Serious

Difficult to get serious when, again, a few Christmas drinks to the good. Probably it would be sensible to have a quiet day at home tomorrow building a Civilization of some sort.
Can't be worse than being sober and watching the cricket. Still, even for the poor buggers there at the MCG, it must still be fun as a life. I wonder where England are touring next winter?

Ashes to Ashes

I've managed to miss writing anything about the Ashes this winter, which I suppose is just as well. If you can't speak well of the dead, say nothing at all - or something like that. It's been an absolute bloody mess from an English point of view, but even that doesn't stop me enjoying my holiday by being able to stay up a bit and follow the cricket from afar. In fact, so far tonight sounds like about the best session of the series for England - Ponting and Hussey both out for single figures. And in fact, Clarke goes too as I write. Time to turn on the radio I reckon.
I've started reading the book I got for Christmas about 'The Long Emergency'. The full title is 'SUrviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty First Century'. PArticularly relevant is the concept of cognitive dissonance, applied to a society - in fact, to a species. Essentially this comes down to ignoring the broader context of what is happening in your environment in order to focus on the smaller - perhaps, more handleable, details. And so most folks worry about how to pay the rent, or the mortgage, and miss the disasters looming over us. I guess it's a survival mechanism as well to some extent, but one which is actually leading us into disaster.
Time to evolve again I reckon.

Nice day?

Well, Christmas is nearly over, for another year, and to be honest I'm too pissed to type. It was a good one, and a merry Christmas to anyone reading this. It was good fun, and I've been busy from beginning to end, so either some of it passed by me or I caught the true meaning of Christmas, I'm not sure which. Perhaps someone can supply a sit-com happy ending and let me know?
Anyway, it was great to see everyone tonight - 14 people in all I think, so I reckon there was some good grub distribution.
This is nice now - everyone gone home or to bed, and a bit of funk (to remember James Brown, who died today) . I've got a feeling that tonight is a Christmas to last a little longer.
Kisses and merry Christmas to you all!

All trimmed up

So, here we are. Christmas time again. I'm a huge fan. How can you not be? - the room is full of lights and colours, I'm off work and allowed to drink from mid-afternoon till early morning, and there's all that goodwill concept kicking around.
Willow's birthday tomorrow morning. She's started to be a bit more able to deal with this double excitement - we can claw her down from the ceiling now and then.
I'm cooking a huge dinner on Christmas Day - I think the guest list is about 15 people. So I'm presuming they're not going to want to sit and listen to the cricket from Australia at 2 in the morning.
Shane Warne announced his retirement a couple of days ago, following the all-too-easy regaining of the Ashes. I never saw him play live unfortunately, which is a shame as he's one of the greats of all-time.
I'm having a decadent Christmas again this year, helped out by having my first Christmas bonus. I'm well into the realms of middle class territory - my kids are certainly going to grow up middle class at the least. It's a strange thing.
I'd like to be optimistic. I have lately had a few inklings of optimism, which is curious for me. Sure my personal life is fantastic in many ways, and even though I detest wage-slavery, I am at least reasonably OK with it at the moment; but neither of these are justifications for true optimism.
The greening of the Sahara: reading recently that the Sahara has - contrary to expectations - actually been greening lately, rather than desertification increasing - now, that was good news. Such things are few and far between though.
So, for Christmas, when we can at least have a little optimism, when we can perhaps think how the world could be a better place, when we can think that - if it's not necessarily a wonderful life, it at least bears that potential - and celebrate.
Most importantly of all, is the depth of feeling that we can allow ourselves by having some time out to contemplate. That's why I like to take a couple of weeks at this time of year. It was originally a winter solstice festival, and it's an appropriate time of year, when there's little agricultural work to be done, to contemplate. That I miss Luna is still an intense feeling. But I'm also looking forward - to next year and another new baby! And sheer joy at my two daughters. Amazement at my love, my Esther.
I also have precious old friends, some of which will be joining us on Christmas Day for dinner. And new friends too.
I guess the point of these ramblings is simply that I'm lucky and happy. And even though most things seem to indicate that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, there a few signs out there that just maybe there are also reasons to be cheerful...

Briefly

Christmas holidays start in two days for me. Lots of things I want to catch up on. So this should be busy here.
One of the worst things though, is the baiji being declared functionally extinct.

Oscillations

It's been quite a while since the last ramble. Being sick again for a couple of weeks was the main reason, and since then I've not felt like too much of a stay up and write Friday. Sinterklaas arrived a couple of weeks back, and this means the weekends have extra commitmments - away to the shops tomorrow afternoon again with the happy hunting credit card.
On top of that, there's the usual work shite, compounded by imminent redundancies (which theoretically I'm breaking confidentiality obligations on by writing about it here, but as this is effectively non-public, I guess i'll not worry too much). And I'm busy looking at the proposed redundancies, together with my colleagues in the Works Council, to see if the plan is acceptable. The sad thing is, I think I'll have to resign from the Works Council as the position I'm in now is untenable: I have too broad a picture and may be distracting others from their own focus, and I feel frustrated at their understandable wish to focus in a different way than I do. As I've got a big mouth, it bothers me that I'm becoming more of a hindrance than a help for the rest of the Works Council, for their own development, if nothing else.
That's difficult to express. I do also find it difficult for myself. It's weird when I find myself understanding the bosses' point of view more easily, but I've run a company and I'm one of the movers in this place, so it's definitely unusual for a syndicalist. Still, if you're gonna play the game, play hard - I like to think I'm using those skills for the benefit of most, if not always for everyone. It's the witch thing - somebody has to make the judgement calls, and it seems there's only a handful of us that are actually going to make those calls when the moment bites.
It's nice to be up late for a change, even if I have got the frankly discomforting threat of several hours at Toys'R'Us tomorrow afternoon with a hormonal pregnant wife to look forward to. The 2nd day of the 2nd Ashes test kicks off in 6 minutes, and finally I have the chance to listen to something hopefully entertaining.
It's the 1st Decmber today, which means lots of things in my own personal timekeeping. Sinterklaas time is coming to an end - and it's Pakjesavond on Tuesday already. But it's also the kick into Christmas time: we have the work party on Thursday already; and I'm already into when we're going to get the tree, the Advent calendars are dispensing chocoloate and the specials are starting to get broadcast stateside.
Also, it's the beginning of the meteorological winter here, though the only snow I've seen hints of so far are in the winter sports on TV and the digital snow on the Aussie torrents site Diwana, which is kind of unexpected - I didn't think Aussies would associate Christmas with snow.
The reason I'm on the Aussie torrent site of course is also for the cricket, which has just begun. A maiden to start. It's the ultimate feel of the European winter - the whistling of the reception and the slight twinge of the heating not quite warm enough, the imagining of sun and heat over the other side of the planet.
Not that we're having a European winter yet. I'd be hard pressed to call this an autumn as yet. I might suggest the poles were switching and the seasons topplingover, if it weren't for the rest of the Northern hemisphere. West of us, there have been some heavy winter storms, including the earliest lake effect storm ever seen in Buffalo and some good heavy dumpings of snow in the Rockies and Midwest. And east of the Urals, the temperatures have been record lows for the time of year. Which makes it even more remarkable that the temperatures in Europe have been so high. Not just slightly warmer than the record (which was anyway set last year) but knocking on towards 2 degrees hotter for the entire autumn than the record. This is unheard of, and has naturally got the meteos concerned and investigating over here.
Meanwhile, yesterday was the last day of the Atlantic Hurricane season. Well, what can you say. After last year, and 2004 for that matter, it was natural to expect another heavy season. And the result was anything but. One tropical storm hit the US, and that was it. Almost all the storms started well east, and recurved out to sea well before the Bermudas. In fact, what needs looking into, is that Western Europe had to keep more of an eye on the storms than the US. The Azores were hit a couple of times, and Spain, Portugal, England and Ireland were all hit by at least one heavy storm. I don't know the casualties, but I seem to remember a couple of people being lost when one of the hurrican remnants - Florence perhaps? - hit the West of England, Northern Ireland and northern Iberia. Which would mean more casualties from the Atlantic Hurricane season in Europe than in North America. For sure, we had to keep more of an eye on the storms than the US did!
So what do we see here?
Extremes. Oscillations. Unpredictability.
Everything that we could expect from a chaotic system being disturbed and moving to a new state. Predicting where this will settle, the new pattern that will emrge, would require an ability to understand this sort of complexity way beyond anything we can currently manage. All we can say is, extrememes will become the norm. It might be very hot or very cold, we might get storms or settled weather. We know millions will die and be displaced and economies will collapse. This is now unavoidable. The only thing remaining to be seen, is what the new pattern will be, and that is all that is left for us to influence.
Maybe the weather thing is an English tic. After all, only the English would break into the live coverage of the most keenly anticipated sporting event in years in order to bring the listenenr the forecast for ships. It is a uniquely and peculiarly English lyricism - "Dogger, Fisher, German Bight".

