I overheard somebody talking in the garden of the Pen and Wig the other day whilst my friend was in the toilet, and it made me smile to myself, a lot. I think the misuse of the word 'literally' has to, with no exception, be my favourite fuck-up of the English language there is at the average idiot's disposal. For example, the girl was barking out the rest of her evenings plans to her friend, who was stood on one of the benches trying to warm her hands on the heaters by reaching as high as she could. The following key phrase was dropped:
"I don't know how I'm going to fit everything in over Christmas, I've literally got my fingers in every pie"
An all time great. I can think of countless examples. These clangers usually occur when the person speaking intends to say 'practically': "my relationship with Roy was literally a car wreck", or "I'm literally buggered", "I literally haven't got anything to wear tonight" etc. Maybe it's the fact that one simple word like 'literally' means that any statement is therefore a statement rooted in certainty, fact and unquestionnable actuality, or maybe it's just because people (like myself) like to use it because it's a longer word than 'soooooo". To coin a Friends comparison, it's what sets the Chandlers' from the Phoebes in the world.
In the Private Eye almanacs of 'it's 'Colemanballs' (famousy nonsensical statements made by celebrities, such as 'Mentally, he's as strong as an ox' - Michael Owen, or 'There's more secrets in my family than there is in a hot dinner" - Jeremy Kyle) there is often a chapter dedicated to the year-or-so's pick of the misuse of 'Literally'. Sadly unless the girl in the pub was actually Peaches Geldof (unlikely) or a member of the Royal Family (even more unlikely), 'literally' having a finger in every pie is going to remain mine and her friends little secret.
Post Script: I just typed in 'Literally' into soulseek to see if I could find an interesting song title to suit this post, and it produced a six minute comedy clip of David Cross discussing 'The Misuse of Literally'. Much as I have time for David Cross after he ruined several hundred Sleater Kinney fans lives by taking nearly 30 minutes to introduce their set at All Tomorrows Parties, and then they delivered the punchline by being COMPLETE shite, I'm never going to listen to this six minute clip because I don't want to be reminded that I'm not a successful American comedian who's famous to have his quotes bootlegged onto Soulseek, and I don't think my voice has been recorded by anyone except maybe the Samaritans in probably five years.
Saturday 22 December 2007
Thursday 20 December 2007
When You Wake Up a Snake
So anyway, I watched about three quarters of Anaconda last night when I got home from the pub. Wow. What a magnificently, breathtakingly, staggeringly shit moment of cinema history. I'm well aware that a film called Anaconda, about a big ass snake in a swamp is hardly challenging the world of High Arts, but betcha by golly, is this film bad. What I did't know before I started watching mind, is the number of Real! Hollywood! People! cropped up. Jennifer Lopez, I knew took a starring role, and obviously was going to be the token survivor, alongside Ice Cube (who I didn't know was in it). What I didn't know was Jon Voight was going to show up displaying a riciulous display of laughable pantomime ham acting as a lunatic hunter with no actual idea what he was even doing there in the first place, and also can't make up his mind whether he wants to kill the crew, the snake, himself, or the film. I'll settle for the latter. What rounds this mysterious A list cast off perfectly, is the inclusion of Owen 'Llama looking through frosted glass' Wilson, who does his "Gee Wally, I just wanna drink moonshine and have some fun y'all" routine for about five minutes, and then all you see is his shaggy-dog hair disappearing down the gullet of the most ingeniously unrealstic looking big ass snake. Add into the mix a token chesty female who was so insignificant I can't even remember how she snuffed it (although, given every character somehow ended up inside the snake, that's a safe bet), a 5 year old childs vision of what an Engish photographer should look and sound like (a straight Alan Cumming lookalike who's be trained at the Royal Academy of Brtish Pomposity) and some boring git who spent 99% of the film laid on his back in the cabin and was apparently J-Los love interest. Awful.
I wouldn't want to ruin subsequent viewings of the film for anyone by revealing the ending, or the best bits, but there are some howlingly bad efforts right across the board here. Personally, the snake itself was the icing on the cake, because I'm terrified of snakes, but even this lesson in special effect no-nos was too screamingly hysterica to take seriously. Firstly, it appeared to have super-snake powers which not only allowed it to be almost as big as the entire boat, it could move quicker than lightning, had impeccible eyesight, hearing, and movement sensors, to the extent it could attack with it's head and tail simultaneously despite them being at opposite ends of the boat, and had facial expressions, and made "aaaargh" and "eeeeeek" noises when it was in pain. Clears the effects crew forgot half way through they were dealing with a snake and used and leftover effects from the Jurassic Park goody box.
Last night I went for a pre Christmas drink with my ex girlfriend Anna. There really aren't enough people in the world like her, and I mean that in a good way. I can't believe I forgot to ask about her robotic arm though, I'd been saving that question all year.
I wouldn't want to ruin subsequent viewings of the film for anyone by revealing the ending, or the best bits, but there are some howlingly bad efforts right across the board here. Personally, the snake itself was the icing on the cake, because I'm terrified of snakes, but even this lesson in special effect no-nos was too screamingly hysterica to take seriously. Firstly, it appeared to have super-snake powers which not only allowed it to be almost as big as the entire boat, it could move quicker than lightning, had impeccible eyesight, hearing, and movement sensors, to the extent it could attack with it's head and tail simultaneously despite them being at opposite ends of the boat, and had facial expressions, and made "aaaargh" and "eeeeeek" noises when it was in pain. Clears the effects crew forgot half way through they were dealing with a snake and used and leftover effects from the Jurassic Park goody box.
