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2005-04-08 15:26

Mmmm... Sm�rg�spost!

�1.

Who needs a thermostat when you've got a calendar? The University's turned the heating off, and the domestic cricket season is officially underway, and it is every bit as cold and as moist as this would lead a sane persons to expect:

Rain delayed the start of the match between champions Warwickshire and an MCC XI, the traditional curtain-raiser to the new county season, at Lord's.

Heavy overnight rain and more showers on Friday led to the umpires ordering a 1315 (BST) lunch, after which a further pitch inspection will take place. The forecast for the weekend is not good, with more interruptions expected.

�2.

� Si un homme qui se croit un roi est fou, un roi qui se croit un roi ne l'est pas le moins. �

[If a man who believes himself to be a king is mad, a king who believes himself to be a king is no less so.

J Lacan, �crits p.70, quoted in P-L Assoun, _Lacan_, p.36

We're an emperor of course, and as sane as the day is long and warm and full of uninterrupted cricket.

�3.

It's an (un)prinsess!

Norska prinsessan M�rta Louise valde att f�da hemma.
Det blev en liten dotter - igen.
M�rtha Louise ber�ttade nyheten i ett sms till mamma, drottning Sonja, som rest till Rom f�r p�vens begravning.

The Norwegish prinsess M�rtha Louise chose to give birth at home.
It was a baby daughter - again.
M�rtha Louise broke the news in a text to her mum, queen Sonja, who travelled to Rome for the Pope's funeral.

Royal baby news by textning! Those wacky 'Wegian royals, isn't it?

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2005-04-08 12:23

Duh!

Hello, I'm an official spokesperson for the Department of the Bleeding Obvious!

University essays ordered online are often poor quality, a joint investigation by the BBC and a university professor suggests.

Let us see: the customer is pretty much by definition incompetent to evaluate the goods, or they could write their own stinkin' essay, and they have no recourse for being sold duff goods, on account of it being cheating anyway.

The mildly interesting thing is that there are now bespoke essay services, which we assume is an outsourcening thing based in India; to the surprise of no sane person they're rubbish too.

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2005-04-08 09:33

Prinsesssensation, made in Japan

It is the kronprinsess Vickan of Sweden! Who we conclude is taking the scenic route back from Upsidedownia, via Japan!

Victoria tar Japan med storm.
Landets journalister chockades n�r de i g�r uppt�ckte att kronprinsessan inte �r lika strikt och tr�kig som Japans kejsare.

Victoria is taking Japan by storm.
The landes journalistes were shocked when they discovered yesterday that the Kronprinsess isn't as strict and as boring as Japan's Emperor.

Dudes, Yoorpean Emperor's are way more fun! We, in particular, are a blast! All the journalistes say so, albeit admittedly on pain of death.

And Vickan has some advice for the childrens, who are after all the future:

Och s� gav kronprinsessan japanska ungdomar r�d i livet.
- Var er sj�lva, det vinner ni p�.

And so the Kronprinsess gave the Japanese youth advice on life.
"Be yourselves, then you'll succeed."

(We are ourselves, we are! Well done us!)

But not necessarily to the throne: she shamelessly sidestepped a question on the kronprinsdaughtersuccessionissue. And quite right too!

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2005-04-07 16:04

For shame, France!

We are not amused:

The thorny issue of secularism has again divided France following the authorities' instructions to fly flags at half-mast in honour of the Pope.

La�cit�, now available in Catholique. Because, unlike those naughty Islamique headscarves, the Church's teachings in no way have, do or ever could inconvenience any wimmins.

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2005-04-07 11:43

Principalityindependencegenderbugthreat!

It may be just a carpark with a sea view and landscaped tax hoopholes to you, Varied Reader, and most of the time also to us, but as Holy Roman Emperor (in exile) we are sworn to oppose the evils of republicanisme on all European soil except possibly France! So the threat to the Monaguesque succession is one we take very seriously: they have prinsesses, after all!

�tten Grimaldi har regerat det pyttelilla skatteparadiset i 706 �r, men nu finns en risk att furstend�met blir franskt igen. Monacos sj�lvst�ndighet erk�nns n�mligen bara om tronen �rvs i rakt nedstigande led p� den manliga sidan.

The Grimaldi clan has reigned the minuscule taxparadise for 706 years, but now there is a threat that the principality may become French again. Monaco's independence is only acknowleged if the throne is inherited direckly in the male line.

