26Apr04 — 0

Double-Platinum Double Standard

I was listening to Avril Lavigne singing live on Radio 1 yesterday evening. Her voice is powerful and true. Her albums are slickly produced. She has an almost-distinctive sound, that you could describe as “Alanis Morissette‘s Mini-Me“. Vital for a pop star, some of her melodies are memorable and inventive. Where Lavigne’s music falls down is the godawful lyrics.

It’s Joni Mitchell‘s fault. Streams-of-consciousness are fine if you they are original and/or insightful, but, like free verse, a non-rhyming/structureless lyric had better be bloody interesting or it ain’t worth our listening. In this respect Avril Lavigne reminds me of that other “singer-songwriter”, Dido. The common theme of their work is: “My boyfriend’s crap. Waah!”

Lavigne’s latest single delivers the classic post-feminist combination of “I’m a funky, crazy, independent chick with a mind of my own and I can do just what I like with my body” and “He went off with my best friend because I wouldn’t put out like that tart and does my bum look big in this?” Unfortunately it’s difficult to render just how poorly the words scan when sung, but here’s a sample:

“You held my hand and walked me home, I know
Why you gave me the kiss, it was something like this, it made me go oh oh.
You wiped my tears, got rid of all my fears, why did you have to go?
Guess it wasn’t enough to take up some of my love, guys are so hard to trust.

“Did I not tell you that I’m not like that
Girl, the one who gives it all away?

“Don’t try to tell me what to do,
Dont try to tell me what to say,
You’re better off that way.”

Compare this with Dido, from her defiantly named album “No Angel”, as she lurches from:

“What I choose to do is of no concern to you and your friends
Where I lay my hat may not be my home,
But I will last on my own

“‘Cause it’s me, and my life,
It’s my life.”

to:

“When you see her sweet smile baby, don’t think of me.
When she lays in your warm arms, don’t think of me.

“So you’re with her, and not with me, I know she spreads sweet honey,
In fact, your best friend, I heard he spent last night with her
Now how do you feel?”

If The Streets had written it, the song would be called “Bet You’re Sorry You Dumped Me For That Slag”. (Have you heard far too much of his Fit But You Know It“, lately, as well?)

My impressions from snippets of of interviews with them tell me neither Lavigne or Dido is role-playing or being ironic. You can practically hear them declare to some DJ, “The songs on this album were very personal,” over the intro to another a track of banalities.

Avril, it’s clear that you (and your co-accused, Dido) aren’t ready for sexual liberation yet. When you dress like Lolita at the same time as you bitch like a yellow-eyed nun about your “sisters” sexuality then life’s going to be complicated for you. Luckily, I know how to simplify away your pain—and it’ll work for most of your “wild, mad-for-it, modern-girl” fans too: “Bin your troublesome lovers; find a nice, steady man from the sales department to marry; and shut up.”

26Apr04 — 1

PooterGeek Fisked

Rupert Read visited this site today and politely pointed out that my statement in a previous entry that he was Balliol JCR President during my time at that college was bollocks (my word, not his). This entry is by way of apology to him and to all readers of this ‘Blog. He was right: as a result of lazy Googling by me, I confused him with someone else. There are worse libels, and he didn’t ask me to do this, but, as is my policy, I’ve corrected my mistake and the correction will, eventually percolate through Google’s cache too. I still don’t agree with him about much else, though.

UPDATE: In a spectacular display of grace on his part (I am starting to feel seriously ashamed now) Rupert has just sent me a very nice private email and I am tempted to take up the academic offer he made in it.

23Apr04 — 0

Two Nations Divided By A Meat Cleaver

In the UK we have cookery programmes like Delia and Two Fat Ladies. Look at the DVD cover for the latter and smile at the eccentric old dears’ roly-poly faces peering over the jolly saturated colours of a flood of fruit and veg. The subtitle “full throttle”—in a non-threatening all-lowercase serif—hints that the eponymous heroines took their vintage motorbike and sidecar a mile or two over the speed limit along an open, straight stretch of ‘A’ road somewhere in the home counties. Their faces say: “If we came round to your house we might offer your children a sip of the cooking wine and slap your wrist theatrically should you sample any of the food before it was ready, but everyone would be sorry to see us go when the meal was over.”

In the USA they have IRON CHEF AMERICA: BATTLE OF THE MASTERS. Gaze in fear at three macho multi-ethnic cooks glowering at us over sci-fi blockbuster caps and angled blades, photographed in grainy monochrome. The middle one looks like Metallica lead singer James Hetfield. His face says: “Fear me for I shall COOK THE FLESH OF MY RIVALS and prosecute you for sharing my recipes with your friends. When my restaurant franchise opens in Baghdad the Feyadeen will BURN ON MY GRIDDLE.”

