Werner's last blues

Grizzly Man looks very good indeed. I had to watch a video entitled 'Are you bear aware?' before I was allowed to stay in Yosemite National Park (needless to say there was no similar awareness raising of the squirrel peril). It showed lots of bears committing car crime - smashing windows in a desperate search for Lion bars and cheese and onion crisps, I don't think there was any joy riding though. It's a well documented fact, but no animal in the annals of car crime will ever match the chimpanzees of the West Midlands Safari Park. Sadly they were all rounded up and shot when foot and mouth broke out - which certainly sends a message to the criminal underclass.

I once described Werner Herzog’s voice as my favourite sound (above even the melancholy chimes of distant ice-cream vans) – which of course sounds horribly pretentious, but something about his lugubrious vowel sounds which match exactly his lugubrious face gives me great joy. I'm sure anyone who heard him saying 'That's not an opponent' about a plastic dustbin in Julien Donkey Boy, would agree.

Anyway nobody ever seems to ask 'What's your favourite documentary?' which is a shame - because I have lots - so in the spirit of time-wasting...

Wings of Hope - Werner Herzog
My Best Fiend - Werner Herzog
Chronique d'un Ete - Jean Rouch
Ongka's Big Moka - Disappearing World
One Day in September - Kevin Macdonald
Awake and in Pain - no idea who. It was about when the anaesthetic fails in surgery - I have no memory if it was any good, but the title stays with me almost as a motto

What else....?

Know thine enemy

...yes, yes that's his bloody name Conor McNicholas. He crops up on tv every now and again and before my brain has even had time to decode the information from my retinas, my mouth is shouting 'Cock. Cock. Cock' and similarly inspired variations on this. I take my hat off though to the far more charming, and somehow accuate description of him as a 'bleeding glow stick'. Since I can find no reference to this excellent quote anywhere else, I can't help feeling that the 'waspish commentators' are in fact the authors of that item.

Anyway... I suppose there's nothing really to be gained by marvelling yet again how awful the nme is these days, though if you still think you might have a nerve ending that hasn't been bludgeoned into numbness yet, this might do it for you. I can't get too worked up about it, though I think this, which is old news is more depressing.

Conor McNicholas (back to front name), Alexis Petri Dish (stupid bunsen burner name), it's good when people you don't like very much have silly names. Jeremy Clarkson is far too normal a name for such an inordinate knob....whereas Bono obviously pretty much does the job..... I need to think of some more examples to work this up into a theory....

What are squirrels up to?

I've been thinking about squirrels a lot recently. Working in the middle of the park, my awareness of them is at an all-time high. Keenly aware you could say.

I see them everyday, doing that thing they do - fevered activity and then momentary motionlessness - like they're playing musical statues but only they can hear the music.

At first I didn't see it, but after a few days I started to get a strong sense that I was seeing the same squirrels in exactly the same locations as the previous day. The same key positions always occupied by the same little faces, avidly munching, if I'm not very much mistaken, the very same 'nuts' (perhaps not even nuts - I don't claim to be an expert).

Just the occasional deviation, the odd change of stance might have thrown me off the scent - but I fear the squirrels have got a little sloppy.

I've just been out for a circuit now for my lunchbreak. I walked down the usual path and there they were insulting my intelligence with their pretence. As I walked on I spun around to try and see what they got up to once I passed. I'm not sure what I expected, maybe a couple of them lugging a big radio transmitter across the path, whilst the others did stretching and flexing exercises. Anyway - I'd underestimated them - they were there inscrutably nibbling.

Now I'm not sure....