Just another false alarm...

Though there's been a lot going on in my world, and lots of stuff to blog about, I haven't really had the impetus to do so recently, so I've decided to take a more official break. I imagine I will be back to it, but not for a little while, except with the odd film review. Meanwhile, I'm off to get a change in medication, and am going to try to continue to enjoy the sunshine and a new relationship. Happy summer, everyone.

I always get irritated when using Political Theory Daily Review, because it links to lots of articles in online newspapers which require registration. Very usefully, a friend has now passed on the link to a site which gives you the codes you need to log on to these sites without registration. So I thought I'd pass on the favour.

Unfortunately the real world is intervening often at the moment. So it's fortunate that The Virtual Tophet has provided me with more ways to fill in space with minimum effort:

1. Cats or Dogs? Cats
2. Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton? Taylor.
3. Royal Opera or ENO? Brian Eno? Hmm...
4. Ancient or Medieval? Ancient. Medieval stuff's causing me trouble at the moment.
5. Titian or Caravaggio? Titian.
6. Yeats or Eliot? Yeats.
7. Bruce Forsyth or Larry Grayson? Yuck!
8. George or Ringo? George.
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Casablanca
10. Tracey Emin or Rachel Whiteread? Emin, but not for any good reason.
11. The Who or the Stones? Stones.
12. Dylan Thomas or Ted Hughes? Dylan Thomas
13. Robinson Crusoe or King Solomon's Mines? Haven't read either.
14. Fellini or Begnini? Fellini, but I like both.
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? See previous post.
16. Oxford or Cambridge? Oxford, perhaps obviously.
17. The sixties or the seventies? The 70s, because of a lot of good music and good politics (the true beginning of lesbian separatism perhaps?)
18. Burger King or MacDonalds? Macdonalds, at which I've shamefully started eating through sheer laziness.
19. Jonathan Ross or Angus Deayton? Deayton.
20. Peter Mandelson or Alastair Campbell? Mandelson. But again, yuck!
21. Verdi or Wagner? See previous post.
22. Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet? Duran Duran, but only just. I have far too much 80s music hidden behind the more obviously 'cool' records.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? See previous post.
24. The Iliad or the Odyssey? The Odyssey.
25. Hello or Heat? Neither.
26. London or Paris? Paris.
27. Moscow or California? Moscow.
28. Athens or Rome? Rome
29. Red wine or white? Red
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? Wilde
31. Vanessa Redgrave or Judi Dench? Dench, but both are great.
32. Brown or Blair? Brown
33. British Museum or Natural History Museum? British Museum is in my favourite bit of London (near Gay's The Word, Foyles, Bookmarks, Soho, The Astoria...) so I'll go for that.
34. More museums: Louvre or Pergamon? Louvre.
35. Pubs or bars? Pubs.
36. Comedy or tragedy? See previous.
37. Fall or spring? Both, then one's less painful. (D'oh!)
38. Coffee or tea? Coffee
39. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Austen
40. Bull-fighters or gladiators? gladiators.
41. Renaissance or Enlightenment? Enlightenment.
43. Town or Country? Country, but with convenient towny bits.
44. Mac or PC? PC.
45. Charles or Diana? Charles Windsor - 'You're on your way to the guillotine!'
46. Tuscany or Provence? Tuscany
47. Email or Telephone? Email has made phones obsolete. I only wish everyone with mobiles agreed.
48. Fruit or Cake? "'Cake or death?' 'I'll think I'll take cake'. 'I'm afraid we've run out of cake'. 'So the choice is 'or death'?'"
49. Football or Rugby? Neither.
50. Dolphins or Tuna? Slurry.

[Via Chris]

