Tuesday, 31 August 2010
My absolute worst is when people say that the middle of Durban is like daahntaahn Lagos.
Racist things said in Sassy Durbs are the real pits.
I helped a person called "Byron Lumpkin" with his essay today
"Byron Lumpkin".
If Martin Amis was writing a Coruscating Account Of What Is Wrong With America Today, that would be the name of one of the minor characters who ran a computer shop in a satellite suburb of LA and was bewildered by the sharp decline in the quality of his marriage to his much-smarter-than-him Puerto Rican wife.
If Martin Amis was writing a Coruscating Account Of What Is Wrong With America Today, that would be the name of one of the minor characters who ran a computer shop in a satellite suburb of LA and was bewildered by the sharp decline in the quality of his marriage to his much-smarter-than-him Puerto Rican wife.
Monday, 30 August 2010
Norma and Spec have a flat near Musgrave Centre
And living in that flat is a man named Vic Jagger.* His best pal is Don Lennon. No that's not true; I don't know any of his friends. But it's true that he is called Vic Jagger. That bit is true. Norm and Spec sort of put my dad in charge of looking after the flat-ish. Being a kind of satellite landlord, I suppose. And once my dad and Lee went over to the flat to listen to Vic Jagger have a whinge about the furniture, and they came back, and I said, "Well, what's he like then?" And Lee shook his head a bit and said: "He's like a...he's like an Ultra Human."
And I said: "Explain this."
And he said: "You know those people who when they are making toast, they are MAKING TOAST. Like that is all they are doing. Those people who you can see their inner monologue just says 'The thing I am doing now is MAKING SOME TOAST'".
And I said: "Oh God that's brilliant."
Because I understood what he meant immediately. And really that is the absolute perfect way to describe people like that. Because it's not that dumb people are Ultras. It's just that they have a way of engaging with whatever they are doing to the exclusion of just about everything else. I suppose the nice way to say it is that they are people that Live In The Moment. Basically an Ultra Human is someone who is always totally preoccupied with the minute to minute business of being a human, like how a cheetah or whatever is totally preoccupied with hunting and then feeding its cheetah babies and then finding a tree to sleep in and then digging its claws in the branch so it doesn't fall out and then making that horrible noise that cheetahs make for whatever reason they make it ETCETERA.
David Beckham seems like a real Ultra Human to me. Look at him. Look at his little face. Like you can see that what he is thinking is "I'm confused by what is going on here."
A thing to do a poll about on my invisible radio show would be:
Does any of this make any sense to you at all?
*This reminds me of the beginning of Fantastic Mr Fox**. Me and Lee had it on tape book when we were small, and for reasons that I can't really work out now, the opening lines used to TERRIFY us both. It starts something like "In the middle of the wood there was a tree, and at the bottom of the tree there was a hole..." I think. It used to give me the most awful creeps. I like it in the movie of Fantastic Mr Fox where he says "I don't like living in a hole, it makes me feel poor."
** The secretary of state for defence here is called Liam Fox. Which is what my brother would be called if he was a fox, of course. Equally obvious are the number of headlines in the guardian that have something about NOT SO FANTASTIC MR FOX in them.
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Norman Mailer ran for mayor in 1969
This is a poster from his campaign. He wanted to make New York City the 51st state. Whatever you think of Norman Mailer, you must at least admit that this is interesting and weird.
Michael Chabon's wife seems a bit terrible
It's so sad, but she does. I REALLY would like to think she is great. But I can't.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Pleased that he is still going to be on that show
Not pleased that Tracy Jordan's wife got pregnant from saying hello to him.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
OH but the WORST thing to say in Sassy Durbs
is "That's so random."
"Thet's sah rendom."
That's the worst. That's the one.
"Thet's sah rendom."
That's the worst. That's the one.
Here are some words that give me the creeps.
Sometimes you'll read something or hear something, and you'll think "Now there is a thing that I would just never ever say." And sometimes it's the content, but very often it's the form. Mae told me the other day about this conversation she overheard where one of the people said "I saw you crossing the road and I said to myself, I said you'll know what I'll do, I'll just give her a call."
