Appearance at Norm's

Norm has added a cricket memory of mine to his excellent series and if you so choose, you can read it here.

Tone-Deaf

God my last post was wishy washy and dull and boring. It's bloody hard to get the tone of this blogging thing right. You might have noticed that I am trying to tone down the swearing but all that comes out is fucking pathetic slightly old and wilted petal type writing.

Fuck the government and fuck their stupid arse-aching attempts to control our lives with piss-easy targets that all their chums in the lefty bloody academies and animal rights arsehole groups and socialist working-class-people-are-too-thick-to-eat-properly brigades applaud with media-hugging thunderous-fart talk. Fuck them.


Well, it feels better, but has it achieved anything?

And I'm not drunk, by the way, check the times on the posts. I'm not such a lightweight that I can go to the pub AND lose all sense of reason in just 10 minutes. I need to be sober to lose my reason.

End Bacon Now

Well, this is the message of the experts as any fule no by now. And, as Anita Anand said to a guest on last night's Drive show on Radio 5, "who are you to argue with peer reviewed science?". I presume the words "Sokal" and "hoax" mean little to her, but I'll defer to her point nonetheless.

The question is, apart from the simple "ok then" or "fuck off", what does one do? When I heard the news I did experience a moment of genuine panic and I can't help but think that this is partly the aim of such studies, however much they bleat about it actually being a good thing "because it helps us control our lives" or whatever. But while some people will, others, like myself, will continue to manage the risks and try to be careful with our diet.

The facts being "known" however, and I know DK has done a fine job of casting doubt on them, the _other_ question is - do I deserve medical treatment, should it become necessary, for refusing to follow the peer reviewed advice? Should I be regarded as a fool? I can't help thinking that this will happen, sooner or later, but, more, (oddly enough), food and drink we will expect people to control thoroughly but their sex lives we will not. No one, as far as I know, has suggested that people have less sex due to the risks, or that people should not receive treatment for sex-related conditions.

Why are we becoming collectively neurotic about food, obsessed with finger-pointing and threats of losing basic civil rights through it; but seem not to think that people can control what happens to them by having less sex?

I'm going down the pub, despite being exhorted to drink little or no alcohol. I won't be causing any fights, but I suppose I might fall over or something.

I probably won't come up with answers to my questions, but I might think about them a bit more.

Guilty

Back from my school trip. Normandy is one of my favourite places and the weather was stunning: cold and bright with the mist trotting over the gentle valleys each morning. It was, as usual, a fairly exhausting process but I find the Bayeux Tapestry gets more stunning each time I see it, with more ambiguities, more political comment, and more breathtaking action sequences. It helped that the place was empty so for once we could see from a distance, where the cavalry charge sequences look almost cinematic. Some of my charges found pictures of men with their knobs out which I hadn't noticed and was unable to explain unless it was Adam.

I feel as though I need to apologise again to my blogpals for non-appearance at their sites recently. It really is difficult to visit them as often as I'd like because of my dial up and also I'm online a lot less than before, owing to work and a slightly confused home situation (ie I'm in a couple of places). However, I am going to try more to get round.

The title of the post refers really to Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which I've just finished and which I found less satisfying than his other novels. At times it cannot decide whether it is a murder mystery, a satire or an exploration of consciousness and it ends up being not quite any of them. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it: there is the detail which is characteristic of his work, though it's toned down a bit; there is the Adrian Mole like narrator and the enjoyable hints that the entire thing is made up from much later on (the anachronisms which occasionally creep in, usually from the mouths of other characters). You also sense an author having a lot of fun and letting himself go, whereas his other books feel tightly controlled (especially Human Traces). It's worth a read but you might finish it with a "meh".

Literary Joke

Apologies for the light posting, the return to work has taken me by surprise somewhat, and I'm increasingly finding my antediluvian dial up connection simply gives up on many fellow BP blogs, especially, darn it, James's.

It'll continue to be light for the forseeable as I'm off to Normandy on a school trip.

So here's a quick gag I saw in the Torygraph last weekend: a letter, dated April 1959, from Ted Hughes to TS Eliot: "Dear Mr Eliot...I hope you are well and enjoying April."

How I laughed.

The Origin of Laws

Interesting 5 Live debate on the Eu Constitution/Treaty today, the usual Eu-philes calling everyone else "bigoted/xenophobes/little Englanders" and Mark Mardell intervening only to make pro-EU points, but what interested me was this. One caller pointed out that EU law is framed by the Commission,after secret or hidden negotiations and reviewed by the parliament, but ultimate authority rests with the commission, unelected. Recently of course an EU commissioner graciously decided to allow Britain to continue to use imperial units without threat of crminial prosecution. I'm not commenting on the truth of all this, by the way.

