Who's The Daddy?

I am. I’m the Daddy. Don’t get too excited, I’ve nothing new to report on that front yet. But in my efforts to keep this place ticking over during the quieter summer period a lot of the stuff I’ve churned out has ended up to being fairly worthy and po-faced. Dull, frankly. And because we all deserve a break from that, here’s something a little more cheerful. ‘Sappy’ some might say.

Juicy Plums

It's kind of meant to be like that, just not quite so much like that, like that. More like an armadillo...

Empire State

Adam Christopher, 2012

(August 2012)

This could be so cool. This should be so cool. In places it is very cool indeed, but in others, well, it isn’t.

  

Slugs and Snails

Chewing the Cud, Part Three

So here’s the missing piece from parts one and two, hold on tight:

A Visit From The Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan, 2010

(August 2012)

A nice book, that’s all I want. Not always, just once in a while. A nice book about nice people having a nice time because nice things are happening to them. But no. Literature has decided that all people in all books ever must be irrevocably damaged and irritating, because that’s art.

Fight! Fight!

Y’see, this is how it happens. You read a blog post the first time and make a good humoured and mildly sarcastic comment. Then you check back a little while later and read a couple of other comments. But, crucially, you than get called away to change a nappy or give the kid a bath or something. And because these aren’t the most intellectually stimulating activities, your mind rehashes and dwells upon whatever it was you were thinking about last.

When your parental duties have been discharged, you return to the post and start to write a reply containing everything you’ve been kicking around for the last half-hour or so. A reply so witty, erudite, and compelling that only the most entrenched ideologue would fail to be convinced by its brilliance. And then you realize that, for all its brilliance, it’s probably going to be close to a thousand words long. There’s a word for people who leave thousand word comments on other people’s blogs. Several words, in fact, none of them good. So then you hit delete.

The Last Lingua Franca

The Rise and Fall of World Languages

Nicholas Ostler, 2010

(July 2012)

Language – languages – are messy things. There are no really clear-cut boundaries between the various levels of slang, pidgin, creole, dialect and full blown language. The distinction is often more political than linguistic. The relatively small differences between Scandinavian and Iberian languages are primarily due to specifically identifiable historical decisions; whereas in their ongoing quest to freak out the rest of the world by being as terrifyingly monolithic as possible China insists that there is only one Chinese language, despite spoken Mandarin and Cantonese being mutually unintelligible.

  

In which I bitch about TV commentators being shit

Which is rather like complaining that water is wet, I know. But Christ on a bike, did you see the Olympics’ closing ceremony on NHK? Just fucking useless. Take a fucking bow.

Meet The New Boss...

I am now, hilariously, ranked second on Google for the terms ‘Homare Sawa boyfriend’ and ‘Homare Sawa husband.’ I’m just being edged out by some dodgy looking, distinctively unauthoritative reference site. Johnny-come-lately upstarts. And that’s just the English version, I’m not even ranked in Japanese (澤穂希彼氏, 澤穂希旦那. Shameless, isn’t it? Sorry, shameful. I meant shameful).

So, what with the fortunes of the Nadeshiko at the Olympics, I’ve been picking up quite a few search engine hits on that score. Some have even been hanging around. Hello there! Either way, it certainly beats my normal complement of chubby chasers and Scarface fans, but still comes nowhere near my all-time favourite query of ‘egg fucking.’

Birds and Bees

Chewing The Cud, Part Two

All Cows Eat Grass. And of course Every Good Boy Deserve Football, or maybe Favours or Females. Or maybe some other word beginning with F, depending on how open minded your music teacher was. And while they may deserve it, most don’t get it. Every Good Boy Get Stuck In The Friend-Zone is probably more accurate. Every Good Boy Gets Ignored By Sarah Connelly As She Continues To Sleep With A Succession Of Arseholes While Sobbing On The Shoulder Of The One Person Who Would Never Hurt Her And Ignoring What Is In Front Of Her Face, is definitely so. Though I’m not sure quite what sort of stave you’d need to fit that on.

Faced with that sort of insane female logic, I’m not all that surprised that the current generation of Japanese men is apparently giving up their interest in Females’ Favours and other Fs, opting instead just to Eat Grass. You see, I’m not talking about music at all, I’m talking about Herbivorous men!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century: 2009

and the Black Dossier

Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil, 2012, 2007

(July 2012)

Contemporary Culture! Alan Moore is disappointed with you!

Dead Harvest

Chris F Holm, 2012

(July 2012)

God’s war for real this time. There’s a war a-brewing between heaven and hell, and our hero is the only man/soul/spiritual entity that can stop it. But then there’s always a war brewing between heaven and hell, that’s pretty much the point. C’est la vie/mort/I’ll stop it now.

Faster, Higher, Stronger

It’s a sad time in any man’s life when he realizes he’ll never represent his country at his chosen sport. Or any sport for that matter. However inept he might be, I think that every man likes to think that if he gave up everything and dedicated himself totally to a single goal for four years, he’d be able to get to the Olympics. However, I’m of an age now with some of the more ‘experienced’ athletes in London, which means that making it to Rio would be really pushing it.

But can it play the fiddle?

"A Japanese electronics company unveils its £900,000 robot which weighs four tonnes and is 13ft tall. The robot can be controlled by an iPhone and is fitted with a futuristic weapons system, including a gun capable of shooting 6,000 BB bullets a minute, set to fire when the pilot smiles."


Priorities, people. Priorities.