Last night I went for a pre Christmas drink with my ex girlfriend Anna. There really aren't enough people in the world like her, and I mean that in a good way. I can't believe I forgot to ask about her robotic arm though, I'd been saving that question all year.
Tuesday 18 December 2007
He Keeps Me Alive
Today has seen two very entertaining comings together of loose ends. I think in a wider world, to the fashion set in London, or people with Parker pens who put 'Filofax accessories' on their christmas list, these are very small things indeed. Both, interestingly, are illegal activities. Slightly less interestingly, neither are going to see me joining a chain gang or being hauled up before the DA or amateur magestrates just yet.
One! I finally found a website streaming episodes of Dexter. Whilst the bubble has been somewhat burst by people constantly telling me how shite the books are and eventually having so much peer pressure compressing hot air inside the opinion chamber in my cranium that I'm half inclined to believe them. The first two are alright actually, especially the second, which features a cartoonish Mexicana slice-n'-dicer with a penchant for word games. The third one is dreadful mind, although I think it was party ruined by the fact that I had to read the hard back edition, which given the other main hard back book I've read this year have been by Alex James (appalling) and Russell Brand (the only example of an autobiography of an adult that reads like it's been written by an overeducated child who's yet to actually live the life being discussed - also appalling) I've been overwhelmed lately with the feeling that hard back books, with their large print, and easy-on-the-eye covers, are more for children. Although tell that to the publishers of Naomi Klein's latest doorstop.
So anyway, I had to call quitting time on my watching of Dexter earlier in the year because the arduous task of trying to get someone who had the FX channel to video it for me every week proved too much after discovering our video player didn't actually work and so I never actually watched the first episode on hard copy anyway. Luckily for lucky old me, the plethora of illegal sites allowing streaming episodes of every TV show under the sun (even 'Kitchen Confidential', the hilariously pointless cable-TV adaptation of legendarily dull chef Anthony Bourdain's crappy memoirs, starring Xander from Buffy the Vampire slayer as a cake icer) had lots of lovely links to watch Dexter chopping up murderous psycho bunglers. Up entire episode six, where inexplicable for the last four months, no bugger has managed to upload the entire episode, so I've watched the opening ten minutes, which, good as the ooh-aren't-we-clever opening credits are on initial viewing, become tediously long like the Will O The Wisp openers, about twenty time you've tried to watch the same episode and it cuts out when Ritas carping on about her housemaids husbands disappearance every single time. Thank heavens and stars above, that this time it didn't happen, and I only had two-thirds of the screen covered up by Spanish subtitles. If this is a capture straight from Spanish television, then God help the Spaniards. You can barely see anything that's happening on screen. I had to squint at one point because the sound was fucked, I was in the lounge and the washing machine starting rumbling no more than 5 feet from me, and the subtitles covered up the characters mouth, face, and eyes. I had to rely on eyebrow gestures and my total lack of understanding of Spanish (three words) to unscramble the unfolding events. I think someone got murdered by someone, and then someone else did, and then Dexter put the bodies in a car boot, only someone was hiding in another car boot and might have seen them but I don't know who it was, and I don't know if you're supposed to know who it was, but it didn't matter but basically I think some people got chopped, and then Dexter threw them in the sea. 'Dexter' is a lot more interesting that I've just made out, although this episode could easily have done without the prostitute knobbing the paraplegic in the hopsital. Seriously, I'm so happy I can finish the series now.
Less psychotic, but equally as morbid, I finally downloaded Sally Shapiro's 'Disco Romance', only with the three US bonus tracks. This album has been an absolute arse to download. Bits and pieces have made it on my hard drive, only to accidenally be deleted, moved to other files by mistake, proved to be 'of a format not known to Windows Media Player', only downloaded half, of best of all, proved to be a completely different album altogether (by what appears to be a vastly inferior Swedish pop singer). Obviously, Sally Shapiro is a Swedish pop singer in the vein of Robyn or the many other Scandinavian females backed by faceless Moroder-esque males in the last few years. All of Shapiro's songs take an extra precedent because they're so lyrically bleak. On the off chance any of them have a back story, then it's pretty much set in winter, or December, or near Christmas, and involve battles of jilted hearts and wistful longing, all coated in acidic musical froth. The seasons must-have accessory, it seems, if anyones following any of the largely piss-poor (Middeton except) attempts by indie artists to 'trump' Simon Cowell. Like anyone gives a honker of a hoot anyway. I'm sure sure Sally Shapiro and the bastard that left her doesn't.
