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metrocentric
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| NoMyNa |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|06:30 pm] |
I was asked earlier this week, by a visitor, 'what do people do here for Thanksgiving?'. An awkward question, in so many ways. I responded approximately that we didn't observe the festival, but that the extra day off work would be nice.
Of course, we don't practice Thanksgiving: instead we've a fundamental sense that we're entitled to all of this to begin with and that it's not all that fantastic anyway. Or maybe that's just me.
I suppose 'Harvest Festival' is similar - a few tins of baked beans and Mr Smedley's prize marrow from the allotment dumped by the font like a socially embarrassing Ocado delivery. That's as close as we get.
But then I looked up the origins of this Thanksgiving business and encountered the Pilgrim Fathers. An insufferable bunch of gits. Outcasts from the East Mids: they were actually Too Dull for Lincolnshire. They'd sit in the pub over a glass of orange juice all evening, if you could even get them in there. Throwing paddies about anything looking like fun. Limited sense of humour. It's said they were so uptight you could bend them over and use them as pencil sharpeners. Good thing we got shot of them.
So we, as a nation, do have something to be thankful for. Cheers to the Native Americans, for taking the puritans off our hands. You must have had the patience of saints. We're much obliged to you for the tolerance and hospitality you have shown. Particularly given how things turned out. You know, the smallpox and so on. If you're ever over here we'll buy you a drink. You'll probably need one by now. Thank you. |
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| Léon Halévy, 'La Chaussure' 1855 |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|11:42 pm] |
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This people, whose head and hand you fear,
Must march, must march - no halting!
It's when you stop their steps
They notice the holes in their shoes. |
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| Hi hi, polizei! |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|11:10 pm] |
Rulers have a great aversion to violent changes. They want everything to stay the same - if possible for a thousand years. If possible the moon should stand still and the sun move no farther in its course. Then no one would get hungry any more and want dinner. And when the rulers have fired their shot, the adversary should no longer permitted to fire; their own shot should be the last.
Bertolt Brecht, Fünf Schwierigkeiten beim Schreiben der Wahrheit. 1935
(compare to now, a disorientation of constant change, hunger for and plenitude of the new. And the adversary allowed tremendous quantities of dud ammunition through free speech, consultation and voting) |
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| Valid by any reasonable route |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|09:06 pm] |
The multi-storeyed and bland new buildings that make up an extension to Battersea Dogs' Home. A questing muzzle heart-breakingly visible at the bars of one room, but otherwise strongly reminiscent of an Ibis chain hotel.
Bromley South, this is Bromley South. Recent tagging on the inner wall of the bridge at the country end of the platforms. The usual tightly squiggled signatures, then in the same script but clearly legible: 'VOTE LIB DEMS'.
Sittingbourne. A goods train consisting of many low yellow trucks coasts to a halt, its engine still visible at a far signal. The signal changes to green and, without any apparent ceremony of uncoupling, the maroon EWS diesel sets off, leaving its charges behind: an errant parent making swift escape. |
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[Nov. 18th, 2009|06:27 am] |
"Have you ever noticed that a section of sky seen through a vent or between two chimneys or two rocks, or through an arcade, gives a more profound idea of the infinite than a great panorama seen from a mountaintop?"
Charles Baudelaire, writing to Armand Fraisse, 19 February 1860 |
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| On the other hand, proper buses back on the 38, so it's not all a bag of shite |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|07:24 pm] |
It's probably not war, famine, torture, or poverty. It could be a deeply crass press release, a young man wearing oversized sunglasses, the insensitive location of Abercrombie & Fitch on the street behind the RA, the over-vivid colours used in daytime television studios. Or none of these. This will vary from one observer to the next, it's subjective. Something that makes you think: 'how did this happen?'. Later, familiar with a thought now prompted by new examples, a wearier: 'how did this happen?'.
As if through understanding comes reconciliation, a calming knowledge that this must be, would always be, the product of circumstances, as inevitable as the final character in an equation. But it doesn't work like that.
