Category: [Personal]

So that was the old year

One of the greatest pieces of growing up I’ve achieved was finally recognising that I don’t HAVE to “do something” just because it’s the 31st of December. I always used to feel the need to mark the occasion, mostly because I was younger and “doing something” for NYE seemed important for some reason… to which end I actually went into the city for the fireworks a couple of times, 1994 and ’97 if I recall rightly—a sign of how much younger I obviously was if I found that tolerable enough to do twice, I obviously had far more patience then—but eventually the sense of having to do something grew wearying. And going anywhere also involved the potential difficulty of getting back home again.

Eventually I kind of snapped one year when the taxi I booked to take me to the club I was looking forward to going to never showed up, and thereafter I resolved that I wasn’t leaving the house again on NYE unless I had a really fantastic place to go and someone to take me there and back. I have stuck to that since then (friends are running a club in Newtown I’m sure I’d have a nice time at, but I can’t be arsed enough). So my NYE has been writing this gibberish, watching Dinner for One for the umpteenth time on SBS, having one of those Coles microwave curries for dinner… a life of excitement, hey.

Anyway. I made it through a whole calendar year without any medical procedures being done to me other than a normal blood test. Haven’t actually been operated on as such since 2021, but last year (there’s still a few hours left in which I can call 2022 “last year”) I had an invasive-ish heart exam that meant spending several hours at POWH. Mind you, lying back and watching the ceiling move when you’re on fentanyl was surprisingly entertaining. Otherwise, I spent four years in a row (2018 to ’21) going to and from POWH to get my left leg cut open for blood clots. It’s been nice having a whole year off from that, though I suppose I should actually go and get scanned again to make sure it’s still OK and not going to kill me… But yeah, I suppose the highlight of 2023 really was not doing something rather than something I did. Perhaps in 2024 we can change that…

Why don’t we end the year as I started it? The first proper post I made after the introductory one was We Rate Dogs’ Dogs of 2022 video, and I think the 2023 version seems like a good note on which to end things for 2023. Good boys and girls all.

The state of the blog

So, back to that Simon Reynolds article I mentioned in passing the other day…

The blogging circuit I joined was only one corner of an ever-growing blogosphere. Even within music, my blog’s primary focus, there was a whole other – and larger – network of MP3 blogs. Still, my particular neighbourhood was bustling all through the 2000s. Out of its fractious ferment emerged cult figures such as K-punk, aka Mark Fisher, one of the most widely read and revered leftwing thinkers of our time, and the prolific cultural critic and author Owen Hatherley. Then there were those like me, who fit a different archetype: already a professional writer but someone who relished the freedom of style and tone offered by blogging.
Today, there are still plenty of active music blogs I enjoy reading. But what’s changed – what’s gone – is inter-blog communication. The argumentative back and forth, the pass-the-baton discussions that rippled across the scene, the spats and the feuds – these are things of the past. If community persists, it’s on the level of any individual blog’s comment box. I prize the unusual perspectives and weird erudition of my regular commenters, while wondering why so few of them operate their own blogs.

I found this the most interesting point he raises in the article. That conversation that used to keep the blogosphere going 20 years ago—and yes it is a bit disconcerting to realise it was that long ago, and I was part of that scene myself with the legendary in its own lunchtime Hot Buttered Death—doesn’t seem to be there now in whatever remains of that blogosphere (I think Youtube is where that sort of community has moved). I, of course, don’t do anything to encourage conversation here cos my own comments section is resolutely shut and no one seems willing to spend time on an email… I don’t exactly do anything to advertise this place’s existence so I was never overwhelmed with commenters anyway, I think I’ve had precisely one real commenter and some trolls, some of which were using the same IP and I think I know who that was (HI JAMES if you’re still reading and it was indeed you). I mean, they were never going to get posted anyway cos I had all comments set to be moderated first, but why waste my time if that was all I was getting anyway? May as well just disable the fucking things and be done with it.

