Associated sites

Last updates

12th January 2007
Yet more pictures of the garden added to 'My House' in the 'About' section!

27th May 2006
Even more pictures of the garden added to 'My House' in the 'About' section!

3rd April 2006
More pictures of the progress of the garden makeover added to 'My House' in the 'About' section

18th March 2006
More updates to the 'Acting' section, which is now pretty much complete. I might scan and upload a few more photos to the odd show, but there shouldn't be any dead ends in that section now!

8th December 2005
I've temporarily suspended the guestbook due to increasing spam attacks. Should be back up soon, once I've modified it to block as many of them as possible.

29th November 2005
Added some photos of the new bathroom to the 'My House' section, along with a 'work-in-progress' shot of the embryonic new garden.

30th August 2005
Re-worked the site to be visually almost identical but with much improved accessibility. The site is now AAA (triple-A) compliant to the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines and fully Section 508 compliant. I have also taken the opportunity to do a small amount of cleaning up of redundant links and brought some of the 'one-off' pages of the site into the main structure.

There are some pages (particularly in the 'Design' section) that I haven't updated yet. These will hopefully be added over the next few weeks. Until then, sorry about any non-existent pages you may come across!

8th July 2004
Added a guestbook to the site. Let's see how many people actually visit the site who care enough to leave me a message!

29th June 2004
Changed this page to include a dynamically populated 'journal'. This was written in ASP VBScript. The journal can be updated through web-form and uses a simple Access database to store the entries.

27th June 2004
Added details to the rest of the plays in the Acting/Theatre work - 1957-1978 section, the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School productions.

26th November 2003
New render added to the Artwork/CG Work section. Details added to a couple more plays in the Acting/Theatre work - 1978-1988 section.

14th September 2003
Two new renders added to the Artwork/CG Work section.

1st July 2003
More content added to 'Design' section and 'Acting' section (TV). Fixed rendering problem that made images in the left-hand column float away from the left margin.

16th June 2003
Added more content to 'Design' section.

11th June 2003
Uploaded new, re-designed site.

Wayouteast Seagull

Welcome to WayOutEast

- jon dixon's place on the web

Hi. Thanks for visiting Wayouteast. As well as the sporadic and random musings and rants below, this is really just a repository of stuff that I've done in my 51 years to date, as a professional actor, illustrator and designer. I hope you find something you like or are interested by in these pages. If you do, let me know by dropping me a line, if you'd like to. There is also a guestbook, but it's currently offline until I can work out how to stop the flood of automated spamming. I really do have enough V!&gra and Ci@l''s now guys - you can stop, OK?

I hope you enjoy your visit!

Latest musings

It's baaa...aaaack!

...if anybody actually noticed it had been away! Wayouteast is back up (obvious really, as you're reading this), looking much the same but much improved in terms of the validity of the code and the accessibility of the content. Some of the content and its presentation has been improved too. All comments welcome as ever...

Far too much has happened in the time I've been away to catch up on here - sad (Robin Cook, Mo Mowlam), funny (Extras, Boston Legal), magnificent (Edgbaston ,Trent Bridge) and tragic (Fantastic Four, Big Brother).

As usual, entries in the journal will be intermittent and usually entered due to guilt at the long-ago date of the previous posting! Now read on...
Posted on 30/08/2005 20:05:17

R.I.P. James Doohan

Sad news yesterday of the passing of Jimmy Doohan at the age of 85. To unashamed Trekkies like myself, Jimmy Doohan, like all the cast members of the original (and still best) Star Trek, was an icon.He was an integral part of the extended Star Trek 'family' and, though I never met him, I'm sad to think that he's gone. Unlike so many of us, though, he'll live on in all our memories in the person of the Enterprise's resident 'miracle worker', and generations to come will still be just as captivated by that brusque sincerity and (occasionally dodgy!) scottish brogue.

"The word is given. Warp speed, Mr Scott..."
Posted on 21/07/2005 11:59:31

Job Swap?

