Archives for 2012

Everything in the garden reminds me of Sandra

posts interesting only to me
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Sandra watering the garden

If you’re a gardener, especially if you’re an English gardener, you know of course that the Chelsea Flower Show has been on all week. I’m not much of my garden enthusiast myself, though I can enjoy a nicely turned out garden as much as the next bloke, if the next bloke isn’t Alan Titchmarsh, but Sandra was always very keen. She was never as happy as when she was puttering around in our postage stamp garden, patiently nursing plants to health, providing hiding places for solitary bees and laying it out in such a way to pack as much green and flowers in it as humanly possible. Like everything she put her hand to, she made it look easy, even after she became ill; she made sure that before she went into hospital, her garden was in the best possible shape.

So of course we watched the BBC gardening shows, with Gardening World on Fridays being a staple, as was Gardening Question Time (for which we managed to attend one taping when they were on tour in Amsterdam) on Radio 4 on Sunday afternoons. There was something very comforting about these programmes, something very English in its middleclass niceness and preoccupation with improving hobbies. In this the Chelsea Flower Show was the annual highlight and Sandra always talked about how much she would’ve liked to visit there. We’ve sort’ve made plans that, when she was out of hospital and back into “normal” life, we would do just that, but we never got that far…

With the weather finally making a turn to the better this week and the Chelsea Flower Show back on, it’s been hard not to dwell on Sandra’s death these days. Hwer garden after all is also part of her heritage I have to get to grips with somehow; luckily my father is just as keen a gardener as Sandra was and more than willing to help out; he and Sandra had always bonded over their gardens.

But this, as well as talking about her death on MeFi has made me realise something important: I’ve made my peace with her decision to die. I didn’t really at the time, though I could understand it intellectually and although I had spent the last two years living in fear that she could die at any moment, or might make that decision. In my heart I wished she hadn’t chosen to end her suffering, if in my head I understood she had to. But now, a half year after her death, I’m beginning to make my peace with it.

The only way to win is not to play

Life under Capitalism
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Via Blood & Treasure, Kosmograd on the Olympics Brand Exclusion Zone:

In essence, London has abdicated all rights and responsibilities to the International Olympic Committee, and implemented legislation which creates radical new spatial demarcations not only within the Olympic Park, but because of the distributed nature of the Olympic venues, across the whole of central London. London has surrendered the traditional rights to the city to the demands of the Olympic ‘family’ and their corporate paymasters. What the IOC want, London will give. London will be on brand lockdown.

The most carefully policed Brand Exclusion Zone will be around the Olympic Park, and extend up to 1km beyond its perimeter, for up to 35 days. Within this area, officially called an Advertising and Street Trade Restrictions venue restriction zone, no advertising for brands designated as competing with those of the official Olympic sponsors will be allowed.

Kosmograd also mentions the “guerilla marketing” (sic) efforts by rival brands to subvert these kinds of exclusion zones, something which of us will instantly sympathise with, but which is of course just as obnoxious. In either case we’re only pawns of the branding masters and the only way to win as a people is not to play either game and just stay away from the games altogether.

Which is one reason why I’m opposed to any attempts to bring big sport events like this to the Netherlands; let them happen in Dubai or China, countries adapted to their hypercapitalism.

Scott Kurtz calls the whaambulance

Comix
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Shorter Scott Kurtz:

I don’t care about the shitty way Marvel treated Jack Kirby, all I want is to enjoy my Avengers movie and anybody who cares about how the big comic companies treat their creative talent is a cynical meanie.

No, really. Here’s a direct quote if you don’t believe me:

But I am a grown ass man, and I can tell you this: the real world does not operate like the morality plays we see acted out on the silver screen in movies like “The Avengers.” Life can not be summed up by “that’s not fair.” It’s not as simple as “Give Jack’s estate some money, Marvel. You can afford it.” That’s not pragmatic thinking. That’s cynicism. And I’m so tired of the cynicism.

Here we have a manchild deeply offended that he is forced to think about the moral implications of his favourite entertainment. He’s neither the first, nor the last fanboy to feel this way and his arguments, as shown up by the Mighty Mighty Godking are the same tired old excuses fanboys have always been dredging up: it’s all in the past, it’s the way the world works, Kirby wasn’t actually all that important, he signed a contract, etc. etc.

More so perhaps than any other art form commercial comics have always depended on screwing over the people actually creating the stories, with every attempt by these creators to gain a modicum of fair treatment quashed, either by the companies themselves or by fan indifference. Kurtz’s argument fits in neatly with this shameful tradition, another confirmation that for most fans it’s more important whether or a Captain America or Thor are done justice in a movie than whether their creators were.