Must. Get. Out.

Update: If I'd realised so many people would visit from Annie Rhiannon, I'd have put up a more cheery post... I'm not always this grumpy! Do stop by again!

Today we had our fortnightly progress meeting, at which I always end up ranting like a nutter and regretting it. Made a resolution to bite my lip, but despite the calming happy pills I didn't manage it. AND ANOTHER THING that makes me furious is that fact that I come across as a ranting nutter - not only do they want you to just shut up and get on with it, we're not even allowed to talk about it any more. Dissent is frowned upon, as new iniatives from the borough ( ie the government) are now treated like they've been served up piping hot from God Almighty. The teachers are expected to be passive and unquestioning, and so are the poor kids. Poor little buggers. We're giving them an utterly miserable childhood and training them up for a lifetime of wage slavery.

Anyhoo - the final straw was when our admin-crazy mgmt delivered some spreadsheets recording Incidents of Behaviour. One of the little boys in my group (one of my favourites, not that I have favourites oh no) I saw had offended. For, I quote, "throwing snow". There it was, logged on the spreadsheet, a 7 year old's record of shame. HOW DARE 7 YEAR OLD BOY THROW SNOW! No doubt this record will be compiled and end up somewhere in the LEA's statistics.

Must. Get. Out.

Look who came to stay

Annie, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Only Annie Rhiannon!

Yaaaay!!

Yes, it's a coded message

And my favourite PE tune:

Karma Coma

Feelings, seriously, who needs them? Since my doctor prescribed happy pills for the losing-of-the-plot-from-the-bark-bark-barking, have been untroubled by feeling much of anything. Situations where I should feel, I don't know, enraged, sad, happy, frustrated, excited, disappointed, I'm observing calmly... it's like watching fish swimming about underneath a layer of ice at the bottom of a lake. Or something. May just triple the dose and float off into the stratosphere. (though I suspect it doesn't really work like that.) Modern science, isn't it wonderful? I was thinking I'd stay on it for only a few months, but maybe this glacial calm would be worth pursuing forever and ever?

It reminds me of Brave New World. Didn't really get it at 16, I must re-read it, it would make much more sense now - I wish I had it in front of me. At one point, the Savage, an unreconstructed human rescued from the wilds, brought into this world of technology and soma* and hedonism, makes this great speech when someone asks him if it's really a bad thing to have eliminated pain and disease and misery from the world, if he would really have them back again, and he claims them all.

I was on his side when I first read it, never realising as an adult I might be on the side of the Brave New World.






* "There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle."

Jealousy

People who can run fast
People who are rich
Redheads
People who can calculate fast in their heads
Musicians
People who love their jobs
Cats (eating, sleeping, fucking, getting praise for being selfish lazy little attention whores because they're cute - pretty much the ideal life)
People with a talent
People with quiet neighbours
People who are sporty
Slim people
Good looking people
Contented people

You?

Ada Lovelace Day

Celebrating women and technology - I'm pinching this video from the fantastic TED on Aimee Mullins

Paranoid, much?

This is what you see when you apply for a visa waiver for the States. Was trying to get to it from my home computer. Think I'll try it from work, instead.

Are all artists selfish bastards?

And is being talented any excuse?

Apparently Graham Greene said that writers need a chip of ice in their heart. (I can't find where he said it, does anyone know?)

I was watching a documentary of John Martyn, who died in January. Came across him when a teenager, when I thought he was an old hippy and didn’t really listen – later got hooked on Solid Air, and started really properly listening to his voice, which is a voice in a million. I have no words to describe it, but when you hear him you’ve no doubt some people are just born with a gift, when you hear him sing his voice somehow expresses the whole range of what it is to be human. He was a proper musician, the antithesis of all those technically good but soulless talent show winners on the X Factor.

He reminds me of Bob Dylan too – there’s such understanding when he sings, this is someone who’s lived through everything and has great empathy with people’s experiences - yet he seems at the same time to have been an angry, aggressive, incredibly selfish human being (he took over his first wife’s record deal, knocked her up so her career was effectively finished, then buggered off on tour leaving her to bring up the 3 kids alone.) All the while making this beautiful, spiritual, achingly sad music.

I couldn’t get my head around the contrast between the music and its effect on me, and how he lived his private life.

What are they doing to London?

Gloooooom

Things in London that are closing down - the world is changing and I don't like it one bit - it's all getting homogenised, glossy and corporate, bland and boring. Stop selling our city out to developers who don't care about it! Say no say no!

RIP the New Piccadilly.

RIP the allotments on the Olympic site.

RIP Greenwich Market

RIP Ridley Road Market (probably)

RIP proper pubs with 1 old man with no teeth and his dog.

RIP Camden Passage

RIP greasy spoons that aren't repackaged and retro

RIP the Streatham ABC, art deco cinema turned into flats.

Anything you'd like to add whilst I'm in this mood of mourning?

Gentrify this, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Postcard from Berlin

In the misty mists of time, I found the blog of lovely Broke In Berlin. So I when I dragged Rae (not a blogger) to Berlin, we met the lovely BiB, and it was like we'd always known each other, and Rae conceded there might be something in this blogging lark. And I liked it so much I met Em (not a blogger) there another time, and she met BiB.

Then she and Bad Sarah (also not a blogger) went to Berlin, and they met up with BiB. And sent me a postcard.

Aw...

Fuck shopping, let's make art

Anybody want to come and see a play in West One Shopping Centre with me?

Here tis:
Staff of a Private Military Company are passing through Amman en route to Baghdad when one of their number goes missing in Amman. His oldest friend defies protocol to stay and look for him.

It's a promenade play - I understand this to mean that you walk around the actors. It comes highly recommended. ( And after sitting down for TWO AND HALF HOURS through 'He's Just Not That Into You' recently my butt protests at any more sedentary entertainment. )

Shops going bust left right and centre, so they're turning them into theatres & galleries - bring it on!

(I saw an installation in a laundrette by the magnificent Dr D recently, just happened to be wandering past when I saw Brainwash on Bethnal Green High Street - more on Dr D's subversion - and better photos - here. It seems to be the thing at the moment. )

Gran Torino

Have you ever been to the Electric Cinema? OH MY LORD. Massive comfortable chairs, lots of space, little footstalls to put your feet up, a bar, a sidetable for your drink, a beautiful renovated 30s picture house...

Oh, the film. It was good, and gripping, and old Clint does his grizzled old flinty-eyed thing superbly, but my, what a bleak view of race relations in America today.

The Korean immigrants have all become assimilated beautifully into the local culture - they wear the clothes, they talk the talk, they're all driving around in gangs beating people up and shooting them.

'You should go out with your own kind' Clint says to his Korean next-door-neighbour, when he sees her with a white boy. She has just been harrassed by black boys angry when they see her and a white boy walking together through their neighbourhood.

But it's okay, Clint arrives in his truck (which replaces his horse) and his gun saves the day. Firepower is just as important in this movie as it ever was in Spaghetti Westerns. Is this the way they're going to solve their problems, shoot their way out of it? Whoever has the biggest gun wins? Is that the best we can hope for? I won't write a spoiler, but if you see it, do note Clint's final pose and what it tells you. Individualism alive and well in the American cinema - too bad people somehow have to get along together.