"All that is, is metaphor"

From YouTube, a condensed version of Robert Anton Wilson's Maybe Logic DVD:

"RAW talks about the sanity of using maybe, E-Prime (the english language without IS or Being), imprinting and conditioning, optimism, awakening and how 'the map is not the territory'."

Well, whaddaya know. I didn't even know there was a Maybe Logic DVD, let alone a condensed version of it.

Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) will always be one of my favourite writers. I spent a large chunk of my 20s trying to hunt down and devour just about every goddamn book he ever wrote. In the days before Amazon, this was no mean feat. By contrast, I stumbled upon the above clip after spending ten minutes or so loitering on the superinformation highway.*

It's at times like this that I love YouTube.



* Is it still called "the superinformation highway"? I've got a feeling that I just made myself sound very Windows 98.

Thor Blimey!

It's not every day you see an item of news that will excite fans of Marvel Comics, Norse mythology and popular Brummie playwright William "The Bard" Shakespeare.

Here's something from Variety that might:

"Kenneth Branagh is negotiating to direct 'Thor' the next Marvel Comics property that will be turned into a live-action film by Marvel Studios. Pic will be released in 2010."

Well, maybe not the Norse mythology crowd. They're never easy to please.

The prospect of Kenneth Branagh directing a big-assed superhero flick might seem like the maddest idea since, I dunno, Ang Lee directing a big-assed superhero flick. Then again, this one's about a hammer-wielding God who's partial to a bit of blank verse blather. It might not be too much of a stretch.

I suppose that over the coming months there'll be all sorts of feverish speculation amongst fanboys as to who should play the God of Thunder. Me, I don't particularly care - I'm more interested in the supporting cast. I'm hoping that Branagh once again calls upon his regular company of performers to lend a bit of much-needed gravitas to the project. I want to see Thor's dad Odin played by Richard (The Good Life) Briers. I want to see stately, plump Volstragg played by Brian (Z Cars) Blessed. But most of all, though, I want to see Thor's arch nemesis played by a truly great British performer. Someone who has worked with Branagh before. Someone who'd be perfect for the role. Someone who was born to play an evil trickster god.

I want to see Ken Dodd as Loki.

The letter writing campaign starts NOW!

Bank Bailout Scheme “To Be Extended To Riverbanks”

Fot the first time in ages, I've submitted something to the satirical website Newsbiscuit. Here it is:

Financial markets were in turmoil this morning following news that the British government will soon be extending their momentous £500bn bank rescue package to include ailing riverbanks. This comes in the wake of the Irish Government’s controversial decision to prop up the banks of the River Liffey

The news sent shockwaves through the financial markets both here and abroad. Following the announcement, the FTSE 100 share index plunged by a staggering 20%, setting a new record as its largest inter-day drop since Tuesday lunchtime. Transactions were suspended throughout many of Europe’s derivative exchanges as “absolutely bloody gob-smacked” Futures Traders were forced to spend much of the morning frantically rewriting history.

According to waterways campaigner Canal Phoenix, Britain’s riverbanks had been hit particularly hard by the credit crunch. “High Street banks aren’t the only victims in all of this,” claims Phoenix. “Thanks to global warming, there’s just not as much water out there as there used to be. Britain’s riverbanks are facing an unprecedented liquidity crisis.”

“Industrial pollution has always been a problem for our riverbanks,” claims Phoenix. “Over the last year, though, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of toxic assets. You should see how many dead cats, used prophylactics and broken bicycle parts we’ve dredged up.”

A global collapse of the riverbank sector will have a devastating knock-on affect for other industries. “Riverside taverns, fishermen’s pubs and boat hire firms will all be affected,” claims Phoenix. “The sub-prime mortgage crisis has really hit property development along popular riverside locations. You have to remember, in this part of the world ‘sub’ usually means ‘underwater’”.

