beat stevie blog

Polish Queuing

when you're on tour everyone thinks it's marvelous and you get to see all these strange and wonderful places. Now touring is indeed marvelous but actually you don't really get to see much of the places you visit or hang out with the local peeps in a normal fashion. this is a great shame. You do get a weird sort of tour vibe guide to places. This may or may not represent the place as a whole. In some ways Beat Stevie is a big magnifying glass at the way the world looks when seen through the beer goggles of us on the road.

Last week in Poland I learnt about Polish Queuing. Polish queueing is indeed entirely unlike queuing at all. Polish people don't queue. This is because under communist rule there wasn't anything in the shops and if there was you would have to queue a long time for it. So they hate queuing. And if they have to queue for bread only to find there is no bread there well they're really going to hate queuing. So they don't queue. In Poland a queue is simply an invitation for you to come up with the most elaborate excuse going for pushing to the front. It has universal appeal and you are just as likely to be barged out of the way by an incontinent old woman in a wheel chair as anyone. As an Englishman i believe it is my right to queue and maintain my position without recourse to elbows or jostling. If attempting to get anywhere in Poland you must sling your Englishness aside and be prepared to mosh. 

Air France flight 447, North Korea and how to keep a secret

 

Between the earth and the deep blue sea there are not many places that can keep a secret anymore. As demonstrated admirably earlier this week by a large jet plane the sea can still do a pretty good job if you choose the right place. On earth your choices are much more limited, but if you wanted to tell someone your darkest secrets our leader the magnificent Kim Jong II would be a pretty good choice.

Long live North Korea. The last bastion of privacy on this planet. Yes, it may be run by a megalomaniac fruitcase with one eye on us and one finger on the button of apocalypse but hey at least they don’t have to watch Big Brother. We know next to nothing about what goes on behind those closed borders. There are no longer many mysteries to life left. It’s inspiring to me that one man, in one really bad suit can manage to keep his own little castle safe from prying eyes all these years.

In this day and age there are no surprises. We know the answers to most questions. We know why tragedies occur even if it is only with the benefit of hindsight. Planes do not just disappear like your remote control. There are no secrets anymore. At the very least some sort of plausible explanation is put forward for even the most astounding occurrences. We find a new fossil; oh it’s the missing link. There’s a load of snow in the summer, oh it’s because of global warming. A plane vanishes overnight. No one knows. It’s amazing. Unexplainable things just don’t seem to happen anymore.

On the Tv, in fictional stories and in films amazing things always happen. It’s part of what makes them interesting. Miracles, crazy coincidences, that sort of thing. Amazing things happen with such frequency in films that you can see the actors visibly struggling to look fazed by the most incredible occurrence. Oh there are aliens trying to kill us all, oh that’s nice. A giant asteroid has been spotted that we didn’t notice before. The retarded janitor is actually a genius.

This just doesn’t happen!  If it did people would go bonkers. People call it a miracle when a child survives a crash or some shit football team wins the fa cup. It’s not a miracle it’s fucking lucky. The most amazing thing that has the slightest viable chance of happening to you is to win the lottery. And that is multi million to one chance.

The world is a boring place. We don't even have man made crises such as World Wars or a half decent epidemic to put our lives in peril anymore.  Next year will be much like the last. Sure, we’ll worry that the sky will fall on our heads but as Asterix always knew tomorrow never comes. For the most part every day is much like the next. We know everything about everything.

