The Consumer Category
We bring you the chic and unique, the best and most bizarre shopping offers both online and offline. We offer you tips on where to buy, and some of the less mainstream and crazy, individual and offbeat items on the internet. Anything that can be bought and sold can be featured here. And we love showcasing the best and worst art and design.
Coca Cola cannabis and the volatile world of marijuana investing
Invest in cannabis? BNN Bloomberg says Coca Cola is looking at working with Canadian marijuana producer Aurora Cannabis to create drinks laced with marijuana. “Along with many others in the beverage industry, we are closely watching the growth of non-psychoactive cannabidiol as an ingredient in functional wellness beverages around the world,” said Coca-Cola in a statement. Unlike the cocaine Coca Cola used to put into its products, cannabidiol contains no psychoactive effect. But it can relieve pain.
It follows news that Constellation Brands (US-based producer of Corona beer and a raft of spirits and wines brands) is pumping lots of cash into Canada cannabis producer Canopy Growth.
Released in 1880, this is the very first publicly sold bottle of Coca-Cola. It contained around 3.5 grams of cocaine.
Why Canada? In June this year, the Canadian government pretty much legalised the use of recreational cannabis. Weed should go legal in Canada on October 17, 2018. You’ve got to feel for Mexico, which should fully legalise the drug exported illegally into the US via cartels. The market is there for the taking. And the money is huge.
Yesterday, shares in Canadian marijuana cultivator, distributor and producer Tilray – the first weed company to IPO in the US – reached an intraday high of $300, closing up 38.1 per cent on the day. The surge was based on news that America’s drugs regulator would allow loss-making Tilray to export a cannabis-based medicine to the US. Tilray shares have soared by – get this – 1,288 per cent since the company floating on the Nasdaq stock exchange two months ago. At one point Tilray was a bigger stock than 59 percent of S&P 500. Not too shabby for what is essentially a farming company – even if it does look absurdly overpriced and highly volatile.
But here’s the thing: no-one can be certain what form a legal market in marijuana will take once prohibition ends. Why would a consumer pay a big corporate farmer for their hit when they grow it themselves? Weed isn’t like moonshine – you really can grow a decent crop in your airing cupboard. And if the market for products gets huge and varied – cheap supermarket own-brand weed drinks? – won’t the price for weed fall? Marijuana is just commodity that grows in the ground.
Posted: 20th, September 2018 | In: Money, News, The Consumer | Comment
Miniature horse-eating gator banned from flights and shot dead
Americans love miniature horses. Southwest Airlines allows them onboard commercial flights as emotional support animals. Pigs, ferrets, spiders, peacocks and hedgehogs are on the no-fly list. But L’il Sebastian made the cut. Alligators did not – which is good because gators and miniature horses don’t mix, not unless the reptile is hungry. To Texas, then, where an 11ft alligator devoured a little horse owned by Judy Cochran, 73, mayor of the rural town of Livingston. She caught the killer and shot it dead.
For 20 days a year alligator hunting is permitted on public land in Livingstone and greater Polk County. The only rule is that alligators must be caught first before they can be killed. Ms Cochran’s son-in-law, Scott Hughes, tempted the horse-eating gator with a dead raccoon he found by a roadside and “seasoned”. The bait was laced with a large hook and tied to a line over a lake. When the alligator took the meal, Cochran despatched it with a single shot from her Winchester .22 Magnum.
“One shot in the head, and he went under,” boasts Mrs Cochran, who plans to eat the gator meat and make some gator-skin boots. “Typically the gators don’t bother us, but we’ve been looking for this one. We think that this is the gator that ate one of our miniature horses several years ago.”
You’ve got feel sorry for the gator – if people bought normal sized horses, he’d have had no need for that racoon pudding.
Posted: 20th, September 2018 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Stormy Daniels teaches Donald Trump that porn star sex is rubbish
What’s it like to have sex with Donald Trump? Until Melania goes full Princess Diana and reveals all, we can roll over and ask Stormy Daniels (aka Stephanie Clifford) about intercourse with The Don. “It may have ben the least impressive sex I’ve ever had,” is the lead quote on the Mirror’s front page. So there’s Trump in his ‘I’m Number 1 why Try Harder’ T-shirt possibly expecting new adventures with a professional shagger. Reading Stormy damn Trump brings to mind the tennis pro playing with the happy amateur. The pro knocks the ball over the net with spin, power and guile; the amateur hits a sublime return, his game improved immeasurably by the skill of his partner . I once played head tennis with a top footballer. With an equally hapless mate, I could manage 6 or seven headers. But with talent we got to 20, 30, 40… So, Donald Trump, what’s it like to have sex with a pro?
