Went back to Barrocco on Friday but was with Deep and my sister Pam this time. Much better night, (better company I guess!). We ended up in The Green Rooms, a pre-show Bar/Restaurant opposite the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre. It’s sort of my local and apart from chatting to an intelligent and attractive schoolteacher named Satnam, (although she called herself ‘Nik’), I bumped into Simon, a guy I went to school with many, (too many!), years ago.

Of course I was too crap to get her number but I regret, even more, not getting his. When we were at school, Simon was a unique individual, intelligent, sensitive, principled, fat, funny, just a little bit weird and he suffered from creeping alopeatia. Being an outsider myself I think we naturally gravitated towards each other, (along with other nerds/geeks/foreigners), and he was someone I should have kept in touch with. In particular I remember that he would stick up for victims of bullies irrespective of the inevitable pummelling he would receive by putting himself ‘in harms way’. He was also an ardent fan of a punk band called the ‘Four Skins’…(go figure!).

Anyway, it’s Easter weekend which means that I’m constipated as a result of eating at least half a kilogram of chocolate but while I poured copious amounts of coffee into my straining digestive system this morning I got a chance to watch ‘The Time Machine’ again.

This was the 1960 version, starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux and not the 2002 version starring Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba. I know quite a lot has been written about the underlying themes of the original H.G. Wells novel and I don’t have the inclination nor the intellect to go into it myself but I know it’s one of my favourite movies. I take something different out of it every time I see it and this occasion was no exception.

Whereas the 2002 version have the Elloi portrayed as a ‘coffee coloured’ peoples – possibly representing a future in which we’re all blended into beautiful Samantha Mumba types, (hmmmm!), the 1960 version’s Elloi were all beautiful Nordic visions of perfection. I always found that a little disconcerting – a future were perfection is represented in such glowing ‘Aryan’ terms and in their lotus-eating state they’re being exploited by the blue ape-like Morlocks. I think I identified with the H.G. Wells character, (Rod Taylor), in a strange way.

I remember growing up in England, equipped with my budding anglocentric consciousness wondering why all the sundar manush (Bengali: fair people) appeared to be so oblivious to other people’s pains.

I don’t think that anymore, I’ve met plenty of individuals of all types who display compassion and humanity and I am hopeful for our long term future but still, there is in me a residual echo of past doubts as I remember the words of Frantz Fanon:

“I have no wish to be the victim of the Fraud of a black world.
My life should not be devoted to drawing up the balance sheet of Negro values.
There is no white world, there is no white ethic, any more than there is a white intelligence.
There are in every part of the world men who search.
I am not a prisoner of history. I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny.
I should constantly remind myself that the real leap consists in introduction invention into existence.
In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.”

(–Fanon “Black Skin, White Masks”, 1952)

I went to Wolverhampton today, (well, yesterday to be pedantic), to work as camera assistant on Matt’s First Cut production – “Things to do in Wolverhampton when you’re Dead”.

As usual on Matt’s productions, it was weird! It’s not that we started the day by filming in a graveyard, nor that we were filming a set of twins at that morbid location. Nor did the fact that the twins claimed to be psychics phase me, (afterall this was Wolverhampton).

What really freaked me out was Blue Mountain. He is the spirit of a dead Cherokee native American who is channelled by one of the twins!

I was relieved to end the day’s filming with a shoot of a man called Gerald and his wife. There was nothing bizarre about him… well I say nothing but there was his habit of sketching dead people in the local community hall.

Matt joked that at the next shoot I would have to dress up as Bette Davis. I’m worried!

It’s such a beautiful, warm day in Birmingham, apparantly it’s got something to do with the weather coming up from the Sahara, at least that’s it according to Bacon, Cheese and Oatcakes.

Up till now I have been adhering to a regime of not mentioning other blogs but am starting to realise that that is going against the spirit of the blogosphere. I suppose I’m just becoming used to the ettiquette of it all and till now had been using my own blog simply as a journal of my thoughts. But I think I will modify my unwritten rule regarding this because there are an amazing number of fascinating people who are sharing their thoughts.

