The Phantom of Fairpools

What's that? Today's big prize for guessing why this is here is a GP Taylor novel. If you can't guess you win 2 GP Taylor novels. Haha! No I'm sure they're great really. I tell you what, you can have their ashes and a deeply satisfying vid of me burning the Jeremy Vine-bothering, disturbing vicar-cop's shite book, which I own by a tragic accident. No money changed hands. Anyway I'll give you clue, it has nothing to do with The Phantom of Fairpools which is a top-notch creepy tale of the supernatural. Look it up if you don't believe me. Not sure why I brought it up really, other than to muddy the already muddy waters that were muddied enough by Muddy Waters, the legendary blues guitarist, for some reason.

Nonsense, nonsense nonsense! I must be a bit 'tooty'. Actually I'm a bit hyper and excited because this is my big, busy weekend of the year. Pity we're past the longest day.

I changed the 'Oh's' to 'O's on the last awful post because it seemed more likely in retrospect. This is, I must confess, becayse I'm not reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, I'm actually listening to it as that was the only version the local library could get me. It's on Audio Cassette. Imagine! Sure they had CDs in 2004? Still I'm happy. It's read by someone called John Chancer, who's pretty good. His default voice is slightly crisp and hissy (maybe that's the tape) but when he does Crake he sounds like a cross between HAL and Norm Sherman. The Craker's speech is the best. Maybe I should lose a 'C' and make this the Revolutionary Army of Crakers. It would actually make slightly more sense. Joking! I'm imagining poor little Crackers crying at this final rejection. I was nearly crying today on Tape 15, the bit where Jimmy is watching old Alex the Parrot videos. Phew. I mean I've enjoyed these 2 novels immensely but it always takes you by surprise when something really burrows into you like that, I had to stop what I was doing. Suppose that's how you get nominated for the Man Booker Prize, whatever that is. It is funny in places too, like Year of the Flood, which I'll have to go through again now to spot all the ironic bits, especially with Ren's descriptions of Jimmy and Glenn. Two 'N' Glenn named after the piano genius, as it turns out. Fudgefuggingmonkeys.

Er...there was more but I've forgotten it. More debate on Libya and Afghanistan. Debate is a start, especially when we've got into that American thing of almost fetishising military personnel. Heroic or not, it's still worth considering whether they're actually solving the problems behind these desperate situations or just obscuring them with action and perhaps even creating worse ones. The Gadaffi thing is a case in point. While it is undeniably desirable for the Colonel (why didn't he just promote himself to General or Supreme Commander?) to leave office, it does seem that all attempts at a cease-fire and allowing a face-saving exit for him have been ruled out. The longer the violence continues, the more acrimony builds up between the army of the State of Libya and those engaged against them. The army come to be seen by their opponents as criminals to be excluded from maintaining their role in the post-Gadaffi Libya (seen as a major error in post-Saddam Iraq) whilst the rebels come to be viewed as western puppets and risk alienating whose whose circumstances are not improved in a newly free Libya. It's true someone needs to do something about the world's fascist regimes but let's face facts, if Mubarak had massacred his own people, no bombs would have fallen on Cairo. None are falling on Damascus and definitely none in Bahrain. Why not? Because they don't really solve anything other than saving us the money we'd have spend looking after those bombs if we weren't using them. As it is we'll now have to buy some more but at least they might kill more people or be a nicer shape or colour or keep some workers employed somewhere and their bosses nice and rich. The ones who went to school with the guys at the top of the bureaucracy and the guys at the top of the arts and the guys at the top of industry and the guys at the top of the finance and the guys at top of the crime.

Defeat, defeat the power elite!

Linkees: http://www.perdador.com/f6update/illustration_f9.html

Sorry! Especially to Snowman (O Snowman!)

