The Null Device

Yesterday, Your Humble Correspondent went to the south bank of the Thames and took part in an unreliable tour of London Tokyo, given by the performance artist/writer/musician Momus and his partner Hisae. I only saw part of it, joining the tour in the afternoon. Momus and Hisae were attired in what looked like Japanese or Korean uniforms (which, Momus stressed, were not trendy-minimalist Muji products) and carrying 1950s-vintage megaphones through which they talked to a small crowd which had assembled around them, describing to them which part of Tokyo they are in. Well, Momus did most of the talking, with Hisae adding a native Japanese perspective; some of the time (particularly towards the end, when things got a bit more absurd), their act seemed like a traditional comic/straight-man music-hall duo.

The actual content was fairly interesting; we were informed that the National Theatre was actually a trendy shopping centre whose top floor was an art gallery/museum, where yesterday's unsold fashions ended up, and that the mayor of Tokyo makes his way up the river by speedboat at 6pm every day. Other than that, Momus expounded on his theories on Japanese culture and its similarities/differences with British and European cultures (European individualism vs. Asian collectivism/"superlegitimacy", the British stiff upper lip and the Japanese bushidō (which is apparently making a resurgence), the falsehood of the assumption that modernism is Westernism, and the rising Gini index in Japan and declining originality of Japanese street fashion (apparently it's all Uniqlo and The Gap in Tokyo nowadays)).

¶ london tokyo momus art personal [no comments]

There is controversy after London mayor Boris "watermelon smiles" Johnson made the Rise music festival drop its anti-racism message, in favour of a less contentious statement about "culture" and "community". It's not clear what happened there. Was he repaying a debt to the pro-racism lobby? Shoring up his support among Daily Mail readers? Or was this a case of his anti-leftist cold-warrior instincts deciding that "anti-racism" is a codeword for "Marxist socialism" or somesuch? (The latter could hold water, with Johnson banning the Cuba Solidarity Campaign's stage from the festival, though one could argue that such an event could be propaganda for what is a totalitarian regime, albeit one with splendidly good PR.)

(via xrrf) ¶ boris johnson politics racism london [no comments]

Quelle surprise; it turns out that, after all, Boris Johnson's replacement of bendy buses with magical flying Routemasters, a key plank in his election campaign, might not actually happen.

Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson's director of transport policy, said that a design competition would be launched - but if no bid was good enough they would look again at the pledge.

He added that although Mr Johnson is very keen to bring in a new-style bus in place of bendy buses, they would not press ahead with the idea for the sake of it.

Mr Johnson made phasing out bendy buses a priority, initially saying new Routemasters would cost £8million to run with conductors. However, he later admitted the figure would be nearer £100million.

Petrolheads and Chelsea tractor drivers can rejoice, though, as the congestion charge looks set to be "reviewed" (i.e., cut back); the western extension looks set to be scrapped altogether. Jeremy Clarkson, however, will be disappointed that a £500/day congestion charge on bicycles is not on the agenda.

(via london-underground) ¶ london boris johnson public transport cars politics uk [no comments]

Last night, Your Humble Correspondent made his way out to deepest darkest Richmond to see Momus' performance at the Richmond Lending Library. (This was the second ever performance in a public library I had seen; the previous one was also by Momus, only somewhere around Balham or Tooting, in the southernmost reaches of the Northern Line.)

This performance, which I only found out about yesterday, was ostensibly about the restless spirits trapped inside books. Momus (attired all in black, including a hood) played the role of a spirit medium specialising in spirit media, as it were, or more precisely in the spirits of dead people trapped in books. He invited attendees (of whom there were perhaps 10, presumably because those attending only had a day's notice of the event) to choose books at random and read a sentence from them, which he then would spin into a tangent, philosophical reflection or evidence of eldritch and unholy things beyond the veil between worlds. (In the first example, a cheerily banal line in colloquial English turned out to really be in "Ukrainian", and a portent of grim things indeed. Later, a book of knitting patterns revealed the battle between Jesus Christ and the tamagotchi—perhaps an echo of Momus' writings about the dualism between the Judaeochristian sex-death-guilt culture and the Shinto fertility religion, though he didn't labour that point.) In between the entertainment, he performed a few songs, including Beowulf (which he did from under a blanket) and Robin Hood (with a dig at Thatcher Blair Brown's devil-take-the-hindmost Britain), singing over an iPod playing through PC speakers, and playing the odd stylophone solo. He also played one of the songs from the new album he's working on with one of the chaps from Gay Against You; it was built up from a Magazine sample (and thus, he said, possessed by Howard Devoto's restless spirit), and sounded quite good, in a glitchy breakcore sort of way; not too unlike Kid606 or Talkshow Boy.

