the modern guide...better lies

...the modern guide to tiny miracles

2010-01-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

It was freezing last night, -5. As I left work I saw a tramp, not a homeless person , not a junkie, not a beggar but a tramp. I know he's a tramp because he does his tramping near where I live.
I recognise him.

I walk past him. He stands there, he looks so cold even with the hundred layers on. I stop and take all the money I have out of my pockets go back and give it to him. He's negotiating a cigarette from another passer by, he looks at me, says nothing.
What does he recognise?

I walk round the corner and the bus is there. I've no money. Need to go the bank get cash, will miss bus, weather has put the trains off, be another hour before I get home. Its freezing.

I get on the bus anyway, don't no why. "How much to the west end?" . "£1.60"

Put my hand in my pocket. I have exactly £1.60.

...the modern guide to star wars*

2009-04-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

Simon Pegg was on TV the other day. I'm a fan. He was talking about Star Wars - again.
I was the perfect age for Star Wars. Ten in 1977. My big brothers were playing Bowie and Mott the Hoople. I loved Marvel comics and football, was in the middle of discovering punk rock and gangs, taking the piss out of posh kids and spotty girls , and staring dumbfounded at the girls who were beginning to develop.
Star Wars meant nothing to me or the other local kids. Nothing at all! Nada , Zilch, F. all...I remember my dad taking me to it and thinking ... Jesus ... another western.
He didn't even think it was that good. He mumbled "Buck Rogers... Flash Gordon" He'd seen all the same Saturday morning B movies as Lucas. He knew a rip off when he saw it.
I don't remember talking about it at school or going mad for the action figures or my mates acting out Death Star scenes or thinking we were Luke and Hans or the posh robot or the big monkey guy!
Nine months or so later Grease came to town. Leather jackets....girls who looked dirty...burst condoms ...drag racing..."the chicks will cream ". ..T -birds and Pink Ladies ... Like Blondie and the Ramones. Kids doing the quake and chorusing "tell me more...tell me more" at the comprehensive school disco.
That's the movie experience I remember from then. That's the one the kids round my way queued round the block for.
I don't think we were any better or any worse than the kids that liked Star Wars.
I like it now, my kids like it.
I know this flies in the face of fashion, but back then to us, Star Wars was a just another movie and Grease was the word!.

...the modern guide to job hunting

2009-04-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for a job. Its a lot harder than I thought.

The internet is awash with great jobs, poor jobs , high flying jobs and low slung jobs. You can sit in Iceland and look at a job in China. Look at a great role in New York from your home in Leeds.
You can spend all day at work looking for a job. Only to find your own advertised.

But its tiring and trying. Too many sites, too many jobs, too many recruiters, too many categories, too many agents.
I'd like to create a world job page.
A simple table listing every vacancy on the planet.
with ...job title....location....duties....benefits.

Maybe Something like this:

Pontiff....... Vatican........Flock Tendering........Infallibility;
Chairman.......Wall Street........Decision Making.......Power;
Barman.......London Pub......Serving.......Stories;
Street Sweeper....Paris....Cleaning.....The wonderment of toddlers;

That's it. No wages mentioned. No "must be motivated self starter" or "appreciator thruster" or any of that other Myers Briggs type nonsense.
Just a link to the role.
Every job in the world indexed through how you benefit as a human being.

It' a rough idea but I think I'm on to something.

In the meantime back to the job sites...

...the modern guide to newspapers

2009-03-31T14:28:00.000-07:00

Suddenly it's everywhere, on TV last night, on the radio this morning, The end of regional newspapers the redundancies and lack of profits of national titles. A senator in the states suggesting local newspapers could assume not for profit status ( actually an interesting idea) certain cities in the US having no print newspaper at all.
But what bugs me is that this isn't something that just appeared out of the blue like an alien from a b-movie issuing adapt or die ultimatums to newspapers. This has been coming for years and anyone with even a passing interest in new technology and media could have made an educated guess well over ten years a go that this point was coming.

