tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313625802024-03-19T08:08:16.716+00:00The Tin DrummerBill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.comBlogger622125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-90471706158203128382010-11-10T11:50:00.003+00:002010-11-10T11:59:40.321+00:00Fans Criticize Police<span style="font-style:italic;">Fans caught up in trouble at a football match in Plymouth have blamed a "low-key" approach by police.<br /><br />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.</span><br /><br />In other news:<br /><br />Bear criticises lack of woods presence - I had to take a crap on the street, he says.<br /><br />Pope criticises lack of Protestants in Vatican area<br /><br />EtcBill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-57886857007472157492010-11-09T21:10:00.003+00:002010-11-09T21:42:55.600+00:00Ain't That Peculiar<span style="font-style:italic;">Crossposted onto <a href="http://severnside.wordpress.com">Severnside</a></span><br /><br />How, exactly, do you turn a romantic, soulful song into one that barely celebrates the beating of hearts, let alone the complexities of living?<br /><br />And, more to the point, how do you thereby reinterpret the song for your age, giving it the empty heart of your own time?<br /><br />And, worse, how do you suggest something of the reality of timeless emotions in a bounded and digital era?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />You'd also have <a href="http://www.mickkarn.net/">the most talented bassist of his generation doing his thang.</a><br /><br />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.<br /><br />I think that sentence was meant to be ironic.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />It was what we would have wanted...<br /><br />You'd start with this:<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CfpzePp5y8s?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CfpzePp5y8s?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><br />And you'd do this to it:<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nkimBwFa02c?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nkimBwFa02c?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-83641209059027219872010-11-03T21:28:00.003+00:002010-11-04T08:35:04.053+00:00New, Non-Politically Partisan or Sweary Blog StartedYes, I've decided to start a new blog, with Ms Drummer, in which I write for the first time *under my real name*.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />I note that several bloggers have given up since the erection: <a href="http://lettersfromatory.com">LFAT</a>, <a href="http://mreugenides.blogspot.com">Mr Eugenides</a>, 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />The new party could be called something like...oh I don't know..The Liberal Party, maybe?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />It's here: http://severnside.wordpress.com<br /><br /><br />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.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-13192239412344564022010-10-02T11:13:00.003+01:002010-10-02T11:15:08.970+01:00ThoughtcrimesWell, I've messed around again with the posts I wrote for the blog on Nineteen Eighty Four. I've revised, added and expanded them up to 21000 words and published them on Lulu. So if you're interested, follow the link at the side. It's all pretty basic in presentation but then I always was crap at art.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-30255763230669077962010-08-31T00:40:00.007+01:002010-08-31T01:12:55.846+01:00Severn GurlsI thought, given that Katy Perry is signalling the death of postwar western civilisation through her evil song _California Gurls_, that I would try to persuade myself and anyone who wishes to read that life goes on. Building, making things, creating families goes on. Even after Katy Perry and her festival of zero.<br /><br />Well, to be honest, it's not easy. <br /><br />Because sun-kissed skin so hot it'll melt your popsicle, even though or perhaps even because it's so self-contradictory, so utterly meaningless given its stated objective, its clear innuendo-meaning - because that is so shit, language seems to have been finally shat out after a 50 year curry and 50 years of crap, factory made lager; because, ultimately, even pop music has conflicted itself in its own greatest exponents, and they, as they speak, have called for erectile dysfunction in the midst of "undeniable" hot sex teenage girls - <br /><br />because of all that, meaning has now finally been flushed down the karzee.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJEvhr6hTEffLe4EvN905qznYS4MVWoUG2YX2CEQlgklISA2tfCrtcgLxIRtw9SLFTKTq7z2ST3pR6BYejUwTHItIpOfv4DEzIAwjZW4onkV_SkBkZwwG1J85quosHn0zw65xKrQ/s1600/berkeley.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJEvhr6hTEffLe4EvN905qznYS4MVWoUG2YX2CEQlgklISA2tfCrtcgLxIRtw9SLFTKTq7z2ST3pR6BYejUwTHItIpOfv4DEzIAwjZW4onkV_SkBkZwwG1J85quosHn0zw65xKrQ/s400/berkeley.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511357515033881090" /></a><br /><br />Meaning has finally, thankfully, been disowned. We no longer need a word or a phrase to correspond to an idea. <br /><br />Think about it, you twats, think about it: a pop song asks to you want to fuck teenage girls. Then it tells you they're so hot your popsicle will *melt*. You will just go soft, just sort of being there.<br /><br />I really don't think that it means you will come in your pants.<br /><br />Really. I don't.<br /><br />It means the literal opposite of what it intends to mean.<br /><br />Language is dead. Words have no purpose.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1Ldo0yU-Pt7R1WFdW4Z0CLHWd7XqL3ebLgkqOmFa1F46SbMf19O5tjfOYhgdrBVX6VUEIGjCzPR4miXqaGkLC6MwYVq7f4SoGac38XcUSYj8Co8K3gpzLYXllwAFWw3PijcAVw/s1600/oldburynps.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1Ldo0yU-Pt7R1WFdW4Z0CLHWd7XqL3ebLgkqOmFa1F46SbMf19O5tjfOYhgdrBVX6VUEIGjCzPR4miXqaGkLC6MwYVq7f4SoGac38XcUSYj8Co8K3gpzLYXllwAFWw3PijcAVw/s400/oldburynps.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511358383681712482" /></a><br /><br />Katy Perry killed language.<br /><br />Dante is too dead to save it; Chaucer too ironic; Shakspear too involved in non-existent persons;Pope too into the sounds of words; Austen in ghastly inter-human relations;Dickens in the...the...play of words, pictures and sentences. After Dickens everyone is toying with their own history. Plath is killed doing it, Hughes after having sex with words; Larkin hates words too much; Roth just has too many of them. Orwell thinks words mean something, for fuck's sake; Hardy thinks they are about how there is no God (probably) and Amis (jun) veers from the play of words to the play of his memories.<br /><br /><br />Shit.<br /><br /><br />Language was killed by Katy Perry. She sliced it open with an auto-tune.<br /><br />Open and its guts spilled into the air, to be eaten by the Eagles and vultures and Beatles and flies and Airplanes and to be left alone, token gut by chitterling, to fly away.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Rvd54iiMDQALlN7FZHo1ZLMgklZUsOOWuj12IPqldmg20fzRLeAURmybG1ALPQwSahwMsvD8WoR1cBkmhdp-gBtXipIdNlAJNsbwYNM7PBGd5It1TQVN08yzzFEJm9W6aVcEpw/s1600/nuclear_war.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 319px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Rvd54iiMDQALlN7FZHo1ZLMgklZUsOOWuj12IPqldmg20fzRLeAURmybG1ALPQwSahwMsvD8WoR1cBkmhdp-gBtXipIdNlAJNsbwYNM7PBGd5It1TQVN08yzzFEJm9W6aVcEpw/s400/nuclear_war.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511359425838633362" /></a><br /><br />Fly away.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-64113794202269365262010-08-18T22:08:00.004+01:002010-08-18T22:24:18.049+01:00Nu-HeimatWell, time moves on and if TTD didn't, he'd be dead.<br /><br />Accordingly, the world of TTD has changed and now the village of Hill is the Drummer-heimat (yes, he changes his past, just like the Party). Sadly, Hill is too small even to merit a single nuclear warhead, although both Berkeley and Oldbury-on-Severn both count, probably.<br /><br />The closest serious target then, apart from the two nuclear power stations (alright, alright - only one, and even it isn't sorted yet), is Thornbury.