Anyway, Momus' own account of the gig, with more details, is here.

Momus will be back in London in late June, when he will be wandering the south bank of the Thames and telling tourists that they're in Tokyo or something like that. Which should be worth going along to.

¶ personal gigs momus london [no comments]

This weekend, your humble correspondent went to the Cans Festival, a huge stencil art exhibition in a tunnel under the former Eurostar platforms of Waterloo Station. The festival organisers took the entire road tunnel and transformed it into a gallery, with artists from all over the world painting pieces (most involving stencilling, though a few being paste-ups) along its length. The most publicised name attached to the exhibition was, of course, Banksy, and he had a number of works there; as well as some stencils, he was responsible for a sitting-room installation with derelict sofas and an old piano made available to the public and a number of "remixed" classical statues. Though there were several dozen more artists, and indeed, anyone could come along, register and add their artwork to the exhibition. (On Saturday evening, a section of the passageway was sealed off from the general public and made available only to registered artists, who were busily adorning it with stencils.)

Anyway, here are a few photos; the entire set is here:

¶ banksy london personal photos stencil art street art [1 comment]

Boris Johnson, Tory joke candidate, has just won the London mayoral election by some 140,000 votes. As of now, Londoners have forfeited the right to make smug remarks about Americans having voted for Bush.

Johnson didn't have any positive policies (other than the bizarre magic-Routemaster promise, which can be translated as either "let's divert a few million pounds from boring things like housing and education into designing a cool-looking retro bus" or "let's play a game: you pretend you're an idiot and I'll entertain you"), but got elected on (a) his raffish, loveable-buffoon image, and (b) dog-whistles to reactionary resentment (too hard/expensive to drive into London, too many unruly coloured youths/scary Muslims, "It's political correctness gone mad!"). In fact, he had expert coaching in the art of dog-whistle politics, having been managed by Lynton Crosby, who helped keep a right-wing government in power in Australia for 11 years, tapping into much the same reactionary sentiments and unspoken but popularly accepted bigotries.

It's overwhelmingly likely that the next four or so years won't be an era of innovative initiatives in London. Don't expect things like the Paris bicycle hire scheme, bold new green initiatives, pioneering public transport policy (something Ken Livingstone was actually really good at) or forward-looking visions for a metropolis at the centre of global culture. We can almost certainly expect the congestion charge to be abolished or "rationalised" to the point where nobody has to actually pay it (except perhaps for those pesky cyclists who get in everyone's way), and the axe to fall on Ken Livingstone's public-transport expansion programmes (you can forget about the city tram or the East London Overground reaching Clapham Junction), and quite possibly on Transport For London itself, abolishing this Inefficient Socialist Bureaucracy and flogging off individual tube lines to bus companies. The daily commute won't get any less slow or cramped, though at least those who own cars will have the option to drive. Also, if Crosby's previous client is anything to go by, expect the ugly politics of division and the "culture war" to come out, to see Johnson publicly beating up on cosmopolitan elites and "un-British" foreigners, to mass applause from the Daily Mail readers who voted for him. Certainly, Ken's celebrations of multiculturalism will be replaced by fields of Union Jacks, with Land Of Hope And Glory blaring through the tannoy. But the good side is that it'll be really easy to find parking at the Olympics.

The gist of this is that it now looks like, over the next few years, London will become an even less attractive place to live, even more paranoid and mean and self-absorbed, a backward-looking place whose glories are all in the past, with Boris Johnson's rhetorical Routemasters. And in four years' time, Londoners will look over their dirty, traffic-choked city and Ken Livingstone's reign will look like a golden age in comparison.

¶ fail london uk politics rightwingers [1 comment]

Today, Britain will go to the polls to elect local councils. In London, this als o involves an election for the Mayor of London, a powerful executive post with powers encompassing the entire city, which has been held since its inception by Ken Livingstone.