Opposition politicians, however, were quick to condemn the bailout. Jodie Marshland, Shadow spokeswoman for Riverbanks, Tow paths and Global Financial Catastrophes said: “While we sympathise with the nation’s riverbanks, throwing taxpayer’s money at this problem is no solution. If you ask me, the prime minister has behaved like a bit of a riverdunce.”

“This reckless policy decision has set a dangerous precedent. It has, quite literally, opened the floodgates. Where will it stop? What other bank-related institutions will British tax payers be bailing out next? Will we be offering emergency financial assistance to Jodrell Bank? To sperm banks? To England footballing legend Gordon Banks?”

Phoenix, though, is adamant. “Action has to be taken now. Nobody wants to see a run on the banks, but a run on the riverbanks can be far more dangerous. It can be very slippery and can result in drowning. You should always walk at a leisurely pace.”

In a related development, many of the world’s great rivers are currently involved in merger talks with former rivals. The US Mississippi has confirmed that it is in advanced talks with the Latin American Amazon which could lead to the creation of the world’s first super megariver, which will be known as the Ms. Ippi.

Artful Dodging

While we're on the subject of credit crunch-themed neologisms, here's another one I made up:

Faginomics (ˈfā-gən-ˈnä-miks), noun

Controversial economic recovery strategy designed to alleviate the self-inflicted hardships of the rich and powerful few by surreptitiously removing money from everyone else's pockets.

Schadenfreude, Baby!

As I've mentioned elsewhere (and even elsethere), I'm into neologisms in a big way. When I get bored, I make up a new word. Last week I wasn't bored, but someone invited me to make up a new word all the same. That's never happened before.

The author Laura Lee invited me to take part in a neologism contest on her blog. She's written a book called Schadenfreude, Baby! and as 'schadenfreude' is one of my all-time favourite German words, I thought I'd give it a go. Schadenfreude, in case you don't already know, is usually defined as deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others. See, I told you it was a great word. Once you know what it means you'll wonder how you ever got by without it. According to Laura:

'The kind of Schadenfreude many of us have been feeling in the wake of the financial crisis has a different quality and character than the celebrity downfall gazing of a year ago. It's darker, blacker and angrier. Over at Psych Central John Grohol is talking about his emotions: "I find a strange melancholic amusement to learn that many of these investment banks’ CEOs and boards of directors — people being paid millions of dollars every year to purportedly know what their own companies are doing and how they make money — didn’t have a clue as to how deep their companies were into questionable financial practices."

'I'm looking for suggestions for a new word that encapsulates this "melancholic amusement"- Schadenfreude tinged with a touch of sadness and foreboding.'

The word I came up with to describe this strange mix of emotions was:

SADENFREUDE, noun

An emotion that combines joy in another's misfortune tempered only by the overriding sense that the misfortune is going to have some serious and sad consequences.

See what I did there? I created a new word by amputating two letters from a preexisting one. Nifty, eh?


Believe it or not, I won the contest.

Thanks for the good news, Laura. I look forward to reading your book.

Les Ross vs Hardeep Singh Kohli

Today's random ideomotor response generator is a BBC Radio WM interview between legendary local radio jock Les Ross & writer/broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli.

Your toes will curl.



From Tom Watson via Birmingham: It's Not Shit

Paradox on the Buses

I'm perversely tempted to take part in the indefatigable Jon (Birmingham: It's Not Shit) Bounds' demented-yet-delightful bus-based social experiment, 11-11-11:

On the 11th of November let’s create a modern ritual, a post-millennial cultural cult.

Eleven hours on the eleven bus — join us.

The rules:

• Get on the 11C at 11am (or as near as dammit) on 11/11.
• Get off the 11C at 10pm — 11 hours later — (or as near as dammit) on 11/11.
• You can get on and off the bus as many times as you like (don’t spend more than an hour off bus).
• Document your journey; photos, film, writing, cross-stitch, knitting, amigurumi, poetry, blog, twitter, however you like.
• Meet up with others as mad as you, if you want.