There’s one thing the World should be grateful that the UK and the USA have in common, though: our taste for democracy.

23Apr04 — 4

You Scratch My Back

This morning I received a bottle of champagne (coincidentally my favourite alcoholic drink) from a family of complete strangers, as thanks for my doing them a favour, one I enjoyed doing and for which I had refused payment. Biology geeks might see the connection between this “exchange” and the death of John Maynard Smith on Monday.

22Apr04 — 0

The Bint Is Back

Yvonne Ridley, journalist and former Taliban captive, is standing in the European elections for the “anti-war” RESPECT Coalition, the organisation currently caring for George Galloway, former Labour MP.

The strange history of this woman is in itself worth pointing up, but today I just wanted to draw your attention to her use of language:

“I was overwhelmed when Respect asked me to stand for them, especially because I’m on my home ground. I’m in uncharted territory by standing in the elections and for a new political party, but we have a huge groundswell of support.”

This is a professional writer: three clichés, a contradiction-in-terms, and a gross exaggeration, crammed into two sentences. Now that‘s talent.

22Apr04 — 1

Sitcom Life: Part II

It’s about 7:30pm I’m walking down the stairs from my flat. I have been talking to my landlord. When I arrived, he was vacuuming those stairs, ready for a new couple who he says want to look at the place next door to mine in the block. We chatted, I picked up the things I needed from my place, and he disappeared into the ready-to-view apartment.

As I am closing the entrance to the block behind me, I bump into the people who have come to look at the flat. I say hello to them and tell them that I’m the guy who’d be living next door to them if they take the place. They aren’t looking at me; they’re looking at the un-cased electric guitar I’m carrying.

“Oh. It’s okay; I only practise with headphones.”

“He’s, er, a great landlord.”

“See you.”

22Apr04 — 0

Dragonslayer

Iain Murray over at “The Edge of England’s Sword” needs a link from me as much as Celine Dion needs me to approve of her singing. His Right-leaning ‘Blog makes a hell of a lot more sense than Samizdata and he’s sent some traffic my way today so I’m happy to reciprocate.

It is a elementary logical exercise to derive from first principles that everything he writes is wrong because he’s a Tory, but there are threads on his front page whose spirit I can’t help but approve of: hearty skepticism of Green myths, equally hearty skepticism of diet fads, hatred of bad journalism and a strangely unfashionable distaste for the mutilation of corpses by dirt-stupid thugs. (On the last, however, I don’t agree with the way his wife believes we should respond to said behaviour.)

21Apr04 — 0

Give Her A Clap

I thought these kinds of things only happened in sitcoms. Returning from work, I find a message from a cheery-sounding woman on my answerphone—names omitted to protect the innocent:

“Hello. This is Doctor [DELETED] from the [DELETED]. A message for [DELETED]. Following the results of tests after your visit we’ve found that you do have a little infection. It’s not a serious one; don’t panic! Could you come along to pick up a prescription for some antibiotics? Thanks. Bye!”

Before anyone reading this gets cheeky, this was a wrong number. Whether it’s using a condom or developing a clinic policy on answerphone messages, someone needs to be a bit more careful in future.

21Apr04 — 3

The Prime Minister Is Spamming Me

A tip if you’re about to become a Labour supporter: don’t, whatever you do, give the party your email address. Every time Tony Blair gives a speech important enough to have been trailed on the Today Programme two days beforehand he feels the need to send you an over-sized bleeding Word attachment so you can share his thoughts. Look, Tone, mi old mucker—now that I’m a council candidate that’s what I can call him—look Tone, mate, I agree with you already. I’m the only person in the party who does (except about PFI and Diana Spencer, of course). Just stop with the bloated, proprietary word processor files!

20Apr04 — 0

Walk It Off

One of the last press releases under the reign of the recently deceased CEO of McDonald’s promised an

“Adult Happy Meal containing salad, bottled water and a pedometer.”

(If you follow the link, check out the new customer-friendly look Death is wearing as he stands on the right of the photo. That cloak-and-scythe thing was so mediaeval.)

19Apr04 — 2

It’s That Time Again

First PooterGeeker (anywhere in the World) to comment on this ‘Blog entry gets a free subscription to The London Review of Books.

(Given its editorial line on The Issue of Our Day, I can understand a certain ambivalence, but, hey, they’re giving it away. Get your share of that taxpayer-funded subsidy now!)

18Apr04 — 3

Success Teaches You Nothing

Over at Kamm’s ‘Blog on Friday, the proprietor launched a thoroughly deserved attack on Rupert Read.

