I did a bit of tidying up and moving stuff around on the website (well, it's better than tidying my 'real' room) so you may find things a little different.

I have deliberately buried a links page to magic and juggling flourishes, but temporarily I will point to it here as a *New Page* - but given that I point to how David Blaine levitates and how Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear - I figured I should hide it from casual eyes. On most magic sites they set you a little test to check you are 'in the know' but as I found these sites just using Google, I don't feel like I am exposing something too casually. And I am very scared about people's gullibility in this modern day and age....that they could still see something on television and truly believe that a man can levitate is quite scary. Entertainment and illusion is OK....

I added some links on the cgi vs. real Jabba issue; a page of strange bits and pieces; and links to all current online interviews

Oh, and the second part of the most recent interview is now up.

I just finished doing an online interview with a webmaster (a grand master) which you can read the first part of here
NB: 31 August 2003 this site (like other links below) appears to be intermittent - due to maintenance - try later if you don't get through

You can also find it by going to www.starwarz.com (or just put StarWarz in Google, if you want). That's an interesting node, and you can then go on to T'Bone's Star Wars Universe.

It's a great site, and we had fun putting the words together, and he has added pictures and stuff - I like the result. When I finish changing my Jabba pages I will put a permanent link to this.

After finding Grand Illusions I was racking my brains for the address of another site I found a while ago, containing 'impossible objects' made from playing cards. Well, this morning I found my way back!

They are called WOW cards, and they are at Ian Rowland's website. He performs all over the world doing a 'Beyond the Psychic' show. No Uri Geller he, he has a self-deprecating sense of humour and self-mockery (while obviously still proud of the great stuff he can do).

It was always Geller's vanity that annoyed me (I remain an honorary member of the circle of conjurers who like fooling people, but not kidding them it is anything 'paranormal'. And speaking of paranormal, have a look at the impossible objects on Ian's site, which he calls PPOs (Permanent Paranormal Objects) which make a ship in a bottle look like child's play. (Though sadly the links to Angus Lavery, and the spoon that changes shape were dead links when I visited today).

Here is an absolutely fantastic (in the true sense of the word!) site.

I found it at lunch-time, and it is a serious temptation to goof off during work! Fortunately the phone keeps going, so I am managing to hold off until I get home...

I love magic, but not just conjuring. The whole realm of optical illusions, puzzles, mindbenders, brainteasers and amazing gadgets is a natural extension of conjuring. This site is called Grand Illusions and they certainly are.

In their shop (one click on from the free area) you will also find they have some extraordinary toys (a few of which I saw several years ago when a guy just pulled them out of his bag at a juggling convention...)

All over the site there is stuff to try, animated examples, things to make and do. Oh, and for Judith there is even the address of the only orrery maker left in England.

I came across a Star Wars 'research' page the other day - Starkiller - The Jedi Bendu Script Site - so I contacted them about the few old call-sheets which I came across recently, in an old box. Not much of a souvenir, and I returned my (numbered) script sheets twenty years ago....

Funnily enough, I walked away from the shoot with my bits of script, and then sent them back, very apologetic, later (I wanted to work again!) - I know, because I found the humble letter, too. As it happens, I don't think the people in the office were going to chase me up on it, so I probably could have kept them. Hey ho.

You are talking to a man who gave away an 'almost new' crew shirt for 'Revenge of the Jedi' just a couple of years ago (before I discovered just how much it might have been worth!)

And the young guy I gave it to wore it all the time, and works in the countryside, so it is well trashed now (I hope I am not making any collectors cry out there).

Anyway, Hi to Björn and T'Bone - I have just posted off the copies....

I had a charming email today from Miles Hochstein, who has added my autobiography pages to his page of illustrated lives. I am very flattered, especially to be in the company of Tesla and Einstein!

Yolande Jodi is 35 today. Happy Birthday out there!

To Tom and Sharon - peace and love........

Another larger than life character (though completely different from Michel Thomas) is Harry Knowles, the founder of the Ain't It Cool News website

I found his book, "Ain't It Cool? Kicking Hollywood's Butt" in our library stock, and it's a great read. The opening chapter, on his family background, is just wild!

"From childhood on we are conditioned to associate learning with tension, effort, concentration, study. I n essence, learning equals pain. The educational experience has been a painful one, and has capped the immense learning potential of each child. This is a tragedy." p 320 The Test of Courage: A biography of Michel Thomas.

Or go look on his website

Although, unless you have a lot of money, I would recommend borrowing his language learning material from your local library...his courses are really expensive, short though they are.

I have been looking at the biography of Michel Thomas, which I will not try to summarise here, but I did find good quotes about his attitude to learning and the educational establishment. Anyone who knows me knows how much I disliked the education I had, and yet how much I enjoy learning. I work for the Leisure and Lifelong Learning group in my local council now, which just about sums up why I happened to be a juggler for a while...there was no urge to be a performer, I just wanted to spend the bulk of my time in Leisure and Learning...and that particular skill happened to support itself.

It also took me into teaching - and I always thought of teaching as 'sharing an enthusiasm' and overcoming people's bad learning experiences - juggling was a particularly simple (but apparently difficult) skill, which could rapidly give people a sense of success and achievement. The lessons learned - in 'learning how to learn' could be applied to other areas of life. I always thrived with self-selected students, but often had trouble with ready-made groups doing my course as a compulsory event. Much harder work.

Just listening to Paul Jones' Blues programme on BBC2, and was knocked out by a '21st Century' blues mix thing

Title: Ride On
Artist: Skip Little Axe McDonald
Album : Session CDR

and you can hear it (about 12 minutes in) on the playback on the BBC site.

For some background to Wednesday 9th's Joke Error Page story, see here

"Never memorize something that you can look up." -- Albert Einstein

Definitely Joke of the Day!

Put weapons of mass destruction into Google and click I'm Feeling Lucky

You will apparently get a page not found message, but look more closely.....and read carefully....

And having corrected my timings, I thought I should analyze what I am doing a bit.

I started this Blog when my previous public one - Thinking Allowed - started feeling frivolous and irrelevant after 11 September 2001. And, no, it wasn't just out of respect for people dying (people do die - thanks to US foreign policy - every day) BUT it also wasn't just to bite my tongue because of my sarcastic attitude to most people 'of The Book' (they've been fighting each other since Old Testament times, I just wish they'd leave me out...)

It was just a natural break.

Since then the archives of notes have piled up, and now I am 18 months in I thought I should tidy up. I am printing off hard copy of most of it (so I can edit in the old-fashioned way) and will eventually remove it all. Maybe then I will stick back the good stuff in my writings page...

In case you don't quite get why I love Michel Thomas, it's to do with teaching. I listen for teaching technique.

Both my parents were highly respected teachers in different arts.

When I looked at NLP (now a bit of a cult) it was because the founders had studied great teachers, to see if it was a transmittable skill. It's still not clear if it is.

Certainly you can learn some basic tricks. Perhaps it's the few extra lifetimes of experience which make the difference. (That's for the Buddhists).

Wow, what a fantasy! To get a job working for Blogger and Google on the West Coast!

I am not even applying right now, because I am in love with the person I live with, who has a locked-in life here right now, and because I still have stuff to learn about computing through the job I hold....plus I have the Star Wars connection to work on...

The government here, however, just moved the goal posts for the Baby Boomers (they knew we were coming since 1947, why do they still act surprised?).

They didn't say "we don't have enough to pay those pensions we promised in return for all that National Insurance you paid" ...no, they say "we are against age discrimination, so we don't think it should be compulsory for employers to 'let you go' when you are 65 years old" - in other words, if you don't have enough to stop working, you can work till you drop...

Nice of them.... :-) that's the Irony Check - yes I am joking.

I forgot this guy. William Nowik. I just remembered.

Enjoy his website - pictures and writing. Here

PS: remember artists are bohemian, and unshockable, and find all words and images equally interesting - so don't be surprised if you come across a few surprises...

And don't ever say I didn't warn you................

Another small joy, today. I came across the Michel Thomas language learning tapes/CDs in the library.

What fun! His tapes are of himself and two students going through a logical introduction to language. As English contains both Germanic and 'Latin' elements he points out how much you already know, and then gently takes you through a simple logical progression of communicating. Excellent!

Whenever I have tried to learn languages, or to teach what little I knew to others, I have always pointed out similarities and general rules - but this guy is a relaxed genius at it.

I have dabbled in all three languages so far, and the important thing is the feeling of success, and achievement, and the feeling that you could go off and improvise a dialogue almost straight away.

If you don't like tapes and such, you can hire Michel himself for about $5000 a day....