<br /><br />Wikipedia defines Thornbury thus:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQWTegyxlc88S3I0V04F_nH0ba7r9NFsD8U8vb9KgOTCfvZ1_D_w7WjCbD3M4PCOOE8kJv0uFoAh_KU8j-UmCxHwFCZ9I84Y4YSgoUnWTCRSWpl61W8b1frZqNBlCxoH-00WAebA/s1600/Thornbury.high.street.arp.750pix.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQWTegyxlc88S3I0V04F_nH0ba7r9NFsD8U8vb9KgOTCfvZ1_D_w7WjCbD3M4PCOOE8kJv0uFoAh_KU8j-UmCxHwFCZ9I84Y4YSgoUnWTCRSWpl61W8b1frZqNBlCxoH-00WAebA/s400/Thornbury.high.street.arp.750pix.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506862672708308834" /></a><br /><br />which seems about right.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-58516021491781800442010-08-17T23:28:00.003+01:002010-08-18T00:45:14.194+01:00The Air Attack WarningWell, while I'm here (not I'm not pissed, just couldn't sleep), I thought I'd update the world on the TTD Doomsday Clock. This interesting device measures the nearness of Threads to my imagination. At the moment it is quite close: the ideas and vocabulary of the teleplay are constantly at hand. For example, on Saturday the Thornbury Tesco suffered a powercut. Clearly my first thought was that a nearby nuclear explosion was to blame. It turned out to be rain. There was no need to panic buy, and no chance of hearing Five Live interrupting their premiership coverage to tell us that a US Carrier had been sunk in the Persian Gulf.<br /><br />Bloody hell- the end of the world, as read by Richard Bacon. It's enough to make you seek out the prompt radiation.<br /><br /><br />This might have been influenced by a recent re-reading of Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence. This is an intriguing book, published in 1985, which posits a nuclear war as seen from er, the banks of the Severn (the other side from Berkeley and Hill). In this novel, written for teenagers, there are explosions at - Bristol, Oldbury, Cheltenham, Gloucester - everywhere. And the destruction is so complete that mutations become dominant from the next generation onwards. These mutations eventually form the basis of a new species of human, one with the memory of nuclear war embedded in their psyches. The curious thing about this novel is that there is a strong biblical subtext - this is a kind of Noah's Ark, except that the flood was caused by us, given space by God to do so, for reasons of his own, namely the new, superior race that was to emerge. In short - we, homo sapiens, had failed. We were to be allowed to fail in order to be destroyed by our own hand. The replacements, a kind of cross between Stone Age man and the Tomorrow People, would not repeat the mistakes.<br /><br />Or so the story went. A silly one, at the end.<br /><br />I also re-read Martin Amis's Einstein's Monsters last week. This is a collection of 5 short stories on the subject of nuclear war. 3 are crap, two are good. The worst bit, actually, is Amis' introduction, which is typical 80s Amis, when he was still full of his own shit. He routinely denounces writers he doesn't agree with as "subhuman" but does not appear to have done *any* research on his subject beyond reading Jonathan Schell's book on it - he hasn't watched Threads or the Day After or The War Game, for example. Like a lot of writers, he pulls bits of quantum theory out of his arse and pretends he knows about physics and maths. He also completely gets geopolitics arse over tit and confidently announces we cannot possibly defeat the Soviets on any level, nuclear or otherwise, ever. This was written in 1987. <br /><br />"Formal First"? Fuck me, Mart, not in maths, mate; not in maths.<br /><br />I also had the deflating experience of re-reading The H Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter, which on a second reading turns out to have been copied straight out of Threads, and to have utterly mixed up 80s and 60s Civil Defence, and to have snuck in some shit references to Reagan and Thatcher as wanting to prolong the Cold War - how dishonest can you be? I mean really, how much of a liar do you have to be to think that Reagan, who instigated and carried through summit talks with Gorby with the ideal of getting rid of all nuclear weapons, just wanted to keep the conflict simmering for ever? And Thatch? Did she *really* want a strong USSR in perpetuity? Bollocks did she - she wanted it defeated by its own subjects, as it was (and the forces of economic necessity, etc etc). Bloody hell - I'll say this for your lefty writer - they can be utterly, deliberately, ignorant.<br /><br />In that respect, maybe Daisy Dukes and bikinis on top have their attractions after all.<br /><br /><br />The TTD Doomsday Clock stands at 11.42pmBill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-60647014341530846652010-08-17T23:17:00.002+01:002010-08-17T23:20:07.530+01:00EtcI forgot to mention that the Air Balloon is the worst-sited pub in the world. At the top of a hill, several miles from any settlement, at the interjunction of three stupid roads, all heading to or from Gloucester, Cheltenham or (shudder) Swindon.<br /><br />Ghastly place, ghastly road.<br /><br />Here it is, kind of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A417_roadBill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-40014928028805851192010-08-17T23:03:00.006+01:002010-08-18T00:43:08.281+01:00California Gurls(Daisy Dukes, Bikinis On Top)Hi.<br /><br />Yes, life is sweet and dandy, &c, &c.<br /><br />But I've just downloaded, not entirely by accident, a piece of silence. You see, I thought I heard a clever, postmodern (tsk) satire on sexual politics this afternoon. I was driving up towards the Air Balloon, on my way back to the Cotswolds from the netherlands of South Glos, so I was kind of trying to drive at 80mph between a caravan and a lorry hurtling downhill. I had this idea that "Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top" was some kind of dazzling wordplay, some new style of subversion based on crap early 80s children's TV.<br /><br />Accordingly, I downloaded the track.<br /><br />But really, it isn't - not at all. It is 3.56 of utter, utter silence. Sure, there are ritual incantations about sun, palm trees, jeeps, sex on the beach (aha! ambiguity) and a bit by Snoop Dogg. But apart from that, it says absolutely nothing in 3.56. Not a damn thing. There isn't even any real music, just the "savage, barking rhythm" of the Two Minutes Hate. <br /><br />Can you imagine how O'Brien would have reacted seeing Katy Perry on his massive telescreen?<br /><br />Regardless of that, the fact is that the modern type chart music can sometimes conceal serious intent beneath the froth of a Belgian beer - namely, Bulletproof by the girl whose mum was out of The Bill and also Calvin Harris' I'm Not Alone. To name but two. They sort of take the vocabulary of drugsex music (hey, neat) and manage to coil a meaning around it - sometimes, like Bulletproof, a non-verbal meaning.<br /><br />But this - this is shite.<br /><br />I say that, but my guts actually produce more substance than this track does.<br /><br />Luckily, I've also downloaded Jump by Van Halen.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-6477997912507390762010-02-18T16:16:00.003+00:002010-02-18T16:46:05.191+00:00Bill HaydonI've spent a lot of time thinking about this guy. I've just finished Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, and listened to it on the radio, so clearly I've experienced quite a lot of Bill Haydon lately. Briefly, my problem is this. He's an absolute fucking bastard. I mean the bastard of all bastards. He is a role model for the younger men at the Circus, is No2, is generally idolised - and has been a Soviet mole for 20 years! Worse than that, according to the Radio 4 version, he reckons he's a Colonel in Soviet Intelligence! <br /><br />If I am writing this with all the subtlety of a 4 year old who's just realised that the witch in Hansel and Gretel isn't as nice as she first seemed, then fair enough. But, even though it is obvious who the mole is from an early stage, the unmasking of the hero of all these characters is still a shock. It's a shock you feel on the other characters' behalf more than on your own. It's the betrayal, the smiling, charismatic betrayal he has carried with him all this time - and which has killed so many people along the way. The brilliance of his career at the Circus is vastly exceeded by the brilliance of his career with the Soviets. Bastard Bill Haydon, not only being a good spy and a brilliant mole, but being loved so much by everyone else. Being loved and cutting it to pieces.