I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness

Courtesy of caramel_betty, the best (or at least, funniest) Big Brother commentary I have seen so far.

Standing on Baker Street's Westbound Circle line platforms a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the service indicator on the Eastbound platform still bore the legend 'Whitechapel and Circle Trains', despite it being over ten years since that branch of the Met got renamed. This got me thinking about the Hammersmith And City line, and what a rubbish name it has.

1. At six syllables it's far too long...
2. ...and there's no sensible abbreviation, which leads to people calling it the Pink Line, which is bobbins.
3. It's not really accurate, only skirting the city...
4. ...and even if it were, it would be too boringly descriptive.
5. There's another line with the suffix 'and City', which could easily confuse some very dim people.

I therefore propose that from this point forward it should be known in common parlance as the Hammerchapel. This has the following clear advantages:

1. It's much shorter: only four syllables.
2. It follows precedent: Bakerloo = Baker St and Waterloo, Hammerchapel = Hammersmith and Whitechapel.
3. It's accurate: all the trains go to both Hammersmith and Whitechapel.
4. It sounds funny.
5. MC Hammer's Can't Touch This could be used as its theme song.

It has been pointed out to me that Hammerking would satisfy several of these points, which is true enough. However, it falls down on point 3, the Barking service being peak hours only, and, more importantly, it sounds more like a town in Norway than a tube line.

So, remember, it's no longer the Hammersmith and City Line, it's the Hammerchapel. If enough of us start using the new name, TfL will have to bow to public pressure and use it themselves, just like their antecedents did with Bakerloo.

It initially gladdened my heart to see this press release from TfL on Wednesday. ELL extension work to be brought forward! Proper through running from Highbury to New Cross by 2010! EIGHT trains an hour! Mr Livingstone fully understanding the needs of Islington residents such as myself to visit atommickbrane and mrs_leroy_brown in New Cross! Hurrahs all round! Yet after a bit of close reading I was left with a medium-sized qualm about the plans.

( Warning: transport geekery within )

In case you missed Lord Sukrat's announcement yesterday, poptimists now has a sister community by the name of fooptimists for poptimist style discussion of all things World Cup and football related.

Hello folks. I appear to have a free subscription to the London Review of Books going spare. Given that my current subscription was given to me by puffinry via an open LJ offer, it seems only fair to offer the free one to you lot in the same way. So, first to comment gets it.

Just to let those of you who don't read NTK know, the (in)famous Inspector Morse rave episode (official title Cherubim and Seraphim) is being reshown on ITV tomorrow at 1505. Highly recommended viewing, if only for the immortal (and much sampled) line: 'it's a RAVE, Lewis!', as uttered by old Endeavour himself.

In case you don't already know, Double G And The Traitorous Three now have a (very minimal) website. If you have no idea who or what I'm talking about, see my previous entry about failing to go and see them. Since then, I have seen them, at the lovely Luminaire, where they were under-rehearsed, messy and utterly ACE.

This is just ridiculous: wikipedia includes spoiler warnings when discussing a Borges short story.

I'm not 100% anti people being careful about spoilers. Having watched enough serial TV, I know full well how annoying it can be when someone gives away what happens next because it's already been shown on Sky/Torrented/they know the scriptwriter etc. So, y'know, fair enough.

Except that in this case it's an encyclopedia entry about a particular short story. There's no massive over-arching narrative; it's one self contained piece. If you look it up, you must surely expect the article to contain some plot information? While it's hardly a gripping tale, you can't talk about it sensibly without mentioning that (oh noes) Uqbar turns out not to exist - the article ceases to make much sense without the stuff enclosed between the spoiler warnings. You wouldn't expect a normal piece of criticism to have eg 'SPOILER WARNING: in discussing Jane Austen's attitudes towards the economics of marriage we may accidentally give away that Darcy and Elizabeth GET MARRIED...oh bum' at the front, so why do the plot obsessed geeks of wiki-land feel the need to warn us in big letters that a discussion of a short story might possibly just give away what happens in it?

Bah, ignore me. I'm just a grumpy old git overreacting to being patronised. If I'm not careful, I'll start talking about dumbing down soon.

I've just seen Kristin Hersh play a gig. All Throwing Muses songs. Fifth song played was Finished.

Three things:

1. I've had the new Arab Strap album on repeat for the last couple of days. It's easily the best thing they've done. Aidan has found wuv and is grudgingly optimistic about it. All still partially cloaked in a fug of stale beer and last night's used condoms of course but he's positively joyous in places. Hell, he even SINGS for most of it.

2. Listened to Seamonsters this morning and am now unreasonably excited about seeing The Wedding Present next week. I hope they'll be as good as they were the last time I saw them, at the late lamented Duchess in Leeds. In 1993. Argh.

3. As noted in catsgomiaow's poll, my favourite Xmas song right now is No Xmas For John QuaysLittle Drummer Boy. What I didn't say is that this is almost entirely due to Low's uber-indie slo-core version of the song.

It appears that November has made me come over all indie. And with no Poptimism on the horizon to cure me either. Help!