We shall see.

Here we go again

So. Here we go again. Another late night, albeit an early weekend for me this week.
My phrase of the month is "emotional rollercoaster". Tomorrow we're going to find out how sick Femmie is... Fingers and everything crossed that it's going to be as good news as we can hope for.
Esther's pregnancy hormones are kicking in with a vengeance now. She's getting sickness very heavily - much more so than she did with either Willow or Ayla. She's also being really weird, but that's not exactly unexpected :-)
Next week or the week after I get the official notification of the proposed redundancies at work. It's the annual downsizing, but this time it will be about a third of the company. Ironic, just as the economy is finally picking up, but this will be the big restructuring - moving to just a magazines house.
Saturday we're having the Halloween party - it seems to have got out of hand. Not only am I running the party, but from somewhere we seem to have got 17 kids at the latest count. Which is going to be absolute madness I reckon!
Work's the usual, although I'll be sending off an application to a place in Alkmaar in the next day or two. Not that i expect my own job to be in jeopardy - although you never know. Frankly I could do with 6 months off and chance to get some real writing in.
Last but not least, I'm still missing Luna. Let's just not think of her because there's only so many tears for a dog without non-dog-owners not getting it. Though maybe I've been holding back a bit too much lately :-(

So this was an unusually diary-like entry. Of course there is that element of the diary to a blog, and it's not as if I invite many people to actually read this. But mostly I'm just keeping the fingers in the writing habit at a time when I'm not really doing much creative. ANd maybe laying a few aides de memoir for the future.
Still, if anyone does read this - even if it's me in the future, it would be nice if it's not totally small-minded and assinine - a personal diary purely.
Frankly though - what grabs me. US Army deaths in Iraq this month are the highest in 2 years. About double what NATO killed in Afghan civilians on Tuesday alone.
The end of the world due to climate change continues to grab little attention. Oh well, we'll have to worry about that another day ;-)

Still. Festival season. It really starts here, and I think it's one of the most delightfully primal parts of people - celebrating the seasons and the spirits. Christmas is coming, and SInt even sooner, but for the next few days...

Happy Halloween!

On being cool

Tom Waits and the Dude Lebowski. It's a feeling, it's fitting in and it's being totally set apart. It's being in the right place and time, yet standing out. Being cool isn't emulating that Ray Charles Sam Cooke cool; it's the recognition of difference and acceptance of your place in the circus of freaks. The willingness to stand out and be discounted.It's the clack of pool balls and the lipsmack of jack Daniels for sure, but more it's the ability to look around and see the story and understand, to play the game and remember it's a game. And never care for winning or losing. It's intelligence and sometimes wilful ignorance, especially at the bottom of more than a few Jack Daniels or Jimmy's. It's turning to the dataday world and saying that not only do I understand you and not go along with your story, but I'm living the way you'd really like to live and I'm your hidden dreams.
If only you were cool enough.

Acid house

Two posts in one night. Well, they're linked after a fashion, I guess.

I was just reading the Wikipedia piece on 'Acid House' and it's noticeable that nobody seems to know where the term or the music comes from.
Interestingly, they suggest that the term 'Acid House' might come from Chicago. Well, I was going to the very first House parties in England, which were at a couple of gay clubs - the small club above Heaven whose name I can't remember right now, and another which I went to once and it played too much poppy shit. And as far as I was concerned, they were playing 'House' as in 'Soul'.
It came from Chicago, for sure, but it was Chicago Soul music as far as we were concerned. We understood that the 'House' name came similar to the 'Rent Parties' of 15 years earlier - these were House parties the same way there used to be Rent parties - to pay for the house. And if you look at the music, that makes sense - it was Black soul music from a local Black scene, the same way the music at rent parties was. It got picked up by the gay scene in Chicago, which is why we were getting it in the gay scene in London. I went because I'm a sad kind of soul boy, and so were most of the other guys there. The term 'Acid House' was never used then.
But we did take a shit load of drugs, including alot of acid. What I remember is the DJs fucking with the music themselves to heighten the mood. Ecstasy came later - it was more expensive, more yuppie and less dangerous. Techno was Belgian, a year or so later. There was a very acid driven scene, that later came out in even those people who never went near the West End clubs - nobody would tell me the Mutoid Waste Company were on E's :-)
So my explanation - it was gay soul boys fucked up on acid that invented the term and the scene.
Interestingly, on the Wikipedia site, Genesis P. Orridge claims to have more or less invented the term. Funnily enough, he was living round the corner from me, but sure as hell I never saw him down the clubs ;-)

They were funny days. I never had the feeling that I was living through something really special, like punk. That's how people try to make it sound these days, but they're msotly the JCL's who were going to the M25 raves long after it became the new wave. Before that, the alternative and squatter scene were at the heart of things, but I remember being in that scene trying to play house and I was scoffed at for playing pop or boring music.
Probably something like punk after all - that didn't start in the squats or the suburbs but in a fashion shop on the King's Road ;-)

Oh, BTW that's Marky in the corner. Last saw him when we were both whizzing around Bang back when it was on Oxford Street somewhere. Never knew him well though, but the expression on his face that night was funny.

Bubbling under

I'm wondering what to write about, but I feel there's words coming.
I want to write a bit about Luna, but I'm going to leave that until the wound's a bit less raw and blooded.
I want to write about my feelings finding out yesterday that Esther's pregnant again, but that's more intense than I want to be right now. (I am happy, by the way, only that this is momentous news - have a beer on me and we'll talk about it later, OK?)
And I'm not in the mood for more politics and war and lying, cheating, dissembling arseholes.

I think what I'm noticing alot lately is memory. I don't know if this makes me sounds like an old man, but memory is playing a large part lately. If you'll excuse the recursiveness of the thought, it reminds me of when I first moved to Amsterdam and every smell and sight would trigger a memory verging on a sort of nostalgia. Seeing as I was only 22 back then, I guess this is not exclusively a middle-aged man's prerogative. Hopefully, it has nothing to do with a near-death experience back then :-)
WHat is the middle-age nostalgia about it is the frequent memories of my enjoyably misspent youth. The young lad sat next to me on the floor of the train this morning - separated by some needlessly symbolic glass door! - reminded me of myself. (And of the sort of boy that would have driven me crazy back then :-)
There is that being young and partying; unentangled and lustful; that is what drives middle-aged men to screw the babysitter and buy phallic cars I guess. I don't have any real desire to do that sort of thing - I still think that the guys who try to live that life when they're in their forties are the guys who never did it in their twenties.
So no, it's more a real pleasant nostalgia, watching and reliving through memory. Memory is tied in with death somewhere, but naturally I haven't got that all worked out yet.
I'm listening to the Pogues again right now, and the number of wildly drunken party nights I had with this music as my theme tune is countless. And tomorrow night I'm off out to party alone to the same sort of theme tune, but it doesn't mean I'm trying to relive past glories.
I lived good, I've had a real good life so far, and the adventure's only now getting into the meat of the story. The rst of it so far was prologue...

