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| Saturday, December 19th, 2009 |
ruudboy
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11:20p |
It's Saturday night, I'm in alone and boycotting Match of the Day in a football related huff to watch Love Actually. Therefore, in no particular order, my favourite LPs of 2009. I'll try and write a bit about them, but as usual when I try and write about music I'll probably just end up saying "I like it!" because I'm rubbish at describing music I like. Love Actually's not bad really is it? The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Pains of Being Pure at HeartI may have moaned a bit about their gig a couple of weeks ago, but I still think the album's great. Fuzzy indie rock, vaguely reminiscent of Buzzcocks. Great stuff. This is ContenderGod Help The Girl - God Help The GirlSo this is Stuart Murdoch's B&S spinoff - the story of a mixed up girl sung by three singers he found through internet auditions. And it's beautiful. So listen to the title track: Moofish Catfish - Moofish CatfishAnd the self-titled albums keep coming. I saw Moofish Catfish supporting someone - I can't remember who - earlier this year, and I picked up their album. I like it. Here's About This Girl. Slow Club - Yeah So? (£4.98! Amazing bargain!) As you may have seen, I went to their gig this week. This is It Doesn't Always Have to be Beautiful: Pocketbooks - Flight PathsI've talked about Pocketbooks loads on here. I <3 them absolutely and I've already shared far too much of their album probly, but have another track anyway - Every Good Time We Ever Had: The Duckworth Lewis Method - The Duckworth Lewis MethodIt's not every year that a concept album about cricket comes out, and it's not every year that a track written from the point of view of Mike Gatting is released. Jiggery Pokery: MJ Hibbett & The Validators - Regardez, Ecoutez et RepetezSilly, witty, fun, catchy, INDIE! I've uploaded this track, because although it's written from the point of the view of the band, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed as a punter. It's called We're Old and We're Tired (And We Want to Go Home): |
atommickbrane
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8:49p |
it floods back
Oh NOW I remember why I stopped playing Mario Galaxy! Fvcking "surfing on mantarays"! STOMP SWEAR CURSE. Look, if I wanted to play an impossible to control racing game, I'd buy... any effing racing game, there's only NINETY BILLION sh1tty driving games out there - making me control a mantaray does not amend the essential dynamic, which I do not enjoy (unless it is Mario Kart ok) and most of all, I just CANNOT DO. Why would mantarays be surfing in THE SKY anyway? Arghhhh! If this is "penguin paradise", those lads from "March of the Penguings" (which I have not seen, but would like to hint hint wobs presents) will be most disappointed. Current Music: it was the chills, until THAT SPOTIFY ADVERT |
s0b
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7:52p |
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alasdair
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4:38p |
30 Days – Day #19 – A Talent Of Mine
I take pretty pictures. I’m sorry this isn’t a longer entry, but I’ve had a busy Saturday already, I have a cold, and I urgently want to take to my bed in order to prevent said cold from wrecking me, because I have stuff to do tomorrow, and I’ve got to be in work next week. So you get a short entry, with instructions to go and look at my photoblog instead, and with any luck, I’ll be feeling a bit better by tomorrow.
This entry was originally published at Black Ink |
duranorak
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2:20p |
Sigh. Went to back up some of my music, or at least make quick notes of what's there so when it comes to redoing everything, I have a list. No music. Awesome. Isn't it lucky I've got such an encyclopaedic memory for that kind of thing? Ugh. Panicking everywhere, because broken technology makes me screamingly terrified, but I'll see what can be done. Otherwise, see you on the other side. xx |
p_dan_tic
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2:12p |
On thursday, I ended up having a conversation with Johnny where he was the romantic and I was the cynic. 2 days later my brain still can't process this situation |
elethe
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2:10p |
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perfectlyvague
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12:46p |
Strange little girls
My digital radio is by my bed. Sometimes a song will come on that makes me run up the stairs immediately to find out who is making that noise. This gave me shivers...I sort of stood dumbstruck. You might not, but it's still awesome. I had to get hold of it instantly. And then I forgot I had it - at the back of my head I knew that I wanted to tell you all about a song that mentioned a strange little girl when Sad Cafe's Strange Little Girl came on my iPod yesterday. It's not all fairies and tinsel round here...but it's still awful pretty. |
duranorak
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11:12a |
Geek help, please :)
