Venusberg | That's not your heart, it's a piece of helicopter casing

Friday, January 31, 2003

Light and Magic is buzzing in the background as I try to wrap my head around the concept of the certainty of improvement. Metaphysically, it's an absolute bugger. First up, if we exist in a universe in which every individual element can be improved without cost to the perfection of another element, that is one in which perfection is not a constant, then we are currently stuck in a universe grotesquely unfit for purpose. Alternatively, we find ourselves in a universe already perfect, in which case we are in real trouble.

Pangloss maintains constantly that we live in the best of all possible worlds, but what is more often forgotten is that there was a recognisable philosophical position being parodied here. One of the attempts to solve the problem of evil lands you with a worldview recognisable as Leibniz's optimism, where the balance of elements is such that there is enough wrong with the world to make good actions both necessary and meaningful.

Alternatively, we could subscribe to the Popperian model, where things are getting better, but are doing so in increments so tiny and by processes so arcane that it is impossible to detect how, where or when, or so we must believe in order to continue striving to improve the human condition. Thanks a fucking bunch, Popper. Next time you're in my dojo, we'll be studying the open eye-pokery and its enemies.

What all this has to do with business consulting remains obscure, but I' m sure it will all come in handy in the reasonably near future.

Before we return to my New Year's resolution to fill the pages of Venusberg with light whimsy and the occasional insanely graphic description of parts of my body you may only previously have encountered through Wil Wheaton (no, quite literally through Wil Wheaton), I have to pause briefly to award the You Have Absolutely No Idea You're Naked, once again, to lovely naked Gerard. From a blogpost on blogging:

For me, a blog serves two purposes. The first is that I
wanted to write a diary but felt a normal one to be far
too insular. Second, it allows my many friends across
the globe to keep up with what is going on with me. If
it wasn't for my blog I think I'd get even more than the
300 or so emails I get a day and I'd struggle to
read/answer them all.

Moments later:

This level of honestly (sic) is one of the reason why
I think the site gets the number of visitors it does and
people do come back. Not that it makes much difference.
I started on day one with 1 visitor (me) and now get
2,500 a day. Nothing's changed in the way I write over the
18 months the blog has been running.

And, hard on the heels:

You are right though, the blogging community as a whole
is very cliquey and I've frequently dismissed many
bloggers as 'self obsessed assholes'. A blog is just a
blog is a blog. If you need one to gain proof of being
liked or other such nonsense then you need help.

god, I love this man. I want to rub his head and keep his toes warm. Tune in tomorrow when he tells us that the Lexus is the Japanese Mercedes, and that technically speaking, since he had decided to break up with his last girlfriend before she dumped him, he dumped her. Love it loud.

Thursday, January 30, 2003

Damn it, I can't resist. Off to walk through the snow in a big coat. Wish me luck.

OK, I will admit that on occasion I have been guilty of the odd false trail on the whole "now the clouds have meaning" front. I may at times have allowed my excitement at something to cloud my judgement, leading me to claim that the clouds have meaning when in fact they still remain at best interpretable by nephelomancy only, and at worst completely opaque. However.

Now the clouds actually do have meaning. I promise. They have meaning because and only because you can now buy Wil Wheaton thongs. Yes, for $12.99 you can have Wil Wheaton simultaneously clasping your pudenda in a cottony embrace and inveigling his way between your buttocks. It's an enduring image, I think you'll agree.

This is the kind of thing that a) gives the clouds meaning and b) restores a little lustre to the tarnished institution of the Bloggies. I doubt anyone will further contest his placing as Best European Weblogger, will they now?

Christ! Snow - a blizzard of snow, whirling outside the window. My feet chill in empathy. God, I hope it settles. I want to see London in the snow again - tracked remnants gleaming in the night from the reflected light of the illuminated Tate Modern. Lovely stuff. It will also make the wretched cold of the last few days worthwhile...I'd catch snowflakes on my tongue, but I suspect London snow in the mouth is a bad idea.

