The Errand-Boy's Elegy

Yesterday I saw "The Twilight Samurai" at the Cornerhouse Cinema. This film comes highly recommended, particularly as an antidote to "The Last Samurai".

"The Twilight Samurai" functions almost as an revisionist Samurai film, stripping away some of the romanticisation that characterised not only "The Last Samurai", but also the Kurosawa epics which established the tropes of the genre. Focussing less on combat scenes and more on human stories, "The Twilight Samurai" gives us a more rounded, less rose-tinted view of feudal Japan that we have perhaps seen before.

The film's setting, in Japan at around the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868) makes comparisons with "The Last Samurai" almost inevitable. The latter film suffered from a simplistic knee-jerk reactionary point of view in which everything in feudal Japan was wonderful and was only spoiled by the advent of industrial modernity. By contrast, "The Twilight Samurai" gives us a sense that while the passing of old Japan can in some respects be mourned, the modernisation of Japan did bring a variety of benefits to many people. At the same time, there is an acknowledgment that, despite the great social changes which took place in Japan, in some respects there was remarkable, and perhaps regrettable, continuity.

I typically dislike discussing the plot of films that I've seen, and I'm not really going to change that here. I will, though, say that I felt that this film, as a portrait of people struggling with obligation whilst trying to live their own lives, and perhaps trying to turn circumstances to their advantage, is a great success. I also felt that there was a great success in the underplaying of some of the film's aspects, particularly a swift and brutal sword-fight with only birdsong and a gurgling river as background sound. Once again, this is in marked contrast to the bombastic style shown in "The Last Samurai". I also found the somewhat cynical view of the samurai's military role interesting: in "The Twilight Samurai" there are no more heroes any more, and maybe there never were any. At the same time, any death is presented as a tragedy.

All in all, I found the two hours spent watching this film well worthwhile, and as such I would recommend it to everyone that I know.

I Am Still The Greatest Says Stephen O'Brien

Today I finally got confirmation that Liverpool have accepted me as a PhD student for this September. Rejoicing ensued. All we have to do now is wait for that AHRB reply...

Apologies should also go to Vicky, whose name got left out of the last post (for it was her who I met in Lowlanders). She sent me a pseudo-irate e-mail on the subject. To placate her, I may have to send her a free gift.

Back In The DHSS

You don't know how lucky you are, boys...

Yes, I am onvce again going to sign on. Not because I want or need the money, y'see, but to protect my National Insurance stamp. My Dad says that this is A Good Idea. And if your Dad says something...

I have signed up with some temp agencies while I come up with an archaeological CV. I am spending a lot of time watching TV. My exposure to TV again after six months is strange: all my TV-cynicism seems to have dissapated. I find that Yakult ad strangely moving. I also spend a lot of time watching the "UK History" Channel. Last week was 'Hitler week'. "That'll make a nice change", I thought.

Be impressed, for I have also put a new hard drive in my computer all by myself. I was impressed that Windows 98 partitioned and formatted the drive for me, despite claiming that this was something it most certainly would not do. As I can now burn CDs again, some of you can expect compilations off me. If you want one, send me a postal address and wait for me to do something about it.

I should also report that I achieved #14 on my List of Things To Do, spendfing one night before I left London getting drunk in Lowlanders. It was the first time I'd seen her in two years, but we picked iup right where we left off, with her laughing (sorry, "smiling") at my life. I had missed that. Hopefully it won't take two years to do it again.

The tedious AHRB application process is over! They have got my form at last! Look out fdor further highly interesting updates on this matter!

Up Here In The North Of England

Extra points to those who get the 80s music reference. 'Tis true though - I am sat in the easyinternet cafe just off Deansgate. I have done very little so far except attempt to impose order on the chaos that is my room. The weather is highly sunny.

See you round...

