Welcome To The Machinist [entries|friends|calendar]
McGazz

[ website | McGazzine ]
[ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ]
[ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster." [11 May 2008|02:35pm]
Approximately 85 minutes ago I found out that "Koyaanisqatsi" is available to watch on Google video. It's possibly my favourite film (I'm such a stoner hippy, me). If you've nothing better to do, why not go watch it? Okay, the compressed format might hinder you fully appreciating the cinematography, but you'll get the gist. I like the shot of the pilot, and the scenes in the sausage factory best.

Not recommended if you have a fatal aversion to minimalist orchestral music and/or time-lapse photography.

http://tinyurl.com/5f838y

If you want to know what the hell I'm on about, go here first. 

Pilot bloke
6 ripostes| fire off a missive

The clock struck thirteen [09 May 2008|09:02am]
Three cheers, everyone, for the return of blacklisting. Tailgunner Joe would be proud. 

Note that one can be put on this new database for alleged (and therefore unproven) misconduct. And while the legal safeguards of DPA might apply, no one is informed when they're put on it - you can't demand alteration of a record you don't know exists. A bloke from the company who provide this system sez: "Theft in the workplace hurts staff as much as employers because it puts everyone under suspicion", which is interesting when you remember that anyone "under suspicion" can go on to the database. Maybe we're all supposed to spy on our colleagues and report their pencil-stealing and websurfing-instead-of-work activities to save our own necks? It's reminiscent of [Godwin deleted]

The class war continues apace (although I suppose it's not really a war if only one side fight, while the other side do nothing).
4 ripostes| fire off a missive

25 unused icons [08 May 2008|08:11pm]

This blog doesn't have enough pictures, so here are 25 icon-sized images I haven't used.

25 icons

9 ripostes| fire off a missive

Money, Money, Money [08 May 2008|01:40pm]

As anyone who has even skimmed this blog will know, I hate Libertarians. Permanently teenage, smart-arsed little computer programmers who read Ayn Rand and reckon that their tough, Marlboro Man individualism would make them rise to the top in the completely deregulated and privatised society they crave - but who, in reality, would be crying for their mothers after two days without internet access and Diet Coke.

The single most disingenuous act I've ever witnessed a human being commit occurred when one of these types - a self-proclaimed "anarcho-capitalist" no less - tried to argue that taxing consumption (via VAT) was fairer than taxing income because the fraud opportunities offered by VAT were more egalitarian. He argued that rich people with good accountants can fiddle their income tax down to pennies, while PAYE plebs like us are unable to. VAT, he reckoned, allowed everyone a go at cheating the system - as an example, he suggested "employing a cash-in-hand tradesman".

Now, ignoring the fact that he attempted to disguise his fervent, ideological belief in regressive taxation by dressing it up as some kind of everyman, common-sense pragmatism, his argument is still total baw. I have, myself, paid for work done on my house cash-in-hand, but the amount HMRC lost out on was pretty small. Meanwhile, big business systematically defrauds the government on VAT by massive amounts. And what of those of us who aren't getting new kitchens fitted or new extensions built? The tradesman argument assumes we all can and do employ accommodating workies on a regular basis. As for the income tax argument, I'm so into this idea, and not just because "Scandinavians do it, so it must be good". For the record, I'm not an Income Tax fetishist - I'd far rather the taxman concentrated on unearned, rather than earned income (inheritances, interest on savings, share dividends and "Capital Gains" are all taxed at lower rates than salaries) - but I honestly think basing people's contribution to the running of the country on ability to pay is A Good Idea.

What I've never got is why this "shift the tax burden almost entirely on to the poor" attitude should be so popular with people who're not particularly well off themselves. I can see why, say, Donald Trump, would be in favour of raising all tax revenue from the purchasing of "luxury goods" like clothes, shoes and heating. He, after all, wipes his arse with high-denomination banknotes, and couldn't possibly spend as fast as he earns. But why should some IT monkey who doesn't earn much more than me (I've been a computer programmer, and it doesn't pay *that* well), possessed of an almost creepy obsession with personal wealth, be a cheerleader for a system that will impoverish them? Free market fundamentalism is as bonkers as all the other types.

