A short note from Jackobury Nation: Fighting patriarchy on all fronts

It's the end of a rather full couple weeks travel, conferencing and research in various bits of this fair isle and I'm not up for much serious thought on a hot and far-too-humid evening in London.

Which, as The Wife has noted, leaves me in a perfect state of mind to match the silly state of the media mind (i.e., wall-to-wall, 24-hour obsession with all things Jackobury) that has blossomed all around me.

And I suppose that while my brain seems to have temporarily shut down (encouraged, perhaps, by drinking too much red wine in the sun at a retirement party for my boss this afternoon) I'm still left ahead of Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones, who seems to suffer from this condition on a more permanent basis.

That's just a surmise based on the evidence of her commentary in today's Waily Snail entitled 'What's really oppressing women isn't the burka, it's their breasts'.

It's really quite...appalling.

But educational: I wasn't aware that Victoria Beckham was 'oppressed'. I'm appalled that some worthy charity has not intervened and helped the poor woman.

And then there's this useful tit-bit that our Liz offers:

Believe it or not, I once had very big breasts.

I did not know that. But without a reason to think otherwise, reader, I believe her. And I urge you to do likewise.

And the learning (and tragedy) doesn't stop there:

I’d been anorexic for years and when force-feeding and threats of hospitalisation hadn’t worked, in my early 20s my endocrinologist started feeding me drugs and hormones to make me eat and to make me fat. My breasts grew rapidly. Clothes no longer hung properly.

Fascinating.

Also:

My drug-induced breasts were nothing like the ones you see these days on the covers of men’s magazines: natural big breasts hang, honeydew melon-shaped, towards your waist.

Thanks Liz. Truly, this is information we can use.

It's especially gratifying -- I think we will all agree -- to see the Fail standing up for feminism and against the the objectification of celebrity women via their breasts.

Also via the Vomity Pail (which is distributed free by my hotel), I encountered 'Miss Ellie', who has been voted 'ugliest dog' at some kind of fair in California that concerns itself with such things.

The pure-bred, pint-sized pageant participant -- who has as far as I know not yet expressed any opinion about mammarial oppression -- has a strangely endearing charm, I must say. And she also called forth an immediate (though cross-species) association:

I always was more of a cat person.

Looking forward to being home.

Everything you always wanted to know about the Swiss

The Cement Garden (book/film) meets Concrete Island - only funnier, by the looks of it.

Home (dir. Ursula Meier). More here.

Meier explains at Cineuropa:

It is a contemporary family tale; it is about isolation turning into madness. There are strong intimate ties between the characters, which will be revealed by the motorway. It becomes the screen onto which each of the characters projects their own neuroses. It is also a mirror of the world – violent, aggressive, and polluted – which enters the homes of people who thought they would be able to live alone, set apart from society. In this sense, it is a film about Switzerland.

Defiance

Apparently some guy died and now everybody, including what counts in the UK as "serious" media, is in a frenzy. While I don't care about the dead guy per se (never have), I do care about the increasing silliness of the eulogies composed on the occasion of his passing death (Like George Orwell I seriously dislike the replacement of "strong primary words by feeble euphemisms" so typical of American English).

I also don't care a bit about Glastonbury, but apparently it's important enough to live blog about it at the Guardian. Oh, what a frigging juvenile place Blighty is!

Anyway, here's some music for Sunday. 'Fraid I have no time for more. TTFN!

Happy music

I don't think I've ever posted this track, which Deutschlandradio Kultur kindly played for me (and only me) this morning:




The Seekers, "Georgy Girl" (1968).

If I find the time this weekend I might watch the film. Might cheer me up.

Midweek music

Unfortunately, there are no proper videos to be had for these two songs, which I heard on my way to and back from work, but maybe that's a good thing: the songs are wonderful by themselves (though melancholia-inducing).



Boris Vian, "Le Déserteur"



June Carter Cash, "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?"

By special request

This is for a fan of German opera further up the Rhine:



Spike Milligan, "The Fresh Fruit Song"

And for the Geburtstagskind in London! Happy, happy, happy, happy!

The enemies of liberty. And peppermints.

A quick post from the British Library...

Among the stack of books I'm working my way through is E. S. P. Haynes's 1923 libertarian tract The Enemies of Liberty, which took aim at a broad range of threats, as he saw it, to traditional freedoms.

It's interesting to see in this period how frequently certain writers contrasted English liberties with their presumed opposites elsewhere, typically in Germany (a reasonably common epithet in this context seems to have been 'Prussianism') or, interestingly, America.

As an appendix to his book, Haynes prints an essay from A.P. Herbert on ‘Prohibition in America’, which he wrote after a sojourn of several weeks enjoying that blessed land's freedoms:

‘The truth is, I fear—and I hope my American friends will forgive the remark—that as a nation they seem to have very little idea of social liberty. They are not so much Puritan as persecuted. Formal political liberty and formal social equality they have ad nauseam, but these are poor substitutes. They seem to like it when an Irish policeman flourishes his club at a gentleman in the street and refers to him as “That Man,” for this shows that all men are equal, and the gentleman is a good as the policeman. But he is not—not by many miles. Anyone who shouts loud enough for a long time will put the gentleman in his place—and he seems to enjoy it. For he has no King and no titled aristocracy, and he flatters himself he is a sturdy, independent fellow, standing no nonsense. But in fact I found him a little cowed, with the habit of being dragooned and bullied and sitting down under it—under the policeman, the Press, the politicians, the literary critics, his wife, the Irish, the Middle-West, and any kind of tom-fool League or organisation that has the energy, cash and Publicity organisation to spread it abroad day and night, for years together, that black is white, or peppermints bad for the soul.’

Herbert, 'Prohibition in America', printed in Haynes, The Enemies of Liberty (1923), 179-80.

Put her in the curry

Unlike David Cameron's attempts at humour, this here is funny in the smash-bang-wallop kind of way that slapstick-suckers such as myself relish:



Spike Milligan, "Pakistani Dalek" (via)

As the canned laughter is a bit overpowering, here's the script.

David Cameron: Unfunny and Uninformed

Oh David, David - you don't know anything, do you?

