Just Say Yes

An interview in the latest issue of Mother Jones with pranksters The Yes Men, who most memorably (for me, anyway) switched the voice boxes in a number of Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls on sale so that when the kids got them home, Barbie advised that "Dead men tell no lies" and G.I. Joe announced "I like to shop with you."

Don't Buy That, Buy This (or Out, Out Blackspot)

Adbusters have started to introduce their own product ranges for all you anti-corporate types.

I've just discovered a new level of cynicism.

Mobile Forensics

Not just more back scratching: Check out Kirstie's blog, particularly this most recent posting, involving a lesbian psychic and a farting bulldog. Brilliant stuff. Talk about Americana!

More Single-Serving Adventures

A most relaxing and carefree week endured in the Canaries got off to a phenomenally enjoyable start thanks to my latest single-serving friends. While lacking the erudition and sobriety of my last acquaintances, the couple who sat beside me on the flight over to Fuerteventura provided me with just the right dose of entertainment to get me in the mood for my hols.

Better half and I had been pre-booked seats because of my inordinate height, but it turned out some sadist had allocated us a window and a middle seat, so better half kicked up a fuss (which she’s very good at, by the way) and got us both aisle seats, across the way from one another.

As we walked onto the plane, ahead of most other passengers, better half selected her seat first, across from my new acquanitances, who were already ensconced. Better half’s astuteness soon became apparent, and post-flight conversation with her confirmed that she knew right away, just from looking at this pair, what I was in for.

Single-server couple were young, about mid-twenties, he with closely cropped but unshaven black hair, moustachioed and wiry, with T-shirt and jeans, she pleasantly plump in some lime green outfit you’d only wear on holiday. Less readily apparent, since they were sat down and not trying to walk around, was the fact that they were already “nicely sozzled.”

“I can tell you now, we’ll be up and down the whole flight,” was his greeting, in a broad Dub accent. I smiled politely, suggesting it was no problem but not realizing that he meant that the pissing would be almost constant.

Having successfully got past the flight attendants, and once the plane was in the air, single servers ordered a Red Bull from the cabin staff and surreptitiously opened their litre bottle of duty-free Smirnoff (Fuerteventura’s a duty-free island, so you can buy cheap booze at the airport on the way out). Vodka and Red Bull thus flowed copiously, if on the Q.T., for the next hour, the flow interrupted every 15 minutes or so by one of the two deciding they needed a piss.

To be fair, male single-server offered me a vodka early on. I declined, explaining that I’d been sampling the free whiskey at the airport and wouldn’t be able to read if I drank anymore.

“Good man. Whiskey. Puts hairs on yer chest. I’d be drinking it meself if it weren’t for this cunt,” he said, referring to his companion. “But you’ve got to live with the cunts, haven’t yer?”

At which he gave me a broad grin, revealing for the first time the only two teeth that were left in his head. Fuck me, I thought. They’ve sat me next to Cletus.

For another hour they worked their way through the litre of vodka, with the odd piss now and again, he at one point commenting on my choice of wine with my meal with the immortal observation, “I don’t know why you’re drinking their shit when there’s vodka here.”

Again, credit where it’s due: All this was said in a spirit of camaraderie. Neither of them was a nasty drunk; rather, they were impressive drunks with really small bladders.

Bladders that were their undoing. After about two hours, the cabin staff sussed what was going on, so that when female single server went to the loo for about the 19th time and male tried to pour himself another wee snifter, male flight attendant came down the aisle and relieved him of the bottle, explaining,

“You can’t drink duty-free alcohol on the flight.”

This could have resulted in fisticuffs across my seat, I thought, except male single-server was by this point so langered that he was incapable of response. His head dropped, he surrendered the bottle, and bowed his head to gaze forlornly into the empty bag at his feet. Needless to say, when female single server returned from the loo, she was raging at him and it quickly became clear to any observer just who was in charge in that relationship.

I didn’t understand why, however, until the following sequence of events played themselves out. Over the next two hours, male single server would drop off to sleep for ten minutes or so, then wake up and start searching his bag for the vodka. He'd spend ages bent double, rifling through his plastic carrier bag, then searching under his seat, then he’d wake up female single server and say, “Where’s the vodka?” and she’d have to explain to him that the flight attendant had taken it off him.

“No cunt took the vodka off me,” he’d say, then lapse into a melancholic stupor for another ten minutes or so until waking up again and repeating the whole performance.

After about an hour of this, my shoulder muscles were in agony from laughing so much. The poor sod might have had some sort of early-onset Alzheimer’s or alcohol-induced petite mal fits, I don’t know, but seeing him wake up, search for his duty-free, wake up his partner, then fall back to sleep again, over and over, and never any the wiser, afforded me all the fun I felt I was entitled to after the many, many times he’d made me get out of my seat so he could piss Red Bull and Vodka into the airplane’s innards.

