The Red Diamond Dragon Club played their first gig tonight. It was at the Gateway in Reading, in support of Last Crewsaders. They played the following:

Fuck the Pain Away - Peaches Cover
[O. Daffarn on synthesiser and sampler, A. Huzar on percussion, T. Huzar on vox and guitar, P. Neville on drums]

Blue Orchid - White Stripes Cover
[T. Huzar on vox and guitar, P. Neville on drums]

Lucky - Radiohead Cover
[O. Daffarn on drums, A. Huzar on vox and guitar, T. Huzar on guitar]

Naked Pictures (of your mother) - Electric Six Cover
[O. Daffarn on guitar, A. Huzar on guitar, T. Huzar on drums, P. Neville on vox]

Endless
[O. Daffarn on guitar, A. Huzar on vox and guitar, T. Huzar on drums, P. Neville on percussion]

Craved
[O. Daffarn on drums and percussion, T. Huzar on vox and guitar]

Immolate Me - Wildbunch Cover
[O. Daffarn on guitar, A. Huzar on sythesiser and percussion, T. Huzar on vox and guitar, P. Neville on drums]

The Red Diamond Dragon Club is Mr. Oliver Daffarn, Mr. Alois Huzar, Mr. Timothy Huzar and Ms. Philippa Neville, plus probably some other people at some point.  The Red Diamond Dragon Club is the best thing you are likely to experience.

These two quotes from Hannah Arendt's On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1970) are worth presenting in full:

"Today we ought to add the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such domination: bureaucracy or the rule of an intricate system of bureaus in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called rule by Nobody. (If, in accord with traditional political thought, we identify tyranny as government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyranical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs, making it impossible to localize the responsibility and to identify the enemy, that is among the most potent causes of the current world-wide rebellius unrest, its chaotic nature, and its dangerous tendency to get out of control and to run amuck)." pp. 38-39.

"Finally - to come back to Sorel's and Pareto's earlier denunciation of the system as such - the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, or the power to act; for the rule of Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant." p. 81.

How shit hot incredible are those quotes? Isn't it amazing that they were written fourty years ago?

With my new found wealth I've indulged my consumerist urges and ordered this:


And am going to order this:

The first, a Korg MR-1, is because I've recently decided I need a digital audio player. I spent a hell of a long time finding a good one, because they're all so bad. Currently the digital audio player market is in a bad place. Apple's iPod now has an almost complete monopoly on hard drive players. Even Creative's Zen players above thirty gigabites have been discontinued. It's simply not profitable for companies to try and compete. This is a very bad thing as iPods look really good but are pretty bad for what I need. Actually they're pretty bad for what most people need, but never mind that. The MR-1 isn't marketed as a digital audio player, rather as a portable recorder. It does portable recording very well, and because it's aimed at portable recording it plays lots of different file formats and has a basic non patronising set up.

The second is a Fujifilm FinePix S6500fd. I need a new digital camera and I've been advised that this one is shit hot for the price.

I've been working at Woking Library fifteen hours a week for about six weeks now. It's an excellent job.

It is keeping my life busy. I'm living at home and commuting to Brighton (about two hours by train) three days a week. On top of that is work, football on Wednesday evenings, badminton on Friday evenings, Philosophy Society mostly every other Thursday evening. All these things are great (regular sport is awesome) but it's been a little hard keeping up with everything.

Too busy to go on, check out this live demo of a new song, Sign.

An entry in Roy Greenslade's blog on Guardian Unlimited is very silly. Roy is blogging about the BBC's perceived 'liberal-bias' (see MediaLens for the BBC's real bias), specifically a Newsround article about an explanation of why al-Qaida conducted the September 11th attacks, originally posted six years ago. The explanation ran thusly:

The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like the Middle East has made some people very angry, including a group called al-Qaida - who are widely thought to have been behind the attacks. In the past, al-Qaida leaders have declared a holy war - called a jihad - against the US. As part of this jihad, al-Qaida members believe attacking US targets is something they should do. When the attacks happened in 2001, there were a number of US troops in a country called Saudi Arabia, and the leader of al-Qaida, Osama Bin Laden, said he wanted them to leave.

