Trip

I took a trip to Ben Lomond with friends... These ur the photies....










On the car trip there...










By yon bonny banks...










Another of those bonny banks...










Pier and hill










Sometimes you're better off back home...











We stop to spy some Heilan coos...










Another photie of them heilan coos...











Car window and landscape











Watering hole...











Another watering hole, with friend and kid...











My lunch











Kid number two bothering truck....

Ego

I have to put with Lanarkshire hot-heads barking at me on the phone. This means that after work, the last thing I want to do is communicate with the outside world. Still... my main survival mechanism is honesty. Brutal, blatant honesty. It bruises a few egos, but it usually works. Australia, however, has exploded this principle to a massive campaign against young drivers. And it's genius....

Read this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7045178.stm

It's a good idea, int'it? Don't attack the man, attack his ego.

Now onto Football fans... I've holidayed in a couple of weird places, one of which was a city in the Ukraine called Chernovtsy. This news story though highlights how little regard most football fans have for the reality of international problems. Football fans are morons, and this isn't an anti-english thing. I'm including Scots who join the Tartan army in various eastern european destinations and whichever set of supporters it is, seem surprised that they're not treated the same as if they were travelling to Falkirk. If I travel abroad (which is a rare occurance) I make sure I'm prepared and know a bit before a go over. The most football fans seem to manage to pack is the football shirt of their choice and the hope that whichever distant abroad destination they're travelling to is a bit like they're home town.

Still, funny in the ego states this week was Menzies Campbell who seemed surprised and perturbed by the fact that he was considered old. At 66. This particular hemisphere of the planet is often chastised for a lack of respect for the old. Well put it this way, respect is earned and if our pensioners don't have it, then don't look to younger generations as the source of the problem. They were the ones enacting the laws and raising the young who disrespected them. Ming was as guilty of his folly as the emperor who ordered his new clothes. He took a job and fucked it up. He underestimated people's views on his age, and failed to prove how much of a sage he was.

There's even a few in the Nationalist movement for whom I certain amount of complacency when I think of them. Ian Hamilton QC (whose blog is here) is one who has made me think. Not in a good way. For the Nationalist movement, he should be a hero. Someone who should sit at a fireplace somewhere and recount for the umpteenth time his story about the Stone of Destiny. But what I read is the ramblings of an eccentric more fitted to the BBCs Grumpy Old Men programme than someone one should respect. He seems happiest when baiting a reaction. This is something I can entirely understand, and probably HAVE done time and again, but for the life of me I'm struggling to see the point in this old relic and those like him, anymore. I don't want to read more coy defence or old age repentance, I want to hear a bit more politics and a bit more fire. I guess this is a hangover the the implosion of the Socialists and it's subsequent and interminable naval-gazing. Ian's turning into something out of Dickens or Shakespeare and not whatever he's being cast by the Nationalist movement as this week.

Dag-nab it...

Occasionally I get caught on film.

And even rarer... I have to put all photos on the interweb.

http://www.taghairmdubh.com/determination.htm

Yep... your narrator has been a-protestin' and it's been caught on camera. MY camera in fact. I didn't know other people knew how to work it...

Neurocam and Scotland

http://www.neurocam.com

If you are 'cammer... this blog post is not for you. It's for my countrymen. I'm trying to change their perceptions. Fanks.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was: "Neurocam is not..."

But before we get to that, let me take you back, way back, to Danny Wallace. Danny Wallace was an English writer and comedian. He wrote various boy's adventures with his amigo, Dave Gorman and they both invented a genre of writing that would be copied ad infinitum by lesser comedians. They would document their escapades in book form as a comedy / information / travelogue. Danny eventually wrote on his own (like Dave Gorman would) a book called "Join Me". In it, he put an ad in a newspaper saying: "Join Me" and gave an instruction (to send a passport photo) and to send their address to him. The book documents his attempt to found a "nice" cult. He did so. You can find it here: http://www.join-me.co.uk

Robin Hely, an australian artist, launched a similar project in conjunction with a bunch of people I don't know called "Neurocam" an arthouse project aimed at changing the perceptions of whoever wanted their perceptions changed. They'd use lies, damned lies, obfuscation, espionage mythos and showmanship to "Derren Brown" the general public into compliance. The world would listen, for a time, and it was all secret and mysterious and lovely.

I joined neurocam for a couple of months, and still find myself lurking on their main board, the Neuroboards. Scotland has her own Neurocam, under different circumstances and different names. We have the Stone of Destiny and Roslin Chapel. But nothing modern, and nothing so imaginative. Neurocam is... Derren Brown. It's about using showmanship and creating something from nothing.

What I'd like, is for Scotland to do something as captivating and use it to change who we are. Why? Because we find ourselves stuck inside that moment from Trainspotting where Ewan McGregor / Renton says: "It's shite being Scottish..." We seem stuck inside our ain mediocrity and this depresses me.

What I want my bloggerino's to do, is to type "Neurocam" into whatever search engine you prefer and go down the rabbit hole for a bit. End up on blogs that speak in tongues and learn to be entertained by the name "Chris Titan" or "Teigan".

Finally... think what YOU can do with this new knowledge for your brothers and sisters.

[whiteamerica]

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between" Oscar Wilde

Scotland has a strange relationship with America. On the one hand our socialist politics are entirely incompatible with their way of life, yet we lap up their movies, bands and pseudo-morality as if we were an alcoholic in an empty off license.

I can never get a handle on America. For the record, most of my favourite movies are American, but I despise almost all of its politics. I’ve friends who are Confederates and support it being broken up into its constituent parts. The rise of Microsoft and Haliburton is reprehensible to me. But the cultural contribution of the people is a great thing. “So wash you car in your X Baseball Shoes…” Yeah…

One of my favourite bands, Rage Against the Machine, have been guilty of being naïve and blurry on their beliefs. Their classic line: “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me…” repeated various times, is as vague as you’re likely to get from any cock rock band. But they combine Rap music with Rock music and quote communism and mention Carlos from Mexico. So that’s okay then.

Rap music though, is equally as a fascinating for a quick digress. This is street poetry corrupted by the iniquities of the American system. Bono can laud Martin Luther King all he likes, but the system he pontificates upon spawned Malcolm X and Cassius Clay when he refused to go to Vietnam. More recently it spawned the Washington Sniper and held court to a war of Gangster Rap musicians who decided that killing Tupac and Biggie whatever was more important than the street poetry.

But here’s my point. The declaration of Arbroath was the founding statement of America. We should, apparently, be proud of this. Scottish people were present at the signing and did this, that and the other. We provided the philosophy, yes, but that just makes us part of the blame. We provided tactics and expats for the confederates, so apparently we tried to be a part of the solution, but I guess the loss suggests the time wasn’t right. Either way we are the inheritors of our own mistakes. The Confederacy has itself to free, and we have ourselves to free. Little people in little houses with a few votes with which to free ourselves.

We are the seduced, the protagonists and the exploited. And in every Native American reservation, in every film, in every song, in every band, in every genre it spawned, in every cynical quote you’ll find on the internet, you’ll find Scotland’s influence. We’re the guilty and the victims. We’re the poodles who now bark at Iraq for the black gold. We’re the supporters of the CIA torturers of Guantanamo Bay. We’re the victims of suicide bombers. We reside in a bankrupt culture, alienated and pretentious without Embra Tattoo and Festival.

“Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.” Margaret Thatcher