Stephen O'Brien And The Blogging Cohorts

As I prepare to leave, I am informed that Timo has gone public with his blog "An Outsider's View", viewable at:

http://www.anoutsidersview.blogspot.com/

The fact that Timo deployed the word "epistemological" in his very first post amuses me vastly, for some reason.

In the interests of bandwagon-jumping, I'm also going to join in with the estimable Mr. McGrenery's "memery" game from "Mind On The Run":

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

My sentence:

"Speaking tubes are always going out of order."

Straight Outta Beckton

Yes, it's over - no more mud, bombs, snipers, whizz-bangs, or those bloody awful songs that have "whoops" in the title. Wait: that's not my job, it's the First World War. Ah well - I'm unemployed again, and I love it!

Unlike the last time I was unemployed, I'm not worried about money or finding a job. I can stalk Holborn and Bloomsbury in a carefree manner, though still being careful to avoid abandoned syringes. Better yet, I can meet up with people. But more on that later...

Easter Parade

Well, it was a busy four days over Easter, so this is going to be a brief guide to all the excitement. I spent Easter with my sister over in Chiltern. On Friday we did the “Aleister Crowley & The Golden Dawn” walk out of her Time Out book of London walks. Most of it actually only has a very tenuous Crowley connection, but the route is good, taking you all the way from Euston Station through King’s Cross, Holborn, Bloomsbury, Soho, St. James, and finally ending up at Victoria Station. A good way to see quite a lot of London.

Saturday was spent at Borough Market. I don’t know if Emily has ever been there, but there’s enough pastry on sale to keep even her happy. In the afternoon we saw the excellent Shaun of the Dead. A whole lot of zombies get taken out in the film, but by far the most satisfying aspect was the manner in which it took a bloody shovel to the shambling corpse of the British film industry. People who know me may also like to note that I am quite plainly the Dylan Moran character.

Yesterday we went off to Greenwich to see the “Tintin at Sea” exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. It’s very good if you’re into Tintin, but probably less so if you aren’t. I did learn a few choice pieces of maritime history though: who would have thought there was actually a pirate called “Calico Jack” Rackham?

Today, before coming home, I went to the Curzon Soho to see Capturing The Friedmans, a fascinating, if disturbing, American documentary. I’m not really into the platitude of “learning” from everything, but I did find the film illuminating on several issues. For example, there is ample proof here that you can document as much as you like, you still won’t be able to come up with conclusive answers to anything, merely be placed in a position where intuition has to take over. The malleability of human memory is also prominently on show: is it possible that an innocent man might, in some sense, convince himself that he’s guilty just because it seems the best option? Can he also maintain his innocence to his family because he has to? Is one of the above a performance, or are both genuine? “Thought-provoking” isn’t the word.

So, now I’m back on Green Lanes. Four more days of work, four days to enjoy London, and then off to Heaton Chapel. I ran into Yvette in Bloomsbury today, which was nice - I haven't seen her since my MA ended, so it was nice to say goodbye in person. With just over a week left, book me now…

New Puritan

Underneath the railway bridge on Green Lanes a poster tells me that the current issue of Maxim is a "Special Sex Edition". 'That'll make a nice change' I think to myself.

A few days ago, on a late-night tube, I was sat opposite a drunken couple who were all over each other, as couples often are. If it happens again, I may be forced to throw a bucket of water over them.

It occurs to me that at some point, and without realising, I have developed a Puritan streak a mile wide. It won't be long before I'm referring to playing cards as "the devil's picture-book", or lobbying to have all sexual activity made punishable by an on-the-spot fine of £10.


"I'm not a Puritan - I just like the Puritan look"

#14

As the oh-so-clever title suggests, on Sunday, lacking anything better to do, I went to the National Portrait Gallery. Prior to being given it as a Thing To Do, I had no real interest in the place, but I actually quite enjoyed it. The first thing I did was to go and look at the very good, but very small, exhibition of Gerald Scarfe caracatures. It really should be done on a larger scale, because they are highly entertaining, giving a cynical view of just about everything. After that, I tracked down various people that I'm interested in (interestingly, all of them were 19th or early 20th Century): T.E. Lawrence, Rupert Brooke, Aleister Crowley, and Sir James Brooke (who really needs a film made about him). All in all, a very enjoyable afternoon!