We say: lay off "Prins" Albert and fix the gender bug. We are an absolute monarch, but we are by no means a sexiste one.

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2005-04-07 09:39

Tonight we're gonna party like it's Fahrenheit 451

Do duh, do da duh!

It is a meme! We got it from Margaret! You could get it from us! (See below for details; terms and conditions apply.)

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

(Can we be stuck inside Celcius 233 instead, pretty please? We have a hard time caring about these such silly Farenheits.)

We learn, in any case, from Margaret that being a book in these many "Farenheits" is a question of memorising a whole book, given that the paper versions have been terminally gefarenheissen, in the service of the greater community.

So we would shamelessly seek to be something the knowledge of which would cause our company to be greatly sought after by young wimmins in large numbers and abundant quantities. We thought, having recently been gratuitously reminded of the existence of Richard Chamberlain by a passing German trashbladet, of Thornbirds, but then it occured to us that even many young wimmins and the chance to impose our passing whims on the plot were insufficient compensation for being, as we of course are currently and thankfully not, aquainted with the book in question.

So we'll compromise: Wuthering Heights for us, please. (We thought about Jane Austen, but we concluded, not without regret, that she attracts the Wrong Sort of Fan in rather more abundance than we would wish to cope with.)

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Do you know, Varied Reader, we have not the slightest idea?

No, wait, we do and we did! One of Anne McCaffrey's heroines, P'tui (o.n.o.), the musically precocious foundlingess from the Dragonsossage series. A gazillion years back in our hormone-ravaged youth, of course.

[The last book you bought is

Yikes, missed one! Since this was first posted, I've handed over the cash for Bruno Latour's Nous n'avons jamais �t� modernes ("We have rubbish summers these days") at the University bookshop, but it'll take two (2) or three (3) weeks to arrive because it has to come from France, which is in Africa somewhere, and it depends what mood the elephants are in.]

What are you currently reading?

What aren't we currently reading?

Oh all right, to hand are:

  • M�nchhausens abenteurer, (Easy Readning Edition), G A B�rger. 600 W�rtchen? We don't got no 600 stinkin' W�rtchen, but we're getting along.
  • Why read Marx today?, Jonathan Wolff. A neo-scholastique perspective.
  • The latest Courrier International. Mais bien s�r !
  • Lacan, P-L Assoun. We didn't like Assoun's book on the Frankfurt school and we don't like this. Sadly, he seems to have compromising fotos of the Que sais-je? imprint's commissioning editor(s).
  • �crits philosophique et politiques, Louis "The Loony" Althusser. Which doesn't contain anything we actually want to read, as it turns out, but we paid good money for it.
  • The Great Chain of Being Arthur Onck "If you had it last night" Lovejoy. Which is shaping up to rock our world more than any absurdly under-recognised work of non-fiction since Monod's Le Hasard et La Necessit�, which will be a major event if substantiated.
  • The Next Book from the University of Openness. Read a book, write an essay: having lathered and rinsed, we find ourselves at the "repeat" stage, again. (It cost us 42 silly Engleesh pence to dispatch our last double-spaced, single-sided and abundantly margined assignment, by the way! We note, purely for the record, that we have yet to see this such University deny that it gets a commission on postning costs from the Royal Mail.)

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Why, one book, two books, a book and a half and half a book, of course!

The thing about desert ("deserted") islands is that they're pre-modern environments, and if you were going to be stuck on one for ever and ever you would want mostly pre-modern things to read, mostly. Dickens, to say nothing of Pynchon, are quite the wrong sort of sustenance or fare under these such conditions, our intuition insists. So:

  1. A complete Shakespeare, since this isn't Desert Island Discs and nobody's mentioned bundling this for free
  2. A ditto Plato. We have never read any, and we probably should.
  3. The Penguin Book of English Verse - it is superb, for sure (and more modern than it ought to be for our purposes, but we will console ourselves with the langwidge.)
  4. How to survive on and escape from Desert Islands, by J Bradling Slapphardt, IV. The definitive work on the subject, or your money back!
  5. One of the really really big Levi-Strauss mythology books, as much for the myths as for the analysis.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

First come, first served!

It is the law of the island! The ruthless law of the desert island! This I, the Count von Bladet, Emperor and Conch-Bearer of these lands and dominions, do solemnly declare!

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2005-04-06 15:49

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Science War Jaw-jaw

It is Col. Algernon "Algy" Frumpton (rtd.)! And he is huffing and puffing in the Torygraph, his natural habitat!

