forecast remains unsubstantiated

Farther calibrating The Fall's stammering decline into the jaws of August. The last gasp of summer, before it has properly commenced.


Paper Cut by Hans Christian Andersen. Uncovered here.


▼ THE FALL: WEATHER REPORT 2 from "Your Future Our Clutter" CD + LP (Domino Records) 2010 (UK)

the mouse barks, the caravan passes

Or. Tracking the ongoing ballad of a part time rating agency assistant.



"Köpek ürür, kervan yürür." In Turkish.

"ha kla-vim novchim, v'ha-shayarah o-veret." In Hebrew.

"Wot ? Wot ? Wot ?" Nathan NØ.



Have mouse, will travel.

"But what has been entrusted to one's care one does not laugh at; to do so would be a breach of duty; the utmost spite that the most spiteful amongst us can vent on Josephine is when they sometimes say: 'When we see Josephine it is no laughing matter."

- Kafka, "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk", published 1924.



Let me begin by explaining, yet again, my protracted absence from the bleachers. This time around, it has less to do with those recently accumulated factors in stress - a birth; moving home; a death in the family - than a spurious addiction. My voluntary exposure to WOT in the course of the past two weeks has brought me out in rash. A belt of welts. From collar to cuff.

The Web of Trust did not impose itself. I actively sought it out.

A hive activity governed by Bayesian inference; or rejection of hypothesis based on the posterior probability.

Confused ? Well. I am too.

The Web of Trust is nothing remotely approaching a secret order. On the contrary, WOT currently has two million registered users as of January, 2011, and an online participating community estimated in the region of 17, 000, 000.

That adds up to a lot of contributing fingers.

A tad more than those swords employed by the Knights Templar.

"Browsing the Web with the Web of Trust extension gives a completely different sense of security. Instead of browsing alone, you have millions of people helping point out what sites are trustworthy, are safe for your children, and respect your privacy. No matter how you use the Web, Web of Trust is an essential tool to browse safely in today's sometimes uncertain environment."

Indeed.

That is the central premise.

The reality underpinning the notion of trust is a good deal more impenetrable. Perception is just that, if one goes no farther than blind faith in those coloured ratings returned in one's browser. Or the default splash warning.

From WOT Wiki:

"Users are rewarded activity points for rating websites and writing comments. All users have an activity score, which is visible on the add-on's rating window and the profile page for registered users."

For every rookie there is a platinum plated wannabe. The popular misconception is that level 'ranking' somehow equates with rating reliability. This is not the case.

"The rating reliability is a computed estimate based upon demonstrated talent and ability, aka: merit."

Deduce from this that a rater with a higher reliability carries more weight in his or her ratings, that the resulting evaluation is that much harder for any casual rater to overturn. WOT is not so much democratic, as a firm proponent of meritocracy. This is valid, when one considers that an especially active participant might not necessarily be driven by egalitarian motives; but, on the contrary, might be galvanised by personal agenda.

Or grudge.

In fact, it has been the case - in my short spell as active participant on WOT forums - that I have witnessed factions fighting up and down the flanks when opinion has been polarized. And rational debate disintegrates into something far more partisan.

A rain of neckties all along the lonesome trail.

This was never more so than in one particular instance where the submitting party to a graphic design site was publicly dissected on the grounds of the domain proprietor's alleged association with Scientology. This, in spite of there being no trace of evidence that said site espoused values demonstrably sympathetic to L. Ron Hubbard's 'spiritual' auditing.

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party ?"

No flying saucers. But enough light sabre rattling to implicate Tony Manero in a rhumba with Darth Maul.

In these trying circumstances, the forums run red and green in turn where the high ground is pursued.

Unsecured. Fought to a bloody stalemate.

And yet. Through it all runs a thread of prevailing sanity, even though rating reliability remains undisclosed. Guessed at. Whispered.

"...reliability estimates aren't public to make gaming the system more difficult and to encourage everyone to rate honestly. Also, even though the estimates are automated and perfectly objective, I'm sure some users would take them personally and publishing them would create all kinds of unwanted friction in the community. I don't think anyone wants that."
- Sami 18 January, 2010

Often, the process employed to arrive at an equitable rating is painstaking. And quite transparent to anybody following a submitted topic. It involves more than just a rudimentary grasp of any single technical process: virus checking; the routine examination of PTR records to resolve IP addresses into hostnames; the exposure of malicious redirects.

The whole nine yards.

A closer inspection of any one unravelling thread more often as not reveals something approaching forensic science. All of this conducted by volunteers.

In the space of two short weeks, and some 200 posts - typically 'comments' in blogging parlance - I have observed quite severe threats exposed and rated accordingly. Activities ranging from blatant Phising scams to deeply unethical corporate practices. And this is one area where WOT collectively excels.

The reasons for my initially coming into contact with the WOT community are fairly pedestrian and well enough documented in a previous post. The impact of a negative rating cannot be underestimated. Equally, not nearly enough consideration is given to the various motivations which govern a rating. The community, in common with any community, is populated by disparate individuals harbouring equally disparate ideals.

Not everyone can be trusted.

Still. One of the fundamentals I have taken from this is how readily privacy is overlooked. Less, protected.

Many bloggers originating on blogspot.com, or a wordpress equivalent, do so because the platform eliminates the necessity to understand CSS and HTML; to design - or commission the design of - a website from the ground up.

As a result, many bloggers appropriate code from third party sources with no acute sense of how that code impacts on privacy. I am no less typical in this regard.

The most innoccuous byproduct of this behaviour is the inadvertent setting of cookies.

Given that many bloggers employ some form of traffic monitoring as a means of assessing their site's popularity - Google Analytics, Statcounter, etc - setting cookies is a prerequisite. The information gathered includes IP addresses, browser details, timestamps and referring pages. This is the primary function of traffic analysis.

Since the majority of bloggers operate non commercial sites, and are therefore not legally obliged to carry a Privacy Policy, the temptation is to absolve oneself of all responsibility to inform as to how that information is handled.

Consider this.

In 2010, Quantcast settled out of court to the tune of $2.4 Million after UC Berkeley published findings disclosing that it knowingly employed 'zombie' cookies in to gather Personally Identifiable Information in a"pattern of covert online surveillance".

