Kamata

Back in Tokyo. This time staying in Kamata, which is a sort of central urban junction town, hence interesting. Rows and rows of those little bars, sushi and sashimi shops, yakitori, izakaya (居酒屋) and yakiniku (焼肉) places to eat. Most of them with about 12 seats, especially near the station and west (NishiKamata), but there [...]

Take the skinheads bowling – Camper van Beethoven 1985

Must see: Take the skinheads bowling, remembering the Shout Bros in the Sandringham Hotel Enmore, circa 1991

narco-analysis

Dave Boothroyd’s book “Culture On Drugs” (2006) is a sound and entertaining read, and is just as much a carefully argued account of the influence of various substances on theory and theorists across a wide field – Freud and Cocaine, Benjamin and Hashish, Sartre and hallucinogens – as it is a commentary on, and plea [...]

Mark has skillz

Writing Controls

The beautiful arabesques of the writing of Raymond Roussel, still evident in translation, are most interesting as discipline (contrivance, organisation, code, device), and made all the more alluring by the discovery, in 1989, of a trunk full of manuscripts. I have always been interested in the manufacture of text, and the versionings required. First draft, [...]

Nagoya-Bird&Rabbit-4-Tim Stelfox-Griffen

So I am posting these pics to Ellen, but they can also rest here for a while. Bird and Rabbit went to Japan. To Nagoya in fact. They came with me to give a talk at Nagoya City University – the talk was about Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian lad murdered by police on [...]

FDM – compulsory viewing.

Ubiquitous Media

The conference theme (TCS 25th anniversary meet at Todai U Tokyo) has set loose a plague whose epidemiology can only be described as the onset of a ‘digital Adorno’ virus (I adapt this from Anthony King – I see Adorno referenced but not read, glossed via secondary readings, named but ignored, as ever it always [...]

Heaven and Earth

Once more in Shimokitazawa, where there is a small 5th floor club called Heaven & Earth, and where, after dancing sweaty hot electro and hip hop all night (and gospel for Charlie K), you can sit on the balcony as the typhoon rolls in over Tokyo and then you can get noddles on the way [...]

Christina Sornito

My excellent Coney Island tour guide, Christina Sornito has a fieldwork blog in the Philippines. I recommend very highly that you paste her url or atom feed into your google reader (or whatever feed reader you use)and keep up with the stuff. She promises to write about Islands, which is gonna make us all pine [...]

The Eigteenth Brumaire of Gaius Balthar

So, with Laura, a paper for the conference on bsg planned for end of the month. My notetaking has been so frakking slow I cannot tell you, but parts of the plot now seem to show up on Draidis. So say we all. (Mere notes, sorry, see other Sci Fi bits in labels for more): [...]

1857 – the cheeky chapattis

150 years ago. This text is somewhat overdue, as it as promised, then delayed, and reworked, then neglected, viciously, for too long. And its still not finished – these notes at least tell themain tale… Which is… That, in an important book which pretty much started the Gramsci influenced ‘school’ of Indian historiography called Subaltern [...]

The Banana Pancake Trail

I’ve seen a lot of new discussion recently of comfort foods on the tourist trail. I thought I would excavate comments on this from my “Rumour of Calcutta” book. Hence the following reminiscence: From Chapter One: “The confusion which reigns in this kind of tourism derives from a predicament where the consumption of its product [...]

Jesus Trinketizaton

This disturbingly interesting post is from youth worker Mark Oestreicher. The convolutions of owning and believing are curious indeed. I normally would not bother with god-botherin’ types, but this is almost authorization from above when he wants to get the law involved in terminologies/normative ideal typologies or whatever we might call em, that I am [...]

No Borders Gatwick

first notes for a Migrating University to be held at Gatwick International Airport amidst the No Borders Camp(link below) The No Borders camp at Gatwick in september (19th-24th) is an ideal opportunity for the local uni to rouse itself from sleepy London and show its solidarity with Britain’s new settlers, condemn the Government’s asylum and [...]

No Borders Gatwick in Sept.

An Invitation To The Gatwick No Border Camp 2007 From 19th to 24th September 07 we will gather at Gatwick Airport for the first No Border Camp in the UK. This camp will be a chance to work together to try and stop the building of a new detention centre, and togather ideas for how [...]

Bombs don’t go bump in the night …

So there are Bombs that don’t go bump in the night … The new/not so new development in wartime-Britain this week is that relatively mundane places … a trashy nightclub, a regional (!) airport, a carpark … have become targets™. And, more importantly, this targeting is an admitted consequence of robust security at more prestigious [...]