Intermission

I'm going to be taking a short break from blogging for a while, I have come to the conclusion that I have too much else on at the moment and need to focus on that for a few days. Booming Back will return on February 15th for its 4th birthday.

Huzzah!

Here come the knives

Waterford ensemble Fighting Spiders have emerged from the studio with an album of rather tasty tracks. While 'Tarantism' should be released later this year, the first single 'here come the knives' has already been used by the RTE Storyland horror series 'Maraia' as its theme music.

I've seen 'Fighting Spiders' a few times live now, and their energy on stage never fails to impress. I also got a sneak preview of the album late last year and they certainly have a wealth of stand out tracks to choose from come singles time; 'here come the knives' is an excellent debut choice and a great introduction to their sound.

Its available for download from the 29th January for the princely sum of 99 cents at downloadmusic.ie.

The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles

I am now about 20 hours into a 48 hour visit to my family home, which will possibly be the longest continuous period spent in my house since I was twenty. So far I have not killed anyone, which is a good thing. Still, 28 hours to go and the night, as they say, is still young.

Normally when I am here it is because I am looking after one or other of my grandparents in shifts with other family members; I will do the day shift and someone else does the night shift, and thus I get to return home to the warmth and comfort of my own bed each night. Now however it is just me for the weekend and the creepy factor of being in your childhood home that has had no trace of your own presence for eighteen years since your sister decided she wanted your room after you moved out, threw out everything in it and repainted its amazing burgundy walls because they scared her, is really starting to kick in.

But I'm not bitter.

The other weirdness involves watching television with my grandparents. As I have mentioned before my Grandfather has a predilection for watching programs that will annoy him, just to raise his blood pressure and give the rest of us a wee shock. Thus when he announced his intention to spend the evening watching "that hateful, spiteful appalling little man" I braced myself for a night of either Ryan Tubridy or Glenn Beck. Unfortunately for me he was referring to both.

The Late Late Show (the Irish one, not to be confused with any American equivalent that actually has a host with some semblance of charisma, guests that have evolved beyond the intellectual level of bread mold, and an audience whose recent ancestors did not include farm animals*) is an institution that, like anarcho-capitalism, Hanna Montana or Kazakhstan, I am aware of in that I know it exists, but could not actually identify it in a police line-up. It is an experience like tripe, tongue or kidneys that others seem very partial to but when I encounter it sitting on my plate I can't help but retch. I am thankful, rather surprisingly, for last night's experience, for I did not think it possible that any RTE presenter could annoy me more than Pat Kenny, in fact, I did not think it possible that there was anyone more smug, condescending and annoying than Pat Kenny, but I was wrong. Ryan Tubridy is the Black Swan of RTE's 'I can't believe that he has no personality' personalities, and he has changed my understanding of just how awful a presenter can be, forever.

But he is still light years away in awfulness from the other "hateful, spiteful appalling little man", as my Grandfather so eloquently labels him. In the five minutes of watching Glenn Beck during the ad breaks of "The Late Late Show" I learned the following things:

a) Hitler and Stalin were best buds
b) Hitler was actually a far-left liberal, which is why Stalin loved him so much
c) George Bernaaaaaarhd Shaw (said in a pirate accent) was English
d) George Bernaaaaaarhd Shaw won a Nobel Prize because, like all Nobel Prize winners, he was evil
e) Hitler got the idea for the Holocaust from George Bernaaaaaarhd Shaw
f) Obama will create death camps and kill millions of Americans because he is a Nazi and a Socialist and a Nobel Prize winner.

While there was no word on whether any of Obama's works will inspire a Broadway musical and movie starring Rex Harrison, I can certainly see Julie Andrews rocking out "Yes We Can" in a Cockney accent.

Sometimes I think that I live in a parallel universe to the rest of the folks around me, and after a night watching spiteful hateful little men I'm glad that I do. My world might not be as day-glow or hexaped-filled as that of the Na'vi, but its still a pretty nice place to live, with nice friendly people (you know, real Pandorans) and in my world right is right and left is left and we've absolutely, positively, really and truly always been at war with Eastasia.

Always.

* In the interest of full disclosure it must be pointed out that once upon a time I too was a member of The Late Late Show audience. The year was 1994 and a group of us in college went in an ironic way. And by ironic I mean there was drink and/or the prospect of drink involved. Gay Byrne was still host and the guests included The Kelly Family. More than once during the three hour long ordeal I too wished I was an angel.

The Value of Nothing

I'm currently reading "The Value of Nothing" by Raj Patel, and although I'm only half way through I thought I would give it and its writer a little plug this morning.

2007's "Stuffed and Starved" was one of my top reads of the year, and a perfect compliment to Michael Pollan's "Omnivores Dilemma", in that while Pollan concentrated on an Amero-centric examination of the origins of the food he himself ate, Patel's work delved into the multinational food industry and global food trade and the consequences of cheap western food for marginalized food producers in the majority world. It was a very well researched alter-globalisation take on the real cost of food, and I loved it.

