"Google is your friend"
I was loitering in the pub we call Twitter near closing time when I overheard the phrase. "Google is your friend". It was said as part of a Twitter conversation about the merit of information professionals in research.
"Google is your friend" "Information Professionals are obsolete"
The only proper response to this is: "F*ck off ya fud". [Ironically, best don't google search 'fud']
The reason this is the only response it deserves is because there is nothing else to say. Anyone who says "Google is your friend" loses this and any future argument about information management and research at that point. Anyone who says it is archaic, primordial, pond scum. Gloop. They no longer matter. They are anti-matter, vacuous. Nothing.
Quite aside the statement predisposes that Google is somehow the friend to those without access to the hardware to use it, the literacy to use it, the technological infrastructure to use it - it shows a lack of understanding of improving information provision and why it is important in society. Google in this statement shows a limited ambition. Google is good enough for the dross masses. It is the statement of the false bourgeois built on hollow straws.
Google is a commercial company and can and do change their motivations and mission statement based on capital theory, not for the good of information access. Google has abandoned it's primary operation to archive and protect the World's printed analogue and born-digital history. It is now about the money-making, patent-pending future.
The Google Books project has lost impetus and is out of funding and favour: Self-driving future cars are in.
"Google is your friend" "Google is your friend" "Let them eat cake"
The thing is, Google is your friend. Google is able to talk to you about pretty much anything you want. Sure some of what it talks about isn't always accurate, it hasn't always read up on a topic, sometimes it forgets things and sometimes it tells you just what you want to hear, but it is easy to talk to. You can have better relationships with other "friends" who can offer better advice, but Google keeps tagging along and wittering on over them. Google is your annoying old school friend who you worked with a couple of times on a class project. It's Google who turns up later to your office nights out and is reduced to telling old, hoary jokes for attention when the conversation goes over their head.
You could be introduced to other "friends" with good, respected specialised jobs - who are encouraged to be professional, continue in their development and take care of their health. Your friend Google is too ripped of its titties on sweet candy and sugar cane to care much about being professional. Professionalism is for squares - you see any squares in the word 'Google'? Google doesn't care, it's so pumped full of algorithms in its veins it has no idea what it is saying to you, just whatever comes to mind first, but it doesn't matter because Google is still talking to you, still your friend, right, buddy, right?
"Google is your friend" "Google is your embarrassing friend"
Let's drop this silly analogy for now. Let's have a practical example.
"Google is your friend"
You've been accused of a heinous crime. You're going to court. You know you're innocent but the details are complex. If you are found guilty it is career ruining at best, family disownment and a shiv in the eye down at the prison yard at worse.
Your lawyer comes in and says: "OK, I've sat with the ipad this morning on Google. I've found a few things which seem legit. Well, one of the things was, like, the 6th hit on page 1 - so that has to be hopeful, right? This one guy has a blog - I'm calling him as an expert witness. He is really opinionated on a lot of stuff, some of which involves your situation, kind of. It shouldn't be too hard to track him down because IJUDGETHEJUDGES is a fairly rare name, I reckon. I would have done more but I clicked on Google Images by mistake and then spent a fair bit of time searching for lawyer cartoons. I will charge you time for that, unfortunately."
OR, would you prefer if your lawyer comes in and says: "Good afternoon. I've been working on your case. The firm's professional information team has collated a dossier of supportive Good Law: authoritative case reports and the concerned legislation status at the time of your alleged crime. While they were doing this for me, I used my time to read through your details and start on how I'm going to develop your defence."
"Google is your friend" "Information Professionals are your best friends"
The world of information is expanding in preposterous directions and over mind bending mediums. Information Professionals should be in more demand than ever. There is sound reasoning for it. Information access and literacy is going to be ever more key in research and learning. If Google is the highest form of resource we can aim for, we are in trouble.
Information professionals are not against Google. Google is not a friend to an Information Professional. To them it is a tool. It has some advantages and some disadvantages. It doesn't search the Deep Web, but lets you track down a lot of populist facing materials which want to be freely found. It also has some fairly advanced tricks hidden away to help search it the most effectively, of which will be mainly unknown to the non-information professional.
An information professional will tell you Google is the last port in a research storm. You start with the information query and in a structured interview with the researcher, hone it to the most precise it can be. The information professional will help with interrogating the most suited resource, online or offline, to find the most authoritative information. They do this objectively. They do it without any sense of trying to promote one answer over another because they've not been paid to do that. They give the answer in the most useful format. The information professional also has the advantage of being in the best place to ask other information professionals and combine their skills for your benefit.
Information professionals enjoy giving good information, using trusted resources with efficiency and the occasional smile.
Google might be your friend, but with Information Professionals you are amongst friends.
Oh! Someone has just tweeted we don't need libraries because now there are Kindles.... Grrrrrrr!
Sunday, 30 November 2014
Saturday, 1 November 2014
Drive-thru review - No. 1 (and 2)
Hello and welcome to the first of a semi-regular series of late night intelligentsia posts I am calling: “Drive-thru reviews”. These are my low-key reviews of the more non-mainstream films I have been watching: TV movies, B-movies and C and probably D Movies too. Stuff you might see at a small town drive-in. The reviews will be a mix of synopsis, my own views and film facts. The potential for spoilers is rife. I will keep those to a minimum wherever I can. And if I can imbed a trailer or clip, then I’ll do that as well. Hopefully you might find them as entertaining as watching the films, which I hope you will too.
I will award each film my patent-pending Tombstone Rating too.
So slouch down, pick up a day old bucket of popcorn and chew on.
To kick off this feature, I am hosting a Saturday night double presentation of reviews – the 2011 film, Disco Exorcist and Frankenhooker, from 1990.
The Drive-Thru Review of Disco Exorcist (18)
Disco Exorcist was cut by American director Richard Griffin and the production travelling ensemble cast and crew in the relatively brief downtime between shooting Nun of That (a revenge genre piece about an avenging nun) and Sins of Dracula (Shadow of the Vampire versus community theatre workshop).
Disco Exorcist holds the enviable accolade of being the first film I’ve watched and then immediately re-watched, with director’s commentary. This was because I was unsure if what I’d seen was simply borderline p0rn. No further educated by the commentary track (it mainly talks about lighting and set dressing between giggles) the third time I watched it I did so with a girl just to be absolutely certain. Girls can tell if you’ve invited them to your home and then start showing them p0rnography. I always find.
The result is I think we are just about safe to (re)view it.
Filmed as a homage piece to the recently back en-vogue budget produced horror films of the 1970’s, Disco Exorcist is a paranormal horror planted in an unclassified US town at an unidentified time in the 1970s where a Disco going, bed post notching lothario meets his match in a classic woman scorned plotline with an incantation hell-raising, voodoo twist.
The trouble with Disco Exorcist is it is a superb idea for a film (acknowledged with it being by far the most well-known of the company’s output despite it being the least seriously approached)… which should have been a film made in 1977: a mirror-ball reflecting riff on the success of Saturday Night Fever. A straight ahead, lurid sexploitation budget horror filmed in a contemporary environment would have meant this being a cold classic today.
There is a decent, fun film in here if you rummage, but as homage, Disco Exorcist simply fails to find the conviction to raise it from modern curio to cult status. Period films of this nature stand and fall on the audience investing in what they are watching. Is it a supposedly gonzo account of hedonistic events and exploitative counter-culture? Is it a living nightmare where the rules are malevolently tipped in the balance of the evil entity at every slow turn? Can you suspend your belief enough to buy into the rules established in the movie?
Watching Disco Exorcist, you are never unaware this is a modern attempt at retro, characters are actors playing dress-up (and wearing wigs) and the locations’ the same warehouse redressed with drapes and repositioned lava lamps. This is a film by people who were barely alive in the 1970’s reanimating the disco scene into what they think it was probably like. This isn’t Happy Days, this is a history lecture of Mel Gibson proportions. Everyone knows this is a through and through fake, crucially including the viewer. The main cast are having too much fun pretending, and it shows. There is no authenticity and the world the characters inhabit is like a paint-by-numbers rendering of the Mona Lisa.
Neither does it maintain a conviction to the horror, comedy or 70’s adult cinema lineage although it certainly has enough touchstones to all three.
There is plenty of gore and fake blood spilled throughout the film. There are moments grafted onto scenes as comedy (although the comedy does flat line more than the body count. Example: “Go get the good coke from the good cocaine safe” “where do you keep the bad coke?” “In the bad cocaine safe”) and dilutes any sense of building terror left in the fairly ponderous, flabby edit. There is a buffet of male and female wobbly parts on show. The actual film-celluloid is faux-aged and damaged (through post-production digital effects) and the audience is even treated to a “REEL MISSING” card (though there is no disappointment at missing a scene where the characters evidently move from one location to another). The other genuine touch of pure grindhouse offered is how the tiny budget and less than convincing horror effects combine with some amazingly uninhibited scenes to compensate which would look a treat spliced in a 240 second trailer from a scratchy, stained rental VHS tape.
But for all the gore, drug and sexual excesses in the film (and these all do increasingly push boundaries as the running time rattles on – and it is not exactly “Watch With Mother” from the opening scene) it never fully commits to them, much like the walk-on extras who are often painfully caught half-heartedly reacting in the background. This is a surprising statement to make considering (thanks to the director’s commentary) the lead characters in the film are real life husband and wife, and the scenes of drug taking involved genuine snorting of flour.
On a final note, you don’t see the tits of the hottest actress in the film. Armoeena Jones (played by Sarah Niklin) never reveals a nipple. And, remember, I’ve watched this film twice. And then another time. Sarah steals the scenes she is in – attractive and able to deliver a line – playing Armoeena, a starlet in the adult movie industry and subject of voodoo possession. Given the copious amounts of nudity surrounding her, that Armoeena meta “acts” in an adult film within the film and later abundantly enjoys the festivities of an orgy party, Sarah has a part which is the very mathematical formula for topless being a contextual prerequisite for the role.
Ironically, this is the most perverse thing in the film.
Greville Rating: 3 out of 6 Tombstones
There are no such imponderable issues of the mind in our second drive-thru review of the evening. The leading lady in our second feature does go topless, even if technically they are not her own breasts.
The Drive-Thru Review of Frankenhooker (15)
The tag-line was gift-wrapped to Frankenhooker’s PR when Bill Murray provided the quote: “If you see only one movie this year, make it Frankenhooker”.
If you followed Murray’s advice in 1990 you would have not paid to see: Kindergarten Cop, Spaced Invaders, Troll 2, Bill Murray’s own starring turn in Quick Change; Ducktails the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp or the Bill Cosby big screen vehicle “Ghost Dad” where Bill Cosby plays ghost dad… a workaholic ghost who struggles to complete a multi-million dollar merger deal for his alive boss while also providing a nurturing home environment for his alive family, all of whom can’t hear him.
Frankenhooker is a story very (and I mean, extraordinarily) loosely connected with the Mary Shelly gothic novel, Frankenstein (if you hadn’t already worked that out).
After befalling to an unfortunate accident with a remote controlled lawnmower, boyfriend Jeffrey Franken, sets about combining his weekend hobby of experimental biology and his day job working for the local electricity board to rebuild his girlfriend from chunks of prostitutes he kills. However his plans go awry when his creation lives to become less girlfriend and more girl-fiend in a tale which manages to hold together to the Kafkaesque ending better than the Monster.
A horror-comedy, Frankenhooker also intended to be a satire, supportive of the feminist cause. Although killing prostitutes in order to use their flesh to improve your girlfriend’s appearance may seem like a stretch of the satire in that direction.
In some ways, Frankenhooker takes the male adolescent fantasy game of creating the perfect woman (the head of Jolie, the body of Hayek, legs of Anniston…) to its more satisfying gothic end compared to its older cousin, Weird Science. In other ways, it doesn’t quite make the emotional connection that what is being done is a grotesque of nature and so the altogether more fulfilling conclusion about whom the real monster is, is lost.
As an aside, the cast of hookers and Elizabeth – the mad hobbyist’s girlfriend and, later, objects of his affection (the objects specifically being her head and right foot), and all Penthouse Pets at the time, possibly better known by the late night theatre going audience than anyone else in the film – were all chosen for their on screen glamour. If you’re going to measure up a thigh to sew into a meat jigsaw, may as well make it a good one.
Just like the Penthouse Pets, Frankenhooker does the most with what it has: limited special effects are put to use with multiple lopped heads rolling about, and so a strong sense of narrative pulls the story along when perhaps the action cannot.
Indeed, this movie almost plays out as a character piece.
In a scene early in the film, Jeffrey explains to his mother the series of weird feelings and bad thoughts he has been having since his girlfriend’s death. One may be moved at the outpouring of dialogue of a troubled young man coming to terms with his grief in the midst of trauma against a society which does not empathise (his Mom comically offering him a sandwich after his heart bled speech). Or one may see it as a means to convey these feelings when the actor is not talented enough to portray them any other way.
