tipple topple

coinic

A quick zap to Cheltenham on Friday morning and the nostalgia of street parking with ordinary pay and display - coins and little tickets to put on the dashboard.

In Westminster now, unless its the weekend or after hours, the act of parking can trick unsuspecting irregulars with the dial up parking meters.

Its simple enough in theory.

The individual meters have been replaced with a monoblock unit for a number of bays and you buy a ticket for around 20p for 3 minutes or multiples thereof. Except the units all have mysterious faults and it is necessary to pay by phone instead.
"No problemo", I hear you cry. Well it isn't after the first time through the system.

The first time involves enrollment and the act of typing in about 25 numbers, at the end of which you get flipped to a real live operator who is there to take the money. The receipt is't a ticket, just a text message back to the phone. Oh, and an automatic text reminder x minutes before the end if you ask for it.

Its amusing in some areas with notoriously regularly broken meters (like behind Oxford Street) to watch people struggling their way through the system. The interesting thing about it is the difference compared with the act of feeding a meter.

There's a kind of coinic precision to the calculation about "how long will I stay here?" when its done whilst feeding the meter. Adding 20p and 50p at a time and watching the little clock go around. On the phone it becomes "Oh, say eight quids worth, please" (thats 2 hours in the middle zones).

Travel smart and use Oyster, of course.

glitter and doom

Yes, it includes Europe - and - a rarity below.
Always keep a diamond in your mind.

urbanissimo

Time for a segue from greenery and sunshine back towards the city:

"Photograph caption : Inside the Bohemian Grove : This photoessay captures the spirit of the fine balance between rural surroundings and the encroachment of the City. In most versions of the story, the City wins and farmers and rural folk become parts of the ever-radiating machine. In this scene, it seems to have worked the other way around where the apparatus of city life is captured and annulled by the elemental forces of nature. First, Fire quenches the power of the city's machine to move, then Earth starts to sprout vines to surround and ensnare it. Water plays a part by creating the corrosion of the remaining skeleton and Air carries away the specks of rust as this manifestation of the struggle is played out. What is left is a Bohemian Grove, with a trophy of Moloch as a center of worship."

Ok, so I made it up.

bucolic

More greenery Wednesday as I took a meander whilst mulling the options in my current work assignment. Not a red bus in sight today. I'll be working late, but its good to have seen the sunshine.

Oh, and the brown sheep.

Baaa.

bluebells

Don't leave it until May to dispose of last season's Christmas tree.

Not high on the priority list, it was tucked away forlornly and then Tuesday I remembered to ask Alan with the flatbed if he'd throw it on along with the grass cuttings. I was just about to head out for a short bicycle spin through the sunny lanes and didn't give it a second thought.

And so the meander through the fresh green of the new leaves, enjoying the waft from the soft verges of bluebells and surprising a few noonday basking bunnies along the way. And mission accomplished, I returned just as Alan was lobbing the tree onto his truck.

"Quick word", he said, "I think I've annoyed one of your neighbours", and then described a minor altercation, "See ya", he said, as he jumped into the truck. "Which neighbour?", I mused.

sliding doors

I'll admit a certain scepticism using a Bank Holiday Monday to go out sliding door hunting for the bedroom. It could have meant time in traffic with lots of other shoppers in mad pursuit of bargains, but actually, it felt more like a quiet and pleasant visit to a sunny riverside pub.

Which was exactly what we did after the informative visit to the slippy slidey door place.

bojomatic

 

whalesong for sunday

... or to just be chilled, listen to the beautiful whalesong. Via soubriquet and live here from the Alfred Wegener Institute.

Play loud and be patient, its live from the ocean. Amazing.

any 15 year old can play GTA 4?

The Telegraph and the Times, two upholders of moral values in the UK both appeared to give the new game about car theft, gangland violence and misogyny a thumb's up recently.

Where is the line between gratuitous commercialism and satirical art form? In the Baby Boomer generation or Generation X there would be hippies, Zappa, Monty Python, Spitting Image or Now Show to rail against conventional values and make points about how we all live our lives. Where is the multi channel Generation Y equivalence to these perspectives?

This purported car chase game, with a 15+ predominantly male demographic (yeah, I know it says 18 on the pack), is already a winner for Rockstar Arts, Sony Corporation's Playstation and Microsoft's XBox360 (see the new bundled savings etc).

