Symbolic Forest

I’ve said it before, I’m sure, but I generally dislike pretty much all politicians. Some, though, I dislike more than others.

I particularly dislike it when people tell me that draconian and illiberal laws are necessary For Your Own Good. When people tell me that removing my right to freedom from arbitrary detention is really part of preserving my right to a greater, more nebulous freedom, which always remains mysteriously vague.

But what really disgusts me, is when people use innocent deaths, horrific deaths, deaths that deeply affected you and me, to push for ever-greater authoritarianism. No amount of detention without trial would have prevented the July attacks.

That’s just a few reasons why I smiled when I heard today’s news.

(and, incidentally, anyone who does think that we do need 90-day detention without trial “because of the victims” should read what Rachel from North London has to say about it)

Keyword noise: authoritarianism, evil, terrorism, Tony Blair.

Tonight, Christopher Edward Buckingham is a famous man. He probably doesn’t appreciate this, though, because that isn’t his real name. He’s also in prison, because it is the name on his passport. The Passport Office don’t really get the joke with that sort of thing.

Christopher Buckingham has been Christopher Buckingham for twenty-something years, since he was around 20 himself. He won’t tell anybody who he was beforehand. The police are, naturally, suspicious; the police are always suspicious about something. Why, though, do they immediately jump to the assumption that Buckingham has a dodgy past? It’s entirely legal to change your name, if you go about it the right way. So why assume that somebody is a bit shady just because they didn’t bother to fill in the paperwork? Because they show signs of being a fantasist? Why can’t we just let him go ahead being Christopher Buckingham?

Christopher Buckingham’s mother is very upset. She’s not his mother, though, she’s the other Christopher Buckingham’s mother, the one whose name he stole. She’s very upset because her Christopher died in infancy, so therefore she thinks he should apologise to her. You can’t stop somebody stealing your name, though, so long as they don’t actually pretend to be you. He hasn’t done that, so really, it’s nothing to do with her.

I’ve often wanted to run away from my life. It would be good to be able to make a really fresh start. So, you see, I can sympathise with Christopher Buckingham.

Keyword noise: Christopher Buckingham, disguise, false identity, fresh start, identity, identity theft, news.

It’s November the 5th, and so it’s time, of course, to celebrate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, the cunning plan to murder the King, the government and the parliament, 400 years ago today. I’ve always thought the November timing to be a bit convenient for an event involving warm fires and pretty explosions. What would we do if the Opening of Parliament was in, say, June? You can’t have a nice big effigy-burning in June – that would be silly, and everyone would overheat. You’d have to stay up damn late to see the fireworks, too.^*

Just remember, though, if you’re at a bonfire or if you’re watching the fireworks, to make sure you don’t make any jokes along the lines of “we could do with fewer politicians anyway,” or “shame they didn’t finish the job properly.” That would be glorifying terrorism – you can probably get away with saying it now, but this time next year comments like that will be strictly illegal and liable to land you with a lengthy prison sentence. Instead, the Symbolic Forest management would like to suggest the following alternative, appropriate Government-approved phrases for use at fireworks displays:

“God save the politicians!”

“Hurrah for torture-extracted confessions!”

“Look at that nasty terrorist burrrrrn!”

The legality of using the phrase “Wooo!” when a rocket explodes is, at present, unclear.

* Yes, I know that both the French and Americans manage to have firework celebrations in July. It gets darker earlier in France and America, though. So there.

Keyword noise: Bonfire Night, Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes, justice, law, terrorism.

The last couple of posts make me sound like an old curmudgeon. I try not to be.

Too many people have died this year. When you’re in your 20s still, you don’t expect people your own age, people you know, to go. A dead friend comes at you like a kick to the ribs.

In the past six months, two people I got to know from the Sinister mailing list have died suddenly and unexpectedly, in very different ways. The second death was yesterday: sudden, unexpected heart failure. We hadn’t been in touch for a couple of years, but even so to know she’s gone was a sudden, nasty shock. I keep thinking of all the greetings and apologies that I should have said, but didn’t.

I’m not sure that I should be posting this picture – I’m not sure that it’s what she would have wanted. I want to show you it, though, because I think it shows what a lovely, lively person she was.

Rest in peace, Amy

Keyword noise: death, Sinister, sudden, unexpected.

Walking through the town centre, I heard a piercing scream, loud enough to make me jump. “What the hell?” I thought, worried that something horrible was going on.

Turning the next corner, I found that something horrible was going on. “HOW LOUD IS YOUR CHILD COMPETITION,” said the sign. “WIN A BEAR.”

That’s really not necessary, I thought. Children are loud enough already. They don’t need encouragement to scream as loud as they possibly can, because it happens often enough in any case. If only it was a real bear.

Keyword noise: children, competition, noise, screaming.

Someone recently said they thought the mysterious creature at the top right was myself. Strangely enough, it isn’t. Here’s a slightly better picture of it:

The creature isn’t me, but it does have a name. This is a gruntlebeast. Although shy,^* and so rarely seen on camera, these rather sad monsters are unfortunately rather common.

