Wednesday 20 January 2010

Indefinition - 13

slowlights, n. Real-time test-match footage, as shown on Day 5, to fill broadcast schedule in light of humiliating defeat.

Boswell vs Johnson - LIVE!

ASH: Diary idea a cracker. My biographer (i.e. I) will be so gutted when I reach 70 and have never got round to it.

Dom: You'll have to busy yourself editing mine... X

ASH: You are a total Johnson x

Tuesday 19 January 2010

Slanket



(Thanks to RL)

From Cairo

Pretty sure that, while I'm trying to finish my book over some lunch, there is a woman in a burkha breast-feeding a baby.
- JRHS, brother and A-rabist

Sunday 17 January 2010

The death of humour

Dear all,

It pains me to admit that I have just deleted an Amnesiac post(-it), at the request of a lawyer.

The lawyer in question (you may or may not recall) had, last April 1st, executed a superb prank on his colleagues, prompting an increasingly absurd correspondence between him and several office juniors about a non-existent all-expenses trip to the Caribbean and the young French counterpart they might have to share a room with.

Alas, he writes to tell me that killjoy types have given him shit about it, so would I take it down? Since I didn't get the FWD'd e-mails from him in the first place, this seemed fair. The only thing worse than seeing this splendid joke deleted would be seeing the joker fired.

Grimly,

A

Incoming!

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Saturday 16 January 2010

Friday 8 January 2010

Pour mon camarade

How did they command such deference - English teachers? Compared to the men who taught physics or biology, what did they really know of the world? It seemed to me, and not only to me, that they knew exactly what was most worth knowing. Unlike our math and science teachers, who modestly stuck to their subjects, they tended to be polymaths. Adept as they were at dissection, they would never leave a poem or a novel strewn about in pieces like some butchered frog reeking of formaldehyde. They'd stitch it back together with history and psychology, philosophy, religion, and even, on occasion, science. Without pandering to your presumed desire to identify with the hero of a story, they made you feel that what mattered to the writer had consequence for you, too.
- Tobias Wolff, Old School

Tuesday 5 January 2010