British kids growing up in the 1970’s had a pitiful choice from three TV channels, only one of which showed commercials. As one of those kids, who watched a lot of TV, I could never understand why my dad would get so angry with the commercials – some of them were quite good! He used to say they were an invasion, or an intrusion. But surely it provides a convenient break to go for a pee or relax your brain? I thought.
As weird as it may sound, I was a lot older before realising that the BBC didn’t air commercials. Commercials were normal, but if they weren’t there I didn’t notice.
Things changed over the next 30 years.
Those of us that don’t watch broadcast TV and use Ad-block Plus on our browsers have been de-programmed from accepting commercials as part of our normal life experience.
Now for us, sitting in front of a TV relaying normal programming, is extremely hard to take. In fact it seems so weird that it’s difficult to comprehend how viewers can deal with it. Why would someone voluntarily opt to be subjected to a bunch of lies intended to sell you something you probably don’t need? You know you can turn that off now?
The people that do know how, turn it off. Other people do not. They’re not necessarily stupid people, they’re just used to it as a part of every-day life.
There is a big problem with this: what if everyone opts out of viewing advertisements? The entire web economy relies on advertisements – those of us that block them are actually damaging this economy! If everyone did it, the majority of commercial websites would die.
Fortunately most people don’t care – that will keep it ticking over for a while. But what of the future? What if everyone does opt-out? Well, they’ve thought of that!
If you end up in A&E (ER) your time will not be wasted because you can now sit and absorb hours of TV adverts while you wait for several hours. Buying petrol (gas) at the local station is no longer the hugely boring experience it once was because now you are forcefully subjected to commercial pressure by a TV screen at every pump while you wait to fill your tank! A boring old cab ride home now earns more money from you than the fare because every Philly Cab is equipped with a screen in the back that bombards you with commercials…fortunately the customer is allowed to turn off this particular telescreen.
These are all examples of invasive advertising – but there is a new form of advertising slowly making headway which makes the former seem quite enjoyable and cute: mandatory advertising.
Last year I flew to San Francisco with Virgin America. As is now traditional for airlines, the telescreens directly in front of us were hijacked to show a mandatory video about safety – you know, the thing that tells you how to put your seat-belt on, how to evacuate if the plane “lands on water” etc etc. The videos are important, and that’s why you can’t turn them off. They are played after the plane has started to taxi and so you must have your seatbelt on while you watch. It’s a pain in the arse for frequent travelers but we all understand why it’s necessary.
But this journey had a new twist: after the mandatory video were a couple of commercials – one of which was for a well known brand of Cola. We were still strapped in, and the commercial was still unstoppable.
To clarify, hundreds of people on a plane were forced to watch shitty commercials while they were strapped in. You can turn those telescreens off during the flight, but NOT while they’re showing you how to enjoy The Real Thing.
I was pretty shocked about this experience and it brought to mind the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex has his eyes pegged open…
Back to the now; every working morning I have to get into a lift (elevator). This lift not only delivers passengers to their desired floor, it also contains a small screen for us all to watch as we travel. The telescreen shows us snippets of news, sport, and a bunch of trite crap that no normal person could benefit from. Obviously they also contain on-screen commercials that help us decide what to buy. Nice. The screens proudly display their sponsor: “Captivate Network”.
The name “Captivate” is really rather sinister. Rather that invoking the notion of “captivating” an audience, what they are talking about is a “captive audience”. They’re gonna be in this lift for a minute or two – and there’s nothing they can do about it. So sell them shit! In the wonky world of marketing it doesn’t matter that no-one will ever actually fork-out for something that’s being advertised. We now have a situation where advertising “real-estate” (they do actually call it that) is worth money on its own. If you can push an ad to a place where people will see it, you get money!
Even if no-one ever actually puts their hand in their pocket, the marketing people cash out. It’s just another form of currency now.

