Month: September 2004

Tony Blair, right now, is cornered.
At the party conference he admitted the evidence of WMDs turned out to be wrong. He offered in his defence:
(a) “The rest of the international community also believed it” – well, that’s a surprise, considering they ‘believed’ it based on your dossier and political pressure from the US. In other words, this doesn’t absolve you – it’s another thing you must apologise for.
(b) “I believed it to be true.” Suuuuuure you did. Tony, we who opposed the war mostly thought you believed it. We were protesting because you were an idiot to believe it. It was a colossal failure of judgement. Sorry, mate.
(c) “I won’t apologise for removing Saddam.” That’s right. Because the entirety of the Iraq issue is WMDs and removing Saddam.
Tony never believed he was going to war for WMDs. He lied about that. Determinedly and baldly lied.
(That’s a fact, by the way. It came out in the Hutton report, waaaay back in January, that Downing Street had desperately sought to strengthen the dossier before its release. The process of logic leads from this fact inexorably and inevitably to the conclusion that the UK government were, contrary to their claims, not going to war on the basis of WMDs.
I wrote about this back then, and I still haven’t seen it mentioned by anyone but me. The content of the report was of course buried under the spin it got on the left and right in the UK and the US.)
We who opposed the war – also known as “the side that has been proved right”, you’ll note – had doubts about the WMD intelligence from the start. This led us to to look for the real reason for war. Well, we were right about that as well.
Tony Blair lied to the UK and led this country into the current disaster in Iraq, not to mention adding inestimably to the diplomatic legitimacy of George Bush’s squalid little junta. Now he’s dissembling and waffling and hiding and confounding and doing everything he possibly can to avoid dealing with what he did.
He’s stuck in a corner, slowly and carefully performing a PR-structured focus-grouped media-tested step-by-step U-turn, on a schedule that will get him out of this whole situation in time for a general election next year.
In his situation, he has to lie. If he’s honest about Iraq, his whole presidency – whoops! I mean prime ministership – comes crashing down around his ears.
But that’s what he deserves: to fall from grace, spectacularly, hugely, humiliatingly, with all his self-delusions laid bare.
He doesn’t deserve his position as Prime Minister. He has failed the people of the United Kingdom. Worse than that, he has betrayed them.
I have no sympathy for him. I hope the horrible stress he is under now tears his soul apart.
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Of course, he’s going to get re-elected. There is no credible alternative.
That’s the saddest thing of all.

I was going to have a big rant about Tony Blair. I had it all boiling up in my head and everything. Then I was gonna post about the lovely Ken Loach film Ae Fond Kiss that we just saw. But I’m not gonna post on either topic, because it’s even later than it was when I posted that other post just behind this one.
Instead I’m gonna say, go check out Steven Grant’s column ‘Permanent Damage’, a weekly feature on Comic Book Resources and pretty much the best comics-related column you’ll probably ever read. He’s particularly good on the business of the comics industry, on US television, and on being utterly scathing and insightful about politics in the US in general and the reign of President Hand Puppet in particular. But just read it to ratchet up your coolness factor – after all, comics are the in thing right now, the New York Times has said so – if you can’t namecheck Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Joe Sacco and above all Art Spiegelman then you aren’t fit to be hip.
Fellow additivericher Pearce, of course, has chosen exactly this moment to denounce comics. Is he way ahead of the curve? Or way behind it? You decide…
Anyway, Steven Grant. If you check out this week’s entry and look reeeeal hard, you’ll even find an unbilled cameo appearance by me. His response makes it all worthwhile. Hee hee hee.
Hmm, didn’t I used to post serious, considered discussions of political issues on this blog once?
I really must go to bed.

A comment by the lovely el Rache has prompted me to get off my rear and update my site template. So, a wee tour:
To your right: a recent comments list! (Soon to be populated by the charming bob@y4h00.com offering exciting online gambling opportunities!)
Also to your right: some changes to the links list.
(a) Mike Sands is newly blogging, apparently about games
(b) whereas Stephen has been blogging for a rather long time about all sorts of stuff – he’s the only person linked to here I don’t know in the flesh, but I have it on very good authority that he’s a top bloke
(c) in a fit of silliness I changed the name of the link to Matt Mansell & family’s blogsite, and it seems kinda wrong now, but I can’t be bothered changing it again and rebuilding, sorry Matt I love ya but it’s past midnight on a school night
(d) the ever-insightful Rafah Kid Radio has stopped broadcasting BUT it has been replaced by the bigger, brighter and bluer…
(e) Rafah Pundit (linked to down in the increasingly-inappropriately titled “wombling free” section.) One stop for a whole lot of comment and insight on lotsa stuff but particularly on Rafah in Palestine. You’ll see stuff here you won’t see anywhere else. Highly recommended.
Um, that’s all.

