Twittercide

There used to be, in the sidebar of this page, a collection of my latest tweets and the more eagle-eyed among you will probably have noticed they're no longer there (or maybe not). About three weeks ago, I decided, in a fit of whimsy, to commit twittercide and erase all trace of myself from Twitter. It was a sudden acte gratuite; in the morning I was tweeting away to beat the band, by midnight my twitter presence was no more. I told nobody I was going to do it, not even the dozen or so of my 'followers' whom I actually know personally. I didn't even have to use the Web 2.0 suicide machine; it was all quick and painless and it was a good feeling to disappear into the night like that. Though I did enjoy Twitter, I can't say I really miss it. It was leeching up too much of my time (particularly since I got an iPhone) and I have since spent the regained time more efficiently, by reading. To a certain extent, contra the cliché spouted by social networking sceptics, I have become less rather than more sociable since leaving.

I'm not going to join the chorus of uninformed bores who rail against Twitter or any other social networking site. Twitter was enjoyable and can be of great use to some people but, even as my tweeting snowballed (I hit the 700 mark after nearly two years activity last July, by the week of my demise I was up to 4000) I couldn't really justify it from a professional point of view. I've used it once or twice to that end but, to be completely honest its effect was minimal and even the traffic diverted to this blog from it was negligible. I don't know if those folk I used to correspond with on Twitter read this blog (or even if many of them notice me missing) but for those that do, this will explain the absence. I was flattered to find out the founder of one major political website (whom I've never met) wondered where I had gone to. While I have not gone completely offline, it's nice not to have to express oneself in 140 characters or less anymore.

Something to Be Said About Real Journalism

More on Twitter, Iran, old and new media. Roger Cohen has done some great reporting from Iran in the past year, and incurred the wrath of right-wing Zionists such as Jonah Goldberg for suggesting that the country, and perhaps even its government, is not awash with anti-semitism. Here he elaborates on a previous column, written shortly after he was forced to leave Iran during the post-election protests. In that piece, he noted the limitations of tweeting, blogging and citizen journalism, and stirred a wave of irrational indignation from the likes of Ariana Huffington. Cohen, like David Simon, is not contemptuous of the capabilities of new media nor the endeavour of those that use them. But he correctly points out that amateurs, no matter how diligent and knowledgeable can only do so much; to 'bear witness' as he says, takes, time, money and the ability to be on site. Huffington might be correct to say that it's possible to miss a lot whilst there, either willingly or otherwise. And I would agree with anyone that says 'Old Journalism' counts among its ranks tens of thousands of charlatans, hypocrites and armchair thugs who, in a well-run world would be flipping burgers. But this doesn't validate Huffington's point about the likes of her, me or anyone pontificating from their keyboards thousands of miles from the action. Real journalism, Cohen continues,

comes into being only through an organizing intelligence, an organizing sensibility. It depends on form, an unfashionable little word, without which significance is lost to chaos. As Aristotle suggested more than two millennia ago, form requires a beginning and middle and end. It demands unity of theme. Journalism cuts through the atwitter state to thematic coherence.

In the making of the choices I have described, presence is required. Because part of the choice lies in something ineffable — the air you breathe, the sounds you hear, the shadow light as a bird’s wing that falls across fearful eyes — something that cannot be seized or rendered at a distance.

Technology has enriched journalism by expanding the means to deliver it and the raw material on which it is based. But technology has also diminished the incentive — and the revenue — to get out of the office. Understanding without the trained “view from the ground” (Martha Gellhorn) remains impossible. Nature abhors a vacuum, journalism even more so, and so it fills absence with windiness.

It's enough to forgive Roger Cohen the snide, condescending attitude he took towards the French in endorsing Nicolas Sarkozy's candidature using a 'tough love' rationale in the 2007 Presidential election.