Quantcast advertises itself thusly:

"... a new breed of measurement service helping buyers and sellers quantify the characteristics of digital audiences against which they can activate addressable advertising solutions."

A commercially optimised form of traffic analysis, in other words.

Wikipedia asserts that:

"...the Quantcast code causes the user's browser to access Quantcast's servers, at which time they can log the user's IP address and information Quantcast places in cookies that are stored in the user's browser. The cookies significantly aid in making inferences. Quantcast also provides affinities revealing other popular sites that the average viewer browses. This is possible by tracking "referrer" information that is normally included as part of every HTTP request made by the user's browser."

The terminology - 'zombie' cookies - is deliberately pitched for maximum effect. The reality is that flash cookies - Local Shared Objects, as utilized through all versions of Adobe Flash Player - share the characteristic to surreptitiously 'respawn' after user deletion. In short, the facility to be deployed as Spyware.

I have come across several blog sites which utilize Quantcast to monitor traffic. Feedjit, likewise, employs an LSO.

To date, MTV, ESPN, MySpace, Hulu, ABC, NBC and Scribd have all appeared before a federal court in the US on Quantcast related charges. Ustream, SodaHead, Warner Bros. have faced similar charges, in utilizing a Clearspring Technologies widget to clandestinely monitor children's online activities.

And. Lest we forget, let's hear it too for good old uncle Walt.

It's heartening to know one's kids are in safe hands.

Postscript:

My brief time as a participating member on these forums should in no way be regarded as an attempt to infiltrate, or deliver the skinny. We are not riding with Angels here - not even the Finnish Chapter - and while I have witnessed prescriptions for Snake Oil change hands along the trail, I am nobody's Doctor. 

Besides. I don't have the stamina to stay upright in the saddle for the long haul. 

My loitering on the forums, I suspect, has been more tolerated than embraced. That is the way of it with these clubs. The one percenters. If one wants to don the patch, one has to put in the miles. Prepare to get a little bloodied. I have met some interesting characters along the way, a handful of especially righteous members. I started out kicking against the pricks. I end it now without grudge. 

A little respect is overdue. Retrospectively. I have intentionally picked out those last few words in bold; for those with tired eyes.

know your conjurer

To those of you who looked no farther than the sacrificial goat, you left the feast empty bellied; to those of you who asked no more from pablo's danseurs than a festive showing, you missed a merry treat.

Squatters on the Bleachers - and there are a few - will be aware by now of my fixation on the astral unravellings of one Daevid Allen; the dark archipelago where hippie collided with punk in those eruptions from Planet Gong. The liaison was fittingly brief. It culminated with a startled Dingbat Alien fleeing passing searchlights - luminous burning spearings - to seek refuge in the bush; it ended with Mark Perry's ATV hijacking a free bus in the Here and Now.

In much the same anarchic spirit, Dave Sez of Know Your Conjurer - aided and abetted by pinkpressthreat - wassailed the house to alert me to a Megapost on some very hard to unearth gems from the band first formed in Ladbroke Grove in 1974. Never once in print jams and unreconstituted vinyl rips. Soundboard Recordings. What began as one man's labour of love seems to have escalated into something more deeply collaborative.

From who ? Where ?

Know Your Conjurer. From Pablo to Bosch. * * e d o * *.

This unforseen doffing of the - conical - cap took far longer to orchestrate than anticipated. A two fingered jab at the keys, and my dashing off to shake a knitted monkey over the crib. Lest I forget, I would like to say a brief hello to baby Cal, too, who entered the world to share his birthday with Stacia of Hawkwind just three short evenings ago. Glad tidings.

Three weeks on the heels of my own impossibly small son; Milo, the Sagittarian. Registered, at last, today.

Know your conjurer.

pablo dillinger, on registering a birth

A knife. A fork.

And the forceps not so small,
nothing remotely tidy,
or encircling in pentameter.

Two feet and a long syllable;
drawn out, redly yawning.

The cerci of an earwig.

This is not what immediately
occurred to me, or even after
the fact. The blood still
drying on my hams. The wailing.

And the young doctor's face:
contorted with the exertion
required to change a tire.
A 4x4. Something heavy hurtling.

I did not think to thank her until
much later, back in the corridor
between soda machine and bins.
Fearing the worst and hindsight.

A knife. A fork.

Not to spell apple, but application.
Raw, dispassionate intervening force.

I do not remember if I did - thank
her - at this late stage. Not formally.

A smile. A nod. That is properly
the size of it; wan, if not quite
hostile. The fleeting discomfit of a
husband discharged. Discarding
gown and overshoes in sanitary
fashion. Dishevelled. Irritable.

And yet. I threw my arms around
the midwife while they weighed
my son, thankfully she did not
think to escape. Imagine the
effrontery. The potential for sheer
awkwardness; "you crazy fool !"
my wife chiding, from the stirrups.

A knife. A fork.

And the forceps not so small,
but my son a rosy bundle,
scalded and petulant; mewling.



illustration from Picasso's "pichet tête"
(1953); partial glaze on white ceramic.

neville brand ate all the flies | the five gates to hell

"I'm a Buddhist. In case of an emergency call a Lama.”
- Col. Vincent Kane


The fly had been following the end of my brush for close to two days, flitting from room to room like a ball of lint on rotor blades.

I do not care for flies. Houseflies; blowflies; bluebottles. Calliphoridae. Like something decaying off the coast.

Where I might nudge a spider gently on its way - to scuttle under the bed, or abseil behind a door - I have little patience for the fly. The karmic goodwill runs thin. The stingiest dribble of undercoat.

So. After experimenting overnight with a dose of Quick Dry Satin - the ninth configuration of synthetic finishes - I observed enough shredding around the jambs to prompt me to opt instead for an oil-based eggshell. The drying time is a killer, 18 to 24 hours over an offending battleship grey, and all of it an unsightly stippled gloss.

The antichrist of painting and decorating.

I was on the second coat, having walked on down the hall, to where the ghost of a toy tugboat floated face down in the bathtub, when the insect which had been tailing me hovered up and alighted right of frame. I did not miss a beat. Anchored in the greasy slick, the brush caught up with it easily. Swept straight over it. Airbrushed out with a bubblegum pop; a napalm kiss on celulloid.

