Lovely weekend.  Thanks to all, esp. miss_soap for sorting it out in the first place – hope the afflictions clear up soon… 

As for everyone else, well,  imagine a huge list of LJ tags here, many of which I don’t know, because outside the M25, people are still introduced my their real names, rather than their LJ usernames.  It’s a quaint little custom, and when in Rome, after all.  Lovely to see/meet/get to know everyone a bit better.

For the benefit of the rest of you who weren’t there: I have been stuffing my face and drinking the Good Booze in Norfolk.  You were probably not, and that’s sad for you, but I hope you had a good time doing whatever it was you were doing.  You will not understand if I wax lyrical about the ravioli, so I won’t, although I would like to mention the pig that gave its life so that we could have that fantastic bacon with breakfast.  It was obviously some kind of Hero Pig, to produce bacon that good.

Now I have ten bajillion emails to sort out.  And work tomorrow, which is a bit rubbish, but the men have to work, after all.  And I’ve got another four day week coming up, and then two days drinking even better booze than this weekend, so it’s a bit of a result all round.

I suspect that there’ll be all of about three people on my friends list that are going to get this one, but still:

The Few Men Manifesto.

I’m not enough of a barely-qualified, bloody-minded, muppet.

Specifically: I know enough about securing the average company network to not be overly paranoid, and within those parameters of security, I believe in letting people do more or less as they wish. I’m confident in my ability to remain a step ahead of anyone that isn’t in IT, basically.

Many of you will have heard/remember what happened to me in my first few weeks here, when I got slapped with the internet use policy. Broadly: because they thought I might not have been doing my job 24/7, they completely removed my ability to do any work whatsoever. That all got sorted out, in the end, but I thought it was a fantastic bit of muppetry.

They’ve topped it.

Doing some entirely legitimate, work related web browsing, I found a really useful website that will be a great help in keeping the company’s webserver safe and unhacked. Of course, when I tried to go to it, I got an “access denied” message – something about it was tripping the AUP. So I went around it, in the manner that my colleagues kindly showed me how to do. It’s not good for much besides scanning LJ and checking personal mail, though. Which is, to be fair, all I normally want it for.

But anyway: having seen that it will be really usful with the security-type bits of my job, and confident that it was completely work-related, I email my boss and IT to ask if I could please be allowed access to it, in order to do my job better.

They said no.

The site is basically a listing of the various hacking vulnerabilites a website may have that can be exposed by Google. Very, very handy. Go through them, check your site doesn’t have them, generally keep up to date.

But, because (and I think the standard of their English gives something away here) “there is various tools on the site that allow the proxy servers to be hacked and jumped so that its possible to access restricted websites”, I’m not allowed to do it.

Point a) No, there aren’t. There are ways to discover if a proxy is open to exploitation, but not, as far as I can see, anything that would actually allow me to do so. And frankly, I don’t give a shit about exploiting their poxy proxy.

Point b) though, is a doozy. The email from them goes on to say that if I want to access this site, I can do so via the ADSL line we have in the office, that isn’t on the company network. So, they’re OK with me being able to go there, and learn all I can from it, it turns out. Including, apparently, how to bypass their proxy. Just so long as I don’t do it through their proxy. Are they assuming that it’d be beyond me to get any of these (supposed) hacking tools I damn well pleased from the ADSL machine onto another machine sitting six feet away, or something?

So, they don’t want me to do my job easily and well, and to help keep the company’s machines secure, but they’re fine with me learning how to break their rules (and therefore make the company network less secure) so that I can do my job easily and well.

What do they teach PFYs these days on their IT courses?

Still, in the event that any of our webservers should get hacked, it just became IT’s fault, rather than mine. They wouldn’t let me keep up-to-date with how to stop it happening, after all…

Right then. It’s March. This means it’s almost my birthday. In related news, the other night I discovered the other night that apparently, if Jesus wasn’t born on December the 25th (as he almost certainly wasn’t), the most plausible date for his birth is apparently March the 25th. Something to do with there being a planetary conjunction that would have looked like a star, or something, and a badly-estimated equinox, or similar nonsense.

Sounds mad as badgers to me, but who am I to argue with the son of god?

