Guardian readers save literature?

Remember that Guardian 100 greatest novels poll? Of course you don’t, that was three weeks ago, which may as well be a lifetime in this modern age… Anyway, the probably predictable sequel has eventuated in which the readers have answered back… and the results are interesting; the readers’ list is drawn from a much bigger and broader range of submissions, 3000+  more general readers as opposed to 172 writers and critics, and the list includes a number of titles that were noticeably absent from the first one (most notably Lord of the Rings at the top of the list). But there’s also a good amount of overlap, too; the relative positions of some books may be different, but they’re on both lists somewhere, and in some cases they’re in similar places on both. Tolkien may have displaced Middlemarch, but only to second place. Ulysses is still in the top 10. Proust still comes in at 15.

I said of the original list that it was full of the sort of stuff you’d expect to find on a list like that, but interestingly the sane is kind of true about the readers’ list; almost anything on it could turn up on another greatest books list and I wouldn’t be surprised. Neither list surprises me much somehow, though for some reason I find myself liking the new list more… I do wonder if the readers’ choices were determined at all by the fact that they were responding to the “professional” one, you know, did the conspicuous absence of Tolkien inspire at least some of them to vote for him to make sure he turned up on the “amateur” one? I don’t know, but I did see some discourse about whether or not the original list was kind of “performative”… knowing that their individual top 10 choices would be visible to readers, did the authors & critics perhaps choose titles they thought they “should” pick? Did the readers perhaps do something similar? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the bigger and broader range of submissions. Maybe I’m hallucinating something. Mme Bovary and Gatsby can still fuck off either way.

It Came From the Grey Room #1

I’m rebooting the music podcast with a new name, me doing back-announcing again. and trying to make a regular thing of it. No, I’m not sure why either, but I’m doing it anyway. Starting things off relatively gently with a bunch of mostly 80s “hits”…

    1. Ministry – Cold Life (1981)
    2. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Hand on Heart (1985)
    3. Xymox – Obsession (1989)
    4. Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Opportunity (1980)
    5. David Sylvian – Red Guitar (1984)
    6. Cabaret Voltaire – Spies in the Wires (1984)
    7. 23 Skidoo – Coup (1984)
    8. Blondie – Kung Fu Girls (1976)
    9. Minor Threat – No Reason (1983)
    10. New Order – All Day Long (1986)
    11. Icehouse – Dusty Pages (1984)
    12. Executive Slacks – In and Out (1985)
    13. Blitz – Warriors (1982)
    14. Devo – Planet Earth (1980)

Should anyone?

That Joel Webbon nonsense also reminded me of this nonsense:

Found this on Tumblr recently. This was published in 1963, by which time enough research existed to say that “yes, yes it does” was the correct answer to the first two questions; Wikipedia notes that pipe smokng and cancer were linked to each other as early as the 1700s. As for the third question, well, the numerous authors of that volume had no idea what tobacco even was, so… no? I gather that Gordon Lindsay was opposed to smoking anyway, so I presume he didn’t let the fact that the Bible doesn’t even mention it get in the way, much like tobacco enthusiast Joel seems to be doing (just the other way round)…

Big Tobacco’s getting desperate

American Christian Pastor Claims Smoking Weed Makes Men ‘Spiritually Gay’

Christ (as it were). I’ve never actually been a stoner (it’s probably 25 years or more since I last tried the stuff), but I have seen films like Reefer Madness so I have some idea of the sort of propaganda that’s been deployed against it over the decades. This, however, is a new one to me, though Joel Webbon himself isn’t…

If you had “American Christian nationalist pastor launches pro-smoking campaign because he reckons marijuana is making men gay” on your 2026 bingo card, congratulations I guess! You may now mark off the square and mourn the ridiculousness of the world we live in.
Far-right pastor Joel Webbon is copping widespread ridicule after claiming Christian men should embrace tobacco and nicotine because marijuana makes men “spiritually gay” and is contributing to the decline of Western civilisation.
In a video posted to X on 31 May, Webbon argued that anti-smoking campaigns have been one of the biggest “psyops” of the last half-century, dismissing decades of factual medical evidence linking tobacco use to cancer and other serious illnesses.
“I think you know one of the biggest propaganda psyops that we’ve experienced in the last 50-60 years is the war against tobacco and nicotine, that tobacco and nicotine are the worst thing in the world, and they’ll kill you and give you cancer. I don’t believe that,” he says in the video. […]
“Marijuana makes you less masculine, more feminine, soft, gay — at least spiritually gay,” he said, before claiming cannabis users are lazy, unfocused and lacking ambition.
Webbon went on to declare that “hard times create nicotine men” while “weed boys ruin the world,” suggesting tobacco helped build America and could help restore it.

Well, I must give Joel some credit, that is an original spin on the tedious far-right “good times create weak men” bullshit meme; given how much of his schtick otherwise seems to be boilerplate bigotry, it’s a good distinguishing mark. Incidentally, Joel Webbon has apparently only just turned 40, making him a bit more than a decade my junior, yet looking more than a decade my senior. Hate ages you, doesn’t it? Perhaps he should have a spliff and relax a bit.

I should think so, too

Washington priest removed as exorcist after linking UFOs to work of demons

The Catholic archbishop of Washington DC on Wednesday removed a well-known priest as an exorcist of the archdiocese after he made public comments suggesting that UFO sightings were the work of demons.
Cardinal Robert McElroy said the archdiocese also was cutting ties with the St Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, a Washington-based non-profit headed by the priest, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti.
The archbishop said Rossetti’s statements “linking UFOs to demonic presence and the Center’s recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism”.
“There’s a danger here,” Rossetti said in a 29 May video posted on his Facebook page addressing UFO sightings and the existence of aliens. “As an exorcist I wanted to raise that danger. And that is that demons like to hide … They don’t want us to know what they’re doing because they’re more effective when we don’t realize it.
“They can kind of get into your head, you know, and manipulate things in the world to influence us to do evil.
“It’s my personal belief that probably many if not most of these UFO sightings are in fact demons,” Rossetti added.

I’m pleased to see the Church responding to this idiocy with the seriousness it deserves, and I look forward to them replacing the Monsignor with someone who’ll maintain the traditional idiocy about demons.

2SERIP… not yet?

Sydney’s 2SER community radio to avoid closure under reduced model

Sydney community radio station 2SER will avoid being switched off in July under a reduced capacity model put to the station’s owners, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
The station was facing closure after Macquarie University announced it was withdrawing around half the station’s funding late last year.
Macquarie University provided $325,395 in core funding, while UTS provided $320,400, according to the latest available annual report at the end of 2024.
2SER, or Sydney Educational Radio, is owned by UTS, which will become the sole core funder.
2SER Board Member and Dean of the Faculty of Design and Society at UTS, Professor James Bennett, said the new model put a new path forward for the station.
“I’m pleased to say the station has definitely got a future,” Professor Bennett told 702 ABC Sydney.
“It’s taken a lot of work from the volunteer community staff here at UTS and the station manager, but also with a transition director we brought in, Tony Duke, to kind of find a model that allows us to move out of a period of uncertainty and onto more forward-facing ground.”
“We can start working with the community again on fundraising and also a future vision for the station together.”

Well that’s SOME good news in this story; I was expecting the whole thing to fade away and be forgotten, especially after another “reduced” plan was apparently submitted a few weeks ago and UTS said “nah”. It’s still not enough, though, and I frankly don’t trust UTS to keep SER going by itself for too long. But at least there’ll still be a 2SER for longer thah next month. Also, fuck Chris Dixon, still.