Quote of the day: Advice on anti-terrorism from James Thurber

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The moral from The Very Proper Gander:

Anybody who you or your wife thinks is going to overthrow the government by violence must be driven out of the country.

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Look, it was a mistake. It was quite funny. Why all the fuss?

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I thought Liverpudlians prided themselves on a sense of humour, on an appreciation of the ridiculous. Well I guess that the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospital isn't managed by scousers - although it seems to employ them:

The advert, on the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospital's website, invited applications for a trainee anaesthetist.

But it concluded by stating: "Usual rubbish about equal opportunities employer etc".

Any one who's worked in HR (or in advertising) will know exactly how this came about. And the person responsible will get a bollocking and will bore friends, colleagues and relations for ever with the story (suitably embellished).

However the management have got all po-faced. Rather than have a laugh, say "it's a mistake, sorry folks", they had this to say:

"The wording on this advert in no way reflects the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust's position in relation to equal opportunities, to which it is fully committed.

"The trust is conscious of its duty to promote equality and is a Stonewall Diversity Champion employer.

"The trust will be conducting an investigation into this incident to ensure that this cannot happen again."

For heaven's sake, grow a sense of humour will you.
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Post-digimodernism and the Art of Blogging

There are moments of epiphany or are they lightning strikes on the road to Damascus – my grasp of religious metaphor’s a tad limited. But there are moments when you encounter the incomprehensible and wonder why it’s there:

Well, what about digimodernism, one might ask? This is akin to some of the pairings in Ihab Hassan's famous list of binaries where the qualities of modernism were placed over against the characteristics of postmodernism. If within a thematic there are logically only two possibilities, and modernism is clearly over, and postmodernism clearly followed it, does this mean that the more recent moment will be with us forever, there being no other options?

I would reply that digimodernism does not choose to focus on either time or space in this manner, but that it combines and enmeshes two relatively new definitions of both. "Real time" and "cyberspace" are the twin axes of digimodernism. The digimodern appears at the intersection of the two. It's not so much a matter of choosing one term or the other, but first redefining then superimposing them.

One might ask, might one? About digimodernism? Somehow I think this unlikely but let’s explore a little further clutching our trusty Concise Oxford for the trickier words:

Since its first appearance in the second half of the 1990s under the impetus of new technologies, digimodernism has decisively displaced postmodernism to establish itself as the twenty-first century’s new cultural paradigm. It owes its emergence and pre-eminence to the computerization of text, which yields a new form of textuality characterized in its purest instances by onwardness, haphazardness, evanescence, and anonymous, social and multiple authorship.

So it seems that this ‘digimodernism’ is something to do with the textual analysis of all the crap that we write on the web – a sort of Jacques Derrida meets the blog. That plus the bizarreness of reality TV, mockumentary and the ubiquity of computer gaming. In essence our ‘digimodernist’ already exists except he, she or it remains blissfully unaware that such an exalted status has been thrust upon them!

I wrote a few crown-sourced (well twitter-sourced really) blog posts – the best of which is:

Beards, cats and clever octopusses - thoughts on the World Cup Finals 

This post wasn’t a conscious digimodernist experiment – more of a giggle really. But it approaches this idea of:

In its pure form the digimodernist text permits the reader or viewer to intervene textually, physically to make text, to add visible content or tangibly shape narrative development.

While part of me loves this stuff – especially the arrogance of saying you wish to appeal to the ‘general reader’ and then exclaiming:

These in turn become the hallmarks of a group of texts in new and established modes which also manifest the digimodernist traits of infantilism, earnestness, endlessness and apparent reality.

The rest of me just want to take the piss – but no-one did that better than Paul Jennings!

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Offended?

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I've never been Doug Stanhope's biggest fan but he's right on this (except perhaps the trip to Reno):

There is no such thing as laughing at something you shouldn’t. You should laugh everywhere you can find even the slightest glimmer of humour. Life is a series of heartache, tragedy and injustice, punctuated by a few cocktails and that one trip to Reno. The more you can laugh at the ugliest parts, the better off you are.

Go and read the rest (and try not to be offended, OK?)

h/t that annoying moggie

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Well I guess someone had to....

...which I guess makes up for the rest of the world!

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This is a link to a left wing blogger...be warned!

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One of the funniest blog posts I've read in ages from Hopi Sen. Here's a flavour:

Therefore the Central Committee, meeting in secret session, has declared that all blogs written by more than one author are no longer to be deemed blogs, and that given the previous Revanchism of the Jackal Harris, he is to be declared a neo-centrist enemy of the people.

Wonderful stuff - go and read it. NOW!

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On the pricking of pomposity!

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This tickled me. How to prick authority’s pomposity in one simple dialogue!

“Bidworthy found himself afflicted with a moment of confusion. Recovering, he informed hurriedly, ‘His Excellency the Earth Ambassador wishes to speak with you at once.’

‘Is that so?’ The other eyed him speculatively, had another pick at his teeth. ‘And what makes him excellent?’

‘He is a person of considerable importance,’ said Bidworthy, unable to decide whether the other was trying to be funny at this expense or alternatively was what is known as a character. A lot of these long-isolated pioneering types liked to think of themselves as characters.

‘Of considerable importance,’ echoed the farmer, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. He appeared to be trying to grasp a completely alien concept. After a while, he inquired, ‘What will happen to your home world when this person dies?’

‘Nothing,’ Bidworthy admitted.

‘It will roll on as before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Round and round the sun?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then,’ declared the farmer flatly, ‘if his existence or nonexistence makes no difference he cannot be important.’ with that, his little engine went chuff-chuff and the cultivator rolled forward.”

From “And Then There Were None” by Eric Frank Russell

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Made me grin.....the Gordon Brown fan

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A teacher asked her class how many of them were Gordon Brown fans.

Not really knowing what a Brown fan is, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raised their hands except for Little Johnny..

The teacher asked Little Johnny why he has decided to be different...again. Little Johnny said, 'Because I'm not a Brown fan.'

The teacher asked, 'Why aren't you a Brown fan?'

Johnny said, 'Because I'm a Conservative.'

The teacher asked him why he's a Conservative. Little Johnny answered, 'Well, my Mother's a Conservative and my Daddy's a Conservative, so, I'm a Conservative.'

Annoyed by this answer, the teacher asked, 'If your mummy was a moron and your daddy was an idiot, what would that make you?'

With a big smile, Little Johnny replied,

'A Gordon Brown fan.'

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