Friday, December 23, 2005
Epilogue 2005
Soldier Side - System of a Down
They were crying when their sons left
God is wearing black
He's gone so far to find no hope
He's never coming back
They were crying when their sons left
All young men must go
He's come so far to find no truth
He's never going home
God is wearing black
He's gone so far to find no hope
He's never coming back
They were crying when their sons left
All young men must go
He's come so far to find no truth
He's never going home
Welcome to the soldier side
Where there is no one here but me
People all grow up to die
There is no one here but me
Welcome to the soldier side
There is no one here but me
People on the soldier side
There is no one here but me
Soldier Side - System of a Down
Friday, December 16, 2005
The "C" Word
Lithium. One of my favourite alakli metals (behind Sodium, of course), this will turn crimson when you cook it. It can be used to combat mania and depression. So eat up you miserable bastard.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. Gordon is also a bit of a sadist to animals, and if I can get serious for a bit, the events on yesterday's show were absolutely disgraceful. In the preceding weeks Gordon has been growing his Chrsitmas dinner. He has kept a pen of Turkeys in his garden, named them after other chefs he didn't like and let his kids play with them. Every week he paraded them in front of the camera, boasting about how they would end up in his stomach, joking about how they be slaughtered. Yesterday he went through with it, showing their deaths in a mobile slaugher unit in his garden. As he walked them to their deaths he continued to brag, almost as if he was proud in having had the fortune to be born higher up in the food chain.
Now, eating an animal is one thing. Most of us do it. And while we do so, we generally don't fantasize about how it was killed. That's a fetish. It's worse than playing with your food and it implies that Ramsey is a rather small and insecure man who needs to dominate to stop feeling like a retard.
And just like Jamie Oliver has his school meals campaign, so Ramsey has his. To get women back into the kitchen. Apparently too few women know how to cook, not too few people, too few women. That's very Victorian of him. Perhaps I may suggest a campaign to make more children seen and not heard, or one to get more black people back on slave galleys. Get with the times you megalomaniac wingnut.
So, in conclusion, I hate Gordon Ramsey. How mature of me. But seriously, a culture that encourages more of this nasty behaviour is not one I want to prolong. Assholes like Ramsey need cutting down to size. Some may claim he is like that because he is so driven and focussed, a perfectionist. Perhaps, but he is a very selective perfectionist. People skills, communication and tolerance are arts too.
Next week we can say goodbye to The F Word, which, even by today's standards, is a rather nasty show. In today's Britain we can't get enough of TV programmes dominated with conceited bullies like Simon Cowell and the absolutely loaded but totally uncreative hectors on The Dragon's Den. In the TV cookery world (and regrettably this flourishing world is not facing impending doom from too many gas emissions) Gordon Ramsey is the poster boy for sadism. Over the last few years he has mugged for the camera while browbeating chefs younger than him, coming out with awful, rehearsed one-liners and swearing like a true grown up.
In the F Word we get a good look at what new chefs can expect when entering his kitchen for the first time. If they are nervous than it's perfectly justified; Ramsey oversees a true hell's kitchen full of sweat and testosterone, a masculine world where young chefs can look forward to being called "big boy" (oh dear...) in the brief intervals when they are not getting clobbered. And they shouldn't expect to learn anything. While Ramsey may tell the camera that he is offering a young chef the chance to work in his kitchen (the implication being that he is really rather noble and wants to bring out the best in these young saps), he clearly has no intention of developing their culinary skills, certainly not while the film is rolling. He waves away any young chefs that want to ask him a question, clarify matters or actually learn something, telling them to shut up, and bawls at the ones that don't ask questions, don't learn his methodology and fuck things up. It's a lose-lose situation for anybody who hasn't cooked the recipe beforehand (and bear in mind that these are very obscure and pretentious recipes that a prize-winning 100 year-old martian who has travelled the universe and back while also running a three-Michelin Star restaurant might not be familiar with). Instead they should telepathically know exactly how Big-boy Ramsey wants things done beforehand. Last week he gave one poor lady this precise treatment, telling her to shut up when she wanted a detail of the new recipe made clear. She was visibly shaken and later accidentally served raw bacon, resulting in her being kicked out of the kitchen. It was obvious that she was concentrating so much on not offending Big-boy that more important matters slipped her mind. Yesterday he tried to encourage one of his strapping chefs. "Come on big-boy", he said, "bend those bones". Coming from an ex-footballer who retired early through injury,that is exceptionally stupid advice.
All this creates a very nasty contrast with his other side: Gordon the obsequious schmoozer, who leaves the kitchen now and then (well, quite a lot actually) to gush all other his wealthy guests, especially the celebrities. Many a time he will plonk himself down at a table with a bunch of young ladies and start talking about the food in laborious detail, babbling on about the texture, the essence, the hidden ingredients, how it slide dow the throat, how it slides out the arse. I certainly wouldn't want my night out ruined by some control-freak tit who wants to sit at my table and talk about food. That to me sounds like a miserable evening out. If I want to talk about food, I'll go to a seminar on chicken. Fuck OFF and let us eat. (Actually, a good idea for those who do enjoy prattling on about food, when The F Word comes out on special edition, deluxe, sneezeproof DVD, go to the "extra features and deleted scenes" option that they all have. While Hollywood movies have tiresome documentaries showing how the stunts were done - ["obviously we couldn't ACTUALLY shoot this scene on Mars, so we used a blue-screen" duh!] - The F Word might just treat you to an in focus, blow-by-blow account of how Gordon makes his desserts. Just think: "Gordon Ramsey; Behind the Flan"). It's just as excruciating watching Ramsey talk normally as watching him shout abuse. At normal volume he strains like he's taking a shit, his face curlig up and his eyes bulging in their sockets.