Anyway, Reynolds also says he’s not actually bothered by this anyway, and would still be blogging even if no one were reading. This is much like myself, in that I’m doing this while hardly anyone is reading… I mean, look at my recent visitor stats:

I’m not exactly a hub of activity for other people, am I? Which is fine, it doesn’t really bother me, cos this is for my own interest and my own record more than anything. But am I writing about the things I want to write about? Reynolds again:

…one of the great things about blogging, for a professional journalist, is that you can write about topics that aren’t topical. You are unshackled from schedules. An old record or TV programme you’ve stumbled on, or simply remembered, is fair game.

And this is the thing: I find myself having written a lot of stuff here that is immediately topical, political stuff, Oolong’s increasing derangement, whatever the fuck’s happening in Ukraine, vanishing subs, kings getting crowned, nuclear material going missing, etc… and to be sure some of this is kind of important (or at least sufficiently amusing or irritating) stuff worth discussing… but it’s not really what I envisaged this blog being. As of now there’s 594 posts on here and nearly 140 of those are tagged “politics”. That’s nearly a quarter of all the posts on here. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure what I wanted this blog to be—I think I envisaged something more arts-based a la John Coulthart’s blog—but I don’t think it was a repository of political discourse.

And, to be even more honest, the fact that it’s not quite turned out as I’d thought it would is largely down to me. It’s because I’m hardly reading anything, hardly watching anything, and definitely not creating anything. I’m not exactly going many places and photographing things, and in any case all I have is my phone camera which leaves an awful lot to be desired. I don’t even know if it’s worth investing in a proper new camera or not. So I’m a bit hamstrung on the visual front, and even more so on the literary front. All quiet on the musical front, too. (Or maybe this is my creative outlet?)

This is a general slump I’m in, and I know I’ve let myself get into it, and at least some of why that is. I’m in a Youtube rut, I’m watching a stupid amount of that instead of the stupid number of films and TV shows I’ve accrued (though my burnout on film and TV had been going on for years before YT became such a centre of gravity for me), to say nothing of the ludicrous number of books I’ve acquired. I don’t do new year’s resolutions, but this is something I have to make myself rectify in 2024. I’ve already observed elsewhere how I’m trying to cut back on the political content, though that’s going to be hard in 2024 what with a certain election coming up in November and what will no doubt be the endless bullshit surrounding that for months beforehand… still, the effort has to be made.

And it’s not that I’m not happy with the blog in general, I’m actually quite pleased with it and I’m having fun with it. But I am undeniably in a kind of rut and I have to do something to pull myself out of it. I need to start reading more and watching more. And to start writing more of the stuff I intended to write more of.

Doctor Who and the Davros Discourse

So not all Doctor Who fans who were looking forward to the return of Russell T. Davies as the showrunner are thrilled by his first effort:

Yeah, all-walking all-talking all-dancing all-singing Davros (OK, maybe not the singing and dancing) in the new Doctor Who Children in Need special has really got on some people’s tits. Because I’m not a complete idiot, I understand why; able-bodied Davros is quite a change for that character, who we’ve never seen like this before (except for that episode with child Davros). The episode itself is basically a comedy sketch (despite RTD’s puzzling insistence on Instagram that it isn’t) where Fourteen arrives at Skaro while Davros is still developing his Mark 3 Travel Machine, which has a notable difference in design that the Doctor fiddles with. It’s kind of adorable even as it screws with canon in a self-aware way that could’ve been irritating were it less funny.

Now, because I understand why people are worked up over the depiction of Davros before whatever turned him into Michael Wisher in “Genesis of the Daleks” happened, I also understand RTD’s rationalisation for same:

Discussing the new-look Davros, Russell T Davies tells Doctor Who Unleashed that it was a conscious decision to move away from some outdated cultural stereotypes. Discussing the Dalek creator’s problematic legacy, RTD reflected on his discomfort about continuing to play into the trope of the “wheelchair-using, disabled, disfigured monster.” Of course, the appeal of the original 1970s Davros design was the iconic image of a half-man, half-Dalek which became as instantly recognizable as his creations. Unintentional though it was, the image of a scarred and hateful scientist and his Dalek wheelchair does play into this outdated and harmful trope.

