Friday, April 28, 2006
Heligobalism
I am away for three days, surfing the South-West coast of Sardinia, the "Hawaii of the Med". Since we just reached one trillion one billion English words, here are some Words of the Day to mull over during the long weekend:Heliogabaline, which appears to be a David Foster Wallace neologism, taken from an Harper's essay on English usage. It refers to this painting, in which Emperor Heliogabalus is observed trying to smother his guests in rose petals. Foster Wallace uses it to refer to stiflingly flowery writing: Sphenisciform which according to Martha Barnette (and the EB) is the correct word for all penguin species. Orchesography, the depiction of a sequence of dance steps using diagrams. Originally it meant something like this, but I think it can also refer to the comedic footsteps, that were apocryphally printed on the floor of 50s dance schools.(via) Hicatee, a kind of freshwater turtle from Belize, which is beloved of pro Scrabble players, and hungry Belizeans.
"The truth is that most US academic prose is appalling - pompous, abstruse, claustral, inflated, euphuistic, pleonastic, solecistic, sesquipidelian, Heliogabaline, occluded, obscure, jargon-ridden, empty: resplendently dead."[sic]See how the pomo irony never ceases with DFW? I've [sic]ed it, because euphuistic, ought to be capitalised.
Pitagora Suicchi
These are the promos from a Japanese children's show called Pitagora Suicchi. Spare 12.54 of your life to enjoy these endlessly entertaining Heath Robinson contraptions (aka Rube Goldberg devices for US readers).
Tags: pitagorasuicchi
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Last time I checked "shag" was not an obscene word, being among other things a type of carpet, and diving bird, not dissimilar to a diminutive cormorant. By blanking out the third letter in "sh*gs", I am led to assume that The Daily Star think John Prescott is a "shog". The Urban Dictionary helpfully inform us that "shogs" are:A group of men who like to perform felatio on hairy men...[sic]This impression is further confirmed by the sub-headline: "There's hope for fat old gits everywhere". I guess the least of the Deputy Prime Minister's worries is that he has been labelled/libelled in this unfortunate way. (see also two jags, and two sheds.)
Tags: links
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
David LaChapelle Faces His (Milky) Demons
David LaChapelle keeps mentioning in The Guardian how kids at school used to bully him by throwing milk cartons at his head. From Feb 06:
Witness also this famous shot from 1996:
And this equally risque Naomi Campbell pose from 1999:
He got Brooke Shields to do this with whipped cream in 2000:
He then sold out entirely to Big Dairy with a series of ten Got Milk? ads of which this is obviously my favourite: 
It seems as though LaChapelle has taken the Oprah truism "Turn your wounds into wisdom." at face value. He really makes his point that he's conquered the "badly dressed bullies", with this picture of Mark Wahlberg:
LaChapelle would have us believe that this dairy tomfoolery is pure Freudian reaction formation, channeling his negative emotions into creative expression. I think it is just another example of an (admittedly talented) visual artist trying to add intellectual depth to his work. The combination of milk and naked celebrities is just naturally aesthetically diverting. I salute him anyway, for beating lactophobia, in this era when lactose intolerance is so chic.