Lunabaas no more

When I sit at the computer, there should be Luna laying here beside me. And when I come home from work, there should be Luna first and longest to greet me back.
And she's not here anymore and it feels like somebody's cut off a limb and I just have to cry like I haven't cried since I was a little boy.
And I miss her so much.
24 hours a day we were together for the first 6 or 7 years. When I worked, she was there with me. When I went out, she came with me. When I slept, she slept on the bed curled beside me. She was the smartest dog I ever knew - in fact, she didn't truly consider herself a dog at all. She even attempted to talk - a chuntering, dolphin-like noise she developed in imitation of speech. But I understood what she meant. Not word for word, of course, but the meanings, the sentences, the grammar - I understood. It surprised people sometimes how much verbal communication we shared. And she knew enough human speech to ignore me in two languages.
Like me, she also became domesticated by circumstance, half her lifetime ago. Instead of our wild days surviving and partying, suddenly we were living quietly, children appeared, and Luna developed a domestic routine with Esther.
But we had a deep, deep bond by then. Since the first time I met her in fact, when she was somebody else's hairball puppy. She was given to me because the bond between us was so apparent and immediate.
And now there is a huge hole, a hole much bigger than a simple small sort of dog would create. The hole takes up half this room, and takes up half my life. She was my partner, my friend, a being I loved so much. She was smart and beautiful and she loved me deeply too. And I held her last night and stroked her as her breathing shallowed and stopped, and I put her in the hole I dug and covered her up with dirt.
I'm going to keep on missing her, I know that. I suspect it will be many weeks before the sudden hurts of loss and absence begin to fade. I can hide the tears until I'm alone - for the sake of the children, and some faking of normality, some semblance of coping, I keep it together. I'd rather the howling grief comes only when I'm alone - I'm not really a sharer like that. And I hope that with the weekend coming I have time to let the grief rise and abate perhaps a little.
Until then.

Over here for the family picture blog.

Autumn

I like autmn. In many ways it's my favourite season. Harvest, and gathering weather. Lots of celebrations. It's the most Northern European of the seasons - when it can be wet, but not miserable - the colours can be golden and flaming, tress heavy with fruit. And the promise to com,e of the Winter celebrations, so that's nice too.
Still, most people don't get that this these days. Seems there's a homogenification going on that is slowly but surely destroying all sense of celebration and uniqueness.
A funny little example. I'm listening to Erasure now. They were a big band when I was 21, and they were very big in the gay scene. Many the night I was at a gay club dancing to Erasure and the ilk. But these days, who knows that scene? It wasn't cool, or it was too poppy, or it wasn't poppy enough. Whatever. But that's the scene that all modern dance music came out of - the clubs where Erasure was commercial but lots of weird Hi-NRG was around. And then the Chicago House came in. Mix it together, and we got House, Acid House, Techno. It hasn't really changed alot - listening to Erasure live now, it could be taken for dance music easy. If it wasn't for Andy's faggy vocals of course :-)
So well I remember the autmn of 1987, when there were two clubs in London playing House - the club above Heaven, and the (Henry) Africa Club on Kensington High Street. I wasn't a club scene expert, I wasn't in the incrowd. I was into soul music, and coming out as bi, so I thought this would be good music to hear, and got into the scene from there. What happened, well a bunch of poofs listening to soul music could never have guessed!

Holiday Over

The kids are back at school tomorrow. Ayla starts real school, Willows moves up to the 'middenbouw' - where she's really into "education" rather than the glorified child care that it's been so far.
They're growing up. It's my last day of holiday tomorrow - taking the day so that I can take them to school in the morning, be there for this step.
Then Tuesday, it's back to work for me too. It really feels like that end of summer holiday feel you got as a kid. Even though I've only been off for 10 days or so in a row, together with all my broken holidays, and 4 days sick, it's beena good rest. I have no time for work of course. I need to get the writing going properly, with discipline now, to give me a viable alternative. Simply finding the time is the problem - when can I write? I'm kind of shy about it too, so it's not something I feel comfortable taking time for.
I shall try figure that out asap. It's got to be preferable to fucking working for a living!

Sad

For reasons that are too pathetic to even contemplate, I'm sat behind the computer again on my birthday night. I'm watching TS Ernesto, Ernie to his friends, doing strange things.
A year ago tonight, I was on the campsite, listening to England win at Trent Bridge, talking drunkenly with the in-laws, falling ina ditch, and wondering what the next morning would bring when Katrina hit land. I remember the reports on the BBC World Service (from the same guy who's now in Afghanistan saying everything's OK with the world), saying how there was a bit of rainwater downtown, but it looked like New Orleans had got away with it.
The bloggers and posters this evening/night are starting to look very strangely at this storm - for the umpteenth time in its existence. The NHC forecast is for a TS, perhaps a CAT1 to hit Florida, move out to sea again and threaten the Carolinas. But Ernie seems to be strenthening rapidly after - probably - moving off the Cuba shore. The track is uncertain still - which it would be when no-one can find the centre for sure. And the SSTs are very high, shear has dropped completely, and the conditions are ripe for a blow up. Looking at the picture, the banding is potentially enormous.
Mostly in the minds of all the bloggers is Wilma. I've read one comment from a professional meteorologist that we will never see that again in 20 or 40 years. He's probably right. But what if we see something equally mind-numbing?
At least they agree - tonight is Ernie's chance to do or die. At least it's something for me to watch on my quiet birthday night. Hopefully, the only damage out of this one will be to property or reputations. The concern is that with such masive uncertainty, evacuations are going to be near impossible. Tourists have been sent out of the Keys, but AFAIK, residents are still there. I have an unpleasant feeling that the Keys might yet be in line - just before Labor Day...

Hey, it's my birthday today.

I'm going to be forty. Next year! But for now, I'm not really caring one way or the other.
I have done something today. I've written half a page or so of the screenplay. I have quite a good feeling about this. It was fun too. Maybe the idea of having such a tightly conceived and rigid form helps. I dunno.


Anyway, this is it. Can you guess what it is yet?

EXT . NAGIMBI VILLAGE

An African village. It meets all the cliches. Straw huts. Green hills and red earth behind. We pan the countryside then move slowly in. A voice begins to be heard on the air. As we move closer in, people are gathered around in the center of the village. The voice is obviously addressing them but they are paying little attention. Children are playing. Old men are laughing. Women begin to move away sharing a joke. The voice continues; not pompous, but merely pursuing a rather abstract piece of business. Slowly we move in to see the voice delivering the words is EDWIN PORTER, a man in his early thirties, dressed as a typical colonial administrator of the times (1880’s). He has the sardonic air of one who doesn’t truly believe anything he is saying. Beside him are JANE PORTER, his wife, who stares ahead save for swatting mosquitoes, and a handful of red-jacketed soldiers stood behind the Porters.

The whole event is clearly some ritual, in which none of the participants appear to place any stock, but which nonetheless should be pursued.

EDWIN:

The Great Queen over the water extends her hand in friendship to the people of the Nagimbi. Henceforth, she shall regard the Nagimbi as her children. She offers them the same protection and rights as all her children. The people of Great Britain and the Nagimbi are one. They shall share the hardships and sorrows, and they shall share their happiness and wealth. They shall support each other in times of trial and war. They shall share their lives as subjects of the Great Mother, Queen Victoria.

CU HUTCHINSON:

He is well aware that people are not paying attention. But still the words should have import.

EDWIN (CONT'D):

Welcome to the British Empire.

CU: A REDJACKET.

The Redjacket slaps at his neck. A small blowpipe arrow has hit him in the jugular. He falls to the ground.

EXT: NAGIMBI VILLAGE.

EDWIN (CONT'D):

Oh, I say.

So, elsewhere, Ernesto became a hurricane today, then fell back to TS as it moved over Hispaniola. This is proving to be the hardest storm to forecast. It could still end up a monster hitting the Panhandle or even further West, it could be a big thing rolling up Tampa Bay, or it could fizzle to a TS drenching Souther Florida. I don't remember seeing one so difficult to predict for both track and intensity. Makes you realise how difficult it still is to save lives with these things. Probably hundreds are dying now on Haiti/Dominican Republic.
In the Central Pacific, one of the most unusual storms ever, Ioke, is still a Super Typhoon, has been for a few days and looks like being for the foreseeable future! It may, someday, interact with land, somewhere. Nobody appears to know at the moment.
The family have headed off home this afternoon. They should be getting to bed themselves about n ow I'd guess. I really enjoyed them being here. Especially having Mum & Dad and Tania & the girls here all at once, it was good fun.
Strange - the news is quiet. Why's that? Because the politicians are taking their summer holidays! I can't believe anyone still bother with those ratfink charades of elections.
So now we're just left with the usual war and lies, blood and hype, and of course money. I can't be arsed even thinking about any of that shite, let alone wasting words writing on it.

