Americans Count Cost of Automobile Addiction

Mind that fire hydrant

If only they stormed out of the house for a quick walk around the neighbourhood like everyone else when they have an argument with the wife ...

McComb Quits SCMP

As reported recently, Malcolm in the Muddle, as he's known from Quarry Bay to Tai Po, is leaving the SCMP (the newspaper with the world's highest most bought/least read ratio) for pastures new.

Given that Malcolm is an advertising man, it's odds on that he'll be returning to the magical world of advertising, where, as Roger Thornhill once put it so succinctly, there are no lies, just expedient exaggerations. So, he's unlikely to encounter too much culture shock when he finally clears his desk in the new year.

"I added value to the company and now it's time for me to move on," was Malcolm's verdict on his 15 months as Director of Marketing & Communications in an article for which Roger Thornhill himself could have supplied the headline, "SCMP hit by talent drain".

In another interview, Malcolm gives us a glimpse of his humbler, more vulnerable side when he admits that his "background, talent, skills and interest are not in sync with what the company focuses on in the immediate term".

A graduate of Tragos Bonnage Wiesendanger Ajroldi, better known – for understandable reasons – as TBWA, Malcolm's parting shot is an attempt to beef up the Classified Post, which has been looking very sorry for itself of late with about as much body to it as Shu Qi.

But unlike the invitation to join the SCMP Readers Panel last December, which came with promises of free wine, musical tickets, restaurant vouchers and spa coupons, this time the carrot for joining the Classified Post Discussion Panel is the chance to "let your voice be heard" on their "FREE and IMPORTANT" panel (capitals in the original).

You know what they say, Malcolm. Pay carrots, get donkeys.

Abba Mania

Whisper it softly, but tomorrow evening I'm donning my Lionels and digging out the platform shoes and heading down to Wan Chai to hear a tribute band from Australia butchering Björn and Benny's songs. In fact, these events being – so I am told – the vocal equivalent of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, most of the butchering will be performed by the audience. Yes, even by me – shrinking violet that I am – who will be singing along to numbers which I think I know, but actually don't, thus pissing off my daughter who does know them.

However, I have the big advantage over her of having been around when Sweden's answer to the Fab Four burst onto the scene in 1974, while she has the cheek to think that the Westlife version of classics such as I Have a Dream is superior to the original.

I mean, blimey, it's like saying that The Dark Knight with Christian Bale and Heath Ledger is better than Batman with Adam West and Burt Ward

Anyway, Ill let you be the judges. (I'm even sticking up a special poll for this.) Here's a live Abba performance from 1979 on Spanish TV:



And here's the Irish lads' miserable cover:



If I'm not posting on Monday, you'll know it's because I'm in rehab.

Boring Others into Submission

"And wherefore not? A reasonable reason,
If good, is none the worse for repetition;
If bad, the best way 's certainly to tease on,
And amplify: you lose much by concision,
Whereas insisting in or out of season
Convinces all men, even a politician;
Or—what is just the same—it wearies out.
So the end 's gain'd, what signifies the route?"
(Don Juan, Canto 15, Stanza LI)

Now why did I think of this as, in the latest of shifting alliances that characterise Hong Kong "politics" (the word being used loosely and with apologies to Bernard Crick), the lawyers jump into bed with the whackos, leaving the completely clueless on the sidelines? Or not.

Born for Opposition

"Opposition is true friendship." So wrote William Blake (most famous today as the man who penned the words for England's national song – "Jerusalem", naturally enough) in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Owen Barfield – lawyer, writer and friend of C S Lewis, who looked after, or tried to look after, the great man's financial affairs – used this epigram when dedicating his 1928 book Poetic Diction to his contemporary at Oxford.

Theirs was an unusual friendship. Lewis put his debt to Barfield on record by calling him the best of his unofficial teachers in his dedication to his 1936 Allegory of Love, while portraying him in his autobiography Surprised by Joy as a man "who disagrees with you about everything" and "has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one".

