Lyrics, below the fold.

TheTundra Rap

Ice floe, no where to go,
ice floe, no where to go,
lost in the blinding whiteness of the tundra!

[Check him out!]

They call him the shrew,
arms in short, in with the claw!

I’m little Johnny Frostbite,
movin’ around,
freezing you up,
freezing you down like an icicle,
coming in your tent in the pink light scissor bite.
Arctic death,
infinite night.

Call me tundra boy,
because I move like an arctic lizard,
when the blizzard strikes,
I disappear like a pipe dream.
All that’s left is a gleam,
on a tent peg.

Boosh, Boosh,
stronger than a moose,
don’t lock your door, or we’ll come through your rooftop.
Stop, look round, take your mind off the floor,
cos the Boosh is loose and we’re a little bit raw!

Ice floe, no where to go,
ice floe, no where to go,
lost in the blinding whiteness of the tundra!

NEIL: No, listen, Stonehenge…No, listen, everybody, right, listen…

[frustrated, Neil silences the loud music by smashing the record player with his truncheon. Everyone is quiet.]

Right, listen…

[he realizes what he's done]…

Oh, no…Led Zeppelin! Anyway, listen everybody, right, like I don’t want to bring the whole evening down or anything, okay, but basically you’re all under arrest.

[Stonehende collapses aginst her wall. Warlock discovers Neil's radio and takes it out of his belt.]

Okay, roll the film!

What we are hearing are the strains of Electric Gypsies by Steve Hillage. Fifteen years later, the very commercial, radio-friendly Led Zeppelin are still getting the credit for music they’ve nought to do with. Whatever else the late Willie Dixon might’ve thought, they’re not even close:

The Canterbury scene (or Canterbury sound) is a term used to loosely describe the group of progressive rock, avant-garde and jazz musicians, many of whom were based around the city of Canterbury, Kent, England during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many prominent British avant-garde or fusion musicians began their career in Canterbury bands, such as Hugh Hopper, Steve Hillage, Dave Stewart, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen, Mike Ratledge, Fred Frith, and Peter Blegvad. Over the years, with band membership changes and new bands evolving, the term has been used to describe a musical style or subgenre, rather than a regional group of musicians.

Here’s the Gong in its entirety.

The many faces (not phases) of the moon as we journey through time and space, to the world of The Mighty Boosh!

Manny searches for the right passage

In the episode, Manny Bianco (as in white), an accountant under a great deal of stress, who hates his job, accidentally swallows his copy of The Little Book of Calm during an unpleasant exchange with his supervisor. He bought the book for £2.50 (decimalized British currency) from Bernard Black, the putative proprietor of the Black Books establishment located in some London High St area.

Whilst Bernard searches for distractions from doing his accounts for the Inland Revenue menace, engaging Johovah’s Witnesses in philosophical discussion and folding a huge pile of socks, Manny, now in hospital, is being advised by an NHS doctor, played brilliantly by Martin Freeman, that his chances of survival were 30% which was consider quite good by current standards. He reinforces this prognosis by reading a passage from the The Little Book of Calm visible on an X-Ray of Manny’s abdominal area. The surgery scheduled for Manny is abruptly canceled when it’s discovered the book once lodged in him has disappeared without a trace, apart from an odd transformation in his disposition. The doctor surmised that the book must have been assimilated.

Manny has assimilated the book

In hospital gown, robe, and sandals, Manny wanders the hospital and the streets quoting from the book at each stop he makes, where someone or something is in distress. In most cases, the stress is relieved. However, he ends up battered outside Black Books by skinheads loitering nearby who only became more agitated than they already were by his calming advice and responded with a predictable degree of disapprobation. The shock of the ASBO breach brought him round to his old self in quick order (or did it?).

Manny calms an alarmed car

This homily is delivered as a warning not only to CPSC but the general public at large, as well, of the dangers of tiny books. There is a very grave risk of some unsuspecting skinhead being turned into a hippie.

A few passages from the book:

Incidentally, The Little Book of Calm is also available in tablet form.

Shep supports self on 2-tone T-700 Goggomobil

We floo back in time to revisit Jean Shepherd’s WOR radio broadcasts on the Goggomobil, one of the earliest line of microcars of which the present day Smart Car is a descendant.

The wikipedia entry about Shep lists some of his favorite modes of transport: “At the time of the WOR radio show, Shepherd rode a Vespa motor scooter and parked it in the lobby of the WOR building, while at other periods during his WOR years, he drove a Morgan, a Rover, a Goggomobil*, a motorcycle, and a variety of other vehicles.” The picture above is from an advert in a 1959 issue of the literary magazine, Evergreen Review. Audio of his Goggomania phase will be available here, soon. Meanwhile take a look at how one 1957 model leaves the Smart Car in the dust.

More Goggomobils, in a family way.

Update: Audio of Shep’s May 1959 Goggo pitches have been added to the caption above.