And there it's definitely not the content (although the content is not great. It's not a great story that this person was telling), it's how the person said it.
And there are LOTS of things like that. Another thing I know that I would never do is call someone "girl" or "my girl". Not in a way of being a feminist, obviously, but just because it sounds so kitsch. Like if there was a choice between having a stern chat with someone that started, "Listen, my girl, it's time for you to pull your socks up..." or just not having the talk at all, I would choose silence. "Child..." is even worse. It's much worse, actually.
A lot of it has to do with the voice I do in my head when I imagine these things. It's a very very thick sassy Durban accent, and it makes EVERYTHING sound terrible, but there are a few real killers.
"That made me chuckle" is one of my worsts. I can't even think of the word "chuckle" without feeling all sad and embarrassed. "Comical" instead of "funny" is terrible. "Chubby" is a word that I don't think ever said in my life. Another terrible one that really requires you to say it in Sassy Durbs before you get the full picture is "No Offense But...".
My dad has loads. Sometimes he comes home from work laughing scornfully about them. And NOT in the way of being like a "snob" or something. The point is that everyone has words that just get their backs up, and you can't even always explain why. It's something I am doing a poll about on my invisible radio show at this very minute.
And there it's definitely not the content (although the content is not great. It's not a great story that this person was telling), it's how the person said it.
And there are LOTS of things like that. Another thing I know that I would never do is call someone "girl" or "my girl". Not in a way of being a feminist, obviously, but just because it sounds so kitsch. Like if there was a choice between having a stern chat with someone that started, "Listen, my girl, it's time for you to pull your socks up..." or just not having the talk at all, I would choose silence. "Child..." is even worse. It's much worse, actually.
A lot of it has to do with the voice I do in my head when I imagine these things. It's a very very thick sassy Durban accent, and it makes EVERYTHING sound terrible, but there are a few real killers.
"That made me chuckle" is one of my worsts. I can't even think of the word "chuckle" without feeling all sad and embarrassed. "Comical" instead of "funny" is terrible. "Chubby" is a word that I don't think ever said in my life. Another terrible one that really requires you to say it in Sassy Durbs before you get the full picture is "No Offense But...".
My dad has loads. Sometimes he comes home from work laughing scornfully about them. And NOT in the way of being like a "snob" or something. The point is that everyone has words that just get their backs up, and you can't even always explain why. It's something I am doing a poll about on my invisible radio show at this very minute.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
This is only really for my mum
It's always a bit hard getting ready to go out if my mum is the only person that I can ask whether I look all right, because she always just says that of course I look beautiful. And even if we both know that this is clearly not the case, she will never admit. And sometimes I give up, and other times I sort of press her and try get her to confirm my suspicions about my little outfit. Like I'll ask her if I look like a swimmer, and she'll say noooooo, or I'll ask her if I look like a Durban academic, and she'll say Christ No. And even though I never really get anywhere, at least I can see that she knows basically what I am driving at. But the question that I ask probably the most, which is "Do I look like a nice pig in high heels?" is only ever met with this totally, totally baffled expression. Like not only would she never concede that I could EVER look like a pig in high heels, she actually has no idea what even I mean. She always just says "what?" in the most incredulous way imaginable, as if I'd suddenly just stopped speaking English or something.
So. This is what I mean. This is just exactly what I mean. This is What We Talk About When We Talk About Looking Like A Pig In High Heels.
Last poll for the day
What in this picture do you see first?
a) The man taking the picture
b) The little girl and the lady pointing at the camera
c) The one going through the other one's legs.
The lady and the little girl are my granny and her daughter Heidi. I don't know who the legs ones are. I don't know who the picture man is, but I suspect it's Uncle Dicky of Dancing Like John Cleese On The Lawn Fame. I love every single thing about this picture.