The election will involve a limited form of preferential voting, in which voters get two preferences; in essence, one's ideal candidate, and whom one regards as the lesser evil. (You can vote otherwise, of course; you could put down your two favourite fringe parties, in order of preference, but then once they had been eliminated, your vote would not have any input into the race between the two major-party candidates who are all but guaranteed to square off for the title.)

The two major candidates are, of course, Ken Livingstone in the Labour corner and, in the Tory corner, Boris Johnson, the outrageously outspoken party clown of the Conservative Party. Johnson is best known for his gaffes (such as talking about black areas as being full of "piccaninnies with watermelon smiles" and asking New Guineans whether they have stopped eating each other yet), though has been uncharacteristically restrained in recent months—some say by his campaign manager, none other than Lynton Crosbie, the Australian Karl Rove who kept John Howard's conservative government in power for 11 years and has since become a sort of soldier of fortune to rightwingers seeking office across the English-speaking world. Or, perhaps, by medication; for the most part, his policy pronouncements have been rather vague and not demonstrated much of a grasp on how exactly he intends to manage London (except for hinting that there'll be less management going on, and more power devolved).

Whom would I vote for? Well, naturally, Boris Johnson—if the election was for the post of Mascot of London, that is. His loveable-buffoon act is considerably more entertaining than anything Ken Livingstone has been able to come up with, and since no more suitable candidates (such as, say, a professional wrestler or Leoncie) are running, he'd be the best person for that job. However, since the election is not about choosing whom you'd most like to have a drink with at the pub but whom you'd want managing the metropolis of London, electing Johnson would be at best dismal, and quite probably disastrous.

Johnson has not revealed much of what he would actually do in office. He has issued a few policy ideas, all of which were very sketchy. There was his plan to replace the (much-maligned) bendy buses with something called "21st-century Routemasters", which nobody has actually seen, though we are supposed to believe that Boris will somehow conjure them up once he takes office; the proposal could scarcely sound less reassuring if we were promised flying Routemasters fuelled by pixie dust. (If—if—one were to take Johnson's word at face value, this would presumably involve allocating a big chunk of London council tax revenue to researching and developing a new retro-styled bus; which would be a jolly good boy's-own adventure, though hardly the most efficient use for tens of millions of taxpayers' pounds.) Other policies are either hopelessly ill-costed (such as the commitment to putting attendants on buses, whose costing turned out to be off by an order of magnitude) or else amount to little more than vague motherhood statements, promises to do something about crime or give power back to the people. If you squint hard enough, and hate the thought of Ken Livingstone getting back in enough, you can almost convince yourself that there is something there to vote for. Though you'd really need to believe that anything would be better than Livingstone.

Chances are what would happen if Johnson got in is that he'd pose for a few photo opportunities, pass a few populist pieces of legislation, play a bit with the giant model train set he has won and then, like Toad of Toad Hall, get bored of it and go off to pursue the next distraction. He already would be dividing his time with a seat in Parliament if he got in, so London couldn't expect more than half of his time. Of course, he would remain Mayor of London, but the real decisions would be made by the men behind the curtain, i.e., various nameless apparatchiks.

What these would be we can only guess at. While Johnson hasn't spoken about abolishing the successful Congestion Charge (a policy left publicly to the extreme right—the isolationist UKIP and the neo-fascist BNP—one of whose candidates is also on record as saying that rape cannot be an ordeal because women enjoy sex), he has hinted at rationalising it. It's quite likely that the rationalisation could involve filling it with the sorts of loopholes one could literally drive a SUV through. The recurring theme of "power to the people" could indicate dismantling a lot of the powers of the Mayor of London's office, the breaking up and privatisation of Transport for London, and could mean the end for projects such as Crossrail or the ongoing renewals of the Tube. As for cultural diversity, while Johnson (whom Crosbie has undoubtedly coached well in the art of dog-whistle politics) hasn't outspokenly condemned multiculturalism or championed a Daily Mail-approved brand of John Bull Englishness, he has in interviews said that the best thing about London's diversity was that one could find mangetout in the supermarket. That may or may not mean anything, but it doesn't sound promising. And let's remember that Lynton Crosbie's previous client also seemed like an affable moderate until he was safely in office and the gloves came off in a vicious, dirty culture war.

So yes, I'll be putting Ken Livingstone second. I'm still not sure whom I'll be putting first (I'm leaning towards either Siân Berry or Brian Paddick), though it won't be BoJo the Clown.