In his immensely enjoyable satirical romp Don Juan, Byron half seriously (was he ever entirely serious? like all the greatest wits, he was rarely purely flippant) seeks to justify the length of his poem by pointing out that opposition requires more words than flattery:

A modest hope – but modesty 's my forte,
And pride my feeble: – let us ramble on.
I meant to make this poem very short,
But now I can't tell where it may not run.
No doubt, if I had wish'd to pay my court
To critics, or to hail the setting sun
Of tyranny of all kinds, my concision
Were more; – but I was born for opposition.

(Canto 15, stanza XXII)

Opposition, or conflict, as he generally refers to it, is also a quality that Alasdair MacIntyre focuses on in After Virtue. He quotes fellow philosopher John Anderson as saying that we should not ask of a social institution "What end or purpose does it serve?" but rather "Of what conflicts is it the scene?", Anderson's insight being that "it is through conflict and sometimes only through conflict that we learn what our ends and purposes are". (163-4)

It is MacIntyre's contention that traditions, vital traditions, will embody conflict. He takes as an example an institution dear to his heart (he worked at enough of them) – the university:

"... when an institution is the bearer of a tradition of practice or practices, its common life will be partly, but in a centrally important way, constituted by a continuous argument as to what a university is and ought to be ... Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition becomes Burkean*, it is always dying or dead." (222)

* Seen as an anti-rational, stale traditionalism that worships the past and seeks stability at the expense of human flourishing.

In a tantalising passage towards the end of After Virtue, MacIntyre appears to offer a re-evaluation of conflict; or at any rate to offer a scenario in which a type of conflict is depicted as its own worst enemy, allowing pluralism (and multiculturalism?) to render it invisible and thus, we may take it, impotent:

"... Marx was fundamentally right in seeing conflict and not consensus at the heart of modern social structure. It is not just that we live too much by a variety and multiplicity of fragmented concepts; it is that these are used at one and the same time to express rival and incompatible social ideals and policies and to furnish us with a pluralist political rhetoric whose function is to conceal the depth of our conflicts." (253)

2012 Clichés

From the moment at the beginning of the film when the camera zooms in on the battered black Penguin Classic that the hero, also black but considerably less battered, is reading, as his taxi – a 1960s Jaguar – lurches over the potholes on its way to the copper mine at Nigga Donga in India, you know that you're going to be in for one hell of a scary ride.

When you descend into the bowels of the earth in a rickety lift with the hero, who rejoices in the name Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a handsome Indian astrophysicist with a beautiful wife and a chess-playing son, you know that this is going to be a gut-wrenching experience. As you're taken on a Cook's tour from India to Paris via Washington DC, Canada, China (or is it Tibet?) and London, you realise that this movie is going to be Uttar Pradesh.

2012 is a film that sets the bar so low that a cameo by an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike provides the highlight. The clichés come so fast that you end up wishing you will be vapourised at the halfway mark with Woody Harrelson, who plays the loony libertarian who may not have a regular pay check coming in but who knows everything from how to run his own radio station from a camper van to how to read the lines he's been given while keeping a straight face.

As compensation for being made to dress up like Lord Baden Powell auditioning for ZZ Top, Woody is given one of the best lines before he exits in what I believe was called a solar climax – a great ball of fire to you and me. When he gets a call from the white hero, John Cusack, asking him where he keeps the map that has the location of the bunker with the space ships in which people with a billion Euros to spare will escape the coming global devastation, Woody replies, "It's on the 'Conspiracy' shelf – between Roswell and Marilyn Monroe."

But, in an incredible twist, it turns out that they're not space ships after all; they're – wait for it – real ships, as in the ones that float in water, in anticipation of the mother and father of all tsunamis that's set to envelop the Himalayas. And what's more, they've been built by the Chinese at breakneck speed under Mount Everest. ("Don't mention Tibet! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.") So, not only are they incredibly well built – like everything with "Made in China" stamped on it – they're also guaranteed to ensure that the movie gets shown in Chinese cinemas and goes on to break all box-office records there.

