This will hurt me...

This is what I believe they call “High Concept” advertising. Very L.A. Here’s how I see the pitch going down: [Warning, this may contain words that offend.] “there’s this fucken’ monkey right, really freaky lookin’ thing. He sorta looks like these old chinamen that hang about in those opium dens right? And this monkey is probably stoned, off his fucken’ head or something you know man, real far gone kinda deal. Anyway, this monkey's a bit ropey looking, kinda wrong-side-of-the-tracks. He’s on a downer, seen better days and he knows it. He’s probably stolen the bike and on the lam. Yeah, he’s on the run. That’s why he’s goin’ so fast you see. He’s tearin’ down the mountain out the middle of nowhere off his fucken’ head, not a fucken’ care if he lives or dies. And get this, man (and this is the killer, man), he’s got this parrot with him. Who knows where he’s got it from, but he’s got this god damned parrot! And this parrot don’t look too happy bein’ there right? She’s old, maybe she’...

M1911A1 Colt 45 Automatic? Check. SMLE rifle and bayonet? Check. M36 Mills bomb? Check. Pfaff 130? Check.

Continuing the attempt to catch up, here are another couple of reviews. Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon Solid little story about the difficulties faced by refugees who’ve fled Nazi Germany. Although hampered by rather staid and pedestrian dialogue, the story itself moves briskly enough to keep things ticking over. Though lacking when measured against All Quiet on the Western Front , Remarque manages to construct a disturbing account of courage and cowardice, love, faith, evil and everything in between. I’m somewhat surprised that this hasn’t been made into a film, because it has all the ingredients of a tragic romance. Although the love story remains a little clichéd and predictable, it does manage to reconstruct the little known (to me at least) world of those who left Germany in the face of persecution, but struggled to find anyone prepared to take them. The fact that Remarque himself faced this brings authenticity to the tale. Mildly recommended. Giles Foden, Mimi and Tou...

There are a couple of things that I really like about this ad. First is that the baby has a really rotten head. I am all for rotten heads in advertisements, and quite frankly, it upsets me that we don’t see enough of it today. Second, babies doing adult things. This baby is lounging cross-legged in a deckchair, naked as the day it was born, smoking a pipe and grasping an unopened envelope, that’s pretty much every Sunday morning for me! And all advertising cornmeal baby cereal. Genius!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the hours after reports of his death, the top ten searches on Google Trends found people looking for more info on actor Heath Ledger. Perhaps more surprising was number two in the search terms... PhillyBurbs.com has more.

An avid reader, I intended to regularly do book reviews on this blog. Somewhere along the way though I forgot to do so. The last review I see was posted on July 27. I thought I’d best try and post some brief thoughts on what I’ve read in the interim for anyone who might be interested (but more for myself, to be honest). So, in no particular order, here are my thoughts on the first chunk of books that I’ve jotted notes down about while eating my lunch: Anne Applebaum, Gulag A long history of the Soviet (and previously Tsarist) system of Gulags. Profoundly interesting and terribly depressing at the same time. I am grateful for the awful lot of original research that went into detail what is a sadly obscure piece of modern history. Recommended for anyone interested in this area. Antony Wild, Coffee: A Dark History A popular history of coffee. It has its moments of appeal, but a little to ideologically driven for mine. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting (nor in the mood) for a post-colonial,...

The text roughly translates as “People eat with pleasure and without fatigue good pork sausages". Now I ask, if a pig is this happy – indeed joyous – to lay his life down for your dinner, surely you owe it to him to eat heartily? It’s exactly this sort of self sacrifice that is missing these days. He may be French, but I sense the spirit of a Samurai warrior dwells within this fellow.

I got a mobile phone very late on. Resistant to the charms, I held out until the looming birth of Henry, where being immediately reachable appeared crucial. Even now, something like 18 months later, I’ve perhaps made a total of 10 calls, maybe less. Yet it is the art of the text message that has captured me. Routinely I converse with my wife throughout the day through texts. Yet not for me is the shorthand “text message speak“. I find "text speak" is almost impossible to interpret, let alone understand the sort of ADD-influenced logic that appears to determine most of coded messages. So I choose to preserve proper standards of written English. Correct syntax and grammar should be maintained at all time, and spelling should not be sacrificed for speed or quantity. That’s not to say that my messaging does not differ from other modes of communication, because it does. And here is my point. Through no conscious effort on my part, text messaging is honing my ‘Hemingway”. First a c...

A guilty pleasure, but ah the good old days, where completely, utterly hateful and odious racial stereotypes sat right at the centre of ad campaigns!

Minsk, Belarus Minsk is the capital and largest city in Belarus. Located on the south-eastern slope of the Minsk Hills, Minsk was initially founded on the hills. However, in the twentieth century, it grew to include the relatively flat plains in the southeast. Minsk must have something going for it, because it has a long history of being ruled by different states. I think that it is this long history of destruction and rebuilding that arouses my curiosity about the place. First settled by the Slavs in the ninth century, it was incorporated into the early medieval Principality of Polatsk, one of the earliest East Slav states in 980. 1067 is now accepted as the founding year of Minsk, though the town (by then fortified by wooden walls) had certainly existed for some time by then. In the early twelfth century, the Principality of Minsk was established although this was annexed by Kiev, the dominant principality of Kievan Rus. However in 1146 the Polatsk dynasty again regained control. Mi...

Reuters has broken a massive story , and I assume that the comedic double act of Peg Putt and Will Hodgman will be calling for a public enquiry. Yes, the latest in cutting edge research indicates that children don’t like clowns. The researchers from the University of Sheffield (UK) polled a group of youngsters as part of an examination into improving the decor of hospital children's wards. The study, reported in the Nursing Standard magazine, found all (yes, EVERY SINGLE ONE ) of the 250 patients aged between four and 16 asked reported that they “disliked the use of clowns”, with even the older ones finding them scary. "As adults we make assumptions about what works for children," said Penny Curtis, a senior lecturer in research at the university. She went on to say, "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable."

Babies shave? I'll have to tell Henry. This baby looks so happy about it!