Captains Log Additional: Additional

Furthermore to highly irrelevant posts about swift insurance and it’s soul sapping advertising campaign. I read that it has only recently begun to insure musicians.
Previously it didn’t due to some mumbling about ‘high risk’
Go live that one life!
There is selling out, Iggy and then there is Selling out!

I’ll Advertise That

Anyone see those dumb adverts with Iggy Pop or at least a very passable Iggy Pop look-a-like who wants to watch out for a defamation case? Please someone tell me it is actually a look-a-like c’mon put me out of my misery of simply not doing the relevant research myself.
You see as I dragged my feet through Petersfield after another foray to the library to plug away at my Latin translations, I was affronted by one of those ubiquitous purple adverts for swift insurance (is it swift? I don’t know and I really don’t care).
Fronted by that radical, madman Iggy Pop these adverts have it all, the sense of quirky cool, the individualism of a tailor serviced insurance company, celebrity endorsement…purple. For Home insurance who else would you choose?
If I may allow the tangent to begin and for myself to be shepherded blindly at an oblique angle from the main issue, I thought I’d discuss the nature of a tailor made service. It’s all in the language really isn’t it, tailor made to your convenience like you were some 19th century aristocrat having a bespoke suit made out of elephant hide by an obseqious oriental slave you’ve just had imported from the empire; when in reality you’re attempting to keep up with the legal necessity of keeping your battered old car insured allowing you to continue your meagre existence of driving to work, working, driving back from work, sleeping.
If it were not for my fervent hatred of marketing I’d probably admire the way that the idea of a tailor made service has turned the process of what is otherwise known as ‘giving over your details’ into a situation which evokes the musty comfort of a saville row tailor shop.

“How would Sir like us to rob him blind today? We have the draincashquick express service if you’re in a hurry, or if you’re interested in contrived little scheme which we, the retailer, will always screw you on, then perhaps Sir would care for our extra specia, individually tailored, poverty deluxe service?

But really the main thing I thought about was the concept of selling out, I mean clearly it’s a widespread thing. I will never forget the awful, gut-wrenching disappointment I felt when I heard Rik Mayall was the voice of the Andrex puppy, nor did my soul really recover from the shock of seeing Adrian Edmondson on Casualty. To be honest I still haven’t gotten over the end of the Bottom series but that’s an issue for another day.

What is it like though? I mean the actual point you sell out? One minute you’re sticking your fingers up at the system, your out there, you’re a rebel, you’re saying “yah boo to the establishment man, go screw the squares” then all of a sudden you’re advertising insurance on the back of a bus.
What goes through your head? Is it like a one day you wake up and you go ”Oh man I realised I’ve been wrong all along, I thought people needed rock but no! They wanted double glazed conservatories and a credit card with a sloping edge!”.
Or is it a sneaking, insidious thing. The offer comes through, it looks good on paper and yeah you’ve always had a thing about toilet duck, it’s quirky and it’s kind of funny. C’mon a duck in a plane that cleans your toilet, that’s good. It’s advertising sure but you’re sticking with an old school product so it’s okay and anyway there isn’t anything wrong with toilet cleaner, it’s not part of the system or anything, poor old toilet duck, in fact see that’s the problem with rebellion against the system, it doesn’t take into account the need for clean toilets and if we’re honest toilet duck is a better name than cilit bang, better ‘brand’ yeah and the money won’t do any harm either, I think I’ll do it…
So conscience loses the battle, the soul retracts, and the market consumes with greedy lust yet another poor wretch.
What I want to know is whether or not the individual in question wakes up one night in the cold sweat of a night terror and suddenly realises what they’ve done.
Rock stars do tend to die of overdoses.
Perhaps there may be a connection.

