A flight of fancy brought about by lack of sleep...

The time has come to confront the elephant in the room: In two weeks time smoking will be banned in England. The effect this will have on The Muted Slughorn – the labyrinthine boozer frequented by Dogtooth, myself, and on occasions even the Newt, or at least one of its creatures – remains to be seen. There have been rumblings about a euphemistically named ‘contingency plan’. Rumour abounds – only a couple of days ago a lean Swedish trawlerman seated in the saloon bar told me of a planned secession, which would leave the Slughorn beyond the law of any government in the world. Other less dramatic speculation suggests that a loophole has already been introduced, lending credence to the stories of a tunnel from the beer cellars emerging in a deserted office in Whitehall. Perhaps most alarming of all are the hushed mentions of a ‘patio garden’. What kind of garden the Slughorn might have does not bear thinking about…
The pros and cons of the smoking ban have been dealt with at length, and I’m not going to rehash them, but instead I want to draw attention to the aesthetic ramifications. No more Watteauesque taprooms, no more seeing Turner’s House of Lords, and its elemental interaction between smoke and water, recreated in a smoky gents. No more forgiving veil of blue smog to mask those of yellow tooth and grainy skin. The future will be hard and bright and uncompromising, and if that doesn’t make you feel like a cigarette I don’t know what will.

P.S. - I found this rather amusing.

Are you drinking what we're drinking?

Aside from the obviousness of having a European - or preferably pan-national - system of unitary measurement for alcohol, the undercurrent suggestion that it is safer to drink a pint in Denmark than in England, though only parodic of the government line, is still uncomfortably close to the legislative rationale of this flagging Labour front-bench. Does anyone else wish it were Blair's entire cabinet who were about to resign rather than the PM himself?

An adventure on the stairwell:

I share a hallway with two other people. One of them is a young man with a taste for UK hip-hop and narcotics, the other a woman of advancing years who must surely be wondering by now what went wrong with her life. I recently received an email telling me that our landlord had 'received complaints about the smoke which has been emanating from one of your rooms. I've been told that it smells of drugs and not tobacco. Probably cannabis.' Avoiding for a moment the rather delicious appended non-sentence (presumably designed to address the likelihood of said drug being marijuana while not discounting the possibility of it being crystal meth or opium) we must ask ourselves why such a complaint would be made. At first it seems obvious that were your neighbour using drugs then 'something should be done'. However it is very hard to find a rational motive for actually objecting to the practice. I can sympathise with the complainer insofar as the pungent odours of cannabis smoke are not pleasant, but to be exposed to said fumes for any length of time would require that the person lingered in the corridor for far longer than can be considered seemly.

The sanity of a person is inversely correlated to the number of films they watch between 4 am and 1 pm.

I am currently rather taken by the idea that a 'warning label' on alcoholic drinks would stop people getting drunk. I recently quaffed what I thought was a large glass bottle of very expensive apple juice: judge of my surprise when a closer examination of the packaging showed it to have been a litre of Calvados. I remember my last thoughts as I reeled drunkenly to bed - 'if only the government would force the producers of these deceptive liquors to put some sort of warning on the bottle'. I suppose that a pint of beer will come with a verbal disclaimer from the barman.

Illegal penises

A senior judge has been cleared of charges of exposure after allegedly flashing a woman on a train. The maximum penalty for exposure is a two-year jail sentence. In terms of rational and proportionate responses to perceived crimes, I think, in this case, convulsive mirth on the part of the general public would be about right. The law is an arse. Over and out.

It's funny how quickly 'Big Brother Racism Row' has become a cliche...

Our UK readers who have not been lucky enough to avoid series seven of the moronic reality show Big Brother (I don't even have a television, yet here I am blogging about it at six thirty in the morning) will know that one of the contestants has been thrown off for her reckless use of the word 'nigger'. From what I can tell from the transcripts, the nigger in question reacted to the word rather competently, with a cool admonishment. I'm not going to get into the complex issues surrounding whether the word 'nigger', parroted as it was from hip-hop culture and rap lyrics rather than directed as a racial slur, warrants an eviction. All I would say is that the Newt's official stance is that fact we support free speech as a legal right does not mean we think media outlets should be forced to direct whatever slurry some lone idiot on the payroll might spout at the public. However, what does alarm are the calls for BB to be stopped altogether. I don't like the idea that the British Public have become to racist to broadcast.

More fun with maths:

In popular automotive television show Top Gear the presenters suggested that road works take longer than necessary because of the malign influence of that popular scapegoat 'health and safety': to demonstrate this they resurfaced a road in twenty four hours, rather than the week which the council would have needed. Very impressive! Except for the fact that in order to do this they needed to hire 32 employees rather than the usual 14, and they worked for the full 24 hours. Assuming that most workmen put in a five day, eight hour a day week. Therefore the 'inefficient' council could have got the job done in 560 man hours, rather than the 768 hours the Clarkson lead construction team needed.

Blake really can't draw - or write poetry...Why do we study him again?

The "human form" - Sir Isaac Newton (curiously naked) by William Blake.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'The Blossom', by William Blake:

Merry, Merry Sparrow!
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Sees you swift as arrow
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my Bosom.

Pretty, Pretty Robin!
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, Pretty Robin,
Near my Bosom.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So Farewell Then Little Boy Poisoned by Religion and Old Hags,

not by William Blake

-

O little boy lost, what will you do

If I sit here all day shedding tears over you?

Will you run to the priest and be sermonised to death?

Will you run to the harlot who, for all I know, might not be permanently miserable and steeped in sin all of the time...

O! O! O! dark...wrath...fear...illicit sex...clergymen...chimneys...O O O!

The London Prodigal Exposed

Wembley

After an evening of shenanigans with The London Prodical which involved sex, drugs and rooftops, Silver Dollar Jim got a personal view of the new Wembley to see that most eagerly anticipated football match. The final... between Conference rivals Exeter and Morkham. The day was doomed from the start. I was supporting Exeter as they were the only team who's name I managed to remember. I gave the friendly beverage seller a genuine asthma attack with the cigarette I was innocently holding in my left hand. Exeter lost and the Morkham manager fell over multiple times when he ran onto the pitch after the final whistle. This lower league stuff is so undignified, at least in the premiership the hooligans managing the clubs are living in Kensington & Chelsea.

Baby guitars

Following from Dogtooth's statement of fondness for Roy Smeck I must express my own growing fascination with the George Formby school of seduction.

1 - Most importantly, always carry a small stringed instrument.

2 - When invited to give a performance (or even if not) ignore anyone else in the room, and direct your song at the most attractive woman you can see.

3 - Work in as many smutty double entredres as possible, but diffuse any sleaze-factor with a charmingly boyish smile.

4 - Give a high pitched laugh at any moments you consider particularly funny.

5- Try and have your performence cut short by some pompous male authority figure.

Personally however, if I had to pick the most dashing comic singer I'd have to go for Jake Thackray.

