"Tomorrow, a book...."

2011-05-26T21:25:00.001+01:00

Awww, it's a shame for Blogger; I love Tumblr now :0(

2011-03-15T19:39:00.004Z

"Pikachu is dead..."

Simon Scott - Depart, Repeat 7"

I bought this because: I'm a sucker. No that's not strictly true, but I wasn't bowled over by the music initially and was more sold on the mystery and potential of 6 more hand made 7"s being released over the next few years. With the possibility, in my head anyway, that one of those releases might be a Peter Broderick release. I bought from the label too so that I qualify for some special surprise when the last 7" is released. Sounds intriguing. It cost me £10 for this 7", so it better be bloody worth it!!

Umberto\C V L T S - Split 7"

I bought this because: it's limited to 300 copies (on white vinyl) and I didn't want to um and ahh, then get stiffed buying it from eBay or Discogs after it sold out. Some beautifully dark drones going on. The Umberto album is amazing.

2011-02-26T21:06:00.002Z

"It's a shame these sofas are flame retardant"

Penelope Joy & Peter Broderick - Apple Bobbing At ___

I bought this because: of the afore mentioned Broderick fixation. There were only 100 made, mine's number 45. I missed out on the Digitalis tape (Ten Duets), and there were 300 of those, so with this capture I feel all warm and (chosen?), nah, special :0) You can stream it here...

2011-02-24T19:22:00.005Z

"What's my problem? I'm allergic to idiots and the only cure is £1million. Cash"

Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers 7"

I bought it because: despite the fact that it reminds me of Duffy (!), it is cool, catchy and has a very infectious little Japanese drum hook.

NOMO and Shawn Lee - Upside Down limited 7"

I bought it because: it's another damn fine addition to my 'funky sevens' box. Limited to 500 copies and comes with some cute little jukebox inserts. Shawn Lee got da beats fo' shure.

2011-02-23T19:48:00.003Z

Lemon Jelly - Rolled\Oats 7"

I bought it because: it's a very cute little promo-only 7" containing 2 special mixes of tracks from their Lost Horizons LP. Gold vinyl picture disc in a printed hessian bag. Only £6.99, when it usually goes for abut £20. Ruff.

2011-02-08T20:55:00.003Z

Heather Woods Broderick - From The Ground LP

I bought this because: of the Peter Broderick connection (sister\brother) and his appearance on the album. It's marvellous in it's own right however and limited to a measly 222 copies on Digitalis Records.

2011-02-01T19:47:00.005Z

New feature (yawn! oi!): records I buy and why.

Eddie Johns\George Duke – More Spell On You\I Love You More 7”

I bought it because: they are original versions of the tracks sampled by Daft Punk for “One More Time” and “Digital Love” and they are damn good.

Breakwater\Edwin Birdsong – Release The Beast\Cola Bottle Boy 7”

I bought it because: they’re more original versions of Daft Punk sampled tunes. The basis for “Robot Rock” and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".

Gorillaz – White Flag 10”

I bought it because: it’s the best track on the, pretty lame, Plastic Beach LP. Has a superb Arabian flavoured orchestral intro. Limited to 1000 for Record Store Day 2010

Oriol – Night And Day 2xLP

I bought it because: it was one of the best albums of 2010. Future beats with plenty of melody and funk – recommended if you don’t know it already.

Dro Carey – Venus Knock EP 12”

I bought it because: it was supposed to be limited to 200 copies in a hand-stamped cover, from Will Bankhead’s The Trilogy Tapes label. It’s also very good in an original, experimental beats stylee.

PRODUCER #1 – Various 2xLP

I bought it because: Fat City have good form and the hook-ups are sweet. MF Dooooom! Plus it was only £10.99 from Amazon for a double LP with free P+P.

Lafayette Afro Rock Band – Soul Makossa LP

I bought it because: there are some righteous tunes on there, including Hihache and Voodounon. Samples, samples, samples.

Tensnake In The House EP1 – Various 12”

I bought it because: Coma Cat is my house tune of 2010 and this 12” only cost me £4.99 from HMV inc P+P.

Goose – Words Remixes 12”

I bought it because: of a chance hearing. The Living Islands Tropical Doom mix sounds like late 80’s\early 90’s proto-trance (aka 808 State)

Imagination - Just An Illusion (Lindstrom Remixes) 12”

I bought it because: it was only £3.99 from Juno.co.uk, it has the original AND 2 Lindstrom mixes. Bonusk!

Ramadanman – Appleblim Void 23 EP 12”

I bought it because: the Carl Craig mix destroys it! Why is it so expensive though? £8.99? Really?

Peter Broderick and Johan G Winther – Re:Create Series Vol 1 7"

I bought it because: I’m a Broderick collector (groupie!). Limited to 350 copies and each is unique. Better to grab it now rather than regret it later when it’s sold out everywhere. Except eBay.

Rauelsson With Peter Broderick – Replica LP

I bought it because: of the same reasons above. However, the music of Rauelsson is something I’ve now been turned on to – very good.

Trophy Wife – Microlite 7"

I bought it because: they are one of the ‘next big things’ from Oxford. The A and B sides are awesome and will undoubtedly be in my Top 10 tracks of 2011 and we’re only just into February.

How To Dress Well – Love Remains LP

I bought this because: I wanted the original Lefse Records version rather than the Tri-Angle release. It was cheaper ordering from Lefse themselves and they gave me downloads of the album and a compilation of artist tracks from their roster – all excellent.

************************************

Not many then :0/ I reckon I'll keep on top of them from now on, so that was all of January's in one hit (half of them were birthday pressies too). And here's a little Spotify playlist for all the ones I could find - shizzle.

2011-01-24T22:11:00.002Z

Who put the 'turd' in Saturday?

2011-01-06T19:51:00.003Z

...ummmm, I don't think this is too much of a stupid question...but what does the moon smell of? Does anyone know? Has anyone even thought to find out? Does Neil Armstrong kick himself now when he thinks, "Damn, I was right there and I didn't think to check that out". Too late now of course, which is a shame two-fold, because it's always better to "regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done" (Orbital - Satan).

2010-12-31T23:33:00.001Z

Toffifee is made of hazlenut, caramel, chocolate and nougat. Not toffee.

Happy New Year!

2010-04-03T10:54:00.000+01:00

2010-03-23T21:01:00.001Z

Sophie Dahl's pretend cookery program is on the background. She is annoying. She's making a show of trying to recall a Dorothy Parker quote, which you know the production team have just got her to memorise, like 2 minutes before the camera started shooting. She is aping that Nigella 'Bloody' Lawson presentation trait of shoe-horning adjectives into all the ingredient descriptions (I can't give any examples as I've purged them from my brain already - they were poisonously irritating). And she's just described a big mozzarella cheese as a "ball of alabaster" - soft cheese vs marble ball?? I bet people in council houses all over England want to punch her in the face. Or is it just me?

2010-01-14T19:12:00.003Z

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!! Oh, shiiiiiiit!!

Playing London for the first time EVER!!!

Roundhouse tickets for 5th March 2010 - get 'em while they're hot.

Please don't let him cancel......

2009-11-09T20:29:00.002Z

Couple of things got my goat this morning. Didn't realise I had a goat actually, until it was 'got', but that's another story (no, it's not - Ed). Right, who's first then, Jacqui Janes or Rev'd Canon Dr Giles Fraser?

OK, women first - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8349757.stm.

Yes, Jacqui Janes is beside herself with grief at the loss of her young son in Afghanistan and my absolute heart goes out to her, but the claim that the perceived spelling mistakes in her condolence letter from the PM were "disrespectful" and an "insult" to her son, is a bit hard to sympathise with when you consider that she very quickly turned that upset into a fat payment cheque from Rupert Murdoch's odious empire, i.e The Sun(k so low). I can't help but think that in a different age those feelings would have been dealt with in a more private and less mercenary way.

Which just leaves me to sneer at Rev'd Canon Dr Giles Fraser's contribution to the Radio 4's long running religio-soap box 'Thought for the Day' this morning. RCDGF, as he will now be known (because it reminds me of GDR), was telling us about the small chunk of the Berlin wall he had in a dusty drawer somewhere. He didn't explain how all the dust got into the drawer, unless it was open all the time maybe, but he was troubled by the method by which he came to possess the tiny fragment of concrete; how the, "little bit of the wall still troubles [him]".

He bought it, pause for effect, from a mini-bar in a hotel in Friederickstrasse, Berlin.....

Wha??? OK, stop right there Rev. Two things off the top of my spinning head:

a. what was a man of the cloth doing looking in the mini-bar in the first place? Hmm? and,
b. who the hell buys a bit of 'supposed' Berlin wall, sealed in plastic bag, from a fridge in a hotel-room?!

In his little 2 minutes of fame he uses the sale of the souvenir in cheap packaging from such a potently iconic event as an example of the, "ability of freedom to become something cheap and tawdry". He repeats the philosophical claim that liberty often simply translates into the "freedom to shop". Well, sorry RCDGF, but these laments and woes carry almost gossamer levels of weight when they come from a man that helped propagate the tawdriness and cheapening of liberty by actually buying the little plastic bag of concrete in the first place!!

How the deuce has he missed the irony here? The irony that, from where I'm sitting, is sounding it's stentorian air-horn and waving it's fluorescent orange flag directly in his face? Possibly by employing the same level of self-delusion required to preach as gospel a way of life derived from a story-book concocted of errors, lies and exploitation? Yes, quite possibly that.

Dr Brockles is on holiday this week.

2009-11-08T16:21:00.002Z

A subject for posting, guaranteed to prompt accusations that, "he must have a lot of time on his hands"

Why do we sing in the shower?

Well, not everyone sings in the shower, agreed, but I've used "we" to include you with me if you do.

Quite a lot of the reasons\theories I list below are intended to be considered as coming from the subconscious, so I'm not accusing you of being one type of person or another, or of doing something for a specific reason, but I hope it might make you ponder the motives behind some of your more banal actions, just purely as a fun\interesting exercise.

Quite often, people will sing or whistle whilst performing mundane tasks, either as a way of demonstrating the ease (or pride) with which they are performing the task, or simply that their brain is showing that they have extra bandwidth to do a job and sing\whistle at the same time. "Check me out, I'm washing my armpits and singing, Philadelphia Freedom by Elton John at the same time. Who says men can't multi-task?"
One sometimes has music playing in one's head shortly after waking and so this continues into the ablutions (nb, it may just be me that has an iPod on continuous shuffle in my head, from waking to sleeping)
There's the classic explanation people give of 'good acoustics' in the shower or bathroom. This isn't really clarified though, because I for one certainly don't walk into a shower exclaiming, "oh, the acoustics in here are marvellous! la la la laaaa, do re mi fah so la ti dohhhh!!". I would agree however that the background noise of a shower (water falling, pump pumping) might mask any imperfections one's own singing voice might have, which in turn would embolden one to risk belting out a few verses of Girls Aloud.
Following on from the perceived better acoustics in the shower, the falling water etc would also act as a slight sound barrier to protect one from any listening family or friends in the vicinity who one may not wish to be privy to, or irritated by, your crooning.
Falling water, the eurhythmics of it, as with falling rain, changes the human mood. Think of how a rainstorm in a movie is used to note a transition in the narrative from one mood to another. Rainy Sunday afternoons are perceived to be the nadir of English boredom, but only in the hands of the boring. Given as an opportunity to stay in with close friends and family, they can become cosy and relaxing times. The stress and complication of a thousand and one possibilities of what to do and where to go are taken out of one's hands and the relief that one feels is seldom spoken of, but gratefully received. The micro-rainstorm of a shower brings about the same emotions that one feels next to a waterfall, a babbling brook or the spray of a breaking wave at the seaside. Maybe the singing comes from that mild euphoria. It might explain why one doesn't sing in the bath so much; that placid block of water intended for wallowing in.
I don't intend you accept all (or any) of the above possibilities all at one time. One explanation may be appropriate for one person, two more for the next. Or maybe it's none of the above, and instead just this one explanation that fits you: that, whilst naked and exposed in a shower with limited visibility and hearing (two essential senses for the survival of the human from unknown, hostile forces), you are nervous. But, whilst one is (ridiculously) nervous in this state, a hangover from the times when humans were once prey (although not in the same era that they owned a Mira power-shower), one is also self-consciously aware that it's not good form to show any kind of fear. And so one sings, nonchalantly. Out of tune. And whilst forgetting most of the words.
And lastly, people sing in the shower because there is a kind of social meme that is propagated from comedians to pub-goers to work colleagues to family that poses the question, "Why do people sing in the shower?". It's a semi-rhetorical question, in that no-one really wants an answer (although certain types, ahem, sometimes spend far too long attempting to supply one) and is intended just to point the thing out. The result being that, if you didn't sing in the shower prior to hearing this question, you most probably will be more inclined to after hearing it.

Dr Brockles signing off.

2009-11-03T14:35:00.001Z

Oh, err, Hi. Sorry, my dog ate my homework, the bus was late, I forgot your number, I was ill, work's been busy, I thought it was next week etc etc excuses excuses.

So lovebirds, what was it that awoke me from my self-induced slumber? What event of history altering import roused me from my mental torpor? Hmm? Only the fact that one of the most ridiculed lyrics in the history of pop music has recently been resurrected by a band that really should know better! That's what.

Remember this classic line from Des'ree's 1998 single "Life":

"I don't want to see a ghost
It's the sight that I fear most
I'd rather have a piece of toast"

Recently voted by listeners of BBC radio to be the worst lyric ever written, but of which Des'ree couldn't give a toss, because I think she made millions from it being number one everywhere for always.

Well anyway, poo lyrics agreed by all to be consigned to some kind of dustybin of embarrassment.

Well, rum-punchers, fast forward to the present nowness and marvel at the Arctic Monkeys' recent turn of phrase in their latest single 'Cornerstone':

"She was close
Close enough to be your ghost
But my chances turned to [yep, you guessed it pop-pickers] toast"

Presently the world wide web of bedwetters love this song and appear to forgive Alex Turner's poorly chosen plagiarism. But I haven't. Shocking mate, shocking.

2009-09-17T12:53:00.003+01:00

Awww, what the hell?! A new 50 Cent album?! No fair!

When "Fiddler" and Kanye Wazzock (nee-West) went head-to-massively bloated head in a sales figure battle for their last albums, "Fido" said that he'd stop releasing music if Kanye sold more than him. And Kanye battered him. Although it seems that he's turned his attention now to demolishing small white girls these days (a-la Taylor Swift) rather than tackling muscle-bound, ex-drug dealer, ghetto gangsters.

Anyway, "Foo-foo", you lied, you big fat liar!

2009-09-11T21:45:00.005+01:00

An arboreal theme for you today, and a quick announcement that I'm not going to bother hyperlinking and Googling for stuff on the net before I post updates anymore (oh, you didn't know I did that? shoot..). Anyways, this is a picture of the house\bungalow of the guy that lives opposite my Dad.

I say "lives", but you'd think from the state of his lawn that he might have died in his sleep, like, 20 years ago and no-one took any notice. Least of all his gardener. Anyway, the story here is that one day, about 15 years ago, his car, which I think is a green Talbot Alpine, broke down in his drive. There could be like a really big funny bit of blogging in the middle here, but there isn't. He simply went out and bought a red Talbot Alpine to replace it. However, he was obviously so distraught that, just like when his Mum died he kept her in the cellar, fully clothed and sitting in a rocking chair for 12 years (possible lie), he decided to keep the "carpse" in his driveway. For 15 years. Rotting away, whilst trees grew up from saplings all around it. In fact, as one of the trees has grown up flush with the rear bumper, the only way he'll move that car now is by chopping down the tree. Yeah, he's weird.

Next up, "Hey, doesn't this log look like a crocodile?"...

That's because it IS a crocodile, silly!

No, I'm just joshing it's a log.

No, not really!! It is a carnivorous amphibean: it's an a-log-gator :0)

Nah, it is just a log.....I think :0/

2009-08-30T21:19:00.005+01:00

Champagne Supernova! Oasis have split up!! :0)

I don't care if I sound mean when I say that I'm glad. They were tired old plod-rockers well past their sell by (sell out?) date and frankly the thought of idiotic Liam being exalted as a rock-god these past 15 years or more, fair made my gorge rise (whenever I did accidentally think about it). I say "old" plod-rockers, but Noel was only 42 and Liam a sprightly 36 (despite displaying the emotional intelligence and intellect of a 6 week old chimp).

Of the many things that made me laugh about this breakup though was the statement from the remaining band members that they were going to, "consider whether to carry on without Noel". Yeah, I predict that they'll carry on about as long as a chicken can with no head.

No I'm being too cruel again, go on Liam, sing us one of your songs. Oh, no lyrics yet? OK, just hum it. Oh, no tune either? OK, well can you do that 'hands behind your back gibbon sway' thing that you do in front of the mike? That's it, there's a good boy. Want a nana?

2009-08-27T21:44:00.005+01:00

Latest Zomby 10" Digital Flora\Digital Fauna. Limited release with an awesome cover, so I had to treat myself. Ordered from Rub-a-Dub yesterday at 4.15pm and delivered to me at 10am today! This is the second order I've placed with them. Bizarrely, I'm still waiting for the Zomby\Rustie Hyperdub 12" and Rustie Bad Science EP that I ordered Monday, but as their prices are so low, £1 - £1.50 cheaper than Boomkat, Juno, Phonica and Bleep (more on them in a minute) I'm not so fussed. One of the chaps that works at the shop goes by the name of Jackmaster - check out some of his awesome free mixes here. He also runs the Wireblock label, so I feel like shopping there is a bit more special :0)

Right then, Bleep, Warp's retail outlet. Riddle me this: would you expect to find the latest (boring, I think) Flying Lotus 12" LA EP 3x3, which is on the Warp label, at Bleep to be cheaper or more expensive than at other online stores? You know that's a loaded question right? Experience tells you that if someone's asking you a question that seems too obvious, they're setting out to surprise you. So? Well, yes, you're right: more expensive. £1.70 more expensive to be exact. "Pains" have been "taken" to provide you with the following:

Bleep - £6.99 + £1.50(P+P) = £8.49
Boomkat - £6.99 + £1.49(P+P) = £8.48
Juno - £5.99 + £1.80(P+P) = £7.79
Rub-a-Dub - £5.50 + £2.00(P+P) = £7.50
Amazon - £6.79 + FREE (P+P) = £6.79!!

Seems very weird to me, if not plain wrong, that Bleep should be selling their own (Warp's) products at a higher price than pretty much everyone else (bar Phonica, who I only use as a last resort :0). I thought I'd query Bleep about this and, although I was probably being a pain in the ass, they responded very graciously:

"We price our records in accordance to the dealer / wholesale price that we receive them at. The fact that we are part of Warp bears no significance on our price, as we still receive our goods from an outside distributor before it receives [sic] our warehouse. "

I still think this is odd. Bleep's parent company, Warp, makes them purchase Warp records from a distributor not affiliated to either Bleep or Warp?? This seems crazy to me. Warp are basically doing Bleep out of money by making them pay more for their products. I then thought, hang on a minute, what about the Warp 20 (Box Set), which I bought on pre-order from Bleep for £85 (plus P+P)? That is now on retail for:

Rub-a-Dub - £115
Boomkat - £110
Phonica - £109 (FREE P+P)

Bleep are obviously getting a massive discount on this from Warp, which is what I would expect. Bleep's answer:

"The Warp 20 (Box Set) is a unique product and exceptional case and has only [sic] been the only product this year where we have not gone through a distributor. This product and the quantity manufactured has actually been made specifically to the amount of Pre-Orders made on our site and so Bleep's role played a crucial part in this decision before an external distributor was brought in for retail distribution."

That's me told then! ;0)

2009-08-20T19:57:00.003+01:00

Mini haul of rubbish records at the car booty last Sunday.

Chicago - III on a Quadraphonic double vinyl from 1974. Had to create a new Discogs entry for it and then had a quick spin through their back catalogue on Spotify. Yes they were sampled by The Bucketheads for 'The Bomb' ('Street Player' was the, very good, track in question) and yes, III has a really good funk\rock track on it by the name of 'Free' (check the break that comes in at 1:19 secs), but generally I have no idea how they managed to make the status of "biggest selling US band after The Beach Boys".

Phil Collins - No Jacket Required. It suddenly struck me on hearing 'Sussudio' how much it sounds like Prince's '1999'. But apparently I'm about 24 years too late in claiming credit for this observation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sussudio). Other faves from my teenage youth were resurrected in the shape of 'Only You Know And I Know'. Also, 'Don't Lose My Number' (misheard lyrics: "shoe bid up, cube it up, d'you bid up" is actually, "you better, you better, you better"!) which accelerates swiftly into the rabble-rousing 'Who Said I Would', minus question mark. So it must be a statement. Or something.

Living In A Box. Plop. Good eponymous single; bad pony mouse album.