So, having firmly established that the day of my birth is an extremely important event, that has changed the world, and lead to all sorts of madness and suffering over the last couple of thousand years, I feel you have the proper context to understand how important it is to celebrate it.

So, as you’ll recall, the plan is this:

Friday the 25th – Dinner at Boisdale. I am aware that this largely excludes vegetarians and those who don’t have a limb or two to spare to cover the cost of dinner and drinks, but since I am a meat-eating bastard with a cabinet of spare limbs, I don’t care. (Also, I am doing plenty of stuff that anyone can join in on.) But this should be an extremely civilised night out, and well worth it, anyhow.

Saturday the 26th – Cocktails and clubbing. Clubbing will almost certainly mean Slimelight, as I can’t be arsed to be imaginative about it. Cocktails, on the other hand, is more complex. Depending on how many people are up for it, it’ll either be at my place (in which case, I will be asking those who are coming to each bring a bottle of a specific spirit so that we’ll actually have enough to drink), or if loads of people decide they want to come, at a bar in town. I don’t know which one, and will happily accept suggestions.

Sunday the 27th – A film of some stripe in mid-afternoon, followed by drinks at the Big Chill Bar, because I like it there.

Monday the 28th – Pub lunch, followed by wandering around somewhere nice like a park or an art gallery, or something. More details nearer the time.

Anyway, once again, I’m asking for you to indicate what you’d like to join me for, more concretely this time.

Particularly important:

Do not tick the Boisdale box unless you are definitely going to come – I’ll be making a reservation there for an appropriate number of people early next week.

With the cocktails: if you don’t mind which, please tick both boxes. I need to judge how many people want to come, so I can work out whether we can all fit in the flat, or not.

Also lilitufire is in town for this lot as well, also celebrating her birthday, and obviously, it is extremely important that she return home impressed by with wit, charm and style on offer in London. So I need you lot to pick up the slack for me…

Let’s be clear: I wanted to see Flipron. Somehow, I had got the idea that they were on first. They weren’t. They were headlining. So, y’know, good. More Flipron. But my companion in gigging and I got there assuming they’d be the first act on. And so we had to sit through two other bands in an overpriced Soho Media Hole, that made shitty cocktails.

It might have been bearable, but the other two bands were shit.

Actaully, no, it wouldn’t have been bearable. The crowd were self conciously cool, in that immensely slappable way. Fashionable (read: stupid looking) haircuts, trendy (overpriced and stupid-looking) clothes. Understand: I speak as a man with shoulder length hair that I dye ginger, a man who hasn’t worn much of anything that isn’t black in his adult life. I am aware that I am no position to throw stones. And still: I think those people looked stupid. I felt out of place, and not in that usual goth “I feel like everyone in here is judging me for a freak” way. I mean, I’m hardly a model of sartorial elegance, but at least basic black jeans and a jumper never looks outright stupid. Scruffy, maybe, but at least it’s relaxed, unpretentious, and comfortable. But I digress.

So, I’m sitting there, surrounded by media yahs, wondering when Nathan Barley was going to walk in, and on came the first band. And fleetingly, I thought “Well, things will pick up now.”

Wrong. Barbarossa: Earnest folky alt-country crap. Or: Painfully boring whiners. Suicide music. Two guys and a girl singing, and some bloke with a mandolin, or similarly tedious stringed folk instrument. There may have been a violin (thus making them one of about three bands ever with a fiddle in that I don’t like, which will give you some idea how dismal they were) but frankly, I was past caring.

I can think of no better summation of them than this: they closed with a song, the chorus of which ran something pretty like “I want to lay you down and love you with no one else around”, delivered in the same harmonised whine as everything else.

How do people listen to this anaemic crap? Have they had their testicles cut off, or something? How can you sing a song about shagging, and remove all evidence of hormones from it? What thought process says “yes, we shall sing about fucking, but we shall do it in an earest and passionless style, because then people will want to sleep with us”? I mean, I assume that’s why they formed the band. It’s not like seem to be having fun, and don’t have a unique voice, or a clear burning desire to Say Something To The World. That leaves “getting laid” as the only remaining motivation, doesn’t it? And god knows, seeming tediously earnest and passionless has never been the best route into the underwear of anyone I’ve ever met. What were they thinking?

