Weblogging & landgrabbing & jackassing

I'm sorry this blog has been a bit quiet, but I've been spending a lot of my time online playing Landgrab with our bulgarious friends. It's the Risk board game on a pretty nifty website, but you can play on hundreds of different maps. Like this elegant one, "ShowMR" by Foist, we've been playing on:


The last time was a long game, all the continents are so interconnected (there's sea passages around the edges of the board), that everywhere feels like you're fighting for Asia. The continents have bizarre names like "Rap the Musical" & "Nature's President". You can also play on Pangaea. You can play in Belgium or the Great Lakes. You can play for Istanbul. You can play on the moon, on the Monopoly board (the most confusing board in my opinion), on The Band's Big Pink house, Star Wars' Millennium Falcon. I know this is a lame excuse for writing less, but there you have it, & let us know if you want to play with us.

The off-the-record recording where Barack Obama called Kanye West a "jackass" this week was leaked & ubiquitous now.



I asked Mrs Eley-Nelson if she thought, in her weathered English opinion, that he had had a few pints. She replied "I see what you mean. He sounds like a disney drunk. Whu'du'ya'mean.... kind of thing. Hic." It's nice that we no longer have a teetotaler in the White House, but, I said, "So you agree? He shouldn't risk being recorded when he's unwinding in the Lincoln bedroom with a few Nixon martinis." Nixon's martini, he stole the recipe from Winston Churchill, is to pour a glass of gin & glance across the room at the vermouth.

As for Mr West, I hate to say it, but the whole event seemed a little staged to me, & it'll probably help everybody's record sales. He'll probably call his next album The President's Jackass or something.