The target market has queued in lines to buy it at midnight throughout the globe and it will become a pervasive houseparty item amongst 15-35 year old boys. It paints a realistically rendered crime-based underbelly to New York complete with spoof TV and radio channels espousing bling and materialism. Is it so different from the real world?

From the early days of computer gaming whilst shooting blobs in mazes, via first person shooter-em-ups like Quake in the mid 90s, Lara Croft in the late 90s and to the 21st Century 3D rendering of Halo and this game, there's been a steady march to towards graphically realistic violence in the games and more latterly a sense of an elementary (im)moral structure interposed.

A strata of kids are already immersed in this multi player experience, ferrying gangland bosses at any cost through the streets of an alternative New York, using any form of weaponry they can obtain to complete their mission.

And in the new game, the 'women as objects' coding typified by the suppressed 'hot coffee' modifications to the previous version appear to be back in new forms along with cheats downloadable via 'Nico's phone ' in the game.

Which brings it to the question.

Is GTA IV a modern art form, portraying a tongue-in-cheek version of a New York City with some kind of mirror held up to exaggerate the values of early 21st century living? Or could it be a cultural virus, intended to push thinking to a new level of negative behaviour? Or simply the 21st century manifestation of Pacman?

I don't have the patience or interest to spend time playing these games, but I do wonder about the impact they have in modern thinking.

So, does this long term gaming in realistic environments affect behaviour? does it override or offset other social values? does the game stop at the off switch? Can the switch ever be reset once turned on?

bojo rising

Both my taxi drivers on Thursday were supporting Boris, although neither actually had a London vote. One lived in Canvey Island and the other in Hertfordshire. They both made the point that they hated the way Gordon was running the country and that it was time for a change. I found the linkage between national politics and the way London needs to operate somewhat tenuous, as I suspect did Ken Livingstone, who kept a slightly distant participation of Brown in his campaign.

Cameron, on the other hand, was all over the Boris campaign, suggesting the full Tory munitions were wheeled out to buffer the buffoon. "Team Boris" comprised skilled handlers to keep Boris between the guard-rails of acceptability required during the campaigning stage. They don't want him getting in any more hot stew with Papua New Guinea or Liverpool even the Conservative Diary didn't know what to make of those bloopers.

The paid-for newspaper read by most Londoners is the Evening Standard (which is owned by the moaning, alarmist 'sell it with a Diana pic' Daily Mail's Associated Press) and the Stannit cleverly presented a strongly negative Livingstone image in the run-up, without any obvious counter through the freebee papers, which somehow operate in a different news galaxy. The Standard's approach could be worthy of a media studies course, using the big stories for slagging off Ken, whilst running small font credits in the back pages with the stair lift adverts.

Andrew Gilligan of the Standard was at County Hall yesterday night (oddly, it is St Boris Day on 2 May) and defended their position as factually critical, and that there would now start to be a similar analysis of Boris. I suppose from a news perspective it gives a brilliant new set of clichés to invent and roll out, including plundering of the Private Eye war-chest.

Some of today''s press is saying that Boris is clever and thoughtful, with his Etonian and Oxford high profile roles. They say he got further up the popularity pole in those places than David Cameron and that may have influenced Cameron's entry to the elitist toff Bullington dining club. His birth in America means he also jokes in such circles about running for Mizter Prezident. Perhaps after he's restarted his gin drinking and had a good scoff, he'll come up with some policies that were not written in detention by a couple of his job-experience aides.

We will all be watching you, Boris.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, boris, bojo, london, mayor, buffoon, bloopers, vote, livingstone

bojo does london

I see a routemaster full of cynics
Who want to twist the peoples' wrist
They're counting every vote we make
We're all included on the list

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Boris has taken over London

No philander the buffoon lied to us
but who are we to disagree
'Cos when the madman flips the switch
Thirteen Billion money gushes free

Bojo has taken over London
The lunatics have taken over the asylum

I've seen the faces of the citizens
But i just can not see the points
'Cos there's so much rhetoric here today
That no one wants to take away

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Bojo has taken over the asylum
A hypocrite has taken over the asylum - take away sane right to choose
Bojo has taken over the asylum - corrupt my point of view
One hundred forty thousand have taken over the asylum
- take away my dignity,
Boris has taken over London - bandwaggoning immediately

Bojo's taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum - take away my proud city,
Take away the right to speak
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Please, Boris, treat this city carefully

Technorati Tags: rashbre, boris, bojo, london, mayor, buffoon, bloopers, vote, livingstone