Where exactly is there bias in this? Roy doesn't say. The BBC posted a new explanation (actually done a long time ago, the previous one was accidently left online) which ran thusly:

Al-Qaida is unhappy with America and other countries getting involved in places like the Middle East. People linked to al-Qaida have used violence to make this point in the US, and in other countries. The events of September 11 2001 and other al-Qaida attacks have been condemned by many people all over the world, including large numbers of Muslims.

Roy doesn't appear annoyed with this version, so it seems, comparing the two, that the lack of description of the violence of the attacks, and a lack of moral condemnation, was at fault. But this is an explanation of the motives of the attacks, not of the attacks themselves. What use is moral condemnation and description of the violence of the attacks here?

If there is any bias it is in describing al-Qaida as using 'violence' while only describing America as 'getting involved' in the Middle East.

At the end of last summer we were told by our tutors that next year we'd only be coming in two days a week, to streamline things for the School and to allow the students more time to work.  This was very good news for me as I'd already decided to try living at home this coming academic year, and so my transport costs would be severely reduced.  With this happy knowledge I applied for a job at Woking Library.  Because I was only going to be in two days a week they were happy for me to get my timetable and work my hours around that.  But lo!  Last Saturday I discover my timetable and find that while a couple of the options in our degree are in two days a week, my option is in four days a week.  I spent the next few days trying to work out exactly what I was going to do, deciding to stick with my option as it is awesome rather then switching to one of the other options which were only in two days a week.

This gripping story has a happy ending, you'll be relieved to know.  I let the Library know of my new situation and what hours I could physically do, and they still wanted me despite probably not being able to contractually do all the hours I'm meant to.  So fuck yeah!

In combination with this Lib's course at Guildford College is definitely going ahead, so she will be living locally for the next academic year, which is fucking awesome.  Getting to Cardiff for more then a night would have been tough with the job and university.  The course she's doing is perfect for her too, I'm really excited for her.  Small-Scale Theatre Practice; basically learning how to manage theatre productions, be a good actor, learn business skills etc.

Watching England play good football is a serious pleasure.  Coincidence that the overpayed, uninterested celebrities of Rooney, Beckham and Lampard aren't in the team?  I don't think so.

Other good things; last night Electric Six's upcoming fourth album 'I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me that Restricts Me from Being the Master' was leaked on the net.  It is shit hot.

We recorded!  The songs are very tastey.  You won't be able to hear them yet, we're going to record some more and hopefully have a bad assed physical release which you can all buy.  Yeah.  I'm writing music as well, one song in particular is looking very good.

I've been winning quite a lot of Risk, which is fun.  A great game if there ever was one.

The Guardian makes me so sad.  More and more it's turning into a piece of propaganda for the elite of society.  Take today's most prominant article on their website.  It documents the claims of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' that Al-Qaida has "revived, extended its influence, and has the capacity to carry out a spectacular strike similar to the September 11 attacks on America" and that "Iran could have a nuclear weapon by 2009 or 2010".  Within the article there isn't a single alternative opinion, criticism, or even supportive claim from another organisation.  This is simply a press release for the IISS.  Where is the evidence for these claims?  Why does the article's author, Richard Norton-Taylor, accept all their claims unquestioningly and present them as fact?  The IISS is run by people deeply embedded in the elite of society and with close ties to the Government; surely any journalist who claims impartiality has to see that presenting only one side of the argument is merely acting as the mouth piece for the Government?

