat combo who had seen fit to name themselves Marilyn Manson.  I felt that "Marilyn and the Mansons" would have been more appropriate for an aspiring four-piece, just setting off on their musical journey, but they seemed intent on differentiating themselves from the greats, and who can blame them, flushed as they were with the exuberance of youth?  No doubt the name arose during a marathon bout os exposure to the jazz salts.

The popular press, ever in search of a simple story with which to amuse the lumpen mass which comprises their readership, had painted young Brian "Marilyn" Warner, his friend Jeordie "Twiggy" Osborne White and their various androgynous cohorts as dark lords of evil, jaded libertines of the most violently excessive sort, who would be virtually guaranteed to indulge in the most unnatural and disturbing acts in what was promoted as a nothing less than a mixture of all the most unpleasant layers of Dante's L'Inferno.  You can imagine, gentle reader, with what trepidation I approached the unobtrusive discotheque within which the evening's fateful events would be played out.  Fool that I was, I had chosen to bring with me a young lady who would, one day, become my wife.  At the time, I worried that I might regret exposing her to promised to be no less than the Book of Revelations itself played out in real-time.  I speak, of course, of the promotional tour for the musicians' new long-player, Antichrist Superstar.

Mr Warner had done little to dampen the fevered expectation which his theatrical agents had sought to provoke.  The Daily Express demanded he be banned.  The Evening Standard stopped just short of calling for his hanging (unusual liberalism on their part which I cannot, to this day, explain).  The Daily Mail devoted several pages of their colour supplement to wondering whether Prince Philip might not be planning to hire Manson to kill the Princess of Wales!  And yet Brian, when interviewed on popular music channel "MTV2" simply said "we really like it when our audiences, like, spit on us and abuse us and stuff, it really, you know, inspires us."

How often, down through the years, have I cried out in despair at those words?  "Why, Brian?  Why did you say that to me?"  For, still flushed with the excitement of the afternoon's rugby match, I found myself in exuberant mood, pondering the provocations of the man who now stood only scant yards away, crooning his touching and romantic ballad, "Angel With The Scabbed Wings".

How many seemingly insignificant occurences that week might have made things different?  If only I had not heard Brian's call to arms, what then?  If only I had not looked into his eyes as I heard him ask plaintively for audience-based abuse.  If only I had not played hooker at rugby only a few hours previous to the concert, leading not just to a well-practised throwing arm but also to an unnatural thirst, but four songs into the concert.  A thirst which was slaked by only a quarter of the litre of diet coca-cola which now, dear reader, sat in my hand, heavy, well-balanced, and at the beginning of a journey which would take it from my hand, through each and every one of the intervening points in space, curving gracefully, even spinning a little on its long axis as it spiralled towards Mr Warner's elaborately dishevelled costume.

Brian is a man of dignity.  Not for him a lunge into the crowd and a swinging fist.  No, he restrained himself to a single, high-pitched squeak of outrage, not unlike that of an unusually baritone pipistrel bat.  Then he stalked - I refuse to give in to those who call it minced - stalked from the stage, a large, brownish-black stain spreading across his chest, and succulent carbonated liquid dripping from his face.

I was dismayed!  Why was Brian not inspired?  Had I abused him inappropriately in some way?  Was he disappointed in me?  Did it have to be phlegm?  Would no other liquid do?  These and other questions (many concerned with the burly ex-servicemen of the nightclub's janitorial staff) raced through my mind, as the band finished a rare, instrumental version of the track (I am told that surreptitious recordings of this version change hands for surprising sums of money in Camden's less reputable record stalls, even to this day).  There followed a confused delay, as the mercurial Mr Warner was coaxed out onto stage, doubtless with the promise of fresh souls to devour or something similar.

In any case, our dark master did emerge, turning his baleful, slightly sticky gaze out upon the crowd..  If I may belabour an old saw, I believe that it could be said that his face was like fizz.  Yet even now, the situation could have been retrieved: a little supportive expectorating in Mr Manson's direction and the maestro, suitably inspired, would no doubt have continued in fine fettle with his malign performance.

What the situation did not need was a high-pitched, slightly querulous voice to emerge from behind the coke-smudged make-up, proclaiming that "I'd like to start again, unless anyone out there wants to throw else anything at me?"