Holiday begun

My holiday started yesterday. The family's over visiting, it's very nice seeing them here. Tomorrow we're having a bit of a party. Have to stay reasonably together for that - at least till my folks leave :-)
Ernesto has just formed over the Caribbean - or rather , just been named. Looks very dubious - it needs to be watched. At the moment, the NHC is forecasting a cane in the Gulf on Tuesday. It's going to wander into the Loop and nobody knows where it's going to go.
Some storm chasing for my birthday one year would be cool. But at least this year I'm not getting a pair of slippers, so I'm not totally decrepid yet.
Family goes home on Sunday, and then I think I have a little something I want to write. Something light and fun to get me back in the mood. I suppose on the plus side - light and fun are more commercial than the stuff I'd normally write ;-) Maybe I'll post it here as I write...

Surprisingly

Deep things. Need to write some stuff. Need to chill, get ready for autumn, for party season. Need to extend this break from work, prepare for stopping work - and that can only be done by making writing my work.Need to prepare for next child - and finish the work on the house now.
Smell it in the air and taste it in the water, it's a time of change again. These are the moments that are really special to me, these are the moments that you can see clearly the differences in the types of people: are you a carpe diem or a laissez faire type?
The family's away today, camping. I go join them tomorrow for a day. I thought maybe I'd do some writing whilst they were away, but it didn't work out that way - it was just too relaxing having that silence in the house!
So I need to muscle and make space - same as I'm also supposed to be doing studying for management training courses.
Oh, and family coming in a few days...

Take a deep breath now. It's about to get exciting...

Oh, BTW - here's an old anarcho commetn from the US elections 2 years back. Whoever you vote for, the government wins. (Given new spin by Diebold & its Republican bosses).

And again

No work tomorrow. So another late night blog...
In an argument with the wife today. She doesn't understand that I need resolution. She's part of the old school that pretends that nothing ever happened and let's go along just so....
And she's not from the same background. She is, whatever she might say, from a middle class background. That is still true for more than 90% of the people I know. And the reason for that, is that I move in a middle class environment these days.
So how is it that in a middle class environment, there are virtually no working class people? In Esther's scene, there's one working class guy - Arie; married to a spolit rich brat, who hasn't got the balls he was born with to say boo to her. In my work scene , all the young pretenders are middle class, sons and daughters of the respectable.
No wonder then that I still have trouble with their culture. That's actually at the root of my argument with the wife today. Becasue this whole middle class husband shit is shit. I don't buy it at all.
The question for me, is whether I should abandon it all and go back to the real world without money, but at least with some form of integrity and resistance.
If I didn't have kids, the choice would be a no-brainer.

Nothing specific

Nothing specific on my mind today. I've been busy with work, which is a shame as such. It's fine looking at new systems and architectures, but everything comes down to money, so I've got to fit the systems into the business case, instead of simply saying "these are best for the job". So those people who reckon capitalism is the best methodology for organising human affairs are missing a beat right there.
We should have been down in Eindhoven today at the Reggae Sundance festival. Four days in a tent with chill music - Steel Pulse, Alpha Blondy, Culture, ISrael Vibration, etc.... Instead we're at home, because the girls have been sick all week. They're getting better, but just aren't well enough for such an undertaking. A real shame - mind you, it would hardly be a sundance. Following July's heatwave record, we've had a monsoon, and it's really broken these last couple of days. It's definitely gonna be more of a reggae raindance.
On the other side of the world, the Atlantic is having a quieter time of it for storms than they'd feared. So far. The Pacific, on the other hand, is having anything but a quiet time. After Australia's record season, China has just got ravaged by its eighth storm so far this season - Saomai (up to 'S' already!). And the entire Northern hemisphere has been hit with extreme heat. California and New York have seen records, as well as Holland and Spain. Not to mention Korea, where I've read newspaper reports that were so keen for a cooling storm that they were actually regretting that Saomai passed them by!
Meanwhile, the god-botherers are still busy knocking ten tonnes of shit out of the civilians across Lebanon and Iraq and Afghanistan. The UN Security COuncil are meeting tonight to approve a 15,000 strong peacekeeping force to Lebanon, which is just about the stupidest fucking pretext crap I've heard since Korea (and I'm not old enough to remember that, but I get the feeling nobody was standing up and shouting 'Are you fucking mad?' loudly enough back then too.)
So the troops of the West will be in place from the Mediterranean coast to the Hindu Kush, along the Silk Road to the foothills of the Tibetan plateau. Those countries in between who might complain - like Syria and Iran - are portrayed as next snack in the bastards' banquet. All the countries that Islam spent a millenium conquering are being occupied by troops whose figurehead leader is a fundamentalist Christian maniac. Any wonder that the Islam god botherers shout about crusaders?
Not to mention the rapture nuts who are waiting for Armageddon.

I'm getting used to being in this house a bit more now. To sit here tonight and drink and write helps. It still takes some getting used to though. I'm listening now to 'Missing You' - the lament of the homeless in mid-Eighties London. My time, my people. I look around and wonder when we'll get caught out - wonder when "they" will realise I'm just faking this respectable shit. Sometimes, i think that's paranoia. Other times, I remember that I *am* just faking it.
I don't intend to be mortgaged or wage-slaved for the rest of my life, by any stretch of the imagination. Sure lots of people say that - but the last few years should show anyone who doubts that I can pull a hell of a lot together when I'm so inclined :-)
Of course "they" only care fundamentally about money. They'll give you money iof they can make money off of you, and have a reasonable security that you're going to keep making more money for them than they have to give you. Which kind of brings me back to the nature of capitalism, and here's another flaw. The company I work for is disturbingly dependent on me, which they at least acknowledge, but if anything other than money was important to that organisation, they might be able to claim some loyalty from me. But any loyalty went up in flames twenty years ago together with the barricades at orgreaves. Loyalty to capitalists was marched underfoot in Armthorpe and Easington twenty years back as the riot police and troops dressed up as coppers marched into pit villages across the North of England.
So fuck them all. The rich get richer as usual. The bosses look after their own. The bosses in a company now still come almost exclusively from the middle class and the rich.
Scum like me is useful. But we should never forget how disposable we are - and be able to dispose of the dependency on wage slaveryjust as quick as we can when the chance arrives.
And that doesn't mean get-rich-quick self-satisfaction. Getting rich on the backs of others' slavery might be the American dream, might be the proud boast of a handful of self-made rich men who are complete cunts. Doesn't interest me. I don't want my wealth to be funded by exploitation, slavery, famine or colonialism.
Damn, life's tough being moral :-)

A police car and a screaming siren -
A pnuematic drill and ripped up concrete -
A baby waiting and stray dog howling -
The screech of brakes and lamplights blinking -
That's entertainment.

A smash of glass and the rumble of boots -
An electric train and a ripped up 'phone booth -
Paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat -
Lights going out and a kick in the balls -

That's entertainment.

Days of speed and slow time mondays -
pissing down with rain on a boring wednesday -
Watching the news and not eating your tea -
A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls -

That's entertainment.

Waking up at 6 a.m. on a cool warm morning -
Opening the windows and breathing in petrol -
An amateur band rehearsing in a nearby yard -
Watching the tele and thinking about your holidays -

That's entertainment.
Waking up from bad dreams and smoking cigarettes -
Cuddling a warm girl and smelling stale perfume -
A hot summers' day and sticky black tarmac -
Feeding ducks in the park and wishing you were faraway -

That's entertainment.

Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight -
Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude -
Getting a cab and travelling on buses -
Reading the grafitti about slashed seat affairs -

That's entertainment.

Blood and guts

It's the end of the world as we know it.
Those fucking American rapture specialists must be preparing for pigshit heaven right now with the armies of the unbelievers - therefore, the antichrist - engaged in bitter battle with the armies of the jews.
I've seen too many pictures of dead children being taken from bombed out buildings these last couple of weeks. At least I'm not the only one getting disturbed:
Here's Emma Brockes.
Everyone has their own tipping point. For some it was North Korea's decision to fire missiles over the sea of Japan last month; for others it was the transcript of Bush and Blair rap-speaking at the G8; the relief into which the number of Iraqi dead has been thrown by the war in Lebanon did for many more and for those really paying attention, it was the collapse of the world trade talks last week. None of these crises are in themselves unique, but they have built up over the weeks until you are watching the news one night and suddenly there it is: the out-of-body experience and sense that everything, everywhere, is out of whack. It's like that scene in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum, finding himself being chased by a T-Rex, struggles momentarily to organise a response. "I'm fairly alarmed here," he says. I'm fairly alarmed here.

