Me Lazy Bugger

I’ve been way too lazy lately to sit and write anything meaningful (hence the man raped by his dog post) but it’s been an exciting two weeks so and my hangover has finally worn off.

Firstly, I have to confess that nothing had brought me more pleasure than watching the wheels fall off the Bush war machine. To see Tom Delay’s smiling mug shot (apparently designed so it couldn’t be used in a Democratic political campaign) confirmed for me that these fucks really do think they are above the law. Shouldn’t He be more worried about being found guilty? The mug shot is only one thing, the headlines will speak for themselves.

Then watching Patrick Fitzgerald’s press conference after indicting the ridiculously named “Scooter” Libby on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, almost made me think that there IS hope for America!

What is it with American Politicians (actually I guess he is really a civil servant as nobody voted for him) with names like “Scooter”? Anyone remember Newt Gingrich? Who the hell wants a representative called “Newt”? Might be appropriate though as he was a right slimy bugger!

Anyway, it seems that if the checks and balances are in place in this system then there is hope that corrupt politicos will always get their comeuppance. Now we really know why the Christian Right is always screaming about “Activist Judges” - they are the only thing stopping the government from doing whatever it wants!

I’ve no doubt that Bush will circle the wagons but hopefully this is the beginning of the end.

Well Bugger Me! Actually on second thoughts......

Extract from the Yorkshire Evening Post:

"A drunk who claimed he had been raped by a dog was yesterday jailed for 12 months by a judge. Martin Hoyle, 45, was arrested by police after a passing motorist and his girlfriend found a Staffordshire bull terrier, called Badger, having sex with him at the side of a road in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

Prosecutor Ben Crosland said the couple had stopped to help because they thought Hoyle was being attacked by the animal. But when they got closer they saw that he had his trousers round his ankles, was down on all fours and the dog was straddling him from behind.

"The defendant mumbled something about the dog having taken a liking to him," said Mr Crosland. "The couple were extremely offended and sickened by what they saw." Another passing motorist contacted the police and Hoyle was arrested as he walked with the dog down the road.

Hoyle, of East view, Marsh, Huddersfield, told police "I can't help it if the dog took a liking to me. He tried to rape me."

He repeated the ra pe allegation at the police station and added "The dog pulled my trousers down." Hoyle, who has had a long-standing alcohol problem, was jailed for 12 months after he admitted committing an act which outraged public decency.

His barrister said Hoyle had no memory of the incident because of his drunken state, but was now very remorseful and incredibly embarrassed.

Jailing him, Judge Alistair McCallum told Hoyle "Never before in my time at the bar or on the bench have I ever had to deal with somebody who voluntarily allowed himself to be buggered by a dog on the public highway. Frankly it is beyond most of our comprehension. It is an absolutely disgusting thing for members of the public to have to witness."

The End of the World is Nigh

In the wake of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and war, there has been a big upsurge of people who believe the end of the world is nigh. I’ve been reading a few articles about these loonies lately and unfortunately they are no longer the sandwich-board-carrying bell-ringer down the train station.

The evangelical Christian movement in this country have been dictating the politics here (and unfortunately around the world as well) for the last 6 years and they are mainly to blame for most of this shite.

This apparently is what they believe the end will be like: First there is the Rapture, in which God's loyal followers suddenly disappear from Earth and enter his kingdom. Then comes the Tribulation, a seven-year period of rule by the Antichrist and severe hardship on Earth. During this time, nonbelievers who remain on Earth will have a chance to convert to Christianity but will be hounded by the Antichrist and his minions. Then comes Armageddon, when God comes back to defeat Satan in a devastating battle. Ultimately, there is Judgment Day, when those who are with God live on in Paradise, and others are eternally condemned to Hell.

Yeah… I think I saw this film, it was called “Lord of The Rings”.

Personally I can’t wait for the rapture when all these idiots disappear from the earth. I think it will be a time of peace and prosperity. As for the Tribulation, isn’t George W. Bush the Anti-Christ? If he finally gets hounded out of office after next year (believe me, it might happen, there is a growing feeling that his lies are starting to catch up with him) we’ll have suffered 7 years of the little illiterate fuckwit. Oh-oh, maybe it is true…

Oh well, when Darth Vader comes back to battle Godzilla on Armageddon, I’m teaming up with Buck Rodgers to get off the planet. My idea of hell is a room full of Evangelical Christians.

Under the Subway

Last Monday I saw a view of a New York City subway train that I never want to see again - the underneath.

Twice a year the MTA (that’s the “Metropolitan Transport Authority” to you non-New Yorkers) holds training sessions for blind people on what to do if you should fall on the tracks in the subway.

The sessions are held at the Transport Museum which is housed in a disused station in Brooklyn and still has working tracks though the power is turned off.

