Happy Halloween

An inordinate amount of attention has already been lavished on 'Sachsgate' so I'll try to keep this short in the interest of common sanity.

This, but for the media, wouldn't be a big deal. Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross crossed the line; they apologised. The end? Of course not. You could almost here the stampede as the politically correct brigade made for their keyboards in a state of almost frenetic sexual ecstasy. Some members of Comment is Free on the Guardian's website drew some inspired comparison's, like: 'I work in the NHS, another service paid for by the public, and if I made comments like this to someone I would lose my job.' Does it get any more irrelevant than that?

The vitriol and self-righteousness being drummed up by the Daily Mail and sanctimonious airheads alike is far more detestable than Brand and Ross egging each other on until they overstepped the mark and offended one old, unfunny slapstick comedian.

This is just another case of manufactured outrage, as pointed out by Peter Tatchell  and most annoyingly, it's another example of the increasing weight society gives the notion of something being 'offensive'. Brand's jokes were juvenile and embarrassing but claiming they offended you as an average Radio 2 listener is a little far fetched. Sachs may have been offended to hear his Satanic Slut granddaughter had got off with Brand, and at the manner in which he was told, but can anybody else really be offended by the whole thing? The fact that Gordon Brown felt the need to comment is laughable; I guess he'll be wanting to table a motion relating to Gordon Ramsay's treatment of others at the next G8 summit. Then there's boring know-it-alls like Paul Gambaccini; with men like him on the Radio 2 roster, they needn't worry about the ratings now Brand's left.

People love a witch-hunt and they love feeling indignant. Acting offended is one of the easiest routes to both these things. As Stephen Fry points out, if you hear someone say 'I'm a bit offended by that' often enough the response should be 'so fucking what?'.

Stella

As one of few amongst my peers who will readily welcome Stella into my fridge and body, I thought it was fitting that I should write a short entry on the revamped artwork. The new can seems a bit classier to me, I prefer it without the gold top and horizontal red pinstripes and like the echoing of the details from the official Stella 'chalice'. As the creative director in charge of the new design puts it, 'we have focused on the logo as the 'hero' of the packaging, reinforcing the premium cues and making it more modern, ownable and distinctive.' Quite.

Lager is particularly topical today, as I've been rendered largely incapacitated by the Peroni that accompanied Sheffield Wednesday beating Sheffield United yesterday. Can't do anything but read and watch a soothing John Martyn and Danny Thompson performance.

It's art Jim, but not as we know it.

To the immediate left are two pictures. On the left of the two, there's a lovely stone cottage at Sudborough Green Lodge in Northamptonshire. On the right, is the same stone cottage as it recently became an 'art' installation. 

Over to a spokesperson for Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, who were awarded £74,000 of National Lottery funding by Arts Council England, part of which was spent on commissioning the 'inspiring' Richard Woods for the project above: 'Artist Richard Woods has clad the cottages in a unique, candy-coloured faux stone cladding makeover that reinvigorates the rural landscape.'

• When has stone-cladding of this nature ever been aesthetically pleasing?
• It's not even real stone-cladding (so at least its less permanent) and using the word 'faux' doesn't make it alluring or artistic; 'fake' would have done just fine.
• It's not unique, it's from Hansel and Gretel.
• The reason for its uniqueness in the real world is self-explanatory.
• When was it decided that nature, particularly like the area of forestry that this cottage sits in, was in any need of 're-invigoration'? "Oooh this elephant's boring, can't we paint it loads of colours?" 

This project is just the sort of self-serving, self-indulgent, vacuous, pseudo-intellectual nonsense that gives 'contemporary art' a bad name. Handed the bitter pill of the artwork itself, you're not even allowed to wash it down with a refreshing gulp of humility, for example, an admission that 'it's just a bit of fun'. Instead, you have to read on websites and press releases about it being 'daring' and 'reinvigorating' i.e. the same ad infinitum brand of justification that those in modern art circles do so well, one that's based on nothing but lots of grandiose statements about ideas that have absolutely no relation to the real world. You don't have to be talented or visionary, all you have to be is willing to exploit the fact that there's no definition of what 'art' is; anything you say is art, just, well, is art. "To me, this bloody tampon hanging from a packet of digestive biscuits really represents how the female is often considered the other in our world of constant consumption and that in some way her monthly cycle is both a cry for help and an attempt to rid herself of a form of guilt manifest in all women." Hey presto! It's that easy. Easy and really, really lazy.

More photos of the breathtaking transformation at http://www.fermynwoods.co.uk/elsewhere/forestry.htm

Crimble Gig

Those who don't believe that a virgin can give birth to a child, that a man can walk on water or that there's a being in the sky that can read your mind (as well as everyone else's, naturally) and who gives a shit about what it is you're thinking, may or may not be interested in this show on at the Bloomsbury Theatre and then the Hammersmith Apollo in December.

I already have a pair of tickets for the now sold out show on the 18th *smug* but an extra date has been added on the 21st.

Dulcet-toned, genius biologist Richard Dawkins will be there, along with Ben Goldacre, whose Bad Science column in the Guardian is a textbook exercise in hilariously dry dissection and analysis.

As most other committed Ricky Gervais fans will notice, I saw that his good friend/victim Robin Ince tops the bill as host. My hopes and dreams were fulfiiled this morning when RG confirmed on his blog that he would be making an appearance as one of the Extra Special Guests.