On page 7, we learn that Trump’s penis is “smaller than average” but not “freakishly small”. “He knows he has an unusual penis,” says Stormy T-Cup. “It has a huge mushroom head like a toadstool.” did little Mis Muffet sit on the engorged tuffet? “I lay there,” she says enticingly, “annoyed I was getting fucked by a guy with yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart.” so much for the fantasy porn star level sex. Stick with the love doll, smut enthusiasts. You won’t get judged.
On page 10, Stormy’s lie-there-and-tell becomes “Donald stump”. In the Sun, we learn that Stormy’s tribute to gaming forms part of her book, Full Disclosure. Donald isn’t a “fun guy” in bed, the paper puns. We’re reminded there and in the Express that Trump denies the affair. She claims to have been paid “hush money”. And Trump reimbursed his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the money she received, $130,000. Yep. That’s what it allegedly costs to shag an angry woman who thinks you’re an inadequate loser. There’s a book in it – but not a token entitling the bearer to a discount on marriage guidance…
Posted: 19th, September 2018 | In: Books, Celebrities, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
Middle-class drinkers should ignore advice on safe alcohol limits
Shocking to learn that the middle-classes take more drink and drugs than the poor. The Mail calls the report by the Social Metric Commission a “landmark” finding. Having discovered that people with more money and leisure time use more mind-altering substances than those with less money, we wonder what else the Mail has revealed?
In 2016, the Mail told readers: “Middle-class drinkers can get away with drinking MORE because their otherwise healthy lifestyles make up for it.” Adding: “Wealthier drinkers are less likely to smoke, be overweight and have a poor diet – traits more associated with the lower-income demographic.” Today Ian Duncan Smith, the Tory MP, says: “Part of impoverished adults drinking less is that they do not have the cash to spend on it.” The other part being, presumably, that huge taxes on drink affect the poor more than the wealthy. He doesn’t mention that. He also doesn’t mention why politicians of all stripes want to clamp down on cheap booze with minimum pricing (see: sin tax for people seen as too poor, too thick and too dependent to know what’s best for ’em). But he does say: “This is not in the report but my own experience is that where people are drinking or taking drugs in poverty, it is at a very serious addictive levels. For the middle-classes, they are holding down a job and doing what’s expected of them.” Which is to say: paying more taxes.
But the overriding message is that drinking in excess of the Government’s stated limits does you no harm at all. Indeed, in 2007, an insider said that the recommended weekly limit of 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women decreed by the Royal College of Physicians in 1987 was a guess. Former panel member Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, revealed to the Times: “So those limits were really plucked out of the air. They weren’t really based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee.”
The Mail‘s readerships is very much middle-class. But having told the middle-classes that drinking more makes no impact on their health, the Mail also says that it is a huge problem for the kind of so-and-sos who say ‘wine ‘o’clock’:
The talk is of “problem” drinking. The middle-class “culture of drinking at home is driving the problem”. And you can narrow it down still further to educated women:
It’s hard to work out what the point of all this bilge is. Perhaps it’s just a prelude to tax rises, moves to hike the price of booze for our own good – even if it it’s not doing the biggest payers any harm.
Posted: 17th, September 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids, The Consumer | Comment
There’s Costa Coffee machine that plays creepy coffee shop noises
“I’ve found the worst thing in the world,” tweets Alistair Coleman. “It’s a Costa coffee machine that plays coffee shop noises while it makes your drink, so you can pretend you’re not all alone at the 3rd floor coffee machine… There’s no fanfare at the end. The music and sound effects just stop abruptly, and you are alone with your paper cup coffee.”
Presenting the Marlow coffee machine, with noises which, according to Costa, “recreate the atmosphere of one of our lively high-street coffee shops”:
I’ve found the worst thing in the world – a Costa coffee machine that plays coffee shop noises while it makes your drink, so you can pretend you’re not all alone at the 3rd floor coffee machine. pic.twitter.com/t94JrTLlLN
— Alistair Coleman (@alistaircoleman) August 27, 2018
What noises made the cut was something most likely picked by Atomhawk, the company hired to make the vending machines. Do you go with the clutter of knives and spoons, the gurgle and grind, or include a choice bit of gossip from parents grabbing a cup of coffee and spite on the school run? According to the Atomhawk website, it’s created “a next-generation self-service coffee experience”.
Costa approached Atomhawk to help define the technology, customer experience and branding for this unique coffee machine, as well as to design the UI and UX for the machine’s 28″ capacitive touchscreen; delivering an intuitive interface and a catalogue of dynamic branding animations that attract users to the machine from afar.