Basically 20 or so blind folks get together (never a good idea in the first place), don paper overalls that make you look like part of the NYPD’s Chemical and Biological Warfare clean-up team, and get led down onto the tracks by an MTA worker.

They teach you how to use your cane to feel for troughs in the ground where you can survive by letting the train roll over the top of you. These troughs are not very deep and to the naked eye, it’s the last place you would think of lying down since you would be sure you were going to end up looking like somebody stepped and skidded on a plum.

Surprisingly they are deep enough, and just so I got the idea I was instructed to get down on my knees in front of a parked train with a torch so I could see right under it. True enough the underside of the train is a good 2 feet above the tracks and if you were to lie in the trough you would survive - your underwear wouldn’t though.

They also teach you to identify the electrified third-rail. This one kind of freaked me out and even though I knew the power was off I didn‘t want to touch it.

One thing you should never do is try to lie down so the train passes alongside you. There are metal shoes that stick out a foot or so on both sides to make contact with that third rail. You get hit by one of those and you are going to look you just got cheese-wired.

Well, in all the session was helpful if a little paranoia inducing. I got the impression that the MTA people who led us around the tracks were all volunteers taking time out to help us so thanks to them for that.

Death by Advertising

I think that my head may be about to explode.

Why?

New York City is an incredibly noisy place - you are constantly being bombarded by the noise from sirens, passing subway trains, angry pedestrians, car horns, angry drivers, religious lunatics, regular lunatics, and violent lunatics. And this is just the audio pollution!

The visual pollution is just as bad! Advertisements everywhere from the top of taxicabs to the subway walls to being painted on the sidewalks! I’m not even talking about Times Square here!

So this is why I despair when I read in The Guardian that they have developed a paper-thin TV that they think could lead to newspapers and magazines having moving images on the cover. Sound too far fetched and Harry-Potter-like for you? Well you can read the story here.

We don’t need more moving shit! I sure as hell do not need to spend my day thinking about the shaking boobies on the cover of Playboy (I mean let’s be honest about this – this technology is perfect for porno mags!) anymore than I already do!

It makes me want to lock myself in a plain white room with no windows or decoration of any kind. The padded walls can be added later!

Fear

I traveled into work on the subway this morning – the same day the Mayor talked about a “credible threat” happening and the fact that I might be blown to bits an exploding baby.

Well thankfully nothing happened and the “credible threat” has yet to materialize. Hopefully it won’t.

It’s been a paranoid few days here in NYC and once again I’ve been proud of the reaction of New Yorkers to all this shit – they are a pragmatic bunch to say the least! Most New Yorkers went about their business as usual and middle finger salutes were hefted in the direction of Al-Queda, Mayor Bloomberg and George Dubya.

Fear is an amazing controlling substance. You can tell most people that as soon as they step out the door they are going to be raped by a crack-addicted-AIDS-infected-rottweiler and there is no way they will ever leave the house again.

Stay at home! Your Government is in control!

I was watching CNN after the London subway bombings and after the customary 3 minutes devoted to the actual story, they moved onto the “When will it happen to us?” part and proceeded to rack up the hysteria another notch!

Thankfully however, they also had a segment entitled “How to lessen your terror fears!” with a psychologist whose first recommendation was “Limit your exposure to the media!” I immediately turned off the TV and felt 10 times better.

It was then that it stuck me – Holy Shit! It’s not Osama Bin Laden that I am scared of it’s CNN!

Now I’m not saying you should walk around in blissful ignorance (although I am sometimes jealous of people who do this), actually I am saying the opposite. Educate yourself by watching CNN but then turn over and tune into Al-Jazeera and get a different point of view.

A little bit of balance lessens the fear. I’m believe that fear is born out of ignorance more that anything else - I am scared to do something because I don’t know anything about it!

It seems to me to have seeped into all walks of life now, even the mundane things. Think about it -Why do we have more Starbucks and Wallmarts than small family owned stores now? People say it’s because we like the consistency of the stuff we can buy there - a Starbucks cup of coffee tastes exactly the same in NYC as it does in Scotland and in China.

I’m starting to think it is more because we are scared of the inconsistency of the product at an independent store. I’ve had some crap cups of coffee in my life (especially in Scotland!) so in my mind Starbuck’s becomes the safe bet.

Doesn’t this take the fun out of living. Yes, it is likely that sometimes you will get a bad cup of coffee every now and then but you’ll also get some really good ones, better even than Starbucks!

There is a line in a Gil Scott Heron song that comes to mind a lot when I find myself in Ikea/Wallmart/Starbucks:

“Plastic people with plastic minds are on their way to plastic homes”.

Don’t let that happen to you….