Further Update 10/01/11: Daimler’s Smart Car Sputters in Size-Obsessed U.S.

Leo McKern's Barrister

Beardyman

The winner takes silk, becomes QC (Queer Customer), and moves to the front bench.

The official Beardyman website.

I Am Sparticus!

Other videos:

• Beardyman at Glastonbury festival
• Wild Rumpus featuring Beardyman – Rock The Joint

If you’ve ever saved recyclable plastics for delivery to recycling drop points you’ve probably experienced the problem of accumulating plastic gallon milk containers in a limited space. They have this annoying tendency to take up quite a lot of space in a short space of time.

Go north!

It turns out that, in Canada, people get their milk in plastic bags rather than in the containers made of plastic suitable for guitar picks that Americans find in their local High St moo juice shoppes. It’s very counter-intuitive, to be sure, if you consider the implications for shipping and handling, not to mention, end-use. Well, people in Canada have managed quite well with this type of milk packaging for years, thank you very much.

Bagged milk comes in a 3 litre size as opposed to the 1 gallon size Americans are accustomed to. You see, Canada is a more advanced society than America. They use the metric system, for one thing. People in America, albeit less anglophilic, prefer the barbaric, English units of measurement (length, weight, volume). So, straightaway, they are going to need a way to understand how much 3 litres yield in terms of English units. A litre is about a quart. So, a bag of milk is about 3/4 of a gallon at sea level.

Now if you’re going to measure the milk at sea level to verify that my estimate is indeed correct, be careful not to allow the bag to take on marine salt water and other possibly equally unsavory things, as that would undoubtedly have a qualitatively negative effect on the taste and bouquet of the milk. Instead of going to so much trouble, you might just take my word for it, unless you happen to live in a seaside villa, in which case, knock yourself out!

There’s a web site devoted to the subject of bagged milk here. If I may just quote from it:

I think the most irritating thing of all time (next to maybe Adam Sandler) is when you’re in the middle of a conversation and you happen to mention milk bags, and the other person is like “WHAT IS A MILK BAG?”, and you try to explain what it is, and how exactly it works but the concept is still a very hard one for them to grasp.

The reason for including this particular quote is, of course, to diss Adam Sandler.

This page, on the aforementioned website, shows you what a bag of milk looks like and how it’s served and stored. The image above is just one of several views that will help the curious become more acquainted and perhaps comfortable with the unfamiliar, yea, the downright strange concept of bagged milk.

What to do with the bag of milk

You figure if you open the bag of milk it’s going to be rather difficult to keep the liquid inside the bag or, otherwise, stop it from leaving the bag involuntarily. The way it works, actually, is that you place the bag in a pitcher (or ewer, as American crossword solvers would call it), cut a corner of the bag (preferably at the top) using something like the very handy Snippit plastic bag opener that conveniently doubles as a fridge magnet/conversation piece, and with that, you are ready to decant the milk simply by tipping the pitcher. Of course, there should be something nearby to decant the milk into, otherwise you might as well dispense with the pitcher.

But how do you close the bag?

Okay, so you’ve done all the decanting you can manage in one day. How do you close the bag? Well, that’s a good question, and a lot of people are asking that question, and it’s a question that deserves an answer, as a lot of questions do.

Typical Canadian

The thing is, the honest to goodness truth of the matter is that the Canadians are not as concerned about germs as Americans are. It’s well-known that they rarely bathe, after all. So, you know they just leave the bag unsealed in the pitcher (or ewer) and chuck the whole lot in the fridge, without a worry in the world.

As far as that goes, Americans have to put up with bottle caps that collect dry milk residue that winds up in your cereal or coffee or tea and no doubt carries a highly lethal dose of pathogens. Something to think about, eh? (Eh?, is Canadian for what?)

How can I drink straight from a bag?

Canadians wouldn’t even think of drinking from the bag even if they could. It’s really not their scene. It’s not their bag, even if it comes in a bag. On the other hand, it is inescapeable sociological fact that Americans compulsively drink milk straight from the bottle.

It’s a question of lifestyle which type of milk container is right for you. If you’ve cast your lot with the Canadians, then you must enjoy your milk from a bag carefully placed in a loudly-decorated ewer. If, on the other hand, you’ve chosen to be on the “right side,” then you must have a sturdy container that can be tipped back and chugged down without making too much of a mess. Above all, it’s your call.

More space!

Consider, though, all the space saved when storing the bags for recycling. I’m not sure of the type of plastic used for bagging milk and whether it is recyclable or not, but it probably is far more environmentally friendly and less burdensome than the rigid plastic bottles.

In conclusion

If and when the day ever arrives when Americans can partake of this innovation in milk storage, it won’t be nanosecond too soon, I must say.

• The Confrontation Quest by David Richardson

An update from Wikipedia is appended to the article. It is hoped that the 12-page pamphlet mentioned in the article will be added to TMH in the near term.

Update (12 Sept 2007): The pamphlet has been acquired and now resides here.