He was also a war hero, and his biography is there in Military Studies - but I would like to finish with this quote from his website:

"However, it was a single sentence -- a negative statement -- made by a psychology professor at the Sorbonne, which influenced Michel and changed his life. This statement -- "nobody knows anything about the learning process of the human mind" -- drove him to devote his life to probing the learning process. It is his deeply held conviction that the biggest weapon in maintaining a free society is education and an educated citizenry."

Enjoying my lunch-hour skimming the web - looking for the original author of Desiderata (no, it wasn't written in 1692) I came to InfoAnarchy and by browsing ended up looking at the book
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

Which can be bought as a book or downloaded for free - I haven't decided yet, but I enjoyed this quote about it:

"In his modernization of wearing your karma on your sleeve, society is governed by reputation and actions. This is not so much an ideal world, as a practical one which keeps considerable adventure and moves in anything but boring ways. 'The whole point ..was to be more reputable than the next ad-hoc, to succeed on merit, not trickery, despite assassinations and the like."

I am suffering from déjà vu again

Listening to this new Bill Hicks CD, and he is doing a routine about Sadaam Hussain and George Bush, and the alliance of the Brits and Yanks to go in and clean out a country which is heavily armed (with stuff we've sold them). And it's 1992.

"How do you know they have weapons of mass destruction?" he might have asked these days...

'Well, we looked at the receipt.

And, as soon as that cheque clears - we're going in!"

Day off today.

Tidied my room.

Changed a few bits on the website.

Dull weather.

Usual kind of diary people keep.

A bit of a gap, there.

The gang have been off at Glastonbury, but I have been cat-sitting. Julie threw a BBQ on Thursday, which left me hanging on Friday (she had the day off). We did go out on Saturday (long drive to disappointing Sculpture Trail) - I had such good memories of it...hey ho.

All I ended up with was a stiff back from the road, and so I didn't go to a wedding reception OR a party due that evening. Hey Ho.

My first two-day weekend for a while, and it fell apart a bit.

Anyway - Monday back at work - humid still, here. There was some rain last night (just to make the tent-crew's life a bit harder), but overall it sounds as though Glastonbury went well. I was missing it quite badly (this is the first time I've watched it on television).

Not that I have gone every year, just that (when I didn't get to go) I didn't watch it on TV.

Listening to Spike Jones on headphones as I walked to work. I had forgotten just how close jazz and cartoons were. The soundtracks of cartoons in my childhood were almost all comedy jazz with sound effects, and Spike Jones is the master of the mental pictures.

And they tried to kid us that dope was from the Sixties! Stoned humour is written all over the Spike Jones sound.

The suppressed history slowly leaked out, of course. You want the facts? Look at Jack Herer's Hemp site before you leap to judgment. When the killjoy Americans gave up trying to ban alcohol under Prohibition, they just switched that established police force onto banning the poor minorities' grow-your-own herb instead - marijuana. Accidentally, they made a most useful fibre, farmed all through the United States at that time(hemp), illegal overnight. Surprised some of the right-wing farmers. Lunacy.

But, if you don't already know this, you probably don't care. And I probably shouldn't be admitting to preferring grass to alcohol EVEN NOW, 35 years after 'The Sixties'. Like Bill Hicks asks - if there are people being rowdy, obnoxious and dangerous in a public place are they drunk or are they stoned? They're drunk, of course. Case closed.

A Happy Summer Solstice to you all!

I have made the mistake of working today (I try not to work on Equinoxes and Solstices, the only 'holiday's' I take seriously, as they are real cosmic events, not local superstitions. Hey ho.

A particular big hello to Walter, as I have just downloaded the Astrolog software, which is a small download (elegant in design) but has so many functions I don't know quite where to begin. I have linked to Walter's 'Labyrinth' site since I first put up the webpage about my film work - as I had failed to expand on my own experiences on the movie, and wanted people to have more information, if necessary.

I thought today deserved something a bit more light-hearted. Julie and I celebrated five years together, last night.

It was a beautiful morning, this morning, and I remembered a day many years ago when I was swimming in the Pacific Ocean, off Bolinas Beach, and it was a bit overcast, and I said to a companion 'it would be perfect, if only the sun came out'. And he replied, rather sternly, 'this is the only day we've got!' A real fierce old Here-and Now message. We hippies were quite fierce with each other, when it came to staying aware....

All of which brings me to this old Sanskrit poem:



Look well to this day

For it is life

The very best of life.

In its brief course lie all

The realities and truths of existence,

The joy of growth, the splendour of action,

The glory of power.

For yesterday is but a memory.

And tomorrow is only a vision.

But today well lived

Makes every yesterday a memory of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore to this day.

I am receiving 'good books' so fast now I can't keep up. I just had placed into my hands "The Best Democracy that Money can Buy" by Greg Palast. If you can't get the book (or don't have time to read) go look at his website

Remember how Bush got elected after some fumbling in Florida? It was like watching a little kid do a card trick. You may not have known exactly what was going on, but there was so much fiddling, and shuffling, and furtive behaviour you KNEW something was going on that wasn't magical.

Well, Greg will tell you how they removed Democrats, African-Americans, Hispanics, etc from the voting list by the thousand, so Bush could be slipped in by a few hundred votes. Check it out, and weep.

And if this is new news to you, you probably live in The USA.

Please don't read these as 'finished thoughts'.

I have spent years thinking about some of these things, and the weblog often just contains notes to myself.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about 'money' and 'wealth'.

As an old hippie, living in an affluent (effluent) UK whose wealth came from exploiting the planet through Empire-building, I already despised what had happened before I was born, but was only really interested in what I could DO about it. The first thing was to resign from the System. I didn't claim benefits through the Welfare State, and didn't pay taxes for many years (except for those indirect ones 'they' cunningly placed, like VAT, the tax on alcohol and tobacco, etc.)

After a long period of wondering how to survive, I ended up as a street performer - my 'pitch' being that if you were amused, and wanted to see me there again the next day, you would have to contribute enough for me to eat and find somewhere to sleep. Enough people gave me cash in those years that I got through this phase. Essentially, these was 'gifts', freely given from one individual to another. No interest, no promises.

Nowadays, street performers have to get public liability insurance, pay self-employed National Insurance stamps, etc. It doesn't take long for the 'System' to integrate you.

Still, I enjoyed the period in which I earned and spent 'cash'. It's a precarious way to live, in a society which uses long-term planning and commitment of resources. If houses were all to be bought by people working the way I did then they would cost about ?£10,000 (a just about feasible amount to 'save' up'). Because you can promise your life earnings away to a mortgage, you can multiply your current earnings (and future earnings plus speculative promotions) to come up with a sum you can 'afford to borrow'. That's what the house costs you - everything you may ever earn.

I guess the illusion of stability allows this sort of gamble. The two generations before me had a couple of wars, The Great Depression, and other reminders that promises might be hard to keep in a changing world.

Still, voluntary 'wage slavery' has its benefits. The huge card castle of debt that the UK and the USA are now living on (far higher than any Third World Debt - which is a parallel debt we hope will pay off our own extravagance) does worry me slightly.

partt of the reason is that, having reached the age of 52, more or less standing back from this system, I joined the library service, and now get low wages which encourage the tendency to borrow against theoretical (speculative) earnings in the future. I haven't gone far into debt, but enough to worry me...I got a credit card to be able to shop on the Internet, and that alone has started eating up my earnings in paying 'Interest'.

Now, charging 'Interest' is the root of the problem. Usury, they call it in the Bible. In systems theory this is a positive feedback loop (in simple terms, the HOWL you get from speakers when a microphone is put in front of them - and you know how excruciating that is!)

Ecological and balanced systems use negative feedback loops to stabilise themselves. The simple model for this is the thermostat in central heating systems - TOO HOT? Turn it off. TOO COLD? Turn it on again.

Of course, someone has to decide on the parameters of the settings. Set them too close together and the system goes into oscillations OFF?ON?OFF?ON?OFF?ON?

Notes to self, like I say. I am reading an excellent book on Money, and Local Currencies, called "Money, Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender" by Thomas H Greco, Jr.

The Introduction is by Vicki Robin, author of 'Your Money or Your Life'.
Why not visit her site, and look at the 9 Step program?

and look at the Simple Living website

As you may gather, I am apparently a skeptic about most things. I could refer you to Michael Shermer's site at www.skeptic.com...

or his book, Why People Believe Weird Things. It would all relate to why Richard Dawkins thinks of religions as mind viruses (dangerous memes).

If it will amuse you, look at his savaging of the numerology of The Bible Code, in the latest Scientific American.

Thriil! as David Thomas searches through the book Bible Code II, and uncovers this secret sentence: "the Bible code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax" using their own techniques!