We’ve had “excessive heat warnings” here for a week or two, but the temperature just keeps creeping up. Today it went over 100F and so I made sure I never left the air-conditioned world without just cause. “Just cause” in this case involves the journey from my house to the bus stop (4 minutes); the walk from the bus stop in center city to my office building (45 seconds); the walk from my office to the home-time bus stop (4 minutes); the walk from the final bus stop to my house (12 minutes). All of these times are tiny and therefore completely dealablewith. But today the bus journey home wasn’t the simple quotidian air-conditioned ride home, oh no. Today something was wrong. The bus was packed to capacity, and that includes around 30 people standing, packed together, including me. I was carrying a shoulderbag, a 5L wine-box, and enough sweat to drown several children. The people around me on the bus weren’t happy about me holding my arms up to grasp the parallel bars on either side of the bus but they were sitting down, the lucky bastards, so I was unconcerned about the gallons of sweat which were pouring off me. They wanted their seats more than they were disgusted about drops of sweat from a stranger.
The A/C on Septa buses is pretty awesome (in the literal use of that word) but on a day like today, with a lawbreaking number of passengers stuffed into the ridiculously small vehicle, it couldn’t keep up. After a a few miles it became apparent that even the youngest, fittest, healthiest passengers were suffering with sweat rivers. It was, without doubt, the hottest and most humid place I’ve ever been, and that includes the London Underground during a heat wave.
We got as far as Roxborough and finally the crowd had started to dissipate. A young lady, formally from the sweatbox at the front of the bus, decided to occupy a recently vacated seat at the back of the bus where we were all concentrating on not passing out. “Oh it’s even hotter here isn’t it” she observed. “Can we open that air vent thing?”.
A young boy opposite me (he was probably in his late 20’s but that’s my judgement these days) forced it open and in an instant the back of the bus was bathed in beautiful, sweat-evaporating cool air from the outside world. There was a mutual sigh of pleasure from all passengers at the back of the bus and for the first time in half an hour I stopped worrying about collapsing. A minute or two later and I was feeling human again. “I think, we’re going to make it!” I said after a minute of wallowing in the cool fresh air.
After alighting the bus into the cool fresh air, I felt free again; the outside temperature was around 95F – so whatever was going on inside the bus was clearly the work of something astonishingly evil.

Despite surface similarities, there are big differences between the British Pub and the American Bar. Brits, imagine this scenario:

You enter a drinking establishment and head to the bar, where you order a pint of something. The bar-person gives you your pint and informs you that the price is three groats. You give the bar-person three groats and retire to a table nearby where you consume the drink whilst reading a book. After you have consumed the drink you return to the bar and order an additional pint of the same. You return to your table after paying the three groats.

Brits may be surprised to know that in some of the bars I’ve visited in Philadelphia and its surroundings such a simple set of events could have made you the subject of hatred from the people that work there!
There are at least three faux-pas’ in the above scenario of which most Brits would be unaware. Nearly all of the faux pas’ stem from the fact that serving staff in the US rely, and I mean, rely on tips. So for starters, paying three groats for a three groat beer would be very rude. In Philly as I write this, the general rule is a buck for every drink ordered (caveats to follow). For full service, the tip should be 20% if the service was acceptable. Any less is an insult.
Secondly, if you order drinks at the bar, the bar-person gets the tip and not the person who serves your table. This can cause all kinds of problems. There have been times when our allocated server came up and berated us for ordering drinks at the bar even though we’d never seen her before.
Thirdly, we didn’t wait to be seated by the maitre’d in this example. A certain chain of North American “traditional English pubs” has the dreaded sign outside each of their premises that reads “Please wait here to be seated” (in fairness their food is authentically crap). If the maitre’d doesn’t seat you, you’ve broken the restaurant/bar. God forbid you buy a bunch of drinks at one table and then decide to move to another table when a new group of friends turn up. This can cause serious aggro over here.
Finally, we didn’t order food. We just chose to drink two pints of something. Even though the mark-up on drink is better than that on food, I have been subject to derisory comments, and witness to many more when the server considers our purchases to be too small. Every time I enter a bar for an after work pint and get asked if I want to see the menu, I get saddened.
Obviously there are places here not so strict and also not full of uptight wait-staff, but these places are rare. And in fairness if it’s all based on tips it’s understandable that they’d be uptight.
There are times when I yearn for the poor but direct service of British bar staff who only get annoyed if you can’t order a drink quickly enough. Once served, the transaction is over and you can drink wherever you like. With, optionally, a packet of pork scratchings.

Watching a recent Question Time with Mark Steel. Some observations:

• Mark Steel is still one of my favourite people on this planet.
• Party politics is a pathetic sideshow for the real politics that are going on behind the scenes and have been since the beginning – Question Time is full of the same arguments today as it was in 1979.
• The panelists have started looking way too young to me.
• The saliva all over the TV screen and the soreness of my throat have reminded me of why I stopped watching Question Time. The neighbours must think I really hate my wife.

