Widespread gusset anxiety

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck, it's January the 21st of January, 2008! And I never even said 'happy new year' to the cyberworld. Do we still call it that? It seems like an age, is it Web 3.0 now? I can't keep up.

Great, so 2008 sees me in an enthusiastic frame of mind, and what could be better to ease one back into the blogosphere than the juxtapositioning of Paxman and pants?

He says - and I'm going to have trust Paxo here, as I do not use Marks and Spencer as my smalls providers - that the lack of 'adequate support' in the M & S male undergarment range is causing 'widespread gusset anxiety'. He wrote a letter to Stuart Rose about it [for some reason called Sir Stuart Rose in the above linky, and here as well, which is a bit previous - he's not actually been knighted yet...]

So that's all very funny, cheerful return to work, return to blogging, Monday smiles... Jeremy's in a win-win scenario because it makes him look both action for normal blokes bloke and also implies that he - ahem - needs that adequate support... ['yeeeeeeeees']... and certainly nothing at all to do with M&S needing some feelgood publicity and a bit of public attention. Hope Paxman's getting some money off them.

Under Dubya's tree, from Osama, hugs & kisses

While having a little holiday weekend up North recently the Hornby landscapes, Airfix kits and shiny stuff in the window of a toy emporium, the Monk Bar Model Shop, caught the eye. In we went, marvelling at the intricacies of the models, the attention to detail, the whiff of train set, etc, etc, in a happily distracted mode of nostalgia and pre-Christmas random gift perusing.

I used to make the odd model when I was a lad (by which I mean, 'When younger, I would make, occasionally, a model from a kit', not 'Bizarre creations were formed by me in my youth', nor indeed that 'In my childhood years, I would force those I viewed as singular to wear clothes I had created' - sorry, I just thought I'd better clear that up), but it has been a long time since I wielded a tub of Enamel Copper Plate or inadvertently glued my thumb to an aileron.

However, I spotted this on the shelf and felt that I could be drawn back into the world of the miniature replica - once I had stopped actually wiping the tears of laughter from each eye.





I mean, really though. I bet this wasn't what John Masefield had in mind.

Dethpicable!

An intriguing snippet found on one of the internet's many free smut networks...



Daffy: The Wilderness Years

Pedalphilia

You may have seen/heard the one about the bloke caught apparently humping his bike by now...

Avoiding the obvious jokes about what passes for entertainment in Ayrshire - be it the hapless frotterer himself or the cleaners with nothing better to do than barge in on paying guests and then shop them for doing weird stuff in the privacy of their own room - readers of this or my other blog might know that 'two wheels good, four wheels not so good' is one of my mantras, and of course I've always agreed with Freddie Mercury on the splendours of the bicycle ['BI-cycle BI-cycle'... nudge, nudge, Fred, I got yer]... but in terms of actually wanting to 'ride my bicycle'?

"You've taken that too far."

Postfacto Sexualis!

Billionaire writer J.K. Rowling has revealed that Professor Dumbledore, the sorcerer principal of the Harry Potter saga, was gay.

In a curious Moebius strip trail of self-congratulation, the usual suspects [Peter Tatchell, for example] emerged during the week to applaud this retro-active character development. Growling gushed to fans: "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy."

For the love of God. I would have told you earlier if I'd thought of it. Perhaps she was trying to avoid a slew of tabloid headlines [The Sun: HARRY BOTTER]. Tis well known in tabloid land that GAY TEACHERS PREY ON CHILDREN, fact. 

Outing Dumbledore after the series has finished achieves precisely nothing, as the somewhat dry quote from an unnamed Stonewall source ["It's great that JK has said this. It shows that there's no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster."] illustrates.

If she was that committed to affirmative action, maybe she'd have had Harry and the ginger one share a bed. Imagine, 'Brokewand Mountain.' 'I wish I knew how to expeliarmus you.' etc etc

THAT would have been great. Not 'a character I killed off in the sixth book without hitherto revealing his sexuality was also casting spells for the other side, incidentally.' Bah!

Tale from an Accelerated Culture

Saturday morning, I'm on my way to get the train north to watch the football. I am hungover, I need food, I need a pen. Huge queues for every single shop in the station at King's Cross lead me out of the terminal building, through the underpass [newly refurbished and free of the odour of piss, drink and urgent sex you might once have associated with the area; well, so far anyway] to resurface on the opposite bank of the endless torrent of traffic, outside McDonalds. I stride purposefully to Ladbrokes, note that Leeds are 4/1 to beat Swansea, pick up a stubby red bookies pen [does anything look more rakish behind the ear?] and swiftly exit before the urge to waste a few quid on the lovely horses becomes too pressing.

The hunger is upon me now, and yet the thought of paying £3.79 for a bagel in the station - I'll say that again just in case you thought it was typographical error, THREE POUNDS AND SEVENTY NINE BRITISH PENCE for a BAGEL - is quite beyond me. I skulk 'neath the Golden Arches and, slightly dazed by the breakfast offreings blazoned across the back wall, I order a bacon, egg & cheese bagel and a small sprite, no ice. £1.79 for the bagel.

I take a seat under the T.V screen, which is playing Sky News... enmeshed in the Hegemon, there is to be no escape. I have just informed the counter slavey that when I say 'no ice' it's because I want a cup full of liquid, not half a cup of ice and some liquid, and further that his attempted explanations are useless because I used to work in McDonalds and I have retained certain useful information. I only want a cup to put my wine in on the train, I add under my breath as I slide into the seat and unwrap the bagel.

What the FUCK is this abomination? I am committing an act of eco-terrorism on myself. It is categorically the worst food I have ever eaten, slathered in oil from the cheese which tastes of nothing, and revealing one disappointment for the palate after another: the bacon which is perhaps only on nodding terms with actual pork, the defrosted bagel and the cuilnary feat of transforming an egg into bathmat. I grimly force it down as there is not time to turn into one of the Roux brothers now. I have made my bed with dirty sheets and must lie in its squalour.

On the screen, as I chew my way through this excuse for food, is an advert for the third season of Ross Kemp on Gangs, which is being teamed, for this advertisement, with a new season of Prison Break, one of which [now I come to look at them with sober eyes and without a miasma of grease clouding my mood and vision] looks moderately interesting and one of which looks like total incarcerational cobblers. On Saturday morning both programmes - bagel and feelings of oppression weighing heavily on my heart - serve only to reinforce the sensation of being trapped in the Panopticon. It's a bad world out there, and it's bad food in here.

I sit with my mouth open, flavourless oil dabbed from the corners as the ad reaches its climax. 'How much more can you take?' the gravel voice of excitement demands. 'None whatsoever,' I announce to no one at all, and crumple the bag, wrapper and clarty napkins into the Last Bin before Kings Cross. I'm leaving it.

See, Naples and Diet

I have got over myself. Adopting the nickname 'Two-Blogs', let's rock. Life's too short and all that.

Now, turning our attention to the world wide web... Italians have this week gone bonkers about rice ['Having a paddy' if you won't]. Context... [shimmery screen and harps flashback]

Mass protests were being encouraged in Italy [apparently, as yon link notes, with [stereo]typical Italian ambivalence in response] over the rising price of pasta... downing forks, disgruntled diners and chefs took a stand against the rising cost of the famous staples of Naples [I've checked to see that I'm not making a gastronomic gaffe here, it is a staple in Naples, though not as famous as pizza but that doesn't rhyme, anyway... and elsewhere. As a respondent on one discussion board suggested, 'Well, I live in Milan and we prefer rice anyway...' or words to that effect.]

Underneath all this rubbish is the now becoming more discussed notion about biofuels raised as early as 2005 by the usual suspects, which is that they are being touted/grown as the wonder solution to the oil crisis, but at the expense of both food for humans and other creatures' habitats [not that this has ever stopped us]... which seems a somewhat fuellish [sorry] response to a different issue [transport] which might be better resolved by not 'keeping the cars moving whatever happens', and in turn creating a further problem, i.e. mass starvation AND other species extinction AND gridlock... different meeting...

However, Adelaide Ajroldi and compatriot lovers of the risotto may have a fight to contend with. There appears to be a stirring in the rest of the country not just against this biofuelled threat to the traditional Italian menu, but also against other staples. Not just protests about the rising price of pasta [and other traditional ingredients], but a movement AGAINST RICE...

First of all, the news from Venice that in a [supposedly anti-pigeon] move, the Mayor's office has considered banning rice at weddings. Taken on its own, this might be nothing to do with food-related disgruntimento. However, the VERY NEXT DAY, it appears that the Vatican has taken the issue so seriously [as usual] that even people called Rice aren't to be tolerated [perhaps a good thing, although maybe genuinely nothing to do with oil/environment/aggressive foreign policy and all about diaries].

What this all means to Italy's former status as leading producer of rice in Europe one can only speculate. The people of Lombardy etc should take note: this may be a ricepaper thin premise on which to waste some time bringing a blog back up to speed, but from small grains... etc etc.

Meanwhile, back at the old homestead:

Matt's Presto Pronto Matt Surprise:
White long grain rice
Green olives (no filling)
Green or classic pesto (half a jar)
Salt
Pepper (optional whole grain)

The trick is to fry for 30 seconds when cooked/combined.

Last slalom-speaking blog

It's often the way. There have been occasional moments where, for me, there's been comment worthy of note on this blog, and occasional moments where I just feel like I've been typoing for the sake of it. I always meant 'slalom-speaking' to be about veering between topics, but recently I've only ever felt inclined to write bilious - so I haven't bothered - or fatuous, so I've chucked in a funny spam email or something...

I can't be bothered with commentary on stuff I don't like anymore, it makes the veins in my temples stand out, my pupils go a pale green and I grow to enormous size and want to smash things in. Sort of metaphoricartoonidoolally. Seriously, as if the world needs someone wasting their time with bitterness at stuff. It's admitting defeat. I need to write about what I like. However, if I just write about stuff I like, it won't be very slalom.

So farewell, slalom-speaking. Hello... something else.

A world in a grain of sand

I just read this little bit of speculation:


"The Tech Lab: Charles Stross

UK science fiction writer Charles Stross, author of novels Accelerando and Singularity Sky, posits a future in which all human experience is record[ed] on devices the size of a grain of sand.

...For the past 50 years we've become used to computers getting cheaper and more powerful exponentially - doubling in performance (or halving in price) roughly every 18 months.

But a parallel trend in data storage means that storage space is becoming twice as plentiful on a similar time scale - and our ability to generate data to store is also increasing, as witness the 4m CCTV cameras around the UK, and about 70m cellphone accounts, of which maybe half are associated with camera phones able to record video.

Sooner or later they're all going to be switched on, all the time and our data storage capacity is growing so fast that we need not delete anything ever again. ...If we can figure out how to read and write data on the atomic scale, you could store the sum total of all the data we recorded in 2003 on a grain of sand.

And some time after our demise, this information will be available to historians. And what a mass of information it will be. For the first time ever, they'll be able to know who was where, when, and what they said; just what words were exchanged in smoky beer halls 30 years before the revolutions that haven't happened yet: who it was who claimed to be there when they founded the Party (but didn't join until years later): and where the bodies are buried.

...For the first time ever, the human species will have an accurate and unblinking, unvarnished view of its own past as far back as the dark ages of the first decade of the 21st Century, when recorded history "really" began."

... and then we'll really go fucking mental.

Culture and culling

I love the way Ticketmaster, 3 download and the like have some sort of cultural filter/compression device going on, with all bands levelled out to equal status [One Market Under God].

"Don't miss Kaiser Chiefs"
trumpets the Ticketmaster email update. Well, if they'd just hold still...

If you want a picture of the future...

Cabinet reshuffle. Jack Straw. Minister of Justice. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And where are they cloning these Milibands? Milibank Tower? Gah!

Never mind the "Here's your new leader, everyone - rejoice!" pictures yesterday.

"Woah, did I miss an election?" "GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN!!!"

A number of items

Previously, on slalom-speaking...

For the first time I posted something and then just took it down... it wasn't that bad, just a bit pointless and bitter. Anyway, I'm sick of writing about stuff I think is cack in such passionate tones. [It was about the Kaiser Chiefs, 'everything is average nowadays', a chance hearing of which was multi-layered and multi-faceted in its revulsive qualities. Let's move along.]

I happily discovered that someone who posted a comment on a recent post is actually my oldest pal [by which I mean in terms of service [be quiet, do]] and we continue to converge in most matters of culture.

'Going forward' I am only going to write about things that make me write enthusiastially and well. If I'm just sniping fish in barrels then it makes me sound mean-spirited and does nothing to suggest the trillions of galaxies of better worlds I imagine every day before I even break my fast.

With regard to the last bit of the above sentence, I want more Holmesian circumlocution in my quotidian utterances. Taking a cigarette of tobacco, etc.

Finally, from the spam files:
Did you know that 76% of girls prefer guys with a descent ramrod?

'Is that not some sort of mining equipment?' 'In a sense.'

Here endeth the mini-manifesto.

'Mis-pronounciation'.

Listening to 'The Only Chart That Counts' - although obviously it needs to use fingers and toes, and perhaps remove some clothing as well - this afternoon revealed something called 'Umbrella' to be selling well. [To be read in the voice of a bemused high court judge asking 'What is a Gazza?']...

Maybe it's the rap superstar combining with cutie; maybe it's the the sexed-up video, featuring Rihanna cavorting with umbrella... ['Jay-Z, mate? You just stand over here. Cheers...']; maybe it's the download it NOW dynamism of the pop economy... I am, as usual, more concerned with something else.

Neil Tennant, Pet Shop Boy and former music journalist, once remarked in interview, a propos of nothing: 'Can I just say - Elton John's 'Sacrifice'? "It's no sac-er-i-fice." There are three syllables in sacrifice.' Likewise, there are three syllables in 'Umbrella'. Umbarella. Eh-oh!

I'm not that bothered, obviously. It's just my imagination running away with me.

Band name generator spam

'We bet you wouldn't mind to become a super hot bedstar for your non-satisfied girlfriend!'

Indeed no. Super hot bedstar though! In at number seven...

Too many protest singers

I saw a 'news item' [man bites dog, etc] last week, but I couldn't be bothered acknowledging it. It's a slow day at work.

Where, as I have observed on occasions prior to this, to even begin? 'Horrific ordeal'? Well, nobody made you do it, you stupid cunt. And what kind of animal rights protest involves eating dead animals? And a corgi, at that? This has to be one of the most annoying 'protests' I've ever seen, and all I'm doing by talking about it is giving this publicity hound the Winalot Prime of attention he's yapping like a fucking annoying lapdog for.

His next project is, it says here, to be buried in a box under a mountain of mashed potato - in Dublin. He doesn't say why, but given his 'taste' for the obvious in his symbolism, it'll probably be something to do with the Potato Famine. What a shit-for-brains. Perhaps after that he'll turn up at a succession of supermarkets, naked, in a styrofoam box covered in shrinkwrap, standing in the fruit and veg aisle nodding obviously at the pre-packaged products.

I'd quite like to see him turn up outside his own house toting a giant replica of a tube of Preparation H, pointing it at his arse and pantomiming a pained expression.

Dog-eating wanker.

Infospam

'The corpora cavernosa are the two bodies of erectile tissue on each side of the penis.'

I can't say I learned nothing at work today, anyway. The most informative email subject yet!

Charmless mag

Something must be amiss when the Sunday papers no longer afford anything in the way of enjoyment, instead only goading my sensitive cultural antennae into a quivering fury of cognitive dissonance and disgust. Reading the hard copy of the new look Independent on Sunday has resulted in a world record number of utterances of the word 'gah', narrowly pipping the last time I watched an episode of Big Brother.

The front cover announces 'Everything you need on a Sunday. Nothing you don't.' Apparently I need stories about Jude Law, articles announcing that spending £650 on a bag is acceptable behaviour, Juliette Lewis promoting Scientology. And the acme of annoyance, 'The New Review' coverstar Alex James, in an extended puff for his autobiography 'Bit of a Blur' [and before I get stuck into him, see that hyperlink? Works online, not in the paper. Loads of articles with underlined phrases in a different colour ink. If they're left in deliberately, it's a stupid affectation. If they weren't left in deliberately, it's an editorial oversight and further proof of slap-dashery and smug complacency.]

So, Alex James. 'They were the fresh-faced art students who changed the face of pop nearly 20 years ago, and only last week they were voted the world's greatest band.' Whaaaaat?! Changed the face of pop? That was The Stone Roses, surely? I'm sure they've done very well for themselves, there were a few good records, but the 'country house' embarrassment... Fat fucking Les, I fucking ask you. To read the article you'd think they personally invented 21st Century music. If I want self-aggrandising bullshit from wordy bass guitar players, I read slalom-speaking.

Damon 'the significant composer of the past 20 years'. Again, whaaaaat?! Fucking 'The Good, the Bad & the Queen', lachrymose one idea Manu Chao knock off. Wigwam, thanks for letting us know Betty Boo was still alive, now stop it. Former drummer joins the Labour Party, who today announced that under new leader Brown [don't we get a say? Oh, just asking, sorry, carry on] they are committed to spending billions more pounds on 'anti-terror measures', while the trains of Britain stink of piss, and crawl through crumbling suburbs, overfull and slow, the buildings of Lewisham, Ladywell and New Cross [where Goldsmiths students still work, rest and play] falling to fucking pieces. Don't let anyone terrorise us, we're busy looking on in pride as our infrastructure disintegrates and millionaire popstars write about their great removed life in a very big house in the country.

Meanwhile deep in the blank pools of their eyes in the photo of Fat fucking Les, Keith Allen's daughter cavorts in her finery with Rhys Ifans, Alex James' children 'Geronimo and twins Artemis and Galileo' - I'M SERIOUSLY NOT MAKING THIS UP - milk his goats and Damien Hirst's multi-million pound diamond skull grins blankly shiny from the mantelpiece...

We are watching the decline and fall. Up against the wall, motherfuckers! Time for something different.

Happy Bobmas!

Bob Dylan, we salute you as you blow out the candles on your groaning birthday cake.

Photograph by Matthew Rolston from Rolling Stone

'On his sixty-sixth birthday
He already is an old man'

A-ha a-ha a-hacchhh

Excellent, a stupid article to cheer me up as well. This non-story, about the impending smoking ban in public places in the UK, was in The Guardian the other day as well, and was bollocks then. As if jazz - or rock music, or fucking any kind of music for that matter - is anything to do with smoking.

I think the most disappointing aspect is that all sorts of people are viewing it as emblematic of something or other other than what it is. What happened to Joe Jackson for him to come out with this, in his capacity as a smokesperson for FOREST, the pro-smoking lobby funded by tobacco companies, on bar staff:
"The whole point of nightlife venues is that they are places to get away from work and not to be nagged like naughty children.The few people who are working should be there on that understanding," he wheezed.

Hasta la revolucion! Well, back to the piano, Jackson, because you have clearly never washed 30 ashtrays at the end of an evening, nor swept a floor hoaching with roaches, nor had someone blow smoke in your face while they were ordering a drink. Your next album [should there be one] should be songs of contrition for conflating a perfectly sensible public health measure [the same kind of thinking that banned it on aeroplanes] with a spurious civil liberties argument.

Smoking is carcinogenic, a public ban isn't about stopping people from pleasuring themselves in public [there are other laws for that, of course, like the Criminal Justice Act and the Sex Offenders Act], but about allowing everyone else their measure of freedom to drink, dance, flirt or work without red eyes, stinky clothes, sore throats, yellow walls, etc etc etc. IT'S PROPERLY BAD FOR YOU! Interestingly, Graham Chapman [according to Wikipedia's Throat Cancer article] said that the primary site for the cancer that would eventually kill him was the spot on his throat where the smoke from his pipe hit first - and he was a doctor, so I'd trust that kind of opinion.

I don't know, it's probably different for pop stars. [Does an eerie loop of 'No such thing as tomorrow...' in the Tracheotomy Man voice to fade]

'Sweet blessings from [reads] Pierre Dominguez, it says here.'

Post seasonal adjustment disorder? The belief that one has never 'achieved anything of worth, anything that rhymed with my conceptions, my dreams (for those were fine; of that, I certain)?' [Lypiatt in Antic Hay] Or just feeling a bit of a mardy bum? I suspect (c).

Still, it's hard to maintain an expression of pained sensitivity/wallow in your own chemical imbalances like some ghastly French poet from the 19th Centuree when you log in [at the silicon face] and get emails with subject lines like this:
'Your orgasms will be enhanced to the point of ecstasy, and your stamina and overall sexual health will be greatly increased.'
This from Pierre Dominguez. What a benediction. Then, in a comically vulgar counterpoint, the fat and beery companion of the sensitive Pierre pipes up. It's Virgil Trotter:
' fuck them as much as they can handle', he slurs, then in the same breath, 'do it all night don't be silly', urgently, not even pausing for punctuation or capital letters.

Splendid, splendid.