On an unrelated note: do we think that The London Prodigal has anything to do with this?

The Hair of a Madman...

A chemical study of Beethoven's hair suggests that his infamously stormy temperament was the result of lead poisoning. A slightly more complex way of saying - he had mental hair. Good old Ludvig Van: he could have kicked Mozart's arse any day.

The virgin story.

I viewed part of a documentary on the channel 4 tonight about a man in his late twenties who is still a virgin and has had no sexual contact with the female specimen. He apparently had "intimacy issues", these issues only became apparent when the Dutch Sex Therapist that he was forced to "go all the way with" was an elderly woman. Is gerontophilic pornography really what we should expect from a Brown government? At least under Blair c5 had good softcore straight to tv movies on after 12.

The best fitness routine.

The "Arctic" "Monkeys"

The Post-Newt seems to have become a vehicle for stock manipulation, so in an attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere, I'm going to talk vaguely and uselessly about something I noticed in the news. Gordon Brown did it in his speech at the Labour Party Conference, and - probably in direct reference to that speech - Tim Hames did it in the Times this morning. These are, in fairness, the only two examples I have, but there are surely others. It has become a very robust political half-volley to gesture publicly to the Arctic Monkeys. It is usually politicians or journalists who have given up trying to remain in touch, and have started making sport of their advancing years - playing the loveable grandparent card. The idea is that "Arctic Monkeys" is the newest metonym for pop music. Making the occasional ignorant and casual reference to the group is a clever way of trivialising popular culture and making one's own business (politics, journalism, etc) seem more important. But why the Monkeys? Why not "KT" Tunstall, Amy "Winehouse" or "Kings of Leon"? Personally, I think people just find the name "Arctic Monkeys" funny - I think it tickles the childish sense of humour. I imagine Gordon Brown chuckling on his sofa at mention of the band.

Financial Sector

Buy Easyjet shares, they're undervalued.

Disclaimer: This suggestion is provided on an as is basis and postnewt are not responsible people and have no moral compass. Easyjet may not even exist. This is not endorsed by the Coca-Cola company or any of its affiliates or sponsers.

Racist Maths

A long silence from my underwater lair. The Muted Slughorn recently declared an amnesty on stolen bar furniture and I've been having a recurring dream in which I have to escape from a lunatic asylum by extreme violence and guile.
The student publication of the place of Higher Education where I work occasionally as a test tube cleaner and find a ready market for smuggled curios and exotic 'male enhancers' recently published a headline decrying the racism within the institution. After a lifetime of casual discrimination directed at me by various small minded chordates I am sensitive to this issue, and at first the statement that 30 percent of foreign students had experienced racism seemed worrying. However, closer examination of the statistics soon reassured me. Given that one is either prone to racism or one is not (very few liberals can identify a single point of their life when they abandoned previous beliefs and shouted 'rag head curry muncher' or another such crude slur at a startled shopkeeper, and then returned to their previous tolerance) we can assume that for a given number of people who have experienced racism there are about at most a quarter as many people perpetrating racism. I can't claim maths is a strong point, but given that around seven percent of the university students are from overseas, and only thirty percent of that number have experienced racism, and assuming that on average every racist student has sinned an average of four times, only 0.525 percent of the students could be considered racist. A closer examination of the argument suggests that even this tiny percentage of students is an over estimation - staff of the university are included as well.
We seem to be doing a racism theme today, so here are two more pieces of idiocy:
Anti-Racist Maths - whoever came up with this idea clearly suffered from the delusional and in itself rather racist belief that our mathematical system was developed in Europe, which would explain why we still use roman numerals in our calculations and have no concept of zero...
Positive Hip Hop - I have never seen an article encouraging indie or rock musicians to take responsibility for the education of their listeners. This seems to me the latest in a long line of movements, headed by people of all races, which see black culture as a work in progress, in need of outside guidance.

I can't seem to work the links today, but here are the three relevent ones - perhaps a benevolent fellow newtists could sort this out for me -
http://www.nouse.co.uk/2007/05/08/are-we-a-racist-university/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-racist_mathematics
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2006/01/30/aiming_for_an_alternative_hip_hop/?page=2

James Gordon Madonna Testes Yoda Clinton Brown door Reginald PerrinBrown

While leisurely spending my work day browsing wikipedia I stumbled upon the true name of the chancellor. See here

Update: The article has been retracted. Come back later for saucy photos of gordon brown and chirac.

Three of them, and Alleline

In spite of my not inconsiderable statephobic paranoia, the idea of the Service working undisturbed has always appealed. They clearly serve our best interests - let us hope this is not the end for MI discretion.

Sweet Charity

I have a theory about charitable donation. Hamilton and I were into the 74th hour of our bi-monthly draughts rubber at the Muted Slughorn. Me to play. But first, the important business of drenching my whistle. My round. No-one behind the bar, so I helped myself to vintage bottle of elderflower wine, noticing, in the process, a donation box sitting accusingly by the pulls. 'Please give generously in support of Dapple, an elderly shire-horse who was being bullied by other horses, and had to be removed from the field and provided for separately.' What an endearing cause, I thought, and was on the verge of popping a ripe trio of shiny doubloons into the tub, when I realised my error. Of course I was willing to give to such an appealing cause, just as I would willingly give to the RNLI, or the RSPCA. Such charities are the most rewarding by far, since you can go on featherbedding the ol' conscience without having to accept the existence of real problems in the world: Global warming, children in need, famine in sub-Saharan Africa. The Donkey Sanctuaries of this world provide an invaluable service: they offer a comfortable domestic problem about which no-one is too fussed. Giving money to Oxfam or the NSPCC, for example, forces us to recognise the afootness of very serious societal, economic and political malaises - the sort of which it is preferable to remain ignorant.

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.

Alcohol related lobby groups such as Alcohol Concern, seems to have garnered quite a lot of media coverage recently. Consider the following:

Call to stop children's drinking and Call to raise drinking age to 21

The first is utterly unenforceable and the second is abhorrent. Rather than copying the highly regulatory approach favoured by MADD, I - along with many others - have always been in favour of the more sophisticated approach to alcohol demonstrated by our neighbours across the channel. So what would be the sole result of the proposed laws? They'd successfully fill the middle classes with angst as they wondered whether they'd be shopped for offering little Penelope a sip of wine or letting Rufus indulge in a glass of West Country cider to accompany his Sunday roast. Come to think of it middle-class consternation - tremendous.

William McGonagall - the 'worst poet in british history'

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!

Alas! I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away

On the last Sabbath day of 1879,

Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

See more here

Fear, loathing and immeasurable satisfaction

Wild horses couldn't drag me away from this one: watch Hunter S. Thompson interview (after a fashion) Keith Richards.

Hardly knew thee? I never knew thee!

