Seb Palmer

I’m anticipating that this little essay won’t be popular with many folk. 

It’ll upset the Gammonry, obviously, as anything that isn’t moronically monosyllabic hate-filled tripe does. But it’ll upset the liberals as well, perhaps. We’ll see, I guess? 

I’ll try and keep this brief and to the point. But that is hard, given the enormity and complexity of the many interrelated issues.

Before I get going, why am I even bothering with this? There are two main threads to the answer: motivation, and the subject itself.

First, the latter: I’m prompted to write this due to the tidal waves of vacuous crap that one encounters on social media around Remembrance Day (today!) [RD, hereafter, for brevity]. I want to address that later.

Secondly, as a wet behind the ears country bumpkin, newly arrived in London, studying art and art history, I wound up interviewing Noam Chomsky, for a putative student rag that never really took off. It was a disaster. But you learn from your mistakes. At least I hope we do?

My key issue that I’d hoped to explore with the famed linguist and philosopher was ‘why bother?’ In relation to his stuff about manufacturing consent, and engaging with politics. This seemed so alien to him that it appeared to irritate him. The interview was a shambolic mess. Or at least that’s how I remember it. 

The point of this reminiscence is this: I find ‘The Man’ has already defeated me; I’m simply overwhelmed by the oppressive state of the world as it is, as I experience it. Any desire to engage is punched out of me, before I can even try and get in shape. 

To live like that is to live defeated; it’s enervating and depressing. But I think it’s poss’ far more a norm than is generally admitted. Sadly, Stockholm Syndrome means that many might not even see it. They’re so embedded in The Matrix of everyday consumer Crapitalism that no other reality seems plausible, never mind possible. 

Anyway, in moments of higher energy and more optimism, I’m with Chomsky, in wanting to create a better present and future, somehow. So… enough with the digression. Let’s get to the meat…

WAR

I believe that war, like religion, has been essential to getting us to where we are today. And as much – maybe even more? – in a good way as a bad way. But that’s a whole huge other debate from the one I’m concerned with here. 

Like religion, however, whilst essential to our survival and thriving up to this point, we may have reached or be reaching a point where it is becoming less beneficial. Even counterproductive.

Just as religion’s explanations of what we don’t understand have been and are being replaced almost entirely by better understanding, through science, so too ‘politics by other means’ – aka War – now that we have world-obliterating tech, may no longer be the ‘least of all evils’ it once, arguably, was.

REMEMBRANCE

The way WWI and WWII are talked about – in the popular culture soundbite arenas of social media – esp’ in the run up to RD – is stupendously one-dimensional. Anyone who actually studies these conflicts will know that they were neither of them righteous anti-fascist Crusades.

Both world wars were essentially started (WWII), or escalated (WWI), by the kind of 19thC empire-building associated with Britain’s short-lived global dominance.

The hordes of the lower orders recruited and sent off to kill and die, under the type of appalling circumstances war always produces, weren’t well informed politically aware heroes. They were cannon fodder, fed into the ever more mechanised machinery of empire building (Germany) or preservation (England).

If we cross The Pond, and take the US’ role, in both World Wars, the idea of good vs evil is even more problematic, as the US was, despite their 19thC Civil War over the issue, a massively racist and largely apartheid nation. 

I hate Trump, and his fascist DHS/ICE goons. But the endless ‘our fathers fought fascism’ stuff I’m seeing, mostly from the US (but the UK as well), right now, is just nauseatingly oversimplified. These complex issues shouldn’t be so relentlessly dumbed down. 

POISONED POLITRICKS 

It’s interesting, as a Brit, to see that some of the American military are, as they should be, disgusted by Trump et al’s fascism. Here in the UK, sadly, almost all ex-military types I’ve encountered are hysterically and myopically right wing. Many loudly braying their support for the beyond odious Reform.

There is a small quorum of folk who appear to see through the tsunami of misinformation that is most of our mainstream media these days. What’s odd to me is that it all seems so blindingly obvious. 

If you want to investigate a crime, look to see who benefits from the commission of it. 

It’s so blatantly obvious that the real enemy of the masses is, as always, the hyper-elite. In our times that means the billionaires. And the systems that produce and enable them. That would be unregulated capitalism. 

The ‘plunder of the commons’ that has characterised Tory politics – and the word Tory derives from an Irish term for ‘thief’ – for hundreds of years, from The Enclosures Acts to the selling off of nationalised assets (PO, utilities, etc), has been relentless. 

Reform represents the extreme right wing, i.e. the worst, of Toryism. And that’s who they are: Farage and most of his cronies are former Tories. Mostly ex public school, many millionaires, and all on a quest for personal enrichment via deregulation (the real reason for Brexit, and the motivation for their antipathy towards the ECHR). Sold to idiots as ‘taking back’ or ‘making Great’ Britain. 