One thing is for sure, this show isn't really done with a cookery-loving audience in mind. Every week he shows us a recipe, without really telling us how to make it. Sure, all chefs have their presenting styles, from Delia Smith overly cautiously spelling everything out to Jamie Oliver liberally dumping his ingredients in a pan. Gordon's technique is to list the ingredients in a gravelly voice, without ever giving us measurements or timings. One monologue on yesterday's show (he was cooking 'Sea Bass with Pepper Sauce') went: "Salt. Basil. White wine vinegar. Reduce" What? For how long, how much? Another went: "Score. Salt. Thyme. Olive oil". He is not so much teaching us how to cook as narrating a competition in his thick head where various ingredients compete to find out which is hardest. He never told us how long to cook our sea bass for, which is handy because I'm still working on the beef wellington I started last month. It's turned grey. Is it ready yet?
And would you want it anyway, this pretentious slop? As I mentioned earlier, this is not food you eat. You might photograph it or paint an oil painting of it. Gordon often looks like he wants to have sex with it (clue: don't kill the animal beforehand Big-boy). It wont feed you. Gordon's fetish for decoratig his meals is most clearly seen in the weekly competition he has with a celebrity guest. Both prepare a dessert, like chocolate brownies or fig tart. There is a recuuring theme with this part of the show: Gordon welcomes the guest (schmoozing), Gordon and guest start recipe, Gordon adds lots of extra shit (nuts in a chocolate brownie? you TWAT), Gordon tells guest they will lose, panel of tasters eat both and declare the guest to be the winner because it tastes like food and not like an antique, Gordon throws a strop and declares that the panel don't know what real food is. The food in his restaurant is even worse. Gordon probably insists that he is adventurous and sophisticated. pah! Strictly for his benefit, here are some ingredients he should try for the next series. Just to help:
The poison dart frog, belonging to the family of Dendrobatidae. They receive their name from the toxin pumiliotoxin found in their skin (cook the skin Gordon). The most poisonous variety is Phyllobates terribilis, also kown as the golden poison dart frog, presumably because it is covered in a crisp, tasty batter. You can separate the poison by roasting them over a fire (don't bother with that part Gordon). And if a fellow chef is pissing him off, Gordon can use the poison on his arrows (you do carry arrows, don't you Big-boy?)
Sulphuric acid. Discovered in the 9th century by Persian physician and alchemist Ibn Zakariya al-Razi, this would be an intersting addition to any meal. While killjoys might point out that this kills (the famous rhyme goes: "Johnny was a chemist's son, but Johnny is no more. What Johnny thought was H2O was H2SO4") people and causes acid rain, real men drink it with their Guiness.
Platypus. The only venomous mammal, this wont kill you, but it will uspset the tummy, forcing you to throw up that shitty appetiser you were served, which sounds nice, but translates from the French as: goat's balls doused in whale semen.
In the F Word we get a good look at what new chefs can expect when entering his kitchen for the first time. If they are nervous than it's perfectly justified; Ramsey oversees a true hell's kitchen full of sweat and testosterone, a masculine world where young chefs can look forward to being called "big boy" (oh dear...) in the brief intervals when they are not getting clobbered. And they shouldn't expect to learn anything. While Ramsey may tell the camera that he is offering a young chef the chance to work in his kitchen (the implication being that he is really rather noble and wants to bring out the best in these young saps), he clearly has no intention of developing their culinary skills, certainly not while the film is rolling. He waves away any young chefs that want to ask him a question, clarify matters or actually learn something, telling them to shut up, and bawls at the ones that don't ask questions, don't learn his methodology and fuck things up. It's a lose-lose situation for anybody who hasn't cooked the recipe beforehand (and bear in mind that these are very obscure and pretentious recipes that a prize-winning 100 year-old martian who has travelled the universe and back while also running a three-Michelin Star restaurant might not be familiar with). Instead they should telepathically know exactly how Big-boy Ramsey wants things done beforehand. Last week he gave one poor lady this precise treatment, telling her to shut up when she wanted a detail of the new recipe made clear. She was visibly shaken and later accidentally served raw bacon, resulting in her being kicked out of the kitchen. It was obvious that she was concentrating so much on not offending Big-boy that more important matters slipped her mind. Yesterday he tried to encourage one of his strapping chefs. "Come on big-boy", he said, "bend those bones". Coming from an ex-footballer who retired early through injury,that is exceptionally stupid advice.
All this creates a very nasty contrast with his other side: Gordon the obsequious schmoozer, who leaves the kitchen now and then (well, quite a lot actually) to gush all other his wealthy guests, especially the celebrities. Many a time he will plonk himself down at a table with a bunch of young ladies and start talking about the food in laborious detail, babbling on about the texture, the essence, the hidden ingredients, how it slide dow the throat, how it slides out the arse. I certainly wouldn't want my night out ruined by some control-freak tit who wants to sit at my table and talk about food. That to me sounds like a miserable evening out. If I want to talk about food, I'll go to a seminar on chicken. Fuck OFF and let us eat. (Actually, a good idea for those who do enjoy prattling on about food, when The F Word comes out on special edition, deluxe, sneezeproof DVD, go to the "extra features and deleted scenes" option that they all have. While Hollywood movies have tiresome documentaries showing how the stunts were done - ["obviously we couldn't ACTUALLY shoot this scene on Mars, so we used a blue-screen" duh!] - The F Word might just treat you to an in focus, blow-by-blow account of how Gordon makes his desserts. Just think: "Gordon Ramsey; Behind the Flan"). It's just as excruciating watching Ramsey talk normally as watching him shout abuse. At normal volume he strains like he's taking a shit, his face curlig up and his eyes bulging in their sockets.
