Against wind chimes

Posted on March 28, 2008 by blogmywiki

Wind chimes. Why? Why why why why why?

Our garden has many other gardens backing on to it, and now a second neighbour has decided that the tree at the bottom of their garden wasn’t quite cutting it as a tree. It needed something else. Blossom and apples? Meh. I know, they must have said, let’s nail some wind chimes to it.

I hate wind chimes, their smug twinkly, plinkly, new age arseing noise. They are at the bottom of their garden so they can ignore them but they are very close to my back door.

Tonight, just as I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I was standing in the back garden trying to nail the back door back together – it had been split in two by a HUGE gust of wind. It was like something out of Consequences. My life is spinning around me, the weather is against me, come on Ye Almighty what can you throw at me now?! Then I heard the bloody fucking wind chimes.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Reproduction

Posted on March 27, 2008 by blogmywiki

Inspired by Wardy, I’ve cranked up Garage Band for the first time – it says here – in two years. Now I have rather less than no musical talent, though I can just about play the gramophone. But that hasn’t stopped me trying to make bloody awful cover versions of tracks off the first Human League album, Reproduction. It’s a synthesiser album from 1979, and it’s still my favourite album in the world ever. I love the weird noises, I love Phil Oakey’s fragile vocals, I love his mad lyrics like:

I spent a bad day yesterday
With a man and a picture of himself
The tape was running and the tv turned…

…fading into a news report of Jim Callaghan leaving office.

Posted in music | 5 Comments

Bugger Bognor

Posted on March 22, 2008 by blogmywiki

Flickr is down, so I’m forced to blog.

Ashes to Ashes is getting better and better. Two highlights this week: Gene Hunt looking at one point exactly like Martin Fry out of ABC (memo to self – get screengrab off AutoROT). And the line – which I have to say I saw coming – “Bugger Bognor”. These were supposedly the Famous Last Words of King George V, which I only know because Peter Greenaway used famous last words as a theme in Drowning by Numbers, hence the names of the Bognor bothers in the film.

By the way, I read somewhere that Moe Sizlack in the Simpsons is based on comedian Rich Hall. They do look identical, but this has to be a joke? Isn’t it?

Great movie double-bills that will never happen: Drowning by Numbers and Bugsy Malone. Alan Parker once said something about leaving the country if Peter Greenaway ever made any more films – always a bad move, threatening to leave the country. The words “don’t let the door slam you on the way out” always spring to mind. But I love both these movies.

Posted in cinema, TV | 2 Comments

I Don’t Even Like the Aphex Twin

Posted on March 17, 2008 by blogmywiki

SAD BAD DADI’ve had ‘Nannou’ by the Aphex Twin stuck in my head all day.

And I don’t even like the Aphex Twin. I think I heard one of his tracks once and hated it, and I used to snigger when the NME said “Congratulations, Mrs Aphex, it’s a twin!”

The soundtrack album to Morvern Callar changed that. Its plinky, plonky melodic genius closes the film and the album. And it’s wheedled its way into my brain.

I enjoyed the film of Movern Callar, but I’m enjoying the book much more. Reading it makes some of the decisions they made in adapting it seem very odd… I don’t recall Morvern crying at all at the start of the film, but she does in the book. And there are some arresting images in the book that I can’t believe they didn’t want to film – the model village and train set in the loft, the body crashing down on it, a man drinking whisky from the gullet of a fish… and why is Morvern English in the film? Why?!

Posted in cinema, literature, music | Leave a comment

Twitter ye not

Posted on February 27, 2008 by blogmywiki

I’ve just had an invitation to Twitter.

Nooooooooooooooooo.

Just before I left Facebook I’d taken to trying to subvert the status thingy by typing in the names of any songs on my iPod that fitted the phrase “Giles Booth is…”. For a while a couple of people may have decided that I was fractionally more interesting, thanks to lines like “Giles Booth is being boiled”, “Giles Booth is between Kate and Naomi” and “Giles Booth is cheating on you”.

But if Facebook is utterly pointless, then Twitter is the last refuge of the insane, web 2.0, 3.0, leading edge, bleeding edge doyenne of les citoyennes du planet web. Repeat after me: “I am updating my Twitter status, I am updating my Twitter status, I am updating my Twitter status…”

Giles Booth is watching Morvern Callar, drinking cider brandy then off to bed.

Posted in internet | 2 Comments