Tories and Labour members alike, they had swallowed the Blair line that following a vicious war […] the United Nations would be brought in to run a post-war Iraq and that a ”road map” to peace between Palestine and Israel would be followed assiduously.
assiduously (adv) : with care and persistence – source: New Statesman 21 April 2003, p. 21
I’d already forgotten how much frontal nudity this show has. Oh, now there’s an insert of Eddie ’The Eagle’ Edwards and the guy still remembers the lyrics to his song. I’d hate to discredit my former employers, but when Euro Trash came to Jyväskyä to shoot an insert about Dr Ammondt, Keskisuomalainen gave the story one full page. And the show is on at 1 AM Wednesdays. Oh god, now they’re playing a story about German yodellers who about ’Pussy-Fixiert Fraulein’.
Two things about commercials. First: I bet that the people in I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! (I just love that name and wish they did other products as well, like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Dead Rat) are actually reacting to naked genitalia. Second: The ’Don’t You Love It When Things Just Work?’ Honda commercial is the single best one this millennium.
CD: Version 2.0 by Garbage The sophomore album was a slight disappointment when it came out, and it took me all these years to take a second listen and realize how good it is. Here Garbage perfect the up-tempo pop song (Temptation waits, Push it, Sleep together) that was blossoming on their debut (I’m only happy when it rains, Stupid girl), do few mighty fine slow ones (The trick is to keep breathing, You look so fine), and don’t blunder as many times as they did before and after. Highly recommended.
DVD: The commentary track on the R2 release of The Man Who Wasn’t There by the Coen brothers Compared to, for example, the otherwise interesting comment track on Nightmare Before Christmas, the Coens and Thornton are a barrel of laughs, while still amazingly managing to talk about the movie as well. Any commentary that points out the protagonist’s erection has to be worthwhile.
But let me assure you that the good moments do greatly outweigh the bad. Her background research is impressive, as it should be with any journalistic work. The descriptions of dispirited workplaces and council flat residents who have given up in all but name are accurate and powerful. But at times Toynbee drifts from describing the problems into proposing answers and that’s where the problems start. The thing I have most problems with isn’t connected to the factual writing but the ideological solutions she proposes. She claims that everybody has the right to cheer themselves up by shopping, that small companies ought to die out (yes, she has good reasons for it but still), and other views which don’t nicely fit mine. But then again that might be just me.
Ultimately I feel that Toynbee’s work has a certain mentality best articulated by Jarvis Cocker in Common People: ”You will never understand […] If you called your dad he could stop it all”. Toynbee is the first one to acknowledge this but in my opinion she doesn’t get away with it. The ending of the book with her thanking her lucky stars just emphasizes it. Incidentally the development of the theme bears some resemblance to Hornby’s How To Be Good where the middle-class protagonists try to alleviate their guilt over other’s suffering but ultimately they just fall back on their lives with nothing changed. And I know I’m just being terribly moralistic and naive but it doesn’t make me feel right.
Somebody at Tesco had noticed that the way they package the baguettes is suboptimal. See, the long piece of bread is stored in a flimsy plastic bag that a) sealed at only one end and b) is mere centimetres longer than the bread. This means that quite often the bloody French baton just drops out. But no more! Because now they had finally managed to tie a small knot to the up-to-now open end of the bag! A miracle! Sheer genius! Somebody promote the guy/gal who invented that!
In other news I also picked up three DVDs for £24 at Choices (Airplane!, Naked Gun, and Full Metal Jacket). I’m pretty pleased with myself right now.
Channel Four, on the other hand, was showing The Young Poisoner’s Handbook with not enough cropping. Not only were the black bars visible above and beneath the picture, but also on the left and right sides. Tut tut.