One thing is for sure, this show isn't really done with a cookery-loving audience in mind. Every week he shows us a recipe, without really telling us how to make it. Sure, all chefs have their presenting styles, from Delia Smith overly cautiously spelling everything out to Jamie Oliver liberally dumping his ingredients in a pan. Gordon's technique is to list the ingredients in a gravelly voice, without ever giving us measurements or timings. One monologue on yesterday's show (he was cooking 'Sea Bass with Pepper Sauce') went: "Salt. Basil. White wine vinegar. Reduce" What? For how long, how much? Another went: "Score. Salt. Thyme. Olive oil". He is not so much teaching us how to cook as narrating a competition in his thick head where various ingredients compete to find out which is hardest. He never told us how long to cook our sea bass for, which is handy because I'm still working on the beef wellington I started last month. It's turned grey. Is it ready yet?
And would you want it anyway, this pretentious slop? As I mentioned earlier, this is not food you eat. You might photograph it or paint an oil painting of it. Gordon often looks like he wants to have sex with it (clue: don't kill the animal beforehand Big-boy). It wont feed you. Gordon's fetish for decoratig his meals is most clearly seen in the weekly competition he has with a celebrity guest. Both prepare a dessert, like chocolate brownies or fig tart. There is a recuuring theme with this part of the show: Gordon welcomes the guest (schmoozing), Gordon and guest start recipe, Gordon adds lots of extra shit (nuts in a chocolate brownie? you TWAT), Gordon tells guest they will lose, panel of tasters eat both and declare the guest to be the winner because it tastes like food and not like an antique, Gordon throws a strop and declares that the panel don't know what real food is. The food in his restaurant is even worse. Gordon probably insists that he is adventurous and sophisticated. pah! Strictly for his benefit, here are some ingredients he should try for the next series. Just to help:
The poison dart frog, belonging to the family of Dendrobatidae. They receive their name from the toxin pumiliotoxin found in their skin (cook the skin Gordon). The most poisonous variety is Phyllobates terribilis, also kown as the golden poison dart frog, presumably because it is covered in a crisp, tasty batter. You can separate the poison by roasting them over a fire (don't bother with that part Gordon). And if a fellow chef is pissing him off, Gordon can use the poison on his arrows (you do carry arrows, don't you Big-boy?)
Sulphuric acid. Discovered in the 9th century by Persian physician and alchemist Ibn Zakariya al-Razi, this would be an intersting addition to any meal. While killjoys might point out that this kills (the famous rhyme goes: "Johnny was a chemist's son, but Johnny is no more. What Johnny thought was H2O was H2SO4") people and causes acid rain, real men drink it with their Guiness.
Platypus. The only venomous mammal, this wont kill you, but it will uspset the tummy, forcing you to throw up that shitty appetiser you were served, which sounds nice, but translates from the French as: goat's balls doused in whale semen.
Lithium. One of my favourite alakli metals (behind Sodium, of course), this will turn crimson when you cook it. It can be used to combat mania and depression. So eat up you miserable bastard.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. Gordon is also a bit of a sadist to animals, and if I can get serious for a bit, the events on yesterday's show were absolutely disgraceful. In the preceding weeks Gordon has been growing his Chrsitmas dinner. He has kept a pen of Turkeys in his garden, named them after other chefs he didn't like and let his kids play with them. Every week he paraded them in front of the camera, boasting about how they would end up in his stomach, joking about how they be slaughtered. Yesterday he went through with it, showing their deaths in a mobile slaugher unit in his garden. As he walked them to their deaths he continued to brag, almost as if he was proud in having had the fortune to be born higher up in the food chain.
Now, eating an animal is one thing. Most of us do it. And while we do so, we generally don't fantasize about how it was killed. That's a fetish. It's worse than playing with your food and it implies that Ramsey is a rather small and insecure man who needs to dominate to stop feeling like a retard.
And just like Jamie Oliver has his school meals campaign, so Ramsey has his. To get women back into the kitchen. Apparently too few women know how to cook, not too few people, too few women. That's very Victorian of him. Perhaps I may suggest a campaign to make more children seen and not heard, or one to get more black people back on slave galleys. Get with the times you megalomaniac wingnut.
So, in conclusion, I hate Gordon Ramsey. How mature of me. But seriously, a culture that encourages more of this nasty behaviour is not one I want to prolong. Assholes like Ramsey need cutting down to size. Some may claim he is like that because he is so driven and focussed, a perfectionist. Perhaps, but he is a very selective perfectionist. People skills, communication and tolerance are arts too.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Mel P: Stupid Spice
A rather haphazard article on the Australian riots by Melanie Phillips today shows her best and worst sides. She veers on the side of common sense and moderation on a few occasions, but the overall tone of the article is yet another swipe at multi-culturalism, with question marks hanging over her proposed solution to violence by Muslim immigrants (send them all to the Middle East? Ban them coming in?) and what her precise feelings are over a religion which is practiced in a largely peaceful manner. But worst of all, she repeatedly shows what a twisted bigot she can be, in an article that could offend Arabs, Muslims, Aborigines, Swedes and the Danish. Oh, and me. Nice work.
