tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9862842969964757772024-03-26T16:03:43.876+00:00Wrestling Emily DickinsonThe life & opinions of AJ McKenna.AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.comBlogger629125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-48696537068756774432024-03-26T15:55:00.003+00:002024-03-26T16:03:11.697+00:00Injurious Visions: The Zone of Interest, Sniper Elite, and How We Look at Nazis<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWtuuLV-4ZZd4y5J7zlOOfAxUotPqu76oUeepKfg8Zd_lo1RprvY7tEC5jSdbJQ4H88IOOjyVY71PvKX5W18YvQ8vOB7ins7fwL1QemH7zqtZgsocqGLOLTIV-YBVoIE2bAiSaRNv4-XptAxcG_trs9Z5BmoGCK35pOjvZQ0Lt8RYC9cEvCag_T4LLfbY/s750/1000013884.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWtuuLV-4ZZd4y5J7zlOOfAxUotPqu76oUeepKfg8Zd_lo1RprvY7tEC5jSdbJQ4H88IOOjyVY71PvKX5W18YvQ8vOB7ins7fwL1QemH7zqtZgsocqGLOLTIV-YBVoIE2bAiSaRNv4-XptAxcG_trs9Z5BmoGCK35pOjvZQ0Lt8RYC9cEvCag_T4LLfbY/s320/1000013884.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I was trying to work out why Jonathan Glazer's <i>The Zone of Interest</i> made me want to play <i>Sniper Elite 5</i>. There are a couple of obvious answers to that question: for one thing, the <i>Sniper Elite</i> series is about killing Nazis, and Glazer's film, with its tight focus on the family life of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoss, follows a particularly dislikable bunch of those guys; for another, there is a scene fairly early in the film which is extremely reminiscent of the environmental kill for Major Jaan Trautmann in the Desponts sur Douve mission in <i>SE5</i>. But I think the similarities between the two texts go a little deeper than the surface, and those similarities can tell us a lot about where Glazer chooses to focus his camera in this extraordinary film, and <i>why </i>he places focus there. </p><p>Focus itself, of course, is a key concept in the <i>Sniper Elite</i> games - focusing binoculars to tag targets, emptying the lung to focus shots and guarantee lethality. Jim Morrison's poetry is on the whole not very good without Krieger, Manzarek and Densmore backing him up, but the erstwhile navy brat did come up with a really good line about sniping: 'the sniper's bullet is an extension of his eye. He kills with injurious vision.' Rebellion's WW2 game series does an excellent job of making protagonist Karl Fairburne's scope feel like exactly that kind of lethal ocular extension. </p><p>Glazer and his Director of Photography, Lucas Zal, wanted to do something similar in <i>The Zone of Interest</i>, the latter telling <i><a href="https://www.ibc.org/features/behind-the-scenes-the-zone-of-interest/10705.article">IBC365</a></i> that 'we wanted the camera to be like an eye'. To achieve this, they rigged up a network of ten partially hidden 6K digital cameras in their reconstruction of the Hoss' home and garden, a process which Glazer wryly describes as 'Big Brother in the Nazi house', then retired to a concrete bunker from which they relayed directions to a team of focus pullers working in the house's basement. Another similarity between the film and the game there: just as the player of a <i>Sniper Elite</i> game spends most of their time moving Karl around the map in third person perspective, so Glazer and his crew remained at one remove from their actors, resulting, as the <i>IBC</i> article puts it, 'in a uniquely disembodied form of authorship'. </p><p>Watching the film, it's immediately obvious that Glazer and Zal were successful. As the camera(s) guide(s) us around the Hoss villa and garden, or on the family's trips around the countryside, we feel like a lurker, a voyeur. We feel as if we, too, are in the surprisingly narrow corridors of the Commandant's house, or following him through the tunnel that connects that house to the camp (secret tunnels, of course, are also a feature of the <i>SE </i>series). That house and garden are another of the major achievements of Glazer and his crew. In an interview with <a href="https://aframe.oscars.org/news/post/the-zone-of-interest-james-wilson-interview"><i>A.Frame</i></a>, producer James Wilson described 'how to make the physical place' as one of the biggest challenges they faced. Initially planning to film in the historical Hoss <i>haus</i>, they quickly found that venue unsuitable, and so decided to renovate a derelict house near Auschwitz (still within the actual 'zone of interest', or <i>interessengebiet</i>, surrounding the <i>todeslager</i>) as a stand in. As Wilson puts it: 'I've never seen a set like it. The entire garden was built and grown out of nothing. Trees, plants, beehives.' The house, too, is lovingly recreated: if you came across it, shot with the photographer's back to the death camp, on an Instagram like <a href="https://www.instagram.com/mod_in_metro/">Modernism in Metroland</a> or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/architectonictravels/">Architectonic Travels</a>, you'd give it a heart react immediately for its clean lines and use of glass. In this way, by painstakingly recreating their environment, Glazer and his crew not only recreated the experience of the Hoss' themselves (Rudolf is described admiringly as 'an ideal settler-farmer', and Hedwig boasts about her garden to her visiting mother), but they also once more echo the <i>Sniper Elite</i> series, one of the key visual pleasures of which is its loving recreation of World War 2 era environments. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE3KQYUApCTr8AVxZU0bl7I5Zwnt_2zedqGgUNurAJGZ-6TZ9_rtfUQRmbRCYHynjLsc6aGKaQZ6gXgUQq-AN_-lTqMKSVlewY9Sn2h3n56vY2Y42PNQQVxNpDTWC7s2AUm254qWxa7pdgFbosDkafCSMKxzu9QMcXa3zo5iaGjYWXKEarKms-MpLlPb8/s480/snipin.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE3KQYUApCTr8AVxZU0bl7I5Zwnt_2zedqGgUNurAJGZ-6TZ9_rtfUQRmbRCYHynjLsc6aGKaQZ6gXgUQq-AN_-lTqMKSVlewY9Sn2h3n56vY2Y42PNQQVxNpDTWC7s2AUm254qWxa7pdgFbosDkafCSMKxzu9QMcXa3zo5iaGjYWXKEarKms-MpLlPb8/s320/snipin.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>In <i>Sniper Elite 2</i>, the earliest entry in the series most players will encounter these days, that visual pleasure is somewhat muted and melancholy, the game's action being mostly set in the ruins of immediately post-war Berlin. Things begin to get more colourful in the next game, set in the North African campaign, with Karl palling around with the Long Range Desert Group and exploring some impressively arid environments, but there is still something harsh about them. <i>Sniper Elite 4</i>, though, in which the action moves to Italy, moves into full pastoral mode. From the first level, in which Karl takes a delightful evening walk on the Mediterranean island of San Cellini (a walk enlivened, of course, with plenty of opportunities to creatively dispatch those goddam Nazis) to the conclusion of its <i>Deathstorm</i> DLC, in which he destroys a nuclear reactor in the picturesque (and fictional) South German city of Steigerloch, the maps really are a pleasure to traverse, enhanced by little touches like the movement of the long grass where Karl takes cover, the recreations of Italian buildings, which run the gamut from simple peasant dwellings to ornate monasteries, and the way in which the game renders light. By the fifth and most recent instalment in the series, set mostly in France and around the German Atlantic Wall, graphical improvements make the environments - which include a French chateau and its extensive grounds, a Mont St. Michel style abbey (for my money, the best single map in the entire series), and the island of Guernsey - a positive joy to spend time in. At least, until you see the swastikas. </p><p>Because, of course, as beautiful as these environments may be, they're also riddled with evil. Steigerloch, for all its timber-framed charm, is sitting on top of a reactor tasked with producing radioactive dust to scatter from the air on the D-Day landing parties. On charming, picturesque Guernsey, an officer from the Organisation Todt is building an artillery battery using slave labour. The farmland around Desponts-sur-Douve, the very image of <i>la France Profonde</i>, has been ripped up with Nazi trenches, where Karl finds the body of a tortured Allied radioman. And everywhere, again and again, you see the symbol of the greatest evil of the twentieth century. The games tend to avoid any direct mention of the Holocaust itself, but it is there, lurking behind events, just as it is in Glazer's film. The Nazi officers Karl takes out might instal themselves in fine chateaux, but however ornate their surroundings, they can't hide their true thuggery. The ballroom in Oranienburg, where Hoss attends a party towards the end of <i>The Zone of Interest</i>, is a dead ringer for a ballroom in level 2 of <i>Sniper Elite 5</i> in which the player has a chance at pulling off an impressive triple kill. To Hoss, who has just been informed that the operation to exterminate the Hungarian Jews will be named after him, those are rookie numbers: he spends the time in<i> his </i>ballroom musing on how much Zyklon B it would take to kill all his fellow partygoers. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBF8-q1YkbY2mQczRzm7GHsJOGcoNTcLiiQv9Hq9LWgP27doWhE4-L1I4T0WP39KnHzEU1DFgYSoxrJ90cyXi3AG7PpNW7mkjAQ0b1gJpzo2FbWNtZrjqsA1_VOMs1wgaKKXmmYVjwqK_-dkCATgH_8ijqAeQo8C-tXsUJiLEV1YBcOvif_GyHr-h2Wo/s750/1000013884_20240326153835742.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBF8-q1YkbY2mQczRzm7GHsJOGcoNTcLiiQv9Hq9LWgP27doWhE4-L1I4T0WP39KnHzEU1DFgYSoxrJ90cyXi3AG7PpNW7mkjAQ0b1gJpzo2FbWNtZrjqsA1_VOMs1wgaKKXmmYVjwqK_-dkCATgH_8ijqAeQo8C-tXsUJiLEV1YBcOvif_GyHr-h2Wo/s320/1000013884_20240326153835742.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>This is the most profound similarity between Glazer's film and the <i>Sniper Elite</i> games: the way in which they visually seduce us with pastoral imagery while the true evil squats just out of frame. And the fact that the pastoral is what's used to seduce us is important, because pastoralism was a key element of the Nazi aesthetic. When Hoss, the ideal settler-farmer, goes horse riding or kayaking with his children, he is LARPing as a Romantic Aryan aristocrat, a man at home in nature, whose keen ear for birdsong can make out the cry of a heron against the <i>interessengebiet's</i> constant hum of industrial murder. When Hedwig points out all the different plants with which she (or, more likely, her slave labour gardeners) have made the wasteland bloom, and boasts to her mother about how her Rudy calls her 'the Queen of Auschwitz', she positions herself as the embodiment of the Nazi <i><a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensborn-program">Lebensborn</a></i> (literally 'Fount of Life') program, drawing an implicit parallel between her personal fertility and that of her garden. When we, as Karl, stop for a moment and listen to the sound of a river in the <i>Rough Landing</i> DLC, we may not be buying in to the illusion to the same extent as Rudolf or Hedwig but we, too, are allowing ourselves to be seduced, to imagine ourselves for a moment as the subject of a Caspar David Friedrich painting, a wanderer above a sea of blood, imagining that some core, higher aspect of ourselves remains untainted by the dirty business of killing. We home in on the sounds of nature and tune out the sounds of death, just like Hoss hearing his heron. And then, just like Hoss, we get back down to business.</p><p>It's easy to say, of course, that it's different for us. For one thing, we aren't killing real people. But then again, neither were the Nazis. Their whole ideology was based on denying the humanity of their victims, reducing them to an inferior status, whether as 'degenerates', 'useless eaters' or 'lower races', to make them easier to kill. In the scene where Rudolf brags to Hedwig about being brought back for his namesake <i>Aktion, </i>it's frighteningly clear that if he ever did see the inmates of his camp as being human, he now sees them only as numbers he wants to increase. And as his comment about gassing the other guests makes clear, he may have crossed the line to seeing even his fellow Nazis as a chance to increase his high score. Nothing, for Rudy, is real anymore but the numbers. The line has to go up, and if that means, as <i>Aktion Hos</i>s meant, killing 450,000 people in three months, that's just a challenge. If it means running the crematoria continually, that's just German efficiency. What does it matter to you? When you got a job to do, you gotta do it well. </p><p>So no, pointing out the people we despatch in all their gory, kill-cam glory are simulacra won't get us very far off the ethical hook. And we won't get much further off by pointing out that those simulacra are very much the baddies. We're still playing a game about killing, and we're still enjoying the thrill. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpo3w18RadYqe3_7kOlb6JmgRKQN7RO_5D9rWhGDaxtyMCjYrHEAh7mIBCSvP5zhJZj2g0AzMawB3fJ6dSqIP_kUfCGlThqrNOYepd2x_XxtLfLwZyMMhfPiB-_zyxrDuuP-OOOkNbisNgfi8xvq5AoViNigUmbrwZYi1R5BBPofPqg6PIZi-IJ5UUcnU/s480/apps.21787.14595554922816019.13efe6e8-ecc1-4d7d-95f8-56ec07d2ff6a.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpo3w18RadYqe3_7kOlb6JmgRKQN7RO_5D9rWhGDaxtyMCjYrHEAh7mIBCSvP5zhJZj2g0AzMawB3fJ6dSqIP_kUfCGlThqrNOYepd2x_XxtLfLwZyMMhfPiB-_zyxrDuuP-OOOkNbisNgfi8xvq5AoViNigUmbrwZYi1R5BBPofPqg6PIZi-IJ5UUcnU/s320/apps.21787.14595554922816019.13efe6e8-ecc1-4d7d-95f8-56ec07d2ff6a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I played <i>Sniper Elite 5 </i>for the first time in a long time after watching <i>The Zone of Interest</i>, partly to research this article, partly just to scratch an itch. The question I was trying to answer in returning to the game was, largely, the one I've tried to answer in this essay. But I also, quite by chance, got an answer to another question which I wasn't expecting. One thing that's kept me away from this series in recent months has been the main context in which, of late, I've encountered the word 'sniper', in reports of the atrocities in Gaza - something which, as Glazer's Oscar acceptance speech made clear, was on his mind as he filmed <i>The Zone of Interest</i>. To quote from James Wilson's interview again, the film seeks 'to put you in that perspective and ask the viewer, ask us - including me - are we closer to that perpetrator perspective? To look for the similarities rather than the differences in that perpetrator, rather than the perspective of the victim. Which, of course, should be uncomfortable and a dangerous question.' </p><p>I hadn't wanted to play the <i>Sniper Elite</i> games much in the past few months because I didn't want to spend my leisure time occupying the perspective of the kind of soldiers who take <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/9/israeli-snipers-kill-21-civilians-outside-gazas-besieged-nasser-hospital">potshots at injured people outside hospitals</a>. I didn't feel much like getting the Vehicle Buster award when it would remind me of the people who<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/10/middleeast/hind-rajab-death-israel-gaza-intl/index.html"> blew up the ambulance which tried to save Hind Rajab</a>. I didn't want to think of myself as being close to someone who takes pleasure in <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-snipers-brag-about-deliberately-crippling-gaza-protesters#:~:text=Eden%20was%20instructed%20to%20%22repel,to%20as%20the%20%22killer%22.">shooting to maim</a> - who takes pleasure in shooting children. I didn't want to ask if I was closer to that perpetrator perspective. But I got the answer anyway.