Pete Ashton’s Blog

This evening John Peel played a song by Bal Sagoth entitled “Battle Magic” which cheered me up no end (I think I’m coming down with the flu that has spread around my shop of late). I’m not normally a death metal fan, but “The Bal” combine the growling undertones of yer common or garden death metal singer with synth-prog opera and a total D&D-style fantasia reminiscent of the excessive parts of John Boorman’s Excalibur. I must have more of their music.

This amuses me:

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against Napster in our effort
to keep the major record labels from shutting us down. Get the low-down on
the ruling and check out a video clip of Shawn Fanning and Hank Barry’s
comments on our legal update page.
http://www.napster.com/legalupdate/

The 9th Circuit Court ruling does not mean the lawsuit is over. We still
have a lot of work to do, and we need your valuable help. Find out how you
can pitch in.
http://www.napster.com/speakout/

Would you like to join an exciting company where your work will have
far-reaching impact? If so, Napster is hiring.
http://www.napster.com/company/jobs.html

Hmm, what inviting job prospects!

Excellent 404 Not Found (from lukelog). Where there are mistakes, we shall make art.

Okay, no more internet.

MUST…..PACK….STUFF!

I’ve removed the Blogvoices comments system because it was slowing down the loading of the page too much. I still welcome comments though!

This time last year I was reading No Logo by Naomi Klein. I’m currently reading Coercion by Douglas Rushkoff, whose monthly column in the Guardian’s Online section comes recommended. It’s a very good book indeed. I mention this because I’ve found an interview with him which outlines exactly where he’s coming from - someone who understands the internet properly but is also acutely aware of the real world as well.

The most dangerous thing about a “Just Do It “society is that it compels us to act on reflex - not intention. We are led to believe we are acting from the gut. That we are somehow connecting with our emotions and bypassing our neuroses. But this isn’t true at all. We are merely moving impulsively. It’s not from the gut. And the more impulsively we act, the more easily we can be led where we might not truly want to go. People who act automatically are the easiest to control - by marketers, by anyone. There’s less intention and thus less life involvement.

Funny. I figured that what with moving house I’d be spending a lot less time online, but it’s turning out to be a very useful therapeutic tool.

Grrrr

Moving house. Phone BT to switch line. Not using a touch tone phone so have to hold through options. Advert is played JUST PRIOR to being connected. Get through. Cannot find new address. Have to get A-Z to help. Tries to sell me payment package. Say not interested. Starts on the spiel. Interrupt and say not interested. “I only have 20 minutes to phone 5 utilities and just want you to change the account to a new line. I’m not interested.” Points out I will save ONE POUND a month be switching. Point out this is half a pint of beer and not worth worrying about, so please just switch the account. Discover I have to phone a separate number to switch “surftime” (unmetered, flat rate internet access) to the new number. Start whole thing over again. Get through to BT internet people who give me a new number. Dial that and wait for many minutes. Give up.

Get home. Check BT web site. Find blurb about internet access. Phone number on screen. Am informed that all I have to do it dial 150 on Saturday and it’ll be sorted out there and then.

I accept that I fit into the marketing psychological profile of “new simpleton”. I am happy to pay more for the easy life. I am not interested in saving money but paying for it by having to give a damn about how my phone connection works. I don’t want to have to think about this kind of thing. Not interested. Go away.

So why isn’t there a phone number staffed by a pleasent middle aged person who will, in two easy steps, sort out my phone line. I don’t want talktime or phonewankbudgetbollocks. I want to be able to pick up the phone and make a call or switch on the computer and access the net WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT.

When BT leave me alone to make calls without thinking about it I think BT are a fairly good company. When they starty trying to sell me stuff a few days before I move house when I’m tired and pretty busy, I start to think they’re evil fuckers from hell here to make my life a misery. Not good PR.

Give me the “new simpletons” access line please.

Dad writes:

You’re lucky you live in London. I get moew calls from would be telephone providers than from all my friends! Standard response during start up of the “big sell”:

“Hello. . . . Hello. . . . . . Is there anybody there. Must be something wrong with the phone. Hello. . . . .” click

Never fails!

