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Chivalry Timbers, Sleepless Knights Once more I am stuck, late at night, on an essay, this time one about the conduct of medieval knights and the concept of 'chivalry'. The word 'chivalry' comes to us from the French 'chevalerie', but doesn't quite mean the same thing. 'Chevalerie' originally meant the company of mounted soldiers - from which we get 'cavalry' - and later the actions of those soldiers. They were 'chevaliers', but in Old English the word used was 'cniht' - meaning 'boy' or 'vassal', similar to the German 'Knecht' ('servant'). This of course became 'knight'. No, 'chivalry' was a behavorial code, a system of values that knights would use: if they were being watched. And knoghts loved to be watched. Tournaments were the arenas for show-off knights, a place where they could win fame, money and women. A bit like the World Cup, where todays knights are called footballers, and their damsels are called glamour models. Personally the only Knights I'm really interested in are the ones with lightsabres. |
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2.5.05 23:56 |
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May the Fifth be with you Goodfellas Pizzas have a new advert out, which ends with a caption that's something like, 'Closing the Doors of Pizzerias'. How blatantly capitalist! A big multi-national frozen food corportaion actually putting out adverts extolling the virtues of closing down the family pizzerias, the little businesses that cook fresh, flavoursome pizza as opposed to mass-produced faux-Italian (give it a gangster name! Yeah!) nonsense. I actually thought it was an advert for the Tories. They may as well have said Vote Howard, Get Free Garlic Bread. And today is the day. Polls opened at seven am, and news channels started showing pictures of Blair plus family soon after. Talk is of Turnout, Postal Votes, Spoiling Ballots. After weeks of cowering from Paxman, avoiding eggs, and thinking up ever unbelievable slogans ("It's Time To Make A Stand", whatever Michael), the maelstrom is crashing into the sea-wall (can they do that? I'll have to ask Oliver Letwin for help with my metaphors). I'm looking forward to John Snow's Swingometer. But that's not the only reason to watch. Remember Mandelson's madness when he won last time? And the face of Portillo when he lost his Southgate seat? I think the date is significant, 05-05-05. I'm sure that Michael Howard wishes it were next year though. On June 6th. I can't wait to see his face. He has something of the Election Night about him. |
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5.5.05 13:16 |
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You Only Swing When You're Winning I think I'm getting dysnomic. I invented the word; it's like dyslexia, but with names. I think I have a problem remembering names. I never used to, or did I? Recently I've called Charles Kennedy 'Gordon' (on a previous blog; I changed it), Peter Snow 'John' (he of the swingometer), and Shirley Williams 'Porter'. It's a good job I didn't get to vote. Imagine how many people who have this affliction, getting the names wrong on their ballot paper? I heard the Tory David Davies is running against another David Davies. I know there's very little difference between the candidates these days but that is ridiculous. And I'm watching Election Night. The BBC exit poll at 10 pm gave Labour a win, with 66-seat majority. At the moment, the score is Lab:94, Cons:9, LibDem:7, Other:3. This is a marathon sprint. Paxman is on good form. (My own contribution to the election has been made, on the Channel 4 site, one of my silly cartoons.) but the one thing I am taking away from all of this is a new sense of geography - I'm learning lots of new place-names. In Scotland there are new, longer seat-names, the record one being called something like Inverness-Nairn-Bach-Och-Aye-Jimmy-See-You-Wor's-Me-Lager or something. Haltemprice and Howden? Battle of the Davies'. Erewash? It's where Kilroy-Silk is standing. Should be called Earbash. |
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6.5.05 01:41 |
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The Ditch Blair Project I can't remember exactly when I fell asleep, but it was starting to get light. Paxman was getting more acerbic, Dimbleby was dimming his lights, Marr was looking more Martian. But when i woke up it was getting on for midday, and they were all still at it, there in the studios. That was a LONG shift! I bet it wasn't really them. I bet it was all part of Peter Snow's swingometric graphic generator. The Lord of the Swings really does live in that virtual world he projects around him. One moment he's standing on a tricolore Britain (which looked remarkably bluer than the results would suggest), the next he's walking down the steps of the House of Commons, the next he's outside 10 Downing Street presiding over a race between BBC-CG versions of Howard, Kennedy and Blair, which scared the koi carp out of me. I thought Jar-Jar Binks looked more convincing (come to think of it he's more convincing than the real Blair). Snow's house has no furniture, no fixtures and fittings, no food, it's