One! I finally found a website streaming episodes of Dexter. Whilst the bubble has been somewhat burst by people constantly telling me how shite the books are and eventually having so much peer pressure compressing hot air inside the opinion chamber in my cranium that I'm half inclined to believe them. The first two are alright actually, especially the second, which features a cartoonish Mexicana slice-n'-dicer with a penchant for word games. The third one is dreadful mind, although I think it was party ruined by the fact that I had to read the hard back edition, which given the other main hard back book I've read this year have been by Alex James (appalling) and Russell Brand (the only example of an autobiography of an adult that reads like it's been written by an overeducated child who's yet to actually live the life being discussed - also appalling) I've been overwhelmed lately with the feeling that hard back books, with their large print, and easy-on-the-eye covers, are more for children. Although tell that to the publishers of Naomi Klein's latest doorstop.
So anyway, I had to call quitting time on my watching of Dexter earlier in the year because the arduous task of trying to get someone who had the FX channel to video it for me every week proved too much after discovering our video player didn't actually work and so I never actually watched the first episode on hard copy anyway. Luckily for lucky old me, the plethora of illegal sites allowing streaming episodes of every TV show under the sun (even 'Kitchen Confidential', the hilariously pointless cable-TV adaptation of legendarily dull chef Anthony Bourdain's crappy memoirs, starring Xander from Buffy the Vampire slayer as a cake icer) had lots of lovely links to watch Dexter chopping up murderous psycho bunglers. Up entire episode six, where inexplicable for the last four months, no bugger has managed to upload the entire episode, so I've watched the opening ten minutes, which, good as the ooh-aren't-we-clever opening credits are on initial viewing, become tediously long like the Will O The Wisp openers, about twenty time you've tried to watch the same episode and it cuts out when Ritas carping on about her housemaids husbands disappearance every single time. Thank heavens and stars above, that this time it didn't happen, and I only had two-thirds of the screen covered up by Spanish subtitles. If this is a capture straight from Spanish television, then God help the Spaniards. You can barely see anything that's happening on screen. I had to squint at one point because the sound was fucked, I was in the lounge and the washing machine starting rumbling no more than 5 feet from me, and the subtitles covered up the characters mouth, face, and eyes. I had to rely on eyebrow gestures and my total lack of understanding of Spanish (three words) to unscramble the unfolding events. I think someone got murdered by someone, and then someone else did, and then Dexter put the bodies in a car boot, only someone was hiding in another car boot and might have seen them but I don't know who it was, and I don't know if you're supposed to know who it was, but it didn't matter but basically I think some people got chopped, and then Dexter threw them in the sea. 'Dexter' is a lot more interesting that I've just made out, although this episode could easily have done without the prostitute knobbing the paraplegic in the hopsital. Seriously, I'm so happy I can finish the series now.
Less psychotic, but equally as morbid, I finally downloaded Sally Shapiro's 'Disco Romance', only with the three US bonus tracks. This album has been an absolute arse to download. Bits and pieces have made it on my hard drive, only to accidenally be deleted, moved to other files by mistake, proved to be 'of a format not known to Windows Media Player', only downloaded half, of best of all, proved to be a completely different album altogether (by what appears to be a vastly inferior Swedish pop singer). Obviously, Sally Shapiro is a Swedish pop singer in the vein of Robyn or the many other Scandinavian females backed by faceless Moroder-esque males in the last few years. All of Shapiro's songs take an extra precedent because they're so lyrically bleak. On the off chance any of them have a back story, then it's pretty much set in winter, or December, or near Christmas, and involve battles of jilted hearts and wistful longing, all coated in acidic musical froth. The seasons must-have accessory, it seems, if anyones following any of the largely piss-poor (Middeton except) attempts by indie artists to 'trump' Simon Cowell. Like anyone gives a honker of a hoot anyway. I'm sure sure Sally Shapiro and the bastard that left her doesn't.
Thursday 6 December 2007
Triumph of Life
It has come to my attention that I don't actually enjoy very much at the moment. It's a myth (that unfortunately, I think I fuel on a daily basis) that I hate everything and everyone and that being misanthropic comes first, and then if you're really lucky, I might like something. This isn't true. But it's becoming much more so. So here below is an incomplete and rather haphazard list of things that right now, at 4.30pm on a dark, wet Thursday in December, that I actually find a modicum of pleasure in doing, and the problems that play amongst the pleasures.
1. I like walking around the perimeter of Roath Park lake listening to the Red House Painters and other Mark Kozelek projects, especially just as it's getting dark, and feeding the geese. I haven't done this for weeks because I just don't have the energy to do anything after work, and every time I've decided to drag my aching body out of the house on a day off, it's been wanking it down with rain to the point that even walking to Tesco (which in an exercise of monotony, I worked out today takes just under three minutes, or for more accurately, it takes EXACTLY the length of 'Glenn Tipton' by Sun Kil Moon to get to Tesco, take three cartons of orange juice off the shelf, and walk to the checkout) is a chore. Plus, the geese don't tend to come out that much in Winter because geese are no fools, and know they can maximise the amount of breadcrumb scraps they can achieve if it's sunny, there are children with new bicycles riding around, and families in pushchairs.
