John Walker's Electronic House

Well what a splendid time.

The day at 826 went very well, with an enormous amount of information given, and a lot of helpful people met. Ideas run apace, and I’m going to go quiet about them in public for a bit as I try to decide the right direction. As for the Pirate Store itself, I have lots of photos and will post about that when I get back.

Saturday was completely mine to do with as I wished. So I wished to do a quick bit of shopping (STILL BUY NOW! EVERYTHING STILL HALF OFF!) and then went to watch the San Francisco Giants play the Cardinals. Again the crazy cheap dollar made this a lot of fun, letting me get a fantastic seat for an amazingly reasonable price. I was sat 11 rows back from 1st base, and surrounded by some great people.

Because baseball fans aren’t barbarians, there’s no division of fans, so Cardinal fans were mixed in with the dominating Giants crowd, and were defiantly loud. In the end they were proved justified in their confidence. Despite going 5-0 up in the bottom of the 6th, the Giants managed to pee the game away through some abysmal pitching, This was doubly a shame, as opening pitcher Cain not only was hitless into the 7th, but also scored his career third home run. It was a doubly-fun underdog game with brand new player, John Bowker, getting a hit in his first Major League at bat, and then scoring a homer the next time he was up. How wonderful to get a standing ovation from such a massive crowd on your first day in the big leagues. It all got ugly as the Cards went 7-5 up, and then the Giants amazingly pulled it back to 7-7 in the bottom of the 9th. Some awful pitching let St. Louis go 8-7 up in the 10th, and the Giants couldn’t pull it back leaving two men stranded.

There – literally no one cares about that, but I told you anyway.

Also nice was chatting with the people around me, especially the superbly sarcastic and embittered Giants fan sat next to me, her mood collapsing along with the bullpen.

Then last night I went into full tourist mode and went to good-old Pier 39, said hello to the sea lions, and ate a proper, traditional American meal of burger and fries. Today, my plan is to visit the SF MOMA, but the reality will probably be sitting in coffee shops, fearful of getting to the airport on time.

Arriving into San Francisco’s beautiful sunny afternoon was an excellent shock to the brain. First of all, it should have been the evening, but it was apparently before 2pm. Secondly, I left an England covered in frost, and I think some snow, and then by the afternoon it was a glorious summer. Splendid.

San Francisco is a peculiarity. It doesn’t fit in California at all, and yet would be completely inappropriate up near Seattle, or over on the East coast. It bears the effects of having the sun shine on it so much of the year, but without this having boiled the place’s brains.

The architecture is the most immediately odd thing. Leaving the airport on the train, and winding north toward the city itself, the houses pour down the hillsides, beginning with luxury mansions, and ending in what look like shanty-towns, if only it weren’t for the property prices. The buildings are strikingly unlike typical suburban America, their flat, open roofs looking like they should more likely appear in a Middle Eastern town. But a Middle Eastern town coloured in by a My Little Pony-enthused eight-year-old with a box of pastel crayons.

It’s hard to tell how much San Francisco is caught up in its own legend of being a cultural capital – how much is calculatedly commercial reinvention of previously poor areas, and how much is the result of opium-addled writers planting themselves and being fruitful. But here you feel like any of the considerable numbers of homeless people lining the streets could break into beat poetry at any moment. Starbucks look like dirty stains in streets filled with independent obscurities, and every street announces an exhibition of some nature is waiting for you.

And there are trams.

Potential polarising sides for the next world war:

1. Right Handers Vs. Left Handers
2. Vegetarians Vs. Omnivores
3. Scrunchers Vs. Folders

Results:

1. Oddly, the Lefties. You’d think sheer force of numbers would win it for the North Paws, but all those so-called products for left-handed people? Scissors, corkscrews, anti-tank missiles? All secret war weapons in disguise. They’re plotting, people.

2. More obvious this time, as the Omnivores win. Not only because the Veggies will all start going pale and begging for a vitamen pill about ten minutes in, but because the right-minded Omnis will bite them with their canines designed for tearing flesh.

3. I think this one’s the most likely. It’s that bubbling undercurrent of hatred that lies beneath every society, every culture, every race, sex, age, class. Those who scrunch the toilet paper. Those who fold the toilet paper. The hate is in place. The difference insummountable. The day will come.

My life, if plotted on a graph, would reveal a series of whims. It would indeed be an esoteric graph, capable of displaying such ethereal concepts. Overall, it’s a very clever graph. But that’s not the point. The point is the whims it so clearly reveals.

I’ve whimmed my way through a bunch of ideas, peculiar and different, eventually settling on two key whims: journalism and youth work. I’ve been astonishingly fortunate to have both these tumbled-into worlds work out for me, albeit with youth work on the back-burner (ie. ignored) for the last two or three years.

