9000 words in 40 days (including 4000 words in 13 days)

I have stuff to write. Specifically, I have a 6000 word essay about the relationship between democracy and terrorism due in on the 4th of May, and a thesis about the Bush Administration's "freedom agenda" for the Middle East due in on the 1st of June. I don't know that I'm gonna make it, especially since I'm supposed to have a draft of the thesis in to my supervisor at about the same time I hand in my essay.

(By the way, the scare quotes around the words freedom agenda should not indicate to you that I'm doing a predictable liberal hatchet job on Bush, who, as we all know, is a chimp. A chimp with an IQ of 120* who speaks fluent French* and is an inspiring speaker provided you don't let him wander off topic. The point of the thesis is that, initially, the "freedom agenda" did in fact represent a genuine break with US foreign policy history, at least to some extent, until the Administration got spooked by the rise of Hamas and inhibited by the sheer shitfulness of the war in Iraq. If you call yourself a liberal, you should want to support democratic developments in the Middle East, including anyone in the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas or whoever, who shows signs of co-operation. The idea is excellent; the execution is appalling, Crack-man.)

*My sources are liberal - Ivo Daalder in America Unbound for the first, New York Times for the second. The NYT article was one of those "What would you ask the President?" things they do around election time, and the head of some US-France friendship society mentioned in her contribution that Bush speaks fluent French. It puts the whole "The French don't even have a word for entrepreneur" thing into perspective.

Anyhoo, it's fairly obvious from the posts below that I've been procrastinating my little (that is, not little) arse off via the pleasures of Blogger, despite the fact that this blog has about two genuine readers a day (out of about 30 hits per day, about two are not search spiders). So what I decided to do was to start writing directly into Blogger. That way, I can copy and paste what I write into my thesis template, and voila! The illusion of procrastination whilst doing real work! The two real readers are most welcome to comment.

Free Monem!

A while ago, I posted about the arrest of Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer on charges of "insulting Islam" and "defaming the President". Recently, a level of absurdity has been introduced as the authorities arrested Muslim Brotherhood activist Abdul Mon’em Mahmoud, presumably on charges of being a member of the illegal Brotherhood. Human rights activists suspect Monem was probably arrested for writing about torture and illegal detention in Egypt, which makes sense given that the Egyptian authorities don't evenly and equally enforce the ban on the MB. The government uses the Brotherhood when it sees fit, and squashes them when it suits.

One important reason that Western bloggers, human rights activists etc should support Monem is that he and other Muslim Brotherhood writers have spoken out in support of Kareem, despite Kareem's open contempt for Islam and Islamists. This indicates that at least some MB members are starting to "get" why freedom of speech and liberal democracy exist. It's not just because we want to insult Mohammed and have orgies! If we (ie The West) want Islamists to start behaving themselves and showing respect for democratic principles, we are obliged to offer carrots as well as sticks. Co-operating with Islamists on human rights issues, whilst still firmly criticising them when they fall down on these issues (ie anti-Jewish, anti-Coptic sentiment) will send a firm , consistent message of Western values, which are largely compatible with Islamic values.

In addition, there is a far greater human rights issue here. The Mubarak regime targets all opposition, not just Islamists or leftists. Even quite middle-of-the-road political parties have difficulty registering to operate as parties, and they have to apply to the government to register. In the West, parties have to apply to a government-funded body to register, and they may be forbidden/delisted for various reasons, but (for instance) left wing parties don't have to apply to the conservative party for permission to operate, nor right wing parties to the Labour party.

In Monem's case specifically, I don't yet have words of a petition or a specific campaign for him, but the Free Kareem! guys have stepped up to the plate on his behalf with news of his detention, and if you wanted to fire off an angry letter to the Egyptian Justice Minister, they have details right here.