Big news at the Houses of Parliament at the moment is that the cleaning staff are threatening to strike over their pay and conditions. Thanks to the Thatcherite obsession with privatising anything and everything in sight - continued and even expanded with great relish by the current Nu-Lab lot - the cleaning staff in question are employed by two private contracting companies and currently earn the princely sum of £5 an hour, with no sick pay or pension. They get 12 days' holiday a year. This shameful figure is the absolute minimum allowed by law, and will rise to a munificent £5.05 an hour in October as the minimum wage for adults is to go up then.

The cleaners are asking for £6.70 an hour with some sick benefit and a few days more holiday a year.

My suggestion for solving the situation is simple. The cleaners should get full MPs' salaries and represent us in Parliament. And the current crop of MPs and Ministers can deal with the toilets. OK, the toilets inevitably won't be nearly as skillfully cleaned, but at least the standard of debate and legislation in Parliament will rise immeasurably.
Posted on 20/07/2005 15:17:05
Quote of the day: "Too often, people were told to make a choice between the indignity of unemployment or the humiliation of poverty pay." - Tony Blair.

In His name...

Over a week on, now, and I guess I have to finally write something about the events of 7th July. I haven't wanted to write anything before because, like most other people I suspect, it's taken time to come to terms with both the dreadful nature of the events themselves and the implications for us all. And I've also been all too aware that the last thing that people who were directly involved in the blasts and the friends and families of those who died or suffered injury need is the pontification of those who are not as personally affected by these appalling crimes.

I suppose I've finally been driven to write now because of two connected incidents in the last couple of days, incidents which have left me angry and a little afraid of what the future might hold. These have led me to reflect on the nature of so-called 'muslim' extremism and the wider issues surrounding it. Some readers will disagree deeply with some of the views below. Some will be angered, I suspect. But, insofar as there can be any 'truth' in such a complex and divisive issue, this is mine.

The first incident was on the Jubilee Line tube on Thursday evening. I was on my way back to catch the train to Derby from St-Pancras after a meeting at the Houses of Parliament. I was travelling with one of our project managers. It was five-thirty-ish and the train was very full so we were standing in the usual odiferous crush. Immediately in front of me was a young, dark-skinned guy - peobably a tourist from Sri Lanka, if the tags on his rucksack were any indication. Behind him, facing me was a fifty-ish white guy. Suddenly, this latter saw fit to announce to the carriage at large that '"they should fucking stop people like that getting on the fucking tube" in tones which suggested that he was ready to accept the plaudits of a carriage fully in agreement with him. For some minutes he expanded on his theme, gesticulating at the Sri Lankan tourist as he did so. "He should have been fucking searched and thrown off the station! Look at that (the rucksack)! Could be anything in there. Fucking muslims!" I suspect the poor tourist himself was either a non-English speaker and didn't understand the invective hurled at him or else understood only too well and was politely ignoring the English nutter, as indeed were the rest of the carriage. Eventually, realising his singular lack of success in whipping the rest of us into a lynch mob, he subsided into dark mutterings which were still going on when we changed trains at Baker Street. I had mixed feelings about the incident - on the one hand it was actually rather funny. But the ease with which this guy launched into his rantings gave me pause - I had never before heard someone so openly and publically give vent to violently anti-muslim feelings before.

This sense of queasy un-normality was driven home the following evening. I'd got home from work late-ish and didn't fancy cooking. So I telephoned ahead and then went to pick up a meal from my local Chinese take-out. When I arrived my meal wasn't quite ready so I waited. Also at the counter was another customer waiting for his meal. The TV was on, as usual, and happened to be showing the police operations in Leeds. As we both watched, the news announcer read a statement from the family of one of the alleged bombers expressing their shock and horror at their relative's actions and their sympathy with the victims of the bombs. Suddenly, the other customer turned to me and, in the horrible chummy tone that racists use when they assume that because you share their skin colour you must therefore also share their views, said to me, "You know what, they should take all that bloody family, make them tell everything they fucking know and then fucking hang 'em!". I was somewhat unprepared for this. I told the guy in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't assume that I shared his view, that as far as I was concerned until evidence to the contrary emerged the families were as much the victims of these terrible acts as anyone else, and that I'd rather he kept his opinions to himself. That sparked a quite violent torrent of abuse from the guy, the basic thrust of which was that all muslims were terrorists and that I was a 'traitor' for not sharing that view. No amount of quiet remonstance on my part deflected him from his tirade and I was quite glad that my dinner finally appeared before he could become physically violent and I could leave with his continued imprecations following me out of the door.