2. I like watching films that make people go 'Whaaat! you've never seen *insert painfully worthy film that populates AFI top 100 films list* ????" under the impression that I'm going to find them overrated and boring, and then surprising myself that I actually really like them. Star Wars is a terrific example of this, and were it not for the fact that The Empire Strikes Back is absolute piffle, I'd cite the example more often. I still haven't seen Pulp Fiction from start to finish mind, although I've seen the same 6 or 7 scenes repeated ad nauseum, so waitching it from start to finish will just be a duty-bound couple of hours filling in the blanks, which is unncessesary because it's non-linear anyway. I also get a similar pleasure to the above when I discover that a band that appear on every conceivable level to be and utterly hopeless bunch of dead-arse fuckers, have at least one good song. For example 'House Party at Boothys' by Little Man Tate, 'She's Attracted To' by the Young Knives, and more recently 'Amylase' By Cajun Dance Party. Bands which have no actual valid right to exist, let alone exist in a world that my ears go anywhere near, but all three of these songs are fantastic, and the odd sensation of not knowing just how bad they are for my aural diet, but gorging anyway, is actually very fun.
3. I like reading out the best sellers at work. I can probably fit the number people who don't work at Borders who don't know what the Best Sellers list, on the back of a tandem, but I'll divulge anyway. The Best Sellers List is a list of the products which sold the best the previous day / week / month / designated time period. Obviously. I like finding out what they are, even though they are mostly eye-bogglingly obvious (Rugby players autobiographys, Rugby miscellanys, a DVD about Rugby, a calendar of Wales, a book written by a author from Cardiff etc) It's when something bizarre crops up it sheds a little stardust on an otherwise predictable day. Like Season 1 of Flight of the Conchords was a bestseller on Saturday. Last Saturday two people decided that the entire box set of Cadfael was a must have Christmas gift. I wonder if they were my parents. The finding out of the best sellers is fun especially, as you can turn it into a cross between Articulate, Give Us a Clue and a general slanging match, on a good day. Also because one of my few good life skills is remembering useless information about irrelevant things (this is what I eschew forming meaningful relationships with people for) it comes in handy. Where else can you drop wisdom like "did you know Russell Brand shared a bed with the guy that plays Martin in Green Wing for a while a few years back, like Morecambe and Wise?". Fascinating.
4. I like drinking orange juice. Not orange squash, I'm not a complete masochist, and at any rate, the general weakness of orange squash these days means you have to fill over half the glass before you add the water, without it tasting like pot-boiled piss. I'm talking about pure orange juice without any shite in it, that you can buy in a white, blue and red carton from Tesco or Sainsbury and it rarely costs more than 50p. This stuff is the shit. I mostly like to drink orange juice out of mugs, or wine glasses. In our house we have two of these large goblets, the sort of ridiculous vessell Falstaff would drink ale from in Shakespeare, which can hold almost a pint of liquid, and this is probably my favourite thing to drink orange juice from. I broke one of these last week in a bizarre incident which involved me dropping the external hard drive of my laptop into it whilst it was empty, and it erupting into a mess of shards and debris on the lounge floor. I then got loads of bits of glass stuck in my foot every time I ventured over there for the next couple of days.
5. I like watching exactly the same things on TV day-in, day-out. I know this makes me boring, but I'm perfectly content with being boring. There's nothing wrong with routine, and at the moment when I have a spectactularly small number of reasons to go out and 'live life', so I'd rather be boring and content. It starts, if I'm home in time, with either The Weakest Link on BBC2, or Paul O Grady although I tend to cook my dinner in the kitchen whilst thats on so that I don't have to actually listen to his vile, nasal Liverpudlian shite, and can bop around the cooker to unappreciated vile, nasal indie shite instead. Then at 6 it's the only thing that guarantees me infront of the television at any given time - a repeat of an episode of the Simpsons everyones seen five thousand times. Although at the moment actually, Ch4 are showing a series that I haven't seen many episodes of, thank fuck, because they're dreadful. Yesterday, Bart for bitten by a mosquito found in Krusty the Klown merchandise (plot recycling #245) and had to live in a bubble. Impossibly bad. At 7 it's Back-to-Back episodes of Whose Line is it Anyway, which after a couple of months I'm fully versed on and I think I'm borderline expert. Having said that, there was someone on there yesterday that I'd never seen before, but he wasn't funny anyway. After that, it depends a lot on what day of the week it is. I don't like Tuesdays much because Dave repeats episodes of the Apprentice and Dragons Den which annoy me, especially Dragons Den, because they insist on showing 'best bits' of Dragons Den, which defeats the point because I challenge anyone, anywhere to admit they like it on Dragons Den when the Peter Jones is grovelling to the client, rather than the other way round invest. Exactly. It's why sadists like me stop watching the X-factor after the audition stages because after that point the people can actually sing and nobody gives a fuck.
6. I like nice photographs. By this, I don't mind endless pages of pixellised losers grinning inanely infront of the lens and filling up so much space you can't even tell where the picture was even taken, so you're left with photo albums of identical pictures and captions saying "dunno where this was taken". These are not even photographs. Although I'm not going to pretend I've not appeared in at least a few of these sorts of snaps, but then I've also pumped several gallons of pollution into the Ozone layer in my lifetime too, and I didn't enjoy that either. An example of a nice photograph would be a hungry looking horse looking wistfully over a fence towards a patch of carrots during lunchtime at a Medieval Renaissance fayre just as they're about to roast a pigs head in the 'murder' tent. Anyone who has a picture like this, please help. I typed in "murder, horse, and carrots' into google and just got pictures of Shergar.
