It was different in my day...

If, like me, you feel yourself being pulled by inexorable tides of middle-aged curmudgeonry, in which so many things - especially schools - "were so much better in my day", then take heart: sometimes you are right.

On the other hand, reading these examination questions for eleven year-olds seeking entry to a nineteenth-century english prep school, it is clear that "my day" was not so hot after all? Until you remember that, in 1898, an eleven year-old me would have been sent down the pit without the benefit of any kind of education at all. In my day - 1978 - we'd all been to school first, then went down the pit, or worked in the 'Yard.


Ooh: quite forgot to tip Harry the Cavalryman.

Thanksgiving

Mentioned it before, that when you move to another country and intend to stay there permanently, there's a lot of the old world you have to let go. Sometimes consciously, but not always: it mostly just happens, as you immerse yourself in the new. But not everything need be discarded. Had an american friend who'd moved the other way, became a UK citizen. The only thing she ever admitted to missing was Thanksgiving. So one year - turned out to be my last year, though none of us knew that - she decided to gather her friends, her friends and their kids, and to prepare for us all a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, served with grace and a tiny measure of solemnity. We were not strangers to the turkey - it's what's for christmas, after all - but all of its marvellous accoutrements and paraphernalia were exotic to us. Yams and marshmallow, succotash, bread stuffing with apple, roasted chestnuts, pumpkin and squash, a long parade of unfamiliar fruits and vegetables.

Here is a curious thing I have found: holidays in america - Thanksgiving, 4th July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day - these are all rather more meaningful to americans than the british equivalents, where a holiday is nothing more than a day off work. Which is to say, without appearing too solemn or heavy-handed, that people here, those of my acquaintance certainly, they all stop to think about the day and what it means? About what is being celebrated, and why? Except Labor Day, which really is just a day off work. But the others are marked, marked and occasioned, by a measure of ritual in which everyone participates. Not quite "holy days", but more so here than there?

Thanksgiving is a day of family feast, and of giving thanks. It is also my favorite of these american holidays, since it arrived so quickly, and so fittingly, just days after footfall. It arrived at precisely the moment I had everything to be thankful for: for being here; for being with her, and being with them. And so each year that passes I give thanks anew for all that is important to me, and many things that aren't.

The Man Who Would Be Queen

This is a picture of the Royal Yacht, Britannia - used for so many years to carry Her Majesty about Her far-flung Dominions and Commonwealth, across the length of which the sun never set. Lately, however, at the behest of Parliament, Her Majesty's Yacht has been retired to Leith docks, where a grateful commons may stroll her bright-scrubbed decks and gangways. Her Majesty now takes the bus.

Rather Blather

I don't think I've ever watched a Dan Rather newscast? Certainly not all the way through. Broadcast television news in the United States is just awful, on so many different levels, that I rarely get past the first: the superficial, the fluffed-up phoniness of its anchors and reporters. All of them. Sure, sometimes they deal in serious topics - watched one the other week about little Bengali boys enslaved as camel jockeys by the Sheiks of Arabie - but the reporter, his demeanour, his whole play-it-for-tears insincerity, left me just gagging. Wrongly, too: for important subjects deserve serious treatment. Human treatment, not pantomime. There is one station - couldn't tell you which one, don't really care - has this nightly feature, "Around the World in Sixty Seconds"? In this they stoop to bring us news of the Great Outside, while the whole time there's a fucking countdown clock in the corner, each tick saying "only 33 more seconds of this shite to go, then we get back to Sports!" Do you remember reading Lileks that one time, hear him describe the voice of BBC reporters as "sneering"? God, but I miss that? Cable television news - the fyutchurrr, captin' - is worse still. You want sneering? You want snickering? Watch Fox. You want smug? You want conceited little pricks? Watch CNN too, watch Lou Dobbs, or Larry King - better still, swap back-and-forth between Fox and CNN at commercial breaks, if your remote can keep-up with the pace, catch a little Britt, or - what is that smarmy fart's name? Shep Smith, sumpthin? All of them painted thicker than an old french tart. You know why: half of them are so old the make-up stops their skin from peeling off their skulls. The rest of them disguised - they are the lizard people, the "Visitors" from "V", here to suck away our brains.

A pox on all their plooks.

Which is all to say, I don't give a fish's tit that Dan Rather is going to retire. Cheery bye, Dan. Don't let the door ya-di-ya yer arse on the way oot, innat?

Aah, but t'was the mighty Bloggers did for poor-old Dan, was it not? Those same, mighty "who, me?" paragons who'd never admit responsiblility for their own posts, nor the snidy posts they like to link to, heh, but jump like yappy wee dogs to claim the rights to this? Good kill, guys: high fucking five. Got that old bastard bang-to-rights. You've surely saved the Nation from catastrophe, and done us all a favor. Listen... Hear that? That's just the cackle of bitter old ladies, sipping cups o' tea round the vicar's table, pinkies raised like eyebrows, cold dead lips pursed for gossip. Bravo, ladies, for calling Account! to big Libruhl media, who owe us no more accountability than you, while ignoring the beam in the eye of your government. Who are accountable to no-one. CBS and ABC and NBC and all the rest, they ought to take a leaf out of your playbook: "it's our damned network, we can say what we want, just like you, and if you don't like that, well, start your own!" Fox did. Heck, the Jeebus channels did, and they have their own News! So can you.

