Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his book about his early years in Paris, which seemed to be on every counter and table in Waterstone's Piccadilly branch last week.

We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescape. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Cafe des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside.

That is on the opening page of the stories in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his book about his early years in Paris, which seemed to be on every counter and table in Waterstone's Piccadilly branch last week.

I discovered Hemingway very late. And when I did I nearly gave up writing anything in English again except for business writing because that has to be bad and clumsy to be effective. I thought, based on rumour and hearsay, that Hemingway was merely a stylist. He isn't: he is simply one of the best experimental writers of English there has ever been. Those two sentences pick out maybe a dozen images from a winter evening and knit them together like one smooth Vincente Minelli crane shot.

Masterly.

It’s cold. I’m trying to get over seven hour’s sleep a day

It’s cold. I’m trying to get over seven hour’s sleep a day. I’m wading my way through Nessa Carey’s The Epigenetics Revolution and getting lost in proteins called things like WNKR3 and a description of gene expression modification that sounds like some really kludgey patches to some gigantic corporate Java program.

The Economist had an editorial about Cologne and immigration that was mid-boggling in its sophistry and I don’t even want to get into it. It says:

Thousands more refugees arrive in Greece every week. Those who would shut them out must explain where they should go instead.

Uh. How about they stay where they are and fight for their freedom? Or go to another Muslim country, of which there are plenty much closer than Sweden. Europe is full: go look at the unemployment stats. But here I am getting into it, and I said I wouldn’t.

Rollo is trying to square the circle of the Red Pill for the second time in three weeks.

The circle is that if what he says about women’s hypergamy and sexual strategy is correct, no sane man would ever commit his life, income or assets to a partnership with one, and the only kind of love a sane man could feel is an aesthetic feeling similar to the “love” that one has for sunsets, a favourite comedian or a pretty figure, which is not a love for a person, but for particular features of them. This is the position of PUAs and MGTOWs.

Rollo’s audience are men who want to feel the whole-person kind of love leading to financial commitments that can be cashed in by lawyers. (What makes it worse is that this seems to me to be a laudable ambition, just not one that is going to be happily fulfilled in the current exact conditions of really-existing Capitalism.) He can’t say that he can show how Red Pill aware love for the whole woman is possible, because it isn’t, but if he says words to the effect of “bitches ain’t nothing but sex and entertainment” he risks losing his audience. Roosh lost his moorings a while back with the neo-masculinity thing, Heartiste is shilling for Trump and could be in more white supremacy mode unless he signed off “14/88” (look it up). Rollo is the last of the three R’s standing and it's slightly worrying that he can't deal with this. It's the sort of thing that causes thinkers to implode.

And I'm trying to watch one episode of Nikita S3 an evening, but I missed this evening because I wound up writing this.

Should I know about Chinese Art, or will it go away if I ignore it for long enough?

Should I know about Chinese Art, or will it go away if I ignore it for long enough?

Octopus in Damson on Brewer Street after training and before going to the hygenist.

Yet another new restaurant franchise in Spitalfields Market - something to try in January.

This is going to be a casual, easy rent office space for hipsters with Macs and a glib presentation. Or so the current promotion says.

But I do work with my hands? What the heck else is typing code?

No the waitress isn't telling the clueless Millennials that they can't eat food they bought somewhere else, especially at a faux-Japanese franchise that uses really poor ingredients. I wish she had.

That Ain’t Working, That’s The Way You Do It, You Get Money For Your Sperm and Your Porn For Free

I have to finish the year with this little gem. It's from an article in the Telegraph about how English women are going to Denmark for sperm. Which wasn't the way I read this paragraph...

When “John”, one of the 250 regular donors on the books of European Sperm Bank, walks through the door, the attraction of using a Danish donor seems a little more obvious. In his twenties, with Nordic good looks and utterly charming, he donates three times a week, getting paid around £30 a visit. He insists that although the money makes a difference, it’s his desire to help others that is key. “Instead of donating blood, you can do this to make people really happy,” he tells me.

