For all you Snapbox fans out there, another outing for your favourite screenshot quiz, sponsored as ever by our friends at Hatbox, giving you a chance to win an all-suede 1980s Austrian Hatbox from the 1950s.
So, without further of this ado, here it is: Snapbox!
Answers via envelope to Sally.
If you don’t have the answer, then why not console yourself with this hilarious Antique Hatbox Sketch. Maybe my all-time favourite hatbox-related sketch.
Xnfg, noun, from the Chinese xun, a traditional egg-shaped Chinese pottery flute:
a xun
Xnfg means, literally, “the sound caused by blowing into a traditional egg-shaped Chinese pottery flute when it is blocked.” The nature of the blockage is unimportant. Mud, cork, petals, plastic, the screwed-up body of an origami swan, the blower’s fingers, any of these. The key to the meaning (or rather, two meanings) of ‘xnfg’ lies in the response made to the blockage by the individual who suffers the indignity of a fouled note. The shame of failure. Will they dash the offending pottery egg to the floor? Or persevere, remove the impediment, and return their lips to the flute? Either response can be implied by the tone used to deliver the word. For example, here’s a conversation between the director Michael Mann and the actress Gina Gershon, who worked with Mann on The Insider:
MICHAEL: I saw Daniel Day-Lewis in an old episode of Shoestring the other day.
GINA: Series two, episode five?
MICHAEL: Yes, The Farmer Had a Wife. He played a DJ.
GINA: Goodness me. Daniel Day-Lewis in Shoestring.
MICHAEL: Xnfg.
GINA: Don’t you mean “xnfg”?
MICHAEL: Sorry, that’s what I meant to say. Xnfg.
GINA: I totally agree with you.
It is a troubling thing to see any great artist doubt his own art, but in witnessing their perplexity, in seeing them square their shoulders against failure (or the possibility, even, of failure), we can rediscover them, see them as more human, more like us, and their boldness when it returns seems all the brighter. Stebson is suffering a dark night of the pencil, this we can see for sure, a figure cries out for correcting fluid from yet another inhospitable office interior, but what is that in his bucket? One of three things, certainly. There is an urgency to this crisis, a calmness broken, but perhaps it serves as much for a wake-up call for us, his audience, as it is a crying-out from Stebson to his muse. Stebson’s doubt is our doubt. He stumbles, and we fall. He rises again, and he carries us with him, skyward.
I used the inside of a kettle and some old TV valves and apple crates I found under some bleach, and wired the whole thing up to a clock radio. I’m happy with the results – very happy – but she says she’s allergic to coal dust and won’t eat anything except egg whites through a straw. I guess she’s used to that sort of pampering. I’m thinking of taking her round schools, on an anti-bullying campaign. I think the kids would respond well.
Very excited about Steven Seagal’s latest movie project. Directed, co-written by, and starring Mr Seagal himself. It’s called Prince of Pistols, and I am intrigued and delighted by the latest casting information on IMDb:
Steven Seagal … John Prince
B.B. King … (in talks)
KoKo Taylor … (in talks)
NB. He’s also the executive producer. Four salaries! (and the decision to do the ghastly Prince of Pistols / John Prince reverse pun made so much easier).
Update: thanks to one of my readers, a Mr C.T. Onions for pointing out my ‘saleries’ spelling blunder, and for recommending I try Steven Seagal’s Lightning Bolt energy drink with the added Policosanols, in particular the Asian Experience flavour. Thanks C.T. – I’m onto it!
- which has been digitized by Google – and I was intrigued to discover, in Chapter 7, that Alderman Mechi considered it a fact that:
which makes sense, I guess, in the context of what he’s already said about mastication, dry chaff, and a horse’s solid something-or-other.
Runner up:Â
Jason Donovan: Chooses beef burgers over lentils, does 100 sit-ups every day and couldn’t live without nit treatments.
And the winner:
Shane lifted the goat out of the water with the boom and let the big 9-1/2 inch nanny drain.
I’d love to know what bait he’s using.
Yes, that is exactly what I say! What better way to celebrate the 11th of February than with a quiz? I can’t think of one! And here it is: WhoTube? So stop whatever you’re doing – put down that bacon sandwich, close the cellar doors, get out of that hot tub, wipe your mouth, park your bus, take a deep breath and tell me: who is this smart-casual individual, snapped mid-performance on Youtube?
Prize for first correct answer tattooed onto Rihanna’s leg: £0.73
So get calling!
I should have a special place where I keep my ski gear. I always need them at short notice, but as usual ended up rushing round like a lunatic, grabbing a boot here, a glove there. Found my ski hat in a box marked ‘Food Processor’ – what idiot left it there? – hardly had time to finish my Brandy Alexander, before speeding off to Piedmont, to the resort of Sauze d’Oulx, to fetch the wonderful David Monk to his eternal rest. Credit to Mr Monk, the hard work was all his. Wisely, he had spent the evening inebriating himself, for without the courage and inspiration that alcohol imparts, who knows if he would have stumbled so happily upon the means with which to end himself.
As it was, I arrived in plenty of time, found a good spot to watch, idly made myself a snowball, and savoured the crisp mountain air. If I were mortal, rather than an unholy sempiternal vortex of blinding chaos, I would love for my last breath to be as pure and cool as this. Ah well, you get what kicks you can.
It had just gone half past midnight when my moment came. A leap, a whoop, a holler, a “whoa!â€, a thud… and from me, a gasp of unimaginable delight. Mr David Monk of Hertfordshire, whose fortunate soul I still keep in my jacket pocket to dandle with, a souvenir of a happy night, died where he fell: at the bottom of a beginners’ ski-slope. He whacked his head on a metal post, and that was that. He should, of course, have been saved by the protective matting that surrounded the post, except that – with wondrous foresight – he’d just removed that section of protective matting, dragged it up the slope, and ridden it headfirst down like a toboggan. For a moment, as his friends screamed and tumbled towards him, I was lost in admiration, and could do nothing but applaud. “Well done, Sir!†I exclaimed, as I slid and crunched through the snow to join the pack. I leant amongst them, sucked his psyche out through his nose (as sometimes I do if I’m feeling ‘old school’) and we were off. Last orders at Cicci’s. I had a flavoured vodka. Vanilla and peach, I think it was.
I showed him the newspaper the next day, and he managed a chuckle. “He hit the post at exactly the spot where the crash mat had been stripped from,” said a spokesman for the Alpine rescue service. “It was an act of suicide.†Suicide by plastic mat. Too many tobogganing deaths are run of the mill neck snaps. Hats off to David Monk for freshening the pot.
Death at work:
I don’t know what’s at the back of it.
A bursting forth of old Luo/Kikuyu tribal tensions,
a coming to fruition of the violence and corruption that
took hold over Kenya under Kenyatta and Moi, or something
altogether more sinister…
