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Saturday, December 03, 2011
Remembering Rob Brezny
Free Will Astrology was the name of the website
with the quirky hippy star signs written, in the style of
Tom Robbins, by a certain Rob Brezny.
Back in 1999 I answered his online questionaire.
So to continue the function of the meme blog,
you can find out about ME by reading this.
Sorry it's a bit long.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
While listening to Karen Dalton
Deary me oh momma,
wave me a hankie,
tear me up old maid mamma in the morning rain,
Off to the railroad and my grip is firm on this old suitcase,
my suit doesn’t fit and I have no tie,
But I must go go and be on my way,
The morning broke I had had no sleep.
You stood back and you let me leave,
Remembering the good times,
Those days there were so few,
This bye bye is more between us and the dew
While listening to Daniel Johnston
And she did sing and the chorus with in harmony,
All did feel safe in the warm room,
Where devils were not welcome,
When time it came to leave and she was alone,
Being quiet and still then her heart was so loud,
And devils feast on crying souls,
The birds came to her as she dished out crumbs,
Beaks and eyes and feathers and ripples,
The Sunday sun fell and the colours were left,
Some things last a lifetime.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Gillespie Park to Finsbury Park
Gillespie Park to Finsbury Park, a set on Flickr.
Chilled out in the little park reclaimed from old railway land. Walked along to Finsbury park where there was a fairly empty fun fair.
All snapped with my mobile phone.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Operation Target - massive police propaganda?
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
a retelling of an old corny Christmas joke
Sunday, November 14, 2010
War Jive
"We are takin' dis acshun fo' one real simple reason, dig dis, dig dis: t'damage Serb fo'ces sufficiently
t'prevent Milosevic fum continuin' t'puh'petuate his vile oppression against innocent Albanian
civilians."
UK Prime Minister' Tony Blair
"De grotesque breach uh human rights in Kosovo which we gotss' seen in recent monds kin
be tolerated no mo'e. S coo', bro'."
UK Conservative Party leader William Hague
"We had no opshun oda' dan t'snatch dis regrettable acshun against Milosevic once da damn
Kosovars had signed our peace proposals but da damn Serbs had defiantly continued deir brutal
repression. What it is, Mama!"
UK Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown
"People who lived drough de 30s and 40s feel some sense uh utta' shame and disgust dat da damn
British Government should be boogiein' its solemn commitment t'de UN and launchin' air
attacks waaay downon Serbia. Ah be baaad..."
Veteran Labour MP Tony Benn
Saturday, November 13, 2010
One limerick after midnight.
When it was two thousand and ten,
The young poet lifted his pen,
He couldn't believe,
That old new year's eve,
Was happening all over again.
Thursday, November 04, 2010
International Limerick Writers Month - my first contribution
Dean Whitbread initiated a month of limerick writing here
He wished to be the sole contributor but I had other plans.
Here is my first entry that I wrote about ten minutes ago.
An elephant from old Dungeness
Left his wife in a terrible mess
He packed up his trunk
And did a swift bunk
Now she's living off mustard and cress!!
more nonsense about mustard and cress from The Goon Show
The Mustard and Cress Shortage
Seagoon: Mr. Crun, British Railways want you to grow them six thousand acres of mustard and cress - in the Amazon.
Henry: Very well, I'll get my hat. Min!
Minnie: What did you say?
Henry: I'm just going to the Amazon.
Minnie: Be careful.
Henry: I'll be away for six years, Min.
Minnie: I'll put your dinner in the oven, Henry.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Why Boris's London hire cycle scheme may not be so great
Friday, May 21, 2010
A taste of Ireland.
Hungry shoes ate a cracked wheat biscuit and surrendered to the tarmac. sweet prospect of hitch hiking waits on unknown a-roads. Irish times cross the border with frozen beef in the boot, you're a star, you're a star. From Newry to Carlingford on a summer's day.
John Barleycorn must die. The buses are all done. Belfast has gone. Say goodbye to the redbrick. Hallo green grass and the placid blue sea.
Gossiping and stepping up and around town, there are fishing boats and some dead ends. But it costs ten pence to have your things put in a shopping basket. We step out onto the harbour wall. This is a heatwave. Dublin is not far away. But the taxi driver cuts a mean city in two.
So is that a windmill an old church a fairy glen or the sight of our mother in blue? Grottos are two a penny here.
I take a tumble and bring out the pac-a-mac.
Sure its getting moist now.
Very moist.
So when I say go, we'll go. Ok?
GO!
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Random Reading #3 from Techgnosis by Erik Davis
Here is a little video I just made.
It is part 3 in a very occasional series where I pick up a book and open it at a random page
and read.
This one is from Techngosis by Erik Davis
I'm not very professional at reading and this was a first take, but it may be interesting...
