So its Friday afternoon, and you are bored. Why not drop in on Googlefight and try to think up some amusing fights. Here is one, Here is another. Getting the hang of it yet? Go on, give it your best shot in the comments box. you know you want to.

Later: Don’t forget that you can play Googlefight tennis with someone on IM (MSN etc), make up your own rules.

I’d left reading this book for some years. Partly because I was scared that a ragbag amalgam of works scraped posthumously off an author’s hard disc might disappoint, no matter how good the author is - in this case, Douglas Adams.

I need not have worried. Each piece of work is a gem, multifaceted and gilttering. He was a good - no a great - writer capable of making you think and howl with laughter in successive seconds. He had a particular talent of holding up the world from a slightly different angle, so that you can almost feel your Centre of Balance shift.

…as we become more and more scientifically literate, it is worth remembering that the fictions with which we previously populated our world may have some function …

and

…I don’t care about PICTS and TIFFs and RTFs and allt he other acronyms, which merely say, “We’ve got a complicated problem, so here’s a complicted annswer

I’ve deliberately chosen two almost anti technology quoes, because he is normally so associated with it. If you let it, the book will take you to other places. The only down side is that there is not enough.

Amongst other things, it is the book Bill Bryson wanted to write, but never did. Do try to read this if you get the chance.

of junk mail in the sty. 12 pieces, in around 5 separate visits. Is this a record? Has anyone ever been killed by a herd of stampeding leaflet pushers?

Time was when I used to go backpacking. My method of choice was to stick a pin in a map, grab both the tent and the dog and hop on to a train. Remember when that used to be possible? The simple pleasure of deciphering the timetables and wending your way, normally with a maximum of two changes, to just about anywhere in the UK. Those small strips of cardboard that provided your passport there and, if you tore them in half, back. Strange mystic symbols would be punched into them by the ferryman.

Your journey was punctuated by mystery and serendipity, more often than by failed signals or the wrong kind of rain. Today as I travelled there and back to Liverpool, and the train angled itself into the bend at 120 miles an hour I remembered those times. Something lost and something gained.

The Blue Witch was talking about great female vocalists, and the list is long and varied. What always surprises me, though, is how good looking they all are. Is it because you have to be good looking toget noticed? Maybe anyone can make themselves good looking given a favourable light and suitable investment? Somehow, it doesnt feel entirely right. Maybe if you are ugly, you don’t have the confidence to sing. Even so, some of those voices are so spine chillingly good, that even if they were ugly people, they would be singing. Surely there would be at least a few plain girls in the mix. You really don’t often see a dog singing. It really does look as if gifts come in abundance, or not at all. Does the same apply to male singers? I don’t feel qualified to comment. What does anyone think?

I’ll leave you with a short poem, by John Masefield:

Epilogue
I have seen flowers come in stony places
And good deeds done by men with ugly faces
And the worst horse win the gold cup at the races
So I trust, too

Actually, I can’t leave the subject without a short mention for those, like Karen Carpenter, who show us that being beautiful and singing like an angel isn’t everything. Listening to her voice wrap itself around my ears while knowing how sad and disturbed she was, is sobering. Like Marilyn before her, I hope she found peace.

Gub Gub

You can’t duck the issue of a bill of rights, even if it sounds a bit quwakers, the issue will be all over the web before you know it. So dab dab will be ok. But where are pigs in all this, I ask? I feel in my loins it won’t do much for us, and should therefore be given the chop straight away. Brains, not brawn, I say. Take this act and fillet out the dross and what’s left? What’s at the heart of this? Dashed cheek, say I. of lilly livered politicians who ignore the best creatures on this earth, because that Cameron man wants to save his own bacon. We will end up with this country in hock, while these quasi actors shoulder their way in and ham it up in Whitehall. We are more important than that.

On a serious note, this meaningless grandstanding frightens me. We have one already that is suitably nondescript, but important for all that; it is behind our entire democratic system. What is it that this politician wants? (apart from an office at No 10) The answer is in the rest of his statement - to be more like America. No thank you. No. We are already getting to that state (sic) faster than I like. The last thing I want is a President Blair or Cameron. If that means sticking by a curious system that says an accident of birth decides if you are head of state, so be it. (Here is the line of succession to the throne to 900 decimal places…. dashed load of johnny foreigners). Next thing is to enjoy these British Rights, you’ll need an ID.

Sometimes, I wish the concept of focus group had never been invented.

Gub Gub

Were due to go to a concert in Kenwood House last night, but the old sow (who doesn’t read this blog) got the call from on high on Friday, and as a result both yesterday and today we’ve both been working on a ‘puter from 6:30am to midnight So no ocncert. Funny thing is, how I don’t mind helping someone else with their day job, but I would resent it if I had to do the same because of mine. Odd that.

Normal service will be resumed, whatever that is.

