Sitting beside me on the couch is a can of Coca-Cola, bravely liberated from Costco last night in torrential rain. On the side of the can is a huge, bright-red bauble. On the side of the huge, bright-red bauble, as if reflected in its perfect shininess, is the face of a jolly old man, with ...
In celebration of Norms’ iconic ‘Steak & Cake’ special, A. & I were taken to imagine a restaurant whose menu consists entirely of foods which rhyme. We think it’s a fabulous idea, and an obvious gap in the market. The Norms special might be extended into three courses. There could be hake, ...
The project that I’ve been working on at Unidentified California University for the past year originally hired me as a techie — to help with putting the research results onto the web, and in other digital forms for distribution, and also to fathom out a piece of software they’re using for qualitative analysis of ...
Well, not really. (Okay, a bit.) Trawling idly around the web tonight, looking to find any news of the album that Kate Bush is working on (I know, there really should be a sound file attached here named ‘hollowlaughter.mp3’), I came back to these photographs of her. I’ve seen them before, but I still find ...
A. and I spent at least ten minutes in the cereal aisle at Albertsons last night trying to decide what to get. In the end we had to choose our own, because we couldn’t agree. What is it about cereal shopping that turns us back into five-year-olds? Not cranky squabbling five-year-olds, but having been taken ...
One of those moments of weird cultural dislocation, or maybe co-location. We have a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun in our bathroom — don’t ask, it’s just there. Flicking through it idly while, well, while contemplating a bowel movement, I read the following line in his own preface: And, ...
Found this card in a toilet cubicle at the Westside Pavilion. I think this one goes under ‘kink’, but who knows. It could be the estate of Roger Hargreaves is planning a Mr. Tickle film franchise.
The Two Cultures are both alive and well, thank you very much, as is the yawning chasm that exists between them for some people, most aptly illustrated by their pathetic attempts to reach across it. This piece by Philip Pullman (of His Dark Materials fame) in the Guardian is so lazy, clumsy, and, well, undergraduate, ...
A few years ago I was sitting by the pool at a friend’s house — actually her sister’s house, but that’s by the by. It was a hot, clear deserty day — a photo I took that day shows A. and the friend in the foreground, with a large cactus in the background. As we ...
Okay, I feel rambly today. We’ll start one place and end up somewhere else. This one isn’t going to explode the Death Star, so much as take a few pot-shots at Mos Eisley, then scoot around aimlessly on Hoth, before spending a few centuries stuck in a swamp on Dagobah, and finally shooting at the ...