Verbatim

"I find Jewish things very funny. Apart from the Holocaust."

- KJW

Further Thurber

Tout, as the French say, in a philosophy older than ours and an idiom often more succint, passe.

- Further Fables for Our Time

De haute en bas

I am the birdshit on the statues of once-great men.

'Harry Potter student found hanged in room'

It was only a matter of time.

Old joke

What's the difference between an arts critic and a yoghurt?

'Dicks unhappy with referee'

(but ain't that always the way?)

Seriously, though...

The student-teacher relationship

Getting in on the Colombo music scene.

Hauteur! Hauteur!

I find my name listed in the program of the Edinburgh International Festival among those of writers invited to take part in its Writers Conference.... Needless to say that I am supremely indifferent to "the problems of a writer and the future of the novel" that are to be discussed...

- Vladimir Nabokov, letter to The Times, May 30, 1962

Titles gone begging - 10

The Principle Principle - or, Why People Think I'm An Arsehole

American history wtf?

The New Press has a category entitled World History/WWII.

Everything you need to know about the American isolationist mentality...

No(ta)bels

Neat piece on Nobel oddities (Obama award not incl.)

Too soon!

Anyone else think rewarding Obama for his hopes and dreams is on a par with giving the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to an undergrad with a daring hypothesis?

Hearing voices

A great authority on singing once wrote that when Everyman sang in his bath, it was Caruso whom he fancied he heard.

- Frank Johnson, Best Seat in the House (not actually about music, ironically enough)

Which invites the question: when Everyman reviews his day's blog activity [ahem... - Eds.] whose work does he imagine he is reading? Nabokov? Fitzgerald? That idiot Joyce?

InDefinition - 10

dinner dance, n. prelude to a violent voiding of the bowels, usu. in the tropics (esp. if some distance from the nearest convenience). Ideally performed solo.

A precursory glance

Every writer creates his own precursors.

- Borges, 'Kafka and His Precursors'

World Teacher Day

I got a card today - "to the World's Best Teacher."

It had five spelling mistakes in it.

And was a day late.

Gawd...

It is impossible for a man to read and earn money at the same time, unless he is a reviewer, and Ruggiero prayed never to fall so low.

- Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies

[Personally, I gotta say I've never found it possible to read and earn money even while being a reviewer. But there it is.]

I have a question

If a man who tells stories about his own adventures is branded an egotist and a bore, why is the man who spins fictions neither sectioned as a madman nor denounced as a liar?

non PC est

This isn't a pissing contest.

But if it were, I'd win.

The deafening sound of silence

"You're not saying anything. That speaks volumes."

Fame, Branded

"My persona don't really work without fame. Without fame, this haircut could be mistaken for mental illness."

- Russell Brand

Couldn't agrizzle more. Here's me today, writing:






Hmmm... Maybe need to work on my back-comb.