3287.6 people die every day in road accidents across the world. 174 people die of flu-related illness daily in the States alone. Between 1988 and 2000, 47 Oklahomans were hospitalised as a result of lawnmower-related burns; 5 ultimately perished. Now ask me why I'm not praying for the souls of the Virginia Tech. victims...no, true, because I don't believe in god - but also because they are no dearer to me than any of the figures cited above. That they happened to bite the dust at the same time in the same place does not make their death any more of a tragedy, or any less of a statistic. There hasn't been a gun massacre of these proportions in the US since 1999. The shooter was mentally unstable; but perfectly sane people veer into oncoming traffic every day of the week. Why is it that the more unusual and outstanding killings attract the most concern? I'm concerned about the quotidienne killers! the blights that are here to stay; not these trickster-reapers that pop up unexpectedly at irregular intervals and playfully drag a few unfortunates down the Styx. If campus-blanket-gun-massacre victims continue to meet their maker at a rate of 32 every 8 years, I think I can live with that, don't you?

Update: Good measured material, once again, from our friends at Spiked.

Has Hamilton the drive to be a sporting hero?

It's the question all the papers are asking.

Nappy Headed?

Predictably the liberal e-zine Spiked, of which Dogtooth is much enamoured, has taken a strong editorial line in the Don Imus affair, and initially I sided with them, being fairly keen on free speech myself (other startling facts about me: I don't like being hit on the head and I don't endorse murder) but I'm starting to have my doubts. If some form of government legislation had forced CBS to fire Imus then I would have been dead against it, but no coercion was involved. CBS fired Imus because they judged him to be, despite his large audience, to be more of a problem than an asset. Do we think that a private company should be forced to suffer financially just to defend an elderly racist's right to free speech? Just because we are glad to live in countries which allow freedom of media does not mean our media should gratuitously offend. Do I think that I should be allowed to draw Mohammad? Yes. Do I plan to do so? No. I feel no compulsion to risk my safety to exercise a theoretical right.

Breakfast of Champions:

So farewell then Kurt Vonnegut.

Hamilton gets distracted...

I was originally going to complain about something or other, but I saw this instead.

Also, here is Mme. Moitessier by Ingres. I think it is a very good painting.

Post-Newt Winter '07: A Retrospective

Dogtooth's soul is nervously sipping a long dark cup of tea, and he is left feeling profoundly unoriginal this afternoon. Here are some of the more brilliant examples of our journalism from the last few months.

• How It All Began
• Anadin Extra
• Hamilton Craves an Iron Liver
• Dogtooth is a Tree-hugging Pinko
• Hamilton's Rip-snorting Melville Pastiche
• Dogtooth's Early-afternoon Routine (inc. Flaubert/Zombies)
• The London Prodigal's Lovecraftian Laundry Nightmare

Sentimental claptrap pertaining to legitimised violence:

Appy polly logies for the long absence. I had pressing undersea business to attend to. It looks like I'm holding the fort here at Newt Towers - The London Prodigal is off net, and Dogtooth is in Wales, where the enlightening force of the blogosphere has yet to reach.
Speaking of Wales, I have just watched Joe Calzaghe beat Peter Manfredo in Cardiff. The event was a poignant one. Manfredo was a former contestant on Sly Stallone's boxing reality show The Contender: a product of television as much as of any boxing gym. He described himself before the match as 'the real Rocky', and believed he could win by sheer 'cojones'. Naturally he got taken apart. Manfredo is brash and young, aggressive in the ring and outside it. Calzaghe is camera shy, dignified, his face always tinged with a Latino Celtic melancholy even in victory, and for much of his career inexplicably obscure and unpopular. Manfredo catapulted to fame in a few weeks, while Calzaghe had to put in years at the top of his sport before getting any attention at all.
I watched the American Dream being taken apart: Calzaghe has a tight, cold style and Manfredo barely laid a finger on him. What surprised me was that I wasn't entirely happy about it. When Manfredo came out of the ring in the third round he must have known he was already lost, soon he was up against the ropes and offering no resistance as Calzaghe pummelled him round the head. The referee stopped the match, not because Manfredo showed signs of any serious hurt, but because he was so soundly outclassed. Many, including Frank Warren, feel that the match ended prematurely, but this in itself seems a suitably unromantic, tired, European ending for an American dreamer. Calzaghe has now won twenty fights as a WBO super-middleweight champion, making him the longest reigning title holder around, Manfredo will be heading home physically unharmed, but with his fairytale cut coldly short, after a fight he could never have hoped to have won. It is probably worth remembering that before Rocky there was On The Waterfront, and as Calzaghe said before the fight 'he's the contender, I'm the champion'.

Wife Beater Triacontaology

The Wife Beater Epic.
While our serial polygimist hero beats his wives sinister forces are moving in the galaxy.

The hero is a devout catho-marriagist- a bizarre religion based on the idea that there is no god, there is only marriage.

His almost insatiable lust drives him to marry repeatedly. There is no deeper reason for beating his wives, he just does.

These films will need enormous amounts of disposable finance and if any readers know of financiers will they please get in touch.

March of the Idiots

I was just watching the News at Ten, and a report on global warming suggested that 2007 was predicted to be 'the hottest year in the history of the world' - Hamilton keeps an open mind about anthropogenic global warming, and certainly distrusts the Bush/Clarkson school of head-in-the-sanding, but he suspects that whoever wrote the report didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

Jargonising

Question Time last night was a cringe-and-wince affair. Dimbleby was in playful mood, as was the former primate, Lord Carey, though his treatment of casino-building as a 'moral question' scores him no points with the Newt. Nigel Farage rather delightfully suggested a Tory/Labour merger, but as ever it was the odious Blears who really ruffled my trousers with here flight-attendant-intonations and vaginal-deodorant viewpoint. Here are a few of my most-hated potboilers from the current political rostrum:

'Walk-on-by society' - a favourite of David Cameron. It's just trite.

'All walks of life' - a patronising euphemism for 'different careers, some of which (we are loath to admit) might be more productive and remunerative than others'.

'A range of different faiths and cultures' - The Newt has no real sympathy with either Faith or Culture, but is willing to tolerate any harmless entity. Dogtooth is not opposing diversity - it's just a disgusting phrase that makes me want to tear out my tongue and staple it to my ear.

'Apologist' - this has suffered recently from very lazy usage (it's been a bad year for -isms). An apologist for slavery is someone who defends and upholds slavery. I don't think that's quite what Ms Blears meant...

Idle scribblings regarding countries to the east

Ayatollah-shy Magical Realist Salman Rushdie reckons that Islam needs a reformation, such as Christianity went through. As far as I can recall the Christian reformation involved a return to literal interpretations of sacred texts, a rejection of temporal authority, a cult of martyrdom, apocalyptic rhetoric, factional warfare, theocratic governments and the destruction of sacred images.

On a related topic: I think I was more upset about the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyam than any of the human rights abuses of the Taliban. Not something which I am particularly proud of.

Saw this on the tube

I'm aghast...

O what a rogue and peasant load of detestable balls!

