Made with the Brushes app on my iPad. In case you thought it was Hockney’s.
Posts Tagged ‘Daft’
Sock puppet news
Posted 22 Jan 2012 — by Jonathan
Category Daft
Category Daft
Here’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy signing off last night’s Channel 4 news, just in case you missed it. Anyone with an irrational fear of sock puppets, look away now. You may or may not be surprised to know that Krishnan used to work for Newsround.
This week in football
Posted 21 Jan 2012 — by Jonathan
Category Daft
Category Daft
A surprise expansion of the teams playing in the English Premiership has meant that this week’s football scores contain something interesting, for once – or at least, that’s what it looks like from today’s Guardian website.
Of beginnings and transitions
This is really quite amazing; no matter how long I look at this picture, I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that what I am looking at is one cat, not two. There’s one brain. One personality. Two working eyes, one working mouth (although two working noses). But this glorious, strange, janus-cat is still alive at 12, spectacularly defying his life expectancy.
Diprosopus (Greek διπρόσωπος, “two-faced”, from δι-, di-, “two” and πρόσωπον, prósopon [neuter], “face”, “person”; with Latin ending), also known as craniofacial duplication (cranio- from Greek κρανίον, “skull”, the other parts Latin), is an extremely rare congenital disorder whereby part or all of the face is duplicated on the head.
And a wonderful comment below the line.
iPhone text whale
Lord, forgive me for clogging up my once-considered blog with daft things like this. But I need to spread the happiness. I love this so much.
Found somewhere on Twitter, seen a million times since, with no less joy on each occasion.
Questions, flops, miracles
Posted 25 Aug 2011 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, General, Technology
Category Daft, General, Technology
This is rather lovely. Over on Quora someone asked, ‘What’s it like to have your film flop at the box office?’. Sean Hood, the professional screenwriter who wrote the last iteration of the Conan The Barbarian franchise, is well placed to answer. So he does.
In the days before the release, you get all sorts of enthusiastic congratulations from friends and family. Everyone seems to believe it will go well, and everyone has something positive to say, so you allow yourself to get swept up in it.
You tell yourself to just enjoy the process. That whether you succeed or fail, win or lose, it will be fine. You pretend to be Zen. You adopt detachment, and ironic humor, while secretly praying for a miracle.
The Friday night of the release is like the Tuesday night of an election. “Exit polls”are taken of people leaving the theater, and estimated box office numbers start leaking out in the afternoon, like early ballot returns. You are glued to your computer, clicking wildly over websites, chatting nonstop with peers, and calling anyone and everyone to find out what they’ve heard. Have any numbers come back yet? That’s when your stomach starts to drop.
It’s a great read – click here to access the whole thing.
Meanwhile – that’s not the only difficult question the internet can answer.
Chimps and tigers
Posted 03 Aug 2011 — by Jonathan
Category Daft
Category Daft
This is just fantastic – a two-and-half-year-old male chimpanzee at Thailand’s Samut Prakarn crocodile farm and zoo, 25 miles south east of Bangkok, has been trained to feed tiger cubs out of a bottle.
The chimp, named Dodo, has been feeding the cubs, aged between three weeks to five months, every day for more than a year.
I like his little denim shorts, although someone should point out that the current look is to have the pockets poking out beneath the hemline, not a nappy poking out of the back. That aside, he’s bang on trend.
One day we’ll mourn its passing
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the lions share of the week obsessing over #hackgate and reading endless articles about it in the press. And if so, you were probably as surprised as I was to discover that The News Of The World – far from being a detestable, lowest-common-demoninator rag – was a Great newspaper whose proud history will be remembered longer than the ignominy of its final passing. Interesting to learn.
Who knows, then, perhaps one day we’ll be witnessing the death of the Daily Express and saying the same thing. Pretty sure that no-one however, no matter how misguided, will mourn its culture section.
Earlier this year, the paper saw fit to dedicating a bit of space to a review of PJ Harvey’s latest LP, ‘Let England Shake’. Here’s the review in its entirety:
YOU might not be able to pick her out of a police line-up but there’s no lack of respect for English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey.
This album moves away from her usual sound but let’s just say it’s not our bag.
Verdict: 2/5
Hmm. Incidentally – Polly Harvey is in the running, but my pick for the Mercury Prize this year is the wonderful Ghostpoet, whose Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam is one of my favourite LPs of the year so far. Really hope he wins it.
