Distractions

Another of those days where I'm left without a clue what to post about.  I'm sure that, yesterday, I had a vague idea as to what I was going to say today, but I've had a lot of distractions since then.  I'll doubtless remember at some point and it will become a future post.  But for now, I'm contemplating the fact that my back aches - I've had a niggling back injury for a couple of weeks now, the result of farting around up a ladder trying to replace a strip light - and my neck also now aches, not in sympathy with my back, but thanks to having slept awkwardly.  Which is another thing, my sleep patterns of late have been more disturbed than usual - I finally managed to piece together eight hours of sleep overnight for the first time in what seems like weeks.  But like I said, I've had a lot of distractions lately.  I've had a lot of problems with the domains I have registered, for instance, with DNS settings mysteriously changing and the email forwarding on one domain suddenly not working, resulting in me not getting email from my bank, amongst other organisations I used it with.  As the current registrar was clearly not interested in resolving the issues, (they'd already had my money for renewing the domains), I decided to test the water in terms of transferring the domains to a new registrar by moving the email-related one first.  Due largely to my own incompetence, this turned out to be a more protracted and frustrating operation than I had hoped for.  Still, it's sorted now and the email address is fully functional again.

With that up and running at a new registrar, I'll maybe start contemplating moving my other domain there, the one that I use for The Sleaze and therefore can't really afford to have any glitches with.  Still, I at least had a more positive distraction from posting here today, as it was this month's local Toy and Model Train Fair, where I picked up my usual amount of tatty model railway equipment and books at minimal cost.  This time around I walked out the proud owner of a couple of those Ferry Van models Lima used to sell back in the eighties.  They are very basic and HO rather than 00 scale, but these are at least fitted with Tri-ang style couplings and will be useful for 'bulking out' freight trains, (using cheaper, less detailed wagons between the newer, better detailed wagons is a good way of creating long goods trains at low cost - you only tend to notice the wagons at the front and back of the train, so that's why you marshal the higher quality stock front and back of the train, with the tattier stuff in-between).  Another major distraction throughout the winter have been the intermittent appearances in my living room of a mouse.  I say a mouse, but I'm pretty sure that there have been at least two mice at different times - in the earlier appearances it looked black, more recently, it has been brown.  

Anyway, I've contemplated various anti-mouse measures, but I don't actually want to hurt it/them.  I almost bought a humane mouse trap, but their appearances declined, lulling me into a false sense of security.  Then the brown one started appearing again.  At which point I contemplated borrowing a local cat and getting it to walk around the living room - the scent of a predator is sometimes enough to deter mice.  Then I remembered that the last time I did that, many, many years ago, the cat in question decided that this was an open invitation for him to come into my house whenever he pleased - I frequently found myself ambushed at the front door as I came home from work.  While I was actually quite fond of that particular cat, it isn't an experience I want to repeat.  But the problem seems to have gone way for now, with no mouse sightings for over a week.  Which might mean that my chasing the brown furred bugger with an air freshener aerosol the last couple of times he appeared has scared him enough to cease and desist.  Or, it could mean that he's simply gotten smarter and now makes out sure that I'm not in the living room when he appears.  Either way, for now, at least, it's saving me the expense of buying that mousetrap.

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer(1970)

It's always tempting to think that all of the developments we see around us, be they in society, technology or politics, for instance, are brand new and unique to our current age.  Yet, surprisingly often, we are jolted by some artefact from the past which reminds us that, in truth, there is nothing new under the sun.  Quite recently, for example, I finally watched the Peter cook-starring The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)  all the way through, (I'd previously seen parts of it during its infrequent TV airings).  What struck me about the film was just how relevant to today that much of the film's story feels.  In essence, the film chronicles the rise of the titular Rimmer, an efficiency advisor to a run down advertising firm, first to the top of firm, which he modernises and turns into the UK's leading agency, then through politics, eventually becoming Prime Minister.  His methods are frequently cynical and dishonest, sometimes criminal, (he becomes PM after he ensures that this predecessor suffers a fatal 'accident).  Whilst they way in which he gets his agency to fake and massage its polling data in order to manipulate public opinion are clearly relevant to today's world, it is the political sections of the film that seem most contemporary.  Rimmer engineers his political rise through the practice of what we would now call 'populist' politics, presenting simplistic, but popular, 'solutions' to complex issues like immigration.