The only place I know very little about is North Korea. Sure, I know that their esteemed leader Kim Jong II has some bad assed styles going on, but I, nor anyone else this side of the great divide really knows what’s going on over there at all.  This is an amazing achievement in this day and age. We have been to the moon. Explored every inch of the earth, from the highest mountain to the deepest ocean crevice. We know what underwear celebrities are or are not wearing at every possible opportunity. We know shit all about North Korea. I would love to do a beat stevie there. In this time of open borders and internet enabling access to all, i think its great that there's somewhere that still retains it's secrets. It seems like the depths of the ocean and this little patch of earth are the last bastions of mystery on this planet. Long may mystery reign. Who wants to know everything anyway? 

i don't wanna talk about it

We have to stop talking. I know everyone wants to help. Stop grimey things happening to other people. But verbal negative reinforcement just doesn’t work. Your brain just doesn’t hear the “no” part. It’s the rest of the sentence that sticks in your mind. If someone tells you not to do something you can’t help but think about it. If you say to someone don’t run downhill, what they actually remember is “run downhill.” The negative isn’t strong enough, and you just put the idea of running downhill into someone’s head. You never say to someone don't crash, you say drive safely. Positive reinforcement is so much stronger. 

Talking about something in an attempt to stop it is incredibly counter productive. Even if you’re demonstrating why it’s bad all you’re doing is planting the seed in more people's heads. This has been looked at in a number of scientific cases, most notably suicide. Suicide Contagion they call it, i think i first read about it in Freakonomics. They noticed on a small pacific island, suicide caught on like a virus. The more kids did it, the more it was reported, other kids followed suit. More recently there was an outbreak of suicides in Bridgend. 13 kids died in a year, 8 within a matter of a few days. With their deaths reported in the media and their Bebo accounts becoming shrines to the dead the cult of suicide spread just like any other internet meme.

Seeing and hearing about something just incites copycat behaviour. People think it’s ok to behave that way, and they learn how to do shit. Then there’s an outpouring of love and sympathy for the victim. It makes an awful experience somehow have positive benefits. This is what happened with the spate of suicides in Bridgend and the more fame it got the more deaths occurred. It didn’t appear outlandish behaviour to kill yourself, normal cool kids did it, and others copied.

Talking about something just exacerbates the situation this is clear. Of course you care. You want to go on a march, write a blog, you abhor the state of the world today. You want to save others from the gruesome things that can happen to their loved ones. But shouting loudly is not the answer.

this why i'm not going to talk about what i'm actually talking about

in the words of the wisest man i know

be good

Fiddling the expenses while your ipod crashes

Far be it for me to ever come down on the side of the politicians but it does seem a bit one sided of us to expect them not to take every extra penny they can. If most people had the option to claim our mortgages on our expenses then i think we probably would. Stupid for allowing it in the first place. Everyone i know who has expenses and the opportunity to add a bit on does it.  The more disgruntled you are about how much you get paid the more you are likely to compensate yourself with a little extra here and there. Simple common sense.  If you don't get the chance to fiddle your expenses then i recommend you at least rob as many post it's, pens, or whatever else you can lay your hands on. If not, why not? That's what the stationery cupboard is there for.

Part of the reason i think Politicians like to up their expenses is because they feel they could be earning more in the private sector.  I bet the big cheeses in a private company rack up some startling claims. Before the banks went crash it was a regular thing to hear of 20k bottles of wine being downed in business meetings. Private companies unencumbered by this whole "public service" bullshit can spend like crazy on whatever they like and we don't get to investigate. We should! We’re still spending money with these companies we should see where it’s actually going.  I mean it looks like we're going to get to see all MP's expense claims live and direct online. Why not with all businesses? We are pissed off that we pay taxes and these get spent on moat cleaning and not ambulances, but we pay extortionate prices for everything. Why can't we have a peek at all companies’ bottom lines? See if our money's going on extra ham in our sandwich or extra Bollinger in the MD's fridge? If all companies operated a transparent policy to their expenditure it would be amazing.

The nerds have of course already beaten the companies to it. Breaking down the new Ipod shuffle they have calculated the costs of the parts as being about $59 while retailing at $99. That's a 40% mark up. Pretty sweet going, even allowing for marketing and developing costs. It certainly seems to have stained apple's reputation just as badly as the luxury fittings have lost some MP's their jobs. Aren't there some geeks who can work this out for everything? Let's see exactly what we're paying for. Style or substance? I know which one my MP prefers.

