I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes.
I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over.
I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong.
And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions.
I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely.
It's what we do.
Having just posted Suzi Pinns, from 1978's "Jubilee", (yes, I know... Queen Elizabeth II's silver jubilee was in 1977, the film arrived a little late).... it brought me to thinking of other women in the punk era. And to Nina Hagen. Nina was born in the same year as Ms.Pinns, 1955, but in East Germany.
By the time she was nine she was considered an opera prodigy, she was expelled from the Free German Youth group at the age of twelve, left school and joined a band at sixteen, went to stage school, formed a band... 'allowed' to leave East Germany in 1976, she was listening to punk music in Hamburg, travelled to London, mixed with the Sex Pistols, The Slits, and othercentral figures of the punk movement. (I got all that from Wikipedia)... I first heard her when Icelandic punk friends played her records to me. (disclaimer: I was NEVER a punk.)
I did, however, have a couple of her albums, on tape, which I'd listen to whilst working.
I'm sure she's absolutely deranged, but hey! she makes me laugh.
Quote: "I can't sing gospel, I'm a white chick"
Ha! makes Debbie Harry look like Goody Twoshoes!. Mind you, this is her being the very model of genteel restraint.
Here she is being a bit more herself.....
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.
Suzi Pinns was the character Amyl Nitrate in the film, she was not really called Suzi Pinns, she was called Jordan, well, that was her assumed punk-name, when she worked in Vivienne Westwood's King's Road boutique, of course, Jordan wasn't really her name either.
Her real name was Pamela Rooke.
She sang with Adam and the Ants (who were also in Jubilee) and managed them for a while. Was stripped on stage by the Sex Pistols....
The Interweb tells me she now works as a veterinary nurse and breeds Burmese cats.
The picture to go with this is one I have not yet taken. Today's thoughts are about signs. Those with an unintended duality. I've been suffering from a lack of wind. In my tyre. It keeps, unpredictably, deflating. A week or so ago, I had it fixed. Or so the man said when he took my money. Days can go by when it's perfectly okay, then another day, I'll come out of work and find the tyre almost flat. So I keep pumping it back up. (I'm going to buy a new one, and fixing man was twenty miles away, so going back and arguing involves a forty mile round trip and fuel etc.) So. I stop off, buy some diesel, head over to the air pump "Digital Tyre Inflator" it says. Damn. How will I know if my tyres are digital ones? can you fill analogue tyres with digital air? I mean, analogue air is obviously all fluffy-shaped and nebulous. digital air is bound to be pixellated, all square cornered, little blocks of it. It's the corners on those discrete units of air that worry me, because they could cause damage to the inside of a tyre designed for analogue air. Hm. The tyre has a note telling you how many square inches of pressure it can take. Digital air would be cubes, but..... I think digital tyres probably have a kevlar liner.
This week, I've been travelling to a different work site than my normal one. I pass a discount climbing/hiking goods store which has a sign proclaiming "free undercover customer parking".... I look around. Spy vs spy. I'm looking for those furtive folk, collars turned up, hats pulled down, dark glasses, skulking from shadow to shadow, the undercover customers. When I see a sign that says "wet paint" I wonder whether I should pee on it or go find a bucket of water.
And then there are those cringeing doors you see all over the place, those doors who quiver, and let out panic stricken shrieks. We've all seen them, they have a sign. "This Door is Alarmed"
He obviously scrutineers the supermarket for bizarrities much as I do, top marks for observation, Sir.
This stuff obviously belongs on the inorganic aisle. For those of you who remember little or no chemistry or food-science, the sugar we use on our tables is mostly sucrose, C12H22O11 The C stands for Carbon, H for Hydrogen, O for Oxygen, so, a molecule of twelve parts Carbon, 22 parts Hydrogen, and 11 parts Oxygen is table sugar.
Take away the Carbon, and you have 22Hydrogen, and 11 oxygen, which, if they combined together without Carbon, would give you eleven molecules of H2O. Rather better known as water.
Glucose is C6H12O6. Sugars are CARBO-hydrates. Sugar minus carbon is water. Not Sugar.
