Your head will collapse.

somone once told me, a someone who doesnt exist, that if you start writing then sooner or later you will become coherent. i dont know if thats true. i sometimes wak down the street with an intermineable chatter going through my head, virtually unnoticed by myself, and i thin that maybe i could convert this to words it would be ok bu then when i write something it tends to resemble something that you're upset you stepped in. anyway, this is an attempt to do that. it is free of revision, and correction, although only i am here to verify that. but which thats ok, because, what does it matter what you say wheny you are the only one to hear it? words become someting so important dont they? but only when they are recieved. this is something i need not be concerned about. well i was wondering wwhether the human so called race is a sociable one, and i was thinking that its not. what is it, do we think, do i think, that binds us together. language? no language separates us. we have languages that reaffirm our state lines, that reaffirm our sense of continental space. the dialects we have inherited from age old languages. we have infinitesimal variations between the same language. you say tap i say fawcett, but we both mean the thing you turn and hope for water. there is a language for the rude boy, a language for the aristocrat, a language for te man who sells you a hot dog, a language for the man who sells you a mpobile phone. theres binary language and texting language and the bad language you hear on the 171. when i walk downt eh road and come across a someone who i dont know, i at first trouble over whether i can or should or want to make eye contact. then what this eye contact means. do i now facy this individua;, do i hate them? am i startin'? do i want change? or, the least likely of all the options that confront my foe, am i nice? aM i worth knowing? what is it. why do we have people. an ant, whom i am not unlike in all but character, will just test everyone out. we don't. do we scrutinise, is that what iit is? without friends we lack connections, and without connections we lack opportunities, and without opportunities we lack hope. we are in stasis, time is a lie, so waht is hope anyhow. hey let's meet up in 100 years and have a party, what would hold us back? and there and i'll still be in a toilet cubicle because its the only safe place to finish my drink.

theres something offensive about looking up pixies lyrics- to get these moments reduced to banal symbols. where do we go from here, to deciphering them, sure, sure theres no going back to the days when you wondered what that was all about.

A coming myth tale

One tenth of a new century passes, a world warming now in

the sweeping cloth of democracy, its unequivocal legitim

acy, a mantra for capital on the airwaves, seeping into

the crevices, hiding under the tables in countries

we band together and name ‘developing’. 20

years ago, Francis Fukuyama hailed ‘the en

d of history’, the end of competing ideo

logies in the wake of a victorious libe

ral democracy, as the Berlin Wall fe

ll. Paul Virilio, come the year 200

0, contributes the end of geogr

aphy, as our hypermediated

world shrinks to the size of

a computer monitor. And

in 2010 David Cameron

comes to power and ta

kes it all to literally . . .

‘Fuck it,’ he says, ‘to hell with all the humanities.’

Myth: This time it's personal

***** 'OUTSTANDING!' - Total Theory Magazine

***** 'You'll never laugh so much!' - the Sun

Coming to a journal near you . . . (in the summer or something, maybe)

Yes, Yes, The Informal Formalities That Play Out in the Coffee House.

i enter the café, encouraged by its atmosphere that i might be able to work. within this space, this posited lounge of some other whom i will never quite know, i am a guest. i have not the instruments of procrastination that haunt me in my home. here i am freed from distraction, yet never alone—continually threatened by disturbance. why is it here, where i know not those who sit nearby, those who pass through with their awkward gestures, where i am curiously at ease? why not in my home, which i have been able to sculpt as i see fit?

upon entering i am confronted with a smile, a token or maybe not. i smile in return, and tentatively—for is one ever 100 per cent positive that their decision is the right one for that day?—order a coffee. the ballooning menu of hot beverages creates choices where really there are none; i make one and state it with a lingering doubt.

but, i am thrown! now is not the time, it's simply not the time!

