Thursday, September 29, 2005
He's not vicious / or malicious / just lovely and delicious
Everyone knows just how huge a tune Deee-lite's Groove is in the Heart is. There is no debate there.
But every time I hear it, I can't help but speculate on how Q-Tip ended up as guest rapper. Surely there must be a hell of a story behind this Tribe V.s. Eurodance shakedown?
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
The day ended as it began / As he was seconds older than the man he was this morning
An Irish friend visited the LDN last week. I was able to catch up with her whilst getting red wine and ash spilt on me at a party on Saturday night. We discussed the proposed ban on smoking in public places, amongst other things.
On the one hand, smoking is bad for you and everyone around you. A responsible government should encourage you not to do it. Statutory encouragement, whilst blunt and authoritarian, is usually the most effective way of bringing about change quickly. I am also not a smoker, and thus am all in favour of the lives of others being altered according to my preferences.
Any liberal, however, should be deeply concerned at the prospect of encroaching on the liberty of others just to make their lives easier. After all, no one forces me to go into pubs. I know they are smoky before I go out, and I still choose to drink there rather than throwing my cash at a smoke free bar.
My friend is a Dubliner and a smoker. She was able to give a hipster's first hand perspective of the reality of a smoking ban.
Broadly, she was in favour. Her nicotine habit had developed at University through social smoking. The ban put several major obstacles in her way, making it harder for her to stay with her mates when she wanted a cigarette. This had had a much greater impact on her cigarette consumption than merely increasing cost of a pack of coffin nails. She was grateful for this. Though this should be put in the broader context of the rise in price of a night out in Dublin since the introduction of the Euro.
Some interesting unintended consequences have hit nightclubs as a result of the smoking ban in Ireland.
A night out will know involve a good deal more interaction with bouncers and doormen, who have to now constantly marshal smokers out and back into clubs after fag breaks. We can now only be months away from a bold and dynamic new play or short film about love blossoming between an ex-convict bouncer and a sassy young woman with commitment issues set entirely during these peripheral cigarette breaks during a night out.
The health of bar staff is one of the main arguments cited in favour of a ban in pubs bars and clubs in England. However, most Irish club workers now have to conduct their business in a persistent cloud of body odour. Previously, the Marlboro Light smog had effectively masked this. On busy weekend nights, the odour can be so pervasive that it hits you like a wave as you enter a club.
Friday, September 23, 2005
The reason for this hiatus in blogging has been my work. This is my last day in my current job so its been fairly intense trying to get stuff finished before I head out the door.
On Monday I am moving desks to begin a new job. It will be good. Going to be harder work than now, but that might be a good thing.
As I will be based in the same organisation, albeit working in partnership, I have not really registered the change involved until today.
I thought nothing drastic was happening. I will work in the same building, so no need to change the email address, journey to and from work, where I drink on Friday nights and where I get a morning cup of coffee. Most people are flexible enough to be refreshed by a change in the content of their work and most offices look more or less the same, so it's upheaval in those coffee, train and sandwich, quality of life issues that exhausts you when you start somewhere new. I guess that was why I found temping, even when slacking completely, quite so tiring. The context was so continually new.
This is the longest I have worked anywhere. I have surprised myself that in beginning to shift the detritus from my desk I have come over a little melancholy. Though the hangover doesn't help.
I started with such verve, vim and vigour. And here about me is the evidence of my half-achievements.
A crumpled semi-complete application for a reader's pass at the British Library, scrawled minutes and notes which will never be typed-up let alone 'actioned' and a cornucopia of brightly coloured reports and policy papers from government, think tanks, conferences. Like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, they will be shelved and left to gather dust once more.
I won't particularly miss the substance of my work, but I will miss the peripheral chaff. That's always the best bit, right? the banter with teammates? Just after a frank discussion,this morning, a friendly colleague from my floor emailed me, minding me to remember that she still had today left when she was within distance of 'throwing heavy objects at my unusually large head'. Brilliant. I wasn't expecting that.
But its not just the banter. It is everything around the edges of what I do. There's the consultations you wish you had a response for and those press releases you wished someone else found funny too.
There was that time, 2 days before a conference I organised someone phoned up and asked if we could arrange a live video link-up so a keynote speaker who couldn't attend in person could address the assembled attendees.
'I work in the voluntary sector, mate.' was the tone of my response. 6 months notice might be feasible, but 48 hours? I was struggling making delegate badges. I'm not the Apprentice. More's the pity.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Bare laughs - #1 in an occasional series
Has everyone heard the one about the collectivised farm and the rural famine? Go on, indulge me!
So, a Soviet regional administrator goes to inspect a farm in the Upper Volga district.
After travelling for miles up the river, exhausted and irritable he finally arrives at the collectivised farm. The fields look dry, cracked and barren. Ever hopeful, the ambitious young administrator keen to report on progress in his region to the Moscow authorities, hurries up to a ramshackle farmhouse.
He rouses a peasant at his kitchen table. The farming peasant, keen to get on the right side of the authorities, makes a stab at small talk.
