In the gutter, looking at the stars

"There’s an old joke: Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them..."

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:55:00 +0100

“

There’s an old joke: Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, ‘Boy, the food in this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’

Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life – full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness … and it’s all over much too quickly.

”

- Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), Annie Hall (1977)

How to boil rice

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:44:54 +0100

How did I get to be in sole charge of cooking rice in this household?

Oh, that’s right. It’s due to the incident I fondly refer to as “The time someone decided to boil rice for three in the smallest saucepan we have, and then wandered away from the kitchen for three quarters of an hour”.

I name no names.

Rod Liddle on bloggers

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:06:00 +0100

Rod Liddle on “Bloggsville”:[1]

… that vast network of talentless and embittered individuals tapping away at their keyboards in the intellectual vacuum of cyberspace, only occasionally leaving their computer screens to heat up a Tesco microwave-ready mini filled garlic and coriander nan bread with Indian dip selection (mango chutney, pickle, cucumber raita ©) before returning to spew out some more unsubstantiated bile.

This has caused a bit of a stir on the internet, with some accusations of pot/kettle. I’d say it’s more a case of careless framing; in its original context, Liddle is clearly going after Guido Fawkes, “the semi-literate, extreme-right-wing, public-school-educated, foreign-born former bankrupt and convicted criminal blogger”, and people of his ilk, but in doing so has effectively insulted the rest of the blogging community (or at least those of us with some interest in politics).

Me? I’m doing this ‘cause it provides a bit of distraction – for the fun of it. Call it a hobby. Most of the blogs and feeds I follow, on or off Tumblr, are run by people with apparently similar motivations, and most of them have a talent for whatever it is they do, whether offering commentary on current events, sharing unusual pictures or interesting links, or making the case that Aquaman isn’t lame.

I may well be talentless, but I’m hardly embittered.

Well, not much.

Sexy man and a hot car … It occurs to me the last post was...

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:31:00 +0100

Sexy man and a hot car …

It occurs to me the last post was tagged “Bruce Campbell” without really mentioning anything about that stirling fellow. I must rectify that omission by sharing my favourite BC moments from the Burn Notice panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con.

Because, for some insane reason, Tumblr won’t allow me to feature the second video by editing the embed code into the HTML source, the sequel can be found by clicking “Keep workin’, sweaty man”.

(And yes, people did follow through with the Twitter prank.)

Stalking Bruce Campbell

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:58:56 +0100

I’m beginning to appreciate the Tumblr dashboard now that I’ve got the hang of it. I particularly like the way the Tracked Tags feature allows me to ~~stalk~~ monitor the ongoing narrative regarding a particular topic.

My feelings on the reblogging feature are more ambivalent. Yes, it provides a way of directly commenting on someone else’s stuff. But should I need to make such comments a feature of my own blogging?

cutenonsequitur: comicallyvintage: Every trannie needs a...

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:43:07 +0100

cutenonsequitur:

comicallyvintage:

Every trannie needs a Dave.

First off, comicallyvintage, it’s not even spelled with an ie. Second of all, that’s pretty fuckin offensive.

According to my copy of The New Oxford Dictionary of English, both “tranny” and “trannie” are allowable spellings of the term.

Peter Purves regrets

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:09:23 +0100

Being slow and stupid, it took a second or third look to work out that the Blue Peter nuclear bunker described by David Mitchell in his recent piece for The Guardian’s “Comment is free” was entirely fictional:

The windowless studio environment from which Blue Peter has always been broadcast was selected so that it could easily be replicated under post-apocalyptic conditions.

“In the 1950s, nuclear war seemed inevitable,” remembers a former head of children’s television. “The BBC felt responsible for maintaining the nation’s morale as it gradually succumbed to radiation sickness.”

The John Noakes-era set, in this subterranean, reinforced-concrete complex deep beneath the Pennines, is complete with a stuffed Shep double and 30% of the nation’s reserve supply of double-sided sticky tape.