Meanwhile, in a world where you're beginning to say along with Long John that "Them that dies'll be the lucky ones", the White House has morphed to Bleak House via Black House thanks to a performance by Danny Glover that makes Jimmy Carter look strong, credible and statesmanlike. Not only is he the weakest POTUS in history, he has a daughter who rejoices in the name of Thandie Newton and who has the hots for Chiwetel Ejiofor because he's the only guy she's ever met with a weirder name than her own.

"I read 2,000 books in high school and never had a girlfriend," says the geologist, now rock hard and close to eruption.

"I didn't kiss a guy till I was in my twenties," the art historian replies, shuddering as the phallus-shaped ark emerges from a head-on collision with the north face of Everest with nothing more than a cracked helmet.

Yes, they do call them "arks" and, yes, they do carry animals – we see giraffe and elephant swinging from helicopters as they fly over K2. And, yes, the cruise liner that Chiwetel's Dad is employed as a crooner on is called Genesis, and, yes, John Cusack's boy is called Noah. And, yes, Noah's evil stepfather – a bespectacled plastic surgeon who dresses like a dentist – is called Gordon, while Cusack – a failed writer with an Internet addiction – is given the manly name Jackson. Call a man Gordon and you know his fate's been sealed and he won't ever get to beget with Jackson's ex.

Think Gordon, and you think losers like Gordon Liddy and Gordon Brown. Think Jackson, and you think winners like Jackson Pollock and Michael Jackson. Combine them both and what do you get?

A monster like Gordon Jackson.

After Virtue

After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory, by Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, was first recommended to me by my PhD supervisor many years ago. Regrettably, along with a number of other suggestions he made, I didn't take him up on this one at the time. However, if you're reading this, Guy, you'll be pleased to know I've finally got round to reading it courtesy of the excellent Hong Kong Public Libraries.

First published in 1981, with a second, corrected edition coming out four years later after MacIntyre had had the opportunity to take on board criticism from his peers, After Virtue is in truth a bit of a curate's egg. To stretch the metaphor a bit, it is, though, a free range egg rather than the product of intensive battery farming. It is thought provoking, quirky and learned; it ranges over a wide variety of subjects; it is generally well written with a surprisingly light touch despite occasional lapses into obscurity.

In essence, the book is a defence of Aristotle (indeed, an attempt to reinstate his moral scheme - minus the slavery) and a rebuttal of Nietzsche, or at least a rebuttal of Nietzsche's take on Aristotle. MacIntyre traces one of his major targets, ethical "emotivism", according to which moral judgments are merely expressions of how we feel about a matter, back to the eighteenth century and an "Enlightenment" that failed to provide an objective basis for moral judgments. After Virtue is MacIntyre's attempt to rehabilitate a moral way of looking at life:

"... I am not merely contending that morality is not what it once was, but also and more importantly that what was once morality has to some large degree disappeared – and that this marks a degeneration, a grave cultural loss." (22)

So who exactly is living "after virtue"? It is that type of liberal individual who has renounced allegiance to all traditions (echoes of Karl Popper here) and who thereby leaves little room for the virtues.

In the middle section, there is a highly enjoyable attack on what the author calls the fiction of managerial effectiveness, with the manager as actor cast in the central role.

"It is histrionic success which gives power and authority in our culture. The most effective bureaucrat is the best actor." (107)

After Virtue is as much a celebration of excellence and a treatise against mediocrity as a philosophical tome. In the age of Celebrity Big Brother and the Chief Executive's Policy Address, it has, then, its place.

Scholesy Shows Frogs How to Do It

No faffing about from the little ginger fellow:

Green Mist Descends

Sent out of de World Cup by a handball – and to tink Oi'd never don anyting loike dat in me whole loif.