[The rest of this entry was a rant about Rupert and one of his papers. Although I still disagree violently with his letter to the Telegraph and am very skeptical about the content of that paper, Rupert has offered—very kindly under ths circumstances, since I also confused him with someone else—to open up a discussion with me about his approach to philosophy, based around my objections. I think I might borrow from The Professor‘s normblog and approach it in an interview style. Watch this (or a nearby) space.]

18Apr04 — 0

News Readuh

[High Court Judge voice] I’ve just heard an excitable young lady deliver the 7:30 news on Radio 1, the BBC’s popular music channel.[/High Court Judge voice]. Yesterday’s assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi was about the fifth item:

“The leader of a militant Palestinian group has been shot and killed by the Israelis. It was part of a long-running dispute over the ownership of land.”

and, er, that’s it.

18Apr04 — 1

What It Is

A lot of us are currently trying (again) to point out the people on the Left that Iraq is not Vietnam. It’s also important to point out to people on the Right that Al-Qaeda is not the KGB.

You know those forms you fill in as you fly into JFK, where you tell US Immigration about your drug-dealing, terrorist past? If you do, you’ll like this part of the article:

In July 2002, long after 9/11, an Egyptian national walked into Los Angeles International Airport with a gun and killed two Israeli citizens at the El Al counter. On his application for asylum in the United States, Hesham Mohamed Hedayet had written that in Egypt he’d confessed to being a member of al-Gama’a al-Islameya, but apparently, unless a man has Osama Bin Laden’s phone number in his PalmPilot or a big “AQ” tattooed across his chest, it takes the FBI almost a year to decide he is, in fact, a terrorist. And how did they finally determine this? “The investigation,” said an FBI spokesman in April 2003, “developed information that [Hedayet] openly supported the killings of civilians in order to advance the Palestinian cause.” This is incompetence and there is nothing to indicate our law enforcement agencies are getting better.

17Apr04 — 5

Meeting The People

“‘Labour Party’? Dictatorship Party more like!”

I am standing in the street with a couple of other local party members and the local Labour MEP. We are armed with highly explosive balloons. The person ranting at me is about 22, has a whispy blond goatee, multiple piercings and a grating, sneering, estuarine voice. He is telling me why he will never vote Labour again. Iraq, apparently, is radioactive as a result of our attacks with depleted uranium shells and yesterday the US marines killed 600 people, most of them women and children. I am, to my shame, losing my temper. The switch flipped when he said “If he [Saddam] wants to be a dictator it’s his business. It’s not for us to go and kill thousands of people.”

Another tells me that she voted Labour once, but cannot support Tony Blair now because of his “sickly smile”. She does not want to support any of the other leaders either because they are “not statesmen”.

And, of course, there is the surreality factor: Cambridge is a place of deep and perpetual strangeness.

One potential voter juggles a melon and a giant box of cornflakes while confiding in me interestingly and at length about his crisis of political conscience. He has been reading a biography of Churchill. It has increased his sense of the importance of the individual and now he is finding it difficult to reconcile this feeling with his traditional Left-wing affinity for collective action.

Later, I am approached by a woman who has individual strategies for her votes in the council, general and European elections. “This is going to sound mad,” she begins at one point, “but I was sitting next the Lord Chancellor at dinner last night”.
“At Pembroke College?”
“Yes.”
“I was at that dinner too.”
She is momentarily thrown.
“I was sitting next the Lord Chancellor at dinner last night and I spent half-an-hour telling him why I can no longer vote for a Labour government.”
Her reasons are very good. I can’t argue with them, but I still ask for her vote.

The MEP, Richard Howitt, has to deal with a refugee from Chile who fled Pinochet and still bears a deep grudge against Bush Snr (as former head of the CIA). She has transferred her resentment to Bush Jr. Howitt doesn’t stand a chance. This morning’s front pages are full of pictures of this meeting between Blair and Bush.

Don’t be misled by my choice of snapshots. On the whole, campaigning in the street in Cambridge today is simple and pleasant. So many punters happily take a leaflet, chat politely, and often people claim to be life-long Labour supporters, but occasionally I see what a bloody awful business politics can be.

As Howitt’s lift arrives, a drunk on a bike shouts “MPs! Fuck off!” and continues to abuse him as he puts stuff into the car before he is driven away.

UPDATE: Here are Richard and Damian, and their sickly smiles [photo by Alex Mayer].