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Neither.
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? The Great Gatsby, because I've read it.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Count Basie, as a populist, though I know Duke Ellington's meant to be better.
4. Cats or dogs? Cats all the way.
5. Matisse or Picasso? Picasso.
6. Yeats or Eliot? Yeats.
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Buster Keaton, for everything.
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? Don't know.
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Haven't seen either.
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? Willem de Kooning.
11. The Who or the Stones? The Stones.
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? Larkin.
13. Trollope or Dickens? Dickens, but not a big fan of either.
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Billie Holiday.
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? I've read more Dostoyevsky, but I'm more impressed by the little Tolstoy I have read.
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? The End of the Affair, for a film.
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Who?
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Vegetarian hotdogs.
19. Letterman or Leno? Lenin.
20. Wilco or Cat Power? Cat Power (to Chris - they're both recent lofi American artists).
21. Verdi or Wagner? Wagner, since my dad blasted him at me for years.
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Monroe.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? Johnny Cash.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis? Neither.
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? Brando.
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? Who?
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Indifferent.
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin? Tchaikovsky.
29. Red wine or white? Red.
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? Oscar Wilde.
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? High Fidelity, or so people keep telling me. Haven't seen/read either.
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Prokofiev.
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Don't know.
34. Constable or Turner? Turner.
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Don't know.
36. Comedy or tragedy? Tragedy, because I haven't reached true profundity yet.
37. Fall or spring? Fall, to be American about it.
38. Manet or Monet? Manet.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? The Simpsons - the best thing ever to hit a TV screen (along with Blackadder).
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? Rodgers & Hammerstein.
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? I've only read small amounts of either. The Turn Of The Screw pissed me off intensely, so it'll have to be Conrad.
42. Sunset or sunrise? Sunset.
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Cole Porter.
44. Mac or PC? PCs. Never used a Mac.
45. New York or Los Angeles? NY.
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? Don't know.
47. Stax or Motown? Motown.
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Van Gogh, but only because I don't really know any Gauguin.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? Costello (for Oliver's Army)
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Blog.
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Gielgud.
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers? Only The Lonely.
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Dunno.
54. Ghost World or Election? Ghost World.
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Dunno.
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? Bugs Bunny, though Daffy's great in the early cartoons when he was insane and kissed everyone.
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Dunno.
58. Batman or Spider-Man? Spiderman.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Harris.
60. Johnson or Boswell? Dunno.
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Austen. Woolf's often unreadable.
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Dunno
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Dunno
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Dunno
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Figaro, because I know it.
66. Blue or green? Grue.
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? As You Like It, though I wouldn't go for either from Shakespeare's plays.
68. Ballet or opera? Ballet, but I'm uncultured and don't really like either.
69. Film or live theater? Film. Can give myself in to isolation better.
70. Acoustic or electric? Acoustic.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? Vertigo.
72. Sargent or Whistler? Dunno
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Kundera.
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? Oklahoma.
75. Sushi, yes or no? It makes a change every once in a while.
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? Dunno.
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Williams all the way. He's great.
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Portrait of A Lady.
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? Dunno
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Dunno
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Dunno
82. Watercolor or pastel? Watercolour.
83. Bus or subway? Bus (but see previous post).
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Dunno.
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? Smooth, but neither preferably.
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Dunno
87. Schubert or Mozart? Schubert.
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? Twenties.
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Huck Finn.
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? Mann, because I've read some of him.
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? both are beautiful, but I'll go for Young. (jazz musicians, Chris).
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Dickinson.
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Lincoln.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? I think I'm meant to like Mann, but I don't know.
95. Italian or French cooking? Italian.
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? Piano.
97. Anchovies, yes or no? No.
98. Short novels or long ones? Long, but only if I have a long time.
99. Swing or bebop? Swing.
100. "The Last Judgment" or "The Last Supper"? The Last Supper.

My friend Mike has been putting forward a drinking class theory, which because both he and I had been drinking sounded quite appealling. This being that a working class person will never have alcohol in the house, because they drink what they can afford, while an upper class person will drink everything they can, but what they can afford is so much that they may still have a bit left - just a wine cellar or two's worth, of course. The middle class then work as the oppressive ones, because they place too much emphasis on appearance and social status to be drunk all the time, but want to look like they can afford a good stock of alcohol, so they'll always have some in the house.

Add into that that it is of course in the interests of the middle class to keep the working class drunk, a traditional truth anyway, and it all works quite nicely.

This was one of the albums I got for my birthday, the most recent from M Ward. Having heard a few tracks of his on various Uncut Free CDs, I had him passed off as nice-but-dull alt.country, worth listening to but only as one or two tracks on a mix tape. But he's much better than that, and I recommend this CD highly (as I do most things I blog about, I know - really, there's a lot of stuff out there for which I have nothing but contempt, but I don't think it's worth bringing it online).

One of the highlights of the album is his cover of Bowie's 'Let's Dance', one of my least favourite Bowie songs. His version is a slowed-down acoustic number, bringing out the soul in the song (which I'm not sure was there at all before). Reminded me of Cat Power's cover of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', which removes the chorus entirely, goes slow and acoustic, and comes close to cryingly beautiful at the lyrics 'baby, baby, baby come back - can't you see I'm on a losing streak?'

There are a few instrumental tracks on the album, which are nice jazzy bits of guitar, forming breaks between Ward's voice, which is great in its own way, but something you could otherwise get too much off - sort of a permanent husky Tom Waits falsetto. His own songs are great, with 'Sad Song' nearly a blues number, and 'Helicopter' reaching rockabilly, but with each songs also maintaining something that's distinctive to Ward, and that distinction adds the extra layer the album needs. Really excellent.