Point is, when I get a new idea, history says I tend to go ahead with it, and see where I end up. I was tempted to write, “throw myself at it,” there, but that would be a terrible lie. It’s more a lackadaisical stumbling, sourced partly in laziness and partly in arrogance. Is arrogance the right word? Maybe it’s naive confidence. A sort of peculiar assumption that I’ll be able to make something of it, probably. (I’m intrigued by the sense of internal conflict this statement creates, confusing me with an inherent lack of self-esteem somehow combined with an inherent assumption that I’ll be good at something. Boy, blogs really are for the wanky, aren’t they?)

There is a reason for this. I think I’m on the way to my next stumble. I’ve been thinking about this 826 thing, talking about it, and finding myself crying whenever I try to explain it. (That last part: very weird. Also awkward when you’re in a coffee shop, trying to have a conversation). So I figured, using my keen, analytical mind, that I should probably look deeper into it all. I emailed the 826 people to ask if there were any information packs, material, etc, that could help me in giving the matter more thought. They replied telling me that the project’s founders, Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari, are doing a one-day seminar in San Francisco this April.

So, well, I’m going. After approximately half an hour’s thought. This is thanks in part due to the… let’s go with “providence” for now… of being told that I’m owed a bunch of money by Future that I should have been paid in December, and thanks (such big thanks) to my parents being willing to help fund my whimming, even at the age of 30. Flights are booked, hotel is awaiting confirmation, and I’ll be going to SF for three nights (any shorter and the cost of the flights goes from £356 to £1456 – the extra day seemed sensible at that point), to meet the creators of the project I’m increasingly convinced could work in Bath.

I love life in whim form. I mean love. I’m so ludicrously blessed to get away with it, and while it’s meant I’ve never had any financial security, nor perhaps respect from people who wear ties, it means I reflect on the last ten years and don’t feel any significant regrets.

So John, what’s up with you?

How kind of you to ask. I’ll tell you.

Life’s changed a bit of late. And I get a strong feeling it’s going to keep changing really rather a lot. My brain’s been in a bit of a sleepy rut for a couple of years, and appears to be waking up again. Which proves a positive experience.

A rather huge part of this is involving myself in a church for the first time in a long time. An unpleasant time at the church I worked for until nearly three years ago left me pretty bitter, and pretty unforgiving. This in turn led to a peculiar hardening of my faith, which petrified into a primarily intellectual, and fairly redundant rock. With this, my passion faded: passion for almost everything. I’ve always been, and for the foreseeable future will always be, a hefty ranter. But what made such exercised moments worthwhile was the passion behind them, rather than the mindless anger that replaced it. Angry rocks aren’t very good at much. I disappeared up inside my own anxiety, and haven’t been the most enthusiastic friend to many.

I’ve not been completely shit. I’m a decent enough person. But I think even friends who would rather I minced myself headfirst than was involved in Christianity will agree I’ve faded. I guess I’ve learned two aspects of myself: What matters when it’s gone, and what I suck at when I try to do it on my own. So what’s this, this overtly personal post on a public blog? It’s a form of confession. It’s a declaration of intent. It’s a deeply embarrassing thing to write to someone who Googled my name after disagreeing with a review in PC Gamer.

Ok, so two topics.

1) Church

Give me a millennia, and I’ll give you a lecture on everything that’s wrong with church. But tell me to shut up and stop being such a moron and I might listen for long enough to remember everything that’s right about it. However, one lament that I’ve always had, and is probably even valid, would be my frustration at the mediocrity of the teaching. I wish to be challenged, to be charged to think. Not reassured and patronised. I have been phenomenally fortunate and found a church (thanks entirely to Jo) where the teaching is just fantastic. Theological, intelligent, difficult, and set in reality. This is doubled by the remarkably warm and welcoming nature of the place. There ARE decent churches out there. This is my message to the world.

2) The Future

So, I have this first class honours degree. It’s in Youth And Community Work & Applied Theology. I really haven’t done anything with it. I haven’t really known what to do with it. I still don’t know. But I’ve always had one passion, one idea I know with a certainty is a good one, and one I really should get on with. A phenomenon of this country is that we offer nothing for teenagers to do after school. I mean nothing. The immediate face of this problem are the media and parliament’s favourite complaint: “youths”. Hanging around outside our Spars, scaring the elderly with their hoods. But these are the groups that are addressed, and joyously so. Projects, as few and under-funded as they are, exist. People are noticing. But there’s a group that aren’t noticed. The kids who aren’t upsetting the neighbours or nicking the KitKats. To have a heart for these young people is remarkably unapproved of. They’re rich and comfortable and fine! Some are. But they’re also bored out of their brains, living in a cycle of school, homework and school again. These teenagers have powerful minds that we utterly ignore. Others aren’t, and they’re struggling, and we won’t step in to support them until they’ve cross the dangerous lines. I have a passion for these people – PEOPLE – who deserve attention.