And what became of Neville Brand ? Lee Marvin’s thuggier twin.

I would not mention the incident with the fly if it did not bother me. Just a little.

Slow witted and lazily sculpted, Brand bristled with the neanderthal menace of the faintly retarded or simply psychotic. A slack jawed insouciance melting into bulging eye and pit bull leer on the turn of a sixpence. Or the onset of a stroke.

Neville Brand wore sharp suits and Brylcreemed hair. His face hewn blunt. Liver lipped. Itching to be cut by a cornerman with trembling hands between the 6th and 7th round.

In truth, I planted both feet heavy in the schoolyard bully’s shoes when I flattened that fly. Smeared on the door with the cigarette fastened between my teeth. I was irritable. Tired. Bitten by self-pity.

In bad need of a slave.

But wait. Killer Kane. Boyd, not Arthur. And several times removed from Stacy’s Colonel.

Neville Brand was no simple bad boy bum. Weighing in for a preliminary bout in Griswold, Iowa, and cremated in Sacramento, his nine times decorated army grunt was D.O.A. from the first. Painted into a corner, I contest, as the result of Dutch and Celtic ancestry. The white heat of Illinois steel.

Typecast by villainous hacks - the revolving door of misplaced mediocrity - the former shoe salesman turned Warner Bros. stooge traded bleeding out by the Weser River for an afterlife of two bit parts.

Sometimes shiny as a quarter in the gutter. Often overlooked.

“I’m a loser! I’m a loser!” he cried, but the truth was far from that.

Scant regard is given the 30,000 books reportedly amassed between petulant acts of cruelty; teased out of acting classes paid for through the G.I. Bill. The raging thirst to distance himself from understudy. Shadow.

“Let me out! Let me out!” he sang.

And all the while the whiskey and remorse. The inability to rearrange at sub molecular level: to set the atoms dancing; to walk - as Captain Fairbanks yearned to - between and through the impenetrable. Walls and floors.

Buttresses.

I have no idea if Neville Brand ever flirted with Buddhism. Perhaps. I suspect not. Myself, I have only used the term emphatically when laid up in a hospital bed. Just to see the charge nurse stiffen.

The closer I peer into cracks and examine those hairline fissures tumbling off into chasms, the weaker my resolve becomes. An endless cycle of filling and painting. Sanding. Immersing bristle and forearm in litre upon litre of turpentine substitute.

It was emphysema which did for him in the end. And the library all up in flames.

Still. The fly is my concern alone. All this chatter of Neville Brand and Hollywood is just so much passing the buck.

Well. It could be worse. Don't ever get me started on the time I aimed a .22 at a crow on the lamb and missed.

calling cllct

Why. Those unholy Oreaganomics get better and unrulier by the minute.

Straight from the lips of lapsed ordainment:

"We had to mortgage our soul to Satan to get it done & I know you'll like it  
(That's a promise right from the "source")."

What's not to like ? 

Late last week with the rain coming down heavy - the pavements along the Crow Road laced with black puddles - I hunched out through the spray of taxi cabs for rent in search of Jim Beam or an iced Jack watered down with Pepsi. My head was pounding.

Our house felt small. In need of a lick of paint. And the varnish was burning in my nostrils.

I fell through the saloon doors and bruised the rail along the bar. The ceiling was high. Pocked with little glass lanterns glowing like whiteheads on the brow of a passed out whore (Hubert might have observed). A trio of jazzmen were two fingers in to the last number of their set. The vocalist sat it out. A glass of stout on the table in front of her and her knees together, tidily.

An empty house. And the keyboard player refusing to let it needle him too much. The drummer laying on some syncopated flourishes with delicious irony.

I finished my first just as they wound it down for the eight o' clock wave of serious spenders. The lights did not go up or down any. A smattering of dry applause. Drowned by the splash of mixer straight into a tumbler two dripping raincoats along.

And that was their cue.

Milton Ager and Jack Yellen. Chasing rainbows. "Happy Days are Here Again".

It was a sterling snook of tumultous wonder, let me tell you. All that was missing was a pint size plastic uke.

If I had a kazoo I'd have whipped it out my pocket. As it was, I turned and clapped my hands together and caught the heel of one shoe on the trailing hem of my pants.

I would like to believe Oreaganomics might have enjoyed a warmer reception. An Acapulco ovation in the last resort. They are deserving of such. "Hand Turkey", as they promise, is the unreconstituted stuff of leg-end. A refusal to be stymied; blindsided; bluffed.

God bless them.


▼ OREAGANOMICS: GHOST TOWN GENERATION from the forthcoming "Hand Turkey" LP / CD (CLLCT) 2010 (US)

FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD ON AN EMPTY HOUSE RUSE

another council tenancy < slight return >

So. Here we are, then. Surrounded by a jumble of unopened boxes still, the lingering itch from a hastily amputated limb.

We packed the parachute before we leapt and slammed into the ground running.

The pregnant one rode out ahead of the marital bed, while I scuttled back and forth between floors and jettisoned all that seemed feasible. We reunited amidst a coil of soldering wire and commenced our tenancy before the school bells sprang a chime.

It took three weeks for an engineer to arrive and connect our phone. Another seven days before a replacement in overalls could be dispatched to correct the overlooked fault.

The line had shredded in its yellowed plastic jacket some time in the previous forty years. Between telegraph pole and bedroom window. And while the signal was intermittent, my ire at placing calls cloaked in crackle and drag was anything but. In these days of fibre optic cable - telecoms cabinets on every street corner - I had assumed those slowly rotting timbers were surely decorative. The second engineer resembled a hungover Glen Campbell in hard hat karaoke as I watched him emerge from the foliage by way of a steel ladder.

One clear October day before the ritual carving of the pumpkin.

Well. The DSL lamp is awake and constant now. Touch wood. The connection is made. It is altogether quieter out west here on the river. Too quiet, perhaps. Though the soundproofing is dreadful, it is as if our neighbours have adapted to this intrusion on their privacy by bedding down shortly after 10PM. If one strains one's ear - even marginally - one can follow a whispered conversation almost word for word. The floorboards squeak above our heads; below our feet.

I find myself pining at times for the dysfunctional pattern of muddling by on the 22nd floor. Insulated by concrete. The asbestos which erupted in a mushroom cloud when they brought our sibling crashing to its knees.

