Human Flesh is Porky Meat (Hee Hee Hee Hee)

Under The Skin, US poster, 2014

I'm not one for hype. I'm not one for opening day screenings. And I'm on holiday, so I'm not really one for getting out of bed. Despite that, I've been waiting several months now for the release of Under The Skin. The Guardian has until recently been choked (non-erotically) with articles about Lars Von Trier's magnus trollus Nymphomaniac to the expense of every other film. With that finally out of the way I saw the low-key promotion for Under The Skin begin in the run-up to a March 14th general release. Still, why so interested? Well, my interest was piqued over two years ago when I heard parts of the film were being shot in the area. And, most obviously and honestly, it's Scarlett Johansson. Not that I would see any old tripe just cause she's in it. Undeniably, though, she is a sex symbol - and I don't say that often. I once got into a minor brawl with a friend at the age of thirteen when I dared to suggest Britney Spears was unattractive. I was engaged in a daydream two weeks ago about meeting Scarlett on set via certain connections, although I realised my connection didn't extend over that boundary line. Ahem. Nonetheless, I've always been into sci-fi cinema beyond the space-opera of Star Wars and what little I'd heard of the premise intrigued me.

Spoilers for Under The Skin inbound after several paragraphs of travelogue twaddle.

I Thought It Was The UK, Or Just Another Country

PART ONE OF A SERIES.

Na Nož, Jaroslav Věšin, 1913

Britain isn't cool you know, it's really not that great / It's not a proper country, doesn't even have a patron saint / It's just an economic union that's past its sell-by date
-Take Down the Union Jack, Billy Bragg, 2002

At the deepest historical time-depths there is a very basic notion of identity between the self-identified civilised peoples and the barbarians. While the concept of being Greek (Hellenes) didn't yet exist, the city states at the base of the Balkan peninsula saw a commonality between themselves but not with others to the uncharted North or in the later conquered territories of Alexander's empire. The genesis of this fraternity also lies in transmission of culture as the Greek alphabet (save for some regional variations) allowed folk culture to be stored. The established alphabet may also have smoothed over the dialects as it only represents the sounds distinguished within a dialect and not the phonlogical distinctions between the dialects. That would not be unlike the unifying force that Hanzi had on the disparate Chinese languages by representing words and not the component sounds of the languages (which are as wildly different though related as French and Romanian). Indeed, language is one of the most prominent pillars of ethnic identity along with religion (historically Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, etc paganism for pre-modern Europe) and, of course, land.

Sojourn II: There Were Always Dreams of Leaving

We're moving out, 2009, Sint Smeding

It's been two weeks since I came back from London and I've had time to reflect on the trip and also where I want to go next. If you want to take that as literally seeking a destination then I guess that would be New York City as one of the earliest films I can remember is Ghostbusters and dozens of other films over the years have impressed parts of the city in my mind (nearly all of which are in Manhattan, so I apologise to the other four boroughs). My thoughts about where to go next are actually life questions. The sojourn down south was one of three desires that arose earlier this year. You could call them goals or aims, but I've never thought of myself as pursuing very clear objectives which is why I've always had a problem answering questions about the extent of my desires - which sounds too passionate but intentions sounds too immediate so I'll roll with the former. The issues raising themselves mark this as a 'quarter life crisis'. I thought I'd gone through a quarter life crisis back when I started flunking college in the early days of the blog though in hindsight it bears more resemblance to angst, still how I went through it did warrant calling it a crisis. On the other hand whilst what I'm describing now is far more contemplative than a mental car crash, it is far more of an actual attempt to find personal direction in my twenty fifth year. Thus, this post is labelled as if it were the second part of the London travelogue.

Sojourn I: London Calling to the Faraway Towns

Big Ben from the London eye, Prij, 2012

It's been a long time since I've gone away on holiday. Four whole years. When in May the opportunity arose to travel down to London for a few days in the near future I figured I should take it. After all, I end up sleeping through most of my time off work when I'd really like to be doing something. Plus it gives me something to write about and travel writing seems to be quite popular with whoever reads this blog. For some as yet undiscovered reason my outbound travelogue from 2006 is the most popular post on this blog with well over a hundred hits from South Korea. Personally I prefer the inbound post, but either way travel writing is something I enjoy doing in the vein of Round Ireland with a Fridge and if a post about me making eyes with a girl in an airport cafe can be the most popular post, then let me witter on for an easy few thousand.

Play To Win

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
-Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1947

I Wanted to Rub the Human Face in its Own Vomit

Fall of the Damned into Hell

The de rigueur moral outrage is predictable and contemptible. I ask, why is it we send people to prison? People out there consciously debase justice to revenge. Driven by tabloids with their head-on-pike photoshopped front page graphics. Vanguard of morality, continued on page 3 with tits. The eternal shreiking victims are never able to accept that anyone can reform. Did he paint a picture of the rape scene? They will never accept anything less than the death penalty because they cannot reform themselves. An eye for an eye, and still they'll be calling for a second hanging for a one-man murder.