Why?  Why Brian?  I have asked myself that so very often since then.  Dear, dear interlocutor, I am sure that you - such is the esteem in which I hold your intelligence and insight - can imagine just what happened next.  The offer, flung at the feet of a boisterous Glasgow audience, many of them (I am sorry to say) I suspect of having been in their cups, was too much for the denizens of that dark place to resist.  Helpful to a frankly exuberant degree, they swiftly set about picking up everything in the place that was not actually classifiable as structurally integral to the building and hurling it in the direction of poor Brian.  A miscellany of items ranging from furniture to small audience members was soon arcing through the air in the direction of a dismayed, would-be Beelzebub.  Wielding a microphone stand for defence, Brian half ran, half crawled from cover to cover, using speaker stacks as temporary refuges behind which to plan each leg of his escape from what had become less a stage and more a treacherous sea of broken chairs, spilt drinks, and ricketts-stunted, buckfast-drinking midgets.

I cannot pretend that I felt welcome, as I atempted to blend in with the crowd, and trudged towards the doors.  I had misread Brian's signals.  I had gone too far.  And, since Brian has never called or written to suggest that any sort of forgiveness had occurred during the long years since that night,  I am sure you will agree that it would be entirely inappropriate for me to attend.  I am not even sure that I should send the customary note, apologising for my absence and citing a previous engagement.

Edit: I just remembered that the surreality of that night did not begin with Marilyn Manson.  The support act were an all-girl band called Fluffy, but their act kinda fell apart after their bassist had to be carried from the stage, projectile-vomiting in spectacular fashion as she went.

MMOs and Morning Storytime Hour

One of the great things about flying with Goonfleet is not having to work in the mornings.

By which I mean that I get into work, fire up the pc, and get to read compelling stories authored collaboratively by scores of people on the GF forums.

Of course, there is rarely a single, cohesive post anywhere that tells the story of what has happened.  You can cheat, and skip to the end of whatever ALL CAPITALS IMPORTANT FLEET OP thread has grown to 10 pages and 500 posts overnight, but even that will only give an insight into the mood at the thread's conclusion.  Actually deciphering what happened is a different matter: forum threads, especially those which grow so rapidly, see substantial assumptions about contextual knowledge made by those who are collaborating in the events described in real time.

So the story has to be read start to finish, from page one, skimming the brief flame-wars and nerd-rage between acrimonious neighbours and browsing past the detours and cul-de-sacs of off-topic diversions.  The narrative is built jointly, rarely more than a paragraph at a time, by those participating in the events, and this happens in real-time. Some posts are aimed at fellow participants.  Some posts are aimed at observers: the "at work crew", most often, furiously F5ing as they read and begging for updates when the postrate slows.  Occasionally, most often in a moment of extreme triumph, a post will be explicitly aimed at the other: those spies who read our forums to report to their masters amongst our enemies. The result is a curious mixture of description and conversation

Like any historical record made up of primary sources, care needs to be taken when reading the narrative.  Much of what is written is speculative or precipitate, and turns out to be incorrect.  Some authors are notably trustworthy; some are notoriously not so.  Some people are not there, but are repeating as fact what they have misunderstood from participants.  This is goonfleet, so some will be downright lying for comedic value, and the wording of those trolls- which would seem indistinguishable from actual, factual claims to the inexperienced reader - are the keys to knowing they are intended humourously: at least three times last night posters claimed that the enemy leader Shrike was tackled in his titan (an uber-boat that we kill when bored).  Each of these reports was clearly intended to give the message "you should get here quickly" while not intending to convey the meaning "Shrike is actually tackled".

The overall shape and mood of the story is the primary indicator of current success or failure, shaped by occasional, blessed reports from high-value posters.  Then, sometimes, will come silence.

If you notice that posts suddenly stop for half an hour or more, then something big is happening.  Usually, it means something big and good is happening.  If we are getting slaughtered, some people will usually not reinforce their failure, but will come to the boards to say "welp".  If something wonderful happens, then even those who die jump back into ships and get right back out there, and don't have time to post about what happens.  This happened last night at about 12:50 GMT, and I read on eagerly, quickly reaching the mass ululations of delight posted an hour later as we discussed our victory.  Note that I say "we": these tales build our group identity.  It is the "we" of Goonfleet who killed Shrike, defended Detorid, cleansed 9-9, reclaimed Tenerifis and are siezing Omist and Feythabolis, even if no single Goon was there for all of these acts.  It is not surprising that one of the posts on the GF site is an adaption of Beowulf: stories and history make up a lot of the alliance wiki, and what better than the epic tradition?