Hampshire Libraries to be decimated by proposed savage cuts
Hampshire UNISON reports:
Yesterday library management began consultation with UNISON and the other trades unions over their proposals for the Library Service Restructure, which if implemented would result in a total reduction of 65.32 full time equivalent (FTE) posts. By now you should also know what has been suggested. These proposals are much worse than we had feared, and we are very doubtful that the Library Service can be sustained if these savage cuts go ahead. There is no doubt that they wil result in a worse service for library users and extremely difficult working conditions for those staff that remain.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Concussion
I banged my head against a shelf in the darkness of the garden shed.
I didn't knock myself out but later that evening I began to suffer from mild concussion.
I felt anxious, I felt overwhelmingly and unusually tired.
The next day a headache kicked in and I went to a&e to see a doctor and make sure I wasn't about to
have a brain meltdown.
So anyway now I am chilling at home and here is a very basic electronic track I just put together very quickly whilst feeling pretty spaced out.
London 2 Glasgow
I recently became reacquainted with my old turntable.
So I decided to record some vinyl into a mix, well there is no mixing as I only have one turntable.
This was my first attempt from a couple of weeks ago.
It is mainly electronic music, but still has the Child Without An Ipod podcast flavour.
ie, there are some odd cheesy tracks as well as some classics.
It is called London2Glasgow as those were the two cities I lived in during the 1990s,
a time when I bought a lot of records.
I do have to get rid of some of my vinyl though, so if anyone wants that dreadful track with
the Police sample which is second last in this mix, just let me know and its yours!
Tecnical notes, I used a Behringer U-Control UCA202 to get the line in from my amp.
It is a great cheap littlee usb soundcard.
My old amp has a bit of a static problem so there is a bit of hum, but not really noticeable.
I used Audacity software to record the music.
Labels: podcast childwithoutanipod mp3 music techno
Monday, May 03, 2010
EVADING STANDARDS LONDON, FRIDAY 18 JUNE 1999
this is a lost page from my second website Matt King's Unbelievable Hype.
At the J18 demo in London there was a fake version of the Evening Standard being handed out.
I must have transcribed this article but I never put it online
EVADING STANDARDS
LONDON, FRIDAY 18 JUNE 1999
The Final Act Of Enclosure
One cold winter morning in 1997 Lord Simon, Minister for Competitiveness, awoke to find bio-activists in white coats in the back-garden of his Islington residence collecting samples of his pot plants and tagging his petunias with bar-codes. This was the day that Lord Simon was travelling to Europe to sign a directive allowing the caring, compassionate biotech companies to patent plant strains with engineered genes - of course for the 'good of mankind'. This was a huge leap in the concept of patents. No longer did companies or entrepeneurs have to invent something to patent; under the new concept, pioneered by the US and forced on the rest of the world by the WTO(World Trade Organisation), engineered strains of plants and animals could be converted to private property rights. Almost overnight life became an 'invention', a commodity, a product.Extravagant claims spin their way through the corridors of the biotech industry and, amplified by large sums of PR money, out into the public domain. On the other side the financially challenged NGO's and direct activists scrape together their resources and challenge the biotech giants head-on.But on the ground are farmers, who depend on strains of plants that have been gradually and painstakingly selected over about 10,000 years. The focus of the biotech giant's attention; the 'Third' (and majority) World. India for example, is home to some of the greatest genetic diversity in the world, much of which is found in their valuable crops as rice.Basmati is the champagne of rice varieties. It's distinctive aromatic flavour makes it a favourite in the US, Europe and the Middle East, netting India USDOLLARS 280 million in 1996-1997 and employing around a quarter of a million farmers. In september 1997 Rice Tec Inc ( a US based multinational) was granted a patent on Basmati "rice lines and to plants and grains". Their claim stemmed from a genetically altered strain. However it could ultimately extend to all strains of basmati rice producing the ridiculous scenario where basmati growers could violate Rice Tec's patent merely by continuing their traditional farming of rice.In India, unlike in the US, patents on life are not allowed. However, under the WTO's trade related property rights regime (TRIPs) all signatories are due to unify patent laws this year - consolidating corporate (and Western) control over the genetic diversity of the world. Under so much pressure from the public one woders why the UK government is so keen to support the biotech irms in their race to gain control and intellectual ownership of the world's food supply. Perhaps the Minister of Agriculture, Jack cunningham's words on the recent BBC Panorama programme hands us a clue. As he sat in the spotlight justifying the use of Genetically Modified Organisms, repeating industry rhetoric he eventually hit in the key: GMO's are good for the British Economy. In short the share prices of Zeneca ( a British based biotech firm) are more important to our repreentatives in the government than the will of the people.This is part of a wider process that has been taking place for centuries, from the enclosure of common land in England in the 18th century, to the claims now being made by corporations. From the local to the global, things that once belonged to all of us are being transformed into exclusive private property. Today a few powerful institutions are, in some sectors, virtually eliminating small business and securing all trade for themselves, turning public streets into guarded shopping malls, and life itself into a profit-making venture.