The fact is people were describing exactly this impact on print media local and national as far back as the mid nineties and probably beyond . But (in the UK at least) most editors and journalists chose at best to ignore it and at worst to snear and mock the internet and it's users and champions.. I remember Janet Street-Porter on a TV show called J'accuse - about 1996 maybe - likening the internet to CB radio and generally taking the piss out of the freaks and geeks and spotty kids who used it.

Now JSP is a rent a gob I know. But a few years later she was editing a national Sunday newspaper and I think what she was saying was what most of fleet street and regional journalists were thinking.

It's a great example of being in the water and not listening to the guy on the beach shouting about the waves.

Good local journalism and news will always find an outlet and an audience and that in itself is a worry to some. I think nostalgia is wasted on titles. It's a shame about jobs. But it's a case of history repeating. Just ask the town cryer.

...the modern guide to the banking crisis

2009-02-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

... the modern guide to peace on earth

2009-01-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

In the gospel according to Star Trek. Mankind got it together, stopped wars and the pursuit of power, rendered excessive wealth and pityless poverty to history and overcame hunger and disease all because of first contact with aliens.
Vulcans to be precise.
If this is what it takes then the sooner they get here the better.
Rght now - as we lurch from crisis to bloodbath and back again- would be great timing.
With this in mind I was thinking to myself wouldn't it be great if the new president took the stand on inauguration day raised his hands, parted his fingers and announced "Live Long and Prosper" ...and then I saw this picture and thought wow!

...the modern guide to the old year

2008-12-31T19:10:00.000-08:00

So goodbye 2008.
The credit crunch - half the people we never trusted in the first place proved us all right and the the other half bailed them out.
The Olympics - a world sporting event was held in a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world . But it was ok, it all went really smoothly an the UK won a shed load of medals. Its up there with "you know you can say what you want about Stalin/Hitler/Pol Pot etc..,but at least he got the trains running on time"
President Obama got Eelcted - the world breathed a sigh of relief- maybe just maybe.

On a personal note; Nick Sanderson Died - and I'll never see his like again.

There's loads more. But that's about it for me.

Happy New Year from the modern guide

...the modern guide to Christmas

2008-12-25T07:48:00.000-08:00

I was stopped in the street yesterday (Christmas Eve) by a raggedy girl of about 19. She was thin with a noticeable bump. Her skin was sallow and eyes pastel pale. She was pretty given half a chance.
She said - "Excuse me I've just arrived in the city I'm 25 weeks pregnant (she rubbed the bump) and I need money for a cup of tea?"
Is this a modern Mary? Was the bump real? Was it nativity themed begging? I don't know if I believed her or not.
But I took the change out of my pocket. There was about a fiver and I gave her the lot.
I walked on feeling bad about not asking her not to spend it on drugs or drink. Then feeling worse about being such a puritan wanker.
Two minutes later there's Romany woman knelt down arms straight out chewed out cellophane cup in hand. I feel worse for not sharing the change.I even consider giving her a note.Ten yards further up there's another woman being moved on by the police for much the same approach. Two boys about the same age as my modern Mary walk by. One comments "that's what I like to see ...get them out...send them home". I think I'll confront them. I don't
Instead I haggle with a flower seller and get three Christmas Bouquets for £25 rather than £30.I buy some stocking fillers for the wife and kids and wonder if she'd bought me the David Holmes album "The Holy Pictures" or should I just buy it myself.
I go home. We wake up. Breakfast and presents, ripped paper and sweet filled stockings. Happy pictures and videos - happy family's.
I keep thinking about Mary, my fiver, the Romanies and the teenage one nationers.
I'd like to see them all in a Christmas miracle.
I'll play that movie in my head today. It beats the TV.
Or maybe I'll just download "The Holy Pictures".
Merry Christmas from the Modern Guide