"Value of Nothing" goes beyond the food industry and places consumer culture and capitalism itself under the microscope, and rather than just energetic polemic he attempts to provide workable, albeit radical, alternatives.

Beyond these books Patel has embraced digital culture, originally shortly after college through joint editorship of the online journal 'Voice of the Turtle', then through Stuffedandstarved.org, launched to promote his book, and now more recently at rajpatel.org, where he casts a much wider net and is a feed definitely worth subscribing to.

Although Oxford and LSE educated he clearly feels as comfortable marching shoulder to shoulder with his Compañeros in the Global South as he does delivering key note lectures at academic conferences, and his extensive experience in post-Apartheid South Africa and Zimbabwe has given him a unique world-view and a writing voice that I find compelling.

While "The Value of Nothing" is definitely aimed at a mass-market audience rather than an academic one and is a lighter read than his earlier work, it is engaging and ire-provoking enough that it gets a solid two-thumbs up from Unkie Dave.

On Hope and Change

Three years ago this week on the occasion of my 34th birthday I made my first ever political donation to the exploratory committee of a young Senator from Illinois. Though the country of my blood is not always the country of my heart, the man I watched stood as the antithesis of everything that had occurred over the last six years, and I was moved to action. I dared to think that the world might actually change.

Two years ago today I sat and watched the son of a Kenyan immigrant in the church of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. declare that if the people stood together the walls of oppression would be shaken down to the ground. I could feel that the world was about to change.

One year ago today I stood on the frozen grass of the National Mall with a million other people and watched the world change.

Only it didn't.

It didn't.

Nothing more really needs to be said than that.

Again? Seriously? Didn't we do this last year?

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I bought all the childish things I could not afford as a child." - 1 Corinthians 13:11(a)

hmmmmnnnnn.

Thirty-seven.

Not really sure about this whole "late thirties" thing.

Mathematically speaking I am now in my prime, something I haven't been for six years, but given my inability to effectively use the word "sick" in a non-ironic way in a sentence, the derision with which I greet the sight of young male haircuts and the increasing frequency with which I draw pop-culture references from continental philosophers rather than the D-list talking heads on "The Top 100 'Top 100 Shows' of All Time" shows, I must now accept the undeniable fact that I am getting old.

While American television and film is populated almost exclusively by 30-somethings playing the talented denizens of assorted High Schools and Colleges, only on a very, very good day could I hope to pass for an 18-year old. With progeria. In bad lighting. As viewed by a blind person. Who is also deaf. And has never actually encountered a real 18-year old.

Which is just as well, as 18-year olds are quite possibly the most useless thing on earth, good only for serving as cannon fodder in the overseas conflicts of fading empires. Unless they are a whiskey.

But no bitterness there, honestly.

Happy Birthday me.

Yay!

en fraternité

"When, echoing the French Revolution, the black slaves in Haiti revolted in the name of the same principles of freedom, equality and fraternity, this was "the crucible, the trial by fire for the ideals of the French Enlightenment. And every European who was part of the bourgeois reading public knew it"... In Haiti, the unthinkable (for the European Enlightenment) took place: the Haitian Revolution "entered history with the peculiar characteristic of being unthinkable even as it happened". The ex-slaves of Haiti took the French revolutionary slogans more literally than did the French themselves: they ignored all the implicit qualifications which abounded in Enlightenment ideology (freedom - but only for rational "mature" subjects, not for the wild immature barbarians who first had to undergo a long process of education in order to deserve freedom and equality...). This led to sublime "communist" moments, like the one that occurred when French soldiers (sent by Napoleon to suppress the rebellion that occurred and restore slavery) approached the black army of (self-)liberated slaves. When they heard an initially indistinct murmur coming from the black crowd, the soldiers at first assumed it must be some kind of tribal war chant; but as they came closer, they realized that the Haitians were singing the Marseillaise, and they started to wonder out loud whether they were not fighting on the wrong side."
- Slavoj Žižek, "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce", pp111-112

You can donate here to Oxfam Ireland who have a presence on the ground in Haiti , as do Concern who also have an emergency appeal, or to the agency of your choice in your home country.

Nous sommes tous les enfants de Toussaint l'Ouverture.

Tragedy, Farce and Vegetarians

Politics and Religion, if ever there were two greater topics certain to spark up a healthy banter* with random strangers** in a pub, taxi, queue for the ATM or website comments section then they surely must have existed outside the English language, for I have yet to find them.

I've just finished Slavoj Žižek's "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce", his clarion call for a resurgent Left in the wake of the post 9/11 surge in neo-liberalism and the resultant global economic collapse, and have progressed on to Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", his argument for the scientific examination of Religion as a purely natural phenomenon.

Both are best described as 'light reads', in that Žižek's reads more like an extended lecture based around a few talking points rather than fixed notes, and Dennett, writing for an overly-religious American audience is apologetic in the extreme for the offense he is about to cause them by ripping their belief-system to shreds before their very eyes, he is become death, the destroyer of spiritual worlds, but will offer you a nice cup of tea and a biscuit while he does so***. Žižek makes no such offering of a light tiffin, and is all the more enjoyable for his rambling and deliberately provocative style, sounding at times like nothing so much as the Jeremy Clarkson of the radical Left.

