Elementary electronics

Even if you connect no devices to a cell in a complete circuit, the cell's power will drain through inertia and the resistance of the circuit's media.

Analogue to digital

Looking at the tapes unspooled on the floor, eaten by the constant playback, rewind, stopping, tautening and slackening caused by the electrical motors, he feels sickened by the repair. Would it not be easier to switch to compact disc?

He doesn't see the flaws, the jumping, the scratching that lies in the future.

In touch

A groundswell. Everything rises up. Tremors rip through the landscape like tearaways on stolen motorcycles. Everything turns to nothing, perverting conservation of matter. Nothing turns to everything.

Standing. The earth shifts, undulating beneath my feet, knocking me off balance before I can realise it. I don't have time to steel myself before I connect with the ground below.

I connect. I immerse. My cells mix with the warm soil. A chain reaction takes place. A new beginning. A groundswell.

Stereolab - live at Shibuya Club Quattro

Ooh, it was really good. I mean, I was a bit tipsy, and perhaps trying to encourage everyone in the club to dance was a bit embarrassing but we had a lovely time. My friend Graham said it was the first time he'd pogoed in ages. (To French Disko). It just rocked out. The best pop music I've heard in a long time.

Cambridge Shoe Thrower - Follow Up

The Guardian has a story saying that Wen Jiabao has asked the Cambridge proctors to go easy on the inept shoe thrower. Read it here.

Facebook deleted and Language exchange

Strangely enough, I don't feel either a sense of loss or a sense of burden being lifted. I just wonder whether my account really, really has been deactivated.

I have a language exchange today. Quite looking forward to using Japanese again.

What is home to you? Part 3

Is it fitting in? Is that what it's all about?

I have always been a bit eccentric: not weird, I don't think; not a bit mad; slightly different. Because of this I've never really felt like I fit in anywhere.

I grew up in a small mining town in England where I was a freak: I was curious, and had a memory for inane facts and trivia and I like things that were different to other people who prefer the same glossy mass-marketed stuff that the majority of people everywhere do. I didn't fit in when my family moved to a small city, but it was less of an issue because I met other people who didn't fit in either. At university, I sort of fit in and any non-conformism was to do with alcoholism which let my tongue be a lot freer in seminars than it perhaps should have been. At work, post-university, I was often been a marginal figure because I didn't like trashy nightclubs and I was too much of a loose-cannon when drunk. When I was a primary school teacher I didn’t fit in because I was male.

Here in Tokyo I fit in. In the English-teaching community I am not a weirdo. I've met other people who listen to Stereolab (who I am going to see on Thursday) and read books other than Harry Potter novels. People like me. I'm not friends with all of them, but I understand most of them. We don't fit in, but we don't fit in together.

At least, we're in a transitional state of not fitting in. I was drinking with some people from a construction company last night and we had fun. My Japanese was good enough to handle the conversations and we had a good night. And though I'm at least five years older than the other present I didn't feel like an outsider. I had fun, but not the kind of fun that had me peering over the edge at oblivion when I was about nineteen.

Anyway, Tokyo is feeling more like home. It's still not the real thing though; it feels transitory but instead of worrying about it I'm just trying to appreciate the good things.

Part one

Part two

The Ticket that Expired

I have given up on reading William S. Burroughs' The Ticket That Exploded. Maybe I'm not clever enough. Maybe I just can't stand the repetitive talking of bollocks to get to the one very clever, thought-out point. But maybe I was right, aged seventeen, to dismiss The Soft Machine, it's predecessor, as utter crap.

It was about trying to read something different. I think I'll give my wife's copy of Pride and Prejudice a try.

Britain under nationalist spell?

I can understand that people are pissed off that major projects are being awarded to foreign companies bringing foreign workers to do jobs in Britain. There's an economic downturn and loads of people have already lost their jobs. There are strikes which are being portrayed as racist protest, which the BNP is trying to hijack (more here).

Hundreds write to the BBC to protest Carol Thatcher's sacking for referring to a tennis player as a "golliwog". Hundreds of posh Tory idiots, probably. I wonder if they protested that Mark Thatcher shouldn't be tried in Equatorial Guinea for his part in a coup. Anyway, she'll have the support of Royalists, who only just removed golliwog toys from Sandringham's souvenir shop.

These are strange days. Everything is cyclical. I'm wondering if there's going to be a hung parliament in Britain next election. The Tories just don't seem up for it like they used to be; Labour are a joke; the Lib Dems can't make headway despite having sleazy fools on both sides of them.

Facebook deletion

I haven't encountered anything as yet that has made me want to reverse my decision to delete my Facebook account. I have the email addresses of most people I'm friends with on there. Those that I don't, well, I still have time. I also don't need to know what people are eating for dinner most of the time. Unless it's antelope kidneys with balsamic vinegar and lotus root chips I'm not going to be *that* interested.

A new trend?

First there was the Bush shoe thrower in Iraq, now the Cambridge shoe thrower targets Wen Jibao, Chinese premier.

I would have preferred it if Gordon Brown got a size twelve in his mush. Not content with selling public services to big business by calling it PFI, he's cosying up to a dictatorship with an appalling record on human rights in exchange for filthy lucre so he can keep cash flow in the British economy. What next? Giving Russian exiles back to Putin to make sure the Prime Ministerial car always has a full tank?




Don't throw shoes, kids. They're not heavy enough to take down a government.

Oat biscuits

Oat biscuits
Originally uploaded by un-understand.

I'm sorry I ate all of the shortbread. I baked this in return!

I am not a target market, Facebook

Regarding this Guardian article I am going to delete my Facebook account. No, really, don't cry. It'snot such a great loss to the social media sphere.

So, if you want me, I'll be here. And I have my delicious.com account here. And flickr here. And twitter, if we must communicate by a 140-character limit.

Lo and behold, there's even email (marc at un hyphen understand dot co dot uk).

I have no will power though, so expect a post about "undeleting facebook"