She starts off by writing the few facts we know for sure, and then quotes, at great length, a retired policeman and a journalist. After doing her usual cut and paste job she concludes:
"As in Britain, the white racists in Australia appear to be exploiting a situation which has been allowed to get completely out of hand. Racists are parasites who attach themselves to a decaying organism and feed off it. But the organism wouldn't attract them if it wasn't already decaying. Britain, France, Australia, Sweden — variations of the same phenomenon are happening all over the western world. Aggression and denial, creating a spiral of ever-worsening aggression, all because of a paralysis in acknowledging, let alone dealing with, the true nature of what we are all facing."
~and now, the part where she is taken apart~
Firstly, what is this "organism?" Speak in metaphors all you like love, we can't figure out what you want if you don't state it clearly. We can reconstruct CSI-style, what she might be on about by consulting her previous written crimes. She, like many other more reasonable commentators, demands a reassessment of Islam by people across the world. She wants states in the Middle East to get with the times and the Muslims living here to adopt our values. Putting to what extent this has actually happened aside, how would she want this change effected? Islam is not like Catholicism, where a central authority can decree appropriate behaviour and pass it off as God’s word. Its practitioners are as diffuse as they are voluminous, with liberal movements contrasting with the fanatical terrorists with which we are all well-acquainted. The extent to which Islam can be reconciled with decent values is getting to be a rather tiresome debate these days, but, as always, it might help to bear in mind that the problems come from a tiny sector of Muslims. This is oft-repeated but true.
Not that Islam is the issue. When Jason Burke flayed Melanie Phillips for her drivel on the Parisian riots, one major criticism he had (and which she never responded to) was the way that she repeatedly leapt between labelling the perpetrators Muslims (their religion, apparently. I mean, did some researcher go out into the flames and ask the faith of every dark-skinned man kicking up a fuss?) and Arabs (their ethnicity). He called it “dangerous nonsense” and he is not far wrong. She does it again here, writing:
"These gangs were involved in heroin smuggling, extortion, armed robbery, gun running, organised factory and warehouse break-ins and large-scale car theft and conversion."
Wow, heroin smuggling. Armed robbery. Warehouse break-ins. Gasp! I know the term for these guys. Criminals. That’s what we call them when they are white Brits. Does the fact that these criminals are Arabs prove that multi-culturalism is failing? Does she want multi-culturalism to fail? Her desire to attack Islam with almost any pretext is a sight to behold. The repeated accusations of Islamophobia levelled at her may or may not be unfair (though given her repeated use of the term "anti-semite" against reasonable and moderate commentators she is hardly displaying firm principles when she claims those accusing her are crying over spilt milk). She herself seems to believe that Islam is a largely violent religion and that reasonable practioners are in the minority, writing last year:
"There was a Muslim enlightenment, they both said, and it was the duty of the west to help and protect its proponents. Absolutely right; but in reality, how many moderates are there? Given the terror, no-one knows".
Now, one area that is important is how the initial small-scale crime flared up into several days worth of violence. This will become known in time, and I suspect the answer will be a bit more intricate and demanding of context than multi-culturalism beig intrinsically flawed and a security blanket for liberal sissies.
And what is she referring by including Sweden in the above list? Have there been country-wide riots in Sweden by Muslims? Because if there were, they slipped through mainstream reporting. Last month, when Swedish Prime Minister Persson was warned that it could be worth preparing for riots like those seen in France he called the alarm "unnecessary". Little has changed since then. Could be wrong, but I suspect she meant Denmark, which both she and the media covered quite liberally. Still, Swedes, Danes, same thing I suppose. As long as you are a bigot.
But the worst error of all is her use of the word "indigenous" to describe white Australians. Obviously somebody writes such poisonous garbage about the Palestinians is going to struggle with that particular word. Does she know who the aborigines are? And the conditions they live in for that matter? She also writes that: "the current unrest was sparked by Lebanese Muslim attacks on two indigenous lifeguards", which correlates with what the mainstream media has claimed and so far is as accurate as we can get. Well, accurate if you exclude a second use of the word "indigenous", which clearly shows how badly she wants to differentiate between two groups of immigrants. Commendably, she buttresses the outburst of common sense by stating that "As in Britain, the white racists in Australia appear to be exploiting a situation which has been allowed to get completely out of hand." But since this is with the context of another article that seeks to divide rather than unite people, it should receive only faint praise. The true nature of the Sydney riots will become known, but we know that Melanie Phillips has once again already made her mind up.
She starts off by writing the few facts we know for sure, and then quotes, at great length, a retired policeman and a journalist. After doing her usual cut and paste job she concludes:
"As in Britain, the white racists in Australia appear to be exploiting a situation which has been allowed to get completely out of hand. Racists are parasites who attach themselves to a decaying organism and feed off it. But the organism wouldn't attract them if it wasn't already decaying. Britain, France, Australia, Sweden — variations of the same phenomenon are happening all over the western world. Aggression and denial, creating a spiral of ever-worsening aggression, all because of a paralysis in acknowledging, let alone dealing with, the true nature of what we are all facing."
