1. During season 3, Viewing Public complains that show is going nowhere, stops watching in droves.
2. To appease Viewing Public, Producers commit to set timetable for resolution of show, up pace.
3. In order to facilitate (2) above, Producers start resolving the most thematically important subplots, more or less abandon the rest.
4. Show ends. Viewing Public complains about subplots not being resolved.
***
Years later, the Dessert-Eating Public becomes enraged at their inability to both have and eat cake. A global spate of bakery-directed arson ensues. Cuse and Lindelof appear to call for sanity. JJ Abrams appears to fling the idea for Super Clovereightfield II at someone and collect a fat paycheck. Colm eats a Mr Freeze, maintains that it is both “delicious” and “refreshing”. Paul Daniels is pronounced World President, resolves to crack down on pastry vandalism. Everyone is confused. It was all a dream. Or was it? No. But you could be forgiven for thinking so.
[A short discursion on a stranger's nethers, in two parts]
“Look on the bright side, you get your hole, you have 2 great kids, and you gt to pass of the door-knocking sales-scum to CL. Win-win, really.”
“Christ, could you refrain from referring to CL as a fucking hole? I know you think it’s jokey and cute, but it isn’t. It’s just a way to insult women.”
I.
“Getting your hole” is an idiom meaning “having sexual intercourse on a regular basis”. The hole in question could be a vagina or an anus–here, in context, it’s pretty clear that it’s a vagina. To a woman you might say “getting the length” or “getting your fill”1. So the direct meaning of the phrase, let’s say, is “having more or less unrestricted access to a vagina, subject to the ongoing approval of the person of whose body said vagina is a part”.
II.
So “hole” in this case refers specifically and solely to the vagina–i.e. to the organ, not the person. But now, look at the switcheroo happening between the two quoted comments: the second takes it as read that “hole” is referring to the person. In other words, the second commenter is speaking as if the vagina constitutes the entirety of the person’s being. Which, if I may offer a humble opinion here, is treading some pretty dodgy ontological ground, enlightened-outlook-wise.
Though the latter is maybe a bit redolent of that musty old nonsense about passivity/receptivity and the psychosexual/social implications thereof, which let’s side-step that whole barrel of worms for now. [↩]
I was listening to t’wireless the other night, and that new Lily Allen song was playing. You know, the jaunty number about an otherwise lovely relationship being spoiled by shoddy times in the bedroom. The one that can in no way be construed as an attack on all men.
Aha, though. Because it would appear it can. As soon as it finished the DJ jumped in with a remark about her “tales of woe,” and I wonder if a man released a song like would he get away with it, hmm I don’t think so somehow ha ha, but sure aren’t we men useless at everything anyway, and it’s 11 o’clock and here’s the news.
Right.
Let’s, for a moment, ignore all the squabbly noncefights about who gets to be the equalest, and concentrate on what a colossal sackbag you have to be to make comments like that. And not just to make them, but to be so horrendously glib and passive-aggressive while you’re at it. I get that you’re insecure. I get that you grew up in the midst of a lot of change and uncertainty. But surely you realise how you’re coming off? Surely you could think things through a bit more? Because I would respectfully submit that if in order for you to see a personal insult in those lyrics, your knee has to possessed of a jerkiness rarely seen outside of late-stage Parkinson’s.
So and anyway. I guess if there’s a wider point to be made, it’s that it’s pretty embarrassing to be a man sometimes. There’s a line to be skated between victim and apologist1, and it’s easy enough to fall off. But seriously fellas, could we at least refrain from taking a dive?
Some fellers are fixin’ to get some information out of me. NotRuairi is (n’t?) at it, as is this hirsute hombre. Six things they want, which is a bit annoying, since I gone and did 25 of them on Facebook a while ago. Seriously, those are all the things about me. I have nothing left.
But then I read Andrew’s facts, and it occurred to me that they were awful familiar. Awful familiar indeed… for you see, I know this man – or rather, I knew him. We were a team, Andrew and I, before an unpleasantness forced us apart. Then a while later we were a team again, before a misunderstanding put paid to our relationship. Then after a couple of years we were a team again, and then we kind of got really really drunk, and I guess there might have been some psychotropics in the mix, and basically we haven’t seen each other since.
Many fine histories of our exploits have been written1, but here’s a few choice “behind the scenes” nuggets that tend to get left out:
1. While my favourite pen is a Bic biro, Andrew is a die-hard fan of Staedtlers. In order to minimise arguments and avoid needless destruction of property, we tend to write in pencil when in each other’s company.
2. You know where at the start of those Pepé le Pew cartoons the cat would squeeze under like a freshly-painted fence or something and then the skunk would chase her for ages looking to do the deed on her? Well, [excised at the request of the British Royal Family]
3. In the space of three minutes during a late-night/early-morning singalong in a Munich pub in the 1860s, we inadvertently invented the Eurovision, paracetamol and Cambodia.
4. Pork, as a meat, was much less delicious before we started hanging out together. We’re not sure why.
5. We wrote the preliminary code for Auto-Tune in 1971. It’s taken 38 years for someone to find a proper use for it.
6. The seven-day-week thing is one of Andrew’s most common boasts but, as usual, he was only partly responsible. I recall it was a balmy Blurnsday evening back in the sixteenth century: myself and himself were pretty heavily into peyote at the time, as were the rest of the Tibetan aristocracy2, and in the middle of one of our lengthier binges I happened to make an offhand comment about there being seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye. Well, things got somewhat hazy, but when we came to several days later Andrew was clutching a sheaf of paperwork from the US Patent Office3. After several months on the road, and some characteristic mountebankery, we’d convinced the rest of the world to adopt the new system.
q.v. particularly the following paragraph on Wikipedia: “In the course of history, men with facial hair have been ascribed various attributes such as wisdom and knowledge, sexual virility, or high social status; and, conversely, filthiness, crudeness, or an eccentric disposition, such as in the case of a bum, hobo or vagrant.” [↩]
Guy Garvey is a class act, and one of the best frontmen going, but he’s a hard man to track down. Security tend not to accept a 6-pint jug of cider as valid identification. Should have gone with the pints, obviously, or pulled some Manchester variant of the potato man routine… the plotting continues.
Going into this thing I had resigned myself to missing out on my usual Sunday evening fix of balding middle-aged men with mullets and walrus moustaches wearing suits and doing karate kicks, so imagine my delight when Grinderman turned up. As a bonus, there was a sentient beard flinging percussion instruments around the place and playing a tiny, tiny guitar. Mortal men would have just looked silly.
Much as The Sex Pistols did… either they’re hell-bent on becoming the most nonsense thing in human history or they’re just acting out Primary School: The Musical. In whatever case, when you come in from a day spent with Henry Rollins and Nick Cave – men with actual testicles – John Lydon gets pretty old pretty quick.
Denny – them that make sausages and the like – have a problem. Rashers, right? They’re pretty cool and all, but they don’t have that je ne sais quois. They need an image boost if people are going to start having them with their tofu smoothies. So here’s the deal: Denny are running a competition. To win the probably half-decent prize, all you have to do is “share your Denny rasher craving”.
Here’s my rasher craving: fucking rashers. Those pink things you slap under a grill, yeah? Goes well with chips a la sauce.
According to the official competition site*, the current top runner is “Pesto Fusilli with Croutons, Rashers & Parmesan.” I sincerely hope someone is taking the piss.
* What happens to sites like this after the closing date? There must be an orphanage somewhere full of unwanted marketing.
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