Meanwhile, travelling to Elephant, just like the bad old days, and most especially after the derailment on the Central Line, reminded me of Geoff Ryman's classic 253, one of the most successful hypertext books I've encountered so far, and briefly flavour of the month a couple of years ago. The dictum that in cyberspace people become places is a massively important one, I think. People also become text, which is perhaps more significant if less extraordinary. I have a program called Fantamirror which turns images into ASCII art. I imagine that I will probably uninstall it when next I need to springclean without ever using it, but the idea of it I rather like. Making the metaphor concrete, so to speak.

The snow's stopped. But on another weblog it's still falling.

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Meanwhile, new voice Anna scores big with this collection of Japanese emoticons. Emoticons are of course the work of the Devil, but in this case there is something glacial about the horizontal unscrolling of these ones. Also, the range of things judged important enough to the culture to have their own emoticon is fascinating. When did you last need to express the concept of John Lennon non-verbally? How about cuttlefish?

Emoticons in a basically pictographic language is an interesting idea, on which I must think more....

Christmas Jones! Thank God for homeworking, where I can snuggle in my endlessly comfy dressing gown and actually get something done. Yesterday was an ass-to-ass nightmare, although it did at least give me a chance to drop off my books at the Poetry Library (drop off literally, in fact; it's closed on Tuesdays, so you have to leave them outside the door, like a charity shop). However, no trains from Charing Cross. None. Since this was caused by a signal failure at London Bridge, that didn't seem like such a great idea either. So, tube to Elephant and Castle, and the most crowded bus ever home, a 20-minute journey taking two hours.

When I was younger, I used to take the nightbus back from the centre of own pretty frequently, often getting in about dawn. Maybe I will feel more sanguine about it when the weather improves, but right now I'm just bewildered. Who the hell was I? Clark Kent?

Friday, January 24, 2003

It always feels so good to see Kissinger standing next to a US president. It's kind of like watching Voltron gear up for a physical assault on the Statue of Liberty.

Damn, but I love Get Your War On, as much for the phraseology as anything else. I know I keep coming back to this, but it's a very strange thing. At present, it seems that US and UK troops (a quarter of our operational forces, I believe - if Yorkshire wants to declare independence, now is a bloody good time) are currently in the process of pottering off gulfwards, to what appears to be the general disapproval of the population of the UK at least. There appears to be no clear remit for war, and no firm suggestion, beyond regime change and kittens (hey, everybody loves kittens) of what the war would entail. I for one am not entirely clear whether this is meant to be the second front of the War on Terror (and, as MNFTIU points out, thank god that's over now and there's no more terror), or a separate war against Evil. Plus, we are being told alternately that war is inevitable and that war is a last resort on which decisions have yet to be made.

It's all very confusing. Baudrillard said that the Gulf War was the first war not really to have happened (apart from the second Anglo-Dutch war, which as any fule kno was just the first Anglo-Dutch war with director's commentary). It's possible that the War against the Terror-Striking and Furthering Alliance that Coordinates Evil will be the first war that most certainly does happen, but nobody can work out who it happened to or why it happened, or indeed to what end it occured, since every contemporary report is balanced out by an equal and opposite report.

I look forward, as an old, old man, to helping my epogoni with their history homework, probably by jacking into their intertrodes or something equally technomagical, and allowing myself a wry chuckle at chapter 12: "TWATFACE: What the fuck was that all about, then?"

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Hemp, at the moment, seems to be taking up a greater and greater part of my life. I moisturise my hands with hemp oil, wash my face with a hemp-based cleanser, and take three teaspoonfuls of hemp oil every day to build my Omega 6 count. I feel as if I am knitting a cocoon of hemp, within which I am moistened, cleansed, fed, nurtured. It's a dangerous feeling. Thank god for my congenitally poor memory for taking care of myself, really, or we could be in real trouble.

So what else can hemp do? What can hemp do for the Earth? What can hemp do for you? Pretty much everything, as it turns out. .

Thursday, January 16, 2003

YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO MISS THIS LLOIBIN.

Apparently. Spam may be no more seductive than it has ever been, but at least it appears to be branching out into either surrealism or Welsh. And is there really a difference?

