penguin – Page 52 – Fooyah

February 23 2014February 23 2014

Rock Identity

For practically all my life I have been a fan of heavy metal. See this communication about my descent into metal.

For me the 80s were filled with early flirtations with pop, from Madonna to Frankie Goes To Hollywood and then into Heavy Metal and Rock. I love Iron Maiden and AD/DC following on from Bon Jovi and Def Leppard in 1987. Come the very late 80s and early 90s I descend into thrash with Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax. I see these bands regularly along with new British metal bands such as Wolfsbane and The Almighty.

During university I don’t really expand my musical tastes a great deal. My major discovery (via Smith) is Senser and their cross-over political rock and rap. This sustains me for a few more years along with Alice In Chains.

My music buying diminishes as I start my career and I don’t really get into new bands for a few years. I don’t have a network of friends who can inform me of new things and I don’t live in London. I spend a number of years sustaining myself on the stuff I already own. I still see bands like Iron Maiden and Slayer when they come along, but nothing small or new.

In the early 2000s someone gives me her Rammstein CDs (Sara T) and I find the sound fascinating and new. It’s exciting. Along with seeing Slipknot perform on the TFI Friday television programme I have found something new. Something a little scary and something that seems dangerous. All the music I have grown up with seems rather tame in comparison to these new sounds. I played them over and over. Until around 2009 not much happened until Smith returned from abroad and he and I started attending gigs and concerts together again.

In 2009 I saw two bands. AC/DC at Wembley Stadium and I loved it. They were brilliant and I their music has brought me so much pleasure over the years [so much so that I wore out my musical cassette version of “If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It”]. The other band I saw that year was Rammstein. Their stage show is just absolutely brilliant. If you don’t believe me then just search YouTube for “Buch Dich”, it is quite brilliant, a little bit dangerous and something to cause moral outrage amongst the leading classes. The support band for Rammstein was Combichrist and that is when the trouble started.

After hearing Combichrist and being impressed with their sound I ordered a CD.

Today We Are All Demons

This music was exciting, different, morally dubious, scary and just damn brilliant. It made me want to dance (something I just don’t do). The big problem was that there were NO GUITARS and it was all SAMPLES and DRUM MACHINES. For someone who likes his music live and reproducible without machines this caused major issues. Why did I like this? Was I going insane? How can I like music with a complete lack of heavy guitars and bursting riffs? I was at the tip of the mountain staring down a great big slippery slope to the valley of “not real” music [as far as my metal head would tell you].

I bought more Combichrist stuff and started to look at their influences and associated acts. I bought more. Bands like:

Aesthetic Perfection
Reaper
Suicide Commando
Funker Vogt
Hex-Rx
Panzer AG

Pretty much all of this is what I would now call EBM, Aggrotech or Hellektro. These names are good because it means I am back on the edge of society and seeking to be different with my music. When Metallica took the world by storm in 1992 or so I was done with them. Their sound had changed and I didn’t like it any more. The “edge” had gone. This new music I had found has an edge. It makes me feel uncomfortable [sometimes] and it is different.

I have tried to describe it to friends and I say:

It’s heavy metal without any guitars. The lyrics are nasty and the tunes are awesome.

It’s kinda dance music but without the nice lyrics and happy stuff.

I have leant this stuff to friends who like the same sort of metal as me and they don’t really get on with it. They apologised and handed back the USB stick. That’s fine by me because it means I can carry on feeling “on the edge” and liking the music. This stuff ain’t ever going to be mainstream. It sometimes sounds like it should be playing in a night club on a Saturday night but then I have no idea what sort of stuff these people would play. I’d love to be in a club and hear this stuff come on and the crowd just freak out because it hurts them.

I am struggling to come to terms with my new found musical taste. It irks me that I’ve gone for samples and drum machines. I’ve been to see these people play. I’ve liked their music. I’ve had a great time. Yet still the 18 year old me is somewhat miffed at this odd turn in my ear pleasures. As an extreme I have seen a “band” with three Apple Macs on stage and a few leads and then they danced around pressing the odd key here and there. I loved it. There’s a tiny part of me that isn’t sure it’s music but I like it anyway. Over time I’m sure I’ll heal this mental riff. Much like I’ve got used to being a university snob when at the age of 17 I hated that person!

