Meme House

I have just been tagged by Rob of Eine Kleine Nichtmusik with a meme, that originated with the wonderful Clare Sudbury of Boob Pencil.

1. Tell your readers three things about you that would make you the Ideal Housemate if you were imprisoned in a house with ten random strangers for weeks on end. Then three things that'd make you the Housemate From Hell.

Three Things on the Good Side



1. I can converse. I can converse about the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star and other shoes. I can converse about almost anything except pop trivia and biology. And one of those statements is a lie.


2. I have patience. But can you spend your whole life hanging around with arseholes? If I can take in several books I won't pester anyone. I'll be no bother. Honest.


3. I can cook a mean Bolognese (either veggie or meaty)



Three Things on the Bad Side



1. I can converse. I can converse about the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star and other shoes. I can converse about almost anything except pop trivia and biology. And one of those statements is a lie.


2. I have patience. But can you spend your whole life hanging around with arseholes? If I can take in several books I won't pester anyone. I'll be no bother. Honest.


3. I hate people who just witter on about nothing in particular without pausing for breath and who don't know how to carry a conversation so it includes other people and even when what they start off saying is vaguely interesting by the time they've reached what should be the end, the end my only friend, of their train of thought you have long since factored every number from here to 1729 into sums of cubes and started to wish that someone in a cloak and twirly moustache had abducted you and tied you to a railway track with great thick rope so a heroine in red and black 1950s style dress could come to the rescue but then you're disturbed by a thought that you chose to go in with these complete strangers who'd all chosen to go in to this charnel house so you have actually got something in common but then you stop and find yourself at war and watch waterfalls of pity fall and find yourself not paying a damm jot of attention to what is going on with life all around you and you stop to think that yes life is carrying on all around you with punctuation but you drift in and out of picking up words drifting across the ether from your housemates and you start to sing half remembered lyrics and then you start thinking that don't you know gazing into the vastness of it that G_d is Pooh Bear only to stop right now and know that when you gaze into abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

Oh and I'm sometimes not a social being.

Yes I will vote for the wonderful Clare. In fact I'll vote early and vote often to quote Tony Banks quoting someone else.

I'll tag anyone who reads this. Go on. Just do it.

Blogging At Work

Well, in the public sector. Some of us do work and we do it in the public sector. Research (and good honest to goodness academic research) shows that public sector bodies are using blogs to communicate with each other and the public.

The research was done by David Wyld at South Eastern Louisiana University who reasons that any body funded by the tax payer is a public body. As an old fashioned lefty I'd say that a public body is almost any body funded by the tax payer that is not part of the military. But he's an academic.

In looking at bloggers and blog readers, Wyld said they tend to be better educated, more diverse and more urban than the American population as a whole. In addition, from a political perspective, they are more civically involved and politically engaged in both the online and offline worlds.

The report includes tables detailing Wyld’s research, which is baseline data identifying blogs initiated by members of Congress, Congressional committees, governors and lieutenant governors, state legislators and other officials throughout the nation and in places as far away as Scotland and India.

The public sector body most eager to use blogging is U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM). That means that the global war on terror is being run and fought by bloggers.

A Logician's Dilemma

There's a classic logical puzzle about a cell, two doors and two guards. A bit like this from the brilliant xkcd.



But not.


(Via Norm)

Lichfield Jazz and Blues Festival

Sunday we went to Lichfield Jazz and Blues festival and saw some great acts.

First up we saw John Etheridge a great guitarist but a bit too rocky for jazz guitar.

Then the amazing Gareth Roberts, his fantatstic trombone and his quintet.

We also caught the excellent pianist Zoe Rahman.

The best band on was definitely Empirical.

Four of them are past members of Tomorrows Jazz Warriors namely, Jay Phelps trumpet (here last year with Dennis Rollins) Nathaniel Facey saxes, Neil Charles double bass, Shane Forbes drums with outstanding pianist Kit Downes completing the quintet.

Here's a performance from the Vortex Jazz Club



If you like jazz then these are your cup of tea. They have an album out shortly.

Dickie Attenborough's Crockery

I went with Rullsenberg to Leicester to pick up our Summer Sundae tickets and to see the exhibition of Picasso ceramics donated to the city museum and gallery by Richard and Sheila Attenborough.

The exhibition is brilliant. The pieces are well displayed. They are all of a quality you would expect of Picasso. The back story as to how the Attenborough's came to own a collection of Picasso ceramics is on the Times's site.

Before visiting the gallery we had a glorious lunch at The Quarter. That was a glorious lunch at The Quarter.

The link between Amin and Hussein

It's all down to money.



As seen in a shop off St Martins Lane, London, last week.

Gratuitous Use of the word rooster

Or, how to use a thesaurus and get things totally wrong.