On Charlie Adam
In a deal illustrative of Liverpool’s slightly confusing transfer policy (which seems to be to overpay for players with Premiership experience, even if they’re as yet unproven at higher levels), they have just signed Blackpool’s impressive (but not world-beating) central midfielder Charlie Adam, for about £7.5m. Charlie Adam is a pretty decent player, in the box-to-box midfielder style, and is surely the latest in a long line of okayish players who get overhyped and overpaid because they make people nostalgic for a certain type of British player we see less and less of (cf. Lee Bowyer, Danny Murphy, Kevin Nolan, Scott Parker). Anyway, like I said, I don’t know much about him, so it’s possible I’m underrating him. But at least Liverpool have placed some handy facts about him on their website, for those of us trying to keep up. This is my favourite by some distance:
3. Adam then returned to Ibrox in the summer of 2006 and was handed his opportunity to shine by gaffer Paul Le Guen. He admits to changing his diet on the advice of the Frenchman. “I’d never really thought of eating salads before,” he said during an interview in 2010.
Lovely stuff.
A very strange interview
This is the loveliest thing I’ve come across today. Courtesy of Wowser:
Why not get Wowser to do you a drawing?
Fuck it let’s print it
Posted 19 Apr 2011 — by Jonathan
Category Daft
Category Daft
Amazing URL on this otherwise snoozeworthy Royal Family puff piece from the Independent website:
Eight nights away
Posted 23 Mar 2011 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, Islam and the Middle East
Category Daft, Islam and the Middle East
Uuuerrrm…. Not right now, thanks.
From today’s Guardian homepage:
Happy Birthday Anne-So
There’s a nice, light-hearted little article on the Guardian site today which might as well be subtitled ‘some people can’t take a joke’. It seems that Cédric Enjolras, the president of FC Borne, a second division team in the Haute-Loire league in France, made a silly offer for the services of Lionel Messi, who plys his trade in Spain for FC Barcelona, and is currently the world’s best player. Submitted in jest, he could hardly have guessed that the offer would be intercepted by the French Football Federation, who not only declined to pass the offer on to Barca, they decided to suspend Enjolras for six-months, noting humourlessly that “One cannot accept such behaviour. It is perhaps a joke but we are here to judge the facts”. Arseholes.
The Guardian article ends on a nice note – the last line is a peach:
Enjolras, bemused by the FFF’s lack of proportion, explained what had happened: “To submit bids among small clubs, you need to fill out forms on the internet. I decided to register a bid so I typed the name Lionel Messi, his date of birth and his parent club into the system. Then the league transmitted the request to the federation. They were shocked by it and refused to send it to their Spanish counterparts. I have been suspended for six months, of which three are suspended. It was just a joke, to amuse friends.
“I’m going to have spend three months in the bar.”
Every cloud has a silver lining.
On other French matters, my friend Anne-So – who knows a great deal about spending excessive amounts of time in bars – is celebrating her birthday today in distant Alsace. Happy birthday Anne-So! Here you are submitting to your English side…
Shampoo hotel
I’ve never really been a big fan of Gruff Rhys or his psychedelic pop with the Super Furry Animals, but I suspect that I’m missing out. For some reason I just can’t really get with bands who are influenced by The Beach Boys, but all the evidence points to the fact that Rhys has been one of the most creative and unconventional British songwriters of the last couple of decades.
Never mind that though – he really interests me because he’s one of those pop stars capable of coming out with marvellous quotes like this, from yesterday’s Observer:
“I had a batch of songs that were quite reflective, picking up on different bits of my life over the last 15 to 20 years,” he says. “By a complete coincidence, I’ve been trying to build a hotel out of shampoo bottles.”
Ace.
Richard Dawkins’ hate mail
Weirdly, this video makes me feel really Christmassy. Here in Brighton we don’t get to spend Christmas with Dawkins, so we have to get Sam over instead – he’s our proxy-Dawkins.
New Labour leader knows how to chop melon
Posted 27 Sep 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Politics
Category Politics
From the Guardian’s politics liveblog:
2.08pm: Ed Miliband’s election as Labour leader has been making the headlines around the world. My colleague Luke Harding has sent me this from Russia.
There were more congratulations for Ed Miliband this morning from far-away Moscow. During his first trip to Russia last October Ed discovered that he had a long-lost relative – 87-year-old Sofia Miliband. Today Sofia, Ed’s second cousin twice removed, said she had followed Labour’s leadership election closely and was ‘thrilled’ by Ed’s narrow victory.
‘I’m delighted for Ed. He’s very good, active, and – I have to say – a rather homely person. His brother David is a bit more formal, a diplomat. I like both of them very much,’ Sofia said.
Sofia recalled how Ed dropped round to her Moscow flat after she called into a Moscow radio show and told him: ‘I am your long lost relative.’ (Sophia’s grandfather was the brother of Ed and Dave’s Polish-born grandfather Samuel.) ‘Ed treated us very well. He even cut up the melon.’