If you want to try this stuff then have a look for the following tracks:

190 – Reaper
X-Junkie – Reaper
Hit The Streets – Aesthetic Perfection
In The Pit – Combichrist
God Bless – Combichrist
Tip The Dancer – Panzer AG

I am now listening to more industrial stuff. The following bands are on my current active list:

Faderhead
Eisbecher
Rotersand
Front 242
VNV Nation

My metal taste buds are still there. I watched Mentallica last night. I went to Download last year. I’m going to see Therapy? and FFDP soon. However, this Hellektro is here to stay and just wonderfully stunning: suck on that 18 year old me!

February 17 2014February 17 2014

Chimney Balloon

I’ve lived in my house for nearly ten years. It’s an old house (built 1880) and a Victorian terrace. The back of the house overlooks fields and woods all the way to the paper mill at Aylesford. There’s always steam (or smoke – less pleasant but it’s probably steam because a lot of water is used in paper stuff) of some kind spewing from the mill.

Mostly the wind comes from the south to west in the South East of Great Britain. This means it travels freely over the open area at the back of my house and then strikes my house nearly front on.

In the map the long thin blue bit is a river (tidal section of the river) and the big blue bits are quarry lakes.

The wind hits the back of the house. This causes high local pressure while over the house the wind continues moving creating a low local pressure (Bernoulli Principle). Most of the gaps in my house are at the back of the building. This means that the wind flows through these gaps and exits through the largest hole in the house which is the chimney, which has a lower pressure at the top!

This situation caused draughts and noise even when there was a slight wind.

One day I got “Google happy” and just searched for a chimney balloon. I don’t know what prompted me to search for this, I may have searched for “chimney draughts” first and then found the chimney balloon. Who know? Google and Chrome but I’m not going to spend my time looking through my history.

I ordered a chimney balloon from Amazon. It’s a plastic bag that I inflated in the chimney pipe. It blocks the chimney. It stops the draughts. Simple. I’m impressed with what a simple solution it is.

The one draw back is that it has also made the dining room really quiet. I can no longer hear the outside world. This is very strange but something I’ll get used to. There were some serious winds recently and I only knew about them when I went into the bathroom (it is at the back of the house), the dining room was that quiet. Also, my feet no longer get really cold when I sit in the dining room as there is no draught (or rather minimal draught now).

February 16 2014February 16 2014

The Monuments Men

A Nice Little Film

These are the words I text Smith just after seeing this film. I really enjoyed it. If this film had a purpose then it showed man’s duty to protect culture and the importance that should be placed on it. It also showed camaraderie and dedication to a cause that is “just”.

You quickly forge the cast and the “big” scenes seem to just fit but I can see that they took a lot of work. The film had scenes from the Normandy Landings to Paris, the Battle Of The Bulge, St. Lo, etc. To get the “look” of the film right was a huge amount of work and probably un-noticed by most.

There were no overblown heroics and I had expected some time spent on “basic” training with the laughs thrown in but this was avoided too. As I said earlier:

A Nice Little Film

I now have some more places in Europe to visit. I have been to Bruges but I didn’t know that the statue of the Madonna and Child was there. Time to return I think. I will say one thing and I have to blame the culture of the 1980s: I was half expecting some of the cast to find or say they were searching for the “Fallen Madonna With The Big Boobies”. Such was the influence of ‘Allo ‘Allo on my childhood. Damn!

I did watch a trailer for this and I’m pretty sure that there were a few lines in the trailer that weren’t in the main film. That’s good. I hate seeing all the “big” bits of a film in a trailer and then the actual film fails to overcome my expectations. Comedies struggle with this, they put the funny lines in the trailer and then there’s nothing left for the main film. An exception to this was The Heat with Sandra Bullock. I didn’t see this at the cinema because it looked as though they had put all the funny bits in the trailer. I was wrong. This film had me laughing out loud ALL the way through. It was far better than the trailer.

Rant:

I really should try and avoid films the first few days that they are released. People in the cinema with loud sweet packets are REALLY ANNOYING. I nearly turned around and told these people to “fuck off”. Any food taken in to the cinema should be something that is quiet to eat or access. There is no need to take noisy packets of food into a cinema. It just shows what anti-social pricks you are. If you want to eat food while watching a film do it at home. You are probably too fat anyway and so shouldn’t be eating more food anyway.