Victoria Derbyshire challenged the caller by saying: "If it's a good law, does it matter where it comes from?" and the caller did answer her, but it struck me that for the first time to my knowledge someone openly questioned whether or not law makers should be elected, accountable, removable, and their laws open to repeal. Her argument rested on the philosophy of a given law - is it right? Do I agree with it? Does it satisfy my sense of justice or ethics - and the concept of a lawmaker deriving their legitimacy from the consent of the governed was not mentioned.

It's seemed clear to me for a while that we're moving towards a kind of technocracy, where "experts" really do know better than everyone else because the modern world is so complex; but it's rare for someone so openly to challenge the basic tenet of democracy and then to replace it with something resembling this: If the modern world really is unfathomably complex, and if some people really do understand it better than us, then they do have a greater right to frame it than we do. Our view, or vote, is largely irrelevant. Moreover, if a principle is right, or "good", then it should be enacted, regardless of the wishes of the people.

Am I then an old reactionary in thinking that laws which affect my day to day life: which measurements I am to use; how long I can work; what I should think about certain events or people; should be enacted, if at all, by a government elected by the people with a mandate for that, and that they should be able to be repealed when they fall out of favour or outlive their usefulness and the lawmakers removed?

I'm not saying that our current system does this well, but it is at least supposed to, and we can scrutinise it and hold it to account. I don't see the EU commission held to account much at all, and it depresses me that intelligent people want less public involvement in law-making rather than more.

Then again, everything depresses me so that's largely irrelevant.

Animals are Panicking

I can't readily explain what it was that brought me back to blogging, unless it were boredom: it certainly was not a desire to explain or expand upon my political obsessions, though I intend to do that too. My assumptions are of a simple class, obtained through Freudian simplicities and back pedalled reasoning.

Did I ever discuss my favourite types of pornography?


Well, time and place my friends, time and place.

My political views are easy and reactionary: I don't see why government deigns to give me rights and why I should be grateful. I _do_ see why there is no other source of rights, though we've transmuted a post-holocaust set of aspirations via Ernest Bevin into a Platonic reality of some faintly sinister kind.

Nathelees, blogging is no reason for expounding on these ignorances, nor are ignorances reasons for blogging. No. The bloghaters, whisper if you dare, are right. We blog because we are frustrated and because we want to hear what we want to hear. Yes, alright, sometimes I read the Intelligent Person's Guardian (Matt, Stumbling &c) but mostly I read the nearest equivalents to the Mail, the Torygraph and the Times (though it's dispiritingly socially liberal these days, even unto its tv reviews helpfully pointing out which tv shows show homophobia and which don't, as if anyone reads a tv review to be told what to think about human sexuality).

By the way can I just take this opportunity to tell ALL tv reviewers the following:

I don't give a fuck for your views on abortion, Mrs Thatcher, Eisenhower, President Reagan, gay rights, religion, atheism, stem cell research, the internet, blogging, corruption, sex or murder.

You are hired to discuss whether x programme is good or not. Kindly stick to this remit or fuck off. We are not so utterly ignorant that we need political point scoring in the middle of so-called professional media criticism. So fuck off. Or give me your job.


Then again, if they did, you'd get stuff like this:

Castrovalva is a pointed satire on Thatcher's Britain (c all newspapers): the characters (who, interestingly, barely seem to know who they are in this nightmarescape) stumble over invented traditions, which appear to give a conservative gloss to reality but which in fact expose the hollow and false nature of conservative fantasies....


Er...no, actually, hang on. More like this:

Logopolis suggests that technology and "progress" (c Greenpeace) is but a fig leaf for universe threatening desires. It is wholly ironic that Logopolis, the mental maths paradise, resorts to flawed and, if you observe closely, cobwebbed technology to save the universe. The implication is clear. Only the natural mind is acceptable. Technology (ie carbon footprinted wasteage) is harmful.

Erm..no that's still not right. Wait a minute...er....


Um. Anyway.

By the way, academic twats, research does not "show" anything. It might "suggest" conclusions, but it does not "show" them. I learned that in GCSE History. Shame that graduate teachers are bedazzled by self interested twats waving bits of paper and telling them that x study of 4 children in Luton "shows" that y obtains when it might well do, but we just don't, actually, know for certain.

Huh. So much for blogging as a way of expanding the mind.

