On meths

Daft link time. Amazon sell, amongst their usual wares, bottles of Barrettine Methylated Spirits. There are some rather wonderfu­l reviews up:

From the moment you remove the cap you realise you’re in for a treat. Fresh, bright, smoky, with a mineral edge and rounded, fruity nose. Midweight and bold, possessing some edge and no little bite, yet remaining smooth, balanced and satisfying. This is a drink to enjoy with friends in a park. Highly recommended.

Ever since the HSE removed B&Q essentials paint thinners from the market, there’s been something missing in the world of the al fresco drinker – now Barretine have answered our prayers. The nose is similar to a fine Algerian vodka; on the palette fragrant hydrocarbon appear first, followed by a searing alcoholic kick; the finish is brief and flammable. Half way through the first bottle, I was merrily releving my salad days on the road, by the end of the third I was screaming incoherently at the traffic in a soiled tracksuit. Top stuff.

There’s lots more. Enjoy.

this cruelty called sport

cats (and their dykes)

Spotted while out shopping in Kemp Town this weekend; marvellous.

fun with string

(via)

changing opinions

Julie Bindel is easy to admire - a courageous, dogged fighter for women's rights and relentless campaigner against men who abuse women - but rather hard to like. The Guardian has been running a series of columns recently which describe the things its respective authors have changed their mind over during the 2000s. Bindel's contribution reveals that she, over the last decade, has learned that it's possible to be friends with men. It's really rather shocking that this realisation has come so late, and while I'm glad for her, it's hard not to wonder if the problem is not that, as she suggests, men are intimidated by her sexual politics, but rather that she's not a very friendly person. Towards the end of the article she reveals that she's even had a male friend over for dinner, as if this represents incredible progress. It's a world-view I don't recognise.

As often happens, she gets a bit of a kicking in the comments, which probably just confirms her distrustful attitude towards men. Nevertheless, the following comment made me laugh out loud.

dealing with camera loss

This is quite sweet - a pictorial guide to avoiding camera loss. Really not a bad idea at all. Thinking back, given the many things I've mislaid over the years, I don't think I've lost a camera yet. Give it time.

mystical animals

For reasons I don't understand, I just seem to be getting an enormous amount of spam comments at the moment - it's really annoying. If I snap and turn on the comment verification thing soon you'll have to forgive me. In the meantime, some - some - of the spam is charming enough to let slip through the net.

to be or not to be

Perhaps I'm softening in my old age - not sure I'd have spent much time watching youtube videos of cute kids a few years ago - but this is just lovely. The actor Brian Cox coaches a 30 month year old toddler to recite Shakespeare. Extremely sweet.

joy diversion

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jenga dog

Possibly I have too much time on my hands.

design for life

Anyone else falling rapidly in love with French designer and all-round-genius Philippe Starck, courtesy of the BBC's 'Design for Life' programme? I am - it's great value TV (essentially The Apprentice for designers) and I think Starck is the most charming man in the world. He is a force of nature; imitating a klaxon when he enters a room, milking his heavy French accent for all it is worth, and coming up with adorably eccentric soubriquets left right and centre (describing evolution, he declares that "to start weez, we wazz bacteria! Zen feesh. After, we become frog! It ees not exactly ze real story. But eet's close!").

Best of all is the way he fires people. No agressive finger jabbing, no scorn. Instead he merely saunters over, shrugs apologetically, and gently delivers two warm, deadly kisses, one to each cheek. Mwa Mwa. You're fired.

You can catch up on iPlayer.

dog playing pool

I think possibly the two minutes I just spent watching this video were the happiest two minutes of my life.

geographical ignorance

Overheard on the train this morning.

Tall, feckless youth: "Did you see the football? Fucking qualified for the World Cup!"
Short, feckless companion: "Did we?"
Tall youth: "Yeeeah. Thrashed Croatia. 5-1."
Short companion. "Who are Croatia?".

How do you answer that?

snow angels

I've not seen his later films, but I'm a massive fan of the two early movies by the American writer and director, David Gordon Green - George Washington and All The Real Girls (which I've written about before). Since those films Green has made a couple more indie pictures and a couple more which suggest he's keen to move in to the mainstream: he's currently making a stoner comedy starring Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman. Having lost track of his films somewhat, I just took a quick look at Wikipedia to see what I've missed, and noted that he made a film in 2006 called Snow Angels, starring Sam Rockwell (who was excellent in Moon) and Kate Beckinsale. Anyone seen it? Worth seeing?

Anyway, curious about it I just flicked over to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and read a few user comments. This one delighted me - I love it.

"The only problem I found with the movie was that its setting was a bit confusing. There were scenes where the characters used cell phones, and others where there were those record players for LPs. But other than that, the movie was flawless."

Mobile Phones and record players. Can any of my clever readers solve this complex chronophysical puzzle?

currently listening

1. Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue LP
2. Delorean - Ayrton Senna EP
3. The Antlers - Hospice LP
4. Yacht - See Mystery Lights LP
5. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca LP

Ah, not really. The above are all hip albums I've read about on the web in the last week or two. Out of a vague sense of duty, I downloaded 'em. But I can't really be bothered to listen to any of them. Here's what I'm really listening to.

1. Blur
2. Old mp3s of the Adam & Joe show.
3. The new Noah and the Whale LP
4. Music from John Hughes films
5. ...er. Radio 4?

I realise that this feature works better when I'm motivated to listen to music. Having a dry patch at the moment, clearly.

expenses

more naive kids on the train

This morning, sat on the train, I’m joined by three young men who start an earnest discussion around me. It’s about moving to Brighton now that they’ve finished their sixth form.