At the last gasp, however, some of the extreme skeptics are as badly fanatic as the True Believers (Some of the guys at PSICOP spring to mind). It's not that I don't agree with The Amazing Randi, and Martin Gardner (that we delude ourselves a lot of the time) it's just that they don't seem to find that fascinating in itself! I really do think we have to leave a gap for stuff we don't know for sure. Hence my liking for Robert Anton Wilson.

I am also reading a book called Straw Dogs, which not only argues (as I argue) that Western Christian culture has caused terrible problems by believing humans are a 'special creation' separate from the rest of Nature, but points out how the same arrogant belief has been smuggled back in by 'humanists' who still seem to be saying that humans are somehow 'special' and superior to the rest of Life. A dangerous belief when you are entirely dependent on a Vast Active Living Intelligent System like Gaia.

I found myself defending the sociobiological position (hated as a right-wing tendency by socialist and feminist friends alike - they fear more social Darwinism and Eugenics) just because I feel embedded in a continuum of living beings, and I think people are in denial if they try to pretend that we are not descended from animals...and that we carry all sorts of leftover traces of those origins.

I agree we shouldn't base social policies on 'Men are aggressive, women are submissive' and other such crass simplifications, but it also seems obviously true to me that men can not be sure they are the father, whereas mothers can be sure it is their child, and that this reality might affect their mating behaviour as it does every other animal. That women can only have (say) 20 children, but that males could (in theory) have hundreds. That a lot of cultural patterns seem to have evolved around suspicion and control of the female, and reckless 'spreading of seed' by males. I know we CAN override some of our 'animalistic' motives (with our 'superior' brains) but to deny that they exist at all, and claim we are all born exactly equal, and that all differences come from differences in Nurture seems like a deep evasion to me.

It just seems weird to me to ignore modern biological studies and retreat into some empty claim that humans are the only conscious beings, that we are the only intelligent ones, the only ones who feel pain, etc.

That degree of separation seems scary and dangerous, to me.

Call me an animist, pantheist, taoist, what you will...

I know my interest in Burroughs seems odd to some of my friends, but I have always enjoyed intelligent people, and particularly people expressing themselves in writing - so I overlook all the other stuff. His misogyny reminds me of W.C.Fields (it's a routine), and that's the truth. To me he is (like Samuel Beckett) hilariously funny under the deadpan, and a lot of people miss that (or just don't share that sort of hangdog humor).

So, if you are easily shocked, or worry about non-PC behaviour and attitudes, you'd better let Bill Burroughs pass by.....(and Bill Fields, most likely).

In case you are wondering why the title of the blog changed (again!) - I bought a book on Laurie Anderson in Paris, and that reminded me of a tape I used to have - 'Home of the Brave' - which contains a track with that title, but which got lost on some circus tour or other...

I went out and bought a secondhand copy of this, on CD, and am enjoying it as much as before.

Hence the change.

Start here, if you don't know what I am talking about, but only if you care...

Most relevant to the virus theme might be the Electronic Revolution text (which I used to have in a book called The Job, but is online on this site).

Went to a circus party on Saturday night. All-nighter.

I don't remember much, after the dawn. Woke up on the sofa - missed the AGM. Hey ho.....

I had a great chat with HR and John Coppinger tonight. John was being interviewed online, and I spoke to Lars briefly, but the IM windows got confused (blame Trillian) and we were talking across each other. Sorry Lars - it was all on one screen to me, like a noisy party!

HR showed me a greeting on Lars' site here and as Babelfish couldn't do Danish, HR translated it for me. It was a birthday greeting (Feb 14th), and I was very touched...here is a quick translation which HR sent me:

"Hr Nielsen: A Birthday greeting.

I'm honored to inform that one of the greatest, most famous and best remembered puppeteers to ever have performed Jabba's left arm is turning 57 today.

His name is Toby Philpott, and his father was the first to ever do puppeteering on tv. His mother was an actress.

When he was younger he travelled the world as juggler, magician, fire eater and everything else he could think about
performing.

His job in Return Of The Jedi was to control Jabba's left arm, tongue and body movements.

He now, besides a son, has a huge fan following, and even though he describes his part of the Star Wars saga as being a minor part we should always remember that without people like Toby Philpott Jabba would have never come to life and eaten that frog.

Hr Nielsen: That is what it said"

Many thanks to HR (as ever) and to Lars and to all well-wishers. I am very grateful for all your good wishes.

As usual, I'd like to plug The Ecologist magazine - look at a sample of its current issue. You can find the text of the article on Stanley Milgram's scary experiment to see how easily we are led by our peers....to do awful things with a clear conscience.

If you can get a copy, I also recommend the article on Carnival (pp 14/15); the piece on the Wichi tribe (find out more here), and the gag about Harry the Hawk on page 16.

One of the joys of working in a library (even for low pay) is that I get to see all the magazines as they come out..............it's the equivalent of earning quite a bit more to have access to DVDs, CDs, books, magazines and newspapers....

It was interesting to find that the first signed images I gave away are now on offer online at £25. Phew! I don't know if any get sold, of course, although I did find one offered on a Japanese site. And you can buy a card for £7 here (I got devalued from £8)

I still give some away, for goodness sake.

Anyone wants one, why not email me, and get one for less.

What you do with it afterwards is your own choice, I guess. I prefer to personalise them for people's private collections or gifts.

Not that anyone is out here reading this......................... herherehrherherherherher!

I am sitting at one of the public terminals in the library. Just checking on a Monday morning. It is one week to go to the change of library computer systems - this is something many staff have been through before (about every five years) but it is a first time experience for me, and I am supposed to know how it all works (!)

A bit anxious, shall we say.....

back a couple of days now. We had a great time, so thanks to everybody who came to the convention, to all the people who organised it and to Aurélien in particular (for getting me to go), and to Paris and the Parisians for making us so welcome.

I have been corresponding with Matt Lee, who is trying to raise money for a youth centre in Dodge City....so I am sending a few signed things for the auction. I wish them all the best of luck with this, and only mention it in case anyone else can contribute something to the fund-raising - get in touch with me and I'll give you Matt's address.

There was a launch for Jennie Savage's website of anecdotes from Cardiff. She has been artist in residence at the library for some months. And yes, I chatted for a bit about NoFit State [check out their revamped website]and its spin-off, Splott State community circus. The site is here

In the Index, don't look under circus, but under Community. I am the sixth speaker....and yes, you can listen to us talking, as well as read the (rough) transcription of the text....and they may even spell may name right, eventually......

Thanks to Aurélien and all the other people who organised the convention; thank-you to all the people who came; and thanks to Paris and the Parisians for making us welcome.

I am sending some signed stuff to Matt Lee in Dodge City, who is raising money to build a youth centre. I only mention this in case anyone else has something they could contribute to the fund-raising auction. Let me know, and I'll put you in touch with Matt. It's a great idea to offer kids something more than bowling and shopping malls and a cinema. He plans indoor skateboarding rinks, computer rooms, a coffee shop, etc.

I got held up in Paris by the strike at the airport. Back now. News and memories follow.

Yes, the name has changed, to indicate that I am working on my self again. Dr Sarno's 'Mind-Body Prescription' sounds like just the thing - although there has to be a certain"Doh!" factor if and when you find out that all the pain and distress was not directly a physical thing.

"I've never dealt with whodunits. They're simply
clever puzzles, aren't they? They're intellectual
rather than emotional, and emotion is the only thing
that keeps my audiences interested."
-- Alfred Hitchcock

Online Visions - a magic magazine, if you're interested

PS: If you are still feeling a little gullible (like believing that David Blaine can levitate - and please don't follow that link if you prefer to believe he can) then why not go to Cecil's anti-gullible page, The Straight Dope

After doing Test the Nation, I started exploring the Web (again) to look at online tests. The set I focussed on this time was the Myers-Briggs typology tests - (based on Jungian principles) - and started off with a test which said I was INFJ, so I joined a mailing list for those types...then I took another couple of tests, and it changed to INFP, then INTP, and so on. [If you don't get the jargon, do the research...]

I am consistently Introverted, and iNtuitive on these tests, but they seem undecided about my Thinking/Feeling split, and the Perceiving/Judging split. Julie came across this great page for XD38 types which rings certain bells, although she insists it is even more like Keili...

If you have found your way to my blog, and have read this far, I would guess that this might describe you quite well:

"You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic."

you can find this text, and a good discussion of this sort of stuff in The Skeptics Dictionary - for the above text you should check out the 'Forer Effect' before you start believing more than is good for you. Oh the wonders of self-deception.....

