Latitude Festival 2010: revolution in the air

Teh Nu Pr0nographers

I wonder - do folks who work in the pornography industry have special spam filters for their office emails to ensure that messages with dirty subject matter go directly into their inboxes? And how do these filters separate work-related filth from junk filth? Are there ever any situations in which colleagues are forced to flag up a link with the "NSFW!" warning?

The truth may never be known to me, but that isn't so worrying. Anyway, I interviewed AC Newman, chief of indie-pop alternative rockers The New Pornographers, a few weeks back. Click here to read the piece, published a week later than planned. Why? You guessed it: overzealous spam filters. Safe for work, though, I promise.

Ian McEwan on crisps

One day I hope Ian McEwan will write a whole novel about crisps. But this will do for now.

"He was a man to take his pleasures seriously. The trick was to set the fragment on the centre of the tongue and, after a moment's spreading sensation, push the potato up hard to shatter against the roof of the mouth. His theory was that the rigid irregular surface caused tiny abrasions in the soft flesh into which salt and chemicals poured, creating a mild and distinctive pleasure-pain."

Ian McEwan, Solar (Jonathan Cape: London, 2010)

Cruising for a Susan

2.51 blew my mind.

Birthday books

What I got last year...
...and the year before

Niko case

From The Observer:

"Tom Bissell was an acclaimed, prize-winning young writer. Then he started playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. For three years he has been cocaine addicted, sleep deprived and barely able to write a word. Any regrets? Absolutely none."

That's a great standfirst. The full article - here - is even better ("Soon my pillowcases bore rusty coins of nasal drippage"), so go and read it this second.

Window win

A blog post! Don't get too excited, though, just thought I'd post a couple of pictures of Moroccan windows I found in the archives. Look, but don't touch.

Just the ticket

"I'm sorry, sir, but that train ticket is not valid."
"It's valid where I'm going."
"And where is that, sir?"
"The void."
"Oh, that's fine, then."

Nice sentence

"He came to a marketplace, where old men who looked as if they had heard the crying of their children fade and turn to silence too many times led donkeys carrying panniers of gnarled, sawed-up tree roots, drawn like wisdom teeth from the back jaws of deforested hills, to sell as firewood."

James Meek, We Are Now Beginning Out Descent (Canongate: London, 2008)

Sebald
Self
Brooker

"Coffay"

Should probably get away from the old "...of 2009" thing, but this bit from Adam and Joe's BBC 6 Music podcast (aka "Podmax") made me laugh harder than anything else last year.



A quick iTunes podscan reveals my ears bathed in over 20 hours of A&J last year, with an estimated 12 of those hours spent emitting bizarre giggling sounds. Oh, go on, then:

Best podcasts of 2009:

1. Adam and Joe BBC 6 Music podcast
2. Everything else