27 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Spain is currently getting its wrists slapped by the big G5 for its immigration amnesty, one of the more forward-thinking pieces of legislation to hit European shores since Ferdinand and Isabelle gave Columbus a blank piece of paper and said "there's your map, now go fill in the gaps".
What the BBC article fails to mention is that it wasn't quite a free handout to anyone in line. You had to have institutional proof that you were in Spain six months before the announcement, and that you had a contract to provide steady employment.
Of course there will be those who've slipped through loopholes and forged papers (and some American friends of mine have just missed out by not having the right wax seal on the correct piece of papyrus), but the point is this: now legal, 600,000 more people will be paying taxes and actually participating in the state that's around them, rather than living in that fearful sub-state of illegal work that exists throughout the first world. The papers don't give them the right to claim residency in any other European country, and don't give them European passports (that's another debate for another day). It's about a right for recognition, given to those already working for euros to keep Spain moving. That's not to say all applied - and temporary labourers remain in the shadow economy as before. Hard to know how to solve that one quite so easily, but at least Spain has dared to stand up and make a start. Thanks to an accident of birth, I had no problem moving here to work. If others want to do the same, welcome sibling. The weather's just fine.
Not unrelated, the main Spanish refugee NGO will be celebrating World Refugee Day on 20th June with a number of events specifically aimed at expats. Economic migrancy is an incredibly privileged state, and one that's only going to increase across all sectors; Refugee Day, however, is dedicated to those who don't have a choice about changing borders. I did it because I wanted to. They do it because they have to. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to click here. Do feel free to find your own local equivalent.
26 May 2005.
Inspired by .
The Cherubim and Seraphim
Are starting to despair of him,
They've never known a shade so entertaining.
He chats to total strangers,
Calls the Angel Gabriel 'Aingers',
And talks for even longer if it's raining.
When St. Peter's done the honours
He will pass you on to Johnners,
Who will cry 'Good morning, welcome to the wake.
You're batting Number Seven
For the Heaven fourth eleven,
And while you're waiting, have some angel cake'.
As the Bangladeshis tumble, the ONB LOTD pays tribute to Johnners, with a fine piece written by EW Swanton. Hunt it out here this week before it vanishes...
26 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Get this young fellow a contract, a budget and a byline. Now.
Actually, just as impressive as the story was the way he sold it afterwards. For your next trick, David?
25 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Another six months have passed, which means it's time for another edition of M-real's thoughtful, crunchy, papaya-flavoured magazine about print design. Oh, and time for your tablets too, don't forget or it'll never clear up.
Issue ten is themed The Reader, and brings with it all kinds of pine-scented goodness. Who, according to its editor, is the typical Match! reader? How do international magazines write for their audience? Is monitor proofing the future - or even the present? And what IS going on with the Russian magazine market?
All this and plenty more porcupinery from industry leaders and top journo types, all designed marvellously with plenty of illustration love by a talented designery fellow with authorial authority, all edited by hand by yours truly.
And starting with this issue: a bonus. It's not so easy to add yourself to the mailing list any more (too many naughty people who had nothing more than a passing interest in publishing taking advantage there - now you have to contact your local M-real sales office) but you can download now the text of the magazine, in English, French, Spanish or German, over here.
Special bonus treat for Prandial readers: tucked inside the latest issue is a really very good short story about thin paper, printed on shiny 36gsm. The pdf isn't on the M-real website, despite being one of my finer commissioning moments. Oh, hang on, isn't that it just there?
24 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Thumb texting ain't so new and ain't so special you know. Take that, young whippersnappers.
23 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Originally uploaded by neb.
Last night, to the flamenco to see my friend Rosalie stunningly strut her stuff (she's the one on the right, featured in this set by the weekend's fine compadre Neb).
It was an eve of curry on the terrace in front of the venue, really fine passionate dancing by an Australian ex-criminologist, and then beer. Just another weekend in Spain.