</p><p>Shortly after seeing <i>The Zone of Interes</i>t I replayed 'Spy Academy', the <i>SE5 </i>level where you infiltrate the Abbey of Beaumont St Denis, on it's Mont St Michel style island. At one point, I had a tricky shot to make, on an enemy sniper who kept moving from side to side, his head disappearing behind the crenellations of the turret he occupied. I got Karl into cover, then engaged the scope, switching from third to first person mode. I zoomed in the sights on the modified Mohsin-Nagant as far as it would go, then focused, releasing air from Karl's lung until the cursor hanging over the target turned red. And then, just as I fired, the bastard moved. I knew I'd missed. But the kill-cam engaged anyway, and I followed the bullet on its trajectory, until it collided with the thinnest sliver of the sniper's head as it ducked behind the stone, his body now gone transparent so I could see in X-ray clarity as it burrowed through skull and brain to exit through his cheekbone. And I cheered, because I had made an extremely difficult shot. And then I stopped cheering, and logged out, because I realised something. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2n9spSeFHNc8uIz3xAsxWYUDJdczOQotDuDbuIpHgLF9dYog87U66PehxQ2EBOfkp8ALcCovRJwobZMcrmHrpBLfTvIPpyxOUrxJxJlhKczBTVyvTIAytAeSkpqYUR_SsV_dOEww7KmTOtKe0_Q7WAk56RlqCXj2-qSMMuPeNfD4VWNdBnoSv8NAwQ88/s640/beinshottin.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2n9spSeFHNc8uIz3xAsxWYUDJdczOQotDuDbuIpHgLF9dYog87U66PehxQ2EBOfkp8ALcCovRJwobZMcrmHrpBLfTvIPpyxOUrxJxJlhKczBTVyvTIAytAeSkpqYUR_SsV_dOEww7KmTOtKe0_Q7WAk56RlqCXj2-qSMMuPeNfD4VWNdBnoSv8NAwQ88/s320/beinshottin.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Why shoot children? </p><p>Because they're smaller targets, and a smaller target is harder to hit. It requires more skill. Why shoot children? To show off that skill. It's just a challenge. What does it matter to you? When you've got a job to do, you've got to do it well. Why shoot children? For the bragging rights. </p><p>And if you don't think of them as human, it's very easy to do that. As easy as it is to look at a ballroom full of people and work out how much gas you'd need to kill them, or to tell one of your servants you could have your husband scatter her ashes in a moment of rage. Or to make TikTok videos mocking the kids that your snipers are shooting for bragging rights. </p><p>Focus. Perspective. The vision to injure. It's a question of where you choose to look, and what angle you look from. </p><p>Hollywood has been looking at Nazis for decades now. The Polish artist Piotr Uklanski's piece <i><a href="https://contemporarylynx.co.uk/piotr-uklanskis-the-nazis-the-enfant-terrible-of-polish-contemporary-art">The Nazis </a></i>consists of 164 photos of famous actors like Rutger Hauer, Harrison Ford, and Clint Eastwood dolled up in SS uniform to play Nazi officers. Not everybody included in the artwork appreciated this - the Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski, angered by what he saw as Uklanski's insinuation that he was an <i>actual</i> Nazi, slashed some of the photos, including his own, with a sabre borrowed from the set of a historical drama, in an act of vandalism which itself comes close to being a weird kind of performance art. But Uklanski's intention was never to imply that actors like Steve McQueen or Ralph Fiennes held secret fascist sympathies, it was to make a point about the way cinematic representations of the Third Reich lull us into a false sense of security, by taking its crimes and turning them into entertainment; by putting a matinee idol in a fascist uniform, do we imbue thugs like Hoss with a glamour they don't deserve? </p><p>Avoiding that glamourisation was one of Glazer's key goals in making <i>The Zone of Interest</i>. A lot of reviews of the film have referred to Hannah Arendt's concept of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem">banality of evil </a>in discussing the way in which Hoss, Hedwig and their families are depicted. Hoss isn't the classic Hollywood image of the SS officer with duelling scar, eyepatch and Wagner obsession, as gleefully parodied in the Smith and Jones 'Nazi Generals' sketch: he's a boring, pallid weirdo with a crap haircut whose wife only stays with him for their big house at the edge of a death camp, and the fur coats the guards take from the inmates. He's a loser. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2WnyCjshNZc" width="320" youtube-src-id="2WnyCjshNZc"></iframe></div><br /><p>The <i>Sniper Elite</i> franchise also tries hard to avoid glamourising Nazis. Unlike, say, the <i>Far Cry</i> series, the games steer away from the idea of opposing Karl with charismatic villains. Indeed, the one time something like this was tried, in the DLC for the series' third instalment, which ends with Karl fighting a duel against his German equivalent, a sniper planning to kill Churchill at the Casablanca Conference, it wasn't entirely successful: the villainous Raubvogel is simply nowhere near as interesting as the labyrinth through which you pursue him. Instead, the antagonist characters in the series tend to be fulminating functionaries or duplicitous sneaks, whose role is to deliver exposition in cutscenes while the real challenge comes from Karl having to make near-impossible shots, and the nearest thing to end-of-level bosses are the occasional tanks Karl has to take out. The real challenge isn't the enemies, but the environment, because when you get down to it, these games are not so much action shooters as puzzle games which involve shooting. Perhaps that's why Rebellion recently branched out by launching a board game version of the series, which actually goes even further down the road of deglamourising its antagonists by removing any Nazi iconography, and referring to them simply as 'the enemy', a decision which has not been uncontroversial. </p><p>Glazer's film, too, has been criticised for its omissions, with both politics professor Peter Rutland and Israeli film critic Avner Shalit describing it as '<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/19/opinions/zone-of-interest-holocaust-movie-rutland/index.html#:~:text=As%20Israeli%20film%20critic%20Avner,for%20best%20international%20feature%20film.">a Holocaust film without any Jews</a>'. It's hard to see these as good faith criticisms, however, with Rutland in particular only writing after Glazer's Oscar acceptance speech, and dropping in frankly perplexing lines like 'What the satiric movie <i>Saltburn </i>does for the English upper classes, <i>The Zone of Interest</i> is doing for National Socialism', a sentence which strongly suggests Rutland fails to understand not only Glazer's film but also <i>Saltburn</i>, the English upper classes, the Nazis, cinema and the basic concept of satire (I hope, for his students' sake, that he's stronger on politics than film criticism, but that's a lot to get wrong in one sentence). </p><p>But even if we assume critics like Rutland and Shalit to be objecting to the film, rather than Glazer's speech, this is an absurd criticism because the fact we rarely see any of the camp's inmates is the whole point of the film. Hollywood has looked at the Holocaust for decades now, and it has always struggled to depict it, because such an enormity is as hard to face truthfully in cinematic grammar as it is in the grammar of video games. One thinks about what Stanley Kubrick is reputed to have said about <i>Schindler's List</i>: 'The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. <i>Schindler's List</i> was about six hundred people who don't.' Sources close to Kubrick dispute the quotation, which appears in the memoirs of his <i>Eyes Wide Shut</i> co-writer Frederic Raphael, but it haunts us because it gets at a truth about the difficulty of depicting the Holocaust in cinema, which is that, fundamentally, you can't. The industrialised murder of over six million human beings is too big to depict in the terms of conventional narrative. You have to choose a part of it to focus on, and tell only that story. </p><p>One of the only other Holocaust films which comes close to depicting the real horror, Tim Blake Nelson's <i>The Gray Zone</i>, does so by focusing on the <i>sonderkommando</i>, the Jewish prisoners who helped operate the gas chambers and crematoria, and the moral, physical and psychological trauma this causes them. There's a <i>sonderkommando</i> in <i>The Zone of Interest</i>, too: he's the guy with the wheelbarrow who delivers clothes taken from executed inmates to the Hoss house, including the fur coat Hedwig tries on and poses in. The fact he is one of the few Jews we see in Glazer's film is part of the point. Rudy and Hedwig have built themselves a perfect little world, with a nice big wall around it. And on the other side of that wall, people are starved, and abused, and suffer, and are murdered systematically. And the only people from that side of the wall who are allowed to pass, briefly, into Rudy and Hedwig's perfect little world are those who provide them some service, and even then only temporarily, and on the condition that they keep their mouths shut and do as they're told. </p><p>And, because their world was so perfect, I wanted, in a way, to join them there. I wanted to climb over the wall, or out of the secret tunnel, or from their jetty by the river, and creep through the long grass, and the smart corridors of their house, and pour poison in Hoss' birthday schnapps; or slit his throat on the stairs in Oranienburg; or zero the sights of the Mohsin-Nagant on his absurd little head as he swam with his family. Because I, too, was seduced by their perfect world, and wanted, for one beautiful moment, to be the most important person in it. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dVUXhR-lFjDdMibGCz_aQ1neyiM2CazsKZqZZkmO5ElhxxPqSdvJFCQQifr6YYm0s3b1Vh0T0PoEJ2BSlasI-BXKDhvOz_3TWDkBHrU2Z15J3L2ll_ZuCopzD-wmaMVZO6XEHyiDLf6aSaT9fo9gUgH9fIusmTZHMn5xJBlIdWL3RUEdv91tn_9Jbqg/s750/1000013884_20240326154051645.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dVUXhR-lFjDdMibGCz_aQ1neyiM2CazsKZqZZkmO5ElhxxPqSdvJFCQQifr6YYm0s3b1Vh0T0PoEJ2BSlasI-BXKDhvOz_3TWDkBHrU2Z15J3L2ll_ZuCopzD-wmaMVZO6XEHyiDLf6aSaT9fo9gUgH9fIusmTZHMn5xJBlIdWL3RUEdv91tn_9Jbqg/s320/1000013884_20240326154051645.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-71896683877045459512024-03-22T12:12:00.001+00:002024-03-22T12:14:30.922+00:00Video Verse<p> Because I am an extremely disorganised individual who sucks at co-ordinating things, I forgot to add video for my last few poems, so here they are, direct from YouTube: </p><p>First, and most recent, here's my newest poem, from today, <i>Keep Lists</i>:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vp-kceefegY" width="320" youtube-src-id="vp-kceefegY"></iframe></div><br /><p>Second, here's <i>Paycheck (The Ballad of Workplace Psychosis)</i>:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wRIZndFp-Ms" width="320" youtube-src-id="wRIZndFp-Ms"></iframe></div><br /><p>Here's <i>Slough, </i>which I note I haven't even got the text of on here yet: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q8_UG9uugGQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="q8_UG9uugGQ"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>And finally, from all the way back last year because I am such a ding-a-ling, here's <i>English Sounds Like Injury in Arabic</i>: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rfPAGf0cy0c" width="320" youtube-src-id="rfPAGf0cy0c"></iframe></div><br /><p>I will, I promise, get around to posting some of my bizarre synth/sampling experiments on here, but they can also be found on my YouTube channel if you want to hear the results of me faffing around recording and remixing rain, rubbish, and random gibberish. I recorded something weird AF the other night, which I will be posting up as soon as I come up with a video which fits. </p><p>And remember: if you appreciate my work and would like to reward me for making it, you can do so by donating to my<a href="https://ko-fi.com/ajmckenna#linkModal"> tip jar</a>! </p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-12238816184202221612024-03-22T09:14:00.003+00:002024-03-22T09:15:23.665+00:00Keep Lists<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwX0efnuL4sXndifI7QJNdxXFfQdktuy0VzIOFTMXN35bmuagK29UHLNwVpezyo9MFvmyUO3iibs3HSiSVVlxaZ4ifwNaUhQQyEHyUa4cDFlyC0ujid6OWhyphenhyphenTtY96xQnIwaxliVSYYgGHWL_WmHCiBex2wWsB7nDA3wrjin-JvrHD5n3WKexeoJpnNAv0/s1600/spiral%20stair.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwX0efnuL4sXndifI7QJNdxXFfQdktuy0VzIOFTMXN35bmuagK29UHLNwVpezyo9MFvmyUO3iibs3HSiSVVlxaZ4ifwNaUhQQyEHyUa4cDFlyC0ujid6OWhyphenhyphenTtY96xQnIwaxliVSYYgGHWL_WmHCiBex2wWsB7nDA3wrjin-JvrHD5n3WKexeoJpnNAv0/s320/spiral%20stair.