Another Industrial Ugly Morning

...but on the other hand, as Matt has recently revealed, Doctor Who's short term future is safe after a fair amount of speculation about RTD and David Tennant.

We get series 4 in Spring 08, 3 feature length specials during 09 (IMO to allow David Tennant to mourn Yorick) and series 5 in spring 10. Over at Outpost Gallifrey a lot of people do seem to think that DT will return for series 5 having committed to the 3 specials.

However, RTD is apparently quoted in The Sun as saying series 3 was "too dark" - whereas I thought its tone was mostly perfect.

Hooray for Doctor Who and its infinite variety and adaptability.

That Book By Nabokov

I knew that would get your attention.

Yes, alright, TD is not dead. What happened was this: after reading yet another Guradian editorial about how all is well in our glorious isle, and how being appalled at murder is moral panic and hence a bad thing; and one in the North London Daily Mail* about how climate change will take our children from their playgrounds, the tin drummer fell as dead, on the ground: he was then buried but was not in fact dead. Owing to a clause in his will stating that an emergency button had to be put into his coffin he was rescued after only 30 days of eating wood and maggots. And breathing...well, we'll leave that for now.

However.

His health is poor, so he advises his readers not to expect too much (ie regular, well written, knowledgeable posts).

For now I will say only this.

The TOTP2 retrospective on The Police this week was fucking brilliant. As were they. The pop group I mean. I know the real police also need a retrospective, but we're not going to see that any time soon. I mourn, as does everyone else, the death of Tony Wilson (pbuh) but I disagree with him about The Police. They did not piggyback New Wave: they were clever, stylish, intelligent and cool.

And they referenced Nabokov.

Evidence of dumbing down can be seen by the fact that the 1980 original release had the above quoted line; whereas the 1986 re-recording said: "that famous book by Nabokov" as if it needed some explanation.

Anyhoo. I love music with hinterland; and the lyrics of The Police have hinterland. As the retrospective showed, Sting's solo stuff verges too much into the lick-my-own-ass territory: I wonder if Stewart Copeland brought him down to earth occasionally.

Hey ho. Look, I'm working near as dammit full time now so don't expect anything good. This country is, though, more of a shit hole than it was when I "died", complete with even more arrogant lefties telling us that everything is fine and that to believe that murder cannot be tolerated in a civilised society is "right wing". Hooray. Some of my best friends are right wingers. Andrei Kanchelskis for one.** [rest of paragraph edited to remove drivel]

anyway. Some of you might be under the impression that I outed myself as "[edited and obscured on legal advice]". Au contraire. He was my ghost, and himself died unexpectedly after a lethal cocktail of The Daily Mail, eight pints of Stella, four packets of plain crisps, and the sight of a local youth spitting into the street. Tragic, really.

*The Independent. In case you didn't know.

**I'm guessing at this. I liked him anyway.

Update:It seems the break has not stopped my rubbish writing! Never mind. It's too late to do anything about that anyway. Still, it's not an inevitable condition for everyone. If you don't want rubbish writing, consider an online degree in English composition. Also, ditch the Stellas. They do for your writing what they do for your driving.

..but the moment has been prepared for.

No more words, as Orcini says at the end of Revelation of the Daleks: no more shadow-hibernations. I have, finally, run out of enthusiasm for The Tin Drummer and all his works, and so he dies.


I am not ruling out a return, either under my own name, or a totally new pseudonym (heh heh, wouldn't that piss Tim Ireland off!) but either way - no more TTD.

CBI recently wrote:

Awake ye, Oh Tin Drummer...

More posts required by chomping army of fans...

The world is lacklustre, the Drummer has things to say.
Time for the silence to end.

I'm sure you can do better than me, old chap. Over to you.


-Drum goes in the bloody bin -

Crumbs

Saturday's Doctor Who was really, very very good indeed. I thought "crikey, this isn't for adults, this is drama for the whole family and goodness me I haven't seen anything this damn good for years and years." As usual, myself, Ms Drummer and Ms Drummer's boy watched spellbound - how many modern dramas can a whole family watch like this? - until finally I had to send the boy out to attend the barbecue because I needed to, erm, do some washing up* immediately after the last scene.




*=yes, alright, I was crying. So what?

A Crap Death

Now far be it from me to condemn anyone's passing into the other world, but today's death of Scott Timmins (aka Stingray) on Neighbours was downright arse. I've nothing against stupid or freakish deaths (like the guy who died while clambering down a cliff face to shag a chicken, or the bloke who had a heart attack while watching a fight between a set of bagpipes and a black pudding on "The Goodies"), but this takes the freakin' biscuit.