"He'd walk into the cafeteria dressed as a Fifties rocker, or as a cowboy with a pink and black shirt and cowboy boots, and milk cartons would fly at him from every direction, hitting him on the head."Almost self-parodically he put a sartorial twist on this childhood nightmare in an interview today:
"Of all the bad memories that he has of his schooldays, among the worst, says LaChapelle, is when he had milk cartons thrown at him by badly dressed bullies."It even helped him out on the streets of Compton when he was shooting Rize:
"What do you know about the hood?" he recalls people asking. "And I said, 'Well, you weren't with me when I was at high school and I couldn't go to the cafeteria because milk cartons were getting thrown in every direction. If that's not being marginalised, what is?"Far from succumbing to an overpowering dairy phobia, LaChapelle has actually spent his whole career confronting milk head on. He gets underway early in the mid-nineties with these portraits of The Beasties and Lili Taylor with milkshakes:
Witness also this famous shot from 1996:And this equally risque Naomi Campbell pose from 1999:He got Brooke Shields to do this with whipped cream in 2000:He then sold out entirely to Big Dairy with a series of ten Got Milk? ads of which this is obviously my favourite: 
It seems as though LaChapelle has taken the Oprah truism "Turn your wounds into wisdom." at face value. He really makes his point that he's conquered the "badly dressed bullies", with this picture of Mark Wahlberg:
LaChapelle would have us believe that this dairy tomfoolery is pure Freudian reaction formation, channeling his negative emotions into creative expression. I think it is just another example of an (admittedly talented) visual artist trying to add intellectual depth to his work. The combination of milk and naked celebrities is just naturally aesthetically diverting. I salute him anyway, for beating lactophobia, in this era when lactose intolerance is so chic.Tags: lachapelle, milk
Tags: dealornodeal, ghostface
Monday, April 24, 2006
The BBC Apostrophe
-781282.jpg)
I think the momentous day has finally happened, when as first suggested by Bernard Shaw, we have abandoned the apostrophe. Coming home from work I was flabbergasted by the startling banner in the window of Iceland:"That's why mums gone to Iceland"However on getting home, something much worse happened. BBC News 24 are running a story about the closure of a TVR factory, with the ticker headlines reading:
"Firm says its looking for a new site. It wont be in Liverpool."BBC internships are a highly competitive affair, so I'm sure they only hire the literate. The bastion of our dear octagenarian Queen's English has thus apparently abandoned the apostrophe. I've registered my complaint at the Apostrophe Protection Society.
Tags: bbc, apostrophe
The Exact Scientific Formula For Gastronomic Failure
-775540.jpg)
I tackled jugged hare tonight, which is to me the quintessential English dish. I "first caught my hare" at the local farmer's market. He was a big brown hare, perhaps 3-4kg in weight pre-skinning. I dug out a few books before tackling the jointing. Strangely neither Fearnley-Whittingstall nor Elizabeth David seems to give directions for dissecting the limbs, and the saddle ("Ask your butcher to separate off the usual parts", says David). The back legs particularly are well attached, and it takes some force to dislocate the hip joints. Acting on a tip from Larousse, and utilising all my surgical skills, I deftly perfomed a combined hepatectomy/cholecystectomy. By this point I was covered in hare's blood, and feeling queasy, so I didn't bother to enter the mediastinum and dig out the heart. I plumped principally for the recipe from Nose To Tail Eating. It involved flouring, browning, and then stewing in red wine for two hours. Unfortunately at the key moment I managed to lock myself out of the house, extending the stewing time by an unnecessary extra two hours. When I finally got back in there was clearly too much meat for one sitting, so I diverted the front legs into a hare terrine. I rustled up the stock/blood/liver/port reduction which forms the sauce, but it was too late. The hare was overcooked. Based on this I give you the formula for calculating kitchen failure:((Hours spent in kitchen + number of guests invited) X Percentage surface area of kitchen covered in blood and other mess))/ Fraction by which finished article falls short of culinary expectation = Total Failure Factor
Easily among my top 10 greatest foodie disasters.
Tags: juggeedhare, recipe
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
I'm being exiled to the Norwich Travel Inn, for the next few days, attending the glamourous International Continence Society (UK) Conference 2006. It's all a little too close to Alan Partridge's own sojourn at the Linton Travel Tavern. I doubt wifi has reached the wilds of Norfolk, so updates might be more sporadic than usual.
