Whatever happened to... original thought?

Don't you just hate it when somebody else expresses that succinct thought much better than you can? I just saw this and decided it was so right it had to be shared. Some guy by the name of Einstein, apparently... if he's not on a reality show I think we can assume he's going to have a fairly short shelf life!

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."

Who are we to disagree? After all he was apparently very close to Marilyn Monroe (I don't mean in physical appearance, obviously) and therefore clearly a man of great taste and discernment. Unless Nicolas Roeg was just pulling my leg? No, what are the chances of that?

Whatever happened to.. Ray Gange?

I have a love/hate relationship with the 'net, as I guess most of us do. For large parts of the time, I curse the day it ever came into being. My inbox is always full of the most ridiculous unsolicited garbage - always. No 'spam killing' products seem to do the job. They won't because they are by definition reactive. Such software won't know to treat 'Do you want v1agara??' as spam until somebody somewhere has told it that it is. By which time of course the genius who sends it out has changed it subtly ('v1agarra', maybe) and your spam filter is back where it started. Perhaps you can hear me tearing out my hair in frustration. Please don't send me emails promoting Rogaine!

But at the same time I can't help loving the internet and all that it brings us. The access it offers to, well, just about everything, is nothing short of remarkable. Case in point: as any fule kno, the Clash was the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world. Ever. (Feel free to disagree, but obviously you'd be wrong.) But because their heyday was back in the days before we all had digital camcorders that fit in our bondage trouser pockets, there's never been a lot of footage of their live performances available to the general public.

There is of course, the movie 'Rude Boy', so let's divert for a second into the realm of movie reviews. A classic in its own way, but the live stuff therein only serves to focus the viewer's mind on the sheer awfulness of pretty much everything else about the film. We all know the Clash tried pretty hard to make sure it never got released - I suspect this was because they saw how cheesy it made them look (from Strummer's sibilant "the terroristssss..." to Mick's frankly scary "I'm watching you..."). And anyway, the live stuff has clearly been overdubbed significantly. Anyone who ever saw them in the early days will know, that, blistering as they were, they never played that well!! Much like Thin Lizzy's groundbreaking 'Live & Dangerous' double LP, the strength of Rude Boy is that the live stuff has been tweaked just enough to make it sound more listenable, while retaining the live edge.

However, completists like me have always wanted more. And the shoebox of dusty cassette tapes doesn't satisfy in the digital age. Enter eBay! I've been able to build quite a network of saddoes like myself, at the same time as building quite a collection of video performances of my fave band (among others). Of course, it could be argued that, by paying someone for a DVD full of grainy footage transferred from a dodgy VHS of a TV show from Japan, I'm contributing to the sad decline of the entertainment multinationals (altogether now, "Aahhh..."), and robbing my own heroes of their dues. I can't see it that way.

Why not? Well, I have faithfully bought every single damn thing the Clash ever issued officially (even 'Cut the Crap'), in several cases paying more than once for the same material (when buying a compilation just to get the 'previously unreleased' tracks, for instance - told you I was sad). I've also bought stuff on CD that I already bought on vinyl. And - how dumb does this make me sound, given my comments earlier? - I even bought the DVD of Rude Boy, even though many many years earlier I had bought it on VHS - AT A TIME WHEN VHS MOVIES WEREN'T GENERALLY ON SALE!! That's right, I went into my local video rental store and bought their copy, for nearly forty quid. They thought I was mental. My mates thought I was the coolest kid in town. We almost wore out the heads on my parents' Radio Rentals top-loading VCR.

So, buying illicit DVDs of stuff from my youth is a way of reminding myself of a simpler, happier time - hang on? Happier? Thatcher had just come to power, the miners were being systematically destroyed, the unions retreating up their own backsides, the NF were winning London council seats.. can I really have been happier then? Answers on a postcard please...

Whatever happened to.. good old black & white?

OK, so I never suggested for a moment that this blog might cover things like boxing. Or politics. But what the heck, I'm interested in both - though they couldn't pay me enough to actually DO either. But anyway, it's my prattle and I'll preach if I want to.

Being a late night person (as you have to be to get any time to yourself with children!) I find myself watching Channel Five - not something to boast about maybe, but every Thursday they run 'Fight of the Week', and despite my reservations about its essential barbarism, I love to watch boxing.

Last night though my blood boiled, and it was not about unfair judges or blatant fouls. Both boxers happened to be wearing black shorts with white trim, so, explained the commentator, for purposes of clarity, we will point out that Allan is the fellow in the white gloves, and Bonsante in the black gloves. Um, maybe I'm taking the 'too-obvious' route here, but wouldn't it have been so much simpler to say "Allan is the black boxer, Bonsante is white"?

I know we all have to be careful what we say these days, and I daresay the US is more precious about this kind of thing than we are here in the UK (apart from the few remaining Spartist boroughs, of course). But honestly, isn't this kind of pussy-footing around the fact of someone's skin colour actually worse and more insulting than just saying it? Surely it's not racist to say that someone is black or white (or whatever)?

At the risk of sounding like the Daily Mail (or my late great mum), some people don't have the common sense they were born with.

First post, the past...

We have to start somewhere I suppose. And on starting my first blog, where better than the beginning? Or at least, the recent past, so that anyone who chooses to read this will have some idea of what makes me who/what I am.

I am, at the time of writing this, 44 years old. Widowed in 2004, I am bringing up two children on my own. And as any parent knows, it's hard! Not wanting to become a drain on society (we've too many of those already) I work, as a writer & marketing consultant. It means I can work from home, and have reasonable flexibility in my working hours etc.

When I say to people who ask, "Mustn't grumble', or 'Things could be worse'. they sometimes look at me as if they're wondering 'How, exactly?'. But hey, it's the truth. Plenty of people out there have got things a whole lot worse than me and my fearless brood. The kids are smart, and for the most part they're happy. I think. I hope!

So why blog? Part of me thinks 'Why not? Everybody else is..' But that's probably not a good enough reason to do anything - if it were, I would also be phoning up Big Brother to tell them which housemate I'd like to not have to watch on TV any more, instead of just changing the channel when the really offensive ones come one. Which is not to suggest that many of them aren't offensive, of course!

But there needs to be a reason to share your thoughts with the wider world. When my wife first died I got into the habit of sending what are rather gauchely called 'round -robin' emails to friends and family, just to let them know how I was doing, and how the children were handling the huge shock they'd been dealt. But I think that in fact it was also to give me a channel to share my thoughts and feelings, and sometimes just to vent about how unfair the world sometimes seems (is?).

I noticed that I always felt a bit better when I'd sent off one of these missives to everybody I'd ever met, or spoke to, or had the email address of. So, how much better might this be, to write a blog? People can choose whether or not to bother reading it. They can even comment on it - though I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that idea. Like most people who write for a living, I don't respond especially well to criticism! Hmm, maybe this wasn't a good idea after all.

So what will it be about? My thoughts on what's happening in the world, I guess - hopefully written in a vaguely entertaining way. And why call it 'Whatever happened to..'? Nothing to do with the Likely Lads, I'm afraid. Homage to the Buzzcocks, maybe. Certainly a nod to the idea that, hey, everything changes. Sometimes too fast for us to appreciate it. But (he says with barely disguised irony) life goes on.