Regular readers of dadams.co.uk will know that I love modern art… mainly because it gives me a chance to be sarcastic and rude about the complete tripe that someone people produce. Usually I turn my barbed wit upon the Turner Prize, but as luck would have it another group of artists has provided some ammo. Taking the Michael out of art is often like shooting fish in a barrel, but this occasion it’s like shooting dead fish in a small barrel at point blank range with a long-muzzled revolver.

I saw this story featured on the BBC news yesterday morning, and it’s also featured on their web site:

A series of 12 Olympic and Paralympic posters, designed by leading UK artists including Tracey Emin and Chris Ofili, has been unveiled in London.

Most of my vitriol towards modern art is based on the simple fact that once an artist becomes well-known or gains a reputation they can produce any old load of tosh and have art critics falling over themselves to praise the genius of the works. And here we go again. I’m going to pick on three works in particular, for no better reason than if I hadn’t been told otherwise I could easily mistake them for something a five year-old would proudly bring home from a school art lesson.

1. Work No. 1273 by Martin Creed – a blue block on top of a slighter bigger pink block, on top of a slighter bigger black block… then yellow, then green. Mr Creed said the shape represents an extended podium. It must have taken him all of five minutes, including washing the brushes. By the way, Martin Creed is a Turner Prize winner, responsible for the exhibit where lights were turned on and off. Say no more.
2. Rachel Whiteread’s work representing the famous Olympic rings. To create the same effect, ask a five year-old to place the bottom of a mug in some red paint and then stamp it on a sheet of paper… and then repeat using green, yellow, blue and black paint. According the BBC site, organisers said the stains act as “memories of a social gathering”. No they don’t. They serve of memories of art lessons at primary school and coming home with paint on your shirt. Having said that, this work of art would make a nice design for a tea-towel.
3. Howard Hodgkin’s swimming artwork – this is my ‘favourite’ because the art critic on the BBC news was particularly sycophantic about this one, talking about the painting’s chaos and energy. Mr Hodgkin himself describes the work as “representational pictures of emotional situations”. The Beeb point out that a figure in ‘the water’ (or the splattering of royal blue paint) can just about be made out. Shame that it looks more like a toad than a human. Maybe Mr Hodgkin will come clean and admit that one of his grand-children knocked this one off in three minutes at nursery.

Just to prove that I’m not always negative about art, take a look at Michael Craig-Martin’s work (the word ‘Go’ on a stopwatch). It’s artistic and relevant to the subject, and would look good on a canvas. So I declare him the winner. As for the rest of them, the genius is not in the actual artistic skill, but in the ability of the artist to create something which allows us, the mere mortals, to use our own imaginations to interpret something meaningful related to the subject. Or something like that.

We got a dog in January, didn’t go on holiday during the Summer, and then the weather was rotten which made the fact that we didn’t go on holiday just that bit more depressing. I changed jobs in April and I’m now spending less time in Scandinavian airports. Christmas was fun but came and went too quickly.

My best wishes for the time period between the 1st of January and the 31st of December, which is basically a range of dates decided upon by a Roman guy who died a long time ago. There is no real reason to cheer and kiss people at midnight.

Nothing annoys me more than waiting in a queue for the checkout in a supermarket. Actually, that’s not true, loads of things annoy me more than that… for example, Eamonn Holmes, and the fact that orange juice is always served at social functions for people who aren’t drinking alcohol. Anyway, I digress – the notion of those new self-checkout machines appearing in supermarkets is a good thing… when they work properly.

Mrs A does a big weekly shop on Monday, but I’m often dispatched at weekends to get the odd item or three. It has been noted that I can never just buy the things on the list, that I always have to add something (which is true). But as there’s usually just a small number of items, I get to use the self-checkout machine. Cool, eh? Hmmm…

On this occasion I was sent to buy a large pumpkin (something to do with Halloween maybe), a chicken (a dead one, for roasting), coleslaw and ice-cream – and I added mini-Battenburg cakes and some honey-roasted cashew nuts (which we absolutely 100% needed).

