The Obscurer

Month: November, 2005

Monday 28th November 2005

Balloons

My thanks to Steve for pointing me in the direction of YouTube, a sort of Flikr/Yahoo! Photos for your videos. Now I can effortlessly inflict my short films on you, and all for free.
If you have 4 minutes 24 seconds to spare, then you can check out my video of the Northampton Balloon Festival of 2004, complete with a cameo of my wife and son near the start of the vid. The quality isn’t 100%, although that is as much the fault of my cheap video camera as the compressing of the video file. If you make it to the end, then “Another Trial & Error Production” very much refers to my method of making films.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6-LFcQaselw

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Friday 25th November 2005

For Pete's Sake

“Is there any football fan in the country who doesn’t want Peter Crouch to score?” asked Adrian Chiles on Match Of The Day 2 last Sunday, while reflecting on Crouch’s missed penalty in the Liverpool – Portsmouth game. Well I don’t want him to score, not just yet, although nothing would have given me more pleasure than if he had tucked away his spot kick last weekend.

The obvious reason is that I am a Man City fan, and Crouch’s Liverpool are due to play us tomorrow, so clearly another Crouch blank would be good for us; but it is more complicated than that. The thing is, while I don’t want Crouch to score, I do expect him to; it is almost inevitable. Look at the facts: he will be playing against City, he hasn’t scored for ages…it is simply bound to happen. In fact, I’d say that the likelihood of him scoring against us has increased exponentially with every goalless game he has played in. If I were a betting man I’d place a wager; if I were a bookie I’d stop taking bets.

It was ever thus; are your team in the middle of the longest losing streak in their history? Then come to City and see your fortunes change. Perhaps you are a full back, and your only goal was against City when you last played them five seasons ago? Well, get your extended family down to the game, badger Sky to show it live (although they probably already will be doing) and get ready to savour goal number two, which will likely be a 20-yard screamer. Have you never won on your travels all season, and are due to play away at City, who are currently unbeaten at home? Just sit back and let’s enjoy both fine runs come to an end just as surely as night follows day.

It is good to know your place in life, and just like people, football clubs have their own specific roles. United’s is to be hated, and always has been, even before they started amassing silverware under Ferguson (loathing of United is not jealousy brought on by their success; it is primal); Liverpool are there to win trophies (they used to have to be the best team in England in order to do so, but have recently found that an unnecessary burden and have had continued phenomenal success despite being distinctly average these days); Arsenal’s role has changed dramatically over the years, but they still have one; from being the most boring team in the country, then going into a chrysalis stage during Bruce Rioch’s brief tenure, before finally emerging as the most beautiful evocation of balletic football I think I have ever seen. City’s place in football, however, is merely to inspire sympathy and to make others feel better about themselves. Our historic apparent inconsistency is in fact a selfless but concerted effort to provide the desired result for other teams and players. We are the counsellors of the Premiership. It is our calling, our vocation.

Case Study: Michael Owen. I have literally lost count of the number of times he has rolled up at a City fixture, low on confidence, short on goals. One 90 minute consultancy later at the Theatre of Base Comedy and he is right as rain, firing on all cylinders again, ending his goal drought with a headline grabbing hat-trick. Thank you Mr.Owen, that is the end of this session, can we arrange to see you again same time next year? Just make your appointment with the Premier League on your way out.

Most supporters I suppose curse their teams’ luck as some stage, are aware of certain little superstitions and idiosyncrasies, bemoan some typical fallibility or other. The difference with City is that we have a real and lasting claim to the title of most ridiculous club. When Crouch scores tomorrow we won’t be downhearted, we won’t winge; if the cameras cut to the City fans as David James is picking the ball out of his net you will see benignly smiling faces, understanding nods of the heads. What we have been anticipating all week will have come to pass; we will be bearing witness to and admiring a job well done.

So congratulations in advance to Peter Crouch for ending his lean spell this Saturday. Just don’t get too worked up; hitting the back of the net at the City of Manchester Stadium is the least you should be doing judging by your recent form in front of goal; it doesn’t mean a thing. However, should you not manage to score? Then City will have failed in their raison d’etre; that or you really are beyond hope.

