Adult, Content

2011-04-29T22:47:00.006Z

The Alternative Vote referendum is on Thursday. In order of priority, I have collected all the arguments in favour of the existing first-past-the-post system.

1. Creates majorities.
2. Information not used.
3. Information not used.
4. Information not used.
5. Information not used.

If anyone believes that the most important reason has changed, please let me know and I'll delete what's currently there and update it.

2011-03-31T10:21:00.006Z

A blog is a sort-of place where people write down their thoughts and then influence the world. I have been blogging for over seven years, intermittently, as we all do everything, being the multifunctional beings that we are. As yet, however, I do not feel I have enacted any particular global change, and I think this might be because I have never really had any clear objectives in that area. Therefore, my demands are:

1. Less wars. I don't know how many wars there currently are, but it always feels like too many. I didn't have a specific number in mind. Maybe zero? Lennon said 'give peace a chance'. But that's not the same as saying 'There should only be peace'. I mean, I gave Lost a chance, but I watched other TV programmes as well. Plus, if you say that we're going to stop all wars, but you overshoot, you're in danger of owing some people some war. So perhaps we should just aim to keep a few. Like maybe four? Four wars? That sound manageable, and pleasing. If shutting down the others proves difficult, we could just merge a few together. Is there really a need for separate insurgencies in Laos, Chechnya AND Yemen?

2. Something to be done about the environment/the banks/this oven (whichever is easier).

3. Smoking to be made more ridiculous. Cigarettes should be increased in diameter so they require two hands to hold. They should have a sad whistle built in which plays every time someone inhales. Would expect to see less smoking in films (whistle obscures dialogue, takes attention away from plot) and by musicians (to cumbersome to also hold instrument or play with hair).

4. Drinks to change temperature in the same direction when left in a room. Either hot drinks should get hotter or cold drinks should get colder, but the current system is an absolute mess and I can't believe we've tolerated it.

5. An end to 'less is more', and full reinstatement of 'more' to the role of 'more'.

6. You don't see many herons these days, do you? I'm not sure this is a demand, so much as an observation. A demand would be more along the lines of: I have to see more herons. But I haven't decided whether I think seeing more herons is desirable. Sure, to start with, it's all, 'hey, look, there's a heron', but after a while it becomes 'is that still the same heron?' and then finally 'who do we call about this heron?'. So maybe it's for the best.

7. Waiting lists to be made shorter, but deeper.

8. Everything else to be doubled.

2011-03-17T01:52:00.002Z

I seem to have developed some followers. Thanks for popping by, and that. Do say 'Hello' of you get the chance.

2011-03-16T23:31:00.003Z

I'm not sure if it's been noticed before, but, on occasion, the Internet is not the best place to go for measured debate. Arguments on message boards, across social networking sites and in comment threads often have an edge to them which you see less routinely in real life, almost as if people are emboldened by the anonymity provided.

To give a comparison, this post so far is the second most understated thing ever written on the Internet. The most understated thing ever written on the Internet was a email by Mr Arnold Timms of Rochdale, who, having been on the Internet for a day, observed that people seemed to waste a significant amount of their time watching and reading things that made them very angry. (The third most understated thing ever written on the Internet was: 'I will hide in your house and cut you with a blade whilst you sleep you faggot'. This was also Mr Timms, midway through day eight.)

Some people may appreciate the directness, of course. "It's pithy", they might say. And it is. It can be also be venemouth, inthidious and, if you know where to look, a bit rathist.

One of my favourite things to do on the Internet is read the Twitter feed of Joe Cienkowski. Joe describes himself as a Christian author who lives his life for Jesus, so it all checks out up to this point. However, from casual observation, this often takes the form of berating people who don't believe that creationism is the only truth supported by science and that the Bible is the exact history of humanity, for hours at a time. I just can't imagine that Jesus would be looking down, thinking to himself, "OK, FINALLY. All the hungry are fed and the homeless are sheltered and sick are being cared for. Now, has anyone thought to berate the unbelievers?".

Today, I was reading the comments left on a Facebook wall post by Nick Clegg, who, similarly, is the deputy prime minister. If you have ever done this, you'll notice that people get a bit abusive. People repeatedly say 'broken promises' to him, regardless of the topic. Maybe this is like someone shouts a band's biggest hit song title at a band whilst watching them play something else. I worried that eventually he'll get fed up of hearing it and not play it at all. I mean, I've got a recorded version, but it's better live, isn't it?

Anyway, one comment I read particularly stood out. It said: "Nick, you're talking out of your backside, you've got your head up your ass". (Obviously, it didn't use punctuation nearly as well, and it used the word 'arse'. I always wondered why people do this. Is there someone I can arsk?). Now, this has two interpretations. The first is that Nick Clegg does in fact talk using his backside, and that he has, rather foolishly, also got his head up their as well, essentially muffling himself. I can't imagine that anyone with even basic public speaking training would allow themselves to make such a fundamental error.

The second option, which seems more likely to me, is that Nick Clegg actually speaks with his mouth. His mouth is in his head, which is currently up his own ass, giving the impression that he is, in fact, talking out of his ass. But he's not! He's talking out of his mouth, from some point near his ass. An understandable mistake, but not a fair criticism. It would be like having a go at someone for being both blind and a reckless driver.

(And then at this point I probably say something smart like 'please leave a comment and tell me what you think'.)

2011-03-15T00:28:00.003Z

A thing happened today. A while ago, I signed a petition or something about a particular advert which essentially amounted to a lie and a fairly disturbing bit of fear-mongering, by the 'No to AV' Campaign. I'm someone who will vote Yes in May. If the country rejects AV in May, fine. But it would be nice to know it happened because of reasoned choices.

Anyway, at the time, I listed my profession as 'Academic'. I don't really ever know what to put. I'm a Research Fellow, officially, but the word 'Fellow' always sounds ridiculous when I go to say it and I balk, often simply calling myself a Research Fff. Something vague like 'I'm in research' or 'I do research' sometimes works in conversation, but in form-filling might be taken as a learning disability. (Name: My name is Craig. Age: My age is 27. Address: I live in a flat with a blue door. I keep all my secret things there. Ssshhh.). Basically, it's all linked to a guilt that I don't do a proper job with stone and grime and lathes, and no matter how much I want to call myself a 'fact welder' or a 'hypothesis foreman', there's no escaping this. 'Academic' sounds flouncy and pretentious, but I went with it on this occassion.

Which brings us to today, when I received an email asking whether, as an academic, I would add my name to a open letter type thing, urging people to vote Yes. This troubled me. Yes, I'm kind of an academic broadly, but I'm an economist more specifically. I have absolutely no academic credentials which should give me a voice of authority here. It would be like me signing a letter, as an academic, in support of stem cell research or tougher regulation on carbon emissions or the legal case for war. In all those cases, I have an opinion which I could argue for. But it's really just me (Craig, 27, yachtsman).

But tell me this, kind reader: am I being overly precious? Or is this kind of thing just as manipulative as a bad advert?

2011-02-03T14:07:00.004Z

There is a lady who works at a place where I work called Chloe Sparrowhawk. This would be unremarkable if she were, in fact, a sparrowhawk, and more or less mandatory if she were a cartoon sparrowhawk. But she is not. I wondered if that surprises many people when they meet her. I wondered this in part because, as I knocked on her door, reading her door plaque - Chloe Sparrowhawk, Human Resources - as I did so, part of my brain started to consider whether, on the other side of this door, would be an actual sparrowhawk. (The remainder of my brain was busy, of course, with knocking on the door and opening the door. And you may scoff at how relatively easy it is to occupy my entire brain, but I'd like to point out that this technically counts a multitasking). And it's comforting, I find, when you begin to suspect that you've managed to set up a meeting and exchanged numerous emails with a bird-of-prey, to know that you're not alone.

I realised at that moment (now well over the door's threshold) that if she did, in fact, turn out to be a sparrowhawk, then while her name would not be of any interest, any more so that other species-appropriate names such as Donald Duck, Rupert Bear, Kermit T. Frog or Eli Oystercatcher, her chosen profession certainly would be. How would a sparrowhawk end up working in human resources, I began to wonder. Surely the rigourous and unimpeachably scientific practices of human resources would have been too difficult to master by all but the most gifted of sparrowhawks?

I briefly considered the possibility (whilst closing the door behind me) that perhaps she had worked her way up from a previous job in Sparrowhawk Resources. But, of course, I had noticed no other sparrowhawks working at the place where I work, so the office of Sparrowhawk Resources would only have been necessary to deal with the working issues of the sole sparrowhawk employee, who worked in Sparrowhawk Resources. In fact, the only way I could imagine a sparrowhawk working in human resources is if the sparrowhawks had risen up and enslaved the human race, then given in to an as-yet unrealised tendency towards inventory control. But in that case, the conditions of enslavement would have contradicted sharply with the invitation to pop by the office "whenever I was free".

Anway, by that point I was entirely in the office, and able to see that Chloe Sparrowhawk was distinctly human. She was seated, and did not offer me a field mouse, as well as other clues. On the plus side, this allowed me to focus on the purpose of the meeting (mental wellbeing) without really mentioning any of the thoughts I'd just been having. In fact, I realised that in all the human resource meetings I'd ever had, the reality of the meeting was always fair less interesting than how I imagine it might be in the few minutes beforehand. And I also realised that perhaps the reason for this was that the meeting was always with a human, and that a human working in human resources now borders on a cliché.

2010-12-15T16:22:00.005Z

I haven't had such a long gap in blogging for a while. I have no idea how the past two months have gone by (chronologically, I would imagine), but here we are, December 15th, and as far as anyone knows, I could be dead.

But I am not! (Of course, I would say this). I have been simply been drowning in a sea of thesis writing, teaching, working, holidays, films, meals, sleep, watching live comedy, performing in live comedy (not dead) and swimming pools. All of which is pretty standard fare, particular for those of us who write theses, teach, work, holiday, watch film, eat, sleep, watch live comedy, perform live comedy (not dead), recycle jokes and swim. So here's a brief snippet of each.

1. My thesis nears completion. It looks and sounds very much like a thesis - earthy and well researched.

2. My teaching has been fun. I hope one day to be good at it.

3. My work has proceeded. I have research papers and journal submissions and I think I'm due a minion.

4. I went to Egypt! I walked like an Egyptian - that is to say, near some pyramids and sand. This was a very good time.

5. I have watched many films. I'm unlikely to reach 100, as I've lulled for much of the year, but I've got through a lot in the past month. Donnie Brasco is absolutely my new favourite film. I like Johnny Depp playing lunatics and the weird, but Johnny Depp playing hardman undercover agent is far better, and Al Pacino's performance? Forgedduhboutit.

6. I have ate and slept. Not dead, you see.

7. I saw Mark Watson - here's a comedian who you should go and see if you want five hours of comedy delivered in under two hours. I failed to see Josie Long.

8. I have done the Imps, and that. There were new Imps who are a delight to be around and old Imps who get better and better, and a director-assistant director team who are doing a lovely job. A student of mine saw a show, which I imagine was strange for her. But that's me, shattering preconceptions about lecturers and their non-participation in improvised comedy shows. In some ways, this carries over into tutorials (no preparation, polite applause, rock music between each section).

9. I continue to Twitter. Follow me on Twitter. This is where you get everything you might expect from this blog - mystery, intrigue, preconception shatterings (bring you own!), jokes about the News and what we should do about it - but shorter (less than 140 characters) and more regular (more than 0 characters in two months).

10. I have continued with swimming. I am svelte. I am doing an exercise class on Saturday mornings. My abs glean in the midday sun. I am getting faster in the pool. My biceps bulge. I take my hands and place them on your hips, pulling you close.

2010-10-07T23:02:00.001Z

I find myself asking the question: "what is work?" I have narrowed it down to two definitions:

1. Raising ten kids in one house on benefits.

2. Writing an article for a tabloid newspaper about how the parents raising ten children in one house on benefits "have never worked a day in their lives".

2010-10-01T21:55:00.005Z

Because I had some rudimentary training in economics, people often ask me about questions about areas of economics I do not know a huge amount about. I know more than, say, my parents, or probably the average Oxford PPEist (concerning, given the education of most of the front bench of both government and opposition, so let's hope experience counts for something). Large swathes of macro policy often fall into this category.

So when people ask me about the current government's deficit reduction plan, I tend not to have a definitive answer. As far as I see it, the basic argument for deficit reduction now (rather than in two years, say) is that the size of our debt has created an atmosphere of uncertainty in the UK amongst consumers and business, maybe about the timing of future tax hikes, possibly about a Greek-style default (although this is silly). Anyway, confidence is low, so reducing the deficit and (eventually) the national debt in a transparent way may restore some certainty and allay the worst of these fears and get people spending again. Government spending, if too large, may "crowd out" private sector spending, which may be undesirable - there is no guarantee that government spending is the best (most efficient, most wealth-creating) type of spending.

To me, the flip side always seemed to be more tangible. A spending cut (which isn't one of those politically convenient efficiency savings) takes money away from somebody - either an employee of the government, or someone who sells something to the government. That's somebody who goes out and spends less money, either because they no longer have a job, or their business has lower profits. Less spending has a knock-on effect - if a large group of government employees are laid off, and all of them reduce their spending, that's leads to other business earning less revenue. Maybe some of those businesses have to let some staff go because they just don't have as many customers as before. And so on. It's called the multiplier, and it's been known about since Keynes.

The reason that I dither is that evidence is limited and, even if there are lessons from the past, they may not apply to this particular moment in time as easily. This recession is special, both in origin and in depth and length. However, the Economist this week drew my attention to two very different recent papers giving some indication of the possible effects. The first they describe as the intellectual justification for many government's programmes of deficit reduction - published by two Harvard economists, it finds adjustments to the structural deficit lead to short-term growth (increases in the national output). This is great news for Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron, who were also boosted last week by the IMF's backing of their "bold" deficit reduction plan. This approval is all the more surprising when you see that the second paper picked out by the Economist this week was written by the Fund itself. They have severe criticisms of the methodology of that Harvard study, which, when corrected using their own data on deficit reductions, reverses the conclusion.

Firstly, they find deficit reduction of 1% leads to a 0.5% fall in national output, and a 0.3% increase in unemployment. Secondly, deficit reduction by spending cut is less severe - however, this has usually be accompanied by lowering interest rates at the same time. It's worth noting that in the UK's current situation, there is ZERO scope for doing this, as the base rate is, to all intents and purposes, as low as it can go.

As I say, the current set of circumstances are special, so this is by no means conclusive, and actual answers will only be known looking backwards. In fact , if you ask me about it at some point down the line... well, I'll still dither. But I'll have a more pessimistic face on.

2010-09-15T19:33:00.003Z

Swimming update. I've been going three times a week since June. I've gone from managing 2km to well beyond two miles (3.2km) in a session. The coach has worked out a programme for me for the next year, and he's timed a couple of swims to get a bench mark of where I'm at. This is the cool bit (for me). I managed 1:11.0 for 100m backstroke and 1:03.8 for 100m crawl. For some perspective, my best ever was about 1.04 for the backstroke and 58 seconds for the crawl (with a dive), so I'm pretty pleased with that. Friday I'm doing a 1500m time trial - that used to be my best event. I'll be delighted if I can do it in 19 minutes.

2010-09-13T10:38:00.003Z

For a few years now, I've tried to be a part-time vegetarian and have just one meat-based meal per day (usually dinner). It doesn't always work out - sometimes, I just fancy a chicken baguette or someone else is spontaneously cooking me a chicken baguette or it turns out my pasta salad contains chicken baguette - but I would say I have, at most, between six and nine meat-based meals in a week, which is a lot less than before.

It's a simple thing relating to overconsumption. My substitute for meat often involves cheese - OK, fine, cheeses - so it's really not a health thing. Also, I have no ethical problem with our position in the food chain, I just try to avoid the worst parts of the production process and pretend I never stop at motorway service stations. I believe our current level of consumption is too high, and that this has a huge impact in terms of the inequity of global nutrition, the destruction of natural environments and on climate change.

