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April 29, 2005
A legal war?
Pigeons coming home to roost?
Shit hitting fan?
Or are we seeing a British public that simply doesn't care a jot about the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent Johnny Foreigner-towelheads?
As time goes on - I'm finding it harder to be able to tell the difference between what Saddam Hussien was doing trying to invade his neighbours and what Bush and Blair have done...
by groc at 09:54 AM | Comments (2)
April 27, 2005
portable personal multimedia
I wrote this back in Feb. 1994 - it migt help to explain why I've always been unimpressed and completely underwhelmed by the iPod.
Oh it's small, it plays music. It's a walkman? Oh, it stores *all* your music. Oh. Is that it? Is that all? Yawn. I so was over the idea of the iPod years before it was even invented.
by groc at 02:36 AM | Comments (1)
April 26, 2005
woodring
by groc at 05:06 PM | Comments (1)
April 25, 2005
UK election 2005. -part 3
The most bizarre part of this election is that in terms of policies and issues in polls everyone generally sees the Lib Dems as having the sanest, most sensible and decent policies that they feel they can support. Despite this pretty much no one is going to vote for them in the General Election. Simply and purely because the Lib Dems haven’t been in power before, and because of that no one trusts that’ll they’ll be up to the job. Yet the only reason they’ve never been in power before -is because no-one will vote them into power because they haven’t been in power before...
(It would seem the Lib Dems only pick up any votes when someone is making a protest against the party they would normally support, rather than voting postively for the party.)
See the inanity?
Yes, indeed, the people in this country really are on the whole THAT stupid. Both Labour and the Conservatives know this and pander to this fact to the hilt. The Lib Dems are perpetually surprised by this, and being inherently decent haven’t learnt how to exploit this to their advantage. (I do have a sneaking suspicion that your standard Lid Dem voter has a higher IQ than that of your average Tory or Labour voter.)
My gripe about this sitituation is that to break this absurd deadlock is that we need to change the political system, we desperately need proportional representation. But we won’t get that until… the Lib Dems get into power -see the flaw? Of coursse Labour and the Tories aren't going to ever change the electorial system - it's not in their interestes to ever do that.
So the country remains trapped in this complete rut - we never really get to actually progress anywhere.
The other problem with the Lib Dems is that their Leader is a red head. I’m sorry, but this ignores another principle of modern politics which frequently gets overlooked: the fact that in this highly visual - completely televised world - politics is now in large part a beauty pageant. The political world is increasingly ruled by image consultants, every prominent MP you see is put under intense training to fake sincerity as convincingly as possible. Anything close to genuine authenticity was bled out of politics a very long ago.
by groc at 09:37 PM | Comments (2)
UK election 2005. -part 2
Despite my deep seated dislike and distrust of Tony Blair -not under any circumstances must Michael Howard ever be allowed to gain power. He was one of the worst Home Secretaries we’ve ever had, he was one of the main forces behind the disastrous Poll Tax fiasco, the list goes on.
The Conservative Party played their race card early, all to make a direct appeal to their bigoted supporters. No doubt hoping to steal some votes from the BNP.
Also once again they’re dragging out their tired, completely threadbare and discredited promise for lower taxes. By which they always, but always, mean lower taxes only for their wealthier supporters, which in the end always involves sneakily clawing back this new shortfall from the poorer individuals and families in both indirect (VAT) and direct taxes, whilst at the same time cutting all the public services these people have to rely on. (Rich people never care about public services - they don’t use public transport, they don’t use NHS hospitals, they go to BUPA for their Health Insurance and go private hospitals, they have private pension plans -etc. Mark it all down to selfishness. If the Middle classes are about anything they're about all out selfishness.)
The Conservative Party has a whole have always disgusted me. I can see through how utterly primitive their world view is -it’s all so medieval, so completely feudal under-pinned with the mentality of the robber Baron. It's just nasty and grubby. So I can see why this is so popular amongst the 'less sophisticated'. Hell, it’s not far off from the whole monkey-mentality -"My banana! Mine! My territory! Mine! I’m bigger than you -I hit you. -I rule. Now I want your banana too. Give -or I hit you."
The only vaguely clever part of all this is where the Party leaders recognise this primitive mindset in their minions and exploit it to their advantage. They’ve been remarkable by how very successful they’ve long been in getting the working class to vote for them - despite the fact that everything the Tories have ever done and will continue to do has been totally against their, the Working classes own best interests.