¶ politics uk london tories boris johnson ken livingstone [2 comments]

Charlie Brooker weighs into the London mayoral election; he's voting for Ken Livingstone, if only to stop Boris Johnson from winning:

A few years back, during the run-up to the Nathan Barley TV series, my co-author Chris Morris and I briefly kicked around a storyline about an animated MP running for election. When I say "animated", I mean literally animated. He was a cartoon - the political equivalent of Gorillaz - fashioned from state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery so that he could move and talk in real time, like Max Headroom. His speech would be provided on-the-fly by a professional cartoon voice artist working in conjunction with a team of political advisers and comedy writers, so he'd have an impish personality not dissimilar to the genie in Disney's Aladdin. Debating against him would be impossible because he'd make outrageously goonish statements one minute and trot out cunning political platitudes the next. Because he wasn't real, he'd never age, die, or be bogged down in scandal - and huge swathes of the population would vote for him just because they found him cool or fun or different.

Fast-forward to now. On May 1 London chooses its mayor, and I've got a horrible feeling it might pick Boris Johnson for similar reasons. Johnson - or to give him his full name, Boris LOL!!!! what a legernd!! Johnson!!! - is a TV character loved by millions for his cheeky, bumbling persona. Unlike the cartoon MP, he's magnetically prone to scandal, but this somehow only makes him more adorable each time. Tee hee! Boris has had an affair! Arf! Now he's offended the whole of Liverpool! Crumbs! He used the word "picaninnies"! Yuk yuk! He's been caught on tape agreeing to give the address of a reporter to a friend who wants him beaten up! Ho ho! Look at his funny blond hair! HA HA BORIS LOL!!!! WHAT A LEGERND!!!!!!

Basil Brush would be a shoo-in. Churchill, the nodding dog from the car insurance ads - he'll do. Or if we're after the ironic vote, how about Gene Hunt from Life on Mars? Or Phil Mitchell? At least he's a Londoner.

¶ uk london politics boris johnson charlie brooker the spectacle [no comments]

The colossal, ongoing cock-up of Heathrow's new Terminal 5 has been a boon to London's homeless community, who have taken to disguising themselves as delayed travellers and sleeping in the terminal:

Each night, scores of London's homeless men and women take advantage of modern travel delays by posing as stranded passengers in order to sleep in a warm and safe place. They play a cat-and-mouse game with police, often donning floral shirts, fanny packs and other travel accessories to blend in. And their increasing creativity — and ability to disappear in Heathrow's swelling crowds of delayed passengers — has prompted the airport to try a new approach.

"Rough sleepers," as homeless people are known in Britain, disguise themselves at all major airports, says Sandie Cox of Heathrow Travel Care, the social care organization overseeing the one-year pilot scheme. Indeed, Chicago's O'Hare airport instituted a homeless outreach in the 1990s. But while the problem may not be unique to Heathrow, several factors make it easier for rough sleepers to blend in. It is the busiest airport in Europe, has more delays than other major hubs, and while it doesn't serve Europe's low-cost carriers, it has still seen the effects of the democratization of air travel: gone are the days when you could identify a British air passenger by their suit and shiny shoes. Indeed, on Wednesday, the two scruffy passengers curled in the corner of a remote bathroom turned out to be holding tickets to LAX; they had chosen their spot because it was the only place they could find an outlet to charge their hand-held video game console.

(via MeFi) ¶ heathrow homelessness deception uk london [no comments]

Seen in the comments for a blog piece about the renaming of a London Underground station, this piece of trivia and/or folklore:

The name Surrey Quays was coined by civil servants as a way of embarrassing the then Minister of Transport, Cecil Parkinson. The name alludes to his deserted mistress, Sarah Keys. It would be a pity to lose this snippet of history.

(via londonconnections) ¶ apocryphal folklore history london names scandal uk [2 comments]

Ken Livingstone has promised, should he be reelected, to ban all traffic from Oxford Street and replace it with a tram line, turning the shopping thoroughfare into something like Melbourne's Bourke Street, presumably paved in red bricks and containing tramp-proof public seating and such. Unlike Bourke Street, the traffic ban will be absolute, with no exemption for taxis.

A pedestrianised Oxford St. could be a good thing, turning a congested thoroughfare into a genuine public space. On the other hand, bus routes which go through it would either be rerouted through adjacent streets (which are already quite busy) or chopped in two.

