This from the guy who first gave us Samorost. Delightful!
Courtesy of the Sun-Earther.
October 19, 2009
October 12, 2009
Send Them All Back Where They Came From
We should all rejoice, as with Nazi war criminals, that perverts (yes, a loaded term if there ever was one, but if there was ever a better shorthand for it, suggestions please) eventually have to answer for their crimes. Clearly forcing yourself on impressionable 13-year-olds cannot go unchecked or unpunished.
But...dangerous precedents apply. The Polanski case, in the greater scheme of things, is less to do with a priapic child molester than it is to do with Europe's thoroughly unhealthy and subservient role in the face of American power, which is neatly crystallised in wholly one-sided extradition treaties. In other words, we are that vulnerable child cowing to a domineering, demanding presence. No should mean no.
But...dangerous precedents apply. The Polanski case, in the greater scheme of things, is less to do with a priapic child molester than it is to do with Europe's thoroughly unhealthy and subservient role in the face of American power, which is neatly crystallised in wholly one-sided extradition treaties. In other words, we are that vulnerable child cowing to a domineering, demanding presence. No should mean no.
September 28, 2009
They Used to Be Called Houses of Learning
I joined my local library the other day. You might have forgotten these places exist. Within a few minutes I had 60 quid worth of new literature of genuine merit between my grubby paws...and nobody even tried to question me on the way on the way out. Some security check must have gone astray.
You take away things that contain ideas, fantasies, plots, dreams...everything of that ilk you'll readily go online for. Only that you will not have to rely on your server, batteries, wi-fi access. This might seem more about books than anything else. But we all pay for this. It's ours; it has been there for centuries and now it's neglected.
I'm not a revolutionary on this front; I believe the Net, particularly through the search engines and Wikipedia, has done more to further universally accessible knowledge to a larger part of mankind than anything ever seen. But the Net does encourage superficialism: it's simply easier to skim. You search, you find, you end up ignoring the context, and even with just factual information-trawls, let alone trying to make some sense of art, it'll mean you've missed the bigger picture.
You take away things that contain ideas, fantasies, plots, dreams...everything of that ilk you'll readily go online for. Only that you will not have to rely on your server, batteries, wi-fi access. This might seem more about books than anything else. But we all pay for this. It's ours; it has been there for centuries and now it's neglected.
I'm not a revolutionary on this front; I believe the Net, particularly through the search engines and Wikipedia, has done more to further universally accessible knowledge to a larger part of mankind than anything ever seen. But the Net does encourage superficialism: it's simply easier to skim. You search, you find, you end up ignoring the context, and even with just factual information-trawls, let alone trying to make some sense of art, it'll mean you've missed the bigger picture.
September 17, 2009
All I Want for Christmas
So, Barack Obama's popularity rating has plummeted faster than with most of his predecessors. Must be because of Afghanistan and the continuing failure to find Bin Laden, right? After all, he's had nine months now, and with the benefit of all those years of useful groundwork that Dubya did as well. Or is it the banks? We know that the average US voter brings a wealth of perspicacity into their evaluation of this administration's inadequate measures to rein in the wild horses of Wall Street.
No, it's because he's been so impudent - and imprudent - as to try to steer America away from the most glaring trait in which it proudly displays its barbarism, i.e. its healthcare system. Free universal healthcare is apparently not a mark of civilisation, but of fascism. And, as fascists are all foreign, Obama must indeed not be American, as they knew all along, and what up to half of the electorate in some states now believes. Meanwhile, turds like Glenn Beck continue to be vindicated by the kudos of the platform that the Fox network still gives to their xenophobic rants.
Labour will soon be losing power in the UK, and deservedly so, if for nothing else than keeping Peter Mandelson in charge against all rhyme or reason. But we won't be able to withstand more than one term of the Tories any more. There must be some way we could kidnap and naturalise Obama...it would clearly be both what we sorely need and what the Americans deserve.
No, it's because he's been so impudent - and imprudent - as to try to steer America away from the most glaring trait in which it proudly displays its barbarism, i.e. its healthcare system. Free universal healthcare is apparently not a mark of civilisation, but of fascism. And, as fascists are all foreign, Obama must indeed not be American, as they knew all along, and what up to half of the electorate in some states now believes. Meanwhile, turds like Glenn Beck continue to be vindicated by the kudos of the platform that the Fox network still gives to their xenophobic rants.
