Author: christophernosnibor

Writer, ranter, purveyor of postmodern fiction; 50% of the Clinicality Press editorial team, editor at Aural Aggravation, contributing editor at Paraphilia Magazine, and music reviewer for Whisperin' and Hollerin' and Shout4Music. Sleep is for wimps.

In the news: Rowling THE PLAGIARIST and there’s no place to hide!

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As a child I thought that the news was boring, but I’m a fairly keen observer of current affairs these days, which means I’ve grown old and boring or have come to realise how the stories in the news have a bearing on my own life. It’s not always the big headlines that are the most relevant or interesting to me – in fact, the opposite is true, and more often than not the real news is buried beneath the smokescreen that passes as news much of the time. In the past few days, I’ve uncovered a couple of particularly intriguing stories.

The first concerned me greatly as a blogger, a part-time corporate whore and a full-time fervent anti-corporate ranter who believes strongly in free speech and the individuals’ rights to privacy (something I’ve written on variously in the past in a number of different places so shan’t go over the same ground again here). Now, I’m not so blinkered in my anti-corporate / smash the system stance that I think employees have the right to disclose information that could compromise national security or would offer the possibility of insider dealing or other such illicit activity, and can appreciate that certain acts can constitute an abuse of power or position. Other than that, though, I say it’s open season.

The public has a right to know what (mal)practices go on and how customer or taxpayer money is spent. And so on.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/16/20090617/ttc-bloggers-have-no-right-to-privacy-sa-6315470.html

So I’m rather pro-mole, and have posted a few articles that might not go down too well in certain quarters. But while ‘exposing’ overseas sweatshops and promoting fair trade is considered positive, speaking out against the erosion of workers rights at home is viewed as bad form in the days of the minimum wage. We’re supposed to be grateful for our statutory sick pay and not mind increasingly shit conditions, discrimination and our employees checking out our activities on Facebook and using them against us in the workplace.

Blogging, then, is a public, not a private pursuit in the eyes of the law, so publish and suffer the consequences. I can of course see where they’re coming from. But is posting a blog really all that different to talking in the pub? You may be seated around a table with a bunch of mates beefing about what a cunt the boss is, without realising that some members of senior management are at the next table (probably beefing about what a cunt his boss, or your boss is). Can such an eavesdrop be used against you? Thankfully not, at least not officially. But as in situations where the interviewer tells the black guy, the guy with the tattoos or the guy in the wheelchair that he’s not being offered the job because another guy with identical credentials or a girl with similar credentials and a big rack gave a better interview, there are ways round what’s strictly legal that make discrimination impossible to prove.

As such, a blog may be posted for an intended audience, but one accepts that there is a risk that unintended audience may also find it, which is why privacy settings exist and why many people write pseudonymously. That the safety of anonymous blogging has been removed by law is a concern because it represents a further erosion of privacy. So who’s being protected by such precedents? Not the individual, that’s for sure… what’snext? Monitoring of email? Cameras watching us at every turn? A DNA database? Oh yeah…

The other article that caught my eye relates to a lawsuit being filed against JK Rowling and her publishers, Bloomsbury.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090615/media_nm/us_britain_potter_plagiarism

Now, I’m not exactly entirely opposed to plagiarism, at least in certain (theoretical) contexts, and I think our litigious culture has gone beyond compensating injustices and has become a way of life for many. I strongly believe that claiming exclusive ownership of something as vague as an idea is iffy at best. I’m also of the opinion that there are only a finite number of plots when reduced to the most fundamental of fundamentals, and that no-one can really claim the ownership of words.

But I’m no fan of Rowling either. I’ll admit that I have managed to not read ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,’ and I’ve certainly not read ‘The Adventures of Willy the Wizard,’ so cannot comment on the alleged similarities.  Of course, very few people have read or even heard of the former, and this is why it’s an interesting case.

