The charity in question is Help For Heroes, which “supports our wounded. Help for Heroes provides practical direct support to those servicemen and women wounded in the line of duty in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Whatever your thoughts on those conflicts (regular readers of this and other blogs will know mine are strongly anti-war to say the least) it’s important to remember that wounded military veterans have a traditionally raw deal, with post-service support from the government often failing to meet their economic, social and psychological needs, and a lot of veterans also end up homeless.

Besides which, anyone who cycles across the United States deserves respect, no?

Still, if you have a real ethical problem with donating to this cause, you could always offer your support to this grassroots pro-Democracy Haitian aid group instead.

• The rest is noise: Throats’ guide to metal – “…we turned to Alex, Thom and Mark from Holy Roar’s newest noiseniks, Throats – who are well and truly flying the flag for rage and bile with their debut EP, Throats – for the lowdown on their favourite bands.”
  Tags: metal music
• The Encyclopedia Of Decency: The White House Tapes – (Rush transcript – Oval Office recorder 1.4 – start time 14.29, 1/23/10)RAHM EMMANUEL: You wanted to see me, Mr. President?

  PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes, Rahm. Take a seat. We may have… (Oratically brilliant Presidential pause) …a rather significant problem.

  EMMANUEL: Yes sir. Can I take it you’re referring to the column in today’s London Observer?
  Tags: funny nickcohen satire decentism

• British Newspapers Make Things Up | Psychology Today – In April 2008, I wrote that British journalists interpret “freedom of the press” to mean that they can make up anything they want and publish it as fact in British newspapers. Now another evolutionary psychologist has learned the lesson the hard way.
  Tags: britain journalism newspapers lies news science media
• Mass Effect 2 editorial « The Cynical Brit – When is an RPG, not an RPG? This is what it boils down to. There are certain people that believe Mass Effect 2 sacrificed too many RPG elements from its predecessor and became at best a fancy cover-shooter and at worst, a Gears of War rip-off. Hyperbole and enraged, impotent screaming aside, is there any merit what-so-ever to these accusations? Let’s take a look at the so-called ‘RPG elements’ of the original Mass Effect.
  Tags: gaming rpgs masseffect2 review
• The Myth of Meritocracy – Of course, there is no culture large or small which is able to hold a purely unbiased view of the people who participate in it. Gamer culture is no exception. Personal characteristics that count against you in the real world and its dominant, mainstream culture carry over into the virtual world. Gender is one of the largest biases which skew the meritocracy most gamers try to abide by, leading to a culture where hard work and practice pay off – but they pay off much less for some people.
  Tags: gaming gender sexism
• Overton window – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named after its originator, Joe Overton, former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It describes a “window” in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue.
  Tags: politics psychology theory propaganda society marketing rhetoric
• Why I Think RaceFail Was The Bestest Thing Evar for SFF – So here’s what I think. RaceFail was a good thing. In fact, I think it was a necessary thing — not just for me and other writers/fans of color, but for the SFF field as a whole. Bear with me; I’m going to have to put on my psychologist hat to explain this.
  Tags: racefail09 race writing genre fandom sff
• McGOP: The Virtues and Vices of Sameness – I’m not going to comment too much on the topline findings of the Daily Kos / Research 2000 poll, of Republican identifiers, which many others have written about extensively. What I found more striking, actually, were the cross-tabs. On just about every question, the results showed essentially no difference based on age, gender, race, or geography — once we’ve established that you’re a Republican, these differences seem to be rendered moot.
  Tags: statistics analysis republicans usa rightwing conservatism
• Daily Kos: State of the Nation – As I’ve mentioned before, I’m putting the finishing touches on my new book, American Taliban, which catalogues the ways in which modern-day conservatives share the same agenda as radical Jihadists in the Islamic world. But I found myself making certain claims about Republicans that I didn’t know if they could be backed up. So I thought, “why don’t we ask them directly?” And so, this massive poll, by non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000 of over 2,000 self-identified Republicans, was born. The results are nothing short of startling.
  Tags: usa republicans rightwingbullshit batshitcrazy
• Kid Pix: The Early Years – Ben: Dad, what have you been doing upstairs?
  Dad: Writing a short history of Kid Pix.
  Ben: Do you really think anyone is going to want to read that?
  Tags: software history computers childhood parenting education mac
• Dirty Scavenger on MySpace Music – Dirty Scavenger are a grungy 3 piece band, based in England, performing songs written by Jo Maultby about her experiences of life on the streets, protesting, and other adventures. (She has a pretty awesome voice.)
  Tags: band music
• Brighton Pavilion: A Green leap forward? – John Harris voyages to the seaside seat where Caroline Lucas could become Britain’s first Green MP
  Tags: politics electoralpolitics greenparty labourparty conservativeparty britain brighton sussex carolinelucas
• No cops, no parks, halted economic activity: conservative paradise – We often wonder what a conservative paradise would really look like on the liberal blogs, and it looks like Colorado Springs—home to many defense contractors and to Focus on Family—has become a shining star in the much-desired collapse of basic government services that Grover Norquist and other anti-government fanatics have always wanted. Unfortunately, it seems less paradise to have much-slashed government, and more stinky, ugly, boring, and scary.
  Tags: taxes publicservices civicplanning business industry economics usa
• LEATHERFACE on MySpace Music – New song from Sunderland’s finest!
  Tags: band music hotdamn!