7. I still like making mixxes and making mathematically complex lists of music. As it's now December, I'm starting to compile my tracklistings for my annual CDs which I make for people. These take the forum of 'plus' editions and 'minus' editions, (just like DVD-R's) - with the extroverted tracks going on 'plus' and the introverted tracks going on 'minus'. So far the shortlist for 'minus' is a lot longer than the shortlist for 'plus' which may or may not be a statement on the year as a whole. Probably just because I can't make up my mind whether certain songs are plus or minus. Anyway, this annual process usually sets the scene for the compiling of my top 100 songs of the year, which is, as a rule, deliberated and written out on Boxing Day. I genuinely find this process exciting, although year-on-year, there are less and less people to actually read it, and even less people who might actually enjoy reading it anyway. But having read some magazines and online ballbags with their lists, I can thoroughly assure fans of the Animal Collective and Battles that neither of these two vastly overrated and frankly pathetic excuses for bands are going to feature on my list. Hooray.
1. I like walking around the perimeter of Roath Park lake listening to the Red House Painters and other Mark Kozelek projects, especially just as it's getting dark, and feeding the geese. I haven't done this for weeks because I just don't have the energy to do anything after work, and every time I've decided to drag my aching body out of the house on a day off, it's been wanking it down with rain to the point that even walking to Tesco (which in an exercise of monotony, I worked out today takes just under three minutes, or for more accurately, it takes EXACTLY the length of 'Glenn Tipton' by Sun Kil Moon to get to Tesco, take three cartons of orange juice off the shelf, and walk to the checkout) is a chore. Plus, the geese don't tend to come out that much in Winter because geese are no fools, and know they can maximise the amount of breadcrumb scraps they can achieve if it's sunny, there are children with new bicycles riding around, and families in pushchairs.
2. I like watching films that make people go 'Whaaat! you've never seen *insert painfully worthy film that populates AFI top 100 films list* ????" under the impression that I'm going to find them overrated and boring, and then surprising myself that I actually really like them. Star Wars is a terrific example of this, and were it not for the fact that The Empire Strikes Back is absolute piffle, I'd cite the example more often. I still haven't seen Pulp Fiction from start to finish mind, although I've seen the same 6 or 7 scenes repeated ad nauseum, so waitching it from start to finish will just be a duty-bound couple of hours filling in the blanks, which is unncessesary because it's non-linear anyway. I also get a similar pleasure to the above when I discover that a band that appear on every conceivable level to be and utterly hopeless bunch of dead-arse fuckers, have at least one good song. For example 'House Party at Boothys' by Little Man Tate, 'She's Attracted To' by the Young Knives, and more recently 'Amylase' By Cajun Dance Party. Bands which have no actual valid right to exist, let alone exist in a world that my ears go anywhere near, but all three of these songs are fantastic, and the odd sensation of not knowing just how bad they are for my aural diet, but gorging anyway, is actually very fun.
3. I like reading out the best sellers at work. I can probably fit the number people who don't work at Borders who don't know what the Best Sellers list, on the back of a tandem, but I'll divulge anyway. The Best Sellers List is a list of the products which sold the best the previous day / week / month / designated time period. Obviously. I like finding out what they are, even though they are mostly eye-bogglingly obvious (Rugby players autobiographys, Rugby miscellanys, a DVD about Rugby, a calendar of Wales, a book written by a author from Cardiff etc) It's when something bizarre crops up it sheds a little stardust on an otherwise predictable day. Like Season 1 of Flight of the Conchords was a bestseller on Saturday. Last Saturday two people decided that the entire box set of Cadfael was a must have Christmas gift. I wonder if they were my parents. The finding out of the best sellers is fun especially, as you can turn it into a cross between Articulate, Give Us a Clue and a general slanging match, on a good day. Also because one of my few good life skills is remembering useless information about irrelevant things (this is what I eschew forming meaningful relationships with people for) it comes in handy. Where else can you drop wisdom like "did you know Russell Brand shared a bed with the guy that plays Martin in Green Wing for a while a few years back, like Morecambe and Wise?". Fascinating.
4. I like drinking orange juice. Not orange squash, I'm not a complete masochist, and at any rate, the general weakness of orange squash these days means you have to fill over half the glass before you add the water, without it tasting like pot-boiled piss. I'm talking about pure orange juice without any shite in it, that you can buy in a white, blue and red carton from Tesco or Sainsbury and it rarely costs more than 50p. This stuff is the shit. I mostly like to drink orange juice out of mugs, or wine glasses. In our house we have two of these large goblets, the sort of ridiculous vessell Falstaff would drink ale from in Shakespeare, which can hold almost a pint of liquid, and this is probably my favourite thing to drink orange juice from. I broke one of these last week in a bizarre incident which involved me dropping the external hard drive of my laptop into it whilst it was empty, and it erupting into a mess of shards and debris on the lounge floor. I then got loads of bits of glass stuck in my foot every time I ventured over there for the next couple of days.