It is usual to dress up this kind of extreme nonsense in fancy language. Obscure foreign words are used, along with unintelligible English ones. It is tempting to give an example, but brevity is not common in this activity. The teaching and the publications coming from "pretend" social science departments are peppered with references to figures such as Foucault, Habermas, Latour and Derrida. The more obscure and unintelligible the teaching and the writing, the better. The goal is to appear profound.

Stuff and nonsense, damnable Forreners! We'll blow your proposterous houses down in no time with our Good Old Fashioned English puff!

But I found this (again) Googling for Latour: while he's disliked also by the very sensible Alex Golub, he provides the conceptual infrastructure for the next wodge of my studies chez the University of Openness.

So if anyone has a Continentaliste debunkning of his no doubt very silly epistemological relativisme, we'd be glad to hear of it.

(We ourselves combine a militant epistemological nihilisme with a firm belief in the march of scientifique progress. Ask us how some time by all means: it's very clever.)

�2. Magnetron arena raga!

Which is to say "An anagram generator"!

And also "romana regnata regna"!

Which is to say "An anagram generator", in Latin!

There are other langwidges too, aslo and as well: go play!

[Tack till Pekka f�r l�nken!]

�3. Silly Flash quiz!

Dining etiquette for cosmopolitain(e)s!

�4. Do you like the moon? We do!

A lot!

Also, an Ancient and very Glorious moonjoke:

Question: What is more useful: the sun or the moon?

Answer: The moon, because the moon shines at night when you want the light, whereas the sun shines during the day when you don't need it.

We like the moon!

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2005-04-06 12:16

More Belated Monday Review of Stuff!

[We have a USB memory stick and a laptop at home, so we can prepare stuff behind the scenes now. And then we can neglect to use it until the topicality is all worn off, since we are very foolish.]

It is Pericles by William "Big Bill" Shakespeare!

In particular it is the above as performed at Bristol's Tobacco Factory, which is in Bedminster which is an awfully long walk from civilised parts of town: if we go there again we'll take a cab, for sure, especially since we always get miserably lost in Bedminster. (Southville, we can handle. It's a Bedminster thing.)

This play's first two (2) acts are (a) obviously not by Shakespeare, and (b) utter dreck. If you haven't heard of, read, or seen the play, Varied Reader, this is quite possibly why. Although you might equally, for all we know, be an uncultured oaf: the Googlebots let all-comers in on the internets these days, and standards are by no means what they were.

Not all of the rest of the play is especially distinguished by excellence, either, but anything by Big Bill himself is going to have its moments, and this does. And the Tobacco Factory theatre and company are Good Things: it's all about kicking Bardic Bill on an Old Skool tip, being all in the round and curtain free and with only one (1) tier of seating for a change.

If the RSC production of Julius Caesar at the Swan Theatre in Stratford had (a) a much better play, and (b) a more radical sense of staging (which it did), they do however not, as the Tobacconistes do, encourage you to take your many gins and their many accompanying tonics into the auditorium and pick your own seats Easyjet style.

Finally, since I am now serving my noviciate in sociologie and I have an essay on ethicity to write next week, I feel qualified to note that the number of persons in the audience other than of very white indeedness was exactly none (0). There's class stuff tied in this too, for sure: the ambient banter of the mostly elderly persons in evidence was the suffocatingly twee bourgeois drivel that Cultural Events are justly notorious for inside our head but even so we do not consider this good enough by a long chalk. (We currently lack a convenient boc emissaire ["scapegoat"] for this though but. Are we still allowed to blame Thatcher, these days?)

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2005-04-06 10:02

Best supporting gerontocrat!

Bye bye, "Prins" Rainer!

He may not have defeated communisme as such but he did get to marry Grace Kelly and we know which we'd rather 've done, for sure.

And Monaco's risible 1.95 km� beats the Holy See's preposterous 0.44 km� for total area, after all.

(Royal House Top Trumps, anyone? We think it'd be ace!)

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2005-04-05 15:44

Why I am so very Lovejovian

Nobody tells us anything (not that we especially blame them), but we came across Arthur O Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being in Oxfam, and we are enjoying it enormously (so far, at least).