Ah, vanity... Googling my name this morning I came across another site that says I only worked on Dark Crystal and Labyrinth and Tall Guy. (Why don't they use IMDb like everyone else?) - but what amused me is that they list my occupation as 'normal actor' :-) Anyone who knows me knows that that is as far from the truth as you can get without actually being a lie.....

Here's a delightful thing, which put a smile on my face this morning (not easy when I am complaining of RSI)....

FlyGuy so simple, so sweet. Many thanks to Keili for pointing it out.....

Ended the evening watching Ed Harris's film about Jackson Pollock.

Some sort of tormented genius. The 'making of' part of the DVD was even more interesting.

Hey ho. If you want my hero - Buster Keaton.

"In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler's effortless, uninterested face."

-- James Agee, "Comedy's Greatest Era"

Well, I am feeling a bit smug at the moment. I missed Test The Nation a few weeks ago, and didn't do the online version, as I had the complete programme on video. I settled down with it today (and a Do Not Disturb sign) and got 64/70, which, for my age range translated as an IQ of 148. The highest in the studio was 135, and the highest online user that evening was 149.

The woman from MENSA said getting over 130 on this particular test would qualify you to join MENSA (the top 2% of the population). The reason being that scores vary quite a bit (last year I got 128 I think). To quote the MENSA site

The term "IQ score" is widely used but poorly defined. There is a large number of tests with different scales. The result on one test of 132 can be the same as a score 148 on another test. Some intelligence tests don't use IQ scores at all. Mensa has set a percentile as cutoff to avoid this confusion. Candidates for membership in Mensa must achieve a score at or above the 98th percentile (a score that is greater than or equal to 98 percent of the general population taking the test) on a standard test of intelligence.

I am not actually surprised, as I was told I was smart when I did the 11+ all those years ago (even though, as Julie pointed out, it was biased against girls). It didn't turn into a university degree. I dropped out in boredom and frustration; I would say because I was too smart, but others would say because (in that area) I was dumb. It hasn't turned into (say) a high income (If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?) It has kept me amused (but easily bored). And I've met people way smarter than me, too (Hi Keili and Kim).

But still, smug, like I say. Just publishing it up here is pretty egotistical, isn't it? Still, I did it because I like the brain exercise. And I get the age-weighting advantage (when actually I am not much slower than I was when I was young). Curious about what I am talking about? Go try it here. Bear in mind that it is weighted against people for whom English is a second language; weighted against people who had less education; weighted against people who suffer exam anxiety; etc.

And I enjoyed chess as a kid, but can't play it well, now. I go nuts trying to understand the fascination of Bridge, and can't even begin to do cryptic crosswords. Each to their own.

Just doing a bit of Googling during my lunch hour. Looking for gossip about the trip to France, I found this chatroom, where people were saying it was too expensive: 8 Euros to get in , and 10 Euros for a signature. Trop cher!

I agree with dark.anakin "C'est clair que c'est un peu cher, surtout pour des persos vraiment secondaires dans la saga" and boba.fett7 made me laugh "Mais ce prix là pour des personnages de second plan est abusé surtout que dans la liste,on voit que l'on peut avoir l'autographe de l'opérateur de Jabba ?! Où est l'interet ? lol
A quand l'autographe du gars qui a livré la pizza à GL pendant le tournage de l'épisode III ?"
[who is interested in a Jabba operator's autograph? You might as well get the autograph of the guy who brought George Lucas's pizza....]

I agree of course. I know I am a very minor celebrity (At hollywood.com I am celebrity number 1,475,096, and they don't even know I was in Star Wars!)

and

I certainly wouldn't pay good money for my own signature...(je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho).

I agree with all these guys, I am a secondary character, a bit part player. But then again, I don't spend my time collecting Star Wars toys and memorabilia...so to me it's not just too expensive (as though there was a reasonable price for these things) it is merely ludicrous. But that's not to put people down - it's just to say we all value different things. I am probably going to pay $60 for a video of some crazy German magicians, because that's my sort of thing. Others might say

Too much!

Why should a piece of George Harrison's half-eaten toast be worth thousands of pounds (see 27 June 1999), but my signature not even 10 Euros? They are both ludicrous. Unless you are just into money, in which case the tradeable value is the only measure...and I see this guy is selling my autograph (obtained from me by post, for free) for £8 (more than 10 Euros, and I give you a glossy photo).

So, hey guys, don't begrudge un viel acteur une petite vacance.......I give the organisers a large percentage, and I pay for the photos, silver pens for signing, etc. so I only come away with about 4 Euros a picture.

que la force soit avec vous ! And if any of those French guys contact me I will send them a free pic, just for the hell of it! What more can I say?

I just heard from Steve (edits a SW magazine) and it reminded me yet again that I do not really follow the story and characters of the Saga. (sorry, guys!) I am just not from the generation who it had an impact on. There was very little media choice when I was a kid, anyway, but I'll talk Catch-22 with anyone. It was a universe with characters for every occasion...later everyone in my age group seemed to do Lord of The Rings (I know, I know) but I never did, and still haven't (second time around).

If you want to discuss alternate universes with me you have to get into the Illuminati stuff, not just Illuminatus! but all the peripherals, and hints and clues, and cross-references, and dead ends, etc. Echoes in The Prisoner, or Umberto Eco, in genuine straight history books and subversive ones, heresies, magic, perception, manipulation, myths and legends, including urban myths, etc. It's a rich realm, and I hardly share it with anyone...maybe I'm just paranoid.

Still, I do understand the joy of repeated reading (viewing) and trying to work out what is going on, and so on, but I am more of a bloopers and bad continuity person (having worked on some of these things) rather than a true believer....

I guess these are just notes to myself - may not mean much to others. If anyone was wondering why The Grateful Dead is not just a silly Sixties name like The Chocolate Watchband, but is more evocative than that, well, however they came across it - old folk tale books, or whatever - it is an old theme from Tales and Legends, the shortest form being a wayfarer coming across a dead body, giving it a decent burial at their own expense - later the spirit of that dead person turns up to help them out in return. There are many variations in all cultures. It's not so much ancestor worship, as it has that 'Good Samaritan' aspect....

Anyway, I was surprised to find in The Stacks (the underused stuff out in the back of the library) a Folklore collection called The Grateful Dead...so any amusing bits will get put up here. The original folklore work, for instance, was done by an anthropologist called Hippe. Is that pronounced 'hippie'?

The book I have is by Geroud, and using that I went onto the Web and found this great (grate?) page on Grateful Dead Stories

A small pleasure that the book of Tobit is in here somewhere.................

That's It for the Other One

look at the Dark Star page!

Happens to be the title of one of my favourite Sci-Fi movies, too....

The faster we go, the rounder we get!

Ove the Bank Holiday weekend I ploughed through some books based on the history of The Grateful Dead. Mixed views - some sociological, some musical - oh the joy of libraries, having several similar books to skim and compare.

Dead reckonings - The Life and Times of The Grateful Dead

A long strange trip - the inside history of the Grateful Dead McNally, Dennis (a co-conspirator)

Sweet Chaos - Brightman, Carol (more from the point of view of the Berkeley radicals - over the bridge)

Oh, and now I just found the other end of the Internet

or the Flash animation version...

Of course, if you do any of these things too often you may end up here

or here (please be careful with the button)

Do go visit the End of the Internet, and come Back safely, but if you go to Shutdown the Internet, don't push the button if computers make you panic - you HAVE been warned....

Or just remember this - AFTER pressing the button (just to see what happens, of course) use Alt+F4 to close that window, and Back to get back here again....

Well, I may not have a table reservation for the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but I have found The End of the Internet. You'll be back...

Long slow weekend - but time to read a book. The weather was foul for a day or two, so I didn't get up much. Then I slept through today, which seems to have been beautiful (sigh). Everyone knows I am a sun-worshipper, which is hard on a naturally nocturnal person...

Work that one out! I can't....

Hi Keili - I've posted a message in our offstage blog

Nice to catch Tim Adam last night. I haven't seen him since he went off to Brighton for the British Juggling Convention, where the NoFit State blue tent was the renegade cabaret (as usual). I am sorry I didn't go. I know for many people juggling is a lifelong love. I will always enjoy watching jugglers, and hanging out with them, and Haggis and Charlie will always make me laugh, while astounding me with technique, but I, me, moi, personally just don't do it any more. Fell out of love with it. Nothing else I can say. It's nice to know people still make a living that way. Hi to Lynn, still doing magic, or Tim Bat still doing juggling, or John Lee still doing clowning....

I'd have to paraphrase Sir Ralph Richardson [God in Time Bandits] "Has anyone seen a very small talent, I seem to have mislaid it somewhere..."

