Even though I havent lived in my home town for about 18 years I have always been proud of it, even when, to be honest, it was a shithole. It is now very far being a shithole and is getting better all the time. Still, fools who have never been there malign the place: let them, it leaves more room for us that are aware of it's charms. I don't know of one person who has ever spent time in the place who doesn't come away with a completely different impression to the one they started with.
Stuart Jeffries, a self confessed yammer, sings the cities praises in todays Guardian, although his tongue would appear to be firmly embedded in his cheek.

Classic ruins of Detroit.

Are you a Ninja?

Old Etonian George Orwell would have been 100 this year. It would be interesting and enlightening, I feel, to know what he would have made of recent events. I have trouble with Orwell, I don't know why, it must be a class thing, though I am very glad I have read much of his stuff, and his account of his time in the Spanish Civil War is required reading. Plenty of Orwell to keep you amused (! ?) here.

I can't say I have ever been a great admirer of Moloko, but their website is worth a visit for some very fetching pictures of the singer. A pop up also appears inviting you to listen to the new album.

Explore The Wasteland. It all looks a bit complicated to me eyes, but then nothing worthwile is ever simple I suppose, apart from my Mrs. I know at least one visitor to this blog who will enjoy the link anyway.

It appears that thousands and thousands of leaflets are being dropped on Iraq, they look just like this.

Found on Mefi; The First Church of Jesus Christ, Elvis.

Let your inner child loose.

The Friday Five:
1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?
Although I read newspapers every day, and would be bereft without them, novels are the shit, as it were. It doesn't matter how late it is I always have to read something before nodding off. Browsing around bookshops is part of the joy, I rarely leave with just one book, it's usually armfuls, I am then like a little kid at Christmas reading dustjackets and flicking through before deciding which to read first.

2. What is your favorite novel?
This is an impossible question. After a lifetime of devouring novels it cannot be distilled like that, you are not comparing like with like for a start. Then how do you distinguish between books that brought great pleasure, like Captain Corellis Mandolin, and heartbreaking works like , well, anything by Primo Levi I suppose, or the dozens and dozens of American detective novels I have read.
I used to have a penchant for the English campus novel, how would that compare with The World According to Garp, or another peculiarly American writer, Richard Ford, or Richard Russo? Can't be done.
Having said all that, Monsignor Quixote is a little masterpiece. Funny, gentle, wise, full of humour and compassion. I love that book.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
(Yeats)

4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
Dunno, can't think. I don't go in for all that longing to read the classics. Das Kapital maybe, but life really is too short. I have a copy of Underworld upstairs, but the size of it puts me off, I will get round to it one day.

5. What are you currently reading?
Tishomingo Blues

Good interview with Daniel Day Lewis.

The incomparable Miguel Cardoso started a thread on mefi inviting people to post images of their home town, its magnificent.
American Photo Journalist.

Everyone who is able should get their altruistic heads on, as Glenn Hoddle would say, and sign up for mefiswap. I am looking at you Bluetitch, Squealy and Ragamuffin.

Fantastic and humbling images, courtesy of junkbox, via mefi.