criticising the critic's critic

I don’t know if Norman Lebrecht has some sort of personal feud going on with Anthony Tommasini, or if perhaps Lebrecht is just jealous that he wasn’t invited to teach the Oberlin Conservatory’s criticism course and is hence arbitrarily spouting bile at random targets. But either way, he has crossed a line with this post, in which he takes a completely unobjectionable piece of text by Tommasini and subjects it to a sort of incompetent pedantry, in an effort to make Tommasini look stupid. Needless to say, he not only fails, but he also comes across so spectacularly small-minded and dim that it's actually worth pointing out.

a gratuitously aggressive title would be "occupy THIS"

With apologies for furthering the argument... in response to this. I have two outstanding questions after reading it, even though it's probably the fairest account in support of the protests that i've read.

1. What is an occupation? Why do protesters occupy things? Seriously. I’m not sure any more. I thought the whole point of occupation was to cause inconvenience. Presumably, the Occupy Wall Street thing chose Wall Street rather than, I don’t know, Sunset Boulevard, because it was a location broadly associated with the reason for protesting. Otherwise - if location hadn't mattered - they should probably have chosen a field, because it is easier to camp in a field than on Wall Street. Clearly, the occupiers wanted to occupy the place they had issues with. Occupy London Stock Exchange would have done the same, but as we all know they couldn’t go to London Stock Exchange, so they occupied a square outside a cathedral instead, because it was nearby. But as they had no particular issue with the cathedral, they attempted to be as nice to it as possible. Fair enough.

But they were, on the other hand, still occupying the area. And doing this quite successfully, it would seem, as they have caused the cathedral sizeable inconvenience. This is utterly undeniable. Even if the cathedral staff wanted to remain open and the police waterboarded them into coalescence (actually, especially if so, thinking about it), the cathedral has obviously now been caused sizeable inconvenience. St Paul’s has shut and is losing money needed for maintenance. This would not have occurred if the protesters had not occupied the square in front of it. The cathedral has suffered because of the protesters.

Given that (as noted) the protesters are not protesting against the cathedral, I can only conclude that they have massively misfired, and, somewhere along the way, forgotten why protesters occupy particular things.

2. Can the protesters really be credited with making bankers reevaluate their life choices and capitalism? I do know quite a few people who have gone into what is essentially the financial sector. None of them match the stereotype of the ‘greedy banker’. Maybe they are just not rich or fat enough yet. Or, on the other hand, maybe they have just chosen a convenient job which they know will earn them a good – excellent, in fact – living salary. Pretty logical really. I absolutely would have done the same if i'd had any common sense. (But no, i'll work three unpaid internships simultaneously, that'll be really clever and fun.) But the main point here is that my friends haven’t got these boring money jobs because they are massively enchanted with capitalism or because they love money and enjoy spitting on tramps and hippies. Working in finance makes sense for many practical reasons, and that’s it; we say that you ‘sell your soul’ when you get a job in the city precisely because such work is uninspiring and unengaging. 99 percent of the time, working in the city is not love for money, but just convenience. Greedy bankers are straw men; most of them are just bankers, profiting from a system prepared to give them lots of money for reasonable work.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that plenty of bankers and whoever else think that the protesters have a point. Why not? It's not like it's costing them anything. They may have a slightly greater vested interest in capitalism than the protesters, but let’s be honest – everyone knows that capitalism isn’t going to vanish any time soon; the protesters aren’t actually a threat, are they. And although they may depend on it to some extent, it’s deeply unlikely that a majority of bankers actually feel any particular attachment towards capitalism as a system in itself. It's just this weird alien thing giving them stuff. A banker expressing support for the Occupy movement is like a 12-year-old whispering to himself in his bedroom that his headmaster has a silly name, even though he’s just been given a scholarship. Or something. Hmm.

What annoys me most of all, though, is how my default writing mode is 'hugely sarcastic and bitter', but i don't seem able to change that. Plus it is quite late so i will stop. Sorry!

because picking jokes apart makes them funnier

I wrote a crossword clue today that i'm proud of:

In which one might have weed or hemp - batch almost baked (7,3)

the answer is

crap riddles

That anybody, anywhere, could possibly have considered this to be anything remotely resembling a riddle in any conceivable sense of that word absolutely amazes me.  Here it is again.

A woman walked into an office building, looked at the guard, and said her name was Jenny. The next day she walked into the same building, looked at the same guard and said her name was Julie. What is going on?

CLUE: use psychology

ANSWER: The woman has Multiple Personality Disorder. This happens when a traumatic experience causes so much pain that they make another personality to cope with the situation.

If that's a riddle, so are these.  This is a decent enough conceit for a blog post right?

A woman walks into a shop and asks how much a particular item costs.  The shop assistant informs her that it costs £7.50.  The woman thanks the shop assistant and informs him that she will probably buy the item.  However, in fact she has no intention of buying the item and simply returns it to the shelf and leaves.  What is going on?

CLUE: use philosophy

to the person from Santa Barbara, CA who found my blog through googling the phrase "what song goes like da"

thank you

facts gleaned from the Virgin Encyclopedia of 80s Music

Q: What is the difference between Stan Stammers and Elvis Costello?

limericks which end with the same rhyme they start with

I'm usually slightly disappointed when Edward Lear's limericks end with the same rhyme they start with, probably just because we've come to expect limericks not to do this.  But sometimes i quite like the effect of this repetition, such as in this example, which has a really charming pointlessness to it:

There was an old man of Dundee,
Who frequented the top of a tree;
   When disturbed by the crows,
   He abruptly arose,
And exclaimed, "I'll return to Dundee."

So tonight, when i couldn't sleep for some reason, i wrote eight limericks which adopt this form and here they are because this is obviously newsworthy.  Initially they were meant to be in the style of Lear, but here i have been very inconsistent.

There was an old woman of York,
Who would eat with two knives and no fork;
   When asked why this was,
   She replied, "It's because
"There's a really cheap knife shop in York."

There once was a mayor of Chicago,
Who imposed a potato embargo.
   He made people evade
   All potato-based trade,
As they had plenty there, in Chicago.

VERY

Is there a less rock-and-roll word than "very"?