Tabloid Edition

Modern Relationships.

Are you ever puzzled by what you should be doing? Finding it dificult to work out how to act and react in your oh so modern relationship? Having difficulty understanding the balance between yin and yang that provides a solid foundation for such? Worry no longer.

Your answer is right here.

Quote of the Day.

It is clear to the US administration that Gerry Adams is no more than an Irish Yasser Arafat - and no more reliable.

Kevin Myers.

Jessica Biel Pictures.

Further research into what the world is interested in reveals that Jessica Biel is an adequately toothsome young American actress who has parlayed looks into a TV and film career. Those who like to know what the definition of toothsome is should go here for a series of pictures of her. Also an interesting example of how to break contracts for it is rumoured that she felt her role in Warner Brother’s 7th Heaven was restricting her film roles (her character was apparently too goodie goodie) so she posed for a magazine in mildly undraped poses, the horror of this being such that she was released from that restrictive contract. Whether disrobing is a more widely applicable technique in such situations is something I shall have to leave to others.

Dimebag Darrell

To get this new series off on the right foot I have investigated the sad demise of Dimebag Darrell. How did I choose such an unlikely character for my self-education in the mores and fables of this modern world?  Looking at this page allows one to see what it is that the hoi polloi consider worth searching for and as, as you know, my task is to find out what it is that interests this class of moderns it seems like a good place to start.
In short Dimebag was a guitarist with a band called Pantera (who they are is a subject for another day) and had just gone back on the road (see how this cultish language of the rock and roll lifestyle seems to slip off the tongue so effortlessly!) with a new beat combo known as Damageplan. Sadly, while performing their music hall turn (what I believe is known as a "gig") in a colonial ville called "Columbus, Ohio" on Dec 9 this year a member of the audience decided to shoot him four times as he performed before said assailant was himself shot by the police. One could make tasteless jokes about the seriousness  with which they take musical critcism in the Mid-West but this would be wrong for there were three other entirely blamless people also killed in the incident (it is difficult to imagine that a guitar player of the "heavy metal" kind could be described as entirely blameless and the murderer was of course not).
The rest of my research has concentrated on his amusing forename, not one that I believe is common in the baptismal registers on this side of the Atlantic. Apparently his mother thought it would be interesting to name her son after a common packaging of cannabis, a ten dollar bag (slightly confusingly our colonial cousins use "dime" to refer to a ten cent piece and also to ten dollars, context being everything. Disturbing visions passed across my mind as I thought of the consequences of proffering ten cents in a dark allyway for an adequate supply of sativa...perhaps this is just a ghost memory of a scene from a moving picture or something?) which certainly shows how inflation has changed matters. Back in my day we used to ask for a groat’s worth of Mary Jane in a twist. Back then there was also a thought that the whole thing was a plot to get white teenagers to sleep with negro gentlemen and while it never actually affected me in that manner I do hope that Mr. Darrell’s christening did not affect him in that way either.
There may be some trivial details that I have got wrong in this brief foray into the modern world but I have no doubt that they will be corrected by attentive readers. I would just like to emphasise that no, the murder of four people is not funny and is not a joke. One can (and I prefer to), however, make a joke about anything and everything, for that is not the same as making a joke of something.

New Category of Postings.

As was rather embarrassingly shown a couple of days back my knowledge of the real world out there, those issues which are truly relevant to the way we ordinary people actually live our lives now, is so scant that I did not recognise Penny Lancaster as the name of the blonde, leggy, underwear model currently in receipt of the occasional schtupping from Rod Stewart (whose name is at least vaguely familiar). I am therefore adding a new category of posts, named "Zeitgeist", where on an occasional basis I will find out what is truly causing a disturbance on the web and report back for the edification of none other than myself. For of course, all you trendy youngsters out there will already know the name of Britney Spear’s next divorce lawyer, know that Glenn’s ruminations on digital cameras are a coded job application to direct the upcoming Paris Hilton video, that Ron Jeremy has already attended a casting call for "Blunkers: The Life, Times and Tragedy" and regard as thoroughly old news the snippet that Catherine Zeta Jones is to star in the movie version of the Maureen Dowd columns.
I needed to use this internet thingy with the special attatched search option to find these out and will, as I said on an occasional basis, scribble down my notes as and when I find something of interest.