Derrida=Columbo

That is all.

New tricks

After finishing Gravity's Rainbow, I decided to set myself an even tougher task in ergodic fiction. Read about my progress at Project Sakrileg.

All the cool kids have two blogs now.

Vote for the Winner!

Well, we did "vote for the winners", but Lithuainia didn't win.

Of course, I can't help but be happy about the winners, but remember Norway's entry from last year (which stirs up memories of Richard's leaving party)? Much more deserving of a win in my book.

Noel

Someone foolishly mentioned Deal or no Deal, and I was going to "go off on one" about it, and how it's shit, but compelling, and then I remembered this article by Charlie Brooker , and I guess it says most of what I wanted to anyway.

`Every afternoon, Noel's basically taking part in an improvisational drama workshop in which he plays the hysterical id of a man arbitrarily flipping a series of coins.

`"Christ, I hope it comes up heads. If it doesn't come up heads we're in serious trouble. I do NOT want to see heads now. Not heads. Please God no ... IT'S TAILS! HOORAY! Well played! How skilful! OK, time to flip the next coin ..."'

I would pay good money to see someone take the first money offered and then play the "let's see what would have happened game for the rest of the forty minutes.

Jens Lekman

Are you aware of him? Download some songs at

http://www.secretlycanadian.com/mp3/index.htm

I've been meaning to blog about him for some time, and then he was weirdly on MTV Germany. Like the Magnetic Fields, but perhaps less artful.

Speaking of MTV, I have become a big fan of Pimp my Ride, which is genius to begin with, but massively improved by German subtitles. I now know that the phrase to drop amongst "the kids" when attempting to express approval is "Das ist der Hammer!" As in "Den neuen CD von David Hasselhof? Das ist der Hammer!"

New digs

We moved into our new place on Monday, and we've spent the last week acclimatising to our surroundings. The area is much more promising than our previous place; requisite bloggable landmarks in the vicinity include: organic butchers (which I shall visit tomorrow in the hopes of procuring calves liver for dinner), scary shack (sadly not scary church), several second hand/charity shops (items of furniture bought: 0, suits purchased:1; priorities clearly in order), a highly recommended cafe (which we haven't visited yet) and Big Ben's English theme pub (which we visited last night).

Big Ben's has some serious potential. It's an English pub in Switzerland, yet has more Belgian beers than English and Swiss put together. In fact, the choice of English beers (all served in cans) is woeful; this is where sinful readers of What's Brewing go when they die. However, the pub does have splendid genuine imported English decor (including flock wallpaper) and the best selection of pub books I have seen for a long time.

I'm bunking off work this afternoon to go to Bern's agricultural fair with Mary. This should prove more fun than it sounds, as amongst the threshing machines and cattle there should be copious wine tasting and such. It would have rounded up the day quite nicely if we could have got tickets to see the Alan Parson's Live Project, Jethro Tull and Barclay James Harvest (never heard of them -- should I have?), who are playing there tonight, but they were sold out. I have consoled myself by buying tickets for the Zutons next month.