• -ZX-: Super 90’s Emo/Hardcore Post – Now here’s a great little treat for all you real emo/hardcore fans out there (myself included). I found this on the Collective Zine forum, it’s a huge list of download’s that someone kindly put up featuring hundreds of old emo bands from Baby Harp Seal, Across Five Aprils and many many more. I am slowly working my way through the list and there is some real outstanding stuff on here. So get on it.
  Tags: emo music downloads
• Smart Pop Books — Holy Signifier, Batman! – Batman, as one of the most iconic and enduring of comic book heroes, is ultimately nothing more than a bundle of images that have proven themselves to be far more valuable and compelling than any storyline, movie, or book of essays on the character. Batman is a Pez dispenser; he is a bat-shaped belt buckle. Batman is not a hard-ass vigilante, nor is he a duly deputized crime fighter; he is a stamped silhouette on a box of cereal.
  Tags: batman popart linguistictheory comics icons logos symbols signs camp
• The people’s historian – Howard was an inspiration to all of us on the left, especially in the times when we were fighting difficult battles and not winning many. His writings taught us that the resistance to oppression lives on–and that the struggles of ordinary people have the potential to change the world.They also taught us something else: that every high point of struggle is only possible because of the smaller battles that came before it–ultimately, that it matters what individuals do now to oppose injustice and to organize for the future.
  Tags: howardzinn obituary radicalism activism politics history heroes

My pre-order copy of Mass Effect 2 arrived yesterday, so I spent the evening in the company of its occasionally plastic-faced charms. I enjoyed the first game a great deal despite its flaws, and am happy to find that thus far the sequel has addressed most of these – although it has introduced its own foibles in so doing.

I probably won’t bother writing a review since it’ll be several weeks before I’m in a position to do so, and by that time what would be the point? But here’s an excitable little account of a gripping experience from last evening, which I shared with some friends this morning:

I experienced a genuinely affecting moment in ‘Mass Effect 2′ last night, where I thought an earlier action I had taken – not murdering a thug in cold blood in order to disable some military hardware – had later resulted in the death of a comrade I was very fond of. He was torn to fucking pieces. I was actually horrified that I might have been responsible.

As it turned out, he survived – but his face was half torn off and he’s permanently scarred. For the rest of his life.

I was relieved when he didn’t hate me. It was a gamble – when I met him after he was patched up I risked making a joke – a sort of macho camaraderie thing – and when he laughed it was just, wow. Thank fuck. And yet I still felt so sorry for him. I wondered if the game would let me tell him that I could have spared him that tragedy. Would I tell him if I could? Should I tell him if I could?

I can only hope the game is full of more moments like this: moments when you come face to face with the unintended consequences of actions you chose to take, moments where regret or horror or shame are the emotional responses not demanded of you, but drawn out of you. But I’m already impressed that the game made me care enough about one of its characters to make me feel this. That is special, particularly in a medium where a derisive blasé attitude is more than most titles’ stories and characters deserve.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of the world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

(From You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, via SW’s obit.)

It’ll be a bit of a Holy Roar-themed week as I’ve decided to review a few of their recent-ish releases – although this first one is a co-release with Hassle. I mentioned this 7″ in my 2009 Best of the Year round-up among the “hon. mention” EPs. It’s clearly not an EP, though, offering just two tracks even if one is a medley.

It’s a split based on the classic concept of two bands covering songs by each other. There’s a risk of these records becoming an exercise in pointlessness if bands sound too much alike, or their covers are too slavishly devoted to the original, but this is not the case here. Rolo Tomassi’s stop-start dynamics, creepy and distorted keyboards, and dirgey feminine roars, set them apart from the unstoppably brutal hardcore onslaught of Throats’ crushing, riff-heavy approach.

Both bands approach one another’s tunes determined to imprint them with their own personality. Rolo Tomassi combine ‘Headclouds’ and ‘Reign of Low’ (both from their split with Maths) into a single track. It starts similarly to the original version with loud and low distorted strumming, but soon kicks into something more Rolo-flavoured with staccato keys and dual vocals from Eva and James singing and chanting respectively. From there it launches into a comparatively clean lead guitar riff with guttural growls before seguing into the brutal drumming frenzy of ‘Reign of Low’. The heavy metal riff that sees that song out is mostly unchanged, which is no bad thing.