The Doobie Brothers - Best Of. Bought because I'd read that Michael McDonald, who we like ('Sweet Freedom', 'Behind The Mask' and the Steely Dan appearances: 'Peg', 'Gaucho', 'Katy Lied' etc) joined The Doobie Brothers as lead vocalist during their career. Hmm, Long Train Running aside, obviously, more plop.

Pat Benatar - Tropico. The cover has her in soft focus, crouching in a punky ball gown on a huge chess board releasing an owl. If that doesn't scream 80's soft rock I don't know what does! Has the classics 'We Belong' and 'Love Is A Battlefield' and is therefore immediately immune to ANY criticism whatsoever.

I passed over 3 Toto albums. Then, after subsequently revisiting: 'Africa', 'Rosanna', 'Hold The Line', 'I Won't Hold Back' and 'Georgy Porgy' (more Michael McDonald), wish I'd bought them. The revisit to Africa unearthed some mis-heard lyrics 'hilarity' as well...

'Africa' - actual lyrics:

"Its gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
Theres nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had (ooh, ooh)"

'Africa' - as I've known it since I were a small lad:

"Gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do
I've guessed the ratings down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we've never had, to do"

I think I know which I prefer.

And finally, this observation:

My record collection is, in effect, a segmented and clothed black monolith of latent sound. Picture all the records out of their sleeves, but remaining in their filed and stacked positions, side-by-side as a huge block of black vinyl. Deeeeep maaan.

2009-07-26T17:32:00.004+01:00

Think the recession's on the decline? (Ignore the oxymoron, smart-alec) Well I have photographic evidence here that things are so bad that even the pigeons at Oxford's HSBC branch at Carfax are suicidal:

Yes, poor little bugger's hung himself. Yet another hapless victim of those greedy traders out for short term grain.....ahem.

But on to happier, brighter, shinier things, like my new toy:

Dr Destruction: Red Tide Kozik.

Isn't he cool?

2009-07-18T21:43:00.002+01:00

I bet you thought I'd been in mourning for a month didn't you? Well I have been upset by the passing of MJ, but I haven't been disabled by it. I did kind of feel a need to keep myself busy though and so, after being aware of the furore around the new iPhone, I decided to get in on the action. Behold, the iPhoney:

iPhoney©

Originally created to try and impress my work colleagues (without the £569 outlay), the iPhoney has become a test bed for my own home-brew iPhoney apps. From which I understand you can make a fair bit of cash. Currently in development at JBG Industries are (from top left to right):

1. Imperial Communicator - allows holographic communication with Imperial troops. Over IP. With Sith smileys.

2. Fairtrade Diviner - auto-dials a farm in Guatemala where a switchboard team of ex-nickel miners are on 24 hour shifts to advise you whether the food you're purchasing adheres to strict Fairtrade regulations. Calls cost £5.60 for half a minute.

3. Lego - Tetris-like game with Lego bricks.

4. Henken Reciprocator - allows automatic response to the "Henken" call, freeing one up to continue working, uninterrupted.

5. Royal Mail stamp - use it when you want to post a letter. Simple.

6. Llama Alarm - self-explanatory. Highly sensitive llama alarm. Can be set to auto-detect\repel\mating call as required.

7. Sedentary Mode - effectively puts the iPhoney to sleep.

8. Swine Flu Detector - I think I may be too late to market with this one already :(

Drop me a line if you're interested in trialling any of your own iPhoney apps on my test kit and we'll go halves on the iProfits.

2009-06-26T10:20:00.003+01:00

R.I.P - M.J (1958 - 2009)

2009-06-24T17:24:00.008+01:00

"You've been gone 17 days, and 17 long nights" (wrote ickle lickle Prince once upon a time) and that, I'm sorry to report, has indeed been the duration betwixt my postings. Perpetual infantile stewardship is depleting valuable resources and so I'm finding that I barely have the energy to depress the keys on this keyboard, let alone depress the keys in the correct order to produce mildly entertaining nonsense to boot. Is there anyone out there willing to jack right into my cerebral cortex and simply drain the essence of my musings into html format, with pics, for the blog so I can carry on sleeping whilst simultaneously remaining 'online' and "current"? No? . This brain needs coffee and crullers, stat!

Anyway, despite that pediatric preface, I refuse to turn this blog into a baby update noticeboard (you can use the My Coco link on the right for that :0), so let's have a pop at Steve Davis instead. For those few of you out there who didn't watch BBC2 on Sunday afternoons in the 1980's, Steve Davis used to be the world's number one snooker player. He was also, possibly unfairly, perceived to be an extremely straight and drab and boring ginger man. Now, it is customary in snooker, as in a lot of sports actually, for some of the more successful or prominent players to be given epithets relevant to their persona, attributes or playing style. Some of Steve's contempories at the time therefore were awarded somewhat flamboyant and exciting nick-names, such as Alex "Hurricane" Higgins and Jimmy "Whirlwind" White. Steve's nickname however was "Interesting". Steve "Interesting" Davis. Personally I felt that was a bit off and they could have at least stretched to something a bit more in the weather vein (excuse the pun), something comparable to Alex and Jimmy's nicknames and possibly also emanating from the Beaufort scale. Steve "Gentle Breeze" Davis maybe?

His eminence at snooker, dull personality and lack of "wind based" nickname therefore made it all the more confusing for me when I saw this advert:

Now I've checked Steve's Wikipedia entry and nowhere can I find anything that even remotely hints to him being any sort of authority on double-glazing (that would be Dennis Taylor with his over-sized glasses shurely? Ho ho). Why and how would any advertising company connect Steve Davis's snooker prowess with PVC windows, doors and conservatorys? I find the whole thing a bit suspect to be honest. A bit like a bodge job and cheap shot (trick shot? - Enough with the puns!! Ed) at pure attention grabbing advertising. What's also odd is the thumb thing he's doing. It doesn't look at all natural to me. Looks more like a picture that's been Photoshopped for an ulterior purpose. To help illustrate the point, here's my "artist's impression" of how the original would have looked, with the missing snooker cue re-instated:

Poor Steve isn't the first celebrity to fall foul of the develish photo editing application that is Photoshop and I doubt he'll be the last. It's the least we can do in the meantime though to boycott the despicable Network VEKA. Peace and love comrades.

2009-06-07T19:58:00.004+01:00

And as if by magic, a baby arrived. Subtitled as, "At last, a valid use of the blog!".

So, here we have: Coco Brockbank-Gash, 7lb 4oz, born at 07:34, 07/06/09 at Wallingford Cottage Hospital.

Just two things to note:

She is much happier in real life than is suggested by any of the photos I've taken so far
Yes, we have unscrewed her hands to stop her from scratching herself

Awesome.

2009-06-02T21:08:00.004+01:00

Measured quietness reigning down from me at the moment. Even in the house we're speaking in hushed tones in case any overtly loud noise brings on the contractions early or some such malarkey - homunculus disgorgement is imminent...

To while away some of the time though I knocked up this piece of trash.

I purchased a homemade oil painting from eBay for the princely sum of 99p, and then proceeded to defile it with vintage (1983-86) transfers from He-Man, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Knight Rider. It didn't actually turn out as well as I'd hoped - I think the term, "over egged the pudding" would be an accurate description of the result - but it's going to go into Toby's room anyway, and he likes it.

And finally, the fruit (literally) of our labours in the garden.

Not the sum total of course, just the stuff that's ready to eat now. I know what you're thinking, "you're going to have to freeze some of that over-harvest or it'll spoil". Pathetic isn't it? And I don't even like strawberries. All the other stuff in the veg patch is either over-watered, under-watered, partially gnawed by cats and\or pigeons or appears to be descended from some kind of rare breed dwarf variety that refuses to, or is genetically incapable of, growing beyond the stage it was at when we planted it....4 weeks ago. More "gardening sucks a massive wiener" stories at a later date pop pickers...
...
...
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are you watching me........?

2009-05-28T18:24:00.002+01:00

Aaaaand again:

Whilst perusing our SharePoint portal today, my deranged colleague asked me if I was going to log a defect for a minor cosmetic issue I'd noticed by the site's login box. One of the background graphics was slightly distorted; I said it looked to me like a hare-lip, but no, I wouldn't be logging it as a defect. Half an hour later I had to go to a meeting with James, one of the portal developers in a different building, reviewing open defects. The chap sitting opposite James had a hare-lip. Which I couldn't stop staring at. Not because I was being insensitive, but because it was ~~a sign from God~~ an interesting co-incidence.

Clarification: It was I that had mentioned "hare-lip", I'd never been to that floor of the building and had never met or seen either of these 2 guys before.

2009-05-26T22:18:00.002+01:00

More co-incidences. I thought I'd be upfront about it at least and tell you straight off. I don't want you getting halfway through the post and then face-palming yourself with, "Oh not again. Get over it!". So, you know the format:

1. This one's a bit self-referential (is that the right word?). I was telling Simon, my new work buddy, about a co-incidence I had last week. I had seen that someone had posted some free tickets to a gig at the Roundhouse in London for a guy named Holger Czukay. I'm always up for a freebie, particularly if it's at the Roundhouse, which is a great venue. Unfortunately I couldn't go and also I had no idea who Keyser Soze, or whoever, was. Later that evening I discovered that he was a co-founder of krautrock band Can when I read his name in a review of an unrelated CD in The Wire - it was literally the first paragraph I read. Simon wasn't that impressed with the co-incidence, and come to think of it, I'm not now either. They always seem weirder when they happen personally and out of the blue. Anyways...

2. I was telling Simon this (in hindsight, un-) interesting story, when I had a heart palpitation. I exclaimed a faint, "Oh" and checked my pulse. He enquired, in his sardonic Brummie brogue, "What's wrong, have you trodden on a frog". I was pretty shocked by his throwaway jocular query. And why? Last night at about 8.30pm whilst walking up the path to water our fledgling vegetable patch I trod on what I thought was, and felt like, a slippery cat poop. Of course it wasn't a poop, it was a frog which, bizarrely and thankfully, hopped off unharmed.

Now, this is the sort of thing that the Lost script writers wove into a 6 season TV series, so whether you find it interesting or not is irrelevant - I've got some killer material here. Now if only I can rope in some "hot" actors and a tropical paradise setting...

2009-05-24T20:42:00.003+01:00

It's been a gorgeous Bank Holiday weekend so far, so no time to be sitting down tappy tapping stuff and nonsense, but I did have two co-incidences today to keep that little topic spinning along:

1. Toby had a friend over to stay last night and so we had to drop him off this morning after I got back from some fast and furious mountain biking down near Henley. In the car on the way to Newbury we 'lounged' to the Best of Acid Jazz album, which I often dust off as soon as we get prolonged periods of sunshine (predictable? moi?). US3's Cantaloop was just finishing as we parked up and headed into town to get something to eat. We chose ASK as a fairly safe bet (except actually I had to send my calzone back as the pancetta in it was raw!!) and, as we walked in, playing on their stereo was Herbie Hancock's Water Melon Man which, as I'm sure you know, was the source of the samples for Us3's Cantaloop. Cantaloop? Canta-spook more like.

2. Idly flicking through the micro-blog links on Ben Goldacre's BadScience.net, I ended up at a site blogging about a book reader app for the iPhone called Eucalyptus (it looks very cool - I'm starting to get hunger pangs for one of these iPhones now; dangerous...). I watched the short demo movie which turned the pages (as though they were real pages) of Jules Vernes - Around The World In 80 Days, just as an advert came on the TV for next Sunday's family film...Around The World In 80 Days (the rubbish one with Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan).

Spook(y).

2009-05-20T20:52:00.003+01:00

The mystery of the moniker revealed...

2009-05-18T19:33:00.014+01:00

Regulars to these pages will recall that for a while I cataloged a lot of my observed "co-incidences" as they happened to me in my everyday life. Then I went through a quiet patch, got bored blogging and gave up. On reflection however, and in light of recent co-incidences, I think I have decided that I have a duty to record them and make them available should anyone wish to gather data and conduct the sort of study and investigation that Arthur Koestler may have done regarding synchronicity. So, with plenty enough ado:

1. Coming home on the bus tonight I listed to Simon Mayo standing in for Chris Evans. He played a country and western cover version of Green Day's - Time Of Your Life. From the beginning intro I thought it sounded like The Proclaimers. Imagine my surprise (you'll have to imagine it as I didn't film myself) when, after the news and traffic reports he played....The Proclaimers new single.

Not a major co-incidence I suppose, so don't start tutting at me. It's a warm up. So, I would suggest the possibility that the beginning of the Green Day cover version did sound like The Proclaimers and that maybe that was what inspired the playlist order. Easily explained, if it needed explaining at all you might say. Without such a logical consideration though you can easily see how these co-incidences could be interpreted differently. Like, say, as a message from God (to go out and buy the new Proclaimers single maybe). OK, so, a light-weight, everyday, low-level one to ease you in. Now, how about this one:

2. Yesterday I took Toby out to do some boring food shopping. He asked when we were out if we could go to the big pet store, Pets@Home. I said yes, on a whim. We turned up and began by peering into the many mini-aquariums displaying the little fishies for sale. I entertained the little tyke with tales of how they got the fish to go different colours by pouring various types of liquid into each tank. Ink for the blue fish, Tango for the orange etc etc. I noticed that most of the colourful and interesting little fishes were all cichlids, which I recalled from a TV documentary on the Nile Perch, to all originate from Lake Victoria in Africa. We left shortly afterwards as we were making idiots of ourselves laughing at this...

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"London's burning, London's burning, fetch the engine, fetch the engine. Fire, fire. Fire, fire. Pour on water, pour on...?...ahhh, sorry, going to have to stop you there. Two things. Firstly, with these claws, it's an absolute bitch getting the hose rings screwed onto the hydrants properly. And secondly, we have kind of a debilitating aversion to water. So this isn't really going to work out for us all to be honest. We were thinking maybe the dogs could step in? You know they love water and they love to fetch, "Fetch the engine boy, go on, fetch the engine". Is that OK? Good. OK, we're off for a little nap now - it's toasty here isn't it? Sorry we couldn't really help out. I've left you a headless mouse in your porch by way of apology. I know you'll like it. Bye"

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Later that evening I made the decision to work through my backlog of books and arbitrarily chose the first in the pile to start reading - Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee. On page 27 this lunchtime I read about the differences between related species of the cichlids of Lake Victoria. Spook.

Now, some "co-incidences" I judge to actually be sub-conscious decisions which are made and which actually lead you inexorably to a "co-incidence situation". In this case it could have been that me remembering about the origins of the fish sparked me thinking, sub-consciously, about the animal world, species and genus etc, which I have a passing interest in as a result of much reading about evolution. It may even have been the case that I'd flicked through The Third Chimpanzee some time ago, glanced at and stored the cichlid reference, and it was this that prompted me to not only choose to start reading a book, but to start reading that specific book. It wasn't though. I've not even opened that book since I got it at Xmas, and the only reason I chose it, like I said if you were paying attention, was that it was first in the pile. The other remarkable thing of note I suppose is how uncommon the word cichlid is and the sequence of events that a. led me to the aquarium and b. to encounter a word that I can consciously recall hearing\reading just 3 times in the past 3 or 4 years. Two of those occasions being within the past 24 hours.

Even that second point I'll admit doesn't sound that impressive really. Most co-incidences that you have yourself are probably just ignored. Or, to be more fair, are filtered out by you as being unimportant. Humans though as you may know are pattern seeking animals and it is this innate ability to note patterns, cause and effect, consequences and results etc that make us the dominant species on the planet. Sometimes this ability can go a bit haywire, like with me seeing faces in everyday objects and saying, "ooh, that's a co-incidence" when a song I've been singing suddenly comes on the radio. But at least I have the good sense not to attribute it to anything holy, divine or supernatural.

2009-05-13T22:16:00.004+01:00

Aiee, no time for bloggee! Apologies for the lack of updates lone reader, but I usually try to cram some keyboard bashing in at lunchtime during work hours. I've started a much busier role at work however so I'm finding that I don't actually have the spare time that I used to have. What this really means of course is that I'm not willing to spend my own personal time updating the blog. I don't value you enough (lone reader) to spend my time typing out rubbish for you to ignore. This is very rude of me to say of course but it does provide a perfect, real world example for you to use when arguing at a dinner party against the notion of 'honesty being the best policy'. Whilst on the subject of honesty, I can honestly say that Level 42's - Heaven In My Hands is one of my top ten favourite songs of all time, and I'm not ashamed to let it be known (to the approximate 3 people who read this blog).

Wolverine - I haven't seen it, probably won't at the cinema, but I'm sure I'll rent the DVD. No comments on the film per se then, but oh my god, could Hugh Jackman do with getting a little perspective on that whole "leak" thing. Someone leaked the movie, geeks downloaded it. Geeks that will probably go see it at the cinema, buy the film, action pose the figure, stand in front of the poster with a double comb-over and knitting needles cellotaped to the back of their hands going, "grrrrowl!" etc etc. Hugh commented on the leak saying, "it's a serious crime". He said that the "FBI are onto it and they're taking it very, very seriously".

Jesus, Professor Xavier, quick, can you use your psychic abilities to project some perspective into his adamantium skull? Terrorism and child pornography are very, very serious crimes, worthy of FBI interest.

Basically, my view is that the film and music industry have, through increased marketing, now cultivated such a hunger for their products that the lap-dog consumers they used to have at their beck and call (I'm thinking, 20 different movie\album release schedules for each targeted global market, "and each of you will wait your turn"), are not only biting the hand that feeds them, they are downloading the food and eating it without cutlery or a garnish. As has been said many times before, post-Napster for instance, don't be scared "big companies", embrace the new demands of your market and adapt to them. My 2 cents worth: pay the actors less; produce the film for less; make it available without all the razzle dazzle and waste on promotion. Skip ALL of that and you have a product which is agile: better value for money and delivered when the customer wants it.

Hugh Jackman gets $20 million a film. He's already earned enough to support him and his family very comfortably for the rest of his life. The person who leaked the film could potentially face a custodial sentence lasting a year or more. If you think this is just, you are an idiot.

Peace homies!!

2009-05-05T16:46:00.003+01:00

It's just, literally, occurred to me for no good reason that for some years now I have been selfishly harbouring the ultimate (ie most reliable) cure for the human hiccups. As you can well understand, there are certain things that must be in the public domain for the good of humanity and this I believe is one of them. So, without further ado (although I may have already used too much "ado") I will now divulge all.

If you are currently hiccupping or have performed one or more of the 'build-up' hiccups\backward burps that signal a bout of looping hiccups then you are experiencing, or are about to experience, what is simply an involuntary spasming of the diaphragm. This spasming, this 'body out of kilter with itself', is the single and only cause of hiccups. Drinking a glass a water, receiving a fright or holding your breath will not reliably cure your hiccups for the simple reason that hiccups are not caused by dehydration, a deficit of anxiety, or a surfeit of oxygen*. Hiccups are a purely physiological phenomenon and as such can be treated very practically, thus:

1. Inhale a lung-full of air (a proper, deep, lung-full) and hold it.
2. Simultaneously tense your stomach (abdominal) muscles and crunch your torso down onto your diaphragm. You may find it useful to hunch your shoulders forward and down slightly as you do so.
3. Continue to hold your breath, tense your abdomen and compress your diaphragm all at the same time for as long as you can - about 30 to 40 seconds should do it.

To use an analogy, what you are doing in effect is trying to hold with both hands the jumping frog that is your hiccupping diaphragm. Once you restrict the frog's movement and ability to jump, you will have brought the diaphragm back under the unconscious control of your body and brain and the hiccupping will cease.

Now, after this 30 to 40 second routine, as long as you don't pass out, pop an eye vein or tear a muscle somewhere, your hiccups should be gone. Simples.

Whilst writing this I had a quick scout on the net, and there are some seriously idiotic methods folks have suggested to cure hiccups, including "pressure on the eyeballs, traction on the tongue and inducing vomiting". I have actually had the bilious misfortune to vomit whilst hiccupping and it wasn't pleasant. More importantly it did not stop me from hiccupping. Pushing your eyeballs and pulling your tongue sounds equally unpleasant and I wouldn't bother with either of those suggestions. My method works because the solution relies on you controlling the rogue element in your body by your own means. Don't trust the interweb quacks: trust me, I'm a doctor.

*I realise that some of you may be trying to argue (I can't hear you by the way) that those classic remedies I listed (not the eye-gouging, tongue twisting, sick-up ones) all attempt, in a very vague way, to also address the spasming diaphragm. However, to use my amphibious analogy a second time, this would be like trying gingerly to contain a jumping frog using one hand and then leaping and yelping a lot when it touches your skin, allowing it to continue on it's jumping rampage. Actually, that might also be quite a good hiccup cure in itself. I'll get back to you on that one.

