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30 March 2009
At the risk of revealing quite how much time I'm capable of wasting when I should be doing something productive, I feel the time has come to rail against the grievous annoyance of a television show that is The European Top 20. This is an MTV show, on their TMF(?) channel on Freeview in the UK. It's an hour long, and after running swiftly down through numbers 20-11, it does the simple and basic thing of showing us the videos for numbers 10 to 1.
Hmm. I've already expressed my antipathy for it; so, why have I watched it more than once? One reason may be the lovely Charlotte who presents it, more lovely now since she finished with the media blonde look, and reverted to what is probably her natural dark brown. But even Charlotte wouldn't be enough reason; mainly, I wanted to confirm my impressions about the content.
You see, when I spotted The European Top 20 in the Programme Guide, I thought, Aha! At last! This'll be interesting, a music show with a bit of diversity, offering a flavour of what's going on elsewhere in Europe. And the reality? Talk about naïvety!?! You won't hear anything not in English on this show. Worse, you will rarely see anything European. The show is so very disappointing, and for me the biggest disappointment of all is that it doesn't feature anything we don't already see on all the other humdrum music chart shows. For instance, this week the Top Ten in Europe' was entirely American, except for a couple of notionally European acts, IIRC Lily Allen and James Morrison. There's a lowest common denominator quality to the chart; it somehow manages to be less interesting than anybody's national charts. One does begin to think about and make comparisons with MTV's very own and deeply offensive 'MTV European Video Awards', which ignores any and everything interesting about the continent it is supposedly devoted to, and gives awards to the blandest of US chart acts. It goes one step further than The European Top 20 by being hosted by US 'personalities' who often succeed in aggravating us with parochial (to the US) banalities. At least Charlotte is English. I think. How much longer will she last? Because lately I have detected the odd subtle dig at certain acts (she should know it really isn't done to suggest that any of these marvellous singers uses Autotune). But good for her, let's have more of that. Um... I hope she's not CGI?? That'd be awful.
So, what's going on? Why don't we see any European acts? I assume what is happening is that the major record companies release songs (American songs) across Europe all at once, whereas few European acts - almost all of whom are British - will get similar releases across borders. And as for acts who sing in languages other than English, you can forget it. This week I'm listening to PMMP's latest album. There's some wonderful stuff on it, and I'm convinced they're one of the best pop bands on the planet. But they sing in Finnish, so they'll never appear on The European Top 20. And nor will a host of excellent performers from France, Germany, Italy, Russia... Come on! One of you tv channels, why don't you put together a show which does give an airing to some great acts from elsewhere - something different from the relentless monotony of the US-based stuff the major record companies shovel onto the European cultural landscape. Acts at the top of the various national charts, rather than the totally meaningless The European Top 20. But I'm being naïve again, aren't I?
4 March 2009
Gloom and doom. I hope that's not why you came here; and it isn't what I'd want to sell. But I've been reading the latest issue of New Scientist magazine and not feeling very positive at all. On the front, in big red letters: Earth 2099. Underneath: Population crashes - Mass migration - Vast new deserts - Cities abandoned. Yes, this is about global warming. Uh.
The message is bad. The one thing which always struck me about global warming was how vulnerable we are, to slow catastrophe, ie. how we can react very well to sudden awfulness, but tend to ignore stuff which we can put off until tomorrow, especially if, politically, it's beyond the next election and hence someone else's problem. Right, well, according to the latest conclusions, global warming isn't that slow at all. That's why it's headed Earth 2099. Obviously, things will already be bad well before then, but around 2099 we can project a state of the planet that is deeply unwelcome. You think, 90 years away, who cares? You should. Lifetimes are getting longer. Both my aunts and my grandmother lasted into their nineties. It's entirely likely that my little nephew and niece will be around then. I won't - short of an injection of something unimaginable - but like anyone else I feel the importance of the next generation and what will happen to them. It's bad enough when I realised with a pang that when I was their age I took it for granted that lots of the earth's surface was wild, and that fabulous animals like tigers and elephants roamed around; and that today's kids will soon be lucky to see such creatures in zoos, if at all. The New Scientist's projection amongst other things says that there won't be any large wild animals anywhere in 2099. Any animals which could have coped with the desert conditions which will cover most of the planet then will have been eaten.
