White Wine in the Sun

There is so much more I want to say about this song, but it's 6pm on Christmas Eve, and I've only just had breakfast.

There's a reason for my cereal tardiness - I'm doing some overnight shifts for Crisis Christmas again this year, so currently live like a vampire. In a coming out at night and sleeping during the day kind of way, obviously, not a drinking other people's blood kind of way. When it comes to vampire analogies, boundaries can be important.

If I'd had more time and more sleep I'd attempt to explain the strange cognitive dissonance which happens whenever I start thinking about Christmas; something, funnily enough, I'm prone to do at this time of year. Although I don't think cognitive dissonance is quite the term I'm looking for; that would imply that I'm uncomfortable, to some degree, with having two wildly different and completely conflicting versions of the concept  of "Christmas" floating around in my head. But I'm not. Instead of fighting it out with each other, "This Christmas" and "That Christmas" live side by side in perfect harmony.

"This Christmas" is cold and snow (well, icy sludge now) and turkey with all the trimmings, and tinsel and shiny lights and dark evenings and watching telly. It makes perfect sense. "That Christmas" is sitting on my parents' veranda in thirty-something degree heat, going to the beach, air-conditioning, flies, platters of cold seafood.  It makes perfect sense too.

People - by which  I mean people who aren't me - tend to have very fixed ideas about what a "proper" Christmas is; how it smells, how it looks, what it feels like. I have two versions and they both feel utterly right.  It's weird. And it's just a symptom, I think, of a bigger mental battle which is to do with national identity.  The question of whether I'm an Australian who lives in London or a Brit who just happens to have been born and raised in Australia is one which quietly bubbles away in the back of my mind most of the time, and something I've been meaning to blog about for a while.  I still want to, but there is probably a better time to do it  than half way through the Ashes series.

For now, what I'll say about Tim Minchin's alternative Christmas carol is this: It's a beautiful song.  And regardless of whether or not you agree with its take on religion, it's something else which makes complete and utter sense.



I'll be back in a week or so, I expect.  In the meantime have a very Merry Christmas, whatever yours might looks like.

Radio Gaga

From a nice list of "15 Extremely Embarassing Scientific Predictions" over at Listverse,  this editorial first appeared in the Boston Post in 1865:

"Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires, and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value"

Practical value or not, radio doesn't come much funnier than this:



Unless, maybe, it's this:

Changing Rooms

Thought it was about time for a makeover.  Still tweaking.  Suggestions more than welcome.

Bad Santas

I'm feeling well Christmassy this year.  Much more so than usual, and I can't work out why.  I expect it might have something to do with all of  the snow, which is making it feel a bit like we're living on top of a giant Christmas cake.

I can appreciate that not everyone will be feeling quite so festive; at this time of year some people are all bah-this and humbug-that.  If  you are one of those people this is the story for you.

It's a jaw-dropping tale of war - and I do mean war - in the Santa industry.  (That's right, the Santa INDUSTRY.  I don't have time for lengthy extistential debates about Santa right now.  Let's just assume that even if he does exist, he's in such high demand around this time of year that it makes sense to recruit an army of impersonators to help out.) 

The Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas is a membership organisation for Santas.  Not just any old Santas, mind you - the AORBS are the top of the heap.   These are Santas who take their job very seriously indeed; the kind of Santas who have a Christmas grotto in their house and carry a stash of small toys and stickers with them at all times, even in the middle of July, just in case they are recognised by small children who have cannily identified them by their white beards and twinkly eyes.

It all began back in 1994, at a multi-Santa photo shoot.  The ten Santas, who were being photographed for a shopping catalouge, went out for a meal afterwards.  They all had so much fun swapping stories and tips that one of them, Santa Tom, suggested they ought to meet up more regularly.  Everyone agreed and AORBS was born.   The group widened over the following years, and in 2003 Santa Tim joined them.

Santa Tim was already a pretty serious Santa.  He had his own company - The Kringle Group - and offered services such as Santa referrals, a mail order costume service, and even an International Santa Claus University.  Santa Tom thought Santa Tim seemed like a pretty good guy, and recruited him to help run AORBS, which was growing at a rate he couldn't handle.  