2009-05-01T11:48:00.008+01:00

Q. When will avian flu and swine flu combine into a more virulent strain?
A. When pigs can fly.

They're great aren't they, topical jokes? Seriously though, we had a bit of a scare with Toby this morning. He woke up claiming to feel really ill. We thought he was telling porkies, but then he came out in all these rashers. Luckily the doctor gave us some oinkment.

It really is no joking matter though (as those monumentally poor attempts at humour clearly illustrate). But I don't just mean the main flu situation, I mean the media coverage. Feverish is the word is it not? I mean come on, let's have some restraint; calmness; perspective; purlease. From the reams of printed matter and gigs of webspace already devoted to this latest "threat to the world" I have been able to discern that, at a personal level, there probably is something to be concerned about (and probably something to take action about) once it reaches your local community. Then you take the commonsense prevention measures that haven't really changed in the last 100 years or so, with the exception that you now also line the white-coat pockets (again) of Big Pharma by taking the Tamiflu\Relenza drug. But to be honest, as a fit and healthy 38 year old male citizen of the United Kingdom, with all that that affords me, I'm in a better position than the majority of the people in this world likely to be infected by flu, and I would prefer that the UK government gave my course of flu drugs to someone that needs it, i.e the third-world population that are destined to be most hit by this latest outbreak. When I say "hit" I am of course using it as a euphemism for decimated; man, woman and child (and pig).

If "we" want to do something about the pandemic, then let's get internationally co-operating and send drugs, not reporters, to the exposed and vulnerable countries NOW. At this rate there's a 100% certainty that I'll be sick of the press and TV hyper-panic long before I get sick from any kind of flu.

There was an excellent article from Deborah Orr in The Independent and also one from Ben Goldacre in The Guardian, which, although seem to be at odds with each other, sum up pretty much my views on this entire phenomenon. Nuff said.

I'll take this opportunity now to publicly coin my oft muttered idiom, "Nothing ever happens" so that we can then revisit this topic in a year's time to determine if anything really did happen. Which brings me, via Del Amitri (yes I know), to my latest Spotify playlist, "The Antidote to the Swine Flu Fever" by themightyflu.

Hot Chocolate – It Started With A Kiss
Them – Gloria [Explanation - it started supposedly in La Gloria, Mexico]
Pigbag – Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag
Tori Amos – Caught a Lite Sneeze
George Benson – Shiver
The Smiths – Panic
Public Enemy – Don’t Believe the Hype
The Coral – Pass It On
Electric Light Orchestra – All Over the World
Del Amitri – Nothing Ever Happens

The soundtrack to "parmageddon" (credit to Ben Goldacre)? You decide.

Enjoy, carriers.

2009-04-28T22:39:00.003+01:00

A little self-indulgent posting just for posterity.

I had a dream on Saturday night\Sunday morning that I was at the foot of a mountain by a lake. In the sky around me were huge white cranes with scarlet red wing feathers, wheeling around on the updrafts. I picked up my binoculars and tried to get a closer look at what they were doing. They were building nests, large flat discs made of mud, that floated on the lake. Around the edge of each nest the birds had planted a kind of cage of upright sticks and longstalked flowers, tulips and daffodils, which were being visited by iridescent green hummingbirds. In my dream it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and it made me cry. The rest of the dream descended into the usual pattern of me trying to do something (photograph the birds with my camera phone in this instance) and being massively, irritatingly, thwarted. Then I woke up.

I have a (probably not all that original) theory that the frustration theme in dreams, most commonly experienced as the "trying to run through glue" feeling, is the consequence of your body trying to move the parts of your body that have been deactivated by your brain as part of your sleep cycle. I had a good one once where I was trying to shout out in my dream and the frustration built up so much, stressing me out, that my heart sped up enough to partially wake me and enable me to spaz out, "Mwaaarrrdle!!". I sounded like I was brain damaged. And to a certain degree I had been.

Anyway, Sunday morning we set off to a carboot looking for junk (I actually picked up Wang Chung's Dance Hall Days on 12" for 50p - yessss) and as we pulled out of the drive, above me a huge white bird wheeled round and descended on the house opposite. It was a heron. No red feathers, but it was a big old bird alright.

Is it a sign, or is it just a coincidence....?

2009-04-25T19:41:00.006+01:00

**NEW web address alert**

We're now broadcasting from www.themightychew.com, so please update your internet girls and boys. Re-wire your Google-page and e-web downloads stat, because this Twit-feeder is going to be ripping up your Face-Space portal imminently. Web 4.0 coming your way in Y2K!

Right, onto the normal stuff...

You need Spotify in your life, if you don't have it already. Not just to play the (very slightly kitsch and embarrasing) playlist I just compiled of all the tracks that were No 1 on my birthday from 1971 to 2009, but also just because you need Spotify.

1. Times are hard. You need free stuff. Spotify is free music. What better combination could you wish for than free stuff that makes you forget the fact that times are hard? Exactly. Triple yay!
2. They have a lot of good stuff. Complete discographys of some labels. All the big names (bar Pink Floyd I've just discovered)
3. You can unplug your headphones so you don't have to listen to the (actually quite infrequent) adverts.
4. You can create playlists, which you either keep to yourself and load up even when you run Spotify on a different computer, OR, you can mail those playlists to other people.
5. If you liked my birthday playlist, give it a score here.

I read somewhere that Spotify is one of a slew of new web-apps that are set to herald a move away from 'ownership' towards true and proper on-demand access to shared media. Like I say, there are adverts unfortunately, so it's not all chocolate coated roses delivered by the naked model\actor of your choosing just yet, but it'll do until they arrive.

So, fancy a boogie? Here's "4 for the floor" from me. Why not post your own "4 for the floor" playlist URL in the Comments and we can all have a laugh, er, boogie.

"Pretty young things, repeat after me..."

2009-04-22T21:20:00.004+01:00

Did you guess Monday's quiz question correctly? I suppose you won't know until I tell you will you? Durrr....

It's the Spittelau Incinerator in Vienna, Austria. Designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

Give yourself a carbon credit if you got it right.

2009-04-21T12:23:00.002+01:00

Forget about that other thing for now, this is better. Now I don't often see the point in blogging what someone else has just blogged, but (yeah, you know there was a but) this is worth 5mins 48secs of your life.

I have that very same Japanese record player that they use in the penultimate chain reaction :0)

2009-04-20T12:18:00.002+01:00

What's this then...? Answer tomorrow.

2009-04-19T19:05:00.003+01:00

We watched Monsters vs Aliens in 3D yesterday. I must say that I was slightly blown away by the 3D - verrrry cool. Also very cool for the movie companies that will now look to re-releasing at the cinema all their killer back catalogue. Basically, think of your favourite film (possibly 'Heat' for me) in 3D on a massive screen. I'd very easily part with £8.40 for that.

Anyway, in the adverts before the main feature was a short promo film from the Scottish Tourist Board showing a model couple (ie they both looked like models) swanning round Scotland having THE most amazing time. To be honest the Tourist Board could probably be done under the Trade Descriptions Act, because it made Scotland look amazing (I'm half-Scottish so I'm allowed to say that). To be fair it was mainly showing the West Coast, which actually looks like an overcast Caribbean (true); white sand beaches, clear blue sea and idyllic, secret coves devoid of any form of humanity, and more importantly, tourism. They finished this rose-coloured montage with the strapline/URL VisitScotland/perfectday.com. Now, it may just be me (Shoulder Devil says, "it usually is". Shut up Shoulder Devil!!) but when I put the words, Scotland and Perfect Day (the Lou Reed song about drug abuse) together, I come up with the scene in Trainspotting where the 'hero' Mark Renton, played by Ewan McGregor, overdoses on heroin in a derelict squat, is dragged into the rubbish strewn street by his pusher and left alone, at death's door, to wait for the ambulance.

Like I say, that might just be me, but I don't think that that's the image that the Scottish Tourist Board is looking to conjure. Unless of course they have a shed-load of 'brown' to shift...

2009-04-16T12:15:00.002+01:00

Whilst cycling in to work today I started noticing an increasing number of small empty bottles lying in the road and occasionally on the pavement. About one every 500m or so. In the space of the last kilometre as I reached work, I saw 3 bottles, which actually turned out to be miniatures (shot-sized bottles of booze). This struck me as unusual and started me thinking about some of the possible reasons why these would be strewn around like this on the road into the business park where I work. I pictured:

a Hunter S Thompson type character weaving his dusty old convertible down the highway, sporting aviator shades and a cowboy hat with a laughing blonde draped round his neck and leaving a trail of bottles and exhaust fumes behind him

or maybe an alcoholically depressed CEO, slouched in the leather seat of his Jaguar, downing a handful of miniatures before he gets to work, his manufacturing business on the brink of bankruptcy. The tiny bottles travel from lip to lap twice and are then dropped carelessly out of the driver's window onto the road

or... and then I didn't have to speculate anymore, as I discover the source of the trail. Asleep under a bush next to a half-eaten kebab was a garden gnome.

Rough night's sleep I bet he had.

More true stories next week listeners.

2009-04-14T20:13:00.001+01:00

Happy (belated) Easter from Jedi Master Mace Windu.

2009-04-11T09:04:00.001+01:00

PLEASE SIGN AND DISTRIBUTE THIS PETITION

http://www.avaaz.org/en/fix_british_protest_policing/?cl=214900900&v=3198

Thanks x

2009-04-09T16:41:00.002+01:00

I'm off to see David Byrne in Oxford tonight. Just boning up on him (sorry?!) on Wikipedia and I came across a quote of his, which I think everyone involved in and into music needs to digest:

"The "industry" had a nice 50-year ride, but it's time to move on. Luckily, music remains more or less unaffected — there is a lot of great music out there. A new model will emerge that includes rather than sues its own customers, that realizes that music is not a product in the sense of being a thing — it's closer to fashion, in that for music fans it tells them and their friends who they are, what they feel passionately about and to some extent what makes life fun and interesting. It's about a sense of community — a song ties a whole invisible disparate community together."

That concept of music being, in essence, comparable to fashion, is genius. That plus a properly good listen to 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts' has really got me looking forward to the gig :0)

2009-04-08T12:39:00.002+01:00

Sorry, do we live in North Korea now?

Massive sense of humour failure today and heartfelt sympathy for the family of Ian Tomlinson, murdered by the "friendly English bobby".

2009-04-07T14:51:00.003+01:00

A further addendum to my post of yesterday about distasteful terms, would be the use of the phrase, "frog in my throat". Whilst I admit that it is not in the same league as "that word" or diarrhea, it still conjurs up images that I don't need. Namely that of something green and slimy in someone's throat.

And that's exactly because, when someone tells you that they have a frog in their throat, they do indeed have a green and slimy object in their throat: a big glob of mucus. Well, great. Thanks for that mental picture. What do you have lined up for me next? A slug in your ear? An eel in your bowels?

So, a request for you all. Less of the imagery please and more drinking of water. Properly hydrate your body; be frog free.

More important than my bodily function\terminology hang-ups, I have to warn you of a possible Muslim fundamentalist "scam" (for want of a better word). I received the following e-mail earlier today from a humanist website:

"Hello, I Live in Quetta, Pakistan. I am male. I am 31 years old. I live in Quetta, Pakistan so I can’t publish my name. Whatever is happening in our Country? Everyone is very much aware from it. We are very sad and worried of this worst situation in our country. My heart is crying with blood tears.
I am a Secular and Modern Thought person. I born into in an orthodox Muslim religious family, but as I became mature and I started studies of secular and non believers writers my thoughts changed and now I believe that religion is creating lots of problems in our society.
I believe that religion must be separate from state affairs and equal opportunities must be provided to everyone without any discriminate of caste, colour, blood and religion.
I think our big problem is this, that our society is deeply involved in religion. Also they are not adopting new and modern approaches.
You cannot imagine that how much it is difficult to talk about Secularism and modern democratic ideas and thoughts in a society like we live in it. We paid a great price for talking about secularism in our Country. People boycott us, socially, economically and every type of relations they have cut from us. But to be honestly we will not stop for struggling of a Secular and modern democratic society in our country. Religion must be separate from state affairs. We believe that only and only secular and modern thoughts and approaches can bring peace, stability, prosperity and happiness in our country and in the world also.
We need help and guidance from people like you. You don’t know how much difficulties and problems we are facing in this fully religious type of country where we live. It is not only our duty to bring Secular and modern, democratic and human thoughts and ideas in Pakistan but it’s your duty also to help us and guide us in this noble mission.
I hope that I will hear soon from you with positive response."

Now, call me a skeptic (please do, I'd love it :0) but this sounds like a massive set-up. How about this for a theory - a fundamentalist (with the emphasis on 'mentalist') Muslim organisation in Pakistan decides to send out e-mails to humanist, secular, liberal, human rights organisations in the UK. These e-mails purport to be from a likeminded comrade who is currently evolving their forward thinking secular philosophy whilst living, trapped and in fear for their life, in a dangerously oppressive theocratic state. The bleeding heart liberal types amongst us (me) respond to the new "pen-pal" and strike up correspondence. The "pen-pal" then passes my address to some UK based terror cell and I get a special "parcel with a bang" that either blinds me or takes all my fingers off. This gets reported in the national press and people think twice about meddling in the affairs of the extremist state.

I've already put myself off....

2009-04-06T12:36:00.004+01:00

We had some new people over for afternoon tea* yesterday. Not new as in, freshly cloned; new as in, new-ish acquaintances. Sarah made a big pot of tea, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts off and rhubard and custard cake - very English. During the tea-time chit-chat conversation which ended up on idiosyncracies, learning habits and general behaviour, one of the guests referred to themselves as "anal"…..[Me: "cough"]…..my hand, reaching for a mackerel sandwich, paused momentarily and my eyes dropped to the tablecloth. The conversation, thankfully, carried on without any noticeable recognition of my flinch.

A quick post then about "that word", and also a quick statement that in this post I will be avoiding all types of comical double-entendres and euphemisms involving "that word".

From what I can remember, "that word", entered the ring (fnarr - damn!) of popular parlance as an adjective about 7 or 8 years ago, possibly through one of the many US sit-coms whose characters use psychotherapy-type terms quite frequently. I'm thinking Seinfeld, or Friends, Larry Sanders\Garry Shandling etc etc. In that context of course "that word", as a contraction of "anally-retentive", generally means 'uptight' or 'obsessive', 'compulsive' etc. Prior to that, in England, it would have been used to describe something to do with bum-holes. Anyway, to me it's just a word that you don't bring up at the table. Like 'rape'.

Maybe my aversion to it is a bit "that word" too. Maybe if I start thinking about how uptight I get about "that word" I'll get stuck in some feedback loop and explode? Anally-expulsive? Horrible, but we're not away from that whole topic yet, so to speak.

The other term I don't like is "verbal diarrhea". Ugh. It conjures up images of mouths dribbling with runny poop (sorry, I had to be graphic to effectively convey my revulsion). So please, can I ask you all to start saying "logorrhea" instead?

Toby has logorrhea. Acute logorrhea. Coupled with his debating skills, already quite masterful at just 6 years of age, we're quite certain he's going to become a politician. Or a taxi driver. Actually, he wants to be a tramp (true) as, "they just sit on the pavement and people give them money". Added to that, they have dogs (bonus), don't have to wash (double bonus) and can go where they like (probably not very accurate) and eat what they like (hmm, more what they can find really). I can just picture him at the JobCentre now in his filthy oversized suit, rolled up sleeping bag under his arm and hob-nail boots with the soles flapping off. That's my boy.

Just to round up then. Whilst filling in an application form for car insurance last night (see Toby, look at all the fun you'll miss out on if you become a tramp!), I noticed that one of the occupations you could choose for yourself was (no, not tramp), jazz composer. Imagine that, jazz composers everywhere must be thinking, "at last, recognition!". What made me marvel was that the insurance companies must actually have some kind of risk analysis/probability ratio/matrix thingy set up that grades people's likelihood to make an insurance claim at a level so granular as to make a distinction between say, classical composer and jazz composer. Amazing. And now that I think about it, with jazz's sometimes free-styling tendencies and random improvisations, maybe a jazz composer is pre-disposed to make bad driving decisions, be more prone to accidents and therefore liable to pay higher premiums. If that's the case then maybe they're not the type of character you could trust to drive your kids to school or take you down the M40 in the pouring rain. Our anal friend is a jazz composer. I don't think we'll be seeing them again Sarah. Goodnight listeners.

*Tea is tea, as in 'pot of tea at four o'clock'. Some of you might use tea and dinner as synonyms. You would be wrong I'm afraid. You go 'out for dinner', you have supper as your evening meal. Tea, dinner, supper - got it? Good.

2009-03-31T22:45:00.003+01:00

I've noticed that a number of these NHS posters have sprung up around the place at work. They're a bit dull so I thought I'd add a comic touch to them, starting with this one...

The observant amongst you will have noticed the addition of a little ciggie in her hand. If I don't get fired first, I'll try and post some more in the next few weeks. Power to the people.

2009-03-29T19:49:00.005+01:00

Man oh boy, I've been off work for the past week with what felt like a medium strength dose of dysentry. I didn't have any substantial meals for like 5 days. Eating a handful of dry Cheerios here, a small square of chocolate there - a real tropical shipwreck diet with all the special effects. I didn't know if I was coming...

or going....

2009-03-25T15:45:00.006Z

Couple of things annoying me this week. One, the idiots that shoot polar bears. And two, the Pope advising Africa that condoms are exacerbating the AIDS epidemic.

Let's start with the retards "hunting" polar bears for £25,000 a pop. I think the reason this made me speechless with a whole range of violent emotions is down to the fact that the polar bear has become a mascot for the world's Green\Eco\environment followers, which, let's face it, should encompass everyone living on the planet. It's for that reason that I can't come up with some clever, "the bear has polarised opinion on global warming" headline, quite simply because it hasn't. The polar bear is a tangible, emotive and universally recognised symbol representing the non-human elements of the earth that are at risk of extinction due to human action and in-action. It's because of this, I thought, world-wide accepted elevation of polar bear status to that of sacred animal, a totem almost, that I was lost for words when I saw the photo below.

But later on I thought, £25,000 seems cheap for a polar bear, you know? And, what type of people are friends with someone who would shoot a polar bear? One of the pics I saw showed a man hiding behind a white board, probably half a mile away with a high powered rifle. So, how is that hunting? And whose polar bear was it anyway? Turns out it was probably Canada's actually, as 60% of the world's population of 22,000 polar bears are in Canada, where, luckily for them, they can be legally hunted. That makes just over half a billion $s worth of furry white rug running around the Arctic.

A solution (of mine) would be to pay the Inuits, who are selling their "traditional hunting rights" to the game hunters in return for the meat and money, directly. That way we can completely cut out the middle men (hunt organisers and hunters). Who pays for that though Jason? Well, if you launched it as a charity with such an iconic and, let's face it, saleable mascot as a cuddly polar bear cub, you could easily raise the $1.5 million a year required to earn all the cuddawee widdle powar bwears a stay of execution. In the meantime, you bring in a global ban on polar bear skins and trophies, starting with the UK.

Anyway, excluding the hunters and any Eskimo children who might have had parents eaten by polar bears, I estimate that the guy in that photo is hated by about 99.9999% of the world's population. Surely he's got to be in fear for his life and in serious danger of some ALF (Animal Liberation Front) nut hunting him down? I mean, if I met this guy at a party I would give him a major hard time, embarrass him very publicly and maybe even perform some mild violence or dog shit related attack to his house or car. And I'm a pacifist! (always struck me as odd that word ending with a "fist").

Next up, the Pope. Holy shit(head), now this guy surely IS in fear for his life, or maybe his belief in an eternal afterlife means he doesn't really give a damn. What is up with this guy? For those that missed it, he recently made the staggeringly medieval evaluation that condoms actually make the AIDS epidemic worse. As the leader of the Catholic church he's supposed to be divine leader to around a billion people (God's main man on earth), which makes him more than comparable to the king or queen of a country or a president or prime minister. If any king or queen or president or prime minister came out with some of the crap that he spouts they would be removed from power by a national, if not international, revolt, rebellion, revolution, whatever. This guy however just goes right back to balcony appearances and a sea of adulating faces. He and his cronies are what’s wrong with religion.

My solution to these problems? Pope hunting. Goodnight listeners.

2009-03-18T18:39:00.002Z

When money is tight and the international economy is in meltdown, what's the best way you can think of to cheer yourself up? Make a papier mache cat mask from dollar bills? You betcha.

All my own work. 1 of 1 suckah.

2009-03-16T12:26:00.002Z

My new "favourite thing in the world"....

2009-02-22T19:55:00.008Z

I made a t-shirt. This might be the first of many, so I'm quite excited to show it off here. You might say that there's no point me getting too excited about it really, because no-one's going to see it. I'm tucked away in a little travelled part of the web called 'personal blah-blog' with photos that only matter to me. I might be able to change that with a truck-load of spam words though, I'll see. Anyways, here you have a green 'Fruit of the Doom' (Loom) t-shirt, which has almost the entire front surface covered from top to bottom with hand-written MF Doom lyrics.