Enough of this idiocy! I never thought I'd drink to see the day when Mick Hume (Dogtooth's man of the moment) didn't go far enough - although in his defence, he writes for a respectable blog and must of needs retain some public relations, not having a faceless pseudonym to take the blame for all his vitriole and aggressive journalism.

In short, Dogtooth feels he can say with some confidence that he does not feel in the slightest bit apologetic for the slave-trade. I might as well apologise for the Bay of Pigs or the Harrying of the North. Remorse is a personal affliction, to be dealt with personally by those whom it visits. I suppose I could plead, like Paxman did tonight, that my family were not remotely implicated in the trade - but even this is a weak line of reasoning. Let us suppose for just a moment that 3 generations of my family had profited handsomely from the transportation of slaves to plantations in the West Indies; that my great-great-great-grandfather had owned a remunerative fleet of slavers in Liverpool; that my grandfather had experimented on Jewish babies at Buchenwald and that one of my maternal uncles were a Manson...

...Regret - that the ignorant public associates me with such historical bloopers? Possibly. Remorse on behalf of my "forefathers"? Absolutely not. The Post-Newt has long maintained that family is a myth. And I refuse blankly to be held to account for the actions of those whose only claim on my identity is some similar DNA or a common blood group.

And I'm sorry, but this feeble mantra of 'Slavery's still with us!' will have to bite the dust as well - in spite of Madeleine Bunting's bleeding heart. Yes, there is still sex-trafficing and exploitation of migrant labour, but this, need I say, is a far cry from the African slave trade, which enjoyed social, governmental and commercial support.

Of course, I am forced to concede on a point that no-one had yet made. In the early days of abolitionism in both England and the States, only a handful of people raised their heads above the political parapet. I have to confront the fact that, in all probability, my attitude to slavery would have been one of support or indifference. But personality is the fickle darling of history. As a lusty carnivore, I am certainly a pariah in the making - the next century's moral scapegoat. Killing animals and eating their flesh is dispicable, surely...

Andy Goldsworthy intrigues me...Or rather I should say: his work is very engaging. For, as he proved in interview tonight, it is repeatedly necessary to separate artists from their creations. Most absorbing were the fallen tree which Goldsworthy framed with a brick-wall enclosure, and the glass window covered in densely-packed manure, leaving only a serpentine portion of uncovered glass running from one side to the other, whose resemblance to the Thames unhappily conjured in my mind the Eastenders closing credits. In spite of this, the work is an appealing spectacle. Goldsworthy, naturally, spoke of 'deeper levels', and the importance of the caked manure in reminding the squeamish public why grass grows and crops flourish. As a viewer, I struggled to incorporate arable farming technique - and my sensibilites relating to this subject - into my appreciation of the piece. But I liked the funny colours and the windey-woundy glassy snakey thing.

Ivory Bill: Buffalo Bills African cousin...

The Ivory Billed Woodpecker disappeared, then it came back. Or did it. At first I was excited at the prospect of this cryptozoological oddity, but really, it's just a big bird. More exciting than a sparrow, but not a patch on Argentavis magnificens. If the Ivory Billed Woodpecker did exists, we wouldn't give a toss, as evidenced by the western worlds vast lack of interest in the Pileated Woodpecker, a bird so similar to the IBW that only an expert could tell them apart. The truth is, cryptozoology is self defeating: it's proponents love oddity and mystery, which puts them fundamentally at odds with the scientific community whose ranks they long to join, who seek truth and clarity.

In other news, the sweaty morons at Demos have suggested that pupils in British schools should be taught foreign variants of the English language (hinglish etc.) rather than the traditional form. While we're at it, let's teach them Cajun French and maths using Roman numerals. The impracticality of this situation aside, there is something rather queasy about the intellectual establishment (and much as they might hate to admit it, Demos are part of this), attempting to suck new vitality from the lively development of popular culture. India got away from us, and 'hinglish' is their language now, and Hamilton says good luck to it.

squid pro quo...?

Following a curious series of events, Dogtooth found himself at dinner with Hamilton's parents this evening. Over the course of the evening, marking their movements closely, Dogtooth was able well and truly to anatomise the both of them: two legs, two arms, one mouth (no beak evident), one head (skull dimensions conforming to homo sapiens specifications), no ink, no fins, no tentacles apparent.

The plot thickens...

A Few of my Favourite Paradoxes

These are transparently stupid problems, made soluble with a little common sense. They exercise the mind, nonetheless.

Buridan's Ass: The ass is a perfectly rational creature. It is placed at an equal distance from two identical bails of hay. Logicians conjecture that the ass will starve because it is unable to choose its prefered bail of hay.

The Ship of Theseus: Theseus's ship encounters many misfortunes on its travels of the sort that we are all used to: sea monsters, angry gods, jilted women, etc. Every time the ship is damaged, Theseus's crew replace the damaged part. Ultimately, the unhappy ship has so many misadventures that every single part of the ship will have been replaced at least once. Far away on some Afric shores, all the original wreckage of Theseus's ship washes up. The industrious locals set to work at once to piece it all together, until they reconstruct the original ship in its entirety. So...which is the real ship of Theseus: the one still afloat, or the newly-built vessel?

Drinker Paradox: I don't really understand this one, but my ribs squeak with delight at the image of everyone in a pub having to follow the lead of one man on a stool propping up the bar.

Ibid.

I was flicking through last week's Times Style magazine while I waited for my shower to warm up, and I noticed a small space-filler where the editiorial staff discussed creating the perfect woman out of various celebs (interestingly the same activity as some of the lewder men's mags get up to: I am not sure which gender this reflects worse on) and one of the component parts of the posited uberdamen was Beth Ditto's 'body confidence'. For those of you who with their fingers less firmly upon the pulse of 'popular culture', Beth Ditto is a large gay singer from indie-punk band The Gossip. Presumably Ms Ditto earned this accolade for her body confidence by daring to go out in public with a big fat arse. Ditto came to fame when NME called her the 'coolest person in rock', on account of her 'unconventionality'. Some people might think it a little controversial to call homosexuality an expression of unconventionality rather than a biological tendency, and anyone who thinks that being overweight is unconventional clearly spends too much time around anorexics and drug addicts (which seems about right for music journalists). According to Wikipedia, Ditto also appeared in the altogether in lesbian smut rag On Our Backs. If appearing in gay porn wins you the respect of the Times itself, perhaps I shouldn't have spent so much money bribing that magazine...

Anyroad - what I'm very slowly getting around to is this: not only have I never heard of The Gossip, but I don't know anyone else who has either, and I severely doubt the writers of the Times Style have them on their CD changers. Despite how 'right on' the NME staff thought themselves, they were merely continuing the tradition of women being judged by their looks, not by their actions, and while the music industry abounds with men who are ugly, gay, or both, to be either as a woman marks you out for attention.