And then the second “band”. Mimosa. A girl vocalist and a guy with an acoustic guitar. My first thought: “This looks like it could be bad.” I was right. It was. I present the chorus (and indeed opening lines of) their first number: “You smile and walk away/There’s nothing more to say/And now as time goes by/I seem to laugh and cry”. The mediocrity speaks for itself, I feel. The song turned out to be called “Are you listening to me?” Not if you give me any fucking choice in the matter, sunshine. Alex retreated under her coat. I went to get more drinks. It didn’t help.

For god’s sake, I used to date someone who played acoustic nights in shittier venues than that one. Open mic nights, where almost anyone could get up on stage. They were better than the shit I sat through last night. I mean, it helped that I liked her stuff, but even if I hadn’t it was honest, and there was vitality to it. Testicles Ovaries. Is that so much to ask of these people?

Another song started, this one called “Now I’m Boring”, and I can help but think “No, you started out boring, luv. Now you’re just pissing me off.”

There wass a sign on the wall by the door asking that the audience be quiet while the act was on. Following “Now I’m Boring” they had the brass neck to ask us to obey it. Now, fair enough, everyone inexplicably shut up for the first shower. But this pair were actually worse, and it was not lost on me that I’d handed over cash for this. I figure that I paid for the right to not listen, and attempt to do something fun instead if I want, and am not bugging anyone else (and since everyone else is talking, I think I can assume I safe). The only duty of art is to command the audience’s attention for as long as it’s asking. That they’re failing in this ought to tell them something, I feel.

And then after what seems like an age: Flipron.

(Interestingly, there was what seemed to be a complete audience change as they came on. Obviously, the audience always bulks up a bit as the headliner comes on, but it seemed like 90% of the audience watching the first two acts fucked off as soon as they were done. Suddenly, the audience were better dressed, and had much more sensible hair. It was quite a relief.)

It was worth sitting through the tedium. Better than I remembered, better than their CD, and with about 70% new material that’s at least as good as their old stuff. And they played for about an hour.

But best of all: they looked like they were having fun. They smiled. There was wit and personality there. They responded to the audience. Made jokes between themselves. The lead singer started a link: “This is a deeply personal song about a relationship…” and you could almost feel the audience sag, before he broke into a grin “Nah, just kidding. It’s a song about hell.”

And like all their stuff, it’s funny, entertaining, and betrays serious talent on the Flipron’s part – a song about being nice to Cerberus: “Throw him a stick and he chases the shadow” is going to stay with me. A perfect fit in a set full of lighthearted songs about being old, being dead, and being just slightly mad.

I am aware, as I draw this to a close, that I have spent rather more time and space being horrible about the crowd slating two acts that I didn’t like, rather than praising the one I did. Not, perhaps, in the best spirit of this sort of thing. But I’ve talked about Flipron before, and I’m sure I will again. I just felt it was important to warn you all about the other two horrors I had to sit through, so the same doesn’t happen to you. Is this what the young people are listening to these days? Etc…

I have a new toy.  I have made it to payday with enough in the bank for an iPod shuffle, so, in accordance with my promise to myself, I have bought one for gym-going purposes.  Hurrah, go me, etc.  But since I want it for the gym, the automatic, random-loading function wasn’t what I wanted.  Even now, it is filling with a playlist selected for gym-going benefit.  But it’s taken me all bloody night to compile the fucking thing.  I’m pretty sure some of you must have solid-state MP3 players, that require you to select a small amount of music to load onto them.  How do you cope?  I mean, I’m almot never planning to adjust what’s on this, and thank god for it.  If I had to do it a couple of times a week, I think I’d kill something….

In other news, the Glenfiddich Caoran Reserve is great with ice.

Stop looking at me like that – it’s only half a step up from the regular pish you can get in any pub, so I feel no guilt about this little experiment.  The water/chill brings out the Islay peatiness a bit more, without killing the sherry flavours.  It’s a bit less subtle, perhaps, but a very nice drink.  Maybe I’ll learn to appreciate Islay malts yet.

I am not up in arms about ID cards, terribly much. I am against them, yes. But it’s not really something I really care about from a civil rights point of view. I think getting up in arms about it only serves as a distraction from the more pressing civil rights issues in this country.