I've left an MF Doom logo shaped hole in the chest area and kind of rippled the text around it.

The lyrics I chose come from my favourite Doom-choons, which took me about 10 hours to write out. The idea behind it is that the Doom lyrics become art in their written as well as their spoken form. 1 of 1 suckah.

2009-02-19T19:45:00.002Z

If music is your thing (i.e art medium of choice) think how lucky you are that you can go and see your favourite artist in action at gigs and concerts.

Not many people could claim to get the same thrill watching an artist mixing paint or an author sharpening his pencil, compared to listening to musicians such as Friendly Fires airing the best, goddam white funk indie tunes currently available to man. Sarah (6 months pregnant - go girl!) and I saw them and White Lies at the O2 Academy in Oxford last night and they were superb. End review.

Now, a little something for the Prince fan(s) ;0)

I think, given his past record, the Purple One might blow his little top over this "copyright infringement" by Crown Paints (UK)? Maybe someone should tell him...

2008-10-23T16:07:00.000+01:00

Can you hear me laughing? No? I'm surprised. I can't stop. Chortling, sniggering, guffawing out loud when it builds up too much. Oh, my source of amusement, why George Osbourne of course. Blithering idiot that he is. As you may well know he tried to drop Peter Mandleson into hot water, but that particularly feisty lobster managed to escape the pan and give poor Georgie Porgie a very nasty nip on the nose. Not only that, but Georgie then had to face the press and explain why he had such a red face. (Oxford) Schoolboy error!

Now whilst this is all highly amusing for such a staunch anti-Tory such as myself, I do realise that it's probably more of an annoyance for them rather than a critical issue in itself. At the moment anyway: early days I suppose.

All that said though, I'd still prefer the rudderless, leaking, creaking ship of Labour to get us through these turbulent times than the Tory Titanic and it's traditional segregation of upper class luxury over steerage misery.

Byee

2008-09-22T00:06:00.003+01:00

Hey there. I read this recently.....

Eve Ensler, author of 'The Vagina Monologues,' on Sarah Palin:
DRILL, DRILL, DRILL
by Eve Ensler

"I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story – connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the Arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, under mining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and health care or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain. Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?"

And it inspired me to come up with a new logo for Sarah Palin to use in her Vice President campaign..

2008-09-19T22:49:00.002+01:00

The house believes that atheists are more benevolent than theists.

Proof: Atheists, by and large, are pretty sure that when you die there is nothing else. End of. Stop writing, pens down. Theists on the other hand have all sorts of weird and wonderful explanations about what’s going to happen, and this is based mainly on the word of mouth stories of superstitious cavemen from back in the day when we thought that a chariot brought the sun up each morning and then a woman with wolves or a bell or something drove it away again in the evening. OK? Good.

Now, when a theist dies, I, as an atheist, believe that they will have just a split second to see the error of their ways. They will have a split second in which to bear the crushing cold certainty, of which the unprepared unfortunately will have to suffer, that there is no tunnel of light, no winged angel bearing them aloft, no pearly gates, no cosy “Welcome!” mat to the biggest private members club in history. They will have that split second during which their body will be dead and their brain dying, and as the last neuron is switched off by the cranial equivalent of a night-watchman leaving the premises for good, they'll realise that this really is The End. And then they'll die, as all living things must. Without fanfare. But with the unjust and impertinent factuality that a person on the brink of death will most certainly experience. But they’re lucky, at least it's just for that split second.

Theists on the other hand think that atheists are going to burn in hell for all eternity. And they think we deserve it.

JBG (in Hell)

2008-08-07T12:14:00.003+01:00

**Scam Warning**

I saw a Council litter-patrol van parked up by the side of the road this morning, full of bags of rubbish with a big sign on the side that read, "Is your litter worth £75?". Well, not being one to pass by an opportunity to make a little extra money, I spent the next 2 hours grovelling around the surrounding roads and hedgerows gathering up four carrier bags of fag ends, crushed cans, Lucozade bottles filled with wee and many various crisp packets and sweet wrappers. By the time I'd finished my hands were as black as a miner's arse (I don't know what that means) and I'd gone through the knees of my shorts. They were long shorts. Anyway, I went back to the van just in time to catch the grubby man climbing into his cab. I presented him with my bags and eagerly asked how much he thought I'd get for them. But instead of responding, he simply threw the bags into the back with barely a glance, sneered at me as if I was mad or something and then drove off! With my litter! I rang the council to complain and they just treated it like some kind of joke and hung up. Some people I tell you.

Why do the working class point with their middle fingers? I know it's a slightly longer finger and there may be the argument that that helps emphasise the point being made, but it looks rude, so please stop. Pass it on.

The fact that it was raining again this Sunday, only for about the last 8 in a row!, meant that there was no car booty - again. It did remind me though of a funny incident at a car booty last year that I'd forgotten about. Toby and I were keeping an eye out for beer glasses for Mr Milligan and his Crystal Palace of Obsession and as I was rifling through some crappy old LPs Toby piped up, "Oh look, is that a Mr Tall glass?". I looked up to the glass in question, which actually said, "Top shag". Another one of those situations where adults laugh and have to fabricate a non-explicit alternative joke to cover the rude one they're actually laughing about. Later at that same booty-from-another-dimension I heard a woman talking to a bloke:

Woman - You know you look just like [name]
Bloke - Yes, I'm his older brother
Woman - Oh! Are you twins?

?!?!?!? Well, I suppose, strictly speaking he could have been, but...

2008-07-18T19:00:00.003+01:00

Yorkshire Sculpture Park comes up trumps again. Pops and I headed out there after being fatally betrayed by Pontefract's town council and their trade description flouting "Liquorice Festival". The festival billed as "all things liquorice" consisted entirely of a liquorice dalek (?!), a stall giving samples of liquorice beer and a van selling liquorice sweets, of which only a third were actually liquorice flavoured, the rest were watermelon, cola, apple etc etc. As was duly noted at the time, there was probably more liquorice in my Dad's lower intestine from the allsorts he'd had earlier in the week than there was at the festival.

The Liquorice Dalek

The museum in Pontefract did however provide us with a few chuckles courtesy of it's jaw-dropping collection of "quaintly english" (ie rascist) early 20th century sweet labels, depicting sinister Gollywogs chasing white men and generally scaring the bejesus out of kids and adults alike: packet of Nigger Eye's anyone?! Or maybe after Mum's bought her 40 Regal for the week, the kids might want to spend their pocket-money on their own "Boys and Girls Packet O' Fags"?

Anyway, Pontefract Liquorice Festival - rubbish. YSP in summer, nothing short of sublime, as my piccies hopefully illustrate.

Usher - Moving Mountains lyric "the water from the rain washes progress away" misheard as "the water from the rain wash his frog ass away". That's Timbaland delivering the musical sweetness again by the way.

You could do an entire book on the ridiculous adverts that Google Ads generates: Hipsway ringtones anyone??!! I don't deny that The Honeythief would make an excellent ringtone, it's just that the demographic for that particular product probably covers about 6 people in the UK. And 4 of them used to have sons in Hipsway.

Imagine being at work and being asked to make a giraffe from silver foil as part of a Fun Week. Imagine it. The tallest, most stable, most accurately realised giraffe wins. Such. Amazing. Fun. I think it's part of a managerial initiative to help people enjoy themselves at work. But I don't need upper level manager assistance to think of fun things to do. I can think of fun things on my own. Like making a realistic assagai out of the silver foil, using the tube to strengthen the shaft, and then leaping over the desks whooping and plunging the Baco-blade into the quivering chest of the organiser and showering in their hot blood. That's obviously a lie because I don't feel motivated to exert anything like that level of energy. I'll just blog it instead.

2008-07-01T15:09:00.001+01:00

I thought I had the "shining" yesterday. I was walking back from the bus and three crows flew in formation above me making a right old racket; "caw, caw, caw". Like a trio of lewd brickies carousing some distant female.

- I've put the "caw"s in speech marks there. This was of course bird speak but I have no idea what bird-speech marks look like -(?).

Anyway, as soon as I heard the cawing I immediately got a high pitched whining in my head (and the funny thing was that Toby was nowhere to be seen - ho ho). This pitched up to a high piercing tone, but then lessened and dropped right off as they flew away. Spooky no? No? No, I suppose not really.

Invention - hand held drill or saw powered by trigger action. Useful when you only have one hand free and no power supply. It will (note the optimistic future tense) look like a gun with either a drill bit or a hacksaw blade sticking out the end and will work by repetitive trigger action.

Just for posterity, we were talking about how slow Merlin is these days (14 year old collie) and Toby agreed, saying that, "if someone said to Merlin run for your life, he would just walk!". Priceless.

Currently listening to Band of Horses' - Cease To Begin album. Absolutely brilliant. I'm gutted I didn't go and see them at Bush Hall last year :0(

2008-01-11T12:33:00.000Z

Well, answers to questions as follows:

1. From what Google-found info I've managed to squeeze into my tiny realm of understanding, you would indeed accelerate to the centre of the Earth. The momentum would then carry you up to the surface on the other side of the Earth (assuming, presuambly, that the diameter of the core to surface is the same on both sides of the globe) and you could step out onto Ozzie soil.

2. Language arrived for humans, which is better than plumage or size of air-sac for determining your future partner.

Xmas was good, New Years was really good (Eve that is. Actual day was spent in bed vomiting bile and crying with alchohol poisoning). Birthday was very good - went to www.ysp.co.uk to see the Andrew Goldsworthy exhibition and then into Leeds for shopping and dinner at 1920's themed Italian restaurant, Bibi's. Where Toby found a MontBlanc pen shoved down the back of one of the couches. It was only when we got home that I realised that it was a £170 pen. Now I have the dilemma that I should really call them to ask if anyone's reported a lost pen...

2007-11-27T14:36:00.000Z

Oh the grand old Thom of Yorke, he found a great rock band
He marched them up to the top of the charts and he marched them down again
And when they were up they were up
And when they were down they were down
And when they were only half way up they were still the most innovative and influential rock band in the world.

Loving In Rainbows to tiny little coruscating bits :)

2007-11-26T17:15:00.001Z

You knew this already; mute swans can't honk or squawk. Which is possibly how they developed such huge flapping wings - for getting other swan's attention.

Swan 1 thinks: [there's a crocodile!] FLAP! FLAP! FLAP!
Swan 2 thinks: [what's his probl...]
Crocodile: [crunch] Idiots

But, the powerful wing is certainly much more effective at keeping small chidren at bay. A kind of variation on the maxim, "speak softly and carry a big stick". ie. don't speak at all, but break a childs arm if he tries to throw a stale roll at you.

Couple of co-incidences to kick things off, then a couple of questions which I might have a stab at answering later in the week. Note to self, if you're going to ask yourself a question, make sure you already know the answer or you'll appear disorganised. Further note to self, don't write notes to self in plain view of anyone not "self".

It's just a co-incidence 1:

Just finished reading Joseph O'Connors excellent Star of the Sea and I had earmarked Fast Food Nation as the next to be devoured. Went to Wallingford on Saturday and had a look in Sue Ryder at the books. Star of the Sea and Fast Food Nation were sat right next to each other on the top shelf. Sp-oo-oo-k.

It's just a co-incidence 2:

On Sunday I hit the Olympia Record Fair with a serious thirst for dusty vinyl (which seems a bit of a paradox), while Sarah and la familie went to the British Museum. Id asked Sarah to look out Albrecht Durer's rhinoceros woodcut print that I had read about in Mario Livio's book on the Golden Ratio, as I wanted to know how impressive it looked. When I got home that evening I decided that Fast Food Nation was a jump too far away from my current literary era (Dostoyevsky, Euclid, 19th Century Ireland etc), so I put it back and took out a Penguin collection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant. Looking for an indication of what the stories were about I flicked to the back page and found a diagram of....Albrecht Durer's rhinoceros woodcut print.Sp-ii-ii-ke.

OK, so:

Q1 - if you drilled a hole al the way through the Earth and out the other side, put on a protective suit impervious to everything, and then jumped in, what would happen? When you got to the centre of the Earth would you just stop? Because I can't imagine you flying out the other end, which in Australia would mean that you fell up a hole!

Q2 - in nature (red in tooth and claw and dangly bit under a turkey's neck), why is it the males that are colourful and make all the attempt to woo the females? Whereas in the human world (red in sunburn and tarty lipstick), on the whole, it's the females that, excuse the expression, go the whole hog and preen to attract the males. What happened?

OK, no guarantee of updates then; I might just fall again back into the blog-slumber I've been in for the past year or so and not return.

Music in my mind - Radiohead, Flying Lotus, A Mountain of One, Burial, BT

2007-03-06T10:08:00.001Z

(This was written ages ago, but not posted)

My brain has not come out of hibernation from the Xmas period, despite many temptations. This was demonstrated last Thursday when we had a power cut at work. All the drinks machines were off and I wanted a cup of tea, damn. "Hang on though", I had a revelation, "I know someone that's got a kettle!".

Yes it has been a bit quiet on the blog. I have been secretly plotting the overthrow of the UK's theocracy, building my arsenal, honing my skills, amassing and galvanising my comrades in arms etc etc. More news on this as it comes.

"Taaa-aake a Break. It's fun to stay at the Taaa-aake a Bray-ey-ake". It goes something like that anyway. You haven't seen it? OK, so let me paint the luridly incongruous picture for you. The advertising simpletons charged with promoting the TV guide-cum-gossip mag, Take-a-Break, have come up with a TV ad featuring the Village People (lookalikes) dancing like gaydons in a school canteen to a molested cover version of YMCA. "Taaa-aake a Break. It's fun to bum at the Taaa-aake a Bray-ey-ake".

The concept doesn't make sense really, but luckily for the Village People (lookalikes) reality has been put on pause for 45 seconds and the dinner ladies are up for a bit of synchronised homosexual dancing disrupting their busiest time of the day. And the kids don't seem to mind either, which is even stranger. These kids are not at all typical of your usual secondary school chav-hoodies, text-bullying each other and throwing flick knives at anyone in authority. No, completely the opposite in fact, they love the camp Red Indian (political correctness has no authority here) and the sinister, sunglassed and suntanned construction worker, and even the police officer! (now we really are in the land of make believe). A mere 10 seconds into their song and dance routine and the kids are up there with the old biddies thrusting away before you can say Section 28.

It's a lazy kind of lowest common denominator attempt to appeal to the gossip rag's demographic and it won't mean anything to most of the (normal) UK population. Dinner lady types, however, like hunky men, even if they're gay apparently, so it goes down a storm and as a result they've found no better gay disco icon endorsed TV guide with which to pass the time. Dinner hags are happy, kids are happy, Village People are happy (well, they're gay, so by definition...), Take a Break execs are happy. Possibly. So, everyone's a winner babe. Oh no, that was the other lot wasn't it?

The Oxford Secularists meet at the Old Tom this Thursday by the way. You haven't heard of them? Oh, well, they're all over the net don't you know.

Actually I forgot. Toby had a mad co-incidence the other day. After supper he was allowed a Tunnock's Tea Cake (oh yes, the king of tea cakes. Also called a Mace Windu in our house after Samuel Jackson's character in the Star Wars films)

After he'd finished it he went into the sitting room and about 1 minute later returned with my Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down book (check out their purple Digestive photo), opened at the page talking about the Tunnock's Tea Cake. "Look what I found" he said. Now this was quite odd as he has never been shown the book before. It does have a very small picture of a jammy dodger, a round shortcake and a smiley face on the spine, but I don't know why he'd pick that book from the book case and flick through it to find the tea cake section. Anyway, it's almost certainly the work of some baked goods deity and so I should definitely follow the rules and regulations of the NCOTAASD book without question and murder anyone that disagrees with anything in it. Right? [Note to the humourless religious types: that is called sarcasm.]

Toby also saw a TV advert for Disneyland Paris that had the voiceover tagline of, "Where dreams come true". "I definitely don't want to go there!" he piped up. "I had a dream last night where a monster was trying to kill me and if I go there it will come true!". I think he was confusing the ad with the report that Tigger had tried to punch a kid at one of the Disneylands.

Also, last year at a friend's birthday party, the kids were tying wishes to balloons and letting them go in the back garden. Toby wrote his in secret (with Mum) and fifteen minutes later was in floods of tears. His wish to become a green Power Ranger hadn't come true. For days afterwards he kept saying, "I still haven't turned into a green Power Ranger dad".

I know it's nice to go, "Aaaah, sweet", but for him at the age of 4 and a half these type of things are quite traumatic and I'd prefer to just be honest with him. Better to have a shower of honest tears and clear the air than to foment a brooding thunderstorm of deceptional payback in later life eh? What?!

2007-01-24T13:44:00.000Z

Hey, you know how I've been working on getting my brain into gear this year? Well, I got a Nintendo DS with Dr Nagasaki's Brain Training, I've been following The Independent's Train Your Brain in 7 Days program, have promised to start production on my creative inspirations and I've been reading numerous books on thought processes, ethics, atheism, philosophy etc etc blahdi blahdi blah. Well I'm very pleased to report that it has really paid off. Today when I went to the toilet I discovered that I had put my pants on back to front this morning. 36 years old. Pants on back to front. Even Toby manages to get his pants on the right way round, most of the time, and he's 4.

What's more annoying is that my boots are such a massive pain in the arse to take off that I can't be bothered to get undressed in the toilet cubicle at work and so I'll probably have to wait until I get home to switch my pants round the right way. Now when I sit down I feel like the lower half of body is facing in the opposite direction to my head and torso. It is very confusing.

2007-01-09T20:23:00.000Z

Nice break? Yes me too.

One little observation I made over the Winter Solstice (Christmas to you), was the prevalently incorrect usage of the word "literally" in common parlance. For example, a taxi driver on the telly who was commenting on a lack of heating in his cab, remarked "I'm literally freezing my nuts off here!".

Now, for this statement to be true, his testicles (test-icicles?) would need to have frozen solid and then been snapped from their glass-like vans deferens, broken through his brittle scrotum and rolled down his trouser legs out onto his shoes. I don't think that actually happened however, as he appeared far too calm and collected for one to have suffered such an icy castration. Maybe the shock really set in when he started to thaw out though. Ouch.

Another example, which I forget the origins of, was a man who exclaimed that he could, "literally eat a horse". Really? I think even a baby Shetland pony would probably be too much for even the hungriest of gluttons.

This is the incorrect use of the word "literally" when what it should really be used for is to clarify and state that the metaphor in question is actually true to itself. e.g homeowners living under the approach path to Heathrow, who often experience the brief, warm shower that accompanies the onboard sewage tanks being purged on landing, would be quite correct to state that it's, "literally pissing down".

Interestingly, those who often comment, "I literally haven't got a clue" are making an incorrect statement of another sort. Quite often the fact isn't that they don't have a clue, it's that they literally don't have any idea what the answer might be. They have plenty of clues, just not any ideas. I've just realised that I may have plagiarised this idea from Russell Brand. They're all my own words though!

Now, bed wetting nail bombers. It cheers me greatly to watch the type of program I saw last night on BBC1. The kind of documentary based on some murderous lowlife who is caught, imprisoned and then psychoanalysed as being a bedwetting mummy's boy. The London nail bomber who detonated devices in Brick Lane (aimed at Asians), Brixton (aimed at Blacks) and the Admiral Duncan pub (aimed at homosexuals) was described by his psychiatrist as,"someone with very poor hygiene", "an inconfident, weak and bullied child", "a bed wetter" and a "possible closet homosexual". I just hope that he was watching the program in prison with hoards of rough blokes laughing themselves stupid at this description of him. Small punishment, but it probably had more of an impression on him than the 6 life sentences he got for carrying out the horrendous attacks that he simply described as his, "duty".

Incontinent twat.

2006-12-11T22:21:00.000Z

I had to go and watch the little boy in his first nativity play last Thursday. As a newly hardened atheist this was a fairly interesting experience. Having immersed myself in atheist literature, podcasts and watched countless movie files of lectures, debates and documentaries it was a real slap across the face to hear 70 young children singing, “Hallelujah to the Lord above” with all their hearts :-/

I had to flick my V’s at a Methodist church on the way home to make myself feel better.

One kid left the stage about halfway through with a teacher holding a box of tissues. I say “kid” in both senses of the word, as he was a boy playing a small goat (!). I didn’t really give that much thought to it, until the head teacher at the very end of the play revealed cryptically that the youngster had obviously got stage fright and had to leave. He shuffled onto the stage so he could get the chance to actually say his lines in the play. “Why would a king be born in a stable?” he sniffed, but this was after it had all finished and it just sounded stupid. How embarrassing for him; poor kid standing there in hisrubbish goat hat and white tights. I’d have preferred to get changed and just go home and excuse myself with a claim of partial amnesia or mild Ebola or something.

