SEX IN THE WORKPLACE

de Botton quite funny.

I can't seem to get the full version

NET PORN

$3,000+ per second

For some reason, I know more alumni of Framlingham than any other boarding school.

We used to play them at cricket and rugby and then I kept bumping into old boys in London publishing and then again as bankers in Hong Kong.

Categories: I can understand "older women and perhaps "Russian women", but "Christian singles"? Kinkeh!

Wanker nigrah twat paki Ofcom study

Another good column from the Speccie's Dot Wordsworth, whom maman is convinced is bearded religioso polymath, Chris Howse.

Some choice facts from the Ofcom study on offensive language.

Nigger and Paki are judged the most offensive discriminatory words and thought not quite suitable for TV or radio.

Nigger used only 47 times

Fuck ~ 75 times

C*** 39 times

Wanker, 13 times; oddly enough Wank not at all.

Twat, a currently fashionable word, is used 25 times.

"It is worth mentioning that the language of the Ofcom report is itself offensive in quite a different way.

It mangles grammar in pursuit of a dialect that might be known as executive summarese.

It speaks, for example, of:

‘Material broadcast pre-watershed and post-watershed across a range of channels’.

Why not ‘before the watershed and after the watershed, on a range of channels’?

Sometimes this executive summarese obscures meaning."

Good stuff.

Sint-Job-in-'t-Goor

More like "Sint-Job-in-'t-GORE, if you ask me.

My eye was caught by the wonderful name of the 'quiet village' in which Mistress Lucrezia ran her dungeon, but as I read more I realised what a gem of a story this is.

Ee, lad, it's not every day you get a quote of the modesty of, “I am sadistic, intelligent, and perverse. In my nature I am a sadist of the worst kind.”

Or the demure handle of “Europe's most perverted dominatrix”

A personal ad from a “creative artist perverted sadist” offering “bondage, humiliation, torture, education and cross-dressing”.

And the eminently titillating tidbit that "Police who searched the property ... found some of the most extreme sado-masochistic equipment they had ever seen."

Quick! Show me da Polaroids!

Newspaper

Paper, singular

Look at what they're all reading

The Decadence ... the decadence

To be hoarsely voiced in best Vox Brando à la his performance in the Graeco-Nippon joint production of 'Αποκάλυψη Tora Tora Tora'.

41 hours into solo bliss.

Maman called from Villa Thefti to report safe arrival. Tinkling Charles Kunz on the hi-fi in the background

Rainy day in town but I was singing in my heart.

Overdid it last night down the 02 so sans sauce today and extrah PT drill and gathering of shredding around the garden. Take that, you boozer.

Tidied house and set up guitars and 'puter for that at-hand convenience.

10pm prompt: knock on door. Dinner-on-the-hoof courtesy of the Dinner Hoofer.

"Howdja know I wasn't mid whipping up a Gordon Blue repast?"

Hollow laff.

Vow of lifetime sobriety on back-burner.

On with songstress Kaliroe Raouzeou, the only chanteuse a man needs in the CD rack.

'And for your next Desert Island Disc?'

Jimmy Potts on the blues.

'And your luxuries?'

The complete jottings of Professore Potts and a blow-up doll of Ka-Ra.

On the tele [paused]: 'Jass on a summer's day', attached to the big speakers.

Alarum clocks set to all the calls I'm gonna make to daughters and pals.

From the cuisine ~ Sound of bifs-teki sizzling and the chip pan bopping.

"Almost on the table. You still on that computer?"

Plus ça change.

Comment ~ There you go, what did I tell you? Speak ill of the Devil and the next thing you know, there he is at the crossroads.

Corfu Bluesman cheering up my morning mug of Twinings' Earl Grey ("with the delicate flavour of bergamot") with the ultimate Desert Island Discs.

Lively site, serendipitous buttons that don't hint at what they do but send you flying all over the place.

Sex and the City 2

"The most stupid, most racist, most polluting and women-hating film of the year"

Hurry hurry - on at the local Orfeas now.

The London Evening Standard's Andrew O'Hagan delivering some wonderful quote-bites:

"Ugly on the inside

"Greedy, faithless, spoiled, patronising, women-degrading morons who confuse their common vulgarity for camaraderie

"A quagmire of denuded self-worth, a mature woman of means with the desperate mentality of the School Bike.

"A junket to Abu Dhabi, a place chosen, one presumes, because it might be the only place on earth where the nasty antics of this quartet might be mistaken for feminism.