End of rant.

February 13 2014

CopyTrans Manager

For quite a while I have found iTunes to be thoroughly frustrating. It has issues with my music collection, randomly adds songs I’ve deleted and doesn’t like updating the artwork on my albums. iTunes also takes an age to synchronise my phone and when it does it fails to update artwork, copy playlists or new songs across to my phone. It seems to be a pretty bad and bloated piece of software. I don’t use iTunes to back up my phone and rely on the cloud for that, which I am thankful for as iTunes probably wouldn’t cope very well with it.

I searched the internet thingy and found a free piece of software called CopyTrans which has a suite of iPhone utilities. I was rather hesitant about using it as it could really mess things up. Would it work with iTunes and my phone and help me do the following:

Edit my playlists on my phone without me having to add songs one at a time?
Update the artwork on my phone without me needing to delete the songs and then load them again?
Copy music onto my phone quickly and efficiently?
Actually read my phone database and allow me to edit it (kind of)?

I do still need iTunes but only to manage my playlists on the NAS drive as that is where my Sonos system reads the files. I guess I could use a completely different music manager but iTunes works well as long as I don’t connect my phone to the PC (which is kinda the point of the software).

I downloaded CopyTrans and started it up. The Manager part of the suite is free to use. I was quite wary of doing this. I love my music and have spent ages making sure I have the songs I want and the correct artwork. It’s quite a time investment.

“Connect Your Phone”

CopyTrans wanted my phone. I connected it and waited. CopyTrans read my database and a song list appeared on my computer. I tried to copy some new songs across to my phone.

IT WORKED

AND QUICKLY

I tried editing a playlist – easy. I even tried making sure my artwork was up-to-date (I had noticed two albums only had artwork on the first song), this was really easy and IT WORKED.

The online help files are really good. It all seems so easy.

CopyTrans you have made my life a lot easier and I am thankful. I hope millions read this and use your software, but unfortunately this website only gets ~270 hits a month. More people should use CopyTrans.

Confession – I have absolutely nothing to do with CopyTrans. I just think their software it worth a mention here.

February 12 2014February 13 2014

Football Chat

I was sitting in the staff common room the other day and chatting to a female member of staff when another male member of staff came in.

Ian, I was at the ‘Stones match last night”

This was an interesting comment. Firstly it was directed at me and not me and the female in the room. It was also about football and the local team Maidstone United.

Now, I really don’t do association football. I just don’t find it interesting. I’m happy to go to a match and I have seen a few premiership teams play [Southampton, Everton, Tottenham and whomever Spurs were playing]. Watching the match live is an experience and one I enjoy but on the whole, football [or association football as I insist on calling it] just plain bores me. I really don’t understand watching it on television. I also don’t really follow it. I pick bits and pieces up from the radio in the morning and I have a working knowledge but not enough to have a major “bloke” conversation.

I do have a team: Tottenham Hotspur. I have this team for the simple reason that my father and other family members support them. That’s it. Geographically this is a good choice as I grew up in Essex but my ancestors are from the east end of London and so any of the north east London teams would be a good choice [except Arsenal, as much as I don’t care the ‘Spurs thing runs deep]. I keep an eye on the scores and results of ‘Spurs matches, that’s about it. I find it hard to get fanatical about the England team when they enter big competitions as it all seems rather jingoistic and I have issues with the English “identity” [more on that another time].

So, back to the conversation starter:

Ian, I was at the ‘Stones match last night”

This would have been better directed at the female in the room for all I cared. But I was now stuck in a quandary. Should I say:

Sorry, I don’t really do football. Could we talk about the NFL?

What I ended up doing, and in my head I could see the IT Crowd episode when they learn how to talk “football”, was say:

Oh, how was it? I heard they were doing well in the league.

This formed the basis for a conversation that I had no interest in completing or taking part but words were exchanged and as much as I wasn’t fussed I think the other person felt we had a meaningful exchange. I felt a little more “bloke”. Funny how it’s assumed that I must know about a particular topic because of my sex. Now, if everyone had read my twitter profile, that might help!

