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| Thursday, October 30th, 2008 | | 4:11 pm |
Obama / Bill Clinton
Went to see Barack Obama and Bill Clinton speak yesterday. The logistics of turning up to events of historic importance are always the same - nowhere to park, long walks, stumbling around looking for the entrance. The sequence of events is so predictable it always makes me wonder if people bitched about the parking at Nuremburg, before standing around in the cold and straining to get a crap view of the back of Goebbels' head. There was a line that ran twice around the entire Osceola Heritage Stadium. The combination of bootleg t-shirt vendors, hipsters and standing around in the cold reminded me of attending a concert rather than a political rally. Got inside and stood around near the back, which suited me fine but Kim (being rather shorter than me) had trouble seeing anything. Bill Clinton was conversational and utterly comfortable with being behind the microphone, endorsed Obama and put his arm around him for the cameras. Obama gave a lofty speech on the importance of unity, voting and refuting the claims from McCain that he's a socialist. He's probably further right than both of the major UK parties. I would quite like to see McCain speak, just for the contrast. I'd imagine the crowd would be much older, and much whiter. I also doubt there would be any t-shirt vendors selling bootleg, airbrushed hip-hop style McCain t-shirts. He seems to be concentrating on the more rural parts of Florida, where the whole "God, Guns and War" platform seems to go down better. It's hard to comprehend just how much of a circus the whole election is over here, or how polarized Americans are politically. It's also addictive, and difficult not to get swept up into all the feeling that the next guy might be able to change something for the better (as opposed to the British view that at least the next guy might not be as bad as the last one). Next week will be interesting. A McCain win appears to be offering a rather miserable continuation of George Bush's incompetent neoconservatism, whereas Obama might just be able to undo some of the damage done in the last 8 years - economic, social and diplomatic damage which has almost managed to run this juggernaut of a country into the ground. America needs regime change. Current Mood:  hopeful | | Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 | | 10:01 pm |
| | Monday, December 24th, 2007 | | 8:44 pm |
| | Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 | | 3:37 pm |
Raving, Florida style
Just when it seemed as though warehouse parties were something which I blurrily looked back on as a happy phase of life, I found one right here in Florida. Tried to get a bunch of people together but (just like always) most people dropped out leaving just me and Kim to head down. We loaded up the car with sleeping bags, premixed vodka martinis and a flask of good bourbon and started driving. And driving. And driving. As it got more and more rural we passed through about five counties (the last two of which had "Welcome to..." signs peppered with bullet holes) and the last fifteen miles or so was a straight, dark rural highway punctuated only by the occasional deer or pickup truck or burning cross. OK, maybe not the last one. Two dirt roads later we pass a gate with a bunch of kids wearing vests and waving us into a farm field with glowsticks. We handed over $20 each to get in and drove another mile or so through fields until we found the car park - hundreds of cars were there, a campground, people playing music from car stereos (incidentally the first time I'd heard any hard house in the US). Got out of the car and found a large, modern farm building with a decent soundsystem in (with lasers and a projector), and a smaller tent out back playing electro/breaks. Danced around a bit, spoke to a few randoms, watched a guy blowing glass bongs, got drunk. Around 5am the police arrived and said that the music from the tent could be heard several miles away and had to go off, the organiser handled the police well and they went away. Figured sleeping in the car would be more painful than driving home around 6am so we headed back, it felt like I was driving on clouds and I almost fell asleep a few times. The party was well organised, the soundsystem was great, it was beautifully warm all night and there were plenty of friendly people there, but I dunno, just didn't seem the same as stumbling around a damp Manchester squat in the freezing cold, feeling slightly scared as you're no longer able to see anything but strobe lights or hear anything but techno beats tearing through your skull... Maybe rave has passed into history like every other movement before it, or maybe I'm just getting old. Current Mood:  nostalgic | | 3:15 pm |
Formal Stupidity
StupidFilter is developing a filter which attempts to filter "stupidity" from the Internet by adapting technology used for filtering spam. They're training it on millions of YouTube comments. Seriously. Current Mood: amused | | Monday, October 1st, 2007 | | 9:42 pm |
Orlando Warehouse Party?!
