A spot of linkage
Wow, this gets that really annoying trope absolutely spot-on and bang to rights ('HAI! Mi name iz ANIMA and I will B ur muse for the evening!!'):
[T]he stock character first pinpointed by US film critic Nathan Rabin - the "manic pixie dream girl".
She is, he wrote, "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures".
Manic pixie dream girls, as often played by Natalie Portman, do wacky little dances to illustrate their eccentricity, and turn boys on to obscure-ish indie music, enriching their lives and eventually making them men. They're muses, whose vague ambitions are shadowed by the success of their delicate admirer.
Can art put new heart into our seaside towns?:
We talk about the Dreamland project in Margate: local enthusiasts have been buying up heritage pleasure rides - most recently, Blackpool Pleasure Beach's Junior Whip - and are now raising money so that Dreamland can be reopened as the world's first amusement park of historic rides (the Deco cinema will also be restored, as a museum of street style)....
Perhaps it all comes down to what you call culture. I can think of few things lovelier than looking at a tempestuous Turner sky in the place where he painted it. But I also think that old wooden rollercoasters count as culture, too - not to mention fish and chips and mushy peas and Tizer. These things are part of who we are. They make our lives better, just as art does, and theatre, and music. To combine them, then, is very heaven. For our battered seaside resorts, all 250 of them, this must surely be the future.
Mmmm, yes, up to a point, perhaps....
Read all about the end of the world:
Our planet is getting mad as hell and it isn't going to take it any longer. It's an old theme but a rich one, and in the 1950s and 60s provided plots for dozens of science-fiction disaster novels. Cities were drowned, oceans eradicated and pastures killed off as authors such as JG Ballard, Charles Eric Maine and John Christopher subjected civilisation to a welter of different indignities - apocalyptic literature that mirrored the era's cold war uncertainties.
Today, in these more strained ecological times, this kind of storytelling has taken on a harder edge and eco-thrillers have become a more robust genre - both on the page and on the screen.
Ummmmm - apocalyptic fiction is like dystopia: it's been the generic trope of preference for writers not normally considered genre writers to dabble in. And it goes back well before the 50s and 60s, at least to the 1920s, though perhaps more along the lines of the awful ways in which humanity can bring down the civilisation it has created (influence of the Great War?) than eco-apocalypse.
And talking of apocalypse: Could Dan Brown's new novel spell the end for the printed word? - though apparently this simply reports that his new novel will be published simultaneously as an e-book and not that the world will end through naff fiction overload.
Dept of WHUT???!!!: Most healthcare costs are spent on retired people, who pay little tax. Well, maybe: but on the other hand, they have, quite reasonably, paid in tax and National Insurance during their working lives, in the expectation that at some point they might need to recoup on that. A somewhat different, personal, transatlantic view on the NHS (by someone who goes to my health centre, if not the same doctor).
And possibly relevant to the debates that have been going on lately:
"[T]he Missing Unemployed"... the estimated 750,000 middle-class people who have lost their jobs in the "white-collar recession", but have not been claiming any benefits. Instead, they are presumed to be living off savings, redundancy payments or being supported by a spouse who is still earning.
The presumption is that three-quarters of a million people either don't realise they can claim benefits, wouldn't know where to begin or are simply too proud and dignified to do so. Or as one government source put it: "People who do not think of themselves as the sort of people who claim benefits." Oh, those sorts of people, I see. Then again, I don't.
Some might argue that the missing unemployed are a good, selfless development as every day they remain "missing" they are saving the country money. Well, in the short term, this may work, but long term?
....
If one wanted to be churlish, one could almost read a bizarre arrogance into the missing unemployed. The underlying message seems to be that the middle classes have far too much dignity to become benefits-literate, like their "lazy" working-class counterparts. However, surely poorer people, in long-term jobless areas, have had no choice but to become benefits-literate - there is nothing undignified about the mechanics of survival.
Then there is the point that the missing unemployed may feel that the money they could claim is such a pittance it is not worth making the effort. They're probably right, but again, poorer people tend not to have the luxury of choice.
Moreover, where is the herd loyalty? Isn't it the social duty of the missing unemployed to come out of the shadows and declare themselves, even if claiming benefits is an alien concept, even if the money they claim is a pittance? As disparate as the many sub-strands of the unemployed may be, isn't it still best to stick together?
This seems preferable to what the missing unemployed are doing now, which amounts to enabling the government to hide truly appalling unemployment figures, whereas more honest statistics may lead to faster, more effective unemployment policies for all.
For my fashion-fan friends: a review of 20th Century Fashion: 100 Years of Apparel Ads.
Middle-class fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder.
With the launch of glossy catwalk titles in China and India, the dominance of glamorous European women is being challenged by a new face in beauty:
Some cynics, however, have dismissed south and east Asian models as simply a return to the "exotic". Navaz Batliwalla, a columnist for Indian Grazia, believes this concept is dated. "As the profile of Indian fashion and celebrity rises, we will embrace that culture over here. Exotic stereotyping is boring and a cliché"
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