Son of Schism Schasm

Hairballs

2008-05-16T12:37:48Z

Much as I hate to add to the preponderance of cat humour on the net, this is brilliant.

Hard at work on those small, personal projects...

2008-05-13T15:58:39Z

I really don't know what to make of this.

As indicated by the link at left, I have long maintained that the Clone Wars animated cartoons produced by Genndy Tartakovsky and his unit at Cartoon Network Studios are by far the best material to be generated by Lucasfilm's largely mishandled run of Star Wars prequels.

Among the many criticisms that can be levelled at George Lucas' second bite at his main cash cow (I once called him a "one trick pony"; unfair, he has two tricks), detailing the manner in which they all but entirely undermine the goodwill generated by the first trilogy, for me the biggest remains the way in which the definitive, crucial relationship between the two principal protagonists (and the transformation of one into an antagonist) is botched.

This is partly due to miscasting but largely due to problems with story structure. Watched in production order, the viewer's greatest expectation of Episodes I-III is surely seeing the great friendship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker maturing against the waning days of the Jedi Knights and the specifics of Skywalker's betrayal and his rebirth as Darth Vader. Yet the two characters share virtually no screen time in the first film, and in any case are separated by a disconcertingly large age gap. In the second, the better part of a decade has elapsed and we find Skywalker churlish and resentful of Kenobi and events soon conspire to separate them anyway. In the third, they are once again spilt from one another and when they meet again it is for the first time as full-blown adversaries. Anakin's whiny, passive and rapid switch to the "dark side" is thus devoid of dramatic weight and for all the emoting the actors attempt their fight to the finish seems desultory at best. There is a sense of doom about the events onscreen, but only because we know they must happen because later stories have told us so. It is impossible to reconcile the brief, stiff and unnatural interaction demonstrated with the abiding friendship so fondly remembered by "Ben" Kenobi.

It is this deficit that the Clone Wars series, and the second in particular, helped to redress. Therein, the two characters fight side by side largely free of angst, recrimination or scratchy-voiced loggerheads. Taking those few elements that do work from Eps I-III, ignoring pretty much everything else and applying the trademark design sense and flair for visual storytelling of the Tartakovsky team, the results only underlined George Lucas' inadequacies as a director and keen-mindedness as a multimedia producer yet further. Now Lucas has, as is his wont, returned to the well. Having used the previous micro-cartoons to serve as "Episodes 2.5", Lucas now expands the window yet further with a maxi-series of cgi cartoons that, despite being apparently open-ended, must all take place within a very few months of narrative chronology as demarcated by the already existing and canonical animation.

The first few episodes of said series are being released theatrically as the above feature film. As far as I am aware, this has only happened once before, about fifteen years ago when Bruce Timm and company's Batman: Mask of the Phantasm was unexpectedly bumped from a dtv production to a theatrical release by Warner Bros. while the work itself was already well underway. It shows; the budget had to be stretched beyond breaking point and the film does not stand up to rigours of full-blown cinematic presentation (although it is still exponentially more intelligent, absorbing and entertaining than the Schumacher horrors that followed). Cobbling together several television episodes, regardless of how polished and and well-produced, is not the way to make a movie (just ask the MST3K crew). Furthermore, I would suggest that adopting a visual style developed specifically for self-consciously "designy" 2D animation is not the way to make a 3D animated film. The result is inorganic characters that appear sculpted rather than grown; based on the trailer, the is film looks like nothing so much as a mega-budgeted episode of Robot Chicken...

Like Ron Burgundy crossed with Ratso Rizzo

2008-05-13T14:19:50Z

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, familiar to most from the cottage industry of documentaries and books that have arisen to needle the network for which he works, if not his regular examination via YouTube and Crooks & Liars, his spoofing on The Colbert Report (The Daily Show has eased up on the guy since The Report's inception) and his near-daily roasting by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, is perhaps the most recognisable American news man outside America, if for all the wrong reasons.

The latest nugget of toe-curling footage added to the pile of public indictments of the man's character is actually an archive piece that is bound to become a viral mainstay for many days to come (YTMND, I'm looking at you). It's been blindingly obvious for several years that O'Reilly has a shorter fuse than Yosemite Sam, but I used to think it came with the general grumpiness of middle age. It seems that in his youth the man was to broadcast news what David O. Russell is to film-making today.

If you haven't seen them, please do ensure you watch both to the very end. And now, to play us out...

Artist? Musician? Writer? Film-maker? Time to storm Capitol Hill!

2008-05-09T12:41:35Z

Does this man possess the most dangerous legal mind on the planet? If you create images, sounds, prose or objects for a living you might just be inclined to think so.

According to the Illustrators' Partnership of America's Brad Holland, Jaszi, his colleagues and students are the authors behind a bill currently before the United States Congress and Senate, attempting- not for the first time- to address the problem of "orphan works". These are pieces of intellectual property that, for one reason or another, cannot be attributed to a copyright holder. Therefore they are often unused (particularly in research and education) for fear of infringing upon the rights of some unknown party. No one wants to find themselves liable for misuse of a photo that it later turns out belongs to Paul Getty.

Many American creatives contend that this bill, if enacted as law, will remove the inherent, immediate and exclusive copyright protection from all intellectual property. In-principle protection from infringement will no longer apply from the moment of creation; instead, any and all work will have to be registered with corporate-ran databases at an as yet unknown cost. Of course, this penalises the individual artist who is least able to pay (average earnings for a visual artist in Scotland: £4-5,000) and benefits aggressive and unscrupulous corporate raiders of a mind to gather and misuse any unregistered photos, drawings, music, films, stories or essays. Of course, a cheaper alternative would be to not put work in harm's way by disseminating it; in other words, don't have a career. The article above asks whether this bill amounts to a violation of international law. If it does, it'd hardly be the first time the US's conduct flew in the face of the world's judgement, but even if it it doesn't it remains a signal violation of creative rights.

The IPA has prepared a document that explains why this development should be of concern to creative people globally, as the new law would make it just as easy for an American-based crook to "orphan" a European, African, Asian or South American artist's work as a domestic's. In the age of the blogosphere, anyone or everyone with a mildly creative bent is spewing pretty much every idea they have into the public domain with little or no understanding of where they stand legally. Thankfully, there currently exist rules that govern the use of such material, but it appears this legislation could drive a hole right through the middle of the statute book.

Therefore I encourage you to read, but more importantly print, sign and send this letter to the relevant parties and tell everyone you know about it too.

Shell-head, Big Red & Die Fledermaus Mench

2008-05-01T19:09:24Z

Once again, tomorrow marks the annual Free Comic Book Day. If you live near a participating outlet (and you can find out whether or not you do by clicking here), take the chance to sample the delights of Ninth Art for no charge.

In the year when America celebrates the 75th anniversary of the modern comic (Japanese and European dates differ), the art form finds itself in strange shape. Internally, the medium is suffering-like all print media- from the encroachment of digital alternatives. Comics readers are getting progressively older, and the market itself is increasingly propped up by expensive hard cover albums and spendy ancillary merchandise (much of which appears absurd to all but the most woefully addled and obsessive collectors). Comics magazines of the the kind that Funnies on Parade inaugurated are an ever-dwindling portion of what constitutes "comics"; the cost of paper and the shipping of such small items has made individual comics close to prohibitively expensive, especially when one considers the extent to which the mainstream publishers pack a monthly comic with advertising.

And yet, while commercially speaking comics appear to be in trouble, artistically they are in the rudest of health. The perceived saviour of mainstream comics is branding and adaptation onto other media platforms, the main thrust of this post being three such endeavours. Yet the inevitable focus of these is on super-heroes, the majority of these originating from the forties, fifties and sixties. This masks the richness of 21st century comics (cast an eye over the nominations for this year's Eisner Awards- the Oscars for things with staples in the middle- and you'll find recognition of less then 20 conventional capes and tights books among almost 150 choices) and confirms the outsider's worst prejudices about the industry; that it's nothing but adolescent power/revenge fantasy and Freudian technicolour wet dreams.

