| Wednesday, August 27, 2003 |
 | Oh, and check out the 9/11 commemorative Afghan carpet Ben found in Kabul. Fascinating stuff.
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| Until normal service is resumed, comfort yourself with this utterly top short story from Matt, on the Upsideclown (another area I haven't been having enough time for lately...)
The Starling Variable
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| I'm actually developing a bit fo an eBay habit, while accessorising my new laptop (currently back in the shop, since they forgot to put in half its RAM). accessorising is a terribly easy thing. And I *really* want a toughbook...
As eagle-eyed biewers may ahve observed, I'm not aroud much at present. Blame paid employment - God knows, I do. Thus, when I do write, it is often on my Palm, to be cut and pasted later. It's not an ideal arrangement, but at least I have new batteries. More soon, hopefully.
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| From the 15th:
Sorry, childish responses again - Radio 4's Jazz Greats programme, and Charlie Mingus' widow, Sue Mingus saying "I remember reading a jazz magazine"...
So do we all, dear lady. So do we all.
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| It's the form of words that gets you sometimes - odd correspondences that result from different cultural maps.
So, for example, the description of theoretical biologist Joan Roughgarden as "once a man". This is a perfectly good, albeit somewhat portentous, phrase (although, you know, does Roughgarden feel that the fact that she was born male deserves to be whacked above everything else she has to say in 30-point type?).
However.
However, "once a man" is a phrase sadly associated forever in my mind with the cries of Cobra Commander, turned into a snake in a harsh but not entirely unjustifiable response to being in essence a shit terrorist leader. This is not a reaction Laura Spinney could reasonably have anticipated.
Well, I did say "sadly"...
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| From Wednesday 13th:
Bongoing, bongoing, bongone.
I learn with interest that top bongo mag Penthouse has filed for bankrupcy. Apparently the bongo behemoth's readership has shrunk from 5 miliion to a little over 500,000. This is a startling descent, and begs the question of what exactly causes such an enormous loss of readers. Given that, with the best will in the world, one's editorial expectations of a stroke mag (naked ladies), is unlikely to stray far from one's experience, that is. Did Penthouse show the wrong naked ladies, or perhaps did it transpire that 9 in every ten readers were in fact reading it for the articles and left in disgust as the editorial standard went downhill, having no real interest in the distracting and undesired naked ladies?
All rather peculiar, essentially.
Yeah, I know, it's the Internet, but think of the other factors.
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| Saturday, August 16, 2003 |
| From Monday 11th:
The heat is doing strange things to London and the outlying districts, apart from giving the whole place the look of the intro video to David Bowie's Let's Dance tour video.
For example, over a good fifty yards of my walk to the station today I was assailed by an unbelievaby strong smell... of parmesan. Parmesan. Now, I'm guessing that nobody was knocking up a quick risotto at 7:45 in the morning, so presumably one of the things currently heated beyiond structural expectation - tarmac, creosote, Guardian reader testicles - gives off a whiff of Italian hard cheese. This is a hitherto unexplored consequence of climate change.
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| Sunday, August 10, 2003 |
| From Tuesday:
I'm proofreading Danish, a language I don't speak. Over time, it becomes a kind of visual equivalency to listening to Sigur Ros. Since I am also proofreading the same text in Portugese, French, Italian and, crucially, English, I have an artificial perception of linguistic ability, because I can judge from vague similarities and sympathies, along with position on the page, what any particular paragraph is saying.
And, on the subject of speaking a langage I don't understand, it looks like the Anglicans may be on the verge of doing it again. After having apparently managed to elect a gay bishop, the creation has been paused by last-minute accusations of sexual misconduct, clearly designed to generate as much attention as possible so that, even if they are found to be baseless, the rumours will survive. Nice one. Of course, these allegations do need to be investigated, but I can't help but suspect that the timing is at best pusillanimous.
Still, it does give the evos and the traditionalists something to agree on - both reserve their right to hate any queers who dare to work for the advancement of the church. Midn you, they hate pretty well everything else fun, so why should sex be an exception?
Well, it's tomorrow and they've done it, although it may be awhile before I actually trust that this is a sincere and secure establishment. It's a wonderful slap in the face to the church in England, which after all claimed that the hounding of Jeffrey John was aimed at keeping the global church together - now the colonies have presented them with a bishop that not only is avowedly gay but has also decided to say a resounding "fuck that noise" to celibacy. Must make them feel terribly nostalgic for dear old Canon John, with his hand-knitted cardigans and forebearance of fellation.
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| From Wednesday:
It's a personal opinion, but I remain unconvinced that weather can be described as "glorious" if people are dying from it. I am aware that that narrows the field considerably - find an area in which the weather is so anodyne that it endangers nobody and you are basically talking about Kent. And in many ways the fact that mankind has spread out from the so-called "Garden of Eden" that is Kent is a testament to the human spirit; we must admire the inventon of flip-flops for Southern France, and wooly jumpers for Lancashire, but surely there's a limit? We find ourselves living in a world where massive demand for electricity to run air-conditioning units leads to greater consumption of fossil fuels, which leads to higher temperatures, de dum de dum de dum.
I want to see England cloudy and grey again, and I want it now.
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| From Wednesday:
Shitty legscratch - they've relaunched My Little Pony. This is worng on levels unplumbed by the science of man. I suspect Mys-Tech may be involved...
Although they are no longer named after porn stars, a gag made first by the Brunching Shuttlecocks, bless them.
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| From Thursday:
My favorite bit of press today was indubitably the Guardian's correctons section, which noted that they were out by a factor of ten in one section of their "dangerous clothing" article. The optimum temperature for testicles to produce sperm was in fact 2.2 degrees lower than body temp, not 22. A nation of potential fathers cease to press their balls against ice creams and relax.
Second favorite from the Telegraph, whose front page declares "Anger rises as gay bishop heads for London", which summons up images of some sort of Godzilla figure - a three hundred foot tall gay bishop heading for these isles, striding across the shallows of the English Channel, as the church, dwarfed and in fear of its very life, falls to vicious infighting.
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