Being a good citizen of planet Earth I’d brought my own bags, so the first step of self-checkout is to let the machine verify those bags. I followed the instructions, and the machine said it needed human intervention. Cue the old man with a bar-code on a well-worn card – he swiped the card and pressed something, and I was ready to progress.

First item was the pumpkin – the biggest one I’ve ever purchased, it could be hollowed out to provide shelter for three homeless badgers. I scanned it, I placed it next to the bags, and a voice said:

Unexpected item in bagging area

Eh? I scanned in a pumpkin, so why was the placement of a pumpkin in the bagging area unexpected? What was it expecting… a tube of haemorrhoid ointment? Maybe a packet of digestive biscuits? Cue the man with the bar-code card, who swiped and pressed something, and I was ready to progress.

Next up was the chicken – I scanned it, I picked up one of the bags and put the chicken inside, and placed it back in the bagging area. A voice said:

Unexpected item in bagging area

Bloody hell. It’s a chicken, which weighs about the same as a dead chicken and has the same approximate dimensions as a dead chicken. But the machine clearly thought I’d scanned in a chicken and placed an electric toothbrush in the bag. I picked up the bag and a voice said:

Please return the item to the bagging area

Hearing me utter a mild profanity, the man with the bar-code card intervened and worked his magic. Next up, one of the tubs of ice-cream. I scanned it, and this time placed it in the bag without moving the bag (I’m now making very careful movements, like someone playing a bizarre version of Ker-Plunk). A voice said:

Unexpected item in bagging area

By now I wanted to cancel the whole process and join a queue to be serviced by a human being. Enter bar-code man, who once again waved the magic card and pressed the magic button. Like a supermarket version of Obi-Wan Kenobi, this time he uttered a subtle instruction – “it should be okay now”. And hey presto, it was. The rest of the ice-cream went into the cold bag, and even though I was filled with an icy dread at the thought of utilising the second bag, Mr Bar-Code wasn’t required again.

I got home, and Mrs A pointed out that she’d tried calling me, and had sent me a text message to say that I should also buy a bag of penne pasta. Back to the supermarket…

If you weren’t aware, let me inform you that there was a general election in the UK yesterday. I kid ye not. After weeks of tedious bickering, debates which didn’t include a single punch, one hurled egg, insulting of bigoted pensioners and kissing of babies, it all culminated in a result which wasn’t really a proper result. Yes, we now have a hung parliament. What’s a hung parliament? Let me explain… no, actually, just read this. Or if this is already too boring, here’s some funny pictures of cute animals.

Okay, so the Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, gained the most votes and (more importantly) the most seats of elected Members of Parliament (306, which will most likely rise to 307 once the delayed election in Thirsk & Malton goes ahead). However, because there are 650 seats in the House of Commons, Dashing Dave Cameron and his cronies were 20 (soon to be 19) seats shy of a majority… hence the hung parliament situation. A government likes to think it can vote on a bill and win, which is a bit tricky when the combined force of the other major parties and minnow contingents outnumber you.

Here in Surrey Heath we sit among the Tory heartland. Our local MP, Michael Gove, was re-elected without breaking into a sweat and increased his share of the votes from 51.5% to 57.6% – not bad for someone who didn’t even turn up to a local debate (because he was bag-carrying for Mr Cameron that evening). And not bad for someone who trousered £7,000 of tax payers’ money to furnish his Kensington home, even if he did pay it back after the finger of suspicion pointed in his direction. To be honest, here in the sprawling metropolis of Camberley I didn’t see much (or any) campaigning… just a few signs. I presume the Tories didn’t think they needed to bother, assuming themselves to be a shoo-in on election night. As for the rest, they probably thought it wasn’t even worth the effort of trying to win. And looking at the results, it wasn’t.