2 ripostes| fire off a missive

[insert 'offal' = 'awful' pun here] [07 May 2008|01:58pm]

My childishness knows no bounds. I've just sniggered like an idiot on reading the headline "Ireland appoint Kidney as coach".

I also chortled a bit when I found out that, in 1982, the Zimbabwean Government passed a law making it a criminal offence to make jokes about the name of the head of state, President Banana.

If you want real last-gasp punnery, you could comment on the Special Relationship by suggesting that "Brown and Bush" is the Bad Lieutenant's idea of a good night out.

Seriously though - if I discovered that, say, Austria, had elected a President called Koch-Schmoker, I'd probably require medical attention.

4 ripostes| fire off a missive

It Was The Evening Standard Wot Won It [05 May 2008|01:29am]

The flawed but useful Political Compass website rates the UK as one of the three most right-wing countries in the EU, along with socially conservative Greece and ultra-Catholic Poland. If you're interested (or even still reading), Sweden is allegedly the most left-wing, but only because the even more right-on Norway is so progressive, it refuses to join the EU at all.

While Britain as a whole is pretty far-right, England, as much as it exists as a country within the UK, seems particularly determined to become the most mean-spirited, knee-jerk, self-interested, greedy, intolerant, uncompassionate, I'm-all-right-Jack region in Europe, if not the World. I honestly believe you'll find more warmth and human kindness in large swathes of Jesusland (Bush-voting USA) than you will in, say, the Home Counties.

I've said before that London is a place of its own, and not strictly English, and I had always thought of it as being outside this trend, along with the similarly devolved Scotland and Wales (Northern Ireland is a special case, and I'm not starting on that at this time of night). While none are beacons of Social Democracy, let alone Socialism, there is some evidence that they're not quite as keen to become uber-capitalist dog-eat-dog dystopias. Consequently, what I find most upsetting about BoJo's election as Mayor (and the presence of the BNP on the London assembly) is that it suggests London is siding with the rest of England, rather than with its devolved cousins.

Weirdly, I was in London when the mayoral result was announced, on unrelated business. I spent a fair bit of Saturday wandering around the Tate Modern, where I realised an ambition by experiencing Joseph Beuys' "The Pack" first hand. That evening, I went for a curry on Brick Lane. On Sunday, I took a bus through the East End (Hackney actually looks quite nice, although Dalston seems a bit of a dump) before ending up in Highbury which, ironically enough, was full of Scousers (I sat in a pub a few minutes from the Emirates Stadium, and watched a singularly boring game of football between Arsenal and Everton on the telly). I'm sure all these things will still be possible after Teh_Legernd has done a bit of Mayoring, but this election is yet another sign that Britain's slide to the right continues apace and one more reason why I should think about emigrating.

12 ripostes| fire off a missive

OMG WHAT A LEGERND!!!! [30 Apr 2008|07:50pm]

Boris is a cock

Of course, it's up to Londoners who they have as Mayor. Part of me thinks - if they elect that prize-winning c0cksmoker Johnson, that’s their business and they deserve all they get. But, while I might live in the unimaginably brutal and impoverished (not to mention non-devolved) hinterland that is non-London-England, the fact that the capital bleeds us of talent and then uses it to generate a large chunk of the country’s wealth means that what happens in London has an effect on me as well, so I can’t be totally dismissive of it.

There's a hideous Blairite neocon tendency who've been making smug pronouncements about how they're going to support Boris (usually accompanied by lukewarm praise for the colourless Lib Dem no-hoper) because, essentially, Ken is some kind of evil 'loony leftie' postmodern relativist who wants to murder rich people and make burqas compulsory. It's reminiscent of the Sunday Express' description of Ken in 1981 as an "IRA supporting poof-lover", yet it comes from mouths of people who consider themselves holier-than-thou on all things ideological.

