Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Camera Now

Someone lost their camera.

A family found it, gave it to their son, and were then reluctant to take it away from him when the original owner claimed it. This is, obviously, stupid.

Then BoingBoing got wind of all this nonsense.

Now, if you look on the original Lost Camera Blog (I shudder as I type that phrase, not least because this room is being refrigerated by northerly winds), you can see that the loser, as it were, is "hoping that the wrong here is righted through legal and official channels, which I'm actively pursuing."

But Doctorow, in his infinite, has pronounced: "She should post this family's name and hold them up for shame and ridicule. This is theft."

I have two points to make:

1.) Who cares? WHO CARES? If you lose your camera, you report it to the police (which she's done), maybe you post about it on the internet if you're "that way inclined", but you don't set up a gigantic whining Livejournal and populate it with phalanxes of gibbering morons. Why not try growing up and maybe buying a new camera? If you feel like whining, go to the pub with your friends and whine to them. It's not like you've lost a spleen.

2.) If you're Doctorow, you have a social responsibility. Many, many people read Doctorow's output every day: he's seen as a kind of wirelessly-networkable guru for the autodidactic left. He's a clever guy; he knows that if the loser posts the family's name all kinds of unmentionables will arrive on their doorstep because there are plenty of people out there with nothing better to do than to send the aforementioned unmentionables. So what's he doing waving his bombast around and telling us that "this is theft"?

The police, it would appear, are being fairly useless in dealing with this. But that's not sufficient reason to support, let alone advocate, the mobilisation of illegal geek retribution. By all means criticize the police - that's what freedom of speech is for - but don't abuse your privilege by essentially giving a tacit go-ahead for your followers to commit crimes far worse than camera theft.

Bloip! Tarantino

Geek humour often revolves around the principle of comedy through futility: the fact that someone has spent days of their life in the pursuit of a goal which is utterly arcane to functioning social humans, and the fact that this process is laid transparent by the product of their labours, is the joke.

Take this (via Joystiq) for example. It's a fight scene from Kill Bill dubbed with Mario sounds. The video isn't funny, but the unswerving dedication of the creator to his initial aim of geting those darn sounds in at every possible opportunity is what you're really laughing at.

Feature Complete

I have just finished a feature on the art of musical destruction for CM, and now, for some reason, I'm watching this video of lots of people playing Gradius overlayed on top of each other.

It's supposed to prove something about the commonality of human responses to videogames, but doesn't. Pretty though.

Currently half-working on a new track for a forthcoming project - the results have been slightly...Ceefax-esque in their nature, but hopefully it can be moulded into something pleasant.

Also, I'm planning to ransack my old computer for audio at some point and post a big load of free stuff up here.

Talking of ransacking, it's been a pleasure talking to James Kirby of V/Vm for that CM feature. He's a highly opinionated guy (as you might expect), but it makes for an interesting read. He said something funny about Elton John which I'm *sure* won't be printed.

Best Binster Track Ever

It's official - everyone's favourite, Binster, has reached some kind of creative apex with The Diplomat.

It can, unfortunately, now only be a hopeless downward spiral into Marmite addiction.

Ursonating

You should really listen to Jaap Blonk's ridiculously great renditions of Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate. It's a sound poem comprised of German phonetic fragments that sounds like a man honking and babbling as if he's reading all the single-syllable nouns from a Swiss instruction manual.

My hands are freezing off in the Fens. Brr.