Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The Windermere Self-Immolation Society Day-Trip to Frinton

In the last few weeks, I've found I have had more time at this time of night (after 11:00pm) than I have had for a long time. My days were and still are full of work, the difference between now and a few weeks ago is that Will has gone and while I am in no way blaming him, I did allow him to be a distraction for me, which meant that I ended up doing lots of stuff after the wife went to bed. I even convinced myself that my best work happens when everyone else is winding down for the night.

I miss having Will at the end of Facebook messaging for about 18 hours a day, but it has allowed me to reorder my day and schedule it properly, allowing me the luxury of having late nights to myself again... and Christ is it boring.

Tonight was descending into the prospect of staring at the computer screen, willing myself to feel tired enough to a) be able to go to sleep and b) stay asleep past 6:00am and then I thought, 'I could write a blog entry', so, here I am. I warn you, I'm a wee bit out of touch...

I have thought about blogging quite a bit in recent weeks, wading through the quagmire that is the English countryside with four very brown dogs. Every other day I rail at some injustice or example of fuckwittery; ejaculate profusely at the wife when she gets home from work and then can't be arsed to articulate it all again [you are all aware that the word 'ejaculate' was something Dr John Watson did quite a bit in Sherlock Holmes's company, aren't you?] in a blog.

The injustices of our government; the demonisation of our poor and disabled - things I would have been incandescent about a year ago, now fill me with anger and then ambivalence and finally apathy. My days are too full of the realities of modern day business fuckwittery to rage against the machine any more than I already do... And trust me, a lot of my apoplectic rage in recent weeks will come back and bite me on the arse - I half expect the bank/printer/e-commerce/major on-line retail outlet [delete as appropriate] to tell me to fuck off and never darken doors again, fairly soon. The prospect makes me wince, but I can't say it would be a shock. But the incompetence of the world just pisses me off beyond what is healthy...

So, here I am. Do I have anything to moan about? Loads of stuff, but, you know...

The new neighbour, who I christened something derogatory a few months back, is actually a thoroughly decent chap - very friendly and quite conscientious. I think his missus is having a hard time ... post-natally ... but they have pretty much blended into the surroundings and, by the looks of things, won't be the newbies much longer. The loud woman who lived next door to the people who live next door to Fishwife have gone. They left quickly and quietly and over a month ago and I only found out because Fishwife knows most things. 

All the shenanigans at Mr Miserable's place has changed the landscape over there and the Lithuanians are almost part of the scenery. Back on my side of the road there's much happened. The weed smoking dude who I've always wanted to get friendly with and his lovely partner also did a moonlit flit; Fuckwit or his lard-arsed concubine have been quite ill recently; sick enough for paramedics and ambulances and there's Fishwife, who, it seems, has sold his house and is waiting for the chain to not unlink and we'll have brand new neighbours...

That's something to fill you with excitement and trepidation. I might sound like I moan about Fishwife (I mean it's not exactly flattering, but I'm not going to say his name in case anyone I know knows him!) and his loud kids, but they've been, head and shoulders, the best neighbours we've ever had and they will be missed.

I was back on the radio today after an 11 year hiatus. I like going on the radio. I always reckoned the way I could talk I'd make a great talk radio host; but the weird thing is, like many of my generation, I would rather have the graveyard shift playing all that eclectic shit I love and you never hear on the radio.

You can see I'm out of practice, I've been doing this an hour and this is as far as I've got; usually I can get between 2500 and 3000 words down in an hour - especially if I'm on one (hence why there's always mistakes).

Right, no point in boring you all rigid. Let's do this cos we ain't for yonks...

Effercio et Ineptias
  • I have been listening to Sam Healey of North Atlantic Oscillation and his sublime solo album Sand. I reviewed it last year; I'm still listening to it and almost as much.
  • However, I have also had the pleasure of: Lorde, London Grammar, Engineers, Billy Joel, Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters and Amanda Palmer.
  • St Vincent is worse than some of the shit Roger listens to.
  • I have barely picked up a book let alone read one.
  • TV: Shameless US; TWD; Almost Human (quite good - interesting ideas); Sleepy Hollow (bonkers brilliant) and True Detective (blimey!). There are others.
  • Health is as good as can be expected. Catching a cold was a nightmare and I now fully appreciate how dangerous the common cold will become to me in the future. But generally I'm still walking three miles a day and I'm just about back to normal after the cold (it only lasted 6 weeks).
  • I met a 19 year old dog today who had more bloody life in her than my Lexy (8). The old girl actually was one of the many good things that Monday February 24th brought; I love old dogs, we don't realise sometimes how brilliant old dogs are. My dogs are just starting to get older and the next ten years will, hopefully, be pretty good ones.
  • Radio Northampton hasn't changed that much; Bernie Keith was 10 years older, a little greyer and now sports a beard. he also has a lovely dog, who realising I was a soft touch gave me a hard time in that new continual 'fuss me' stage.
  • I have tried three different saag paneer recipes in the last three weeks; each one had pretty much different spice mixes - which was why I wanted to do them because while I like my cheese and spinach curries, I fancied a variation on a theme. Ha! Do you know what the first one tasted like? The second and the third; that's what and all three tasted just like my usual saag paneer recipe - the similarity was almost disturbing. Spinach does that to most things.
  • We had some ground frosts back in November...

    Thursday, February 06, 2014

    Album Review

    8194 Satake
    Every Great Man Is Unique

    What is going on? A band bursting with opal fruit like brilliance with a sound like the lucid dreams of a donkey with really bad shits. Ormonde Crotsville's blisteringly weird album of jazz kazoo mixed with baroque screaming is like nothing you've ever heard before and probably won't again, as EMI have dumped this band faster than you evacuate your bowels after 17 pints of Guiness and a bat vindaloo.

    Schnorgle is 17 minutes of dwarves being strangled by kittens in jumpers with a melody not dissimilar to Auschwitz. I'm not sure if it's a musical instrument bassist Blag Hôgenstraub is playing or the recording of his cat being castrated but it certainly adds to the entertainment.
    Attend the Fjords is a 2 minute yodel. Crotsville at his most sublime, singing - pub stylee - the Norwegian national anthem in Swedish. Pure genius.
    Violent Scalding is a percussion piece where Vorm Placento, the Venezuelan drummer, immerses himself in a vat of boiling hot water while guest musician Jimmy Page talks about turning 70.
    Pound hog is just plain dutty.
    Chortz is like a solid gold sausage of an instrumental. It's fiercely dubstep while only using violins and frozen bananas on Tesco bags stretched over seals' teeth. Groovy.
    Dying in a Leningrad Apartment staffed by Drunks is the weakest song on the album, mainly because it is just organist Dong Boo making noises like he is masturbating to an episode of The Munsters. However, this might be deliberate as this meandering wart of a song bashes into and then defenestrates The Attack of the Turkmenistani Bastards - a veritable temple to jazz kazooeyness.

    An utterly genital-fondling fruitcake of an album, full of egg white and Polyfilla.

    Of course, the thing that comes lurching like a man with half his brain smashed away at you is whether or not every great man really is unique or if uniqueness is not really unique but a bit samey.

    2/10

    Track Listing:
    1. Schnorgle
    2. Attend the Fjords
    3. Violent Scalding
    4. Pound Hog
    5. Chortz
    6. Dying in a Leningrad Apartment staffed by Drunks
    7. The Attack of the Turkmenistani Bastards
    8. Schnorgle (reprise)

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