There is a traffic jam in China that has been going on for nine days
NINE DAYS.
if I was doing a Poll about this, my question would be:
At what point would you abandon your car?
a) after six hours
b) after a day
c) after three days
d) never I would still be there thanks
if I was doing a Poll about this, my question would be:
At what point would you abandon your car?
a) after six hours
b) after a day
c) after three days
d) never I would still be there thanks
The other day Caitie said I should be a DJ
which made me laugh for AGES. And when I said oh WHAT caitie I would be the worst DJ in the world, she said "You're lying. I know you agree with me. Just imagine! All your pals could phone in and have very important and compelling chats for your listeners and then you could play a nice song. and just think you could do lots of polls."
And I thought ohhhhhhhhhh THAT kind of DJ. Imagining being that kind of DJ makes more sense than being the other kind. But still I would be completely rubbish at it. There is an amazing David Foster Wallace article on a Glenn Beck style person, where he says:
"Hosting talk radio is an exotic, high-pressure gig that not many people are fit for, and being truly good at it requires skills so specialized that many of them don't have names.
To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want—with the proviso that your topic, and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape. Naturally, in order to be even minimally interesting, your remarks should be intelligible and their reasoning sequential—a listener will have to be able to follow the logic of what you're saying—which means that you will have to know enough about your topic to organize your statements in a coherent way. (But you cannot do much of this organizing beforehand; it has to occur at the same time you're speaking.) Plus, ideally, what you're saying should be not just comprehensible and interesting but compelling, stimulating, which means that your remarks have to provoke and sustain some kind of emotional reaction in the listeners, which in turn will require you to construct some kind of identifiable persona for yourself—your comments will need to strike the listener as coming from an actual human being, someone with a real personality and real feelings about whatever it is you're discussing. And it gets even trickier: You're trying to communicate in real time with someone you cannot see or hear responses from; and though you're communicating in speech, your remarks cannot have any of the fragmentary, repetitive, garbled qualities of real interhuman speech, or speech's ticcy unconscious "umm"s or "you know"s, or false starts or stutters or long pauses while you try to think of how to phrase what you want to say next. You're also, of course, denied the physical inflections that are so much a part of spoken English—the facial expressions, changes in posture, and symphony of little gestures that accompany and buttress real talking. Everything unspoken about you, your topic, and how you feel about it has to be conveyed through pitch, volume, tone, and pacing. The pacing is especially important: it can't be too slow, since that's low-energy and dull, but it can't be too rushed or it will sound like babbling. And so you have somehow to keep all these different imperatives and structures in mind at the same time, while also filling exactly, say, eleven minutes, with no dead air and no going over, such that at 10:46 you have wound things up neatly and are in a position to say, "KFI is the station with the most frequent traffic reports. Alan LaGreen is in the KFI Traffic Center" (which, to be honest, Mr. Z. sometimes leaves himself only three or even two seconds for and has to say extremely fast, which he can always do without a flub). So then, ready: go."
I would be the worst at that. Really. BUT. The thing about the polls would be amazing. I wish wish wish I could have a job where I could just do lots of interesting polls all the time. The trick I spose would be to make the results of your poll relevant or useful to whoever is paying you to do this. That's the hard bit.
However.
If I was hosting my talk radio show today, the polls I would be doing are:
1) What do you think of Ray Mears style people who know how to get water out of the ground in the desert? In other words, what do you think of a person who goes out of their way to acquire the kind of knowledge that would enable them to survive in The Wild? Creepy and childish and wasting their lives? Or noble and manly and we will all be thanking them when the apocalypse comes?
2) Does everyone know who their parents' best friend was when they were small?
And I thought ohhhhhhhhhh THAT kind of DJ. Imagining being that kind of DJ makes more sense than being the other kind. But still I would be completely rubbish at it. There is an amazing David Foster Wallace article on a Glenn Beck style person, where he says:
"Hosting talk radio is an exotic, high-pressure gig that not many people are fit for, and being truly good at it requires skills so specialized that many of them don't have names.