By the way the picture is of a fine art exhibition I went to. A student posted up all their cab receipts as visual evidence of what they’d spent their student loans on. It kinda reminded me of those big houses in the country all our politicians are about to retire to. 

The Internets is full, please try later.

This is the best day of your online life. Today. Make the most of it. Don't tell me what you had for breakfast. Tell me something that will change my life.

One of the weirdest things that has happened on the internet recently is that it’s become self absorbed by “real time”. It’s all about what’s happening right this second. What’s being talked about now, what’s being downloaded, what’s being listened to? It’s all about now. I want the latest information on everything. What happen now is all that matters.

Twitter has undoubtedly helped to accelerate this strange priority of time over anything else. It’s the exact opposite of the way the internet used to be. It is now more important to know what was last said about a topic than the key information on the subject itself. Whether discussing Britney Spears or the theory of relativity I find it hard to believe that it’s more important to know what was said about them yesterday than who they are and why they are worth discussing in the first place. The most important thing to people at the moment is to not be left behind on the current debate. This stance assumes that no one cares about anything until someone has something new to say about it.

This is a radical change in the use of the internet. The web used to function like a huge vault of knowledge, the proverbial hitch hikers guide to the galaxy where the best, most used, most reliable, information would rise to the top. Now it seems that the latest gossip and rumours, have superseded anything else. Is this indicative of our heat based culture?  The watercooler moment has won the battle of the internet and it’s dumbing down my brain.

I’m a sucker for googling information. Anything i hear about that interests me, I google and get a wealth of new and useful information on the subject.  If do the same thing via a twitter search I don’t get gems of information from experts on the subject but a howl of noise from the uneducated mass concerning the last nugget of slander they uncovered. It’s neither useful nor interesting. Try it. Now.

It gets even worse if you don’t try and use twitter in a directed sense. Look at the twitter trend bar just added to the homepage. It’s great to watch all these trends develop live but most of the stuff that is trending is a load of shit. The internet is getting full up of details on what everyone had for breakfast. Why are keeping a permanent record of these banalities of people’s lives? There’s nothing to be gained from this voyeurism of the mundane. I would much rather hear from just one person what is the most important thing they have learnt from their whole existence than a thousand people telling me what happened that morning. Not only is all this vacuous nonsense filling up my brain it's filling up the internet. For real.

This has been talked about for a while, how the use of the internet is expanding exponentially, much faster than we can build servers to host it all.  At some point in time- urm soon, these paths will cross, and we won't be able to upload anything new about what we had for tea until some tech guy cooks up a fresh box of micro chips. What's going to happen then of course is that we are going to have to start paying. If something is no longer infinite then it can no longer be free, as scarcity equals value. It might not be much at first but having to pay anything will make a huge difference to what is hosted. If the demand still increases the expense will increase. When you have to pay quite a bit of money to put something on to the internet, the world is going to change.

The wonder of the web is that anyone can post stuff; personal blogs, shit about your toast, what you had for breakfast. Anything.  Once it's all gonna cost that's gonna change. While of course i will be very happy to see the end of inane drivel about breakfast materials it will also kill of lots of stuff i love.  Interesting personal stuff by people who do it for nothing will be gone. People who provide me with useful information and lessons. Gone. Overnight. The democracy of the internet will be replaced by the capitalist world of the long forgotten high street.  Brim full of branded content, owned by rich corporations. A life online where we have been schooled by independent monks happy to impart knowledge replaced by one sponsored by Pepsi and nestle where everything is ad funded and aimed at selling us something.

The wishes of the majority will soon overcome the minority interests; it’s simple economies of scale. The communist state of the internet where everyone is equal will be over. We will look back at the internet as it exists today with tears in our eyes. Search hearty on the web tonight my friends for tomorrow you google in hell.

Swine Flu, Twitter and the David Palmer Effect

I’d like to dedicate this blog to all those people that never leave the house. To the people right in front of their computer, for days on end. To those not sneezing. Thank you. Thank you to the doley bludgers sitting in doors too lazy to even go and pick up your giro. To the grannies staying in, watching the tv. Thank you. It’s because of you that we have just averted the greatest natural disaster to afflict the world since the bubonic plague. I’ll never forget your dedication to your couch.

