John Walker's Electronic House

The BBC, gawd bless ‘er.

I love election night. It’s like the Eurovision Song Contest without all the awful singing.

Last night’s coverage was magnificent. A fifteen hour marathon performance, remaining sharp, belligerent, and most importantly, awake. I can’t stand Dimbleby on Any Questions or Question Time. He only has to have a week off and Nick Clarke step in to reveal what a terrible job he does of it. But as an anchor he excels, keen enough to stay on top but relaxed enough to be daft. And that way, he leaves the analysis to the excellent Andrew Marr, the jumping around like a lunatic to Peter Snow, and the tearing the throats from the weak to Jeremy Paxman.

I love living in the future. This is how the later hours of an election should be watched:

Paxman was especially wonderful throughout. I cannot understand the argument that says he is rude. He is not rude – he is direct, awkward, bold, and not prepared to ‘put up with bullshit’ (as he recently described himself in an interview with News 24). The argument against him relies on the belief that there is an fair playing field at the beginning of the interview. This is patently untrue, and belies a lack of awareness of the purpose of political interviews. They are a game, a competition to see who can get their agenda across. Everyone knows this, but it bears repeating in the light of anti-Paxman sentiment. The politicians have scripts, and they have messages they intend to get across, no matter the line of questioning or their reason for appearing. That’s why you hear, “I’m very glad you asked me that question. Let me answer it by ignoring it, and reading out this piece of paper.” And what you get from nearly all political interviewers is a quiet willingness to put up with this. At the worst end you have people like David Frost, who believes that politicians should be given free space to say whatever they wish, unchallenged. This defies all reason – politicians have that space in press conferences, speeches, and in nearly every part of their lives. The political interview is the one place where this freedom should be withheld, what with it being AN INTERVIEW and all, in which one might suppose the interviewee answer, I don’t know, the questions from the interviewer. Paxman, and few others, are aware of this, and are the only ones who play properly. They fight for ground, knowing that the politician will be steering things where they want it, and so steer back. The only way to do this is a direct, belligerent approach. Nothing else works – that’s demonstrated by every other interviewer. But so long as people fail to recognise the process of manipulation to which they are a victim when politicians are left unfettered, they will always perceive such fairplay as rudeness.

For instance, if you didn’t stay up until 5.30am (what’s wrong with you?), then you might have missed this: Paxman vs Galloway. Paxman’s opening question is clever, if perhaps unhelpful. It sums up the reality of what happened – Galloway, in a foul tactic, picked a seat where he could use the racial tension to his advantage – but without dancing around. Galloway’s response is utterly ludicrous. But then, from Galloway, that should not come as a surprise to anyone. How Paxman didn’t say, “Oh just piss off then, you useless fool.” is beyond me. The studio laughter at “What else haven’t you heard of?” is wonderful, and Paxman’s eventual turning his back is the most appropriate way to end such an encounter. And if you don’t agree, don’t worry – every other interviewer will allow him the interview you’d rather.

I watched the first few hours of the coverage at Alec’s house, where apart from discovering that I am in fact a foul bigot when it comes to the Welsh language speakers (I still feel ashamed), I had a splendid time engaged in corporate booing at all the right people. I wondered before I went, what would I do if someone had invited me to watch the election, but when I got there they had ITV on? I think I’d have to make my excuses and go home.

And worst of all, if anyone had watched *that* channel, they would have missed the fantastic descent into complete madness as the presenters became more tired. I went to bed at about 5.30am, and was awoken by the phone at 10am. And they were still going. Dimbleby was taking the piss out of Nicholas Witchell at every opportunity, even at one point suggesting that Prince Charles was probably watching him from his window, muttering about how he was “that bloody awful man.” Even Paxman seemed surprised. They were all fantastic, and deserve statues built in their honour.

Meanwhile, yesterday while waiting for a train, I heard this exchange between a four year old boy and his mum:

Boy: Mummy? Mummy? Mummy, do you know where that train’s going?!
Mum: No dear.
Boy: Mummy! That train mummy! That train’s going to POO POO AND WEE WEE LAND!

Which was repeated about nineteen times, recognised as it was to be the funniest joke ever, until he was asked to speak like a four year old boy, and not a baby. Which seems a bit unfair to me. But still more coherent and intelligent than George Galloway.

So you’re voting, aren’t you?

Good.

Not voting is a lot like being incredibly stupid.

Here’s some propaganda for you: Every vote for Lib Dem is a vote for, well, Lib Dem.

