Oscar's wild

Pistorius back in the news, more flannel about the window dressing for a guilty man's show trial. What really riled him was when his girlfriend stormed out of the bedroom calling him a "bloody idiot". With her SA accent it sounded like "bladey idiot", and he thought she was mocking his handicap.

PSH

Philip Seymour Hoffman: that came out of left field. The biggest loss to camping since Kenneth Williams' passing. Great actor.

Harold, man and boy and girl

Re: the Roy and Hayley storyline on Coronation Street, no-one seems to have drawn a parallel with the film Harold and Maude (Hayley was after all a transgender man originally called Harold). Come on you fellows of Media Studies (there are a lot of you out there), what price a treatise on Harold and Roy v Harold and Maude. Which is best? Only one way to find out... Fight!

Dr Who - those were the days

Been watching the first ever Dr Who episodes (DVD box set Xmas present). Ian Chesterton, the male assistant, is forever telling his female companions, "Stand back, let me do it, I'm a man, I'm wearing a cardigan and a tie." Oh how manly men used to be, and how vulnerable and in need of protection the fairer sex.

Hiatus

Just remembered I had a blog out there in the Ethersphere! Totally neglected it since I started Facebook. Henceforth, if I have any thoughts I'd like to share with the wider world, I'll post them here too. Can you hear me, mother?

Iron Lady

Went for a Friday night roller blade ride, took me down the Champs Elysées. A crowd blocked the way, I thought it must be a street performer, but on approaching I saw they were massed in front of a cinema, and there was a cordon leading from the doors with cops in attendance, obviously awaiting the arrival of a limo with some screen celeb (maybe Ms Streep herself) for the Paris premiere of La Dame de Fer, as it's billed over here. Since I came upon it by surprise, and was skating downhill, it was only the rear of the queue that would have heard me when I yelled "Thatcher is a twat!". Completely unpremeditated, a kind of Tourette's reaction. Then the next song on the earpieces came on: "Up against the Wall" by the Tom Robinson Band. Moments like that are very special.

Black arse, fat arse, what arse?

There's been such a frightful brouhaha in the media lately about the ex-caddy of Tiger Woods exclaiming at a caddies' award ceremony that he would haved liked to "stuff the award up TW's black arse".
The uproar that ensued largely concerned the interpretation of the comment, and the underlying attitude, as racist. Well, on the day that even Tiger Woods has come out in public to defend Steve Williams as "certainly not a racist", I feel quite simply that the question is more linguistic and aesthetic than a matter of racism.
The statement was certainly meant as an insult, and an insult requires strong epithets. He might have got away with just saying "stuff the award up TW's arse", but that fails on at least two counts. Firstly, it is weak. Compare "I'm going to smash your face in" with "I'm going to smash your stupid face in." Your interlocutor may not have a "stupid face"(and what, in any case, is a "stupid face" supposed to look like?), and in this respect it is just an - arguably - milder, perhaps more reflective, alternative to a stronger expletive, such as "fucking" or "cunting" or the like.
The same might be said of "black arse". What else could he have employed as a reinforcing adjective: "fat"? TW isn't fat. "Skinny"? Ditto.
So that's the first consideration. As for the second, if he'd simply uttered "I'd have liked to ram the award up his arse," the interlocutor might have been left in doubt about the speaker's sexual predilictions, and the use of a sneering "black" nips any such doubt in the bud.