Back (again)

December 21st, 2008 | 11:29pm by Jim Bliss

Apologies for the unannounced absence. I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and although I don’t appear to have lost any data, and the front-end of the site wasn’t affected, I couldn’t log into the admin area. I think the password got corrupted in the database… but that’s really weird as nothing else seems to have been affected. Anyways, I eventually had to resort to some hand-written SQL to rebuild parts of the database. But that had to be embedded in some PHP code. And while I’m pretty good with the ol’ SQL, my PHP skills aren’t up to much (more of a Coldfusion person). So it took a while.

Anyways, all seems to be well now and I must say that the new WordPress admin is really quite shiny.

So it looks like I’m back up and running just in time for my Christmas holiday.

PS: Happy Solstice!


Bleed The World

December 12th, 2008 | 3:01am by Jim Bliss

At Christmas time we should always spare a thought for those less fortunate than us. After 20 years of bleeding the world, the global financial community has fallen on hard times. These people desperately need our thoughts, prayers and lots of our money. If you have any investments or savings left, or any money left over at the end of the month please, please give generously. Merry Christmas.

View the video at: Bleed The World

(via)


Boom… tish

December 10th, 2008 | 12:36pm by Jim Bliss

Somebody gave me an Advent Calendar from Woolworth. The windows were boarded-up and there was fuck all inside.

Shamelessly nicked from here.


Further reading

December 9th, 2008 | 7:16pm by Jim Bliss

Hopefully I should be back to proper blogging tomorrow. The worst of this lurgey has passed (christ I was feeling shit yesterday, but am a good deal better today). As an aside, how come cold medication is no fun anymore? Yeah, yeah, it’s probably more effective at suppressing the symptoms… but while medicine may well have advanced in that area, there’s been some serious back-tracking in the whole “makes you feel jolly spaced-out” area.

I want my “may cause drowsiness” back!

Anyways, while I’m still a little under the weather, why not check out some stuff on other websites (alternatively you could go read a book I suppose, but who does that, eh?)

First up, head on over to Merrick’s place for some thoughts on the Plane Stupid action at Stansted. Climate Justice Cometh, says Merrick. My thoughts on it? “Yay!”

The Curmudgeon also reflects on the action and considers it Plane Irresponsible!

Justin at Chicken Yoghurt has a couple of good pieces (Fighting over the scraps and Avoiding, evading, dodging the issue) on the tendency of mainstream politics to demonise the poor and disenfranchised. After all, they make far less troublesome scapegoats given the fact that can’t really — by definition — stand up and fight back. Part of me always thinks this is a dangerous strategy in what is, ostensibly, a democracy given that far more of us lurk near the lower end of society than have scaled the heights. But then I remember just how easily people can be indoctrinated, just how unimaginative indoctrinated people can be, and just how often the unimaginative will vote for whoever the media tells them to. And I don’t even consider myself a cynic. How cynical is that!

Gyrus, meanwhile, recently reflected on Hazel Henderson’s notion of economics as brain damage. I was recently asked for “advice and perspective” on the current economic crisis by someone rather high up in one of the world’s foremost financial institutions (that mere fact should goose the hell out of you, as it certainly did me). I’ll post something about the day I spent with him in the near future. By and large the guy seemed to have an open mind to many of my ideas, but when I quoted Henderson’s famous line at him, I think he was a tad affronted.

Oh and check out Michael Greenwell’s Extraordinary post. Succinct and well worth the read.

Harry Hutton doesn’t post nearly as often as I’d like. As a result I’ve gotten out of the habit of checking his site. So I missed him Liveblogging the American Election. Excellent stuff.

Along with Harry’s blog, one of the most consistently funny sites (even after all these years) is The Onion. The latest video news item is a good’un… New Portable Sewing Machine Lets Sweatshop Employees Work On The Go.

OK, that’s your lot for now. I’m off down the chemist to ask for a bottle of “Do not operate heavy machinery”…


Parrots, the Universe and Everything

December 8th, 2008 | 7:22pm by Jim Bliss

I’ve promised to write a response to this comment on a recent entry. But I’m really under the weather at the moment, so it’ll have to wait a wee while. It’s just a bad cold (or a mild flu bug) but it’s far from conducive to coherent thought (yes, yes, how could I possibly know the difference?)

