Out of Touch

So yesterday's Times2 supplement ran an article on emo's. It highlighted how out of touch I am with youth culture -- and therefore middle-aged and old -- as I hadn't heard the term emo before.

Apparently emo's are all emotional and are basically goths with frills and an internet connection: Boy emo's pretend to be gay. Girl emo's wear polka-dots and animal prints in addition to the black drain-pipe jeans and wide rubber, cut-disguising, bracklets on their wrists.

Ask an emo, Family Fortunes style, what a razor is used for and their response will be:

1) Cutting yourself whilst listening to Joy Division or some internet band nobody's heard of outside of MySpace
2) Ummmmmm.... Having a shave?

Of course teenage-angst, and dressing up like the Manic Street Preachers, is nothing new: Ironically the term emo is almost identical to the brief emu youth sub-culture that was spawned in the UK after this self-harming skin-cutting 1999 tragedy.

Play those Radiohead albums emu.

Small Things Give Us Pleasure

Before the match I'd hoped for a last minute Ronaldo miss to level things, resulting in him crying his greasy eyes out.

There is a god.

And he waved his offside flag.

I had to wait 2 minutes before the local TV broadcaster showed the grease ball sobbing away, but it was a wonderfully uplifting sight, if not the highlight of the World Cup.

Recommended Podcast: Baddiel and Skinner's "The Britishers are Coming Home", chapter 8, 10-11 mins in.

iCandy

"Mummy, can I have an iPod... for my birthday?" -- India, aged 2 and 3 quarters.