One, I don’t believe it’ll do any good, as the only protests I’m seeing are on-line, and we all know that petitions signed on-line don’t count.

But, more importantly, two, I am well aware that the state already has all the power and apparatus if could need to investigate my life, should they decide to, and I’ve seen no convincing arguments that would lead me to think that making me carry a bit of card with some personal information on it will not significantly increase its power over me, or provide it with much more information than they could get with, say a court order to my ISP, and another to the Oystercard people. That’ll tell them more than they could possibly want to know about my interests, associates, and movements.

It will, I suppose, make it harder for me lie to the police. I’m not going to be able to give a false name and address, should I get nicked for something. But, I’ve got to be honest, even were I charged with a crime that I had committed, I don’t think it would occur to me to give a false name and address.

But, all that said, I’m still against, them. I don’t see a need for them, or think they’re solve any pressing social problems. Introducing them will be a complete waste of time and money.

But here is an excellent argument for why they’ll be an on-going waste of time and money.

Johnny Cash, John Peel, and now Hunter S. Thompson.  The only three strangers whose death has caused me to shed tears.

I have been trying to sort out what I want to say about the good doctor for most of the day.

Thompson is quite justly held up as one of the great American writers – he pioneered an astonishing brand of journalism, one that I personally feel may be the most valuable kind, because ultimately, it’s about giving a shit about something, getting out there and engaging with the world, learning from it, making it different in some way, rather than just observing and reporting.  So it’s always faintly rankled with me, that the book everyone holds up as his best work is Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas. 

I become suspicious that perhaps, that’s all they’ve bothered to read of his work, because it’s the “underground classic”.  Me, I’ve always prefered Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.  There’s more berserk gonzo madness in the first one, sure.  There’s more drug taking, and lunatic escapades – superficially, it’s cooler.  But the second always seemed like the more mature work to me.  By the second book, he’d mastered his technique, and rather than turning it on the rather nebulous “American Dream”, he was using it on something that mattered – a presidential campaign, a document of how political power worked in America at that time.

The book is no less savage, no less vituperative and no less filled with craziness, but these are stories that actually happened, events by which the world was changed, covered by a man with a command and love of language second to none, a man with passion and conviction.  I don’t understand why everyone prefers the more ficitionalised example. 

I think one of the reasons that people prefering the fiction rankles a little is that whatever else one can say about him (and lets be honest, there are many unflattering things that could be said about him) Thompson was a blisteringly honest man, who wrote what he thought.  There was no-one else who could write books like him, because he wrote with a near complete disregard for the consequences.  No political journalist out to build his career would have written the book Thompson did.  No-one who worried about the safety of their four limbs would have even gone to get the story on the Hells Angels the way Thompson did, never mind written the book afterward.

Thompson is not a man I would like to have met, unlike Peel and Cash.  But, like both of them, I would have liked the chance to thank him somehow.  In most of the pieces of writing I’m happiest with, I can see things I learned from reading his work.

“I feel like I might as well be sitting up here carving the words for my own tombstone… and when I finish, the only fitting exit will be right straight off this fucking terrace and into The Fountain, 28 stories below and at least 200 yeards out in the air and across Fifth Avenue.

Nobody could follow that act.”

— Hunter S. Thompson, from the Author’s Note accompanying “The Great Shark Hunt”.

Via zoo_music_girl, I hear that Flogging Molly are playing the Mean Fiddler on April 26th.  So, there’s that.

But in another vein, the sleazy, creepy and marvellous Flipron are playing their unique brand of music in London on Monday the 28th of Feb.  Anyone out there feel like trying something new?  (Samples available here).  They’re another lot like Firewater, in that I could not explain the kind of music that they play if my life depended on it.  But they’re ace.  Actually, now I think of it, fuse Firewater’s strange fantasies with a more fifties British seaside town sensibility, and you’re getting there.  Dodgy men in raincaots hanging round the end of the pier, soundtracked by sinister fairground rides.  Yes.  Ace.  Come and see them.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were anyone (like, say, members of my family) thinking of buying a gift for me some time in the next couple of months, for, y’know, some reason or other, then they could do a lot worse than one of these.

(link via adrasteah, cheers.)