Everybody Needs Succour (But Only Some Of Us Can Spell It)
I've been working on a speech that I have to make next week, and of course, anything I can do which distracts me from my task is infinitely appealing. So, I am cruising through MySpace, remarking upon the way it has brought me back into expressive internet contact with a whole tranche of my younger friends, for whom blogging is a scary place full of verbalists who love a lit-spat... and laughing at the way every musician band and artist in the entire world now believes that MySpace will be the cure of all their financial ills - and thinking that the Arctic Monkeys have a lot to answer for.
MySpace shows that the "overnight success" myth has never been more alive - which is sad, since behind all such stories there are untold tales of struggle, rejection and disappointment. And anyway, that isn't the point about these "social networking" sites - the commercial successes which stem from MySpace are the exceptions, and it's only journalists and money men who get excited by them. I however am a much more typical internet user, still a punter despite my inside knowledge (for what that's worth) and I regularly get excited (especially when I am meant to be doing something else) by things like slide.com (see above) Spainful Films, and Pig Boy Movie.
Since Google bought Blogger, Murdoch bought MySpace, and YouTube did a deal with Warner Music, the slender chance of the lone creative genius (or small band of creative geniuses) making commercial headway by using these simple, cheap promotion and distribution tools has diminished even further. Fashion dictates that things which are now trendy will soon be a signifier of the boring and out-dated ("you mean, you still use an iPod?") - and the next new big thing will be elsewhere, just because it has to be in order to satisfy the endless ravenous appetite for new stuff, new opportunities, news.
What we need, I have come to realise, is a twice-daily bulletin called the Olds which tells us that things which used to be there are still there. As more and more of what we now take for granted disappears - a million species wiped out on land, at sea, the vanishing of clean water, food, living space - the Olds will become just as compelling a program to watch as the News, and every bit as disturbing.
Parents of three year old Thomas Dolby had a shock when they realised that their unattended three year old son had successfully bid for a 100 year old parish priest from Wells, Somerset.
A while ago - 9th August 2002 to be precise - it was announced that Professor Manindra Agarwal of the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, and two of his students, Neeraj Kayal and Nitin Saxena came up with a formula for determining prime numbers.
Some days I wake up with a word in my head, or a phrase. Often this is unconnected with my dreams - it's merely the product of the first collision of the day with my rested mind. This morning, the word is Buganga!
I've added the exclamation mark because that was how the word arrived. In fact, you should pronounce it not just with some emphasis but also with a positivity bordering on the belligerent to reproduce the desired effect - and extraordinarily, today's spontaneous word is also accompanied by a double hand gesture - palms facing forward, digits splayed, at chest height.

I really do feel like complaining. I remember once when asked how I was by R my dear old friend and pal, I said, well, I'm ok, but I just feel like moaning all the time, he said, "Well, fucking well moan then! You probably need to..." 

It felt like I was entering a huge advertisement as I walked into the Great UK Machine at Heathrow, still high on being away from this dirty, fierce and degraded home of mine. HSBC's red letter logo is plastered everywhere - they bought the space leading into the passport control and baggage reclaim in order to make Blade Runner a sooner reality. On the train which runs from Terminal 4, which is a couple of miles from the rest of the airport, or at least it feels like that, there are screens showing time-lapse film of various urban centres around the world. Reassuring. They are all still there then. We got on, to be told to get off again to allow a security check. Wearily we picked up bags and waited. I felt a lot more secure now. As I got off, the screens began to play me news, about a bomb going off. But I don't want to hear the news right now, I found myself saying alound, I only just started to feel secure after the CHECK..., and I watched a young asian girl to my left smirk with either embarassment or mild scorn or both at my naivety. Clearly I am now a bumpkin in my own city.
Personally, I like Norwegian and would like to learn enough to have a decent conversation, make a joke, or at least, purchase my mandolin plus hard case with nae bother. Some of the words are like or exactly the same as English - send, for example - or Scottish - barn / bairn = child. Norwegian of course has its own particular rhythmic inflection, which M once described as Oompa Loompa, and which the infamous Chalkie White termed Hurdy Gurdy Wordies to describe and illustrate the predominant rhythms of Nordic speech - or at least, the cadences which are not shared with English and which to our ears stand out.
Well blow me if we haven't arrived to find that after a few heavy showers and some thunder, the city of Oslo, cradled securely in green forested slopes, is baking like a northern potato in an Indian summer. 
