The machine also contains a sophisticated sound system and facial recognition technology powered by Intel’s AIM Suite…
Atomhawk has a wealth of experience developing UI for games on all platforms, and that experience was brought to bear on a new audience with the CEM-200.
You want more? You used to just be able to see your face reflected in the kettle. Now you can see the future. This is intelligent coffee – and it’s not a little bit creepy:
Atomhawk went to Costa’s Flagship store in Kensington to film footage for the ‘attract mode’ video that plays whenever the machine senses a user is not present.
This dreamlike sequence mixes diverse themes; Costa’s Italian heritage, gourmet coffee, the true café experience and more, into a video that draws users to the machine.
Is that what you dream about?
Posted: 3rd, September 2018 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Cindy Sherman gives us the Oops Phone Float
You can buy a Cindy Sherman (born 1954) a phone-shaped PVC inflatable for the poor and ocean. The li-lo features an image called Oops!. It came about when Sherman, an avid swimmer, was playing around with some apps. She says:
“I took this photo to send to someone who knitted the hat for me (Helene Winer of Metro Pictures gallery, actually). But, I also wanted to play around with some apps that I’d just started using and accidentally pressed a button that added some old setting onto this image. I thought it was a nice accident so I kept it.”
This arty float retails at… $250 at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art store and MOMA. It comes packed in a swim bag with the artist’s motto “I’d rather be swimming.”
Spotter: Coudal
Posted: 28th, August 2018 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Liverpool to play in Levi’s jeans?
When Liverpool players aren’t shaving their chests and rubbing Nivea into the stubble, expect to see them sliding on pairs of Levi’s jeans. Levi’s are Liverpool’s “official denim partner”. It’s a big deal for mankind. Be in no doubt. The club says Liverpool FC and Levi’s are “two organisations dedicated to making a difference around the globe”.
A pre-plucked Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – footballer and denim ambassador – models the new Liverpool kit
Cynics might wonder if playing football in jeans is the way forward? The current fashion is for footballers to pull their sock up high like stockings over their knees and tether them possibly with garter belts under the hem of their big skort-style shorts. It’s a small step to wearing trousers, or A-line skirts. But this is about “giving back to fans through football, lifestyle and music”, it says hear. Fans no longer care about winning cups and having a laugh at the match; they come to Anfield for tips on skin care, yoghurt and if carrot-cut denim can lead to deep vein thrombosis in quieter matches.
The plan is for the Levi’s LFC “capsule collection”. We look to it with excitement, as must too rival clubs keen to link their brand with fabrics. Arsenal velvet perhaps, Spurs chiffon or Manchester City oilskin?
Posted: 26th, August 2018 | In: Fashion, Liverpool, News, Sports | Comment
This is how you sell a house – just ask the T-Rex
This is definitely the way to sell a house. Just ask the T-Rex, if you don’t believe me…
The blurb on the home in Granbury, TX:
Charming 2 bed 1 bath lake house comes fully furnished. Enjoy a great lake side view with room to fish and play outside. 2 storage buildings, 2 car carport, indoor fireplace, screened in patio, 2 porches, a deck. Community has its own boat slip just around the corner. All furniture, dishes, and appliances stay with the property!
Spotter: Realtor, Paul Gallagher
Posted: 24th, July 2018 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
The Aubergene Revolution – Cheltenham protests over lack of veg at Tescos
The normally staid – even respectable – town of Cheltenham is apparently in uproar over the lack of aubergines for sale in the town’s Tesco supermarket. To the point of, whisper it softly, actual complaints out loud and even tweets. Thus, to follow the Orange Revolution in Ukraine which overthrew the corrupt oligarchs we have the Aubergine one to demand their return to the fruitnveg racks.
The things is, it’s true:
Those stewing over their loss have launched an online protest and even told the police of their upset.
The furore started when an aubergine fan tweeted Tesco to ask where the veg — which cost 70p each — had gone in the town’s superstore.
A customer services rep said they’d been discontinued, adding: “I wouldn’t be too happy about this myself.”
Shocked shoppers vented their rage on the Twitter page “Bring Back Our Aubergines”.
We could make a comment or two about this. I’ve lived in the place myself and I’m just absolutely certain that it had more than one food shop. Meaning that those essential Moussaka supplies are undoubtedly available somewhere. But there’s something else, too:
SHOPPERS in a posh English town say they are outraged after its Tesco pulled AUBERGINES from the shelves.
Customers at the branch in Cheltenham were told the superstore would only restock the velvety-soft vegetable on request from customers.