5. I like watching exactly the same things on TV day-in, day-out. I know this makes me boring, but I'm perfectly content with being boring. There's nothing wrong with routine, and at the moment when I have a spectactularly small number of reasons to go out and 'live life', so I'd rather be boring and content. It starts, if I'm home in time, with either The Weakest Link on BBC2, or Paul O Grady although I tend to cook my dinner in the kitchen whilst thats on so that I don't have to actually listen to his vile, nasal Liverpudlian shite, and can bop around the cooker to unappreciated vile, nasal indie shite instead. Then at 6 it's the only thing that guarantees me infront of the television at any given time - a repeat of an episode of the Simpsons everyones seen five thousand times. Although at the moment actually, Ch4 are showing a series that I haven't seen many episodes of, thank fuck, because they're dreadful. Yesterday, Bart for bitten by a mosquito found in Krusty the Klown merchandise (plot recycling #245) and had to live in a bubble. Impossibly bad. At 7 it's Back-to-Back episodes of Whose Line is it Anyway, which after a couple of months I'm fully versed on and I think I'm borderline expert. Having said that, there was someone on there yesterday that I'd never seen before, but he wasn't funny anyway. After that, it depends a lot on what day of the week it is. I don't like Tuesdays much because Dave repeats episodes of the Apprentice and Dragons Den which annoy me, especially Dragons Den, because they insist on showing 'best bits' of Dragons Den, which defeats the point because I challenge anyone, anywhere to admit they like it on Dragons Den when the Peter Jones is grovelling to the client, rather than the other way round invest. Exactly. It's why sadists like me stop watching the X-factor after the audition stages because after that point the people can actually sing and nobody gives a fuck.
6. I like nice photographs. By this, I don't mind endless pages of pixellised losers grinning inanely infront of the lens and filling up so much space you can't even tell where the picture was even taken, so you're left with photo albums of identical pictures and captions saying "dunno where this was taken". These are not even photographs. Although I'm not going to pretend I've not appeared in at least a few of these sorts of snaps, but then I've also pumped several gallons of pollution into the Ozone layer in my lifetime too, and I didn't enjoy that either. An example of a nice photograph would be a hungry looking horse looking wistfully over a fence towards a patch of carrots during lunchtime at a Medieval Renaissance fayre just as they're about to roast a pigs head in the 'murder' tent. Anyone who has a picture like this, please help. I typed in "murder, horse, and carrots' into google and just got pictures of Shergar.
7. I still like making mixxes and making mathematically complex lists of music. As it's now December, I'm starting to compile my tracklistings for my annual CDs which I make for people. These take the forum of 'plus' editions and 'minus' editions, (just like DVD-R's) - with the extroverted tracks going on 'plus' and the introverted tracks going on 'minus'. So far the shortlist for 'minus' is a lot longer than the shortlist for 'plus' which may or may not be a statement on the year as a whole. Probably just because I can't make up my mind whether certain songs are plus or minus. Anyway, this annual process usually sets the scene for the compiling of my top 100 songs of the year, which is, as a rule, deliberated and written out on Boxing Day. I genuinely find this process exciting, although year-on-year, there are less and less people to actually read it, and even less people who might actually enjoy reading it anyway. But having read some magazines and online ballbags with their lists, I can thoroughly assure fans of the Animal Collective and Battles that neither of these two vastly overrated and frankly pathetic excuses for bands are going to feature on my list. Hooray.
Wednesday 5 December 2007
Have You Forgotten?
Last week I told somebody in a nightclub that they could 'stop by my house anytime and borrow (my copy of) The Elephant Man'. So far they've declined this lucrative offer, which has so far been a relief for me, and unbeknown to them, a relief for them also, because I don't own a copy of The Elephant Man.I also said that Ian Rankin was 'Britains greatest crime writer' which a completely bizarre thing to say, what with me only ever reading one British crime book and very very few other crime books whatsoever, but at least it was as far as my opinion on such a small knowledge, it was the truth. I bought a crime book yesterday, actually, by James Ellroy. I also bought The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain for £2 because I intend to spend my day off tomorrow listening to Gillian Welch and Uncle Tupelo and read tales of the Ol' American West, keeping the curtains closed to pretend it's not the New Walian South outside, and it's pretty grey with it, too.
Today I went to Blockbuster to return 'The Departed' and a couple of others, and it took more almost 10 minutes between getting to the till and actually leaving the shop. In this time, I enjoyed a few minutes of confusion whilst I was denied my three choices of films because I already had three on rentail, only for me to have to watch them go through the 'quick drop bin' to find the three I'd just returned. Then I had to listen to a conversation between two members of staff who were discussing in distinct business terms a situation involving broken IT equipment at the Glocester Road store, and whether they had to phone head offce or the DC to find a particular member of staff, and that a RM from Choices wanted to know the stats on inventory. I imagine to the stereotypically wisecracking cynics who work in video rental stores, the average drooling apes who drag their knuckles around their stores and then rent Steven Seagal films have no idea what they were talking about. Unlucky for them, I did. So that was fascinating, and I had to listen to it, because they man serving me on the till was new, and had a pony tail, and asked too many questions. The next time you find yourselves resorting to going into a Blockbuster video store for entertainment, the tills ask a LOT of question, but luckily most staff skip them all, but if you have the misfortune to be served by 'the new guy', who has a pony tail, and a remarkable lack of understanding of computers despite the fact the IT equipment in Blockbuster is so primeval it pre-dates Windows, then get ready to wait. Eventually, the two guys 'talking business' stepped away from putting copies of The Simpsons movie in plastic sleeves and came to his (and his pony tail)'s rescue. I might have pulled a few hairs out in frustration, were it not for a brilliant person who came to the till next to me, who was so utterly cretinous he didn't realise that Blockbuster was a rental store, and tried to buy three films (including Ultraviolet) for £7 and was disappointed when he coudn't.