The story of Swine Flu is spreading a whole lot faster than the disease itself. Technology has actually improved on natures abilty to duplicate and spread. Rumours travel faster than the speed of light. It’s an amazing synergy really, just as Twitter really breaks through into the mainstream we are gifted by the story most suited to. In 140 characters it is possible to give pertinent updates as to what’s going on.

 The fear and worry being created by the viral story of the threat is much greater than the threat itself. Unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I I have to admit to hankering towards a huge disaster.  Sure millions of people will die but won’t it be exciting! Watching this thing unfold online, in real time will be better than any disaster film. Certainly much more useful than tracking the explosion of Susan Boyle over my computer. Now that’s a mental image that quite frankly no one needed.

The fact is that that most of us only have a clue about how global disasters unfold through watching films. There is no doubt that this has affected how we envisage the future. When Obama was elected there was much talk of the “David Palmer” affect. This is the idea that a black president only became possible by first creating a fictional one that everyone approved of. David Palmer from the series 24, would be an absolute shoe in for an election victory.

There’s no doubt that our experience of disaster movies affects our collective memories of what's going to happen. We don’t have any real knowledge of what might occur or how a disease might spread but we sure have been fed a diet of fictional movies that tend to follow the same path. No wonder fear and panic has been spreading. We know what happens next, some guy gets swine flu and goes on the tube, next minute half of Manhattan has got it, they have to quarantine the whole place, and wild mutants roam the land.

If all this propaganda is being spread by the film and Tv industry shouldn’t we try and control it a little bit? Even it out? What we need right now isn’t disaster films it’s feel good romantic comedies. A guy on the dole falls in love with an infected bird at the job center. The government solves the problem with capitalism, distributes wealth evenly, all go back to farming. Or even a film about a killer virus that was going to wipe out the world and everyone panicked and then nothing happened cos they contained it after 2 days. These are all films I would like to see.

We will never see these films because no one cares about disaster averted. Even worse no one even notices. It’s like the story of a guy who invents the locking cockpit door on 8/11. Would he even be thanked? The guy who doesn’t get stoned in his car and mow down a queue full of people. The woman who doesn’t leave her house when she’s got the killer flu and so it doesn’t spread, and no one dies.  These are the heroes we don’t recognize. So let’s hear it for them. Thank you for not leaving your house. For not catching the deadly man flu. For not spreading disease,  by going door to door and sneezing on the tube. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten

Pirate Bay, Google and Fair Trade Cocaine

I’ve stopped downloading illegal music. Not due to the demise of Pirate Bay. Because of Spotify. When will the entertainment industry understand that in order to overcome illegal downloading you simply have to offer a better alternative? At the moment it’s like trying to get drugs in London. It’s illegal, but no one really minds. You have to get it from a dealer, which probably means participating in the only criminal activity you get up to. When you’re in Amsterdam you buy your drugs from a shop. It’s safer, easier and you know what you’re getting. As soon as we can get music and films as quickly and as easily as we like, for the price we are prepared to pay, the torrent dealers will be over. If people could buy fair trade cocaine from Lidl they would.

Why has Pirate Bay been shut down anyway and not all the other places you can find illegal torrents?  Like urmm Google for instance?  What’s the difference between Google, Pirate Bay and Amazon? They’re private companies that act as shop windows for information, torrents and books.

Pirate Bay is the most specialized store. It’s the place to go for illegal torrents. That’s all they stock. This makes them the local drug dealer. You know exactly what you’re getting from them and they know what they’re selling you. As what they’re solely dealing in is illegal they are liable to prosecution and so are you. It is easy to put them in jail.

