The chemtrail conspiracy

Shelley Bridgeman wrote this in the New Zealand Herald, an allegedly serious newspaper, and Danyl McLauchlan wrote this at the Dim-Post, an occasionally satirical blog, in response. I think he is our best satirist since AK Grant.


It’s a competition – enter it! I’m not going to because Matt Nippert and Andrew Geddis already have and are much funnier than I could ever be, but do have a look – many of the entries are outstanding.

UPDATE

Danyl writes:

I’ve closed off comments on the Shelley writes the classics thread, because Keri Hulme has agreed to judge the entries and declare a winner. Winning criteria, date and time of the announcement and prize for best entry will all be subject to the merciless whims of Keri Hulme.

Metallica, forex dealers

Neil Shah in the Wall Street Journal reports:

Duff McKagan, the former bassist of Guns N’ Roses, once unwittingly spent $40,000 on expensive suits in Italy because he didn’t realize how much his purchases—then in Italian lira—were worth in dollars. The lanky musician now sings a more sober tune: After taking business courses at Seattle University, he started writing about finance for Playboy ("Duffonomics") and—most recently—launched a wealth-management firm for rockers: Meridian Rock Capital Management LP. Millionaire musicians, the 47-year-old told fans at New York City's Strand bookstore in October, are an “underserviced” community. 

And then, as always, there is Metallica:

After the 2008 global financial crisis, rock bands and their managers are paying closer attention to obscure concerns like currency rates and economic trends when inking contracts with foreign concert promoters. Eight months before Metallica takes the stage in Germany, [manager Cliff] Burnstein decides whether the band should be paid in dollars, euros or a combination of the two. If exchange rates swing in a way that hurts Metallica’s earnings, he buys derivative financial instruments to lock in a preferred rate. Sometimes ticket prices are hiked to compensate for possible currency-related losses, though Mr. Burnstein shuns this strategy.

“Nobody is looking to make a foreign-exchange trade to make money, but you don’t want to be a loser,” the scraggly bearded manager said.

Speaking of scraggly bearded comedians, here is Bill Bailey with his version of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”:

Monitor: Penny Wise

Plagiarism and B.S. Johnson

There is plagiarism and there is plagiarism. Q.R. Markham’s debut crime novel Assassin of Secrets received some great reviews. Here is a selection of them at Amazon:

“Brainy and enticing ... a narrative hall of mirrors in which nothing and no one are as they seem and emotion is a perilous thing to have ... A dazzling, deftly controlled debut that moves through familiar territory with wry sophistication.” (Kirkus (starred review) )

“Quirky, entertaining ... fine writing keeps the enterprise firmly on track, and the obvious Ian Fleming influence just adds to the appeal.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

“Hardcore, old school spy fiction for a generation raised on ass-kicking Bourne flicks. Q.R. Markham’s thrilling debut is just like his spy hero: ambitious and audacious. More, please.” (Duane Swierczynski, Edgar-nominated author of Severance Package and Fun & Games)

“A fantastic, gleeful, chrome-plated-slick debut of a novel. In Jonathan Chase, Markham has created the perfect cliche-shattering super spy while honoring the progenitors. Dangerously sharp, and genuinely fun—and very, very, very smart. I want more books like this. I want more books from the mind of Mr. Markham!” (Greg Rucka, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Run and Queen & Country)

But then Markham was nicked, for nicking. Assassin of Secrets is not just a crime novel, it’s a criminal novel. He stole it. As the great crime writer Lawrence Block, a star of the 1999 Auckland Writers’ Festival, comments at Amazon:

There are plenty of good sentences in this book, but they’re all the work of other writers. The author must be seriously disturbed; he quite deliberately stole everything in the book.

The plagiarist behind the nom-de-plume, Quentin Rowan, confesses here. He is a recovered alcoholic and drug addict:

Over that same time period, I’ve fought a mostly losing battle with plagiarism. [. . .] I struggled with plagiarism in the same way others struggle with smoking, sex addiction, food addiction, and gambling. 

God yes, Don’t we writers all struggle daily with our addiction to plagiarism. Not.

I was taking words that I wished were mine from writers that I loved.

Flattery will get you nowhere.

But the key quote for me is this:

I was 20 years old, and trying to write a short story for the first or second time when I came upon a paragraph I liked from a short story by B.S. Johnson called “What did you say the Name of the Place was?” It was so easy to do, as easy as picking up a drink, if you think about it. The lifted paragraph perfectly fit my narrative. And it temporarily assuaged the awful feeling I had in my head that I was no good as a writer. In retrospect, maybe that’s when I transferred my obsession from drinking and drugs to plagiarism. My addiction didn’t disappear; it simply morphed into something else.