<br /><br />When he is debriefed by Smiley, he gives nothing away, and only makes Smiley feel that Haydon as a man doesn't reall exist at all. This is awful, because you desperately want Haydon to be beaten up, kneecapped and shot. But - the novel is only vaguely about spies and spy rings. Its about love and hate. Smiley does not, cannot hate Haydon, Guillam has to make himself want to hurt him. For neither of them does revenge really enter into it - nor does Haydon expect it to. He expects to keep his good reputation, his history of service, his charisma - all intact. He's not delusional as such, merely un-self aware. Smiley loves Ann of course, and Haydon slept with her - not because he loved her, but much worse than that - on orders. Subverting love altogether. Haydon tries to communicate to Smiley some kind of love for the USSR but it only comes out as a frustrated aristocrat trying to influence the world when he knows his own country can't. Smiley's greatest gift in this book is his love - of Ann, of duty, of Britain, even of his colleagues at the Service (eg Connie Sachs).<br /><br />Bill Haydon is a sore, but not a festering one - he doesn't itch enough for that. He doesn't make enough itching. As a result, will he achieve the fame and notoriety he wanted? Will he be loved? <br /><br />Nope. Chances are, even if he hadn't have been topped by another man who deeply loved him, ie Jim Prideaux, he'd have been like Philby. A scalp, but one who doesn't quite know his place. And the historians he thinks will write his apologia, thanks to Smiley, probably will never get to know about him.<br /><br />He will be nothing, the net result of his betrayals.<br /><br />Of course, he's based on that cunt Philby, who ruthlessly exposed agents in the Soviet Union only for them to be shot, and who was convinced he was a Colonel in the KGB only to find that he was, instead, a largely washed up communist arsehole, who like all the other fuckers, drank too much vodka.<br /><br />In fact, I hate Bill Haydon so much, I'm changing my name - to Bill Haydon.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-35777852654492021792010-02-06T22:51:00.002+00:002010-02-06T23:17:12.543+00:00OiArgh.<br /><br />Life takes its route, through sexual desire, into the tunnel of early middle age, where you worry about a combination of your body and your performance: in point of actual fact, you are neither a pornstar with a ten inch cock of almost infinite variety and adaptability, nor a non-wannabe train-spotter with a semi-hibernating cock of uncertain provenance and even less certain occupation (to the extent that even a putative mother in law might worry about the general occupation of your membrum virilis). In short - you are just a guy, just a guy.<br /><br />You are the service module of any Apollo mission: you do what you can but you are never going to be the star.<br /><br />Trees are cut down, hurricanes never come again and the modern world fades into oblivion; you and your friends vaguely recall a female prime minister and lots of strikes; you don't in fact recall a time when accepting a job was not your decision but the union in charge's call. You don't recall there being no point in holding savings of any kind. You remember the smiles but you didn't see the cynicism in them. You don't recall the violence of the picket lines that you did see on TV, even though you were a kid. You remember the sparkly, glittery music and television, the over-emphasised desire to escape at every single point. You really do not remember the concrete blocks from motorway bridges; the spittle; the dodgy deals; the illegality that seemed normal because there was no law that could contain this new age with its conflict between the two sides of the same belief: Self. <br /><br />What is self?<br /><br /><br />the....<br /><br />going to school, in the cold and the fog and the mist, just like going anywhere anywhen on this island.<br /><br />Shiver: down the path to the bogs, the dirty concrete, the other person there - he was the boy who you never understood. There he was, trousers round his ankles; even then, at the age of seven, you knew that was not how males went for a piss. Went for a piss/ a slash/ a jimmy riddle/ a wee/ to see a man about a dog/ to strain the greens.<br /><br />Went for a Martin. A Martin Amis.<br /><br />Fuck me I think I have missed a trick in the last four years. Blogging has truly passed me by. What do you write? how do you write it? Who do you write it for?<br /><br />Do you need pictures?<br /><br />Do you need porn?Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-58735185629567101582010-02-01T21:08:00.002+00:002010-02-01T21:21:35.785+00:00Obama Cancels Moon Project<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8489097.stm">This is a strange story</a>. While it seems to be the standard "recession causes cutbacks" thing, there are deeper considerations at work here too.<br /><br />Firstly, it's clearly a reversal of the 1960s policies. When JFK committed the US to reaching the Moon, the subsequent president (Nixon didn't have time to do much about it) followed it through. In part, this was because LBJ was consciously trying to capitalise on the JFK legacy and somehow therefore ensure his administration wasn't dominated by the escalating Vietnam crisis. In that, he was only partly successful. Obama of course is trying to undo the Bush legacy in almost every way. And this project, so long term and so expensive, was designed as a Bush legacy thing - something for people to remember him by in generations to come. It wasn't a real aspiration in the way that it was in the 60s.<br /><br />And the reasons for that is the second point. We're just not interested anymore. Our scientific interests are entirely to do with our bodies. Biology - that's what we want. From that point of view, our range of inquiry has narrowed. We don't look outwards now. No-one wants to go back to the moon: the practical benefits look slight; the costs and risks immense; and the sense of achievement it would bring is irrelevant - we simply don't value that kind of achievement. We are much more likely to condemn it as wasteful and so on.<br /><br />Thirdly, the whole project seemed somewhat uninspired. The rocket was new, but the delivery systems were entirely based on Apollo, just with updated computers and guidance and so on. NASA's argument was to the effect of "why rewrite a hit" but it made the whole idea seem derivative and as if they were just going through the motions - very expensive motions, at that. Is this unfair? Perhaps. But for a project intended to be concluded some fifty one years after the original moon landings, using the same designs is strange. Were there really no other ideas?<br /><br />While I deplore the lack of imagination in this decision, and the fact that it's all too predictable in an era that is not interested in anything outside its own genitals, the project was definitely flawed. If Obama and his government can come up with anything more interesting, I'd be all for it. It does look as if they are going for something they are condemning elsewhere -a private sector, private finance set of initiatives.<br /><br />Who'd a thunk it?Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-38904010553955481382010-01-26T20:09:00.002+00:002010-01-26T20:18:46.950+00:00Poor PiggyProof, if any were needed, that the obesity crisis is a grave health issue.<br /><br />Here we see the consequences of being overweight. Not only are you vulnerable to psychopaths levering massive rocks down at you, but you don't even get a decent death scene.