My computer has a problem. Specifically, what looks like this problem (I can't run updates for Ad-Aware, it didn't much want to install the new version of it, Trillian won't accept the new update and refuses to delete from my system - and won't run the old version because 'I don't have access to it' - I bloody do, though - etc, etc). Normally I bury my head in the sand about these things, but you know, the last time I did that my old computer eventually died, and so will this one, so can anyone help me fix it? Running Ad-Aware as is doesn't find anything, but it doesn't find anything at all, which is implausible as there's usually at least some cookies that need deleting. I let AVG scan this morning as well and towards the end of that it exploded in blue screen of alarming messages. \o/ Sigh. It was fine before I left on Wednesday! So. Can anyone help? I can't understand the advice offered in the link I've posted, because I am useless at the technical side of computers and don't have any idea what they're talking about - if you can offer help, please couch it in frustratingly simple 'go to this bit, click this thing, this thing, and this thing' language because otherwise I won't know what you mean. Sorry. :/ But please help if you can, I don't want to lose Sebastian, I've got quite fond of him! Thanks, guys. xxx |
davegodfrey
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10:01a |
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s0b
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8:16a |
Friday
I had yesterday off work. It snowed so I went outside to build a snowman, but then it started to rain and the snow melted. So I built a rainman. He's still out there in the garden, counting frost and modelling fractals. I went over to Ilford to see Helen and Henry. Am fascinated by the speed of development of the young chap. He's already physically capable of standing up, but has no sense of balance to speak of. Much like many of my friends. He's started to focus now, but quickly rejected me as a source of food and lost interest. Much like my cats after they have been fed. I played him some music, but some of the cover versions from punk rock baby made him cry. He takes after his mother in that respect, as I have been making her cry with cover versions for years. I still have three days off! This makes me very happy. |
surprisetruck
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7:35a |
100 Days #019 Santa's Little Helpers
An advance notice for today as we're off to help Santa by delivering pressies to little ones in the Midlands (and I will update you on the last three walks tomorrow). The 100 Days blog mentions my activities in their entry for yesterday http://www.hundreddays.net/Vital statistics Total miles walked = 65.08 Total minutes walking = 1401 Mean miles per day = 2.79 |
imomus
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12:43p |
Boyish GALS one-shot mook
In June of last year I penned an eloquent elegy for the endangered bukkake genre of Japanese porn. So what seems to be replacing that Shinto ritual of repression and release? Since nature -- and porn -- abhors a vacuum, what new fetishes are represented on the combini racks and the DVD shelves of Japan, in the areas designed to get customers a little hot, shifty and breathless?  One answer seems to be provided by a magazine I spotted in my local Family Mart last night, while buying wholesome things like Muji stationery and soup. Boyish GALS is, to be pedantic, a one-shot mook shrink-wrapped with a DVD. I didn't buy it, but as a keen amateur sociologist I couldn't let it go unnoted in these pages.  My analysis of bukkake inevitably raised Shinto's focus on seed -- and agrarian fertility in general -- as a framing device. Using that same frame, what does the rise of "boyish gal" porn tell us about the Japanese sexual psyche in late 2009? Is it a gay development, or a feminist one, or some kind of softcore misogyny, or part of a semi- hikikomori fear of the otherness of the other sex? One mook doesn't make a winter; I don't think it would be fair to say that a desire for Japanese women to become more boyish represents a step towards sterility and austerity. Certainly you could say that bukkake, invented in 1986 at the height of Japan's profligate economic bubble, represents a certain spendthrift tendency, a gloriously reckless waste of the national seed (something like the necessary lack of necessity Bataille built into his idea of the accursed share). By contrast, a trend for boyish gals would represent mere thrift. A boyish gal won't (in symbolic terms) give birth, which in turn means you won't end up paying money to bring up a child in a difficult world of recession, economic downturn, and so on.  But we should look at this in a wider context. This is an age where pregnancy and giving birth is very highly valued in Japan. The new government is promising wads of extra money to parents, conscious that something needs to be done about Japan's longterm demographic decline. Magazines like Crea (which recently featured a heavily-pregnant Kahimi Karie) and MiLK ( Isshiki Sae) have recently fetished female fertility as never before. It's worth noting the target audiences of these magazines, though. Boyish GALS is aimed at men, whereas Crea and MiLK are women's magazines. Could it be that while Japanese "grass-eating" men (the kind for whom even having a real girlfriend is mendokusai; too much hassle, too costly) dream of ever-less-fertile, ever-more-boyish women, Japanese women fantasize themselves as massive matriarchal baby machines with ever-bigger, ever-more-fruitful bellies? Bukkake is hardly a fertile genre, if you think about it; sperm delivered to the wrong areas won't make babies. So perhaps it's less a question of fertility falling out of fashion in hard times, and more a question of men liking their sex non-reproductive and women liking it fruitful? We'll continue our penetrating investigations into Japanese fertility when we have more data; watch this space. |