It could be that the late Adrian Jacobs’ son is simply after a spot of fame and out to make something from his father’s book when his father failed to do so. Whatever, I consider it unlikely that they’ll win the case, simply because it would be hard for an average Joe to be able to beat the battalion of top-flight lawyers Rowling and Bloomsbury will be able to draft in. To represent them, and moreover, proving that Rowling had any knowledge of Jacobs’ obscure text would be nigh on impossible. But it’s the relative obscurity of ‘Willy the Wizard, ’ even more than the connection between the two writers in the form of agent Christopher Little that makes me wonder if there might actually be something to the Jacobs estate’s claim. After all, if you’re stuck for ideas and running out of time to produce something and the pressure’s mounting, you’re not going to turn to a well-known source for inspiration are you?

Sounds Like… # 1 in a very occasional series (when I can be bothered)

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Ok so I’m something of a trainspotter when it comes to music I like. Perhaps not as anoraky at some who can tell you that the guitar fades out 2 seconds earlier on one version of a song on which the drum also pan slightly differently during the fill at the end of the middle eight, but pretty nerdy nevertheless. I don’t see any shame in this, and sometimes my ability to retain large quantities of apparently useless information can come in handy. I’m not too shabby in the music round of pub quizzes, for example.

Anyway, while I accept that certain chord sequences are common simply because they are (how many songs can you think of that use the same three chord descending sequence that’s the main riff on the Stooges track ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ for example?), some songs bear more than a passing resemblance to others that came before, and it’s unlikely to be entirely coincidental.

Try playing ‘Mrs Jones’ from the first Hole album alongside Bauhaus’ ‘Dark Entries’ and tell me honestly you don’t think the former appropriates in any way from the latter.

Anyway, one soundalike that’s long gnawed at me is the bassline to ‘Blah, Blah, Blah’ by Hüsker Dü, which is to all intents and purposes identical to that of ‘The Damage Done’ by The Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters single was released in 1980, two years before Mr Mould and co. recorded the tracks for ‘Everything Falls Apart,’ which was released January ‘83. Obviously, I’m not about to go on a big rant about plagiarism or anything, I’m just putting the observation regarding their similarity out there…


Amazon Adenture – Up the Creak with a Borrowed Paddle

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One of the reasons I like to be closely involved with the publication of my work is that I like the degree of control it affords me, over so many of the details I consider important. The design, the marketing, and perhaps most importantly, what actually goes out are all things I like to keep a close eye on. And if there are any shortcomings in any of these, I’ve no-one to blame but myself – which means I’m not going to fall out with anyone over a bad job, etc., etc., provided I’m willing and able to accept my own limitations.

Sometimes, however, it’s good to relinquish some of that control. Sometimes, things happen that are beyond my control, without my intervention. This is why when Lulu, who I use for all of my PoD requirements, notified me that THE PLAGIARIST had been selected for a pilot involving Amazon marketplace, I decided to let it run, rather than opting out. And I’m glad I did. UK sales via Amazon.co.uk are actually up, after a quiet spell and after a period where I’ve not really been promoting the book.

I was similarly surprised today to find that someone’s added a second entry for Bad Houses over on Amazon.com, as well as there now being a listing for the hardback edition of THE PLAGIARIST. This is great, as Clinicality and I jointly agreed not to obtain an ISBN for this instead deciding to focus finance and energy on the mainstream ‘mass-market’ paperback a few months later.

Perhaps most remarkably, C.N.N. can now also be purchased as ‘New and Used’ on Amazon.com. This was entirely self-published, and again, I didn’t see it as a work that warranted an ISBN, and without an ISBN, you can’t get your book listed anywhere, and this includes Amazon. And now it’s here without my having to fork out. Great! Given that promotion for C.N.N. was minimal, sales never really took of, and I had been considering pulling the publication entirely. But now I think I shall leave it, at least for the time being, and see what happens.

Conservative Party Goes Green for EU Election Campaign

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I’ve heard it claimed a number of times now, that the ‘new’ Conservative Party is a greener party. And David Cameron on a bicycle certainly presents a more environmentally-friendly image than, say, John ‘Two Jags’ Prescott (hmm, where is he, now?), and that fat bastard of a PM who clearly thinks that exercise is dialling the number for a pizza to be delivered.

