Well, while I’m insanely busy on a couple of immense projects and the endless production of music reviews that mean blogs and short pieces will continue to be few and far between, Stuart’s been taking care of business at Clinicality. In fact, I’m essentially stepping down for the forseeable future and leaving the running – both the everyday stuff and the big decisions) to him. As such, Stuart’s going to be responsible for the forthcoming publications, and is also exploring new directions to expand the press’ outlets and raise its profile (without spending any money, which is perhaps as well as we haven’t got any). It’s good news for me, as it means I can concentrate on the projects I’m committed to. What’s more, he’s going to be putting out a couple of new works that I wrote a while ago and then simply left, for various reasons. The first of these is my simultaneous narrative novella, From Destinations Set. Started as a piece to offer Bookworks as part of their Semina series, it made the 2008 shortlist but failed to get a commission. Nevertheless, having written a good chunk of it and planned out the rest, I finished it, then immediately gave up hope of publication after a strong of rejections and the realisation that I had no idea how the formatting could be made to work as a print conversion. I left the manuscript with Stuart, and one day, he figured it out and decided it should go out on Clinicality. I wasn’t going to argue... Anyway, here’s a link to a sample of the book: http://christophernosnibor.co.uk/Documents/From%20Destinations%20Set%20-%20Section%201.pdf...and below is the official line from Stuart via Clinicality.
Clinicality Press may be a small no-budget publisher, but that doesn’t mean we lack ambition or a roster of work that we have total faith in. To this end, we’re going all-out on bringing new titles to the market in the next six months, as well as exploring new avenues (for us) for the circulation of our existing titles.As of next week, Christopher Nosnibor’s ground-shredding anti-novel, THE PLAGIARIST will be available for Amazon Kindle in the US, and we’re also now selling copies of the physical version directly through the ‘New and Used’ section of Amazon in the UK. We intend to expand the range of Clinicality publications available through both of these channels in the coming weeks and months.
In other Nosnibor-related news, we will be publishing his ‘lost’ novella, From Destinations Set on Monday, August 2nd. Extending the experimentation of THE PLAGIARIST, From Destinations Set was written in 2008 and adopts the ‘simultaneous narrative’ that Christopher first incorporated in ‘Heading South’ (published in Neonbeam 4) and which was also a feature of the extremely limited 2008 pamphlet A Call for Submission. From Destinations Set tells the stories of two very different people in simultaneous real-time, and is both challenging and cerebral while also pushing the parameters of narrative convention to tackle the eternal problem of time / space and linearity. From Destinations Set will be available as a hardback with dust jacket, intended primarily for the US market (but available as an import to other territories) and globally as a .PDF download at a significantly lower price.
We will be following this in September with a duo of hard-hitting booklets: The Gimp by Christopher Nosnibor (with an introduction by Lucius Rofocale) and Kicks by Vincent Clasper.
The year will be rounded off with the publication of a rollercoaster of a novel entitled
You want more? Time and money permitting, there will be a second anthology, a follow-up to Clinical Brutal... An Anthology of Writing with Guts toward the end of 2011, as well as a second novel by Bill Thunder.
Keep watching for more updates.
