...But everybody hates the Jews

The following message is directed specifically at anyone who has ever speculated about the root cause of Hitler's anti-Semitism: DON'T! I've heard ludicrosities spanning the whole breadth of human insanity, from rumours about Hitler's own Jewish origins to half-baked anecdotes about bad childhood experiences with Jews. Like many others in Weimar Germany, Hitler had scrappy notions of Jewish Communism as the cause of Germany's political impotence, layered with Romantic notions of an Aryan Germany. You might as well suggest that Ken Livingstone's political affiliations can be explained by his having been daily cuffed around the head as a boy with a hardback copy of The Road to Serfdom.

A modern Ahab

This is beyond parody. I like to imagine the sainted Rudy standing above a small ferret and shaking his fist at it...

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.

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'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.

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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.