Finally some good news

From the BBC...
"Morris dancing could be 'extinct' within 20 years because young people are too embarrassed to take part, a UK Morris association has warned. The number of people taking part in the English folk dance is falling while the average age of the dancers is going up..."

Excellent. Although "embarrassed" is the wrong term, "too busy falling about laughing at grown men making twats of themselves" is perhaps closer to the truth.

I hate Morris dancers, always have. What is so good about banging bits of wood together while jingling pointlessly? I don't care if it's tradition, so was bear-baiting. One of the most annoying things in the world is settling into a delicious country pub pint in a quiet corner of Sussex only to be disturbed by a bunch of bearded saddoes fresh from a psychotic's dressing-up box. Many years ago I even witnessed a woman playing air accordion, wearing the kind of badge-filled jumper that marked her out as the kind of person who collects the beermats at beer festivals and loves helping out instead of drinking. I think that was the moment I decided to grow up to rule the world and immediately slaughter all the jingly people without mercy. Unless evolution gets them first, of course. Hopefully the youth of today have lives and I'll be spared all that conquering.

Back with deep thoughts

Ha! Look! Dope in a can! hahahaha!

Make your bloody mind up

Or, how being trapped in a bookshop with only tea for company can make you do odd things. Namely listing all the varieties of Longmans' imprints in our database...

1796 - Longman
1798 - T.N. Longman
1800 - Longman and Rees
1805 - Longmans, Hurst, Rees, and Orme
1806 - Edward Orme & Longman, Rees, Hurst and Orme
1806-15 - Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme
1812-23 - Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown
1824-31 - Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green
1837 - Longman, Rees, Orme, and Co.
1837 - Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman
1837-41 - Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans
1842-56 - Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans
1860 - Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts
1866-69 - Longmans, Green, and Co.
1868-77 - Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer
1869-1954 - Longmans, Green, and Co.
1959 - Longmans

No, I didn't have anything better to do.

How's your paranoia Charlie Brown?

Been trying not to have this self-same thought myself...*

(*The new world order puppets thought that is, not the pumpkin patch one. That would be silly. CFR stands for the Council on Foreign Relations, apparently).

If I had a time machine

I'd go back to Christmas 1967 and head for New York. I'm going through piles of old music magazines and have come across a picture of Tim Buckley standing in the snow in front of random gig hoardings. On Boxing Day you could escape the sober family atmosphere and check out the Ornette Coleman Trio with John Coltrane at the Village Theatre (tickets $2-4). Then if New Year's Eve turns out to be a drag (no pun intended) cheer yourself up (or not) with the Velvet Underground & Nico any night in the first two weeks of January over on W. 46th St.
Howlin' Wolf is also in town later in the month.

Who needs the court of Louis XVI or Restoration foppery? Jazz and droning violas, that'll do me. And maybe hunt Tim down and buy him a beer while listening to the Wolf at the door, too.

Orwell uber alles

Maybe in slightly bad taste, that (been muttering the Dead Kennedys to myself today, y'see). Anyway. The Orwell Project. A bookmark for as long as it takes... So far it's yielded the fascinating tidbit that Orwell's dog was called Marx. Genius.

Things I didn't know a week ago

Tortoiseshell is actually made from tortoises (don't know what I thought it was made from, but there you go).
In England and France lectern Bibles lay upper cover up, in Germany and Holland lower cover up.
The Stationers' Company didn't let anyone bind octavos or larger in sheepskin.
Remboitage is a good word.
The people on the 8.06 from Haywards Heath are actually dead - mentally, physically, culturally and any other way you could measure it (unless looking at blackberries is some kind of sign of life, that is).

Doesn't get any better

I doubt I'll ever top this recent 3-move checkmate. Storming, and rather unlikely, too. Thanks to the poor chap who played me, I suppose.

(For those who care, the moves are 1. e4 f6 2. d4 g5 3. Qh5#. Nice, eh?).

Chuck Norris? Who?

Much silliness from the Rawk forum...

Martin Skrtel is the leading cause of death in Eastern European centre forwards.
There is no ctrl button on Martin Skrtel's computer. Martin Skrtel is always in control.
Martin Skrtel can touch MC Hammer.
Martin Skrtel once ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills. They made him blink.
Every year on his birthday, Martin Skrtel randomly selects one lucky child to be thrown into the sun.

The Executive Colouring Book

Link

Patriotism redux

"What has kept England on its feet during the past year? In part, no doubt, some vague idea about a better future, but chiefly the atavastic emotion of patriotism, the ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners. For the last twenty years the main object of English left-wing intellectuals has been to break this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the SS men patrolling the London streets at this moment."
- George Orwell, from an essay on H.G. Wells, 1941.

