A safe, slow, Sunday, spent staying in;

Messing around on Facebook and google, listening to Lyn.

Skyping my Dad, getting news of Mum, Luke and Mark.

Chilling out indoors, while outside it grows dark.

Aye, a truly nice sunday, not doing much at all,

Snug in my office watching evening fall.

True, I often like to be out, relishing every bit of life;

But today I just wanna be here, at home with my future Wife.

I wouldn’t be much of a blogger, internet denizen and media commentator if I didn’t say anything about the new star wars trailer. I came across it last night on my ipad, when I was in the pub, and have just rewatched it. What can I say? Oh Please! I still maintain that this is a film that should never have been made: the Star wars story, the rise and fall of Aniken Skywalker, has been told; what remains is fluff, a sequence of oversaturated images, shown in quick succession, intended to appear dramatic and ominous yet totally lacking any artistic merit. Neither star wars fans nor the hacks who make it can face the fact that their franchise has now been eclipsed by far more complex, deeper narratives, like Lord of the Rings, so they start to churn out cliched bull like this. It’s a kid’s film, made by disney, directed by that total muppet JJ Abrams, but you just know it will have fanboys the world over wetting their pants with glee. Give me a bat’leth over one of those laughable new lightsabers any day!

I still think I need something new to squeal about. I’ve had my three filmic fascinations for years, but Bond, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings are all so mainstream, I now need to get myself off the beaten track. Of course, I’ll probably always love all three: I wrote about my fascination with bond and trek in my thesis; I’m still more than a little obsessed with 007’s Olympic appearance, probably in part because it echoes the parachute jump in The Spy who Loved me, one of my cinephilliac moments; and meeting Patrick stewart was undoubtably one of the most special events of my life, again in part because it relates to my work. Thus it seems to me that all my obsessions are interrelated, usually having some sort of connection with London 2012 Olympics, my masters thesis, or London in general. In fact I once tried to roughly sketch out those relationships; what I want to do now is get away from that network.

In other words, I think it’s time to expand my horizons. I still have the problem I wrote about here. I need to find something more niche, less well known. Similarly, having been to mega-events like the paralympic closing ceremony and python’s final performance , I think I now need to start hunting down smaller, more intimate gigs. It is as if the big stuff can now be ticked off, so I can now start to investigate the smaller things. The question is, how? One cannot deliberately search for an obsession – they usually just spring on you when you least expect, just as pieces of awesomeness can occur at any given time. What I need to, the, is keep my eyes open, be vigilant and curious, and try to stop reverting to my usual mainstream interests.

Having got politics off my chest earlier, I find myself wanting to write about so much today. There are the riots in america, which, while one can never condone violence, I cannot help but agree with and back. There’s the appalling news that people with learning disabilities are being abjectly failed, thrown into homes – surely a step backwards towards the darkest days of disability. There’s the slightly better news that advertising on video blogs is going to be regulated slightly more. Personally, I am utterly contemptuous of people who use their blogs to get money by flogging stuff – what a sell out. Now, excuse me while I sip my delicious Coke. Above all, though, inspired by this news about a singing nun rising through the Itallian nun with such hits as ”Like A virgin” (you really couldn’t make it up, could you?) I feel utterly compelled to direct you to this Frank Zappa classic. Amen.

(As you can probably tell, I have my computer back. Yay!)

It’s wednesday again, and once again I have spent the last half hour yelling at the tv, becoming angrier and angrier as that arrogant, unelected prick CaMoron tells us how wonderful he is, how well he and his party are doing, and how fortunate we all are to have him as prime minister. I’m sick of it. It really rubs me up; I find myself shaking with rage as I think of the suffering he and his party have caused through their cuts, only to watch him try to blame all our woes on labour. It was Labour who started the recovery, and the economy is doing well despite, not because of, what that barely numerate prick George Osbourne is doing. But now we have to watch the tories hijack the credit, thinking they can sneer and jeer at those who actually care, patting themselves on the back for lowering taxes while people reliant on benefit starve. It is utterly infuriating. I’m sure it worries Lyn to get so angry, but too see those tory scumbags impose their childish neoliberal views on us is almost too much to bear. I want the fuckers out!

As we drove home in the taxi last night, I was struck once again by what an awesome city we live in. London had done it again. Last nights screening up at the Royal College of Physicians went very well indeed: the shot film with Lyn and myself was played film, then the main film, followed by a question and answer session. It struck me as a triumph, although I suspect that a few of my friends in the crip community may raise one or two questions. They used lyn’s score well: it was not too overt, but really helped set the mood of the film, just as non-diagetic music should. It made me feel really proud to hear it: whenever it was introduced, I thought, that’s my Lyn!