And so it was, that the other day I received a leaflet from the Conservatives telling me why I should vote for them in the forthcoming EU elections. There’s been surprisingly little campaign literature through my letter box in the run-up to this election: one from the Greens, two from UKIP, and most recently this. I was rather disturbed by the fact that it was addressed to me. personally: full name, including middle initial. Now, I’m on the electoral register, but then so is my wife, and this was addressed solely to me. I hope it goes without saying that I’ve never voted Conservative, and I’ve never given these fuckers my details. So how did they get them, and why are they writing to me? Well, apart from because they want my vote, that is….

On the front of this leaflet is the slogan ‘Vote for Change.’ Now, I’m all for change. Which is why I’m not voting Conservative. Given that New Labour proved to be, in effect, the Old Tories, why would I want the so-called ‘New’ Tories (who very much resemble Labour circa 1997) to be able to decide what goes on? But there was something else that troubled me: that slogan seemed oddly familiar, and a strange sense of déjà vu began to creep over me.

Because I’m curious, and a compulsive reader, I had a look inside the leaflet, which contained the usual bollocks about how shit the other parties are and why the party behind the leaflet in your hand is the only one that will actually do anything and that wants to act in your interests. That’s your interests as in mine, apparently. Yeah, right.

Most strikingly, the leaflet’s interior reiterated the ‘change’ angle, this time with a slightly different slogan: ‘It’s time for change.’ Boom! Yes, the Conservative Party are using Barack Obama’s election campaign slogan. Did they think no-one would notice? Personally, I find it rather an affront to assume that voters – like me – have such short memories, for a start. And the alignment with Obama… well, it’s a bit rich. Britain may be experiencing some dark times, and while our current government have done a fine job of screwing things up, one has to remember the legacy they inherited in the first place. Still, despite the leaflet not being printed on recycled paper, I am now nevertheless convinced that the Conservatives are committed to recycling – other people’s campaign slogans, if nothing else.

It’s hardly surprising that I, like many others, am disaffected where politics is concerned. All the parties are much of a muchness, and they’re all fundamentally crap. So while I’m still deciding how best to cast my vote, one thing’s for certain, and that’s that I will be voting, if only to keep the BNP from gaining ground. Because apathy can be dangerous indeed.

Manic Street Preachers in Cover Controversy… or Censorship?

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I was rather astonished to read that the UK’s leading supermarket chains, Asda, Morrison’s, Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s have ‘banned’ the new Manic Street Preachers album on account of it’s ‘inappropriate’ artwork.

http://new.uk.music.yahoo.com/blogs/snapcrackleandpop/8314/manic-street-preachers-banned/

Well, ok, so further reading reveals that they haven’t actually banned it (as Kerrang reported, and supported with a quote from bassist Nicky Wire “Supermarkets won’t accept the album cover, which I am really startled at. You can have the Pussycat Dolls poledancing, but you can’t have our album cover.”) and aren’t refusing to stock it. They’re simply refusing to carry its original artwork, and will instead display the CD in a plain slipcase.
‘Journal for Plague Lovers’ features a painting by Jenny Saville of a boy, who may (or may not, depending on your interpretation) have a bloodied face. Whether or not I think it’s a ‘good’ painting isn’t the point. But does the fact it doesn’t shock me in any way make me desensitized?

I can’t help but agree with the band’s bewilderment at the decision, and the point made by James Dean Bradfield: “You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out”

While the Guardian ran a music blog by Jonathan Jones that contended that this ‘raises the interesting possibility that hand-made, painterly images now have more power to shock than conceptual artworks’ (and he may have a point), I would also say that it reinforces the depressing – rather than interesting – possibility that the world’s gone mad and is riddled with hypocrisy.