Well, why would a supermarket stop stocking something? They are in the business of trying to make a profit by selling things, aren’t they? The answer – obviously enough – being that people weren’t buying them. Or not enough of them to make it worthwhile stocking them.
At which point, those complaining. Why are you complaining, given that people weren’t buying them?
Posted: 17th, July 2018 | In: News, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
James Joyce crayon marked manuscripts for Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
James Joyce crayon marks on his manuscript for ulysses
James Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake “lying on his stomach in bed, with a large blue pencil, clad in a white coat, and composed most of Finnegans Wake with crayon pieces on cardboard,” says Maria Popova. “The large crayons… helped him see what he was writing, and the white coat helped reflect more light onto the page at night.”
His obituary in the NYTimes noted:
While living in Zurich Joyce began to suffer from severe ocular illness and eventually underwent at least ten operations on his eyes. For years he was almost totally blind and much of his later writing was done with red crayon on huge white sheets of paper.
“Joyce used a different colored crayon each time he went through a notebook incorporating notes into his draft,” adds Derek Attridge in a review of The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. The crayons were “a scrupulousness which has never been satisfactorily explained”.
And steeped in deep meaning, of course, Unlkess the witer was a great meketeer. As he said: “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant – and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.”
Spotter: Flashbak, Open Culture
Man at Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden is ‘Spit’ intolerant
Everyone has special dietary request these days
To Queens, New York, where a man marking Father’s Day at the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden with his daughter and granddaughter is chewing on his grub. Yum. That mayo and onions on his burger a scrumptious. And it’s juicy too, what with the added ingredient: spit.
Curtis Mays noticed that his bill included the direction: “PLEASE SPIT IN IT TOO.” Mays complained. He’s no picky eater asking for this and that. Just serve the dead cow as it comes.
The manager was called. The waitress was fired. Mays got a free meal. If you don’t want spit in your meal, please ask:
Posted: 20th, June 2018 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Wetherspoon stops selling champagne; Primark closes Chanel concessions
Brexit continues to ripple although British society. The BBC brings news to chill the marrow: “Wetherspoon to stop selling champagne ahead of Brexit.” Who knew you could buy champagne at Wetherspoons? And no, Bronco Pete, Matt The Talc and All-Day Dave, champagne is not a nicety for Tenant’s Super in a glass. It’s the French fizzy wine. News is that Brexit supporting pub landlord Tim Martin, who co-founded the chain of budget boozers, sees the ditching the champers as part of the transition away from products made in the European Union.
“There will be an inevitable transfer of trade post-Brexit to countries outside the EU, which will reduce prices in shops and pubs,” says Martin. “The products we are now introducing are at lower prices than the EU products they are replacing.”
So champagne will be replaced with sparkling wines from the UK, which the BBC tells us, “such as from the Denbies vineyard, and Hardys Sparkling Pinot Chardonnay from Australia”. Well, if Oz can be in the Eurovision Song Contest, why not consider it as part of Kent?
Champagne growers will hope to make up for the loss of trade by doing very little.
In other Brexit news:
WHSmiths stops selling Gutenberg Bibles
Primark closes Chanel concessions
Pound Store says ‘No’ to Rolex
Ted’s Second Hand Motors rejects Ferrari
Posted: 13th, June 2018 | In: News, The Consumer | Comment
Heinz Salad Cream or Sandwich Cream: the taste of bottled jizz
Heinz Salad Cream is relaunching. The sweetened gunk is to change it name to ‘Sandwich Cream’ because, as the marketing bilge states, “millennials don’t use it on salad.” But they do pour it into artisan bread and avocado sandwiches, apparently. Minds recall the last time Heinz relaunched its product. On 23 March 2000, Denise Van Outen and Graham Norton were at Jongulars Club in London’s Camden. Norton thought it good to present Salad Cream as the perfect substitute for ejaculating on a woman’s chest. Van Outen then smeared the gloop over the end of a priapic hot dog and offered it to Norton to suck on. Is the motto: ‘Heinz Salad Cream: tastes like bottled jizz’?
Posted: 7th, June 2018 | In: Celebrities, The Consumer | Comment
Stanley Nelson’s film shown to all Starbucks workers – both racist and non-racist
When Starbucks stores closed for racial training – half a day training adults not to be bigots – staff watched this video by Stanley Nelson. Called The Story of Access, here it is:
Starbucks explains:
On May 29, we closed 8,000 Starbucks stores in the United States for four hours — so 175,000 Starbucks partners could come together for a conversation and learning session on racial bias.
