| Saturday, November 13, 2004 |
 | The whole world plus the work of the world
Every three months or so, work gets hardcore. This time around was more hardcore than some, partly because a protective layer of employee (the one I could trust to do most of the actual stuff) hds been torn away, and partly because after a week off, the horror of the US elections and the emotional fall-out from that and its consequences, I was really not. In. The. Mood.
Still, every industry has its crunch times, and it's now over, although of course the mini-crunch begins as everything that was shelved during the crunch cycle falls out of the back of the cupboard. It's the waste as much as anything else - arriving in a hotel room knowing that in an hour I will have to shower and head out again. Not moving around the streets when anyone else is - 4 in the morning out, 5:45 back. Chatting to the cleaners. I used to pull back-to-back all-nighters when I was 19 and had tutorials two days in a row. It wasn't a great idea then, and getting a better class of takeaway doesn't make it a brilliant idea now.
Could be a lot worse, at least - the fact that nobody in Britain is supposed to enjoy their job at least means that they get to kvetch and shirk somewhat. If you find yourself actually doing what you've always wanted to do, the opportunities for abuse are incalculable. Which makes me fear for this poor French butterfly on a big, hard English wheel. In general, my hatred of jobhunting, musical CV or no, is so great that if I was currently being employed to be rabbit-punched in the kidneys by a leering Dalmatian, I'd probably resign myself to it fairly quickly. Having said which, maybe I should be considering my next move, inspired by the slightly disturbing suggestion that I had given my talent to my work and my genius to a fucking bulletin board, and a vague desire to get radical in some way or another.
Aporia. So much is happening in my life, in my head. When was this ever not the case? When will this ever not be the case? Maybe I should try to express my emotions creatively. Maybe through a flash animation. That's what Archilochus would have done, had he only the tools.
Of course, yesterday was also Remembrance Day, one of those slightly awkward feast days. The silence was observed, although signalling its beginning and end by a short blast of the fire alarm made me feel somewhat like I was in the Machine Gunners. Was that inappropriate? It's confusing these days... I think I probably accumulated a lot of good karma for at no point referring to my desperate and distraught state running between three computers - fox, chicken, bag of grain - as in any way comparable to being shell-shocked.
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| (Written yesterday)
This is what you want, this is what you get.
Oh, Christ. I thought at the time that W's call for unity was welcome, but was going to be difficult for me at least to put my shoulder behind when I keep seeing dead Iraqis. All around me. They don't know they're free. Despite the sterling efforts of the media, this remains the case. And now we can look forward to an absolute dickload more dead on all sides. Whether when you subtract the number of insurgents and Iraqi rebels killed from the number of insurgents and Iraqi rebels created you get a negative number, I'm not yet sure. I do know that the civilian population of Fallujah, and for that matter the ranks of the US and British military, will be harder to replace. Even a broad agreement on the need to combat international Tairrrrrism might not be enough to support the offensive in those terms.
Of course, it is fair to ask what exactly I or any of my pinko friends would have done in this situation. To which the answer is of course "a bake sale".
It's not been a good morning, really. On the way into work I passed a poster, tacked up with special "stop crime" stickers, asking for witnesses to the murder of David Morley. I mean, fuck. To survive one loathsome hate crime just to end up kicked to death on the South Bank.
Maybe this is just a very bad month, or maybe this is part of a trend. The progressive tendency tends to comfort itself with the knowledge that it is progressive - that, for example, the "Red states" exemplify a neanderthal trend that can be seen as the death throes of an old order before it is swamped by a new, exciting, multicultural polyverse of infinite variety.
But what if, not to put too pointy a pin in it, that's complete self-delusion? What rights the formerly oppressed have obtained are recent: how long has a woman been able to vote in the UK? Compare that to how long a scholar of King's College Canterbury has been entitled to walk on the quad. Essentially, the face of human civilisation has long been privileged, despotic, monocultural and male. Actually, quite a lot like Alan Hansen. The period during which this face have softened to create a kinder, gentler arrangement of similar features - what we cultural historians call the Hank Azaria period - is a Christmas scene carved on a grain of rice, and perhaps no more likely to survive a vigorous assault with heavy boots.
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| Tuesday, November 02, 2004 |
| Well, it's official. Democracy in Afghanistan actually works better than in the USA. The news that Kerry has just conceded depresses me immensely - unless and only unless he is just messing with Bush, and is going to keep calling every hour or so to remove or replace his hat from or in the ring, in a genius tribute to Al Gore. I can understand why he's done it, but by God could we not at least have pretended for another ten days. Every vote counted? Every vote counting?
Still and all, as a wise head on Metafilter observed, at least the collapse of the US economy is going to make DVDs cheaper, although troops may well then invade to bring those DVDs back home to a triumphant public. I am already planning a TV movie in which a TV movie based on the rescue of a heroic American soldier by special forces is rescued by special forces.
Miracles and wonders. West Ham look to sign a player who clearly only exists in Championship Manager 3 - this is generally considered a bad idea, no matter how tasty they were in the game - lest we forget, this was the thinking behind Ibrahima Bakayoko's ultimately unfulfilling time at Everton.
What an interesting world we have to look forward to. While aware of the need to retain electability, and without a majority in both houses and on the Supreme Court, Bush has managed, it seems, to create a situation in which 1 in 200 people in Iraq is now not people anymore. That's pretty good going, but I can only salivate at what we can achieve in the never-ending war on Tairrrrrrrr now that the checks and balances have checked out. I'm not fancying the 22nd Amendment's chances, either.
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