I can't even be sure if it is because I can't stand the competition. In juggling terms I feel like Roger Bannister is to mile runners...back then some things seemed impossible or superhuman, and when Roger ran around the mile track and collapsed over the line in under four minutes it seemed amazing. Set a new level of possibilities. When I first taught myself to juggle five balls I felt like that. There were no ready-made props, no books, no videos, and no mentors I could find.

As it happens, Five Balls, like The Four Minute Mile, was more of a mental block than a physical one. Throw in better nutrition and training methods, more time for professionals to work on stuff, more access to training material and quality props, and the sheer competitiveness of 'more people doing it' which drives up standards and maybe you can see the parallel. Roger nearly gave himself a heart attack breaking that Four Minute barrier, but a few years later that standard was a basic qualifier for sports events. Similarly, the stuff I broke my heart over is 'very ordinary' these days. I and I don't have the time or inclination to improve.

Of course, there is 'being funny', too, which I enjoyed, and is a different kind of skill. My real problem is that I am a misanthrope (people hater) a snob (I don't like cheap jokes - and I'm so patronising I think I have to explain misanthrope) and a passive-aggressive introvert (go away, and leave me alone!) so the sooner I got out of show business, the better....

Another PS: from Samuel Goldwyn "Gentlemen, include me out".

On a review for Richard Dawkins' newish book 'A Devils Chaplain' there is this quote, which more or less states my atheist attitude to Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and even the most recent events in Iraq (Christians versus Muslims).

"Is there no catastrophe terrible enough to shake the faith of people, on both sides, in God's goodness and power? No glimmering realization that he might not be there at all: that we might just be on our own, needing to cope with the real world like grown-ups?"

Richard Dawkins

Are there any national leaders on the whole planet who are atheist/agnostic/freethinkers? Rationalists? Anything approaching non-superstitious in their beliefs? Is there any chance of getting the job if you admitted it? We can't all have God on Our Side (to quote Bob).

PS: I hate defining myself as not believing in god (atheist) or not sure if there is a god (agnostic). I don't wish to define myself as though I am against something. I don't make things up (say, BLOB), and then go around asking you to believe the same thing as me OR define yourself as someone who doesn't believe in BLOB.

As Londoners say "Leave it out!"

In case you didn't read the Addicted to Oil piece, or wondered what the throwaway comment about Hemp was, there's a quote below, and I leave you to research the rest. Just bear in mind that this is suppressed history. That (even now) 'they' managed to ban hemp under cover of banning a dangerous drug (marijuana). Although (as it happens) I would be for legalising marijuana, that is not what this is about. Hemp is one of the oldest and most useful plants we ever had. You know Canvas (sails on ships) that's Cannabis (look it up in the dictionary). Rope? All made from hemp until recently. So, if it wasn't fear of drugs that made them conspire against it, what was it? Well DuPont Chemicals like us using cotton for everything (needs loads of pesticides, fertilizers, etc) rather than Hemp (a very sturdy weed). And the Oil Lobby like us using ancient plant material from under the ground, expensive to get at, and all in their control, rather than renewable resources like hemp oil, and they can palm off their by-products on us as plastic. Check it out...

"Notably, this was at the same time (and thanks mainly to the same people who developed the plastics industry) that the only product to have more uses than oil, but with none of the toxic side effects, was banned. That product was hemp – the oil of which can drive cars, create plastics or be made into soap, the fibres of which can be turned into paper or clothes, and the seed of which is one of the most nutritious substances known. (Oh, and growing hemp counterracts climate change, too.)

Thanks, however, to the efforts of DuPont and William Randolph Hearst (with their respective vested interests in the plastics and paper industries), the use of hemp (which one would have to smoke around three tonnes of to get high) was outlawed, along with its more potent sister marijuana, under drug prohibition laws.

In place of the drug that was not a drug, we drill ever deeper into the veins of the earth. We pull the oil up not with syringes, but with derricks (named after an infamous 17th century hangman because of their resemblance to gallows). We cannot imagine a world without oil, deny the possibility of weaning ourselves off it, and will break the law – and even kill – to ensure a constant, cheap supply of the stuff. We are, every single one of us, addicted to oil. "

Excerpt from: Forbidden Fruit
Date Published: 22/04/2003
Author: Jeremy Smith

Back at my desk today. Not a good start to the day (still coughing) but at least I am back at work. Whether I have the stamina for an 8 hour day remains to be seen.

Looking at The Ecologist - scary stuff about oil and it's role in wars (and WHY did we ignore the sustainable resources cry of a couple of decades ago?) in the April 2003 issue. Addicted to Oil? Try 30 steps to an oil-free world.

The May issue has material on Hemp (another case we've been shouting about since the Sixties) as a multi-purpose plant/fibre; TV addiction; Recycling (UK does 12% at the moment); and an article by Fritjof Capra (the systems theorist) about the insecurity of centralised resources, and the security inherent in de-centralised units of production.

Saturday came, and I am still overwhelmingly tired. Coughed and pulled a muscle in my neck. It's really silly this stuff - am I just getting old? Perhaps, when I was self-employed, I just used to take the time off until I felt like working again (unless I already had contracts, of course, in which case I used to do them even if I could hardly walk, or think, or see....)

'If you're not dead, you're fit to do your act' and other lovely circus sayings:

Work your act;
when you can't work the act, practice;
when you can't practice, sleep.'

I am still off work. I feel better, then go downhill in waves. Now Julie has got it, and is off work, too - although she's in the early stages. Rhiannon, as well, is ill. Of course, I tease them that they are 'super-carriers' of SARS (they both came home from Thailand a few weeks ago) - but it was probably me that brought it home from working in the public domain, and also a fairly 'sick building' (sealed, air-conditioned, etc).

I am not trivialising the distress of SARS, of course, but I think the media is getting hysterical. We have six probable cases in the UK so far (probable, because they may just be ordinary flu). Nobody has died. And 'ordinary' flu kills the old, the young and the weak every winter, here. Just as it did (on a plague scale) throughout Europe in 1918-19.

I guess viruses are 'The Alien' (neither living tissue nor inert crystals, neither plant nor animal....), and we are back to fear of 'mutation' (it's like the 1950s). I thought this one was trying to kill me, that's for sure. and two weeks later, it hasn't entirely gone....

I mentioned Ursula Le Guin when responding to watching 'Walking With Cavemen' (and that unknown anarchist still hasn't posted the complete text of 'Carrier Bag Theory..' up anywhere, for me to link to) - however, I went and found her delightful website, and came across two quotes I'd like to pass on, the first is from the preface to the short story 'The Day before the Revolution' published in the anthology 'The Winds Twelve Quarters Vol2' It is written by Le Guin 'In Memorial to Paul Goodman 1911-1972'.

"Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principle moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories." I found that here

The second appeals to me even more (the only real difference between us being that it took me a little longer to discover Taoism)

"I read Lao-tzu and the Tao Te Ching at 14. My father had it around the house in the old edition with the Chinese text. I sneaked a peek and was and remain fascinated. Taoism is still an underlayer in my work. It begins talking about what we can't talk about -- an old mysticism that intertwines with Buddhism and is practical and not theistic. Before and beyond God. There's a humorous and easygoing aspect to it that I like temperamentally and that fits in with anarchism. Pacifist anarchism and Lao-tzu have a lot in connection with each other, especially in the 20th century."
Quoted in "Summer Reading," Mother Jones May / June 1995 v. 20 no. 3 (p. 34). That quote I found here

I had a deeper look at the Prosperity [Money Reform] website, mentioned before, and found a particularly clear story from a speech by David J. Weston. I hope he will forgive me for putting it here, but you can always follow the link to the source, if you prefer. It comes at the end of the interview, in which he responds in this way:

What are the key points that you like to emphasise?

"We should not preach at people. We need to use humour, analogies, stories, documented examples of currency successes, poems and music, graphics, cartoons, and the like. Replace Fear with Trust. Replace Greed with Generosity. Replace Despair with Hope. Never give up -- the first hundred years are the hardest! Question all assumptions. To think clearly is a political act. "

Here's the story:

In the town of Worgl in the Austrian Tyrol, there stands a bridge whose plaque commemorates the fact that it was built by debt-free, locally created money. This is just a small part of a significant experiment which transformed towns and whole areas out of poverty within 3 months and into prosperity within one year, when there was widespread unemployment in the national economy. In the early 1930s this small town (6000 pop.), was suffering like every other from the Great Depression. Worgl's Burgomaster, Michael Unterguggenberger, faced an empty treasury, because the unemployed citizens could not pay their taxes; there were roads, bridges, buildings and parks needing maintenance, for which the town could not pay; and idle men and women earning no wages. He recognised that all three problems could be solved if he found the connecting links. Those links were the key human information systems of money and a community-owned bank.

