Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy

Contains strong sex, violence, nudity and sexual violence.

Well, point made! (again, and again...)

Horrible truths

Sam Harris, right as usual, but this time about the writing 'business'.

Ouch.

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kids
lies

To cut a short story short

The Sunday Times is running a £30,000 short story competition. This is good.

But you have to be a published (fiction) author to enter. This is not so good.*

--
* Unless you're one of the judges, in which case one sees their point.

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 4

Tsik! – Wauja (Brazil), arrow impact (cf. tssigke! [sp.?])

[With thanks to Fry's Planet Word.]

'Prepare to die!'

I always wondered about that line in movies. What does it mean? 'Wet yourself'?

A new acutection?

Crazy auto-thesaurus James Joyces my interview with Sir John Tomlinson:

Original: A legend on the operatic stage, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has sung with all the major British opera companies, made countless recordings, and for sixteen years was a fixture at Bayreuth, where he performed leading roles in each of Wagner's epic works. Throughout his career he has worked regularly with English National Opera and with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where in 2008 he created the title role in Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur. (Read on.)

Now: A fable on the operatic date, Sir John Tomlinson (CBE) has articulate with all the above British opera atoneanies, fabricated calculationbeneath rebondings, and for sixboyhood yaerial was a accoutrement at Bayreuth, wactuality he peranatomyed leaadvise roles in anniversary of Wagners ballsy plans. Thasperousout his afflictioner he has planed approvedly with English National Opera and with The Royal Opera, Coaperture Garden, wactuality in 2008 he actualized the appellation role in Harrison Biraberrationles The Minotaur. (Read on.)

How many cooks?

Roald Dahl's
MATILDA: the musical
Book Dennis Kelly
Music & lyrics Tim Minchin

Classic English understatement

As you probably gathered, the whole film is not high art.

- Rowan Atkinson, on Johnny English Reborn, in The Times

InDefinition - 36

punnet, n. container for wordplays (holds approx. 1 dozen)

Oh.

Speaking from experience, he had the strongest possible opinion on the deleterious effect of regular journalism on a writer's work.

- Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: a biography

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hotel
hovel

Baroness Orczy - in context [GUEST ENTRY]

They seek him here, / they seek him there; / but he's not there, he's blowing up your slag sister!

- Four Lions

InDefinition - 35

amenable, adj. of things that warrant a legitimate 'amen'

Say hello to Posterity

I very rarely think either of my past or of my future.

- Leonard Woolf, opening line of autobiography (vol. 1 of 5)

The two types of editor

Leonard met at that first lunch Clifford Sharp, the surly and, as it turned out, alcoholic editor, and the literary editor, Jack Squire...

- Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: a biography

The leaker, leaked

Julian Assange's first-draft memoir to be published, contrary to its author's wishes.

Ouch.

Palahniuk - in context

You wake up at Meigs Field. You wake up at SeaTac. You wake up at O'Hare. You are Chuck's Exhausted Location Scout.

Philosophy

Is it too much to ask if it's too much to ask?

Info ex machina

The Greeks had a chorus, which was a sort of mythic Google.

- AA Gill, The Sunday Times

Inbox

You are entertained by kangaroos to an extent yes?

[With thanks to Monoganon, Scottish band]

Bloody liar

What's wrong with this picture?

Proverbs - in context

In the house of the righteous is much treasure - so wait 'til the righteous is out and you could really clean up.

Confession!

mea culpa from the Times' literary editors for a classic incorrect:

Correction
An error was introduced last week into Ian Brunskill's review of Anna Funder's novel All That I Am, erroneously describing her first book, Stasiland, as a novel: it is not, as Brunskill originally stated. 

The mother of all spoilers

Jane Eyre is still a tale of its time... it is moving, at the film's end, to see Jane reunited with the blinded Rochester.

- Erica Wagner, The Times

Like every other literary critic, Ms Wagner assumes that everyone has read Jane Eyre. I find this curious. Still, she's saved me a tenner down the Odeon. 

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mums
nuns

Nonsense

Saying I don't like women would be like saying I don't like giraffes. Which is nonsense. 

- Lars von Trier, The Sunday Times

Words you don't want to hear from Geoff Dyer

Joking aside, though...

- Sunday sermon On Americans, School of Life

Matthew Parris enters the 5th dementia

The crushing gloom startled me because if bipolar disorder is at one end of a scale, I'm at the other.

- The Times

Spellcheque?

Landsman is at the wheel of a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sport, which he bought ten years ago in an access of nostalgic optimism...

- Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

The Microsoft doctors break the news to a 5-year-old

Your internet connection went away, but we'll keep trying until we get it back!

Radiohead - in context

Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon but lost my fone n cudnt post LOL!!!