Defying Mao

Just as Sebastian Heffner once wrote a book called Defying Hitler, Nien Cheng's memoir could be called Defying Mao. Dipping into my yellowing edition last night, I re-read the two bits I'd marked up when I first read the book.

"The guard would unlock the door of the cell and lead me into a room in a remote corner of the prison compound where we could continue to shout at each other without being heard by the other prisoners. I would give in and stop talking when I became utterly exhausted. Sometimes my endurance outlasted the guards' patience. When that happened, they resorted to physical violence to silence me, either hitting my body or kicking my legs. They called me a 'hysterical old woman' and often deplored my 'mad fits', but they never knew my real purpose in provoking them. During my six and a half years of solitary confinement, I deliberately caused scenes such as this many times. Whenever deep depresion overwhlemed me to the extent that I could no longer sleep or swallow food, I would intentionally seek an encounter with the guards ... fighting was a positive action much more encouraging to the human spirit than merely enduring hardship with patience, known as a virtue of the Chinese race."

At another "interrogation":

"As I gazed at Mao's face wearing what was intended as a benign expression but which was in fact a smirk of self-satisfaction, I wondered how one single person could have caused the extent of misery that was prevailing in China. There must be something lacking in our character, I thought, that had made it possible for his evil genius to dominate."

Life and Death in Shanghai

In the Authorised Version of the Bible, the letter to the Hebrews has the simple yet evocative phrase "of whom the world was not worthy" to describe those men and women who had shown outstanding courage in defence of the faith they upheld.

When I first read Nien Cheng's account of her experiences in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution (has any act of lunacy ever been so badly misnamed?), these words came to mind. Twenty years on and no other book on the twentieth century turmoil in China comes close to Life and Death in Shanghai, whose author died in Washington DC earlier this month at the age of 94.

Entirely free of the boastfulness and self-promotion that characterise so many other books by "survivor/sufferers", the author's intelligence and courage bring a power to the narrative that is fully commensurate with the monumental subject matter. The understated style makes the sadness of the senseless loss of her only child almost unbearable.

In an age when serious matters are dumbed down, it is refreshing as well as instructive to read a book in which the dumb acts of human beings are treated with seriousness.

SCMP Slumps to All-time Low as Director Misspells Own Name

I open my Inbox this morning and what do I find? A missive from Hong Kong's world newspaper inviting me to attend a PostGrad Expo next month. I don't want to appear too mean, but it would appear that the person who really needs to go back to school is the South China Morning Post's Marketing & Communications Director, Michael McComb, who signs off as follows:

Your sincerely,

Micheal McComb

Bunyan had his Slough of Despond. The SCMP prefers to wallow in its Vale of Diction.

Swallowing Eulogy More Than Satire

I mentioned that Byron was a bit harsh on the Stormin' Norman of his day, the Duke of Wellington, in his Don Juan, which came out in instalments like Private Eye, and was eagerly awaited by his readers. Here's a taster on the Iron Duke, whose name he corrupted to "Villainton", which must have gone down well in the Wellesley household:

"I am no flatterer – you've supp'd full of flattery:

They say you like it too – 't is no great wonder.

He whose whole life has been assault and battery,

At last may get a little tired of thunder;

And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, he

May like being praised for every lucky blunder,

Call'd 'Saviour of the Nations' – not yet saved,

And 'Europe's Liberator' – still enslaved."

(Canto IX, Stanza 5)

I reckon this bloke would have made a half decent blogger.

Opera That Made Pavarotti Coming to Hong Kong

Although more famous now for his operas Lucia di Lammermoor and L'Elisir d'Amore, Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment has been a smash hit in France since its first performance in 1840. A comic opera in two acts, it used to be performed every Bastille Day at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and is still regularly performed on Armistice Day across Europe.

