Aidan Hartley in his Wild Life/'Voodoo power' piece for The Speccie, 24 Jan:
"They say you make a person into a zombie by blowing powder from the liver of the puffer fish into the eyes, followed by doses of the hallucinogenic Datura plant."
Say what? The hallucinogenic Datura plant??
Mater never told me nuffink about that.
We're surrounded by Daturae. What have I been hanging around for?
Miz Kaz is that beguiling young lady who performs the infuriatingly catchy Keyboard Warriors song that I can't get off my mind. I even tried plunking it at our local guitar strum-alongs but it's too fast for an oldster tongue like mine.
On a whim I've added her as a fellow Twitterer so here's the acid test to see if I'm a bona fide Twit' twot and can stay the course with this burgeoning fad.
The fact that Twitter seems to have been hi-jacked by D-list celebrities rather cools my ardour.
Jammin' - Oh to be in London!
I see from her site that the impish Miss Kaz invites musicians to come jam with her.
To boot, la Kaz looks just like the seductive local sirens I try to serenade in all my fave tavernas.
Did I read somewhere that she has Cypriot in her? Loipon, no wonder those looks, yeh?
PHOTO CREDIT - I'm bad at crediting skilled lensers so let me play honest here and toss a bouquet to the talented Katja 'Falling Star' Hentschel for that tasty photo there of the delicious Kaz. More shots here (click on the Kaz mug).
So ... when you've played and played KBW 'til you're sick of it, you'll have all those pics to drool over.
Just in: wonderful jaunty Boyfriend/Girlfriend duet showing The Kaz in yet another entertaining guise.
I tell you, this lady is going to go far. She's the "It" gurl.
I told you about Laura Veirs, told you about Jason Whitton, alerted you to Louise Nylen and tipped you off about Kaliroe Raouzeou - I got da Nose.
Don't make me say I told you so.
ADDENDA
Ace Virgin Atlantic airlines advert, cleverly filmed to make the red uniforms stand out and even more cleverly tailor fitted round shapely red-hot gals.
Some marvelously dated faces from the early 1980s and that chap's mammoth phone at the beginning brought on waves of nostalgia.
Many people to whom I've sent this charming iPod Shuffle advert have asked me to add it to the 'Fucius blog, not least because they think the sweetly dumb blonde looks somewhat like a popular recent guest at Pagoda Corfucius (who was and is not at all dumb).
It took me some time to pick up what Lance the boyfriend's very first words are after his wonderful swivel gaze.
They are, "It's a ... iPod Shuffle", after which he says "Yeh, I'm pregnant", rather than the less funny "You're pregnant".
But enough of Gollies and wallies; I've darlied myself out and am now thinking of more literary matters.
I had hoped (and let thud leaden hints a-plenty) for a Christmas or birthday prezzie to be given Salley Vickers' Where Three Roads Meet but it was clearly judged too brainy for me, so I went back to the novel I like best of hers and can never re-read too often or without finding new insight or pleasures - Instances of the Number 3.
Incidentally, that 'Salley' is not a mistype: it's spelled with an 'e' because it's the Irish for 'willow' as in W B Yeats' "Down by the salley gardens".
Then one evening it was taken away from me because I was paying the page more attention than my guest, so I sulked and revisited her excellent foreword to Edith Wharton's The Touchstone, whence comes the title of this post where SV talks of Wharton's reputation standing in the shade of her more famous male contemporary, Henry James, "as a graceful larch might to a venerable yew.". I know a catchy title when I see one.
That, too - her foreword - I can read and read again and find new lines to admire.
I was hooked by the second para when she wrote that, "BOth Wharton and James were fascinated by the lurking, misty dangers that inevitably accompany the exercise of free will; in the diabolical traps we set ourselves through self-referential obtuseness and self-protective blindness."
Self-referential obtuseness, eh? I first read that in the throes of smarting from the removal behind my back of my entire collection of cufflinks and tiepins that my girls had grown up with and had understood they would be receiving as mementos of their dad. They were taken to my brother's place in Italy where, still unbeknownst to me, they were handed over to be placed in a dark dank safe for 'safer' keeping from the thieving Corcyran locals.
No one, least of all me, could understood how or why that was done, until I came across the self-referential reference and realised that, of course, I was dealing with people whose entire world reference was to their *own* 40 acres and a mule.
Indeed, when I was spotted with "Instances #3" and asked what it was about, and replied that it was a 'ghost story', my mother looked askance and almost disapproving, as if Salley wasn't actually allowed to write anything as non-U as a **ghost** story. It's not a ghost story per se except that the husband is a ghost but he exists in a uniquely Vickersory way.