So far, so good.  But, in 2007 Santa Nick Trolly joined the organisation, and here's where it starts to get ugly.  Santa Nick wasn't entirely comfortable with Santa Tim juggling both AORBS and The Kringle Group, and soon began asking difficult questions.  Santa Tim hardly helped matters buy signing a deal with a documentary maker to make films about  his own university and the AORBS conventions, receiving payments on behalf of both groups. This caused such a scandal when it was discovered that he eventually resigned from the AORBS board. 

Santa Nick took over as president and immediately began instigating some changes. There was some grumbling about this, particularly among the Californian santas who felt that Santa Tim (a fellow Californian) had been forced out of office by a power-hungry newcomer.  The disgruntled santas began to use the AORBS online chat forum  (called, pleasingly, "Elf-net") to air their grievances. Elf-net was being moderated by a cohort of Santa Tim, though, and Santas who used it to complain soon found themselves banned from posting.  Santa Tom, the same Santa Tom who set up AORBS in the first place, was one of them.

The banned Santas set up their own chat-forum and the bickering continued.  It began to get quite ugly; both sides threw insults and allegations at each other and law suits were threatened on a regular basis. There was a violent confrontation at a theme park, which no-one, least of all the security guard who was called in, quite knows the truth about; it took place during a Santa convention and  in a room full of Santas it's hard to tell who is on which side.

There are now two seperate Santa organisations, and they are still bitter rivals.  It's a fascinating story;  I heard it on This American Life* where, over the course of a twenty-or-so minute segement, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Stalin and the FBI were mentioned.  The comparisons aren't as far-fetched as you might think. 

*a podcast I've been hearing good things about in various places for a while now, and finally got around to tracking down yesterday.  This was the first episode I listened to; I'll definitely be back for more.

.

The logistics alone are mind-boggling

If you trawl through almost any blogger's back-catalogue, you'll find a post about the strange and wonderful search terms which have led people to their blog.  This is that post.

I'm quite excited - it almost feels like a rite of passage. The main reason I've taken so long to get around to it is that for the first few months my search terms were really nothing special; they were downright boring, in fact. But they've become slightly more entertaining now, I think.  Besides  it feels like a good pre-Christmas, year-in-review sort of thing to do.

Sowhich search terms have taken readers gently by the hand and led them through the streets of this blog?  At the top of the list, and making me feel even more guilty than I was already feeling (which was quite guilty) about abandoning those episode summaries mid-series, is pretty much anything to do with The Apprentice.  Oops. Did I mention how guilty I feel?

Aside from  some poor person looking for "jokes about Lord Sugar" (move along please, there's nothing for you to see here) most of the Apprentice-based searches involved Chris and his blue eyes. "Chris apprentice eyes blue", "blue eyes apprentice chris", "what colour are apprentice chris's eyes".....well, you get the idea.  There are fourteen more of these.  To your enormous relief  I won't list them all.  Someone wanted to know "what colour eyes does apprentice Chris have?" (BLUE, you fool, they are BLUE!) but it wasn't just eyes people were interested in; one odd-bod was more interested in Sandesh's feet.  I don't know why either.  My favourite Appprentice search was "apprentice Stuart Baggs muppet", and my least favourite, which popped up several weeks ago was "spoiler Stella wins the apprentice".  It didn't *completely* spoil the final for me, but it certainly made the result less of a surprise, and was very annoying.  Someone also came looking for "Shibby impersonation" and to that person  I can only apologise.  I'm rubbish at impressions.

Quite a few searches involved  questions about the Canterbury Tales, none of which I've actually answered.  Also, given that my Canterbury Tales posts were all bluffer's guides to the various tales the search term "Die bluffers" was more than a little worrying.  I can't help wondering whether this was the same person who came looking for "What to do on a Sunday night in Canterbury"; perhaps they were hoping for more  nightclub recommendations, less of the low-level literary analysis.  Speaking of people who might have been a little disappointed, I also feel bad for the person who was sent here as a result of their search for "the prettiest woman in the world"......but thanks, Google.  That one made my day.