We snuck back on the subway to watch it coming down. They evacuated our old building, of course, but I spoke to a neighbour who barricaded himself in bed and rolled one fat one after another. Just to brace himself against the bang.

The klaxon sounded as we rode the escalator up to ground zero.

We were a street away when the detonators blew, three in quick succession. Shakin' Street. The MC5. The dust was all enveloping. It followed us as we crossed back over the river and clung to ligaments along the bridge and burrowed down into our throats.

Our noses were furred. The children's hair prematurely grey.

Overnight, I developed a hacking bronchial cough; aggravated by my digging into the floorboards at our new address with a ridiculous detail sander fit for windowsills and skirting boards at best. And the cigarettes. Always the cigarettes. Taxed to the butt from recession through depression.

The staple diet of the institutionalized and soon to be interred.

I will get used to the sudden quiet, I expect. Already I am lulled by it on early mornings when the rain falls like rustling paper where once it stuck like an angry slap. A wet towel or a razor strop.

The rest is likely errant nostalgia. A character defect.

Vic Godard: vocals;

MarkBraby (previously Sidi Bou Said): bass, acoustic guitar;

KevinYounger (Armitage Shanks): guitar, piano; organ;

GaryAinge (Felt/Gokart Mozart): drums, percussion.

Special Guest: Paul Cook on drums and percussion;

Guest Backing Vocalist: Simon Rivers.

Recordedby Jon Clayton at One Cat Studios South London,

Mastered by Dallas Masters.

Mixed and Produced by Jon Clayton and Vic Godard.

The ‘We Come as Aliens’ Tour kicks off with a couple of dates in Catalonia on 8th October,

The John Peel Festival Koln on 23rd, then Munster, Berlin, Hamburg,and Hanover 4-7 November.
Candy Apple red glass globe shade available from SeaGullLighting for $51.99,
Subway Sect's "We Come As Aliens" for considerably less.

▼ SUBWAY SECT: OUT OF OUR ZONE from "We Come As Aliens" CD / Ltd Edition Vinyl (Overground Records / GNU) 2010 (UK)

a sanitary riot

On threading our rented trolley
between the aisles of a supermarket,

we acquired a bottle of bath oil.

As one does.

"Revive & Restore", the label advises.
Very calming. Very restive.
When one is prone, susceptible.

It prompts the smoke detector to howl
everytime we pour a bath.
It triggers a bout of anxious scrabbling.

The effect is less than therapeutic.

Sandalwood, surely, is quite innocuous,
a dash or two of an essential tear.

The pepper spray is an alarming twist.

22 unM4SKed

"the hollows" by simon woolham. biro on paper, 2008.

Honest to Christ, that drill. 

A machine gun rattling in its pillbox. Stalling ocasionally, the bit overheated, encased in concrete. Starting up again in earnest before one can catch one's breath.

At 3 AM, I rolled off the futon to close the windows. Hobbled into the kitchen to slam both catches when it occurred to me the noise had merely jumped channels in a stereophonic assault.

The demolition is ongoing. Every morning, too, entire new sections of the M74 have been bolted into place. 

The shoemaker's elves spit rivets all through the night.

And speaking of drills, it would appear I have missed a dental appointment. I am forced to grovel to avoid a fixed penalty. 

As if losing one's teeth is not punishment enough.

M4SK 22 - a collision of postcodes - is an experimental project fusing input from artists Simon Woolham and David Moss. They met in Manchester in the mid 90s, but did not begin making music together until January, this year.

"We make music and videos as products which we work on furiously, then we put them out online and move on to the next idea."

There is no obvious manifesto. Working remotely on passages traded via the internet, each bends the material as the moment dictates; throwing out a curve and letting it float. Simon is a renowned visual artist, David makes music and film. Their product is tested on M4SK 22.

"The Spindle of the Dowie Dens" began as a guitar part recorded by Woolham, with additional strings - piano and more guitar - overdubbed by Moss and relayed back. Moss was keen to to evoke a sense of traditional Scots and Irish melody familiar to him from childhood, and Woolham responded with a spoken word narrative shaped by recurring themes in his drawings and installations.

Looting archived public domain film footage, Moss then developed a short animated visual sequence incorporating stock elements of George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Musically, the end product is faintly claustrophobic. Full of echoes. Reeds. Inkeeping with the historic ballad which in part informs it, a rhyme of the Yarrow Water running through the Scottish borders. Collected in 18 variations in Francis James Child's "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads", first published in ten volumes between 1892-8.

"The Spindle of the Dowie Dens" drags one out of the past by the scruff of a cigarette burned anorak.

Into the nettles growing through the inner tubes of bicycle tyres a child might paint as snakes. Discarded bottles of Buckfast Tonic.

Of course, nothing is linear. Or quite so transparent.

M4SK 22 aim eventually to commit to a series of live performance. Until then, by far the best way to familiarize yourself with their sometimes challenging product is to visit the archive direct.

▼ M4SK 22: THE SPINDLE FROM THE DOWIE DENS from "M4SK 22: The Screen We Face is the Primitive Mask of a Global Society " MP3 / Multimedia (M4SK 22) 2010 (UK)

a cruel and incontinent punishment

If I did not know it for the broken crock of shit it almost certainly is, I might hazard that my game is cursed.
 
For some time now, my son has been fond of golf. 

What began simply enough as idle simulation on a games console quickly gravitated to genuine curiosity on the green. Junior clubs were procured and for several months now he has been honing his skills on municipal courses.
 
Now. Golf is all very well - even old stooges have a weakness for it, I realize - and while its modern form may have originated here in Scotland, I for one have never truly graduated beyond a passing fancy for park life pitch and putt.
 
Shepherds knocking stones down rabbit holes on the site of the old course at Saint Andrews ? Sounds suspiciously like fallacy through the wrong end of the looking glass.
 
Anyway. Having previously demonstrated no fear on both the front nine and a driving range, last Sunday I ferried my son by bus to break his 18 hole cherry.
 
Since kids get in for free I could hardly argue. And since adults similarly enjoy a waiving of fees, providing they are merely there to escort a minor round said sprawl of urban wilderness, I settled on merely caddying. Besides, years of bad posture have taken their toll.
 