The three problems the Burgomaster outlined co-existed because no one had any means of exchange, and his simple solution was to create money locally, with the Town Hall as the bank. He issued numbered "certificates for services rendered" to the value of 32,000 schillings, in denominations of 1, 5 and 10 schillings. These became valid only after being stamped at the Town Hall, and depreciated monthly by 1% of their nominal value. It was possible for the holders to "revalue" them by the purchase, before the end of each month, of stamps from the Town Hall, in the process creating a relief fund. The depreciation not only encouraged rapid circulation, but also the payment of taxes, past, current, and upcoming. These taxes were used to provide social and public services, such as for the payment of wages for the building of streets, drainage and other public works by men who would otherwise have been unemployed. During the first month, the money had circulated 20 times. Taxes were paid, unemployment reduced and local shopkeepers prosperous.

It enabled unemployed people not only to receive a local wage, but also to create useful public assets -- street repair, including a new drainage system, street lighting, construction of a ski jumping platform, bridges and a new water reservoir. The workers found all businesses in Worgl accepted the currency in payment and at face value, and the notes returned to the town treasury bank as dues and taxes. Economically, there was no inflation, and politically, the money was unanimously acceptable to all the municipal parties. Because it was a depreciating currency, it circulated with rapidity, boosting the local economy. Because it was a locally controlled bank, the politically ensured 'multiplier effect' helped to create and enhance the well-being of the local community.

It is observable that the more a pound can be circulated and recirculated within a region or community, the more economic activity will take place. In contrast to this is the 'extractor effect' of externally controlled currency and banking, whereby every pound that is extracted is, in effect, a pound lost to the region or community. In Worgl, people were able to pay their current taxes in the currency, and also discharge their tax arrears. Many paid their taxes in advance because it was financially advantageous. Apart from the obvious employment benefits, physical assets were created. Although the Worgl money was unanimously accepted at the local level, there was opposition from two centralist forces -- the Tyrol Labour Party and the Austrian State Bank. There seemed to be the fear of the experiment spreading, for the idea was copied by the neighbouring town, Kirchbichel. The town monies were valid in both places. Other towns in the Tyrol also decided on issuing depreciating money, but didn't proceed due to threats from the State Bank. The nearby town, Kitzbuehl, followed suit with a similar programme. A meeting of 200 Austrian mayors decided unanimously to follow the Worgl example. Prominent people, including Premier Daladier of France, visited and were enthusiastic. The end of the experiment.... it became clear that the financial interests of Austria and of Europe were afraid of this success spreading, as ultimately the State Bank threatened, and took, legal action against it. After a long legal battle, the Austrian Supreme Court decided in favour of the bank, and the innovation was prohibited. The idea spread to Bavaria and was also squelched there. On 1st September 1933, the Worgl experiment was terminated.

Copyright © David Weston

I came across a bunch of old papers today, on alternative money systems. They were notes for a briefing sheet I was going to write for The London Ecology Centre (back in 1994) after I did the one on Cars. Hey ho, I was forced to go out and get a proper job, so there was no time to continue being a volunteer writer, and that year then just went downhill all the way.

I'd like to piece all that stuff together again, although I have as little hope that we will ever change our money ideas, as that we will ever attain a lasting world peace, or that people will stop exploiting the environment and settle for something sustainable, or abandon religions and adopt a god-free morality.

I am a pessimist, not an activist. But I love the ideas - and I think we have to keep our possibilities in front us, just in case. I'd really like to join Bucky in believing that changes will come when people see the advantages... Enlightened self-interest, they call it don't they?

Anyway - have a look at this Money site, while I put my thoughts in order....

Feeling fractionally better today, after missing yet another holiday period. Read a few books, though. I've read a couple of Carl Hiasen's in the last few days. Strange mixture - satiric comedy thrillers, or something. I first of all read "Lucky You", and then "Stormy Weather". There are some grim moments, and a lot of comedy, a bit like a Tarantino movie...

And this quote popped out of Stormy Weather, pointing back to Henry Miller [Tropic of Cancer], one of my favourite writers in my youth (no, not for the rude bits but for the anarcho-mysticism):

"Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity - I belong to the earth! I say that lying on my pillow and I can feel the horns sprouting from my temples."

Oh dear, we seem to be dropping like flies. I have just heard from Vijay that Nigel died on Saturday, (aged 44). He was a guitarist, a gentle and mild-mannered man, who I last saw at Pete's funeral. I can only claim to be an acquaintance, not a close friend, but he was part of that Ealing circle, and we had a few adventures together, as mutual buddies of Pete's. It's a bit of a shock, and yet another reminder of mortality. I guess I really should start saving for my own funeral, to stop my friends having to have a whip-round at the last minute.

I've got to apologise to anyone who does come here regularly. I seem to have forgotten that brevity is part of writing for the Web screen. Right now the words are pouring out of me, even though my typing is still as slow and erratic as ever. But where is the damn book? (The one that everybody thinks they can write - the old myth - everyone's got one book inside them) That's what I want to know.

Have I missed that whole step out, and found myself in cyberspace, writing a little column for anyone who happens to turn up?

It's a funny old world. Hello to Gerold and Eveline (picture will be posted on Tuesday); a big hello to Britta, Volker and a late Happy Birthday to Dave; and an especial Hi to Julia (I will phone soon, I promise, but the flu is in my throat right now).

No it's not SARS, but I am still off work. My doctors says it's a 'viral infection', so all their expensive education wasn't wasted, then. No cure, of course, but 'gargling with soluble aspirin' might help the sore throat. Wow, if my grannie could be here now, she could be doing the emergency surgery and earning $40-50K. 'A nice hot cup of lemon and honey and an aspirin, love, that'll see you right'.

Don't mind me. Being glum and sarcastic is part of being ill. I know doctors do a good job here and there, I just seem to suffer from all the things they can't cure, or diagnose, or even define. All those ordinary, uninteresting things. If only I had an obscure, and major disease, which attracted real research money then they might be able to do something. Maybe? Oh no, that's right, Pete died this year, and he used to have to lecture students about Lupus (they came to visit because it was fairly rare), as it was just something in their reference books. Hey, I can read, too.

Don't mind me - I am quite happy to let my body work it out (one day it'll lose and something may kill me) but now I have a steady job I have to get a 'sick note' from an expert, to say I am not just skiving off to watch the footie.... At least they pay me to be ill. When I was self-employed the loss of earnings just increased the stress, which is why I generally used to work through illness.

I can never get it out of my head, you see, that these highly respected doctors (authority figures) are ex-medical students (those silly people going on pub crawls, pushing prams with their friends in diapers, etc). Gosh, two years later, they are like a priest/shaman. At least my currrent doctors are women, so that 'healer' role seems slightly likelier - I am afraid the man in the pinstripe suit just never cuts it for me.

I've calmed down after my rant (see below) - and found my copy of Ursula LeGuin's piece, so I am now torn between my anarchist desire to stick it all up here, and my librarian's respect for copyright laws. Maybe I'll have to give you the excerpt I've typed up so far, and then 'serious researchers' can contact me for a full copy for their private use. Either that or I'll have to link to some anonymous site where some unscrupulous anarchist will have published it all.... hmmm

Excerpt from: THE CARRIER BAG THEORY OF FICTION (1986) by Ursula LeGuin

"In the temperate and tropical regions where it appears that hominids evolved into human beings, the principal food of the species was vegetable. Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food. The mammoth hunters spectacularly occupy the cave wall and the mind, but what we actually did to stay alive and fat was gather seeds, roots, sprouts, shoots, leaves, nuts, berries, fruits and grains, adding bugs and molluscs and netting or snaring birds, fish, rats, rabbits and other tuskless small fry to up the protein. And we didn’t even work hard at it – much less hard than peasants slaving in somebody else’s field after agriculture was invented. The average prehistoric person could make a nice living in about a fifteen-hour work week.
Fifteen hours a week for subsistence leaves a lot of time for other things. So much time that maybe the restless ones who didn’t have a baby around to enliven their life, or skill in making or cooking or singing, or very interesting thoughts to think, decided to slope off and hunt mammoths. The skilful hunters then would come staggering back with a load of meat, a lot of ivory, and a story. It wasn’t the meat that made the difference. It was the story.
It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats….No, it does not compare, it cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank while Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood spouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain.
That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of the makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn’t their story. It’s his."