Indeed, the immigration thread of the movie, where he persuades the Tory Party to allow a right-wing old fogey of an MP to publicly air his extremist views on the issue, then disown and fire him, in order to whip up anti-immigrant sentiments, which they can then exploit at the forthcoming general election, echoes the Tory Party's real-life courting of the anti-immigration lobby in recent years, trying to capitalise on the racist agenda popularised by the likes of Nigel Farage.  It also echoes the way in which the Tories had similarly courted the anti-EU sentiment whipped up by the extreme right in order to secure electoral victory by promising an EU membership referendum, (which then backfired on them when our idiotic electorate voted to 'Leave').  In fact, referenda feature prominently in the film, with Rimmer making good on his promises to make the country more democratic by holding a referendum on every issue, thereby 'giving power back to the people'.  He knows, of course, that people will rapidly tire of being expected to have opinions on every obscure issue, allowing him to walk back the policy and institute a more autocratic form of  government in order to lift this 'burden' of decision making from the public.  

In many ways a prescient film - even the right-wing Tory MP's anti-immigration speech - which relies on citing an obviously false case of immigrants harassing an old lady 'locked in a lavatory' of the sort run nowadays by the right-wing media and championed by populist politicians and racists - seems startlingly contemporary.  Which begs the question, of course, of why The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer isn't better known and more widely referenced in current political and cultural discourse?  The fact is that the film was something of a flop on its release, mauled by critics and failing to find an audience.  Not because its message wasn't pertinent, even then, so much as the fact that, as a satirical comedy, it is somewhat hit-and-miss.  More miss, than hit, in truth.  In too many scenes the gags simply don't seem to land on target, missing their mark by varying degrees.  What should be laugh out loud funny is all too often merely mildly amusing.  A languid pace and a leading character is (deliberately) too bland to be either truly likeable or dislikeable doesn't help.  Too much of the satire of then contemporary political figures also tend to fall flat, the comedic blows never quite landing cleanly enough.  Perhaps fatally, the film's release was delayed until after the 1970 General Election, ensuring that its impact was minimised.  Nevertheless, seen today, what stands out still is the eerily accurate prediction of the direction of British politics, to our current lowest-common-denominator race to the bottom by our leaders in terms of policy, as they chase a mythical 'populist' vote and shape their policies via focus groups and polls rather than by principles. 

Hamasutra - the Art of Sex and Terror

So, just what is the 'Hamasutra'?  It's a word that sprang into my mind the other day for no good reason.  As they sometimes do.  The 'Hamas' bit suggests a connection to the militant Palestinian group of the same name.  You know, the one that is frequently dismissed by politicians as being a terrorist group, yet still enjoys the support of Palestinians in Gaza, despite the Israelis having used its presence there as an excuse for their destruction of the region and its people.  My best guess is that the 'Hamasutra' is some kind of sacred text which, like the similar sounding 'Kamasutra' is concerned with the arts of love and sex.  Except that, with Hamas allegedly being a terrorist organisation, maybe it is a guide to the best way to combine violent terrorism with sex.  Which is quite possibly why we've never heard of it - I mean, a text which advises people on how best to get off while killing Jews (the most likely targets of Palestinian terrorism) would be sure to be suppressed by the Israeli government.  Indeed, maybe that's what the whole bombing and invasion of Gaza was really about, (because, you know, we live in an age where nothing can actually be about what it ostensibly and most obviously is about).  Despite having thought that they had successfully seized and destroyed every known copy of the 'Hamasutra' since the creation of Israel, they'd gotten word that surviving copies had surfaced in Gaza and were inspiring a whole new generation of Palestinian would-be terrorists with its promises of achieving peak orgasm via violence.