My back is not up to swinging a shortened stick.
 
As a family, I feel I must add, we also possess a forty year old set picked up in a thrift store, but these are "Ladies Clubs" - each one has this failing branded into the iron like a caution, even the woods - and while I concede there is no real justification for me to turn up my nose, one has to draw a line in the sand somewhere.
 
I would sooner desist from doing so with a ladies' wedge.
 
Well. The boy done good. He hit some more than decent balls. He did not tire, or peak too soon, he did not whinge. Nor did I cajole.
 
So. A good neighbour of ours caught us slouching home, weary but jubilant, and promptly made a gift of a set of full-size clubs. It was an offer I could not refuse, or accept on loan, he knocked on my door and insisted I take them.
 
For all my reservations, I was delighted. If nothing else, I could do with the excuse to get out there and burn off the bloat, as much as the shriveler's block.
 
He is a good egg, this neighbour.
 
Almost but not quite a novice then, I struck out alone to get in some practice.
 
On the first tee, I sliced my drive into the rough. I recovered with a shot straight into the bunker guarding the green. There ensued several woeful attempts to clear the ball. More buckloads of sand than Dylan on the beach. When I did at last make good contact, the ball sailed respectably aloft and onto the front of the green. My putting was adequate.
 
Close to exceeding my stroke limit, I did not bother writing up the scorecard.
 
The next two or three holes went by void of drama. And no spectators to witness me make amends.
 
On the sixth, a steep incline on a fairly short par three, the wind picked up. Once again I was fighting from the rough. I made the shot. My bag toppled over on the fairway behind me, spilling clubs like Pick Up Sticks.
 
I righted it and immediately saw that the vintage putter - a Fred Letters' Silver Swan, no less - had sheared clean through at the foot of the shaft. I have no idea why this might have occurred, unless there were some inherent weakness to it when it was cast. Still. It had clearly lasted decades without incident.
 
I soldiered on.
 
Somewhere between the seventh and the ninth I lost the vinyl cover to the No. 10 Driver. I retraced my steps half-heartedly but there was no sign of it in all that sea of green. I was glad my neighbour seemed entirely plausible in his largesse. I had no stomach to dwell on, less report, this second loss.
 
With every subsequent drive, my game deteriorated rapidly.
 
I made it to the 12th playing the same ball that I began with. At least there was that. Some teenagers appeared over the brow of a hill. Making off with the flag. Whooping drunkly like a tribe of native americans sold down the river for beads.
 
The green was pocked with litter and plastic bottles. I still made the putt in two.
 
There I stood on the 13th. "The Wave". A small pond choked with weeds. Farther on, an undulating sculpted feature right across the fairway.
 
I pressed in the tee and balanced the dimpled ball on it.
 
My arms and shoulders were aching now, my face and neck awash with sweat. On the 17th, to my left, a father and his two young sons were busy making inroads with a couple of well judged pitches. A pin-seeking chip. The youngest son cavorted cheerfully on the lip of the green while his dad remonstrated without much feeling.
 
I lit a cigarette and smoked it down to the butt before settling into the drive. Two afternoons previousy, my own boy had struggled with this one. It was a psychological thing. He fluffed two or three attempts before I stepped up to the plate and smacked it high up in the air, a good ten yards or so beyond the undulating horizon.
 
It felt good. Showing him how to rein in that fluttering dread.
 
I drew back on the stick and let fly with it. Ping! It smacked down in the water with an almighty splash. The six-year-old on the 17th stopped cavorting and silently watched me fish a second ball out of my trouser pocket. No matter. I was justifiably piqued, seeing as I had made it this far with the ball I started out with, but it was a minor gripe. Sploosh! The second ball fell dead in the water in the exact same spot. This time I could feel the second kid watching me. His father too.
 
I fidgeted my shoulders and lined up a third ball. Not counting that first ball, I had another five in the zippered pocket of my golfing trolley. What the fuck. I could make it on home with enough balls to spare.
 
Plop! went the third. The fourth. Now I was seriously pissed and sweating worse than before.
 
The father and his sons drifted away to tee off on the 18th - "Past Caring" - a little too hesitantly for my liking. I dug out the fifth ball and noticed there was no sixth. Between that distant first fairway and this one, I must have lost one somewhere in the deep grass. I did not remember, but I knew I set out with six.
 
That Sunday drive could not have been a fluke. 

I wandered down to the edge of the pond and spotted a fat white globe caught in the reeds. I plucked it out of the water and dried it off on the sleeve of my shirt. Well, all right. Now I had a backup.
 
I squinted at the three of them disappearing over the hill towards the clubhouse and teed up the fifth. An affluent looking bastard in khaki had by now taken their place on the 17th green. I hadn't seen him coming.
 
The fifth and sixth balls went the same way as the rest. I was out of balls. Humiliated. Emasculated.

I was relieved, then, my son was not beside me to share in any of it.

I stashed the clubs away and heaved the bag up on my back. It felt heavy as lead. Heavier than an unsorted sack full of mail. I have worked for the Post Office, too, you know. I have tossed crates around for the odd paycheck between meals; here and there, this way or that, but never once freshly slaughtered slabs of meat.
 
Well. I lumbered off that golf course under my cross and carted those clubs the extra half mile or so to catch a bus.
 
On the way through the gates I stooped to pick up a single ball lost between the vege and chain link fence. I could not leave there empty-handed.
 
More circumspect men than me might have gone to pieces. As it was, I arrived home to a conveniently empty house and hooked up the hog to get it all down. For posterity. Austerity. An absence of silverware, winning smirks.
 
There is no home run, I find, in the long run home.

a fluttering of owls

Some years ago, too many years ago, I was arguing with my then partner over breakfast. I no longer remember exactly what prompted it or where it went from there. I had arrived somehow in my thirties - a good way past the stain of the big "3-0" - without hitting the panic button, and I couldn't summon the energy to do much more than grunt.

We were sat at the table - me in my boxer shorts, she in my boxer shorts too - and the grey light shone like a beacon through our tenement window. The table was big and round, dressed with some kind of cloth to protect the faux teak, and for all our squabbling the setting was fairly civilized.

"Listen," she might have said, "you are turning into some kind of old fart."