Unpleasant to be sure. But no more than a momentary and isolated inconvenience. If I, a middle-aged white man, can be attacked like that, however, out of the blue, imagine how much more fearful must be all those people who in some way - skin colour, dress, facial hair-style, language - more closely resemble the terrible bogeymen that people like take-away guy hate so much.

I live, by choice, in an inner city area in the Midlands where the population is predominantly muslim. Most of my neighbours are muslim. There is a small and well-attended mosque a few doors down the street. Each evening there is a flurry of voices outside my window as the local children, home from their day in the local junior or secondary school make their way to and from the mosque for their evening lessons. Most of the local shops are muslim-run. When I leave my house I am as likely to hear Urdu as English and as likely to see the hijab or shalwar kameez as jeans and tee-shirt. My neighbours and my wider circle of acquaintance in the area - all of them - are decent, friendly, hard-working and pleasant people. Inevitably, we discuss topical events when we meet in the street or in each others' homes, and the events of last week have been no exception. I have not come across a single person yet who had anything other than contempt for the bombers, shock and horror at the events themselves, and a genuine and heartfelt sympathy for all the victims and their friends and relatives.

But when the discussion moves on to wider issues, as it has done in the past, there is a widespread and deep anger at the way this country's - our country's - foreign policy has played out in recent years. My neighbours - peaceable and law-abiding - are quietly furious, at the killing of innocents in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Chechnya. They are despairing and angered at the seemingly endless plight of the Palestinians and at the one-sidedness that drives the continuance of that shameful situation. They are resentful and full of fear at the constant ratcheting up of the tabloid media's anti-muslim rhetoric (though, to be fair, that seems to have been thankfully absent from post 7/7 reporting, even in the worst offenders - perhaps even the numbskulls at the Sun and the Daily Mail are finally queasily aware of where their constant demonising of a whole population might have taken us). To my neighbours, Abu Hamza - the one-eyed, hook-handed bogeyman of so many shrill tirades in the tabloids - is a somewhat farcical and wholly fringe figure; the Robert Kilroy-Silk of the muslim community. But to many of the non-muslim population, faced with his scowling visage on the tabloid front pages day after day after day, he came to represent all muslims. All muslims were seen as mad-eyed, violence-preaching fanatics, just waiting to murder us all in our beds. Where, my neighbours ask despairingly, are the front page stories given over to the much more representative, and much more numerous, moderate muslim voices?

It's that preconception and deliberate or accidental caricaturing of the muslim population that feeds the innate racism of people like the guy in the Chinese take-away or the guy on the tube, to the point where they now feel comfortable enough to speak openly to a total stranger of basically lynching brown-skinned people simply because of an assumed connection to the perpetrators of a terrible crime. Because they now feel justified. Their fear and hatred of 'them' has been validated - by the bombings, yes, but also by general, and un-corrected, belief that 'they' are all in on it. "Those fucking families knew exactly what was going to happen..." take-away guy said to me as a parting shot. "And you're as fucking bad as they are!" Guilt by association. String 'em up! And if you don't like it, we'll string you up too! And so it goes.

There's a nice little story that shows how completely ridiculous the extending of responsibility for this kind of attack from the perpetrators themselves to the wider group to whom they may belong. Muhammad Ali visited the rubble of the World Trade Centre in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on 9/11. A reporter there asked him how he felt about the attackers sharing his Islamic faith. In return, Ali asked the reporter how he felt about Hitler sharing his. One muslim, interviewed recently about the London bombs, asked quite reasonably why it was that whenever a terrorist attack is committed by someone with a muslim background the first reaction of most reporters is to rush to the nearest mosque. Why, he asked, when the IRA were bombing London and other cities on a regular basis, was it not felt necessary to besiege the Catholic churches and demand of their congregations why they were not rooting out the bombers in their midst? Let's remember that several of the victims of those dreadful bombs were muslim, as will have been many of the rescuers and the hospital staff and the surgeons and the emergency services who acted so selflessly and tirelessly in the face of horror.