Monica Bennett likes taking the bus. I'm not so keen, though like her I've had many life-affirming experiences on buses which I might not have had while driving. On really bad days the insane bus driver who'd start improvisationally singing the numbers from 1-20, in increasingly climactic notes - "17!" - was a real kickstart to the day. The guy who told me I looked intelligent and then offered me a spliff when I was 12 was also appreciated. Being beaten up twice on the bus was less fun, and one experience (my best friend's, not mine) is particularly worth mentioning on the 'mixed blessing' side:

A man was smoking on the bus, as many do on the top floor (illegally). This was pretty annoying, as the windows don't open very well, and another man came along and told him to put the cigarette out. He didn't, looking tough with a don't-fuck-with-me mouth. This other guy then took out a gun and said calmly 'I said, put out the cigarette'. This time the first man obeyed, looking a little less tough. The man with the gun then put the gun away and came up to my friend, beginning to chat her up. What do you say to turn down a guy with a gun?

So yes, I have a certain fondness for public transport, but the general rudeness of people on buses, added to experiences like this, has fuelled my love of solitude. I'd rather walk or take a car. Saving the environment can wait until they make public transort a bit safer.

I'm probably the last person I know to have discovered The Onion, but it's great, particularly the horoscopes:

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22—Dec. 21)

You will be faced with the unenviable task of telling somebody that they have lost that loving feeling without breaking into song.

I had the pleasure of seeing this film last week - Scorsese's documentary (of sorts) of The Band's last ever concert. I didn't think it was a particularly good film, unlike most people - the came work seemed unprofessional, and the interview clips are dull and druggy (though that's probably intentional) - but it was very enjoyable nevertheless, if only for the concert sections. It must have been an amazing show to attend, with increasingly great rock stars entering stage left every new number - including (in no particular order) Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John and Bob Dylan. I could have done without Eric Clapton and Neil Diamond, but each to their own tastes and all that...

The interweaving of interview and songs reminded me of Down From The Mountain, and there are other parallels too. Both films feature (I think) some of the best American music of their times, with some amazing duets and group numbers from people I've been used to seeing on their own. The fact that Emmylou Harris is in both films is no small testament to her own greatness, often overlooked (by me, anyway, because as more of an alt.country fan I've only ever thought of her as a backing vocalist until quite recently).

The film drags a little, as most music films do, but the experience is still great - in some ways just like being in the front row of a gig - you always end up forgetting all the people behind you, even though you can hear them, and end up feeling like the music is being shared with you alone. I guess I've always been a selfish gig-goer, though, so that might not be everyone's experience. Good film, nevertheless, and worth seeing if you like that sort of thing. Particularly good discoveries for me were 'Up On Cripple Creek' and 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down', neither of which I'd heard before. I went out to buy The Band's greatest hits the next day, and I recommend doing that to anyone else who doesn't know them already.

Adam has posted a list of his academic achievements and intentions for the summer, which makes me feel very unworthy. Every holiday I seriously intend to learn a little German and Russian - in order to have more communicative holidays - but it never happens. I also intend to read all the academic books I buy throughout the year, but with similar lack of success. So he deserves a pat on the back for actually getting down to it.

Two of the books I intend to read over the summer (fun rather than academic) are Mandeville's Fable of the Bees and Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars, so if anyone else (who hasn't read them already, or who is willing to read them anew) wishes to do the same, and talk about them via e-mail or in an Oxford pub, I'm open for discussion - a (virtual) book club might make me fulfil my intentions.

Ah, Henman's out of Wimbledon and England are out of the European football - it's a good time to be English! Now, if only we could do a good job of doing badly at the Olympics too; then we'd have a full set of failures...

Normally I don't remember my dreams at all, but last night's was particularly excellent. Margaret Thatcher was coming to visit my college. I went into college round a back exit, where I found her chauffeur and some children's books the President of the college had given her as a thank you present for coming. Not only did I successfully manage to steal one of these books; I then laid in wait and got her to sign it and was quite inordinately pleased with myself to have nicked something and put one over on the old bag.

It's a strange world in my head. The next part of the dream was running from there to hall, where Led Zeppelin happened to be playing a gig.

Just found an online archive of movie monologues. Most of the ones picked are from rather recent films, and not the best, but the idea's quite good, particularly when sourcing quotable quotes.