I am impressed that he started out stealing from the English novelist B.S. Johnson who was a big deal in the 60s and early 70s but is completely obscure now. Johnson came to regard fiction as lying: at the end of his second novel, Albert Angelo, he stops the action and writes:

fuck all this lying look what I’m really trying to write about is writing not all this stuff about architecture trying to say something about writing my writing I’m my hero though what a useless appellation my first character then I’m trying to say something about me through him albert an architect when what’s the point in covering up… I’m trying to say something not tell a story telling stories is telling lies and I want to tell the truth about me about my experience about my truth about my truth to reality about sitting here writing looking out across Claremont Square trying to say something about the writing and nothing being an answer to the loneliness to the lack of loving

Regular readers will be sick of me banging on about  the Great Book Robbery of 1998 but I did have most of Johnson’s books, though sadly I couldn’t afford The Unfortunates, whose 27 chapters one could shuffle and read in any order. Albert Angelo had holes cut into the pages so you could see what was coming.

Johnson killed himself in November 1973, aged 40. Who knows what else was going on in his life, but he did seem to have written himself into a corner and perhaps could see no escape. 

Still, what Quentin Rowan did somehow fits with Johnson’s view of fiction, that “telling stories is telling lies”. I think that both Johnson and Rowan are/were wrong in an undergraduate way, but if Johnson were still with us maybe he would be amused by Rowan’s application of his theory. 

Johnson came up with one of the best book titles ever, Aren’t You Rather Young to be Writing Your Memoirs?, and seems to have been as interested in film as he was in fiction. Fat Man on a Beach, his last film, is on YouTube and here. No true Johnson fan would watch the five clips in the order given. So here is Part Four:

For fans, David Quantick has done a sterling job in uploading not only those but also this: Johnson’s  TV short You’re Human Like the Rest of Them.

Which leads us to the Pernice Brothers and their song “B.S. Johnson:

We are all shoes

Mick Hartley, keen collector of curatorial curiosities, or what Paul Litterick at the Fundy Post calls “artwank”, reports from the show Gesamtkunstwetrk: New Art from Germany at London’s Saatchi Gallery. One piece by Josephine Meckseper, says, is “one of those display carousels you get in shoe shops”. It certainly has a lot of shoes on it. The catalogue says:

Josephine Meckseper makes collages and installations that reconstruct the worlds of contemporary advertising and fashion in the context of the gallery, as a way of critiquing the political implications of the iconography of consumer culture. [. . .]

Meckseper’s politically engaged works highlight ongoing problems of corporate corruption, status anxiety, social privilege and representations of women. They are also a chilling reminder of the excesses and distortions of capitalism, which has created a world in which, she would argue, there is no separation between materialism and political ideology: we are what we buy.

Hartley comments: “We are all shoes! Yes, of course, it’s obvious once it’s been pointed out.”

Speaking of Paul Litterick, here he leaps to the defence of Deborah Hill Cone whose recent piece in the Herald about the quality of New Zealand’s universities attracted the ire of one commenter called JD, who claimed, preposterously, “My Waikato Management School degree is on the world stage.”

Barely literate, under-informed and over-opinionated, JD is a shining example of the modern managerial class. Armed with a degree in Doing Things, trained but not educated, JD doubtless will go far – probably in a BMW. Whether JD will make any sense is another matter.

 Speaking of things preposterous, the Sunday Star-Times today reviewed Max Cryer’s new book Preposterous Proverbs and quoted approvingly Max’s comments on “all that glisters is not gold”. Funny, I thought, didn’t Shakespeare write that? I looked it up in my Project Gutenberg Word file of the complete Shakespeare: Ctrl-F, type in “glisters” and there it is in The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene vii:

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. O hell! what have we here?

A carrion Death, within whose empty eye

There is a written scroll! I'll read the writing.

“All that glisters is not gold,

Often have you heard that told;

Many a man his life hath sold

But my outside to behold.

Gilded tombs do worms infold.

Had you been as wise as bold,

Young in limbs, in judgment old,

Your answer had not been inscroll ’d.

Fare you well, your suit is cold.”

Cold indeed, and labour lost,

Then farewell, heat, and welcome, frost. 

Portia, adieu! I have too griev'd a heart

To take a tedious leave; thus losers part.

     Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets

I like the flourish of cornets. But I had thought that a proverb was anonymous folk wisdom. Can a phrase written by an identifiable individual really count? Maybe so. Does anyone know?