Oddly enough, the message attached to this particular piece of gibberish was for a website devoted to the end of smoking. Not, I hasten to add, as a philosophical concept, but on an individual level. And, as such, this is perhaps the time for a confession.

My name is Daniel, and I am a shitquitter.

Oh, the actual not smoking I have pretty much nailed, in almost every situation. Unfortunately, my one blind spot involves being in a pub, with people who are smoking, with beer. With beer being drunk by people who are smoking. That is to say, in about half of my entire social life.

Tomorrow I meet a friend who plans to move back to London from Norway. I shall drink white wine. She shall not smoke, I shall not smoke.

Christ.. I feel like I'm in the Sugarcubes. He said hi. I said hi. I was still clean.

I realise I have been remiss lately. There are many reasons for this. The most obvious one is Christmas. Bad things happen at Christmas, and I maintain the the weblog is not the place to broach such things. As it happens, no bad things happened this Christmas. This Christmas was, to an astonishing extent, thoroughly pleasant. Lovely, even. But that in itself is perhaps disqualification from the weblog. After all, in blogging all families are happy and unhappy in precisely the same way.

So, we have before us a problem of interpretation. It's curious. But more tomorrow, hopefully, and more on Sondheim also. Sleep tight.

Friday, January 10, 2003

Do you like crosswords?

Good God, no. The cryptic crossword is like chess, as far as I can see; an awful lot of effort learning a skill set with almost no practical applications.

I agree. So, what do you do?

Play chess and do the cryptic crossword, mainly. My life hasn't turned out exactly as planned.

Thursday, January 09, 2003

Fortunately, I was spared a trip in by those friendly fellows at the Guardian, who provide pictures of snowbound London here. Besides, I shall be out tonight, seeing a play my dear old friend Leigh has produced. Which is lovely, although I was rather hoping for a quiet and early night. Still, you know, Sondheim. So perhaps snowbound (and gritty) London then.

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

I should take some photos of this, and maybe even head into town to see snowy Trafalgar Square (with its snowy roadworks), but that would involve leaving the comparative toastiness of my study. Tricky tricky tricky....

Meanwhile, met schoolfriends - Russ, Damien and Isaac - for pub quiz last night at the Frog and Forget-Me-Not, home apparently of breast-enlarging coffee. We kicked ass. More precisely, we cocked the music round and were honestly surprised when we won, but the principle's good. More disturbingly, Isaac won the raffle for the second time in a row - I think we worked out the likelihood of that occuring as about 64,000 to 1, thus making him the Messiah. Fact. It's been a while since I did a pub quiz. Or threw a snowball - a recollection sparked by the sight out of the window of a tiny urchin lobbing one at a car. I did in fact make a snowball on instinct yesterday, before realising that I was really too old to chuck it at random people. If tinies, I am a bully, if grown-ups a statistic.

Bloody Hell...all of a sudden we're walking in a winter wonderland. Or, more precisely in my case, snuggling in my new and exciting sub-John Rocha dressing gown. Damn, but it's toasty. And it will have to be; snow is tumbling like panic on London.

I wonder - can you eat the snow around here? I'm guessing not; meltwater is meant to be the purest, but I suspect that truism is pre-metropolitan. Which is a shame, since we can't trust the water.

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

Well well - only yesterday, returning by the last train from Andy's farewell do (doubtless we all wish him well in his journey to Barcelona, and his concomitant goat-strangling hangover), I was thinking to myself that one thing I missed about living in London was snow. The temperature within the city generally being higher by a few degrees than the countryside, (if countryside is the word we're looking for to describe the blighted, blasted wastelands that, beloinclothed wild boy that I was, I made my stalking grounds as a a child. You can stop imagining me in a loincloth now. Oh, hang on. No. You can't. How often do you get to reveal yourself as both physically and morally hideous in a single fell swoop, eh?) snowfall seems a pretty rare occurence, as against the perfect fields of thick white emptiness the young man might pour himself into and beneath.

And lo and behold, it's bloody snowed. At lunchtime I shall take a walk, and swing my cane at the branches of trees, at least until somebody calls the police. I can already feel the pale, clean smell in my nose. And my toes are going numb.

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