all BBC graphics; he never eats or drinks, never uses the toilet (where would it flush to?), even the air is all let's-pretend. So Blair's Labour won, but they took a slap or two. The scores: L-355, C-197, LD-66. That's the highest LibDem amount since the 1920s. Labour's majority has been slashed to 66. George Galloway's 'Respect' took Oona King's Bethnal Green seat - I never liked her much, 'cos she's such a grinning Blairite, but I really don't like Galloway or the way he handled himself on his acceptance. And he got very pissy with Paxman because he wanted to ask cutting questions rather than pat him on the back. But there were no big surprises; LibDems lost some to the Tories, but won some from Labour; Labour lost some from the Tories, but hey, they are still government; the Tories - well, they are losing Howard, he announced he'll step down this morning. The Dead Ringers guy said last night that the Tories are like Have I Got News For You, changing leaders so often; they should just have guest-leaders. Maybe hold a reality-show type contest like The Apprentice. Portillo, Ken Clarke, David Davis (note correct spelling, told you I was dysnomic), and the token baldy, stick them in a house that looks just like Number 10, and leave them to it. I wouldn't watch it. But the big change will surely be within Labour - I give Blair two years at the most. I do like him, if I'm honest, but he will not stay the whole term. Despite making history for his party, they will be sharpening the knives quicker than you can say 'Jamie Oliver'. This was the last election I'll see in the UK, most likely. And it was fun. Kind of. |
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6.5.05 17:28 |
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Game Over I just came across this article on the BBC site. Apparently Christie's auction house won a game of 'Scissors, Paper, Stone' against Sotheby's because they were using a remarkable strategy, which goes that most people go for stone, so other people choose paper to beat that, therefore always go for scissors... what a load of arsenal. "Sotheby's reluctantly accepted this as a 50/50 game of chance", it says. No it isn't, it's 33.3333/33.33333. They won a 10 and a half million quid commission thanks to that. And there are strategies for Monopoly, like buy the Orange ones, or better, just buy everything you land on - like, duh, hello like? Some bloke in Limburg got a Masters in Connect Four. Connect Four?! I wish mine was in bloody Connect bleeding Four. I'm surprised they haven't got strategies for Penny Up. That was a game, wasn't it! It's just throwing a penny at a wall, and seeing which one lands closest. They actually banned it at my school. Maybe I should write a doctoral thesis in the ins and outs of Penny Up. Penny bleedin Up. Why the anti-game sentiments? Because I'm losing my ability to win. Terry beat me twice at Chess last week, unbloodyheard-of, and last night Simon and I stayed up until nearly 6am playing MarioKart, and for the first time ever, he BEAT me. 10-9, the final score, but I was behind all the way. Utterly disgraceful! No amount of Red-Shells could help me out. I have to think up a new strategy. I need all the help I can get. |
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7.5.05 16:41 |
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Du Nord Someone just emailed me from Russia, her and her boyfriend are travelling the Trans-Siberian. I called it the Trans-Siberian Express to my Siberian colleague once and she laughed at me. An 'Express' doesn't take the best part of two weeks to get somewhere, she said. It does in this country, I said. Anyway, my friends are apparently going to Irkutsk. You know it, if you played Risk. Next to Kamchatka, I think. She tells me that it is known as the Paris of the North. Eh!?!? For one, it's more east than north. Two, in what way can it possibly be like Paris? This whole trend of calling somewhere the 'something of the north etc' has got to stop. Edinburgh, 'Athens of the North'. No it isn't!! Palmers Green, maybe. There are several 'Venices of the north', presumably because of their canals, including St.Petersburg, Stockholm and Bruges (but not Amsterdam, interestingly), but someone once said Birmingham was the Venice of the north. PER-LEASE!!! Birmingham? Are you absolutely out of your mind? (Maybe it's because of Spaghetti Junction) What next, though? The Arctic - the South Pole of the North? Derby, the Leicester of the North? Irkutsk is near Lake Baikal, you know. I always wanted to go there.It's the Loch Ness of the east. |
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8.5.05 14:27 |