XKCD, which describes itself as “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language”, has some new items in its online store in time for Christmas. Among its offerings, “For the topology enthusiasts out there, an accurately labeled coffee mug”:

and this shirt (I can’t copy the images but this link shows it): 

The Self-Descriptive Shirt, loosely based on comic #688, has on it a set of charts and graphs precisely describing itself. On the front is a white pie chart showing what fraction of the shirt's area is white, and on the back are a series of black and white charts and figures describing in more detail the size and location of black and white areas of the shirt.

Since the graphs are describing their own content, it had to be designed to avoid any contradictions, and since a change to any one graph alters all the others, it took a lot of careful measurement and fine-tuning to precisely calibrate the size of each chart element, and the design was adjusted for each size of shirt to ensure accuracy. 

They say it took ages to get it accurate, and it will be. These guys are seriously mathy.

Speaking of seriously mathy, now we all know what to get BK Drinkwater for Christmas. (Can’t link to his blog which is defunct, but regulars will know who I mean. ) 

  

And speaking of topology, this from Abstruse Goose:

 Honestly, you wait ages for a topology joke and then along come two at once. 

Distance looks our way

In the December issue of Word magazine, regular contributor Fraser Lewry writes:

Last month I relocated my desk to the Southern Hemisphere to examine the Rugby World Cup at close quarters. Distraction was provided by Chris Bourke’s multiple award-winning book Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964, which led me to the delightful swing of Pixie Williams, whose 1949 hit gave the book its title.

Of more recent vintage is Tiny Ruins’ exquisite debut album Some Were Meant for the Sea, which is decidedly post-Joanna Newsom but somewhat less squeaky. [. . .]

I’ve been dipping into First Catch Your Weka, a history of NZ cooking, and devoured Lloyd Jones’ The Book of Fame, a fabulously poetic novel about the 1905 All Blacks tour, when they lost only to Wales. The 2011 bunch remained undefeated, but shredded my nerves in the process.

Chris is convenor of the judging panel for the 2012 NZ Post Book Awards, a job I did in 2010 and our mutual friend – it’s a cabal! – Paul Diamond did in 2011. It’s bloody hard work and Chris will be as brilliant at it as Paul was.
Anyway it’s good to see Blue Smoke being publicised in the UK to a music-friendly audience of literate people. Which brings us to Distance Looks Our Way: the Effects of Remoteness on New Zealand, the seven Winter Lectures given at the University of Auckland in the second term of 1960. 

This was the second series of lectures: I don’t know if the first lot were published. The book was edited by Keith Sinclair and published for the university in 1961 by the hugely influential Paul’s Book Arcade. Contributors included “Mr R. M. Chapman, Mr C. K. Stead, Mr E. H. McCormick and Mr P. Tomory”. Glancing through it now, the writers’ concerns seem as distant now as England still is – but it must have been a wonderful book when it appeared 50 years ago.

Lady Garden

Quentin Letts, parliamentary sketch-writer for the Daily Mail, writes in the Diary column of the Spectator’s 26 November issue:

An embarrassed cough from the features desk of the Daily Mail as they ask: ‘This government whip in the Lords you mention in your column — are you sure about her name?’ The whip in question is Sue Garden, a Liberal Democrat. ‘What about her?’ I say. It is explained to me, gently, that ‘lady garden’ is a euphemism. My copy is duly altered to read ‘Baroness Garden of Frognall’. Poor love. To be both a Lib Dem and a synonym for pubes. That’s hard.

In that week’s Australian edition of the weekly – which is even better than the English one because you can read more about Australian politics and culture than you can in a month’s worth of any NZ newspaper –  Karl du Fresne asks “What’s John Key’s secret?” Smiling, apparently.  

The past is a foreign country

In 1988 the Maori activist and trade unionist Syd Jackson, who died in 2007, travelled to Libya. This caused a fuss at the time. He was accused of being a terrorist and there were calls for him to be tried for treason.

Here are some extracts from his 6200-word account of what he saw, “My Libya”, published in the December 1988 issue of Metro. Syd was a columnist there at the time and I was his editor: he wasn’t totally reliable about deadlines but otherwise he was always a pleasure to deal with. I don’t think he’d mind me republishing this as an historical curio.

It was 10am when our taxi pulled up outside the international terminal at Sydney Airport. [. . .] Australian journalists are far more aggressive than their New Zealand counterparts. They are extremely bel­ligerent in their interrogation – or at least they were of these two suspected Maori terrorists. [. . .] We told them that we were going to Libya to give support to the indigenous people of Australia in this important year of their struggle. As it was the 200th year since Australia had been invaded by criminals, and since the Aboriginals had chosen to use the white celebrations to focus international attention upon their plight, we would support their struggle in any way we could. [. . .]