Matt King's Unbelievable Hype
The J18 Homepage
Sunday, May 02, 2010
I finally found my first ever website
Hey People, Get Ready To Relax.
____________________________________________________
Hi there. Sorry I have moved server. please click here to go to http://freeweb.digiweb.com/arts/webking
Well you know things are strange. Crosswinds my server for this page have speeded their act up, so I may use this page for a more relaxed laidback kind of vibe. So for serious pretentious arty bollocks you can go to that digiweb site up there. But if you wanna stick with me you'll get a regular update of rambling sprawl straight from the centre of London. So you can Email me at Mattyking@hotmail.com
Latest update 2nd of December 1998: Well my lovely Grandpa died the sunday before last. So I have been with the family up in Liverpool. He was a great man. You would have enjoyed meeting him. He was born in 1912 in Foley st, London. He lived in Fitzrovia, London, but spent the summers in Saint laurent a small village in rural France where his Father was from. His mum was a loving cockney. So as a child he was surrounded by his singing parents. He learnt all the French and Cockney songs of the time and he could still remember them eighty years later. At the age of 15 he became a cook on board the Cunard ships. The Mauritania took him to New York. He also travelled to many other parts of the globe on these ships, at a young age. This travelling stayed with him until the last years of his life. Anyway he wrote lots of memoirs about this early period of his life, and maybe I'll get permission to put it online because it really is worth a read.
CHECK OUT THESE LINKS!!
CYANOSIS
This is a page with some seriously fascinating essays for all you poetic-genius nutters out there.
SYSTEM-ZERO
This is the homepage of Cyanosis and also has unhinged arty stuff from San Francisco.
NETWORK 23
This is a techno/direct action/drugs/arts/fun/reclaim the streets kind of site with minizines spreading across the UK and the world!!
t0 PUBLIC NETBASE
This is a large site based in Vienna with many fascinating essays written by some deep thinkers.This is a live regularly updated picture of downtown sydney. My pals Matt and Hayley are there.
Brian Wilson Fan Art from the 1990s
Yeah, back in the early 90s we were buying cd bootlegs of smile and reading fanzines like Beach Boys Australia to find the latest news about poor old Brian Wilson who was being held under the care of Doctor Landy. Affectionately known to us as Wilsa, I made this cover inspired by a book that was being written at the time.
Collage from the 56k modem psychedelic internet 1999
I made this birthday card for a friend using the wonderful magical images I was finding online.
In those days you could download 64k intros which were 3d demos and then gaze in awe at the cool visuals
that would fit into such a tiny download.
I remember downloading lots of pictures of sunsets and lightning bolts.
Classic visionary art by Blake and Hieronymous Bosch were alll the rage.
Plus people were doing their own digital airbrush art, many of them influenced by narcotic intake.
Anyway I think this is pretty cool and I remember knocking it together pretty quickly.
There is also a pic of me in there somewhere.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Settler is the new single by THE EUROPEAN
THE SETTLER from THE EUROPEAN on Vimeo.
In this short video, we present the heroic/pathetic figure of The Settler as he wanders, lost and conflicted, through the jagged ruins of Modernism in search of some dimensional portal to the happy hunting grounds of the post-historic era.
The Settler is the new single by THE EUROPEAN
Released March 2010 by Stolen Recordings
Directed by Simon Break
Photography and lighting by Coco Asper Valdes and Paul Jones
All Rights Reserved
Sunday, October 25, 2009
LSD inspired sonic-vocal sample mix I found on the net
This mix took a long time to complete & is in the style of MILF WEED & part of the Drug Session mixes as volume 2: LSDisco. It's a small tribute to Albert Hoffmann (who died at 102 last week, RIP) & the acid generation.
It's a challenging bombardment of disembodied voices over ambient music, taken from the acid generation of the 50's & 60's. Starting off with Albert's Bicycle Ride, an audio representation of his accidental ingestion of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, we hear the sound of him peddling his bike towards the very first LSD psychedelic trip. Sounding like the bastard offspring of the KLF & the Orb, they are ambient & sound representations of what it might be like tripping.
Later in the mix we hear from Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, students involved in the laboratory tests & various authoritative voice overs appropriated from that era. A Paranoid Bad Trip gets captured by the CIA; the Hallucination Generation goes into Hippie Revolt & a classroom of high school students show No Fear discussing taking LSD & those freaky chromosomes. Colors become complete in a Monogramatic World. American Military troops (normal soldiers) loose control & laugh senseless into Alice Trenton's long trip into Acidland.
Like a LSD trip itself these "sound painting" sections seemed to want to wonder off in their own direction but I present to you a loose (rough) mix of LSD samples, appropriated from various DVD's & you tubes. There was plenty that could have gone into the mix & you may notice that I did not include many of the staple acts, The Stones, The Beatles (no Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) although Pink Floyd was heavily represented.