Blog Orgy II: A quick one, please please please please please

Dave Bloustien, Beastly, Imperial Hotel, Cnr Bourke & Spring Sts, Melbourne, 7.15pm (Sun 6.15)
Dave Thornton, EuroMission, Trades Hall, 54 Victoria St, Carlton South, 9.15pm (Sun 8.15pm)

Dave Bloustien is a nice, gentle guy and Beastly is a nice, gentle show. It didn't help that I'd already seen a number of the jokes at a show Dave did at Three Degrees a couple of weeks ago ("Does anyone know the difference between a pigeon and a dove?" *thinks - yes, you told me last time*), but this is not the sort of show where you'll wee your pants with laughter. Bits are very funny, and the small size of the room creates a really cosy atmosphere for audience interaction that isn't too threatening. It made me think of Gerard McCulloch's Gerry of Arabia show from a few years ago - that wasn't particularly funny, but it was excellent as an eye-opening tour of the Arab world, and this was a good intro to some Africa issues for people like me who are ignorant and a bit overwhelmed by starving black people, HIV and child soldiers. I kinda felt like I would have enjoyed more discussion of Africa issues rather than less. This review of Beastly in Sydney highlights the fact that he's an educated, intelligent, interesting guy whom you'd like to buy a beer for and have a chat with. Whether this equates to $15 entry for the show is, I suppose, up to you.

Dave Thornton I'm having a bit more trouble writing about. EuroMission is piss funny, not so much because of the jokes - if you've ever seen any decent comedian do Amsterdam material, guess what, it's in this show - as because Thornton's facial gurning and physical humour adds a layer of absurdity over solid but standard jokes. The general theme of the show - Dave tours every country that's ever won the Eurovision Song Contest - is propped up with video footage of Eurovision (but not too much, thankfully) and interspersed with emails to Mum and Dad. (If you're sitting close enough, lean forward and read the "address book" at the side of the Hotmail screenshot - highlights include "Andrew Bolt [cockhead@...].) Highlights include getting checked for STDs in Ireland, parking naked in France, getting raped by Viking hordes, and remembering Oktoberfest. Which starts in September.

That's not why I'm having trouble writing about it - in fact I can just stop here and say go see it, it's ace - the reason it's hard to write about is because Thornton looks like a fucking Neu Bogan Vogue model (you know, the ones with the $150 mullets) and I spent the whole show going I WANT TO SWALLOW THAT GUY LIKE FREDDY KRUEGER IN NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST III: DREAM WARRIORS. He's like Wil Anderson - modelicious looks, groovy clothes, bong jokes - but without being a smarmy twat. Given that Anderson is universally reviled by men because their girlfriends want to blow him, it would be interesting to see if Thornton can win over male audiences even as their girlfriends stand up the front flashing their Brazilians.

Check out Dave's gallery, which includes a pretty good example of his stuff from Good Morning Australia on video, and you can tell me if I'm smoking crack on the modelicious issue. And go and see the show - I haven't seen any mainstream media reviews, which is just fucking wrong.

Blog Orgy I: A quick one, while he's away

At Trades Hall last night to see Dave Thornton (see above), I picked up a blank CD with a friendly note attached:

Free CD!
15 tracks and 2 remixes for your pleasure

If you like the music please consider making a donation via paypal from my website, or at least just say hello...

www.chinchilla-music.co.uk
www.myspace.com/chrischinchilla

Chris used to be a member of Art Brut, and despite the .co.uk suffix, currently lives in Melbourne. This means that if, like myself, you lack funds to make substantial donations, you could perhaps check out a live performance. You could also spend a while entertaining yourself at the Chinchilla Music website, which contains much entertainment and food for thought.

Eddeaa, Abjeez

This is the first in what I hope will be a series on music from the Middle East and its diaspora. I've discovered a few bands I really like, many of them Iranian - there's just something about repression that stirs creativity, or it does if you can avoid getting locked up.

These ladies ("Abjeez" = "sisters" - their brother is their soundman) are Persian by way of Sweden and the US, collaborating between continents via the internet. Their sound is highly original, mixing reggae, pop, flamenco and anything else you can hear (I can hear a kazoo, myself). This is an irresistibly catchy song with variety in its 4 and a half minutes. It's in Farsi, so of course I can't understand it (curse living at the arse end of the world!), but I get the impression that it's funny... (Eddeaa means "Pretension".)

