Samizdata

For the last month or more I have been paying occasional visits to Michael Jennings‘s blog. One day a picture of him appeared at the top, making him look alarmingly like the bearded bloke on They Think It’s All Over. And then it was there at the top the next day, and the next, and I jumped to the conclusion that he was on holiday and not blogging, because if he was blogging, the photo would have moved down, and have been replaced by further entries. Or so I deduced. But, I do sometimes get matters intenetted slightly wrong (see the comments). It turns out that under the picture he’d been blogging away like a mad thing.

Yesterday, for example, with an unerring eye for the main story, he focussed in on the alleged doom facing the banana. Apparently, bananas are all clones of each other, which means that they can’t do evolution properly, which means that they are now about to be completely wiped out. This was national news in Britain yesterday, and for all I know, everywhere else that bananas are cared about.

Michael notes the supposedly ferocious consumer resistance in Europe to genetic engineering, but goes on to note that banana-wise Europeans – Germans in particular – may face an agonising choice.

Actually this could be interesting. Imagine the scene in 2012. Normal bananas are extinct. Those of us who have been following the ongoing EU banana war for the last couple of decades know that the Germans have an almost legendary appetite for bananas. It may be that they will be faced with a choice: accept genetically modified bananas, or move to some other fruit. My money is on the genetically modified bananas.

Michael also had a posting at the beginning of the month about cricket. For Zimbabwean mass murder reasons I want the entire blogosphere immediately to become fascinated about this strange game, and it can plug itself into an elaborate discussion via Michael’s posting about which international cricket side was the best ever, who the all time best Australian (and English and West Indian) side(s) would consist of, and so on, also involving Iain Murray. And then when all of blogdom everywhere is lusting to watch the World Cup, others whom we have also been instructing, but this time on the political dimension of this tournament, can dig up all the pitches.

When Oxford-based poet and professional bore Tom Paulin advocated the shooting of West Bank Jewish settlers he probably expected nothing more than the appreciative plaudits of his academic colleagues. But I daresay he had not even heard of the blogosphere. If he had, he might have kept his mouth shut. As it is, he was catapulted overnight from obscurity to ‘Global Moron’ status and assigned a transatlantic reputation as a virulent anti-semite. Paulin got a maulin’

Personally, I don’t think Mr.Paulin is an anti-semite. More likely he was caught up in the wave of anti-Israel sentiment that has swept right through the academic and media classes; a sort of fashion-induced rush of blood to the head. However, the details barely seem to matter now because, judging from his response in the Guardian the whole affair has unhinged him:

“The first answer is Beckett’s

in another context – to “Mr Beckett

they say that you are English?”

he answered “au contraire”

– he didn’t say “I am not dot dot”

which plays their game

– in this case the ones who play the a-s card –

of death threats hate mail talking tough

the usual cynical Goebbels stuff

so I say the same

and say that peace it must be talked

re Palestine and re Iraq

– Israel has got the bomb

but that’s not why

no one in their right mind

says Israel should be swept into the sea…”

Hey daddy-o it’s, like, so far-out, man. In fact, it’s so far-out I can’t see it. I can, though, imagine one of the Guardian’s editor’s accompanying him on the bongos while he read it.

I think I shall compose a response in similar poetic vain. Ahem…(clears throat):

“First Michael Moore,

Now Tom Paulin,

One by one,

The idiots are fallin’.

Thank you. Thank you.

I am trying to figure out who ‘Holland & Barrett’ are worried might sue them if they discovered NUTS in their packet of… Whole Cashew Nuts!

Yesterday I found myself reflecting on that monstrous half-truth, consumer sovereignty. It’s a half truth because the places where consumers do their consuming are also sovereign. (I seem to recall the late Murray Rothbard having some good things to say about “The Myth of Consumer Sovereignty” in Chapter 7, I think it is, of Man, Economy and State). Shops can also do things as they wish, and if you don’t like this then ultimately your only course may be to run away. I don’t favour shop sovereignty extending to the point where they can bolt the door while you’re still there and force you to do things their way, take back what you just said, buy things you don’t want, and so forth. But short of that I like the occasional shop where the constomer has to walk on egg shells to avoid a proprietorial tantrum or to avoid knocking huge tottering piles of random items all over the grubby floor.

Sure, there must be proper shops where the customer is always right and which are helpful, clean, efficient, full of good stuff well displayed and reasonably priced, etc. etc. But not all shops should be like this.

There used to be a wonderful place in Dover Street, just off Seven Dials (a bit to the north of Covent Garden tube station), which was crammed to the ceiling with hardware of every kind you could possibly want or imagine, provided it could be found.

I remember three things in particular about this place, aside from the general mess and dirt and confusion and lack of walking space.

First, the front window was literally a rubbish dump. There it was, displaying a kind of archaeological system of sediments from previous eras of the shop’s history. Nails from the late nineteen fifties, drill bit sets from the early sixties, crushed cardboard boxes, rolls of insulating material, bags full of obscure and complicated joinery items, long discontinued workbench kits, and of course inch upon inch of genuine actual rubbish. All this could be clearly enjoyed through the front window of the shop. → Continue reading: Retailer sovereignty

I went over to Michael Jennings‘ blog to read his cricket piece, the first version of which was apparently eaten by Blogger (the blogospherical equivalent of Wordstar), and which I recommend to all Americans enthusiastically. The cricket piece, not Blogger.

I also found a link to this piece of nonsense, which must be what they mean by the bursting of the internet bubble.

I think we may have finally found a justification for burqas.