The centrepiece of the feature is a map. Under the heading The world: 4°C warmer, this shows most of the earth's surface to be desert or otherwise uninhabitable. Right up to the US-Canadian border and a vague line across Europe through the middle of Germany, the Southern Urals and on to Kamchatka (if I remember my Risk correctly). The Southern hemisphere? There's only the very bottom end of Patagonia and New Zealand which is up to much. And one other big green area, which seems to me to be a complete fantasy, Western Antarctica. One point which escaped my eye ie. I might have missed it, is that those far Northern and Southern latitudes may become warmer, but they'll still be subject to long dark winters and 24 hour light in mid Summer. It's annotated in a matter-of-fact way and one could read it with simple fascination up to the point where one realises how many assumptions are being made. And the main assumption is that this is the way things will be if we act logically and co-operatively. So, there's a 'Solar Energy Belt' stretching across the Equator. Even if there was no political obstacle to this, and any other of the schemes for surviving Global Warming, do you reckon by then we'll still have the industrial base capable of constructing such a thing? Or indeed the big new cities which will be needed in places like Siberia and New Zealand? As for the world's population, if it grows as it may, it's impossible to imagine being able to feed it from the much reduced agricultural areas - and don't forget there'll be next to no fish left in the seas. The UK is already overpopulated at 60 million: will we manage with our 'share' of, I don't know, 200-250 million? And we'll be much smaller anyway. Don't forget the rising seas. I don't think they've blotted out nearly enough on the map, of the area which will be inundated when the icecaps melt.
The New Scientist's article does go on to discuss the currently favoured schemes for averting warming. As I've already suggested, one's heart sinks when one appreciates that they depend on governments acting sensibly now. And that the warming won't be even worse. However, we're not reducing emissions of CO2 at the moment, but increasing them. Really, however one looks at it, it seems highly likely that there'll be conflict over resources, especially water, and over mass migration. How will the Northern European countries, Russia in particular, react to the masses surging North? But maybe the numbers won't be quite as big as all that. The magazine uses the word cull. Not necessarily any sort of deliberate cull, just the extremely likely population crash which may in the end be the only way the human race will survive. But by that stage will the planet be the kind of place we want to live on? Will it preserve any echoes of the beautiful place it once was?
17 February 2009
I went to see Children of Bodom and Cannibal Corpse last night.
CoB because they were Finnish, and I fancied seeing at least one Death Metal band in my life. Cannibal Corpse were a 'bonus'.
This morning the BBC were interviewing a blonde US pop singer who is 19 and has hardly paid her dues in this country and yet she gets this big exposure on the breakfast show. Apparently, London is 'awesome', and her parents have always given her maximum support. So, BBC Breakfast, where was your interview with hard working touring band Cannibal Corpse? Eh?? I guarantee you that interview would have been somewhat more interesting.
Those bands were ferocious.
I really don't feel very well this morning.
31 January 2009
Happy New Year/Onnellista uutta vuotta.
A bit late, but never mind. The year's picking up a bit. It's getting lighter, though we're getting another dose of snowy wintry weather over the next few days.
Anyway, here's one small reason to be cheerful - I have a book out! :) Well, kind of. I wrote three of the stories which appear in this little collection here, Lancashire Tales - Light & Dark, by our little group of amateur writers calling itself Panocticon. Most of the stories are flavoured with the supernatural, though not mine, which are definitely on the lighter side. It's actually a new fangled type of vanity publishing, courtesy of Lulu.com (ie. you can get hold of it there if for some bizarre reason you're interested). To be fair, I shouldn't be so self deprecating, people seem to like it, and I must admit, it may be self published, but it is very nice to have a shiny proper book in one's hands. There are five of us who contributed to this volume, and it looks like we're going to have a go at another one. On a different theme, science fiction possibly, although that may change.