18 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Is anyone else getting a lot of unpleasant German anti-Islamic spam this evening? It's appearing as links only in the body of the text, in both English and German, slipping through the spam filters and, like spam itself, leaving a very nasty taste in the mouth.
Update: via Ben, the unsavoury explanation. Am again glad I have an iBook.
18 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Back in an infographics groove, Jaime Serra is rightly being praised over at Visualmente as being rather good at what he does. With plenty of newspaper experience, particularly in Argentina, he's not afraid to play around a little, as this piece for Creator magazine shows. There's also some more of his stuff over on the blog's photostream, an essential for anyone into news graphics. As is the blog itself, for anyone who is into such things, and speaks Spanish.
13 May 2005.
Inspired by .
A brief lull in work and a dip in the weather here lets me spend some quality time indoors with this year's D&AD award nominees. While we still don't know if any black pencils are being awarded this year, there's much goodness there for a design junkie, and much to ponder in the complete lack of any worthies in illustration and online advertising.
Although the images for many of the campaigns are far too small on the site (and only press types can download hi-res images - would it have hurt to have included a middle-sized screen-res image for design fans? Yes I know I could probably register for the download, but still), they do host small QT movies of all motion and audio nominees. This is probably the only time this year you'll voluntarily watch adverts, but these are worth it.
Here's my picks of the year, if you didn't already catch them: Getting Dressed (just lovely), Prison Visitor (lol), Grr (not 100% on this but the visuals and music are great - download the tune from the Radio category), Spooks Interactive (ARGtastic, and good fun too), Blinded by the lights (banned on UK tv for showing drug taking, but a very clever twist on the very visual lyrics), Y Control (for freaking me out with children), Hope Super Lights packaging (well, it looks very cool on the bleached-out mini jpeg), Brains (for proving there is still room for creativity following The Missing Piece), Carbot (well, duh), those remarkable Channel Four idents (never tire of those, particularly in context), Mano Japones (possible mild racism, probable high humour in execution), Worms (very, um. Japanese actually, despite being Thai), McDonald's reply to SuperSize Me (I don't agree with the cause, but it proves that smart communication works both ways), the opening credits for Dawn of the Dead (not great use of old news footage but still very chilling, better than the film, they say) and the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia (for doing exactly what it says on the tin).
Plus extra kudos for them nominating GTA: San Andreas for Art Direction - perhaps the first step towards an overdue Game Design category away from Interactive advertising.
And there you go, while writing that, the sun came out, I've had eight emails, two phone calls, and I'm busy again. A quick addendum for doorbell fans: truth is beginning to imitate my fiction.
12 May 2005.
Inspired by .
There comes a point where satire is so sophisticated that entertaining truths become disappointing for not, as it turns out, being the products of a cynical imagination.
On our left, we have Be Nice to Nettles week (Special guest: John Nettles).
Occupying the middle ground is Bollocks to Alton Towers, a book of true British days out made by the Framley fibbers. How guidebooks should be, and I ought to know.
(both those via the ever-resourceful Rogue Semiotics)
Then on the far side, is the magician-historian Ricky Jay's Extraordinary Exhibitions. It looks like a marvellous piece of research, but I can't help feeling ever-so-slightly let down by the list of contents, mostly because it doesn't seem as good as a scrambling of the words in the blurb would be.
Imagine, if you will, a flea spirit medium, a showman circus, a rabbi incubating machine, a ghost hermaphrodite, a mermaid catcher, an armless bee keeper, a chess playing mouse, a singing bullet, an automaton ventriloquist, a glass African woman, a chicken magician, a cannon ball blower, a dulcimer player juggler and a speaking machine equestrian with prodigious memory.
Now THAT'S what I call a show.
11 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Zapatistas: still the most imaginative guerillas in town.
Intercontinental freedom fighters cup, anyone?
11 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Nick sends word of Idiot Toys, a suitably scathing UK gadgets site, which in turn sends word of the HooAH! Bar, the power bar for the modern warfighter.
Is there anything the US Army won't licence? Perhaps, in these days of military budget cuts (well, in every other country at least), there's nothing wrong with everyone hunting out other income streams.