"Greetings, regional administrator" says the peasant (I can't do the accent), "how proceeds the liquidation of the Kulaks?"
"The Kulak class are being liquidated as we speak, comrade farmer"
"And the progress in creating kolkhozy, regional administrator?"
"...it goes well comrade farmer, it goes well."
Small talk over, the administrator gets out his clipboard and begins making notes.
"How much land do you cultivate here, And how many households on this kolkhoz?"
"Why, over two and half thousand hectares and seventy families, regional administrator"
"So the potato crop was bountiful this year, comrade farmer?", presses the administrator.
"Indeed yes!", proclaims the peasant.
"And the harvest proceeds well?"
"Regional administrator, it is marvellous. So gargantuan is our harvest that, piled up, our crop of potatoes scrapes the very feet of God!"
"Ah ha!" cries the administrator with a flourish. "Comrade farmer, there is no God!"
"No, regional administrator. And there are no potatoes".
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
You lack lust, you're so lacklustre / Is that all the strength you can muster
As m'collegue TUPnews has pointed out, England's recent performance in the Ashes has stimulated a popular mania for cricket. This is a good thing. However, it does mean that Johnny-come-latelys like myself are now searching round for a sport we can get in on at its early stages and thus surf the wave of self-satisfaction when it hits the mainstream.
TUP readers, I give you: the British Open Crabbing Championship.
Each year, around 600 people compete to see who can land the heaviest crab in an hour and a half. The championship takes place in high summer at the coastal village of Walberswick in Suffolk. Organisers arrange the competition to take place at high tide, thus ensuring the creek will be as dry as possible for the competitors, who are mostly children.
It costs £1 to enter. Each entrant is given a number and assigned to a colour coded zone in which to compete.
The beauty of the competition lies in the amateurish home-made quality of the catching gear. String is a must, as no nets or hooks are permitted. Entrants guard the secrets of their bait very carefully. Sausages and bacon seem popular, sometimes used alone sometime in combination.
The clever money seems to go on those using fish somewhere in the mix. Miss Annabel Stevens (10) the 1998 world champion, swore by fish-bait from the local Fishmonger. Last year's victor used fish heads. In 2005, however, she failed to repeat the success when she used fish heads in combination with ox liver. The crabs did not warm to that one bit.
Gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded to the catchers of the three heaviest crabs caught in the ninety minutes. Last year's winning catch weighed in at around three ounces. The 2005 gold medal winner, just over four. The record therefore remains at 7.25 ounces.
Every competitor receives a free pot of Shippams Crab Paste.
Monday, September 05, 2005
The Sunglasses Principle
I went to Cornwall for the second bout of my summer holidays. It was good. But I forgot my sunglasses, which was frustrating. I had to adopt a permanent scowl for the beach.
This got me thinking. Are there fashion quandaries more tricky than deciding on a set of sunglasses? I ask because I don't know.
Being hilariously short-sighted, I am locked out of the debate. Perhaps it is easy and I am just being struck by that which I least understand. It is certainly true though that solutions for us furniture-faces are few and far between. Prescription sunglasses, I have, but make my lenses even thicker and thus will never be hip. The other two options are clip-ons, (Where are they now?) And those sunglasses out of the Innovations catalogue which fit over your specs and are, in essence, laboratory safety glasses with added UV-protection.
[And no, I couldn't get contacts, because my eyeballs are rugby-ball shaped, so contacts would never be as effective as specs. There is also the Hegley critique, which states that glasses are 'a symbolic celebration / of the wider imperfection that is the human condition'. Contact lenses, therefore, 'are a denial of the self / they are a denial of the other / they are a betrayal of humanity'.]
So what do you actually go for? Its not like buying jeans. For boys at least, you can usually get trousers and tops for most sizes. So you have a wide choice constrained only by personal preference and available resources. Do you go for sunglasses that compliment the shape of your face, that look good on you, even if they are revoltingly unfashionable? Personal style, or prevailing trend? Whither tortoise-shell?
Recently, trendy sun glasses have got bigger and bigger, Fly eyes ones for the ladies, Aviators for boys. But are big lenses still in? Maybe I should go for some perscription aviators with those lenses that react to light. I would look like a 1970s DT teacher indoors and Goose out of Top Gun outdoors.
Apparently though, photochromatic lenses take ages to react to the ambient light. You could potentially come in from a sunny lunchbreak to a meeting, and have to sit through half of it nervously waiting for your specs to change colour enough so you can read the agenda. Instead of effortlessly blending two different looks in one pair of glasses, you just look like some feeble faux 1970s mobster.
Some trendy mens ones, and girls' massive 'Fly' ones, seem to offer a modern take on the mid-90s wrap-around. But turn up in a genuine pair of reflective lense Oakley wraparounds and- despite the £60+ price tag- you'll look as if your ten years late for what ever it was you turned up for.
What the unhip like me need is a visual guide: These sunglasses would work for those with a square jawline....This colour frame would suit you, unless your forehead is too massive to carry the circular lense off.
E.g....This is Dope
(Hat tip to TUPNews for the image)
and...
(Source: BBC News Online)
...that is whack.
