Silver Lining (Sorry, my fonts are ferkackt!)

I love Carol Ann Duffy! She has made poetry exciting, insistent, immediate. Here is her take on the air ash crisis:

SILVER LINING

Five miles up the hush and shush of ash,

Yet the sky is as clean as a white slate —

I could write my childhood there.

Selfish to sit in this garden, listening to the past

(A gentleman bee wooing its flower, a lawnmower)

When the grounded planes mean ruined plans,

Holidays on hold, sore absences at weddings, funerals ... wingless commerce.

But Britain’s birds sing in this spring

From Inverness to Liverpool, from Creith to Cardiff,

Oxford, Londontown, Land’s End to John O’Groats.

The music’s silent summons,

That Shakespeare heard and Edward Thomas and, briefly, us.

And for those who haven't read it, her rumination on DB's recent foot injury:

Achilles (for David Beckham)

Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised,

they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...

but when Odysseus came,

with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,

and it was sport, not war,

his charmed foot on the ball ...
but then his heel, his heel, his heel ...

Oracle!!!!!!!!!!!

Online, unkind?

Just got into a bit of a spat on the Guardian website, which I left with these words:

"Apologies for my rudeness. I just get a bit defensive when writers I admire are attacked anonymously by people with an option to skip articles that aren't to their tastes, choosing instead to insult both the writer and, by implication, their readership (eg, me). I can't even fathom why people do that. I don't give a crap about the financial blogs - should I go tell them?"

and ended with this plea:

"The internet has created a strange, anarchic society which isn't always a nice place to play, and I just think once in a while we should remind ourselves how our interactions would look in real life, and then adjust our antennae accordingly.

Peace."

Why can't we all just get along? No, really. I'm asking.

"If You've Googled Yourself ...

CLAP YOUR HANDS!

If You've Googled Yourself ...

CLAP YOUR HANDS!"

So I googled myself. And if you enter my name ("Oh Matron!), you get almost two pages, excepting the very last one on page 2, at this minute: London time 01:03, that actually refer to me. Me! The real person behind a Google conjunction! Which is rare in the context of googling(?) gulaging(?) the peeps you meet, only to bring up a scrollsworth of eighteenth century architects and other antiquated irrelevancies (the firstnames and surnames MILES apart ... in overencumbered PDFs related to Annual General Meeting Notes of Junior(sic) High Softball Teams in Bumfuck, USA ...)

But I digress.

It's not my actual birth certificate name - haven't checked that yet - but the diminutive of my given aka in Oz Christian name - which is actually the name my mum wanted to give me but was urged it was too cutesy and childish and I might want to adopt the longer form as an adult (oops). When she was pregnant with me, Mama Plog worked at a creche, where she was completely bewitched by an adorable toddler, (insert Dr. P's everyday name) + Brown (it's alliterative, folks!) here.

It's only now, 2010, that I was lured by some naive facebook commenter two-friends-removed to check out my name on urbandictionary.com ...

I dare you to do that and record your findings here!

And not only because my name is apparently slang for "blow job" ...

Le sigh.

So back to self-googling. I urge you all -- google yourselves. And then please post your results, or at least your reactions to the aforementioned results in the comment section below.

Redundant

"Think of the amount of print that would have been saved if I had removed the double slash. But there you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time"

Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web, regretting the // at the start of every website address.

A Plea From Dr. Plog

You may have noticed that I give bad header, pictorially/designwise.

Also: I can't insert text between photos and videos, nor control where on the post anything appears.

In short: I am a technological loser and this blog sux.

Can anyone help? Explanations need to be at kindergarten level.

Mom, Meet Emoticon ...

I think I'm going to call my mum.

From here.

Doctor Plog Is Fast Losing Faith In Humanity

(How's *that* for a Status Report?)

1. Click here to see why.

2. Post comment to EXPLAIN why, if you could venture to guess. I mean, really?! Give me an oy! OY! Give me a vey! VEY! ...

Banksy Vs The Bristol Museum, Part Deux

Some more of the work that you wanted ... Apologies again for the poor quality of the photographs ( = no flash allowed + nisht my forte)

Love, your reader-responsive Dr P xxx

ps. I wish I could caption them but my blogger does not seem to allow me to vary the text/ image combo. The fact that it allows me to type at all is a modern miracle: most technology is stubbornly plogphobic ... :(

pps. Whenever I express 'emoticon' I feel about twelve. Do you know what I mean?

ppps. Whenever I multiple p-s, I feel about eight. And then the sudden desire to use acronyms like TFNE or whatever we used to use way back when overcomes me ... or was it TTFNY? Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Cowardly Lions Vs Roaring Jezebels: The Bish Plz Edition

It is mind-boggling to me that on the same day that I am mourning the loss of one who still had so much to contribute, I feel compelled to write about those that offer gurnischt. Hell, make that a whole plate of gurnischt mit gurnischt with a side order of extra-gurnischt. It's what the kids these days called Haterade.

Or what a blog I know and love once defined as a Mean Girl Syndrome, not at all loosely based on a Lindsay Lohan vehicle of the same name.

To those of you who don't spend too much of your life trawling the interwebz, you may still be aware of an undercurrent in our culture that is directly linked to snark - the desire to rip to shred mainly female targets, but anyone'll do! There are hate sites devoted to all manner of people and things. Who the feck are these losers that bitch and spew bile behind the safety of their screens?

Well, we know one ...

I'm not a big believer in corporal punishment but Perez Hilton? Draw enough crudely imagined cocks and stick them in the mouths of babes, slut-shame women, pay lipservice to anti-homophobic politics but then vilify lesbians (SaMANtha R, anyone?) -- dude, you're lucky you don't have to abide my my natural justice - waterboarding would be too soft on you. STFU Perez Hilton.

But please don't tell the Jezebels to STFU (whoever is behind STFU Jezebel, not Perez). What an idiotic target for all your vitriol? Why not Ahmadinejad? Even Speidi, if you're so loserishly inclined you need to "hate" on anyone? Why don't you just log off and go outside? Plant a tree? Volunteer somewhere? You are clearly not unintelligent, why invest yourself in such an ultimately futile and kinda very pathetic venture? Seriously. Seriously!

It's not what you're saying that is all that off-the-mark. It's just why the need to say it? You say you were on Jezebel from the outset so you're clearly simpatico and saw how much misogynist crap they called out so you ... decided to add to it? And by calling out individuals you claim not to know BY NAME? I'm not being glib, but you may want to consider therapy. CBT is good but you probably need to go with something more psychoanalytic; perhaps go back to the womb for the source of your idiocy?

Unless the problem is that you're not long out of the womb (ie, twelve). Which would explain so much. So turn off your TUMBLR, young lady! And take care. Really. I'm not being bitch for bitch's sake but because your site has actually unnerved me.

Dr. P

"There Are Three Of Us In This Relationship"

Mr Plog got the new iphone.

He facebooked statused about it, too. More than once.

He schlepped all the way to meh Brent Cross (think Chadstone, only uglier), bright sunshine notwithstanding, to buy some accessory for it.

They are inseparable, man and machine. It is near impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.

I sit and read an article in last weekend's Guide.