News Roundup

[robinturner]

First the sad news: John Peel has just died of a heart attack at the age of 65 (thanks to vret, rodneyorpheus and ankh156 for alerting me). John Peel was possibly the best DJ I've heard, as evidenced by the fact that he could make me listen to a lot of music I didn't like (Peel was the man who first got BBC Radio to play punk, which was a mixed blessing). I would patiently listen through jarring punk groups in the early 80s thinking that if Peelie saw something in them, they must be worth listening to. He also had an ear for talent. I remember listening to one grungy group doing their first studio session and thought, "Well, these guys aren't bad - shame they'll never make it into the mainstream with a sound like that." The band's name was Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

In other news ....

America's use of mercenaries in Iraq has always been controversial, but now it appears that they are recruiting them from the South African police's Special Task Force. Someone should tell these guys that "kaffir" has a different meaning over there, before they set their ridgebacks on coalition forces instead of intimidating the natives like they're supposed to.

Meanwhile in Iraq, tons of explosives have gone missing from a site that used to be part of Saddam's nuclear programme in the days when he had WMD and wasn't afraid to let the world know about it (because Reagan and Bush Snr. were backing him to the hilt). Don't worry, people, just repeat the mantra after me: "The world is a safer place without Saddam. The world is a safer place without Saddam. The world is a safer ..."

It's not all bad news though. Ever ready to act in the service of humankind, the pornography industry is helping the rapid growth of wireless Internet services. It makes sense - since the Venus of Willendorf, every time a new medium is invented, someone immediately uses it to produce pornography, and this in turn helps the growth of the new medium (the only exception I can think of is television, which only got raunchy later on). Even so, I find the idea of people downloading porn onto their mobile phones rather odd. It took me long enough to get used to people talking into the things, let alone drooling over them.

Finally, inhabitants of Western Australia can rejoice that use of racial epithets has been legalised so long as they are "light-hearted". So it's OK to call someone a "whinging pom", so long as you do it with a cheeky grin and add "no hard feelings, mate." To this, the appropriate response is a light-hearted racial epithet related to activities with sheep.

Comments

[solri.livejournal.com]

"Whinging pom" = "moaning Englishman"

[solri.livejournal.com]

I think it's only racist when they say "pommie bastard" ;-)

On a slightly more serious note, I think it's inappropriate to use "racism" for negative feelings about people who are a different nationality but the same race, but I can't think of a better word. Well, I suppose there's "chauvinism", but I wouldn't use a word invented by a bunch of bloody Frogs ;-)

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mainly hear it in the phrase "male chauvanist (pig)," but I've heard it used in the broader sense as well. I wish it were used more in the broader sense, 'cos it's a really good word.

[solri.livejournal.com]

The original meaning was "ultra-nationalist", after the legendary French soldier Nicolas Chauvin, who was held up as a kind of super-patriot in an early case of Stakhanovism. It was later applied to groups other than one's country, hence "male chauvinism". This latter use become so popular that it all but eclipsed the other senses.

I hope this makes my reference to "bloody Frogs" a little clearer.

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

John Peel subjected you to punk even before the '80s, and I have the Peel Sessions (bootlegged or not) to prove it.

I am sad to hear of his death.

[solri.livejournal.com]

He subjected the world to punk in the '70s, but not me, since I didn't start listening to him (or indeed to Radio 1) until 1980 at the earliest.

My other favourite DJ of that time was Anne Nightingale, though I was a bit pissed off with her when she read out my letter on air, but missed out the nasty remarks I made about Malcolm McClaren.

[ironed_orchid]

I should really start paying attention to local news.

[vret.livejournal.com]

I was thinking earlier that perhaps the reason Peely never played anything from the first couple of tapes we sent him was that he misread the label, thought the title of the first track was a casually racist reference to antipodean autochthons, and saved himself the time of listening to it.

We should have written it out in full. He might have broadcast "A Bucketful Of Sick" to wonder out loud how it came to have that title.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Hah, I'd forgotten about ABOS! I sometimes think we put more creativity into our instrumental titles than we did into the tunes. My favourite was "I Like Your Jacket" (a reference to Mark's favourite chat-up line).