(Much in the same way the Neo-Conservatives in the USA cynically took /take advantage of the Christian Fundamentalist Right Wing over there to help bulk up numbers at the polling booths.)
I hope that most people won’t fall for their lies - and can remember what a disgusting repellent ball of decadent sleaze the Tory party eventually devolved into after their far-too-long years in power. When you’ve got a primitive grasping monkey-mentality you’ve bound to start playing with your own shit and start flinging it around sooner or later. That's just what monkeys do.
by groc at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
UK election 2005
In which the Groc has a long, long rant about the current election:
part one.
I’ve been hearing on the news that the current election issue today is the Iraq Invasion. Which brings me directly to the reason why I certainly don’t think Tony Blair deserves to re-elected. As far as I’m concerned no matter which way you look at it he in no way deserves another term as our Prime Minister.
To quickly recap: Saddam was pretty much on his last legs, there were sanctions against him in place, everyone now admits there were no ‘Weapons of Mass destruction‘, so in actuality Saddam was complying to whatever was being asked of him. He certainly had nothing to do with the bombing of the Twin Towers. Etc. Yadda, yadda, yadda, we all know the story by now.
But today as on previous occasions all we’re getting from Tony is, something like, to paraphrase wildly: ‘well, I thought I doing the right thing at the time (according to what the American President told me). We won. So I’m not sorry. (Yaa-boo-sucks.)’
But Tony, if you end up doing everything President Bush tells you to -are you being a Leader (of our Country) or are you just being a follower? (Not to metiona complete suck-up?)
If you believe the moon is made of green cheese are you suddenly going to start to send rockets up there to mine it? It doesn’t matter what you ‘believe’. Running the country isn’t about articles of faith. It’s a pretty lame excuse for killing people in an invasion.
So in short, at best -being overly charitable here, he made a vastly bad decision based on completely dubious intelligence or else is (I dread to think) part of something altogether much more sinister. In either case -the cold hard facts are that it has cost thousands of innocent lives, is still costing untold amounts of money and has left Iraq in a far worst state than it was before -a mess which is going to go on costing and be a big problem for everyone concerned for many years to come. It hasn’t even lead to lower oil prices for the ‘Merikcans. It hasn’t even lead to contracts for UK big business taking a share of the cake in ‘rebuilding’ the country.
It also sets a dangerous prescient doesn’t it? “We absolutely totally need to invade - (insert name of any country we fancy here -China/Russia/Poland say)- because we have it on good authority (IE. That is from some people we captured from that country and tortured into getting them to tell us exactly only what we wanted to hear) that they’ve got a lot of weapons aimed our way and they’re threatening to attack us with them.
… … …
After the invasion: “Oops-a-daisy, - there weren’t any weapons after all, our bad. Never mind, what few civilians there are that are left -are very happy to be liberated… So that’s alright then isn’t it? Yay for us.”)
Either way all of this marks Tony Blair as someone I really don’t want leading our country.
by groc at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2005
Kramer
Larry Kramer on the ‘Tragedy of Today’s Gays’
“I hope we all realize that, as of Nov. 2, 2004, gay rights in our country are officially dead.”
by groc at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)
The Nomi Song
The Nomi Song - a documentary film.
by groc at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2005
Will Powers
Random thought: today I found myself quoting (in the obligatory pretend 'vocoded' voice): “You can get ahead by co-operating as well as by competing” from an old Will Powers song, and wondering whatever happened to…
I’ll have to have a bit of a Google later, and see if I can find out my old vinyl LP of hers.
Update:
Will Powers = photographer Lynn Goldsmith. (Her own website but chockful of dead links - which is a bit worrying.)
and it's a her - not a him, especially not this him!
by groc at 06:39 PM | Comments (1)
Pige Cam
and on Flickr.
This is the kinda thing I would've done if the pigeon couple had nested on my side of the balcony. Instead my heartless neighbour played abortionist.
(I don't like the way humans like to pick and choose what wild animals they decide to help or exterminate.
Wasn't there a time in communist china where one year they decided to exterminate a lot of birds - then the following year they ended up suffering plagues of insects - because there weren't the birds that would've usually eaten them any more? Humans are stupid.)
by groc at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
playing it dumb...