Then I walked past 'Bedz 4 U' and felt a massive twinge of sympathy for the poor man running the place. He was sat in the middle of the glass fronted warehouse with his head in his hands. As I walked past, he looked up, saw me walking past and then sat back on the edge of the bed and resumed the position of voluntary dispair with his head in his hands. I felt sorry two of the best things in the whole world, ever, take place in bed; sleeping, and reading in bed, and he was surrounded everywhere by beds and being totally unable to do so. Like the Ancient Mariner of beds. It wasn't long before I realised I was feeling sympathy towards somebody else and went home to watch 'Taxidermia', the film we bought Martin as a present for basically setting up the multimedia department and being generally awesome. It's been crap so far. The start of December has always been a bit eerie. This time last year I spent almost 24 hours a day holding onto my phone because it wasn't long after I was getting to know Gemma, and I was completely infatuated and hung on every word she said, and didn't want to let go of my phone incase it meant not being able to reply straight away. I don't think I'll be in the position again any time soon.We don't talk now. A few years back, in 2002, I spent too much emotional energy trying to stop a girl from liking me when I had no intention of reciprocating, and naturally she turned against me. Luckily, we don't talk now either. In 2000, during the second week of December I spent all the money I'd saved to buy Christmas presents in order to travel to Chelmsford in Essex, under the belief that my girlfriend at the time was going to try and kill herself that evening. She didn't. I spent the night on the streets of the city and slept in the doorway of a Samaritans. We don't talk either. In fact, we stopped talking no more than three weeks after that incident, after she cheated on me, ditched me, and then got pregnant on New Years Eve. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.
Today I went to Blockbuster to return 'The Departed' and a couple of others, and it took more almost 10 minutes between getting to the till and actually leaving the shop. In this time, I enjoyed a few minutes of confusion whilst I was denied my three choices of films because I already had three on rentail, only for me to have to watch them go through the 'quick drop bin' to find the three I'd just returned. Then I had to listen to a conversation between two members of staff who were discussing in distinct business terms a situation involving broken IT equipment at the Glocester Road store, and whether they had to phone head offce or the DC to find a particular member of staff, and that a RM from Choices wanted to know the stats on inventory. I imagine to the stereotypically wisecracking cynics who work in video rental stores, the average drooling apes who drag their knuckles around their stores and then rent Steven Seagal films have no idea what they were talking about. Unlucky for them, I did. So that was fascinating, and I had to listen to it, because they man serving me on the till was new, and had a pony tail, and asked too many questions. The next time you find yourselves resorting to going into a Blockbuster video store for entertainment, the tills ask a LOT of question, but luckily most staff skip them all, but if you have the misfortune to be served by 'the new guy', who has a pony tail, and a remarkable lack of understanding of computers despite the fact the IT equipment in Blockbuster is so primeval it pre-dates Windows, then get ready to wait. Eventually, the two guys 'talking business' stepped away from putting copies of The Simpsons movie in plastic sleeves and came to his (and his pony tail)'s rescue. I might have pulled a few hairs out in frustration, were it not for a brilliant person who came to the till next to me, who was so utterly cretinous he didn't realise that Blockbuster was a rental store, and tried to buy three films (including Ultraviolet) for £7 and was disappointed when he coudn't.
Then I walked past 'Bedz 4 U' and felt a massive twinge of sympathy for the poor man running the place. He was sat in the middle of the glass fronted warehouse with his head in his hands. As I walked past, he looked up, saw me walking past and then sat back on the edge of the bed and resumed the position of voluntary dispair with his head in his hands. I felt sorry two of the best things in the whole world, ever, take place in bed; sleeping, and reading in bed, and he was surrounded everywhere by beds and being totally unable to do so. Like the Ancient Mariner of beds. It wasn't long before I realised I was feeling sympathy towards somebody else and went home to watch 'Taxidermia', the film we bought Martin as a present for basically setting up the multimedia department and being generally awesome. It's been crap so far. The start of December has always been a bit eerie. This time last year I spent almost 24 hours a day holding onto my phone because it wasn't long after I was getting to know Gemma, and I was completely infatuated and hung on every word she said, and didn't want to let go of my phone incase it meant not being able to reply straight away. I don't think I'll be in the position again any time soon.We don't talk now. A few years back, in 2002, I spent too much emotional energy trying to stop a girl from liking me when I had no intention of reciprocating, and naturally she turned against me. Luckily, we don't talk now either. In 2000, during the second week of December I spent all the money I'd saved to buy Christmas presents in order to travel to Chelmsford in Essex, under the belief that my girlfriend at the time was going to try and kill herself that evening. She didn't. I spent the night on the streets of the city and slept in the doorway of a Samaritans. We don't talk either. In fact, we stopped talking no more than three weeks after that incident, after she cheated on me, ditched me, and then got pregnant on New Years Eve. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.