The undoubted highlight of the show is the aria "Ah Mes Amis - Pour Mon Âme" (not technically an aria at all, but an arietta, followed by a solo with chorus, followed by another chorus leading into the magnificent cavatina, "Pour Mon Âme").

It was with this song that Lucio Pavarotti burst onto the scene at Covent Garden in 1966 in a role he would reprise at the Met and which would earn him the title of "King of the High Cs".

The good news is that the opera is coming to Hong Kong in the new year. More details when I have them.

New Rules, Same Old Crap

Under Hong Kong's famed and feared anti-cartel laws, it's now illegal to sell a skyscraper in the Mid-Levels by using photographs of a chateau in the Dordogne. However, you can still sell the Mid-Levels skyscraper with photos of the chateau if you print a disclaimer to the effect that "the photographs in the advertisement represent the artist's imaginative impression of the development concerned". People who insist that the camera never lies should visit Hong Kong.

While here, they might like to stay at the latest of these high-rise boxes, a 63-floor contribution to the wall effect called Seymour. Located at 9 Seymour Road with panoramic views of the ParknShop, this edifice does have one thing going for it: a sensible name rather than a stupid Italian one.

Originally owned by Emperor International, the conglomerate controlled by the entertainment mogul with an eye for young female talent, Albert Yeung Sau Sing, the property was sold on to WingTaiAsia, the local arm of Singapore property developer Wing Tai Holdings.

If you thought Singaporean English was an improvement on the Hong Kong variety, think again. A quick look at the sales blurb in yesterday's South China Morning Post is enough to make you turn your nose up at the linguistic pretensions of those annoying people who will insist on switching from Hokkien to English as soon as a white face sits down at the next table.

Imagine the forgotten luxury of slowing down, where one leisurely takes in exquisite art collections amidst a ceiling of hand-crafted chandeliers.

I particularly enjoyed the schoolboy error of assuming "leisurely" to be an adverb since it ends in "-ly".

"Amidst a ceiling" is pretty good, too.

Parsons Knows

After witnessing one of the great Open Championships on the Ayrshire Coast in July, I thought I'd take in the Saturday and Sunday of the Hong Kong Open Golf tournament, which tees off tomorrow at Fanling.

Getting there is proving to be quite an adventure in itself. Monday lunchtime, I walked down to the local branch of Parsons Music, which according to the Open's website was selling tickets for the event along with Cityline. When I requested two 4-day passes for the event – the cheapest option – the woman behind the counter asked a string of questions about venue, dates and times, and then, almost as an afterthought, told me the computer was down and wouldn't be fixed till the evening.

So, yesterday, before setting out, I got my secretary to call and check that everything was in order. The thumbs up having been given, I sallied forth and asked Elvis, the man behind the counter, for two 4-day passes for the Hong Kong Open Golf on 12-15 November. At first, Elvis offered me tickets for Thursday, then for Friday. He was about to offer me tickets for Saturday when I popped round the counter to join him and point to the "4-day pass" option which was staring at him from the drop-down menu.

Having sorted that out, Elvis picked up the phone and after a brief conversation in Cantonese handed the phone over to me. The woman on the other end said something but I couldn't hear what it was because a couple of brats chose this moment to thump the nearest Yamaha upright.

After dispatching Elvis to urge upon them the wisdom of desisting, I had a conversation which was memorable in the rather surreal manner that service encounters in Hong Kong have a way of being.

"You want two 4-day passes for the golf, sir?"

"That's right."

"For the pass, there are no guaranteed seats," she said apologetically.

"That's okay," I said. "I'll take them anyway."

I passed the phone back to Elvis, who confirmed with his superior that I would indeed be willing to watch the golf without being allocated a seat number.

Next it was time to pay and I had an inkling that things might not be straightforward. The chances of the credit card going through I rated about as high as my daughter's favourite player, Nick Dougherty, winning the tournament.

