tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56536592011-04-22T05:24:36.512+01:00PugalgiasRandom witterings from a bored office drone.Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comBlogger231100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1100122619524809972004-11-10T21:34:00.000Z2004-11-10T21:36:59.523ZBrushes the dust off some stale writing
Gosh, has it really been a year? And how pompous was I back then? Jesus. Christ almighty...
So, hmmm, what's happened since then?
Dorking was driving me mad, so I moved. Thank fuck. But I did still manage to win £20 on the office fantasy football league, something about which I know slightly less than nothing.
Er... Um... I'm thinking I should Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1067214225307560982003-10-27T00:23:00.000Z2003-10-27T00:23:44.753ZHas it really been over a month? Gosh. Much as I'd like to plead pressures of work, I've just been a lazy sod indeed. Still, things I have discovered this month:-
Knowledge of Time Commanders is very useful in job interviews in the world of corporate tax, as is having read Russell Weigley's Age of Battles (the title belies its central thesis, incidentally.)
So, some fresh content. Dredged up Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1063909436906215672003-09-18T19:23:00.000+01:002003-09-18T21:06:12.506+01:00"Nearer and nearer they came, as steadily as if they were on their own parade ground, in perfect silence. A creeping feeling came over me; this silence seemed so unnatural. [...] When we attack we begin firing our muskets and shouting our famous war cry; but these men, saying never a word, advanced in perfect silence. They appeared to me as demons, evil spirits bent on our destruction, and I Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1063571078722658532003-09-15T19:14:00.000+01:002003-09-15T19:14:57.056+01:00Long train journeys (by English standards of course - three hours or so), and my habit of choosing inappropriately dense reading material tend to send me into free-associating reveries spinning off into endless self-referential circles in which certain key mental images and threads keep on repeating rhythmically like the nonsense rhyme in The Demolished Man ('Tenser, said the Tensor/ Tension, Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1063649352566796822003-09-15T19:09:00.000+01:002003-09-15T19:10:42.910+01:00Aristotle 1 The Pop Group 0
We are all prostitutesEveryone has their price.
All men have their price.
All prostitutes have their price.
Therefore, all men are prostitutes.
The two and a half thousand year-old technique of syllogisms has defeated the classic song of the early-80s post-punks before they're even two lines in. Hah.
(Some may not see what's wrong. Try this:
Democrites is mortalRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1063238156440717542003-09-11T00:55:00.000+01:002003-09-11T00:55:56.500+01:00I was reading Anne Applebaum's Gulag a few days back, my possession of which (along with Bernard Willams' excellent Truth and Truthfulness) is the legacy of being drunk late at night with the internet, a credit card and consequently easy access to Amazon.
Apart from the realising how accurate Solzhenitsyn actually was, years before the Iron Curtain was pulled down, the one thing that struck me Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1062878864065519352003-09-06T21:07:00.000+01:002003-09-06T21:07:44.240+01:00So, right now, I'm reading Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, and thanking God I've managed to avoid more than dabbling my toes into the maelstrom of the controversy over sociobiology.
On one of the pages is a diagram of the infamous Necker cube - you know, the wireframe cube which can be inverted such that one of two planes is in the foreground, and t'other behind it, and will power can make Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1062242454538013672003-08-30T12:20:00.000+01:002003-08-30T12:20:54.550+01:00 Psuedo-random quotes from recent reading
If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog's cock about Truth, this wouldn't be happening.
What was needed was something in which the effort was not abitrary, and in which the struggle was not one against another will. Science is, in game-theoretical terms, not a two-party game: what confronts the inquirer is not a rival will, and thatRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1061816725788298202003-08-25T14:05:00.000+01:002003-08-25T14:05:25.823+01:00A veritable massacre of the flies in Pugalgias Palace last night, thanks to the hot weather, leaving a window open for two weeks, and possibly, just possibly, my tardiness with the washing up. Which set me to thinking in a free associating way.
Jack the Giant Killer. Now, of course there's many variants of this story, but the one I'm thinking of is the one where Jack is a tailor, and while Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1061315648964573512003-08-19T18:54:00.000+01:002003-08-19T18:54:23.746+01:00My Bloody Valentine
The comments to Angus' recent post about tape fetishism (oh look, just read it. It's not dodgy, I swear...) remind me of one of the most cherished tapes in my collection. I haven't listened to it in years, in fact, I haven't had a cassette deck for almost as long as I've had the tape...
It's just a cassette tape, given to me by an ex-girlfriend (my first, as it happens) whenRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1061165534590507992003-08-18T01:12:00.000+01:002003-08-18T01:12:14.660+01:00After a few overly-serious and ranty posts, a random observation:-
Page 53 of The Oxford Illustrated History of Italy has a photograph of perhaps the most odd bit of public artwork I've ever seen. (Even more so than all those rude Greek pots). It comes from a 12th century gate to Milan and is of a woman hoicking up her skirt to shave her pubes.