Other recent search terms include "Death knight face paint", cute baby pigs (you'll find those over here), snake glass painting, spiders in face paint, water base snake face paint (what is the fascination with face paint? And why does Google think I might know anything about it?) and my favourite: "vampire hippo porn".  (Again - why, Google, why? And more to the point - HOW??  On second thoughts, don't answer that.)

Then there was this:

"i was doing sex few days ago know i have a problum of headattach can i am pregnent"

Hmmmmm....that's a tricky one.  But my head seems to be firmly attached as well - it hardly ever falls off - and I'm definitely not pregnant.  So you're probably OK.  I am no doctor though; you may be better off getting a second opinion.

Sunday Night Music Club

My favourite Christmas song of all time:



While this is just silly:

Hornets: Gentle Giants!

After finishing Stieg Larsson the third I'm still none the wiser about the hornet(s).  But  thanks to the sweetest website in the world (they really do appreciate you visiting their site; it says so right at the top), which is dedicated to fighting some of the bad press given to them,  I'm quite a lot the wiser about hornets per se.

I'm sure you've heard the sorts of ugly rumours which the team behind Hornets: Gentle Giants! are concerned about:

"Seven hornet-stings kill a horse, three an adult and two a child ". Such neighbourhood myths, held for generations, have led to the hornet becoming quite rare in many area of Germany, due to merciless human pursuit

If you click the link (and why haven't you yet?) you'll find loads of information about hornets, like where you can find them (The hornet lives throughout most of Europe, but is never found north of the 63rd parallel. It is also found in Asia, the United States and Canada. Meanwhile also in Guatemala.) There are also some instructions for building a hornet box (suitable for the settling and requartering of hornet peoples), as well as a very specific description of the first year in the hornet life-cycle:  November 5th. The last worker of the colony dies during a frosty autumn night.


Meanwhile, also in Guatemala:

Hornets dismember captured insects with their powerful mandibles removing head, legs, wings and abdomen. Only the thorax, with the proteinaceous flight musculature, is transported as little meatballs to the nest and fed to the larvae

 Even the description of their predatorary behaviour is unbelievably endearing.  I mean we all need to eat, right?  And how can you not feel at least a tiny bit warm and fuzzy about an animal whose favourite food is little insect-thorax meatballs?

I love it, and I'm not the only one.  Here's a testimonial:

Hello, I would like very much to congratulate you on your web site. I have had hornets living with me, in the roof of our home near Oxford, England, this summer, and they have you to thank for their survival. I first noticed that we had hornets in mid-summer, with one or two appearing at lights both indoors and out. Looking around the house I discovered their nest in an relatively isolated part of the roof. The nest at that time appeared to be only half constructed. My initial reaction was one of panic, and immediately visited the local hardware store to purchase large quantities of powder and foam wasp killer. However, I decided that I would research these beautiful creatures on the web before doing anything and I am really glad that I did. The foam and powder remains unused. I attach a few photographs I have taken. The ones of the hornets themselves were taken in beautiful early morning sunlight, when they were still a little chilled by the night air.

And also....

Thank you for your lovely web page. Today I saw a hornet in the Bare forest,by the big lake and I was very frightened but now I have read your page, I'm am only a little frightened.

Jasmine, age 7

I am not Lynne Truss, but someone should sort this out

I am being driven crazy by apostrophes at the moment.  Not all apostrophes, just these ones:

Same book.  Same title.  Different apostrophe placement.  Why?? WHY?? WHY??????

Initially I was under the impression that these were the paperback and hardback covers, which would have been even weirder, but as it turns out they're the UK (on the left) and the US (on the right) versions.  Different publishers. Same question though - why the difference in where the apostrophes appear?  How many hornets are there supposed to be?

I am not the only one to have noticed .  No one seems to have any answers though, which is what is driving me crazy.   It's not as if hornets are like fish and sheep - one fish, many fish, one sheep, many sheep, one hornet, many hornet.....nope.  It just doesn't sound right. 

