Hedjog haz teh lurghi
I emailed work last night to indicate that the possibility that I would be in this morning was remote, so that I didn't have to drag myself up to ring in (and find no-one actually at their desks) at usual starting time.
And slept through until
12.20 pm.
I guess I really, really needed that sleep.
A few links:
Vulgar greeting cards are a boom industry, but how have they become acceptable - and why are they so popular? - surely not as new a phenomenon as this article seems to be making out? Goes back quite a long away, have been moaning for years about the difficulty of find Valentine cards that are not either ickily twee or totally disgustingly obscene. On the one hand, maybe we need to invoke the anthropological concept of 'joking relationship' redeployed within non-familial structures. On the other, I can see these cards being used in a cruel and hostile way.
Somewhat weird little column on the internet which is both taking on the mythology and codslapping it yet somehow is working with the underlying assymption that 'the internet' is all one monolithic thing rather than the blurring, buzzing confusion of proliferation that it is.
Apparently there is still a law from the Mussolini era on the books in Italy which makes it a criminal offence to make fun of the Pope and the authorites tried to prosecute comedian Sabina Guzzanti under it.
Writers who write about writing are stuck in a dead end. Why not get out and see the world? - up to a point, Mark Ravenhill. I am always somewhat prejudiced against the lazy invocation of 'Hampstead' in this connection, but I think he has a point. However, the idea that going out there and experiencing Life In Itself necessarily makes a better writer is problematic. This is argument partner and I have had several times re Joseph Conrad vs Jane Austen, in which my case is that it All Depends on the Sensibility that the writer brings to the experiences, and just having varied experiences doesn't guarantee anything, cf people who think they have had a fascinating life but want someone else to do the, what they consider easy-peasy, task of writing it up.
In connection with which, reading this on Paul Newman (and by association, Joanne Woodward), made me wonder if the point there was actually that they didn't have that obsessive focus on being big Hollywood stars but had other interests and priorities?
That breastmilk icecream thing: Zoe Williams points out, what struck me when I read the various links about this, that human milk is actually a rather rare resource and breastmilk banks apply rather stringent criteria over access because the supply is limited.