Forgive me, dearies, if I keep my clappy hands in my pockets for now: I'm saving them for Jarvis, and for Marshall, whose targets are far more worthy opponents than yours.

kthxbye.

IN OTHER NEWS, we report tonight that unregarded Los Angeles "blogger", Mr F.C. Bearded, has been granted permanent residency in our fine country, and is here for keeps. WE ASK, what was the Department of Homeland Security thinking? Who knew? Who authorized it? Whom did it benefit?

Set tongues on Stun, ladies...

MURDER, She wrote

At first, when I read this on Slashdot - how many color laser printers employ microprinting on every document they produce to identify the printer to law enforcement - I thought, "How sinister!"

That's just creepy - imagine: the Law can read a printed document and trace it back to you?

But then, after a minute's harrumph, perhaps not? It isn't creepy at all: it's just the return of the dodgy typewriter key, staple of detective fiction through the ages? A micro-printed watermark is just like that off-centered "T" with its rough little edges that Poirot knows came from La Machine de la Madame Scarlét, that proves she wrote the ransom note for the kidnapped little boy who was found in a ditch with his ears cut off.

I feel better.

For what it is worth, my wife only recently pointed-out the microprinting on our checkbook. I didn't know it was there. She is of the belief that this counter-forger tool was invented by noted crook-turned-cop, Frank Abagnale Jr. But then, she also believed the "World Series" was named for the New York World newspaper, and not for american arrogance as we Brits prefer to believe. But Volokh's blown that theory out the water today already!

Ha.

Vain Puffers

I can't remember the name of the tract - nor even the name of its author - where I read the term "vain puffers", but for some inexplicable reason it has stuck with me down the years: one tiny part in a miasma of formless trivia. I do recall that I read it within a novel, an alchemical novel long out of print, titled Mercurius, by Patrick Harpur. At least, I think it was Mercurius - who can be sure without reading? It may instead have been Aegypt, by John Crowley, but I doubt it? Aegypt, I vaguely recall, gave the real reason why Moses has horns, which had nothing to do with mistakes in translation?

<aside>
Sorry - you will find no certainty here, nor coherence if such you seek? I am simply unequipped for it.
</aside>

Mercurius the book has proven to be as beguiling and elusive to me as the substance it portrays was to those vain puffers of old: to those who labored long and hard and fruitlessly in fevered kilns, dabbling in The Art, who sought the secret of The Work, the Magnum Opus: by which the lowly, filthy, everyday-common prima materia, the first matter, the fifth element, may be transformed into the Stone of the Philosophers', the universal panacea, the elixir of life. True adepts looked upon these with contempt: they puffed at their bellows in vain, seeking only to enrich themselves by transmuting base metal into gold. Such base motives could never hope to yield The Stone, they scoffed, whose powers of transmutation were merely a test.

The book, the novel, fetched itself into my hands at a public lending library, back in a time when I could rarely afford to buy books for myself; yet, ever since I have sought it in bookstores here, there, everywhere and anywhere, always in vain. There is a second-hand copy to be found on Amazon, right now, but that would be cheating, and demeaning. When I do find it, I want it to be in some out-of-the-way tumble-shelved bookery, ran for an hundred years by some elderly, learned, but sprightly gentleman rather like that kindly old cove in New Orleans, who sold me The Mysteries of New Orleans on the basis he'd known the author, from before the Civil War.

As Above, So Below...

Recipes, instructions for The Work abound in the literature: hundreds have been written down the ages, all of them presenting "Ane True Accompte Of The Secret Of The Great Worke Of The Philosophick Magistery", all of them - all of them - riddled in coded obscurity. For it is a simple fact that the First Principle of Alchemy is not, as the great Hermes Tresmegistus would have it, that "As Above, So Below," but rather, "be ye hidden in plain sight." This great Work is of such importance that it must be written down that later adepts may acquire it, but is of such terrible proportion that it must never be writ plainly, that any TomDick may stumble into it unwisely?

Any cursory investigation of the Alchemical Arts - and, belive me, that is the stretch of my particular abilities - would quickly reveal that to embark upon the Great Work is not simply a physical exercise, but a spiritual one: it is as much a transformation of the spirit as it is of vulgar matter. There is a mythical dimension too - which is to say that the tale, the essence, of alchemy offers an allegorical lens through which we may glimpse Man and His Pursuit of Power? There is something about it, its methods, its secrecy, its price, that resonates internally?