Op-Ed Columnist - New Tweets, Old Needs - NYTimes.com

Twits for Peace

Something from last weekend. An opinion piece, written by a former US national security advisor, in the normally lucid and admirable Christian Science Monitor that calls for Twitter to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, really. Iran is the main reason cited, given the widespread use of Twitter by pro-democracy activists in the post-election protests. The CSM even gets a bit emotive on it, indulging in foamy rhetoric last seen in Stanley Kramer's heyday:

Without Twitter, the world might have known little more than a losing candidate accusing the powers that be of alleged fraud. Without Twitter, the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy. They did so because they knew the world was watching. With Twitter, they now shout hope with a passion and dedication that resonates not just with those on their street, but with millions across the globe.

My word, what utter nonsense. Those that know me know I'm not behind the door when it comes to tweeting and I have no intention of joining the chorus of jobbing journos who see imminent social decay in people's micro-blogging. But let's keep things in perspective. Twitter was a useful tool for Iranian protestors to disseminate images to the world, not least images of the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, though it is questionable how useful it was for organising protests given that Iran had a relatively small number of Twitter users and given how easily traceable users are on it. And there is of course the fact that many decoy feeds were set up by Iranian authorities. Evgeny Morozov is a great deal more sensible about this and internet activism and security are his domain, knowing a thing or two about repressive regimes (he's of Belarussian nationality). He cautions against a 'cyber-utopianism' which imagines that web applications such as Twitter can be used to bring down authoritarian regimes.

Iran's protests would have happened without Twitter; to suggest otherwise is to insult both the bravery and the sophistication of those that organised and participated in them. It's an absurdly solipsistic view of westerners to imagine that the mass protest against a thirty-year-old theocracy might be suddenly given fresh impetus by a tool that most of us use for diversion. If Twitter should get the Nobel peace prize, why not give it to the printing press, the telephone, the human voice? Has the world really run out of humans striving for peace and justice that we must reward a web application conceived with little other than instant messaging in mind?

There is also a disturbing vertically-integrated culture of heroes and villains in this 'Twitter revolution theory', it's all plucky secular Iranians against the Mullahs, plucky little Georgia against the big bad Russian bear, the plucky Venezuelan bourgeoisie against Hugo Chávez. And Morozov is guilty of this himself, in his analysis of the 'Moldovan Twitter revolution'. Moldova, earlier this year, was the first instance of Twitter being used to organise and publicise protests. But what few people mention is the fact that the protests were against an election victory in polls judged free and fair by observers. While I can understand the frustration of Moldovan youth who bristle at living under a democratically-elected communist government (I have liked few of the governments I myself have lived under) the moral force of the protests was not persuasive. And, among people in the west, there's a rather strange assumption that people who use Twitter for political ends must be on the side of the angels. A quick look at a few Twitter feeds will convince otherwise. A little bit of perspective on Twitter would be welcome. It's safe to say that many authoritarian regimes and protests against them will long outlast micro-blogging as we know it.

Only on the Internet

It's not only fluff we post here; sometimes we go for the hardcore ephemera that is so ephemeral one barely notices it ephemerating before one's very eyes. It's like Marty McFly in those photographs that he always manages to have on him as he zips and back and forth to the future.

First up today is Keggers of Yore, a photo-blog devoted to the festivities enjoyed by past generations of American (and, no doubt, Canadian) college students and hangers-on before they faced reality, conquered their five-beers-a-week alcoholic hell, sharpened their straight edge, made a fortune selling mousepads or organic yak's milk to gullible yuppies, or became Secretary for Defense. A surprisingly large number of these photographs can bear the simple caption: 'in happier times.'

There is also the Slanket, which is nowhere near as weird as it should be, now that is has featured on an episode of 30 Rock. This ingenious variation on an old favourite is a big hit with the monks of Chartreuse, the Ku-Klux Klan, Obi-Wan Kinobi and Masonic lodges in wintry northern climes among many other key demographics.

From the Emerald Isle comes a brave stab at at mounting an Áine Chambers-esque bid for Internet Meme Stardom. The trick, not surprisingly, involves clowns, coffins, funerals and pre-Y2K web-design. I would try and analyse it as it clearly means something but it's not as if I wasted my time in college studying art history.