To backtrack briefly:

• We walked for ninety-six miles then ran out of money.  Have a read of James' entry for a more detailed analysis.
• Electric Six put four new songs from their forthcoming album on their MurdochSpace.  Down at McDonnelzz is awesome.
• I've played a lot of Risk, and even won one of the games.
• I got a £1000 scholarship for doing well in my course last year which was a lovely surprise on two counts: 1) I didn't know they gave scholarships and 2) I didn't think I'd done overtly well last year.
• I've seen my friends a lot and Lib quite a lot which has been wikid.

Stuff with the band has been swirling around; we've made a concentrated effort to work on new material and it's starting to come to fruition.  On the 27th-29th we're recording Gaps, Rainbows Form and anything else that is in a recordable state.  I'm really excited about everything we're producing; once we've recorded an album's worth that album will be tres bien.  We've not actually done much in the way of physical playing (one practice and one gig is pretty much all we have to our name this summer, and due to lack of practice the gig was far from something to shout about) but summer always manages to be the busiest time of year, if we can just nail a regular every other week practice day/evening we'd be sorted.

Can't wait for the next academic year to kick in, currently it's looking very rosey.  The knowledge that I did well last term has given me a shot of confidence that makes me want to devour the potential knowledge ahead.  What's super super cool is that Fi has decided to go to Brighton to study Humanities.  I am well excited that she's going, it'll be crazy to see a 'home' friend studying in Pavilion Parade.  I'll be living at home which will considerably reduce money anxiety and encourage me to get into a routine, which is greatly appealing.  There's one last final thing which would be awesome if it came off, but I'm not going to go into it until it's certain.

Tomorrow myself, Graham, James and Marc are catching a train from Ash Vale to London Victoria, then catching a Megabus to Middlesbrough, then taking a taxi to Robin Hood's Bay. Total journey time: seven hours forty-one minutes. We're staying the night at Hook's House Farm Campsite, and then we're making our way westwards by foot, the day's aim to reach Grosmont, the ultimate aim to reach St Bees, about one hundred and seventy miles away. It should take somewhere between ten days and two weeks. On our backs will be what we feel we need to survive; two tents between four; clothes; food; one SLR camera plus all its amenities...

The Home Educator's Seaside Festival (a.k.a. Hesfes) happened, and I was there for nearly the whole week. I spent a lot of it being silly and wasted a lot of opportunities, but despite my own attempts at sabotaging my enjoyment of it I had a great time.

Throughout the week there were storms. I spent quite a lot of time trying to catch site of lightning in broad daylight; I managed it once. It was a completely different experience to seeing lightning without the sun (as you usually do). It made it feel more unreal and far more powerful, as if the lightning's potency was restricted to its form rather then being allowed to spread out in the form of light. It also made it far more sinister; there were no immediate dramatics to let you know it occurred, just a sudden blib in the sky that could almost be your imagination. No blast of light to mark its presence, only the latent thunder. Stealthy.

One storm related moment stands out; we were playing football in the middle of a field, bathed in intense light, but surrounded by a ring of hazy storm clouds, miles away. Everywhere you looked you saw lightning bolts in the distance. It was seriously dreamlike.

One of my most significant discoveries was the Groovy Movie Picture House (a mobile cinema powered by solar panels), and subsequently the short animation Cows With Guns.

Me, just out of bed

Been spending a lot of time messing around with last.fm. A lot of that was trying to get it to work with musikCube, but that's now sorted. It was pretty cool to see my band has an entry on there already. Pretty soon I'll be able to stick in some widgets so you can all see what cool music I listen to.

Ah yeah! On saturday and sunday I played football. Saturday I was really bad and fairly unfit. On sunday I was pretty good and my stamina was loads better. For the first time in a couple of years I feel like I'm reaching the footballing level that I was at while we were playing regular five-a-side in college. It's a great feeling. All I have to do now is not sprain my ankle, like I have two summers in a row, both playing football on the same astro-turf.

There are lots of really good attacking non professional footballers (the people who don't play for any major team but regularly play with friends, maybe in a five-a-side league), what I don't get is why so many of them have an issue with passing the ball for an easy goal rather than taking a difficult shot themselves. Non selfish play is always more interesting to see in a player.