For some clarity on these vague points, I would point you in the direction of George Monbiot's latest piece on the myths and realities about meat production. Don't worry, it's actually a argument against the need to give up on all animal products on ethical grounds, but to change our methods of production away from the inefficient use of grain feed. This suggests we would have less meat, but not zero. It also suggests that some claims about environmental damage have been overstated. They are still real, of course, so moderation is still worthwhile.

And now, for some cauliflower cheese. OK, fine, shut up, some cauliflower cheeses.

2010-08-29T11:14:00.003Z

Today I took an old cat carrier to the recycling centre. "Where does this go?", I asked one of the men, holding it up in my right hand. He looked at me slightly suspiciously before checking it was empty, then pointed me in the direction of 'Landfill'. Which I suppose is better than not looking to see if it was empty, then pointing me in the direction of 'Unwanted Animals'.

2010-07-13T19:18:00.003Z

I can't remember if I've talked about swimming before, but when I was young, I swam a lot. I qualified for National championships on two occassions, and when I stopped just before my 18th birthday, I would regularly do eight session a week, every evening after school and three mornings sessions before. I was in pretty good shape.

Then I quit. Then I got fat.

Alright, shut up, I know I'm not enormous or anything. But I barely went above 9 stone (too small for a 17 year old, 5'9 male) when I stopped, and today flirt dangerously with 13 when on the scales (just pushing me into the overweight range on the BMI scale). So I could be better.

I've got back in the pool on several occassions since I stopped, for a decent run of time before falling out of the habit. Since we moved to Cowley, I went to the local baths once. Then, in May, Cath joined the David Lloyd gym, and we got a couples membership after I tried the pool a few times and enjoyed it. So I started going a couple of times a week and then found out they had a weekly club session, so I've starting going along to that as well. The guy who runs it asked me if I had a goal, so I told him the abridged version of the above story ("I was in pretty good shape. Then I quit. Then I got fat.") and he wondered if I'd think about doing competition again. In a burst of overenthusiasm I looked around to see what the university-level competition was like and, well, they apparently import huge Americans to swim over here, so the competition is faster than I ever was in my prime, so that was out of the question.

But there is a thing called Masters events, which are competitions for older swimmers who don't spend all their life training or are an imported American. Amusingly, the first age group is 18-24 years old. In golf, Masters starts at over 50s. In darts, Masters is over whenever it is you die. Anyway, there are some competitions I'm eyeing up for next year, because training is going well - I'm feeling faster in the water each week, and my stamina is building up and even though I'm carrying 4 extra stone, I think I could get within a few seconds of my best ever times over 100m. So, all very exciting and I'll probably put up occassional updates.

Update 1: I have lost no weight yet.

2010-07-06T20:01:00.004Z

I have a Twitter. I have no plans to update anybody on my whereabouts, nor to send messages to others, nor to pass on anyone elses thoughts. It is solely to write (or reproduce) a joke (or something) every day. It'll be like the Month of Puns (remember that, Facebook friends), only never-ending.

Anyway, follow me.

2010-06-23T19:18:00.001Z

I love Wikipedia:

"The world record for most aces in a match is held by John Isner, with 93 aces (although game still ongoing) in a first round match against Nicolas Mahut at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships on June 23, 2010 (Mahut holds second place with 80 in the same match)."

Four minutes later:

"The world record for most aces in a match is held by John Isner, with 93 aces (although game still ongoing) in a first round match against Nicolas Mahut at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships on June 23, 2010 (Mahut holds second place with 82 in the same match)."

2010-06-23T13:07:00.005Z

News coverage of important and complicated economic developments is often very helpful, but sometimes it leaves more questions that it answers. I was trying to get to grips with the Budget's implications for welfare this morning, but the few headline measures don't really mean anything if you don't understand how tax credits work. So this morning I spent a few minutes getting to understand the system and a few more minutes trying to model the reforms.

There are two main sorts of tax credits in the UK: Working Tax Credits, paid to those in work but on low incomes, and Child Tax Credits, paid to those with children. The two credits replaced the old Working Families Tax Credits, which basically did the same but in one go.

There is a maximum value for each component of each credit, which is reduced as your income increases. There is what is called the first threshold (presently, £6420), where earning below this means you get the maximum. At present, tax credits are taken away at a rate 39p for each pound earnt over that threshold. They are technically ordered as well, so that the first credits to be removed are working tax credits (which have a basic component, a component for being a lone parent or a couple, and a component for working over 30 hours a week), then childcare, then the variable components of Child Tax Credits (children, baby, disability) except for the family component (which is the basic fixed element). The family component remains at £545 until the second threshold, £50,000, and then removed at a rate of 6.7p for every pound earned after that.

OK so far? The key changes in yesterday's budget are that the rate of removal is being changed to 41p for each pound for all credits (including the family component of the Child Tax Credit) and that the second threshold is being reduced to £40,000 next year. The one change that hasn't really been picked up on is that the second threshold for the family componet will be scrapped in 2012-13, so the family component will be removed immediately after all other components are - I'll show an example in a minute, but it basically hits everyone earning from about £23000 to £40,000. The baby component is being withdrawn.

At the same time, the children component of the Child Tax credit is being increased by £150 per year (in real terms) and another £60 the following year. Currently, this component is £2300 per child. This shifts the benefits from tax credits in favour of the lowest earners. Added to this, the tax allowance rose by £1000. Anyone earning between the current level and the new level will now pay no tax, and anyone earning above it will pay about £200 less tax each year. Those who have been taken out of tax will gain between 20p (for the person earning £1 more than the old threshold) and £199.80 (for the person earning £1 less than the new threshold).

Ignoring the income tax issue for the moment, I wanted to figure out who is better or worse off from the tax credit changes, so I put all of this into a model and looked at changes for benefits for incomes ranging from £1000 per year to £70,000 per year. I just focused on families (single parent or otherwise) with children (not babies and not disabled), so they receive a working tax credit - maximum of £3810 if they earn below £9,000, £4,600 if they earn over that, because at that point you would expect the person works 30+ hours in a week and receives an extra £790 - a child tax credit (maximum of £2300 per child in 2010, £2450 in 2011 and £2510 in 2012) and the family component (maximum of £545). I ignored childcare credits and child benefit for simplicity and kept all other benefits and the first threshold constant.

If you have one child, you are better off in both years if you earn less than £13,000 per year, by up to £210. This is important for government aims about poverty - the benchmark threshold for poverty in the UK is around £13,000 (about 60% of median income). So any claims that this Budget do not hurt the poorest stand up to some scrutiny here.

Up to £17000, you gain in 2012-13, but lose less in 2011-12. Above that, the losses this year from the steeper withdrawl tend to outweigh the gains the following year from the higher children component. The total net losses are between £0 and £120, depending on income.

Families earning between £24,000 and £40,000 are not affected this year, as they only received the family component. Above £41,000, the family component disappears, so familes between £41,000 and £50,000 lose all or most of their current credits this year. Next year, families earning between £24,000 and £41,000 will lose the family component due to the scrapping of the second threshold. This is why it is surprising this reform hasn't been picked up on - it will affect a lot of people to the tune of £550 per year. At the same time, it's not surprising how little it has been mentioned, because it's a bit complicated to get at.

For example, if you have two children, the patterns are roughly the same, but the exact thresholds change, and the headline "Families to lose £550 per year if they earn a certain amount per year" wouldn't work well. In this case, it is families between £31,000 and £40,000 that will lose the family component of their tax credit in 2012-13.

One last thing is the income disregard change from £25,000 to £5000. This, unlike what I thought after my first reading, is not a threshold, but a way of dealing with unexpected changes in income. So you earn £12,000 the previous year and are given the appropriate tax credit payment for the coming year. At the end of the year you earn £14,000. The income disregard means you haven't got to pay any credit back if your income change is small enough. "Small enough" used to mean £25,000 a year, and will now mean £5,000 per year. A tightening of the belt, for sure, but not one anywhere near as scary as the magnitude of the numbers (a drop of 80%), once you understand what it is. And now you do too.

Anway, that's all the numbers. The welfare state is a topic which raises strong emotions, often at the expense of facts. I would want to do nothing about the emotions, but hopefully this will do something for the facts.

By the way, our tax and benefit system hurts my head.

UPDATE: Some attention now being paid to the middle income families issue.

2010-06-22T10:56:00.004Z

About a week ago, I went to watch American: The Bill Hicks Story, at the Phoenix. I am an enormous Bill Hicks fan. Obsessively so. I think I have all the bootlegged concerts on my computer, and a DVD of rariety camcorder shows as well as enough official CDs and DVDs that I have basically all his material available in one form or another (there's a lot of recorded stuff from 1990-91 which is repeated on several shows, which I ususally refer to as his Drugs and Drink and Cigarettes and Porn set). I also have about three books - two biographies and a book of transcripts and scripts and other writings. So that's the background I took into this documentary.

First of all, it's a beautiful film to look at. There's the usual audio history going on in the background, but what the directors have done is taken still photographs and created pseudo-animated sequences to support the narrative. It's odd at first, but very quickly you stop even noticing that the still faces aren't moving in their animated environment. Very clever.

Secondly, where has all this new footage come from? There are several camcorder recordings which must go back as far as the early 1980s that I have never seen before. If a DVD comes out, the producers had better put the whole sets on as extras. There's some bits (about his father) which I'd never heard before which were used to accompany the section on his early shows. I don't think they are quite as old as that (he looks a bit older than 16) but it's not far off. Some of these early clips also show later material in an earlier form - like the fantasy about the grotesque death of woman that broke his heart seeing him on the Tonight Show as she breathed her last.

The best thing about the film, however, is they way everything is brought back to the comedy. With enough reading, you'd already know about the drug stories and the depths of his alcohol abuse and his tragic early death from pancreatic cancer. While all of these are important parts of the story, no-one dwells on the more sensational details, but instead uses them in partnership with recordings to show how they motivated what he was doing on stage. There's clips to show him drinking excessively on stage, clips about his growing dislike of governments (including from Hicks and Kevin Booth's trip to Waco in 1993), clips contrasting his raptorous reception in the UK (the huge rock and roll entrance of the Revelations show at the Dominion theatre) adjacent to the small audiences ("staring blankly back at me like a dog that had been shown a card trick) of a backwater comedy club in the US South. I like this because it feels like the best use of the documentary medium, and gives fresh insight into a topic I (and many other fans) already know well. I mean, I can read and re-read an autobiography of his life but only in a film can I really see the effect on his work. Very much recommended, for disciples and neophytes alike.

2010-06-21T11:28:00.004Z

What I have done today:

1. Check email - three minutes.

2. Discuss Christmas holiday arrangement with colleague - two minutes.

3. Try to come up with a catchy title for a presentation: three hours, seven minutes.

This is the hardest thing about academia (easiest thing about academia: the spa days). What I want is about six words that suggests that my paper is both thrilling, yet insightful; meticulously researched, but definitely with car chases. The first problem is that my paper is on the labour market in the UK over the last thirty years - what jobs are disappearing (middle jobs income, routine task based occupations), why they are disappearing (computerisation) and where people doing them end up (words to do with mobility). This is not prime material for a catchy pun (play on words). In desperation, I tried to think of a song lyric or expression that might be tangentially related to this and what I discovered is that all of them have been used. A lot.

First attempt: "Stuck in the middle?" - a reference to noted popular music song 'Stuck in the middle'. This yields about 7000 results in Google scholar, ranging from the predicable (political science papers on countries bordering Russia and West Europe, sociological studies of middle management) to the less predictable (an article in a journal called, intriguingly, Fire Engineering) . I also found a paper called, "Tax Neutrality to the Left, International Competitiveness to the Right, Stuck in the Middle with Subpart F" (Keith Engel, if you ever Google your own paper titles, and I currently assume that you definitely do: Holla).

Second attempt: "Dude, where's my" and then something. There are 300 papers which are called, "Dude, where's my" and then something. Dude, where's my phenotype? Dude, where's my paradigm? Dude, where's my corn (possible subtitle: where's my corn, dude?). Even, Dude, where's my Black Studies Department? This is an actual book, although it may also be a page on Yahoo Questions.

Increasingly desperate attempts three onwards: "The more things change, the more they stay the same" - 3000 hits on Google Scholar (Including 'The use of popular cliches in academic paper titles: the more things change, the more they stay the same'). Next, "Moving on up" - 1200 hits on Google Scholar ("Movin' on up" has 600 hits, which tells me that for every three academics who have heard the music of M:People, two thought they could have been better). Finally, "Where have all the flowers gone? (where flowers are workers in routine task-based occupations and similar)" - no hits on Google Scholar, several hits on keyboard with own head.

So, anyway, this is the net result of my morning's work. Two paper titles. Firstly: The route out of the routine: jobs, wages and mobility in a polarising labour market. I love the 'interesting title: tedious exposition' format for academic papers. I want to write a paper called 'Punch in the balls: a study of fruit drinks at formal dinner and dance events'. The second one is called: "Calling time on the hourglass economy". Oh, by the way, there's a thing called the hourglass economy hypothesis, and I'm disputing it's importance. This is why this is clever. Both are original. Most importantly, if either are ever Googled by an up-and-coming young academic looking for ideas for a title of a new paper they will now see a link to this post. And, if they continue reading, they will also see this:

THESE TITLES ARE TAKEN. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING THEM. THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE.

AND, YES, THAT ALSO APPLIES TO THE FRUIT DRINK ONE.

2010-06-18T10:06:00.003Z

Sorry that this blog keeps changing in appearance. After six years, I wanted to try something new, and whilst I liked the last template, the code was rubbish and their were loads of problems (like no dates) and I don't know CSS so I have now switched to this one.

I also figured it was time for a name change. My use of Frogg as a internet pseudonym has diminished in recent years - I tend to go simply by Craig on wrestling or music forums or ScowlinMonk on latex fetish message boards - and I've always liked Adult, Content as a title for something (it was going to be my autobiography) so that is now the way it is.

2010-06-17T20:30:00.003Z

A story about last Monday that I want to remember.

There is a legend in the Imps, known by few. It's name is Lost in Alien. It is my all-time favourite improvised scene - loosely based on the films Lost In Translation and Alien, it remains the funniest thing I ever did on stage with Andy, featured the line "' I Will Survive' was your song?" and a thousand other bits of stupidity, and culminated in our first on-stage kiss. It was one of those moment where everything we said got a laugh and I felt like we were in complete control of the audience yet giddy with delight at the same time.

Last Monday was the last Wheatsheaf show I will do with Joe Morpurgo and Lucy Hamilton, two of the best improvisers I've ever had the privilege to perform with and (to the extent that anyone cares about it) two of the best human beings on the planet. I have had numerous great scenes with Lucy (including the only Imps scene I can remember that was done completely without words), she is so easy to be with on stage and I will miss her.

And now to Joe. To finish the the set off, we did a scene which could be entitled: Batman - by William Shakespeare. Everything started off normal enough - Batman (Joe) and Robin (Jim) talked in Elizabethan English to set the scene. At one point, Joe fires webs from his wrists - it later emerges that Batman has defeated everyone in Gotham City, and he had also eaten Spiderman. My cue to come in as the disembodied voice of Spiderman, from inside of Batman. The scene basically broke away from any semblance of a Shakespearean plot from then on, as the dysfunctional relationship between an increasingly irate Batman and an increasingly aggravating Spiderman played out.

Spiderman says "follow my lead", and Joe exits the stage, stomach first. Then: "What can you see, Batman?" "Nothing, it's dark". "Me too. We must be in the same place". Then: "Spiderman, I need your senses". "OK, I will use my sense of touch. It feels squishy. Are you somewhere squishy?" (Joe grabs his stomach in pain) "Use you sense of hearing. What can you hear?" "Digestion".

