May 3rd 2004 - May 9th 2004
Sunday Quirky
Saturday Everything must go
Friday *** ****
Thursday Misery, filth, shame
Wednesday Breadhead
Tuesday Nonsense
Monday Snap
Sunday 9th May 2004
Am I the only person who reads that a follower of the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has urged his congregation to capture British women soldiers and make them their concubines - and immediately starts imagining a new Saturday night sitcom starring Pauline Quirke?
Saturday 8th May 2004
Links clearout
You can read an excellent (if lengthy) analysis of the flaws inherent in America's pursuit of global hegemony here (but only if you subscribe); you can discover which corporate symbol of American global hegemony faces investigation for illegally inflating its profits here. (And you can get a good working definition of hegemony here.)
You can read about the BBC's plans to broadcast explicit gay sex here.
To find out why a 37 year old transexual and his 17 year lover were making love halfway up a tree in Central Park last month, see here.
You can learn how to emulate Andrew Marr's technique for dealing with other people's loud mobile phone conversations here.
You can read a review of a seven volume, 3,352 page essay on violence here.
If you don't know what connects Muhammed Ali, Jeff Koons, a dolphin and a goat click here.
If you don't know what idiopathic means, you can find out here.
If you haven't been following the elections in Alphaville, you can start here.
Details of the debate over politically incorrect sign language here.
Taiwan from news fascinating find can you here and.
Friday 7th May 2004
The gutters and runnels of the popular press have, as you may have noticed, been full to overflowing with pullulating outrage at the sexual self-exposure of a soap-star.
As ever, the interesting bits are not so much the quotes from the stories, as what's left out:
The star's depraved tastes were first revealed by The People two months ago when we told how he performed a sex act at a roadside while on the phone to a blond mistress [what sex act? Oh please, use your imagination] [He did] [We certainly did]
Grantham, 57, spends hours in his dressing room at Elstree, Herts, indulging his sordid desires on the Internet [and when he gets bored with online betting, he turns on his webcam]
The star transmitted explicit messages about deviant sexual practises and sordid images of himself fully aroused and pleasuring himself [c'mon, sexual desire in a 57 year old's gotta be sordid, right? And totally deviant. But that 'fully' is impressive for a man of his years]
In another scene he is standing up, side on to the camera while holding his penis. He has a pot-belly and an old towel is draped over a radiator in the background. [Old towels - told you he was a pervert]
The star added: "I'd like to take you in a field and make you kneel on all fours while I **** *** **** *****" [There was more, but we ran out of asterisks]
Amanda said: "It started as harmless chatter and descended into filth" [But because I am really really stupid I didn't realise where this was heading.]
She added: "It was not the kind of behaviour that is suitable for a family audience. It was disgusting." [But I kept my mind occupied taking screenshots and thinking of how much money I could make out of the story.]
Thursday 6th May 2004
Bloggers beware
You'll remember this. You may not live there anymore, and it might be years since you've been there, but you'll recognise it instantly. Nothing has changed. Not a thing out of place, and not a detail altered: same views, same problems, same people, same faces, same old same old.
'I feel violent with "hate" against this bloody town.' 'It is the unsociability, the not-knowing-anyone, the having-no-colour, that kills. No interesting people to talk to, no sincere people, no unusual things to do.'..'Going through a long period of self-discontent.' 'Sense of waste.' 'Need to find a striking individuality.' 'People bore me profoundly and desperately.' 'The complete pointlessness of overdrinking.'
Ah, yes, you guessed! This is your younger self speaking. And this is John Fowles, 1949-65: 250,000 words of adolescent whining, groaning, anomie, enthusing about Antonioni films and wishing he were somewhere else, with more glamorous people, doing more glamorous things.
A marathon of self-obsession, self-pity, misery, filth, shame, loneliness, isolation, and a lot of embarrassing stuff about sex.
It's difficult to pick out the funniest bit in a book that is entirely lacking in humour, but 'apart from language, I am French' is pretty hard to beat.
- Ian Sansom demolishes John Fowles' Journals
Wednesday 5th May 2004
When I opened my front door to go to work yesterday evening, I found a loaf of sliced white bread sitting on the balcony.
Is this:
A gift from a neighbour with no room in her freezer?
A very new kind of promotional offer?
A random act of charity
An obscure insult? or,
A mistake?
Tuesday 4th May 2004
According to Mr Rowe, Miss Ward, 27, from Bury St Edmunds, could have become lost in the reserve when she went there to photograph wildebeest. At night, he suggested, she had lit a fire and then climbed a tree to keep out of the way of wild animals.
Then she had been struck by lightning with such force that her body had had split apart and the remains had fallen from the tree and been burnt on the fire.
A pathologist, who conducted a second post mortem examination that concluded that Miss Ward's body had been hacked up after she was murdered, described the theory as 'utter and absolute nonsense'.
Monday 3rd May 2004
Time to rephrase that famous Sixties button-t-shirt:
JOIN THE ARMY.
Travel to exotic, distant lands, meet exciting people, pose them in humiliating situations and have your snaps published all around the world.
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