Yeah, right. Three times a week!

Have a Prosperous 2016.

Rey is Not A Feminist Heroine, and Kick-Ass Females are Actually Male Fantasies

So there’s a new Star Wars movie out, in case you hadn’t noticed, and it has a female action heroine (Rey, played by Daisy Ridley) and a black male hero (Finn, played by John Boyega). I’m not going to discuss that, because Star Wars is now a Disney movie, and Disney movies have central characters like Rey and Finn. Rey is Disney’s take on the kick-ass heroine.

Kick-ass heroines have been a staple of Japanese manga since the Dawn of Manga (and Joss Whedon is a huge manga fan, which is where both Buffy and Dollhouse come from) and manga got it from earlier Japanese stories about warrior women. Furthermore, the idea of Warrior Women and Goddesses is as old as all sorts of northern European myths - which is where Wagner got his Valkyries from.

But feminist heroines? Are you kidding? First, all kick-ass females are always hot, as well as fit and healthy. So that’s really feminist. Second, they right wrongs with often extreme violence dispensed with nary a doubt. Bad guy? Kill. Move On. So that’s really a feminist thing to do as well. Third, they don’t dissemble, manipulate, or engage in “relationship management” (aka “lying”). Which is also pretty feminist. Nikita uses her considerable sexuality feminine power on men, but since Maggie Q is tall, slim and very hot, she doesn’t count as feminist.

Since kick-ass heroines are women, they don’t carry any freight of moral expectation. They can kill, maim, detonate and destroy at excessive will without anyone wondering about their moral character. The only male action hero who can wreck as much havoc as Maggi Q’s Nikita is James Bond, and he is always told off for being a near-psycopathic rogue at least once in every movie. Most ruthless male killers, such as Denzel Washington’s Equalizer, turn out to have been brutalised by their time in Special Forces, or something similar. The capacity of the female for psychopathic levels of violence at the drop of a hat is a cultural given. This is a boon for writers and directors who want maximum carnage with minimum time wasted on explanation and moral justification.

Why the growth in kick-ass heroines in western culture? It’s tempting to blame Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who found a way to westernise the extreme Otherness of manga heroines. But the real blame lies with an earlier creation: the anti-hero. Anti-heroes do the right thing, eventually and reluctantly, for the wrong reasons and with the wrong attitude. They are competent and capable, but also cynical, lost, disillusioned and have questionable personal morals. Anti-heroism passed into the mainstream and made all male lead characters more complicated, requiring backstories and explanations. (Or exceptional luck with casting: why waste words when you can cast Harrison Ford as Han Solo and let his face do all the explaining?) It got to the point where it was impossible to have a simple male hero unless he was wearing a cape or a mask. And after the Dark Knight even the capes got complicated.

But with a kick-ass heroine, it’s easy. Women are known to be random complicated. Having swallowed the utter implausibility of her combat skills and strength, why strain at the gnat of psychology? Anyway, she’s a SHE, so there’s nothing to explain: mood swings, emotional upsets, changes of mind and motivation, all come for free with a female character. So there’s no need for characterisation or character development. Male characters change and develop (the one weakness of the Bond franchise is that Bond doesn’t change): female characters are created whole and perfect. (Quick: think of any female character with a development arc who isn’t played by Demi Moore or Sandra Bullock.) So if you want a simple hero, get a heroine.

The kick-ass heroine is a male fantasy figure: she can take care of herself, doesn’t exploit the impressionable young men around her, hauls her share of the load, takes responsibility for getting stuff done, and is generally a pretty decent sort of chap to have around, despite being hot. So just like thousands of teenage girls then. She’s not whiny, dependent, manipulative, exploiting, and above all, she shows up and doesn’t flake. She is the Girl All Men Want But No Girl Wants To Be. The fantasy isn’t about “hot”, as “hot” is the default for actresses, unless fat-or-ugly is a feature of the character, as in many comedies. The fantasy is about a woman who is capable, straightforward and dedicated to a higher goal than a new pair of shoes.

