Compare and Contrast
Overheard on the train to Liverpool this morning
You can get cheapo Chinese knock-off vintage games consoles with hundreds of games on them these days, but, after playing them for five minutes, you realise all the old games were shite.
Serendipditty
It always amuses me to see Pam Ayres filed (correctly, alphabetically) next to W.H. Auden in the poetry sections of bookshops.
Art concept
For some years now, I’ve harboured an artistic concept for a piece of Concept Art (capital C, capital A):
As you might know, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which marks the boundary of the Eurasian and North American geological plates, runs through the middle of Iceland. It looks like this:
As you might also know, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is gradually spreading at a rate of about one inch per year as the Atlantic Ocean widens.
It occurs to me some enterprising Artiste Conceptuel might construct an artwork on either side of this ever-widening divide. I have in mind a pair of massive sculptures of human hands, between which would be suspended a humongous Christmas cracker. As the two geological plates continued to move in opposite directions, the Christmas cracker would, over years and perhaps decades, become increasingly taut, and, at some point, would suddenly split in two with a loud CRACK!, just like a real Christmas cracker, to eject a humongous plastic novelty, an enormous paper hat, and a large parchment scroll bearing a dreadful joke.
The only thing I’m not sure about is what on earth to call this marvellous installation. The Rift That Keeps On Giving, perhaps.
When I do it, it’s called ‘a red line’…
…When you do it, it’s called ‘refusing to negotiate’.