And sure as nuts, it’s not long before the condoms come out and the Dior T-shirts come out, every frame driven by the dull-minded assumption that any country without slingbacks is a nation in chains, that any country where the women don’t shout about screwing, or behave like materialistic whores, is a country where women are enslaved.

(It still doesn't stop me fancying that felinial Kristin Davis creature ~ above and below. That's directions to the photos, not where I fancy KD)

"At the lowest point in the film, Carrie and her mates enter a room full of women in burkas, and the latter remove them, as if compelled by the power of moral example to reveal their own big-label gear, which they are wearing underneath, closer to their true selves. “We too can be American, like you, Carrie,” they seem to say.

"This could be the most stupid, the most racist, the most polluting and women-hating film of the year, with a variety of ugliness that no number of facial procedures could begin to address."

Feedback: This is what I like best about my blog: I post some half-hearted effort and shazam! some clever clued Lifestyle Guru rescues it with the Real McCoy:

OK Mag's razor-totin' PhilmGuy, Phil Villarreal, is the rreal deal when he shows how,

"Most horror films try to get you with shock value, loud scores and copious gore. But not Sex and the City 2, which grinds away your suspension of disbelief and confronts you with the prospect of endless mental torture.

Throughout the 146-minute running time the monsters top one another with dreadful puns, revolting sexual innuendo and strained catch-phrase inventions, such as “interfriendtion.”

At one point, Swamp Thing is on an airplane and grabs a date off a plate. There’s an infinitesimal pause as you cringe, wondering if she’ll actually say what you think she’s about to say, and then, yes, she remarks that she just left and “already has got a date,” prompting her evil companions into a hideous cackle.

You stare at your watch: still 90 minutes to go."

Thanks for that gem to the hawk-eyed Princess Puella d'Anonyme.

Wot modern womanhood means ~ And from the Boss of Me, lovely Lindy West writing in my fave Seattle reading, The Stranger, watched "146 Minutes of Sex and the City 2 and All I Got Was This Religious Fundamentalism".

As BoM says, nota bene the final payoff line.

Ground-breaking for baby boomers: I'm a fair man. I'll run the roobish write-ups along with the rest.

Someone called Liz Hoggard in the Evening Standard thinks

"its celebration of mature flesh is radical. And totally on the zeitgeist."

See what I mean? The gobbledy-gook's out there. English gobby-goo, to boot, bless it.

Abomination ~ Princess Penuezela brings this right up-2-date with this review from my birth-country Oz.

"A cheerless, broken sham.

One more time: Your movie has lain itself on the rock of female self-loathing, asked late-capitalism to gang-bang it, please, and then drown it in a bukkake-tsunami of product placement.

This is not a movie but an advertising medium strangely complicit in its own rape and murder."

Bang on stuff.

My ticket is booked for the Република Србија première. Should be fireworks ... wait, that's the burning of FIFA in effigy. 'Nuther city.

PONGO 'CLEARED' OF ASSAULT

Except, of course, they never *do* get clear, do they?, because bullies of the Smellie species can't change their spots so - 1 year, two, mebbe even three; however long it takes for the bad blood to start re-circulating - Antoine's penchant for pummeling will out, and he'll be back in.

"I've tried and I've tried, doctor.

I can't get peanuts off my mind"

Tricks of the trade

Digitally enhancées modèles

We all know the wonderful Dove classic make-up clip, all the more famous for the spoofs as well as the model appearing to be rather a home-spun gal before the wizards start work on her.

This one looks a stunner without help, which is presumably the whole point.

Does Sexercise Work?

Who cares? Just trying it with yer Main Squeeze is fun enow. You both keel over with laffter and that's when the fun begins.

First off, see that photo? Looks lecherous and easy, don't it?

Right, mate, grab her right now and go into that position. Not so easy for us over-funties ... and if her bathroom scales register as one of the card-carrying avant en plus $#@!-dupois, gravity will wreck gravitas and you'll be squirming and squealing among the turnips, ready to go.

Big clue to the fun is when the journo's got a name like Megan Pleticha.

Like ... perusing the behind-curtain per adulte section of my local DVD-aria? Come across

"Megan does Marmaro" ('She was just a rep', out for the season. He a maintenance engineer on the boil. Life was a gas')

That'd make a change from a pizza delivery stud PLUS he'd be wearing one of those manly belts with all the tools to plug a leaky boiler.

