see nerd) blog
2008c
companies i won’t use again: PC World
They tell me I had insufficient funds. First of all, I don’t like being lied to. Secondly, this is effectively accusing me of attempted fraud. I don’t like being accused of attempted fraud. I don’t like being accused of attempted fraud by people who are lying. I don’t like being accused of having criminal intent. I especially don’t like being accused of having criminal intent by people who are lying. But I’ve tested this on a number of occasions. It always happens. It is clearly policy. I really detest being accused of having criminal intent by people who repeatedly, and clearly deliberately, have a policy to lie and insult people who use certain banks. If their policy was based on simple unwillingness to use a particular bank, they wouldn’t say I had insufficient funds, they’d use some other formula to simply say they couldn’t accept the payment. Instead, they deliberately fail to check my bank balance, and they deliberately insult me. That attitude is unpleasant, and rude, and clearly deliberate. So I strongly suggest anyone who wants to pay excessive prices for poor quality computer equipment to go to one of their competitors. Obviously, anyone who wants to pay a sensible price for the product doesn’t go near them anyway. Why do they do this? Well, the chap who ran Dixons and PC World, until recently, is Stanley Kalms. He subscribes to nationalism, his politics have been described as rabid. To my mind, there are two forms of nationalism. The civilised form promotes “us”, the irrational form denigrates “them”. The irrational form attacks and denigrates people who know better than them, such as, by necessity, non-nationalists. The Co–op bank is associated with the socialists (I am not a socialist). I am quite convinced the inability of PC World to take Co–op cards is political, is because the people who ran PC World suffered from nationalism. I am equally convinced their refusal to be honest about it, to insult people who use the co–op, is because they suffer from irrational nationalism. Incidentally, if anyone questions my dislike of irrational nationalism, may I remind you of ETA, of Northern Ireland, of Serbia; all examples in recent years of irrational European nationalists expressing their belief that anyone who holds a different opinion, or has a different accent, should be murdered; all examples who don’t seem to have noticed a rather big and extremely nasty event that took place in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, an event of great evil caused by nationalism. 4.11.8 |
companies i won’t use again: Vodafone
Vodafone would not listen when told this. They deliberately, and without apology, destroyed the service they had sold me. It was done without warning, and with total refusal to make practical alternative arrangements (such as emailing bills). A company that behaves like that is a company that I will never use again. If you want a phone that’s reliable, you need a supplier with both reliable technology and reliable policies. That’s why you should avoid a Vodafone phone. 4.11.8 |
europe: a chapbook
But there’s nothing wrong with genuine scarcity. The paper based four sheets of A4 copies will, of course, be immensely special, and be worth every penny of the €1500 they’ll cost the wise investor. In these terrible times, times so bad that banking disasters are named after biscuits, arts are a rare safe investment. FLASH NEWS: five sheets, make that five sheets of A4, nicely folded. Four paper, one card. Signed. Worth every penny, as you know. Postage and packing, anywhere in the world, will be €4.50: I’ve got to make a small profit somewhere. 3.11.8 |
why are word processors crap
This time, though, it’s something else that’s annoying me deeply. You’d think that, after 20 years of having these miscategorised products about, they’d have got round to working out what a booklet is. It’s just a document in which you print the last and the first page on the first sheet of paper, the second and the penultimate on the next piece, and so on. It’s something that’s so blindingly obvious kids have been making them at schools for centuries. Yes, centuries! But not one of these over complicated piles of commercial rubbish has grasped this blindingly obvious concept. These products are such damn f***ing drivel. Even the free ones are crap. Here, I’ve got oodles of (legal) editions of Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, Word Pro, Open Office, and not one of these damned products can print a document as a booklet. Quite a few claim to do so, but they can’t; they get the page order entirely wrong, or don’t grasp the incredibly obvious detail that two portrait pages get printed on one landscape sheet (not one portrait sheet, Open Office). What the fuck is up with the software industry that such simple simple things are beyond them?! Jesus wept, I shouldn’t have to do this by hand. 2.11.8 |
wurm im apfel
We’ve chosen the name for Reinhard Döhl’s classic 1965 German concrete poem, apfel. Consider Dublin poetry, dem konkreten Apfel. The where is Monster Truck, 72 Francis Street. The when is 20.00 10 12 08. Hear Maurice Scully. Watch. 18.10.8 |
more french