Throats, for their part, cover ‘I Love Turbulence’ from Hysterics. The sinister synths and keys are gone, retained is the breakneck pace and violence – ramped up to 11 in Throats’ inimitably aggressive, confrontational style. The guitar lead at the end is a nice change from the original, and I’m not usually much of a fan of widdling; elsewhere Rolo’s haunting electronic breakdown is replaced with a guitar-based segment. It’s a more faithful cover than their counterparts went for, but hearing a Rolo song played entirely on strings and skins with everything sounding louder and heavier is impressive in itself.

Rolo Tomassi | Throats | Holy Roar | Hassle

• Science fiction is really beginning to annoy me… – Give the reader or the audience an opportunity to explore an issue – that’s what you want to do if you want to morally engage with them. Use the speculative powers of science fiction to design a thought experiment – a problem to solve. Have the protagonist attempt to solve it, and if the dilemma is resolved then have it done in a sufficiently morally ambiguous fashion that the reader can’t deduce endorsement from the choice of the protagonist. And have the decision weigh on the characters. Have them doubt themselves.
  Tags: sciencefiction writing deusexmachina cliche prophecy narrativedevices genreconvention
• How I fought to survive Guantánamo – It is not hot stabbing pain that Omar Deghayes remembers from the day a Guantánamo guard blinded him, but the cool sen­sation of fingers being stabbed deep into his eyeballs. He had joined other prisoners in protesting against a new humiliation – inmates ­being forced to take off their trousers and walk round in their pants – and a group of guards had entered his cell to punish him. He was held down and bound with chains.
  Tags: guantanamobay torture usa resistance islamophobia courage
• “There are no security issues”. – This message, now coming from aid workers in the Red Cross and Partners in Health, starkly contradicts the racist coverage of the wire services, the mainstream newspapers, and the television channels and the websites belonging to all of the above – the capitalist media in toto. Take this, for example: a wire story, reproduced in newspapers and on television programmes across the world, uncritically reproducing the claims of the Haitian police, using less than a handful of named and unnamed witnesses as editorial sock puppets to justify the attempts to spread terror and organise vigilante violence – to actually create the very suspicion, mayhem, and bloodshed that has so far been notable by its absence.
  Tags: haiti imperialism humanitarianintervention politicalengineering usa unitednations naturaldisaster shockdoctrine

Possibly a bit nepotistic as she used to drum for us and is friends with the two original members of the band, but she’s no bullshitter and notes she was “very pleased I didn’t have to lie when Ben and Shanu asked what I honestly thought!”

Read the review here.

A lesson is learned: I am probably too old, or have developed too strong a tolerance to intoxication, to drink several crates of extremely cheap dry cider and expect to get up the next morning and run around in the freezing cold after a sleepless night in a tent. Yeah, yeah, I need a waaahmbulance to get me to the party.

I wake up about half an hour before Crocus play but it’s all I can do to inch half out of my tent and breath in some fresh air; anything more might lead to explosive vomiting (or, worse, dry retching). Bleeurgh. Some hours later our campsite is awake and there’s solidarity in suffering. We miss Holy State. We miss Brontosaurus Chorus – an extra shame since I’d previously persuaded everyone that the best way to deal with a hangover was to listen to a man playing twee pop songs on a ukelele. We miss KONG.

Eventually we drag ourselves out to see young screamo noisemakers Maths. It’s a fucking trial. I feel sick just looking at water, let alone alcohol, and I’m shivering from the cold and lack of food. Eating, of course, is right out. Surely some pure, violent, cathartic music will shake me out of this self-afflicted funk? It probably would, but too fucking bad: we’re so slow that we only catch the last song, which I’m too much of a mess to even recognise. Defeated, we slink back to the campsite to suffer, share stupid stories and poke fun at our friend’s decision to leave the festival for six hours on Saturday night to see a play by Shakespeare – “Shitbollocks” – with his girlfriend.

I know what you’re thinking. We’re fucking atrocious. We proceed to miss Let’s Wrestle.

Sometime after five we’re feeling human enough to check out The Stupids. They seem a bit of an anomaly on Offset’s bill since on the strength of what I’ve heard they’re a straight-up UK hardcore punk band – albeit fast and tight as fuck – and aren’t too well known except in certain circles. There’s only a small crowd here to watch them, which is a shame as they’ve probably been going longer than at least 90% of the bands performing here this weekend, but they’re cheerful and amicable, cracking jokes and self-deprecatingly enticing the audience to pirate their new album, The Kids Don’t Like It, to prove that the kids do like it after all. I later do download the record and it’s a decent slab of punk rock, and if it grows on me more after repeat listens I’ll probably buy it.

