Mysterious Traveler Entrances Town With Utopian Vision Of The Future
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Raising the Barack
I've totally missed most of the Clinton-Obama coverage, but after the New Hampshire primary turnaround when women voters suddenly decided they were all about Hillary, did anyone go with the headline "The boys are backing the Barack"?
And if not, why not?
And if not, why not?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
No Sun of mine
Wow, this is the most outrageously sexist bit of hokum I've read in quite some time.
In the wake of “outrage” over Holly Willoughby’s low-cut dress (viewers: 9.8 million, complaints: five), Britain's biggest selling newspaper The Sun has produced a “hilarious” breast-orientated TV listings feature. Here are two jawdroppingly awful extracts:
In the wake of “outrage” over Holly Willoughby’s low-cut dress (viewers: 9.8 million, complaints: five), Britain's biggest selling newspaper The Sun has produced a “hilarious” breast-orientated TV listings feature. Here are two jawdroppingly awful extracts:
12.30pm Loose Women (ITV1)
More topical debate from these feisty female presenters... blah blah blah, whatever. Just hit the mute button, sit back and gawp at Coleen Nolan's marvellous hooters.
8.00pm Relocation, Relocation (C4)
While Phil is on the lookout for a family home in Felixstowe for ex-fireman Richard and his wife Laurie, Kirstie Allsopp is in Swindon showing off a cracking set of norks.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Backdate, the word is on the street
I'm back from Japan now and backdating all the action, so you should see the step-by-step truth slowly emerging below. That's nice for you, isn't it?
*Update (29 Jan): phew, that took ages. All done now, though. Now I can go back to the sporadic posting of pointless links and videos for which this blog is famous. Click here to get all the Japan stuff on one page.
*Update (29 Jan): phew, that took ages. All done now, though. Now I can go back to the sporadic posting of pointless links and videos for which this blog is famous. Click here to get all the Japan stuff on one page.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Days 14 and 15: The Narrow Road to the Deep North
The next day we get a couple of shinks back to Tokyo, which takes around five hours. In the evening we have one of our nicest meals of the holiday, then spoil it slightly by going for a drink in a gaijin rugby bar which charges extortionate prices for Asahi (possibly because you get it in pints).
This leaves me with 300¥, about £1.50. I wisely decide to spend it in the arcade playing Time Crisis 2. Luckily Dan still has some bucks - we find a bar and buy a bottle of wine, which is called "Marriage", weirdly.
Then it's Monday. It's time to do our arrival in reverse. I sleep for 30 minutes on the plane this time, and watch Transformers and Ratatouille. Dan, I discover late into the flight (he's sitting in the seat behind me), has been sick three times. Landing is delayed and as we enter the last (extra, and 13th) hour of the flight, I start to feel it too. What is it with final night holiday meals? This happened to me in Paris too. As the wheels finally touch down, I dash to the toilet, ignoring the stewardess who tries to stop me because the plane is still moving.
The tube journey from Heathrow into town is awful. The pair of us sit there with heads in hands. After saying a queazy goodbye to Dan as I change onto the Northern Line, I pick up a copy of Thelondonpaper and read an article about how today is the most miserable day of the year, according to psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall. I recognise Arnall's name - he's a charlatan, whose formulas The Guardian once called "corrosive, meaningless, empty, bogus nonsense that serve only to caricature and undermine science"- but against all the odds, this time, he appears to be right!
Luckily I have Tuesday off to recover. Then it's back to work.
This leaves me with 300¥, about £1.50. I wisely decide to spend it in the arcade playing Time Crisis 2. Luckily Dan still has some bucks - we find a bar and buy a bottle of wine, which is called "Marriage", weirdly.
Then it's Monday. It's time to do our arrival in reverse. I sleep for 30 minutes on the plane this time, and watch Transformers and Ratatouille. Dan, I discover late into the flight (he's sitting in the seat behind me), has been sick three times. Landing is delayed and as we enter the last (extra, and 13th) hour of the flight, I start to feel it too. What is it with final night holiday meals? This happened to me in Paris too. As the wheels finally touch down, I dash to the toilet, ignoring the stewardess who tries to stop me because the plane is still moving.
