Showing posts with label Internet Nonsense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet Nonsense. Show all posts
Seven years and still no book deal...
What's it going to take, HUH?
No, but life goes on and so does this blog. Say what you like (you can't btw - it's a figure of speech) but Through the Scary Door has outlasted:
And many other sites runs people who could string a sentence or two together. We definitely hope Red Bed Head, Monuments Are for Pigeons and Proletarian Tide keep the flow coming. What does the future hold? I think we can safely say the bigger picture's going to get worse before it ever gets better. Lots of Tory outrage posts I guess.
No, but life goes on and so does this blog. Say what you like (you can't btw - it's a figure of speech) but Through the Scary Door has outlasted:
Shoot Johann Hari
Dead Men Left
Heckles Cakes
64 Slices of American Cheese
The Prophet Rage
History Needs a Push
City Centre Socialist Workers
Tottenham SWP
Theft is Good (but it depends who you're stealing from)
The Sharp Side...
Par En Bas...
Fear of a Red Planet...
And many other sites runs people who could string a sentence or two together. We definitely hope Red Bed Head, Monuments Are for Pigeons and Proletarian Tide keep the flow coming. What does the future hold? I think we can safely say the bigger picture's going to get worse before it ever gets better. Lots of Tory outrage posts I guess.
Actually existing lyrics
Cut my life into pizza/This is my plastic fork
It's not fair to deny me/The crosseyed bear that you gave to me
I love rock and roll/So smoke another dime with 2Pac's baby
This ain't a sea/It's a god damn arse face
Let's pee in the corner/Let's pee in the spotlight
The shoes on my feet/Alf Garnett
Hold me closer/Tony Danza
The ants are my friends/They're blowing in the wind
You're gonna have to face it/You're a dick in a glove
We gotta hold on to what we got/It doesn't make a difference if we're naked or not
Scuse me while I kiss this guy
She's got a chicken to ride
Out on the windy/windy moor/sweet Roland rolled in brie
Must be talking to a ninja
Scare a moose/Scare a moose/Will you do the fandango
Beelezbub has a devil for a sideboard
This is the dawning of the age of aquariums
Holding back the ears
Bunny's too tight to mention
I left my brains down in Africa
Midnight after your wasted/Take a camel to bed
Israeli men/Hallelujah
Here we are now/In containers
No accounting for taste
Honestly, you leave the internet alone for 24 hours and somebody does something stupid with it. Who are these douchebags pouting with rocket launchers?
Getting down to some serious work...
Best of all is serious work in local communities... Don't you just love this injunction? It's common on leftie websites; a phrase (with a few variations) that says everything yet means nothing. As if we were doing silly work up until that point, reeling about in clown outfits going honk-honk or somesuch.
Getting down to some serious/hard work/graft in the (local) community is usually contrasted to high-profile campaigning of various sorts (maybe even involving students - boo! boo!). When it comes down to it serious work can only mean doorknocking about local issues, bin-collections, pest control, meals on wheels, etc, the stuff of local government.
Back in the day it may have been possible to change the world, or at least believe you can change the world, though local government. The recent history of local government, from the abolition of rates up to the Chancellor George Osborne's recent council tax freeze, the role of local goverment has diminished to all but a rubber stamp... and then there's Barnet Council, a mere kitemark on a bundle of services.
What is left of getting down to serious work, other than a rhetorical flourish on Socialist Unity?
Getting down to some serious/hard work/graft in the (local) community is usually contrasted to high-profile campaigning of various sorts (maybe even involving students - boo! boo!). When it comes down to it serious work can only mean doorknocking about local issues, bin-collections, pest control, meals on wheels, etc, the stuff of local government.
Back in the day it may have been possible to change the world, or at least believe you can change the world, though local government. The recent history of local government, from the abolition of rates up to the Chancellor George Osborne's recent council tax freeze, the role of local goverment has diminished to all but a rubber stamp... and then there's Barnet Council, a mere kitemark on a bundle of services.
