Fishy Goings On

Apparently up 25% of all fish sold is "mislabeled" according to a report that The New York times would like to bring to our attention. Actually, in the article they are slightly less euphemistic in their naming and say "fraudulently identified". You can't always trust your fishmonger, I guess.

Anyway, the report is from a non-profit organisation called Oceana and is titled "Bait and Switch", which made me smile.

David Simon - Saying What We Don't But Probably Should

Jorn Barger had an arresting quote from David Simon today:

"My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him."

David Simon, of course, being the man behind Homicide, The Corner, The Wire, Generation Kill and, though I've not seen it, Treme. So it's definitly a valid position for him to have. Anyway I found the original piece where the quote comes from it's in The Believer and is an interview Nick Hornby did with Simon somewhere around August 2007

If I start quoting it we'll be here all day, instead you should go over there and read for yourself, or read it again if you were luck to catch it back when it was published. It's still fresh today.

Go! If only to find out why Deadwood is Shakespeare, with added cocksuckery, and The Wire is a greek tragedy.