Whatever, the scene is a good example of the main protagonist giving a running commentary of his thoughts by talking to himself throughout the film: from his deep love for his chopped up girlfriend to how he is vetting the hookers he sees. Which is only a little annoying – like a mouthy audio photography book that won’t shut the hell up!
It is notable the writer and director Frank Henenlotter strove hard for an R rating post cut, and this film is classified 15 in the UK. There is little bloody gore involved, which is a likely factor of budget (although the cost of the film was a startling $5m – which today could be $126m for all I know) rather than anything else. There is little in the way of bad language and sex, considering the plot. The titular Monster, a potential pin-up for the video nasty fan, is played with lightness and a sense of the ridiculous. Ultimately every character gets exactly what you feel, in the end, they deserve in karma exploring conclusions (with the exception of the guinea pig, which is pure and simple animal cruelty). As a result of this, Frankenhooker is more 1950 sweet 16 Debutant Ball than 2003 Dutch underground club sleaze-fest.
If there is a loser in this film, it’s science. Science of all schools is a distant second to the populist means of getting on with the story. This is why it is Peter Venkman and not Egon Spengler quoted on the poster.
Which leads me onto Ghost. The film Ghost was released in 1990. How come no Ghostbuster was endorsing that one? I would have thought that would have been the prime candidate for a bit of Ghostbuster championing.
As for the feminism in Frankenhooker? Well, one of the prostitutes’ heads comes off when she explodes from taking “Super Crack” and hits her pimp, rendering him unconscious. That’s a form of girl power, I suppose.
Greville Rating: 3 out of 6 Tombstones
I will award each film my patent-pending Tombstone Rating too.
So slouch down, pick up a day old bucket of popcorn and chew on.
To kick off this feature, I am hosting a Saturday night double presentation of reviews – the 2011 film, Disco Exorcist and Frankenhooker, from 1990.
The Drive-Thru Review of Disco Exorcist (18)
Disco Exorcist was cut by American director Richard Griffin and the production travelling ensemble cast and crew in the relatively brief downtime between shooting Nun of That (a revenge genre piece about an avenging nun) and Sins of Dracula (Shadow of the Vampire versus community theatre workshop).
Disco Exorcist holds the enviable accolade of being the first film I’ve watched and then immediately re-watched, with director’s commentary. This was because I was unsure if what I’d seen was simply borderline p0rn. No further educated by the commentary track (it mainly talks about lighting and set dressing between giggles) the third time I watched it I did so with a girl just to be absolutely certain. Girls can tell if you’ve invited them to your home and then start showing them p0rnography. I always find.
The result is I think we are just about safe to (re)view it.
Filmed as a homage piece to the recently back en-vogue budget produced horror films of the 1970’s, Disco Exorcist is a paranormal horror planted in an unclassified US town at an unidentified time in the 1970s where a Disco going, bed post notching lothario meets his match in a classic woman scorned plotline with an incantation hell-raising, voodoo twist.
The trouble with Disco Exorcist is it is a superb idea for a film (acknowledged with it being by far the most well-known of the company’s output despite it being the least seriously approached)… which should have been a film made in 1977: a mirror-ball reflecting riff on the success of Saturday Night Fever. A straight ahead, lurid sexploitation budget horror filmed in a contemporary environment would have meant this being a cold classic today.
There is a decent, fun film in here if you rummage, but as homage, Disco Exorcist simply fails to find the conviction to raise it from modern curio to cult status. Period films of this nature stand and fall on the audience investing in what they are watching. Is it a supposedly gonzo account of hedonistic events and exploitative counter-culture? Is it a living nightmare where the rules are malevolently tipped in the balance of the evil entity at every slow turn? Can you suspend your belief enough to buy into the rules established in the movie?
Watching Disco Exorcist, you are never unaware this is a modern attempt at retro, characters are actors playing dress-up (and wearing wigs) and the locations’ the same warehouse redressed with drapes and repositioned lava lamps. This is a film by people who were barely alive in the 1970’s reanimating the disco scene into what they think it was probably like. This isn’t Happy Days, this is a history lecture of Mel Gibson proportions. Everyone knows this is a through and through fake, crucially including the viewer. The main cast are having too much fun pretending, and it shows. There is no authenticity and the world the characters inhabit is like a paint-by-numbers rendering of the Mona Lisa.
Neither does it maintain a conviction to the horror, comedy or 70’s adult cinema lineage although it certainly has enough touchstones to all three.
There is plenty of gore and fake blood spilled throughout the film. There are moments grafted onto scenes as comedy (although the comedy does flat line more than the body count. Example: “Go get the good coke from the good cocaine safe” “where do you keep the bad coke?” “In the bad cocaine safe”) and dilutes any sense of building terror left in the fairly ponderous, flabby edit. There is a buffet of male and female wobbly parts on show. The actual film-celluloid is faux-aged and damaged (through post-production digital effects) and the audience is even treated to a “REEL MISSING” card (though there is no disappointment at missing a scene where the characters evidently move from one location to another). The other genuine touch of pure grindhouse offered is how the tiny budget and less than convincing horror effects combine with some amazingly uninhibited scenes to compensate which would look a treat spliced in a 240 second trailer from a scratchy, stained rental VHS tape.
But for all the gore, drug and sexual excesses in the film (and these all do increasingly push boundaries as the running time rattles on – and it is not exactly “Watch With Mother” from the opening scene) it never fully commits to them, much like the walk-on extras who are often painfully caught half-heartedly reacting in the background. This is a surprising statement to make considering (thanks to the director’s commentary) the lead characters in the film are real life husband and wife, and the scenes of drug taking involved genuine snorting of flour.
On a final note, you don’t see the tits of the hottest actress in the film. Armoeena Jones (played by Sarah Niklin) never reveals a nipple. And, remember, I’ve watched this film twice. And then another time. Sarah steals the scenes she is in – attractive and able to deliver a line – playing Armoeena, a starlet in the adult movie industry and subject of voodoo possession. Given the copious amounts of nudity surrounding her, that Armoeena meta “acts” in an adult film within the film and later abundantly enjoys the festivities of an orgy party, Sarah has a part which is the very mathematical formula for topless being a contextual prerequisite for the role.
Ironically, this is the most perverse thing in the film.
Greville Rating: 3 out of 6 Tombstones
There are no such imponderable issues of the mind in our second drive-thru review of the evening. The leading lady in our second feature does go topless, even if technically they are not her own breasts.
The Drive-Thru Review of Frankenhooker (15)
The tag-line was gift-wrapped to Frankenhooker’s PR when Bill Murray provided the quote: “If you see only one movie this year, make it Frankenhooker”.
If you followed Murray’s advice in 1990 you would have not paid to see: Kindergarten Cop, Spaced Invaders, Troll 2, Bill Murray’s own starring turn in Quick Change; Ducktails the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp or the Bill Cosby big screen vehicle “Ghost Dad” where Bill Cosby plays ghost dad… a workaholic ghost who struggles to complete a multi-million dollar merger deal for his alive boss while also providing a nurturing home environment for his alive family, all of whom can’t hear him.
Frankenhooker is a story very (and I mean, extraordinarily) loosely connected with the Mary Shelly gothic novel, Frankenstein (if you hadn’t already worked that out).
After befalling to an unfortunate accident with a remote controlled lawnmower, boyfriend Jeffrey Franken, sets about combining his weekend hobby of experimental biology and his day job working for the local electricity board to rebuild his girlfriend from chunks of prostitutes he kills. However his plans go awry when his creation lives to become less girlfriend and more girl-fiend in a tale which manages to hold together to the Kafkaesque ending better than the Monster.
A horror-comedy, Frankenhooker also intended to be a satire, supportive of the feminist cause. Although killing prostitutes in order to use their flesh to improve your girlfriend’s appearance may seem like a stretch of the satire in that direction.
In some ways, Frankenhooker takes the male adolescent fantasy game of creating the perfect woman (the head of Jolie, the body of Hayek, legs of Anniston…) to its more satisfying gothic end compared to its older cousin, Weird Science. In other ways, it doesn’t quite make the emotional connection that what is being done is a grotesque of nature and so the altogether more fulfilling conclusion about whom the real monster is, is lost.
 |
| Behold! The most beautiful girl in the world! |
Just like the Penthouse Pets, Frankenhooker does the most with what it has: limited special effects are put to use with multiple lopped heads rolling about, and so a strong sense of narrative pulls the story along when perhaps the action cannot.
Indeed, this movie almost plays out as a character piece.
In a scene early in the film, Jeffrey explains to his mother the series of weird feelings and bad thoughts he has been having since his girlfriend’s death. One may be moved at the outpouring of dialogue of a troubled young man coming to terms with his grief in the midst of trauma against a society which does not empathise (his Mom comically offering him a sandwich after his heart bled speech). Or one may see it as a means to convey these feelings when the actor is not talented enough to portray them any other way.
Whatever, the scene is a good example of the main protagonist giving a running commentary of his thoughts by talking to himself throughout the film: from his deep love for his chopped up girlfriend to how he is vetting the hookers he sees. Which is only a little annoying – like a mouthy audio photography book that won’t shut the hell up!
It is notable the writer and director Frank Henenlotter strove hard for an R rating post cut, and this film is classified 15 in the UK. There is little bloody gore involved, which is a likely factor of budget (although the cost of the film was a startling $5m – which today could be $126m for all I know) rather than anything else. There is little in the way of bad language and sex, considering the plot. The titular Monster, a potential pin-up for the video nasty fan, is played with lightness and a sense of the ridiculous. Ultimately every character gets exactly what you feel, in the end, they deserve in karma exploring conclusions (with the exception of the guinea pig, which is pure and simple animal cruelty). As a result of this, Frankenhooker is more 1950 sweet 16 Debutant Ball than 2003 Dutch underground club sleaze-fest.
If there is a loser in this film, it’s science. Science of all schools is a distant second to the populist means of getting on with the story. This is why it is Peter Venkman and not Egon Spengler quoted on the poster.
Which leads me onto Ghost. The film Ghost was released in 1990. How come no Ghostbuster was endorsing that one? I would have thought that would have been the prime candidate for a bit of Ghostbuster championing.
As for the feminism in Frankenhooker? Well, one of the prostitutes’ heads comes off when she explodes from taking “Super Crack” and hits her pimp, rendering him unconscious. That’s a form of girl power, I suppose.
Greville Rating: 3 out of 6 Tombstones
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
My B-log has something to say, why don't you ask it.
There is a rule of playwrights which I vaguely recall:
If you put a loaded gun in the scene, make damn sure a character pulls the trigger.
Something along those lines anyway. More of that later.
It has been 25 years since Twin Peaks first aired. It has taken all those 25 years for something to happen. 25 years since Twin Peaks first aired and... I've watched it for the first time.
Why I've never watched it before is a question I can't rightly answer.
Partly a reason of being pretty young, more partly because my parents didn't watch it. They called it "weird" and "confusing". I looked at the font spelling out Twin Peaks - a green and black warning sign - and didn't argue. I think, also, it hasn't helped that media commentators continually struggle to describe it: "Surreal", "genre blurring" and "cult" and talk with bemusement about a "log lady". Worse still when the general criticism is half-way through the whole thing goes off the rails and the quality tail-spins, why would you bother?
Very few describe Twin Peaks as "Good".
Partly though, I never had the opportunity to watch it. Until now. So over the last month I watched the whole thing on DVD. It turned out to be my bag.
For those who haven't watched it, I will try and explain what Twin Peaks is, without spoilers.
That is tricky. It is almost certainly why TV critics have kept away from specifics. Everything in Twin Peaks is a potential spoiler. But more of that later.
Actually the plot is very mainstream, 100 afternoon TV movies have the same one. It is a classic, housewife pleasing whodunit.
A body of a local girl washes up on a lakeside and when an FBI agent called Cooper gets involved it becomes clear this is not the killer's first victim. The FBI agent quickly endears himself to the locals and uses a number of unconventional detection techniques which reveal a rather unconventional set of circumstances of the murder in this rather unconventional small town steeped in Americana.
Stylistically Twin Peaks throws itself to the cult-kiddies.
With the advantage of seeing the shows it inspired, you can see Twin Peak DNA especially in shows like Eerie Indiana and the X-Files and, I would proffer, even in True Blood. An apparently simple, hokey set of characters and locations where strange mysteries are accepted parts of everyday life to deal with.
Yes, just a charming programme about a town's hokey inhabitants with drugs, domestic violence, a whore house and a lot of far more bizarre activities going on. And a murderer on the loose. It is not all dark, either, there are several twisty moments of humour and lightness to be found.
