R.I.P. Les Paul

Questionable Content sums it up well.

All that glitters glitters for bloody ever

During university I spent my third year away from home doing work experience. My little sisters were aged six and nine at the time and I missed them a lot. I sent the youngest a package of art supplies. She was delighted, and duly used them to make me a thank you card.

It was very touching. She'd used almost as much time and effort as she'd used glitter. A thick layer of the stuff had managed to stay attached to the glue, and the rest welled in a small sparkling sea in the envelope.

Happy and reflective about the artistic zeal of infancy, I went shopping. Walking about the shopping centre I found that quite a number of people were looking at me. By quite a number, I mean more than none, which is about how many people take notice of me when I'm not doing gay fascist salutes.

Alarmed by this attention, I returned home to consult a mirror. The glittering visage that confronted me was as disturbing as bodily fluids of indeterminate origin. I looked like I'd been facefucked by tinkerbell. I turned slowly, as if appreciating a finely cut diamond, and thousands of tiny squares of plastic twinkled at me. Holding up a hand to touch a particularly fetching purple bit, I realised my hands too were those of a fairy fondler. They were, of course, how I'd got my shimmery countenance. But even that didn't explain how I'd covered myself quite so utterly with unicorn dandruff. That shit gets everywhere.

The picture with this post is not, as you may have guessed, the card my sister sent me but Demetri Martin's pithy summation of this most heinous of stationery.

Glitter. Just say no.

Bill lands two women in the U.S.

Bubba's North Korean mission all over the news now. Kudos to Radio 4 for using Trey Parker's I'm so ronery to introduce their piece on it this morning. Also to fark.com, who won the headline war with the sublime 'Bill Clinton picks up two asian chicks'.

BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS

It occurred to me recently there's only a very small part of a man's life where he is not thinking about boobs. This period begins shortly after he is weaned, and ceases at puberty. Outside of this short window, it's a mental titfest. Obviously they - chest pillows, that is - are not always the foremost thought, otherwise chaos would ensue. Pilots would crash planes all the time, enraptured by the memory of a particularly arresting pair of sin cushions. But scrumptious mammaries and suffocating gazongas are still always there in the background. Even in a fighter pilot's brain during a dogfight, for example, there's a small part occupied with 'I like how they wobble' or 'I wonder which one is bigger?'

This brief time free from nork tyranny needs a name. Better suggestions on a postcard, please. In the meantime, here's a Venn diagram explaining it. It considers only the first 21 years for reasons of symmetry.

In praise of Melbourne's cafes

@PuzzlerT points out this interesting article on antipodean cafe culture spreading to London. Funny how these things go in cycles - the high quality of coffee in Australian cities is usually put down to the post-war European immigration. Good coffee has been widely available since then, long before the coffee chain boom. And now we're exporting it to London, a city which, as the article points out, was itself a centre of coffee culture a couple of centuries back.

Now, I say all this as but an interested observer: one of the great tragedies of my life is that I love caffeine but hate coffee. What I love about antipodean indie cafes is their vibe. London abounds with quality pubs, bars and clubs but is sadly lacking the kind of cafes Melbourne has by the hundreds. They're invariably friendly, fun and filled with interesting people. The decor is eclectic and often maximalist: every surface covered with posters, pictures and trinkets. There's always a liberal supply of fliers and pamphlets advertising all manner of local happenings. Old, random, mismatched furniture is the norm and there's almost certainly a few couches - usually vast and collapsed ones that require so much effort to get up from that one decides one would rather keep sitting. In short, they're the kind of place I love to while away a Sunday afternoon.

Wow, imagine being able to sit down and shoot the breeze with Kim Jong-il!

Seems Bubba is over there now on a mission to win the release of two journalists. I wonder if Kim is as batshit insane as he seems? I'm fascinated by North Korea's isolation. It strikes me as the most isolated place on earth. Even primitive tribal cultures have regular contact with the outside world now, but it seems North Korea's general population may have no idea what's happening in the world. Perhaps Michael Jackson not only never died over there: he never even lived.