Do you seriously believe that not carrying your ID-card in Germany incurs the pithy act of interpellation that you depict in your charming faux-Cleesian vaudeville routine?

Oh no, my dear friend, here in Tschermany we have other vays of making you pay for not being able to identify yourself properly (and, no, your adult video club membership card does not count as "properly")! The usual treatment involves tearing the flesh from your breasts, arms and thighs with red-hot pincers, burning the hand that should have held the object of identification with sulphur, and pouring molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together on the pitiable rump that remains of your body after this treatment.

After that you will be drawn and quartered by four horses, your limbs and body consumed by fire and your ashes thrown to the winds (morbid details via Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish).

That'll teach you not to carry your ID-card!

But that's only the special Sunday treatment. The rest of the week you will merely be tasered.

Yeah baby we were savage, we existed to kill

Guitar, bass, drums.

Simple. Sometimes effective.

There is apparently a new album by The Thermals.

This is the first single, 'Now We Know'.



Also:



The Debut, 'Photograph Song' (via Boing Boing)

Also also:



Sonic Youth, 'Sacred Trickster' (Via Dale)

Ishiguro and language

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Kazuo Ishiguro. But the more I read of his work, the more I feel that it is all about coitus interruptus.

Well, ok – that’s not exactly true (but somehow I couldn’t resist this opening line). Ishiguro’s writing is really more about coitus non performatus: in his books, budding relationships are left to peter out, secret desires remain undeclared and potentially joyful emotional roads are not taken. His characters typically lack the honesty and courage to acknowledge and express their feelings and so end up lonely and disappointed.

The butler Stephens, narrator-protagonist of The Remains of the Day, is haunted by the memory of his former colleague Miss Kenton, but fails to confess his love when he meets her many years later. In a similar way, the uptight Christopher Banks in When We Were Orphans is unable to act upon his feelings for the eccentric Sarah Hemmings, with whom he briefly hopes to start a new life. In Never Let Me Go characters copulate with gay abandon, but because they are clones regularly culled for their organs until they die they have been brainwashed into not developing any deep feelings for their sexual partners.

Taking up some of the author's pet themes - strained relationships, a sense of imminent loss and a general disappointment with life - and presenting variations on them, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (Faber and Faber, 2009) is an entirely typical Ishiguro book.

In “Crooner” an ageing American singer hires a Polish street musician in Venice to serenade the woman he is about to divorce because he believes that she hampers his comeback. In “Come Rain or Come Shine” Raymond, a middle-aged language teacher is confronted with the possibility that he might have misinterpreted a long-standing college friendship. In “Malvern Hills” an overconfident but unsuccessful young musician plays a practical joke on a Swiss couple only to regret it when realising their appreciation of his work.

Nocturnes sets up an analogy between the skillful handling of musical instruments and the way human beings instrumentalise each other in the pursuit of their own interests (the Polish musician being the artistic equivalent to the cliché of the Ukrainian hit-man - helping to kill her softly). Importantly, however, the exploitative relationships that Ishiguro describes are never unilateral: rather than confronting each other as victims and perpetrators, his characters are entangled in a gordian knot of complicity.

The Polish guitarist in “Crooner” is not only attracted by the cash promised him for his services, but also clearly enjoys the opportunity to fawn upon a star beloved by his mother. In “Come Rain or Come Shine”, Raymond is summoned by his old friend Charlie to revitalise his marriage, but he is willing to do so because of a latent desire for Charlie's wife Emily (who, it turns out, has been despising him for as long as she has known him). The other stories, too, emphasise the power and pervasiveness of the human need to be acknowledged and liked by others while also depicting the unrecognised submissive acts of self-prostitution that this need results in.

In that sense, yes, the stories are truly tragic (and I'm not one to use this category lightly). But they are also tragic in so far as the characters are blind to these entanglements, while still priding themselves on their superior perceptiveness. This is as close as contemporary fiction gets to creating a sense of hamartia.

Again in a way that is typical of Ishiguro’s work, these personal encounters are set against a larger historical context - more concretely post-cold war Europe - invoked by the stories’ settings and their cosmopolitan dramatis personae. On a superficial level they could be read as vignettes about global tourism in which a variety of real geographic spaces (Venice, London, the Malvern hills, Hollywood) become the setting for miniature dramas about love, disappointment and the unbridgeable gaps that separate people.

America, however, seems to dominate these global encounters, whether explicitly, as in "Crooner", or implicitly, as in “Come Rain or Come Shine”, a story that seems to be inspired by the American phrase “the dog ate my homework” (on this point the story is woefully misread by Frank Kermode in his unflatteringly indifferent LRB review). In “Nocturne”, the only story set in America, an all-American obsession with beauty is contained within the “hush-hush floor” of a Hollywood hotel, where stars (or those aspiring to stardom) hide after their cosmetic surgery, but there is the notion that in the long run Old Europe will be smitten by this obsession, too.

Of course it already has. This suggests that the it is not Ishiguro's point to depict America as a noxious cultural virus. It would also be too simple to read the collection as a jeremiad about how human beings are entrapped in their sadly isolated existence. More likely and maybe appropriate is an inverse interpretation: in Ishiguro's stories, the personal is the political, so that global diplomacy (or the lack thereof) merely echoes what human beings do to each other in private.

To cite Mr Heston (out of context): "It's people!"

So far, so good - with their focus on individual experience, these psychological stories point outward towards politics at large. And yet there is an odd sense of artifice in all them, as though Ishiguro was consciously constructing stage sets for his overt messages, as if to remind us that this is fiction with no immediate referential relationship to the real world. Although they are all about communication - in foreign languages and on foreign soil - characters often speak a stilted code more akin to an emotionally and contextually empty Esperanto (or botched phrasebook Hungarian for that matter):

“‘Mr Gardner,’ I said eventually, ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking. But is Mrs Gardner expecting this recital? Or is it going to be a wonderful surprise?’” (“Crooner").

“‘ Of course, our country has many beautiful features. But here, in this spot, you have a special charm. We have wanted to visit this part of England for so long. We always talked of it, and now finally we are here!’” (“Malvern Hills”).