I hate to say I was right, but after Elvis had swished the card through for the fourth time I told him not to bother, I would pay cash. Rather than the HK$400 per head that the website talked about (never trust a bank – the event is sponsored by UBS), the computer flashed up $360.

I paid up and left 20 minutes after arriving with a deeper insight into why Parsons Music is doomed to forever be the poor man's Tom Lee.

Warring with All Who War with Thought

My recent reading has included two interesting books, each something of a classic in its own field and each a strong defence of freedom: Don Juan by Byron and After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre.

Don Juan was a revelation to me – not least, because I had never before read anything much by Byron apart from what turned out to be snippets from this hefty work (unfinished, as all great English epics must be). Think "The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece ... Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their Sun, is set".

The great thing about the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale is that you can never be certain when he's being serious. Famously described by his one time lover, Lady Caroline Lamb, as "mad, bad and dangerous to know", Byron loved nothing better than taking pot shots at the great and the good of his day. Writing just a few years after Waterloo, he's merciless towards the Duke of Wellington, but his greatest scorn is reserved for his fellow poets – not Shelley and Keats, with whom he will forever be associated, but Wordsworth ("incomprehensible"), Coleridge ("drunk") and especially Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate ("mediocre").

It's not often you read a poem and laugh aloud, but this self-described "satirical epic" has just that effect. Don Juan might fizzle out a bit towards the end, but then Byron himself was fizzling out, so I suppose he can be forgiven. The following three extracts give a taste of the depth of the man, and his importance as both philosopher and poet.

Deep, wordless ire of the human heart (Canto 3)

"The cubless tigress in her jungle raging
Is dreadful to the shepherd and the flock;
The ocean when its yeasty war is waging
Is awful to the vessel near the rock;
But violent things will sooner bear assuaging,
Their fury being spent by its own shock,
Than the stern, single, deep, and wordless ire
Of a strong human heart, and in a sire."

Sanctifying excess of love by power to bless (Canto 4)

"Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother,
All that the best can mingle and express
When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another,
And love too much, and yet can not love less;
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless."

On tyranny (Canto 9)

"And I will war, at least in words (and – should
My chance so happen – deeds), with all who war
With Thought; – and of Thought's foes by far most rude,
Tyrants and sycophants have been and are.
I know not who may conquer: if I could
Have such a prescience, it should be no bar
To this my plain, sworn, downright detestation
Of every depotism in every nation.

It is not that I adulate the people:
Without me, there are demagogues enough,
And infidels, to pull down every steeple,
And set up in their stead some proper stuff.
Whether they may sow scepticism to reap hell,
As is the Christian dogma rather rough,
I do not know;—I wish men to be free
As much from mobs as kings—from you as me.

The consequence is, being of no party,
I shall offend all parties: never mind!
My words, at least, are more sincere and hearty
Than if I sought to sail before the wind.
He who has nought to gain can have small art: he
Who neither wishes to be bound nor bind,
May still expatiate freely, as will I,
Nor give my voice to slavery's jackal cry."

More on After Virtue when I've finished it.

Mozart Minus Magic

It is a sad reflection of the version of The Magic Flute currently being staged at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre that the best part of the evening was reading Savio Lau's recommended CD and DVD recordings in the programme notes.

In his article, Lau pays tribute to Ingmar Bergman's 1975 filmed version, writing that "after many recorded and live performances of the great work, the Bergman version still comes top for its wit and enchantment". What a full house in the Grand Theatre on Friday evening got was The Magic Flute without wit, without enchantment, and without magic. They responded in turn with a very short ovation and a swift exit.

