The Poor Mouth

A date for the diary: Hein Heckroth

2009-11-22T17:45:00.004Z

Today's Guardian reports that the BFI will hold an exhibition of paintings produced by German artist Hein Heckroth.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger formed one of the greatest partnerships in British cinema giving us such gems as A Matter of Life and Death, The Black Narcissus and perhaps their "Sistine Chapel" the Red Shoes.

In advance of the release of a restored version of the Red Shoes, some of the 2,000 artworks Heckroth produced in his role as set designer (for which he won an Oscar) for the film are being exhibited from 26 November.

I am not familiar with his work but a search on the work he did for the Red Shoes certainly makes me want to visit the exhibition.

Hugo Chavez talks crap, part 2465

2009-11-22T16:55:00.002Z

Whatever he good may or may not do in Venezuela itself, Hugo Chavez consistently shows himself to be an imbecile when it comes to world affairs.

In a televised speech socialist politicians from various countries , Chavez managed to support Carlos the Jackal, reiterate his friendship for Mugabe and Ahmadinejad and even consider that Amin was not such a bad fellow after all...

The Venezuelan president praised Carlos — aka Ilich Sanchez Ramirez, a poor little rich kid Venezuelan who was generally who took up terrorism as something to do – as a useless as a freedom fighter — "revolutionary fighter" who supported the cause of the Palestinians. (not that his acts really did much to help the Palestinian cause much. "They accuse him of being a terrorist, but Carlos really was a revolutionary fighter,"

Chavez also sought to defend other leaders he said are wrongly labelled "bad boys" internationally, including Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Chavez called both of them brothers and said he now wonders whether Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was truly as brutal as he was reputed to be.

"We thought he was a cannibal," Chavez said, referring to Amin, whose regime was notorious for torturing and killing suspected opponents in the 1970s. "I have doubts. ... I don't know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot."
Carlos the Jackal was hardly a principled fighter dedicated to the Palestinian cause. He was clearly in it for the money and, presumably, the violence. What does Chavez have to say about Carlos being hired by the Securitate to kill Romanian dissidents,. not that he was successful...

As for Mugabe and Ahmadinejad, Chavez once again spits in the face of those who want a better Zimbabwe and Iran but, hey Mugabe and Ahmadinejad are anti American so it’s all okay...

And Amin, where do you start?

The more Chavez opens his mouth the more of a twat he sounds. Perhaps he would be better sticking to Venezuela and not making an idiot of him

Now Jacko turns up in a foetal scan

2009-11-21T17:57:00.002Z

Just when you think we have seen enough bad simulacra for a year (and it has been a bumper crop this year). This time it’s Michael Jackson once again.

According to the Telegraph parents-to-be Dawn Kelley and William Hickman had the fright of their life when looking at the ultrasound scan of their unborn baby, realising that it looked like the late pop singer.

Mr Hickman said: “We were looking at the pictures again, and I just saw Jacko there. None of us are really Michael Jackson fans. I mean I like him, but we’re not crazy about him or anything.”

Ms Kelley said: “I’ve had plenty of scans before and none of the photos have ever looked like this one. It’s a bit spooky really.”

Hmm even after death it seems that Michael Jackson can’t help hanging around children even if the child in question is a foetus....

A belated apology from Thierry Henry

2009-11-21T16:50:00.003Z

Thierry Henry at Customs control at Dublin Airport

Better late than never some may say (although perhaps better he owned up to his handball at the time) but Thierry Henry has apologised for his handball during the World Cup playoff between France and the Republic of Ireland.

According to a report in today’s Guardian he now believes a replay would be the "fairest solution" to the continuing furore over the handball which led to the goal that eliminated Ireland from World Cup qualification, and said Ireland "deserve to be in South Africa".

"Naturally I feel embarrassed at the way that we won and feel extremely sorry for the Irish who definitely deserve to be in South Africa," said Henry in a statement today. "Of course the fairest solution would be to replay the game but it is not in my control."

Henry handled the ball twice immediately before passing to team-mate William Gallas to score his side's decisive goal in the 1-1 draw on Wednesday, but referee Martin Hansson still allowed it despite vehement protests from the Ireland players.

In a statement he said: "I have said at the time and I will say again that yes I handled the ball. I am not a cheat and never have been. It was an instinctive reaction to a ball that was coming extremely fast in a crowded penalty area.

"It is impossible to be anything other than that. I have never denied that the ball was controlled with my hand. I told the Irish players, the referee and the media this after the game. Naturally I feel embarrassed at the way that we won and feel extremely sorry for the Irish who definitely deserve to be in South Africa. There is little more I can do apart from admit that the ball had contact with my hand leading up to our equalising goal and I feel very sorry for the Irish."