There doesn't seem much doubt that we're now busy with the Third World War. I imagine that after that radio speech from Chamberlain back in September 1939, things seemed a little unreal for a long time for the Brits. Was this really a war or not? Sure the occasional crazy thing happened - like bombing Scunthorpe - but that hardly passed for real war. I imagine people back then were going along thinking it might work out OK, until suddenly they found themselves up to the elbows in lost family and bombsites. Then it was body parts and propaganda left, right and centre.
War is raging from the Mediterannean to the Indian Ocean. More "international peacekeepers" are going to go into South Lebanon, though quite which country's poor gullible fools are going to be sent is so far unclear. The Christian idiots are busy from Al-anwar to Uruzgan. Only Iran is so far untouched, and partly Syria.
If I was those countries, I would be preparing the tunnels and arming the populace right now. And of course, that's what's happening.
It's turning to hellon Earth. Those fundamentalist God-botherers on all sides must be happy as pigs in shit. And the rest of us will really have to get our shit together if we're going to stop them sending us all to hell ina handbasket - or a cut-rate mushroom cloud, if that so inclines.

Meanwhile, the Western news is full of the fact that the US and France have finally agreed on the wording of the text of a resolution calling for an eventual cessation of hostilities. They don't seem big on the fact that Lebanon has said: ""Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation."

Half the world sees Israel as bully. Half the world sees Israel as victim. It's time that Israel saw itself as safe. That will take a lot of work. But I can guarantee, sending helicopter gunships and F-16's to kill children is really not the way to make friends...
Here's the Christian pacifist Bruce Cockburn on being exposed to the war of oppression in Central America in the 80's:

"i want to raise every voice -- at least i've got to try.
every time i think about it water rises to my eyes.
situation desperate echoes of the victims cry
if i had a rocket launcher...some sonofabitch would die"

Many sons of bitches are gonna die.
But vastly more of us who just want the arseholes to stop fighting.

Return of the Blog

So, just over a month later, I'm finally back online at home. The PC's in the kitchen cos we've been busy putting a new floor in the living room and the rest of the house is still a mess.
And just found out Murray Bookchin died yesterday.
Write more soon - back to the grind...

Almost ready

About to move. The day after tomorrow. I've been off work the last couple of days; was round the house again today painting and peeling off wallpaper. It's a great feeling, to be going to a real nice place in a nice area, with a garden and space and the works. The feeling of being out of the city (even if we're in reality in the city still), and of giving the kids something real good. Absolutely fantastic.
It does make me wonder about a few things. I didn't expect being a mortgage husband to actually make me happy :-) I'll think on that and write when I've thought it through.
And we've had a nice time in this appartment - which, as I write, (I'm surrounded by boxes and naked furniture) I'm about to leave. The good thing is, we came here with the plan to leave in two years to another bigger house of our own, and here we are - slightly under two years - fulfilling the plan.
The next stage is La Gomera. Es is going on studying, I'm moving up the greasy pole and learning, learning. And in the new house I think I can start writing again.
So who's to doubt our plans now?

Meanwhile - the World Cup continues.

England and Holland are on course for a quarter final meeting - which is a bugger, I hoped they'd meet in the final! No idea who I'll support - I probably won't know until my first cheer betrays me.
Saw Brazil-Japan this evening. Ronaldo equalled Muller's record for goals in World Cup finals. For a man who scored two goals, I think he moved less than I would in a typical 90 minutes at the office. Way fat and just dawdling around the D of the box. Yet still touches of the genius. And ten years ago, he was just awesome. An absolute flash of brilliance. I would have paid just to watch him play. And he seemed untouched and unfazed by all the adulation.

Then, the final of the 1998 World Cup, and hours before the final he had a fit. Whether epilepsy or nerves or what, is still undisclosed.
And he's never really been the same since. And what's happening now - I can't believe he's just being a fat bastard for the hell of it. He doesn't even look like he's able to train. The only reason I can imagine he's there, apart from being a genius, is for commercial reasons. Just like in the final of 1998.

World Cup

The English critics are full of venom and despair as usual.
They won their first game with a pedestrian 1-0 in severe heat. The English commentators went mostly ballistic. When the Dutch did the same the next day, it was a case of "not well played, but good result". That from the most demanding of stylists.
In England they say that the team that plays badly and still wins is the team that wins the league. So surely the same principle applies here? I can only imagine what these old patriots would have made of England's opening game draw with Uruguay back in 1966 :-)
In the last World Cups, England have lost to teams that were clarly better than them. Last time: Brazil. 1998: Argentina. 1990: Germany. This time round, only Brazil is arguably better, and their defence is very suspect. France, Holland and Argentina are in transition. Spain and Italy are real possibilities but I don't know how well they've got their shit together.
So it's amusing to watch the English veering between their magnetic poles of blind optimism and cultured cynicism. Ideally, I want the Dutch to win. England's a second choice, but it's more realistic than my first.

Sell out?

So we've fucking done it! Bought a house. Signed and delivered and got the keys today.
I always said I'd never get a mortgage. All those people who said they didn't want to get in debt, but didn't give a thought to getting in hock for a couple of hundred grand to the banks: the double standards and petit-bourgeois shit put me off. And still does.
Truth be told, the plan was move to Alkmaar, then after a couple of years buy a house, then after a few more years, move to La Gomera. So we're on track. But my secondary plan is that I expect to have the mortgage paid and sorted by that time - within 3-5 years.
Capitalism's an easy game. I have to play the game for a wee while, but I'm fucked if I'm not gonna win while I'm playing.
Then it's retire and goodbye and a whole new future causing more trouble :-)
Meanwhile I seem to be writing strategy documents for bloody Time Warner - and with the director that's pushing me to this, I don't know how far he might want to take it! It's a craic.
My responsible husband life should last less than 10 years all told I reckon.

We have an Alberto

Took a while getting his act together, but not even mid-June and here's Alberto...

later

So all the storm nuts on the net are excited about Alberto. The bad weather in the Caribbean is still growing. GFDL is forecasting a Cat 3 making landfall in Florida, which is just insane in June! For comparison, the first storm in 1992 was Andrew, which granted was the worst storm in US history between Katrina & Camille ( 2005 & 1969), and that was at the end of August!

Meanwhile, more real back to us here in Europe, the World Cup kicked off tonight. I'd forecast the opening game as a draw, which it would have been but for two amazing goals for Germany. And I'd forecast 1-0 for Ecuador over Poland: it ended 2-0 (but the second goal was offside :-) (Still, if flukey and wrongly reffed goals weren't counted, football would be truly dull!)
England, should they get through to the next round, will play one of these teams. On tonight's evidence, Ecuador look the strongest: well organized, Italian style of play. Only not very strong in attack. Strangely, they were also mostly African-descent players, when according to Wikipedia (and what I thought I knew of Ecuador), African/Slave descendants are only a tiny minority of the population (about 3%). I don't know why that is, but I'm curious.
Up there in the picture is Cristian Mora, the surprise goalie, who was either born on the 26th AUgust 1979 (FIFA) or on the 28th August 1982 (BBC). He'd nicely face-painted flags on his cheeks anyway...

Storm blog

When the kids are older and I have more money, I'm gonna go do a little storm chasing. In the meantime, I think it's important because it's the most visible indicator of Climate Change. (NB: I don't say Global Warming, as that's a misnomer. We don't actually know what the change will be, because we understand so little of the system. Similarily, we don't know what impact humans are having on the system. Which is why it's accurately called an uncontrolled experiment.)
And, primarily because of language and culture, the Atlantic Hurricane season is the one I'm most familiar with. There is, with us wanting to move to La Gomera, even the chance that we're going to be impacted by it in the future. So that's what I watch most carefully.
The first storm looks to be brewing in the West Caribbean, the place that Wilma and Stan came from last year. Which is bad news, cos the SSTs over the Gulf are much warmer than over the West Atlantic. Current forecasts are for a storm - strength unknown, of course - to hit between the Panhandle and Tampa. (The Tampa forecast is from GFS, normally one of the most reliable global models, but then yesterday it had it going into North Mexico, so that shows what we really know.)
And it's *real* fucking early for a storm with this potential to be developing.
Beautiful hot, going tropical, weather here in Northern Europe too this coming week. The only week we had like this last year was the last week in August. My birthday then - and Katrina.

