26Apr05 — 5

There Are Gods; At Least One Of Them Is A Bastard

I am carrying a red clipboard and wearing a Labour Party sticker on my raincoat (John Rocha, dahling). The four of us have each been canvassing in a ward which will remain anonymous for the rest of this post. We flit from door to door. We pass each other in the cluster of streets that we are working, occasionally pausing to swap notes.

My colleagues have been dealing with “I’m-not-racist-but”s. Curiously, none of my interviewees has used the phrase. Sometimes, when I ask non-Labour voters what single issue is bothering them most of all, I have to tell myself that something dark doesn’t flicker behind their eyes before they answer, “Well, there isn’t one thing really…” A large proportion of the people who offer more than “Fuck off!” or the bald answers to the questions in my script make absolutely no sense at all. I nod at them the way people nod at their grandparents. Occasionally I attempt to nudge waverers gently towards Labour; this is not an evening for thoughtful debate.

Wearily, I knock one of my last few doors of the evening. It is opened by a young woman of shocking beauty. On my side of the doorstep of her shared house, after bulging gloomily for over an hour, the clouds have begun to piss out of the sky. On her side, Zephyr and Chloris fan the burnished copper strands of her hair with their perfumed breath. My spinal cord has successfully piloted my mouth through most of the voter interview script before I realise that she is inviting me in out of the rain. I stand awkwardly in the front room where she has been sitting alone in front of the television, so help me, delicately licking roll-ups into shape. If she didn’t look like she’d been grown in a vat from one of Christy Turlington’s fingernails I’d swear I was in a cheap and corny porn movie.

Then, in between licks, she invites me to sit down. I perch nervously on the edge of an armchair while she fixes me with eyes that would have tested Shakespeare’s vocabulary. I ask her why she has decided not to vote Labour this time. She explains how important climate change is to her and how she has, up until very recently, been pleased with Blair’s position on this. Apparently, however, the UK now intends to apply for a larger national carbon emissions allowance. I don’t agree with her priorities, but her logic is flawless. Like her skin. She is only the fifth person I have questioned all evening who can get from a premiss to a conclusion without folding the fabric of space-time.

She is about to become the first person to bring up the subject of immigration in front of me. She objects to the media coverage of the election and the priorities of the party campaigns. The emphasis on immigration is top of her list of objections. I realise I must leave before she offers me a cup of tea and I am forced to ask her for her hand in marriage. Yes, I have met a goddess. Yes, I know where she lives. And yes (even if she were the kind to descend from Olympus to consort with a very mortal man like me), it would be comprehensively unethical of me to do anything about it.

I hate canvassing.

26Apr05 — 0

My Old Man’s A Linguist

Keen Spanish speaker Brian emailed with a pretty direct translation of the dustbin message:

“Bastard rubbish collector, put the rubbish into the (f*****g) lorry and work like some kind of whore’s life”

…or similar. It could be Portuguese though. I don’t recognise a couple of the words. I’ll get working on it!

He did (though any problem he had with recognizing words was, I’m sure, because I’d failed to copy them correctly). He asked his Spanish friend for something that captured the spirit of the “POLITE NOTICE”:

Chuck the rubbish in the lorry and work for once in your life!

25Apr05 — 0

Are You Spanking Who We’re Spanking?

My current guilty pleasure is ToryScum.com. Highlights of the site include their “Sleazy Lover” match-the-Tory-to-the-scandal competition—answers:

  • Cecil Parkinson—Abandoning an illegitimate child
  • John Major—Adultery
  • Harvey Proctor—Spanking rent boys
  • Ian Harvey—Cavorting with a guardsman
  • Stephen Milligan—Autoerotic asphyxiation

—and their marvellous collection of Conservative poster “subvertisements”.