And though this has been around for a few months now, here's the latest piece of annoying self-referentialism from hipsters, for whom fashion clearly never sits still for one minute. Die hipsters die!

Hat tips to Octavia, Cormac and Jim, without whom none of this would have been possible.

The Unluckiest Writer of the Twentieth Century?

I meant to post a couple of weeks back on a review by Fintan O'Toole on Flann O'Brien's Collected Novels (Everyman edition) that appeared in the New York Review of Books recently but I was stymied by the NYRB's limited online access (even to those of us that fork out for a print subscription). Now I seem to have mislaid the copy amid the piles of books, magazines, periodicals and manuscript papers with the words 'red rum' scrawled all over them that litter my flat. It was an interesting piece (if untimely, as the Everyman edition, to the best of my knowledge has been out for a long time), and on first reading I was most interested in the parallels O'Toole makes between Flanno and Beckett, a pair rarely thought of in the same moment yet who shared a similar knack for stepping outside the constraints of language (and their own language) and they also both shared a significant love for Ivan Gonchurov's Oblomov. The NYRB has now posted a podcast interview with O'Toole where he summarises his arguments in the essay. It's well worth a listen.

O'Toole comments on Flanno/Myles' writing in English as if he were writing it as a dead language, or one translated from another. It's a part fanciful, part persuasive idea but I was definitely taken by O'Toole's diagnosis of sexual repression in Flann's work, where he sees writing as taking the place of sex, scored out of the literature of official Ireland; I had never noticed before that much of the writing in At Swim-Two-Birds take place in bed (though that might have something to do with the fact that I read it as a student). I think that O'Toole (and others) are a little hard on the Ireland of O'Brien's time; while it was, of course a grey, priest-ridden, poverty-stricken place, it nonetheless managed to provide some unlikely cultural resistance. I also think that O'Brien, rather than being frustrated at being stuck in Ireland, stayed in the country out of a clear love for the newly-independent nation, you have to remember he was only 11 - and a fluent Irish speaker - at the establishment of the Free State. No matter how maddening he found the place, he was not necessarily given to flee it, especially as an (initially) idealistic and brilliant member of its fledgling Civil Service.

O'Toole is correct in saying that Flann was one of the unluckiest writers in 20th-century history, seeing At Swim-Two-Birds sink into obscurity shortly after its publication on the eve of World War II and then, of course, The Third Policeman was inexplicably rejected by his publisher. Even today Flann is criminally neglected with few people knowing his much funnier journalistic work (most of which is still in print) and even his name itself is little known outside cult literary circles, even within Ireland. Do yourself a favour this week and go out and read some Flann O'Brien, especially if you haven't already.

There's also a fine review of Flann's Collected Novels by Joseph O'Neill here.

Dear Reader...

Joe Queenan is, as a friend of mine and a fellow fan put it a few years back, a very facile man. Queenan is also consistently funny, as anyone who has read his masterpieces of snide humour will attest. These perfectly-formed volumes of snark include Imperial Caddy (about Dan Quayle's expected impending run for the 1996 Presidential election) and Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon (an account of his year slumming it amid American middle-of-the-road pop culture - retitled simply America for benighted Europeans).

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal Queenan turns his hand to a short study of readers' reviews on Amazon.com, because someone must, just as many imagine someone must pen those reviews in the first place. Queenan imagines a world in which the Amazon readers' review - that great leveller of canonical rankings and literary esteem - has been with us from the dawn of writing (and reading, of course). Below are a selection of his reviews. No fish in this barrel escapes Queenan's fire, nor does this detract from his greatness.

• "King Lear"—Average reader rating: Two stars. The author tells us: "As like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport." Oh, right, like I didn't know that? Like I didn't know that to be or not to be is the question? Like I didn't know that the fault lies not in us but in the stars? Tell me something I don't know, Mr. Bard of Whatever.

