Here to see it in: a Christmas cracker I made for a friend who is Welsh, but now lives in China...
Saturday 31 December 2016
Sunday 11 December 2016
Ten
Just when you thought number five couldn't be more off-putting... lo, it has been made flesh. Well, plastic, anyway.
Posted by John Finnemore at 9:35 pm 16 comments
Friday 9 December 2016
Thursday 8 December 2016
Seven
This is a different sort of place-holder, in that it's a work in progress, a first layer, and when (if) I finish it, I'll replace the image and delete this text. But for now, and who knows, maybe for ever, here's the undercoat.....
Posted by John Finnemore at 1:04 am 7 comments
Tuesday 6 December 2016
Six
You know when you see the clock-tower of the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, and you can't stop thinking about how it looks like some mad early twentieth century monarch of a minor Balkan state?
Posted by John Finnemore at 4:39 pm 18 comments
Monday 5 December 2016
Sunday 4 December 2016
Saturday 3 December 2016
Friday 2 December 2016
Thursday 1 December 2016
Wednesday 31 August 2016
Probably best just to tell your insurance company you work in a cubicle.
Posted by John Finnemore at 7:07 pm 41 comments
Labels: Fierce Creatures
Tuesday 5 July 2016
Over my head
Wittgenstein, enjoying a joke. |
This is from a memoir of Ludwig Wittgenstein by his former pupil Maurice Drury:
'After tea Johnson played some of Bach's Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues. Wittgenstein told me he admired Johnson's playing. On the way back to Trinity he told me that at one of these afternoons Johnson had played badly, and he knew it himself, but the audience had applauded loudly. This annoyed Johnson, so by way of revenge he gave as an encore the accompaniment only of a Beethoven violin sonata, which of course was meaningless without the violin part. This gesture seemed to please and amuse Wittgenstein.'
Ways in which, had I been there, I would have failed to get the joke which pleased and amused Wittgenstein:
1) I wouldn't have noticed Johnson was playing badly.
2) I wouldn't have noticed the audience were applauding indiscriminatingly.
3) I might have noticed Johnson was annoyed, but I wouldn't have known why.
4) I wouldn't have recognised the Beethoven violin sonata.
5) I might have noticed the piece sounded odd, but I wouldn't have known why, or that it wasn't meant to sound that way.
6) Even if I had understood all of the above... I don't think I'd have realised the choice of the sonata was intended as a rebuke to the audience for clapping the player's previous poor performance too enthusiastically. That seems to me quite a... subtle point.
I suppose what's happening here is I'm coming to the shocking conclusion that Wittgenstein was a cleverer man than I am. And also that I slightly regret not living in a world in which people take their revenge through their selection of Beethoven sonatas. Though, of course, the above shows that quite possibly people around me are doing things like this all the time, and I have simply never had Wittgenstein around to explain them to me.
Posted by John Finnemore at 4:37 pm 32 comments
Labels: Stupidity - My Own
Saturday 21 May 2016
Ahoy hoy!
This week I was honoured to make my first appearance on Radio 4's comedy warhorse Just A Minute, now in its astonishing 75th series, and which I've listened to and enjoyed all my life. It was enormous fun, and the regulars were very kind to me.
Posted by John Finnemore at 7:50 pm 298 comments
Thursday 19 May 2016
Lines imagined to be written by Galileo Galilei upon demonstrating that, contrary to Aristotelian thought, the ratio of gravitational mass to inertial mass is essentially unity.
Whether they're large or
Whether they're small
Has no effect on
The rate that things fall.
But whether you choose
To accept this or not'll
Depend on your faith
In that fool Aristotle.
Posted by John Finnemore at 1:08 pm 17 comments
Tuesday 17 May 2016
The A, of course, stands for 'avoid thinking of envelopes'.
Posted by John Finnemore at 6:01 pm 16 comments
Labels: Didn't Know That Yesterday
Saturday 27 February 2016
Emu's debut.
Something a bit different today - I've written a crossword. If you're in Britain, it's published in today's Times, on page 54 of the Saturday Review section. It's also available online here, although it may be behind the Times' paywall. And here's a picture of it.
If you do tackle it, let me know how you get on...
Posted by John Finnemore at 5:18 pm 166 comments
Friday 12 February 2016
You're just in time to miss the last episode!
So... the fifth series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme has been going out!
Featuring this pile of idiots. |
That's... that's definitely the sort of thing I should have been posting about here. Oh dear. Well, the last one was broadcast yesterday, but that does mean that there is now a two day window - today and tomorrow - where all six episodes are simultaneously available on the BBC iPlayer. On Sunday, the first one will drop off, then a week later the second, then... well, I'll leave you to work the rest of the system out for yourself. Anyway, sorry for being so rubbish at publicity, and hope you enjoy them.
Posted by John Finnemore at 9:09 pm 24 comments