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <span id="docs-internal-guid-6bc41fa0-7fff-aa77-d5fb-e4bf4b54d7fd"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Keep Lists</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">No paper could be taken off the floor,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">so scraps were torn theatrically</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and tossed in plastic bins:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">contraband confetti scattered</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">in the name of confidentiality - </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">but we committed house numbers</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and postcodes to our memories,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">browsed Google Maps and bus times,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">wrote things down in breaktime notebooks;</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">looked for patterns in their spending,</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">for political donations or the papers </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">that they took. We built up profiles,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">checked their local papers’ websites</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">for photos showing how they looked,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">obituaries of relatives we could obliquely</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">reference and listen for the slight</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">catch in their breath before we moved on</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to the next stage in the bullet-pointed script</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">our bosses called </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Real Conversations</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Others copied out the letters in their names,</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">reshaped them into glyphs we ripped</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">between their hang-up and the next shriek</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">through our headsets set us copying</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-55b80131-7fff-48b7-44dc-3c140421a3b9"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">again. No paper could be taken</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">off the floor. In India, the management banned pens.</span></p><div><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-09f0f3f2-7fff-7627-a911-2622b9522f80"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><div><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></span><p></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-4412885529513662012024-03-16T19:39:00.001+00:002024-03-16T19:40:08.326+00:00Paycheck (The Ballad of Workplace Psychosis)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE0TwOQPe-4QcwQ2HyRKeV40trKhg9CRNfKIccNeQ7rIouSfHRVAP0U1UqTvYIaoKA5O56yvlCK918SdQmpVjFrxUhmOs5ERfhmMRWnNI1yqtMJoXT2zREBJRxbpw5DvTZAyD4ngZ1PnAkY8vuP1eXN5-U0hzAw0Fz-gzJYfrvw0fDUXKmBh9RPUmU4lc/s640/Workplace_02_Modern_640x640-1-640x640_20240316193622840.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE0TwOQPe-4QcwQ2HyRKeV40trKhg9CRNfKIccNeQ7rIouSfHRVAP0U1UqTvYIaoKA5O56yvlCK918SdQmpVjFrxUhmOs5ERfhmMRWnNI1yqtMJoXT2zREBJRxbpw5DvTZAyD4ngZ1PnAkY8vuP1eXN5-U0hzAw0Fz-gzJYfrvw0fDUXKmBh9RPUmU4lc/s320/Workplace_02_Modern_640x640-1-640x640_20240316193622840.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-0a32941c-7fff-d7ce-2adc-3f24043151ca" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I'll buy a hatchet with this paycheck</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and on my first Monday back</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I'll take it out and split the forehead</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">of that prat who parrots phrases</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">from the shit he sees on TV,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">see his eyes light up completely </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">for the first time in his life, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">before they shut down for the night</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and switch to mental QVC. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I'll pull the hatchet from his forehead</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and I'll walk across the floor</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">while my fellow workers book it</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">(this is not what they're paid for)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">until I find myself outside the room</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">with a poster by the door</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">proclaiming loudly END THE STIGMA,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">acting like we're not the cause</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">of the very mental illness </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">which has brought me to the door</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">that my Team Leader locked the second</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">she heard screaming on the floor</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">but which, I know, is made of cheap wood,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and cannot, for long, endure</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">repeated impact from my hatchet</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">‘til its handle hangs ajar</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">from the door it used to open</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and I know the look of horror</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">that stains her eyes on seeing me</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">is something new to her:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">wish I could say it was for me,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">but I'm glad. It's good to share. </span></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-34806685711393328632024-02-02T13:04:00.004+00:002024-02-02T13:04:48.334+00:00Charlie Windsor's Theme<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ev2yXthfEe8" width="320" youtube-src-id="ev2yXthfEe8"></iframe></div><br /> It's been a while! I am still working on <i>Albian Dreams, </i>with more of a focus on making it a properly multimedia project rather than just a weird sort of blog/novel/poetry collection thing. So with that in mind, please enjoy the first official piece of music from the Albia OST, the theme tune for Charlie Sausage Fingers!<p></p><p>I've been working a lot on music over the past month, as you'll see from looking at the recent output on my YouTube. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm pleased that my pieces are beginning to become more ambitious in terms of structure, even if I am still mainly mucking about with loops in Endlesss. I'm currently working on a grant application for this project which will hopefully allow me to do some kind of structured training in music/video production, but in the meantime I am reliant on the meagre state benefits I receive as a disabled person in the decidedly <i>un</i>-utopian version of these islands we have to live in, and on tips from readers like you, so if any of you feel like chucking a few coins in my tip jar at <a href="https://ko-fi.com/ajmckenna">ko-fi.com/ajmckenna</a> that would totally rock hard! Tippers get access to cool extra stuff like bonus videos, shout-outs in the dedications, etc etc, you know how this works. </p><p>More updates and ramblings soon!</p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-6377493205474870062023-12-12T10:49:00.009+00:002023-12-13T08:50:45.225+00:00English sounds like injury in Arabic <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the language I am learning like a child</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">who must be taught the shapes and sounds</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">of letters, children scream. Already, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">they are more well-versed than I </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">in sounding out these shapes,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">and screaming too. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">I who, from my earliest days at school, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">was punished for deficiency in cursive; I, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">whose English letters fall somewhere between</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">a spider-in-an-inkpot smear and a-for-apple print,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">am learning a supremely calligraphic language</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">as hands far more practiced than mine</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">find their own writing sliding into scrawl</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">and must accept it, so those hands may yet</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">incise and suture with precision</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">after sixty-six days, most without electric light</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">or anaesthetic.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the language I am learning </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">the word I find most pleasing</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">is the name of a nation we bombed into freedom</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">where people are now sold as slaves. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this language, the words for my country</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">are half-rhymes for wounding and guilt. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the language I have grown up speaking</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">people quibble about what it means</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">to say things like 'genocide' or 'self-defence', </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">or 'rules-based International order'. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the language I am learning, </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">I cannot say these things. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">I do not, yet, know it well enough to lie.</span></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-31961323884871232272023-10-29T02:46:00.001+00:002023-10-29T02:46:15.033+00:00Things I've been up to lately<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yaRRd0wzIm4" width="320" youtube-src-id="yaRRd0wzIm4"></iframe></div><br /> I've been feeling lately as if I haven't actually been doing much, so I decided to do this post as a way of disagreeing with my impostor syndrome about that, as much as anything. Most obviously, as you'll see above, I recorded a version of 'We know where the huntsman lives' for my YouTube channel, which you can check out above. I've also been faffing about visually, so I thought I'd document that, starting with the thumbnail image for the above video:<p></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt5jQCj8FMYg-JI4Y0NVDaaWGccJSzC4vTLUFO4ucO69OvlzW7YoVHR9efar4a8qjUe5y7nDRvPJeK6l0KUVePVjRlQ2zdqWUN87PGQI_C1h_dPPFiLi25HmPItUdPV8SXUOOWpJTDrz7CdN2XdWZy91dYKVhX7iVxVX_3YxhJWfFHPjJxTSCZe71wb4/s1440/1000011534.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt5jQCj8FMYg-JI4Y0NVDaaWGccJSzC4vTLUFO4ucO69OvlzW7YoVHR9efar4a8qjUe5y7nDRvPJeK6l0KUVePVjRlQ2zdqWUN87PGQI_C1h_dPPFiLi25HmPItUdPV8SXUOOWpJTDrz7CdN2XdWZy91dYKVhX7iVxVX_3YxhJWfFHPjJxTSCZe71wb4/s320/1000011534.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I seem to be using a lot of stuff from The Invisibles for image manipulation purposes lately; make of that what you will. You may recognise Miss Dwyer's sunglasses in this picture of Shadow Chancellor and plagiarist Rachel Reeves:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkKw2TlrYJisJDd6juu9KOQcKdlF6Eauir5huOsHu7guLH9qNNv8Pst7CpkaxCw5Gu1Vw9PWxGpjdGr8nbBcuWyqTUjgUqCRYBaCrB_W3X-ZNrzbcvuwEhFNXCtAtqVth0HNKhoNJw4HOvVQGFaqkiE52ADzjOEbNG96j4NFHzkm0BL55mqmPFLn0gWR8/s535/1000011512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="535" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkKw2TlrYJisJDd6juu9KOQcKdlF6Eauir5huOsHu7guLH9qNNv8Pst7CpkaxCw5Gu1Vw9PWxGpjdGr8nbBcuWyqTUjgUqCRYBaCrB_W3X-ZNrzbcvuwEhFNXCtAtqVth0HNKhoNJw4HOvVQGFaqkiE52ADzjOEbNG96j4NFHzkm0BL55mqmPFLn0gWR8/s320/1000011512.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I've also been mocking Elon Musk, because it is fun and very easy to do: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTXp_rgcCKlS_QwTzbcIwlvYplCAY_sajFd-fcc_N4Y-GHh6cL2vEiiT0MclLGArDX14IyYjmxscOmAdgBDqlvaLTlpAfM7DSY4xfZ4vb-FAq5SbrNo5jLEEP4ZNgSxEvDsGp2kX7VBOCAOQxPC1SWEjt_nUyS8ZSvqPFUGHUx_dUAKNAQyYr02oGO2Q/s1630/Screenshot_20231026_200224_Facebook_20231026200341766.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1630" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTXp_rgcCKlS_QwTzbcIwlvYplCAY_sajFd-fcc_N4Y-GHh6cL2vEiiT0MclLGArDX14IyYjmxscOmAdgBDqlvaLTlpAfM7DSY4xfZ4vb-FAq5SbrNo5jLEEP4ZNgSxEvDsGp2kX7VBOCAOQxPC1SWEjt_nUyS8ZSvqPFUGHUx_dUAKNAQyYr02oGO2Q/s320/Screenshot_20231026_200224_Facebook_20231026200341766.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcTR50Gq_PKKq1v1dzq6v7-L9vBk2VkH9A-7rGsb_Xa-NsUP21fG0Ek_6dypi5b-o71AbUz6_1yOaV50hNCItjqSVRCD7h7FTbUaWqD0iJP_gBs6mrHeQwxBTlSj0y6BlrBqo6sijMFKcuJBpU8TpMs3jFxotYLqDgQCxsFmCvIMMCa8k21xvfXCEnoo/s1280/1000011424.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcTR50Gq_PKKq1v1dzq6v7-L9vBk2VkH9A-7rGsb_Xa-NsUP21fG0Ek_6dypi5b-o71AbUz6_1yOaV50hNCItjqSVRCD7h7FTbUaWqD0iJP_gBs6mrHeQwxBTlSj0y6BlrBqo6sijMFKcuJBpU8TpMs3jFxotYLqDgQCxsFmCvIMMCa8k21xvfXCEnoo/s320/1000011424.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Another highly mockable individual is one Vincent Kennedy McMahon, particularly with the revelation this week that he hated UK crowds: <div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-japCb9tfSNvc6k5GOmTWe2MF2cjwPigJfwaXL069L5_sM4FsKVkXDLJ2C9aHRYeVW7MfEjsDim0S1YrvRzQOveeUBGkC-E-ytg_6btWan9SY4dOgfbRyPqaQr2f9bLtDlKYNrAlxZsbkGADHIcbIZ1krY9PzrC587t5Da3hXHU_I4UQI3zqrXo2HxA/s600/1000011503.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="600" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-japCb9tfSNvc6k5GOmTWe2MF2cjwPigJfwaXL069L5_sM4FsKVkXDLJ2C9aHRYeVW7MfEjsDim0S1YrvRzQOveeUBGkC-E-ytg_6btWan9SY4dOgfbRyPqaQr2f9bLtDlKYNrAlxZsbkGADHIcbIZ1krY9PzrC587t5Da3hXHU_I4UQI3zqrXo2HxA/s320/1000011503.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>Sometimes I just get something stuck in my head and have to make it: </div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAfnOyy582Y3qlyl9mghDmpDZ_3kiCAQgHyUumjXHtuvP7sB29ZMOhen4zGXWn5x596wh4K1rYq5ub_bGaJGjzpfhVhn2CdNATPO6VJNVYBhNMChcqMtRgrlozFm4ttKJzSIc_HeFZ7HXeKULiUh0Sh1dK7ZXeQbwnCeiT80N9X7lZiHQZbOoQs_B08Yg/s1600/1000011399.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1198" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAfnOyy582Y3qlyl9mghDmpDZ_3kiCAQgHyUumjXHtuvP7sB29ZMOhen4zGXWn5x596wh4K1rYq5ub_bGaJGjzpfhVhn2CdNATPO6VJNVYBhNMChcqMtRgrlozFm4ttKJzSIc_HeFZ7HXeKULiUh0Sh1dK7ZXeQbwnCeiT80N9X7lZiHQZbOoQs_B08Yg/s320/1000011399.