• "The 120 Days of Sodom"—Average Reader's Rating: Five stars. OK, so I like totally pre-ordered this book based on the author's name, which just happens to be the same as my maiden name—Marquis de. Yeah, a sketchy reason to buy a book, but I was pumped. But when it got here I didn't understand it at all. It just didn't go anywhere. It just kept repeating itself. I went through it a few times more, searching for some deeper, awesome meaning, but just ended up totally bummed. Actually, some parts of it were kind of gross.

• "Mein Kampf"—Average reader's rating: One star. Lively writing, but just too, too depressing. Why does he keep using big words that normal people can't understand, like lebensraum and oberkommandant? Hey! I own a thesaurus, too! And what's up with the Jewish thing?

Next week Joe Queenan turns his attention to YouTube commenters.

Joe Queenan: Amazon Reviewers Take On the Classics - WSJ.com

Another Fine Messi

I mentioned the Copa America last week and, like most other people in Europe I haven't been able to follow much of it on TV. I don't have access at home to any of the channels showing it and the time difference is a bit too punishing to go watch it in any of the bars where I might see it. Last night, two friends, one Argentinian, one Mexican, invited me to watch the semi-final between their two countries, which looked like it would be a great match, given the last two games between the two sides, in the Confederations Cup two years ago, and then in Leipzig in last year's World Cup round of 16. But, early work this morning deterred me and I have been hearing all day about yet another wonder goal by Lionel Messi. I managed to track it down on the copyright-infringing extravaganza that is YouTube. Sit back and enjoy.

Saving Face

I shut down my MySpace about six months ago after a few months of non-activity that followed the initial enthusiasm. Realising that I didn't really care about when the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album was coming out and annoyed at the amount of time the site crashed, I vowed never to waste my time on a social-networking site again.

Then there came Facebook; I signed up a couple of months back, just to look around, which means I'm probably one of the few that came to it rather than it come to them via a friend's invitation. It was only a month later when a friend of mine joined up that I got going in earnest. Facebook is capable of being a black hole for one's time every bit as much as MySpace though i have found that I waste far less time on it, because of the very sensible policy of limiting profile browsing to your own networks and friends, and, from what I can tell, there are no rock groups on there either, plaguing you with unwanted bulletins. Facebook also seems to be free from the spam that has come to be MySpace's stock-in-trade. The best time-saving feature of Facebook however is its integration with other web applications that I already use, such as Last.fm, del.icio.us, Digg and Blogger. Many American online news sources have already oriented their news stories to be shared on Facebook and one's web browser can be easily adapted to do the same.

One thing I have noticed about Facebook though is that most of the people I know that are on it are old friends, and many of them were never on MySpace. It has been remarked recently that there is a large class (and even race) divide between the two sites, which is not too surprising as Facebook originated on the Harvard campus and has been open to outsiders only since last September. Given the rapid rise in users, this imbalance is likely to level out however. All the same it was significant that the US military in Iraq recently banned the use of MySpace (which is predominantly used by soldiers) while allowing the use of Facebook (mainly used by officers).

For the moment Facebook is more geared towards grownups, though, like MySpace, it is very much what you make of it yourself. But there still remains the lingering sense of shame among many of its thirtysomething users: are we too old for it? Are these social-networking sites a sign of latent infantilisation? Perhaps but the future of social networking may well be for older people. As this article on the Beeb's website suggested a couple of months back, the people that might benefit best from social networking are middle-aged people recently divorced or even the elderly. The young, after all, do very little on Facebook and MySpace other than lark about with the friends they already know. For some older users, networks could be a vital escape from loneliness and alienation.

Reasons to be Cheerful Part 3

Good news, on two fronts. One is the election of Ireland's first black mayor, in Portlaoise. Rotimi Adebari, a Nigerian native who arrived in Ireland seven years ago is set to don the town's chain of office for the next year. You'd need to be very naïve to believe that this development is emblematic of total racial harmony in the country but it is likely to go some way to furthering it.