Update 8/12/05: My thanks again to Ken Owen for choosing this post for his latest SportBlog Roundup, and to my mystery reader who nominated this post in the first place, despite my prediction turning out to be wrong. Cheers!

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Thursday 24th November 2005

The Daily Planet

I didn’t get that worked up at first when I heard the allegation that Bush and Blair had discussed bombing Aljazeera. First, the story broke at The Mirror, which is hardly my most trusted news source. Secondly, it was the sort of thing that I expected to be flatly denied by the governments involved and for the story to just fizzle out (although I thought much same about the Andrew Gilligan / “sexing up” report, which shows how much I know).

But then things got a bit interesting. Frank Gaffney of The Center for Security Policy, and someone with strong links to the Bush administration, went on Newsnight and said that he was “not sure it is outrageous” to attack Aljazeera, that it is “appropriate to talk about what you do to neutralise” them and that they are “fair game” to be dealt with by “bombs or other means”. Then as a response to this ultimate story of journalistic freedom (ie. the freedom not to be blown up) it was revealed that two civil servants had been charged and journalists threatened with the Official Secrets Act if they revealed the contents of the memo detailing the conversation (Richard Norton-Taylor of The Guardian told Newsnight it is the first time the government has threatened him with the act, rather than a civil injunction) which inevitably leads one to think there must be some truth in the story, and indeed that there may be further revelations to come.

The White House of course has denied the story as “outlandish”, but unfortunately it isn’t all that bizarre an idea. Aljazeera offices have been hit my US missiles in Iraq and Afghanistan (although it is claimed accidentally), and during the war in Kosovo NATO deliberately attacked the (albeit state controlled) Serbian TV station.

There are though “two” Aljazeeras; there is the terrorists’ friend that promotes al-Qaeda though its pro-jihadist propaganda, and then there is the fiercely independent news organisation which is one of the few outlets for free speech in the middle east. I tend to the latter view; I have read their English website which on the whole seems fairly balanced (in particular I remember a fine opinion piece strongly critical of the London bombings, and indeed terrorism in general). No doubt they will report certain stories in a manner that I may balk at, but I could say the same about Fox News (Tony Parsons compared the two news organisations when discussing two films, Outfoxed about Fox, and Control Room concerning Aljazeera; “On one side,” he said, “you have these crazed religious fundamentalists and on the other side you have al-Jazeera”).

There will be those who say Aljazeera is a legitimate target as it issues al-Qaeda propaganda, and I am not going to “sign off” everything they have broadcast; but the main complaint, that they show videos of Bin Laden and associates in their cavernous hideaways is a curious one when those same videos are subsequently re-shown across the rest of the world’s media. In this instance Aljazeera is just Bin Laden’s chosen outlet; I doubt CNN, Sky or anyone else would just bin the recordings if they were the ones to receive them. As for broadcasting propaganda, from the other side of the fence the whole idea of news organisations embedding journalists with coalition forces during the Iraq war could well look like an example of colluding with one side against the other, and perhaps it is, while even to my British eyes the editorialising and commentary you often see on American news programmes can be jarring, and can have the look and feel of propaganda; does this make western news organisations legitimate targets?

If the Mirror’s allegations are true then I do think it is disgraceful, but perhaps not too surprising. There is a crevasse between what the Bush administration says and does. They speak at times as if they alone understand freedom, as if they have a monopoly on liberty; but in abandoning the norms of due legal process, through their ambivalence towards torture, and in now reportedly considering literally attacking free speech, it is not freedom and liberty as I understand the terms.

PostScript: I would have written this post earlier and so given the vague impression of being a topical blogger; but I couldn’t find the time yesterday during the day, and after a bottle of Guinness Original (not draught!) in the evening, I couldn’t be arsed. Oh well, perhaps next time.

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Saturday 19th November 2005

White Light / White Heat

Chemical weapons is yet another subject on which I have little knowledge. I know they are bad things, and illegal, but that is about it. As a result I have kept out of the debate over the use of white phosphorus in Iraq. If more knowledgeable people (not difficult) defend it’s use by saying that it is an incendiary rather than a chemical weapon, and that its use can be legal, then I have to take that on trust.