Hiya! No pic or link tonight. Soz! I'm slightly in a hurry as usual. Oh when will I stop? No time! It was going to be:
Berbers on C4 news
Gadaffi problem. All the reasons the war is wrong. Isn't it an insult to the people gadaffi killed before Feb 2011? Syria, Burma etc Mention of Tony Blair- Man of Destiny.
Comments on tonight's conservation expose prog - More Oryx & Crake related stuff
Apologies to Jimmy for calling him a douchbag. Felt sorry for him today...etc
Maybe link to the guy with the pix ee dun from it.
It was going to be called 'That's the way the money goes' with that as a thread running through it and mentioning the Euro crisis but ultimately I thought better of it. There's £13.48's worth of Wexford Cheese to anyone who can guess why.
So yeh why not just get on with the ironing, chill with some sounds and then settle down with Snowman O Snowman! a bit more instead of writing more of this shit, you pretty old Koosie. Yes! Of course its very rude to Ian Blogspot, future me and possible you to leave tonight's attempt in this state but

Here Comes the Flood

Dee Dee the creator. It seemed appropriate, having her dancing on the beach, after the flood perhaps. This will be the last in this little run of blog posts as I'm off to the seaside myself tomorrow and after that, well who knows? It's been fun.

The future? I've enjoyed Margaret Atwood's vision of the future in The Year of the Flood and dark though it is, I think I'd be better there than in the one described in her The Handmaid's Tale. YOTF reminded me a little of Dennis Potter's last TV play Cold Lazarus as the RONs (Reality or Nothing) have a similar attitude to information as God's Gardeners have to nature.


Hey there might actually be more of this musing added later as I did have a list of things I wanted to get in but I've just realised how late it is and well....the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. Still, here's the link: It's not 80s tonight but 70s and I didn't go for the obvious one neither.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=3cISzi4fXN0

Thanks for still being there! Love you! Bye bye!

I love you, Big Bird!

Koorosh, known in the west as Cyrus the Great, may have been the first to march his armies under the Eagle standard, as shown above, and he may have even been the nicest. He was a friend to the Jews and is said to have been the first ruler to have a concept of human rights. He certainly beat Ashoka to it by a couple of hundred years. His life is celebrated on October 29th apparently so remind me at the time and I'll organise a Koorosh party.

I've seen some nice big birds the last couple of days, the usual Buzzards and Herons but also 2 possible Ravens. The first one was in a place I've seen one before and it was mobbed by a gang of Jackdaws who looked tiny by comparison. The second was this evening flying over my house in the city which doesn't seem too likely. It was hard to see the shape of the tail, which is the visual giveaway or make a croak, which is the main one. They're bigger than Carrion Crows but you can only tell when they're close together. Most people up here call all big crows Ravens anyway.
Fools!

BTW It's bollocks about Margaret Atwood being an SF denialist. Dunno where I got that from.
More fun today, Rebecca's still alive, yeah! Blanco's dead, yeah! Nice that Toby got to kill him too, though it was more an act of mercy than a Charles Bronson reckoning. Now I'm getting near the end I figure it's safe to start using t'net to do some around reading. Oryx and Crake was nominated for the Man Booker prize. Er...is that the same as the Booker Prize?All the reviews seem to think that YOTF is some sort of laugh-fest by comparison. I mean it is very funny in places but it is a about a nightmare scenario, before and after the flood. I can see David Cameron's big society going that way you know. Oh shut up Koosie.

Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmGxh1FhtxE

I loved the video when I was a kid and still find the music very exciting all these years later, like yesterday's. Now I used to think that the other singer's voice was speeded up but I seen a live recording of this on a DVD of Whistle Test and I can tell you it isn't. It's just a really amazing voice.

Birds might fall from black skies

Hey Hey! Clouds are whey. There's straw for the donkeys and the innocents can all sleep safely.

Wish!

Some black skies here for the last 2 days. The thunderstorms are the best. Crash! Boom! and hail on metal. Lovely. Sadly the days aren't so hot that when the storms go over and the sun comes back out, steam rises off the land. I've only seen that once up here, in 2003 I think.