<br /><br /><em>The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch<br />exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy,<br />saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, traveled through the air<br />sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded<br />twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his<br />back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff<br />came out and turned red. Piggy’s arms and legs twitched a bit, like a<br />pig’s after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow<br />sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went,<br />sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone.</em><br /><br />"twitched a bit"?<br />"stuff came out"?<br />"like a pig's after it has been killed"?<br />"no time for even a grunt"?<br /><br />Where is the dignity? The sense of a life lost? The utter senseless waste? The deep tragedy of the death of civilisation?<br /><br />No - "stuff came out".<br /><br />Piggy's death is made comical by the shape and bearing of his bloated body. Had Piggy been slim, like Simon, there'd have been real emotion in his death.<br /><br />My students yesterday laughed at the death of Piggy.<br /><br /><em>Laughed.</em><br /><br />Kids - don't eat that pie. It's not worth it - <br /><br />Do you want a comical death?Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-52771736587701496282010-01-21T20:24:00.005+00:002010-01-21T21:14:51.684+00:00Heart and ArtIt seems odd, and overtly narcisstic, to announce one's own continued existence: I still am.<br /><br />It wasn't an easy 2009, and I had to seek help to carry on. I don't pretend to be free of the tendency to darkness and soil, but I stopped taking medication some time ago and have found someone who wants to knit themselves to me in perpetuity, and more, to carry my issue. You'd think such a violation of nature would bring pestilence, hatred, famine and disease - but apparently not: someone is out there who thinks that TTD could help make good people. Together, we intend to perform this act of bestial art.<br /><br />This is more powerful than I could have imagined. It means that in such darkness as we now find ourselves naturally in, I look up rather than down - and that I find myself softening towards my previous life. If there were an eagle-eyed reader of this blog, they'd find that I've only ever deleted one post. All of my other hatreds are still here for the amateur psychologist to peruse. I don't regret those hatreds. It's a weird tendency of our world to shout "hate! hate!" when someone says something they don't like. We want to censor and stop. We want to prevent. All must be seen to be well.<br /><br />And I proved one of the conjectures of my teenage years: hate and love really are very, very similar things. They switch and turn on a heartbeat.<br /><br />You can really love someone with all your body, and feel the knot in your stomach at all hours of the day and night: then you can hate them the same way: then you can love them again.<br /><br />All the reasons are the same, only inverted, or shifted either side of the equality sign.<br /><br />You really can stand, leaning on the broom, contemplating the wreckage of your heart, and you really can pick it all up and glue it with pritt-stick. When you've done it, and you've wiped your hands, and you've scraped off the bits of glue that squeezed out the sides, and you've thoughtfully and carefully held the pieces still for far longer than is necessary, then you can say "I mended my broken heart".<br /><br />People will never tell the difference. Honestly - they won't. There is no difference between a heart naturally malformed and a heart carefully put together with glue.<br /><br />You really can walk into the sunset together, even though you have a limp and she has a club foot.<br /><br />That - that's what life is really about.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-74753059742612352842009-10-31T12:30:00.004+00:002009-10-31T12:34:48.835+00:00Three Types of SimileHere's something I wrote while deeply bored some time ago. As you can imagine, I'm still desperately bored - too bored even to blog propely, though I've started posting again over at CTS. I had a volume of Hardy and a cup of tea to hand when I wrote it.<br /><br />The first type of simile simply tries to invoke some genuine quality of a real object through reference to another object. The relevant cliché is “as hot as an oven”. With these “concrete” similes, the danger for the writer is that cliché is difficult to avoid; exaggeration also creeps up on you. But the possibility is always there for a simple simile of this type to contain other, hidden meanings or connotations. Take this example from Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘The Clock Winder’: “It is as dark as a cave”. Nothing too complicated there, the image is clear, the reference, obvious. But think for a while on the nature of caves. Claustrophobic, tapering into ancient rocks, the home of unknown streams, stalactites and stalagmites, the origins of human civilisation, hidden realms. The darkness of the very ordinary night Hardy is explaining now takes on a more psychological aspect. The depth of similes such as these is, of course, entirely up to the writer. But writers and students should be encouraged to think very carefully about the objects they choose to place into their similes.<br /><br />The second type does the same thing, but invokes non-existent objects that people are nonetheless familiar with. For example: “Quick feet as light/As the feet of a sprite” from the poem ‘Signs and Tokens’. It is easy to see the reference, even though there are (as far as we know) no such things as sprites. The word “sprite” itself has become almost a metaphor for quickness and lightness. With this kind of simile a writer can convey some sense of numinosity or give an ethereal atmosphere to a scene or idea. A clichéd example of this type would be something like, “She looked like an angel”. A better one would be this, from Hardy’s poem ‘Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune’, “..sweet as angels’ laughters”.<br /><br />The third type of simile intends to reference the object or quality only vaguely or slightly to anything, and is instead a satire, or a play with language for its own sake. This is exceptionally difficult to write appropriately. Most usually it is done to make the reader question the writing process and think about the difficulty of communication. It is mainly associated with modernist and post-modernist writing. An example would be “The years were like the cries of children”, in which a sense of fear is invoked, but otherwise the similarities are slight or non-existent.<br /><br />These types of simile can also be adapted, extended or cut. Often a writer will slide the usual expressions into “hot like an oven” or “oven-hot” or “with the heat of an oven” or some other phrase. To avoid cliché and extend the image – though this has to be done with caution – a writer might take a simile like “she looked like an angel” and change it to “she looked like an angel, full of its sadness for humankind” – the idea being to give the object of reference more detail in order to make the image more complex. In the following quotation Hardy doubles his simile to give it more shades of meaning:<br /> From tides the lofty coastlands screen<br /> Come smitings like the slam of doors<br /> Or hammerings on hollow floors<br /><br />(from ‘The Wind’s Prophecy’)Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-76040800364995104342009-08-21T20:19:00.003+01:002009-08-21T20:49:16.538+01:00Oh Who Am I (The Susan Howatch Edition)Well, clearly I'm not Charles Ashworth. Nor even Neville Aysgarth. It would be a minor blasphemy to put me as Jon Darrow.<br /><br />I'd be massively offended if you called me Christian Aysgarth.<br /><br />i'd be unbelievably gratified if you thought I was Lyle Ashworth (nee Christie).<br /><br /><br />Sadly, this is my destiny - <br /><br />Eddie Hoffenburg, less the war-suffering. Oh how awful.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-87985358316575805162009-08-20T20:25:00.003+01:002009-08-20T20:47:26.339+01:00Bullshit ProofHere's what I will never be trapped by again:<br /><br />1) The "soulmate" crap. That's about control, guilt and the pretence of tender-heartedness. If someone says it to you, ignore it. Falling for it is irredeemably beta.