I finished Richard Adam's Watership Down yesterday. Really great book.

Stu is once again heading off to Buenos Airies early July, so he's lent me a large number of awesome DVDs and books. I can't wait to get stuck in to them.

HesFes is happening next week; it's going to be really fun being with my friends at a festival. I'm also hoping to attend a lot of the talks about home education in preparation for what I could maybepossiblyhopefully write my dissertation on - something to do with democracy in the 21st century.

Hey!  I've written the music to most of a song!  A full one!  I've written it on piano.  Currently it sounds like a cross between Street Spirit (Fade Out) by Radiohead and Teardrop by Massive Attack.  I'll hopefully pull it away from those when we practice it as a full band.

Tomorrow is Lib's prom, in Cardiff.  I get to wear a suit, and she gets to wear a dress and look beautiful.

Us headlining the Clapham Grand the other week:

A music related post.

Last Saturday was the tenth anniversary of the release of Radiohead's OK Computer. Seems like as good an opportunity as any to pay my debts to the band, in the form of 1s and 0s on some server in the U.S.. I'll keep it simple - Radiohead's music has affected me more then any other music I'm aware of. OK Computer is an exceptional album. I'm not going to say it's their best (it could be, I don't know) but, in my opinion, if you want a patent example of their beauty you don't really have to look any further.

The White Stripes are another band who I adore. So far they have produced five excellent albums. This is why I am in slight shock at how bad their latest offering, 'Icky Thump', is. The music is pretty mediocre throughout. I can deal with mediocre; there's usually at least one or two situations where I can listen to mediocre music and enjoy it a lot. What makes it a bad album, as opposed to a mediocre one, is the quality of the recording and production. It's awful. Truly awful. The low end of the whole album is distorting. Where as before they produced lo fi stuff which sounded like it'd been recorded on old school equipment really well, now they produce stuff which sounds like it's been recorded on hi quality stuff really badly. I (illegally) downloaded the lead single 'Icky Thump' off Frostwire prior to getting the album, but deleted it as I assumed the file I'd got was a bad quality rip from the radio or something. It was the actual album track. Why haven't any reviewers mentioned it? Surely it's not just me?

At the same time as buying 'Icky Thump' I bought 'Era Vulgaris' by Queens of the Stone Age and 'Idealism' by Digitalism. 'Era Vulgaris' seems ok, with a few good tracks, but doesn't appear to be anything close to the awesomness that 'Lullabies to Paralyze', their last album, was. Again, the production is far from great. What is it with bands? Fortunately, Digitalism's 'Idealism' is awesome fun. Daft Punk meets Kraftwerk. And the production is as slick as you'd expect from said cross over.

Last night I had a horrible half an hour, where I was so determined to write some music I went downstairs late at night into the conservatory, lit some candles and played my guitar for a while. It was all shit. Tonight has been better, I've messed around with a melody I indirectly stole on piano and hope to make something out of it with the band. I'm still waiting to be able to write full songs again.

Over the last three days I have been to two gigs and a festival. And done other things too.

On Tuesday I saw CocoRosie with Lib at the Brighton Komedia. It was a really good gig; the best sound I've seen them have, and the smallest venue. I've also grown to fully appreciate the new album, and so got that much more out of it. Lib and I rounded up my time at 26a Paddock Field. We left a present for the future occupants of my room.

On Wednesday I saw Art Brut with James at the London Astoria. Firstly, it is a crying shame that the Astoria is to be pulled down and replaced with shops in a couple of years time. It's a great venue. Art Brut were great. I don't know them hugely well but know a fair few of their songs. James and I were down in the thick of the crowd for the start of the set, loads of jumping around ensued - a nice change to CocoRosie (not that bopping and gently dancing is at all bad). After we headed back to Ash Vale and I cycled home.

