Who’s on the cover of this week’s Enormous Ego?

You gotta have a bit of an ego to get ahead, right? To convince yourself that your art is important to others… So what better example to follow than the composers Chopin and Liszt.

Chopin and Liszt come courtesy of the Hark, a vagrant blog. I bought the book the other day. It’s great. The topic, ego, was set by the Loose Bloggers Consortium. It’s all them, them, them with Ramana, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Maxi, Maria SF, Padmum, Rohit,Shackman, The Old Fossil and Will – when it should be me, me, me, whoah ha ha ha.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: You may notice a new image under my horse’s head in the top right hand corner. It’s a big F. Please click on it and follow the link. I’ll tell you more about it soon.

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Bin Laden, the barking seal and the royal lookalikes

New takes on recent events.

1. The Royal Wedding.

Remember how you were saying to yourself as you watched the royal wedding, how some of the main players looked looked naturally – but also strangely – familiar? This is why.

Your route through the creative writing maze

If only there was a set of instructions on how to get through the labyrinth of creative process, getting a book agent, a publishing deal, published, critical acclaim and airport bestsellerdom… What’s that? You say there are loads of such guides out there?

Well… That’s not the point. I mean, I’m a man. I never read instructions – duh. I could maybe glance at a one page diagram. Preferably one using the image of a pickup truck to represent me.

Oh – lookee here. This could work.

Thanks to the Subnormality Sphinx up there, aka Winston Rowntree, aka Virus Comix, we can all benefit from this handy map. Hurrah – writing success is assured for all! All who can read teeny tiny writing. As for the rest of you… Is this any better?    (Still looks a bit squeezed – click on the picture for an even bigger version – and then come back and tell me if any parts of the route look familiar from your own experience.)

It’s all here – cheese, politics, a Gandhi joke and the best headline of all time

Thanks to Virus Comix for the cheese.

Politics time now.

This is not about rights and wrongs – but analysis of the raw data. In the US mid term elections, who swung the most from the Democrats to the Republicans? Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has this to say:

First things first: In 2006 Democrats won the popular vote for the House of Representatives by about 8 points. In 2010, Republicans won the popular vote by about 6 points. That’s a shift of 14 points. There are plenty of broad structural explanations for this—the economy, dislike of health care reform, whatever—but beyond that, we’d also like to know if there were any specific groups that helped power this Republican victory. Was it the youth vote? The evangelicals? What?

To find out, you have to look for groups that swung by substantially more or less than 14 points. So here they are. Based on a comparison of 2006 and 2010 exit polls, here are the demographic groups that showed the biggest swing into the Republican column this year:

• Nonvoters from 2008 (+56)

Euphemisms for… ahem… you know…

Death in the North is different. We don’t like to acknowledge the event. Down South they’re weeping and wailing and partying round the coffin.

But up North we don’t like to talk about it.

We come up with euphemisms instead.

He’s tatey bread

Now look what you’ve done…

Now look what you’ve done. You’re famous. That’s you – readers and commentators. You have only gone and become online exemplars who have made “clear the sort of support you can get from a virtual network in a connected world.”

That’s according to the highly prestigious Trading As WDR blog. (“A blog containing thoughts about change, and how to achieve it…”)

WDR spotted what’s been going on here recently and has drawn attention to it.

After such high achievement, you deserve a special treat.

Spandau Ballet sang:

“Questions questions

Give me no answers

That’s all they ever give me

Questions questions”

But to cut a long story short, this is the moment you start getting answers. Three answers. (Four if you count the last one double.)

First, I’m going to reveal to you the answer to the question that has been bugging you since childhood.

My favourite St Patrick’s Day joke

So now you know how the miracle happened. Obvious when you think about it really. Happy St Patrick’s Day to you all.   (The cartoon is an episode of The Adventures of Festy O’Semtex, from the July 1st 1994 edition of Phoenix Magazine, Dublin.)