He probably has a point. If there were a bunch of nazis bombing me every night I would undoubtedly rouse myself to feel something for this country, but until that happens I can't be doing with it. Holland and Spain play better football anyway.

The poetry of Bo Diddley

I walk 47 miles of barbed wire,
I use a cobra-snake for a necktie,
I got a brand new house on the roadside,
Made from rattlesnake hide,
I got a brand new chimney made on top,
Made out of a human skull,
Now come on take a walk with me, Arlene,
And tell me, who do you love?

Wild goose chase

There are lots of cool books in this world. The limited edition of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that's bound in asbestos, for example. The edition of Snowblind bound in mirrors. Or, less sensationally, anything printed by the Golden Cockerel Press.

However my favourite book ever in the world ever is, for utterly trivial reasons, Gerard's Herbal. First published 1597 and then reprinted in the 1630s, it's one of the most astonishingly illustrated books ever - more woodcuts than you can shake a 2B pencil at (and I should know, I've counted them). I know it's all important for its impact on contemporary botany and medicine blah blah blah, but I just like the bit where he very seriously imparts how barnacle geese hatch from barnacles...

"When it is perfectly formed, the shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird hanging out and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill. In short space after it cometh to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose; having black legs, and a bill or beak, and feathers black and white... For the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repair unto me, and I shall satisfy them by the testimony of credible witnesses"

Or the testimony of pissed-up sailors, maybe. It's also illustrated by this rather wonderful and entirely unconvincing woodcut...

Facts? Who needs them.

Smart casual, Garden of Eden style

Undoubtedly the most printed book in history is the Bible. It said so in the Observer book of half-arsed book facts last Sunday and everything. What was actually interesting was that Mao's little red book was in second above the Koran, in only half a century. The awesome power of a totalitarian book club.

Anyway, over time errors crept in and out, one of the most famous being the Breeches Bible. It's not actually a single edition, more a series of editions using the same text over a period of perhaps 80 years, mostly printed in Geneva from around 1560. We just got one in and it's very cool. See below in Genesis chapter 3, verse vii, how it got the name...

We've also got a very rare Hungover Typesetter's Bible that starts "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was, oh bollocks, this is all rubbish isn't it? I'm off for a pint. If the Bishop wants it by Friday he can print it himself. What's this? Snakes? Apples? You what?" and kind of goes downhill from there. But it's too fragile to scan, sadly.

Not big, not clever

I don't care what anyone else says, I love Lolcats. Particularly this one...

Boo's Bloke is Back

Increasingly these days I get puzzled and sometimes pitying looks when I mention that the Boo Radleys were/are my favourite band ever, usually from people who are perhaps a few years too young to remember Giant Steps and might just remember Wake Up Boo! as a sort of summer novelty single. Little do they know that this will prompt me into embarking on a well-practiced rant taking in everything from Coltrane to acid trips I've done, which boils down to the fact that the Boos were the bestest faroutest most risktaking and interesting band of the 90s and Martin Carr is up there with the best songwriters in the country.

So hurrah then, that having put his bravecaptain project to bed and disappeared from view for a year or two he's back with a myspace page and some new songs, sans laptop but with guitars and (yay!) some trumpets. Go listen...

They're stealing the skies

Just when you think they* couldn't find new ways to piss you off, this. Floating logos made from I don't care what. And illustrated with the CND/peace sign, too, as if to say "we're groovy and we want to make the planet a better place". Er. No. You're just a pair of fuckwit fratboys who want to take one of the last remaining unspoilt things about this planet and cover it in corporate faeces. You cunts.

Hanging is too good. Drawing, quartering, repeated exposure to Metal Machine Music, this is all too good for them. What would Bill do? Something pretty damn violent involving shotguns, perhaps.

The only crumb of comfort is that they're in Atlanta. Let's hope they stay there.


(*I don't know who "they" are as a group. But they're out there, for sure).

True

XKCD rocks. A few days ago he aped Calvin and Hobbes (or should that be tigered?). And this is nice and pithy. But hit the random button and you'll be away.

Coffee rant

Now, I've always thought coffee was shit. It tastes horrible, it gives me headaches, it gives rise to these vaguely culty chains of coffee shops where ordering is more complicated than filling out a tax return. And it isn't tea.

So, I'm not a fan. But I never imagined that even weirdo coffee drinkers could stoop as far as to drink coffee made from the undigested beans that have been shat by a civet. What. The. Fuck. Do tea drinkers piss on their tea leaves before brewing up? No. Do gourmets insists that truffles are covered in pig saliva? No. Has caffeine sent the whole planet mad?! Clearly.

Although the palm civet is rather cute...

...it won't prevent me from seeing Starbucks and Cafe Nero as some kind of respectable front for copraphiliacs from now on. And thinking that coffee really is shit.

"See my car keys? You'll never get these"

Yeah, boyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!