Dag 673: I befriend them in these dreams of mine

Today is the day before christmas eve and it is the last Yonathan Woss show of the year. The next one will not be until March or May or something of next year, so that means this will be the last weekly woss weport for some time.

As it is the last weekly woss weport you may have expected me to go to bed early and start writing my opening story nice and early so I can represent every nuamce of the show within my weport. So I guess I should jump straight in and give you the full facts:

1. I was watching the xmas rosemary and thymne christmas special on pasue TV mode so Jonathan was well underway before I finished watching this.
2. I haven't written a pre woss weport story as I normally do I have just gone straight into the weport.
3. I started watching the show while a Scottish girl was being interviewed so I never saw any of the bits before that.
4. The Jonathan Ross show finished some time ago - I am currently flicking between BBC2 (extras) and CH4 (something about coming up with a xmas number 1).
5. The first lp record I ever bought was hunky dory by David Bowie, the first 7 inch single was I wish it could be christmans every day by Wizzard (I think) and the first ever 12 inch single I bought was Marquee Moon by Television and the first pre recorded tape I ever bought was A Trick of the Tail by Genesis and the first ever compact disk I bought was Victorialand by Cocteau Twins and the first ever music video I bought was pictures at an exhibition by ELP and the first ever music DVD I bought was volumen by Björk.
6. The more numbered items I can think of writing the longer I can get out of having to write the woss weport pwoper.
7. Last Monday when I was flying up to Edinburgh the air hostess asked some bloke near me if he wanted a breakfast. He said "yes please, what have you got?". She replied "Breakfast". I thought that was really funny - in fact some of those BMI hostesses are really nice people.
8. When you fly a lot you get to notice that some men on the plane behave as though they are superior to everyone else and will quite happily do things like:
8a not only take over the middle chair arm, but also up to a third of the space in your own chair
8b take off their jacket in such a way that it wacks you accross your face and just act as though it never happened
8c speak to the hostesses as if they are something stuck to the bottom of their shoes
8d various other things
9. ok I suppose I'd better get to the woss weport now

Ok so, for me, the woss weport began with a scottish lady from extras being interviewed. Extras conatins Ricki Gervase out of the office. A couple of years ago I really liked the office and I bought them on DVD and stuff, but I haven't been too impressed with extras and also when Ricki Gervais gets intervoewed on various programs he comes over as a bit of an arse (as far as I am concerned).

Next up was Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Me and Al went to see Rob Brydon at the fringe in 2004 and as we were on the first row we both got spoken to by him. They are quite funny and both good at doing impersonations. Steve Coogan sometimes comes accross as a bit of an arse when he is interviewed, but I think he does it on purpose. I think Alan Partridge is very funnny. These 2 manage tp get through the Woss Inetrview without having to do too much and the show ends with music by Richard Ashcroft.

So that is the end of the last ever Woss hsow from 2005 and this the end of the last ever woss weport from 2005. So as from next week I will be doing some other sort of posting.

I'll see you in the other room......

Dag 670: Wot no woss weport?

I have had a number of people asking what happened to last weeks woss weport, so here is the story:

There was a woss weport last week and it was published on Friday night as usual. However it was pulled on Saturday night due to the fact that it had not only failed the quality control test, but it had also told me to fuck off.

One of the reasons it failed its quality control test was because I missed the first half of the show and didn't pay much attention to the second half and the reason it told me to fuck off was because my opening story was not up to my usual high standard of literary accomplishment. In fact not only had it failed my quality control test, but I had failed its quality control test.

It is currently being held in quarenteen and if I manage to improve it over the next day or two I will re-instate it. Otherwise I will leave it where it is and hope that next weeks weport is back up to the usual standard.

additional notes from the day before xmas eve
I have had a few complaints about the language used in this post so I have decided to re-instate last weeks woss weport by way of recompence. I hope that makes you stuck up sticky beaks happy.

Dag 656: Dreams that fade in the dawn of morning

The 3 amigos entered the blue blazer with the thirst of 16 antelopes. The northern lad was already there and had just got a drink in. The 3 amigos had actually become 4 just before arriving and they wanted to have a drink with that northern lad, but the blue blazer was more busy than it had ever been before and everyone was trying to order another drink at the exact moment they arrived. After some waiting they managed to aquire 3 bottles of baltika and a half of Scruttocks Old Dirigable and were able to sit down with the northern lad in the corner table of the back room and start their old skool christmas night out. They may not have thought about it at the time, but this was likely to be the last christmas night out they would spend together.
And the only thing that could possibly follow on from that would be the latest episode of the weekly woss weport.
However, things are not as they should be. Somebody had been watching taggart and had missed at least the first half of the happless woss talking to his ensconsed guests.

So the weport opens with Dairmid O'Brian saying goodbye. This is the second time I have missed him performing. The previous time was when I tried to book tickets to see him at the Edinburgh fringe, but he was sold out so we went to see another irish comedian whose name escapes me.

Take that were on next and I didn't pay much attention to them, as can only be expected.

Next up was a lady that had something to do with strictly come dancing. This may sound like some perverted fettish type program, but in fact it is about old fashioned dancing and should be avoided at all costs.

Finally some group played something. I didn't notice much about this apart from the fact that there was a Vox amp involved. I have become a bit of an expert on guitar amps since I bought one the other week.

So by the time a wrote this Yonathan has long since left teh screen and I am watching some James Bond film featuring David Nivia. I'm not sure if it called Casino Royal or not, but I do know that it is rubbish. In fact on reflection, it is even worse than rubbish. This bit that involves people trying to pick up big round stone balls is one of the worst bits of cinema I have ever seen.

So on that note I think I will call it a day and watch an episode of Seinfeld instead.

Goodbye.

Dag 649: There's and angel standing at the door

The door made a creaking sound as it slowly opened and the occupents scurried into the shadows. I just caught a glimse of the last one before it was swallowed into the black pit of oblivion. It was taller than me and it looked scared as it turned away just before disappearing. I wondered why it was scared of someone so much smaller that it, especially as there had been many of them and only 1 of me.

Meanwhile the walkers were nearing the summit of pen-y-ghent and the straggler was feeling tired. He wasn't as fit as the others and he was finding it difficult to keep up. The others realised this and decided to stop for a break. They sat in a group just below the peak on the other side of the hill from the village they had set off from. The straggler breathed heavily as he tried to catch his breath, while the others chatted and drank tomato soup. One of them broke off a piece of kendal mint cake and offered it to the straggler, but he declined the offer. "Sorry, but I've got to get my laptop out and write up the weekly woss weport" was all he manged to reply before the clouds closed in and the thunder and lightning began. The straggler now knew exactly why the occupents had felt so scared.

I think the first guest is called Jack Black and he is in the new King Kong film. They have showed some scenes from this, but none of them seem to have the guest in. Maybe he plays the part of the gorilla. This film looks like it is really well made, but I don't really want to see it as I didn't like the original version. I don't like films that have people being cruel to a big pretend gorilla and then killing it in the end. Tomorrow I am going to see the new Hary Potter film.

Now they are showing a clip from Rock School. I haven't seen this film, but it looks rubbish. Sometimes I wonder whether there are any films that I actually like, but really I know that there are.

Now it's Will Young. He was in some rubbish TV show that turned him into a star so he did pretty well for himself I guess.
Jonathan (pronounced Yonathan) has made some comment or other and Jules has come back with a reply that I found really good. I like Jules Holland.

Anyway, Will Smith has gone off to sing some song and I have to admit that I don't like it at all.

Now it is time for Mr Holland himself. I find Jules a real dilemma. I think he is a really great guy and I find him very funny and I think he has done a great deal for music. His show, later with jules holland, is really good and he has had some great guests. I also think that he is a fantastic piano player and I really used to like some of the squeeze songs. The trouble is that I don't really like his rythmn and blues orchestra style music. Boogie woogie just isn't my cup of tea, but because he is so cool I just can't say a bad word about him.

Now it is Paul Weller performing a song. I never used to like the Jam, but I like quite a few of Paul Weller's songs. I particularly like one called The Changing Man - it is really good.

Now James Blunt is on in some program following Jonathan Ross. It is called James Blunt at the BBC. I don't know much about James Blunt, other than my daughter likes him and the people I work with don't. I wonder who is right? I guess they both are.

Dag 642: Dreams are like water - colourless and dangerous

The boat was floating down the river towards the sea. The water was deep and dark and the boat was moving very slowly. Occasionally it would touch one of the banks and pause momentarily before the current would cause the back of the boat to swing around and the boat would float backwards for a while. Eventually it passed the flat rock on which I was having a picnic. I noticed the boat before it drew level with me and I wondered whether it had broken loose from its mooring as I could see no one on board. As it passed by me I noticed there was something big lurking in the bottom. It seemed to be moving slightly as if it was breathing heavily, but it was larger than any creature I had ever seen before. There was a sudden movement and the thing jumped up and looked back at me as the boat floated away. Although this was clearly some abomination of nature that could only have entered this world through some strange rift in time I had a weekly woss weport to write so I just let it go on its way without a further thought.

First of all Mr Woss went on about getting some sort of OBE or something from the Queen. I often wonder why these things are given to people off TV - though I am sure they have good reasons. While we are on the subject I also often wonder why they put these TV award shows on TV. After all they don't put Sys Admin award shows on TV.

The first guest is out of sex in the city. I have never watched it and I didn't really listen to what was being said as I was busy with the introduction.

Harry Hill was on next and he was pretty funny. I liked his musical performance with those old fashioned horns.

Then it was Patsy Kensit out of Emerdale farm. I don't watch that, but I did go to school with Claire Seed. I also think that Bo Selecta is very good.

Now cold play are being interviewed. They seem to talk quite a bit of nonsense and the singer has got various bits of coloured tape on his hand.

Now they are performing their new single. It is called Talk - which is half of the name of the band Talk Talk.
The one on the right seems to be playing through a Hiwatt amp, but I am not 100% sure - I'll let you know if I mange to confirm it. I can't tell what amp the one on the left has. The one at the back has some drums and the one at the front is singing. I've just noticed that I can hear keyboards being played, but I can't see anyone playing them. Maybe they are miming. I just have confirmation that the one on the right is indeed using a Hiwatt amp. I bought an amp today. I could have got a Hiwatt one for £1200, but instead I bought a Line 6 one for £429. It should arrive tomorrow before noon and no doubt I will mention it in some future posting.

The show has now ended so I have turned over to watch later with Jools Holland.

