Monday, March 20, 2006

Blogging for Beginners

There are two secrets to running a successful blog .....


1. Always leave them wanting more.




Sunday, March 19, 2006

Sunday Sermon (Courtesy of Jethro Tull, with thanks)



In the beginning Man created God;
and in the image of Man
created he him.


And Man gave unto God a multitude of
names,that he might be Lord of all
the earth when it was suited to Man.


And on the seven millionth
day Man rested and did lean
heavily on his God and saw that
it was good.


And Man formed Aqualung of
the dust of the ground, and a
host of others likened unto his kind.


And these lesser men were cast into the
void; And some were burned, and some were
put apart from their kind.


And Man became the God that he had
created and with his miracles did
rule over all the earth.


But as all these things
came to pass, the Spirit that did
cause man to create his God
lived on within all men: even
within Aqualung.


And man saw it not.



But for Christ's sake he'd better start looking.





To be continued.........................

Friday, March 17, 2006

Testing Times Ahead


I am going to die at 47. When are you? Click here to find out!



Forget whatever the gypsy told you when your blood ran cold in that darkened clearing in the woods when you became separated from the tour guide during your honeymoon visit to Transylvania.
Take this scientifically* proven test instead (the internet would never lie, after all),and post your results and preferred wreath arrangement in my comments, assuming I'm still here.




* Disclaimer - Remember "scientists", the guys who told us there was no such thing as mad cow disease and that god wouldn't smite us with George Shrubby Bush if we chose to believe that the Earth was round and dinosaur fossils were NOT just his little joke ?


Sunday, March 12, 2006

L? I. T. I'D. N. S. SUNDAY

For my millions of loyal readers worldwide, I introduce to you a new feature, "Laugh?, I thought I'd never start, Sunday".

(Freeform interpretation from Berthold Brecht, "The man who laughs has surely not yet heard the bad news.")


-------------------------



A bear, a lion and a chicken meet.

Bear says: "If I growl in the forest, the entire forest is shivering with
fear."

Lion says: "If I roar in the jungle, the entire jungle is afraid of me"

Chicken says: "Big deal, I only have to cough and the entire planet
shits itself!"








Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Wouldn't it be nice to learn about A Salty Dogg Wednesday







'All hands on deck, we've run afloat!' I heard the captain cry
'Explore the ship, replace the cook: let no one leave alive!'
Across the straits, around the Horn: how far can sailors fly?
A twisted path, our tortured course, and no one left alive

We sailed for parts unknown to man, where ships come home to die
No lofty peak, nor fortress bold, could match our captain's eye
Upon the seventh seasick day we made our port of call
A sand so white, and sea so blue, no mortal place at all

We fired the gun, and burnt the mast, and rowed from ship to shore
The captain cried, we sailors wept: our tears were tears of joy
Now many moons and many Junes have passed since we made land
A salty dog, this seaman's log: your witness my own hand


(Brooker / Reid)

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Tagged


1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what did you think?:
Damn. Another one cracked!

2. How much cash do you have on you?:
"A Boy Named Sue"

3. What's a word that rhymes with "TEST"?:
Fuckfest.


4. Favorite planet?:
Only sampled the one so far, but cannot believe there aren't better.


5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?:
Wiped them.


6. What is your favorite ring on your phone?:
The one from Over There.


7. What shirt are you wearing?:
Sackcloth and ashes, a.k.a. NOYFB.


8. Do you "label" yourself?:
Of course. How else would the cab driver know where to deliver me home?


9. Name the brand of your shoes you're currently wearing now:
Homer J. Simpson slippers by Clarks.

10. Bright or Dark Room?:
Depends. This month's electric bill paid or not?

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
I Image hosting by TinyPic her

13. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Defining "chaff"

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?:
"Check your offlines & get your butt over here"

15. Where is your nearest 7-11?:
Nearest one i KNOW is Tulse Hill, South London, about 230 miles. Suspect there
may be a nearer branch.

16. What's a saying(s) that you say a lot?:
If work is so good for you, then why don't the rich keep it to themselves?


17.Who told you they loved you last?:
S


18. Last furry thing you touched?:
J

19. How Many days of work did you miss this week:
Seven


20. How many rolls of film do you need to get developed?:
Sheesh, where have you people been? Even I went digital!


21. Favorite age you have been so far?:
Pre-cambrian

22. Your worst enemy?:
Errrrrrrrrrr...........Prevarication

23. What is your current desktop picture:
A Santorini window ledge

24. What was the last thing you said to someone?:
"Yes"

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly, which would you choose?:
No-one could eat that much venison, so I'll fly to the teaparty reunion instead.