Satire & The Public Domain

The problem with bad parodies is that they serve no purpose. A good parody, like one's shadow at evening, rises to meet its mark, confronts it with a waggish dignity. It need not destroy its target, as Lewis Carroll did Robert Southey - there is room for parody and parodied to co-exist until - like Dennis Thatcher - with the passing of time the original is absorbed into the mimicry. Some parodies completely fail to register on the scale (see Ezra Pound's 'The Poems of Alfred Venison' ); others prove that parody can be generous and genuinely amusing (it usually isn't) - see Hugh Kingsmill's Housman rip-off.

With all of this in mind, I find myself angered by everyone's present infatuation with Uncyclopedia. This noisome dig at Wikipedia is excessively tedious and not very funny. It accompanies the tiresome attitude that Wikipedia is not 100% reliable, and consequently completely redundant. Wikipedia is plainly a marvel: one of the wonders of the internet - perhaps the most useful tool since email. I know for a fact that Hamilton has passed many a sleepless night, lost deeply and intensely within its pages. I have offered a comparison between the two sites by examining their respective treatment of the German electronica group Kraftwerk. Notice that Uncyclopedia - in the feeblest of satirical wet-farts - makes the creative leap from German pop music to Hitler. It pains me to point out - given the nerdiness of the reference - that Viv Stanshall cornered the market in Hitler/band-line-up gags back in the late 60s when he played MC to the Bonzos' big band:

Princess Anne on sousaphone. Mmm!
Looking very relaxed Adolf Hitler on vibes.

It seemed to be a sort of monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive

I've just been confronted by a remarkably unusual sight:

While innocently searching the internet for a new distraction, I turned my head to admire my room's majestic state, then quite suddenly my clothes reared up into one gargantuan form. The creature stared at me (as far as a pile of clothes can stare) and issued an utterance (from where this noise actually emerged I am still uncertain):
"Wash me." It barked
"No." I responded
Flustered by this show of defiance the creature's form quickly dissipated. My recovery from this shock would be most helpfully aided if someone could provide me too with a wet flannel to drape across my brow à la Dogtooth.

More idiocy relating to sport

For the love of Mike! Is there any chance we might employ a touch of perspective when it comes to Freddie Flintoff's banishment to moral Coventry? Duncan Fletcher commented sternly on the 'serious nature of the incident', Flintoff's name is mud, and everywhere his image has been thrown on the not-so-proverbial bonfire of the insanities. English cricket fans are louts. 100%, solid gold, lager-swilling hoodlums. Somehow they can afford expensive tickets for international sports events, so Dogtooth is assuming - perhaps unreasonably - that when they are not making mini Mexican waves with their penises, they hold down normal, burdensome nine-to-five jobs. Furthermore, a fairly considerable proportion of Britons - the people I'm supposed to give a damn about because we are 'united under a common flag' - (myself not excluded) drink insane quantities on a regular basis and still get up in the morning. Andrew Flintoff is onesuch. But wherefore the sudden puritanical moral outrage? Is he obliged to conduct himself decorously because he is 'a role-model to youngsters', or a 'representative of his country abroad'? Somehow when I think of the poor little ten-year-old boy sobbing quietly into his Flintoff-themed pillowcase, my sympathies remain unextended.

So lets cut to the nut: Flintoff's contract probably contains a clause in which it is stated that he must behave in a manner befitting blah-blah-blah when representing his national team etc. Frankly even that is ridiculous. If he can drink tequila shots all night, almost drown in a pedalo-related incident, and still get up in the morning and bowl 8 wickets (and he's probably done it before!) then good on him. Strong effort. Kudos and post-match naked locker-room Cava-drenched towel fights. Nice. I'd have him for the annual rounders game against Hamilton's formidable Squid XI any day.

Update: Further to the point, I came across this article today, courtesy of the ever-grounded Mick Hume. Finger on the pulse, and all that.

Self Cannibalism

This will be a short post, because I can't in good faith write eight hundred words on this subject, but I can think of two ways to increase the number of people giving blood -

1. They put the bag in your lap and let you watch it slowly fill with warm blood that only seconds ago was rushing out of your heart.
2. Half the blood you donate is given back to you in a bottle, and you can take it home to make black pudding or enrich stews. Imagine the surprise of your friends!

Both these options will allow the Blood Service to offer the doner an odd, complicated experiences of real appeal to those of a philosophical bent, and difficult to replicate at home without some effort and risk.

I'll be back tommorow, because I want to talk about Algernon Bastard...

Wait, wait, wait: I wanted to check that I wasn't crazy to think that you could put blood in stews (I wasn't) and I found this. Funny how the less I eat the more I think about food and cooking. The lamb liquor looks like it could be the answer to my prayers.

Pasteboard Masks...

from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.



This program was designed so idiots could see what celebrities they looked like (I did try it on myself, and it said I looked like Johny Depp, which despite my affirmation exercises is quite a long way from the truth), but to stop at that is nothing but a failure of imagination. Who knew, for example, that Beckett looked 83% like himself, and 75% like Roland Barthes, while Richard Dawkins looks 59% like Silvio Berlusconi? Kate Bush looks like Natalie Imbruglia, Halle Berry and Sophie Marceau, among others, which seems about right. John Barth looks 62% like Woody Allen, 61% Gregory Peck, and 46% like Bette Davis.
Most delightful of all was the effect that Hunter S. Thompson and Thomas Pynchon had on the machine. With Thompson the system was unable to locate his face, and when I manually pointed it out it was then claimed that he looked like no-one else in history. Pynchon's photo just couldn't be entered at all.

Little of import.

I'm a tired and grumpy cephalopod this morning: I stayed up all night reading about new book about Somalia in the 90's, and then I dreamt that Kalashnikov-wielding warlord in a limousine was trying to kill me, because I made fun of him over the internet. Anyhoo.

I read an article about etiquette classes just now. I must admit, though hardly a class warrior, I couldn't help but choke a little on my morning layer cake (a favourite of Dogtooth’s, it involves crushed Anadin and whisky, and rarely makes you feel any better). I will of course accept the existence of such a thing as manners, dependant on respect for others, but can people not see that etiquette is merely a system of shibboleths which the idle rich use to identify themselves, like the lisp of and 50's homosexual or the handshake of a mason. Perhaps I'm just bitter: tentacles and a beak make for poor table manners.

I recently watched, over t'internet, a new episode of House about a brain damaged savant with remarkable piano-playing abilities. Two questions arose - first of all, what is this post-Rain Man obsession with autism and savants? I admit they are fairly interesting, but I don't see why a general public who display no interest in any other aspects of neurology should take these particular subjects to their heart. The more important question, of course, is how do I begin to justify stealing television over the web? I'll come back on that, either with a functioning excuse or a great deal more free time.

You might not hear from Dogtooth and I for a couple of days: we're off on a father and son whaling trip, by which I mean we hope to harpoon both a bull whale and a calf. Don't worry, we always catch-and-release.

Clerihew, where are you?

