via youtube.com
This is amazing. The comment feed on youtube is funny also. There’s always some douchebags that just don’t get it.
This morning on the Today programme there was a feature about how Radio 4 was failing to replenish it’s audience and that the audience it has was predominantly over fifty and living in the South East. Hardly a surprise. The gentleman presenting the research pointed out the fact that it is a predominantly metrocentic country and the ruling class elite all live in and around London. When they said that the station needed to attract younger listeners I groaned initially, but what they actually meant (incredibly) were people in the thirty to fifty bracket.
This reminded me about Charlies Brooker’s accurate assessment on How TV Ruined your LIfe of the modern world being one where, at least in how they are represented in the media, people are perpetually young – in a state of arrested development. A condition that is increasingly beginning to grate now that the Tories are taking a giant dump on us all. I mean, look at these two self satisfied young chaps. Only, they’re not really that young anymore. They are of course millionaires by now probably – no wonder they look so happy.
Spaced, a sitcom about some immature late-twenty somethings first hit our screens in the late nineties or something. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, and Shaun of the Dead etc. But what are these forty something men doing now? Even the trailer for their new project ‘Paul’ fails to elicit any real laughs (I can’t even be bothered to link it). It looks stupid and lazy. And Edgar Wright’s last film Scott Pilgrim was the most self indulgent piece of crap, no really it was. He needs to stop hanging around with Quentin Tarantino and grow up.
If thirty to fifty is now regarded as young then we really are in trouble.
Philosophy Bites latest edition features features Jeff McMahan on vegetarianism. He forcefully makes the point that if you 
really confront the moral arguments against eating meat, there really is no contest. One point I had never considered before for instance, is that as well as having to weigh up the difference between the pleasure you get from consuming meat, against the pleasure a slaughtered animal would have experienced if given the chance to live out the rest of it’s life. Crucially you also have to in this calculation take account of the difference in pleasure you experience between eating a meal that includes meat, and a meal that is just derived from plants etc. So if you really think that this small difference is worth the suffering and premature death of another mammal then go ahead and eat meat. Otherwise you really have to ask yourself some questions.
Jeff McMahan’s closing argument is to liken meat eaters in the developed Western world to Southern slave owners in the America of the 19th century. Seemingly good people look around themselves and a see other seemingly good people doing the same thing and fail to realise the collective error in their ways. In this sense vegetarianism is a sort of consciousness raising enterprise.
Personally I’m not sure how much longer I can continue to be a hypocrite, in this area of my life anyway. Over the last six months I have grown accustomed to eating it very rarely. But I still find myself attacking vegetarians for fun. I’ll routinely point to the rich tradition and culture of eating meat, and to the gastronomic superiority and flavour of dishes that include it. I’ll happily point out that none of the world’s top restaurants are vegetarian and top food critics and chefs have nothing but contempt for those that forgo meat in their diets. But really this is a fairly pathetic argument from hedonism and a form of nihilism.
I am now beginning to think seriously that I can live without it completely, or at least, maintain my, (admittedly somewhat enforced) current policy. I still eat fish after all. They are different; they’re less ‘neurologically advanced’ than mammals, or so runs the argument. And I’ll still eat dairy; who could live without cheese?
Previously when this discussion has arisen I have resolved to just eat meat that is ‘ethically sourced’, to at least take some steps in the right direction. You want some sort of guarantee that the animal you’re eating has at least had a good quality of life, while it lasted. But in reality this policy is very difficult to maintain. My main weakness is for pork based products and sausages especially. Sadly I think the ethically sourced kind are expensive and difficult to come by. What we need is a whole new approach to food labeling on the back of a real cultural shift in attitudes to meat. I’m not sure that the food revolution that has occurred in the UK in the last fifteen years or so has really contributed much of use to this debate.
But now it’s barbecue season and everybody hates a killjoy vegetarian at a barbecue. Even so, I think from now on it’s scampi fries for me and no more pork scratchings.
Speaking of rules by which to live ones life by, I really enjoyed this extract from Christopher Hitchens’ new memoirs on Slate. It includes his rules to drinking and information about his daily intake. Also on Hitchens, did any one see read this funny interview from the Guardian the other week?
Every so often the emergence of a figure like this will serve both to reinforce certain art world myths, and to provide reassurance to others toiling in obscurity by adding fuel to their comforting delusions. Romanian artist Ion Barladeanu, (b. 1946), spent more than thirty years refusing to live as an ‘honorable citizen’, whilst working, virtually in secret, on collages of real finesse that fuse pop, dada, and surrealism. His works comment on the country of his birth both before, but predominantly after the Ceausescu regime. They are composites of printed and photographic detritus, including many advertisements, from the broken society in which he lived. The figure of American artist Henry Darger springs to mind as an obvious comparison, though Barladeanu’s work is less idiosyncratic and one cannot help but situate it within a European tradition, despite the obvious influence of American pop. It’s hard to tell from images on the web whether the work is really any good or not. Has the art world fallen for him because of the quality of the works or because of the myth surrounding their creation? It’s hard to say. I’m more than little late on this one, Angelina Jolie is already a fan. Must try harder. Read more here.
March has brought a significant improvement in the weather in Brum making wondering the streets as a pass time much more acceptable. I am taking the opportunity to explore more hoping to find something, anything, of interest out there.