The Sony Ericsson table of verbs (singular, present indicative active)

boat
coat
amat

Tobias Zachary Ziegler, speech writer

You wanna tempt the wrath of the... whatever, from high atop the... thing?!

- The West Wing

Grace

We should not be dismayed... by the elusive, flickering, on-off quality of our contact with the numinous. Rather, we should learn to wait with equanimity—as poet or as believer—for the next flash of grace.

- JM Coetzee (see below)

Conclusion

There's no point reading poetry without a pencil.

Press release on behalf of the Pikey Laureate

It’s my mission to irritate the hell out of the eloquent... by being a paradox that their categories can’t assimilate: the Subhuman Redneck who writes poems.

- Les Murray, Australian poet

[With thanks to JM Coetzee for the heads-up.]

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 3

iKlwa - Zulu, thrusting assegai (being withdrawn from flesh)

InDefinition - 34

prolix, n. Keith Richards' guitar playing

Keystroke twins - 5

efficient/efficiency
deficient/deficiency

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 2

pétanque - French, boules/bowls (hitting gravel courtyard?)

Kafka - in context

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself slightly put out as those dreams, though not easy, had been mostly about Natalie Portman. 

Political correctness gone full retard

On Gary Oldman's career playing wackos:

He never quite went the "full retard", as the film Tropic Thunder describes performances too horrifying to win awards.

- Camilla Long, Sunday Times Magazine

Er, no. They're talking about actual retards.

Famous plays in space

Theatrical classics via McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Only on Twitter

realrobbrydon Not Rob Brydon

InDefinition - 33

badvertising, n. 1) terrible adverts, adverts for rubbish, erroneous/distateful application of ads to programmes (Hugo Boss during Schindler's List, e.g.), and all possible variations thereon. 2) Purposefully 'bad' adverts, effectively designed to lodge product in viewer's mind forever (cf. Meerkat)

Last night's TV (2) - Cooking is hell

Also, did anyone else feel it was bordering on distasteful to have 'My hands are shaking!' high-adrenaline cooking-show ads in the middle of an award-winning war documentary?

Last night's TV (1) / Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 1

From last night's More4 screening of Armadillo, I learnt that the Danish for 'editor' is 'klipper' (a much more honest designation, if you ask me), that they have no native words for 'debriefing', 'associate producer' or 'jackpot', and that they use the word 'cojones' - or one which sounds very much like it and is equally unlikely to be Danish.

Also, their gunshot onomatopoeia - transl. as 'POW!' in the subtitles - is 'tssigke!' [sp.?] A significantly more accurate reflection of being on the wrong end of small-arms fire.

End of a cliché

The interminable task of painting the Forth Bridge will end in December, thanks to a coating that is expected to last for 25 years.

- Financial Times

InDefinition - 32

Tannhäuser, n. German beauty salon (Hauptstraße, Bayreuth)

And vice versa!

These fragments I have shored against my own ruins.

- TS Eliot, The Waste Land

Thought for the day

There are very few books you could actually use as a door-stop.

(Suggestion box below.)

Classic graffito

Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho.

[With thanks to JS, editor (not mine) and gent.]

Crap Canadian Poetry

Asked, the other night, for a hit-list of contemporary Canadian writers, Michael Ondaatje struggled for several minutes before coming up with... ONE novelist.

For why, please see the Oxford Cheese Ode by James McIntyre.

[NB the Ode apparently comes in at #577. Out of 500.]

Banking bullshit

barclaycard's
0% for
22 months
(2.9% fee applies)*

* and even that's barely true

?!!

Apparently, Ballard fantasised about having sex with Margaret Thatcher in the back of the prime ministerial Daimler V8. Is that so odd?

- Ian Thomson, The Sunday Times

InDefinition - 31

Wikipede, n. creature with a great many legs, most of them unreliable

Medical text

[With thanks to CE, Silliness-Smeller General]

InDefinition - GUEST ENTRY (DUD)

Twitter for i·Pad, n. the official Twitter app for iPad

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damaged
fancied

Seen (on front of T-shirt)

Don't follow me... I'm lost

Groan...!

[A.S.] Byatt's younger sister is the write Margaret Drabble (who is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd).

- The Times

InDefinition - 30

amusing, adj. - of them as can't carry a tune in a bucket

Self-flagellation (by someone else)

I tried writing, but could barely get beyond the first sentence. Or, at least, I wrote and rewrote the first sentence a few thousand times, before deleting it. Frustration is piling upon frustration. I don't know whether to call on Smyth for inspiration or to blame him for wrecking my writing.

- DS Hilton, Esq. Diary, 23.2.2010

Truth

Any literary work made anywhere is a request from writer to reader: Do you recognise anything? Are we both human beings.

- Julian Evans, Making the World Legible

(Oftentimes, of course, the answer is No.)

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