25Apr05 — 0

Marxist Mog

I met snappy Hak yesterday in London. She was only really snappy when, for example, a mad Islingtonian bint all but knocked her down, dashing across Upper Street to hail a taxi; otherwise she was a charmer. We had a nice lunch; discussed politics, psychiatry, and property; and fondled the shiny things in the Tottenham Court Road; before she padded off to take advantage of another Blogger’s accommodation—thereby following the time-honoured Way of the Cat.

Curiously, as we wandered around some of the nicer parts of Islington, we saw far more Labour posters on display than Lib Dem ones. Makes you wonder how numerous the members of the the bruschetta tendency are.

24Apr05 — 5

Comrades In Arm Rests

I’m adding three more sites to the ‘Blogroll today. First is Bloggers4Labour. This is late, I know, but I’d assumed that I had already installed it. B4L led me to two entertaining sources of nitpickery: Twistblog, which I am going to forgive for being run by the person responsible for Cute Cat Of The Day, and Grammar Puss, which boasts one of the best ‘Blog straplines ever.

[Photo courtesy of Charlie, via casualsavant—click to enlarge.]

amusing Engrish poster

24Apr05 — 12

Better Than Blue Eyes

Frank Sinatra is in my big book of overrated singers alongside Bob Dylan and Elvis. So it’s all the more surprising that I am about to rave about someone who started his performing career impersonating Presley and Sinatra. On the evidence of his latest album, It’s Time, Michael Bublé is going to be huge. More than that, he will be a Canadian pop music superstar you can like without being embarrassed. This, after all, is the country that gave us Rush, Bryan Adams, Céline Dion, Nickelback, and Alanis Morrissette.

It’s Time isn’t perfect. Bublé lapses into unconvincing scat more than once. (Is it possible to sing scat convincingly?) A couple of the tracks are just pastiche—albeit beautifully executed. The production overwhelms occasionally with its close-miked, larger-than-life, I’ve-got-Pro Tools-and-I’m-gonna-use-it excess; the lead singer’s voice is embedded in such a shiny, saturated, widescreen soundscape that he sometimes becomes a monochrome gnome in the land of Oz. I haven’t tried it, but I bet he’s smothered occasionally if you’re listening on a radio with one speaker.

But so many important things about this recording are so right. Despite being an award-winning songwriter himself, and contributing to one superb song out of the thirteen on this album, Bublé defers to some other promising composers: George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Dozier/Holland/Holland, Lennon and McCartney, and Stevie Wonder. Talent recognizes genius.

And what talent! It helps that his voice is beautifully recorded, but Michael Bublé has it. His range at the top end is shorter than Sinatra’s in his prime (has A Foggy Day been transposed down from its original key?), but Bublé has better technique and intonation and—a matter of taste, I know—a far more pleasing texture to his voice—or rather textures, because his other edge over Sinatra is I always felt that, with the Chairman of the Board, the performance was just short of persuasive. Bublé can croon, but he can whisper, he can growl, he can swing, he can soar and—most of the time—he sings it like he means it. If you can’t stretch to the full price album—I bought it reasonably cheaply online with a bunch of others—then at least try to buy/hear the single Feeling Good. Yes, Michael Bublé is so gifted that I am recommending his version of an Anthony Newley song.

WARNING:
Nelly “I-claim-my-record-company-‘shoves-away-my-ethnicity‘ even-as-it-hypes-it-shamelessly*” Furtado turns in a performance of Nancy Sinatra competence—without the charm—on the duet Quando, Quando, Quando. I take no responsibility for any damage you might find yourself doing to your hi-fi equipment if you accidentally fail to skip that track.

[*How “ethnic” or “powerless” can a Portuguese popstar living in Canada be anyway?]

22Apr05 — 0

Shawcross Nails It

Oliver Kamm quotes an admirably restrained letter to The Independent by William Shawcross. Earlier this week I read the original article that prompted the letter and expressed my disgust with it so noisily that I was forced to explain myself to one of the Campus librarians. Unlike the Bodleian, the Sanger library doesn’t require you to promise not to “kindle therein any fire or flame”. Every time I pick up that appalling rag the temptation to get a-kindling grows.