Their problems with Ken seem to stem entirely from:

  • His meeting with some Islamic fundamentalist nutter a while back, which is a bit rich when you look at some of the rather nasty heads of state the Government consorts with. I mean, it's not like he gave the guy the freedom of the city or anything.
  • His getting pissed off with a journalist who doorstepped him while he was pissed, and who he called a Nazi. The journo was, in fact, Jewish and tried to use the incident to portray Ken, a lifelong anti-racist, as some kind of David Irving figure. The point has been made that the same crowd who leapt on this non-story would have cried foul immediately if a non-white person had played the race card.
  • Alleged, and largely unproven, financial 'irregularities'. From a local politician? Well, f*ck me! Boris has, of course, never misappropriated so much as a farthing in his political life and will run London with an efficiency that would make Scrooge jealous.
  • Ken apparently got a few of his old, former leftie mates jobs working for the administration. Big f*cking wow. I'm with Chris Rock on this one: "you can't get your friend a job?” Until I see evidence that the Assembly is funding Stalinist indoctrination camps, I can’t see why anyone would give half a brass f*cknut about this.

If I lived in London, my biggest issue with Ken would be his unwavering support for the Metropolitan Police after they shot an innocent, unarmed guy in the head multiple times at point blank range on a tube train, but maybe Londoners have different priorities to me.

Smart-arsed contrarianism is all very well when you're trying to impress people you imagine to be of lesser intelligence online, but to risk giving one of the most important municipal offices in the world to a colossal nadgebag like Johnson is going too far. Of course, Charlie Brooker has already said something similar, and was more entertaining when he did so.

5 ripostes| fire off a missive

Get it right Upmann you [28 Apr 2008|10:52am]

From the San Jose Mercury News (not a paper I read much)

On Feb. 6, 1962, President John F. Kennedy secured a supply of 1,000 cigars from the legendary Cuban tobacconist H. Upmann. The next day, Kennedy made it illegal to import Cuban cigars, imposing a trade embargo that remains to this day.

When I become dictator, I must remember to pick up the more obscure Ween albums before banning all trade with the USA.

fire off a missive

Fáilte na h-Iran [25 Apr 2008|12:13pm]

This is interesting. After the Iranian Revolution, the new government changed the names of a lot of Tehran's streets - especially those with names associated recalling the old regime. The British Embassy stood on Churchill Street, which was renamed as below.

Bobby Sands St

Apparently, the Embassy had all their mail delivered via a side door and new stationery printed, to avoid having to mention Bobby.

2 ripostes| fire off a missive

Eyeless in etc etc [18 Apr 2008|09:45pm]
I noticed, the other day, in the ongoing bollocks in Gaza, that Hamas killed three Israeli soldiers, and Israel retaliated by killing five children and a Reuters cameraman.

Doesn't that sound like one of those irritating logic puzzles they used to use in school maths classes back in the day? I can imagine Robert Robinson putting it to Mr and Mrs Quantity Surveyor on "Ask The Family". "If three soldiers equals five children and a cameraman, how many cameramen do you get for one soldier and seven children? Ahh, would that it were..."

Disclaimer: other countries also do bad things.
5 ripostes| fire off a missive

It's Fr1d4y 4ft3rn00n!!!111 [18 Apr 2008|01:13pm]

[geek filter]

I found this funny. The URL should be self-explanatory.

http://www.devtopics.com/101-great-computer-programming-quotes/

2 ripostes| fire off a missive

Paul is twittering: I've never heard it called that before. [16 Apr 2008|12:51pm]
I was turned down for the part of Jim in the remake of "Taxi". However, they want me to play Mr Walters from the end credits.

That Tim Berners-Lee. He invents *one* thing.

When they eventually bring in automated rectal cavity searches at airports, people won't respond by revolting against the state, or even refusing to fly. They'll try and outdo each other in being blase about it, boasting about how they've worn elasticated waist trousers and pre-applied some Astroglide.

Apparently, Portishead made their first TV appearance in ten years the other night, on Jools Holland's Middle-Aged Matey Bonhomie Backslapfest. I missed it. Still, statistically, I'm pretty likely to still be alive in ten years' time, when they make their next one. I wonder if Jools introduced them as "the excellent... Portishead"?

Actually, in case I do die suddenly, I want to world to know now that "Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself" was the worst film I've ever seen. And I've seen "Not Now Darling".