Fifa have already turned down an Irish request for a replay of the match. Unsurprisingly the French have rejected any appeal.

Ireland's captain, Robbie Keane, said: "On behalf of the Republic of Ireland players, I would like to thank Thierry Henry for his statement this afternoon that in his opinion a replay would be the fairest option. I would also be happy for a replay to happen in the interest of fair play so that whichever team qualifies, can do so with their heads held high. We can only hope that the French Football Federation might accept the wishes of both captains in the best interests of the game."

Fat chance Robbie! The French are not going to throw away the millions they will earn from qualifying for the finals no matter how unfair it was. As for Henry, his apology is a little hollow given that he didn’t exactly pipe up at the time.
But then football is a funny old game. Shame nobody is laughing much...

Photo Hunt - Birds

2009-11-20T20:34:00.003Z

The theme for this week's Photo Hunt is birds. So here are some birds... Top is a crow in flight outside my home. In the middle are two amorous pigeons in a neighbour's garden. Bottom is a sparrow tucking into sunflower seeds in Paris

Wonders never cease... at least for a minute anyway

2009-11-20T00:40:00.000Z

Boris having been an only cat all his life (until July anyway) does not play well with others. Robyn has lived with other cats all his life so is more tolerant. It was still a surprise to see them both together - Robyn had jumped up and curled up beside Boris - and for a while they were quite content.. until Boris remembered himself and took a swipe at the old fellow

This week's entry for the Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats.

Linguistics the final frontier

2009-11-19T21:30:00.001Z

Minnesotan D'Armond Speers has been on a three-year mission in which he boldly split infinitives where no man had split them before

For three years Speers, a software consultant and expert in computational linguistics, spoke only Klingon to his son as part of an experiment to understand how children learn languages.

"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language. He was definitely starting to learn it."

D'Armond's wife spoke in standard English.

D'Armond has since landed a job with an internet software company creating a dictionary in Klingon for use in language applications on mobile phones and computers

Hmm I wonder what his Kindergarten chums will think when Speers Minor calls them P’tachs!

Voted least likely to visit Ireland over the next twelve lifetimes

2009-11-19T20:37:00.003Z

I can't imagine that Thierry Henry will be welcome in Ireland any time soon after a blatant handball that led to France's winning goal last night. Sadly France are in the World Cup Finals and Ireland aren't. That is the outcome I would have expected but not this way.

Then again football is an ever more squalid game...

2009-11-18T22:01:00.002Z

I would like to thank a person from West Haven, Connneticut for being visitor 600,000. Not eaxctly sure what he or she was looking at but it was something in the December 2007 archive....hiho

Q. How do you find a Nazi war criminal?

2009-11-18T21:04:00.001Z

A. Look them up in the phone book according to the Times and several other papers.

90-year-old Adolf Storms, a former member of elite Waffen SS Wiking Division has been charged with the murder of 58 Hungarian Jews. He was found by University of Vienna

Towards the end of the war the Wiking Division was in Austria
Storms was charged at a regional court in Duisburg with the following

“On March 29, 1945, the accused and his accomplices brought at least 57 Jewish forced labourers in several groups to a nearby forest area, where they had to surrender their valuables and kneel by a grave. The accused and other SS members then cruelly shot the Jewish forced labourers from behind.”

According to testimony laid before the court 57 labourers were killed near the Austrian village of Deutsch Schuetzen. On 30 March Storms allegedly shot another Jewish labourer who could not keep up on a forced march between Deutsch Schuetzen and the village of Hartberg

The mass grave at Deutsch Schuetzen was excavated in 1995 and the bodies were given proper funerals

As yet no living witness has been found to testify on the mass shooting; the case against Mr Storms for that alleged atrocity will be based on written statements made in previous trials.

Mr Forster, who was studying the forest massacre for part of his university course, was reviewing the files on the Hitler Youth burial unit and came across the name of Mr Storms. He searched German telephone books and worked out that a Duisburg pensioner matched the description.

Storms, apparently, remembers nothing about the massacre.

It remains to be seen if he ever comes to trial but even at this very late stage I wonder if there are others like him who realise that there is still just enough time for that knock at the door

History made in Hornchurch

2009-11-17T21:52:00.006Z

Hornchurch stadium is one of my area’s unsung local amenities. Located just beyond Upminster Bridge station it is the home of Hornchurch AFC “the Mighty Urchins”), currently in the lower half of the Ryman’s Premier League and the Havering-Mayesbrook Athletic Club.

