29oct2004: Not
sure how good the pizza is, but London takeaway Dominic's
is an amusing sideswipe at a vastly more famous pizza chain.
27oct2004: One site where Google
is really wasting AdWords impressions. I've never seen the point of purely
cosmetic surgery. I mean, if it's got some useful function, sure: some lean cuts
of muscle meshed to a weightlifter's biceps, extra fast-twitch stuff for sprinters,
vocal cord roughening for a voice talent actor - no problem; that's a functional
change that adds value to your whole body in addition to achieving its stated
purpose.
But doing it for purely visual purposes, especially when the results are
often so obvious and so bad? Boobs where a woman can't raise her arms without
dragging them along? Or the way facelifts create that awkward sneering downwards
V starting at the bridge of the nose? And glamorous brand names like Botox shouldn't
really delude anyone into thinking that's not botulism being injected into your
forehead.
If you need cosmetic surgery get to the gym instead; a few hours
a week don't just make creases look healthy and sags get firmer - many women
say the combo of sweated-out toxins and relased endorphins gives them a healthier
glow than any makeup.
24oct2004: One welcome improvement to the streets
these days: you never see rusty cars any more. Enjoying a coffee
on Marylebone High St, a long snake of different vehicles roved by, and not one
had even a telltale spot.
I haven't owned a car since my teens, and in the last 14 years rust
protection's become so good it's hardly worth worrying about for most car owners.
(I thought my first Mk3 Escort was a great buy because only one wheelarch and
the boot door were rotting away.) I suppose you could say carmakers have galvanised
into action.
21oct2004: People I admire: The managing editor
of Channel 4 news (C4's Jon Snow is one of British TV's best journalists) is
called Gay Flashman. To reach a position of authority with not one amusing name,
but TWO...
21oct2004: The Wildlife
Photographer of the Year has been chosen - and it's another shot at the much-imitated
'Shark about to have dinner' genre, no less. Still a great photo though. It's
equally interesting how the winner of the junior category describes her photo
of a lizard hidden among leaves - 'like a velociraptor'. Sad that so few people
look at wildlife that she had to describe this living, breathing creature by
comparing it to a fictional representation of an animal that's been extinct for
65 million years.
18oct2004: Finally, the UK government is thinking
about the IB in all but name. British education to age 18 has long been a
dreary, disconnected mass of facts without the overarching, contextual nature
of how everything fits together. The International Baccalaureate - which Tomlinson
is calling a diploma, or a British bac - comes close to being the complete education:
interlinked modules, a broad base of common concepts with lots of options that
a kid can tailor to what interests him. The bac approach is why so many French
blue-collar workers read Proust or philosophy; the lack of it is why British
kids are inarticulate, anti-intellectual couch spuds - or worse, automatons just
memorising facts to pass endless box-ticking tests. The bac is a method of instilling knowledge rather
than just information, building rounded citizens of the world. Perhaps in thirty
years or so, the UK will have a genuine popular intellectualism.
18oct2004: Realised at the weekend what's been missing from
work for the last few months: laughter. Had an hour of mirth with Dazbert yesterday
- not so much for the odd product names as for the deadpan delivery of his copy
next to them. (Of course, Engrish is
always worth a mention, even though Japan's sort of an easy target.) I hadn't
laughed in so long I had to Google for the correct sequence of muscle movements.
So this week will be an attempt to bring laughter to my workplace.
Of course, plenty of clients laugh at my copy anyway, but that's another story.
14oct2004: So Kerry's ahead on points... but he's
in a fool's paradise. 62 TV stations have been ordered
by their Conservative owner to show an anti-Kerry programme a few days before
the US election.
Bush may be a nasty little puppet, but you've got to admire his chutzpah.
He's constantly criticised Kerry's war record - when W himself barely showed
up for his own military service at best, and falsified his records thanks to
family connections at worst.
Then there's the US economy - Bush attacks Kerry's economic skills, having
presided over an incredible destruction of American wealth (turning a $226bn
budget surplus into a $442bn deficit in just four years.)
I'll try to enjoy the next couple of weeks when I think about the
USA, living in faint hope that Bush will be out on his ear. But as Kerry climbs
in the polls, I feel less and less certain that he's got any real chance on polling
day.
