04Aug03 — 0

The Final Victory of Karaoke

Yesterday evening, driving back from Marlborough, I listened to Robbie Williams’ last night at Knebworth, live on Radio 1. As I passed the venue itself I reflected that a third of a million Brits schlepping out to some old pile to listen to the King of Pastiche Rock was the lowest point in UK popular music since Beatles tribute band Oasis played at the same site in 1996, perfectly ugly examples of English “heritage” pop meeting English heritage. When Williams and the Gallaghers “perform” it’s the musical equivalent of unemployed northerners dressing up as coal miners for the tourists.

Actually, this might be an even lower point in British pop, but I haven’t heard it yet.

03Aug03 — 0

Not-vigation

Today I managed to double the time the AA reckons it takes to get from Cambridge to Marlborough. At least when I got there the warm, kind and generous Miller family and lots of friends were waiting for me. Pictures to follow.

27Jul03 — 2

Family and Friends

Happy anniversary, Clare and Steve! Some of your wedding and christening pictures are finally up over at Love And Bent Spoons. Now, perhaps you can do something useful with your absurdly long state-sponsored summer holiday and add some captions. (Your username and password will arrive in your email.)

(10 comments on PooterGeek—so far—in one day. And only 4 of them from me. I’ll have to provoke my friends more often.)

Update: I must point out that the Clare’s wedding photos were not taken by me, but by Jeff Ascough so I shouldn’t take credit for their beauty; my scanner doesn’t really do the originals justice.

26Jul03 — 0

Unintentional(?) Humour

I browsed Amazon.co.uk today, thinking of picking up the This is Spinal Tap DVD, and I noticed two interesting things about the page for the This is Spinal Tap CD.

First: the famously “blacker than black” album cover can be clicked on for a larger version. (Yes, but is it art?)

Second: if you scroll down beyond the product details, you can see that a Harley Street back pain clinic has, somewhat na,Ao(Bvely, paid Amazon to sponsor a link from the page.

23Jul03 — 2

Maoigraphs

Maoi introduced me to a couple of photography sites that make my anti-expensive-hardware attitudes look mild by comparison.

The Holga is—as the young people would say—a complete munter of a camera, yet, in the right hands, takes pictures like these.

Maoi herself owns a Colorsplash, which I referred to as looking like a travel iron. Not only can she press her shirts with it, she can use it to create interesting and fresh images.

If you’re reading, Maoi, your Colorsplash link is broken.

23Jul03 — 2

De-fence

Not a good start to today: I drove into work and, while attempting to park, drove through a fence.

If you’re reading this Auriol, Viv is OK. There are some fine scratches on her bonnet which are so superficial they mostly wipe off; I’ll examine more closely later in the week. One of those plastic headlamp protector things has gone, though. I guess that’s what they’re there for.

My only real worry now is that Campus Security might have added my “low-speed” manoeuvering antics to their Christmas video collection. Luckily I managed to extricate my jambed foot (the cause of my accident) and brake before Viv crashed into the large tree that the fence had been put up to protect. In a battle between the ancient vegetation and Auriol’s almost-as-ancient Peugeot 205 my money would have been on the one made of wood and sunk several metres into the ground.

18Jul03 — 1

So Prescient My Pants Hurt

I aspire to an permanent state of smugness, but I occasionally find it uncomfortable being wise before the event. Following my last WMD ‘Blog posting, I flicked through my correspondence from around the time of the original one.

On 18Feb03, in an email to about a dozen fellow members of la Résistance, hiding in attics across Europe from the marching pro-Saddamites, I wrote the following:

Every shaky argument of the Right (as opposed to the Wrong) in support of the war against terrorism will be worried by sympathizers and appeasers of “Islamofascism”…

…The answer is simply to stop using dumb arguments. Blair got interesting when he made his speech de-emphasising all that WMD destruction stuff and bluntly comparing the numbers of rich white people with baby-slogan-banners protesting in London with the number of poor brown people who had died in Iraq. Let’s get utilitarian on their asses:

“Look, kids, it’s simple:The Cold War is over now. The arithmetic of badness is so much simpler: you don’t have to factor in politics any more. Despite lacking our fancy hardware, their bad guys kill and persecute more innocent human beings than our bad guys. We suggest you get on the right side of history now—while there’s still time.”

. Actually, that could be our own baby-slogan: “Berlinski’s Bullstoppers—On The Right Side of History Since 1993“.