Instead I’m going to post yet another YouTube clip. This time though it’s not music, but an hour and half long lecture given by Douglas Adams a few weeks before his death. It focuses pretty much entirely on his book Last Chance To See and I’d like to thank Toby for drawing my attention to it.

Yes, in these days of mouse-click attention spans, an hour and a half is a long time. But you’d be a fool to miss this funny, sad and informative talk.


Justice is Done (an anecdote)

December 7th, 2008 | 11:54pm by Jim Bliss

Back in the mid-90s I collaborated briefly with ‘K’ on a book that ended up getting shelved. Despite the fact that we never completed the project, it was a hugely enjoyable experience. K was an old ‘head’ from the psychedelic scene of the 60s and 70s. He’d hung out with Tim Leary, was a close friend of Jerry Garcia and as a result of an elaborate FBI sting, had spent a few years in prison for conspiracy to supply LSD. Suffice to say, he had some good stories to tell.

Once, after we’d finished working on the manuscript for the evening at my flat, he opened the oversized briefcase that he carried with him at all times and lifted out a record. He handled it with such care that I immediately felt I was in the presence of a precious artifact.

Fire up that thing, would you? He pointed to the bong that lurked in the corner of the room. You’re going to hear something unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.

I didn’t exactly need to be told twice, and I filled the bowl with a bud of locally grown hybrid known as “Willesden Green”. K examined the stylus of my record player carefully. I suspect had the needle not been in pristine condition, it wouldn’t have been allowed close to this record. I had two coins blu-tacked to the top of the stylus. He gestured towards them with a quizzical look. “Don’t worry”, I assured him, “it’s the optimum weight”. He accepted this without question.

This record has only been played 4 times so far, he told me, This will be number five.

I passed the bong to him and he took a long, satisfying hit before passing it back to me for refilling. He insisted we have two such tokes each before listening to the record. It’s called “Justice is Done” he muttered from within a rapidly enfolding haze. There’s were only five copies pressed, one for each band member…

“Which band?” I asked, automatically impressed at the rarity despite not having heard a single bar.

We called ourselves ‘The Transfer’… there was me, Jerry, Tim, Janis and Big Joe.

To this day I have no idea who “Big Joe” was, except that K said… he went to Mexico a few weeks after we recorded this… never saw him again, though I heard he changed his name to ‘Jesus Wept’. But I do know that Jerry was Jerry Garcia, Tim was Timothy Leary and Janis was Janis Joplin.

Soon afterwards the Willesden Green made its presence known and he started the record. The first side was one long fried guitar solo with the occasional wail from Janis Joplin. Side two involved a conversation between Tim Leary and K while Big Joe played bongos and Jerry and Janis made a godawful racket in the background. To all intents and purposes it was fricking awful.

But there was something very magickal about hearing a recording pretty much nobody else will ever hear.

Now it has to be said that the world already has enough Jerry Garcia guitar solos. Tim and K’s rambling (clearly acid-peaking) conversation was mostly indecipherable and often descended into bouts of giggles that lasted a minute or two. Big Joe couldn’t play bongos to save his life and Janis was identifiable alright, but hardly at her best. So musically speaking, Justice is Done won’t be missed. But it’s an historical oddity that some might claim should be preserved before those 5 copies get misplaced or destroyed. Assuming they haven’t been already.

I lost touch with K a few years back, and while there’s a part of me that would like to hear the record again for old time’s sake, I kind of hope it never gets mp3-ed and bit-torrented (it doesn’t appear to have been as yet). I suspect that if it does, then it won’t be K’s copy. I know he’d like to keep it as a sacred relic rather than converting it into just another weird download for completeists to collect and never listen to. And I think I agree with him on that. Not everything needs to be digitised.


Obama’s investment strategy

December 6th, 2008 | 8:21pm by Jim Bliss

As a short addendum to my previous post, and to indicate exactly why Obama is not going to address the fundamental problems facing America — and the wider world — this article over at the BBC contains a revealing quotation from the man himself.

Now, let me preface this by pointing out that his plan for massive government investment in infrastructure projects is a sound one. The problem comes when you analyse the type of projects he wants to invest in.

We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule — use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.

“New and smarter”. “Roads and bridges”.

Because that’s what America needs in an era of decreasing oil availability. More roads.


Previously on The Quiet Road

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I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. — Brendan Behan

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