But what would the practicalities be of such a philosophy of sexual fulfilment through violent terrorism?  Would it, at its simplest, involve jerking off whilst gunning down some IDF personnel?  Timing your lovemaking to coincide with the detonation of the bomb that you had made and planted on a bus, perhaps?  (With advice to book a hotel room as close to the detonation point as possible so that you don't just get the thrill of hearing it as you reach a climax, but also feeling the shockwaves vibrate through your bodies).  Could it be about actually being able to carry out an assassination whilst having sex?  The art of being able to sight a sniper rifle on a target while in the 'sixty nine' position?  Or firing a rocket launcher while being 'pegged'?  I mean, that would require some incredible calmness techniques in order to keep your aim steady while being porked up the chutney.  Of course, it might be that the actual physical sex act isn't the focus of the 'Hamasutra' but instead the sacred text is about training oneself mentally and physically to be able to develop a physical sexual response to committing an act of violent terror.   Just the pulling of that trigger or the setting off of that bomb would induce an orgasmic experience taking the terrorist to heights of sexual ecstasy unknown to the non-violent.  Moreover, thanks to the discipline that the text teaches, the only sign that the terrorist is experiencing such sexual highs would be a slight curling of the lip, or maybe even just a slow blink.  Whatever the truth, it's all a terrifying prospect: clearly, every copy of the 'Hamasutra' must be seized and burned! 

Out of Step

The right-wing press in this country really can't help themselves, can they?  If there's any opportunity, no matter how ill advised, to attack a Labour government, they'll seize upon it.  Witness their recent gleeful reporting on Trump's criticisms of Starmer for having actually shown a bit of backbone with regard to Iran - all trumpeted in huge headlines.  Yet, in this instance, they really have read the room badly and are quite out of step with the public.  Really badly.  The reality is that Trump remains hugely unpopular here in the UK, so that anything he says criticising Starmer is actually likely to bolster the PM's standing with the public.  More importantly, Starmer's position on Iran - not directly supporting the US and actually questioning the legality of Trump's actions - is actually pretty much in alignment with UK public opinion, as backed up by recent polls.  Tory leader Kemi Badenoch made the same mistake in the Commons - attacking Starmer for not getting involved in another war, when the public is overwhelming against the UK getting drawn into any more American wars.   Such a lack of judgement and connection with public sentiment is one of the main reasons, of course, that Badenoch and the Tories are essentially irrelevant right now.  But this is all part of the fundamental problem the right in the UK have: the Trump factor.

At a time when the UK's political discourse has been pulled so far to the right, having someone like Trump in the White House should be a boon to them.  He's enacting the sort of policies, both domestically and internationally, that the right-wing media and politicians wet their pants over.  The billionaires who own much of Britain's media would just love to have a UK government that gave them the sort of privileges and access to power that their US counterparts are getting under Trump.  Yet Trump is massively unpopular in the UK, making writing favourably about him, or speaking in support of his policies, represents a huge risk.  Politicians or newspapers  praising him risk alienating huge sections of their supporters or readers.  But every so often, they just can't help themselves.  They get so frustrated by not being able to say what they really want to say - that they just love Trump and all the evil he stands for - that they just can't keep their mouths shut.  Hence, we have the press revelling in Trump criticising Starmer for not supporting them in a war the UK public don't approve of and the Leader of the Opposition similarly lambasting the PM for failing to be Trump's lapdog, boasting that she would have been right there at America's side sparking another destabilising Middle Eastern conflict, despite Trump's unpopularity here.

But still they keep trying to find some stick in this unpopular war with which to beat the government.  They seem to think that they've found it in the UK's allegedly inadequate response to committing defence resources to protect its allies from the fall-out from Trump's latest adventurism.   In particular, they keep obsessing on that bloody Royal Navy destroyer which won't be sent to Cyprus for weeks, as if it is vital for the island's defence from stray Iranian drones.  Cyprus and various Gulf States, they claim, are complaining about the UK's lack of commitment.  All of which ignores the fact that the UK has a significant deployment of RAF resources at its base in Cyprus, including not just aircraft, but air defences which are probably more capable of defending the island than a single air defence destroyer.  But the French and the Greeks have sent support!  I heard some Cypriot rent-a-voice bewailing on the BBC today.  Yeah well, Greece is just next door and France has a naval base - Toulouse - on the Mediterranean coast, so it is hardly surprising that they can respond more quickly than the UK.  As for the various Gulf States allegedly upset with us - well, they are oil rich states who apparently aren't prepared to spend their money on their own defence and expect us to defend them instead, is that it?  As for the other issue that the right-wing media are harping on about - the parlous state of the UK's armed forces, particularly the navy - well, let's not forget that they got into that state thanks to fourteen years of Tory spending cuts - cuts by Tory governments that this self same right-wing press endorsed and cheered on.  Presumably they must also have supported those cuts.  So yah boo sucks!  Stick that in your collective pipes and smoke it! 