If any of you went to see Sigur Rós recently you may be interested to know that you can watch the whole of their gig from Reykjavik, Iceland on 27th November 2005on a webcast by clicking here and then clicking on the bit that says "Webcast of the Iceland concert!".

This weeks weekly woss weport was bought to you by I can't be bothered to wite a weekly woss weport wimited.

Dag 635: The Horizon Bleeds And Sucks Its Thumb

The cold north wind was blowing through the trees and whistling like the ghosts of a long forgotten morning. The sound of a breaking twig caused me to start. I was trying to find my way out of the wood, but which ever way I went I ended up in the same glade. The moon hang low in the sky and I just couldn't get away from the ghosts that were following me. Once upon a time I was riding through the wood with my faithful dog and a friend who was running with weights on his feet. But now I just have these ghosts for company. One of the ghosts calls out names that could never be mine, while another writes names in the dust. A third ghost enters my dreams and promises me things that I know she can never give to me. She starts shaking me and I reach out, but can feel nothing. I hear her voice in amongst the sound of the wind. She says "Jeremy Clarkson is currently being interviewed by Jonathan Ross (pronounced Yonathan Woss) and you have to write all about it". This brings me back to reality, for I now realise that Jeremy has been on for ages and I haven't written about anything yet so I'd better get with the program and start the Weekly Woss Weport.

I have to admit that I like Jeremy Clarkson. He says quite a few conrtoversial things, but I don't care - he makes me laugh. He is currenlty smashing up some sort of Nissan Micra or somthing with a big hammer and I don't mind. You know Jeremy Clarkson could say just about anything he jolly well wanted and not only would I not care, but I would probably find it funny.

It is now the end of this interview so now we listen to Jonathen Woss telling us some ghostly paranormal story about some gas fire that started working while Harry Potter was being interviewed. This sprt of thing happens to me all the time.

Now we have the gorillas. They are some sort of pop group made out of cartoons, but it is really a front for Damien Albran out of Pulp. The song has a chorus of children singing and was probably inspired by the first song from the colour of spring by Talk Talk. The Talk Talk song is called "hapiness is easy" and I would say that the most difficult thing about being in a cartoon band is finding someone good enough to draw the cartoons in the first place. If I was in a band I wouldn't bother with the cartoons I'd just perform in person instead.

This Damian Cornflake guy is now saying that the live 8 concert was all about giving money to Africa and there was not a single Afican band performing at it. This is something that I have heard before about this concert. Another thing I have heard is that Hiwatt claimed in some advertising bumph that David Gilmore out of Pink Floyd used a Hiwatt custom 50 combo amp during the G8 concert, but in reality he was using 3 old Hiwatt valve heads and not a custom 50 at all. Do you know that to buy a brand new Hiwatt custom 50 costs almost £1200. That is a lot of money for an amplifier don't you think?

Thy are now showing a clip of Gorilaz on stage and I am pretty impressed with how they did it so Damian Weetabix has gine up in my estimation. He has just gone up even more because he said X Factor is crap. Anyone who thinks X factor is crap is alright by me. Now they are all saying they like the crazy frog so they have all dropped a few places in my chart of coolness.

Now it seems to be time for the final guest who is some kind of film actor called Patrik Swayze or something. They are showing him doing some dancing in a film called dirty dancing and I thing his dancing is rubbish. I think I could do better. Me and Simon Walsh used to do a really good dance when we were at a party of club that would have knocked the socks off what he did. He says he is 53 years old and has had no surgery. Well I am 41 years old, but I did have some surgery once as I had an ingowing toenail removed when I was 16 or 17. See, at least I am prepared to admit what cosmetic surgery I have had.

Now they are showing some scene out of a film with a man and a woman making some sort of clay pot and it makes me feel sick. People should not be allowed to make such contrived rubbish as this.

Now it is Antony and the Johnstons. I must admit that I like some of the songs that they have done, even though Johnston is an american word for penis. This particulet song has got Boy George in it so it is not as good as the other sonsg of theirs I have heard. Boy George once called into my Dad's old pub (the General Tarleton in Ferrensby) one lunchtime and the locals have a bet going as to whether he would go to the gents or the ladies.

And suddenly it is all over.

Dag 621: Down and Out

The sun shined obliquely in through the front windscreen of my car and onto my face causing me to wake with a start. Why had I been asleep in my car? Why was my car in the middle of a field? What had really happened after that Sigur Rós gig last night in the Corn Exchange. Had I really been talking to a tooth fairy? Or was that before the concert had started? Will I ever wear that t-shirt in a brown paper bag full of badges and stickers? What is the mystery behind the 3 labels where you would expect to see only 1? These questions, and many more, may never be answered because it's time for the reguler item to end all reguler items: The Weekly Woss Weport.

As usual I missed the openings, but I was ready in time for the introduction of the first guest, and it's someone from Eastenders. In my day the Jonathan (remember its pronounced Yonathan) Woss show didn't interview people off Eastenders. Either Mr Woss has sold out or someones been leaning on him. Sometimes when I fall in love I think that Eastenders is one of the worst programs on TV; do-do-do-do-do-dododo (that is the drums of the end of Eastenders for those who are too slow to keep up and realise that I am capable of writing some half decent prose now and again).

Shane Richey is wearing a suit and he is also wearing the sort of shoes that go with a suit. I hate wearing suits and I also hate wearing the sort of shoes that go with a suit. In fact I would go a bit further than that and say that me and Shane Richey (for it is he) have probably got nothing at all in common. If I ever go on the Jonathan Woss show I will not be wearing a suit and I will not be wearing the type of shoes that go with a suit. If Shane Richey ever wrote the Weekly Woss Weport I bet he wouldn't be wearing an old IBM RS6000 t-shirt either (if DJ is watching, an RS6000 is a type of car that is much faster than the one he has).

Now we have our second guest and it is Jimmy Carr, but he isn't being interviewed he's doing some kind of stand up routine. This is probably what some people would call subverting the form, but I don't.

Now he has ended his standup routine and realised that he should be sitting next to uncle jonathan because he realises he needs interviewed. Strangley enough, I don't seem to be able to take in anything that is being said. In fact, we may be half way through the show and I haven't reported anything that anyone has actually said. This is probably a really good format for an article reporting on a show in which the main aspect is people talking to each other.

Right, that's the end of Jimmy Carr and now we can get to hear all about Mr Gay International gay of the year show award. Aparently he beat off 25 other contenders.

Now it is the final guest before the band (don't know who they are yet) and it is 2 women called Cameren Diaz or something. I don't know why girls called Cameron Diaz always come in pairs, but they do, so get used to it. Jesus.

They are talking about some film or other and even though I have just seen the trailer for it I can't remember what it is called and I don't even care that I can't remember what it is called. Sometimes you have to realise that it is just time to let the past go and move on.

Did you know that Iceland has some geological formations that are unlike anything anywhere else on this earth or something?

These 2 Cameron Diaz type women are complaining that they aren't coming over as funny as Jimmy Carr did. What do ypu want ladies, jam on it? It's not my fault that you ain't funny. Get used to it and move on. That's what I say. Give me a bottle of Baltica every time.

You may wish to know that I did end up buying doom for a fiver and downloading it and I am currently on level 4. For all those with a W800i I woudl recommend buying it as it is well worth the money.

These Diaz women are now discussing burping. Get real ladies. One of them has admitted that she comes from Australia or something and has just done something with her thumb. Well you don't impress me, because I can do things with my thumb also.

Two drunk women are now putting makeup onto the face of Jonathan Ross. Rubbish daytime cable TV suddenly seems to hold all sorts of attractions. At last, they have finally finished and then it is time for the end of show band. I have just found out that it is Green Day, so we'll see what they have to offer. Ok - not much. Just because you happen to sing a rude word on the Jonathan Woss show doesn't mean you're going to get any creedence from this reviewer. Also, the drummer's hair is rubbish.

So, all in all, it wasn't the best Woss show and to cap it all the next one is in 2 weeks time.

To make up for this we shall extend this weeks Woss Weport to incorporate the Jules Holland Jule fest Report.

After reading the radio times last week, I was lead to believe that the show would include both Sigur Rós and John Cale, but following a fine performance from Paul Weller, Mr Holland intoduced the remaining bands and Mr Cale's name was not mentioned. That must mean something, but I am not prepared to speculate what it is here.

After Paul Weller it was Santana. They have now finished and someone else is singing. I didn't catch her name, so we'll have to sit this one out and wait for the next one. Next up is Sheryl Crow at the piano, but I'm getting tired now, and I'm taping this downstairs anyway so I can't be bothered to write anymore.

However, Mr Jules has just introduced one Mr John Cale, so I'd better just write a little more. Mr Cale is singing his current single off his current album. The single is called perfect and the album is called black acetate. I should, at this point, point out that John Cale has got the same kind of triangle of hair growing under his bottom lip that I have, only his is bigger.

Now Sheryl Crow is singing some song about crows while she plays a piano. Ok, the song may not be about crows, but as I'm not listening to words I can't actually tell what it is about. John Cale's song was about someone who is perfect for him. Lou Reed also wrote a song with perfect in the title, but his wasn't about a person.

If you want to hear about the rest of the show you will have to read it on someone elses blog, because with 10 minutes left before injury time I'm saying goodnight from me, and goodnight from the tooth fairy.

Vi ses imorgon.

Dag 614: rugged and wretched

Twas a dark and stormy night. The rain lashed down and the wind blew sideways. In a dark damp cave the 3 fugitives were huddling around the dying embers of the smoldering fire and wondering what they could do next. One of them spotted Harry Potter out of the corner of his eye and another one noticed a Scottish singer from Texas. The third one began to feel nervous. What kind of trickery could this be?

Well fear not good people, it is simply the Weekly Woss Weport and those 3 fugitives are merely a figment of your imagination.

Following a bit of banter to get both audience an guests feeling comfortable with each others sexuality, the first guest is on the podium. It is someone from Cheers (which is a TV program) and he is talking about being kidnapped by someone. This could be a bit disturbing for our younger readers so you may be advised to look away for this bit. But it does seem to end up ok because he got a cab or something.

Whenever someone tells something to Jonathan and then says I shouldn't have said that, Jonathan always says "It's ok no one noticed". He said it again tonight.

It seems that this ex cheers actor is into hemp in some way. All of his clothes are made out of it, but I can't say that I understand what point he is trying to get across. Personally, I really enjoyed all those shots that I had with Adrian in the Tapas bar on Gamla Stan, made by Michael the barman. I think my favourate was the liquid cocaine one (I had quite a few of those), but they were all pretty good.