All in all I saw Toby for approximately 30 seconds at the very end of the performance. It was with literally about 5 minutes to go when I suddenly got a cold chill of realisation that I hadn’t actually seen him on stage or on the floor at all. I was thinking, “What if he’s been abducted? What if I’ve been standing here for 50 minutes like an idiot watching other people’s children fluff their lines and sing like castrated mice in a p*ss poor Nativity when he was actually abducted right at the very beginning and is now on a cargo freighter steaming towards North Africa?!”. Anyway, I saw him finally when he went up to take a bow for whatever it was that he did in the play. I have no idea.

Check this Jesus Christ action figure out.

Or, even better, OCD action figure!

2006-12-05T16:13:00.000Z

Cliff! Was in the news just recently as he and Jethro Tull were campaigning to get the copyright laws on recorded material extended from 50 years to 95. His early recordings from 1958 will become public domain in 2008, to those that want them, and he's been bellyaching about it, quite rightly I suppose. He will after all lose all control over the recordings and more importantly he won't get a bean in royalties from anyone that plays them after that date. I wanted to find out what he had to say about the ruling specifically (to be honest I knew he would be a whinger and I just wanted to have a laugh at his expense) and so I went to his website to have a look at the News and Forum pages and, ooh what's this? A Blog.

To get into the inner world of Sir Clifford of Rich and his loyal fans I had to register on the website and today I received my first update e-mail from Jesus' favourite leather faced tennis partner and it opened thus :

"Cliff isn’t just known for his musical successes (no, he's also known as a closet homosexual, Bible-bashing, Botox zombie too) - but also the fragrances his hits inspired, which have become bestsellers, worn by his legions of (undead) fans and by fragrance-lovers who just love the perfumes themselves (as opposed to the fans who only wear his perfume because it's Cliff's): Miss You Nights, Devil Woman and Dream Maker".

OK, so he's got three fragrances:

1. "Miss You Nights - warm and floriental, with its heady notes of ylang-ylang, rose and jasmine (which remind Cliff of his home [read - tax haven] in Barbados)"

2. "Dream Maker - opens with a zing of citrus notes, which give way to a floral heart – inspired by the sweet-smelling flowers Cliff grows in his own garden [the grannies swoon], and with spicy, woody undertones"

3. "And Devil Woman – Cliff’s latest creation – evokes a heady sensuality, with a fruity note of cassis, and exotic ingredients from faraway lands: musk, precious woods, Madagascan vanilla and benzoin resin [what?!], from Indonesia"

I think those are quite weak names actually for the perfumes. They are obviously taken from his hits of the same name, but I think he had a whole raft of other song name possibilities to choose from that would have more obviously conveyed the type of fragrance they lent their name too. Here are some of my suggestions, all using Cliff's original hit song titles:

1. Summer Holiday - coconut, pineapple, cut grass and summer rain
2. Evergreen Tree - err, an evergreen tree
3. Dancing Shoes - foot odour and sweaty socks
4. Spanish Harlem - roses, blood, whisky and garbage
5. Bachelor Boy - BO, stale clothes, beer and fags
6. Chinchilla - damp fur, carrots and pee
7. Yugoslav Wedding (my favourite) - vodka, horse manure and cabbages
8. Jerusalem - petrol, gunpowder and myrrh
9. House Without Windows - rising damp, pigeon shit and tramps urine, and...
10. Willie and the Hand Jive - I don't think I want to investigate what that would smell like actually...

I think there's money to be made there. Obviously some perfumes would cater to a rather specialist market, but that's what Cliff does now isn't it?

Finally, I went to get a Dr Pepper from the vending machine yesterday and noticed an 8" x 12" sign on the front of the machine which just said, "Thirsty?". Um, yep. That's usually my motivation for buying a drink. What next, a sign on the lavatory door asking, "Need a wee?".

And I've just discovered that a little bit of Flora makes a good lip salve improvisation and it contains sunflower goodness and essential polyunsaturates for a healthy heart. Bonusk.

2006-12-01T16:41:00.000Z

Hey kiddywinks, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s December and the blackboard outside one of my local pubs reads, “Santa sez – drink early for Xmas!”. So obviously drink early, but please also remember to leave Christ out of Christmas from now on. We’re celebrating Xmas these days – and the bible bashers agree :0)

Every time I see starlings now I think of that Carling “Belong” advert with the Hard Fi soundtrack (“Living for the Weekend”). It’s quite a clever ad and I love those swirling clouds the birds make. It makes me want to listen to the CD. But…it doesn’t make me want to drink Carling Black Label. I don’t think even a throat full of hot sand would make me want to drink Carling Black Label. Also, I think they missed a trick there and could have blended the swirling cloud of birds into bubbles in a glass of Carling being poured out. And, all it finishes with is the word “Belong”. If you don’t recognise the red, black and white branding of the wording then you don’t recognise the product either and it ends up looking like just a clever TV ident.

themightychew – 3, Marketing coke heads – 1.

What’s funny though is how I’m, mostly, impervious to adverts, but not to trailers for crap films. The latest trailer for the new Miami Vice film (which I’m guessing is going to be crap) has the Linkin Park\Jay-Z tune “Numb\Encore” running through it. I love the track and straight away I’m interested and thinking, “Yeah, I’ll get that DVD out, yeah that’ll be really good!”. Then I know I’ll watch it to the point where they play the Numb tune and that’ll be it, film over. I did that with the absolute bag of shite film In&Out (6 out of 10 on IMDB?!!). There was one scene in the trailer where Kevin Kline’s character, who is trying to prove he’s not gay, says, “I ran into him at the homo-section, I mean the inter-sexual!!”. It stil makes me laugh now. But all I have to do is think about the rest of the film and that smile quickly evaporates. Such. A. Pile. Of. Crud. The trailer sucked me in, but the actual film is the only one that I have ever walked out of the cinema from.

“Who dear me dear gay dear? No dear! How VERY dare you!!”

Whilst looking for a pic of Derek Faye (Catherine Tate’s 'gay man in denial' character), I found this horrible 'right-on' Christian poster that has tried to piggy back onto popular culture to get Christ’s message to 'the kidz'.

Erm, do they know that the character they’re quoting is gay and that the reason he’s refusing to accept his gayness is because of the feared persecution and stigma that often then follows? The kind of persecution conducted so viciously by these very same religious types....

themightychew – 1, sad religious types - 0

2006-11-29T11:13:00.000Z

Hey, check me out; the blog had some ‘technical difficulties’. No, that’s not an Israeli army euphemism for my blog slaughtering scores of innocent Palestinian children. No, my blog home page simply went blank. As blank as a Creationist's science book. If you logged in looking for updates (ahem, yeah right) and found a blank page instead, then that’s why. Sos.

Today I nearly scalded myself quite badly trying to teach an insolent Asian a lesson in manners, which completely backfired. There's a girl\woman\female at work I see fairly regularly around the office and who has a striking absence of courtesy. I don’t think I have ever heard her say please or thank you to anyone. She hardly acknowledges the presence of anyone around her, she pushes into queues, she will barge her way off a bus in front of the other, patiently waiting passengers, she asks for stuff from the canteen with no civility, no “please can I have?” or “thanks very much”: she’s horrible.

The main thing she does that aggravates me is stalk around with her arms folded and stride through doors being held open for her with absolutely no “thanks” and no acknowledgment of the person holding the door for her. She will also, happily it seems, let a door close behind her with no attempt whatsoever to hold it if there are people following.

So, after holding doors open for her a number of times myself and being blankly ignored (like it was my job to hold doors open specifically for her) I decided that the next time I came to be going through a door in front of her, I would skim through the smallest crack and make no attempt to prop it open for her. So, I just came back from the canteen with a large cup of tea and noticed that she was walking my way back into the office. The door was already closing and seizing my opportunity to let the door close in her face I tried to quickly scoot through the diminishing aperture. What I actually managed to do was catch the sleeve of my sweatshirt on the handle, stumble and kick the door loudly enough for people to look up at me and then tip half a cup of boiling tea partly down my leg. Still, she did have to unfold her arrogant arms to open the door herself, so that taught her a lesson. I think. My leg hurts.

Back to the main theme, it would seem, of this blog – co-incidence. I’m interested more in these co-incidences now from the angle that some more impressionable people would read into them more than I do, even though I'm the one that the co-incidences are happening to. What I mean to say is that some folk with a supernatural, superstitious and religious bent would be seeing the work of a higher force at work here. Possibly.

1. Sarah and I watched ‘The Root of all Evil’ last week and in the final interview Richard Dawkins is speaking to the Archbishop of Oxford in the cemetery of a small, possibly local (to Oxford) church. In the background is a dual carriageway and I wondered out loud if it was the A34 and the church in that case would be in Botley. I took Toby to music class the following morning and as drove back home I took a wrong turn in Headington. I had my bearings roughly and decided to follow the road back to the ring road. I came to a small T-junction amongst some houses with The Black Boy pub on my right. I looked left before puling out and lo and behold, there was the church from The Root of Evil with the A40 dual carriegeway in the background. It’s in Barton by the way. Spook!

2. I was posting in the Superfuture.Superdenim forum about the dangers of buying (fake) PRPS jeans from eBay and made the statement that I didn’t want others to make the same mistakes as me. I posted, “I’m very altruistic like that”. Approximately 5 seconds later Sarah called me from the car to tell me that Richard Dawkins was on Radio 4's 'In Our Time' talking about altruism. Double spook!!

3. [Not a co-incidence as such]

I bought a McDonalds breakfast on Sunday and as I was waiting for my yummy pancakes and syrup I considered the charity box on the counter. I’ve seen them, but never paid attention to what they are actually collecting for. The money collected goes towards McDonalds’ own foundation to help families with children in hospitals that are not local to them by finding or providing low cost or free accommodation. This seemed noble enough and, as I have been paying particular attention to the level of charity work undertaken by religious organisations and the criticism of atheists and their, alleged, lack of charity I decided to donate my 98p change. I didn’t really get a “warm glow” as such from donating; it just felt like more of a duty. After all, what is 98p? Not enough money to really miss, but a decent enough amount to make some kind of difference when donated.

I walked back to my car and as I opened the door I saw a shiny £1 coin on the wet tarmac. A reward from God for my charity…..? I’ll let you decide. No, not you, the other guy, behind you, yes you, you can decide.

2006-11-14T15:08:00.000Z

Did you know I was going Coasteering? If so, due to my lack of updates, you might have thought old Neptune had caught me in his net or Davy Jones had towel whipped me from his locker. Not quite, but nearly. Jumping into a wind-swept Irish Sea at high tide on a mid-November morning is a good way to get yourself killed, but if you survive, it's also a damn good way to have some dangerously nervous fun too.

[out of focus water-cam pics to be posted soon]

The drill runs like this:

1. introduction and obligatory, "are you up for it!" hype-speech from blonde surfer dude with the physique of Mr Incredible (seriously)
2. pull yourself into a skimpy, ball-crushing wetsuit, damp from the previous occupant
3. don helmet, gloves and buoyancy jacket and get into transit van to soundtrack of Red Hot Chili Peppers (cliché surf music? check!)
4. drive to windswept cliff edge near ruins of derelict nunnery (?)
5. scramble down lethal cliff edge path. slip....grab gorse bush to stop falling to death. (multiple thorns in your hand? check!)
6. make way over medium size rocks and water to big rock for first jump off. arms across chest, legs together - pencil jump
7. sluice sinuses with ice cold salt water
8. climb onto rock, repeat 6 and 7
9. paddle\bob uncontrollably over to wave battered peninsula of rock and insert self into the small maelstrom hosted there
10. get repeatedly battered against various rocks whilst forcing out collective nervous, "yeee hah!"s
11. get swept down a channel not unlike the clashing rocks from Jason and the Argonauts
12. watch in amazement as instructor and fellow coasteerer are swept off the rock by a 6 foot wave that bowls them into the group
13. witness Dutch guy get his face smashed against a rock and Chris get double-dunked whilst trying to grab some breath
14. laugh uncontrollably
15. repeat until your feet have gone numb and you have lock-jaw from shivering so much
16. get a tow back to shore from Mr Incredible as you think you might drown
17. try to covertly pee in wetsuit through a cold-shrunken, inverted penis
18. get changed out of your freezing wetsuit on the top of the windswept cliff
19. start to thaw out your 'blocks of ice' feet
20. two hours later, thaw out your 'blocks of ice' feet

Remarkably, the recollections I have of this event are good and I want to do it again. What I don't want to do though, is go back to Swansea, where you get the threat of danger, but without the fun. What a dump. Some people like it though. Take this little chap we saw in the park....

2006-11-10T16:13:00.000Z

Of course yesterday's update wasn't my first topic of choice. Most probably those that died in the "technical failure" would have preferred it not to have been either.

No, the update I was going to put up yesterday was another quite trippy co-incidence. Last Tuesday I was watching Mughal-e-Azam and had got to the part where the son of the Emperor is cast out of the palace for getting hammered on wine and balancing whores on some super-size, sacred scales of justice. Give him a break, he's 12, he's experimenting! I confess I found the film a bit dull at this point and my 'Concentration Kid' had already skipped off to the park to play on the swings. Considering my next blog update as a more worthy use of my mind-waves I started to think of an analogy to use for the irony in banging my head on a 'Mind Your Head' sign. I likened it, weakly, to writing, "Danger - sharp" in tiny letters on a sword edge and slicing your nose off as you bring it near to read. Time in the film had since skipped forward about 10 years and very shortly we got to a scene showing the exiled son, in his tent after a battle, writing a prayer in his own blood on the edge of his sword....dum dum daaaaa! It's ONLY a co-incidence!! I am not the Messiah!! Go away!!

......"how shall we go away my Lord?"

A thought has just occurred to me whilst considering this update. Would the devoutly religious fundamentalists, for example the Islamic suicide bombers, consider a society of atheists an easier target when it comes to spreading fear? Atheists have no 'Eternity in Heaven' comfort blanket to get them fearlessly through life (neither do the "faithful" actually if you want to be picky about it). Probably, one could argue, we atheists cherish the current life more so than those that consider it simply a practice run for the afterlife. I don't like this hypothesis: it's a weakness for evil headcases to exploit. Maybe, using the principle of cut-out soldiers on the battlements at night, atheists should put up a fake faithful front to these nut-jobs in order to disguise this potential chink in our armour? I might post this in the Dawkins forums to see what replies I get.

Remember kids, don't have Faith, have certainty.

2006-11-09T12:58:00.000Z

I see Israel have scored another powerful strike against terrorism in Gaza by using a surprise attack of heavy artillery to shell women and children as they sleep in their beds. I can kind of see the logic and I suppose you can't underestimate how many lives the IDF have potentially saved with this latest bombardment.

Certainly there would seem to be at least 10 less children that could have grown up into terrorists and at least 4 less women to bear little baby terrorists as well. So in that respect, a total success and one that the IDF should feel very proud of.

The Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs website comments in their latest statement that the Hezbollah fighters frequently use civilian areas as a shield when launching their rockets against the Israeli settlements. The IDF then have to target such areas for retaliation, although in this instance the shelling was actually just wildly off target and they shouldn't actually have been directing fire anywhere near the homes of the defenceless Athamna family, who were all but decimated in the attack.

"The IDF expresses regret at any harm to uninvolved civilians, but stresses that the responsibility for this rests with the terror organizations, which use the Palestinian civilian population as a "human shield", carrying out terror attacks and firing Kassam rockets at Israeli population centers from the shelter of populated areas."

Hmm, "harm to uninvolved civilians". When you've just killed 18 civilians, the majority of whom were blown into chunks of gore and blood vapour, I think that harm is a pretty inadequate word to be using. Unless of course you want to avoid any kind of admission of atrocity and you'd prefer to use such euphemisms to simply deliver lazy, lip-service apologies.

This comment, purely and simply, demonstrates yet again the absolute disregard the IDF have for non-Israeli lives when carrying out any of their military operations. Whether they are Lebanese, Palestinian, reporter, peace activist, child, baby etc etc, it matters not who gets collaterally crushed whilst they try to stamp on the elusive cockroach of terrorism.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs quite openly admits that this was a mistake, they weren't even targeting the area that was hit, but they then go on to blame the terrorists for making them fire on the civilian area, which they just claimed they weren't aiming at in the first place. They don't care about the logic, because they simply just don't care at all.

I find it continually staggering that the governments of the world can do nothing more than 'tut' at the regularity of these outrages and I marvel at how inured we are to reports of innocent civilians being routinely murdered, a high proportion of them children, whilst sleeping in their homes or taking picnics on beaches.

Transpose their country to yours and think how amazed you would be if there wasn't national or international outrage at a neighbouring country indiscriminately firing artillery at your house, family and friends with impunity and with absolutely no redress whatsoever.

Even taking a heartlessly objective view of the aftermath, Israel still seems to fail to recognise these days that these murders are such colossal PR disasters for them. They alienate their supporters and at the same time justify the actions of their attackers.

I've lived in Israel and I loved my time there. The people were just normal folk living in a tough neighbourhod, but unfortunately the one unattractive trait which manifested itself and the one which I've come to recognise in these incidents time and again, is arrogance.

The Beit Hanoun atrocity is simply the latest in a succession of arrogant, abhorrent, disproportionate, remorseless, careless and unjustified attacks against innocent civilians in the IDF's counter-productive campaign of terrorist cleansing.

2006-11-08T13:29:00.000Z

If you can barely hear me it's because I have laryngitis. This came on as an entree to my horrendous visit to the dentist and is a pre-cursor to the pneumonia due to arrive following the coasteering and sea-kayaking I have planned off the coast of Wales this weekend.

The laryngitis could also have been brought on by the 48-hours solid I've spent howling with glee upon learning of Ted Haggard's dismissal from the National Association of Evil-gelicals (NAE) for having paid for gay sex whilst high on crystal meth.

"I love it!"

That is awesome isn't it? I don't mean gay sex on drugs, I have no idea what that's like (Collard?), I mean the way he went out with a real bang. That's some way to go for a holy man that exerted great energy preaching that homosexuality is a sin that will get you roasted on a spit of white hot steel for all eternity. Remember that smirking that I said I was going to quit, I can't now, it's just too much fun!

Read his confession here and then, whilst on that site, marvel further at the Christian back-stabbing that goes on within these loony camps. When I say 'back-stabbing', that's not some kind of euphemism for any kind of rear-penetration type shenanigans by the way. I just want to make that absolutely crystal (meth) clear, OK?

There's been a foreign kind of feel to my observations this week. On the bus on Thursday Toby overheard a Polish conversation and asked if it was French. Fool, mixing the Gallic burr with Slavic timbre, tch. I told him that it was probably Polish and he asked, "Why would anyone want to live in a foreign country?". Very astute for a 4 year old. Well, my mono-lingual munchkin, they might want to come to the UK and work as a rude barber for instance.

I went to a barber in Oxford on Saturday and was clipped by a Polish ice-maiden who, without any discernible emotion, remarked, "Your hair is very thin". Why thank you deary, I try my best (!). By the way, that's a really good way to NOT get a tip, "you evil Pole".

Other immigrants decide, benevolently, that UK food is drab and too easy to pronounce, so they choose to emigrate and bring us their lovely cuisine and bizarre culinary language. Take the Thai Orchid in town for example where there is a plethora of Priks and Gongs on the menu and you can also get a very tasty Lad Prig or Hor Mok. I rang them on Friday for a takeaway and was able to recreate the 'Dude, Where's My Car?' scene by being asked, "And then...?" after giving each part of my order. If you know the film, you know the joke.

When I arrived to collect the meal I was followed in by a couple, yes that's 2 people (one, two), who had turned up for a sit down meal and were asked, "Table for...?". Err, two maybe, Ting Tong?

There was a touch of irony on Sunday as I nearly concussed myself on a Mind Your Head sign and then some blatant false advertising on the Good Seed - Toasted Hemp Seeds packaging I saw in Tesco.

"Good for joints" boasts the blurb detailing the numerous health-giving properties of the seeds. Well they're not, they're rubbish: burned straight through the Rizla. Actually, maybe that's how my throat got knackered.

On the right: new links, old twinks.

2006-11-07T16:53:00.000Z

wasn't i meant to be writing something here as well??

hmmmmmm.....

monkey tennis?

2006-11-01T16:25:00.000Z

Who wants to hear my dentist haiku? Oh, one, two, three, four... quite a few of you. Here you go then.

Dentist and drill
Suffering to ease pain
Toothache still

I don't think they're supposed to rhyme, but I can barely think straight with the pain. Now, if I had me some of these suckers...