To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want—with the proviso that your topic, and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape. Naturally, in order to be even minimally interesting, your remarks should be intelligible and their reasoning sequential—a listener will have to be able to follow the logic of what you're saying—which means that you will have to know enough about your topic to organize your statements in a coherent way. (But you cannot do much of this organizing beforehand; it has to occur at the same time you're speaking.) Plus, ideally, what you're saying should be not just comprehensible and interesting but compelling, stimulating, which means that your remarks have to provoke and sustain some kind of emotional reaction in the listeners, which in turn will require you to construct some kind of identifiable persona for yourself—your comments will need to strike the listener as coming from an actual human being, someone with a real personality and real feelings about whatever it is you're discussing. And it gets even trickier: You're trying to communicate in real time with someone you cannot see or hear responses from; and though you're communicating in speech, your remarks cannot have any of the fragmentary, repetitive, garbled qualities of real interhuman speech, or speech's ticcy unconscious "umm"s or "you know"s, or false starts or stutters or long pauses while you try to think of how to phrase what you want to say next. You're also, of course, denied the physical inflections that are so much a part of spoken English—the facial expressions, changes in posture, and symphony of little gestures that accompany and buttress real talking. Everything unspoken about you, your topic, and how you feel about it has to be conveyed through pitch, volume, tone, and pacing. The pacing is especially important: it can't be too slow, since that's low-energy and dull, but it can't be too rushed or it will sound like babbling. And so you have somehow to keep all these different imperatives and structures in mind at the same time, while also filling exactly, say, eleven minutes, with no dead air and no going over, such that at 10:46 you have wound things up neatly and are in a position to say, "KFI is the station with the most frequent traffic reports. Alan LaGreen is in the KFI Traffic Center" (which, to be honest, Mr. Z. sometimes leaves himself only three or even two seconds for and has to say extremely fast, which he can always do without a flub). So then, ready: go."
I would be the worst at that. Really. BUT. The thing about the polls would be amazing. I wish wish wish I could have a job where I could just do lots of interesting polls all the time. The trick I spose would be to make the results of your poll relevant or useful to whoever is paying you to do this. That's the hard bit.
However.
If I was hosting my talk radio show today, the polls I would be doing are:
1) What do you think of Ray Mears style people who know how to get water out of the ground in the desert? In other words, what do you think of a person who goes out of their way to acquire the kind of knowledge that would enable them to survive in The Wild? Creepy and childish and wasting their lives? Or noble and manly and we will all be thanking them when the apocalypse comes?
2) Does everyone know who their parents' best friend was when they were small?
Monday, 23 August 2010
Not that I am a person of Curiosities, like someone who is really into Emily Strange or fox furs with the horrible heads and claws still on
I mean like there is most certainly a type of girl who is very into All Things Dark, and is very pleased about it. Like a bit too sort of triumphantly idiosyncratic. A bit too yes I am a woman of both the beautiful dresses and the interest in taxidermy, and both the sun and the moon rise and set within me.
I hope I am not like that, but I must say that I was very drawn to this when I went to the British Museum with Simon. Those things are hummingbirds' heads set in gold. I've been thinking about it all day because it reminds me of that spider's eyes. That's the most moody I Have A Thing About Victorian Torture Instruments sentence I ever wrote.
I saw a most terrible spider in the shower this morning
and then the TV was on upstairs, and David Attenborough joyfully told me about this one. A "Himalayan Jumping Spider".
I don't think I'm being silly when I say that it's one of the most horrible things I ever saw. The name of it is terrifying as well. It tells you that it can just climb all over you.
Other names of venomous spiders:
Brazilian Wandering Spider (very scary) also known as The Armed Spider (less scary) also known as The Banana Spider (either not scary, or most sinister of all).
The Wolf Spider (quite frightening)
The Violin Spider (most frightening, because it sounds sophisticated and therefore more cruel)
Saturday, 21 August 2010
"Though he is no Oscar Wilde, Kray's 'Hello Clive' letters provide a fascinating insight into his time in jail."