I should add, at this point, that I am currently trying to do 3 things at once:
1) Watch the Jonathan Woss show so I can weport on it.
2) Do the actual typing up of the woss weport.
3) Tranfser all the stuff off my old P800 phone so I can take my sim out and put it into my new W800i, which will then enable me to switch it on for the first time. I don't even know what games its got on it yet.

Now it is time for a female Scottish singer, who I haven't got a hope of spelling her name correctly, so I won't even bother trying. She is rather nice, even if I have to say so myself. She is frae Glasgow, but she currently lives in London. She just said "deep fried pizza supper" which has probably caused a number of readers to go weak at the knees. Now she has said cockles and Jonathan Woss has asked her to say penis - which, in my opinion, is taking it too far. She would have been fully entitled to say "Woss - NO - that's taking it too far, gonni nae dee that". To which Woss would say "How?" and she would say "just gonni no - baw bag".

She just used a proper swear word, but they beeped it out, so I'm not sure which one it was - probably cunt.

Now she is talking about nearly getting a part in a film and having respect for actors, so she went down a bit in my estimation, be she recovered in an exemplary manner by rounding it off with "bend over and kiss my arse", you just don't get prose like that these days.

Now it is time for Harry Potter, so I'll get back to sorting out my new phone for a bit.

I've turned it on and all I can say so far is that it has a grand total of 0 decent games. Not much of a surprise there.
While trying to turn on Bluetooth so I can transfer my address book over I managed to find that doom is available for download for £5.00. I left it for now, but I am sure I'll end up downloading it as I do not like the idea of a new phone with no decent games on it.

Now the kaiser chiefs have come on. Old Wossy says they are from Leeds. the song was ok I suppose, bit when it finished you could hear one of them saying to another one that it sounded really good because either some engineer didn't tunr the mike down in time, or because they shouldn't have been speaking owing to the fact that the show has no policy for getting the mikes turned down after the band has finished playing.

Now it is time for the shining to be on. I've seen it before, but maybe I'll just watch it again while I try and find out how to sort my blue tooth out. Oh, and the other thing that is wrong with my phone is that it doesn't have Swedish on it - just a load of stupid languages that no bugger is ever going to want to learn to speak.

Dag 607: bloody and blunt

As I type this I can hear a lone dog barking outside.
The TV is switched on and, on it, two men are talking.
One of them is called Jonathan Woss so I'd better leave my lone dog story for later, because now its time for the Weekly Woss Weport.

I've been doing this for some time now and my readership has almost reached 5 and contains a number of key demographics so I think we can safely say it is a resounding success as far as things on the internet go.

OK - first up was Jade. She has already leaft and I was prepared to write nothing about her as I was (and still am) not a fan of big brother in anyway so I thought she would be rubbish. However she came over much better than I thought she would - although lets not get carried away here. I thought it was pretty cool that she thought the Mona Lisa was painted by Pistachio. I could go one of two ways now, so lets briefly explore them:
1) It was really painted by Brazil.
2) This isn't as bad an answer as you may think as many people believed the artist to be nuts.
As this is the internet complete with full virtual reality you can choose which of the answers you would rather have.
The final note for this part of the show was that Jonathan (pronounced Yonathan of course) ended it saying he may well pay Jade a visit at her Salon, but of course you and I know that there is more chance of Jade coming round here for a coffee than there is of Jonathan going round for a quick blow dry.

Next up was some guy - I didn't catch his name, I didn't recognise him from anything and I wasn't paying attention to him because I was typing up my jade bit, so as Steven Fry is now on I think we'll leave it at that.

Steven Fry - now of course he is the presenter of the great show QI so he has a lot of QDOS. Last week alan Davies was on and he played the side kick of a show also called QI, but I must say the ome that Mr Fry presents is slightly better.
They are talking a bot about the books what he has wrote, and I have to admit that I haven't ready a single one of them (or any other number). I like reading books by Henning Mankell, Lisa Marklund, Ian Rankin and Karin Fossum.
They are now talking about crossword puzzles, but I prefer a good sudoku, and by "good" of course I mean "samurai". DJ prints one out for me most weeks and I do them on the plane. I have been to Spain by plane 3 times now, and it hasn't rained once during the flight.
My that Stephen Fry certainly knows a lot about stuff - he is able to show up old Wossy without even breaking into a sweat (just like me at the gym).
Now they are showing a clip of university challenge. When I used to watch this in my youth I thought that the desk of one team was in fact above the other team and they had to climb up a little ladder like the ones you get with bunk beds.
Mr Fry has no left and it can only be time for some music to round off the show.

This week the group have called themselves the magic numbers and are playing and singing a song. One of them has got an orange amplifier. I once went to see Magna Carta play in Hampswaite Village Hall and they had orange amplifiers too.
I have decided that I am not going to bother buying a cd of these guys. The groupe seem to be made up of long hair and beards (apart from the girl who hasn't got a beard). The bass playet hasn't got one either. As the end credits roll accross the screen from right to left like some wierd cunic script it is time to leave you again and muse upon something profound.

Car toon

It's a strange thing. Usually I have inspiration after an event for a post which contains a bit of humour. This is mainly based on the fact that I find life funny, in a good old Scottish, dark kind of way. This time, however, I'm struggling. It was a straightforward holiday, very enjoyable and all that, but I'm almost having to put together a tour guide.
Right, let's get on with it.
We flew to Belfast first - this was due to the much cheapness of EasyJet, which flies from there to Palma. We were going to Majorca, so that was quite handy. We hung about there for a few hours and met my good friend and partners mum and brother, who live over there, for lunch. It was an easy little jaunt down to the balearic island paradise.
My mum, dad and niece were flying direct from Glasgow, since they'd booked a year in advance, and were landing within 5 minutes of our flight in Palma. This worked perfectly and we met at the airport and all went together to get the hire car. In this particular case I'd hired a 7 seater, it was an Espace although the word 'space' should have been missed out. It was, in it's defense, a big car, and did, indeed seat 7. The bit that was missing was that this left no room at all for anything bigger than a box of matches. We did manage to squeeze everything in though, very precarious, and we only had six passengers (which you'd know if you'd been keeping up).
I jumped into the driver's seat, then jumped back out and round to the other side, which was the real driver' seat and inserted the card. Yup. Card. A slot where the ashtray would be with a button next to it saying 'Start/Stop'. I searched in vain for the handbrake and decided to try starting the engine anyway. I put my foot on the footbrake, just in case, and pressed the button. The engine roared into life and the car didn't shoot forward into the wall. All was going very well so far then. I tried to go into first gear, but the thing wouldn't move. I realised quickly that I hadn't pressed the clutch. It's wierd how you forget how to drive when these little things jump out at you. Anyway, finally got moving, the handbrake light went out and all was well. A pretty uneventful trip later and found the apartment and reverse parked. I say this because I had Dad out guiding me in, but couldn't hear him because of this incessant beeping which had started. It kept getting shorter between beeps until finally it was constant. Yes, it turns out that it's a 'Woman's Parker' which tells you how close to the kerb you are when reversing in. Found out a couple of days later that it was a bus stop I'd parked at, but I'm not giving them 60 euros, so there.
The rest of the week was pool and beach stuff mainly, with a trip to some caves, which were nice.
Only other story was on the way back when Belfast security refused to let the wee man's water guns on board. Big purple and yellow plastic things they were, but the guys were adamant. Of course I did have to say "What am I going to do, break into the cabin and say 'Take me to Cuba or I'll soak you?'", which the junior security guy laughed at, even if the older one looked like he was wanting to shoot me with his real gun.

Dag 603: why?

Few things are more distressing to a well regulated mind than to see a boy, who ought to know better, disporting himself at improper moments.

In a sea of change the prime mover will always keep one eye on the main chance.

If you find a trumpet growing in your garden you should root it out.

A wise man will give you good advice soon.

Dag 602: wondering

As I sit and type the rain is falling outside.
The tree is bereft of bark and the dog has forgotten it's tale.
Three robins dance in formation on the lawn and the sky hangs ominously low.

All I can do is wait to see what dark mysteries this night has yet to lay at my door.

Jules and the Julian Calender

Now and again I sumplement the Weekly Woss Weport with a quick snippet about something else that has caught my attention in someway, and 9 times out of 10 this somthing is Later with Jules Holland.

I started off watching the beginning of Jaws 2 without any great expectations, but then I turned it over to BBC2 just as Uncle Jules was introducing Goldfrapp. The song instantly reminded me of Gary Numan circa Down In The Park (i.e before he went downhill with all his cars pish) and I thought it was really good. It was fairly simple and it got me thinking "I'm sure I could do something like that", but of course I couldn't (especially the singing).

Up to now I didn't think it qualified for a snickerty snippet, but then Bert Backarach and orchestra played some song about shakespere. Those, that know me well will know that anything that includes shakespere in the title has lost 250 jungle points straight away, but this song was fantastic, so I thought to myllef "Ise just gots to blogs this ones" and so I did.

As a small foornote I should add that whenever I see Jules Holland on TV I am reminded of Jules Vilarrubi. This is partly because they share the same name, but mainly because of Julian's almost fanatical devotion to Squeeze in his youth. In fact some people might say it was more than fanatical, but I'll just leave it at that.

Dag 600: I got a gift of butter.....

.....but there isn't time for me or Robin Williamson to discuss the relative merits of butter as a present, because it's time for the Weekly Woss Weport.

Tonight we have Alan Davies, an actress, Des Lynam and Robbie Williams - so a bit of a mixed bunch really.

First up is Alan Davies. He is really great due to his Jonathan Creek fame. I have got all of the Jonathan Creek episodes on DVD and every monday night I watch one with my chicken fried rice and absolute vodka with sprite (and plenty of ice). But to make things even better, in addition to Jonathan Creek being my favourite Jonathan Creek style program QI is also my favourite QI style program so I really enjoyed this bit of the show. In fact I predict that the rest of the show won't be as good as this bit.

Next was the actress - I didn't catch her name, but I think it is quite complicated. She was in the english patient and they showed a clip of it. This film is so rubbish that I chose never to watch it. Then they showed a clip of 4 weddings and a funeral - I also don't like films like this, so we aren't doing very well here. It was while she was being interviewed that I got my computer out from under the bed and booted it up and began typing this so I miseed the rest of he interview.