Obviously if you’re reading this, you’re not even vaguely considering voting Conservative. Because, you know, if you were you’d realise what a vile, racism-endorsing moron you are, and be far too busy expressing your hatred to those with accents and better tans than you. What’s most amazing is that they’re not even trying to hide it this time. They’ve seen a seam of bubbling racism (see also: nationalism) in the country, and are tapping it enthusiastically. Previously they’ve at least had the good grace to pretend like they weren’t just planning on building giant Keep The Darkies Out fences all around the coast. Hague did at least attempt to tone down his previous plans for “detention camps” for asylum seekers.

(Paxman on newsnight, interviewing a Tory spokesman:
Paxman: So, you’re planning on building detention camps? Or are they concentration camps?
Twat: No! Splutter! How dare you?!
Paxman: So the people in them are free to go?
Moron: Yes.
Paxman: Yes?!
Git: Yes. But if they do, they will be arrested.)

And IDS was good enough to remove those awkward connections with the BNP when he was appointed – firing his advisors who had previously been in the BNP for instance. But no longer are such niceties required. Now they’re just campaigning on, “We plan to turn away people seeking asylum from oppression, so you don’t have to.”

Labour will win, obviously. No one doubts it in any party. The real fight this year is for second place. Labour would obviously like to keep the Tories second, as they propose no threat. Hence, “A vote for Lib Dem is a vote for the Conservatives – vote for Labour.” Cunning way to convince you not to promote the Lib Dems to second place, where they could start making some effective difference. The Tories have to maintain the rather quaint impression that they have a chance of winning. A chance that would require the greatest swing in political history. What they’re really fighting for is their lives – they know too that a Lib Dem vote is a vote for Lib Dem. And they can’t afford that. So they present the fight between themselves and Labour, pretending that there isn’t even another choice.

And the Lib Dems keep making their ridiculously quiet whimpers, but with principles of social action and an attitude of thinking for the greater good over the individual. How I wish they would speak louder.

As Warren Ellis said tonight (and indeed so did I to someone in the pub, as has nearly everyone else), if everyone who said they wanted Lib Dem to win were to actually vote for them, they probably would. But since only one out of three people will vote tomorrow (unless you live in Birmingham, where five out of every three people will vote, it seems), this won’t happen. However, there’s a very real possibility that they could see second place. But only if you get off your apathetic backside and add one more to the box.

Forks of lightning as wide as a city.

Living high up on a hill, high up in some flats, is a gift. To see a streak of purple electricity slice across the entire panorama view from our balcony is without peer.

However, as thunderstorms will, its centre was erupting behind an obscuring building. So Jonty and I climbed Bath’s ludicrous hills as high as my lungs were prepared, and then even higher by clambouring on top of someone’s high garden wall. Perched here, quiet conversation was quieted every few seconds by the display.

There wasn’t a moment without light. Each gap between brilliant white/purple flashes was littered with flickers, bursts and sparks from all parts of the sky. And then, for less than a second, daytime. Perfect white light, the clouds black and grey against an ethereal white sky, the ghost of the city revealed below.

People talk about how sheet lightning is much more common that forked lightning. It’s not the case. Most times, people are just looking the wrong way when the bolt appears. Tonight there was sheet lightning. It’s something that deserves a far more respectable name. It isn’t a flash in the sky. It’s a boiling mass of elecricity erupting outwards in a giant circle from within the clouds. Each had its central focus, a swirled purple ball that burst in all directions, the resulting wraith-light a vast, beautiful jellyfish in the sky.

And the rains didn’t come. The thunder was rare. Tonight it was all about the lightning.

So I’ve been a bit busy.

Well, not so much “busy”, as “not busy”.

The important news is: I finally relaxed for a few days, after months of feeling as though my spine might snap from tension. It does mean I now have 5400 words of freelance to write by Wednesday, but that’s still preferable to a severed spinal chord and the accompanying death.

People have been useless in suggesting what to do with the rest of my life. Do better. I shall be more helpful this time.

Firstly, no, I do not want to become a vicar. The pastoral side of the job is something I wouldn’t cope with. I’m lovely, obviously, and am always willing to listen to people and so on. However, I don’t want that to be my job. I’m not convinced that my own brand of pastoral care would be appropriate either – calling someone a “wee-face” when their sister has just been eaten by wolves is not listed as a helpful technique in many counselling guides, despite being something I find to work well. Vicars just can’t do that. And it’s for that reason, the desire to call people a “wee-face”, that I can never take up the vocation. Also there’s the stupid hours, the archaic church rules, the having to take funerals and weddings, and the further three years of university.

I also want a break from youth work. I’ve been doing it for six years, and while that’s hardly a lifetime, I would like to pause before carrying on. Ideally, oh so ideally, I’d like to find a church I could bear to attend, and be a volunteer helper with their youth groups. A spare time thing, rather than a job. Then I could do the bit I’m interested in – the face to face work – and not all the bloody faffing around that has driven me to distraction of late.