The role of the Tories in preparing the ground for this, with the sham referendum on voting (we urgently need PR), the politically destabilising and economically catastrophic shambles of Brexit, along with chronic underinvestment in social services coupled with constantly bailing out private disaster with public funds, is fundamental. 

Modern Conservatism is an oxymoronic (not to mention plain moronic) nonsense. They’ve taken a wrecking ball to a lot of what was once (and only very briefly, as in post WWII) good about British public life and the fabric of society. 

I like to say that this long and disturbing drift ever further right in UK politics doesn’t just beggar belief, it buggers it, with a barbed-wire chainsaw. 

The Boris Johnsons, Rees-Moggs, Michelle Mones, Farages, and their like – and the millionaires and billionaires who fund them (and the CEOs and shareholders, milking this oligarchy) – enjoy luxurious lives largely funded from the public purse, or built on the back of underpaid workers. Countless thousands of whom – people these politicians (and even the business types) are supposed to serve – live miserably squalid lives, only to die long, protracted, painful deaths.

Not because nothing can be done about it. But because it doesn’t suit the richest to give up even a fraction of their privilege. 

NOTES

[1] And what do we do with these beauties? Get high, or remember/celebrate killing each other. Humanity, eh!?

Ash and four friends on vacation travel to a remote cabin. Things quickly go to Hell, when they discover a ‘Book of The Dead’, and listen to the tape-recordings of a former occupant of the site.

By modern horror movie standards this venerable old classic starts off pretty slowly. But it builds nicely. A lost art, perhaps?

Sam Raimi already has some chops – this is his directorial debut! – visually speaking, with only Into The Woods as warm up. Tricks like the wobbly low-to-the-ground camera , scooting over the rather squalid terrain…

Bruce Campbell, and co. are great. Cheryl, his kid sister, is the first victim. In a highly controversial scene she is violated, by the evil spirits of the woods!

From hereon in the pace picks up. And very soon, with Shelley – Scotty’s gal – taken, chaotic carnage ensues…

Ash and Scotty are the last; all three gals get possessed first. But not long after Scotty’s failed solo escape bid, it’s just Ash… As Scotty fades, and the gore revs up, the movie switches into a more overtly absurd and even morbidly comic mode…

It’s alternately jaw-droppingly amazing, and utterly preposterous. Scary, then silly. But there are some terrific passages. A favourite for me is the several minutes of Ash’s apparent descent into madness. The camera angles and lighting are, at times, terrific.

And then there’s the whole epic lo-fi gore meltdown, which is extraordinary. Porridge? Plasticine? God knows…

Bonkers, and epic… and the very end? Brilliant.

Having decided I’m sick of cheap n’ nasty plastic or metal (or even woven) waste bins, I’ve started making some from recycled palette wood.

The first is shown above, finished and in use. The second is detailed below. From processing the lumber to gluing up and painting.

The first bin is ‘raw’ wood, inside and out (and along the upper edges; warts and all). The second is more processed, with a smoother and coloured interior. Both are 12-sided.

Went with a pea-green interior…

I quite like the idea of making and selling a few of these. Will there be a market for them?

I was scrolling through God knows what (FB, perhaps?), and somehow I went down a Lindy Beige / Nikolas Lloyd rabbit hole.

I read a bunch stuff about him, starting off with a thread that lead me to a Goodreads page, where someone called Nikolas Lloyd (and also an illustrator, named Christopher Steininger) are berated over the no-show of a kickstarter funded graphic-novel about Hannibal.

This was a bit alaruming, as I’d only ever known Lindy/Lloyd through his pretty affable YouTube content. I love the range of his interests, and – pretty much – his whole vibe, demeanour, schtick, call it what you will.

Anyway, I went from Goodreads to Lloydian Aspects, another of his outlets, where I read about how an article on vegetarianism erupted into a media hullabaloo, of sorts.

After reading a bunch of stuff by Lloyd, including most of the vegetarianism piece, I decided to email him, and share some responses/thoughts. Will he read it, or respond, I wonder?

Anyway, here’s what I sent:

Hi Nikolas,

I’m someone who occasionally enjoys watching your YouTube content. 

I’m writing this email in response to reading about something that happened to you many moons ago, regarding a piece you wrote on Vegetarianism.

I’m not going to go into it all in the same way you do in that piece. I merely want to make a few points. And I would be interested in what you thought about them, should you have the time or inclination to respond. 

I’ll try and keep this succinct.

Because you mention vegetarianism’s potential relationship with modern forms of Puritanism, I ought to mention that I was brought up in Christian circles. 