By the time we get to this sentance Des Lynam is already being interviewed and it has just been revealed that he will be the new presenter of block busters - I mean countdown. When he came on the gay singers same the bit that goes der der der der der der der der poo, so I guess that was a clue to him presenting countdown. They are now talking a bit about sport and boxing. I have never been very keen on sport as I have always preferred music. As a child, my theory was that you either liked sport or music, so it was a bit of a let down that you had to do sport every wednesday afternoon - I think they should give you a choice of sport or music. By the time I was in the 6th form we could choose what sport we wanted to do, from a limited choice, and I always chose squash, because there were only 2 squash courts and loads of people wanted to play it, so if I handled it correctly I managed to get away with 5 minutes in the squash court and the rest of the afternoon chatting to my friends, which is much more fun than sport.

Now we have Mr Robbie Williams and he is being spoken to at the moment rather than just coming on and playing like the musical act usually does. I don't really like his music, but he seems to be coming accross quite well and saying a few funny things. He just said "I am so loving it" so he has gone back down in my estimation again.
Now he is going to sing a couple of songs - let's see what they are like shall we?
song number 1:
This is called triffin (or something). It has just started and I thought it started a bit reggaeish. It doesn't look as thought one of his ear things is in properly. So far I am not thinking this is one of his best songs. The only song of his that I have liked so far is one were he was riding on a horse in the snow in a forest somewhere - it was good, but I can't remember what it is called.
song number 2:
He hasn't finished song number 1 yet so I'm just sitting quietly and waiting just now.
OK he is now ending the song and he is singing some reggae lyrics so it looked like I was on typically good form with my opening comment on that one.
Now song 2 has started. It already sounds better than song 1 to me. He sang "modern thinking made me miserable" and I thought that was quite a good lyric, especially for a Robbie Williams song.

I feel I need to add a footnote at this point. Each week, earlier in the evening, before I write my Weekly Woss Weport I try and think how I am going to open it. Some weeks I think of a good opener, but when it comes to he time to write it I have forgotten what I was going to put and have to make something else up (which happened last week). This week, however, I had remembered what I was going to open with and had already typed it before the guests were announced. So imagine my surprise when I find out that Robbie Williams is on after I have just written a bit about Robin Willamson.

What are the chances of that happening?

Dag 593: The return of the Useless Napkin Bandits

Are you sitting comfortably? - I hope so because its time to put out that fag and read the Weekly Woss Weport.

First up it is an actress. She is called Emma Thompson and she is in a film where she has a rubber nose on and a big false tooth in the middle. I have seen quite a few clips of this film and everytime the nanny looks like Emma Thompson with false bits to make her look older. The interview involved lots of innuendo and also some bits that sounded a bit rude, but without being blatant about it. JR revealed that he doesn't like people other than his wife giving him massages.

Next up is Mr Rob Brydon. Me and Al saw him at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004 and as we sat on the front row we were right in the firing line for getting spoken to by him. He picked on me twice as I had a bright yellow t-shirt with 'swe' written in bright blue which stood out quite abit, but there was a bloke with a 'jesus wants me for a sunbeam' t-shirt on a couple of seats away from me and, obviously, he got picked on over 10 times.
Rob just mentioned that his latest program had a cgi bird in it, that means that the bird was a script (probably written in perl) that was executed when a certain link was clicked on. Those of you that work in compters will, of course, already know that.

We just saw a picture of mr brydon in a sauna with some people out of little britain being topless women.

Now the Wosster is talking about pompei and various rude messages that have been found carved in the rock. Such messages as "my other sheep is a goat" and "don't touch my thingy with your penis".

The final guests are Jordan and Peter Andre. Jorden is Swedish for "the earth" and is pronounced "Yorden". So if we wanted to say "the earth is round" we would say "Jorden är runt". This is just yet another example of why Sweden is such a good place to live. On the other hand, I have no desire to ever meet Jorden and/or Peter Andre. This means I have to sit here enduring them talking about bald badgers and tits while I wait for the band to come on and play, so I can complete my weport. Now they are discussing fame and the fact that they are on the Zed list. They may be on the Zed list, but they keep showing clips of Rob and Emma in the back room and Emma Thompson is lying on the sofa and she looks a bit drunk in the same way as Gerard Depardu also looked a bit drunk, but Mr Woss went on national TV to stress that he wasn't drunk.

While we are waiting for the band to start up I may as well let you know that my latest 2 CDs that I ordered from amazon arrived today. They are Early by Scritti Politti and The Colour of Spring by Talk Talk - I wonder which one I will listen to first.

The earth and Mr Andre have just left so now we can listen to Cash Machine by Hard 5 (or at least that is what their name sounded like to me).
The song opened with someone playing a hohner. I used to have a green one of these when I was younger. It was exactly the same as the one that new order used, but I had mine years before I had ever heard fo new order.
The song isn't too bad, but "cash machine" is a crap name for a song. If I had written it I would have called it something like "the endless task of the fathomless enigma".
They have now started singing "There is a hole in my pocket" over annd over again and I realise I have heard this song before. The hole in my pocket bit is, in my opinion, the best bit of the song.

So Wossy has ended for another week and you wont be able to read this until I hit the "publish post" button, so here goes nothing........

cheap flights @ flightful.com :: find budget flights in europe

cheap flights @ flightful.com :: find budget flights in europe

Dag 590: Life is what you make it

When you have had a few drinks and have gone to bed with your laptop in order to write up a Woss Weport for a very Critical Mass it is very difficult not to waste a load of money buying a load of stuff off iTunes, some of which you will never ever listen to.

This lunchtime I hadn't had any drinks but I bought a couple of cds from hmv.
The first, and most important, purchase was spirit of eden by talk talk. Ever since mentioning talk talk in my recent posting I realised that I needed to buy this agaion and laughing stock. Neither of them were on iTunes. They were both on amazon, but with a week or so lead time. So I went into sunny livingston this lunchtime to see if I could find them there. They didn't have laughing stock, so I will probably resort to amazon for that.
I originally bought spirit of eden on vinyl and it was probably the last vinyl I bought as I moved to cd round about that time. I was initially slightly disappointed with it, as it was so different from their previous release the colour of spring and that is a really strong album. However I gave a few plays and gradually I began to realise how good it was. I'm on my third play of it since purchasing it again this lunchtime and I must say that it is just the best music to be listening to when creating a large number of veritas volumes and filesystems. From now on this music will always go through my head whenever I run vxassist or mkfs.

I also bought () by Sigur Rós which I needed to add to my collection as we will be going to see them next month (10/11/2005) at the edinburgh corn exchange and I like to swat up before going to a concert.

Happy Birthday Andrew. (...and to Paolo for last Friday).

Kill or Cure

I wanted to use this opportunity to share some thoughts. It's quite common for me to brain dump, as my IT brethern know very well, but I'm feeling my yin and yang in perfect balance and feel I can share knowledge and wisdom rather than rant aimlessly as I am prone to do.
The NHS is pish, I know this due to numerous episodes whereby their assistance has been required over the last number of years, but let me recount this experience for your perusal. You should also understand that towards the end, some advice is given, so it's not just an excuse for a moan, honest.
I had a sore shoulder. No big deal in itself, but it lasted a few days, then I couldn't move on Saturday morning, constant pain and all that. So, cue trip to casualty and usual lack of interest, waiting and eventual dismissal as a muscular strain which would take about a week to go away. Under duress, the Doc finally made good with the drugs, so diathamole, or something like that was dispensed; but the 'piss off unless there's something hanging by the last sinew to your badly maimed body' attitude makes me really annoyed.
Anyway, to the interesting bit. I was then taken to a Chinese medical practice (you know, one of those health shops) and the 'Doctor' agreed to see me immediately. The wee chinese guy could speak two words of Engrish - 'O.K.' and 'Betta?'. He took me into a room and I lay on my good side. Some straps were wrapped and secured around my right arm in three equidistant places, wrist to shoulder and then plugged into the electrical control panel. I was a little concerned at this point. He then brought out some sort of microphone shaped object, with a shiny head. I was a little more concerned at this point. As he touched my shoulder with the mic, it send a shock through my body, tensing the muscles in my shoulder and arm. He then proceeded to work on me for 20 minutes with this instrument. It would pulse these electrical shocks for half a second every 3 seconds or so, which varied between causing a reasonable clench of muscle and some pretty serious pain. I must admit to being close to telling him to stop a few times, and I did admit to the Kennedy shooting.
After all this was fnished, he went for the acupuncture approach and stuck some needles into various places, including my shins. This is all about 'meridian' points all over the body. I've had quite a bit of acupuncture before, so this wasn't too bad.
So, another 20 minutes later I was done. I wish I could say I was ready to give up the Robocop impersonator career, but not quite yet. I was, however, only stiff instead of sore, and had a bit of movement back too.
The 'doctor' then gave me a bottle of black balls (pills), I was to take 8(!) of these 3 times a day. He also gave me a little bottle of (Tree Oil) oil, which I was to rub in to the sore area before bed - "Only three drops, no more", and a packet of plasters, with chinese writing on them. £65 the lot, treatment included.
Ah well, it was worth a try, and I'm sure he'll enjoy the money.
I did take the pellets, then had the oil rubbed in before bed and took one of the plasters and stuck it over the sore area. I noted the plasters did have a bit of a smell, which probably made them worth the £5. After a couple of minutes it all went hot, and stayed hot for the rest of the night.
I woke in the morning to find that most of the pain had gone, almost full movement returned and a spring in my step.
So, as morals are the way forward for these stories, here's the one from this.
Shove yer NHS right up yer bahookie.
update
Wood Lock Oil

Dag 588: Seasons they change...

...and so do some groups.

I have mentioned a few groups in recent times that have started off really good, but then following some change of direction have become rubbish. The becoming rubbish is usually accompanied by massive increases in record sales and popularity amongst the general masses.

Here are some of the groups that fit into this category:
Vice versa/ABC: Vice versa were a really good synth band who suddenly changed their name to ABC and started doing some really bad things.
The Human League: I don't blame Phil Oakley for this, but the human league started off really good, but following the tour that went with thier second album 2 of the blokes left and they got a couple of girls in to replace them. Then they recorded "don't you want me baby", which is the worst ever song in the whole wide world and the rest is history.
Scritti Politti: I've mentioned these guys already, but basically they record some tip top self financed stuff, then they do a change of direction complete with rubbish songs and they start doing well in the charts.
New Order: They started off along the lines that Joy division left off, but then they recorded the second worst song in the whole world "blue monday" and went down hill from there onwards (apart from a few good songs that I can't remember the names of).
Genesis: They were really good and then Peter Gabriel left, but they carried on being really good and then Steve Hackett left, and then they were bad......