Another, more trivial piece of news is the launch of BBC's iPlayer, which will allow web users to catch up on BBC programmes from the previous seven days that they have missed, including free downloads that can be viewed for thirty days before they get wiped. Mac users will have to wait until autumn to use it but I'm not going to grumble too much about that. Hopefully there will be no restriction on people outside of Britain streaming or downloading. Hopefully this will be the end of waiting months or even years to catch up on the likes of The Office, Extras and The Thick of It.

Wi-fi Wi-fi Everywhere and a Drop to Drink

Paris, from next month, will be the first 'digital city' in Europe with the establishment by the municipality of wi-fi access points at 262 locations across the city, divided evenly between municipal buildings such as public libraries and parks and gardens (with the exception of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg gardens, which do not come under the city's auspices). The points are accessible during opening hours, though Parvis de Hôtel de Ville (in front of the City Hall) and the Champs de Mars (in front of the Eiffel Tower) will have 24-hour access for those foolhardy enough to carry their laptops about in the early hours of the morning.

The initiative will cost €2.9 million to implement, with an annual running cost of €540,000, which media-savvy Mayor Bertrand Delanoë will no doubt fund quite easily from advertising. Paris is already endowed with a large number of bars and cafés offering excellent free wi-fi access for the price of a coffee. From now on it will be possible to be online almost ad infinitum. Which is a bit bothersome for me, considering how much time I tend to waste on the Internet; when I need to get some writing done I usually decamp to a public place where the temptation of clicking on my web browser is not a potential distraction. Now there may be few such places left. Still, wi-fi users in Dublin will be envious at this indulging of Parisian surfers, especially considering the extortionate rates charged almost everywhere for wi-fi there. If it's any consolation, the Dublinesque weather that Paris has been subjected to recently - with rain every day for the past three weeks - will ensure that I won't be sitting on a park bench blogging too soon.

That Was #500

The last post was the 500th I have made on this blog since I started last July. At just under eleven months that is not a bad average considering I only started the blog to regain a bit of momentum that had been lost in my writing elsewhere. The very first post, written two days after the World Cup Final, offered little in the way of direction and ambition, and though the blog has gained some speed in that time it is still very much a hotch-potch, an indulgent, ad hoc amalgam of things I would otherwise have been mumbling incomprehensively to anyone that might be forced to listen (those that know me will aver that my accent is rather strong, except maybe those from Sligo, who will argue the very opposite).

The blog, enjoyable as it is, has become an albatross of sorts around my neck however, a distraction from doing other activities, the same ones whose abeyence occasioned it to be started in the first place. For this reason the posts may well become less frequent over the next few months, which is something I regret as I enjoy writing it, and, to be totally honest, I could probably have posted 2,000 times had work commitments, the odd hangover and the more productivity-stifling reaches of Web 2.0 not stymied me. I have really had that many ideas, which is no bad thing. I have to admit, of course, that keeping them from the world was no bad thing either.

With regards to blogging and the Internet I remain a sceptical enthusiast. Much has been written in the past couple of days about Andrew Keen's attack on the extension of the publishing franchise afforded by the Net; while I feel that Keen's gripes - to judge at least from the quotes in the adjoined article - owe more to sour grapes over a loss of prestige of the official intelligensia, it's hard not to agree that much of the Internet is depressing to wade through. Don't get me wrong: I read about 100 blogs daily and I would probably search for many more I had more time to satisfy this bulimic habit. Those that I read are all excellent and the fact that their RSS feeds end up on my newsreader every day is the only worthwhile praise there is.

I have to say though that blogging, for all its liberatory qualities and enjoyability is still inferior to print. Perhaps not print newspapers, the vast majority of which, worldwide, are of dubious trustworthiness and wretched quality, but to books, yes, I'm afraid it is. Blogging has legions of fine qualities and there are great writers on the web that, thanks to the medium, get audiences that might otherwise be denied them. Some have progressed to writing a book, from Salam Pax to Twenty Major, but writing a book is a different kettle of fish altogether. It demands stamina, quality, balls, self-belief, discipline, a mastery of the most mundane technical matters and, after publication, a willingness to turn yourself into a consummate bore in order to get anyone to read it. That does not make it a greater art - it doesn't even make it an art in itself at all - but the challenge is a lot bigger. Blogging is great, and I would hope to continue this one for a couple of years to come but the challenge of writing something more substantial is much greater.

