Booze just in

Alcohol shoves a grandiose but nervous mind into a trench of this world and fills it with impatience about the future.

- Dr. Arnold Mandell, co-chair psychiatry dept., UCSD

Overheard on the train

"'This train is the service to Canterbury West'? Is that right?"
"Yes. It's going all the way down there."

Excerpted from a long and painful conversation between two old bags (+ luggage) - the sort who have to touch each other's knees when they say something of monumental import, who never sit near you when you've actually got your iPod, and who you know, instinctively and immediately, will be with you for the full duration of your journey.

Other highlights include: an uncle's forthcoming medical procedure (rights and wrongs thereof); feebly risqué references to husband and the "or pear" [au pair, for those readers who don't speak Sarfeast]; "Are you happy to sit facing the way we're going?" (x4); and "There's Battersea."

At one point, one of them spends a full five minutes trying to write and despatch an SMS.

Then:

"Ooh! Message from Sue [both chuckle, apropos of nothing]. I said to her 'if you're not on time, don't worry, we'll wait.'"

InDefinition - 6

Marxist feminism, n. No sex for everyone

Now

I've seen everything.

I think I just vommed a little

in my mouth.

Anag.

J U S T I N T I M B E R L A K E
I'M A J E R K B U T L I S T E N

Amnesiac Recommends

Wherein it is hoped that Tim FitzHigham, FRGS, Bt. will be giving the Amnesiacs a massive plug.

(Click image to book - and say 'Bath' to get a £2 discount per ticket.)

Overheard in charity shop

... by the book section:

Old crone: Which bit of history are you most interested in?

Young crone: Any bit, as long as it doesn't feel like a waste of time.

While trying to come up with a witticism involving historians repeating one another (and wits, likewise), I confess I felt a nagging sympathy for my fellow customer's quandary.

How many men does it take...

Three men came round to lay a carpet today.

Two did the fitting, while one sat in the van, on the kerb, for the duration.

Loo x 2

My father recently repainted the downstairs bathroom.

He moved the mirror from the wall to the window-sill, and hasn't put it back yet.

Now every time I use the toilet I have to watch myself pee, in stereo.

'Ograsm'? As in Shrek?

How too Give a Woman an Ograsm That Will Have Her Dragging You Back Night After Night For More‏

- Sender's name, no jokes: Mausoleum.

Thought for the day

If ignorance is bliss, why keep dentists in college for the better part of a decade?

The Amnesinsomniac Review

Advice for Insomnia

• Avoid caffeine.
• Don't drink before bed.
• Don't eat too much before bed.
• Take a bath before bed.
• Exercise.
• Sleep alone.

- Taken from The Skinny: On Losing Weight Without Being Hungry by Louis J. Arrone, M.D. The last piece of advice actually goes on to say, "Many people wake less often if they sleep alone, away from the distractions of a spouse or pet."

So now I'm wondering: if you couldn't make it up, what's the point in writing fiction?

Er, run that one by me again, will you, pal?

"There may be more of them [professional journalists], not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won’t be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer. If so, leveraging the Free—paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards—may not be the enemy of professional journalists. Instead, it may be their salvation."

- From Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine. (See Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker review here.)

For what it's worth, I'm assuming the techno-utopian Anderson was paid for his book, sells copies of it, and charges for a copy of his magazine.

It's a bitch convincing people to like you

I could tell that Perry was held in ungrudging affection, which in Dublin meant that a writer was too old or too chronically a failure to provoke envy.

- Hugh Leonard, Fillums

The 15(b) golden rules of theatre etiquette

... according to Benedict Nightingale and me:

15b (and corringendum)
Do NOT, under any circumstances, sniff. If you're ill, stay at home; if you're just ill-bred, stay out of the theatre.

Top of her class-consciousness

“I didn’t realise before That Face that writing about the middle classes so scathingly was quite a rare thing. But there’s no mystery as to why I write from that perspective. I’m middle-class.”

- under-age playwright, Polly Stenham

The post-Blur blur

Question

Just out of interest, what's so great about the great unwashed?