To unpack this a little, the supermarkets in question aren’t making any kind of judgement regarding the contents of the CD. Fair enough, it’s certainly innocuous and harmless enough compared to the wall-to-wall misogyny and glorifications of violence that proliferate across many of the rap albums in the charts, but then, by the same token, if the problem with the cover is that it’s thought-provoking and hints at darker aspects of life, then surely the album should be subject to the same kind of scrutiny. But that, of course, would require some actual interrogation, rather than an immediate and not very rational knee-jerk reaction that surrounds anything to do with children, the likes of which saw Chris Morris’ truly brilliant ‘Brasseye’ and Channel 4 subject to a mass of moral outrage for daring to parody a subject as grave as paedophilia. And, more saliently, I believe, to refuse to stock an album that’s guaranteed to be a top 10 hit and probable number 1 on the week of release won’t send a message to anyone and will simply mean that the supermarkets won’t be getting a cut of the sales profits. And that would never do: the shareholders would have a fit. I daresay the record company might have something to say too. As it stands, however, the controversy is more likely than not to boost sales, for all sorts of reasons.

Ironically, the supermarkets that are, by their actions, giving the band some free promotion (there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? Just ask Jonathon Ross: a furore, a few weeks of vilification and a three-months suspension and a BAFTA at the end of it all) are the kind of corporate giants that the Manics railed against at the start of their career, back when they were full of bile and were all about political sloganeering against the system rather than being a part of it.

Are these supermarket chains guilty of uneven censorship, or simply reactionary hypersensitivity in a climate already rife with moral indignation over the most trivial of things? Either way, the end result is the same, and the latter leads to censorship however you look at it. It’s a slippery slope, alright, and people need to speak up and to take action. Because if you tolerate this, your children will be next….

Holy Cow! Failed Attempts to Escape a World Gone Mad

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I think it’s pretty well-established that I’m a writer by compulsion. And as a writer, I like to try to push myself from time to time. And so I had intended to try something different, for me, at least, and keep some kind of journal of the last couple of weeks, during which I’ve been out and about and on the road and home only very little. It’s something I’d attempted the last time I came to Stirling a couple of years ago, but ground to a halt after penning my observations of the four-hour train journey and recording a rainbow arching over town on my arrival in simultaneous sunshine and rain.

This time I failed even more miserably. The trouble is, it’s hard to write when you’re actually out and about and living life and gaining the experiences to write about. Rather a catch-22, in short, and introspection can get to be a real drag after a while.

The first weekend of my time away was spent on a 40-mile walk in the Peak District on a variation on the Peakland Piss-Up, detouring via Ashbourne. I generally find such walking expeditions are the perfect way – often the only way – I can clear my terminally clouded mind. Alas, it wasn’t to be, and instead I encountered the first of several examples of social insanity I witnessed over the time.

A small scenic market town, I was shocked by just how chavvy the place is. I mean positively crawling with scabbers on a Saturday night. My feet were killing me and I was ready to drop, but not having a nightclub, Ashbourne’s pubs are the main entertainment, and all seem to put on either live music, karaoke or a disco until the small hours. Not cool when your room is directly above a bar with the worst DJ in the world cranking out chart dance pap. I was reminded precisely why Basshunter’s ‘Pretty Green Eyes’ is the singular most depressing song of the last five years, while The Guru Josh project shook my floor twice (yes, twice!). That anyone could actually consider this a good night out baffles the crap outta me.

I landed in York barely able to work having sustained the nastiest ugliest blisters I can recall: they would have probably been worse but for the fact I had run out of foot surface on which to put blisters by the end of the second of the three days. I put it down to the unseasonably warm weather. Alas, the walking was impediment to any form of writing, and I only just managed to note what beers each of the dozen pubs we called at served for the benefit of my father who devised the walk with a friend of his some years ago.

Still hobbling, I headed off to Sheffield to lead a pair of back-to-back undergraduate seminars on John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets, which pleasingly managed to prompt some quite lively discussion. True to form, I managed to squeeze in an explanation of Marvell’s ‘quaint’ pun in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ much to the shock of a few of my female students, and pour scorn on one upstart who suggested that Donne’s poetry wasn’t relevant in any sense to a contemporary reader.

