Friday, September 30, 2005
Can I just say, "Everyone Says Hi" by David Bowie is a tune. Yes, yes I have had a couple of drinks. What of it?
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But my boss, right, he used to go to the Blitz club. And he’s all like Leigh Bowery this, Steve Strange that... And I’m like, you’re this old guy – you’re a bum now, and I’m sure you were a bum then. But you had this, and I had... what, Britpop? Great. There were some tunes there, I’m not going to run it down, but it was pretty meat and potatoes – no men in makeup.
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So I’ve been going out with brokers more nowadays. This afternoon I had to tag-team one of my directors. He ended up staying for at least an hour. I walked into a middle-aged grievance session: immigrants; fathers for justice; the usual Daily Mail stuff. The following phrases were used: “milkers” (breasts); “birds”; “it” (for woman); “Bas Vegas”(derivation of “Basildon” and “Las Vegas”).
Yes, I know.
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Tempted?
And has anyone seen "Harold and Kumar get the Munchies"* yet?
* Also known as "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle".
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And has anyone seen "Harold and Kumar get the Munchies"* yet?
* Also known as "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle".
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Thursday, September 29, 2005
So Ron Atkinson's making a comeback. Yeah, great. Fine. Personally, I'm more excited at having Esther Rantzen back on our screens. I have a bit of a soft spot for old Esther. There are three reasons for this:
1) She looks a bit like my Auntie Ros.
2) Her version of "La Vie En Rose" on Celebrity Stars in their Eyes was excellent - proficient, touching and charmante.
3) She seems like a game old gal.
I trust you agree.
Esther Rantzen: great.
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1) She looks a bit like my Auntie Ros.
2) Her version of "La Vie En Rose" on Celebrity Stars in their Eyes was excellent - proficient, touching and charmante.
3) She seems like a game old gal.
I trust you agree.
Esther Rantzen: great.
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I have long suspected that if - as seems certain - Gordon Brown succeeds Blair as Prime Minister he will be remembered as Labour's John Major. Oh, party members love the man, sure; but his appeal escapes me, and I think it escapes the electorate too.
Interesting comment on the Labour conference by Rob Newman, the ever-excellent Anatole Kaletsky and Boris Johnson.
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Interesting comment on the Labour conference by Rob Newman, the ever-excellent Anatole Kaletsky and Boris Johnson.
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It seems like this “blogging” thing is going out of fashion. Time for me to get back into it then.
When posting is slack it seems to be harder to put anything up – breaking the silence demands something special. I’m sure you agree that a picture of a monkey does the job better than anything else.
Any reason for not posting so much? Not really. Guess I just don’t get drunk on my own anymore. And I thought I was taking it all a bit seriously – I checked my referrals for God’s sake. Vanity, thy name is Jah Jah.
So I went to this restaurant last week with some brokers. It was alright. Lots of kind middle-aged men taking their daughters out for dinner. Sweet.
Well, that was worth waiting for.
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When posting is slack it seems to be harder to put anything up – breaking the silence demands something special. I’m sure you agree that a picture of a monkey does the job better than anything else.
Any reason for not posting so much? Not really. Guess I just don’t get drunk on my own anymore. And I thought I was taking it all a bit seriously – I checked my referrals for God’s sake. Vanity, thy name is Jah Jah.
So I went to this restaurant last week with some brokers. It was alright. Lots of kind middle-aged men taking their daughters out for dinner. Sweet.
Well, that was worth waiting for.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005
I started writing this after being annoyed at this article (mentioned earlier). I’m not quite sure where I ended up in the end.
I’ve argued this before: if football has problems it is because it is insufficiently capitalist. The clubs are not so bad - although a little cost benefit analysis and risk assessment would have saved Leeds from their current situation - it is with the supporters that the blame must lie. Clubs hold a monopoly over their fans’ loyalty, it is natural for them to exploit it; but high ticket prices and uninspiring football can only continue with the acquiescence of the supporters.