A big thank you to Celebrity Murder Party (CMP) for his collaboration on this mix. King Megatrip for sample contributions & Strictly Kev for his friendship & support.
Tracklist
(Alberts bike ride)
Sample: pushbike..train sound effect
Pink Floyd (Piano from Animals) (..grooving with a Pict) (Peddle steel guitar Dark Side Moon)
Pelican Daughters - The Bicycle Ride (CMP edit)
Genesis P-Orridge - talking about ambient sound representations
Genesis P-Orridge & Mr Leary - Thee spirirt of thee molecule
Voidware -Take LSD
Hawkwind - Space dust
Tangarine Dream - Pheadra
Ken Kesey..Terence McKenna
Irresistible Force - Wave form
(The Paranoid Bad Trip)
The Weird World of LSD,(1967)
Sample:Dewey Cox Story (Walk Hard)
Danny Ben Israel - Bad Trip
Love - Seven and Seven is
Todd Rundgren - Dogfight Giggle
Sounds of Haunted House
Drum and Bass Beats - CMP
Voiceovers from LSD and Mind Control Documentary
Todd Rundgren - International Feel
More Beats - CMP
Todd Rundgren - Flamingo
John Luther Adams - Shimmer
Ken Nordine - WordJazz (from podcast)
Rhys Chatham - Two Gongs
John Luther Adams - Velocities crossing in space
Cheech & Chong - Acid scene
(Hallucination Generation)
Hippie Revolt (1967)
Meat Beat Manifesto
Iron Butterfly - In A Gadda Da Vida
Ken Kesey (The Room)
Unkown 60's band - Acid
Woodstock Brown Acid
Godley & Creme - Consequences
Moody Blues - Legend Of A Mind
Dr Timothy Leary (Death)
(No Fear in the classroom)
No fear- CMP
voiceovers LSD Educational video
Pink Floyd (steel peddle guitar)
Chris Coco - Memory of a free party
(Monogramatic World)
Various people talking about the colours of LSD
Hot Chip - Colours
(The troops of the White Rabbit)
Ian Hunt - Troops on LSD
Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit (Jonathan Peters Mix)
Alice in Acidland (1968)
Stu Mitchell - LSD
http://www.divshare.com/download/4409598-b7e
Thursday, October 15, 2009
current British housing market ruminations
"They've [the bankers] achieved their aim - to fraudulently pump up house "prices" for 10-15 years by issuing Liar Loans, backed by CDO's & SIV's: THUS - The Genie is out of the bottle - house "prices" now = 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 [etc.] x single salary...
SO - only way to "afford" property now is for both husband & wife/partner to combine their earnings - and take out 30-40 yr mortgages of lifetime of slog incomes -- TO BUY THE SAME THING IT TOOK JUST ONE LOW INCOME TO BUY 15-20+ YEARS AGO......
This was all deliberate - The Moneylenders have prised the Genie out of the bottle.... Many people have fallen for it -- they now pay £200-400k for A SHOEBOX/DOG KENNEL, BRAINWASHED into thinking this is an "investment".....
THE question now is: WILL people continue to accept this? We have in many ways, got to STALEMATE. House buying turnover has halved [at least]: MANY people do not see WHY they should partake in this SCAM.
I.E. IT IS STALEMATE. As per usual -- it's down to - WHO BLINKS FIRST? The Buyer or the SELLER ..... ?
In the meantime - the PR Machine is PUMPING, PUMPING, PUMPING -- in the newspapers, 24/7 on the tv -- "Property prices only go up".... "Invest in property for the future"..... "Become a Property Millionaire".......... etc., etc., etc.
AND - The Moneylender[s]....? They're sitting in the wings, as per usual, sniggering away, rubbing their hands together in glee.... They control the politicians via the PR & Lobby Machine - MP's and BENT Lords in House of Lords table and/or amend legislation through parliament for them on the sly...... etc etc., etc., etc. "
tinker -
"I remember the property crash of the 90s, and that was before Liar Loans, and people got hurt, negative equity became currency.
But those price levels (and losses) mare nothing compared to the bubble created today (see HPC graph).
I looked on with disbelief wondering how prices could have risen so much, and how people could be so stupid and fall for it.
Pokey little 2up-2downs that had trebled in price over a few years. Absolute madness. All that interest - what a waste.
The bankers it seems will always find ways of relieving us of our money, too many are willing to acquiesce.
One salary
Then one and a bit
The two
Then increased multiples
Then increased terms
What next? Generational mortgages?
The madness will only stop when people stop plying the game, and say enough is enough.
This should be happening now, however, the powers that be have other ideas... "
Redhat Sly -
"In 1980 I tried to buy a house that was on the market for £4,500
I had to have a sit down talk with my bank manager. A Mr Stead at Yorkshire Bank.