It’s never going to host International events but amazingly it has seen at least two world best times since it was opened in 1956.

On 17 May 1956. 22-year old Bristol athlete Phyllis Perkins recorded a time of 4:35.4, beating Nina Pletnyova’s record set in 1952 by 1.6 seconds.

Phyllis Perkins represented the UK in the 800m at the Rome Olympics. Sadly, she failed to qualify from her heat.

The following year (16 May 1957) 24-year old Diane Leather smashed Perkins’s record by over 5 seconds, recording a time of 4:30 dead. She bettered this time at a meet in London in July and remained the record holder until New Zealander Marise Chamberlain clocked a time of 4:19 in December 1962.

Diane Leather was one the finest British female athletes of the 1950s: she was the first woman to break the 5 minute mile mark just three weeks after Roger Bannister went below four minutes. She was silver medallist in the 800m at both the 1954 and 1958 European Championships.

Sadly neither Phyllis Perkins nor Diane Leather were technically world record holders as the IAAF did not recognise female 1500m times until 1967... not that this means that their achievements are diminished in any way

WW - More Fireworks

2009-11-17T11:38:00.002Z

This week's entry for the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of Wordless Wednesday.

It’s Sunday night in Rome....

2009-11-16T20:18:00.001Z

Just a gigolo

You’re a beautiful young woman in Rome. You have been recruited to attend a lavish function. Do you:

Expect Silvio Berlusconi to turn up and slobber down your cleavage
Get whisked off to a sun kissed resort by a rich, but elegant Playboy
Get a lecture on Islam and be sent packing with a 50 Euro note and a copy of the Koran?

If you answered c) you are correct. According to the BBC the girls received a lecture on the wonders of Islam by Muammar Gaddafi, who was in town for the UN food summit.

Having been selected the women were taken to an imposing reception room, they were then left waiting for an hour without so much as a glass of water until Gaddafi arrived and proceeded to preach the benefits of Islam, taking particular pains to assure his guests that it was not misogynistic, and encouraging them to convert.

Two hours later, the women left, looking a touch bemused, 50 euros ($75; £45) better off and clutching a copy of the Koran.

So there you have it - just another Sunday night in the eternal city

Edward Woodward RIP

2009-11-16T19:24:00.004Z

I was saddened to hear that actor Edward Woodward has died, aged 79. Woodward.

Woodward is known for his major tv series Callan and The Equalizer, but his finest hour was certainly the role of Sergeant Howie in the Wicker Man (the original and not the abysmal remake starring Nicholas Cage).

The still shows Howie catching sight of the Wicker Man, his final resting place.

Reflection IV

2009-11-15T17:40:00.003Z

Bayeux

Reflection III

2009-11-15T17:38:00.001Z

from a stream in Bayeux

Listening to the Hitchcock 1

2009-11-14T21:24:00.006Z

I've been meaning to do some sort of guide to Robyn Hitchcock's discography for ages but I never got around to it.

However, the Economic Voice has asked for some advice on the best Robyn CDs to purchase

Robyn has an extensive discography having produced his first LP back in 1979 with the Soft Boys. Many of them are excellent, some are indispensable and a few are to be avoided at all costs.

The First Indispensable Robyn Album is the 1980 Soft Boys album Underwater Moonlight sadly it is not available at present except at a stupid price. Hopefully it will be reissued soon. I will talk about it in a later post.

The first indispensable album that is also currently available is is Robyn's third solo release from 1984 I Often Dream of Trains.

Performed without the Egyptians (ex Soft Boys Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor) as most of his albums were up to the mid 1990s it is an acoustic recording featuring some of his finest songs and some of his strangest too.

After the beautiful opening piano piece "nocturne" you face the odder aspect of Robyn in the form of "Sometimes I wish I was a Pretty Girl", the reason being that it will permit him to loofah himself in the shower... After "Cathedral" you come to "Uncorrected Personality Traits" in which you discover that Even Marilyn Monroe was a man (even this get overlooked by our mother fixated, sexist media). Next comes one of the first true highlights the sparse"It Sounds Great When you're Dead". Next comes the beautiful "Flavour of Night" and the amusing "Sleeping Knights of Jesus"

Side two of the original vinyl release features the sublime "Trams of Old London", "I Often Dream of Trains", "Autumn is Your Last Chance" and closes with a reprise of "Nocturne". The only irritating track on the whole album is the odd "Furry Green Atom Bowl"

The current CD release features ten bonus tracks, of varying quality

A live DVD recording of the album, featuring most of the songs is being released on Monday, based on a series of concerts recorded by Robyn last year.