This change is often referred to as selling out, but very occassionaly a really bad band will do the opposite and "sell in" (or should that be "buy in"?).

One such group that fits in to this category is Talk Talk.
When they began they were full of altruistic dreams,
but their songs were absolutely rubbish. So much so that they got boo'ed of when they supported the genesis reunion that went by the name of six of the best.
But then they released an album called "the colour of spring". This albyum was incredibly good - so good hat it would not be possible to do anything better, but then they record 2 more albums that were even better which mean't that they are 2 of the best albums ever recorded ever. I tried to buy these last 2 albums (spirit of eden and laughing stock) off iTunes last night, but they only had their early stuff (in much the same way that they only has the later stuff of scritti politti.

I think there is a moral to this story and I don't think it needs spelling out here.

Dag 586: Who's that behind scritlocks door?

Why its Jonathan Woss and that means its time for my weekly Woss Weport.

First up tonight it's Sharon Osbourne which is not good news because I hate X fuctor with a vengeance - so much so that I can't even bring myself to type it correctly. The music that results from an X twatktor series is all about making money and that is not what music should be about. Also people who don't happen to fit in with what the judges are looking for should not have to go through the humiliation that they are put through. I can't sing very well, but it doesn't stop me from singing on the songs I record and I would never dream of putting myself forward for such tripe as this. I may not have made it as a musician, but that isn't down to the fact that I can't sing very well. There are a huge number of people who can't sing who have made it, yet they too would have been laughed off X Craptor - however they were sensible not to go on it in the first place.

Next guest was some bloke out of a boy band - didn't notice which one, but it doesn't matter as boy bands are just the sort of rubbish that the X Blumptor produces.

Next up was Bob Hoskins - he came over pretty well and it was the first bit of the show I took any notice of.

Finally it is Miss Dynamite who is singing as I speak. Not my cup of tea I'm afraid. Reminds me of UB40 who I was never fond of listening too. So all in all once we take everything into account this has been the worst Jonathan Ross show since I started reviewing them professionally.

And that's it just finished. So what am I going to watch now?

In other news, I need to mention Scritti Politti.
This is a group that appears in Adrian's top 10 list of groups that are good enough to appear in his top 10 list of groups (and Adrian, this wording actually gets around your dilemma that there could be more than 10 groups good enough to be in your top 10 list).
Anyway, back to Scritti Politti. Firstly, this is a group that I thoroughly approve of. They started by funding their own records and had the novel idea of packing their self financed records in sleeves that simply listed how much each part of the recording/production/packaging process cost. They would never have appeared on X Feltcher.

One of the singles I had of theirs (the one I liked the best) was called Scritlocks Door. I tried to find it on iTunes yesterday, but only their later stuff was on their and that reminded me that I don't like their later stuff. After producing their initial self financed singles the singer got ill and there was a gap. When he got better he changed his music and I no linger liked it (another group that did this was vice versa - I really like them, but they changed their name to ABC and started producing crap). So, the long and the short of it is that although I agreed with Adrian that Scritti Politti were really good it was the early Scritti Politti I liked, not the later version. I was a bit mortified, because I thought there would be no way I would ever get the songs I wanted due to the fact they were only produced in limited quantities on self financed vinyll. I began to wish I had never sold my old Scritti Politti records. However, I then had a look on amazon.co.uk and what did I find - a Scritti Politti CD entitled "early" that contained their early songs - the exact same ones that I used to like. So I added it to my basket and it should be winging its merry way to me next week (when I get around to going to the checkout, because its still just sitting in my basket because I didn't want to just order it on its own and I can't think what else to order - any suggestions?).

While typing this I turned over the TV to BBC2 and watched a song featuring Van Morrison. There is a fairly large band and they all have top of the range microphones similar to (but not exactly the same as) the one I had ordered and was waiting fro me when I got home tonight. I ripped open the packaging in double quick time so I could hold it in my hands. It is a thing of great beauty - the only surprise with it was that it was smaller than I expected it to be. If you are interested it is an AT 4033.

loius the fourteenth - update for down beats

I completely failed to turn the channel over so am now watching Louis The XIV play and the song they are doing contains elements copied from David Bowie, John Cale, The Cure (in look not sound) and probably some other people whose name escapes me.

Dag 579 - the weekly woss weport

Last week I went to bed and watched Jonathan Ross and wrote up a report on the performance of Simple Minds. This proved to be so popular that I have bowed to public demand and decided to review the show each and every week from the comfort of my own bed.
It is on right now and so far Lee Evans has already been on and Louis Therioux is currently being interviewed. I missed most of Lee Evans because I was tidying up downstairs and letting the dog out etc. Lous has been talking about his shows which have included being on the set of pr0n movies, going to swinging parties and meeting pimps. Later there will be some group or other called Louis XVI or something - I have never heard of them, but I have a feeling that they aint going to be as good as simple minds were.
Now they are talking about Jimmy Saville - when I was young I had a friend whose familly knew Jimmy Saville.
Now they are talking about Chris Eubank - I have a friend who lives in the same town as Chris Eubank and he has seen him around and about before (including his big lorry). He may have even met him, but I can't remember.
Now Louis is talking about his cat that was called scratch - I have never met a cat called scratch before, my cats are called dogger and mac. Louis Theroux has just described how he was rubbing his unnuetered cat called scratch on the tummy and how his cat became aroused and how Louis carried on until the frustrated cat had finished. This is quite disgusting and I am glad that the hapless therouix has left the stage and Rossy is telling some between guest jokes.
The final guest is someone from eastenders so I think it is time to turn over and watch something else, which means I won't get to find out whether I like the band or not.
So until next week, its goodbye from me and goodbye from the whole cast of Tintin and the asparagas napkin bandits.

Dag 572 - simple minds for complex people

As I type this I am watching simple minds playing on the jonathan ross show. I don't know what song they are playing, but it sounds typically simple mindish and I think it is pretty good. I have seen simple minds twice in concert, the first time they were supporting magazine and the second time they were the main act (I can't remember who was supporting them, but it may have been china crisis). Both concerts were at Leeds university.
I don't know if it is the same people playing now as it was when I saw them in Leeds, but it looks like it probably is. There are 2 feelings going through my mind as I watch them. The first is that they look like a bunch of geriatrics and the second is that I wish I could be doing what they were doing.

Dag 571 - Skid stop or nutter?

This weekend is the first ever inaugural formula A1 GP grand prix race of the year show award at Brands hatch.
The intrepid DJ will be flying down there tonight and will be driving some car or other in one of the races or something and we, the hard working staff of Critical Mass would like to offer him our full support and let it be known that we are fully behind him on this one.

So, good luck DJ.

Sometimes my pee smells like chicken soup

The cool night drifted into a cold morning. He woke up hungry, not sure where he was and needing to pee. The others snored on, oblivious of his consciousness, dreaming their own dreams. He decided to wait, at least for a while, to see if anyone else would move first.
A single sparrow broke the silence with a high pitched whistle. Summer was almost gone, but autumn still struggled to impose itself on its seasonal rival and could wait until its death throes were over. His bladder started screaming for attention, a spoilt child starting its supermarket tantrum and he knew it would only get worse. He slid a single leg from under the duvet. The air in the room was stale, the same air he'd been breathing all night, but something was wrong. As it caressed his leg he knew that something had happened in the room during the night. The knowledge was absolute and bore no argument. He slid his tired body from the bed and scampered to the bathroom, no longer caring who he disturbed.
The bathroom was dark and he fumbled for the twisted piece of string that would throw it piercing light over the bright white furnishing within. His hand swirled and twisted, trying to find the elusive cord, to no avail. He decided to take his chances in the dark and stepped forward. His foot thumped against a solid object on the floor. He stepped over, cursing whoever had left a wet pile of towels in the middle of the floor. A white ring shone before him, catching what little light was available to advertise its presence. He pulled at the gap in his shorts and fumbled inside. At last he was ready and started to release. The blessed release washed over him and the pain subsided. The tantrum had been averted this time, and he relaxed. He caught a faint whiff of something familiar. At last he placed it, "Chicken Soup" he muttered and collapsed in a pile on the floor.

Millions of games

Millions of games all under one roof, it's called, umm, millions of games.

Dag 563 - I once wrote a poem of stillness and sadness

.......but I'm not writing poems anymore.

However, last night while watching an old episode of Inspector Lindley a couple of song lines came into my head, so I got hold of my lyric book (last added to in the 1980s) and wrote them down. Throughout the reminder of the program further lyrics came into my head so I added those and ended up with nearly a songs worth. They'll need tidying up a bit, but I will then try and write some music to go with them. This will be a first for me, as I usually write the tunes and then try and think of some words to go with them. I will possibly blog them when complete, but not here - I'll do that in my other blog.

Last Saturday night when I went to bed I decided that instead of subjecting innocent bystanders to me rambling on about my music I would create a new blog specially to allow me to do that (at 02:30 I thought it was about time to finish my first post and go to sleep). This means people can read that one if they want to, and the regular punters can stick with this one. So this is the last post here about my own music - you'll still get postings about other peoples music from time to time though. I won't be putting a link to my new blog here, so if you want to read it you'll have to find it for yourself. I'm sure it won't be hard to do. In fact there are 10 clues to its location on this blog, 3 of which can be found before the first line.

The other thing I will be carrying on here are my indepth film analysis, reviews and commentary.
So, a few weeks ago I finally got around to watching Mulholland Drive. It was very watchable and I did enjoy it, however, I did not understand one bit about what was going on with it. I even got confused about who was who, and when I saw those small versions of those old folks doing a jig or something I became even more confused. After it finished I looked at the extras to see if that might help me understand what I had just seen. These included 10 clues to understanding the film. Clue number 1 stated that there are 3 big clues before the opening titles. Ok, I thought, so I started watching the film again, but it began with the opening titles - so how could there be 3 clues before them??? I wondered if there was meant to be a bit before the titles, but it had been cut from my version of the DVD. I could well believe that, because someone had certainly been fiddling with other bits of the film on my copy. For example, just before the lesbian scene (that Adrian has previously alluded to) one of the actresses removes here bath robe. On my copy of the film someone has done a bit of pixelating (like they do to hide peoples faces on crimewatch) only they had missed the face completely with their pixelating. Also the lesbian scene was suspiciously short, so I think someone had got a bit happy with the scissors there too. This was most surprising on a film that I bought in Sweden! Anyway, then I decided that there was no explanation for the film, it was just made up and wasn't supposed to mean anything and the so called '10 clues' were just to get people even more confused. I was so convinced of this theory that I looked it up on the internet and discovered a site that could explain the story, and after reading this explanation it all began to make sense. I'll be waiting a bit for me to forget some of it, and then I shall watch it again.