And some of the commentary has been perfectly positive:

Of course, listening to disabled voices means acknowledging that disabled people aren’t a monolith and, as brother Ian demonstrates above, not all of us agree with Davies on this one… indeed, I had a squiz at the comments of the Youtube video of him saying this stuff and yeah, lots of people not really into it, with asking the fairly pertinent question of whether this ultimately just amounts to disability erasure. Personally, I’m not sure where I myself stand on all of this; not just because the subject is complicated—rather more so than the general discourse seems to think—but so is how I in particular relate to me being disabled.

Because I acquired my disability; I wasn’t actually born with this less than fully functional carcass… and I’ve never been entirely able to shake the suspicion that it’s not a “proper” disability somehow. That I’m a second-class cripple or something. I think the fact that I’m not in a wheelchair (though I expect to end up in one eventually) adds to that. I can’t remember exactly where or when, but I think it was in the Guardian that once I read an article that was obviously well-meaning about disability, but something about it definitely made me feel… kind of lesser as someone with an acquired disability rather than having been born with one. Probably it was just me, I’m sure that whoever wrote it didn’t mean it that way, but, well, that’s how I’ve seen myself ever since.

EDIT: I later saw this post on Bluesky regarding Ian Levine losing his shit above:

And while I entirely understand the point being made, in that I also have a different experience of disability to someone born with one, it doesn’t do anything to help my sense that my different experience is also a lesser one.

Accordingly, I find myself a bit… mixed about the Davros thing. I never actually saw him as contributing to the “disabled evil man” trope… but then again when I first saw him in “Genesis of the Daleks” in 1986 I wasn’t disabled myself, and I don’t think I even knew that it was a trope. (Or what a trope was, for that matter.) At any rate, I don’t think I ever saw Davros being in his Mark 3 Travel Machine as the thing that made him evil as such. I still don’t. That may just be me. I don’t really know. I would be curious to know what if any advice from disabled people Davies took before doing this.

I do want to note one thing I’m not seeing many if any people bring up in relation to all of this, which is that the show has kind of done this before. Back in the dim dark past of 1989, in “The Curse of Fenric”, one of the main secondary characters was Dr. Judson, the man running the Ultima machine from his wheelchair… until he gets taken over by the spirit of Fenric and can suddenly walk again. I don’t recall seeing any comparable reaction to this at the time, though admittedly I wasn’t really paying attention either; in 1989/90 there was no social media and people had to spew their venom forth in actual print in Doctor Who Bulletin or something, which I think I’d finally got sick of and stopped reading around then.

And probably no one cared, cos Judson wasn’t exactly an iconic Who villain on the order of Davros. But I do wonder what the people going off now think about that older episode. Especially with what we also know now about how Ian Briggs modelled Judson on Alan Turing and wanted him and the military commander in the story to both be gay and have had a past with each other, but the BBC weren’t having that in their on-its-last-legs SF series in 1989. How do we all feel about that, I wonder…

But the ultimate problem with the episode is that Davros should never have been brought back in the first place in the original series, as he was in 1979. With all due respect to messrs Gooderson Molloy & Bleach, I’ve always thought he should’ve been a one-and-done in “Genesis”. And for all that I enjoyed the episode; I thought having Julian Bleach play Davros out of the chair rather than in it was a really interesting idea (and he still looks like Davros somehow even without the mask and makeup), and the general comedic angle of it all was well done (Nicholas Briggs was spot on as the voice of Nyder, too). Maybe this makes me a Bad Disabled Person. Then again, I’ve never been much of a good one. CRIPPLE PUNK WHOO!