LeGuin, Ursula "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction." Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. New York: Grove P, 1989. 165-70.

Oh, and if you wonder what carrier bags have to do with it all:

"Before - once you think about it, surely long before - the weapon, a late, luxurious, superfluous tool; long before the useful knife and ax; right along with the indispensable whacker, grinder and digger - for what's the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can't eat home in - with or before the tool that forces energy outward [Toby: spears, etc], we made the tool that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. I am an adherent of what Fisher calls the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution."

Oh, you have to read it all. I hope that wicked anarchist gets the complete text posted up soon, so I can link to it.

Once more, appalled, I watched 'Walking with Cavemen'. Episode 3. I watched because one of the performers is a friend of mine, and performers can't always choose the jobs they do....

I am really grumpy, though. Being a life-long vegetarian (and yes I know we are basically omnivores, and I have two canine teeth, and CAN digest meat and all that - I've tried most things in my travels). What I can't stand is the macho history of males. Can we still be pumping out this crap that humans are males!!!!! Males hunt, humans are vicious, we have to hunt to kill to eat, etc.

It's such rubbish. First of all it is speculation. Secondly, all representations of early humans I have ever seen are about as accurate as portraits of Jesus (sorry, folks) in terms of the local cultural bias of the artist - for Victorians they were 'primitive' and so 'ugly'. Of course, we now know that other races than the 'white ideal' contain some of the most beautiful human types, so why are we still portraying our own ancestors as ugly brutes? Oh yes, it's all 'scientific' now, isn't it, careful reconstruction from bones (is that why they all look like photofit criminals?)

And I may not be a zealous vegetarian, but I thought it was admitted now that we are not descended from 'Hunter/Gatherers' but 'Gatherer/Hunters' (i.e. 80% - or 'most' - of our diet has always come from roots and shoots, nuts and fruits and berries and leaves). Things that don't run away, or need to be hunted. Then there is honey. Then there are eggs (they don't run away either). Then there are small things like grubs (don't move very fast) and (the thing we don't like to talk about) scavenging other animals which are already dead.

The amount of lively creatures we chased and caught and killed must have been a tiny percentage of our diet.

So why are we portraying ourselves as avenging chimps? Personally, I feel descended from peaceful old apes like Orangs and Gorillas. Nothing macho about some of the biggest vegetarians on the planet. In fact, the biggest animals are ALL vegetarians - elephants, rhinos, hippos, gorillas, even some of the whales live on algae.

So what is this total nonsense about us being the ultimate predator? It makes me so mad. Haven't we moved on yet? When I calm down I will collect some of my evidence in a better form, but right now I am furious. So many people are going to think this is 'science' and not mythology.

I'll dig out Ursula Le Guin's text on 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction' as a good starting point.....I can't find the whole text online, and I don't know about copyright issues just at the moment, but I highly recommend it for a picture of our ancestors as calm, smart, benign and magical intelligent beings. With the women and children and old folks providing most of the nourishment by browsing and grazing, while the macho youth go off on futile chasing after after rabbits.... (oh yes, and - oh sure - deer or elephants).

We really worship predators (making a killing in the market) and the idea of the big lump of protein (the lottery win) which will solve all our problems for a long time - and we despise 'sheep'. We wannabe the hunters, not the prey. We don't want a symbiotic relationship with our surroundings, and endlessly renewable resources like plants. Check out this piece on 'Primitives' and Ecofeminism.

A good day, all in all. I didn't catch the sunshine, still being ill, but I managed to get back into the dead hard drive, and rescue Julie's Thailand pictures, and my old email, and so on. I still don't know quite what happened, but at least I have got my data back in an accessible state. Phew!

I'll try to get to work tomorrow, but I am still sweating and coughing. My PC seems a little better than I am, right now.

I've been under the duvet. After my PC got hit (old age or virus, maybe?) last week, my bodymind got hit (old age or virus, maybe?) and it was bad enough that I took time off from work. Anyone who knows my 'show must go on' attitude to contracts will know that means I am feeling pretty rough.

I've read a couple of books, through the fever, and coughing, and sleepless nights (and let's face it, you have to be ill, these days, to find the time to get through 600 pages) . I finished 'Interface' by Neal Stephenson (who has a very plain, but fascinating website here) and it was most excellent. I have enjoyed all his stuff so far, rich nourishing and stimulating books. Then I remembered I hadn't even waited for the library to get the latest William Gibson (his blog is here), I had bought my own hardback - 'Pattern Recognition' - and this is in a class of its own. Not a megablockbuster book, not a million pages, but very insidious. More sci-fi of the present, with that conspiracy edge I enjoy.

It's a laugh, isn't it? The programme didn't get transmitted, replaced by a war special, so that's why my video didn't kick in

Zwap emailed me to say that if no-one used my forwarding link soon, then they would get rid of it. I had to think back. Ah yes, we made a hoax UFO site, full of half-truths, real links, and completely phoney photos (thanks Keili!) as part of a publicity campaign for the Circus's great new tent, when it was up in a Cardiff park ('on a ley line') near the castle and a folly of not so old stones . I put the Zwap address on to make it a little less obvious that it was posted on a circus page.

Busy last night - getting the computer set up. I didn't get to see Caroline on the tele, and my video didn't record (Doh!) so I am in the hands of anyone else who recorded it.

Woke up this morning (I believe I'll dust my broom...) with a swollen throat. I know I was up late, and I don't normally get hay fever...

I am told there is something going around (the usual). Julie has nearly but not quite had a cold for a week or two. People in the library say that there is this cold/flu thing. I don't need this...now...no-one ever does...

Just a quick announcement: I haven't bothered to try to fix that broken drive, yet. Maybe I can rescue the data, and maybe I can't.

I went off and bought a new hard drive, installed it, and am using it now. Of course, I have to reinstall all the software, once I have dug out the CDs, and passwords and such. I'll also have to download all the stuff bought through the Web (if I can find all the Order numbers, Product keys, etc). It's a lot of work, but I get a clean new system. And it's another reminder to backup regularly...

My more recent email exchanges are lost...didn't back that stuff up since the end of January, but addresses were mostly synchronised onto my handheld PC. If necessary, you can always contact me again....

I'll be doing a check list, and gathering my stuff together, but I don't think it's a total disaster. Goodnight everyone. Sleep well.

Well, it was nice to hear from Julia - and Hi to all you Dacombes out there!.

[GEEK WARNING - skip this if 'how computers work' is boring to you] I did a bit of hunting on The Web, and found a bunch of people discussing EXACTLY the same symptoms as I had on my PC.

Everyone seems baffled. Is the common factor the Maxtor drive failure? or using Kazaa (OK, I admit that might be stupid) - a rather promiscuous way of mingling with other people's computers...and I didn't stop and scan each file that got downloaded.

Why did my RAM go as well? Is the supposed virus really a hoax, or is there something in the fact that my Norton was waving at me in the unstable period before the crash? [One of those viruses/trojans which get behind the security system and disable it].

I do keep adding software to mess with, and I did recently pull down a beta version of a power tool program, but it was from the [until now] very reliable guy whose Registry Cleaner I have great faith in. So, hmmmmm.

Shall I just go out and buy a new hard drive, and hope all the rest is fine (motherboard, CPU etc). Is this hard drive now just another doorstop?

A quick hi to Jason and Kati - I am about to put some pictures in the post. I hope you enjoy them.

I replace the RAM which was faulty, but the hard drive is corrupted, too. I don't want to do anything major to it, with Julie's photos in it, etc, but equally I don't think their is anything on it so valuable as to go out and spend 'businesslike' sums getting files recovered. I still have a few other things to try. It does seem odd that both the Hard Drive and the RAM should die. Or did one go and pull the other one down? Did I pick up a virus (even though I had Norton's installed). Maybe I should never have offered to get a friend some tracks of a band called No Doubt, and tried Kazaalite. Harrumph. Downloaded a few tracks, but didn't run them or scan them. Paranoia, basically.

I may have to go get a new hard drive and rebuild from scratch, which is always fun, NOT. Still, you end up with a clean system.

When a PC goes down with all data, it really is some kind of metaphor for dying. Backups are the written records you've left, or the shared experiences and anecdotes remembered by friends. All the other, private, knowledge just seems to go......Not feeling too Buddhist today.

And I walked into work to find there is no water in the building so we are not open to the public. Then later I hear water is pouring through the ceiling, splashing over books, but landing straight on one of the new PCs we installed just a week ago. Strange stuff, having just seen Donnie Darko. I didn't do it in my sleep, honest!

Just to let you all know - my PC crashed and burned, so I don't have Home access to it. That means that my website will stop changing for a while (I treat it almost as a blog).