Day 536: Film 2005

It's a question of sport
but not real sport - only in thought (sung to the theme tune for film 87)

So I haven't seen a huge number of films recently, but here are the in depth reviews of those I remember:

Secret window: I've been meaning to watch this for ages and finally saw this on tuesday night. It was pretty good to watch, but I wasn't too impressed with the ending.
Hide and Seek: I saw this before watching Secret Window. They have similar twists to them, but I got the twist in this one much earlier than I got the twist in Secret Window. Both films were pretty enjoyable though.
The Life Aquatic: I rented this last weekend and from the cover and the cast it looked like it would be really funny, however the humour is pretty subtle and seemed mainly to be take offs of the old Jacques Cousteau films. If you hadn't seen any of those you would be struggling to find the humour (and even if you had, you still have to work at finding the funny bits). I admit that I got bored around half way through and switched off. Maybe I would have enjoyed it better if I was in a different frame of mind.
Dodgeball: Waited ages to see this as I wasn't expecting it to be that good, but it was better than I expected. The story line was pretty obvious, but I think it was meant to be.
Gothika: I really enjoyed this - it is a tip top top of the range film.
Mannen som log: This is the third in the series of these films based on the Henning Mankel books. It was the first one I had seen without reading the book first - I haven't even noticed this book as being available. It was shorter and less dark and forboding than the previous two (or at least shorter than the second). It seemed, therefore, to be more commercial and user friendly that the others. I still enjoyed it though. I did cheat a bit by putting the english subtitles on, which wasn't an option with the previous 2 films in the series.
Meet the Fockers: I enjoyed this film alot, but I still prefer Meet the Parents (Släkten är värst) which is one of my all time favourate films of all time.

I have Mulholland Drive and Spirited Away waiting in the wings to be watched (both bought on my last trip to Stockholm), but the time hasn't seemed right for either of those just yet. Spirited Away is a Japanese film which is dubbed into english (if you bought it in the UK), but my copy is dubbed into swedish so I have to wait until my brain is in need of a good work out before watching it.

Dag 535 - music was my first love

and coming up with crap blog headings was my second.
OK, normally my titles are pretty reasonable, but as I thought I would ramble on about some of the key albums I have bought over the years, and I couldn't think of anything better, I thought I might go for something really cheesy instead. In fact you could almost say this is the story of my life through music.

So I began my life musically deprived as my parents didn't have a record player. This was eventually rectified when they sent off for one from an advert in a newspaper. I can't remember how much it cost, but I know it was cheap and I remember thinking it looked really cheap and nasty when it arrived. It was stereo, but it had very thin speakers and the record deck itself was very plasticy. Also all the wires were firmly attached, there were no connectors here.

The first lp records I remember having were a tuffty club lp and the soundtrack of chitty chitty bang bang. I also had some Thomas the tank engine singles with stories read by Johnny Morris (at least I think that was his name - he used to do the voices on animal magic). I used to listen to chitty chitty bang bang a lot (of course in those days there were no videos or dvds, so you only got to see films when they were shown on TV or at the cinema). Nowadays I hate musicals in all forms so would rather eat my own feet than listen to anything like that again.

So, up to now I had had limited exposure to any music, and what music I did have was pretty dire - so what happened to get me on the right path?

I remember one day my Dad came home from work saying he had been at Leeds University sorting out some scaffolding requirements for the stage there for a concert by David Bowie. It seems he had met with Mr Bowie to discuss what was needed and had been asked if he wanted any free tickets for the show. He asked me if I wanted him to take me to it and my reply was along the lines of "why would I want to go and see him, isn't he the pop star that wears make up?". So I didn't go and see it - I guess you can imagine how many times I have kicked my self since.
Anyway once the concert had passed David Bowie kept popping up, not in person, but I kept hearing him on the radio and remember seeing lost of posters of him in shops and started noticing his records in record shops.
I also began to start liking other pop records I heard on the radio and I started saving up my pocket money to buy singles. I can't remember the first one I bought, but I know I had Tiger Feet by Mud, Ballroom Blitz by Sweet and various singles by Wizard, David Bowie, Status Quo and others.
I then noticed the album Hunky Dory in my local record shop so I decided to save up for that. I finally bought it for the sum of 3 pounds and 60 pence which was a huge sum in those days. I thought it was fantastic and started listening to more and more of that type of music (my chitty chitty bang bang record was put to the back of the pile, never to be played again).
I used to play Hunky Dory a lot and I remember our neighbour telling my parents that their daughter you to listen to it when I played it by holding a glass up to the wall between our houses.
I remember buying seeing and album for not much more than the price of a single which contained loads of songs that I liked including Jean Jeannie by David Bowie so I bought it with my hard saved pocket money only to feel completely ripped off when I played it because the songs didn't sound right - they were played by different people! I could not believe that it was possible for some group to make an album of other peoples songs - I felt I had been ripped off and never played it again.
I came across this phenomenon on a number of other occasions because various relatives knew I liked pop music and bought me Top of the Pops albums for my birthday and Christmas presents. They never got played, and if I had them now they would probably be worth a bit.
So I couldn't really afford many albums so I spent most of my pocket money on singles and when I was alone I would get my trusty tennis racket and tie a bit of cotton to it and then tie the other end to an electric plug and hay presto I had an electric guitar which I could use to strum along to all my records.
When I bought the single of Dance with the Devil by cozy Powell my electric tennis racket just wouldn't do, so I got a pair of my Mums thickest knitting needles and used these on the sofa. In the end I could play the sofa just as well as cozy Powell could play the drums.

I started having piano lessons at school at some point and I liked Life on Mars so much that I was determined to learn how to play it on the piano. I even went as far as inviting someone who was really good at the piano from school around to my house so he could work out how to play it and teach it to me. He came round but once he knew what I wanted from him he became completely uninterested. He had never listened to any David Bowie before and had no interntion of starting at my request.

I'm unsure of the exact dates and even order of events, but this was all based around the early 1970s.
The only reference I can find to a gig at Leeds University was June 2nd 1973, so that would have made me 9 years old, so I must have been 9 or 10 when I bought Hunky Dory (for some reason I'd always thought I was 7 when I bought it). I suppose it is always possible that my memory is so hazy that I had already bought it before my Dad asked if I wanted to go to that gig. Also according to David Bowies website the Leeds University gig was cancelled, so I guess I wouldn't have got to see it even if I had wanted to.

My next stage in my musical apreciation was around 1976. I had spent a fair bit of time with my uncle who was into music in a big way and I remember him having albums by King Crimson, Genesis and John call, amused others. I heard a song by Genesis called A Trick of the Tale and this sounded, in some way, much more advanced than what I had been listening to so I remember shortly after getting a portable tape recorder for my birthday I bought the cassette of A Trick of the Tale. This was played constantly and I remember my Dad telling me to turn the music off many times. Because it was portable I would take it round with me from room to room.
I remember visiting a friends house whose Dad was playing an ABBA album. I thought that was great so I thought I would tape it on my new tape recorder. When he had left the room I put the record on, pressed record on the tape recorder and sat in silence while it taped. I remember he came back in the room after a few songs and I put my finger to my mouth in the hope he wouldn't say anything, but he asked why he needed to be quiet. I told him I was taping the record and he then showed me that with the use of a certain type of cable you could tape an lp over the cable and therefore you could talk while you taped it. It also had the added advantage that the recording would be much higher quality.
I never did learn how to play Life on Mars on the piano, but the Dad who taught me about recording also taught me how to play Sailing by Rod Stewart on the piano. I never really liked that song, but I feel like I am better at the piano that I really am when I play it, so it still gets blasted out from time to time.
By now I had also started buying NME and Melody maker every week and had also bought myself a cheap second hand electric guitar complete with buzzing frets and was spending my time listening to David Bowie, Abba and Genesis. I should stress that at no time had I bought the song that shares the title with this blog entry.

This is enough for now, so part 2 will follow in the near future.