Because learning how it came to pass only brings knowledge of the malaise which is both cause and context of the symptom. It's everywhere, all around us, latent. Now everything is tainted. Far better not to know. |
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[Nov. 15th, 2009|08:00 pm] |
"How much I admire those men who decide to be shut up at night in a museum in order to examine at their own discretion, at an illicit time, some portrait of a woman they illuminate by a dark lantern. Inevitably, afterwards, they must know much more about such a woman than we do."
Andre Breton, Nadja, 1928 |
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| Get him dear, he's going bold again! |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|07:08 pm] |
Walking home I recalled a workshop on Risk. Those gathered were asked to draw an example not from the working environment, but from life. One of our number suggested: what if you went to the zoo and there were no animals?
For this he was later derided in some quarters, which I thought awfully unfair, in all sorts of ways. I shall deal here with only one of them, validity.
Had those derisionists ever been to a zoo? In February? In light rain? It's been a while since I last visited any site of curated zoologica, but I do recall a distinct lack of essential components. It's as if the prisoners are all on day release.
Barren compounds in which the most compelling feature is a stone. Aviaries as described by Rachel Carson. Tanks kitted out with sun lamps beating relentlessly down on cold-blooded nothingness. Aquaria containing nothing more than brackish water and a column of bubbles. This is probably why structures like penguin pools win architectural awards, because the little characters in the dinner jackets are all out of sight, behind a door, huddled, hiding from view - so one is forced to admire the cantilivered ramps, etc.
So I'd say Likelihood is High and Red, but so is Impact. Particularly at weekends. Lacking inmates to gawp at, the visitors are forced to fall back on other topics of discussion and forms of entertainment as they tour the place. Those impacted upon include:- Blokes with access day offspring for whom the cohabitation arrangements of a pair of aardvarks might form a useful entrée to enquiry about whether mummy has any new special friends yet.
- Recently formed couples picking their way around conversational landmines of hitherto undiscovered incompatibility, who require the distractions a listlessly masturbating marsupial can provide.
- The welcome diversion an oryx rampant presents to persons trying to spend a whole afternoon without shopping, eating, gambling, boozing, e-mailing her or him.
- The jaded old roué for whom only titillation time at the ocelot enclosure remains a sufficently stimulating debauch.
- The salve by exemplar provided by the slow loris to a man who is wagging off work today, bunked off yesterday too, and is going to keep up this pattern of absence until they sodding well sack him.
So, it's the riskiest risk there is. From the four am frettings of the compulsive worrier to the register, forward look and horizon scan of corporate captainship, there's nothing like that 'no animals in the zoo' scenario. |
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| In partnership with key stakeholders we took the matter forward to a satisfactory conclusion |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|07:08 pm] |
Locations were shuffled about in my office recently. Things were 'restacked'. To assist the move process various items - computers, their screens, chairs, desks, have been marked with labels. These labels appear all the same colour: a slightly pinkish orange, a confectionery hue, not pleasing to the eye for more than a moment. As well as sundry encoding - floor, zone, floorbox numbers - they bear the name of a colour, and these names vary.
These colours are not primary. For instance: tangerine, primrose, pistachio. It's as if the 'I am Curious' series had re-awakened, swiftly run through the primary points on the spectrum and was now some way into describing the secondaries.
The pc I usually use has a label too, which I see every day when I switch the thing on. It reads '7 - C3 - 232/4', and on the next line down, 'VANILLA'. As if to describe the contents. Dismissively. |
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| Things that have been around for ages but that I somehow missed. |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|08:04 pm] |
Wireless doorbells.
I'm familiar with the gradual passing of the traditional doorbell, enabled by mobile phones and hastened by many buildings being subdivided into multiple households without proper attention paid to services held in common.
I didn't realise that, of those that remain, some of those little buttons are simply adhered to the door frame, without wiring connecting them to apparatus for buzzing, chiming and ringing within the residence. The signal from doorstep to interior alert-sounding equipment simply passes through the ether.
I'm told these have been around for ages. I had no idea. What will they think of next? |
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