Oh god, not content with drifting ever more right-wing, the Cleggist LibDems are just being downright embarrassing with this cold-calling stunt of theirs. Who on earth in a million years really thought that that'd lead to a big rise in LibDem popularity? I'm feeling that disillusionment and falling of crests you get when somebody you really fancy turns out to believe that there is such a word as 'wierd': it had all been going so swimmingly and you were so proud, but actually no, scales-drop-from-eyes time: this is, it suddenly transpires, no grand passion and maybe you're not actually going to introduce them to your friends after all, and abundantly not in any forum where they might happen to be writing about the uncanny, the arcane or even simply the unfamiliar.

But where does this leave the oh-you-know-vaguely-left-liberal-decent-sort-of-pinko-Guardianista to go? Neither Dave nor Gordon are exactly enticing options and both are still to the right even of the New LDs. So err, what's left (in all senses)? Am I going to have to change my Facebook politics status to 'apathetic'? !!! Like the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel, I am disenchanted, dismayed and like to swoon.

And another thing: how come there are so many people called Clegg about all of a sudden? There used only to be Peter Sallis, and he always seemed perfectly harmless and normally rather charming, really, but now they're absolutely everywhere. It's terrifyingly like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and something really ought to be done about it.

But anyway, a poll: ( Read more... )

Is it my (admittedly shonky) connection or is Google Chrome really *really* slow?

Anybody see what I did with the title there? Such larks!

Sorry about the above ^^^. It's all fracture242's fault. I've had bloody Bodycount in the House going through my head ever since something on her journal yesterday set it off.

There is something so gloriously silly about that song, though, that you really have to forgive Ice T, despite it all: I particularly like the introducing-the-band bit in the middle, and that line 'And back here on the bass is my main motherfucker named Moose Man!'. Right up to the word 'named' that's fine and thoroughly rock'n'roll, but he just so utterly loses it as soon as he starts talking about Moose Man. I mean ghetto names are all very well and no-one could hope to be more hip to that sort of thing than am I, but what on earth possessed anyone to think that Moose was a good idea? Mm, moose. If you ask me, Ice T should make sure he gets himself a less ludicrously soubriqueted main motherfucker if he wants to be taken at all seriously. Which, to be fair, I suspect that he doesn't. Isn't he playing a cop in some tv series nowadays? Thus forever laying to rest the nonsense that Americans don't get irony.

Oo, though, talking of really laboured attempts to get song titles into LJ posts, for some reason this morning as I awoke my first thought was how fantastic it would be if Dr Clegg the Elder were to attend Pride and then (perish the thought!) get enormously drunk. Because when it was written up on LJ there would never be a better reason to have 'Beers, steers and Queers' as the title! I hasten to add that it only seemed funny and like a splendid idea whilst I was still very much Lethe-wards sunk and that I mention it solely to give you all an insight into the rather worrying state of my subconscious in the fond hope that you'll then have sympathy and that sort of thing and I'll be able to get away with murder, ha-ha! Oh, and for anyone that doesn't know fifteen-year-old Revolting Cocks songs, this whole paragraph isn't going to make an enormous amount of sense. Honestly, Simon, what crack are you on today?

Ye-es, so, moving on...
( the actual point of this post )

Reposted (oops) as I mucked up some of the type="check" bits.
( Under here )

My Lovely New Flat is gradually emerging from the piles of boxes with which it has been filled for the last month. Last night I even took what I consider a significant step towards oh you know houseproudliness and bourgeois respectability and all those Daily Mail/Middle England sorts of virtues by removing the table which had been holding the bathroom door permanently open for the last three weeks. There really wasn't anywhere else it could go, but it did rather curtail the range of guests I was ready to admit to closer friends only, especially if they seemed likely to require the lavatory at any point during their visit. There's only so much looking the other way and stuffing fingers in ears that one can do. Now it - the table, that is - is sitting in the kitchen and getting in the way terribly, but still I suspect this is what the How Clean Is Your House people would counsel had they happened to visit. Thank goodness they haven't. I wouldn't want to know about their bathroom habits.

Anyway, none of this is awfully to the point, which is that I'm just about to set up my phone and net and I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations or ghastly cautionary stories of woe relating to land line/broadband bundles, Tiscali (my currently favoured option) in particular? Any thoughts?

Also, there is a special prize for enormous cleverness and being desperately well-read for everyone who recognises the quotation in my title. But it would be very vulgar to call attention to the fact that you do recognise it, so the way that you qualify for the prize is by just reading the title and then nodding and inwardly smiling to yourself as you sit at your computer and thereby share with me a moment of self-congratulation and smug recognition of our cultural bond.<sup>1

1</sup>Please note that this competition is not open to anyone whose degree happens to be in Eng Lit as you have a terribly unfair advantage. Just leave it for the Computer Scientists and that sort of person as they'll feel ever so much prouder if they win.

... or even, frankly, an indifferent or wholly morally bankrupt one. I'm no snob.

• Indesit W113 Washing Machine 1100 spin


• Moulinex FM 1535E Microwave Oven 650w


• Double bed and mattress see picture below

All free to anyone who can pick them up from the Blackhorse Rd area of Walthamstow.

I have a nasty feeling that most people I know are far too well-off for this sort of thing, though, so, alternatively, does anyone know of any charities that would want these and which would pick them up?

Please do pass on to anyone who might be interested. If no-one bites by Friday then they'll go on Freecycle.

Yesterday was a triumph of a day.