The other thought I have is the youth coffee shop plan. Bath has nothing for teenagers to do. Much like every town or city in the country, after school or in the evenings a teenager can either a) go to the pub, or b) go to the pub. Both of which they’re not really meant to do. And if you ask, not what they really want to do every single day. So the idea is, as so many other towns have, to open a coffee shop aimed at young people in Bath. These are generally successful ventures, and it’s something I’m interested in doing. However, I’m not interested in accounts, management, or funding applications. What I need is to find some sort of freakish weirdo who is interested in such tedious drivel, and partner up. Ideally this person will be in their mid 20s, female, single, and attracted to people who look and act a lot like me. So that’s a longer-term goal, maybe something for next year.

But meanwhile, what to do? I still have the treasures of the Knights Templar to discover, after that was delayed last year due to inefficiency. But what else?

Also, Brian has finally been updated after a naughty week off.

Oh dear me, it’s been a while.

The dissertation was over by last Thursday, handed in that afternoon. To answer the question everyone asks, nope, I’ve no idea if I’m happy with it. I know that I wish I’d made some points differently, having thought of some things I really should had said on Monday. I was explaining the logic of the argument to someone, and in doing so said something so utterly perfect (forgotten since) that it would have ensured mathematics would have to increase upper limits on percents in order to mark it fairly. As it stands, I cannot fathom whether it will receive marks in the low 50s, or creep toward the 70s. I can argue it either way in my head. We shall see.

However, handing it in did not secure a few days of sheer relaxation. Thursday night was spent at Sian’s while she finished, which was at about 4am. Then Friday handing hers in and some entertaining shopping in Bristol. And then the weekend was spent in Wales with some of the older teenagers I’ve worked with for the last three years. It was a splendid time, relaxing in Wales, sort of youth work but not quite, and has set my mind thinking about all manner of things about how youth work works, and how youth workers create pretend versions of themselves to present to youth groups, and so on. But that’s all but small fry compared to the mind-thinking that dominates…

I’ve realised (well, I’ve just realised that I’m writing one of those awful diary-entry blog posts, as if anyone cares about the minute details of my busy week, but phew, here comes a valid subject for writing about…) that I’ve never made a plan for my life.

It’s quite a huge realisation, and moreso when I wonder at how I’ve not noticed this before. Warning: here comes the complete life history of John: After failing my A Levels once (NNE, since you wondered. There are two groups of people in the world: those who got an N, and those who didn’t know you could get Ns. They’re like a U, but Not quite), and then doing poorly in the retakes (EED, nosy), I applied for a Radio Film and TV Studies degree on something that I can only think of as a whim. The course was already full, and I had to talk my way onto it in a very strange phonecall. That was a pretty dreadful degree (although the first year was alright) and halfway through the second year I did some work experience at Talk Radio (as it was called then, before evil Kelvin Mackensi demolished it completely). Due to a technical hitch that night I ended up being useful, and I was offered a place on the show’s team. “Poor John” they called me, because I wasn’t paid. So that meant leaving uni, and moving back in with parents. Talk Radio stuff came to an end (not before they paid me for some stuff) after a few months, and at around that time I somehow ended up pitching work to PC Gamer. I forget how that happened now. And at the same time my friend Steve asked if I would help him with the youth groups at the church he vicared for. Three years later and I find myself applying for the youth work degree, just as something to do next rather than as part of some complex plan, and the magazine work kept going. Three years later again, and I’m finally here, now. And I’ve no idea what to do next.

Part of me seems to assume that something will come up. It always has before. But that’s madness – I’ve just been incredibly fortunate so far. To be fair to me, I’ve done a decent job of the stuff I’ve done, but none of it ever happened on purpose.

As of July, I’ve got what alternately presents itself as either a hopeless void of nothingness, or all the potential in the world. Key issue: I’ll need to make enough money to pay rent/bills. But how? Do I try to do more writing? Do I get another youth work job? Find more education? Or something else. If anyone knows, please tell me.

MITCH BENN, as I see your name is still to be spelt, if you’re still out there please come back and argue with me on my blog some more.

You appear to be on Radio 4 again, which is an event I can’t say I whole-heartedly agree with.

What have you done to Robin Ince? He used to be funny. Is your horrible not-funniness catching? I wonder if you should perhaps be put in quarantine, as Radio 4 isn’t exactly overwhelmed by humourous people at the moment.

I was somewhat startled to discover there were new depths to which you were capable of sinking in your unique blend of comedy and music. Your hideously ignorant opinions on “world music” managed at once to be insultingly stupid and enormously racist. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not convinced that all music from the funny foreign countries sounds like a man playing a penny whistle and adopting a Carry On generic foreign accent.

