I haven't posted for days! I blame this for wasting my time. That and going swimming twice in three days which has lead to wanting to flop and rest aching limbs. Hey, I can propel myself from one end of the pool to the other in 30 seconds now, but have to rest for a couple of minutes afterwards. I blame the custard doughnut - it weighs my middle down. Hmmm, custard doughnuts . . . . . .
Oh look, somewhere new to go on my holidays. Just need to get the hamster-powered starcar up to speed . . . . .
There used to be a shop in King's Lynn called "We Are The Music Man". It was a rather stripped down music store, nothing flashy, with a constant background barrage of country music set to a poppy beat. I often popped in there to see what was in the bargain £1 section, and ended up with a few worthy albums as a result. I just bought what looked interesting, and at £1 a time, it was hardly going to be much of a waste if I hated it. Here's a few that I remember :
Mimi - Soak
Ex-Hugo Largo vocalist goes solo and releases a beautiful melodic album. Mainly atmospheric but with some bizarre rockier moments. Just the sort of thing that I like.
The Tiger Lillies - Shockheaded Peter
Imagine The Pogues playing Tom Waits music with vocals by Dame Edna Everage. That's sort of the area that this album comes from. Martyn Jacques' falsetto voice can take a bit of getting used to, but these fairytales of children meeting gruesome endings work so well. Great stuff.
Another Girl - In The Galaxy
Decent female singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. A nice variety of rock, pop and acoustic. Enjoyable.
Pond - Rock Collection
Reminds me of Granddaddy, a mixture of well crafted songs, sometimes moving and sometimes bland, with a few instrumental bits.
Holly McNarland - Stuff
I bought this as the artwork featured a dog's arse. Female singer/songwriter with guitar based acoustic and rock music. Strong vocals and no nonsense lyrics pull this album up.
Pet - Pet
Apparently the first group on Tori Amos's record label, and they do end up sounding a bit like what Tori would, if she fronted a straightforward rock band. Nothing that special, but worth the odd spin.
Anyway, I popped into Lynn and was delighted to find that a Fopp had opened. I like Fopp. Even better was a stand of £1 and £3 albums! Yey! Now although I am on a tight budget at the moment, I still walked out with 6 CDs. Renaissance, Deep Purple, Dolly Parton, Spiritualized, Captain Beefheart come to me! Cheap music rules.
Since Life On Mars ended (what a great show that was), we seemed to have stopped watching TV. We only watched Desperate Housewives, Doctor Who and Have I Got News For You in a week: roughly 2.5 hours of TV. Then last night the big slop happened. The sofa grabbed our arses and held us there, hypnotising us with house-improvement programs before those Wisteria Lane gals returned. After that the comforting cushions stopped us rising, and we had to giggle at Harry Hill (what are the chances of that happening?) Three hours of TV in one night, more than the previous week put together. Something was making us lazy.
I blame those cushions. There are 10 on the sofa. Why do we need 10 cushions on one sofa! Even T. threw a couple on the floor at one point and she loves a good cushion. There are cushions in the bedroom, cushions in the kitchen, cushions in the outhouse! I mean I do like a good cushion to rest my tired back upon, but soft furnishings are taking over. I guess they must be breeding, and I ought to divide them up, but how do you sex a cushion? Or do they just split like amoebas do?
Ha! that's it, they drain our energy while we are watching TV and use it to perform their dance of mitosis. At their current rate of multiplying, our house will be full of cushions by the end of April.
Just to prove how middle-aged I am, one of my hobbies is collecting old postcards. See www.maudefealy.vispa.com for my little collection of Maude Fealy postcards. I do like this one below though, it is just like the life T. and I lead!
I came across this delightful device on Tom Ballhatchet's site. Great for saving energy. Now how many hamsters does it take to power my car?
Among those soggy bits of paper (see previous post) I found a story. Back in that first tech. support job, we had email for the first time (it was a novelty back at the end of the 1980s for us Brits, I know Americans have had it since the 16th century). Our department soon used email for passing around wacky stories composed piecemeal by each person adding a few lines to the end and passing it on to someone else. One one occasion I got bored and knocked up a spontaneously written epic about Magnificent The Wonderfish which was printed out on some random printer in the building. It got found, passed around and so, due to popular demand of one, I wrote another one. Soon there was four such silly stories and people feared to approach me. 20 years later, here is that first story, now in glorious technicolour (the colours black and white). Note also the period details, such as references to British Railways.
Magnificent The Wonderfish Fights The Early Morning Blues
Twas Flopday and all was groovy. The trees were rising over the horizon and bricks were wafting in the early morning thermals. A steaming kipper was sunbathing in the shadow of a large but friendly rock. This piscian creature was no cats' dinner however, for this was Magnificent the Wonderfish, the fish who single fin-didly saved the universe three times before breakfast.
Magnificent opened one beady eye and announced to no-one in particular "I hate mornings!"