Sorry to HR that the broken link to your site will not get replaced for a few days... I can plug it here...go visit HR Nielsen's site if you are a Star Wars fan.

DOESN'T IT MAKE YOU CRAZY? I have had an unstable and complaining PC for a week or two, but the messages didn't seem to add up. I blamed new bits of software, or people doing things in other profiles. It's always good to blame others :-) Suddenly, when chatting to John C on sunday, the thing went Pfffzzwgghpeyow... and just shut down. Couldn't Restart it. Let it cool down. It didn't even recognise the C Drive, (accused it of being corrupt). when I opened the PC (I've already voided the ewarranty by doing that!) and disconnected the hard drive, the POST test comes up with memory test failed.... So I am guessing that it is the RAM that needs replacing. Did I drive you all away yet? (apart from the sneering geeks, of course, who know what's happened, how I've done it to myself, what I ought to have done (particularly backups), why I shouldn't have tried XP in the first place, etc...

Hey ho.

Still, I loved Donnie Darko, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed Waking Life, recently, too. Only go to the Donnie Darko site if you want to be frustrated and challenged. Even with a cheater page I found I can't get everywhere...[uh oh, I just tried it here, at work in my lunch hour, and it works, so maybe it was all a symptom of my dying PC].

The lucid dream theme of Waking Life, and now the Time Travelling aspect of DD have reminded me that I never did get my friend Mick's book "Another Kinda Time" up online. I can't at the moment, of course!

I will be back to the previous post to add some notes about that book. Meanwhile, I have been thinking about another page for the website. I was going to compile all my 'encounters' with famous people. All the anecdotes that sound like name-dropping. Get them out there and done with.

The thing about show biz is that it is a job, so to have been on a set, or in the same room with someone 'famous' may have just been 'another day at work'. Sometimes you get overawed, of course - we all do. It still amuses me to hear someone famous explain how nervous they were when they met one of their own heroes....and, of course, I am a Z-List celebrity myself these days. Celebrity number 1475096, to be precise. And it's 1st Firey, guys not 1st Fairy!

Nowadays, as we head into play culture and virtual realms (or at least the affluent third of us do) - everyone has the ambition to be famous...for fifteen minutes, at least. It's humiliating what people will do to get on television (look at the Jerry Springer show...) You can publish to the Web...and might get lucky. Some people seem willing to (literally) kill to get famous (infamous). I'd prefer it if we all completely forgot the little idiot who shot John Lennon, for instance.

So, anyway, I have met a lot of people you may consider famous (these things are all relative). Some I have just been near, others I have spoken to, some I have worked with quite closely, and some have even been friends. Of course, you may have 'heard of' someone, but not be a one of their fans, so do not envy me meeting them.

You may say 'Who?'

You may say 'I don't believe it!' [Perhaps I'll plant just one tall tale in there, to see if anyone can spot it....]

I grew up backstage. I didn't even know it was odd to see someone 'live' in the living room, and later the same day in a movie. It was just a job. I enjoyed Gilbert Harding's riposte, when someone asked him if he ever watched television (back in the 50s, when it was considered a lowbrow thing to do) "Television isn't for watching, it's for being on!" Still, even show biz people get excited sometimes....

So I'll be doing my name-drop page. How I borrowed a book from Patrick Stewart (and never returned it); how David Bowie blagged a cigarette from me; rolling joints for John Martyn; bowing to Dame Sybil Thorndyke; stuck in Jim Henson's armpit for hours; Bob Hoskins confesses to me that he is starting to see imaginary rabbits at home; playing table tennis against Frank Oz (he's really good); getting that close to the fabulous Joanna Lumley; Lesley Grantham is a very nice man; 'Auntie' Valerie Singleton round for lessons from my mum; onstage with The Yardbirds; being Tony Allen's roadie; sticking my tongue in Carrie Fisher's ear; acting with John Ratzenburger; drinking with Ric Le Parmentier; and so on.

"The Age of Access" Jeremy Rifkin how the shift from ownership to access is transforming capitalism
more follows

A lovely sunny day yesterday. I sat in the garden reading a book, for the first time this year. Even had my shirt off. Julie was busy (as ever) making hanging baskets for the verandah, for her Mum (yes, it was Mother's Day) and for Ali. The clocks had gone forward, so we were an hour short of sleep...which was more painful this morning, when I dragged myself into work with that jet-lag feeling.....

We watched Seven Days in Tibet last night. Good film. Rather harrowing to remember what the Chinese did in Tibet. Odd parallels really. Harrer leaves Germany in 1939, avoiding the war to climb mountains. Ends up as confidante to the Dalai Lama, only to see these peace-loving people invaded and overwhelmed by the Chinese. And who are the heavily armed, intolerant baddies slaughtering (liberating) innocent people these days - ah yes, that must be us.....

It was Nelson Algren's birthday yesterday.

I reckon his advice is pretty good: "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."

I hope that's an exact quote, it gets paraphrased a lot......

Forgotten who he is (or never knew?) Lifted from The Web: "He made it through the University of Illinois, then drifted throughout the Midwest, hopping freights, working as a door-to-door salesman, playing cards, and betting on horses that didn't win. He eventually settled in Chicago, which he called "The City on the Make," or sometimes, "the lovely lady with the broken nose." "People ask me why I don't write about nature or the suburbs," he once said. "If a writer could write the truth about one Chicago street, that would be a good life's work." He wrote two novels: A Walk on the Wild Side (1956), and The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), about a disillusioned, card-dealing World War II veteran named Frankie Machine. "

And here's a story inspired by those words on William Nowik's website [Danger: artist at work]
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Oh, and I absolutely love The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy - particularly in it's original radio format (so much easier in the imagination) - then the books, then the low-budget tv version (a bit too Dr Who for me....how do you do a mile-high statue of Arthur Dent, and giant birds, etc? The computer graphics were good, though. The film, I guess, will never happen, as the last human has to be an Englishman and no US funding is going to allow that!)

On the radio I was there in my mind. Hey ho, each to their own. Still, the loss of DNA (Douglas Adams) and the zero possibility of any further HHGG (sorry, H2G2) episodes, are greatly lamented...........

I am slowly being drawn into the world of Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans. It's OK. I enjoy it. The only real problem I have is that I am not really a fan myself. I have nothing against it, mind you. I have had phases of enjoying sci-fi books ( but usually the off-centre stuff like Philip K Dick or Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan), and had a longish run of watching Star Trek (back in the 80s), but (to give you a clue) my favourite sci-fi movies would include Dark Star ("didn't he tell us that four years ago?" "No, it was four years ago) and Galaxy Quest (especially Alan Rickman, "by Grabthar's hammer!")

It's not just my lack of respect for the solemn, reverential attitude that most people have to sci-fi - the quasi-religious stuff - I have nothing against that (all religions are quasi-religions to me, none better or worse than another - being a Jedi seems equally valid as me claiming to be a self-elected Taoist) - Nah, it's the idea that god (or goddess) is somehow serious! Looking around all I see is mad exuberant creativity in nature, laced with a fierce sense of humour - creation and destruction all wound up together...so if there IS any purpose behind it it seems more like Dali....

I recommend the Church of the Sub-Genius to those who need to find Bob, and hand over all responsibility, and time and money, to a guru. I recommend Robert Anton Wilson to all those who would prefer to contemplate this great dazzling sideshow without jumping to conclusions. I recommend you don't spend as much time reading over my shoulder, as I waffle away to my online notebook.

“The story runs deeper than you know and you are part of it.”

Julie's birthday last night. A nice, small, gathering of people. I like being in a Gathering.

We both have the day off tomorrow (today, in local time) - right now I am just trying to sober up for a bit of sleep. Enjoying the red wine tonight.

Great fun chatting via Trillian with a couple of friends. Seamlessly migrated me from MSN and Yahoo to a common interface. Hi John, HR and Habidabad.

It was Keili's recommendation - and he was right. Thanks from John. Great interface.

Went to see Ken Campbell last night. What a joy! I have links galore for him...This show was The History of Comedy Part 1 Ventriloquism.

Hey, do you want to see something pretty spooky? Try The Shaman at elusionist. It kinda looks like something you might have seen before, but it's a bit freakier than that when you try it a couple of times.....

It fooled me for a few minutes, but if you know the general principles of magic, and the magic of nines, it won't take you very long. If you can't stand it - contact the designer at Cyberglass, who will tell you how it's done for a small contribution. Don't ask me, I don't like giving other people's secrets away.

I'd wish you all a Happy Equinox, if war hadn't just broken out.

The best we can hope is for some sort of peace as soon as possible.

Have a Safe Life!