Dag 533 - and that's traitorous

"Wallop!" said the yellow sad eyed wombat to the mother of plenty. Oh yes that's fine for at least 20 different strokes when the rain flows in freely from several apertures but suddenly I heard a flux bird digging the mushrooms from underneath our perforated veruccae with silver pots covering them and died.
The greenfinch that flew past my window yesterday burped as it flew away backwards down the upwards facing slope because never had it once eaten any blue opal fruits. "Well!" said Grobblegott "That's tasty" as bird-shit, which was not yellow anyway, slid through his carpet slippers while he was not wearing them on his tree house garden chair with flowers on the left chair arm.
Anyway, two or black fishes with spotty fins swept out their kitchens without heed of the rotten consequences to life in hospital teaching wards.
The often upset shrew who knew Grobblegott went sick 3 or 7 times but never coughed because he was hermaphroditic - "At least that's a true story" said Fluxbird.
Suddenly, without flybutton, police-tree Shrubbery burst forth or fifth branches in his attempt to fly backwards inconsequentially. Mother of plenty appeared massaging the greenfinch in its entirety. "Gosh! I would think that that's a thrilling non-entity" yelled Wombat through all mouseholes having purple doors which rattled. "Taht!" squealed police-tree Shrubbery. "Are Dungheep's armpits found available locally?". That is unusual to speak of in Gromboland because armpits are never found very near the mountainous lake steamer.
Flicknife Fryingpan called across the gangway to his brother's fiancee, whilst three hot happy buns stole butter from the tapeworm's auntie. "Oy fatso where's Fluxbird's armpit cleaner? I've dropped mine off the edge of Grobblegott's big bulbous midwife".
Finding no jam jars, I decided that it would explode the others wives if something or someone risked breaking them all.
"Wallop!" said the yellow sad nosed wombat. "Is that preferential to repeat such trivia? - Not really cricket what ho? is it?"
Flik flopped over garden zones at midnight screaming 'Blue curtains'. Why this phenomenon occurred wasn't exactly explicable, but he felt normal when he did it.
Amyway, back to the story which was happening simultaneously with this story as might well be expected.
While sniffing uncertainly, Dungheep washed Greenfinch twice in seven bath tubs at Waterloo Bridge Tunnel, Neptune. The clock ticked and the Mother of Plenty watched and waited for something to happen.
Suddenly in a blinding flash a creature strolled invisibly on. "Quack" wasn't said ever so it clipped itself away.
As foretold by the storytellers the jelly mold didn't work on butter because Bekorz wasn't helping the mind make sandwiches.
"Fazoom!" cautioned the, now, spirangulated Police-Tree Shrubbery, as copies of Crass News crassly crassed open baked bean plants stems. The news quickly traveled away from the scene of a crime, not anything to speak silently of, but neither Crass News nor itself were able to withstand the unhappy plight they found Police-Tree Shrubbery not in - slowly, quickly and inbetween.
Wellington boot hill is quite steep and slippery and awfully muddy in several bushes armpits but not herbitualy speaking. Incidentally, cosmic badges.
"Skies biscuits!" whispered Greenfinch. "I have already sold myself 15 hours worth of chewing tape under false eyelashes." psychedelic possums ran round Grobblegott backwards extremely stoned (quartz) concourse (digital) kaleidoscope (watched). Follow you and follow others.
This only philosophy shows Dungheep's intense oneness in life.
hepatitis epidemics had already got 16 of the cousin's sweets before they had been introduced to Grobblegott, who was against any participation, political or otherwise indirectly by noon.
"My God!" spoke Said, "I've just realised that I'm not really supposed to be in this story at all, so I'd better get myself lost."
The thigh high sky fell flying to the clouds (pink and fluffy, but not at all light). Police-Tree Shrubbery gasped at the sight as the pink high clouds rushed to bed with their buxom birds feather and sickle.
They left Corny Marks house in a cataclysmic cosmic pickup of a mess tin, It was soon, I think mostly yesterday, maybe sheltered sooner by squeezey tops of no liquid of no fixed aberration, but plenty later it backwards rained.
Oh, I will sniff for stories untold because I shan't care what happens to our story unless you know what the answer is.
Blue stew, barley and gruel upset, dribbled and dropped.
And of fairies, there was pixies of mice drowned under water through grey hollow slabs, come more slabs. Pavements.
I wouldn't - oh well that'll find some nicely rounded kneecaps of shrew often jellied. Right wing flapping shirtflaps open, Greenfinch crashed into Flicknife Fryingpan as soon as possible.
"Wallop!" said the sad mouthed wombat.
"Titter titter titter" tittered Dungheep, "that was humorous, titter titter titter".
Greenfinch didn't kill Flicknife Fryingpan, but he walloped Dungheep on his interior flybuttons twice.
Sadness filled Dungheep quickly, "boo hoo hoo" swallowed he.
After much consideration and merriment, heart searching and floorcleaning, Dungheep slept all morning, except between break waters and piers. Analysing his situation, he followed, basically, the principles already layed aside by others, especially Tart Taht who hated beauty so much she became beautiful every full moon.
The grey hollow slabs were not moving because they weren't alive or kicking, but they were often non-existent.
(c) PL, MG and DB.

Dag 516: worlds longest gmail conversation (abridged)

A couple of weeks ago my good friends and I had a gmail conversation (at least thats what us people with gmail accounts call them - if you just use email, you'd probably just say you sent some emails or something) which ended up reaching 94. As this makes it the worlds longest gmail discussion I thought I would summerise it here:

Pao: Lets go out on thursday night - dom can choose where
Al: Perfect
Air: I'm quorate
Me: Hope you feel better soon
Pao: Blue Blazer has Sailor Jerry
Al: So is it a date then?
Me: Who is that question aimed at?
Al: you - you fud
Me: yes its on then
Al: Is DJ coming or is he attending his basket weaving class?
Me: He is going to his Jenson Button adoration society meeting.
DDS: If you get fired you'll be playing guitar on the London Underground.
Me: No, It'll be the Stockholm underground.
Air: My quorates are now back down to size. And we could call DOminiC Doc because he knows a bit about Swedisk pr0n or something.
Al: WHAT!!!! I'm the only one with a doctorate in that subject!
Pao: Doc don't like shellfish unless they are queens.
Al: What are you rambling on about and why are you up so insanely early?
Pao: Who told you that? I thought that was between me and the webcam in the booth.
Al: http://paosbooth.com/ credit card required
Al: I want an electric guitar - anyone got any tips?
Me: Get a shergold.
DDS: Time to go electric man.
Al: Damn, I wish I had got to slate him first.
Me: It is an electric guitar actually.
Al: I've just been to Asda and bought ham and bread.
DDS: I just went to Tesco and bought a jerk chicken wrap.
Al: I had too much ham so am a pig. But you had jerk chicken.
Pao: I went to the livi inn.
Al: some joke about a frog and Mick Jagger. The punchline was "It's a knick-knack Patty Wack, now give the frog a loan. His old man's a rolling stone" - you had to be there.
DDS: I am an avian jerk.
Me: I had chile for lunch.
DDS: I want to be a moon - ommmmm.
Al: Incestuous Scatophilia - I win.
Me: Heavy wet and messy space feltching - no you don't.
Al: I feel queasy.
Me: So to sum it up: We meet at 19:30 in the blue blazer and then go on to the hard rock cafe.
Al: blank email (he still hasn't got the hang of these things - sigh)
Me: I just told Andrew to go and read his gmail to find out about tonight and he came back 5 minutes later asking what his gmail address was.
Al: That's hilarious, and believable.
Al: Anyone up for a beer in glasgow next week?
Air: Oh yes we can go to Waxy Baxy Chunky Clarty O'Connor O'Hartigan's
Al: Are we fuck.
Air: They have decent home-made pizza too. Duck pizza? You will.
DJ: Would you like me to go out with you and comment on your driving from an advanced drivers institute type perspective?
DDS: Fools.
Al: Fuds.
Air: Exemplary.
Guy: How are you keeping?
Pao: Plaid.
AB: Most adjacent.
Jonty: C*nts.
Andrew: gmail?
Me: Deck mockets rock.

If these words were people, I would embrace their genocide.

He means you.

Link Fest

Right, just a little experiment - links and only links for humour and knowledge.
Comments welcome, of course....

Dag 502: I want my Shergold back

In around 1978 I spotted a guitar in the window of my local music shop which looked like half of Mike Rutherfords famous dual neck guitar. It was a Shergold Meteor, and I would spend hours standing outside the window starring at it. My Dad must have felt sorry for me because some time later he took me into the shop and bought it for me. I couldn't believe taht I owned a guitar that was the same make as one used by Genesis (who were my fave rave at the time).

I used that guitar in my first band, a punk band called Cloud 9. We played a number of gigs at local youth clubs, church halls and even at the 'Folk and Blues' night at our school. I really liked the idea of throwing my guitar down on the floor at the end of our gigs, but didn't want to damage it, so I used to put a thick blanket down before each gig. Unfortunatley, it did end up getting quite a few dints in it, but it stil played fine.

Cloud 9 eventually went their separate ways and I had, meanwhile, bought a Korg MS 10 mono synth, and my Shergold ended up just beijng used for messing around as I concentrated on my synth playing. With my trusty MS 10 I played synth for Nova Grace, Neural Circus and then went solo. I ended up doing a solo 'Human League style' gig at another of my school's 'Folk and Blues' nights using my own MS 10 and one ownded by my, then, girlfriend (HJ - who stood at the edge of the stage playing tamberine). The backing track was on tape and I played and sang along to it. The show began with a drum beat and bass line while I waited off stage. At the double snare beat I walked on and began to sing. As soon as I started to play the synth I realised it wasn't tuned the same as when I had made the backing tape (in fact as each song went on I found that it had been tuned differently from the previous one). The whole concert was taped from the mixing desk and also from a pair of mics hanging from the roof. I still have a copy of the tape (now transformed into mp3 format) and you can hear me frantically trying to retune my synth during a few of the songs. In the end I ended up programming in a hand clap type sound and just playing along to the tape using that. For those recording enthusiasts amongst us, the recording from the mikes came out much better than the one from the mixing desk as it had more audience noise and atmosphere about it.

The shergold never got used on stage again and I ended up signing up to do A level computer science at Harrogate College and a pre requesit was to own a computer. I didn't have one so I put my beloved bettered Shergold up for sale in the local paper. The first person that came to look at it (who, I remeber had long hair) said he was interested, but couldn't afford it until he had sold his sinclair spectrum. The outcome was obvious - we did a straight swap. I went and did my course, carried on playing synth, and that was that.

Until yesterday. Al sent me an email saying he wanted to buy an electric guitar and did I have any suggestions. I replied saying he should buy a Shergold and promptly did a search on google to see if I could find out if they still made them.
I found this site and discovered that they are no longer made.
I suddenly began to miss my guitar and I want it back.....

So, if you have long hair and you swapped a sinclair spectrum for a shergold sometime in the 1980s in Harrogate please can I buy it back from you? I'll swap it for a spectrum if you like.

Altenatively, if you have a Shergold Meteor in natural finish, can I buy yours?

Freddie

We went out last night. It was really good catching up with the guys, and it's wierd typing this since they all read/write here. So, I'll skip the report, since we were all there. I'm sure Dom can do it more justice anyway.
Only conspicuous absence was Danny boy. (DJ, etc. aren't expected). So Dan has some explaining to do.
Here's to Fredrik Butler, may all his days be long and happy *chink*.

Footnote - I hope Dom doesn't feel cheap and used. Waking in the morning and remembering the things you've done is always hard, but you just put it down to too much drink and the party atmosphere.

Wish you were here

It's tedious, sitting around, trying to figure out which sites to visit which will kill time without being entirely unprofessional. Given the plethora of web tracking tools, keeping your head below the parapet is another constant consideration. I figure that finding a nice long page of information is the way to go, maybe a big wiki entry or something.
I don't have work to do. I'm either really good at this, or there really is nothing to do. It's difficult to deny the urge to pull out the laptop and play a round on my new golf game.
Anyway, I have a few pastimes that you may be able to help with, or at least kill some of your own time with, if you're in a similar position (i.e. work in I.T.)
1 - Electric Guitar - I need something to start out with, but will be decent enough to use for a while if I enjoy it
2 - Acoustic Strings - Too many out there to count, and want to try a few
3 - Missed TV - I've downloaded the first series of 24, the whole of CSI and series 1 of desperate houswives (for the girl). Anything else I should be focussing on?
4 - Holidays - Something unusual, or something worth doing at the weekend in Scotland
5 - Streaming movies over wireless. New laptop does it...almost but why does it still stall? I'd have thought 2MB/s would be the requirement, so wireless (56MB/s?) shouldn't have a problem

Traffic News

I've been playing around on GMaps since it was released a while back. It's nice, it's got some features I really like.
It was updated a couple of weeks ago to include satellite images, although the level of detail is a bit strange.
The latest thing though, is the publishing of APIs that allow geeks to use the maps to overlay all sorts of information.
Clicking on the title of this post will take you to what I think is the best example of a UK based one that I've found. It shows speed cameras, weather reports, local news and a bundle of other things I don't really understand.
I like it when technology and innovation amaze me, it breaks through my cynical tendencies and makes me smile.

