This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 28/03/10
Slouching
Well yes, it has been quiet here of late, hasn't it?
Part of it has been due to one or two things which I might grandiosely describe as 'projects' which have been keeping me away from me usual pithy comments ("I didn't know you had a lithp". Ed.) on the world.
One of them is getting my archive of photographs sorted out (like wot I tried to do last year). Another has been completing the digitising of my vinyl. This is now complete, and covers no fewer than thirty six DVD-Rs (I've kept the .wav files as well as .mp3s). I may well put a full list of my record collection up here soon, just to show off how broad my musical taste (or lack of it) is. I'm also getting ready to start digitising all my old open-reel tapes, now that I've got hold of a machine that can play them.
Being easily distracted and having a short attention span, I got myself diverted into looking at a bit of family history. Apparently, it's possible to trace my father's family back to Sussex in the mid-17th century (and possibly before, although gaps in the fossil record have caused problems for those who have delved far deeper than me). It's possible that one of the signatories of the execution warrant for Charles I of England was a cousin twelve times removed, but it has proven difficult to be sure about this. I'd like to think so.
Apart from that, my lack of communication with my reader has been down largely to lethargy and one of my periods of "What's the fucking point?". I mean, here we are, the same shower of crooks are in power over us, a tribe whose avarice and power-hunger are outstripped only by their contempt for the views, the needs, even the lives of those they rule. We are governed by corporate interests; the State is building ever-tighter constraints on our freedom to move, to act, to think; it is colluding with 'entertainment' corporations to cut off people's access to the internet simply on the basis of allegations made by those same corporations; people are getting two years in prison for throwing an empty water bottle in the general direction of the Israeli Embassy; the rich get richer on our money, and those who provide front-line public services are having their redundancy terms slashed as a precursor to tens of thousands of those at the bottom of the pyramid being chucked out of work irrespective of which party wins the forthcoming election. What could it possibly matter what I have to say?
Except, I suppose, that I have not only a right but a duty to say what I think, in the same way that I view my ability to vote as a duty (even if this is reduced to writing "A pox on all of them!" on the ballot paper). There is nothing that gives the powerful a greater sense of comfort than the idea of the docile, complaisant masses, so anything which gives them a pin-prick of unease must always be worthwhile.
And then, of course, there's work. I don't think I would be exaggerating to say that this, at the moment, sucks like a Dyson on steroids. The trouble is that I am, for obvious reasons, very restricted in what I can say about it. Shall I just confine myself to saying that we are being run by a bunch of empire-building, self-aggrandising and self-important wankers, and leave it at that? Oh, and to point you to this blog which - although it often strays a little too far into the 'minimal state' standpoint beloved of those Hayek-groupies who misleadingly label themselves as 'libertarians' - might be a useful source of information for those who might want to know how bad things are in the Depratment these days.
So, now you know.