It really made my holiday.

And, unbelievably, they were on my flight home yesterday. Sober. “Incredible,” I thought. “How the hell did they manage to avoid being deported in the intervening seven days?”

Maybe the locals got as much fun out of them as I did.

I should really buy them both a drink.

Hijos del Pueblo a Las Barricadas en Discos

News from Red Star Recordings via Club Mekon mailing list:


The Redskins tribute album Reds Strike The Blues will be released on 1st May 2005 on Red Star Recordings. The album includes The Three Johns version of "Reds Strike The Blues." For a full track listing go to http://www.redstar-recordings.com

My brother has been to the Kingdom of Heaven

And my father too. And I myself want to pay a visit sometime soon. I’m talking about castles in Spain, actually, and one of them in particular, where Ridley Scott filmed part of his film Kingdom of Heaven.
This is not the first time the castillo de Loarre (Loarre castle) is used as a location for a film. Here and here you have a couple of sites about the place. They are in Spanish, though. But here you may find some news in English about the castle and the filming of Scott’s film.
You have more information about the film at its official web site. And there’s this other site as well.

Gigs in Barcelona

I’m glad Jordi has joined us. I know he dropped in a few times to take a look.
Well, if any of you happen to be in Barcelona during these days, there are a couple of gigs you may find interesting. Next Thursday 17th, Urge Overkill are playing at the Bikini (check out the Bikini new site, by the way). They scored a hit when Tarantino used their cover of Neil Diamond’s number “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” for one of his films. After that, they released one last record, and then disappeared. Now they’re back, and they will play in Barcelona in two days. I admit I’m curious to see their show.
Another interesting band that will be visiting us next Sunday 20th is Wilco. They are playing again in Barcelona (at the Razzmatazz), after the excellent show they offered at the last Primavera Sound Festival. I was there, but I wouldn’t mind an encore.
Well, I hope we can keep enjoying more good gigs around here, while we wait for the next Primavera Sound.

Gaining one of the good guys

A quick welcome to Jordi, who has joined the team here at C&S all the way from Barcelona and who will be hopefully adding a further dimension to our inimitable and brilliant blog.

Losing one of the good guys

Just before heading away, I learn of the death of Maurice Brinton of Solidarity, a group that has had a strong influence on my political thinking over the years (christ, how fucking pompous does that sound?) and which exposed me to the anarchist-communist/lib-soc works of Cornelius Castoriadis. I'll post more when I get back from my holidays, but there are comments and obits already out there, namely here and here.

Getting the Wobbles

Lisa over at Rullsenberg has been trying to post a comment to C&S with no success; I've had the same problem over there and on other blogger sites for some unfathomable reason recently. Anyway, you can see her comments on her site, and this contributor is off on his hols for a week, so with a bit of luck it will give Blogger a chance to get its act together.

I'll try and check in during the week to see if anything exciting is happening. Annoyingly, Site Meter tells me the hits have been picking up lots recently, just as I bugger off. I'll need to come back with some extraordinary tales of derring-do or laughable English incompetence abroad to get the numbers back up again.

¡Hasta Luego!

Dave Allen R.I.P.

The Irish Bill Hicks? Made me laugh as a kid but best watched when drunk (either you or him, preferably both).

May he be with his God.

Oi! Llewellyn-Bowen. No!!

Our efforts at being sincere, committed, non-sexist men here at C&S have every now and then failed to protect us from the implicit prejudices of our era, class, generation, and society to the extent that even this contributor, a former sociology lecturer in a college of higher education, has made phenomenally atrocious errors along the way: The most embarrassing of all has to be the occasion when I attended a moderating conference of fellow sociology lecturers where, during a break for tea and biscuits, I took hold of the teapot in an effort to be considerate and committed the most impressive faux pas of my entire life by turning to all and sundry and saying “Shall I be Mother?”

Thanks to writers like Donna Haraway, we can refer to this form of abject stupidity euphemistically as a sign of the “gendering of domestic technology.” Plenty of empirical research has been done on British home life to show that the TV remote control is a strongly masculinized object, which is to say that it’s usually the blokes who keep control over it, whereas the teapot, the iron, and the telephone are, to a greater or lesser extent, feminized objects. But what brought back to me that awesome blunder, cringe-inducing even at a distance of 15 years or so, was a conversation with a colleague of mine who has just bought her first home and is in the process of renovating it. Rightly proud of her work to date (she is somewhat of a tyro on the interior design scene) she has provided me over the past few weeks with a detailed description of the entire project, describing how she got the builders and electricians to get the job done on time, how she obtained discounts on the floorboards and curtains, and how she drafted in a gang of friends, on the promise of free booze, to paint her kitchen pink.