What is left of getting down to serious work, other than a rhetorical flourish on Socialist Unity?
The internet told me to do it
During the Cold War every political event, even the most ephemeral, was granted some deeper, sinister meaning; it was all down to the International Communist Conspiracy. These neo-liberal days the powers that be try to render all events, even grand ones such as revolutions, as meaningless. What sparked the London riots? Not arrogant, corrupt policing. Not general political atrophy. Not low wages and unemployment, a lack of opportunity and a declining future. No.
It was social media, the mysterious cyber-Loki fanning enigmatic conflagrations from here to Cairo. Get ready for the 2012 bill banning the internet.
It was social media, the mysterious cyber-Loki fanning enigmatic conflagrations from here to Cairo. Get ready for the 2012 bill banning the internet.
In praise of tired, old routines
Let's get to the point, I'm talking about the making and selling of newspapers. Two things must be said, I think.
(1) Nobody, but nobody, no meaningful actor on the British left has put out a serious document/thesis/whatever arguing that newspapers are all and the internet is nothing and it shall be that way forever, amen. For one thing, if you could find such a document, right now, it would be, yup, on the internet.
No one hypes newspapers. People do hype the internet. At the basic mainstream level people hype the internet as a way of denying agency. The Arab people did not make the revolution, Facebook did. It's cobblers.
No one should pretend there's some absolutist orthodoxy about paper sales they're bravely railing against. There isn't.
(2) The distributing printed word is time consuming, energy consuming and expensive. When people suggest "you're just interested in selling papers" I tend to reply, "of course I'm not. I'd rather someone else did this for me, but that's not going to happen". What can having a printed paper do for you? I am in a London branch of the SWP, there are two branches in my borough. In our branch we have one street sale, usually on a Saturday, two regular workplace sales and a few more irregular ones. In the course of organising these sales the branch brings a dozen to two dozen people into activity. The basic propagandism of a street sale is not everything, but it should not be underestimated. Amongst other things, the day-to-day opportunities for making Bolshevism, even in unionised workplaces, are slim. The sale is a chance to put your ideas to some kind of a test.
In the course of regular, hum-drum activity, like meetings and sales, the branch can accurately estimate who can be counted on, who can do what and to what likely effect. I'd say there are 20-30 people regularly active in this branch during an average month, modest compared to our ultimate ambition but hey-ho... We can only know this because we ask people to complete regular, horrible, abstract drudgery, actual physical tasks.
The internet can't do this.
(1) Nobody, but nobody, no meaningful actor on the British left has put out a serious document/thesis/whatever arguing that newspapers are all and the internet is nothing and it shall be that way forever, amen. For one thing, if you could find such a document, right now, it would be, yup, on the internet.
No one hypes newspapers. People do hype the internet. At the basic mainstream level people hype the internet as a way of denying agency. The Arab people did not make the revolution, Facebook did. It's cobblers.
No one should pretend there's some absolutist orthodoxy about paper sales they're bravely railing against. There isn't.
(2) The distributing printed word is time consuming, energy consuming and expensive. When people suggest "you're just interested in selling papers" I tend to reply, "of course I'm not. I'd rather someone else did this for me, but that's not going to happen". What can having a printed paper do for you? I am in a London branch of the SWP, there are two branches in my borough. In our branch we have one street sale, usually on a Saturday, two regular workplace sales and a few more irregular ones. In the course of organising these sales the branch brings a dozen to two dozen people into activity. The basic propagandism of a street sale is not everything, but it should not be underestimated. Amongst other things, the day-to-day opportunities for making Bolshevism, even in unionised workplaces, are slim. The sale is a chance to put your ideas to some kind of a test.
In the course of regular, hum-drum activity, like meetings and sales, the branch can accurately estimate who can be counted on, who can do what and to what likely effect. I'd say there are 20-30 people regularly active in this branch during an average month, modest compared to our ultimate ambition but hey-ho... We can only know this because we ask people to complete regular, horrible, abstract drudgery, actual physical tasks.
The internet can't do this.
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