All of which rambled train of thought was released, unbidden, when I read today of machinations in government - of the sly attachment of a tiny-but-powerful proviso tucked quietly into a huge Appropriations Bill - a 3000-page blunderbuss Bill that passed through Congress and Senate on Friday. The Bill was so big that nobody who voted for it could afford the time to read it; at least, not all of it, and certainly not closely? There it sits, hidden in plain sight by Rep. Istook of Oklahoma, a provision that allows the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee or their appointed agents access to any tax returns or return information held by IRS, privacy be utterly damned. Not the point: fact is, though it may seem underhanded and sleekit, it is nevertheless an entirely legitimate manouvre. And I'm not going to embarass you with ill-thought rants about it here. No, my point, such as I might have one, is that the rules by which we are governed are there for all to see, openly, but are nevertheless written with a subtlety that one must be adept to comprehend fully. It struck me, too, that the ordinary everyday business of Congress - its resolutions, bills, committees - has to be mind-numbingly dull, often to the point of torportude, to its participants? Who could blame Sen. John McCain, for example, for not reading a 3000-page budgetary monster all the way through? Have you ever read a Bill? House and Senate Bills - take one at random as I did, say H.R.5349, G.I. Bill enhancement Act of 2004, a small one-pager even - you will find it dreadfully dull and obscure? The language is dense, and its content often indirect - which is to say, like the snippet below, it may explain how to ammend the language of some other statute, but will not show what the ammended statute looks like afterwards:

Section 3018 of title 38, United States Code, is amended--

(1) by redesignating subsections (c) and (d) as subsection (d) and (e), respectively;

(2) by inserting after subsection (b) the following new subsection (c):

`(c)(1) Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, during the one-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this subsection, an individual who--

`(A) serves on active duty as a member of the Armed Forces during the period beginning on November 16, 2001, and ending on the termination date of Executive Order 13235, relating to National Emergency Construction Authority; and

`(B) has served continuously on active duty without a break in service following the date the individual first becomes a member or first enters on active duty as a member of the Armed Forces,

shall have the opportunity, on such form as the Secretary of Defense shall prescribe, to withdraw an election under section 3011(c)(1) or 3012(d)(1) of this title not to receive education assistance under this chapter.

Yet for all that, bills such as this - tortured and obscure to the likes of me - are the implements of power within our land. It is for these, for the authority to create and manipulate them, that our politicians campaign so bitterly. And not just in Congress or Parliament, or whatever national forum but, as above, so below,the same holds true at the micro level: in local councils, school boards, parks and recreation committees? Where I live we have a local cable channel, an homunculus CSPAN, that televises city council sessions. Five minutes on any given evening is about as much as I can stand to watch. You begin to realize that it must require considerable dedication to drudgery and to the study of the subtle arts to become even an initiate, let alone a master, of the form?

A tentative connection, an unexpected association, slowly congeals within: congressional bills and statutes, local by-laws - these are, if you like, the physical realm of Power, cooked in chambers through a lengthy, difficult, chymikal transformation of base goal into shining statute? An alchemical vision of Government. One can imagine a congress, or a city council, filled with vain puffers who labor long and dull at this humdrum art, who find themselves stuck, out of their depth, trapped within its coils? That would surely be me, if ever I were to tred that path: or any well-intentioned naïf who may be motivated by visions of bringing plain-honest Mr Smith dealings to Washington, or Westminster? One can also envision its true adepts, those others who are by necessity master chemists, but who know that this be the lesser part of it? Those who would move beyond, to walk the spiritual dimension of Power, the superior realm of High Power? These are the mages, the magicians, the dangerous ones. A bill, a resolution, a statute - these are but projections of a Greater Work, a shadow cast from a fuller world onto a lesser, like a cube drawn on paper, like a television image. Much will be hidden in translation - projections are like that - and it can be no small feat to work backwards, to infer from what we see on paper before us, the broader intent that cast it? Magicians are rare, but they do exist: most, I expect, are fully aware that knowledge and power carry with them the responsibility to wield them wisely. Some of them - perhaps most - do. Others do not. And I, Bearded, who is wholly incapable of tracking their spoor, though I may sometimes smell it, am condemned to offer nothing more intelligible than hasty uninformed rants before flittering, in mental retreat, down some useless, trivial, associative rabbit hole. I may loathe them, some of them, but they still command my grudging respect.

Now, Paracelsus - he was a character...

What You Are Missing (1) - B r a a a a i i i n

Case in point: Republicans changing the rules of Congress to suit themselves.

Here's the way I understood it: majority Republican congresspersons changed House rules back-in-the-day so that anyone in a position of power within the House - meaning, Democrats - would be handed their cards if they were ever indicted on a felony beef. Then, yesterday, the evil bastard Republicans changed the rules back again, now that their guy - their leader, DeLay - is expecting a Knock from the Filth, right?

So I'm reading Josh Marshall at lunchtime, right - who is having an orgasmic day winkling answers out of Republican Representatives, see who'll admit they voted for it - reading, eating, fries and bread dunked on autopilot, horseradish-to-mouth, au-jus-to-mouth, dribbling on shirt, eyes scanning feral askew, brow furrowed indignant, when:
- Hold on?
- What did that say?

A number of congressmen (no congresswomen yet) are now telling their constituents that there's no question to answer because the DeLay Rule never came to a vote. (Staffers from Congressmen Tom Davis and Tom Feeney offices have both used this line, according to TPM readers.)

Whadda they mean it "never came to a vote"? Can one party act alone to change the rules that govern the whole House? From behind closed doors, without even a nod from their opponents?

Course not. Idiot. Grabbed the wrong end of the stick - again. Old, old, story: there really isn't a wrong conclusion that I won't leap at.