More to the point, this is a great video - it takes me back to the 80's when video was exciting and new and people actually gave a shit about how the video looked. (Yes, I am fully aware that I'm getting all "In my day I had to walk 20 miles through ice and snow in bare feet to watch MTV at my cousin's house", and that for every Sledgehammer there was ... a bunch of other forgettable shit. The point is that this video is of the calibre of Sledgehammer, OK?) It was made by the husband of one of the sisters, who rejoices in the name Dr. Frank J. Suckdasti. I don't think this version is very high quality - try visiting their website for better quality.

Hear some samples from their album Hameh (Everyone) at CD Baby, and particularly enjoy that album cover!

Well, now you know

"women have very little idea of how much men hate them"

Slow Review seeks submissions

If you love reading the AV Club but chafe at the fact that they don't accept submissions, and find yourself writing 1000 word responses requiring several posts in order to adequately counter the editor's delusions about the historical and cultural importance of the original TV series of Charlie's Angels*, Slow Review may be for you.

Slow Review's call for submissions is

looking for essays that take their time making a point, that measure the local fauna and customs and shades of grey and thereby cover much pleasant journey-time, that gain in persuasion that way.

Imagine a group of jazz musos having a late-night session just for the love of playing. You tend to write better or more generously about a subject you know or respect when limits on time and space are absent or irrelevant. So give it the red-carpet prose treatment it deserves; write from what you know and love.

Generally speaking, it's about a tendency to rescue/revive/reveal stuff that can't, won't or wasn't promoted first time round or which simply disappeared — with of course plenty of comic leeway. It's whatever corresponds with the Slow Lifestyle; to develop a kudos aesthetic through items only the Slow Review would claim and celebrate with due consideration.

No reviews of product less than six months old, please. Personally, I think it's way cooler to reconsider a lost classic (I mean, Office Space wasn't a box office hit, but you'd be surprised how many people know what you mean when you lisp "Ethcuthe me... you haffe my thtapler...").

*Which I was banned from watching as a child, because, as my dad said, "It's shit."

Witch's Hat Huzzah

Are you indie, but sometimes feel a bit goth? Do you love Spinal Tap, Goblin Cock, Tenacious D, Steeleye Span, early Brian Johnson era AC/DC or Talking Heads? Do you really, really, really miss Freddie Mercury? Do you own a copy of Dracula or The Hobbit, but never actually read it? Do you crave the majesty of rock, the pageantry of roll? Witch's Hat are here to rescue you from your boring, dragonless existence.

Made by nerds for nerds, Witch's Hat walk a very fine line between pisstake and sincerity. It's like cheese, but really high quality cheese. Not all of their lyrics are ripped straight from Dungeons and Dragons, but the ones that are are delivered with a booming conviction that makes you want to pick up your crazy bastard sword and swing it about wildly and ineptly. Singer Greg is teh living David St. Hubbins (and I seriously want to hear these guys cover "Stonehenge"), despite an unnerving resemblance to Jack Black. (That's him on the cover of the magnificently titled Mastery Of The Steel, but as we can see in the video for "Huzzah!", he is a homely dude with moobs. But what moobs!)

It's kinda frustrating being around the other side of the world when you find bands like this, because you just know they're probably about a billion times better live. Check out the video for "Huzzah Huzzah" - that audience is having way more fun than you are right now.

Thanks to Nina from Emergency Umbrella Records for the heads-up. Emergency Umbrella is a diverse collective of bands from Columbia, Missouri , covering art-rock, metal, indie, chamber pop (?!) and all sorts of interesting stuff.

By an amazing coincidence, I've already done that twice...

Arab Psycho Therapy, Arab Psycho Therapy, whatcha gonna give me?

