Billiards in Heaven

Languishing in the Draft Section (part II)

And this one dates from 19/10/07 (21:50)

No link. Nothing. Which is a shame 'cos I like that cartoonist's moxy.

Posting penguins

This image has been in the draft section of my blog since 23/07/04 (04:35 to be exact), and I don't know why.

What's the life expectancy of penguins?

With a heavy heart . . .

. . . but what Phil said.

Addition to the Sidebar

Posted the 'Socialist Thinkers Series' on the sidebar. It's just below the Socialist Standard on the left side of the page.

Note to self: Update the Socialist Standard sidebar with the most recent issue.

Cold Sweats

Christ, 79 posts still in draft. Mustttttt try 'arder.

In like a bullet at #961

Sorry I'm a bit late with the latest bloglist, but apparently they don't inform you direct about the final results if your blog happens to finish outside the Top Ten. Bastards:

The top 10 political blogs of all time

Oh well. Maybe next year.

Murray Bookchin for Beginners

I was initially going to be snotty about Janet Biehl's My Graphics About Murray Bookchin blog, but who am I to be a cheeky bastard? This is what blogging is all about, and even if some of the material isn't exactly my cup of tea, I hope her intent for it to eventually become a graphic novel reaches fruition.

Biehl worked with Bookchin closely for the last twenty years of his life, and it was via her graphic blog that I found out about the essay, Bookchin Breaks With Anarchism, that she has written for inclusion in the forthcoming AK Press title, 'Anarchism for the 21st Century' (edited by Larry Gambone & Pat Murtagh).

Interesting read, and it just goes to show that sometimes it pays not to be on permanent smirky mode. One question, though: what's with the photograph of David Crosby on the blog? (Phuk it, I can't break free from my all consuming sarkiness.)

Hat tip to the Commie Curmudgeon for bringing the blog to my attention.

A Local Blog For Local People

I've been meaning to signpost the Kensington (Brooklyn) blog for a while now. It's a blog that covers the part of Brooklyn that Kara and I live in.

Sandwiched between better known neighbourhoods such as Borough Park, Ditmas and Windsor Terrace/Park Slope, for some reason not a lot of people know about Kensington, which may explain why it is one of last affordable places in Central Brooklyn, but the blog (or at least the anonymous comments it generates) reflects the gradual change in the area.

The area is predominately made up of Bangladeshi, Albanian, Hispanic, Polish, Russian and East Asian communities - historically it was Irish and Italian - but in the last year and a bit Kensington has experienced an influx of twentysomethings who have been priced out of renting in parts of Brooklyn such as Park Slope or Williamsburg, and have plumped for Kensington because of its centrality, relative affordibility and easy access to Manhattan (F Train).

The blog is good at covering local events in the area - Kara and I attended the bazaar on Church Avenue on Sunday - and, by default probably, it also reflects the contrasting differences and expectations of people both old and new in the area.

Sometimes that can be hysterically funny in the comments box, with it's anonymous commentators more often than not in push-me/pull-me denial mode about the fact that what they really want more than anything in the world is a coffee shop with wi-fi. If they and the coffee shop also happened to be situated in Park Slope, that would be an added extra. (I'm not fussy. I just want a 24-hour diner/radical bookshop within thirty feet of the apartment.) However, those same comment threads can sometimes veer too much over into territory which borders on the UN maybe having to send in a peace-keeping force in to police the comment box. For such a diverse area, we are all in our own wee boxes a bit too much, unfortunately.

In short, Kensington is akin to Stoke Newington but with decent slices of pizza, and this post is proof that I can occasionally blog about Brooklyn.

That's When I Reach For My Typewriter

Sometimes I just get an overwhelming urge to switch to wordpress. Why should I be the last blogger left behind to switch the lights off at Blogger?

Just lost a bastard post via a combination of Safari quitting on me mid-post and blogger refusing to autosave the post 'cos it insists that I use word verification.

The chunky monkeys dropped the bombshell that they "have detected that [my] blog has characteristics of a spam blog."

I feel like bursting into hysterical laughter. Can't they tell the difference between an spgb blog and a spam blog?

Wait, where did that tumbleweed come from?

A Kiss of Seedcake

When in Birmingham, do what the Brummies do: drink Black Country beer and bar-bar at Fircroft.

A Man Out of Time

The tubes at Tribune still won't join the 21st century by putting a decent archive on their website, but this sideline page/blog of theirs looks promising in a leftish trainspotterish kind of way (can't be arsed to link to their other sideline blog, a cartoon page, 'cos the cartoons in general aren't up to scratch).