In the next scene Simon, as narrator came on, only for Joe and I to completely tear the Shakespearean structure to pieces and say goodbye to any plot for good, first correcting his failure to use sufficient plurals from offstage ("Can our hero..." "HEROES".), then making snide comments when he tries to please too hard ("Is it the Flies". "No, it's just the Fly. Keep up"), before finally breaking into a proper fourth-wall crushing argument between Batman and Spiderman ("Whose name is on this play?" "It should have been mine, until you ate me". "Well, did your film win any Oscars?"), until Joe tires of the whole thing and commits hari-kari to end it all - only to be met with "You missed me".

It was beautiful. Everything we said got a laugh. I felt in control yet giddy with delight, spurred on by occasionally glancing at all the other Imps on stage falling about with laughter. Joe was magnificent, spending most of the show on stage alone, talking to his stomach and slowly building up an impotent rage (all the while, I could corpse at will from off-stage).

Monday was one of the best shows I can remember in a long time. As a final act of the uniqueness that Joe brings, he got forty audience members on stage to join in the final song of musical, whilst reflecting out loud on three years of Oxford and love and life and everything. This is also the show that he ended Story Story Die with a rant on the Cherwell's predicable reviewing policy for any form of untraditional theatre. But above all of this, I am so glad that I'll remember my last Imps show with Joe for this: our Lost in Alien.

2010-06-17T20:09:00.004Z

I went to see Murder by Death last Wednesday, and, as before, they were fantastic. I love how they will play any song from any album - looking over set lists from previous shows, they mix up the new stuff, pick and choose the old stuff and play the entirety of In Bocco over the course of any three nights. That's a band there - there albums aren't three singles and a bunch of filler, but twelve immaculately crafted songs, each one telling a story and standing alone. The new stuff off Good Morning, Magpie sounds tremendous live - the title track is heart-wrenchingly sad, whilst Yes and Dark Streets Below rock along disguising their dark lyrics. And they played Those That Stayed as an encore, which was their classic encore song before, you know, they wrote so many songs they could mix it up. And the Big Sleep (now also played by me, every evening, to my wife's chagrin).

Truly, this band has spoiled rock music for me. As a guy who mostly listens to different forms of metal, there are few rock bands I really listen to, and none of them are anywhere near as good as Murder By Death.

By the way, there are hidden links to songs in this post, if you can find them.

2010-05-26T09:19:00.005Z

I listen to Radio 5 on my way to and from work, which means I get Nicky Campbell's call-in in the morning. Normally, of course, the opinions of people (all people) annoy me, but I remind myself that we live in a pluracracy and it's good to hear debate about important issues and most importantly, by the time I get to work, I've written a blog-post-rant in my head and I'm just sorting out the formatting and capitalisation of important words. Then, I sit down at my desk and remember that I have Paid Employment, so it will have to wait.

Not going to happen this morning, however. I don't know why the issue of choosing a baby's sex is getting some attention this particular week, but it is and that was the topic of the call-in. The point I entered the discussion was with a woman, who had lost a daughter (possibly miscarried) and wanted to have one through a gender selection procedure, and two men, who clearly felt she (and everyone else) shouldn't have that option.

Mentioning the caller's respective genders was intentional, and is probably the reason why I got angry enough to ignore Paid Employment for a few minutes more. The tone of the exchanges sounded (once refined through my brainfilter) very much like: "Okay, WOMEN, we MEN can no longer dictate to you whether you have a child or not. You have taken that power away from us. As a result, we are looking for new and increasingly petty ways to tell you how you may and may not use your body, specifically in the womenparts region."

Nicky Campbell did a decent job directing the debate, particularly when he drew the discussion to a close when it became a lot more aggressive. One caller actually suggested, behind a wall of faux disclaimers, that it was "sick" to attempt to use science in this way to deal with the loss as a kind of therapy. Others made the point that it was just a natural thing, that people didn't always get what they want, that having children was reward in itself, regardless of their sex, and that not all children develop into the gender stereotypes that anyone who wanted one or the other might expect (if you want a boy for the typical reasons, he might not be interested in playing football).

All of which may be fine for the people making those points (some of whom were female). However, it doesn't mean that the lady calling in, or anyone else who felt in a similar position, should be expect to similarly console themselves with it. Gender selection seems to me like a victimless scientific advance. In that I can't think of someone that gets hurt by it. It uses science. And it's an advance (also: a stepforward; an improvement and a conquering of obstacles). As a result, it should be a choice. If you're not fussed either way, or not comfortable with the idea, no-one will force you pick an X or a Y chromosone from a catalogue. If you are, well, now you can.

Final point. One of the later callers (try to guess what parallel he made by the end of this paragraph), who couldn't be cut off soon enough, made me conclude this: Godwin's law and its resulting rules needs to apply to non-Internet discussion as well.

And penalties for violating it should be harsh, just like the Nazis were.

2010-05-20T11:30:00.002Z

It's actually a little difficult for me to write about Four Lions, which I watched last night at the Phoenix. It seems pointless to talk about how funny it was, given that the top half of the film poster consisted of about twelve different quotes of the single word "Funny" taken from various different newspapers and reviews. The jokes, by the way, are fantastic - in true Chris Morris style, they move between the dark and uncomfortable (Omar's Lion King allegory) through the intentionally provocative ("Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic") to the absurd ("What we gonna blow up?" "Internet.") and the banal ("Is this a gesture?", says Barry, slowly running his car into a wall).

The other problem I've got is the urge to write things like "true Chris Morris style" (see above). Everyone knows his work will not so much push boundaries as it will repeatedly kick dirt at them until people can't tell where they once were. You go in with certain expectations. The last time I was left actually shocked to the point of breathlessness was during his Blue Jam series, when two parents discuss, in bored ambivalent tones, the disappearance of their child, the police finding the body and the inconvenience of having to deal with it ("Well, it sounds like he was buggered quite a lot and then strangled." "Oh. That's a bit much.") Yet, despite that bar, Four Lions managed to do it again. It is a film that is funny up to the point that it isn't, and when it isn't funny, it is stark and shocking.

I don't think the shocking is gratuituous, however, and that is where I generally draw the line. Without those moments (and don't read this next paragraph is you don't want to know about them in advance) the whole thing would be a farce. They'd be Sean Penn in the Assassination of Richard Nixon - clueless and deluded and impotent. With them, however, it becomes much more meaningful. It becomes clear that completing the bombings becomes the important thing, regardless of the actual damage done. They are no less ineffectual for being, in some way, successful.

The hardest thing about this film, but arguably the reason it is brilliant, are the moments where you are almost forced to sympathise with the bombers, especially Omar. He has a loving and devoted wife and child, yet the idea of his death is not a source of anguish and grief for them. I found Omar's coded goodbye to her at her job, perfunctory as it was with the police standing nearby, utterly awful to watch, as it should have been. There's no given justification for what he wants to do, and even his wife jokes that he as "more fun" when he was going to be a bomber. The absence of apparent motivation stops you thinking about them as heroes, however imperfect, and forces you to see them as the fools that they are.

There has been a lot of negative attention on the film, particularly coming from families of the victims of 7/7, given the close parallels. I think there is a difference between being offended and being upset. Such a person would of course be upset by the film - it's too close to a painful personal memory. That's not the same as the film being offensive. The only people that should be offended by this film are supporters of violent radical Islam, and I am completely OK with upsetting those particular sensibilities.

For a post that began with a concern that I might find it difficult to write about the film, I seem to have found enough to say. I should point out this post has taken several hours to write, in bits, because I'm still sorting out exactly what I think about it - another good thing. But I've picked over what I remember, and can't find anything disappointing, and clearly a lot that I thought was tremendous. Comments welcome, of course.

2010-05-13T21:47:00.003Z

We watched (500) Days of Summer, as heart-warming and delightful a film as I've seen since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The story skips between different days from the beginning to the end of a relationship between the two main characters, Tom Hanson and Summer Finn, with each day numbered at the start of the scene. This was a cool little device, especially as they played around with it. Two scenes, far apart in days but similar in setting, are used to give little insights into the characters, like Tom's different feelings about the same memory of summer lying in bed, or his move from prodigously writing love messages to angry condolence cards. The shorter scenes were nice touches, especially in the midst of Tom's depression. One scene sees him yelling on a bus, and asked to get off. Later, there are two consecutive days shown in quik succession where he ignores his alarm; then a third scene, amusingly labelled 1/2 a day later, watches him leave a shop, unshaven, in his dressing gown.

What I really liked about this story is that although its about a failed relationship, it's not about a huge drama which ruins these two peoples lives. Rather, it says, simply, that sometimes relationships don't work out. This is striking in a film, where we are almost preconditioned to expect these things to go one way or the other: either they work out their differences and go off into the sunset, or their lives fall apart. For all the surreal moments of humour, the story here feels very real. I really liked the split scene bit, where Tom's imagined reunion with Summer at a party and the actual disappointing outcome are shown side-by-side. It would have been easy to have have the imagined scene stray into overly romantic fantasy: instead, the differences start off minor (Tom imagines a dinner party, rather than a gathering on the balcony) and the gap builds from there in a much more natural way.

Time isn't just a device in this film, although the careful arrangements of the different scenes out of chronological order adds a great deal. The main message is that life comes in phases, in episodes, and things rarely work out as planned because something surprising is just around the corner, a point emphasised by the final punchline. Funny, smart and touching. Oh, and the music is really great as well. Lovely.

2010-05-11T09:33:00.002Z

I argued before that people needed to give Nick Clegg credit, rather than criticism, for trying to make a deal with the Conservatives. I believe that an agreement on a programme of government between them and the Liberal Democrats would best represent the country, and that the same people who argue for proportional representation needed to to acknowledge that it works both ways.

However, if an agreement can not be reached, then this ceases to be the case. Two parties that can't agree to a great deal and can't move on their own aims and those of the voters who supported them does not best represent the people. In such a case, an alliance of Labour and Liberal Democrats would be more representative of the country than a Conservative minority government.

Obviously, that isn't the only consideration, and the numerous media narratives that are currently going on show that their probably isn't one completely correct, iron-clad viewpoint. On one hand, many commentators have labelled the potential Lib-Lab government a 'coalition of the losers', whilst on the other hand, other have pointed out that the Conservatives are also not winners either. In fact, if you consider where the country was last year, when Labour managed 16% of the European election vote, you would have to summise that the Conservatives have taken quite a beating from the electorate too, whilst Labour did much better than expected. It's a confusing time.

Mainly, I think this is because the country at large is dealing with a new perspective on elections as the two-party system has fallen apart. A majority of people in this country voted for one of the two main left-of-centre parties. If they are the "losers", then we are essentially saying that the 36% who voted for the Conservatives are the winners, which is an odd mathematics at best.

I will say this though, as a trained economist. Screw the markets. I'm so sick of hearing about the "market's reaction to the uncertainty of a hung parliament". Firstly, it says a lot for our priorities when short-term market fluctuations could an important driver on much longer-term decisions. That's pretty much how the financial crisis started in the first place, and it's a psychology we need to lose. Secondly, the markets went down on Friday (uncertain government, failing Greece) and up yesterday (uncertain government, bailed-out Greece). One idea that presents itself to me is this: MAYBE IT'S FUCKING GREECE, YOU FUCKWITS.

2010-05-09T15:40:00.004Z

Due to numerous other time constraints, my film watching year hasn't really gone quite as planned. However, I've been watching at a steady rate of about one film every two weeks, and as soon as I'm back on top of work, I plan to motor through a lot more.

Films I have watched: 15
...of which are rewatchings: 2 (Da Vinci Code, The Prestige)

Films I have watched by the Coen Brothers (despite owning every single Coen Brother movie on DVD): 1
...of which were A Serious Man: 1
...of which were a comic masterpiece: 1

Films I have watched by Tarantino: 1
...in which Nazis were killed with reckless abandon: 1
...of which I loved: 1

Films starring George Clooney: 2
...of which seemed like less than the sum of the parts: 1 (The Men Who Stare At Goats)
...of which did not: 1 (Up In The Air)

New favourite films: 1 (Network)

Black comedies: 3
...of which seemed like they were written for me personally: 1 (Drop Dead Gorgeous)

Films that are good because of great solo performances: 3
...by a man: 2 (Up in the Air, The Assassination of Richard Nixon)
...by other (woman, etc.): 1 (The Reader)

We just watched Glorious 39, a British film set during the summer and autumn of 1939 which neither Cath nor I had ever heard of, but we picked up on a shopping trip earlier. It's about a wealthy family who are strongly linked to the government and a plot to make peace with Hitler rather than fight a war many believe unwinnable. I found this a really intriguing viewpoint on a period of British history generally associated with heroism and principle. The scenes about the suspension of habeas corpus and military detainment, and those about blackmail of opposing voices, focus on the uglier side of war, a theme extended in a more personal way by the mass putting down of household pets. The lead character, Anne Keyes, an adopted daughter of the family and actress, stumbles across recordings of the plot, which involves disposing of dissident voices within government, especially those who wanted to follow Churchill's much tougher line of anti-appeasment. Slowly, the plot reveals more and more people who are involved, who, perhaps predictably, are increasingly close to Anne, and her previously comfortable existence unravels.

The whole story is really engaging, with little details and twists added gradually, and the tension builds nicely. There are a number of scenes which seem slightly surreal, which added to the growing sense of unease as Anne becomes increasingly unsure about who to trust. That said, there were a few things which, at the end, were unsatisfactorily explained. Anne's escape, aided by her mother, is particularly confusing - her family, who want to keep her locked away to avoid her asking more questions, react warmly to her when they see her in the town. Cath say's its about public appearances, but it seemed strange to me. The presence of Walter, a boy whose older self tells the whole story in the present-day, provides a number of jarring moments as he appears, alone, unexpectedly - it emerges that he helped the family at times, but its not always clear why, neither does it become particularly clear who is involved in what parts of the plot.

That said, I suppose some confusion or unresolved issues in the story are needed - it's a conspiracy thriller, told by individuals not fully informed about the whole thing. Romola Garai was excellent portraying the mounting paranoia and terro of Anne, as was David Tennant's all to brief appearance as a outspoken MP and supporter of Churchill. I can't decide whether I liked Bill Nighy here - his character is so mellow, its hard to reconcile him with being a plotter doing unpleasant things for the good of his country. Then again, such jarring distinctions works in mirroring the doubt Anne increasingly feels with her familiar surroundings. Overall, a gripping and tense story, with minor fumblings.

2010-05-07T20:49:00.002Z

Well, there you go then. Not the night I thought we were going to have at all. I must say I felt very depressed watching late into the night, especially after Dr Evan Harris lost his seat. Caroline Lucas' win was the only really pleasing moment.

That said, I think Nick Clegg is doing the right thing, at least morally. I believe in a more proportional system of representation. I think a country that is split between different ideas is better represented by a compromise, and a Lib Dem-Tory agreement is the best way to represent the most amount of people (60% of all votes we cast for those two parties). Now, had Labour and the Lib Dems enough seats between them to form such a coalition, I may have a different opinion, because the scope for agreement is greater, so whilst the vote share is smaller, the actual policies might be more representative. But they can't do it. They didn't get enough support.

The anti-Tory sentiment seems to be encouraging people to urge Clegg not to support the Tories. Maybe it's nice for some people to believe that they can keep the Tories out for another term, fair or otherwise. These people need to grow up. Get more involved next time, fight harder for what you believe in and put your trust in whatever system we will have then. If it's undemocratic that the Lib Dems get far less power from their share of the vote, it is just as undemocratic to deny the significantly larger support for the Tories yesterday.

2010-05-05T20:47:00.005Z

I want to publically (in a fashion) thank Andrew Smith for being a good MP during the four years I have lived in this constituency, for replying to my letters, raising questions with his party's government and on occassion voing against them on matters of principle. In an ideal world, he'd have a safe seat and someone pointless like Blears would be losing her seat tomorrow. This is not, however, the way of the world, which is unfortunate because tomorrow I will be voting Liberal Democrat in the hope that this marginal seat changes hands.