Of course - and here my neighbours are vocal in their determination - the muslim community must take more action to sideline even further the small but vocal minority who preach confrontation and hate and jihad (in a cynical and lying twisting of that word's true meaning). I know that in the mosque down the road from me, as well as in the wider community, there is a new and startled urgency about making sure that the younger generation in particular are taught the real, peaceful, mediatative, philosophy-rich Islam rather than the one-sided perversion of it that is taught by the Wahhabists and others of their kind. The muslim community has a huge and urgent task, if for no other reason than its own safety and that of all of us.

But there is a wider context to this, and I fear that our politicians, led once again from the top, in their hubris and their complacency are once more seeking tominimise, ignore or deny their responsibility. Why do the poisonous seeds of extremism find such fertile ground in some muslim youth? Because that ground has been ploughed, tilled, fertilised and made ready by our wilful disregard of the long-term resentment and anger that our - the west's - policies towards the Middle East have inculcated within the muslim community. This is not, as the new Nu-Lab story would have us believe, a post-9/11 phenomenon. 9/11 and the terrorist incidents before and after it, did not suddenly spring - contextless - from the crazed brain of some Bond-like super-villain. These resentments and angers have been growing, steadily and surely, for many many years. They have been growing as a direct result of the actions - or sometimes lack of action - we have taken in the Middle East - supporting despots and then bombing their populations when they stop obeying orders, installing troops on holy ground, allowing the brutalisation and oppression of the Palestinian people. In particular, the resentment is directed - with justification - at America. And we, as America's self-ordained sidekick, are just as guilty in their eyes.

Blair, of course, specifically denies any connection. He tells us that it is simply that 'they' - note the use once again of the non-specific and terrifying 'other' - 'they' hate our freedoms. And that is it. That is their whole justification. They 'hate our freedoms'. Why then, no attack on Sweden? Or Denmark? Or Greece? Or any of the other 'free' countries that have not signed up as America's foot-soldiers in the new crusade?

The ridiculously-named 'war on terror' may indeed not be intentionally a 'war against Islam', but the incompetence, illegality, mendacity and (in Bush's case) domestic political expedience with which it has been conducted make it all too easy to characterise as such by those who have their own anti-Western agenda. And our governments are dancing to these peoples' tune. They are playing into the extremists hands every time they - either deliberately or through a blind and wilful and obtuseness - misrepresent the nature of the other side's grievances or casually dismiss as unconnected the underlying resentment and anger that fuels the extreme minority within the islamic population.

These extremists do not 'hate our freedoms'; the terrorist bombers who wreaked such havoc on the 7th July were not bearded and robed 'aliens', they were not kalashnikov-toting muhajadeen, they were young British men who had happily embraced our freedoms and many of the norms of our society. They do not 'hate our freedoms'; what they hate is our foreign policy, particularly when it is so closely tied to the interests of a United States whose intent in the Middle East can scarcely be characterised as benign.

In the aftermath of the London bombs, the Queen spoke to us all and condemned 'those who commit such brutal acts against innocent people'. And she was, of course, right to do so. The acts were indeed brutal, viciously callous and wholly abominable. But in any wider analysis of these events, to wilfully disregard our own 'brutal acts against innocent people' - whether they be wedding parties in Afghanistan or whole towns in Iraq - is to abdicate all responsibility for our contributions to the seething resentment and anger that fuels these acts. Dead people are dead people, whether killed by ten pounds of explosive in a rucksack on a tube-train or by a thousand pounds of explosive dropped on their house from 30,000 feet. And the surviving friends and families of those people have exactly the same feelings about the death of their loved ones, whether they are in London or Fallujah. And the same contempt and hate for the bombers. And the same determination not the let the perpetrators win. In Iraq, even today, twice the number of civilian deaths are officially attributable to the actions of coalition forces as to the 'insurgents' (who didn't seem to exist anyway until our invasion). To many Iraqis - and to many people here too - we too, or our representatives, are the brutal, callous killers.