Earlier this week, I decided to spend my lunch hour in one of the local pubs near the office where I work, and get a spot of writing done. After a pint of Cropton Brewery’s Two Pints, I was on a roll. I was getting tight on time, and didn’t want to go fall asleep at my desk during the afternoon, so opted for a half. The blackboard behind the bar listed the ales priced by the pint. So, at £2.90 a pint, a half should be.... ‘That’s £1.50 please.’ Huh? I never was especially strong in mathematics, but I can manage basic mental arithmetic. I didn’t say anything, just handed over the money and returned to my writing. It wasn’t a big deal, after all. Just five measly pence, in fact. Back at work, I thought over it some more. And the more I thought, the more it irritated me. In the first instance, why should purchasing half of something cost more than half of the whole? Pubs purchase beer by the barrel (ok, by the firkin or kilderkin); it contains the same amount no matter how the divide it out in terms of units, and the contents will therefore realise the same amount at retail whether the beer is dispatched in whole or half pints, by my reckoning. Granted, a 5p mark-up on each half sold is neither here nor there when it’s a matter of a few drinks, and I understand that many pubs are struggling and need every sale they can get, and if that means an extra 5p here or there, then, well, ok. But... I can’t help but feel that responsible drinkers are being penalised. I mean, I get the deal with supermarkets selling smaller quantities of things at a higher price by weight: there’s the whole issue of shelf space and packaging costs... but a barrel’s the same size. Buying by weight – or volume – should mean that a smaller quantity doesn’t affect the retail price. I know this practice isn’t illegal, but it hardly seems consumer friendly, and, moreover, there is legislation in place that states that prices must be clearly displayed. By my reckoning, failing to clearly show on the price list that a half pint costs more than half the price of a pint – by only showing the price per pint – falls foul of this. Ok, so I’m a pedant. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.... The next day, on my way home from work, I called by a local greengrocer’s. I was giving myself a night off real cooking and was going to sling a frozen pizza in the oven. Given that the toppings on these things are so meagre, I like to add a few bits. I’m a vegetarian, and I like mushrooms, and in my opinion, no pizza is complete without come mushrooms on top. I didn’t want many, though, so just put a couple in a bag while the shopkeeper reorganised some of the other baskets of vegetables around the shop. I then placed the brown paper bag on the counter. And waited. Two minutes elapsed before she stopped rearranging the pears and came to the till. ‘What’s in there?’ she asked, picking up the bag. ‘Mushrooms,’ I told her. As if she didn’t believe me (what else would I have put in one of the paper bags that sit with the mushrooms? A (very small, light) kohlrabi? A light, spongy piece of ginger? Well, it’s possible: much of the produce in this shop is clearly several days old and a little past its freshest best. Something really expensive, like a whole heap of saffron or vanilla pods, that I was trying to sneak out cheaply under the guise of a couple of mushrooms?), she proceeded to unravel the bag and peer inside. ‘I can’t just sell you two mushrooms,’ she said. ‘I can’t do business like that.’ As far as I could tell, she wasn’t doing much business at all. I was the only person in the shop, and it was half an hour before closing. She had a choice: stick the bag on the scales and sell me two mushrooms at the price the scales and her pricing dictated, or not, and have two more mushrooms sitting there, shrivelling away, overnight. She could take my money, or leave it. There are, after all, other greengrocers. I just try to support small independent businesses where I can, especially when they’re conveniently located. Plus, I prefer to but fresh produce loose and by weight, rather than buy a sackload more than I need (which invariably results in needless waste) and put more unnecessary packaging into landfill. The point of selling produce by weight is that the consumer is charged according to how much of something they buy (or how large it is); thus, three large onions cost more than three tiny onions. Presumably the retailer purchases produce from the wholesaler by weight, and prices said produce accordingly, in such a way as to make an proportional mark-up on the overall weight of the items they have purchased to then sell on. ‘Right.’ I was rather at a loss for words. ‘I just can’t,’ she said, tossing the paper bag disdainfully onto the scales. ‘You have to buy quarter of a pound.’ Right. Just because something is priced by the quarter doesn’t mean it’s not possible to sell part quarters. More to the point, nowhere did it say ‘minimum quantity ¼ lb.’ or anything to that effect, in the way that many shops have a minimum card transaction, and on-line retailers have a minimum order value. However, there’s a reason for this. Potatoes, for example, are generally priced by the pound or kilogram: there’s nothing to say a consumer can’t purchase a half pound of spuds loose (and in season, a half-pound of potatoes will cost less than my two mushrooms... hell, a pound would!). If I wanted a chunk of ginger for a stir-fry, there’s no way I’d be buying more than a fraction of an ounce, around, say, 15 pence worth. I often go to the market on a Saturday and ask for a couple of medium onions, a couple of carrots, and, hell, I’ve even asked for half a dozen sprouts. The traders may smile at me or look at me in a strange or bemused fashion, but they always stick them on the scales then put them into my bag and charge according to the weight of those onions, carrots, sprouts. For the record, it isn’t as though I only ever go in and buy two mushrooms every now and again: I often stop in on my way home from work and spend a couple of quid or so, sometimes even five or six. I’ll concede it’s hardly big money, but the thing is, the products greengrocers sell aren’t exactly high value. As a consequence, they must obviously rely on a high volume of small sales rather than a smaller volume of larger ones. No-one goes into a greengrocers and spends thirty quid. It isn’t that I can’t see her point: tiny transactions are a pain. But unlike processing a credit card transaction for less than the amount the bank would charge to process it, my two piddly mushrooms weren’t costing her anything to process, and my being there wasn’t preventing anyone else from being served with a more lucrative purchase. ‘That’s 22p. But you’ll have to buy a quarter of a pound next time. It’s just not worth my while.’ ‘Ok.’ ‘D’you understand?’ Not content with giving me grief, she had to patronise me too, to speak to me like I was retarded, just to complete the humiliation, just to make her point. I felt thoroughly chastised, and rather embarrassed. I was tempted to proffer the scenario that I might have been buying two very large mushrooms, weighing in at a quarter of a pound each (ok, it’s unlikely, but I’m thinking in purely hypothetical terms): what then? Or, as often happens, there are only a couple of mushrooms left in the box? I was similarly tempted to say ‘fuck you, you can keep your two lousy mushrooms, I’ll take my 22p and spend it in a store that wants it.’ I didn’t, of course. I’m far too polite and respectful for that. Instead, I handed her the correct change, and hissed, ‘Yes,’ through clenched teeth.Because she was right. She can’t do business like that. Certainly not with me, because I won’t be going back any time soon. You see, the customer might no longer be king, but they do have choices. She hasn’t just lost herself another 22p in a few days; she’s lost all of my future custom, and over the years, it could add up. Irritate enough people, and the odd few pence or few quid lost son becomes a big chunk of the takings. So I’ve made my choice, and let’s see how the old bat likes them onions.
And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk
In my previous blog, I considered the current seeming obsession with ‘rights’ – the right to free speech, and so on. Well here’s another: right of way. To clarify, the ever-contentious debate over vehicle / cyclist / pedestrian rights of way.
I should perhaps point out two things before I continue: first, I’m all too aware that everyone seems to believe that they have right of way wherever they may be on the highways and byways, and while I’m no fan of motorists (to put it mildly), but get rather annoyed when cyclists claim that they are legally entitled to go wherever they so wish, and equally by pedestrians who insist that the right of way is theirs, and that if they choose to walk down the middle of the road, then they should expect all traffic to stop. Second, I’m not in the habit of blogging anecdotes-cum-rants, or rantecdotes, and generally find other people’s tales of what annoyed them today quite tedious. However, this one I just couldn’t leave.
Ok, so I’m rarely in the best of humour on my way to work in the morning. Juggling multiple jobs in addition to my writing, I’m usually short on sleep, and so rather crotchety. However, I’m also fairly awake and cogent: I’m something of a morning person. I just happen to hate my job, and also get annoyed by groups of schoolchildren walking five abreast at a quarter of a mile an hour.
Cyclists, pedestrians, motorists... it makes no difference to me. Returning to the point I made in my previous blog, it’s not about ‘rights’ or even ‘responsibilities.’ My rule for living: ‘don’t be a twat.’ So when people are walking three or four abreast and I’m on my own, it’s difficult for me to reduce the space I occupy in order to make way for them. I have permanent bruises on my shoulders from almost daily pedestrian collisions, but what can I do? I can’t go less than single file.
