referendum 2

The tories who have ended up in charge are interpreting the 'exit' vote as a 'hard brexit', although they have nothing to base this on. Given that the vote was not a big lead - and only half the country voted - it seems opportunistic to only listen to the most hardline europhobes.
Given our complete lack of leverage, a hard brexit seems like maybe the only option, because Europe keep saying to us things like 'you can't have access to the free market and not have freedom of movement' which ends up with us cutting off our nose to spite our face, throwing our toys out of the pram, and ultimate crashing the country. Of course, a ruined economy would only increase the government's push for continuing austerity - they're running out of fictional reasons to prolong it, so they need to manufacture some more bad times for us. And of course when I say 'austerity', i mean 'transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich'.

It would only be in the character of our democracy (such that it is) to have another referendum, this time with more options:
HARD BREXIT
MEDIUM BREXIT
SOFT BREXIT
ACTUALLY WE DON'T WANT A BREXIT AT ALL

the 52% - surely diminished, now that the obvious lies of the exit leaders have been exposed - will be split between three options, and the reamins side will win, and we can all get on with our lives without deliberately taking our country back into some sort of alternate reality where the winter of discontent never ended.

War bastard

We went to a story telling festival in Martineau gardens today. The final story was a Levantine folk tale about people are afraid of the truth but love stories, so every story should contain some truth.

Jeremy Corbyn is the weary truth-teller the media have ignored. I don't know if I blame him for being ignorable, or the monolithic media - who have learned that all attention is good attention and so the best way to damn a labour leader is to silence them. Plus, how vile his party were towards him destabilised the whole party.

He is a leader who was supposed to have unified his party as pro-European. Europe is usually the downfall of the tories, the issue that exposes how fragmented and infighty they are. Labour officially declared as 'remain', and yet allowed individuals to argue the other way, apparently without looking turbulent. But then, labour didn't look anything throughout the campaign. Sitting back and letting the tories tear themselves apart looks like it could have been quite a good strategy. Unfortunately, the result is that the bullshitters won, virtually unopposed.

The emergence of the scatter-shot-bullshit politician, in the age of big data, is an absurdity that should not stand. Fact-checking organisations, Programmes like 'more or less', shouldn't be fringe news, they should be mandatory. Corbyn took his authority from an educated position, compared with anti-intellectual tories, who dismiss racism and innuendo as 'the rough and tumble of politics'. He spoke honestly, and when he countered the bullshit coming from Cameron, was ignored with attacks on his appearance.

The victory of 'leave' shows us people listen to strong stories. Corbyn's absence from headlines shows us the truth is not enough. We need a labour leader with not just the truth of the sold-out generation, but the anger of them too.

The working class of this country have been abuse and neglected by their governments, then set loose on a bystander, like a tortured dog attacking the first thing in sight rather than the person who has been twisting it for years. 

I think we need a labour leader with the outrage to make the headlines but the academic clout to back it up. We need John Hurt as the War Doctor; not the one we got in the 50th anniversary special, who actually was a bit of a Corbyn, but the one we were promised: a soldier who had the bravery to do what it takes against an abominable foe. We have to face the fact that Blair is the only labour leader to have won an election in - what is it now - 40 years..? We need a war bastard. Can Corbyn be that war bastard? 

But I don't think it'll make any difference. In the fight for votes, the tories and the anti-labour papers will still rubbish whatever labour says, regardless of the truth. They can make a story of any strength they like, because they are not bound by the truth. Do we just have to wait until Rupert Murdoch dies?

experiment in creating a bandcamp playlist with html

It's great how the bandcamp system works, interacting between tracks and even between pages, however it doesn't seem to flow through between these individual tracks. What's more, creating this flow-through page took too many clicks to add each track and I long for a quick and easy bandcamp playlister.

There would be complications with releases that request you purchase after a couple of listens, but actually, that's less of a problem and more of a great thing, if you're listening to a playlist too much you probably should open your wallet and buy those tracks.

on Crimson Peak for those who have watched it.

If you haven't watched it, what ever I say below, I think it's worth a watch. I liked it.

If you have, well...ell, Crimson Peak is a film built almost entirely out of references. It's Rebecca, Macbeth, Usher, Dracula, woman in black, Amnesia the Dark Descent (or just shares influences, I doubt gdt has played that), and every other gothic thing you can put into spot (makes me wonder what I missed). The main character's surname 'Cushing' tells you all you need to know; if you don't know why that's significant, maybe you're not going to understand this film beyond the surface level.

