Posts by Joe Wylie

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  • Hard News: In the nicest possible way,

    Sorry, until we have a clinical term for being a total shit.

    As I'm not too up on cutting-edge psychology, it wouldn't surprise me if there already is one.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Hard News: In the nicest possible way,

    Most depressed people do not make a career out of viciously and gleefully attacking others.

    So I've noticed. Once we have a clinical term for being a total shit, and it becomes a recognised disability that one may publicly spill one's guts about, there's only plain old suburban depression. You could argue that David Garrett displays more imagination by playing the I-was-traumatised-by-my-time-on-an-oil-rig-back-in-the-day card.

    I say give the boy more TV time. In case you haven't noticed, once he's in front of the camera all the bluster evaporates, and he's just another attention-seeking puppy who wants his tummy tickled.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Hard News: In the nicest possible way,

    Slater has gone public, waved the metaphorical wooden leg, & fessed up to being a card-carrying sufferer from a genuine disability, namely big-D depression, which has scourged his existence to the point where he is no longer able to live a 'normal' life, let alone work.

    As the commentariat Around Here generally extend the greatest concern to disabilities of all stripes, surely the same should be accorded to Slater, tempting as it might be to regard him as the village cripple of the blogosphere, menacing women with his makeshift crutch.

    I for one have been scolded for loosely using the term 'off one's meds' in this forum, and while that gym photo might send me thinking along those lines, I now resolve to become a better man. Nor will I wilfully confuse slaters with earwigs, as I've been prone to do in the past.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Hard News: In the nicest possible way,

    Burchill will sometimes positively go to war on herself -- her down-on-the-gays period was followed by her lesbian period, for example. But that is how she is.

    If she's ever acknowledged her inconsistencies I've missed it, but there are vast slabs of her career that've happily passed me by.

    She was certainly snidely amusing in the late 70s NME/Tony Parsons era. On the Village People: "They're all practicing homosexuals (keep practicing, boys)."

    A lot of then-hubby Tony Parsons's role was taken up with damage control for what Burchill had previously written. For example, the week after her slagging More Songs About Buildings and Food as a steaming heap of elitist pretension, Parsons did a Talking Heads interview, which started with Tina Weymouth's "Your wife didn't like our album." It was fun for a while, but no-one's good enough to sustain those kind of hijinks indefinitely, and Parsons was certainly destined for better things than cleaning up after Burchill - or spooking Johnny Ramone into thinking that he was a communist because he turned up to interview the pinheads wearing a hammer & sickle badge.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Island Life: Adventures in English,

    Is there a crisper, clearer, more specific alternative I could use?

    In the 1993 Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man, Sly plays a cop released from suspended animation to deal with escalating crime in the California of 2032. It's a world without steroids and police brutality, and those nasty criminals have taken advantage of the outbreak of niceness. When Stallone "blows away" a villain his minder, Sandra Bullock, cries "You blew him!", raising a big audience laugh with her imperfect grasp of 1990s vernacular.

    Crisper, perhaps, but not exactly cleaner.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Southerly: Lockwood Smith: "Part of Me…,

    I thought MJ got it all from Sir Howard Morrison?

    Sadly, no. The side-splitting levity that leavened Sir Howard's shows back in the Quartet heyday - with considerable help from the late Gerry Merito - was sadly absent from Jacko's ouevre.

    Not only were audiences treated to such gems as My Old Man's an All Black and I Want to Cut Your Hair, there was actual joke-telling, such as the tale of the "old lady" who discreetly asked her doctor how she might end her sorry life in the most painless manner, and was recommended to shoot herself under the left breast. How the audience would roar back in those days before the stifling hold of political correctness had descended, when Howard delivered the excuse-me-ladies punchline about the old dear shooting herself in the left knee.

    Who knows, if Jacko had lightened up a bit he might still be on deck.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Southerly: Lockwood Smith: "Part of Me…,

    Fancy that. I'd have thought that any contribution that Lockwood might have made to the wonderful heritage of pop would have been something to do with Cliff Richard. Like, advising Sir Cliff to play down the gothic aspect of Devil Woman, thanks to which it became a surprise monster hit & revived the well-preserved knight-to-be's fading career.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Michael Jackson: A Life?,

    Joe, your Fred cartoon contribution earlier in the week aside
    the reality is - we saw this .... but got this

    Thank you. Y'know, my one encounter with sea monkeys was looking after them as a houseminder. Them and the kids' hermit crabs. Proud to say that I never lost a one. I know because their owners counted them on their return.

    While those sea monkeys are so small that you can't distinguish their fabled crowns/coronets/whatever, not to mention the Neptune-style tridents with which they're classically depicted, I never saw any Jacko-style shenanigans taking place in their little plastic aquarium, so the asexual reproduction bit seems to be a goer.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Michael Jackson: A Life?,

    Parasites reproduce asexually, so do many single cell organisms – the only larger animal observed has been a few lizard species, and one shark, one time.

    Khrist you find some ill-informed drivel on the web. The only reason this post is in any way remarkable is because the comments section of this particular blog has been pretty much free of such nonsense. Brine shrimps and several other species of small crustaceans reproduce without males, and lately there's been a variety of ant discovered that's mastered the trick.

    ALL single-celled organisms reproduce without sex. The necessary tackle for sexual reproduction is, by definition, multicellular. And parasites? Individual tapeworms, for example, are equipped with both male & female reproductive organs. Apart from single-celled parasites, most of the nasties that infest humans and animals reproduce sexually, tho it wouldn't surprise me to learn that spammers increase their numbers by simple cell division.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

  • Up Front: The British Are Coming,

    Tina Fey

    I quite like this one.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report

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