Sigh. All that stink raging around the blogs this week, and here's me - I, Bearded; I, Numpty - completely arsed the whole situation.

They are not changing any damned "Rules of the House"! They are not, after all, abusing their majority to murther fair Democracy, to re-write Procedure to suit their own diabolical ends!

No: all the Republicans have done is tinker with their own Mission Statement; with that cute little Sacred Heart of Congress Promisekeeper tract they hand around to passers-by in Malls and Strip bars.

I was wrong, very wrong, and I apologise. But, this? This is so much more fun now; now that it doesn't really mean anything. All that Liberal bleeting and blaahting, calling up congresspersons, taking names and vote rolls, writing stiff letters - it's all just fluff and nonsense. A gambol in the hay before the rain comes, when we'll all have to run inside so we don't get wet.

Heh. As they say.

What Am I Missing?

I have an honest question to ask. Fact is, being a foreigner, there is much about the implementation of democracy in America - its structure, its electoral and governing processes - that I do not understand, or have failed to grasp properly, but about which I would learn more.

One facet that I have tremendous difficulty coming to terms with is the apparent willingness, in states across the country and within Federal government itself, to place what are, to me, sacred non-partisan Officiates into the hands of brazenly-partisan elected Officials? I'm thinking mainly of functions such as Secretaries of State, who administer and control the election process, the electoral rolls themselves, in the various states; and to the boundaries bodies who delineate electoral districts. In short, why do we hand the keys of the bank to the crooks?

Not to disparage politicians as such - they are what they are, and what they are is what they need to be - but since I know what politicians are like, since everyone knows what politicians are like - why would you do that? Why do you give elected, partisan hacks the power and machinery to manipulate electoral rolls, to keep people out of the voting booths? Why do you allow the governing majority in elected state assemblies to decide for themselves where your electoral district boundaries lie?

Things are different in Britain, where the sanctity of neutrality in electoral affairs is, supposedly, preserved by strongly independent, non-partisan commissions whose members are duty-bound to remain neutral, and whose actions are subject to full parliamentary scrutiny.

So: what subtlety am I missing? Does the american model reflect some underlying belief that her politicians are as upright and selfless as The American President; or is it founded upon some deeper cynicism that says "all such positions are corruptable; by electing our Officers, we shall know the flavor of it?" Or is it, more simply, a belief that in a democratic society all positions of power ought to be accountable to the electorate?

I do repeat: serious question, honestly posed, no hidden meaning, no sly attack.

Blogging Like Grandpa

Some erudite advice for Tyro bloggers, in this anniversary post at Outer Life - a blog I read today for the first time, a gift of The Charlock's Shade, itself but recently discovered here, and whose rumpled festive wrappings still lie littered at my feet.

There things stood for a few more miserable months, my blog serving as a daily lesson in what not to do. Then grandpa hit the scene, taking over as a guest blogger for a few days and kicking me in the pants. His posts, coming straight from his gut (the lower intestine, to be precise), were written to please him, not you, were written with his voice, not yours, and contained a refreshingly honest and frank (albeit unintentional) admission of his limitations.

Grandpa, publish and be damned, blogging as it ought to be, joined by unseen unknown filaments of aether to his contemporary in another world, Tony Pierce, 111.

There is much to be learned. It is characteristic of americans, I have found, to be open, frank, to say their piece out loud and have done with it. This - like the ubiquitous handshake hallo - is shocking and fearful to those, like me, who have been bred for reserve and councils kept, in a world where strangers must not touch. No matter how open to assimilation we aliens may be, there are residues of our older cultures that persist beyond others, and that we fear to change. This is one. It must be dealt with stealthily.

Dear Joshua,

I am sorry, but Tony Blair is no man's poodle, sir. That you now aspire to paint him so, or rather, to paint him less-than so, is unworthy of your site, and a disappointment to an avid reader of it. I would add, sir, that it is you rather than he who now yaps and fluffs his tail from that comforting ladies hand-bag? And though the fashionable mistress you court may come in time to pamper you, sweetie, she shall care more to bind you in gaudy pink ribbons than she ever shall to feed you.

But I know one thing. If we were under direct threat, America would be our ally. I know that its people enjoy, as we have seen, a vibrant competitive democracy; and that in America, Hispanics, blacks, Asians and former Europeans live together, worship in their different ways and can rise from the bottom to the top in a manner we could do well to emulate. I didn't agree with Michael Moore's film. But in America he was able to make it and be praised for it. This is called freedom. We are in danger of forgetting these simple truths.

And when America was attacked on 11 September 2001 - a brutal, unprovoked slaughter of innocent people, planned in the previous administration when Iraq and Afghanistan had not happened, when President Clinton was working flat out to secure peace between Palestinians and Israelis - that was an attack designed for the purpose of forcing American out of its role in the world; to get it to disengage from the Middle East; to remove it as an obstacle to the progress of the new fanatical extremism the terrorists represent.

- Tony Blair, Mansion House speech, 15 Nov 2004.

[Full Speech]

Hat tip to Eric the Unread, with whom I heartily concur.

Shall I Never Be Rid Of It?