Amazon is less specialized than Pirate Bay but its focus is still pretty narrow. They stock books and stuff like say a newsagents. The majority of customers are average people after average stuff. They stock some porn mags and adult orientated material but these are tucked away on the top shelf. Unless you’re looking for it you probably won’t find Shaving Ryan’s Privates.  This is just the same as hiding gay books and erotic literature on Amazon away from the general bestseller lists. Generally you don’t find razzle next to the lemonade. 

 Google is a massive shopping plaza. You can get anything there. You can find the same torrents that are on pirate bay just as you can find some weed in a shopping centre. There’s also kids stores and anything else you can imagine. Google shopping centre likes to talk about the variety of options available in their mall but they don’t like to talk about the drug dealers and porn shops that are also there.

When you go to Google’s headquarters they have a massive screen with all the live searches from around the world displayed in real time. All the naughty stuff is removed however. So they’re ashamed of it? Bet they’re not so shy of all the cash it generates. Take away the porn and the illegal stuff from Google I wonder how much they’re traffic and ad revenue would fall?

So why doesn’t Google take responsibility for all the illegal stuff you can find using it? And why is Amazon in trouble for hiding the porn? Google is still a private company, a private shopping mall but we all treat it like it’s a public place where we can wander at will and they hold no responsibility for what we might find there. Its up to the consumer to choose what he looks for.

 You can of course set up Google to Safe Search only just as you might not go out after 10pm to avoid the drug dealers. So why not block all illegal torrents and the like. We could even take it a step further, get all Chinese on the internet’s arse. Block anything that doesn’t agree with our philosophies and jurisdictions.

The trouble is most people agree that censorship is wrong and Google is seen as being a democratic window to the world. It would be wrong to restrict it because who’s to judge what’s right and wrong. 

So what Pirate Bay is guilty of is actually acute specialization. It’s too easy to find the naughty stuff and there's not enough nice stuff on offer to cloak it all in.

This is like saying it’s ok if you design a search engine that let’s you find illegal stuff but don’t make it too easy. This is exactly the same as those neighbourhoods who go crazy when a strip joint or gay club opens up on their street.  “we’ve nothing against these people but not round here ok?”

 Pirate Bay has just been giving people what they want. They’ve just been far too good at it. Shutting it down is not gonna change anything, just as closing down Napster didn’t sell a load of Metallica albums. People want to be able to get the tunes and films and whatever else they want, easily and very very cheaply.

I don’t believe people want stuff for free. Maybe a few years ago but now I think most people understand that that if you don’t put money into things you get shit back. People have watched their favourite bands/tv shows fold and they understand these things need money to continue.

If you close down pirate bay you just make it a little harder to find illegal torrents for a while. When your local drug dealer gets pinched, you have to hang around in new neighbourhoods till you find a new one. Don’t fight it. Legalise it.

 The photo by the way is of a newsagent I just went into. The adult magazines all seemed to be racked about 2 foot off the floor. The people who were so outraged by Amazon last week must own it. 

Susan Boyle is Minging

 

The strangest thing of all about Susan Boyle is not that she can succeed without her looks but that they are actually as vital as ever. Youtube is the number 1 medium for this sort of meme, and this would never have spread so quickly f it was just an audio clip.  Is this the first case of someone succeeding because they’re unattractive? In order for people to talk about you, you have to be remarkable. Being a good singer is not remarkable enough. Being an amazing singer who looks like she’s stepped off the set of Last of the Summer Wine is more than enough to press that forward button. 

 Susan Boyle has exploded around the world.  How did this happen?  It's just a woman singing. Sure she's pretty good but the fact is that the reason it's done so well is principally down to the fact that she is not that groomed or particularly attractive. Why is no one speaking about this? 100million views in a few days just of a woman singing? I don’t care if she sings the shriek of harpies on acid, no one would care if it wasn’t for the fact that she is seriously aesthetically impaired.

Are we so shocked to see that talent can exist outside of the industry? Is it a revelation that someone is capable of being naturally talented without the years of training and bullshit that we expect the music industry to have imposed on them? Or is it that the music industry has created a myth that you have to be fit to be heard? Susan crushes our prejudices that someone who looks like a dowdy housewife can't possibly be anything more than that.