NOW Sesfan Qu'Lah bode in the system of the Goons,
leader beloved, and long he ruled
in fame with all goonfolk, since his father had gone
away from the world, till awoke an heir,
haughty Remedial, who held through life,
sage and sturdy, the Goons glad.

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM THING

You may think I am exaggerating when I say that some GF posters are unreliable or hard to read.  Perhaps you think that you've read enough forums to be able to effortlessly discard the chaff.  Well, allow me to quote Arghy, who it so happens is the single best poster in Goonfleet.  Imagine you are trying to piece together an engagement and you come across this, without even a hint of a clue what provoked it:

Hate to tell you this man BUT DINOSAURS ARE FAKE!! well not really but i do f***ing hate the idiots who speculate any further then 10000 years then say i cant make up my own story when its got just as much proof(guess who dident get along with the dino man at the museum?). I love f***ing with guys who believe science is an absolute haha shoulda seen how flustered i had this astronomer, he f***ing strongly believed that blackholes exsisted when i told him they dident because we have never seen one beyond some darkspot on a blurry camera.
How about the guys who think they know how big the universe is? HAHAHA man what the f*** is at the edge of it dude? you cant even f***ing FATHOM THE DIAMETERS YOUR TALKING ABOUT SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE MR PROFESSOR! I can tell you how old the earth is because i measured the radiation released from this thing! what did the radiation thing come from? what?! thats not important!

I suspect that you see what I mean a bit better, now?

Ach, some people...

I got three comments posted via the contact form on this site today, which is a rarity: most people use the comments page.  What made it even more unusual is that all three were about a post from the best part of a year ago, discussing a concert by the Teenage Fanclub I'd attended.  One was a friendly, if anonymous note, pointing out a thread about my review on the Teenage Fanclub fansite, and warning me that one or two posters were out for my blood.  But the other two were a bit more unwelcome.  Clearly both by the same person, the first one was a short string of badly-spelled insults.  The second said (edited by me to remove unimaginitive swearing and correct personal details):

oh look what i seem to find out
Mr xxxxx xxxxxxxx
23 xxxxxxx xxxxx
Edinburgh
EHx xxx

why don't you make it easy and just take doon that p**h you call a review

Now, our friend may have the technical skills to be able to do a whois 9or the tenner to pay to have it done for him), but he isn't smart: uttering threats is a serious business in Scots law, made more serious for the offender when he forgets that, like most self-hosted sites run by professional devs, I log all IP addresses of my tiny readership on this site, which would enable the police to issue an order to the ISP (Virgin Media, in Newcastle, so we have an emigre, folks) to reveal the offender's details, and a second order to the site he came from to do likewise to provide evidence that he had recently viewed the thread on the Teenage Fanclub boards, which would themselves be held liable for continuing to host a second series of threats of physical violence by one of their more committed posters.

Of course, luckily for our militant muso, I am old-school internet, still living in the days of free speech, fond of those libertarian principles, and rather resentful of the legislation that Blair introduced to make such convictions easy.  But I admit that, when the address is that of my family home, I was very tempted for a second...  And you have to love the faux-gangsterism of asking why I don't "make it easy on myself?"  Someone is over-compensating a touch.

I registered on the site, thinking that it would at least be a laugh to have an argument about this with the more sane denizens who were clearly a bit :rolleyes: about the whole thing.  But music is about pleasure and personal taste - one of the few areas where I find relativism an arguable proposition. The discussion of why the review was read as so negative (the review was actually hugely favourable, but I couldn't help but be interested in the personal dynamics on-stage) would have been dragged into a flamewar by the few.

The odd thing is that these are fans of the teenage Fanclub we're talking about, here.  If I'd posted a review saying that Slayer sucked I would have anticipated such a response.  But one saying that an excellent gig by the Bellshill Beach Boys had an odd ambience?  Every band, every book, every football team, I suppose, has those who just invest too much in it.

===============

Edit: In the end I did post on the site: Goons don't back down from such internet buffoonery.  It was fun to enjoy such fleeting notoriety, and I now feel able to empathise with such great martyrs of the internet age as Paris Hilton and Jade Goody, upon whom I have always modelled myself.  Everyone should, at least once in their lives, experience viewing a messageboard full of angry, pitchfor-wielding strangers with a big picture of oneself (rather a good shot, I felt) under the words "DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN?  AN ENEMY OF THE FANCLUB!"