It would hardly do to write two angry posts in succession, although it's been an angering week. But anger, like Resistance, is futile, and must be repressed. It is in that spirit that I come, not to bury Microsoft, but to praise it.

Every so often Microsoft - Windows - mucks me up. It will do something so remarkably stupid, so insidiously foul, that I become convinced that the entire Mickeysoft apparatus is evil, and is part of that netherworld conspiracy set against me? That they are one with other covert forces - the Stop Light Team, for instance, who sit in cars in empty sidestreets waiting for me to happen along, that they can creep to the line and turn the light red? Yeah. Them!

Today - rather yesterday, day before yesterday - it wiped a hard drive. It wiped the drive with all my tunes on it, my iPod tunes, bought and paid for from the store. I didn't tell it to do that, wasn't like that, wasn't just me being an idiot: it just did. What happened, I'd installed a new cd writer, so's I could make backups (you laugh, you die, dammit). But Windows changed the drive letters - so all those registered applications (games) and data (tunes, saves) that were supposed to live on F: now became inaccessible. If you have Win2k there's a tool under Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management that lets you change the drive letters back. No biggie, you think: after all, the drive letter has nothing whatever to do with the drive itself, it's just a hook that Windows hangs it by? Well you'd be wrong. Of course you would. That filthy Windows tool erased the disk partition table, and could not would not put it back again. I tried a whole bunch of things to restore my disk - linux tools, even bought some recovery tools at Fry's - but nothing. Or rather, after restoring a partition table, after buying and installing new recovery ware, after waiting twenty hours while it read each cluster on the disk and tried to guess what was written there: after all of that and more - Nothing. Nothing that could be usefully recovered. Naught but a million files, all called "#3004562". Seething, beat-the-kids rage followed quickly.

Scratch a geek - and I am a geek - you'll sniff a Microsoft detester. Also, a terrific bore - no question. Where did I read that? Just yesterday... Normblog? the Friday Normblog blogger profile? Ah - there it is, yes: Enoch Soames:

What is your favourite proverb? > Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.

Hah - I work in communications. So by now you're thinking: sheet, another linux lecture comin'? More "buy a mac" crap?

Well, no. Not this time.

Sure, I have my own linux box - using it to type now, in fact - and I do all my work on linux servers: writing code, building code, uploading code, running code, testing code - but access to it all mostly uses X-windows that run, rather awkwardly, under Windows windows, through a package called Exceed. I don't have a linux PC at work - it's Windows - and I can't use my linux PC at home to tunnel into work either: has to be Windows, all the way.

Why? Given what you know, Mr. Bearded, why would you do that? Indeed, how could you do that and then tell all of us, who be happy in our Windowry, to throw it all away and switch to linux, or buy a feching mac?

Here then, in no particular order, are the reasons why I, Bearded, still use Windows and probably always will:

1. Because I frigging have to

Windows is employer-mandated: true for my company, probably true for yours? Your employer simply decided one day that everyone will use Windows, on PC's bought or leased at from Dell. Economies of scale, uniformity across the company blah blah blah - they get Word and Excel and PowerPoint and Microsoft Project: who could need more?

I use Windows at home because I have to. My company insists I tunnel in to work through a Windows-only program. I use it here because my company uses Outlook for its mail and its address books and its calendars, because it has contrived a network of Windows file shares.

Companies love Windows because...

2. Because, dammit, Windows is easy

Even my kids' granny can use Windows. Kind of. So can your CEO and your manager. Can't nobody say that about linux, no matter how well they tart-up the front end (and they're really pretty good, if only you bleetery sheep would persist). Thing about linux is it's made for geeks: it is huge, wonderfully powerful, highly adaptive, marvelously chaotic, delightfully obscure, and preternaturally secure. But you have to be a geek to use it. On linux, command-line is King, and shell its consort. Truth is, we geeks like it that way: linux - unix - is sacred to us, it is our thing and of our essence. It demands much of its acolytes: sacrifice, study, commitment to the Great God Code; and in return it grants power, cachet, Neal Stephenson coo-uhl, and ultimately cold, hard cash. If all of youse moved to linux, we would not be special any more, and our wages might drop.

I, too, use Windows, at home because I don't have to think about it. I can point and prod and it usually does what it is supposed to. I use linux at home for pleasure, and as a carroty stick with which to beat those of my kids who have a mind to follow daddy's footsteps down the dark, consuming code hole.

But I also use Windows at home because...

3. Because it isn't Mac

Macs are easy to use too, you say - rather famously so. Even your great-granny can use a Mac, right? And there is no Screen of Death, it all works magically, fluffily, every day in every way, and with such style that Windows scowls as tacky trailer-trash, as Donald Trump, crouched at the knee of graceful Adonis. P'tah! says me - I hate Macs. Apple? Jobs? Their arrogance and attitude sticks in my craw. I've never forgiven them for those early days, when Macs and windows and mice and MacWrite and early Word were new and wonderful, but stuffed arse-full of conceit, their sense of their own unmatchable importance. Macs are - now and ever - expensive... deliberately so. Defiantly so. It is writ that thou shallt pay to suck at Jobs' teet, though you remain unworthy. But more than that, everything connected with Mac had to be Mac - everything, even the bloody serial cables. Jobs' own design, different from all others, jealously guarded, zero tolerance inter-operability and inter-connectivity. The Mac way or the high way... be grateful you're only paying fifty bucks for an ethernet cable.