'Pleticha Plaire ~ Au Pair' ~ How could a chalet maid from Marlborough hope to stay sane and chaste in the treacherous waters of 'Corfu Cottarjes' ('bunks and bavardages to the gentry'):

"Do your room, sir?"

Ratherr!

AUTHOR PUTDOWNS

Actually extremely badly presented and as confusing as one could make it, but once you're thru to the quote itself, there are some mildly amusing cuts.

French ~ "useless modern language"

But that's what the sexiest wimmin speke

MULLED VULVAS

This is exactly what I predicted and didn't so much fear as resigned myself to.

What else expect?

I mean, just look at that photo ~ absolutely says it all.

In fact, one picture paints a thousand words or however they'd say it over there.

You know when I knew we were up the greasy Limpopo without a forked stick?

When I heard that the Jo'burg stadium was being modeled on a friggin' calabash.

I jest not.

If you or I invited a bunch of dusky footie players over (no doubt insisting on their ancient tribal right to actually play barefoot, I wouldna be surprised), and if we showed them into a stadium shaped like a fucking calabash ... we would be inside a boiling pot quicker than you could prong a bone thru your conk, a grass-skirted Ju-Ju man hop, skip and jumping around us.

I mean, Vuvuzela?

Even the name should have beat out a warning tom-tom beat that the natives gwine be restless.

Voodoo Influenza Filter

He's out there ~ relevant Badass blare.

Solidarity Tones: More from the lynx-eared Sinbad of Sass, everything a Vulva Zealot needs to blow ... in B♭.

Hitler and the Vuvuzela: Buzz buzz buzz

OWN GOAL

Poor bugger.

Green will live with that for a long time.

MP EXPENSES TRIAL

What impresses me about the grubby little case of the Labour MPs and Conservative peer facing criminal trials for alleged expenses fraud is just what grubby little crooks they all too clearly are.

I mean, you only have to look at them

Or at least look at 'Lord' Hanningfield there on the right: talk about Exhibit A.

Blimey, did you ever see such an out-n-out slimer and ne'er-do-well?

In another time it'd've been 'Lord' Hanging Field, more like, and his tubby corpse would be swaying from some lonely gibbet.

So ... good for the judge chucking out their pathetic arse-covering efforts to claim parliamentary privilege.

I hope this last-ditch run for cover is noted as part of their form and used at the trial itself to ram home what despicable types these are.

(Not that I haven't myself spent a lifetime pocketing expenses and petty cash and paper clips and the odd bottle of Stolly, oh and reams of paper for all the novels I don't write, and then there's all the computer collaterals and the hire-cars on my personal company Avis card ... but that's neither here not there - particularly there if we're talking about clinky and the dock.")

Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield had argued that they could not be tried in court because of a 300-year-old law exempting MPs and Lords from prosecution over proceedings in parliament.

Well, they would, wouldn't they?

All the more bravos and props to Mr Justice Saunders for staring the wankers down and phrasing it so succinctly, that:

"I can see no logical, practical or moral justification for a claim for expenses being covered by privilege; and I can see no legal justification for it either. In my judgment, the conduct alleged against these defendants is not covered by Parliamentary privilege and is triable in the Crown Court. Unless this decision is reversed on appeal, it clears the way for what most people accused of criminal behaviour would wish for: a fair trial before an impartial jury."

No immunity

FAT SLOB

No idea who the young blubber bubba is but he doesn't pull it off.

Hideous when this sort of thing happens.

I was at a Hong Kong ceremony in the early '80s when some young fatso megastar of a comedy soap started mocking and interfering with the speech of a venerable Stewart type.

One forgets how many of these old troupers started life in the circus. The young bufone certainly had.

Even as he elbowed his elder and better aside to land another 'joke', what the TV audience saw but we in the stalls didn't was Junior's elbow seized precisely on the nerve and, as he folded to his knees in pain, a 'concerned' arm went out to catch him, kneading a nerve at the neck that finished the job.

"I think too much brandy," joked the 'old man' as he eased the obese idiot to the floor.

The 1001 slow-mo playbacks that followed showed precisely how it was done, down to the rolling eyeballs as the joker lost further interest in the proceedings.

Measured comment by Dessau. Correct about what a painful youtube clip it made.

Truth to tell, I have not the faintest idea who that fat chap is/was and have little curiosity in that direction.

SQUASH TOSH

I have seen some badly run literary awards in my time; run some good ones, too.

This evening's Orange Prize award surpassed incompetence.

Chair of the judges, 'author and TV producer Daisy Goodwin', was a blush-making embarrassment. Don't they check whether these people can actually speak?