13oct2004 Get ahead, give an ASBO. I'm a big fan
of Antisocial Behaviour Orders, one of the few good ideas from this Labour government.
What spawned them was the persistent low-level crime in British cities - all
the stuff it isn't economic to put someone in jail for and will never stand up
as a criminal offence. (It's a measure of the times that those 'low level crimes'
include stealing cars, shoplifting, bodily injury to others, and arson.)
They're basically pieces of paper limiting where someone can go, what
he can do, and who he can do it with. If a kid's broken into 20 houses on the
same street, the ASBO prevents him from walking down that street. Simple and
sensible.
Of course, woolly thinkers make a lot of noise about the ASBO'd people's
rights - but rights aren't limitless; we don't let 10-year olds drive cars, or
give strangers the right to enter our homes while we're out.
And ASBOs are not exactly overused: just 2455 issued since 1999, over
half of them to people under 20. Pretty much all of them have gone to well-known
troublemakers with police records as long as your arm. I'd also lay odds that
virtually all have been issued for activities on council housing estates - the
areas most in need of some adult supervision.
In addition, the requirements laid down in an ASBO aren't exactly
odious: defining a troublesome kid's route home, or listing the people he can't
meet with. Nor do ASBOs criminalise the recipient. They're civil orders,
a last chance for the kid to avoid a criminal record. If he breaches it, fine,
that's criminal, and an ASBO'd adult can go to jail for five years on that basis.
My only complaint about ASBOs is that they're not used enthusiastically
enough - and I'm no fan of this bossy government, or the UK's increasingly politicised
police.
ASBOs simply recognise a basic reality: that some people are just
beyond hope, and will always be a pain in society's ass no matter how great an
effort social workers put in. Let's see more ASBOs issued, guys.
09oct2004: Great British Understatements. It's a
sign of class to understate things; whereas a working-class British chav might
raise hell over a bruised ankle, a traditionally upper-crust person might apologise
for missing an appointment with 'I've got this stupid leg' (when it's broken
in three places.) Or there's that summer barbecue staple, 'Think this could do
with a few more minutes' (after biting into a chicken leg and drenching a dozen
bystanders with a spume of avian blood.)
Managed my own touch of class at the pool on Friday. I felt the water
was slightly unbalanced - you can taste it like a corked wine - and sure enough,
in the changing rooms my hair was slightly bleached and as stiffly vertical as
a guardsman's buzby. I resembled the main character of Lynch's 'Eraserhead',
or perhaps Don King on a bad morning.
Anyway, thought I'd mention this at reception. And at the same moment
- perfect timing - six other swimmers ascended the stairs, all looking like extras
on a cheap zombie movie.
Then came the line, to this background of red-eyed, stiff-haired, moaning
zombies:
'Think there's a bit of a chemical imbalance in the pool today.'
30sep2004: Old.
Another birthday's gone, and as I apply a critical eye to my body in the
gym, those little cues that signify aging - skin texture, waist shape, shoulder
structure - are definitely starting to become evident. Most people put me at
over 30 now; a year ago most would have put me in my late 20s. Age hasn't
so much crept up on me as jumped out in front wearing a clown suit.
So here it begins: the long slow slide into weakness, irrelevance,
and finally oblivion. Hopefully in the preserving stillness of a cryotank before
I can wake up a perfect 25 forever, but that's still statistically quite unlikely
- although the chances are improving each year.
It doesn't matter that as I walk the London streets, I know I can run
further, swim faster, lift bigger and hit harder than practically any one of
the teens and twenties kids around me, their fat-puddled bodies and Chavster-slack
jaws betraying a life already blighted by Big Macs and binge drinking, while
their brains atrophy in front of reality TV. Because they have youth; time to
make mistakes, time to learn. My time is now fast running out, like the inexorable
downward slide of the sand in the sauna's timer, below which I sweat out the
damaging toxins in a futile attempt to blunt the long knives of time.
OK, Time, I know you'll win eventually. But you're in for a fight. I square
my shoulders, tense my stomach, and speak out loud to my evil twin in the mirror.
"Nothing stays the same.
Deal with it."