I was just wondering, could you perhaps do some sort of research before you write your programmes? And just before that, saw off your hands to prevent the rather foolish following moment when you write your programmes.

Your statement, “Everything sounds like Coldplay now” is somewhat discredited by your sounding absolutely nothing like Coldplay. Somehow you manage to be even worse than them.

On a well-earned break from my dissertation. So not entirely sure why I’m sat at my computer, other than to add more text to the top of this blog so that hideous photo of me moves further down.

I receive some assurance from Housemate Hicks that it doesn’t look a great deal like me. However, I think the camera may be developing psychic powers, as the picture does look exactly how I feel.

I’ve written 8000 words in the last two days. But it’s not lovely creative writing like,

“Once upon a time there was a happy digger called Jake. Jake liked to dig holes in things, like huge sandpits, the sides of hospitals or people’s children. One day Jake was struck by lightning, and he died.”

It’s horrible, academic writing like this:

“In fact, Thomspon goes on to argue that it is a contradiction in terms to suggest that the presence of an author’s ideology determines the reader’s ability to interpret the text in an autonomous fashion (Thomspon 2004, p.146). If the text is capable of deciding a reader’s autonomy, then the reader surely has no autonomy at all! – they are at the liberty of the nature of the text. To imply that an ideology within a text necessarily imposes any control over the reader’s interpretation is to obfuscate, or perhaps even completely dismiss, any notion of a constructionist vocabulary. If a constructionist approach to communication is accepted, then it must be that the manner in which we interpret those meanings held entirely in the language is dependent upon our experiences, and the understandings we have learned and associated with those symbols. It is by these means that one person may read one meaning into a story, and another something quite separate, without either being ‘wrong’, nor indeed the text implying one or the other. The author’s intent is unknown, and even if stated, not relevant to the interpretation of either reader.”

And that appears to be quite significantly more draining to generate. Especially if it’s to make any sense… Um.

(Just think of the Google hits I’ll get for that paragraph)

Possibly the most disturbing development (even more disturbing than the turgid prose above) is the new-found insanity I have developed. I have taken to typing a word that rhymes with the word I intend to write, and then to go on to write the intended word anyway. Earlier I managed to write “book hook” in the middle of a sentence.

Proof reading my dissertation shall be a treat!

New Brian on Brian’s Guide.

Yesterday I awoke to find myself hideously deformed.

Look closely at my right eye. It’s more than just a bit out of shape because of an evil, buried, underground spot. It’s a metaphor for my existence.

You see, if you look closely, using my magic zoom-in-o-camera below, you’ll see there’s more going on than you dared to imagine.

Spots are so often associated with teenagers, despite probably most people (based on the statistics I have made up) still getting them throughout their twenties, and far more people than you think (because you are a horrid person whose spots cleared up on your 17th birthday, and your unblemished epidermis compels artists to stop you in the street because they “just have to paint you right now.”) get them throughout their lives. Despite that, DESPITE THAT, people still think they’re a teenage stigma, and so when I appear in the pub tonight, hideously rendered in red lumps (it’s become worse since that photo was taken. WORSE. Damn you and your clear face), people will think me trapped by youth.

But look again, look to the left side of the picture. (Which reminds me, it’s now time for this utter rubbish of saying “left hand side” to stop. “Left side” says everything. What on earth does the word “hand” have to do with any of it? Really, is everyone so painfully moronic that the only way they can comprehend ‘left’ and ‘right’ is to look down their arms, try to remember which hand they write with, and then deduce which direction to look in based on this? “It’s on the left hand side of the screen.” NO IT ISN’T. It’s on the LEFT SIDE of the screen. Your hand is not a part of the screen. If you turn around, the object does not move to the other side of the monitor. So just stop it right now, for goodness sakes). Because there, circled and labelled, is the sheer ignomy of the beginnings of a wobbly old-lady thing.

It’s in its larval stage currently, but you can see where it’s going. Big, vile, gelatinous evil, that will scare small children and attract blackbirds thinking they’ve spotted a hiding tasty worm.

So there on one side is the evil spot of the youth, and on the other, the hideous growth of the elderly. My metaphor. 27, trapped between youth and… um, oldness. Poor me. Poor, POOR ME.

New Brian uploaded this evening.

It’s meant to be updated Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but I want to keep it moving while it’s new. If people bookmark it and check back, then I’ll be well away.

I’m not sure what I’ll be away with. I think it’s attention I’m seeking. I’ve still not got my head around it.

Dissertation due in 9 days. Please send arrows and bullets.