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div>And sometimes the Guardian drops something in your lap that's so obvious you can't not do it: <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcEGxIVriYmnARI01kDRqJmSYGbfp3KOvJki7vxiEFoj0byj1d4FHNgQmJxVA-TdJmYRebwsNjyiEGv9zoCzMpVlqHsv4c_S8VCYCadTye4eB1HUot-0YBUj2JpUs9DwqkGcAtgXVsT8sEZVS77PDaD11Zzmhh6diW-po0HbCEgPbmnHXRyXe3IUSG04/s2000/1000011326.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1478" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcEGxIVriYmnARI01kDRqJmSYGbfp3KOvJki7vxiEFoj0byj1d4FHNgQmJxVA-TdJmYRebwsNjyiEGv9zoCzMpVlqHsv4c_S8VCYCadTye4eB1HUot-0YBUj2JpUs9DwqkGcAtgXVsT8sEZVS77PDaD11Zzmhh6diW-po0HbCEgPbmnHXRyXe3IUSG04/s320/1000011326.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><div><br /></div>While we're on the subject of the Carbonara Kid, I was very pleased to hear a classic public safety film has been revived to warn kids of this new danger (EWOTRIAP):<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirta4lI9gEdtwAerlBLEiMYFyvf-Gits67IzBYcFZlhbtt5nMGnY0_dwisdXrSEWXnyZ-etxkmdaL5q3qkosZxDAaHeDVjq3thvGo14kazHIXjfz8BpUqtbabd0HPJfNhBDnWwiJnA2aoLloY_UgNf9tHD01SdYsLWsC12P252oyssIAUUvdW2cRG8uKg/s360/1000011222.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="360" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirta4lI9gEdtwAerlBLEiMYFyvf-Gits67IzBYcFZlhbtt5nMGnY0_dwisdXrSEWXnyZ-etxkmdaL5q3qkosZxDAaHeDVjq3thvGo14kazHIXjfz8BpUqtbabd0HPJfNhBDnWwiJnA2aoLloY_UgNf9tHD01SdYsLWsC12P252oyssIAUUvdW2cRG8uKg/s320/1000011222.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>I also see that Rishi Sunak has rebranded the Tory logo to better appeal to his core vote: <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmd2_vDtXExlD-9E8fSx1_AxDD_2bksWS9zxjvMpFADhAwathUqgJeR8oP5OD0gwpcGqT7hlvDrzu818iMOuQQvbAS5PdQBgp1EOFzcx-MM54lXRv-oTbwC94vm51poSMXHddbDHlU17-JEMdDJBdUnEZVIlooeP9pOZEK2XXpiXslNF8inI8Cfn4NPBs/s640/1000011303.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmd2_vDtXExlD-9E8fSx1_AxDD_2bksWS9zxjvMpFADhAwathUqgJeR8oP5OD0gwpcGqT7hlvDrzu818iMOuQQvbAS5PdQBgp1EOFzcx-MM54lXRv-oTbwC94vm51poSMXHddbDHlU17-JEMdDJBdUnEZVIlooeP9pOZEK2XXpiXslNF8inI8Cfn4NPBs/s320/1000011303.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Also, in terms of my own photography, I've gotten quite interested in photographing real things that look like static or interference patterns. These will probably wind up being used in future shops or video backgrounds, I imagine: </div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUhi2FaFtC0IbhqLQLU22xZqauNVdG8hXuzi1I8xTpzajeJU2WFvz319n6Hi45MGfUnPMdHkE9921vfeD-UnT938i2dbPUHPG-ywUlMTSeokMmru3ZRmijC3pKoQPva1ZxZFn7Cz2IF2XDT96iPW_0kJepfKoOt1vphAMe4EzfMvlA-pBOOkjCNJDKcr0/s2047/20201117_132057%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2047" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUhi2FaFtC0IbhqLQLU22xZqauNVdG8hXuzi1I8xTpzajeJU2WFvz319n6Hi45MGfUnPMdHkE9921vfeD-UnT938i2dbPUHPG-ywUlMTSeokMmru3ZRmijC3pKoQPva1ZxZFn7Cz2IF2XDT96iPW_0kJepfKoOt1vphAMe4EzfMvlA-pBOOkjCNJDKcr0/s320/20201117_132057%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6zOletK8yIYKTdDtTt-1SkgJs3PhJINKHhozK8gUL_H8CPEF561K1oo75DcT-5dtcrTAi-s4mxP6On92JJRB3RXLfWg07YKU9Vf_CoMBeySkBl1CB897strBo3oJ2heJWB16Wbd6i8wZ612JGYUeNNTT1nC7ZlaoB7PdQ5Wn_hrZ-dlXT19d2LbUjSQg/s4000/1000010852.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6zOletK8yIYKTdDtTt-1SkgJs3PhJINKHhozK8gUL_H8CPEF561K1oo75DcT-5dtcrTAi-s4mxP6On92JJRB3RXLfWg07YKU9Vf_CoMBeySkBl1CB897strBo3oJ2heJWB16Wbd6i8wZ612JGYUeNNTT1nC7ZlaoB7PdQ5Wn_hrZ-dlXT19d2LbUjSQg/s320/1000010852.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div>There's a bunch of other stuff that's been going on, but is more difficult to include in a quick post like this - synth experiments, voluntary work, doing stuff at demos...expect to see more stuff about all of these things on here soon; after a little time off after finishing up Albian Dreams, I'm planning to get back into the habit of updating here more frequently. And as always, of course, if you like what I'm doing then feel free to show your appreciation by tipping me via my <a href="https://ko-fi.com/ajmckenna">ko-fi page</a>; October has been a pretty rough month for me due to an unexpected illness and some surprise bills (don't you just love those?), so any tips are super-appreciated. </div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-72381781054941094662023-10-22T20:07:00.001+01:002023-10-22T20:07:07.081+01:00Moment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lQaXjrcd6Rq759_YrbfSJjLsHbnxloknpU6rPtAfqDWhN-HxRRZ14sVJsYN5Su6D8-P3JZrz9YTrA-AgPees4N4EfgjgBUMAmyCFmQ145Yk5jqJxRy7hD1KQmpGhTZSAd1zdIXTxp9HBIsb9NZ43areRbFr2EAQhmO0FM2YeLmhFRX11HKoTKAm-Zl8/s300/1000011436.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lQaXjrcd6Rq759_YrbfSJjLsHbnxloknpU6rPtAfqDWhN-HxRRZ14sVJsYN5Su6D8-P3JZrz9YTrA-AgPees4N4EfgjgBUMAmyCFmQ145Yk5jqJxRy7hD1KQmpGhTZSAd1zdIXTxp9HBIsb9NZ43areRbFr2EAQhmO0FM2YeLmhFRX11HKoTKAm-Zl8/s1600/1000011436.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I closed my eyes</div><div style="text-align: left;">at the flash in the sky</div><div style="text-align: left;">and hoped to be killed by the blast wave</div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-56135694651986334812023-10-13T01:17:00.005+01:002023-10-13T05:08:12.124+01:00We know where the Huntsman lives <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAmFOyQ7nYUrU1U_oYjC-sycLe_-dSKbQHJFgQCsZm2whQW1teCCJowEMih99TWOxVnbLZRVzPQITzi8JAhS37iQU1O4EfMwrXtK9HBNV5QhJF1KkgF_1gf602SpOH1JFtdHEQwgfO5o-OC8f_rkBE76lVzXFI18XFSTQtVJyoW5j1DIzPKQbPMmNwMo8/s387/1000011351.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="387" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAmFOyQ7nYUrU1U_oYjC-sycLe_-dSKbQHJFgQCsZm2whQW1teCCJowEMih99TWOxVnbLZRVzPQITzi8JAhS37iQU1O4EfMwrXtK9HBNV5QhJF1KkgF_1gf602SpOH1JFtdHEQwgfO5o-OC8f_rkBE76lVzXFI18XFSTQtVJyoW5j1DIzPKQbPMmNwMo8/s320/1000011351.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <span id="docs-internal-guid-84401b01-7fff-1cfa-7e2d-d3dda43f8109"><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">We know about the author <br /></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">who likes getting off on torture<br /></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">writing doorstops of smug thuggery <br /></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to settle petty scores;</span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">we know about her charity</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">enabling depravity </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">from back alleys in Bucharest</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to Port-au-Prince’s shores; </span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">we see the politicians</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">wink and make insinuations</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to ensure your misdirection </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">as, magicians of suspicion,</span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">they hide the hand that disappears</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">their colleagues’ allegations;</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">the columnists who polish up </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">once-tarnished reputations,</span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">dressing up facilitation </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">as rehabilitation, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">as they cutely euphemise</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">their grooming </span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">as ‘home-schooling’, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">call their trafficking ‘adoption’</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and expect us to be fooled. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">But we see through</span></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">their find-the-lady hand-jive</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">and their prestidigitation.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">We’re wise to their forces</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">and we know the fucking score.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">We know where the lady is,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">and we know who the groomers are,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">and we know where the Huntsman lives</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">and we refuse to be prey anymore:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">We know where the Huntsman lives. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">We’re breaking down his door. </span></p></span></div></span><p></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-85697319862530760292023-07-28T21:53:00.000+01:002023-07-28T21:53:28.094+01:00Thoughts on the WAG and SAG-AFTRA strikes<p>It's interesting how much work is going on to undermine the written word today, isn't it. </p><p>It's interesting just how much work is going on </p><p>to undermine the written word</p><p>today. I mean right now, in sweating offices and boardrooms,</p><p>men who are paid more money than I am ever going to see</p><p>before I shuffle off this mortal coil, are talking to shady guys</p><p>like the man I once met in a Baltimore restaurant</p><p>who seemed like the epitome of charming evil, </p><p>to try and find the dirt to turn a snitch with,</p><p>and all with the intention</p><p>of replacing professional writers - not weirdoes like me,</p><p>who will always be shouting out here at the edge of the </p><p>boarded-up shopfronts, but people paid to write the actual words</p><p>which millions remember, mimic, maul into ubiquity</p><p>with machines with which, we are told, will outwrite</p><p>Wilder, all the while unable </p><p>to write more than a third-form book report. </p><p>It's absolute exhaustion. Is this why</p><p>e said the mind was wider than the sky?</p><p>To satisfy the kind of men who dined with Harvey Weinstein? </p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-32093346807206094702023-07-09T21:25:00.001+01:002023-07-09T21:25:36.183+01:00George Osborne Is Weak<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb3JhrVVd7_m-lyA_SP5Uf1lhG7sEICUXl-JgnoKfopJuEOCh2WjDbdoEB9VtrTVWv7NniSQ6Ba63qXSSb6RA__aaro7BGt8IpO3Eu_05Z3xS7TsEaORGJbiew7-855gcMcTDCxe8t04-6JAgZ3joTGljrkElyxgem-MpL9--6LGa7UzKukqhMwEOvRFE/s680/TELEMMGLPICT000342012226_16889085653820_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqtA9hvt4yaDuJhaJG2frTIbeHsZFrEmHQDi0eQN40zhg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="680" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb3JhrVVd7_m-lyA_SP5Uf1lhG7sEICUXl-JgnoKfopJuEOCh2WjDbdoEB9VtrTVWv7NniSQ6Ba63qXSSb6RA__aaro7BGt8IpO3Eu_05Z3xS7TsEaORGJbiew7-855gcMcTDCxe8t04-6JAgZ3joTGljrkElyxgem-MpL9--6LGa7UzKukqhMwEOvRFE/s320/TELEMMGLPICT000342012226_16889085653820_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqtA9hvt4yaDuJhaJG2frTIbeHsZFrEmHQDi0eQN40zhg.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>And so is everyone soiling their pants over one of the Just Stop Oil people getting him point-blank with some orange confetti. Emphasis on 'some'. Look how little that lady is throwing at him, in my little collage piece above (which is just a bit of banter, right chaps? After all, I'm not even using <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/totally-unacceptable-mod-criticises-troops-after-corbyn-picture-used-in-target-practice-11682894">simunition </a>rounds...) . Look how little hits him! If you genuinely find this terrifying then look away now, because I'm about to blow your tiny, cowardly little mind. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4mya2COugs6F_w3MfwFSZ6lty4SDC8-Xp-30Ys3iIWg8QlX92-ocluNoVmJRpoHOt1SVv1QBXuka1YX9bzHf7Wq7lXjcj3ljcG1uaAH2vNV-xAGeLuh7lgcpk2D_7SoIL-jlWup4hw0VCK359RCZ9ULRwykc12uUfJYIlNsz-yXTLDJ50avWxfkOXNck/s1280/20150812_180206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4mya2COugs6F_w3MfwFSZ6lty4SDC8-Xp-30Ys3iIWg8QlX92-ocluNoVmJRpoHOt1SVv1QBXuka1YX9bzHf7Wq7lXjcj3ljcG1uaAH2vNV-xAGeLuh7lgcpk2D_7SoIL-jlWup4hw0VCK359RCZ9ULRwykc12uUfJYIlNsz-yXTLDJ50avWxfkOXNck/s320/20150812_180206.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>That's me covered in fake blood and very real confetti after the first prop rehearsal for <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/applesandsnakes/aj-mckenna-public-address-the-soapbox-tour/">Shotgun Wedding</a> back in 2015. We learned two things from that rehearsal: one, that the literally underground venue we were using wasn't really set up for a situation where gallons of sugar syrup and food colouring were being thrown around, and, two, that the blood may have looked impressive but the confetti really didn't. So going forward, we decided to bulk out the confetti with dry rice. </p><p>The thing about having handfuls of dry rice thrown at you by people who've been whipped up into a frenzy? That isn't like having confetti lightly tumble down upon and around you. That shit hurts. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyTl1yGjPdxes0Qr2jnRslzys9aSvKd_OPFDS_WACeK22G5_yZ7vchAvzV1gOkcdEK8iKw0eFZGCNYZCgvR_P_u3vCtAatmpgKDP8OraomcGp2Qj74oKIsH6bzqwl1Pp5ZPm4neO0PhyAgBdxEyKLM9pyp2uLsgPDHbvRaw7f0FynxtGkpBZlxEO7aqnY/s1920/DSC_0091.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyTl1yGjPdxes0Qr2jnRslzys9aSvKd_OPFDS_WACeK22G5_yZ7vchAvzV1gOkcdEK8iKw0eFZGCNYZCgvR_P_u3vCtAatmpgKDP8OraomcGp2Qj74oKIsH6bzqwl1Pp5ZPm4neO0PhyAgBdxEyKLM9pyp2uLsgPDHbvRaw7f0FynxtGkpBZlxEO7aqnY/s320/DSC_0091.JPG" width="180" /></a></div><br /><p>And here's me after the last performance of the tour, at which I specifically instructed the audience to try and throw rice with sufficient force to stop me performing (they didn't in the end, but it did get pretty close). As you can see, I'm absolutely plastered with the stuff. </p><p>A tiny bit of confetti? Don't make me laugh. Frankly, from everything I hear about Georgie 'Porgie' Osborne lately, he wants to be thankful he didn't get hit with something much stronger than novelty wedding favors. I mean, I would have turned up with a brick <i><b>before </b></i>I read this Thursday's Popbitch...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTSR0oGEQGAm0-0MmYnVEpCfR8Bd9lUTbkktj4U2VQuyoZF9-2EdI4-B6AGQ-qSONVuQLH4NkEBbmyGERU7cyA9BdZQ99q3IZM1dtFl7lEsmNBSEHZIl86zU_ifNE9NA9hBfeXUt4N9areGbDWlfkBt89Xyr-cFhPnmzRyEM2x5HYjvEn3rwAhkcF6TEM/s600/nursery-rhyme-georgie-porgie-pudding-pie-14190551.jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="600" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTSR0oGEQGAm0-0MmYnVEpCfR8Bd9lUTbkktj4U2VQuyoZF9-2EdI4-B6AGQ-qSONVuQLH4NkEBbmyGERU7cyA9BdZQ99q3IZM1dtFl7lEsmNBSEHZIl86zU_ifNE9NA9hBfeXUt4N9areGbDWlfkBt89Xyr-cFhPnmzRyEM2x5HYjvEn3rwAhkcF6TEM/s320/nursery-rhyme-georgie-porgie-pudding-pie-14190551.jpg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-62096650775788265532023-06-05T21:10:00.000+01:002023-06-05T21:10:37.902+01:00Let me show you the tail of the scorpion...