Something I’ve always wanted to create is an after-school space for young people to hang out in, with one key phrase to define its tone: “A place where young people feel safe enough to do their homework.” It’s an odd phrase, but for me it’s always defined what I’m after. So every time I read or see anything about Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia project – a San Fransisco based after-school programme for local high school kids where they can do their homework with one-to-one supervision – it calls to me like a beacon. He’s figured it out. He’s created that space.

I think the same is possible here.

Below is a video of a lecture Eggers gave to the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference after he won the TED Prize. It explains 826 from inception to its current state as a project that’s appearing all over the States, and is associated with many similar enterprises. (I’ve been to the one in Chicago, The Boring Store, and took many photographs).

In reply, Hillary Clinton donned blackface and hid her clan cloak.

Woo woo! New Ace Attorney game!

Review on EG this morning. I shall quote the appropriate:

There are some reading this who want to know nothing about Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the fourth game in the AA series and the first to see Phoenix Wright’s name removed from the box. But they want to know whether to buy it or not. To them, the answer is: yes. But, well, just don’t expect all your wishes to come true. Read no more.

Also, I forgot to link to this review of Harvey Birdman last week.

It’s always fun when decent internet memes first start to spread. It’s much more fun when those making them are professionals with a budget. Although, as ever, Kevin Smith manages to disguise his budget beneath a veneer of laziness. Which is perfect. Stealing the X is fucking Y idea, he cleverly promotes his next movie, Zack And Miri Make A Porno. Thanks to Steph for the link.

Be warned, this is full of naughtiness. Your mum would be cross if she heard it:

If you didn’t see the video from the Jimmy Kimmel Show where his girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, confesses in song that she’s been fucking Matt Damon, then you’re rubbish at the internet.

It’s here:

Rumours of a revenge video have been around for ages. It’s finally aired. And yes, Jimmy Kimmel is fucking Ben Affleck:

The list of celebrities in there is just insane. You’d normally need to be saving the world to get that much of Hollywood in one place, rather than making a dumb video for a pretend fight on a chat show. But this is by far the preferable result.

Here’s a quite remarkable story. Quackometer is a site that covers bad science – the dubious or downright nonsensical claims made by those professing “alternative medicine”. It’s been doing a splendid job for the last couple of years. Recently it posted a story about “Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi MD MPH FRIPH FRCAM FACAM MICR”, covering his various documented moments of madness, to which the good doctor replied with a mystifying lawsuit.

Quackometer’s pathetic hosts, Netcetera (“passionate about hosting”), responded to the empty threat by pulling the entire site offline, permanently. A mealy-mouthed excuse about violating terms and some such rubbish is all they’ve given as explanation, because of course their only reason was cowardly stupidity, and a complete lack of interest in protecting the rights of freedom of information.

Professor Obi, as he likes to call himself, was fired from South Tyneside General Hospital for serious professional misconduct, and had his license to practise medicine in the UK revoked. A trustworthy man to be sure.

He now claims to be the boss of the “Royal College of Alternative Medicine”, which is a near-fictional entity, not existing beyond a website, and so many of those letters after his name are of dubious origin, while many others are cheaply bought titles from various worldwide websites. Delightfully, he is alleged to have conned an old lady out of her life savings since being fired for allegedly failing to treat a heart attack patient, innappropriate treatment of psychiatric patients, and abusive behaviour toward colleagues. He’s all-round the sort of guy to which you’d want an ISP to immediately capitulate, yes indeed.

Gimpy’s Blog provides an excellent summary of the recent closure of the site (from which much of the above has been cribbed), and a previous post details where you can find copies of the articles removed from Quackometer, for instance here.

Fortunately, the good people at Positive Internet, who host this blog, as well as Rock, Paper, Shotgun, have stepped in to provide hosting for Quackometer, which should be online again shortly. Positive have a history of stepping in to offer hosting for sites that have been shut down either by cowardly ISPs, or for sites that deserve support but cannot afford excessive hosting charges. The wonderful Bad Science site is a previous rescue of theirs.

“Professor” Obi has duly threatened Positive in his latest blog post.

His blog is well worth a read. It’s very difficult to believe it’s not a spoof, so hilarious is its composition. For Obi, any who disagree with him, or mention his tawdry past, are automatically racists. For Obi, “victory” means saying, “I’m going to sue you!” to anyone who observes his history. For Obi, the only logical course of action is to describe himself as “Leader of the Opposition against the General Medical Council” – a clearly evil body as they dared to fire him for repeated counts of serious misconduct.

Phrases like, “Speaking in Belfast , at the end of a Private Inspection Tour of an Alternative Medicine Facility , the Eminent Black British Human Rights Crusader delightfully said…” are just so fun. So, after he walked around someone’s back room where they wave crystals, the disgraced former doctor said to the other guy in the room…

Seriously, have a read. If it’s a spoof, then I’ve been fooled. But the writing style matches that of his own nutcase website, implying something this ridiculous might actually be real.