Things about which I know nothing #3

Hi. Rounding off this week's carnival of tripe, I have decided to commentate upon another subject beginning with 'B', just to cast some symmetry over the whole affair. In this vein, todays thing about which I know nothing is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Despite barely knowing anything proper about Mr Netanyahu, I do know this. He has my favourite name in the history of anybody ever. It's great. Say it to yourself. Enjoy the feeling as the iambs of the surname trip off your tongue. Revel in the entertaining contrast with the formal 'Benjamin'. Maybe even go a little crazy and finish it off with a joyous 'Yahooo!'. Say it again. Now. And smile to yourself.

Now add to the resounding pleasure that you are experiencing the knowledge that Mr Netanyahu's nickname is 'Bibi'. Yes, that's right. A former Prime Minister of Israel - for that is what he is - is known to friends, family and the world at large by the cheerful moniker 'Bibi'. When you consider that Israel is a pretty bad-ass place to be in charge of, what with all that Palestine kerfuffle, you have to admire a man who sternly takes the helm, turns to his first mate (countries have first mates, right?) and said gruffly 'I'm Benjamin. But you can call me Bibi.'

Aside from his name (which I may have mentioned is bitchin'), I can only conjure up a few further facts ubout this juggernaut of a man. So, content in the knowledge that libel cannot be enforced on private, not-for-profit ramblings of idiots (I'll check that with a lawyer, but I'm probably fine), here is everything you need to know about Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu.

• Benjamin Netanyahu has the second largest collection of marbles this side of the Gaza Strip.
• He also has the largest collection.
• On both sides of the strip. He also doesn't like to boast about it.
• Benjamin Netanyahu once famously challenged Margaret Thatcher to a thumb war, and won four games to three.
• Sometimes, when he's thirsty, Benjamin Netanyahu has a cup of tea.
• When he was four, Benjamin Netanyahu asked a Rabbi why god allowed terrible things to happen. The Rabbi told him the answer, and then swore him to secrecy. Benjamin Netanyahu has never told anyone to this day.
• Benjamin Netanyahu looks like the kind of man you wouldn't mind turning up on your doorstep with a broken-down car and asking to use your jump-leads.
• Benjamin Netanyahu knows that 'Leviathan' is the Hebrew word for whale.
• Benjamin Netanyahu possesses my favourite name ever, and I thank him for that.

Next week, I will be writing something different. This weekend, I will be enjoying myself. I may even see some of you then.

This blog is produced in association with the Indie Supergroup Buried in Pompeii. It is written by Dan.

Thing about which I know nothing - #2

Hello again. Today's small, unsavoury deposit upon the already-soiled porcelain of the internet concerns another thing about which I know very little. I will today be discoursing about Bands.

Bands come in all shapes and sizes, sounds and styles. You do not have to wear a flag and display your undercrackers to be in one, as Mr Rose is rather flagrantly demonstrating in the above photo, but such behaviour is more befitting to a rock star than, lets say, a chartered accountant. Many people know that the name Axl Rose is an anagram of Oral Sex. Fewer people know that it is also an anagram of 'Real Sox', which is the actual reason why Rose chose it for his stage name. As you can see, his socks are indeed extremely real.

The purpose of a band is almost identical to the purpose of an iPod, in that they play music so people can listen to it. The drawback of a band is that they take up roughly 5,000 times more room, only play between 6 and 20 songs in one go, and you have to pay money to stand in a hot, sticky venue while smelly people stand on your feet in order to listen to one.

Modern bands usually incorporate drums, guitars and vocalists in order to create a noise, although some of them add synthesizers, samplers and uncoordinated men with maracas to fill out their sound. These additions are usually unnecessary and tend to get in the way.