Yes, that’s right. Pink. She’s painted her kitchen pink. Bathroom, I can understand; bedroom, yes, that’s acceptable, too; but kitchen? Who cooks in a pink kitchen except Barbie? Yes, Barbie. Not Ken.

You see what I’m saying? Good. On aesthetic grounds alone she should be ashamed. For her crimes against morality, I await suggestions for a suitable punishment. Ironic ones only, please.

Proof that Mother Nature favours socialism

From the February issue of Car and Driver magazine, an article by Ken W. Purdy that originally appeared in the August 1957 issue profiling upper-class twit the Marquis of Portago. Here is the opening paragraph:

"Don Alfonso Cabeza de Vaca y Leighton, Carvajal y Are, Conde de la Mejorada, Marquis de Portago, was 28 when he died at Guidizzolo, a few miles from Brescia and the end of the Mille Miglia, on the 12th of last May. Portago had been a flier, a jai alai player, a poloist, a steeplechase rider (the world's leading amateur in 1951 and 1952), an Olympic bobsledder and record holder, a remarkable swimmer, and he was at his death one of the dozen best racing drivers in the world. He had never sat in a racing car until 1954, but he believed he would be champion of the world before 1960, and most of the men he ran against every week thought he very well might be—if he lived."

The rest of the article carries on in a similar vein, extolling the virtues of this "incredibly brilliant athlete" and speaker of four languages. I suppose, grudgingly, I must accept that it's a product of its time, when playboys were still regarded as somehow admirable; the Lindbergh Syndrome, let's call it. Still, nothing brings out the misanthrope in me more than reading these paeans to the idle rich, as though there was something impressive and virtuous about someone who spends his life being good at games, pastimes, hobbies. Essentially, their entire lives are wasted on frivolities, no matter how seriously they take them. Today, of course, they'd be circumnavigating the world in a balloon or a boat or crossing the Antarctic by snail.

When I read that Portago had died at the age of 28, I confess, the first thing I thought was, "Good. Here's another candidate for the Darwin Awards whose stupidity and recklessness was no doubt the result of ceaseless inbreeding amongst the European aristocracy." The second thing I thought was, maybe Formula One isn't so bad after all. After years of thinking it was mindless driving in circles, I've missed the real attraction it holds for so many fans: the possibility of some upper-class half-wit driving into a wall at 150 miles and hour. It's the French Revolution in commodified form.

I think I'll take up knitting.

You lucky, lucky people (in Chicago)

Next Wednesday, at the Hideout, you can see the Waco Brothers AND the Nightingales. I only wish I was with you. A night not to be missed.

Stop Bolkestein!

Please read this and this and then sign the petition here.

If you absolutely MUST buy me a book

This one will do.

Christ is Risen. Fancy a Pint?

Spotted by my brother, a sign outside the Hare and Hounds pub in Timperley: "Join Us This Easter."

Says Martin, "Almost made me want to give up binge drinking for Lent."

Maybe they're holding a special Mass there on Easter Sunday: "This is my blood. It's a lovely Cabernet Shiraz. Goes nicely with the scratchings."

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans"

So said John Lennon. It's also true about death and explains why there won't be any postings or party tomorrow, on the day of C&S's first birthday: Better half's remaining maternal aunt died over the weekend, so we'll be at the funeral in Carrickmacross for the day. Apologies for our absence.

It Could Happen to Anyone

Thanks to Darren at Inveresk Street for linking to this story at A Revolutionary Act of an Oldham neo-Nazi who died while attempting to achieve sexual gratification in a cupboard using a kettle flex and a picture of a model dressed as a schoolgirl (model's sex and colour not disclosed). Sounds like Cluedo, doesn't it?

Just the thing to cheer you up on a winter's morning.

Sublime and Ridiculous

Or rather ridiculous and sublime, respectively. Two articles in New York magazine of January 24-31. Jeff Sharlet reports on the increase in popularity of New Age healing in the metroplis since 9/11. One such healer is Bhakti Sondra Shaye, described as an adept member of the Great White Universal Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Light. She says that she earns more money today as a healer than she did during the early 1990s as a corporate attorney. According to the article, she believes that New York is a New Age spiritual center because it is not afraid to interlink the worlds of spirituality and money. I'll bet.

In the Arts section, Mark Stevens reviews the exhibition "Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography," which runs through April 2 at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU. For the exhibition, artists Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari have collected a range of proletarian portraits of the Arab world. Instead of directly challenging the view of Arabs put forward in the Western media, they have chosen to present imagery that emanates from within Arab society itself. Retrieving the pictures from the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, a huge archive of predominantly commercial photographs taken during the 20th century in Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq, the pair provide an insider's view that successfully complicates and enriches the Arab character.