Today I read a comment on a BBC article about Edward Snowden that berated the BBC for referring to Edward Snowden as an “Intelligence Leaker” rather than a “whistleblower”. It was the usual green-ink response by some terrified, impotent, suburban, delusional, working-class, Tory to anything the BBC says. You know, the sort of moronic Daily Mail level insults like “The BBC is Communist” and equally risible suggestions usually stemming from the poster’s innate fear of being Gay.

But this comment really irritated me. Clearly it was from a dickhead, but a dickhead that really believes that Edward Snowden was more than just a leak, and perhaps deserves some reverence. The sort of thing that similar mental-cases often accuse the BBC of doing!

As a gobshite myself it’s only fair that I get a chance to weigh in on these important issues too. Hear me out.
Around ten years ago, the US government told its citizens it was about to start spying on them when it announced the Patriot act. The UK Government did too, only they called it the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. There was a minimal protest at the time which some of us found a tad disheartening. Perhaps people thought it was a conspiracy theory (despite being open to public scrutiny by parliament/congress).

Ten years later, the things the governments said they were going to do, they have done. They see all.
Is Edward Snowden a Whistleblower? Well, he’s reporting what he considers to be illicit activity on behalf of the government and its agencies. So you may be inclined to think he is.
Bear in mind he was employed (i.e. paid) to work for the government and its agencies and will have contributed to the illicit activities during his time there. In fairness he may be too young to remember the Patriot Act or RIPA. Perhaps he suffered a sudden attack of conscience?
Either way I’d argue that publishing stuff about the government, that the government previously made no attempt to hide, is not whistleblowing.
“Whistleblower” is the only debatable title at this point. “Intelligence leaker” is firmly and undeniably accurate. He had clearance to TOP SECRET/CODEWORD information, and you can’t get that by accident. At that stage everyone knows what happens if you leak. Bradley Manning certainly did which is why he kept it quiet. Manning’s mistake was talking to a fellow hacker who turned out to be a massive douchebag grass. Unlike Snowden he wanted to stay out of the limelight.

Do I think the governments spying on their own people are doing right? NO! I didn’t think so ten years ago either! Also, I’m delighted that as a result of Snowden’s leaks people are getting angry! Good! I just don’t understand why the press and seemingly everyone else is surprised about it now.

The truth is that their surveillance is next to useless when it comes to people trying to remain private – that includes terrorists and freedom fighters. The worse news is that it will be a really useful tool against the general public who don’t care about privacy and don’t understand the technology or its consequences.
[Update – I have completely changed my opinion of Snowden since I wrote this.]

You’re born, you do what you need to do, and then one day you wake up to discover you’re 30; “The Wednesday of Your Life”. I freaked out a bit on mine, and figured that the end was nigh. The day turned out to be really pretty enjoyable on reflection, and I was given a valuable gift by an older friend; he said “your 30’s are like your 20’s, but you just don’t give as much of a fuck”. The same advice can, and should, be given to everyone at every age.
So despite recently turning 42, I’m no longer worried – but it’s interesting to note the things that have changed.

• Going out, getting pissed and “having a good time” now seems more like a threat than a good idea. Spending a weekend hacking, reading, watching films and spending time with my wife and the parrots is far more enjoyable on its own merit. OK red wine is currently a key part of the equation but I’m working on that.
• I’m older than the majority of my peers at work. Oddly, it can be quite comforting: with age comes experience, and I enjoy the occasional feeling of being sure that I know what I’m talking about. It’s still very infrequent, but when it happens it’s very satisfying.
• I used to think I was the same age as teens and people in their twenties. Now “people my age” ranges from 25 to 65. Anyone younger is a child. Anyone older is “a bit older”.
• Worrying about being uncool is a thing of the past. It was always a bogus ideal, but now I relish it. There’s a lot to waffle about here, but not now.
• A disposable income means that educational toys can be purchased without sacrifice or guilt to help keep my brain working, my childish spirit satisfied, and my skill-set increasing.
• The Internet: it’s impossible for anyone with any vestige of curiosity to become bored now.