The role of the drummer is to turn up to practises and make a constant, continuous racket for the duration of the session. They tend to balance this out by subsequently turning up to gigs and forgetting to play at the times when they are supposed to. Bassists hate their instrument (for being boring), themselves (for not being talented enough to learn a better instrument), and their fellow band members (out of jealousy caused by the previous reasons). Bassists are usually depressives and alcoholics, but nobody cares, because after all they are only the bassist. Guitarists are widely regarded as being 'cool'. This despite the fact that they probably learnt their instrument by playing 'Smoke on the Water' again and again in a darkened room at the age of 15, then picking their spots and feeling 'frustrated'. Keyboardists are the worst of the bunch, since their instrument carries as much sex appeal as Bernard Manning's decomposing inner thigh. Anyone playing a keyboard looks like they've wandered in from a nearby community centre and have no idea what they are are meant to be doing, or indeed what day of the week it is. I am a keyboard player (although I prefer to call them 'Fiddle-planks').

Some bands play their own music which they have written. This is brave, applaudable and rather stupid. Other bands play music that other people have written. This is neither brave nor applaudable, and is even stupider (yes, stupider is a word) - as the below video will testify.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw8sNoodIDk

There are other types of bands, such as brass bands and jazz bands. These however do not count as bands, because they are only listened to by pipe-smokers called Geoff who tinker with things in sheds and say things like 'by Jove'.

Although it may sound as if I don't like bands, or music, or anything whatsoever, this is a false impression. In fact, I myself am in a band (although it is impossible to utter that phrase without sounding like a posturing fop with a sock packed into his briefs). My band is called Buried in Pompeii, for no good reason at all. There is a picture of us below.

You might recognise my polystyrene-hipped fender salesman landlord as the man with the bass guitar and the distressed expression. Also appearing are Tom, a talented and scruffy guitarist, and Stephen, a talented and neatly groomed drummer. We play our own songs to politely disinterested audiences, which are sometimes 20 or 30 strong. When we finish making noise they clap. I like to think that this is because they have enjoyed it, not because we have stopped making it.

While most bands melt swiftly into obscurity, some bands manage to achieve a much lusted-after thing known as 'fame'. This seems to entail having to do for a living what you used to do for fun, with the added irritation of having to go on a bus every day, and have people scream at you every night. Drug-taking and sex-having are encouraged when you are a successful rock star. These activities are also encouraged when you are a successful crack whore.

Successful bands from the past include, but are not limited to:

• Def Leppard - a dyslexic band who were neither deaf, nor composed of leopards.
• The Beatles - A dyslexic band from Liverpool. Liverpool also gave the world Merseybeat, Craig Charles and the West Indies slave trade. Liverpool has a lot to answer for.
• Bill Haley and the Comets - One of the few bands from the United States of America.

But of course, there are dozens more.

If your interest has been piqued by this article, then you have the enviable opportunity to see Buried in Pompeii LIVE AND UNCUT this very weekend. We will be performing in the small seaside town of Felixstowe at The Cork, a glamorous and cosmopolitan music venue located roughly 17 drunken steps from the glorious beach. This festival of music* will take place on Saturday night.

That's everything for now. Tomorrow... something else.

This blog is produced in association with the Indie Supergroup Buried in Pompeii. It is written by Dan.

*not a music festival

Things about which I know nothing

In order to kick this blog off in some kind of manner, I have decided to dedicate this week to educating the internet. As it's already Wednesday, and there is a lot of internet to educate, I had better get started. So without further ado... what is an ado? I don't think I've ever been responsible for an ado and I certainly wasn't intending on creating a further one - although I probably have just done so by musing upon the nature of them in the first place. They're clearly more cunning than I thought. Anyway, without any more ados than strictly necessary, today's 'thing about which I know nothing' is Boats.

Boats can come in a variety of sizes, from very small to extremely large. The larger ones are very big indeed, as you can see from the picture.

These leviathans of the sea (although leviathan is the Hebrew word for whale, so whales are already the leviathans of the sea really) are used for transporting people and things from place to place, by means of crossing large expanses of water. Usually they do this by making use of propellors, which are attached to engines the size of small council houses. Older kinds of large boat used to use the wind to get from place to place, which, when you think about it now, is a monumentally stupid idea. Hence the engines.



Large boats are normally referred to as 'Ships', or in the case of the people-carrying ones, 'Ferries'. Some ferries can carry over 50 people - that's more than two minibuses!