PC's, on the other hand, were cheap and nasty. Affordable to all, and vulgar, perhaps, but with Windows, good enough substitute for Mac. VHS to Betamax. Aah, but those laptops are nice.

4. Because the printer works

That your printer works on Windows but not so well on linux is a simple fact. And it was Microsoft made it that way, using all of the filthy underhanded tools in its Grand Monopolist repertoire. This is true, not only of printers, but of most PC-related hardware from modem cards to graphics cards. The trick is simple: relieve manufacturers of costly code development by providing all the code they need, so long as they build to Microsoft's specification, and never, ever give the game away. Lashings of cash for one and all, and any competition kept down and out. Linux is slowly catching-up, but has a long, long way to go yet. Meantime, we pretty-much have to use Windows.

5. Games

For similar reasons - this time by way of its DirectX suite - all the best computer games are written for Windows, and rarely run at all on linux. Ain't nobody giving DirectX away.

And I loves my games. Totally useless as a player, but who cares about that? I used to develop graphics code for simulators, hacking like crazy to produce realistic renderings of the sea, of the south coast of England, of Portsmouth harbour, ships and airplanes and lighthouses and buoys, of the weather spread across 240 degrees and eight interlocking screens, hacking like mad to draw it all without jitter or crazy artifacts, all on high-powered multi-million dollar kit. And now my PC, with its pawky $80 graphics card and nifty games can do as much, though to a smaller scale. Games remind me of those days, and I'll always be a sucker for tasty graphics.

And that, in the end, is my main excuse for keeping Windows. The games. All else be damned.

Even though the bastard thing just ate them all.

That it should come tae this?

Whit's become of yiz? A forty year struggle for yer ain devolved parliament, an' six years efter they huvnae even finished the building yet, but they've piled yer scanty millions intae the cerpets, a'right?

And noo it's come tae this: banning fags in public places. Banning smokes in public hooses - nae mair smokin' in the pub fur yoo, Geordie ma lad! As if the f*ckin' places wurnae bad enough wi'oot thur copper f*ckin' kettles hingin' off the wa's, an' a' thur happy-clappy barstaff wi' thur braces and badges like TGI f*ckin' Fridays, and thur stupit crappy conglomerated made-up names, like "Ye Oldde Pubbe" and "The Crate an' f*ckin' Barrel".

Whit'll it be like, sittin' in The Auld Inn or the Sarry Heid or The Barony, nursin' a hauf an' a half or a pint a Guinness wi nae f*ckin' smokes? Deid! That's what. A' the life'll be drained frae the place; a' the savor'll evapourate, an' soon enough yez'll a' be askin' the c*nt fur coffee, or a nice cuppie tea, an' mibbe a coupla they wee french fancies? But yez cannae enjoy them either, no wi'oot yer f*ckin' fags ye can't!

Kudos tae the polis, though, fur tellin' the f*ckers tae stuff it. No that that'll stop them frae hirin' some shower o' nippit-pussed wee teenies, wi' a badge and an armband and a holy crusade?

"For the good of the Health of the Nation" my hairy f*ckin' erse. Oors is not a healthy nation - never huz been, never should be. The only f*ckin' international competition we ever f*ckin' won wiz the Heart Attack League. And just think whit it's goin tae be like twinty years doon the road - a' they auld c*nts still no deid, still nae fags, crabbit as sin like yez widnae believe? M.i.s.e.r.a.b.l.e.

Think it'll stop there? Nae f*ckin' chance. First its yer fags, then its yer pies and yer chips and yer curries and yer blessed kebabs - ya fat b*stards - then it'll be yer f*ckin' motors an' ye'll huv tae take the f*ckin' stinkin' bus everywhere or ride a f*ckin' bike tae the shops. An a' yez'll dae is whine an' whine an' whine, just like the rest o' thum.

Well. Guid luck. No that it's any different here mind, no that it hisnae been that way since ah came here. But a rarely go tae bars here, no unless they have a patio or sumpthin' where ye can gan ootside furra smoke. An' it isnae pishing rain here, or freezin' f*ckin' cauld. It's do-able. Here. But no there. No in Embra in the middle o winter? Poor Caledonia, ma hert bleeds fur ye.

I Did not "Flounce" - I Ran

I chuckled a little, reading Mark Lawson in the Guardian this morning:

Flouncing out is futile

Some emigres are heroic, but not those who just can't bear Bush

Mark Lawson
Saturday November 6, 2004
The Guardian

The words "I'm leaving" always carry a kick in relationships or workplaces but are most dramatic when aimed at a nation. In the week when it was confirmed that greater than ever numbers of Britons are emigrating, there were widespread reports of American liberals - most notably Robert Redford - threatening to go and live elsewhere during the Bush second term.