Justified Thuggery

The atrocious behaviour of several police officers during the G20 protests in London demonstrate, with almost textbook simplicity, that the very base level of state legitimacy relies upon the right to resort to violence.
Anyone who violently shoves a man to the ground, from behind let me add, is guilty of a particularly cowardly form of common assault. A man who resorts to wielding a baton against a woman who is guilty of nothing more than remonstrating after having been struck in the face for no good reason whatsoever, is simply inadequete as a police officer and needs taking down.
I for one don’t see any justification for such behaviour but what I do see are the bared teeth of the state, I see it’s jagged, ragged jaws and I hear it growling at the very people it is meant to serve.
The antics of the police over the protests really raise the question of whether they were there to preserve order or to cause a riot and the practice of concealing shoulder numbers and, in some cases, faces (as appears to be the case of the TSG officer who floored Ian Tomlinson) speaks volumes as to the relationship between the public and the police.
An excellent argument in favour of introducing ID cards, wouldn’t you say?
For the record I regard such events with utter dismay, the officers who carried them out with disgust, and the state that sits smugly behind them with nothing but contempt.
Such behaviour is simple thuggery and given that the thugs happen to be wearing uniforms and fighting on the side of ‘law and order’, such thuggery is perceived by many to be somehow justified. Given the state of the nation, and the increasing creep of unemployment, poverty and deprivation; how many more people are going to find that suddenly the police they mistook for allies have suddenly become their enemy? How many more people are going to feel fear when exercising their right to legitimately protest?
Doubtless there will be many who will see such behaviour as some how justified, but I don’t, and if anyone wants to know how I feel about it, then I’ve  got to say I’m tempted to go give like-for-like and cow-tip a copper next time I see one strolling down the street.
Betcha I wouldn’t have many people justifying that.

Some sense amongst the chaos

The attacks on the Massereene Army base, Antrim in which two young soldiers were killed and four other people injured mark another senseless killing in a world that seems to completely lack any sense whatsoever. The death of two young men, who I notice were both younger than myself a factor which always accentuates the impact, serves no purpose whatsoever other than to undermine the Northern Ireland peace process and remind everyone of the dark days of the troubles.

I couldn’t help but agree with Brigadier George Norton however when he rejected concerns that guards at Massereene had not returned fire when attacked, his response to such finger pointing was short, rhetorical and straight to the point.

“Are you suggesting that people should have fired into a closely packed group, including my soldiers?”

It’s at least a relief to see that there are some who can keep their cool, it’s the antidote that’s needed in a storm of hatred.
Such random attacks, which have also claimed the life of a Policeman in Craigavon, County Armagh have been owned up to by a dissident republican group calling itself the Continuity IRA which quite apart from anything is a crap name for a paramilitary group but I digress.
Needless to say these are the inevitable results of any form of conflict, especially those as internecine and as divisive as the Northern Ireland troubles, even when governments decide that enough is enough there are usually plenty of individuals who are willing to continue their own private, personal war. Perhaps this is the folly of government for it believes that it can stop and start such conflict like a game of musical chairs and then expects everyone to sit back down again when the music stops instead of say picking up the chairs and smashing them over each others heads.
I’d just like to point out that this is not a criticism of the Northern Ireland peace process which I think is eminently sensible and necessary if we’re to provide a better future for both Irish and UK citizens, merely an exposition of how when large scale narrative movements be they political, religious or both kick off against one another, they propel individuals into the melee, when the whistle blows it’s one hell of an almighty assumption to expect all the players to be ready to quit, war sows the seeds of conflict and for years afterwards we have to deal with the recurring echoes of such violence and bitterness.
All we are left to do is reduce these echoes as best we can, let them die out and strive with all we can, not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The Juggernaut of Privatisation

As though you fools think you can stop it, look at those poor saps in the union running around talking about ideology and politics and principle, bleating on about fuzzy, abstract concepts such as pensions, people, job security, fair pay.
When are they going to realise that there is only one important factor in this whole issue and that of course is profit?
Do we actually believe that the Labour government give a toss about the state of the working class, or the thorny issue of equality of outcome? Of course they don’t, they’ve backed off from the whole concept of Socialism as though it was a toothed vagina.
What we are seeing here is an administration which has simply lost contact with reality, lost contact with the populace as a whole and the terrifying thing is that neither the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats are any different at all, our political system has reached a point of stagnation and we’re all watching as our representatives blithely perform an increasingly irrelavant role in increasingly irrelavant debates, whilst the edifice of popular sovereignty is tossed into the dustbin of history, steamrollered by the perfidious facade of market democracy.
Well, fuck market democracy, and fuck capitalism and fuck the free-fucking-market, there is a nice, simple manifesto of a pissed off proletariat, no high flying language just a practical articulation of just how beyond the pale of market fundamentalism I’ve managed to get.

The part-privatisation of Royal Mail has been on the cards for years, I know only too well how the pressure was applied at top and bottom level and I know only too well how that pressure was felt by everyone that worked in the industry and I can only really stand in awe of this worthless, pathetic government for managing to achieve what Thatcher’s Tories could not or would not themselves do. But the sheer audacity of what is taking place which is as Billy Hayes quite rightly pointed out

“We have got a situation where The Royal Bank of Scotland is on the verge of being nationalised and we’ve got the situation where they are suggesting Royal Mail should be privatised and flogged to a foreign multinational.”