Saturday 1 December 2007
Evel Knievel
Evel Knievel was probably the closest thing I've ever had to a childhood heroes. I don't tend to have much in the way of strong urges towards celebrities as far as putting them on gigantic pedestals for me to worship at and then they can nosedive off every five minutes, ready for me to ignore then when I realise they truly suck ass from the basin of the vast oceans of suck. No, I have friends, work colleagues and relatives for that fun. Evel Knievel tends to get out of being my childhood hero on several technicalities, luckily for him. Firstly, he stopped doing any motorcycle stunts three years before I was born, so in the interests of being contemporary, I'd be idolising a drunken ex motorcyclist womaniser. Secondly, he was a drunken motorcyclist womaniser anyway. And thirdly, he spelt 'Evil' wrong unnecessarily. Apart from these three minor instances, the man is surely one of this century's genuinely brilliant, ridiculous individuals, and therefore deserves and honorary obituary from just about everybody. Seriously, he's up there with Dustin Diamond, 'The Masked Magician' and Lt. Horatio Caine in the inner circle of stupidity. Only out of the four, Evel was the only one who was for real.
My first real introduction to Evel Knievel was in 1998, when I was 15. At the time, 15 sounds too old to have a childhood hero, but given that seems like such a long time ago (I was still buying CD singles for one thing) I guess maybe that's another techinicality he escapes from. BBC2 for no reason whatsoever, other than having absolutely fuck all else in the archivest to show, decided to have an 'Evel Knievel' night one Saturday, in which they showed an hour long documentary, then another slightly longer documentary in which they encoporated all the now-legendary David Frost interviews and it was all about how he (Knieve, not David Frost) wanted to jump Snake River Canyon in Idaho using a rocket powered bike, obviously the pinnacle of his career. This was followed by the fantastically awful 'The Evel Knievel Store' starring George Hamilton. The stuntman had just entered my teenage psyche by firstly appearing on the cover of the single 'Bad Idea' by A, and there was a dance track doing the rounds on Steve Lamacqs Evening Session called simply, 'Evel Knievel', and it was actually pretty good. It's still worth tracking down actually, were it not impossible to find on file sharing networks without it being wedged inbetween two other tracks like a shit sandwich. I watched the entire night, in which they marvellously used the aforementioned 'Evel Knievel' track (despite it having no relevance to motorcycle stunt jumps or anything else within the documentary whatsoever other than the title) all the time. I even watched the film, despite it's utter pomposity and self-publicising nature. It lended itself neatly to the other reason I love Evel Knievel, he was an arrogant self-aggrandising berk, which aren't usually my favourite traits in people, however, if you're a wire-thin greying buffoon who jumps over fountains and buses and fucking canyons for fun, then to be honest the fact you think this is all a brilliant and wonderful thing and you are a brilliant and wonderful person, then bring it on. People who have absolutely no right to be arrogant should be allowed to be as arrogant as they want, really.
But now he's dead, although people die every day, sometimes they're not even famous. But he is dead, and since he just settled a lawsuit with Kanye West, and Kanye West's old dear snuffed it the other weekend, I'd be visiting Bupa pretty sharpish if I'd spent more than five minutes in the company of West in the last year or so. The man's cursed.
My first real introduction to Evel Knievel was in 1998, when I was 15. At the time, 15 sounds too old to have a childhood hero, but given that seems like such a long time ago (I was still buying CD singles for one thing) I guess maybe that's another techinicality he escapes from. BBC2 for no reason whatsoever, other than having absolutely fuck all else in the archivest to show, decided to have an 'Evel Knievel' night one Saturday, in which they showed an hour long documentary, then another slightly longer documentary in which they encoporated all the now-legendary David Frost interviews and it was all about how he (Knieve, not David Frost) wanted to jump Snake River Canyon in Idaho using a rocket powered bike, obviously the pinnacle of his career. This was followed by the fantastically awful 'The Evel Knievel Store' starring George Hamilton. The stuntman had just entered my teenage psyche by firstly appearing on the cover of the single 'Bad Idea' by A, and there was a dance track doing the rounds on Steve Lamacqs Evening Session called simply, 'Evel Knievel', and it was actually pretty good. It's still worth tracking down actually, were it not impossible to find on file sharing networks without it being wedged inbetween two other tracks like a shit sandwich. I watched the entire night, in which they marvellously used the aforementioned 'Evel Knievel' track (despite it having no relevance to motorcycle stunt jumps or anything else within the documentary whatsoever other than the title) all the time. I even watched the film, despite it's utter pomposity and self-publicising nature. It lended itself neatly to the other reason I love Evel Knievel, he was an arrogant self-aggrandising berk, which aren't usually my favourite traits in people, however, if you're a wire-thin greying buffoon who jumps over fountains and buses and fucking canyons for fun, then to be honest the fact you think this is all a brilliant and wonderful thing and you are a brilliant and wonderful person, then bring it on. People who have absolutely no right to be arrogant should be allowed to be as arrogant as they want, really.
But now he's dead, although people die every day, sometimes they're not even famous. But he is dead, and since he just settled a lawsuit with Kanye West, and Kanye West's old dear snuffed it the other weekend, I'd be visiting Bupa pretty sharpish if I'd spent more than five minutes in the company of West in the last year or so. The man's cursed.
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