This is so easily the best thing I've read in ages. Imagine stumbling on Reggie Kray's "Hello Clive" letters. Like those were the letters your grandfather had kept in a box under his bed, along with those lovely paintings. My best is when he says: "Hello Clive, So hows things going at the new place*. Same old shit here mate."
I love the Kray Twins. I feel like they are a lie created to make me pleased. JD Salinger said that thing about being "a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” It sounds a bit twee and Joyfully Childlike, but I always like that he said that, especially when you think about what a miserable old hermit he was meant to be, and it does perfectly sum up my feelings about the Krays. It's terrible to say, but an article like this makes it hard to believe that the world doesn't revolve around me. There are so many things in it that are so entirely up my street that I find it hard to believe that it wasn't written with me, specifically, in mind. An article like this makes it hard to believe that I'm not in the Truman Show.
It's nice that Clive is described as Reggie Kray's "gopher". I like to think of Clive as his batman. I mean a batman like the sort of slave upper class soldiers had in the First World War.
JRR Tolkien "famously" had one. I'm sure lots of other people did as well, like Wilfred Owen and things, but you can't really look up anything about batmans on google without trawling through a whole lot of stuff about The Dark Knight.
The other thing I like to think of is Keith Talent's alsatian called Clive in that book called London Fields. Especially that bit when he wants to name his new baby (a girl) either "Keithina" or "Clive". I hope the character of that dog was actually written in homage to Reggie Kray's batman. Keith Talent and Reggie Kray are right off the same conveyor belt, obviously.
So to sum up: the plan called Make Rosie Laugh For A Bit On The 21st August 2010 (concocted by Martin Amis, Wilfred Owen, Reggie Kray and the criminal underclass of 1960s London, alsatians, The Lord Of The Rings, and a famous London auction house) has worked. Congratulations to everyone involved.
*Clive's new prison.
Thursday, 19 August 2010
This is what I am thinking about today instead of doing my work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generations#List_of_generations
"Generation Y" doesn't sound quite as dreamy as "the Lost Generation", although obviously it's much better to be a member of shitty old Generation Y than to live in a time where everyone you knew was getting killed in WWI.
Also, at least Generation Y sounds better than "Generation Z" also known as "Generation I", also known as "The Digital Natives" which sounds the most like a terrible drum and bass party at Fiction. I actually struggle to believe that it isn't. I can picture the poster so perfectly.
"Generation Y" doesn't sound quite as dreamy as "the Lost Generation", although obviously it's much better to be a member of shitty old Generation Y than to live in a time where everyone you knew was getting killed in WWI.
Also, at least Generation Y sounds better than "Generation Z" also known as "Generation I", also known as "The Digital Natives" which sounds the most like a terrible drum and bass party at Fiction. I actually struggle to believe that it isn't. I can picture the poster so perfectly.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Simon just reminded me of the best one of all of them
ANYTHING to do with poor old awful old Captain Scott makes a person feel a bit better about whatever straitened circumstances they happen to be in.
Me and Em and Nick have been having a very self-consciously English sort of a time
Like if you wanted to show an alien what English People do when they are at leisure, you would show them a little film reel of the last few days. Obviously this isn't what actual English people do. A bad thing is when horrible old men who make a big deal out of maintaining a stiff upper lip in all other situations allow themselves to get all maudlin and sentimental about the England of Days Gone By. That is not a real thing to get upset about. It's like people who don't give a shit about beggars and orphans but get all wobbly and worked up about abused cart horses.
HOWEVER.
The fact remains that we have been having a very cartoonishly English time of it lately, and it has been great. You feel a bit like Peter Rabbit after a while. The other day we went blackberry picking, and then came back and made blackberry pie. And yesterday we went and got a whole lot of stuff for a picnic and went to Leigh Woods, which is full of beech trees and cows and earnest looking people pulling out weeds while wearing big purple tshirts that say NATIONAL TRUST VOLUNTEER, and sat and ate cheese and bread and tomatoes in a field. And then we came back and all had to have cold showers because the boiler packed up, which is quite English in an I Capture The Castle sort of a way.