The gall that Peter Mandelson has in arguing that the only solution to the Royal Mail pension deficit is to sell off 30% of one of our last great public services whilst banks are bailed out to the tune of billions of pounds of taxpayers money goes beyond the incredulous and into the territory of truly legendary arrogance, forget the brass neck, this man should be pinned spreadeagled over the harbour at Rhodes in an attempt to recreate history.
As for his accusations that the CWU is fighting an ideological battle he finally actually makes the point quite happily for his opponents, Yes! the union is fighting an ideological battle, and what is more it is doing so with a democratic mandate, which is a damn sight more than what Mandelson can claim to possess himself, it’s called principle, it is called S.o.c.i.a.l.i.s.m. What is Mandelson doing if he’s not fighting an ideological battle himself, cleverly operating on behalf of capitalism from the ranks of a so-called social democratic party?
His statement that-

 “I think a lot of the workforce of the Royal Mail won’t be thinking of the politics of this, but about their pension and about their job security, Both are in danger if we do not sort out the finances of the Royal Mail.”

-can be quickly translated into ‘we’ve got you over a barrel here, you can’t afford to go on strike, we’ve got you so caught up in our shitty little system that you can hardly breathe let alone start waging a war of political principle.’
If we analyse exactly what is going on here, we can see, peeking from behind the smart and serried ranks of the petty bourgeois the rampant and destructive face of capitalism and it’s ever present child and ally, inequality. Mandelson has made the point himself, whilst we have the nominal right to take industrial action our financial circumstances often preclude us from doing so, in essence our formal political rights look good on paper but remain essentially worthless since by being subsumed within the system we have been imprisoned by it.
This is the ‘humanisation’ of capitalism, it seeks to disguise the injustice that it produces with an artificial facia of content and fairness, yet it remains nothing more than a system of exploitation.
What is going to happen is that the profit will be privatised and the pension deficit will be nationalised all £6 billion of it, Royal Mail will go to the dogs and when the music stops we’ll all have the honour of bailing out the various shareholders who up till then will have been making an absolute killing out of the whole business, we can all vote with our wallet as much as we like and all we’ll do is return ourselves to a world in which the rich and powerful have a greater share of the vote than the majority, turning Toqueville on his head we’ll have the tyranny of the minority but hey! at least it isn’t mob rule right?
So what to do, grumble a bit about it, then switch off? We’ll probably allow ourselves a bit of a whine but get on with it eventually, the fantastic thing is we’ve actually learned to enjoy our exploitation now we’ll follow the advice of the politicians who call for a competetive market to be combined with fairness and humanity and happiness and fluffy little kittens with rosy bows tied round their cute little necks, we’ll even accept this whilst they deride socialists for being deluded and we’ll miss the glaring irony, politically we’ll vote in the Conservatives in the next election who will give us more of the same, they’ll humanise our capitalism for us which to use a less than subtle analogy is a bit like applying a liberal amount of lubricant to the broom handle before they fuck you up the arse with it. 
Voting in the Conservatives when Labour are flushing public services down the toilet like they were something dirty they never want to see again? It’s a bit like setting fire to a sinking ship in the hope that all the water will evaporate.

The Evil of Internet Portal Sites

Clearly there is too much to write here regarding the atrocious nature of internet portal sites, too much for the five minutes that I have scheduled into my not-busy-at-all day to write this inconsequential observation.
However one news story caught my eye

Controversial art goes too far!

How in the seven names of Paddington Bear’s alter ego does controversial art go too far? By it’s very nature it causes consternation in all the indignant gabbling minds that seem to enjoy nothing more than denigrating those things they usually do not understand.
Can you imagine an artist talking in some left bank toss cafe supping his caffe latte which cost the same as the education budget of some tinpot south american dictatorship with an individual who is inexplicably wearing a see through eye patch and a red beret that sports both the Iron and the Victoria crosses.

Wanky Artist 1. Yeah so I was going to like produce a piece of like controversial art, you know like jesus nailed to a baby or hilary clinton making love to a cigarette, you know

Wanky Artist 2. Wow, like cool and not a little political dude, but what about like offending people?

Wanky Artist 1. What you mean people might, like, not get the vibe man?

Wanky Artist 2. Yeah like it’s cool causing controversy but, like, seriously uncool if it goes too far.

Wanky Artist 1. Yeah man, yeah you’re right, I don’t want to like step outside the comfort zone of the conservative mindset man, woh! just think I could like get death threats or something.

Wanky Artist 2. Hey it’s cool you can still cause controversy but just cause like a comfortable amount, so that the risk, like everything else in this sanitised, mediocre society, is, like, acceptable

Wanky Artist 1. What like…Rupert the Bear holding an AK-47?