I voted Lib Dem last time, and I guess they are my default position for most elections. Of course, they do not speak to my views exactly, so I do try to find a reason to support them more than any other party. In some cases, they don't go far enough (immigration, nuclear disarmament), and on others I just disagree (tuition fees, vocational training). However, of the three main parties, they are the only ones who I would trust to make expenditure cuts in the fairest possible way, to impose and cut taxes and to regulate our banks. They are strongest on civil liberties and have the track record to back it up. They share my progressive views on drugs and on crime, and have the longest standing environmental credentials.

Most importantly, however, I genuinely believe we have a chance, tomorrow, to forever change our electoral system. The more votes for the Lib Dems, the greater the imbalance in our first-past-the-post system will seem, the more unfair it will appear, the stronger the case for reform will be. I'm so tired of hearing how a vote for anyone other than Labour or the Conservatives is a wasted vote. If tomorrow marks the start of a long-overdue reform, no vote will ever be considered wasted again.

By the way, none of this is intended to influence anyone's vote, as if I had that power anyway. I just like recording things like this. I think it will be interesting to re-read them in thirty years time. However, I would echo Stephen Fry's call earlier to thoroughly consider the merits of re-electing Dr Evan Harris if you live in the other Oxford constituency. It is a tragedy that his intellect and uncompromising principles are an exception, rather than the rule.

2010-04-30T22:04:00.003Z

This is exactly the sort of nerdishness I just can't enough of. FiveThirtyEight are, as far as I've experienced, the most thoughtful pollsters around (actually, they are complete statistics geeks) and last Sunday they released their latest UK model. First of all, they dispense with any assumptions of uniform swing, which means they are already further along than any other model being discussed. They use a full matrix of voting transitions from 2005 to 2010, and build in elements of tactical voting in each seat (that is, the shift from one party to another is more likely in close seats where the transition is to the second place party, for example). They also build in more regional variation, and things like incumbency advantage and shifts between voting and not-voting.

The current results are starkly different to anything else out there. Firstly, there is no chance, in this model, of Labour finishing first in seats with the third largest vote. The predicted seats based on the slowly stabilising vote share poll of polls position (Con 34, LD 28, Lab 27) give the Tories 100 more seats than Labour, although they would be short of a majority. The Liberal Democrats take 120 seats, 80 fewer than Labour. Because of the built-in larger swing between Labour and the other two in seats where they are more likely to win, the model penalises Labour more in terms of seats than, for example, the BBC's simple uniform swing model does. A Lib-Lab coalition doesn't have a majority either, although the margin is tiny.

Obviously, it's our quirky election system, so who really knows, and in a sense its just an academic exercise. But if this is close to what happens on Thursday, what a remarkable month it will have been.

2010-04-28T21:35:00.003Z

Tonight, Ronnie O'Sullivan's annual campaign to become world snooker champion and my annual campaign to see Ronnie O'Sullivan prevented from becoming world snooker champion coincidentally came to an end, with a favourable end for just one of us. Mark Selby, you are a beautiful man.

So it's Selby vs. Dott and Robertson vs. Carter. A Selby-Robertson final would be my ideal, because both are guys I've wanted to see win this for the last few years, and aside from Dott's victory of Maguire and Allen's early round performances, both have probably played the best snooker this tournament.

2010-04-28T09:15:00.003Z

Greek unemployment is over 11% and will almost certainly continue to drop. The UK's unemployment is about 9%, and has probably reached the bottom. Greece's S&P rating went from BBB to BB yesterday, thus crossing the threshold into junk bond territory. The UK's credit rating is the maximum AAA. The UK is not Greece.

What people need to realise is that debt can be willingly held by investors. In the case of Greece, it is not. In the case of the UK, it is at present. Would this change? Only if it becomes apparent that we can not service it - that is, if we can not pay the interest on it. Our tax revenues are likely to rise as the economy begins to grow again, and benefits are likely to fall. I know people get frightened by big numbers, but there is always a context. I don't know how you make this case convincingly to the public, but all the scaremongerers need to stop it. Mainly, I'm talking about the Tories, but Vince Cable this morning sounded no better.

That doesn't mean I think we shouldn't start to reduce our debt, but not for the reasons that are usually touted. Debt is a transfer of resources over time. With governments, this can be between generations. If debt is built up for investment, then the benefits of such investment will probably outweigh the costs of repaying it, so future generations are not made worse off. However, crisis management has a more immediate payoff and much less of one for people in 30 years time. It is not fair that the costs of that be paid by the future generations, nor that the government's ability to crisis manage should a similar thing happen again in the future be impeded by a shortage of cash.

2010-04-26T00:03:00.004Z

I've broadly agreed with the consensus views on both televised debates so far. Clegg impressed more and mastered the format immediately in the first, whilst in the second things were a lot more even. Brown did well as the statesman during the foreign policy questions, but came completely unstuck with his attack on the Tories health policies for the elderly, leading to Cameron's strongest moment of the debate.

What I found most interesting was the immigration question in the second debate. By all rights, Clegg should not do well here. His parties view on immigration is far more liberal than the average British position. For the record, he's not liberal enough on immigration for me, but then no-one ever will be. I'm uneasy with the points system for that reason, but I completely support the idea of an amnesty, and the idea that it would encourage more problematic illegal immigration in the future holds no track with me. That said, he went on the attack against both Brown and Cameron, and came out looking like a guy who might be able to actually deal with a system that has become seen as broken. His line against the Tories was simple enough - if there is going to be a cap, what's the number? - and utterly rubbishes their policy as simply rhetoric. His response to Brown, however, seemed off the cuff, yet managed to be both genuinely funny and a real argument winner.

It's been a fun ten days. Surely, we must be on the brink of a completely new political reality.

2010-04-15T20:50:00.003Z

I had an idea today. If the Tories get into power, Cath and I will get £150 for being married. I will promise not to touch it, and put it in a bank. We'd earn a little interest on it. Next year, I will pay a couple £150 plus interest to get divorced.

2010-04-12T23:10:00.002Z

Murder By Death (AKA The Greatest American Rock Band of the Past Decade) are back in Oxford in June. In honour of that, here's some Murder By Death videos (AKA Videos of the Number One and Best Rock Music on the Planet):

Brother.
Until Morale Improves, the Beatings Will Continue.
The Big Sleep - make sure you get to the climax at 3:30.
Those Who Stayed.

2010-04-12T09:52:00.004Z

We did a run of our Byron and Shelley improv show last week for Oxfringe, although in a three man format with Joe taking the role of Byron as Jim was out of the country accidentally. Andy retained the role of Shelley and I continued as Maurice the boatman.

If you came to see it, thank you - I hope you enjoyed it. Overall, I thought the run was pretty good. I think on reflection I liked it more than our Burton Taylor run last October, but then again, I think my opinions of that were skewed by my own lack of personal enjoyment of those shows, rather than an assessment of the show as a collaborative effort. There were parts of the style of improv that we were shooting for - conversational, rather than plot-driven - which we managed on a couple of occasions, and there were other things which pleased me on a technical level, like the tying in of themes by the conclusion and what we call 'finding the game' of a scene. On the downside, I don't think we got the audience response that we wanted (crave, need, exist for, etc.). There was laughter, sure, and sometimes a lot of it, but it felt like hard work at times, which indicated to us that it wasn't the sort of free-flowing, uncontainable joy that we always picture it could be but something a lot more workmanlike.

In fact, the mood after the last show was very low-key and disappointed, followed by the saddest looking after show party you could possibly imagine: three guys sat around one full cider, one half beer and one Coke attempting to politely work out what went wrong and not apportion blame. Ultimately, however, we came to two conclusions. The first is that discussing what we would do next may largely be pointless - the four of us each have an increasing number of commitments, far more than we anticipated last June, and looking ahead seems to suggest that we will be quickly become even more geographically spread out over the coming six months. Realistically, another run of shows with the amount of rehearsal time we needed doesn't seem like an option.

The second was skirted around a lot more, but it came out implicitly: this show isn't working as we hoped. Maybe we have lofty expectations and are perfectionists, because friends and critical reception have always been positive (at least on balance), but I'm also sure that we should be having more fun. We discussed that before, but it seems that no number of directives and edicts ordering us to have fun with the show made that more likely.

I don't think we've canned it completely: it definitely feels like more of a shelving. It seems easier at this point to focus on point one and acknowledge the practical problems which mean that point two is somewhat moot. Given the opportunity, I think we would definitely come back to this project at another time and try and make it work, if only to be sure that we've done as much as we could. I hate giving up on something that I've spent so much time on. Sunk cost fallacy it may be, but it still feels no less of a failure.

Which is silly, if I think about it objectively. Financially, the two runs of shows and additional extra performances broke about even - the first made money, this one lost a little. I've gained a lot of experience from the technical and production side and, most importantly, I was involved in a hugely ambitious show which, to an acceptable standard, worked. People are generally amazed by the notion of improv in its short-form format, so the reaction to the risks a entirely improvised play receives are quite something. It's hard not to believe I'm not a better improviser now; I know for sure that I am.

And I've also learned a lot about what sort of things I want to do and am suited for. I think long-form improv is a niche performance type (at best) that I would dearly love to help push forward to wider recognition. I think I have a certain approach to improv which is useful to it: I actively look to spot themes and ideas that can brought back in again and again, I think I have a good eye for finding resolution to complicated narratives and I think the use of mime and physicality for establishing scenes is underutilised by most improvisers. Yet, if I am being honest, I have struggled with this particular format: I've felt hemmed in by a character that I never properly got into. I never felt at ease playing the straight man (and I have an immense amount of respect for anyone who can). Worst of all, I often felt superfluous to whatever stories have been developed by the others, especially in the first run of shows.

My approach to my comedy ventures has long been: I want to do things I enjoy, I want to try as hard as possible to be a success with it and if anything ever really works I'd be delighted. If not, I am fortunate to have plenty of career opportunities ahead of me and a comfortable existence. So, all of these lessons are good to know. There will be many more projects and experiments, no doubt, and I'm one step closer to working out which things I want to do and how I want to do them. And that is today's life lesson.

2010-04-05T12:39:00.004Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8602988.stm

This is an annoying debate from both sides. Firstly, a rise in employer national insurance contributions will likely lead to fewer jobs than a world where this did not happen. The economics is pretty simple to anyone familiar with a downward sloping demand curve. Any evidence based on past experiences of the form "last time NI went up, employment also went up" is nonsense, because we don't see the counterfactual: a world where NI didn't go up. Probably, in that world, employment went up even more.

I say probably in all of this because firm decision making tends to be lumpy, rather than marginal. I'm not convinced a large firm can distinguish expected profits from creating 18 new jobs and creating 22 new jobs, for example, especially in service and retail companies (which is where many of the Telegraph writers came from). I'm positive that actual research on this would yield mixed results across different firms.

All this said, there is a deficit to correct, and that money needs to come from somewhere. I'd rather Darling came out and made the argument that as we expect the economy to grow and employment to start to expand, we are raising NI contributions from employers as a way of raising extra revenue by sharing in the returns to this growth. After all, the government's deficit is partially the result of the support it gave to employers during the recession (including the giveaway to business that was the 15% VAT rate). That seems fair to me, certainly moreso that many other sources of tax income.

2010-03-23T11:27:00.003Z

Amidst all the gnashing of teeth and stomping of feet from American conservatives and morons, it's good to see a most sensible (and conservative) offering on health care reform and Sunday's vote.

I've been thinking recently about the often interchangeable use of the terms 'pro-market' and 'pro-business', which are not at all the same thing. For sure, the genius of enterprise driven by market incentives is undoubtedly a good thing, far more efficient than any socially planned direction of resources. But we need to remember that firms are ways of organising labour and capital away from the market. The market essentially starts where the firm ends. Within a firm, plenty of activities go on that could also take place in a market place. For example, instead of the creation of careers, with rules about promotion prospects and pay scales, labour could be hired on a day-to-day basis from the competitive job market, in the same way other inputs into production are bought as and when needed. The reason that firms internalise market processes is for reasons of cost reduction and profit maximisation, given a certain degree of foresight.

But in the same way that the relatively benign idea of creating careers reduces competition in the labour market for certain jobs, firms can reduce competition in other ways for the same goals of increasing profits. There are a whole raft of anti-competitive practices which firms may (and frequently do) engaged in, from legal ones, such as mergers and acquisitions (which replaces a market relationshiop between a supplier and a firm with a relationship that now takes places inside of the firm) to illegal ones, such as price-fixing (agreements between firms to rise prices about the 'market' prices) and predatory pricing (where large, cash-rich firms lower prices for a while to force smaller weaker firms out of the market). The point is, doing these things are in the interest of business. They lead to higher profits. Also, they are generally less immediately costly than other forms of activity which may create profits and benefit society (such as innovating new products or production processes).

So there is a difference between wanting to remove regulations which may stop markets working well and competition being impeded and wanting to remove regulations which impede business, because often, such regulations make competition and markets function better, not worse. Remember that, next time someone talks about a pro-business agenda.

2010-03-02T12:08:00.006Z

I found a few clips from the Brussels lucha show, thought I'd link them all in one place for myself and for anyone else who might have been interested:

Cassandro vs. Magno:

Nearly complete match, great quality

Mascarita Dorada vs. Octagoncito:

Complete match (Saturday show)

Negro Navarro vs. Solar I:

Finish (Saturday show)

Santo/Cassandro vs. Solitario/Magno:

First caida (part 1)(part 2)
Beginning of second caida
The dives
End of first caida (different angle)

2010-03-01T20:36:00.003Z

I'm cross-posting this from my wrestling blog. It's half about the lucha, half about the day to Brussels, and all about the jokes. Enjoy.

Ah, Brussels. To me, the very name conjures up an image of the people of Brussels going about their lives and their work in the city where they work and live. Of course, whatever else you may think, there is one thing we can all agree on - Brussels is not in Oxford. Yet, that is where I found myself on Sunday morning, nine hours before the Cirque Royal hosted the second of two Todo X El Todo shows which I had a ticket for.

I set off at half five of the morn, first by car (Suzuki Swift, my flat to the bus stop), then by bus (Oxford Espress, bus stop to Baker Street) then by underground train (underground train, Baker Street to London St Pancras). I have never travelled on the Eurostar before, and it was an enjoyable experience. Recent air journeys has conditioned me to associate checking in and passport control with invasive personal searches and ludicrous restrictions on hand luggage contents, so it was refreshing to meet the bored eyes of an attendent who couldn't care less if I went through the scanner laden with metal coins and have packed in my bag a bottle of (non-clear) Apple Tango. Ha! The fools. They won't be so care-free when I work out how to make an explosive device out of metal coins and (non-clear) Apple Tango. I concede that the prototypes have been failures, mainly looking like damp metal coins.

I watched some of disc three of the New Japan set on the train (Killer Khan vs. Andre is a really great match, Bret Hart vs. Tiger Mask is a really bad match) and listened to Immortal's 'Pure Holocaust' on the iPod, then arrived at Brussels Midi at 12.30pm, Belgian time, and took the metro to Madou, the final leg of the journey. It was at this point I stepped outside for the first time since Baker Street. The first thing you notice about Brussels is how cold and wet it is during a freak storm which killed fifty people in France that day. I walked towards Grand Place for a quick ham and cheese omlette, chips and a Tongerlo Dubbel (brune, if you're asking), Belgian beer being a secondary reason for making a day trip to Brussels. Back to the theatre for 2.30pm, collected tickets, took seats.

The Cirque Royal was a really nice venue, seating down to floor level all the way around the ring, then a huge ring of balcony seats going up a long way. According to Santo, the Saturday show was a sell-out. This was not, however, but most of the lower seats were full. The crowd was a mixture, plenty of masked children in Rey Mysterio t-shirts with parents, some older rowdy teens and then plenty of couples both young and old who had gone out for the Sunday to watch some lucha libre. There was no-one there who looked liked they be chanting at a wXw show, for example.

