“I’ll wager xwaxboz quatloos on the newcomer“: [v.long post alert]
Aliens in SF movies are mostly humans in rubber suits for a good practical reason. But since humans read books to find out about themselves, aliens in SF novels are[…]

Beware the floating eye — this book about the symbolism found in the various elements of the US dollar bill is sorta good, sorta not. There’s a lot of basic history about the design of the bill which is very interesting, along with detai[…]

Appliance Anniversary OK the list of wedding anniversaries is well known to be a bit lame – paper/cotton/fruit etc etc. – but Wedding Guide UK’s updated SPEND-MORE-MONEY-PLEASE list of ‘modern anniversaries’ is simply me[…]

Trivial Inaccuracies
Chris once said I was the only person he knew who tried to land on the brown squares on a Trivial Pursuit board. That’s true, without the brown I would be far less competitive. So, inaccuracies get my goat.
This question tu[…]

BROWN WEDGE QUIZ OF THE WEEK
You pick up useless facts when researching. Occasionally said useless facts stick. After spending yesterday speed reading all of the playbills of West End plays for the last seventy years, here is a nice little fact I gle[…]

Teetering on the Edge of the Precipice of Spannerism
G’s post about the Routemaster Festival reminds me of the time I went to the London Transport Acton Town Depot.
I’d been to the London Transport Musuem and thought it absolutely superb.[…]

yes yes but can he write?:
For years I have loved almost everything abt Alexander Cockburn’s The Golden Age Is In Us: Journeys and Encounters, 1987-1994, from the cover inwards: it’s kind of a blog, actually – snippets of pieces pu[…]

A little bitter, a little sweet, that’s how he likes his life to be: being a Marc Almond fan has actually been good fun over these many years now…half my life, I think, more if you count hearing That Soft Cell Song from an early age. St[…]

Franz Ferdinand’s Car
The material remains of my childhood library rest in a dank loft in my parents’ garage. Whenever I visit, I rummage. My favourite book (as a kid) was a Pan paperback called Stranger than Science. Last month I found[…]

Routemasters in Finsbury Park
 
“Basically, it’s a tank without a gun barrel” said a man in a white shirt with yellow armpits. This was considered insightful judging by the nodding it produced. Routemasters are being phased out[…]