What remains, of course, is for the film to be marketed. It is apparently doing well in Spain (after all, it is a documentary about Spanish paracyclists). With any luck, someone at channel four or the Beeb will see it and pick it up, but time will tell. Now, though, I feel very excited: what I saw last night has very great potential indeed, and is gaining momentum. I cannot wait to see what happens next.

Link

I suppose I can’t complain, given the frequency with which awesome things happen, but today has been a dull, slow day. I have barely moved from the sofa. It has been raining all day, which always dampens my mood. Tomorrow, on the other hand, should be much more interesting: you may recall me noting a while ago that Lyn was asked to compose the score for The Unstoppables, a Spanish documentarry about paracyclists. Well, tomorrow is its first screening, up at the royal college of physicians, and guess who is invited! I can barely believe we are going to my first proper premier. I have been wondering what to wear all day – part of me really wants to go in my tux.

I was just watching an old episode of the Simpsons and I was struck by a thought worth noting. It was the episode where the homer and marge are judged unfit parents and are fostered by Flanders. Ned then learns that Bart, Lisa and Maggie were never baptised, and has an apoplexy. I noted how he immediately resolves that Homer and Marge were indeed bad parents. I know it is a cartoon, but that struck me as a perfect example of religious hypocracy of religion and the folly of it. How does being religious make one in any way a better person? Indeed, I would argue that ned is by far the worse parent, for it is he who indoctrinates his children into a strict conservative worldview, demanding they believe all kinds of fiction and refusing to let them think. From an objective standpoint, surely that counts as abuse, yet society allows people like Flanders, even praising them. That strikes me as troubling: through religion, kids are being lied to and abused, and society hypocritically allows it.

I don’t usually like the army. I try, as a rule, to avoid the military. There are far better ways to solve the problems of the world than through bombs and guns. But when your heading out for your Friday night drink, and the bolt on your front wheel breaks just outside the woolwich barracks, those guys can be very helpful indeed. Thanks guys – I owe you.

I was right: watching monty Python live on DVD didn’t even compare to watching them in the flesh up at the dome. Yet last night, having gone to buy a new DVD player in Woolwich, I was glad I did. Not only did it refresh my memory, but, of course, I was able to get more out of it through a second viewing. My studies in both film and literature teaches me that one should never adress a text just once. Thus late last night saw me on the sofa howling my head of, yet also remembering that fabulous night, and trying to spot myself in the audience.

This morning, though, sees me on the sofa again, worrying about a completely different set of jokers. The March of ukip is more frightening than any killer bunny, and what stands to happen in Rochester tonight concerns me very much indeed. We have a group of people with a simplistic, xenophobic worldview, who, by grouping together to call themselves a political party, seem to have completely hijacked the politics and mindset of the country. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sickening and stupid; how I wish Professor Hawking would come and run that twit Farage over.

While I realise it won’t come close to the experience of actually being there, I just bought the DVD of Monty Python Live. I was just up at Stratford with Dom, dropping off my computer for repair (if you’re ever in a similar position, remember to cite Consumer Law and the repair will be free if the machine is young enough).

We were going to come straight home, but I thought I might as well check if the recording of that awesome night was out yet. It is, and I am now the proud owner of Monty Python Live on DVD.

It’s odd, when you think about it: that night was a truly special event for me, and watching it on screen will probably seem but a shadow of it. To have been there, witnessing that moment of cultural history, was awesome. A recording is just an echo, yet it will keep those cherished memories fresh. That’s why Barthes was so intrigued by the photograph; and why I wish I had a photo or video of when I met Sir Patrick Stewart. The past is gone, but we must relish precious memories. The photograph or film stops times, extending the moment into eternity. The only problem is, without my desktop, I am now counting on Dom to get our DVD playa working.

Bob has bashed out band-aid again:

Do you not see we’re his tools

Guilt-tripping us over Ebola, and then

Entreating us to buy his record, like fools

Using suffering to gain attention and air time

Pretending to act so pure

His ego trip should be a crime

He’s just after his face in every store

I just caught Psnelope Keith’s programme about village life on more four, and feel compelled to have a rant. I can usually let such things slide, but I have to ask, what the smeg is Channel Four playing at, making such a cloying, conservative, short-sighted bit of tripe? While I have nothing against village life, the way in which Keith romanticises tradition and seems to yearn for some idyllic heyday when somehow everyone looked after everyone else and a benevolent local Lord cared for his subjects made me cringe. She contradictory professes to embrace change yet laments the passing of some bygone era. The entire programme was a jumble of cloying cliches; it was just an ego trip for Keith – Channel Four obviously just allowed her to make a program on her chosen subject, which, while it might seem sweet and innocent, has a form of repressive conservatism at its core. The whole thing really wound me up – I expect better from Channel Four.

