Getting a rise out of information....

Apparently, the CIA have a new weapon in the intelligence war against the Taliban. Viagra.

Read all about the little blue pill's part in the War Against Terror here.

Digger to the stars

world champion
Originally uploaded by Grain Damaged

Back in 2001, for reasons I won't go into too much, I was a bit on the skint side. On the other hand, I really, really wanted to go to the Eugene Celebration. So, what does a man do?

Volunteer. That's what he does.

So off I trotted to the Eugene Celebration offices and I offered my services.

"We've got just the thing for you," they said. "We're having a sand art competition..."

"Sounds... interesting," I said. "Pop my name down for 4 hours."

In the meantime, something horrible involving planes and tall buildings happened. I'm sure you remember: so you can imagine I was wondering whether anything would happen at all. I showed up on the day to find everything cancelled for the day EXCEPT the sand art.

When I got there, I was introduced to a rather engagingly charming bloke called from Cleveland called Carl Jara, who produced a Scooby Doo comic from his bag. It had a rather silly cover depicting Scooby emerging from the middle of a cake with a rather shocked Shaggy looking on.

"We're doing this," he said. "I reckon the kids'll love it, what with all the stuff in the news..."

And so we did.

Sand art is an odd discipline. It requires hours of prep work, which is hand-blisteringly, back-breaking work for a poor civilian like me. Then, if the sand is rubbish (and apparently it was that day), the best-packed sand can sometimes collapse, causing on-the-fly alterations to be made to the entire sculpture.

However, Carl was calm throughout (mostly) and kept me going with cracks about giving up smoking (I'd made the decision to quit not knowing about Al-Qaeda's plans and had spent the last three days wondering whether a Day of National Mourning was really now the best day to stop...), me being British and a never-ending stream of fascinating trivia about sand, Ohio and the idiotic questions asked by the general public.

Eight hours later, we'd finished. I was damn proud of my contribution to the festival, and well chuffed to have helped such a nice bloke.

And now, after visiting his flickr page, I find he is the 2008 World Champion Sand Sculptor. I'm made up for him. Well done, Carl. Proud to know you, mate.

"Academic inspiration, he gave me none..."

I was immensely lucky to be living in the Midlands in the early 80s, but I didn't think so at the time. One of the great things about being a Midlander back then was a programme that the BBC put on during the Tuesday night BBC1 regional opt-out featuring local bands and youth issues. Hosted by Toyah Wilcox, "Look Hear" was a lo-fi goldmine of great live performances from such local luminaries as The Specials, The Selecter and (believe it or not) Judas Priest. Hell, they even featured a just-starting-out Duran Duran.

However, the showcase here goes to one of my bands of the moment, who are providing the soundtrack to a rather nostalgic time in my life: Dexys Midnight Runners, performing, inevitably, "Geno".

Beautiful.

Phoning It In

I've just discovered this, and I can't quite believe it's been going on as long as it has under my radar. So, in my inimitable style, I'm going to burble on about it like you should all take a listen.

But you know, you should.

So what's it all about? Let them explain...

"lo-fi is the right fi: dj talksonthephone calls up all your favorite musicians for live over-the-phone performances and awkward conversation." 

Phoning It In is a radio program whose flagship show is broadcast on 88.1fm BSR in Providence, RI (where it's hosted by Gabe) and whose satellite show is broadcast on 88.1fm WMBR in Cambridge, MA (where it's hosted by Nadav). You can listen to every single past show from both stations in the Archives.

Yup. Live sessions over the phone. It's a genius idea. 346 sessions online. Get in there and listen. Phoning It In!

Stop press: given the title of this blog, this is a must: Jens Lekman at 1am Swedish time, in the bath, with a kalimba and a dying phone battery. Touching, cute and just plain funny. 

Download mp3 | Stream mp3

Indeed: you can't keep a good man down.

I've been at a loss as to what to do with this blog for a few days. Not being in Fife anymore kind of makes the title a bit redundant - then, walking into town, listening to some music, it all crystallised. So: we have a new title and another beginning - so let's celebrate that with the song that inspired the name change.

Chocks away, Jens.

John Podesta's back.

Gave me a bit of a surprise this morn to read that President-elect Obama has selected John Podesta, Clinton's final Chief of Staff, to head up his transition team. A pleasant one, mind.

I tell you: it's like the last eight years never happened.

I wish.

A quick lifestyle note

Travelling 865 miles in five days by train is bad for the body, but good for the heart.

That is all.

Oh, am I relieved, pt 1

Less of the personal, more of the political. And oh, how my old student self would cringe at that statement.

