Hot potato

Reading Jorge Luis Borge's Labyrinths yesterday, I was particularly struck by one passage, in his short story The Immortal:

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal. I have noted that, in spite of religions, this conviction is very rare. Israelites, Christians and Moslems profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment.

It was with these words in mind that I wrote this brave, brave piece of journalism.


UPDATE: just came across a group of my colleagues huddled in an obscure corner of the office. They were whispering and went suddenly quiet when they saw me approaching, so all I could make out were the mumbled words "guaranteed Pulitzer". But when they looked at me, I could see the silent awe shimmering in their eyes.

Camera + London + Me = Pictures of London

As Sarah's friends Becky and Chris were visiting from Manchester this weekend, I went all touristy, which meant doing some fun things I'd never done before. I ate an overpriced Argentine Steak sandwich in Camden. I bought a Jesus and Mary Chain album. I had a cup of tea in the Tate Modern cafe. And I went on the London Eye.

The London Eye is an excellent addition to the city's tourist activity roster, because it means you get to see views of London from a great height, without having to throw yourself out of a plane or waste time and money building your own jet pack. You can even capture your own images of the city from the movable pods, using portable photographic devices known as 'cameras'. Below are some of the images I extracted from the world using the aforementioned device.

The Millennium Bridge, named, of
course, after the Robbie Williams song
(it's clearly Brunel's Hungerford Bridge)

The London Eye: basically made out
of cleverly linked white pipecleaners

County Hall, which used to be a Roman amphitheatre
before pranksters moved Rome to London

Downlodd

The man Tadich has spotted this extraordinary website called the 365 Days Project, part of UBUWeb ("a resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts").

The project consists of a day-by-day collection of MP3s of the weird and wonderful rarities dug up from flea markets. Having had a flick through it, I've noticed that the tunes generally fall into three categories: eccentric but great, disturbing, and downright insane.

It's all totally Peel. Do the delving yourself, but here are a few examples which I enjoyed (and was terrified by), split into my three categories:


1. Eccentric but great

Testing 1... 2... 3... by the Bolivar Blues Band
1977 blues track created by a German speaker company for testing your hi-fi equipment.

They say: "...some funkalicious blues playing all on side A with narration by the Bolivar Speaker Works people. Grade A stuff."

Hey Jude by Assagai
Cover version of the Beatles classic, sung in "an unknown African language".

They say: "Assagai were formed in England in 1971 by South African exiles and a couple of Nigerians (one is the singer on this track)."


2. Disturbing

Distant Star by Anthony Hopkins
Yes, that's the Anthony Hopkins. A bit like William Shatner's spoken cover versions or John Betjeman's jazz stuff, but far more scary; he's clearly trying to sound wise and mysterious, but instead just sounds like Hannibal Lecter.

They say: "The thin, paper sleeve; the juice label, so low budget, it can't be true, I thought, biting my lower lip, but there was the face: unmistakable...I simply had to buy it, 50p"


3. Downright insane

Jesus Loves Me by Baby Lu-Lu
Woman with deep south accent puts on child's voice and sings religious songs. Truly hideous.

They say: "I was expecting it to be unlistenable, and when I took it home and played it, I found I was right! However, I was also entertained. Within it's mind-boggling wretchedness is a grating blend of annoying, frightening and unintentionally funny sound that captures your attention."


Introuniversal Jam/Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly by Kit Ream
Tadich sent me the link to this with the warning that it was "truly the sound of a mind violently shaken from its moorings". He is so right.

They say: "According to someone who knew him, [Kit Ream] dropped tons of acid in the '60s and wound up in a mental hospital where he spent six months staring at his own reflection in a mirror. Eventually the acid wore off, he was deemed 'cured' and let loose in society, whereupon he decided to become a guru and make a record."

The next big thing, again

Here are your orders: pop over to my MySpace and have a listen to my profile song. They're called Lavender Diamond (a band, not a chanteuse, I believe) and I narrowly missed seeing them last night because I'm an idiot. Sounds like: Regina Spector and Nico sledging in Narnia. The perfect soundtrack to these snowy times.

The Stockwell Flats: Pamuk

"Were the streets empty because of the snow, or were these frozen pavements always so desolate?"

Orhan Pamuk, Snow


Stockwell flats slideshow

This just in: Newsreader mistreated by media

She should be so lucky

Topical question of the day: does Kylie Minogue have any friends? I'm not being cruel, I just haven't seen any hard evidence that she has mates.

Close encounter

On Thursday I interviewed a rocket scientist. To be honest, I was more interested in him as a person – his name is John Zarnecki by the way - rather than the ultraviolet radiation levels on Mars, although the space talk was far from boring.

JZ (as no one calls him) had something of the Forest Gump about him, being one of those people who makes you wish your own life was more entwined with history or at least more interesting. As well as a rather luminous career (Giotto, Hubble, Cassini-Huygens), at one stage he mentioned that he'd been at Wembley in 1966 to see England win the World Cup. I asked him what first attracted him to space. His reply:

"I was a schoolkid in north London in 1961. Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut, had suddenly become the most famous person alive. He embarked on a world tour and the first place he went to was London.

"In those days every visiting Russian dignitary would have to go to Highgate cemetery, where Karl Marx is buried. I was at school just round the corner. We were given the day off so that we could go and see him – that's how famous he was. Most of my mates went off to play football or play on their Playstations, or whatever you did in 1961. For some reason, I decided I had to go along.

"I ended up standing about 10 feet away from Gagarin. He was wearing this big Russian uniform with a massive cap, standing in front of this big mausoleum and saluting. I just thought, 'Bloody hell, this bloke has been around the world in 93 minutes'. You can't imagine how mind-blowing that seemed – the first person to leave the confines of the Earth. I was just inspired by that. I didn't really know what it was all about, but I knew it was what I wanted to do. That was the trigger. I was 10 years old."

Zarnecki did, of course, go on to become a space scientist; his major achievement was his work on the Cassini-Huygens mission, which began in the late '80s. Fifteen years of his life was spent on providing instruments to go on the Huygens probe, which finally touched down on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, on 14 January 2005. Why this is so special: Titan is 3.5 billion kilometres away. Like, woah.

***

And here's how to make a beatbox:

Lessons learned from... The Queen

It's "ma'am" as in "ham", not "ma'am" as in "farm".

My war-torn youth

In February 1980, my parents moved into a house in Croydon. It turned out to be the first house I ever lived in; I was born around 14 months later. Twenty-five years and 10 months after that, my mother is driving me to the dentist, the sun is shining and she's refuting the current trend of blaming unseasonable weather on global warming, remembering sitting outside eating her breakfast just after moving into the Croydon house, in February 1980.

"It was very strange when we moved in," she says. "The lady who lived there before us couldn't be bothered to move any of her stuff out, so we got the house fully furnished. Very weird. There was a fully stocked airing cupboard, full of sheets and blankets. She left her pyjamas under the pillow!"

We laugh.

"We didn't have to buy anything, everything was there already," she goes on. "But it meant everything in the house was about 40 years old."

Now I know why I always feel like I grew up during the Second World War.