No ribbing please.

 

Here we go, the nation is about to get ice fever once again. After last months outbreak of illegal bonspiels throughout the country when doughty maidens and roguish pensioners sneaked past sleeping policemen on to frozen lochs and hurled 40 lbs of granite over the surface, the smooth indoor Olympic game to best them all is back in action.

Scotland, sorry Team GB men have already played one game, with David Murdoch's world champion rink losing their first game in the round robin section 6-4 to European champions Sweden. The women's team, skipped by 19 year Eve Muirhead have just beaten the current world champions China 5-4. 

After the public acclaim that Rhona Martin and team garnered when they won Olympic gold and the great google box watching public stayed up to watch them in their millions, one would have assumed that sponsors would be falling over themselves to associate themselves with a sport that encompasses individual resolve and teamwork. The winning rink should have been fast tracked to a life of reward and luxury, endorsements, fragrances, clothing lines etcetera...Well they would in America. Imagine my surprise, therefore when I discovered that Team USA Curling are co-sponosored by 'Hurry Hard' condoms.

'Hurry Hard' are sponsors with a difference they have a charitable side with proceeds of all condom sales being split between USA Curling and Monterey County AIDS Prevention programme. http://www.mcap.org 

Other sponsors of Team USA include Laphroaig whisky...sound familiar? 

Team GB are sponsored by the exciting Primary General Limited a commercial underwriting company based in Leeds.

I suppose the question is this if either of our teams win Gold will we see them being backed by something a bit more laudable than a commercial underwriter? 


 

Click Opera no more. The digital fat lady has sung.

So farewell Click Opera possibly the most widely read, influential blog ever written by a Scotsman.* Nick Currie aka Momus, has ceased to blog. I seriously doubt more than a few of us in Scotland, except for the exalted post-literate, have ever noticed, heard of, or even read Nick's writings, muses, dissertations, cries for thoughtful examination. Instead, so insular has civic enlightened Scotland become, that you can forget minimalist introspection of what is Scotland, we're currently embroilled in the high dramas of half eaten pies, fraud and expenses corruption. 

Alas my raising the spectre of Momus, is all too late, as he decided, on the eve of his 50th birthday, to stop adding to his blog after 6 years of almost continuous daily updates, from Berlin, Tokyo, New York, Finland, Budapest, Paris etcetera.

The recent polls of Scottish blogs really puts our parochial Scotland into perspective, as giddy as I am for this cheesy blog to be recognised in the various categories and delighted that punters voted for me, be that through notoriety, honesty or a mission to spread mischief, our standards in the Scottish blogosphere are lower than a pregnant snakes belly.

Yes, there are a few writers who are erudite, can set out their stall with an argument, counter argument and reasoned conclusion, but on the whole we have few, if any, great chin-stroking thinkers, merely some pretendy shock authors, a few limited wordsmiths a clutch of gag meisters, a honk of psephologist's (whom you'd most likely avoid at any normal social gathering) but sadly no true leaders in contemporary thought inhabit our little bit of tartan cyberspace. I don't claim to be anything other than someone who occasionally fancies boring a few similar like minded souls with some particular twist on an old story, or as is more often, I enjoy a piss take on others pomposity, eventually, like Nick Currie, it gets old. 


In the next ten years, of course, blogs will have gone the way of the filofax, Presidents will pardon by tweet, facebook will implode under the sheer weight of its own self importance, bebo and myspace will be the sole preserve of lovelorn paedos and vice cops.

Who knows what will replace the blaaawg, what other sources will we have for catching up on the latest thoughts of our philosophers in exile? No doubt there'll be an app along shortly to tell us what we are going to do next, what we are going to do next, what we are going to do next...


* How could I forget Dumbarton-born David Byrne who fled the country as a fresh foetus, yet whom, our tabloids still love to still claim as one of our own.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/ 

Further links to Momus:

Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momus_(artist)
 

Web- http://imomus.com/
 

Blog - http://imomus.livejournal.com/
 

Wired: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/imomus/2005/11/69429
 

Lyrics: http://www.phespirit.info/momus/
 

Free downloads: http://www.ubu.com/sound/momus.html

 

Interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0bJV6VtNKY

His latest (2008) album: http://www.filestube.com/13202190ae9a424b03e9/go.html

His column for the New York Times: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nick-currie/
Blogging conference - http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4105106

Thanks to El Bloggo for the above links.


Just to show how cosmopolitan one Scot can be, here's Nick's interview in this mornings Libération...in French.


http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y296/imomus/more/libegrab.jpg