Paul Octopussies Out

Paul the Octopus is to retire from the world of professional forecasting.

The astonishing rise to fame for this mystical cephalopod has created more headlines than that feetball thingy...you know, with the different coloured shirts. No? I'll explain later.

The BBC claim that Paul's seeming ability to render active competition obsolete has seen betting shops from around the world place bids to take him off the hands of his Oberhausen Aquarian owners. All potential buyers have been disappointed however due to Paul's choosing to step down from his decision-making duties.

This news will come as a heavy blow to the Aquarium itself as it is rumoured they were in the process of finalising a multi-million euro deal with the FA that would have cancelled all professional fixtures. Reports say that Paul's contract would have seen him broadcast live every Saturday and Sunday picking a mussel out of a jar over the course of 90 minutes...several times.

Well, well, well Paul. It seems you're shrewder than I first thought.

Clearly aware that his cheap parlour tricks and brief foray into this particularly theatrical brand of match-fixing (I call a spade a spade when I see one) might well be exposed, he's made his money and scarpered.

It's a smart move for someone with no skeleton. It was only a matter of time before the media tide turned (as it does for all the greats), Paul predicted an incorrect result in the Bundesliga and they said 'Fuck it. Let's eat him.'

Sources close to Paul claim that he left just moments before Spain's winning extra-time goal to board his new yacht which he co-owns with sister Sarah Jessica Parker. The pair are currently enjoying a holiday at the family home in the Azores.

Wiki Wiki That's a useless-ass day

Things I was meant to do today:


1) Dissertation work
2) A list of plays my boss has requested
3) An history of a particular hospital from the 1700s


Number of these tasks achieved: Zero

Things I have learnt today:

1) Shanghai, despite not being the capital, is the most highly populated city in China.

2) The psychic octopus has predicted the Spanish will win tonight's football World Cup semi-final.

3) There is a Chilean football player called Waldo Ponce (N.B. This information was also gained along with the fact that hot coffee is the second most painful substance ever to come out of my nose).

4) I like Walnut and Banana cake.

5) The time it takes milky coffee to make me poo is about a third longer than black coffee.

6) A man named Gordon Frost whom I have never met (and, given that he's dead, am never likely to meet) once owned a brewery.

7) As of 15th May 2010 the current squad for Macclesfield Town FC contains eighteen Englishmen, one Jamaican, one Algerian (he must be popular) and one José Veiga of Cape Verde.

8) Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago located in the Macaronesia ecoregion of the central Atlantic Ocean, off the western coast of Africa, close to Mauritania and Senegal.

9) An 'archipelago' is a cluster of islands formed tectonically.

10) Steven Spielberg is currently listed as developing a film alluringly entitled Robopocalypse.

11) A waka is either a Maori canoe or a Japanese poem.

12) Wikipedia is four times more likely to prevent any sort of productive output in my day than it is to help produce anything of value or worth.

Here is a picture of an hilarious baby so that you too might find that it has all been worth it:

My Mercury's In Retrograde

A few notes on some of the Mercury Award Nominees that I scribbled. I meant to throw them out before they announced the winner, so they're a little dated now I know:

Florence and the Machine - Lungs:

Lungs is a boiling, swirling cacophony of soul and passion, the only record in the major leagues I’ve heard in a long time with a beating heart; certainly the only one nominated by the Mercury Awards as long as I can remember. Florence Welch’s swirling vocals, firing off synapses in the listener’s brain, lift high above the pounding drums that stir the blood to boil as she shrieks to the stars in ‘Cosmic Love’ and murmurs chastising pillow-talk through ‘I’m Not Calling You a Liar’.

Perhaps the most impressive attribute is the album’s eschewal of today’s penchant for abandoning ‘influence’ in favour of copycat syndrome. Artist’s such as La Roux toil at recreation, while the 80s sensibilities of Phil Collins, Kate Bush and U2 have all left their mark on Lungs, but are incorporated with elegant and innovative subtlety, just as a myriad of other decades worth of music peek through a layered work of solid originality that retains a celebration of those that have gone before.