Please don't read it: I can't stand the way everyone loves and admires her and understands her nuances and can comment perceptively. She's mine, all mine, dammit. Do you ever get that possessive feeling about a writer? Well, the wise and beautiful Ms Vickers does that to me.
Yes, I do know she's beautiful because I've sat next to her at dinner - twice - and I always mean to keep my trap shut but she gets me blabbing and blurting which must be a terrible bore for her so I reckon that instances of our adjoining placement will lodge at the number 2.
I also learn new words from her.
'The Touchstone' deals with an older woman once in love with a self-referentially obtuse and impecunious much younger man. Listen to this for nailing what we all go thru:
"[The friendship] enacts for us that uneasy disjunction in any relationship where affection is not equally matched and which thus always threatens to dissolve, on one side into an atypical brutality and, on the other, into faintly accusing masochism."
Howzzat for getting it bang to rights? Maybe if I'd read that before making such a fool of myself over a certain Miss, I'd've had an easier landing, who knows?
Actually, I don't mind you reading her provided you keep your wiser shrewder opinions to yourself and buy the costliest editions to boost Salley's royalties so that she can continue writing.
Silly Carol Thatcher for blabbing in the green room. She should have known that it would be full of smarmy sensitive stoolpigeons of heightened political correctness who'd never *heard* of the sprightly woolly gog on Robertson's marmalade.
"She made a light aside about this tennis player and his similarity to the golliwog on the jampot when she was growing up."
Exactly the comparison I would have drawn - and do - if I come across anyone with that tight curly coiffure.
Come to think of it, I've never actually heard the whole word used as an insult. When I arrived at my posh prep school, it was always 'wog' that was directed at me.
But I'm like Carol: every time I hear the word, I think of that super little chappie on my marmalade of whom one could collect badges and the like. It never occurred to us that he might have been born under sunnier skies.
Good days.
Blimey! First Prince Harry's KhakiGate, now this.
Hunt the Gollie: This really does seem to be sprouting legs.
Black & White Minstrel Show - I know they've got nothing to do with gollies, but this might be a good time to cash in on the general groundswell of nostalgia and have them back. Instead of just blacking up, they could wear goggie masks.
That's the Bogus Bonhomie git over there - Master Adrian Chiles - who, with 'comedienne', Jo Brand (too ugly to show) mentioned Thatcher's golliwoggy comment to his executive producer. The pathetic whingeing creep.His "Victoria's Travels" from the fine house of Frederick Muller was for many years the perfect gift to take to maiden aunts, country house weekends and the like.
The entrancing Nikki gets the origin of 'Wog' ever-so slightly wrong but never mind because that's her darling 'Dandy Dick' Golli over there. Anyway, she looks too young and beautiful to worry about such details.To boot, she's only trying to give our side a good name by pretending we meant they were "Worthy " Oriental Gemmun.
(Chortle. As if! 'Pon my soul, what a preposterous proposition.)
I left a discreet correction on her blog which I'm sure she'll take in the right spirit and ignore me as just another Wilful Old Grump.
News flash: Honestly, I can't keep up.Anorak mag (laff!) now tells me that it was Andy 'Too Good to Hurry' Murray to whom Carol was referring.
Give us a break: He's not even a tinted shade of pale.
What the fuck is the BBC playing at?
At least let the Thatcherism have been about someone with a decent tan.
And she's wrong: Murray's unruly locks are nothing like a golli-cut. We wuz robbed.
You know, I'd often wondered about that as I cruised the supermarket aisles ... Unca Ben, Aunt Jemima, all those cute Asiennes beckoning us to chop their sticks. Then there's wily ol' Rowan Faginson treading the boards, oy veh.
Yes, as I say, images like Mr Golly are/were our mental landscape, just there as reference points. That's not to say I don't find Carol's comparison a bit far-fetched. I have many pals with fuzzy hair - good heavens, the stalwart Paul Gude has a fine head of tight curls - and I'm sure I've complimented or envied them in every way I can think, but the image has never come to mind of the Golly that's at the heart of this furore. Even my blackest friends don't stir images of marmalade. Very odd that Carol should come up with that one and if it *wasn't* someone with a touch of colour in his cheeks, odder still. Nowt as quare as folks, aye?
Back in my Hong Kong days, all of us grew up keeping our gnashers gleaming thanks to 'Darkie'.
I even took crates back after each summer hol as bribes for the prefects and anyone else who bashed me up.