Every second adjective was 'fantastic', she gave the impression of never having heard of the books let alone turned to page 1.

When Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna was announced as the winner, the subtitle fastened permanently on the spelling of 'Kingslover'.

Absolute farce.

But the book itself sounds fun.

Ferrari watch

At least, for £260,000, they were considerate enough to make it look cheap and nasty.

Justice Non Reçu

Second stab at sizzling step-mom

Dunno why precisely, but I feel very resentful that bufone Neil Shepherd has won a new trial.

And he's going about it well ~ this is a very Daily Mail story and O Βοσκός is a typical Daily male - a match in Chattering Class Heaven.

Of course I feel sorry for the continued strain on the reps but it's mainly the sheer thickness of Shepherd's reason for appealing:

He believes his children 'had not received justice'. [My italics]

What mendacious rubbish.

Deaths retrial 'grossly unfair': Bereaved dad Shepherd has been pointed in a new direction, to "believe his children had not received justice."

Indeed, Corfu's council of prosecutors have, inexplicably, ordered a retrial after deciding that 'vital court evidence had been ignored by the judges in the original case.' A new trial will probably be held next year.

Shepherd had better watch out this 'holding' re-verdict doesn't explode in his face when someone actually has to produce this 'vital ignored' evidence.

Posting and poning is a national sport here, likewise chickens homing.

Once upon a time I would have expressed myself in forceful lingo but lost love and debilitating Time have reduced me to a toothless dodderer able only to raise a feeble,

"You stupid stupid little man ~ leave it, f'fuck's sake."

Talk about giving grief-strucken dumbness a bad name.

On that thought, I thought I'd check out some GBH chansons (Grievery Boo-hoo Hollers) and there are some pretty cool tunes out there.

All a bit samey, of course, and George Winstonian and with pseudy names, but not bad for sucking on a fifth of Jim Beam around the ol' camp boiler.

To be balanced, I suppose I ought to look up something for the hapless reps to which to fiddle their thumbs as Shepherdgate grinds through the process again.

Now's the time to grab that Court House corner store at a peppercorn rent and prepare it for next year's invasion:

Cooked-food and cool drinks

Souvenirs

Bus tours to Gouvia Corcyra - but wait! Boskos wants the chalet pulled down and a sensitive all mod-cons memorial built to his departed jewels.

Ack! If they're as speedy as my builders, the ground-breaking won't be until the postponed hearing of the disputed re-retrial forced by the over-turned verdict following the 'New Evidence' upset of the quashing of the findings of the 2011 brouhaha I'm posting about today.

Archive photos and aides-memoire: it'll take so long that the paparazzi will have difficulty recognising the longer-in-the-tooth-no-longer-quite-so-hot step-mater and will be reduced to lascivious snappings of my carefully planted younger daughter, playing into my litigious hands and opening up another court case out of which the tabloids will end up paying handsomely.

Loipon, the good Shepherd has accidentally hit on a lucrative wheeze after all.

I should stop dissing his self-referential obtuseness and get on with planning permission for my cooked-food stall.

No prizes for guessing the name ... or shall I run a little competition and the winner gets front seat for The Verdict?

~ Best look on the bright side and hope the case lingers as long as the fragrant Ruth Beatson keeps her lovely looks, thus enabling Fleet Street's reptile paparazzi to get on with their verminous job of tabloiding the Ionian's hottest step-mom.

Let the drivel begin: Vital court evidence ignored by judges

Cool Comments ~ As is his wont and wizardry, Sinbad saves me from plummeting into worst taste wankery.

To paraphrase Austin Powers - "Yeh, baby" - If you read one blog this summer, read Demo Street; if you read two, try to make it this one.

Sinbad songstry ~ brilliant idea to come up with comforting carols from 'Bards of the boiler room'.

Numero Uno for my cooked-food court house juke. Who else but BoMar? Well done, Badass.

That's him left, the petulant pater who's determined to drag his infants through la boue.

Age shall not weary them but it will certainly turn tiresome for the rest of us and condemn the names of Christianne and Robert to the eternally boring.

Well done, dad.

Phone lines open for suggestions for the R.I.P-off juke box jury.

Think of it as clever comp like the Athens Plus 'ComeUppance' chart.

Name that Nosherie ~ I admit it. Quandary. The 'Christianne and Robert Mealtime Memorial Muncherie' does not trip off the tongue.

