Monday, September 25, 2006

Old Puma Shoe Box

Despite my usual shortcomings as a lazy sod, I disposed of 8 years worth of bank statements and pay slips on Sunday. I decided upon using my strength and tearing the aforementioned articles rather than using Lisa's lousy paper shredder. This proved to be a most prudent decision on my part, though Lisa reacted in a most sensitive manner when she asked why I was doing it manually and my response was to refer to the shedder as "shite". I often wonder if she loves that shredder more than me.



We now have an old Puma shoe box going spare. Fool hardy plans on a grandiose scale of putting this shoe box to good and practical use kept me awake half the night resulting in my weary appearance today. Thankfully, after establishing myself in the office as looking weary at the best of times, my unkempt appearance has remained undetected to my fellow office dwellers.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Professional Facade

I've decided to wear a lead propelling pencil (the Pentel Sharplet-2 0.7mm) and pen (pilot G-2 05) in the breast pocket of my shirt in an attempt to look wiser and more professional. Thus far this has been unsuccessful.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Spin Clarissa

Finally- after ordering the same sandwich for the past two and a half years (cheese salad, brown roll, no onion, mayo) the quasi friendly staff at the nearby sandwich shop finally acknowledged my existence and remembered my order. I felt proud and ashamed in equal measure- I was "proamed" you may say. My happiness was short lived as the sandwich they made for me was of poor quality. I may take my business elsewhere in the future.

I also, with it being pay day, I purchased a packet of Ready Slated Crisps and in error I opened the packet upside down. Some may say this is bad luck-not I though, not I…


Whilst on my designated luncheon break, I tended to my elastic band ball, which to my dismay is getting depressingly smaller. Having cherished and nurtured this ball of surplus rubber bands for several years, through cold and dark winters and warm unpleasant summers, I feel a great affinity with her. After all it was a childhood dream of mine to be a rubber band ball owner.

I called it Clarissa.



Tony's step-son who worked in our office on a week's work experience earlier in the year, looked thoroughly bored and disinterested throughout his placement, the only moment I saw him animated was when he clapped his eyes upon my beautiful creation during a moment of relaxation in the office during which I proceeded to spin Clarissa in manner which caused it to return to me once it had hit the floor.

"How long did it take you to do that" he asked.

"2 and a bit years me'lad…man and boy" I said.

He asked to have a go. I declined and put her back in my drawer.

Now she withers and is a shadow of her former self.

Gorging myself on the upside down ready salted crisps and an over familiar cheese and salad sandwich of poor quality did little to lift my spirit

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

“Others find pleasure in things I despise…”

So the Mercury Prize went to those articulate little fella’s from the City of Steele. Watching the show last night I totally forgot that the rather excellent Richard Hawley had been nominated too- and despite my obvious affiliations with Hot Chip (of whom the TV sound engineer did a particularly poor effort of replicating their live sound) I was certainly routing for the chap. Once again the ceremony was, for a lack of a better description, a load of shite, as once more Jo Whiley’s over sincerity had me rolling my eyes, though there was a rather hilarious interview with the newly crowned winners- who appeared to have consumed a rather large intake of alcohol and quite possibly other substances. Obviously her renowned patience had worn pretty thin whilst trying to get a straight answer out of them, but nothing could top Marcus Brigstock’s attempts of trying to engage Mr. Hawley with witty banter:

(On watching footage of Hawley playing with Pulp at a previous Mercury Award Ceremony he noted the guitar he was playing)

RH: “Oh- that was a great guitar- someone stole it”
Brigstoke: “who stole it?”
RH: (With look of annoyance) “If I knew that I would find them and jump on their bastarding neck”
Brigstoke: “ah”

Tit!



Also boredom produces interesting random internet searches and after looking up details of Steve Irwin (RIP), once more I wasn’t let down by those (perhaps that should be “them’s”) crazy Yanks. Over here we had cock-er-nee wide boy chef Jamie Oliver on a crusade to make school dinners healthier, which no matter what you think of him is a really great thing to have happened, however; in Good Ole’ America, rather than spend money on improving food standards and re-educate the fat youth of America they’ve come up with an ingenious way of a) scanning in fingerprints of all the students for the continuation of the Big Brother prophesy, b) Ensuring that the School gets as much cash from its kids as possible and c) spending an exorbitant amount of money on this pile of

  • pish




  • Anyway, disillusioned with it all- please find several MP3s below for no significant reason- except I like them:


    Casiotone For The Painfully Alone- Tonight was a disaster.
    As referred to in my last blog.

