Dag 795: I've never done good things

I have been working at a television company on some project or something for some time now. I used to work in a big room full of people with about 10 TVs at the front showing various TV channels. Usually it was sport and Australian aerobics, but one day about 2 and a half years ago it was decided that there wasn't enough available power for the computers so any non essential bit of kit that ran off electricity would need to be switched off and so all of the TVs were switched off never to be seen on again.

So it remained until about 1 month ago. By this time I was working in another room which was much smaller. There was 1 portable TV in here, but it only got switched on at night so when I was on the night shift I could watch Sinefeld, the simpsons or futurama. But about a month ago the TV was moved down to my end of the room and started being switched on during the day. Rather than showing sports channels the TV was tuned into music channels so I have been watching music videos for some weeks and it had been a revelation. When I was about 17 I used to listen to John Peel on the radio at night. I heard all the latest songs and knew pretty much all I needed to know about what groups were hot an which were goats. As I got older I started only listening to the music I liked. I bought all the albums produced by the groups I liked, but I never heard anything new as I never listened to the radio any more.

In the last few weeks I have heard many groups that I previously knew nothing about and I now feel I am getting back to my original status of knowing more about what groups are cool than anyone else.

Only this afternoon before leaving work, as well as hearing Mr Blunt telling us about his semi by the sea, I saw the video of "Don't forget to white your weekly woss weport" by Coldplay.

As usual I missed the beginning - but not as much as I usually miss.

First up is Mr Sir Tom Jones of Lady's knickers fame.

It seems Sir Tom is 65 years old but still going strong in the old tonsils department. He seems to have done pretty well of late as he is one of the few older performers that still seems to be considered cool.

Mr Woss showed a clip of Tom doing the song obla dee obla da, which reminded me that I had the single of this song, but mine was sung by a group called Marmalade. I remember it had an orange label, but I can't remember what the B side was.
I can't remember what the first single I ever bought was, but the first album I ever bought was Hunky Dory by David Bowie and the first 12 inch single I bought was Marquee Moon by Television. Both of these were played to death and were major influences on my life.

Soon after this Mr Jones leaves and Mr Woss starts talking about Tom Cruise and then goes on to relate the story of Xenu that Scientologists of level 3 and above seem to believe in.

This is followed by some footage of a stripper who just happens to be the next guest. It seems that she is the number 1 burlesque stripper of modern times and I suppose I'm not really in a position to argue against that as stripping is not currently one of my specialist subjects.

I've never done bad things.

I'm not sure if I have missed something but I think that Mr Woss may have just said that this stripper is married to Marilyn Manson.

The stripper has now left and Wossy is talking about the time he had a video camera up his bottom and they videod it. This reminds me of an episode of Jonathan Creek. Now he has decided to show the video accompanied by music from Sigur Ros. I can think of other things I would rather see to the music of Sigur Ros.

Now it is the final guest - Mr Graham Norton. I first came across Mr Norton on Father Ted. I think he has been on 2 or 3 episodes and at the time Father Ted was just about my favourite comedy on TV. I recorded the whole of series 3 on video and I used to watch it ever night when I went to bed for about 18 months around 2000. I haven't watched any Father Ted for some year so so maybe it is time to watch them all over again.

They are talking about some new program on TV presented by Mr Norton that is some sort of dancing competition or other. Some sort of follow on from come dancing or something - not my cup of tea so I think I will concentrate on trying to write the opening as I haven't thought of what to put yet. Up until now you may have thought that I write that bit first, but that is not the case - I regularly write the opening seg-way after I have written the actual Woss Weport. This is what is known as a trick of the trade and normally we are not allowed to tell people about these, but I have never been one to keep to the code of the magic circle, so now you know.

The show ended with a new song by Mr Jones which sounded ok to me, though I won't be rushing out to buy it in a hurry.

I've never done anything out of the blue.

Dag 788: The post that hurts the most

The car was stuck behind behind 2 caravans and a lorry and progress was slow. The driver noticed that a green car had appeared behind him and was giving the appearence of impatience. The car seemed to be full of people and heavily laden.
The driver was not able to pass any of the vehicles in front of him and the green car was not able to pass him.
Eventually the winding road reached the motorway and the green car overtook the driver, who noticed that it appeared to be so heavily laden that the wheels seemed to be almost touching the wheel arches.
The green car was in the middle lane and had to brake as a lorry pulled out infront of it. The driver was picking up speed in his smart car and pulled into the overtaking lane passing both the green car and the lorry that had slowed it down.

The smart car carried on and the driver had forgotten all about the green car until about 15 minutes later he saw it in the rear view mirror. It looked like it was almost scraping the motorway under the weight of its load. It gradually caught up with the smart car and pulled into the overtaking lane. As it slowly passed the smart car the driver noticed that the passengers were watching the smart car and making hand gestures and shuffling body movements that suggested they were all willing the green car to be able to overtake the smart car. It took a while, but eventually the green car passed the smart car and pulled in front of it. The green car seemed to be going flat out as it stayed just infront of the smart car. The smart driver thought that maybe the green car hadn't liked being overtaken by a humble smart and wanted to assert its place in the car food chain by staying in front of the funny toy like smart car. After about 10 minutes the smart driver noticed that a bit of smoke seemed to be coming from one of the front wheels of the green car. He couldn't tell whether this was from the tire rubbing on something or coming from the engine. It had only been a wisp, but the smart pulled back a bit as he thought that this green car was probably driving a bit too hard and may be about to break down.