My family drifted through many churches, over the years of my childhood, finally settling on a brand of watered down quasi American Evangelical type vibe. Quite fundamentalist: Biblical literalism (Creation, Flood, etc), speaking in tongues, and suchlike. 

As soon as I was able to think coherently for myself, doubts about received religion set in. And by the age of something around 11-13, I had strayed from The Flock. 

Ever since I’ve been an evolving form of what A C Grayling once described as something along the lines of a ‘rational humanist’ (I think his exact phrase may have been ‘free-thinking naturalist’, but I can’t find the quote).

Sorry if that seems a digression. But I hope you’ll agree, it’s contextualising and relevant.

Now to the meat of the matter, so to speak: I became vegetarian about aged 13. The cause? A documentary a class I was in at school watched about the fishing industry. 

I’m no longer vegetarian, by the way. My vegetarian period lasted about 13 years. And ended when my then girlfriend (now wife) stopped conforming to to my veggie ways.

I read and enjoyed your piece, which – a bit confusingly to me (having got there via your ‘I was banned’ threads) – appeared to be titled with words you claimed not to have used (I’m thinking of your disavowal of Daily Mail inaccuracies), re forcing veggies to eat lard. 

But never mind that. I’m in almost total agreement with you on all of the parts I actually read. I will confess I skim read several chunks. 

I write and send this partly just to be in some kind of dialogue with a fellow thinker, with whom I share a lot of views/interests. But also partly to suggest that, as enjoyable as your piece on vegetarianism is/was, you don’t address – to my mind – the two chief and related reasons I always assumed (from both my own reasons for going veggie, and those of most vegans and veggies I’ve ever known and talked about the subject with) were the motivating factors: 1) animal suffering 2) industrialised practices.

When I ditched Christianity, I became a ‘friend’ of Buddhism. I’ve never been a Buddhist. But for about 15-20 years, I did meditation and yoga fairly regularly, as I found them useful for my mental and physical health. I also read quite a lot of Buddhist or Buddhist related/inspired literature. 

One of their key arguments for vegetarianism is not causing suffering. And obviously killing other animals to eat them causes those animals suffering. 

Of course, as you say, many animals are abundant through their relationships with humanity, from the mostly edible/wearable (sheep) to the mostly tractional/occasionally edible* (horses). But some of your stuff about how wonderful farmed animals have things, vs life and death in the wild, rang a bit hollow to me. 

The human animal is a good example of one that we’ve thoroughly domesticated, but – ‘Civilisation & its Discontents’ – isn’t necessarily or always the better or happier for it.

As an example, from personal experience: I’ve been to former German concentration camps. And I went to the Spanish pig farm owned and run by my sister’s Spanish husband’s family. I watched piglets being castrated. The farm reminded me of the concentration camps. By then I’d resumed eating meat. What I witnessed made me think seriously about going back to my former veggie ways.

Of course many farmers do care for and even love their livestock. Even if only for economic reasons, such as you outline. But there is also an enormous amount of cruelty to animals, perhaps especially in the industrialised ways in which we ‘farm’ them nowadays. 

It’s highly likely that a lot more people might decide to go veggie if they were to actually see the conditions many animals go through, between their birth and our guts. From the production line debeaking of chicks for battery farming, to the types of gases (and their effects) used prior to slaughter in abattoirs.

Now I’ll come back to that film I saw, as a young teen. The one that ‘turned me veggie’. It was a documentary, on modern fishing methods, largely focusing on the damage done to the environment, and the enormous wastage and cruelty of ‘bycatch’. 

It being the open seas, it’s always been harder to police. But it was abundantly clear to me, a wet-behind the ear young teen, that some of the ways we were fishing then were both morally grotesque, and most likely totally unsustainable. 

So, in a nutshell: animal suffering, and humanity’s endlessly repeated tendency to rapine exploitation of natural resources, are two strands I think you missed. And the two that, in my view, are perhaps most fundamental drivers towards the veggie way of life. 

For all the reasons you eloquently relate in your article, and more, quite likely, I’m no longer vegetarian myself. But another way to look at my position might be… I’m lazy, uncaring, and I just can’t be bothered. 

I don’t think deciding to be veggie can be or should be simply dismissed out of hand as miserabilist Puritanism, or no more than fashionable ‘virtue-signalling’. 

For me it’s a complex and challenging issue, as are so many aspects of living life in the modern or current world. 

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the subject. 

With warm regards, Seb

NOTE RE IMAGES: I use two screenshots of the LindyBeige YouTube channel, under the ‘fair use’ dispensation, to illustrate this post.

In other more domestic news… Teresa cooked Salmon with veg n’ spaghetti, for our supper. It was absolutely yummy! Thanks, sweetheart.