In Scotland this hysteria typically results in yet another outcry against the 'not proven' verdict. Their motivation for its removal has nothing to do with fixing the legal system, but everything to do with gaining closure - regardless of who it's exacted on. Abandon your pretensions of morality. You're really not much better than they are. In the end, there will only be the guilty verdict.

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Rain Down On All Those Days You're Not Around

throbber85, Home at Last, 2007

High flats keek above low clouds. Metallic screeches emanate from the ocean terminal. Three cranes standing in a row, arms saluting the river. The ambient pulse of traffic and the hiss of drizzle. The cold air soothing sunburn upon exiting the airport. A tanker leans against the flow, a tug strolls past bound in its proud posture. A disused dock does overtime and a thousand call centres cluster around it.

What's missing when you leave? Can't stand the ground further inland. Dreaming of somewhere else even though you'd be miserable not being here being miserable. Being cold isn't a feeling. For some reason, being here is. When the river opens up, you do too.

A Man's A Man If You Strip Away the Legend

To declare that I live in Scotland when on holiday or speaking to someone over the borderless internet, generally inspires truly cringeworthy stereotypes in that person's mind.

This need to distinguish ourselves from England went OTT long ago - resulting in the awful Burns Night. Apart from the fact I've never been able to coherently read half of his poetry, he's always appeared to me to be some two-dimensional character designed solely to prop up the notion of Scottishness.

When I was in my last year of Primary school, I was the person bringing the haggis in, and the narrator for the play Tam O'Shanter after the meal. I noticed two things: 1) I'm carrying some ground up meat, why are we standing when it enters the room and addressing a speech to it? 2) No-one listening to this play (including myself) has any idea what the play is about beyond the literal.

I'm the embodiment that you can be a nationalist (and like McDairmid, also a communist) without the ridiculous ceremonies, most of which were invented by the English only 200 years ago.

Anyway, I stumbled onto the Burns page at Wikipedia whilst following various links as I do at 2AM. It would seem the same forces that invented the "traditions" also neutered Burns, the revolutionary republican, into a twice-a-year romantic devolutionist.

So dump your incorrect notions of Burns and start thinking about what he had to say.

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I'm Sorry, I Thought I Heard A Politician Speaking Sense

Jack McConnell, someone who has never really looked like a First Minister of anything, has gone insane and spoken sense:

Until there's a solution to the problem of nuclear waste, I don't believe that we should be involved in further generation of nuclear power.

In fact, one could almost say he sounded like he was in touch with the public... except, the SNP believe this is an example of Holyrood taking orders from Downing Street - how exactly? Labour are pro-Nuclear, amongst other things.

Richard Lochhead, Scottish National Party energy spokesman, says:

The first minister should rule out new nuclear power stations once and for all and throw his weight behind turning Scotland into a renewable powerhouse instead of a nuclear danger zone.

Yes! Go the whole fucking hog! Can someone tell me why we're still reliant on non-renewable energy sources? Could it be: lack of political will, corporate manipulation and the rest of the crap that defines our 'democracy'? (Those are also reasons why we haven't been to the Moon since 1972 - it's not like its far)

I find myself gravitating towards the SNP. My SSP vote was wasted whatever way you look at it (their share went down in May, they're in a mess since they booted Tommy from the throne, by definition Marxists should know they can't change the system through the system) and the SNP went up here (here being a safe-labour seat).

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Stunted Growth

This is frontpage on The Herald today.

That politicians would put their own jobs ahead of the wellbeing of those they rule over is hardly a revelation, but nonetheless appalling.

For 31 years, Westminster has trumpeted that Scotland would never survive on its own and that there was certainly not enough oil to tide it over. By 1980, Scotland should have been on-par with Norway and Stizerland - those are two of the best places to live in the world. By contrast, Scotland is one of the worst small states in Europe.

"Some countries discovered oil and made the desert bloom. We discovered oil and created, in too many places, an industrial desert." - Kenny MacAskill

The SNP, advocating a petrol-fund, puts the lost revenue at £200bn. Kenny MacAskill said that Scottish North Sea oil "would have transformed Scotland economically, socially and politically." What do we have now? Abandoned factories, ghettoid housing estates, and social decay.

"With oil at only $45 a barrel there is still at least a trillion pounds worth of oil left in the North Sea, at $62 a barrel there's 1.5 trillion pounds worth of oil."

Thank you Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Thatcho, John Major, and Tony Bliar.

As a sidenote to this political rant, like the schizophrenic I am: doesn't Yulia Tymoshenko have lovely hair?

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