Crazy Lady

The Crazy Lady lived in the apartment opposite ours, back in the days when we lived in a slightly more “colourful” part of town, when we were young, childfree, and poor. Crazy Lady had a face like a pug chewing a wasp. She had a small dog (not a pug, and not fond of chewing [...]

Oh, the Humanities!

The short film above reminded me of my university days, and, more specifically, of the light-hearted enmity between hard-working sicence students and slacker arts students, as typified in the jokes below:   Q: Why do humanities students leave their curtains closed all morning? A: It gives them something to do in the afternoon.   Q: What do [...]

Whither Belgium?

What does your country mean to you? Is your nationality something that you feel strongly, or do you have stronger ties other levels (region, city, neighbourhood, street?) How “large” is your tribe? Italians are known for placing their region above their nation (not surprising given that their nation is only 150 years old), and even [...]

Big Train

A post over at the Guardian arts blog reminded me (as if I needed it) of the vastly underrated sketch comedy show Big Train. The brains behind it (including Graham Linehan, Arthur Matthews, Simon Pegg and Kevin Eldon) have all gone on to bigger things (including some of my other favourite shows, like Spaced), but I [...]

No comment

So, I took my wife’s advice (as I always do) and managed to transfer the comments from their old LiveJournal home over to here using a charmingly retro technique called “cut and paste”. Ok, so the results aren’t exactly pretty, and some of the hyperlinks seem to have got lost, necessitating a little editing in [...]

Decisions, decisions

I realise how difficult it must be for you, dear reader, at this time of year – what to give the man who has everything for his impending (one month’s time) birthday? What gift could fully express your gratitude and admiration? Allow me to make a few modest proposals: Wind Leaves, or Turbulent Orb Kaiseki [...]

New Home

Welcome to my slightly-less-humble-than-before abode. The move was prompted by various additional features WordPress offered, mostly relating to comments and statistics. The only snag encountered so far is that, despite trawling FAQs and fora both here and back at LJ, I’ve not found a way of importing the comments so many of you kindly left [...]

Four naked men in a room

The room is small and dimly lit. The men sit in plastic chairs. A young woman, who is not naked, enters and explains to them how to smear the four different coloured muds on various parts of their (own) bodies. She leaves the room. The lights dim, leaving the room illuminated only by myriad tiny [...]

A is for Apple

Me, on the phone to a customer service agent, reading out a product code on a faulty item I’d bought: ”B as in Belgium, D as in…Denmark, K as in…uh…Kazakhstan?” I need to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Mud balls

I have nothing to say about this other than “ohmygodthat’ssocool!”.