Fewer people than ever are reading comics, but a larger audience than ever is consuming the fruits of comics artists and writers' labour. This summer, movie-goers will be given the opportunity to sample five comicbook movies (eight if you include the spoofs Hancock (good) and Superhero Movie (dire) and the animé inspired Speed Racer). God knows I'll probably see all of them, but there's three I'm specifically excited by: today's release of Jon Faverau's Iron Man, based on Stan Lee and Don Heck's 1962 creation; Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the second collaboration with creator Mike Mignola, now in his fifteenth year of illustrating HB's adventures; and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, his sequel to Batman Begins and a film that looks like it'll owe as much to Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Frank Miller, Denny O'Neill, Neal Adams, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale as Bob Kane, the man whose name has been most readily associated with the character since his first appearance in 1939.

These three characters have all, at one time or another, been favourites of mine and it's interesting to compare and contrast them. Both Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are super-heroes bereft of super-powers, made extraordinary by their intelligence, their bravery and their wealth. Hellboy is super-powered, supernatural in fact, yet has a resolutely blue-collar demeanour. Iron Man and Hellboy seek redemption; one is a hawk turned into a dove, the other a demon trying to be a man (an angel's probably too much to ask). Batman is motivated by pure vengeance, often positively embracing the darkness that enveloped him as a child. Also separating him from the other two is his apparent distaste for sensual pleasure; he pretends to be a playboy billionaire to better conceal his personal war on crime, whereas HB would much rather kick back with a six pack than fight the forces of evil, and Stark is positively self-destructive in his vices. Indeed, it's impossible to point to a less healthy hero. Depending on which books you read, he's ravaged by shrapnel wounds, alcoholism, gunshot wounds, paraplegia, quadriplegia, nano-technological viruses and terminal cancer. Of late, certain comic book writers have been emphasising a streak of fascism in the character that was barely perceptible in the beginning but slowly emerged as he was portrayed as an ever-more wealthy Reaganite technocrat in his double life. In this respect he is again comparable to the vigilante Batman and unlike the resolutely anti-authoritarian and generally put-upon Hellboy.

All indication's point to an Iron Man film made with genuine affection by all involved. As previously written, Robert Downey Jnr is insanely appropriate casting for Tony Stark, and all the visuals have been superb. Reviews indicate a severe case of "first in a speculative trilogy" syndrome; once the character origin is well and entertainingly told, the film has nowhere to go in the remainder of its running time. Some form of partial resolution must be provided, yet aces must be held for future instalments. Cue big, noisy, shallow fight. On that point, I think the film will suffer too from the absence of a villain that's anything more than a bigger, badder version of the hero (ditto Spider-Man 3 last year and Incredible Hulk later this summer). The film makers can't be blamed for this entirely; Iron Man lacks a rich gallery of rogues and his main "big bad" is an embarrassingly outdated racial stereotype. Never the less, I think this film will be a much stronger stab at the Marvel Comics vibe than recent woeful efforts such as Electra or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, thanks in no small part to the fact that its the first production from the publishers own and newly-established studio.

The Dark Knight arrives in cinemas in July, unshackled from the burden of franchise building or "rebooting" mentioned above. Christopher Nolan remains tight-lipped about whether he intends to weave further tales in Gotham City. This is perhaps due to the untimely death of Heath Ledger, his Joker, that has inevitably cast a pall over the film's publicity campaign. The movie's official web site remains little more than an obituary for Ledger, even at this late stage of the game. Warner Bros have instead invested in one of the most lavish poster campaigns and complicated and obtuse "viral" strategies ever mounted for a movie, climaxing in flash-mob events around the globe triggered by puzzle-based web sites. This strategy would seem more appropriate for a film featuring the Riddler than Joker, two characters often confused in the public mind. Nolan has gone on record to say he won't include outlandish villains like the Penguin. Perhaps the Riddler is too flamboyant for his tastes too, and so he's cherry-picked his penchant for clues but jettisoned the rest. We'll know more after the long-awaited trailer materialises tomorrow. As much as I enjoyed the first of the series and am eagerly anticipating the second, I think Nolan's films are far from perfect. Despite his attempt to rationalise every aspect of every character, he's missed a few tricks. To cite just one example, and like Burton and Schumaker before him, he tells a story about a man with a definitive and pathological aversion to hand guns who nevertheless makes liberal use of explosives and ballistic weapons. Check out the "Bat-pod" for example. What the hell are those on the front? Rolls of architect's drawings for the new Bat-cave?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army brings up the rear in August. Guillermo Del Toro is hot to trot right now, critically lauded on an international scale for Pan's Labyrinth, hand-picked to succeed Peter Jackson as the director of the prequels to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Again, I've harped on before about the questionable albeit author-approved tinkering that went on the first Hellboy film, especially turning the character from perennially middle-aged to an over-grown adolescent and the recasting of the FBI-like Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence to a sub-MIBs secret organisation. However the trailer looks like it will all but dispense with the BPRD and instead fling the main characters into a mash up of the European folklore that has entirely captured Mike Mignola's imagination recently, the kind of non sequitur weirdness that made seventies vintage Star Wars such a joy and the fever-dream visuals that where Pan's Labyrinth's hallmark, to whit:

Jaisus, I could barely sleep after seeing that for the first time.

I'll return to these films, and others, as I see them, but with a trip to San Diego in the offing I simply wish to declate the Summer of Ultimate Geekery officially: OPEN!

That other election this year...

2008-05-01T17:24:12Z

Did some updating over on my cartoon site, including this piece which I've submitted to the 2008 ComicCon Souvenir Book.

They're looking for editorial cartoons in an election year, as well as celebrating a host of anniversaries including the 50th of the Legion of Super-Heroes (referenced in the drawing, Golden Age geeks) and the 75th of the comicbook itself; more on that tomorrow!

Less Twitter, more bull-shitter

2008-04-21T15:57:51Z

See what I did there?

Anyway, inspired by McGazz, a few random doodahs.

Over the weekend, I finished the last of the dvds and books I got at Christmas. This is less an indicator of the largesse of my family and friends than my life-long habit of eking out pleasure, milking any given thing for as long as possible. Similarly, I haven't finished the chocolate I was given at Easter yet. I'd be bloody useless at an orgy.

The on-going saga of incompetence and broken promises at that was the 2007 BT switch-over has resulted in a cash settlement that has to be spent immediately as the cooker's packed in.

Is it just me, or was Saturday's Doctor Who the worst since the "scribbly" Olympics episode? Came across as pure kiddie-pandering. The Ood were weak creatures of the week to begin without giving them a hook so weird that even the writers couldn't get it straight in their vestigial fore-brains. It's established that as a species the Ood were compliant pre-lobotomy and also that they're still psychic post-lobotomy; in other words, the same characters. So what's the point of the "second brain" plot device other than as a gross-out gag? And the third "giant" brain, clearly a model, was just embarrassing. Things better get darker and smarter pdq, otherwise the promised hiatus, scaling back to occasional specials rather than full series, might be prove to be the best move... Even if it is an invitation to a latter-day equivalent of the Colin Baker years.

Since 1) Virgin Media apparently cannot transmit television pictures at the correct aspect ratio but offer a raft of add-on services and features that don't work, such is the fundamental uselessness of their hamsters-&-marbles-driven set-top box, 2) I will not pollute this world with another satellite dish, much less feed the Murdoch beast and 3) there is but the weakest freeview signal in my area and no indication from my ever-indifferent, perennially-ignorant property managers (Grant & Wilson: wankers) whether they intend to commit to their legal obligations re: digital switchover, as of next month this household will be forgoing broadcast television. What little tv we want to see will be viewed online or, in some cases, procured on dvd. The only thing I'll miss, I think, is the strange allure of streaming news, but then again it's maybe no bad thing to put a filter on my facts. Any recommendations for news sites?