Meanwhile, Tory clown prince Boris Johnson has vowed that, should he be elected, he will allow motorbikes to use bus lanes, just as cyclists do. Finally the petrolheads have a candidate they can rely on, since Jeremy Clarkson (who proposed abolishing the congestion charge for cars but imposing a £500/day congestion charge on bicycles, on the grounds that they are a nuisance to decent motorists everywhere and the smug, politically-correct Guardian-reading vegan types who cycle are annoying) declined to run.

Alas, if Livingstone (who has done an OK job, when he's not being George Galloway Lite) doesn't get reelected, it looks like Johnson will get up, as the other candidates (Brian Paddick and Sian Berry) do not look like having a chance. And, if Johnson becomes Mayor of London, I wonder how long it'll take until the fun-loving buffoonery gives way to hardline tory policies.

(via londonconnections) ¶ boris johnson ken livingstone london politics public transport tories trams urban planning [no comments]

Looking out from a London-bound train from Brighton today, I noticed a peculiar sight to the west of the railway line. At one point, in the area between two railway lines, there is a lot containing a large number of old red telephone boxes, in varying states of rust and decay.

Examining the line in Google Maps, the location appears to be here, just south of the M25, and in the vicinity of Redhill and Merstham.

¶ geography london uk [no comments]

As Camden Market (and the celebrity-infested Hawley Arms) burned this weekend, somebody took advantage of the commotion to paint over the famous Banksy maid up the road, leaving only a stencil saying "all the best".

(via Londonist) ¶ banksy camden market camden london vandalism crime [no comments]

The culture jammer calling himself The Decapitator has released a video of his latest stunt—hijacking a consignment of copies of free commuter tabloid TheLondonPaper, modifying them by gruesomely beheading David Beckham in a mobile phone ad, and then droplifting the doctored copies near Old Street, all in the space of 3 hours.

(via Wired News) ¶ the decapitator pranks culture jamming david beckham london media advertising détournement [no comments]

The latest thing to do on the London Underground: swapping station names around on maps, confusing tourists:

(via london-underground) ¶ london london underground pranks maps détournement [2 comments]

In March, the British Library is hosting hosting a futurist banquet, based on Futurist Manifesto author Filippo Marinetti's 1932 La Cucina Futurista:

The starter makes it clear that this will be no ordinary meal. Expect to be served an olive, a quartered fennel bulb and a kumquat, while the fingers of your free hand stroke morsels of velvet, silk and sandpaper. At the same time the scent of carnations will be sprayed into the room and your ears will be assailed by “wild jazz”, Wagner and aeroplane noise.

Typical Futurist dishes included meat broth sprinkled with champagne and liquor and decorated with rose petals, or the deliberately obscene-looking porco eccittato, a whole cooked salami upended on a plate with coffee sauce mixed with eau de cologne.

Benito Fiore, chairman of the Italian Academy of Cuisine in London, is hosting the event to support the British Library exhibition Breaking The Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937. He said: “Marinetti was a really fantastic person but his food was awful to eat. We are trying to make it edible.”

¶ futurism art food london retrofuturism [no comments]

Scientists have found a rat-eating plant in far north Queensland. Perhaps they could start exporting them to London (where, folklore has it, one is never more than either six or 20 feet away from a rat, depending on whom you ask)?

(via /.) ¶ biology australia rats botany queensland london [no comments]

Paul Torrens, of Arizona State University, has developed a computer model of crowd behaviour in cities, complete with graphics. The possibilities, as is pointed out here, are endless:

Such as the following: 1) simulate how a crowd flees from a burning car toward a single evacuation point; 2) test out how a pathogen might be transmitted through a mobile pedestrian over a short period of time; 3) see how the existing urban grid facilitate or does not facilitate mass evacuation prior to a hurricane landfall or in the event of dirty bomb detonation; 4) design a mall which can compel customers to shop to the point of bankruptcy, to walk obliviously for miles and miles and miles, endlessly to the point of physical exhaustion and even death; 5) identify, if possible, the tell-tale signs of a peaceful crowd about to metamorphosize into a hellish mob; 6) determine how various urban typologies, such as plazas, parks, major arterial streets and banlieues, can be reconfigured in situ into a neutralizing force when crowds do become riotous; and 7) conversely, figure out how one could, through spatial manipulation, inflame a crowd, even a very small one, to set in motion a series of events that culminates into a full scale Revolution or just your average everyday Southeast Asian coup d'état -- regime change through landscape architecture.