Let’s spare a thought or two for Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Nick’s ratings soared during the live television debates, and it seemed that after years of distant third places and a risk of being beaten by the Loonies that the Lib Dems may have been getting closer to the big two. Even the embarrassment of claiming £2.49 for cake tin wasn’t going to dent Nick’s confidence. But then we discovered why for so many years the Lib Dems have been advocates of proportional representation. The basic premise of proportional representation is that the elected government seats should closely correlate with the number of votes received. So why are the Lib Dems so keen on this? It’s best illustrated with two graphs based on the 2010 results:

On the left, we see the number of votes received in millions (Liberal Democrat = yellow, Labour = red, Conservative = blue). On the right we seat the number of seats in the House of Commons taken up by the three parties. While Labour and Conservative have a fairly consistent ratio between votes and seats, the Lib Dems don’t. Some basic maths tells us that for every seat won, the Conservatives received just under 35,000 votes… for Labour it was around 33,300 votes. But for the Lib Dems it was a ratio of just under 120,000 votes per seat. Why the big difference?

This has nothing to do with the Lib Dems winning seats in the most populous constituencies… quite the opposite actually. It was all about coming second in too many places. And what do you get for coming second in a contest for one MP seat? Nothing. Look at Surrey Heath… the Lib Dems were a clear second with 14,037 votes to Labour’s 5,552. Then look at Guildford where the Lib Dems netted 19,000 more votes than Labour. It’s a similar story almost everywhere the Conservatives won a seat… the Lib Dems came second with no reward.

Proportional representation would help the Lib Dems gain a greater standing in our democracy, but wouldn’t it also make a hung parliament more likely?

I must say, I found the Turner Prize very disappointing this year. In previous years it’s been all-to-easy to poke fun at the preposterous and pretentious rubbish that these so-called artists pride themselves on… people dressed as bears, flashing lights, planks of wood on the floor, mannequins on toilets and old sheds. But this year it seems that there are a few pieces I would describe as art and actually demonstrate some artistic talent. Okay, I say this as someone who is a bit of a philistine and was utterly hopeless at art during my school years. But look at Enrico David’s Harlequin-style pictures and sculptures… I wouldn’t pay 50p to see them, but unlike laying a piece of wood or a half-eaten bowl of porridge on the floor I’d have to admit I couldn’t create anything like that.

Roger Hiorns created some sculptures (or do we call them ‘installations’?) and they look fairly boring. One is called IBM and looks like something from the inside of a futuristic toilet cistern. Another of his installations is a fire in a grate, which I’m sure is something we’ve never seen before. But Roger did see fit to encrust an abandoned London flat with liquid copper sulphate, so he’s a worthy nominee in the Turner Prize tradition. Could I have done that? I don’t know – I don’t think it ever would have occurred to me to try it. Roger clearly has too much time on his hands.

Lucy Skaer created some sculptures and pictures, and quite frankly they’re not wacky or pointless enough for me to take the p*ss out of. They’re just a bit boring. Don’t feel too bad Lucy, I’m a philistine and I looked at the pictures of your works for about 2.7 seconds. My opinion is worth nothing.

Now we come to Richard Wright. Not the late Pink Floyd legend. I’m referring to the man who “combines graphic imagery and intricate patterning from sources as varied as medieval painting, graphics and typography”. And also exhibits some shelves as art. Often you place your art on shelves, but this piece of art is actually shelves. This is what most of us call ‘furniture’.

But to give Richard his dues, I actually find one of his pieces (using “gouache and enamel on paper”) quite impressive to look at. I like the shapes and the symmetry, and the way it reminds me of a pre-historic cave painting with an organic feel. No, I’m not being sarcastic, I actually genuinely do like it. Maybe it’s a bit too busy to be a Windows backdrop though. At least I now know what gouache paint is, so I’ve expanded my knowledge of the world, thanks to the Turner Prize.