    Lisa Germano -Small Head
    I was given this CD during my short lived life as a Student Magazine Music writer. I never got round to writing up the review- but this song is a corker- Lisa loves this album, and stole it from me during one summer break from university.

    Kate Bush -- Hounds of Love
    Barking mad and brilliant.

    Dinosaur Jr –Whatever’s Cool With Me
    Apparently this song was written after reading this blog.


    Guided By Voices- Hold on Hope (XFM Acoustic Session)
    There rides the Cowboy….


    TV On The Radio - Dry Drunk Emperor.mp3
    Best thing I’ve heard for a long time- gutted that I missed them in Leeds.

    The Louvin Bros. - The Christian Life.
    The Raconteurs covered this at the recent Leeds Festival- “Others find pleasure in things I despise…” Sums it up really.

    Preston School Of Industry-Whalebones
    A song about coming back home after a long tour- this song might have made Terror Twilight a better Pavement send off.

    Sparklehorse -Happy Man [Memphis Version]
    A better version than the ‘Good Morning Spider’ album- great riff and dedicated to all those who’ve woken up un a horses stomach.

    Tuesday, September 05, 2006

    fancy pants trainers and cocaine

    Tonight is the music industry’s annual farce other wise known as The Mercury Music Prize. Once again, I roll my eyes to the back of my head and chuckle to myself that the holy trinity of the British Music Industry chose to nominate such irksome toss pots such as; The Editors, Muse, The Artic Monkeys and The Guillemots for the “prestigious” award. In the words of someone wiser than I once said: “What da fook?” To make matters worse they’ve paired up these big selling artists with Thom Yorke (who it is obligatory to nominate so he can do his generic Anti-Bush/Blair speech) the usual bunch obscure folkies just to make up the numbers and the head scratching, befuddling inclusion of Scritti Politti!!!???.

    Surely any prize that requires a £500 entrance fee just to be considered automatically eliminates a large section of the smaller British bands for entering and paving the way for the “big boys” on their big fat major record labels to enter and in doing so it has reduced the prize to a back slapping exercise for selling more records a la The Br(sh)it Awards. Surely The Editors’ album (which alas my nearest and dearest purchased) does not warrant receiving an award for innovation? Surely the only accolade they should be receiving is the ‘Getting Away With It Award’ for managing to sell as many records as they have. For Chissake, they sound exactly like Interpol (who aren’t the best band on the planet to imitate) only with the same bloomin’ melody/rhythm on every song and in general sounding as dull as dishwater. I saw The Editors live out in Spain at The Benacissism Festival and they were every bit as boring live as they are on their record only the singer was a bigger tit than I had previously given him credit for.

    The Artic Monkeys will no doubt be really hoping they win as their record isn’t selling too well I hear and they’re short of a few quid no doubt. Of course the AM album is quite good, and they’ll no doubt walk away with the prize and spend the prize money on fancy pants trainers and cocaine.

    For what its worth, I will be rooting for my band de jour Hot Chip to win- but reluctantly so, as no doubt it will result in an significant increase of their ticket prices, but their excellent album ‘The Warning’ is surely a million times more deserving than any of the above on the grounds of it being innovative, interesting and different from the plethora of dullard guitar bands that get nominated year in year out. So what is the best British album of the last year? Aside from Hot Chip’s, by my reckoning it’s got to be ‘Chops’ by Euros Childs, but funnily enough I didn’t see his name on the list of nominees. Perhaps the judges would be kind enough to publish a list of all the artists who entered so I can see for myself just why some of these bands were selected for the shortlist. I reckon they didn’t have enough entrants, and chose to call upon The Guillemots as a favour, promising them a crate of beer and the opportunity to appear on Jools Holland’s 'Later' show if they turned up to the event.