I’m used to trawling the blogosphere and encountering blog after blog of US based bloggers saying the most thought provoking things I’ve heard in a long time. Real thoughts, real people and although I don’t agree with some, with others I find myself nodding furiously in agreement. Had it not been for this direct access to the thoughts and feelings of real people I feel that I may have fallen victim to the prevailing Anti-Americanism, (at least amongst nearly everybody I know).

Having said that, I’ve recently joined a webring: <#Blogging Brits?> which, unsurprisingly, is a ring of Brit Bloggers. I’ve got to say that I’ve spent the last hour or so just looping through these blogs and it’s been really great, somehow more intimate than the US ones.

I’m looking forward to the time when the technology is so pervasive and accessible that it becomes impossible to wage a war. Anyway, I’m going off to enjoy the the sun while it lasts. Peace be upon you.

* The BBC’s motto, ‘Nation shall speak peace unto nation’, was based on biblical verses from the Book of Micah (chapter 4, verse 3) and Book of Isaiah (chapter 2, verse 4): ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.’

– Mind Streaming – John Coxon’s Online Journal

It looks as if the SARS pandemic may have claimed it’s 140th victim and that it’s mutated into a more virulent form that is now attacking fit young victims.

As if that wasn’t worrying enough, Bangladesh fears Sars case; a situation that should be alarming given the massive population, the density of it and the ill-equiped medical facilities in Bangladesh.

It’s ironic then, (but hopeful too), that today, (the fiftieth aniversary of the discovery of DNA), is when the Human Genome is officially declared as mapped.

At the moment though, I think SARS is worrisome rather than panic inducing, it has a fatality rate of 4%. At any other time the SARS virus would have been the big news. Plus, I can’t believe, (even with the Iraqi war), that the Genome mapping news isn’t being heralded as the monumental breakthrough that it undoubtedly is.

Maybe the project should have had a few ‘embed’ reporters on board!

I read an excellent op-ed in The Daily Star, (an english language daily newspaper from Bangladesh).

The writer, MJ Akbar is Chief Editor of the Asian Age and in this article, “The conflict has just begun”, draws historical parallels between the Mongol invasion of Iraq in 1258 and Dubya’s [current] great adventure. (I love this sort of thing!)

He begins by restating the question asked by the victorious Mongol conquerer of the Iraqi ulema.

“Which man is better as a sovereign? An unbeliever who is just, or a Muslim who is unjust?”

to which one of them eventually replied,

“The unbeliever who is just should be preferred to the unjust believer.”

Of course, there’s a lot more to this article but as if it were a message directed towards me, with my habit of citing history as precedent, Akbar says at one point:

History, of course does not repeat itself. There may be parallels, but nothing is ever a replica.

Even so, he writes,

The consequences are familiar to those who read history. A crisis has eliminated the pretender, and the future waits to see who will fill this vacuum.

The Americans want this space to be occupied by a favourite like Ahmad Chalabi. But all they will succeed in doing is setting up an administration. There is a difference between administration and control. A figurehead may sit in Baghdad, but George Bush will be in power. This was precisely the situation after the First World War, when a British-Indian army ‘liberated’ Iraq from the Ottomans and imposed first direct, and then indirect rule. The British foreign secretary in 1918, Sir Arthur Balfour, was not concerned about niceties. He said: “I do not care under what system we keep the oil. But I am quite clear that it is all-important for us that this oil should be available.”

Iraqi nationalism, supported by Arab anger, will also seek to fill that vacuum.

Now I know it’s been pointed out many many times, (to the point where it’s mantra-like invocation threatens to hide the essential fact), but it’s worth restating who stands to derive financial gains from this adventure. And Terry Jones, (he of Monty Python fame), does just that in his article, Welcome aboard the Iraqi gravy train in today’s Observer. This is the grist to the [Iraqi nationalism] mill.