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Random ephemera

Two things that have amused me over the last couple of days (admittedly I am easily amused): I am often to be found propping up the quiz machine in my local, not through any real expectation of winning any money worthy of the name (after a short period of grace the questions ineivitably become of the guess one obscure date from three variety) but for the joys that are the silly answers to multiple choice questions on Battleships early on. So it was that yesterday I was to be found gurgling my point on being offered the option of answering "Mockney Sellout Co" to the question "which supermarket does Jamie Oliver advertise?" Small joys.

Even smaller joy, and it's distinctly possible that the only other person on earth to be amused by this will be Jimmy, is to be found in the cheap shit DVD section of Morrisons. You know the one, selling five-pack bundles of films you've NEVER HEARD OF (for a GOOD REASON). Fascinated as I am by these films it's the knock-offs intended to closely resemble something else and hastily cobbled together to catch the scraggy arse-end of the cultural wave that never cease to cause me to weep for the hubris of man. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you dancing instruction DVD "Strictly Dancing." That's right, like that film, and a bit like that BBC show, except that it's not affiliated with them IN ANY WAY. The pathos comes in when you think of the production team knocking this shit out. I envisage the director going home to his empty flat, looking at his Kubrick poster, reading his Hitchcock biog and weeping silently as he drinks himself to death. And quite right too.

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