~and now, the part where she is taken apart~
Firstly, what is this "organism?" Speak in metaphors all you like love, we can't figure out what you want if you don't state it clearly. We can reconstruct CSI-style, what she might be on about by consulting her previous written crimes. She, like many other more reasonable commentators, demands a reassessment of Islam by people across the world. She wants states in the Middle East to get with the times and the Muslims living here to adopt our values. Putting to what extent this has actually happened aside, how would she want this change effected? Islam is not like Catholicism, where a central authority can decree appropriate behaviour and pass it off as God’s word. Its practitioners are as diffuse as they are voluminous, with liberal movements contrasting with the fanatical terrorists with which we are all well-acquainted. The extent to which Islam can be reconciled with decent values is getting to be a rather tiresome debate these days, but, as always, it might help to bear in mind that the problems come from a tiny sector of Muslims. This is oft-repeated but true.
Not that Islam is the issue. When Jason Burke flayed Melanie Phillips for her drivel on the Parisian riots, one major criticism he had (and which she never responded to) was the way that she repeatedly leapt between labelling the perpetrators Muslims (their religion, apparently. I mean, did some researcher go out into the flames and ask the faith of every dark-skinned man kicking up a fuss?) and Arabs (their ethnicity). He called it “dangerous nonsense” and he is not far wrong. She does it again here, writing:
"These gangs were involved in heroin smuggling, extortion, armed robbery, gun running, organised factory and warehouse break-ins and large-scale car theft and conversion."
Wow, heroin smuggling. Armed robbery. Warehouse break-ins. Gasp! I know the term for these guys. Criminals. That’s what we call them when they are white Brits. Does the fact that these criminals are Arabs prove that multi-culturalism is failing? Does she want multi-culturalism to fail? Her desire to attack Islam with almost any pretext is a sight to behold. The repeated accusations of Islamophobia levelled at her may or may not be unfair (though given her repeated use of the term "anti-semite" against reasonable and moderate commentators she is hardly displaying firm principles when she claims those accusing her are crying over spilt milk). She herself seems to believe that Islam is a largely violent religion and that reasonable practioners are in the minority, writing last year:
"There was a Muslim enlightenment, they both said, and it was the duty of the west to help and protect its proponents. Absolutely right; but in reality, how many moderates are there? Given the terror, no-one knows".
Now, one area that is important is how the initial small-scale crime flared up into several days worth of violence. This will become known in time, and I suspect the answer will be a bit more intricate and demanding of context than multi-culturalism beig intrinsically flawed and a security blanket for liberal sissies.
And what is she referring by including Sweden in the above list? Have there been country-wide riots in Sweden by Muslims? Because if there were, they slipped through mainstream reporting. Last month, when Swedish Prime Minister Persson was warned that it could be worth preparing for riots like those seen in France he called the alarm "unnecessary". Little has changed since then. Could be wrong, but I suspect she meant Denmark, which both she and the media covered quite liberally. Still, Swedes, Danes, same thing I suppose. As long as you are a bigot.
But the worst error of all is her use of the word "indigenous" to describe white Australians. Obviously somebody writes such poisonous garbage about the Palestinians is going to struggle with that particular word. Does she know who the aborigines are? And the conditions they live in for that matter? She also writes that: "the current unrest was sparked by Lebanese Muslim attacks on two indigenous lifeguards", which correlates with what the mainstream media has claimed and so far is as accurate as we can get. Well, accurate if you exclude a second use of the word "indigenous", which clearly shows how badly she wants to differentiate between two groups of immigrants. Commendably, she buttresses the outburst of common sense by stating that "As in Britain, the white racists in Australia appear to be exploiting a situation which has been allowed to get completely out of hand." But since this is with the context of another article that seeks to divide rather than unite people, it should receive only faint praise. The true nature of the Sydney riots will become known, but we know that Melanie Phillips has once again already made her mind up.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Another brilliant poll by CNN
From Pink Dome:
"I'm doing what pisses me off when y'all do it to us--being nit picky about grammar. I know 'stupider' is in the dictionary, but oh my God it gets on my nerves. I think 'more stupid' is quite adequate, nor antiquated English. And yes, Ann Coulter is more stupid than anything--regardless of the question."
Nevermind bad grammar... which CNN page do I cast my vote at!
Friday, December 09, 2005
The Connection
Not the name of some gormless book on Saddam and Al Qaeda, but a rather pleasant discovery that might assuage the fears of readers passing by our site. What started out as a site about bashing Britain (all in good taste mind) now has a rather tight focus, or more precisely, two of them. In one corner you have a guy with fire in the belly protesting about oppression in Singapore, in the other is a petty young man who wants to see Melanie Phillips tarred and feathered. Any visitors these days would surely demand a connection to justify these apparerently disparate topics. And now I can reveal that such a link exists. Here. Wow, Melanie Phillips praises Lee Kuan Yew. We can't confirm what she thinks of his son, but seeing as he administrates an anally precise nanny state with an all too literal war on drugs we have to assume she would enjoy it there.
Everytime you buy a new Nirvana record...
...you are feeding this:
Courtney is US$4 million overdrawn. Cue a 'new' Nirvana record. (Q)
Sometimes I wonder if it is any wonder that the widow of a rock legend has managed to fuck up so bad. A recent string of expensive legal actions associated with her drug abuse and violation of probation amongst other things have thrown her into a hefty debt. And hence Sliver was born. Featuring yet more previously unreleased demo versions of songs including Spank Thru, Sappy and Come As You Are.