Lest I appear to be too serious here, I would like to thank all that read this blog (even those that expect to find pictures of Lawrie Sanchez or Artur Boruc in the nip or torrent files of glamour models peeing on one another) for doing so, and I have resolved to reply to all comments from now on (being from the west of Ireland, manners don't come naturally to me). Here's to another 500, as lazy hacks in the old media would say.

Round Two

Drinkers were in a resigned mood last night in the bars in the 11th arrondissement, the area of eastern Paris where I live. This is left-wing heartland, composed mainly of immigrants, young people and the old Parisian working-class; it was the last area of resistance to fall when the Commune was crushed in 1871, resulting in the covering-over of the Canal St-Martin from rue Faubourg du Temple as far as Bastille, so that the water could no longer provide a barricade for insurgent areas. Few people are convinced that the miracle will happen tonight where Ségolène Royal unexpectedly overturns the polls that have been giving Nicolas Sarkozy an extended lead in the days since Wednesday's debate. Personally I think it is going to be a lot closer than the polls have been suggesting (most likely 51%-49%) but it is unlikely to be in Royal's favour.

So it seems that all one can do is brace oneself for five years of Sarkozy (and possibly a UMP-dominated parliament). The country is split down the middle on him (though there are some on either side that are horrified by his social policies while being attracted to his economic liberalism - however misplaced that might be). There will be tension in the suburbs tonight, as everyone knows, and it will be largely used to vindicate the Sarkozy vote in the more reactionary and racist reaches of French society. The sad thing is that it will take only a handful of hoodlums to start burning cars and things will begin to spiral down again, and chin-wagging editorialists throughout Europe will deplore this contempt for the dramatic wish of the people - thereby missing the point. Sarkozy was a disaster as Interior Minister, there is no reason to believe he will be any different as President.

As a parting shot here is Irish expat man-about-town Paddy Sherlock's amusing view of a France under Sarkozy (or Tsarkozy as he calls him - a splendid moniker that sums up the tinpot Napoleonic ambitions of the little man): the horrors of bad French music are likely to be all part of the package too:

Avec le Tsar - "Kozy"
Y'aura plus jamais Joey Starr - "Kozy"
Rest'ra que Jean-Michel Jarre - "Kozy"
Et Johnny et sa guitare "Kozy"

(With the Tsar/There'll be no more Joey Starr/Only Jean-Michel Jarre/And Johnny and his guitar)

Very funny stuff, circumstances notwithstanding

On éspère, pourtant.

Debatable

I didn't watch the Sarkozy-Royal televised debate last night, opting for the football instead, much to the dismay of a number of people I know (though there were some who were criticised for watching the debate on the grounds that they already knew who they were voting for). I caught bits of it near the end as almost all the cafés lined along rues St-Antoine and Faubourg St-Antoine had it on the TV in front of hushed audiences. Today I read the transcription in full in Libé (all eight pages) and I was struck by how Ségo went on the offensive, harrying Sarkozy rather mercilessly - rather like the way that Milan ripped Man U apart in the opening half hour at San Siro. She had no real alternative of course and trying to needle Sarkozy and get him to lose his temper was the trump card. That, as I have said before, leaves it open to question the efficacy of her overall campaign but she certainly showed herself competent and assured - which many people have this far doubted - but Sarkozy was not overly ruffled either. He adopted a mocking condescending demeanour, with a number of jabs in turn designed to rile his adversary. At one point he actually did accuse her of losing her cool but she resumed her composure quite well and, as a colleague of mine pointed out today, her anger is a different, less ugly sort than Sarkozy's. According to the Herald Tribune 9 out of 10 voters have already made their mind up, and it still looks as if Sarkozy will benefit. But Jean-Marie Le Pen's call on Front National voters to abstain may yet be critical, if the race is closer than polls suggest, which I think it is.