It has certainly given a very good laugh to my colleagues at work, a couple of whom I have had to reluctantly dissuade from stirring up further fan-based musical lynchery.  One actually had an account there already, and it would have been fun to see his reaction if he had simply stumbled upon it.  There have been strong suggestions that I should dob the offender in to the constabulary anyway, but I fancy that in a fight bbetween rugby-player and basement-dwelling internet troll (I'm the first one, thanks for asking) I suspect I'd have a fair chance.  It certainly wouldn't measure up in tension to the last time I had a bunch of people cruising Edinburgh, high on speed and wielding baseball bats, pretending not to know my address (now that was a concern).

Justifiable Assault

Vigilantism is on the rise.  Hot on the heels of Smeato comes this story from Seattle,  I wholeheartedly endorse the actions of the unknown "little hippie girl" who took the law into her own hands in order to stop the singing of that vile hymn to mediocrity and middle-of-the-road blahness, Coldplay's Yellow.  I am only disappointed that she was one of the few Americans who does not tote around several concealed firearms on her person, as that would have allowed her to dispense swift and summary justice.

Recovery

I have not, despite the efforts of my cornea to the contrary, gone blind.  I am banned from wearing contacts for weeks, though.  Glasses reveal just how many bits of my face and ears have been broken by rugby, and they don't work well, forcing me to peer at things.  Headaches are, I suppose, a manageable consequence.  My vanity hurts worse than my head.

The specialist is a tiny, Chinese man who, by coincidence, looks and sounds not altogether unlike the eye doctor in Bladerunner. True dialogue:

Doctor: Mr Harrison, you are a very vain man.
Me: I beg your pardon?
Doctor: Your contact lenses, they make you look good...
Me: Thank-you
Doctor: ...and they are good for your sports, good for your rugby...
Me: How do you know I play rugby? [he had not seen my medical records, packed with rugby injuries, yet]
Doctor:  Mr Harrison, I am a doctor.  I am an eye doctor.  I look around your eyes, I see many cuts.  I see you play rugby.

If only he had had a wispy, white beard to stroke at this point, I would have been utterly impressed.  I imagine that he finds that patients like and are reassured by his Confucian wise man persona.

On the Renton (my cat) front, the situation is improving, although it is too early to tell how well he will respond to treatment in the medium term.  He has only a tiny fraction of the red blood cells he should (I saw his figures, and they were literally off the chart), probably because he is generating antibodies to his own red blood cells.  Either that or a blood-borne parasite.  So he's on a big dose of steroids and is also on antibiotics.

Oh, and insure your pets: I may consider 750 quid/1500 dollars extremely good value for saving my ten-year-old cat but not everyone has that option!

Horrible

One of those very rare bits on my blog where I say something about me.  What a horrible week.  On Friday, I woke up with an ulcer on my cornea.  This was sore, and the drugs have left my pupil constantly dilated, exacerbating the photosensitivity that was already occurring in what is the brightest, sunniest week of the year so far.  Basically, though, that was just an uncomfortable inconvenience.

This morning, however, my cat, Renton, came through unsteadily at about 7am, mewling in a clearly uncomfortable way.  He lay down on his side and didn't move, except to howl a little, and there was foam flecking his lips.  His tongue and eyes were pale, and his breathing shallow.

I immediately drove him to the 24-hour veterinary practice on Mayfield Road, where they say that he may have a blood clot in his hind legs.  This would not, apparently, be good at all.  They put him on oxygen and fluids, and I was told to leave him there and phone back later today for news.  If I was allowed to, I would have sat with him the whole day: after all, he is loyal to me in a way you would not believe with a cat.  I am very lucky that I can afford to pay a 500 pound bill for such initial treatment and investigation: my heart breaks for those who would have looked at the quote with their own broken heart and known that they could do nothing.

You would not believe how upset I am.

John Smeaton One Man Antiterrorist Squad

Here are some quotes from one-man anti-terrorist squad John Smeaton.  Note that these are genuine quotes.

Interviewer: "What message do you have for the bombers?"

John Smeaton: "This is Glasgow, you know, so, we'll just set about you"

Interviewer: "Can you describe what happened when you apprehended the terrorist?"

John Smeaton: "Me and other folk were just tryin' to get the boot in and some other guy banjoed him."

John Smeaton: "I see the guy get out the car... an' goes straight for the police an' ah'm like that: no chance... this isnae hapennin'."

It's worth realising that in Glasgow parlance, "no chance... this isnae happenin'" is not a statement of disbelief.  It is very close to the imperative, and means that this, while perhaps happening right now, will not be happening for much longer.  It is a Nietszchian imposition of will upon the world.

