Sneer, Miss!

[j4]

There really haven't been any good memes lately, have there? That chemical elements one was a bit poor, and I think a couple of people have tried to restart the "Top Million Books In The World EVER" meme, but, well, honestly. I think we should take a leaf out of addedentry's book (pun entended) and compile a list of the Top 100 Things That Don't Exist. No invisible pink unicorns, please. No, really. If you must go for the obvious, at least implement it nicely, like these fake book covers from 'FlapArt' (not a radical women's art collective). I'm reminded of how one of my tutors at Oxford had a book on her shelf with the title "Rosy Fingered Dawn: A Sapphic Romance" (bringing a whole new meaning to her professed field of "devotional literature"), and it took me a whole term of furtively looking at it (and looking at her with poorly-disguised rampant undergraduacy) and trying to find a way to raise the subject casually ... before I finally sneaked a peek (at the book, you naughty readers) while she was making tea and discovered that it was an amusing home-made bookend.

Then there's things that shouldn't exist, but do. First among these this week has to be the announcement of Fatboy Slim and David Byrne's musical about the life of Imelda Marcos. That's got to be more exciting than The Likes of Us, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1965 musical about the life of Dr Thomas Barnardo (yes, that one), which was premiered on R2 on Friday evening. It's not bad, and it benefits enormously from Stephen Fry's arch narratorly interventions, but it's rather a case of having-one's-cake-and-eating-it to come over all apologetically post-modern about one's juvenilia even as it's being launched with great fanfare and an all-star cast.

More wholehearted mockery comes from You Knit What??, a blog devoted to pointing and laughing at knitting patterns. (Ahh, the internet.) There seems to be a fast-growing web genre (for which I'm struggling to think of accurate paper analogies) which consists of excerpting things for the sole purpose of pithily and (hopefully) amusingly tearing them to pieces. Among the sites pointing the (admittedly often deserved) finger of derision are Ugly Dress (bridesmaid dresses), Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing (baby names), Museum of Bad Album Covers and Weight Watchers' Recipe Cards from 1974 (both of which do what they say on the tin -- I know, I know, I've touted the WW Cards and the baby names before, but they're still funny). I guess when publishing is free (as in beer, as in speech, and often as in jazz) there's no premium on contributing nothing but a well-turned sneer. Not that I'm complaining, she sneered.

Don't sneer on your passport photos, though, if you want them to be accepted. Don't smile, either. And when they start using fingerprints as ID instead, don't go swimming or get eczema. Don't indulge in anything resembling anti-social behaviour, either; in fact, go one stage further and proclaim your anti-ASB stance (and your fashion-consciousness) with a classy glow-in-the-dark wristband.

Easy, huh? If only everything was this black and white.

Comments

Faith in fakes

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for fake bookjackets, continuing a long tradition. We've just taken delivery of two bucketloads of 1920s novels rebound to form a uniform shelf for display. It's only in the last century that bookbuyers stopped habitually binding their books for themselves, losing the habit of abbreviating the title on the spine. The tradition of fake books - like those you pull or push to cause the entire case to revolve and give access to your lair - included comedy titles where an imaginary treatise by Prof. Knock on the trees of the world would be condensed to 'KNOCK ON WOOD'.

The analogue analogue of the point-and-laugh sites are the Christmas facsimiles of etiquette handbooks or advice for girls. The difference is that they reproduce the material without commentary, ironic reading taken as read (http://www.livejournal.com/users/kaet/322918.html), whereas the websites bitch with style. (Oh, http://www.threadbared.com/ was the contribution I was struggling to remember.)

[sparrowsion]

'KNOCK ON WOOD'

Modern spines can still sometimes manage to induce a small thrill, such as 'A Man Rides Through Stephen Donaldson'.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

See also The Man Who Melted Jack Dann (http://nielsenhayden.com/jackdann.html).

[ Not often I get content this well suited to an icon. ]

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the panda pics at the end; just the thing to provide a smile after a moderately catastrophic driving lesson. Just four (times two hours) to go before my test and I made three serious errors in 20 minutes.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Inevitably, my eye was drawn by the phrase 'Flap Art' and I'm still sniggering.

In other news, I suspect that a ridiculously high percentage of my LJ consists of statistically improble phrases.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

my eye was drawn by the phrase 'Flap Art' and I'm still sniggering

'Flap Art'; what's that then? The illustrated edition of Rosy Fingered Dawn; A Sapphic Romance?

I'm surprised you walked into that one Jan, that joke title's older than me.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Jan didn't 'walk into' that one, or indeed any other innuendo: she sidled up to it suggestively and whispered something shocking in its ear. She is the only woman I know with a mind even filthier than my own.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Ah, but j4's mind is creatively filthy.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised you walked into that one Jan, that joke title's older than me.

Dude, I was 18! I was still totally bowled over by the idea that there might be other girls out there who liked girls!

[brrm.livejournal.com]

'Flap Art'

I am unflappable!