Whilst being penetrated and excavated in the dentists today, I attempted to focus on the radio as a distraction. The news at 12.00pm reported that the 4th most important occurrence in the world today was apparently a traffic jam in Moscow. What?! Oh my god! Quick, the phone! I know that every tender nerve in my handsome head is being electrocuted, contorting my face in febrile agony, but I simply have to call Moscow's Traffic Control Centre to see if there's anyway at all I can assist in this colossal human tragedy. Could I offer telephone support to the trapped wretches or maybe donate money so that stranded motorists can at least be given boiled sweets and travel games such as ‘Boggle’ or ‘I Spy’ (the KGB version) to help pass the time? Oh the poor souls I can hardly bear to think of the number of dinners going cold on family tables or meetings and TV programmes being missed. Oh, boo bloody hoo. Who cares!

Now this, is news.

The only other thing I had to note today was my theory on how the Incas died out. (Not dined out, died out, silly). Their diet, I'm led to believe, consisted largely of maize and sweetcorn, supplemented with seeds and nuts. Now I know for a fact that those particular foodstuffs have a very uncomfortable habit of surviving the journey through the human digestive system, often making a second appearance a day or two later, virtually unscathed. I suggest that it was this lack of nutrients being absorbed into the body that weakened the population to the point of exhaustion. Along trot the paella and chorizo scoffing Spaniards and, “estampido”, end of (civilisation that is)

2006-10-31T17:19:00.000Z

Hey it's Halloween and I have a scary pumpkin face for you...

Well, I suppose you could consider the Halloween themed lunch in the canteen today a huge success, as the food was truly horrific. The sort of fare that I doubt even the most wretched of creatures could stomach. And where was the "fun" element? There were a few half-arsed puns on the menu, but it really was very pitiful. They seem to have chosen a rather unappetizing play on words for some items and passed over what I would have considered perfect pun candidates. For instance, I had the Steak and Kidney Pie. Why not "Stake In Kidney Pie"? Then they called the Chicken Wings and Spare Ribs, "Flesh and Bones", which was less of a pun and more a literal description of exactly what they were. That put me right off. As did the description of the pureed swede as "Bug Mash". Turned out that the steak and kidney pie was awful anyway. Possibly made with the decaying corpses of BSE riddled cows for truly a realistic Halloween flavour? Not sure, but the taste of the kidneys triggered smell memories of cattle sheds, which of course are heavily scented with the secretions of those kidneys - cow pee. Eeyuww. No thanks.

Now something sad, or funny if you're cruel. Depends on how you look at it. Since a fairly young age I've been aware that I tend notice a lot of things that most people don't seem to see and I'm not talking about ghosts and goolies (?) etc. The things that I tend to see are little social situations in which someone is feeling uncomfortable or alienated or awkward. It's annoying. It's a bit like the really emotional dreams that I have that stay with me for hours after I wake up. They are draining, pointless and, as the drug addled Gary Oldman spits in Leon, "I don't have tiiiime, for this Mickey Mouse bullshit!". The classic example of this is being at a party and catching the eye of the loner who no-one wants to talk to who then meanders over. That happen to you once? It happens to me all the time. I'm not explaining it very well, but this latest incident, a sort of heartache-and-loneliness double-whammy, I had to share.

Looking out of our bedroom window on Sunday morning I saw an elderly woman waving goodbye to some visitors from her front door. The bungalows opposite are full of "oldies" and as such there are a fair few visits fom sons and daughters with granchildren at the weekends. You can often tell by the body language of those visiting that they see this as more of a duty that a genuine desire to brighten up their parent's day. As this particular couple and their kids were leaving, they made their way across the road and I was struck, as I often am, by the elderly woman's resolve to stand on her step and watch them walk all the way back to their car. Then I saw how she waited with her hand poised to wave as soon as they turned round or looked at her. They look back, hand shoots up as if electrocuted.

It reminded me of how my Gran used to stand on the doorstep of her house when we were leaving after visiting. She would wait until we had completely disappeared from sight before she closed the door on us. You could crane your neck right round as her house disappeared round the corner and if you stuck your hand out of the window at that split second, she would flash back a wave as quick as you like. Sadly, I'm guessing that as you get old and abandoned you start to treasure visits from your family so much that you want to savour every last second of them before returning to the interminable front room drone of lobotomising daytime TV.

What made Sunday's little tableaux of human misery even more unbearable was the shuffling Bilbo Baggins-type pensioner who had appeared on the pavement directly between the old woman and her family. As the family drove away and she frantically waved her goodbyes, the confused old man mistook her waving as a greeting, leant on his stick and started to wave back to her. She seemed to get annoyed at this misunderstanding, turned her shoulder slightly so as to shun him and then seemed to raise up on her tip toes as if to wave over him! He then looked round at the waving occupants of the departing vehicle, realised his mistake, slumped his shoulders and lowered his head and continued shuffling off into to his own lonely destiny. Too, too sad.

Never one to leave you kids on a downer, look here. I've found a real life Ting Tong for you.

"Oh pwease Mr Dudwey!"

2006-10-30T23:47:00.000Z

If I was in New York I might go to 5th Avenue. If I was in Edinburgh I might go up to Princes Street. In London, down the Kings Road. I'm in Abingdon and I go to the precinct. If one measures the stylishness and success of ones life by the quality of the places where one goes to shop, then I'm just edging above a tinker who lives in a field, washes in a cattle trough and steals his clothes from scarecrows.

I've mentioned before the 1970s concrete horror that is Abingdon's shopping precinct, but I don't think you'll ever truly appreciate the soul-crushing drudgery of it all until you've had to walk the gauntlet of its poorly presented shops and track suited denizens scoffing chips on a weekend morning*. There are 2 beacons of light in this grimy cobwebbed passageway and they are Costa and The Book Store.

Costa arrived in Abingdon about 8 months ago and was an instant (coffee) hit amongst the middle classes who had previously had to brave the proletariat masses of Jenny's and Crumbs in order to get a tea or coffee on a Saturday morning. Now you see them all huddle-snugged with frothy lattes, coats squashed up against the windows and pushchairs akimbo. It's a little oasis for them. A watering hole to revive oneself before moving on through the cultural desert of the precinct. As I mentioned earlier, there's also a little independent bookstore where I generally go to assess the books that I then go and order online to save money. It struck me that this "patronage" of the local bookstore probably isn't that effective at helping them pay their bills at the end of the month and, seeing as I'd be the first to whine if they closed down, I decided to go in and buy The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. As Sarah would say, I'm "bennying" on him at the moment (I'm very interested in him). I had a little smirk to myself (is that gay?) to see it in the Mind and Body Improvement section. Both the store owner and myself had another little smirk to each other when I suggested that it should go into the Mythology section. Actually that is a dangerously high level of self satisfied smirking going on there. Some might say a taunting level of smirking that gets gangs of Luddite precinct dwellers waiting for you outside with cudgels and pitchforks.

I left the shop clutching my blasphemous tome and my ears were immediately assailed with what sounded like a pre-pubescent boy having an argument with his Mum. Following the sound to a crowd of people outside Woollies, I could see that it was actually a squad of God-botherers having a little show. Not as interesting as Punch and Judy, and as such there were no children. That's excluding the 2 teenagers shouting "Oi!" and filming them on their mobiles. The chap with the amazing breaking voice was trying to convince the blank-faced crowd that their purpose on this Earth was to serve God and that if they didn't, no matter how good they were (?!), they would go to Hell. For eternity. What, they would have to stay in the precinct for ever?! Oh ho ho, how amusing of one (note to self, STOP SMIRKING!). I objected to so much of what he said that it made my legs shake and I vowed to bone up (steady!) on my God-busting atheistic put-downs, so as to decimate him and his ilk next time I see them boring people in the name of religion.

If you yourself are getting bored reading this, then that's good. I've done it on purpose so as to help convey the tedium of listening to a squawking Bible basher preaching to jelly-heads in a grubby provincial shopping centre. If you're not finding it boring, thanks very much.

The miggedy mad coincidence that follows on from this, and the real reason I brought up the subject anyway, is that Mr "They've-Not-Quite-Dropped-and-I'm-Thirty" was using a stooge called Alison to answer his staged questions. Apparently they pepper the crowd with them, in true con artist stylee, to join in the event and to help build up the illusion that they're not simply preaching to the converted. Well, as I started to move away I turned around to find a chap I knew from work standing in my back pocket (virtually). I'm sure he was flicking holy water on my back or something.

God Botherer: "Oh, hi there. Are you OK there?"
Me: "Err, yeah" (beam me up, BEAM ME UP!)
GB: "Did you have any questions, you know, about what was being said?"
Me (in my head): "Yeah I bloody well have actually..." (launches into well prepared Root Of All Evil speech, dispatching every argument for the presence of God without drawing breath. Then the freshly converted ex-Bible bashers hoist me on their shoulders and we all sing an emotional version of Imagine by John Lennon as the national news crews arrive and start filming a cross toppling mob descending on the 1200 year old Abbey, marking the start of a global Dissolution of the Church.)
Me (shuffling away meekly): "Err, no. Thanks"

Ha, but beware my friend, the meek shall inherit the earth. Oh, no, that's a God thing as well isn't it?

Anyway, I was relating this story to my manager at work. He knew the chap that had cornered me and was very surprised to hear he was, "one of those". We were then discussing what it was that made certain people religious. What switch is it that get's flipped that stops the logical approach to creation and replaces it with, "Oh, God did it", when I glanced up to see what I thought was this Alison woman from the precinct walking past my pod. I quickly looked up all the Alisons on our intranet and found her working in the department next door. I had no idea this person worked at my office. Spooky. In a town with a population of around 36,000, one of the two named members of the Precinct Preachers (yeah, check that out) works about 10 metres away, and I'm talking about her as she walks past. And do you know what? That's exactly the sort of co-incidence, especially given the religious connections, that some people in this life would take as a "sign". In fact, I'm sure that people have probably been bowled over by lesser examples of mathematical probabilities than this and I think that this is exactly the " trip switch" that we were discussing. The kind that activates when the desire to keep questioning facts and evidence suddenly seems so exhausting that it's easier to simply hand over the keys to your life to religion and to accept everything that then follows as unquestionable truth. To have Faith and to Believe.

And, (yes I can start a sentence with "And" :0) as if the thought of God watching over you wasn't bad enough, we now have this Ceiling Cat creature to look out for...

*This has given me an idea for a shop-by-shop review of Abingdon's precinct to be continued through the weeks leading up to Christmas. If I start at the logical place, at the main entrance, and take the left side first, I will be begin my journey this Saturday from that fashion Mecca for teenage mums everywhere, New Look.

2006-10-27T20:40:00.000+01:00

I understand that there may be some new viewers to the blog. I think you might be a little disappointed with the content, sorry. You'll find that I promise a lot and deliver very little. Mainly, little anecdotes about dreams, music, funny (I think) stuff and things that annoy me. For instance, I am supposed to be reading the Bible to try and get a handle on whatever you religious retards find so life affirming, but I'm finding reading it akin to eating a balloon: you get full really quickly, but when you digest what you've just consumed you find it's nothing but wind and you're left with an empty feeling in your gut. What do you think of that, Bible-bashers?

2006-10-26T20:16:00.000+01:00

No dreams to write about today. But, I did have one of the maddest co-incidences I think I've probably ever had last night. I was wandering around in the kitchen trying to make some hotdogs and suddenly got the urge to mumble (in a faux tribal accent) "dukka dooku dukka dukka dukka dukka dang a dang" etc etc (it goes on for a while). This was a bizarre jingle for MTv that used to be on the telly all the time when I was over visiting Sarah when she was working in Long Island. Being a bit of a retention retard it's stuck with me for all these years, as well as tens of thousands of other useless tunes and ad jingles, such as "Blue Riband blues", Country Life's "betta bit uh buttuh" and "Meow Mix".

I've no idea why I suddently recalled the jingle out of the blue like that. I simply wanted to sing something and that was what popped up.

So, I had the last 100 of my breakbeat 12"s to listen to and thought I'd sit down in the living room to run through them on my little portable record player. The 20th record I played had that sample in it from the MTv advert, and I swear it proper freaked me out. I hadn't heard that silly little chant played outside of my head for about 10 or 11 years and here it was on a track by Blue Light Fever called Ebola Tombola about 30 minutes after I'd just been humming it. Highly improbable and surely my most bizarre co-incidence to date but yet, to me, still nothing more than a co-incidence. There was no divine intervention, no higher purpose, no fate or destiny, no mysterious entity trying to communicate to me. It was just a random co-incidence with a calculable figure of probability, should anyone with a massive brain, computer and an infinite amount of time want to work out.

OK, so there was a dream. I was a giant that fell asleep in a city. I had to lie on my side to fit in the street and lay my arms down alleyways with my head wedged in a piazza so I couldn't move. Why did I dream this? Because I had 2 ibuprofens when I went to bed and slept like a log in the same position all night. Sorry to burst the bubble oneiromancers, but there is nothing mysterious about a dream. Don't think about it too deeply, look what might happen...

2006-10-25T19:38:00.000+01:00

Other people's dreams are boring, so look away now. I had a very short dream last night that I was in a car park surrounded by brambles and willow trees. I started to hear a very loud hissing, which I guessed was a snake and started to run away from the noise, when a 3 ft long cobra poked it's head out from under a bush and launched itself at me. I put my hand out to stop it, but it swallowed my arm whole and sank it's fangs into my shoulder and armpit simultaneously. Nice. Then I felt it stabbing my middle finger with some kind of internal sting. I woke up with a start and found my arm hanging out of the bedclothes and just starting to get the beginnings of pins and needles.

Here's a random picture of a snake eating something. In this case it's an antelope.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but antelopes are pretty fast aren't they? I mean, they outrun cheetahs on the savannah most of the time yes? So this python either parachuted silently out of the sky, was disguised as some grass or was riding a frigging motorbike! Anyway, pain in my arm was what triggered an elaborate dream created to wake me up and move my arm into a more comfortable position.

But what, I wonder, was the point of the next dream? I was a woman in Bournemouth (?!) trying to avoid a thunderstorm in the overgrown garden of a tatty bungalow. Lightning struck the ground near me and set light to a large pampas grass. The man that owned the bungalow was a cruel hunter that had built a concrete channel in one side of the garden, down which his rabid dogs would chase rabbits. When the rabbits reached the end of the channel, where it opened out into a shallow basin, he would blind them with a halogen torch and shoot them with a shotgun. I left the garden fairly swiftly and walked round the shops which were perched on the side of a very steep hill. There I met a really ugly and hairy muslim woman in a cafe and thought to myself, "I wish she would wear a veil, she's hideous".

2006-10-24T16:37:00.000+01:00

I might have a brain disease. I went to call someone today and picked up the mouse instead of the phone and last night I had a dream involving four, pillar-box red weasels, synchronised swimming in pool next to an enormous, inflatable re-entry capsule from an Apollo rocket.

My mindwaves could have been troubled by the late night documentary I watched before going to bed. It was a Storyville program called "Ortho-dykes" on BBC4 about gay Jewish women trying to gain recognition and acceptance from their friends, family and faith. The program title is a great pun on the word Orthodox, but it's just a shame that it was such an upsetting programme. It basically just re-enforced my hatred of religion and it's mediaeval rules, although I would find no allegiance with the women for thinking this, as they wanted to be gay and still be able to be classed as practicing orthodox Jews. Talk about giving yourself a cross to bear. Ooh, another bad pun. I'm off before they start skimming stones off my head.

2006-10-23T15:22:00.000+01:00

Mmm, IKEA make the best meatballs. Meatballs, gravy, fries and lingonberry sauce. Yum. Meal and drinks for three, £9?! It's a bit of a pain that we have to drive about 45 miles to Milton Keynes just to get them though. Also, what I find a bit weird is that they have these cafes right at the top of a warehouse. It's almost like they can't have a restaurant just on it's own. What? They sell furniture as well? Well that's diverse. Not sure it'll take off though.

One of my most vivid memories from primary school (apart from performing a "cough and drop" for a male doctor and a female nurse in a cold hall with 10 other boys) was the assembly where the headmaster played a Simon and Garfunkel record to us as we trooped in and sat down. We were told to come in quietly and to listen to the song that was playing. We had all been seated for about 2 or 3 minutes when the song finished. The headmaster stood up and asked us all what we thought of the song he'd just played. This would have been about 1980-ish and us kids weren't the PSP\iPod touting, txt msging, internet junkies that kids are these days and, not being very music savvy then, we just all kind of murmured, "s'alright". It was a very gentle inoffensive piece of music sung sweetly by Paul Simon (don't know the song name though) and it didn't even register as anything but, probably, some kind of soppy love song. Well, the piece of music was actually about some guy killing his girlfriend, possibly by slamming a brick on her sleeping head, possibly by drowning, possibly there was a knife involved with a lot of blood. I can't remember fully, I was young. Anyway, he made us listen to it again, but this time to listen to the words. And there it was all spelled out, a murder song wrapped up in sugary melodies. It taught us (well it taught me at least) not to take things at face value, to listen to what you hear, to think about it and not just to blindly accept it, and it was quite probably the greatest lesson I ever learned from anyone and certainly the best piece of advice I've ever received (inlcuding "wine before beer makes you feel queer"). This especially as I'm inclined to ignore all advice anyway, confident that I can cope with whatever situation might arise from me ignoring that advice.

Anyway, that lenghty pre-amble goes some way to explain the suspicious mind I have and what leads me to ask questions of the adverts I see on TV. I know that all adverts are trying to get me to buy something, sure, but when they don't directly say, "Go out and buy this product", I know something sneaky is going on and it's my job to find out what that is and protect myself from it. After all, I don't really want to be remortgaging the house just to buy the surfing car I saw one time or the car that does somersaults or the car that sounds like a plane. I don't want to be tricked into switching my mobile phone contract to a higher tariff on the basis of a singing cherry being eaten by a Japanese schoolgirl etc etc. So, the new Sony Bravia TV advert, hmm.

Now the old one I understood, I think. Lots of coloured power balls bouncing down a street in San Francisco to the dreamy melodies of Jose Gonzalez. This enabled Sony to convey the Bravia's prowess (albeit through the medium of my crap telly) at displaying bright colours, moving at speed and then to associate with it the cool factors of Senor Gonzalez and San Francisco. Easy. Now, the new advert adopts a similar approach. This time though it's a lot of exploding paint (bright colours moving at speed again) and the music is cliched-classical, whilst the setting, bizarrely, is a council estate in Scotland. Err, hello?

To me this is Sony saying, "Hi there. You live in a crappy, grey tower block on some sink estate in Bumtown, why not improve your life immensely by getting a £2k TV? Simply shackle yourself to an impossibly extortionate loan with an interest rate inversely proportional to the rate of interesting programmes you'll watch and instantly transform your moronic little face and mushy brain into another kind of receiver dish for radio waves beaming in on a wavelength more damaging than if you'd simply sat in front of a microwave set to cook with the door open. Think of it as a massive rose tinted window onto a world that you'll never see, understand or experience fully".

I don't know what everyone else thinks?

2006-10-20T16:22:00.000+01:00

Today I am speechless. I went to the loo and in the only available cubicle I found the toilet in this condition....

Oh. My. God. It is true, I work with cavemen. In case you can't see, that is poop smeared round the back of the seat and splattered up the back of the lid. I mean, Jesus, did his ass explode or something? It might explain why he only managed to make a cursory attempt at cleaning up after himself, if he had his bowels hanging out of his ruptured sphincter.

Added Richard Dawkins' new website to my favourite links (look right) and was very pleased to get a ticket to his 'The God Delusion' book reading at The Oxford Union on the 14th November, thanks to the QI Club.

Tonight we're off to se Boy Kill Boy at Southampton, so expect some rubbish camera phone pic tomorrow :0) .

I'm still laughing about the panda.

2006-10-19T11:43:00.000+01:00

Looks like I'm at the back of the pack when it comes to discovering the idiocy of IKEA's "Ask Anna" help-bot. See, I'm a cool hep cat who prefers to frequent online music stores rather than flat pack furniture websites, so I can be excused for only just finding out about this grimacing Bimbo of a logic-vacuum. As quickly as I found her though, I quickly tired of her. The small task of trying to prise information out of her regarding a chest of drawers descended into irritable tedium and I finished up childishly haranguing her and trying to trip her up. Small excerpt of my conversation with her:

Me: How do you go to the toilet?
Anna: You can find all products in the product line on the page I'm opening for you now. (opens Search page)
Me: OK. Do you pee pee? (OK, so I'm no Descartes!)
Anna: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
Me: Format c: would hurt you. Do you have a front bottom?
Anna: Sorry, but that's an object I don't really know enough about to comment on.
Me: It's like a tuppence.
Anna: You said it.

OK, so that conversation ended a little strangely, but I'm bored of her now.

Now I want you to watch this sneezing panda video, with sound.

I don't want to build it up, but if you want to get an idea of the sort of thing that makes me laugh so much that I go dizzy, red-eyed and my body and brain get so confused that I actually end up crying rather than laughing, then watch it ten times in a row like I did. I'm definitely anthropomorphosising the panda into a fat man with big sad eyes. And that's making it funnier!