I can't quite tell if this is serious.* Even worse, I now can't think of a band name, even though I'm always thinking of totally cool band names when I'm out buying milk or somesuch. If you're in a band and need a name, though, try "FuN tiGer !.!" or "my brother wore army shirt".

*I'm thinking not... but it's hard to say... and it's a lot more fun than "If you were a car, what sort of car would you be?"

Blessed are the cheesemakers!

But where will all the staff come from?

... there are shortages of, for example, engineers, and in particular mining engineers; banking and finance lawyers; auditors; boilermakers; cheese-makers; and train drivers.

Clearly, I'm in the wrong field.

The Thesis Fairies

It's 9th April. I have half of an honours thesis due in on 1st June. I have a 6000 word essay on the relationship between democracy and terrorism due in on 4th May. So, that's less than 4 weeks for the essay (I don't think they'll accept "There isn't one" as my full text, even though that's pretty much it), and less than eight weeks for the thesis, which has maybe another 6000 words to go, plus maybe 1500 words of conclusion. I've never had to write this much before, and I don't think my undergraduate degree has prepared me well for this workload. Seriously - you go from little baby essays to novellas. It's like, "OK, you've boiled a few eggs, now let's try making a five-course formal dinner involving souffle, thousand-year-old eggs, bombe alaska and homebrewed poitin".

To add a razor blade behind the eyeballs, I'm currently bleeding so hard I'm crying out for heroin, and I can't afford my happy pills, which doesn't just make me unhappy - I can deal with unhappy - it makes me gluggy and snotty, like a Clayton's head cold. I am basically out of action for one week, and obviously, there's one more due before the thesis has to be handed in. My sleeping habits have gone to hell for various reasons, meaning that I sleep until some stupid o'clock in the afternoon then feel like shit until I go to bed again.

It's times like these I like to try to invoke the Thesis Fairies. These mythical beings not only work for free, they leap into your ear, crawl into your brain, and pull out the delicious, gooey reasoning inside. The point is not that you haven't done your research - it's that you HAVE, and the Thesis Fairies crawl among the neurons and axons, find out what has to go on the page and where it came from, and voila! All your boring writing and referencing is done for you when you wake in the morning, refreshed and perky, to find your computer on and your fully footnoted (Harvard), beautifully and individually written thesis, which will totally pass a plagiarism Google because it's steaming fresh from your brain, all prettied up and exported to PDF ready for printing and distribution.

How do I call up these fairies? I certainly have enough blood to make a very decent sized pentagram, but it's a condition of my lease that I have to have the carpet cleaned before I move out, and I'd like half a chance of getting my bond back. Incense? Chanting? Poitin? What do you do to summon the Thesis Fairies?

Favourite webgames

When I'm trying to procrastinate on my honours thesis - which is pretty much all the time, given that it's due in on June 1 - I write reviews for Jayisgames under the name Ms .45. It gives me that feeling of having written something as well as justifying my dicking-off. Since I haven't written anything all weekend I figured I'd compile a list of my favourite little webgames.

Menulis
Gorgeous little hand drawn game where you have to get past obstacles to get to bed! Unlike a lot of point-and-click games, this one makes complete sense - things actually work the way you'd more or less expect them to in the real world. Looks pretty, takes maybe five minutes to solve. Check out A!bat, by the same game designers.

Sprout
This is not a game that you really need to replay - once you've solved it, you can feel all warm and fluffy. Until you do solve it, though, you can enjoy the hand-drawn graphics and funny results of making the wrong move.

The Impossible Quiz
This is hilarious. Answers are either severely literal or just bent. My favourite is the "question" where you don't have to do anything except get the characters to beat the crap out of each other.

Grow nano v.1
To be honest, everything at Eyezmaze is incredible, but I'm highlighting this one because I play it with my niece sometimes. It's fun and cute, but not amazingly difficult - for a (comparatively) more grown-up challenge try Tontie.

More to come...

City of b3ta bedroom infringement

How dirty are you?