I try to bolster myself with a drink – more cider, though this time not our ALDI piss – before Throats. Probably for the best I do: this crushingly loud, aggressive band is not the sort of thing you want to be confronted with when feeling fragile. The tent goes fucking wild from the first chord, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s one of the craziest, most frenetic pits I’ve seen in years. There are scores of teenagers throwing themselves and each other around and clearly having an awesome time. It’s totally fucking rad. I try to stay out of the way and just soak in the brutally fast and heavy riffs slamming into me.

There’s one point where I actually feel old – and to underscore this, I’m only 27 – and that’s when one of the band’s guitarists climbs onto a monitor, throws a fist in the air, and roars “FUCK EVERYTHING!” Everyone in their teens screams approval. Everyone older, well… varies. I kind of approve of the general sentiment though I guess I’m a bit old for melodramatic slogans. That said, I’m wearing a Throats shirt which says “I still can’t believe what this world has done to me.” But hey, that I can get behind.

Ten minutes later, Scottish fight-pop upstarts Dananananaykroyd take the stage. It’s the second time I’ve seen them, and the first since drummer/voxalist John broke his arm, so by the looks of things he’s on vocals only tonight and Dana have a permanent second drummer. Or maybe that’s always the way of things; at a later show it’s singer Calum who seems to be playing with the bonus drums. A mystery wrapped inside a cipher. Anyway, the band put on a characteristically exuberant set, exhorting fans to have fun and treat each other well; “moshing is for meat-heads”. Even having seen Throats minutes before, I love the sentiment – later underpinned by the band’s trademark ‘wall of hugs’ whereby the crowd is split in two and invited to charge at one another, hugging everyone they encounter along the way. It’s a brilliant positive subversion of the hardcore ‘wall of death’.

After that we take a bit of a break and I choke down some food before heading back to the hardcore stage for Rolo Tomassi. This is the band most of my friends are here to see, their fusion between metal/grindcore that can be spazzy one moment and tech the next appealing to their oddball tastes. The band don’t disappoint, apart from a soundcheck that takes about half an hour. It seems like every time one microphone or keyboard starts behaving, something previously set up falls over.

Fortunately the band are on good form and everyone’s as eager to see them as they were Throats, if not more so. Unexpectedly James Spence seems to be covering more vocal duties than Eva today; it’s a shame as her terrifying vocal chords and lungs are a Rolo trademark, but we already know that James can roar like a bastard himself so it’s no bad thing. Despite the dodgy soundcheck the equipment mostly behaves, and the volume helps beat my slowly receding hangover further into submission.

After that we end up sat on the grass, drinking and smoking. My friends are moaning about how Rolo Tomassi should’ve headlined. I don’t despise Ghost of a Thousand as much as they do; I’m quite fond of them after seeing them play a small Brighton show years ago and picking up what I’m guessing was their first release, a DIY 2-track CD single with black artwork on black paper. Fortunately we’re sat outside the hardcore tent so I can still listen to their set despite my friends bitching. In fairness, Ghost of a Thousand’s chugging, melodic hardcore sounds uninspired after the intensity and virtuousity of Throats or Rolo, but they’re not a bad band at all.

Eventually, though, we do find something everyone likes: the world’s smallest gazebo has some disco DJs in it spinning vinyl, and a lot of very cold-looking drunk people are dancing next to it. I leave company behind and go off to explore the remainder of the festival’s evening offerings. These include a deeply uninspiring and tedious few songs from the Horrors, complete with a bona fide end of set tantrum from their singer at the crowd not liking his band more, and a couple of pretty cool funk/rock tunes from Gramme. I’m disappointed I didn’t head to see the latter earlier, actually, as their catchy and laid-back tunes were exactly what I needed.

Fortunately after that I find Gold Panda who is playing some very low-key tunes in a tent containing five people watching him and five more people talking to each other. For about half an hour Gold Panda is totally engrossed in his work, and it’s mesmerising listening to his soft, minimalist electronic songs slowly evolving over the course of their (on average) 8-10 minute lengths. There’s a common thread running through each but every element of the song gradually changes so that by the end, although it’s still the same song it seems to have changed completely. I’m impressed at both this and at his cheerful attitude after his set, despite his small audience.

After that, some boring stuff happened: it was really cold so I bought another hoodie, there was more disco-dancing, and then the DJs were stopped, nowhere sold any more booze, and we had to go back to our campsite and nurse our few remaining cans of Taurus. Fortunately we befriend some guys who have whiskey and stories about trying to pick fights with the Horrors’ singer. Good times.

Offset: top festival. Would use again. A++.

Houston Has A Problem and Another Day Lost also put in storming sets; a privilege and a pleasure to play alongside ‘em.

Anyway, aside from the possibility that we’ll have another show on January 30th – a Haiti benefit at the Hare & Hounds – our new plan is to get on with writing some new songs. Watch this space. Or our MySpace.