The show started about twenty minutes late, which is practically early by most lucha shows standard. There were two annoucers, one in French and the other in Flemish due to the biligual status of Belgium's capital. I was waiting for Terry Wogan to summarise it in English (a niche joke, at best). They were probably doing the standard "lucha for non-lucha fans" spiel about lucha being about good vs. evil, technicos vs. rudos and then, out of nowhere they are both saying "Black Terry", and I shot out of my mental happy place where I retreat every time foreign languages are spoken around me. Black Terry is my favourite luchadore in the world, I was thinking only last week how I may never see him live as he doesn't seem to be one of the guys who does Santo's European tours. And there he is, first guy out. In a referee's top. Mother of fuck. Who flies Black Terry out to Belgium just to referee? I will tell you now: it was not a Jesus who loves me.

Anyway, we are five paragraphs in, so let's talk about the wrestling. The opening match was the minis title match, with Pentagoncito against Mascarita Dorado (who, unless I've forgotten what he normally wears, was dressed as a mini el Hijo del Santo. A Santitocito, if you will). I thought this worked well as an introduction to the style, which is a good idea on a show promoted as much to art fans as to die-hard lucha fans. They started simple, with the rowdy teens ironically cheering every takedown and moved on to some arm drags and other lucha rope running stuff. They seemed to be having some problem with the ropes, which were too loose. Also, Dorada ended up botching a springboard moosault after slipping off the top rope. Pentagon drew boos by pelting Dorada in the chest a bunch of times, and it was nice to be amongst people who aren't desensitised to that. Slaps to the chest, as we shall see, were a great way of getting heel heat on this show. I think I was hoping for something more spectacular though, Dorado seemed quite restrained. This wasn't, for example, the exhibition that Dorada vs. Pequeno Damien 666 was from last year, but then Pentagoncito is nowhere near the base that Damien is.

Next up was Solar vs. Negro Navarro. They were wrestling an una caida match, so we got a sixteen minute matwork masterclass, as they worked through some of their extensive repetoire. They build up from simple takedowns to longer counter wrestling sequences and more unlikely submission and while I'm aware this may be a minority interest - it did not strike me that many people around the arena were watching this thinking to themselves, "here's the WKO100 third best wrestler of 2009" - I found it mesmerising. I think I may have been sat agog because I had the sense that the little Mysterio-shirted kid next to me was looking at me as if to say, "Whats so great about this? Where's the 619?". "Screw you, little kid", I said back inside my brain, "and watch these two guys take each other down in 619 different ways". Yes, I'm quite the quick thinker when I have time to write down an imaginary conversation nearly a day later.

I guess, objectively, it was about standard for them, but there were a couple of thing I found from seeing the live version. Firstly, they never stop talking. It's either meaningless noise or Spanish (the happy place again beckons), but it really adds to the competitive one-upmanship. Secondly, one of the reasons they work so well together is the way they split to roles. Solar is constantly interacting with the crowd, posing, encouraging them to cheer, whilst Navarro is nearly stoic, occasionally nodding his head when he knows he's been bested or sniffing in derision. Standing there, he looks like the toughest human being on the planet, it is an aura that almost can not be quantified, and only live performances do it justice. After about fifteen minutes of matwork, Navarro slaps Solar in the chest and the audience really react, whilst he slowly turns his head around to look at the most vocal with a slight smile and menace in his eyes. Just a tremendous performance.

After an interval of thirty minutes, they introduce a title match between Angel Blanco and Hurracan Ramirez Jr. This wasn't particularly good, and was the time during the show when my brain really went, "you booked this over a Black Terry match? He's standing right there, and he would have made Ramirez look amazing". Angel Blanco did some decent bumping, but this mainly struck me as not having many ideas, and the ones they did have weren't really well executed. They even did two near identical tope spots.

The main event was Cassandro and El Hijo del Santo vs. Magno and el Hijo del Solitario. Right up front - this was the most fun I have ever had watching a wrestling match ever. Before I start wheeling out superlatives, this was a best of three fall match with a classic formula: technico fall, rudo fall, comeback technico fall. Cassandro comes out and I will say (as a tribute to Eric), he was wearing a fabulous two piece robe radiating the same brilliant blue as the heavens from where he descended. This is what he was wearing the night before. He had unreal hair both days, looked truly beautiful and felt a confusion I had not felt since my corporal beatings in the headmasters office during my boarding days at Repton. I have seen two recent Cassandro matches previously, yet from those and (mostly) from this, I have no problem calling him the most spectacular wrestler, anywhere, in the world.

I love the reaction he got, which was identical to the first time I saw him in the London show. I didn't understand the tradition of exoticos in lucha libre, assumed he'd do an entertaining gay or drag queen act with a load of schtick. What nobody expected is the extent of his athletic gifts. His first armdrag and flip up are met with a collective "Wha?". From then on he continued to amaze a crowd that was already won over. His execution is perfect. His workrate is tireless - he'll go from one takedown, to a quick hip shake at the crowd then run straight into the next sequence. He drops in comedy spots before doing something else. I loved his rope running bit where he prances over Solitario. I got the impression from the short video on Belgian TV that on the first night Santo, maybe the luchadore with, did a lot more of his spots in the first caida. In this match he took a back seat and allowed Cassandro a complete showcase. They also both seemed to be having a great time, Cassandro was smiling almost constantly, which could only add to the enjoyment.

Santo is someone I love watching so much that providing I see him once in a year, for long enough to go, "yeah, he's still El Hijo del motherfucking Santo", he'll appear in my list of the best wrestlers alive. I also really enjoyed the rudos. El Hijo del Solitario was hugely entertaining, from the moment he camply ran to the ring lip-syncing to AC/DC's 'You Shook Me All Night Long', thrusting himself into the turnbuckle. He ran up into the crowd at the start to shout at a teen, followed by Santo who walloped him in the middle of the people. Both rudos bumped all over and did everything they needed to do in a match all about the technicos. They both also had some really stiff strikes, I remember Cassandro taking an audibly nasty right hand from Magno to the side of the head, and Santo ends up sprawled across the front row while Solitario chopped him right in the chest. In fact, the rudos were so aggressive in the second fall that they had the old lady (and many others) next to me covering her eyes after a series of strikes, then a senton, then a double team assisted front lungblower.

The deciding fall finished with stereo topes (the ring rocking as our technicos hit the ropes at the same time), Santo's like a dart and Cassandro's with a little giro. Our seats were above to exit right in front of the ring, so the dives came towards and then under us. The visual of seeing Santo and Cassandro dive out of the ring and then right out of sight was amazing. The whole theatre, young children and elderly couples alike, cheered and laughed and clapped in awe and it was just a fantastic moment.

After the show I followed a similar route to the one I took there, only in reverse. I forwent stopping around afterwards for photos to make sure I made my train, only realising when I got there how much time I would have had to spare. In keeping with a theme I listened to Immortal's 'Sons of Northern Darkness' and watched a couple more New Japan matches, but mostly half-slept. I got home at half ten, British time, and then did the other half of the sleep. A good day.

2010-02-27T16:45:00.003Z

I'm having a day in Brussels tomorrow, which is about the most 21st century thing I've probably said. It is a much smaller world than it used to be.

The reason I am going is to watch a lucha libre show. Mexican lucha libre is the most unique of all the forms of professional wrestling. It transcends Mexican culture in a way that other forms do not. It's also a lot more performance, rather than accurately imitating a sporting contest. Both explain why this show is actually part of a month long Mexican culture week in Brussels in a theatre - the Cirque Royal - and other shows have been organised in venues, like the Lourve last year, where wrestling fans are not necessarily the target audience.

The card is stacked, with el Hijo del Santo, Negro Navarro, Solar I and Cassandro all performing. The middle two are thirty year veterans, maestros, still amazing to watch (actually, they have improved with age), and I figure it may be my only opportunity to see them live. Cassandro is a guy I come to know recently and is an incredible performer, but one who has rarely appeared on video. And Santo is the most famous luchadore alive today, a guy who embodies everything great about lucha both as an in-ring performer and as a part of the mythology that make it such a transcendent artform.

Exhausting a day as it may be to travel to Belgium and back in less than 18 hours, I am massively excited.

2010-02-19T16:06:00.002Z

Economics is a science of relatively simple calculations, behind which we find truth. For example, sixty is larger than twenty.

2010-02-18T10:27:00.003Z

I'm a big fan of the context paragraphs that news reports tag at the bottom, as they are usually the most pedestrian of journalism. From today's Daily Mail:

"There are more than 1.1billion Roman Catholics in the world, with more than 4million of them living in Britain.

Because of its huge global influence, the religion's practices and traditions are known and respected throughout the world."

Oh, that Catholicism.

2010-02-16T13:17:00.003Z

One of the reasons I will probably be a lefty until I die is this: when left-wing think tank produce lunatic ideas, they are generally framed in terms of 'quality of life' and other such terms of making the world a more lovely place; when right-wing think tanks produce lunatic ideas, they are generally about making more people more miserable.

2010-02-15T09:51:00.003Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8515592.stm

This is not going to be a long or nuanced post. Some things are just absolute truths:

There are no circumstances in which a rape victim should take responsibility for the attack.

2010-01-15T20:20:00.003Z

We went to watch Sherlock Holmes last Monday. Very entertaining, providing you leave your brain behind, which is a perfectly fine way to watch a film that doesn't take itself seriously. I liked the incarnation of Holmes - it makes sense to me that a guy who has such incredible deductive abilities is much more likely to be a little crazed than the placid detective from previous versions. I liked Jude Law's Watson too, his backstory justifying why a doctor was also such a man of action.

There's loads of touches in this movie that I liked. The slow motion scenes where Holmes plots his next move in fights, and the explosion scene were great, with the slo-mo actually serving a purpose, and allowing us to see all the details we would have missed. There's great moments of humour as well. To take just one, I was really amused by Holmes and Adler trying to dearm the weapon whilst Watson carried on fighting in the background before being launched across the room in a Family Guy-esque moment. I also loved how Holmes was a terrible locksmith, or more specifically, I loved how this was underplayed and never directly pointed out.

Because, for all those moments, Guy Ritchie is not a man who deals well in subtlty, and sometimes, it all gets a bit much. There's moment where adversity is piled on top of more adversity to the point where you struggle to really care about any one problem. It feels too long at the climax, which is a direct result of Ritchie's overblown style. The Watson-Holmes relationship used the obvious device of them talking like an old married couple, which, whilst funny, wasn't really done particularly artfully. By the end, I was even a little tired of Holmes' many quirks and abilities, which is annoying because he had the potential to reach unparalleled levels of awesome. Basically, at times, I wanted to grab this movie and say 'Stop it'.

Movies watched this year: 4

2010-01-06T13:22:00.002Z

Don't people know you can't launch a leadership challenge on a Prime Minister when the news has got so much snow to cover?

My thought? I don't like Patricia Hewitt. I remember her being dull, bordering on vacuous, but the interview I just on BBC News, where she managed to claim that a public call for a leadership vote is the best thing for the party is sort of hilarious, and as blatanly self-serving as she is pretending it isn't.

2010-01-05T11:06:00.004Z

I can't remember watching many films where I've actually struggled to understand what's going on for a good half an hour. Not in the sense that I couldn't get the plot - there are plenty of films like that early on. But in the sense that I couldn't get a handle on the characters, the way they spoke and acted and thought. For those who haven't seen Brick, it's basically a film noir detective story meets high school teen drama, where the style, language and archetypes are from the former, and the characters and location are from the latter. Not having any knowledge of film noir or those sort of Philip Marlowe detective stories meant it took me a while to figure out what was going on. For example, when Brendon says of Emma "she's gone" to the Brain, the auto-pilot of my brain told me that he's hiding her death and the circumstances around it and any emotions he might be feeling, and it's only when I adjusted to the (what I know know is called) hardboiled style that I realised that's enough for one person to tell another someone's dead, murdered, and that's as much emotion as will be shown on the topic.

None of this is bad, mind. The end result is one of the most original feeling films I can remember seeing, all the more remarkable given how old the underlying story type is. I'm definitely OK with being mentally challenged by a film - it's not the filmmakers job to pander to the intelligence of the watcher, or his own limited frame of reference. I suspect a second watch would lead me to enjoy in a number of other ways lost by having to concentrate. On a first watch, however, it struck me as a satisfying balance of edgy gritiness and cool quirkiness. I really liked that this unusual world just existed, with its own internal logic, and that the film was not about the reason for that. The humour was wonderful - the scene where Brendon sits opposite The Pin in his mothers kitchen whilst his mother fixes him an apple juice with excruciating detail was very funny - and their lots of off-kilter moments like that. I also remember being aware of the music and liking it.

Movies watched in 2010: 3

2010-01-04T19:39:00.003Z

Without taking an unpleasant amount of pleasure in it, The Economist's obituary for Oral Roberts is delightfully sarcastic and withering.

2010-01-03T03:15:00.002Z

Young Victoria was OK. It's quite a sweet love story, but not a deeply emotional one. I thought that largely was the result of trying to include too many historical or political aspects, often without really contributing to the story; or occassionally, where they did, the impact or connection to the personal stories was so tangential that it seemed rather forced. A film like The Queen showed that you pick just a one story from a complicated history, you care so much more about it and it's characters. Positive final comment: Emily Blunt is outrageously beautiful.

Movies watched in 2010: 2
...of which the reviews cheapened women actresses: 1

2010-01-02T12:26:00.001Z

I was going to start on Mafia movies tonight (I have loads), and rewatch The Godfather (with a view of watching the two sequels for the first time). However, Cath has asked we watch Young Victoria instead. Great. Thoughts later.

2010-01-02T00:46:00.002Z

Watched Pan's Labyrinth. Thought it was fantastic: the performances, story, the photography (beautiful yet utterly bleak). I liked the overlap between the harsh realities of the outpost and the fights with the Resistance, and the macabre fanatasy world of the labyrinth - the two worlds borders are blurred and look very similar, which furthers the idea that the fantasy world is the creation of Ofelia. It is horrific and violent in short bursts, often executed in such a way that seems both visually shocking yet massively real, like the bullet through the Captain's cheek, and the bloody in the eye above it, or the way the Captain crushes the poacher's son's face with a bottle in distinct phases. There's lots of pleasing little details which recur throughout, which start small yet grown in significance. The broken watch, for example, begins as a bit of backstory, but ends up telling us about how the Captain mistakenly sees himself relative to his more noble and heroic father. I'm sure there's a bunch of clever stuff about Fascism and the parallels with the orders of the faun, but I haven't thought it all out yet.

Movie films watched in 2010: 1

2010-01-01T18:15:00.003Z

My new years resolution is to watch films. I'm so rubbish when it comes to watching films. There are so many I should have watched (by which I mean, ones everyone has seen apart from me). A pointless ambition? Maybe. But it should hopefully be an enjoyable one. And, I always thinks it helps intelligent comedy to have as many cultural touchpoints available as possible.

I aim to watch 100 this year. I'm starting tonight with Pan's Labyrinth.

2009-12-30T19:05:00.003Z

I passed a sad landmark last Sunday. It has been ten years since a friend of mine from high school, Ed Matthews, died. He had turned 16 two months before, and he took his own life on December 27th 1999.

I do think of him on occassion. We met at the start of year 11 (September 1998), and quickly became good friends through sharing a lot of the same classess. Ed's importance on my life and on my character really can't be overstated. I was an awkward boy, short in confidence outside my group of friends. Ed was massively popular. He was cheeky and playful - he would disrupt a class with a joke, but in such a way that he rarely got in real trouble. I attribute, at least in part, my future interest in comedy and performing to him.

People would joke that we were identical twins (despite only having bright blond hair in common) and I loved hearing that, because I secretly doubted I was half as interesting or funny or as enigmatic as he was. He was a teenager who refused to care what anyone thought of him, in a way that most people only bluster about. He wasn't interested in the politics of the school yard - he had time for you if you were interesting and fun, regardless of who you were friends with. He brought out the best in everyone around him. I think he made me comfortable with myself, and helped me embrace who I was and what I was interested in, and care much less about how I was seen. If I can pass only one attitude to any children I might have, it will be that.