Today I saw Queens of the Stone Age and the White Stripes with my family at the O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park. Both bands rocked mightily.

I'm fully into my room and I love it. I'm really really happy I'm home and I can't wait for next year. We're only at university two days a week, the rest of the time I can work and travel. Getting into a routine will be very good.

Saturday sees our first big headline gig in a while, at the Clapham Grand in, unsurprisingly, Clapham. It's going to be great fun, there's been a really good reaction, I'm expecting a fair few people to be there. And playing for fourty five minutes rocks, you feel like a big band. We get the big dressing room to! And lots of free alcohol! Fuck yeah! That reminds me, I need to mix the intro music. Picking the intro music is secretly the best part of playing big gigs, but don't tell anyone.

As I write this my room is in dissaray. Tomorrow at 10am my parents arrive to take everything from here and bring it back to my home. On Tuesday Lib and I will stay the night in the bare room (so we can see CocoRosie at Komedia), and once that's done that will be the end of my time in Room 7, 26a Paddock Field.

The Philosophy Society Q&A session went really well. Lots of people came, lots of questions were asked, lots of answers were given, and lots of wine was drunk. I enjoyed chairing, although it would have been nice to have had a chance to ask some questions. Went to the pub after and got quite drunk, and came home at about midnight.

The University of Brighton has shares in three of the largest arms manufacturers in the UK. I emailed the Freedom of Information Officer to confirm these claims that Campaign Against the Arms Trade have made. I'm certain they're true, it's just useful to have my own research on the matter. Once I get a response I'll take things further.

Portishead are curating the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival in December. It will be their first full length public performance for ten years. It's at Butlins Minehead. Dan took £900 out of his interest growing student loan to pay for a six berth chalet for the weekend (festival tickets included). It shall be immense.

From Lib's for Elfie on Wednesday:

Roses


Leaf


Me

I can't get no sleep, as they say.

I was up til a bit before 3am filling in an application form on Surrey County Council's website for a part time job at Woking Library. It was a crappy application form. I'll check a few things over with my parents before submitting. Working in a library is one of the few jobs that doesn't leave me feeling anxious and frustrated when I picture myself doing it.

It's 04:31. It's getting light out side. I had no idea it did that this early already. That says a lot for the amount of lying in I'm able to do in an average week. I love staying up until it gets light. This time doesn't count as there was a brief period of lying in bed while it was dark. But the other times, when you're in a field with friends, sobering up, watching the clouds get sucked away to where ever they go leaving the glow of the next day in their wake, they're awesome.

My first year of university if almost over. The first two terms were good although marred by exams. This term has really been excellent. It's unbelievable how much better my essays are when I'm writing about things I'm interested in, from an angle I find productive. We should be given this level of autonomy from as early an age as possible, not as late as your third term of higher education. It's empowering.

I'm really happy with where I am with university. If I can get into a rhythm of doing well in essays, keeping my seminar performance up, and doing a good job of running PhilSoc I should get a lot out of it, without it restricting the other important things in my life. It's all about the rhythm.

Going back to Buffy, I think that all 144 episodes, all seven seasons, should be required viewing for young alternative liberal types. It's had such a huge influence on our generation; without knowing Buffy we don't know a part of ourselves. It's immense.

The perfect situation over the summer would be me landing a job with some library or what have you at the start of August, then said job offering my permanent part time work while I'm at uni next year. I'm going to work quite hard to make that happen. I really do need the money.

'The money' is dumb. I don't really understand how I've managed to spend as much as I have this term. It's really, really, not good.

In five and a half hours Goldfrapp's 'Black Cherry' will be waking me up. I should get to sleep to let it do its job.

144 episodes in three months and I've finished all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The ending was superb. I didn't realise just how emotionally involved with the show I was until the end.

My band Philanthropy are playing a headline gig at the Clapham Grand (Clapham, London) on Saturday 16th June. You can see all the detals here. It will be awesome, please do come. Our myspace is here.  Listen to tracks from my band below.