The tube journey from Heathrow into town is awful. The pair of us sit there with heads in hands. After saying a queazy goodbye to Dan as I change onto the Northern Line, I pick up a copy of Thelondonpaper and read an article about how today is the most miserable day of the year, according to psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall. I recognise Arnall's name - he's a charlatan, whose formulas The Guardian once called "corrosive, meaningless, empty, bogus nonsense that serve only to caricature and undermine science"- but against all the odds, this time, he appears to be right!
Luckily I have Tuesday off to recover. Then it's back to work.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Day 13, Hiroshima, Miyajima: The Sea of Fertility
We get up early and head straight to Hiroshima's Peace Park. It is remarkably... well, peaceful.
If you've never been there, it's impossibly hard to get your head around the fact that there exists a place, with trees and benches, where an Atomic bomb once exploded, killing 70,000 people instantly and subsequently another 70,000. When you're there, it's even harder to understand.
The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall was the nearest structure not to be completely wiped away by the blast – props to whoever built it – and it has been deliberately preserved as a reminder of what happened. It's now known as the A-bomb Dome - you can see it in the background of the picture above.
The Peace Memorial Museum is thorough, balanced and, of course, impossibly sad. It begins with a thorough history of the events leading up to the destruction. Once all the background's gone in, it's the odd details that work on you: the black, tubular fingernail of a man affected by the radiation; the fact that the city got some of the trams back up and running just three days after the blast; a wall stained with radioactive "black rain", caused by the mixture of dust, dirt and soot thrown skywards by the scorching hot air; the section that tells you another nuclear bomb, 3,100 times more powerful than Little Boy, was tested by the Soviets just 16 years after Hiroshima; the tattered clothes of dead children; the wall of letters, a culmination of the dispatches written and sent by the Mayor of Hiroshima to Prime Ministers and Presidents every time a nuclear test has been conducted; a small black shadow singed onto a wall, all that remains of whoever it was sitting on the steps outside the bank at 8.15am on 6 August 1945.
It all builds up until it gets hard to take and you find yourself rushing towards the end before you're overwhelmed.
In the afternoon, we get the ferry across the Inland Sea of Japan to the island of Miyajima, famous for Itsukushima, its water-shrine. Although it's the usual garish red, there's something fierce and iconic about this imposing structure rising out of the sea - you feel it looking at you when your back is turned.
This is the kind of thing Kerr is always banging on about - those bloody telegraph wires everywhere. Bury them, people!
After we'd had our fill, we got a cable car up Mount Misen to check out the view from the (nearly) top. Another two happy customers. Thanks Miyajima. Thiyajima.
If you've never been there, it's impossibly hard to get your head around the fact that there exists a place, with trees and benches, where an Atomic bomb once exploded, killing 70,000 people instantly and subsequently another 70,000. When you're there, it's even harder to understand.
The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall was the nearest structure not to be completely wiped away by the blast – props to whoever built it – and it has been deliberately preserved as a reminder of what happened. It's now known as the A-bomb Dome - you can see it in the background of the picture above.
The Peace Memorial Museum is thorough, balanced and, of course, impossibly sad. It begins with a thorough history of the events leading up to the destruction. Once all the background's gone in, it's the odd details that work on you: the black, tubular fingernail of a man affected by the radiation; the fact that the city got some of the trams back up and running just three days after the blast; a wall stained with radioactive "black rain", caused by the mixture of dust, dirt and soot thrown skywards by the scorching hot air; the section that tells you another nuclear bomb, 3,100 times more powerful than Little Boy, was tested by the Soviets just 16 years after Hiroshima; the tattered clothes of dead children; the wall of letters, a culmination of the dispatches written and sent by the Mayor of Hiroshima to Prime Ministers and Presidents every time a nuclear test has been conducted; a small black shadow singed onto a wall, all that remains of whoever it was sitting on the steps outside the bank at 8.15am on 6 August 1945.
It all builds up until it gets hard to take and you find yourself rushing towards the end before you're overwhelmed.
***
In the afternoon, we get the ferry across the Inland Sea of Japan to the island of Miyajima, famous for Itsukushima, its water-shrine. Although it's the usual garish red, there's something fierce and iconic about this imposing structure rising out of the sea - you feel it looking at you when your back is turned.
This is the kind of thing Kerr is always banging on about - those bloody telegraph wires everywhere. Bury them, people!
After we'd had our fill, we got a cable car up Mount Misen to check out the view from the (nearly) top. Another two happy customers. Thanks Miyajima. Thiyajima.
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