I MISS MY FUTURES.


NARCISSUS VERSUS PROLAPSUS

Photo by angus88

Local (To Reading) free-press types Burn After Reading have released the second edition of their free paper, available as a pdf

Give it a read, hope etc

I have been very lax in the blog posting department recently. I have been exceedingly busy, or perhaps Santa…

However this does not mean that the internet here & elsewhere is not still brilliant.

Cases in point:

The year is coming to an end, which makes it possible to discover the best scandals of 2008. Not included on that list was the heinous case of some guy reported only by some other guy.

In case you were not wondering & had therefore not clicked the link, the image at the top of this post is from If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats which is reliably graphic as far as weblogs go. the picture is the following:

Mayor Destroys Last of Slot Machines.

New York — A modern St. George conquering a moral dragon, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City has the personal satisfaction of destroying some of the 2000 slot machines which were loaded on a municipal barge, towed out to sea, and dumped. They are believed to have been the last machines in the city. The money remaining in the machines at the time of confiscation will be turned over to the police pension fund. Watching the Mayor are Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine and State Senator Joseph Esquirol, sponsor of a bill outlawing the evil. (1934)

A truly beautiful moment in the history of self-righteousness.

NOTICE: I have also recently discovered the secret of eternal life. If you want to discover the meaning of life then please donate five pounds to my paypal account:

NOTICE1.1: If you think that you can get the secret of eternal life for just five pounds then you clearly don’t deserve to know it. In order to receive the secret of eternal life please donate the amount you think it is worth to my paypal account:

NOTICE1.2; DISCLAIMER: This may or may not be a reworking of a Peter Cook sketch that I was unable to find a link to. I may or may not be in possession of the secret of eternal life.

Use either your own skill & judgement or the nearest thing you have.

Love regards etc

Notice: This is a technical post. If you don’t have this problem, you probably want to skip this one.

I have just started using the Listen music player, which is a very nice lightweight little python program that comes shipped with xubuntu. As of the time of writing the version included in the xubuntu-desktop package has not been updated so that it integrates with last.fm properly.

The following fixes the problem, and will happily allow you to broadcast your terrible taste to the rest of the world without sitting you down & asking why you really want to do so.


wget http://www.listen-project.org/raw-attachment/ticket/826/audioscrobbler_manager.py

rm audioscrobbler_manager.py


You can see this in action on my last.fm profile should you have the inclination.

Love regards etc

Notice: The next post will almost certainly be of a less niche nature. Look forward to it. Or something.

Allow me to introduce you to the wonderful Hjalmar Söderberg whose collection of short stories has consumed the last day of my life.

If you are already acquainted, then excuse my presumption, but allow me to refresh your memory of these wonderful phrases:

There are people who are not exactly devoid of conscience, but who have never by themselves come upon the idea that they might have done something wrong.

The two old ladies stop in front of the bronze group and exchange their thoughts about the work of art; I cannot hear what they are saying, but I see from the shaking of heads and from the violent waving of the dark green parasols in the air that they are regarding the matter from the point of view of morality rather than aesthetics, and that their verdict is unfavourable.

There is wisdom and wisdom. The wise men of old will always remain the wisest of all. But there will come a time when any fool can do a number of things which the wise men of old considered impossible. Tricks and trifles of no special importance. But what is it that you want of me?

Wonderful short-stories, (of the variety that actually are short stories, rather than disguised novellas) with a point to make, and ideas to plant… Never over-written & remarkably prescient, this collection contains what may be my favourite ever piece of short prose.

Meanwhile, I will most certainly be exploring what is apparently the man’s masterpiece - the novel Dr Glas in the very near future… expect more to come.

Love regards etc

December the 10th marks the last day in my current job 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I personally have no affiliation with REM. Or this film. That is entirely the work of Amnesty, who are otherwise exceedingly wonderful people.

Love regards etc

Edit: There is a video embedded in this post. It does not appear in the feed. This may or may not be rectified at some stage.

I know my faults, & this will not be enforced wholesale, but the fight is valiant.

sentenc.es

I will now stop typing.

Love regards etc

I will not make this needlessly long:

The explosive pertinence of a remembered detail may challenge repressive or merely complacent systems of prescriptive memory or history; memory like the body, may speak in a language that reasoned inquiry will not hear.

Randolph Starn & Natalie Zemon Davis

N.B. also, two fantastic names.

#almost_a_real_post

I think it may be something in the water, but there seems to be a whole lot of optimism floating around in the world right now. And in large part accompanied by a very refreshing realism such as that of this post about how we can ‘build anything we want’ that warns:

We’re nowhere near the bottom of this disaster we’ve voted onto ourselves. I don’t think the majority of Americans fully understand the severity of our financial crisis. We’re all fervently staring at Christmas, confusing the holiday spirit for hope.

To borrow a riff from Seth, the best time to start affecting the changes that need to be made was five years ago. The second best time, is now. The reason being that certainly for me, and for most of the people in the world, we can be the change we need.

I am off to do so, right after I set up a reminder to Hassle Myself just in case I forget.

Love regards etc

Related: Also, watch Davd Simon’s talk on The Audacity of Despair, which I have posted about at People Want More

This week, via the the Library of Congress flickr account, I came across the fantastic story of my (now) favourite ever ship.

In the 1850s it was employed as a prison ship off the coast of Australia, gaining notoriety when, in 1857 prisoners managed to murder the Superintendent of Prisons John Price. After this, it was “purchased by a group of entrepreneurs to be refitted as a museum ship to travel the world advertising the perceived horrors of the convict era.”

It then travelled to England before spending more than twenty years sailing up & down the east coast of the U.S., only falling into disrepair during the great depression, which coincided with a fall in the public’s appetite for buying museum tickets.

Now as far as I am concerned this, especially alongside the striking images of torture equipment makes for a fine tale. But the really remarkable thing about this museum about horror, pain & death, is that throughout its history, it retained the original name given to it. Which was the Success.

File under “Sublime Ironies”.

My thanks to Joho (the blog) who first alerted me to the existence of the LOC on the interwebs.

Love regards etc