As per, but still, you all ought to read this. It’s Cory Doctrow’s speech to Microsoft about Digital Rights Management. It’s as on the ball as I’d expect from Doctrow, but as well as providing a strong argument against DRM, it’s should provide a pretty good summary of the background to the whole affair, and generally explain why you ought to give a fuck about the debate if you’ve been ignoring it up to now. At least, I think it does.

Also, if anyone would like to buy me this, then I’m sure I can come up with some appropriate form of thanks.

This week, I shall be mostly: Getting ready for glastonbury. Other than rockoctopus and davebushe, is there anyone else reading this that’s going?

[Update notice: Black Ink has new content.]

Good weekend. Double dose of clubbing, which is slightly worrying, since I seem to have come out the end of it feeling pretty much fine, rather than the wreck I by rights ought to be (special prize to the people at for following “The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn” by The Pogues with Flogging Molly’s “Devil’s Dance Floor”, which pleased me beyond measure – a pair of tracks I’ve never heard while out clubbing before, but which I adore…) and I even managed to run the second installment of the game on Sunday, and did not collapse in a tiny brain-fried heap as I’d feared I would. I’ve got a few re-writes to do on my notes for the next few sessions, just to re-structure act one a bit – based on player feedback, one of the things I had in mind for later needs shelving, but I can replace it with an interesting sort of action sequence, that’ll also play to some interesting stuff about one of the characters, so that’s OK.

Quiet week coming up, thank god. No gigs, no nights out, nothing planned for the weekend, and I’m going to be my best to keep it that way, I think. A rest, before Glastonbury…

But apparently, Thea Gilmore’s fans don’t like it.

I appreciate that her sound is changing – there’s a more rock vibe to a lot of her most recent album, that people who went for the more folky sound of her earlier stuff may not go for. I appreicate that if they liked her more acoustic stuff, they may not enjoy the full band. And I admit that it was bloody hot in that venue (Islington Academy), but I don’t think I’ve ever been to a gig with a more inert audience. Half the people standing near me (and I was pretty well toward the front) had their arms folded across their chests, and didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves at all.

Still, I really enjoyed the set, and would probably go and see her again, in the hope that the crowd will be more prepared to move a little.

In other gig news, Nick Cave has a new album out in September and is playing Brixton in November as a result. Hurrah!

Went for my usual walk round Battersea Park at lunch, as I have every day this week. The Park has unsurprisingly, been busy so far this week – full of people out enjoying the sun. Today, despite the generally OK weather (sunny patches through cloud, slightly cooler than the last couple of days), it was empty. Not just slightly less busy – empty. The only people I passed were a mother and child, a couple of people walking their dogs, and another couple of people from the Dog’s Home walking their packs of dogs. (One of the dogs from the home had no hind legs, and was instead strapped into a contraption that gave it rear wheels instead, allowing it to pull itself along by its front legs, like some living version of those old children’s toys. I managed not to laugh out loud, but only just.)

But aside from that, the place was deserted – there wasn’t even the usual collection of joggers. What does everyone else know that I don’t?

I thought it was important to let you know that I want to help someone else to live after my death by donating my organs.

http://www.uktransplant.org.uk

Thanks to thepaintedone for pointing this one out. I’ve been meaning to register for this for years, and never gotten around to it. Never occured to me to check if I could do it on-line. So now I have, and I encourage you to do that same, and paste the message above into your own journal to encourage others.

Edited to add: And, of course, let your next of kin know you’ve done it, as well…

I bought a book called Shopped the other week, about the rise of ths supermarket, and the effect it has had on British food culture, and British shopping life. I’m only fifty pages in, and already I’m swearing off shopping at places like Sainsbury’s and Asda ever again, although my Mum will be pleased to hear that Marks and Sparks gets off lightly (which also makes me feel rather better about my shopping habits).

Anyway, I just wanted to commend it to your attention.

I would like to draw your attention to this and this. The second one, I admit, is less credible, since it’s just an LJ post, but I think that true or not, the real horror is that I have no trouble believing it of the US authorities. One might argue that the second guy did commit a crime, and therefore he really can’t complain too much, but y’know, it’s worth comparing his experience with that of someone like Erwin James an inmate of the British prison system, who recieved a life sentence for murder, if memory serves. It’s not the fact that the guy has to do time that bothers me – it’s that he did it in a system that seems designed to grind people down, rather than rehabilitate…

I would hope that none of the Americans on my friends list are planning on voting for Bush in November, but what bothers me most, I suppose, is that thought that I don’t seriously expect things to get better under Kerry, I just expect them to stop getting worse. That these experiences will keep happening to people who don’t deserve them, but at least there won’t be new legislation passed allowing worse. And I wonder – is this resigned acceptance to the idea that the status quo is the best we can hope for an inevitable consequence of growing older, or is it just me getting even more fucking cynical?

Well, I knew that getting my new tattoo was going to hurt more than my last one – this one is on my chest, the last was on my arm. Even knowing that, though, I wasn’t prepared for quite how much more it was going to hurt, or the interesting varying sensations of pain in different places, which was probably worse than the intensity – just as I’d got used to one sort of pain, we’d move one to stabbing a whole new bit of me repeatedly with needles, and I was in a whole new place of ouch that I wasn’t quite steeling myself for.

Those of my friends with backpieces/work that goes across the spine – how did you manage it? Because right now, I’m revising my plans to get a backpiece done, since it turns out that I am a big girlyman.

Also, I feel really wierd with one side of my chest shaved.

But if you’re a Pixies fan, and have tickets for anything they’re at over the summer, you’re in for a treat. They utterly fucking rocked. If you’re a pixies fan, and don’t have ticktes, then you have my sympathy.

If neither option applies to you, then you’re just some kind of freak, obviously.

Wedding lovely. Seeing friends even better. Huge thanks to everyone I saw up there for the pleasure of your company, and in Paul’s case, also the use of the spare bedroom. Massive apologies to the enormous number of people I completely failed to catch up with. I’m going to try and come back up for a longer break in October, so I’ll make sure to see you then.

And now, the sleeping.