February 12 2014February 16 2014

Robocop

I saw this at the local IMAX. I knew nothing about it when I went and only a vague memory of the original film and thinking it was a good film.

This film was a 12A certificate. The original was an 18 (and directed by Paul Verhoven). So, it was clear that there was not going to be the same amount of violence or language involved in the new film.

[Note: I have since watched the original again and the new film stinks in comparison to the old one (which I consider a classic, probably due to where it appeared in my lifetime)]

Overall, the new film was rubbish. There were some nods to the original but they were poorly done. The news-caster opening the film and being generally very republican and Fox News about it all was there in the original but more cleverly done 20 years ago. I don’t think the news section added a thing to the film whereas it gave a much better view of the future world in the earlier version.

The original film had more menacing corporate politics, more menacing criminals and a far better plot line. This latest version of the film was too politically correct. Murphy’s wife gave consent for him to be turned into Robocop in this film and knew about him. When Robocop tries to overcome his programming in the new version we just see him flash loads of video over his display. In the original you can see a man dehumanised and then struggle with memories and his inevitable return to humanity. His wife and child have gone. He’s left alone. The original film makes more of the “struggle” to overcome his computer identity.

To improve the new film there were certain aspects that needed to be included. Murphy spinning his gun after shooting is surely a pre-requisite. That and the ED-209 saying “you have 20 seconds to comply”. I missed these as I thought they were certain shoe-ins.

So, as a film for the latest generation who can’t cope with the 80s excess this is a very neutralised version. Less language, less nasty. It’s a shame, but then they probably wouldn’t make any money if it was an 18 certificate.

The final scene of the film, much like this final paragraph, was a waste of time.

February 6 2014February 13 2014

Lone Survivor

It’s an American war film made with plenty of US military backing.

It was interesting to see a war film in the cinema again after such a long time. It was ok. It was trying to play on the heartstrings. Clichéd it was. I got the idea that the SEALs were hard and “superhuman” from the opening and after that the action went on to prove it. The result of them following the rules of engagement was lots of pain and death, but we have rules of engagement for a reason.

Ultimately this film fails to deliver any critical view of a “just” war (hence the military backing) and just provides action based on real events with photos of people who are now dead as a coda.

Entertainment this is. Art or discussion forming it is not.

January 29 2014February 13 2014

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh

I don’t understand the logic or reason behind this:

My questions are:

What colour would 54.4% be?
What colour would 59.15% be?
What colour would 64.5% be?

Why are they coloured using whole numbers to differentiate the boundaries and then why tenths for the light blue-ish colour?

Ohhh, I think I get it. Because the national average is 59.2% that means it’s ok to have three colours below that and only two above it.

Does this chart say that no local authorities managed to get the average but some were below it and some were above it?

There are about 52 areas below average. There are way more (I got bored of counting) above that. Does this mean there is positive skew?

Do you know what?

I CAN’T TELL FROM THIS DIAGRAM. IT TELLS ME NOTHING OF ANY USE.

January 18 2014

I Don’t Get It

About five years ago there used to be three or four burnt out cars by the footpaths surrounding my village. The were rusty and were old, plants had grown in them and I couldn’t see a track or pathway to get them there. At some point there was a clean up and the footpaths and surrounds were back to a more natural look.

This morning on my run up the Downs and down them again I found a freshly burnt out car. It was still smoking. I don’t understand why someone would do this. I really don’t. It’s not that I care for cars, I just don’t get why you drive a car to a relatively quiet spot and set light to it. Seems pretty shit to me.

Here’s the route I ran:

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRun

Here’s the car I found along Common Road at the top of the Downs.

Possibly a Vauxhall Corsa. I don’t really care.

January 17 2014February 13 2014

Lunch

Thanks to the 309 Twitter feed this is a picture of me from quite a while ago. I’m the twat in the hat.

A nice lunch on the cantilever many years ago! #30yearsof309 pic.twitter.com/R157u01GxW

— 309 Air Cadets (@309atc) January 17, 2014

January 17 2014January 17 2014

The Railway Man

I normally don’t wait too long before writing these “reviews” of movies in case my opinion is coloured by talking it over with other people. “Review” is a rather loose concept. I write exactly what I think. It doesn’t mean anything in the real world.