Fans must use their most powerful weapon – their money. It is unrealistic to expect people to follow a different team because they play more attractive football – although floating voters may have drifted from Manchester United to Arsenal to Chelsea over the last five years – but they should withdraw their support if they are not seeing the game played the way they would like: they can refuse to buy the replica shirts, duvet covers and season tickets by which their clubs make their supernormal profits. But as soon as this does begin to happen people complain about a crisis. Hardly. The desertion of football is the necessary trigger for it to change.
The fashionability and unprecedented exposure that football has enjoyed over the last ten years have led to unrealistic expectations. At some point the warming sun would drift away from the Premiership and something else would become popular – and at that point football would have to change to become more attractive or shake hands amicably with the departing fans and agree that we’d always have Barcelona. I suspect that “real” fans of clubs do not care too much how their club plays, as long as they are winning, and that it is the casual viewer in search of entertainment that bemoans the lack of goals. Well, maybe it’s time for those of us who know the name of Chelsea’s first choice left-back but who would never go to a game to just piss off out of it and cast our money-votes in favour of La Liga, or cricket, or Celebrity Wrestling – anything that fulfils our search for something exciting to watch. The Premiership is not for me, nor should it be. This could be goodbye.
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I’ve argued this before: if football has problems it is because it is insufficiently capitalist. The clubs are not so bad - although a little cost benefit analysis and risk assessment would have saved Leeds from their current situation - it is with the supporters that the blame must lie. Clubs hold a monopoly over their fans’ loyalty, it is natural for them to exploit it; but high ticket prices and uninspiring football can only continue with the acquiescence of the supporters.
Fans must use their most powerful weapon – their money. It is unrealistic to expect people to follow a different team because they play more attractive football – although floating voters may have drifted from Manchester United to Arsenal to Chelsea over the last five years – but they should withdraw their support if they are not seeing the game played the way they would like: they can refuse to buy the replica shirts, duvet covers and season tickets by which their clubs make their supernormal profits. But as soon as this does begin to happen people complain about a crisis. Hardly. The desertion of football is the necessary trigger for it to change.
The fashionability and unprecedented exposure that football has enjoyed over the last ten years have led to unrealistic expectations. At some point the warming sun would drift away from the Premiership and something else would become popular – and at that point football would have to change to become more attractive or shake hands amicably with the departing fans and agree that we’d always have Barcelona. I suspect that “real” fans of clubs do not care too much how their club plays, as long as they are winning, and that it is the casual viewer in search of entertainment that bemoans the lack of goals. Well, maybe it’s time for those of us who know the name of Chelsea’s first choice left-back but who would never go to a game to just piss off out of it and cast our money-votes in favour of La Liga, or cricket, or Celebrity Wrestling – anything that fulfils our search for something exciting to watch. The Premiership is not for me, nor should it be. This could be goodbye.
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Ok, so I may have brought this one on myself, but I really couldn't get past paragraph one of this.
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Ooh! The first two articles I read in today's Guardian both annoy me! From the second:
"That same day Jose Mourinho gave a press conference in which he said his team had no obligation to entertain, it was all about focus and winning. You can understand Mourinho's rationale. He is just playing by free-market rules - winning means prize money and even more fans. Only he's not factored for one variable. Despite their success the supporters are turning away - 29,000 for a Champions League game tells the story: £45 for the cheapest tickets and the fans have had enough."
You see my problem of course.
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"That same day Jose Mourinho gave a press conference in which he said his team had no obligation to entertain, it was all about focus and winning. You can understand Mourinho's rationale. He is just playing by free-market rules - winning means prize money and even more fans. Only he's not factored for one variable. Despite their success the supporters are turning away - 29,000 for a Champions League game tells the story: £45 for the cheapest tickets and the fans have had enough."
You see my problem of course.
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Monday, September 19, 2005
Is it wrong of me to delight so in Kate Moss's plunge into ignominy? She's completely without worth, of course, but she's never done anything to me.
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You might like to check this out - Democratiya. A glance at the "Editors" page should let you know if it's your sort of thing or not. For the record, it is my sort of thing.