And meanwhile, Blair carries on regardless, endlessly repeating his and Bush's vacuous and similarly religion-driven catechism - "evil ideology, evil ideology" - and flatly refusing to acknowledge even the smallest connection between the thousands of dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and Chechnya and Gaza and the dead here in London. For to do so, of course, would be to admit some responsibility. And with responsibility comes the possibility of being wrong. Of fallability. And that can never be; after all, God keeps telling them they're right, in the face of all the physical evidence to the contrary. "God made me do it" - the age-old cry of the zealot. And while God/Allah is seemingly in charge, marshalling and directing His bombers on both sides, whispering in their ears, directing them through their prayers, - while we are led by zealots and fully paid-up members of the 'faith-based community', despite the wishes and hopes and strivings of peaceful people - Christian, muslim, Jewish, even (speak it softly) secular - there will be no peace. Only the smug moral certainties and the violent acts of God/Allah's self-appointed agents here on earth. And the bombs, whether carried by planes or in rucksacks, will continue.
Posted on 17/07/2005 19:39:51

Wayouteast - unofficial sponsor of the 2012 anti-olympics

Well, so we've won the Olympics. Only the mildest of hoorahs from this non-sports-lover, I'm afraid... At the risk of sounding a negative note already, there were two things (other than the inevitable and deeply boring anti-french bollocks) that forcibly struck me about what the various interviewees were saying in the immediate aftermath of the announcement...

Firstly, everyone kept saying that this was 'a great day for London' or that 'this will really make a difference to London' or that 'Londoners will really benefit from this decision'. Now, those of us who don't actually live in London - yes there are just a few of us - are all too used to this London-centric view that 'Britain' equates to the area that lies inside the M25, but this felt a little excessive even by those standards. It really felt as if 'London' had won the games and all the associated benefits rather than the UK in general. As we'll all be paying for it (oh, how we'll be paying, and for years and years and years to come...) it would have been nice to have heard about any benefits that might accrue north of Luton...but then perhaps the rest of us poor benighted savages in the Midlands and all points north are just there to pick up the (huge) bill.

Secondly, Coe, in his interview, referred to the winning of the Olympic bid (and I paraphrase) 'giving every child the chance to achieve their full potential'. Well, only if they happen to be good at sport! Why is it that truly vast additional sums of our money (leave aside the millions that have been spent already on the bid itself) are now to be pumped into sport and sport alone? Why is sport given this special treatment...especially at a time when other pursuits and forms of entertainment are having money taken away from them year after year after year..?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for giving people who can jump really high or run really fast the chance to achieve their full potential. But it would be nice if people who might be able to act really well, or write really creatively, or play really brilliant music, or sing like angels, or sculpt, or write poetry, or do any of the other wonderful things that human beings are capable of were also given the same sort of chance to achieve their full potential, instead of being treated as little better than free-loading 'luvvies'. How about an arts Olympics? Can you imagine, though, the derision that such a suggestion would cause, the range of patronising arguments that would be ranged against it, the outrage at the impertinence of these wasters wanting public money to subsidise their elitist and non-commercial pursuits? No, there's still no place in Cool Brittania for anyone who might excel at anything non-sport related.

Anyhow, now I have to go and mentally prepare myself for the dreadful horror of the next six years as every single company with any presence in the UK splashes their 'official sponsor of...' crap all over everything, every news bulletin is headlined with how far behind schedule the tube-link/stadium/swimming pool/beach volleyball court is, every available media outlet is taken up with steroid-pumped athletes flashing their hideous bulging veins at us, and you can't turn the TV or the radio on without hearing Heather Small wailing away asking you what you've done today to make you feel proud. Sometimes there's nothing for it but to just turn your face to the wall...

Verdict on Live8 (music only - the political effect will be determined in the result of the summit in a few days time): high points for me were Pink Floyd sounding as if they’d never been apart after 24 years - brought tears to my eyes - and the two surviving Whos showing the youngsters how it's done. Brilliant. Snow Patrol and the Killers were both great, and Madge was as fab as I’ve ever seen her. Ditto the Lennox diva. Loved the Scissor Sisters. Thought Coldplay were very disappointing though. And yes, ok, ok, Robbie was great - though I still hate all that pretending he's Sinatra.