The Law (noun) has taken pride of place in my cabinet of things that are responsible for everything wrong in the world. It is a large oak 18th century corner cabinet with mirrored backs and a glass front. One day I’ll take a photo for you.
Most people consider The Law (or more usually “Law and Order” – a terrible misnomer) a good thing, but that is simply propaganda from the lawmakers and the people who benefit directly from The Law. Kafka wrote a typically surreal and insightful short story about The Law which is well worth reading: Before The Law.

So here is some advice from the little I have learned when dealing with The Law personally and second-hand; regardless I believe it to be true. Hopefully it will help if you ever have to deal with lawyers, the police or the man.

1. Be co-operative without co-operating. Do not answer legal letters unless they have proof you received them – e.g. a signed delivery to you or by being “served”. They hate that and eventually give up; it costs a lot to send a human being after you – and unless they can actually connect with you, there’s no guarantee you got the message.
2. Never refuse to co-operate! In fact assure your agressors that you wish to help 100%. Direct refusal is recognizable by The Law; laziness, forgetfulness, ennui and general crapness are not.
3. Don’t be scared by their scare tactics! Just because an envelope comes by UPS/FedEX express and contains a bunch of legal sounding threats does not mean it has any legal value at all. Lawyers are good at scaring people. Don’t be scared. 99% of it is legally useless bluster. They rely on scared people contacting them. Non-cooperation costs the lawyers’ clients more money.
4. If you do have to deal with the lawyers then for the love of His Noodly Appendage don’t do it in writing! Phone them! You may even get legal tips from your agressors lawyers that end up costing your agressor! Getting recorded phone-calls submitted to court is still a surprisingly difficult business.
5. Always remember the golden rule when dealing with The Law – if you have to say something, say nothing.
6. Ignore the advice of lawyers, in general. They will tell you that what I suggest is illegal while missing the irony of their advice. They get paid by the hour – longer periods of agression are good for them. They don’t want it to end. if you’re not paying, don’t worry about it.

Further “reading”:

• Don’t talk to the Police
• What to do when you are stopped by The Police
• The Arrest – advice

Before reading this post, some people will already be concerned about the use of the word “Racist” in the blog title. To some, it sounds a warning alarm of liberal joyless dogma ahead. If you feel like this, please read on. If you don’t, please read on.
The following short clip from is taken from “Doctor in the House” (1954) which was the first in a successful series of comedy films based upon writings by Richard Gordon concerning medical students in college. The back-story to this particular clip is that a medical student, in the throws of passion with a young nurse, asks her to marry him. She accepts immediately (more about this in a later post). In the sober aftermath of his ejaculation he panics and asks his colleague for advice.
Here is the clip.

I’m guessing that the majority of the viewers of this clip will be astonished, offended or at least amazed. Some may find it amusing, given that it is from the 1950s. There may even be people that find it genuinely amusing today! The chance of such viewers actually being here is unlikely because most of them will be too busy watching re-runs of “Love Thy Neighbour” and “Mind Your Language”.

Referring to this clip as “racist” will probably irritate a lot of people, particularly people who were around in the 1950s and maybe would even have found it funny at the time. But I’m not suggesting for a moment that these people are racist in the least, really! The world was different then. But if the same joke was injected into a 2013 comedy movie I’d suggest that the majority of those people would also agree this was “out of order”.

Let’s take the clip apart: Nurse Gullible proudly declares her joyous news to the other nurses who are busy looking the other way. They turn around revealing that they too have been asked to marry the young cad by revealing their ostentatious flowers. Nurse Gullible realises that it’s clearly not a serious engagement if he has also asked so many other nurses, of all shapes, sizes, and levels of attractiveness. And she sighs. That’s the joke – he asked all these misfits too – haha you’ve been fooled.

But this wasn’t enough for the producers – they thought they could take it a step further. Consequently, one of the nurses doesn’t turn around initially. It’s only after Nurse Gullible sighs that the black nurse turns around to deliver the final punch line: he even asked a black woman to marry him! Hilarious.

But the hilarity of his indiscriminate proposals was clearly not obvious enough to the makers of Doctor In The House so they felt the need to hammer the point home: after the black nurse turns around, she says “Me Too!”, grins, and nods in the cheery way that those dark types do. The audience is left in no doubt that this is the ultimate sign that the doctor was joking! No white doctor with Donald Sinden’s good looks would ever seriously ask a Darky to marry him! Even the Darky gets that. Hahah – we all laugh at the ludicrous notion. Well obviously we don’t – but the imaginary 1950’s audience supposedly did.