How is it that you can never even imagine the limits of your own knowledge? Until today I had never heard of a Cargo Cult, until one of Jorn's links revealed the mystery. For the uninitiated, it's a form of recurring religious cult, endemic to the South Pacific, in which "natives" establish rituals and festivals based on the commodities abandoned by Western visitors, in the expectation that the Gods will provide more "cargo". BGBlitz has a new 2.01 version, that is a whole 2% better than its previous world championship winning version. Prepare to have you backgammon butt kicked 2% more thoroughly. Naked Melee Armageddon, flash game of the day, and flash game name of the year. Launch hundreds of tiny (naked) humans in a flurry of mouse clicks, and then watch the aliens slaughter them in amusing ways.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Friday, April 14, 2006
The Acorn Electron was my first computer. It was released as a budget version of the BBC B, and I think I got one for my 7th birthday in 1984. The computer had only 32Kb of RAM, which is 1/16000th of the amount my current iBook shipped with. All the games had to be loaded from tape, which was agonisingly slow and error prone. Complicated games would require saves to be made onto a separate blank tape, or else squeezed in after the program code had ended, if you were confident about not overwriting it. It was a golden age of 8-bit gaming. Important games such as Elite (from where we get the word l33t) were available, as well as hundreds of extremely anglo-centric titles like, Ian Botham's Test Match, and ShedMaster Finsbury Park. Delightfully there is an excellent crossplatform emulator: ElectrEm, and a huge number of games available for free download.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
A YouTube Top 10
YouTube is incredible for some niche topics like skateboarding, japanese game shows and My Humps videos. Here's a random recent list of faves:
10. Embryonic Rodney Mullen, pulling huge casper flips before he even learned to walk. Incredible how early he became so unbelievably much the best skateboarder in the history of ever:
9. Robo-One styled on Gundam:
8. King Ad Rock shooting hoops in the Beastie Boys' custom halfpipe/basketball court on Rappin' with the Rickster. A show that never made it to UK TV, and we can now see why.
7. Chris Haslam just utterly ruling: one footed manuals, one footed rails, darkslides, more caspers etc. The new Mullen.
6. Obscene stop motion Lego animation (NSFW soundtrack):
5. The Pinball Song from Sesame Street, an undeniable classic:
4. The Muppet Babies themesong, which has been on constant rotation in my head for the last 19 years:
3. Harbin Ice World, a zoo that functions like the Colosseum. They have 50 Siberian tigers (approx), and tourists pay $60 for a live sheep to be introduced into the enclosure.
2. A bicycle land speed record goes disasterously wrong, and the Japanese safety attendants prove they know nothing about C-spine safety:
1. Snakes on a Plane the rough cut:
PS I take no responsibility for you trying to play all 10 videos at once. It will almost certainly break your eardrums, if not your soundcard.
10. Embryonic Rodney Mullen, pulling huge casper flips before he even learned to walk. Incredible how early he became so unbelievably much the best skateboarder in the history of ever:
9. Robo-One styled on Gundam:
8. King Ad Rock shooting hoops in the Beastie Boys' custom halfpipe/basketball court on Rappin' with the Rickster. A show that never made it to UK TV, and we can now see why.
7. Chris Haslam just utterly ruling: one footed manuals, one footed rails, darkslides, more caspers etc. The new Mullen.
6. Obscene stop motion Lego animation (NSFW soundtrack):
5. The Pinball Song from Sesame Street, an undeniable classic:
4. The Muppet Babies themesong, which has been on constant rotation in my head for the last 19 years:
3. Harbin Ice World, a zoo that functions like the Colosseum. They have 50 Siberian tigers (approx), and tourists pay $60 for a live sheep to be introduced into the enclosure.
2. A bicycle land speed record goes disasterously wrong, and the Japanese safety attendants prove they know nothing about C-spine safety:
1. Snakes on a Plane the rough cut:
Tags: mullen, snakesonaplane, chrishaslam
PS I take no responsibility for you trying to play all 10 videos at once. It will almost certainly break your eardrums, if not your soundcard.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Links
DFW on the OED
It is rather bittersweet catching one of your heroes in a youthful error. Witness the following sequence of quotes from David Foster Wallace:
"I'm an OED man, myself"- Hal Incandenza, Infinite Jest (1996)
"I have read the OED, but I have a vastly abridged version of the OED. I wouldn't say that I've read it all. When I was 13 I decided to try to get through it all and I got continuously up through K and then I began to skim."- Foster Wallace in Stim E-zine (1996)
"Listen: the OED is priceless. The only disadvantage it's got is that the entries are so interesting and chocked with subsidiary info that sometimes what was originally supposed to be a quick one-word dash to the dictionary becomes a two-hour perusal of cross-references and ramifications and etymologies and the sorts of illustrative sentences that make your saliva flow with sheer interest. "- Foster Wallace, quoted as an "Editorial Review" of the actual OED, on amazon.com (circa 2006)
To put it lightly, there is no "vastly abridged" OED. The Shorter Oxford is a dictionary (and in this author's opinion much inferior to Chambers), while the OED is the dictionary. It's hilarious that a famous sesquipedalian like Foster Wallace should have finished the mammoth Infinite Jest without having a copy of the OED to refer to, and that only now he has actually picked up a copy. I myself am shortly to become a published OUP author (Oxford Handbook of Clinical Crosscover, Aug 2006), and will be paid the princely sum of £250 in OUP vouchers. I intend to spend it immediately on a Compact OED, from which to refer while I complete my meisterwerk.