    Surely it’s about time someone nominated The Fall on their behalf (I can’t see Mark. E. Smith filling in the application form can you?) after all it’s about time the best British band of the last 30 years basked in a bit of their(his) deserved glory? I can’t see it happening though.
    Anyway, another excellent recommendation from the chaps at Aquariam Drunk led to the discovery of :

    http://www.daytrotter.com

    It’s a unfathomably great music website. Please check out the ‘sessions’ section and listen to the Bonnie ‘prince’ Billy tracks (including a version of ‘New Partner’) and Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, who does a full band version of ‘Tonight was a Disaster’ which the Lo-Fi genius, tape hissed Casio keyboard driven original was one of my all time favourite songs: “crying in the cab ride home/with Frank Sinatra on the radio/but it might as well have been Lil’ Kim/when every song you hear still reminds you of him”


    Anyway, I found this CTFPA video on you tube as I don’t have the origional ‘Tonight was a Disaster' on this computer. Not my favourite song-but is very (Smog)-esq.




    NEWSFLASH-

    I’ve just learned via the CTFPA Myspace that he/they’re playing in Manchester soon (24th Sept)- woo and indeed hooo! X2

    Monday, September 04, 2006

    Death or Glory

    Stop the Press!

    Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

    Okay so I was going to waffle on about in my usual un-grammatically-correct-poorly-spelled way about the recent Leeds Fest- but aside from the fact that you probably couldn’t give a damn about the irksome conversations with Tex-Mex vendors who almost drowned my spicy potato wedges in Salad cream rather than Sour cream, and upon querying the former condiment (is it a condiment?) he said “oh we don’t do that” in a curt manner, despite the large sign above his poorly written menu stating that they if fact did, or the Glaswegian girl who told me she’d woken up to the sound of my voice after I was talking to (or should I say ‘at’) Lisa about why you don’t see the old NHS style wooden crutches anymore for nearly half an hour, she said I had a soothing voice- and I sounded like Mr. Scruff (A Manc no less- not for the first time Johnny Marr thought I was a Mancunian too!! Although some old bird in Benacissism asked me, after overhearing me talking, where in Liverpool I came from- I’M FROM ‘EFFING YORKSHIRE YOU DOLTS- WHAT DO I NEED AN EFFING WHIPPET!) or conversely the forgetting tent incident and the “ah a fellow fence dweller” conversation with the chap whom Lisa thought was chatting me up and who took umbrage when I suggested his appearance could easily be misconstrued as being Emo. Sadly I have to report all this has now been put on the back burner due to the sad news that Aussie Legend, Steve Irwin sadly “copped it” from a Sting Ray whilst filming out in the Barrier Reef yesterday. http://www.abc.net.au/farnorth/stories/s1732635.htm?backyard


    It was the first news I heard on the increasingly annoying Chris Moyles’ Show this morning, and not since the loss of John Peel/Rod Hull have I felt sadness on a par with this. How could anyone not warm to a man who spent his adult life wearing the same beige jungle clobber whilst charging up to a plethora of dangerous animals with that look of Aussie determination upon his simple face? The same guy who cried like a baby over the death of an alligators and said : “I loved it like I love my wife”. In the continuing dumbing down of television programs- especially those aimed at children it was good to see someone actually being enthusiastic towards sharing his knowledge with the viewers.- surely the last kids’ TV presenter over the age of 25.

    Why are all the kids TV presenters slightly effeminate schmucks with spiked hair donning crap Top Man polo shirts? Do they think as far as educating children via the medium of TV that the presenter must either be an animated character or a bland no-mark with a provisional driving licence? Johnny Ball and Rolf Harris are kid’s TV legends who surely demonstrate to me that eccentric old (er) men have just as much to offer without appearing sinister. Conversely; they still use the bearded old paedophile Captain Birdseye to promote his fishy fingers, abducting several hundred wide eyed kids on his boat over the years- I mean would you leave your kids with him? Would a genius show like Tony Robinson’s ‘Maid Marian and Her Merry Men’ be made today? I think not- which in the words of the late Mr. Irwin is “a bloody shame” and I feel the time has come for me to stop watching kids TV.

    Anyway, I would like to make light of the news, but sadly as a mark of respect I will resist- no doubt a barrage of joke e-mails, predictably involving some reference to the Gerry Anderson created TV show ‘Sting Ray’ will clog up my various e-mail inboxes in the next few hours. At least Fat Karen and had a little bonding session as she exclaimed in a childlike voice “oh no- I loved him” when she learned of his sad demise.

    Tonight upon my return to my domicile, I shall open a can of Fosters and doff my cap to the loon and perhaps get Lisa to dress up as a crocodile whilst I gently wrestle her to the ground as homage to the guy.

    Adieu Mr. Irwin… adieu.


    The Clash -Death Or Glory