I have long been preoccupied with the concept of rhetorical interrogative responses which euphemistically imply the absence of doubt. Which sounds as complex as could be, so let me clarify. To give an example ( Read more... )

It seems funny. Exactly when did it become de rigueur for journalists for national broadsheets to say things like this Guardian journalist last Saturday: "I know this may sound strange to you, but to me, a middle-class child growing up in suburbia, darts was glamorous, the stench of beer, sweat and fags wafting through the telly and hooking me for ( Read more... )

I have a question concerning phases of the moon, and I was hoping someone brainy and knowledgable here might be able to answer it ( Read more... )

John O'Farrell always make me laugh, and he's at it again in this recent piece in the Guardian, all about some new pamphlet the Government are introducing about English history and customs ( Read more... )

I found a new flat yesterday, and celebrated with half a bottle of vodka by night. Tipple of the Czars. That sounds like a song-title by Spinal Tap. I am moving in on the 11th of December. Not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but maybe the end of the beginning. I have a big hill to climb over the next six months, and will probably roll over ( Read more... )

There are those who say 'better any party than no party'. (There are also those who say that stilton cheese is fit for human consumption.) But I wish it were one of those people going to this party tonight instead of me. It's a publishing party, children's publishers, so it will be full of tipsy bibulous dipsomaniacs, and thus I will mingle ( Read more... )

As I was flying back to the UK, I had a sudden clear vision of being a condemned man in a cell, about an hour before execution. A strange sense of being very much alive, yet certain, not only of death, but death at a fixed time close at hand, and with no possible reprieve ( Read more... )

"A cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar and then thrown out, as good for nothing," a doctor, quoted by Waverley Root ( Read more... )

Now I may be the only person not already hip to this, so apologies in advance if so. However, for all fans of the found or appropriated object, and especially Found Magazine devotees, this site is a total must ( Read more... )

There is a really increible review of the new Chicago exhibition of Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte, written by Holland Cotter in today's New York Times. I don't know if you can follow this link without signing up for their email service, but just in case ( Read more... )