So because there's nothing else much on tonight I’m watching this truly awful ‘Playing it Straight’ programme on Channel 4. (Danny B is cute though - shut up - I can be shallow if I want. Although it would take a strong effort to get as shallow as this braindead wreck of a programme. -Even Gay.com doesn't think much of it.)
And I’m left thinking whatever happened to when there were TV programs made by gay/queer/lesbian/homosexualist folk for gay/queer/lesbian/homosexualist folk. It happened a few times back in the 80s. It was all very daring and innovative -even though at the time many complained a lot of those programmes was just a bit too arty for them. *Eye roll* At last it happened. But nowadays although there are lots of openly homosexualist peoples on the TV -in reality we’re lapsed back to being there as entertainment figures for an almost exclusively heterosexual audience. No one but me seems to think that that is altogether a bit crap really.
I suppose it must date back to when Boyz the publication cottoned on that the mass of gaymen are actually staggeringly stupid and easily pleased. As soon as the rest of the media world also got the message - things were never the same after that. The great widescale dumbing down begain in earnest.
*Sighs* I despair.
by groc at 02:25 AM | Comments (3)
April 21, 2005
Population Control 1:
Anyone who has 'Sweety the chick' or 'the Crazy Frog' on their mobile phone.
Surely the world would be better off without these people?
Feel free to submit your own candidates for immediate population control in the comments box.
by groc at 02:12 PM | Comments (4)
Bowie's area
this link is dedicated to Jeremy who gave me her old video copy of this particular movie.
via all things christie.
by groc at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
grumble grumble grumble
I'm getting an awful lot* of instances of the I-Worm/Netsky.B virus being sent my way.
*by which I mean one every other day or so. For me, because it's so rare I get any nasties, that's a lot.
by groc at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)
Ah, Smallville --how do I hate thee
Let me count the ways.
Tom Welling - yeah, OK well, that’s just nothing even remotely anything like acting is it? To call it wooden? That’d be an insult to trees.
Moreover, this is a taunt I can equally level at the rest of the cast. Isn’t one of the first rules of any drama that in some way we should care about the characters? Who could care anything about this bunch of cardboard cut-outs? They’re all so relentlessly bland. If they were to be wiped out over night in a meteor strike - who would even notice they were gone?
Super-boy? Isn’t he in his very late 20s / early 30s? Surely to god he’s way too old to be still in high school?
If he’s Superboy -who is going to grow up to be Superman - then who was that Superman in ‘Lois and Clark'/'the New Adventures of Superman'?
Where’s Clark Kent’s trademark thick black rimmed glasses disguise? Clark Kent is supposed to be a bumbling geek to hide that he’s Superboy/Superman. If he’s going around playing college football and whatever -then… well, that’s a large portion of the whole Superman mythos pissed away.
I can’t get my head around this whole re-invention, updating business. It just doesn’t gel with me. Is he Superman or not? Why throw away big chucks of the myth away but then keep making endless lame 'knowing' 'subtle' references to it. Like having Kent wear so much red and blue... blah blah blah. (I've spotted a few in the few episodes I've seen, but I couldn't be asked to list them.)
If I was making this show - I’d have gone for the full-on retro treatment and set it back in the 50s or 60s. Played around with the anachronisms a lot more. Made it fun and funny. I can’t stand all this completely tedious wholly dreary tortured teenager approach. Mainly because it’s all so unconvincing - “oh, I’m really fantastically good looking, oh, and look I’ve got super-powers too, and the chicks just can't keep their hands off me”. Well, boo-fucking-hoo. Isn’t *your* life so hard and difficult, my heart bleeds for you. It's impossible to take seriously - it was wrong to have tried. It should have been made as a comedy show from the get-go. It would have been brilliant played as a comedy.
Lex Luther’s long greasy haired billionaire (but trailer-trashy) father. Who’s idea was that? Because that was a full-on car crash of a lame idea if there ever was one.
That episode where Clark’s father was supposed to have visited Earth back in the 60s and met -was it the Grandma of Lana Lang or Lois Lane? -I can’t be bothered to remember. That took crap onto a whole new level of super-hyper-mega crappiness with sprinkles on top.
I'll stop now - because I'm starting to lose the will to live.
by groc at 02:01 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
bookishness
Memelicious.