The Railway Man was a good film. Much like “12 Years A Slave” everyone should watch this. The brutality of the Japanese army and what they did to the slaves they used to build the railway through Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) is terrible. Everyone should understand how man can treat man if he is conditioned to do so [see Evil below].

Ultimately this film is not as much of a downer as “12 Years”. The theme running through the film is the terror of war and how people are affected by post traumatic stress disorder. BUT the ultimate theme of this film is forgiveness. This is surely man’s greatest asset. The ability to forgive, not to forget but to understand the terror of other times and then to forgive and allow peoples to work together to reconciliation. We are not different as human beings. Whichever part of the world you come from, whatever your religion (or none), whatever your abilities, whomever you support in sport and whatever the colour of your skin (and all the other different ways we segregate ourselves) we are the same. We are NOT different races. We have different cultures. We are raised differently. In the end, however, most of us would forgive and learn to live with our mistakes and work to correct future issues. Ultimately I believe that humans should and eventually will do good for each other.

To be good to each other we have to overcome inbuilt prejudices. We are tribal creatures and fiercely territorial. We want to be in gangs and to feel surrounded by people who think the same as us. We are animals who yearn for togetherness and knowingness of familiarity. To trust and like others we have to leave behind eons of evolution and hard-wiring in our brains. We have to constantly battle our thoughts and work to make sure that we can be the best we can and do good to others.

We would not fight and kill and maim each other if we could all sit around a camp fire and chat and make food for each other, become a single society. Religions, governments, sports teams, schools, villages, music, politics, practically all aspects of human behaviour involves us being in “like” groups” and forces us to “be on one side or the other”.

I repeat: We are all the same. We are not races.

Human beings need to get together and sit. Face to face. Talk. Consciously overcome the inbuilt prejudice and work together. Work together for the common good. To make the world a better place for the entire human race.

Look around the corporations and governments and see if you see that happening anywhere. I would be most surprised.

If we can learn to forgive and learn to listen to each other and help each other then we might have a chance on this little rock orbiting the Sun.

Hmm. That went a little left-field. Oh well.

After watching this film I read a comment on IMDB. The person said in the “trivia” section that the film uses the compressed time technique as in reality it took a couple of years between meeting and marrying. Apart from a few special films I think all films use compressed time. Does this commenter write this is all film trivia sections?

The film uses compressed time to speed up the story. Eric Lomax and Patti Wallace did meet in 1980, but in reality they didn’t marry until 1983. Eric didn’t learn that Takashi Nagase was still alive until 1993, and they finally met in 1995.

Evil
This should really be a longer communication by itself and maybe I will write one someday. For now I would like to say that I don’t like the media describing someone as “evil”. Considering the world is over seven billion humans there is plenty of scope for all manner of people. Most will fit into the constraints of society and some will not. Some people do terrible things because they don’t know any better, these people should be helped. Everybody else probably does terrible things because of greed or jealousy and many other reasons. These people are probably quite rational and know that what they are doing is wrong and so they should be punished within the bounds of what that society thinks is suitable. By society here I mean the laws of the land [as agreed by elected representatives] and not just what the victims think should happen, perhaps that is another communication to write: The problem of laws and society.

I am not claiming that this is a complete dichotomy. I am oversimplifying the issues to make a point. My basic view is that people either do bad things and know they shouldn’t or a smaller proportion of people do bad things and don’t know any better.

When people who commit terrible crimes are labelled as EVIL by the media it infers that these people are not rational. That these people have been inhabited by EVIL and it has been there since birth. EVIL is a religious term. EVIL means it’s ok to seek revenge in a terrible manner as there is nothing that can be done for that person. EVIL means we don’t have to examine the REASONS behind what that person did. We don’t have to look for excuses, we don’t have to seek rational arguments why they behaved that way, we can just accept that they are EVIL and should be treated as such. Labelling people as EVIL removes the responsibility to ask why and allows us to ignore reasons why.

This whole communication came from the Japanese doing terrible things to other people during the second world war. Should the wrong doing be punished? YES. Did some of the soldiers enjoy what they did? YES. Were many soldiers acting on orders and their society telling them to be brutal? YES.