<br /><br />2) The relationship shit-tests like "were you looking at her?" to which all possible answers are wrong. The best thing to do is to respond in kind, ie: "Well, of course: she's as hot as fuck".<br /><br />3) The absence of communication. If she doesn't text you, that's her fucking problem. *Never* get trapped into sending loads of texts to a silent woman. She will loathe you for your spinelessness.<br /><br />4) Sexual intimacy. There ain't no such thing. You are just number n. So, to some extent is she. We don't communicate souls in sex, however much hand-wringing Christian clergyman think we do. We just fuck like animals. At last we're learning how to do it properly. Remember that kissing is absolutely nothing at all.<br /><br />5) Rows are good. If she gets cross with you, get cross back. Never, ever appease a woman's anger. Women hate craven, cringing men.<br /><br />6) Never believe what a woman says about the type of man she finds sexy. All that stuff about kindness, intelligence, etc is all crap. Women are as sexually predictable as we are, and we find big tits and slim hips sexy, and they find big, dominating men sexy. Believe me, your reading of Heidegger will be utterly irrelevant to whether she likes your cock, and she will, whatever she says, not be turned on by your claim to be a poet.<br /><br /><br />Well, that's it. As you can guess, some of this is inspired by reading less savoury stuff about "game", but my experiences over the last two years (of steadily being battered into the ground like the beta I am) suggest that there is a lot of truth in it. <br /><br />Women are not hard-wired to be caring, or loving, or care-givers or whatever. They, like men, are animals, and their desires and preferences are far more animalistic than we often think.<br /><br /><br />The title of this post is inspired by the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQdC7h609k8">extremely cool track Bulletproof by La Roux</a>, which is 80s synth pop for 2009, with a video whose visual imagery is what many 80s groups would have made, had the technology allowed it. It shows that this kind of music really does have meaning: archetypal grid patterns, geometric solids, splintered images, too much lighting, asexual or androgynous characters (she's a mixture of Toyah, Hazel O Connor and Flock of Seagulls). I wonder if the grid patterns, reminiscent of laboratories and prisons, are trying to say something in particular...<br /><br />And not a single whoremark arse tattoo in sight. No lingering cunt-shot either.<br /><br /><br />Even crap 80s synth pop had more to say about real life and real personalities than Lily Allen, whose failure to reach an orgasm is not really inspiring me. Nor am I rendered speechless by Black Eyed Peas' prediction of a great night's clubbing and sex. I'm also unprepossessed by Lady Gaga's somewhat tired attempt at edginess. Equally, Evacuating the Dance Floor could have had intriguing cold-war psychological subtones - but it doesn't. It's just shit.<br /><br />Yeah, ok. I'm spending 2 hours a day in the gym right now. So I know my music. Thanks to TMF.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-24223923648382945182009-08-11T18:28:00.003+01:002009-08-11T18:34:06.166+01:00Cricket and GameOK. Here are some facts.<br /><br />Strauss = beta<br />Cook = beta<br />Bopara = beta<br />Bell = omega<br />Collingwood = lesser alpha<br />Prior = alpha<br />Broad = alpha<br />Swann = beta<br />Anderson = beta<br />Harmison = lesser omega<br />Onions = beta<br /><br />Watson = alpha<br />Katich = beta<br />Ponting = alpha<br />Hussey = beta<br />Clarke = alpha<br />North = alpha<br />Haddin = alpha<br />Johnson = beta<br />Clark = alpha<br />Siddle = alpha<br />Hilfenhaus = alpha<br /><br /><br />There's the problem. The England cricket team is populated by beta males.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-54151985215052341042009-08-07T21:44:00.003+01:002009-08-07T22:11:24.941+01:00Not Dead YetNo, not dead yet. Despite all predictions, of his arse, his head, his bollocks: he is not quite dead. <br /><br /><br />Citalopram is a soft but stupid drug, which makes you shake and makes you tired. Especially when you ignore your quack's orders to give up the booze. Then it's worse. You shake all day, you feel like death (oh the irony). Also you don't want sex. You want death more than sex. Heh. Death and sex are indeed two sides of the same filthy coin, with Edward VIII on it.<br /><br />It's a fuckwitted drug, which makes you want to drink to calm down, even though you oughtn't to drink. Well fuck that. I feel great on citalopram and loads of Stella. Citalopram and no Stella then I feel like shit.<br /><br />I seem to have the DTs!!!! Fuck me I have the DTs!!! <br /><br /><br />Alright. Well no-one cares about that. Well what have I been up to. I have spent the last two weeks throwing out year after year of my life. The tip is my second favourite place. They let me put my clothes, tea towels, videos, computers, anything. All my life goes into the skips there. Thirty two years of rubbish. Lots of it. Any sign that anyone loved me. The things I loved as a child. The VHS videos I spent years recording. The books I collected. <br /><br />All gone. In a flash of bin bag, all gone. <br /><br />My car, even. Gone even before I sold it, thanks to an utterly unscrupulous Ford dealer!!!<br /><br />My poor little Fiesta. Don't get me wrong, I love my sexy new Focus, with its glorious, vast, curvy arse, and its tempting Pacific blue colour....but my poor little Fiesta which did me so well up and down the M4 and took me to Frogland 3 times....<br /><br /><br />*sigh*<br /><br />Can one have an affair with an ex - car?? Is it ethical?<br /><br />Oh but I'm still in love with my Fiesta and her little teardrop rear lights....her invitingly tight front grille....oh Fiesta, would you take me back, even though I abandoned you so?<br /><br />No. I knew it. Even when you had gone when I went to pick up the Focus, I knew you'd moved on. You'd never have me back. Someone else was driving you. Someone else was getting their foot soaked because of your malfunctioning aircon, someone else was having to get in via the passenger door because the driver's side door was fucked, someone else was feeling your utterly lame braking. Someone else knew that your foglights were shit. Someone else knew that your brakelights never ever fucking worked.<br /><br />Not the Ford dealer, thankfully, but, I guess, someone else. The someone who'd taken you out even before I'd sold you.<br /><br />And the Focus? Yes she is as sexy as hell. Her tits (front fog lights) are fucking amazing and her arse...well, I've fucked it already. Twice. But you know she doesn't love me like you did. It's like her mind is on someone else, someone bigger. Someone who doesn't need to move the seat forward. Who doesn't need to lean to see the blind spot. Who doesn't need to move the rear-view mirror. Who can just park it in reverse with hardly needing to look. Who just knows where the front end of the car is when they do tight turns and that.<br /><br />My Focus will never love me, I'm not man enough. And I still fancy the sexy little thong off my ex-Fiesta, not that she ever wore a thong but you get the picture.<br /><br />Oh fucking hell, has ever a man had such a problem with his beloved cars??Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-49679251579790989342009-06-13T21:46:00.000+01:002009-06-13T22:07:47.113+01:00She Blinded Me With ScienceTime for another experiment, dear readers. This time, unlike my previous posts on the subject of mind-altering substances, this one is entirely serious. Doubtless it will come as no surprise to my remaining readers (ie Cheeks and Matt), but I, along with half the western world, have been prescribed anti-depressants. I wonder what took them so long. My fear of doctors, probably. But it seems that things I thought were normal - utter lack of interest in career, trouble sleeping, rubbish concentration - are symptomatic of depression, along with a number of other things I've generally lived with for a few years (no, being right wing is NOT one of them). It was a self-pitying email to my mother that finally persuaded me -or rather she did - to see a proper quack this week. So I have spent the day enjoying the various side-effects of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. I was warned that during the adaptation phase the symptoms for which I am being treated may increase, along with other, rather more interesting side-effects. I started on Thursday.