After some eight months of both being fragrant cheek by sandpapery jowl every day, Y's going back to a job in the city centre at the end of the month. It's going to feel strange being alone again. The cat's probably going to be well pissed off, having only me to look at.

I have yet another finance article to illustrate for the paper. Nice to have the work, of course, but Jesus it's a near-exhausted seam. This one's about the IHT benefits of a "Spousal By-Pass". Lovely.

There's significant upheaval going on at Anderson towers lately, tremors preceding an earthquake that I can't write about just yet. But if all goes according to plan the outer limits of the comfort zone are about to be well and truly shattered.

And the ubiquitous Lucy Montgomery doing that "street" voice of hers...

2008-04-14T14:01:52Z

Henry Naylor's new show for ITV, Headcases, is a very mixed bag.

The show's promoted as Spitting Image MkII, but it doesn't look like there are any artists on board who can touch the inestimable Peter Fluck and Roger Law, or even the team who worked on 2D TV. The Piers Morgan caricature is at the forefront of the show's publicity material, yet more closely resembles Stephen Fry; attempts at certain political figures like Nicholas Sarkozy and Nick Clegg, and even obvious targets like Tony Blair, are astonishingly poor. And apart from the fact that many of the likenesses are wide of the mark and the scripts are equally in need of the red pen, the real reason the show leaves a weird impression is its neither-fish-nor-fowl execution. The faces have been caricatured in a conventional pencil and paper manner before digital modelling. But the bodies are more often than not animated using cutting edge motion capture techniques. In other words, although the characters LOOK like cartoons, they don't MOVE like cartoons. As recent feature film experiments with the technology have shown (Happy Feet, Beowulf) mo cap works well when portraying the extraordinary and fantastic, but when used to sell the idea of someone just strolling across a room, it somehow draws attention to its artifice and thereby pulls the audience out of the narrative. Watch the spoof of Madonna of the David Cameron press conference in episode one of Headcases and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Aside from Robert Zemekis, the world's leading proponent of mo cap is probably Peter Jackson. Having cut his teeth on Gollum and tweaked the tech on Kong, he's in the midst of filming The Adventures of Tin-Tin entirely on mo cap stages. However, a very great deal of the former two "performances" were completed by animators; enhancing, emphasising, exaggerating and at times entirely ignoring and replacing the physical movements of actor Andy Serkis. Of course, on the third film Serkis will be playing a salty sailor, not a giant ape or Ring-wrecked Hobbit. It remains to be seen whether a cgi Capt. Haddock will require the touch of a true animator's talents in order to succeed and will depend on whether the film's designers will attempt to replicate Hergé's clear-line aesthetic or just use the kind of hollow-eyed zombies that populate The Polar Express.

For a lot more on the importance of funny, exaggerated movement in animation, read John "everything modern is soulless shit" Kricfalusi's hugely absorbing, hyper-opinionated blog.

At long last...

2008-04-07T17:01:24Z

... £10 million spent on a verdict we all reached a decade ago. Now let the conspiracy-peddling morons, opportunist vultures, maudlin grief addicts and ridiculous Brit-kitsch flag-wankers SHUT THE HELL UP.

"Five pounds to get into my own bedroom?"

2008-04-06T01:59:03Z

Several weeks ago, the Toon Weekly site transformed into a members-only forum, meaning the various character design challenges are now held on private threads rather than in public galleries. A shame, in my view, since having passers-by looking at the work kind of forces you to raise your game. Having said that, most participants post their entries on their own sites and blogs and I've been doing the same. This blog has been reserved for writing since I set up t'other shop, but I'm so pleased with what I did for this week's assignment (redesign a classic live-action sitcom cast for animation) that I decided to post it here too:

Yes, before you say it, I know Vyvyan had four stars; the point of the exercise is not a facsimile of the costumes, nor a caricature of the actors for that matter, but an an adaptation of the characters. It's interesting to see what you can eliminate, what you have to keep and what you can tweak whilst still evoking the spirit of the thing. I couldn't decide which member of the Balowski family to include, regrettable since our Alexei was arguably the funniest bloke in the group.

>pick up the sword >i don't understand that

2008-04-03T15:46:51Z

I return to technophobia. Lest this blog become a neo-Luddite tract I want it clearly understood that I’m not trying to be “amusing and eccentric”. I’m genuinely angry and concerned about digital convergence and my struggles to keep apace with it. This incompetence is neither funny nor charming and hardly unique. The wider ramifications of that last point I want to explore, but first a clarification: my problem is not with computers in the strictest sense. Computers- the machines- are a marvel, a deeply impressive manifestation of mankind’s genius, conceived by engineers and scientists whose only limits appear to be those of natural, physical laws; the width of molecules, the malleability of light, the speed of an electron are all that hem them in. No, my problem is with software. Software, for the most part, seems to be the progeny of sociopaths. It is designed, executed and disseminated by fraudulent, bullying, blackmailing hostage-takers, and I’ve had it up to my degenerating eyeballs with them.

I’m going to make a comparison with the motorcar, that other great advance and illness of the twentieth century and another device I have enormous difficulty reconciling myself with. Cars, like computers, are complex machines of which very few of us have a complete, nuts and bolts understanding. We rely on others to repair them when they fail, yet most of us in the (Western) world own at least one, rely on one, depend almost utterly upon one to convey us whence we need to go. Complex as it is, as constantly refined and improved upon as they are by the manufacturers, we need no “user interface” with a car. We acquire the requisite user skills and then we control it directly, using our working knowledge of the car under licence and insurance. The same knowledge is rarely acquired in advance of computer ownership or use; we unpack it, plug it in and expect to “go” anywhere and everywhere immediately. Indeed we are encouraged to expect so by the software mavens.

The software is our chauffeur, a middleman, translating our human A to B desires into the zeroes and ones language of the computer. Yet imagine how frustrating a literal journey would be if you surrendered the driving seat to a chauffeur who not only could not speak your language but also lacked knowledge of the local roads, the quickest or safest routes, the Highway Code or was just a complete fucking idiot. This is the software experience.
My recently documented problems with eBay aside, let me name and shame some other examples of software and web design idiocy:

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
The software that killed a hundred thousand printing businesses and, more than any other package, heralded the rise of the “good enough” amateurism that is the hallmark of the digital era. Despite latterly being adopted by many professional printers as their package of choice, it remains widely misunderstood and ham-fistedly used. I could fill a book with stories, but a recent example saw colleagues handing a layout into a pro print shop, said layout containing certain fonts that the shop did not have on file (one questions why a printer would not avail themselves of any and all fonts, but never mind). Photoshop, rather than flagging that discrepancy, simply replaces all text in the unknown font with another random font from the files. That substitution, in the days of plate-based lithography, would not only have been virtually impossible but tantamount to wilful sabotage of the job, as anathema as changing colours or text content. Yet every day, in digital print shops up and own the land, computer software packages like Photoshop make countless automatic “helpful” changes to specified layouts that go unnoticed until the job is printed, resulting in masses of paper wastage and costly reprinting.
BIGFOOT
This woeful troop of keyboard-stabbing baboons offer a webmail service that will periodically deliver your messages to recipients bereft of all text. Infuriating.
HP SCAN PRO & PHOTOSMART STUDIO
These pieces of garbage came with my scanner and the former has to be used in order to import images from it to other, better applications (such as iPhoto). The software will occasionally and completely without input, warning or discernible reason skew the images it scans by about twenty degrees clockwise. This will happen time and time again on repeated scans of the same image, yet scans taken from other images placed on the flatbed during these periods are fine. This skewing ceases as suddenly and inexplicably as it starts, again without any given instruction. The Studio package also features a tool called Stitch, which is clearly intended as a quick way to join disparate images into one, especially to create panoramic landscapes. Yet the software will crop a pre-set amount from the ends of each photo before fuzzily “melting” them together. In other words, even if you were a sufficiently skilled photographer as to have taken shots that married with one another right down to the last pixel, there’s no way for this inherently useless tool to provide you with anything other than considerably less than the sum of their parts. Mind-boggling.
iTUNES
The latest versions of iTunes will, when downloading music from the store or uploading it from certain cds, retrieve album artwork for the purposes of the improved screen displays on newer iPods. Can someone explain to me why, when I listen to Danny Elfman’s score for Spider-Man2, I’m shown the cover to his first Batman composition? Or when I’m enjoying Derek & Clive: Come Again, I’m looking at the debut album from Derek Clegg? Correct me if I’m wrong, but in terms of raw data, aren’t the words Spider-Man & Batman and Clive & Clegg as different as the numbers 34678 and 74386? Imagine what would happen if, say, Excel were as lazily written as to allow those to be transposed? Why does iTunes have the discernment of a cloth-eared, slightly stoned record shop assistant? Puzzling.
MICROSOFT ENTOURAGE/ MAC OSX/ SAFARI
I cannot use the Macintosh application Mail on my computer; imported emails from my previous machine brought with them a fatal error that prevented Mail from ever launching properly. I had no choice but to abandon it and start using Entourage instead. Fine. But there is no way- at least no way I know of- to set Entourage as my default email application. Whenever I’m looking at a website in Safari and click on an email link, off my hard drive goes, looking for Mail. The OSX software allows for a dazzling array of preferences and personalised touches. I can, naturally, set my machine to “prefer” any number of applications other than those specified in the factory settings. Yet it appears to have occurred to no-one at Apple that users might not want, or even find themselves unable, to use Mail. Cretinous.
I say “no way I know of” because the in-built Help application, intended it seems to offer answers to users in strife, cannot provide assistance. How is it- in 2008- that Help appears to have been equipped with as narrow a vocabulary as a ZX Spectrum text-based role playing game? Staggering.
US AIRWAYS
This airline run a website that accepts international bookings, yet include a billing form that can handle only US zip codes. Entering anything else sends the system into an anti-fraud spiral that’ll have your credit card frozen and your phone bill jacked up by unplanned calls to their American contact centre before you can say “no meal option”, negating any money saved by “booking direct” in the first place. Galling.

Bear in mind that every one of these examples is by design, ipso facto. Computers cannot think, they cannot act, they cannot decide. Programmers though, acted and made the choice to have their software perform in this fashion. Human beings crafted facilities, features and applications that run counter to human intuition, needs and expectations. Madness. And yet the marketers and the developers continue to sell us the lie that these things will make our lives easier.

How to end the kind of widespread misery that has followed the launch of, say, Microsoft Vista and the subsequent deliberate withdrawal of Windows? I return to the car, and the need for either an equivalent to the red flag-waving signalmen that used to precede the earliest motorists (i.e. a frank unilateral admission that this is all bullshit, that new applications can scarcely do anything other than stumble, fail and misfire) or a driving licence, a standardised certification of IT knowledge that will enable us all to circumvent the inherent problems in mass-marketed software. Absurd, you say? Misuse of cars can inflect terrible damage, ditto firearms, which is why their ownership is subject to licence. Computers may exasperate, but they can do us no harm. Really?

Several organisations charged with social policy provision, including the International Futures Forum, recognise an increase in mental health problems approaching “pandemic” scale. They believe a significant factor is the shortening of both attention spans and patience by the breathless pace of broadband media, the incredibly high turnover and rapid obsolescence of digital product, the associative effect of prolonged screentime (your computer becomes you; its flaws are your flaws) and moreover the disassociative effect of constant alias or avatar use and certain sites that simulate social interaction but signally fail to offer the subtle, multifaceted reward and hard lessons of the human experience. I’m heartened to read of the advent of Griefers, latter day Dadaists and “virtual terrorists” who- it seems to me- are the only ones to have truly embraced what’s possible in these sprawling digital realms of the imaginary (Second Life etc.); disrupting mawkish “weddings” between over-sized pink tigers and anti-gravity boobed glamazons, asinine business conferences between pretend people selling pretend products for pretend money and po-faced “campaigns” by highly-strung role players. Griefers exhibit an unstoppable joi de vivre and healthy disregard for taste, decency and manners and we need more of them before the whole bloody planet gets Facebooked.

But I digress; hardware good, software bad. I’m afraid I don’t have any neater or pithier coda than that, just an ache in need of articulation. Like Sideshow Bob before me, I’m aware of the inherent irony of using a media in order to decry it. Unlike him, I do not propose it be abolished. What I think is sorely needed is reflection; we’re heading somewhere, but we’re going to fast to see the passing landscape and thereby appraise the likely destination. The way we receive information influences the way we process it, the conclusions drawn and ultimately the way we perceive and manage our world. As outlined above, the printing industry as we knew it has all but ceased to exist. The recording industry is set to follow. There are some in publishing who plan in earnest for the “end of paper”, expecting it early in the next decade. The recent American screenwriters strike and the accordant scarcity of new television has shown broadcasters just how willing audiences are to turn from spoon-fed scheduling and polished, “event” programming to self-selected channels, gaming and endless hours of amateur offerings. TV sets, phones, furniture; all become computers, computers become all. Certainly no one will die for lack of YouTube, but always, always, the gulf between those connected and those who are not widens. We face enough discord in the years ahead without an irreconcilable iGap between young and old, east and west and rich and poor. This needs debated, loudly, reasonably and quickly, and somewhere other than the self-serving blogosphere.

And with that, I exorcise the subject. Time to get back to what I came here for; big time, industrial strength geekery.

Foolishness

2008-04-01T09:33:09Z

Feel like reading some sweeping generalisations and blatant self-contradiction? Check out Jonah Goldberg in the LA Times.

Wow. Considering the date, I'd like to have thought this was a joke article. The guy's so off base I don't know were to begin.

First off, if you want to talk about "smugness", let's look at the contention that anyone who displays a "Darwin fish" exhibits moral cowardice. I'm hearing this a lot from certain Christian quarters these days, pissing and moaning about how "the media wouldn't dare" portray Jews or Muslims in the same way it does Christians. The general public don't greet criticism or plain mockery of Christianity in the same way they do the other big two because they know that a) the church's founder espoused non-violent, even meek acceptance of such treatment; b) that there's no active paramilitary Christian group currently engaged in campaigns of murder or intimidation (although if you work in the field of human fertility, your perspective might be different); and c) no nation in living memory made an industry of shovelled Christians into ovens. In time, we will blithely make films, books and cartoons that treat all three with the same amount of respect and contempt. In the past, Christians were executed on a mass scale, and later committed atrocities when given the upper hand. Those days are gone. That's cause for celebration, not disingenuous claims that the church is some kind of underdog, tired of being kicked around by all these secular superpowers. Right now, there's a good few raw Islamic and Judaic wounds and we're not quite ready to talk as freely and openly about those two as we do about the good old, established church that arguably hasn't given us any major grief since the Inquisition.

His comparison between the use of the fish symbol and the Star of David is utterly pathetic. Even those who don't fully understand the origins of the fish symbol know it's not THE emblem of Christian faith. The use of The Cross in a likewise manner would be offensive, and if it were happening Goldberg would be right to decry it. However his carping about the "cancer" at the heart of Islam- including, in his view, censorship and lack of freedom- does not sit well in the same article with the contention that those who make a joke about creationism are committing a hate crime. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the teaching of evolutionary theory in American schools still a very active debate? Aren't those who display this symbol adding their voice, in satirical mode, to that debate? If Christians have a problem with the Darwin fish, my advice remains the same as it ever was; instead of getting all idignant, make with some jokes, make them more often, louder and, above all, better than the non-believer. In that manner you'll retain the moral high ground so precious to you and you might just win the long lost middle ground too.

Sorry to spoil everyone's fun, but...