Or you quadruple the population of Chicago. How about 200 million? And into its historic Emerald Necklace system of parks, you drop an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, a pedophile, an Ebola patient, an illegal migrant worker, a swarm of zombies, and Paris Hilton. Then grab a cold one, sit back and watch the landscape descend into chaos. It'll be better than any megablockbuster movie you'll see this summer.

(via schneier, mind hacks) ¶ computer science modelling society panic terrorism zombies riots urban planning geography gibson's law psychogeography chicago london san francisco [no comments]

Some anonymous guerilla artist has been hacking the heads off models in advertising posters in London. Dubbed the "East London Decapitator", he or she creates meticulously photoshopped overlays, with the figures' heads replaced with gory stumps and the surroundings splattered with blood, and pastes them over the advertisements. Nobody — not squeaky-clean Disney stars, not pop singers, not even computer-animated characters — is safe.

(via Wired News) ¶ art culture jamming guerilla art pranks london decapitation advertising détournement [1 comment]

Charlie Stross visits London and devises a foolproof means of preventing terrorist suicide bombings in the capital:

The solution to protecting the London Underground from terrorist suicide bombers can be summed up in one word: Daleks. One Dalek per tube platform, behind a door at the end. Fit them with cameras and remote controls and run them from Ken Livingstone's office. Any sign of terrorism on the platform? Whoosh! The doors open and the Dalek comes out, shrieking "exterminate!" in a demented rasp reminiscent of Michael Howard during his tenure as Home Secretary, only less merciful.

The British are trained from birth to know the two tactics for surviving a Dalek attack; run up the stairs (or escalator), or hide behind the sofa. There are no sofas in the underground, but there are plenty of escalators. Switch them to run upwards when the Dalek is out, and you can clear a platform in seconds.

Suicide bombers are by definition Un-British, and will therefore be unable to pass a citizenship test, much less deal with the Menace from Skaro. And as for motivating the Daleks, one need only mention that the current crop of would-be British suicide bombers are doctors ...

¶ humour charlie stross daleks terrorism london [no comments]

In a few years, there may be direct trains from London to Germany; Deutsche Bahn is applying to run trains through the Channel Tunnel to St. Pancras. Eurotunnel, who own the tunnel, are apparently keen for them to do so, being considerably in debt and having capacity to spare. There remains a question of safety standards, though, which DB may want amended somewhat:

At present, passenger trains using the tunnel have to be capable of being divided in two in the case of a fire. The safety rules also require operators to use a special locomotive capable of coping with the signals and power supply on both sides of the Channel. Under European Union open access rules for railways, the £5.7 billion High Speed One, due to open in a fortnight between the Channel Tunnel and St Pancras, has been built to accommodate trains from across Europe.

¶ railway travel london uk germany channel tunnel eurostar [no comments]

This afternoon, I was walking through Notting Hill when I noticed that the fronts of various shops had changed. Jack Wills, the "geezer" couturier on the corner of Portobello Road and Talbot Road (near Rough Trade) had become "Fowler and Green Hardware", and had racks of old boxes out the front. Meanwhile, the café diagonally across the road had been transformed into an old radio shop, its windows full of black-and-white TVs and such. The First Floor bar was in the process of being done up to look like a no-nonsense old pub.

It turned out that they were filming some scenes from a film titled "Hippy Hippy Shake", which is set in London in the early 1960s. I'm not sure whether they were using Portobello Road to stand in for a generic street in early-60s London (which would presumably have been quite expensive), or whether they were actually filming a scene set in Portobello Road, and in which case, whether the shops they had reconstructed had actually once existed there. (Then again, there was someone carrying a Blenheim Crescent street sign, which presumably had been temporarily taken down, so perhaps they were actually reconstructing the intersection two blocks down circa 1962 or something?)

¶ london notting hill life film history [no comments]

The Times has the poignant story of the death of a 42-year-old loner, whose body was not found until, two months after his death, a neighbour (who did not know him) noticed an odd smell coming from his north London council flat:

For some, the decision to disappear is gradual. It begins with an impulse, a desire to disconnect. It could mean turning the phone off and retreating under the duvet. For most people, it’s a fleeting escape. Family and friends are what keep them tethered. But what happens to those who become untethered? Or let go on purpose? Days, months, even years can pass. They have slipped through the cracks. Despite the presence of CCTV cameras and telecoms technology, which make most of us feel we are constantly monitored, it has become easier for those who live alone to avoid human contact altogether.