Among the principals, the only performances of any note came from the two basses, Mika Kares as Sarastro and Freddie Tong as his sidekick, the Speaker of the Temple. Even so, what could otherwise have been considered a tour de force by Kares was seriously compromised by the dialogue he was made to speak. Suddenly, from being a believable and weighty character fighting the good fight against ignorance and wickedness, Sarastro becomes a young Finn waging war on the English language

The question of how much dialogue to use in The Magic Flute, technically not an opera but a Singspiel, a popular 18th century form that includes speaking as well as singing, is something that anyone who stages the work needs to consider, but the twin facts that most of the dialogue is silly and redundant and that no one in this cast had the necessary acting skills to make it work should have prompted the producers and director to keep it to a bare minimum. Another reason for judicious pruning is that the second act isn't as strong as the first, as the main characters Tamino and Pamina prepare themselves for Masonic purification – not the sort I'd recommend, incidentally – with several false endings giving the audience a sense of the arduous nature of the tests the protagonists are undergoing.

While Eric Margiore as Tamino, Inna Dukach as Pamina and Mimma Briganti as the Queen of the Night were all adequate, major disappointments included Brian Montgomery as Papageno, Margaret Yim as Papagena and Alex Tam as Monostatos. In the plum role of Papageno, Montgomery was wooden and annoying, while the best that can be said for Yim is that she seemed made for this Papageno. Playing the villainous Monostatos straight out of the Wu Fung School of Acting, Tam, who is possessed of a decent tenor voice, descended to obscenity – dry humping and masturbation – when the most powerful evil is internal and understated.

Montgomery, Yim and Tam are all connected with the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, so it was no real surprise that the Three Spirits – played so beautifully by three boys in Bergman's film – should struggle so much, all being graduates of that academy. Not that the women received any favours from the costume designer, appearing understandably ill at ease in their Thanksgiving turkey outfits.

Basra Babe Named Miss England

In a story so vacuous and inconsequential it could form the plot for a whole series of Footballers' Wives, Lance Corporal Katrina Hodge will be swapping beret for coronet as she seeks to become Miss World in South Africa next month.

I don't think you'd need to test this bird for gender, but if it's mandatory I'm up for it.

Clown who Sacrificed Caster Semenya Finally Stripped of his Shiny Red Nose

The clown in charge of Athletics South Africa, Leonard Chuene, has finally been stripped off his red nose, big shoes and giant round buttons in a damage limitation exercise by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) ahead of an announcement later this month by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

The IAAF is likely to confirm that 18-year-old Caster Semenya, one of the two South African athletes who won gold at 800 metres in Berlin in August, is an "intersexual" - or hermaphrodite, if you prefer Greek to Latin - with both male and female organs.

This will come as no surprise to Chuene, who not only knew about the earlier gender verifcation tests carried out on the teenager before he packed her off to Berlin, but also ignored the advice of team doctor, Harold Adams, who urged him to withdraw Semenya from the World Championships. To round off a remarkable performance, Chuene then lied about the gender tests, denying they had ever happened, until he was forced to change his tune when a South African newspaper published emails between him and Dr. Adams discussing the tests.

Which all goes to prove the old adage: you can always tell a buffoon, but you can't tell him much.

Meanwhile, SASCOC have moved quickly to claim squatting rights in the moral low ground recently vacated by Chuene, issuing a bull in which they thunder about "taking appropriate action against the IAAF for its disregard of Semenya's rights to privacy", as they attempt to prove that you can indeed have it both ways.

This too, I fear, will end in tears: the tears of more clowns.

Quams and Quims

Browsing through the judges' report on Hong Kong's best 2008 annual reports, in which we managed another top three finish, my eye was taken by the name of one of the also-rans, a certain "Quam Limited".

The website of what wikipedia calls this "small securities firm in Hong Kong", quamir.com – pronounced to rhyme with quagmire? – has this to say about its business under the heading "Quam IR Unveils Your Niche":

"Quam IR is a proactive strategic solution provider assisting listed companies in enhancing their corporate identity and market positioning among retail and institutional investors. We help you to unveil your niche."

Reading that, I can fully appreciate why the panel didn't reward them for their efforts. Okay, so they've worked in enhance, proactive, solution and niche; but where, oh, where, are the paradigms, portals and synergies?