Where Twin Peaks changes from a straightforward poor Stephen King short story adaptation is in the layering. Twin Peaks has so many layers, it is internet forum heaven.
From the theme tune to the incidental, the music adds a sense of homely and strange. It is a sort imperfect facsimile of the music it is attempting to replicate. The main characters each have their leitmotif theme tune and the viewer can be directed to where the action is headed or who is to be taken notice of with this well executed technique.
But it is not just orally viewers are given reminder signs. Visually there are a number of motifs used to keep the tone of Twin Peaks percolating. Logs, owls, cherry pies and coffee are all used to ground the scenes in this town.
OK, the acting by the young, attractive cast plays out like the afternoon soap-opera which most of the TV sets in Twin Peaks are tuned into. More of that later. Sometimes the acting is really awful. The actor who plays James - and this is no spoiler, at least no more than his sweet ventriloquist dummy face of every scene he's in - plays the character as a teenage Terminator trying to deal with hormones.
But they were also fashion icons. None more so than Audrey Horn, the gorgeous teenager with pin-up good looks and a line in 50's cuts made knitwear.
The older cast fairs a little better in the acting stakes, although maintains the cringe style particularly when raw emotion is called for.
The dialogue, too, is unnatural often. The conversations are deliberate and short. And eminently quotable like catchphrases for fans.
"That's a damn fine cup of coffee"
If anything, though, the acting style and dialogue fits Twin Peaks perfectly and keeps things off-kilter.
The soap opera the characters tune into gives a hyper-reality version of events to come. And this is a great example of the technique used to keep the audience part of the show.
In David Finch and Mark Frost's writing, the storyline is driven by clues in plain view, and - yes - surreal deviations. Notably and most famously of these are the dream sequences which keep FBI Agent Cooper on the case with oblique paths to follow.
The plotting is so tight within it's own Twin Peaks universe, the puzzles so well developed and solved it should make Whovians (yes, Doctor Who fans, I'm going there) physically wretch. There is no 'get out of jail free' sonic screwdrivers. There is no free added lives. No "wait is that cannon? Did they forget?" Twin Peaks operates quite superbly within its own logic. In Twin Peaks no loaded gun goes unfired.
The result is everything is a clue. Everything is a lead. Everything there for a reason and more than it seems.
The soap opera, the logs, the diary, left arms, clicking fingers.
It is exhilarating, investing television. There is no concession, if you miss something once as a viewer you might not understand an action 3 episodes later. There is no coming late to this party. It gripped its audience because they had no choice.
It was a significant mainstream cult success. Twin Peaks was even gently and caringly parodied in a Satuday Night Live sketch which, typically you wish wasn't done live. A show which demanded so much, which took its own sweet time and played with the boundaries of "para"-normal in a detective TV using a soap opera genre was truly ground breaking in its success.
True, famously there was a concession where - mild spoiler - the killer is revealed far earlier than what was planned. One cannot help but wonder just where the story would have gone without this network interference. Would the killer have been someone else for a start? Someone least suspected of all? Is there a character who fits the whole if they were missing piece?
Perhaps this was why David Lynch began to lose interest. The tightness loosened and the oddness cranked up just a notch in Twin Peaks. The audience dropped. Another series was not commissioned. I feel this is doing the second part of the show a disservice. Tension builds admirably and the action quickens pace. But, for a show used to cauterising every loose end, there are a few cliff hangers left hanging on by their fingertips by the rolling final credits.
David Lynch did create a time bending prequel film to Twin Peaks. Called Fire Walk With Me (I've not seen it) it is said to be more the vision Finch had tonally for Twin Peaks but couldn't get away with on network TV. The scenes were harder, more violent, the sex less chaste. It was given a mixed response.
[Now there are some skirting spoilers coming...]
However, going back to the main show, there is so much to ponder over even as the plot points began to entangle. There could be theses written on the themes in Twin Peaks.
Note the number of times Black and White / Brunette and Blonde / Good and Evil are used. Are the puzzles representing the show's own puzzle? Or, consider how each character goes through some form of transformation of opposites at some stage. Or, ask just how cheap was it to employ the guy who played James?
It is testament to the plotting and the immersive environment created by all the elements which made Twin Peaks that, a full 25 years later, Twin Peaks fans began to get excited all at the same time.
You see, in the final episode a character said: "I'll see you again in 25 years".
The fans had been waiting ever since.
And they have been rewarded. They knew Twin Peaks wouldn't just have someone say that. Especially when it was said backwards.
Indeed it is happening again.
Weirdly and this is Gospel truth, I watched the final episode on the DVD the night before the announcement a new 9 part series would be broadcast. From quietly watching an old show to correct a long term anomaly on my CV, suddenly Twin Peaks was trending on my Twitter feed! I couldn't have had any better synchronicity if I tried. And, because I had watched 30 episodes of Twin Peaks in a very short time, there was a part of me genuinely thinking this was no coincidence. This was planned. And I was OK with that.
My advice is get ready for 2016, watch the original series: It's damn fine TV.
If you put a loaded gun in the scene, make damn sure a character pulls the trigger.
Something along those lines anyway. More of that later.
It has been 25 years since Twin Peaks first aired. It has taken all those 25 years for something to happen. 25 years since Twin Peaks first aired and... I've watched it for the first time.
Why I've never watched it before is a question I can't rightly answer.
Partly a reason of being pretty young, more partly because my parents didn't watch it. They called it "weird" and "confusing". I looked at the font spelling out Twin Peaks - a green and black warning sign - and didn't argue. I think, also, it hasn't helped that media commentators continually struggle to describe it: "Surreal", "genre blurring" and "cult" and talk with bemusement about a "log lady". Worse still when the general criticism is half-way through the whole thing goes off the rails and the quality tail-spins, why would you bother?
Very few describe Twin Peaks as "Good".
Partly though, I never had the opportunity to watch it. Until now. So over the last month I watched the whole thing on DVD. It turned out to be my bag.
For those who haven't watched it, I will try and explain what Twin Peaks is, without spoilers.
That is tricky. It is almost certainly why TV critics have kept away from specifics. Everything in Twin Peaks is a potential spoiler. But more of that later.
Actually the plot is very mainstream, 100 afternoon TV movies have the same one. It is a classic, housewife pleasing whodunit.
A body of a local girl washes up on a lakeside and when an FBI agent called Cooper gets involved it becomes clear this is not the killer's first victim. The FBI agent quickly endears himself to the locals and uses a number of unconventional detection techniques which reveal a rather unconventional set of circumstances of the murder in this rather unconventional small town steeped in Americana.
Stylistically Twin Peaks throws itself to the cult-kiddies.
With the advantage of seeing the shows it inspired, you can see Twin Peak DNA especially in shows like Eerie Indiana and the X-Files and, I would proffer, even in True Blood. An apparently simple, hokey set of characters and locations where strange mysteries are accepted parts of everyday life to deal with.
Yes, just a charming programme about a town's hokey inhabitants with drugs, domestic violence, a whore house and a lot of far more bizarre activities going on. And a murderer on the loose. It is not all dark, either, there are several twisty moments of humour and lightness to be found.
Where Twin Peaks changes from a straightforward poor Stephen King short story adaptation is in the layering. Twin Peaks has so many layers, it is internet forum heaven.
From the theme tune to the incidental, the music adds a sense of homely and strange. It is a sort imperfect facsimile of the music it is attempting to replicate. The main characters each have their leitmotif theme tune and the viewer can be directed to where the action is headed or who is to be taken notice of with this well executed technique.
But it is not just orally viewers are given reminder signs. Visually there are a number of motifs used to keep the tone of Twin Peaks percolating. Logs, owls, cherry pies and coffee are all used to ground the scenes in this town.
OK, the acting by the young, attractive cast plays out like the afternoon soap-opera which most of the TV sets in Twin Peaks are tuned into. More of that later. Sometimes the acting is really awful. The actor who plays James - and this is no spoiler, at least no more than his sweet ventriloquist dummy face of every scene he's in - plays the character as a teenage Terminator trying to deal with hormones.
 |
| James being... discontented?? Contented?? |
But they were also fashion icons. None more so than Audrey Horn, the gorgeous teenager with pin-up good looks and a line in 50's cuts made knitwear.
 |
| Audrey sporting part of her Smokin' collection |
The older cast fairs a little better in the acting stakes, although maintains the cringe style particularly when raw emotion is called for.
The dialogue, too, is unnatural often. The conversations are deliberate and short. And eminently quotable like catchphrases for fans.
"That's a damn fine cup of coffee"
If anything, though, the acting style and dialogue fits Twin Peaks perfectly and keeps things off-kilter.
The soap opera the characters tune into gives a hyper-reality version of events to come. And this is a great example of the technique used to keep the audience part of the show.
In David Finch and Mark Frost's writing, the storyline is driven by clues in plain view, and - yes - surreal deviations. Notably and most famously of these are the dream sequences which keep FBI Agent Cooper on the case with oblique paths to follow.
The plotting is so tight within it's own Twin Peaks universe, the puzzles so well developed and solved it should make Whovians (yes, Doctor Who fans, I'm going there) physically wretch. There is no 'get out of jail free' sonic screwdrivers. There is no free added lives. No "wait is that cannon? Did they forget?" Twin Peaks operates quite superbly within its own logic. In Twin Peaks no loaded gun goes unfired.
The result is everything is a clue. Everything is a lead. Everything there for a reason and more than it seems.
The soap opera, the logs, the diary, left arms, clicking fingers.
It is exhilarating, investing television. There is no concession, if you miss something once as a viewer you might not understand an action 3 episodes later. There is no coming late to this party. It gripped its audience because they had no choice.
It was a significant mainstream cult success. Twin Peaks was even gently and caringly parodied in a Satuday Night Live sketch which, typically you wish wasn't done live. A show which demanded so much, which took its own sweet time and played with the boundaries of "para"-normal in a detective TV using a soap opera genre was truly ground breaking in its success.
True, famously there was a concession where - mild spoiler - the killer is revealed far earlier than what was planned. One cannot help but wonder just where the story would have gone without this network interference. Would the killer have been someone else for a start? Someone least suspected of all? Is there a character who fits the whole if they were missing piece?
Perhaps this was why David Lynch began to lose interest. The tightness loosened and the oddness cranked up just a notch in Twin Peaks. The audience dropped. Another series was not commissioned. I feel this is doing the second part of the show a disservice. Tension builds admirably and the action quickens pace. But, for a show used to cauterising every loose end, there are a few cliff hangers left hanging on by their fingertips by the rolling final credits.
David Lynch did create a time bending prequel film to Twin Peaks. Called Fire Walk With Me (I've not seen it) it is said to be more the vision Finch had tonally for Twin Peaks but couldn't get away with on network TV. The scenes were harder, more violent, the sex less chaste. It was given a mixed response.
[Now there are some skirting spoilers coming...]
However, going back to the main show, there is so much to ponder over even as the plot points began to entangle. There could be theses written on the themes in Twin Peaks.
Note the number of times Black and White / Brunette and Blonde / Good and Evil are used. Are the puzzles representing the show's own puzzle? Or, consider how each character goes through some form of transformation of opposites at some stage. Or, ask just how cheap was it to employ the guy who played James?
It is testament to the plotting and the immersive environment created by all the elements which made Twin Peaks that, a full 25 years later, Twin Peaks fans began to get excited all at the same time.
You see, in the final episode a character said: "I'll see you again in 25 years".
The fans had been waiting ever since.
And they have been rewarded. They knew Twin Peaks wouldn't just have someone say that. Especially when it was said backwards.
Indeed it is happening again.
Weirdly and this is Gospel truth, I watched the final episode on the DVD the night before the announcement a new 9 part series would be broadcast. From quietly watching an old show to correct a long term anomaly on my CV, suddenly Twin Peaks was trending on my Twitter feed! I couldn't have had any better synchronicity if I tried. And, because I had watched 30 episodes of Twin Peaks in a very short time, there was a part of me genuinely thinking this was no coincidence. This was planned. And I was OK with that.
My advice is get ready for 2016, watch the original series: It's damn fine TV.
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
The wonderful land of Twitter
I like Twitter very much. It's a place where I can share freeform moods, ideas and thoughts. Some are gothic, some are pugs.
And this week this happened, and grew to like it even more.
I posted the following tweet:
And this week this happened, and grew to like it even more.
I posted the following tweet:
Another reason why books are good - imagine this with K!ndles instead.
Within 10 minutes I received this reply from @tellthee:
@grevilletombs you are right ...
That is simply fabulous. The wonder of those I connect with on Twitter revealed.
And there are moments like this for me unbelievably regularly. I am so very lucky to have such fun followers. And some with a skull handy.
Saturday, 20 September 2014
Whats a 'Cuddlier Scotland' anyway?