WE'RE MOVING

Amnesiac Review offices, SE24

In Ernes'

To drop one 't' may be regarded as a misfortune. To drop two looks like Kentishness.

Revelatory trivia

Hitler was a chorister.

That is all.

Overheard at the Salem Public Library, Vol. 1

1. Old lady, looking at a copy of "A Time To Kill" by John Grisham: "Oh that's nice, you never seem to be able to plan hacking someone to pieces, it just sort of...happens."

2. "Excuse me, could you help me find a book? I don't know the title. It's by a female author from the South who may or may not be dead. She writes stories. Have you read it?"

3. "I'm pretty sure Flannery O'Connor is a dude."

4. "And that's why the Goddess gave us boobs."

(Courtesy of Mrs. Dee Dee Cusack, sexy cardigan-wearing pencil-chewing seductress extraordinaire.)

Not even my own

Smyth says

"Give a man a fish and he'll feed himself for a day. Give a man a hat and he'll be an arsehole for the rest of his life."

Glasto UPDATE

This just in from my mate Jack:

"Hello Tiger Bone, How are you? I just got back from the sex farm. The german Springsteen impersonator 'Springstein' was particularly gut. My favourite songs Donner Bahn and Tanzen in der Dunkel."

Enjoy

Henry Dingle on MySpace

Vive la barbe!

Am musician. Have beard.

Nuff said.

Vacancy

WANT TO WORK FOR THE SPORTS ILLUSTRATED OF THE CARIBBEAN?
Now is your chance. Ambitious publisher is looking for journalists who know and love sports and who wouldn't mind living in the tropical paradise of Puerto Rico.

Unfortunately, this position was advertised in 1959 - and was filled by one Hunter S Thompson.

Also, I wouldn't say I know about sport(s), exactly...

Not in front of the choristers!

Fitting tribute to Michael 'Beat It with both manuals' Jackson.



(It's not just me, is it? You can actually hear congregants laughing... Nuff respeck.)

Housemaid's knee

In a moment of self-indulgence this morning, I tried searching for 'Smyth' in the archives of a regional newspaper to which I am a frequent contributor.

Results returned:

'Super Smyth in four-goal blitz' (setting the standard)
'Smyth and Beer both bag four' (standard night out)
'Hawks at bottom' (standard night in)
'Oxon's freak goal in vain' (standard shrink's assessment)
and
'Bank bans customer for boob joke' (Evening Standard)

Tragically, not one of these has anything to do with me.

NB Unlike Nixon or Vaughan, Smyth does not traditionally refer to himself in the third person.

The wisdom of Ross Michael Brown

My company has got me in this horrendous situation where I am obliged to work for 40 hours a week in return for a monthly salary. It's like living under Mao...

- RMB, on life in the (year of the) pig pen

--
Ross Michael Brown is head of the Amnesiac special ops division, hereafter known as The Carpenters.

The Duckworth Lewis Method

... is now the name of a band.

Their eponymous album will be out on Monday, July 6th. Until then, you can listen to the whole lot here - free and legaleasy.

Old newspaper adage

"Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel."

- Toby Ziegler, The West Wing

Here at the Amnesiac Review, we don't buy ink: we mix our own.

Damned with great praise

"I see him as a genius writer, but an amateur human being."

- William McKeen on Hunter S Thompson

"I learned a new word today, Basie" - 11

five-finger discount, n. Stealing stuff.

Criticising critics

Important, frank note on arts criticism from Jonathan Jones. Shame he works for The Guardian, but still...

Bad news

Good news: you'll probably still be in in time to catch the fifth set.

Tanzanite Hour

I've just tuned in to Netplay TV, only to discover that Tanzanite Hour is not Africa's answer to PMQs.

What it is however, is a shitty jewellery programme [ambiguous adjectives + p&p incl.], featuring an Oscar-winning performance from the actress (or whatever you'd call her) tasked with flogging this sub-Ratner trash.

Seriously, for the ability to riff endlessly and with little-to-no understanding of the topic at hand, these shopping-channel lasses knock spots off Gordon Brown. Do they know there'll be seats up for grabs in the next Parliament?

"Time served."

Possibly the best description of office working hours I have ever heard, courtesy of Joshua Ferris.