Category: Random

I’ve had a few comments about my post yesterday about the daubing of the Cenotaph. They tend to say that there are legitmate targets for protest who have transgressed morally (one person included Churchill in that list) and non-legitmate targets which include the Cenotaph. I have been thinking about this at length and I have come to a few conclusions.

• Morality
  If one can make moral choices about who we wish to protest against, then some people will think the Cenotaph is a legitimate target. If we can understand that they might decide that it is such a target then we can’t be horrified when these sentiments become actions. You can make moral statements about the war, the glorification of people who die for state sanctioned causes, the ascription of moral superiority to one side or the other etc etc etc. Let’s take this argument to it’s most (ludicrously) extreme to see if the need for a symbol of mourning for people can ever be “desecrecrated” in a moral fashion. If there was a monument in Trafalgar Square for SS Officers and Hitler then people would feel totally justified in putting graffiti on it. But these officers died too, often for a cause that they believed in and in which we don’t.

• Glorification of War
  One person who e-mailed me talked about how the Cenotaph was as much a symbol of the futility of war as one could reasonably hope for. I’m just not sure that I agree with that. Does a war movie in which everyone dies doing something “heroic” make a statement about the futility of war? The Cenotaph seems to me to be as much a way to make a political war movie as it is about commemorating the people who actually died. In fact – I doubt that it is possible to do one without the other.

• Why these things happen
  But all this, as far as I can tell is off the point. As I said yesterday – I wonder how many of the demonstrators were actually trying to make a point like this. I suspect remarkably few of them. Instead I think that they wanted to stick two fingers up at the world. I want you to try to imagine that you are a middle class parent living in a semi-detached house with your wife somewhere comfortable but dull (like Norwich). Now your child is starting to rebel, she’s horrified by the uninspiring paths that she sees her life evolving into – the world that she lives in is designed to make things easier, more comfortable, less challenging and totally unthreathening. So she starts to shoplift, vandalise telephone boxes, experiment with dubious substances. WHAT DO YOU DO? Do you spank her, punish her, call her filthy names and throw her out of your house? Of course not. You want to find a way for her to achieve what she wants from life, to find the happiness, the stimulation, that she needs. “Staying Out Of Trouble” is no longer a suitable lifestyle choice.

• Informed Objection
  And that is where this whole idea of informed objection collapses. There are more frustrated people in the world than there are political ones. There are more crushed aspirations than there are passionate politicians. And the girl who aspires to doing SOMETHING (ANYTHING) knows very well that at some level, at some times, the battle is more against the structure that says “this is right”, “this is wrong” than it is against either the right or the wrong things themselves…

A blog based around Haiku? Who would have thought such a thing was possible. Haiku the Blog proves that it is. I’ve been quite bored today, so I have been trying to remember an haiku that an old flatmate of mine and I wrote a few years back. We were awfully proud of it:

Waiting is a game
Not a very good one though
Like Monopoly

In Cluedo they die
Like in Agatha Christie
But not of boredom

And lo did the Onion say something very funny, and verily did I blog it:

Clinton Consults Surgeon General On Behalf Of Friend Curious About Homosexuality
WASHINGTON, DC–President Clinton spent several hours behind closed doors Monday with Surgeon General David Satcher on behalf of an unidentified friend who is curious about homosexuality. “As a favor, this friend of mine asked me to ask the Surgeon General a few questions,” Clinton said. “This person said he’s had some funny new feelings lately, feelings he doesn’t feel comfortable talking about, so he was hoping I could ask for him.” Clinton said Satcher assured him that the feelings his friend is having are “completely natural.”

Katy has been talking about the Anti-Capitalist Riots that happened in London on May Day:

“I don’t think even the sensationalist news reports quite prepared me for what I saw:essentially the aftermath of pure carnage. I’d expected to see looted shops, broken glass, and a lot of mess, but it really was shocking to see the Cenotaph, a memorial to Britain’s war-dead, daubed with graffiti. I’m all for free speech, and I think demonstrations can be very effective when they’re conducted well – but the desecration of these commemorative landmarks just revolted me.”

I’ve been thinking about this since the events actually took place, and although I have yet to wander around the areas concerned, my feelings on the event and its aftermath in the press are anything but clear.

I saw a piece in The Sun today which suggested that a vote for Ken Livingstone was a vote for “THEM” (them being the people who “defaced” the Cenotaph). I saw the word “EVIL” bandied around in a couple of places as well, and a general horror of people not honouring the honoured dead of our country – the same “evil” people who gave us Churchill with a green mohican, and who daubed comments on the memorials of people who gave their lives in World Wars.

But what actually is the problem? Is it that they parodied Churchill? Is it that they don’t appear to care about “war heroes”? Because if this was written down and placed in a magazine or on a website people wouldn’t get anywhere near as irritated. Is it then just property damage? It doesn’t appear to be that either, because you don’t see any news reports focusing on how evil you must be to deface a MacDonalds.

