Quarantine

Thanks to Inventor Spot for the image

It seems to have been a week of censorship related incidents. I was on CiF the other day and became increasingly enraged - whilst reading an article about school selection - by a commenter who goes by the name of CharleySays. This guy really is an offensive little toad; racist, snobbish and misogynistic, and he seems to pop up below the line on every article on the bloody website. Just the kind of person you would not want to have living anywhere near you. Anyway, he was saying that he would not wish his kids to attend a school where there were 'immigrants or rude and unruly' pupils. His initial comment was modded and removed, but quite a few others had already copied the offending words (which offence seemed to be caused by the 'immigrant' part) and - pasting them into their own responses - were calling him out. Many, including me, did not agree with the removal of the comment, because you don't fight this kind of mindless prejudice by shutting it up. A light has to be shone onto it.

And then, one of my emails to a friend from my work address was quarantined. I was explaining why I had introduced comment moderation on this blog (it was purely to fight spam, I assure you - I have recently fallen victim to some annoying ad spam in the comments section of really ancient posts, and it was beginning to piss me off) and told him why I had done it, saying something along the lines of:

'I'm getting a lot of ads about penis extension, free software... the usual stuff...'

And this was enough (I presume 'penis extension' was what did it in this case) for the net police at my office to consider the email offensive - though they did say the administrators had not received a copy of it. I only wish they had, so that I could have discussed with them the merits or otherwise of such actions. I was forced to re-write the message in order to get it through. I ask you! Anyway, in case you're interested, I have removed the moderation from here now. I screwed up somewhere and appeared to have blocked any commenting whatsoever. God knows there's little enough interaction on here or in the world in general.

Finally, I read recently on Metafilter about a list of the 25 most shocking films ever. Needless to say, the original post was snarked to death, but the stuff below this line - in contrast to a good deal of that on CiF - was as always very interesting, and I heard about a film - called A Serbian Film - which was described as truly (and I mean truly) shocking.

Of course, I pride myself on being able to watch pretty much anything, and would hesitate to censor almost any content ('almost' is a key word of course. There have to be lines, and for me they centre around exploitation, although thinking about this is a little more complex, and probably requires a post all of its own) so I read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia. Indeed it is shocking, as I'm sure you will agree if you read that Wikipedia link, but still I had not had enough, so I managed to find some streams of the film in sections and watched up to about 45 minutes in. When I had to switch off, vowing never to go there again. In actual fact, despite reading the director's apology, I could see little if any artistic merit in it. I disagree with some of the reviews I have read, praising the good acting performances, although I do think that the production values are surprisingly high. But this is really not enough.

Happy Blog day!

It is one year since I started this whole blogging thing. Originally, my main focus was on football, Man City and Sven-Göran Eriksson, and it's been quite a year for him as well as for me, though I have drifted away slightly from the beautiful game in my musings, and he has ended up (again) several million pounds richer and living in Mexico. Somewhat different paths, but there you go.

In every close season I start feeling a bit fed up with football, and this year it's worse than ever because it really does seem as if what little heart and soul left in the game has evaporated. Every other story seems to be about who's buying out which club, which massively overpaid 'star' is moving to or from Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, whatever, and what the players' female companions (I refuse to use the term'WAG' on principle) are wearing, buying, selling...

As for City, I'm not, and - ahem - have never been, happy about Shinawatra being in charge of the team, and in common with Simon Hattenstone, am pondering a divorce from the club. It's very hard to tear oneself away even so, and I know that I will still be watching the results at a quarter to five on a Saturday afternoon. That's if any games are going to actually kick off at 3.00 on a Saturday in future. Despite protests from some critics I will probably post more about footy. So there!

I have been asked 'How do you find the time?' To which I can only shrug and say that I make the time. Sometimes a subject burns with me, so that I feel compelled to write about it, others I write when I'm in the mood, building up a post over time and scheduling publication for later.

But perhaps more interestingly, I have been asked 'Why do you do it?'

And why do I do it indeed? When I started, I had been reading some forums for a while, mostly Metafilter and Comment Is Free, and was really taken by the way that a discussion could develop with the participation of the readers, becoming something quite different to what it had originally been. I think -dredging up stuff from my college days - that it's called intertextuality. Most tellingly in this vein has been the development of Seth Freedman's views on the Israel/Palestine conflict. It is worth spending some time (if you have any) reading about this, I think. So, where MeFi often made me laugh, CiF often made me angry, and I joined both in order to be able to express my opinions. It seemed a logical step after that to set up a forum of my own. Of course, Blogger being a free service, and a couple of clicks away, certainly helped.

