The Obscurer

Wednesday 26th March 2008

Into The Valley Of Death

Following the drainage work done on our house to prevent it from subsiding into the mud, and the subsequent mayhem of having to cram four rooms worth of our accumulated belongings into a room-and-a-half while the plasterers and painters erased all memories of the cracks in the walls upstairs, we decided to take advantage of our insurance-financed first-floor “year zero” by awarding ourselves all some new bedroom furniture. So it is that my wife and I have been enjoying to the full all the associated pleasures of flat-pack assembly; the dowels, the barrel nuts, the instructions simplified to the point of incomprehensibility, and of course the inevitable accompanying medical complaint of “Allen key thumb”.

Through this chaos we managed to stumble upon my son’s old Fimbo toy, a first birthday present from my brother, if memory serves. Delighted, my son took it away to play with, but soon returned ashen faced, stating that Fimbo was “too scary.” Understandable, I thought; I always felt there was something not quite right about old Fimbo, which is why it was the perfect choice as the picture on my old Blogger profile, and is still the image for my About page, Gravatar, and so on. More specifically, however, I reckoned my son had simply forgotten that this Fimbo was the talking version – if you press its tummy it emits one of its famous phrases from The Fimbles television programme – so when it started to speak my son got a bit of a harmless shock, as anyone would.

But having now heard Fimbo for myself, I wonder if my son may indeed be onto something. Over the past few years has the absence of human contact driven poor Fimbo completely mad, or into the arms of someone or something much darker? See for yourself, if you can stand it. Too scary? I certainly think so.

5 Comments
Thursday 20th March 2008

π

It’s Thursday, and you’re on the High Street. Feeling peckish? Then luck is at hand, fate is in your pocket, and you’re wearing good fortune like a comfy old scarf.

I’m more of a Chicken & Mushroom man myself, but I’ll try anything once.

3 Comments
Monday 17th March 2008

Points Scoring

Are you still here? Well I am, more or less, and though perhaps a little bit behind the curve I have just noticed that there now appears to be a Libertarian Party here in old blighty. Yes the UK Libertarian Party has apparently been around for a few months now; they even have a website and everything, and their moral compass couldn’t be proclaimed more boldly than on its introductory page.

Libertarians believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and freedom from government—on all issues at all times. We don’t say government is too big in one area, but then in another area push for a law to force people to do what we want. We believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and freedom from government—on all issues at all times.

Their emphasis, not mine. It’s rousing, unequivicol, take-no-prisoners stuff. And yet, and yet…glancing through their manifesto that articulates the virtues of their policies on the rule of law, the economy, heathcare, education and defence we eventually reach their

Immigration Overview
Totally free movement of people into the UK is not practical whilst we have a large welfare state and other countries are themselves not broadly Libertarian in nature. In line with the Rule of Law, a transparent, consistent points based system is one of our key proposed measures to humanely manage migration.

So, er, not liberty and freedom on all issues at all times after all then (my emphasis, this time around.) Still, it is the impractical idealism (as I see it) that some libertarians exhibit that means I often dismiss their theories as being strictly for the birds no matter how attractive they may seem, so perhaps a realistic policy is to be welcomed. No doubt a fuller discussion of their immigration policy than this mere overview will reveal an admirable aspiration to eliminate such restrictions on the free movement of people, once that troublesome welfare state is done away with by a Libertarian government, no?

Policy

  • The UK shall have full control over its immigration policy with any right of final appeal remaining within the UK.
  • We propose the adoption of a points-based immigration policy for economic migrants.
  • Asylum Seekers must present at a UK border otherwise their claim shall not be accepted. Those refusing to declare originating country and accept that denial of their application will result in their return shall be denied entry, and any right to seek asylum will be refused outright without appeal.
  • Move towards asylum seekers to be held “air side” while their case is heard as swiftly as possible, e.g. within 2 weeks.
  • End automatic access to education and resources for any child who presents itself to the authorities, i.e. vouchers will not be available.
  • Any concept of a mass “amnesty” for illegal immigration undermines Rule of Law and as such will not be entertained.

So that’ll be a no then. Now, I’m no Libertarian, so I could have got it all wrong here, but this all seems to be less a UKLP policy than a UKIP one; all of which is perhaps not too surprising, as that is only where the party’s Director of Communications has just come from.