Some comments on Robin D. Laws’ livejournal have started fuzzing up my brain.
The US has an electoral college system, wherein each state can cast a certain number of votes in the Presidential election, from 3 to 20-something (I think). However, each state is run as a mini-election – and in almost all states, the winner in the state election gets all the state’s votes in the overall election. That is, it isn’t proportional. If a state has 10 votes, and candidate A wins the election 51% to 49%, all 10 votes go to candidate A.
Now this seems absurd and archaic to me.
However, LJ user jbru then said:
“The electoral college, however, is a mechanism by which the individual voter has a greater say in the outcome of the election. See http://www.avagara.com/e_c/reference/00012001.htm”
Now I’m not sure. Its one of those things where I think I understand the nuances – but I’m not 100% sure I do. Is it in fact the case that when I vote, I want the outcome to be determined by the majority of my fellow voters? Or do I want a system that makes each individual vote more powerful (i.e. more likely to swing an election)?
If anyone’s still reading you’re clearly interested in either logic puzzles or politics or both. So go read the links, both of them. If you’re feeling really motivated you can check the logic of my posts there…

Today’s Ron the Body instalment: Cass and Ron are finally hanging out together in the relationship that will define the book. And its happening beautifully. The dialogue between them flowed sweeter than between any characters I’ve written since In Move. And those characters ended up so completely true in my head they’re like parts of me.
If this is a sign of the way things are going in Ron, then I am more confident than ever that this will be The Book.
(Of course, tomorrow I’ll probably stall in mid-scene and choke and die and feel blackly despondent in that special melodramatic way we writers have.)
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I’ve been going to a lot of parties lately. Morag’n’Bex’s flatwarming, Cat’s flatwarming, George’s farewelling, and the hello and goodbye events marking Kathleen’s brief return to this country to re-enrol at Edin Uni. Now she’s back on the anthropology beat in Syria, in sunny Damascus, just in time for Israel to carbomb a Hamas leader there! Hurrah the Middle East. Lordy. Hmm. How did I get from parties to assassination in one simple paragraph? Life is incredibly strange sometimes. The parties were great!
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I have a large backlog of email. Mum, I did get your message about Tongan Ninja. I am surprised you watched Tongan Ninja. But, yay! Now I want to see the documentary…

In the wake of The Office we’ve had such gems as Peep Show, Jam, Nighty Night, The Smoking Room, and my new favourite funnylaughmakingshow Green Wing. The pendulum is swinging back from the States for the first time since the 80s.
These shows are all of a similar mindset – edgey, absurdist, misanthropic, deadpan. It is a new wave, as solid as anything the UK has ever done. They are on the same radar as Fawlty Towers, as Monty Python, as the Goons.
It is a new bright time for comedy, and like any time for comedy, it won’t last. They belong unquestionably to right now.
It’s finally starting to feel like my generation is taking control.

Thing Number One: the other night I watched Charlton Heston read the lyrics to Body Count’s Cop Killer. (Sorry, Pearce, I didn’t record it.) Cross that one off the ‘to do’ list then.
Thing Number Two: This dude in NYC made a store/cafe/thing. “affordable art + shoestring media + zines & comics + obscure bands…..open wednesday through sunday……..noon till dark”
Wellington should have one of these. He goes through the whole process of how he made it happen and its interesting reading. Wellington people – take note. Spread this url around. Maybe someone will take a hint…