“We actually recorded a dry run under full emergency conditions, with the cast medicated to simulate the effects of a nuclear winter. The sight of Lesley Judd throwing up all over the advent crown really brought home to me the horrors of war.”

I should’ve borne in mind that this was by one of the chaps responsible for The Quiz Broadcast.

Johnny Depp as Doctor Who?

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:21:00 +0100

wehavenoneedofcomfychairs:

HOPEFULLY this is just a rumour, although I have heard that it is set for release in 2012 and Russell T. Davies is writing it.

Decided to check this out. According to io9:

You can scratch that rumor about Johnny Depp starring in a big-screen Doctor Who extravaganza. We checked with the BBC, and a rep says there are “no plans” for a Who movie, and any talk is “pure speculation.”

Mozzer: "... Chinese are a subspecies."

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 09:44:00 +0100

You have to give Morrissey credit. With one off-hand remark, he’s managed to divert attention from (his) concern over animal welfare issues in China to a discussion of whether or not he’s a terrible racist.[1] Even the Animal Liberation Front aren’t this adept at courting bad PR.

WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:06:00 +0100

On the beach at Eastbourne with bucket and spade, noticing a dried starfish, aged 2(ish).

Should’ve asked me about my first blackout. That was much more interesting.

Afore ye go

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:48:35 +0100

The SNP-led Scottish government has announced plans to increase the minimum price of alcoholic drinks to 45p per unit, which would hit cheap-but-strong brands, in an effort to discourage problem drinking.[1]

Do the nationalists think their support comes mainly from teetotalers and middle-income, moderate drinkers? Good grief, no one watches Braveheart sober.

The power of music: a 90-year-old man recounts a remarkable...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:34:39 +0100

The power of music: a 90-year-old man recounts a remarkable experience he had in WWII.

Raito

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:31:00 +0100

Finished the second Death Notice movie last night: effective cat-and-mousery with a high concept, supernatural shell. Had I been offered this in anime or manga, I probably would have passed, being somewhat wary of the forms. Why I should suffer from this prejudice, I’m not exactly sure. Perhaps it’s a result of having little exposure to the best of Japanese animation in my formative years? All we had in the 70s was Marine Boy and Battle of the Planets; I barely remember the former, and the latter, a heavily butchered, English version of Gatchaman, wasn’t the best introduction to the field.

I really should try to leave my comfort zone on this.

"For one thing, it's not at Ground Zero. Also, it isn't a mosque."

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:17:00 +0100

It’s difficult to watch the nonsense surrounding the proposed Park51 (formerly known as “Cordoba House”, more widely known as the “Ground Zero Mosque”) without bringing to mind Warren Ellis’s witty submunition “July 4”, which describes the US as a social experiment designed to provide the UK with “the longest-running free comedy show of all time”. And the debate seems to have brought the best out of Charlie Brooker:

To get to the Cordoba Centre from Ground Zero, you’d have to walk in the opposite direction for two blocks, before turning a corner and walking a bit more. The journey should take roughly two minutes, or possibly slightly longer if you’re heading an angry mob who can’t hear your directions over the sound of their own enraged bellowing.

Perhaps spatial reality functions differently on the other side of the Atlantic, but here in London, something that is “two minutes’ walk and round a corner” from something else isn’t actually “in” the same place at all. I once had a poo in a pub about two minutes’ walk from Buckingham Palace. I was not subsequently arrested and charged with crapping directly onto the Queen’s pillow. That’s how “distance” works in Britain. It’s also how distance works in America, of course, but some people are currently pretending it doesn’t, for daft political ends.

I imagine if I lived in the middle of this that I’d be less amused to see conservatives temporarily forgetting their love of defending private property rights, the attempts to frame the project as a monument to terrorism and its moderate Muslim proponent Feisal Abdul Rauf as a “secret radical”, and the disregarding of the First Amendment.

Thankfully, I don’t.

You know you're getting older ...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:29:00 +0100

… when the MPs start looking younger.