Then one day in the early '80s, old timers like me in the colony were shocked - shocked - at the news that Darkie would be no more and that it was being re-branded under the spineless 'Darlie' moniker.
There was immediate panic buying and the shelves were stripped bare by frantic souvenir hunters (I still have my paste 'n'brush memorial pack.
" ... the Chinese name of the brand, "黑人牙膏" (in English, "Black Man Toothpaste"), had not changed.In fact, a Chinese-language advertising campaign reassured customers that "Black Man Toothpaste is still Black Man Toothpaste".
This is because the term "黑人" does not have any negative meaning in Chinese. The phrase 黑人 (hēi rén) in Chinese is a general term for persons of African descent."
Full page advertisements, no less, which I found astonishing enough to buy a dozen copies and send the relevant paqe to pals back home, most of whom framed them for decor in the loo.
Sinosplice : Thanks to researching G-gate, I've got to know the excellent Sinosplice where not only appears a good pic of the before and after branding but also a quote from Toothpaste World:
"Hong Kong’s Hazel & Hawley Chemical Co. would probably still be hawking Darkie toothpaste had the company not been acquired by Colgate. The Darkie brand’s Al Jolson-inspired logo, a grinning caricature in blackface and a top hat, was as offensive as its name. Colgate bought the company in 1985, and then ditched the logo and changed the product’s name to Darlie after US civil rights groups protested. However, the Cantonese name - Haak Yahn Nga Gou [黑人牙膏] (Black Man Toothpaste) - remains."
Was Thatcher being racist? - TimesOnline's shrewd Dan Finkelstein cuts thru the crap and applies the Malcolm Gladwell Test.
A Better Britain - At last the ball is rolling for real and we have passed Gladwell's tipping point. Out of the woodwork comes every Dave, Dick and Jamal to use Golligate as a springboard for memories of racially epitheted childhoods.
Remember the famous Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch with self-satisfied northerners outdoing each other over who'd had the roughest upbringing? Hilarious. Well, we're fast reaching the point of Golly Fatigue from the outpourings of scribblers vying to tell a sadder story.
If this was a whiter shade of problem, the media bosses would have stemmed the drivel long ago; as it is, they're too scared of their woollier staff to nay-say them their bleat and a weary nation is goaded towards rivers of even gollier epithets than the original.
What? As in gathering round the cauldron for a tasty chomp? Dude! What a cannibalistic remark - lucky Davy has his photo up there to confirm his credentials for such a snipe. I'd like to see whitey get away with a crack like that.
Would you believe I've never been on a stag night - 's true! I'm too boring to be included - but I like the idea of getting the groom slaughtered and then shove him on a slow train to Adlestrop.
Better still, book the hapless wretch into one of these bizarre hotels and, ideally, be present or film his awakening.
What i *do* know is that brides-to-be fear and loathe the idea and find it not at all funny. I'm surprised some weddings go ahead at all, the battered state of some of the grooms when and if they arrive at the altar.
That's the Greek warning on my delicious Karelia.
Rather a good photo because it's my birthday tomorrow ('Chronia polla, Christo!') so the cigs and card juxtapose well: keep puffing and I won't be seeing many more.
The total ban on smoking in public places in Greece has been advanced from Jan 2010 to this July. Uh oh.
Settle down, chaps, it won't work. For one thing, there's a section of the community that went under the ban last Feb 1 - the Greek parliament! - and you can bet your bottom Euro *those* chimney stacks will pay it no heed.
It's to bring Greek law in line with EU policy and, like, when have we paid a blind bit of attention to *that* loada twaddle, yeh?
July? Height of the tourist season (we hope)? Nah, ain't gonna happen, dude.
Yo! Latest photo of yours truly down there: see how fit and in fine fettle I've been keeping on the 'baccy?
How long after waking up do we dive for our first cig?
Just utterly unfunny, and yet there it is online.
The blurb is giggly playground humour.
Why rent? Why not buy?
"As we all know, the purchase of African Americans was outlawed many years ago.As times have changed the need for black people in your life has changed but not diminished.
The presence of black people in your life can advance business and social reputation.
These days, those who claim black friends and colleagues are on the cutting edge of social and political trends.
R.A.N offers you the chance to capitalize on your connection with a black person. At any gathering our service can bring a freshness and tension that will keep things lively."
I don't understand.
Anyway, I had come across a reference to The Book of Negroes and was looking up 'negro' to check if the title wasn't an inadvertent slur, and found the bizarre 'rental' site.
In re the book, I concluded the author was writing about a time when 'negro' was the applied term and therefore fitted here, altho' I'm not sure how easily certain US bookshops would stock and display it.
