Beautiful Land
One of the first excellent images from the new camera. I have feelings, it does the rest. [Click image to enlarge]
Time, pavement, road, box junction, lane divisions, guards, gate, security barrier, traffic cones, fences, signs marking prohibitions, and then the geometrical living arrangements and the distribution of light to specific areas...
There is so much order here in Beautiful Land.
Ask not for whom the pig oinks, it oinks for thee
I speak to thee, today, to this nation of Ian Tomlinsons, on the subject of Swine Flu...
I counsel thee that what the world needs now is not love, sweet love, but fear, and plenty of it. You are to remain indoors and to be highly suspicious of one another and to limit your foreign travel and to certainly not gather in the streets and protest.
We are sending the vaccine to you, and who knows what the vaccine will contain. Certainly not thee, yet will thy arm still be proffered? We can make this obligatory if necessary, and take thee to a detention facility for staking out such a dangerously individualistic course...
The whole thing is a hoax, look at the timing. Flu kills thousands, millions, every year, and here we have a tiny number of deaths and a mass-media generated, state-sponsored public health scare. Nothing will enter my body by way of the vaccine.
Ok, thank thee kindly for thy attention, this nation of Ian Tomlinsons. Please wait beside your televisions for further news of the war [on... Terror, Drugs, Pigs...]
Taiwangle
I referred to the Taiwan angle on the swine flu outbreak today, then realised that this could be covered by the new word - Taiwangle.
Impressed
Spent the morning reading T H Huxley's Physiography. A truly great writer and educator, it is fairly astonishing to think he only had two years of formal schooling and still went on to become one of the most learned men of his time.
Things that improved my life #9 – Jeffrey Lewis
The common link between the various things that improved my life is obvious enough - it's all cultural artefacts, usually music. Anyway, the cool thing is that after a period of disillusion, not just with music, but perhaps with everything, even with the sky, that lately I have found some new artists that have restored the faith, and made me reassess the cost/benefit of actually taking time to look for fresh stuff. One such is Jeffrey Lewis, who, after hearing a single song, I've accumulated 10 of his albums in short order. They are magnificent low-fi efforts, with simple music and great lyrics, overflowing with cool words and strange ideas.
Anyways, here is a song from his most recent album, Ere am I (that puts me in mind of "Ere I am J H", which is probably where it's pulled from - blows away the talcum powder and laughs...)
The Revenge of Geography
A great article from a great writer - http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4862&print=1
Cat Shit One Eighty & other delights from Taipei
I had one question for this man - "At what time do you go to sleep?" His jacket is a cast-off from a Taipei Metro worker, while the black patch by his head suggests his unwashed hair as a source.
Seats that appear modelled on the cheese grater. I can't see why anybody would come up with such a correspondence, "Wait, I know what's always extremely comfortable to sit on - a cheese grater!" But somehow, this passed through the design and manufacturing process and found a buyer.
Why are urban planners paid salaries at all? It has to be assumed that they never use public transport. Here we have a waiting environment specifically designed to make time itself a menace. We have an undifferentiated chromium, artificial light, cheese grater seats, a massive amount of symmetry, and geometric patterned tiling that will uncover any latent psychotic urges.
An information board with no information. I actually found this quite informative. "Hmm, I now know that there is an absence of relevant information to be displayed here at present..."
A dog playing golf while a teddy bear looks on. Note to staff - drop acid after doing the window display.
Three graphic novels photographed in the food court of the Taipei 101. You are not insane, that book really is called Cat Shit One, it features an elite unit of cats battling enemies that are mostly goats and the occasional human. Rabbit Doubt is about a bunch of grisly murders where the prospective victims encounter threats involving a giant rabbit head with red eyes. Zetman features a woman-child, with small/giant breasts* and a huge derriere, who alternates between a swimming costume and being woken up in bed.
Small/giant, because the artist switches breast sizes depending on which fantasy he is catering for in that frame.
The gods of sport
This is with my new camera, a Nikon D90, the quality is great, right?
Here they are, performing, recovering, the gods of sport look down on the consumers below.
I like the Beckham picture in particular, I like the idea that instead of working hard, I could just project the image of being hard-working. Perhaps I could have an image like this stationed close to me, so that no matter what I am doing, people are reminded of the inarguable reality of how hard I am working (in this image). I could look at them, accusingly, and say, should I feel moved to do so,
"Have you ever worked that hard?"
The second thing I like is that the hard work never happened, that Beckham was brought in, sprayed with some photogenic compound which glistens 'as sweat should glisten' (but does not), click click, and then sponge-dried by supermodels and back on with his suit, back into the convoy of blacked-out bulletproof vehicles, job done. Maybe he smiles and says something like,
"That didn't feel like work."
Since when…
Did enforcing international law become retribution? Oh, Obama, no, Obama...
It is imperative that the rule of law prevails, given what a future Republican administration might do, if, what's the word they liked to use, oh yes, if they were emboldened. Yes, the enemies of international law must not be emboldened. Justice will not teach them anything, and they will forever deny that justice was done, sure. Nothing less should be expected. But they may just remember the sanctions and be marginally discouraged.
Israeli Gold Standard
It was not for this, however, that the countries of Europe and North America gathered up their skirts and walked out of Ahmadinejad's peroration. The UK's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, rather gave the game away when he said afterwards: "As soon as President Ahmadinejad started talking about Israel, that was the cue for us to walk out. We agreed in advance that if there was any such rhetoric there would be no tolerance for it." The Iranian leader, he went on to say, was guilty of anti-Semitisim.
It's the end of the West. Israel is the new gold standard for what can and cannot be said. The end. Truth dies. Israel has triumphed, unreason has been unleashed. Everything from now on is paradoxical, anything that deviates from the tiniest orthodoxy, itself the grossest of fabrications, will now be repelled in the same fashion of the reflexive 'anti-semitism' accusation, a catch-all for those citing any unwelcome truths. It's impossible to believe the rapidity with which this has broken loose, from this walkout, to the UK government barring Geert Wilders (anti-Islam), to the BBC refusing to air an appeal for the Palestinians, to Canada refusing entry to George Galloway (pro-Palestine = terrorist sympathiser, an Israeli construction), etc.
Of course, people will resist, but the stronger the resistance, the stronger becomes the rhetoric employed to firstly destroy the legitimacy of any resistance through the label of terrorist or sympathiser, secondly through misrepresentation or exclusion from the media mainstream, and thirdly, if all else fails, through persecution via immigration laws, anti-terror legislation, etc. This week the UK government had not enough evidence to charge most of the Pakistanis it arrested in Manchester, yet enough justification to deport them. Again, the circle can not be squared, the paradox can not be explained, outside of a confession that it was all political theatre, from beginning to end, a narrative where the orchestrators place themselves in the best position to enhance their reputations - politicians become decisive, the police become (well, not heroes, we can't aim too high) defenders of freedom, the arrested become 'linked to Al-Qaida' (linked via media briefings at any rate), the PM can talk of averting 'a major plot' and, finally, the men concerned can be quietly not found guilty of anything, and then deported without fanfare (it was done right before the budget, politics again), so we need not be troubled by their rather partisan account of how it feels to be conscripted into such a theatrical production.
What is conflicting about this is that the anti-terrorism policies should surely have imperatives, in terms of the timing of operations, etc, that lay beyond political calculations. This is how a genuine threat would be countered, when the moment is right. If the timing proves so convenient to Downing Street, is there any other conclusion than the fact that 1) the government is placing its own concerns above national security, or 2) that the threat was non-existent and therefore the whole thing was theatre for the masses. Both scenarios are a disgrace.