pippaalice
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12:42a |
I'm often naked and play the accordian
I know you probably all read Mr Gaiman's blog but this links quite a bit to what I was previously talking about. Also because I couldn't see the youtube things I was linking to I didn't realise the mitchell and webb sketch was missing the rather essential 'Men, because you're perfect anyway' male products bit at the end. Had work xmas do so haven't had a chance to reply to anything, tho seem to have had time to make many tiny doll heads. To the point where my house is now disturbingly full of eyeless freaky faces. |
| Friday, December 18th, 2009 | |
officialgaiman
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6:57p |
Xmas Roundup With Some Good Links and a photo of an author in it
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/xmas-roundup-with-some-good-links-and.html posted by Neil
How the hell did it get to be December the 18th? Ohhh. All the links I meant to post. Arghh. For a start, I want to repost this little true thing I wrote, from last year's Independent: it's about being an eight year old Jewish kid who really wanted a Christmas tree... http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/neil-gaiman-hanukkah-with-bells-on-1203307.htmlI wanted to tell you that you can still get the signed prints of "Before You Read This" I did with Todd Klein -- it's a poem I wrote that Todd lettered -- at Todd's website (along with Todd's other unique signed prints -- collaborations with Alex Ross, Alan Moore and J.H. Williams). http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=6525. (If you're hesitating, order: they're really cheap, and the second printing will be gone soon.) Also, for signed things and rare stuff, you can Do Good while last minute shopping by heading over to the CBLDF shop website. Here's the page with stuff related to me on it.) I just got my author's copies of "A Hundred Words To Talk of Death", the poem I wrote that Jim Lee illustrated and Todd Klein lettered. (Someone wrote to me on Twitter pointing out that it is two syllables short, and unable to figure out why. I will leave that as a problem for you to solve.) It's beautiful -- the same size and quality as the print of "The Day The Saucers Came". It's glorious. (Thinks: I can take a photo to show people.)
I didn't used to think of Jim Lee as a glorious and subtle pencil artist, but he really is, and this is wonderful. (You can order them from here, and read about Kitty's adventures in shipping them out over at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/, with bonus pictures right now of my Very Late Guy Fawkes Part of last month.)  Here is a photo of an author who needs a shave holding a print of "One Hundred Words" poem.
Kitty herself is heading off on tour with Lady Gaga early next year, and Maddy is going to see them in Chicago (where, about eight years ago, I first met Kitty, on the road with Tori) ( Who will be interviewed tonight on ABC -- Tori that is, not Kitty or Maddy).
Amanda and I have been having something that isn't quite an argument about Lady Gaga for a few weeks. We have really rubbish arguments, because they normally resolve into the discovery that we weren't arguing at all, just saying the same thing from two different points of view. Amanda posted a ukulele video-song-blog she'd written late last night from her Boston flat when she was probably meant to be practising her New Year's Eve Tchaikovsky, and I discovered that our latest argument wasn't an argument and we were talking about the same things again. It's art. You make it.
I don't think I will ever write songs and post them on YouTube instead of blogging. I'm in awe of someone who can. It's a good song, too, not just a funny and wise end-of-an-argument, even if she has to stop and scroll down at the last verse. Also, she said "aluminium".
And finally, in keeping with the not-exactly-Christmassy-but-sort-of theme of this blog...
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foibey
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11:05p |
1. Philosophical stuff in Kino no Tabi does my brain in, in a good way. Metaphor and allegory are devices put under heavy strain in it, but nicely. 2. EVE Online gave me a solar sailing ship for xmas, and it's pretty cool. 3. Family life is good. |
miss_mcq
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8:53p |
Basically, a mash-up from 1977.
