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.

Vermin

This just in from the official Leave.EU Twitter account:

I guess that tells us all we need to know.

Would you rather be hit by a bus or a lorry?

In the unlikely event you’re struggling to remember…

Guardian: What Vote Leave leaders really said about no-deal Brexit

Brexit liar ‘Boris’ Johnson is clearly aiming for the no-deal Brexit we were told would never happen.

And when, as is entirely possible, he fails to get his no-deal Brexit through parliament, he will not call a second referendum to seek support from the UK public—because he will almost certainly not get it. Instead, he will call a General Election, when we will be presented with a stark choice between a no-deal Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.

‘Boris’ Johnson might well be a lying, philandering oaf, but he is no idiot.

Distinguishing the perilous adventure of selfhood

Terry Eagleton writing in the latest edition of The London Review of Books:

Kierkegaard is careful to distinguish the perilous adventure of selfhood from whimsical self-fashioning, in which the self, intoxicated by endless possibility, reinvents itself experimentally from moment to moment, shucking off responsibility for the past and surrendering to the aesthetic allure of the moment. It is a striking prevision of postmodernism. When Kierkegaard speaks of dread or anxiety, he has in mind this prospect of pure, empty possibility, which lurks at the heart of one’s experience like some bottomless abyss.

This is precisely the sort of paragraph I aspire never to write.

The morning after

Congratulations to ‘Boris’ Johnson on so quickly overtaking Theresa May as the UK’s worst Prime Minister since David Cameron.

It serves us fucking right

So, Alexander ‘Boris’ ‘Brexit-liar’ de Pfeffel Johnson is to become our next Prime Minister.

It’s time to rally round! It’s time for Tory MPs to stop their vicious in-fighting and show Johnson the same level of loyalty that he showed his two predecessors.