Later, spoon feeders.

2006-10-17T13:04:00.000+01:00

A paucity (look it up) of blog updates might make one suppose that the blogger has nothing to say. But the supposer in this case would be catastrophically incorrect in their supposition. I am tired though. Sick and tired of people talking about me. Well, not people exactly. More like animals, birds to be exact. Sparrows.

Every day during the week I walk down from the bus stop and as I get within about 100 metres of my house I can hear all the little chirpers in the hedges around the garden, twittering away happily, gossiping in their clipped little chatter. And this goes on furiously right up to the point when I open the gate and they presumably then realise that I'm there and listening. Then they stop, caught, red-handed (winged?) and perch quiet and ashamed until I go into the house and close the door. Then they start up again just as brazenly as ever, without a care in the world for any upset they may have caused! Well, we'll see how much energy they have for tittle-tattle through winter with no crumbs or seed in their bird feeders, the back stabbing little passer domesticus’ (oh yeah, Latin baby).

A very busy 4 or 5 days have passed actually, involving Jimmy Carr, American friends visiting (Craig and Andrew), the London Eye, the London Aquarium, 700 breakbeat 12"s, a 15 mile trail bike through stinging nettles and brambles and an accidental foray into a gay bar with my Dad. Yes, now you're interested aren't you, you little Hello\OK! reading sex-topic magpies? Well the story goes thus:

Pops and I arrived in Oxford about 2 hours before we were due to see Jimmy Carr at the Apollo. We walked into town, conscious that it was Friday night and that most places might be heaving with loud Ben Sherman's (and the offer of violence) and so I tried to think of somewhere quiet to go. We walked past The Castle Tavern, had a peek through the window and saw the bar quiet and well presented enough for us to venture in. Two pints were ordered and we sat down on our bar stools oblivious to the impending homosexuality about to descend upon us (I don’t mean that there were gay men hanging from the ceiling like bats, it’s just a figure of speech, silly). The first warning should have been the sign over the bar requesting, "One customer per stool please", an obviously self aware reference to the joke, "How many gay men can you get on a bar stool?"*. However, the first thing that registered with me was a flyer on the wall for a gay club night. Nothing wrong with that, the club scene has a massive gay following and you'll find that half the world class DJs are in fact gay - they have a natural gift for handling 12"s in dark and sweaty environments (fnarr).

Next I noticed the poster ad for extra strong condoms. Hmm, not such a common advertisement I felt. A bit more specialized, targeted for a certain demographallic. Quick glance round the room and I instantly catch the eye of a chap in a leather jacket sitting on his own with a glass of wine. Err, small alarm bell ringing now. I didn't say anything to my Dad, but the conversation unusually came to a halt as the evening bar tender came in, swung his man-bag off his shoulder, gave an affected swoon to indicate he'd rushed to get there and then waved goodbye to the chap he'd just relieved (steady). I thought I'd better nip to the loo and then suggest that we move off somewhere else. So, I went downstairs and stumbled on a second bar in the basement festooned with balloons and streamers, a glitter ball and Freddy Mercury playing on the jukebox. Okaaay, we're outta here. But just then I was startled by the loo door opening and a bloke coming out (I don’t mean he revealed that he was gay, I mean just coming out of the door). I made certain not to make eye contact and quickly walked in to a cubicle, just as my Dad came in. "I think this is a gay bar" I said. "Yeah, me too" he said. I waited outside while he had a wee and started to read the notice board: "Men's sexual health clinic", "Gay advice line", "Room to let - contact Keith, Derek or Nigel".....!!

We left pretty sharpish. I commented that I’d always thought the Jolly Farmers was the gay pub and then noticed that, unusually, the pub sign was a vertical rainbow design with the Castle Tavern logo over the top. I looked down Paradise Street towards the Jolly Farmers and also saw a massive rainbow flag flying from the roof. The penny dropped. Or should that be “benny”? A quick look on the internet the next day confirmed that the rainbow sign is indeed a gay code to indicate pubs that are safe for or frequented by, gay men and women. And the article I also found on gay pubs in Oxford went on to say of the Castle Tavern, “The stylish pink exterior and a big rainbow flag make it hard not to notice (though many still walk in oblivious)”. Yes, they do, but they walk out that little bit wiser.

In my trawling of gay websites for further information on the rainbow sign (strictly for investigative purposes only I can assure you), I noticed a flash advert on the RainbowNetwork.com site for Philips razors featuring two hairy kiwi fruit that had me nearly choking with laughter (see below).

If I read that correctly, are they suggesting that gay men like to shave their balls and that the Philips razor is the one for the job? Or am I taking it the wrong way? OOOEERRR missus!!!

* The answer is 4, when it's upturned. This is an example of "artistic licence". In other words, I lied about this happening to make the post funnier. There was no sign. So sue me!

2006-10-10T12:16:00.000+01:00

Maximo Park were good, thanks for asking. Here's a piccy.

We were up in the circle and found ourselves seated right next to a giant. He was about 7 feet tall, wrapped in a black tarpaulin (possibly a raincoat) with a large baseball cap balanced atop his boulderous head and size 22 baseball shoes on his platters of meat. He seemed tame enough, even though everything about him was enormous. I tried to take a picture, but actually couldn't get his head and feet into the same shot to capture the full impact, but believe me, you would have been impressed. He was like Hagrid. Interestingly, he didn't clap after any of the songs. I think he was too self conscious that, with his shovel-like hands it would either drown everyone else out, or deafen everyone around him, or create booming shockwaves powerful enough to knock everyone else over the balcony. "Hurrr, hurrr, hurrr. Band! Good!! Hurrr, hurrr, BAND GOOD!!!" CLANGBOOM CLANGBOOM CLANGBOOM!!!

After the gig I went to one of those archetypal London convenience stores run by Asians that is a 24-hour Aladdin's cave of drinks and foodstuffs that you never see out side of the M25. I tried a peanut flavour nourishment drink by Nestle. Weird, but good.

Something I was reminded of the other day after spinning Toby around for about half an hour (not continuously, he doesn't want to be an astronaut or anything), was that it is possible to cancel out the dizziness by simply turning in the opposite direction for 3, 4 or 5 rotations. I discovered this myself and it really works. Using this simple Gash-technique you will no longer be mistaken for a sad wino in the park who staggers from swing to slide, moaning and vomiting onto the grass after a prolonged spin on the roundabout.

Following on the amusement theme, we took Toby to the Abingdon (F)un-Fair last night. A massing of the great unwashed lubricated with Stella and fuelled by blue candy floss, boneburgers and do-nuts saturated with dripping. I don't hate people having a good time, but the fair embodies a lot of the things I do hate, such as jostling in crowded places and spending\losing money with nothing to show for it, oh except maybe an inflatable plastic hammer...! If I wasn't so depressed being herded in with all the other council estate cattle I could have found some of the 'people-watching' quite entertaining. Such as the guy below who nearly kebabbed a bystander and then the stall holder with his boss-eyed archery "skills". As Napoleon Dynamite famously griped, "Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills".

The other highlights were the return of the Romanian pram.

Every year this 1900s style pram appears, not sure if it's the same, stunted child each year though. Maybe he's kept that size, Bonsai style, by being cooped up and restricted from growing? And then there was the Burberry clad inbreed running the raffle stall who, on handing over a massive Crazy Frog to an apprehensive child, proclaimed through the loudspeakers, "another satisfying customer".

And lastly, if you're bored by people going on about their dreams\nightmares, please go to sleep now. This dream-ramble is recorded simply for posterity:

The haunted paddle steamer Goliath built by the local wealthy landowner. Moored out at sea and brought back in with giant rusty chains to be moored aside a monstrous jetty with corroded pilings. We are walking along a coastal path to a shallow bay. There is a rope coming out of the sea which is fastened to a tree stump. The rope ends at a chain, which leads out into the bay and is attached to a larger chain. When we pull on the rope\chain we can see that it is in turn attached to a larger chain, which is in turn attached to a larger chain. Eventually we can no longer move the largest of the chains that is attached. We drop the rope and move on. The 'camera' stays on the chains and we realise that a chain of events (ha) has been put into motion and the chains actually lead to an iron clad building on the far shore which appears to be a winching station with a further, even more gigantic chain leading out to sea. The gardens around the house around are filled with exotic and dangerous plants and insects. I was covered in leeches. Later when the ship comes into the bay, a girl fishing for crabs doesn't see one crawl up her line and fix itself to the side of her head. It looks like a small Japanese spider crab and begins talking to her. She then pronounces that she can understand all the sea creatures. It's a kind of Babel-crab. We make it to a tea room in the grounds of the abandoned house of the wealthy landowner that built Goliath. Whilst talking to the lady owner, I notice through a window the massive form of Goliath moving through the sea fog. There is a huge bow wave which is swamping the smaller boats. Two men on the shore shout out to a man (possibly called Jennings) furiously rowing back to shore. He is overcome and sinks. Goliath is actually a ghost ship, a bit like the Event Horizon. We all board the ship and are trapped in various rooms with ghouls and half decomposed Victorian gentlemen covered in barnacles and seaweed hammering down the rotted doors. Toby and I are trapped in one room and a corpse drops down the chimney and begins reaching round for Toby with a wormy, decomposing hand. He's screaming. I wake up, very relieved that it was all a dream.

2006-10-06T15:36:00.000+01:00

What are you people, vampires? It's just "take, take take" with you lot isn't it? Bleeding me dry until there's nothing left. Well I won't have it. I won't have it I tell you! There's no post today, but I will have some toilet humour for you to look forward to tomorrow. In the meantime, please feel free to vote on my rather poor effort at suggesting a new sidekick for Mitchell and Webb's Angel Summoner on the BBC's Comedy Soup website.

Regulars (ha) to the blog may recognise the little chap in my submission.

And so, as Ian Astbury once said, "Ciao baybeeeeaaahhh!".

2006-10-05T17:10:00.000+01:00

I broke my own self imposed embargo on eating turkey meat (massive legs, ugh) today and had the roast turkey at lunchtime. It wasn't too bad actually. Dry, as the Turkey Creature always is, but not bad and better at any rate than the limbless, burnt rat on a skewer that was advertised as a kofta kebab. As I know you're hanging on every word I write, longing to know what accompanied my meal of monstrously proportioned fowl, so I will tell you: potatoes and brussels.

Seeing those potent little green balls again reminded me of an incident some years back where I was subject to the type of craving usually reserved for pregnant woman. It was late one evening at my Dad's house when, obviously lacking some vital vitamins and minerals, I had a sudden urge to eat a bowl of brussel sprouts. I knew we had a 2lb bag in the freezer and I now fancied boiling them up. At the time I didn't feel that it was a bizarre thought to have, despite my wife and father ridiculing me, for eating vegetables. I mean, times were when I would have had both of them moaning at me for not eating enough, tch. Anyway maybe my craving combined with a stubborn refusal to listen to reason was blinding me to danger that I was putting myself in. Twenty minutes later I had, I kid you not, a serving bowl of steaming brussel sprouts slathered in butter sitting in my lap and I steadily began to chow down. Another 20 minutes later and I'd scoffed probably around 50-60 sprouts. The evening wound up as normal with a movie and Sarah and I going to bed around 12.00. (gurgle).

I could possibly have been having a dream involving a compressed air hose being inserted up my anus, as about 4 hours later I was awoken to a feeling of agonising internal inflation. The natural digestive processes were underway, only with more fuel than ever before, and I was beginning to resemble Kananga from Live And Let Die (Bond forces him to eat a compressed air pellet). But with a damn sight more methane. Oh my days. I won't be base and go into full toiletical details, but needless to say, most of the windows remained open that night and Thames Water were subsequently fined £4,000 for releasing an untreated toxic substance into the River Thames, as their Bicester Sewage Works was temporarily overrun by an early morning surge.

So, I can't recommend eating a bag of brassics, but I can highly recommend DJ Roctakon's new EP on Money Lotion records. Available now from Boomkat for only £5.99, it's in the style of Diplo's Hollertronix EPs and does very well on the mash up front of Soulwax style chopped drums and emotive 80's soft rock melodies. If I was a DJ, I would play it out and chicks would dig me.

"It's just another Bombtrack!"

2006-10-04T12:07:00.000+01:00

Sometimes my postings are really short, as nothing of note has tickled my brain blob. Like today. Although, you might be interested to know that I watched Brick last night and would recommend it. It's similar in style to Donnie Darko with it's teenage protagonists and cryptic storyline, also a bit David Lynchian. Much as I hate to recommend films, as they immediately then become 'built up' for the recommendee, if you like to exercise your brain while viewing it could well be worthy of an hour and three quarters of your busy life one evening.

As some welcome light relief to The Bible, I've also just started reading Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner. It's about reading statistics holistically, and sceptically I suppose, and by co-incidence has a section within entitled, "Why drug dealers live with their mothers". The mysterious drug dealer 'Pin', in the aforementioned film, did indeed live with his Mom. But please, before you take to the streets with pitchforks, flaming torches and religious banners, I must point out to you that this is no Godly portent or proof of a Higher Power ruling over our lives, it's just a co-incidence.

And if you suffer from vertigo, you better look away now...

2006-10-03T14:10:00.000+01:00

Behold, Stupidity! Many levelled, ubiquitous, amusing, comforting and self-affirming stupidity. I have a number of examples of stupidity collected over the past few days that I want to share with you (no, not just you Milligan, there could be others reading too). They're probably less about actual stupidity and how I've perceive it and more about my own insecurities and prejudices I suppose. But thinking like that takes all the fun away from laughing at the idiots for God's sake!

Example 1: Slightly stupid - In this article, David Cohen is commenting on a Canadian college Professor's daily use of marijuana on campus, with the college authority’s permission apparently. The article is fine except for where Cohen states that the Professor in the story had been, "toking up for more than a decade now". Now I imagine that, prior to writing an article, a lot of journos do some quick "genning up" on a topic to give the reader the impression that they're writing with apparent authority on the chosen subject. Unfortunately for David Cohen, by getting his drug parlance so mixed up, he ended up sounding more adrift than if he'd just said, "smoking cannabis". 'Toking' is smoking (apparently). 'Skinning up' is rolling (apparently). There is no such thing as "toking up". You non-inhaling idiot.

Example 2: Naturally stupid - I snapped these two slugs sliming over and eating a paper sachet.

Yum for them. Until they eat through the paper layer and discover the SALT inside!!! Yowser! Terminal indigestion for two? Coming right up retards.

Example 3: Paternally stupid - Toby was watching a really annoying Dennis the Menace cartoon at the weekend. I was interested to see where it was made (so I could send them a letter bomb) and as the credits were rolling up I noticed that one of the crew was called Euan Kerr (who turns out to be the recently departed editor of The Beano). My playground bully brain is still very much alive and I was smirking immediately, at a loss to understand why would Mr and Mrs Kerr call their son Euan? Euan Kerr, say it out loud. I bet he had to get a job working in comics so that he could pretend it's a stage name (Jo Kerr would have been better). He wanted to be a forensic pathologist really but the anticipated disruption to court proceedings when giving evidence ("In your professional opinion Euan Kerr..snigger..") forced him to drop out of medical school.

Examples 4 and 5: My stupidity\Celebristupidity - Recently I failed to realise that the bookmark I'd made to The Telegraph online website was actually specifically to the News page of 17th July 2006. After reading about the 6th news article yesterday and saying to myself:

Blair push for peace in the Middle East - "I didn't think there was still fighting in the Lebanon"
'Heat kills' warning as temperatures head for record - "In October?!"
Lord Levy denies blocking loan declaration - "Why can't they leave him alone?"

I finally realised my error. I then went to the main news page looking for current events and one of the first headlines I saw was that George Michael had been arrested for possession of cannabis after being found slumped at the wheel of his car in London on Sunday morning. Hang on; this happened earlier in the year didn't it? I checked the date and confirmed that, no, I was not the idiot this time, it was Mr Michael, repeating the exact same infraction he was cautioned for 6 months ago. Proof that smoking cannabis plays havoc with your short term memory. What a hairy gay monger.

Example 6: Blind stupidity - People smoking whilst cycling. You guys must be out of your tiny minds. I mean, even the most belligerent of smokers would surely have to admit the fact that they are killing themselves by smoking? I think that they do recognise this and have at least some kind of desire to prolong their lives, even if it is just so that they can smoke more cigarettes, and the high sales of 'Lights*' cigarettes would seem to back this up. So when I see these fools cycling, exercising, puffing away and sucking death even further down into their expanded but ever weakening lung bags I'm thinking, "Hello?!". I liken it to the auto-erotic asphyxiators who, not content with joffing off, have to go one step further and half kill themselves at the same time with a pair of tights, an orange and tourniquet (apparently). Chimney thicket.

These examples might not seem that stupid to you, but you're just wrong you stupid idiot! You probably think that this bloke doesn't look like an idiot either do you? Look, he's chosen to have a profile photo taken with him pretending to smoke a pipe. He wants us, you, to know that he smokes a pipe - why?! So that he can be seen as an elder, patriarchal trustworthy type that we can go to when wrestling with those tough decisions such as when to cut the runner beans down, whether to go for an indoor aerial or whether to bother with a chamois when washing the car? Tch, OK, so he's a techno guru, a very good one, and I've just learned something interesting from his blog about sound compression on pop songs to make them stand out on the radio. He's still an idiot though.

And finally, Toby calls Sarah's Flamenco dancing, "flamingo dancing". Oh right, is that where they stand on one leg and curl their unfeasibly long necks down to the ground then is it? Fool. And I suppose you think I'm being cruel to say that's stupid? In that case you must feel that a sensible child would dress up as Rambo, pretend that a yellow rubber basket was a pirate's galleon and use it to attack a pot plant only to topple over and whack their head on a wall as well?

Piratical fool.

* 'Lights' being light in name and not nature. The name makes them seem less harmful without the tobacco companies actually having to go through the tedious research and manufacturing processes of lessening the harmful chemical intake and thereby actually making them less harmful.

2006-10-02T12:11:00.000+01:00

Oh ma giiid, how tired. No question mark there, rhetorical question, I am tired. Another Late Night with Gashy and Seal. I don't think it's anything specifically to do with getting old that makes late nights more of a problem to get over. Going to bed late, maybe 1.00am, and then having to get up for work at, say, 7.00am, isn't really a killer, as long as you have opportunities to recover. And when you're younger that means not having any real responsibilities (e.g. kids) to stop you from falling asleep watching Neighbours when you get home from work. Just that extra hour on the sofa is usually enough to get you back on track. Or you can simply use it as kind of sleep credit and cash it in with another late night. Careful though, if you burn the candle at both ends you, er, won't be able to stand the candle up anywhere. Although you will have twice as much light and I don't know where this analogy is going. The End.

Soo, we went to see People Under The Stairs, in their first UK gig in 7 years apparently. Mad. It was at the Jazz Cafe and they rocked it, along with Giant Panda the support act that they kind of gave a helping hand to back in the day. I was thinking, "why Giant Panda as a name?". I got it later when they were rapping, "black and white, and from Asia". A black guy, a white guy and an Asian guy. Well there's the panda. And “Giant”? Well, just because, why not? I love all the wordplay that goes into intelligent hip hop and it's a real shame that most folks don't ever get to appreciate it because they can't get on with the delivery or the beats or have an image of hip hop that begins and ends with 50 Cent, Ho's and hoodies in the precinct.

The rest of my day was decidedly un-hip hop as I spent it in the autumnal Bix Woods near Henley with Toby, hiding from monsters, climbing and swinging from trees and trying my hand at some Andrew Goldsworthy-style natural art.

Afterwards I wished that I'd combined the two pieces to make a larger flower head with concentric circles and a stalk, but I didn't have much time and Toby was getting restless as I'd nicked most of the beech nuts that he'd braved the brambles and nettles to collect. Never mind, I was still happy with the way they turned out and also with the thought that they could be dismantled and eaten by squirrels or rabbits later in the day.

I’d visited my Ma earlier in the day and she’d cheered me up no end with hilarious tales of various people she knew that were dying from a number diseases, including one man who’d told her he was dying from "prostrate cancer". I had to bite my tongue to not quip, "Prostrate? He must be lying".*

More fame and guns tomorrow with a little thread on stupidity, but I leave you with:

"First the worst, second the best, third the one with the hairy chest, fourth the golden eagle"(?!). What does that actually mean? Now you know. I personally think that it’s a biblical based saying myself and can very easily prove it. The first son of Adam was Cain (the worst); second was Abel (the best who was killed by Cain, the worst); third was Seth (who had a hairy chest, probably) and the unknown fourth son who was a golden child and also a bit feathery and had talons…

Fourth son: "KAAAAHHH!!!"
Eve: "Hush now Kaah, you can't have any pudding until you've finished all your doormice"
Kaah: "KAAH! KAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

*prostate as opposed to prostrate

2006-09-29T22:05:00.000+01:00

Following on from the Jay Z gig we have a kind of after show party with People Under The Stairs this Sunday at the Jazz Cafe. I'm sure it's going to be a whole different kind of vibe in a smaller venue, but I have a good feeling that they are going to rock the party right. And, even though no-one's listening, I want to say a big shout out (what, am I on 1Xtra or something?!) to Lisa at the Jazz Cafe who's got me on the guest list. Not that I'm any kind of cool cat with slick contacts in the music biz, I just forgot my ticket last time I was down and got an IOU for another gig after buying a replacement ticket. I used to have slick contacts in the music biz when I worked in the record shop. Anyone remember Chalky's in Oxford, Bicester, Buckingham or Banbury? No, thought not.

