Guardian Unlimited | Arts special reports | Salgado Antarctica 1
It really is an extraordinary planet (compared to what? I hear you ask) – look at these photos to prove it. The elephant seal looks disconcertingly like me in the morning.
Thursday evening saw your correspondent in Birmingham, staying overnight so as to be present on time at a morning meeting. I stayed in a pleasant hotel, but its situation – at the intersection of two dual carriageways on the ring round – left something to be desired. I decided that I (or rather, the institution who would get the bill) couldn’t afford the “world -famous” cuisine in the hotel (which world was not specified) so my choice was limited to the establishments adjacent to the hotel. The Indian would have been my first choice, but the place was dead, and the plastic tables under strip lighting reminiscent of school dining halls. I walked past McDonald’s on principle (and I’m vegetarian too) which left an establishment claiming to offer authentic Mexican cuisine.
This place – Chiquito? I can’t remember – is a chain, with those really sophisticated laminated menus, but I was hungry, and this was available and cheap. My English teacher’s hackles rose (where are your hackles, by the way?) when I saw that the place was, apparently “Famous for Fajita’s”. I was tempted to ask “Fajita’s what?” but knew that I would be met with incomprehension. Do you think there’s any mileage in a concert aimed at making the redundant apostrophe history? Thought not.
I was served by the efficient Sally (“I’m Sally and I’ll be your server tonight”) who took my order and asked if I wanted a drink. I did, but not from the cocktail list she proferred. Here, in the same kid-friendly laminate, was a list of staggeringly awful drinks, all with wonderfully “amusing” names. What startled me, though, since this was the kind of place where parents brought kids for birthday treats, was the names of these concoctions. “The sloe comfortable screw” might be explained away, but “Sex on the Beach”? If you wanted two of these, do you ask for “Two sexes on the beach” or “Two sex on the beaches”? The latter has a Churchillian ring… The most startling concoction was a ghastly collision of vodka, Baileys and various dairy products going by the name of the Screaming Orgasm. This is obviously designed to be hilarious to the alcopop generation, but rather like the FCUK label, if it was funny the first time (and that’s debatable) it sure isn’t by the three hundredth time. I imagine to the people that drink these things, it quickly becomes just a name – “oh go on then, I’ll have another screaming orgasm” – but I did wonder how the parents at the table near me where a seven year old was being brought a birthday cake would explain it. “No Britney, for the last time, you’re not old enough to have a screaming orgasm”…
I took my car for an MOT this morning. The woman who runs the garage is very efficient, but she has a really irritating vocal tic. Her answer to virtually any inquiry is “not a problem.” It’s a variant of the increasingly common “no problem” spoken, for example, when you are given change in the shop. You say thanks, the shop person says “no problem”. Well, no, obviously – why would it be a problem? I am entitled to my change, no? At the garage, I overheard a telephone conversation which went like this:
Caller – (whatever, I couldn’t hear)
Garage woman – Not a problem Mr Davies
Caller – Blah blah blah
GW – Not a problem
Caller – Blah
GW – That’s not a problem, no.
Caller – Blah
GW – That’s not a problem in any way, shape or form…
What about that last one?
I imagine this woman’s awesome power to smooth out problems could be used to solve global difficulties. Let’s get her up to the G8 meeting. I imagine the press conference:
Andrew Marr: Do you have a plan to end world poverty?
Special Envoy Garage Woman: That’s not a problem
Adam Boulton: What about AIDS?
SEGW: That’s no problem at all
Jon Snow: Can you fix global warming?
SEGW: That’s not a problem in any way, shape or form.
All: Hurrah!
Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Welcome
Here’s someone with lots to offer those of us exploring online and distance education. A fascinating site, and I’ve only just scratched the surface.