I owe somebody, preferably not Rob Manuel, £370.50 (that's a whopping $901.98 AUD, or a marginally less whopping $726.99 USD - gotta love those .99c) for my, er, crimes. What I want to know is, why is anyone getting a fine for recieving oral? You should get a little trophy for that!

No more End-Times ads!

Bloggers must be delighted to hear that they'll soon get a choice over what Google ads appear on their blog. I'm sure we're all aware of our favourite alternative blogs running ads that are diametrically opposed to their actual position (my favourite being Palestine-related or pro-Arab blogs which end up with "Israel/Palestine: The End Times Are Nigh! Download Free E-Book"), and have to post plaintive messages saying "We don't have any choice, Google generates these ads by keyword, just ignore them!".

However:

For web-based publishers, the option offers a way to leverage the trust of their audience, Knietz said. For example, bloggers could recommend a particular realtor or law firm that advertises on their site.

"If they are a trusted source, they will eventually drive business to their advertisers," Knietz said.

This could end up creating ethical dilemmas, however, especially if publishers are tempted to recommend high-priced law firms who offer to pay a lot for customer leads.

Dan Gillmor, director of the Centre for Citizen Media, said "These arrangements will raise some interesting questions, such as whether site publishers run the ads likely to make them the most money, whether they believe in what the advertiser is selling or not. So there'll be important issues of transparency and disclosure, too."

There's another issue, though: Bloggers will now have to take some responsibility for the ads that appear on their site. You would have a much harder time saying "The ads aren't my fault, but click on them anyway just to generate us some money", especially when the model is now pay-per-action rather than per-click.

This raises interesting administrative issues. Would you prefer to put the extra work into carefully selecting your ads, making sure they meet your ideological standards (which don't have to be amazingly high, provided the advertiser isn't a fierce opponent of your cause), choosing advertisers where your audience are likely to actually DO SOMETHING on the clicked-through site, putting the ads in aesthetically desirable positions... or would you prefer to throw your hands up and just go "fuck it, you're getting end times ads and if some loonbars want to send off for the free 750-page book, that advertiser's cash is as good as any"?

It also raises the issue of audience reach. What will happen to blogs who have a tiny audience? (A big hello to everyone who comes here from jayisgames, Kingdom of Loathing, Abu Aardvark and The Arabist - you're pretty much alone here. Issandr, this is Jay, Jay, Issandr. Grab a beer.) Will advertisers have the choice of rejecting ads to go on blogs that they don't approve of, either ideologically or commercially?

If you're hardcore, you can reject the idea of ads entirely. Just keep in mind that, as in Soviet Russia, ads may also reject you!

Shock! Comment is Free item concerning Islam actually half-decent!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the responses to this Comment is Free post by Abdul Monem el-Futouh, spokesman for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, was not so much the steaming pile of bilge that CiF posts concerning Islam tend to be. The responses give a good range of perspectives on the Muslim Brotherhood's activities and the concerns that regular Egyptians have about them. I think it's a bit rough to judge the MB on activities that took place 50 years ago - I don't know if you've noticed, but practically no-one outside the hard left raises Israeli Irgun activities except in a historical context - but there are still areas of current concern that are worth monitoring, such as their lack of support for freedom of artistic speech and, yeah, their funneling of support to Hamas (although I don't know how much actual support has been forthcoming - I assume they were responsible for the contents of some of the briefcases Hamas officials were trying to bring into Gaza by car). Oh yeah, I wrote an essay about them recently that covers some of these issues.

The solution to the Middle East's problems

If this is the worst that Israel inflicted upon the world, many geopolitical problems would be solved.

Really, that whole article annoys me. Aside from Mr. Raphael's extracurricular activities (and, more to the point, his incompetence at being discreet), he is described as "a polished media performer" who has served as Ambassador for Israel in several countries. Yet "his adventure in San Salvador revived last year's criticism from a public service watchdog that the ministry lacked transparency in recruitment and promotion procedures".

