The most ridiculous YouGov question yet

I went to ATP and all I got was this lousy tinnitus

Photo by Andrew Bowman / The Liminal All Tomorrow’s Parties’ Nightmare Before Christmas event (3-5 Dec 2010) was a terrific monster of a festival. Staying in Soviet Lynchian chalets and braving the December sleet made it all the more memorable. Growing, The Ex, Scout Niblett and Deerhoof were outstanding. Listening to the white-noise-and-wolf-howls of Keiji [...]

Kurt’s Humanism

I’ve been reading an account of the development of Humanism, but in Chapter 21 of Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut sums it up in just one paragraph: Humanists try to behave decently and honourably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far. We [...]

Resolved

My New Year’s resolution for 2011 is to write something original every day. This won’t mean writing in this blog each day – it could be an entry in my diary, or some fiction. I’m allowing myself all sorts of get-outs, so a (non-work-related) email counts, as does an interesting combination of two words. In [...]

Hauntology and nowstalgia

‘Hauntology’ is a word that’s appeared on my radar only recently. It was originally a term coined by Jacques Derrida, linked to the similar-sounding ‘ontology’, the philosophical study of the nature of being and reality. Derrida’s idea was that the end of history would be signalled by a preoccupation with nostalgic, ‘old-time’ aesthetics. I first [...]

Martin Starr

Let it be known that I choose Martin Starr (Freaks and Geeks, Adventureland) to play me in the film of my life.