I can also stop panicking quite so much about the AHRB form: Cyprian tells me that he has it, and the Results forms are being processed by Nottingham and UCL. With a little luck, I should actually make the 4 May deadline.

Misapplied Force

Recently, partly for academic purposes, I’ve read John Newsinger’s Dangerous Men: The SAS and Popular Culture. In many ways this is an interesting book, exploring the unique warrior-cult which British society has formed around the SAS. Newsinger convincingly argues that this cult stems from a Thatcherite attempt to resurrect popular militarism: the SAS has existed since 1941, but it was only following the Iranian embassy siege in 1980 that the unit was celebrated in popular culture.

There are, however, some serious flaws with the book. I felt that much of its analysis was too superficial, or that analysis was simply lacking. This is particularly apparent in the chapter on SAS fiction, which Newsinger spends masquerading as a literary critic rather than doing any sociology. I had already guessed that most SAS novels are appallingly written, and that the film Who Dares Wins is so mind-destroyingly bad that it might explain why Britain no longer makes action films. What I wanted more on was what relevance and role the warrior-cult has in a modern western society.

In fairness, these questions are addressed to some extent, but the answers given are so obvious that you probably don’t need to buy the book: backlash against feminism, desire to solve complex international problems through brute force, desire to see the existence of a national/racial elite. What goes unanswered is why Britain has this warrior-cult, while other nations seem to lack it – as far as I am aware, French popular culture does not worship the Foreign Legion, Russians do not idolise the Spetznatz. Comparisons with other nations are, however, almost completely absent from Newsinger’s work.

In addition to this, there are some worryingly simplistic segments of analysis. For example, when discussing the SAS deployment in the Malayan Emergency (1948-1958), Newsinger claims that the SAS role was ineffective in that they only killed 108 of the 6000 Communist guerrillas who died in the conflict. The equation of “most effective = kills the most people” is misleading and gung-ho, which, had the claim been made in an SAS biography, Newsinger would have been the first to point out.

Newsinger’s understanding of how people work also seems somewhat skewed. His model of British society in the 1980s goes as follows:

1) Thatcher tells people things.
2) They believe her.

Thus, in this analysis, all Thatcher had to do to resurrect British popular militarism (dead since the failure at Suez in 1956) was to point to the SAS as being efficient at the Iranian embassy, and win a bizarre colonial war in the Falklands three years later. However, it is impossible for popular culture to be dictated from the top down. While the political leadership can influence popular culture, there has to be a receptive audience. This is the flaw at the heart of Newsinger’s work. Nowhere can I find a reason why the British people took to popular militarism again in the 1980s. Here’s a half-baked theory of my own though: after the disaster of Suez in 1956 the popular perception of the British military was that it was brave but incompetent. Therefore, Britain would have to rely on American power for protection during the Cold War. However, the Vietnam War showed that the Americans could also fail - the unforgettable fall of Saigon in 1975 (a mere five years prior to the Iranian embassy siege) going out via mass-media. It is possible, then, that the British public now saw that America could fail, and perhaps felt that Britain needed to protect itself. Such a mood would be highly receptive to the muscular military nationalism promoted by the Thatcherite Conservative Party.

Reading the above back to myself, I appear to have thoroughly disliked this book. That isn’t true. Newsinger does effectively destroy many of the myths which have sprung up about the SAS, and provides some telling analysis: I was much taken by his claim that the classic image of the SAS, clad in black chemical-warfare suits and gas-masks, resembles nothing so much as fetish gear! The discussion of SAS involvement with counter-terrorist operations in Northern Ireland, and how they may have served to prolong rather than end the conflict, is highly interesting given the current world situation (the book was published in 1997).

