>>Nostalgia For Infinity

Hmm.

April 2010:

And sometime in 2009:

Hmm. HMM.

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Here are two videos, via the New Left Project, that relate to Israel/Palestine and are worth watching.

First up is a short 3-minute piece that restates some of the simple facts about the siege of the Gaza Strip and the recent assault on the aid flotilla.

Following that, here is a clip from the Colbert show where the host interviews Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

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FUCK OFF.

(Rowson also puts it well.)

This weekend at WisCon I was explaining to people at the Dollhouse panel that there are many levels to privilege and understanding and such. Down on the bottom level you have the folks who are just racist or sexist or whatever and haven’t ever examined anything and don’t want to for various reasons.

But then up higher is the level where people agree that racism is bad and wrong, we’re all equal, and everyone should just stop being so mean. Na’amen helpfully labeled this the Kumbaya level, because it’s that kind of surface, touchy-feely non-racism that doesn’t actively engage with people of color or any oppressed people.  Nor does it work to change things for the better because, hey, aren’t things just great now?

While the Kumbaya level is much better than just plain racism, people on this level often really frustrate us because they are resistant to acknowledge that they still have work to do. They don’t wear white hoods so they can’t ever say or do things that have a basis in racism. Not that they are racist, but they aren’t helping, which is bad enough.

[Full post.]

I thought that this excerpt succinctly articulates the complexity of privilege and reactions to / acknowledgements of it. Obviously as a hetero white male of Anglo descent living in the UK I’m about as privileged as can be, so it is important to remind myself of this as often as possible. There is always work to do, understanding to reach, attitudes to amend, recognition to achieve.

Via Ansible, this:

MURIEL GRAY learned the peril of telling anecdotes, after joking in a Fantasycon 2004 interview about some chap’s complaint to HarperCollins that her horror novel _The Ancient_ (January 2000) was suspiciously similar to his fantasy (unpublished). Her comment ‘So obviously he was a nutter’ clearly rankled, but not as much as her claim that his book had been written after hers appeared. Since she didn’t mention his name — Geoff Widders — this was hardly defamatory; still, he went to the Small Claims court, asking not for damages but for an official ruling that Muriel Gray had told a fib and should jolly well be ashamed of herself. The case moved to High Court and then Court of Appeal, ultimately being thrown out in December 2009 with costs against Widders. He feels a vast sense of injustice and has created a website about the whole affair (hewasanutter.com), plugging this on literary messageboards: the British Fantasy Society’s because of Fantasycon, Stephen King’s because _The Ancient_ had a King cover quote, and (at Facebook) Gray’s home-town football team Glasgow Rangers. [JS] Oh dear….

Via hewasanutter.com, this opening excerpt from the author’s unpublished novel:

“Upstairs in the bottom of the wardrobe…get the best tablecloth Davey…” his mother called breathlessly as she staggered down the lobby with armfuls of plates, “Davey!” she screeched after him.
“Yes Mum?” he halted.
“Make sure it’s not the cloth with a hole in it,” she whispered.
“Did you say, make sure it’s not the one with a..” he called loudly but his mother interrupted with a scream of panic, “DAVEEE!” They both laughed as she busied her way into the street. She shouted after him, “and get a move on or you’ll be late. Your uniform’s hanging on the banister!” “That lad’ll be the death of me,” she muttered emerging into the hustle and bustle.

And another excerpt from chapter 18:

“IT IS I WHO SEEKS YOU! IT IS I WHO SHALL FIND YOU,” roared the Shaman. The shout had a horrible hissing quality to it. As they looked closer they could see why. Only his head and forearms had yet to be absorbed into the body of the snake, his split tongue flickered in and out.
His head poised itself before the hole in the wall of the cell, the tongue scented the air wafting along the shafts. A look of comprehension passed through the remains of his face before it became totally reptilian and without expression.
The snake entered the tunnelways, its huge mass filled every space as its muscles propelled it forwards. The scaly scratch its skin made as its scales gripped the sides of the tunnel echoed horribly.

“Jesus Christ Davey!”
“Chacuti!”
Powerless to do anything they sat and watched.

Posted without comment for fear of a drawn-out lawsuit.

Hmm, I feel this calls for a Mamatas!

Just a quick post to point at a couple of mp3 blogs that I think are pretty cool and you might want to check out. If you’ve got some favourites, feel free to share ‘em in the comments.

Note – none of these are blogs that are likely to post high-profile releases. They’re more about offering exposure to obscure outfits. If you want to know where to download the new Deftones, use Google. I’m not enabling you. You might alternatively want to go listen to something you’ve never heard before instead… in which case, knock yourself out!

Anyway, obviously you’re gonna do whatever you want to do, but if you find some tunes you really like and it’s still in print, go buy a real copy of it. Give something back to the artists and the labels who support them, huh?

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I’ve lately become a little obsessed with the pop culture junkie blog Stuff You Will Hate, which is mostly written by some of the guys from Metal Inquisition and some teenage scene girls. You’d be right in thinking that this is not something that would traditionally be up my proverbial alley and you’d be spot on with that assessment. That’s partly why I like it so much.

So just what is SYWH? To quote its own blurb:

The meaning of “Stuff You Will Hate” changes depending on the installment, and often during the course of a single column. It can mean “stuff I love, but that you, the reader, will dislike.” Sometimes it means “stuff you will hate, and I hate it as well.” And sometimes, it means “stuff you like, and I might actually like it, too, but I’m going to pretend to hate it in a way that will infuriate you because it will be written as a parody of a typical idiot hating something great, and you’ll quote the fake blurb to your friends and say ‘what an ignorant dick’ when in reality it’s intentional and now we’re laughing at you, you gullible fuck.”

Yeah, pretty much. A lot of the blog’s content is about contemporary pop music – the scene stuff that the kidzzz are into, right, rather than the shit that sells the most units. It’s often written in a way that’s simultaneously derisive and loving; evidently the writers have a fondness for their subject matter at the same time as they realise the essential absurdity of pop culture. In a vague sense it’s simultaneously ironic and post-ironic, which I kind of get the impression is the nature of contemporary teen/pop culture.

A lot of posts poke fun at ‘oldz’; older fans of music like hardcore or metal who like to criticise the shit that the kids listen to these days. SYWH slaughters some of the last sacred cows of the pop music machine; the idea that what came before was somehow better rather than, as is actually the case, just a different sort of music made by and for young people that responds to or is a product of the culture from which it emerges.

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M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Brilliant, horrifying video.

I’ve moved house and we currently have no internet, so no updates for a while longer.

Catch Rolo Tomassi & Throats on their current tour if you can!

There seems to have been limited coverage of this incident so far. A cursory search with the obvious keywords turns up nothing on the Guardian or Beeb websites.