Firstly, Neighbours is resolutely secular, even unto refusing Harold a prayer while Stingray committed himself to surgery to save baby Kerry; it is always going on and on about the benefits of secular values like promiscuous sex sans the consequences; but today....Jeez....

Right. Firstly, Stingray, feelin' fine, but saying he'd "sit this one [dance] out" went and sat down and looked lovingly at his family's party. Then, the camera angle swooped to over his head _and rising_, then from that pov the fmaily noticed he was slumped in his chair and they all went over and the credits rolled. For such a secular show to even suggest that some kind of soul or spirit or some such nonsense "rose" out of Stinger (why do religious images suggest that rising is good? We are natural to the lowest point available and being in the air is an abomination) is a massive, massive cop out to an audience, which they believe doesn't do God, but still wants some kind of reassurance that the default position of tv companies is that "souls" or whatever, rise out of dead humans upon their death. Pathetic. If they'd really thought their worldview through they'd've just shown him slump, or sent the screen blank. But not a rising camera angle. Neighbours does not do religion or God, even if Stinger said "say one for me", like my old atheist grandad used to, today in a ghastly, shitheaded act of foreshadowing. This was cowardice, a sop to a society which _still_ has not got past Nietzsche's point about George Eliot: that they have given up the belief, but not the ethics, or sort of, or something.

I mean, how crap was that? A rising camera! Why not go the whole hog and show little fucking angel wings coming up as well?


Yes, I know it isn't real. But still. For goodness' sake. It could be I'm reading too much into a camera angle ascending on someone's death, but I doubt it.



No Stingray, you must die. Die Stingray, die, Stingray, die, die!!!! Hah! Hah! Hah!!!

Blog Hiatus Continues

I'm still on hiatus BUT


1) In Doctor Who last night, "John Smith" gave his parents' names as Sydney and Verity.

Sydney Newman - inventor of Who, head of BBC Drama in 1963
Verity Lambert - the first producer of Who.

Truly, Doctor Who's mum and dad.

and

2) The highest score by an England batsman since 1990 with Pietersen's 226 yesterday. Does anyone know all the other test double hundreds by England players since 1990? Clue: there ain't many.

MMMmmmm....the 1981 Budget....

...is just a way of getting your attention. I'm still on hiatus, the previous piece of utterly harmless nationalism notwithstanding (anyone who disagrees with it can fuck off to France). I still have no way to express my infantile rage or my more considered anger at the self-serving habits of _any_ tosser who comes anywhere near power.

As if to prove it, I've just passed a law which states: "The financial dealings of Mr T Drummer Esq (MA (Oxon)) are herewith and hereby to be kept from the prying eyes of all and any agents of the state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Hey, it's a piece of piss, this lawmaking business, eh?


By the way, the 1981 budget was fucking amazing. Firstly, the inestimable Geoffrey Howe raised taxes, and then....


(contd 2007AD*)



*er..it turns out that "AD" is in fact offensive*: it is in fact, hencefuckingforth to be known as CE and BCE (for "Common Era" and "Before Common Era", what the fucking twatting makes it common is to be fucking well censored untill we're all parts of another fucking planet).


*it is in fact, furthermore, offensive to people who want to be offended, in the hope that it might, somehow end capitalist oppression of socialist academics, who have been under the yoke since...well, since they left Oxford anyway.

Hibernation Interruption

Jeeeesus, when _will_ the French and the intellectuals learn? When I hear phrases like "perfidious Albion" and all that fucking bullshit that the French come out with, it fucks me off big time. The _most_ offensive phrase in history - to me - is "The English fight to the last Frenchman".

Right.


Listen, you bunch of arrogant fuckwitted twats. We fought and died for _your_ country, you cunts. The British Empire lost 1 000 000 mainly _very_ young men in the Great War fighting for France or for ideas of France: and still they think we are selfish, Atlanticist (as if that were a bad thing) tossers.

When did France commit the lives of millions of young men to the defence of Britain? The fucking tenth of fucking never, that's fucking when, the gitannes smoking arsewipes.

I've just spent an hour looking drunkenly at photographs of British men - at the same age as me when I was listening agonisingly to tracks by Tony Wilson's bands - dying, dying, for fucking hell's sake, for France.

I've spent days looking at the immaculate cemeteries in northern France, full of British kids amid perfectly hewn grass and the magnificent smells of a northern European summer; and then watched the arrogant dismissals of French stallholders at the English accent.

Look.