Wanky Artist 2. No, I was thinking more like splashing paint on a canvas so that no one has a clue what you’ve done but still part with thousands of pounds to puby something that looks like a five year old might bring back from his first nursery class.

Wanky Artist 1. Cool, I could afford another coffee!

Ad Nauseum

Falling under the spell

You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts in recent times, well you’d be right and top marks for observation, of course after the masses of disappointed letters I received in the posts from all those fans who simply couldn’t bear the thought of not having my paper thin personality forced upon them in chunky, opinionated and usually incredibly self pitying doses, I thought about perhaps getting back to it.
The thing is I’d just be tempted to write long and usually misinformed essays on Classical Athens, what can I say other than I actually have a structured academic life to occupy my time and consequently find very little time to actually put together long winded and often as not highly niave political polemics…oh and I do not actually possess a computer any more, which makes internet use quite tricky.

I was thinking recently about poverty, or at least about money and the lack of it, more specifically my lack of it, since going back to college it has been one long slide into simply not having a spare penny, I’ve involved myself in a spirited attempt to boost the flagging economy by drinking away a lot of my surplus funds over the past year and a half but alas to no avail our credit based disaster of a system still seems to be headed down the pan in the same manner as all that whisky that my ex girlfriend poured away.
That isn’t to say that I have not been working, I’m a barman these days, which is very similar to being a postman asides from not having to deal with mail, or having to really go outside, or physically exert myself beyond standing vertically for several hours, or deal with dogs, or bikes, or uniforms, or strikes or…okay it’s quite different to being a postman.
I say poverty, well it isn’t poverty in the slightest, even if me and the cats were almost on the same rations during christmas and I’ve been paying for petrol with huge inconvenient piles of ten pence coins, I’m not starving or anything and I’ve got a roof over my head, even if it seems to be a roof over nothing more than a giant freezer.
Lets just put it this way and say that I’m not a rich man, nor am I likely to be in the near, far, distant or indeed conceptual future, nor do I particularly care.
The thing is, and its something that I have always been fairly sure would be the case, I’ve never been very bothered about money, it’s just a gas, just a way to survive and as far as I’m concerned it’s nothing more than that.
Once you find what it is you want to do in life, and I’m going out on a limb but I think I’m getting to know what that is now, the idea that you’d go jumping through hoops for money is so laughably ridiculous that the very absurdity of willingly submitting to all manner of misery and degradation in return for such shallow material rewards with an eye to nothing more than the intrinisc ‘value’ of said rewards seems beyond comprehension. I’ll stand by my patronising attitude I gave that dumb girl at college who accused me of niavety when I described that my motivation for going to college was to gain an education, to enjoy it in the way that I couldn’t first time round, to challenge myself, to prove I could do it, the idea that I’d do it to get a higher paying job not only didn’t cross my mind but is a complete anathema to me.
So I told her I felt sorry for her, and yes I was patronising because I was justified in being so and I can confirm for free that I still feel sorry for the stupid little cow.
But anyway I digress, I don’t do that often I know but no one’s perfect.
The current economic climate looks bleak, and we talk of hard times ahead, we might even finally get round to actually experiencing some of these hard times rather than just suspect the media of concocting the entire thing.
Poverty is a miserable experience and not being able to afford food or a home just isn’t good no matter how philosophical you want to get about it, it’s a crappy, crappy situation to be in but if poverty means you’re not able to indulge in ‘retail therapy’ (whatever the fucking hell that means) or splash out obscene amounts of money on nonsensical items of bourgious bullshit then perhaps it’s a good time for a reassessment of values.
I remember when my financial situation had hit about rock bottom and for a few days I felt oddly worried then I went for a walk, it was a clear, cold, crisp day with a blood red sun that seemed to just hang in a nest of pink cloud like some frozen red crystal high in the sky. I recall feeling a weight lift because I realised that I was alive and healthy and most importantly I was happy, it wasn’t some sort of bourgois philosophy of poverty justification, it was a feeling that I had shaken off the conception that I needed money to be happy or to feel validated and I was actually proving a point to myself. Of course I knew that I had to be practical and that I would need to do something about the situation eventually but it was a reaffirming moment. I’ve harped on about not being defined by money or wealth time and time again, I’ve waxed lyrical about my disinterest in being rich and I’ve reached a point at which I’ve, for once, matched principle with practice.

Money is money, a dirty sordid substance in a dirty sordid world and I get the feeling that we’re all instilled with a desire to chase after it rather than to treat it with the disinterest it deserves and go chasing after ourselves instead.