It's quite possible that Israel's Foreign Ministry does lack transparency, but I fail to see what that has to do with Mr. Raphael's hobbies.

From 'Aqoul:

Even worse and most significant, however, is punishing that all too rare thing these days --- an Israeli diplomat associated with a compromising position.

Give me back my headless lion woman!

Fighting for Iraq's culture

Great little article by one of the Marines in charge of preserving any Mesopotamian antiquities that may still exist in Iraq (there's a great opportunity for some enterprising screenwriter to do "Grandson of Indiana Jones" right there), in which he acknowledges the pushing-shit-uphill aspects of his job - "diverting resources to save cultural artifacts during a war may seem like cutting funds for the police and firefighters in order to expand the public library."

He raises practical issues to drum up support for his activities, such as the strong possibility that if you buy antiquities of dubious provenance you may well be supporting the insurgency (this may not be a problem for you, of course) and that in not looking after the antiquities, the West is demonstrating to the Arab world that we don't give a fuck about their culture, losing the battle for hearts and minds.

I have another issue, which is that Mesopotamian antiquities aren't just Arab culture, they're everyone's culture. Mesopotamia was the site of the earliest literate and Bronze Age societies: that is your and my heritage, whether you are Arab, African or Anglo. It is called the Cradle of Civilization for a reason.

Here's some examples of what we're missing when antiquities in Iraq are looted:

Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago holds some gorgeous little statues, including the Pazuzu demon, whose enmity towards the demon of childbed illness makes him handy to have around when you're giving birth. This institute also has more information about the quest to recapture artifacts stolen from the Iraq Museum.

Treasures of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad Extremely rich site of artworks, like these two new wavers and this gnarly old bat. Also check out the Iraq Cultural Heritage Worldwide site, which brings together artworks and articles from the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of New York (there's a Swedish museum mentioned, but its site doesn't seem to be online). You can use the drop down menu to navigate, then break out of the frame by opening links in a new window.

What I love about the Mesopotamian sculpture in particular is that it seems to be vastly more naturalistic than other antiquities, the gnarly old bat above being a prime example. The fact that statuary seems to have retained its eyes (like so) more often than others seems to help. Even this lioness has a kind of pathetic facial expression. Whereas, for instance, Egyptian artworks have a distancing effect - I can appreciate how beautiful and important they are, but the Iraqi antiquities make me feel like I'm looking at photographs of ancient people.

That said, I don't know anyone who looks like this.

My my, hey hey, it's Dolorean

When I first visited Dolorean's Download.com page and downloaded The Search, I thought "whahey, these guys really like Neil Young huh." Big, BIG surprise when I visited their wordpress page and the first post is about... oh go on, you'll never guess...

They also have an artist page at YepRoc Records, which is itself a rich repository of streaming media and downloads that I must mine further.

In the meantime, could someone please tell me which Neil Young song The Search reminds me of?

Free Kareem

If you're reading this blog, you're probably already familiar with the recent arrest of the Egyptian blogger calling himself Kareem Amer. Failing that, here's a brief recap:

Egypt is an authoritarian republic with tokenistic elections and restrictions on the press and freedom of association stop Egyptian authorities have arrested or threatened a number of bloggers in Egypt from various sides of politics stop Kareem Amer was arrested and sentenced for four years in prison for ‘contempt of religion’ and ‘defaming the President of Egypt’ stop Bloggers from all sorts of backgrounds have stepped forward to support Kareem stop contact the Free Kareem website to see if you can help in any way.

Check out Marc Lynch's "Brotherhood of the Blog" in the Guardian's almost-useless Comment is Free section (which really ought to be retitled Opinions Are Like Assholes) - he makes the excellent point that, whether you like the Bro's or not, they are entitled to the same transparency, justice and freedom of expression as the rest of us.

In this context you may also like to consider signing up for Amnesty International's irrepressible.info campaign, where you agree to post blocked text on your site. This may not be too useful for people using Blogspot, which is a seriously blocked domain, but if you have a university or private website it could be valuable.