2008-03-31T14:54:08Z

Does an elephant know it's an elephant?
Does it know what an elephant looks like?
Does it know that other elephants are elephants?
Does it equate the other elephants it sees to the concept of "an elephant" and also to its own self-image?
Can it understand a two-dimensional representation of a three dimensional object?
Can it make decisions with regard to what are and are not the essential anatomical features of an elephant?
Can it make the necessary intuitive leaps to render those features as linear figures?
Does it see in full colour?
Does it make imaginary flights in its mind involving the distortion of spatial relationships and relative scale of objects?
Does it want to express these imaginings to human beings and does it comprehend that human beings have minds capable of interpreting that expression?
And finally, does it derive pleasure from the process?
Because the answer to all those questions has to be "yes" before this can be considered as anything other than as charmless and disturbing a sight as the self-same animal performing in a conga line or teetering atop a giant ball, and I dread to think what methods were used in order to have the beast do it.

Not dead. Just distracted.

2008-03-28T20:49:06Z

So, um, Happy Easter there. Yeah, fell off the radar for a bit.

Biggest bit of news would be that the Studio has its venue and date for the next major exhibition of Fizzers caricatures. We can't formally announce it yet, but we're excited.

Secondly, the Scottish Government finally published the Creative Scotland bill that will bring the country's new arts agency into being. The SAU already have some pretty strong opinions on it which will be published soon. Read here of a government that feels commercially driven endeavours like advertising, architecture, broadcasting, fashion and games software should be developed by the same body charged with the fine and performing arts, who want to push culture to the fore of society's agenda yet refuse to define it for fear of being "prohibitive and exclusive", who feel no need to give "statutory acknowledgement" to the self-same artists from whom true culture flows and then consider the terrifying implications; a Scotland where the "sexiest" ideas grab the funding, culture goes no further than marketing exercises and pretty much every day is Tartan Day.

Rant over.

I'm still working on my conclusive article about computers n'at, after which the topic will be banned from this blog. I'm also thinking about writing an essay about the Iron Man/Batman/Hellboy troika hitting cinemas soon. All three characters have, at one time or other, occupied the top of my favourite comics list so my eighteen year old self would be exploding with joy at this convergence. Whether or not I am now, and why, will be worth exploring. I think. But I'm a geek and a navel gazer. So why so at odds with the mores of the internet? Damn.

One eye looking at you, the other looking for you

2008-03-18T16:18:49Z

Went to Belfast over the weekend, my first visit to the city and indeed Northern Ireland despite it being the birth place of my paternal grandmother.

It is astonishing- truly astonishing- to see the transformation that is taking place on and around the Lagan. Belfast is still a city divided (physically by the "peace walls" as well as by poverty and by new racial tensions that are increasingly replacing the sectarian) but it is inconceivable to imagine some of the developments recently completed and in progress happening as lately as five years ago. A new court house that's not only bereft of a fortified wall, but made largely of glass? An open air shopping mall? An open-top tour bus that goes down the Shankhill and up the Falls road AND gets friendly waves as it passes churches on a Sunday?

People's memories cannot be that short. Indeed, some of the murals I saw indicate that there's some who have absolutely no intention of ever forgetting. The city will have to address the presence of gun-heavy murals by this minority and the still provocative grills, walls and fences that split street from street before it can hope to raise a generation of Catholics and Protestants entirely at ease with one another.

Nevertheless gable-end murals are an integral part of the culture of the city, should never be subjected to a ban, and I wanted to see them as but for few twists of fate and accident of birth I'd probably have found myself contributing to them. It was interesting to see the extent to which some painters have turned away from direct provocation to more simple commemoration (Bobby Sands and his compatriots; various civilian victims from both communities; a spectacularly boss-eyed Queen Mother) and have abandoned NI's troubles in favour of painting about distant lands. Cuba and Palestine are- perhaps unsurprisingly- high on the list for Republicans, but there's a fair amount of general Bush-bashing and murals about African nations too. Others prefer to dedicate wall space to the tiresome Celtic/Rangers clusterfuck, but its heartening to see the extent to which non-sectarian sport (particularly ice hockey) appears to have taken root and found a following in the city. Humour has always been an important part of dealing with and healing after any trauma and the people of Belfast have embraced it fully. I was particularly tickled by the plan to redevelop the ship yards area and replace every job that was lost when their industry withered. How? By building a "Titanic town", a new quarter of the city centre entirely dedicated to the disaster-stricken vessel. As one resident put it, "She was fine when we she left our yard, it's not our fault they put an English captain and Scottish first officer in charge..."

All in all it was a pleasant experience. It might have been nice to see a few more brown faces about the place but the reality is that the city has been a no-go area for outsiders of every sort (immigrants, investors, tourists) for so long that it's a sort of miracle the place is attracting the flurry of interest that it's currently getting. Long may it continue.

Signed With David Robertson's Pen

2008-03-10T23:57:43Z

As ever, I'm coming to the party about a year late, but over the weekend I discovered the salty humour of Limmy. I particularly enjoyed this:

Sure, it's just the average conversation one overhears on the Number 45 Pollock to Woodhill "banter bus" transferred to t'internet, but it's funny none the less. I also highly recommend Guy Fawkes, Yes or No, Nightmare and What Would You Do?, by the same performer. They're maybe not that good on their own, but when watched together they have an accumulative effect, rather like Gary Larson cartoons. Nicely inaccurate use of the word "play" throughout.

We'll all have to speak up

2008-03-10T23:38:34Z

I really, really don't know what to think about this.

I recently listened to a presentation by Dr Tom Shakespeare, a noted visual artist and academic who happens to have achrondoplasia, in which he made a similar statement to that being put forwatd by Tomato (?) Lichy and his partner; that there is no such thing as a disability, merely a circumstance that society does not readily accommodate. In other words, a better, more tolerant and egalitarian world would include no-one who could be considered disabled.

It's certainly a challenging and noble sentiment. Dr Shakespeare's condition clearly denies him only a few physical dimensions. His cognitive abilities and senses are fully realised, and so it's easier for "normal" people to swallow his proactive approach. His life experience cannot differ so very greatly from that of the majority, we can imagine being in his place and the prejudice and the set backs he encounters, admire his good-humoured but straight-talking ownership of the genetic card he's been dealt.

It's harder when a person who cannot experience the world in the same way that most do, as Mr Lichy and his family cannot, claims that his lack of a primary sense is not only not a disability, but speaks of the deaf as if they were a nation, one with a language, culture and traditions of its own. Mr Lichy bandies the words "eugenics" at anyone who claims his desire to intentionally bring another deaf child into the world is morally wrong; he sees no difference between the civil rights movements for women, ethnic minorities, lgbt groups and the disabled. To deny the latter the right to be born is as abominable as permitting no black children to born, says he.

For the moment I'll leave to one side the point that sign language can be acquired by hearing or non-hearing people, allowing both to engage in the "deaf culture" he describes, while nothing in the world can teach a deaf-from-birth child to hear. I listened to Mr Lichy and his partner speaking through an interpreter today. Time and again they used the example of their living, deaf and by all accounts happy and brilliant child as justification for actively choosing to have another with the same condition. Tellingly, they relied again and again on visual examples; the couple both work in a theatre company, so they frequently mentioned the child's joy in performing arts, invariably talking about colour and movement and so on.

So the question has to be asked of this pair of doting parents; are blind people disabled? If you were to be told one of your frozen embryos would certainly develop into a child who could hear but could not see, would you be thrilled at the opportunity to induct her into "blind culture" or would you pause? Reconsider? Consciously reject her in favour of another?

I'm loathe to condemn this couple, I think they are highlighting something that needs to be debated, but I'm saddened that they feel the need to be so wilfully contrary. Going so far as to describe a child who can hear as disabled and saying they "feel sorry" for John Humphries because he can't appreciate a joke told in sign language just makes them appear like post-libertarian weirdoes.

What happens to human gametes and embryos in future, as stem cell research continues apace, infertility spirals ever-upwards and we in the West have less children and later in life to boot, is crucial. Human organs likewise. Personally, I say donation of any and all tissue should be an opt-out, not opt-in proposition. Living people are more important than the dead and yet to be born, end of story. As for who gets to be born and who doesn't... Urgh.