I had a £2k deposit, a bond for £1k that matured about 4 months later which I wanted to sign over.
I wanted a loan for £1.5k
I was in full time employment earning £3k a year.
He refused! "
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
my recent trip to Switzerland
The March Hare Race
Saturday, August 22, 2009
home again home again jiggedy jig
this is a panorama shot of my kitchen/living room that I share with three others. I made the picture by automatically stitching together several photographs using a piece of free software called Hugin.
Its easy to use you should try it.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The chancellor's City surrender
What ?! They piled over $1300Trillion of derivatives on a base of mortgages they sold to people who barely had a pulse and zero income. They did it outside of a transparent market, over-the-counter. They lied and lied and lied. They even shorted the companies they sold the rubbish on to because they knew the junk would take them down. They lobbied for Glass-Steagall to be binned because they knew that what they were up to was a conflict of interest and all they had to do was to remove the legislation in their way. They decorated their balance sheets with assets that they themselves valued and called it "mark-to-model". Bookkeeping based on a lie. They took their worse crap off-balance sheet and offshore and sold and resold crap between themselves and the SIVs to create ever more "deposits" which they used as "collateral" for yet more borrowing and lending. Every time the penny came around they took "fees" and "commissions". This boondoggle inflated the money supply, robbed honest workers of their savings and because it was covered with layers of bookkeeping boolshite, distorted price and investment signals leading to malinvestment and misinvestment. Now they have collapsed the world.
And you think that is BORING banking ? Then what the hell is rampant, out of control , criminal, embezzeling, their noses in the coke bucket and their hands on your wallet. banking ?
This was no Black Swan , this was an organised crime who have as a last insult stolen what is left of the taxpayers' money and bailed THEMSELVES out and carried on paying themselves obscene "bonuses" as though nothing happend.
These BORING bankers need to be put on public trial for treason.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Glastonbury events - getting earthy on an early Sunday morning
So after a period of Spock mind melding with planet Earth, I left the peace tent and went up to the main fire by the stone circle.
Here gaggles of people were waiting for the sunrise. There was drumming going on but no dancing. A lass who had just wheelbarrowed a tonne of wood up and then hand lifted the great heavy lumps onto the fire decided to relax her weary body with a bit of a dance. I naturally joined in. After she left I moved into her spot next to the drummers and to the command of their silent gestures I stomped my feet in time to a particular rhythm. I let the ground really have it. Over and over and over again. In fact each time I stomped I could feel a whole mass of the earth vibrate - kind of like how the earth moves if you jump up and down on peaty ground.
So eventually in my addled mind I thought (in a Neil from the Young Ones moment) WOW they're drumming the drums with their hands and I'm drumming the whole planet Earth with my feet. This added to my enthusiasm and I transmitted a lot of energy. More and more people had started to dance so I felt Job done. I wandered off for more early hours adventures...
Friday, June 12, 2009
my band logos from last.fm
Thursday, June 11, 2009
prophetic article - the new poor
You have heard of the third-world debt crisis: now for the one in the first world. Ordinary people, up to their necks in debt, will bear the brunt while the rich get off scot-free
British and American consumers are obedient and compliant. When the central bank chiefs of America and Britain, Alan Greenspan and Eddie George, sidled up to them in the 1980s and 1990s, nodded and winked, they took the hint, and dutifully embarked on a binge of borrowing and spending. The nod and the wink were never explicit, but the easy money policies that deregulated lending, boosted credit card companies and lowered interest rates have provided the incentives for consumers (on declining incomes) to borrow like there's no tomorrow. That, consumers rightly calculate, is just what the powers that be want them to do.
And so debt has spiralled. By borrowing and spending, the middle-class consumers of the US and the UK, heroically and almost single-handedly, are holding up damaged economies, scarred by the bursting of asset bubbles such as stocks, telecoms and dotcoms. These bubbles, in turn, had their origins in the credit bubble created by central bankers and other deregulators.
But one group of people has stayed away from the party: the rich. According to the new annual report on the global econ- omy from the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the rich have declined to become heavily indebted, both in the US and the UK. They have sat idly by and watched as central bankers helped inflate a credit bubble, which then flowed into and fortuitously pumped up the value of assets, including property.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
a nice video
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
FLOW
In his seminal work, 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience', Csíkszentmihályi outlines his theory that people are most happy when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfillment, and skill—and during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored.[5]
In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."[6]
To achieve a flow state, a balance must be struck between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. If the task is too easy or too difficult, flow cannot occur.
The flow state also implies a kind of focused attention, and indeed, it has been noted that mindfulness meditation, yoga, and martial arts seem to improve a person's capacity for flow. Among other benefits, all of these activities train and improve attention.