I do seem to be quite good at bullshitting in bad French. For example, the subject last night was sport. Now, sport is a great life choice as a burrow to dig for the mildly psychopathic. Mildly psychopathic? I cannot see how anyone with any empathy for the needs of others could dedicate their lives to an activity that saves no lives, and leaves nothing for future generations. Sport has no utility. I didn’t get the chance to mention the original Olympics, and remind people the only thing to survive are the plays and the poetry. We don’t even remember the rules of the ancient sports; some archeologists even had to do a dig to find out which way the runners ran round the track. Clearly sport has no historical significance. I took my bullshit further, though, when the national question came up. Does success in sport enhance a nation’s well-being? I pointed out that, for England (remember, I’m in Ireland), even when we lose we really win. Almost all international sports originated in Great Britain. Football is English. Rugby is English. Golf is Scottish. Thus, whenever another country plays England at football, and wins, England wins too because the game itself is “philosophie anglaise”. Football is an example of the global spread of English culture. The same goes for golf and Scotland. I think I went a little too far with this; the class went silent. And I was already to do a rendition of “Football’s coming home”. I might try and move myself up a class. I was making people laugh (darts is officially a sport, but it’s really an excuse to drink). No one else did that. I don’t quite follow the teacher’s French, though, which is not a good sign. I suspect I need to get over to France for a while and immerse myself in the language. 16.10.8 |
more dutch
I’d studied at the CSO, the equivalent of the local FE, at a relatively gentle pace, in a course for all foreigners at all levels of linguistic ability. I’m now attending the only Dutch evening class in Dublin, which happens to be at Trinity. Trinity’s in the global university top 50. This course is ahead of me. I’ve got work to do. I believe I can do it. I need to retune my ears, too; Dutch Dutch with an Irish edge sounds quite different to Mechelse Flemish. My motivation is unusual. Most of the people on the course are learning the language because they’re living with a native speaker. My weak knowledge doesn’t stop me using the language in my poetry. It’s strange, but sometimes a poem wants to be written in another language. Europe only works in Flemish. With the latest, lege land, I was tuning myself to the course when the poem knocked. These poems must sound pretty dreadful to native speaker ears. But I sometimes intentionally commit a similar abuse of English. I like the effect of a language made strange. It helps freshen familiar words, give them back a little newness. Of course, in English, I can judge the effect, as much as a poet can judge the ears of a listener. 15.10.8 |
devon on hold
My poetry videocasts will continue. 5.10.8 |
the perfect podcast episode
And you know what makes it for me? I have absolutely no idea if Fry was acting, or being genuine, or even both. How can someone get so upset on something so irrelevant? Yet the concern is his profession, his lifetime passion; the rant is such a middle England way of dealing with a very English thing; and, best of all, there’s a serious point underneath. If I ever write a play, which I won’t, I’ll steal this episode. If I ever teach media, which I won’t, this would be my perfect podcast. If anyone ever asks me how to play the irate Englishman, which would be like asking Mr. Creosote how to diet, this would be my example. 2.10.8 |
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PC World, the near–monopoly UK computing superstore, have a policy of deliberately insulting customers who use certain banks. I use the Co–op in the UK. If I try and use my Co–op debit card at PC World, I am always told that I have insufficient funds. I always have sufficient funds, actually, and, according to my bank, who should know, PC World make no attempt to check.
I had a contract with Vodafone in the UK many years ago. I’d been paying it to standard terms, e.g. within 28 days of the bill being issued. I’d almost cancelled it, because I couldn’t afford it, but they persuaded me to stay, with discounts. A few months later, they spontaneously, without prior notice, changed to terms to pay within seven days. They automatically cut me off if the bill wasn’t paid within these seven days. The post office took ten days to deliver the bill. So my phone was cut off at random. I was doing some support work with a client at the time who needed immediate access to me.
As part of my reading at 
Every few months, I get deeply annoyed with those software products that call themselves Word Processors. Not one of the damn things processes words. It’s so f***ing annoying. They just don’t seem to have the concept of what a word is, despite their own self-nominated category. Don’t believe me? Then consider this: a word, first of all, is something that is said. It is sound, it is many many qualities of sound. You really disagree? Try speaking words without using sound, then. Tell me one, any one, so-called Word Processor that has any concept of sound, of this essential nature of the word. None of them do, none of them. Word Processors: yet another triumph of marketing over truth.
Myself and my fellow fenland refugee are organising small readings here in gloried Dublin. Actually, I’m hardly doing anything, but will bark in the shadow for cake.
I went along to some evening classes in French over summer, and found by the end of the four months I’d lost confidence in my ability to use what I was learning. That’s no good; a language is there to be used. So I’m keeping up the French in an evening conversation class.
I’m restarting my Dutch evening classes, even though I’m unlikely to return to a Dutch speaking country. I’d completed a year and a little in Belgium before I left for the Republic. I don’t like leaving the learning half done.
I’ve just posted devon garde’s final two videocasts. I want to see the reaction, if any, to the forthcoming album before I make more music. Without music, it’s a little difficult to make music videocasts.
Go listen to Stephen Fry’s “Compliance Defiance”, his latest
