Svenska

I've got a 'teach yourself Swedish' course, but I haven't got round to trying it out yet. I'm pessimistic about my chances of being able to make myself understood in Gothenburg at the end of the month - from what little I know of the language, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to get my tongue around the vowel sounds or tones. Maybe I'll just speak Japanese to everyone there. I've got quite good at Japanese.

One last stat attack

People persistently find this blog searching for cartoon-related topics on Google. I need to write more blogs about old cartoons, and especially the ones released on cheap knockoff videos, fast! I haven't toon-blogged for years, actually. Right, from now on, this blog is nothing but cartoons!

Return of the ukulele

I went into Nottingham today for no particular reason, and was walking through the Victoria Centre when I heard the sounds of ukulele music. It turned out that the music shop were having some kind of ukulele event, including free lessons/singalongs with the guy who wrote my teach-yourself-ukulele book. He even recognised me, too, although he seemed doubtful when I suggested he might have seen me memorising things on the telly and asked whether I do cabaret or anything like that.

Still, I know an omen when I see one, and clearly this means I should stop wasting time practicing memorising things, and start practicing the ukulele. I might even join the Nottingham Ukulele Group, which is probably going to be formed shortly by someone else who was there today.

I appreciate that I'm probably never going to be the World Ukulele Champion, both because no such title exists and because my fingers are generally clumsy and useless, but it would almost certainly be fun anyway...

Drat those logistics!

The latest collection of classic Broons and Oor Wullie comics is in the shops now! Well, according to Lew Stringer, who knows about these things, it's been out for a month, but this is the first time I've seen it. Anyway, once I'd read the comics, my eye was drawn to the small print on the first page - "While every effort has been made to preserve the authenticity of the pages reproduced here, for logistical reasons, certain minor adjustments have been made."

That's strange, I thought - previous collections haven't had a disclaimer like that. And what are "logistical reasons" when you're reproducing old newspaper comics? Well, I had to investigate further, and here's one of those minor adjustments that were logistically necessary! Here's one of the reprinted strips from this year's collection:

And here's the strip as it originally appeared in 1937:





Spot the minor adjustment? Now, don't get me wrong here. As a general rule, I do think racism is a bad thing, all in all (I would hope that goes without saying, but you never know). But I don't like the idea of reprinting old comics and whitewashing out the offensive racial stereotypes. Besides which, that unfortunate black member of Wullie's old gang (I've seen him referred to as 'Ezzy', but he's unnamed in all the comics I've seen - Wullie's original gang were a nameless horde, hugely indebted to the Our Gang movies, for the first couple of years) wasn't there in an attempt at racism, he was an attempt at political correctness, 1930s-style, and inclusion. He's drawn like that because that's how you drew black people in those days.

And okay, there were some Oor Wullie strips where his purpose is to play up the usual comedy-nigger clichés, but he's always just one of the gang, and a valued member at that. Here's one of his greatest moments, where he's elevated from the ranks of the horde to become Wullie's most loyal sidekick:



(Note the fat one called 'Sandy' in that strip, by the way - after a couple of months as 'Geordie', he became 'Fat Bob', shoved the rest of the old gang aside, and the comic evolved into the familiar lineup we know and love today)

So here's to Ezzy, or whatever his name was, and I want you all to go and draw him back into your copies of "The Broons and Oor Wullie - Family Fun Through The Years"! For logistical reasons!

"Are, in retrospect, glorious..."

Someone found my blog by googling "The follies of men's youth" today. I'm going to have to stop reading that stats page, it's terribly addictive.

Anyway, looking back at 2006 to see the blog entry I wrote with that title, I noticed just how much of this blog is devoted to whining that I'm not sufficiently prepared for memory competitions. Now I come to think about it, I don't think I've ever felt that I've done enough training, since the world championship in 2004. Perhaps I should just give up on the subconscious desire to recapture the downright obsessive practicing I was doing before I won the world championship for the first time, because it's never going to happen.

Really, I'd settle for forcing myself to do just a little bit of speed numbers and binary training to get my speed back up again, between now and the Swedish championship. I'll see if I can muster the enthusiasm tomorrow...

An aid to memory

I feel that I should record for posterity that my favourite poem is Rudyard Kipling's "If". The subject of favourite poems came up recently in a conversation, and for some reason I couldn't think of one on the spur of the moment. So in accordance with the well-known mnemonic principle of 'write it down and even if you never look at the writing again, you'll remember it', let me just say that I absolutely worship and adore that poem, and it's always going to be the one that springs to my mind when asked for a favourite.

Then I'll follow it with an apology for choosing the poem that everyone lists as their all-time favourite, but it really is. Sorry.

Stats!

Hey, this is something new! Or maybe it was always there and I just didn't notice, but it's new to me! Blogger comes with stats telling you who's reading your blog and why!

Today, my viewers come from:

United Kingdom 70
United States 45
Australia 9
India 6
Sweden 4
Latvia 3
Canada 2
Germany 2
France 2
Hong Kong 2

Who's reading me in Latvia? I don't know any Latvians. I mentioned Lithuania the other day, but not Latvia. Perhaps they were offended! If I'd known I had Latvian readers, I would have pretended to think Latvia was great!

Furthermore, I've had a visit from the New Zealand version of Google, searching for "how to give myself food poisoning". I hope my blog was instructive - open a tin of tuna yesterday, save half of it until today, assume it'll be fine.

And people have been looking for Krypton Force again! I haven't done a blog post about Krypton Force videos for ages. I must devote another blog to Marc's artwork again soon. And people have been sent here by recordholders.org, too - I didn't know that site even still existed, let alone had a link to my blog. You learn something new every day. And, thanks to Blogger, the things I'm going to learn revolve around the question of who's reading my blog!

A need for speed

The only real problem I had at the UK Championship was that my brain was running too slowly. It was taking me more time than it should have done to look at the numbers/cards/whatevers and translate them into images. Once I'd done that, my recall was excellent and my mind really wasn't wandering at all, which surprised me a bit, because I haven't done very much marathon-memory training in the last year or so. So really, I just need a bit of regular evening practice going as quickly as possible, and hopefully I'll be back up to somewhere close to my best, possibly...

On the other hand, I was really super-fast with the random words last week. The first three or four columns of words just sunk into my brain with no trouble at all, it really struck me as weird. Maybe there's a reason behind that, or maybe they were just easy words.