Politics, then. Where do I start? Going into the last election I had convinced myself I wasn’t going to vote. I didn’t feel much enthusiasm for any particular party, hadn’t taken much interest in politics for nearly five years; frankly, didn’t really care.

And then it got interesting. The polls fluctuated in response to the good impression Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg made at the first ever televised election debates, giving the illusion there was a possibility of a third party breakthrough – which of course, didn’t happen, but at least there was a sense of excitement about the process, which I hadn’t felt since 1997 when I stayed up to watch the ongoing massacre.

So, I bothered to look into the online profiles of the parliamentary candidates standing in my constituency, theorising that I could possibly make a choice in terms of the individual rather than the party they represented. Of the five candidates, only two people really stood out, and only one for potentially positive reasons.

Let’s deal with the other one first.

I mean, really, BNP. Him? Don’t you guys have enough of an image problem without fielding a homunculus? (I’m not basing this solely on looks. Video evidence suggests Mr Mather has not the searing charisma or commanding rhetoric which could overcome his unprepossessing countenance. At best, he could be described as an old fool pursuing an eccentric hobby in retirement.)

Enough of him. I opted for Labour’s Lisa Nandy (pictured at the top of this post), an overachiever from the voluntary sector. Though I found the more party political elements of her campaign a little banal (seriously, there’s decreasing mileage in warning of a return to the bad old days of Major and Thatcher when it’s your party that’s been holding the buck amidst the country’s recent financial problems, particularly as few senior members of the last Conservative government are active in frontline politics), I did find that on subjects she specialised in during her time in the voluntary sector (namely housing and child welfare), she came across as somewhat more formidable and independently minded than many of her more experienced colleagues.

The latter characteristic seems to be evident in her career as an MP thus far (yes, she was elected; Labour + Wigan = Labour MP). Certainly, she’s so far rejected the perceived “wisdom” that all Labour needs to do to win back power is to sound tough on immigration,[1] backed Miliband Minor for the Labour leadership,[2] given stick to senior frontbencher Ed Balls,[3] and argued in favour of maintaining government spending[4] (and not, as I originally thought, disingenuously, with the freedom of an opposition MP who doesn’t have to bear the consequences, but from a Keynesian point of view). She’s kept busy, apparently having asked 145 written questions within her first three months.[5] Moreover, she hasn’t neglected her constituency duties, regularly featuring in the local press as a supporter of one good cause or another.

All in all, I can’t say I feel embarrassed about having voted for her.

Except …

Well, there is this recent post to LabourList, entitled “Is preference leadership ballot confusing Labour members?”

I mean, I can understand wanting to make an argument against the government’s plans to open up the possibility of electoral reform in a manner that avoids seeming desperate to hold onto the advantage our current first-past-the-post system offers to larger parties. However, this tack has made it easy for political blogger Guido Fawkes to characterise her statement as “Labour Members Too Thick to Vote”, framing Ms Nandy as more than a little patronising.

Oh, well, nobody’s perfect.

ETA: Lisa Nandy has since been mentioned in Lance Price’s speculative piece “Labour’s leader after Miliband”.[6] That’s her career over, then.

Comment is free, but tricky

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 09:17:00 +0100

Five minutes on Twitter and I begin to feel nostalgic for paragraphs. But it has, at least, ease of response. It seems strange that Tumblr, a service which supposedly emphasises ease of use, should present a few hurdles when a user wishes to allow comments to individual posts.

I have no idea whether what I’ve done regarding DISQUS is “correct” but it has allowed me to leave a test comment in the first post. So, hurray for me.

(And hopefully, that’s the last whinge for a while.)

ETA: As it happens, what I’d done was bobbins. The right method is a little simpler.

To blog or not to blog

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:37:00 +0100

I’ve been in two minds about having a public blog for a while now. Is there any point if you’re the only one reading it? Or worse, what if you get a readership and it’s not the kind you really want?

Maybe I can justify the former by simply observing that I have the time and I’ve long been curious about tumblr.

The latter, I still fear.