It does this to a point that begins to feel a bit Alan Moore; the point where one character finishes one sentence with 'the horror', and starts the next with the same phrase, feels like the 'showing your work gone mad'ness of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

There's another plot area that really felt Moorish to me too; the protagnist Edith is an author and near the start spells out the point of the film. 'Its not a Ghost Story', she says 'it's a story with ghosts in it. The ghosts are just metaphors for the past'.

Indeed, like any good GDT film (i.e. not Pacfic Rim), as grusome as the ghosts are, it is the people who are the monsters. Edith's comment is not just a snarky 'ooh i'm so clever' one-liner, but a massive shovel in the face telling you THIS IS FICTION, A METAPHOR, IT HAS A DEEPER MEANING IF YOU LOOK FOR IT.

There isn't much discussion of the nature of her book in the film, apart from one pivotal dialogue, where she tells Tom that she doesn't control her characters - they make their own minds up. This transforms him into a character who has free will, and from this point on he is able to make his own decisions, steering the final act of the film. It is after this final act that we see the cover of the book 'Crimson Peak by Edith Sharpe', which makes you wonder how much authorship our protaganist has had all along. Remember she was writing a story with ghosts in, and was forced to introduce a love plot to pelase the publisher - well how forced does the romance feel in the film?

There's loads of symbolism - the shock of industrialiastion (also a theme of Dracula) in the form of type writers, wax cylinders, and digging machines, meant to liberate us but rendering us lifeless. The butterflies every where - dying or pinned or being eaten alive (the most grusome moment, I thought) or merely on wall-paper. The 'nobility as parasite' idea, again introduced right at the start for obviousness, is woven through the film in a surprisingly literal way.

The first act, in New York State, i think is my favourite. It's pretty much a straight period piece with some interesting characters and bits of conversation - if there's one thing I felt this film could do more of, it's dialogue. Scenes are often too short and economical.

I didn't like the final act where it was all stabby - it didn't move me. And I didn't like the shocks that were entirely for the benefit of the audience - The Woman in Black did this too and it feels too much like a non-interactive roller coaster ride. Compared to the other great meta-horror film Cabin in the Woods, it pales. That film is funny, and cleverly reference heavy, and has a lot to say about horror, to the point of being an essay or even manifesto. Crimson Peak is certainly reference heavy, but without humour, and I'm not sure to what extent. It's given me a lot to think about, but I haven't yet figured out if GDT is trying to say anything with the film. I don't know if he's trying to push horror forward. And it failed the 'scared going to bed' test...

Case in point: Edith hears something from the bath. we see a ghost, but she does not. The ghost, a rotting near-skeleton, comes right up to her whilst her back is turned, then vanishes when she turns around. Just at that point, her dog runs back up to her - and from the empty darkness, its ball is rolled back to it. The second part is the unsettling, not going to sleep tonight bit, but it's undermined by the gorey OTT prelude.

And maybe I've seen too many GDT DVD extras, but when the first ghost turns up I thought 'ooh look it's Doug Jones'. And that's good because I love Doug Jones, but also, when your monsters always seem to have the same figure and posture, maybe you should branch out more. Or is it a reference to GDT's earlier films?

(That reminds me, I don't think I've seen Andy Serkis play a human for ages, and that's a shame because he's great as Hannet and Dury)

Still, I liked it, and I'm intrigued enough to come back to it later to see if there's anything I missed. I suppose like a Half man half Biscuit song, if I watch it in five years time maybe I'll get more out of it.

It's a frankenstein film, almost the cinematic equivalent of Paul's Boutique, that wears it's sewn-together stitch marks so blatently that it 's a confident sign that there is more depth to be found.
It's certainly a rich enough film to provoke these midnight ramblings.

Lovecraft dreams

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt the children were possessed by elder gods who had been imprisoned in pillars, but were still alive, perhaps dreaming, at least psychically accessible. Somehow this was Gillen's fault. 

The possession seemed to manifest itself by mood swings, and playing computer games on the phone.

Last night, I had a really terrifying dream. I read a book and it went like this:

There was a iron structure that went across a valley, like a train bridge that linked to tunnels. It bore a remarkable resemblance to a picture of a fictional submarine dock, and this was evidence of a psychic link. Although I can't remember the exact steps, i was being mentally stalked, and as my awareness and power grew, the thing got closer. It was like, the more aware of it I became, he more power it had over me. I checked with several beings - the first two I can't remember, but the third was the Minotaur, who gave me a dire warning - my 'psychic guard' was gone, this apparently was a figure I was semi-aware of, who was the last layer of defense. The next thing I knew, my consciousness itself was being peeled away. The end.

And then I visualised the whole thing as a graphic novel.

I was terrified. And when I woke up, esme was standing at the end of the bed in the darkness. Shiver.