As seen in a shop window off St Martin's Lane last week in London.

Hello, Goodbye

I've just been in London for a week on a course. Managed to meet up with an old friend. We talked. We drank. We ate and drank and talked some more. We walked and we drank. And we talked some more. Then it came to that time when you have to go your separate ways. You say goodbye. And realise there has to be a better way of parting. There are things you didn't say. They'll have to wait for next time.

Anyway, here's a link to a cool cartoon about goodbyes.



I recommend xkcd, a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Bonfire of Books

A second hand book store owner has started to burn books he can't give away. When he wanted to thin out his stock libraries didn't want them, thrift stores didn't want them. Tom Wayne, owner of Kansas City's Prospero's Books, saw burning books as a protest against declinining support for the printed word. His colleague said "There are segments of this city where you go to an estate sale and find five TVs and three books". That's tragic. Is it really the case that not reading a book is as good as burning it? I don't think so. A book shelved has the potential to be read. A book burned can never be read. Many books are read and then recycled. How many Tom Clancy novels does the world need?

That second hand book shops are closing down is a cultural tragedy. That people aren't reading as much as they did once in a golden age of literacy is another cultural tragedy. Are those who still read reading better books? Reading Adorno over Adams (but there again, Douglas Adams and Henry Adams are both worth reading)? Reading Althusser over Debord, or even Debord over Althusser.

Secondhand book shops are a major cultural resource. I love going in to a good secondhand bookshop. Picking a book. Beginning to read it. Paying for a pile of books. Leaving with a pile of books. The acquisition of books is good. Reading books is better. Reading good books is better still. But how do you define a good book?

Notebooks and the social command

I was tidying up and reviewing some old notebooks when I found some notes I'd made on Mayakovsky. Can I find where the notes are from? Can I heck. But here are the notes. Someone may know from whence they came. Probably not some dizzy whore in 1804.

Unreconstructed non-revisionists

At the Chesterfield May Day rally there was ideology and newspapers on sale like biscuit and cakes at a CWI fete.

I bought The Proletarian sold by the CPGB-ML, who are a bunch of unreconstructed anti-imperialist non-revisionist Communists who left Scargill's Socialist Labour Party because of its commitment to social democracy.

As they say

The CPGB-ML was set up in July 2004 by a group of committed communists who had either been expelled or had resigned from the Socialist Labour Party. It was set up in recognition of the fact that there was no existing party in Britain that carried a consistently Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist, anti-social democratic political line. It was, and is, the unshakable conviction of these comrades that only such a party can develop into a genuine working-class vanguard.

And they unconditionally support Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Kim Jong Il in DPKR and the memory of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. There's a strong overlap with the Stalin Society which

was formed in 1991 to defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him.

At a meeting with the Workers Party of Korea (WKP) last September Harpal Brar said

The leadership of the Labour Party and the trade unions, which are very similar, have exercised a most harmful influence on the working-class movement in Britain. The old CPGB, under the guidance of the Comintern, was able to make deep inroads into the working-class movement, but that party went revisionist with the ascendancy of Khrushchevite revisionism in the CPSU(B) from 1956. In 1989, the CPGB dissolved itself and passed a resolution saying that the October Revolution had been a “mistake of historic proportions”.

In these circumstances, we picked up the banner of Marxism Leninism and tried to build a movement. We are trying hard to dig deep roots in the working class, with very limited success so far. With increasing imperialist attacks on the working class at home and the oppressed peoples abroad, people are beginning to listen to us. We are working hard to develop trade union and working-class work, but a lot has to be done.

So is the CPGB-ML going to win over the British working class to its program? Join us next week to find out. Erm. That may be postponed to next year. If you can't wait to find out just read The Proletarian.

As A Very Public Sociologist says the presence of smaller groups make the British left a fun place to be. Diverse ecosystems are good and that extends as much to a political ecosystem as to any other.

Laggardly posting of Chesterfield May Day

Last monday, 7th May 2007, Rullsenberg and I went to Chesterfield for the May Day Rally.

Here's the brass band before the march.



Here's the gathering of the banners, with what looks like an old NHS bed.



Here's one with Chesterfield's famour crooked spire.



Here's some more banners.



At the beginning of the rally there were stalls selling books. There were stalls selling ideology and newspapers.

And at the end of hte march the sun came out. And there's more in the next post.

Beware Drunken Brawls

Just found this picture, by Rory Hanratty, of a new street sign in Belfast.



Could we make this a nationwide thing?

Nietzsche Family Cartoon

Via DSFTP here's The Nietsche Family.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

There's one for you. Just hit refresh and gaze into the abyss.

All the world's a stage and here's a drill

Back in February artist Jo Mitchell recreated Einsturzende Neubauten's famous gig , Concerto for Voice and Machinery, at the ICA in 1984 where they had a cement mixer, electric drills and jackhammers. The recreated gig was supported by an industrial tool hire company, as it would be.

