..................of a periphery news day.
Today, I am going to be doing a short blog as I read the newspaper, making a collection of comments and seeing if they end up being anything more than a jumbled eclectic mess.
I suppose the one thing that will hold them together will be that I have taken an interest in them. To this effect, it is interesting to see how one personalises the news.
I haven’t actually got the newspaper in front of me so I am doing this little activity directly from the website.
Let’s see where it goes.
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Sarah Silverman: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/21/sarah-silverman-bedwetter-extract
She is a strange girl this one. I once watched her television programme about – well, to be honest, I cannot remember. It was so gloriously quirky and incomprehensible that I cannot even remember what it was about, other than her toing and froing to a shop and something to do with a television set.
This article struck me for two reasons. Firstly I wondered, having been a late developer and a bed-wetter, whether she was now fully developed as a sexual woman and was she still concerned about female ejaculations. Bedwetting is a strange thing to write about, probably even stranger that she admits to being one until the age of 16 and even stranger that she should name her biography “The Bedwetter”. But that what makes her a little different. One might even go as far as to say she is unique.
Secondly, it struck me that even the quirky ones are still American. For all Sarah’s brilliance and difference, she is still a race apart from me. What does one do for a teenager who has a slight problem? Well, you send them off to a shrink and then you pump copious amounts of chemicals into their body to alter the way the brain works and our ‘friends’ across the water see this as normal behaviour.
Utter madness.
Here is an extract that sends shivers down the spine of anyone who has lived with depression or known someone who suffers from this debilitating illness.
“I was sent to another shrink. When I told him I was taking 16 Xanax a day, he was horrified. He called my mother in and told us that this was fucked-up shit (I'm paraphrasing) and that his very own brother died going off Xanax cold turkey. He explained that I would go off the Xanax gradually, a half a pill less each week. It was eight months before I was completely off meds – and the day I took that very last swallow of half a Xanax was the happiest day of my life to that point.”
When one reads things like this, don’t you just sit there in dulled stupor that the rest of the world is trying to emulate the so-called success of this great nation? Man, they are sick! (And the use of man is deliberately ironic!)
See the youtube extracts for an example of Sarah’s quirkiness. The first one is one way of finishing a relationship – made me laugh. The second one is all about Georgie Boy – or “human cancer” as the little girl says at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLG3S5WzHig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfBtVeTrN7U
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Charlie Brooker on Big Brother
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/aug/21/charlie-brooker-big-brother
I am pointing to this article for one reason. Charlie Brooker makes me laugh, considerably, even when he is writing about a subject that I know very little about.
I only ever watched one series of Big Brother; funnily enough it was the one series that Charlie didn’t see or certainly didn’t write about. So I had no idea who Charlie was writing about but it is still amusing regardless of my ignorance.
Take these extracts.....
“Federico loves imself so much he probably sends a Valentine's card to his own right hand each year. I hate him. I hate him so much I'm already fantasising about killing him.”
I don’t even have to look Frederico up to visualise him such is the power of a single couple of sentences and a vague knowledge of the morons who go onto this show.
“Mind you, dense as Jade, Jo and Danielle clearly are, even they're eclipsed by the staggeringly dim-witted Jack, a man so thick he'd have to study hard for six months just to make it to the level of "vegetable" A potato could beat him at noughts and crosses - assuming he could work out how to hold a pencil and make marks on the paper in the first place, which is doubtful..”
Brilliant!
And finally,
“He's the human equivalent of fingernails down a blackboard, and is therefore the quintessential Big Brother resident.”
Sums up BB contestants perfectly, though of course, I shouldn’t really make such sweeping comments without watching. I’ll let Charlie do that on my behalf.
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Mr Benn returns
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/20/mr-benn-back-in-print
Sadly, it is not THE Mr. Benn for there really is only one. Wouldn’t it be great if Mr. Benn was returning and was being handed the keys to government. In my dreams!
No, this is the man from Festive Road, number 52, who went off to the magical costume shop and disappeared into all sorts of weird, trippy adventures.
Mr. Benn was actually on television a little later than my pre-school days but it was definitely one that I watched when I was ill. I still wish I could travel from place to place like Mr. Benn, especially with regard to packing for holidays – see Madeleine Bunting later.
Why do I mention this article? Well for two reasons once more.
Firstly, it was a reminiscence. Yesterday, I was listening to the great Kathy Burke talking so matter of factly about her life, her father’s alcoholism, her orphan status at such an early age. None of that had much in common with my history and yet there was a connection in some of the music that she chose; as I said reminiscent of another time. I wonder if she also watched Mr. Benn when she was off school ill with tonsillitis, though being a couple of years older she probably didn’t.
Secondly, it reminded me of how much work I have to do, how much work I would love to do, given the right working conditions. Children’s books, when they are written well, are priceless. Elmer the Elephant is a delightful story, simple in its message, creative in its subject matter and has become a confirmed favourite with many. If only people would realise how much discussion, personal development and thoughtfulness could come from thoroughly engaging in these books, using them as a means to discuss sensitive issues. You cannot tell a class of children to be “good with the new boy” despite his slight or definitive differences without drawing unnecessary attention to the poor lad. You can, instead, read “Elmer” and get the children to consider what it might be like to be different in the crowd.
Guess what folks, children are far more intelligent than we give them credit and they can get the inference without the explicit.
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Andy Murray
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/aug/20/andy-murray-cincinnati-masters
There is only one reason for writing about Andy Murray today. He has lost. Which is not worth writing about. I mean what is the news in British man losing a game of tennis?
But his opponent is definitely worth a mention, merely for his name.
He is called Mardy Fish.
American, of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardy_Fish
Obviously, his parents had never visited the more northern parts of Britain because ‘mardy’ for those who are not familiar with the word means sulky or whining like a child, which is quite ironic because that is precisely what Andy Murray does when he doesn’t have things going his way!
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Frank Kermode
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/21/frank-kermode-tribute-john-sutherland
This just caught my eye, mainly because of the eye catching way it was introduced on the webpage.
“John Sutherland salutes Frank Kermode, whose brilliance instructed generations in a new way of thinking”
Wow! As a teacher, I think I would like that as a footnote to my obituary.
Further reading informs me that he was the co-founder of the London Review of Books
“In later life he had more honorary doctorates than he bothered to tell you about but, as a young man, he did not complete his PhD thesis. The narrow discipline of the doctorate might, one may surmise, have desiccated his intellect.”
And indeed his intelligence!
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Madeleine may have to wait or have a blog all to herself as there are children to be shoed and dogs to be walked.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/20/expensive-summer-holidays-stranded-tourists
Definitely worth a comment later.
Other articles that captured my eye include
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/21/life-after-weight-loss-champion-slimmers
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Any links? Not really, other than they are about me, not obviously so, and not as egotistically as it suggests but about me nonetheless.
Elaboration later.