That there Trash Addict decided to get his revenge on me for slapping him with a music meme. I'm slow to respond and had to think about because -I barely read books anymore. There's way too much internet and Satellite TV and DVDs to watch and reading is so damn sloooooow. I find myself increasingly exasperated by it all -I can flip through a book and think: 'too many words, so many words, surely there's a better way?, this is such an inefficent and vastly overrated method of communication.'
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
It is a modern classic. It’s funny and quite profound in a number of places, Adams managed to cleverly distil some rather nifty philosophical ideas.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Not that I can remember.
The last book you bought is:
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
(£3 from MVC. Warra bargain.)
The last book you read is:
I got half way through the Collected Plays of Joe Orton before I decided I didn’t like them much. It just made me want to watch the films again - to see if I’d still like them or not. It’s been so long since I’ve seen them.
I been dipping in and out of a few of the short stories in ‘The Day of Forever’ by J. G. Ballard. But I don’t think I liked them much either.
What are you currently reading?
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2
I loved it. I’ve yet to start the written novel part.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
The complete Works of Lewis Carroll
The other four would be things like
The Dummies Guide to Surviving on a Deserted Island.
The Jamie Oliver’s Guide to Finding Food and Cooking Yummy meals on a Deserted Island.
The Ann Maurice Guide to Building and maintaining really nice shelter on a Deserted Island.
Some sort of in-depth Encyclopaedia about the Flora and Fauna of Deserted Islands.
I rather think I'd be too busy struggling to survive to have too much book-reading time. So it's bit of a ropey question in my view.
Three people who I'm passing this meme onto:
Rakka.
I know she's always reading books. It was also her what did originally slap me with the meme what I did pass onto the Trash Addict. What goes round - comes round baby.
Ian.
I don't know if he reads ever. So it'll be interesting to see what stuff he has his nose in.
and er... someone else.
by groc at 01:49 AM | Comments (1)
April 17, 2005
cheating or just ingenuity?
Exams ban for mobile phone users
You see, I’ve long had this thing against education - or more strictly speaking against a particular narrow band of it… this whole thing of having to mindlessy memorise stuff. This is where education is debased to being not much more than a glorified memory test. I mean this skill may well have been crucially useful in the days before, well - writing, literacy and handy-sized printed notebooks and back when books where expensive things that had to kept safe in libraries. Then you pretty much had to memorise things, because you couldn‘t so easily look things up. But these days with mobile phones, the internet, even filofaxes or PDAs it seems redundant to have to memorise things for the sheer sake of it. If it’s knowledge you use on a regular basis you will automatically memorise it anyway. If it isn’t -you might well be advised to look it up somewhere first to make sure that information is correct before you attempt to put it into use.
I speak as someone who's always had a bit of ropey memory - but I can't say I've ever been hindered by it - because I'm perfectly capable of looking stuff up as and when the occasion demands- if that isn’t a vital skill in the 21st Century I don’t know what is.
So when people are ‘cheating’ in exams I can’t but help think that they should be applauded for their ingenuity rather than admonished. The only thing I’d say against it is that it’s unfair on the poorer students who can’t afford this sort of gadgetry.
Exams are a pretty retarded system of testing people's skills anyway. It's about time we got rid of all this antiquated nonsense. What was great for the likes of Medieval monks back in the Middle Ages isn't doing us any favours in the here and now.
by groc at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2005
Lost
What? You haven't been bittorrenting this from the internets? What? it isn't on Sky or any other British channel yet? Even though one of their programs (Entertainment Tonight - or whatever it's called) keeps mentioning it?
Oh -of course, they've got to show the entire series over there first, then they've got to translate it into European English from the Americ... oh wait, they don't do that. Funny also how they can manage to broadcast that same Entertainment Tonight program without having to wait months first...
Filmfodder: Lost Blog.
by groc at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
ID cards will solve eeeeeverything....
Clarke calls for ID cards after imagining huge poison terror ring.
What's going on here? - just why can't the Govt. come clean and tell us exactly why they're so damn insistant on foisting this misguided, wrong-headed and insanely expensive white elephant on us all - instead of subjecting us to this endless series of scaremongering, and downright barefaced lies?
It must be something really, really bad.
by groc at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2005
Subject: LETS WORK FOR GOD
FROM:Mr Maadeu Folarintumo.
Rue Street 10.
Lome Togo.
Hello Dear,
How are you today?hope you are fine.
Please permit me to introduce myself, I am Mr.Maadeu Folarintumo.