So who won? It was Richard Wright, which was the right (no pun intended) decision. What is happening here? Come on artists… let’s see a ventriloquist’s doll dressed as Hitler on a unicycle carrying a bottle of bile next year please.

I have just one thought about this kerfuffle over British hacker Gary McKinnon finding his way into some (supposedly) ultra-secure US Government systems… don’t put the guy in jail. Instead the US Government should fly him over the pond first class and grill him on how he did it. That way they can learn about how to make the systems more secure. And then they should give him a job working in the UFO lab that we saw in Independence Day.

Of course, regular watchers of 1980s movies will already know how easy hacking is. Watching Beverly Hills Cop II we learn that even in the late 80s you could have accessed any computer from any other computer, as Eddie Murphy pops into Gilbert Gottfried’s office and accesses the Police HQ system. In Weird Science we learn that to hack into a secure government system all you had to do was type in ‘override’. Unfortunately that doesn’t work any more as security experts removed all override back-doors after the movie was released on VHS. The new back-door is ‘pa55w0rd’ – this is what McKinnon used, but if the US Government interview him and discover this, they’ll change it to something like ‘l4tme1n’.

So, here we are… Summer has officially ended, the first X-Factor live show is just over a week away, and Christmas merchandise is quickly taking over the local garden centres. There are two other important things I noted this morning, both on GMTV.

Firstly, the weather forecast from Kirsty McCabe. Earlier this week she speculated that we would have a mild Winter with no chance of a white Christmas – a pretty safe bet, given the last one was thirty-nine years ago. This morning she said that October and November would be mild with temperatures slightly above average (I suppose that’s what mild means). Given that the forecast for today now differs from what she said it would be on Monday, how much faith do we have in her ability (or that of any weather forecaster) to tell us what the weather will be like in eight weeks time? As Paul Daniels used to say, ‘not a lot’.

And then we have the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. You have to applaud Gordon Brown and his gang for not treating it like an early wake, and for keeping up the pretence that they’ll still be in power this time next year. Mrs Brown, there’s no point in looking at the interior of 10 Downing Street and thinking “we could do with new curtains”. Mrs Cameron will take care of that next year. So I was amused by the comments of the sprightly little political bunny David Miliband who this morning said something to the effect of…

Britain loves an underdog, and sometimes Britain wants the underdog to win.

Let’s put this into context Mr Miliband… Britain loves an underdog when Luxembourg are playing Germany in a World Cup qualifier. We love the underdog when a British player other than Andy Murray reaches the third day of Wimbledon. We’ll cheer for the British guy who turns up for a skiing competition and stands alongside Swiss and Austrian competitors. Labour’s position is rather different – the reason that they’re the underdogs in the polls is that hardly anyone thinks they’re doing a good job or intends to vote for them. So come the general election next year, we’re hardly likely to cheer them past the finishing post like some marathon runner dressed as a smurf who’s taken seven hours but has raised £2 million for a cancer charity. Being an underdog, trying your best and valiantly failing with respect and dignity in a sport is one thing… making a hash of running a country is another.

Travelling from Heathrow to Copenhagen on the world’s favourite airline allowed me to pick up a copy of the Daily Mail, a newspaper well-known for it’s traditional values. I guess it depends which historical figures you judge to be traditional… Adolf Hitler maybe? Anyway, there was an amazing picture of a 25 foot great white shark on page 3, and while coming into land I had to turn off the Archos and my eye caught a reader’s letter. This wasn’t the usual old guff from people who still believe Britain has an empire and that National Service will cure homosexuality… oh no, this is, shall we say, priceless and involves the sweet wrapper seen here.

Taking a glance at the picture, you have to ask “what is the green chap doing”? I can’t really come up with any good explanation, but I do know it’s not half as questionable as the cherry version (don’t take my word for it, Google it). Even if I was to believe the worst, I wouldn’t be bothered to write an enraged letter to the Daily Mail. But that’s okay because Mr Simpkins from Pontefract has done it for us.