Small political note, finally. I read that Geoff Hoon now wants compulsory voting for all of us. OK. I'll go along with that...just so long as it goes along with making MPs'attendance at all debates and subsequent divisions in the House of Commons compulsory too. No more empty benches and full bars when something that's of importance to all of us is being debated. OK with you, Geoff? No?

Here's a thought. Instead of dealing with voter apathy by compelling me to cast a wasted vote (I'm in a safe Nu-Lab seat), how about finally getting around to changing the electoral system to a single transferrable vote system so that my vote actually counts for something, actually has an effect, and you have to take my vote and my opinion into consideration. Or does that mean you'll actually have to start listening to people other than the few thousand floating voters in marginal seats.
Posted on 06/07/2005 17:26:57

Today's link(s): this is fake diy - great site for new and up-and-coming bands.

What a cheek!

In the wake of all the current bill-board hoo-ha, I've been re-reading H.G.Well's "The War of The Worlds" recently. What an amazing book. Over a hundred years old now, and still a brilliantly creepy, evocative and engrossing page-turner, full of the most incredible set-pieces, events and plot-twists. He could write a bit, could old Herbert George!

The Spielberg version looks utter pants, frankly. I've been involved in an acrimonious exchange with some americans at one of the modelling boards over the audacity of the sainted Steven in making 'Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds' and then carefully removing anything that makes the original conception unique, original and brilliant in favour of some by-the-numbers, generic, saccherine, LA-based 'courageous Yanks save the world yet again for apple pie, white teeth and fatherhood' bollocks. They're not even MARTIANS in this version FFS!! Wells would be spinning in his grave.

'Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds'!! What an arse! I'm planning on making 'Jon Dixon's Jaws' later in the year, in which I'll be changing the shark to a giant chicken, and taking out any reference to water or boats.

After about five posts my opponents ran out of any even vaguely cogent rebuttals and started the old 'we saved your Euroweenie asses in WWII so you and that there Horace Wells better be grateful buddy or we'll come over there and kick your butts!' kind of nonsense. Oh dear.

The Pendragon Films version, at least, looks much better (see link below) despite some truly atrocious acting and not a few extremely dodgy moustaches! Worth a punt on DVD, I think.

Had a week off recently, as the bathroom was being re-plasterd and the suite replaced. Full of good intentions to see 'Sin City', 'Batman Begins' at the pictures, and 'A Series ofUnfortunate Events', 'Meet the Fockers', Team America' etc. etc. all of which I'd missed in the theatres.

Actual number of films watched during week - zero, zilch, nada...! Total couch-potato incompetence. Oh well...

Big (and very sudden) changes afoot at work too, so once again living in a state of horrible anxiety and nervous tension. Bugger!
Posted on 30/06/2005 17:47:04

Today's link(s): H.G.Well's The War Of The Worlds
Quote of the day: "Its not for those who fear for their civil liberties to prove their case, its for those who want to spend billions on ID cards to do so." [Don't know who said it, but it's dead right!]

And I should go and see this because...?

Today's QuickRant™...

Compare and contrast:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - the book:

Man with bulldozer: "But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."

Arthur: "Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."

Man with bulldozer: "But the plans were on display..."

Arthur: "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

Man with bulldozer: "That's the display department."

Arthur: "With a flashlight."

Man with bulldozer: "Aw, well, the lights had probably gone."

Arthur: "So had the stairs."

Man with bulldozer: "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"

Arthur: "Yes. Yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked fling cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - the film:

Man with bulldozer: "These plans have been on display for the past year!"

Arthur: "I had to go down to a cellar."

WTF! What a fine piece of movie adaptation! Thank heavens they went to such lengths to capture the feel of the original scene so well! Superb!
Posted on 11/05/2005 14:05:12

Today's link(s): The CSS Playground - good resource for style-sheet geeks (like me)
Quote of the day: "Come to the edge, he said. They said, we are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came, he pushed them and they flew." - Guillaume Appollinaire.