So yesterday I was walking toward town with my wife. Our journey takes us through an underpass beneath a railway line, and the route is shared by both pedestrians and cyclists, with no marked divisions for either. Seeing an oncoming cyclist, my wife went ahead of me and we proceeded in single file and pulled in to the right. A third pedestrian remained to the right, but there was still what looked like a navigable gap in the middle.
The cyclist – a middle-aged woman - clearly thought otherwise, and without really slowing down, veered straight toward me as Mrs Nosnibor, ahead of me, rounded the corner out of the underpass. I maintained my trajectory: I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, and besides, I figured she would surely apply the breaks before she landed her front wheel between my knees. Inches away from me, I pulled away a little, but with a wall inches to my right, didn’t have much scope for evasive action. She, meanwhile, weaved to her right by a few inches and ploughed straight into my left arm. It hurt.
‘This is a cycle path, you know!’ she shouted irately.
‘It’s also a pavement!’ I retorted, similarly irate and not just a little bit shocked. Yes, I had meant footpath, but my full vocabulary often escapes me at 7.45am when I’ve just been hit by a lump of pedal-powered metal.
‘I know!’ the idiot shouted over her shoulder as she regained momentum, leaving me no opportunity for a further response. Not that I’m sure how I would have made a comeback to such an evidently nonsensical rejoinder.
Rubbing my bruised arm, jarred to the shoulder, shocked, and above all enraged, I continued on my way, ranting inchoately about the fucking bag who clearly thought she had the divine right to mow through pedestrians just because. The question is, would she have continued her collision course and berated me for failing to evaporate into the air in order to make way for her if I had been a small child or an elderly person? Of course, I don’t know, but I’d be curious to see the scenario play out again in different circumstances. One has to question the logic and mental capacity of someone who goes straight toward the largest target – the two pedestrians close together instead of the one walking alone – or, better still, the space between the two objects. Was she trying to make a point, or just a complete fuckwit? Again, I don’t know.
Believe it or not, I’m actually all in favour of cycling. It’s an economical and environmentally way of getting about, not to mention a good way of incorporating some light exercise into a person’s daily routine. So yes, I’m very much in favour of cycling. Responsible cycling that it. Wearing a helmet, high visibility clothing, lights when appropriate, riding on the road or in the cycle lane or on cycle paths rather than the pavement, and following the flow of traffic (the number of cyclists I see riding the wrong way up one way streets is just insane)... that’s responsible cycling. Oh, and not being a twat. Is that really so much to ask?
Ok, so of course I wrote my Michael Jackson blog ‘Is Michael Jackson Really Dead? If So, Could Kanye West be Behind it?’ in the hope that it would be read by a wider and different audience than my usual work. Of course I was deliberately contentious, with a view to provoking some responses (although precisely what sort of responses I would receive, I didn't really consider). Of course it was an absurd suggestion, to pin Jackson’s death on lamecore rapper Kanye West. I didn’t feel the need to explain that I was mocking targets left, right and centre: the media, the conspiracy theorists, West and, yes, Jackson and his ‘fans’. Of course it was rushed. I knew that there would be an insane media frenzy - it was already in full spate while the news was still breaking. And yes, I've long maintained that a good title counts for a lot.
At the time, however, I didn't truly appreciate just how good my title was, although had I thought about it, it would have been quite apparent. As is the case with every dead celebrity, people are incredulous. Ok, fans and the gullible are incredulous, the conspiracy theorists simply refuse to accept what the media present as 'fact.' If Elvis isn't dead, Diana isn't dead, Richie Edwards isn't dead and Jesus Christ isn't dead, why would Michael Jackson have popped it for real? The circumstances surrounding his death, not to mention the way in which it happened, were truly ideal for the formation of conspiracy theories. So half the world took to the 'net in search of theories, and facts that they could use to piece together half-baked theories of their own. Within a matter of days, it was abundantly clear that the phrase 'is Michael Jackson really dead?' had serious currency, and my article, being one of the first published under this title, shot toward the top of any Google search using that phrase. Bingo!