Just after I boarded a train on Tuesday for my flying visit to Huddersfield to join GBS in watching the Electoral College votes come in for BO, apparently the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, was spotted on our street.

Now (a little wry nod to Steve Jay here) the significance of this will be lost on non-Brit readers. No, he wasn't doing a swift immigration check - but the fact that I'd just that minute been popped on a train South Of The Border would have helped if that had been the case.

No - I'd just managed to parachute myself into by-election territory - and this had some potential for mischief.

Back in the summer, the Scottish National Party had scored a major upset on the back of what I would call mediocre economic news. It was nowhere near the meltdown we suffered later, but just scary enough for people to cause problems for the government without it being so bad as to make a "we should all pull together" call. One of the safest Labour seats in the country, Glasgow East had turned SNP with a viciousness that took even the London press pack by surprise. So, bad news for our Prime Minister (a man I have enormous sympathy for, by the way).

Now, you can imagine that, when the seat of Glenrothes fell vacant after the death of sitting MP John MacDougall, the news media salivated. After all, Glenrothes had nowhere near the Labour majority that Glasgow East had - so this was potentially a ripe picking for the SNP.

Basically, should Labour have lost this seat, Labour back-benchers, let alone The Daily Mail, would have been baying for Gordon Brown's blood.

The scenes in the town in the last few days were a tad surreal -I witnessed television interviews with the candidates amongst the shops in the Kingdom Centre, where carefully-planned policies would be reduced to five-second soundbites while advisers muttered shadily into cellphones just out of the camera's gaze, like a real-life version of The Thick Of It. I saw swarms of activists in the town's estates leafleting like fury. Incidentally, you could tell Labour swarms by the sound they made before the rosettes came into view - the mix of British regional accents gave the game away: after all, what Welshman in his right mind joins the SNP? To add to the tension, the SNP had brought out a big dog for the campaign - Fife Council leader Peter Grant was their candidate.

All in the end was well. Although the SNP cut Labour's majority by half, Labour actually polled MORE votes than in the 2005 General Election, and won by an unexpectedly large majority considering the appalling expectations. Basically, the SNP gambled the farm and lost. Boo-hoo for them.

I should say that I have a highly ambivalent attitude to by-elections. They seem less about local issues and more about one party trying to put one over on a rival on the national stage. It means that, although the attention the constituency gets is flattering, the politicians have bugger-all interest in that constituency in the grander scheme of things.

Indeed that is the case. Labour have held Glenrothes, the US have their first African-American president and the dust is settling. Come the weekend, there'll be one last set of analysis in the heavyweight papers and the comment programmes on the telly; and then we can all get on with moaning about our pissy little lives.

Well, not mine - but you know what I mean. And, if you'll excuse me, I have to let a cat in.

Well. Well, well, well.

So - my first long weekend in Glenrothes is over. I'm now on a train heading for York, and my eventual destination of Huddersfield, for a long-promised night of electoral geekery with GBS. I'm counting on a large Obama victory. Anything less will look suspiciously fixed.

So. a couple of random notes to start off with.

1) At first glance, Glenrothes seems to be a Lucky Strike free zone. This scares me, in a kind of "David Cameron might be the next PM" kind of way. By that I mean that, although I don't like it, I can't do much about it and, ultimately, I'll live.
2) Got told the worst about what to expect. Massively, completely, undersold. Great place, lovely people, marvellous family. I feel accepted. I had a LOT of fears: all based on previous experience, all unfounded.

I miss her already. I'm back tomorrow.

A prologue

There was a boy, who, for the purposes of this story, we shall call Dorothy.

Run with me on this one, OK?

Dorothy spent many years in a foreign land not unlike Kansas: abroad at home, if you like. One day, a great storm raged and his house was lifted into the air. The storm seemed to go on forever, and the Wicked Witch of the West flew round and round his uprooted home, tearing her hair out, blaming him for the weather: even though he had seen with his own eyes that the Wicked Witch had caused the storm herself.

Friends were swept up in the storm. Some were lost forever, others clung valiantly on, telling Dorothy just to hold on. One day, they would say, the storm would clear, and everything would be fine. Dorothy, however, could see no end.

Then, after the storm had raged for a full year, a Good Witch materialised from the North and guided his home to her. When he emerged, teary and exhausted, he found the Wicked Witch of the West had been crushed by the house's landing and, waiting outside, was Glinda: the Good Witch of The North.

He looked around the strange new land he found himself in and, bewildered, he asked Glinda how he was ever going to get home.

Glinda smiled a gentle smile and said with a twinkle in her mischievous eyes: "But Dorothy: you are home."

And do you know: he was.