As I said the other day, the election has descended into a referendum on Sarkozy, which is a dereliction of democracy, however much I dislike the man. The right-wing has hit back with a few pallid efforts at demonising Royal - I noticed a few of her election posters on the way home this evening defaced with the legend 'Staline en jupon' (Stalin in a petticoat), which reminds me of the Fianna Fáil-crafted slurs on Adi Roche during the 1997 Presidential elections, capitalising upon some former employee of hers that too exception to her businesslike manner. A measure of how much this election has gripped France is the fact that MTV broadcast the debate in its entirety last night. There have also been a number of election-related curios going around the Web too, such as this Ségo v Sarko online game ('dumb but it helps you let off steam' said the person that forwarded it to me) and below, a fourteen-year-old televised debate between the two that provides a fascinating preview of this election.

John McCain's Sing-Song

On the subject of Iran, here is US Presidential hopeful John McCain's joking views on what the White House should do to it. Charming stuff, and this is the liberal wing of the Republican Party.

"They're looking for what?"

I posted last month on the number of web searches that find their way to this blog as a result of looking for content that is, by Underachievement's own standards, a bit racey. There have been people looking for info on Kira Eggers, 'Glimpse-It', a British website with a strong focus on micturation (and since that last post, the number of people happening upon the blog using that search has increased, possibly triggering deadly paranoia in those poor thirsty souls). And then there is the perennial demand for pictures of Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc in his birthday suit. Naturally, Seanachie is no longer shocked by any of this, though he was taken aback yesterday by a request for nude photos of Northern Ireland manager - and new Fulham caretaker boss - Lawrie Sanchez. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there was nothing of that sort that remained after Lawrie's brief tenure in charge as Sligo Rovers manager ten years ago, a time when Lawrie's physique might have been more worthy of such close scrutiny. I will endeavour to supply the goods for that user of a Dutch-language version of Internet Explorer based in Madrid.

No Comment

Much has been written this past week about the Blogger's Code of Conduct drawn up by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Tim O'Reilly, particularly with regard to comments posted on blogs, in the wake of death threats made to American blogger Kathy Sierra. As one reader pointed out (in a commentary) a few weeks back, Underachievement is not laden down with comments, despite the fact that I have turned Comment Moderation off in the past couple of weeks to see if I would survive a prospective onslaught of spam commentary - and, remarkably, thus far I have. I am not sure why there are so few comments posted, perhaps it's because the blog is too wide-ranging to interest everybody all of the time (and there is no shortage of readers of day, regulars as well as casual ones) or maybe it is because I am not too pro-active myself when it comes to posting comments on other people's blogs. This may well be the main reason, and one can accept that you have to give as well as take. Either way I am not being sniffy about the lack of comments - Seanachie is not so precious a sort - and there have been those of you that have contacted me directly too, all of which is greatly appreciated. The Blogging Code of Conduct is probably not too applicable to such a modest enterprise as Underachievement but don't be afraid to leave a comment if you want to; I will read it as will others - I hope. Go nuts, kids.

Wilfing and Two Films

A few days off as I decided to lay off the wilfing for a while. Among other things this past weekend I saw two enjoyable, if modest films, the Argentinian El Custodio, the Pialet-esque tale of a governmental bodyguard and the petty humiliations he suffers on a daily basis. Though the dénouement is a bit improbable the film is a diverting and intelligent portrayal of middle-aged angst. It also features a large number of point-of-view shots of the ministerial car driving around Buenos Aires, the engine humming pleasantly and a rosary dancing suspended from the rear-view mirror. I don't care for cars much but I have always found such scenes beguiling. Funny that.