Of course, I was fifteen. I considered him one of my best friends, but when he killed himself, part of the shock was because I knew nothing that might be troubling him. He never even called. He just went and did it. I know a little of what happened now, the falling out with the unbelieveable overreaction. He left a note in his pocket for when it was found. On it was written his name, his address and the sentence "everyone likes a considerate suicide." His last joke.

Sometimes I feel angry at him. Sometimes, thinking back, it barely seems like that Christmas holiday happened to me at all - so much has changed since then. But mostly when I remeber us daring each other to lie on the book shelves at the back on the class until the teacher noticed, or him hopping around on his BMX, or the last time I saw him (Christmas Eve 1999, laughing and waving), I think what I do is miss him. The answer to all the unanswerable questions drives me crazy.

2009-12-17T09:49:00.003Z

Hilarious.

"Hey Zach, if you play your song Killing in the Name Of on the radio, you won't swear will you?"

"Oh, no".

"You'll just say 'I won't do what you tell me', instead of 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me'."

"Oh, yes".

"Well, I believe you, because I have no reason to think, based on this little exchange, that you would ever not do something that you were told to do. No reason at all".

2009-12-15T12:05:00.003Z

I'm supporting the Rage Against The Machine for Christmas Number 1 campaign, not because I think it sends a powerful message (it does not) or because I care about who tops the Christmas chart (I do not), but in the name of SHENANIGANS. I am pro-frippery. And also vastly amused that Cowell would call this bit of fun 'cynical', given how he makes a living.

Buy the track or don't buy the track. But do make a donation to Shelter, who do amazing work for a group of people it would be easier to forget about: "You'll never silence the voice of the voiceless".

UPDATE: Cowell again bemoaned the campaign earlier, calling its organisers "miserable". He also said it's denying Joe "his moment". Firstly, he's had plenty of moments, including the one where he won the talent contest that he entered and got a million pound recording contract. Secondly, there's the implication of entitlement. The fact that Cowell sees the Christmas number one spot as something that should be granted to everyone who wins his show is just another reason to get on board.

2009-12-07T16:26:00.003Z

John Hutton, as Defence Minister:

"The individuals transferred to Afghanistan are members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a proscribed organisation with links to al-Qaeda....
...The US government have explained to us that those individuals were moved to Afghanistan because of a lack of relevant linguists to interrogate them effectively in Iraq...
...The US has categorised them as unlawful enemy combatants and continues to review their status on a regular basis...

...We have been assured that the detainees are held in a humane, safe and secure environment that meets international standards that are consistent with cultural and religious norms."

Let's play a game called Spot Everything That Is Wrong With The Above. It's round one in a game called Spot Everything That Is Wrong With UK/US Counter-Terrorism Policies. To highlight a few:

- America pretty much decided their affiliation without a trial. Reprieve (a human rights charity) dispute this status for at least one of the detainees.

- Does "review their status" mean check they are still barely alive? Or check their assumptions weren't wrong?

- The relevant linguists explanation is the weakest explanation for anything ever.

- Perhaps the word "linguists" was a typo. For the word, "violent psychopaths".

- Assurances as to the high quality of conditions of imprisonment from the people you ask to covertly torture suspects don't carry much credibility.

- What do cultural norms mean for secret prisons? Because I'm fairly sure the cultural norm of a secret prison is nothing good.

- Aslo, what do religious norms mean for secret prisons? Muslims are allowed to pray five times a day? I think if I were in a secret prison, I'd be praying a lot more often than that.

2009-12-01T01:35:00.003Z

I was reminded tonight, pottering around YouTube for guitar songs to copy, the first time I heard my favourite REM song - from their 2001 unplugged set: Cuyahoga.

2009-11-30T12:02:00.005Z

As far as I'm concerned, this is the only argument for vegetarianism I'm interested in. It is a very good one, and I recommend giving it consideration. I, personally, try to have vegetarian lunches, or vegetarian dinner if I had meat at lunch.

I have no desire to stop eating meat entirely, but I think moderation can have a massive impact. We should all share the costs of climate change, and going without chicken on that Caeser salad should be right at the top of the list. Interestingly, this is exactly the opposite situation for me when it comes to alcohol, but the same result - I have no real desire to drink (and would happily go completely straight edge) but do so in moderation in social situations where, quite frankly, it's almost seen as offensive not to (happily, I've learned how to have a drink in hand and remain sober). I wish I could always have Coke, but I also wish to avoid unnecessary dramas.

By the way, I don't count fish in this (neither as a food nor as an alcoholic drink). They don't live on land, we don't cut down rainforests to build aquariums. Although that would be more pleasant.

2009-11-29T18:59:00.002Z

On Friday, I had a moment where I suddenly thought, "you know what? I actually might finish my D.Phil. And it might be good."

Had a good weekend. First time in a long time I've had a weekend off. I could get used to it. Not allowed, though.

2009-11-12T17:28:00.002Z

Oh, come on, the BBC. Why would you do this? Tomorrow: What do you think about homosexuality? Saturday: What should be the punishment for convicted paedophiles? Sunday: Do you like the Peter Mandelson? Monday: Whose better: Allah or God? Tuesday...

There really isn't any need.

2009-11-12T10:23:00.002Z

I think this about covers my view on this distasteful subject. Also the expression, "I could care less".

2009-11-09T10:29:00.004Z

Dear viewers of the X-Factor,

Many of you apparently came to a realisation only last night, after Simon Cowell elected not to eliminate the double act of John and Edward from the competition after weeks of deriding their performances and stating publically that their victory in this competition would destoy the programme and would encourage him to leave the country. You have apparently developed a sense of cynicism for the first time (a cynicism oddly absent in the way you have previously embraced this popularity competition mascarading as a talent contest) that Cowell only did this because he calculated he can make more money from the circus that surrounds those two boys than Lucie Jones. Indeed, it could be argued that by taking such a public stance against the two, he has himself increased their value as a commodity.

I am inclined to agree with this assessment. Please, however, do not confuse this with sympathy for your outrage.

Most of you will continue to watch this meaningless exercise. You like to claim that the programme discovers the some of the most exceptional singers in the country. That it does that on a yearly basis makes me inclined to think that there is a plentiful supply of such individuals who can be easily slotted into the producers desired show format. Most can hold a tune, but I've yet to see why we need one more of them, and why we need to spend so much time finding such a minor contribution to popular music. Once again, we as a nation and a culture have confused being good at something with being exceptional. This is how mediocrity wins.

Here's what you should do. If you care about music so much, leave the house and go and support real musicians. Go to local gigs. Buy their CDs. Tell your friends. That all this time and energy spent on one sideshow act in the name of finding the country's next top musician is troubling at best (and downright perverted at worst). We live in an age of vast informational resources. We could each discover ten great acts in one-twentieth of the time it takes for this show to runs its course. So, stop moaning, and consider doing that instead.

Of course, if you don't care about music, may I recommend you watch the X-Factor. It is the programme for you.

Yours sincerely,

Craig

2009-11-01T11:47:00.002Z

Going to a wrestling show tonight. Dragon Gate is one of the larger Japanese indy promotions, and to be honest one of my least favourite. That said, live puro ten minutes down the road from me (its at the Regal on Cowley Road) is rare - this, to my knowledge is the only UK show any Japanese promotion is putting on this year, so its proximity is too much of a reason not to go.

It should be fun at least - the Dragon Gate guys may be weak at putting together coherent wrestling matches, but they can fly around all over the place which should be a spectacle. The atmosphere will probably be fairly contagious too - UK fans, wrestling starved as we are, are usually great, providing they don't try to imitate the more annoying tendencies of US indy fans (chants of "this is awesome" after two minutes of action). More on this, later.

2009-10-30T18:54:00.003Z

What's the point of having scientific advisors if you only listen to them if they confirm your priors or support your political position? If you're never going to change anything, even if a respected scientist says you're basing your position on nonsense, why even bother having an advisory body?

I'm so tired of this empty debate about drugs. All governments ever say they are going to do is "fight against illegal substances", ignoring the fact that they are only illegal because they called them that. What we're trying to say is that there's hypocrisy in the distinction between those currently legal and those currently illegal, despite many of them being less personally and socially harmful (by a number of different measures) than nicotine and alcohol. If you can't get past an argument more sophisticated than "they're illegal because they're illegal", you're not the right people for this job.

2009-10-23T09:46:00.002Z

So we're are three nights into the show, and it's going well. I would say, although its open to debate, that they have been improving each night, certainly from a personal level, and also with things like the degree of mind-meld and reincorporation. There were several times last night when I realised we were all thinking the same things, which makes driving an improvised storyline that much easier, and look that much better. That said, last night was also more silly and over-the-top than previous nights, which means that perhaps, whilst enjoyable for ourselves and entertaining for the audience, may not have been the best (or deepest) improv.

John and Sarah Lloyd attended last night, and said they thought it was so well improvised, it was possible to forget that it wasn't scripted. This is a huge compliment, although also creates problems, which we may need to deal with. Reviews have been good, generally. Aside from a savaging in the Oxford Student, based on what was admittedly not the greatest press preview, the Cherwell review was good (although the star rating reflected the perceived likelihood that a improvised show varies in quality) and OTR put up two here. It's a shame no-one was in to review Wednesday or Thursday's show, as they were our best yet.

Anyway, tickets are mostly sold, though some remain, especially for Saturday. If you haven't had chance yet, do come: 9.30pm, tonight and tomorrow, Burton Taylor Studio Theatre.

2009-10-15T22:40:00.003Z

Excitingly, I have had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Public Economics. This would be my first one. Go me. The world will now have to brace itself for the revolutionary impact of "Quasi-hyperbolic discounting and retirement: a comment" (forthcoming).

2009-10-09T09:11:00.002Z

I'm as Pro-bama as the next guy, but seriously, what on Earth?

Edit: Actually, reading this is an impressive argument. My initial thoughts were based on the fact that its still early days. Maybe that misunderstands the purpose and nature of the prize.

2009-10-08T09:41:00.004Z

Sorry, haven't done this for a while. I meant to put up a Kitson review, and I probably still will. In the meantime, however:

Every morning, Cath puts on GMTV as she's getting ready. I have reached the point now where if I meet Andrew Castle in the street, I'll probably injure him (although that would only give him something else to look outraged about the following morning). Every morning there's some massive injustice going on somewhere in the country, some Little Man's battle against evil business or ineffectual government where he (or one of his co-hosts) will attempt to impersonate a real journalist by asking what I assume they think are the tough questions, but are actually just populist jabs, usually without the slightest bit of research or knowledge apart from the talking points from the segment introduction.

About a month ago, they were doing a segment on teen binge drinking, with the angle being that marketing departments in drink companies aggressively target young people. Possibly true, and morally quite dubious, but that misses the point. A representative from the industry made the reasonable point that companies can only operate with the existing law, and that maximising profits for shareholders is actually a legal requirement. They also had on a girl who had become an alcoholic in her mid teens. This sort of reporting, where you take one person with a huge vested interest and a sympathetic backstory as a spokesperson or expert for a particular point of view is manipulation, pure and simple, both of the individual, and of the watching audience, and lacks the intellectual rigour these issues deserve. Think Paul Betts everytime there's a drug tragedy story.

That said, she impressively and bravely argued that it was much more her personal choices than advertising that was her downfall, despite Castle's attempts to place sentences like 'wouldn't have happened if these companies didn't target children' in her mouth, nearly destroying the whole angle of the segment (it would have been destroyed if the host paid any attention to the input of their guests, rather than continuing with whatever they were going to say anyway).

This morning was a familiar one - the idea that electricity and gas companies pass on increases in energy costs much more than they pass on decreases in energy costs. The whole segment was lunatic on many levels. There was an 'expert' claiming that the problem was that the Big Six energy firms had been allowed to get too big, and competition was weak. There are SIX firms. That's four or five more firms than are active in most other European countries. The UK is the country furtherest along with the sort of market liberalisation the European Commision wants. How can any of them get too big? They have to share a market six ways.

The report also pointed out that companies tend to buy fuel a long way in advance, which is true, and for good reasons to do with reducing risk (which, ultimately, lowers cost). This, then, is the reason why changes in energy prices aren't always seen on bills. That is the end of the argument, because the initial question is the wrong one. Obviously, this point of logic ignored. They went on to ask if government should step in, as Ofgem wasn't doing enough, without the slightest discussion of why regulators are made independent from government in the first place.

The piece actually finished with a long statement from Ofgem stating that this issue had been investigated extensively last year, and no evidence was found that this perception (which has been propogated by media outlets like GMTV). I haven't read this report, but I do know that regulators rarely tend to side with energy companies on principle. I've worked on reports for regulators, and reviewed regulatory proceedings, and the amount of times a regulator will reject the arguments of a regulated company far outweigh the times they concede the point. Clearly, however, this argument will continue until someone writes a better report. Your move, Ofgem.

Let me finish this by noting that I'm no champion for the benefits of unfettered free market capitalism and big business. I realised long ago that capitalism is the only sustainable economic system, because it best matches human nature, with all its innate self-interest. That is not to say that I think that just because these motivations are natural, they are the best we can do - and anyone who argues otherwise is grotesquely unambitious. I believe that one of the challenges of the modern left is to find ways which greater equality can be created within this system.

Big business and the free market can, at times, do this - lower costs of living are a benefit to all, but a particular benefit to the poorest. At other times, the necessary conditions for effective free markets (information, rationality and power) fail so much that goverment intervention is better. I believe that government should care about social welfare, and that taxes can be redistributive, but that not all taxes on the wealthy are effective in achieving this goal. There's no hard and fast rule. But we can surely all agree that these sorts of programmes, with their uninformed, analysis-free posturing helps nothing or nobody - the whole purpose of it is to generate public anger, which takes away energies that could probably be better spent on real issues.

2009-09-22T08:42:00.002Z

Seeing Kitson tonight at the Playhouse. First time. Glowing reviews to follow.

2009-09-20T10:28:00.003Z

I've been enjoying Derren Brown's latest series. What I've enjoyed most is watching public reaction - and I'm convinced Derren is enjoying it as well.

After the lottery trick, the amount of time spent proving it was a trick was completely unprecedented. I can only assume that people feel the need to try to prove a magician is actually a magician, and not a wizard, because he's been so successful in the past at baffling people. His act often dresses up magic in the guise of being something deeper. He may certainly be better at controlling minds than other magicians (the Heist stunt, for instance, is no illusion) but he is still, at the end of the day, a magic act that use a wide variety of methods.

The anger at his explanation - I've seen people say they've written to advertising watchdogs because of false claims - was particularly amusing, especially if you really watch the show. The punchline of the show - after giving his obviously false mathematical explanation, and his even more absurd 'fix the draw' explanation that was designed to taunt the real cynics - was simply "I'll maintain that it was just a trick", a throwaway reminder that the idea is could be anything else is just ridiculous.

If anything, the reaction to the control the nation event was even better. Commenting on the Guardian's live coverage of the show, many people seemed keen to point out, in a tone that suggested they were in some way superior, that it had not worked for them. Quite frankly, anyone who tried it with that attitude was never going to experience anything else. It should be noted that there was a punchline at the end of this show as well - this time mentioning that all the tricks has nothing to do with subliminal messaging. Cath chatted the entire way through it, but I've got it on my DVR, so I'll give it another go later, and let you know how it goes. I deeply want it to work. I think that would be more interesting than standing up.

2009-09-11T21:47:00.004Z

I've never really listened to my iPod using the shuffle facility - I prefer to listen to whole albums. That said, I recently decided that I'd try to listen to all 2496 songs on my iPod because sometimes I think I don't know all the music I own. There are so many times I listen to the first twenty minutes of an album on a journey, and as a result don't really.

Anyway, I also thought I keep an on-going log of my progress and any thoughts. We join things at track 144 - Anaal Nathrakh's 'Yellow King' from the 'Eschaton' album. An incredible album, very heavy, yet surprisingly accessible, with clean vocals and even guitar solos. It's the majestic black metal of Emperor mixed with the Midlands grindcore of Napalm Death, with soaring chorus breaking out dense walls of noise. This track is less so - its all pummelling drums, gurgled vocals, and a crushing bursts of guitar. It's very grim - but in a good way.