In conclusion then, Dangerous Men: The SAS and Popular Culture would serve as a useful initial textbook for “SAS Studies” (does that course exist yet?) As a sociological work, however, it is too shallow in its analysis to be truly useful, and so merely provides a useful jumping-off point into other works.

My Life Is A Series Of People Saying Goodbye

Well, last night was my last ever Gamesoc, and I’m going to miss it tremendously. It occurs to me that the main reason why I stayed in London was actually to be near those guys: all my other London friends had moved away, and I had nowhere to go, except home. That’s the tragedy of being young: you constantly have to throw everything away and leave it, perhaps just when you were beginning to get into the swing of things.

Over at Peat’s weblog, he says some rather nice (if factually incorrect – I’m not going to Liverpool to do a PhD, I’m going to Heaton Chapel to sleep) things about me. He also offers to be my adventuring companion, which he’s welcome to be. The county towns of England won’t know what’s hit them.

I’ve decided to call off my hate campaign against the Royal Mail (instigated when the mindless bastards managed to loose my AHRB form), as the new copy has officially been delivered to Cyprian, and they didn’t loose the two other forms which I had to send off.

#11

I have, as readers of "We Eat A Nut And An Insect" will know, been challanged to perform 25 of the 50 things on my list of things to do. Well, the other day, I did actually go to Westminster Cathedral. While I didn't actually half-inch one of St. John Southworth's limbs, I did buy a postcard of him, which is the next best thing. Does this count as a Thing Done?


The Mortal Remains of St. John Southworth, Yesterday

There was more insanity in the news when Chris The Medic informed me that henceforth he should be addressed as "Dr. Godeseth". Congratulations to him!

The Results Are In...

Here it is, the Big List Of Things That Stephen To Do. I am amazed, not only by the number of talented comedians that I know, but also by the amount of extra informatrion I got from people: that I should ignore whatever suggestions a certain correspondant made, that "The Name of the Rose" is shit, that one of my friends is being hassled by "tank-top wearing hippies", and that the main disadvantage of the National Portrait Gallery is that it is not in any way offensive.

I've added a few items of my own, both for the purposes of comedy and to get a nice round number.


1) Why not come to visit us in Brighton?
2) Why not hike the South Downs Way?
3) Why not perform chalk drawings on Stockport pavements?
4) Why not dye your hair?
5) Why not knit a giant blanket?
6) Why not study a foreign language?
7) Why not read some Thomas Hardy?
8) Why not do some voluntary work?
9) Why not cycle across the Pyrenees to Barcelona, camping on the way (but not in the Keith Richards sense)?
10) Why not feck off?
11) Why not go to Westminster Cathedral and steal one of St. John Southworth’s limbs?
12) Why not meet me for a drink?
13) Why not spit on Enoch Powell’s grave?
14) Why not visit The National Portrait Gallery?
15) Why not watch the films “Reanimator”, “Necronomicon”, and “Dagon”?
16) Why not incur massive debt?
17) Why not meet an old Yank friend?
18) Why not invade Abyssinia?
19) Why not kill an animal with your bare hands?
20) Why not visit every county town in England?
21) Why not write the Great American Novel?
22) Why not become a close personal friend of Sting?
23) Why not construct a fictitious persona and go on holiday playing that person?
24) Why not learn how to unicycle?
25) Why not get thrown out of a “Lord of the Rings” film by shouting “Now that’s what I’m Tolkien about!” every time an orc gets killed?
26) Why not pretend at parties that you’re learning to unicycle?
27) Why not invent names for unicycle stunts that don’t exist?
28) Why not star in a short film where you play a world-weary film noir detective partnered with an exuberant sock puppet?
29) Why not perform situationist comedy at English football grounds – throwing a Chelsea Bun onto the pitch at Stamford Bridge, hiding at Hyde United, and so on?
30) Why not get Liechtenstein nationality, play for their international football team, and become famous for kicking famous, highly-paid professional footballers in the crotch?
31) Why not become Irish?
32) Why not think of something to do with a tainted Feng-Shui statuette?
33) Why not burn the master tapes to “Birds of a Feather”?
34) Why not visit all of the very small countries of the world?
35) Why not write a short story/film called “The Limehouse Cut”?
36) Why not get a massage from the “Massage Parlour” on Green Lanes?
37) Why not visit Peniston with Andy? (NOTE: Not a euphamism)
38) Why not form a band made up entirely of Billy Idol impersonators?
39) Why not learn how to cook?
40) Why not learn how to massage?
41) Why not learn how to dance?

