A slogan for Dunedin

Dunedin is staging a competition to find a new town slogan to replace the feeble 'I am Dunedin' incumbent. Here's some of the suggestions so far:

Dunedin, where that missing sock ends up
Dunedin: if Keith Richards called Invercargill the a---hole of the world, we must be its fun bits
Sydney is hot. Dunedin is cool
We burn the sofa at both ends
Dunedin – Kids are actually safe in our chocolate factory
“Been there Dunners that”
Dunedin – where you used to be
Down there
Dunedin: we’ve got a castle
Dunedin – cr-pping all over your summer since 1848
We keep your beers cold.
Dunedin: gateway to Mosgiel
Dunedin: At least it’s not Palmerston North
Dunedin: horizontal rain is a good thing
Dunedin: Keeping it real (cold)
Dunedin: It’s not Auckland

- Source: Red Alert

How to deal with annoying dogs

Particularly if you're a cool cat.



[Via ICHC]

Mr T

'The strangest thing about [acting in] The A-Team was Mr T. He was, as far as I'm concerned, a bona fide, credentialled psychotic. He had no benevolence. He drove a fire-engine red Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible. He'd start talking when he got into makeup at 7 o'clock in the morning and he'd still be talking at 7 o'clock at night when he got back into his Corniche. And nobody paid any attention to him at all. He was a very, very strange man'

- Actor Robert Vaughn discusses Mr T, Guardian Guide, 9 January 2010

The 2000s

Sam Wollaston provides a pithy summary (from a UK perspective) of the decade I still refuse to call 'the noughties':

It began with an ill-thought-out dome by the Thames that no one wanted to go anywhere near, although, a few years later, middle-aged people were fighting to get in, to feel young again, after it was reborn as a music venue. These people pretty much succeeded in reversing the ageing process, physically, mentally and in their souls. The fact that they had accidentally become wealthy, due to the property they owned, helped.

The youth weren't wealthy, but it didn't matter so much because this was the decade when everything became free. The little money they did have they spent binge-drinking, then they disappeared into their hoods, and then they put a donk on it.

The oldies didn't understand and were afraid. But only for a minute, because they were too busy kite-surfing, and rocking out to Led Zeppelin and Prince. Then suddenly the clock struck 12, their young bodies and young minds turned back into pumpkins and they rushed to Switzerland to have themselves put down. "There is a point when you stop being a kidult and you start being a state-subsidised organic unit rotting in a care home," says Will Self. "And you start trying to reckon whether you're going to be able to cram yourself on an EasyJet to Zurich where a man will give you a beaker of sodium phenobarbital and you'll die."

- Guardian, 6 January 2010

You can never have too many toilets

Rowan Atkinson and Mel Smith delve into the mysteries of bathroom design on Not The Nine O'Clock News.

On Basingstoke

'Basingstoke: A respectable town in Hampshire whose name for some reason has come to be regarded as droll or even irresistably amusing, placing it on a par with towns such as Chipping Sodbury, Godalming, Scunthorpe, Wigan and Surbiton'

Mad Margaret: When I am lying awake at night ... strange fancies crowd upon my poor mad brain, and I sometimes think that if we could hit upon some word for you to use whenever I am about to relapse - some word that teems with hidden meaning - like 'Basingstoke' - it might recall me to my saner self [W.S. Gilbert, Ruddigore, 1887]

- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, London, 17th ed., 2005

Hens in the skirting board

Victoria Wood and Julie Walters in the classic shoe shop sketch from Victoria Wood As Seen On TV in January 1985:

Defying the dark lord

In the much-hyped chart battle for the UK's Christmas No. 1 single spot the campaign to defeat Simon Cowell's X Factor winner Joe McElderry's cover of Miley Cyrus' The Climb has been successful, with half a million downloading Rage Against The Machine's sweary 1992 track Killing In The Name. Charlie Brooker of the Guardian spells out which side of the fence he sits on:

For one thing, I happen to think Killing in the Name is an excellent song, so I've already got something out of it. Most importantly, it contains genuine emotion. Even if the climactic repeated howls of "F--k you, I won't do what you tell me!" put you in mind of a teenager loudly refusing to tidy his bedroom – as opposed to a masked anarchist hurling petrol bombs at the riot squad – there is at least an authentic human sentiment being expressed. Zack de la Rocha is audibly pissed off.

Compare this to the pissweak vocal doodle that is Joe McElderry's X Factor single. For a song whose lyrics ostensibly document an attempt to gather the spiritual strength to overcome adversity and thereby attain enlightenment, The Climb is about as inspiring as a Lion bar. It's a listless announcement on a service station Tannoy; an advert for buttons; a fart in a clinic; a dot on a spreadsheet. Listening to it from beginning to end is like watching a bored cleaner methodically wiping a smudge from a Formica worksurface.

But then nobody's buying The Climb in order to actually listen to it. They're buying it out of sedated confusion, pushing a button they've been told will make them feel better. It's the sound of the assisted suicide clinic, and it doesn't deserve to be No 1 this Christmas.

Of course, as Brooker points out, both tracks are ultimately owned by Sony BMG. But the thought that this might in some small way have irritated Simon Cowell makes it all worthwhile, no?

- Guardian, 21 December 2009

Neville Cardus

'The chance to read one's own obituary is rare. [Cricket writer] Neville Cardus, on being told that the Buckinghamshire Examiner had described his death and published a moving tribute, paused before saying: "I have no wish to challenge the authority of the provincial press. They must have some information."'

- Jeremy Malies, The Wisden Cricketer, March 2004

American football and the judicial process

'Circuit Judge Dan King announced Wednesday he would grant a delay in the civil suit Traywick v. Energen Corporation, which was scheduled for trial Jan. 4 in Bessemer, Ala., a suburb of Birmingham.

The reason?

Energen’s defense attorneys want to attend the showdown between the University of Alabama and University of Texas at Austin, scheduled for Jan. 7 at the Rose Bowl. If Alabama wins, it will be the first time in 17 years that they’ve claimed the Bowl Championship Series national title, considered by many to be the apogee of college football achievement.

“Such an event only comes infrequently during a person’s lifetime and is an achievement of such a magnitude that all involved in this litigation should want everyone to fully participate in this achievement,” writes Jon Terry, attorney for Energen, in his nine-point motion for a delay.

Because so many lawyers, jurors, and witnesses are planning to travel to Pasadena, Calif., for the game, it would be a hardship, he says. February would be better. Much better'

- Christian Science Monitor, 18 December 2009