What doesn’t seem to be in doubt however is just what an unpleasant substance it is, and what a hideous effect it can have when it comes in contact with skin. For me it seems strange that when pro-war bloggers have defended its use (Scott Burgess at The Daily Ablution in particular has gone into great detail, and has summarised his views at Tech Central Station) there doesn’t appear to have been any disquiet at all in doing so. Rather than tackle the morality of using the ammunition in the way the Pentagon has now admitted, the pro-war commentator have instead picked holes in the opposing arguments. That is fine as far as it goes – to correct errors and deceits, to tackle the moral equivalence of comparing the use of WP with the chemical attack at Halabja – but it doesn’t deal with the principal concern that “our side” has used a weapon that burns the flesh off peoples’ bodies. Just saying that we are not as bad as Saddam doesn’t really cut it with me; it’s not a great defence.

In a strange inversion, and in contrast to the pro-war arguments made in the run up to the war, there has been no plea to the moral high ground on this one; those arguments have been sidelined. Rather we have heard plenty about technical definitions, and a detailed insistence on the weapons legality as enshrined in international conventions. Ironic, really, to compare then with now. Ah well, any port in a storm.

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Saturday 19th November 2005

iMeme

Steve over at Occupied Country looks to have a bit of a meme in the making. Inspired by Word magazine he suggests you set your iPod or MP3 player to shuffle and see what comes out.
The problem in my case is that I don’t have an iPod of my own, rather I have half inched a half gig or so of my wife’s; furthermore, if you were to draw a Venn diagram of our musical tastes you would find only a tiny overlap where it says The Divine Comedy (although with the exception of Pixies and Pavement my wife is generally more tolerant of my music collection than I am of hers). So with that in mind, let’s see how it goes.

1. Joss Stone – You Got Me
One of my wife’s. You probably know this song already, if you know any of Joss Stone’s stuff at all. She can certainly carry a tune and this song follows the usual funky, soulful pattern of her output. It’s alright; I can take it or leave it, but given a choice I would leave it. Next.

2. Robert Johnson – I’m A Steady Rollin’ Man
As promised in this post, I finally bought my Robert Johnson CD and loaded it on the iPod, and the iPod thanked me by putting it second on the shuffle. This song is not one I am that familiar with, but it is instantly recognisable as the great man himself. Sure, most of his songs sound pretty much the same, following the rough and raw 12 bar blues template so beloved, but when the template sounds this good, why muck about with it?

3. David Gray – We’re Not Right
Another one of my wife’s; my heart sank when it popped on the iPod and I anticipated the usual David Gray dirge. I thought about skipping it, but when I saw its running time is less than 3 minutes long I decided to give it a try; and I am glad I did. Gray really seems to sing with feeling on this one, the song fair clips along with a great fuzzy bass line and what even sounds like a theramin solo. Perhaps I’d better give him another chance.

4. Crowded House – Not The Girl You Think You Are
One of “my” bands, but this is really a joint favourite. Their final single, I think, and one of their best, full of melodies reminiscent of Lennon, as usual. It provides many memories for me of the Hole in’t Wall pub in Bowness-on-Windermere which featured this song on its jukebox for many years, and which we played to death whenever we stayed in the Lakes.

5. Eliza Carthy – Willow Tree
Another one of my wife’s choices, but one I really like. Inspired by watching a BBC Four documentary on Martin Carthy and his family, we bought his daughter Eliza’s CD Anglicana and took it down to Cornwall when we holidayed there a few years back. The folky sound of the album was spot on while we stayed in a cottage in the middle of the countryside during a baking hot summer, and this up-tempo track was probably my favourite. There is a downside to listening to this CD however; once it gets into your head it is impossible not to slip into singing made-up-on-the-spot cod folk songs at the drop of a hat.

So perhaps our musical tastes aren’t too incompatible after all. Mind you, the next track up on the iPod was a 10 minute offering from Dido, definitely one of my wife’s choices, and someone who I cannot abide; so perhaps we just struck lucky.

So there you have it; give it a go yourself or don’t bother, as you see fit. It’s up to you.

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