I Capture The Castle is the book I read when I want to feel a bit better about being such a mouse in a box. She makes being poor feel quite fun and glamorous. It isn't really, but you can almost believe it while you are reading.
Other Books to make you feel better about being such a small scruffs mouse in such a tired old box:
1. City of Thieves (Siege of Leningrad)
2. Cellist of Sarajevo (Siege of Sarajevo)
3. Siege of Krishnapur
4. There must be so many more books about sieges that I can't think of now.
HOWEVER.
The fact remains that we have been having a very cartoonishly English time of it lately, and it has been great. You feel a bit like Peter Rabbit after a while. The other day we went blackberry picking, and then came back and made blackberry pie. And yesterday we went and got a whole lot of stuff for a picnic and went to Leigh Woods, which is full of beech trees and cows and earnest looking people pulling out weeds while wearing big purple tshirts that say NATIONAL TRUST VOLUNTEER, and sat and ate cheese and bread and tomatoes in a field. And then we came back and all had to have cold showers because the boiler packed up, which is quite English in an I Capture The Castle sort of a way.
I Capture The Castle is the book I read when I want to feel a bit better about being such a mouse in a box. She makes being poor feel quite fun and glamorous. It isn't really, but you can almost believe it while you are reading.
Other Books to make you feel better about being such a small scruffs mouse in such a tired old box:
1. City of Thieves (Siege of Leningrad)
2. Cellist of Sarajevo (Siege of Sarajevo)
3. Siege of Krishnapur
4. There must be so many more books about sieges that I can't think of now.
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
I watched a very strange documentary about The Wire last night
It was by the people who made the show, and it was strange because it was making a number of Important Political Points, but it was interspersed with various very pointed remarks made by the narrator (David Simon, who directs the wire) which were clearly directed towards specific people he hated when he was working as a journalist. And not like politicans or any other public figures, like other journalists and news editors and things. It was a bit of an Uneasy Mixture. Saying all these very NB things about the failure of the public school system in America, and the failure of the war on drugs, and the decline of journalism, and what terrible baddies the Bush administration were, and then going "BUT CLEARLY THE REAL VILLAIN WAS YOU, MAN I USED TO WORK WITH ON THE BALTIMORE SUN OVER TEN YEARS AGO." It was a good example of what happens when people let their "private grievances" spill over into other aspects of their lives. ANYWAY, there was one bit in the documentary where David Simon was talking about someone he actually did like, and he said "Ed Burns has the imagination of at least three men."
This sounds pretty feeble when you first hear it, like quite a rubbish compliment, but actually it is quite a thing to say about someone. I have been thinking about it a lot since I heard it because I am trying frantically to work out What Happens Next in this story I am writing, and I have come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no imagination whatsoever. I don't even have the imagination of half a man.
And THEN I was thinking about writers who have the imagination of lots of men, and obviously all the brilliant ones have the imagination of a whole bus full of people, but the one I was thinking about this specifically this morning was JD Salinger, and specifically that story called The Laughing Man. I think about that story all the time.
Here it is:
http://derosaworld.typepad.com/derosaworld/2010/01/jd-salinger-the-laughing-man.html
(It's quite amazing that it comes from a blog called DeRosaWorld, which is of course the name of my theme park.)
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Here is my grandfather trying on some Christmas present pants
I find it hard to believe that this picture was taken in 1980, and yet it was. My mum sent me this as well. Things she pointed out:
1. The record player
2. My cousin's HIGHLY POLISHED leather shoes
3. The picture of Table Bay from Reader's Digest
Monday, 9 August 2010
I don't know what else could happen in this picture that would make me love it more
I like to think that even if a lot of the people in this picture weren't related to me, it would still make me scream with laughter and joy. This is my mum's Uncle Dicky, he of the v. long legs and flat caps and racist remarks. My mum sent me this photo with the caption "Dicky dancing like John Cleese". It's true that he is dancing like John Cleese, but he is also doing so much more than that. And I have so many questions. Why are they all dancing on the lawn like this? Why is it the day time? Why are two of them wearing funny hats? How come there are only old people, except for that little girl? Who is that little girl?