Right now, if you simply type ‘is Mic’ into Google, it will offer ‘is Michael Jackson really dead’ (without quotation marks or question mark) as a popular search above, amongst others, ‘is Michael Schumacher the Stig,’ ‘is Michael Ball married,’ ‘is Michael Buble married’ and ‘is Michael Jackson a Muslim.’ Taking the first option yields some 409,000,000 hits. My article is at number two.
Almost a year on, and that phrase remains incredibly popular. The hits were tailing off, though, and the comments were only being posted very occasionally. Still, I'd had my fun, made my point, wound up a fair few idiots who had completely missed the point, and... what's that, a new conspiracy theory? Jackson is alive and on national television as a burns victim who was friends with the late star? Jacko even paid for some of this guy's reconstructive surgery? Brilliant! David Rothenberg had even changed his name to Dave Dave to 'erase' his past, a man intent on breaking free from his past by adopting a new identity...
Suddenly, my little article, banged out in a couple of hours as a wind-up, which had settled down to receiving a steady 20-30 hits per day, is back up to the region of 150 hits a day... and rising. Jackson may well be dead, but this article is definitely alive and kicking!
And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk. 02:03 GMT | Read comments(2)08 June1923 Turkish Bath: Cyberterrorism and Virtual Warfare
The world is full of crazy, crazed and angry people. This much is apparent just from turning on the news, reading a newspaper, sitting in a pub or walking down the street. Some of them have a definite point to make, and are driven to take desperate measures to get their voices heard. However, it perhaps goes without saying that some degrees of extremity are a step too far, and the means never justifies the end. Others, however, simply like stirring things up, getting their kicks by making life difficult and unpleasant for others, and have the sole objective of fucking shit up. There are instances where this can be witty or clever and artistic, and these type of activities I don’t only approve of, but actively enjoy. I’ve even engaged in a spot of mild pranksterism in various forms and guises in my own career of (counter)cultural activity, and it’s this type of thing that the avant-garde thrives upon. But in many instances, it's just pointless vandalism and mindless destruction. This very much goes against my life motto of 'don't be a twat.'
Hacking websites and screwing with them is one of those things that strikes me as being fundamentally twattish, particularly when the victims are completely random and genuinely innocent. Whisperinandhollerin, the music site I review for, was hacked yesterday. On going to upload some reviews, I was deeply perplexed to see the homepage had been replaced by a large graphic (a detourned Israeli flag with a pair of defecating dogs in silhouette), beneath which appeared the legend '1923Turk' and 'Fuck Israel.' The tab contained the information ‘hacked by Gamoscu.’
Being the curious sort, I did a spot of research into 1923TURK. Details are scant, but from what I can ascertain, 1923turk grup are the second largest hacking organisation currently active, having risen from position number four in the hacking ranks just under a year ago. Their attacks aren't so much widely documented, as much as their presence is widely announced, and each member tags their hacks (in the case of W&H is was Gamoscu, but other members seem to be much more prolific, if the edidence a brief Google search yields is to be taken at face value). YouTube videos, a Facebook page with several hundred fans (which features links to the sites they've hacked and defaced), and they even report their own hacks on sites such as zone-h (http://www.zone-h.org/). Zone-h doesn’t only record reported hack attacks and rank the notifiers, but gives further details, breaking down the hacks by category of Single def. (defacement) / Mass def. / Total def. / Homepage def. / Subdir def. (1923turk have thus far claimed a total of 70,074 defacements across all categories. Yes, well done).
In some respects, this latter 'claiming' or attacks is not entirely dissimilar to the way terrorist organisations claim responsibility for attacks. The concept of on-line terrorism is one that does, to an extent, perplex me, not least of all where 'organisations' like 1923 Turk are concerned, because precisely what they hope to achieve is so unclear. I mean, are they opposed to the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians? If so, fair comment, but there are other, more appropriate, places to advertise the fact. One of the things I like about music reviewing is that it’s apolitical, and is purely about the art, the music. I, for one, always make a point of reviewing as objectively as possible, and entirely honestly. This means that some acts who may hope for or even expect a positive review might not get what they’re after, but that’s the way it is. And sure, I’m opinionated, but I’d be a lousy critic if I wasn’t. But I do make it policy to review without prejudice, and not to make any comments that could be perceived as overtly political, defamatory or inflammatory. Of course, it’s not all about me, but I definitely speak for all of the site’s contributors here, who write for the love of music, nothing more and nothing less.
