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New Year's Eve
It was only in the early 20th century that everyone started going nuts for the big NYE countdown malarkey, all the fireworks and booze and inappropriate snogging. Don't get me wrong, I think all that stuff's marvelous. Especially the snogging. It's a nice feeling, thinking that I'm the excuse for so much ill-advised tonsil hockey. Nowadays it's all your mates together, a massive piss-up and then that strange sense of anti-climax after midnight.
Of course, in times gone by people tended to use their imaginations a bit more. I remember well those wacky 7th century pagans in the Netherlands who used to make tiny figures of an old woman and miniature deer, and lay their tables in readiness for an imaginary house elf. Mad as a brush. For centuries, coastal-dwellers have been wont to gallop into the icy sea on New Year's Day - from Canada to Clevedon they do it. I bet they'll be at it again this year, pale flesh all goose-bumped in the morning light, shivering in their tiny Speedos. Mmmm, tiny Speedos.
NEW YEAR'S DAY HAPPENS ON FRI 1 JAN. THERE'S PLENTY TO DO - SEE LISTINGS FOR DETAILS.
- Venue interviews New Year's Eve, apparently.
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Technology?
It's entirely possible that we are entering a new 'Dark Age', one that, when viewed from a thousand years from now, will be equally as bafflingly opaque. All music, literature, blog, photography, all of it gone, the data stiffening slowly in silicon, unreadable, corrupted, lost. In part because of the arms race strategy employed by a digital industry obsessed with upgrading, reformatting and piracy blocking, and in part because all this stuff's just, well, so new. Very little of the technology we take for granted now is older than 60 years. Consider the lifespan of an average CD. Seventy-five years is considered optimistic. The dyes used in their manufacture will fade, the code will corrode and the disc will fall silent. Oh, and that CD player? It's got a laser in it. That's right, a laser. Try and take it apart and put it back together again so that it still works. I'll wait.
- Kid Pensioner on why books are great, this issue.
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Serial Thriller
Was it the ongoing resonance of your school years in Bristol that influenced your decision to root 'Captured' so firmly in the area? Not really my school years, although I suspect the dole and bedsit years which followed played a role. The truth is, although I left Bristol more than twenty years ago, it taps a deep root in my psyche. It's where I'm from, it's where most of my family still live, and the kind of friends that count as alternative family. It doesn't matter where in the world I happen to be, I only have to open my mouth in order for people to hear Bristol's formative affect on me. Which is lush.
Clearly you know this neck of the woods very well. Did you stay here in order to write it? Sadly, no. Although I'm in the UK four or five times a year and in Bristol at least once, the Bristol in my books has less to do with geography than a particular, psychological landscape. Parts of the area are significant to me in a way that has little or nothing to do with autobiography - Weston Pier, the Paragon in Clifton, Avebury. I don't associate these places with happy times. Often, I don't even have specific memories of them. Their hold on my imagination is much more mysterious than that - which is a way of saying I don't really understand it.
- Author Neil Cross on his latest thriller, 'Captured', which is set in Bristol, interviewed this issue.
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Jokes
The teacher asked the children about the collective names for animals. She asked the class if they could think of any.
Billy puts up his hand... "A flock of sheep!"
"Very good Billy, any more?"
Mary puts up her hand... "A herd of cows!"
"Excellent Mary, any more?"
Little Johnny puts up his hand... "A dose of crabs!"
(Thanks Ellie)
When Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked if he was going to upgrade to Windows 7, he replied, "I still love Vista, baby!"
(Thanks Tom)
God appeared before three world leaders, Putin, Obama and Mugabe, and ordered them to inform their people that Judgment Day will be in three days." Putin went on every television station in Russia and said, "I have bad news. First, everything we've believed for 70 years was false: God does exist. Second, Judgment Day will come in three days."
Obama recorded a video for YouTube in which he said, "I have good news and bad news. The good one is that everything most of us believe is true: God does exist. But the bad news is: Judgment Day will come in three days."
Mugabe appeared to 20,000 people forcibly bussed to a stadium in Harare and said: "I have great news for our country. First, God has acknowledged me as your president. And he has promised that I will remain your president until Judgment Day!"
(Thanks Steve. You win this week's star prize Mail us a postal address and we'll sort you with some books/CDs.)
Please send us jokes. Best one each week wins some stuff. Don't delay - email editor@venue.co.uk now and fill our inbox with your big, meaty funnyness .
For all the Venue spam jokes ever click here
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Websites
Some of the world's wackiest houses http://yepyep.gibbs12.com
How would you play a game called 'Greed'? http://www.scientificblogging.com
The real value of different professions http://www.hrmreport.com
New anti-whaling superboat uses stealth thechnology http://www.life.com
Road accident blackspots map http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8401344.stm
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Guess the Year?
As part of Venue's look back on the noughties, we dug out some classic quotes from the magazine over the last ten years. Just for fun, guess what year these all came from:
"No but yeah but I ain't not never done nuffin 'cause what happened was was we was all down Broadmeads when Theresa Mayer who's brother is on remand nicked Semna Geshwani's McFly pencil case and threw it at a homeless but she was well out of order to do that because everyone knows McFly are well fit apart from the one with the big chin but anyway Trisha Bentley came over and started stirring it all up and started saying that Shannon got off with Dean Finnegan but anyway don't listen to her 'cause everyone knows she's dirty 'cause once we was all down the Whitelady's Road and she took a dump outside Argos."
- Vicky Pollard (aka Matt Lucas) on hearing that she'd won Venue's top local person of the year award.
"It's absolutely daft when Tony Blair says he thinks that this means we'll drink more like the French do. The British don't drink like the French, even when they're in France ."
- Martin Plant, professor of addiction studies at UWE, on the new licensing laws.
"I wouldn't sell sh*t to Saatchi. I don't need one man to tell me I'm an artist."
- Banksy.
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Subscribe
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Please remember...
Please remember to buy Venue - the management have promised to stay in the Bahamas for the rest of January if you do.
P.S. Happy New Year
P.P.S. The quotes were all from 2004
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Cheers then.
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