Tony, why didn’t you listen to your heart? Why didn’t you listen to me?

Anyway, you’ve got to wonder how Saddam’s henchmen would have had the time or space to hide any WMD, what with all those corpses to get rid of. Rebels, women, children, babies, Kurds; now, at least, he and his posse can take time off to hang out in that missile-hardened recording studio with Osama and Elvis.

Of course, we could have given peace another chance.

17Jul03 — 1

Silly Silly Silly

As if you ‘Blog readers needed telling, there are people out there with too much time on their hands. One of them has prepared The Hand Puppet Movie Theatre; and, especially for Leasy, here’s a link direct to his related Animatrix adaptation. Masterly.

Still sillier and more obscure, Kim sent me a link for those of you who are bored next time you’re at a trendy gig: play Hipster Bingo!

And, after 17 standing ovations from the houses of the US Congress and continuing accusations of a “presidential style” (whatever that’s supposed to mean coming from dimwits who scarcely understand the British constitution—such as it is—never mind the U.S. one), surely it’s time to kill two birds with one stone.

17Jul03 — 2

Stop with the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Already!

Back in February I put what I was worried was an already-tired link to the famous Weapons of Mass Destruction “error message” in my ‘Blog. (Scroll down to the 13Feb03 entry for the original reference.) It has recently re-emerged as the sort of phenomenon even grandmothers know about [ 😉 winks at Judith*] and I have had half-a-dozen emails about it in a fortnight.

The original creator wrote an article about the phenomenon in The Guardian last week. He even sells T-shirts of Mass Destruction now [server overloaded at the time of my posting this entry].

Funnily enough, his position on the war itself is similar to mine. And, as everyone who knows me knows, I could care less if they find any WMD anywhere in Iraq. Actually, I’d be pleased if they did because the usual crowd might stop whining about it. (And then start whining about the Coalition’s insufficient provision of play facilities for the under-fives in the greater Baghdad municipality.)

*Judith Levy is not a grandmother, but her mother is.

10Jul03 — 1

Uncle Damian Answers Your Questions

Dear Uncle Damian

Despite being in a stable long-term relationship, I have become stigmatized as a result of my forthright personality and purely platonic extra-curricular associations with men other than my boyfriend.
In short, all the girls hate me and they think I’m a slag.
I don’t know why I’m writing to you either, since you are part of the problem.

Ostracised of Essex

Dear Ostracised

You are not a slag; you might be a ladette, though.
I suggest that you marry your boyfriend and negotiate a lucrative contract presenting a breakfast radio show for the young people. Not only will all the girls want to be your friend, you will become their role model.

LaBS
Uncle Damian
x

P.S. Don’t blame me: everyone thinks I’m gay (but I’m not).

10Jul03 — 0

Classical Music

Yesterday evening, as I drove through the rolled Cambridgeshire countryside, my local radio presenting duo promised me that they would be “talking with the legendary Dido”.

Omigod, they have actually got an interview with the Queen of Carthage! Who next? Cleopatra?

(Surely they couldn’t have meant the Queen of Bone-achingly Banal Bridget Jones Ballads, the classically-trained, but still strangely out-of-tune, Dido Armstrong?)

09Jul03 — 3

How Do You Spell “Free”?

Maoi drew my attention to an article in tomorrow's Nature about an international call for patent-free, "open source" drug development, signed by various stars, including a couple of Nobelists.

I would love to link you to the actual story, but there's no access for non-subscribers.

09Jul03 — 0

Rewriting History

Curiously, since I linked to it earlier today, that BBC story has changed from one leading with the enthusiastic welcome the Liberians gave American military advisors, to one focusing on the arrival of West African peacekeepers. Hmm. You can try this one from the Boston Globe instead.

08Jul03 — 0

I Call It Killing

If you believe in capital punishment, you have no right to plead squeamishness in the face of the details of executions; if you believe that abortion should be legal, you can’t object when your opponents use pictures of foetuses.

There are some kinds of killing that some humans are prepared to accept, but those people have to accept the reality of the acts they tolerate. Dark euphemisms for “killing”—“lethal injection”, “termination”, “euthanasia”—often precede an advancing cloud of moral cowardice.

I supported the war in Iraq, so I made myself read all of a depressing—and probably largely accurate—article in the Observer Magazine this weekend describing the human consequences of that war. I doubt that I would have been so thorough if I it had been about Saddam Hussein’s crimes against humanity.

People were killed to free Iraq.

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