<br /><br />Since then I have experienced:<br /><br />constant low level shaking;<br />constant drowsiness but inability to sleep;<br />increased depression and mild suicidality (a word I thought I had invented many years ago, but it turns out to be real) - ie silly fantasies which I remember now having as a teenager - don't worry dear reader, it's just like being fourteen again, or eighteen, in my case;<br />palpitations & general increased anxiety;<br />anorgasmia (don't ask);<br />bruxism -(weeping and)grinding of teeth(though I get this anyway).<br /><br />And it's true. It does affect your driving. I was struggling to find third and fifth gears. Or maybe the transmission on the old Fiesta is giving out.<br /><br />I haven't quit the booze, though I have cut it in half, and I think probably that has something to do with it. The quack said I didn't have to give it up but the pack's instructions are fairly brusque on the matter. So I guess I will try. I don't feel like a drink anyway. I feel like breaking up with my Stella...<br /><br />In other words, whereas I didn't feel too bad, just generally rubbish, now I feel utterly crap.<br /><br />You might wonder why you are being subjected to this. Well. I went to the quack's because I am utterly fed up with what Will Self correctly called The Talking Curse in his book of short stories, Grey Area, and my mum insisted I do something about it, making her about the fifth in line from the ex, my dad, my landlady and my sister's boyfriend (don't ask). Talking through problems often makes them worse, activates and doubles the bastards, increases self-absorption and pity. And I've been there and done that, endlessly.<br /><br />So I wanted something chemical. <br /><br />But I can't altogether get rid of the urge to talk about myself.<br /><br />So here it is.<br /><br />Hey ho. Ten O Clock and I'm blogging on my bed. Alone.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-37349268773466343502009-06-04T11:39:00.003+01:002009-06-04T11:39:54.476+01:00That's Not All of It, By The WayThat's only some of the stuff I wrote about 1984. I'll post a few more all in due course. Meanwhile there's a government collapsing somewhere...Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-11247366217030816172009-06-04T11:38:00.001+01:002009-06-04T11:38:59.434+01:00The Disappearance of SymeThis is an interesting moment in the book. Winston foresees it over lunch in the cafeteria - demonstrating a stronger grasp of the principles of Ingsoc than O Brien gives him credit for - but the lingering question is: why does this lover of Ingsoc disappear?<br /><br />Winston's fear was that he was "too intelligent" - meaning that he understood what he was doing with the Newspeak dictionary, and why, but also that he spoke too clearly about the aim of the project: to narrow the range of thought by narrowing the range of vocabulary. Syme obviously thought - if he did at all - that his obvious goodthinking and his clear bellyfeeling of Ingsoc would keep him safe.<br /><br />This is where he went wrong. He failed to exercise doublethink appropriately. In his conversations with Winston he should have made it clear that the aim of the reduction in words was to expand the range of goodthinkful ideas and to enable fuller discussion of the principles of Ingsoc, but instead he describes it in entirely oldthink terms: reducing the range of thought. As an Outer Party intellectual he should know that expressing truth can only be done with lies. Syme could have been promoted to the Inner Party, had they wished it; but instead, his open use of oldthink suggests that he is merely a cynic, and a genuine oldthinker. Remember that the greatest fanatics are the Inner Party members.<br /><br />It kind of begs the question whether, in this case, it was necessary to have "the heretic here at our mercy", in the words of O Brien. What possible kind of re-education could Syme have needed? Apart from the obvious training in doublethink, it seems more likely to me that Syme, not in fact being guilty of an incorrect thought, would simply have been shot, no questions asked. <br /><br />Could it be, however, that a clear understanding of the true principles of Ingsoc does itself constitute crimethink - when voiced by a member of the Outer Party? If this knowledge spread, then discontent and rebellion could follow throughout the Outer Party, leaving O Brien and his mates (of whom there are few) could be overthrown. The Party is a hierarchy, designed to freeze history with one group permanently in control - the Inner Party. Syme is not of the Inner Party, although one might question why such an intelligent character is not. It might be that Syme is not quite cynical enough, though his language does suggest it.<br /><br />Most likely, the understanding of Ingsoc is crimethink when not tagged on to doublethink. Without that the danger of falling into contempt for BB is great. O Brien, being a fanatic, is in no danger at all: his doublethink strategies are excellent. Even here, though, O Brien is as clear as possible to Winston: "The object of power is power." O Brien seems to be able to face and discuss the evil at the heart of Ingsoc, and recognise it as evil, and know that he wants evil. Syme does not recognise that you need to hold this knowledge of evil and also to know it as good at the same time, in order to be truly goodthinkful. His words leave too much open to interpretation, too much that could make a Party member wonder or worry...<br /><br />On the other hand, we know that Syme frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe, and that he was too open in his conversations. It is possible that in fact, despite his instinctive goodthinking, he knew he was in danger and killed himself (as Winston knows that many disappearances are suicides).<br /><br />In the main, however, the disappearance of Syme provides Winston (and the reader) with proof of the evil of Ingsoc; they even murder their own faithful. There were always excuses for the purges of the Soviets - that they needed to secure the revolution - but if you murder your own, you do that in a display of power only. I wonder in fact if it was meant to be another part of the game O Brien was playing with Winston: that Syme's death was nothing to do with Syme, or little to do with him, and everything to do with the thought-criminal, Winston? Clearly when he first speaks to Winston he mentions it deliberately, even teasingly. <br /><br />The Inner Party like playing games with humanity. That is what they mean by pure power, which is their sole motivation. The games are fun, exciting, rewarding, like hunting. But instead of just killing, first you turn the quarry into whatever you want it to be.