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Pop
"Just pop your trousers off would you?"
What is it about doctors' training that they have to say "pop" your trousers off, rather than "take" them off? How do I "pop" my trousers off? If it were a skintight pair of Mexican nightclub crooner's trousers with snappy elastic I might be able to satisfy her, but my Geography Lecturer in Minor Welsh University cord trousers allow of no plosive bottom slapping.
I lay on the examination bed, aware of my navy blue pants and the outline of my penis. She bent my leg with its swollen knee this way and that.
I got dressed and she started asking me about my drinking. Last month, doctors in the UK were issued with a directive to ask "lifestyle questions". Not about the kind of music we like or what sort of interior décor we favour, but things like how much we drink. "Well, a bit. I'm fully aware it exceeds the recommended levels." Yes but what about my knee?

She said "I'm going to do a blood test, and a liver test too." She printed off five pages of notes about Drinking Myths and Facts. But also a prescription for some codeine, so it was worth being hectored. I took my myths and facts to read in the pub. Neil and his lover were there. "My doctor thinks I drink too much, for some reason." We got pissed and I accidentally, not deliberately, left the notes in the pub.
There's a saying "You're only an alcoholic if you can't afford it." I gave up drink for Lent a few years ago and the only advantage I felt was in my pocket.
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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person
M / 61 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].
"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.
WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.
There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic
I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008
The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek
Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner
La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes
Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to
mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards
the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity
would be able to use the word again.
John Whale
One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010
The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011
Rummage in my drawers
The Comfort of Strangers
23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
16.1.19: Further pruning
If your comment box looks like this, I'm afraid I sometimes can't be bothered with all that palarver just to leave a comment.
63 mago
Another Angry Voice
the asshat lounge
Clutter From The Gutter
Crinklybee Defunct
Exile on Pain Street
Fat Man On A Keyboard
gairnet provides: press of blll
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
On The Rocks
The Most Difficult Thing Ever nothing since April
Quillette
Strange Flowers
Wonky Words
"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006
5:4Bristol New Music
Desiring Progress Collection of links only
NewMusicBox
Purposeful Listening (né The Rambler)
Resonance FM
Sequenza 21
Sound and Music
Talking Musicology defunct, but retained
