Mixed lollies
The Director-General has tripped across the ditch for a “speaking engagement”. Or so he claims. He left the day my mate ML was arrested, so my guess is the trip is just a cover for talks with Tone about becoming his substitute fundraiser — the DG has the spiel and a bulging book of rich chicks’ phone numbers (pity he never calls them back). He left NZ with an admonition to “write something funny for Lollies this week — you know, like I do. I’m paying you to be Director of Light Entertainment, after all”.
Right. Over to young Mark, then, who located this timely retrospective of bad opening lines from the annual Bulwer-Lytton Prize. Timely, because NZBC reader Chelsea writes to remind us that this year’s winners have just been announced; although I must say I prefer runner-up Stuart Vasepuru of Edinburgh’s entry over the winner’s:
“I know what you’re thinking, punk,” hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, “you’re thinking, ‘Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?’ — and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel loquacious?’ — well do you, punk?”NZBC reader Chris Keall finds Piers Morgan (author of The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade) “alive and well and apparently working on some kind of street installation art festival thing in Melbourne”.
Stephen is tickled by a gently paced blog about life in the slow lane, called “The Slowskys”, where they only learned of the demise of Barry White in May 2006 (Bazza, in fact, checked out of this Fat Farm in July 2003). The Slowskys are ahead of their time in at least one respect: finding solo albums “made by members of successful bands [that] could honestly be said to be as good as or better than the best work of the bands themselves”. We’re not clapping too loudly in congratulation, so as not to risk waking either of them up.
By the time I was 11, Syd Barrett had already left Pink Floyd, released both his solo albums and given his last interview. But I’ve always had a soft spot for The Fragile One, so was pleased when Stephen located these tributes, which weren’t written by rock hacks but by fans.
I can offer you a discussion about the origin of the term “flash mob” (via Boing Boing), in which the “discovery” of a supposedly antique postcard from late-19th Century Tasmania reminds us of the folly of taking Ye Olde Internet at face-value. And in the first of two further cautionary tales, Timothy Garton Ash is looking for shortcuts that will lead him to “the wisdom of crowds”… in blog comments. Then we have the sad story of a man foolish enough to take an Onion story seriously: a piece that was clearly a mash-up of the liberal notion of “pro-choice” and the inflammatory one of “pro-abortion” caused a blogger named Pete to get his knickers all in a twist, and the whole sorry business to be reported by salon.com.
And, in a tumultuous finale, conservationists warn of a crisis in biodiversity after recording dramatic countrywide declines in moths — they reckon it’ll affect British birdlife; Arts & Letters Daily points to Wired’s Rupert Murdoch feature, examining the MySpace acquisition and wondering how come he’s gone all technological; a discussion on the relative merits of US and NZ literary appreciation at Leaf Salon begins entertainingly and spirals into comments smeared with Marmite and baked beans; and thur’s trrrrubbel on’t presses.
Nos da i chi gyd!
posted by Chris Bell at 4:35 PM
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