<br /><br />Syme is not really a quarry: more of a diversion. He stands for the wholly contingent nature of humanity and life under Ingsoc. He doesn't even get to stay on the chess team. <br /> <br /><br />While we are on this subject, we could read Parsons as a sort of obverse of Syme. His devotion to Ingsoc is clear, his energies are directed solely towards it. He is a stereotype (more properly a comic stereotype) of the stupid fat man, whereas Syme is thin, weedly, and wiry. Parsons, unlike Syme, who is vaguely solitary (although he does hang around with slightly undesirable elements) has a traditional family. Syme disappears while Parsons is seen in the cellars of the Ministry of Love, before a rapid despatch to Room 101. Parsons will presumably either be re-arrested later, or his strength and stupidity will be put to use in a labour camp. The problem for Parsons is that he has clearly spent his entire sublimating his hatred for Ingsoc into love of it. His rebellion runs deeper than Winston’s because it manifests itself when his conscious mind is not available. Indeed, one could speculate that Parsons has shut down his conscious mind to be rid of it – this of course would be an extreme example of crimestop. “It’s just a matter of reality control,” says Syme. Parsons will probably be rapidly re-arrested and executed, because his story is more fun than Winston’s. Winston was never really a Party man, while if someone as clearly devoted as Parsons could be a thought criminal, well....The Inner Party would love that, and the Outer Party would be terrified. Parsons is also the way that Orwell demonstrates the control of the family: his children are ideologically aggressive, suspicious and most of all, love only the Party. Mrs Parsons is a sort of standing satire – as it does not seem right to Winston to call her “comrade” because she is the last old style “wife and mother” – a type that would be more recognisable to Orwell’s intended audience than to us. <br /><br />But that is by the by. Syme and Parsons are opposites and complements, in their intelligences and apparent devotion to Ingsoc. Typically enough, Syme’s crimethink is suggested, or implied, by a subtlety of depiction that matches his fluidity of mind (his discussion of the project in Oldspeak terms – see The Disappearance of Syme), while Parson’s crime is the cry of the idiot who does not know how to articulate his feelings: in his sleep, he simply shouts “Down with Big Brother”. Incidentally, one would have thought that Mrs Parsons would have noticed this....Can’t be long before she is arrested too.<br /><br />Winston sees Ampleforth arrested, Syme disappearing, Parsons arrested: with Julia, that means that almost everyone he has a conversation with during Parts One and Two is arrested (except Mrs Parsons). The thought occurs: are these people really arrested for their own thoughtcrimes, or are they all, like Syme, meant as amusing ways of making Winston even more afraid of the power and ruthlessness of the Party?Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-58948690072676849052009-06-04T11:37:00.000+01:002009-06-04T11:38:11.717+01:00After Room 101Winston, purified, is supposedly filled with "ourselves" - meaning the desires and wishes of the Inner Party. He drinks, he gets up late, he hangs out in Chestnut Tree Cafe, he has a sinecure. He meets Julia and their meeting is awkward, punctuated by a lack of emotion, and precisely the inner hardness and separation that O Brien wanted and that Winston sought to escape from before the moment he first wrote in his diary.<br /><br />In fact it is not quite the same, for Winston is now no longer aware of that isolation. He drinks heavily and he plays chess, and he worries about the news. His anxious thoughts are gone, but whether O Brien's confident statement that never again would Winston be capable of "ordinary human feeling" is correct is debateable. Take the drinking. He drinks heavily, freely, just like Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford, and countless others while waiting to be re-arrested and executed. But why the drink? If you were full of the Party following Room 101 there would be no need. Is Winston trying to hide something from himself - disgust? anxiety? Julia? Is he completely capable of those thoughts but merely repressing them? That is not quite what the Party wanted, of course. But the prevalence of “synthetic gin” in Oceanic society suggests that this is another area, like prostitution, where the Party knows that is ideology cannot sustain itself in purity for long – because humanity has not been crushed, not been stamped on, only repressed, and will survive. Sex is necessary, alcohol essential to hide the experiences, to fill the emptiness of the Party (and it is, “fear, rage triumph and self abasement”) an emptiness, just like it is in real life.<br /><br />O Brien highlighted "fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement." He mentioned love of Big Brother and loyalty to the Party - but "everything else we shall destroy - everything."<br /><br />From the final lines of the book, which contrast with an earlier segment, before he was arrested, Winston, in the bliss of the news of military triumph, imagines the "longed for bullet entering his brain" - he delights in this vision, this fantasy of his own death, "his soul white as snow". <br /><br />With his tears of love for BB and his joy at the news, together with his conquest of the "false memory" that comes to him there of a happy moment of his childhood, Winston has been hollowed out. O Brien has his wish, and Winston finally belongs to the Party.<br /><br />And so he wants to die: because the Party want him to die, because they have engineered him to desire death at the point of his "perfection" - which is now, the very end. It is a reaction to his self-discoveries here: there is no self. Only the internalised Party and that, as intimated here and throughout the book, is a kind of living death. But O Brien does not look or sound dead, you might argue. No, but then he is a power-mad loony (c Private Eye), and so his type, as we have seen for the last million odd years, flourish in societies which destroy normal human beings.<br /><br />Incidentally, the final point of the novel is made: the love of the Party is death. The theme of the novel has been "thoughtcrime is death" - as a totalitarian warning; but now we learn that it is this evil and hollow Party that is death. It is a re-statement of the vital values of civilisation and freedom. As readers we knew this already, as Winston used to know - but the point is made with the self-sacrifice of the hero, who gives up, finally, any hero status he had, even in the physical act of survival (which was intended and controlled by the Party of course) - and is scooped out, once and for all. <br /><br />There is nothing left to do except fulfil the dream, which, we must imagine, would take place at any point of the Party's choosing following this moment.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-47542524973533028562009-06-04T11:35:00.001+01:002009-06-04T11:37:02.572+01:00HumphAs no-one bought my Thoughtcrimes on 1984 book off of Lulu I've taken it off and I'll publish the original stuff here!<br /><br />So here's a possible timeline for the novel. <br /><br /><br /><br />1944 – Winston Smith born (probably). At this point the timeline has run more or less exactly the way ours has. Imperialism, the growth of socialist theory in the nineteenth century, World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Nazi seizure of power, World War II and later the atomic bomb on the two Japanese cities.<br /><br />1945 – End of World War II. Winston remembers several years of peace in his childhood, because the atomic raid on Colchester came as a surprise. This (presumably) is a non-Marshall Plan Europe with heavy Soviet influence across the continent. It could be assumed that this period was hungry and tense until around 1950, when a few years of plenty set in: the ones Winston remembers as a child. Lemons were probably available in shops by then, for example. <br /><br />1954 -55 Atomic Wars are fought between Europe, USA and USSR. Many major cities are devastated. This war Orwell clearly envisions as being fought with weapons of around 20kilotons – Hiroshima size. Small enough to leave some infrastructure intact, but large enough to devastate societies. These wars lead directly to Civil Wars, between the establishment (ie in the case of Britain the liberal democracy) and radical parties inspired by either the Nazis or the Bolsheviks or both (which is clearly the case with the Party). During the course of the Civil Wars, starvation becomes routine, the mess left over from the wars is not really dealt with, and the different sides begin the process of exterminating enemies (Winston’s memory of the ever present sound of machine gun fire). The wars lead politically to radicalisation (already far enough advanced to cause an atomic war), and perhaps psychologically to a deepening of the “hardening of outlook that set in around 1930” – as the desperation of survival would have been so much more intense after the radioactive aftermath of an atomic war. This could even be true physiologically: damaged psyches and minds could be the progenitors of true Party philosophy more than the ideology of the Nazis or Bolsheviks. The rearrangement into pan-continental power blocs begins to happen during the recovery period (ie probably almost as soon as the last bomb is dropped). It might be this struggle and psychological damage that causes O’Brien, probably in his early twenties at the time of the atomic wars, to carry the old, worn look that Winston notices so keenly. By the end of the wars, strong, radical parties of left and right are the only serious political movements. The Party is the strongest of these. It is probably an offshoot of a powerful pre-atomic war Communist Party.