My last blog, where I wrote my views of the styles of debate by the opposing YES Campaign and Better Together Campaign, was my most viewed blog ever with 187 views to date.
So this, all too predictably, is the underwritten, rushed-out, disappointing, cashing in sequel.
This is my personal experience of the last few days of the Scottish Referendum and immediate aftermath.
When we exhaled it was not in orgasmic stutter, but a steady sigh.
Scotland decided at 6:08am on 19th September to remain within the United Kingdom.
85% of residents in Scotland went to the polling booths in church halls, school houses and local government stations. 55% put an X the NO box, 45% put an X in the YES box.
It was over before it really started. I went to bed at 11pm on the 18th and when I switched the TV on at 5:15am YES had conceded. This concession was made official just after 6am.
Both leaderships called for Scotland to heal, move on and work for a better future.
So here is my story of my hours before and after this in the centre of Edinburgh's Old Town.
Before
I took this photo:
I like this photo very much. I took it quickly. To me it feels rich in symbolism of the ordinary campaigners and of the larger significance depicted in microcosm.
A foreign camera points point-blank range at a YES supporter who has set up his campaign close to the Edinburgh Fringe HQ. He is a one man-band, only a simple YES sticker and his own, childlike protest song: "We are throwing out the Bankers! We are throwing out Westminster!" marking his chosen view. A "YES" is scrawled in chalk above Tragedy. In the background, just in view, is a Union flag hung at the statue of Adam Smith, the father and architect of western capitalism. In front of it is a man, standing stalk still, hands in pockets, staring into the middle-distance. He is wearing an England rugby shirt. Scrawled on it in black marker: "Scotland, please stay with us!"
Here was a symbol of the way debating and making a political point had advanced on the side of YES. It was ever so slightly more sophisticated, more progressive. Less, even, nationalistic.
This was Scotland's Summer of Love! A flower of Scotland in the barrel of the guns of Brixton.
But, just as the photo only captures the moment but cannot bottle it, the hours passed and tension cranked into the great gears of democracy another notch or two.
The final hours of campaigning intensified. Things became frayed as the time for making the killer argument drained from the hourglass and the polls continued to suggest it was anyone's to win.
YES 46% NO 54%
YES 49% NO 51%
YES 50% NO 50%
Which, because America hates draws and small numbers, and mathematics, equates in American numeracy to:
It was now officially too close for the polls to give any indication. Those eligible to
vote who had not stuck their poster (literally) to the window now became the kingmakers. The undecided (some 400,000) needed to be persuaded one way or another. And fast. And shouting was the quickest way.
The supporters of both sides, too, increased their demonstrations to the point of fanaticism.
Facebook and Twitter became chocked with statuses of increasing desperation to convince friends and followers to vote one way or another and yet more facts and counter-figures and propaganda and emotional hijacking.
Every vote counts the same: 1. But some of my friends, I started to believe, by sheer force of hammering home their vote they somehow thought it would count more.
The best comment I read:
"If you vote NO, then you should never vote again. I won't put up with your complaints on here"
I am only friends with them for their ability to resolve my political complaints as well. Hmmm.
There were others:
"A vote for NO is a vote you want food banks!"
"YES voters are not taking brave a leap of faith, they are fools jumping down the abyss!"
"It is not about if you'll be richer or poorer - it is about more!"
Thankfully, for me, although Facebook was lost, I found solace in Twitter which remained brilliantly eccentric, surreal and calm on my timeline. I guess it's true how the new old saying goes: You can't choose your Facebook friends but you can choose who you follow on Twitter.
18th September
It was odd out there. Cameras pointed at doors. No one was coming out. The sky was nothing. Words were held on tips of tongues. It was odd out there. Like the world had become loose at the hinges.
The international narrative had been written. A union - perhaps the union in the world - could be about to dissolve. 300 years of interwoven history might just have a full stop placed at the end. Japanese news crews ran down the Royal Mile after a personal opinion of someone grasping a polling card. Cameras and reporters pointed at buildings and entrances from all angles. Coffee shops were doing roaring trade off journalists who were reading broadsheets, ipads and their blackberries trying to get a handle of feeling or scoop.
Perhaps the nation got shy. The mist descended and gloom of Edinburgh came to the rescue of the lady - shrouding her face and covering her ankles. The town was a quiet voice behind a scented handkerchief.
I walked past the Scottish Parliament building.
Up until now the debate had been modern. It avoided dredging up cliché and stereotype. And Scotland is rich in national stereotype! Forget Oil - Scotland's national resource is tartan shortbread tins. Scotland was presenting a modern view. Up until now.
It was outside the Scottish Parliament on 18th September I heard the first yell of "FREEDOM!"
It might as well have been a warning as much as a declaration.
I voted mid-evening.
As I entered my local station, a girl: porcelain skin, blonde hair and white teeth walked by in her school uniform - several YES badges pinned down her school tie - walked out the other way. I heard both representatives of the respective campaigns politely thanking her for voting.
19th September
The outcome was more pronounced than the polls had predicted. The narrative had not delivered the twist ending. Culturally and historically the by far most likely result predicted since this long discussion began had come to pass.
The evening went with little excitement. Someone suggested this was a positive. A sign of a mature and sensible nation. I tend to agree.
1.6 million, 45% of votes (or 38% of the entire population) had not got their way. 2 million, 55% (or 46%) had got theirs. We had done pretty well in keeping things civil until now, could Scotland pass the final test? Could we keep growing and showing the world how Scotland is progressive? Could we calmly accept the result?
I left for the laboratory and, where the day before was full of calm introspection, the atmosphere was now of base instinct: Fight or flight. It was a new odd. No one wanted caught in another's eye.
I watched out of the window on the bus as a man appeared round the corner on the street. He was like an mutated soldier who was still fighting a long since decided atomic war. A stained saltire kilt, the royal standard draped round his bare shoulders: his grey stubble at odds with a wild 'See-you-Jimmy' hat popped on his head. He was either tired, drunk or pumping Scottish own brand brown 'Schmack' through his veins. He was grabbing women on the street as he staggered, wide eyed and mouthed: "YASS!" He did a Highland jig. ""FREEDOM!" "YASS" he shrieked. He grabbed a man in a suit: He's to blame.
The fall-out from the blast had began to drift. It was not the truth bomb that was going to kill us, it was the toxic air.
The Summer of Love was over.
Now, in the aftermath
The YES supporters describe the loss as grief. Their country has died. They've set up a vigil outside the Scottish Parliament replete with candles.
YES asked for a leap of faith. They just hadn't reduced the chasm to make it possible.
Better Together didn't offer independence. They offered just attractive enough of a better way of trying to do things within the system already in place and established and integrated.
The social media status rhetoric has not abated, just changed.
People who kept from entering the debate before now are posting sub-statuses. I am seeing reactions posted clearly in response to what are experiencing on their timelines. It is weird.
I've enjoyed photos of cats and now suddenly:
"The vote was really close! 45% is huge! Let me be upset in peace!"
"I hate Scotland right now!"
"55% disagree with you, you lost, now have dignity!"
"I am deleting so-called friends on here!"
The regular YES campaigners are now spending their time calling NO voters "weak", "cowards", "enslaved" and worse. They are saying they are "ashamed", "embarrassed", "disgusted" and "sickened". Someone I know talks now of "having no country" and hating half of the population but pleased that in their own polling station "my people voted YES".
Those who had YES badges now sport '45' exclusive membership badges. Many of supporters are joining social groups such as 'The 45 Rebellion'. There is talk of being cheated out of the result by vote rigging. There is talk of boycotting the BBC TV licence fee, continuing the movement and never ceasing until Scottish Independence is achieved.
The blank canvas of iScotland can be anything to anyone, and this remains a powerful motivator. But ultimately the movement lost. The say of this political vision is limited for the time being. Realising the plans for this particular attempt for independence, are not coming to fruition will need to be accepted.
If the loss of YES can be viewed as undignified, the win by NO is ungracious.
The celebrations and the humorously un-ironic shouting of "Yes!" when the results continued to go their way is forgivable. Either side would have celebrated.
The regular Better Together activists are posting statuses of victory and wanting to draw a smug thick line under the vote. For a long, long time. They are dismissing dissent as sour grapes and accusing YES supporters of being delusional and paranoid.
Last night Glasgow (a YES voter) was plunged into the darker ages with violent clashes between those claiming to represent the both sides. Someone states Better Together has ignited a Scot's version of The Troubles.
The rhetoric is strong on both sides.
Scotland is on a flint edge in tinder at the moment. Healing is going to take a while. But heal it must.
To be honest, I felt a weight was removed on the 19th. The increasing pressure was now released. There would be no return, no re-vote. Whatever the vote, it was a once in a generation - a lifetime - event. I heard both camps say so. We must move respectfully onward from whatever path the democratic decision will put Scotland on, and get on. I heard everyone say so.
My only hope was that this referendum would engage people politically and we would end up with a better relationship with politics. I think it did this.
We are part of something amazing. We need to keep the engagement. We need to make our voice heard and the politicians will have to listen. This is what this referendum ended up being about for me. Scotland has shown the way. We've a long way to go, but this is something to be proud of.
Yesterday there was more analysis and shocks.
Demographics showed the younger Scottish electorate had largely voted YES and the older electorate largely NO. YES pointed to the younger voters "getting it more" and Better Together to the older voters "understanding it more". The old debate strategies were dying hard.
Alex Salmond, the leader of the YES campaign and First Minister of Scotland talked about the future and seeing how far the campaign had taken Scotland towards independence. Then he walked off stage and walked away from his position as First Minister.
Claims started being made about the Better Together parities reneging on their timetable of promises as party lines were redrawn again. There was anger and confusion as the added powers for Scotland promised then became part of a proposed UK devolution package. This will almost certainly take years to agree.
Less than 24 hours after the last votes were being cast, a member of YES leadership spoke on a Scottish news programme. A new leader of SNP was coming. After the Scottish election in 2016 the new party leader could be the new First Minister. 45% will still want independence, quite probably more. This is a massive chunk of the will of the People of Scotland. This will likely set up a mandate for another independence referendum in Scotland.
The Better Together spokesperson replied: "We would obviously take a stance against the YES campaign again".
If I had a revolver in my hand, I'd have shot my fucking TV.
Thanks for reading / listening to the soundtrack!
So this, all too predictably, is the underwritten, rushed-out, disappointing, cashing in sequel.
This is my personal experience of the last few days of the Scottish Referendum and immediate aftermath.
When we exhaled it was not in orgasmic stutter, but a steady sigh.
Scotland decided at 6:08am on 19th September to remain within the United Kingdom.
85% of residents in Scotland went to the polling booths in church halls, school houses and local government stations. 55% put an X the NO box, 45% put an X in the YES box.
It was over before it really started. I went to bed at 11pm on the 18th and when I switched the TV on at 5:15am YES had conceded. This concession was made official just after 6am.
Both leaderships called for Scotland to heal, move on and work for a better future.
So here is my story of my hours before and after this in the centre of Edinburgh's Old Town.
Before
I took this photo:
I like this photo very much. I took it quickly. To me it feels rich in symbolism of the ordinary campaigners and of the larger significance depicted in microcosm.
A foreign camera points point-blank range at a YES supporter who has set up his campaign close to the Edinburgh Fringe HQ. He is a one man-band, only a simple YES sticker and his own, childlike protest song: "We are throwing out the Bankers! We are throwing out Westminster!" marking his chosen view. A "YES" is scrawled in chalk above Tragedy. In the background, just in view, is a Union flag hung at the statue of Adam Smith, the father and architect of western capitalism. In front of it is a man, standing stalk still, hands in pockets, staring into the middle-distance. He is wearing an England rugby shirt. Scrawled on it in black marker: "Scotland, please stay with us!"
Here was a symbol of the way debating and making a political point had advanced on the side of YES. It was ever so slightly more sophisticated, more progressive. Less, even, nationalistic.
This was Scotland's Summer of Love! A flower of Scotland in the barrel of the guns of Brixton.
But, just as the photo only captures the moment but cannot bottle it, the hours passed and tension cranked into the great gears of democracy another notch or two.
The final hours of campaigning intensified. Things became frayed as the time for making the killer argument drained from the hourglass and the polls continued to suggest it was anyone's to win.
YES 46% NO 54%
YES 49% NO 51%
YES 50% NO 50%
Which, because America hates draws and small numbers, and mathematics, equates in American numeracy to:
It was now officially too close for the polls to give any indication. Those eligible to
vote who had not stuck their poster (literally) to the window now became the kingmakers. The undecided (some 400,000) needed to be persuaded one way or another. And fast. And shouting was the quickest way.
The supporters of both sides, too, increased their demonstrations to the point of fanaticism.
