Man Bites DOGs

I hate DOGs - Digital On-Screen Graphics - those little channel identifiers that these days sit within what broadcasters call the sweet spot, which means they appear wholly on-screen if the viewer is watching in 4:3 rather than 16:9, because of course so many people still do watch in 4:3 even if their receiving equipment is capable of picking up 16:9. What did we do before we had digital channel identifiers hidden in the signal itself? We do not need DOGs - the channel is displayed prominently along with the details of the current program every time the channel is changed. They detract from the programme in question - looking like a hair in the gate or an eye-mote which you can't get rid of. So many times the letters in The Radio Times talk about the programme makers ignoring our wishes but I am sure that the directors, directors of photography and editors who actually do make the programmes have no say at all in whether DOGs are plastered indiscriminately over their carefully set-up shows. I know I am not the only one to get annoyed about this but so many of us just seem to roll over and accept these visual excresences. To me it feels like being repeatedly jabbed on the shoulder by someone saying - "I'm Mr So-and-so I am! - don't forget me!. I'm bloody great I am! Remember that! Nudge nudge!". JUST STOP IT.

I've been reading Adrian Mole's lost Diaries. Can you tell? I am struck by how it seemed absurd that Adrian Mole could be writing a Serial Killer comedy for the BBC. Surely no one would watch that? I have also mostly been listening to Journal for Plague Lovers which is (pause for search for suitable adverb) ... excruciatingly good even if I have not a clue as to what any of it means. The special edition comes in a beautiful book pack which panders to the Venn Diagram of my obsessions with limited edition CDs and Ladybird books. It goes well with the beautiful, cloth-bound case for Radiohead's Amnesiac and the various elaborate 4AD packages. However, I have always had a problem with the Spritualized Blister Package for Ladies and Gentlemen, we are Floating in Space because it had to be destroyed to get at the CD. Should have bought two.

Rock Dude or Geek Chic

Well allowing for the facts that I have never even approached being a dude and have long since passed the age where I could even consider attempting to be chic, we have to decide on what the next purchase will be. Oh to justify both in this time of parsimony!

On a more intellectual note here is very good article about a new book on Clarence Darrow of the Scopes trial.

Savage Saville

I'm not sure how I feel about this cover being censored by various supermarkets. I suspect that like the vitriol aimed at one of the CBeebies presenters who is in possession of fewer than the average number of arms, it will probably affect more parents than children. It might not even be blood on the child's face after all - maybe it's impressionistic. While I can't say it's beautiful, it is strangely hypnotic which goes well with the strange lyrics from the album that I heard when The Manics were on Later. It is brave of the remaining crew to use Richey's lyrics when they have no possibility of going to him for clarification but it does have a situationist charm. I am sure that Sylvia Plath had some influence on it, though nothing of hers was ever as unstructured.

The Poet's Guide To Britain about her poem Wuthering Heights was suitably atmospheric though I do wonder how long the crew had to wait around to get the wind and the rain exactly right for the backing shots to the readings. I suspect that Owen Sheers being the talent was allowed to saunter back to Heptonstall to nurse a pint in the shelter of the pub while the poor, bloody infantry of the BBC (or whatever independent production company made the programme) hung around the moor tops waiting for a particularly attractive huddling of the sheep. All those years I lived in proximity to many woolly ones and I never noticed that sheep's eyes have horizontal slots for pupils. It takes a proper poet to notice stuff like that.