A clerihew is an ametrical four line poem which starts with the name of a person and then describes them. Go on, you know you want to.

Ezra Pound
Is widely accepted to have broken new poetic ground.
However, this does not excuse
His feelings on the Jews.

W.B Yeats
Was interested in altered states,
But he never lived to see the widespread availability of pot
So he went to séances, and also drank a lot.

D.H. Lawrence:
To him mosquitoes and bats were an abhorrence.
The animal kingdom proved too much for him to take
So he threw a log at a snake.

In Praise of Molly

I'm still a little shaky after last night's brush with the unimaginable conspiracy which exists around, and to some extent within, my local pub, but I've settled my nerves with Dogtooth's favoured analgesic - Anadin Extra (actually I favour a cheaper, own brand alternative, but I'm trying to keep things looking classy) - and I want to write about Achewood.

Good comic strips are very rare (I was briefly exposed to the Sun's 'funnies' while waiting for my tea to brew yesterday morning, and can only report disappointment, or, in one example, actual offence), and in the open cloaca of the web anything of any merit at all whatsoever is rarer still, so Achewood is a daily delight. I like Achewood because of Roast Beef, a cat whose debilitating depression causes him to shower in his socks and to overspice nachos; I like it because of Lyle, a stuffed tiger who wishes he could wake up with the liquor already inside him. I like Achewood because of the constant references to the preparation and consumption of food, and because of the Bangsian themes of death and resurrection. I like the character Emeril LeGoinegasque, a Melungeon who speaks in a bizzare cod-chaucerian manner and trash-spots recreationally. Most of all though, I like the timing. Gags are offbeat and asymmetrical. A punchline does not end the strip, but is followed by a silence, or a change of topic. It is delicate, intelligent, and, a (dare I say it) postmodern. Beckett uses the same technique of the ruined laugh, the abortive joke.

The entire comic exists in a weird, semi-real space, which intersects uncannily with our own world: the characters keep blogs which can be read online, and they listen to bands and cook foods which exist in our own world, but they also have their own peculiar life, where stuffed animals talk and cats gather ever year for a Great Outdoor Fight where hundreds of them brawl to the death for personal pride. You can buy Roast Beef's t-shirt (I am the guy who sucks. Plus I got depression.) or Raymond Smuckles the millionaire party cat's brand of hot sauce. The fictional urban recreation of trash-spotting is gaining a real-world following. You can buy a novel written by the gentlemanly serial killer Nice Pete or have your problems answered by the ever knowledgeable Ray.

Achewood bills itself as 'a momentary diversion on the road to the grave'. Well divert away; I raise a glass of my customary cocktail (cut-price red wine, white cider, whisky, ink, salty sea water and saltier tears, mixed in a dustbin before breakfast and sipped throughout the day) and drink to its creator, Chris Onstad.

In other news, I cut and pasted another's work (above) without any knowledge of copyright law, and the legality or otherwise of my act. Don't be surprised if you see me being led away by the 5-0 with five pairs of handcuffs on me.

A New and Radical Theory of Existence

Dark deeds abound: Hamilton's life was threatened yesterday by a sinister intelligence living behind the wall of the Muted Slughorn. Perhaps it was his dangerous new theory of existence as a vector that tickled the creature so. Hamilton postulated that existence - currently measured only by duration in Time - should also be considered Spatially. People lament that their lives are short, their days numbered. 'My existence stops at 6'1",' rejoins Hamilton, waving an errant tentacle at the empty space above his head, 'and yet it is not a cause for complaint.' Dogtooth paced out his days on this earth, never to stand taller than 5'9" - was he to be followed by a funeral procession all his life, mourning the inches that might have been? A pleasant equilibrium is seen in the respective lives of men and women: on average, women live longer; men, on average, have a greater physical volume. We have not done the sums, but we feel confident that, all things considered, men and women enjoy the same quantity of existence. That fateful sandwich cannot be regarded so morbidly when one considers that, in her short life, Mama Cass existed in more places at any one time than her more slender contemporaries. It is clear that the only achievable way of extending one's life is to give oneself heartily to fatty foods. Mankind can only travel forward in time, turning what would otherwise be a scalar existence into a vector measurement. It is obvious that, were we to travel back in time to our conception, we would never have existed.

Unfortunately, the vector factor must be Time. It is, however, very pleasing to consider our spatial activity as a vector. I conjecture, for example, that if my existence was a spatial vector, I could travel ten yards from one tree to another tree, then back to the first tree retracing my steps, and claim never to have made the journey. I don't know much about physics, but...

Avian Pre-History & The Zombie Apocalypse

These two subjects are in no way interconnected (if only...). It's been a very avian sort of a morning for Dogtooth: when I stepped out to meet the a.m. I noticed the reptilian sprawl of the coot's foot; the geese were steeped in honied indolence - 'Vanish, ye phantoms, from my idle spright', said I. To no avail. I returned and began the usual mid-morning Wikibrowsing: I flirted with falconry, and settled finally on a comprehensive index of Late Quaternary Prehistoric Birds. If, like me, you are of such a disposition that relishes the occasional departure from rocky reality to shamanic flights of fancy, you no doubt find the pre-history of the Earth an engrossing subject. I have learnt about bolide impacts, Moa and post-glacial rebound. Last year the London Prodigal and I visited the Horniman museum in SE London (Forest Hill - where they nabbed the bank-robbers - nice place). Exquisite taxidermy was the order of the day. I recall with great fondness a stuffed Dodo. I think it is the finality of extinction - seemingly more final than death (a debatable Newt point) - that has such an impact on the self-righteous failed celebrities who rally round the endangered species with their shabby rhetoric and cheap, hand-wringing catchphrases...

(Intermission: Dogtooth drinks a glass of water and drapes a wet flannel over his brow.)

Today my preferred ally in the zombie invasion we are all anticipating is Gustave Flaubert (pictured above). He was known at times to rampage fiercely around his study, waving his arms and sweating furiously; on other occasions he would loafe for hours on the hearth-rug, thinking. He displays the sort of temperament that can adapt quickly to its surroundings: when we are fighting the zombies, I will obviously want him angry and alert; at other times I will want him to keep himself quietly in a corner while I work on the problem of dispelling the zombies and saving mankind

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the

supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities[.]

No movie featuring Harry Dean Stanton in a supporting role can be altogether bad

Pah! I've been press-ganged into this. I have a ferocious head-ache after listening to the whole of Captain Beefheart's 'Trout-Mask Replica', then Tom Waits' 'Bastards' followed by 'Disco Hits of the 1970's' - the situation has been exacerbated by 'Play that Funky Music [White Boy]' seemingly playing on a loop.

Naturally enough there is something cheering me at present; aside from this delicious Cabernet Sauvignon courtesy of the good people at Casa Lapostolle. That being the forthcoming release of the latest David Lynch film: 'INLAND EMPIRE'. Mr Lynch, another photogenic character, is simultaneously exhibiting a major art retrospective at the Fondation Cartier. Both of these are earning 'rave reviews' - I can't possibly comment - but I'll be off to my local Odeon come March 9th (film) and hopefully Paris before May 27th (exhibition).