In short, flow could be described as a state where attention, motivation, and the situation meet, resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
"Young Socialist" lets greed get the better of him
His group of investment companies called Level One owes 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) to creditors led by Credit Suisse Group AG, according to estimates by the German administrator. The two main holding companies defaulted and were placed under court administration in August, U.K. filings show, after the group bought 27,000 units of communist-era public housing in the former East Germany over three years, almost entirely with debt. read more
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
London Zoo
turnip prize or eurovision
hump the toaster
trevor mcdoughnut or alastair campbell
god save me from a Canonbury weeping willow
new river walk is a drain with poisoned ducks
the birds sat stiff and in a daze, what is in that water
a new river - a stagnant pool
and the weeping willows remember a better time
to be in Islington...
past the essex road
I get to the canal
I see a large opening
I'm listening to London Zoo
Angry sounds,
The guys fiddling with their longboats
Don't seem pleased to be there,
I gaze into the large opening,
A grand vista,
A rectangular pool of Canal water.
In the distance a half demolished building,
I can make out the insides of homes,
Spilling out.
A freeze frame of a dynamite demolition.
LONDON ZOO LONDON ZOO
What animals have escaped
and are roaming the streets?
piggies
sang a song of suckling
and this little piggy
rode a white swan
and this little piggy
in an english country garden
while this little piggy
gatecrashed a new cross squat
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
£20bn of public property to be sold off to finance banks bail-out
"the Banks are buying up our country with our money - they are transfering our assets to the Bankers (through corporations which the banks effectively own anyway through the title of the loans they advance those companies) - and get this - it is such a twisted wicked scheme that we get to fund the bankrupt banks to take our national assets as well.
This is the undoing of our democratic parliamentary system - this is the nature of the wicked schemers that lord over the people of the UK. "
Friday, April 10, 2009
Blog from an inter city train
Thursday, April 02, 2009
The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
how our leaders are propping up this sick system of rich bankers
Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.
What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.
Joseph E. Stiglitz
The whole Geithner plan stinks. It is even more of the same, socialising the losses and provatising the profits and Stiglitz is not the first to point out that this plan is just a way of robbing the taxpayer to get the nasty stuff off the banks' books without looking like pure nationalisation of the debt to the man on the street.
It is disgusting!
The fact that 90% of the population aren't rioting in the street suggests that the US public are bovinely cowed and stupid...or is it that a large portion of them believe that, given their obscene debts, this will work out well for them? Whatever the case the whole thing fills me with loathing of the whole system...there is absolutely no morality left. I see no reason to be honest and hard working anymore...none. I've more or less come to the conclusion that tax evasion is a moral duty. Boy are my kids going to get a different lesson about how to behave in society than what I did from my parents.
The only way to get these toxic assets off the banks' balance sheets in a fair way that does unduly encumber the taxpayer, is by allowing the banks to fail. Certainly there would be a certain cascade effect, but being "too big to fail" is absurd, and creates moral hazard - if a bank only borrowed and lent enough, it would put the taxpayer at its mercy by being "systemic". But the hopeless flailing around with obfuscation schemes designed to transfer the "systemic" risk to the taxpayer, is no less systemic once it sits uncomfortably on the public balance sheet, and given the globalisation in the finance industry and the politicisation of these decisions, are simply protectionist.
The Banks must be allowed to fail. The losses must be accepted by equity holders and bond holders. The fools must be parted from their money. It will hurt. It might even be seen as depressionary. But it will be over much sooner, the market will find its bottom, the point from which it can recover. However, a finance industry absolved of its utter failure, transferred to an overburdened and newly indebted taxpayer, is a recipe for a much longer and intractable depression.
Yesterday's demonstration in London is really just the tip of the iceberg.. The *ankers waving money from the windows is like the french gentry's behaviour just before the revolution.
This is the start.. Just wait until later this month when Brown ups the tax to extortionate new levels and by the end of the year, we are all watching our food and fuel skyrocket, and interest rates get hiked .. We are nearly at breaking point.. I think the majority of the population are in denial at the moment, but that will soon turn to anger and we WILL have civil unrest.
History does have a habit of repeating itself. Mark my words, please somebody.. quote me in 12 months time.!!
I'm a mild man but it's time for a fucking global revolution just to teach these fucks a lesson
Let me see if I follow here:
The banks lose trillions of dollars
The world's leaders steal our money to give them back the money they lost (not in order to replenish out lost pension funds and retirement funds, btw, but in order to replace their empty coffers since these banks were loaning out at a rate of 50 bucks for every 1 buck they actually had)
The world's leaders meet in London to discuss how to steal more of our money
We protest
And the police who are paid by our money beat the crap out of us.
In other words, we pay for the banks to lose money, we pay for the leaders to pay the banks, and we pay for the police to beat us.