22Apr05 — 4

Online Satirical Magazine Fails To Raise Laughter

Sadly, an Onion article entitled “Fifth Grade Paper Doesn’t Stand Up To Peer Review” reminds me of my actual working life:

DECATUR, IL—A three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski’s fellow classmates at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed Tuesday that his 327-word essay “Otters” did not meet the requirements for peer approval.

Nogroski presented his results before the entire fifth-grade science community Monday, in partial fulfillment of his seventh-period research project. According to the review panel, which convened in the lunchroom Tuesday, “Otters” was fundamentally flawed by Nogroski’s failure to identify a significant research gap.

“When Mike said, ‘Otters,’ I almost puked,” said 11-year-old peer examiner Lacey Swain, taking the lettuce out of her sandwich. “Why would you want to spend a whole page talking about otters?”

“It’s probably only the dumbest topic in the history of the entire world,” 10-year-old Duane LaMott added.

Members of the three-person panel had many concerns about Nogroski’s work, foremost among them their belief that the fifth-grader did not substantiate his thesis. Two panel members even suggested that Nogroski’s thesis was erroneous.

“Otters are not interesting!” 10-year-old peer examiner Jonathan Glass said.

“Otters are so boring, I fell asleep for a thousand years and woke up with a long beard covered in ice,” LaMott said. “I had to defrost myself.”

22Apr05 — 0

Thirtysomething

Hi, Olivia. It’s Damian here. Er, I was wondering if you might be free for lunch on Thursday. We could, um, discuss…

“…Sex”? It’s always the same with you professional bachelors, isn’t it? “There’s no ‘I’ in “commitment”—that’s your motto. You think you can breeze in with a pack-of-three and breeze out with bloody fibres of our hearts clinging to your selfish paws. Well I told Steve and I’m telling you: if you’re looking for a “fuck buddy” or a nice soft female breast to rest your fragile male ego on you can look somewhere else!

…the changes to the manuscript for the EMBO Journal paper.

Oh. Yeah. Twelve-thirty at the Campus Restaurant good for you?

Cool. See you then.

20Apr05 — 2

Celeb Kneels Before The Power Of The Poot

Since I wrote this post, mithering on about how unattractive I find Kylie Minogue, even when writhing around sweatily on an electric horse dressed in her skimpies, and how this saucy schtick of hers was going to become more embarrassing with her advancing years, there has been a couple of interesting developments.

Firstly, one of the creators of the Agent Provocateur ad that I referred to emailed me to say that originally they had intended to cast someone else as the model, but Kylie’s agent heard about it and wanted her in. Secondly, Kylie has (allegedly) sacked the man who first put her in hotpants because she now wants to look more grown up.

20Apr05 — 0

Garbage In; Garbage Out

I have to apologise to people expecting reports from the Labour canvassing frontline here. This evening I set off to join our candidate on the streets and got completely lost on the way to the rendezvous point. I promise to tell all when I finally get out there and meet the voters, the bastards. At least I managed to stuff a couple of hundred leaflets through letterboxes this evening instead.

Cambridge is a multilingual city. You can easily hear half a dozen different tongues along the walk from my flat to the centre of town. You can read them too. As I was leafletting today I encountered a little plaque outside one terraced house bearing the words:

“ATTENTION AU CHAT EXCENTRIQUE!”

and a wheelie bin further down the road was daubed with the following in blotchy white paint [apologies for my transcription errors—I have no Spanish at all]:

“POLITE NOTICE: Basurero cabrón Bajate del Puto Camion y Trabaja pro una puta vezentu vida”

Something tells me that there is an inconsistency between the English and the rest. If anyone would like to correct and/or translate this text I think the rest of us might be entertained.

20Apr05 — 0

Enlightened At Last

Whodathunkit? As well as being “destructive” and “ecologically catastrophic”, biotechnology is “racist“. I suppose that makes me some kind of sell-out:

“This June in Philadelphia, thousands of wealthy capitalists and biological profiteers representing the Biotechnology Industry Organization will convene in Philly to celebrate and promote their dangerous manipulation of life’s very building blocks for private gain. Missing from their PR agenda will be the destructive, racist, and ecologically catastrophic consequences of playing God with the global gene pool. In response, thousands of concerned activists and citizens will gather to decry this ruthless commodification of Earth’s biodiversity and the proliferation of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).”

[Thanks to casualsavant.]

17Apr05 — 4

My Straight Trousers

The menswear floor of the Cambridge Grafton branch of Next: Leasey and I are practising low-stress tag team male/female shopping, a mode of consumption made possible by mobile phone technology. At last an end to blokes idling morosely in Monsoon while the women they are browsing with compare a succession of near identical burgundy velvet things. (For men “burgundy” is of course a drink, not a colour.)

Leasey arrives in the department from her previous shop just in time to see me emerge from the changing room wearing a new pair of blue trousers. She approves. I disappear to slip into something a little less comfortable: a pair of cream coloured ones that are slightly—but not much—closer fitting. The next time I go back on the shop floor the response is not so positive, though there are worse things than having two attractive women stare at your backside simultaneously.

Leasey: “Those are gayer than your gay trousers.”
Changing room attendant: “It looks like you’re wearing jodhpurs.”

Back inside the changing room I wonder if I can get away with buying the cream ones too. No chance. By the time I’m back at the entrance to the changing rooms some kind of female bonding has taken place. The attendant addresses me as though I am Michael Douglas in Falling Down and she is trying to talk a short-barrelled shotgun out of my hand: “Would you like to give me the ones you aren’t buying?”
I am a balding, middle-aged straight man armed with a pair of dangerously camp pants. I am not to be trifled with. But I know I’d never make it out with them alive; only Chris Eubank could get away with something like that.
“Good choice,” she comments as I surrender the ersatz riding wear. Leasey is waiting at the till to make sure I don’t try anything foolish.

14Apr05 — 2

Your Momma

A PooterGeeker wrote to ask how she could take part in the Genographic Project. The answer is here, though some of us “in the business” might get a little bit sniffy at the idea of a human sample group that is not only partly self-selecting, but includes people who’ve paid to be experimental subjects. Of course, in return for your money you are promised anonymized information about your genetic origins. The editor of a related scientific journal asked me, “How many thousands of certificates do you think they already have printed up saying, ‘Your ancestors came from Africa’?”

13Apr05 — 3

Geeks Resurrect Gould

Perhaps you have heard those George Gershwin player piano recordings, rendered from rolls of his original performances. Much as I admire Gershwin, his showy, overworked playing hasn’t, to my ears, dated well, even when recreated live by modern human mimics who are a more sensitive to contemporary tastes. It’s like listening to a blousey old soprano drown a classic song in vibrato. There is also something odd about player piano recordings.

In a staggering feat of programming, a bunch of software engineers at a US start-up have managed to restore completely a performance by another distinctive pianist, Glenn Gould, from a low-quality mono recording. Their code listens to the noisy audio and re-synthesizes everything using a modern MIDI-controlled acoustic instrument. And Gould is only one of their dead clients. [via Robot Wisdom]

12Apr05 — 4

That Labour Party Election Broadcast In Full

[Tony Blair and Gordon Brown face each other in painfully close proximity, like an Alas Smith And Jones head-to-head. A clumsily applied blurring effect is intended to shift our attention from one part of the frame to the other as they take turns to speak. This also keeps the pile of dirty Blair household laundry in the corner of this room in Number 10 conveniently out of focus.]

Brown: So, Tone, ye grinning backslider, I can’t talk about how I’ve redistributed wealth?

Blair: No, Gordy, you grumpy scrote; we don’t talk about progressive taxation any more.

Brown: Or about how I’ve reduced Third World debt?

Blair: Nope, nothing about spending money on fuzzie-wuzzies under any circumstances.

Brown: So we don’t mention the wars either, ye slippery Papist bastard?

Blair: ‘Fraid not, Gordy, you conspiring toad. Liberating millions of oppressed beige people isn’t well, er, relevant to Middle England.

[The blurring effect is already becoming intensely annoying.]

Brown: So no progressive taxation, no overseas aid, no defeating fascists? What can we talk about, ye sanctimonious sissy?

Blair: Low mortgage interest rates.

[A ghostly figure washing a Ford Mondeo outside a suburban semi-detached fades into view…]

Brown: Low mortgage interest rates?

Blair: Low mortgage interest rates. And high-fibre school dinners. […Jamie Oliver buzzes by on his moped, raising a thumb and winking…] And all of the services we’ve been throwing money at: city academies, foundation hospitals… […An orderly shovels bundles of twenties into an incinerator…]

Brown: …Chartered Diversity Facilitators… […Cuttings of public sector job ads from The Guardian spin one after another into the foreground…]

Blair: And, er, how well you and I get on with each other these days, you overrated beancounter.

Brown: But everyone knows I think you’re a two-faced, smartarse git. Why do we have to lie about everything?

Blair: I wouldn’t call it lying about everything exactly, Gordy, you micro-managing bore; we’re being macroeconomical with the truth, so-to-speak. Fact is, most of the people we need to win over to keep our jobs are selfish, small-minded bigots. They can’t see further than the end of their driveways, so we won’t show them anything beyond. Even if we did, they have the attention span of a chav toddler strung out on tartrazine

Brown: What, like Michael Howard?

Blair: Yah, that sort of thing. But we can’t say that either. It’s like when one of those godforsaken northern English towns elects some British National Pary councillors. We can’t admit the voters are racist.

Brown: But they’ve just voted for racists!

Blair: What we say is that they were “protesting against the failure of mainstream politicians to answer their legitimate concerns”.

Brown: Like their “legitimate concern” about having to look at brown faces in the high street? […An Asian man smiles through his beard as he hands over a newspaper in a Burnley corner shop…]

Blair: Yah, that sort of thing. No redistribution, no little black babies […African children gather around Bono who is dressed as the Pope…], don’t mention the war […John Cleese goosestepping through Fawlty Towers…].

Brown: Bloody hell, Tone, you toothy, treacherous tosser. The hypocrisy of it! It’s like stealth socialism. […B-2 bomber over Tora Bora…].

Blair: Gordy, mate, you’re a genius—albeit a spiteful, embittered, spleen-leaking genius: “Vote Labour: because stealth means never having to say that you’re socialist.” I’ll tell Alastair to get the T-shirts made. Fancy a couple of drinks while we plan how to stitch up my succession?

Brown: Don’t mind if I do. Mine’s a pint of Keynes—I mean Cains.

[Cut to Brown in the Commons bar patting his pockets looking for the wallet he “must have left back at No 10”.]

11Apr05 — 13

Loathsome

Anyone on the Left who thinks it might be “instructive” for Labour under Tony Blair to suffer a reduced majority and who fancies some protest voting (or, indeed, protest abstaining) needs to reflect on Michael Howard’s re-launch of the Conservative election campaign yesterday. Howard, the Jewish son of Romanian refugees from the Nazis, wants to make increased restrictions on both asylum and economic immigration to the UK the central part of his appeal to voters. He made no substantive case for the benefits of the proposals, falling back instead on that Alf Garnett favourite “common sense” to justify his party’s policies.

Anyone on the Left who wants to argue that Labour immigration policy is no better than that of the Conservatives is choosing to listen to this government’s (unpleasant) rhetoric rather than examine the more reassuring facts. Once again The Economist puts it well:

[A]long with more tough language about asylum seekers[,] in some ways, Labour’s proposals consolidated its liberal immigration policy.

This is in curious contrast with the Lib Dems who, perhaps more interested in getting the Guardian vote out, invert this approach:

The Liberal Democrats stayed out of the fray, loftily declaring that politicians should not engage in a “bidding war” over immigration. Yet they, like the Conservatives, want an annual immigration quota.

Tory policy on immigration has nothing to do with the real numbers of new arrivals into this country—“low to medium” by World standards, according to the The Economist. It has nothing to do with the economic impact of immigration on the UK—almost certainly it is of net benefit to an ageing UK population with low unemployment in need of hardworking, skilled, and genuinely entrepreneurial citizens. Howard is also noticeably quiet about one of the largest groups of illegal immigrants currently taking advantage of the UK’s rightly admired generosity to visitors—Australians, New Zealanders and others of the pasty-faced colonial persuasion.

No, it’s not about any of these things. It’s about good, old-fashioned, vote-winning xenophobia. It is illiberal. It is economically illiterate. It is illogical. It is as despicable as it is desperate. Any Left liberal at this election who, even by default, acts in a way that gives any more power to Howard than he has already because they are still in the spasms of some hissy fit over Iraq should be ashamed.

Of course, there could be some people reading this who actively want to support Howard’s stance. A friend sent me an email on Saturday that reminded me of a story about Tony Blair during the ultimately victorious 1997 Labour General Election campaign. (Remember, this is when people were still referring to him as “Bambi”.) Perhaps in a bit of a panic about polling figures, the Tories had decided to play the race card as a last gasp measure. One of his aides asked Blair what he was going to do about it. He is supposed to have said

Nothing. If that’s the kind of government the voters want, then fuck ’em.

So, if Howard’s is the sort of government you want, then fuck you too.

11Apr05 — 6

Watch The Exxxtreme Mini Bears!

Tardigrades—“water bears”—are amazing. They are mostly less than a millimetre in length, but have a complete multicellular anatomy and physiology with recognisable limbs and organs. Despite their complexity they can go dormant and become hardy little spheres of just-add-water life. In this form they are resistant to all sorts of unpleasant treatment and harsh environments. Even active tardigrades can be found everywhere from 6 000m above sea level to 4 000m below. They are extreme animals. If there’s something complicated living Out There In Space, I’d bet on it looking like a tardigrade. If you have a video player that can handle Windows Media you can marvel at a red-eyed tardigrade marching, but there are lots of still pictures and tardigrade facts here and here.

11Apr05 — 1

Stolen Cartoon

This is a thumbnail image of an unauthorised scan of Saturday’s Biff strip in The Guardian. After you have clicked on it to read the full-size version please visit BiffOnline and buy some merchandise.

scanned Biff cartoon from Guardian yesterday

07Apr05 — 5

Madder Than Qaddafi

After reading Anthony’s piece about Google bombs, I couldn’t resist a peek at “Jew Watch”, the anti-Semitic conspiracy site that came so high in searches for the word “Jew” that the civilized world had to displace it with a Google bomb. Their front page story (complete with photo of the recently deceased) is—I kid you not—“Was The Pope Jewish?”.

The headline links to a page where the damning evidence is collected. My favourites: many of the young Karol’s best friends were Jewish and “he was a gifted actor, and a fine singer“. Apparently the Pope-to-be became a devout Catholic to escape the Nazis, but it all got a bit out of hand and he ended up the head of the Holy Roman Church.

You guys can think of pithy last line for this one. This is another one of those rare occasions when I am lost for words.

06Apr05 — 2

How Not To Get Fired For ‘Blogging

There has been a (false) fire alarm at the Genome Campus. Tens of its employees are standing outside in chilly spring rain and wind. I am joined by my boss’s boss and the senior colleague with whom he is temporarily sharing his office.

My boss’s boss turns to his officemate: “Have you read Damian’s ‘Blog?”
My boss’s boss’s officemate: “No. What’s it about?”
My boss’s boss: “Well, most of the time I have no idea at all.”

05Apr05 — 0

The People’s Party

A general election has been called. Within hours of the announcement the socialists over at Harry’s Place have generated 75 posts (and counting) about whether or not to vote Labour. It’s like wandering through the college bar in the 80s all over again.

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