By contrast, feminism is obsessed with power, not capability. A feminist heroine wouldn’t be kicking ass at all: she would be giving the orders for men to die kicking ass. And then escaping on her personal transporter when the Rebel Alliance flew in to save the day. And therein lies the problem. Someone who does that is not a hero. The Big Three of World War Two - Patton, Montgomery and Rommel - are admired as commanders, but not as heroes. “Feminist heroine” is a contradiction in terms. Rey, Buffy, Nikita and the others are plain old heroines, and there’s nothing “feminist” about them.

Dear Pamela Stephenson, Here’s The Reply to Your Recent Fake Question

The other day in the Guardian online (I have to stop reading that) Pamela Stephenson had a fake love problem concerning a woman in her mid-forties who had not had sex for ten years, missed it and was worried that a future partner would be put off by her extended period of chastity.

Here's the reply I couldn't post from work.

Dear Fake Lady,

I’m going to assume that you have not suffered some awful disfiguring accident, nor an emotionally traumatic event that has left you incapable of relating to men except as fellow members of the economic machine in which I assume you are also a cog. I’m also going to assume you are size twelve or under, exercise at least three times a week and have managed to maintain a pleasant and charming exterior.

So...

You are right. Don’t mention that you haven’t had sex for ten years, in what is supposed to be the prime of a woman’s sexual life. A man will rightly take your behaviour as proof that your sexual drive is minimal and politely end the conversation as quickly as possible so he can meet a woman who experiences desire. No man over the age of thirty has any sympathy for a woman complaining she can't get laid. He was rejected by so many of them in his twenties that as far as he’s concerned, her current dry spell is her due karma. Any woman can find a man to have sex with, anywhere, at any time of day. If that’s all she wants.

You want more than sex. Much, much more. You want sex on your terms with a man who ticks as much of your 463-bullet point checklist as possible. And you don't want him to provide you with just the physical act. You want him to provide you with what the physical act means to you. Which is one or more of about two hundred and forty-three different things, none of which are events in the physical world, and all of which are events in your interior world of emotions and feelings.

And why do you want all those Good Feelz? Because you’re wondering why you should, or how you can, go on hauling yourself through the day without some Good Feelz to encourage you. Is this it? Is this all you have to look forward to?

Yep. It is. Welcome to the rest of your life. For the next forty years you are going to work, feed and wash yourself, keep your lodgings clean and tidy, keep yourself fit and healthy, eat well, read challenging books, go on holiday and persue whatever hobby you have... all for no other reason than you woke up alive again. This is where you prove you're an adult. Happiness, love, belonging and other such happy hormone stuff are for children. Adults live right, day after day, for no reward and no reason, and that is the definition of self-respect.

Woman up. Quit whining. And buy a dildo.

Recent Music - November / December 2015

I’ve been hitting the music recently. Here’s a list and some examples...

(Some of these seem only to be available from You Tube)

Black Widow - In This Moment

The Strange Case of… - Halestorm

Late Night Tales / Nils Frahm

Going to Hell - The Pretty Reckless

A 22 CD Box set of nearly all Stravinsky's work - basically a re-issue of the "Stravinsky Conducts" recordings

A box set of Ry Cooder soundtracks

We Are Harlot - We Are Harlot

The First 3 EP’s - Golden Teacher

No Deal Remixed - Melaine de Blasio

Elaenia - Floating Points

Magister Leonis, Sacred Music from 12th-Century Paris

Gregorian Chant - Choral School of Vienna High Church

Canto Gregoriano (yes, that one!)
 

Heavenly Revelations - Hildegard of Bingen

Facade, William Walton
 

Works for Solo Vihuela, Luys Milan