Exile is among the most egotistical human instincts and we see two sides of it in this week's stories. There's no evidence that the 191,000 Britons who left last year were directly distancing themselves from the prime minister in the way that Redford and other Kerry voters threaten to pack their bags because of Dubya. Accordingly, the almost 200,000 people lost from the native population last year can probably be categorised as expatriates driven by hope rather than despair.

Traditionally, most emigration from Britain has been meteorological or psychological: people convinced themselves that their health, jobs or marriages might be better in a country with a more reliable climate. And several experts on population mobility have suggested that the recent increase in emigration from the UK is driven by such glamorous images of banishment.

[READ THE WHOLE THING...]

I did not flounce away from Britain so much as run towards America, though I didn't quite start out with that in mind. My original motive for moving to California can be summed-up cookie-style as "Embrace change at moments of High Opportunity." The tail-end of a dismal, gloomy five year lifeslump had just been capped by the closure of the company I worked for. Curious, really, how fearful we become of losing our jobs when the commandment "Work!" is so deeply ingrained in our psyche? It is almost the very worst thing that can happen to you, you think, until a real very worst thing happens. But honestly, modesty aside, we were none of us in any danger of remaining unemployed for long. Other companies, competitors, were lined-up round the block with leering offers of cash, and options, and - I swear - in one case, women. Even so, irrational dread persists, and I'd never been laid-off before.

It could not have happened at a better time, looking back. By mysterious conflux of events I had by then settled into a kind of philosophical acceptance of the way things were, and was, if not particularly happy, at least resigned. You've all seen Sleepless in Seattle: having small kids is a delight and a wonder, always, but although they sustain, they are no substitute for the lost, and never should be. Being of a certain middling age and being wholly unable to talk to women one is attracted to? Being reduced to stuttering, stumbling mumblitude in their presence? Priceless. That is a dreadful curse that one must come to terms with, else one sink in despair. By way of compensation I had deflected all residual anger and resentment away from life and self towards the hideous weather, as personified by a malign, mocking hole in a busy road not four feet from my doorstep. This, this twisted Sysyphus of a hole, would fill itself with icy bitter rain and empty onto me at every car's approach. Local tax-fed Council engineers would send me testy notes, claiming "no evidence of ponding was observed." Bastards.

I was fit for change, then, but needed a spur: and in those first few hours that followed our dismissal, sitting shocked in a nearby pub, we many of us realized that we knew a guy in California who would have hired us all if he could, even me. He was definitively one of us, our own lost, charismatic leader sacked some months before for being honest in his council to those less so. High opportunity, indeed, nothing more. Britain, Scotland, Edinburgh, is by no means a bad or awful place to live: there is no desire to flee. Quite the opposite - Edinburgh in particular is a marvelous, vibrant, cultured city - beloved of its inhabitants. Most of my compatriots would not countenance leaving it. But to some of us, including me, America, California, Los Angeles, were curiosities, to be explored, experienced. I wrote away that night, and he replied. "You're on!"

Some weeks passed before the interview - you, dear Reader, should realize and be reassured that no foreigner, no alien, can simply waltz his way to any kind of job in America. There is a lengthy process put in place whose intent is first-and-formost to secure those jobs for citizens, and secondarily to ensure no foreigner comes cheap to undercut the locals. Weeks before an interview, months before a visa. There are no guarantees, at any stage, for aliens seeking work until that visa is firmly in hand. Even then, you can be thrown back at the airport Immigration desk. Your return ticket has already been provided by your sponsor. There are many rules, obligations, investigations, tests, quotas that may not be exceeded. If successful, there will be restrictions placed upon accustomed freedoms which you must acknowledge and accept, up-front, from the very start. I offer no complaint, not then, not now: for it is in keeping with the magnanimous nature of this american society that it offers upgrades to those willing and persistent.

Some weeks passed before that interview, outcome still uncertain. Weeks to be filled with other, local interviews. Half-hearted, laconic, relaxed interviews, being freed of their customary tyranny by my alternate plan. Job grills can even be enjoyed when you don't think you need a positive outcome? I had High Hopes, yet still some doubt: it is no small step to throw away a settled life and move hearth and home and kids to the other side of the world. There are fearful preconceptions to be overcome, too: for a Briton's notion of America, of Los Angeles in particular, are as far from reality as yours are from ours. I had visited America many times on business, many cities, many states. I had even spent a fine two weeks in LA. I knew better by experience, but what does that count against long-ingrained prejudice? Nothing. Los Angeles, City of Angels, Hollywood: but to the protective parental imagination, city of gangs and gangstas, of riots, of high crime and drive-by shooting. The important question to be answered by my interview was not "will I enjoy the work?", nor even "will the offer be good?", but rather, "should I raise my kids there?"

Absolutely!, Absolutely!!, Abso-frigging-lootely!!!

It wasn't quite Los Angeles at all - the county line lies over a hill - but here, safest city of its size in all of America. A suburb of Los Angeles, then? A bit outside, but not too far away. Came to notoriety some years earlier because of its county courthouse, wherein a county jury, not city, decided certain LA cops were justified in beating Rodney King severely. By fine irony, this singular event is seen as the cause of those very riots I had worried over. Of course, I knew little of that then, nor of policemen blocking-off the Ronald Reagan Freeway exit ramps to all but locals on that day, nor even of the Klan, filled with expectation, being chased away from the rail depot by crowds of angry, outraged mothers and their babies some days after.

