SixKindsOfChris at 0823 today
That doesn't begin to detail the scope of it: more than 600 public bodies have the power to bug citizens, and the report listed 1,088 cases where the rules were broken in a 9 month period.

Daisy88 at 0842 today
Do you think MI5 is reading this blog, and this comment by me?

liberati at 0847 today
Unlikely. I only got as far as the first sentence

JaneT at 0853 today
How can you feel qualified to comment on something you haven't even read, liberati?

liberati at 0902 today
That's funny. Is this your first time on the internet?

JaneT at 0907 today
Don't patronise me, you wanker

SPECIAL- RELATIONSHIP at 0917 today
I'D JUST LIKE TO SAY THANK YOU TO THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS WHO MONITOR US FOR OUR OWN PROTECTION

GCHQopcom #21399# at 0921 today
you're welcome

MaxPersons at 0925 today
It's a difficult balance - our privacy is important, but of course the intelligence services need to be able to do their work without being hindered.

GCHQopcom #21399# at 0929 today
a-men

SixKindsOfChris at 0936 today
It's clear we've completely lost sight of any "balance". Wiretap evidence isn't even admissible in court, and yet we're spying on litterers.

JaneT at 0948 today
GCHQ - are you really monitoring this blog?

GCHQopcom #21399# at 0954 today
Sort of. It's my lunch hour, so I'm listening but I'm not really paying attention

Daisy88 at 0957 today
Hanging is too good for litterers, IMHO

BigDorrit at 1002 today
Eating lunch at 10am are you mad!!!!!!!!!!

GCHQopcom #21399# at 1011 today
I'm on a weird shift - late night Facebook duty. I get hungry at odd times.

ElSmell at 1019 today
I think the security services are doing a great job, but then I feel like I have to say that or I'll be put in jail.

Daisy88 at 1024 today
Yeah, that's why I said that thing about litterers - keep them guessing.

MaxPersons at 1028 today
There are already legal protections in place. The question is whether they are sufficient, and whether they are enforced

JaneT at 1033 today
The question is, what is the best protection against having your phone tapped and your emails read by the govt?

liberati at 1045 today
Being boring

JaneT at 1052 today
You're safe then

comments from 'A Government That Listens' on Guardian blogs

Keep smiling

a nice wide rictus sardonicus if you can't manage anything else

no more stories.

oh dear what's happening?

i find every present moment so endlessly entertaining... life is so funny i'm going to laugh myself to death one day...

but i just don't feel like telling the internet stories about it any more.

i would like to contribute to the net somehow, though. give me a cable to hold or something.

what, you don't need me? -don't worry, we've got loads of experts on the job. we've got a couple experts to every foot of internet cable, all the way down the line to you...

still waiting

blast your mind so that all the human pleasures of life just seem like more essential corpse maintenance, yess...

(and then everything just falls apart after that...
"Look... I can tell when it's the voices in my head and when it's them doing it...")

waiting for godot

is the nearest thing to a genuine lethal text that i know

take a chance you stupid ho

i have been living such a wholesome life lately that something was bound to happen sooner or later. still not quite like the time before realgem, but fingertip pushups, zen archery, yoga stretches, memorising persian verb forms and proper home-cooked meals abound.

on saturday it was a real effort to force that glass of wine down before eating anything other than breakfast. although if i'm all so yogic and everything now one might ask why i had felt compelled to dose myself with temazepam and valium and tramadol in the morning, no kidding, but it's really not the rule these days... but once it was down, that glass, my god, the next one and the one after that felt so right... got in touch with my inner self who turns out to be a fucking alcoholic...

i didn't really feel like drinking that left-over wine but some demon drove me... i didn't really feel like going out, but the malung's band was playing nearby... i didn't really feel like talking to that girl but some demon drove me, hissing but isn't she fucking deliciousss, preciousss? in my ear like some demented fucking gollum... fuck yeah of course she is, cafe latte skin and perfect tits, and then she vanish sometime in the morning-after with a phone and a credit card and some money and 40g of high-grade maroccy from the desk.

so we have a very contrite Lazy sitting with coffee under a hung-over and mournful sunday sky. jesus fuck, what can i do? set my psycho friends to hunt her down? police?

"what you gonna tell them? i slept with an underage girl and then she stole my phone and drugs?" says arofish. ha ha. fucking funny guy, that arofish.

it only takes a very short time to find the necessary attitude-adjustment switch in my head and then everything seems funny as hell again. the real moral of the story is not to tell anyone on this goddamn street anything or everyone will know by lunchtime. "but what should we do if we see her again?" asks too many people. "ask if she'd meet me again and i'd love to buy her a drink," is the correct glib response, and why the fuck do you care? "i heard about what happened... i'm sorry about that..." they actually say. what the fuck are you sorry about? i'm not. what did you do to me that you're sorry about?

i can't even feel angry at that dumb whore. she was just a slutty opportunist with a lovely ass and a pretty face, adventurous and totally non-sentimental; i can't hate anyone for those qualities. but the gossiping twittering i-don't-have-a-life-myself's, on the other hand, put me into a cursing murderous rage.

how completely absurd to commiserate with someone who has just learned a valuable lesson about this or that, like maybe basic pharmacology. that's what it often is, you know, these things that happen when god leans out of the sky to whack you over the head with some inexplicable thing, pay attention, you fucking idiot... and fuck you all, i'd do it all again anytime...

well i haven't been here for a while. some people, i can see, do keep checking for signs of life...

then there are all those people who click through from google searches on 'chemical torture' (realgem is still at #1 as of this posting...). they read this through in a couple of minutes and most don't look at anything else here but click straight through to the Atlantic Monthly article or then to ishmael smith's profile. i wonder what they make of that. some of these come from very strange IPs, .mil servers, or searches on 'how to tie an afghan scarf' from security corp addresses.

but to the first group above, i suppose a thank-you for keeping an eye out and an apology for the recent erratic copy-and-paste posting is in order...

take care & take control

Fuck Buttons at ICA, in Big City Redneck: "A friend recently informed me that the dark ambient rubric has now become known as “Illbient”. Fuck Buttons are bona-fide positivists, in both attitude and sound so it occurs to me that they/their sound could be described as “wellbient”. That’s not to say that darker, more intense moments do not exist in Fuck Buttons music...

...to me, anyway, this bodes well for an electronic/experimental/industrial-influenced outfit in terms of the “I believe in coincidence but I just don’t trust it” perspective...

Normally, this kind of positivism would make me want to pull my teeth out with pliers, their seeds of love falling on the stony ground that is my dry, blackened soul. But despite the fact that these boys are to my battered old psyche possibly too young to have experienced any real distress in their lives, there is a genuinely uplifting aspect to them both as people and in their music." (text Dr Otter, photos Lazy as always)

[[[[Fuck Buttons myspace]]] (playing a few gigs in Austin, Texas mid-March you Texas visitors might want to know)