I for one urge the UK to do the same. SAS-endorsed balaclavas for the winter months. MI6's official hearing aids. Metropolitan Police pepper spray for flavouring bbq steak.
All of which led to one further speculation: does the US Army have official ranking officers working full-time on this? Seargeant Johnson, Marketing Division, reporting for focus group strategy, Sir. Full metal CRM.
11 May 2005.
Inspired by .
Although the lower house has approved gay marriage here, it's far from certain if it'll make it all the way. The upper house requires just four socialists to swap sides for the whole thing probably to be blocked, or at least sent back downstairs for another reading. And even if it clears that hurdle, there might, according to today's (small-c conservative) El Mundo, be one more stumbling block. The man who would have to sign it into law.
Following Vatican condemnation of the decision, the bishopry of Spain declared that no Catholic worthy of the wafer should ever support gay marriage - which includes a fellow by the name of King Juan Carlos I.
Constitutional experts are in something of a tizzy over this one. A law isn't passed until he signs; but he's also constitutionally bound to follow the will of Parliament.
One option is to do a Baudouin - the timid, slightly shifty King of Belgium who surprised everyone in 1989 by refusing to sign the country's new abortion bill, because of his personal religious convictions. Instead, and with the full support of his Spanish wife, he abdicated - for a total of 36 hours. In that time, Belgium's Council of Ministers took charge of the country in his absence, passed the bill, and then let him back in - but not before they'd also passed another bill reducing the official power of the monarchy, to stop anything as odd ever happening again.
It's uncertain, even if JC1 wanted to do it, if that would be possible here. There'd need to be some very subtle linespace reading of the constitution to get a legal result that people would both understand and be happy with.
If the bill does make it to his desk for his biro to wave over (and lo, there was law), then the King, a rather shrewd judge of character and of public opinion, will probably hold several private meetings with all concerned and then publicly keep his thoughts to himself as he signs it into the statute books. But that won't stop the Catholic press trying to force him into some form of action over the coming weeks.
Spain, by the way, has had more monarchs abdicate than any other country in history: five (in the Wiki list, don't forget Charles I the Holy Roman Emperor), though admittedly all but two abdications were forced upon the monarchs in question by a restless army/people/invading other country.
Extra factoid: the only Roman emperor to abdicate was Diocletian. When urged by his followers a few years later to return to power, he replied "If you could see the cabbages planted by my hands at Salona, you would never think of urging such an attempt." I didn't see them either, but I bet they were good cabbages.
10 May 2005.
Inspired by .
As part of a week mostly spend at DocumentaMadrid, I finally saw Peace One Day - currently available at any film festival near you. How one man with a camera and an idea can get a long way. And who knew that the UN was run almost entirely by Brits? It's incredible stuff that deserves much wider coverage - if there's no festival near you, do the world a favour and buy a copy. And then lend it to everyone you know.
In lieu of anything else nearly as worthy or worthwhile to say, Stalin World, the futility of everything, Barcelona says 'Beijing', the ultimate gift for mortuary students, pathologists, embalmers, or your sweetheart.
05 May 2005.
Inspired by .
All quiet recently in this corner, but quiet is good. You missed Italy and the Madrid four-day weekend (day of the workers, followed by the Madrid-only holiday celebrating the failed uprising against the French), the fact that the weather is now just starting to become lovely before it starts to burn (I feel like a lobster in a pan - come on in, the water's lovely), another doorbell (a theme oft discarded but not yet forgotten), 19 bowlers were used in this dull game which makes you wonder what was wrong with the other 3 Windies' arms, and Cricket Manager is about to suck out my life.
Simon Schama has a top round up of the elections over there as compared to over there, Grafaedia is great because it's not been created cynically by a company who'll make money from it, I'll be on a discussion panel and giving a short talk here (come along, it'll be fun) in the midst of an insane two weeks, of which more later.
Lots more besides, but I've given you plenty to click on for now. Happy reading.