The subject to this post is the next essay I'll be writing. Thoughts and feelings encouraged.

Today has been a double plus good day. The weather is stunning. I cycled down from Falmer to Brighton which is always exciting if not especially fun. Once in Brighton I bought a sketch book and two 9B pencils from Grand Parade's student union shop, tried to ring the speaker's assistant for June 7th's Philosophy Society, gave Liberty a ring, gave Absolute Music a ring, gave James Allman-Talbot a ring, ate some food, decided on my essay, and scheduled a pre essay tutorial for tomorrow. Then I cycled back to falmer.

The sketch book and pencils were good as I've been meaning to buy some since I did life drawing in Nottingham with Philippa last December. The speaker's assistant only works til 1pm (her answer phone message told me) so that didn't get very far. Talking to Liberty was lovely; because of my lack of signal in Falmer I don't get to very often. I received my digital stage piano from Absolute Music at Christmas, I sent it back a couple of months later for repair and haven't seen it since, during the phone call today they said they'd send me a brand new one tomorrow. I'm trying to get hold of James Allman-Talbot to get the Philanthropy website properly working - he's proving very elusive. The food was yummy from my local café (to uni), a vegie sausage sandwich and salad, plus tea. It'll be good to formulate an essay plan at the tutorial tomorrow. Cycling back was cool as exercise releases plenty of endorphins.

Edit 19:04 23.05.07:

And the day just got that much better when, after posting the above, I discovered CocoRosie were playing a sold out gig at Komedia (small ish venue in Brighton), so I jumped on my bike, cycled to Komedia to beg for a ticket, and low, they had eight left.  Fuck yes.

I picked up a key ring from the under stairs cupboard, so now my front door key, my uni room key, and my USB key are all in one place. This makes me happy. When I get back to Brighton I will attach my bike lock key and the bike shed key to the key ring. Fuck yes.

Been digging this funky shit. I'm not sure how cool it can be yet, lots of people seem quite excited, but I'm going to stay neutrally critical until I get some first hand goodness out of it. And once I fully understand how it works. Check it out anyway.

On the subject of the internet.

I was talking to Peter for quite some time about the internet and it's potential for emancipation and empowerment. It really does seem that the internet is able to function as a non hierarchical entity incredibly well. The amount of free open sourced software is truly staggering. Fuck Microsoft. Free open sourced software has within it the potential for you to be in control of what you use. And even if you're happy to take the free open sourced software as it comes, you're almost certain to be getting a powerful, non exploitative piece of software which works very well for you, in ways a profit orientated piece of kit never could. When you have thousands of people trying to create something amazing for free you know it's going to be good. The best bit is because no one individual/group can be held accountable for the software it can do and say whatever it likes, with the usual threats of suing/prison being all but ineffective. It's like turning the model of the corporation on its head. Corporations are so hard to deal with because so many people own them (the shareholders). It's monumental. It's a free space where censorship is useless; where if one falls a thousand others spring up in its place. Who knows, maybe its the faint sound of the death knell being rung for blinkered profit maximisation at all cost. Or maybe not. It's gonna be super fun finding out.

It would be a pretty cool dissertation. Maybe I could link it in to a latter part of looking at democracy in our modern world; where it's come from and where it's going.

Some free open sourced software that I know of.  Please add to the list in the form of comments, I know very little and want to learn so much more.  Anyone know of an awesome free open sourced alternative to Windows Media Player?

Firefox
Thunderbird
OpenOffice
Ubuntu Linux
FrostWire

Also please comment me with thoughts about the internet and its potential for what I just outlined, whether you agree but see a hugely important aspect I've ignored, of if you think I'm talking male cow faeces.  And anyone who's got mad skills with Linux, I'd love to hear from you, I'm thinking of switching over from XP.

