Dear Valentine,

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Valentine’s Day is just consumerist bullshit,
Now haven’t you got some ironing to do?

Tony “The Lapdog” Blair will be facing questions all day today regarding decisions made to send troops in to invade Iraq. So far the questions haven’t been very probing; he’s been allowed to ramble on about his opinions by a rather deferential Chilcot & Co. and seems to be in control of the proceedings even. Let’s see if he can (ever) be held accountable for his actions and if this time he can call in some favours from his pals in high places (there must be quite a few Lords owing him one) and find a weasely way out.

After all, it might set a bad precedent if our leaders had to explain their decisions..

On another front, can’t wait for Snowboarding Sunday! We shall be visiting the beautiful, staggering slopes of Val d’Trafford and make the run down the bone-crunching Le Chill Factore. Shoop shoop baby!

been out-of-sight-out-of-mind for a while. here are a few snippets, in the order i recall them:

1) avatar. one heck of a film an experience. my first 3D film, IMAXed it and sat with goggles over my customary goggles, and didn’t fidget for the entire two-and-a-half hours or so. more to my surprise, i was told i didn’t even make any sarky comments (obviously apart from identifying, for everybody’s benefit, the analogies being drawn from humanity’s chequered history).

2) dawkins. bought ‘the god delusion’ and the second reading has me thinking that perhaps i’m not agnostic (because i thought a true scientist would not assert an absence of a thing without definitive proof) but athesist (because gods are more hassle to explain than any other hypothesis). jury’s out on that one.

3) m2. got increased memory for my phone/walkman (yes that w word dates me) and am rollicking in choice, choice. no dj in the world would go from toto to chapman, ozzy to police, wishbone ash to e.s.t. also bought again the superlative enigma trilogy album after “somebody” kept my first which i loaned them. “somebody else” should also remember who the annie lennox ‘diva’ cd belongs to, as should “somebody else else” bring themself around to return carl sagan’s ‘cosmos’. you know who you are. the view i take on it (after the initial cussing because of the loss) is “damn, i’ve got good taste for people wanting to keep my books and music”. then i auto-fellate.

4) bulls. will be running with them, or being chased by them to be more accurate. pamplona, ready or not, here we come. anything to avoid being hit, chased, accosted or otherwise molested by tomatoes.

5) ligament. recurring ailment of (what appears to be) the lateral collateral ligament of my left knee due to ice-related slippage.

6) birthday. missed my darling sas’s. what kind of a cad would do that? i mean totally dolally forgot. i was expecting a dressing down, which would be severe. but ‘understanding’? oooh, i’m in for a decade of winters.

7) risk. it’s a strategy game. wine helps the playing. mebbe not the winning therefore it of.

8) scots. more of that should be coming up, watch this url. suffice to say i love them.

and missing the frankie boyle.

I’ve just started reading the first of Sergei Lukyanenko’s trilogy The Night Watch and it is a rip-roaring ride. Brilliant imagination has been melded into the gritty Moscow night-time like it was written at Kurskiy Vokzal at 3 a.m. Readers fond of foreign movies might remember the film ‘Nochnoy Dozor’ (literal translation) based on this book bursting out of Russian cinema in 2004. This is a great bit of mythology worked around a core of realism that is very gripping.

I will definitely buy this in the original Russian (still looking for where to buy it from), as there’s clearly been some loss in translation. And seeing shoddy English such as “…the train was already breaking as it pulled into a station” when I’m only 14 pages in doesn’t build confidence in the rest of the work. I’ve heard said, and agree with the fact that the language a translator is translating into should be their strongest. And with a name like Andrew Bromfield you’d expect the translator to know better. But maybe I should give him a brake (pun intended).

As an aside, I will point out that I rented this book from the library a while ago, and was in no way influenced by the recent spate of teen-vampire mush spewing out of all of Hollywood’s orifices.

Note: in today’s news, Dubai World’s failure to repay its debt has resulted in further loss of confidence in the whole Dubai rollercoaster. To quote: “Dubai could not undermine itself any further as a place not to do business in at the moment,” said Manus Cranny at MF Global. From BBC News, link

Fact really is stranger than fiction. The BBC reports today that house prices in Afghanistan’s capital are soaring. Most obviously, one ex-pat has this to say:-

According to Richard Scarth, day-to-day life in Kabul remains relatively unaffected despite the global downturn.