All I can say is this. I always thought a hallmark of parenting was the aspiration that your children would have better, fuller, longer, happier, richer (in every sense) lives than your own. In appearing to campaign for the "right" to ensure their next child will not be able to do a thing that they also cannot do (the least loaded way I can put it), this couple might be at the cutting edge of societal dynamics but they're stretching the definition of familial love to breaking point.

a Life well spent

2008-03-04T22:41:55Z

Last night saw the final episode of what in all likelihood will be the last of David Attenborough's "sledgehammer" natural history series. Life in Cold Blood follows on from Life on Earth, The Living Planet, The Trials of Life, Life in the Freezer, The Private Life of Plants, The Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals and Life in the Undergrowth to form what must be the most stunning treatise on natural history ever broadcast, as convincing a call to the cause of conservation and testament to the unique power of television- making the remote and unfamiliar seem intimate and arresting- as one could wish for. Attenborough's voice and mannerisms wavered a little more than I'd seen before in this series. His delivery was always caricatured as hushed, but at times he seemed genuinely breathless. He also seemed to let more of his own opinions and feelings come through in the script. This felt like the end of his documentarian career and the beginning of another as commentator, even polemicist.

The final moments of the programme, as Attenborough sat in the company of "Lonesome George", the only living specimen of Pinta Island Tortoise in existence, were both poignant and weirdly metatextual. The animal is estimated to be of roughly the same age as the broadcaster; both are the last of their kind, and in the midst of their swan song. While Attenborough has suggested that we'll hear more from him on an occasional basis - and most likely on environmental issues- his globetrotting is over. The final shot, of the venerable man silhouetted in Galapagos mist, turning and disappearing amid the giant and ancient reptiles, was superb.

Attenborough's charm lies in his enthusiasm. He predates university courses in film and television and the rise of the career media luvvie. Indeed, he doesn't even have a doctorate in natural sciences. Therefore his enthusiasm is- in the strictest sense- that of the amateur, and it's infectious. He fled publishing to join the BBC back when there was no such thing as a documentary (factual programmes were called "talks", belying nascent tv's status as mere illustrated radio), much less one involving filming natural animal behaviour in parts foreign. His first forays on our screen were in Zoo Quest, a show that involved literally dragging animals out of the wild and back to the studio so the cameramen could get a decent shot at them. Said animals were then handed over to London Zoo.

Can you imagine such a show on television today? Belonging to no indoctrinated school of zoology, biology or any other -ology, Attenbrough's attitude to animals has changed and matured right along with those of the public he's sought to entertain and enlighten. We've always liked looking at them, but that enjoyment has changed from schoolboyish gawking and collecting, to a young man's perception of the natural world as a resource to be exploited, to a middle-aged appreciation of a garden in need of tlc through to this our ultimate and mature understanding of a global ecology brought to the brink by man's meddling and one that man's ingenuity must now put right if we want to continue Life As We Know It (you can have that one on me, Sir Dave). He hasn't needed a wheedling Greenpeace beardy to brow-beat him into toeing the lefty line; he's been around the damn planet often enough to know that something's up. How lucky that we've been able to join him in part, and have him point out all the most exciting sights.

I've touched on this before, but who can replace him? It's impossible to imagine any other voice currently heard on the BBC talking with even a tithe of Attenborough's authority on matters furry, scaled and slimy. Nigel Marven's blown what little credibility he had with his ridiculous cgi dino-wanks. That and he's as much screen presence as a sea cucumber. Alan Titchmarsh? I'd rather not have my natural history dished out by hands that write porn for grannies, thanks. Who else? Bill Oddie? Too nerdy. Michela Strachan? Too sentimental. That posh bird who looks a bit like Katie Melua? No. Simon King, maybe. Or bring back Julian Pettifer!

A sackish person

2008-02-20T23:09:03Z

It's been quite a week in the British courts, demonstrating either an unprecedented confidence on the part of defence lawyers or a new-found tolerance among judges for unutterable bullshit.

First up we hear from a bloke who'd have us believe that he did not kill a girl but did have sex with her freshly-slaughtered corpse, noticing neither her multiple bloody wounds nor her cold, unresponsive state.

Then we hear from a London shop-keeper whose son died in a car crash a while back, along with a girlfriend. You probably didn't read about it. Anyway, this man appears to live in a Britain lifted straight out of an episode of The Avengers, complete with shadow-governments, psycho blue-bloods and secret agents masquerading as television reporters.

However my star is the least-reported of the bunch, a postie in Perth up for drink-driving charges. His defence? Normal rules shouldn't apply to him, because he's a mutant.

It's begun! Homo superior is here! Choose a side! I'm with Magneto!

eBaylfully howling at the walls, blood spurting from my temples

2008-02-15T20:37:25Z

I'm no computer expert. I can't tinker with the bolier rooms of websites. Java's for drinking, not scripting. I've sat through tuition on Dreamweaver and been shocked by how hit and miss, see if it sticks the whole process of web design is, or at least appears to be. Sure, I can do a bit of html code, but that's as deep as my knowledge goes.

I've just spent the best part of three hours, on two different computers, trying to get an online auction going on eBay. Specifically, I've tried to set a reserve price on a lot. Forgive my old-fashioned thinking, but I don't think an auction is an auction without a reserve price. If you don't care how much you get, you're begging.

Anyway, this most popular of ecommerce sites, a system that children use daily, that cranially damaged spud-a-likes hooked to lung pumps sail through, transforms into a labyrinth of frustation and despair at my fingertips. This happens to me a lot. I have access to a top of the line machine, the broadest of bandwidths and a decent brain. Yet much of the worlwide web is a closed box. I can't post a video to YouTube without it stretching and squashing to the wrong aspect ratio. I can't get my head round Photoshop, Flash or Firefox. I recently found that out neither BitTorrent not iChat actually work at all, except as space fillers on my hardrive. I don't subscribe to any RSS feeds and, as previously outlined, find Facebook unrelentingly naff.

The gap is widening. Within the next decade I'll be the digital equivalent of Adam Adamant, hopelessly unmoored from comtemporary life, hamfistedly trying to ram my usb dongle (and what cretin coined that particular gem, pray?)into the most intimate neural wet ports of a 700 tetrabyte, wah-fuhr theen zMac Ghost or whatever the hell.

Oh, double balls and bollocks.

Unreported strokes, retards' cricket and "I'm on first names with the postman" bollocks...

2008-02-14T19:36:18Z

Britain's love affair with wittering, breathless, sexless, woeful chantreusses continues. After Katie Melua and Sandi Thom, step up Kate Rusby and her cover of The Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society. This record neatly combines the meandering, dopey lists-as-lyrics of Melua with mind-shatteringly irritating Thom style "nostalgia for a time I didn't actually live in". The thing that gets my goat most is the inclusion of "Donald Duck" along with all the imagery of a WI-ran rural England long since lost. The invocation of a character belonging to one of the most rapacious megacorporations in the world is bad enough, but that they should pick one who is typically seen lathered in a beligerent, incoherent, violent frenzy of misanthropy... Wait. Actually, he's perfect. I can't think of a cartoon character that more closely resembels the Daily Mail-reading yahoos at whom this release is aquarely aimed.

Has anyone else noticed how the plot of pretty much every episode of "adult" Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood is either predicated or at least partly depends upon how stunningly attractive the main characters are, despite the fact they are played by a typically pasty troop of sub-Casualty jobbing actors? For example, in the first show of this second series guest villain James Marsters straight-facedly referred to this bloke as "eye candy". Last night, on BBC 3, Freema Agyeman turned up for a spot of inter-series nod and winkery. A genuinely attractive woman, by the internal logic of the drama all narrative should have ceased as our bunch of bi-curious alien-busters greeted her like a paragon of female sexuality, falling to the floor in paroxysms of orgasmic joy. Meh. Bring on Dave Ross, says I.