I have always wanted to be a writer (though I'm under no illusions as to my abilities) and a year or so ago, on the back of a redundancy and an uncertain personal future, vaguely thought that I might be able to make a living out of internet publishing someday. Now, a year on, I'm under no illusions on that score either. It doesn't look like I'll be pulling a Kottke-esque blog wage anytime soon. But it doesn't matter. Blogging has given me the opportunity to tell a small but loyal audience how I'm feeling, what's been going on in my life, and I hope raise the occasional smile or provoke the occasional thought. The best thing about it has been the (admittedly rare) occasions when two friends who don't know each other have started a discussion in the comments section, and I have become a bystander in my own blog. That there is one commenter who is able to hold a (usually surreal) conversation with himself is neither here nor there, but it certainly brings a smile to my face when I read his comments.

Just a few stats to finish. I have posted 146 times in this past year, with November 07 the month with the most posts (22).

The most commented on post was entitled Easter My Worries from the 21st of March this year with 27 comments made. After 'football' (50 tags) and 'city' (45 tags) the highest tag is 'politics' with 25. My favourite post is entitled Faith Hope & Charity, published in November 07. The biggest disappointment is always when I put in a deal of effort to build a detailed post and am confronted with tumbleweed blowing across a dusty plain, or worse, people don't bother to click on the hyperlinks. When that happens, I try to think about how often I actually read 'non professional' blogs myself and then carry on.

I hope you've enjoyed it, at least some of the time, as much as I have. I aim to carry on for a while. When I (finally) reach 5,000 hits I know that I'll be thinking about hitting 10,000.

Bono bo boss

I have just read the latest article by George Monbiot, which outlines his action in attempting to perform a citizen's arrest on John Bolton at the Hay Festival. More power to his elbow, I say, and it's just a shame that he didn't succeed, though I am amazed that there are some people out there still attempting to justify the invasion of Iraq.

However, the serious political issues aside, my attention was grabbed by GM's reference to gorillas in the piece. I read the article in hard copy last night and have been haunted by the phrase till now, which is the first opportunity I have had to go online and read the comments posted by the loonies on CiF. These are his words:

"I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent..."

It comes hard on the heels of watching Escape From The Planet of The Apes the other day, which is a mildly absorbing and mildly amusing movie. A bit too clunky perhaps in its attempts to raise social issues. You will be familiar with it, I'm sure, or at least familiar with the whole POTA schtick, as I thought I was. I had always thought that the story went like this:

In a future Earth, due to some catastrophic nuclear event caused by humans, apes will have become the dominant species (or would that be race?) and us people have become subjugated to their will and hunted like animals. What I have discovered (from Wikipedia) is that the story was originally a novel written by a Frenchman called Pierre Boulle. What really happened was:

"In the distant past, the planet was ruled by human beings, who built a technological society, and enslaved apes to perform their manual labour. Over time the humans became more and more dependent upon the apes, until eventually they became so lazy and degenerate that they were overthrown by their ape servants and fell into the primitive state..."

(From the Wikipedia link highlighted above)

The problems obviously start with the premise that the most belligerent group on this hellish future world are the gorillas, while the chimps are the gentler, more cerebral ones. Orangs (in the films at least) are cast as spiritual guides, holders of the sacred word, etc. This is clearly not correct, as anyone who has watched either (or especially both) of the David Attenborough programmes on gorillas or chimps will concur. Chimps (and to a certain extent bonobos, though there is some debate as to whether the influence of humans, direct or otherwise, is causing a shift in bonobo behaviour, making them more aggressive. Which could be a possible explanation for the total shift in ape behaviour in the POTA) are immeasurably more violent than gorillas, who are, as someone on the CiF board pointed out, peace-loving vegans. They go on to point out that the gorillas GM refers to are actually serving the top chimp - GW Bush - but my issue is with the whole idea of gorillas being misrepresented. This is, I suspect, partly the result of ignorance, in that M Boulle wrote his novel in 1963 and detailed knowledge of wild ape behaviour would not have been available at that time. We all, even the esteemed Mr Monbiot, carry the stereotype of the 'big gorilla' as a terrifying monster. But more than this, I believe there is a strong whiff of racism in the classification.

Anyway, 'two of the biggest gorillas [he had] ever seen' is surely a wild exaggeration? Has he never watched King Kong?