"Well," I retorted, "You can gripe all you want. If I don't wash the dishes and occasionally drag the hoover around we would be up to our knees in shit."

Perhaps she had returned back from a night out with her friends to find me darning a hole in my jacket pocket. That might have torn it. That, or the fact I was content to do my drinking at home.

The last gasp of punk rock. Mending holes. Needlepoint.

The words were washing over me when I noticed a lump on my thigh. I prodded the raised flesh, immediately fearing the worst, moving back in my seat to shed a little light on it.

"Sure," I said. "Uh-huh. Whatever you say, dear."

Actually. Bar the music burbling from the stereo, we more or less fell back into the not quite truce of silence. Each with our separate ashtray, a carcinogenic his and hers.

Well. I poked at my leg until I was all but certain it was merely a boil. I dug my fingers under it and bore down until I felt something give.

It did not so much erupt as ignite like an indoor firework. As fascinating to behold as these inocuous little brown pills which, when lit, keep going until they leap up out the box and hang like ripe intestines. As big in diameter as a plug of toothpaste.

"Dear Christ!" I exclaimed. "Just look at that thing!"

My partner got up and left the table with a dignified little snort of contempt. I did not give a fig. I felt only a peculiar sense of liberation. As if the accumulation of a decade or so of bad karma was being exorcised inch by inch. Drained out of me by invisible shamans. Operating at ceiling height, somewhere in the cornicing.

Chemicals, certainly, but more than that. Arrows. Slings. Toxic mutterings from an industrial zone in deep space.

The minute it was done, I jumped up and danced into the bathroom to splash what passed for iodine over the evacuated area. Oh, I was light headed; cleansed. And only the tiniest of indentations. Not even the trace of a scar.

Our cat, Biff - a gentle old tom who could be found most nights under the tables of the free house three doors down - lay grooming himself on the floor as I bathed the wound. Owlish, alert, but quite disinterested.

Of course. By two or three o'clock that same afternoon, I was back to pouring all that bad shit in, I did not hesitate or waver. What started out, quite benignly as some kind of karmic zit, quickly mutated into something more entrenched. 

Subcutaneous. Learning to conceal itself, slyly burrowing deeper.

What did you expect ? A happy ending ?

silkwood, wormwood, taggart | ghetto defendant

My wife sat down to watch the latest instalment of "Taggart" last night, hobbling on to our screen with all the weariness of a geriatric nosing after a curled fish supper. I caught most of it out the corner of one eye. Preoccupied as I was with clipping my toenails.
 
It has never been the same since Mark McManus withered away in hospital. It was never really much to begin with, I suspect, but between McManus and the local topography it sometimes sufficed.
 
Last night's episode was filmed on location in the Gorbals. Right on my doorstep. Shored up with an implausible imported cast.
 
The topic, loosely, was one of urban regeneration.
 
One scene was even filmed in the high rise my wife occupied before we were married; the only vaguely successful attempt at refurbishing a twenty-two storey apartment building in two square miles.
 
"Look at that!" we exclaimed. Stupidly agitated at just seeing the tedious rejunivated on tv.
 
A clinically depressed woman sat frozen in her armchair drinking tea, the view west through her double-glazed picture window noticeably marred by a few indiscreet palm prints. Placed there, no doubt quite diligently, by some halm-fisted old fruit.

Let me tell you. That building is almost immaculate - sensibly maintained - but in the summer its tenants bake in central heating. Unhealthily indulged. Passing out between floors while struggling to escape for cigarettes. A loaf. 

The episode was filmed some time in winter, I believe. The housing association closed down one lift for the better part of two days just to ensure a few rampant egos were not compelled to rub shoulders with the great unwashed.

They could not have similarly enticed a pampered cast into our own freezing building. The windows leaking condensation and howling drafts; the coffin sized elevators stacked with junkies on gangrenous legs.
 
There is not enough shortbread or 12 Year Old Single Malt in Glasgow to bribe a unionised film crew to set foot in such filth.
 
Briefly, the backdrop was one of heroic politicking. A lone ranger riding side-saddle on behalf of a seething inarticulate mass. 

The truth is more a prosaic tale of design and procrastination by committee. The vacillation of the inept or plain corrupt as they waver between chasing awards and profit. The same the world over. That would have made for a genuine crime worth persuing. That might have made for good television.
 
Well. I might be a whingeing ineffectual bastard, I won't deny it; if you have made it this far down the page - and I have my doubts - let me pause and advise you that this post is distressingly long-winded. And I might as well warn you while I'm at it that I'm not about to let anybody off the hook by stapling on some oblique gem of a song.  

Just so you can scroll quickly to the foot of it and dispense with the reading.
 
There. I've said it. This is just another instance of my scraping three shades of shit off the chest. Unbuttoning my shirt and letting it spill. You might as well fuck off now while the going's good.

All right with you ? Good. See you later.
  
In January or February this year, we called in the buildings inspector.
 
"Before you begin," I said, poking a hand out between raised glass and drizzle. "Take a look at this."
 
I ran my fingers lightly along the sill and four or five inches of mulched wood came away without any teasing. A plague of wasps could not have made a more thorough job of it. The buildings inspector sniffed and examined the mould creeping along the perished rubber seal.
 
"No doubt about it," he said. "All the windows are rotten, subject to water penetration. I don't need to see any more to get a handle on it, but I had better do it by the book."
 
I was relieved. I had thought it might have taken more of a fight, but here he was, writing it up without argument.
 
"Listen, " he said. "I'll submit my report and you should hear word back in two to three weeks. They're putting in new windows, finally. They're putting up the cages to make a start on the worst of it."
 
Should might be the most overrated word in the English language.
 
The cages went up, but I could see little activity. Four weeks came and passed. I was about to pick up the telephone when two more men arrived without warning to measure up those bad windows. All the windows are uniformly the same dimensions, but what do I know ? At least things were progressing.
 
A month or so later and the cages came down. And not a new uPVC window in sight. I scurried about peering up at the building from every side but I could not detect any.
 
This would have been approximately the same time the foul smell appeared in the ground floor foyer.
 
The children would travel down in the lifts to set out for school in the morning and gag as they sprinted to the front door. My wife would hurry back with groceries and lock herself in the bathroom to vomit.
 
Twice, I telephoned the Ghetto Housing Authority.
 