“Seriously”, one says, “let’s do it. Imagine. Even if we were only there for the summer. We could easily afford it if we shared”.

“Do you think?”, another replies. “Brighton is WELL expensive”.

“It’d be amazing though”, the third chips in. “I’m totally up for it. If we can afford it”.

“Rent will be NO PROBLEM”, the first insists. “Credit crunch, isn’t it! All the rents have gone down MASSES”.

The others lean forward. “Seriously?”, they chime in?

He nods confidently.

I leave them to their planning.

i have a cold

Disclaimer: I'm not that ill at all. But I wrote the following so that I could spare my friends from having to hear me whinge.


I have a heavy head, which
aches with the weight of my eyelids.
I hate my cold.
I shuffle to the door, peer outside,
and offer it a walk.
It declines.

I venture an experimental cough,
wondering if it's got to my chest,
timber creaking,
bending my lungs and my ribcage.
Calculating aspirin doses,
mineral water.

I remember when having a cold
conferred luxury, back home.
Swaddled, indulged,
my discomfort traded for blackcurrant juice
and videos.

So I offer to wrap my cold up warm, console it.
It glances ruefully at cracks in the window sill.
Then I call it names.
Alone in my flat, swearing.

It lets me get a bit of sleep in the afternoon.
But I wake up dry mouthed, bruised,
sorry for myself.

Then, pretending I'm friends with it,
I take my cold to a pub, buy a beer
and try to leave it at the bar,
tip-toeing away on peanut shells.

I concentrate.
I click my neck.
I close my eyes.
I wait for it to pass.

the real nick griffin

There are lots of 'fake' twitter accounts on the internet, and most are either deliberately misleading or blunt, unfunny attempts at satire. Since it was created a couple of days ago, however, the @realnickgriffin account has been consistently hilarious. No idea who's behind it, but the tweets are much more than isolated gags - instead the timeline of posts works as a kind of absurd, hilarious soap opera, purporting to present the BNP leader's fatuous racism and daily trials at the hands of the PC liberal media and the European Parliament which he is now compelled to attend. It is there that he is forced to interact with the Parliament's other resident thug, Jean Marie Le Pen.

The gags are often crass and a bit childish - but it works, and has a tremendous amount of fun with the idiotic figure that is the BNP leader. Incidentally, there are a host of anti-BNP tags being used regularly on twitter, but my favourite so far is the tag people tend to use when talking of Griffin: #fathitler.

Anyway - here's a selection of the @realnickgriffin tweets posted so far.

arrived in Brussels. guess what? it's only full of bloody foreigners. i can see i'll have a right job on.

moved into my new office. guess which way it faces? east! that's right. someone thinks this is funny, no doubt

that idiot Le Pen left a whoopie cushion on my office chair. there was a note: "I'm sure you'll find Europe's a GAS! haha" - cretin

awful biscuits here at the Euro Parliament, too. not a custard cream in sight: just sneering, cosmopolitan macaroons

SO bored in my first day of the new job. sat at my desk drawing the golliwogs back onto jars of (politically correct) jam.

policy ideas: a golliwog for every child. dynamite the Channel Tunnel. some sort of phrenology initiative. more coastguards.

stupid European vending machines. tried to ram in my BRITISH pound coin anyway. hurt hand. lost coin. no Twix. fuck Europe.

off to hit up that sniveling little bollock Le Pen for some lunch money.

snuck into Le Pen's office and wiped my glans around the rim of all his cups. haha!

just had a pathetic, tearful phonecall from J M Le Pen, saying he wants to "mend bridges". suppose i'd better go and see what he wants.

someone snitched to Le Pen about the cups! the "meeting" was a trap. i was held down by his advisors and forcibly teabagged by JMLP himself.

furious. i will REPATRIATE the fucking french and anyone who talks french or likes french fucking food.

i can't wait for my tea. i'm having an Indian. just kidding! i'm having a Chinese. just kidding! i'm having moussaka. just kidding!

i'm having sausages

reading Brick Lane. kidding! reading The Buddha Of Suburbia. kidding! reading The Kite Runner. kidding!

reading nothing

all those astronauts up there, different races, all rubbing up against each other in a solar powered tin can. it makes me sick to my stomach

still not happy about my new easterly-facing office. perhaps a nice rug would jolly it up a bit.

sending my secretary out to shop for a rug

bloody hell. sent my secretary out to buy a rug for the office, she came back with THIS. it will have to do. http://twitpic.com/6ypya

and now in my fury i've dropped a contact lens. i'll just kneel down to pick it up....

Le Pen walked in while i was on all fours searching for the contact lens i dropped on that gaudily-patterned mat in my east-facing office.

obviously now Le Pen is laughing his head off telling all the other fringe MEPs that i've "gone Cat Stevens". fuck fuck fuck. i hate him.

Here's the link to the twitter feed. Genius. It's like a racist Adrian Mole.

snow mistake

I love it when newsreaders make mistakes on air; for some reason it's particularly amusing when people invested - generally speaking - with such dignity and poise slip up, either through a rare and temporary lack of composure on their part or a technical glitch which visits a moment of humiliation upon them. Just now Jon Snow - just about the most unflappable of news presenters - became absolutely and comprehensively flustered at the top of the 7 o'clock news. He just stood, for a moment, like a rabbit in the headlights. 'Um', he said.

A minute later his calm was restored. "I apologise", he said, "for the technical difficulties".

An apology was far from necessary. In my flat, wonderfully distracted from hanging out my washing, I was cackling happily.