You have to have heard Smeaton's calm, matter-of-fact delivery to realise just how unphased he was by the whole process of tackling a would-be terrorist who is on fire, next to a car, also ablaze, containing petrol, nails and gas cylinders.  A true ambassador for Scotland, up there with the lion-bashing hero of Springfield, Groundskeeper Willie.  He was outside the airport, having a smoke at the time, on a break from his job as senior ramp attendant.  When he saw a burning jeep protruding from the terminal, what was his thought?  "I've got to get this sorted." Matter of fact; understated, and very much an ideal witness when it comes to the trial in a year or so.  No wonder there is now a website dedicated to him.

-------------

Someone has already done a side-by-side comparison of local reactions to a terrorist incident in Glasgow versus one in the USA.  I love it:

America: "Oh my God! There was a man on fire, he was running about,  i just ran for my life. I thought i was gonna die, he got so close to me"

Glasgow "C*nt wis running aboot on fire, so a ran up n gave him a good boot, then decked him"


America: " I just wanna get home, away from here. I just wanna get home, I thought i was gonna die"

Glasgow: " here shug, am no leaving here till am oan a f*ckin'  plane!"

 
America: " there was pandemonium, people were running in all directions, we didn't know what was happening thought i was gonna die"

Glasgow :"F*ck this fir a kerry oan, moan we ll get a pint in"

 
America: " We thought he was gonna blow us all up he had a gas canister, and was trying to get into his trunk, I thought we were gonna die, I just ran for my life"

Glasgow :"a swaggered by the motor that wis on fire, and the dafty couldnae even open his boot, he wis in fire annaw so a ran up n gave him a good boot to the baws"

 
America: there was this huge explosion, it sounded like war, I thought i was gonna die"

Glasgow: " There wis a bang, yi know when yi throw BO basher intae a fire it wis like that"

 
America: " I'm too traumatized even to speak, I thought i was gonna die"

Glasgow "here mate, gies 2 minutes till a phone ma auld dear, if am gonna be oan the telly a want her tae tape it"

Glasgow Bombs - Have Your Go, Wee Man

Islamic terrorists set off a bomb at Glasgow Airport at the weekend, setting light to the front of the terminal building.

Glasgow Police say the bomb did more than one hundred and twenty thousand pounds' worth of improvements (Thank-you Ironwood).

Ok, it's an obvious joke, but I'm an Edinburgh resident, so I'm obliged to make it, just like everybody else has, already.

By the way, I love the fact that, when you're a terrorist in Glasgow, driving a car packed with a potentially lethal payload, you're on fire yourself, and you're waving a Molotov cocktail, the most likely outcome is that locals will immediately run at you and beat you into submission. Now that's hard.

Has anyone else noticed that the quality of the explosive devices available to our UK-based fundamentalist brethren has been going steadily downhill? In the first lot of London bombings they used proper, honest-to-goodness bombs, capabale of generating a shockwave, overpressure and everything. In the second set of attacks, the idea was fair enough, but their nitrate-based explosives failed to go off, leading to a casualty list of rather more limited extent: one attacker who danced around with his back smouldering for a bit.

The latest tranche have seen three cars packed with gas cylinders, petrol and nails, and apparently lit with matches. They're going through a bad patch. Unless they bring in someone from outside, the next set of attacks will have to be carried out with cars stuffed to the gunwales with wood, newspaper and firelighters, maybe topped off with diesel and with a detonator made of a boy scout with a digital watch, furiously rubbing two sticks together.

P.S. Americans! be the envy of other news broadcasters by pronounced Glasgow correctly! it's "Glaz-goh". it does not rhyme with cow.

P.P.S. Although it was glasgow airport that was hit, the location is actually in Paisley. Clearly, this marks a shift in tactics by our fundamentaloid cousins, who by bombing Paisley are trying to appeal to right-thinking Greenockians everywhere.

Work and Relaxation

As an aside from the ongoing CCP dramabombs, I just got back from five days staying at Hownam again.  It's the second time I've been there this year, and the timing couldn't have been better: Friday saw me with a deadline for a  product launch to user acceptance testing, and saw me do my first hand-in on my new masters course.  All of which rather conspired to see me reach new heights of stress.

Comparing this with my two full-time courses of study is quite a contrast: I had no idea how lucky I was to have so much time to squander during my first degree in particular.  But, on the upside, I didn't have the option of renting a big house in the borders when it all seemed too much pressure!