Professional skeptic James Randi has spent years telling the world that Uri Geller doesn't have psychic powers. WE KNOW, YOU TOOL. Do you think we're stupid? Any other mind-blowing revelations, you pompous old sack of shit? Are those not Bernie Clifton's real legs?

This isn't a proper blog post - it's just a collection of Twitters pasted together! Damn microblogging!

There's absolutely nothing of note to report in my life at the moment. But never mind me - how the hell is everyone?

(I just wanted to say 'Astroglide')
9 ripostes| fire off a missive

Don't Muenchen it [08 Apr 2008|01:48pm]

Blimey, it's incredibly easy to go weeks without posting anything if you don't go out of your way to do so. It was only the torrent of goodwill emails I received that persuaded me to blog again. "Please McGazz - we're sick of seeing Gen Y girls droning on about their imaginary health problems and hearing apologetics for the patently post-shark-jump Dr Who - furnish us with some of that good ol' adolescent polemic peppered with obscure music references".

I was supposed to go to Munich last month, but was prevented from doing so by Northern Rail. "Northern Rail run services to Munich?". Haha. You know the way, on plebtastic charter flights, people applaud when the plane touches down? I keep expecting the same thing to happen when Northern Rail drivers announce "we are now arriving in Wigan". A catalogue of train-related errors (well, three) led to L and I getting to the airport too late to make our flight. We looked into booking another one, but it wasn't doable. "The Aeroplane Song", by crap late-period Britpop no-hopers Straw, had a chorus that went "Lufthansa go where you wanna go". What they neglect to mention is that they often "go where you wanna go" via Dusseldorf and it'll cost you several times as much as the direct flight you've just missed. We went home and blew the spending money on drink, takeaways and [work filtered].

The Government says public sector workers have to accept a below-inflation pay rise (or, as you or I might say, a pay cut) because a cost of living increase would be "bad for inflation" - can't give you plebs money, you'll only go and spend it on stuff. City of London bankers "earned" bonuses totalling £14.1 billion last year. A back of a fag packet calculation suggests that this amount is equivalent to the entire public sector getting a 10% pay rise. I'm at a loss to see how £14.1 billion sloshing into the economy via the Square Mile isn't a problem, while G Brown spending a fraction of that so that people employed by the state get the same in real terms as they got last year supposedly is. Is it because the Retail Price Index doesn't factor in Ferraris, Bulgarian property investments or cocaine? Come the glorious day, I'll have all City banker types shot, using bullets dipped in poor people's excrement.

Craig Pulsar is spot on here, on the Limb Pics.

5 ripostes| fire off a missive

Pete Tong got POWER! [17 Mar 2008|09:19am]

Does anyone else find this incredibly funny?

I think it appeals to me because it sounds like a John Hughes film plot, although the actual event would more likely resemble scenes from "Skins" crossed with the 'country house rave' episode of "Inspector Morse" (qv).

Although the best bit may have been a BBC newsreader introducing the story by saying "it's all gone Pete Tong".

6 ripostes| fire off a missive

It's gone downhill since I left [14 Mar 2008|02:46pm]

Looking for something soporific on the telly last night, I found myself watching the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament – specifically, First Minister's questions. My general impression was - how embarrassing for all concerned. A near-full house of overpaid chancers shouting and squawking like a drunken student debating society (a tautology?) And the SNP want this amateur-hour bollocks to be the national governing institution of an independent sovereign state? Okay, so there haven't been any punchups in the chamber yet, but give it time.

There was one fantastic bit, though. Annabel Goldie, when asking a question, congratulated the Scottish rugby union team on a recent win, claimed that the last few times Scotland had won the Grand Slam were under a Tory government, and made a piss-weak joke along the lines of "not long now, lads". Alex Salmond started his reply by asking Goldie what position she'd be playing at Scotland's next rugby fixture. The "Miss Stoneybridge...has been cancelled" look on AG's face was priceless.

Amazing fact: the Indian version of the Scottish Parliament, dubbed "Bollyrood", is actually bigger than than Holyrood!

Your search - "Miss Stoneybridge has been cancelled" - did not match any documents.

