Rage Against Florence and the Machine
Everything Including the Girl
Mended Social Scene
Delicious Moist Cake
Steel & Brandy
Modest Mighty Mouse
The International
Très Bon Iver
Holy-Trinity Jones
…And You Will Know Us By the Trail Of Delicious Moist Cake
Duran Duran Duran
Blur More
Adorno claimed the world is evil, because we could be living in Paradise but instead it’s just California.
Out of all the Great Assassinations of Our Time (Time-Life, 1976–78), why is Vol. 5 (Walter Reuther) always the one in used-book stores?
Imagine when everyone in the world finally spells résumé with two acutes. Overhead, without any fuss, the stars will be going out.
Ulysses S. Grant once rehearsed the part of Desdemona, but luckily an actual woman arrived. What US President today would admit to that? I presume Ulysses (who wrote a very readable presidential autobiography, incidentally, all by himself) had not yet grown a beard. Grant later defeated Johnson, President because Lincoln was shot by the brother of the best friend of that Othello director’s son. Coincidence?
Nobody who watches TV every night has permission to say “some people have too much time on their hands.”
In UC Library suggestion box: “Could the ‘Library will be closing in 15 minutes’ announcements be in English and Māori, please.”
What, if anything, is Paris Hilton? According to the Press, she’s a “celebrity lifestyle identity”. So now you know.
Weierstrass’s elliptic function [ ℘ ] is my favourite Unicode. Though the reference mark [ ※ ] is nice. The Cyrillic millions sign is a little sun made of commas. [ ҉ ] Adorable. And…a snowman in a fez. ☃
Colleagues found a website mockup JPEG. Nothing happened when they clicked on buttons, so thought computer had frozen. CtrlAltDel. Repeat.
When Harold Macmillan visited India in 1958, Nehru asked, “I wonder if the Romans ever went back to visit Britain?”
Becoming a Justice of the Peace in NZ is like sitting your driver’s license theory test, but you have to have over 300 Facebook friends.
Just took 140 homeopathic anti-insomnia pills for the TV cameras. If I stop tweeting you’ll know why.
@adzebill
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva Biebera,
Ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Back in the 1990s I tried, as an experiment, to not know anything about the Spice Girls (those of you around at that time will remember why). This was unsuccessful: I can rattle off each pseudonym. It just wasn’t possible to remain ignorant when their names were on everyone’s lips.
Nevertheless, I’m currently attempting to know nothing about Mr Bieber. That doesn’t mean sticking my fingers in my ears going “la la la la” when his name comes up; just not actually seeking out news or gossip about the man. Is it possible, in the 21st century, to live in a bubble of Biebignorance?
Currently I know precisely four things about Justin Bieber.
For some reason, whenever I talk about this project, people see it as an invitation to email me Bieberfacts—that is, deliberately sabotage the experiment. Perverting the course of science. Dear reader: if you feel so inclined, could I ask you before you hit Send to examine your motives? Could you, perhaps, be just a little ashamed of how much you know about Bieber-san? Will sharing your knowledge truly lessen your burden, or will it simply make the world a little sadder, a little more tawdry, a little less like it was in the golden years, when nobody had heard of a teenaged Canadian MILFer? Those innocent times, when all we spoke of were Posh, Scary, Sporty, Ginger. And Baby.