Facebook and Twitter became chocked with statuses of increasing desperation to convince friends and followers to vote one way or another and yet more facts and counter-figures and propaganda and emotional hijacking.
Every vote counts the same: 1. But some of my friends, I started to believe, by sheer force of hammering home their vote they somehow thought it would count more.
The best comment I read:
"If you vote NO, then you should never vote again. I won't put up with your complaints on here"
I am only friends with them for their ability to resolve my political complaints as well. Hmmm.
There were others:
"A vote for NO is a vote you want food banks!"
"YES voters are not taking brave a leap of faith, they are fools jumping down the abyss!"
"It is not about if you'll be richer or poorer - it is about more!"
Thankfully, for me, although Facebook was lost, I found solace in Twitter which remained brilliantly eccentric, surreal and calm on my timeline. I guess it's true how the new old saying goes: You can't choose your Facebook friends but you can choose who you follow on Twitter.
18th September
It was odd out there. Cameras pointed at doors. No one was coming out. The sky was nothing. Words were held on tips of tongues. It was odd out there. Like the world had become loose at the hinges.
The international narrative had been written. A union - perhaps the union in the world - could be about to dissolve. 300 years of interwoven history might just have a full stop placed at the end. Japanese news crews ran down the Royal Mile after a personal opinion of someone grasping a polling card. Cameras and reporters pointed at buildings and entrances from all angles. Coffee shops were doing roaring trade off journalists who were reading broadsheets, ipads and their blackberries trying to get a handle of feeling or scoop.
Perhaps the nation got shy. The mist descended and gloom of Edinburgh came to the rescue of the lady - shrouding her face and covering her ankles. The town was a quiet voice behind a scented handkerchief.
I walked past the Scottish Parliament building.
Up until now the debate had been modern. It avoided dredging up cliché and stereotype. And Scotland is rich in national stereotype! Forget Oil - Scotland's national resource is tartan shortbread tins. Scotland was presenting a modern view. Up until now.
It was outside the Scottish Parliament on 18th September I heard the first yell of "FREEDOM!"
It might as well have been a warning as much as a declaration.
I voted mid-evening.
As I entered my local station, a girl: porcelain skin, blonde hair and white teeth walked by in her school uniform - several YES badges pinned down her school tie - walked out the other way. I heard both representatives of the respective campaigns politely thanking her for voting.
19th September
The outcome was more pronounced than the polls had predicted. The narrative had not delivered the twist ending. Culturally and historically the by far most likely result predicted since this long discussion began had come to pass.
The evening went with little excitement. Someone suggested this was a positive. A sign of a mature and sensible nation. I tend to agree.
1.6 million, 45% of votes (or 38% of the entire population) had not got their way. 2 million, 55% (or 46%) had got theirs. We had done pretty well in keeping things civil until now, could Scotland pass the final test? Could we keep growing and showing the world how Scotland is progressive? Could we calmly accept the result?
I left for the laboratory and, where the day before was full of calm introspection, the atmosphere was now of base instinct: Fight or flight. It was a new odd. No one wanted caught in another's eye.
I watched out of the window on the bus as a man appeared round the corner on the street. He was like an mutated soldier who was still fighting a long since decided atomic war. A stained saltire kilt, the royal standard draped round his bare shoulders: his grey stubble at odds with a wild 'See-you-Jimmy' hat popped on his head. He was either tired, drunk or pumping Scottish own brand brown 'Schmack' through his veins. He was grabbing women on the street as he staggered, wide eyed and mouthed: "YASS!" He did a Highland jig. ""FREEDOM!" "YASS" he shrieked. He grabbed a man in a suit: He's to blame.
The fall-out from the blast had began to drift. It was not the truth bomb that was going to kill us, it was the toxic air.
The Summer of Love was over.
Now, in the aftermath
The YES supporters describe the loss as grief. Their country has died. They've set up a vigil outside the Scottish Parliament replete with candles.
YES asked for a leap of faith. They just hadn't reduced the chasm to make it possible.
Better Together didn't offer independence. They offered just attractive enough of a better way of trying to do things within the system already in place and established and integrated.
The social media status rhetoric has not abated, just changed.
People who kept from entering the debate before now are posting sub-statuses. I am seeing reactions posted clearly in response to what are experiencing on their timelines. It is weird.
I've enjoyed photos of cats and now suddenly:
"The vote was really close! 45% is huge! Let me be upset in peace!"
"I hate Scotland right now!"
"55% disagree with you, you lost, now have dignity!"
"I am deleting so-called friends on here!"
The regular YES campaigners are now spending their time calling NO voters "weak", "cowards", "enslaved" and worse. They are saying they are "ashamed", "embarrassed", "disgusted" and "sickened". Someone I know talks now of "having no country" and hating half of the population but pleased that in their own polling station "my people voted YES".
Those who had YES badges now sport '45' exclusive membership badges. Many of supporters are joining social groups such as 'The 45 Rebellion'. There is talk of being cheated out of the result by vote rigging. There is talk of boycotting the BBC TV licence fee, continuing the movement and never ceasing until Scottish Independence is achieved.
The blank canvas of iScotland can be anything to anyone, and this remains a powerful motivator. But ultimately the movement lost. The say of this political vision is limited for the time being. Realising the plans for this particular attempt for independence, are not coming to fruition will need to be accepted.
If the loss of YES can be viewed as undignified, the win by NO is ungracious.
The celebrations and the humorously un-ironic shouting of "Yes!" when the results continued to go their way is forgivable. Either side would have celebrated.
The regular Better Together activists are posting statuses of victory and wanting to draw a smug thick line under the vote. For a long, long time. They are dismissing dissent as sour grapes and accusing YES supporters of being delusional and paranoid.
Last night Glasgow (a YES voter) was plunged into the darker ages with violent clashes between those claiming to represent the both sides. Someone states Better Together has ignited a Scot's version of The Troubles.
The rhetoric is strong on both sides.
Scotland is on a flint edge in tinder at the moment. Healing is going to take a while. But heal it must.
To be honest, I felt a weight was removed on the 19th. The increasing pressure was now released. There would be no return, no re-vote. Whatever the vote, it was a once in a generation - a lifetime - event. I heard both camps say so. We must move respectfully onward from whatever path the democratic decision will put Scotland on, and get on. I heard everyone say so.
My only hope was that this referendum would engage people politically and we would end up with a better relationship with politics. I think it did this.
We are part of something amazing. We need to keep the engagement. We need to make our voice heard and the politicians will have to listen. This is what this referendum ended up being about for me. Scotland has shown the way. We've a long way to go, but this is something to be proud of.
Yesterday there was more analysis and shocks.
Demographics showed the younger Scottish electorate had largely voted YES and the older electorate largely NO. YES pointed to the younger voters "getting it more" and Better Together to the older voters "understanding it more". The old debate strategies were dying hard.
Alex Salmond, the leader of the YES campaign and First Minister of Scotland talked about the future and seeing how far the campaign had taken Scotland towards independence. Then he walked off stage and walked away from his position as First Minister.
Claims started being made about the Better Together parities reneging on their timetable of promises as party lines were redrawn again. There was anger and confusion as the added powers for Scotland promised then became part of a proposed UK devolution package. This will almost certainly take years to agree.
Less than 24 hours after the last votes were being cast, a member of YES leadership spoke on a Scottish news programme. A new leader of SNP was coming. After the Scottish election in 2016 the new party leader could be the new First Minister. 45% will still want independence, quite probably more. This is a massive chunk of the will of the People of Scotland. This will likely set up a mandate for another independence referendum in Scotland.
The Better Together spokesperson replied: "We would obviously take a stance against the YES campaign again".
If I had a revolver in my hand, I'd have shot my fucking TV.
Thanks for reading / listening to the soundtrack!
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Let's have a heated 3 and a half year debate
In less than a week, Scotland will have completed a walk down a long path for a short answer:
Yes, or, No.
The Question:
Should Scotland be an independent country?
As a resident Scotsman, I feel I should blog something of this.
So, here goes!! Big breath!!
This all comes with the caveat of being my personal relationship with the Scottish Referendum.
Once the Scottish National Party (SNP) gained a surprise majority voice in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in 2011 (a surprise because the Parliament Constitution was designed so no single party could have a majority government, unless with overwhelming votes) then a referendum for Scottish Independence was inevitable.
The UK Government agreed it "was for Scotland to decide."
Scottish Government published their white paper in late 2013.
The White Paper is one of the most complex documents relating to a constitution ever published anywhere. It details every aspect of a new nation: from NATO membership through to Eurovision Song Contest entry.
Keeping out of the politics (if possible) I have been hugely interested in the ways this question of independence has been debated by the two campaigns.
The movement for independence for Scotland quickly established themselves as the "YES Campaign".
The YES campaign has revolved around the concept of "positive politics". This is borrowed from the SNP who, in the early 2000s, changed from being a party of protest to one of promises.
The SNP leadership, the story goes, were transformed in their thinking by leader Alex Salmond who had a epiphany when seeking the answer to how to win more votes.
Later, at the training day, the SNP leadership sat down to an activity to demonstrate the new way. They each put down a pile of coins in front of themselves and were asked to make political arguments on policy subjects. Each time one of them made a negative argument to support their stance, that person had to give a coin away. Once out of coins, you were no longer heard.
The outcome was a Party which talked only of what good things it could do - accentuate the positives of everything, deny or ignore the dissenters and refuse to engage with those who queried their statements.
Other parties looked outdated and out thought in contrast and the result was for all to see in 2011. It was a form of political Barcelona tika-taka.
The YES campaign has taken this philosophy to his heart. The campaign strategy is built on it. Led by Alex Salmond and his government, the campaign made an easy transition to this style. It even improved on it: The YES campaign has a "happiness guru" providing coaching for those speaking publically on behalf of the campaign. They don't talk about "freedom" but "opportunity".
Because of this, the YES campaign, ironically, claim a non-political elite movement. YES are keen to repeat they are a "grass routes movement" with and for the people of Scotland. They don't discuss voters, but "the People of Scotland". YES say independence is a vote for the confidence residents of Scotland have in themselves and each other in making independence a success. The YES campaign has been marked by a happy band of supporters with smiles, music, jokes and a ferocious embracing of social media, with activists openly and relentlessly sharing their views and political arguments on social media. Even the campaign leaders are taking obligatory "selfies" with those attending rallies.
YES supporters enjoy being part of what they view is enlightened politics and striving for something better than they, and equally everyone else, already have.
They do not refer to the Battle of Bannockburn, but of future grandchildren's Scotland.
It is cool socialism for the 21st century. Hell, YES campaigners even refer to an independent Scotland as "iScotland" because this socialism is as cool as Apple.
YES, in positioning itself as the positive, condemns all those who don't agree as negative, scared and bereft of ambition. In the main, the campaign has remained steadfast in it positivity, however, as with all grass route movements, The YES campaign does have a militant side.
Commonly referred to as "cyber-nats", these are members of the campaign who actively direct ire on any and all who do not share the YES view. Think of them as the crazy Directioners who post threats to kill any one who announces the like a Taylor Swift song, and you're sort of there and also have an idea on how they should be treated.
Essentially the YES argument for independence is this:
The residents of Scotland are better served by a universal and direct Political Will in Scotland.
The campaign against an Independence Scotland have called themselves Better Together.
Better Together is a different concept to YES.
Happy to be called and call themselves the "NO Campaign", Better Together positions itself as the realist to the YES idealist.
Recently the Better Together campaign changed their stance from NO to NO THANKS. With a heart shape round it. This seemed to be a reaction to soften the message when the common view is Better Together is running a negative campaign.
Better Together has run the campaign as one of posing questions (What will the strength of the financial sector be in an Independent Scotland? Where will an Independent Scotland be seen on the international stage?) with their leader, Alistair Darling answering them: Scotland is better served by being in a union with the other nations of the United Kingdom.
It has been a campaign which has called out the risks to YES policy rather than making an argument for maintaining the Union.
Although separate from the UK Government, it has relayed a number of policy decisions which the UK Government have since been drawn upon.
The Better Together campaign has been marked by running along more traditional party political lines. The activists, too, are in a more traditional role of holding banners and shouting slogans and - in the likes of the Orange Order - have... er... uber-traditional supporters.
Like the main campaign, the Better Together support has been less vocal than YES. As the campaign has gone on, Better Together supporters have found a voice similar to YES and now enjoy active participation online and through social media.
Their supporters, too, have their minority of militants who enjoy disrupting events and making ridiculous Twitter death threats.
The stance and statement of Better Together is this:
Scotland is in a stronger position within the safety of the United Kingdom infrastructure.
The national debate has been going on in Scotland for over 3 years now.
Because of the Scottish Government decision to allow all residents of Scotland, including 16 year olds to vote (people who should have been concerned with underage drinking and just how did Ted meet his children's mother, for the past 3 years), the largest demographic ever has been invited to join in the national discussion.