Dag 498: Det kallt är av

It has been a little quiet round here as I have been back in my normal home for the last 2 weeks and I don't get much chance to get on the computer there.

I still haven't done a posting about my trip to see Kent in Stockholm, which is now many weekends ago, but I still intend to do it. One of my excuses is that I have been trying to load all my photos from that trip onto my newly purchased .mac web space which I will then link to within the posting. Getting the photos on there was easy, it was when I decided I wanted to rename them that the problems started. With .mac you get a thing called an iDisk. This appears as a volume on your desktop and when you copy files onto it they will be automatically synced up to the iDisk you have on the web. This means you can do things to your local iDisk when you are not hooked up and next time you hook up it will get resynced. So the first problem was that I renamed all of the photos on my local iDisk whcih then got copied onto the web iDisk, ok so far, but then the original photos on the web iDisk got synced back to my powerbook so I now had to copies of the photos on both the web and my laptop. After various bits of messing around I deced to delet my iDisk and start again.

So now I had my iDisk complete with 1 set pf photos with proper names, rather than the numbers my camera had automatically given them. My next step was to create my .mac photo album to which I would be able to link from my soon coming kent concert weekend blog entry. This was easy enough to do, apert from the fact that the photos were sorted alphabetically so they were no longer in cronological order (which they had been on my first trial as the generated number were sequential). This is fixable though as the .mac website allows you to drag the photos around into the order you want. The problem is it is very slow and after dragging a random number of photos into the correct order you suddenly find that the descriptions that go with the photos have suddenly moved out by one place.

So if i can't swap the order of the photos without this happening I need to get the photos in the correct order to start with. So it was back to my local iDisk to rename the files to have a number at the beginning. So once I had done this (and deleted the iDisk again because I had ended up with 2 copies of the photos again and then recreated one with numbers at the start of the filenames) I recreated the online photo album. Unfortunately the sorting of photos was not exactly as I had thought so it went 1 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 20 21 etc...

Now it was nearly right, there were 9 photos in the wrong place. I tried moving these really slowly but, again, ended up with the descriptions getting out of sync. So I renamed the ones with a single digit to have a zero in front of them, which would solve the sorting issue, but of course I ended up with duplicates again.

At this point I ended up taking 2 weeks of work and have just returned today. I currently have an empty iDisk and I will try doing the whole procedure again in the near future. I will then do my blog entry for my weekend in Stockholm (if I still remember what happened by then).

After reading Al's eloquant and moving post I had a look at the stats to see if it had caused our ratings to soar through the roof and found that the share of languages on the computers that connect to this site are as follows:
English: 86.75%
Swedish: 10.84%
Russian: 1.2%
German: 1.2%

This is pretty pleasing to me as it means that as well as gaining a good international reputation for delivery both interesting and hard hitting blog enries, we are also finding that 10.84% of end users have there language set to Swedish. I wonder how many of those percentage points are attributable to that fact that my powerbook has it's language set to Swedish?

To our Swedish fans I would like to say "Tack", to our German fans I would like to say "Danke" and to our Russian fans I would like to say "My tap doesn't work". (ok that bit doesn't work that well on paper, but it is funny because one of the few things I can say in Russian is "my tap doesn't work" - the problem is that I don't know how to write it down. It sounds a bit like "my er cram nerra bootiette". I can also say "where is the map" in Russian. In fact I don't know how to say thankyou in Russian, but thanks anyway for making up 1.2% of our viewing figures.

Until next time, as always, dos vidanya.

The Heat Is On

Well well, it's quiet in here.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
Best.Opening.Line.Ever.
I was reading the latest one of this series of books (exercise for the reader) at the weekend. I was thinking about how the story has emerged and was trying to decide whether the plot had just disappeared up the writer's arse, or whether it was literary genius that I was just too intellectually immature to 'get'. As always, my mind decided it'd had enough of that pretentious nonsense and went off at a tangent. I tried to catch it, honest I did, but it was just too fast.
As always, the thoughts were linked, slowly but determinedly toward where the subconscious wanted the almost-conscious mind to be. I kind of like it when that happens, it feels like the mental equivalent of gravity, all the planets and stars being the thoughts, ideas and emotions swirling around in the immense darkness of our mental universes until the inevitable black hole appears to pull in the nearest ones.
Well, in this particular case, the black hole was pulling in the star that was 1982, with the planets that were my 11th birthday, the vast, alien world that was the move from the highlands of Scotland to the slumlands of Glasgow and the newly discovered world of adult books. Not those kind of adult books you filthy minded minx, the other ones.
My grandparent's (nana and gaga, would you believe) house was full of books. A strange collection of novels from god knows when, combined with large encyclopaedia-like tomes that contained all the wisdom of Victorian Britain about raising and entertaining children. Not in the self-help way that books are these days, more in a "books about children, for children" kind of a way. Obviously written by people with no idea of what children were. There were pages about origami, kite flying, counting raindrops and other such pure and innocent pursuits. I remember the melancholic way I used to read these, already allowing the little descriptions of innocent, happy pastimes supplant the memories of life up North. My recollections of playing in the street at midnight with my friends taking on a shade of brown and my cheap 70's clothing morphing into a Victorian schoolboy's uniform of shorts and blazer, with a little peaked cap. My idealistic memories were doubtlessly fed by the current environment of endless filth, the streets covered in empty crisp packets and cigarette ends, the kids with their dried in, snottery beaks running around and swearing before the inevitable fight broke out between a couple of the sorrowful latch-keys.
I started school after the summer. My parents must have felt sorry for us, or maybe just wanted us out of the way, because they'd shipped of the youngest (which included me) to nana's for most of the 7 week summer. I'd spent that time in the 5 house village of Kentallen, with loch linnhe across the road from the house and endless bracken-covered hills at the back. After a couple of months in Glasgow, it was a welcome release to come back 'home' and feel the sun, and run up the hills with the dogs and not have to worry about the big kids in the street picking on the new kid because of his weird accent and permanently startled look on his face. Reality, however, had to return.
The first day of school, and I was all dressed up with my brown satchel strapped in securely over both shoulders. The uniforms from my old school - which had been a little village one with two classrooms, one for primary 1-4 and one for primary 5-7 - weren't suitable attire for the new school, so I'd been dressed up in black trousers and white shirt in lieu of finding out the proper dress code. I should have sensed the difference immediately as I was being walked to school by mum. All the other kids were strolling down the road alone, some a lot younger than me, dressed in jeans and trainers, with their Nike and Adidas sports bags casually hanging from one shoulder. I was, however, still in startled rabbit mode, and took in none of this and all of this at the same time.
I was introduced to my classmates after registration, where we'd all stood in the sports hall and recited the Lord's Prayer. I stood at the front of the class as instructed by Miss Brown, or White or Turquoise or something, as she told the slack-jawed, uninterested throng of thirty other weans my name and that I was new here, which I'm sure they'd never have guessed if she hadn't mentioned it. I took my red, burning face to my new desk and sat down, hoping against hope that I was done, that I could just disappear into the quiet corners and be forgotten. The teacher was asking about something to do with something. I must have listened at the time, because when she asked me a question about it, I answered. I only did because that was what you did when teachers asked you questions. You did your best to answer in the hope that they didn't tell your mum you were misbehaving the next time she dropped in for a cup of tea on the way to the bus stop. I got the answer right. "Hey, we've got the Brain of Britain here!" exclaimed the helpful teacher, and moved on to a random selection of hard-nosed pupils. My face burned again, not sure whether I'd done well or badly, but sure that the attention was unwelcome and wanting to be left alone.
The fire alarm went. That meant it was 10.30am. That meant the washless throng moved out to the concrete playground for 15 minutes, when another alarm would go off and we'd troop back to the classroom. Just another little difference then, no more head teacher coming out with her church bell in hand, smiling and telling the kids is was 'time to come back in and learn children'.
I stood in the playground, trying to be invisible, as one of my classmates came over, trailed by 3 or 4 more of them. "So, where the fuck are you fucking from then?" he asked. "North Connell" I said meekly. "Where the fuck is that?" asked my new friend. "Up North." I replied. He turned to his friends - "Brain of fucking Britain is from fucking up North.", and turned back to me. "Do you want a square go?” I tried to translate this and failed. "What's that?" I asked politely. One of his friends interjected, "Just fucking deck him Jimmy!” The others joined in with a rhythmic "Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight" chant. The nearest other kids came over to the crowd and joined in. I stood, surrounded, with tears threatening to fall and a bladder desperate to unleash a torrent of hot piss into my new trousers. The boy swung at me, I saw the fist through blurry eyes and swayed a bit so it just glanced across my temple. The rage came upon me and I unleashed a torrent of blows, obviously using my brown leather satchel as my weapon of choice. He fell to the ground after the first couple of shots, as I continued to rain satchel laden terror upon him until a teacher ran over and dragged me away to the headmistress' office. "I hope you're not going to be trouble" she said "We already have enough of that". I answered that I wasn't and I was sorry and she guided me back to class. I sat back at my desk and continued learning, thankful that I had black trousers on, which didn't show the damp patch very well. And anyway, I'd only leaked a little bit, and my pants would have soaked most of that up.
So I started reading books, becoming the hero for a while as I immersed myself in these new worlds. And I read that opening line "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.", and was hooked. I wanted to be both men. I wanted to run away, but 'flee' just sounded much faster and more honourable. And I wanted to be the gunslinger, standing firm with no emotion in my eyes as I watched the fear in the face of those that had forgotten their father. As always, some middle ground was eventually found. I gave James a few bloody noses and we became friends. I tumbled around with a few other kids and won and lost. I found there were acceptable limits when I picked up the hammer in woodwork to subdue a particularly annoying boy and was sent home for a couple of days on 'suspension'. I never hit him, just scared him a bit. And I peeked over the changing room curtains when Debbie was changing for the end of (primary 7) year school play at which I was receiving the school Dux medal, and saw her rapidly developing breasts. I don't know where the medal is these days, or where Debbie is for that matter, but I know which one is my favourite planet in the Universe of my mind.