I wonder what Cobain would say if he were looking upon this mortal world to see his wife milking his living memory for all its worth. Isn't it a tad bit unfair to begin with that 91% of Nirvana royalties go to Cobain's estate leaving only 9% for the other two former members of the band?
Courtney is US$4 million overdrawn. Cue a 'new' Nirvana record. (Q)
Sometimes I wonder if it is any wonder that the widow of a rock legend has managed to fuck up so bad. A recent string of expensive legal actions associated with her drug abuse and violation of probation amongst other things have thrown her into a hefty debt. And hence Sliver was born. Featuring yet more previously unreleased demo versions of songs including Spank Thru, Sappy and Come As You Are.
I wonder what Cobain would say if he were looking upon this mortal world to see his wife milking his living memory for all its worth. Isn't it a tad bit unfair to begin with that 91% of Nirvana royalties go to Cobain's estate leaving only 9% for the other two former members of the band?
The Toxicity of our City
Given the recent spate of natural disasters and tragic events, many have simply sighed in disbelief, some have cried as death took loved ones, but there certainly has been no short supply of people preaching the Revelations, or whatever Doomsday prophecy from their own religion, if any. The natural response of most religious groups quick to play the Armageddon card is to stress the urgency of redemption, and hence propagation of their religion, for all.
"Somewhere, between the sacred silence and sleep. Disorder, disorder. Disorder!"
Given the recent spate of natural disasters and tragic events, many have simply sighed in disbelief, some have cried as death took loved ones, but there certainly has been no short supply of people preaching the Revelations, or whatever Doomsday prophecy from their own religion, if any. The natural response of most religious groups quick to play the Armageddon card is to stress the urgency of redemption, and hence propagation of their religion, for all.Yet I am one to believe that if you truly believe the end is inevitable, then the fight to save ourselves is already lost. An informal CNN poll a few months ago asked what people were most concerned with and which issues should have the highest priority; amongst them were 'crime and personal safety', poverty, the pandemic flu, and global warming. If memory serves correct, the pandemic flu and personal safety came in highest, but the very under-played issue of global warming came nowhere close. In my opinion, gobal warming poses the most imminent threat to mankind on a very real level. It would be unwise to pay a deaf ear to someone you would normally pass off as a 'tree-hugging' activist. While the US has stubbornly downplayed global warming as being an effect of mankind until recently, it is important to know that majority of scientists in this area believe global warming to be a very serious threat that will become exponentially more difficult problem to recover from and prominent as soon as 10, 20, 50 years."With only 4 percent of the population, the United States now produces 25 percent of annual CO2 emissions -- 6.7 billion metric tons annually -- and will remain the chief climate change polluter worldwide for years to come. During the past century, the United States together with other industrialized countries such as Japan, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Canada has produced more than 60 percent of the CO2 emissions that contribute to global warming." - ClimateStar.org
My mentor once described a few key events that gave birth to the concept of global warming. The detection of a change in radiation levels in Europe from a source of origin in America indicated that our atmospheric system is highly sensitive and that the environmental changes in one area had the potential to affect the entire global system detectable very far away. A second key event was the atmospheric measurements (Keeling's measurements) taken by a scientist named Charles D. Keeling since the 50s that has been described as "the single most important evironmental data set taken in the 20th century". His measurements of carbon dioxide levels in addition to measurements taken from polar ice cores show that the levels have been steadily increasing while the latter showed that the levels began to increase sharply during the 19th century, around the time when industrialisation was born.
I found it rather amusing watching the BBC news quite a while back as one anchorman decided to show he had a little more skill than just reciting flashcards in proper English. His story was regarding global warming and the melting of the ice caps. Now I apologise and admit I was not paying attention to the tv just prior to the scientific "stunt" I'm about to describe. But he was claiming that the melting of our ice caps would not cause the sea level to rise. He then prompty proceeds to illustrate this by taking a glass of water, putting some ice in it, fast forward and wala! The ice has melted and the water level in the glass has not changed. Wow. How worthy of a Cambridge degree, no?
Coastal areas: Scientists predict average sea level will rise 1 to nearly 3 feet over the next 100 years. Seaside communities can expect more erosion, flooding during storms, and permanent submersion of low-lying areas and islands.
In addition to the increase in sea level, the polar ice caps are also responsible for the reflection of a significant amount of heat from the planet's surface and hence a reducing surface area will mean more trapped heat in the atmosphere. Ice caps have been photographically documented and the surface area each year has been disappearing at a disturbing rate.
All these factors combined means that the cost of inaction is exponentially rising and the longer we leave ourselves blinded to the consequences, the steeper the slope will be to recover our global climate and the higher the probability of a worst-case scenario where we reach a point of no-return.
"Somewhere, between the sacred silence and sleep. Disorder, disorder. Disorder!"
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Killing in the name
Hwee Yee notes Singapore's sense of irony:
"this morning i noticed a sign on the train tracks that said value life; act responsibly.
she says:
If we cannot be sure, can we at least then forgive? Beyond all the complications of the sacrificial culture from which the death peanlty has been produced and the other spirit of Christianity which opponents – Victor Hugo being one – fall back on, can we forgive the unforgivable?
the rules: it is ok for the state to kill you. it is not ok for you to kill yourself. do not circumvent the power of the state.
everyday i die a thousand little deaths in the face of words that fly past my eyes.
a perverse kind of le petit mort."