Sofia’s comments appeared in this morning’s Moskovsky Komsomelets newspaper along with the somewhat underwhelming headline: ‘New Labour leader knows how to chop melon.’
Mad eye deficit
I’m still, predictably, struggling with the whole Ed vs. David question. Instinctively I lean towards the former, but I think the latter may well be the most pragmatic, pluralist choice.
Either way – digging through a big box of old newspaper cuttings earlier today, I found this – the first time Ed Miliband featured in Steve Bell’s wonderful If… comic strip, I think (it’s dated 16 July 2007).
Incidentally, he may be bonkers, but I’m really enjoying Tony Blair’s book.
Regulate explained
This is totally brilliant – someone has taken the trouble to update Wikipedia with a full, clear synopsis and explanation of the the lyrics to Warren G’s still-fresh classic ‘Regulate’. Exerpt below; click here to read the full thing:
“Warren, unaware that Nate is surreptitiously observing the scene unfold, is in disbelief that he’s being robbed. The perpetrators have taken jewelry and a name brand designer watch from Warren, who is so incredulous that he asks what else the robbers intend to steal. This is most likely a rhetorical question.
Observing these unfortunate proceedings, Nate realizes that he may have to use his firearm to deliver his friend from harm.
The tension crescendos as the robbers point their guns to Warren’s head. Warren senses the gravity of his situation. He cannot believe the events unfolding could happen in his own neighborhood. As he imagines himself in a fantastical escape, he catches a glimpse of his friend, Nate.
Nate has seventeen cartridges to expend (sixteen residing in the pistol’s magazine, with a solitary round placed in the chamber and ready to be fired) on the group of robbers, and he uses many of them. Afterward, he generously shares the credit for neutralizing the situation with Warren, though it is clear that Nate did all of the difficult work. Putting congratulations aside, Nate quickly reminds himself that he has committed multiple homicides to save Warren before letting his friend know that there are females nearby if he wishes to fornicate with them.”
Wonderful.
Two unconnected thoughts
Posted 02 May 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
- I don’t use the chubb lock on my front door; there’s already an outer door to be negotiated, so I don’t feel I need that extra security. Plus, I’m a bit lazy. But I realised something funny the other day, when Vic came round for dinner.
When Vic comes round, she has to be watched carefully, because otherwise she will start opening post and peering into drawers. This time, she successfully managed to get open a letter from my landlord, informing me there’d be a annual check on the property later this month. It ended with a reminder that all locks would be used on departure, so I should make sure I have everything with me to get back in. I realised that there is, in fact, one time when I always use the chubb lock.
Ten times out of ten, on those increasingly rare occasions when I go out and drink so much that I cannot recall getting home, I discover the next morning that I have double-locked myself into the flat. I find this fact, pleasing – somehow I not only always manage to make it home, but take extra care to make myself safe, too.
I’ll be alright.
- Four days since The Guardian announced that it’s backing the Liberal Democrats at the General Election, and I’m still too angry to buy a copy. Apart from occasions when I’ve been out of the country, I don’t think I’ve gone four days without buying a Guardian in at least a decade. I wonder how long this will last.
Preparation and prosperity
There’s a lovely bit in the first series of ‘The Office’, where David Brent, in the middle of a performance review, is caught out by Tim, and accused of reading aphorisms from a carefully hidden piece of paper.
“If we’re facing in the right direction”, Brent advises, “all we have to do is keep on walking”
Tim: “Yep, very nice. You’re quite a philosopher”
David: “Well, it’s just that… I think that our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall”
Tim’s patience snaps. “Are you reading these?”, he asks.
David: “Am I what?!”
Tim: “Reading the quotes”
David: “Sort of…”
I was reminded of this watching football on the telly this weekend. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed this, but football commentators make quite a thing of dropping learned references into otherwise anodyne punditry.
On Saturday, I was idly watching Portsmouth – who are currently in horrific financial straits – playing Birmingham in the quarter finals of the FA Cup. Winning the cup nearly bankrupted the club last time they did it (because of all the stratospheric win bonuses in the players’ contracts) but it’s hard not to wish them well at present, given that their fans have so little else to cheer about. And happily, they were 2-0 up after about seventy minutes, at which point I enjoyed the following comment. It’s only really funny, I think, because of the way the sentence is constructed, as if part of a conversation, a spontaneous observation; when it is rather obvious that, in reality, Peter Drury had a few smart comments written down on a piece of paper, and was reading them out.
“I think…”, he said, as if he couldn’t quite remember, “I think it was William Hazlitt who said that while prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater”.
You think it was? If only Gareth Southgate had done a Tim.
Gareth: “Are you reading these?”
Peter: “Sort of”.