Anyway, as a closing thought, suffice to say I find this a bit over the top:

I know this is from Ian Levine’s FB group and I don’t think he started this, but I’m sure he’s all in favour of it. If it stops him making “Davros in Distress”, I’ll take it too…

49

Boo!

Hi, it’s me, birthday boy. On Friday the 15th of November 1974, at approximately quarter past five in the afternoon, your humble scribe popped into existence, and I don’t suppose I was terribly impressed about this situation. And somehow I’m still here 49 years later. Every time another birthday has rolled around since The Cerebro-Vascular Accident of June 9 2009, I find myself hopefully confused as to how I’ve made it through another year… and the longer I persist, the more confused I am about how and why. I was kind of impressed at making it to 35, having had that stroke at 34, that was big enough… and then the birthdays kept racking up, I made it through my late 30s, to 40, to my early 40s, mid-40s, into my late 40s and now on the downhill slide to my half century. I don’t understand it. Especially cos I don’t think I look too bad for nearly half a century, hairline’s not what it used to be but at least it’s still its natural colour, the white bits are generally limited to the beard, and the skin’s not too bad considering I do nothing to take care of it, or indeed of myself generally. Anyway, confused or not, here I still am.

Hmmm… unlikely at best

This, frankly, has always struck me as kind of bullshit. I mean, I know the things that make me weird—you may have seen and been confused by some of them on here—and I can’t blame all of them on damage from the stroke cos some of them go back much further than that, and I don’t see any way of translating those into positives…

Not everything is temporary

Someone posted this interesting piece on Masto today, and I’ve been pondering it… and I’m still not sure what I make of it. Basically our author did himself an injury while on holiday in June, and he’s still recovering from that, but in the meantime he’s been pondering something from an accessibility course he’s been reading that he writes about here:

1 in 5 people currently have a disability. 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime. Quote from Cindy Li, “We’re all just temporarily abled.”

There’s certainly some truth in that quote, in that shit will happen to all of us at some point that, frankly, gets in the way of us being able to live normally. But I have a bit of an issue with it, in that we may indeed all be temporarily abled but the converse isn’t true. We are not all temporarily disabled; some of us get abled again. No harm to Jim Nielsen, who does at least seem to be on the mend and has found the experience an educational one… good luck to him on getting back to his old ability. Speaking as someone who’s never going to do that, I just find something irritating about that quote…

Disability Pride Month

It’s been Disability Pride Month all month, and I’ve said nothing about it cos, frankly, I don’t know what to say about it. But I think this video nails at least some of my issues about it (you should also watch it because Jo uses a microphone attached to her prosthetic foot in this video which I think is fucking MARVELLOUS), particularly the use of the word “pride” in a context like this. Cos I know it’s not about literal pride in being disabled as such, it’s like not being ashamed of being disabled. I’ve just always found the use of the word “pride” in this sort of way to be… I don’t know what, exactly, but off-putting. It’s using a word to indicate you are not the opposite of that word rather than that you are that word, they’re not the same thing. “I’m not this thing!” That’s nice, good for me… what am I supposed to be in a positive way, then?

Anyway, Jo also brings up the idea of being “differently abled” and yeah, FUCK THAT TO HELL. I am able to feel pain (physical and mental) I might not otherwise experience if I weren’t disabled, that’s as far as THAT goes. I am able to stumble in a way that I couldn’t before. I am able to only walk rather than run as well. Bah. This is why I’ve always been enamoured of the cripple punk movement since I first discovered it (yes, something good and useful did come from Tumblr! Unimaginable), there’s none of that bullshit and it’s actively opposed to that “inspiration” Jo also talks about, i.e. the pressure she feels as someone who’s a public figure in the disabled community to put a brave face on things all the time. And I’m not a public figure of any sort, but even I feel that sometimes. I kind of like having cripple punk there as a corrective to that. More useful for me than disability pride.