There has been volumes of newspaper commentary written, screeds of online comments uploaded, televised rabbles hopefully termed "debates" and enough spoken about it to send a hot-air balloon to Mars.
We've had YES badges and No lollipops, leaflets, rallies, community hall speakers.
We've been subjected to propaganda posters, great big wooden signs in gardens, LED signs in city apartment windows, sexist campaign adverts, a frankly bizarre ill-judged declaration of opinion by Ross Kemp:
We've had President Obama talk about it, Alan Cumming fly over and give a view and Groundskeeper Willie chip in:
We've argued if we can keep the UK currency, continue to drive on the left and if we'll need to smuggle in episodes of Doctor Who from off rowing boats in Leith Docks.
I've heard the YES campaign promise what's important in an Independent Scotland will be to keep the pound, keep the Royal Family, retain EU membership, still watch the BBC i-player, and have free interaction with England as we do now and, in practice, be no different at all from how we live in Scotland today if it is a Yes vote. And I've heard Better Together promise what matters in Scotland is new powers of budget and taxation, improved benefits packages, better employment opportunities and better living standards and these changes will come with a No vote.
At times, I won't lie - it's been odd.
Scotland is now a nation of economic experts, oil industry directors and we all have a copy of the Lisbon Treaty annotated in our own hand hanging on the kitchen wall.
The turnout for the vote on Thursday 18th is expected to be somewhere between 80-93%. This is amazing. If the referendum has achieved one thing all sides can be happy with, it is in engaging the electorate. It has been an interesting time to live in Scotland.
And now, with less than a week to go where has it got us? According to the polls the result is too close to call.
In the past month the campaigning has predictably ramped up, as a consequence.
Suddenly the English media has moved up North to stand on picturesque hills in Edinburgh and at the side of the River Clyde in Glasgow, the Scottish media has extended it's journalistic programming. It is on every terrestrial channel. All the time. The referendum debate is literally washing over us in (air)waves.
The social media has become electrified in gibber: some from those ineligible to vote now trying to get their head's around a 3 year long conversation realising the potential implications that's only getting more heated and involved, the rest from people (like me!) deciding we need to have some form of outpouring of a view before it's over.
The UK Prime Minister said this was a decision solely for the Scottish residents. Perhaps a clever move, given his own political persuasion not being popular North of Berwick Upon Tweed. Last week he and the other UK party leaders came over the boarder to make an appeal on behalf of the Better Together campaign.
And why? Because, well, YES might just get the most votes.
How has it come to this? Surely the case for either side should have been made beyond all doubt by now?
For me, the reason is based in the arguments made by each side.
The YES stance has maintained a single position. It has been unabashedly positive and populist. It has only spoken of the best possible outcome. There is enough resources, employment and wealth to be taken in Scotland to lower taxation, increase child care, remove food banks and in the future probably create a 4 day working week.
YES has worked the positive stats almost to breaking point.
It has campaigned hard over the 3 years. It has adapted to the new ways to reach the hearts and minds of voters. It has been a slick operation from the beginning.
This is not a surprise. In Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon YES has the 2 most effective political campaigners and speakers arguably in Britain right now. With cross-party support coming from minor parties (the Greens and independents) compared to the SNP, YES has not needed to compromise their vision. The SNP is largely in control have been preparing for this for 30 years and it shows.
By determinedly only accepting the most positive line, YES have been susceptible to the Better Together Campaign when asked to consider any potential difficulties. The YES response has been one of incredulity and to accuse Better Together of being "Project Fear".
Interestingly, the Better Together campaign have never said Scotland couldn't be independent, despite YES building the straw argument to knock down.
If this was a vote on the best campaign, YES would win in a landslide.
The campaign has stuttered and failed to get a momentum apace with YES.
Better Together, has struggled to maintain a single line of argument. Unlike YES, the parties involved have more to lose if Better Together win. All of a sudden the campaign will split after the vote and the parties will return to their individual polices. For the Conservatives to be seen agreeing too much with Labour (and vice versa) may well come to mean a loss of core voters come the election season.
Better Together have kept with a line instead, therefore, of not offering a coherent future vision, but entrenched in attacking the YES policies as being "wishful thinking" and the White Paper as the "longest suicide note in history". Better Together talk of risks an uncertainty which come with stepping out and becoming independent.
Better Together have been complacent. They quite possibly felt the Scottish population would come to the "sensible" conclusion and vote comprehensively to stay within the Union so why divert too much effort.
Better Together has only really started to talk about the benefits for Scotland to remain in the UK latterly. It has only begun to talk to voters in a constructive manner. The reason is surely because they have seen the polls tighten.
All of this has culminated in every point being rebutted from both sides. Arguments have raged to a standstill.
Here is an example of the sort of thing (reconstruction, not actual verbatim):
YES: We will keep the pound sterling, with a currency union with the Bank of England.
NO: The UK Government say Scotland will not have a currency union, so what then?
YES: We will. The UK Government, as part of Project Fear, is bluffing.
NO: The UK Government is not bluffing. You need a another option.
YES: It is in the UK Government Treasury's best interest to join a currency union with an independent Scotland, so we will keep the pound in a currency union.
NO: You can't. The UK Government is not making that union possible.
YES: That's nonsense. Wait and see.
NO: That's nonsense.
Good, glad that's cleared up.
NO: Only with a No vote will powers be guaranteed.
YES: Name 6 powers Scotland will get with you.
NO: Er...
YES: You can't because there is none. I can name 6, 7, 15, 50 detailed powers right now a Yes vote will give.
NO: You make promises you can't possibly keep. You will not have the resources.
YES: Why are you scaremongering? You know we do. Think of the future!
NO: Why are you not being realistic? You know you don't. Think of the future!
Excellent. Much clearer.
Both sides talk about trusting the People of Scotland with the facts to base their vote on, not relying on old political party politics. What has happened is politicians unable to agree any fact at all and debate shamefully with only their own power and point-scoring as priority. Someone has to be right - why not admit it?
Both sides talk about ignoring "personality" politics, yet both sides are quick to call out the other on their "snake-oil salesmen" and "smug, toff classed" opponents.
Both sides talk about making the arguments for the common man and woman on the street to relate to then discuss university grade economics and the ins and outs of nuclear decommissioning.
There is no facts, no actual trust, only campaign approved, self serving "truths". No wonder the population is completely split.
What then, of my vote?
I've read, I've listened, I've had conversations... and I'm no further understanding it all. All arguments have a counter argument. No one can say what the political plane will be like in 5 years, 25 or 100 years from now.
A Yes vote might be a cure for Scotland, or put the lunatics in charge of the asylum. The No vote might keep us on a ship to navigate the storms, or have us in the cargo hold as it crashes on the rocks.
Will an independent Scotland settle into a successful nation, will it have to become more right-wing as it evolves separately, will it lose its international presence and be swallowed up, will it be a country modern designed to survive better than any of the old western ones?
I don't know.
This is the fault of both campaigns. I considered not using my vote. Neither deserved it.
Then I had another idea. There is someone I detest. Thanks to the penchant for people placing posters of YES and NO THANKS in their window I actually know which way they are going to vote. Now, I don't know if independence will be the right or wrong thing, but I know on the 19th September, as sure as the sun rises and sets, I'll still detest that guy. So I'm going to use my vote for spite and negate theirs.
....
....
This last bit is a joke, obviously. Please don't panic. I have taken this all very seriously. I will vote with my best intentions. But there is no way I am publically saying which way. My friend Jaf sums up my thinking pretty well on that here.
Well, that's it. Back to blogs about Scottish things which amuse me from here on! Fun things like this.
OH! Actually, it turns out this is part one of a two part blog! If you'd like to read the second, superior part where I write about the 18th and 19th of September, please vote now:
Should I read the Second Part of this blog?
NO [ ]
YES [X]
Yes, or, No.
The Question:
Should Scotland be an independent country?
As a resident Scotsman, I feel I should blog something of this.
So, here goes!! Big breath!!
This all comes with the caveat of being my personal relationship with the Scottish Referendum.
Once the Scottish National Party (SNP) gained a surprise majority voice in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in 2011 (a surprise because the Parliament Constitution was designed so no single party could have a majority government, unless with overwhelming votes) then a referendum for Scottish Independence was inevitable.
The UK Government agreed it "was for Scotland to decide."
Scottish Government published their white paper in late 2013.
The White Paper is one of the most complex documents relating to a constitution ever published anywhere. It details every aspect of a new nation: from NATO membership through to Eurovision Song Contest entry.
Keeping out of the politics (if possible) I have been hugely interested in the ways this question of independence has been debated by the two campaigns.
The movement for independence for Scotland quickly established themselves as the "YES Campaign".
The YES campaign has revolved around the concept of "positive politics". This is borrowed from the SNP who, in the early 2000s, changed from being a party of protest to one of promises.
The SNP leadership, the story goes, were transformed in their thinking by leader Alex Salmond who had a epiphany when seeking the answer to how to win more votes.
The positivity of their [SNP] election strategies... only started before the 2007 election following a workshop with the Really Effective Development Company where, amongst other things, they learned about Martin Seligman's research on how it's the most optimistic candidate in American presidential elections who usually wins. - http://www.scottishreview.net/CarolCraig172.shtml
Later, at the training day, the SNP leadership sat down to an activity to demonstrate the new way. They each put down a pile of coins in front of themselves and were asked to make political arguments on policy subjects. Each time one of them made a negative argument to support their stance, that person had to give a coin away. Once out of coins, you were no longer heard.
The outcome was a Party which talked only of what good things it could do - accentuate the positives of everything, deny or ignore the dissenters and refuse to engage with those who queried their statements.
Other parties looked outdated and out thought in contrast and the result was for all to see in 2011. It was a form of political Barcelona tika-taka.
The YES campaign has taken this philosophy to his heart. The campaign strategy is built on it. Led by Alex Salmond and his government, the campaign made an easy transition to this style. It even improved on it: The YES campaign has a "happiness guru" providing coaching for those speaking publically on behalf of the campaign. They don't talk about "freedom" but "opportunity".
Because of this, the YES campaign, ironically, claim a non-political elite movement. YES are keen to repeat they are a "grass routes movement" with and for the people of Scotland. They don't discuss voters, but "the People of Scotland". YES say independence is a vote for the confidence residents of Scotland have in themselves and each other in making independence a success. The YES campaign has been marked by a happy band of supporters with smiles, music, jokes and a ferocious embracing of social media, with activists openly and relentlessly sharing their views and political arguments on social media. Even the campaign leaders are taking obligatory "selfies" with those attending rallies.
YES supporters enjoy being part of what they view is enlightened politics and striving for something better than they, and equally everyone else, already have.
They do not refer to the Battle of Bannockburn, but of future grandchildren's Scotland.
It is cool socialism for the 21st century. Hell, YES campaigners even refer to an independent Scotland as "iScotland" because this socialism is as cool as Apple.
YES, in positioning itself as the positive, condemns all those who don't agree as negative, scared and bereft of ambition. In the main, the campaign has remained steadfast in it positivity, however, as with all grass route movements, The YES campaign does have a militant side.
Commonly referred to as "cyber-nats", these are members of the campaign who actively direct ire on any and all who do not share the YES view. Think of them as the crazy Directioners who post threats to kill any one who announces the like a Taylor Swift song, and you're sort of there and also have an idea on how they should be treated.
Essentially the YES argument for independence is this:
The residents of Scotland are better served by a universal and direct Political Will in Scotland.
The campaign against an Independence Scotland have called themselves Better Together.
Better Together is a different concept to YES.
Happy to be called and call themselves the "NO Campaign", Better Together positions itself as the realist to the YES idealist.
Recently the Better Together campaign changed their stance from NO to NO THANKS. With a heart shape round it. This seemed to be a reaction to soften the message when the common view is Better Together is running a negative campaign.
Better Together has run the campaign as one of posing questions (What will the strength of the financial sector be in an Independent Scotland? Where will an Independent Scotland be seen on the international stage?) with their leader, Alistair Darling answering them: Scotland is better served by being in a union with the other nations of the United Kingdom.
It has been a campaign which has called out the risks to YES policy rather than making an argument for maintaining the Union.
Although separate from the UK Government, it has relayed a number of policy decisions which the UK Government have since been drawn upon.
The Better Together campaign has been marked by running along more traditional party political lines. The activists, too, are in a more traditional role of holding banners and shouting slogans and - in the likes of the Orange Order - have... er... uber-traditional supporters.
Like the main campaign, the Better Together support has been less vocal than YES. As the campaign has gone on, Better Together supporters have found a voice similar to YES and now enjoy active participation online and through social media.
Their supporters, too, have their minority of militants who enjoy disrupting events and making ridiculous Twitter death threats.
