“Tonight’s Panorama,” intoned Jeremy Vine in his Most Serious Voice, “will be an eye-opener for anyone who says that Britain has become a more racially tolerant place.”
Well it was revealing, but not for that reason. Here was the plot: a pair of Mancunian Asian undercover reporters decide to make a Panorama programme about racist bullying, so they rent a house in Southmead, the roughest estate in Bristol, and walk around the streets for two months in full Muslim gear seeking out racist bullies to be racially bullied by, until they have accumulated enough footage of racist bullying to make a half-hour Panorama programme about racist bullying. Cue handwringing headline: Britian is still racist! Or, on our local BBC news: Bristol is still racist! Or in the Community Meeting featured in depth on our local news: Southmead is still racist!
Except of course they weren’t bullied by Britain, or by Bristol, or even by Southmead, all of which are chock-full of non-racists; many, many more non-racists than there used to be 20 years ago. They were bullied by a small gang of vile, feral chav kids. I’ve no idea why the Panorama reporters thought there was anything special about their race or religion in this. Small gangs of vile, feral chav kids will be vile to you and make your life a misery if you’re Muslim, black, Chinese, ginger, disabled in any way, or just vaguely middle class-looking.
The revelation of the programme, of course, was the true depth of the liberal, socialist BBC Guardianista's loathing of the white underclass. The only real-life victims on camera were not the undercover Asian reporters (they were actors from Manchester), but the white kids, born without any sense of self-worth into a system of hopeless, circling welfare-dependency. The undercover reporters have now left Southmead and gone back to their real homes. The chavs are still there, and in a few years they’ll be churning out another generation of self-loathing, vile, bullied, bullying, hopeless welfare-dependent chavs into the system created and supported by the liberal, socialist BBC Guardianistas who will then send spies to make more television programmes about how awful and intolerant they are.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Why I do not approve of grey jogging bottoms
The grey jogging bottom is amongst the leading sartorial eyesores to be found on Britain’s highways and byways. Professional tailors are wont to physically cringe and whimper upon encountering a pair, and even the lay observer may find himself blenching when, from the window of his Audi or the comfort of his Starbucks armchair, he spots a set of them flouching to the newsagent or taking a bulldog for a walk.
Why, only this very morning my eyes were assaulted by the sight of a pair of grey jogging bottoms. Sagging baggily beneath some sort of hooded jumper and above a brace of white running shoes, they loosely encased the legs of a gentleman in early middle-age. He was chaperoning his children to school and in the contrast with their smart uniforms one could almost fancy that the respective clothing of adult and minor had somehow been magically shrunk, grown and switched by some mischevous demon.
Why, only this very morning my eyes were assaulted by the sight of a pair of grey jogging bottoms. Sagging baggily beneath some sort of hooded jumper and above a brace of white running shoes, they loosely encased the legs of a gentleman in early middle-age. He was chaperoning his children to school and in the contrast with their smart uniforms one could almost fancy that the respective clothing of adult and minor had somehow been magically shrunk, grown and switched by some mischevous demon.
Thus the infantilisation of Western culture. Thus the emasculation of Modern Man. Thus the decline of the once-great British Empire: from the pantaloon to the breech, from the breech to the spat, to the trouser, the slack, the chino, the jean and, at last, the bottom.
And that, to summarise, is why I do not approve of grey jogging bottoms.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
This postal strike business
Could one make a case for it being the stupidest, least support-worthy industrial action ever, I wonder?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The Buy-Brit-a-Nice-House Appeal 2009
The village in which I work is a cheap place to rent an office but a very expensive place to buy a house. In. Which is a pity because I have my eye on this one:
It’s not the largest house in the village but I feel that if I lived in it I could pretend I was in a Jane Austen novel, or even better, a sumptuous BBC adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. Certainly I would wear breeches and sport a set of whiskers and say “indeed” a lot.
The only obstacle is the prohibitive cost. However, I have calculated that if every Think of England reader pledges just £10,000 to the Buy-Brit-A-Nice-House Appeal 2009, I could raise enough to make an offer of £1 million to the current occupier which, I hope, would be enough to swing the deal.
To donate
It couldn’t be easier! To contribute to the Buy-Brit-A-Nice-House Appeal 2009, simply email me your bank account log-in details, and I will transfer £10,000 of your money directly into my account – you don’t have to do anything!
Once I have amassed the necessary million, I will purchase the house. Then, when the new kitchen is done, a commemorative post-it with the name of each donor will be ceremonially stuck to the fridge, and a photograph of the fridge will be emailed to you, along with a semi-personalised message of warmest thanks.
It’s not the largest house in the village but I feel that if I lived in it I could pretend I was in a Jane Austen novel, or even better, a sumptuous BBC adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. Certainly I would wear breeches and sport a set of whiskers and say “indeed” a lot.
The only obstacle is the prohibitive cost. However, I have calculated that if every Think of England reader pledges just £10,000 to the Buy-Brit-A-Nice-House Appeal 2009, I could raise enough to make an offer of £1 million to the current occupier which, I hope, would be enough to swing the deal.
To donate
It couldn’t be easier! To contribute to the Buy-Brit-A-Nice-House Appeal 2009, simply email me your bank account log-in details, and I will transfer £10,000 of your money directly into my account – you don’t have to do anything!
Once I have amassed the necessary million, I will purchase the house. Then, when the new kitchen is done, a commemorative post-it with the name of each donor will be ceremonially stuck to the fridge, and a photograph of the fridge will be emailed to you, along with a semi-personalised message of warmest thanks.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Great car parking spaces I have known, by Jeffrey Archer
Now that the Yard has more or less given up blogging, it falls to me to keep the world abreast of developments in the exciting world of Jeffrey Archer.
You’ll be glad to know that he is still bang on form: the expert non-sequiturs, the postmodern shunning of insight or interest, the bathetic, punchline-free endings…
Stay with this report on the parking facilities at popular venues for charity auctions; it ends with a real thigh-slapper of a quip from Jeff’s pal Peter Bottomley….
You’ll be glad to know that he is still bang on form: the expert non-sequiturs, the postmodern shunning of insight or interest, the bathetic, punchline-free endings…
Stay with this report on the parking facilities at popular venues for charity auctions; it ends with a real thigh-slapper of a quip from Jeff’s pal Peter Bottomley….
(And note that Jeff has, without irony or shame, embraced Bryan’s ST nomination for 'Best Cult Blog'. But then I suppose that being entirely without irony or shame is what has made Jeff the man he is today. )
Monday, October 12, 2009
Ancestry is largely a matter of personal choice
Over here, Quiet Reckoning responds thoughtfully and fully to a comment I made in my post about Rabid Scottish Nationalists. Amongst other things, he says:
Look at the numbers: Four and a half million Scots in Scotland, twenty million Scots in America, and twenty five million Scots spread across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a smattering of other former British Colonies. Only ten percent of Scottish people live in Scotland
Which I suppose is arguable, but relies on a pretty generous definition of ‘Scottish’ (far more generous, for example, than the definition of ‘Irish’ which Eire relies on for stuffing its team with mediocre English footballers.)
Genealogy, particularly as it exists for Britons and Americans, is a strange old business. I use the word ‘business’ advisedly, since selling tourists their family trees, tartans etc is a pretty sizeable industry. I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘scam’ because by and large it is literally true that the average American tourist can trace a line back to some Jock or other. But it does depend on a very selective way of looking at things.
I’ve discussed this before on blogs somewhere: let’s call it the 'Multiplying Ancestor Problem'. People who are interested in their genealogy tend to think of their line of descent as being much narrower than is actually the case; they have no notion of just how ‘bushy’ family trees are. Consider the exponential multiplication of great-grandparents as you go back through the generations. You have four grandparents and 8 great-grandparents and 16 great-great-grandparents and so on. This doubling builds things up alarmingly: you only need to go back a couple of hundred years and there are 1,024 of your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents pottering about the four corners of the planet. All of them are equal genetic contributors to you (though some are the same person, which is why this growth doesn’t go back forever but instead all human beings share a Most Recent Common Ancestor), but of course when studying genealogy people tend to focus on just the one with the surname they happened to inherit (or, if something interesting like minor royalty can be readily found a few generations back, on that one instead), as if he or she was more ‘significant’ to the 'making of you' than were the others.
Given the sheer volume of ‘direct’ ancestors, it is no wonder that genealogy-sellers can always come up with an interesting/famous/Royal/Scottish person in your family history. They’re not lying: it’s just that every other Tom, Dick and Harry has him in their family history too. All humans are far more complicatedly interconnected than is generally realised (I remember some supremacist plonker on TV claiming that he ‘only had white Anglo-Saxon ancestors’. Of course it turned out on examination that just a couple of generations back there were all sorts of gypsies and other undesirables in his blood, and indeed, that if we were to expel from Britain everyone except those who ‘only had white Anglo-Saxon ancestors’ the population of these Isles would be reduced to precisely zero.)
I don’t dismiss identity-by-genealogy as complete nonsense. If being historically ‘Scottish’ is important to you and your sense of identity, sure, why not choose it? But it is a choice.
There’s a pertinent example of this in my own family. My paternal uncle and his wife, both English, moved to Edinburgh when my cousin was an infant. My cousin, now in his thirties, therefore has a strong Scottish accent, supports the Scottish rugby team, wore a kilt for his wedding etc. Despite being precisely as ‘English’ as me from an immediate genetic perspective, he feels patriotically Scottish. He wants to be, and is, Scottish. Which is fine. But it has led him deep into the confused web of wishful genealogy. He and I are Nixons, and there was, according to some old historical documents or other, a bunch of notorious Nixons back in the legendary/mythical clan-days (border-raiding cattle-thieves or some such). It has therefore become his life’s work to try and connect himself, via an unbroken ancestral line, with these notorious Nixons and therefore to prove that he is, by genetics as well as upbringing, a bona fide Scot.
He hasn’t managed to do it yet (which doesn’t stop him claiming them of course). But there is no doubt whatsoever that, if he followed any line in his hugely bushy ancestry, he could get to Scotland – perhaps a Campbell or McDonald or both – somehow and soonish. All of us Britons, Aussies and most Yanks could, since if you define it generously enough, we’re all ‘Scottish’. We’re also all English, Norman, Roman and ultimately (and this last applies to literally everyone on the planet, even Norwegians and the Welsh) we’re all ‘African’.
So anyway, going back to Quiet Reckoning: of course it’s his right to choose to identify himself as a particular kind of Jock, to feel pride in that and so on. No problem there at all, it’s a valid option. But, for myself, I can’t see the point in getting angry about any of this genealogical Anglo-Scottish stuff, when the ‘side’ you’re on is such an arbitrary matter.
Look at the numbers: Four and a half million Scots in Scotland, twenty million Scots in America, and twenty five million Scots spread across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a smattering of other former British Colonies. Only ten percent of Scottish people live in Scotland
Which I suppose is arguable, but relies on a pretty generous definition of ‘Scottish’ (far more generous, for example, than the definition of ‘Irish’ which Eire relies on for stuffing its team with mediocre English footballers.)
Genealogy, particularly as it exists for Britons and Americans, is a strange old business. I use the word ‘business’ advisedly, since selling tourists their family trees, tartans etc is a pretty sizeable industry. I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘scam’ because by and large it is literally true that the average American tourist can trace a line back to some Jock or other. But it does depend on a very selective way of looking at things.
I’ve discussed this before on blogs somewhere: let’s call it the 'Multiplying Ancestor Problem'. People who are interested in their genealogy tend to think of their line of descent as being much narrower than is actually the case; they have no notion of just how ‘bushy’ family trees are. Consider the exponential multiplication of great-grandparents as you go back through the generations. You have four grandparents and 8 great-grandparents and 16 great-great-grandparents and so on. This doubling builds things up alarmingly: you only need to go back a couple of hundred years and there are 1,024 of your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents pottering about the four corners of the planet. All of them are equal genetic contributors to you (though some are the same person, which is why this growth doesn’t go back forever but instead all human beings share a Most Recent Common Ancestor), but of course when studying genealogy people tend to focus on just the one with the surname they happened to inherit (or, if something interesting like minor royalty can be readily found a few generations back, on that one instead), as if he or she was more ‘significant’ to the 'making of you' than were the others.
Given the sheer volume of ‘direct’ ancestors, it is no wonder that genealogy-sellers can always come up with an interesting/famous/Royal/Scottish person in your family history. They’re not lying: it’s just that every other Tom, Dick and Harry has him in their family history too. All humans are far more complicatedly interconnected than is generally realised (I remember some supremacist plonker on TV claiming that he ‘only had white Anglo-Saxon ancestors’. Of course it turned out on examination that just a couple of generations back there were all sorts of gypsies and other undesirables in his blood, and indeed, that if we were to expel from Britain everyone except those who ‘only had white Anglo-Saxon ancestors’ the population of these Isles would be reduced to precisely zero.)
I don’t dismiss identity-by-genealogy as complete nonsense. If being historically ‘Scottish’ is important to you and your sense of identity, sure, why not choose it? But it is a choice.
There’s a pertinent example of this in my own family. My paternal uncle and his wife, both English, moved to Edinburgh when my cousin was an infant. My cousin, now in his thirties, therefore has a strong Scottish accent, supports the Scottish rugby team, wore a kilt for his wedding etc. Despite being precisely as ‘English’ as me from an immediate genetic perspective, he feels patriotically Scottish. He wants to be, and is, Scottish. Which is fine. But it has led him deep into the confused web of wishful genealogy. He and I are Nixons, and there was, according to some old historical documents or other, a bunch of notorious Nixons back in the legendary/mythical clan-days (border-raiding cattle-thieves or some such). It has therefore become his life’s work to try and connect himself, via an unbroken ancestral line, with these notorious Nixons and therefore to prove that he is, by genetics as well as upbringing, a bona fide Scot.
He hasn’t managed to do it yet (which doesn’t stop him claiming them of course). But there is no doubt whatsoever that, if he followed any line in his hugely bushy ancestry, he could get to Scotland – perhaps a Campbell or McDonald or both – somehow and soonish. All of us Britons, Aussies and most Yanks could, since if you define it generously enough, we’re all ‘Scottish’. We’re also all English, Norman, Roman and ultimately (and this last applies to literally everyone on the planet, even Norwegians and the Welsh) we’re all ‘African’.
So anyway, going back to Quiet Reckoning: of course it’s his right to choose to identify himself as a particular kind of Jock, to feel pride in that and so on. No problem there at all, it’s a valid option. But, for myself, I can’t see the point in getting angry about any of this genealogical Anglo-Scottish stuff, when the ‘side’ you’re on is such an arbitrary matter.
Portents
Gaw sees black comorants, dead larches, herons. These signs he interprets as foretelling the exit of Hard Kandy* from the X-Factor.
But in fact it seems quite obvious from the symptoms that, at some point over the last few weeks, Gaw was kissed by the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman.
*Bit semiotically unambitious these days, that ‘Kandy’. I’d have called the group hλr!rD k&EEEe
But in fact it seems quite obvious from the symptoms that, at some point over the last few weeks, Gaw was kissed by the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman.
*Bit semiotically unambitious these days, that ‘Kandy’. I’d have called the group hλr!rD k&EEEe
Friday, October 09, 2009
Some favourite cupcake recipes
One of my absolute culinary standbys (along with Delia Cooks Nice Things for Whitsun and Jamie Oliver’s Pukka Pies’n’Shi’) is Pamela Spanks’s wonderful book 1,000,001 Cupcake Recipes: Inspirations and Innovations for Everyone’s Favourite Teatime Treats.
I thought I’d share some of my favourite extracts…
Number 1 – The Basic Cupcake (difficulty rating: Beginner)
Here’s where it all begins! Master this and you have the world of cupcakes at your fingertips!
You will need:
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
125g/4oz caster sugar
125g/4oz soft margarine
125g/4oz self-raising flour
Method:
1. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat them together until the mixture is smooth and slightly lighter in colour.
2. Line a bun tin or cupcake tin with paper cake cases and half-fill each case with the cake mixture.
3. Cook the cakes for 18-20 minutes. You can tell they are done when they have risen up, are golden in colour, and spring back into shape when lightly pressed.
Number 2 – The Black Forest Gateaux Cupcake (Difficulty rating: Beginner)
Everyone loves a Black Forest Gateau, and everyone loves a cupcake, so why not combine the two for a sinful teatime treat? Each cupcake serves 12, so 12 cupcakes will serve 144.
You will need:
12 basic cupcakes (see page 1)
12 Waitrose Black Forest Gateaux
Method
1. Make 12 basic cupcakes (as detailed in Recipe 1)
2. Remove each Waitrose Black Forest Gateau from its box
3. Place one (but only one) Gateau on each cupcake and serve
Number 78,034 – The Samuel Johnson Cupcake (Difficulty rating: Novice)
One for the literature-lovers in your family!
You will need:
10kg writing icing
Writing icing tube (fine)
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
Method:
1. Make basic cupcake (see Recipe 1)
2. Carefully, use the icing tube to copy out the First Volume of The Life of Samuel Johnson or any favourite passage onto the cupcake
3. Serve
Number 180,669 – Coke-conut Surprise (Difficulty rating: Intermediate)
A delightfully more-ish cupcake - ideal for young adults and teenage parties.
Simply follow the recipe for Coconut Surprise (number 180,668) but substitute 5ml of LSD for the cherry kirsch, and dust with 20g (good quality) cocaine instead of icing sugar.
Number 255,482 – The Turnip and Communist Manifesto Cupcake (Difficulty rating: Improver)
I find the turnip gives the cake a lovely proletarian earthiness and helps balance the papery texture of Marx and Engel’s revolutionary classic!
Number 976, 229 – The Full-Size Model of the Titanic Cupcake (Difficulty rating: Advanced)
You will need:
Basic cupcake
Dry dock facility (preferable)
45,000 tons steel
Three or four large industrial cranes
159 coal burning furnaces
1,178 cabin beds
16 lifeboats
20 billion bolts
Screwdriver (Phillips)
For the decoration: Six restaurants, squash court, Turkish bath and Casino (don’t forget the betting chips)
Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4
2. Clear some space in the kitchen.
3. Construct full-scale model of Titanic according to standard principles of shipbuilding
4. Using cranes, lower model of Titanic onto cupcake and serve immediately
175 cupcake recipes is not enough cupcake recipes
Mrs Brit, having her reasons no doubt, has been scouring Amazon for cupcake recipe books.
Martha Stewart's Cupcakes: 175 Inspired Ideas for Everyone's Favorite Treat looks like a winner, earning five star reviews from J “Cupcake Crazy” Wilden of London, and also from Ms Sonia Dioniso of Geneva, Switzerland, who writes:
This is by far the best cupcake book I own (and I own plenty!).
Which demands the question: how many cupcake recipes does Ms Dioniso need? 175 is clearly not enough cupcake recipes. Would one million cupcake recipes suffice, or is there literally no limit to the number of cupcake recipes it is feasible to amass?
Martha Stewart's Cupcakes: 175 Inspired Ideas for Everyone's Favorite Treat looks like a winner, earning five star reviews from J “Cupcake Crazy” Wilden of London, and also from Ms Sonia Dioniso of Geneva, Switzerland, who writes:
This is by far the best cupcake book I own (and I own plenty!).
Which demands the question: how many cupcake recipes does Ms Dioniso need? 175 is clearly not enough cupcake recipes. Would one million cupcake recipes suffice, or is there literally no limit to the number of cupcake recipes it is feasible to amass?
The Weeping Episode
Last year on the Yard I wrote in praise of The X-Factor. Yeah, well I now come to bury it. On Sunday, for various inexcusable reasons, I saw that nasty episode between the end of the Boot Camp stage and the beginning of the interminable Live in the Studio stage, which isn’t but ought to be called The Weeping Episode.
It’s the one where the various judges take six hopefuls each to some exotic location and whittle them down to three apiece. The hopefuls are tortured in tellyland’s usual style: made to wait around in a state of funk for ages while the judges ‘deliberate’, then given the news in double and triple bluffs (At first I was very impressed with you… but now I’m very sorry to say that…you’re not going home because you’ve made it through!).
Before the judgements are delivered the contestants weep because it all ‘means so much to them’. After the judgements the losers weep because they haven’t made it through and, conversely, the winners weep because they have. All of the men weep these days, even the judges, and the women howl like banshees. Nobody takes it well.
I had previously suspected the Weeping Episode was unnecessarily exploitative, even by reality TV standards. Since we’re months away from the finishing line, by which time these early fallers will all be long forgotten, why do we need to see them being tortured and crushed? But then I also thought: well, they know what they’re getting into by choosing to appear on it. And they only weep so much because they saw contestants weeping last year; they don’t really invest all their pitiful hopes and dreams on the huge improbability of winning, do they – surely that’s just something they say? And surely they’ve realised by now that even winning the whole thing is no guarantee of lasting success?
Sadly not. One of the failures in this year’s Weeping Episode was one Daniel Pearce, a 31-year old father of two from Kent, who, seven years ago, was successful enough on Popstars: The Rivals (the X-Factor precursor that also spawned Girls Aloud) to make it into the boyband One True Voice. The band and its members disappeared from public consciousness almost instantly, so Pearce has been chasing fame since, culminating in the final humiliation of ejection from the X-Factor at the Weeping stage in 2009.
So here is a man who has actually won one of these shows, lived through the experience of it singularly failing to make him an international star, and yet is still sufficiently deluded and desperate that he believes the X-Factor represents his sole shot at happiness and fulfilment. Rather than let him back on telly, they should have set him up with a desk job and a shrink; these are seriously fragile people that ITV is torturing for our weekend entertainment.
It’s the one where the various judges take six hopefuls each to some exotic location and whittle them down to three apiece. The hopefuls are tortured in tellyland’s usual style: made to wait around in a state of funk for ages while the judges ‘deliberate’, then given the news in double and triple bluffs (At first I was very impressed with you… but now I’m very sorry to say that…you’re not going home because you’ve made it through!).
Before the judgements are delivered the contestants weep because it all ‘means so much to them’. After the judgements the losers weep because they haven’t made it through and, conversely, the winners weep because they have. All of the men weep these days, even the judges, and the women howl like banshees. Nobody takes it well.
I had previously suspected the Weeping Episode was unnecessarily exploitative, even by reality TV standards. Since we’re months away from the finishing line, by which time these early fallers will all be long forgotten, why do we need to see them being tortured and crushed? But then I also thought: well, they know what they’re getting into by choosing to appear on it. And they only weep so much because they saw contestants weeping last year; they don’t really invest all their pitiful hopes and dreams on the huge improbability of winning, do they – surely that’s just something they say? And surely they’ve realised by now that even winning the whole thing is no guarantee of lasting success?
Sadly not. One of the failures in this year’s Weeping Episode was one Daniel Pearce, a 31-year old father of two from Kent, who, seven years ago, was successful enough on Popstars: The Rivals (the X-Factor precursor that also spawned Girls Aloud) to make it into the boyband One True Voice. The band and its members disappeared from public consciousness almost instantly, so Pearce has been chasing fame since, culminating in the final humiliation of ejection from the X-Factor at the Weeping stage in 2009.
So here is a man who has actually won one of these shows, lived through the experience of it singularly failing to make him an international star, and yet is still sufficiently deluded and desperate that he believes the X-Factor represents his sole shot at happiness and fulfilment. Rather than let him back on telly, they should have set him up with a desk job and a shrink; these are seriously fragile people that ITV is torturing for our weekend entertainment.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Offending with compliments
I can’t let the nose of the mind discussion go by without sharing with you the rest of Boswell’s story. This is one to wheel out in a gloomy kill-joy tone the next time you see a luvvie award ceremony, or worse, are unfortunate enough to find yourself in the proximity of the Green Room immediately post-performance, when the actors are all in a state of highly-strung backslappery.
[Johnson] entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity ; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process ; one, he observed, was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of the mind.
[….]A young gentleman present took up the argument against [Johnson], and maintained that no man ever thinks of the NOSE OF THE MIND, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet’s ‘In my MIND’S EYE, Horatio.’ He persisted much too long, and appeared to Johnson as putting himself forward as his antagonist with too much presumption; upon which he called to him in a loud tone, ‘What is it you are contending for, if you BE contending?’
And afterwards imagining that the gentleman retorted upon him with a kind of smart drollery, he said, ‘Mr. —— it does not become you to talk so to me. Besides, ridicule is not your talent; you have THERE neither intuition nor sagacity.’ The gentleman protested that he had intended no improper freedom, but had the greatest respect for Dr. Johnson. After a short pause, during which we were somewhat uneasy,—JOHNSON. ‘Give me your hand, Sir. You were too tedious, and I was too short.’ Mr. ——. ‘Sir, I am honoured by your attention in any way.’ JOHNSON. ‘Come, Sir, let’s have no more of it. We offended one another by our contention; let us not offend the company by our compliments.’
[Johnson] entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity ; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process ; one, he observed, was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of the mind.
[….]A young gentleman present took up the argument against [Johnson], and maintained that no man ever thinks of the NOSE OF THE MIND, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet’s ‘In my MIND’S EYE, Horatio.’ He persisted much too long, and appeared to Johnson as putting himself forward as his antagonist with too much presumption; upon which he called to him in a loud tone, ‘What is it you are contending for, if you BE contending?’
And afterwards imagining that the gentleman retorted upon him with a kind of smart drollery, he said, ‘Mr. —— it does not become you to talk so to me. Besides, ridicule is not your talent; you have THERE neither intuition nor sagacity.’ The gentleman protested that he had intended no improper freedom, but had the greatest respect for Dr. Johnson. After a short pause, during which we were somewhat uneasy,—JOHNSON. ‘Give me your hand, Sir. You were too tedious, and I was too short.’ Mr. ——. ‘Sir, I am honoured by your attention in any way.’ JOHNSON. ‘Come, Sir, let’s have no more of it. We offended one another by our contention; let us not offend the company by our compliments.’
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Definitive Pixies Album Evaluation
Importantly, the results of my Pixies album analysis are in, following the conversation here. Remember, the following conclusions are definitive, because I reached them via the nose of my mind.
Doolittle is indeed the strongest overall, and Bossanova the weakest purely because it is too easy to listen to and Pixies are most appealing when they hurt a bit. Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim is the best for scattering your enemies, and while Trompe Le Monde sags a little fore and aft, it nonetheless contains a central sequence so awesome that it makes you laugh aloud when playing it at ear-splitting volume on the M4. The sequence starts halfway through Sad Punk, when it goes all slow, then carries on interrupted through Head On (a cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain song and a good one if the topic of Best Cover Versions comes up to make you appear painfully cool), the nasty U-Mass and then the bish-bash-bosh trio Palace of the Brine, Letter to Memphis and Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons. Not been topped yet, that lot.
It’s quite possible that this post means absolutely nothing to all but three ToE readers, but don’t worry, I’ve got a Johnsonian treat for the rest of you tomorrow. And for the three or more Pixters: rock on, please.
Doolittle is indeed the strongest overall, and Bossanova the weakest purely because it is too easy to listen to and Pixies are most appealing when they hurt a bit. Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim is the best for scattering your enemies, and while Trompe Le Monde sags a little fore and aft, it nonetheless contains a central sequence so awesome that it makes you laugh aloud when playing it at ear-splitting volume on the M4. The sequence starts halfway through Sad Punk, when it goes all slow, then carries on interrupted through Head On (a cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain song and a good one if the topic of Best Cover Versions comes up to make you appear painfully cool), the nasty U-Mass and then the bish-bash-bosh trio Palace of the Brine, Letter to Memphis and Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons. Not been topped yet, that lot.
It’s quite possible that this post means absolutely nothing to all but three ToE readers, but don’t worry, I’ve got a Johnsonian treat for the rest of you tomorrow. And for the three or more Pixters: rock on, please.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
The Nose of the Mind
Is there such a thing as a universal catch-all response to any question? Frank Key reckons that Elberry’s phrase “I know people in Finland” has a claim to that status.
Meanwhile, in the anti-poetry thread David gives us the apparently non sequiturial but in fact profound aphorism "Strategic management scholars are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
Father Ted, I seem to recall, answered all questions of religion put to him by his parishioners with the phrase, "That would be an ecumenical matter."
And on the religious theme, who can ignore the claims to universal applicability of "I’m the Bishop of Southwark, it’s what I do"?
Personally I think it’s overambitious to expect just one phrase to cover every eventuality (as a youth I invested too much faith in Paul Newman’s insouciant line in, I think, Hud: “It don’t make no difference to me”, which got me into lukewarm water with a few authority figures). Under interrogation, one needs a small stock of responses with just enough plausibility and absurdity to put the questioner off his stride.
As ever, we can turn to Boswell’s Johnson:
He entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity ; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process ; one, he observed, was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of the mind.
So the next time you make some perfectly reasonable claim, such as that poetry is rubbish or that hamsters are evil, and some oik pipes up rudely with “How would you know?”, you can reply: “I know it through the nose of my mind.”
If the oik is obnoxious enough to suggest that there is no such thing as the nose of the mind, you can politely suggest he avails himself of a copy of Boswell’s Life Of.
If he further claims that it doesn’t matter who came up the damn 'nose of the mind' because the expression isn’t in the public domain, you can beam serenely and exit with the line: "That, my friend, is the public’s fault, not mine.”
Meanwhile, in the anti-poetry thread David gives us the apparently non sequiturial but in fact profound aphorism "Strategic management scholars are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
Father Ted, I seem to recall, answered all questions of religion put to him by his parishioners with the phrase, "That would be an ecumenical matter."
And on the religious theme, who can ignore the claims to universal applicability of "I’m the Bishop of Southwark, it’s what I do"?
Personally I think it’s overambitious to expect just one phrase to cover every eventuality (as a youth I invested too much faith in Paul Newman’s insouciant line in, I think, Hud: “It don’t make no difference to me”, which got me into lukewarm water with a few authority figures). Under interrogation, one needs a small stock of responses with just enough plausibility and absurdity to put the questioner off his stride.
As ever, we can turn to Boswell’s Johnson:
He entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity ; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process ; one, he observed, was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of the mind.
So the next time you make some perfectly reasonable claim, such as that poetry is rubbish or that hamsters are evil, and some oik pipes up rudely with “How would you know?”, you can reply: “I know it through the nose of my mind.”
If the oik is obnoxious enough to suggest that there is no such thing as the nose of the mind, you can politely suggest he avails himself of a copy of Boswell’s Life Of.
If he further claims that it doesn’t matter who came up the damn 'nose of the mind' because the expression isn’t in the public domain, you can beam serenely and exit with the line: "That, my friend, is the public’s fault, not mine.”
Monday, October 05, 2009
The Thief of Time
I take virtually no interest in Grand Prix (it is the anti-sport sport) but yesterday morning I caught an interview on BBC 1 with Jenson Button, during the course of which he said something along the lines of: “I was carving whole chunks of time out of the guys in front.”
Instantly I quailed, stricken by a vision of some supernatural villain, probably Noseybonk-faced, stalking his victims with a diabolical scythe, every cut and swish of which slices a decade from their precious stock of Time, leaving them prematurely wrinkled, saddened, gasping and limp. Ugh.
Yeah, sorry for burdening you with that nightmare on a Monday morning.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Queenan and the Minotaur
Gaw, whispering from the labyrinthine depths of the NHS, approves my ferocious attack on the poets and urges me to go after the watercolourists next. The brush-wielding bastards have, he insists, had it coming for years.
Damn right they have. Ooh, look at me with my wooden bleedin’ palette, wearing my hat, mixing up a colour wash, perched by the riverbank on a bleedin’ deckchair with a sleeping Labrador tied to it, dab-dabbing away like a git, oooooh pardon me I’ve made a bugger’s muddle of the perspective of that barge, oooh never mind I’ll turn that smudge into a heron, just a bit of artistic license you understand, hope you’ll forgive it hem hem. Oh yeah? Well screw you, watercolourist *****ers!
And so on.
The anti-poetry rant has sloshed around the internet a bit, in the way that these things sometimes do, with visitors being unwittingly led here from Books Inq, the Poetry Foundation, this poetry site and, unexpectedly, this Dutch one. Oddly, not one visitor has yet leapt to the defence of the poets. But then it was a very good rant. Reading it back, it puts me in mind of an episode of Newsnight Review a few months ago, in which Joe Queenan had a proper pop at modern classical music when discussing Birtwhistle's Minotaur. I’ve skipped the beginning for you (Parsons and Myerson), but stick around for his punchline right at the end of the vid….
Damn right they have. Ooh, look at me with my wooden bleedin’ palette, wearing my hat, mixing up a colour wash, perched by the riverbank on a bleedin’ deckchair with a sleeping Labrador tied to it, dab-dabbing away like a git, oooooh pardon me I’ve made a bugger’s muddle of the perspective of that barge, oooh never mind I’ll turn that smudge into a heron, just a bit of artistic license you understand, hope you’ll forgive it hem hem. Oh yeah? Well screw you, watercolourist *****ers!
And so on.
The anti-poetry rant has sloshed around the internet a bit, in the way that these things sometimes do, with visitors being unwittingly led here from Books Inq, the Poetry Foundation, this poetry site and, unexpectedly, this Dutch one. Oddly, not one visitor has yet leapt to the defence of the poets. But then it was a very good rant. Reading it back, it puts me in mind of an episode of Newsnight Review a few months ago, in which Joe Queenan had a proper pop at modern classical music when discussing Birtwhistle's Minotaur. I’ve skipped the beginning for you (Parsons and Myerson), but stick around for his punchline right at the end of the vid….
Thursday, October 01, 2009
There is too much internet
Martpol points us to Wikipedia’s list of US official state crustaceans. Disgracefully, it seems that only two states have even bothered to nominate official crustacean representatives.
So while we applaud Louisiana and Maryland for adopting the crawfish and blue crab in 1983 and 1989 respectively, we have to wonder what the hell the other 48 states have been doing in the intervening decades. Pull your fingers out Oregon, Florida and Vermont, to name but three! There are 52,000 unclaimed species of crustacean out there, get recognising!
Insignia-happy Maryland is a shining example to the other states, also boasting an official state dinosaur (the Astrodon johnstoni), an official state dance (the square dance) and piously endorsing milk as its approved beverage. (Milk dominates the list of state tipples – well it would, wouldn’t it? – with only rascally old Alabama venturing into booze and Nebraska naffly naming Kool-Aid).
As an aside, I observe that we can retrospectively apply the Ethical System of Biological Taxonomy to prehistoric fauna. Good: triceratops, brontosaurus, iguanadon (thumbs up!) woolly mammoth, dodo, unicorn. Evil: T-Rex, velociraptor, pterodactyl, sabre-tooth tiger, giant octopus. Neutral: stegosaurus, trilobite.
But I digress from the point I was going to make, which is the following:
Could it be, I wonder, that the Wikipedia page of official US state crustaceans – which, despite there being a mere two relevant examples, nonetheless displays both in a table with illustrations and binomial nomenclature – could it be, perhaps, that the creation of this wiki page was the moment, the shark-jump if you like, the tipping point as it were, when it was finally the case that there is too much internet?
Or perhaps it was this blogpost?
So while we applaud Louisiana and Maryland for adopting the crawfish and blue crab in 1983 and 1989 respectively, we have to wonder what the hell the other 48 states have been doing in the intervening decades. Pull your fingers out Oregon, Florida and Vermont, to name but three! There are 52,000 unclaimed species of crustacean out there, get recognising!
Insignia-happy Maryland is a shining example to the other states, also boasting an official state dinosaur (the Astrodon johnstoni), an official state dance (the square dance) and piously endorsing milk as its approved beverage. (Milk dominates the list of state tipples – well it would, wouldn’t it? – with only rascally old Alabama venturing into booze and Nebraska naffly naming Kool-Aid).
As an aside, I observe that we can retrospectively apply the Ethical System of Biological Taxonomy to prehistoric fauna. Good: triceratops, brontosaurus, iguanadon (thumbs up!) woolly mammoth, dodo, unicorn. Evil: T-Rex, velociraptor, pterodactyl, sabre-tooth tiger, giant octopus. Neutral: stegosaurus, trilobite.
But I digress from the point I was going to make, which is the following:
Could it be, I wonder, that the Wikipedia page of official US state crustaceans – which, despite there being a mere two relevant examples, nonetheless displays both in a table with illustrations and binomial nomenclature – could it be, perhaps, that the creation of this wiki page was the moment, the shark-jump if you like, the tipping point as it were, when it was finally the case that there is too much internet?
Or perhaps it was this blogpost?
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