Category: Uncategorized

I cut my hair.
Yay. Number 2. I am smooooove.
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My moose powerz continue to grow. MAD SKILLZ TO THE MOOSE. Ergo keyboard has arrived too, cool.
Just watched the third-to-last episode of Angel. Wow. Cool. Funnay. Cookie dough.
Now watching ‘Death in Gaza’. Err.

Cal and I are both feeling pretty stressed at the mo. Too much to do! It isn’t cool. We’re managing very well, I feel, and the stress isn’t turning into bitter angry HATE HATE BITE DESTROY anything, it’s just an ‘aaargh! too much to do!’ vibe.
We are looking after each other with cuddles and NZ chocolate and the occasional episode of Firefly or season one Dawson’s Creek (which I will defend to my dying day, HAH).
Little-known fact: for an entire year of my job at Massey University, my screen background was a Dawson’s Creek cast shot. I thought it helped me get ‘down with the kids’. Yeeeeah.
At work we have just had a total rebuild of all our PCs. Now we are not allowed any screen backgrounds other than the mandatory blue-with-PC-specifications-on. It isn’t gonna help morale much, but I’m cool with it.
If you’re at all interested in what’s going on in Gaza right now, check out Rafah Kid in my links list – he’s getting regular updates from the field. The comments are pretty interesting too. Some big debates that seem to be staying pretty rational all the time, which is good.
Last night I went to the Opal Lounge, which is big-trendy Edin bar, for my boss’s 29th birthday. It was pretty cool. I was underdressed (typical) but didn’t particularly care (also typical). There were many hen nights. One gaggle of young women from Milton Keynes filled up the area near us, sat around not talking much and sipping drinks, then got up and left twenty minutes later. Luckily the bouncers made them take off the bobble-headbands with spangly penises at the end of the springs. Hen nights are an Edinburgh menace, on account of our ridiculously late licensing laws. (Pubs in England shut at 11, remember.)
Anyway. I have managed to get some good writing done, including an entry for the BBC3 ‘Get Writing’ competition which involves finishing off a very short story by a Famous And Successful Author. I went for horror churn-out-er Shaun Hutson’s one, on account of not having to think so much. I don’t think I could ever be a horror genre author, I don’t have the commitment to grime and misery, but I can definitely do dark’n’scary. I’ll email it to anyone interested once I’ve keyed in all the amendments.
Right. I’ve got to get sorted to go into town and run some roleplaying games for enthusiastic people in this club I started. It is a beautiful day, and I might try and get us to play in the park. Ahhhhh. Park.
Peace to you all. I am reading your emails, and will respond as soon as I can!

It is hard for the moose to break free; but he may use his antlers. The camels assault the moose with their humps and well-aimed spit but with a hefty hoist, the moose can clear a path!
In the above, camels=stuff to do, moose=morgue. The rest, I should think, is self-explanatory.
I am suckily developing the tingling fingers and achearms of classic RSI/OOS/CTS/that keyboarding thing. Dammit, I’ve been keyboarding this much for a decade without a twinge and nothing has changed that I can think of! Bah. It’s swung in over about the last couple months. I’ve been trying to do everything I can to manage it, but it is still there. Suggestions as to preventative measures very welcome.
Sorry to all whose emails and comments haven’t been getting replies. Been busy. Thanks to all those who have made positive comments about the Palestine account, or have passed the link on to their friends – much appreciated.
Website of the day: via Maryanne Garry, TruthOut.