http://www.damagingsound.com/community/Beat Harvest 2
Saturday October 20
Rain or shine on a 100% legal, 70 acre venue, complete with a 5000sqft air-conditioned warehouse and outdoor tent area
$20 at the door / Gates open Saturday at Noon and we're partying well into SundayAbout half an hour outside of Orlando, didn't think they had that kind of thing over here. Quite excited about checking it out as I've not been to a proper rave since I left the UK. Anyone from round here want to come? Current Mood: excited | | Friday, September 21st, 2007 | | 6:08 pm |
| | Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 | | 12:08 pm |
Bye Bye Facebook
"The irony is that Web 2.0 has been heralded as the dawn of a new era of community and togetherness. Through the financial eyes of a venture capitalist, this may appear to be true. For the rest of us, what this means is that community is now available to manipulate, choose and consume." - William Davies; The Cold, Cold Heart of Web 2.0I think I logged into Facebook about half a dozen times. Each time I was bombarded with requests to fill in details of how and why I knew people, and to add as "friends" people I had neither spoken to or desired to speak to for many years, plus I'd get a whole bunch of photos which other people had uploaded linked directly from my profile page. Facebook requires your full name (and wouldn't let me change it to a fake one) and has recently said that they will be making profiles available to search engines. I've always been the type of person who compartmentalised their life and Facebook is the complete opposite of that - you must be exactly the same person to everyone, whether they're the old friend who just uploaded a picture of you taking class A drugs (which then appears on the front page of your profile), or a distant friend of someone you just met, or a job interviewer who Googles your name. The lack of control over my own information is disturbing and the site never gave me anything of value, so I'm out of there. I can't see any reason to provide a complete and detailed record of my school history, employment, everyone I ever met and how I know them which can lead to anything positive. PS. Doesn't mean I don't want to talk to anyone though, just please keep in touch via old fashioned email - I miss everyone. I'm also a crap human being so rarely get around to calling/writing to anyone. Sorry. I do reply to mails people send me though. PPS. Apart from being bugged by Facebook, everything is going great. Got a shitty car, got a cute girlfriend and running 2 businesses out here. [Edit: Comments disabled on this post, for some reason spam-bots love this one...] | | Monday, May 14th, 2007 | | 11:57 pm |
Scientology vs the BBC
BBC Panorama (the world's longest running current affairs program) recently covered Scientology. The reporter, John Sweeney, was followed by private investigators and harrassed during his investigation (including having Scientologists turn up at his wedding). At one point he eventually cracked and started yelling at the Scientologist. This clip was then released (entirely out of context) by the CoS on YouTube and comments moderated to show only pro-Scientology responses. The whole programme is available online for at least a week, and it's a perfect example of why I think the BBC is one of the world's greatest media organisations. The show attempts to give a balanced view of Scientology and finds little to recommend it, then broadcasts the footage of their own presenter cracking up which the Scientologists had leaked specifically to discredit the BBC. Despite a little Brass Eye style sensationalism in parts it's really great film making, and took some giant balls on the part of the presenter and the BBC to broadcast it. The "Church" appears to be continuing it's harrassment against the BBC, hopefully the BBC will fight them and inflict some damage on the reputation of this dangerous cult. It's interesting to see the campaign of misinformation the Church has started. They're master propagandists and it'll be interesting to see how they take on one of the world's most respected media outlets. Remember kids, every time the Dianetics people ask if you want a free stress test, say "Sorry, I don't associate with cults" and watch them flip out. Is this incident making headlines in the UK? Would love to see the Private Eye coverage of events, if anyone reads that... | | Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 | | 4:40 pm |
The 358 million dollar typo
My visa got approved in a couple of days, we are still waiting for my mum and my brother's though. We were getting a bit nervous so we called up the USCIS automated service line, which informed us they had sent out a "Request for Further Evidence" (RFE) to our primary fax number. As we didn't supply a fax number (what is this, 1987?), who knows where that went. After a couple of phonecalls they'd posted the request out, refusing to give us any more details. A couple of nervous days passed where we were wondering what they could possibly need that 960 pages of documentation we spent weeks preparing wasn't enough. The letters arrived this morning, asking us to prove where exactly we'd spent $358,600,000 since entering the US. *sigh* Current Mood:  annoyed | | Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 | | 12:01 pm |
Myspace TV
Someone found out that Myspace image addresses are easy to guess, so I wrote a little script that displays a random picture every 3 seconds. It's hypnotic to watch, like drying paint. A bit like real TV. Clicky Current Mood:  bored | | Thursday, April 26th, 2007 | | 4:27 pm |
Immigration says Yes
The California Service Center has approved the following
I-129 Petition for Nonimmigrant Worker
that had been filed under the Premium Processing Program:
..