16Apr04 — 0

Quick Round-Up

Here’s a collection of links that have been deserted in my virtual in-tray for a while, uncommented upon and unshared:

  • Hugh linked me to this bizarre event at a US university—not an April Fool,
  • there are pearls of wit amongst the pellets of gravel at the Four Word Film Review site—I liked the reviews of Desperately Seeking Susan (“so-so SoHo ho flick”), 101 Dalmatians (“see spots run”), and Star Wars (“wars over, stars unemployed”),
  • and here’s an article from last November’s New York Observer that’s turned out to be prescient about the current trouble in Iraq
15Apr04 — 0

I Cracked

I was in Sainsbury’s and it beckoned to me with its front-page headline “Bush rips up the roadmap”, and its science pull-out Life, and its article about bioinformatics. Reader, I bought a copy of The Guardian.

Anyway, inside was a report on an interesting new band BlöödHag. They describe themselves as “edu-core”. This genre involves their alternately playing 2-minute-long thrash metal numbers and raging at their audience to read more science fiction novels—sometimes encouraging them by actually throwing paperbacks into the crowds. The Guardian gives BlöödHag’s motto as “Read to Live, Live to Read”, but I prefer the one cited in this article: “The Sooner You Go Deaf The More Time You Have To Read”. The band members claim to have a strict spectacles-only rule for sex with groupies. Their real achievement, however, is their songwriting—I quote from their tribute to H G Wells:

“Writers still swipe from your most famous books
Yet they forget the social satire of your later works.”

BlöödHag’s official Website seems to be unavailable at the time of this posting, but you can read more about them and an interview with the members at this page.

14Apr04 — 0

On The Counsell Campaign Trail

There are only a couple of months to go now before the crucial election for the hotly contested Cambridge Market seat, and scarcely a day goes by without I and my fellow Labour candidates—running mates, if you will—addressing the media. Perhaps we should have stuck to our original plan to keep a low profile. In a stunning development, my campaign philosophy has already been borrowed wholesale by one of our colonial cousins across the Pond.

People of Cambridge, remember my slogan (if you can): “A vote for Counsell is an admirable and worthwhile gesture in support of the precious democratic process, but, objectively, it’s unlikely to change the result.”

(Not very snappy, I know. How about “Vote Damian Counsell: no one’s counting chads in Cambridge”?)

[photo by Alex Mayer]

13Apr04 — 0

Not Rattling Teacups

I recommend this piece by Mark Steyn from a couple of days ago, firstly, because he manages to agree with both a recent poster to PooterGeek and with me [see this post and this comment box], and, secondly, because it’s an example of how astonishingly good an opinion piece can be when composed by a master. Mark Steyn writes newspaper columns like Cole Porter wrote popular songs, only he writes a lot more of them. I know Steyn of all people would know what a compliment that is.

13Apr04 — 0

Out Come The Freaks

I paraphrase the title of the latest email I’ve received from our Israel correspondent. With holy days circled on the calendar and Spring in the air, the thoughts of many a young religious fanatic turn to killing Jews, a practice which conveniently marks out the majority of the fundamentally evil systems of “thought” and political regimes that have blighted civilization: Nazism, Stalinism, Islamism. Here are some samples of the kinds of people who haven’t been able to blight Passover/Easter for the fathers, mothers, daughters and sons of the Zionist Entity:

“One of two Tanzim activists caught at the end of March told interrogators the group that sent them had planned a series of other attacks, including one with a device to which blood infected with AIDS would be attached.

“Another planned attack was a triple suicide bombing by terror organizations in a large Israeli city. The suicide bombers, whose explosive belts were ready, were to have gone from the Gaza Strip to Egypt by tunnel and then enter Israel through Sinai. Their operators were also planning to kidnap a settler near the West Bank settlement of Kedumim.

“At the end of March, a resident of the Balata refugee camp in Nablus was arrested on suspicion of planning a Fatah suicide attack in Tel Aviv. The 25-year old woman, who apparently was discovered cheating on her husband, was ordered to carry out the bombing for family honor.

“Another woman, 19, of Nablus, was arrested a few days later. She had been ordered to carry out a suicide bombing, after her family discovered she had been romantically involved before her marriage.”

Here’s the original story. God knows, you won’t read about it on the BBC News site.

UPDATE: Just checked my work email (from home) and found that Adam also mailed me about his too.

UPDATE: I have to correct my earlier remark: the Beeb do report on foiled bombings of Jews if the events take place outside the usual killing grounds.

13Apr04 — 0

Rising Again

Sorry about the technical problems with the site yesterday—my 12Apr04 entry is now visible; see below. As well as PooterGeek being back up, I’m generally in a more positive mood after an Easter break of callisthenics and music-making, so I’m going to rave (at more length than usual) about two things—one musical and one literary—and I’ve posted my raves in reverse chronological order so you can read them top to bottom.

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