“You can’t cite statements internal to a document to back up the claim that the document is inspired by God and that it is truth without any mixture of error. That doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work for reasons that are so obvious that failure to grasp them is simply childish. If that did work then all authors could just say ‘this book is inspired by God and it is truth without any mixture of error’ and be taken seriously.” – Ophelia Benson at Butterflies And Wheels.

Well, it may be childish to so aver, but Mr Key’s prose is inspired by the hideous bat-god Fatso, and it is truth without any mixture of error. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as they say.

Wishing all my readers and listeners a very happy Christmas.

From Thirty-Eight Woodcuts Illustrating The Life Of Christ, or Biblia Pauperum (ca. 1815). You can see the other thirty-seven woodcuts here.

Laban Tall at UK Commentators:

“There’s a small Cultural Studies paper waiting to be written on names – how the Amalgamated Union of Wire-Drawers, Fettlers and Allied Trades turns in thirty years into something called ‘Together’ or ‘Unity’, British Insulated Cable and Radio Limited into ‘Xantippe’ or ‘Xenith’, and the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment via ‘Defence Research Agency’ into ‘QinetiQ’. The key being that the old, wordy, literate names actually described what the organisation did, the new ones conceal it and are post-literate, logos in letter form.”

And let us not forget the harebrained attempt by the Royal Mail to “rebrand” itself as Consignia.

For some time now, all of us here at Team Hooting Yard have been readying ourselves for a move to new headquarters. Well, at long last the builders and painters and plumbers and decorators and sundry other artisans have finished their labours, and we can move in! By chance, a snap of our fantastic new base in its finished state has appeared on the Unmitigated England blog. Here it is, in all its glory:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diligent readers of the Comments will know that the other day I got into a bit of a flap when someone had the temerity to include one of those godawful smiley faces to accompany her observations on the “Prophet” Mohammed cartoon. Indeed, so grumpy did I become that I could only becalm myself by mooing like a cow, which I am given to understand is a proven relaxation technique peddled by stress counsellors. I mooed the afternoon away, and so intensely did I immerse myself in cowdom that, at dusk, I found myself standing in a field, staring blankly at nothing, while gnats and midges hovered in the air around me.

While I was thus engaged, Antipodean Hooting Yard researcher Glyn Webster made better use of his time. He has devised an extremely helpful Table Of Non-Blötzmann Smileys which is reproduced below. Mr Webster has suggested that it may be possible for a boffin to tinker with the WordPress software to make these the default symbols for Hooting Yard and, while I do not encourage the use of them at all, this is well worth looking into.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The witterings posted below reminded me of the complete lack of fury caused by Hooting Yard’s own Mohammed Cartoon non-controversy. Back in September 2006, to accompany a piece called Blodgett’s Jihad, a blasphemous portrayal of “the Prophet” appeared here without causing ructions. Here it is again. Shield your eyes if you do not wish to be offended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In case it’s overlooked in the Comments to the piece below, here is an informative memorandum from R.:

It is unimaginably strange to hear an ‘Unspeakable Desolation’ story read in a US accent … for those not traumatised by the mere suggestion, http://tinyurl.com/58avg5  is the place to go, but you have to weather an advertisement, a dictionary definition, and some stuff about trains before the dawning of the Main Feature. ‘Weird, awesome stuff,’ the host declares.

I have to say I like Norm Sherman’s narration very much, particularly the way he intones the words “magnetic … mute … blind … love monkeys”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jan Van Eyck, Man In A Red Turban, 1433

“This is the most meaningful thing that has ever happened” – Oprah Winfrey

There is absolutely no reason to post a picture of the Busby Babes today, and I do so only to illustrate the following:

Dear Mr Key, writes P. Funnel, I have been reading (actually re-reading) my way through the Hooting Yard archives, and am struck by some of your preoccupations. There are things and people you regularly refer to which seem to have little or nothing in common, no overarching theme, as it were, yet you seem obsessed with them. A brief – but by no means complete – list would include:

The Munich Air Disaster; the Kennedy Assassination; Peter Maxwell Davies eating an accidentally-electrocuted whooper swan; the Hindenburg Disaster; Yoko Ono; Googie Withers; David Blunkett.

I realise that my selection includes two aerial disasters, so that is a common thread, but otherwise none of them seem to link up in any coherent way. Are there some profound psychological reasons that cause you to harp on about these subjects, or are you just repeating yourself? And whichever is the case, can you give any clues as to how one might predict whether or not an event or a person might become embedded in your brain, and thus crop up time and time again in Hooting Yard?

I suppose it would be polite of me to reply to these questions, so I will try at some point to frame a response, once I have finished making my set of Hazel Blears finger puppets.

 

Dan Chambers alerts me to this. Do people really buy mik from Amazon? Do they really write reviews of the milk they buy? Are those reviews really such utter twaddle? It is often said that Hooting Yard is “a bit weird” or “eccentric” or “odd”, but the so-called “real world” is a much, much stranger place.

When the usual suspects publish their books, they can be guaranteed to pat each other on the back in the pages of their North London Literary Mafia house journals. When a starving scrivener such as Mr Key publishes his books, he does so to resounding indifference from those same publications. This is neither surprising nor particularly exasperating (on a good day), but it is a lamentable state of affairs. In the past, some review copies have been sent out, but they may as well have been chewed up by a post office hound.

It occurs to me that Hooting Yard readers might wish to marshal the power of the interweb and write their own reviews, to be posted on their own blogs, if they have such things, or on a dedicated page here. This would give new visitors some idea of what delights await them, and also be a generally cockle-warming exercise for all concerned. Just a (possibly ill-advised) thought, in a moment of grumpiness.

Mick Wiggins has sent in a splendidly informative report about those pudding fenders. Many thanks to him for this:

I will relate what little I know about these bulbous knotted affairs that deck hands would hang from the deck and bow in order to prevent damage to the hull from knocking about while the ship is at berth. While commonly used up until the early 20th century, the hand-made rope bumpers were eventually replaced with used auto tires and synthetic rubbers. 

Visually, they’re masterpieces of knot-craft, heavy and beautifully patterned. Lord knows how long it took to knit these things, but I hear sailors can have a lot of free time on their hands while at sea. I did come across a site that sells modern versions of Pudding Fenders, but I can’t really think why one would buy one except for the reason of being able to shout “Throw down the Pudding Fenders” to the first mate every so often.

Also known as Bow Pudding, they came in all kinds of different shapes, sausage-like mostly, and even one style that looks like a steroidal string mop hung from the bow like a great messy beard.  .  

Here’s a nice example, just like one of the fenders I saw on display – large and huggable even, it measured a meter+ in diameter.

 

 

 

 

On a side note, I was a little, well, a lot confused about the Pudding aspect, until tonight I remembered something about the English and their puddings.

 

 

 

 

Mystery solved! I think this Hack Pudding would serve very nicely as a fender.

As for Dismal Nitch, I did not make it down there, as it was raining and dismal out. I learned though, it was during a particularly fierce winter storm in the early 1800’s that had the famous explorers Lewis and Clark pinned down for days, that this spit of land near the mouth of the Columbia River earned its name, which is still in use by locals.