"If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others."- de La Rochefoucauld
"I'm an OED man, myself"- Hal Incandenza, Infinite Jest (1996)
"I have read the OED, but I have a vastly abridged version of the OED. I wouldn't say that I've read it all. When I was 13 I decided to try to get through it all and I got continuously up through K and then I began to skim."- Foster Wallace in Stim E-zine (1996)
"Listen: the OED is priceless. The only disadvantage it's got is that the entries are so interesting and chocked with subsidiary info that sometimes what was originally supposed to be a quick one-word dash to the dictionary becomes a two-hour perusal of cross-references and ramifications and etymologies and the sorts of illustrative sentences that make your saliva flow with sheer interest. "- Foster Wallace, quoted as an "Editorial Review" of the actual OED, on amazon.com (circa 2006)
To put it lightly, there is no "vastly abridged" OED. The Shorter Oxford is a dictionary (and in this author's opinion much inferior to Chambers), while the OED is the dictionary. It's hilarious that a famous sesquipedalian like Foster Wallace should have finished the mammoth Infinite Jest without having a copy of the OED to refer to, and that only now he has actually picked up a copy. I myself am shortly to become a published OUP author (Oxford Handbook of Clinical Crosscover, Aug 2006), and will be paid the princely sum of £250 in OUP vouchers. I intend to spend it immediately on a Compact OED, from which to refer while I complete my meisterwerk.
"If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others."- de La Rochefoucauld
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Restaurant Magazine Top 50 2006
My ambition to eat at Restaurant Magazine's Top 50 restaurants is proving a tough challenge. Last year's list was heavily criticised for its London-centricity, but consequently I had eaten at a full 18% of the list. This year Sketch (where admittedly I've only had high tea), Masa (terrible meal with DJ Waxy), The Wolseley, and Yauatcha, have all been dropped. Luckily I haven't been idle on the gastronomic front. I've had two pre-emptive lucky strikes, eating at Noma, and La Colombe, within the last year, which are new entries on this year's list. That leaves me back on a measly 14% of the total. I've booked lunch at The Fat Duck, in order to start catching up. The list in full:
1. El Bulli, Roses, Spain
2. The Fat Duck, Bray, UK
3. Pierre Gagnaire, Paris, France
4. The French Laundry, Yountville, US
5. Tetsuya, Sydney, Australia
6. Bras, Aveyron, France
7. Restaurant Le Louis XV, Monaco
8. Per Se, NYC
9. Restaurante Arzak, San Sebastian, Spain
10. Mugaritz, San Sebastian, Spain
11. Can Fabes, Sant Celoni, Spain
12. Nobu, London
13. Gambero Rosso, Italy
14. Gordon Ramsay (Royal Hospital Road), London
15. Restaurant Alain Ducasse, France
16. Jean Georges, US
17. Le Cinq, France
18. Daniel, US
19. Oud Sluis, The Netherlands
20. Chez Panisse, US
21. El Celler de Can Roca, Spain
22. L'Astrance, France
23. Hof van Cleve, Belgium
24. La Maison Troisgros, France
25. L'Atelier, France
26. Charlie Trotter's, US
27. Le Gavroche, London
28. La Colombe, Cape Town
29. Enoteca Pinchiorri, Italy
30. Rockpool, Australia
31. Le Calandre, Italy
32. Le Bernardin, US
33. Noma, Copenhagen
34. Restaurant Dieter Muller, Germany
35. St John, London
36. Hakkasan, London
37. Martin Berasategui, Spain
38. Le Quartier Francais, Franschhoek
39. Chez Dominique, Finland
40. L'Ambroisie, France
41. Die Schwarzwaldstube, Germany
42. Dal Pescatore, Italy
43. Bocuse, France
44. L'Arpege, France
45. Gramercy Tavern, NYC
46. Bukhara, India