We said we would be seeking recogni­tion from Libya that Maoris were an independent nation and that we would also be discussing both trade and loan questions with the appropriate people in Libya. [. . .]

The most striking feature of Libya is its egalitarianism. I saw none of the extremes of wealth which are characteristic of many other societies that have freed themselves from the yoke of im­perialism. Similarly, there were none of the vulgar displays of ostentation which is now such a feature of our yuppie society. There were no slums, no shanty towns, no beggars, no miserable poverty. I saw no evidence of a privileged class being waltzed around the country in chauffeur-driven Mercedes or LTDs. [. . .]

Housing is generally free, with the majority of the population living in the Libyan equivalent of our state houses. If a family wishes to build a house, interest-free loans are readily available from the state, usually on a 25-year term. Housing costs take up about 25 per cent of most incomes. Since most Libyans live in extended family groups, there is normally more than one income coming into the house and more than enough money to spend. [. . .]

Other working conditions are far superior to this country. There is unlimited paid sick leave, subject to “legal excuse”, that is, the production of medical certificates. Accident victims receive full pay on the same basis. Free transport to work is the norm, free meals are provided, genuine equal pay exists and other benefits are in place that workers in Libya enjoy and which their counterparts in this country can only dream about. [. . .]

Workers retire at 60 and receive their full salary until they die. If a man dies, widows are entitled to the equivalent of their full salary until their children are able to support them.

Education is genuinely free, with stu­dents being educated in both English and Arabic. French was also compulsory until recently. The universities, which are based on the British model, have three times the number of students that we have with the same population. Tuition, books, accommodation and meals are free and students receive a generous living allowance in addition. We were told that the majority of academic staff and students are women. [. . .]

The 1969 revolution in Libya set in place programmes to ensure that every­one would share the benefits of the country’s wealth. There has been a major redistribution of wealth and a large in­vestment in agricultural and industrial development. Important restrictions were placed on capitalism, and Jamahiriya (Land of the Masses) was estab­lished. While they call it a socialist country, Libyans to whom we spoke were particularly proud of the fact that they have not simply aped the commu­nist model or copied the Western model of so-called representative democracy. It is, they say, their answer to their prob­lems derived from their history, their culture, their religion and their values. [. . .]

In Tripoli, most of the private businesses operating involve weaving, carpet production, jewellery manufac­ture, handcrafts and textiles. Much of the work was exquisite. Prices were reason­able and we were pleased to be able to buy in the people’s markets mostly direct from the people who had made the pro­ducts. It was good to know that their return was higher than it would have been under our system of mark-ups im­posed by a succession of middle men.

The people’s supermarkets are big, state-owned department stores which operate on the same basis. The producer gets the fullest return and the consumer gets the lowest possible price. Some dis­ruptions to supply are obvious in foreign goods, again the result of the US-organ­ised trade embargo. But they are well stocked in the basic requirements of everyday life and there was certainly no scarcity of food. [. . .]

Libya suffers from huge under-employ­ment. Industry suffers from this labour shortage, but the lack of skilled labour is even more critical. It is estimated that half the workforce in the steel works will be migrant labour. All the major construc­tion projects are built by foreign firms using predominantly foreign workers.

The drastic shortage of workers is im­mediately obvious to the visitor Public tidiness, particularly on the roadside, is nonexistent. “Dead” cars are just pushed off the road by their owners and left. Rubbish bags are thrown from cars all over the countryside and left to decay. Many buildings seem to be in need of refurbishing, but without the workers such tasks cannot be done. To help over­come this problem, Arab and African workers are allowed full access into the country and have all the rights of Libyan citizenship.

The lack of skilled workers is, of course, a problem Libya shares with other countries which have been liberated from their colonial oppressors for only a short time. The neglect of education and other services under colonialism is a common feature of Third World nations. In 1968, there were only 178 Libyan teachers in training. To overcome that problem the Libyan government has spent huge amounts building schools and campuses and providing generous al­lowances to students. [. . .]

Libya suffers a brain drain like most other countries because of the emphasis it is having to place on scientific training. Politically, problems will undoubtedly result too as the new, younger techno­crats are confronted with practical problems, the resolution of which they may seek non-ideological solutions to. [. . .]