Instead it seems that people have invested a symbolic value in the objects themselves – the Cenotaph and the statue – that these material products are the actual feelings of a country made manifest – turned into stone. But is that really such a big deal? Is it really any more appalling than writing anti-war statements on a phone box?

As I said – I can’t make up my mind – I just don’t know what I think about it. But one thing seems clear to me. Many (most? all?) of these people aren’t protesting about capitalism. They’re not aiming towards a more noble ideal (Communism? Socialism? Social Democracy? Liberal Democracy? Anarchy?) – instead they are products of a dissatisfaction with the way contemporary society limits and belittles the individual.

Their protest is a reason unto itself – an expression of freedom. It’s an aggressive freedom certainly, a non-communitarian freedom probably, even (possibly) an unworkable, impractical, EVIL freedom – but it’s freedom nonetheless. It’s punk with a cover-story, rebellion with a pseudo-cause. And such spirits will continue to erupt, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Weekend over. And not a moment too soon. I returned home on Friday, had a brief row with my mother on Saturday morning about the way I ate weetabix, sorted out all my personal belongings into “london”, “storage”, “throwaway” and “sell” piles, slept badly and then drove down to my new flat on Sunday morning. And then I drove back to Norfolk again. And then I got a train back to London again. Exhausting.

Monday was a £150 Ikea fest in full Bank Holiday mode. And I still forgot to buy lightbulbs. Scream 3 in the evening and then Buffy box-set 2.2 eased me to bed. Best thing about new flat: having my own bed. Worst thing about new flat: not having a working telephone (being fixed). Most annoying thing in relation to new flat: being unable to find the telephone number of our local cable TV company.

I went to see Scream 3 with Katy – an old (!) friend and similar devotee to the cult of the web obsessive. She has often expressed to me a frustration at our distance from the webloggers that we read regularly. And so on that note, and with the birth of Katy’s brand new blog “kitschbitch.com“, I hearby declare the beginnings of the London Elite Weblogging Detachment – or LEWD for short. Come forward LEWD boys and girls, and LO! I shalt blog thee…

I don’t want to get too off message at the moment, so I am going to keep my personal commentary log pretty brief over the weekend. Regular viewers will find normal service resumes on Tuesday after the Bank Holiday, after I have moved in properly, and after the current rush of Invisibles people just finding the barbelith family of sites settles down a little bit. In the meantime, Invisibles people, look down the page a little for what you are after.

In the meantime, a little rant from Warren Ellis about the state of the comics industry should be looked at by all people who are passionate about them, or grew up with them and can’t get them completely out of their heads (no matter how they try).

And for the regulars, a little something to keep you cheery: Sissyfight – be a vindictive girl and pick on other people for fun. And watch out for MissyBitch, because I made her mean and strong and sassy as the day is long.

“If you missed the Secret of the Universe the first time around, do what Gideon says on page 8 or go to www.barbelith.com where all those cool eggheads and stoner motherfuckers will do their best to “explain” it to you. If THE INVISIBLES exist anywhere now, it’s on that forum and in your heads. If you still ain’t had your fill of fucked up theories, I can be contacted there with the rest of them in whatever form it takes in the future.”

If you are here because of the above quote, start off with The Bomb, and then proceed to the The Nexus. And stick around because the new revolution is just about to start…

And if you haven’t got the slightest clue what I am talking about, or what the attraction of the Invisibles is, and how I am going to feel about the fact that it has now ended then go and talk to Oh Messy Life, who manages to explain it perfectly. Enjoy.

Very frustrating. People tell me the Nexus is mentioned in The Invisibles this month, but it’s a day late arriving in the shops. In the meantime, some people have been asking how they can get their hands on Fortune Hotel, which includes a piece by Grant as well as Douglas Coupland, Will Self and many others. I have found it on amazon.co.uk, but nowhere else. Sorry!

I’m exhausted but euphoric as things finally seem to be coming together. I’m moving in to my new flat on Saturday, finally catching up on work, and I got some sleep (my first for ages). And it’s sunny! But still, I am still not at peak efficiency. So let’s start the day with some gentle blogging:

Is anyone else bored of Diana, the ever saintly (practically canonised) Princess of Wales? Certainly garden.com doesn’t appear to be. All over the net at the moment I am seeing The Princess of Wales Rose banner ads. Is this really the thrust of the new economy? Should we all buy chintz and commemorative mugs now?

The most amusing thing about Wired’s article about National Phone In Sick Day is that in the UK we get the day off anyway. In fact, next week will be our third four day week in a row. I love Bank Holidays.

And while I am at it, I just thought I should say congrats to Meg for both a highly successful redesign and having an incredibly cool web savvy mother. Jealous much, web kids? I know I am.

You build a website for a comic book, and then get the logo of the website in the comic book and then get the website mentioned in the comic book and then the comic book ends and you think – WHAT NOW? Pick up a copy of The Invisibles today, and then go and visit the Nexus.

Web Queeries (which I write for occasionally) has been named blog of the week over at Blogger. It’s a particularly worthy one because it actually offers a useful journalistic service with an entertainingly personal spin.