There was also Jérôme Bonnell's J'attend quelqu'un, a pleasing domestic drama set in a suburb of Paris, about a brother and sister, played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Emannuelle Devos, whose mother has been stricken with Alzheimer's. Darroussin's is experiencing financial difficulties and chronic loneliness, having an infatuation for his whore that is reciprocated only platonically. There is also a youngster, played by Stéphane Dieuade, who is a former student of elementary school teacher Devos, and who has a hidden history with a local woman, whose boyfriend he befriends, with dubious motives. It is a familiar scenario and almost wilfully unadventurous but the performances, particularly from the hangdog Darroussin, help things along. In the absence of a more ambitious film, it'll do for the time being.

Public Blogging

Last summer I posted on La Petite Anglaise, the blog written by a Parisian 34-year-old English expat woman (her identity has since been revealed as Catherine Sanderson) and her sacking for gross misconduct as a result of her blogging. Last Friday however she was absolved by an Employment Tribunal and her former employers, accountancy firm Dixon Wilson have been ordered to pay a year's wages as compensation for unfair dismissal as well as the unemployment benefit that Sanderson had been receiving since her sacking.

Sanderson is not the first to have lost her job as a result of her blogging and in her case the sacking was egregiously unfair as the references to her job or her workplace were both rare and suitably oblique. There is little on this blog that would be likely to jeopardise my own employment (except perhaps for an admission a few months back that I am not the world's greatest teacher); that said I have told nobody at my current job about this blog, mainly because it is nice for there to be a space in my life where it doesn't exist. Everyone at my old place of work knows about it (and one or two read it regularly) but in an age where people surrender their anonymity willingly online it is a pleasure to lurk in the background for a change.

The Nicolas Sarkozy Show - Live from Gare du Nord

emeute gare du nord

If I were still living on rue Lafayette, right beside Gare du Nord, as I was a year ago, I would probably have been caught up in these riots that took place during the evening rush hour in the station the other day. Above is a brief glimpse of the action - of rather poor quality, admittedly - captured on a camera-phone by a 20-year-old from Cergy (think Milton Keynes crossed with Ballymun). Anthony C. has since claimed to have been threatened by an anonymous phone call from the police, though it is difficult to hear what is being said on the recording of the message in question on his DailyMotion page. In an interview with Le Monde Anthony insists that everything got out of hand with looting and the like after an initial expression of outrage by bystanders over the heavy-handed treatment of a fare-dodger by the police. There are plenty of dodgy youngsters hanging around Gare du Nord every day looking for trouble - and some reports claim that the fare-dodger was violent towards the ticket inspectors - but you have to ask: how on earth can arresting someone for fare evasion on the Metro result in a pitched battle involving 200 rioters? After the violent raid outside a nursery school, which I alluded to the other day, and the suspiciously well-timed capture of the fugitive Cesare Battisti in Brazil, one thinks that the outgoing Minister for the Interior is exercising a PR machine in a somewhat unorthodox way prior to the elections.

A Strange Week

It has been a strange week, with the announcement of the commissioning of an 'official' film of Ian Paisley's life, to be scripted by Gary Mitchell, the alleged murder of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer after his team's sensational defeat by Ireland and news of the State of Israel's very own MySpace page. There is an amusing article on the latter in Salon by former Israeli Presidential scriptwriter Gregory Levey, treating of a charm offensive by Israel to win the hearts of the under-35 age group in the US. Though the site is separated by as little as two degrees from some very unsavoury elements, it is largely inoffensive as are most of the comments left on it. In any case I'll be a Zionist for one day tomorrow to cheer Yossi Benayoun and Co. on against England; aren't we so petty, the Irish?

As for Paisley, if I were to spot the Grand Old Reverend in water-borne difficulties I would find it hard to intervene to save him, not least because I can't swim (and I imagine the man upstairs would, in most likelihood, be picking up the tab on that one). But that considered, I can envisage the film being a fascinating prospect, charting the life and rise to power of a genuine anachronistic religious nutcase, a sort of bin Laden with Ovaltine and slippers. I wonder if Big Ian will insist that all involved on the film abstain from the 'Devil's buttermilk' for the duration of the shoot?