I was so exhausted when I came home from toil that I dozed off in front of the Channel 4 news. It is quite an unpleasant thing to do as you keep waking up for a few seconds, hearing about some horror or other then the next bit of information is some other unrelated horror. I think it was Syria and Libya a lot tonight. Hot-heads are saying that if we intervened in Libya then we must intervene in Syria. I can see the point, obviously but how? Should we have intervened in Libya? If not there then how about Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone etc? Why not Myanmar or Morocco? Bahrain or Bhutan? Actually I've always wanted NATO to have a pop at those Bhutanese Buddhist bastards. Might be a bit beyond the NATO remit. Like Georgia turned out to be. Back away.

Seriously though the first thing to do is work out what we mean by 'we' when we're discussing some nation's fate. The western military alliance? It's a concept that's had its day, as is the UN Security Council as its currently arranged. For one thing why is UKOGBANI permanently at the table with a veto? Is it because of our nuclear weapons? Fair enough, then let's have Pakistan up there too and Israel if it wants to come clean. North Korea if it can prove it. OK that can't be it. Must be something to do with winning the second world war then? Well that's stupid. How did France get there then? They certainly didn't win other than in the sense that they were liberated from fascist tyranny and in which case Germany should have a place too. Let's face it the UK/France veto should be an EU one but not even that's not really getting to the heart of what's wrong. How come PRC with a population of 1.3 billion has the same voting power as UKOGBANI with a population of 70 million? These numbers are guesses but they won't be too far off. When you start bringing in your Luxemburgs and Sikkims it gets ridiculous. If representatives have to get together at New York to decide our fate they should at least be representative in all the ways that word implies.

See what happens when you start him off. Jeez.

In other places....Shacky denied that the Mad-Adam's ( militant God's Gardeners splinter) had anything to do with the waterless flood. Still can't rule out Glenn. Today's section was a real emotional roller-coaster. I'd love to actually see the bit where Amanda and Ren are dancing around in bird outfits in Scales & Tails. It looked as if it was going to turn into a terrible scene but turned beautiful when, in another ludicrous coincidence, their observers turned out to be the rest of Gang-Green. I was briefly blissfully happy at this outcome but it wasn't to last long. Dammit! Curse you Margaret Atwood! You could have ended it there and that would have been nice. However that would have left Toby with her maggots and she deserves better. Actually I think her and Ren have both gone a bit nuts now they're both moving around outside their sanctuaries. They were alright all the time they were on their tod remembering stuff. The flood's going to get you one way or other.

Funnily enough, like a gardener, I also have an Ararat. Although mine's pretty much all ____________ which is one of the great disaster commodities. It lasts a long time without degrading, kills pain and stops you dying of Dysentery which is always around whenever things fall apart. Some dried foods might be a good idea too, now that I think of it. Dear oh dear. What am I like? Why the hell should I survive? I'd be doing the world a favour if I didn't 'survive' till the morning.

Link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9gq-ANfjc0

Sorry about the big gaps again. Not sure why that keeps happening. It seems to happen when I upload the picture and then they can't be removed. Help yelp!

Hey you!

It's Stewart Lee on BBC2 tonight so I've got a deadline. Would you believe I spend hours writing one of these things? I know, you really wouldn't think. Hey weirdly enough there was a Diane Fossey song in Year of the Flood today, when she'd been a major thread in the Adam Curtis documentary on Monday. I must admit I didn't quite get exactly what he was getting at with that really. People began to believe that they were no different from animals. Really? Well that's not really new or controversial. Therefore people believe that we are programmed organic machines and therefore have no control over our destinies, being merely vehicles for immortal genes. Well even if they're totally right it doesn't preclude the possibility of re-programming ourselves and over-riding the wee little fuckers. Hell I've been doing it for years, in my own secret way. Smiley Emoticon.
Maybe a wink.
Nah just write the words.
So anyway I've been immensely satisfied with the progress I've made on Year of the Flood since last we spoke. Its really coming on. Ren and Amanda are back together but poor Toby's been reduced to eating maggots. There was a very interesting bit where the slightly enigmatic but nonetheless likable computer-geek Glenn remerges in Ren's past. Now he has to be significant as he's sympathetic to the Gardeners and is intersted in finding scientific solutions to the problem of humanity, plus he and his new 'plank' call each extinct animal pet-names Crake and Oryx, which is apparently another Margaret Atwood novel. Well that's just shot up my to-read list. Or to listen to. They're both good formats.