Best picture of the election…

Byeeeeee!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Ha Ha HaHa HaHaHa HaHa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahaha ha ha hahahaha ha... oh dear oh dear... HA HA HA Ha Ha HaHa HaHaHa HaHa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahaha ha ha! [wipes eyes].
Posted on 06/05/2005 13:59:19

Quick update

Haven't had much time recently for non-essential stuff like updating this sproradic and much un-read journal. So...

No pre-election rant (no point - all the lies are in place; it just remains to be seen how many people have bought them). No long and in-depth discussion of Dr. Who (although how cool was the Dalek when its mid-section rotated 360 degrees and it started 'Robocopping'!). No musings on life, the universe and everything (get the little topical Hitchhikers allusion there?). Just a quick precis of stuff going on.

Currently doing:

Lots of guitar practice. I recently had the offer to play in public for the first time in years - in a band doing folk-rocky Fairport Convention-y kind of stuff. That provided the catalyst I needed to finally do what I've wanted to do for a while now, and that's buy myself a decent guitar. So I've treated myself to a second-hand Fender Stratocaster - a Highway 1 model about three years old in honey-blonde with a maple neck. And I've been listening to and learning loads of Fairport tracks, along with songs by Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny.
Ripping my vinyl and cassette collection - built up over the last thirty years or so - to MP3. Yes, I've finally joined the zombie hordes and bought myself an iPod, so there's even more reason to do this. It's a long job though - I reckon I'm about halfway through and that's already about 350 albums worth, not counting my already ripped CD collection. Including the CDs I'm now up to about 24GB on the iPod - 560-odd albums or nearly 6,000 tracks. It's fantastic having all my music in one place and easily accessible - especially in the car - and I'm re-discovering artists and albums that I haven't played for years.
Back working on the House of Parliament Library project - this time doing preliminary designs for a new concatenated intranet that will give a consistent look and feel and information architecture/navigation across the multitude of departmental intranets that currently exist within Parliament. There's the occasional trip to London, but thankfully no extended stays now my contribution to the BAA project has ended for the moment.
Still dealing with the aftermath of the damage to my car. I've now tracked down the driver of the other car and passed on his registration details etc. to the appropriate people. So hopefully his insurance will end up paying the £1500(!) that it's going to take to put my car right again. Could really do without the hassle, though, frankly.
Trying to learn to play poker - Texas Hold'em, to be exact. My oldest godson is having a poker night for his birthday party in two weeks time and I've somehow got to learn how to play. Trouble is I am the wprld's worst card player. Really. I get confused playing 'Snap'. All this stuff about 'flops', 'big' and 'little' blinds, 'hole cards', 'rivers' and 'kickers' just turns my brain to cheese! Humiliation awaits... lol!

Currently listening to:

Laika (superb UK band mixing rock, electronica, jazz and dub to create extraordinary swirling soundscapes that drill into your head and won't go away)
Eels (brilliant new album - a phenomenal return to form for the man called 'E' after the rather disappointing 'Shootenanny')
Fairport Convention (see above)

Currently watching:

Boston Legal (career best performance from the ever-awesome William Shatner as he and the excellent James Spader - both superb performers - egg each other on to new heights of acting excellence. Good storylines too.)
Doctor Who (See above. Still pretty good despite - rather than because of - its leading 'actor')
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the original TV series, of course, not the vile Hollywood-ised thing that's currently infesting our cineplexes like scurvy - Mos Def as Ford Prefect, FFS!)
House of Flying Daggers (really looking forward to watching this - tonight maybe. Zhang Yimou's follow-up film to the incredible 'Hero' is apparently just as epic in scope and just as visually beautiful.

Soon to be:

Babysitting
Clearing the garden
Having the bathroom plastered and a new suite installed
Sleeping a lot

Current mood:

Changeable

Posted on 04/05/2005 17:24:24
Quote of the day: "There is as much veracity to the claim that voting for the Liberal Democrats will let the Tories through the back door as there was that Saddam Hussein was 45 minutes from killing us all." - Gary Younge (The Guardian)

Popes and poops...

Good to see that the Catholic Church has nailed its colours to the mast so firmly with the election of the new Pope. No wishy washy compromises or conciliation here!