3 ripostes| fire off a missive

It's *got* to be funky [13 Mar 2008|02:32pm]
This article on breakbeats and maths ticks so many of my boxes.
3 ripostes| fire off a missive

Snore [11 Mar 2008|02:08pm]

I was actually going to write a post about going out for lunch with some work folk, and how some very nice Chinese food has left me agreeably full, but also tired and unable to concentrate. Not very 'citing, is it? Is that what blogging is really about? Should I post dull inventories of my 'citement-free meatspace existence, rather than accusatory polemic and recycled Alexei Sayle jokes?

[loses concentration]

Your search - "bacofoil and a battering ram" - did not match any documents.

4 ripostes| fire off a missive

Get to Falkirk [10 Mar 2008|11:20am]

Absolutely is coming out on DVD.

The show ran from 1989 to 1993, a period coinciding with the first half of my teenage years. It was a formative influence on me. Lines like "look, just blinking get out of it please!" and "the pattern clashes with our cooker's jacket" were repeated endlessly at school, the way other people repeated lines from Monty Python.

As well as being extremely funny, Absolutely showed me that comedy from Scotland didn't always have to be 'Scottish comedy' and that when it did, it didn't have to stick to "Scotland The What?" style tweeness or grim, Glasgow-based archetypes. It avoided both the black, miserable bleakness and professional glottal-stopping of "Rab C Nesbitt", and the too-grown-up-to-be-fun codified references to religious sectarianism found in "A Kick Up The Eighties"/"Naked Video" (Robbie Coltrane’s 'Mason Boyne', or Gregor Fisher as a Policeman with his trouser leg rolled up).

There was Mac McGlashan's rabid, anti-English Scottish Nationalism (taking one step over the border, shouting "pooooooofs", and then running back into Scotland), as well as digs at "Braid Scots", the Burns night gibberish that rampant Saltire-huggers claim is a language in its own right (Absolutely claiming that the word for 'newsagent' was 'curlywurlymaun' - cf Ulster Scots). But characters like Calum Gilhooley could be translated into any nationality. Donald & George McDiarmid were like a cross between Laurel & Hardy and Herge's Thomson and Thompson. Some bits weren't Scottish at all. John Sparkes created a number of Welsh characters, like DIY enthusiast Denzil (the early sketches' Welsh subtitles are a work of genius), as well as English creations like the senile Bert Bastard and toilet humour champion Frank Hovis.

The sketches everyone goes on about are not necessarily my favourites. Stoneybridge became tiresome, as the humour-challenged missed all the gags and focused on shouting "Stoneybridge" in a stupid voice. Morwenna Banks' little girl was only ever amusing to the over 50s.


On a similar theme, here is a list of things I thought were *really* funny when I was 12.

  • Chronic Relief (an idea I came up with for a telethon - it'd be like Comic Relief, only you would wear novelty red bollocks instead of a red nose).
  • The idea of someone having the name "Arnold Cellopaste" (actually a brand of glue we used in Primary School).
  • Singing "And I'll paint my left ball blue/Yes you know it's good for you", drill instructor style (those were the third and fourth lines; I can't remember the first two).
  • The word "dobber".
  • The fact that, in the scene in Blackadder II where Edmund sells his house, the buyers were called Mr and Mrs Pants (not to mention Mrs Pants' immortal question about the plumbing, which is so legendary I don't even need to repeat it).

 

13 ripostes| fire off a missive

What if one of them seems odd? [07 Mar 2008|02:17pm]

The Met (the London police department, North American readers) have unveiled a particularly crap poster to accompany their new War on Cameras (peanuts, I tell you, it should be peanuts!).

As you might imagine, some people take the piss online. [contains LOLCATs, but in a good way].

2 ripostes| fire off a missive

Statistic of the Day [03 Mar 2008|01:39pm]
"Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts."

Haven't I always said we should declare war on peanuts? 

For too long, Jimmy Carter's powerful peanut lobby has been instrumental in silencing criticism of peanuts. We must stop these peanut killers. Now watch me take this drive.
fire off a missive

navigation
[ viewing | most recent entries ]
[ go | earlier ]