... the modern guide to tellin' stories

2008-12-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

What with Oliver Postgate dying (sod Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog is where it was at)
and having just re-read the brilliant Paul Auster collection "True tales of American life"
It got me thinking about story tellers and it reminded me of this -
"Stories only happen to people that can tell them".
It's an old quote, I can't remember where I first heard it. If it was my line I'd add ..."and everyone can tell a story".
Stories are all powerful, they comfort and educate us when we're small. They're how we record and share life as we live it. They become the wisdom and memories we pass on and use to keep the cold away when we're old. Now more than ever before there's the means to tell little stories to huge audiences.
When You Tube says "Broadcast Yourself " it's challenging - tell us a story.
Blogs. Social Networks. Idea Sharing . Innovation boards. Stories. Stories. Stories.
I suppose its what people who like to tag things call Web 2.0 .
Its primal. It's drawing on cave walls.
But who would have thought that it could become so democratic.
That so many people would be so great at telling them.
So valuable.
Because now we call it content. And everyone wants good content.
Because everyone knows the power of a good story.

Including me.
So If you've nowhere to send your stories. Send them to the modern guide
- I'm very good at telling them.

... a modern guide to Barack Obama

2008-11-07T04:48:00.000-08:00

Three days after the event and the world seems still to be on a high after - as someone put it - "the USA decided to be cool again".
I'm not American but I don't think it ever lost its cool - just let its mojo slip for a while.
When Barack Obama was making his acceptance speech I felt tears well up in my eyes , it was pride in being human , it was knowledge that the collective was working and it was an overwhelming sense of belief in one person that I haven't had since I was a kid.
And it's that simple promise he's making , the same one a parent makes to their child - I'll keep you safe and sound and build you a future.
It's post modern. Its after all the greed and bullshit and wars and jealousies and tantrums, lets see if we can make this work the other way. The way we've forgotten or abandoned or wrote off because it was too soft or not smart or too simple. From "Its about me not them" to "Its about Us."
People will snear at this naivety.
But you know what? - The hairs on your neck stand up for a reason.
It's the Morning Town Ride....
"Maybe it is raining where our train will ride,
But all the little travelers are snug and warm inside.
Somewhere there is sunshine, somewhere there is day,
Somewhere there is Morningtown, many miles away."
It's Barack Obama ....
...and it's the true beginning of the Twenty First Century.

... to the state we're in.

2008-05-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

I was trying to put petrol in my car the other day and was reading the sign on the pump. It was letting me know that the fuel would start flowing as soon as the surveillance cameras had scanned my registration plate.

I thought for a moment....

the price of a barrel of oil, the price of a loaf of bread, the credit crunch, failing mortgages, wars waging all over the globe, cyclones, earthquakes, human trafficing , water shortages, food shortages, despotic regimes, 24 hour cctv and a dying planet

...then the pump started working and I filled up the car.

...to the army on the street

2008-05-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

Worrying times here in the U.K. . A modern guide worries about the increasing calls by politicians and the media to raise the profile of the armed forces in the streets and the schools and the minds of the people. An armed forces day with ticker tape parades is one government backed suggestion. 'Why aren't we more like the USA?' they ask. No offence to our American cousins - whom I love dearly - but this is not America and we're not Americans.

More frightening still is the call for servicemen to wear their uniforms in civy street and a push for cadets in every school. Is it to instill respect for the forces or for us is to get used to a daily uniformed presence ?

Just unnerves me this kind of talk, I can't quite put my finger on it...call it a gut feeling - the kind you have just before something really scary happens.

...to direct action

2008-05-06T06:15:00.000-07:00

I walked into a well known record store last week to find an old friend openly shoplifting. As a successful professional family man he's hardly the type. So we walked around the shop, while he peeled off the security tags and explained that an elderly relative had bought him a birthday gift of record vouchers for that store, not a huge amount - £20 - but a lot to her. Five months had passed since his birthday and he'd came into redeem the vouchers. In the meantime the store had been taken over by a larger chain .

They had retained the name, branding, carrier bags, staff and "vibe" of the previous outlet. Though it seems not their promises. My friend had written to the new proprietors and their accountants and had been told the debt was not theirs . in the end he felt he had no choice but a course of direct action; taking CDs to the exact value that his elderly Aunt had, in good faith, paid for the vouchers.

Finally we walked through the front door security unmolested and made our way down the street. We went for a coffee but not before he stopped to put the three discs in the back of his family BMW estate. As he closed the car door he turned and said;
"You know you just can't treat people like that."

Indeed.