Teresa and I have been Stereolab fans for aeons. And have seen them perform live numerous times. Mind, that’s going back a ways…

I’ve not bought much – poss’ anything? – in a decade or more. Partly ‘cause they’ve not released much – if anything? – in that time.

I just found out that they put out a new album earlier this year: Instant Holograms on Metal Film (great title and artwork!).

I think I’ll get all three of these more ‘recent’ albums, on CD. When funds allow. Can’t really justify it right now: Flo’ is at The Garage, undergoing yet more repairs.

As a result of Flo’s doc’ appointment, I’m stuck at home. Had bacon and garlic noodles for brunch. Yum! And I continue reading All Hell Let Loose.

Today, after an early morning shift, delivering in Peterboro’, I continued working on the writing desk. Is it a bureau?

Things reached a frustrating impasse, regarding sourcing appropriate fabrics. I needed something that’d work as hinges, as well as cloth for the base and the folding writing slope.

My first attempt at ‘fabric hinges’, using some kind of woven plastic tape (from Storey’s, in March), was an abject failure. I tried using wood glue to bond it, but that simply wouldn’t adhere to the plastic. I wound up having to remove the ‘tape’, and clean up the glue residue.

After lots of ringing around, trying to find local haberdashers with the right material, I eventually went to Ely. Looking to get better hinge material, and – hopefully – the green velvet for the folding writing surface. City Centre Cycles duly obliged.

Cleaning up the base was a lot more work than anticipated. Firstly due to the ancient and very dusty fabric remnants, and secondly/mostly, on account of the remains of a very sticky adhesive.

There was also a crack to be dealt with. I thought about using two part epoxy. But I wound up plumping for plain ol’ wood-filler. After all, the crack will be protected by and glued to a new baize cloth.

Better. But, alas, a bit of a balls up. I used spray adhesive. Which is effective but horrid. And, as can be seen above, one edge of the baize/base doesn’t quite align right.

Once this was done, I glued the new fabric flaps – using card or paper like material called buckram. I used spray adhesive again. This appears to have worked much better. Certainly way better than the wood glue failure!

At this juncture it seemed appropriate to re-attach the two ‘halves’. I used all new screws. One screw had been a nightmare to remove. As a consequence the hole that was left was a bit oversized. A bit of cocktail stick, sanded down and tapped in to said orifice, made a workable plug.

Projects like this are usually plagued – at least in my experience – by minor irritations. Perhaps avoidable, with better planning and forethought? A significant one arose at the end of the day: the new green velvet for the writing slope wasn’t sized correctly.

It was my own dumb fault, frankly. In taking the bureau apart, I’d forgotten that the original cloth was a single piece. I’d allowed myself to think I’d be re-covering the two halves separately… Doh!

This necessitates another long trip to Ely – poss’ prior to S&F tomorrow? – to buy an appropriately sized piece of cloth.

Took the writing desk I rescued from the local dump into S&F today. For a second time. First time I was just sizing her up. This time I set to work.

There was no brass sheet, as such. So Karl suggested I use a bit of brass from a door latch plate. Cutting g the latter with a fret-saw was raking aeons. Transitioning to a (?) saw cut down my work time (boom boom!) dramatically.

Walter has said he has Walnut veneer, and will bring it in. Fab! Hope that’ll match? No idea what wood it is… Asked Clem, he thought poss’ walnut? I also think it might be teak, or mahogany. who knows!?

I had a pleasant time at S&F, despite my own work there being rather disappointing. once home I revisited what I’d failed to do at S&F, which was the two missing bits of brass ‘piping’. These prices a damn sight harder to make and place than I’d anticipated.

Superglue failed to do the job (as usual!). So I had to resort to Araldite epoxy.

I added some wood-filler, where I’d wound up carving out a deeper flatter, squarer channel, for the brass piping. This will support a strip of veneer, in due course.

After separating the lid – see the above gallery – which, again, proved really hard work (old screws rusted in situ), I really cleaned up where the green velvet and material hinges had been. Once again, really hard work going.

And the final job this evening? Making a brass plate to replace all the damaged wood, where there was a slot for locking one of the writing surface boards in place.

This involved making a brass plate with screw (mounting) holes, and a slot. And cleaning up and repairing the very damaged area where this will sit.

I tried to remedy numerous issues, such as: a prod dowel (tapped back down); a missing dowel (first image, below); filling some holes in the top surface, etc.

The lower portion of the lectern also required so e more drastic work. Clamps and glue alone – even using a thick mix of glue and sawdust – were failing to fix the broken ‘feet’ of the two side panels.

Ultimately they required the use of penetrating dowels. Which worked admirably. I also put the little ‘feet’, removed at an earlier stage, back on. Albeit in slightly new positions. And again, dowels were used, rather than screws.

Annoyingly I don’t seen to have pictures of the addition of the feet…