Cool thing from the cool usscatastrophe links page:

something: we can’t read japanese so we dont know what it is but it is cool.

And it is, rather.

This is hopeless
We find this is becoming gay
It was always fun

I’ve added a “comments” fuction from BlogVoices to this weblog. This is a trial to see if it’s worth putting on the main BugPowder page where such things are needed. In time this will all be done in house (and I know I always say that but trust me, it’s getting closer!) but this’ll might do for the interim.

Please have a play with it and see what you think. If it’s a go-er, I’ll put it on the main page next week (once we’ve moved - 35 boxes of paper-related stuff now…).

We’re moving in less than seven days. All paper is now in boxes. Thirty of them. Seven boxes of BugPowder stock. Seventeen boxes of books and comics. Don’t ask me what’s in the other six. Now for the rest of our stuff…

What all this means, of course, is that I’m going to sleep computer-wise. Don’t expect prompt replies to emails or long weblog posts. To be honest the break will do me some good I feel!

All your base are belong to us

Lego Porn.

This in particular is one of the more disturbing things I’ve seen on the web for a while.

(As you can tell, I’m playing around with Google’s newly aquired deja archives)

This was written by Andy Diggle, editor of 2000AD, on the 2000AD newsgroup.

You want my advice? Get a job at your local Water$tones. The staff are usually
smart, literate and weird, you can nick unlimited quantities of free books, and
it’s a great way to meet chicks!

A few months previous to this posting he interviewed me for the job of assistant editor. Smart, literate (kinda) and weird I can deal with, and I did meet Kate that way, but I never nick books and if I did would never mention it in an interview!

From uk.people.bdsm (don’t ask):

Although the bookshop is now one of the recognised places for partner
finding, I think someone’s book choice, though important and
interesting to note, shouldn’t be cause for undue attention.

An explaination of the Hatt Baby phenomenon on Metafilter (along with a full translation).

Aparently, and bear in mind this is really odd and I’m a bit tired, this is a well known comedic hoax from Sweden. There are Arabic pop songs which sound like the Swedish language, albeit complete gobbledygook. Certain Swedish wags take these songs and make appaling animations along with captions in Swedish. So the guy isn’t actually singing “One can take drugs and end up on TV” but to Swedish ears it sounds like he is. For a more complete but not necessarily more sensical explaination, check Metafilter.

Here’s another one. Ansiktsburk (here’s the animation on it’s own. Somehow the “full screen” effect makes it all the more disturbing).

The question is, does this make Sweden a better or worse place?

New p@bp design. Very egotistical I know, but what the hell.

But…

It seems Explorer wants to dump my Favourites every time I reboot. Bugger. Interesting how I’ve become accustomed to the phrase “favourites”. When I switched from Netscape to Microsoft I was really put out by not having “bookmarks” any more, but at the end of the day they’re just semantic tags. This system of branding programs via words for fuctions is really easy to implement (witness “blogging”) but doubly easy to disregard.

I was going to spend tonight re-designing bits of the site, but Explorer has decided to lose my (and Kate’s) Favourites, so I’ll be rebuilding them. Didn’t realise how much I depended on the buggers until now. The good side (and there’s always a good side - it’s one of those weekends) is it was getting out of hand anyway and needed a good tidy up. Thankfully I have an extensive weblog or two so most of the interesting stuff I’ve found is on here. Unforseen bonus!

Kate, using an on-line Swedish dictionary, has started translating the seminal, soon to be meme-of-the-week, Hatt Baby song. A full lyric sheet will follow in time, but here’s a selected summary of lines:

Win kinky funny.

Hat year your, hat year your

Cool bloke with soft drink at hand

The hat liver say funny

One can take drugs and end up on TV (pictured)

More to follow!

Hatt-baby, hatt-baby

from lukelog

Community find of the month - the Haruki Murakami Forum, dedicated to my current fave author. And look who’s a regular? My old mate Stuart!

