This morning’s revelations of a depression Prozac symbiosis are nothing more than a variation on the old Guinness-is-good-for-you pub therapy industry. The trick is to recognise it as such and manage it effectively. While it is evident that Hank Williams failed in the latter respect, I think that one of his songs contains a remarkable…
There is no sound quite as revolting as an ex-street cat on heat and with ferocious nasal congestion licking its posterior end, and the smell is not exactly Scandinavian pine either. Jimmy Rushing on his 1944 recording of Harvard blues sings I don’t keep dogs or women in my room but omits mention of pussy,…
To be fair, Austrian writer Robert Menasse is going after The System in his German spelling reform diatribe, not the 2 l8, m8 clan, but it’s still heavy stuff. Apparently–and I find him a bit difficult to follow–the reform was racist because it Germanised both “German” and “force-assimilated” immigrant words, neoliberal because it has created…
I thought this was rather special, especially when you consider all the one-note-samba rubbish still floating around: an early C20th recording (MP3) by El Canario Chico which concentrates a maximum of micro-variation within a minimal compass. More here on the Centro Andaluz de Flamenco site. A prior engagement with a tarantula means I’m not going…
I’m terribly sorry: I meant conservative in the sense of a nostalgia for things just past, which does, I think, make Habermas and Derrida conservatives. Mark Liberman, on the other hand, is nostalgic for times long past, for the Enlightenment–buckled shoes, open drains, and, quite possibly, beating well-loved columnists with clubs–which makes him not so…
The quote in all the obits for OED superhero Robert Burchfield is his description of English as “a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib”. Even if French dogs did like accordions as much as their masters are alleged to, it would do little to encourage the terminally oppressed Quebec…
I used to sing and play lead moon-whistle with a novelty orchestra which had somehow come to the understanding that when the drummer cried, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Reggie Perrin!”, we would manoeuvre clumsily into a decrepit Jamaican shuffle of a type which would probably not have won the favour of Mr Marley. That was…
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a highly talented Somali immigrant who started as a cleaning lady and, although still only in her mid-30s, was elected last time round to the lower chamber of the Dutch parliament on the VVD (liberal-right) ticket. She has been threatened frequently since being elected for describing Islam as a backward religion,…
Polifònica Industrial, the choir of which I am apparently director, is singing and prancing around at the Marató de l’Espectacle at the Mercat de les Flors at 22:25, tonight, Friday. We are going to perform a mild parody of some West African light music with a text in favour of the commercialisation of popular beverages.…