"I wholeheartedly agree" oozed a passing BR pork-pie (ex-stock 1978). "There's nothing worse then having to face lots of bleary-eyed commuters on the 6:23 from Wigan every morning".
Magnificent pondered this for a while and decided to do something about mornings. "They must be terminated!" he cried to a now sizable audience of agreeable egg-whisks.
"Yes! Yes!" they chanted, whisking like mad and enjoying the fact that they had a speaking part in paragraph five.
Magnificent waved his magic wooden spoon, shouted "Oregano!" and cooked a lentil surprise with juicy mushrooms to give him much needed energy for his new quest. "Burp" he concluded and had a quick nap.
Upon waking from a nice dream about amoebas Magnificent gave a fishy grin and flew east which seemed to be the direction from which mornings came. On and on he flew. On and on and on. On and on and on and on. In fact he flew quite a long way until finally he came to a very bulbous cloud with a silver lining. A wooden sign announced "Big Bouncy Beer Bar" so Magnificent headed towards the sound of merry-making and wassailing.
He entered the bar which was situated in a large green podule on top of the cloud. Carving a way through the thick smoke and language within he headed for the counter with a shout of "A pint of Whumph and a bag of Wiggets please!". Beverage supplied he eyed the inhabitants of the hovel. Several flowerpots were playing un-pool (only equipment you need is a heavy cue and a good aim) while a pack of sticky labels pontificated from a table about life, the universe and the 6:23 from Wigan. In a strangely rounded corner sat several shredded wheats who were burbling and arranging themselves in threes.
Magnificent suddenly had a brain-wave. After vigorously toweling himself down he realised that it must be the shredded wheats who were behind mornings. "In order to make people eat boring gray breakfasts, there must be a morning in which such horrors pale beside the effort of getting out of bed!" he said with a swish of his shiny tale.
He swiftly launched an attack. "Garam Masala!" he yelled and dived at the evil shreddies. A few seconds of fishy superpower was all that was needed. Magnificent stood surrounded by crumbs and a free plastic toy (collect the entire set!), "Hurrah!" cried the nearby soap-on-a-rope, "You've saved us from a lifetime of morning misery".
"Ah shucks!" muttered Magnificent and headed home just in time to see the dawning of a new afternoon.
The bricks made no comment.
I was rooting in the depths of our falling down garage and found a soggy, slug eaten pile of old papers from 20 years ago. They had been boxed a couple of house moves ago and long since dumped in the back of the garage. I found a couple of doodles from university days . . . .
This one obviously represents the great circle of life and how we all struggle to stamp our unique identity during our brief time alive. Or I was just bored during a statistics lecture.
This one is a concept showing how organised religion can destroy the preciousness that is innocence by introducing a fear of evil. Or I was still in that bloody statistics lecture.
I also found this snippet from a printer manual, obtained during my first ever job on telephone support for a computer company. Step three is vital!
I have just wasted some slightly amusing time on The Impossible Quiz. I gave up on Q42 though.
One of my all time favourite singles is The Portsmouth Sinfonia's "Classical Mudley", which was their response to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's "Hooked On Classics". Basically short excepts of well known classical music set to a disco beat. The Portsmouth Sinfonia had an out of sync beat with their typical fuzzy approach to the classics. I usually find I end up in tears as I laugh so much. I tried to find a copy on the 'net but could only come up with another of their tracks on YouTube.
Spring is here.
I can always tell, the moment you realise that you can't buy the things you like in the supermarket because they've had to make room for mountains of chocolate eggs. Gah!
Still, only 5 months until the Christmas Puddings appear.
I am also one of those people chosen by Tescos to use as a barometer of what to stock. If I buy the same thing for more than a couple of months, then they stop stocking it.
I'm sure that they think I'll start buying something else instead, like their own brand. Well, I do end up buying something else, from another supermarket.
They won't achieve world domination if they don't stock my wheaties.
Something is making me feel middle-aged.
Now was it getting up bright and early on Saturday to get to town by 9am, to avoid the crowds? (Well, King's Lynn at noon is not a pretty sight, and the bakers might sell out of buns if I'm not there soon enough).
Was it going to a garden centre and thinking that a water butt would be useful?
Or was it taking to a cauliflower in the supermarket? (it was a particularly splendid example of cauliflowerhood, so it deserved a "hmm, you'll do nicely").
I do seem to be talking to myself (or to inanimate objects) far too much just lately. And falling asleep in front of the TV.
At least I do go and see some up-to-date music, like Muse. Although at their last gig (Birmingham) a lot of the audience seemed to be families, and many looked older then I. I remember being at a Muse gig back in 2000 where I felt like the oldest swinger in town, now I must be pretty average . . . or at least pretty :)
I guess I'll have to find some other modern beat combo to listen to, just to keep my street cred. Like these Articulated Monkeys or Kaiser Chefs I keep hearing of.