What unites them both in my mind despite the gulf of their philosophical and writing styles is the fervour they both display for specific political belief systems. For Žižek a return to the Communism of Marx is the only salvation for the Left. He rejects both liberal socialism and the current inheritors of the Marxist mantel that have evolved from extant Communist traditions and calls for a return to first principles and a new progression from there, quoting Beckett when he says "Try again. Fail again. Fail better". Despite all the evolution of leftist thought over the 160 years since the birth of Communism he sees nothing better suited to the ills of mankind than a return to this nineteenth century ideology in its purist form.

For Dennett it is Democracy, placing it on the same pillars of inalienable absolutes that he labels his 'sacred values' as justice, life, love and truth, and he goes so far as to lay the groundwork for his demolition of religious beliefs in terms his target audience will understand by comparing it to the "obscenely costly mistake" that was the adoption of Communism by otherwise well-meaning people as the answer to their woes.

For two avowed skeptics the dogmatic manner with which they approach a specific political system is at times indistinguishable from religious belief. If religion is the opium of the people then perhaps politics is the opium of the atheist. Indeed it could be argued that politics is a stronger belief than religion as it attracts both the religious and irreligious with equal ferocity, yet rarely is true religious belief entirely apolitical.

Or perhaps religion is the ultimate expression of politics, as politics exists to define one's superiority over the Other with rational argument, and when rational argument can no longer be used one turns to the existence of elements outside the rational that cannot be proved or disproved to justify one's superiority. Thus politics may indeed be the last resort of a scoundrel but religion is then the last resort for a political scoundrel.

In either event organised political and religious beliefs may just be scratching the same mental itch we all carry around inside our heads, the need to feel smugly superior to those around us.

And this is why I refuse to define myself in terms of adherence to any specific ethical, religious or political affiliations. I'm a vegetarian, but not just for the traditional 'meat is murder' reasons, I'm trying to overcome my base programing. I don't believe in god or gods, but it is a lazy, couldn't-really-be-bothered, Dawkins-really-just-tries-too-hard, form of agnosticism as opposed to any card-carrying militant atheism. I believe in social justice, but am not a socialist, communist, anarchist, communalist, progressive or liberal, I do not subscribe to any one narrow set of political beliefs****.

This does not mean that I do not have any passionately held beliefs, quite the opposite in fact. Rather it simply means that while the writings of Dawkins, Žižek, Dennet and Badiou all strongly resonate with me, I have no desire to reject one rigid organised belief system and replace it with another, regardless of its nomenclature.

All of which leads nicely into Žižek's short prognosis on vegetarianism.


* if by 'healthy banter' one means 'rabidly offensive and bile filled diatribe'

** if by 'random strangers' one means 'illiterate trolls'

*** He'd make a perfect Anglican

**** The more astute of you will no doubt be pointing out that I used to be a card carrying member of the Green Party. This is true, but I viewed the Greens as a loose collection of activists banded together in an attempt to use collective strength to drive forward their own disparate environmental and social justice agendas, like the Shell to Sea campaign, the Tara bypass, opposition to Shannon Rendition flights and the Poolbeg incinerator. I was wrong. The Greens are in fact a loose collection of folks banded together for the sake of banding together. Social justice and activism seem nowhere on the agenda, the party's sole drive is to stay in existence, an apolitical Oroborus endlessly devouring itself in an orgy of self-preservation through self-consumption. My mistake, I've moved on, and to reference Žižek quoting Beckett, I must fail better next time.

There's no business like snow business

Although we woke up this morning to find (at least in Dublin) the snowy blanket of joy that had enveloped our fair city for the last few days as washed away into the gutter and all-but-forgotten as last year's X-Factor winner, the good news is that our Minister for Transport cut short his holiday in Malta where he sat out the worst of the nasty weather working up a rather nice tan, and arrived back in Ireland on Saturday night. He would have been back earlier on Saturday, but he had to reroute through Bristol as his direct flight was canceled, because, you know, the weather conditions were so bad that our nation's transportation systems had all but collapsed.

But still, its not as if his presence here would have made any difference to the situation, as he said himself "Ministers for Transport don’t actually go out and grit the roads", which is a good thing really given how embarrassed he would have looked standing out on the M50 and realizing that there was no actual grit left in the country.

On the 4th of January after much intense media speculation Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan confirmed that he had been diagnosed with cancer and was to begin immediate chemo and radiotherapy, but in line with the advice of his doctors would continue to perform his duties as Minister albeit with a reduced public speaking engagement. While he rejected the notion that this decision would lead him to be a "part-time Minister", he did suggest that he expected no further budgetary work to be necessary until December, so basically in the midst of the worst financial crises our nation has faced there's not a lot of impact for better or worse that he can make as a Minister between now and then.