"What's it got to do with you ?" a voice enquired the second week around. "Do you actually live there ?"
 
"Of course I live here, " I said. "That is the reason I'm telephoning. Maybe it's a bad mop. It smells like a bad mop. I'm not suggesting nobody is actively cleaning up in here, everyday I see pople pushing around a mop, but the smell is indescribable. Appalling. The same smell follows you into the lifts now too."
 
"It's not a mop, " the voice snapped. "Those mopheads are changed regularly."
 
"So I'm given to understand, " I said. "The woman I spoke to here last week told me the concierges are not permitted to use bleach, these days. Disinfectant. A health and safety ruling. Just what's the procedure with rotating those mops, anyway ? Do the concierges in our block have access to running water ?"
 
I have lived here for more than ten years, but I still have no clear idea how things work. Every second day or so I might see one concierge or another disappearing into a mysterious warren of rooms just off the ground floor lobby. I say hello, but that is as far as it goes. The job they do is far from pleasant. Unrewarding. Like most jobs.
 
The voice on the other end of the line had no more of an idea of shop floor procedure than me.
 
"How the hell should I know ?" the voice screamed in my ear. "I am a housing officer. Not a concierge."
 
"Listen," I said. "I don't give a rat's arse whether you breakfast at city chambers. This is the second time I've raised this same complaint. I expect something to be done about it. I'll bet that if there was a similar stink right outside your office it would disappear pretty damn fast."
 
I was close to losing it entirely. I barely managed to hang on to the phone.
 
"I'll get back to you," the voice rasped. The connection went dead.
 
That rat's arse was just a figure of speech, a little rash maybe, but as it was it proved queerly prophetic. One has to be careful when dealing with the GHA. They can use your own words to stitch you up as efficiently as a death squad operating out of a cubicle somewhere in Latin America.
 
Good for screwing dissenters out of their hovels. Precious little else.
 
The smell, you will have guessed, was later traced to a decaying rodent in a disused room.
 
One night, possibly late last summer when the foyer door was taken off its hinges and left yawning invitingly for close to two weeks, it appears it wandered in off the street and squeezed under the locked interior door. Its mummified remains discovered inside an open trunk only when one concierge grew so disgusted that he resorted to breaking and entering.
 
The irony is not lost on me.
 
Well. The smell gradually faded after the rat was dug out and disposed with. The windows, though. That's another story.
 
It is a well established fact that the roof of our building bristles with all manner of antennae and masts. From one mobile telecommunications industy to the next, the Ghetto Housing Authority milks huge annual profit from what goes over its tenants' heads. There is little doubt in my mind that those profits explain why this one building remains standing while all around is demolition; chaos; splinters and dust.

For years now I have idly wondered whether we all crackle radioactively from the unseen effects of sustained bombardment.
 
Those supplemented rents certainly explain why the GHA might be prompted to protect its investment. Raking it in year after year, spending next to nothing on the upkeep of core stock while projected demolition dates come and go.
 
And so, when they finally went ahead with the scheduled demolition of the building just adjacent to us, and all these people still living here, they had little option but to confront the unpalatable option of spending some of that cash.
 
"Let's give those radioactive little bastards some new windows," the minutes might have read. "Face facts. Too many fuckers are beginning to ask questions."
 
So. Where was Karen Silkwood while all of this subterfuge was going on ? who didn't blow the whistle when those cages came tumbling back down ?
 
Where was our local MP ? MSP ? City councillor ? That one man band prancing about on "Taggart" ?
 
As I mentioned previously when covering our recent flaccid general election, not one politician of any party or stripe appeared on our doorstep to canvas. Dance a little. Feign hard of hearing while cupping an ear. It is hard to pretend that a jutting twenty-three storey apartment does not exist, even should one chose to avert one's gaze.

A blight on the landscape. Inescapable.
 
Well. A little bird whispered to me that those cages came down when it was discovered the frightful network of satelite dish and transmitter had spread right across our roof like so much poison ivy.
 
They just could not get those cages in place where they were most needed.
 
And all the while the distasteful sight of more recently deployed uPVC windows being stripped out of that empty shell less than one hundred yards away. Rooted out with hammer and chisel. Jettisoned prematurely in advance of the plastic explosive.
 
We went down there to speak to a housing officer in person. Some of them coasting into retirement. Others just out of school.
 
"Well," a young woman responded. "We are still waiting for the Building Inspector's report. There's been some delay."
 
She was not at all discourteous. The job had not gotten to her yet.
 
"Jesus," I said. "That is some delay. He filed his report four months ago."
 
"You have to understand," she went on, "a lot of permanent staff have been on holiday. Some of our key people have just this month or so retired. We'll let you know as soon as we get word back. We'll keep you in the picture."
 
"Is there any substance to the allegation that those masts extend so far over the roof that the GHA can not carry out essential repairs ?" I enquired. Feeling more like Jimmy Olsen than Karen Silkwood. Less competent. Decrepit.
 
She pursed her lips.
 
"That's a new one on me. I've certainly not heard anything to that effect. There is, however, a funding shortage, as I'm sure you are aware."
 
And so. Yet more weeks fly past.
 
There has been so much rain here recently that I am reminded the winter will be upon us all too soon. They will evacuate us briefly to detonate the charges some time in September. We will be back inside for tea. The drilling will eventually cease just in time to welcome in the gales. Sheets of glass buckling under sheets of still more rain.
 
Water puddling under the sills. The sudden cold taking us by surprise again.
 
The absence of silence will get to you. The tension of it just makes things worse.

nine weaves of being

through an enneagram darkly by ib. manett as herself.

Manett is all woman.

An "Enneagram 4" currently residing in Brooklyn by way of Guam.

She writes, "the organs sound kinda trippy dippy, I didn't mean for that but I like it. I didn't even write it with the organ riff, but when I got to my friend Mark's studio, he had this beautiful vintage keyboard, so I thought why not ?"

Why not, indeed. I had to look up 'Enneagram 4' to get a handle on the spectrum. A typology variously referred to as the individualist; visionary; or slacker. If you are acquainted with the scribblings of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff you may be familiar with the Fourth Way.

A school I nominally enrolled in once in an esoteric hour, and subsequently flunked. I have no idea which part of the model my own personality infests.