It has been a while since I directed you guys to anything on YouTube without much comment – it’s a bit lazy on my part – but today I think I’ll direct you here. Whatever you think of Russell Brand (and I think he can be a bit up himself), he is spot on in this wittily written restyling of a Blur classic.

Rather appropriately for a blog entry composed on a bus, albeit one stuck in traffic, I would like to direct you guys here, to an article covering the pram vs. wheelchair row. I should have covered it a couple of days ago, but other things took my attention. Yet it is an issue I feel strongly about: indeed I often get really angry when I can’t get on a bus when a buggy is in the wheelchair spot. In fact I have come to resent pram users. I know they need to get from A to B too, but prams can be folded, and when mums refuse to do so, one cannot help but feel discriminated against. After all, as the article says, people with disabilities had to fight long and hard in the nineties for the right to ride on busses; to see that right usurped and denied to us by those who have alternatives but don’t use them through laziness, just feels wrong.

I would just like to use this entry to send my hearty congratulations to the European space agency. I just got in from my daily roll, and, being interested in such matters, turned on the tv to see how their probe was doing. To tell the truth, I rather expected to hear the dissapointing news that it had crashed, yet, incredibly, it has touched down safely. When you look at the technical detail, it really is a remarkable feat; as someone who sometimes struggles to park his wheelchair in its correct place of an evening, I am in awe of what the ESA has apparently achieved today. And, as they point out, we stand to learn so much from this mission. This is quite a historic day, all things considered – time to sit back and wait for the data to roll in, hopefully telling us something about the origins of life on our own planet.

I think I know what you are expecting to read on here tonight. You are probably expecting me to launch into my usual prosaic bollocks about the futility of war, or about sacrifice; perhaps the word ‘folly’ would be in there somewhere. But why should I write that entry? What would be the point? We all know the score; we have all seen the pictures of the poppies and the devistation. You have read and heard what I have read and heard, so what could I, a man with no experience of war, possibly add. Today was pretty normal for me: up to Stratford to try to get my Mac fixed, then down to bexleyheath to get some shopping. A day of rolling around South london, free to go as I please in my chair. Yet that too is the best thing I can write about today, for those men whose deaths we mark today gave their lives so I can enjoy such freedoms. (Or so we are told, although to question such things is in itself to excercise a freedom).

I am currently watching a quite alarming segment on bbc news about the discrimination people with disabilities face on london public transport. The stories it includes are shocking: you should hear some of the excuses cabbies use to stop wheelchair users and guide dogs getting into their cars, blatantly breaking the law. Of course, if I think about it I experience such things all the time, but I am so used to it that I suppose it fades into the background. However, I am glad this issue is getting some media attention: I don’t think most people realise the casual discrimination we crips so often face. There’s apparrently a progra on about it later – tune in if you can.

I think this is worth recording, though it might take a while to explain. I’m currently using my iPad because, as I m the other day, my computer has given up the ghost. Recently, though, my mobile internet has been playing up, so yesterday I took myself up to the O2 shop at the dome. I was able to explain my problem to the assistant there in no time, and a few moments later I was back online. I went away happy.

Today I set off for the dome again, to see what I could of the Tennis. My new attitude is that you never know when something awesome will crop up: I may discover something as incredible as Monty Python or Star Trek at any given point, provided I keep my eyes open. Who knew what I could have seen. It was possible I could meet a tennis star, got on tv, or anything. Predictably, nothing of the sort happened, but as I was setting off for home I noticed my mobile internet was down again. At home i can use our network, but when I am out and about I like to be online in case of emergency, or if I feel the sudden urge to blog.

I got home flustered. Lyn and I tried to fix it, trying to do what the chap at the dome had done yesterday, with no luck. An hour or so later, I went out again, this time making for the O2 shop in woolwich; I reasoned staff there would be just as helpful as those at the dome. How wrong I was. They were rude and condescending, insisting i needed a carer with me. They even wrote a note on paper for me, in case I didn’t understand what they were saying. I was utterly insulted. I ripped it up before them and set off back to the dome.

