Hilarious junkmail is back!

At last, I've finally started getting amusing junkmail again! The other day Monty Sprague advised me rather scarily to "melt your fat like butter explode" (as if he called me fat, how rude), and Sterling Fountain boldly cried "cellulite be gone comma". Bette Mcginnis apparently mistook me for a character in Bored of the Rings and sent me an email titled "anytime is good arrowroot". But the best bit is that my various bits of spam have actually started having conversations with each other! For instance, today my junk inbox looked a bit like this:

Kirby Boyer - "hows it going"
Grinberg - "It could always be MUCH better, buddy!"

Well, at least they're having fun. I guess it must be a lonely life being spam.

By the way, I'm off to France and Barcelona tomorrow with Lailah (not at the same time, obviously) so I probably won't be updating for a while. Sob! I'll send you a postcard. Maybe.

So, I was looking back through my blog...

I have just realised that four out of my last five blog entries (discounting that one about the coriander seeds for reasons best known to nobody) begin "So,...".

Dearie me. Does this make me really unimaginative or really inarticulate or really annoying or some combination of the three?

It's like a big "aaagh" in your mouth

Yesterday, I found ten coriander seeds in my ratatouille. Ten!

Today, I found ten coriander seeds in my ratatouille. Ten!

Something suspicious is going on here. Maybe someone really inept is trying to poison me...

Compare and contrast

So, having finally realised how little time I have left to get through at least some proportion of my Hefty Cambridge Reading List, I've started doing some reading. I foolishly thought it would be a good idea to invest in Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future by John Dunn, which I finished this morning (not very much the wiser) and which goes down as one of the most incomprehensible books I've ever read (behind Nietzche: A Very Short Introduction). While I'm offering out special prizes, a prize will also go to anyone who can decipher the following paragraph for me:

"If the civil liberties and substantive pluralism of capitalist democracies are thoroughly established, if notably untranscendent, goods, it may be proper to take a fairly sardonic line about these, indicating tartly, historically speaking where they got on and morally speaking where they get off. But if they are wholly historically contingent, in no way guaranteed, embellishments of the human political future, then the terms of trade between cultural fastidiousness and political commitment ought perhaps to shift rather sharply and the culturally exigent come to adopt a more modest tone."

A large proportion of the bloody book was like this. It was a shame, really, because I got the feeling it would have been very interesting if it wasn't like wading through treacle.

Now, the book I've just finished making notes on, Durkheim by Anthony Giddens, is another matter entirely. Ah, it was so interesting. And so very much better written. See, I think that big long words and big long sentences are a sign of bad writing rather than cleverness. Academia annoys me sometimes. Anyway, here is my favourite bit from the lovely book, to compare with the extract above:

"A democratic society is one in which the state is independent and strong enough to accomplish these tasks, but is nevertheless in close communication with the ideas of the mass of the population. A democracy is a 'political system by which the society can achieve a consciousness of itself in its purest form. The more that deliberation and reflection and a critical spirit play a considerable part in the course of public affairs, the more democratic the nation. It is the less democratic to the degree that lack of consciousness, uncharted customs, obscure sentiments and prejudices that escape enquiry, predominate.'"

So, according to Durkheim, the society we live in today is way off democratic, because public opinion is largely driven by a mass media with little or no concern for projecting the facts in an unbiased way, and seemingly every concern with perpetuating "prejudices that escape enquiry" (case in point, asylum seekers and the Daily Mail). Well, I just found that interesting. Incidentally, anyone bored enough to write me an essay comparing and contrasting those two paragraphs is free to do so. I promise to mark it and everything.

Also, sorry about the ridiculous length of my last two blog entries. Anyone who got to the end of this one deserves a prize, at any rate.

Unmissable links of the week

So, I was at my MP's surgery this morning harrassing him about climate change, and They Work For You came up in conversation. I realised that I've never plugged this fantastic website on my blog before, or its sister site, The Public Whip, and now seemed as good a time to do so as any. (Actually, right before the election would have been a significantly better time, but not much I can do about that now.)

These sites are run by (among some other people who I don't know and who are therefore less interesting) a guy called Francis who's a friend of my brother's and one of the coolest people I've ever met. Basically through establishing these websites he's trying to use the internet to make democracy work properly in new and exciting ways (well, exciting if you're me, which I am). What they do is empower you with all the information you need to hold your elected representatives to account - cutting through the media and party-political spin that makes it so difficult to get to the facts in politics. (The websites themselves don't have any kind of agenda, other than making democracy more participatory, and I reckon that's their biggest strength.)

