'The Americans' is crap! And before DM gives me a hundred lines for bad grammar please note that 'The Americans' is a title for a new TV series based on the actual fact that the KGB inserted English-speaking agents into the USA where they adopted totally American lives, sometimes married and even had children. To all intents and purposes they were American - except, of course, when they slipped away for surreptitious meetings with their controllers. So, you, like me, might think, wow! a potentially fascinating scenario for a sophisticated, multi-layered drama series in which nobody is quite what they seem. Oh dear what a pity never mind! If only it had been produced by David Simon, main begetter of The Wire, the best TV series - EVER! And if only it had been written by le Carré, a writer of infinite patience and subtlety. But alas, neither of those people were engaged, instead it was produced by some pillock called Jo Weisberg who couldn't spell 'subtlety'! Thus, we were given some unbelievable crash, bang, wallops, a bit of what appears now to be statutary sex on recent American cable channel broadcasting, and the incredible - and therefore totally unbelievable - coincidence that an FBI man moves in next door to our all-American all-Soviet family! Total garbage!
Oh, no, say it ain't so! According to Ms. Anna Raccoon - and am I going to give her an argument? - not bloody likely! - yesterday marked the 50th birthday of Carnaby Street which makes me - officially - old! Of course, she acknowledges that Carnaby Street has been around since Dickens was scribbling his sentimental tosh (that's my opinion, not hers!) but she is referring to the (relatively) modern incarnation of Carnaby Street. I did, once, buy some 'gear' from there but I only wore it once because I looked an even more complete tosser than usual! Still, her post is worth reading.
No mercy for Mercer: Yet another raft of parliamentary rascals caught taking back-handers from dodgy PR companies according to The Telegraph and the BBC. I was forced to agree with Polly Toynbee - SHLOCK-HORROR! - who was on Sky News a few minutes ago and said, in effect, that it was not so much a revelation concerning their cupidity as their their stupidity! I was not too surprised to see that one of those taken in by this bogus PR company set up by the scrofulous hacks of 'Fleet Street' was Patrick Mercer MP, a particularly pompous and rather stupid ex-army officer who was wheeled out on TV every time some BBC know-nothing reporter needed a quote on military or security affairs. I can remember thinking how glad I was never to have been led into battle by such a donkey!
A pox on the lot of you! Well, not really, that's just my way of pointing you to these people "Schubert, Schumann, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Flaubert, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Wilde and Joyce with contentious evidence around Beethoven and Hitler" who, unlikely as it is, all shared something - they all suffered with syphilis! This is according to Sarah Dunnant in a grim but fascinating article in 'The Graun'. Someone must have been to blame and that man was Christopher Columbus who compounded his folly in discovering America by allowing his sailors to consort with native women and thereby introduce the pox to Europe. As she points out with considerable irony:
Though there has been dispute in recent years over pre-15th-century European bones found with what resemble syphilitic symptoms, medical science is largely agreed that it was indeed a new disease brought back with the men who accompanied Columbus on his 1492 voyage to the Americas. In terms of germ warfare, it was a fitting weapon to match the devastation that measles and smallpox inflicted travelling the other way.
It is generally reckoned that Winston Churchill's father, Randolph, was a member of this less than exclusive club, too.
Not a good day for the 'slebs': Do try to contain your emotions but several 'slebs' have recently suffered bad hair days. First, poor Tiger Woods, a world champ at the sport of 'Hockey at the Halt' took "two double bogeys and a triple bogey on the back nine for a 44". Oh dear, what a pity, never mind! I'm not exactly sure what all that means except that it is bad; very, very bad. Then, and I was shocked, I tell you, shocked, to hear that that that well-known religious irreligious icon, Madonna, has been savaged by her 'fans' and called "a fat face" because of something or other she has done, or not done, to her face. Still, I expect she'll cheer herself up by going home and counting her money - shouldn't take more than a couple of months! Finally, and I should warn you that this not for those of a delicate nature, poor Michael Douglas has blamed his throat cancer on human papillomavirus which is caught by an excess of the practice of cunnilingus. Pity that, because I had thought that when he finally croaks I was going to drop his wife, the delicious Catherine Zeta Jones, a line to say that, er, you know, I could be available and all that. Not any more! (Thanks to Drudge)
No more rumbles today.
We are as one on Dickens. (I'll except A Tale of Two Cities, which I think by far his best thing.)
Posted by: dearieme | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 11:45
"We are as one on Dickens". Pheeew, that's a relief!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 12:22
I must say that the front page of today's Mail on Sunday is eloquent testament to the wisdom of our courts, wouldn't you say? Especially since they anyway manage to drop hints that solve at least half the riddle.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334483/No-10-rocked-secret-love-affair-Stunned-PM-holds-crisis-talks-fears-tryst-blow-political-agenda-water.html
Posted by: dearieme | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 14:32
Oh, no, don't say that Anne Widdicombe and George Brown have been found out at last! Actually, as neither party is in the Cabinet I'm not sure exactly how important it is. Sounds to me like the Mail continuing its kick-back against Leveson.
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 15:04
...some pillock called Jo Weisberg who couldn't spell 'sublelty'!
Is that some sort of subtle hint David?
I don't get it!
Posted by: JK | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 17:16
Would Sarah Dunnant be a 'pillock' too?
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/8129
Posted by: JK | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 17:25
Well spotted, JK, that was my, er, deliberate mistake of today slipped in to make sure you were all paying attention. JK will now be allowed to sit at the *back* of the class, not the front because he keeps on interrupting teacher!
I would never call a lady a pillock, JK!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 18:20
You allude, Duffers, to the peculiar English habit of putting the troublesome and dim at the back of the class. In my Scottish school the opposite was done; the pests and thickos were gathered at the front while the smart cookies were sat at the back.
Posted by: dearieme | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 19:55
Actually, DM, in reality I don't ever remember any teachers using either practice, although I remember one male teacher who was deadly accurate with the blackboard cleaner where-ever I was sitting!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 02 June 2013 at 20:55
Does the memsahib know that you are available, or may be, for Mrs Douglas?
I would have thought that you ARE not available.
Is the memsahib sick of you already?
Posted by: Andra | Monday, 03 June 2013 at 05:05
She knows, Andra, that I have been available to a host of women going back to Sophia Loren in her prime but she doesn't mind because she knows that none of them ever answer my letters!
Posted by: David Duff | Monday, 03 June 2013 at 08:50