The Null Device

I am currently spending some time in Barcelona, once again on occasion of the Primavera festival.

Whilst in the narrow, winding streets of the old town, I noticed a marmot-shaped door knocker on one door. This immediately brought to mind the French idiomatic expression croquer le marmot (to stand hesitantly at a door with one's hand over the door knocker, without following through), marmot-shaped door knockers presumably being customary in those days. This expression was, of course, memorably gifted to the English language as “to craunch the marmoset” by Pedro Carolino, the non-English-speaking Portuguese author of English As She Is Spoke, an unintentionally surreal (and, needless to say, entirely unusable) Portuguese-English phrasebook.

A contemporary equivalent of craunching the marmoset would presumably involve hovering over the SEND button in one's email client or something similar.

¶ barcelona language pedro carolino travel 0

The Australian indie-pop marketplace now has more competition, with a new mail-order outfit and record label in Fortitude Valley opening. Taking the time-honoured indie-pop strategy of having a literary name (see also: Library Records, Chapter Music, and numerous bands), Book Club Records has their own releases and overseas imports (including Tender Trap, Amelia "Talulah Gosh/Heavenly" Fletcher's latest project), with postage being free in Australia. They also have a page of MP3s free for the download, which includes Barcelona's "I Have The Password To Your Shell Account". (via Rocknerd)

It's interesting to look at their links page. Among the usual indie labels and stores, there is an Other section, which features 4ZZZ, LiveJournal, and, um, Manchester United. The last addition seems puzzling, looking at the site from the UK; no-one here would associate football with the indie-pop subculture, and Man.U, one of the biggest and highest in profile of clubs, doubly so. Mind you, it appears the be the usual indiekid-Anglophilia phenomenon, where any and all affectations of British everyday versimilitude are more indie than the local variety. This has been commented on in the past, in observations of American indie fans who are into everything one can slap a union flag on, from Blur to Oasis to Fatboy Slim to Mogwai; not to mention appropriations of British slang, sometimes with unintentionally comical results (I mean, "Shag Frenzy" sounds more like a tabloid headline about suburban swingers' parties than a name for an indie night). With that in mind, I wonder how long until indie kids in America and Australia start imitating the chav phenomenon to get that imported-from-Britain boost to their indie cred.

¶ amelia fletcher amusing anglophilia barcelona heavenly indie indiepop tallulah gosh 3