<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCLwxIXnP0Kokv3GMwo4u5EDTIauow-HjtUtAf6XU4vqmC3WNxhaIBLSS5gFSKLP5-lCzbVvcoi8aKj-kV9M2cPuoK1t7lBiaauu7htxy1qQwrlWqJJfqp_wadpNsvoyNNhP0PbQF_QWw45vgif8oxNJTs6U7e0wEs8DyoxKORX6iXzG8Be7AGOcuS/s1780/EizUfW2XgAAQ5Cw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1606" data-original-width="1780" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCLwxIXnP0Kokv3GMwo4u5EDTIauow-HjtUtAf6XU4vqmC3WNxhaIBLSS5gFSKLP5-lCzbVvcoi8aKj-kV9M2cPuoK1t7lBiaauu7htxy1qQwrlWqJJfqp_wadpNsvoyNNhP0PbQF_QWw45vgif8oxNJTs6U7e0wEs8DyoxKORX6iXzG8Be7AGOcuS/s320/EizUfW2XgAAQ5Cw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><i>'Capturing societies' in the Americas considered slave-taking as a mode of subsistence in its own right, but not in the usual sense of producing calories. Raiders almost invariably insisted that slaves were captured for their life force or 'vitality' - vitality which was consumed by the conquering group. - </i>Davids Graeber & Wengrow, 'The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity'<div><br /></div><div>'[Franco] created orphans by the thousand, and he ate them by the score. And he created orphanages...more like <i>madrasahs</i>, really. Indoctrination with lashings - take that how you will - with lashings of orthodoxy and obscurantism. The children of murdered Republicans would be brainwashed with Mariolatry and hagiology. Their teachers were sadistic brides of Christ, and predatory bridegrooms of Christ. Further, in addition to children whose parents were dead, there were children of surviving Republican parents who were stolen in order to be re-educated.' - Jonathan Meades, <i>Franco Building: Mass Tourism</i></div><div><br /></div><div>'During Argentina’s bloody dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, military officials carried out the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners who were often executed without a trace.' - Al-Jazeera, '<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/23/argentina-identifies-131st-baby-kidnapped-during-dictatorship">Argentina identifies 131st baby kidnapped during dictatorship</a>', 22/12/2022</div><div><br /></div><div>'The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000...' - Wikipedia, '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system">Canadian Indian residential school system</a>' </div><div><br /></div><div>'An Associated Press (AP) investigation revealed in 2017 that more than 100 United Nations (UN) peacekeepers ran a child sex ring in Haiti over a 10-year period and none were ever jailed. The report further found that over the previous 12 years, there had been almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other UN personnel around the world.' - Wikipedia, '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse_by_UN_peacekeepers#:~:text=An%20Associated%20Press%20(AP)%20investigation,and%20none%20were%20ever%20jailed.">Child sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers</a>' </div><div><br /></div><div>'In Australia, between 1910 and the 1970s, governments, churches and welfare bodies forcibly removed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. These children became known as the Stolen Generations. Their removal was sanctioned by various government policies (AIATSIS 2022a), which have left a legacy of trauma and loss that continues to affect First Nations communities, families and individuals today.' - Australia Together, '<a href="In Australia, between 1910 and the 1970s*, governments, churches and welfare bodies forcibly removed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. These children became known as the Stolen Generations. Their removal was sanctioned by various government policies (AIATSIS 2022a), which have left a legacy of trauma and loss that continues to affect First Nations communities, families and individuals today.">The Stolen Generations: the forcible removal of First Nations children from their families</a>' </div><div><br /></div><div><div>'In cases where adoption is in the child’s best interests, efforts should be made for the child to be adopted by a local family from his or her community and country and of origin...Exceptionally, if all prior efforts have been explored, or are not in the child’s best interests, then <i>international adoption may be considered</i> as an option.' - Lumos website, <a href="https://www.wearelumos.org/who-we-are/faqs/">FAQs</a>, 'What about adoption?'</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>'During World War II, around 200,000 ethnic Polish children as well as an unspecified number of children of other ethnicities were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to Nazi Germany for purposes of forced labour, medical experimentation, or Germanization. An aim of the project was to acquire and "Germanize" children with purportedly Aryan-Nordic traits because Nazi officials believed that they were the descendants of German settlers who had emigrated to Poland. Those labelled "racially valuable" were forcibly Germanized in centres and then sent to German families and SS Home Schools.' - Wikipedia, '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_children_by_Nazi_Germany">Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany</a>'</div></div><div><br /></div><div>'Oxfam failed to act on reports children were being sexually abused by its workers in Haiti in 2011...in one case, two emails...both said to be from a 13-year-old Haitian girl - alleged she and a 12-year-old friend had suffered physical abuse and other misconduct at the hands of Oxfam staff.' The Independent, '<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/oxfam-child-abuse-haiti-scandal-inquiry-sexual-exploitation-charity-commission-a895">Oxfam failed to act on reports its workers were raping girls as young as 12, damning report concludes</a>' </div><div><br /></div><div>'Though better known for administering humanitarian aid around the world, USAID has a long history of engaging in intelligence work and meddling in the domestic politics of aid recipients. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the agency often partnered with the CIA’s now-shuttered Office of Public Safety, a department beset by allegations that it trained foreign police in "terror and torture techniques" and encouraged official brutality, according to a 1976 Government Accountability Office report... in 1973, Congress directed USAID to phase out its public safety program — which worked with the CIA to train foreign police forces...By the time the program was closed, USAID had helped train thousands of military personnel and police officers in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries now notorious for their treatment of political dissidents.' - Foreign Policy magazine, ' <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other-times-usaid-pretended-to-be-an-intelligence-agency/">"Cuban Twitter" and Other Times USAID Pretended To Be An Intelligence Agency"</a> ' </div><div><br /></div><div>'In January 2015, Lumos began working in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere...On 31 July 2019 we launched a project to tackle human trafficking <i>in partnership with USAID</i>.' - Lumos website, '<a href="https://www.wearelumos.org/where-we-work/haiti/">Where We Work: Haiti</a>' </div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Ou wè li? Ou wè ke eskòpyon an? </i></b></div><div><header class="sc-qvufca-7 htraSv" id="articleHeader" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Indy Serif", "Adjusted Indy Serif Fallback", serif;"><div class="sc-qvufca-1 dnaSSZ" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px auto; max-width: 968px; padding: 0px 16px;"><nav class="sc-22qwnu-0 jROVxO" style="font-family: "Indy Sans", "Adjusted Indy Sans Fallback", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 20px; padding: 24px 0px 19px;"><br /></nav></div></header></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-91067543947800329932023-06-02T23:38:00.002+01:002023-06-02T23:45:32.417+01:00Enough<div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtkRJGh6NO33vGIqbtpD5gpRI3P3MtiquPog5kRko87bhg7WMP79uuxbCWG0b7u3y6Pvuyja4NDWF_TYvZhsfLNyYfVHWjMRkZqjFurNaRU8x9CZ5TaLucpbSFpHBznfBNDSUteI0M7dste9E7HJirEsDKX4ui8xJCx6q3J8QugYu6TTn6TXRrkHpF/s3328/1685745385016.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2496" data-original-width="3328" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtkRJGh6NO33vGIqbtpD5gpRI3P3MtiquPog5kRko87bhg7WMP79uuxbCWG0b7u3y6Pvuyja4NDWF_TYvZhsfLNyYfVHWjMRkZqjFurNaRU8x9CZ5TaLucpbSFpHBznfBNDSUteI0M7dste9E7HJirEsDKX4ui8xJCx6q3J8QugYu6TTn6TXRrkHpF/s320/1685745385016.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>Not all of us</span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> are </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">leaning into our lovers' </span><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">clothed or unclothed shoulders, rolling into</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">and out of the curves of each other </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- but some of us are.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not all of us </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">have someone waiting</span></div></div></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">at the other side of the border,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">not all of us rhyme <i>safe</i> and <i>home</i> yet</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">- but some of us do.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not all of us</span></div><div>will fight. We do not always</div><div>find our courage at the moment when it might</div><div>be most of use</div><div>- but some of us will.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not all of us will see the other side.</div><div>Not all of us. </div><div>But some of us.</div><div>Enough? </div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-19011816039454883182023-05-31T11:29:00.002+01:002023-05-31T11:29:32.261+01:00Of Brexit and my breakdown - a cashed eye closes<p> This Monday marked a year since the death of my mother. A year ago, it seemed unlikely I would write the preceding sentence: I had always assumed, honestly, that I would also be destroyed by my mother's passing; had always told therapists that one of the few things which kept me from taking the final step towards ending my own life was my unwillingness to inflict that level of grief on her. In a way, the rightness of that instinct was only strengthened by the raw, eviscerating grief that I felt in those first weeks following her loss. The days and nights of crying almost constantly, the shrieks and moans of real deep grief, the almost physical pain of it: how could I have inflicted this on her?</p><p>So to say that I'm still alive a year later is genuinely unexpected. In large part, that has been due to the support of my friends and family, particularly the latter. In its way, depression, which I fell heavily back into towards the end of 2022, has also been a protector: that malaise robs you of the initiative to carry out the final act even as it makes you long for it more and more powerfully. Ask a professional, and they'll tell you: the real dangerous time for suicides among depressives is when we start turning the corner, when the right pills and therapy unlock our capacity to act ahead of our capacity to make peace with the world. But the factor in keeping me alive that has been most relevant to this blog in the past year has, of course, been my writing, and in particular finishing off what became <i>Albian Dreams</i>, itself the third instalment of a thematic trilogy of books which, themselves, formed the culmination of a process begun in the aftermath of the two catastrophic events of 2016 - of Brexit and my breakdown. </p><p>So it's that, mainly, that I'm going to write about here. There will be more, much more, to write about my mother (and some of you will, I hope, have noticed the sly way in which <i>Albian Dreams</i> concludes with a nod towards her). I have a number of ideas for things rattling around in my head at the moment and while some of the smaller ones will probably need to be pushed out first just to clear the decks, probably the main one of those projects will be, of all things, a memoir. Yes, finally, after years of creating frames to try and slip the taint of the confessional, I kind of want to tell it straight for once. </p><p>Well, ...<i>ish. </i>I can already tell, even at this nebulous stage, that the memoir is going to involve a number of major digressions, mainly involving pro wrestling and the works of Wes Anderson, with particular reference to <i>The Darjeeling Limited</i>, but it will mainly, just be a memoir. No autofiction gimmicks, no placing in a larger political context, no alternate realities: just me writing about being me, and particularly being the me I've been since the end of 2019, when it became apparent that one of the things I inherited from mum was the debilitating, disfiguring and humiliating skin disease that ultimately developed into the cancer that killed her. That's quite a thing to deal with, and I don't think anyone can blame me for avoiding facing it head on in favour of taking psychic revenge for Brexit and carrying out an astral hit job on the Windsors, but these things must be faced up to eventually. And they will be. </p><p>But before we go forward, it might be worth looking back over the cycle that we've reached the end of. So that's what we're going to do in the next few entries. 2016-2023 - what were all <i>that </i>about? </p><p>In the meantime, though, please enjoy this reading of 'Not In Any Way That Matters', as recorded by James Whitman for King Ink: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bl0b8znwY7c" width="320" youtube-src-id="bl0b8znwY7c"></iframe></div><br /><p></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-65725669304930868802023-05-19T13:10:00.002+01:002023-05-19T13:10:56.739+01:00Dave Clark should have said to wear sunscreen<p> Normally I listen to classical or ambient music when I'm writing one of these entries; today, however, I am listening to Cliff Richard declaring that he 'was born to rock and roll', a lyric which only avoids prosecution under the trades descriptions act on grounds of being so utterly unconvincing. Cliff makes this declaration at the start of the only remaining artefact of the 1986 musical <i>Dave Clark's Time</i>, an album of songs from the show which, for 25 years, was only available on vinyl due to Clark's famously protective approach to his masters, and distrust of CDs as a medium. And <i>Time</i> is, well, odd. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SN6LinLoNJw" width="320" youtube-src-id="SN6LinLoNJw"></iframe></div><br /><p>In a bonus article in the ebook edition of the Davison/Baker volume of her mammoth <b>Tardis Eruditorum</b> series, Elizabeth Sandifer describes <i>Time </i>as 'a bad 80s rock opera' which 'consists of trite statements about the nature of love and warmed over New Age blather about mind over matter' or, more memorably, as 'recycled Maharishi Mahesh Yogi [spouted] from an overly expensive hydraulic platform'. That's a good description, but in my opinion if anything it's <i>too</i> fair to the source material. I'm just going to come out and say it: <i>Dave Clark's Time</i> sounds like a musical made by a cult. </p><p>And yet, as the personnel listing on the album sleeve (reproduced in the video above) shows, this wasn't just the cult leader and half a dozen of his best mates noodling about on acoustical guitars: this was a big project. While only Richard took the stage in the actual musical (Larry Olivier's turn as a floating head was pre-recorded), for the album Clark was able to call on the assistance of the likes of Stevie Wonder, Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick and Freddie Mercury. The musical itself required the gutting of the Dominion Theatre in order to install the aforementioned hydraulic lift. And how did it do? Well, the fact that this article is probably the first you've heard about it might provide you with a clue. It ran for two years - which isn't nothing, sure, but is very much cutting bait in West End terms. And it has never been revived. To quote Olivier's Akash 'these facts do not inspire confidence, do they?'</p><p>But, as readers of this blog will know, I have a tendency to want to find these things out for myself. So I listened to the entire album. And, having done so, I can report that...it pretty much mostly sucks. The performers, Mercury especially, give it socks, but there isn't all that much you can do with lyrics like 'if these facts cannot be proved, the planet Earth will be removed'. The best songs in the show are the easiest to take out of context: 'In My Defence', with Mercury's vocals, becomes an anthem worthy of Queen's later albums, while 'We Are the U.F.O.', with vocals by the actor Murray Head, is a fun glam jam with an agreeably psychedelic chorus, Overall, though, the best the songs manage is not being offensively bad, though God knows the New Age bullshit about how we create our own realities skirts close enough. And how exactly this kind of Law of Attraction bobbins is supposed to achieve the diegetic purpose of exonerating the human race in its trial before the Lords of Time is never satisfactorily explained. Frankly if this is the best mankind can come up with, I'd be donning my black cap. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ukSZggRMCHM" width="320" youtube-src-id="ukSZggRMCHM"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Despite that, I think the show has one, somewhat ironic legacy. One of the few tracks from the show to be released as a single was, improbably, the spoken word track 'Theme from Time', in which Olivier lays the play's New Age message on the listener. Somewhat inexplicably, this track became a minor hit in Australia, peaking at number 27 in their singles chart. A spoken word track, narrated by an artist more familiar from another context, consisting largely of bland, bathetic platitudes, which becomes an improbable hit? Where have we seen that before...or should I say <i>again</i>? </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zWuuXMef4gk" width="320" youtube-src-id="zWuuXMef4gk"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Obviously I have no hard evidence that Baz Luhrmann was thinking of Dear Larry wittering on about 'The Law of Probenation' when he found the essay that 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)' would be based on in his email inbox (remember when things used to spread by <i>email</i>?). It's just one of them weird coinkydinks. But I can prove I would never have even been thinking about the question at all if it weren't for <a href="https://www.patreon.com/elizabethsandifer/posts">Elizabeth Sandifer's newly relaunched Patreon</a>, via which I acquired my copy of the book containing her essay on <i>Time</i>. If you're not already subscribed to it, I would highly recommend doing so: the rewards are a great deal even just in terms of Sandifer's extant material, never mind the stuff she's currently producing, like her no-holds-barred essays on the horrors of the Chibnall Era, or the exclusive subscriber-only collections like the recent ebook of her <i>Star Wars</i>-related essays. And it means you're at least 25% more likely to be able to work out what I'm going to write about next. Which, sometimes, is more of an idea than I have...<br /><p><br /></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-24140965195743784882023-05-07T21:13:00.001+01:002023-05-08T08:50:46.096+01:00Epilogue: Gansevoort, 2009<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjduVXoZuWAAVF9tez3iu2iFxojntMyrhN44BtcWA-teY5SZ-iVAX-h3RmGzzTIOktjTW3INpcTwGYcoHrzVAsZ9PqiO0JhIvsohzkxr_H_riuWKbXecynE53W8DJJ2CY9sHwOsGQ2VVC1EUF-5BWIct4oVeL2ByTW2SE-p0PPXXfMSemhSV440Rn3U/s4032/1677943328820.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjduVXoZuWAAVF9tez3iu2iFxojntMyrhN44BtcWA-teY5SZ-iVAX-h3RmGzzTIOktjTW3INpcTwGYcoHrzVAsZ9PqiO0JhIvsohzkxr_H_riuWKbXecynE53W8DJJ2CY9sHwOsGQ2VVC1EUF-5BWIct4oVeL2ByTW2SE-p0PPXXfMSemhSV440Rn3U/s320/1677943328820.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Well, would you look at that,’ says Angel McKenna, looking up from the corner of West 13th and Washington. ‘These people really do be fucking.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘I know!’ Chuckles Cyn. ‘That’s the Meatpacking District for you. They try to gentrify, but folks just come and fuck against the windows.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Rich folks,’ Angel sighs. ‘They’ve driven all the hookers out and made the place respectable. Apparently we’re all supposed to call it Gansevoort now?’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Yeah, just like they call Hell’s Kitchen Clinton. Well, for a while, at least. Until…you know…’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Angel grins. ‘It must have been a blow to Slick Willy’s confidence to realise he was real-estate poison compared to the goddam Inferno.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Yeah, well, fuck him,’ says Cyn. ‘You know who would have loved this? Iain.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Angel sighs. ‘Yeah. He sure would. This was his beat. As a writer, I mean. Not…you know. All the…other stuff.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘The stuff he was training you up for when we met? Albia’s little Batgirl?’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘What is it with people and comparing me to characters from comics? At least Batgirl’s the right gender, I guess.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Ah, I’m just giving you shit.’ She smirks. ‘Unless you want to make something of it?’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Oh what, you reckon you can still go, huh? That what you wanna do?’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">She laughs. ‘Hey, you got lucky last time…’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Oh, that’s what you think? Well we can test that hypothesis later. Right now I’m hungry.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cyn nods. ‘If you want a blast from the past, the Hellfire’s a bougie restaurant now. We can eat fillet mignon and look at the wall I bashed your head against that time.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Angel shakes her head. ‘I’m not one for nostalgia. Especially for concussions.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘I did not concuss you!’ </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Any blow to the head is a concussion, it’s the severity that matters.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Okay then, I did not concuss you severely.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Whoa, sounds kinda like you’re dismissing my lived experience there Cyn.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now it’s Cyn’s head shaking. ‘Oh fuck you - ’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘I’m just giving you shit,’ Angel smirks. ‘How about Hector’s? They’re open til ten.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once they’re sat down, tucking into sandwiches, Cyn asks. ‘So. Ten years, huh?’</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Yeah. I still remember the morning I found out. I’d been back in Washington - the original and best -’ Cyn flips her the bird ‘- and so I slept at my parents. I came down about ten in the morning, went to make some coffee, my mum comes into the kitchen and says </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did you hear King Charlie died in a chip pan fire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?’</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cyn laughs. ‘So stupid…’</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘And I’m like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good set-up, what’s the punchline?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> And she goes </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no, there is no punchline, it’s the news</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I was gobsmacked. Especially because I’d sent the RI, through Iain, a detailed proposal for how we could take out the fucker. I looked at maps of the island, the old Nazi fortifications and alterations to Mont Orgeuil…I worked out exactly where you’d need to plot up to put one right through the old nonce’s head at his moment of crowning glory. And then Iain’s like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">current thinking is such action would be needlessly inflammatory. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So of course one of the first things I did after seeing the news was ask if they’d already had their own plan going and this was it…’</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And?’</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Well, you know Iain and his poker face. I never got much beyond </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">neither confirm nor deny</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. For what it’s worth though, I don’t think that it was us. Who knows what it was? Nostalgia? </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pique? Whatever - Chuckie Seven Eggs decides he can cook chips. And didn’t remember the safety films…’</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Maybe one of your people put the thought in his head…’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘What, someone from Dee Division? Maybe. I’ve never been one for that stuff, though. I can’t be arsed fucking with rituals. I gotta tussle. As you know…’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cyn smiles slyly. ‘Really? Oh, I never would’ve guessed…’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Yeah, well, you know, maybe it was a Dee Division joint. Outrageous success if so, mind. Which, of course, they can never take credit for, what with them not officially existing and all.’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Well, officially you’re just a poet.’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘True. Though I am writing a memoir now.’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Really?’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Well, turning one over. Truth is I feel kinda burned out on poems. Hell, I felt that way ten years ago. So much of what I wrote was written out of vitriol against the fucking Windsors and then, after Jersey, they just…petered out, really. Relinquished their titles, became like those Austro-Hungarian relics you see. Or just became citizens, like Harry.’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Ten years on fumes? That must have been rough.’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Ah, stuff came up that I got poems out of. But the big target, the Great Satan if you want to use a needlessly inflammatory term, it wasn’t there anymore. I think my work fell off a bit.’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Really? <i>A Guttersnipe’s Talent</i> won awards…’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Set not thy sweet heart on proud array. Awards make no difference when you feel like a fraud.’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘A fraud?’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘I’m exaggerating. But you know, I feel like I’m at some kind of impasse…’
