peteashtondotcom

Dictionaraoke. It’s better than it sounds, although it sounds pretty terrible I grant you.

Take a backing track from a karaoke machine, one of those ones that is every so slightly familair but completely nothing like the original, preferably of a song like Born Slippy or How Soon Is Now, or even (for Kate) Take On Me. Then visit an online dictionary which speaks words for you in a rather enthusiastic yet still rigidly machine-like manner. Then make the dictionary sing along to the tracks, word for word.

It’s quite, quite stunning. Trust me.

This is quite a gem:

I’m heading up to Geneva. One of the Gaul tribes is planning on cutting through Roman territory, in an attempt to go and fight some other tribe. I’m the governor of Gaul now, so I have to stop them… I’m caught a little off guard – there’s only one legion up there, so I’m trying to raise some more at the same time.

Well, it looks like I might be away more than I’d like, so I decided to set up this blog. My friends in Rome can keep track of what I’m up to amongst the barbarians..
posted by Julius Caesar at 11.52am

Bloggus Caesari is spot on and perfect. Check it out.

Writing while tired (and I’ll tell you why once I finish writing, unless it’s too late):

I wanted to write something along the lines of “since comics are a relatively young and often derided medium, people who like comics often try and connect comics to other media such as film”. In an effort to make that sentence more snappy (it’s the opener) it evolved into this: “Being relatively young and frequently derided, comics aficionados often try to make links with other media”. Which, as Kate said, is more often than not true. The first bit anyway. Which is why I didn’t spot it for an hour. Either than or I’m tired.

Okay, I’m tired because I woke up with a hangover, went to work at 7.00am, had two members of staff phone in sick and then the power supply to the computers and tills started burning so we had to shut the shop and wait for the electrician who couldn’t fix it so I stayed until closing time manning the phones and shelving books.

Actually, the reason I’m tired is because I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep all week (despite going to bed on time - too warm) and it’s Borderline deadline week. But the “my store is so decrepit and old the electricity supply to the TILLS caught fire” is a better story.

Tired, but happy. That’s the main thing.

And now I’m procrastinating. This writing articles to deadline is like school…

“The idea had been fermenting for years. Morris was becoming increasingly frustrated at the way children, and the idea of childhood, had become deified. Inviolate. A golden, innocent, fenced-off part of society full of tow-headed little angels - until the minute they pass 16, when the fence crashes down and they want us to tear their clothes off and roger them senseless.” Guardian, August 5th

I held off from commenting on the Brass Eye “controversy” when it broke a fortnight back, mainly because, not having a TV, I didn’t watch it and didn’t want to come over all Beverley Hughes, but a couple of things have happened since the program that I feel I have something to add.

Firstly, my good friend and fellow comics evangelist Andy Luke has been effectively forced to move from his estate after, it emerges, being branded a paedophile. You can read his account here. Needless to say Andy is not a paedophile. He just looks a bit odd. Andy’s situation seems so far out and distant from my everyday experience that I actually find it hard to get my head about it. What can you do? Is this really down to the News of the World or are these people really that primitively stupid?

Secondly, I was at a party chatting to a mother about her kids and stuff. She mentioned she’d taken some photos of her young son after he’d had a bath because he looked so cute. The towel had fallen off and his penis was on show. When she got the photos developed at Boots they placed a sticker marked “censored” over the penis, one of those removable ones that normally suggest you use a flash in future. She laughed it off - the sticker was removed and she got on with her life.

I couldn’t believe it. When did a naked child become rude? Surely only paedophiles think young children are sexy? That’s why they’re sick evil perverts! But now Boots seem to be saying that pictures of naked children are in some way obscene. That normal people can be corrupted by them. They are saying that the majority of people find little boy’s willies to be no different from giant erect hairy dongs. And because it’s a nice, official, mass produced sticker it settles in your mind making you think that maybe you shouldn’t take photos of your naked child because that’s obscene. And so you’re subconsciously connecting your naked child with hard core pornography.

Somewhere we’ve become a bit screwed up in our attitudes towards children. It’s good that child abuse is more out in the open than it was. I’m convinced, based on talking to older people, that it went on back in the “good old days” as much as now only no-one talked about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was actually less child abuse these days because at least there are systems in place to identify it, deal with it and try and cure the poor fuckers who do it. The downside of this seems to be that we’re trapped in this notion that children are sexual beings like adults rather than pretending to be sexy now and then.

Like I said, I can’t quite believe this stuff. I can’t really understand how the majority of people living in this country can accept that these things go on. I’m with Chris Morris - y’all need a fucking big wakeup call. Stop reacting with your bleeding hearts and start thinking.

Jeez…

Worth investigating further methinks: Cardhouse has all manner of interesting things within it’s server walls. Of particular note is the archive of Foreign Candy Cigarettes from around the world. When time allows, investigate further.

Christopher Locke has placed the entire text of The Cluetrain Manifesto online. Go read most of it now. Do it.

Excellent interview with Iain Sinclair on the Fortean Times site. Scroll down for the juicy book dealing stuff…

I was dealing books from about 1976 to 1986, and for a while it was potentially quite dangerous - books and drugs were counter-balanced. Some dealers were literally getting enough profit in a week to set up the next week’s coke deals. There was a particular house in Cannon St that’s right by the crossroads where the head of the Ratcliffe Highway murderer is buried, and in this house was a pile of really abstruse books, lots of first editions, and also all this drug stuff. There’d be people arriving in the middle of the night and you wouldn’t know if it wad drugs or books they were after - both were done with enormous secrecy. The place was watched room across the road by a disgruntled book dealer who was acting ads a police informer.