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.