Derrida watch
Reading obituaries; comment pieces; jokey, dismissive jibes; personal tributes; and public commemorations: it’s still clear that pretty much no-one knows what to say about JD. About JD the man there’s a consensus, from those[…]

Derrida obituary in The Guardian: here. Does a terrific job of a summarising work and life concisely and clearly. The leader here is certainly more appropriate than the Times one mentioned below, and not just because I agree with it to a far greater […]

X marks the spot.
When Fame Academy was on, I argued that a transposition of critical and popular judgement might be under way in tele-land. (Not necessarily a good or a bad thing.) At the very least, what Pop Idol itself did was place the audience, […]

Jacques Derrida 1930-2004
Expect to see more of kind of obscene gloating in the next few days. There are few scholars whose death could provoke such unseemly and offensive glee among the staff of what used to claim to be a paper of record. The violen[…]

Freaky Trigger Top 25 Scariest Things
no. 25: Spiders
I see no dishonour in confessing to a fear of spiders. But let’s get this in proportion: I’m no arachnophobe, and am happy to take on the gentleman’s burden of deporting 8-legged[…]

Hot Stuff. Perhaps this is de rigeur down in Londres, but on my trip to Norwich last week I was amazed/amused to see the latest in vending technology installed at the station… or perhaps the amusing thing was that as soon as someone dragged the[…]

Cut your fringe!
You can amuse yourselves here with 1-star reviews of the worst of the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s possible some of these comments are funnier than the shows themselves. Of course, the secret to the Fringe is that everything is blood[…]

Law of Averages
Reviewing new album Showtime in the Guardian today, Dorian Lynskey comments that ‘ Too often [Dizzee Rascal] dwells on internecine squabbles of which the average listener knows, and cares, little’. Which raises some fascin[…]

Return to Treasure Island
[See also here, here, here and here]
In Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates Harry Ritchie remarks, a propos the legends of Kidd’s lost treasure, ?the idea of burying loot on a tropical island would have struck[…]

Riffing on a theme borrowed from sinkah’s rise and sprawl (the noise piece), k-punk on glampirism. Without wanting to re-open the engagements of the last couple of weeks, it does strike me a) that “Low” is very much the rockist&#821[…]