Like Chuck, Bradles has suggested to me that I might write a bit about the proposed motorway extension (the “bypass”) in my homebase of Wellington, in the context of the upcoming local body election there.
There’s a website called Heartbeat that looks at the election with a bypass focus. If you’re in Welly, check it out.
I’m heartily opposed to the bypass. There are so many reasons why I almost don’t know where to start.
I think the biggest thing that gets me is the blindness evident in those demanding such a massive change to the city’s infrastructure. To the bypass backers, the only choice is between a Wellington that is backward, clogged and inefficient, and a Wellington that is forward-thinking, free-flowing and efficient.
They seem blind to the fact that a more fundamental choice is embodied in the bypass project – a choice between one kind of Wellington and another.
In my head, from a distance, I understand Wellington in terms of its three streets – Lambton Quay, Courtenay Place, and Cuba Street. They all reach out (more or less) from a central core in Manners Mall. They embody three different aspects of Wellington.
Lambton Quay is the seat of the city’s productivity, its economic strength, its political significance. It is, if you’ll indulge a clumsy metaphor, the city’s mind.
Courtenay Place is the seat of the city’s nightlife, its theatres, its nighttime. It is the city’s body.
Cuba Street is the seat of the city’s creative energy, its endless innovation, its diversity. It is the city’s soul.
Wellington is a city with a rare balance, and of a size where that balance is felt. It is a city where that balance is embedded in the streets themselves – these are concrete symbols of what Wellington is. It is the balance that makes Wellingtonians feel at home.
The bypass will impact on Cuba Street. It will carve a symbolic wall through Cuba Street itself and cut it off from the extensions of the Cuba-Street-idea – places like Aro Valley, Brooklyn. It will have a huge effect on the city.
Now, I’m not saying that the bypass will definitely change everything or will definitely be the tipping point. There’s no way for us to know that. But it will cause significant change, of that we can be certain. If it comes to pass, Wellington will not feel the same. The balance will be shifted. If worst comes to worst, the balance will be completely upset.
This is, in itself, a huge and important reason to oppose the bypass.
But that’s not the reason I’m getting at here.
The reason you should vote anti-bypass councillors is this: those who support the bypass don’t understand any of what I’ve said above.
It isn’t even that they do understand but think differently. They simply don’t get it.
A city is more than its component parts. A city is also the relationship between everything within it. It is the ideas we hold about it. It is the way we move through it. It is the way we see it when we are part of it. It is the way we remember it when we are on the far side of the globe. A city is a network of ideas, it is an impossibly complex system, it is a bubble always, always bursting.
A city is more than its component parts. This is hard fact. This is how our brains work. This is how we see and believe and know the world. Things connect. This is what it is to be a human being.
Any person who cannot understand that a city is an idea more than a place should not be trusted with its care. Those who support the bypass fail to understand this. Do not support them.
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And on a less cod-lyrical note, what the hell is it with that stupid pro-bypass argument that it will save thousands of work hours each year or whatever, by making sure workers get into work a few minutes earlier each day?
This is *absurd*. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in the whole bypass argument. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Workers who get in a few minutes earlier are gonna spend a few more minutes checking email, having a coffee, going out for lunch, and leaving a few minutes earlier to boot. I mean, hello? Human beings, remember?

I got an email today from Paradise net, who have been happily sponsoring my Apocalypse website, free, since early 1999. They’ve decided they don’t want to sponsor me anymore and it goes to a pay programme now.
Oh well. The original agreement was for one year. So I got four bonus years. Nothing to complain about there, really.
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In other news, Flight canceled after passenger discovers Arabic-style handwriting in magazine.

I’m gonna post verbatim my contributions to a big thread on RPGnet. Its on a registered-folk only section of the board so I won’t link to it. Its fairly long, but I would really appreciate feedback.
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(post #1)
On Saturday afternoons I run a roleplaying club that is focused on recruitment (lately we’ve been creating 2 new gamers every week, which is pretty damn snazzy).
We meet in a cafe seating area that is located in an internet barn – so there’s an island of cafe-style tables, where we hang out mixed in with random cafe people, and surrounding the tables are rows and rows of computers offering internet access. (It’s an easyInternet, for those what know the brand.)
So Saturday I was co-GMing with a guy who was running his first game (which he was doing only a month after trying RPGs for the first time) – a fun Mutants and Masterminds thing he’d come up with. As he was doing okay, my mind wandered a little and I glanced over the back of the section wall at a row of computers.
There was this guy there, who looked to be in his early 30s, and he was gazing at and writing messages in a chatroom that was bannered ‘juniorteenschatsite’ or something.
It was obvious the site was Not For Him.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t, in the end, do anything. To be quite honest, I forgot about him when the 14-year-old-newbie-filled game needed my guidance – he was gone by the time I thought of him again, which was at least an hour later.
I’m thinking back on it now, and wondering if I should have done something, and if so, what?
Erg. *shudder*

Continue reading My Ethical Dilemma – Advice Needed!