"this morning i noticed a sign on the train tracks that said value life; act responsibly.
she says:
If we cannot be sure, can we at least then forgive? Beyond all the complications of the sacrificial culture from which the death peanlty has been produced and the other spirit of Christianity which opponents – Victor Hugo being one – fall back on, can we forgive the unforgivable?
the rules: it is ok for the state to kill you. it is not ok for you to kill yourself. do not circumvent the power of the state.
everyday i die a thousand little deaths in the face of words that fly past my eyes.
a perverse kind of le petit mort."
Protesters outside the Singapore High Commission in Canberra. (ABC News)
"anyway i’m so disgusted and angry. and i really hate it that i still have expectations, that i’m still constantly disappointed by this asshole country.
i can’t wait to get the fuck out of here forever." - SomethingSomething
How the Holy Cow milks terror; Moral Equivalence down on Melanie Phillips's Dairy
A few cross words yesterday on Melanie Phillips's Diary. But first, here's a riddle:
Q: What do you call a few cross-words from Melanie Phillips?
A: A cattle grid.
phew! I bet she would have stumbled on that one. I set her a challenge last month: recogise the good deed done by the grieving Palestinian mother, thus proving that she wasn't a cultural supremacist or a racist and was indeed capable of seeing the Palestinians as more than one blood-drinking mass of terrorists bent on genocide. If she could do this before her next racist outburst I would give her a prize, say a medal or some book tokens.
She blew it. A few times actually. But yesterday was a weird one. The Telegraph, the sort of xenophobic rowing club member's read that would float her boat, lost its "moral compass" because it showed a photo of a grieving Palestinian mother. Her son had decided to detonate his suicide bomb outside an Israeli shopping centre, murdering five, a total he would surely have liked to have been higher. Now, unlike Iraq and the London 7/7 bombers, many Palestinian suicide bombers make their intentions to murder Israelis quite plain to their families. Some families encourage it, seeing it as a great honour. Some are compensated for their loss by the terrorist groups, but can live with the proud knowledge that they had contributed to the resistance. It looks doubtful that this was one such case. The anguish on the mother's face does not look like that of a woman who has been preparing for this. She may want to know why her son did it. We don't find out because the article doesn't elaborate. In fact, the photo is a relative non sequitur, since no metion is made of her at all, the focus being entirely on the Israeli casualties. Quite right too? Possibly. But that is never enough for the vengeful Holy Cow, who believes that even running this photo (one of three; there are also images of the blast and of the bomber making an address) "drew a moral equivalence between the grief of the bomber's mother and the grief of the victims he murdered."
Perhaps she would like to demonstrate why she too isn't entitled to feel grief? It's an unexplored question in the article but why does it offend her so much? And unfortunately, since she refuses to recognise the suffering of the Palestinians when they are killed in droves, it is rather poisonous of her in particular to raise such an issue. She continues: "Would the Telegraph have published pictures of the 'grieving mothers' of the 7/7 bombers, I wonder?" I fact she doesn't "wonder". Wondering is what people with open minds do when they want to learn. Mrs Shut-mind here is very abrasive when it comes to new ideas, as seen with global warming, where the fact penetrate her skull with all the ease of a sumo wrestler crawling through a mangle. This is a woman that judges an article, not on how it fits with the real world, but on how well it appeals to her existing prejudices. So, Jason Burke's article here is "mad" and "a smear" because it doesn't sit well with her idea of French muslims as facists. But this shit is worth looking into because it makes her feel a bit less lonely in her beliefs (if you tell yourself enough you start to believe it, that's what they say about fanatics) that Saddam and Al Qaeda were connected in a strong working relationship. What she should be wondering is why there was a serious and vocal debate about whether or nor the families of the London bombers should have been allowed to attend the commemoration in St Paul's Cathedral. Mayor Ken Livingstone and former hostage Terry Waite certainly thought that they should have been permitted to share their grief, the latter's request being covered in The Telegraph that she once revered. How did she miss that one? Perhaps she was too distracted by Rowan Williams' Anti-semitism (see last month's outpourings) to pick up on this.
And on to Moral equivalence. Well, its frequently invoked in the Middle East. To claim that suicide attacks against Israeli civilians is resistance is termed "moral equivalence" on a regular basis by those who like the term. What they are saying is that to carry out these attacks is no worse than the Israeli "retaliation" to them. A question: how do you retaliate against a suicide bomber? Well, putting aside the irritating fact that he is already dead, in Israel you plough down the houses in their neighbourhood and bomb the leaders of terror groups, knowing full well that Palestinian civilians will get caught up in the blasts. You build a "defensive" wall around the country that actually cuts into the state where the civilians live (and which the Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, will become permanent). You impose curfews on ordinary people who are blameless for such outrages. Since attacking people who committed no crime is by definition not retaliation, the question needs to be asked to Mrs Phillips: is terming an assault against innocent Palestinian bystanders as "retaliation" a morally equivalent response to the crimes of suicide bombers and terrorist groups? Is it moral equivalence to say that a soldier, whose crime is shooting Palestinian civilians dead or flattening their houses, is just as bad as those same Palestinians, whose crime is to be in the same neighbourhood as a terrorist? The best thing to do is to bin moral equivalence and condemn each crime as it happens. Sice she is incapable of doing this, I'd politely ask her to sever her typing hand and shut her fat hole.