The stance and statement of Better Together is this:
Scotland is in a stronger position within the safety of the United Kingdom infrastructure.
The national debate has been going on in Scotland for over 3 years now.
Because of the Scottish Government decision to allow all residents of Scotland, including 16 year olds to vote (people who should have been concerned with underage drinking and just how did Ted meet his children's mother, for the past 3 years), the largest demographic ever has been invited to join in the national discussion.
There has been volumes of newspaper commentary written, screeds of online comments uploaded, televised rabbles hopefully termed "debates" and enough spoken about it to send a hot-air balloon to Mars.
We've had YES badges and No lollipops, leaflets, rallies, community hall speakers.
We've been subjected to propaganda posters, great big wooden signs in gardens, LED signs in city apartment windows, sexist campaign adverts, a frankly bizarre ill-judged declaration of opinion by Ross Kemp:
We've had President Obama talk about it, Alan Cumming fly over and give a view and Groundskeeper Willie chip in:
We've argued if we can keep the UK currency, continue to drive on the left and if we'll need to smuggle in episodes of Doctor Who from off rowing boats in Leith Docks.
I've heard the YES campaign promise what's important in an Independent Scotland will be to keep the pound, keep the Royal Family, retain EU membership, still watch the BBC i-player, and have free interaction with England as we do now and, in practice, be no different at all from how we live in Scotland today if it is a Yes vote. And I've heard Better Together promise what matters in Scotland is new powers of budget and taxation, improved benefits packages, better employment opportunities and better living standards and these changes will come with a No vote.
At times, I won't lie - it's been odd.
Scotland is now a nation of economic experts, oil industry directors and we all have a copy of the Lisbon Treaty annotated in our own hand hanging on the kitchen wall.
The turnout for the vote on Thursday 18th is expected to be somewhere between 80-93%. This is amazing. If the referendum has achieved one thing all sides can be happy with, it is in engaging the electorate. It has been an interesting time to live in Scotland.
And now, with less than a week to go where has it got us? According to the polls the result is too close to call.
In the past month the campaigning has predictably ramped up, as a consequence.
Suddenly the English media has moved up North to stand on picturesque hills in Edinburgh and at the side of the River Clyde in Glasgow, the Scottish media has extended it's journalistic programming. It is on every terrestrial channel. All the time. The referendum debate is literally washing over us in (air)waves.
The social media has become electrified in gibber: some from those ineligible to vote now trying to get their head's around a 3 year long conversation realising the potential implications that's only getting more heated and involved, the rest from people (like me!) deciding we need to have some form of outpouring of a view before it's over.
The UK Prime Minister said this was a decision solely for the Scottish residents. Perhaps a clever move, given his own political persuasion not being popular North of Berwick Upon Tweed. Last week he and the other UK party leaders came over the boarder to make an appeal on behalf of the Better Together campaign.
And why? Because, well, YES might just get the most votes.
How has it come to this? Surely the case for either side should have been made beyond all doubt by now?
For me, the reason is based in the arguments made by each side.
The YES stance has maintained a single position. It has been unabashedly positive and populist. It has only spoken of the best possible outcome. There is enough resources, employment and wealth to be taken in Scotland to lower taxation, increase child care, remove food banks and in the future probably create a 4 day working week.
YES has worked the positive stats almost to breaking point.
It has campaigned hard over the 3 years. It has adapted to the new ways to reach the hearts and minds of voters. It has been a slick operation from the beginning.
This is not a surprise. In Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon YES has the 2 most effective political campaigners and speakers arguably in Britain right now. With cross-party support coming from minor parties (the Greens and independents) compared to the SNP, YES has not needed to compromise their vision. The SNP is largely in control have been preparing for this for 30 years and it shows.
By determinedly only accepting the most positive line, YES have been susceptible to the Better Together Campaign when asked to consider any potential difficulties. The YES response has been one of incredulity and to accuse Better Together of being "Project Fear".
Interestingly, the Better Together campaign have never said Scotland couldn't be independent, despite YES building the straw argument to knock down.
If this was a vote on the best campaign, YES would win in a landslide.
The campaign has stuttered and failed to get a momentum apace with YES.
Better Together, has struggled to maintain a single line of argument. Unlike YES, the parties involved have more to lose if Better Together win. All of a sudden the campaign will split after the vote and the parties will return to their individual polices. For the Conservatives to be seen agreeing too much with Labour (and vice versa) may well come to mean a loss of core voters come the election season.
Better Together have kept with a line instead, therefore, of not offering a coherent future vision, but entrenched in attacking the YES policies as being "wishful thinking" and the White Paper as the "longest suicide note in history". Better Together talk of risks an uncertainty which come with stepping out and becoming independent.
Better Together have been complacent. They quite possibly felt the Scottish population would come to the "sensible" conclusion and vote comprehensively to stay within the Union so why divert too much effort.
Better Together has only really started to talk about the benefits for Scotland to remain in the UK latterly. It has only begun to talk to voters in a constructive manner. The reason is surely because they have seen the polls tighten.
All of this has culminated in every point being rebutted from both sides. Arguments have raged to a standstill.
Here is an example of the sort of thing (reconstruction, not actual verbatim):
YES: We will keep the pound sterling, with a currency union with the Bank of England.
NO: The UK Government say Scotland will not have a currency union, so what then?
YES: We will. The UK Government, as part of Project Fear, is bluffing.
NO: The UK Government is not bluffing. You need a another option.
YES: It is in the UK Government Treasury's best interest to join a currency union with an independent Scotland, so we will keep the pound in a currency union.
NO: You can't. The UK Government is not making that union possible.
YES: That's nonsense. Wait and see.
NO: That's nonsense.
Good, glad that's cleared up.
NO: Only with a No vote will powers be guaranteed.
YES: Name 6 powers Scotland will get with you.
NO: Er...
YES: You can't because there is none. I can name 6, 7, 15, 50 detailed powers right now a Yes vote will give.
NO: You make promises you can't possibly keep. You will not have the resources.
YES: Why are you scaremongering? You know we do. Think of the future!
NO: Why are you not being realistic? You know you don't. Think of the future!
Excellent. Much clearer.
Both sides talk about trusting the People of Scotland with the facts to base their vote on, not relying on old political party politics. What has happened is politicians unable to agree any fact at all and debate shamefully with only their own power and point-scoring as priority. Someone has to be right - why not admit it?
Both sides talk about ignoring "personality" politics, yet both sides are quick to call out the other on their "snake-oil salesmen" and "smug, toff classed" opponents.
Both sides talk about making the arguments for the common man and woman on the street to relate to then discuss university grade economics and the ins and outs of nuclear decommissioning.
There is no facts, no actual trust, only campaign approved, self serving "truths". No wonder the population is completely split.
What then, of my vote?
I've read, I've listened, I've had conversations... and I'm no further understanding it all. All arguments have a counter argument. No one can say what the political plane will be like in 5 years, 25 or 100 years from now.
A Yes vote might be a cure for Scotland, or put the lunatics in charge of the asylum. The No vote might keep us on a ship to navigate the storms, or have us in the cargo hold as it crashes on the rocks.
Will an independent Scotland settle into a successful nation, will it have to become more right-wing as it evolves separately, will it lose its international presence and be swallowed up, will it be a country modern designed to survive better than any of the old western ones?
I don't know.
This is the fault of both campaigns. I considered not using my vote. Neither deserved it.
Then I had another idea. There is someone I detest. Thanks to the penchant for people placing posters of YES and NO THANKS in their window I actually know which way they are going to vote. Now, I don't know if independence will be the right or wrong thing, but I know on the 19th September, as sure as the sun rises and sets, I'll still detest that guy. So I'm going to use my vote for spite and negate theirs.
....
....
This last bit is a joke, obviously. Please don't panic. I have taken this all very seriously. I will vote with my best intentions. But there is no way I am publically saying which way. My friend Jaf sums up my thinking pretty well on that here.
Well, that's it. Back to blogs about Scottish things which amuse me from here on! Fun things like this.
OH! Actually, it turns out this is part one of a two part blog! If you'd like to read the second, superior part where I write about the 18th and 19th of September, please vote now:
Should I read the Second Part of this blog?
NO [ ]
YES [X]
Tuesday, 19 August 2014
Silence with added jazz
Question: How can you tell the difference between good jazz and bad jazz?
Answer: You can't.
Just a little joke there to kick off the blog. After all, this is being written during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Putting re-worked, re-recorded and even contemporary music to silent films is nothing new. Indeed, a personal favourite of mine (rightly or wrongly because it was my first introduction to the film) is the 1984 Giorgio Mororder restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, onto which he paired it with a pop soundtrack.
I watched the film weekly on my TV recorded VHS tape, bought the soundtrack on cassette and generally fell in love with Metropolis, if not quite the band Cycle V, over a summer.
This week I went to see a showing of The Cabinet of Caligari set to a live performance of a brand new jazz score by Graeme Stephen.
The venue was the Jazz Bar in Edinburgh. An underground room with splashes of soft spot lights on red and black décor and primary paintings of jazz bands. The film was projected onto the screen on the stage where the jazz trio (guitarist - Stephen-, drummer and multi-wind instrumentalist) performed.
The audience majority was probably more into the jazz than the old film filling the screen in flickers, going by the head-bobs and toe-taps and I might have been more interested in the film, going by my motionless intense staring at the film, but few could not be impressed at how well the two mixed.
The film, coming from an expressionist background, is the genre birthing horror movie. It contains classic horror elements - or elemenemenements - Monsters, Murders, Madness. The film rewards the viewer with a powerful and disconcerting story done with a joyous panache.
In much the same way, the jazz was at times monstrous, murder and mad and all the riveting for it. Although I am pretty sure the music score simply had "Do Jazz", "Do more Jazz" "Jazz" written in the bars instead of dotted notes, it was powerful and disconcerting and done with a joyous panache.
I guess what I'm trying to say is the cosmic sounding jazz fitted perfectly not only with the strange, slightly alien world shown on the screen but even (from the version screened) the rather beatnik styled font of the intertitle cards!
Early German expressionist horror jazz? I'm a fan.
Answer: You can't.
Just a little joke there to kick off the blog. After all, this is being written during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Putting re-worked, re-recorded and even contemporary music to silent films is nothing new. Indeed, a personal favourite of mine (rightly or wrongly because it was my first introduction to the film) is the 1984 Giorgio Mororder restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, onto which he paired it with a pop soundtrack.
I watched the film weekly on my TV recorded VHS tape, bought the soundtrack on cassette and generally fell in love with Metropolis, if not quite the band Cycle V, over a summer.
This week I went to see a showing of The Cabinet of Caligari set to a live performance of a brand new jazz score by Graeme Stephen.
The venue was the Jazz Bar in Edinburgh. An underground room with splashes of soft spot lights on red and black décor and primary paintings of jazz bands. The film was projected onto the screen on the stage where the jazz trio (guitarist - Stephen-, drummer and multi-wind instrumentalist) performed.
The audience majority was probably more into the jazz than the old film filling the screen in flickers, going by the head-bobs and toe-taps and I might have been more interested in the film, going by my motionless intense staring at the film, but few could not be impressed at how well the two mixed.
The film, coming from an expressionist background, is the genre birthing horror movie. It contains classic horror elements - or elemenemenements - Monsters, Murders, Madness. The film rewards the viewer with a powerful and disconcerting story done with a joyous panache.
In much the same way, the jazz was at times monstrous, murder and mad and all the riveting for it. Although I am pretty sure the music score simply had "Do Jazz", "Do more Jazz" "Jazz" written in the bars instead of dotted notes, it was powerful and disconcerting and done with a joyous panache.
I guess what I'm trying to say is the cosmic sounding jazz fitted perfectly not only with the strange, slightly alien world shown on the screen but even (from the version screened) the rather beatnik styled font of the intertitle cards!
Early German expressionist horror jazz? I'm a fan.
 |
| "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari intertitle" by Robert Wiene(Life time: n/a) - Original publication: The Cabinet of Dr. CaligariImmediate source: http://archive.org/details/thecabinetofdrcaligari. Via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari_intertitle.png#mediaviewer/File:The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari_intertitle.png |
Sunday, 3 August 2014
The Vamp
It is perhaps of no surprise, dear reader, to you or me when I say I became rather besotted with the old photo. An attractive gothic woman highly stylistically posed, at once both protective and predatory over a human skeleton, her eyes - those eyes - framed in thick black shadow looking straight back at me, through the exposure, through time!
To my delight, a twitter conversation with the amazing @soniasuponia provided me not only with a name of the woman, but also a reason for the photograph. The woman in the photo is Theda Bara. The reason for its existence is as one of a set to promote the silent movie, A Fool There Was. With this information I now possessed the recipe of the potion still potent enough for an unsuspecting man to drink. Theda Bara was meant to besot me in this photograph.