(These last three come with the advice that they will make women melt at my feet, which sounds fun. If likely to make my shoes all sticky.)

42) Why not legally change your name to “Johnny Foreigner”?
43) Why not go to work dressed as T.E. Lawrence?
44) Why not deliberately score own goals?
45) Why not use your AHRB application to make veiled threats?
46) Why not flamboyantly spunk some research?
47) Why not buy a pet frog, and give it the name “Aristophanes”?
48) Why not buy a Japanese schoolgirl outfit for a friend?
49) Why not grow a beard, but wear a fake beard over it?
50) Why not party like it’s 1899?

The Blog Writes Me

What with me leaving work and London at some point in the next month, I’ll have a bit of spare time. And what better way to spend that time than by doing things that my friends suggest? It can be like an ultra low-budget reality show, but with considerably less Tabloid coverage. Send me your ideas for what I should be doing, and hope to see my exploits recorded here in the Blog. All ideas will be considered, even if they’re gratuitously offensive. Perhaps even especially...

Quod In Aeturnum Cubet Mortum Non Est, Et Saeculis Miris Actis Etiam Mors Perierit.

A while since I last posted, so I should keep people updated. I'm currently wading through the AHRB and University of Liverpool paperwork neccessary to try and get a PhD place and funding. This takes much longer than one might think.

I do have a little time to indulge my quirks, though. Today, for example, I went out and bought De Profundis, the role-playing game of writing letters to people. I think it'll be more exciting than it sounds, honest. I also got a copy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I remember my Dad once reading it but giving up, claiming to be perplexed by all the maths. If I can successfully complete it, I will be officially be Better Than My Dad. As pop-psychology tells me that that's what all us males are really up to, I can't really turn the opportunity down, can I? I wonder what happens when you officially become Better Than Your Dad? Do you spontaneously combust or something?

I have also posted a random fragment called "Green Lanes Blues" over at N.A.O.W.F.I.T.

The Big Meet

It was about twelve o’clock, late February, with the sun not shining and a look of cold rain in the flat grey clouds silhouetting the Liver Building. I was wearing my black jeans, polished black boots, and a dark blue sweater with a v-neck. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the casually-dressed archaeologist ought to be. I was calling on the Head of Archaeology.

And You Know What They Said? Well, Some Of It Was True!

I've decided to give my ego a good stroking this time, by doing a "What They're Saying About..." thing, in the manner of the adverts for godawful West End shows. Expect to see yourself misquoted:

"Funny and everything!" - Peat Carrington

"Laughed out loud several times, matey." - Andy Holmes

"Mighty congratulations to Stephen!" - Jen Tarr

"What's this 'blogging cohort' thing all about?" - Tom McGrenery

"A slackers communication method." - Emily Brown

The estimable Mr. McGrenery has also invited me to join his fiction (or is it?) blog Not All Of What Follows Is True. I've accepted, and he's put up a random bit of fiction by me called "This Is The Way - Step Inside". Why not go there and see...

There are some Bolsheviks (and yes I do mean Bolsheviks) outside ULU. Disappointingly they haven't set up a barricade with machine-guns or anything, they're just standing about giving out leflets. You just don't get the same quality of armed struggle against the bourgeoisie these days. I did consider annoying them by putting on a White Russian officer's uniform and repeatedly walking past them. Like all of my best plans, this had to be dropped due to lack of resources.