<br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Well, I’m-a-pass out if I don’t go to the bathroom. If the waitress comes by, order some more fries, will ya? I still feel kinda peckish.’</span></span></p><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-4cb1819a-7fff-5afa-cff7-4c8c8e2a6c95"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Okay. Will do.’</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Oh yeah - speaking of fries, did you see the news last night? Apparently they’re working on some kind of machine that’ll use much less oil cooking them. You know, health food stuff.’</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Well, fancy that.’</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Yep. Hey, if those things had been around in ‘99, maybe Charles wouldn’t have caught fire and you’d have got to snipe him after all! Anyway, gotta pee. See ya in a few!’</span></p><div><span><br /></span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Cynnamon heads to the bathroom, Angel rubs her chin and stares a thousand yards ahead. She doesn’t catch the waitress. But, after a few minutes, she grabs a handful of napkins and pulls out a pen. </span></p><div><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-6299867494646062082023-05-06T00:00:00.001+01:002023-05-06T00:00:00.142+01:00A Midnight Feast<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6UxoK5PqGqM" width="320" youtube-src-id="6UxoK5PqGqM"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yes, he’s still up. But how is he supposed to feel? It was humiliating. The whole thing. He should have been processing down the Mall, preceded by a display of military might, not making the short walk from the Castle to the Hermitage, jeered at by these ghastly indigenes, inbred, not even bloody French, pressing against the police cordon or volleying dross from their boats…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">He hates it here. He hates the smaller roads, the smaller life; hates that even in Grouville the exiled faithful hold their kids when he’s around them. How can it be evil? The touch of a King is a blessing. They should be <i>honoured</i>!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">He hates watching the news, seeing their grotesque ‘DeCoronation’ unfold, the mass parade to Westminster, the Service of Thanksgiving for Deliverance. Deliverance! Giving away all the jewels they hadn’t yet returned, and breaking down the Royal Regalia. His! HIS!<b> HIS</b> Regalia! They have no right. They call them stolen. Stolen! They were given by a grateful people, as a token of their love, like Uncle Louis’ sweet brown boys in India. They sneer at Louis now. They aren’t grateful now, these people, these Albians. Something got into them. He blames council housing, pop music, modern buildings, poetry that dwells on filth and gossip and political envy and does nothing to ennoble the soul of the reader…He fulminates against them all in his weekly broadcasts, for all the good it does. He knows his pronouncements are mocked in the Albian press, along with lurid speculation on his family dynamics. They compare his dear boys to monstrous catamites from science fiction fantasies. How horrid! How dare they? Don’t they know he is the King? Is. He doesn’t become King after the Anointing with Chrism, he became King when his mother died. Hence <i>vivat</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh, he wishes for the Scholars. The choir from La Preference are lovely kids, of course, delightful, but not up to Hubert Parry. And a brass band instead of the organ? As if he were some <i>miner</i>? It’s insulting. How <i>dare </i>they reduce him to this? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the guests…all those washed-up remnants of old European monarchies, diminished or still spinning harebrained schemes, lending their imprimatur to get-rich-quick schemes, far right agitation, or what-have-you - are <i>they</i> his future? Is that what he is destined to become? They killed Sir James, they blew up Louis, but some days he feels like they got off easy, went out fast and noisy, not this death by a thousand cuts of cloth. Even Andrew’s American friends have stayed away. Some ‘special relationship’! Still, the Americans have their own situation, ever since the Albians played hardball, hung out a bit of what they dredged up from the private files and threatened to leak more unless the Yanks pulled out their nukes and didn’t treat us as an airstrip. They were supposed to be Utopian idealists. They weren’t supposed to learn the ropes so fast. Those damn Intelligencers…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s late now. Most of the servants are asleep. But he doesn’t feel like coddled eggs now anyway. He wants…what is it the people eat? One night, he remembers sitting up late with Sir James, cooking <i>as a very special treat, young Mr Windsor</i>, frying bits…chunks…chips of potato in bubbling fat…Chips! That’s what they called them. So coarse. So barbarian. But that’s what he wants now. Chips and vinegar. He can cook that. They call him helpless and pampered in their papers and web pages but he can do that, he remembers watching Sir James, being told how long to leave the spuds in. Spuds! Delightful word. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">He sets the pan heating as he peels and chops the spuds. If they could see him now, those scoffers! Not like Diana, that <i>bitch</i>, creeping into the kitchen just to stuff her face with cake, a self-reliant man, unbowed by the humiliation they have forced upon him. A King! A true King, deep down in the soul, distinguished by a birthright they can never take away. Let this bubbling chip pan be to him as Robert Bruce’s spider! Here begins - </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">A <i>whoooooosh</i>. The fat is burning! That’s no problem though. The Sovereign need have no fear of fire. He fills another pan with water, then swings it like a tennis racket. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Game. Set. Match. </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Maybe Savile should have done fire safety after all, not seatbelts.’ - Angel McKenna, ‘Good Morning Albia’, 02/5/1999</span></i></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-30470063726706624512023-05-01T13:59:00.000+01:002023-05-01T13:59:19.665+01:00A Birthright of Distinction<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnLlYOMZHQfU-cDUwcMOcqKGuZIdPdNZwsnR52glpJar-iDBweVGTp1zG69hbdE3jUV-tHnaH2-s8nRuStvcuu2gvmyBPofHN_SH7JgOrZgeZyAd40OBj9pxS8HRHo3YKrDBgffNybI_JRcPFx1-v2XDX1Vpqp6sxWferwLfKsOsYU17UsZ1ulYv7/s590/chucknjimmy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="368" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnLlYOMZHQfU-cDUwcMOcqKGuZIdPdNZwsnR52glpJar-iDBweVGTp1zG69hbdE3jUV-tHnaH2-s8nRuStvcuu2gvmyBPofHN_SH7JgOrZgeZyAd40OBj9pxS8HRHo3YKrDBgffNybI_JRcPFx1-v2XDX1Vpqp6sxWferwLfKsOsYU17UsZ1ulYv7/w582-h320/chucknjimmy.png" width="582" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I walked your coronation route today, Charles: not<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the one you’ll have to step, a few dozen guests and<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">jeering Jèrriais watching on boats and up the incline. <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I walked on the red carpet that your Cinderella carriage<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was supposed to process down. I walked with crowds<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of absolutely ordinary Albians, and every one deserved<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to walk that ritual pathway more than you, because</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it wasn’t mice that you turned into footmen<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but lads eager to advance, some all too keen to<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exercise the blindness you expect from those who serve you,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to cook a hebdomad of eggs each breakfast time<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and claim, straight-faced, that actually<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you just like one egg, coddled, and you know what Lenin <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">said. And they maintain that poker face because</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you like them coddled: but we don’t mean eggs.<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You like them smart, and proper, not necessarily<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in uniform, as Louis did, but clean and cute, the way<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you like to think you were before you went to Gordonstoun<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and got worked over in the Bash Camp way. You learned<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from Louis, and your best friend, Mr Savile,<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that men like you deserve the crowns and coaches</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and the exercise of uncommon prerogatives<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in caravan or stateroom, by a birthright of distinction<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from the herd, a right inherited or seized but most importantly<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enjoyed: the right of Lordly Ones to choose a lucky morsel<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from the crowd. How easy do you come by them<br /></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">in Jersey, Charles? I understand that causeway</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">keeps you safe, but we both know you’re under</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-3789957e-7fff-4491-bcdc-be293a69ce73" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">siege there. I don’t see you going masked, in deference<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to local custom, though even in the camps<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they watch their kids when you come visiting. <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are you as skilled at reading eyes as Andrew’s <br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yankee friend, to find the hunger that regards a child<br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as fungible? I doubt that, Charles. I worry for your boys. </span></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-80150505207827208462023-04-21T09:29:00.002+01:002023-04-21T09:29:23.571+01:00The Black Spider at Bay: A Claustrophobic Castle<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTYrefhG0dCA4wsHJqU3rmT2YYGmBaWcOwoMYpZDahR1gTxUxOziSULy0ARqafRmvMeb3Z-lp9FYa_1rnx_l074scZ6btWi2eJP2er43WRIxcaNmuJ4qzgt5mtak57vSLQEGSi-v9-y3sB_vN8fkzKBiOTLbbuoJ_hmCaIjGfOxHMQkhTEJ-TFYGuH/s4000/1682065301656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTYrefhG0dCA4wsHJqU3rmT2YYGmBaWcOwoMYpZDahR1gTxUxOziSULy0ARqafRmvMeb3Z-lp9FYa_1rnx_l074scZ6btWi2eJP2er43WRIxcaNmuJ4qzgt5mtak57vSLQEGSi-v9-y3sB_vN8fkzKBiOTLbbuoJ_hmCaIjGfOxHMQkhTEJ-TFYGuH/s320/1682065301656.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>'English go home'</b>: resentment of the Windsors may be a factor in the recent attack on Grouville Marsh Resettlement Camp</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Someone in St Helier, you suspect, is kicking themselves right now - that's if they haven't already been locked up in La Moye under prerogative powers or, as the less respectful locals have termed the return of direct 'Royal' rule to the island of Jersey since the Windsors' exile there, 'Charlie's peepee'. The self-styled 'King Across the Water' is said to be fuming at reports that the secret, paper and courier-based communications network used by the Windsors to keep in touch with sympathetic Fifth Columnists in the Albian Republics has been penetrated, leading to the release of a new tranche of Black Spider Memos - and what a tranche it is! <div><br /></div><div>Whereas the previous BSMs, released in the wake of the Liberation of London, were written by Windsor from a position of relative power, the newly released documents show a much diminished man, pleading with supporters for assistance and, especially, bemoaning the accommodations at Elizabeth Castle, the 16th Century fortification which has, since the Windsors' Great Retreat, served as the residence of not just Charles, his self-styled Queen Camilla, and his sons Feyd Rautha and the Beast Rabban - sorry, William and Harry - but also the entire Windsor clan, many of whom, it is now clear, are chafing from such close proximity to relatives they cannot stand. While Charles' mother, Elizabeth Windsor, may have kept the peace to some extent following the original Retreat, her death in 1995 has left Charles in the position of mediator between his fractious relatives - something which, it's plain to see, he does not excel at. </div><div><br /></div><div>As bad as refereeing the ongoing sniping between his brothers Edward and Andrew may be, however, it's clear from many of the memos that Charles' biggest concern is not his family, but the people of his adopted island. Some on Jersey despise the Windsors because they are seen as figureheads for the hated English immigrant community, while others are angered by revelations from the UAR about the Windsors' criminal activities - but whatever its motivation, public resentment of the Windsors' presence has grown so great that Charles has become increasingly paranoid about it, largely refusing to emerge from the interior of his new abode, and constantly enquiring as to means of fortifying the causeway which is the only connection between the castle and St Helier proper. His recent decision to ban the island's traditional pilgrimage to the Hermitage of St Helier, which passes through the castle, has been a major flashpoint, and may well have been a factor in the recent attack on Grouville Marsh, the former <i>Organisation Todt </i>forced labour camp which has been repurposed as a 'resettlement facility' for English-identifying refugees from Albia. </div><div><br /></div><div>And on and on the spider spins...but between his fractious family and their increasingly untenable position on an even smaller island, it's an open question as to how long he can continue. </div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-81151774133649428772023-04-15T14:14:00.001+01:002023-04-15T14:14:43.508+01:00Don't play my game, Kieth. You won't win. <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsMxWAe4mnUKNG4uWS-agLcs6P1Z5KXSltaGZW5z4kH9hrscLCjCIZK3Kw-UzpyN0A5qrIQoDLo6RY-pYdwAWU15ox259jVXqxqmCopK0eGFV-tcO_LzsHvW5I-Y3eEF7fC7yASFCMHqwN6LVJWUjTovOftw4XqIuaLeS84hXbbpxuMiTkc7YBQr8c/s777/kiershaggedmaggie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="777" data-original-width="621" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsMxWAe4mnUKNG4uWS-agLcs6P1Z5KXSltaGZW5z4kH9hrscLCjCIZK3Kw-UzpyN0A5qrIQoDLo6RY-pYdwAWU15ox259jVXqxqmCopK0eGFV-tcO_LzsHvW5I-Y3eEF7fC7yASFCMHqwN6LVJWUjTovOftw4XqIuaLeS84hXbbpxuMiTkc7YBQr8c/s320/kiershaggedmaggie.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /> First of all, apologies for having been absent for some time. A number of things collided, much the most important of which was getting back into Gig Mode for my first feature in about a year, at King Ink at the mighty Pop Recs in Sunderland. I tend to oscillate between Gig Mode and Writing Mode such that I do very little writing while working on performance, and vice versa, so for a month or so whenever things which would normally be a natural trigger to fire something off on here have occurred they've just wound up being filed away while I concentrated on getting off-book for 'Cancellation, Baby'. Anyway, the gig footage is up on my YouTube now for you all to enjoy, and I actually think I look kinda cute in it, in a clodhopping chungus kind of way:<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y0L0HUaUv0w" width="320" youtube-src-id="y0L0HUaUv0w"></iframe></div><br /><p>Also I went up to Edinburgh with family to celebrate my brother's birthday. Here, have a photo I took while in the Athens of the North, specifically St Andrew Square, which is home to some incredible buildings and statuary:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVJUZ9edMRcsKb_tI7dK39s3emZ2fA507kUFYAfjwnBMhTCHLDTpnev1lWFlb-EzhYdZcU63zE19PWsHQwvzsDM5gGvD8ROVxac8F6uOfPF0m5fyRI5dTKanqD3BEeqoxTrbYumsXSfXHuw1qcCuGwRGRBN9TRk383B6i4LbVdZuS1diZrBSjrPnk/s2048/hognoncelechery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVJUZ9edMRcsKb_tI7dK39s3emZ2fA507kUFYAfjwnBMhTCHLDTpnev1lWFlb-EzhYdZcU63zE19PWsHQwvzsDM5gGvD8ROVxac8F6uOfPF0m5fyRI5dTKanqD3BEeqoxTrbYumsXSfXHuw1qcCuGwRGRBN9TRk383B6i4LbVdZuS1diZrBSjrPnk/s320/hognoncelechery.