Jackie Leven

Sitting at home after 10 days in Scotland visiting my family and drinking stupid amounts of alcohol. The new Jackie Leven CD “Elegy for Johnny Cash” is playing and I’ve got my cup of tea (freshly imported, along with the CD, by yours truly from Caledonia).

Jackie Leven blows my mind. His music washes over you and makes you want to get out and experience life to the fullest. He can literally sing the shit out of anything, oh and he can be a very funny guy, you can read his column online here.

He also has had an amazing, and sometimes tragic life, I guess this is what gives him his ability to make the kettle boiling sound like soul music. This is an extract from a bio I found online at this PR site.

Born in 1950 into a Romany (Roma) family, Jackie Leven spent his childhood and teenage years clearly marked out as an outsider in the clannish, insular world that was Fife, Scotland at that time. Although Scottish himself, neither of his parents were from the area - his father was an Irish Cockney, his mother was from a large Northumberland (Geordie) family, and adapting to existing cultural norms was a hard, if not formidable task for such incomers.

This seems to have formed the start of an independence of mind in the young Leven, hopelessly wayward at school (although outstanding at English and essay writing), with few friends, and those mostly considered 'oddball'. His attendance at school was woeful, but those truanting times spent alone in glens and hills and by rivers still form the basis of his songs' imagery to this day.

Things started to change in his early teens. His mother, unusually for the time and the place, was a lover of American black blues music, and although Jackie was used to coming in the door from school to the strains of 'I got the blues in the bottle, but the stopcork in my hand' by Lightnin' Hopkins, it was a source of fascination to school friends whose own homes resonated to the sound of Wooden Heart by Elvis Presley.

Soon he was playing in local bands - the first real electric scene at this time in this part of the world, but also playing his own blues songs in local folk clubs, such as the Elbow Room in Kirkcaldy, where he was encouraged by stalwarts of the scene like Archie Fisher and Hamish Imlach, and passing singers like Doris Henderson, with whom he played a few shows as guitarist.

However, such activity also brought him to the attention of local gangs, one in particular starting a baseless vendetta against him, and he was duly obliged to leave Fife, and indeed Scotland.

This precipitated years of rootless wandering, sleeping rough, living hand to mouth, including a four month stint living in corners of the South Bank Centre, London, where he busked for a living. This was during the late sixties when there was much less of the (relatively) ready acceptance of street musicians that now exists in the capital. He also lived variously in County Kerry, Ireland, Berlin and Madrid, where he had a record released, “Control” (1971) By John St Field (his stage name of the time) - now considered to be a psychedelic underground classic. He started to live in squatted accommodation in different locations in the UK where he began to encounter people with real and sometimes serious mental illness and psychic disorder. He often quotes the American poet Theodore Roethke's great line - 'for what is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?'.

These experiences began to inform his songwriting, and this can be clearly seen in the often disturbing imagery in the songs which make up the first two albums by his daunting rock band Doll By Doll, whose other members - Joe Shaw, David MacIntosh and Robin Spreafico he met in this environment.

Doll By Doll (1978 - 1982), a controversial live act at odds with the cartoon violence of punk, made five critically acclaimed (or loathed) albums (one unreleased, all not available on WEA) before accepting they just weren't meant for those times, and regretfully going their separate ways.

After a late night recording session for a solo album due for release by Charisma/Virgin (1983) Jackie was the subject of an unprovoked street attack during which he, along with other injuries, was nearly murdered by strangulation. Unable to speak or sing, he lost his record deal, friends and way, entering his own period of psychic disorder, taking heroin (the classic drug of despair) and living in isolation for nearly a year.

He re-joined the world in 1985 after a successful course of traditional Chinese five-element acupuncture and psychic healing, and co-founded The CORE trust - 'an holistic approach to addiction'. To this day the Trust operates a centre in central London, working with people with all forms of addiction. Jackie has been their manager, chair of trustees, and is presently the patron, having at one time enjoyed a good working relationship with the late Princess Of Wales, who took a strong interest in the Trust. During one encounter with HRH, she said to him "I understand you used to be a singer".

"I AM a singer" was his bristling reply.

"Well, sing something now" she suggested.

That something was the traditional Scottish air 'The Bonnie Earl Of Moray' which had formed the basis of his celebrated Doll By Doll song 'Main Travelled Roads'.

Shortly after this Jackie went to live in Oban on the west coast of Scotland. He spent the nights in bars with fishermen and forester friends, and the days writing the songs that became the basis of his return to music with the acclaimed Cooking Vinyl release “The Mystery Of Love Is Greater Than The Mystery Of Death”.

A string of excellent Cooking Vinyl albums have followed, and the latest, “Elegy For Johnny Cash” takes a unique and candid look at last journeys, and the people who make them.