Thamesbeat

youmightfindyourself: iOS ‘86

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:00:47 +0000

youmightfindyourself:

iOS ‘86

youmightfindyourself: Our Legacy

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:00:23 +0000

youmightfindyourself:

Our Legacy

adamhancher: Link Magazine - Plato

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:29:30 +0000

adamhancher: Link Magazine - Plato

Lee Moses, California Dreaming.

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:29:00 +0000

Lee Moses, California Dreaming.

Whilst I may have left this blog out for the birds, there is...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:01:00 +0000

Whilst I may have left this blog out for the birds, there is still life in the old girl yet.
I understand the sparse reblogs are not an adequate CPR. However, if I didn’t the webpage would grow moldy; my pictures would start to fade, moss would start to cover my few words, grit would get between a link and the mouse.
I know its only you, google bot, who reads this. But I hope it makes your day a bit easier, in-between indexing the flame-wars and karma-whores.
I’ve been stashing my internet treasures and thoughts in evernote where no-one can see them. They will be free soon.

Photo

Sun, 29 May 2011 23:31:05 +0100

Photo

Tue, 03 May 2011 01:19:21 +0100

Not bad. Not bad at all. From putthison: Controversy is brewing...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:55:28 +0100

Not bad. Not bad at all. From putthison:

Controversy is brewing in the UK over outfits. Prime Minister David Cameron has issued a press release, announcing that he won’t be wearing morning dress to the impending wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton. Instead, he’ll wear business dress - a suit and tie. He will be the first Prime Minister to shirk the traditional dress code, and will perhaps be the only man so dressed. (Above, by the way, are Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles at their wedding.)

Many speculate that Cameron is dressing this way to avoid the stigma of his upper-class past. Cameron was a member of Bullingdon, an Oxford club notorious for its exclusivity and its destructive binges. He’s shunned formal dress since his past became an issue when he rose to national prominence, and this is in keeping with that pattern.

It’s tough for an American to judge a choice like this, since class plays so differently here, in a land where we at least pretend that it is a fluid status that comes with hard work and seized opportunities and so forth. Besides which, we have no monarchy, and essentially think of the British royals as amusing anachronisms. So I write from the perspective of a bemused outsider. That said, Cameron’s decision does strike me as both disingenuous and self-centered.

It is disingenuous in that it is an attempt to obscure his past. When Prince Charles dons Highland Dress, it is not because he is trying to pretend to be a Scottish warrior, or lead people to think that he anything other than an English Prince. Instead, it is an act of fellowship and a gesture of respect. Part of dressing, particularly for men, is to humble yourself, even if you are a Prince, by asserting that the custom of the whole is as important as your personal choices. This is why we wear business dress, as well - it is an assertion that we’re all in the same boat, all respect the importance of the situation, and we’ve chosen ceremonial clothing to reflect that fact.

Perhaps if Cameron were a representative of the proletariat he could genuinely claim that breaking this tradition was a revolutionary act. One could then quibble with whether he was leading a just revolution, of course, and the answer would depend on how one felt about the monarchy and so forth, but he would at least have some ground to stand on. Instead, it seems transparent that this is an act of obfuscation in the service of self-interest.

Indeed, it is that self-interest that is the most annoying here. The reason that we all dress the same way for a wedding is respect for the occasion. For those of us in the pews it is a joyous day. For those on the dais it is the most important day of their lives. This is true for Kings and Queens just as it is for street sweepers. We wear clothes that reflect that celebration, but we also wear clothes that indicate ceremonially that we understand how important that day is, clothes that reflect that we are the community that binds together the couple being wed.

If given the opportunity to chat with the PM, my message would be simple, and it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that these people getting married are royalty.

I’d just tell him this: it’s not about you, man.

(Thanks, Ari, for emailing about this.)

Photo

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:53:42 +0100

Photo

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 09:17:11 +0000

apedogs: Mats Holmberg made the most bad ass still life...

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:34:20 +0000

apedogs:

Mats Holmberg made the most bad ass still life painting.

"Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of..."

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:39:23 +0000

“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.”

- Why secondhand bookstores smell good

Perfumes: The Guide (via YMFY)

The Small Faces - Rene (Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, 1968)

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 18:58:00 +0000

The Small Faces - Rene (Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, 1968)

eddieargos: Bring Me The Head Of Michael Portillo - I have now...

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:20:21 +0000

eddieargos:

Bring Me The Head Of Michael Portillo - I have now fallen into a The Family Cat black hole on Youtube. I love this song.

Françoise Dorléac (via L’aquoiboniste: La Peau Dorléac)

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:57:52 +0100

Françoise Dorléac (via L’aquoiboniste: La Peau Dorléac)

Beer

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:35:13 +0100

Beer

pjmix: 247 (by Lina Scheynius)

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:54:31 +0100

pjmix:

247 (by Lina Scheynius)

Ralph Steadman’s White Rabbit

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:49:13 +0100

Ralph Steadman’s White Rabbit

"The loss of liberty incurred by any alternative principle is too high a price to pay to stop people..."

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:28:26 +0100

“The loss of liberty incurred by any alternative principle is too high a price to pay to stop people making dicks of themselves. But, if people are using their freedoms to make dicks of themselves, other people should be able to say so”

- David Mitchell, ‘If Britain decides to ban the burqa I might just start wearing one’. Published in Sunday’s Guardian

Eddie Argos on reading children's books

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:31:00 +0100

I still read children’s books. It is a little embarrassing, but whenever I’m in a charity shop (or “thrift store” to you Americans), I can’t help heading over to the children’s book section and searching for a Three Investigator or Famous Five book I may have missed out on. Don’t get me wrong, I can read. It’s not that I’ve not got past a certain reading level, it’s just that there is something very satisfying about zooming through a book in (at the very most) a couple of hours.

Argos you bastard; you are forcing me to reveal a truth I can no longer contain. About a month ago, I returned to the stockpile of books I collected around the age of 13. They were never read, for I was a connoisseur of fine covers.

Yes. That’s right. I started to read them. In fact, I have just finished The Hobbit. Not too bad you might say. Well how about this: next I’m going to move to His Dark Materials. “That’s alright; Pullman is a great writer who can be enjoyed by all ages”. Well you sir can fuck off, for it is not alright. I demand there be a serious psychological condition with me for wanting to do such a thing. To return to the warmth of the imagination of childhood. Good God, I must be sick. Imagine me, reading Swallows and Amazons. Well I’ll do it, and don’t any of you try and stop me.

To be fair, these days you do get bored reading about the artistic importance of Tsar Nicholas II’s haemorrhoids. I do want to reclaim that colourful imagination and appreciation of adventure that I once had. That is my reason. One last note: we members of society really need to put our heads together and decide to cut-off point for when a teenager has to stop reading books for tweens (think Inkspell) and move onto nice/normal adult books. For I never knew, and therefore one day felt compelled to cast aside that mountain of un-read books. Can a good story be enjoyed by all ages?