February 2012
27 posts
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there are cracks in the world where the time lord gets in but they’re ever so small that’s why time lords are thin
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Matt Smith
prefer him with no clothes on. #the lodger #series 5
my department are teh awesome
especially undergrad secretary Laura Paterson. she is really awesome. and she has nice hair.
so despite having a hard time coming to terms with my tripled workload, am actually really pleased to be teaching Writing and History (even if I am teaching it alongside crappy ‘we love the canon and stuff about the home counties’ module). Laura was like, ‘so, chuffed then?’ and I...
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FOOD PORN = GOOD PORN.
Things I will be teaching this year
Literary periods: Renaissance, romantic, victorian, 20th century, modernism, postmodernism, basically everything since 1603. scottish writing, english writing, indian writing, postcolonial theory, nation theory, feminism, stylistics, ideology and marxism, theory of ethics. Oh, did i mention I’ve NEVER TAUGHT a class before.
Funny shit.
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Walls
In my backyard was a mountain. I climbed it three, four times a week. It was not a big mountain; ninety minutes of climbing but with a thousand ways up. You can’t climb the same mountain twice though it’s as solid as time. And it’s still there, though I don’t climb it now. I haven’t the time, or health, or inclination (if I’m honest). But today I escaped to a...
Gettin a monkey off my back
well, after a sunday in bed reading ‘A History Maker’ (Alasdair Gray) I finally decided to confront my greatest shame and read Lanark, that ‘founding text’ of the modern scottish literary revival (what Rory Watson calls the ‘third wave’ of MacDiarmid’s Renaissance). And am not regretting it, not only is it realy fucking good, but both it and some of the...
I'd almost forgotten what it was like...
to be surrounded by girls wearing clothes 2 sizes too small for them. This is what a culture that relentlessly and unapologetically bullies anyone over a size 12 does to young people. suddenly they’re squeezing their size 16 bodies into size 12 clothing. It makes me sad. the worst thing is, these girls aren’t even fat! and still media culture has gotten to them so much that they...
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A Story of my first Political Campaign, and a Call...
When I was 10ish I was (a very peripheral) part of a campaign to get handguns banned in Scotland. This was part of the aftermath of the Dunblane Massacre, in which a madman with a gun killed a class of schoolchildren, their teacher, and himself. As I type this several people in Cumbernauld are locked in pubs, restaurants, cafes, and shops, while another madman goes around with a gun. Internet...
whatmakespistachionuts asked: Can't be fucked reblogging again and even if I did it would mostly be to point out I was at no point talking about the book; 'Classless' is, like I said, mostly about THE FILMS OF DANNY BOYLE and only has an aside or two about Irvine Welsh. Turns out the chapter on Trainspotting is up on goole books anyway (only half of the last paragraph is missing) so I dunno maybe check that out,...
What makes pistachio nuts?: artkeepsusgoing: What... →
artkeepsusgoing:
What makes pistachio nuts?: Hipsterism, of which Trainspotting is an early example, is the…
Hipsterism, of which Trainspotting is an early example, is the assumption on the part of the middle class subject that there is no position which they cannot occupy, that both…
I don’t actually really disagree with what you’re saying - renton DOES in the final...
What makes pistachio nuts?: Hipsterism, of which... →
Hipsterism, of which Trainspotting is an early example, is the assumption on the part of the middle class subject that there is no position which they cannot occupy, that both class and identity politics have been overcome, or at least that class has been subsumed into identity. The middle…
I don’t think trainspotting is an example of this AT ALL, but there ye go. I think the...
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“To remember everything is a form of madness.”
– Translations, Brian Friel (via millionsmillions)
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“I hope all of us share the view that we can’t simply use the language in the way...”
– Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands
Blacklisting firm opened file on oil industry... →
marxandsparks:
A secret blacklisting file opened on an academic who researched health and safety following the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster alleges the offshore oil industry threatened to cut funding to his university if he “continued to cause problems”.
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stuff i wrote absentmindedly on facebook that...
‘Perhaps the only state left to a stateless nation is its frame of mind, and in that territory it is literature that maps the land’. There is a case - that I dispute - that scotlands writing indicates a freedom at odds with its reality as a stateless nation. So the state of mind (writing) by this logic is preferable to the ‘material’ reality. The more idealist position is...
50 words of random pish
to get back into writing, have decided to write at least 50 words of random pish on a weekly basis. christ, but it was cold. coming up king street, towards the steeple, and you could just button yer coat, but naw, yer fingers were too cold for that kind of thing. wouldnay be long anyway. yer passing the steeple and the jeweller, with it’s gold jewellery taken out of the window, and white...