Labour will soon be losing power in the UK, and deservedly so, if for nothing else than keeping Peter Mandelson in charge against all rhyme or reason. But we won't be able to withstand more than one term of the Tories any more. There must be some way we could kidnap and naturalise Obama...it would clearly be both what we sorely need and what the Americans deserve.
July 13, 2009
Bah! 09
For FFS. Summer, and it all turns to a form of sodden California. Kids go to stand in muddy fields and listen to sub-record standard sounds from their favourite slightly older kids with guitars and attitoods. You can trawl through 20 hours of the so-musicianly they've just found that day's attire in their laundry basket after an undetermined hiatus. Then you get the hoary old twats who were never palatable in the first place, like Neil Young. Oh God.
Dance acts doing all-purpose festivals: no. Acts like The Specials who should really be doing this behind closed doors to the faithful: no. Keane? Crosby, Stills and Nash?
Is this really worthwhile? The only way the mega-festivals make sense is if you can escape from the headliners and get away to their least important stages where people can't bay out requests and build human pyramids with clown hats on their gurning heads. And even then you run into them like accidentally falling into a sewer when you walk out.
Do like Florence and the Machine, though; like a starter kit for Siouxsie and the Banshees, more or less. Which is great, as things go.
Dance acts doing all-purpose festivals: no. Acts like The Specials who should really be doing this behind closed doors to the faithful: no. Keane? Crosby, Stills and Nash?
Is this really worthwhile? The only way the mega-festivals make sense is if you can escape from the headliners and get away to their least important stages where people can't bay out requests and build human pyramids with clown hats on their gurning heads. And even then you run into them like accidentally falling into a sewer when you walk out.
Do like Florence and the Machine, though; like a starter kit for Siouxsie and the Banshees, more or less. Which is great, as things go.
May 19, 2009
An Expedient /sɪ’nɛkdəki/?
Now that we’re in an age where it takes a Hollywood arthouser (this does not actually have to be any more oxymoronic than saying ‘French action film’) to make us reach for the dictionaries and learn a new word, the very least we can do is find out if it has a practical application beyond being more pepper to scatter liberally and thoughtlessly across conversations, a new recruit to the ranks of verbiage. It suffers from a basic handicap from the outset: it doesn’t have one delimited meaning, but a set of meanings, some diametrically opposed. So, what is it good for? Or is this the kind of discussion they only fart about with in Europe?
And there it is. ‘Europe’ is effectively meaningless in that sentence, relying so much on a shared framework of preconceptions to make any sense at all. In as much as you did make some sense of it (the Europe of waffling French philosophers, perhaps, or that of Brussels bureaucrats), it can be said that you’ve already slotted into a certain mode of predictive reading in the preceding sentences, and this contextualizes the use of the synecdoche.
Except that ‘Europe’ should not be employed as a synecdoche. No term can be said to be satisfactory if its meaning is so entirely dependent on speaker, listener and context. This does not change no matter how much certain meanings attributed to it become engrained through popular usage. Currency does not mean rectitude, and surrender to currency is not an admission of the allowability of alternatives: we may now swallow ‘attendees at the conference’ or ‘David Walliams’ testicles’, but only because there are bigger fish to fry.
Europe means a continent delineated by the Mediterranean, the Bosphorus, the Caucasus Mountains, the Ural Mountains, the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic, incorporating a number of islands not tied into other continental plates, most notably the British Isles. Nothing more. It does not mean: the European Union, Western Europe, all the countries on the European mainland other than the Nordic ones or any selection of European countries the person employing the term has cynically chosen in order to illustrate a point for rhetorical purposes. Before long, such laissez-faire usage will result in letting ‘Old Europe’ and ‘New Europe’ through the door unquestioned, never mind that they’re wholly and rather transparently politically weighted, all too easily filed under ‘Fusty’ and ‘Bright’.
‘England lost to a penalty by Miroslav Klose’ contains an acceptable synecdoche: its meaning is unambiguous. ‘Europe won’t let us run our own affairs’ is unacceptable, even before you get to the question of the likely speaker.
May 12, 2009
Blitz My Barnet!
Way ahead of you there, cobber! Your hair loss is decidedly unimpressive. You're right to be worried.
To think that someone behind this touts themselves as an advertising professional...
On another note, what on Earth prompts sportspeople to flog these products? Has it occurred to none of them that it's branding themselves as balding has-beens first and only shifting units second?
Mind you, could be worse...like pimping Viagra, for instance.