Oh, for sure, I know that they don't really mean that the product does not CONTAIN carbon. But their marketing and display people obviously have not thought this through. Furthermore, the debate it is really aimed at, global warming, is about carbon DIOXIDE emissions, not carbon per se. According to my recall, uncertain though it may be, the total amount of carbon, the number of atoms of the element carbon, on this planet can neither be increased or reduced. They can combine together in different ways, and exist in different states and allotropes, but all the carbon there ever was or ever will be, remains the same. Where it endangers us is when it is combined with oxygen, and increases the amount of carbon dioxide in our planet's atmosphere, it causes more solar energy to be trapped, causing our planet to become slightly warmer. And just a few degrees can have dramatic damaging long-term impact.
The company's rationale for the carbon free claim is that they're burning no fossil fuels, i.e. oil or coal, to power their processes, they burn recycled wood and sugar cane, which merely releases the same amount of CO2 that was absorbed in those materials as they grew. Not a zero-carbon process, as for instance hydro-electric, solar, or windpower might be, but carbon-neutral. I notice on the company's website, tractors are shown. I trust they and the truckfleet that the plant requires to distribute and grow the product, as well as the trucks bringing in urban waste wood to feed the power plant are running on bioethanol, made from sugar, and not diesel.
In all fairness, the plant looks a model of green efficiency, and far better than most other north american industries in clean energy use. But it's still stupid to stick a "Carbon free" label on a product that by definition is 25% carbon.
note: whilst checking my facts, rather than trusting to the rather spongy mass I call my memory, I discovered that sugar in the U.S. is significantly more expensive than in the rest of the world, due to trade and import restrictions intended to support the home-grown industry, with a result being that sugar substitutes such as sacharrine and aspartame are far more widely used, as also are corn syrup and other inferior substitutes. I'd assumed the artificial sweetener industry was strong because of the dietary concerns, but it seems not.
"Wanted- Vacuum. desperatly needing a vacuum just had carpets fitted and my vac has broken thank you"
Thus ran the ad in freecycle.. Freecycle, if you've never met it, is like a sort of Craigslist for people who want to give things away and recycle by re-using rather than dumping them. (Oh. Yes, just as in Craigslist, spelling and grammatical correctness are optional on freecycle.) I signed up for it, but so far things I've put on there have failed to go. Nobody, NOBODY, wanted five steel landrover discovery wheels with part-worn, road-legal tyres on them. Except my pal Ken, who said "why didn't you tell me you'd got a spare set, just what I've been needing". Ken's not on Freecycle. Those things I've seen, and thought OOOOH! I want that!" like the complete sauna cubicle, or the sony vaio laptop which needs a new battery, oh no. Even if I put in my request seconds after the alert pops up, I never get it. After you've given a certain number of items away, and proved your green credentials, you're allowed to post a few wanted ads. Very few. This one caught my eye. I've often mused about vacuums. So this person wants a vacuum. They're hard to come by. I had a thermos flask, with a vacuum in it once, but I dropped it, and when I unscrewed the bottom, I found a lot of bits of silvery glass, but the vacuum had fled. (like an elusive genie). I had a pugmill, with a vacuum pump, but, the moment you turned the pump off, there'd be a faint sucking hiss, and the needle on the gauge would return to 1 atmosphere. plus or minus a few millibars. Damn that vacuum. The problem is, nature abhors a vacuum. You can buy a fresh thermos, but you have to take it on trust that it does really have a vacuum in it, because, if you try and open it to take a look.... pffft! gone. So my experience with the elusiveness of vacuums leaves me bewildered by the number of vacuum cleaners out there, if nature abhors a vacuum, then ten thousand times more abhorred is a DIRTY vacuum.
Stop Press... updated. Our freecycler received a "Dyson Vacumn" in response to her plea. Next request "A dictionary"? Stop Press again: - "Hi everyone, I am in desparate need of a vacum cleaner any type will do as long as it is powerful, so it can pick up all my cat's hairs he is malting ."
Both scienceblogs and boingboing focus on the idea of cross contamination, that your organo-bread might get a crumb or a smidge of nasty pesticide-bread on it, and how laughably low on the scale of things in our everyday lives that can harm us that would be.
I'm not debating any of that. The thing that annoys me is the misuse of the word 'organic', If I'm in the aisle which promotes 'organic"'vegetables, I'm tempted to grab a store employee and ask"Where are the the "inorganic" vegetables?" Because, in fact, all vegetables and fruits are organic. All living things are, by definition 'Organic'.