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one night stand
Your hands everywhere, and me kissing back. I insist on lights off. No one would know. Still, all these words slut, trollope, whore, would hang unpleasantly on tomorrow.
These words are sexist I know. And to forget the education of the television the rom-com crap to be as a robot unable to help its programming and to have no blame and no-one to blame me - I still don’t know whose...
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Carol Ann Duffy is Wrong about Poetry says...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/31/carol-ann-duffy-oxford-professory-poetry?newsfeed=true This article annoys me for two reasons. The first is the assumption made by Geoffrey Hill (whoever he is) that his poetry is ‘democratic’ because it is difficult, thus it assumes everyone is ‘intelligent’. Whose definition of intelligence? An oxbridge professor’s...
@Avril Lavigne
If I didn’t like your girlfriend, I’d have the good grace not to say anything. Just sayin. Cos female solidarity beats females divided over men. United we are stronger!
January 2012
96 posts
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Free Labour and the UK's Youth
This is a shameless plug for another site I blog on, which belongs to Scottish Socialist Youth. The top article is currently mine, it is called ‘Free Labour and the UK’s Youth’ and can be found here: http://ssy.org.uk/ Scottish Socialist Youth are a young activist group open to anyone living in Scotland under the age of 27. We are loosely affiliated to the Scottish Socialist...
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Ewan Morrison: The self-epublishing bubble
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/30/self-e-publishing-bubble-ewan-morrison For those interested in books, capitalism, economics, self-publishing, the internet, and DOOM DOOM DOOM.
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Riot Grrrl Manifesto
BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.
BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other’s work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.
BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.
BECAUSE viewing our work as...
A game - how to shop like meghan.
Stage one: drive to your local supermarket. or walk. no points for this since it’s an essential! Whilst driving, sing anti-polaris songs. 10 points. if you can only remember the rude verses, an additional 5 points. if you don’t know the anti-polaris songs you get 5 points for other scots songs, 5 points for other street songs, and 3 points for any song with a sweary word in it (but you...
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Folky of the day 5
todays folky of the day is a bloke called Martyn Bennett. I’ve learned a few tunes off his maw via that great traditional medium of the CD. Martyn is actually quite well known, especially for his electronic experimental fusion stuff. He is that rare thing, a bloke who carries forward the tradition and also distorts it (at times quite literally) into something yer average oldschool...
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Scenes from Glasgow
A friend of mine having a bitch about someone: ‘he’s just a chubby lecturer anyway’ Me: ‘Wheesht you, one day I intend to be a chubby lecturer!’ I’ve got it all planned out, me. dream high people.
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“Literary sociology has long insisted, as we know, on the relationship between...”
– Franco moretti, 16-17
Not sophie's choice
Watch shakespeare and knit watch masterchef and knit look up shakespeare facts so undergrads think you know what you’re talking about and don’t knit. just go to bed.
OMG WHATEVER SHALL I DO.
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The Banned Song List!
For your pleasure, here are just a few of the banned songs from my personal banned song list. The Dark Island. Island mysticism, magic places, the hebrides being ‘unreal’. give me a break already. jeez. Wild Mountain Thyme. Needs no explanation. empty sentimental pointless shite. purple fucking heather, lassies, crap. Charlie is my darlin. just annoys me. not even for the reasons it...
Starting to wonder...
…how long a person can go without a love life. Bit bored. all work and no play, blah blah blah. bored. Still, today was a gd distraction from such things. bit mixed - was late to my own song presentation, not too chuffed, did manage to inform the relevant people I’d be a bit late though and they were cool. presentation went well. went to pub. stayed at pub. went to an open mike thing...
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FOLKY OF THE DAY 4
I have been neglecting folky of the day cos I’ve been huffing about stuff. Nonetheless, the fourth folky of the day is Brian McNeill. McNeill writes angry ranty songs reacting to cutesy empty tartan nationalism, not being a fan of the Jacobite-nostalgia that characterises much folk music (Charlie Is My Darling, Over The Sea To Skye, and other such sentimental twaddle). Founder member of the...
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“I do not mean that [literature] is unstable because value-judgments are...”
– Terry Eagleton (via sonofapritch)
“There’s certainly an aesthetic dimension to the struggle – part of the reason...”
– Capitalist realism: Is art the alternative?
Mark Fisher talking with Mike Watson. Mixed emotions on this one. Love it in theory, but can’t help remembering all those historical misses of leftist art and design. Especially in the realm of architecture and urban planning, oy!
(I’ll concede Russian...