According to a thread on the hackthissite forum from 2009, ‘1923Turk Group has hacked the websites which contains child porns, terror propagandas, and all various attacks for the Turkish Nation and Unitary Turkish Republic.’
This particular post continues, ‘There are a lot of special teams in 1923Turk Group. Some of them hack terror supporter sites, some of them hack porn sites, the others hack enemy state sites and enemy company sites etc... They are at a cyber war via enemy of Turks!’ there’s more: ‘It is used for a lot of harmful sites. In addition, they don't forget their brothers. Especially, East Turkistan (Uyghuristan) and Azerbaijan are important for them. Also, they rejects so-called Armenian Genocide claims. They don't want to open the border gates with Armenia, because of Nagorno-Karabakh! They know Nagorno-Karabakh is a part of Azerbaijan, but now any Azeris don't live in Nagorno-Karabakh because of the migration! Armenians killed 613 civilians, of them 106 women and 83 children. It is called The Khojaly Massacre. The Khojaly Massacre was the killing of hundreds of ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly on 25 February 1992 during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.... Also, 1923Turk Group hacks a lot of states' sites, universities' sites, security company sites, organisation sites, big companies' sites etc. Now, Enemies of Turkia (Turkey) are afraid of 1923Turk Group! Because, 1923Turk Group is cyber army of Turkia(Turkey) and all Turks(Oghuzs, Uzbeks, Azeris, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs etc.) They are the Turks are the ghost soldiers of the cyber world. They sweared as 1923 Turk Group staffs to protect Turkish flag in this cyber world...They will be nightmare for who recognizes so-called Armenian Genocide claims or who supports the terrorist organizations(especially, pkk) or who publish child porn.’
Fine: so as is so often the case, we have a small extremist collective misrepresenting the majority (and while I for one consider myself apart from any majority going, I’m no extremist) and taking their ‘message’ to the rest of the world who have absolutely nothing to do with the situation. I mean, really, how many people surfing for, say, music reviews, are going to grasp the significance of a statement like ‘Martyrs are immortal our land is indivisible’?
Critics of the tactics employed by the group challenge precisely what their tactics achieve, while supporters claim that they have ‘won fame’ and that ‘Hacked sites' masters pay attention and see their social messages! 1923Turk Group just warns! It's a reaction.’ But this again assumes that those who run or visit hacked sites can make out the ‘message’ or give a toss beyond restoring the site to the way it was. Raising awareness to issues is one thing, but there are more useful platforms and channels to do this, and moreover, for any such campaign to be effective, messages must be at least deciperable, if not immediately clear.
So Turkey have condemned Israel over the deaths of nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists killed last week... but then, so has the rest of the world. How this has any kind of connection to child porn, or why child porn particularly offends the Turks (more than it offends / disturbs / distresses any other nation) is unclear. But I digress. The UN haven’t exactly praised the Israeli action either, but I don’t see them hacking the NME’s website. The same is true of Whisperinandhollerin, which is neither pro-Israel or involved in pornography of any sort. Again, linking terrorism and pornography into a coherent political framework isn’t easy, and again raises the question, ‘precisely what are they people trying to communicate?’
Ultimately, I would suggest that it doesn’t matter all that much. The bottom line is that war solves nothing, and in any acts of war, it’s always the innocent who suffer. In the scheme of things, a few defaced websites and the like isn’t much, but it’s simply a part of the bigger picture of people needlessly inflicting harm and damage... and for what? It never solves anything. Man is indeed a bad animal. And I, for one, am tired of it.