In a previous life I worked for a large multinational internet company that had a sales office in Paris. Being the civilized nation that it is, most of France shuts down entirely during August for Les Vacances, and our Parisian office with its 100+ staff was no exception. Funny story though, during the month of August the company's French revenue actually rose by up to 20%, meaning that the business did better when none of the employees were actually there. My (unaccepted) sales plan for the following year involved shutting down the Paris office entirely. I'm not a huge fan of sales people.

The reaction of two of our Ministers in the face of both personal and national tragedies is telling. If their actual presence has little impact on the running of their department and its ability to react to national emergencies, why bother having Ministers at all? I'm sure the €150,000 salary plus pension each get paid could be much better spent hiring a few more folks who actually know anything about transportation or the economy.

In fact, what exactly is it that Ministers do to justify their large salary? In February of last year I looked at the rationale for the high salaries of corporate executives:

"The economist Tim Harford devoted a chapter in "The Logic of Life" to trying to understand why Executive pay is so high, and specifically if there is any contribution an individual could make to the success of a company that would justify today's astronomical salaries and bonuses. His conclusion, rather simply, is "No". Executive salaries have nothing to do with the abilities of the individual, and everything to do with their role as a motivational tool for those on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder to work hard and deliver strong results in the hope of moving up and one day reaching the executive level."

However this example doesn't translate well into the Ministerial world, where the Minister's subordinates are, by and large, civil servants with a hierarchy unconnected to the Minister's position.

A justification often offered in the corporate world is that a high salary is necessary to attract the best and brightest to a specific position, and yet clearly that is not the case with Ministers who usually have no previous relevant experience for the portfolio they are assigned. Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey was briefly a career guidance teacher but has been a professional politician since 1977. Brian Lenihan was a barrister and law lecturer, and inherited his Dail seat upon the death of his father. Neither of these Ministers have any relevant expertise for their portfolio beyond being professional politicians, or being born into a ruling national dynasty, and in the last seven days both have made public statements to the effect that by and large they are irrelevant to the day-to-day running of their department and that their physical presence isn't actually necessary in a crisis.

And don't even think of suggesting that a high salary is necessary to prevent a Minister from giving in to temptation and accepting a few backhanders. If this is the case we are obviously not paying our Taoisigh enough, let alone our overworked Ministers.

It is also worth noting that a UK Cabinet Minister currently earns £144,520 (€160,765), a US Cabinet Secretary earns on average $193,400 (€133,350), so while our worthy Ministers earn (before allowances and pensions) fractionally less than their UK counterparts who are responsible for the affairs of a country with almost 14 times the population of Ireland, they earn substantially more than their US counterparts, who watch over the affairs of a nation with a mere 68 times the population. With that in mind no doubt our Ministers are 68 times more competent than their US counterparts, or at the very least 14 times more competent than their UK counterparts? Unfortunately according to the Financial Times the UK's Alistair Darling ranks joint 7th in the 2009 list of EU Finance Ministers, our own Brian Lenihan comes in at 19th. Out of 19.

Value for money if ever I saw it.

So if we as taxpayers are not paying for a Minister's skills and expertise, or their motivational abilities either as leader or financial incentive, what exactly are we paying them for?

As Edwin Starr might have warbled, "Ministers. Huh. Yeah. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing."

While you ponder this somewhat rhetorical question I leave you with a link to some more photos of the winter wonderland that was our capital city this weekend. Please note the lack of passable roads, but remember that its not the Minister's fault, sure he doesn't control the weather now, does he?

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

After yesterday's mid-afternoon foray into the polar conditions outside I was motivated to venture forth at night with a slightly better camera. Luckily I had outfitted for an excursion to the Arctic Circle last year so I felt slightly more prepared for the shock and awe that Mother Nature had awaiting me beyond the comfort of my sheep's-wool insulated walls.

Late in the afternoon as dusk fell a freezing fog crept in and blanketed much of the city, depositing a fine layer of snow over an already icy tableau. While the canal might not have been frozen solid enough for a Frost Fair, it was still rather nice.

More photos can be found here.

whiter than the snows of Hoth

How cold is it in Dublin right now? Well, the thermometer says -4C and the Grand Canal is frozen solid in large stretches, so I'd say pretty damn cold.

More photos here, many thanks to the Very Understanding Girlfriend for the use of her camera.

On God, Mao and Pooh

I recently spent some time shopping for a children's book on religion. As a) the only theologian most of my friends, or their friends, or their friends' friends have ever encountered and b) an unrepentant atheist, I seem to be considered a safe bet to ask any and all questions on matters of deities, spirituality and the inner mysteries of the Priory of Sion without fear of encouraging hordes of neatly dressed and well manicured young men from Utah to descend upon one's doorstep in search of glasses of water, a nice chat and one's immortal soul.

At a recent winter solstice party I was asked by two friends if I could recommend a book that would explain how Judaism, Christianity and Islam arose, the differences between them, and why people believe in one religion or god over another, all suitable for their five year old. Of course I instantly recommended Mircea Eliade's three volume work "A History of Religious Ideas", which despite Eliade's pre-War engagement in far-right Romanian politics and later view of the positive triumphalism of Christianity, is still an excellent place to start for an overview of Comparative Religion.