The Observer | Review | Observer review: Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew by Bernard Hare
According to this book, there is an underclass of feral children in Britain. I trained as a teacher in Leeds nearly thirty years ago, and in the tough secondary modern where I did my teaching practice, I could have taught the fathers of these kids. The difference then was that there was no drug problem, beyond the odd bottle of cheap cider shared behind the bike sheds. Some of the kids were in trouble with the police because of shop lifting, there were occasional fights, and, memorably, the bus company refused to lay on buses after some boys set fire to a bus while they were still on it. Even so, I was never threatened by a pupil, and most days passed without any major incident. Most of the boys (it was an all boys school) had relatively stable family backgrounds, and unemployment was low. They could expect to land a factory job on leaving school. True, things were getting bad in the traditional heavy industries, but Thatcherism was still a few years off. I don’t look back on it with rose coloured spectacles – it could be grim at times – the boys thought Kes was great, because it was so like their own lives – but nothing like the complete breakdown of structure indicated by this book and other sources such as Theodore Dalrymple.
The comparison in the review to the City of God children is a chilling one, but one that seems justified. In the midst of our affluence, we are harbouring a third-world street culture where violence, crime and death are the currency of everyday life.
Normblog on the Name game
The very great and good Norman Geras – an honorary Mancunian – has the excellent Roosevelt Brighton as his West Indian cricketer name, and the very exotic Lambretta Metformin as his Star wars name. Actually, I’m a bit in the dark on Star Wars as I am one of the three people on the planet never to have seen any of the various episodes. The current Doonesbury story is largely passing me by as a result.
Norm invited people to send him cool names. I always liked Canaan Banana myself, and was intrigued to learn that Brian Eno’s full name was Brian Peter St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. Mind you, ‘er indoors once taught a girl called Cadillac Alexis Snow White Meredith Bennett…
There’s an entertaining thread on the Mark Radcliffe show at the moment. He’s playing that game that we’ve all done where you create a name from certain elements, and the name is then your porn star name or somesuch. My porn star name (my first pet plus the street name of my first address) is pretty good – Sandy Belding – but ‘er indoors has a perfect one: Mitzi Nansen. On the Radcliffe show they’ve invented your West Indian cricketer name, which is the surname of the US president in the year of your birth plus the last seaside town you visited. This would yield Eisenhower St Annes in my case, but St Annes is a cheat because I live there, so I’m going for Eisenhower Formby, a tricky left arm spinner methinks. Someone on the show had Nixon Whitby, which is perfect – a classic fast bowler name – and there are going to be lots of youngsters who could have names like Clinton Scarborough and Reagan Cromer. Radcliffe also suggested your Star Wars name, which would be the first car you owned followed by the name of any medication you’re on, which yields not much in my case as I’m not on medication – yet – but I could cheat and go for Austin Optrex. I can’t compete, however with the fabulous example on the show – Wartburg Anusol!
EducationGuardian.co.uk | Research | How The Waste Land was done
You’d have thought it would be difficult to say anything new about The Waste Land but Prof Rainey appears to have done the impossible. In doing so, he has managed to confirm what I suspect many people have felt – that the poem is not a magisterially organised organic whole, but really is “fragments shored against my ruins”. The paradox in much criticism of the poem has been that in celebrating its quintessentially modernist attributes of ambiguity, uncertainty, provisionality, writers have then suggested that the unfinished feel of the poem is all part of Eliot’s master plan. Not so, according to Prof Rainey. Not sure whether I should point my students in the direction of these findings, as they could suggest that the poem really is what it appears to be – a rattle bag of half-finished bits and pieces. They are very superior bits and pieces, though.
CultureSpace: I Blog, Therefore I Am
This is interesting – suggesting how identities in cyberspace are being shaped by the blogging phenomenon. I read today that there are about 4 million active blogs and millions more that have been started but then fallen into disuse, rather like the diaries we all used to start on January 1st. Mine usually ended about January 6th when we went back to school after the Christmas break.
The way that bloggers have total control over publishing what they want is key to the whole enterprise. And we shouldn’t underestimate the role of hypertext – links are the defining feature of the web in my view, its USP if you like. Bookshops and libraries need some sort of order, and thus you can’t jump from one subject to another with the ease of hypertext. We’ve all had the experience of ending up reading something about the prevalence of gherkins as snack food in Poland when we logged on to look up the dates of Ben Jonson. Or at least, I have…
Easily Distracted � Sample syllabi
Just came across this – it looks like it could be a great course. I’d sign up…