January, 2009

music — No Comments
30
Jan 09

Listening to machine guns

Bill is asking for trouble by joining a band – doesn’t he know it’s a young man’s game? What’s going to happen when he’s under a pile of groupies and his ticker gives out? Still, if you want to encourage him – or, in fact, if you’re a groupie – then you can find The Machine Gunners providing “sort of piano-led bittersweet indie with maybe a hint of country”1 at The Comedy (Piccadilly) on 3rd February and The Hope & Anchor (Islington) on 9th February.

  1. Alternatively “like Cradle of Flith but heavier” – hey, it’s your money you’ll be spending. [↩]
writing — No Comments
29
Jan 09

One Minute Vicious The Next

The straps only get tighter.

You ready?

Ready in two.

It’s for his own protection. It’s hard to talk with the restraints around his jaw. Last time round in this contraption, he nearly bit his own tongue clean off.

Jst gt n wth t, mthrfckr.

The red light on the camera blinks in disbelief, and then it begins.

SILK-LINED COFFIN PRODUCTS

present

SURFING AGONY

Ice ricochets through his veins. He smells something burning, most likely hair. They always shave before they start, but when the nerves are playing pinball with your fingers you always miss a bit here or there, and then they start to fizzle when the switches drop. One of the other voices says,

He’s burning.

Leave him.

He’s lost in a country below the country he came from, where their sort of sport is prohibited. People still watch them in the country he came from. You can’t stop people watching, not unless you want to become like those other countries, countries where people aren’t allowed to watch what they want. Because in that sort of country, that sort of sport is… well, it’s safe to say that the sport has been perfected here. So they exercise due caution, but there are always stray patches of hair smoldering here and there.

Did he say something?

I didn’t hear anything.

The fucking cable hum is killing the audio on this one.

It’s amazing how many thoughts you can fit into such a short space of time. Each of them has something different to get them through. G-Jax counts and ranks the women he’s fucked. Hallo Gritty recites proofs for irrational numbers under her breath. Firebreathing pictures himself beating his ex-boyfriend to a pulp. Nobody said they were a healthy bunch. Continue reading →

comics — No Comments
27
Jan 09

What’s your power, Most Excellent Superbat?

Most Excellent Superbat

Casual racism aside, this was the only really fun moment in Final Crisis #6.

politics — No Comments
26
Jan 09

The Death Star will be completed on schedule

Joshua Foust is a smart guy who writes smart things, particularly about Afghanistan. But this?

I’ve at least made friends with the servants here [at Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait]. “The who,” you might ask? I’m referring to all the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Filipinos who work as the base’s (and all of CENTCOM’s, it seems) second-class citizens. They don’t get bonuses like we do, but they work their tails off to send money back home to their families. They also seem to be held in utter contempt by a depressing number of people here, uniform or no. That idea, of importing servants to do our dirty jobs, may be just how things work, but it is a bit depressing.

It’s never pleasant when the inner workings of an imperial project are exposed, because those inner workings nearly all involve poor people doing all the work and getting treated like shit. Although it’s late in the game, I hope that Josh will make the connection between the way we run things in Ali Al Salem and the entire project of Afghanistan.

politics / UK — No Comments
26
Jan 09

The missing state

On Global Dashboard, Alex Evans asks what are we missing? He’s been doing the rounds of “an extensive series of horizon scanning events to feed into the current revision of the National Security Strategy“, and has ended up here:

Having been to a few of these events, I must admit to being less than convinced that the sessions are really breaking out of the comfortable groupthink that can so easily characterise futures work… For me, the really stand-out risk that barely got a mention in the events I attended was the possibility that serious erosion of states’ capacity and legitimacy undermines their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing… there is nonetheless a worrying set of drivers on the table that raises questions about whether, in (say) 5 years’ time, we’ll be starting to think that states just don’t have the legitmacy and capability they need to manage 21st century challenges.

The problem is simple. The National Security Strategy is a state product, and these consultations are happening within the state framework – and this means that these discussions assume the state and proceed from there. Non-state actors (whether corporate, non-governmental, criminal or private individuals) don’t assume the state – they assume their own interests and start from there. Never the twain shall meet, and that’s why this round of discussions is leaving Alex cold.

The state is a means to an end. If it is no longer an effective means – if it’s not possible to reach your end solely within the state framework – then people are obliged and entitled to seek alternatives. Now that might (and often does) lead to outcomes that are not desirable for the state because they further undermine its legitimacy, but that’s a byproduct. The problem with state-led discussions of these challenges is that they mistake the byproduct for the main aim, and then proceed to treat the actors involved correspondingly.

Needless to say, there have been people who did not believe that states have “legitimacy or capability” ever since states began to form. That the state does have legitimacy and capability is merely a story that the state tells its citizens – it might be true or it might be false, but it isn’t an inherent feature of the state that it possesses either, and once the facade slips, there may be no going back…

art / politics — 2 Comments
24
Jan 09

There are outsiders, and then there are …

Whimsley is rarely wrong1, and today he skewers the outsider manoeuvre. It’s a tedious form of self-justification posing as self-deprecation, offering the artist a flabby excuse for their art. Plenty of artists aren’t outsiders, plenty of outsiders aren’t artists; the link between the two is weak, to say the least. The existence of Outsider Art suggests that many claims to outsider status may be a bit premature unless you spend a fair amount of time being physically restrained or chemically sedated.

Which brings us neatly to politics. Claims to outsider status are the symptom of an individual building a narrative about themselves. Where the artist is concerned, this narrative is mainly for themselves, as well – but where the politician is concerned, the narrative is definitely for public consumption. American politicians are particularly susceptible to this, and apparently the American electorate is as well – claims to be marching on Washington, prepared to sweep aside the old order with a new broom, a broom that only an outsider can wield – these sorts of claims play very well indeed.

You can see the hard form in John McCain’s rhetoric about being a “maverick” or Sarah Palin’s entire persona:

I’ve stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies and the ‘good old boy’ network… If you want change in Washington, if you hope for a better America, then we’re asking for your vote on the 4th of November.

but the softer form is also present in Barack Obama’s speeches, when he says things like “Change doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington” – and means every word.2 The point is not whether these statements are true or false – it’s that the speaker believes them to be true, and wants you to believe as well.

Whimsley is right that we should never, ever trust these claims, no matter who makes them. Claims to outsider status are true or not depending only on where you draw the line of outsider status, but usually people who make such claims are trying to sell you something – whether it’s a film or a presidential campaign.

  1. By which I mean that I nearly always agree with what he writes, of course, rather than making any epistemological claims on his behalf. [↩]
  2. Andrew Keen points out the flaws in this argument with his usual panache. [↩]
wordsperminute — No Comments
22
Jan 09

Words per minute #13: Miller on Creativity

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses.  That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.  Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths… It was revealed to me that I could say what I wanted to say – if I thought of nothing else, if I concentrated upon that exclusively – and if 1 were willing to bear the consequences which a pure act always involves.

- Henry Miller, Sexus

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