I studied memory at university. I loved studying it. I have a pretty good understanding of how it works, and how it doesn’t work like we think it works. (That’s a collective society-type we.)
Last night, before watching the new Angel episode on Sky One, I watched its runup – Tru Calling, a “Buffy-esque” show starring buffy alumni Eliza Dushku. It was crappy. So, so very crappy. But amongst all the crappiness, the bit that stuck out at me and said “morgue! i’m a special shiny bit of crap intended just for you!” was how it handled memory.
Basically, it was about a bunch of med students flatlining themselves to recover their repressed memories of child abuse because, just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes.
Urg. Yuk. Bleh.
So, still no other show to add to Angel as sacred TV time. It really is the only time I watch TV – Angel. I look forward to it all week. Right now I’m looking forward to next week’s one!
Angel, by coincidence, was also all about recovered/lost memory – due to weird supernatural shenanigans, a bunch of characters had a bunch of memories removed, but in this ep it all came back. The bit that caught my attention (“morgue! i’m a special shiny bit of GOODNESS intended just for you!”) was when the architect of the memory-wiping talked about how he had replaced the true memories with false ones…
from a transcript of Angel, series 5, episode 18, broadcast in the US 21 April 04:
VAIL
When Connor was 5, he got lost in a department store. He wandered off while his family was shopping. It scared the poor child nearly half to death.
ANGEL
(leans in, angrily)
That never happened!
VAIL
Yes… but he remembers it happening.
This is a deliberate reference to Elizabeth Loftus’ pioneering study on implanting false memories, which involved convincing children they’d been lost in a shopping mall. It has been at the centre of massive controversy because it stands in direct opposition to Freud-based recovered memories of child abuse.
It really makes me happy to see some of this stuff in the pop media. Freud’s theories make for great narrative, and they keep turning up – recovered memories of child abuse being a mainstay of fiction as they provide a ready-made character arc, complete with shocking mid-arc revelation of hidden truth.
The real facts of how memory work don’t fit the needs of narrative framework too well, and as a result, they don’t turn up much. So I’m glad they turned up this one time – and in one of the best damn TV shows around, to boot.
Thus is it proved: Angel is Good. Tru Calling sucks.

Jazz belongs in cellars. Heading down a few steps and into a small, smoky bar with no windows – that’s its natural environment.
Last night Cal and I went to Henry’s Jazz Cellar, one of Edinburgh’s long-standing jazz venues, and checked out a group called Les Ecossais. They were all music student age, and their look was somewhere between Boyzone and the skatepunks doing grinds in Bristo Square. It was nice to not be the youngest in a jazz venue – there were a lot of young folk there, diluting the old Jazzheads.
They got props from the crowd, too, and deserved it. Their stuff was pretty fresh. Mostly new compositions by themselves, with some by other folk I’ve never heard of (unsurprising given how closely I follow jazz, i.e. not even a little). It was a pretty cool set, and a good evening out. Must go again.
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What the hell is going on in New Zealand? I’m hearing crazy stories second hand, and the stuff I see in the news is crazy enough. Like, Brash making a speech in Napier today that was only a few steps removed from the British National Party cultural purity line? This can’t be true, can it? Like, a Maori woman declaring a train after the hikoi ‘for Maori only’ and forcing non-Maori off? Urban myth, surely? Like, a Maori person getting verbally abused in a corner store while buying milk? This one, sadly, is true.
It seems like New Zealand is turning into a different country while I am away from it. And it seems the new country is much nastier than the old one.
I hate to see the politics of fear played out so strongly in Aotearoa. It makes me ill.
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Excellent piece on reading the Iraq prison stuff, at Teresa Neilsen Hayden’s divine Making Light. Very much worth checking out.

Pearce writes, on Iraq and Saddam:
How would you have dealt with Saddam Hussein?…If you wouldn’t keep him in power, how would you have deposed him? And how would you keep extremists from taking power once he was gone?
Morgue, home sick today, responds:
Okay, assuming the kind of setup that says, instead of launching the Iraq war, the Coalition decided to halt action and say “okay, no war. but we still want Saddam gone. How would you do it then, left-wing person?”

Here are some scratchy-type-top-of-head ideas for a plan.

(Note: I take it as written that the Iraqi people want a democracy, and are capable of democracy. A lot of people dispute this, particularly the second one. I also take as written that democracy, for all its flaws, is the best form of government in the world at present.)

(And note: you don’t need an identified alternative to know that alternatives have not even been explored.)

Strategy:

* chip away

It will take a long time to bring about change without massive destruction – probably decades. Accept this. Improvement for Iraqis will be incremental. Accept this too.

* legitimise and use the UN

The only way to create a justifiable intervention in Iraq is through the UN; flawed as it is, it is also the only way to provide some kind of legitimacy that will prevent actions creating international resentment down the line. All actions should be performed through this body.