One day enduring the corporate grind and I was off again, this time north of the border. I’ve attended conferences in Stirling before and enjoyed the vibe, as well as the town itself, despite some very strange experiences with drunken Scots. Arriving on Thursday evening, I was pleased to discover my (very pleasant) B&B, the Auchyle Guest House sits just five minutes on foot from the Settle Inn, Stirling’s ‘auldest’ bar, and the one that most resembles what I recognise as a proper pub. Under new management, it’s not got the range of beers it had two years ago, but the Skye brewery’s Red Cullin at £2.50 a pint was more than adequate.

Friday morning I realize that for the first time in years, I’ve left the house without a notebook, so head into town and swing by WH Smith. £1.99 for a spiral-bound reporter’s pad is fucking extortion, but outside I spy a poster for a gig. I’ve heard of the headliners, Maybeshewill, and quite liked their contribution to the split 12” they did with Her Name is Calla last year. And it was that night! What are the chances?

So, evening’s entertainment sorted, I headed to the university, listened to a lot of very interesting papers (and a few less enthralling), and on the way between buildings en route to the cheese and wine reception (where there was no cheese, much to my dismay), got chatting to a couple of really interesting guy, whom I subsequently discovered was John Lavagnino, the following morning’s plenary speaker, who’s title and abstract had appealed when I first saw the conference schedule. Another chap called Ben who was also cool joined us, and we pondered the hazards of blogging – particularly when one’s blog doesn’t sit too snugly with one’s professional life.

After a couple of plastic cups of red supermarket wine, I made my excuses and bussed back from the university, out at Bridge of Allen, to my B&B near the old town. A quick change of shirt and then back out to the town centre. I arrived a little earlier than planned, so called into No. 2 Baker Street for a swift pint before heading to the Tolbooth, a cracking little venue where I saw four decent bands for £6 and scribbled some notes for the review I would later write.

Back at the conference the next day, I do my best to mingle, which really doesn’t come naturally to me, but I think I succeed in not making too much of a twat of myself to too many people as I jabber on about print on demand publishing and how poor the coffee is. There’s a really strong panel on writing and publishing in the ‘net age that my paper would have fitted well on before it’s my turn. I’m aware of just how many people have gone home already, and competing against two other strong panels, have to present to the smallest crowd of my life.

Afterwards, I go and speak to the guy who gave a fantastic paper on Mark Z. Danielewski and the physicality of books, only to be interrupted by some girl who wants him to contribute to an anthology she’s planning. Which really makes my day. I can’t help but feel that my paper might’ve gone down quite well if anyone had actually heard it, but hey. In a parallel world, there’s a huge audience, it’s hailed as a remarkable work and I’m tripping over people wanting to publish and work with me.

I return to the B&B in a state of bewildered deflation, then head out for a few pints and read the ‘November’ chapter of Kill Your Friends by John Niven, which I picked up in Oxfam about three months ago and has been keeping me amused while in transit since I left the house on Thursday. Then I return to the B&B, finish the book, watch CSI and call it a night.

The following morning I treat myself to a lie-in, despite waking around 5am, check out and get an earlier coach (all trains cancelled due to engineering work) to Edinburgh. A couple of hours there before my train back to York is time enough to sink a pint and write the first section of this piece in the World’s End on the Royal Mile and call into the ever-brilliant Avalanche records on Cockburn Street.

On my wanders round Edinburgh, I see the strangest and most disconcerting sights of the fortnight – a woman wearing a face-mask like it’s Mexico city, and a table set out in the street offering passers-by a ‘free stress test.’ the trestle is covered in copies of books by L. Ron Hubbard, primarily Dianetics, which has to be an even weightier tome than Rowling’s last Potter installment. And people are taking this test! Sitting there, clutching the ‘cans’ that connect the subject to the e-meter and being asked by the robotic, Stepfordian girls running the stall why they think they react in such a way to this and that. Now, god-botherers and ‘gouranga’ merchants are bad enough, but you know things are seriously fucked when the Scientologists – young ones at that – take to the streets and insidiously play on the stressed-out mode of living we are surely all experiencing most acutely in the techno-age and in the middle of a recession as a way of peddling their warped (not to mention money-taking) cult to unsuspecting buffoons, most of whom won’t have a clue who Hubbard is. This actually served to increase my level of stress, so I walked on by as quickly as I could.

