littorally

Hibernation

No more blogging for a while. Maybe just for a short while. Maybe for good. Am a little bored of many things, and this is one, so a break is good.

Build your own rollercoaster

Obviously, if you actually build this, I disclaim all responsibility for anything. In fact, I didn’t even write this. And if you invite me to go on it, I may be washing my hair.

Moustache on to Christ, lays it back to Bastard

This would be my favourite world XI, if you were allowed to select by name. And had a time machine to rescue those who are no longer with us. Lining up in 4-4-2:

GK:

Norman Conquest

Defence:
Danger Fourpence
Milan Fukal
Johnny Moustache
Mario Killer

Midfield:
Segar Bastard
Danny Invincible
Harry Daft
Naughty Mokoena

Forwards:
Bongo Christ
Creedence Clearwater Couto

Serendipities

Things that I have discovered recently that make me happy.

New (to me) music, from The Notwist and The Shortwave Set.

Grasmere gingerbread. Hot. Especially after a couple of drinks.

This post about probably the most intensive Masters in Creative Writing, which gives a real grounding in the skills and experience needed.

Born from a roiling vat of the seething discontents and sociopathic urges of the commenters to the BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ website: the Twat-O-Tron. None of the comments are made up. None of them. Make plans to flee now: I suggest the Moon.

Pope is Catholic, mandarins announce

The Foreign Secretary has recommended to the Queen that Robert Mugabe’s honorary knighthood, given in 1994, be withdrawn by the Queen, because apparently it turns out it has suddenly become apparent that he’s really something of a nasty chap.

In other news from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today, travel restrictions to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in place due to the threat from the Mongol hordes, have now been lifted.

In a hotel in Amsterdam

We were messing around doing iTunes playlists when Lost Weekend by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions came on, and I mentioned that whenever I think of Lloyd Cole these days (which is not often, in case that makes me sound like a stalker) I always just see Jimmy Carr. Only to find out that I’m not the only one, which makes me feel better.

In other news, the next novel is well and truly started, and I have that sense of compulsion and excitement about it which I haven’t had with any of the ideas I’ve been playing with, that feeling that you’re lost in it, that it’s in your head all day, working on it or not. Which is good.

Disturbance at the Heron Tree

Based in the old naval yards on the Isle of Nantes, the workshops of Les Machines de l’ile, producers of the Elephant. There’s a carousel planned, a 25 metre carousel that will have 27 moving marine creatures including the Giant Squid. And a 28 metre high Heron Tree, which is gradually coming into existence.

(via Mefi).

You Are Not The Ref Anymore

Shoot Magazine is dead.

I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the seventies reading about how hard-faced weathered men with bad hair and worse beards liked to eat steak and chips before a match. Or maybe chicken, if they were progressive and in tune with fancy dan cutting edge foreign sports science. I’d sit for hours, contented, eating Angel Delight and rearranging the little tabs in the league ladders.

A Guardian obit quotes the best answer ever in the regular Shoot questionnaire. When Alan Birchenall of Leicester City was asked which person in the world he would most like to meet, the answer was:

Hitler (if still alive) – or Neil Diamond.

Class.