There was something on woman's hour the other week about why science-fiction is a male preserve. Sadly I missed it and I hope to god it provoked the response I will give here (to myself). Whaaaaaaat?! Margaret Atwood and Ursula K Leguin are among my favourite SF writers. OK Atwood doesn't actually want to be an SF writer ( like the IRA didn't actually want to be British). Also....Rachel Swirsky just won a Hugo award or a Nebula or whichever one it was for one of her short stories....oh go look it up on Escape Pod, they're all good and I'm sure the M/F writers ratio is fairly even. That last one by Mary Robinette Kowal was good, it was like a horsey-girl story. It was a wee lassie called Kameron Hurley who wrote the most disturbing story on the site called Wonder, Maul, Doll. She must be a well sick lady. It pretty much gave even me nightmares. Anyway I've linked it before. http://escapepod.org/ I should also mention Pamala Zoline's The Heat Death of the Universe which is actually online somewhere. I did have a link on 'Empire of Crackers' so I'll see if I can dig it out.

If I thought there was one weakness in Year of the Flood, I've pretty much persuaded myself that it's actually a strength. Ren's first boyfriend Jimmy becomes Glenn's best friend when she first encounters him in the Healthwiser Compound, then he's Bernice's disgusting roomate at the campus, then after that he turn's up as Amanda's boyfriend. He is inexplicably drawn to Ren's former friends. But then life's unfair like that, because poor Ren loves Jimmy he'll just keep showing up in various ways. I really enjoyed the way Ren describes her love for this douchbag of a character:

"It was like being haunted. Maybe I've imprinted on Jimmy, I thought. Like a duck hatching out of an egg and the first thing it sees is a Weasel, so that's what it follows around for the rest of its life, which is likely to be short".

"I tried to forget all about him but somehow I couldn't. Beating myself up over Jimmy had become a bad habit with me like biting your nails. Every once in a while I'd see him drifting past in the distance, which was just like having just one cigarette when you're trying to quit. It starts you off again. Not that I was ever a smoker."

Aw. Hope she gets over it. Now me I'm in love with Nanette Greenblatt who is the female vocal on the following track from AND THE NATIVE HIPSTERS. You'll soon see why. She's terrific and manic and cute and strange and scary and confusing. Just the way I likes 'em. The male vocal is Clem Curtis of the wonderful THE FOUNDATIONS who's original track has been greatly enhanced by Blatt's deeply rational narrative and what seems to be the death march played on a toy saxaphone. Yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX4pqUe-AnE

Inside a stone of cream there is a language

Look at that. Typical fucking mammal propaganda. Oh yeh lizard kings are always diabolically-laughing, scimitar wielding, crazed despots. Boo! I do have a cat though, so at least they got that thing right. See! That proves us Sauropodeans can co-exist with you milk-bearing furry types. Just as long as you know your place. No 'Sauropodeans' isn't in your wikipedia (or wicked paedophilia as I hilariously call it). It's our word not yours. You know nothing. It isn't even an Island, (everybody now!) it's a ........

I'm so lonely.

When I'm bored in times like now, I tell myself a little tale...