* have Arab nations take the lead

The Arab nations aren’t that fond of Saddam. Use this. Have Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi take the lead in all dealings with Saddam. Do not give Saddam the option of calling it a culture war.
And don’t let the US get involved on any organisational level. They can contribute troops and suchlike, but they can’t be involved with policy or be seen to be leading negotiations. The history between Iraq and the US will not lend itself to negotiations.

* use Saddam’s ego to control him

Hussein is cornered and ready to fight. Every time the UN takes action, he should always be provided with an avenue of honorable retreat. Over many iterations, the cumulative effect will be large – his power base will erode, the sacrifices he must make can be made incrementally larger, other avenues will gradually present themselves. This is, of course, how most international politics is done, which makes the utter failure to deploy it against Iraq quite astonishing.

This will probably mean Saddam gets to be a hero, and his sons get to live in luxury. Let them.

* don’t make a big public issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Saddam has his reputation relying on his awesome military power. Getting into public games over what he has and what he wants is not going to lead to anything but a runaround. Keep the demand for inspections high on the agenda, but don’t make it a matter of public image. Progress was being consistently made on this issue.

* prepare a democracy-building plan

So when Saddam is gone, this is ready to take its place. Preferably it will start at the ground level, with elections held in each small region and each chunk of city. This will elect a congress that is actually seen as representative. Part of the problem in Iraq is that the new temporary government has never been accepted. Remember, in some areas Iraqis self-organised elections after Saddam was deposed – and these elections were forcibly shut down by the coalition.

* accept the fact that Iraq will have an Islamic presence in government

And so it should, it’s a democracy. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Islam can be quite progressive. It’s taking massive abuse of power to maintain the oppressive status quo in Iran, and in Iraq the citizens are used to freedom from the excesses of Sharia.

A continued UN presence to ensure Iraq doesn’t fall into fundamentalist hands, as happened in Iran in ’79, will also be necessary I think.

Tactics:

* abandon trade sanctions

This is a human rights imperative. The trade sanctions have to be ended. This is political capital, however. Iraq has always been able to buy itself out of trade sanctions with WMD co-operation, according to resolution 687 – but that’s apparently not going to happen, since the US scotched the deal in the mid-90s. Give them up for something else, but give them up, incrementally if possible.

* attack the regime apparatus at the ground level, starting small

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other organisations have been reporting on specific atrocities in Iraq for a long time. Low-level personnel who are responsible must be targetted whenever they can be identified. (Police officers and police chiefs, for example.)

The idea is to make a big issue about one event, make it a political problem for Iraq (which, remember, has been trying for years to present itself as a responsible player on the world stage.) Then do everything possible to get the regime to sacrifice the person targetted for criminal justice.

Every time this is done, congratulate Iraq and Saddam on its honorable behaviour as a modern state. Then do it again. Keep hitting at the low-level building blocks, and rewarding the people at the top of the chain. Alone, this tactic won’t change much, but as part of a suite of tactics, it should help destabilise the regime’s control structure and ability to project its domination down to those in the street.

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Ach. This is hard. I will return to these ideas some other time.

And I bet George Monbiot has written something cool on this, but my google-fu is not enough to find it.

I’m about to start the long-awaited account of our trip to Palestine.
And I need to set some stuff down first. So here it is.
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When I was showing Palestine photos to my workmates Teresa and Kerry, I realised how hard it was to talk about anything without massive digressions explaining where I’m coming from, and why I hold the perspective I do.
Here, then, in abbreviated form, are some points of reference to use when reading about Palestine.