As you can see my grasp of the abilities of the average five year old is somewhat tenuous, but I take some solace in the fact that I did not also proffer my second choice of Hans Küng's slightly more dense tomes "Judaism", "Christianity" and the more recent and rather unexpectedly titled final volume, "Islam", a mere 2,456 combined pages of reading-on-the-bus Teutonic-y goodness.

Still, better than the time I tried to explain the concept of 'commuting' and 'work/life balance' to their child through the medium of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Taking their blank stares and forced smiles to heart I resolved to find something more suitable, and was somewhat surprised by the difficulty of this task. While there are many, many books on religion for children, they all seem to be on the subject of the right religion for children, as in "Mommy, why are our neighbours going to hell?", "Will Patches be taken in the Rapture too?", "What's the problem with Unitarians?" and so forth. Finding something from a purely academic, non-judgmental, non-proselytizing background that simply answered a child's questions on what religion was, why people believed in stuff and what stuff did they believe in, without labeling any of it as "wrong", "misguided" or "deviant" proved problematic, and for a while Küng was starting to edge back into the frame.

After far too much time immersed in the murky world of true-believers I finally found "The Story of Religion". An out-of-print book by the husband and wife writer/illustrator team of Betsy and Giulio Maestro, the creators of a series of children's books on such diverse subjects as 'how apples grow' and 'the moral justification of the use of violence as a political tool in the overthrowing of British colonial oppressors', this seemed much more up my street. I ordered the book and took a good look through to check the suitability of its content before presenting it last night to my somewhat incredulous friend, who accepted it with good grace and pleasure that almost masked his feelings of terror and "seriously dude I was just making polite conversation with you, you're creeping me out with the amount of time you've spent on this".

Job done.

Children's books are a tricky thing, balancing the authour's and/or parents' desire to educate with the ability of the child to grasp complex ideas, though apparently anthropomorphic animals and the occasional reference to poo help considerably. While engendering a positive and non-discriminatory worldview toward religions would not be the highest item on the list in my own Reeducation Camps (because, as Dawkins the Dog says, "all religions are wrong and stupid", isn't that right Billy?), the idea of imparting an ethic of sustainability and anti-consumerism in a child at an early age through reading, or at least attempting to combat the materialistic messaging that bombards them from all angles, is appealing.

While my friends are increasingly unlikely to allow me to continue to experiment with their child's intellectual development, I do have a similarly aged cousin who is probably due a Christmas/birthday/who-the-hell-are-you-and-why-are-you-sending-me-books present from their favourite Unkie (yes, even my cousins call me Unkie Dave, I'm sooooo old) and thus I will spend some time over the coming days investigating progressive, unashamedly anarcho-syndicalist or even just solid radical left/green children's literature, and if it does not exist I might just have a go at making my own.

In the mean time I leave you with an excerpt from The Mao of Pooh, a series of short children's tales encapsulating the wisdom of the little Red Book as experienced by a certain honey-loving bear and his revolutionary peasant friends, as written some years ago by Raj Patel and chums as part of their now-defunct post-Oxbridge online socialist journal, 'Voice of the Turtle':

Chapter 1 - "All reactionaries are paper tigers"

In which Pooh discovers the dual nature of his best friend Tigger

One day, Pooh Bear was wandering through One Hundred Acre Wood, when he came across his best friend Tigger.

"Let one hundred flowers bloom in One Hundred Acre Wood", Pooh said.

"My, what a lot of flowers that would be", said Tigger.

Scratching his tummy, Pooh felt that it was time for a little something.

"You wouldn't", Pooh asked in full throated solidarity, "have a little something for elevensies, would you Tigger?"

"But of course", replied Tigger. "I have -- and don't tell that Kanga, or Roo, or especially Eeyore -- a pot or two of Munny".

"Munny?" asked Pooh, a little confused by the idea of promisory notes.

"Yes! Pots of munny!"

"Um, is money sweet?"

"Sweeter than honey!", exclaimed Tigger, licking his lips in a predatory way.

"Goodness!" said Pooh, excited in a bear-discovers-something-sweeter-than-honey sort of way.

And so they set off for Tigger's house.

Imagine Pooh's surprise when Tigger proudly displayed his pots of money.

"Well, they're not quite pots," explained Tigger hastily. "They're futures on pots. And although they smell like paper at the moment, they'll smell much sweeter soon. Next month, the price of pots doing what they are, I'll have more pots than sense".

"How many pots will you have?" asked Pooh, discounting the future somewhat.

"Three", said Tigger.

And so it was that Pooh discovered that his friend Tigger was merely the representative of a reactionary class, and needed to be overthrown.

The lesson of the story was that from a long-term point of view, all reactionaries are paper tigers. It is not Tigger but Pooh as the embodiment of the will of the people who is really powerful.

Dances With Smurfs

I finally went to see 'Dances With Smurfs' yesterday in the second biggest 3D cinema in Dublin. The weather was pretty bad, so I chose a Luas ride to Dundrum over a walk to O'Connell Street, and my frozen ears told me I made the right choice. I did, however, forget that schools are not back until next week, and the 16:40 showing that I went to ended up being an extend exercise in childminding.

