‘I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you
I know you were right, believing for so long
I’m all out of love, what am I without you
I can’t be too late to say I was so wrong’

Considering media, public and private space is pretty dull until it happens to you and the flooding in Oxford presented an opportunity to swim in the medieval intricacies of the usually mundane dialogue between being and nothingness. Hmm.

"At an Oxford Union Debate on 18 May the motion 'This House believes that the Internet is the greatest force for democratization in the World' was defeated...speaking in favour of the Internet as a democratizing force were Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Ron Deibert (University of Toronto) and Bo Aung Din (Burma PDP), and in opposition: Jonathan Zittrain (OII), Robert Amsterdam (Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Lawyer) and John Palfrey (Berkman Center)."

I was tied up yesterday planting potatoes and since nobody else bothered to get off their skinny web veined ass to wish old Bill Shakespeare a happy birthday here goes: happy birthday.

William the playwright no doubt added lots of novelty to theatre but his son William Shakespeare Jr. invented a lovely fishing reel "with a device for winding fishing line evenly back on the spool" and his contribution to international culture has never been properly acknowledged.

Artists pride themselves as being innovators & early adopters and jump at the chance to change history but opportunities, in these days of trouble and strife, are thin on the ground but verily I say unto you there are opportunities. There are opportunities in the hills. There are opportunities in the valleys and on the plains. There ARE opportunities in this vale of tears, this mortal plain and they reach across this great country from the swamps of Alabama to the cornfields of Nebraska and these opportunities touch every man, woman and child in this great nation, this one nation under God, this testimony to righteousness and purity and grace. My Brothers and Sisters I don't have to remind you we are a people set apart. A chosen people created by God and by God with God and through God we will create and I'd like to share a

'Don't tell me what the poets are doing.'
Poets, The Tragicially Hip

An 'interesting' test of authorial positioning is to look at the sloppy kissy use of "" or '' and harumph over the assumptions 'masking' the POWER
STRUCTURES GOVERNING CULTURAL BEHAVIOR, DAMN Caps lock. The use of quotation marks points toward patronization and irony but what happens when a 'cool' museum and college host a session on the latest fifty 'nifty' ideas creeping, or is it rolling, around the next 'bend'? A triple inversion? Ooh la la la la. I can barely conceal my 'excitement'. Irritating isn't it?

Walter Raleigh isn’t mentioned in Harding and Taigel’s essay ‘An Air of Detachment: Town Gardens in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ possibly because he was beheaded in the early 17th century. But lacking inclusion hasn’t diminished his reputation as a smoker and, more to the point, an early adopter of Peruvian cuisine. As a dedicated consumer of both Nicotiana tabacum and Solanum tuberosum I was anxious to interview one of the first Englishmen to share my addictions. Walter refused to conduct an email interview so we met last Saturday night at the Harcourt Arms in Oxford while he was in town to wrap up some business at Oriel College.

So Ganesha and Jesus have been sitting in the Deux Magots for the past few hours downing tequila shots when Pollock comes slobbering and joins them. It’s been raining all day. Their bell bottoms are soaked and their leather sandals are squishy, mud and bits of leaves stuck between their toes. Jesus lites another smoke and squints at Pollock, ‘Where’s Hermes, I thought he was with you? The little creep owes me money.