Angry Mr Simpkins describes the illustration as appalling and says that the lime (he’s not actually a lime, he’s just a green character) wears a “lurid and distasteful expression”. By this point I was so appalled I was laughing. The letter goes on to describe a heated exchange of words with the shop manager (yep, like it’s his fault) which resulted in Mrs Simpkins becoming so distressed she had to sit down in the car park. Mr Simpkins was glad he prevented his children from seeing the image – like most normal children I’m sure they study sweet wrappers intensely, checking the sugar and E-number levels before deciding whether or not to consume them.

After writing to the manufacturer, Haribo, Mr Simpkins received an unsatisfactory reply denying any intention of naughtiness, and he is now urging members of his church to boycott Haribo products. There was no further indication as to whether Mrs Simpkins was still in the car park in a sitting or standing position. I’m sure that if she saw the cherry flavour wrapper she’d need a lie-down.

Incidentally, Mr Simpkins isn’t the first to complain about the Maoam wrappers. Back in 2004 the Blasien Jesuit College claimed that “the sweets wrapped in bright yellow, red and green colours show lemons, limes, strawberries, cherries and oranges romping with each other”. This is clearly an inaccurate statement, as the green chap is clearly not a lime. But it’s a good job Haribo decided against the banana flavour.

What you see above is the result of entering ping /? at a DOS / Windows command prompt. From the available parameters you’ll see that there’s actually no way to ping someone via IBM Lotus Sametime or ‘ping a note over’ to someone.

Please see here for more details, and please stop using the term ‘ping’ incorrectly.

A few years ago, when various people met round a table to discuss ambitious plans to put Camberley on the map, they couldn’t have foreseen that the completion of said plans would coincide with the worst time for the retail sector in living memory.

Apart from a couple of eating establishments in the final stages, Camberley 2.0 is now complete. We have a Vue cinema, a bowling alley, a Nandos,  a Starbucks (yeah, now we’re on the map), a host of other eateries, and a new parade of shop units. Ah, the shop units… this is where it starts to go a bit wrong. So far, only four have been occupied – Laura Ashley, Next, a sports shop and Zavvi.

Next moved out of the Main Square mall and into a bigger brighter unit in the now pedestrianised Park Street. Good move I think. Zavvi, as we now know, are unfortunately under administration  – so this leaves one of the occupied new units under threat. Zavvi also moved out of a unit in the Main Square mall. USC took one of the units vacated by either Next or Zavvi (can’t remember which), but they are also now under adminstration. JJB Sports are also in the Main Square mall and according to their web site they’re still there, but for how long? JJB, I think, are next to Adams Kids clothing (who are now under administration) and opposite The Officers’ Club (closed down). First Choice Holidays have already closed the Camberley branch, which was quite close to Woolworths (and we all know the story there).

I can understand Zavvi’s plight. Quite simply, they operate in the market which now seems to be best-served by Internet retailers such as Play and Amazon. That’s a factor that was no doubt part of Woolworth’s downfall.

Curiously, you’d think Game would be in the same boat. However, for the past two Saturdays the queue has stretched the entire length of the store, and not because they’re having a closing down cheapo clearout sale. They were very busy before Christmas so nice to see they’re bucking the trend. Maybe it’s because they have a loyalty points card scheme – that one factor could prompt customers to buy from them rather than an on-line competitor. Maybe it’s because (and this is a rare thing to say these days) they offer very good customer service and advice. Or maybe it’s because the thought of getting Guitar Hero World Tour delivered to your door (and having to wait in all day for a courier who will probably never arrive) is too miserable to contemplate.

Finally, just for a bit of fun, I’ve included (above) a picture of the artist’s impression of the interior of ‘The Atrium’ where the cinema, restaurants and bowling alley are situated. It doesn’t look exactly like this. The escalator is there, but you’d have to stand in the middle of the road to make it appear that far in the distance.