To recap: this is your employer talking about racial bias, the people who took you on. You are not the boss’s partner. The company’s policies are here. Staff don’t need training to be sensitive to racism; they must adhere to the simple premise for any sound business: the black man’s money is every bit as welcome as the female anti-Semite’s.
In 2015, Starbucks launched Race Together in the US. Designed to “stimulate conversation, empathy and compassion” among the races, ‘partners’ were engaged to write ‘Race Together’ on cups and talk about race with customers. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz thought it would “help bridge the racial and ethnic divides”. You couldn’t even grab a coffee without being challenged on racial differences. Don’t you dare ignore difference and just get on with your life. Talk about race with your barista / therapist; think about race as you enjoy your sugary treat; wonder if your preference for black coffee or white coffee is deep-rooted in prejudice. There was no escape. Well, there was: you could avoid Starbucks are its preaching ninnies.
Starbucks continues in its latest drive to educate:
This was a foundational step in renewing Starbucks as a place where ALL people feel welcome.
Even the homeless? The derelict? If they can pay: yes. If not: no.
Starbucks partners shared life experiences, heard from others, listened to experts on bias and racial anxiety, reflecting on the realities of bias in our society and talking about how all of us can work together to create public spaces where everyone feels like they belong.
It’s not a public space. Starbucks is a shop. Punters vote with their feet. If a shop worker fails to take the money from a customer because they are upset by their gender, skin, religion or clothing, then that worker is a fool and needs sacking. The only force for social good Starbucks need concern itself with is to make as much money as possible and thereby keep its staff employed. Screw this corporatising of morals. Just give us the coffee, take our money and give us the correct change.
Via: Stanley Nelson—Story of Access
Posted: 3rd, June 2018 | In: News, The Consumer | Comment
1979 computer shop manager predicts the future (video)
The terrific filmmaker David Hoffman made this film in which a computer shop worker predicts the future. Says David: “I was shooting a documentary called ‘The Information Society’ in 1979 and filmed this in Cedar Rapids Iowa. Compushop had just begun selling the Apple II and this guy had a keen sense of what was coming.”
You can see lots more of David’s work on the brilliant Flashbak .
Via: flashbak and David’s YouTube Channel.
Posted: 30th, May 2018 | In: News, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
We’ve found the journalism’s nadir at Sainsbury’s
Journalism is not dead – it’s just waiting for Sainsbury’s to “reveal” what times its stores open over the bank holiday:
Revealed: The opening times for Sainsbury’s over the bank holiday weekend https://t.co/icWNHFzjB4 pic.twitter.com/Uoqp6pg1LQ
— The Sun (@TheSun) May 26, 2018
The story from investigative reporter ‘Becky Pemberton’ informs readers:
A spokesperson confirmed to the Sun Online: “All of our stores will be open this Bank Holiday but subject to changed opening hours.” It is therefore essential to check up on the individual store times to make sure yours is open.
So essential is the news that amid all the guff about bonus Nectar points and Sainsbury’s being tops for barbecues, Becky advises readers: “Many supermarkets are not changing their hours for the May bank holiday, but it is best to check first. You can do this using the store finder on their website.”
Yeah, that’s right – the Sun has “revealed” the opening times by looking at the Sainsbury’s website. And now thanks to the paper and links, you too can do just that.
Posted: 29th, May 2018 | In: News, Tabloids, The Consumer | Comment
We don’t want more trains are useless; we want 21st Century technology
We have another of those calls from people who would spend our money for us. They’d like lots of it all to be spent upon trains. Lots of ’em, to cover the country with railway lines. There are problems with this idea, two of them being pretty obvious. Trains are a 19th century technology. It’s really more than a little odd to be pushing them quite so hard here as solutions to our 21 st century problems. The other is that they’re concentrating upon moving people around when that’s not the problem at all, freight is.
But, you know, they get to have fun arguing about how to spend other peoples’ money:
The UK risks becoming too reliant on HS2 to plug the gap in its national transport strategy, analysts have warned.
Transport thinktank Greengauge 21 has said that in order to develop a truly “national” strategy, the UK needs to move away from the “hub-and-spoke” model centred on London to a network that links together upgraded city centre “hub” stations.
It suggests that instead of forming a “Y” shape that will link London with Birmingham, the East Midlands, Leeds and Manchester, HS2 should instead form an “X” shape with a new connection in the West Midlands, allowing trains to operate from Bristol and Cardiff to places in the Midlands, the North and Scotland.
Well, that does rather depend upon the idea that there are people in Bristol who would like to go to the Midlands. People who would but won’t currently, given the necessity of going toward London then taking a left. Or, perhaps, up the M5 and right.