I love France. I really do. Goshdarnit I love it so much I'd love to own it - just my little joke - but the French establishment's attitude that we're just a bunch of tossers, aided and abetted by an amazing u-turn by the British Left (from when Jacques Delors made lickspittle promises to the 1988 Labour Conference - before that pro-Eu-ism was just capitalist-clubbism or summat) - fucks me off big time.

We died, we really died, for France, and the cunts still think we're opposed to Europe. Well. When Frenchmen die in their millions, for, say, oooooh, idunnooww, Eng-er-land, - we'll see if they're really "Europeans", shall we?

UPDATE: Notsaussure points out the not very Gallic origin of the phrase "The English fight to the last Frenchman." However, I have heard French personages use it.

Blog Hibernation

Disgracefully, I have been offline for a while and have failed to post or explain myself. Well, as you might have guessed, I have run out of ideas. I am still frothing with anger at the incompetence and contemptuous attitude of our government, but I can find fewer and fewer ways of articulating it.

Hence I've decided to put the Tin Drummer on hold for a bit, until I can work out what it is supposed to be for. While I'm hibernating I will try to read everyone's stuff and leave more comments around than I've managed recently.

If anyone has any good ideas for me, do drop me a line....

(Takes tin drum strap off neck and places it on the ground, with little stick resting on the top).

Humorous Mis-Reading

Phew. The Yahoo news headline says "Queen flashes wit at dinner with Bush." Thank goodness for that.

Slander of the Day

Lacking any serious argument why it should be a criminal offence to display prices in lbs and ozs, the UK Metric Association today compare buying a pound of apples with slavery:

But Roz Denny, spokeswoman for the UK Metric Association, said maintaining the current system was "a nonsense" and that Britain should not be seen as "a heritage theme park" that did not change.

"We are now going to have this crazy double measurement system forever," she said.

She went on: "We are trying to put ourselves forward as a modern country putting our imperial past in perspective, like slavery, and here we are glorifying one element of it."

Nice. Being a modern country does involve, in their eyes, as it seems to for so many people now, associating people who don't agree with you with all manner of evil, depredation and murder. There's a real tone of violence, I think, underlying our modern inability to debate with another without assuming he's something dreadful, and a sense of contempt for others in the need to make laws, laws and laws for things we personally don't like. The more we parrot the hollow slogans of diversity, the less we really believe that people with different views and ideals should exist at all.

The tin drummer is 5' 91/2" tall. Oops. I've just glorified our imperial past and the shocking legacy of slavery. Again. Oh well, off for a pint then.

Not A Guest Posting by Alex

The following post is not written by Alex, on the basis that this is the best I can do.

UPDATE: the rest of this post has been deleted, on the basis that it was stupid, rambling, vaguely drunken and ridiculous. I really have to stop doing that.

You'll Soon Have Ample Scope To Indulge in Melodrama

An advanced liberal democracy somewhere in Europe near the millennium...two candidates for the presidency...one candidate predicts riots, upheaval and unrest if her opponent wins....

Mrs Thatcher? The Valeyard? The Master? The evil Tories exploiting widespread fears of decaying suburbs, immigration and casually demonising their opponents?

No. The compassionate, fluffly, cuddly, inclusive, Socialist candidate for the French presidential election. Just look at the elaborate lengths she's gone to already.

Aha. Of course. Only Tories and other assorted evil right wingers demonise. Left wingers sensibly draw attention to the failings of their opponents....

Oddly enough, the thoughtful, intelligent, compassionate British left has been silent on the appalling tactics employed by Royal in her utterly, totally and utterly failed attempt to win the presidency (that is a mere coincidental occurrence). They have elevated futility to a high art: if Britain had been collapsing into chaos, however, they would have spoken out with the bravery that only the academy can possess. God forbid that the left, anywhere, should engage in any underhand tactics - surely all that has happened is that Royal has clearly and rightly spoken on behalf of France (well, the France that matters, that is)... er...on the other hand, moments such as this should be savoured. There is nothing she can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality. She's triggered a ray phase shift.

To disregard Sarko's commands would be to invite summary execution...er...hang on...er...the election will have inflamed his bloated ego....er...

Well, at least the whole system might self-destruct. No. It's too late. And you said it couldn't be immobilised.

I'll tell you this for nowt...you don't catch me going near no more quill pens again...but if Sarko owes France an apology then it is almost certainly not offered...


Am I the first blogger EVER to mix the French Presidential Election and Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord Part Fourteen in the same post? If not, then I am a bit disappointed. It's way better art than the blimming Sugababes and Gary Numan track or whatever rubbish it was.


Switch it off! Switch it off!!



Carrot Juice, carrot juice, carrot juice.