The Buzzcockian mockney jive ‘Kiss With a Fist’ may veer a little close to Kate Nashness than befits the tone of the album as a whole, and it subsequently stands out as something of a sore thumb, but, considering the writing quality of the record as a whole, she can surely be forgiven a duff track; it is, after all, her debut.

Whether Florence and the Machine win the Mercury Prize may still be up for debate, but the plummet of the award in my estimation should she be overlooked is not.

La Roux – La Roux:

This overrated but musically savvy and deliriously catchy slice of retro sadly substitutes innovation for imitation begging far too many questions regarding a seemingly backwards movement in popular music, impressive as its deftness of imitation is. Elly Jackson’s voice, while exceptionally strong, favours a bored melancholia in tone over the impassioned yell of someone like Florence and the Machine, with less effective results. It also begins to sound irritatingly samey around the halfway point making it almost a chore to get from start to finish without switching to something else. Still good though.

Glasvegas - Glasvegas:

A standard fare and rather lightweight offering of guitar-based, Brit-Rock that makes you wonder why Doves weren’t nominated. Also James Allan’s hilariously thick “scoutush” accent (it makes the Proclaimers sound like The Archers) really does feel ever-so-slightly over-egged; to be honest you can be forgiven for chuckling.

Orange Juice Blues

I have decided, after this many years on the planet, living in ignorance, that I finally understand the importance of a morning routine.

Now, I have long since come to terms with the fact that I will never again function at full capacity if, for some reason, I do not get a cup of tea in the morning. Ok, so maybe it's not as cool as those who need three cups of black coffee before motor functions kick in, but each to their own.

This for many years was, unfortunately, all I had in terms of the morning routine; probably something to do with the truly unpredictable fluctuation of my wake-up time.

However, the more I try to stabilise my daily process the more I'm discovering just what it is that gets me up and about, and, remarkably, what sets the tone for the rest of my day. Now, this is by no means regular yet, but if I've found that if I hit the following checklist then I seem to be on a lovely trajectory upwards for the succeeding hours until I go to bed.

1) For the ungluing of the eyelids: As well as a cup of tea, a glass of orange juice has become essential. Vitamin C rocks my world.

2) For the clearing of the haze: A walk to the shop - this ticks off purchasing a pastry item for breakfast and a paper, it also gives me the fresh air so dangerously lacking in the stench vacuum that is my room.

3) For getting the nervous system fizzing: After a shower, frustrate myself by attempting to check emails on the most erratic internet connection you can imagine (It's also the most pedantic connection as it won't suffice in just giving me the 'Could not open page' message but will make a big song and dance of pretending it's trying its best, leading to a stalemate in which I am always the one who gives up first). NB: This will often lead to indecent exposure toward any unsuspecting (well, the first few times, now it's a given) neighbours as I jump up furious, inevitably dropping my towel, flashing my junk for all the borough to see.

4) For human contact: Wake up my flatmate who works evenings and won't open his eyes until he's brought a cup of coffee (3 spoons 3 sugars) and a cigarette. He then goes about his own routine. NB: 'Human' is a very relative term.

After this, I am ready to face whatever the day has to not so much throw as fling at me like an ape in a cage (this is truly the state of my relationship with life)

Now, all I need to do is work on making this habit. Tomorrow will be better I swear.

Q: What do JFK, Area 51 and Ian Tomlinson all have in common?

A: ‘A senior police officer who investigated the death of Ian Tomlinson told his family that the officer who struck him at the G20 demonstrations could have been a member of the public “dressed in police uniform”, it emerged last night.’ (The Guardian)

Well, thank goodness for that. There I was going about worrying our police force had descended into an armed mob of thugs who wouldn’t know a human rights violation if it violated them right in the pills, for no reason at all.

Now I find out that it may well have been a member of the public masquerading as a police officer (armed with baton, full uniform and restraining techniques). Phew! What a load off.