The party has been and gone, leaving epic memories in its wake. I challenge any group of guys to dance to Living On a Prayer and not remove most of your clothes in an explosion of pent up homoerotic frustration. Once again another awesome breakfast mainly provided by Dan and Liz. I had washing up for ten to do after, but it was very theraputic. The hedonance of the night before was washed down the plug hole along with the dirty water and the remnants of scrambled egg, beans, toast, onions and bubble & squeek. I spent the afternoon going through a cycle of cleaning, tea, Buffy, cleaning, tea, Buffy...etc. B&G came over at nine ish, bringing a variety of desserts and their able hands to help finish making the house look normal. The house now looks normal.

I wrote the first essay of this term over thursday night and friday afternoon. It's the one I mentioned in the previous post. It was awesome. Not that the essay was very good (I missed out lots of important issues, conflated other important issues, could have referenced a bit better etc.) but it's the first serious length essay (word limited 1500 although I wrote 2000...) that I've had to write in almost three years. And I got to choose the title, basically. And I really enjoyed writing it and found it useful and satisfying. Yes!

Recently I did something I've been meaning to do in ages, and found out what the song at the end of American Bauty that is awesome is (Annie Lennox - Don't Let It Bring You Down), and downloaded it. I also downloaded a live Neil Young version, who originally wrote it. As I was checking out my parents CD collection I found a couple of Annie Lennox albums, one containing the track. Which was pretty crazy. Not crazy because they have good taste; they do. Just that I've wanted it for ages and it's been in front of me the whole time. Time to check out the rest of the album (Medusa).


In Cardiff on wednesday to see Lib.

I climbed four trees in a day last week, three in Bute Park, in Cardiff. Lib and Asha were there for three of them.

The first tree I climbed was in Lib's cousin's garden. Peter and I were gardening and more light needed to reach the grass, so I clambered up to cut one of the branches off.

The second tree was strange in that it didn't look like it went anywhere, but if you kept moving upwards you got somewhere. The best part was pushing through the thick foliage and resting on top of the tree. The thin branches beneath you were so numerous that you could wonder around the top without worrying about falling off. The sheer amount of leaves obscured the thin branches. It was very cool.

The third tree was a huge and airy tree, a sort of blossom bubble with a few large trunks inside. You could get quite high before the angles and branches got too steep/few.

We climbed to the top of a tree that I'd guess was sixty or seventy feet high. I carved our names into the bark using a safety pin Asha had. I'm not sure how well it came out, hopefully the sap will have slightly run out and turned into amber. Next time I'm in Cardiff and have a free moment I'll check. Our battle scars were impressive.


My essay due in for friday is entitled Given its origins in Athens, what is the future for democracy in the twenty-first century?. So I'm going to look at what democracy was in Athens, both practically and theoretically, look at what democracy is now, both practically and theoretically, and look at how it made the transition. I'm probably going to argue that now our conception of democracy is very confused, and that practically we don't have democracy in any real sense in the UK, and most other places. I'll probably argue that this is because of capitalism, in the sense that our world is now globalised and so 'direct' democracy is far more complicated, and in the sense that the elite of society don't want democracy to happen and so have worked hard at stopping it happening. Some examples of US sponsored dictatorships in Latin America should help for some proof of the latter. Please hit me with your thoughts and feelings on the matter.


Usually I'm annoyed at our rail network because it's really expensive. On sunday I was annoyed at our rail network because, having bought a saver return with 'no restrictions', I got to Paddington to find that it wasn't valid during the evening peak time. The guard at the barrier told me to read a poster. I read it but it didn't tell me why I couldn't travel to Cardiff. He saw me still standing there and pointed to the bit that said I couldn't travel. Apparently if I was going to Swansea I could pass through the barrier, but since I was only going as far as Cardiff I couldn't. This still idn't explain why I couldn't. I asked at the information point, and the lady said I couldn't travel with the ticket because it was their peak time. This still didn't explain why. I took a complaints form but never filled it in. I spent the next two hours in the middle of a round-a-bout watching cars get angry with cyclists and cyclists get angry with cars, and intermittently reading my book.