EN's Alexander Hacke recalls

Because we were using petrol-driven chainsaws, very soon the whole room was filled with smoke, the stench of petrol everywhere. It sounded like a cross between a building site and war. Because I was very young, the others wouldn't let me near the heavy machinery so I stood, wearing protective gloves and a visor, throwing milk bottles into the cement mixer, which smashed and flew into the crowd.

But we would have kept it pretty straightforward if we weren't inspired by the reaction of the audience. There's a famous Walter Benjamin essay about the destructive character, and he says: "The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away." And that's how it was. We were thinking, "Actually, it's not us doing anything. The audience are tearing the place apart!" People were fighting over the drills and sledgehammers. Cables and machinery were pulled into the audience.

The thing about these situations is that no matter how wild it gets, people do instinctively take care of each other. I'm sure there were moments when we thought it was getting out of hand but it was all so quick, it went "Snap", like a switch being flicked and everyone going berserk.

How many musicians quote Walter Benjamin? How many musicians fire shards of milk bottle at the audience? It's a thin line between really stupid and really smart.

Myth and reality often clash. According to Mick Sinclair's review of the original gig, in Sounds, and in Mick Sinclair's letter to the Grauniad it was not a Neubauten gig but a performance that featured some of the band members. So there, all you mythologisers who mythologise with your pens, your chance is over, it won't come again.

Derby Silk Workers Procession

This Saturday I had a grand day out in Derby. I went to the Silk Mill Procession which is

a trade union commemoration of the struggle of the Derby Silk Mill workers of 1834.
At 10.30am in Derby’s Market Place, join the traditional silver band led procession with your banners, or with your family and friends, in recognition of the long
and radical history of Derby workers. At the end of the procession at the Silk Mill
gates rally, a chaplet will be laid at the plaque commemorating the 1834 struggle, and there will be trade union and labour movement speakers and lusty renditions of 'The Red Flag' and 'The Internationale'.

Here's the start of the march.


The sun shone as we marched to the Silk Museum.


We passed various traction and steam engines. We listened to a cracking speech from the local PCS rep arguing for the retention of tax offices, and tax jobs, in Derby and against the proposed move to Nottingham (sorry but I couldn't find a link). We listened to Margaret Beckett, and a heckler. We heard a passionate speech from Graham Stevenson arguing that "if socialism is not the answer then there is no answer" to the world's problems. Indeed.

We then had a brass band play the Red Flag, then the Internationale. Then a steam organ started up playing Rule Britannia. Was this deliberate? Who knows?

And so to the Silk Mill pub for a talk by Graham Stevenson on Derby working class history.


A bit of history over a pint of real ale. What more could you want?

The Red Review

Don't people accumulate some junk? I've been going through a folder of pamphlets picked up over the years and I found "The Red Review Songbook 1985". Thought I'd copy some of them here.

Here's the cover.



Here's the first songs, The Red Flag and The Internationale.



And here's "I Have a Dream", a song that evokes dreams betrayed.



And here's Old Man's Song.



Nostalgia. A simpler time when the opposition was the opposition. When the enemy was the enemy. The joys of opposition politics. Jumpers for goalposts.

Tonight the Monkey Dies

I was expcting to go to two gigs next week. But after Einsturzende Neubauten were forced to pull out (concert interruptus) I've got just one to go to, Low. Here's a video.



Hope you enjoy it. And get to see Low on their 2007 tour.

Faith, Hope and Salamandrina

Looks like the Einsturzende Neubauten gig at Rock City, Nottingham next Thursday 26 April, has been called off because not enough people wanted to go.

I was first in the queue (ahem) on the 22nd of January. Tickets numbered 10 and 11. What a night that's going to be. I evangelised to everyone I know with even a vague interest in what I call music. Some expressions of interest.

Only to find out that Rock City can't sell enough tickets. What a let down. The idle, ignorant, musically challenged folk of the East Midlands don't know what they've missed. Who could turn down the opportunity for a night of German muttering and clanking? (Obviously almost the entire population, apart from me and Rullsenberg, of the East Midlands).

So I'm at a loose end on Thursday when I should have been listening to sounds like this.



But on Wednesday I have got another gig to go to.

Twenty pound notes

Has anyone seen the new Adam Smith twenty pound note? Rullsenberg has but every time I've been to a cash machine or asked for cash back at a supermarket I've been given either tens or tens and an old crinkled twenty.

Nostalgia corner, but I can recall the introduction of the twenty pence piece. It was ages before I saw one of those. Then I was one of the last to see a pound coin. As for the two pound coin, they were a year old before I got my grubby mitts on one.

Please, please, please, let me get what I want, this time.