The text glosses it as possibly being the Empress Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1061040288305778392003-08-16T14:24:00.000+01:002003-08-16T14:24:48.340+01:00Now, this article in the Guardian Weekend magazine annoyed me quite a bit. The author may have made the ritual genuflections towards Zizek, but she's still rooted the whole thing in a seemingly rather naive attitude about the distinction between realness and artificiality, exemplified by this quote:-
But we will lose something in the process. As we continue to endorse the artificial over the Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060975324237770612003-08-15T20:22:00.000+01:002003-08-15T20:22:03.040+01:00Looking back on that, I haven't really engaged with Foucault's work at all, but dribbled around my general dislike of the naivety of anarchism. I can't help but feel disappointed by this. Bah.
Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060802363282883902003-08-13T20:19:00.000+01:002003-08-13T20:36:37.596+01:00Jim, as usual, has an interesting post about what he terms 'cyberprog' up on his blog. Now, as usually happens whenever I try to coherently reply to something, I start wandering very rapidly off the point into the area that interests me, rather than the original topic, though I do hope to return to his argument at some point in this extended tangent...
Trying to decipher the notes I scribbled (Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060727636868253002003-08-12T23:33:00.000+01:002003-08-12T23:40:08.160+01:00 A quick question or two
Listening to Hunky Dory for the first time in years, the long-forgotten persistent dread resurfaces:- is 'The Supermen' meant to be a joke?
With 70s Bowie, I never can be sure...
Spoilers ahead
Oh, and just what the hell is up with the ending of The Gangs of New York? I'm not talking about the mawkish 'indominitable spirit of New York' coda, but the bit before that -Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060623735754864342003-08-11T18:42:00.000+01:002003-08-11T18:42:15.653+01:00Odd, isn't it?
You write about a band you haven't listened to for years, and then what do you find on Pitchfork within four days?
A respectful review of their main driving force' s new album, of course.
Curse of the Golden Vampire Mass Destruction.
And I'm also surprised to see that someone found me on the search 'Kitchener's sideburns'. Sir, or ma'am, I applaud you.
Things that make me feelRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060555876405152022003-08-10T23:51:00.000+01:002003-08-11T00:06:46.243+01:00Oh, just one more thing that's been bugging me for years.
In John Keegan's catalytic [1] Face of Battle he quotes from someone present at the battle of Waterloo. Officer, of course [2]. But what's always struck me as particularly interesting is that this man describes the soldiers under his command amusing themselves during lulls in the battle by reading letters from the backpacks of slain Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060548890421477312003-08-10T21:54:00.000+01:002003-08-10T21:55:17.610+01:00Just a quick post before Six Feet Under, but I've just remembered this article from Strategy Page.
Particuarly this bit, in the middle of a convincingly inside-seeming account about the current attitudes of US Special Forces:-
This goes back to the situations in Afghanistan where the Special Forces literally had Osama bin Laden in their sights, but had to get clearance, which sometimes was Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060369594692025722003-08-08T20:06:00.000+01:002003-08-08T20:12:42.843+01:00So, I don't think, and you'll all be glad to hear, that I'll be trying to write bollocks as long as that in the future. For my own sake, if not for anybody's else.
I was considering writing about how hot it is right now, but after Angus's last post, I think it might be considered a good idea not to.
In which case, a diverse selection of links, rambling, and slagging off of literary icons. With Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060290365362644332003-08-07T22:06:00.000+01:002003-08-10T21:56:35.136+01:00 A bitchy and scabrous track-by-track review of Rough Trade's Counter Culture [2002]
Right then. As yesterday's post, written while in a slightly maudlin mood admittedly, should have shown, melody is not one the main concerns I have in judging music. Fucking weird sounds like none that I've ever heard before, however, are always most welcome at Pugalgias End.
However, I'm very lazy, and Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060215363855904362003-08-07T01:16:00.000+01:002003-08-07T01:16:03.836+01:00Testing. Can anyone see the comments link, and tell me if I'm doing anything wrong? Blumming HTML.
Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060214430080038272003-08-07T01:00:00.000+01:002003-08-07T01:06:24.403+01:00 Why I (still) like Godflesh
Back in my late adolescence, when I could still fit into trousers with a 30" waist, I drifted, for reasons too banal and embarrassing to be worth recounting, in to the more outre(yes, there should be an acute accent here, but Blogger does funny things to Ctrl+Alt+E) areas of heavy metal. As I started to lose (in this order) my braces, my shoulder-length hair, and my Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5653659.post-1060210376658580362003-08-06T23:52:00.000+01:002003-08-06T23:52:56.586+01:00Well, after certain individuals' subtle hints, it's time to fully leap into the traffic torrent of the Information Superhighway, and start up my own blog.
From my own reading, I note that a common theme in naming one's blog is to either name it after oneself (I suffer from a distinct deficit of self-confidence); to name it after a song title (fuck that with a shitty stick, most of my favourite Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14827342019094034102noreply@blogger.com