What's cool is that no matter how shit the system is there are still cool people in it that cheer me up. A few days prior to the aforementioned incident I found myself at Clapham Junction without my wallet, which contained my ticket, my card and any cash I might have had (cash, hah. Barclay's are right). I was later to find that I'd not left my room with it. I boarded the train for Ash Vale and hoped the guard wouldn't come. The guard came. He asked for my ticket. I said "I'm sorry but I haven't got a ticket, and I have no way of paying for one". I explained why, and he asked me what the ticket was and what its price was. After checking it out on his ticket machine and finding I knew the price of my saver return from Falmer to Ash Vale (actually a saver return from Falmer to Ash, and not valid having already been used before but without any obvious marking, but this would have just complicated matters) he asked why I didn't come and find him. I said that from my perspective I had a valid ticket, and if I could get to Ash Vale without him asking for it no harm done to anyone ey? He said "that's fair enough, don't worry about it mate". I was happy.


I've been writing fuck loads of music recently. Well, smoothing out the edges to music that I'd already mainly written. Either way it was cool. I get to play loads of piano at Lib's, and having been there lots recently I've found that I've got a little better. My hands move far more naturally into chord shapes, and stuff.


If anyone has set up secret cameras in my room then you'll have seen me dancing around with headphones on to the mix I've made for Marc's birthday party this saturday. It pwns hard. I may go as far as saying it's the best mix I've ever done. We'll see.

From the latest medialens alert:

On April 11, the press covered a report by the Red Cross which pulled few punches:

“

The conflict in Iraq is inflicting immense suffering on the entire population. Civilians bear the brunt of the relentless violence and the extremely poor security conditions that are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions. Every day, dozens of people are killed and many more wounded.”

(http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/iraq-report-110407/$File/Iraq-report-icrc.pdf)

The Red Cross ran through some of the horrors:

“Health-care facilities are stretched to the limit as they struggle to cope with mass casualties day-in, day-out. Many sick and injured people do not go to hospital because it’s too dangerous, and the patients and medical staff in those facilities are frequently threatened or targeted.

“Food shortages have been reported in several areas. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, malnutrition has increased over the past year. The vastly inadequate water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is presenting a risk to public health. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, more than half the doctors have left the country.”

And later in the alert:

Writing in the media section of the Guardian, former New Statesman editor Peter Wilby commented:

“... the press has apparently learnt nothing from the dodgy dossiers and phantom WMDs that preceded the Iraq war. British governments may be capable of all manner of dissembling over pensions, NHS waiting lists and school exam results but, when they are laying down the law to foreigners, they are still assumed to be as honest as the day is long. So a Ministry of Defence map purporting to show the sailors were well inside Iraqi waters was accepted by most papers without question.

“Only Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who headed the Foreign Office's maritime section from 1989 to 1992, pointed out that no maritime border between Iran and Iraq has ever been agreed and that the MoD's map was, to all intents and purposes, a fake... the press's refusal to take him seriously recalls its similar treatment of Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who insisted before the Iraq war that Saddam had been ‘fundamentally disarmed‘". (Wilby, ‘A sailors’ story told without a hint of scepticism,’ The Guardian, April 9, 2007)

It says something about the quality of our government's propaganda that respected NGOs like the Red Cross can issue press releases which highlight how awful the situation in Iraq now is, without any real impact on the public consciousness.  The facts contained within the report (and many others like it) should be enough to destroy our Government's support irrevocably.

There are countless things that have happened over the past month that have happened, but I really don't feel like writing them down.  There doesn't seem to be much point.  It's made me wonder what my motivation for blogging is.  I've come up with a few things - it's nice to keep records, it's fun to perform, it can sometimes be creative, it can be psychologically healthy - but it's still largely a mystery.  A complicated mystery.  I'm sure it'll start up again properly at some point.