It’s quite a long bus ride from woolwich to North greenwich, and when I got there crowds were streaming out from the tennis. I didn’t have to stay long there, though, as the nice lady in the O2 store very quickly understood my problem, looked at my iPad and got me online again. I immediately messaged Lyn to tell her. I now know I just have to tap reset in general settings. I still feel angry about how I was treated in woolwich, and that I had to go all the way from there back to the dome. The difference in attitude to me between the two places was remarkable. Indeed, I am seriously considering making some kind of formal complaint.

What are you reading this for? Lyn is currently rocking out – tune in!

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/lyn rock tonight 2.jpg[/img]

I saw my friend Dennis on the news earlier. She is down from Manchester, taking part in a large anti assisted suicide protest up in Parliament square. I have a rather busy day here, otherwise I think I would be up there with them. While the right to choose is a very good thing, I still share the fear that assisted suicide is open to abuse. What if a terminally ill person was encouraged, implicitly or explicitly, to end their life? I have seen too many people – children – fight for one more dawn, day after day, to say it should be thrown away. I’m therefore glad to see Dennis and the guys up there, making sure the reservations of people with disabilities are heard, lest we are assumed to be lesser beings all just dying to end our miserable lives.

Oh, the promises those Apple guys make:

‘Our machines are safe. They never break.’

You can always trust a Mac, they say

They never freeze, viruses at bay

Why, then, is my Mac now dead, And I’m blogging on my iPad insetad?

Oh well, it’s not all bad:

There are certain advantages to be had.

I can blog in comfort, sat on the settee,

Trying to find rhymes while watching the telly!

Earlier today I watched Life is Toff, the beebs new comedy about an old aristocratic family in Devon. I know its a mocumentarry, and supposed to be fiction, but I find myself getting very aggitated by it. The characters are all so arrogant; they act as if they deserve to be rich and look down upon the rest of us, and aren’t just there through accident of birth. It seems, fiction or not, the Marxist in me cannot be silenced. I suspect, though, that we are supposed to get angry, so the question you have to ask – as no doubt many critics on the right will ask – is, is this an attempt by the BBC to incite some kind of class war?

Thirteen years after the original towers were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, New York’s World Trade Center has re-opened for business. The phoenix, it seems, has at last risen from the ashes; yet I fear that while the physical scar on the New York skyline my have been sewn up, with American culture more divided than ever, and fighting continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the wounds caused on that day are yet to heal.

It occurs to me, watching the news stories on such things as Scottish devolution and Europe, that I hold a rather contradictory view on humanity and society. It’s strange: on the one hand, I support localism. If we are all equal, we all deserve an equal say in what goes on in our communities, and the best way to do this is through direct, localised democracy. This way, local variety and culture can be best preserved; ht is why I love the idea of Manchester and other cities getting their own mayors, and think the creation of a northern powerhouse to counterbalance the megalopolis of London would be a good move. At the same time, I believe humanity should be coming together, getting rid of national borders and working together as one species. That requires a large centralised government which can coordinate resources and make sure the strong don’t overpower the weak. That’s why I favour the EU and opposed Scottish independence, and view the news that we seem to be heading further and further towards an exit from Europe, and may no longer be welcome there soon, as very bad indeed. These two views contradict each other, yet both stem from the same principles of democracy and equality. This strikes me as odd; how does humanity unite yet retain its variety and avoid autocracy? This might seem an academic question, but, with our resources staring to dwindle, I think it is one we will soon have to tackle.

Yesterday, as you may have guessed from my poorly rhymed poem, I went down the hill to watch Charlton play Sheffield wednesday. My friend James from the cricket team suggested it a couple of days ago, and it turned out to be great fun. We first met up with some friends of ours who live close to the stadium, then went to watch the match. It started, I felt, rather slowly, but soon warmed up. Sheffield scored first and it went to half tim one nill, but Athletic got one back in the second half. The home team might have won it had their second goal, scored in stoppage time, not been disappointingly offside.

Oh well, at least a draw is better than a loss. I really had fun, and with the ground so close I think I should go more often. Mind you, I have written that before. Nonetheless, it is something I can regularly do with James, who has become a good friend; it also gets me out of the house. While I have never been one of those sporty, footbally types of guys, the football culture interests me: where else do you get groups of men hurling the most obscene insults at each other – the house of Commons aside? It’s quite peculiar when you think about it, and worth delving into. And if I get to a few more games while I investigate tis form of fandom, who am I to argue.

Football day, football day

The cones are out again

A game to play! hurrah, hooray!

To the valley we’re sent

On the terrace they chant and shout

Today I’ll be there too

Throngs of men screaming their lungs out

The great tradition of saturday afternoon