In Ishiguro's stories, communication is always slightly askew because although his characters have technically mastered English (either because they are native speakers or proficient foreigners), they seem to lack a level of understanding external to the purely linguistic. In them, English acts as a perfectly functional lingua franca which, even when applied successfully, nevertheless guarantees that strangers remain strangers.

What remains? Music, perhaps, that universal language - although Ishiguro is not one to idealise its communicative scope. Even music can be misunderstood or lead to misunderstandings.

Just as a kestrel sees more vividly than a mole

I recently ordered the first volume of George Orwell's collected essays, journalism and letters (we have volumes two and three, and very well thumbed they are...).

It's striking that, before you've even read a few dozen pages, you find such amazing examples of both cutting insult and sublime praise.

The insult comes from a review of J. B. Priestley's novel Angel Pavement:

When a novel lacks the indefinable, unmistakable thing we call beauty, one looks in it for sound delineation of character, or humour of situation, or verbal wit. But one looks in vain in Angel Pavement--Mr. Priestley can be clever, but he cannot be in any way memorable. (26)

Oh, that's painful, in a particularly painful way. But then comes the coup de grâce: Orwell notes that Priestley has been much over-praised by other reviewers, and he continues,

Once this absurd praise is discounted, we can salute Mr. Priestley for the qualities which he really possesses, and take Angel Pavement for what it is: an excellent holiday novel , genuinely gay and pleasant, which supplies a good bulk of reading matter for ten and sixpence.(Emphasis added, 27)

Oh man...that must have burned.

On the other hand, Orwell knew how to make a well-placed compliment.

In the context of a review of a biography of Herman Melville, he enthuses:

More important than his strength, he had--what is implied in real strength--passionate sensitiveness; to him seas were deeper and skies were vaster than to other men, and similarly beauty was more actual and pain and humiliation more agonising. Who but Melville would have seen the beauty and terror of a ridiculous beast like a whale? And who else could have written scenes like the bullying of Harry in Redburn, or that shocking and ludicrous account of an amputation in White Jacket? Such things were done by a man who felt more vividly than common men, just as a kestrel sees more vividly than a mole. (Emphasis added, 20-21.)

Partly because of this review, and partly because I noted recently that Melville also made the top of the 'best reads' list by J. G. Ballard some years ago (I found this in the additional material added to my copy of Millennium People), I have thought I should probably give Moby Dick another chance.

It was--like many things...and nearly Shakespeare!...ruined for me in high school (a common story, perhaps).

Though my renewed Melvillian interests may also be partly because I've been enjoying my belated discovery of Mastodon's 2004 heavy metal concept album, Leviathan, which is based on that novel about the white whale.

(I very much like the song--though not so much the video--for 'Blood and Thunder'...which for some reason involves clowns. Far scarier than whales, if you ask me.)



Any post-secondary-school Melville fans out there with their own observations?

And, yes, I know: from a strictly naturalistic perspective, one could have turned Orwell's metaphor on it's head, saying just as a mole feels more vividly than a kestrel.

But somehow I don't think it'd have worked as well.

Funny, that....

How language evolves

And here's me thinking that Britain's obsession with WWII might have made the good people of Albion particularly erudite when it comes to their favourite historical period. However, it seems that the daily dose of marching Nazis on UKTV History has merely confused them, resulting in rampant phantasmagoria and wild surmise.

The sceptred isle hath no dimwit like a blonde Scot in a beanie!

Under the pale moon, where I see a lot of stars

It's been a while since I've posted a reminder of our continuing Mountain Goats obsessions, so it's about time.

And this one, although it's really more audio-based, features a striking image (from his wife's Flickr photostream) of singer-songwriter John Darnielle with a somewhat disgruntled-looking wombat. (It may be, though that 'disgruntled' is more or less the default expression of a wombat, how do I know?)

And you don't run across that sort of thing every day.

Moreover, I have now discovered yet another cosmic link between JD and yours truly: the Cubs have, apparently, broken his heart too.



The Mountain Goats, 'The Sign' (orig. Ace of Base), 2002.

Previous Mountain Goats clips and comments available here.

Other MG version of 'The Sign'.

Drop your panties, Sir William; I cannot wait until lunchtime!

The Wife's latest post inspired certain personal memories of Britain, particularly that wonderful example of British language programming, 'Follow Me'.

(Which is more than slightly reminiscent of the spoof educational series 'Look Around You'.)

Speaking of learning languages:



And speaking of hovercrafts (full of eels, or otherwise):



(The last sentence of that report is somehow also fitting...)

I have a sentimental spot for the old hovercraft: in the late 1970s my family took it from Britain to the Continent and back (we were visiting relatives who were in Belgium).

I enjoyed the Hovercraft...but threw up on it going both ways.

And now for something completely different

Happy Jihad's recent reference to actress Suzanne Somers - she of the auto-estrogene therapy movement (apparently it keeps the menopause away) - provides a welcome cue to post a few visuals of the corrupting Anglo influences that spoilt my pre-pubescent brain forever.

Somers, John tells me, was in Three's Company, the American version of Man About the House - the latter a show I was seriously addicted to when -uhm, like, little - much to the dismay of my mother, who had a dismissive little formula to describe anything British: "bad hair, bad teeth, bad wallpaper".

You must know that I come from a family where wallpaper is considered to be intrinsically common.

So the following had my mother pulling her hair every Friday evening, because I absolutely had to watch it (and in fact found it funny):






I was in London and Northampton over the weekend and you know what - nothing has changed. Nothing at all ....

I was at that time (the late seventies) a raving-loony Anglophile who'd swoon at the sight of an Underground sign. Which is why, years later on a Monday evening I would watch Francis Matthews display his chesthair and fake bake in the BBC's much beloved (by me) language programme Follow Me:



Yes, this is what English had to sound like, plummy and right posh (though Matthews was born in York, and probably capable of quite impressive Northern diphtongs).

Oh yeah (oh yeah), those were the humble years before Blighty turned from a slum tout court into a slum where you could purchase avocados and everyone has a plasma TV:



As well as into "The Home of the British Nazi Party."