High-speed rail connecting all of the UK mainland by 2050 would put ‘rocket fuel in Britain’s economy’, a leading transport think tank has said.
The proposed plan would be a further development of HS2 (High Speed 2) which is the new high-speed rail linking London, West Midlands, Leeds and Manchester, due to be operational by 2026.
The ambitious proposal by a UK think tank is to extend the HS2 line and create 1,000 miles (1,600km) of new rail network that will ‘reach all parts of the country’.
Quite why this would invigorate the economy isn’t really known. For we do that by adding value. What we build must be worth more than what it costs us to build it. And HS2 itself doesn’t even manage that. The reason being that we’ve all got other methods of both communicating and travelling now. Cars, sure, but the internet and mobile phones have reduced the value gained by faster rail journeys.
Fast train sets just aren’t worth building that is.
It would also cut road traffic and shrink a long-standing productivity gap with countries such as Germany, Italy and France, the group believes.
But wasting money on something not worth it reduces productivity, not increases it.
Now, it is about possible that more freight railway work would be worthwhile. It’s a bit difficult to say in a country as small as Britain actually, but it’s possible. But more passenger rail? It’s simply not worth it, doesn’t cover the cost of building it.
So, obviously, we shouldn’t go build it, should we?
Posted: 29th, May 2018 | In: News, The Consumer | Comment
Philip Roth RIP – with replies by John Updike, The Atlantic and Wikipedia
Philip Roth, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1998, has died. He was 85. Claudia Roth Pierpont said his books looked at “the Jewish family, sex, American ideals, the betrayal of American ideals, political zealotry, personal identity [and] the human body (usually male) in its strength, its frailty, and its often ridiculous need.” And, boy, was he funny.
In 1996 Roth reacted to Claire Bloom’s memoir Leaving a Doll’s House. The actress commented at length on her and Roth’s marriage. “He’s tense; she’s tense,” said Gore Vidal said. “Each is neurotic. They were together 17 years; it couldn’t have been all that bad. It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.”
The book was trailed thus in the NY Times:
Ms. Bloom was 47 when she began her romance with Mr. Roth. In the memoir, the opening scene of their relationship reads like a parody of the daily life of two cultivated New Yorkers, with Mr. Roth on his way to his psychoanalyst, and Ms. Bloom on her way to her yoga class….
But soon there were signs of trouble. Mr. Roth was suspicious and mistrustful, she said, and pressed her to send her daughter elsewhere. In the memoir, Ms. Bloom expresses guilt for having done so. But the real problems began when Mr. Roth had a knee operation, she said, and became addicted to sleeping pills and an anti-anxiety drug. She writes that a terrible depression ensued, and that the couple took refuge on Martha’s Vineyard in the home of their friend William Styron, who has written a moving book about his own depression.
Later, when Mr. Roth wrote ”Deception,” he named the character of the deceived wife ”Claire,” Ms. Bloom writes, changing it only after she begged him to do so. Still, as if teasing his readers, Mr. Roth reserved the name of ”Philip” for the book’s narrator.
In 1999, when the book came up in a John Updike essay about literary biography in The New York Review of Books, Roth wrote to the Editors:
To the Editors:
In your February 4, 1999, issue, John Updike, commenting on Claire Bloom’s 1996 memoir Leaving the Doll’s House, writes: “Claire Bloom, as the wronged ex-wife of Philip Roth, shows him to have been, as their marriage rapidly unraveled, neurasthenic to the point of hospitalization, adulterous, callously selfish, and financially vindictive.” Allow me to imagine a slight revision of this sentence: “Claire Bloom, presenting herself as the wronged ex-wife of Philip Roth, alleges him to have been neurasthenic to the point of hospitalization, adulterous, callously selfish, and financially vindictive.” Written thus, the sentence would have had the neutral tone that Mr. Updike is careful to maintain elsewhere in this essay on literary biography when he is addressing Paul Theroux’s characterization of V.S. Naipaul and Joyce Maynard’s characterization of J.D. Salinger. Would that he had maintained that neutral tone in my case as well.
Over the past three years I have become accustomed to finding Miss Bloom’s characterization of me taken at face value. One Sara Nelson, reviewing my novel American Pastoral, digressed long enough to write: “In her memoir, Leaving the Doll’s House, Roth’s ex, Claire Bloom, outed the author as a verbally abusive neurotic, a womanizer, a venal nutcase. Do we believe her? Pretty much:Roth is, after all, the guy who glamorized sex-with-liver in Portnoy’s Complaint.” Mr. Updike offers the same bill of particulars (“neurasthenic…, adulterous, callously selfish, and financially vindictive”) as does Ms. Nelson (“neurotic, a womanizer, a venal nutcase”). Like her, he adduces no evidence other than Miss Bloom’s book. But while I might ignore her in an obscure review on the World Wide Web, I cannot ignore him in a lead essay in The New York Review of Books.