Breathe

OK, so it's nearly a month since I wrote anything. Not surprising really; it was a given that I was gonna have a month or two of being very busy. Working weekends, delivering projects, etc... On top of that, buying a house.
Now kicking off the next weeks is also the World Cup, and I'm writing a couple of project outlines that are basically strategy documents for my work.
All sounds too fucking serious, too much like I've been co-opted :-)

Meanwhile... truth of some of the massacres in Iraq is starting to come to light, the Cold War with Iran continues to warm on us like a frog in a warming pan of water, the North Atlantic Hurricane Season kicked off yesterday (and yes, New Orleans is still a deserted disaster zone, though my money's on Tampa getting the big hit this year).
And on Climate Change, one of the most famous forecasters, Bill Gray, has come out saying that it's a hoax. He knows more than these number crunchers he says. "Few people know what I know. I've been in the tropics, I've flown in airplanes into storms." But the person who's taking his role as the most famous Hurricane commentator these days is Jeff Masters, who has flown Hurricane Hunter missions and is perhaps more to the side you'd expect froma site consciously called the 'Weather Underground'.
There's nonsense in the article, as you'd expect from any half-assed journalist interviewing some cranky old fucker. (And why are hurricane forecasts issued from Colorado of all places anyway?) ""It was a Category 3 hurricane," Smith says of Katrina. Not the Cat 5, at landfall, you keep hearing about." Well, nobody has ever said it was a Cat 5 at landfall. Not even in the media. Irrelevant point scoring off non-existent targets is the surest sign of the right-wing impotence theory. It's like the Creationsists going on about how "scientists are unable to explain the development of the eye". (FYI - Darwin himself was stumped by the eye, but was still confident that it was explicable by evoultuionary theory. These days it fits perfectly well within standard theory.)
The more I read of the article though, the more obvious it is that Gray's - well, basically bonkers. Your run-of-the-mill neo-con nutjob, perhaps, like a Keith Joseph or Alexander Haig,
but a few sandwiches short of a picnic nonetheless.
Here's a bit that gets progressively - but rapidly - madder...

"Smith takes an abrupt detour into the issue of endangered species. The solution is to let the private sector handle it. They should be privatized, like pets or livestock. Dogs, cats, chickens, pigs: These creatures won't ever go extinct.
I want to make sure I understand what he is saying, so I begin to ask a question: "For endangered species, people should --"
"-- own them," Smith says.
But isn't there a difference between animals that live in zoos and animals that live in the wild?
"Yes and no," Smith says. " 'Zoo' is a pejorative term that PETA has turned into an animal slavery community. A zoo is nothing more than an elaborate ark."
What's unnatural, Smith says, is wilderness. The so-called wilderness of early America used to be inhabited by Indians, and they changed their environment. "They burned down trees, they burned forests, they ran buffaloes over cliffs. They were not dancing with wolves," he says. "Wilderness is the least natural part of this planet."

Isn't that a wonderful final phrase? "Wilderness is the least natural part of this planet." This is right out of the Black-is-White school of thought.
Then the journalist got the quote that had him dreaming of Pullitzer: "Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews."
It's a good article to get an idea of the crap involved in the debate. There's an awful lot of poor science - and I'm just an old-fashioned amateur, not a professional. But I recognise that there are alot of nuances in the whole Climate Change scenario(s). Essentially we are observing phenomena (climate warming, chemical composition of the atmosphere, species distribution, event intensity) without any control experiment. We have nothing to compare this to. Without the control, we can only make our best assumption of what is happening. In this assumption, I'd rather err on the side of caution than the side of neo-cons.

Living la vida loca

OK, so strange week it's been. Done something I never thought I'd do, and bought a house. I'm either growing older and wiser or, more likely, older and dumber. It's been good weather too, which just prompts me to think that we're going to be in debt to a bank for a piece of land sunk under rising waters within 20 years.
Of course, that's the cynical view. The optimistic view is, frankly, selfish as all hell. When we moved up here, out of Amsterdam, we said that we had taken a small place, because in two years we would buy a house here. And we're buying a house here because it makes it much easier in 5 years' time to buy a place on La Gomera.
And on La Gomera, we're not gonna worry so much about climate change and rising sea levels . We're not gonna worry so much about hell and high water!
It's a nice place that we've got. Big, by standards of what we can afford right now anyway. It'll be nice to be able to sit in a garden this summer, to have space for us all. Even if it means my holiday is blown out again :-(
So, we're basically on track. A few years of work and bullshit, of playing the game. But no fucking way I'm getting caught in this shit for the rest of my life. It's just not fucking worth it - frankly, revolution is nearer than ever, because where's the fucking attraction of the working lifestyle? (And I've got a pretty good job!)
Someday, us sleepers are gonna wake...

In praise of a president?

OK, so it would be virtually impossible for me to praise a president unconditionally. After all, anyone who wants to run for power is by definition probably a dick.
But any guy who tours the heads of state of a few different countries wearing an old jumper - and doesn't even bother changing it! - is a trustworthy man in my humble opinion.
And now, Evo Morales of Bolivia has done something even more remarkable - he's kept an election promise! He said he would renationalise control of Bolivia's energy reserves. And today, he's taken back control of, especially, the gas reserves. Not only announced it, but simultaneously ordered the troops into the gas fields. To make the point, as it were :-0
I guess Chavez is looking and just *has* to follow the example!
And somehow, I don't think that this being International Workers' Day was a coincidence.
"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources "
What a fucking cracker. I wouldn't give shit for his life expectancy, mind you!
Isn't it kind of ironic that whilst the mad Neo-Cons of Washington are obsessed with the Mid-East, the revolutionaries are back in their own back-yard...
I like him. Morales still dresses like he doesn't give a shit for the pretensions of office. He still says what he thinks, but seems a hell of a lot smarter than he's being taken for by the Western media. He hasn't got the party shit of Lula or the military shit of Chavez. OK, I'm not too familiar with Bolivian politics, but for now, till I know better...Viva Morales!

Weather Forecast

Here's one I missed, a weather forecast (actually 'Hurricane Local Statement') issued by the Slidell local office on my birthday last year:
"MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS ... PERHAPS LONGER ... THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL ... AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD ... WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS."

Damn accurate forecast. The weird thing is, if you read recent warnings about oil and water shortages on a planetary scale, this warning seems uncannily accurate too.

We are all Slidell with 10 hours to go?

Beer and Football

The girls are all away: staying at the seaside on Easter Sunday, whilst I'm here at home alone, ostensibly looking after the dog, but also having a few hours time to myself. I saw a homeopathic therapist a couple of days ago - after all, conventional medicine had hospitalised me with a wrong prescription for a bad back, so it seemed sensible to seek a second bit of input! And she recommended that I make sure to take time alone, as that's clearly something that my nature needs, and is the one thing I'm guaranteed to have little of, living in a small apartment with a wife and two small kids :-)
When they're away like this, it always take s afew hours to even adjust to the fact that nobody's going to walk in and disturb me whilst I listen to music, or type away. Nobody's going to walk in and start talking through the film I'm trying to watch, or wonder why I've not gone to bed yet when it's already 1 in the morning.
Or, like last night, walk in on me listening to music at 1 in the morning, complain of a tummy ache, and start throwing up all over. Poor Willow had got the tummy bug (Ayla had it last weekend, so last Saturday I'd sat with a sick child on me most of the day). This time Willow had it, through the night and through the day (whilst Ayla and Es went off on an egg hunt). So not only could she not touch any of the mountains of chocolate she has waiting for her, but it looked like she couldn't even go for the night at the hotel, with Mama and Ayla, Oma Femmie, Oom Fjodor and Nienke.
Luckily for her, and I guess me - she's there now and I'm sat here now, enjoying the quiet - and doing what else but thinking of them :-)

I've been thinking of something to write about Iraq. It seems that the nightmare over there has become absorbed into our world view, that it's one more horror piled on top, that we won't start pondering the blood till the day that Iran is next in line. Then we might march again, parading our ineffectuality.
I'm wondering what can be done. I wonder what the legality might be of mounting a public fund-raising for the resistance. As the resistance there is labelled "insurgency" and "terrorists", I'm guessing that the laws here might be twisted sufficiently to make such an act a one-way ticket to Guantanamo.
The same laws doubtless would have done for the International Brigades fighting Franco's fascists.
Of course a big difference is in the nature of the resistance. The media tells us it's all allah-bothering nutters and Ba'athist gangsters. I've no way of judging, but I can imagine that a hell of a lot of the people are like me, who would be inclined to take up arms if some army invaded and started shelling and shooting and piling up the prisoners into naked pyramids. I also imagine that it would be strengthen the hand of those ordinary people over there who are resisting - the everyday insurgents if you like - if they knew those of us over here, who oppose the war and are disgusted at the actions of our own governments and corporate bosses, weren't all mouth and no trousers. If we could, at least, put our money where our mouths are.
Lots of respect then to those who do take personal action. Especially to Sam, the clown. Who has now gone to Palestine, to try and bring at least a few smiles to the kids suffering the adult madness that is war; just as he previously did in Iraq.