Then or now.

Not so much a five dollar question as a nine point conundrum.

Nevertheless, I like Manett's "Spider" immensely.

Just this side of dark and gently foreboding, Grace Slick on Quaaludes or Hope Sandoval liberated from them, and my spine just beginning to adjust to the chiropractic magick of laying flat for the first time in years.

If all this sounds a little "Blade Runner", let me assure you Manett is not to blame. Whether androids deliberate on electric sheep is of little consequence, save that I slept my first dreamless sleep these last few nights. Revelled in a little straight time.

The brief word Manett slipped me was a good deal more relaxed. Concise. And. Anyone who covers both T. Rex and the Voidoids in the blink of an eye is more than all right in my book.

I am a slave to tangents. Woven intricacies.


▼ MANETT: SPIDER from "Citholic" EP (No Label) 2010 (US)

MANETT@TUMBLR.COM

fetch me a rickshaw | our bed is on fire

arson scare. adpapted from a photograph by grey villet, 1960.

This post is a week behind schedule; the agony prolonged by the arrival of a mail order bed and the dismantling of the old. A brand new futon to be exact.

The sagging fold down sofa which formerly occupied house room grew just too torturous. Full of ominous creaks and organ jarring spills. Like a decrepit family pet dragging its belly across the floor, ultimately euthanasia came a shade too late.

In canine years, it had the stuffing knocked out of it before it could walk.

Cole from Max & the Wild Things emailed me last Sunday that their - equally - long overdue album is at last in the bag. And very fine it is too.

Where some of the songs should be familiar to long-term aficionados and regulars on the bleachers - in various incarnations, not least live from The Basement - the execution here is taut and farther refined. Tracked and mixed at Welcome to 1979. Mastered in Ohio.

More importantly, while the brothers Traynor and Clint 'Max' Wilson step up a gear with Sam Stewart on guitar, as a unit they shed little in the way of disrepair and attitude. The edges remain mercifully ragged; its volatile core undoctored.

100% analogue and 90 US proof.

From the outset I warned of "concrete evidence that Tennessee continues to distil raw proof talent of the calibre of a first rate Jack Daniels".

Well. The vat has merely matured.

I would have been forgiven for dragging out that old sofabed and shooting if full of holes. Instead, I almost broke my back hauling it away to be disposed of humanely.

I ought to have set it on fire and partied. Sitting on an upturned crate, licking the flames. Well. The walls around here tilt too close to boogie, wholesale arson was never on my mind. Still. I would have liked to watch it burn. Crackling with resignation; roaring without a sound.

Recorded & Mixed by Chris Mara @ Welcome To 1979.
Assistant Engineers: Bert Stone & Brandon Jaehne.
Mastered By Tommy Wiggins.

Produced by Mikie Martel, Chris Mara, and Max & the Wild Things.

▼ MAX AND THE WILD THINGS: GOT NO MONEY from "Max And The Wild Things" CD (WT1979) 2010 (US)

GET IT HERE

time added on

The game is two halves of uneven possession,
won and lost from corner to footstool. Coffee table
and kitchen sink. Dishes, ahtrays, spindle legs.

In my mind I am still smoking Navy Cut behind the
goalposts - a late substitution, an opportunist -
adrift somewhere between 1974 and four years on.

Avoiding the pitching cross, passing on the play.

Even now I take up position near the window. The
peddle bin. Coming up on the wing in the last five
minutes, hanging on to the ball for too long, the final
whistle halting the curve mid sentence. An ill timed
delivery inches too late in the back of the net.

The old Malagan possessed impeccable timing. Not
for the faint hearted. From bull neck to sable brush,
it was a signature theme. An admission of thrust;
a genius for the kill. Always closing, always closing.

Never without his audience. From studio to cashier's
transfer. His ability, his finish, was a thing of beauty.

gang of four | content

Gang of Four are back with content over product. A share of profits pledged to Amnesty International.

Arriving on the heels of The Mekons and Human League, four men from Leeds promptly introduced an unsettling essence to Bob Last's Edinburgh based Fast Records in 1978. A seething undercurrent of ennui, an agitated dislocation as informed by Hearpen Records as transitory exposure to year zero.

Gang of Four's tenure with Fast was brief.

Co-opted by industry giant, EMI, their "Damaged Goods" EP was famously re-recorded at The Workhouse studio in the Old Kent Road for the album, "Entertainment!"; released in September, 1979. EMI might have held the monopoly on paper, but with artwork designed and executed by King and Gill, Gang of Four continued to infect every facet of their product with an unshakeable DIY ethos.

A single from the album, "At Home He's a Tourist", almost succeeded in assailing the Top 40. A sheduled appearance on Top of the Pops failed to materialize when the collective refused to play ball and doctor their lyrics for prime time consumption. The BBC responded with a blanket ban.

Relations with EMI soured.

A subsequent issue on Warner Bros. - 1982's "I Love a Man In a Uniform" - failed to ignite when Margaret Thatcher led the country into a war with Argentina over the contested sovreignty of the Falkland Islands. Even as dysentry was being introduced into the water supply over a calculated radius, Gang of Four were once again subject to collateral damage. Fast tourists on the run from Mao.

Gang of Four seemed - if not cursed - plagued by coup d'état.

In 2004 the original four reunited, but at this juncture only Jon King and guitarist, Andy Gill remain commmitted; Thomas McNeice and Mark Heaney occupying the elliptic core once deftly maintained by Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham.

King and Gill are unrepentant:

"We’re emerging blinking into the light after many months locked in Andy’s studio, clutching Gang of Four’s new album: Content...

A share of any profits from pledges will go to Amnesty International http://www.amnesty.org.uk/ who campaign for internationally recognised human rights for all, and Plan International http://plan-international.org/ who promote child rights to end child poverty."

I find that essence rare. Well. Certainly far from overcooked.

If you mysteriously resisted "Entertainment!" thirty years ago, their debut album can still be purchased through Rough Trade Shops. New "Content", and exclusive access to a digital bundle of artifacts, can be ordered or downloaded directly from Pledge Music.


▼ GANG OF FOUR: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MAD from "Content" CD (Pledge Music) 2010 (UK)
OFFICIAL GANG OF FOUR WEBSITE