Track 151 - 'Red Tape Suckers' by Nasum, of their rarities disc Grind Finale. Two seconds long, consisting of the lyrics 'red tape suckers' and a single blast of noise. I love grind. Moving on.

Track 161 - Darkthrone - 'I En Hall Med Flesk Og Mjod' off of 'Transylvanian Hunger'. I can never distinguish tracks on that album without checking (the Norwegian doesn't help), because there all a lot like this - almost hypnotic, repetitive, not a trace of warmth anywhere in the music. Much better to listen to the whole thing than individual tracks for the proper necro black metal experience.

2009-09-07T10:12:00.002Z

I've been wanting to post this news for a while, but there have been delays in everything being official.

At the age of 25, I have a job. Specifically, a research fellowship at SKOPE, a research group in the Univeristy's Department of Education. They were clearly fooled by my succinct yet persuasive CV (Craig Holmes, 25, unemployed, talented economist, hero to millions of children). It's perfect really - lots of academic freedom for research (within their research programme), but also more security, the ability to publish more often and at a more noticeable level, and most importantly, an office with my name on it. And an employer - nothing makes you get out of bed and start your day like having an employer (Exceptions: fire, dreams about spiders, violent wife). I'm very pleased, is all.

If anyone knows anyone who does poster design quickly, send me a message. I need to send for an order by the end of the month at the latest.

2009-08-31T14:57:00.002Z

Home from Edinburgh, having had a great week in Edinburgh.

Aside from performing in a few Imps shows whilst there (more on that later) we got to see around fifteen shows. Some were exceptional. Tim Key (this years main award winner) thoroughly deserved his accolades with his show, The Slutcracker, and his friend Tom Basden's show, Now That's What I Call Music-Based Comedy, was also great. They both have a similar style, delivering what could be described (simplistically) as intentionally bad poetry (Key) or songs (Basden) ("it's not intentional", says Key, "when I sit down to write a poem, I think 'Let's make this a good one'"). Basden is an excellent guitarist, I should also note. Their material is coupled with extensive use of multimedia and some props, making the show seem so much more than just stand-up. Key ends his show attempting to cross the room, aided by the audience, without touching the floor, paying off an earlier bit. Basden litters his shows with slides on his inventions (new boys names, girls names, maths) cartoons, and other ideas (a wordsearch comprising 100 letter Y's and the word 'Patio') set to music. I liked Key's show more, because of the quality of his performance, his delivery, his interactions with Fletch the techie, but Basden has perhaps been underated this year.

I also really like Laura Solon's first show in Edinburgh since winning the Perrier in 2005. She tells a story through a number of charachter (both male and female) which she voices. The story is both good in of itself and serves to allow a number of excellent standalone sketches (the French radio interview where the presenter and the French author debate whose culture is better, England or France is a highlight, as is her Welsh call-centre lady). The performance was energetic, her delivery impeccable and she seemed just, for want of a better word, lovely.

Rounding off my picks (bearing in mind I'm waiting to see Daniel Kitson and Stewart Lee on their post Fringe tours) was Simon Munnery's 2009 AGM. For our ticket, we got an hour and a quarter in the venue, and a further hour in the pub after as he finished going through all the submitted motions, improvising responses leading into more established routines. It's incredible how much matertial he has to draw on, and style-wise, there's no-one like him ("I went swimming in the river: widths, mainly").

I saw a lot of sketch shows - the Bristol Revunions and Delete the BanJaX were really fun, especially the latter. They seemed liked good friends whose palable delight at performing together was infectious, and where bits fell apart due to exhaustion and lost voices at the end of the run, their good natured mocking of each other was pitched exactly right. One of the guys, Dan, was particularly difficult to stop watching, and his enormous personality was obvious in all his characters (both human and horse). I want to do shows with them.

The Durham Revue were disappointing - I've often enjoyed them more than their Oxford or Cambridge counterparts. Cath and I left feeling quite bored by the end, as the show ran out of ideas about halfway through. I enjoyed the Penny Dreadfuls and Pappy's Fun Club, although given the disputes over the latter between Imps, I've had quite enough of discussing its merits and shortcomings. Rich Hall was quite a letdown - it was a bit meandering, and while he's great at dealing with the unplanned bits with the audience, little of his material was as stellar as I've seen in the past.

There's more, but instead, let's talk about the Imps. I did three shows, and to be brutally honest, I didn't enjoy myself a huge amount. Part of this was being a little out-of-practice, and the problems with joining a group of people who have their own momentum. I also didn't particularly like the set lists - I find improvised musicals tedious and I don't have much more love for Shakespeare scenes either. I find them restrictive with their conventions and often too long and convoluted. I'm also not convinced the audience don't share my assessment, for all our own bluster. Quite frankly, I like short form with all its silliness and energy and gimmicks and short scenes which allow quick ideas and short bursts of insanity, and I like long form for the ability to develop ideas and characters slowly and build up layers of humour and bring back themes. Where the group currently is sits between these two, but without the positives of either.

2009-08-20T11:06:00.003Z

Booom.

Barney Frank murked that shit.

Update: Colbert adds joy to already joyous event.

2009-08-18T09:06:00.003Z

Loading up the BBC News website is always more entertaining when the side bar tells you that science proves zombies could annihilate humans.

In such an event, says science, "only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures." (I think it's the word 'fictional' in the last sentence that makes it comedic art). Because, science reminds us, "it's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble." (I would personally have added the word 'fictional' prior to the word 'trouble', but then I am known for overkill)

Of course, science may not have quite got the model correct - it failed to recognise that the alternative assumption about "zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it's dead forever." So stop your (fictional) panicing right now.

Man, I love it when other people are funny for me.

2009-08-16T20:51:00.003Z

Stupidly, a week ago, I got caught going 36mph going down Banbury Road into Summertown. The letter came yesterday, but addressed to Cath because she's the named owner with the DVLA. And instead of taking the £60 fine and 3 points like a good wife, she's shopped me. Actually, she has filled in a form with my details, put it in an envelope and asked me to post it tomorrow, so technically, I'm shopping me.

Mainly I'm most embarassed by the fact that I got speeding just 6mph over the limit. What's the point of speeding by so little - you get there hardly any faster, but the penalty is the same as if I'd gone 50.

Speaking of speeding, Usain Bolt's new world record was just breathtaking. The record came down by 100ths of a second every few years for ages - he takes 0.11 off in one go. It's important not to go over the top though - listen to the commentator saying (approximately), "he thinks he can go 9.4, but that's his limit. I'm not sure, I think he could go whatever time he likes". One day he shall wake up and say, "I want to go 5". And it shall be done.

2009-08-13T21:17:00.004Z

Two gigs at the Camden Underworld I'm excited about this winter - Amorphis in October, and Insomnium in December. Two of Finland's best, and the makers of my favourite doom/death albums. Insomnium's Above the Weeping World is one of the few albums I'd consider utterly essential - by turn melodic, melancholic and eventually uplifting, I think it could make believers out of non-metal fans.

2009-08-06T08:50:00.003Z

Say you buy an asset of some form, which produces a regular payment to you (like a bond or a share, for example). The price you pay for it should reflect the stream of payments you are expecting to get from it. If there are fluctuations in the stream of payments, this is generally captured in the price as a discount to compensate you for the risk you are taking on.

If an asset produces payments in perpetuity, and say that you expect the payments to be equal each year, and that the riskiness of these payments doesn't change, then the price of the asset should remain roughly constant - that is, the price you buy it for would be the same as the price you sell it for some years later.

If, however, the asset has a fixed life, after which it no longer produces any payments to you, then over time, the price of the asset falls. I mention this because of this story. The same thing as above applies here. The asset is Friends Reunited, which has produced income for ITV since it was purchased in 2005. The gap between £175m and £25m is vast, but this ignores the profits that have been earned in the meantime. In fact, if ITV expected that revenues would likely tumble by 2009 - possible, given the fact that Facebook and MySpace were taking off at the time, and are much more all-encompassing sites - and the price they paid for it reflected this, then this isn't a story at all. Investments can be for short term rewards as much as they can be for long-term ones.

In all likelihood, ITV probably didn't anticipate how much the value of the business would fall, or at least that this was at the low end of their expectations. They may have hoped to be able to create a better competitor for other social network sites than what resulted. I also don't deny that some of this is related to the recession, and the effect that has had on most businesses' income. But at least some of this is part of the riskiness I mentioned above, and the original price likely reflected it. Investmests underperform as often as they overperform, and its pointless to pick out individual ones that were bad after the fact. It may not have been, strictly speaking, bad - the overall gain from the investment (profits plus resale price) may still have exceeded the initial purchase price.

All I'm saying is there is more going on than "ITV lose £150m on investment".

2009-08-04T18:02:00.005Z

I'm starting to put videos from Correctness on the YouTube. Here's the first one - the Elephant in the Room. I'll try and add more to this post tonight/tomorrow.

Update: Have now uploaded Good Cop, Good Cop, Secrets of the Stage and Artsy Parents. If you like them, do share with others. More tomorrow.

Further update: I've now uploaded Don Alfonso, Balloon For Sale, Tenzing Interview, Spleen Conference and Weather Vanity.

2009-08-03T02:16:00.002Z

Well, I've spent most of my evening (aside from two and a half hours gloriously spent rewatching The Dark Knight) setting up a new website for Gelastic Band Productions, mine and Andy's production company. It's placeholder stuff for the time being while I get some graphic stuff done, but I thought I'd link it anyway. It's here.

2009-08-02T12:11:00.004Z

There's important life changes going on related to employment next year, but until I have it all sorted, I'm not writing about it. Check back in two weeks, when I should know. It will either be great, or I will need to sell my organs to you.

It occured to me recently that I don't know what to do when people tell me a joke, where by joke I mean the kind with in the traditional elaborate setup and punchline format. Whenever this happens, my brain can't stop worrying that this joke had better make me laugh, so as not to offend or embarrass the joke-teller. Humour generally occurs when there is a gap between the expected and the unexpected, leading to laughter as an expression of surprise or possibly relief. It is very hard to be really surprised and spontaneously laugh at something when all of your mental energies are now directed towards spotting the end of the joke and producing a socially appropriate level of laughter.

The net result is generally a short burst of what must sound like a very forced chuckle, and a lot of nodding, as I try to convey that while I didn't react like that was a funny joke, I nevertheless want the joke-teller to know that, "Yes, I can see why that might be considered humourous - well done".

But here's a truth. Children laugh ten times as often as adults. And we should all laugh more. Scientists have shown that there are many health benefits from laughing - it releases endorphins into our bodies, much like a good work-out, strengthens the heart and lungs and generally improves our prospects of surviving until a good age. And if you think about it, it makes sense. After all, children do tend to live longer than adults.

(This is where you force a chuckle and nod excessively)

2009-07-27T21:23:00.003Z

Nirvana's Unplugged set is my favourite recorded musical performance - I like that DVD more than any of their individual albums. Their whole attitude to the thing is what makes it for me - eschewing the big hits and focusing on other lesser album tracks (Pennyroyal Tea is a highlight), inviting relatively unknown band The Meat Puppets to join them on-stage where the expectation would have been to play with another of Seattle's leading lights, and a bunch of fairly random covers.

The set finishes with a cover of Leadbelly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, which remains a chilling, intense climax. Watch at 4:40 on the video where Kurt looks like he's about the explode. Sensational.

2009-07-20T14:51:00.002Z

As requested, admittedly a while back, I'd like to point you, dear reader of these words, in the direction of another blog of equal import. My friend Tom is, amongst other things, an excellent stand-up comedian and is so far exceeding even my own high expectations in his role as director of our new improvised comedy project, The Four Gallants.

He is also, if not my favourite Tory on the planet (I have these parents), then certainly the one I would most willingly listen to on matters of politics. This, after a recent revelation that Andy isn't a Tory, despite wearing his shirts like that.

It is, however, strictly for people who are thoughtful and interested in all manners of the living. Warning: lovers of banality and mindlessness may be offended.

2009-07-18T18:15:00.003Z

Had a culinary success yesterday evening entertaining a couple of our friends. I like having dinner parties, because it gives me an excuse to try and impress people with food - I wouldn't say I'm a natural, instinctive cook, but I like trying new things, and I'm building a decent repetoire.

Anyway, our guests impose an additional problem when coming up with a menu, because one of them is vegetarian. The actual problem is that Cath can't stand all the usual things you substitute in for meat as the main ingredient in a vegetarian meal - mushrooms, nuts, aubergines, butternut squash are all off list, and there's a few others that she doesn't really like.

So, we had a warm salad of chargrilled leeks and red onion with mozzarella and a tarragon and mustard (and some other things) dressing to start, and linguine (in a a creamy sauce of parmesan and dolcelatte) with feta stuffed roasted figs - ours were wrapped in parma ham - as a main. It worked really well, and there were excellent reviews.

I must remember to have more dinner parties.

2009-07-16T17:03:00.002Z

I've been reading a lot of Chuck Pahalniuk this year - Fight Club, Survivor, Haunted and Rant - and haven't read one yet that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

Something I discovered after reading Haunted was that the opening short story (it's a book of short stories, about each of the characters in the main story), which is called "Guts" was often read to promote the book. Given the reported effects of these readings on its audience (causing people to pass out night after night), I wanted to hear it performed live. I found it on YouTube here (part 2 and part 3 follow on). Inhale. Take in as much air as you can. Have a listen, and tell me what you think.

2009-07-14T08:22:00.006Z

I've read and see a couple of things recently about sex education in schools. One piece was about how progressive teaching methods have failed, according to a recent paper in the BMJ which found that one particular programme actually appeared to raise teen pregnancy rates (or, that the pregnancy rate in the treatment group was significantly higher than that in the control group). I haven't read the paper, but I also haven't read any particular methodological criticisms of it, so I will continue on the assumption that it is a valid contribution to the debate.

There was also a debate on The Wright Stuff yesterday morning about a new form of sex ed which emphasised more positive messages ("Sex is fun", "Sex is good for your health") rather than the more typical negative messages ("Sex will kill you dead if you do it wrong"). The argument made for this trial scheme was that if sex was seen as something to be enjoyed rather than something to be worried about, children would be less susceptible to peer pressure, and would wait rather than just try to get it over with as soon as possible. I'm not sure I get the logic exactly, nor the necessity of pointing out how much fun sex is, but I'm wouldn't write it off out of hand.

The main point I wanted to make, which I think is being missed in this debate is this: when did the goals become preventing young people having sex and reducing teen pregancy? The actual goal should be preventing the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and reducing unwanted pregnancy. Those are the actual social ills, and the only way to combat them is by education, in quantities great enough for everyone to know exactly what could happen if you have sex, including the exact medical risks, financial issues resulting from unexpected pregnancy and legal matters than may arise from negligent parenting.

If, as the critics say, sex education programmes expose more children to the idea of sex (which seems unlikely in given the high sexualised multimedia world we live in) and ends up encouraging more young people to have sex or get pregnant, then this really isn't a problem. Providing those people are fully informed about what they are doing, they have the right to make their own decisions, and the real concern for a government should be making sure everyone is able to make the decisions that are best for themselves.

And why does becoming twenty years old necessarily make your pregnancy better for society? I'm sure there are sixteen year olds who could be better parents than some thirty year olds. Age isn't particularly important, unwantedness is. If you are old enough to fully comprehend a pregnancy and all its implications, then that's enough to take age out of the equation. Would it be better for society if teenagers stayed in school and developed skills and contributed more to the economy? Maybe. But that isn't a decision a government should be involved in. After all, a fully informed person can choose which path makes him or her better off, and such decisions don't just reflect monetary rewards from economic input.