Little Dieter has two daddies

To keep in mind when you next hear that homosexuality is 'unnatural':

A pair of male penguins has adopted an abandoned chick, now about a month old, at a zoo in Bremerhaven, Germany. Zoo veterinarian Joachin Schöne said Wednesday that the two Humboldt penguins took turns incubating the egg, which had been abandoned by its biological parents. Zookeepers had placed the egg near the two male penguins in the hope that they would care for it as their own. The experiment, so far, has worked.

(German version)

Here, an image of the proud baby daddies, 'Z' and 'Vielpunkt', and their adopted offspring:


Ah, family values, eh?....

(Image Source)

No, we are not your brothers

Apropos of nothing in particular...

While doing some work tonight, I had on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's wonderful (but I have the feeling somehow overlooked) 1941 film 49th Parallel.

The basic plot involves the survivors of a German U-Boat crew trying to make their way across Canada to the (at that point officially neutral) US.

There are many powerful moments in the film, one involving Anton Walbrook as the leader of a Hutterite community who responds to the fanatical Nazism of the naval lieutenant (played with remarkably convincing menace by Eric Portman).



Leslie Howard also has a key role in the film (as an author, canoeist and Thomas Mann fan...and a surprisingly good shot with a pistol), and I learned something looking at his Wikipedia page that I didn't know: he died in 1943 after being shot down on a flight from Lisbon to Bristol.

Of interest:

Several exhaustively detailed books such as Bloody Biscay: The Story of the Luftwaffe's Only Long Range Maritime Fighter Unit, V Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 40, and Its Adversaries 1942-1944 (2001 by Chris Goss) by (which comes to a slightly different conclusion), Flight 777 (1957 by Ian Colvin), and In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard (1984 by Ronald Howard, Leslie's son), conclude that the Germans were almost certainly out to shoot down the plane in order to kill Howard himself.[5] His intelligence-gathering activities (while ostensibly on "entertainer goodwill" tours), as well as the chance to demoralise Britain with the loss of one of its most outspokenly patriotic figures, were behind the Luftwaffe (German air-force) attack. Ronald Howard's book, in particular, explores in great detail written German orders to the Ju-88 Staffel (squadron) based in France assigned to intercept the aircraft, as well as communiqués on the British side which verify intelligence reports of the time indicating a deliberate attack on Howard.

I did not know that.

From my cold dead hands

British politics are sounding more and more like an episode of The Sopranos:

One of Brown's closest aides vowed "the prime minister will only be taken out of Downing Street in a box"[...]

Bada bing, bada boom...



Or, if you require something a little more decisive:



Ah, politics is a dirty business...

[UPDATE] Is this the (metaphorical) Fangschuss?

In praise of lost causes

I would like to think I'd have this sort of courage.

But, to be honest, I'm doubtful.

Twenty years ago, tomorrow:

Background to the photo. (Worth reading.)

Background to the event. (Worth watching.)

It's not today que le ciel me tombera sur la tête

It's all frightfully busy round here right now, but RaRo played this today and made me happy:



Oh, this takes me back ....

On 'tea and muffin dyspepsia' and 'heroic doses of being left alone'

Something from the research pile, this time, for a change, something actually related to a project I'm working on...

The following editorial (of which I re-print about the first half, after which it goes into some rather culturally-specific stuff about betting) gives voice to a common set of complaints about over-interference by the state and police in the late 1920s.

As an added bonus, it combines this with a swipe at the rich and at Parliament for sticking it to the common man while living it up themselves.

The more things change...

Violent Tugs at the Apron Strings

Public Calls for “Heroic Doses” of Being Left Alone

Because some people have apoplexy after recklessly stuffing themselves with hot buttered muffins swilled down with tea in toxic quantities, we do not, at present, legislate as to the quantities of those accessories to the really pious life that may be consumed at one sitting.

It is condoned by super-moral political people because tea and muffin dyspepsia and apoplexy are not connected with that perishing word ‘drink.’

Nor do we legislate—and jaw with shocky-shocky faces—after debates interspersed with murmured moans of approval, against the respectable habit of a flutter in Futures or speculating in margins on the Stock Exchange. Bishops and Baptists, Brewers and Milk and Soda Dealers, and even Parliamentary pietists have been known to practise that enticing game!

THE NON-WICKED

You have to have ‘a bit’ to enable you to do it. That makes it non-wicked. It is not ‘gaming’: it is not ‘betting’; it is not—oh, dear, No!—it is not participating in the Lottery!

Therefore, it is not to be condemned and must not be stopped by Act of Parliament drafted by deeply sly Puritans and ‘amended’ by them in Committee with the view afterwards of applying it to cases to which it was never intended to apply.

Almost at every turn to-day the people are met in their desire for fun and amusement with some Act, Order or Regulation of the Verboten or “Defense de...” kind, and just as their ‘faces want to smile’ they can’t let ‘em. Into the dock they must go. Soon, in Britain, Trappist monks will be the only people who have not been before the Bench, and they may have to go also if they don’t get certificates with their seed potatoes.

I suppose there always will have to be some laws that harrow our bodies, but it is time that Parliament and Parish Constables gave our souls a rest.

We need most sorely and most bitterly what the doctors call ‘heroic doses’ of being left alone.

(T.A. Hannam, World’s Pictorial News, 16 December 1928, p. 4.)

Quite apart from the subject matter, I am often struck by the style of writing that was common in newspapers from the 1920s. Often a bit over the top, there are times when it is remarkably euphonious, even poetic.

Keep in mind, this was the World's Pictorial News, which--as it described itself to potential advertisers--was aimed at 'artisans, skilled and agricultural labourers, and their respective families'. (It promoted itself in this context as 'the paper that’s published on pay-day'.)

So, we're firmly in working-class tabloid country here.

But its writing (if not always its opinions) compares very favourably with today's Sun or Mail.

Just re-read those first few paragraphs...

Insulting the Germans

The activity mentioned in the title has a long and storied history across the Sleeve, and, as we occasionally note here, is far from a lost art.

There is, for instance, the more direct method...

A man brought his German-born neighbour close to tears by twice calling her a schweinhund, a court heard yesterday.

...which suffers only the slight drawback that a knowledge of German that goes beyond comic books may be essential: the correct word is Schweinehund.

Don't forget that little linking 'e', and always remember that all German nouns, especially the insulting ones, should be capitalised. (Thanks to The Wife for the link.)