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So I have a digital camera now, and one of those Flickr things - pictures here. They're rubbish so far, but hopefully they might improve.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005
My motivation for commentary, polemic and list-making seems to have waned of late. I still read your blog though, I can assure you of that.
Anyway, I'm off work this week. I'd love to delight you with stories of what I've been up to, but it hasn't amounted to a great deal: I've read a bit; I've putted golf balls into a mug; I've watched Loose Women; I've listened to country music. Darling, it's been wonderful.
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Anyway, I'm off work this week. I'd love to delight you with stories of what I've been up to, but it hasn't amounted to a great deal: I've read a bit; I've putted golf balls into a mug; I've watched Loose Women; I've listened to country music. Darling, it's been wonderful.
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Thursday, September 08, 2005
I broke my glasses about a year ago. They were old; I didn’t like them much; not a great loss. I realised, of course, that I should get a new pair, that wearing contact lenses for seventeen hours a day, seven days a week was probably a little foolish, but there was always another day – and anyway, it’s only my eyes, for God’s sake. A sequence of events too tedious to recount even here led me back to an opticians last month. My prescription was duly amended. Couple of weeks later and I think, “what the hell, let’s get a pair of those 'glasses' they’re all talking about.” So I did. I picked them up yesterday and I’m wearing them now.
The general consensus seems to be that I look like Woody Allen, but in a good way, apparently.
More importantly, I received a negative (though admittedly hesitant) response to my question, "But do I look like I work in bloody advertising?"
Jane tried them on. She wasn’t too keen, said they made her look too much like Supernanny. Is it possible to look too much like Supernanny?
My eyes feel strange, the wretched ingrates: guzzling, they are bloated on the moisture I'd denied them.
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The general consensus seems to be that I look like Woody Allen, but in a good way, apparently.
More importantly, I received a negative (though admittedly hesitant) response to my question, "But do I look like I work in bloody advertising?"
Jane tried them on. She wasn’t too keen, said they made her look too much like Supernanny. Is it possible to look too much like Supernanny?
My eyes feel strange, the wretched ingrates: guzzling, they are bloated on the moisture I'd denied them.
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Wednesday, September 07, 2005
As a nod to the current trend of talking about stuff in which you may have a professional or academic interest, some commodity news:
There were two major pressures on the world economy this month: high and rising energy prices and Hurricane Katrina. Traditionally August shows strong demand for oil, but this year, and with OPEC countries producing at near capacity, even more pressure was put on prices by a series of supply shocks. What the effects of these high prices will be is yet to be seen for sure, but consequences are feeding through. Japan is particularly vulnerable as it has no indigenous hydrocarbons – as oil prices rose the yen came under pressure. Hurricane Katrina made things yet worse, shutting down refining capacity in the Gulf of Mexico. The hurricane also had an effect several other commodity prices: 27% of the U.S. coffee inventories are in New Orleans warehouses, and fears that these might be lost led to a rise in the market; lumber appreciated in anticipation of the reconstruction effort.
EXTRA! EXTRA! Cattle markets bullish.
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There were two major pressures on the world economy this month: high and rising energy prices and Hurricane Katrina. Traditionally August shows strong demand for oil, but this year, and with OPEC countries producing at near capacity, even more pressure was put on prices by a series of supply shocks. What the effects of these high prices will be is yet to be seen for sure, but consequences are feeding through. Japan is particularly vulnerable as it has no indigenous hydrocarbons – as oil prices rose the yen came under pressure. Hurricane Katrina made things yet worse, shutting down refining capacity in the Gulf of Mexico. The hurricane also had an effect several other commodity prices: 27% of the U.S. coffee inventories are in New Orleans warehouses, and fears that these might be lost led to a rise in the market; lumber appreciated in anticipation of the reconstruction effort.
EXTRA! EXTRA! Cattle markets bullish.
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Right up to the moment this page came up I was going to write a devastating critique of this Guardian review. Now it comes to it I realise I can't be bothered.
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