26. Do you like someone?:
Yes

27. The last song you listened to?:
Creedence Clearwater Revival cover of " I Heard it through the Grapevine"


28. Carmen Electra or Pam Anderson?:
Hmmmm, tough choice; someone I never heard of or a Baywatch Barbie Doll.
O.K. I'll take Carmen, can only be an improvement, plus I loved her mother,
Carmen Miranda's, taste in hats.



Saturday, March 04, 2006

More About Linda Smith



For those of my millions of readers outside the broadcast range of BBC Radio 4, who therefore won't fully grasp the tragedy of her too early loss, I reproduce here appreciations from some of her friends and colleagues, as published in Thursday's Guardian, hoping you may gain some insight into the extraordinary wit, warmth and genius which was Linda Smith.



'She was the funniest woman I've ever known'


This week the much-loved comedian Linda Smith died, aged 48. Her colleague on Radio 4's News Quiz, Simon Hoggart, recalls her 'gorgeous ambles down comedy lane'

Interviews by Saleem Vaillancourt
Thursday March 2, 2006
The Guardian



Cancer is the most evil of all illnesses, because it constantly offers false hope to the sufferer and to their family. The latest round of chemo has really caught it this time, they say ... She's certainly in remission, and the steroids seem to be helping ... Then there comes a point when everybody finds out that the end is horribly near. Last Friday, Jeremy Hardy, Linda's close friend, who was in the next room when she died, emailed to say that she seemed "to be getting pretty fed up, so I think her tremendous spirit is finally waning". She died three days later.

When someone like Linda leaves, they are never quite gone. It's like being an amputee, still getting pains in a missing leg. Even yesterday I found myself thinking, that's a great story - I hope Linda's on the panel this week. It was the briefest imaginable moment, bringing a short, sharp stab of pain.

Some people have expressed mild surprise at the amount of coverage Radio 4 devoted to her death this Tuesday (and we are doing a special tribute to her in place of the News Quiz tomorrow night, repeated at lunchtime on Saturday). But I think it was right to give her that time. To Radio 4 listeners, she was family. It hurt people at home. It brought people up with a juddering start. It came, as I know from my own phone and emails, as a huge surprise to hundreds of thousands of her fans who had no idea she was even ill. She had tried to keep it a secret, had begged her friends not to mention it, and wanted to carry on as if it were no more than a minor nuisance that could be ignored by the simple force of will.

People constantly asked me why she wasn't on the show. Had she been barred? Bar her? We'd have had her on every week if we could. Had her occupying two places, if she could.

She first came on to the News Quiz in 1998, and was extremely nervous, as comedians often are. For journalists the show is an extra - it might be fun, it might be an embarrassment, but it doesn't really matter. We'll still get paid. But for comedians it's a vital opportunity, the hope for a bigger national audience, and a life distant from the jeering, pissed crowds of the comedy clubs. She had prepared routines about the stories of the week, and that can sound stiff and even dreary, but even in the earliest days it never did in her mouth. Soon she gained in confidence and we knew that every time she opened her mouth, what would emerge would be a wonderful comedy riff, with jokes added to the side like curlicues, stray thoughts sprayed on to the main theme like graffiti. Andy Hamilton, another News Quiz regular, said yesterday that, now and again, he would wonder if she needed help - an extra line to bounce off - but she never did. That pause was always for effect.

Being chairman of the News Quiz, as I am, is like being umpire at a singles final at Wimbledon. You have the best seat in the house, you don't have to hit a ball yourself, and at the end somebody pays you. One of the greatest joys of the job is hearing the material that will never be broadcast, because there is no way the producer can fit an 80-minute recording into a 29-minute slot. Linda was brilliant at these gorgeous, time-wasting ambles down comedy lane. She used to have this fantasy that whoever was sitting next to her was in an old folks' home. "Isn't he marvellous?" she'd say, turning to Alan Coren, or Jeremy, or whoever it was. "All his own teeth! And her daughter, she comes every fortnight, from Stockport. It's two buses, you know." Then louder, "No, I'm sure the nurses aren't stealing your clothes."

She was very leftwing but wore it lightly, and never consulted some ideological rule book in her head. (She claimed never to have joined anything since the Tufty Club.) She had done many benefits for the striking miners back in the mid-80s, and loved the story about the pickets who had built a snowman, only to see a police Land Rover deliberately smash into it. "Next day they built another snowman, and exactly the same thing happened. What the police didn't know was they had built this one round a cast- iron bollard."