The other, more subtle way of insulting the Germans may be observed in an article at the Guardian by Ashley Seager a few days ago.

It's about the impact of the Global Financial Worldwide Totally Scary Economic Thingy (or whatever) on this here place I call home.

So far as it goes, I think Ashley is correct--though not entirely original--in saying that said economic impact is going to be...wait for it...quite severe.

Fair enough.

But he manages the very strange feat of suggesting that key characteristics of the German economy (Making High-Quality Things That The World Wants To Buy) and of the German population more generally (Being Somewhat Cautious With Their Money and Not Going Crazily Into Debt) are not the sensible and virtuous things you might have thought and are...instead...somehow...deeply shameful.

I think he should have just come out and used the word Schweinehund.

It would have been friendlier.

Rock solid political commitment

Something slight for the weekend...

In an interesting article on some Tories' concerns about David Cameron's plans to withdraw his party from the main centre-right political grouping in the European Parliament (in order to align it with the far more 'Euroskeptic' alliance with right-wing Czechs and Poles), we encounter the following delightful turn of phrase from Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:

"I do not understand a rigid commitment to impotence," he said.

Neither do I, Lord Kerr, neither do I....

So much for wets and dries then: the modern Tory party will be divided into hards and softs.

Or maybe we could go on just calling them pricks.

Elsewhere in the Guardian: best CiF title this year.

Another superstupid headline ...

... this time from The Independent. And here's me having to travel to fair Blighty next week, the magic island where WWII will never end. Why do I bother?

The Moon Inside (Gets Round and Round)

To pick up briefly on The Wife's 'shipwrecked and comatose' theme of a few days ago, I ran across this trailer for Duncan Jones's Moon.

It looks...quite good.



The references to classics like 2001, Solaris or Silent Running are obvious, but I don't mind an homage if it's done well.

Coincidentally, I also -- while looking for something else -- happened across this interview with Jones in Popular Mechanics (via) which not only explains how to make lunar concrete but also references Daniel Dennett. It concludes intriguingly:

What's up next for you?
It looks like I'm going to be doing another science-fiction film next. I love Blade Runner, it's one of my favorite films, and I've always been really… depressed that there was never—not a sequel, because I don't think it's right to make a sequel about Blade Runner, but no one's really tried to make a film which was set in the same kind of world or had that same kind of field. So that's what I'm doing, a big-city mystery story that takes place in a future Berlin.

Since being in Berlin already, I find somehow, makes one feel as if one is living slightly in the future, I'm curious about what Mr. Jones comes up with.

(Post title reference)

Put off by Padel's poetry

I initially thought that the title of Ruth Padel's (aka The poet formerly known as Oxford Professor of Poetry) poem "Survival of the Fittest", from her collection Darwin: A Life in Poems, was somewhat ... suboptimal. After all, the phrase (coined by Herbert Spencer, not Darwin, even though the latter adopted it in later versions of On the Origin of Species) is not exactly the most appropriate metaphor to describe the principle of natural selection.

But now that I've watched a video of Padel reading from her work (and in a yurt, too) at the Hay festival I'm no longer so certain that this was merely a minor slip of the pen by a slightly ditsy lady sporting the medusaesque hair and dramatic eye make-up of expressionist movie stars. Sounds more like Padel, who is Darwin's great-great-granddaughter, has used her poetry for a wee spot of kin bitching. I don't know whether the other poems in the collection are in any way more ... astute than "Survival ..." (in one of them, apparently, she imagines Darwin's horny revery over a smutty painting), but somehow I can't be arsed asked to read them.

Tired of mad people

And to think that I spent so much of my precious life reading the incomprehensible ejaculations of this hysterical little man ....

Costly (musical) signalling

As I was driving home form work tonight, I caught the beginning of a live recording of a Brian Auger concert (oh, the wonders of Deutschlandradio Kultur!).

Which got me thinking: should playing the Hammond B3 organ be finally studied in light of the handicap principle?



And here's a snippet for a friend who absolutely needs to watch Absolutely Fabulous to chill out:

Shipwrecked and comatose

Life is exhaustingly busy and mildly frustrating at the moment. This explains not only our recent GVBS (Great Void of Blog Silence), but also the manifold RLIJN (Recurring Lapses Into Juvenile Nostalgia) from which the inhabitants of this household tend to suffer when stressed out.

Hence this here association, which has been haunting me for the last few days, is rather symptomatic:



Once life is back to some kind of normal I might have something to say about Kazuo Ishiguro's new book, Nocturnes. Right now, there is little space for anything focused and semi-intelligent.

A kiss is just a kiss

A missive from the past, with some personal relevance this weekend:

FAREWELL KISSES

Chief of Paris Police On Public Embraces

NOT IMMORAL

Paris breathes freely again, the Prefect of Police, M. Chiappe, having declared officially that 'kissing in public is not an immoral proceeding.'

Some time ago (says the B.U.P. [i.e., British United Press]) a Paris municipal councillor, M. Leon Riotor, called the attention of the Prefect to the amount of promiscuous public osculation occurring in cafés, railway stations, and other public places 'and asked that he police should suppress it on the ground that it was immoral, or likely to lead to immorality'.

M. Chiappe's reply, publicised in full in the official gazette, is a severe rebuff.

'It is quite true that people kiss each other at railway stations when saying good-bye or when greeting each other on arrival, but I see nothing immoral in that, and the police will not take any action to stop the practice.

'There is no evidence that such a custom leads to immorality'.

The Daily Herald, 18 June 1928, p. 5.

I am relieved.

Musical associations (that I don't want to go into)

For some reason, this song has been on my mind lately:



Bettina Wegner, "Kinder" (1978)

It's hard to find good help these days...

As part of my occasional series: a few thoughts from 1927 on a problem you may not ever have had to consider: the 'servant famine'.

WAY TO END THE SERVANT FAMINE

Continental Girls Anxious to Come to Britain

Ministry’s Bar

Mistresses Whose Needs Should Be Considered

One means of solving the domestic servant famine is the employment of foreign domestics. Many girls from the Continent are anxious to enter British homes, but are debarred by the Labour Ministry.