Florilegium (February) 2006 The Approach
Florilegium (February) (Detail) 2006 The Approach
This artist incorporates pressed plants into his work. There’s also some sort of conceptual justification to what he does, but whatever, I think visually it’s very strong. And I can feel Spring just around the corner. I have heard that, because of the unusually cold weather we’ve experienced this year, it’ll be a little delayed. When it does arrive however, it will be all the more spectacular. I hope to enjoy some of it in Devon this year; I’ve been yearning for the countryside lately.
This announcement made a couple of weeks ago has been playing in the back of my mind for some time now, and there wasn’t a 
great deal of publicity at the time I felt, or rather, it wasn’t taken as seriously as perhaps it should have been. A report by thinktank the New Economic Foundation, says over-consumption, rising unemployment, increasing inequality and deteriorating work life balance can be tackled by radically altering working life. A twenty-one hour week, the report argues, would be the optimum amount of time, in effect a four day working week.
For a long time, (especially when I was grinding out a thirty-seven and a half hour office marathon every week), the idea of a three day weekend seemed such a wonderful idea – and just such an obvious solution to many of society’s problems. But I always thought my own absolute ignorance of economics and general naivety were getting the better of me. But now professional economists have come to the same conclusion. Hallelujah! I don’t suppose these changes will happen for another generation or so, not at least until generation X, or Y are in control of things. But all that’s needed is the political will. Why can’t we just accept that the economy is fucked, probably forever, and concentrate on building a better society? We need to liberate ourselves from the collective madness of over-working, the sooner the better.
Saul Bellow’s ‘Dangling Man’ is a short Novel in the form of a journal. The journal keeper is an
unemployed history graduate, supported by his working wife. The book explores how he came to the condition of his present inertia (he abandoned an attempt at philosophical essays), and began to ‘dangle’. I chanced upon this in the library and for some reason felt compelled to devote some time to it. I just wanted to reproduce a couple of passages at length to give a flavour.
Great pressure is brought to bear to make us understand ourselves. On the other hand, civilization teaches us that each of us is an inestimable prize. There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death. Therefore we value and are ashamed to value ourselves, are hard boiled. We are schooled in quietness and, if one of us takes his measure occasionally, he does so cooly, as if he were examining hi fingernails, not his soul, frowning at the imperfections he finds as one would at a chip or a bit of dirt. Because, of course, we are all called upon to accept the imposition of of all kinds of wrongs, to wait in ranks under a hot sun, to run up a clattering beach, to be sentries, scouts or workingmen, to be those in the train when it is blown up, or those at the gates when they are locked, to be of no significance, to die. The result is that we learn to be unfeeling towards ourselves and incurious. Who can be the earnest huntsman of himself when he knows he is in turn a quarry? Or nothing so distinctive as quarry, but one of a shoal, driven toward the weirs.
But I must know what I myself am.
And earlier in the novel he writes:
Shall my life by one-thousandth of an inch fall short of its ultimate possibility? It is a different thing to value oneself, and to prize oneself crazily. And then there are our plans, idealizations. These are dangerous, too. They can consume us like parasites, eat us, drink us, and leave us lifelessly prostrate. And yet we are always inviting the parasite, as if we were eager to be drained and eaten.
Is it because we have been taught there is no limit to what a man can be. Satan and the Church, representing god, did battle over him. He, by reason of his choice, partially decided the outcome. But whether, after life, he went to hell or to heaven, his place among other men was given. It could not be contested. But, since, the stage has been reset and human beings only walk on it, and, under this revision, we have, instead, history to answer to. We were important enough then for our souls to be fought over. Now, each of us is responsible for his own salvation, which is in his greatness. And that, that greatness, is the rock our hearts are abraded on. Great minds, great beauties, great lovers and criminals surround us. From the great sadness and desperation of Werthers and Don Juans we went to the great ruling images of Napoleons; from these to murderers who had the right over victims because they were greater than the victims; to men who felt privileged to approach others with a whip; to schoolboys and clerks who roared like revolutionary lions; to those pimps and subway creatures, debaters in midnight cafeterias who believed they could be great in treachery and catch the throats of those they felt were sound and well in the lassos of their morbidity; to dreams of dreams of greatly beautiful shadows embracing on a flawless screen. Because of these things we hate immoderately and punish ourselves and one another immoderately. The fear of lagging pursues and maddens us. The fear lies in us like a cloud. It makes an inner climate of darkness. And occasionally there is a storm of hate and wounding rain out of us.
I suppose the late great novelist must have been about my age when he wrote Dangling Man, his first published novel. War hangs heavily over the book and clearly the author was influenced by European literature of the previous couple of decades. But there’s clearly something universal in the existential angst he captures in these two passages, the precise nature of the protagonist’s circumstance aside. Bellow, for me, is up there with the very best – among the authors that help one make sense of one’s own life.
I have to walk past this monstrosity to get to Saint Philips Cathedral in the center of town. I haven’t been able to ascertain the
name of the building yet. I’m not sure anyone would want to own up to it; it’s probably shared by a number of smallish financial services companies. What you can’t tell from my pictures is that it sits next to an eight-lane motorway. The image here is taken from an almost unbelievably bleak footbridge above said motorway. A face-on view can be seen here.
What I am going to do with this series is avoid noting Birmingham’s obvious and controversial Brutalist structures, and instead point to the designs that somehow sneaked through without anyone really noticing yet nevertheless have a largely detrimental effect on the life of the average citizen, the buildings that are so bad that we just try and ignore their existence. I’ll try and get more details about this first one too.