Talking of music, as I do, I just watched the documentary 'High Tech Soul - The Creation Of Techno Music', which was about the birth of Detroit techno. It started off really well with a nicely detailed history of the city itself, setting up the background for the culture that went on to spawn the techno we all know and love. But then it just kind of descended into a collage of interviews where one techno producer back slapped the other, ad nauseum with no real narrative or time line. It could really have done with a presenter talking through the whole genesis of the genre. Some universally respected producer, someone with some real pedigree, like 2 Unlimited maybe? Ha, I jest. Anyway, the best part was the Extras section where people like Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Eddie Fowlkes were slagging off people like:

Moby - "the most f***ed up individual I've ever met"

Boy George - numerous people expressing their dismay upon entering a techno club to see Boy George behind the decks. I can sympathise. Eddie Fowlkes went on to comment, "Why didn't he stay in England where you guys get the joke?". Eh? Do we get the joke? I don't; he's a Class-A (excuse the pun) knob head whichever country he's in. Have you seen the black paint he cakes round his throat to hide his triple chin? Yes, that's what all that black is. He's not wearing a turtleneck. He's wearing a turkeyneck. He is a spaz. A big gay spaz*

Actually, no amount of name calling can take away The Boy's techno credentials. I mean here he is (below) right at the beginning in the early days of '92/'93 when Altern8 were blowing up big time.

Oh no, hang on, that's him doing street cleaning community service after a drugs bust in the US. My mistake

Neil Rushton - Who? Some "famous" promoter that helped break Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Juan Atkins in the early days, but who also skanked them and turned out to be a dick. One of Blake Baxter's mates got too close to Boy George at a gig promoted by Mr Rushton and was pushed away by two of his heavies. Baxter went to speak to Rushton, but was blanked. Even when Baxter told him his name and said, "You put out 2 of my records", Rushton said, "Sorry, I don't know you". Baxter then poured a litre Big Gulp over his head. Sweet

Paul Oakenfold (Oakey Cokey the Gak Monkey) - for just being an obnoxious git. The first Technob. But not the last.

Don't buy it though. Rent it. Join CD-WOW's DVD club for £14.99 a month and get unlimited rentals with 3 DVDs at a time.

Remember, it's ONLY a co-incidence! I've been trying to remember the name of the squat litle tree down by the river as I'm noticing more of them everywhere round here and it's not really one of your typical trees (ie not a sycamore, horse-chestut, oak etc). Anyway, Seal came back from clearing out her mum's loft on Thursday and brought back the pocket book of trees she had as a kid. I picked it up to have a look and out of 200 pages I opened it at the locust tree. Which was, you're getting ahead of me aren't you? No? Oh, alright then, it was the tree down by the river that I'd been trying to remember the name of. Psyche! Remember, it's ONLY a co-incidence!

And finally, whilst looking for a piccie of my old Tomahawk bike (think 'cheapskate parents' pass off for a Chopper) I found this little beauty, which can be yours for $250,000. It looks like Judge Dredd's Lawmaster. Sweet.

*I have recently reserved the right to resort to the childish name calling of people who can't fight back. He would punch like a girl anyway. That's if the porker could even catch me.

2006-09-28T20:28:00.000+01:00

Jumpin' Jay Hova's phat. My ears are still blinging. Er, ringing. Easily sliding in to No 2 in my Top 10 best concert's ever is Jay Z at the Royal Albert Hall last night. Pipped to No 1 by Kanye West only because Kanye's sound system was more balanced (you could make out the tunes as well as his voice) and he had seemingly boundless energy for the full time he was on stage. Jay Z was more static (I mean that in the physical sense, not the audio), but he's a cool cat with a different style, so it's not a criticism. Anyway, he packed in just about every tune from The Blueprint, Blueprint 2: Gift and the Curse and The Black Album and as well as being joined by DJ Green Lantern and Memphis Bleek for most of the show and sporting a 25 piece orchestra he also managed to rustle up a number of mad guest appearances from:

Nas - who swarmed on stage to Made You Look (the crowd went completely mental), then took it back to the old school with If I Ruled The World (imagine that) and then sent everyone over the edge with the anthemic Hate Me Now (peep the photo below to see the place on fire, sort of). Then Jay-Z came back on stage to show for sure that they'd put their little spat to rest. Mates? Yeah, mates. Aaaah.

Chris Martin - suddenly seemed to grow out of the piano stool and went on to accompany Jay Z and Nas on Dead Presidents then popped back on stage later to provide the awesome vocals to Heart Of The City (Ain't No Love). Sound a bit unlikely? I agree, but it was damn good.

Beyonce - we were crossing everything, twice, in the hope that she would want to appear at the first ever hip hop headlined show at the RAH and she did. With those massive thighs, crazy Tina Turner stomping and strutting and a funny walkaway spin round thing that you could imagine her doing if she walked away from you whilst having an argument and then you said something like, "fat arse" and then she span round and came back at you to break your back. Scary. She did Crazy in Love and Deja Vu with her backing dancers going Ker-azy behind her.

Gwyneth Paltrow - who, again, seemed to spring up from nowhere to provide the amazingly powerful vocals for Song Cry. Again, think that sounds gay? I agree, but her vocals were like Motown Aretha. Undeniably rock steady. And it was her birthday, so everyone sang her happy birthday at the Jigga Man's behest.

The whole gig was perfect and is one of only a handful that I can honestly say that I wanted to see again. Immediately. Towards the end Jay Z even took a bit of time out to turn the lights on the crowd to show his love for the fans. He went round the audatorium pointing people out that he'd noticed through the night. Saying, "Love the Brooklyn shirt man, that's my favourite tonight" and "Yo, number 12 up top" etc. Those that he recognised were going ballistic. I thought the guy in the black shirt (who was baring his chest and being mobbed by his mates) was going to go over the edge he was going so mad. Cynics and haters out there might say that it was a bit of a stunt, but I have never known any artist take the time like he did to recognise the fans that directly. Whether it was a stunt or not, he still did it.

The only partial irritation was the whirling Asian girl in front of Seal who obscured the stage view on some of the more lively tunes with her windmilling arms. Seal said, "There's always one isn't there? And they're always in front of me". I agreed, tutting like a Grandad, then I looked round and saw that we were about the only ones sitting down and NOT waving our arms around. I bet everyone else was like, "There's always one isn't there?".

And he played out with? Encore of course. "Let me get a encore, do you want more...?". Yep, I do. Roll on November 21st and the Kingdom Come album.

2006-09-27T16:01:00.000+01:00

Jay Z at the Royal Albert Hall tonight, "What more can I say....?"

2006-09-26T13:06:00.000+01:00

There are things in the world that I do like, but it's easier to write about things that I don't. Or that annoy me. Or that are just stupid and ill thought out. Case in point (or rather, the reason I started started this post) being the current Specsavers ad running for their new hearing aid.

The ad is very simple. A woman in her 50s is reading a book in an airy, modern living room with cream sofas and a wooden floor. Cut to a long shot of the room, the woman's reading with her back to the camera and a pin drops to the floor in the foreground. She looks round at this noise (you see what they're alluding to yeah?) and then just carries on reading her book. She's obviously wearing a hearing aid, which goes someway to explain her initial reaction, but it's her inaction after hearing the pin drop that I find a bit baffling. It could be because:

1. Pins are dropping in her house all the time. From somewhere. Maybe she has an overcrowded message board full of things she shoud be doing rather than sitting on her arse reading trashy romantic novellas?

2. She has a poltergeist. Probably new to the spooking game and cutting it's (ghostly) teeth on small objects. She'll be paying more attention when she eventually get's a telekinetic steak knife through the sternum.

3. She has a playful husband\partner who's becoming a bit tiring, testing her rejuvenated hearing while she's trying to relax with her new trashy romantic novella:

Man: "Ha ha, tricked you darling"
Woman: "Oh darling, ha ha (twat!)"

4. She thought she heard something, but she wasn't really sure and anyway she doesn't care enough to get up off her arse and go have a look, even though it's in the same bloody room. I suppose that's a luxury of the hearing though; to be able to ignore sounds in the first place.

5. She didn't know what the noise was and didn't care. Although, she'll wish she had cared when the next noise she ignores turns out to be a heroin-addicted burglar going through her knicker drawer.

6. It is a poorly thought out advert from some coke fuelled bozo in Ad-Land that, quite honestly, a child could have put together.

The last one's most likely.

For proper good adverts, have a looksy (looksy?) here and here.

2006-09-25T17:55:00.000+01:00

This mammoth entry should make up for the lack of postings.

Continuing a largely intermittent series of, Remember, it's ONLY a co-incidence!, here's the latest:

On Friday, about an hour before our monthly debrief meeting it occurred to me that I've never actually made sure my mobile is on silent whilst in the meeting. Imagine the embarrassment of a Level 42 ring tone accidentally broadcasting out of my jeans pocket mid session. Now imagine my smug little mug when 'The Manager's' phone not only went off 10 minutes into the meeting, but also that when he hurriedly cut the call off he also received a super loud beep (BEEP, BEEEEEP, BEEP!) text message alert, of which he claimed with nervous laughter, "I don't know who that is. It's definitely not from a 17 year old rent boy trying to blackmail me".

Lot of coverage in the media about global warming of late. The quick and simple solution to this. Don't buy newspapers or watch the TV. Global warming will quickly become a very low priority for you. Until you die of smog inhalation\drowning\skin cancer. Actually, to help do my bit I've stopped buying Bountys as I was concerned that my love of coconut (shipped from abroad on fuel guzzling jumbos or oil burning tankers) is helping to speed up global warming. I'm working on a coconut substitute which is simply artificial coconut flavouring mixed with wet rice. It tastes like shit but hey, we all have to make sacrifices. Actually, do we even grow rice in the UK? We probably will once East Anglia get's flooded due to climate change. Cornfields to paddy fields. See, chin up, we can adapt as easily as that.

I caught the tail end (excuse the pun) of the Scissor Sisters live in Trafalgar Square last Friday.

Hmm, sorry, but that lead singer makes me feel a bit ill. He was wearing a skin tight yellow jumpsuit with a conspicuous "dress to the right" bulge that I could have really done without noticing. He was, I think it's fair to say, poncing around the stage and it made me wonder if I would be allowed to say that he's what I would consider "bad gay". That overly camp and theatrically affected, irritating type of gay. A hand on hip, screechy, eye rolling, big bulge in your face type of gay. As opposed to, say, the "good gay" style of men like Rupert Everett or Stephen Fry. Or maybe Rock Hudson. Although he was probably more repressed, which isn't so good.

I had my hair cut on Saturday by "The Phantom Barber". Not only was his speech whisper quiet, his appearance bleached and pale, but his scissor (sister) action was almost intangible. I went down to my usual chop-shop and was initially pleased to see that there were very few people waiting for haircuts, which is rare, but then I noticed the new guy and was immediately unnerved and on edge, hoping against fate to not get him. He looked weird. Podgy-ish, 40-ish, pervert-ish. Coke bottle glasses (poor eyesight + razor sharp scissors = casualty), greasy, peroxide hair in a side parting with straggly bits over his collar. It looked like he'd tried to kill his hair but against all the odds it was still living and sending out feelers. One should always be wary of hairdressers with bad hair. It's the same principle as skinny cooks, broke accountants etc etc. Anyway, not being one to heed my own advice, when he came to muttering, "Next please", I sat down in his chair. Let the weirdness commence. To start off he mumbled something while trying to tuck in my daft apron\cape thing. This is the barbers cape that stops you getting hair on your clothes, not some kind of bizarre dressing up item that I brought with me:

Me: "Sorry?"
Phantom Barber: "Invisible to match the shirt".
Me: "Sorry?"
PB: "To match the shirt"
Me: "Sorry, I don't understand what you mean"
PB: "Camouflage"

I finally just about managed to deduce that he was commenting on my camo t-shirt and trying to make a joke asking if I wanted an invisible haircut to match my shirt? Not very tactful to a chap entering the thinning out stage of his hair-life. Anyway I kicked myself afterwards as I realised that I obviously hadn't taken this question seriously because the haircut he gave me did indeed turn out to be invisible to the human eye. His cutting style seemed to consist of lots of combing and then doing a couple of quick snips aimed in the general direction of my head, but not actually connecting with anything. As time dragged on, he was VERY slow, I looked down at my barber's cape numerous times and could see very little hair on it. The funniest part was when he squatted into a very determined position to use the clippers on my sideburns. He braced one hand on his opposite forearm and gently guided the clippers in to the sideburn, slowly, slowly. And this is where I'd swear that he was myopic because, after what seemed an age in which I was having to suppress an erupting giggle, he finally did a downward stroke, INTO THIN AIR! After about 30 minutes, during which I watched other punters step up, get their hair cut and then leave, he presented me with the view-by-mirror of the back of my head. He did it with a weird little flourish, like, "Ta da". Proud, like some faithful dog that's brought a headless rabbit into the house and dropped it on the carpet for you. I was late so I just paid and left, but I'd be surprised if he's there next month. If he is I might try and exorcise his ghostly form with my Bible.

Ah yes, the Bible. The Bible is mental. I'm attempting to read it all the way through, but it's heavy going being sent to sleep after every 5 pages with relentless "so-and-so begat so-and-so" paragraphs. Anyway, I haven't even got out of Genesis and it's already raised my eyebrows more times than Cher's plastic surgeon (I thangyou). So begins a new subsection, "God a problem?" (gotta problem? geddit?). So here goes:

God a problem?

1. The whole creation of Earth thing
2. Adam living for 930 years
3. Cain's wife - which is just part of the whole issue of men trying to populate the Earth without having sex with their sister or mother.
4. The flood, the Ark, the bull shit
5. Lot offering his virgin daughters to the men of Sodom so that they would leave his two angel guests alone!
6. The same daughters then sleeping with their own father so that his seed would continue after his wife gets turned into a pillar of the community, sorry, pillar of salt.
7. God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son. Which he is just about to do before God stops him.
8. Jacob's children being slain by God for a. saying something God didn't like and b. spilling their seed on the ground rather than getting some old dear they didn't like pregnant. Good job God's not a-slaying these days isn't it?

Re point 3 - this website tries, and fails, to prove that there is a Bible-friendly explanation for the appearance of a wife for Cain. The argument is teetering on a knife edge until you get to the section about Biological Deformities, then it slips and fatally wounds itself. The argument is that God's order not to marry your close blood relatives came in in Moses' time as the effects of the Curse (God's curse - cheers) and sin were really taking hold. Hmm, sin? Surely sin is a psychological state of mind or an act that breaks some kind of moral code? If so, how does it affect a physiological\biological substance such as one's DNA? I'll give you a clue it doesn't. From the website:

"Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He (as well as his brothers and sisters) would have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam or Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with"

This doesn't make sense to me. If you treat sin (and the Curse) as a kind of infection, surely it will be most strong in the bodies that created it? God is supposed to have directly cursed Adam and Eve and therefore mankind. These were the original two bodies that broke the moral code of God's law and so were infected with sin (and the Curse) from "the source", so to speak. You can't draw a parallel with, say, current day viruses also getting "stronger" over time as these are not "strong" in that sense of the word, they just cannot be killed by current vaccines; they have adapted themselves to resist the drugs that are trying to kill them. Anyway, what they skirt around with regards to this issue is that brothers had sex with their sisters. They try to defend this at a later date by arguing that we're all brothers and sisters originating from the primary divine couple Adam and Eve. Well I suppose if you don't believe that theory from the start, the rest of the argument is pretty moot anyway.

"Enough about all that, where's the comedy?!" You want to laugh at something, try reading the Bible, it's a hoot :0)

2006-09-15T20:27:00.000+01:00

I had a mini Peperami today and noticed that the ingredients listed it as having 108% pork.

Thinking that this was an impossibility I e-mailed the zany Peperami Careline and was eager to hear their hilarious explanation for the crazy factoid. This was the response I got:

"Dear Jason

Thank you for contacting Peperami.

Labelling laws for processed meat products like sausages require us to state the amount of raw meat as a percentage of the finished product (including all the other ingredients like spices, salt etc) as sold. This law applies to both cooked and uncooked sausages.

Usually, sausages are sold uncooked, so the meat percentage will be less than 100% for an uncooked sausage, as one would expect. Of course, when you take an uncooked sausage home and grill it, water will evaporate and fat will drip out - so the cooked sausage will weigh less than when you started - which in effect is the same as what we do with Peperami.

Peperami is sold as a cooked and cured sausage - during cooking and curing, weight is lost through evaporation of water, fat and other constituents of the meat. This means that the weight of the raw meat we put in before cooking and curing exceeds the weight of the finished cooked and cured Peperami that is sold, and this is reflected in the percentage value given in the ingredients list.

This is why, by law, we must calculate the percentage of meat in the product as follows: (27g uncooked meat / 25g finished sausage) x 100 = 108%

I hope this helps clarify our position in the matter.

Kind regards

Claire Connor
Peperami Advisor"

Well, what a bloody bundle of laughs they are!

2006-09-14T13:32:00.000+01:00

I'm in a funny mood today after watching Channel 4's "The Falling Man" last night. I've really not been into any of the 9/11 anniversary events as I think I got a pretty good idea of the horror of it all from watching it all unfold live on TV when it happened. I was working at the Environment Agency and we had a number of TVs in the Flood Control room to keep abreast of weather reports. They were very quickly taken over by coverage of the attacks and I remember everyone was pretty much distracted for the rest of the day by what happened. Apart from one manager, who I distinctly remember being at a loss to understand why we were all getting so shocked, upset and worried. I think he actually said, "It's not the end of the world, is it?". I suppose we don't really know for sure yet. Anyway, the program focussed on one of the people that either fell or jumped from one of the burning towers that day. The photo started an, understandably, emotional debate about the rights and wrongs of printing such an image in the newspapers. I won't go into depth as I think most people could argue the fors and againsts of such a thing quite extensively. However, my view is that the newspapers that did print it were right to.

To my mind, any kind of anger or horror or upset caused by that photo should be channelled in a positive, constructive way against the people, their ideals and the events that led up to this innocent man falling to his death. In a world of image saturation, it is rare to come across really striking, haunting images such as this one and I think that rather than shut your eyes to it, literally and metaphorically, the emotion should be harnessed and used as an energy to address the problems of the world that lead people to commit acts of gross terrorism. Especially if in addressing the terrorists motives we look at what we have done: what we are doing to make them who they are and what drives them to do these terrible things in retaliation.

That was one heavy, difficult program that I'm glad I watched.

I think it was because of the grounding, emotional impact of the program and the lingering thought processes I had that made me react so strongly to the e-mail I received later in the evening. It was one of the daily "update" e-mails from Cool Hunting, which was informing me of a new deluxe backgammon board made by, and for sale from, Maharishi.

Maharishi, if you don't know them, are an ethical fashion company based in London dedicated to reclaiming the camouflage pattern from the miltary and trying to remove all the negative and violent associations that it might currently have. They are pacifists, eco-conscious, importers of cult Japanese toys and produce some very stylish and highly desirable clothes, accessories and artworks. Now this very grounded "company with a conscious" has, as I said, produced a Bonsai Championship Backgammon Set, "For long train rides or rainy days...". I'll give you the link so you can check out the full sales patter.

Why am I mentioning this thing at all? Because the price tag on it is a bankrupting £1200 that's why. "For long train rides"?! Anyone that has enough money to blow £1200 on a board game isn't going to be taking a train anywhere my deluded friend! Learjet maybe, or a "mega yacht". But not a bloody train! Anyway, what really jarred with me was that they felt there was a market, a need even, for this gross extravagance and exhibition of opulence in a world currently bursting at the seams with needy people and urgent issues. For example, this is what you get for £1200 in the real world:

1. 200 Indian children to go to school for a year with hot meals included
2. 17 schools in Ghana to be kitted out with books, sports equipment and resources
3. hot meals for a month for 400 chidren in Ethiopia
4. etc etc you get the idea

Like I say, I think this only really got my back (gammon) up because I was so raw to the woes of the world after seeing the 9/11 programme, but it's still not going to stop me e-mailing them my thoughts. I'll let you know how I get on.