Wednesday 10 November 2010

Fans Criticize Police

Fans caught up in trouble at a football match in Plymouth have blamed a "low-key" approach by police.

At least 20 people were arrested on Tuesday evening at the first Devon derby between Plymouth Argyle and Exeter City for more than eight years.


In other news:

Bear criticises lack of woods presence - I had to take a crap on the street, he says.

Pope criticises lack of Protestants in Vatican area

Etc

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Ain't That Peculiar

Crossposted onto Severnside

How, exactly, do you turn a romantic, soulful song into one that barely celebrates the beating of hearts, let alone the complexities of living?

And, more to the point, how do you thereby reinterpret the song for your age, giving it the empty heart of your own time?

And, worse, how do you suggest something of the reality of timeless emotions in a bounded and digital era?

Well, the first thing you'd do is splice the rhythm of the song, so that it functions like a set of punctuation marks. The next thing you'd do is introduce instruments that don't exist. The final thing you'd do is give the vocals a portentous, pretentious tone, ensuring that you're driving them with a kind of stuttering, halting deliberation.

You'd also have the most talented bassist of his generation doing his thang.

You'd end up with a piece of music that communicated the changing of times. It would mix human emotions with political realities and physical technology. It would show that music can morph itself. It would build the anxieties of a culture on the verge of profound, permanent change in which the individual becomes a piece of malleable information, to be created and discarded at the whim of whoever is controlling it, with the expressiveness and emotion that makes us human in any age. To seek digitalisation and to embrace its dividing arms is what has driven us, in reality, since around 1943 (Colossus), but certainly since 1971 (the Intel 4004) and accelerating from 1981 onward (the release of the IBM PC). It's hard to say for sure, but it's a fair bet that Steve Jobs's attempt to take over every single element of our lives has its roots in that movement.

I think that sentence was meant to be ironic.

In any case, serious or not, it is not a party-political point. This is a point about the changing world circa 1980. Regardless of who was in power, we were destined to become 0s and 1s.

It was what we would have wanted...

You'd start with this:





And you'd do this to it:

Wednesday 3 November 2010

New, Non-Politically Partisan or Sweary Blog Started

Yes, I've decided to start a new blog, with Ms Drummer, in which I write for the first time *under my real name*.

But in the spirit of the new Coalition era, I'll not be whinging about the govt (though I could do plenty of that if I chose). It'll be what I wanted TTD to be, before I got obsessed by NuLab.

I note that several bloggers have given up since the erection: LFAT, Mr Eugenides, to name but, er, two. Mr E is the real loss, for although LFAT was reasoned and liberal, Mr E was the genuine voice of anguished anti-NuLab sentiment.

Centre right blogging was born in the UK out of a sort of proto-Tea Party movement. It was born and flourished on the basis that NuLab were in charge of the country and the world's biggest media organisation (ie the BBC) and that they were virtually unchallenged, given that the Tories were so crap. This was something like 04/05. Blogging really took off during 06, when the Tories got their act together. Then the Left got really sorted, with outstanding blogs like Liberal Conspiracy doing what the left do best: agglomerating voices against an enemy. Then we were back where we started: voices in the dark, shouting at each other.

You need a certain nerve to be a political blogger, one I never had, despite being referenced once by the Staggers as a Tory blogger...I never wanted what I became as a blogger, though I asked for it right enough.

Where do I stand today, as if matters? Well, I was happy enough to see the end of NuLab, but I don't really know what to make of the new govt. Part of me sort of hopes to see elements of the Tories and Lib Dems merge.

The new party could be called something like...oh I don't know..The Liberal Party, maybe?

Anyway. The new blog is being set up and written with Ms Drummer, who is some way to the left of me. That's probably part of it all.

It's here: http://severnside.wordpress.com


I may keep open TTD for random witterings when I'm in from the pub or whatever I want to write. But I'll also refer readers here to new posts at Severnside.