This is because of the fear that the current British rates of pay would be undercut. In view of the refusal of British girls to enter domestic service the harassed housewife would appear to be entitled to greater consideration.

HAPPY HOUSEWIVES

Many Instances of Satisfied Mistresses
and Foreign Servants

While British housewives find it difficult to obtain efficient domestic servants, they have no opportunity of securing good and cheaper services from Continental countries. Unfortunately, that opportunity is obstructed by the Ministry of Labour, which insists that no foreign domestic servant shall be employed unless she receives the normal rate of pay of a British servant. Many Continental women are happy to accept considerably less.

There are obvious disadvantages in the employment of a Continental servant, who, at least at the outset, will have no knowledge of the English language. It seems hard, therefore, on the harassed manager of a home that she cannot avail herself of this service at a cheap rate which will compensate her for the comparative inconvenience she will suffer.

MINISTRY'S VIEW

But the Ministry of Labour adopts the view, so it informs The Daily Mirror, that any extensive importation of foreign domestic labour will seriously undercut the current British rates of pay.

It is easy to combat this attitude. Because such a large number of British girls refuse to undertake domestic service, it is possible for an efficient British worker to obtain any wage she desires within reason, or even a little beyond. On account of this refusal to work in a particular capacity, domestic service has become an occupation which exceptional in this country.

The housewife has interests which are as worth as those of the housemaid. Many Continental servants have been introduced into England. They come from all the Western and Central European countries, and those from Denmark have seemed particularly acceptable. One Danish girl, who in her own country had been a teacher, recently offered to take a post as mother’s help at £24 a year. The Ministry of Labour refused to grant the necessary permit on the ground that this wage was lower than the English rate.

UNNECESSARY CONDITION

In order to obtain a permit for the engagement of foreign servants the prospective employer must satisfy the Ministry that every possible effort has been made to find suitable labour in this country. In the special case of domestic service this proviso may seem unnecessary. During 1926 permits were granted for 1,917 domestic servants, and there were 478 refusals mainly on the grounds given above.

It is, of course, true that many foreign domestic servants wish to come to this country principally to learn the language and may leave for employment of a higher status in their own countries when the language has been learned. On the other hand many find Britain a pleasant land, and many housewives are glad to be able to retain such women in their service.

The Daily Mirror, 17 October 1927, p. 2.

I note only that saying 'many Continental servants have been introduced into England' sounds rather like it's referring to some exotic species of mammal being released into the English countryside....

Remember: British jobs for British workers! (Though it's half as catchy as 'Danish servants for British housewives!', I would think...)

What Maisie doesn't know

Hah - didn't I say so!

The lamentable dismal tragedy story of Juliet Chantelle, Romeo Alfie and their little Baby Maisie brings to mind the comic routine of the fictional pre-WWII comedian Gorgeous George, retold in Angela Carter's last novel Wise Children (1991) by her narrator-protagonist Nora Chance:

" ... and this boy's thoughts turned lightly to" - big poke in the air with the gold club - "so he says to his dad, 'I want to get married to the girl next door, Dad.'

" ' Ho, hum,' says his dad. "I've got news for you, son. When I was your age, I used to get me leg over - ' "

Roars, shrieks, hoots; but all so much titillation without any substance, I tell you, because he gave them a shocked look, pursed his lips together, shook his golf club in reproof.

"Filthy minds, some of you have," he grieved in parenthesis. Renewed hoots and shrieks.

"What I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted ..."

That was his other catch phrase.
'
... was, I used to get me leg over the garden wall -'

He made a fierce lunge in the air with his golf club and looked around, working his eyebrows as if to defy misinterpretation.

'... and, cut a long story short, you can't marry the girl next door, son, on account of she's your sister.'

The air turned blue. Mothers forced reluctant children outside, bribing with ice-cream.

"So this boy buys a bike" - he straddled his golf club, mimicked pedalling, renewed roaring - "and pedals off. Pedals, I said, Missus; what d'you think I said? He pedals off to Hove."

Wonderful diction. Grandma herself couldn't have done more with that long 'O'.

"He comes back, he says to his father: 'I've met this nayce girl from Hove, Dad.' 'Hove?' says Dad. 'Sorry to say, son, I frequently hove to in Hove when I was your age and - '"

He halted, working his eyebrows, manipulating his golf club. Say no more. They laughed until they cried.

"This poor boy, he buys himself a day return, he goes up to Victoria, he meets a girl under the clock. Clock, I said, Missus. But his father says: 'We had trains in my young day, son ...'

Appreciative gurgles.

"The boy goes into the kitchen for a cup of tea. Big sigh. His mum says: 'You've got a face as long as a - '"

Eyebrows. Golf club. Roars.

"What I was going to say, before I was so rudely interrupted, was ... as long as a fiddle!"

They pounded the floorboards with their feet.

" 'Looks like I'll never get married, Mum.' 'Why's that, son?' He told her all about it, she says: 'You just go ahead and marry who you like, son -' "

Split-second timing. That pause. Perfect.

' 'E's not your father!' "

All them DNA-tests paid by Max Clifford and co. really spoil the fun.

"Always looking for opportunities to spread my religious opinions about the kingdom of God and the imminent second coming ..."

Like, for instance, on that popular forum for spiritual uplift and contemplation, Britain's Got Talent. Astute and differentiated commentary on the case of mad Neil Horan (and his bodhran), spreading The Word in a ridiculously short skirt, from my favourite British daily here.

Next stop Oprah.

Eurovision debriefing (or: screw authenticity)

So, they're saying Alexander Rybak's Eurovision landslide is all due to a general craving for authenticity. People are tired, they say, with all that nude writhing and thrusting and playing around with hot pokers. This is what a world trembling in the grip of a global crisis needs:



Authenticity.

Well, he sure looks authentically emaciated and manic.

But on closer inspection his winning ticket "Fairytale" is just a little bit of this:



a little bit of that:



and a little bit of the other:

Drive-by Eurovision update

Sorry about the light posting from my side of things recently, but there have been unpleasant kinds of workplace-related stress that have been keeping me out of the blogging mood recently.

But, as a brief missive from my world....