Some weeks passed before the interview, but a full eight months elapsed before the visa arrived and I - we - put Blightey well behind us. Eight marvelous, desperate months, disposing of one life, nurturing a new. For on that very first interview day a golden seed, a magic bean, had crossed Jack's palm - his very own Red Pill. And in those months it dared to grow: uncertain at first, guarded, unbelieving beyond all reason; until at last its kernel cracked, it found its root, and blossomed into something wonderful. I took way more than I bargained for out of that interview. Way more than ever I deserved.

Rather than embarass you with some grown man blubbing over L.*.v.e. and all its wishy works - though I promised her I'd shout about it over rooftops and the booming ocean surf - let us say, simply, that across eight months a Walk became a Run, that America the land became America the myth, America the beautiful. That one tired life was laid to rest but another born. A new life scripted by a poem: O, my America, my Newfound land. Before, behind, between, above, below.

Of which weeping-kerchiefed tale I'll say no more: it is not the story of this blog, but is its color, its pattern, its weave. I introduce it here to draw a hint, perhaps, at why it is I'm never going back; at why my own commitment to this land, to enjoying, and exploring, and revering this America, is complete and total?

Assimilation is a choice, an Immigrant's choice, a choice at every turn: how much of the auld we try to impose, how much of the new we allow to enclose. Being open to assimilation is a policy, governed by circumstance and driven by outlook.

Me, I've gone native, totally Tonto - almost the worst sin an englishman can commit?

But I don't care, and I don't care who knows it. I never was english. And I sure didn't flounce - I ran.

Thumped? So What?

I did not vote on Tuesday, of course, but my heart was aligned with the Democrats, against George W. Bush and the Republicans. My wife did vote, along with a record number of her fellow americans, but our side was thumped. Massively, unambiguously, convincingly. Thumped.

Sure, it's only three percent - 51 to 48? - but three percent of 130 million is a lot of people. And Thatcher, I seem to recall, laid waste the land for eight-odd years with never more than 47?

No point denying it then, no point whining about electoral colleges or vote rigging or this or that or whatever. We were thumped: now to get over it. True, I have great difficulty placing myself into a mindset that could have voted to re-elect President Bush - much more difficult for me to do this year than four years ago - but that's my problem, maybe yours too if you voted as I would have?

True too, I was feeling quite fearful Wednesday morning, over what this might mean for the coming four years. My half, it seems, are left only with the more esoteric checks and balances to fall back upon; those shenanigans that by their nature always look like the spoiling manouevres of bratty children. How fitting, you might say? But my view of Bush is of a sly and sleekit opportunist, a sneak, happy to use any event to cover his own, selfish advantage. He is a politician, of course, but no statesman. What kind of president must he be that would speak code to his covert "base" in a nationally-televised debate? Who could not bring himself to speak plainly, that we might all have understood what he meant without recourse to Google? The winning kind, it seems. Ah whell.

Still, when all is said and done, I've found myself in this same position many, many times before. In the seven national elections that have passed since I reached working age, my guy has only won once - Tony Blair, back in 1997, and what a wonderful drunken celebratory night that was - yet still I'm here, and prospering, and making my own way without too much hinderance. I expect I'll be able to make the very same claim four years hence... it just doesn't feel like it, right at this moment.

This is not a nation of Nazis, as as Michele rightly pointed-out the other morning. Nor is it entirely composed of religious bigots and bible-boosted hate fiends as many in Britain might have it? There are some though, perhaps even many, but not nearly so many as there are people that combine strong faith with uncomplicated decency. Or who combine little faith or none, with that same uncomplicated decency. Andrew Sullivan knows this too, and will draw comfort from it when the dread smoke from that chill of anti-gay and anti-gay-marriage measures passed across eleven States begins to clear? I don't quite believe in Jesusland either, though it surely exists in some measure and very much believes in itself. What I don't believe is that that is all there is out there, between the coasts, nor that it was they alone who handed Bush his victory? Whatever their contribution, it jumped on the back of 68 million others, and against 68 million more.

Not a nation of Nazis, then, nor even a nation of Falwells. But it surely is a nation of Red versus Blue, and on that score, in particular, I'm with Welch: I plan to spend the next four years as I have the past six, making the absolute most of everything that Blue America has to offer, and pursuing my happiness to the g-ddamned hilt. There is no finer place to be!

Who He?

Xenoverse is a scots software developer who planted his boots in Southern California at the tail-end of 1998, and has remained there ever since.

He bloggered around at this space for a couple of years then kinda demagnetized; slipped off the door and into the freezer. That this occurred while his kids grew older and began moving out - three down, two to go - or while his vast and innate programming powers began to wither to mere skills that demand ever-increasing attention be paid for rapidly diminishing return; that these threads did tangle is entirely coincidental.

So what the hell is the Xenoverse anyway? It's that little crossover world inhabited by aliens, immigrants, who have jumped across oceans to escape one culture and land in another - one that is similar in all of the big ways, but different and infinitely confusing in all of the little ways.