Now,it’s important to state (for the benefit of a certain section of the readership who bang on about political correctness all the time) that I still like this film. It also still makes me laugh – really! What’s more I’m also glad that the film airs in its entirety with the inclusion of this scene! Not because it’s funny or “harmless” or any of that Sun-reader bullshit, but because it is truly jarring for the majority of people watching in 2013. I’m hoping children are as befuddled as I was when I first saw it (back in the 1970s). And long may this clip remain offsensive – because all the while it does it means that society is a little less fucked than it once was.

On top of this, the black nurse is clearly nothing of the sort – rather a white girl blacked-up. A young child watching for the first time today would probably find that the weirdest aspect – why does she look so weird? That also suggests a more sinister and serious situation regarding casting at the time.

Oddly, that particular nurse (uncredited, obviously) does turn up earlier in the film and without exhibiting some sort of racial stereotype (beyond a ludicrous accent and being clearly a white woman blacked-up). One may even be mistaken for thinking this was a piece of pioneering filmmaking for the time – having an incidental black character without reference to her ethnicity – but then you have to remember she is only there as part of the setup to the brilliant “he even asked a Darky to marry him” joke later on.

We should continue to watch these films and enjoy them and be shocked by them. Binning them simply allows everyone to forget how far we’ve come, or rather how far behind we were then.

For the last three days I’ve had vegetarian lunches. It wasn’t deliberate, and I’m not trying to make a political point (even though deep down I agree with the vegans arguments – don’t judge me for this please) it’s just that the vegetarian options seemed more appealing. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Tofu when used in well-made, spicy, asian food acts as a flavour-absorbing medium and can provide a variety of textures. From fluffy sauce sponge to an almost hard-cheese like substance. A really rather good veggie Chinese restaurant in Center City has a dish called “Kung Pao Dried Tofu w. peanuts”. It’s very hot and utterly delicious.
2. Seitan. According to Wikipedia it’s actually called “Wheat gluten”, which sounds disgusting. But it feels and tastes like chicken. So much so that I would now order it over chicken in a restaurant because it tastes better…and also because eating birds goes against the grain a little now that we have such good friends who are birds.

Today for lunch, a friend and I went to a vegan restaurant in Center City. Voluntarily! It actually seemed appealing! The most peculiar aspect of the experience was that it was delicious without caveat. It wasn’t just “really good considering it’s vegan” either – it was something I find myself craving afterwards . There was a cauliflower and truffle-oil soup to start and it would have been worth a trip across the country for that alone; perfect consistency, spiced powerfully and subtly, and the truffle oil was in perfect proportion.
But then came the buffalo “chicken” sandwich. Imagine a massive, delicious buffalo chicken sandwich in a huge Italian roll, but with…well just imagine that. It was like that. But apparently it was vegan.
Yesterday I mentioned contemplating becoming vegetarian to a friend and he gave me some sage advice: don’t tell people, just do what you can. If you tell people you’re vegetarian and one day cave in and have a bacon sandwich you will feel like you have failed and just give up. You also look like a massive twat to the people you’ve castigated for not following your lead during your veggie years.
It reminded me of something I’d heard on Radio 4 (or possibly NPR) where some writers were discussing tips on their chosen profession; one of the writers suggested not telling anyone you know that you are writing a book . People always ask how you’re getting on – and frequently it’s difficult to write at all. So unless your book is about to hit Waterstones on the following Monday – you will sound like a delusional saddo.

There’s an electronic device from 80’s called a “TB-303” or “303” for short. If you’ve never heard of it then you may want to watch a short and informative film discussing its impact on popular music over the last 20 years.
Within my lifetime the 303 has gone from expensive, to throwaway, to prohibitively expensive. Even though nowadays there are thousands of software implementations of the machine that sound, to my ears anyway, every bit as good as the original – the 303 is now for rich collectors only.

Years ago, just after the 303 renaissance that made them unobtainable to ordinary folk, and just before the explosion of digital emulators, I was looking around for some open-source 303 code, and I found this little C program. I read it, failed to understand any of it, and moved on. The emulators came, and I forgot all about it.

Tonight, as part of a new project involving playing with sounds, I rediscovered tb.c and had a play with it. Compiling it, running it, and pulling the output into Audacity begat this! Lars Hamre is my hero du jour. Amazing work.

[much time has passed since the last post – the frequency will increase forthwith]