As for society, there are a couple of issues. Let's suppose greater sex education leads to more teen pregnancies, but that these pregnancies are (in general) wanted. It's not clear to me that more children with dedicated parents would do more harm to society than less children, but those who are born are much more likely to be the result of an uninformed mistake. Yes, children create costs for the government through the payment of benefits. But arguing that sex education policy should be designed to minimise the demands placed on the welfare state is ridiculous - if there's a problem with the the benefits system, reform the benefit system. If you think that the benefit system creates distortionary incentives for childbearing over work or further education, then the indirect solution of designing sex education policy to counter this is clearly inferior to changing the incentives directly.

And, on a related point, the dependency ratio (retirees to workers) in the UK is projected to exceed 40% by 2050. It shouldn't inform policy on sex education, but it does help to remember that an ageing population also creates massive problems, and that there could be some benefits to increasing the population at the other end.

2009-07-07T00:11:00.002Z

Colbert on Berlusconi, a couple of weeks ago: "Still, Berlusconi maitains a solid 56% approval rating among his people, mainly because they're worried if his rating drops into the teens, he'll try and fuck it."

The whole thing is here.

2009-07-06T23:00:00.004Z

I've been learning the play the guitar for a while now, and as my musical tastes and the acoustic guitar are not quite the happy bed fellows you at first might imagine, I like trying to find songs I enjoy and would listen to that could be played unplugged. Youtube is your friend in this situation, as there is no end of people posting their cover versions of pretty much anything. Anyway, I've recently been trying to find versions of Bad Religion songs, having seen a couple of tracks Greg Gaffin himself has done acoustically (Sorrow, already discussed, and God Song, both of which I can kind of sort of nearly play a passable version of).

There's some nice covers out there, but I just found quite a few performed by one girl (whose name is Emily, we're very close), and some of them are really great. This is not just because she has a strong voice and plays well, but because, if you know the originals (find the originals, know them, love them), you'll see they're not just carbon copies played on an acoustic guitar.

Anyway, have a listen - I recommend Faith Alone, Walk Away and You. I'll be stealing them soon. You should all be aware that I only try to sing along when I'm sure most of East Oxford is out.

2009-07-05T23:11:00.003Z

Here's a challenge. Watch Sarah Palin's resignation speech, and see how long you last. Not because she's saying anything particularly objectionable, but because after a certain number of minutes of hearing words unrestrained by grammer or sentence structure, you may actually start to feel dizzy, unsettled or even nauseous.

I made it to 10.11, when I was finally finished off by: "Life is too short to compromise time and resources and though it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand 'sit down and shut up', but that's the worthless, easy path-out, that's a quitter's way out and I think a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and go with the flow. We're fisherman, we know that only dead fish go with the flow."

Then I thought I'd try to finish it, but a minute later this happened: "I've never believed that I, nor anyone else, needs a title to do this, to make a difference, to help people. So I choose, for my state and my family, more freedom to progress, all the way around, so that Alaska may progress, I will not seek re-election as Governor." And I rested.

2009-07-04T00:14:00.004Z

On The West Wing, they would occassionaly do an episode where a conventional bit of liberal thinking was taken apart. In one episode, a gay Republican congressman argues with Josh over the Defence of Marriage Act, and Josh finally says "how can you be a member of this party". The answer given is that although gay, there was a lot more to the congressman's politics and beliefs than just his sexuality.

For most people, we rarely agree with everything the party we vote for has in its manifesto. You try and find the best fit. I tend to vote Liberal Democrat, but I was uneasy in 2005 with their stance on top-up fees, for example. This is unremarkable. However, for some people, there's a tendency for the rest of us to believe they can only care about one issue, and the LGBT community is one of them. It seemed incredible to Josh in that episode, and it apparently seems incredible to the government that according to a recent survey, 38% of homosexuals would vote Tory at the next election, even though the Conservative Party have had by far the weaker record on supporting gay rights (as acknowledged even by the respondents in the same survey)

The irony here is that this stance is in itself homophobic, implying that the only thing a homosexual cares about is being homosexual, and that the only thing they seek from a government is that it lets they be as homosexual as they want to be. Far be it for gays to be interested in the same concerns that have driven the nationwide decline in Labour support, or to care about a number of issues. A fiscally conservative gay? An anti-EU gay? How can you be pro-business or in favour of tougher immigration policies AND a homosexual? Where would you even find the time?

I find it hard to work out where the Conservative Party currently stands on gay rights, as I don't think the positions espoused by Cameron are necessarily spreading throughout his party, nor do I think he is definitely not posturing. I see nothing on the policy section of the website about gay rights (while I do see a section on the countryside). But it's one area that voters - all voters - get to decide about, and that includes heterosexuals who are also able to care about fringe issues like equality and personal freedom. Making it a rallying call against the Tories makes you as much of a hinderance to progress as the anti-gay Conservative party (if it even exists) that you want to stop getting into power.

2009-06-28T21:29:00.006Z

I have phases where my myriad interests take up more or less of my time. I had a couple of years where I was watching hardly any wrestling - now it's the major reason I use the internet. Music - specifically metal - has had similar times where I really care, and times where I maintain just a precursory interest.

I'm currently listening to a lot of new things, and relistening to a bunch of albums I didn't give enough time to over the past couple of years. I realised that I rarely discuss music here, but that I now wanted to a little, so I'm going to try to discuss new albums. Not everyone who reads this blog enjoys the music I do, but maybe occassionaly I can turn you on to something new.

Quite frankly, one reason I wanted to start doing this was because I've been walking around of late, listening to an album that I can't have on for more than a few minutes without thinking, "this is the best album I'll hear this year", and I really want to share it with as many others as possible. The band is called Cobalt, and the album is called "Gin".

A lot has been written in other reviews about the bands lead singer, who's day job is in the US army, serving in Baghdad. Whether his vocal performance on this album is because of his experiences or not concerns me very little. What does matter is that it is a remarkably intense contribution - listen to the him as he bellows, "burn me down, shoot me in the chest" at the end of "Arsonry" to get an idea. That's not to say it's one-dimensional; I liked his quieter bits as well.

The real appeal to me, however, is the music. They are black metal elements, but this is a truly progressive band in the blend of styles they expertly weave together. Take "Pregnant Insect", my favourite song on the album. There's the acoustic start launching into the huge punkish riff . There's tribal-sounding drums and there's Jarboe chanting, all built around the more stock hypnotic mid-paced section that typifies lots of progressive black metal bands. Other highlights include the more meditative "Dry Body" and the lenghty "Two Thumbed Fist". I also actively like the short instrumental pieces that link up the longer tracks, which can sometimes sound like filler or undeveloped ideas that didn't fit in elsewhere.

US black metal is pretty great these last few years, pushing forward a genre of music that can be very conservative . Last year there was Nachtmystium's "Assassins" and the previous year there was Wolves In the Throne Room's "Two Hunters". I think "Gin" may be better than them all.

2009-06-26T06:44:00.005Z

I was a Michael Jackson fan in 1991 when he released Dangerous, but even as a seven-year old who listened to Bad and Thriller over and over again, a part of my brain always thought that it was rubbish. By the time HIStory was released, I had moved on, but my impression of the singles were that they were trite and musically weak, and that they compensated with expensive, bloated videos. I never listened to anything from Invincible.

I don't say this to be callous. I just want to make the point that at a time like this, there is a tendency to overhype the dead person's legacy and the implications for the world of the death. In reality, Michael Jackson was hardly a prolific artist, and his best work was behind him by over 20 years - the Michael Jackson of 2009 is not a loss to the music world. Furthermore, if you are one of the people who are openly mourning the demise of a musical genius, and can't actually tell me when the last time you listened one of his albums was, then you'll get little time from me.

I could also talk cynically about the supposed genius of the man - a great pop record is the result of many different people, and the guy on the cover is just one of them. It's probably unnecesary though, as the word 'genius' ceased to mean anything a long time ago. I think we can all agree that he was a talented vocalist and a charismatic performer. However, even this is not free of hyperbole - a message passing along the bottom of the news this morning from a woman in London declared him 'the last great showman', as if being an entertainer of millions was an ancient secret passed down to only a select few and now lost forever.

Jackson will be remembered as a tragic figure, partly because of the heights he thrust himself to and the unreasonable expectations of his dedicated legion of fans, and partly because of the relentless media obsession - the same media that will fill days with tributes to the parts of his life they haven't cared about since the mid-90s. If I could make one suggestion it would be that everyone shows a degree of balance and level-headedness. If he inspired you, then his death should make you sad. If you enjoyed his music, be thankful for that legacy. But don't jump around making grandiose proclamations about a man who has probably in the past decade been the punchline of numerous jokes you've laughed at and the topic of many appalled conversations you've had. It's very tedious.

2009-06-19T13:54:00.004Z

My friend Rachel forwarded this to me.

For some amusement this Friday afternoon, why not have a little vote on today's Daily Mail poll 'Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue?'. It's much more fun if you vote 'yes'. Then tell some other people about it. Currently, 91% of people have done the same. Publish that tomorrow morning, Dacre.

People power 1, mindless hatemongering 0.

2009-06-13T16:56:00.003Z

I was all set to come and write about the honeymoon. Then I found out Mitsuharu Misawa was dead, and I don't feel like it anymore.

Misawa was the president of NOAH, Japan's second largest promotion. He was still active in the ring, and while older, still pushing his body in the style he helped popularise in the 1990s - hard hitting, realistic, dramatic and exciting. He died of a cardiac arrest following a standard back bump in a tag match in Hiroshima today.

He was All Japan's top guy - or ace - during those years, and produced many of the decades, and history's, greatest matches. There was never an ace like Misawa. His style was a blend of heavyweight striking, bumping and in-ring storytelling, combined with a heavy influences of junior heavyweights: the high spots, the aerial moves, the incredible pace.

With Misawa at the top, All Japan main events and quality professional wrestling were near synonymous - the increase in intensity and impact that started at the end of the 1980s, combined with the traditional rooting in in-ring story-telling and drama, was carried much further by Misawa and his peers. While I always favoured company number two Toshiaki Kawada for in-ring performance, Misawa was by far more influential and much more of a driving force of this revolution. Their match on June 3rd 1994 is simply the greatest, most perfect singles match ever wrestled in Japan, if not globally.

In recent years, the years of physical abuse clearly taking a toll, his role has shifted towards a tired veteran - still fighting, still great, but constrained by a body that isn't what it was. His final GHC title run, culminating with the loss to Takeshi Morishima last year was typified by this, and he found him almost as compelling to watch then as I did during his physical peak. You always hope that these icons of pro wrestling can finish with dignity, and see out their (hopefully many) days in comfort. That his end came in the ring, at the age of 46, obviously fails to meet that criteria, although there is something tragically inevitable that a man who pushed his body for twenty five years would finally be overcome by it.

I hope NOAH survives this, and although this little corner of the internet isn't going to be seen by those it is intended for, I extend my condolences to his family and friends, to the NOAH roster and to its fans.

Mitsuharu Misawa, 1962-2009.

2009-06-11T18:11:00.002Z

I can't get back to regular blogging until I write about the wedding and everything. Enough stalling. My problem is I really don't know what to say to you (the gentle reader) that you probably haven't already said to both Cath and myself. So we'll see how this goes.

Obviously, we had a brilliant day. In all the ways that matter, we thought it went perfectly.

Some details you wouldn't know. The night before we were seperated, although much to Andy's chagrin we spoke several times. Cath likes tradition, but likes me more. I've never cared about tradition. I had a fun night with Murray, Scott and Adam -food, drink (Coke) and a lot of pool. I didn't really sleep much. I struggled to eat a bacon sandwich the following morning, predominantly out of nervous excitement rather than any fear. If you saw me before the ceremony I hopefully looked as calm as I felt, any nerves having departed by the time I started getting ready. Having seen the wedding photos, it's weird seeing me smiling and chatting and generally dicking about downstairs while upstairs Cath's room is much more serious as all the preparations are going on.

We had this plan for the ceremony that failed. Cath knew she would be nervous being watched by a room full of people, and she had decided that she would just focus on me. All the way down the aisle I could tell she had a fixed expression on her face, which made me think for a second something was wrong (she told me after that before she entered the room, she felt really lightheaded and wobbly). I had no preconceptions about what she would look like, and needless to say, she blew me away.

The ceremony is a blur - I don't think we stumbled over our words, and my general impression was that it was lovely. Afterwards, I can't remember ever being yelled at some much - a lot of people had a lot of need for my time. It's exhausting, but at the same time, I am aware I may never be (joint) centre of attention like that again. We were pleased with the food, although dinner did drag on a little. The one part that was worrying me was the speeches (or at the very least mine) but I was pleased with it, and everyone has been really nice afterwards (so thankyou). It was great getting the Imps to perform for all our families and friends, almost all of whom had never seen me do improv before (after four years). It wasn't strictly speaking a good set, but it was an entertaining one, and seemed to be a hit.

And then there was a fun evening of dancing and trying to catch up with far too many people - so for everyone I said "I'll be back in five minutes" (and who might still be waiting), I apologise. Several family members have commented that they liked how full the dancefloor was throughout - I blame (and thank) Imps.

Married life, thus far, has brought very few changes. Maybe the biggest one is that I now need a new clap - my old one keeps hurting my finger as it bangs into the ring. No-one warned me about that. The official photos are available to view online (if I haven't already sent you the info). Go to our photographers website (www.robwhealphotography.com), go to the client area. Then, email me for the password and login details. There are some fantastic shots of many of you, so you should definitely look at them.

I will talk about Cuba next time.

2009-05-30T02:14:00.001Z

I could blog about my wedding and honeymoon and I will, in the fullness of time. But for now, I need to blog about Keyboard Cat.

2009-05-08T12:23:00.002Z

To quote something I read recently that accurately describes what is going to happen over this weekend, after six and a half years of marriage, we're going to have a wedding.

The first thing to establish is that I am feeling no actual nerves about the idea of marriage or the commitment that we will legally be making. It has been a long time coming - I proposed in August 2007 - and we've both been ready for it for a good long while before that. There's a couple of aspects of the day itself which may make me a little nervous, such as not stumbling over my vows and making a speech, but I also realise that these things don't matter hugely, and that if I just relax and let it all happen, it will be fine.

I can't actually use this post to explain why it is I'm so sure that I want to spend the rest of my life with Cath. The first reason for that is that she is currently reading over my shoulder. The second, and most important, reason for that is that I don't want to say anything now that I plan to say tomorrow.

A wedding is a bit unreal, rooted in old traditions, symbols and a sense of show. It doesn't bear much relation to married life, and without the religious motivation, it certainly isn't necessary for modern couples. But I'm glad that we get to do this for one day - people probably don't spend enough time publicly affirming their love for each other, so when there's an opportunity to do so, we should take it. We're fortunate that we've been given lots of help, so we have been able to mark this occasion with a certain degree of ostentatiousness, both for our enjoyment, and hopefully also for our guests - as we're asking them (or you, if you're reading this, and we invited you) to join us for the purpose of celebrating us, we think it's also important to do enough the make the day seem worthwhile.

We're off for two weeks afterwards. Marriage update then.

2009-04-30T01:04:00.002Z

Something I found today that is great, and needs to be watched.

Two out of four predictions right on the snooker. Selby was robbed (by the unfair process of winning less frames). My semifinal predictions are unlikely to be correct, given I didn't even get the possible matches right. It's been a ridiculously good tournament.

2009-04-28T16:21:00.002Z

I really wish people would stop supporting Ronnie O'Sullivan. Sure, he can be exicting to watch. But he's a child, who loves attention, and is equally happy to get in the arena or away from it. Then maybe he'll quit, like he always promises to do because this sport, which he is so naturally gifted at, makes him so miserable.

My predictions go: Day beats Allen, Selby (COME ON MARK) beats Higgins, Robertson beats Maguire, Murphy beats Hendry. Then, Robertson beats Selby, Murphy beats Day, Murphy takes the final? Odd, because saying Murphy beats Hendy is the only one I'm not sure about. But if he does, I'd fancy him for the title (to be shared in the divorce?). You may be surprised to find I'm behind Selby.

COME ON MARK.

2009-04-24T00:04:00.002Z

I'd never want to sound crazy like Olbermann, but I think I've there's a new Worst Person in the World.