How have people arrived at this site? Ten search strings from the last few months:
happy numbers
my sister painting
calculating the area of pentagons
mental and oral starters
bundle or forgave or rome or tramps or guaranteers
skimming stones physicist
the film sunshine
animal rights-cloning
unveristy [–my awful spelling!–]
knife a fork a bottle and a cork
G. K. Chesterton once wrote “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
May I introduce the great Canadian James McIntyre, who I discovered in that delightful anthology The World’s Worst Poetry? Included is his epic poem entitled Ode On the Mammoth Cheese (weight over seven thousand pounds), including such verses as:
Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.
James McIntyre has apparently inspired the Online Dairy Ode Competition: The contest is exclusively for dairy odes, which are poems written about cheese, milk, yogourt, cows, goats, cheesemaking, dairy farming, or anything else to do with dairying and dairy products.
What would GK Chesterton make of it all?
I have just read an article on how Grand Master Jelly Tot came to produce this wonderful single, which reached number 4 in 1987. Two quotations of interest:
1. “If anyone one was going to buy this it would largely be 11 year olds.”
I bought a copy (I still have it). I was 11 when it came out!
2. “…we scratched the theme tune to ‘Neighbours’ (We were later sued by Tony Hatch for doing so, but that’s another story)”
This might be the reason why a copy I found online does not have the Neighbours sample, but rather a rendition of “Three Little Maids From School Are We.”
Anyway, full lyrics below….
Read the rest of this entry »
Tony Blair holds the office of prime minister, but his title is not “Prime Minister Blair”.
Since Blair’s speech to the US Congress, I have heard this solecism repeated frequently and it really gets my goat. Please could radio and television presenters differentiate between job titles and personal titles?
And why does President Bush continually refer to Blair as Prime Minister Blair? Hasn’t the prime minister ever corrected him?
I just started up my desktop PC for the first time this year (both my laptops are very poorly). I fired up IE5 and was pleasantly surprised to see Bob Links as my home page, but I quite literally jumped for joy when I scrolled to the bottom of the page and saw:
Now I am so nearly unemployed, I have vowed not to buy any more books - I already have so many unread ones and there’s a library just down the road.
However, I think I need to get a copy of Diary of a Madman, and Other Stories… by Gogol. I need this as it contains “The Nose”, which apparently tells the story of a nose transforming into a civil servant and back into a nose. I love these kind of stories, although I can’t think of many others just now.
I am told that Gogol himself had a long nose and am aware of some of his writing on the subject:
“The moon is made by some lame cooper, and you can see the idiot has no idea about moons at all. He put in a creosoted rope and some wood oil; and this has led to such a terrible stink all over the earth that you have to hold your nose. Another reason the moon is such a tender globe it that people just cannot live on it any more, and all that’s left alive there are noses. This is also why we cannot see our own noses - they’re all on the moon.”
(from Diary of a Madman)
I have decided to learn Esperanto! I have dabbled (very halfheartedly and hamfistedly) in the past, but an article in Saturday’s Guardian has given me the impetus to take it seriously.
I hope I will be able to give this venture the time it deserves.
While considering languages, may I take this opportunity to share one of my favourite annagrammatic conversations in Latin?
Quid est veritas? [Pilate’s words to Jesus, “What is truth?”]
Est qui vir adest! [Jesus’ possible reply, “It is the man before you!”]
You are your record collection, according to new research that reveals how personality is reflected through music. See the article here.
Summing up people who listen to Bob Dylan: “Inventive, solid, open to new experiences, consider themselves to be intelligent, good conversationalists, but not too clever at maths or analytical stuff. Politically liberal, but not very sporty. Unlikely to be depressed.”
Bob kicked off his latest tour last night.
I have entered the Dylan pool for the ninth time and, after one concert, am ranked 1471 out of 1821.
I am still convinced he will resurrect World Gone Wrong for this tour.
At least 1471 is a prime number!
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