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And this.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>By far the most annoying thing about being temporarily in Gig Mode, though, was not having the time for but desperately wanting to write about one of the most bizarre political events of the last week, which was the mystifying decision by Sir Kier Starmer QC to take a leaf out of my book and <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/news/23445450.keir-starmer-stands-rishi-sunak-attack-ads/">start calling his enemies nonces</a>. </p><p>I can't speak for Kier, here, but when I do this it's mainly in the sense that turnabout's fair play. You may have noticed the constant drumbeat of conservative media outlets trying to link LGBTQ+ people and grooming: my position is that I will stop saying anyone who opposes trans rights is a paedophile when these people stop repeating what Bad Gays host Ben Miller has called the queer equivalent of blood libel, and not one moment sooner. </p><p>Or maybe I won't, to be quite honest, because there's one Hell of a pattern of behaviour with these fuckers. Whether it's<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2W1QS6MfsM"> defending child marriage</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/former-students-ron-desantis-total-jock-partied-with-students-2022-11?r=US&IR=T">partying with underage students</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Boy">publishing a book full of 'erotic' photos of children</a> or <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pocharaponneammanee/groomer-library-child-sex-abuse-materials">being busted in possession of an underage sex doll</a>, it sure is weird how often the<i> soi-disant </i>defenders of women and children turn out to have form for exactly the kind of crimes they accuse queer people of. I've been pointing this out in some form or another for years (the key turning point for me was learning from some pals in a hacker collective that a guy who was calling me immoral for supporting Fallon Fox was a full-on paedophile), but it's only recently that I decided to go full mask-off and just start outright calling these people nonces because quite honestly, what else do I have to lose? I've burned most of my bridges in poetry due to my refusal to play nice with scene darlings I know to be transphobes or rapists, Long Covid has made me a physical wreck, and the government of my country is literally engaging in the early stages of genocide against people like me while most folks look away or offer mealy-mouthed expressions of concern before looking up how to hide their<i> Hogwarts Legacy</i> trophies. If you won't save me from the noose, at least let me spit from the gallows. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTXde97s5fPLVVPibYNk2DCtpC2pbzIwZStNssiqs4J1zyRcAP3daaE3Nbwo_BE-TLt0h_IGEsuVVcH_oPNiHmKEuNQ8G2zNOE4XTbjN_U4ur-48NnIBBzhZbwxoDhzKmAqd7ml8dZZJWuEqHAwMQ56ngxo4yBkInRGf6UlKjrjKS7G0HZF7JKeZTk/s947/1677981130658.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="947" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTXde97s5fPLVVPibYNk2DCtpC2pbzIwZStNssiqs4J1zyRcAP3daaE3Nbwo_BE-TLt0h_IGEsuVVcH_oPNiHmKEuNQ8G2zNOE4XTbjN_U4ur-48NnIBBzhZbwxoDhzKmAqd7ml8dZZJWuEqHAwMQ56ngxo4yBkInRGf6UlKjrjKS7G0HZF7JKeZTk/s320/1677981130658.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Thing is, Sir Kier Starmer QC is hardly on the scaffold, however much he may have lusted to send <a href="https://novaramedia.com/2021/03/02/keir-starmer-is-a-long-time-servant-of-the-british-security-state/">Gary McKinnon </a>to almost certain suicide in an American prison. In fact, prior to this attack ad controversy, his party were way ahead of Sunak's Tories in the polls. Admittedly, Labour have been banging the law and order drum in recent months, with Kier giving speeches about how terribly traumatic it is to be able to smell cannabis; and Starmer's personal Islamophobia and racism are screamingly obvious to anyone who looks into how the party's disciplinary apparatus is being used; and no doubt there is a reasonably large slice of the electorate who can be pandered to with insinuations that Britain's first Asian Prime Minister is the kind of man his Home Secretary accuses of being in 'grooming gangs' (even though by far the vast majority of such gangs are made up of white dudes), but even so, you'd think Kier would guess this wouldn't be received well, if for no other reason than if you start suggesting the Prime Minister is a nonce defender people might start asking questions about the media that supports him and, indeed, the man who asked him to form a government. I don't shy away from asking those questions - but then I'm not hoping to move into 10 Downing Street. </p><p>And also, unlike Starmer, I have never defended nonces myself, whereas Starmer quite literally has: he was on the legal team that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150103002526/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2837226/ANDREW-PIERCE-Keir-quiet-sleazy-Silvio.html">defended Silvio Berlusconi</a> against accusations that, among other things, he had sex with a thirteen year old girl. Quite literal nonce defending, right there on Starmer's CV. And he has to know that the Tory media are going to go ham on this stuff as soon as the election is announced. The only reason to go all-in on accusing Sunak of things Starmer himself literally did that seems even vaguely logical to me is to try and draw the poison now, get it all out in the open so it can't be used in the campaign - but that's a very risky strategy for Starmer personally. </p><p>Assuming, of course, that he actually <i>wants</i> to be PM. It's pretty clear, when you look at Starmer's career, that a big part of it has been about him making himself useful to various bad actors (the most prominent of which is, I've always tended to assume, MI5, though having seen <a href="https://declassifieduk.org/revealed-keir-starmer-billed-taxpayer-nearly-250000-for-travel-expenses-at-cps/">how often he's flown to DC on my dime</a> I think we need to take seriously the possibility he's actually a CIA asset, though tbqfh whichever flag he has branded on his arse he's the same kind of piggy), of which the Labour right is only the most recent. It could well be that, having seen to it that socialism is now well and truly cast out of the party, Starmer is moving to the next stage of his role, suicide-bombing his own reputation in order to dirty up Rishi with the 'groomer' insinuation, before moving aside for a more charismatic 'clean skin' from his side of the party who can play at being Blair Mark 2. After all, as we all now know, he'll be able to retire quite comfortably. </p><p>That's my best guess, anyway. It remains to be seen whether appealing to the racism of the red-faced wall will actually net Labour more votes. But the Starmer/Berlusconi stuff is going to get picked up on by the media sometime, and when that happens, I guarantee that you'll hear some Baz pointing out that 'say what you want about Corbyn, he only defended terrorists, not nonces.' I'm touching the lathe as we speak.</p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-58569466182945102452023-03-19T09:19:00.006+00:002023-03-19T09:19:35.501+00:00Chibs Be The Worst<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zSuxFK6Hhvw" width="320" youtube-src-id="zSuxFK6Hhvw"></iframe></div><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div>They fucked it up, did Pip and Jane: </div><div>They didn’t mean to be such bores,</div><div>But couldn’t help including lots</div><div>Of running round in corridors.</div><div><br /></div><div>But they were fucked up in their turn</div><div>By Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes,</div><div>Whose Timelord tales, while quite routine,</div><div>Were written better, like good poems.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now Chibs hands back to Russell T</div><div>A show that he’s made so much worse. </div><div>Boring, silly and clichéd:</div><div>Like ripping off <i>This Be The Verse</i>. </div><div><br /></div></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-619146920922555842023-03-12T23:42:00.002+00:002023-03-13T07:49:15.387+00:00<p> It's like an astrolabe, a kabbalah,</p><p>like the <i>Doctor Who</i> titles, it's </p><p>like the test card, it's like an</p><p>Etch-a-Sketch, oscilloscope, </p><p>collide, it's like, it's </p><p><br /></p><p>Crosshairs</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-67546528628782847512023-03-10T22:23:00.003+00:002023-03-10T22:23:26.779+00:00Turn your wrathful gazes<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR40LQ1Ms88lM6UeZvXxBsP6hgIQqYU5r73rttVhftb2FWy9ZoSwyQGkLzqgmJUIPQEcfQphKIv6CCZFWleQB8AXSldfUbtNlp_4DBCmWSVOyfONJ314l3tpDBCAz2RqPBvMP7MzDLI0YX54wra5beufqskIS08TtWfYIQO59lEBdp6JhkJYUDtw3C/s976/1678486789712.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR40LQ1Ms88lM6UeZvXxBsP6hgIQqYU5r73rttVhftb2FWy9ZoSwyQGkLzqgmJUIPQEcfQphKIv6CCZFWleQB8AXSldfUbtNlp_4DBCmWSVOyfONJ314l3tpDBCAz2RqPBvMP7MzDLI0YX54wra5beufqskIS08TtWfYIQO59lEBdp6JhkJYUDtw3C/s320/1678486789712.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Turn your wrathful gazes</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">They tell you refugees come here because it’s a land of milk and honey</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Then they say no help for you because they got no fucking money</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Now if you take one look around the City, you can see that isn’t true</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">So tell me why the fuck you let them mug you off that the first bit’s true?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">They come here because they’ve got no choice,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">no matter how the BBC ventriloquize</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Sue-Ellen’s voice deep down you know</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">that’s true, don’t let them lie to you</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">one moment more, take the crisis to their</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">door, turn your wrathful gazes to</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">the City from the Shore!</span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-16801448058013820362023-02-19T22:40:00.002+00:002023-02-19T22:40:39.579+00:00Extremely Unbalanced Clerihew written after listening to Death Grips<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf07dA5LdqmStmAy-VlQma93G5aLpfUuqOheSe8ww-Nt5MM9_bzV9RewnIyL0C9zRiY2X3_CUbrM_q-Gjme87ecHpHoMQ8AfuO8y_Ij0KSkzF33Me5uPzb7OyaOyL0Fti9X4oKBkMmC5gT-P_eXPHmpXQMdMj40xFymeeZ60HF8LjJj1uEjNKFLUvg/s1200/1676846279255.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><i><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="815" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf07dA5LdqmStmAy-VlQma93G5aLpfUuqOheSe8ww-Nt5MM9_bzV9RewnIyL0C9zRiY2X3_CUbrM_q-Gjme87ecHpHoMQ8AfuO8y_Ij0KSkzF33Me5uPzb7OyaOyL0Fti9X4oKBkMmC5gT-P_eXPHmpXQMdMj40xFymeeZ60HF8LjJj1uEjNKFLUvg/s320/1676846279255.jpg" width="217" /></i></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Harry Smith likes playing dress-up too.</i> </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">If Ice-T, who sang 'Cop Killer',</div><div style="text-align: left;">were to shoot a man who calls himself Harry Miller</div><div style="text-align: left;">who runs a group of nonces called 'We Are Fair Cop',</div><div style="text-align: left;">it wouldn't actually be ironic because despite the name he uses for his group and the fact he constantly trades on being 'an ex-policeman' Miller never in fact completed police training, </div><div style="text-align: left;">imagine being too much of a nonce to get a job </div><div style="text-align: left;">at the Pork Shop. </div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-986284296996475777.post-32674969085827306632023-02-15T12:06:00.001+00:002023-02-15T12:06:09.845+00:00Ghostwatch<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLJC61CE-YZPdC1FI1IIPfZGhbHeupUrO5rSg8hHgvSWHbRFOJs1Lbw6GcPvQSg3tPDcWw3YfoPAJMVck21OIZi-GosFlx-lsXLi5oLw_824uCtXo3uhGlXsvZfDsfjeHl_NGCwxUhjuxTgaK3vzV7BP7t5EbbFBKmCPQzrTFsZlDETvs9WECNZyJx/s195/1676461997469.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="195" data-original-width="150" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLJC61CE-YZPdC1FI1IIPfZGhbHeupUrO5rSg8hHgvSWHbRFOJs1Lbw6GcPvQSg3tPDcWw3YfoPAJMVck21OIZi-GosFlx-lsXLi5oLw_824uCtXo3uhGlXsvZfDsfjeHl_NGCwxUhjuxTgaK3vzV7BP7t5EbbFBKmCPQzrTFsZlDETvs9WECNZyJx/s1600/1676461997469.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">Bad trips tattooed on the unconscious</div><div style="text-align: left;">of Old England. Belfast black magic</div><div style="text-align: left;">and the ghosts of Roundhay Park.</div><div style="text-align: left;">An akasic detonation at the home</div><div style="text-align: left;">of Hangman Hawley: the ensuing</div><div style="text-align: left;">conflagration throwing spectres</div><div style="text-align: left;">on the dark. <i>Do what you like, </i>is how</div><div style="text-align: left;">he'd gloss the words above the doorway</div><div style="text-align: left;">for the bits of rough from boys' homes</div><div style="text-align: left;">he'd have piped up to his door.</div><div style="text-align: left;">In a country with amnesia we do duty</div><div style="text-align: left;">as Remembrancers: the things that we </div><div style="text-align: left;">remember teach us why we fight the war. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Hat tips to: </i><a href="https://youtu.be/jQ4M0XDfo5A">The Indelicates</a>, <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1724-the-view-from-the-train">Patrick Keiller</a>, <a href="https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-cu6dn-15683062">Programmed to Chill's Ghostwatch episode</a></div>AJ McKennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07978034654265028416noreply@blogger.com0