2 Comments
Friday 29th February 2008

Animated Liszt

If you were paying attention at the tail end of last year (and there’s no particular reason why you should have been) then you’ll know that I like cartoons, and Tom & Jerry in particular. I’ll regularly watch a couple of their animated shorts with my son last thing before we pack him off to bed, while my daughter sits at our feet massaging a carefully concealed piece of banana into her hair. It would be a cruel assignment, but if anyone were to force me to pick my favourite Tom & Jerry cartoon then I would probably plump for The Cat Concerto; you’ll likely know the one, where Tom attempts to play a piano recital in front of a concert audience while Jerry, apparently a resident of the piano, at first tries to sleep through the performance but in the end decides to play merry hell with Tom, as is his wont.

It is not only a beautiful piece of animation – winning the 1946 Oscar for Best Short Subject: Cartoon – but I think the music featured in the cartoon is fantastic, and so I wanted to find out what it is. Wikipedia was its usual helpful self, informing me that the piece of music in question is Hungarian Rhapsody #2 by Franz Liszt; but it also told me something more. Under the heading “Controversy” Wikipedia reveals the intriguing story that in the same year The Cat Concerto was produced, Warner Bros released a Bugs Bunny short, Rhapsody Rabbit, that – wait for it – features the central protagonist trying to play Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2 in front of a concert audience while a mouse inside the piano causes all sorts of mayhem. Both cartoons were nominated for an Oscar in the same category, and understandably there were claims of plagiarism; but who copied whom, or whether it was all just a bizarre coincidence (the same piece of music having also been used in numerous other cartoons) has never been resolved. Instinctively I would assume that if anyone copied anyone it would be Warner Bros that copied MGM, what with a mouse already being an established part of the latter’s star double act, but Peter Gimpel, son of the pianist who played on the Bugs Bunny cartoon, offers a plausible alternative in this fascinating article.

It is unlikely that we will ever know the truth for sure, and due to current terrestrial broadcasting policy we will probably never get the chance to watch either cartoon on telly; but thanks again to the wonder of YouTube there are a number of copies of the cartoons held on their servers, and I present them to you today, as a sort of 29th of February gift. If this blog is still here in four years time I may do something similar then, if I think on, and if you’re good. Which cartoon is the better? Well for me it is a clear win for Tom & Jerry, but I am probably a bit biased, so why not take a look and decide for yourself?

The Cat Concerto

Rhapsody Rabbit

Leave a comment
Wednesday 27th February 2008

Terror Twilight

I was awoken with a jolt in the wee small hours; not by the earthquake, but by my wife whispering, “There’s been an earthquake!” Somehow I managed to sleep through a magnitude 5.2 seismic shock (albeit one that’s power must have dissipated markedly by the time it reached us, considering our distance from the epicentre) but not through my beloved’s gentle prodding. What that tells you about my survival instinct I don’t know; interesting that a geological incident won’t shift me (suggesting that I care not for my personal safety) but when my wife merely turns to me (and I perhaps imagine an alternative motive for her action requiring me to fulfil some primal duty to perpetuate the species) I’m up like a shot, so to speak.

At the time of course we had no idea how localised the quake was, and so once downstairs with the kids a (depressingly) few hours later I checked the internet to see if there had been word. My home page showed a link to an article in The Guardian, and so I had a quick read.

Large areas of England from London to Manchester suffered tremors just before 1am last night as an earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale rumbled through the country for several seconds.

There were reports of power cuts in some cities and of buildings shaking – in Hull students ran into the street for fear of falling masonry – but no reports of injuries.

According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake struck at 12.56am at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles) with an epicentre 205 km (127 miles) north of London and 30 miles south of Kingston upon Hull.

“What-what-what-what-what”, as Dannan O’Mallard would doubtless say. Do we really need to know that the epicentre was 127 miles north of London? Should it be the first geographical reference point we are presented with concerning an incident in Lincolnshire? Is it so impossible to describe anything without relating it in some way to the capital? Good – and indeed – grief. I can see why Reuters or the foreign press might mention London in passing, dealing as they are with an international readership, but does a British paper need to do the same? Perhaps, for a metropolitan audience, the sad answer is “yes, it does.”

Sorry, then, if I come across as a chippy northerner, because I really don’t mean to. Perhaps it is because I am a chippy northerner – it’s as good a reason as any – or perhaps it is a temporary effect caused by me currently reading Stuart Maconie’s rather splendid Pies And Prejudice. I don’t know the answer just yet; ask me again in a week.

3 Comments