Anyway, every morning I would get up at 7.30 or so, walk the dogs a bit, eat a light breakfast then head out into the hills for four or five hours.  The collies - Sunny and Seleighe - love the place, not least since they spend most of every day running about outside, much of it on hillsides smelling of sheep and rabbits.  I'd climb a few hills, visit iron-age stone circles and barrows,  climb to millennias-old hill-forts, trace out the walls of Roman marching encampments, and sometimes follow Dere Street - a Roman road, but on a route that predates even them, and which is still in use in places.  The landscape in the Cheviots is packed with stone-age and Roman archaeology: literally every hillside has one or more features, be they watchposts, terracing, entrenchments or even abandoned medieval villages.

I'd return and shower, then eat lunch around four or so - chorizo, a chicken I'd roasted on the first evening, fresh and sunblush tomatoes, half a dozen cheeses, grapes, bananas, various north-african cous-cous and rice dishes, tabouleh, humuus, stuffed olives and vine leaves, tzatziki, pate, smoked mackerel and salmon.  And a lot of it.  I'd eat that outside, in the gardens.  It only rained once, for a few hours late at night: the central Cheviots have a wonderful, dry, sheltered microclimate that makes them one of the dryest places in Scotland as well as keeping away the midges!

After that, more tiring of the dogs in the gardens, teaching them new commands (always a delight to collies) and tempting them into the Kale Water at the foot of the lawn.  Then inside, clear and light the wood fire in the living room and read for hours while the exhausted pups - they're still only 11 months old - sleep, fight then sleep some more.  Having been immersed in reading papers, articles and books on requirements engineering I decided on history for this week, and read one book each on Edwards II and III, Simon Sebag Montefiore's excellent "The Young Stalin" (utterly rewriting everything I thought I knew of his early life, and debunking the traditional Trotskyite version), as well as most of "The Grand Alliance", the third volume of Churchill's memoir of the Second World War.

Declension narrative

Tobold, en passant, makes a great point:

We live in an age where people write as much as never before in the history of mankind: text messages, e-mails, blogs, game chats. And it turns out that one of the reasons why many people didn't write so much in previous ages is that they don't know how. They still don't know how, but somehow the social inhibition ... has become lost.

They simply claim that "u" and "r" are just socially acceptable short forms of "you" and "are", mix in some newly invented slang like "roxxor" and "pwn", some acronyms like "lol", and soon the phrases they're writing looks so unlike correct English that nobody even notices that they just spelled a couple of words wrong, and have no idea of the correct use of punctuation.

I hadn't considered the hugely increased use of the written form amongst a wider section of the population.  I was aware that i conduct a lot of my interactions in writing, mainly through emails.  Those, however, merely replaced the letters I used to churn out in the eighties and early nineties (when enough of my friends started getting email addresses to make that viable).  But people who, after leaving school, only wrote in Christmas cards and official forms now communicate widely in textual form.

And they're not very good at it.  Partly through lack of practise; partly because of an unwillingness to read widely enough to absorb correct use of language.  But Tobold is right: at the heart of the matter is a reluctance to accept that there are good and bad ways to use language.  Depressingly many people claim that "r u rdy" is as valid a form of language as "are you ready?"  I have heard that the subjunctive is making a small comeback in some quarters: I would that it were more obvious.  In the main, written language is devolving as those perfectly capable of writing well are disinhibited by constant exposure to sloppily-constructed emails and 10-character, verb free text-messages, and become drawn into the habit of using abbreviated terms and discarding or abusing potentially vital punctuation (not least the comma).  The resulting inexactitude will lead to misunderstanding.  That's all very well when arranging where to meet that night, but rather less excusable when stating user requirements for a civil-engineering project.

Not to mention that it's horrible to read.

Ever-So-Sensible New Cars and Computers

In a horrific week for the domestic capital budget, I have so far bought a new car and a new computer.  I can only assume that I shall round the week off with a new house, or perhaps a second hand Sea Harrier or the like.

Anyway, despair not, bank manager!  For, just at the point where Dragon slams headlong into his mid-life crisis, I get over mine and jump straight to my middle-aged spread.  It is a tragic fact that I have never really been interested in cars.  Not real cars.  Ones on Project Gotham 3 are great, because I can do fun things with them.  But all I do with them in real life is drive them at 30mph around town or 70mph in very straight lines.  And believe me that a Z3 does not sit easily with a wife, a dog and an regular second hound.  Or rather, the wife does not sit easily: not when the