Nice self-deprecating touch by leading off their historical page with a wee political hand-grenade thrown the way of the late Woodrow Wyatt; a man who, in his political life, started out as part of the Tribunite/Bevanite left in the Parliamentary Labour Party in the immediate post-war period, only to end up with a peerage courtesy of Thatcher for journalistic services to her Government's policies.

The sub-heading of the piece on the Tribune page is 'Lech, Toady and Turncoat' but one can't help feeling that the late bow-tied duffer's has been a bit hard done by.

A lech and a toady? Yep, his published diaries and his weekly column for the News of the World in the 1980s, 'The Voice of Reason', testify to the fact that he was enthralled by power, but a 'turncoat'? The bloke was New Labour when Blair was still reading the liner notes to the Tom Robinson Band's 'The Power in the Darkness', as if it was official Labour Party policy.

The poor sod was simply born before his time.

The Little Black Book of Religion

Via Alan J's blog - who got it from someone else - a wee factoid about the wrath of that bloke who looks like Jerry Garcia.

Also looks like Satan is misunderstood (or just crap at his job). Maybe he can get Matthew Freud to do some PR for him to turn around his image.

Killer One-Liner

"Tanaka just happened to be the unlucky cockroach on the kitchen table when the light was switched on."

Love that line from Michael S. in the latest post from the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog.

Knocking That Post Off The Bottom Of The Page

What I wrote on the 28th May Xs 10

People With Too Much Front

A must read post from Andy N. over at the Socialist Unity Blog about the recent “Politics After Blair” conference organised by the Morning Star, but it's as much for Mark. P hoisting SWP'ers Noel on his own petard in the comments to the post for the latter trying to suggest that the SWP's various fronts are " . . . genuine united fronts and therefore being good revolutionaries we put the priorities of building them before building our party as we will grow if they do, not the other way around."

Class in a glass plated house.

Ch-Ch-Changes

One of my favourite blogs, Socialist Unity Blog, has switched to Wordpress.

"I'm an autumn boy on the endless search for summer"

Just realised that today's the 103 anniversary of the founding of the SPGB.

*Cough cough* Happy Birthday to the 'Roaring Boys' (too many lighted candles on the cake is playing havoc with my sinuses). You don't look a day over eighty-five. Bet you never thought you'd last this long . . . fuck, bet you thought that you'd be up and gone at some point after your tenth birthday. (Shades of that scene from Von Trotta's 'Rosa Luxemburg', where Rosa and Karl Kautsky share a toast of sorts for the coming socialist century.)

OK, that's enough from me before I start staring darkly into the distance. I'll need to cheer myself by listening to 'Tropical Brainstorm', whilst the rest of you check out the recently updated Socialism Or Your Money Back blog.

I fell in love with a real city boy

Who's afraid of his nature, afraid of his joy

I punched him out and brought him to this hut

But I know he'll thank me when he wakes up

We got trees, we got snakes, we got acres of sky

His life in the city was making him cry

'Us Amazonians'

Sheer genius.

Out-Viz'ing Viz

I can't be arsed to blog at the moment, so expect 73 posts in the next four days by way of contradiction.

Doesn't Chase Me, I'm in the Cavalry do this sort of thing? Posts on his blogs, I mean . . . not the perverting of young'ish minds. Chuck Connors should have been locked up, which ever way you look at it.

Hat tip to Bertram Online.

Off To A Good . . .

Many pizza slices ago when I got the Normblog treatment, I took the opportunity to cite Pandagon as one of my three favourite blogs, so it's only in keeping that I give a special mention to their new offshoot.

Panda Songs is that mp3 blog that I've always wanted but never had the bandwidth or the tech know-how to get it beyond the 'wouldn't it be nice' nope, no Beach Boys tracks on the imagined blog, before you ask stage.

It gets an especial mention 'cos unlike the rest of America, Amanda Marcotte succumbed to the charms of The Jam, and she has chosen their 1980 classic, Start - the one with the ripped off bassline from 'Taxman' - as her latest post to the blog.

I know that it isn't a big deal on one side of the Atlantic that 'Start' is readily available as a free download, but I'm not on that side.

Cheers.

Coming To A Comment Box Near You

Somebody has been a busy bee in the last 24 hours. Spotted the duplicated comment above on at least fifteen 'left blogs' in the last day. I guess it beats blogging about Lindsay Lohan.

PS - It's still too hot to blog, btw.