All Manner of Miscellaneous Bollocks [ed. Dogtooth]

I was going to write a review of my current obsession, the webcomic Achewood, but I'm feeling lethargic, so instead I'm just going to throw you a handfull of ill-conceived jokes and observations in the manner of a unemployed Parisian left-bank [rive-gauche? ed. Dogtooth] 'thinker'.

Firstly, inspired by Dogtooth's arch intellectual in-jokery I thought I'd dig up some literary and artistic chat-up lines I crafted some time ago:

Postmodernist: Hey baby, how would you like to mute my post-horn?
Futurist: To be honest, I'm just looking for a quick shag...

Surrealist: Fancy making a call on my lobster telephone?

Vorticist: Sleep with me or I'll hit you on the tits with this bar stool.

Beat Novelist: Can I balance this whisky bottle on your head?

If you are anything like me you will have been wanting to see Norman Mailer bite a chunk out of Rip Torn's ear for some time. .

I was reading the Sunday Times in bed this morning (more accurately, I woke up and found the Sunday Times was in bed with me, and a good deal of the ink was actually on me: I am becoming text) and I saw a mention of the TV series Hornblower. For some reason I have a real objection to this series, and I can't for the life of me remember why. Any suggestions would be welcome.

I was going to give you a picture of the Florentine Pietà in a sort of lame attempt to show that I'm just as down with the visual arts as Dogtooth, but it doesn't really photograph that well, so instead here's a picture of Beckett, the most photogenic man in history.

The Proto-Surrealist

The canvasses of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), sui-generis painter and forefather of the Surrealist movement in Art, have an unsettling effect. The paintings are mostly characterised by empty streets and squares, colonnades, squat architecture, statues, mannequins, shadows and distant steam trains; people rarely feature. His style was unique, but de Chirico has been eclipsed in fame by subsequent Surrealist painters whose real contributions are unworthy of his legacy: Magritte and Ernst are off the hook, but Dali's reputation seems to have enjoyed immeasurable indulgence in the past fifty years. I cannot believe that people still have such a generous opinion of his gaudy, cheap tricks and transparent tromp l'oeil. I will concede only as far as to give him due credit for the crucifiction paintings, which, for sheer, brilliant perspective, are surely a marvel. But I digress...and now for something completely stupid: an impromptu Surrealist/Dada shaggy dog anecdote.

Rene Magritte was throwing a birthday bash for his friend Andre Breton. The invitations were all written automatically by their friend Tristan Tzara and, as a result, were totally incomprehensible to the few invitees who received them. Furthermore, Magritte had asked his friend Jean "Hans" Arp to address the invitations. This resulted in a somewhat eclectic guest-list after Arp decided the guests should be chosen according to the laws of chance. But they were all there. Max Ernst arrived in good time riding a mechanical elephant. Dali was very late: he apologised gushingly and explained that he had lost track of the time because all the clocks in his house had inexplicably melted. He had tried to ring ahead, of course, but had found, to his dismay, that some idiot had substituted a lobster for his telephone. Frida Khalo had called earlier in the week to explain that she would, on the day of the party, be undergoing complex surgery to donate her circulatory system to a woman who looked exactly like her. Joan Miro got confused. Magritte had decorated Breton's hall with all manner of wonderful contrivances: cloudy-blue-sky wallpaper; giant pipes, cannons and a model train emerging from the fireplace. The dress code specified dark suits with bowler hats. Food was provided in the form of apples. All the drinking cups were completely useless. All the urinals were upside-down. Breton's speech was pretentious and boring. Ernst started an apple fight and was ejected forcibly. Dali visibly began hitting on Georgette, pinching her rear and cupping her breasts with his hand. Miro was all over the place. Celebes came crashing through the wall and drenched everyone in bottom-grease. At that point, Duchamp entered dramatically, farted, then sat down and started playing chess. The rest is history.

A likely story...

I was still in bed, enjoying my morning glass of Asda's pale medium sherry, when Dogtooth burst through the door, paler even than usual and characteristically short of breath. It seems that on one of his not infrequent sojourns amongst the higher planes he had run across none other than Herman Melville, customs officer and erstwhile pasteboard mask. Melville had, according to Dogtooth, been much exercised on the topic of certain passages which a ruthless editor had expunged from his original manuscript of Moby Dick. He entrusted to my fellow Newtist this short chapter, in which Ishmael describes a night out in Leeds with certain of his shipmates:

The Sandwich

Some time had we spent in our revels, jostling round the long wooden bar, when we were called to attention by the ringing of a bell. I looked to the source of the sound, and saw the bell-man was no other than our own host, the old landlord, who tugged on the bell-rope with a cheerful vigour, crying out ‘time gentlemen, time!’
This peculiar cry was known to all the merry fellows of the tavern, and catching me by the sleeve one of my companions communicated to me by certain gestures that we would now have to leave our drinking. It is a curious fact that will churches of all denominations call their followers to worship, this church sends its followers away by the same signal: the knelling of a bell.

Out then, out into the cold night. Me and my friends gathered together and set off, pushing our hands deep into our pockets against the biting wind, to find the only welcome we might hope to receive on such a night: the warm welcome of a Këbab shop. Presently we came upon a brightly lit doorway from which proceeded those vapours and odours peculiar to the frying of meat. In we surged. A dusky fellow was standing behind the counter, and as I approached he looked up to await my order.
‘What shall I have?’ cried I. ‘A doner? No! For a doner is merely the scrapings of a sheep, and I am no man to eat scrapings. A doner they call it? It is a poor gift to receive another’s leavings. A large shish sir.’ The old gentleman mutely nodded his assent and taking out a couple of skewers on which there lay ready pieces of mutton cunningly attached, he threw them on the grill.
Very soon the meat was cooked, and shortly after that it came to the counter, pressed into a certain type of flat loaf, commonly used for this purpose.
‘Chilli? Garlic sauce?’ asked the server.
‘Yes, both, and a little salad if you please’ I answered. For just as the mildest man is apt, when he drinks, to become a little spicy, so while we may like mild food in the daytime, after our revels we inevitably prefer it a little hotter.

I had eaten some part of this kebab, when I felt myself becoming a little listless, a little sluggish, unwilling to raise each new morsel to my lips.
‘What’s this’ I thought, ‘am I to be defated by this so called ‘Këbab’. Why! I declare that despite its fearsome name this fellow is no more than a sandwich. And who am I to be unable to finish a sandwich. For shame, a harmless little sandwich!’
Cheered by this thought, I plied the fork with a renewed vigour, and soon the whole was so much reduced that I could easily take it up in me two hands, and there consume it in three or for large bites.