'please take a seat and we'll have someone come over and take your order.'

you could not mistake the good will. the sincerity with which she spoke, the casual stretch of her arm towards the seating area. in here, so the story goes, you are to do nothing but relax—leave it to us, we'll take care of you.

an internal battle commences—it's against the nature of the humble western café dweller to drive such warm gestures into the corner of your mind which deals with doubt. here, once through the door, the contract has already begun: with the generous assumption that i have money, and will pay upon my departure, my contract includes not only coffee, but a service—i have an attendant. yet this gesture which apparently is for my benefit, constricts my ability to preside as is implied by my being posited aloft of the attendant, as the logic would suggest. am i really the one being waited on in this relationship? in my attempts to repress it, i find myself formulating a suspicion:

this café is teeming with bureaucrats.

having made the decision, my attempt to actualise the coffee had failed. i had wrongly attempted to subvert the order of things; i was put in my place, hurried through the door, towards the faces cast down examining salads, faces extracting narratives from words printed and bound, faces interlocked with more faces, smiles reflecting smiles, two dozen worlds hostile to invasion.

i weave. I sneak. i eschew eye contact. I try to ignore the perplexity arising like a mushroom cloud from the collective judgement of my audience. my sight becomes an instrument of dissection, cutting into available corners of space, measuring suitability, never hesitating in its mission, feeding information to my decision-making equipment which rejects, denounces, ridicules the offers to the bemusement of my audience, unable to continue until i have settled—'I NEED A POWER SOURCE!'

I did not scream these words out loud.

despondent, i resort to the guidance of the waiter, my attendant and friend, who tells me that 'there is a power source along the wall here. we oblige you to spend at least five pounds if you are to use it.'

the illusion of agency is threatened once again. the jovial way he slipped this new condition into the contract. my laptop has an nauseous battery, to which i sympathise; electricity is imperative. the waiter casually lists a few things on the menu, assuring me that this five pound lower limit will be surpassed naturally, in the general course of my stay. i need not even give it a thought.

yet, it was evidently necessary to bring this new stipulation to the fore.

there is something contradictory in the manner of the young gentleman. it seems, that is, it is assumed, that he is a person. he certainly looks like one. he claims to be my friend, in actions alone, defending me against the constraints imposed on my bill, whilst reinstating the need to conform to it. he is casual, yet formal; a man whom i can command, but to whom i am accountable.

i sit, amongst a medley of others, each here to achieve something, to appropriate this environment which is controlled spatially and temporally from above, where the coffee beans pile up and the cash register beeps; and, aware of the poised pencil and curious eyes, i am finally in a position to order.

le mythe de la mythe

what is the myth, if it itself is a myth?

this is a question that I hope to sponge out for the next issue of Nyx: a noctournal.

"Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact." says Roland Barthes

for barthes, myth is depoliticised speech, and as we can see here in his remarks, it amounts to a simplification of life through immediately part-prescribed messages beheld within signs. the post-ideological age is not upon us, but to what extent do we figure our ideologies to be products dependent on myth? the 60s hippie is a great example of a myth of a myth, for it is he through whom we visualise the hippie movement; it is he whom's very survival depends on the great myth of the 60s. is it not the hippie, as opposed to the anti-corporate anti-war rationale, that cartman despises so? with this in mind - to the quill!

...and other stories.

TFT-LCD, validation is in your hands.

i'm writing on the blog now.

i'm writing on the blog because other people write on their blogs and it makes me think that i should write on my blog. they are productive, so should i be.

i'm writing on the blog so that it is ok that i got up at midday and watched two movies, each lasting more than three hours, and went to bed. for breakfast i managed three items from a chocolate selection pack. i had one sandwich an hour after. later i had another sandwich. it was exactly the same sandwich. it had the same amount of pepper on it. the second time, a slice of ham was added. during these periods, the movies remained on pause. waiting.

i made a coffee once and re-read chantal mouffe for a bit with the pencil i had lost the first time round. reading without carefully applying asterisks in the margins has become unthinkable. rationalist-universalist or contextualist? mouffe wonders, and so do i. then i realised that i have work to do. real work, almost, maybe. for nyx and reallyopenuniversity, if i'm lucky and get myself thinking for more than a short selection of minutes. to this end, i made a to do list, which included 'do's' geared up to some job-related endeavours. i won't mention them for fear that you'll get them first.

then i split the to do lists in to different lists - one's related to writing, one's related to other stuff. then i highlighted some entries in red to garnish them with importance even though i selected them for this treatment randomly. the next step, if i were to be sensible, would be to further organise the to do lists.

to do:

further organise the to do lists under the following newly established categories...

-writings

-readings

-jobs

-moneys

-houses

-others

i then continued the movie at hand.

i have documented this, and have achieved a post for my blog. now i am productive.