I had a big discussion later last night with Tadhg and The Very Understanding Girlfriend (neither of whom chose to accompany me to the film) on state restriction of activity based on age vs parental responsibility, and despite many salient points raised by both I still believe that if a film is classified "Under twelves accompanied" there should be a maximum ratio of under-twelves to adults, as in the eighteen ten year-old girls sitting in the row in front of me really should have had more than one adult with them, not because of the content of the film, more because of that adult's inability to control them much to the determent of my initial viewing pleasure. Herding cats comes to mind.

Despite that initial hiccup however, 'Dance With Smurfs' managed to hold the attention of almost every child in the audience for almost the entire three hour duration, probably because of all the pretty colours, explosions and the 3D, which I have to admit blew me away. I haven't seen a 3D film in the cinema since Jaws 3D in 1983, aged ten, which, with regards to the subject of state imposed age restrictions, I definitely think was too young an age to be exposed to such horrendous film-making; its sheer awfulness permanently scarred my cinematic critical faculties, and no doubt contributed to my ability to stomach (but not enjoy) the oeuvre of Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay.

For a pretty decent review, with spoilers, check out Mr Tim's post on Inessentials, but a few thoughts did occur to me. The first is that James Cameron has bought fairly heavily into James Lovelock's Gaia theory, so no doubt we can look forward to the Na'vi fully embracing nuclear power as their only credible source of future energy in the sequel, "Revenge of Pandora". The second is whether or not there is a direct correlation between the portrayal of environmental themes in over-the-top escapist fantasy blockbusters (Day After Tomorrow etc) and the decrease in the acceptance of Climate Change as either a) real or b) man-made in the general US population.

In 2007 77% of Americans believed in climate change. Today only 57% believe that climate change is real, and staggeringly only 36% believe that human activity is responsible. Rarely has one nation been so out of step with the rest of the world. Has the frequent mining of climate change as the subject for apocalyptic science fiction indelibly labeled it as "science fiction" in the minds of the US masses?

Given Cameron's twee assimilation of New Age spiritualism, Native-American-with-a-single-tear-rolling-down-their-cheek environmentalism and an anti-militarism message delivered with a blunt instrument into what is essentially a day-glow Pocahontas cartoon, will the ideas of genuine pacifism and sustainability be also further moved into the realms of day-glow cartoonism in the minds of the American public?

Despite all this, I really did enjoy the film. The plot is laughable, the acting (particularity Sam Worthington) execrably weak, the music is offensive in a way only achievable by having an X-Factor winner warble the theme music from Survivor in the style of Celine Dion while being accompanied by someone playing 'panpipes' on a Casio keyboard, and at times the pacing is a tad slow. None of this matters however, as long as you see it in 3D on the largest screen you can. Don't think of it as a film, and don't judge it on the same criteria you would a normal movie, think of it as a ride in an amusement park, and go for the sheer experience. Simply amazing.

Its even better than Jaws 3D.

An uncompleted project of political modernity

I have spent the first few days of the New Year reading Fintan O'Toole's 'Ship of Fools', his account of the arrogance, stupidity and corruption that created our current economic crises, and judging by the book's place in the top three of the Irish bestsellers' list over the last few weeks I am not the only one to be doing so.

While our government and their pet economists may try and portray our woes as being part of the wider global economic downturn, it is clear that successive years of corrupt and suspect practices on the part of the Irish financial and property sectors encouraged and supported by successive corrupt and suspect Fianna Fail governments are largely to blame for our unique downfall. O'Toole examines the culture, relationships and social attitudes that created this perfect storm of criminal ignorance, which he summarizes neatly in his conclusion:

"A primitive, pre-modern land hunger created the new feudalism in which the elite puffed up the price of land and inflated a fatal property boom. The political system, embodied most thoroughly in Fianna Fail, remained rooted in the Tammany Hall politics of the nineteenth-century Irish-American Democratic Party machines. Its interest in power and patronage to the virtual exclusion of all else meant that politics, when they needed to be imbued with ideas and ambition, were still defined by what 'one of the most senior figures in [Bertie] Ahern's administration' told the political journalist Pat Leahy: 'Politics is keeping enough people happy at the right time and taking shit for the rest of the time.' A system of patronage and personal connection continued to operate, from the constituent being 'looked after' by the TD to the donor being 'looked after' by the minister.

In business and especially in banking, there remained an anarchic attitude to law and morality, rooted both in a colonial habit of playing games with authority and in a religious culture that saw sex, rather than money, as the currency of sin. The bourgeoisie continued with its nineteenth-century attitude of valuing the professions above all, and certainly above science, maths and technology. And the heroic powers of denial, the ability to know and not know at the same time, that had been formed by the peculiar circumstances of Irish history, remained remarkably intact. Together these five forces created a crazed property boom, a reckless banking system, a lack of interest in the technologies that had created the boom, and a political and public mentality in which none of these realities could be grasped." - Fintan O'Toole, 'Ship of Fools', pp 214-215

Over the Christmas break my attention was drawn by Ms Léan (she of the String Revolution) to a video of Fintan O'Toole at this Autumn's TASC conference. I was supposed to attend the conference myself but unfortunately there was the little matter of the simultaneous Green Convention on the revised Program for Government; given the way that worked out (both personally and for the Nation as a whole) in hindsight my time would probably have been better spent at the TASC event.

