Cats – a cautionary tale

Posted on April 25, 2008 by blogmywiki

Cats. And the consequences of cats. Listen, watch and learn:
http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/04/24/the-neighbours-cat-won/

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FFS

Posted on April 24, 2008 by blogmywiki

Apparently the new Portishead album – which I love – is ‘depressing’ and ‘scary’. What the hell did anyone expect? An album of Aqua covers? The song from Lazy Town?!? FFS…

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They tried to change the world with their fake theremin!

Posted on April 22, 2008 by blogmywiki

I love Portishead. I bought their first single ‘Numb’ in a record shop (remember them?) in Greenwich purely on the strength of the name of the band – I knew nothing about them. Then I saw them live twice, once in a tiny club on Regent Street just before they got big. I even liked their second album. But I didn’t hold out much hope for album number three – ten year wait. Admirable though this work rate is – 3 albums in 14 years – they did seem to have become a bit ‘up’ themselves.

Listening to Third for the first time now on last.fm, it’s clearly a fantastic record. Their second album was too much like the first – this new one is pleasingly bonkers. There are real drums, there are synthesizers, there are drum machines… and banjos! ‘The Rip’ is utterly beautiful, and ‘Machine Gun’ sounds much more delicate (and brutal at the same time, if that makes any sense) than it did on Jools Holland.
Portishead – The Rip

File under jazz. File under psychedelic. File under folk. File under Jefferson Airplane. File under Joy Division. But on no account file under ‘trip hop’.

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Why I’m Voting for Ken

Posted on April 19, 2008 by blogmywiki

Until a few days ago, I had no idea if I was going to vote for Boris or Ken. I don’t really want either of them to win, but despite never having voted Tory in my life, I was tempted to vote for Boris. Why? Because it would be quite funny watching him fuck things up so royally. He’d fuck them up so badly it would, eventually, be bad enough even to wipe that silly impish grin off his face.

I know he plays up his buffoonery, I know he’s not as stupid as he’d like us to believe, but he’s clearly out of his depth. I’ve only watched one debate but Ken wiped the floor with him rather neatly, I thought. Studio floor came up lovely. That mop of blond hair is clearly good for something.

Then I read Charlie Brooker’s very funny Guardian column on why he’s voting for Ken, and that helped sway me. That and the fact that if the Evening Standard want Ken to lose so badly, it’s got to be worth voting for him just to spite them. Recent issues of the Evening Standard are reminiscent of the 1980s Private Eye spoof Daily Mail headline: AIDS THREAT TO LABOUR VOTERS: VOTE TORY AND WIN A MAESTRO. They make Robert Mugabe look like a subtle spin-meister.

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All Cornwall is latent and the remoter west

Posted on April 16, 2008 by blogmywiki

I read this fine passage from E M Forster today, on the train appropriately enough, and wished I’d spotted it in time to add it to my essay on train travel between Paddington and Slough. Somehow it is made even more poignant by the fact that Mark Speight apparently killed himself so close to Paddington station because it reminded him of trips to the West Country with his girlfriend.

Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo [...] And he is a chilly Londoner who does not endow his stations with some personality, and extend to them, however shyly, the emotions of fear and love.

Howard’s End, Chapter 2.

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