Among other things, you can search and read transcripts of parliamentary debates, so you know straight from the horse's mouth exactly what everybody's been saying (so for instance, you can read Charles Clarke's speeches on terrorism, or find out what questions your MP's been asking on your behalf in parliament). You can also find out how your MP (or anyone else for that matter) voted on issues which interest you - and if you're not happy with what you see, there are links to sites which let you fax or email them and let them know you're onto them.

They Work For You has already won a few awards and, if it carries on growing, could really revolutionise the way we think about politics. In an age where politicians seem to be getting more and more distant and less and less accountable, when turnouts are so low that only 20% of the population actually voted for the present government, I just hope that it can do something to re-engage people with the political process. (Obviously, in my opinion many more fundamental reforms are necessary, such as Lords Reform and electoral reform, but that's another matter.)

Whether or not you voted for your MP, their job is to represent you in government, so please take a look at these sites and find out what they're up to. After all, if you don't hold them to account, who will?

[PS: Anyone who follows these links and reports back to me that they've used them constructively to get actively involved in politics will win a super-special and as yet unidentified prize. Promise.]

Pencils: an update

Those of you who can stretch your minds back to Pencil Anecdote of the Day way back in the mists of time (well, June-ish) will no doubt be very excited to learn that on a recent trip to the Lake District, I visited the Cumberland Pencil Museum! Next to this masterpiece of pencilly joy, all other museums seem suddenly pointless (oh dear, an inadvertant and terrible pun... argh, I hate those). If you're ever in Keswick, I strongly recommend that you visit the Pencil Museum, or face the consequences. (These consequences include: missing out on the Pencil Museum; suffering eternal regret that you missed out on the Pencil Museum; facing the scorn and ridicule of your friends for missing out on the Pencil Museum.)

As the sign outside proclaims, the Cumberland Pencil Museum is "an all-weather attraction". Fortunately, it was pissing down with rain when we went, so we didn't have to test this claim - I'm sceptical of whether many people would spurn rowing on Derwentwater, tea gardens and pleasant walks for a day inside the Pencil Museum if it was gloriously sunny. (Fools.)

So, what did you see inside the Pencil Museum, I hear you cry. Well, for a start, we saw those funky prisoner-escape wartime pencils that were in the Pencil Anecdote - complete with detailed maps of Germany and tiny compasses. I can honestly say that this was one of the most brilliant museum exhibits I have ever encountered. We also saw several outsize pencils (when I finally get my hands on a data cable and things, I'll upload photos of Mark next to the World's Largest, and a slightly smaller one with a sign next to it saying "This is me at the Cumberland Pencil Museum"). Verily, it was the Grooviest Museum Ever.

I don't want to spoil the many pencilly surprises that await you in the Pencil Museum in case you ever go, but just in case you're not yet convinced that this is a funky place for a day out, I'll leave you with the text from one of the little information board thingies in the exhibition about the history of pencil making.

"1751 - REDCOATS ARE STATIONED AT BORROWDALE MINE FOR ITS PROTECTION.
PENCILS ARE S C A R C E."

Darn it, I'm going to be a southerner

So, before I start trawling through the events of the past two months, I feel I should acknowledge the fact that I got my A-level results today. I got four As (in spite of the Nightmare Psychology Coursework and the History Exam from Hell - take that, evil-being-who's-behind-all-this-stuff!) This means I am going to Cambridge in October! Hooray!

On the downside, as Char just helpfully pointed out to me, this means that I too will be a southerner, and hence can no longer mock her about her new home in Surrey - sorry, Hampshire. (Just to clear this up, Birmingham is not southern - it's in the Midlands.) Still, I think I can live with that if it means three years of the Red Bar and punting and the best course in the world. Yay!

Ooh, also, Mark got six As in his AS-levels! Six! All applaud, etc. Is it wrong that this excites me more than my own results?

Technology hates me

So, for the benefit of those who didn't know (which is most likely nobody), the reason my blog has gone through the whole of July and most of August gathering dust and looking neglected is that immediately after my exams finished, my computer mysteriously died (possibly as a result of a lightning strike), and only today have I succeeded in regaining access to an internet connection. (The computer's still bust, but I have a shiny new laptop to play with - hooray!)

Frustratingly, a pile of exciting and/or important stuff has happened in the time I've been offline - I've missed the chance to blog about Live 8 and the London bombings, as well as to share with you the joys of People & Planet samba parties and the Cumberland Pencil Museum. So my plan is to upload rants and raves about all these things as and when I feel like it over the next week or so. They'll probably be absurdly out of date and of no interest to anyone, but I feel I should make some effort to make up for my 2-month absence from the joys of blogging.

Merry August, everybody! Ah, it's good to be back.