Still, the good people at TASC saw fit to record the event and upload each of the speakers' sections to the tubes of the interweb, and that of O'Toole is essentially a summary of his conclusions in 'Ship of Fools', specifically his thesis that at its heart Ireland remains rooted in the nineteenth-century. In the lecture he argues that:

"There is a sense in which Ireland went from being pre-modern to post modern with nothing in between… we went from an uncompleted political modernity, in terms of the construction of a national democracy, we didn't get it, without the ideas of human rights, for example, without ideas of a moral community, all of those notions that had to be constructed by other Western societies as a result of the disasters of the Second World War, the Welfare State, ideas of social responsibility, ideas of rooting democracy in society, those things didn't happen to us because we were outside of the frame of the 1950s reconstruction of Europe. So we had an uncompleted project of modernity and as a result there were factors within Irish political culture and Irish social culture which remained rooted in the 19th century and remained unreconstructed."

This is a very interesting argument, that because as a nation (as opposed to a very small group of individuals) we have never had to fight for our current democracy, or reconstruct our economic, social and political systems from the ashes of their destruction, we have never matured beyond the socio-economic norms and aspirations that we inherited from our colonial past upon independence. The lack of any real left/right dichotomy in contemporary or historical Irish politics and the sense of 'absolute impunity' that accompanies those in power (either politically or economically) also contribute strongly to what he perceives as a landscape of neo-feudalism.

Written as a "polemical, rather than a historical or academic work", 'Ship of Fools' draws from publicly available material, the findings of tribunals and the works of other journalists, so while some accusations of "well why didn't you say so at the time" have been leveled at this and other similar works by Shane Ross and Matt Cooper, in truth O'Toole has been arguing against the excesses of Fianna Fail's neo-liberal failings for many years and has highlighted these findings and reports on numerous occasions, usually to deaf ears. In fact he draws attention to the seemingly unique Irish political tradition of candidates for office consistently gaining more votes after they have been found guilty of corruption than before their skulduggery was disclosed:

"Civic morality is not absent in Ireland, but it is marginal and fragile. The political system is tribal, local and clientelist - there is a strong impulse to vote, not for a decent person or a national leader, but for someone who will successfully manipulate the system on behalf of both constituents individually and the constituency as a whole. If morality comes into the equation it is often through the vague but powerful feeling that a lack of it might make for a more effective local champion." - Fintan O'Toole, 'Ship of Fools', p 33

Thus we cannot simply assign the blame for our woes on the coat-hooks of our political and economic feudal lords, there is a very strong sense that our own internal corruption has enabled their behavior.

The outcome of all this is O'Toole's call for a movement of national renewal, embodied by the birth of a Second Republic, encompassing a change in "public morality, in the sense of sustainability" (best summarized as "people knowing when to stop"), a "sweeping reform of the institutions of government" including the transfer of real power to local government, a reduction in size of the Dail and "a realignment of the political party system" away from the traditional centre-right/centre-right non-choice of Irish political populism, and finally "the articulation of a social vision" to replace the Me Fein, get-rich-quick amorality of the Celtic Tiger years. All stirring stuff really that echoes calls made here and elsewhere in recent months.

One hopes that the prominence this book enjoys in the bestsellers' list of late is an indication of the number of angry people across the nation who, like me, are nodding their heads in agreement with O'Toole and, occasionally like me, might be motivated to get up out of their seats and do something about it.

The fact that it has consistently been pipped to the top spot by the autobiography of a fictional man-potato that graces the front of a crisp packet is somewhat less heartening.

Watch the TASC video below and read the book, it really is worth a few hours of your time.

Urbi et Orbi nos transporto insumptuosus

Yes, that is the Pope advertising his new CD on the back of an Amazon box, just delivered to my door this morning.

If Super Saver Shipping is the new Indulgences, I have surely earned my own "Get-out-of-Purgatory-Free" card by now. I might even have a spare one to share, for a nominal price of course.

If the Pope can monetize my Wish List, so can I.

Amen.

2009 in Television

I don't have a television. When we moved into our house a number of years ago we took the decision not to bring the television; we had been using an old Dell monitor that had a TV tuner which subsequently sat in a box unloved and untouched in a corner of our office for many months until we finally gave it away to some friends. We thought that it would be nice when arranging our furniture in the blank canvas of our front room not to have a television as the focal point, and it is.

We do, however, have a projector, and about six feet of blank white wall to serve as a screen. This works well, as unless it is switched on you never notice it. Unfortunately once you do switch it on the air of smug superiority that has been conferred upon you by house-guests marveling at your ability to function in this modern word without a television evaporates in the warm white glow that bathes the room reflected, as it is, off of six feet of blank white wall.

