Crackerwax

It would appear that Doug Morris is the Mr Magoo of the music industry.

Go and read this article then pop back.

What a dick, huh? This is the problem with industry figures who have a bottom line to protect, it’s all very here and now. No view of a longer term strategy.

If Kodak had taken the attitude that Mr Morris is taking you would have forgotten who they were by now. Instead Kodak embraced the digital revolution, they wholeheartedly threw themselves into digital camera technology. As a consequence a company that built an empire on the production of 35mm film is still in existence at a time when nobody uses 35mm film anymore.

The MP3 revolution, the digital watershed, was ignored by the music industry in some vague hope that it would die a death. After all they had CDs, weren’t they digital enough for people?
(more…)

I think those that know me will probably realise that I identify closely with this chap.

He is a little supercilious though and at times comes off sounding a bit like the result of some unholy union betwixt Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Dawkins. But I can live with that, especially since he manages to use this belter: ‘God can suck eggs’.

Genius!

There follows a helpful, if a little pedantic, guide to the English language. I will of course be adding to this as and when I remember the common abuses our language suffers at the hands of the young and dim.

• Their/There/They’re
  Very straightforward this one. Their suggests ownership to, there relates to a place and they’re is simply a contraction of they are. An example would be:

  They’re looking for their stuff, I think they left it over there.

• Loose/Lose
  Fuck me this one’s annoying. Loose is the opposite of tight, lose is the opposite of win. As in:

  Because it was loose I managed to lose it.

• Has/As
  How thick do you have to be to not realise that has, has an H? Thick as pig shit that’s how thick.
• Random
  For your reference a man cannot be random, ok? Saying that you met some random man makes absolutely no fucking sense. Saying you chose something at random is fine, saying you chose some random thing makes no sense. Gah!
• Should’ve
  Thanks to Ellen for reminding me of this one.

  Christ this one really, really fucks me off. It’s should’ve, ok? It’s a contraction of should have. It most certainly is not should of.

  They only reason that you think it’s should of is because you and your thick, grunting friends enunciate so badly that you think it sounds like of not ‘ve. Cunts.

I do, I really do. It just makes no sense.

Why would anyone want to spend three days in Somerset knee deep in mud and piss just so they can watch a few achingly cool indie bands or some washed up old has been that all of a sudden, due to students across the country thinking they’re ironic, has become cool again?

Not only that but you have to pay £150 for the privilege of getting a ticket that you can’t then sell if you don’t need it because it’s got your fucking photo on it, plus if you’re going with friends you have to take a gamble as you’re only allowed to buy two tickets at a time anyway. All this from a website that crashes more often than Lindsey Lohan behind the wheel of a Mercedes.

Then when you do eventually get there, after being stuck in a traffic jam the length of the M5, you have to find a place to put up your tent. A place that regardless of how well you choose it is guaranteed to be beside a complete bunch of arses who appear to have been part of some secret government experiment into sleep deprivation, that means they only need two minutes of sleep a week.

And before anyone dares question me, no I haven’t been. So how can I know, you all might ask? Well I’ve never eaten a dog shit sandwich but I don’t need to do that to reason that it would be a pretty unbearable experience.

I’m not certain that this game is going to be as big as Nintendo might hope. Don’t get me wrong it’s great fun and it’s has the potential to be one of the best games ever but I’m not sure the average Wii owner will be able to get into it.

You see the problem is that the Wii is popular with everyone not just gamers and Super Mario Galaxy is very much a gamers game. Your average Wii owner has one game, Wii Sports and they’re not all that interested in mastering anything that involves much more than waggling the Wiimote.

The first few levels do little to bring in the Wiimote-wagglers, it’s so different from anything that has gone before as to actually be confusing. It’s a step beyond Super Mario 64 in that it’s not just a 3D representation of the landscapes that were in the original Mario games it’s a fully realised up, down, in, out, sideways, right way up, upside down, round about, twisty turny, mind fuck of a landscape.

We’ll see how it fares, Gamestation’s second hand section should prove a useful indicator.

I really am, I’m fucking bushed. I can’t wait for the weekend. It’s been a bit of a hectic week for me, tomorrow will be my twelfth straight day at work, not only that but I’ve been putting in twelve hour days!

Not that I’m complaining of course I do love being busy, hours fly by when you busy, but I could just do with a bit of a rest, y’know?