On this day

New unemployment figures come out - at 7.9% it shows an increase by 35,000 in the 3 months leading up to October. No panic, says the government, its cool because starting next year they'll start stopping people's benefits if you don't 'take part', as employment minister Chris Grayling puts it, and get a job. And, pray, where are these jobs?

Oh yes, the private sector!

Oh come ye brethren into the ether of employment incorporated.

The hope that the private sector will one day pick up the stragglers, which they only will if they have confidence that the economy. Is a continuing and growing private investment in individuals really what we want? And if so, what kind of jobs are likely to be available from companies which are continually downsizing? In a letter in the Telegraph, 18th Oct 2010, signed by an absolute army of company executives, promises were made that “the private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector.” To name a few of these CEO signatory's companies and their respective recent layoffs we have...

BT (35,000 cut since 2008)

Boots (900 over the next 3 years)

Marks&Spencer (1,000 in Jan2009)

Carphone Warehourse (450 in 2009)

GlaxoSmithKline (4,000 in Jan2010)

Arup (20% of workforce over the past year, more to come)

Kingfisher, owner of B&Q, (3,000 since 2008, another 1,000 to come)

Whitbread, owner of Premier Inn and Costa Coffee, amongst others (600 in the past year - but not Lenny Henry, curiously enough)

Yell (1,300 since 2008)

Stats taken from CorporateWatch.org - read more here

Meanwhile, clashes in Greece. Former conservative minister Kostis Hatzidakis took a beating and much fire spread was sparked around Athens. Measures have been taken to protect businesses, at the peril of the workers, who say -

"We need to send the government a message that we will not accept measures that lead us only to poverty and unemployment," Ilias Iliopoulos, general secretary at the civil servants' union Adedy.

Curiously, overlooking views of tear gas and molotov cocktails, the chap reporting from the incident itself for BBC news stressed the anger of the Greek citizens, not the 'violent minority' who are responsible for violence in this country. Why do we have 'irresponsible violent minorities' who 'ruin peaceful protests', while the Greeks' have concerns about reforms when their anger spills into violence? Anyway, as self-appointed spokesperson for the concerned British, I extend the hand of support and solidarity to all our Greek friends in their time of struggle.

Elsewhere, I didn't do much at all.

Letter from Joan Ruddock, Lewisham MP

Thank you for your email. I was very sorry to learn of the scenes at the Council meeting. I was in parliament that evening, as usual, so I have no direct experience of what happened.

The Mayor has issued a statement which indicates that some people had planned – through social media – to use violent tactics to prevent the meeting taking place. As people were encouraged to ‘bring paint, flour and shoes to throw from the public gallery’ the Council had no option but to ask the police to maintain order.

As one of the leaders of the 1980s anti nuclear weapons movement I am a strong supporter of people’s right to demonstrate – but it must always be non-violent. People who set out to cause violence must take responsibility for it.

I am absolutely appalled at the Coalition’s cuts – both those already made and those that are planned. I make every attempt to speak out against them in parliament. I will also make my views known about how I think the cuts should be made locally (I have supported the Save the Libraries campaign).

The enemy is the Coalition not Labour – people should be venting their anger on Tories and Lib Dems not Labour politicians. Coalition plans will transfer resources to the rich – Lewisham is the 39^th most deprived borough in England. The Prime Minister’s Council West Oxfordshire is in the top 5 least deprived. London Borough of Lewisham is expecting to lose around £70million of its funding while West Oxfordshire is expecting an increase. However, there is no option for the Council of not making cuts. They have a legal duty not to spend outside their budget.

Those who condemn Labour politicians are doing exactly what the Coalition wants. The burden of decision-making is being shifted from central to local government.

With regard to higher education funding. I am shocked that the Coalition should be proposing 80% cuts to university funding and putting the burden of making up the shortfall onto students.

I know that many students from higher education institutes across London live in my constituency and I also have Goldsmiths College and part of the Trinity Laban estate in Lewisham Deptford. I am in constant contact with the institutions and students and their representatives. You may like to see the contribution I made to the debate on the 30th of November http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm101130/debtext/101130-0004.htm#10113070000100.

I couldn’t get called to make another speech and Vince Cable wouldn’t take many interventions. However I voted against the government’s proposals and will continue to oppose.

Yours sincerely

Rt Hon Joan Ruddock MP