In a way, I almost wish I didn't know the people in this picture, because there is a part of me that would be happy to endlessly speculate on what the hell it is they think they are all doing.
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Also for Jason in Prague
I really don't like the way this woman reads, but sometimes Americans are more generous about things like this. It's a nice story though.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/05/17/100517on_audio_ali
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/05/17/100517on_audio_ali
A podcast for Jason to listen to as he swans around Prague and that WITHOUT ME
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/10/13/081013on_audio_shteyngart
Friday, 6 August 2010
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/04/14/080414on_audio_erdrich
A podcast for my mum to listen to if she feels like picturing me getting all weepy in the mccormack kitchen as I rattily chop vegetables for mine and simon's dinner later and listen to this story.
a podcast for my dad to listen to while he is having a break from lolita
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/02/11/080211on_audio_boyle
This is one of my best short stories ever. It's a bit grim in some bits, but in a very straightforward way. Which will make a nice change for a Humbert Humbert aged man who is reading Lolita for the first time. My dad is completely freaked out by it. I asked him what bit he was up to, and he sent me an email that said: "Im up to the bit where he is on the sofa in his hideous green silk dressing gown and she has put her legs over his lap. Oh God."
This is one of my best short stories ever. It's a bit grim in some bits, but in a very straightforward way. Which will make a nice change for a Humbert Humbert aged man who is reading Lolita for the first time. My dad is completely freaked out by it. I asked him what bit he was up to, and he sent me an email that said: "Im up to the bit where he is on the sofa in his hideous green silk dressing gown and she has put her legs over his lap. Oh God."
Monday, 2 August 2010
a thing that makes me Cringe (iv)
is when people say "I'm an unashamed (x) snob."
WHEN REALLY WHAT THEY SHOULD EXACTLY BE IS ASHAMED.
WHEN REALLY WHAT THEY SHOULD EXACTLY BE IS ASHAMED.
A thing I would subscribe to
Is a service called Well What Would You Have Said Then? There have been a quite high number of situations lately where something very strange has happened, and I've "dealt" with it in a half-hearted and ineffectual way, and afterwards gone, "I definitely did that wrong. One day I will look back on that and think: my response to that was just all over the place."
So what would be nice is a thing where you could choose the five people whose moral compass or whatever you most trust, and then you could make it so whenever something a bit off happens to you where you don't know how the hell you are meant to respond, an alarm would go off above those five people's beds, and a LOUD VOICE would tell them exactly what was happening, and then they would quickly have to Sketch Out a response telling you what they would do, and then you would at least have some different perspectives.
There are a number of problems with this, obviously. But still.
So what would be nice is a thing where you could choose the five people whose moral compass or whatever you most trust, and then you could make it so whenever something a bit off happens to you where you don't know how the hell you are meant to respond, an alarm would go off above those five people's beds, and a LOUD VOICE would tell them exactly what was happening, and then they would quickly have to Sketch Out a response telling you what they would do, and then you would at least have some different perspectives.
There are a number of problems with this, obviously. But still.
Delia = my best
http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/spanish/tortilla-spanish-omelette.html
she just seems very reliable and trustworthy to me. and i made this the other day for mine and rom's lunch, except without the potato (cos I didn't have any) and with mushrooms and courgettes (cos I did), and it was delicious.
I was reading a Nigel Slater recipe book last night, and normally I love him, but there was this long breezy passage about making Exquisite Rice that infuriated me so much I had to stop reading. I HATE to make rice. It's my worst. Even reading the directions on the back of the packet make me want to kill myself. And people like Nigel Slater get all jolly and cavalier in their rice-making directions, but you start to read it, and you realise that it's actually like 40 steps and everything is taking things off the stove and then putting it back on with some water but NOT TOO MUCH and then some things with strainers and I just hate it.