Speaking of hit-and-miss BBC 3 drama, did anyone else bother with Phoo Action? Jamie Hewlett's work is poorly served by live action adaptation; just how shitty the ill-fated Tank Girl movie is becomes clear when you consider the last ninety seconds of it, which constitute one of the most thrilling and well-executed pieces of animation seen on cinema screens in the nineties. Shame they had to be preceded by as many minutes of unfunny, lazy film. Based on his Get the Freebies comic strips, Phoo Action came off like a love child of The Banana Splits, the sixties Batman tv show and Kill Bill. On paper, that sounds like tv made for Tel, especially when you factor in the cartoonist author and presence of Spaced's Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson) on the writers' list. In practice the hour long show was in need of liberal use of the red pen; the observations on celebrity culture and mass media- Hewlett's original target back in the day- were welcome. But it was overloaded with non-sequiters and half-assed jokes. The show looks fantastic, but it's not up to Hewlett's simian-themed best (be it Monkeys or Gorillaz). I note six more episodes have been commissioned sight unseen, all to be filmed in Glasgow. If nothing else, the increased chance of encountering a basketball-headed goblin on Buchanan Street is a reason to be cheerful.

Decadal felicitation

2008-02-04T16:54:14Z

Ten years ago, pretty much to the minute, this happened:

SCCAM Club, Blackfriars Pub, Glasgow's Merchant City

I can't imagine most folk have a photo taken at the moment the defining relationship of their lives commenced. It's a mixed blessing... Nice to have it recorded, but not so great to be reminded how damn goofy one looked at the time. On Y's face I can see traces of fatigue, perhaps the beginning of the post-viral malaise that blighted our first eighteen months together. On mine, aside from the unfortunate expression (© my mother), there's a lovely goatee of acne that makes me look like I sustained a shot-gun blast to the chin. Let this be a lesson to all you kids; dressing like a Dutch pornographer need not stand as an obstacle to true love.

Compare the shot above to the latest one of the two of us.

At this rate we'll resemble catalogue models when we hit forty.

Despite my demeanour in the top portrait, I was not drunk at the time. That would have been a few month's previous, our literal first meeting, at which point I was hopelessly intoxicated and far too concerned with keeping my vomit down to be aware of any Kashmiri princesses batting their eyelashes at me. Y and I have compared histories, and we're not sure that boozy night in Edinburgh was the first time we'd been in the same room either. We think our seventeen-year-old selves were within yards of one another on a particular afternoon.

Two kids who grew up in west-central Scotland bumping into each other more than once does not prove the whole concept of romantic destiny. Events could very easily have transpired otherwise. Had things gone as planned for me- by me- I'd have still been in the States at the moment this photo was taken. Had life panned out at as prescribed for Y- by others- she'd have been in the back of beyond, married to the village idiot. Never mind all the incidental "for want of a nail"-style coin tosses that had to go in our favour to make it third time lucky that night in the basement of Blackfriars. Our hooking up when we did was random. Yet discounting a higher power or cosmic force shouldn't devalue what happened, diminish how wonderfully fortunate it was, especially in terms of timing. Both of us had little in the way of commitments, allowing us the freedom to truly invest in one another. Were we to meet now, all things being equal, I'm not sure we'd last.

Does that sound like I'm saying we just "settled"? Hardly. Y, by her own admission, was a judgemental bitch at this point. And I was border-line misogynist. We were both clanking through life in great hulking suits of spiky armour. All that fell away, rapidly, beautifully, totally, in each other's company and in a way that it hadn't with anyone else we'd ever met.

These two photographs illustrate how much healthier we are now than then, but that's no great revelation. Every clinical study indicates that marriage or long-term partnerships improve our physical well being. What's not so abundant is the changes that have gone on inside. I cannot easily reconcile the man I am now with the one who wrote- scant weeks before meeting Y- about sitting alone and weeping as "the curiosity, the awe, the fear... slowly darkens into enmity, reproach and hatred." This is the diary of a horny proto-sociopath. Thank your lucky stars I didn't keep a LiveJournal back then, dear reader; your eyes would have bled with the maudlin wank of it all and I would have been arrested for crimes against language. Y has improved, enriched and enlarged my life and my self in too many ways to list, and to do so would only embarrass her yet more than I already have.

Suffice it to say my life proper reaches it's first decade tonight. I can't wait to see what comes next.

Damon Albarn as a cereal-pushing monkey

2008-01-26T01:44:56Z

An unexpectedly long absence from the blog, broken by- what else?- irritation.

Advertisers: do you think you could, as a matter of extreme urgency, come up with some words to describe your products other than "fun" and "cool"?

Food, in particular, can be described in many verbose and flowery ways. But outside of a Hal Roach finalé and the nauseating extremities of "sloshing" it cannot be considered fun and is only ever as cool as the refrigerator that houses it.

Yet the Kelloggs company are currently opening one of their tv spots with the statement "We all know how much fun Coco-Pops and milk are." Really? Am I missing something? Coco Pops are a pretty black and white proposition, I think, either delicious or emetic. But they can't enliven your breakfast with a song and dance number, give you a challenging set or two of tennis, dazzle you with anecdotes about life on the road with their jazz quartet, teach you magic tricks or randomly sling fluorescent cuddly toys at passers-by. I think you'd have to have lived in a sensory deprivation tank for a considerable length of time before pushing chocolate flavoured puffed rice into your head could be considered fun.

"Fun" is in danger of losing its linguistic currency through over-use, in the same way that "fine" has slipped from meaning something of the highest quality to anything just this side of okay and "nice" now equates with the very faintest blip on the pleasure-meter rather than something beautifully subtle and precise. Pretty soon, everything short of having one's body rent asunder by wild jackals will be covered by the term "fun".

But worse by far is "cool". Cool is now the copy-writer's description of choice for something that's either stultifyingly uninspiring or ethically troublesome, yet must be portrayed positively if the commercial is to succeed. Case in point, the advert for a how-to-be-jailbait-comic based on tv show Zoe 101 which manages to describe itself and its associated bits and pieces as cool no less than three times in the space of fifteen seconds.

That a bit of slang coined in the fifties is so ubiquitous in contemporary advertising proves the extent to which an industry that prides itself on its ability to measure what they insist on calling the zeitgeist is hopelessly unmoored from reality. A good example of this is the advert for Orville Redenbacher's Microwave Popcorn. In this, a typically buffoonish tv dad (the way men are portrayed as a race of useless twits on British television is a subject Charlie Brooker's explored to hilarious effect, so I won't touch it) tells his moppet children they're having popcorn tonight, but does it amid an impression of W.C. Fields. The male child is sufficiently delighted by this to exclaim "Cool!" The very idea that a child would get excited over such a niggardly treat as unsalted, unbuttered, uncaramel-and-peanutted microwave popcorn is a stretch, but that he'd be amused by a reference to a screen actor who died about fifty-five years before his birth requires a brain bruising suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, what else? I've been busy since the New Year, but in the worst way, doing a hell of a lot of administrative and otherwise non-drawing tasks. Taking care of business, I guess. Still, there's been time to squeeze in a fair bit of caricaturing and a piece for today's paper. And I've had an unbroken run of six weeks so far on the Toon Weekly site (link on the left). Lots happening on the political front too; there's a big cultural summit happening in February, also the month in which consultation on the proposed replacement for Disclosure Certification closes... Long story short, it's an unfair tax on the self-employed. Speaking of tax, I'm also lining up meetings with all the various party political spokespersons to see if we can't hold the SNP to their promised tax break for Scottish artists. Planning on having a week-long presence in the parliament itself later this year too.

Plans for Feb's anniversary (Y & I will have been together for a decade) have been abandoned thanks to the intransigence of her employer. All focus now on the summer trip out West. This weekend is family, family, family though. A brother and sister-and-law we haven't seen properly for almost a year, an uncle recently turned fifty and a grandmother about to turn seventy-five. Should be fun. And cool.

Postscript: Except it won't be quite so much, because despite their much vaunted interconnnectedness on goodhardpunchintheFacebook, the various members of my family certainly love and cherish but don't actually talk to each other. Important information isn't passed on, yet pretend cartoon animals are fed imaginary treats. This is progress!