So many wonderful lines. "People knock Asbos, but you have to bear in mind they're the only qualification some of these kids are ever going to get." "I had absolutely no expectations of Tony Blair, and even I have been disappointed."

We always said that she was without malice, and she was, for people she knew and liked. And, truth be known, even people she knew and didn't like. Politicians were an exception, though I used to get the odd message from cabinet ministers, saying that they loved her "whatever she said about them". Which could be rude. "David Mellor, the thinking woman's fat, ugly bastard. The last woman to run her fingers through his hair was the nit nurse." She could build up slowly: you thought she was in gentle, ameliorative mood: "I do sympathise with Bush and Blair trying to find WMDs. I'm like that with my scissors. I put them down, then I search all over the house, and I never find them. Of course, I do know that my scissors exist."

As I've said for tomorrow's tribute, whenever I told the studio audience that Linda was on the panel, there was a sigh, a ripple of pleasure that wafted up to the stage. They loved her. We loved her. We were nominated for best political comedy some years ago at a Channel 4 bash, and she appeared on screen, and announced that "Simon Hoggart was the best chairman we could possibly have" - nicely timed pause - "in his price range". I cherished that.

We will miss her more than I can say. She was the funniest woman I've ever known, and one of the nicest people I have ever met. She was a humanist, so we can't wish her in a better place. In any case, she could not have imagined a better place than on a stage or with her friends, or at home with her partner, Warren Lakin. But we can say thank you. The missing limb will hurt for a very long time ยท

Dear Linda ... fellow comedians pay tribute

Mark Steel

Comedian

She was so good at relating anecdotes about other people. There was one that every time I think about the way she said it, it makes me cry. She said she was at a cafe, and there were two young mums sitting at the next table. They both had kids, young children in pushchairs. One of them was talking to the other, but she stopped and looked at her child, who was slouching, and said: "Oi, sit up, you cunt." And then just carried on.

There's [another anecdote] which I think is very Linda-ish, because it's so English. It explains why she never joined any group on the left, possibly. She was talking about a friend's parents, who were in the communist party. The morning that Russia invaded Czechoslovakia it was all over the news, and there was despair because no one knew how to deal with it.

And Linda remembered that this friend's mum got up and said, "Oh well, why don't we all have a nice cup of tea and see what it says in the Morning Star."

Simon Nicholls
Former News Quiz producer

Linda was very good at being very daft and silly about really serious stuff. She referred to Tony Blair, said to be in cahoots with Bush, "as a girl in a horror film". There was a Blunkett question on the quiz, when he was home secretary, and it was a serious story, but she'd start it with this line that she had caught Blunkett going through her bins that week and having to tell him to sod off.

She was very good at thinking about her performance. I was quite a bit younger than her, and it was almost like hearing your mother telling people off. She wasn't a female comic in the way many female comics went on about boyfriends and girly stuff ... instead she went off on daft tangents.

One time, recording in Southsea at the Theatre Royal, there was a question about Charles and Camilla and whether it would be legal for them to marry. She referred to Charles and Camilla as Rod Hull and Emu. So Armando [Iannucci] asked, which one is which? And she said, "Clearly, the one that looks like Rod Hull is Rod Hull, and the one that looks like Emu is Emu."

Sandy Toksvig
Comedian

Linda was the funniest woman I've met. What was wonderful was that what she said seemed conversational - it didn't seem as though it was a set joke. And along with that, she was immensely modest about her skills. On one occasion we were on the same side, on News Quiz, which was rare because women are never allowed to be funny together ... we were allowed to work together because she transcended being thought of as a funny woman: she was just thought of as a funny person.

Alan Coren
Writer and broadcaster

When stand-up [comedy became popular], women were the butt of jokes of male comics, so women had to have their own stick - the way men smelled in bed, the crap of living with a partner. Linda never did any of that. Linda was as good as any man at jokes that weren't gender based or socio-based. She also had this very special thing which is rare among comics, which was that she could draw out of every single source of culture. She used really crap children's television adverts or Dostoevsky. Her comedy wasn't linear, it was lateral, and this is really very rare.

The important thing to say about her is that she was generous, and she wasn't generous with just me, but generous with [stand-up] professionals, with everyone. She would look across the studio and see that she knew what you were doing, and had punch lines in her head that were better than yours, but she wouldn't use them, she would let you do your own joke. And the few times when the impulse to tell the joke came out first, before she could stop it, she would apologise afterwards. She was a very good woman.