About Mastermind

If you’ve nothing better to do on January 5 at 8pm, BBC2 could prompt a wry smile or two. That is all.

About reality (again)

Via the lovely Hegemony Jones: a heretofore obscure governmenty-type chap announces that Baudrillard is dead, we’re not in The Matrix and, er, that’s it. (I paraphrase.) He’ll do Nietzsche vs God next, but he’s having his tea right now.

About blogging (yet again)

Back in the glory days, the story was that blogging was going to destroy print media, provided the underpants gnomes could work out a way to monetise it. Imagine my surprise, when ambling through the WH Smith at Euston station...

About not having a light

“Excuse me, mate, do you smoke?”

I’ll admit, I judged. She was painfully thin, with a sunken face, blotchy skin and all manner of nervous twitches. And we were just round the corner from a drop-in centre for people with substance abuse issues. But she’d done me no harm so I just assumed she wanted a light for the unlit cigarette hanging from her barely-there lips. So I said sorry, no, wondering whether she was then going to ask whether I had a couple of quid so she could get a bed for the night. Except...

“Oh, that’s a pity. It’s just I’ve got hold of a few hundred fags – don’t ask how – so I’m handing them out to people. Feeling generous. Maybe it’s a Christmas thing. Never mind, mate, you have a good day.”

About street art

I’ve been thinking about graffiti/street art lately, so was intrigued when Annie flagged this up, because it raises two interlocking questions; not just the inevitable “but is it art?” but also the equally pertinent “but is it street?”

About Forster

Extremely disappointed the BBC, in their adaptation of Howards End, ignored my suggestion of a lengthy post-credits scene featuring Jacques Rancière and a consideration of the political aesthetics of the novel. Typical dumbing down.

— Benjamin Poore (@Benjamin_Poore) 3 December 2017

About Flake

I’ve just found out that Jonathan Glazer, creator of Guinness ads, Radiohead promos and movies in which Scarlet Johanssen and/or Ray Winstone don’t wear very much, was once asked by those nice people at Cadbury’s to make a commercial for the Flake bar.

Flake - Jonathan Glazer from David Nichols on Vimeo.

But they didn’t like it.

About Derrida

Lifted from Kevin Jackson’s Facebook. Best. Marginalia. Ever.