Classification: E2
Starting Validity Date: 04/25/07
Ending Validity Date: 04/22/09
..
The form I-797 Approval Notice will follow in the mail. Awesome. Here for at least another 2 years. Just got to start a business and keep it running to fulfill the terms of the visa. Guess it's about time I started learning about exactly how to do that, because at the moment I really don't have much of a clue. Erk. Just leaving for Ocala, where me and Kim are going camping. We hope to track down wild monkeys who escaped from the Tarzan film set in the 1930s and have been living wild ever since, North America's only wild monkey colony. Failing that we're just gonna eat boiled peanuts sold from the back of trucks parked at the side of the road and drink lots of cheap beer. Current Mood: relieved | | Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 | | 6:08 pm |
The US Immigration System is Completely Broken
Just posted our immigration (sorry, non-immigrant worker) applications off to USCIS. All 960 pages (320 each), 17.5lb of it. We would've used an immigration attorney, except we couldn't find a single one who was a) competent and b) not trying to rip us off. We're doing the application through some weird undocumented loophole because the USCIS is so swamped with applications the "proper" way involves starting a business here (with all the expense of doing so) then going back to the UK and leaving the business dormant for 9 months until you reach the top of the pile. This loophole method lets us stay in the US, takes 15 days, but we won't be able to leave the country for at least a year. If it comes back accepted we can stay here. If not, we're out within a week and will have lost everything. *crosses fingers* Current Mood:  worried | | Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 | | 11:20 pm |
Things that don't bother me about America nearly as much as I thought they would.
I've been gone for over six months now, which is long enough to get some inkling about a place. America's not exactly the land of milk and honey, but it's not the land of sour milk and a punch in the face either. So here's a couple of lists. Lists of things about what I'm doing here, because I'm too lazy to write real paragraphs. List #1 - Things that don't bother me about America nearly as much as I thought they would: 1. Country music - given context, country is actually pretty good. It's American folk music, those songs about pickup trucks and beer are what a good portion of the population here are all about. It's like White Blues. At least, the classic stuff is. Garth Brooks et al can go fuck themselves with a rhinestone-encrusted cowboy boot. 2. Lack of dance music - worldwide problem, seems rave is dead (again). I hadn't been to a really great party in the UK for bloody ages and I seem to be listening to a lot more indie anyway. Keoki's playing here in April though so hopefully that'll let me dance around like it's 2003. Still vaguely following the scene but it doesn't seem like a lot of innovation is going on anywhere, just more of the same old beats. And electronic music was supposed to change the world *sigh* 3. Language differences - the English love to go on about how the Americans can't spell properly. It doesn't really bother me now I'm here. When in Rome. Or even if you're in Spain, where you still don't complain about how things aren't spelt the same as they are at home. Unless you're one of those pricks who only eats egg and chips whilst reading The Sun and drinking warm Stella the whole time they're there. 4. Heat - I don't really like the heat all that much, which may seem retarded seems as I moved to a subtropical country, but I like the cold even less. It's 37-40 degrees Centigrade in the summer. But everywhere is air conditioned here so you don't notice it all that much, all I know is that it's March and I'm not experiencing the usual Winter depression because it's been dark for months. 5. "Oh, I love your accent!" - I kind of like being slightly exotic, and being asked the same stuff over and over is better than not being asked anything at all. It's also easier to talk to random people as the "amusing cultural differences" conversation can go on for ages. | | Saturday, February 17th, 2007 | | 11:40 am |
Would you have been a Nazi?