While revising an essay on the late (and much mourned) J. G. Ballard, I've kept a little window open in the corner of my screen with a live broadcast from the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, which has become one of those odd-but-wonderful discoveries since moving here eight years ago. I think I've seen most of them live since then, and I've actually had strong opinions about some of the acts in a few of them, which puts me light-years ahead (or behind, depending on how you see these things) of about 99% of people born in the USA. It also signals my, one might argue, as the Germans would say, Integrationsbereitschaft.

Anyway, as usual, most of the music is garbage, but that's sort of beside the point. The show, (even on a tiny Windows Media window) is the thing.

And this year is about as satisfying as ever. Which means: mostly junk, but a few bright spots.

The best things I've seen so far have been Estonia, Germany and Turkey.

Estonia's entry was kind of a standard Enya-with-a-beat number, but, compared to the rest, it came across with an appealing musical flexibilty: you could have added a bridge consisting of anything from ancient Celtic to modern death-metal and it would have worked. A bit standard, but not offensive and rather tuneful.

Opinions are divided in this household about 'Miss Kiss Kiss Bang', the German entry. The Wife is dead-set against. Me, I'm in a more patriotic frame of mind. As usual. I mean...I'm far from a fan of that kind of music, but still: it stands out from the crowd and had...well...style. The Germans have been trying the genre trick recently (swing in 2009, country in 2006), which hasn't worked very well in terms of results, but, still, I'm glad to see them experimenting with something interesting and international. Our Dita was hardly as spectacular as the hype would lead you to believe, but I think this had a certain quality. And, you know, the Finns managed the genre thing a few years ago. Different genre, but still....

Turkey presented, as usual, the kind of Islamic image that comes across well: the sexy version, which so rarely gets a look in. A solid song, nice presentation. I was all for their win a few years ago. But I think they're beginning to get a bit repetitive.

France: nice, classy, melancholy song...but...um...a bit dull. Hardly the kind of thing to keep pace with madly hopping Moldovans.

Norway...WTF?! Finnland...WTF? Sweden...WTF? Sorry, the Scandinavians are disappointing this year.

As for the British entry...well, the singer's story--as offered by German TV as a rags-to-riches classic--was far more interesting than the song itself. Andrew Lloyd Webber? Sorry... Nice voice, Jade, but find a better songwriter. The key change at about 2:15 is especially predictable.

This was all written before the results were revealed. I would like to think that Germany had a chance.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Not sure if I'll stay up for the results. I need my rest.

I have a shooting competition tomorrow morning.

[UPDATE] After 5 countries' votes. Norway. Norway? That was shit.

[UPDATE] I'm in the midst of gaining European citizenship. I'm...reconsidering.

Potty, or what?

You know that you're getting old, when icons of Punk wax lyrical about their mogs' potty training in coy interviews with The Times.

For the disgusting, but somehow fascinating ocular proof that cats can poop like humans, klick here. Here's wishing you and your cats all the best in your experiment in cat hygiene, Siouxsie!

I had hoped to be able to post "Lunar Camel" to accompany this vital piece of information, but there was no decent video to be found. So you will have to content yourselves with this:



Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Passenger" (1987)

Bummeling

Like The Wife, I also was pleased to note the pleasant synchronicity of our friends' bicycling tours. My first association, though, was with Jerome K. Jerome's wonderful book Three Men on the Bummel, from 1900, about three British friends who go on a cycling tour through Germany.

(This association is not due to any particular literariness on my part: I just happen to be reading it.)

Some selected excerpts from the Project Gutenberg edition:

I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London.

He said: “It is a very big town.”

I said: “What struck you most about it?”

He replied: “The people.”

I said: “Compared with other towns—Paris, Rome, Berlin,—what did you think of it?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It is bigger,” he said; “what more can one say?”

One anthill is very much like another. So many avenues, wide or narrow, where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these bustling by, important; these halting to pow-wow with one another. These struggling with big burdens; those but basking in the sun. So many granaries stored with food; so many cells where the little things sleep, and eat, and love; the corner where lie their little white bones. This hive is larger, the next smaller. This nest lies on the sand, and another under the stones. This was built but yesterday, while that was fashioned ages ago, some say even before the swallows came; who knows?

**

To Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German. The disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small province, nobody understands this best German. Thus you have to decide whether to speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad German and travel about. Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen principalities, is unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects.

**

In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany will solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English. Every boy and girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks English. Were English pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not the slightest doubt but that in the course of a very few years, comparatively speaking, it would become the language of the world. All foreigners agree that, grammatically, it is the easiest language of any to learn. A German, comparing it with his own language, where every word in every sentence is governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that English has no grammar. A good many English people would seem to have come to the same conclusion; but they are wrong. As a matter of fact, there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children, penetrating maybe even into literary and journalistic circles. But at present we appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity neglectable. English pronunciation is the stumbling-block to our progress. English spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on the part of the foreigner; but for that he would learn it in a year.

**

George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core. I remember George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting the introduction of the guillotine into England.

“It is so much neater,” said Harris.

“I don’t care if it is,” said George; “I’m an Englishman; hanging is good enough for me.”

**

In Germany one breathes in love of order with the air, in Germany the babies beat time with their rattles, and the German bird has come to prefer the box, and to regard with contempt the few uncivilised outcasts who continue to build their nests in trees and hedges. In course of time every German bird, one is confident, will have his proper place in a full chorus. This promiscuous and desultory warbling of his must, one feels, be irritating to the precise German mind; there is no method in it. The music-loving German will organise him. Some stout bird with a specially well-developed crop will be trained to conduct him, and, instead of wasting himself in a wood at four o’clock in the morning, he will, at the advertised time, sing in a beer garden, accompanied by a piano. Things are drifting that way.

**

This is the charm of German law: misdemeanour in Germany has its fixed price. You are not kept awake all night, as in England, wondering whether you will get off with a caution, be fined forty shillings, or, catching the magistrate in an unhappy moment for yourself, get seven days. You know exactly what your fun is going to cost you. You can spread out your money on the table, open your Police Guide, and plan out your holiday to a fifty pfennig piece. For a really cheap evening, I would recommend walking on the wrong side of the pavement after being cautioned not to do so. I calculate that by choosing your district and keeping to the quiet side streets you could walk for a whole evening on the wrong side of the pavement at a cost of little over three marks.

