Wakefield rocks

As of about nine hours ago, unhemmed is head over heels in love with The Research & thought maybe you might like them too.

skad to foto? i to ...

the great literature of nonsense

Reviewing Julian Barnes's tremendous new novel Arthur & George, Theo Tait in the current LRB:

Chesterton summed up one great appeal of the Holmes stories when he said that ‘the thread of irony which runs through all the solemn impossibilities of the narrative’ makes them ‘a really brilliant addition to the great literature of nonsense’.

Pedalo

Love lists, me

Though obviously it can be taken too far.

In response to the kind request from one drmigs here is is what I be mostly digging of late:

1. My First Lover - Gillian Welch (this is the business)
2. Letters - Laura Cantrell (and this is the business, too)
3. I Need You Back - Ben Kweller (I'm a sucker for this kind of thing - I wish I had made this record myself)
4. Barstool Blues - Neil Young, but what I have in mind is the flaky Evan Dando solo version
5. Levi Stubb's Tears - Billy Bragg (he might live in a big white house in Burton Bradstock, but I love him dear)

I don't know if I have the html skills for tagging the next bunch of dudes. In fact, I'm not even sure that I know five dudes I could tag. Does Elmore Leonard have a blog?

Imagine?

We here at unhemmed thought you might be interested in, and perhaps slightly terrified by, this.

1976

'One day I'll die, and on my grave it will say: "Here lies Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. He didn't know the names of the trees and the flowers, but he knew the rhubarb crumble sales figures for Schleswig Holstein." Look outside at those trees - beautiful.'

Holding Post

Schnucki and I are safely back from Lithuania, a little saddle-sore. We had a fantastic time in Vilnius (or Wilno) - many thanks to Cas, our wonderful hostess. Expect to hear more about it here shortly (a statistical excursion is in the offing), but in the meantime there are eggs to be eaten.

Halliwell's Film Guide my bottom

Best Guest Leaderboard 1

Those of you with the eagle eyes will have spotted another fantastic link just over on the right there somewhere. Really an extraordinary thing, it will tell you where you have come from to be here on . It's not quite live - it updates hourly - so in fact the name of the link is a little misleading, it rather tells you where everybody else has come from. For each of the last 20 visitors (have there even been that many?) a little virtual pin gets pushed into a map of the world that you can scroll and zoom in on and even see as a satellite picture. Thanks to my mild but chronic paranoia, I feel almost certain that the lion's share of these international flags are flying thanks to machines rather than people, but I am particularly taken with some of the data nonetheless. This is the leaderboard as it stands this morning:

1. ESZTERGOM, KOMAROM-ESZTERGOM
Time: August 17, 2005 1:24 am
(not sure if that's Hungary or Slovakia, but a clear winner I think you'll agree)

2. RUSSIAVILLE, INDIANA
Time: August 17, 2005 1:43 am
(get outta town!)

3. TALLINN, HARJUMAA
Time: August 17, 2005 1:44 am
(there were some Estonians at our party the other night)

The good people here can arrange this for your site, should you so desire. It's dead easy.

A far, far better thing

Calling all techies, would-be geeks and HTML-ers. What would be the
easiest way of uploading an MP3 file on to unhemmed?

on the right bank, indeed, we did see

and mere moments earlier, i kid you not, we had seen

CHAPTER 37 A little Cold Water

"My new life had lasted for more than a week, and I was stronger than ever in those tremendous practical resolutions that I felt the crisis required. I continued to walk extremely fast, and to have a general idea that I was getting on. I made it a rule to take as much out of myself as I possibly could, in my way of doing everything to which I applied my energies. I made a perfect victim of myself. I even entertained some idea of putting myself on a vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in becoming a graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora."
Charles Dickens, DAVID COPPERFIELD

Phil and Don

"The first gig I ever went to was The Everly Brothers in the early eighties with my dad and my brother. It was fucking fantastic, they are playing Cardiff in November and I will be there to watch 'em again."

Always a joy to hear from El Capitano.

Get into the folkmobile and drive

Resources 001-3

001 How to go klang - you'll have to follow the links. And you'll be happy to hear that klang is not the only thing they can teach you how to go.

002 And this is the Burryman:

"On the day preceding the Queensferry Fair, the Burry Man who requires to be either a stout man or robust lad, as weakly persons, like the man in complete steel who annually sacrifices his life to the Lord Mayors Show in London, have been known to faint under the heat and fatigue of the dressing, is indued in his flannels; face, arms, and legs, body all being covered, so as nearly to resemble a man in chain amour, from the adhesion of the burrs; and the head, as well as the tops of the staves grasped with extended arms, being beautifully dressed with flowers; whilst the victim, thus accoutered, is led from door to door by two attendants who likewise assist in holding up his arms by grasping the staves. At every door in succession, a shout is raised, and the inhabitants, severally come forth, bestow there kindly greetings and donatives of money on the Burry Man who in this way collects, we believe, considerable sums of money to be eventually divided and spent at the Fair by the youth associated in this exploit." -- W. W. Fyffe, 1865

You're supposed to give him whisky as well. They (those same from whom I've borrowed the above) say that this has gone on for thousands of years.

003 I first met the Burryman just yesterday in the Paul Farley poem 'Thorns' (from his second and most recent book, The Ice Age). He also makes use of the word zareba. I had no idea the web was so hot on pronunciation.

As far as I know, Farley has never used the word 'klang'.

Brzozowskiego

Hala Ludowa

Zielone wrony

Rewriting The Phrasebook

If I've told you once, I've told you again.
Better to be safe than dangerous.

mousetram

Qui est-ce?

There might be a prize.

some people will eat any old tripe

"I've found very little that was actually beyond the boundary of the edible. One example was the Swedish dish surströmming. This is herring that is 'preserved' in salt water but has started to rot. You buy surströmming in cans that bulge slightly because of the continuing 'fermentation' process. It is always prepared and served outdoors because, although it looks like normal herring, it smells quite startlingly of shit. Once, while staying in Sweden, I served it to some of my relations who had often spoken of the dish but never actually eaten it. Before opening the can you have to bang a nail into it to release the pressure. I did so and was hit in the face by a miniature geyser of shit-smelling spray. After having a shower, I opened the can and served the fish in the traditional way, on a soft, thin bread with chopped red onion and sour cream. According to strict local tradition, we drank milk with it. Did it taste like shit? I don't know. I've never eaten shit. But shit certainly could taste like that. Having ingested a surströmming sandwich each, we all discovered an unexpected effect. The fermentation process continued in our stomachs, and we all began to burp uncontrollably. Having eaten shit, we were now farting through our mouths."

- Sean French, from Granta, some years ago

awaiting animation

Tintin et Milou