Poetry corner…

Channel 4's The 10 O'Clock Show is - like its father The Daily Show - not quite as good as it thinks it is, but Charlie Brooker's poem about the Sun's habitual targets was sublime. It's the joy of a headlong, impassioned rant tied to a sense of form and structure:



It reminds me of Marcus Brigstocke's soliloquy on the subject of religious intolerance. Not 'fair' perhaps but satire doesn't do nuance:



PS: If you can't see the Brooker rant, it's because C4 have done something weird. They gave out the embed code, but it's not very reliable.

Morning has cracked, rather than broken

Another day dawns, grudgingly, over Wolverhampton. Yesterday finished in a mixture of joy and tears: my mother was meant to appear with various household items, but instead spent several hours by the roadside waiting for the AA, having filled the diesel tank with petrol - a very expensive error. No doubt my dad is slightly peeved, but he's done it more than once, as I hope mother reminds him.

After that, it was off to Marcus Brigstocke, and his God Collar routine. He is, quite simply, a very funny man with an interestingly varied career for a posh bloke. Eating disorders, working on oil rigs, podium dancer at the Ministry of Sound, Oxbridge and an excellent line in angry, witty liberalism. That's harder than it sounds, by the way: it's easy to be an angry, witty lefty, but expounding satirical disappointment with the world while trying to see every point of view can leave you in danger of having no clear line. Not Marcus. He'd like to believe in god, but can't quite manage it - the show is essentially his exploration of apologetic atheism and the various inconsistencies which mark religion as a bundle of common sense mixed up with weirdo mumbo-jumbo. Highly recommended. He does have a thing about circumcision though, and plots to make the interval specially uncomfortable for the gentlemen by asking them to check, while standing at the urinals, who's been telling the truth…

Work sucks

That's quite enough for one day. I'm off to buy tickets for The Unthanks (formerly Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, a very creepy folk band) and for Marcus Brigstocke, who makes my feeble attempts at sarcasm seem very amateur indeed. His rants are easily available on the web and are well worthy finding, such as this one:

I'm also off to get a hair cut. Not sure which one though, buy shoe polish, choose and air a suit and all the stuff I need to do for my sister's wedding on Saturday. I'm hoping for rain - I suspect she isn't.