Philip Roth
Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut
John Updike reply was slo printed in the magazine:
Mr. Roth’s imagined revisions sound fine to me, but my own wording conveys, I think, the same sense of one-sided allegations.
In 2012, Roth had more words for the World Wie Web. He wrote an open letter to persuade Wikipedia to let him adjust inaccurate description of his novel The Human Stain. Wikipedia refused to accept him as a credible source.
Dear Wikipedia,
I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.
Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”
Also in 2012, Roth wrote to the The Atlantic over an essay’s claims that he suffered “a ‘crack-up’ in his mid-50s”.
“The statement is not true nor is there reliable biographical evidence to support it,” wrote Roth at the time. “After knee surgery in March 1987, when I was 54, I was prescribed the sleeping pill Halcion, a sedative hypnotic in the benzodiazepine class of medications that can induce a debilitating cluster of adverse effects … My own adverse reaction to Halcion … started when I began taking the drug and resolved promptly when, with the helpful intervention of my family doctor, I stopped.”
The letters have stopped. But the books remain brilliant.
Spotter: Dangerous Minds, NYRoB
Posted: 23rd, May 2018 | In: Books, Celebrities, News | Comment
New Look charges the fat more for their clothes
This is being trailed as something of a scandal but it’s actually just great, the way the system should work. Some people should be charged more:
High street retailer New Look has been criticised by shoppers for allegedly imposing a “fat tax” across its plus-sized range.
What’s the standard complaint from fatty lardbuckets the average sized British woman?
Here, she found that the Green Stripe Tres Jolie Slogan T-Shirt was being sold for £9.99 in the standard range and £12.99 in the Curves range – a 30 per cent difference in cost.
So, what’s happening here then?
Firstly, realise that no one does price things by adding up their costs then trying to sell them at that plus a profit. So, arguments that larger sizes require more cloth don’t work. Instead, what everyone does is look at absolutely the maximum they think they can get away with charging. Then they charge that.
Hey, that’s capitalism, every producer of absolutely everything really is out to screw you. It’s markets which temper this. So, someone realises that there’s loads of fatty lardbuckets average sized British women out there looking for clothing more attractive than a Soviet potato sack circa 1955. They go make and sell them and make a fortune doing so. They really do set out to screw those fatty lardbuckets average sized British women. And they do screw them – unlike anyone else to hear the complaining.
Then other manufacturers spot those profits and copy what they’re doing. Prices fall, the range available expands, everyone – other than the original manufacturer – is happy. That’s just how the system works. It’s also how it’s supposed to work, it’s all in Adam Smith.
If New Look can get away with charging higher prices to fatty lardbuckets average sized British women then this tells us that there aren’t enough plus sized ranges out there with decent looking clothing. And the fact that New Look can charge higher prices is what will create the competition and cure the problem.
No, really, markets do in fact work. Which is why we’re not all in Soviet potato sacks, you know, the place which abolished markets and the price system?
Posted: 22nd, May 2018 | In: Money, News, The Consumer | Comment
Meghan’s spare wedding dress cost £100,000 (or not)
Thomas who? Thomas Markle… Anyone? Having rolled over Megan Markle’s father, the news cycle gets to focus on the honeymoon and the dress. Not that the new Duchess of Sussex’s dress was a surprise to Daily Mail readers who on April 4 got a sneak peak of her walk-on look. Rebecca English told us:
EXCLUSIVE: Meghan’s £100,000 wedding dress revealed: Royal bride will wear hand-stitched, beaded design made by British couturiers Ralph & Russo (and paid for by Prince Harry’s family)
The price then doubled. And the designer changed their name. Although no longer an “exclusive”, the story remained a revelation: “Givenchy’s Clare Waight Keller has been revealed as Meghan’s wedding dress designer.” There had been lots of “speculation” – surely “exclusives”? – with with “Ralph & Russo hotly tipped”:
But if it’s guff you’re after, step forward and take long obsequious bow, Robin Givhan, who writes in the Washington Post:
…what was most noticeable were all the things that the dress was not. It was not a Hollywood red-carpet statement. It was not a Disney-princess fantasy. It was not a mountain of camouflaging tulle and chiffon.