Seriously, I'm a mild man but it's time for a fucking global revolution just to teach these fucks a lesson if nothing else.
british police tactics at g20 protest and protests in general
Stage 1: get in the way of marchers at the last minute (ie just before the BoE) and try and push them backwards in on themselves. Cut the crowd into managable 'chunks' using barriers and lines of officers. Prevent people from going down side streets. Prevent people from going in or out of certain areas. "Shape" the crowds into static lumps of a certain size and keep them there against their will, to demoralise the more 'casual' protestors. Shaping the crowd mans that no one section is more than a certain size. Keeping it static means that people can' choose where and how they protest, and allows stage 2 to progress.
Stage 2: Keeping this 'holding pattern', get increasingly kitted up and start rough-housing the crowd in sections - push them around pointlessly and start beating them, but don't let them leave. Further wears down and demoralises people and also provides the pretext for next stage...
Stage 3: The 'controlled release' phase - disperse the 'softer targets' in the crowd in small increments, by baton charging and pushing the crowd around, but now allowing some people to escape. Because people have been held so long most will immediately decide to go home at this point. On the way out they are intimidated and isolated so are easier to bully and instruct, less likely to join another demonstration. In effect the softer targets are bullied off the field of play.
Stage 4: The "Finish them off" phase - anyone who still remains is driven further together and can now be labelled as "the hard core" - by the fact they have remained (and ignoring that they have been penned in). At this point they can be baton charged repeatedly, the media will have run away and its too dark for decent footage, news deadlines have past and the remainder can be arrested, id-ed, searched etc.
This strategy is put in place beforehand, and enacted regardless of how peaceful people are. Anyone wanting to uncover the documentation and management of this by senior officers is told to get fucked on the grounds of operational secrecy, public safety and national security. The proof exists however by looking at even after event where the same thing is put into effect, regardless of people's "right to protest" or how well behaved people are.
Great country we live in, isn't it?
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone
"It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire."
This is quite a long article,
but very very interesting about how
the US Fed bank is secretly protecting
all the failed Wall Street players by pumping trillions
to them under the table. Democracy is dead in america,
the banks rule all.
This was apparent to us when we went on the J18 demo in the city of London all those years ago.
Now the UK and USA are confirming this.
These people are seen as untouchable.
Read on and find out more
Thursday, February 12, 2009
woah this is uncanny
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
I met the walrus
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.
Monday, February 09, 2009
bank bonus culture
I have heard too many comments on this site recently trying to convince us that the bonus is required because if it is taken away then talent will leave this country..........well the talents that were involved in the banks collapsing please leave the country......sorry if I am wrong but a bonus is meant to be an incentive to perform well....and they havent performed wll so no bonus....also if you want a bonus....then perform well otherwise you dont get one now your in public hands through your lack of ability to perform......if amateur economists on this site in their spare time could see the banks error 4 years ago then the talent at the top is a joke...........it really makes me sick all this talk of the great talent we have in our banks and that its justifiable to pay these bonus because of the "Nature" of banking and trading.......wrong........I would like to be there when one of these bankers goes to hospital to have an op.......to be cared for by a nurse on a wage which is a small fraction of his bonus........then for the nurse to pay her tax into his fat pocket for doing a job incompetently.....that is not justice do not try to dress it up as so........
FROM THE FINANCIAL TERRORISTS AT WWW.HOUSEPRICECRASH.CO.UK
Thursday, February 05, 2009
she
she loved me
she loves me
yet how could this be
we weren’t we were we?
maybe she was right
and men don’t know
I feel peace when I give her the right
to be right
so men don’t know
and in low moments
when empty hallway and dry toast is all
then yes
I can see
that she loved me
that she loves me
a dirty little road,
with picnic wrappers in the gutter
and I dawdle
but its dusty and gravelly and it turns and
veers over hills and disappears
I’d make more progress on a bicycle
but walking is my style
hold on there is someone else
hallo
hallo
and?
what
do you have something to say? I ask full of hope
yes
you may begin
blood flows blood flows blood flows blood flows
no time for a jedi teddy
can I borrow your mush eddie (machete)?
in this wonderful world
hold on
in this beautiful world
hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on hold on with a grip so tight
it dams my blood makes my head feel light
blood flow blood flow
hand eczema
Srtike out a coiling serpent poisoned umbrella handle.
Clasp tight scrolls and curves and wishes and spell burned autographs.
Curdle sweet memories in today’s horrorzone.
A pond of fear. How deep? How dark?
A tree stump, cut back too much, it never grew back.
They don’t wink at me in the morning.
A smile is a once monthly gift and usually with strings attached.
My real prize is painful skin,
I can’t grasp, couldn’t think of picking up the guitar.
Like the Singing Detective living in my right hand.
Curse you!
My name is not JOB.
Fuck OFF.
Testing out Windows Live Writer
I just found out about this blog writing tool.
Quite interesting I can see my words being written in the context of the blog.