“That is because the economy is UN-driven,” he says. “Money just keeps coming in regardless of what is happening in the wider world.”

I was spraying my pits with Gilette “Cool-surf-tiger-action-savannah-man” something or other this morning when I noticed that it claimed to provide “over 24 hour protection”.

Now, it hasn’t escaped my notice that just 24-hour protection came before that, and I could cast my mind back to times when 12 hour protection was deemed sufficient for the modern male homo sapien.

We are all aware of the famous 1 blade, no-you-need 2 blades, no-you-need 3 blades, no-you-need 4 blades, no-you-need 5 blades, etc. indecision of the famous blade manufacturers.

In both cases we’ve seen a natural, predictable one-upmanship for a cerain time before a stagnation point is reached and there is simply no more room for blades without moving into cheese-grater territory.

The case with pit-sprays is this. Although I don’t mind the adverts calling me a dynamic 24-hour man, juggling work, wife, mistress, blood donations and my volunteering role as a mentor for under-priviledged kids who only smile when they see me coming down the road on my super-cool urban scooter, being called a 48-hour man would only imply I hadn’t had a shower in two days. And although not showering in two days doesn’t really bother old “Oh-do-I-have-to-dress-for-success?” Naz (you should see smell my record!), I still don’t like it to be pointed out to me.

Reckon they’ve already realised this? Welcome to Stagnation Point.

My my, there’s been a lot of hyphens today.

David Nutt is a professor at Imperial College London and until last week was also chairman of the UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He was dismissed last week by Home secretary Alan Johnson, presumably for disagreeing with the government policy on upgrading certain Class C drugs to a Class B.

Professor Nutt has written a critical article appearing in The New Scientist today about how governments can get it wrong by not heeding their advisors when cementing policy.

Some telling excerpts are:

“Policies that ignore the realities of the world we live in are doomed to fail. This is true for just about all the biggest issues that we confront, from energy and climate to criminal justice, health and immigration. I’m not arguing that science dictate policy; considerations such as cost, practicality and morality also have a role. But scientific evidence should never be brushed aside from the political debate.”

“On ecstasy, for example, it made policy first, sought advice second – and cynically rejected the advice it was given. The result is shambolic policy-making which gives great cause for concern if that is how governments operate more generally.”

“The results of a government inventing its own reality and acting on it can be seen in the appalling consequences the George W. Bush presidency had for world peace, the environment and human rights.”

You can find the article here. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18099-david-nutt-governments-should-get-real-on-drugs.html

Here Chief Scientific Advisor Professor John Beddington backs him up saying research showing the drug to be less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes was “absolutely clear cut”, 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6902240.ece

I thought I had blogged about a science fiction story I had read called “Blood’s a Rover”. It was by Chad Oliver positing a future where a holy language is found encoded in a person’s blood.

But it was the title (as well as its appropriateness to the story) which caught me.

It’s part of a line from an A.E.Housman poem called “The Shropshire Lad”

Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;

Breath’s a ware that will not keep.

Up, lad; when the journey’s over

There’ll be time enough for sleep.” 

I thought this was by Bob Dylan because of the voice and lyrics, but the style was quite different. It’s by Hockey and is being played on radio now.

Song Away :

Make me a deal and make it good for me
I wont get full of myself, coz I cant afford to be
This is small town music, this is big town music
He’s ahead of his time you know but, he cant use it
If only he could prove it

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Hey

See what your man has done to the world
see what the world has done to your man
You know im leaving you, you dont need me
Lovin you wasnt always so easy

This is believe me music, this is forget me music
This is who can love me you know, this aint no roxy music
This is new form music, this is old form music
This is i paid attention not some makes his prediction music
Oh he could let me use it

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Not wanting to write a truthful song over an eighties groove
I like to let you know I’ll always be straight with you
I stole my personality from an anonymous source
And I’m gonna pay for it too, I dont feel bad about that
Give me my chance back

This is on the rise music, this i novelty music
This is who can blame music, I dont get fooled by it
This is where dyu go music, this is come home music
This is down to the wire I’m such a perfect angel music.
Who really tries

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

This is success music and what’s it to ya?
My lawyer always says these are the facts about the future well

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away