I Want You To - Take Me Out

Some albums answer important questions. Franz Frediand’s eponymously-titled (a certain lack of imagination there, guys. You could at least have called it “Mind That Serbian”) debut is one of these, answering the question “What if Noel Coward had been in Gang of Four?” (the post-punk group, not the Chinese dissidents. Or the founders of the SDP).

I’ve always been a big fan of concealing darkness behind a jaunty façade, and with the album’s standout track “Take Me Out”, Franz Ferdinand do this perfectly. The band’s stated intention is to “make girls dance”, but lyrics like the following indicate that there’s more to them than that:

So if you're lonely
You know I'm here waiting for you
I'm just a crosshair
I'm just a shot away from you
And if you leave here
You leave me broken, shattered, I lie
I'm just a crosshair
I'm just a shot, then we can die
I know I won't be leaving here with you

Outside this excellent single, though, how does the album stand up? I think it’d be easier to like it if the entire media hadn’t repeatedly told me that it’s a work of genius. It isn’t. What it is is an interesting debut, but one which leaves a certain amount of room for improvement. For a band which prides itself on an art-school aesthetic, a lot of the lyrics aren’t that good, although the ones in the standout tracks (“Take Me Out”, “The Dark Of The Matinee”, “Darts Of Pleasure”) are good enough. I was amused by the fairly MOR homoeroticism of “Michael” – the more cynical part of me thinks this is included to make the lads in the band even more attractive to the aforementioned dancing girls. The music is really the strong point, reminiscent of late 1970s and early 1980s groups like Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, and Wire.

In conclusion then, don’t believe the hype – but if you like the post-punk/New Wave era, or like a few well-written lyrics, then you might well like this album. If the next Franz Fedinand album builds on the strong points of this one, then it could well be the work of genius we were promised.

Train In Vain

This weekend I went up to Stockport to see my parents, catching the 7.10 train out of Euston. The journey was dull until we were somewhere between Birmingham and Stoke. The intercom binged on, and the most hardcore train manager in Britain began to speak “There is a smoke alarm going off in Carriage B. This train is a completely smoke-free area. If this smoking continues I will take this train out of commission and we will not be going to Manchester Piccadilly” to top this off, he closed with the cold-as-ice words “Good luck to you all”.

Minutes later, two of Virgin Trains’ Corporate Stormtroopers appeared at my end of Carriage B, and advanced on some Asian lads who were drinking (at about 9.30 am) at the other end. It appeared that they had been doing the smoking, although they also appeared to have flushed the evidence (remember, we’re talking about a completely legal substance here). The Stormtroopers went away again. I thought this was the end of the matter. I was wrong. At Stoke the train stopped and remained stopped until British Transport Police arrived and questioned the lads, who denied being the smokers, grinning all the while. Then the Transport Police went away, and we continued on to Stockport, 10 minutes late. So that was well worth everyone’s time and effort then. It amused me though.

I bought the latest issue of Word to read. I’m not going to write about he highlights this week, ‘cos I don’t want this blog to become a compilation of someone else’s humour. However, my attention was caught by one particular turn of phrase, in which a reviewer claimed that an author “flamboyantly spunked*” their research in the first three chapters. I wonder if me wanting to do a PhD is actually a sublimated desire to flamboyantly spunk some research. I’ll have to check with Jen, see if she’s ever been guilty of research-spunking.

* My computer does not recognise the word “spunked”, but suggests that I probably mean “spanked”. Either way seems fine…

Blogging Cohort

I'm temporarily breaking the self-imposed internet silence I'm having over the Valentine's period (Self-imposed on the basis that if you can't say anything nice...). I just wanted to let people know that I have a new blogging cohort, and his blog can be found here:

This Is The Pasty I'm Gonna Die In


Enjoy.