Rarely have national stereotypes been so enjoyably (and somehow gently and graciously) indulged in.

To be totally honest, I suppose my first bicycling association was actually with the song 'My White Bicycle'. Originally by Tomorrow, the first time I heard it was via The Young Ones and the song from Neil's Heavy Concept Album. (A friend of mine had purchased the latter when it was released and I used to own a much-prized tape of it until it went the way of most of my tapes...)

I can't find that version via YouTube. But the original is plenty good:

I want to ride my bicycle

It's spring, the sun's out and bicycling is once again on the mind of many a blogger - witness the recent posts by Andrew and Francis.

For lack of time, energy and inspiration I hand over to Queen for a musical celebration of the two-wheeled endeavours of our dear friends and their recent heroic exploits in the rolling hills of Southern England and the industrial wastelands of Germany:

We're up to our necks in love

Status check:



Robyn Hitchcock, 'Up To Our Necks'

Big man, pig man, ha ha, charade you are

I was in London again last week for a research trip (five days of intensive microfilm viewing at Colindale...both a pleasure and a torture, somehow).

I found the city to be -- as ever -- both quite enjoyable and rather frustrating.

It's that kind of place.

And I'm always grateful for the long train ride along the Rhine that brings me home to my small town.

Anyway, I had the pleasure of making a new acquaintance, for which I am grateful to Chris W (as for so many other things).

Some divine serendipitous gleanings from this research will be appearing here soon (as part of the 'historical bycatch' series), probably after we return from this week's travel to Montreal, where I'm giving a paper at a conference on justice and public opinion.

For the moment, though, as is my wont, I'd just like to register my disgust with something.

There I was, returning to my hotel from a hard day's slog in the archives. Having crossed the Worst Road in the World (i.e., Euston Road), as usual, I rounded the corner onto Upper Woburn Place where, as usual, I was assaulted by a paper-wielding thug handed a copy of one of London's various free papers, London Lite (Friday, 1 May 2009).

Given that we are in the middle of a panic (justified or not, who knows) about swine influenza -- otherwise known in the British press by the more catchy and economical 'pig flu' -- I was interested in reading the cover story, with the subtle title of 'Pig flu hell of London student, 22'.

I got as far as paragraph five when I ran across the following:

Max Clifford, who is representing the family, said: 'He's in a bad way and is suffering from awful sickness and vomiting.'

OK, not for a moment do I wish to condemn someone suffering from a potentially fatal illness.

But still, I had to think: Max Clifford. Max Clifford. A PR agent.

What: given 'awful sickness and vomiting' the first call is to the NHS, the second to a publicist?

Am I missing out on something? I mean, am I insufficiently prepared for the current Zeitgeist when I don't imagine that coming down with a bad case of the flu is the kind of thing that requires...um...an agent?

And this is not just envy speaking.

No, I've had several conversations with myself over the last three hours, and this this has nothing to do with the fact that I've spent the better part of a year and a half fruitlessly trying to interest publishing agents in a fascinating book I've written about a half-forgotten murder case from the past whilst receiving all kinds of lame excuses (when I receive any feedback at all) .

No. I am not bitter.

Much.

Except for when I think that instead of slaving away for two years on a sophisticated-yet-entertaining manuscript, I should have just hung around in places likely to generate the pandémie de l'année and sold my story when the projectile vomiting really got going.

Why do I keep missing out on these great opportunities?

(Title reference)

Wordless Weekend Trio

This is a new feature for your general delectation! No comment.



Mother's Finest, "Baby Love" (197?)



Sniff'n The Tears, "Driver's Seat" (1979)



Iggy Pop, "The Passenger" (1977)

Wessen Welt ist die Welt?

It being the first of May and all (which doesn't mean much in the UK, where Labour Day was turned into a pragmatic May bank holiday in, I believe, 1871, let alone in the USA, where all public holidays are corrupted into bloody sales days anyway), I thought I'd post something appropriate.

Here is Hans Eisler's "Lied von der Solidarität" in a scene from the 1932 film - scripted by Bertolt Brecht - Kuhle Wampe:



It is a very wonderful tune, that - and a great frame. It reminds me of a passage in Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole (1933), in which one of the characters, the (as yet) naive Harry Hardcastle, contemplates the workers at Marlowe's, the local factory, whom he yearns to join. There's a similar sense of distance, of a world removed from the eyes of the beholder:

In a moment this silence would be shattered. Shattered by the influx of the vast concourse of men congregated outside the walls. Before six o'clock the twelve thousand of them would pass through the gates. They crammed the wide thoroughfare, a black mass of restlessness; crammed, saving a strip of roadway kept clear for the frequently arriving, bell-clanging tramcars full of more overalled men. The air stank of oily clothes, reeked with it and tobacco smoke, and buzzed with conversation, with week-end support.

How easily, negligently, these men wore their supreme importance; how infinitely, ineffably superior these gods of the machine and forge were to mere pushers of pens!

Spoiler warning: Harry will, in the course of the novel, be disabused of his idealisation of factory work. Of course.

This version of the song, sung by Ernst Busch, is even better than the one above:

Tanz in den Mai

Happy Walpurgisnacht, everyone!



Les Rita Mitsouko, "Marcia Baila" (1985)

Jeunet, tout à fait

Andrew has kindly identified one of the discursive references of yesterday's video post. Thank you, Mr. Joyboy! I really ought to have thought of that myself .... Only my poor brain is too busy grappling with the Kafkaesque machinations going on at that old institution of mine, which is why The Wife's Rampant Associationism is currently in sleep mode.

So, with a day's delay I give you this:




New Order, "True Faith" (1986)

And this:



Oskar Schlemmer, "Triadic Ballet" (1927)

(Sorry 'bout the quality - it's still worth watching.)

Work it out for yourselves!

Seul montagnard de tes monts blancs

Well, I'm truly shattered. All I can do is post a silly little clip from my age of innocence - when the term "chimpanzee politics" did not yet possess a meaning.



Julien Clerc, "Hélène" (1987)

Pity that Julien Clerc vaguely looks like Lothar Matthäus.

Does not compute

When confronted with stories like this...


...you find your comfort where you can.