It's having kids of your own that really restrict your actions. The more your own world requires and demands security on your part, instead of the liberty of the only responsibility being your own conscience, the brutal truth is responsibility in feeding and clothing two people who really can't look after themselves. And in educating them to be as honest and true as they can be. But most of all, in being here for them. Even if at times, I am a grumpy, chagrined old fucker, and at other times, I feel the need to be alone.

So here I am alone of an evening. 10 o'clock, and no kids to wake up and no wife to wish good night. Sunday night and no work tomorrow, so I suppose at least Jesus died to give me a day off work. Listening to music on my MP3 player, so here in my world it is in fact far from quiet. Drinking another beer and waiting a while till the next football begins. It was the last normal speelronde for the Dutch league this afternoon, and I was still at home with a sick child, I didn't go to the pub to watch the games, but saw the highlights on TV this evening. Good news, in that AZ finished second, and Ajax fourth, so they avoid each other in the first round of the playoffs.
I'm an awfully cliched man sometimes - beer and football. It's something that I've tried to express before. I am, by choice, a quiet person, who doesn't get into the limelight, who doesn't get into fights. I'm not political, not interested in power, don't want to be rich or famous. I would be more than happy to live somewhere nice with my family, watch football and play cricket and drink beer.
But I didn't declare the war. The arseholes who run things had to go and piss around with my life when I was just a kid. I'm a sensitive lad - and I take things like mass unemployment and immigrant expulsions very personally. Most of all, going through police roadblocks, seeing thousands of riot cops and troops-dressed-as-riot-cops - pass by me every morning on the way to school - I took it personally.
Es doesn't know how I can fight. I guess it's best to keep it that way. But I think I see the link between the insurgents and the kid who bunked off school to go down the picket lines (and the pub!) It's a question of the scale of the response, the measures justified: guns might be one thing, but I think there's many resistance fighters in Iraq who disagree with targetting or hurting civilians.
Especially kids. It's a measure for me, being a father, of how you justify your cause. If you can justify killing kids, then you're a lying toerag and I want nothing to do with you. Because there's no justification. Whether you're an American pilot or a Jihadist fighter or an IRA ASU, the death of a child should be cause for you to stop and reassess your whole strategy, the scale of your response. If you can pass that off as 'collateral damage' or 'regrettable' or 'inevitable innocent caught in crossfire' then you've already lost your humanity and no world you might want to take us to can be remotely worth inhabiting.

It was 'Dennis Bergamp Day' at Highbury yesterday. Surely that's worth a drink?
And the cricket season has started, the World Cup is coming, and I'm away two nights next week for work, where I can drink for free and watch the Arsenal in the Big Cup semi, then the next night, Ajax-Feyenoord and AZ-Groningen in the playoffs.





Most of us just want to drink beer and watch football.

More of the Same

So, another Friday night and I'm drinking beer at the computer.
Pretty much as usual, but this is the first beer I had in over a week. Last week I had a back pain came out of nowhere. I'm not usually prone to back aches, and this didn't feel like a muscle, so when I got to work, I asked Es to phone the doctor for an appointment. Instead, she got the mad assistant on the line, who refused to make an appointment, but prescribed me some seriously heavy Ibrupofen 600, 2-3 times a day. Well, I know that's a muscle relaxant amongst other things, and worrying whether I had a vertebrae problem, I saw a physiotherapist the next morning. She told me that it would probably loosen up a bit, and the Ibrupofen would help with the pain, and stop the muscles cramping up to compensate too much.
So, that day I took two, and the day after I took three, as prescribed: the pain still seemed to get worse if anything. But then on the Thursday I got up and had a stomach ache, so I didn't take any painkillers. The stomach ache though just got worse, so I left work an hour early and came home. At home, the pain kept getting worse, until I asked Es to phone the doctors' out-of-hours service. They unusually sent a doctor round straight away, who came with some paramedic looking guy. Worried about a perforated stomach, they phoned the hospital, and then the ambulance. Off I went to hospital, got bled and X-rayed and CAT-scanned and spent the night on a drip.
That night, off to the toilet yet again at 5 in the morning, suddenly the pain had cleared up. However, that didn't stop the new doctor and his intern the next morning outside my room discussing all the tests they wanted to do on me, as all the other tests hadn't revealed anything. Why would it stop them - they hadn't spoken to me yet!
So instead of another day and night on the drip, being bled and having a camera poked down my gullet and god-knows-what-else, I discharged myself. Didn't stop him prescribing double the normal dose of anti-acid ulcer pills for me, whilst there was no evidence of an ulcer at all, let alone the death's door he seemed to feel was appropriate.
Anyway, I've had a week or so of healthy food and no alcohol to recover from teh damage those bloody tablets have done, and feel I'm due a beer tonight :-)

Meanwhile, on a more traditional note for me, I'm watching some storms across in the States. Now I've got a serious connection at 4MB/s I can really see live coverage. (Isn't the net wonderful - I can see a guy in the Deep South who had a broken window this afternoon!) In this case, from Tennesssee. Two dozen died there last weekend. At least two have died today, and they're only approaching the late afternoon there. In fact this is already building into an awful tornado season, and it's only just begun. More people have died this year than last already. And most of the casualties last year came in Evansville in the very unusual November storm. Admittedly, last year was very quiet for tornadoes, but no such luck this year.

And the forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season came out a couple of days ago. For some reason, this is made by the University of Colorado. As far as I'm aware, no hurricane ever came close to Colorado. Anyway, looks like another very busy season. The places to worry about being vulnerable to a high Cat hurricane would IMHO be Tampa and Galveston. I read somewhere that Tampa is one of the top 10 potential disasters in the US - that list had included New Orleans, along with quakes hitting San Fransisco and such like. And Galveston is the location of the worst natural disaster in American history, back in 1900.
Not that these are anything compared with the potentials, such as Yellowstone, or past events like the Badlands megafloods. We've grown up with the idea of the Earth as a friendly and stable place. Considering how we've treated her, I'm not going to be at all surprised if there's no more Mrs Nice Earth from now on...

LAst thing today: I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Not only can't I talk about it, I don't hardly know about what it's about. As usual with these things though, I think alot of people are going to lose their jobs at my work. I don't think that includes me, but you never know. A bit of a bugger really, as we also did something unusual today, and went to talk with an advisor about a mortgage. Next week, we're off to look at houses to buy! The mind boggles - who'd lend me a couple of hundred grand!

Just heard - there's now 7 dead in Galleston(sp?) Tennessee. Bad weather days...