A boat ceases to become a boat and becomes a ship when the vessel in question contains a restaurant. This is the point at which all boatiness goes out of the window (or porthole). On modern ferries you can purchase a lukewarm meal for just under five times its retail value. You can even eat fish and chips! The fish is caught by means of a large net dragged behind the vessel, and then transported to your plate by means of special tubes which pass through large frying and battering chambers located deep within the ship. The chips are made of sea potatoes, which grow naturally on the hull and are harvested everytime the ship stops to colect a batch of fresh people.

However, large as they might be, ferries are not completely safe. You are 12 times more likely to find yourself upon a sinking ferry than you are to find yourself upon a sinking car - which is really rather frightening considering how reliant we are on our cars these days. When ferries sink, they do it quickly and with a minimum of fuss, leaving behind little or no mess for people to clear up. Above, you can clearly see a particularly catastrophic sinkage.

On the other end of the nautical gamut, we have very very small boats. These have no restaurant, and you would be hard pressed to fit even 25 people into one (although by all means you are welcome to try). These are known as 'Dinghies', due to their often drab colour schemes.

The pictured dinghy is not in the water, although it certainly could go in some if a person put it there. The brown flappy bits are used to catch the wind like some kind of floating magician, and harness its power for the purpose of propulsion. Because of their adherance to such a far-fetched and preposterous notion, most of the people who go in dinghies are pillocks.

A dinghy has no practical use whatsoever. It goes in the water and then splashes from place to place until it is time to get out. The people in the dinghy use this time to shout incomprehensible gibberish to each other, including such phrases as 'Lee-ho' and 'ready to jibe'. They intersperse this by rolling over and getting wet. Hard as it may be to believe, such behaviour can earn you an Olympic gold medal.





Jet-skis, like dinghies, also have no purpose. However, by virtue of making a loud noise and infinitely more splashes, they are substantially cooler. Jet-skis cannot be included in this article unfortunately, as they are not boats. They are sexy moist-bikes.

In between the large boats and the small boats, there is an endless array of medium sized boats. Some of them are large, white and expensive, and these are used for making young women have sex with you in return for some of your money. Some of them are, small, squat and ugly, and are used for pulling fish out of the sea. These generally don't make young women have sex with you, as they (and consequently you) smell very strongly of fish. Most boats are very very boring.

My dad lives on a medium sized boat. It has two masts, and a metal hull (metal, it turns out, does not sink in water at all!). He has lived there for quite some time, along with his girlfriend of 13 years (they've been together 13 years, i mean, not that she's 13 years old. That would be grotesque). He is currently living on it in France, despite the fact that he can speak less french than the average housecat. Apparently he spends most of his days trying to get a small fiddly bit off a part of the engine that is inaccessible to anyone without four joints in their arm. Once he gets it off, he spends the rest of the day trying to put it back on again.

I was going to put a picture of his boat on here, but I can't find one, so I have put a picture of my flatmate on instead.


He is related to this article not only because he is unable to sink when placed in water due to a polystyrene hip, but because he works in the marine industry. In short, he sells fenders, which act as bumpers to prevent boats hitting into things. When I ask him why the boat-drivers can't be more careful, he looks at me in a measured way and then talks about something else.

Other facts about boats abound, and are possibly to numerous to mention here. A couple of examples:

• Left and right are not called left and right at sea, but port and starboard. This is because sailors are unable to pronounce the letter 'l', or the vowel sound 'i'.
• Some people believe that there are kinds of boats which live completely underwater, called 'Submarines'. This is patently untrue, as the occupants would be unable to breathe.
• The speed of a boat is measured in 'Knots'. This derives from an old-time way of gauging speed, in which a sailor would throw a bucket on a rope off the back, and then count how many knots passed through his hand over a period of time. In order to do this, the sailor would first cut a hole in his hand for the knots to pass through. This was the second least popular job on the ship, after 'cabin boy'.

So, all in all, that is about as much as there is to know about boats and boatery. Join me tomorrow, when I will educate you on another subject about which I know nothing.

This blog is produced in association with the Indie Supergroup Buried in Pompeii. It is written by Dan, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Indie Supergroup Buried in Pompeii. Until Dan thinks of something relevant, that is.