Still, the point of all this is that although technically we do have the ability to watch television programs, this ability is strongly curtailed by the level of ambient light in the room, for it is not a very powerful projector. Any amount of daylight creeping round the curtains reduces the viewing experience to one akin to watching a zebra race on a snowy day on a black and white TV with glaucoma, while wearing sun glasses. Thus in summer months the maximum viewing time available is normally no more than an hour or two on any given day, and despite a significant increase in the hours of darkness during winter we still seem to be able to tolerate no more than an hour or so of viewing on any given day.

Given these restricted hours and the fact that we tend to record programs for later viewing rather than watching anything live, you would imagine that my viewing choices would be a veritable cavalcade of documentaries, political exposés, hard-hitting journalistic investigations and other such worthy items. Sadly though, my television viewing tends to be pure escapism, for in truth I get enough righteous angst, wrath and ire from my reading, writing, breathing, talking, walking, fist-shaking, out-the-window-at-the-kids-in-the-street-shouting and other daily mundane actives ending in -ing. I like my sci-fi and I am happy to, as the Very Understanding Girlfriend says, reclaim the shame.

All of this is a rather roundabout way of prepping the scene to mention two rather good series that I watched this year, 'Being Human' on BBC3 and 'Misfits' on E4.

'Being Human' was a six-part series charting the relationships between a vampire, werewolf and ghost that all share a flat in Bristol. The vampire and werewolf just want to try and live normal lives and face a constant battle to overcome their inner natures, and the ghost tries to come to terms with her death and separation from her fiancee, who to add to her torment owns the flat they all live in and frequently pops round with his new girlfriend. Its not glamorous, its all a bit dingy and grotty, and does a far more believable job of portraying supernatural characters trying to preserve their humanity in the face of an existential and physical crises than comparable US dramas (True Blood being the most obvious comparison). It is also genuinely funny, but without the campy playing-to-the-fourth-wall of Buffy.

If 'Being Human' is the anti-'True Blood', then 'Misfits' is the anti-'Heroes'. Another six-parter, the series follows five juvenile delinquents coming to terms with having super-powers while working through court-ordered community service. The power each gains is a manifestation of their own base personality, the shy guy that nobody likes can turn invisible, the insecure girl can hear other people's thoughts etc, and the show is more about the development of their relationships with each other, and finding a new level of respect for themselves (oh, and hiding the bodies of a couple folks they murder). Shot in a style reminiscent of Charlie Brooker's excellent zombie/Big Brother mashup "Dead Set" its dark, graphic and very, very funny.

Apart from the strong writing, gritty realism and deft execution of intriguing ideas, what these two shows have in common are great performances from a number of talented Irish actors. Dublin-born Aidan Turner plays the vampire 'Mitchell' in 'Being Human', in which fellow Dubliner Sinead Keenan (most recently seen in the last two David Tennant episodes of 'Doctor Who') also has a recurring part, and arguably the central character in 'Misfits', the distinctly annoying Nathan, is brilliantly played by Portlaoise-born Robert Sheehan, the bastard offspring of Cillian Murphy and Tommy Tiernan.

In recent years much has been made of the British invasion of US TV shows, with British actors taking lead roles in everything from 'House' to "The Wire', but in almost all these cases they are forced to sublimate their national identity and adopt at times ridiculous Mid-Atlantic and other faux-American accents. In contrast Turner and Sheehan manage to revel in their Irishness, without it ever being used as a plot hook on which to hang a coat of Oirishness. This is a testament to both the strength of the writers and their own ability as actors.

The new series of 'Being Human' starts on January 10th on BBC Three, series one is available on DVD. Misfits is also available on DVD, a second series has been greenlit, but as of yet no air date has been released.

Ah, to think of how grumpy I would be without such escapist fantasy to sooth my troubled soul. I think the survivors would envy the dead.

As an aside if you are interested in television and other "cultural" imports from across the water, you really should check out Mr Tim's rather excellent pop culture blog, Inessentials. There may be a little too much 'Glee' for the average person's taste (as in, any 'Glee' is a little too much), but the writing is really spot on.

Links
'Being Human' official website
'Misfits' official website

Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight

Ah, the air is thick with a pungent fresh aroma that can only be classified as New Year Smell, a blanket of slush partially obscures all the sins and filth of the previous decade and we march boldly forward into what for this grumpy curmudgeon is indelibly labeled "the Future".

New Year's Eve was a more social event than in many recent years, with both food and good company at multiple remote locations, culminating in an impressive snowball fight that began with scarcely fifteen minutes left on the 2009 clock and ended with but seconds to spare before the future became the present and the present became the past.

Thus far our shiny new decade is still looking remarkably like our tarnished old decade, the skies yet undarkened by flying cars, our bleached white skulls relatively uncrushed under the feet of our robotic overlords, and nothing wonderful has happened as of yet in the frozen oceans of Europa.

Still, 9 years 363 days to go to we hit the cyberpunk years of the 2020s, and a lot can happen in that time.