Financial farce forces fuckers to focus

Never one to shy away from controversy, I shall dare to suggest that the issues dominating the news at present will have very little affect on the readership of this blog. Unless your landlord happens to be a latecomer to the buy-to-let fad, has mortgaged everything thrice, including his children at his local Bradford & Bingley branch, and has temporarily unsmothered himself from the duvet to insist on a 200% rent increase, you will probably have found the turmoil only shocking in regards to the cost of an aubergine ("a quid for a bloody aubergine?!").

The only real malaise (and I only refrain from using the word 'aggravation' or, indeed, 'outrage' because I've just had two glasses of a lovely, Tim Atkin recommended M&S Rosso di Puglia - try it, it's only £4.50 (pretentious, moi?)) I've experienced from the financial crisis has been because of the horribly hateful habit amongst the media to alliterate as much as seems possible, given the restraints of time or, in the case of the press, space.

'CREDIT CRUNCH' has swiftly and reasonably become an unwelcome piece of trite and vexatious phraseology in describing current events, but no sooner had it been quietly ushered out of public view like a ropey old tart flashing her arse in an upmarket wine bar, in wanders an equally abhorrent slapper - 'MARKET MELTDOWN'.

Let's take a long, hard look at ourselves

Adolescent white noise, the OC syndrome; whatever you want to call it, here's the first batch of words that blight the vocabulary of some or most of us under the age of 30. In what could well become a regular feature, the intention is to expose those words that should affront our sense of imagination, invention, originality, clarity, brevity and, in some cases, outright decency, in the domain of speech and articulation. Of course, it wouldn't be as interesting or as potentially offensive if I didn't postulate some completely unscientific theories pertaining to the reason(s) for their occurrence and frequency. N.B. The inclusion of particular words on this list in no way exculpates the author.

• Like - Runaway winner as the most heinously over/misused word in common parlance amongst young people. Get someone between the age of 12 and 30 to report or explain anything to you and there is little chance of them making the arduous journey to the end of a sentence without saying like. I once counted seven likes in a sentence when particularly riled by a like addict who was regaling a friend with details of a past event at work. Not only is it boring to listen to, but it sounds the death knell for plenty of other perfectly good, and moreover, different words. 'He was like, "Did I ask for that?"'  instead of 'He said, "Did I ask for that?"' Most of the time it's just completely unnecessary: 'it was, like, so shit' instead of 'it was so shit'. Using 'like' in this way is either simply an import from US culture (after all, using like often whilst impersonating an American only adds to the authenticity of the impression) or has been adopted partly because of two trends amongst 'the youth', the first of which is to have no enthusiasm for anything, i.e. I'm not enthusiastic about anything, so I certainly wasn't interested enough in whatever it is I'm telling you about to be certain about what it was that was said or happened. I can, however, offer an approximation of what might have happened and I'll indicate that to you by saying like every other word. The second trend is to aim to appear stupid to your peers i.e. I like, don't know many, like, words, cuz, I like, missed school 'n' stuff and I think books are, like, boring. Good for you, but turn up to a job interview talking like that and you can show off your defective vocabulary down at the job centre. e.g. 'I was, like, totally, like, gutted and was like, "what's, like, the matter with you?"' Correct usage: I like marmite and when I eat it, I feel like making sweet, sweet love .

• Random - Let's clear something up; if something is weird or strange it does not follow on as a matter of logic that it is also random. These words aren't technically interchangeable, they are not synonyms. Secondly, if someone describes their sense of humour as random, thinking it makes them sound more interesting, they're sadly mistaken. It usually means that no-one else finds them funny and that, though they may well be 'quirky', they are so in a way which often alienates them from everybody else. e.g. 'God, sometimes I'm so random; I'm a bit zany aren't I?!' Correct usage: 'Oh, by the way Will, did I text you about the microscopic phenomena considered objectively random according to several standard interpretations of quantum mechanics?'

• Bless 'em (including variants e.g 'BLESS!' "Awww bless him!" etc.) - Undoubtedly the prize winner for most offensively banal expression in this list. Used in myriad circumstances and usually uttered in a tone of voice where the person the 'blessing' is intended for must surely expect a condescending pat on the head as an accompaniment. If someone's done something sweet, they probably don't want to be embarrassed and patronised by someone exclaiming 'AWWW bless YER! If someone's done something idiotic, they'd probably rather someone else didn't hide behind a charade of sympathy that actually sounds more like gentle mocking. And if someone's been genuinely and hurtfully unfortunate, they deserve more than a 'bless' in response to the story of their troubles. The insight I was recently granted by an occasional bless user, was that bless them/him/her is used sometimes when someone else has finished speaking and there doesn't seem to be anything to say in response - the prosecution rests. e.g. A: 'I proposed to her over dinner in Paris and she said "yes". B: 'Awwww bless!' Correct usage: Never - it's always annoying, both after a sneeze and when superstitious people do it.

• Late Doors - Early doors is bad enough; this extrapolation is unacceptable. e.g. 'I probably won't make it down there 'till late doors.' Correct usage: Never.

• Lush - A southerner's favourite. Dense Amazonian jungle is lush, as is the decor in the lobby at the Ritz. Your cold bottle of water, although refreshing, is not. e.g. 'You should have been at that facking club mate, I saw this facking lush bird.' Correct usage: See above.

• Delish' - Good grief. e.g. 'Oh, these pancakes are absolutely delish'. Correct usage: Never.

More in the vitriolic pipeline.

With love, W.