His next Album Fegmania from 1985 is excellent although it does feature a bit of filler.

There isn't a poor track among the 11 on the original album but a number are far from being anything other than filler. Still it has two of Robyn's absolute classics "Heaven" (why this was not a huge hit I will never know) and the glorious "My Wife and my Dead Wife" (A good reason to give thanks for Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit!). Other fine tracks include "Egyptian Cream", the very strange "Man With the Lightbulb Head" and "Strawberry Mind". Extra tracks on the current release include Robyn's take on "Bells of Rhymney" and "Somebody", both of which should have been on the original album instead of some of the filler.

I must say that Robyn is an acquired taste, a bit like Marmite. His more curious songs can irritate some people far more than they amuse. Me they amuse though....

Here are versions of some of my favourite tracks off both albums.

Not quite the pride of Romford

2009-11-14T20:58:00.003Z

Local scouts has made the national press for all the wrong reasons. Not for him “bob a jobs” or other goodly works. The little louts made the news by making anti Semitic comments at last Sunday’s Remembrance Parade at the war memorial in Romford

According to the Guardian and other papers, at least explorer scouts taking part in Remembrance Sunday service in Romford, Essex was heard to repeatedly shout "Let's kill the Jews" at Jewish veterans.

The Rev Lee Sunderland, who was taking part in the service, expressed shock after hearing the scouts shout: "Here come the Jews, let's kill the Jews."

Other witnesses said the racists chants were started by a boy believed to be 15 years old. One of the troop has since come forward and been interviewed by police. He has been ordered by the Scout Association to visit the rabbi of the Romford and district synagogue to apologise in person.

Jack Rose from the synagogue said: "They were boy scouts who are supposed to be true to their cause. Somewhere along the line someone has been completely stupid or they really think these things."

Paul Freedman, an 84-year-old Jewish former RAF pilot who laid a wreath at the service, challenged the scouts. "I was absolutely fuming ... I told them I was a Jew and I'd spent four and a half years in the RAF during the second world war, and that Jewish people had sacrificed so much for freedom," he told the Evening Standard.

Simon Carter, a spokesman of the Scout Association, said the scout who confessed to starting the chant flouted the scouting ethos. "As scouts we promise to do our duty and to help other people. Clearly this child has not lived up to this promise”.

Frankly there is at least one scout I would love to see have his arse kicked from the Western Road Synagogue, around the Ring Road twice, up South Street, through the market and finally across to the memorial garden where he can bend over and let the populace (except the 15% of local vermin who voted BNP) take a good run up for a kick...

On the other hand I hope he undertakes some appropriate community service that will ensure it will be several lifetimes before he makes anti Semitic comments again

Photo Hunt - Music

2009-11-13T18:22:00.004Z

The theme for this week's Photo Hunt is music. Mercifully this is a no-brainer as I can present some photos I've taken at concerts this year:

This is France-based Iranian singer Darya Dadvar performing at her first ever UK concert back in May

Dame Pandora of french band Dark Sanctuary playing their first ever London concert which, sadly, was their last ever concert

My favourite artist of all time, Robyn Hitchcock performing a benefit concert two weeks ago for medecins sans frontieres.

This is what the artists sound like live . The Robyn song is called Airscape and is one of my all time favourite songs but the Dark Sanctuary and Darya songs are wonderful too

Boris is comfortable

2009-11-13T00:06:00.002Z

The not-wife is on the put you up bed downstairs leaving me to a double bed all to myself. Better that than a chance to catch swine flu overnight. Boris is particularly pleased in that it is comfortable and not far from the fire

This week's entry for the Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats.

When mad science met the tobacco industry

2009-11-12T16:28:00.006Z

Still feeling rough so I have decided to rehash yet another post from the early days of the Poor Mouth. This one featured the hugely powerful opioid Etorphine and Big Tobacco.

I've been fascinated by Etorphine ever since it was mentioned duting a pharmacology lecture in the second year of my Physiologu and Biochemistry degree course. It is an opioid that is it is a synthetic relative of Morphine. However, it is many thousands of times more powerful. First synthesised in 1963 it is best known as “Elephant Juice” the drug that can drop a rampaging elephant in a second. just 4mg of the stuff will bring down an elephant, a mere 1mg does for a rhino - that is how powerful the drug is!