So the apostrophe placement is technically correct in both cases, but definitely changes the meaning.  Which raises more questions.  Which one is correct?  And was the other one just a (monumental) mistake?  I doubt it.  More likely, there were many meetings about the apostrophe. I am imagining lengthy discussions about numbers of hornets, their capacity for loneliness and how many of them it takes to build a nest.  Perhaps the American hornets are just super-efficient.  (The Green Hornet - he was American, wasn't he?  I forget what his super-powers were, but I bet he was pretty good at building things.)

 I haven't read enough of the book to find out the significance of the title, but I've read the first two books and know enough about Salander, aka 'The Girl Who', to guess that in this installment she's probably up to a bit more than just irritating some flying stinging creatures. Or creature.  I don't think she'll find herself fighting against the Green Hornet, either, so my money is on the nest being a metaphorical, not a literal one.  Maybe the number of hornets isn't all that important.

Then again, I've just remembered, ages ago someone told me something slightly spoiler-ish about the title which, if it's true, suggests otherwise (sort of).  I don't know. Maybe I should just finish reading the book and find out. 

This all reminds me of my favourite misplaced  apostrophe, which I saw in a newsagent's window in Clapham, on a poster advertising a room for rent.  After the price per week, it said Bill's included.  To this day, I wonder whether Bill ever knew he was part of the deal.

"Be silly, loose, clumsy and loveable......"(WARNING : CONTAINS INFORMATION WHICH MAY SHATTER CHILDHOOD ILLUSIONS)

No, Virginia, it has nothing to do with Santa Claus. But who is this guy?:

Traits: Frequently uncoordinated, klutzy, ever cheerful, optimistic, heart-of-gold, jolly, likes nearly everybody, bumbling,awkward, devoted, sincere, honest, a dreamer.


He may strike the passer-by as a typical village half-wit, but in truth he is a kindly, eager soul, a little on the silly side but always harmless.  ...strives to be a gentleman......has none of the physical attributes usually associated with a "star". His back is bowed, and his shoulders are narrow, sloping down to seemingly heavy arms and a protruding stomach. As he walks, his head, stomach and knees seem to take the lead. This, however, has not stopped him from becoming a foremost authority on any kind of sport or occupation you can name

Have you worked it out yet?

The above is just a snippet from the briefing notes given to Disney employees before they dress in a Goofy costume and wander around the Magic Kingdom to meet and greet people. Which is what author James B Stewart got to do while researching the   (so far) excellent Disney War: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom.

There is more; the instructions go on to explain how Goofy laughs, how he should pose in photographs, what his autograph should look like (if the f isn't backwards you've got yourself a fake), the sorts of activities he should engage in.  There are several paragraphs just on how to walk. "Be silly, loose, clumsy and loveable", is the over-riding message.  I love the amount of detail and the attention to character. 

For a long time journalists weren't allowed to write about the costumed Disney characters who wander the theme parks; at leat not in a way which implied they were anything other than real.  Mentioning costumes or the people inside them was strictly forbidden - all part of the company's commitment to creating and maintaining illusions.   Then several years ago, during a run of bad publicity for the company, The Wall Street Journal ran an article which disclosed (among other things) that dressing in character is a standard part of the induction for top level Disney executives.

Sunday Night Music Club

It's CHRI-I-I-S-S-T-M-A-A-A-A-A-S!*






*nearly

Why, yes - that IS something different

I'm all about the ponies today. Fans of The Apprentice will understand why.

Containing more imaginary ponies than Stuart Baggs the Brand could ever hope to send charging towards an Amstrad computer,  horse-games.org  is a website which describes itself as having "the Biggest Collection of Free Online Horse Games."  One of their games is  Horse Flirt.  The name alone was enough to make me want to find out more, obviously, but then I read the description:

Here's something different . You play a role as horse in the restaurant . You are with your wife on table and beautiful Girl is on another . Take advantage when your wife is distracted and flirt with the girl of the side only make click with your mouse . If you score enought point you can go with the girl before the bar closes at 12 PM. But be careful because if your wife see you flirting you will end like PINATA . Flirt and have fun .

Want to know what the beautiful girl horse looks like?  She's the one in red:

Eat your heart out, Chris DeBurgh.