<br /><br />1955-57 – The Civil Wars and the struggle for supremacy within the emergent Party and between different radical elements. The Party almost certainly possesses a strong paramilitary group as well as fearsome orators. Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford are leading lights in the struggle and eventual takeover. Rutherford’s cartoons inflame popular opinion. During periods of stability there are furious speeches and propaganda from the Party (and, one assumes, other radical parties – hence the “unintelligible proclamations...and gangs of youths in shirts all the same colour”). Starvation intensifies as no real recovery efforts are made. During this period the “confused street fighting in London itself” Winston remembers would probably have taken place. The Party takes sporadic control and begins eliminating opposition. Winston’s mother disappears, along with his sister, in 1954 or 1955. The latest possible date is 1956. His father had disappeared sometime earlier. Winston is removed to a “Reclamation Centre” – orphanages which grew up because of the Civil Wars).<br /><br /><br />1958-60 – The period of the Revolution. The Party defeats its enemies and takes control, though inconsistently at first and fighting continues. The Party then strengthens in control and eliminates the remnants of its enemies, begins purging itself and the population. Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford reach the peak of their power. <br /><br />1958-59 – The Party already rewriting history, claiming in school textbooks to have invented the helicopter (by 1968-69 this has extended to the aeroplane). Winston is at school. Julia is born in either 1957 or 1958.<br /><br />1958-59 (Assuming the dates in The Book are correct) - The Pan Continental Wars begin, to continue without interruption until 1984.<br /><br />1960 - First development of Newspeak. The probable first mention of the word “Ingsoc” dates from this time. It could be that either the original radicals become secure enough to pursue their project more openly, or that idealists within the Party have been ousted by more cynical elements (ie in an analogue to the Left’s traditional view of the Russian Revolution). Most likely, Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford have simply tightened their grip and become extremely keen on power as a result. <br /><br />1960-63 – First mention of totemic leader Big Brother.<br /><br />1963 – Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford photographed at a “Party function in New York”. This date is significant because the three later confess to being on Eurasian soil at this time.<br /><br />1965 – The second wave of Purges, led by the ideological associates of O’Brien. Last of the original Party leaders purged. Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford arrested. This is probably the time meant by The Book, when it says “...after the revolutionary period of the fifties and sixties, society regrouped itself, as always, into High, Middle and Low”. Namely, the defeat of the original, probably more idealistic leaders (idealistic in the O’Brien sense of not wishing to admit to their true motives- and hence the successors of the Bolsheviks and Nazis).<br /><br />1966-67 – Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford re-appear. Winston sees the three in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. Rutherford’s cartoons still appear in The Times.<br /><br />1968 – Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford are re-arrested and executed, the Party is now controlled by the same elite in perpetuity. Progress towards 2050 (total adoption of Newspeak and elimination of the past as an immutable object) commences in earnest.<br /> <br /><br />1972-73 – Winston’s brief marriage to Katharine.<br /><br />1973 – Winston holds the photo of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford.<br /><br />1977 – Winston dreams of a man saying “we shall meet in the place where there is no darkness”: the beginning of O Brien’s games with Winston, which he does not realise until he is arrested. Winston must therefore have already been identified as a thought-criminal.<br /><br />1981 – Winston visits the Proletarian prostitute.<br /><br />April 1984 – Everything kicks off.<br /><br />Summer 1984 – Winston released.<br /><br />March 1985 – Winston and Julia meet for the last time.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31362580.post-24852273712520396372009-05-30T10:14:00.002+01:002009-05-30T10:29:35.432+01:00IdeasWhat do you do with these?<br /><br />I mean on a single, individual level. When you have an idea, what is the best thing to do with it?<br /><br />Generally speaking, through years of hard experience, I'd say <em>wait.</em> Greater damage has been done to people, relationships, poems, novels, games of cricket, politics and indeed the entire world, by ideas that someone somewhere thinks are just amazing but is not prepared to stop and think about than anything else.<br /><br />The same applies to sentences. If I'd stopped and really thought about that last but one sentence, rather than blurting it out while half looking out of the window at the really nice trees on this side of the Chilterns, I'd have reworded it and punctuated it properly.<br /><br />The guys and gals who invented fire. Or discovered it. I bet they looked at it for a bit, scratched their heads and then used it in small, controllable ways. I'm prepared to bet that they did not, as soon as they could manipulate a flame, go and burn down all the forests.<br /><br />On the other hand, MPs, given wadges of public money, did indeed take wheelbarrows full of it to the bank as soon as they possibly could. If only they'd stopped to think whether it was a good idea to toss themselves off on publicly funded porn.<br /><br />Alas, they did not.<br /><br />Also, it was not really all that long between the discovery of the neutron and the destruction of Hiroshima. Einstein did try to persuade Roosevelt to think about it, and look what happened. Mind you, lots of other people were thinking about it too.<br /><br />But they just couldn't wait.<br /><br />Now. It's a fair bet that many people, enraged by our government's unique mix of corruption, incompetence and authoritarianism spiced with just a little sexual libertinism, might be tempted not to vote Labour next week. You know, out of knee jerk rage or opportunism or whatever the buzz word is this week among Labour lickspittle lobby hacks who still have their tongues up Gordon Brown's increasingly sweaty arse.<br /><br />But if they waited -<br /><br />No, fuck it. Don't waste any time rethinking this idea, you'll only paralyse yourself by realising that they're all a bunch of bastards. So vote non-Labour (and non-BNP). Hey, good idea, eh?<br /><br />But generally speaking, if you have any other ideas, like riding your bike without a shirt on, do think it through first, eh? Wobbly guts look best inside T shirts or better still inside shirts, jumpers and coats, which is where I keep mine. Not that I'm accusing Britain of being a nation of lardbuckets like myself, or anything.Bill Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08357811679771159469noreply@blogger.com2