Correct target demographic

Quite astonishingly the Molecule of the Month (yes it does exist and has been featuring a different molecule each month since 1996) entry on Etorphine included the sentence “Scientists at BAT (British American Tobacco) once debated adding it to tobacco as it might create an addictive craving for it”

Etorphine in cigarettes? I seriously thought that this was a joke until I came across a 2003 article in the BMJ journal Tobacco Control Online (The link now requires registration) :

“... Dr Sydney J Green, then British American Tobacco’s (BAT’s) senior scientist for research and development. Green informed his readers about"way-out" developments at BAT including :

"A way-out development is that of compounds (such as etorphine) which are 10,000 times as effective as analgesics [such] as morphine and which are very addictive. It is theoretically possible (if politically unthinkable) to add analytically undetectable quantities of such materials to cigarettes to create brand allegiance. But this thought may suggest the possibility of such compounds occurring naturally."

Me having a quick fag break in 1987

Green’s report followed an earlier memo from Keith D Kilburn to CI Ayres, expressing concern about what BAT’s competitors might be doing in order to create brand allegiance. Kilburn proposed that a regular etorphine dose of as little as 0.2 microgram per day would be sufficient to create an addictive craving for the source. He also claimed that the "required delivery per cigarette…would be analytically difficult to measure."

Etorphine is extraordinarily dangerous stuff: fatal overdoses to vets (as in vetinarians) attempting to dart animals have been recorded. As a consequence vets who are registered to use etorphine must now have an assistant standing by with a dose of antagonist in hand.

I suppose one should not be surprised that Big Tobacco might have considered using etorphine as an additive, despite it being sheer and utter madness! It is just as well they never implemented the plan. On the other hand one would probably go down well after a coke Coke and a McOpium'n'cheeze burger.....

Trash Metal from around the world 1: Pakistan, Peru and Botswana

2009-11-12T10:02:00.000Z

Soul Vomit from Karachi

Anal Vomit from Lima

Crackdust from Botswana

Let's just say that Trash metal isn't really my thing but it unites three continents in music...

Hooray for Tamiflu

2009-11-11T16:54:00.002Z

After a number of autoposts I'm sort of back in the land of the living. Luckily the not-wife acted as my "flu friend" and got my Tamiflu. It does seem to take the edge off things even if I still feel rough .

The biggest bummer for me is not having flu but not being able to visit my mum in hospital. She had a mastectomy yesterday having been diagnosed with breast cancer. My dad and my sister have assured me that she is comfortable and hopefully will be out at the weekend

Futility - 11 November 1918

2009-11-11T14:36:00.005Z

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved, - still warm, - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Dedicated to Augustin Trebuchon, the last French soldier to die in WWI. He was killed at 10.45 carrying a message ordering troops to muster for food at 1130.

Dedicated to George Lawrence Price of the Saskatchewan Regiment, shot by a German sniper at 10.59

Dedicated to Henry Gunther who died charging a German machine gun position in the last minute of the war.

Dedicated also to the German Leutnant Tomas killed by American soldiers after the Armistice. He is thought to be the last German to die that day

Dedicated to the men of the US 89th Division sent to their death on 11 November taking the town of Stenay for the want of a fucking bath.

Dedicated to the 11,000 Allied and German casualties on the last day of the "War To End All Wars"

In the hope that there is a special place in Hell for those who sent these men to their senseless deaths on that day

The DDR still lives!

2009-11-10T09:37:00.001Z

Ive posted this before but a repeat seems to be appropriate now. This one is thanks to Strange Maps whic has lots of fascinating maps, some fictional, some bizarre: many are real, but obscure or virtually forgotten. Although not a map as such there is an entry about Ernst Thallman Island .

The GDR still lives? Well technically it appears so. Cayo Ernesto Thaelmann, formerly Cayo Blanco del Sur, is 15km (about nine and a half miles) long and 500m (a bit over a quarter of a mile) wide island just off the coast of Cuba in the Gulf of Cojones, sorry Cazones. It is uninhabited, other than occasional tourists.

On the occasion of a state visit in June 1972 Castro made the island a gift to the GDR and it was remnamed in the memory of pre-WWII German Communist leader Ernst Thalmann. One of its beaches was renamed Playa RDA (GDR Beach) and in August 1972 there was an event to mark the island's on the island's ceremonial transfer which involved the unveiling of a bust of Thälmann

After reunification Germany made no claims for the territory and thus the island technically represents the sole landmass of the former communist state The Cuban government now views the gift as a symbolic gesture rather than a concession and would probably not be happy if settled by Germans of any political strip

The Bust of Thallman survived the downfall of communism but could not withstand the ravages of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

I for one await the return of the DDR, Trabanys and dubious looking female shot putters with fine, bushy beards. Better still Gorgon George Galloway will have a brand new leader whose arse he can lick to his heart's content