Of course that makes sense, I mean, well, I’ve come to expect behaviour like that from we proletariat. And it is the oldest trick in the book after all - the famous ‘protest-in-a-rented-uniform-batter-an-innocent-news-vendor-to-death-and-use-it-as-a-means-to-expose-brutality-amongst-our-law-enforcement-agents-whilst-ignoring-the-small-matter-of-it-being-a-peaceful-protest-against-the-G20-summit-in-which-the-police-were-not-expected-to-have-any-major-involvement’ routine. A timeless classic. My faith in the uniform of the law is suitably restored.

But wait. If the conspiracy stretches this far, then surely it could be more convoluted than we initially anticipated. What if this wicked protester worked his way into the force from an early age, an undercover activist whose designs were leading always to the day of the G20 protests?

In fact, maybe there was no real Tomlinson at all and this was all an elaborate set-up. What if he and his grieving family members are actually just actors in on the whole charade?

Or what if it goes higher than that? What if there was no protest at all and this is one big media contrivance designed for the purposes of a huge exposé?

Good lord! What if we’ve got it all wrong and it really is the police force’s fault, the offending agent actually a police officer posturing as a citizen dressed as a policeman?!

…my god. Perhaps this is just a horrible dream and we’re actually all fabrications of a supermarket till worker asleep at the checkout?

Or worst of all, what if it’s not a dream at all? What if an everyday junior police officer, with very little training in crowd control at all, panicked and hit a man exceptionally hard during a peaceful protest?

What if, eh? What if…

Svelte the Aged

Cruising Borough High Street yesterday I found myself in front of a poster advertising something to do with elderly health care (the exact details of this advert's purpose escape me, this is why I should carry a notepad). Smiling happily out of their plexiglass panel was an elderly couple, locked in recreation of what the Tango must have looked like 40 years ago - saucy, I know. While the fact that I haven't the foggiest idea as to the intention of the poster presumably negates its purpose, it did set me thinking on (that most well-worn of topics) elderly modeling.

Now, I can't claim to know the slightest thing about the fashion world, much less how one goes about a career as a model (not having the jaw-line I so desired for a place in the industry), but what baffles me most is the concept of the 'elderly model'. There must be such a thing; look at all those posters for healthcare, BUPA television commercials and photographs on pamphlets about living with arthritis - they're everywhere! So where is the source for these photogenic octogenarians? Are they professionals? If so, have they worked a long-life in modeling and now need to change their niche market slightly due to wrinkles and receding hairlines?

Alternatively, are the poster-"children" of these campaigns just volunteers? People that genuinely use whatever product it is that they're hocking, and were coerced by a few hundred quid into putting their face on a bus shelter?

Whatever the source for these aging mannequins, what exactly are the assessment criteria for a good mature model? Is it attractiveness? Now, I fear I may be swimming into dangerous waters here, but can one seriously assure me that many of these veterans of the school of life are assessed on their looks? I mean, obviously it's still a factor, I wouldn't be so offensive and ignorant as to say, older people can't be attractive, but surely after, say, 65, this becomes less substantial a bargaining chip as time goes by? You can call me agist, but you can't have failed to notice that the older people get the more alike they become? In this case, is their selection based on how stereotypically old they look? How 'nice' they look? How much a viewer may or may not want to adopt them as a grandparent?

Am I being totally ridiculous? Perhaps. The fact is that any resentful overtones that may be gleaned from this post are simply projections of my own fears. For someone that, at only 22, feels himself racing ever-closer to retirement years and subsequently (I can only imagine my children to be as callous as I) a home, yet still has not even the whiff of a career, girlfriend or solid future of any sort, the possibility that I may end up still taking jobs advertising hemorrhoid cream and denture fixative when friends are building model boats or taking that trip around the world they always dreamed of, is a nightmare made inescapable by a well-placed Telecare affiche or Werther's Original signboard.

Israel

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Aaaah Psyche!