Continue reading Palestine: My Points of Reference

So I’m reading this book on Eminem. It’s by Anthony Bozza, a Rolling Stone journo who’s covered him since he started to break, and its pretty much in that RS free-flowing journo style – not nearly confrontational/cutting edge like the mag supposedly was in its heyday, but solid, investigative, thoughtful.
I still don’t quite know where I’m at with Marshall Mathers and his music. I remember the strange feeling as music critic after music critic lined up with the teens of the world in hailing the coming of the Great White Rapper. I didn’t get it. His singles (especially ‘My Name Is’ with its numb hook that still sends me to sleep) didn’t turn me on, and the controversy over his content was nothing new in the hiphop lyric field; I had no incentive to look closer.
But he kept getting bigger and bigger.
I don’t class myself as a hiphop backpacker, but rap music holds a key place in my background. Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet in 1990 was my wake-up call to the world of music. I had coasted through the 80s without ever engaging in music on any level – nothing ever got to me, until this. (Honorable exception: Karma Chameleon, the only song from the 80s I remember enjoying in the 80s.) PE was astonishing. Finally, music I could get into!
Over the next few years I followed Matt, Nicky and Brad’s explorations into the music, and eventually started making my own. I fell pretty firmly into what Bozza calls the ‘College Rap’ crowd – Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Arrested Development.
I did enjoy the music of the aggressive, and rising, gangsta sound. The gangsta fantasy never really bothered me, except for its prevalence, and the suspicion that way too many people were taking it seriously as a bible for life.
The misogyny and homophobia were bigger deals, but still not dealbreakers. I needed to investigate and see how deep it ran, how serious the artist was, in order to figure out if I could back the music.
Course, I wouldn’t do any digging if the beats weren’t good. That’s why I didn’t care about Eminem for ages, and why I’m coming late to the party now – his recent single ‘Lose Yourself’ is outstanding in every way. And I still haven’t figured it out, but its a familiar process – trying to get to the meat of what’s going on with the image that’s presented.
Which leads back to the book. Here’s a quote from Bozza’s book, because it crystallises exactly the core of my reaction to the media storm over Eminem back when I hadn’t found any reason to care about him:
“When he did appear the problem for me was that he received all this analysis and psychoanalysis that black rappers never got. If you look at somebody like Tupac… when he was alive he was a ‘bad boy’, that’s all people thought of him. There was no effort in the media to deconstruct who he is or where he comes from. But as soon as Marshall Mathers appeared they all said ‘Oh, this troubled white youth. May we lay you down on the couch? What’s your problem?’ To me it really highlighted the issue that nobody gave a rat’s ass about why young black men felt like expressing themselves in this way, but as soon as a white guy did it then there was an effort to understand.”
The quote is actually from someone named Farai Chideya, a journo who runs Pop and Politics.
And I’m not going to follow this line of thought any further, because my dinner’s getting cold.

Back in University in the mid 90s, a large chunk of my social life was built around “the BBS”. It was a bulletin board system for Vic students (and ex-students), and it was a virtual hangout for an awful lot of cool and interesting folk. An important element that sets it apart from every other virtual community I’ve come across was the amount of crossover into real life – most people on it knew most other people on it in the real world and BBS parties were commonplace.
I loved the BBS. I met many wonderful people, had many preconceptions challenged, had my first and only “e-romance”, was introduced to The Onion, and learned lessons about online discourse that have served me well as the entire world has gone digital…
…but this isn’t a general nostalgia trip. This is about something specific.
Somewhere along the line, the BBS ended up celebrating Hug Day. This was basically an excuse for going around and hugging other BBS members in real life, because Hugs Are Good. Somehow or other I became the flagwaver for hug day in the BBS’s latter days (the BBS was shut down for good in 99 – or 2000? – a shadow of its former self due to member attrition and the rise of so many other avenues for online entertainment and community).
Anyway, today I’m thinking about hug day, and that excuses to hug other human beings are far too infrequent. So, promise me that today you’ll go out and hug someone you normally wouldn’t hug. Your excuse can be this: “I promised Morgan.”
And you wouldn’t want to let me down, would you?
(I can’t remember the time of year in which Hug Day fell – late in semester 1 I think. Doesn’t matter much. Every day is Hug Day!)

In my last post I wondered at the failure of the internet to stay on top of the prison story as compared to slow-coach television.
I neglected to mention that the first I saw of the prison story was in Idiot/Savant’s No Right Turn. So the internet won the race (like Vortox, the internet always wins) but Old Media won the, erm, the discus and the javelin and stuff.
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And the internet has provided my new favourite thing:
people who have had control devices implanted in their brains by the New World Order have set up an online questionnaire to be filled out by the perpetrators.
“While we all want the torture you are heaping on us to stop, at the same time, we would like to know something about you as well.”
(Found via the delightful Making Light, still essential reading for writers of all stripes.)