I'm up for a bit of that. I quite like the idea of donating some bandwidth-by-proxy to such a bold, civic-minded endeavour, particularly when it’s a public transport-based collective metamedia travelogue. It'd make me feel like a walking, talking, head-on collision between Bill Bryson, Marshall McLuhan and, perhaps, Reg Varney.

More importantly, though, it'd give me plenty of potentially juicy things to write about on here. Not only is the Number 11 the longest urban bus route in Europe, but every time I've been on it I've witnessed something odd, weird or mad as a bungee-jumping bishop in a ballgown. They don’t call it an "Out-Patient Ward on Wheels" for nothing.

All this talk of buses reminds me of several things.

For the sake of clarity, brevity and sanity, however, I’ll narrow it down to one. Long ago and far away (which, by my calendar, makes it approximately August 1996) I witnessed a Hofstadter Strange Loop in action on the Number 45. Being a part-time philosopher and half-arsed science geek - which I define as someone who read about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider before Dan Brown wrote about it in Angels and Demons (which, of course, I don’t plan to read) - I had a basic grasp what a Hofstadter Strange Loop was. For the sake of clarity, brevity and charity, however, I’ll just say that a Hofstadter Strange Loop is a sort of elaborate definition of a paradox. You can find a proper definition on Wikipedia, but for me its best summed up by the art of MC Escher or that memorable line from the 80s video classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension:

“Wherever you go, there you are…”

Indeed. Anyway, while I had a reasonably firm grasp of what a Hofstadter Strange Loop was, I never knew what one looked like. I certainly didn’t expect it to resemble a grumpy old fart with a tartan shopping trolley.

Cut to: one sunny Saturday afternoon in 1996. There I was, sitting on the lower deck of a number 45, heading home from somewhere I can't remember and reading a book I can’t recall when the bus got itself stuck in a traffic jam along the Pershore Road. It was a particularly vicious and stubbornly viscous strain of traffic jam, even by the standards of the Pershore Road. I didn't mind, though: it was a pretty good book.

Sitting in front of me was a grumpy old man with a Tartan shopping trolley who spoke in a Birmingham accent that was so strong that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a bad parody of a Birmingham accent. I couldn't be forgiven for thinking this, of course, as I've written so many bad parodies over the years' that I wouldn't get away with it. A fairer description would be to say that the old man spoke in that rarest strain of the Brummie accent, the raw, unrefined, undiluted Brummie accent that these days only exists amongst scattered pockets of traditionalists and in certain parts of the BBC Radio WM schedule.

As the traffic jam slowly eased its way into a terminal case of entropic paralysis, the man and his trolley huffed, puffed and fumed with increasing bile and volume. I tried to ignore them, but it wasn't easy. These things rarely are.

Eventually he stood up and marched over to the bus driver: "Ooroyt, mucka – what’s gooin’on with the traffic, then?" he asked. “It’s a bloody disgrace, that’s what it is – a bloody disgrace!”

The driver explained that some Reclaim the Streets protesters were exercising their democratic right to park their derrieres on the tarmac up ahead.

The old man seemed to explode with rage. Innocent bystanders were maimed by shards of herbal cough drops. The shopping trolley spewed its contents out in sympathy. “Bloody protesters?” he roared, “bloody protesters? You mean to say we’re stuck here on accounta bunch a BLOODY PROTESTERS?” He was disgusted. He was outraged. He was possibly vitriolic with fury. You could feel his vile, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

“I’m sick of these bloody bastard protesters”, he continued, now addressing the entire lower deck of the bus. “Bunch of arf-soaked, scruffy, workshy bastards with nothing better to do, the lot of ‘em. If they’re not out saving the whale or banning the bomb or getting there knickers in a twist they’re holding things up for the rest of us.”

"That sort of thing should be against the law," he said. "People shouldn't be allowed to protest."

I looked up from my book, but decided to say nothing.