A full review will turn up in the dueness of course, some future un-Monday, but for now:

Lovejoy once subjected himself to interrogation by the Maryland Senate, when he'd been nominated for the state's educational board of regents. A legislator asked Lovejoy if he believed in God. George Boas recalled, "I am reliably informed that in reply Lovejoy developed at length 33 definitions of the word God, consuming 15 1/2 cigarettes meanwhile, refusing to be interrupted or ruffled, and ended by asking the committee member which of these meanings he had in mind when putting the question." As the story goes, no one felt inclined to ask him another question, and Lovejoy was confirmed. Unanimously.

That's just under 0.5 cigarettes/definition of God, which is pretty good going, we think.

In 1923, he and colleagues founded the Hopkins History of Ideas Club. The club was for "the historical study of the development and influence of general philosophical conceptions, ethical ideas, and aesthetic fashions, in occidental literature." Meetings were open to anyone. You needn't be a Hopkins professor. You needn't be a professor at all.

We're not, we're not! Quickly, which way is 1923: we have a meeting to go to and we fear we may be late...

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2005-04-05 13:29

Mon gosier de m�tal parle toutes les langues (� condition qu'elles soient l'Anglais)

You what?

Le nuove generazioni viaggiano, conoscono, studiano, assaggiano, la Papuasia ancora fuori mano ma l'India dietro l'angolo e la Tunisia sotto casa. Lo studio dell'inglese da fastidioso optional si trasforma in imperativo categorico perfino in Italia, tradizionalmente immune a contaminazioni poliglotte.

Sorry, Luigi, you've lost me there, mate. Does anyone here speakee ze Engleesh?

"Les nouvelles g�n�rations voyagent, connaissent, �tudient, go�tent. La Papouasie est encore hors de port�e, mais l'Inde est juste � c�t� et la Tunisie quasiment en bas de chez nous. La connaissance de l'anglais n'est plus une option mais un imp�ratif, m�me en Italie, pourtant immunis�e par tradition contre les contaminations polyglottes", poursuit le quotidien romain.

ENGLEESH? DOES... ANYONE... SPEAKEE... ZE... ENGLEESH?

The new generations travel, know, study, taste. The Papouasie is still out of range, but India is just beside and Tunisia almost below us. A knowledge of English is no longer optional but imperative, even in Italy, despite its traditional immunity to polyglot contaminations.

..?

I'll take that as a "no", then. Sigh; Forreners, isn't it?

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2005-04-05 10:19

A Belated Monday Review of Stuff

It is Barcelona, capital of Cataloonya!

The centre, or elderly ("old") town ("or gerontopolis"), of Bar�a, as we call it, is dominated to an extent other than of smallness by its primary arterial avenue, Las Ramblas. Our very excellent hotel, the Hostal-Something Rembrandt was on a side street off Las Ramblas leading to the cathedral, which is vair vair old and Catholique and full of altars, in various styles, and touristes, also in varying styles but probably of assorted denominations.

The palm trees in the cathedral cloister and elsewhere were reminiscent of Nice, but Barca lacks the air of delapidation and nocturnal menace that Nice exudes. (It is by no means the case that we lack a good word to say about Nice: we have exactly one, and it is "avoid".)

So Barca was an agreeable surprise in this respect (and also some others). Having got up at about 04:00, which is a bedtime in any sane world, to get to Heathrow for I forget when, for an Air Iberia flight that spanned lunchtime but provided no provisions un(additionally)paid-for, and to be dumped in Barca airport at also about lunchtime, by the magic of the Spanish sense of lunch more than timezones, and having marvelled at this such airports more than usually enigmatic way with useful information, and having further been soaked with sunny Spanish skyjuice on the way to the hotel while attempting to navigate in a strange city, we were in no hurry to try anything clever on Friday evening.

We found, instead, a nice bar/cafe and bade them bring us good cheap wine (for with which to toast Abroad, where this is not an oxymoron!) and samwidges made from yummy pigs, and sundries et cetera (most of which was admittedly beer). And then we ate the wine (with forks) and drank the samwidges (slurping them noisily through our moustaches) and generally paid homage to Mr Dali, as we would not again.

On Saturday we saw some Stuff. Much of this such Stuff was by Gaudi, but not very much of it was really all that gripping, to our tastes. Plus we were asked more times than one (1) to take fotos for other groups on the roof of the Casa Wossname AKA The Perdrada, which we did very badly. If I were in the habit of asking randoms to fotograf me, I would pick a random with a camera of their own, on the grounds that they presumably have more clue than none how such somethings are perpetrated, which is a claim that neither we nor the accoutrements of our typical public appearances can reasonably be taken to support.