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To Heliand Back Translation, Dryden once said (it may have been more than once, for all I know), is a kind of Drawing after Life: whilst aiming at a true likeness, at its best will only imply a 'bringing nearer' to the original. I read that in a book about the misery-guts poet Georg Trakl by the happy Alexander Stillmark. So I thought I would give it a go. I went to the Tate today and started drawing some art, that Futurist Boccioni sculpture and the like, and lo! and behold, it did bring me nearer to the original. So much so that the gallery staff told me to stop riding the statue, please. That's arguably not true, but I did notice one thing: people spend more time reading the notices about the art than looking at the art itself. That's a true story. I had an exam today, in which I had to translate four texts from Gothic (Wulfila's Bible), Old Saxon (the 'Heliand') and two forms of Old High German, one the 'Tatian' and the other the 'Isidor'. Germanic Philology is the key to this. I did the first three in about forty-five minutes, but took forty-five minutes to do the Isidor. I kept getting stuck on a few words here and there. Not only that, but a fire-alarm was ringing for about half an hour. Alas, I did my best, and no more, but I did come away realising why I could not translate the Isidor well. It is, after all, an OHG translation from Latin, and in my opinion, not a very good one. So you see, my bad translation is actually a faithful rendering of the anonymous German monk's own attempt. I doubt I can convince the examiners of that. I should've drawn a picture instead. |
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9.5.05 17:25 |
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Counting Down The king of bad jokes and the darling of the daytime grannies is seriously ill in hosptial! I'm a big fan of Richard Whiteley, I hope he's alright, I love Countdown; I enjoy the adverts during the breaks. "Do you have trouble getting out of the bath?" "I'm pushing seventy, and I'm not young any more," stuff like that. I just hope that the doctor's are given more than thirty seconds to operate. They could make him guess what he's got in the form of a conundrum: UMEONPAIN. That's a teatime teaser for you, Richard. Last time he was in hospital, he had a vowel problem, and they gave him in-consonant pants. |
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10.5.05 12:36 |
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Monkeys with Mops The headline on the Evening Standard yesterday said that ipods are a health risk. Is it because of radiation, like with mobile phones? No; it is because people listen to them on the tube when the tube itself is noisy. No matter that people have been listening to Walkmans for the past 25 years. No, because ipods are a current fad, they feel they have to splash out ridiculous mind-numbingly non-news headlines such as this to sell more of their right-wing toss. And how do they sell this waste-of-forest? By employing gorillas to shout at the top of their captain caveman voices an untranslatable grunt which experts claim to mean 'Standard!'. I had to laugh today, as one of these sellers lost several issues in a sudden gust of wind. It's not only the Standard who employs primates to perform its menial tasks. According to their own 'website', it's been revealed that Michael Jackson, currently on trial for being a boy-bummer, used his monkeys to clean his toilets and dust his window-sills. His lawyers told him not to release his latest single, the West Ham anthem "I'm forever blowing Bubbles", in case it incriminates him further. And he has said, of his love for innocent children, "I'm a nut for innocence. If it wasn't for children, I'd throw in the towel." As opposed to just letting it drop on the floor. He even joked, the article goes on, about the Pope and Catholic leaders, saying they "all look the same". Michael, you would fit right in with that lot, surely. |
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12.5.05 14:12 |
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Cap Fear The football season is drawing to a close, Spurs are on the verge of being the ninth best team out of all the teams in the whole country (sounds good when you say it like that, huh? thought not), and on the eve (well, nine days before) the FA Cup final, Manchester United have been aggressively taken over by American tycoon Malcolm Glazer. Their fans are not happy; as the richest and biggest club in the world, they do not need somebody like him, as Chelsea did. He looks certain to win a big enough share to take then off the stock market and transfer his debt onto them - that could cause them serious grief. I think however that there is something seriously sinister about this guy. Now I know how other fans feel about Man U. The same way I feel about Arsenal. And I know that Glazer has never even been to United's ground, and many will say that makes him just like most of the other United fans (which is a fair comment). And it's not because he's American. Nor is it because he turned a small, joke of a team into the champions of whatever it was, Baseball or American football or something, and that United of all teams don't need that, and they already do buy the best players for a shitload of dosh - Rooney, hello like? So what is it about Glazer that has the country rattled? He always wears a baseball cap. And, as Bluewater Shopping Centre has demonstrated, backed up by Messers Blair and Prescott's voices of concern today about the cap- and hood-wearing yob culture, that is a hallmark of terror. |
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13.5.05 02:52 |
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