Disconnected!

For fuck's sake!  Right in the middle of trying to watch something via my Roku box, I suddenly lost my internet connection!  Checking my router, there was clearly no broadband connection. Which meant, of course, that I couldn't use the broadband I pay for (and have just been billed another month for) to check the status of my ISP and find out what the fuck was going on.  I had to check via my phone, thereby using up part of my more expensive data allocation for the month, to find out that this is a planned outage by BT for 'maintenance and is scheduled to last SIX hours!  Again, for fuck's sake!  SIX hours!  At a time when people are likely to be using their broadband!  Moreover, why was there no warning of this?  No announcement to customers?  Jesus H Christ!  Typical bloody capitalism: happy to take your money but reluctant to provide any kind of service!  Luckily, the broadcasting authorities haven't yet gone through with their insane plans to switch off Freeview and force us all to watch free to air TV over our broadband connections, because it means that I least still have terrestrial TV to watch.  

If they really want to go ahead with these crazy plans, however, then they really need to get guarantees that this sort of thing simply doesn't happen, otherwise there will be a lot of irate viewers complaining that they couldn't watch TV or that stuff they had set to record hadn't recorded.  Or maybe there will be a recommendation that we will all need to have two broadband connections with two different infrastructure carriers, as backup.  Right now, just to be able to post this, I'm having to use up more of my expensive mobile data - but I decided that my posting schedules have been disrupted enough over the past few years by outages, power cuts and the like, so to Hell with the expense!  The irony here is that this latest outage is again down to BT, who provide the local infrastructure.  I went to great lengths when I switched to fibre to cut them out the equation altogether because of the problems they have caused me.  Yet here we are, with the bastards still blighting my life!  And they were the ones who told me that I had to switch to fibre and that doing so would eliminate all those outages I was suffering over the old copper wires!  As with everything else BT say, it was clearly a load of old bollocks.  

Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1958)

The title of this Roger Corman produced and directed AIP cheapie just about sums the movie up, although, to be fair, the sea serpent is the least of their worries, with most of the film's action centring on their conflict with the Grimaults, a savage tribe who take them prisoner.  The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, to give the film its full on-screen title, was apparently the brainchild of a pair of special effects experts, Irving Block and Jack Rabin, who convinced Corman that they could provide the effects the film's script required to a high standard, on a modest budget.  As it turned out, they couldn't.  To be absolutely fair, for this type of low budget B-movie, the miniatures work is above average, but still nothing like convincing.  The titular sea serpent itself is somewhat underwhelming and only makes a couple of relatively brief appearances.  

Exactly where the women - who are in search of their missing men - actually voyage to is never clear, with the film's ideas on geography being vague, to say the least, with everywhere, from Scandinavia to the, probable, Mediterranean locations, all look rematkably like California.  The fact that the villainous Grimaults are a swarthy looking bunch, dressed in vaguely middle-eastern looking costumes, implies that the location is somewhere in the Mediterranean.  Several critics have remarked upon the fact that while the Grimaults are slightly dark skinned, (being played by white actors in 'brownface' and degenerate, the Vikings, both male and female, are all fair haired, muscular and heroic.  Except, of course, for the token dark haired Viking woman, who is wracked by jealousy and betrays her fellow Vikings, before redeeming herself with an act of self-sacrifice.  The cast is packed full of familiar B-movie faces, including Abby Dalton, Susan Cabot, June Kenny, Richard Devon, Micheal Forrest and Jonathon Haze.  Not a great movie, but relatively entertaining while it is playing, Viking Women and the Sea Serpent at least has the virtue of running only sixty six minutes.