So Let me try something out.
| Blog Posts | Blog Readers |
| 115 | 3 if you’re lucky |
Blue Bell Woods Video
Yeah feels pretty slick,
I have to stop now because my hand eczema is killing me.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Class C for Cannabis
free the weed
smoke on it people
a glass of red wine at night is fine
but smoke some draw and you will free yourself
and create - you will extend beyond the norm
do you trust their reasons for the drug upgrade to class B?
B for Bullshit
they want safe closed minds
B leave
C Love
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Big Phone, Tiny Penis
It runs a new operating syatem called Android.
It is an absolutely fantastic machine.
Never mind the fact that the country is riddled with more and more
powerful cancer/adhd inducing transmitters, usually located on the local creche roof, this phone is the mutt's nuts.
Its big and bulky unlike the apple iPhone.
But I always found the iPhone looked like some posh lady's cigarette lighter.
Something to slip out of your handbag in a cafe.
My googlephone is a bulky bastard.
Stuck in its leather holder it clips to the side of my belt like a
gun in a holster.
I'm not gonna taser anyone with it or chib them - it's not that aggressive.
What it has got that I couldn't do without is Buttons.
It has a full keyboard that slides out from the side and it has a rollerball for
navigation of the menus and browsers.
So what can it do?
Well I spent this week working out what groovy applications I can install on this thing. You can download these from the android marketplace built into the phone.
Music:
Streamfurious:
This simple online radio player can be filled with all shoutcast pls streaming stations of your choice. It comes with a built in selection , mainly techno and hiphop, but the world is your oyster when it comes to stations. It has BBC World service but I'm not sure that other BBC stations can be added as they are real media/windows media streams.
Last FM
A great player for the Last FM website where you can listen to your personal taste in music as well as others while reading about the artist playing and lining up future gig details - perfect/
Shazam
Most new sony erricson walkman phones can do what shazam does.
Identify the artist and title of a recorded song playing from an external sound source such as a car radio using the phone's microphone. Nifty if you missed the name read out by the dj.
GMote
This can be used to start music and video files on your home computer.
It acts like a remote control.
You will see a list of albums on the phone's screen. The files are on your pc's hard drive. Click on one and music comes out of the pc, incredible. It can also be used to stream those PC songs and play them on your phone. It has a nice interface which adds the album art to the background of the controller.
Ringdroid
Use this to slice a section from any of your mp3 files on the phone to create new ringtones or alert sounds.
Arnold sounds
Just a bit of fun . Phone a friend and play famous Arnie Schwazernegger quotes to him or her.
Communication Apps
Chomp SMS
Gives the screen a touchscreen keyboard for quick texting without unsliding the
hard keyboard. You also see a nice conversation style format of previous texts from the same contact scrolling down the screen.
HulloMail (UK only at the moment)
A visual voicemail app.
This syncs with your email account and sends you an email with a small mp3 file with
the sound of your voice message on it.
It is all accessible from the phone using the HulloMail app or by checking Gmail (which I use).
By the way there used to be a service like this back in 1999. I would get land line voice messages sent to my email for free while I was otherwise enagaded surfing the net with my 56k modem.
Google Mail/ G Talk/ Calendar
Being a google phone these apps are already installed.
I already use all three so it is quite handy for me.
Apps that use GPS Global Positioning
Qype Radar
This is great. Find out where nearby pubs, restaurants, places of interest etc are in your local vicinity, works very well and includes reviews and a link to a map.
Loads of content here in the UK.
Various barcode scanner shopping apps like Shop Savvy
I haven't really tried these. You can scan a barcode of an item in a shop and see
how much it costs elsewhere, newrby or online.
Camera
You can add your gps data to photos you take. Later when you upload to
a site like flickr, you can view all your photos positions on a map.
SkyMap
Out and about where the sky is clear at night?
Use this app to help identify the constellations above.
Other stuff
Wifi Scan
Find hotspots when you are out and about for faster data access that
is also outside of your phone contract's data limit.
Steel
A great browser with a touch screen keyboard.
Video player and Youtube for your mob vid needs (if you have them)
Sticky
Create sticky notes. There are other "to do list" and notes apps that I haven't tried yet.
PixelPipe
This is great for uploading photos to any of your online accounts
such as flickr blogger and facebook.
Send to all at once or choose your selection.
There are a few games out there too nothing that amazing,
but enough to waste time if that's your thing.
I mainly love the music apps,
Last FM and StreamFurious.
This phone doesn't yet have any apps to read and write office documents like
windows mobile phone's do.
It's not a business phone and
it's not a pure consumer phone either.
One for the geeks with small gonads I reckon so count me in!
I'm impressed!!
edit to add:
textonphone
this is a really brilliant app,
download ebooks in a really great sharing community
environment, then read them on your phone.
This app is really well developed, check it out,
I think its fabulous!!!!