Jarvcast

It's strange to say, but there's something incredibly reassuring about Jarvis Cocker reading Icelandic folk tales to you on a Sunday night in winter. I strongly recommend you get the first four Jarvcasts from iTunes, or you can download the first two from JarvSpace. I have a particular fondness for Jarvcast 3, because it features him repeatedly saying the word 'bulb', which reminds me of both my girlfriend and Karl Pilkington.

In other news, North Korea have conducted their first nuclear test and scientists are saying that for the rest of 2006 mankind will be living beyond its environmental means. But having listened to the Jarvis stories, I'm like, "Yeah, whatever."

Goosegle

I find Google is better this way.

Hack it thusly

Quiet life

Whenever I'm knackered and just want a quiet Saturday and Sunday relaxing, it'll get to Friday and someone at work will ask me what I'm up to at the weekend.

"I'm knackered, so I'm gonna stay in and do nothing," I'll have to say, and the acquaintance - who won't realise I've had a particularly sociable and tiring week - will raise their eyebrows and think, "He has no mates and nothing to do. What a loser."

Possible solution 1. Instead of saying I plan to "do nothing", I could go into more detail and name every little thing I'm aiming to do. So: "I'm knackered, so I'm just going to try and watch Oldboy, Apt Pupil, 2046, In the Mood for Love and a bit of That Mitchell and Webb Look. Then read some of Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men, a bit of Girl With a One Track Mind by Abby Lee, and Cornelius Medvei's Mr Thundermug. Might pop to the shops to buy a picture frame, probably after I've had fish and chips for lunch and hoovered the lounge. It'll probably also involve aimlessly playing a bit of guitar when I feel the boredom closing in. And you?"

Possible solution 2. Give more precise excuses for why I'll be "doing nothing". "For me, this week has been dominated by the kind of lascivious wasailing I've hitherto only dreamt of, featuring friends of all ages, genders and colours, old and new, celebrity and hermit. I've probably only had a total of 14 minutes' sleep since 1992, so I'll probably stay in, for the first time, well, ever actually. You?"

Retronyms

I've learnt a fun new word: 'retronym'. A retronym describes an item renamed because of the arrival of a newer version which renders its label outdated or no longer unique. So, 'World War One' is a retronym, because it wasn't called that until World War Two came along. As are 'acoustic guitar', 'black and white TV', 'Before Christ' and 'silent film'.

Here are some less obvious ones, which I enjoyed:

- Forward slash: before MS-DOS introduced the backslash ( \ ), what we now call the forward slash was known simply as 'a slash'
- George HW Bush: Bush Senior didn't use his initials publicly until his son Dubya became President
- Cold-water tap: it was just 'the tap' before the invention of the water heater


More retronyms here

Damn his eyes

First he got to go to dinner in Paris. Then they sent him for a long weekend of clubbing in Ibiza. Today, there's another one to add to the list of places my bastard housemate has got to go 'for work': Nashville. Grrr.

Cameron chameleon?

After David Cameron's first conference speech as party leader, we take a look at the man who over the last year has taken the phrase 'jack of all trades' to a whole new level, from Dave the dad to Cameron the carpenter.
Read article...

Lessons learned from... An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore is, like, totally cool.


Other lessons learned

Saluting Sartain

Dan Sartain - he's the new Johnny Cash. Or the next Jack White. Or something. Read my very gushing review of his album Join Dan Sartain here, why don't you.

Top of the corpse

Today it was revealed that James Blunt's Goodbye My Lover is, according to the Bereavement Register, the most requested song for funerals. How depressing.

For some reason, I've always had quite a firm idea of the tunes I'd like played at my funeral; I even created a playlist called "Will's funeral" on my housemate's computer featuring the songs I want. Just in case something happened to me and some cack-handed acquaintance ended up choosing their own music. There's not much reasoning behind these (no resonant lyrics, a la Candle in the Wind), they're just songs I couldn't do without. They are:

1. Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan
2. Typical Girls - The Slits
3. Duchess - Scott Walker

Come on then, what are yours?

Welcome to the neighbourhood

Bit of a Saturday morning surprise for me. I walk out the front door, iPod-clad, listening to Arthur Grimiaux's sublime rendition of Mozart's Violin Concerto in G major. I open the door and the stink hits me. Someone's shat on our doorstep. There's a messy thick slab of shit smeared on the tiles outside the front door, covered in flies, which spring up as I come out.

I skip over it and make my way to the Post Office, checking other people's doorways on the way to see if they got hit too. They're all offensively clean. Maybe we were the victims of a racist attack from BNP members? But then, I'm white, and so is everyone else in the other flats. Perhaps someone from Flat 1 or 3 is responsible, laying it down as some kind of totemistic warning to burglars? (I'm thinking back to the bottle of piss incident). But then I get back home and see the discarded pair of tracksuit bottoms lying forlornly next to our bins.

***

I don't understand why people dislike Chris Martin, the Coldplay singer. I see why some might hate the music (though I don't), but as a human being, Martin always comes across as witty, friendly and – most strikingly – still both surprised and grateful to find himself in the position he's reached.

Martin, who's appearing in next week's episode of Extras, is responsible for one of my favourite quips of recent times. On Ricky Gervais's Video Podcast 4 (free from iTunes), the comedian is asking him serious of spurious questions ("Now, you like to buy clothes made in third world sweatshops because they're cheaper. Do you prefer Chinese or Indian-made stuff?"). Martin's answers are all fantastically deadpan, but this is the best:

Gervais: Now, at the Conservative Party conference a few years ago, you made a rousing speech, saying that if Labour banned foxhunting, you'd leave the country. You did leave, but now you're back. Isn't that hypocritical?
Martin: I just came back to get some stuff. To get my hunting gear. I came back to get two guns and a knife.

***

Anyway, I'm off to clear up the shit now.