It is of course the record industry itself that has for many years done it's best to create this stereotype.  Over the last few years in particular years it has become less and less common to see talented singers who aren't all that to look at. It never used to be that way. Barbara Streisand, Aretha Franklin and lots of other black R&B soul singers spring instantly to mind. In fact it used to be de rigueur to be packing the pounds if you were gonna sing r&b. Suddenly then along came all these skinny ones and you had to be a dancer as well. I don't care what someone looks like when i'm listening to the record. What happened tho was that you had to be fit to even get on the tv show, get in the magazine, or be on a poster. If you were fat you weren’t even gonna have a chance to be heard. The marketing was more important than the record.

 The power of the internet has changed all this. We don't need the permission of the media gatekeepers to seek out what we like. It’s an incredible time for people who like music. We can listen to what we like right as it happens and there seems even little point in putting the record out now, we’re all got it anyway. I bet the label will want to give Susan a make over though, dust off the cd pressing plant and try and get us to hand over a tenner for the varnished, glossed up supposedly better version. And i know some of you are going to say Michelle McManus as an example where they’ve done this before but really. Turd. Polishing.

Bad hair day costs Phil Spector his Freedom

In this day and age we judge everyone by their looks. You're too fat, you're too skinny, that dress looks rubbish, your bag is too small. We care more about how people look than anything else they might achieve.  Phil Spector is a great example. Phil Spector has had some big looks over the years. In the 60's his dark sunglasses never left his face and he looked as good as he sounded. Yesterday, when he was found guilty of murder he looked like a totally psycho. You can't tell me these facts are unrelated. I put it to you that Phil Spector is guilty of nothing more than crimes to fashion. He has one bad hair day, rolls into court looking like this:

 of course you're going to send him down!

Let’s look back a couple of years when Phil was in court for the same crime. That time he rocked the big grey afro look.

guilty? of murder?  this lovable old rogue. he's in the mood for dancing, romancing. not killing people. I would have said to Phil. "Listen Spector you need to play to your strengths. You made Let it Be. Everyone loves the Beatles, they'll never send you down if you go back to the 70's"":

There is no doubt that the blame for Phil’s sentence should lie at the feet of his stylist. Now he's going to have to seriously rethink his look for the large amount of jail time hes got coming up. I think he's gonna have to shave his hair so there's nothing for the gang bangers to hang on to. I guess this is why Gary Glitter went for the smooth look.

 Let's not forget Lana Clarkson the woman who was killed. One of her prime roles was "girl in nightclub" in Scarface. What was she doing with crazy Phil Spector in the first place? She must have thought she was with Phil Spector from Easy Rider, not Phil Spector gun crazed misogynist.

Easy Rider Spector was the guy who bought all the charlie from Dennis and Peter right at the beginning, and he seemed really happy with his purchase. If Lana was hanging with Michelle at the peak of the Miami Cuban crime wave they would have had a lot in common and a big night would have been had by all. This is where it all went wrong, drugs and guns and big shades do not mix, everyone knows that.

So listen, take care with your threads today. Better to be judged for your looks, than judged by a jury.

the mayhem guide to the apprentice

ok so i'm looking forward to tonight's episode of the apprentice.

i am always left open mouth with shock. agog with disbelief at what an absolute pile of shit the "finest business brains in england" can come up with. so i thought i'd put my money where my mouth is so to speak...

starting with last week. morons.

here's what they should have done:

work out what basic cleaning stuff costs the least, power cleaners and stuff fuck that...if you keep your costs low you have to make a lot less money. so make things easy on yourself and keep your costs down. once you've chosen the cheapest cleaning items work out what you can clean for the most amount of money. that's the obvious way to aim for the most profit.

then split the team up into pairs so you've got 2 people doing 4 different tasks, let's say  shoes, cars, windows, glasses.

when you find out which teams making the best you should throw everything behind that albeit in different locations.

simple.

let's see what they manage to fuck up tonight