I haven't posted much recently, because the new tranquilisers and sleeping pills I'm on are making me feel very sluggish, and I'm not doing much apart from work, which wouldn't interest most people. I'll be back with more soon, though. (I have been to see several films - among which, Confidences Trop Intimes, which I don't recommend at all. If anyone was thinking of seeing it and wants to know why, feel free to ask via e-mail).

One thing - it's my birthday tomorrow. I couldn't find many bits of trivia for 'on this day in history', so the fact of my birthday will have to do. I'll be turning 20.

Everyone should write to Norm with suggestions for his latest poll - great rock and rollers of all time - as it's got off to a slow start.

And, as a quick suggestion - use all your votes on Morrissey!

I've seen the film everyone's slagging off. And, like the Tophet with Troy, I'm going to go against the current and say I was quite impressed. Not with the real action of the film, which was clichéd in exactly the way I expected, but with some of the 'subtle' points it made and side-jabs at the US administration.

Firstly, I've never thought that realism in films was particularly important (these three and films count together as three of my favourites) so I'm not interested in criticising the environmental details as many have done. I think it was simply good that it did bring the climate message to the fore, particularly in explicitly criticising US policy, by attacking their stance on Kyoto, and having the vice president - who personifies real-life US government attitudes - explicitly admit he was wrong about it at the end of the film.

Second, it implicitly criticised US immigration policy. At one point in the film, everybody is instructed to head South to avoid the catastrophe, in response to which the Mexicans close their borders, forcing many Americans to cross over illegally across the Rio Grande. All of which I found quite amusing.

Next, I quite like any film that can chuck in a quick discussion over whether it's ethical to burn Nietzsche books for warmth since he was a chauvinist bastard. Even if they do pronounce Nietzsche to rhyme with peachy. Another book point - librarians are useful people. The movies now tell you so.

Not only librarians, but homeless people are also useful. I really expected the homeless man to end up freezing suddenly or being hailed to death. But no. He made it through and even instructed others how to stay warm, something he was used to needing to do.

One thing I found particularly interesting in the film was its strong emphasis on self-sacrifice. Not just one lover for another, as most blockbusters have happen at some point, nor even just a parent for their child or vice versa. No. The self-sacrifice was something that was happening over and over again, throughout the film.

Connected to which, and finally, there was also an emphasis on global awareness - the president's (otherwise nauseating) speech at the end of the film focusses on how people from the Northern hemisphere have, all over the world, been given refuge in countries previously considered 'third world'. This point obviously ties in with the environmental focus, too. But further than this, the last point of the film is to show how it wasn't just one heroic group of people who sacrificed themselves and made it through against the odds. There were lots of them, all over the world, who'd made it through the ice age. The overall message there was that self-sacrifice is something we can all do, and that the human race is resilient. Which is as nauseating as any other message, but at least we are led to care about someone other than the main small group of hero figures.

Now, all these points aside, the film was sexist, melodramatic and highly, highly clichéd. But that was what I expected, which meant that finding something else in it too was pretty surprising, and pretty impressive. For a blockbuster.


UPDATE: There's a more intelligent review from Raj here.

No, not this (or this or this) - but rather a new community on livejournal (yes, I know they're the enemy), dedicated to cataloguing loving same-sex relationships between penguins. Not many members yet, but hurrah for the effort!

The London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival is on tour which, because Oxford is a small place, means I get to see just three or four of films from the main programme, all about men (a calculated decision that lesbians don't watch films in Oxford, perhaps?). Eating Out was one of these, a delightful if clichéd film, which rolls like an extended soap opera with increasingly bizarre (and often very funny) twists.

The film as a whole is thoroughly predictable - handsome straight boy fails to get girls, while his gay flatmate can only get girls, so he goes gay at a party, leading to several obvious uncomfortable situations. The whole film's made worth it, though, for a scene towards the end, where the flatmate invites his family to a dinner party, forcing him to 'come out' to them, while his ex-girlfriend sits at the other one end of the table, menacingly waving a rampant rabbit while the others all have a group hug.

Apart from the film itself, though, I found, as I do every year with this festival, that I enjoyed being in the company of other people who were obviously gay as much as anything else, even in simply watching a film together. I just felt comfortable and at home, a simple feeling which undermines any arguments that cinema-watching and theatre-going are isolating experiences, though I often treat them as such myself, being an avid solo cinema-goer. It often leads me to think that they should really show more sub-18-certificate films at these events, as I think I'm not the only one who found such experiences valuable long before I was able to come out to anyone else and when I was indeed quite young.

Norm's obviously reached the dregs this week.