Little pink stars

Dear Disappointment

Couldn’t sleep again tonight but for once it was used to constructive ends. Unfortunately it just keeps going, I don’t mind really but it is the seeing things that I just can’t abide. How is it that music becomes associated with unfolding nebulas that explode all manner of psychological stardust across the infinite expanse of the mind. There are people walking in and out of my room and I’m utterly powerless to stop them
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
cough
Fuck ‘em
Let the union fall

The Joy of Classical Studies

As a classicist part of my job is speculating upon and re-interpreting literature and history so as to shed new light on old ideas, this also translates as stretching the truth as far as it will go without actually leaving the rails provided by the ‘facts’
In this spirit I have decided to rewrite Antigone in a distinctly anarchronistic vein, apologies to Sophocles and Nietzsche automatically included.

ANTIGONE (According to Freidrich Nietzsce)

Sentry
Here she is! We caught her in the act the rebellious little strumpet!

Creon
You’d better have a damn good reason for this young Madam!

Antigone
I’ve been burying Polynices in accordance with the divine law of Zeus the Olympian…duh!

Creon
You mean to say you defied my decree?!

Antigone
Of course I did, the gods didn’t make this law, you are a mere mortal and I’ll obey the gods before I obey the edict of some man’s wounded pride! Die I must, if I am to die before my time I’ll consider that a gain-

Creon
Whoa!….Whoa! Hold your horses there, you seem to be willing to die for a metaphysical ideal?

Antigone
Well…yes…anyway as I was stating in my apologia…if I had allowed my own mothers son to rot, an unburied corpse, that would have been an agony-

Creon
No seriously I’ve got to stop you there, what we have here is a clash of competing wills and I’m going to win, take it as read. What I’m concerned about is you’re dying for something you’re not even certain exists. Think about it.

Antigone
But the gods do exist, how could they not? I’m following divine law.

Creon
No, no, no. Look, empirically, what evidence do you have of the gods or the afterlife?

Antigone
Oh…well…none

Creon
Exactly! See, you’re willing to die but you have no evidence that what your are dying for is in any way substantial, ‘beware of suffering for the truth’ my dear
to the sentry
Summon Ismene!

Antigone
But I’m dying for an ideal here. Hey! This is meant to be the eponymous clash between individual and state!

Creon
But you’re working on a platonic, christian idea of self sacrifice in the name of highly dubious metaphysical conceptions. Ah, here is your sister

Antigone
Ismene?

Ismene
Look Sis, you know he’s right, just chill out and let it drop. We can always undermine him later using the slave morality you clearly possess. It’s not so bad, remember! ‘What does not kill me makes me stronger’

Antigone
But…but I’m right and Creon is wrong!

Creon
No you see life is a subjective experience, the truth of anything is defined via the perspective of the observer thus, there is no objective right or wrong.

Antigone
Aha! So you can’t be right either!

Ismene
She has a point there Creon

Creon
Oh…well I guess thats true, but what I am doing is asserting my will to power over the state and over Antigone.

Antigone
And I’m trying to assert mine!

Ismene
Well I’m happy being subservient
enter Haemon

Haemon
Dad, I feel that what you are doing is attempting to find meaning in a godless universe. You’re edict to expose Polynices corpse to the carrion birds is simply an attempt to apply law, justice and order onto a structureless, chaotic void. What you need to do is study the unintentional aspect of your intention to do in my missus-to-be

Creon
But its through experience that I become a better person, maybe I just want to find out what its like to be an arbitrary and autocratic ruler…as the cranberries said ‘everybody else is doing it so why can’t we?’

Haemon
Well at least you’re being honest, thats the first step to becoming a free spirit

Creon
Good, now Antigone, are you going to apologise profusely? I may let you off.

Antigone
Now I think about it…I’m very, very sorry, such an act of humiliation is an experience which will cause me to become a stronger human being and anyway I’m not dying for something for which there is no evidence, I’ve got a whole life of non-incestuous sex with Haemon to look forward to

Creon
Good that settles it…now your dad…he really was a bit of a ‘free spirit’
enter Tiresias

Haemon
Hey look everyone its a new philosopher!

Tiresias
I bear good news…not only is Creon the new ubermensch but GOD IS DEAD AND WE HAVE KILLED HIM!

All
Hooray!

Chorus
The scope of this play takes the audience through all
That the mind may suffer, which fate has in store
We Good Europeans will emerge from the upheaval
And the journey from God to beyond good and evil

Exodos

My Manifesto of Simplicity

I disagree with many
And I may agree with some
But of the things I can’t abide
Racism is one