Firstly, on impulse at lunchtime I went for a wander around Cargo on TCR and in their sale purchased a black mock-croc tea tray. Awesome or what? I mean, yes, okay, it's a tea tray, and at that you're all shaking your alternative-as-anything heads and sharing concerned glances of the 'Ohmygod, the bourgeois domesticity bug has bitten this one hard. What price integrity, rockstardom, scuzziness?' sort, I know, but come now, it's not just a tea tray, is it? It's a black, mock-croc tea tray, which is just cool on a stick if you ask me. I bet Ozzy has black mock-croc tea trays, or would want one if someone happened to mention them to him. Anyway, I'm terribly pleased, and keep glancing across to it as it sits next to me on my desk and smiling.

( Pub/Gig review: Queens of the Stone Age, Hammersmith Odeon or Apollo, I suppose, although really it's the Odeon, 11/02/08 )

Current Mood: ergotistical

Okay, just one last blast from me (and then I promise I'll shut up about it) to say

Come to my birthday tomorrow!

BIG RED
Holloway Road

Nearest station is Holloway Road: turn left out of the station and walk straight up the Holloway Road (spookily enough) until you get to Big Red, which is on the left. I'll be there from 6.30 or some bloody silly time like that to get seats, but come whenever you feel is fashionable. Oh, and half the rest of the world is having birthday things in there that night too, so you'll be just too uncool if you don't make it.

Now, I'm just off to go and collect some keys.

Quick question that has so far proved un-googlable...

I know Germans and Germanophones are a bit weird - to Anglo-American eyes - about correctly using academic titles and get wildly hung up about people omitting any, hence the nonsense of 'Professor Doktor Schicklgrüber' or 'Doktor Doktor Schicklgrüber' if Schicklgrüber happens to have more than one title. But I'm currently dealing with an Austrian who would seem to want me to address her in correspondence by the style 'Mag', short for 'Magister', as she is the possessor of a magister artium degree. Surely that can't be normal, even in Germany/Austria?

It is, I should mention, possible that she or I have got entirely the wrong end of the stick in the process of translation, but does anyone happen to know if Germans with MAs really seriously expect to be called Magister/Master?

Update I've just noticed that the Austrian in question has addressed me as 'Mr'. 99.99% of the time I couldn't care less about that, but just this once it has a certain amusement value.

I'm trying - in a tearing hurry - to find a third speaker for a session on colonial literatures in the central middle ages. I already have Ian Short, from Birkbeck, who does Anglo-Norman stuff, and I'm thinking of pairing him with Matt Townend, from York, who does Scandinavian lang and lit in the Danelaw, but has anyone got any thoughts on a third to go with them? It should be someone pretty high-powered and working on language or literature in colonial/contact situations anywhere in Europe - although west is probably better - and between, say, 800 and 1250 or so - the extremely long C11th, if you like. :)

Also, medieval travel: anyone know of anyone doing anything interesting on it? Central middle ages for pref, although early med or high med are probably okay too.

Oops, should add, this is for the Anglo-American Conference of Historians in the first week of July, which is the week before Leeds. So far as I know there's no money to pay for transatlantic flights or anything, unfortunately, which is a bit of a bind, but if there's someone from the States who really fits the bill, then do let me know anyway.

Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

Poll #1081693
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Whom do you think should be LibDem leader?

Whom do you think will actually become LibDem leader?

Fancy coming to Inferno tonight at the Ballroom?

In other news, and at the risk of it all going horribly wrong, I've put in an offer on another flat and had it accepted. All being well, I might even be in by Christmas. Ho ho.

For your amusement, a very young-looking me, thirstypixel and miss_wonderly (together with miss_wonderly's midriff) at a party at Constantine House in York in 1993...

( Scenes of Grotesque Barbarousness )

(with thanks to Laura (WINOLJ) for the picture)

The weekend was long and tortuous, but for the first time in my life saw me really feeling rather like Napoleon ('Have you heard? He's really losing it this time. Damn fool thinks he's Napoleon. I always said he was funny, poor chap.') No, callow reader, don't worry, I still retain the threads of my sanity, or at least inasmuch as I ever had them. What I was saying, before I was so rudely blah blah, was that the weekend put me in mood not of the Emperor in his majesty, but of the Napoleon of 1812, standing in the smoking wreck of Moscow with winter closing in and the Grande Armée deserting him left, right and centre. He had come so incredibly far, slowly and arduously and suffering terrible losses on the way, but eventually he had done it: the Russians had been decisively crushed at Borodino, and now their capital lay open and defenceless as he walked in, the man who had bested every state in continental Europe. But his armies had lost a lot of their strength and all of their impetus, and Napoleon rapidly ran out of options: going any further was unthinkable, and could lead only to disaster, starvation, death and ignominious defeat. Staying, likewise, was impossible, and would mean the same, only more lingeringly. The only course was retreat, scurrying desperate retreat; all the hard-won territory was given up, all the artillery dumped, everything - rifles, uniforms, any semblance of dignity - abandoned as Napoleon and the last shreds of his army turned tail and ran back to the West. Of around half a million who set out against Russia, not ten thousand returned to France.

But for the shooting-of-deserters and having-to-eat-rats-as-all-the-rations-had-gone bits, this is almost exactly analogous to what I was feeling on Saturday and Sunday, as I re-packed everything which I'd moved less than a month ago into my new and thoroughly exciting (or not, as it turned out) flat, and moved it all out in high dudgeon to zoo_music_girl's place. Bah.

Unlike Napoleon, though, I was aided and assisted in my inglorious retrenchment by a superb and generally wonderful bunch of helpers: thank you very much indeed, ladycat,