Spam gets more sophisticated. Now it obviously knows I'm involved with politics, as the latest bit of gibberish came with the subject heading command for me to 'Devolve!' before advertising viagra, so I can only assume it wants me to decentralise my powers to other parts of the body (and change sex, but that's minor, of course). I never knew political science could be so suggestive...

Almodovar is back with his new film Bad Education, which I had the pleasure of seeing last week. A very bright and vivid film, it often goes completely over the top with its plot twists and sexual ploys, so whether or not you will like it probably depends on just how many of these you can cope with. One person came out of the cinema just behind me and said slowly and without a hint of irony 'that was the best film I've ever seen'. Meanwhile, the friend with whom I saw it thought it took itself too seriously, though she did enjoy it. Apparently the large number of drag queens and priests is pretty much par for the course with Almodovar, but this was the first film of his I've seen, and I thought it very fun.

The film begins with a successful film producer being visited by an old school friend (his first lover), with a script that details the sexual abuse performed on him by the Catholic school's headmaster. The friend tells him that the later part of the script, in which the boy, now a drag queen, goes back and exacts revenge through extortion, is fiction, but there's some sense that it bears a relation to reality, that doesn't become clear until much later.

The interplay of film within a film, and stories only half told, makes the film quite exciting (alternatively, it makes it hard to follow) and edgy in places. The cinematography is beautiful, desert Spain and silky bodies, all of which emphasises the sexuality of some of the central scenes. There are too many plot twists in a way, but I felt that this was more the director poking fun at himself than something deadly serious, and though the film is not a comedy, I felt throughout that it really was intended to be in some way lighthearted. This may be that I have a very twisted sense of fun, but other reviews do seem to bear me out.

Altogether, this is one for perverts, plot twist freaks and people with a hatred of old-school (i.e. child-abusing and corrupt) Catholicism. Recommendable.

Radio 4 informed me last night that several members of the House of Lords have been voicing continued annoyance with Brian Haw, the anti-war protestor who's been set up in Parliament Square for the past three years. Obviously they only believe in limited freedom of speech. Rousseau has words for them - 'long and empty harangues which waste such precious time are a great evil, but it is a much greater evil for a good Citizen not to dare to speak when he has useful things to say'.

He also has advice for Haw, though, whose position is, after all, getting a bit old once you've heard it for the 1000th time - 'in order to cut down on the rambling and gibberish somewhat, every haranguer might be required to state at the beginning of his speech the proposition he wants to advance, and, after he has spelled out his argument, to give a summary of his conclusions' (from his considerations on the government of Poland). So we should be getting a short précis from Haw any time now. Proportionate to the length of the rest of his protest, about six months would do...

The following has been e-mailled to many of the people involved with things queer in Oxford. I imagine it has been sent to others elsewhere too. I'm very happy to report that it's already caused a substantial negative reaction and that the LGBT community in Oxford is likely to be responding quite soon:

"I am currently doing some research for a new television show into people's sexuality, with the underlying question of whether its possible to shift a persons sexual orientation from straight to gay.

Research has taken place looking at the reverse occurring with varying results and we would like to investigate whether a persons sexual orientation or attitudes can be altered through environment and if so to what extent.

To assist with this we are looking for people to take part in the role of 'gay mentors' to help educate the contributors in new attitudes, opening their minds and assisting with various tasks and challenges.

I would be very grateful for your thoughts and ideas on the project and if you would be willing to be considered as a mentor, or know of anyone who you think would be suitable.

The person would need to be outgoing, charismatic, open-minded, fun loving and up for being on TV!"

If I've got the right idea this should be a concluding third chapter.

The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
The Black Sheep (Honore De Balzac)
The Scarlet Letter (National Hawthorne)
The Way We Live Now (Anthony Trollope)
In Search Of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)

Here are chapters one and two.

"Do not become a greater coward than the children, but just as they say, 'I won't play any longer,' when the thing does not please them, so do you also, when things seems to you to have reached that stage, merely say, 'I won't play any longer,' and take your departure; but if you stay, stop lamenting."

The Discourses of Epictetus, Book I.24

In trying to find a website to back the celebratory cause of anti-patriotism, I found that the top result for 'anti-English website' was this bit about some Brookes fellow or other...

Anyway, I'm very pleased about the football result, not only because I am anti-English, insofar as I'm against what's become the standard for the true English person - the drunken football yob etc. - but also because it means I don't have to spend yet another summer putting up with all these people talking about and watching England progress through a few stages of a pointless tournament only to lose to Germany in the quarter/semi-finals.

So, all in all, I'm very happy tonight. I thought someone should be.