As you read this, I don't want you to feel sorry for me,
because, I believe everyone will die someday.
I was a Crude Oil merchant in TOGO,i have been diagnosed with
Esophageal
spinal cord after the motor accident I hard A year and six months
now. It has defiled all forms of medical treatment no improvements
I stay one place in the Hospital without walking, this mail was
written by one of my closerest nurse who is in the hospital here
and hard promised to keep this secret.
I await for death any time from now may be in the next few
months,according to medical experts. I have not particularly
lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone(not
even myself)but my business. Though I am very rich, I was never
generous, I was always hostile to people and only focused on my
business as that was the only thing I cared for. But now I regret
all this as I now know that there is more to life than just
wanting to have or make all the money in the world. I believe
when God gives me a second chance to come to this world I would
live my life a different way from how I have lived it. Now that
God ha! s called me, I have willed and given most of my property
and assets to my immediate and extended family members as well as
a few close friends. I want God to be merciful to me and accept my
soul so, I have decided to give alms to charity organizations, as
I want this to be one of the last good deeds I do on earth. So
far, I have distributed
money to some charity organizations in Austra,
cameroun,liberia,Algeria and Malaysia. Now that my health has
deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore. I once
asked members of my family to close one of my accounts and
distribute the money which I have there to charity organization
in Bulgaria and Pakistan, they refused and kept the money to
themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not
to be contended with what I have left for them.
The last of my money which no one knows of is the huge cash
deposit of twenty million dollars $20,000,000,00 that I have with
a finance/Security Company abroad. I will want you to help me
collect this deposit and dispatched it to charity or ganizations.
I have set aside 10% for you and for your time. If you feel up to
it and you are honest, please contact me asap.and I shall proceed
on the documents concerned you will receive this money within 3-4
working days from now.
God be with you.
Apparently there are still some people who really fall for all this shit.
by groc at 11:35 AM | Comments (5)
April 08, 2005
BWO
no idea what this might be like, but I'm putting this link here so I can find it again later...
It's what Alexander Bard - ex of Army of Lovers is up to these days...
Another site here. There's videos and stuff on the downloads page. I particularly liked the 'Conquering America' video.
by groc at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
W WW
Hello. Wheldon to do a new Wonder Woman?
Strokes chin - this could be interesting....
by groc at 10:54 AM | Comments (2)
large crowds of people
freak me out. Always have done.
No, really, I totally fail to understand the compulsion many (most?) humans have to swarm together like insects.
Concerts,
Sporting events,
Political rallies,
Demonstrations,
Royal weddings,
even the Death of famous people like Lady Diana - and now today this dead Pope business...
all I'm seeing is waaaaaay too many people. I can't get over that. How many humans there are now. That can't be good. It scares me.
by groc at 08:27 AM | Comments (1)
April 07, 2005
musical kitchen
Yes - I want a PlayStation Portable but not to play games on... ooooh no...
(which of course begs the question why are PDAs supposed to be dying out? Except they're not really, they're just evolving into Smartphones...)
by groc at 04:21 PM | Comments (2)
UK Election time
by groc at 02:25 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2005
DLM
Mmmmm, I don't know if this is true, but I've just read that 'Dead Like Me' isn't going into a third series on Showtime because the head honcho there didn't like the show, and so has cancelled it.
Over the years I've gathered the distinct impression that American TV executives as a race are staggeringly moronic. Why even work in TV if you hate it so much and want to kill off any program that's intelligent, witty, funny, moving, etc.? Only to replace them with an endless stream of cheap, nasty, mindless and mind-rotting reality shows? Wouldn't these executives be happier working in Toxic-waste managemnt instead?
*deep heavy depressed sigh*
by groc at 12:13 AM | Comments (3)
April 05, 2005
look
by groc at 12:29 PM | Comments (1)
the least viewed photo I have on Flickr
I'm fascinated by what does and doesn't get the most views in my photostream (as they call it) - obviously the pictures that need to be seen large to be seen properly get high hits, whereas the simple clear ones you can see from the thumbnails get the least. Then after that what gets the most hits are anything with bare flesh, then food (chocolate bars are always a big hit on Flickr.) then cute culty things like certain toys... then cute animals - least seems to be the sunrise and sunset pictures. Combine cultish toys and bareflesh and you're onto a real winner...
Now what do you think this says about us humans?
by groc at 11:11 AM | Comments (4)