Venusberg | That's not your heart, it's a piece of helicopter casing

Friday, December 03, 2004

Some things are pretty much as you'd expect:

Tracey Emin isn't the best at handling criticism.

The six girls in the film, who act out different episodes from Emin's life, were fed the lines by her rather than being given a written script. Ad-libbing was forbidden. When I mention how good they are, Emin gives me a pointed look and says: "Yeah, but they're MY words. Not theirs. They didn't make any of that up. It's me, telling them what to say." At 41, she is twice their average age.

I want to like Emin - for her recontextualisation of craft as art, and because anyone who really annoys Billy Childish can't be all bad - but she does make it difficult.

Often, people make it too easy.

Tom Ridge walks into a new job.

The poor kids get the good drugs first.

You should really prefer the taste of man-host if you want to be a US Methodist minister.

It's very hard to get a copy of the homosexual agenda, because the Republicans have grabbed every copy and are studying it avidly. Particularly delightful is the quote:

Kinsey's proper place is with Nazi doctor Josef Mengele

This from Robert Knight of the Concerned Women for America. You may note that Robert is not a woman. I suspect he is also not in any meaningful sense "for America", unless by that you mean he harbours a desire to see the place slide into dark age, but I am sure he makes up for it by being very concerned indeed. Concerned and classy.

Whether or not to execute people is a pretty emotional decision.

Accusing people of treason on doctored evidence is not really on. Mind you, neither is the fact that I read the judge's statement that George Galloway was a tough political operator who is used to hard-hitting criticism as saying he was used to hard-hitting eroticism, which is a world of wrong...

This, ont he other hand, I did find genuinely, off-your-feet surprising, for the five femtoseconds before my internal hard drive spun up and I realised that it wsa a big, honking hoax. It's one that causes conflict, also - I understand entirely what the Yes Men were trying to do, although it's not likely to have much of an impact, but this method means that for a brief period many of those who had suffered at Bhopal, and the people who have campaigned for their welfare, thought that it was all over.

Although... I don't know. At a guess, the mention of $12 billion (the value of the Dow/Union Carbide merger) suggest a coded message identifying it as a fake. Tricksy. Probably too tricksy.

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