Praise be to Shepherd père and his grinch grievery for inspiring the more agile 'C&R Victual Evidence and Whinery'.

Dept of Last Things on one's Mind: Puzzled and pissed off at Mr Shepherd's determination to hammer the memory of his children into a synonym for Boiler Fatigue, I revisited that gruesome report of the children's "final moments" and came across this succinct summary at the very end that has to be even the most pessimistic tourist's most basic requirement of a holiday:

"You're going on holiday, the last thing going through your mind is not being safe.

You just presume that you're safe, you presume that the tour operator has just done the checks so that you can just go away and enjoy your holiday and not have your children die."

My italics.

UKWire on the ball with summaries of the saga to date.

The Corfiot magazine, June 2010 edition: excellent thorough page 5 reportage on 'Boiler death reps cleared of charges ... then sent for retrial next year'.

Actually, a good issue all round:

Two political articles by Harry Tsoukalas

A very literate and shrewd offering by 'A Corfiot', which I suspect to be editrice Hillary's forthright pen

Continuing saga of Flora Sandes.

Good stuff.

WELCOME TO THE USA

Good Manners

My current dinner-table chat consists of testing people on the late lovely James Michie's definition of Good Manners: Considerateness, the less obtrusive the better.

I summarise and therefore miss his graceful prose:

• Seeing a guest's glass doesnt stay empty
• Offering a seat to the old or pregnant
• Turning up on time [whoops, I'm in Greece]

The same if not more goes for Michie's list of bad manners, at which I blush and with which I set the table in an uproar.

• Continually interrupting someone
• Jumping a queue
• Filling in one's weekend host's crossword puzzle
• Playing tapes in cars sans consulting wishes of the passengers [tapes! shows how old this is]
• Talking during dinner only to the person one one side [you can imagine how this sets the table abuzz, and do you know? It is not that easy but v funny to watch us all once i have announced the list of faux pas]
• Taking photographs of other guests sans asking permission - in this age of blogs and the likes of me, guilteh!
• Smoking twixt courses [again, showing its age]
• Reading for however a short time in a room in a private house in which there is a general conversation
• Driving faster than an elderly passenger comfortable [sorry Mum]
• Going to the theatre with a hacking cough
• Mending your host's fire
• Not writing a 'bread-and-butter' letter after staying the night
• Brutta figura to make up one's face or comb one's hair in public
• Uncovered yawn
• Uncouth to telephone before 0830. Also wise to start, "How are you?". I'm always calling in high spirits only to find down the line that there's been a death in the family
• 'Vestibulitis' - what the wonderful Trish Cookson better defines as 'Porch Paralysis': 'lingering interminably in the porch, bantering and reconfirming arrangements, while the baby wakes and cold air streams in, and then driving off with a series of valedictory hoots'

In my case, it's guests chatting for a further 30 mins about some blithering plant my mother has outside the front door.

Husbands stand white-knuckled as I apologise and promise to buy the flame thrower and frazzle the front drive empty of frigging horticultural discussion points.

Peccavi

I'm reminded a propos of nothing of my favourite crossword clue: 'Napier's admission of wrongdoing in India.'

The answer was - as any fule know, since General Napier took the town of Sind in India and needed to let HQ back home know without giving the game away - 'peccavi' (I have sinned).

Bet he was glad he paid attention in Latin class.

Another, 'Bottle Party? Impossible! (2,3,2)' with the answer 'No can do.'

I once went down to a crossword compilers' confab in Brighton. Great fun. Full of people admiring each other's more ingenious clues and introducing themselves in true fashion:

"Gumbrell's the name. Colin Gumbrell. That's 'Good parasol with no handle.'"

Nike World Cup advert

Sacerdotal ... or Soccer dote all?

I was collecting maman from her devotions this morning and as we drove off the Vicar bade us a cheery "See you next Saturday, then!"

June 12. World Cup, USA versus England.

Ever so cazuarly, "So, like what's happening next Saturday ... apart from the obvious ..."

"Church Fair. I've said I'll provide a picture to auction and I thought you might do the tea money like last year."

How did Badass have it? Mad spray of birdie gunfire. Everyone bites the dust. Out with the junk food, on with the TV.

Nivver mind ... check out this bonus cameo piss-take on the great Roo

Actually, they're all talking bollocks, including me, because I see that the match starts 1930hrs BST so I can't see how the Church Fayre can clash ... but it's always good to have a moan, so I'll pretend I was agog to see Greece vs S Korea at 1430hrs Greek time.