In the meantime, why don’t you learn to play the piano? or better, Smurf (sic) the web! (yeah I know that’s silly)

Ring ring…. Hello?… short pause while the auto dialer patches through to a human…..(accented) “Good morning sir, I am calling you from London Mobile Company”. Me: “Sorry, I don’t know what you are selling but the one thing I’m sure about is that you don’t have much to do with London”

This is another of the paintings bought the other day from the gallery in Greenwich. It is called “Towers” by Peter Moore, who paints in an esoteric style often using iconic imagery. His paintings are provocative and challenging, while at the same time exciting to the eye.

I’m a clever pig really. I came up with the theory of creating a frame ourselves, and it has been well executed. Made out of 2 x 1 ash, any small gaps at the mitres are filled using sanded sawdust, held in with sanding sealer.

Clicky for biggy.

Gub Gub

You may have seen and enjoyed the Hollow men Karaoke for the deaf before, in which case you might like these additoinal videos.

Something to click on a friday afternoon.

Well, after working till past 11 tonight - at what should be my day job - what better way to spoil myself than to put Top Hat on the video? Call me old fashioned, but is there a better way to enjoy yourself harmlessly? No great plot, no miserable wars, no real sets outside a Holywood sound stage. How is it that he manages to make dancing so graceful? In the Irving Berlin world, everything rhymes and everything is music. I’m not that suited to dancing, myself.

Gub Gub

I was going to write this blog all myself, I have decided that might interfere with my research into food. Also my good friend Ham is quite keen to take on board some of the writing, and I am not a pig to stand in anyone’s way. So in future, the posts will be written by either of us, and the byline wil indicate whose work it was. I will have to continue helping him out with ideas and theory from time to time, but those are the sort of things a pig is best at. That and eating. We hope you enjoy the result.
Gub Gub

What a good idea! The Pig’sPrize for Punctilious Prose, awarded weekly on a week by week basis to those who stray from the straight and narrow of conventional English phraseology. Those individuals both in and out of blogdom who are contributing towards the decline in the English language, innit?

The very first award is grunted to the Blue Witch, but only because it was her idea: she felt a sentence that she wrote in a comment on one of my posts yesterday had got out of hand.

Congratulations to those who got it right,that is my pet Peeve. Which today is about copyright and the total inability of agencies and individuals understand what the implications of the Internet are and to grasp the opportunities it presents. Lets start by saying that I do believe that artists should be able to make a living out of their work and fairness dictates that anyone making a commercial profit from a work should share that with the composer. But evryone seems to be missing the point with the Internet.

Take The Tfl Silly Tube Map Saga on Geofftech. I watched as the maps got taken down by the lawyers in March, but when I popped back today I find that he’s been forced to remove the links to the pages that mirror the site he has taken down. Of course, that means you can now find the actual maps on lots of other pages like here or here or here. Amongst many others.

Which one is your favorite? Mine is the sponsored one with Alliance & Leicester Square and Old Holborn.

I will return to the general topic later.

Is an optometrist someone for whom the glasses are always half full?

Then sashay over to the Half Bakery. I’d recommend exploring using the “best” and “random” links. Love it or be nonplussed.

I started talking about words and music a couple of days ago, with the intention of introducing you to Pete Atkin.. .I can hear the universal “Pete who?” from here.

Back in the seventies, Pete Atkin got together with Clive James, and six critically acclaimed albums (that means they didn’t sell) were recorded over the next years. What sets them apart from most others is the quality of the lyrics, which can often stand on their own, although they are still improved by combination with the music.
For example:

Touch has a memory
Better than the other senses
Hearing and sight fight free
Touching has no defences
Textures come back to you real as can be
Touch has a memory

(from Touch Has a Memory)
or:

“It’s my lousy memory” I told the Kid
“What other men forget I still remember
The flies are still alive inside the amber
It’s a garbage can with rubbish for a lid”

(from The Hypertension Kid)

Now I wouldn’t hold these excerpts out as the best poetry, but they are good and they are of unusual quality for lyrics. If your interest is taken, the best place to poke around is the Pete Atkin discography, which has links to all the lyrics, sound clips etc.

The Internet brought together the aging fans when one launched a website (called “Smash Flops”) and Pete and Clive have reformed and toured a few times recently, creating new material as well. Pete Atkin is also the director for BBC Radio’s This Sceptered Isle, which is worth a blog post all to itself.

Volunshrub (adj.) - vol-un-shrub Like voluntary but you get less choice.

This weekend your irrepresible grunter has been doing volunshrub work, installing network cabling into a school. This was to correct the work of the so-called-professional who had decided that using wireless networking for all the school workstations was a clever thing to do. They couldn’t work out why nothing worked properly. Anyway, as from tomorrow all their workstations will now be hardwired.

Gub Gub is rather busy this weekend so asked me to let you know that regular serivce will be resumed shortly.

It’s curious really, to see the Pig’s character developing. Rather pompous and sincere, he is very well read and enjoys research. In no way is he inhibited by the inflexibilty of trotters. When I used to do some puppeteering, I noticed the same thing happened with the puppets. Also, puppets could get away saying things I never could. Scary. Since then I have often been called a muppet.