In Fopp the other day, I noticed that one of the cashiers was doing ropey (possibly Adam and Joe or Flight of the Conchords inspired) Bowie impressions in order to entertain his colleagues, or at least himself. 'Is there anybody waiiiiiiitiiiiing?' He crooned, 'Is anybody waitin' to be serveeeeed?' I don't think any of the other customers in there heard it above the indie-cool din, but it was very amusing. It's easy enough to do a pastiche of Bowie being Bowie-ish, but his singing voice can be surprisingly adaptable. Not to the point of singing Miley Cyrus* covers or anything, but he can certainly change things to suit the situation. So his vocals on 'Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth' are a lot better than I remember them being. Bowie and Bing's voices work well together, but for some reason I've always disliked the song. It's just...hollow. The video is hilarious, though - Bowie looks like a hungry wood sprite. Also, I know 'Little Drummer Boy' is an old song, but at what point in history has a drum ever gone 'pa-ra-pa-pum-pum'? Perhaps it was originally meant to have been a tuba. (*Bowie wouldn't have go too far on a TV talent show, unless his funny eye was turned into a tragic backstory.) |
mondoagogo
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7:16p |
it's been snowing in London
I thought about going up on Hampstead Heath to take some photos, but in the end decided not to because the snow would never have been as magical as it was in February. So here are a few more photos from back then, instead.
That was fun. This week it's just been cold. Brr.
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seanazz
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6:53p |
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alasdair
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7:04p |
Links For Friday 18th December 2009
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Just a thing worth noting, should I ever be required to set up a service that needs payment processing with Paypal. Shitty behaviour.
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Weird, and sick. I cannot fathom a motive to do this that doesn't leave me faintly nauseous.
This entry was originally published at my workblog. |
diamond_geyser
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5:18p |
A Christmas Huzzah
As urged last week, if you are looking for Saaarf London festive loveliness on Sunday afternoon, then Brixton's Red Gate Gallery will serve you nicely. Comedy and music and some tiptop bounty to be had, for the splendid price of zero pounds.  General merry-making will begin at 2 o'clock; the gig itself will start at 2.30pm. Huzzah! Current Mood:  awakeCurrent Music: "the snow's comin' down (CHRISTMAS)" |
ultraruby
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4:05p |
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alasdair
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2:30p |
30 Days – Day #18: Design
There’s been a lot of stuff about Art in this meme. There’s been precious little about Design in it. I like design, and back in the early days of this iteration of this blog, I spent a short while explaining what I think its relationship to Art is.
So having skipped past the need for that re-cap, I thought I’d now witter on a bit about what sort of design I like, and I thought I’d start with a couple of links to designers I know.
Phil Clandillon. I worked with Phil in a little yellow room in Acton. Dark Days. Phil’s particular knack is coming up with really interesting and clever shit using unexpected technologies. The Kasabian “Football Hero” video was him, as was the AC/DC music video that was an Excel spreadsheet, as were a few other clever things that you can find out about at his portfolio there. What I like about Phil’s best work is the strength of his ideas – the execution’s important, too, but I like the fact that Phil isn’t just turning out websites any more, but is in a place where he can come up with genuinely orginal stuff that pulls in all sorts of digital media, and generally makes me think “I wish I’d thought of that”.
BERG. BERG is the sort of place that I would love to work for, but quite frankly, am not clever enough to do so. What I love about their work is twofold: one, is that it tends to be cutting edge, at least in terms of thinking, if not technology, and two, that it tends to be made the with the aim of enabling people to do things – they’re makers, rather than marketers. Also, how can you not love an agency who named themselves after of something out of Quatermass?
Between those two, I find I’ve very neatly encapsulated what I love about design – it’s the means by which people’s ideas shape the world, and bit by bit, change our lives. Here at the start of the 21st century, if you’re not engaged with design as a (very broad) field on some level, I do kind of wonder what you’re doing with your life, apart from taking up resources that the rest of us could be making better use of.
So that’s design as idea, and design as world-shaper, which is all vitally important background, but what about aesthetics? After all, that’s what most people think of when they think of design.
Well, I only really qualified to talk about my own sense of aesthetics, and me, I’m a pretty unabashed Swiss modernist. Give me clean, clear lines, plenty of white space, and attention to simple detail in the service of clarity. Sure, I can appreciate the cluttered, hand drawn and grungy look – I quite like the work of people like Courtney Riot or Christopher Cox, but honestly, give me plain black text, well spaced, on a white background every time – a bit of simple elegance. If I had to pick my favourite font, it’d be Helevetica Neue – just about the only font face that is more precise and tidier than Helevtica.
This applies in just about everything from ink on paper to products to architecture – I love simple clear lines and an absence of clutter. Those who have seen the spaces I inhabit and the general state of my desk are probably laughing themselves sick right now, to which I can only remark that very often, really good design is an aspirational thing.
This entry was originally published at Black Ink |
suicideally
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2:26p |
We found some tinsel and fairy lights in a cupboard and so my classy single-poinsettia desk now looks like Las Vegas! Current Mood: totally festiveCurrent Music: The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping |
elethe
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2:10p |
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