Q: What do you call a few cross-words from Melanie Phillips?
A: A cattle grid.
phew! I bet she would have stumbled on that one. I set her a challenge last month: recogise the good deed done by the grieving Palestinian mother, thus proving that she wasn't a cultural supremacist or a racist and was indeed capable of seeing the Palestinians as more than one blood-drinking mass of terrorists bent on genocide. If she could do this before her next racist outburst I would give her a prize, say a medal or some book tokens.
She blew it. A few times actually. But yesterday was a weird one. The Telegraph, the sort of xenophobic rowing club member's read that would float her boat, lost its "moral compass" because it showed a photo of a grieving Palestinian mother. Her son had decided to detonate his suicide bomb outside an Israeli shopping centre, murdering five, a total he would surely have liked to have been higher. Now, unlike Iraq and the London 7/7 bombers, many Palestinian suicide bombers make their intentions to murder Israelis quite plain to their families. Some families encourage it, seeing it as a great honour. Some are compensated for their loss by the terrorist groups, but can live with the proud knowledge that they had contributed to the resistance. It looks doubtful that this was one such case. The anguish on the mother's face does not look like that of a woman who has been preparing for this. She may want to know why her son did it. We don't find out because the article doesn't elaborate. In fact, the photo is a relative non sequitur, since no metion is made of her at all, the focus being entirely on the Israeli casualties. Quite right too? Possibly. But that is never enough for the vengeful Holy Cow, who believes that even running this photo (one of three; there are also images of the blast and of the bomber making an address) "drew a moral equivalence between the grief of the bomber's mother and the grief of the victims he murdered."
Perhaps she would like to demonstrate why she too isn't entitled to feel grief? It's an unexplored question in the article but why does it offend her so much? And unfortunately, since she refuses to recognise the suffering of the Palestinians when they are killed in droves, it is rather poisonous of her in particular to raise such an issue. She continues: "Would the Telegraph have published pictures of the 'grieving mothers' of the 7/7 bombers, I wonder?" I fact she doesn't "wonder". Wondering is what people with open minds do when they want to learn. Mrs Shut-mind here is very abrasive when it comes to new ideas, as seen with global warming, where the fact penetrate her skull with all the ease of a sumo wrestler crawling through a mangle. This is a woman that judges an article, not on how it fits with the real world, but on how well it appeals to her existing prejudices. So, Jason Burke's article here is "mad" and "a smear" because it doesn't sit well with her idea of French muslims as facists. But this shit is worth looking into because it makes her feel a bit less lonely in her beliefs (if you tell yourself enough you start to believe it, that's what they say about fanatics) that Saddam and Al Qaeda were connected in a strong working relationship. What she should be wondering is why there was a serious and vocal debate about whether or nor the families of the London bombers should have been allowed to attend the commemoration in St Paul's Cathedral. Mayor Ken Livingstone and former hostage Terry Waite certainly thought that they should have been permitted to share their grief, the latter's request being covered in The Telegraph that she once revered. How did she miss that one? Perhaps she was too distracted by Rowan Williams' Anti-semitism (see last month's outpourings) to pick up on this.
And on to Moral equivalence. Well, its frequently invoked in the Middle East. To claim that suicide attacks against Israeli civilians is resistance is termed "moral equivalence" on a regular basis by those who like the term. What they are saying is that to carry out these attacks is no worse than the Israeli "retaliation" to them. A question: how do you retaliate against a suicide bomber? Well, putting aside the irritating fact that he is already dead, in Israel you plough down the houses in their neighbourhood and bomb the leaders of terror groups, knowing full well that Palestinian civilians will get caught up in the blasts. You build a "defensive" wall around the country that actually cuts into the state where the civilians live (and which the Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, will become permanent). You impose curfews on ordinary people who are blameless for such outrages. Since attacking people who committed no crime is by definition not retaliation, the question needs to be asked to Mrs Phillips: is terming an assault against innocent Palestinian bystanders as "retaliation" a morally equivalent response to the crimes of suicide bombers and terrorist groups? Is it moral equivalence to say that a soldier, whose crime is shooting Palestinian civilians dead or flattening their houses, is just as bad as those same Palestinians, whose crime is to be in the same neighbourhood as a terrorist? The best thing to do is to bin moral equivalence and condemn each crime as it happens. Sice she is incapable of doing this, I'd politely ask her to sever her typing hand and shut her fat hole.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Melanie Phillips Watch
Thanks to Al for the link:
"In which we analyse the outpourings of the notorious Daily Mail columnist, crowned Most Islamophobic Journalist of the Year 2003. We read her filth so you don't have to. This site is dedicated to fighting bigotry and prejudice in any form. Any comments deemed antisemitic, racist or in any other way bigoted will be deleted and the poster barred."
Proof that if you spew out shit long and hard enough, you will eventually draw hate-sites/blogs in your name. A sure Melanie-Phillips-bashing buffet for the Leech.
"In which we analyse the outpourings of the notorious Daily Mail columnist, crowned Most Islamophobic Journalist of the Year 2003. We read her filth so you don't have to. This site is dedicated to fighting bigotry and prejudice in any form. Any comments deemed antisemitic, racist or in any other way bigoted will be deleted and the poster barred."
Proof that if you spew out shit long and hard enough, you will eventually draw hate-sites/blogs in your name. A sure Melanie-Phillips-bashing buffet for the Leech.