Their name comes from their main food: gruntles. They will often attack lonely strangers, using those vicious teeth to remove the victim’s gruntles. Often, the victim will not even notice the beast’s attack, only realising that they now feel rather disgruntled.

Clearly, these things are a menace. They account for a large proportion of the disgruntled people in the world, in turn leading to large-scale outbreaks of annoyance, irritation, depression and Being A Twat. You should watch out for them, and be particularly wary if you hear their distinctive hunting cry: “Arrg kxrrt!” If you see any, or hear of any sightings, then let me know. Be safe out there.

* and also, according to some accounts, sometimes invisible; which may account for the partially see-through appearance of the one in the picture.

Keyword noise: arrg kxrrt, disgruntled, fake mythology, gruntlebeast.

A news story from the other day: Elvis Presley is the world’s highest-earning dead celebrity yet again. Partly, I assume, because of the effort his record company is putting into milking his back-catalogue as heavily as they possibly can.

Whether or not you think that the Presley estate is being overly grasping and moneygrabbing with its constant record re-releasing; things could, you know, be much much worse. There’s an awful amount of Elvis-related tat out there in the world, but how much of it routes income back to Graceland? If his estate really wanted to exploit its history, they easily could. Re-releasing old 7” singles is the tasteful option.

Keyword noise: celebrities, Elvis Presley, music, records, singles.

Update, August 20^th 2020: A number of posts on this site have a minor update at the bottom, but not many have an update at the top.

It’s now 2020, nearly fifteen years since I first wrote this post, and I’m going through the archives doing a few updates. Tidying things up, fixing now-broken stale links and ancient typos, and excising anything that, at fifteen years distance, feels slightly too pointless or humiliating. And then, I come to this. And I’m not entirely sure what to do with it.

Posts that can be tidied up stylistically, they’re easy to deal with. Posts that are just too maudlin or self-obsessive: they can get right out of here. But posts and series of posts that I quite like, they’re staying, and I quite like the whole “Books I Haven’t Read” series. The problem is: how to deal with a post which openly admits that I used to enjoy reading Neal Stephenson?

At some point I will write a proper post for this site about why I used to enjoy reading Stephenson, why now I don’t any more, and what I actually think about his writing. There could well be another Books I Haven’t Read about a Stephenson book: Anathem, which arrived onto my bookshelves and then departed off my bookshelves several years later without me even managing to open it. But rewriting this post to take that into account would turn it into something entirely different now to what it originally was then, which goes rather against the idea that this is just a minor tidying-up exercise. I’ve decided, therefore, to keep this post pretty much as it originally was back in 2005, but with this great disclaimer at the start, a disclaimer that may well be larger than the post itself by the time I have finished writing it. This post is a museum piece. Read it, but please don’t believe it reflects my views now. Well, apart from what I think of the ridiculous implausible zipwire scene in The System Of The World, which is one of the few things I can actually remember being in the book.

Now, shaky back-in-time dissolve effect, read on…

This week’s Book I Haven’t Managed To Finish Reading is both a book, and a series of books, and also something that follows on neatly from the previous Book I Haven’t Read. It’s The System Of The World by Neal Stephenson, the final part of his Baroque Cycle trilogy.

Now, the trilogy is in itself a sequel to the earlier, 20th-century book Cryptonomicon, which I read and loved. The Baroque Cycle is set in the 17th and 18th centuries, filled with real-world characters such as Isaac Newton and Sam Pepys, and is somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 pages long. The length isn’t a problem, though;^* I seem to have a problem with the way the style of the books changes through the series, even though that change isn’t itself something I can put into words.

The first book, Quicksilver, I read and, again, loved. The second book, The Confusion, took two goes to get to the end. It’s not any longer, its intertwined-but-unrelated plotlines aren’t any denser or more complex, but for some reason it was a lot harder to finish. The System Of The World I’ve tried to read three times, and each time I haven’t got very far at all.

If there is anything I can put my finger on, it’s that somehow The System Of The World feels slightly cartoonish compared to the other books. The main characters swoop into the Tower Of London in a Spiderman style, or are suddenly faced with a ticking timebomb that needs to be defused. The complex political intrigues of the earlier books are still there; and in the earlier books they were mixed with action too. However, the action sequences in the third book are somehow much less plausible. Because of this, the disparate plotlines don’t feel as connected; and the whole thing is much more difficult to finish.

* Cryptonomicon is a similar length to each of the later books, and felt too short in parts, as if large amounts of exposition had been excised by the editor. Or maybe I’m just slow at spotting plot points.

Keyword noise: books, Books I Haven't Read, Cryptonomicon, literature, Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, reading, Samuel Pepys, SF, The Baroque Cycle, The Confusion, The System Of The World.

Following on from yesterday: at the end of the week, the only way to recover is to spend Saturday not thinking about anything, not doing anything serious, just slowly relaxing until my brain eventually starts to return.

Keyword noise: recovery, relaxation, weekend.

I start the week alert and active. As it goes on, the alertness slowly fades away. I find myself yawning in public. I find myself staring into space more. By the time I reach Friday evening, all I want to do is rest. It’s a good thing we don’t have six-day weeks, because if we did I’d just end u…

…

…zzzzzzzz

Keyword noise: asleep, exhaustion, tiredness.