Oh! A fine meal we had. And a fine and jolly meal is this life for us, until we are laid in our coffins, spiced with the tears of our loved ones, and garnished with a salad of funeral leaves, clapped between slices of wood and pressed into the great loaf of the ground.

The Ladies' Man

It is well established on board the robust Newt that Bob Dylan, though a lyricist and songwriter of the highest calibre, can teach us nothing about anything. Leonard Cohen is such another:

The river is swollen up with rusty cans,
And the trees are burning in your promised land -

Admiration flows freely from Dogtooth's quill for the man who brought us such folk gems as 'So Long, Marianne' & 'Suzanne', and such driving electroid flake-Socialist anthems as 'First We Take Manhatten' and 'Jazz Police'. Cohen - with his crumbling features and preternatural growl - is also an irresistible walking advertisement for the beneficial effects of tobacco. Start smoking: not only will you be a massive hit with the broads, but your voice will drop an octave every five years until you die (Dogtooth squirms with pleasure at the prospect of realising his ultimate fantasy: to communicate with tanks, and level cathedrals with a single boom). One is reminded, incidentally, of the Canadian insistence that the Quebecois smoke in church. Well Cohen doesn't attend church; no doubt he farts audibly in the Synagogue, though.

All dogs have four legs; my cat has four legs, therefore...my cat is a dog?

Once again I am late to the table for Oscars-related comment, but I want to repeat something which has exercised Dogtooth and I considerably in the taproom of the Muted Slughorn; namely, the category error of those who equate the successes and failures of 'Britain' with themselves. For example, the newspapers like to suggest that Britain's high rate of obesity is something their readers should be concerned about. Piffle. Be you fat as a pregnant sea-cow or skinnier than half a rake, this has nothing to do with living in the middle of an 'obesity epidemic' (a phrase clearly thought up by someone who either did not know what either obesity or epidemic was) and everything to do with your own diet, habits, genetic legacy and metabolism. Fat people are not your enemy, they are people who have a different shape, either through choice or fortune. As far as I can gather the way people think is 'Britain as a whole is becoming fatter, fatter people die younger, thus I, as a Briton, am going to die younger. I suppose it's easier than just stepping on the scales and taking control of your own lifestyle.

In the same way, when it comes to the Oscars people think that Helen Mirren, an Englishwoman, winning an Oscar in some way reflects well on them. It doesn't, unless you are her parents. It's times like these I feel glad that I live 10,000 feet below the reaches of any nation, territory or state.

Spaghetti, etc

Ennio Morricone just keeps coming good. Dogtooth found himself transfixed by the final showdown of 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly', watching it on a poky screen in the late-night kebab/pizza shop sometime in the wee hours of this morning. It turns out that the legendary theme-tune is great to improvise in the shower of a hungover morning. The acoustics are perfect. Orthodoxy relating to this particular score prescribes a shrill whistle, but Dogtooth prefers to cup his hands over his mouth for an effect known in amateur shower-singing circles as the 'barn owl' or 'Indian whoop'. For the second theme, the standard steely air-guitar impression is acceptable. Dogtooth - and it is only a personal provision - sometimes chooses to accompany the second phase by rhythmically drum-tapping his wet naked thighs. The body is a mine of hitherto unexplored musical potential. Be inventive.

The Wizard of the Strings

Dogtooth is dazzled afresh. While roaming YouTube in pleasant, Quixotic mood this morning, I discovered the delights of ukelele genius Roy Smeck. I urge Newtists to devote as much time as possible to this one: fall in love with his boyish grin, his Vaudeville charm; see his feats, his flourishes and all manner of crowd-tickling japeries!

Slow Learner

Remarkable events are afoot. I recently claimed on this blog that someone slid a picture of a squid bathing in a tub of syrup beneath my door. As some of you may have guessed, this was nothing more than a bare faced lie. I drew the picture myself to get attention and raise a smile. However, like the boy who cried Woolf, my chickens have come home to roost and my mixed metaphors run rampant. I recently went for a pre-arranged meeting with my tutor. The office I was going to is in fairly deserted corridor, on which it is the only occupied room. My tutor would have walked to the office from the door nearest the car park, which was at the other end of the corridor. As I walked down said corridor I glanced the wall on my right, only to see that someone had pinned a picture of a squid roughly to the wall, in a place where no-one but I would have seen it.
Anyone who reads as much Pynchon as I do will have no doubt what is happening. Although I only meant to create a throwaway joke I have accidentally tappped into some sort of vast secret reality, which is now directly targeting me. Who is doing this? May I tickle his creatures? If anyone needs me I'll be down at the White Visitation beating the shit out of Roger Mexico.

Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'

The London Prodigal's wall is reverberating. For the past hour some chap has been pounding the bejesus out of the sweet, innocent blonde girl next door. The London Prodigal considers an evening fortuitous if he lasts much more than five minutes. I'll have to congratulate this stranger on his libido in the morning. Groans of the Britons indeed.

Remember, there's always someone to blame...

I realise that this is to some extent old news, but the latest thing to get me spitting ink is the lawsuit being brought against the owners of Myspace.com by the families of several abuse victims, on the basis that their daughters met their abusers on the site. A cynic might suggest that this makes as much sense as somebody suing BT because they have fallen victim to one of Dogtooth's rambling and inventively repulsive obscene phone calls.

The Golden Boys of American Cinema

There are too many reasons to love the Coen brothers. Most importantly: the screenplays are immaculate; the accompanying scores are eclectic but tasteful; the characters are memorable; the camera-work is without an equal in the post-Hitchcock era; and to round it up, reel it in, cap it off and bludgeon it to death with a blunt instrument (whatever 'it' may be) - they spin a rollocking good yarn.

These superficial qualities prepare the films for the broadest appreciation. But the Coens' films stick closely to their audience afterwards. They are resonant - cannot be laid to rest. Anyone with even a snootful of enquiry must be thoroughly absorbed by the idea of America, and chiefly the vernacular mythologies that have vegetated over the few centuries since the European migrations to the States. The Coen brothers excel at picking a state - or, more broadly, a region - and doing it: myth, history, landscape filtered through a tight gauze that extracts the essentials. A few examples (I have not seen nearly enough of their films): Blood Simple = Texas: enduring images of oil-pumps, ceiling fans, neon lights, Stetsons and wide open spaces; The Big Lebowski = LA: beautiful, masterful bowling-alley vistas, wide residential streets, sandals and burger take-aways; Miller's Crossing = Atlantic State (most likely New York): black hats, corrupt policemen, criminal syndicates and Autumnal woods with carpets of auburn leaves; O Brother, Where Art Thou = the deep south: brown rivers, gospel choirs, dusty roads, blues and the diabolical crossroads myth; Fargo does the cold, desolate northern states: snow, isolation, etc. This engrossing manipulation of imagery is one of the hallmarks of a great film - a film that knows its subject intensely. Their imagery is worthy of Melville, and aboard the Post-Newt, there is no finer compliment. Long may they prosper.