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.