A Potted Biography
Theda was Hollywood’s first sex symbol of the moving picture. Up to this film, Theda was already creating a small reputation as an alluring actress after two earlier films. However, Theda’s third production, A Fool There Was, is a watermark in cinema. A Fool There Was is regarded by some as the first ever Vampire film. From the moment the film roll whirred through the projector, a new type of actress portraying a new form of character was revealed to beguile audiences across America. It was culturally ground-breaking. The term “Vamp” was first coined for this, considered controversial, film and it was coined for the femme fatale character Theda was apparently born to play.
Theda was herself an early product of the Hollywood fame machine. “Theda” was pure creation of the movie industry. We recognise this easily today in enigmatic people such as Lana Del Rey who show how deliberate mystification is intoxicating to the imagination of the public. Her name was a stage name: although a few reasons are given, surely it is no mistake Theda is an anagram of Death. Her background was a back story presenting her as superlatively exotic: Egyptian born to a French actress and Italian sculptar. Theda entered the psyche as a ready-made sensuous, dangerous stranger.
In truth, Theodosia Burr Goodman was American, born in Ohio, to immigrant parents. Far from an accented drawl from the Old World, a rare radio interview gives Theda a crystal clipped, Anglo-American voice.
Theodosia would regret the typecasting roles sent for Theda, but they gained her mass popularity. It is a sad final fact that, despite starring in over 40 films (all from the silent era) due to a fire in Universal Studios consuming all but 6 of them, very little remains of her career output.
And so – to the film! *there be spoilers*
A Fool There Was (1915) is a horror of sorts: A grim fable.
The vampire is only about using. She is attracted to status and money and seeks to sexually manipulate men with both to give it to her. She holds the men themselves with contempt, and this only grows as the men become meek and more snivelling around her as they seek an affection she will always refuse to them.
Once the film establishes the players, it centres on the story of a wealthy and happy family man who is destroyed by his (not so chance) meeting with the vampire.
It is possible Theda’s Vampire character could be the most fearsome of all vampire incarnations. She is not caged or curtailed by the trappings of folk-lore. She moves as easily in the sunlight as in the moonlight. Garlic and religious motifs give no defence from her. She is not undone by love or hesitates from compassion. She is a modern, real threat: her kind talked of and recognised in society. Her castle is a flapper bar. Her blood runs dollar-green. She is single minded, self-serving but worse than this, is also callous. We find her, when the husband is a drunken wretch and of little more use, once again seducing him to prove he will choose her over his wife and child even as they stand pleading in front of him to regain his senses. The Vampire revels in the scene: how she will pick over what remains of his carcass and he will let her, it seems, to show the wife he may have happily lived for his family, but he will gladly die for the Vampire.
Although, overtly, the Vampire appears to possess no supernatural powers, there are hints. In a brief scene, a husband takes leave of his senses (and his wife’s side) for a split instant when the Vampire brushes past not as much as noticing him – as if her thrall is a pheromone plume of perfume. We see the Vampire in an act of almost smelling out her pray in another scene. During the film the Vampire neither ages nor comes to harm. When threatened by a discarded, broken lover wielding a revolver, he still cannot quite bring himself to injure her and so in his final desperation instead takes the only option left, to shoot himself in the head to cure the madness she infects him with.The Vampire, as she always does, moves on unchanged. And move on she does to the film’s downbeat conclusion. As you can see for yourself with the full film for your enjoyment here:
What of this fable’s message? Beware harlots? Beware the Vampires? Beware then the Vamps?
Maybe, like all good horror movies, there is no single message. Maybe, like all good horror movies, it is showing contemporary society a reflection of itself back from the warped hall of mirrors of a carnival side-show. Maybe, like all good horrors, the villain survives to strike again.
And so I go back to the photo. The mystery of it uncovered: a promotion still for a film so scantily melodramatic by today’s plot standards it would struggle to find an audience on the Hallmark Channel. Yet… and… yet… I still can’t quite take my eyes off it.
Thursday, 10 July 2014
Greville Rules, OK!
I reckon I will be a good dictator. And by good, I mean very bad to my dictated to subjects. And they won’t be able to do anything about it because I would be the dictator over all humanity on the entire Earth!
I would be Greville Emperor of Earth!
I have loads of good ideas, too, to make the world a better place if I could only transplant them into all brains. The first good idea being: idea transplants.
I will give people the idea in their brains of not being annoying. This would include, though not limited to: no whistling and being polite. I will also give people the idea of thinking I am incredibly excellent.
And I will insist on plot line and character improvements in TV shows and Films I deem superior entertainment are implemented in real-time to whatever I am watching.
But beyond thought control and personality manipulation, being Emperor of Earth, I will need to make sure I am the grandest Emperor ever known: the most opulent, the most monumental, the most majestic. And for that I will need scale on a grand scale!
I will also need an extravagant entourage of an inner circle of trusted confidants. Get out of my life, friends! From now on I will only want to look at gorgeous people, talk with witty people and recline beside intelligent people in my vast library with an oculus ceiling so high trained exotic birds will circle silently overhead.
And I’ll enjoy the splendour of other exotic animals too: ligers and elks, polar bears and rhinos, butterflies and mogwai – in my Moon Zoo! Obviously I’m going to have a zoo on the Moon. As well as Greville Emperor of Earth I am Greville the Moon Duke. It is a title which came with the deeds for the Earth.
Although I am not a god – I couldn’t just magic up unicorns – I can insist on scientists mixing horse DNA with those whales with the horn. Or make every horse in 20 have a horn strapped to its head and they will be my imperial unicorn sentry. Either option – I will have my imperial unicorn sentry.
Hmmm… and mermaids. I will need to figure out a way to get women to be my imperial mermaids. Although I’ll need to check how well a swimmer each is first. Can’t have dead women in mermaid costumes floating on top of my palatial ponds. That would be a downer on my almighty ego.
Actually, being Emperor of Earth is already proving difficult with getting round the mechanics. Dead women in my pond is just the start of my dictatorship troubles. Having imperial unicorns, bespoke citadels on wheels and highly moisturised women to massage me each evening using the backs of kittens is all very nice – but I have not even considered the administration involved until this paragraph. If I controlled everything, I couldn’t simply demand people treat nature better or stop warring, for instance. I will need to give them something else to do. I could suggest everyone contribute to a balanced economy and food chain to eradicate Need – but that takes co-operation and dedication and there will be the inevitable meetings and conference calls asking for my wisdom which, given I want to have a LOT of leisure time as Emperor of Earth, might prove problematic unless I delegate. And delegation is no dictatorship at all. Oh by Great Grevilleseus! What have I become?! Within the space of 600 odd words I’ve gone from World Emperor with ultimate control of humanity’s thoughts to some Moon Zoo CEO with no clue how the internal moon mail system operates.
My idea of lacing the world’s water supply with champagne might backfire too.
Ok – forget all these grandiose plans for my Earth dictatorship. Let’s concentrate on the basics…
How about if I insist every earthling (or “Tomber” as I would re-term the noun) like me more than the Tomber next to them under punishment of “fight to the death in jelly”? That’s a policy which can’t backfire.
I would now ask for your vote, but I don’t need it.
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Accepting space and everything in it
First, you must accept the improbability of Everything based on a set of universal constants.
The order of atoms coming together at this precise moment in all of the whole “Everythingness” which means I am where I am, typing the letter… “O”… in a blog on a site hosted by the internet, on Earth, is highly improbable. Very highly improbable. I am the only Greville Tombs doing this and may ever do this unless Everything lasts a very long time indeed and every permutation is played out eventually again and again in a cosmic loop until this actual moment is repeated.
Which would feel like if Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was re-released in an extended uncut version.
The chances of you reading this at the particular point you are reading this further multiplies the improbability of “It All”.
Why am I sentient now and not Robert Louis Stevenson? Why did Plato meet Socrates to discuss the concept democracy but will always be destined to miss the distracting concept of Candy Crush Saga? What am I going to not know immediately from the precise act of my death? What do I not know through reasons of the act of my living? Why am I to be here, in this place, during now?
Why was Helen of Troy claimed as the most beautiful woman in the human history when, thanks to FHM, we now can’t decide who is the most beautiful women in the next 13 months?
[It's always Winona]
 |
| Always Winona (RED April 2014, 3) |
In essence, you, me, the invention of the personal pager, a funny looking cave, sound, water, asteroids, dinosaurs, leaves, annual FHM 100 sexiest women lists – Everything - All Of It - is a by probability product from a ridiculous set of probabilities adhering to base universal contestants. That is why I am here during now and not 333 years away still to be. That is why you are reading this and not being rock on a planet so distant it will reflect no light.
It is actually mindboggling. It might be the sole mindboggling thing.
Some say God made Everything. To prevent Anything becoming a god, Everything was denied the ability of the understanding of the meaning behind itself.
Now I can say this concept appeals to me. It could be the reason I can sleep at night. But then, the theory of when you get a weird shiver or jolt across your shoulder and down your spine for what seems to be no reason is actually you experiencing the death of a “you” in one of the infinite parallel universes [citation needed], each one created from every possibility, also appears to me a fair way of doing things. So, you know, I am not necessarily the person to come to for answers. Although I might be the best Greville to ask as, by my count, I am more successful at living than lots of me with every passing day. So far.
Second, you must accept humanity cannot create, but only manipulate and destroy what the universal constants supply. There is nothing more amazing and filled with intrinsic purpose than the eco-system – harmonizing, even on a brutal level, is what Nature is good at. The system is awe inspiring. Humanity is about breaking the system to its own limited inspiration and detriment. There is nothing as intricately gorgeous as a dragonfly about human development.
Except maybe Winona Ryder.
Third, you must accept humanity has the capability to simply put these huge concepts, ones which dwarf our importance and heighten it to beyond all reason simultaneously, to one side and get on with things. Things like watching Catchphrase on TV. And as a direct correlation of this, the third acceptance of the three rules you must accept, humanity invented the scam Cold Caller.
In the same week as walking by Professor Peter Higgs, a man who has rightly placed himself in the pantheon of humans who have raised themselves closest to understanding what's going on, I have been cold called by a human intent on scamming and scheming to their gain without a jot of care to my well being.
Thankfully I was sharp to their tricksies.
The cold call scam was abundantly see-through – which, as it was a phone call, shows how transparent it was.
[GT]: Hello?
[CC, noise of call centre which could have been a sound effect on a stereo]: Hello! Are you having a good evening?
[GT]: Uh-huh?
[CC]: We are a local company who has come into extra money and we’d like to share it among members of the local community like you!
Because this is exactly what nameless “local companies” do when they come into money. I actually think I read somewhere giving surplus money away was “local company” business strategy 101. Or did I see it in Die Hard 4.0?
[CC]: If you answer a couple of short questions, we can look to give you a share of the money tonight!
I presume the first question being my address since I am ex-directory and on the Telephone Preference Service List so you couldn't possibly have my telephone number by reputable means.
[GT]: Not interested.
[CC]: ARRRRGGHHHH! YOU...!
Click!
He actually yelled at me.
These cold callers, though, will get someone handing over their bank details, before you can press "go to checkout" on an amazon wish list. And they are often more sophisticated than this one. Some will even come up with a fake company name instead of "A local company".
Fourth, you must accept that because of the first three rules: a cold caller is contacting you because they want something, not because you want something. If you want a service then it should be on your terms. Check references, call the trade guilds, don't agree to anything or give details without a chance to reflect away from the situation for a day or three. Make sure you go and actively make the mistake, don't let the mistake passively come to you.
Cold callers, whether legitimate or not, on the telephone or at the door, are a scourge. Every cold caller is an irritation, unfeeling and (mostly) expert at taking money.
So, Cold Callers everywhere, remember how stupefying and awesome life is – you, like me, are made from tiny bits of Big Bang, still, if you can imagine it, we are imperceptivity exploding and expanding from a single point in the universe from every part of us. The universal constants, putting it all together from infinitesimal pulls and pushes capable of incredible force, have made atoms and placed atoms with atoms, formed cells, moved vast swathes of space, formed planets, a sunrise over Orion’s Belt, placed elements to carve details into the cosmos and developed almost impossible systems within autonomous systems. Over eons and (I cannot stress this quite enough) astonishing odds, a set of circumstances which, if understood, would make you a weeping God for the instant prior to your mind firing synapse burning lightening bolts with knowing It All, the immense, unthinking, unstoppable, and if it would recognise it: glorious, ultimate science has determinedly, perhaps execrably and if it would recognise it, beautifully, put you and I together in all our complexities and wonders and art and allowed us to exist in this too brief fleeting shared moment to appreciate it all and you chose to be motherfucking cold calling wank stain.
*slow handclap* Well fucking done.
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