Mental state: Positive and slightly agitated, but in a good way as in when you stir a cup of something it becomes agitated. Unfortunately this means I’m awake at 12.30am having been up since 6.30am. Feel this need to “do stuff”. Not sure what stuff is. Settling for descrbing my mental state to the internet audience.

Tube strike notes:

Left the house at 7.30am, got to work at 10.13am. Two buses and a half hour walk from Kings Cross to St Pauls. Saw people trying to figure out how a bus stop works. Confused reading of timetables, etc. Huge queues at one stop so walked 100 yards to the previous stop which was empty. Overheared loads of movile conversations along the lines of “this is disgusting” and “are they going to make us go through all this again tonight?”. Loads of school kids who, it occurs to me, were born after the miners strike. Actually, some of them were born under the Major government.

Saw St Paul’s Cathedral it all it’s glory. An amazing sight. The office blocks on one side have been demolished and before they build something equally bad there’s a large patch of empty land. From Newgate Street you can see the length of St Pauls as if it were on the other side of a river. It’s like it was when it was built - presiding over the City. Magnificent. Do check it out if you can.

Discovered we’d sold out of Mini A-Z maps by 10.00am.

First person asked me how to get to the West End at 11.00am and I told him to take a tube. He informed me the Tubes weren’t working. Oh yeah.

Spent the day teaching Londoners that it’s only two miles from the City to the West End.

Surprisingly busy lunch hour. Rather annoying all told.

Gets close to 6.30 when the shops shuts. Bank station is closed. There are hundred of people walking up and down Cheapside but not going anywhere. Although they give the impression of going somewhere. I decide to go for a pint and wait it out.

Walking back from the pub I pass a bus stop. The bus stops 10 feet ahead to let people off but not on. People swarm towards it and try and push in through the exit doors as people are trying to get off. Chaos and stupidity. Decide to stay in the shop and wait it out some more.

Leave at 8.30pm. Caught a bus and got to Archway station. Re-discovered the joy of reading on buses. Something about the rhythm of them. Decide to get the bus to work when we more next month.

At Archway the trains are running again. Get Tube home.

Lessons learned? The Underground network is essential to London working. It takes an event like today to remind people of this, although they probably won’t understand what it’s about. It is possible to walk around London and the bus service isn’t actually that bad once you figure it out. If all private cars were banned from zone one of London the city would be a better place. People should fucking chill out. If you can’t get on a bus, go to the pub. Or start walking. It won’t kill you.

Kate stayed at home today. It would have taken her five buses to get to Ealing.

web.hamline.edu/~mhotujec/text/wierd_news

Gordon and Jasmine Gelsbrecht opened a restaurant in a suburb of Winnipeg,
Manitoba, called “The Outhouse,” built on the theme of toilets. Toilet
bowls were placed among the tables, and a toilet seat logo appeared on the
menus. Health inspectors then forced the restaurant to suspend operation
because it lacked adequate rest rooms.

And about another thousand gems.

i said a hip hop the hippie the hippie
to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop
the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie
to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat

If you forget for one minute that you’re living in the internet age, this is pretty surreal:

From The Register

Lobbyists for the European Internet industry believe their campaign for a ban on spam is gaining momentum.

At a public meeting yesterday to discuss the revised Telecommunications Data Protection Directive, attended by all sides of the unsolicited commercial email debate, there was an increased consensus about the need to do something about spam.

More and more organisations, including industry bodies and consumer groups, are beginning to understand the need to control spam.

This in marked contrast to a year ago when representatives of EuroISPA - the European body that lobbies on behalf of service providers - attended such meetings but were alone in their condemnation of spam.

While an outright ban on spam is plainly unworkable, there is growing support for an “opt-in” stance.

You can imagine the headline of the Daily Mail when they hear about this. “Euro Diktats Ban Hallowed Ham/Pork Derived Foodstuffs!” “Sir Hufton Tuffton of the bad shirt and braces wearing indignant minority with red faces and curly hair says “It’s Political Correctness gone mad!”

Salmon Coat

This week I’ve mostly been working the early shift so I hadn’t really seen him but I’d been hearing about Salmon Coat for the last few days. About an hour and a half before the shop closes he goes into the travel section, which is semi-obscured from the rest of the shop, puts down his big bag and acts suspiciously. He doesn’t leave until the shop closes.

Tonight I was locking up with one other person (we do skeleton shifts on Friday nights so not everyone has to work it all the time). As it’s the end of a promotional month I was in the process of changing all the tables and windows. Moanrant: Why does Marketing think it’s a good idea to drastically change every promotion at the start of the month? Surely some overlap between promotions would give the stores a more fluid continuity? And then the shops wouldn’t be in a total mess for two days while they shift hundreds of piles of books around.

And there he was. He comes across as a well spoken but slightly disheveled chap, very polite but shy, with the desire to help. He has put books on the shelves (there are currently quite a few piles of books on the floor in that area) and makes “Hmm”-type comments when a bookseller is talking to a customer near him. When you ask him if he’s alright he gives you the brush-off but IN NO WAY is he threatening or deranged or dangerous. He’s just really odd and mildly disturbing.

And he doesn’t seem to realise that he looks really suspicious. He acts like he’s about to fill his bag with books and make a run for it, but he does so in such a blatant manner (coupled with him coming back day after day) that he cannot be so stupid as to be doing something we could nick him for.

But he’s been making the women in the shop nervous. After he left the other day they found a “better sex” manual in the area where he hed been, and they come from another floor. And to be honest I had so much stuff to do tonight that I didn’t have time to keep watching him.

We often get people just sitting reading. It’s a bookshop. It’s what people do. I wish they wouldn’t actually READ books from cover to cover like it’s some fucking library, but on the whole I leave them to it. After all, when I was a teenager I spend whole Saturday afternoons reading the Titan Books 2000AD reprints in Sherrat and Hughes in Croydon. So I can’t talk.

So anyway. It’s getting close to 6.00pm when I start cashing up and the other member of staff comes upstairs to work the main till. She has a problem with Salmon Coat so I didn’t want him there. So I came out with the following:

“Hi. I’m going to have to ask you to leave because you’re acting really suspiciously and I haven’t got time to keep and eye on you. Thanks.”

He acquiesced in the most polite manner possible, put his books back when he’d found them and make his way out. As he left he said:

“Would it be okay to come back another time?”

I was slightly stumped but after a second, realising that what I said had a good chance of being taken as the law, said, quite firmly:

“No. Sorry.”

He nodded and left the shop.

Now, I suspect that he’s slightly mentally disturbed. Possibly schizophrenic, definitely harmless, probably had a good life and then a breakdown, etc, etc. Bookshops can be an oasis of calm for people (unless you work in them) and I suspect he found that very nice indeed compared with the noise of central London.

We very rarely get weirdos in our branch, being as it is in the financial district. There seems to be a psychological barrier that stops tramps and madmen coming past Fleet Street and the last trouble we had was woith a guy who kept falling asleep on the tables while reading books, and that was last summer. So when we get one it’s something of an event. At the Charing Cross Road branch they get junkies coming in every day (and not just Will Self (sorry)) and the customers of Hampstead, while loaded to the gills, have a very questionable sanity rating. But the city branches don’t suffer from it.

Did I do bad? Does it matter? What went through my mind was that, for a city centre shop, this guy has had a very easy ride. That doesn’t make it a good thing, but if he acted like that in some other part of London he’d have been out on his ass way quicker.

But I have a cousin who’s schizophrenic after a breakdown. The mannerisms are quite similar. The desire to be normal, to help, but to be incapable of “doing the right thing”.

I probably did bad but I’m sure I officially did good. And I don’t mean the company line. I mean what everyone else in the shop and the world will think.

Yeah, care in the community is fine and dandy, but not in our back yard.

Lovely site I remember hearing about last year: the5k.org is a competition to design web pages that come in at 5k or less and still have value. I especially like Random Rothko.