Let's Glow 2026

The past couple of days have proven somewhat stressful for me, for various reasons, so I'm following yesterday's example and being lazy with my posting today.  This is a quick video of the recent Let's Glow event held here in Crapchester every February.  This only covers the sections of the event in my local park, (which, to be fair, constitutes the main part of the light trail, although there is a smaller section running from the town centre to the park).  Quite a bit of this footage was shot during the set up and testing of the light show, so not all of the effects (in particular, the sound effects) are in evidence.  Nonetheless, it gives a pretty good representation of what has become a popular event.  Certainly, I always enjoy it, as it provides a welcome burst of illuminated joy at what otherwise often a pretty bleak time of year.

Anyway, posting will, hopefully, be back to normal after the weekend! 

After Hours

Another podcast.  This one, unlike the last couple I plugged here, is composed of entirely new material and is, in effect, the pilot for a series of shows with a similar format, replacing the old, eponymous, podcast I used to do for Onsug.  In common with those other recent podcasts, not to mention the short Nothing is Real series I also recorded for Onsug, I don't, personally feature in After Hours.  The scripts are mine, but they are 'performed' by a dramatis personae of AI created voices.  Most of them are amongst the most sophisticate Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems you can use these days: Google AI Studio and GPT Reader, for instance.  In order to get some British accents in, though, for one segment I've had to use the older, less expressive, voices from Free TTS (which, only a few months ago, seemed incredibly advanced).

As I said, this is a pilot, so it is still a little rough around the edges and includes some features that might not make it into subsequent editions.  Overall, though, I'm reasonably pleased with it.  The Google AI Studio feature which allows the creation of a dialogue between two voices, without the need for all the tedious editing required when you have to stitch together recordings of two separate voices.  It's taken a while to come up with this new format and - as indicated - it is still evolving.  The next episode won't try to simply replicate exactly the format of this structure but will, hopefully, start introducing some new features.  'The Man in the Pub', though, is intended to be a more or less permanent feature - he's also a link with the previous podcast series, having appeared in the last three of those, (although he was never referred to as 'The Man in the Pub' and it was never obvious that he was in one - he did have a name, actually, but it was never mentioned).  

So, some credits for the technical side: After Hours was created using Google AI Studio, GPT Reader, Free TTS and TextSpeakPro.  Music and sound effects by Freesound Community, Luis Humanoide and Universefield - all via Pixababy.  

 

Listen Here: After Hours. 

Paranormal Not Caught on Camera

You know, the downside of the new series of Junk and Disorderly being on Blaze is that it means that I have to put up with Blaze's promotions for the rest of their whacked out programming in the commercial breaks.  I remember that, once upon a time, Blaze used to be full of stuff like Junk and Disorderly and  while some vestiges of it still remain, most of their schedule these days seems to be chocked full of UFO-related and paranormal nonsense.  Just this evening, for instance, they were pushing Paranormal Caught on Camera, which seems to be the supernatural equivalent of those shows where people would send Harry Hill their home video footage of their 'hilarious' mishaps, like decapitating their pet dog with a lawn strimmer, in the hope of winning the 'star prize' of a ten quid voucher for your local kebab van.  Except in the case of the Blaze show it is their home video footage of supposed supernatural phenomena in their homes.  You know the sort of thing: doors apparently opening of their own accord, things falling off of shelves, chairs moving.  It's all bollocks and undoubtedly faked, of course.  Because, the more earnestly and straight-faced that someone is on TV, telling you that they were genuinely terrified by something falling off of a shelf, the more convinced I am that it is a scam.  

I was once told that the way to approach such 'genuine' footage is always, when viewing it, to ask yourself how you could replicate it without involving supernatural agency.  If you could come up with a way to fake it, then what you are watching was probably faked in a similar fashion.  You know something?  I've never yet seen one of these videos and not been able to work out a simple way in which it could have been faked.  Of course, quite apart from moving chairs, opening doors and so on, we have the videos allegedly actually showing ghosts and/or spirits, usually in the form of orbs, but also various other glowing streaks and the like.  There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that there aren't simply camera artefacts, dust motes or insects caught by the camera when filmed under particular lighting conditions.  But such considerations are usually airily dismissed in shows such as this, because, after all, they are made primarily for an audience who already believe in this sort of bollocks.  Just like Junk and Disorderly is made for those of us who can identify with middle aged men rummaging around in sheds and barns to uncover and buy automotive related junk, restore and sell it.  The difference being that it is far more believable that they might be able to turn a profit on a rusty old petrol pump than it is to swallow any of those other videos as evidence of the paranormal.