Generally speaking, I find that travelling tires me incredibly. Perhaps it’s because I’m one of those people who’s incapable of switching off, and consequently finds themselves inundated with new information that needs to be processed. But more than ever, I find that there’s weirdness wherever you look, and the idea of taking a trip to escape the madness is as absurd as life itself.

The weirdness didn’t even stop there: heading on to Sheffield the following morning to lead a couple more seminars with my second-year undergraduates who clearly don’t give a fuck, the train lurched and then began shuddering wildly. There was a scraping sound as though a tree was stuck beneath the carriage, and dust, stones and all sorts came flying past the window until it finally ground to a halt. People were shaken, unsure if we’d even remained on the rails. Livestock on the track. Now deadstock, exploded over the front and down the sides and pulped underneath a national Express Inter-city. Needless to say I was late for my first seminar, but at least I made it. Who would’ve believed that by was of an excuse? Yes, truth really is stranger than fiction.

It’s good to be back.

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk .

Spreading the Virus: World Domination via a Circuitous Route

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I know it goes against all the rules of promotion to openly admit when a release hasn’t exactly been flying off the shelves, and that the way to generate buzz is to spread the word that the initial run has almost sold out and that those who’ve been hanging back need to buy now or miss out, or, worse still, be derided by their peers for living in a cultural vacuum. But I can’t be the only contrary consumer who reacts negatively to such hyp, and will automatically give up hope of obtaining a copy and claim that my avoidance of the latest trend is a mark of protest and a sign of virtue. Anyway, I’ve still got a fair pile of copies of ‘Lust for Death’ sitting here in the office (which is quite an achievement considering that there were only 25 to begin with). Pah, we’re in the middle of a global financial meltdown and I’m not the world’s most commercial writer.

I’ve written a fair few blogs in the past – and have a fair few more articles in the pipeline – that reflect my obsession with the economics of art in the 21st century. Without retreading old ground (or spoiling the surprise concerning the contents of the future pieces on the subject), my basic argument is that it’s nigh on impossible to make a living exclusively from art – be it writing, music or whatever – in the current society. I don’t blame the Internet. I just don’t think we’ve adjusted to it yet.

My initial strategy was to produce so much content that it would prove almost impossible to key anything into a search engine without stumbling across something I’d written. Now, I still maintain that content is king, and that the way to bring traffic to a site is by having as many words as possible that may show in a search as is humanly possible, but have come to realise that quality is still as important as quantity when it comes to building a fanbase. And what’s more, I’m also finding that there are other obstacles, namely publishers – but also time. I simply don’t have the time to try out countless publishers only to be told ‘not quite what we’re after.’ And I get that a lot.

Even for a writing machine, the endless stream of rejections gets to be a grind. So, at least for a short time, I intend to cut back a little on my output. Less is more, and all that. Rather than endlessly blogging and publishing on-line, I plan to spend a few months completing as many of the half-finished stories and articles I have kicking about as possible, and trying to find them homes by selectively targeting potential outlets.

The pamphlet series I began on March 31st with ‘Lust for Death’ will still happen as planned, with a new pamphlet at the end of every quarter. # 2, ‘Before the Flood’ is already written and the cover art almost there, and # 3, as yet untitled, is coming along nicely, and will be in the bag well before it’s due to be published at the end of September.

I will also be continuing with the music reviews. Since I began contributing to ‘Whisperin & Hollerin’’ back in November, I’ve added 37 reviews (and counting). It’s a good gig for me, as I get CDs in the mail and have to listen to bands I’d otherwise have avoided or simply never heard of in the name of ‘work,’ and even the occasional free entry to gigs. And I’m also noticing my reviews cropping up in all sorts of unusual places: a few of the bands I’ve reviewed have quoted from them on their websites and on CD Baby, and I even saw one of my lines in a mailing list mail-out from a label I particularly admire in the last couple of days. Is it shifting books or building my reputation? Not yet, but it’s gratifying to see that there are other routes to ubiquity. Watch this space: 2010 could yet bring me world domination…