Found an online quiz to determine whether or not a person would have become a nazi in 30s Germany, based on various attitudes. Told me I would've sensed the country was going to the dogs and fled abroad. Heh. I am also 99% less patriotic/antitolerant/brainwashable than other people. Scary.
, you're now logged in!
Below you'll find your test result. After, continue on to your
homescreen to discover what we're about.
The Expatriate
Achtung! You are 38% brainwashworthy, 13% antitolerant, and 19% blindly patriotic
|
Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country.
One bad scenario -- as I hypothetically project you back in time -- is that you just wouldn't have cared one way or the other about Nazism. Maybe politics don't interest you enough. But the fact that you took this test means they probably do. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.
Did you know that many of the smartest Germans departed prior to the beginning of World War II, because they knew some evil shit was brewing? Brain Drain. Many of them were scientists. It is very possible you could have been one of them.
Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would not have been a Nazi.
The Would You Have Been A Nazi? Test
- it rules -
|
|
My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: | You scored higher than 99% on brainwashworthy | | You scored higher than 99% on antitolerant | | You scored higher than 99% on patriotic |
|
Current Mood: amused | | Monday, December 25th, 2006 | | 12:06 pm |
Merry Christmas
Hope everyone's celebrating Santa's Birthday in style with good friends/family, exchanging lots of great presents and eating till they vomit. I felt a bit homesick last night when I got a text from people at the traditional Xmas Eve drinking session at The Romans, wish I could've made it. Speak to everyone soon... | | Thursday, November 30th, 2006 | | 7:44 pm |
Sick
Sick for the second time in as many weeks. The first barrage of germs must've knocked out my immune system and let in bacteria which are causing havoc with my insides. So much so that coughing up $100 for a visit to the doctor seemed to be a bargain, despite my lack of enthusiasm for doctors or paying for things which I think should be free. I've spent the past few days feeling as though I was 80 years old, reflecting on how tedious it must be to be very sick or very old all the time, where getting across the room in less steps than you thought it'd take or the simple act of urinating successfully becomes cause for celebration. Then again, maybe I should be more appreciative of the small things. Like pissing. The doctor referred me down the road to get a CAT scan. In the UK this would mean getting stuck on the thick end of a 6 to 18 month waiting list for your turn on a machine which is probably three doors down in the same filthy hospital. Here, I got the scan that afternoon from a radiology business in a non-descript shopfront about 5 miles away. Only difference is the UK system is free and the US one cost as much as a cheap car ($1500). Not that the US system isn't falling apart (economist.com) like the UK one either, it's just a good deal more expensive. Glad we remembered to renew the travel insurance (And that we have insurance, unlike the 46 million US residents - 24% of the population - who can't afford it). Current Mood:  sick | | Sunday, October 29th, 2006 | | 11:55 am |
| | Thursday, October 19th, 2006 | | 1:56 pm |
660 Manuscripts from Charles Bukowski
I found some scanned manuscripts from Charles Bukowski on one of the peer-to-peer services and posted them online for other people to enjoy. Some of them appear to be unpublished. I'm not sure of the original source but they appear to be authentic. Read them at The Bukowski Letters. Happy browsing. | | Monday, October 2nd, 2006 | | 9:01 pm |
The Rick, the Ferris, and MC H.P...Scooter! Back in the UK!
Back in the UK, living in a flat in Eastbourne designed for the older gentleman. It's owned by a charming duffer who's the spitting image of Prince Charles (who appears outwardly respectable but you're left with the sneaking suspicion he spends his comfortable Autumn years throwing darts at pictures of illegal immigrants cut out from the Daily Mail), and we're not allowed to wear shoes on the inside carpets. Lovely view of the sea though. Eastbourne is populated by dour-faced coffin dodgers and hooded chavs, both groups avoiding each other except for the occasional mugging or scathing letter to the local paper. Might brave a night on the town one day to see what goes on here, but I don't imagine it's pretty. The weak dollar meant that going over to America meant everything suddenly became very cheap and I was continually marveling at how cheap everything was. Coming back, it works in reverse and I'm trying to remember how I ever survived paying so much for everything (although I also wonder how I ever survived without Jaffa Cakes). I shall be at The Duke tomorrow evening, come down plz thx! |
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