I bet Delia has the best rice making directions though. I bet she takes it seriously and doesn't participate in that fiction called Making Rice Is Easy.
she just seems very reliable and trustworthy to me. and i made this the other day for mine and rom's lunch, except without the potato (cos I didn't have any) and with mushrooms and courgettes (cos I did), and it was delicious.
I was reading a Nigel Slater recipe book last night, and normally I love him, but there was this long breezy passage about making Exquisite Rice that infuriated me so much I had to stop reading. I HATE to make rice. It's my worst. Even reading the directions on the back of the packet make me want to kill myself. And people like Nigel Slater get all jolly and cavalier in their rice-making directions, but you start to read it, and you realise that it's actually like 40 steps and everything is taking things off the stove and then putting it back on with some water but NOT TOO MUCH and then some things with strainers and I just hate it.
I bet Delia has the best rice making directions though. I bet she takes it seriously and doesn't participate in that fiction called Making Rice Is Easy.
Sunday, 1 August 2010
a thing that makes me Cringe (iii)
Is how so many people seem to be going through the motions of embracing that show called Glee in a way of whole-hearted and unironic and What-I-Just-Like-The-Singing enjoyment.
I think this says more about me than anything. That I can't believe that anyone would just like something like that. But they do. Normal people do. And that is fine and I need to get over it. I HATE it. And that is fine also.
I think this says more about me than anything. That I can't believe that anyone would just like something like that. But they do. Normal people do. And that is fine and I need to get over it. I HATE it. And that is fine also.
I got really owned in an argument* the other night and it is still getting me down
Not that I am unfamiliar with losing arguments. I have lost a billion arguments in my life, and normally I don't care at all. But this was different, for a number of reasons. I think mostly it was because I was trying to defend something I never ever thought I would ever have to defend. Like how you sort of go: "a position I will never have to defend is my decision not to own a slave." But but but. You also think: "If I ever found myself in an argument where someone was asking me to explain why I don't want to have a slave, I would able to have a pretty good go at it." Like you wouldn't walk away from the slave-owning argument feeling all wrong-footed and dumb. Because you would KNOW THAT YOU ARE RIGHT and PLUS IT IS ILLEGAL and you would think at the very least that just naked conviction would see you through.
However.
We were having nice dinner on Friday night, and Dan's friend James said, basically: "Saying that you like music is bullshit. Talking about music is bullshit. Saying that music affects people on a basic level is REAL bullshit."
He then went on to very ferociously defend all of this. And I was just totally bowled over. Because I do agree that people who use their taste in music as a hook to hang their personalities on are losers. But that's all. I FUNDAMENTALLY disagree with every single other thing he said, and the worst part is I couldn't say anything except "But but but you're wrong."
Really I never ever thought I would have to defend liking music.
But also, the pre-last Friday me would have said: "If I was called upon to defend music as a thing, I would do an EXCELLENT JOB."
And I just didn't. I did a terrible job. I feel like I need to apologise to someone.
*It wasn't really an argument. It was a very loud and animated chat.
However.
We were having nice dinner on Friday night, and Dan's friend James said, basically: "Saying that you like music is bullshit. Talking about music is bullshit. Saying that music affects people on a basic level is REAL bullshit."
He then went on to very ferociously defend all of this. And I was just totally bowled over. Because I do agree that people who use their taste in music as a hook to hang their personalities on are losers. But that's all. I FUNDAMENTALLY disagree with every single other thing he said, and the worst part is I couldn't say anything except "But but but you're wrong."
Really I never ever thought I would have to defend liking music.
But also, the pre-last Friday me would have said: "If I was called upon to defend music as a thing, I would do an EXCELLENT JOB."
And I just didn't. I did a terrible job. I feel like I need to apologise to someone.
*It wasn't really an argument. It was a very loud and animated chat.
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