Genesis

In the beginning was the six-day week. Toil without end.

From the void, God created Heaven and the Earth and Time and Motion and the study thereof.

In the firmament, He set arc lamps and divers illuminations: the sun by day and the moon and stars at double time.

On the first day, God created merry hell until the Angels ended their dispute and settled for a pay rise in line with inflation.

On the second day, He created a tier of tertiary management to place between the creatures of the Earth and the creatures of the inner cities.

On the third day, God created factories and an industrial infrastructure as well as rats and micro-organisms with which to infringe Health and Safety regulations.

On the fourth day, He created the closed shop, industrial relations and all that these entail.

On the fifth day, God created the pursuit of pleasure for profit, sharp practices, blunt instruments and the diseases of economic disaster and urban decay.

On the sixth day, God created tension and stress-related disorder, riots and their police, skulls and bludgeons, sundry petty malices and cheap tricks too distasteful to mention.

On the seventh day, He rested and decided to get up late. At lunch, He made up His mind to do it all as a TV movie. Angelo Gabrielli, His agent, thought it was a great idea and, over a glass of Liebfraumilch, they dreamed up a press release and leaked it to the major dailies.

© BH 1983

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Strange how some things weather over time but don't quite wear out.

Back before 1983, the gospel according to industrial relations seemed the only truth. Then Thatcher broke the miners in the seventies and the legacy of that attrition tore up the rule book. As paragraph 23 sub-section 12 faded into memory, the jobsworth mind of dyed-in-the-wool shop stewards tranferred to other bureaucracies. The media star rose in the heavens along with cynicism and cheap-skate sensationalism.

So we fell from grace, or at least from one state of gracelessness to another. All we did was swap sicknesses, in the end going down the pan at the same inexorable rate.

God looked down, looked upon His works and thought, 'Did I do that? Not bloody likely!'

Very little has changed now you come to think about it.

Decades for Dick Heads

Way back on December 31st-January 1st there seemed to be some debate about whether the next decade had already started or whether it was just about to. We actually had this back in 2000, when some argued that the millennium didn't actually start till 2001.

We obviously have too much time on our hands if all we need to sort out are niceties such as this. That said, there seems to be the usual pedantry at work in this debate. Numbers and numbering systems adapt to their functions, at least to an extent. 

We start at zero, I suppose, but we don't count in whole numbers till we get to one. That's why babies get to be aged nine months. Then we reckon age by the past reckoning of years. If I say I'm 40 that's in the past, of course. I'm really going on 41.

Decades, then, if we start at zero old JC kicked it off way back by being, however miraculously, born. He didn't get round to doing all his founding a religion stuff till year 30. Three years later he was on the cross. You know the rest. 

More recently, 2000 started the decade just gone and 2009 marked the end of it when the year of that name (or number) ended. 2010 was just the name we gave to the year of counting 2011, which didn't get its name till it ended and the year of counting 2012 began. And that's where we are now.

It all depends on the idea I've just floated concerning the year of counting. Here we are in March 2011, that is, quarter past 2011. Here it is for me, quarter past eleven. Is this the eleventh hour? Or is it the twelfth that's just not finished yet.

You decide. It's taken me since New Year's in Dallas Texas to work this out and I'm still not sure the debate is settled. Are we one year into the second decade of the twenty-first century or only in the first year of it? Jeez, I don't know. 

Am I become 21st Century Schizoid Man? Most likely.

© BH 2011

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I rest my case.

Another Little Endian

I woke up with that phrase running through my head. Had to Google it. What I thought might be some cosmic concept about the end of days, when the universe finally interplodes and starts again from diddly, turned out to be a term for data storage.

Disappointed, I read on. Little Endian stores the least important value first while Big Endian does the opposite. Then they store data in any order anyway. By the time I got to the bit about Reduced Information Set, TCP/IP and the extremely good reasons for these arrangements, I was ready to go back to bed.

Afterwards, though, it occurred to me that, when it comes to eating I'm Little Endian. In fact, I'm pretty sure we can divide the human race into Big and Little Endian eaters. Provided they have enough to eat, that is.

When I eat food, pizza, for example, I eat the least tasty parts first. I eat the crusty bits before the cheesy stuff. I save the best (in my estimation) till last. But I know of those who get wired in to the cheese and pepperoni straight away. They might even leave the crusty bits. To me that's impatience, but each to their own.

Maybe I'll start a Little Endian Food Forum or maybe set up a Facebook page. If that sounds suitably pointless, consider this. The internet is Little Endian in its data storage. If its use is too, what else should we expect? The least important things have priority, then everything else is chucked in at random. Oh what a world! 

I think my Big End has gone.

© BH 2010

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Actually, it's a bit OCD. I fully admit, part of me is further up the male-spectrum-behaviour chart than many. I mean, I do like sorting screws. Or nails for that matter. Maybe it's a man thing. Sorting the CDs into alphabetical order of the years of the composer's birth.

In my case, how I eat pizza. It's not a curse. I enjoy it. It's logical to me.

Oh, yeah. What'd I Say?

(for the Wilderness Children - and all their mothers and fathers)

But they sing and, singing, love.

Although they take our children 

and slide guitars and synthesisers in their little souls,

rock and roll is raw and real.

It reaches in where text-books never did.

It answers our cries for release from danger,

for comfort in our animalness.

Radios of the world align.

Little ferrite rods are marching.

Copper wires turn into staves

on which the tunes are hung.

Sung in tongues, the hiss of questions come in rhyme —

Sing about this dreamy stuff —

Hush away that loveless ache…

Will the beat be just enough

To give back what we take?

This jive is a dangerous dance,

These creatures sing of chance

That turns a bomb into a saxophone,

Makes laser into Movietone.

Who lulls the monster's many heads to sleep?

Looks for its chains?

Music being both volcano and symphony

Seethes and sooths the savage human heart.

© BH 1988 

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I wrote this to go with a single, if I recall. I can't find it. All I have is a flexi-disk distributed with the fanzine Sowing Seeds #5. (The Wilderness Children "There's A Good Time A-Comin'"/"On the West Coast" (Choabie Records, DOSS I). 1987. It's here. There's another cartoon in the fanzine - The Only Adventure of 12-inch O'Toole - which is not as rude as you think. But it's another story.
I also learned that Fraser Reid who played guitar has recently died. I worked with Fraser when him and Andrea lived in Mid Craigie in Dundee. I did the cartoons at his request. Long time ago. We lost touch not so long ago, as our Christmas card lists decayed.
Sad that he's gone. You can read more about Fraser here.

Terminus

Seed heads hold themselves ready

As the sky birds descend

Beaks gaping 

Upon the arched grass harvest.