You can't see this in the picture above but it turns out that the correct way to flirt, if you are a horse, is to blow cigarette smoke on someone while making kissing noises.  Who says you can't learn anything from the internet?

I thought Horse Flirt was my favourite game at horse-games.org until I found this:

I know what you're thinking: badgers are not horses.  But once you've heard the excellent theme-music (Go! Go! Badger Racing!) I bet, like me, you are quite willing to overlook this fact.

For pony purists, there is the slightly more equine Horse Rock-star where you can dress your horse up in a rockin' outfit.  Here's mine:

I am particularly proud of the mullet. 

My favourite part of Horse Rockstar is the (quite stern) animal welfare warning which appears at the bottom of the screen:

Wish you could try it on a real horse sometimes? Ha! Fulfill you fantasies here and only here.

"Single gene creates snake-resistant mirror-image snails, and maybe some new species"

Definitely my new favourite science headline, courtesy of Discover magazine and coming via @David_Dobbs on Twitter.

You can click the link to view the whole article, but in summary:

1. Japanese Satsuma snails (yes, really, and I haven't even been saving up this story especially for Christmas) have shells which mostly spiral in a clockwise direction, and sit slightly on the snail's right hand side.  A small number of snails have anti-clockwise shells, which sit slightly to the left; a single gene determines which type of shell the snail will get.

2. Snails can only mate with other snails whose shells spiral in the same direction.  They're not being fussy, it's just physically impossible for them to do otherwise. (I am imagining all sorts of Romeo and Juliet type scenarios where poor, love-struck snail couples are tragically torn apart becuase the cruel, cruel hand of fate has bestowed the wrong kind of shell on one of them.)

3. Snail-eating snakes are designed to eat the snails whose shells spiral clockwise.  They stalk their prey from the left, giving them clear access to the side of the snail which is less protected by shell.  Then they use the backward pointing fangs of their bottom jaws to twist the snails out of their shells; there are more of these fangs on the right side of their jaws than on the left.

 4. All this means that if you're a  left-handed (anti-clockwise) snail, you'll be scraping the barrel when it comes to chooing a partner, but on the bright side you probably won't get eaten by a snake.  Not a bad trade-off in my book, but then as a left-hander I'm maybe a little biased.

A literary love story (with added mermaids)

There's nothing better than  a  gorgeous blog post like this one to cheer up a grim and grey Monday morning.  It's sort of about Donna Tartt's The Secret History but is mainly about so much more than that.  It's very romantic.  The blog post, I mean; not The Secret History.

The Secret History is still a good read though. Set in an exclusive college, it starts with the death of a character.  The story then goes back in time; the first half of the book details events leading up to the death and the second half explores the consequences.

Which reminds me: I've just finished Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray, which is also a good read.  It's set in an exclusive boys' boarding school, and starts with the death of a character. The story then goes back in time; the first half of the book details events leading up to the death and the second half...... yep, you've got it.  As a narrative structure, it clearly works.

Skippy Dies is great; it's quite dark but very funny in places, and you can almost smell the adolescent boys as they fly off the page.  Here are some of them (Ruprecht Van Doren included) talking about mermaids:

'Regarding the whole mermaids issue, being amphibious would certainly make it easier to have sex with them,' Mario says.
'Mermaids don't have beavers, you clown. Even if they were amphibious you couldn't have sex with them,' snaps Dennis.
'What's the point of mermaids if you can't have sex with them?'
'Well, I suppose the key thing to remember is that mermaids are imaginary,' Ruprecht notes.  'Although interestingly, some marine biologists speculate that the legend may have arisen from large aquatic mammals of the sirenian class like dugongs and manatees, which have fish-like bodies but human-like breasts, and nurse their pups on the water's surface.'
'Von Blowjob, find a dictionary and look up "interesting".'
'What I don't understand,' Geoff says, 'is why did the first fish, like the one who started land animals, suddenly decide one day to just leave the sea?  Like, to leave everything he knew, to go flopping around on a land where no one had even evolved yet for him to talk to?' He shakes his head.  'He was a brave fish, definitely, and we owe him a lot for starting life on land and everything? But I think he must have been very depressed.'