No don't carry on with that. It's the fist line of a highly disturbing poem I wrote with my brother years ago, that gets more misanthropic and racist as it goes on. Frankie Boyle would be shocked I'm telling you. I tell you what, I'll write it and the Britain Now! song in the private bit so only top hackers can find out what a sick little puppy I am. Or at least I was. It was just a phase. I've gone all mushy nowadays and get all squeamish about any kind of violence, even that I'm forced to inflict on my enemies. It breaks my heart to see them crying out in such pain and uselessly clawing the air for breath, it really does. Poor me.

This whole thing has become even more demented than usual. Where's the promised Mongoose manifesto? Eh...? I'll probably leave it for now. It's too explosive for you bipedal lactatiforms to cope with. Unless anyone actually wants to read it, of course.

This blog, like a big chunk of the t'net, comes under the general category of 'Why are you telling me this?' which is also a terrific punchline in an episode of Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends which obliged to mention more regularly as it where Crackers originated from. No not those Crackers. Read the 'my profile' bit. Yeh, a whole show turns out to be an anecdote being recited to someone who doesn't understand its point and very likely doesn't care. This whole blog is an elaborate tribute to that episode. The title of which momentarily escapes me.

I'm on to Ch 52 of The Year of the Flood now and it's really got me hooked. I only came and did this to stop myself getting back into it tonight and using up the whole experience of being totally immersed in a novel too quickly. I gather Ms. Atwood isn't too keen on her work being labelled as Science Fiction, which is something I can understand. Any genre fiction is easily ghettoised and dismissed by the semi-intelligent reading public. This is especially true for science fiction because of the way it's been thoroughly fucked-over as a genre by hollywood. All the same, it is definitely science fiction. Defi defo.

The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man

Does that say Isle of Marr?

Anyway! The Tragedy of a Ridiculous man. It's a film! A film I've never seen but I did recognise the fact that the music from this film was used in the Adam Curtis documentary series Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace on BBC2. He's obviously seen the films of Peter Watkins but I'm not sure that great man would completely approve of this series. While the content is certainly highly engaging and thought-provoking you're barraged with footage film, music and authoritative narration, all rather rapidly and flitting between narrative strands that arn't always totally satisfactorily tied together. Still! I liked it! It had Morricone music in it so it could have been a documentary about what a load of shit I am and I still would have liked it. In fact I probably would have liked it more, starved of attention that I am.

Actually it did slag me off. Or at least I think it did. Certain notions that ran through the Crackers trilogy were critically examined by the films such as the vague techno-utopianism and biological reductionism evident in some of this work or the woolly environmentalism that lies behind it all. Now, I hadn't been aware of how far I've fallen into a post-industrial hippy malaise until I started reading The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood which I'm currently enjoying a lot. Is the waterless flood policy rather than prophecy or is that too obvious?... I'm about 2/3 of the way through so I'll soon know. Anyway I was rather startled to find that I'm already some of the way to being a God's Gardener. I'm certainly a Gardener alright though maybe I need to work on the religion bit. I'm no atheist. Only a fool believes in non-existence of God. I merely strongly suspect it- Koosism has at its core divine ambiguity: I don't know and never will. Hallelujah fuckerts! Regardless, I might as well be in a religious cult what with the grinding agrarian poverty It's kind of become, by accident, a whole lifestyle thing and whole areas of my previous life are become swamped with greenery and forgotten. Which reminds me I must read Ballard's The Drowned World again soon.

Yeh I've mentally imploded. It feels ok. Like drugs but less shaky. Kind of stopped communicating with all my friends round the world and will probably shortly stop interacting with this daft thing. It is a form of mental masturbation after all, endlessly talking to myself like this. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with a bit of masturbation? Maybe. All the same it's not even as good as regular non-mental masturbation so I might as well just do that instead. Unless I have something I consider meaningful to say but really it's all been said a hundred times before, often better and is probably all total rubbish and not even worth picking over on BBC2 to the accompaniment of excellent music. The past was pretty cool and I was lucky to have seen it.

Tomorrow belongs to me! You can keep it if you want.

Go Team Mongoose!