But then there was a nice little lunch place from Le Routard (doing a roaring trade in fellow Routards trying their level best to interpolate between the Spanish and Engleesh menus - if we personally had a Routard upwritening, we would consider a French menu a wise investment) and an also nice dinner place where we wreaked much havoc on an abundance of Norwegish lobsters.

Then on Sunday - that glorious day of the glorious Sun! - we visited the excellent Picasso museum, which contains exactly nothing remotely famous, but even what would be juvinilia with an artist that wasn't ("weren't") Picasso is more than just worth looking at, and lunched at one of the nearer of the many Basque restaurants in town (but not their Routardly upwritten tapas selection because even early doors the servning counter was packed with the package of jam), we strolled among the Parc de Wassname, accosted intermittently (in Engleesh) by French touristes wishing also to know the location or whereabouts of the celebrated sculpture of an iguana (but sadly only before we ourselves discovered it), and dined at touriste offrippning institution Los Caracoles, which was actually very pleasant once the probation period in the bar had been completed to their satisfaction.

Then on Monday - that most lunar day, so dearly cherished in Catalunya! - we attended the MACBA museum of very random contemporary art. Most of it seemed to be devoted to Catalunatic posters and other such political artistry, which we regret to concede we are not, being abundantly ignorant of both the langwidge and the politics.

And then it was back, via possibly the worst signposted airport trainlink we have so far encountered, to the airport, where we discovered that we had left the gratification of our whimsical desire to procure books in Catalan too late: the airport shops appeared to be almost gloatingly bereft of Catalunatic scribblnings.

In conclusion, then, while the '�lona is not - unlike Berlin (Berlin!) - the kind of city which induces, incites or provokes in us an urge to move there at once and live happily ever after, it is certainly an agreeable place to neglect a weekend's worth of the biting Arctic chill of Blighty's fierce winters.

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2005-04-04 14:42

Elect me harder!

There's a silly general election coming up in Blighty - why we bother electing mere generals I simply do not know - and the dastardly Tories are stooping to frankly Danish tactics in what seems to be a bizarre attempt to remind the disgruntled Labour faithful (dont moi) how much worse things could be.

And then there's the process of electing a new Pope, the same as the old Pope, no doubt. But with the last glorious Battle Pope having seen off Communisme in hand to hand combat (one fall, one submission), who is there for the new Pope, whoever she may be, to fight?

There is us! Simply elect us as Holy Roman Emperor - which is surely no more than we deserve! - and we firmly resolve to mashall our full political and military might against the Church of Rome! It'll be just like the good old days!

C'mon, Spiderman v. Green Goblin, Batman v. the Joker, the Pope v. the Holy Roman Emperor; it's one of the classic grudge matches! It'll be great for ratings!

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2005-04-04 11:47

Internacionalize me harder!

It is Courrier Internacional! "Internacional"? Yes, "Internacional"!

O novo jornal, que deriva de um acordo estabelecido com a edi��o original francesa "Courrier International" (t�tulo detido desde 1991 pelo di�rio "Le Monde"), come�ar� a ser vendido em banca no dia 8 de Abril (sexta-feira), por um pre�o de capa de 2,5 euros.

The new 'bladet, which derives of an accord established as a original French edition "Courrier International" (title detido since 1991 by the dailybladet Die Welt), commences to be sold em banca from 8 April (sexta-feira, for sure), for a capa price of 2.50 EUR.

The Frenchy-French edtion's editorial on the occasion announced a desire to franchise the title in each of the 25 countries in the EU, which we certainly think would be very jolly indeed.

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2005-04-04 09:46

Tuesday Trashning: Special Redraftning Edition

By the kind permission of his literary executor, we have an opportunity to share with our Varied Reader a unique glimpse into our late cousin Freidrich's aphoristique style in the very process of its becoming as preserved for posterity in the fossilised tree-sap of his notebooks!

Take 1:

Anglophone philosophy

It is like someone who, terrified of drowning, sets out to learn to swim in a puddle.

While the basic idea, familiar of course from his published work, is already in place or situ, the unequalled crispiness of style of Freidrich's published works is not yet quite achieved.

Take 2:

Anglophone philosophy? Terrified of drowning, it sets itself the task of swimming in a puddle.

Obviously an improvement, but still not quite exact.

Take 3:

Anglophone philosophy? Terrified of drowning, it resolves to swim only in puddles.

That's the one!

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