The dress, designed by Clare Waight Keller, was free of extravagant embellishments. It was not covered in yards of delicate lace. It did not have a single ruffle — no pearls or crystals. Its beauty was in its architectural lines and its confident restraint. It was a romantic dress, but one that suggested a clear-eyed understanding that a real-life romance is not the stuff of fairy tales. The dress was a backdrop; it was in service to the woman.
Weekend in Blackpool, right?
Posted: 19th, May 2018 | In: Fashion, News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Mertesacker outlines his Arsenal vision
Per Mertesacker, Arsenal’s new academy manager, is the German known as the ‘BFG’. He’s written a book. In it he advocates yoga and using both eyes.
…I was a big fan of yoga from the beginning because I had seen that it improved stability and flexibility.
Even at the age of 33 I was one of the most flexible at Arsenal when it came to my back muscles. Hardly anyone came to the yoga sessions that the club offered. Often there were only four of us: Héctor Bellerín, Nacho Monreal and Tomas Rosicky.
The youth players who were promoted to the first team smiled at these exercises. They thought we were meditating. They were happy with the ball at their feet but for everything else there was a lack of desire. “I play football and go to training. That’s enough.”
But no, it isn’t enough when you want to maintain a certain level for a long time or want to improve.
Either you are learning from scratch, from your parents and the teachers and coaches around you, to take responsibility, or you don’t do it at all. This is the kind of dumbing down we must fight against.
The well-rounded Per:
When I injured myself against Sunderland [in the 2011-12 season] I started working with Lars Lienhard. A former athlete, he is a sports scientist as well as a pioneer when it comes to neurally controlled training.
Working with him was a huge success. We always assume that we can run and see properly because nothing hurts. But that is a mistake. Lars showed me that our eyes are a big factor in everything, above all when it comes to our timing.
On my right side my timing was super but I had the feeling my left eye was not really up for it. Why was that? And was it possible to train and improve [the left eye] so that I didn’t have to turn my whole body in order to look left? It all meant that in 50% of the times the ball came towards me my brain said: “Hey, I can’t really see that ball so I’m not going to jump for it.”
And as my left eye was not really looking at the ball I was always twisting my neck to use my dominant right eye.
Football doesn’t really deal with those things, despite the fact they can be decisive. Players would rather lift weights, stand on their own with their dumbbells – but how does that help me on the pitch?
During the exercises with Lars one could see quite clearly that my eyes were moving differently when an object was approaching me. My left eye always remained in the middle rather than focusing on the object.
He showed me how to make my left eye stronger. I had a patch on my right eye, forcing my left eye to focus on the objects. And after a few weeks I could really notice the difference in games. If there was a high ball from the left I had a much better feeling for where it would end up.
With Lars’s help I stayed injury-free for four and a half years. Meeting him changed my life as a footballer.
The important thing was to do exercises myself before games as well to adjust the eyes. One example was a kind of push-up for the eyes. You bring a pencil in towards your nose and force your eyes towards the middle. When you do that at the training ground a lot of people think: “What is he doing now? Is he completely stupid?”
Mainly I was doing it at home or in the hotel room. I had six or seven exercises that I did, sometimes just before kick-off in the dressing room. I didn’t care what the others thought or if they laughed. But you saw again that something new, something unknown, led to laughter rather than people asking: “What are you doing there?”
The Idlers:
Footballers are used to working only three hours a day. And out of the three hours they are at the training ground they are on their mobiles for half of that.
We have all the money in the world but do not realise how important the body is. A player on average has a seven‑year professional career, 10-15 if everything goes right. You have to do everything possible to be at your maximum.
Weltmeister ohne Talent by Per Mertesacker. Via: Guardian.
Posted: 19th, May 2018 | In: Arsenal, Books, Sports | Comment
The Prince Harry swimsuit features a Ginger Chinge
It’s the mankini for women – and Stage dos. The Prince Harry swimsuit features a Chinge – a Ginger Chinge, naturally.
Oh my God. Harry’s chin crease like ACTUAL labia. This is some real life @AphexTwin shit. pic.twitter.com/QSMFhNbjih
— KT Tunstall (@KTTunstall) May 11, 2018
Oh my God. Harry’s chin crease like ACTUAL labia. This is some real life @AphexTwin shit. pic.twitter.com/QSMFhNbjih
— KT Tunstall (@KTTunstall) May 11, 2018
Posted: 15th, May 2018 | In: Royal Family, The Consumer | Comment
Things that exist: teeth nails
Teeth nails exist. Russian salon Nail Sunny has created fingers that can bite and scratch at the same time.
Spotter: BB
Posted: 13th, May 2018 | In: Fashion, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