No, Christ's new lieutenant on earth is an ex-Hitler Youth member who's been running the Vatican's "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" for the last twenty years. That's the department that was once known as the "Holy Inquisition", by the way, though nowadays thankfully it uses slightly less obvious means of enforcing its will than burning people at the stake. It is widely believed that the new Benedict XVI was the eminence grise behind the majority of the reactionary edicts and pronouncements emanating from the Vatican recently as the old Pope withered away. And I'm sure we can look forward to much more of the same in the future. Here are some of his recent pronouncements on a variety of subjects:

On the prosecution of paedophile priests - "a plot against the church"
On other religions or Christian faiths - "deficient or not quite real churches"
On rock music - "a counter-cult, opposed to Christian worship"
On those who support the 'pro-choice' side in the debate over abortion - "[it is] appropriate to deny Communion to [them]..."
On the admission of Turkey (mostly Muslim) to the EU - "[Europe is united by its] culture which gives it a common identity. The roots which formed ... this continent are those of Christianity"
On Ecumenicism - "other denominational bodies are not worthy of being considered 'sister Churches' by Rome"
On women priests - "womens' place in the church should not extend to allowing them to sing in choirs or serve at the altar"
On homosexuality - "a tendency towards intrinsic moral evil"

Always nice to hear such voices of tolerance, inclusiveness and rationality. He has also insisted that the Church must defend itself against threats such as "radical individualism" - or, as others might choose to put it, against "people thinking for themselves and not blindly doing exactly what they're told".

Still, as I say, at least it's good to know exactly where the Catholic church stands - firmly in the darkest depths of the middle ages, as usual, along with most of the other organised religions of the world. And at its head, puffed up like a toad with false humility - "[I am] a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord" - yet another foolish, power-hungry, repressive, misogynistic, reactionary old bigot, dedicated to sowing hate, fear and misery as far and as wide throughout the world as he can.

If the above sounds even more rancorous than usual(!), it's because I'm still pissed off at my car being damaged at the weekend while it was parked...yet again! This time the person concerned has crushed in my driver's side wing and damaged the nose-cone - and it looks as if 'll need a new wing as well as the inevitable re-spray.

I nearly saw it happen too. I'd just got out of the bath (sorry to anybody who just went to a scary visual place) and had just come back into the front bedroom, and I heard the noise from the street of a low-speed impact - a sort of quiet crunch of metal. I looked out of the window and saw a red hatchback parking, its rear passenger side bumper literally three inches in front of my wing and moving slowly forward. I couldn't actually see the damage to my car from the angle I was viewing, nor could I see the registration number of the red car. The driver got out and I got a good look at him as he seemed to be delivering something to my neighbour's house. I had to put some clothes on, though, before I could rush down and see what was what. By the time I'd made it to the front of the house, the red car had gone and there was my car had a huge, gouged dent in the wing with copious deposits of red paint exactly where the rear bumper of the red car would have hit it as the driver reversed along the street. I was absolutely gutted.

Some time later, having reported the incident to the police, I was describing the car and the driver to my neighbour...and she knew exactly who it was, as the description of both car and driver matched an acquaintance of hers who had in fact put something through her door at exactly that time. She rang him and I spoke to him. He claimed not to have done it - or at least not to have been aware of having done it - but as I described what I had heard and seen, and the time it happened, and the location of the damage he started to sound less sure. Finally, I asked him to check his back rear bumper and sure enough he grudgingly admitted that "it did look as if something had scuffed it". He finally admitted that it must have been him who'd done it. As he was away from his home at the time, however, he didn't have his insurance details handy. And there it lies. I've tried phoning him several times over the last couple of days, but he's not answering. I did speak to him once but he again put me off when I asked for his registration number and insurance details as he'd 'just woken up'. And he didn't phone back as he promised. And it's made even more difficult by the fact that I'm currently in London.

So it looks as if I'll have to involve the police now in order to get his details, which will be a hassle for me, and for them, and for him. It's so unnecessary... But I'm damned if I'm going to let him get away with it! Why can't people behave in a civilised manner? Why do they have to be such shits?

So, current mood not exactly reminiscent of a ray of sunshine!
Posted on 20/04/2005 16:53:11

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