Be honest: would you let Quam near your niche?

Queen Breaks Silence on Adlington Row

"I hear your agent's a bit of a prick."

"Oh, ma'am, you're worse than that Frankie Boyle."

The Informant!

The Informant! is much like The Insider, except that it stars a fat Matt Damon with glasses rather than a fat Russell Crowe with glasses. It also has an exclamation mark in the title to indicate that you shouldn't be expecting to take it too seriously.

Best line in this story of your everyday attention-seeking whistleblower. Damon has just spilled the beans (soya beans, if I remember correctly – the film's set in the agricultural limbo-land between Illinois and Missouri) about multi-million dollar price-fixing involving Japs, Frogs and Yanks. He turns to the second FBI fellow to comment on the lead investigator, Brian:

"He's a good listener – don't meet one of those every day."

Best moment. Damon is about to be sentenced to umpteen years in jail for stealing millions of dollars from his own company. The judge says he can see no mitigating circumstances and doesn't buy the cock-and-bull story about bipolar depression. "It's a pity, as you could have made CEO of the company one day."

David Brent like, Damon turns round smiling in his chair to receive the approbation of the courtroom. So sad, it's actually credible.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a 2007 film directed by Sidney Lumet, the veteran director whose credits include 12 Angry Men, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, is an unremittingly bleak and powerful film.

If it was Oliver Cromwell who is said to have asked the artist Peter Lely to paint him "warts and all", then this film is a warts-and-all depiction of human weakness and human ugliness. And in a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman and octogenarian Albert Finney, that means a lot of ugliness, not least in the first action of the film, when Hoffman's flab fills the screen in a poignant, not to mention rather painful, humping scene with Marisa Tomei. It almost beggars belief that the excellent Hoffman was still in his 30s when the film was shot: he looks closer to 50.

The much maligned Tomei looks great throughout – the vacuity of her character is well captured by her choice of a little black number with plunging neckline when the family are in mourning – and delivers the knockout moment of the movie when, faced with a husband who's howling from the depths of his heart about his lousy relationship with his father, she gives a single look that says both "I don't care" and "I'm leaving you".

It's a measure of the bleakness of the film that Hoffman cannot even manage to be the biggest loser in it. That honour goes to his screen younger brother, played by Ethan Hawke. When he can't afford the US$120 to send his ten-year-old daughter on a field trip to see The Lion King (since when, incidentally, do kids need field trips to see a Disney cartoon?), his girl tells him that she's going to tell her classmates "I can't go because my Dad is such a loser".

The film is the kind of dissection of the human condition that could well do the trick for someone suffering from serious depression. It will either help the sufferer to see that he's not alone, or it will make him realise the futility of just about everything he does and everything he wants. As the Finney character says when his eldest, but certainly not dearest, son suggests refocusing his energies on his jewelry shop after he has lost his wife, "The damn place can burn down for all I care".

That is pretty much a metaphor for the whole picture.

Lost in Translation

An interesting insight into the different assumptions that people from different cultural backgrounds bring to translation and editing work. A friend who has to prepare news summaries for the transport and logistics sector in Hong Kong was preparing the following news clipping, which had already been translated from Chinese, for the monthly media summary:

"Authorities in Fuzhou are considering imposing heavy penalties for the violation of traffic regulations. Fuzhou Bus Group said it would increase the pressure on its bus drivers."

To make the meaning clearer and to ameliorate the rather severe nature of the tone, she changed the second sentence to "Fuzhou Bus Group said it would urge its bus drivers to drive professionally".

She got a message back to say that she had misunderstood the meaning. Fuzhou were not concerned about the need to stop drivers speeding, jumping red lights, etc; they were worried about the pressure that increased fines would have on the morale of their frontline staff.

Wig Makers to Take Class Action against Agassi

I hear zey are going to hit you vif a hair suit.