Should we forgive and understand? Most Definitely.

Out of all this we must LEARN and REMEMBER what happened. We should aim to become better people. We should aim to do good for all.

Once again. We are ONE human race. We are the same.

January 13 2014February 13 2014

12 Years A Slave

This is a very powerful film. It was very hard, as a “modern” person with mostly liberal values and also someone who has no belief in god but believes we should do good to each other, to understand that this film was mostly true. The treatment of the millions of people who were considered slaves and of those who are slaves in our current times is shocking.

It is hard to imagine a time when the LAW of a land allowed the OWNERSHIP of people by other people. This film should be seen by everyone, it should be required viewing, it is very good.

It was interesting to see the stylistic additions to the film. The long shots of the Louisiana countryside and calming times of clouds. This was in stark contrast to the violence and conditions within which the slaves were kept.

In one scene a female slave is whipped. This is a graphic scene. My emotional reaction to this was far more than my reaction to the similar scenes in the film The Passion Of The Christ. I think I reacted more because this happened to real people over and over in a barbaric system of legalised slavery. The mutilation of Christ in the Mel Gibson film didn’t bother me. There’s not a great deal of evidence for it [in fact there isn’t any good evidence for the existence of Christ himself].

Overall this is a film worth seeing or if you don’t want to see it you should be forced to.

January 13 2014January 13 2014

How You Know

The picture shows the window from a local “osteopathy” practice. One day I will go into the shop to ask them about their various practices. However, for now, I shall rely upon the scientific evidence for the following treatments.

This shop purveys:

Osteopathy
Homoeopathy
Allergy Testing
Chiropody
Beauty Therapy
Massage
Sports Injury
Ultra Sound Therapy

So, beauty therapy is fine. I don’t care what you slap on your face I’m pretty sure that, as long as they make no health claims, I couldn’t care what they do. Beauty advertising is beset with rubbish [the “n” signs of aging etc where “n” is a value between 3 and 11 and preferably an odd number] so any claims should be substantiated but these are unlikely to be detrimental to the health of anyone, just their wallets.

Chiropody is a proper thing and I will not take issue with this.

Massage is ok as long as they make no claims to any health effects of massage apart from it making you feel nice. The potential benefits arise from being relaxed and calm, not from any particular aspect of the massage itself.

And now we head into more dangerous territory.

From looking around the web and critically assessing the evidence for therapeutic ultra sound I have to say I am extremely sceptical that it does anything. It is widely accepted as a form of therapy but there is remarkably little evidence that it works or does anything good. I think this is the first form of “woo” from this little shop. I doubt there are any good, documented benefits from this therapy.

Homoeopathy is rubbish. There is no good scientific evidence that it does anything or even contains anything. It is essentially water. I can’t reinforce just how much this stuff doesn’t work. If you have an establishment that is happy to dose people up with homoeopathy then you should be very wary of everything else that they do. It is utter and complete rubbish.

Finally, osteopathy. This mode of dealing with health problems is the most contentious here. The area I live in is blighted by the existence of the European School of Osteopathy nearby. My local doctors surgery even allows osteopathy to take place in its confines. I find this distressing. Osteopathy is an “alternative” medical treatment. This means it is not a treatment nor is it medical. It is based on a completely wrong understanding of how our bodies work. Scientifically osteopathy has been shown to be good for lower back pain and NOTHING else. The very best osteopaths practise what is more commonly known as physio-therapy. Much like chiropractic osteopathy has its roots in bullshit and has tried to change with a greater scientific understanding of medicine but can’t shoe horn itself in to the establishment. If you are suffering then you are best advised to see a physio-therapist, they at least have been taught the proper causes and effects of their work.

The problem with this shop frontage is that it has some [almost] legitimate services to offer and then it also offers utter bullshit.

You can tell osteopathy is rubbish by the company it keeps in these premises.

January 13 2014January 13 2014

Easter Already

The new year has just started which means that the next commercial event to darken these shores is Easter. Christmas is past. Our mid-winter festival and feast to celebrate the dark nights and cheer ourselves up is now history. The burgeoning pressure of consumerism has passed for another nine months.

Time then to get the eggs, bunnies, chickens and chocolate on display.

Wankers.