Sunday Night Music Club

I am not a penguin

So I coped (although I use that term loosely) perfectly well with a trip to Hamleys yesterday. For those whose knowledge of central London toy shops is limited, Hamleys is a  big......well, you're probably a step ahead of me already.

It's MASSIVE.  And full of bouncy, hyperactive employees who blow bubbles on you and throw boomerangs around your head and jump out from behind shelves and try and scare you with lion puppets.  Which is enormously exciting and entertaining if you're a small child; slightly unnerving if you are an adult (those puppets are more realistic than you might think.) It's all harmless fun though, and it's nice to see that the Health and Safety scaremongers haven't stepped in with cries of "careful, someone will lose an eye!" or "what if  little Sally is allergic to bubbles?" or similar. Yet.

What *has* caused more than a bit of a fuss at Hamleys recently is the company's decision to bring  live animals into the store.  There were some reindeer on display earlier in the week - actual , live, reindeer - and they would have been joined by some penguins making a one-off special appearance next Monday. 

To cut a long story short, a wildlife photographer heard about the reindeer and was outraged; he contacted an experienced social media campaigner who used a combination of twitter and facebook to encourage thousands of people to put pressure on the Hamleys management.  As a result the penguin event has been cancelled, and the reindeer have been removed.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, to be honest.  Something - and I can't quite put my finger on what it is - makes me feel slightly uncomfortable.  It's not about the penguins (or the reindeer); I entirely agree that Hamleys is hardly the best environment for them.  It's more about the speed and force with which everything happened.

There's a difference between challenging a company's behaviour and gathering together a gang of people to make them do something about it.  I don't want to use the term "bullying", but.......  The whole chain of events is a good illustration of the power of social media.  Here that power was used for good, but (and it feels incredibly naff to be quoting Spiderman at this point) the phrase with great power comes great responsibility keeps running through my head.  There's a fine line between awareness raising and rabble-rousing.

 I can't emhasise enough, I'm not suggesting that the latter is what happened here.  Although there was some fairly emotive language being used in tweets and blog posts during the campaign, the more I read, particularly posts like this one, the more confident I feel that the people heading up the campaign were, in fact, acting extremely responsibly; their actions seem for the most part to be well-considered and very reasonable.  But there's a tiny part of me which can't help think but what if they hadn't been?  That's the bit which worries me a little, I suppose.

Anyway. I bet you'd quite like to see some penguins now.  Here is a whole parcel of them  courtesty of the Edinburgh Zoo penguin-cam:

You can go here to see them in realtime.  Don't expect to get much work done for the rest of the day if you click that link.

These aren't just any old penguins, by the way.  One of them, an Emperor penguin called Nils Olav, has been knighted.  Yes, KNIGHTED.  From, er, Wikipedia:

 Nils was visited by the Norwegian King's Guard on the 15 August 2008 and awarded a knighthood. The honour was approved by the king of Norway, King Harald V.  During the ceremony a crowd of several hundred people joined the 130 guardsmen at the zoo to hear a citation from King Harald the Fifth of Norway read out, which described Nils as a penguin "in every way qualified to receive the honour and dignity of knighthood"

He's the one who looks like this:

Rosa Parks

It's Rosa Parks day.  On December 1st, 1955 she refused to give up her seat on the bus, earning a place in history books as a pioneer of the US civil rights movement in the process.

The picture on the right is a diagram of the bus showing where she sat.  Under the system of segregation which was in place on Montgomery buses at the time white people sat in the front seats and then filled rows towards the back.  Black people filled the bus from the back seats forwards, often having to pay the driver and then walk around to the back of the bus to use a separate door.  Once the bus was full, the front row of black people were expected to stand up for any new white customers who boarded.  Rosa Parks refused, so the bus-driver had her arrested.

Sometimes drivers would take money from black customers and then drive away before they had time to walk around to the back of the bus to board. This had happened to Rosa Parks several years earlier.  The bus-driver who left her standing in the rain that day? Same guy.

From her autobiography:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.