Blood and Sand

I watched two people die tonight on film.
One was an Iraqi baby, one of twins, in a hospital where there wasn't even an oxygen mask or a proper incubator for a prematurely born baby. Because the Coalition of the Willing had been all too willing to steal Iraqi wealth, to put priority to projects to exhange dinars with Saddam's face on for post-invasion currency, and to fatten up US contractors at the expense of children sick and starving from dysentery and malnourishment. That's not an easy thing for a father to see.
The other one to die was an American soldier, the sole survivor of a shot down Black Hawk helicopter. One of his comrades was burnt and charred in a horrific pose. He explained in his MidWest drawl that something was broken - I wasn't sure what, because he was made to walk anyway - before he was suddenly gunned down. When the first bullet hit, he seemed as surprised as I was.
Then a Microsoft window popped up, to ask me if I wanted to upgrade my Media player.
Video has an unreality, but it's important to remember that even if the news is shot like Made-For-TV movies these days (and in the case of the Jihadist films, like bad MTV music videos), the people in these films are real.
The worst experience I had with this was editing the results of a Shell-instigated massacre in the Niger-delta region of Nigeria. Some thugs from a neighbouring town had been hired - probably with local police - to attack an Ogoni village. Hundreds at least died. Usually by machete. MOSOP - the local liberation movement - had smuggled footage of the atroicty out, at great risk. As usual, the mainstream media ignored it (the same happened with the PKK footage of the Saddam gas-attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. I remember seeing that footage whilst its authenticity was being strenously contested, because Saddam was the West's guy).
I got drunk editing that footage from Nigeria. It was the only immediate way of dealing with it, in the traditional English manner. That and crying, of course.
I've finally managed to get hold of some resistance footage from Iraq. Most of its rubbish unfortunately. I mean that from a technical point of view. Some of it's quite well done though. I saw a statement from a resistance group that was in English - eloquent, reasonable and in many ways appealing. But three times in the film (which was 15 minutes long), there were mentions of 'foreign policy controlled from Tel Aviv', and a couple of other mad anti-Semitic allusions.
A shame. But one thing that really should be learnt by now, is to listen to these small voices of madness. My enemy's enemy is by no means my de facto friend. Usually these are the hints that tell us the insanity event horizon was a few miles back and receding. Just look at the footage of Dubya and his pet sheep book on 9/11 if you have any doubts.
Because I would like to think there was a resistance group out there I could identify with. I guess that's true of alot of Western lefties. Whilst I don't believe the media portrayal of the resistance (or, as it's called for some reason the "insurgence") as little Syrian-sponsored Ayatollahs, nor do I have a lot of time for the Jihadist point of view.
This week, Bush told the Americans that they would be in Iraq until at least 2008. By then, it seems more and more likely, there will be an assault on Iran, regardless of popular support. Bush claimed this week that no leader wanted war. Absolute shite, of course. I saw a bit where today where Peter Jay (I think) asked Jim Callaghan - then the previous Prime Minsiter - how he thought the Falklands War was going, under then Prime Minister Thatcher. 'I wish I'd had a war' he responded. If not for that war, the Thatcherist, Monetarist project in Britain - and perhaps most of Europe - would have died a death in 1983. If not for the Iraq War, then even the fraud of 2004 would not have been feasible for the Neo-Con crew in the US. And leaving aside the question of who was responsible for 9/11, it's likely at least that a good Iran event will help the Republican re-election in 2008, as an honourable Afghanistan flag-waver might help Gordon Brown soon too.
The link needs to be made between the resistance in Iraq and the liberation movements in the West. That means we lefties need to be backing non-religious resistance groups in Iraq. There must be some, as Islam was not exactly strong under the Baathist state - in fact the anti-religion position of communism was official policy until relatively recently, and certainly the new wave of fundamentalism made less headway in Iraq than in nearly any other Middle East state.
It looks at the moment though like an openly non-religious resistance group would find itself trapped between a rock and a hard place, (like the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, to give a favoured analogy). So if one group does come out, it's important that we get behind them as noisily and aggresiviely as possible.
Assuming, of course, that there's no mad anti-Semtitic, kill-the-queers, lock-up-the-women, religious bollocks to go with it :-)
Oh, this then...
Have you ever walked the lonesome hills
And heard the curlews cry
Or seen the raven black as night
Upon a windswept sky
To walk the purple heather
And hear the westwind cry
To know that's where the rapparee must die
Since cromwell pushed us westward
To live our lowly lives
There's some of us have deemed to fight
From tipperary mountains high
Noble men with wills of iron
Who are not afraid to die
Who'll fight with gaelic honour held on high
A curse upon you oliver cromwell
You who raped our motherland
I hope you're rotting down in hell
For the horrors that you sent
To our misfortunate forefathers
Whom you robbed of their birthright
"to hell or connaught" may you burn in hell tonight
Of one such man i'd like to speak
A rapparee by name and deed
His family dispossessed and slaughtered
They put a price upon his head
His name is known in song and story
His deeds are legends still
And murdered for blood money
Was young ned of the hill
A curse upon you oliver cromwell
You who raped our motherland
I hope you're rotting down in hell
For the horrors that you sent
To our misfortunate forefathers
Whom you robbed of their birthright
"to hell or connaught" may you burn in hell tonight
You have robbed our homes and fortunes
Even drove us from our land
You tried to break our spirit
But you'll never understand
The love of dear old ireland
That will forge an iron will
As long as there are gallant men
Like young ned of the hill

Who me?

Damn, these days I'm a respectable hard-working yuppie with a family to take care of.
You can hardly remember the real me.
But there's still some mates out there who remember. The guys who know me from living hard and hard-up, who are the best mates I've ever had. (They know who they are, so no names here!) I still owe them a shitload of money, by the way - which I still intend to pay back with style when I can!
I've been lucky in my life, to have made some very special friends. Some of them, I still see now and then to this day. Some, will be friends whenever I meet them - be that 20 years in the future, it'll be the same as yesterday.
I miss being able to go out for a beer with them - especially tonight, on a Friday night. But, of course, my life had changed long before I moved out here: it's a question of being the father with children. And being the hard-working-don'tbe-too-hungover-the-next-day yuppie fucker that I am.
All I can say to my friends who know me then and now is - whether you like it or not - deep down, I'm *still* the real me! And basically, they can all kiss my unshowered ass before I really believe a fucking word of their yuppie bollocks.
cheers

Lazy bastard

OK. I was going to paste a couple of paragraphs from an email, so here they are:

We don't have time for fundamentalists of any kind, whether god-botherers, party-ideologists or Newtonian-Cartesian-obsessives.
We can't afford to leave the devastation of the planet's climate to single-issue-environmentalists.
We can't afford to leave the corporate rape of the human population to union activists and human rights' fighters.
We can't say 'Stop the War' and ignore the famine and disease.
We can't fight for freedom and ignore overpopulation.

And every political ideology is based on a paradigm that came into being with the first phase of the industrial revolution (be that beginning in the 1770's in England, 1787 in France, or 1865 in the USA).
If Douglas Adams was still alive, I'd suggest we invent quantum politics. Where you can't tell what the spin on a certain issue is until there's an observer to intervene in the process.

In the absence, my plan for a revolution is as follows:
"Overthrow all capitalist/hierarchical structures"
"And what are you going to put in their place?"
"Dunno, but IMHO destroying the entire planet and having millions dying daily of starvation and easily treatable diseases is just about as crap as it gets, so I'm pretty confident we can work something out between us."

The basics behind this is being annoyed at the state of science in a society that is driven by science, and in a world where science tells us we're fucking our entire ecosystem. Also, how this relates to our spiritual understanding of religion, the meaning of life, and all that other shit.

OK, I'm a bit spoilt in this, because I understand the meaning of life (which is not such a big deal, so let's ignore that for now); but it's a bit difficult to get used to the fact that most people are as ignorant of the science surrounding their lives - the technology that supplies their electricity, delivers gas to their cars, connects their computers to this website - as if they were early-settlers believing in some mad-shepherd's monotheistic ravings.
People in the West accept this stuff without having the slightest fucking clue what makes it happen - which is why we have such a hard time making them understand why the planet is being fucked up. Most people have essentially no better theoretical understanding of why the light works in their room, or the TV gets Fox, than some dude in Bhutan who never had a history in this shit till 5 years back.
In Bhutan, I can understand this ignorance, because it'sa new concept, and folks are playing catch up.
But in countries like England or the States or Netherlands - well, simply put, there is no fucking excuse. It actually makes me angry. So I would see it like this:
"Sorry, we're cutting off your gas. You can't use it anymore".
"No, I need that, I can't live without it"
"Oh, you can't live without it. Do you know where it comes from?"
"No."
"Do you know what damage it does when we use it?"
"No."
"Do you know how much we have left?"
"No."
"Then shut the fuck up and piss off."

If it's so fucking important to you now, at least take enough of an interest to find out a bit about it.
Of course, when you see what people ingest, sometimes despite their better knowledge, well, no surprise that they don't give a shit. WHo, with even the slightest education, would eat a McDonalds' burger?

So, I don't agree that the fight to change - or rather, save - the World is just a question of winning the argument. That would be easy.
What we need to do is restore sanity to a good part of the wrold's population. And that's a bit more difficult...

I heard a thing a few years back, and I heard it on the radio, so I don't have alink to hand, that two thirds of the world' population are clinically speaking "Mentally ill". And in Western countries, this number approaches 90%.
I don't have a link for this report, but I do remember that it was issued by the UN/WHO. Most people, of course, have ignored it.
As a thought though, can you think of one leader of a major military power in the last 25 years who was vaguely sane?