Norris’s norks

Although it’s many years since I worked for Guinness World Records, some sort of primeval instinct asserts itself now and again when a relevant news story comes into view. Would I have included it in the book, I wonder? Would it have warranted a picture? Would I have had to mediate over tantrums regarding its validity? All these thoughts flashed through my mind when I heard of the good ladies of Worcester, who had attempted to break the record for the most bras linked together, but were forced to call it off when the relevant undergarments became entangled. As such, it wouldn’t have made the cut. But it is, in its own way, the perfect British silly season story, in that it combines three highly attractive narrative components: admirable charitable instincts; breasts; and plucky failure.

Never mind, maybe a nice picture of a young Charlotte Rampling in a bra will boost my viewing figures again.

You're a pink paintbrush, I'm a blue paintbrush

Carrying on with the art/sex dialectic that seems to have taken hold in recent days:

One of the more tedious responses to that which the Daily Mail still persists in calling "political correctness" is to demand equal treatment for majority and/or privileged groups. If a students' union has a women's officer, the argument goes, we should have a men's officer. If there's a Black Police Association, why not a White Police Association? Which leads inexorably to heterosexual-only nightclubs, although if you extracted all the gay influences from modern club culture, you'd be left with two blokes called Dave headbanging to Hi Ho Silver Lining.

So what happens when this sort of reactionary pointscoring becomes flesh? What happens when someone stages, let's say, an exhibition of male art?

Unless a certain popular philosopher has sneaked in when I wasn't looking, you can read the rest of it here.

Eeyores of the world unite

There are numerous good reasons to purchase Shaggy Blog Stories: a Collection of Amusing Tales from the UK Blogosphere, the book that Troubled Diva and chums have thrown together in record time. Above all, it should raise a decent sum for charity, under the auspices of the hugely successful Comic Relief brand. Not only that, it contains contributions from many fine bloggers, including wotserface and thingy and oojamaflip and the other one. And, of course, it deserves success simply because of the effort that must have gone into such a project. It's almost a year since I signed the contract for my book (Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album, and I mention that only as part of my ongoing experiment to track the correlation between online mentions of a book and Amazon rankings, honest) and the bloody thing's still not in the shops yet. Props to The Diva. And respeck. And, um, t'ing.

However, for all the success that will deservedly cascade upon the Shagtastic tome, I worry that it excludes an important, but overlooked minority within the blogosphere. Those of us who aren't blessed with the amusingosity gene; who can only develop a red nose if we leave our antihistamines at home; who know only too well the dreaded Tumbleweed Moment. Just as the blogiverse is blessed with jesters and wits, it also has space for those of us whose talents lie elsewhere: moroseness; complaining; grumpiness; pessimism; decomposing appendages; and, as the lovely Misty so rightly commented here only the other day, cosy, posturing intolerance. Imagine a bound volume containing the finest examples of such ball-aching misery. Could it not shift, ooh, tens of copies?

So, anyone up for it? Sadly, in the absence of an umbrella organisation (anyone for Curmudgeon Relief?) we may have a more uphill struggle on our hands than the chroniclers of jollity and japery. But we're used to such Sisyphean drudgery and frustration. I don't think we can hope to match the industry and enthusiasm of the Shaggy Bloggers - indeed, I reckon such a thing would be rather against the whole spirit of the venture. So, if we're really after a gimmick, perhaps this could aim to be the most ill-conceived, ill-tempered, protracted and ultimately unsuccessful charity blook project of all time.

Although, knowing my luck, I'd probably arse the whole thing up.

Sense of hooter

James BC directs us to a project that a) may raise a few quid for the many worthy causes supported by Comic Relief, and yet b) doesn't make more discriminating viewers want to disembowel the leading lights of Light Entertainment. Go here for details.

I might pitch something in, but I don't really think I do funny ha ha particularly well.