The pharmacist said he was always dressed neatly. He described him as “shy and pleasant – nothing mentally ill about him”, and admitted that when he didn’t see him for a while, he just assumed that Smith had moved away.

A few doors down from his flat, at No 168, Andrew’s neighbour, a postman, described Andrew as quiet, tall and thin. They lived near each other for 13 years but had only spoken to say hello when they passed each other coming and going on the stairs. In all the years he lived there, he said, he had seen no friends, ever. Andrew kept to himself.

¶ death reclusion society bowling alone atomisation alienation london [no comments]

An anonymous author has droplifted a book into bookshops in the West End of London. The book in question, "The Idiocy of Idears" by "schoolboy Gustav Claudius" purported to be the jottings of a dyslexic schoolboy; further investigation revealed it to be an upcoming work by prolific poet, painter and punk rocker Billy Childish, founder of the art movement Stuckism.

¶ droplifting art stuckism billy childish uk london [1 comment]

Car bomb found and disarmed near Piccadilly Circus. Could this be the "Hiroshima and Nagasaki-scale" al-Qaeda atrocity meant to "shake the Roman throne"?

¶ terrorism london [no comments]

Somebody has been going around the London Underground with specially printed transparency stickers, adding a station named "Brown Punk" to the Hammersmith & City line:

And then there's the graffiti all over town, reading "Alphabet of Brooke Shields" or its variations.

(via london-underground) ¶ graffiti london tube détournement [no comments]

For those reading this in (the vicinity of) London: next Wednesday evening, the Open Rights Group is having a party at Bar Kick in Shoreditch, from 6 to 11pm. There will be "free culture" music and visuals, guest speakers and a raffle, with prizes including signed copies of books by copyfight luminaries like Lawrence Lessig and Bruce Schneier, a PC keyboard signed by Neil Gaiman, and the chance to be written into a Cory Doctorow novel. Your Humble Blogger will sort of be DJing there (there aren't DJs as the place doesn't have a live music licence, but I will be preparing a mix CD of freely distributable music and such that will be queued up on the PA). Attendance is free, if you bring one new ORG supporter.

¶ london copyfight announcement party [no comments]

For years, map historians have been puzzled by the so-called "London Underground Map", and have speculated on what it could possibly represent. Now a new theory claims that, when rotated and adjusted appropriately, the map corresponds with the map of Australia:

Captain Columbus set sail from Whitby in the "Beagle" soon after he had routed the Armada at Trafalgar, in 1215, and reached Australia a few months later. It is thought that he had the map drawn for him, by one Harry Beck, to remind him where he had buried the treasure. Not wanting the map to lead other explorers to find the loot, should the map have fallen into the wrong hands, he instructed Beck to insert all kinds of fictitious roads and placenames -- even airports!

In Beck's hands, Port Philip is renamed Watford -- presumably in an attempt to deter would-be looters -- Botany Bay is renamed Uxbridge, Perth: Upminster and Albany: Epping. Mystery still remains about the purpose of the zonal markings, but Professor Bovlomov speculates that they might indicate the friendliness -- or hostility -- of the natives. The Professor believes that Beck may have included a coded message within the map to identify the location of the treasure. "Bank" is dismissed as "too obvious", and is probably intended to lead the unauthorised holder of the map to a certain death. West Finchley, though, may prove to be the site of the hidden treasure because, as the professor says: "It is obviously a made up name, and was probably invented by Beck as a kind of joke. No one would ever think of going to such a place, let alone living there!" When asked to comment, other experts said it was Barking.

(via kmusser) ¶ humour cartography geography london australia [no comments]

After Oxfam started selling Oyster card wallets to the sorts of Independent-reading Londoners who wear their consciences on their sleeves, two malcontents have launched their own range, in the fine Londinian tradition of grumbling about the Tube:

(via london-underground) ¶ london sarcasm culture jamming black humour tube oyster [no comments]

I woke up this morning to find London covered with snow:

Not surprisingly, there were severe delays on the Tube.

¶ personal life london snow photos [3 comments]