The smart car followed the green car for a few more miles and then suddenly a much thicker plume of smoke came from the green car and it slowed down, indicated and pulled onto the hard shoulder. The smart driver drove past and wondered what would become of the green car and its occupants. Were they on there way to a weekend away? Would the trip be over for them, or would they still make it to their destination. Would the car still have broken down if it hadn't been overtaken by that humble smart car? As these questions went through the mind of the driver a large motorway sign loomed up.

As the sign came into view the driver noticed the message made up of giant orange pixels "weekly woss weport next exit".

As so often happens he missed both the exit and the start of the show.

For me the show began with the tail end of some woman being interviewed and I have no idea who she is. No doubt I could find out with a quick diversion to google, but I think I prefer not to know.

So by the time I was sitting comfortably Mr Woss was talking about some drunk chimp giving him the finger. This was followed by Johnny Vegas doing what the chimp did (from the back room) and then it was his turn to come up to the desk of Woss. I find Johnny Vegas a really funny guy - I have seen quite a few episodes of ideal and really enjoyed it. It is currently on my list of DVDs to purchase. Whatever Mr Vegas says it always makes me laugh and tonight it was no different.

Next up was Joan Collins. I wasn't really very interested in hearing what she had to say so I spent the time catching up on emails and seeing if any more people had been visiting my myspace page. I now have 15 friends and my songs have had a total of 261 plays (even though 251 of those are probably from me visiting the page I can still kid myself that loads of people have been listening to them).

The show ended with not one but two songs by the red hot Chile peppers- I'm afraid they did not pass the old grey whistle test as far as I was concerned and were, in my view, what is sometimes referred to as rubbish. And the fact that they jumped around a lot didn't get them any extra kudos as far as I was concerned.

This morning I had seen that there was going to be some sort of religious type easter show in Manchester tonight and it was to be shown on BBC2. This didn't really catch my attention until they mentioned that it would contain music from Manchester groups including Joy Division and New Order, so I thought that might be a good thing to watch a bit of once Mr Woss had finished his stuff.

Changing the station to channel 2 was with me the work of a moment and I joined the program halfway through Blue Monday by New Order. It sounded pretty good with acoustic instruments. All in all I think it was a really good idea to put this show on and it certainly looks like plenty of people have turned up to see it. The only down side to it is the religious element which kind of puts me off, as I don't go in for all that stuff, but I still think it is a pretty good idea - if that can make sense.
I used to be a student in Manchester and have never been back since, but seeing the square brought back quite a few memories of those days.
In fact having watched this for a bit now, the religious elements are putting me off - even though I think the music is pretty good.

While I was driving back from Scotland today I was thinking about how people can believe that a god exists. It seems to me that if there was a god who had created the earth and all the creatures on it, if he was such a good god he would have created all creatures as vegetarians so that no creature had any need to harm or kill any other one. Various animals have various skills that help them survive, such as fur that blends in with the landscape. If god made them like this it seems to me that he/she was playing some sort of sadistic game whereby the animals that are considered prey get a bit of a chance of not being killed by the stalkers. Its a bit like those films where the baddies let their prey have a head start and then go after them.

Anyway that's enough religious talk - anyone would think it was some sort of religious day or something.

Dag 781: This is not my voice

For some golfing type of reason Jonathan Ross is not on BBC1 tonight so as an alternative they have put Tarrent on TV on ITV instead.

Last week I went into the co-op in East Calder and after choosing my items I joined the queue at the checkout. An old lady in front of me had a £10 note in her hand and her total came to £4.85. She handed over the tenner and the lady on the till said "you haven't got a £5.00 note have you as we have run out".
The old lady said "No sorry this is all I have".
So the lady at the till said "ok I'll have to give you your change in pound coins".
This sent the old Lady into a mild panic and she said "Oh dear, I might have a pound coin in my purse, if I give you that will it help?"
The lady at the till said "no, I need a £5 note".
The old Lady then opened her purse and pulled out 1 £5 note and said "Oh, I didn't know I had that fiver that I did'nae know I had".

I found that so amusing that I thought I would relate it here - of course all of this was said in a Scottish accent.

Tarrent on TV has now finished, but I am not too bothered as Dylan Moran in concert is on soon on channel 4.
I am very much looking forward to watching this as it was the very first program I watched in bed on the TV that we have in our bedroom (and I only caught the end of it first time round).

Paolo and I had come to the conclusion a few months ago that we didn't go to enough concerts anymore so we managed to organise a night out at a gig on Wednesday. We didn't manage to get as many people as we did at our Goldfrapp night out, but we made up for it in the amount of booze consumed.

The chosen gig of the night was at The Caberet Voltaire. It was a special aniversary gig featuring:
The Presets - nice pair of old Korgs
Xvectors - fronted by one of Paolo's drinking partners
The Blackouts - Their first gig, they played really well and were well received.

The night started out with a few Baltikas at the Blue Blazer and then it was onwards and upwards to The Cabaret Voltaire.
Once in the door Paolo and I rushed straight down to the stage while the others hung back. Though once I had refused to buy them a drink after The Blackouts set they soon saw the light and came down to the front to join us for a drink and the Xvectors. They really were good and I will see them again at the first chance I get.
Finally it was The presets who really got the crowd dancing.

I knew it was a good night because I didn't feel good the next day.