Like gladiators, but fluffier

2008-01-10T14:12:50Z

Hard to imagine what an extra-terrestrial intelligence would have made of last night's British television, as our attitude toward other species was examined.

Things kicked off in firmly grim territory as the newscasts covered a staggering case of mass neglect, some hundred or more equines having been left to starve to death on a farm in Buckinghamshire. This was followed by cuter fare with BBC1's Elephant Diaries. Orphaned elephants, hand-reared and prepared for a return to the wild in a Kenyan national park. Bit unfortunate, considering all the recent strife in the region, that the whole thing should come off as such a relic of colonial Africa; dutiful black males working under a blubbery white matriarch. Lots of tacit references to the quasi-mystical bond that exists between the animals, blatant anthropomorphous characterisation and, as the coup de grace, a tiny and half-blind calf trained to follow the sound of a keeper's stick hitting the ground, whose health and vision return only to suddenly go off its food and die by end credits. Hankies all round.

Next up, as part of Channel 4's ongoing The Big Food Fight season, mop-topped River Cottage-dwelling organic foodie Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chicken Run three-parter reached its conclusion. Again, strange timing, as it hit our screens on the day the government announced an up-coming ban on battery-farmed eggs. The point of the C4 show was to highlight the difference between the quality of life for free-range and intensively farmed table birds and to explode the often exaggerated difference in cost. This was interspersed with Fearnley-Whittingstall's experiments in attitudinal change, both micro (encouraging a handful of families to rear and then slaughter their own chickens) and macro (attempting to confront the major retailers over their often misleading labelling and presentation of chicken meat). A month-long campaign to turn Axminster into Britain's first free-range town was, by the cook's admission, a failure; so long as the pub-dwellers of the town resented the haranguing of a bloke off the telly, whom they suspected of self-aggrandisement, and take-away proprietors laboured under the belief that they'd have to charge £15 for a free-range kebab, the initiative was doomed.

What the show had in common with a later offering, BBC3's Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, as well as programmes to come in The Big Food Fight season (especially the heavily trailed Jamie's Fowl Dinners, in which it appears the lisping Mockney will mince live chicks in front of some vomiting diners) was frank depictions of slaughter and butchery. This trend reached its apotheosis in yesterday's episode of the BBC3 show, now in its second series and subtitled The Baby Story, as it focused on the perennial bette noir of veal. In the space of an hour long programme, a number of live veal calves where slaughtered, cleaned, butchered and their meat cooked and eaten on camera. The producers attempted to maintain as clinical a point of view as possible, claiming the manner in which veal calves are raised- especially in this country- is not necessarily as unpleasant as many believe while underlining that male calves are an unwanted part of the dairy industry and will be killed regardless of whether they are to end up smothered in aubergines and parmesan or not. However, confronted with widdle baby cows, they could not resist a small streak of sentimentality, referring to two calves as "brothers". Even if this were semantically accurate (unlikely, since dairy cows generally have just one calf a year) it's needlessly emotive language in what purports to be frank analysis of meat production.

Taken as a whole, the only possible conclusion that could be drawn from these shows is that 21st century Britons are hopelessly at sea over animals. The cosy, dewey-eyed wildlife docudramas are nothing new, but what are we to make of these new "hard edged" meat critiques? What is their ultimate purpose? To bait animal rights activists? Promulgate vegetarianism? Outrage censorious busybodies? Lure gore-porn addicts? Shame capitalists? Indict the working class meat eater?

One of the audience invited to the veal programme charged those who happily consume milk, butter and cheese but not veal with hypocrisy, saying we must either support the dairy industry in consuming all its produce or opt out entirely. That's precisely what another guest did, a vegetarian claiming on-the-spot conversion to veganism. Admittedly, her stance seemed to based less on a sound analysis of the rights and wrongs of farming and more a visceral reaction to the sight of an animal's death. "That's a life," she said, "I don't need to take that life to survive." Btw, I'm heartily sick of this "survival" argument; there are many, many things humans don't need to survive. If that's your rationale behind dietary choices, why not abandon clothing, housing, culture and language as well, because all we need to "survive"- albeit for far less than four score and ten- is a hole in the ground, some dry sticks to burn and pointy ones to dig up tubers. I'll say it again; animals rights are a red herring. The proper and more challenging debate is about what humans have and have not the right to do to animals and each other. It's a subtle difference but a crucial one, as it denies grave-robbing, guinea pig loving lunatics any claim to the moral high ground.

Should the ethics of consumerism be publicly debated? Absolutely. Does the contention that the shopping basket is more powerful than the ballot box hold true? Probably, sadly, yes. But it's a shame that our moral quandry over delicious, nutritious, bloody, lethal meat is so often allowed to mask the greater and surely more important human misery that fuels almost everything else on our shopping lists. The injustices that bring us our coffee, tea, sugar, chocolate, fruit & veg and cut-price clothing. A documentary about sustainable land management, food miles, carbon emissions, low-paid workers, child welfare, international trade subsidies and tax reform, however, will never be as sensational as one in which an animal's throat is cut as it twitches on the meat hook. That we are exercised at all by the plight of a lame African beast while African humans still starve is a pitiful statement on us all. And the celebrity tub-thumpers play on, determined to disgust and scare us now we've become inured to their simple nagging.

Contemplate "sending a message" via how you spend your money by all means, but think about how you spend your evenings as well.

"Ella, ella, ella..."

2008-01-07T12:51:31Z

My big resolution for this year is simply to draw more: not just the stuff I'm obliged to draw but to accept more challenges, stretch certain atrophying muscles (like at Toon Weekly) and do more just for fun, like this.

Apropos of nothing, I witnessed a glorious incident on the bus from Glasgow through to Linwood (paradise!) on Saturday night. I had my 'phones in, so can't swear to every word that was spoken but the essentials were clear enough.

Every four minutes or so I was aware of shouting from the rear of the bus. It was so regular and incessant that I assumed it was coming from a Tourette's sufferer. As Paisley Road West shaded into Glasgow Road, however, the shouter made his way to the front where I could see him and it became apparent he was just a drunken arse, swigging from some alcopop or other. Late twenties, I'd say, but pretty nondescript. Just another Buckie-soaked Weggie.

Anyway, from his seat that's facing away from the bus door and towards everyone else, he starts directing comments to a younger guy and his girlfriend two rows down. Not quite a goth, but a willowy black-clad chap with an umbrella (always an open invitation to forensic examination from Glasgow wags in my experience, along with hat wearing). Between these two is an elderly woman, who's clearly not comfortable being in the middle of the exchange. She gets off at the next available stop, and Alcopop makes a move to do the same. It's at this point that something is said by Umbrella, probably a parting shot or a warning to leave the woman alone.

Alcopop turns on his heel, gets in Umbrella's face, says something else (I'd imagine insulting) and gets right back in his seat, facing the young couple with a typical wide-o expression and posture that made it clear they'd be enjoying his company for as long as they stayed on the bus, and probably afterwards. Alcopop had made two crucial miscalculations in his boozey fugue.

1- The collective will of the entire bus had turned against him.
2- Umbrella may have been slender of frame, but was a good foot and half taller than him.

Within a second of retaking his seat, Alcopop was bodily dragged from his chair by Umbrella with a hearty "Get tae fuck!", and was halfway out the door that the driver had casually and wordlessly opened. Alcopop braced himself in the doorway, at which point a female voice behind me shouted "Remember he's got a bottle!", i.e. an impromptu weapon. Quick as a wink, a stocky, pierced, camo type bloke gets up, takes Alcopop by the ankles and "wheelbarrows" him out onto the street.

The driver promptly shut the door, and by the time Alcopop had got back to his feet the bus was pulling away, filling with cheers and applause. All he could do was stand with both hands pointing and the classic pinched mouth, eyebrow raised expression of thwarted bams everywhere. Camo got pats on the back, Umbrella- I can safely assume- later got laid.