47. De Karmeliet, Belgium
48. Oaxen, Sweden
49. Comme Chez Soi, Belgium
50. DOM, Brazil
1. El Bulli, Roses, Spain
2. The Fat Duck, Bray, UK
3. Pierre Gagnaire, Paris, France
4. The French Laundry, Yountville, US
5. Tetsuya, Sydney, Australia
6. Bras, Aveyron, France
7. Restaurant Le Louis XV, Monaco
8. Per Se, NYC
9. Restaurante Arzak, San Sebastian, Spain
10. Mugaritz, San Sebastian, Spain
11. Can Fabes, Sant Celoni, Spain
12. Nobu, London
13. Gambero Rosso, Italy
14. Gordon Ramsay (Royal Hospital Road), London
15. Restaurant Alain Ducasse, France
16. Jean Georges, US
17. Le Cinq, France
18. Daniel, US
19. Oud Sluis, The Netherlands
20. Chez Panisse, US
21. El Celler de Can Roca, Spain
22. L'Astrance, France
23. Hof van Cleve, Belgium
24. La Maison Troisgros, France
25. L'Atelier, France
26. Charlie Trotter's, US
27. Le Gavroche, London
28. La Colombe, Cape Town
29. Enoteca Pinchiorri, Italy
30. Rockpool, Australia
31. Le Calandre, Italy
32. Le Bernardin, US
33. Noma, Copenhagen
34. Restaurant Dieter Muller, Germany
35. St John, London
36. Hakkasan, London
37. Martin Berasategui, Spain
38. Le Quartier Francais, Franschhoek
39. Chez Dominique, Finland
40. L'Ambroisie, France
41. Die Schwarzwaldstube, Germany
42. Dal Pescatore, Italy
43. Bocuse, France
44. L'Arpege, France
45. Gramercy Tavern, NYC
46. Bukhara, India
47. De Karmeliet, Belgium
48. Oaxen, Sweden
49. Comme Chez Soi, Belgium
50. DOM, Brazil
Tags: restaurantmagazine, fatduck
Monday, April 10, 2006
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I'm sure I've complained of this before, but as Spring actually gets underway, I tend to lose interest in the internet. I've been spending more and more time outside, gardening, running, and tending to the beehives, and less time trawling the marginalia of the web. In this spirit I have come up with a mystery organic object for you. No clues allowed, first person to identify this oddity wins only kudos.Some words of the day:
Tags: wotd, mysteryobject
Friday, April 07, 2006
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Three games for simple souls, or perhaps just simpletons:
Tennis Challenge We Found This Funbox Shave My Yeti
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Tag: sleepparalysis, pandora
I've started a new blog: Niche Blog of the Day. I am certainly not abandoning That's How, but I thought I'd do something more focused as well.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Do I look like a grup?-713901.jpg)
The New York Metro coins the term grup, for adults who won't or can't grow up. While it's true that I do own more pairs of sneakers (100+) than suits (2); and I can't shut up about how awesome Architecture in Helsinki are; and I did buy this floral 80's retro tennis jacket in some anonymous japanese store on Lexington St; I submit to you that I am not a grup for two reasons. (1) I make this sh*t look good, and (2) I don't turn 30 for a whole 'nother 10 months.My man Perry F definitely is a grup though. Item of evidence A: he's in a new band Fisherman. Brainwave MP3s to hack your brain like forever. Make this little Pipecleaner man dance.
-737755.jpg)
The New York Metro coins the term grup, for adults who won't or can't grow up. While it's true that I do own more pairs of sneakers (100+) than suits (2); and I can't shut up about how awesome Architecture in Helsinki are; and I did buy this floral 80's retro tennis jacket in some anonymous japanese store on Lexington St; I submit to you that I am not a grup for two reasons. (1) I make this sh*t look good, and (2) I don't turn 30 for a whole 'nother 10 months.
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