Tech Hysteria

There's a lot of hysteria surrounding AI.  I mean, hardly a day goes by without my seeing a headline somewhere asking whether some proprietary AI has become 'self aware' or 'sentient'.  (The answer is always 'no', in spite of the best efforts of assorted panic-mongers and IT nerds to convince us otherwise, there is no evidence that any current AI system does anything other than process requests and instructions originating with human beings.  They might show something resembling initiative in carry out those instructions, but they still don't spontaneously start their own tasks or create their own art work, etc.).  But it isn't just the in the press that I see these knee-jerk reactions.  Increasingly, in social media, I keep seeing truly ridiculous overreactions to any kind of AI-originated creative work - you'd think that we were talking about the works of the devil, such is the extremity and vehemence of the commentary.  At the very least, it is dismissed as 'slop' that is undermining 'true creativity'.  Most reactions are more extreme.  The other day I was struck by the sheer unpleasantness of the reactions to a user of an online music community who had had their entire library of work deleted after adding some new music they had created with AI assistance - 'good', 'serves them right' were the mildest reactions, with absolutely no sympathy amongst the vituperative gloating over their downfall.  'Oh come on', was my reaction, 'It isn't as if this person hadn't been creating original material without AI for years, but decide to experiment with it as a creative tool or aid and they are suddenly possessed by the devil and condemned to eternal damnation?'

Because, at the end of the day, that's all that AI in its current form is: a tool which can be used to aid the creative process.  If we are to condemn people for using it creatively, then we might as well also condemn artists for using brushes instead of their fingers, or musicians for using instruments instead of just clapping their hands.  OK, I can't deny that I have a dog in this race, so to speak - I make use of AI for various creative tasks I don't have the skills to carry out myself.  If you go over to The Sleaze, you'll see that I make extensive use of images I created using AI to illustrate the stories.  I have no artistic abilities myself, but I know what I want to create in terms of imagery.  AI allows me to do that. It also gets me over the potential hurdle of copyright claims on any image I use, (even the royalty-free images available from many sites are fraught with peril, as their originators could change their licensing terms at any time, without warning, leaving users of them vulnerable to copyright claims).  Do they have any artistic merit?  Clearly not, but that's not the point.  They exist simply to illustrate the story, which was written by a human - me.  Luckily, I haven't had any kickback about these images, but some other AI artwork I devised - a series of satirical fake sixties comic book covers - drew all sorts of anti-AI commentary when I published them on my Tumblr blog last year.  There was an implication that they somehow represented some form of deception.  In the end, a terse footnote I put on the last one - to the effect that they were clearly not real and a joke and created by AI because I wasn't going to pay a real artist just for the sake of illustrating a comic idea that I'm making no money from - seems of cut off this line of 'criticism' entirely.

Right now, I'm editing together a podcast on which I've used AI created voices from several AI assisted TTS systems.  I've done similar stuff before, both complete podcasts and inserts to otherwise human podcasts.  But this time around, the tools used are, in general, more sophisticated and more realistic sounding.  Doubtless, there will be many who won't like this but, as before, I'm a one man band putting my creative work out for free, so I'm hardly going to employ a bunch of actors to enact my scripts, am I?  And that's the point - the 'actors' in this podcast might be created by AI, but the words they speak are written entirely by a human - me.  The structure of the podcast - again, all me, as are all the ideas and characters.  AI is simply being used as a creative tool.  With it, I can create a far more sophisticated piece of audio than I'd be able to just working on my own, with only my voice.  So, while I'm as wary as anyone regarding the hype surrounding AI and the many dubious uses politicians and corporations are trying to put it to, as an individual creator, I'm also quite happy to embrace those aspects of it that I can put to use as a tool.  Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to AI.