The Libyan people I spoke to consi­dered they had as much if not more freedom than other countries they had visited. They might miss some of the accoutrements of the West because of the cultural traditions of their country, but they considered these to be unimportant compared to the role they could play in rebuilding their society after thousands of years of colonial rule.

But they commented that they had a greater freedom to go anywhere they liked in their own country than we have in the West where doors open or close on the basis of wealth, privilege or posi­tion. No such impediments exist in Libya.

Moreover, they could point to a singu­lar absence of violent crime, which made them feel much safer in Libya than in the West. The streets are safe.

Perhaps the equation of full employ­ment, an absence of poverty, good health care and education combined with their religious and cultural beliefs provides a model for us to examine when we are looking at ways to deal with crime. At a time when we have one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world and are busily building more prisons on Maori land, we should note that in Libya they have started tearing them down. If we could overcome our paranoia about Libya, we might find in that society the answers to some of our social ills. [. . .]

We also talked to as many people as possible about the position Gadaffi holds in Libyan society and, in particular, discussed with them the statements made by opponents to our trip, that Libya was a military dictatorship.

In those discussions, and in other forums, the first thing which struck us was the affection, almost adoration, people we met had for Gadaffi. They sang liberation songs about him. They quoted from his writings and his speeches and accord him a special place in their hearts. I don’t suggest that this feeling is universal, but it was wide­spread. He is accorded that special status because, firstly, he liberated the country from the Americans and the British, and because, secondly, he has helped build a fair and just society.

Libyans point to the fact that Gadaffi holds no executive position. He does not lead the country on a day-to-day basis. He is a member of the Revolutionary Com­mittee which has an important propa­ganda role, but can only make recom­mendations to the People’s Congress. [. . .]

We visited Colonel Gadaffi’s former residence [. . .] It was an unpretentious four-bedroom house crowded among other Arab-style city dwellings. Its furnishings were comfortable, but far from extravagant. He is seen as being of and for the people, and his life style is consistent with that view. [. . .]

In our discussions, the Libyan people stated from the beginning a willingness to negotiate with the Maori people as equals. Since 1840 we have never been able to negotiate with the white oppressors in our own country from a position of equality, and this was a remarkable and refreshing starting point.

It was, therefore, easy for us to reach agreement on the matters we wished to raise. A Maori delegation will visit Libya in 12 months’ time. There will be further discussions on the issues which we rais­ed. Recognition of Aotearoa as an inde­pendent Maori nation is a possibility. Trade between Libya and Maori organisa­tions, loans, boycott of trade with white New Zealand and the development of reciprocal cultural links will be explored.

We do not pretend that finality in these negotiations will be reached quickly We are aware that New Zealand’s colonial government is trying covertly to increase trade with Libya and to subvert Maori initiatives in Libya, while at the same time denigrating that country as a terrorist regime. That kind of hypocrisy is typical of this government’s foreign policy. [. . .]

At hui which we have attended since our return, we have told our people of our trip. We shall continue to do so, and with their support we shall be arranging for other Maoris to visit the land of the Jamahiriya

English food

It’s mostly nasty but we do have to give them credit for the sandwich in all its infinite variety. For example, this tasty but sadly not gluten-free item, the toast sandwich.

Just as sadly, it has all got political now. Caroline Crampton in the Guardian objects to Prime Minister David Cameron on sandwich-related grounds:

“Leftwing” is a phrase that many in the political sphere have long been comfortable with [. . .  But now] David Cameron has launched a full frontal attack on it. It’s a long-established rhetorical device that using three adjectives in a row will create a cumulative effect. By sandwiching “leftwing” between “irresponsible” and “weak” and placing it in close proximity to “union-sponsored”, he’s transforming it from a simple adjective into a loaded insult.

Monitor: Tim Blair.

Obituary of the week

From, as it happens, The Week, the 26 November edition, on English actress Dulcie Gray:

The diabolist Aleister Crowley became an ardent fan, once writing to invite her to be sacrificed as a virgin in a dawn rite at Stonehenge. Gray declined on the grounds that she wasn’t an early riser.

Totally natural

On this morning’s walk I took a new route, away from the cows and horses and bravely into the suburbs. I passed a house with a large sign outside offering a service I had never heard of: ionic foot detox.

So I looked it up. Apparently ionic foot detox will deal with, among other things, joint pain, arthritis, chronic fatigue, foggy brain, poor concentration and parasites. Fantastic. It can fix my feet and my head and also get rid of the cat.

Also, even though it uses electricity to ionise water, it is totally natural.

So here is the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano performing Frank Zappa’s “Bogus Pomp”: