Konnichiwa

Dissenter, womanizer, contrarian, friend, and competitor, Masa, who is, annoyingly, rather more famous than I am, has posted something about me on his blog, Road to London Olympics 2012. It's all in Japanese, so the link is pretty meaningless. Nevertheless, here's a quick word for all the swathes of Japanese followers who are currently passing through this site courtesy of his link:

こんにちわ

Shame

There is something extraordinarily moving about this video from the band, Low. Even without the audio, the visuals are beautiful. This song is from their second album, Long Division, released in 1994. They are band for those moments, without whom there would be no soundtrack for.

Backhanded

Radio 5's very takeable podcast, Fighting Talk issued the following question this week: Which sports personality divides the nation down the middle? The usual offerings of Gary Neville, Eric Cantona, et al. were given. My response, however, would be Andy Murray. Unashamedly, I hate him. I hate everything about him. I hate his demeanor about the court, his petulant moping. I hate his arrogance, his childish aversion to interviews, and his refusal to acknowledge the crowd when he lost to Andy Roddick at this year's Wimbledon tournament, let alone wait to walk off court with him. But, most of all, I hate his face. Why? Well, it was always far too unattractive for his ex-girlfriend, Kim Sears. Come to think of it, I always thought there was a problem with her face too.

Murray said the experience of his parents’ break-up had made him more determined to make his relationship with Miss Sears work.

Determination, whether genuine or not, doesn't get you everything in life, mate. Sometimes, genetic attributes play a factor (see your own face). When it comes to uncovering why she was able to see past his face for so long, The Times comes to aid: "Miss Sears has moved out of the £5 million Surrey mansion she shared with the world No 4". Good on you.

Pedantry

The supermarket was filled to the rafters today, likely on account of Thanksgiving. Get your turkeys! Get 'em cheap. Take an extra one just in case! Put it in the freezer, madame.

I'm repeatedly asked whether I'm going home for Thanksgiving. Where? To Britain where we don't know nor care what Thanksgiving is? From what we can see, as Thom so eloquently put it to me earlier, the United States give thanks to the Native Americans "for relinquishing their land". Indeed.

Here, on my blog, I noted two years ago that my Thanksgiving lunch, traditionally taken at my coaches house, was not tainted by any religious overtones. No 'grace' was said, etc.. I wonder if this is unusual, or whether Thanksgiving is a purposefully non-religious holiday, on account of its origins. An interesting question to which I'll seek an answer tomorrow.

While I'm here; I saw the cover of National Enquirer magazine this week held the headline, "Michael Murdered - New Proof", beside a picture of a gaunt Michael Jackson. For those of us unacquainted with with National Enquirer, that pinnacle of subversive contemporary journalism, it's the one you find next to the check-out, propped up against packets of chewing gum. Not to be confused with it's sister publication, Globe, which deals mainly with the ongoing death of Patrick Swayze. Returning to my point, "New Proof" struck me as rather odd; surely, once proof has been attained, any new evidence could not be considered "new proof", just new evidence. I expected better of the Enquirer, or maybe I'm being pedantic.

Ian McEwan - Solar

Solar is published on March 18th 2010. I need not say anything more. From the publishers, Random House:

Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing – a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. [...] When Beard’s professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.

I think "a freak accident" sums up most of McEwan's recent fiction quite nicely (consecutively: Black Dogs, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday, and On Chesil Beach). If this book falls into that ilk we can expect something very, very special.

Origin of Species Update - Old News

In case you're not one to read the comments sections of my posts, Jim enlightens us all on the matter of my 'Origin of Species story'. It turns out that the issue I have before me has been distributed freely about 170,000 times across university campuses worldwide, including, of all places, Oxford (long time abode of master Dawkins). What's more, I didn't put two and two together at the time, but Ray Comfort turns out to be responsible for this classic video about bananas, which Dawkins has shown to the delight of his audiences for some time. How Comfort has funded this enterprise remains a mystery. And finally, for your viewing pleasure, dear reader, here is Richard Dawkins addressing the matter first-hand:

Nabokov

With some caution I take up the task of writing about Vladimir Nabokov. By way of preamble, it's necessary to note that he was a genius, someone whom a blogger like me should never sleight without the utmost care and respect, though that's someway off my radar, it must be said.

As his final, unfinished work is published (click), it would be remiss not to revisit the tale that led to its survival. I first mentioned the unfolding saga almost two years ago, following a rather impassioned article by Ron Rosenbaum in Slate, who proceeded to deliver a string of emails to Dmitri Nabokov, the author's son and translator. The collision between familial loyalties and the yearnings of the scholarly elite was set in motion.

In my initial post I referred to the case of Samuel Beckett who, likewise, demanded his final, unfinished play go unpublished and unproduced. I should also have cited the case of TS Eliot; we would be without much of his later poetry were his wishes recognised in full. Obviously, the case was a delicate one. Empiricists, like myself, would be expected to ignore Nabokov's dying wishes; once the death takes place, his desires, whether fulfilled or not, go unquenched. However, the small matter of a man's reputation is potentially at stake: something to which we all apply a degree of value. A literary legacy, a library of letters, sculpted and tended to with the dearest perfectionism. Who are we to take such a thing into our own hands?

In a strange, though not unprecedented move, Dmitri sent the typescript of Nabokov's work, tentatively titled, The Original of Laura, to a few members of society that may be of some help. Martin Amis was one such individual. In a long, lavish, and luscious article for The Guardian, Amis claims that "writers die twice: once when the body dies, and once when the talent dies". Nabokov, he states, was no exception, and yet the commonplace is circumvented.

When a writer starts to come off the rails, you expect skidmarks and broken glass; with Nabokov, naturally, the eruption is on the scale of a nuclear accident.

Laura, then, falls under the heading of post-"accident". I have not yet read it so I cannot comment, but Amis certainly may. He frames his expectations for Nabokov with an example of genius, quoting from what Amis calls "the incomparable Pnin", Nabokov's only lengthy reference to the Holocaust:

Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths - until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.

The desperation, the agonies of a lifetime ended swiftly in under a sentence, hyphenated. Such instances give any writer, me included the sense, as Christopher Hitchens once noted, "that you shouldn't be in the writing business".

Just as I approached this post, I shall approach Laura with caution, but not before I reread Lolita and several other seminal works pre-"accident". First, however, I must go on with my sudden infatuation for J.M. Coetzee who, in his Man Booker Prize winning novel, Disgrace, briefly intercepts the Nabokovian arc. In it, as in Lolita and five other of Nabokov's novels, Coetzee attempts to "vivify the cruelty, the violence, and the dismal squalor of this particular crime" (Amis' words), that is: the crime of paedophilia or, more accurately, "nympholepsy". I recommend it thoroughly, but that's the subject of another post.

Wiki-Sutra Again

Not quite a position, in the strictest sense, but a new offering from the users nonetheless:

500th Post

For my 500th post in almost two and a half years, I impart a ditty of a story that manages to combine the horrific with the sublime, the banal with the beautiful, and the seminal with the sickening.

On Thursday I was making a whistlestop journey to the campus library whereupon I saw a woman holding a stack of books. As I drew nearer I glimpsed the spines, reading "The Origin of Species". I caught the woman's eye and she thrust a copy of Darwin's masterwork of evolutionary biology into my hand. What could I say? I beamed a smile at her, believing she was a wealthy proponent not only of secularism, but also of free speech. I clutched the text gratefully: my own pristine copy of a book that anyone should retain in their personal collection. "Good for you", I said. "Read the first fifty pages", she replied. So I did, I turned, with an element of suspicion to page 49.

To receive the gift of eternal life, you must repent of your sins (turn from them), and put on the Lord Jesus Christ as you would put on a parachute - trusting in Him alone for your salvation.

Well, that caught me, shall we say, off guard. I flicked through the next few pages, and there it was: the opening chapters of Darwin's text, printed so small one could hardly read it, continuing on to the last page. The first fifty pages, it seems present a "Special Introduction" by a certain Ray Comfort (one "of" short of being curiously laughable). The woman had fooled me, fooled everyone who graciously accepted her offer. I saw a boy sit down five feet from where she stood and turn to page 51. I felt like shaking his hand. A stubborn resistance to a Chaucerian fraudster, an exponent of every sort of secular profanity that could conceivably exist. If blasphemy existed in a non-religious form, this was it. I quote from the blurb, which references zoologist L. Harrison Matthews:

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and thus biology is in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation."

Does the conclusion follow from the presmises? I think not. The concession that evolution is a "fact", quickly followed by the determination that, therefore, biology is based on a "belief", I hope you will agree, gives a perfect, definitive example of equivocation. Needless to say, as an artifact in itself, the book is a peculiar thing, expensively put together, and proudly proclaiming it's timeliness: "150th Anniversary Edition", and I use the word 'timeliness' with all the ironic subtext I can muster.

I return to the UK in a month's time, and when I do I shall send Professor Richard Dawkins a card to explain myself, and a very unwelcome Christmas gift.

Militant atheists ruining Britain?

If you feel so inclined, read Nick Cohen's short piece in The Observer today. With Christians demonstrating their wanting intelligence not yesterday, and the religious propensity to resort to the most extreme measures (see recent Fort Knox massacre; September 11th 2001, etc.), is it fair to label the "new atheists", not far removed, it must be said, from the "old atheists", as just "as fundamentalist in their criticisms of religion as the religious fanatics they criticise". Richard Dawkins hasn't yet motivated anyone into strapping a bomb to themselves and discharging their entrails onto nearby commuters. Perhaps this is merely due to a lack of rhetorical vigour, though I have my doubts. Mixing politics with religion is extremely dangerous, and it would be unfair to you to have to explain why. However, what we see developing in Britain at present is nothing more than the realised desperation of a failing Labour party less than six months away from the next general election. There is nothing "progressive" in respecting the place of minority and/or majority religious communities within political maneuvering.

Missing the point entirely:

Some people are just a little out of reach. Click.

As a brief aside...

Gazing admiringly at my bottle/tube of Nivea lotion "for very dry, rough skin", complete with Almond Oil (imagine that - oil from almonds), I notice that it's labelled: "Essentially Enriched". Something about that term, for me, doesn't quite work. Enriched essentially. Can I essentially enrich? Unless it's conversational; say, how are you doing today? Enriched, essentially, thanks. That would, however, demand a comma. None such is given. Referring to the Oxford English Dictionary, one makes little headway: 'essentially', "as an essential attribute or constituent". This would suggest that were my lotion not essentially enriched then it would be something other than itself, which, one assumes, makes the delineation, from the get-go, somewhat redundant. Delving further, 'essentially', as defined by "a marked or eminent degree". Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So the labelling is simply a marketing matrix, a singularization, a purposeful divorce from its competitors. Essentially enriched. Essentially enriched. Hmm...

On Board Soon

Many things have fired the cylinders of my attention recently, from the publication of Nabokov's Laura (who thought that would ever happen?), to an unsightly incident that occurred to me yesterday, but I've been rather bogged down in multi-sensory self-gratification. The new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is enthralling, so much so that I haven't the time to do anything else. Many of you will know this already, of course, and be hankering for me to get to the end of this post so that you can continue playing. My apologies. This wasted time won't go unsavoured; I'm sure it will be the subject of a post before long. Adieu.

Dungaree Girl

Today my comrade in the dungarees produced a wonderful presentation regarding Jamaica Kincaid's erudite exploration of the mind of an Antiguan teen-aged, disillusioned girl working as an aupair in New York City, entitled: Lucy. The dungaree girl cross-referenced Paradise Lost, and how the presentation of the Devil, Lucifer informed the characterisation of Kincaid's protagonist. It was superb, and could have been drawn out for another ten minutes had she the time. Perhaps I was wrong to judge, but I'm sticking to my opinions.

David Guttenfelder

A picture tells a thousand words, as a mantra, is frequently proved inapt. In this case, however, it is proved inapt for very different reasons. Take a look at these photographs from the front line in Afghanistan. This really is necessary, haunting, amazing viewing. The oft remarked-upon, billiard table look of the Afghan desert is startling, and I particularly like this image of marines patrolling towards a village under Taleban control, like in the rice fields of Vietnam.

Common Sense

I'm currently reading the collected writings of Thomas Paine, quite beautifully compiled by the Library of America, and there isn't a single passage that I'd feel uncomfortable quoting in full. Here, during his pamphlet, Common Sense, under the heading, 'Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession', he gives the strongest opposition to the absurd, constitutional principle that we Britons live, fight, and work under to this day:

This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have had an honourable origin; whereas it is more probable, that could we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their first rise, that we should find the first of them nothing better than the principle ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners or pre-eminence in subtility obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; and who by increasing in power, and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenceless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions. [...] That which first was submitted to as a convenience, was afterwards claimed as a right.

Reality TV Again

I do hope you read all of James Wolcott's article, but, if you haven't the time, here's the crux of the matter, polished with Wolcott's signature humour:

The chatty, petty ricochet of Reality TV—the he-said-that-you-said-that-she-said-that-I-said-that-she-said-that-your-fat-ass-can-no-longer-fit-through-the-door—eventually provokes a contrived climax, a “shock ending” that is tipped off in promos for the show, teasers replayed so frequently that it’s as if the TV screen had the hiccups. The explosive payoff to the escalating sniper fire on The Real Housewives of New Jersey was a raging tantrum by Teresa Giudice, who flipped over a restaurant table in a She-Hulk fit of wrathful fury and called co-star Danielle Staub a “prostitution whore” (an interesting redundancy), all of which helped make for a unique dining experience and quite a season finale.

Reality TV

I suffered a moral and psychological death over the summer when I spent a day indoors with my beloved watching nothing but MTV, during which time, something peculiar happened. My tear ducts crusted over, my mouth hung half-open at all times, I couldn't see anything more than ten feet away, and my brain was incapable of any deductive thought whatsoever. It was the cursive effects of Reality TV, dear reader. I've grown out of it, and endured far too much of it. My much admired journaling icon, James Wolcott, who I avidly read every day even when I haven't the slightest idea what he's talking about, laments the smoldering wreckage of popular culture and, with it, the United States. He punctuates his piece with subheadings enumerating the various after-effects of Reality TV. Under the heading, 'Reality TV wages class warfare and promotes proletariat exploitation', he brings to light something that, in retrospect, seems obvious:

The migrant camera fodder is often kept isolated, sleep-deprived, and alcoholically louche to render the subjects edgy and pliant and susceptible to fits. “If you combine no sleep with alcohol and no food, emotions are going to run high and people are going to be acting crazy,” a former contestant on ABC’s The Bachelor said.

This trend is rather off-putting, I hope you'll agree; to ween the participants on a Reality TV show into aggression and instability represents a very low form of broadcasting. What's more, does it not defeat the point of Reality TV if you're goading the contestants in this way? Of course, this sort of thing is done in a nuanced, delicate way that isn't superficially intuitive by shows like Big Brother, but to learn that it goes on behind the scenes is pretty alarming ("behind the scenes" [?]). Of course, we should have no sympathy for individuals who submit themselves to such ritual humiliation in the hope of televisual stardom, but they've become, as Wolcott says, "fodder" for the broadcasting giants, A&E, Bravo, MTV, VH1, etc.. Let us leave it in the dirt, smoldering away in the desert heat, while we free ourselves with a bit more House.

So Contrary

When Can first formed in 1968 they were joined by the confrontational, unstable, inimitable Malcolm Mooney, a black American who could actually sing. He would later return to the States on the advice of a psychiatrist who, it would seem, was rather perturbed by Mooney's repeated shouting: "upstairs, downstairs". The other members of Can later announced that Mooney was "caught in a Can groove". Something about that, to me, appears totally understandable. I think I'm caught up in one myself. Listen to the following track at a very low volume, so low that you have to strain to hear it, requiring your full and utmost concentration. Mooney belts out the lyrics:

Smoked a haiku cigarette,
Turned around and then we left
Smiling as the way began to grow.
We got your pretty men all in a row.
Mary, Mary, so quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
These silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty men all in a row?

It's from their only studio album together, Monster Movie. Listen to it. Though, to be fair, the rest really is the ramblings of a lunatic.

I Repent

I realise now that I may have been quite harsh on Lesbians yesterday. Undoubtedly, my hate is based on fear, but, like the flaming gays, lesbians have a knack for setting themselves apart. Why is that? You're in the minority, yes, but let's not enhance the matter. Anyway, that's by the by. I write to impart something of innate value. Weeks after I brought you the first line of Ian McEwan's new novel, I bring you the opening line of Bret Easton Ellis' sequel to his debut novel, Imperial Bedrooms:

They had made a movie about us.

It's hard to get excited about a single line, particularly one so short, but not in the case of Ellis. 2010 is going to be a good year.

When a woman takes another for her lover.

While sat in my post-colonial literature class last week I noticed that the girl sat opposite me was wearing dungarees. Now, these weren't some rehashed, modern, hipster dungarees. These were the real deal, fully-blown, pop your clogs, hide your daughter dungarees, complete with a Teletubbie pouch for Biros and knickknacks. I was aghast, as you may imagine. And then it struck me, as I looked around the room (something I positively dislike doing), that there are literally handfuls of lesbians clustered about the place. Can this be mere coincidence? I doubt it. This isn't the first time I've noticed carpet-munchers invading the English classrooms. There must be something about literature that they find positively appealing. Perhaps it is the act of reading itself, adopted at a young age, as a means of social escapism, that has simply carried through to adulthood. For men, lesbians are quite intimidating, especially these ones: gelled hair and tattooed biceps, empowered and angry (they wear dungarees for fuck's sake!). I'll have to keep my whits about me.

Is Christianity a Force for Good in the World?

Dear reader, your Sunday would be incomplete without partaking of the eternal fruit of knowledge. The latest Intelligence Squared debate has surfaced online, and it's your privilege to have it at your fingertips. It's a shame that the footage seems to have been edited down to an hour program, but the rout is complete nonetheless. Much like his highness, Stephen Fry (looking healthily trim these days), the debate requires no further introduction. Suckle on the bosom of intelligence.

Snooker and Damien Hirst

I, for one, was rather surprised by Ronnie's defeat in the Snooker Premier League to up-comer Judd Trump. He doesn't look particularly comfortable around the table at the moment. Insisting on using his left hand to break off every time gives away a weakness in his cuing - he's not straight, and his long game suffers. Warning bells should have rung when he shaved his head again, echoing the dark days of recent years, but he seems content enough, enjoying the game. The match was played on the 5th, so , weirdly, you could hear my bemissed fireworks screeching away in the distance. I was similarly taken aback to see the queer of darkness in the audience. Nope, not Bono, but close. Just as I thought to myself, Who the fuck is that misguided tosser sat indoors wearing his mother's cataract glasses?, the match commentators directed our attention to a certain Damien Hirst sat in the audience, watching his "good friend", Ronnie. Reportedly, he's just sold off a section of works, netting him a cool £100 million in the process. A girl was telling me recently about the Mexican celebrations that take place during El Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, from which Hirst's piece, For the Love of God, was supposedly inspired. Thankfully, she had no idea who he was, so I was very glad to learn that his renown does not extend as far as he may like to think.

Passionate Ambivalence

Once in a while, a case of speculative excitement crawls over my skin, such as when one hears of the Golden Suicides' aperitif that Bret Easton Ellis is currently conjuring. The same sensation occurred when I read that David Cronenberg, directorial craftsman behind recent classics, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, had adapted the William Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch, to film in 1991. A member of New York's niche literati, William Lee, played by Peter Weller (a skeletal Christian Bale) takes us through a faux-autobiographical series of recollective vignettes, tracking down scenarios and hallucinations that pierce the fragile sensibilities of his junk-induced state of quasi-comatose indifference. There is no plot, per se, and characterisation is as elusive as the ambiguities of the language. Now that I've read the book and seen the film I still have no idea what's going on. Indeed, it is not Cronenberg's best, which is especially frustrating considering it formed around the time of his horror masterpiece, The Fly, and his sci-fi classic, Scanners. Admittedly, however, there is real potency behind the imagery of the novel, to which both Bret Easton Ellis and Irvine Welsh owe an extreme debt. If you thought Trainspotting was gritty, this is something else. Cronenberg's skill, however, should never be overlooked. He manages to blend curiosity with disgust, horror with humour, and the absurd with the prophetic. It's interesting, at least, that Cronenberg wrote his screenplay long after the universal war on drugs was realised as an all-but defunct social policy (an advantage that Burroughs was not afforded). Rapidly, we follow Lee down the rabbit hole in search of bigger and better neurotic highs, he's a writer experimenting with artistic impetuous. His unconscious efforts compel him to inject cockroach-killing powder, the black meat of giant Brazilian aquatic centipedes, and, later, the jism of the sordid Mugwump. I know, I'm as lost as you are, but there is a social message in there somewhere, trust me. Feel free to try and find it, but if you're the slightest bit predisposed against insects, do not watch this film.

House

For all the mogul pundits who offer their two cents every week following the latest broadcast of Mad Men, why, I ask, is the best show on television overlooked so criminally? Hugh Laurie fits so perfectly, so graciously, albeit with his signature limp, into the shoes of Dr. Gregory House MD. Once we take for granted his faultless accent, his mannerisms and his persona, the fool is he who asks for more, and yet, series 5 surpasses all those that precede it. The craft of his character is stunning, the depth and the intricacies, the detail and realism make everyday relationships lifeless by comparison. House's gift for rationalism, his gift for diagnostics, and his gift for human observation are all prey to the fatal flaw that underpins not only the beauty of his character, but also the conclusion of the series; his addiction to neurotic painkillers proves, ultimately, too much. Laurie irrefutably destroys the criticism of the show's predictability. Watch the scene in which he semi-blindly succumbs to Vicodin overdose and resorts to a self-induced seizure, or the scene in which he leaps across his bathroom floor, stretching and yearning for one final pill. Secondary characters become distractions, tangents that play out in the shadow of our protagonist, our tragic hero. But still, all paths lead to one, and the zenith is reached in a tender closing act. A series of conflicts are introduced and developed: happy v. sad; gain v. loss; reality v. delusion, and every follicle of your being wants more. Dear reader, I cannot wait.

Comment

Sail to the Moon is one of Radiohead's finest songs. Alas, it goes under-appreciated because, such is its place on the album, it is unfairly sandwiched between one of their worst, Backdrifts, and a nothing track, Sit Down. Stand Up. (Come on, how often do you still listen to it?) Discuss.

Sail to the Moon

Just as I hit 'Publish' for that last post I stumbled upon Brit's quaint little blog, searching for a small piece of home. It's called Think of England, and the banner says it all, I think, rather beautifully. But it would appear that, a few days ago, Brit felt that same sense of belonging and pure contentment residing, as he does, in the west country. "It was a beautiful sunny autumnal day", he says, when he met a "local character" who, like him, "wouldn't want to be anywhere else". Well, good sir, that character may as well be me.

Bonfire Night

For the third consecutive year, I've turned the November page on my calendar and felt the pangs of longing for England. Why is the fifth day named after Guy Fawkes, by the way? (If the CIA had foiled September 11th would we name a day after Osama bin Laden? I think not.) It's this time of year when the weather becomes predictably murky, routinely dark, and just the right temperature to raid the wardrobe for the warmer threads. Mother turns on the central heating for the first time, and you're welcomed into a typhoon of homeliness when you return from school, soothing your stinging cheeks and numbing fingers. The daily routine that took flight in September has fully settled at a constant thirty thousand feet. You're in your comfort zone, and the smaller problems in life take on a significance that was previously denied by the bustling application of new rituals and new rules. Temporarily, I miss England.

Challenge Fail

Yesterday, my philosophy of religion instructor said, "There were no takers, but next time, perhaps, some of you will take advantage of my generosity", which caught me as being rather odd. He hasn't really done anything, only offered to do something, and why, therefore, is he afforded a proclamation of said "generosity"? Maybe I'm wrong, but the grammar of the sentence would seem to suggest that I'm right. Anyway, before we delve too far into the woodwork of irrelevancy, let us plane the surface of generosity a little more. None of you inbreds took advantage of my fairly generous offer by telling me where this came from, and I'm ashamed. It extends forth, of course, from the depths of the Radiohead back catalogue: a rare cover version of a 1968 B-side by Can called The Thief. The lyrics, admittedly, are fairly unintelligible to all but the ardent auditory mystique, but here is the music none the less.

Scotch

It's funny how these things crop up at the right time. Just as I dive in to defend my comedy hero, Stewart Lee, he's been proved right, and well ahead of the front bench yet again. Take this little, and, arguably, pretty inconsequential article from The Times in which Mel Gibson, the "reactionary Catholic bigot" behind Braveheart, admits that the film's portrayal of William Wallace "played fast and loose with the historical truth". It's not so inconsequential, however, when teamed with the following clip from Lee's live show, Stand-Up Comedian from 2005, which, brilliantly, was filmed in Glasgow (his routine about Braveheart begins around 3.47 and continues into Part Two, here):

Halcyon Days

I return to you with none of the lustre that accompanied these last few halcyon days with my lover. It has abandoned me when I need it most. Gladly, the same cannot be said of dear Holly.

You will keep forever.
I'll bury you like treasure.