In terms of chemistry, inorganic refers to substances which do not contain carbon. Life forms, animal, or vegetable, in our world are all carbon-based, and therefore 'organic'.
So, what is 'conventional' bread made from? Silica sand and iron oxide? I think not.
Yes, I know what the 'organic' lobby mean by it. But why not coin a term that fits, rather than misuse an existing word?
In the same article, by Cory Doctorow, one of the commenters uses another stupid term. Baristas. Who coined that stupid term for people who serve coffee?
That bloke with the leather jacket got me to thinking, as I so often do, about attached meaning, about nuance, about semiotics, which led me to leave a comment, full of Steppenwolf, on his blog, because, leather jackets got me to thinking about the whole biker freedom mythology, as epitomised by Easy-Rider, (no, no web2 hyperlink, use google if you've no idea what easy rider is, or where steppenwolf come or comes into the story) and not Herman Hesse, that's another wolf of the steppes, but about freedom all the same... Then I got to thinking about songs in the genre of "Born to be Wild", which led me to thinking of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run", which is definitely kin to Born to be Wild, though it's not so much about bike culture as cars, chrome wheel, fuel injected and steppin' out over the line, so I had a listen to Bruce, who I think is a great American chronicler, his songs are stories and poems, histories and dreams, a bard for the common man, I think it's a sad thing these days that people like him play to vast arenas, rather than smaller, more interactive places, theatres, clubs, college dining halls.... When I was a teenager/young adult, the music venue in my town was the University's refectory, a stage at the end of a hall where by day, hundreds ate lunch. It was big enough, in its time, for the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and many others. The Who's (possibly) greatest album, "Live at Leeds" was recorded there. If you were there, you were THERE!, oh yes, with a pint glass of beer in your hand, in a room of smoke and sweat and music.Now, if you get a ticket to see a band, chances are you'll be in the seven thousandth row back, the band are ant-like specks in the far distance, and the music you hear is rebroadcast to speakers a quarter of a mile from the stage, you're watching action on a giant screen, why not stay at home and watch on TV? After all, you paid a kings ransom, and you're barely in the same county as the band. Whereas in the seventies, you could work your way, beer in hand, to the front, no security guards barring your way. I recall, I'd had an empty glass, for a while, but was loath to miss the music, it was, I think, Jethro Tull that night... there was a stack of crates on stage by the amps, and whilst the singer was in a solo, the bassist was popping bottle caps for himself and the drummer, caught my eye and chucked me a couple of bottles, with a grin. Wouldn't get that with stadium rock.
Just north of here, a couple of miles, it's festival time, at Bramham Park. Leedsfest Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs, and umpty-seven other bands.
Anyway, after all that... The Music. The leather jacket brings me to a motorbike song, which I've posted before, in a different recording, I know, here's Richard Thompson.........
It always sounds, to me, a non musician, that he manages to get two guitarists worth of sound out of one guitar...
Download RingtoneSend “White dress” Ringtone to Your CellDownload Ringtone
Feel how the wind blows, december despair, Bring me a ribbon to tie up my hair, I'll be your bride, go where you go, All of my life, you'll be my beau.
Chorus Kiss me and I might Put on a white dress, If you'll take me dancing tonight. The night's in your face, sky's in your eyes, The day's in my arms when you're by my side, Whenever you're weary I'll sing you a song, Whenever you're lonely I'll show you you're wrong.
(chorus)
Come from the window, let's climb the stairs, All of my sorrows are none of your cares; While life is in us, let's love all we can. I'll be your women, you'll be my man.
(chorus)
The White Dress, from the Fairport Convention album, Rising For The Moon. (1975). The song was written by Dave Swarbrick. The woman singing is Sandy Denny, who, sadly, died after a fall down stairs a in 1978. I saw her on a number of occasions, both with Fairport Convention and with her own band.
Sandy Denny masterclass trivia information. She was the only singer to guest with Led Zeppelin, singing on Led Zeppelin IV, -on The Battle of Evermore
If you wish to know more, there's google, I was just listening to music, thought I'd share.
became, in a few years, a loud one like this.
