Category Archives: Uncategorized

Love and Marriage…

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Oxford Uni Press in verbose wankery shocker!

Last night at SOAS there was an anti-cuts meeting at which 25 people sat around glumly, lamenting ‘why is it that all the people at this university are so lefty / reighteous, but would never lift a finger about it?’ … Continue reading

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Gunboat diplomacy

Yesterday I saw this story on the Grauniad website It looked like a pretty ordinary day on the water at the US naval base in Norfolk, Virginia: a few short bursts of speed, a nice tail wind, some test manoeuvres … Continue reading

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No good deed left unpunished

“Black Flies” is a superior and achingly bleak account of life as a Harlem paramedic in the early 1990s.  It makes the down-est bits of the Wire look like an episode of the Good Life. I kinda reviewed it here. … Continue reading

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Brilliant new word!!! Shared-enfreude

So a facebook friend and meatspace acquaintance called Morag wrote on her facebook profile that she “loves that moment when someone is being a total twat on the bus (loud, personal obnoxious phone call) & you glance about embarrased & … Continue reading

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Films to die for (maybe)

Nigel Andrews, the Financial Times film critic went to the Venice Film Festival and all I got was this… fabulous news. “One moment, with austere enthralment, we are watching a wheat field being crossed back and forth by a combine … Continue reading

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Earworms of Keane and the Boss – alienation and anomie

I have an earworm. Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing”. The earworm bit is the chorus- “So little time Try to understand that I’m Trying to make a move just to stay in the game I try to stay awake and remember my … Continue reading

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The name game

There’s a fascinating piece from the New York Review of Books called “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” written by Peter Beinart. Anyone with a passing or more interest in the Middle East should read it. It’s full of … Continue reading

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Redemption Song Play Book

Well, the song bit is easy, and shall be followed by play (Faustus) and book (Black Flies) Right; saw “Faustus” at the Royal Exchange Theatre Tuesday last.  Man sells his soul to know more. 24 year lease, it comes due, … Continue reading

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God in the lyrics

Apropos of nothing in particular, I have a few earworms about God (the bearded vengeful ‘Christian’ one) eating my brain. Max Q’s excellent ‘Way of the World’, with its life-changing (for me anyhow) lyric “There is God or the Bomb, … Continue reading

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