Well hopefully I’m going to manage to get away at a reasonable hour tomorrow. I’ve got a bit of a busy evening, first off it’s coffee in Tamworth with Anna, then once I get home Nick’s pooping around for a spot of gaming and then later Stuart and Andrea might might be popping around too. It’s all go at Douglas Towers…

Lisa Williams is self-styled clairvoyant who parades around on a show called Lisa Williams: Life Among The Dead, solving people’s spirit problems and helping them communicate with the departed.

As a clairvoyant it is Lisa’s unique gift to be able to feel the dead around her. Of course when we say feel we mean react theatrically to unseen hands and make vague statements regarding the probable cause of death or the location that a body was found in.

This isn’t a unique psychic ability she’s displaying. It’s research.

It works so well because in the case of murders or deaths, where the bodies are found that is, you can get all the juicy details you require from a police or coroner’s report, thereby appearing astoundingly (dare I say it spookily) accurate! On the other hand of course, with those cases where a body was never found or the spirit is from a long time ago, who’s going to be able to dispute what you say? What a scam!

What’s worse though is that after describing horrendous deaths, making lots of weird concentration faces and generally just completely putting the wind up the poor gullible people she’s supposed to be helping, she’ll do a piece to camera where she makes glib comments like, ‘I don’t know how they’re going to sleep here tonight.’ before grinning to camera like a Cheshire fucking cat. Quite honestly by the time she’s finished winding you up I’d be surprised if you ever slept again.

Simply put she’s praying on people like some sort of psychic cowboy builder, look at the exchange below. This is a verbatim transcript of her response to someone that has just described how guests freak out after hearing weird knocks and scraping noises in her hotel.

You would need someone like myself to come in and totally cleanse it and clear that person over, help them pass themselves over. That is not a five minute job.

Hotelier nods.

[Room] 307? The one with the decapatation and everything? The problem is that you’re dealing with a very reluctant and strong willed spirit so it would take a while.

I half expected her to suck air through her teeth and ask for a tea with eight sugars.

Look folks sorry to break it to you but when you die you’re dead. There’s no nondescript ethereal place where you will play with all your other dead friends in perfect harmony. Though if you choose to believe there is that’s fine, if it makes you happy great, just don’t get taken in by charlatans like this, they’re scum.

Next time you’re about to tell someone tales of your twisted nights of debauchery try to prevent yourself from displaying your woeful lack of knowledge. The point I’m driving at here is that it is completely fucking pointless to say four AM in the morning.

You see AM is an acronym for ante meridiem and it means pre-noon. So by saying AM you’re already indicating that it’s morning so to say so is unnecessary. Thicko.

My very good friend Tor got married yesterday!

How she managed to snag someone as clearly lovely and well adjusted as James is beyond me, but manage she did! Anyway here’s a couple of the shots I managed to get of the reception.

Well done Mr and Mrs Sammons!

Fucking A! The Mighty Boosh is set to return to your telly screens next week! After I said it was unlikely to be back for a third series and all that. Tchoh!

For the hard of understanding let’s make this clear, The Mighty Boosh is back on Thursday 15th of November at 22:30 on BBC Three.

This is very exciting news, let me tell thee. Huzzah to the BBC!

Bob Dylan’s seminal masterpiece from 1975, Blood On The Tracks, contains a number of astounding tracks. Actually every single track is astounding it’s just that some are more astounding than the rest.

Key amongst these tracks is Simple Twist Of Fate, a song so steeped in Dylan’s own feelings about his life and loves that it’s hard to tell where the stories end and the biography begins. Take a listen.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The lyrics evoke such strong feelings it’s impossible not to be moved, every single sentence paints a picture so vivid you can’t help but picture the scene. Take this verse for example.

A saxophone someplace far off played
As she was walkin’ by the arcade.
As the light bust through a beat-up shade where he was wakin’ up,
She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate
And forgot about a simple twist of fate.

Every line drips atmosphere. There is nothing I can say that would add to what already exists in the song.

Coronation Street is far and away the best of the soaps. I know that’s like saying Hitler was the nicest supremacist but stick with it, ok?

I’m now forced in to watching it five times a week so have decided to let it invade my mind with its ridiculously contrived storylines about murder, teacher/pupil relationships and car crashes with prostitutes locked in boots.

In this time I have become intimately aware of the numerous storylines. The one that intrigues me the most is the one involving the twisted mind of David Platt. Remember, the guy I think is a total cunt? Cool.

Well, up until Wednesday I was under the impression that everyone else in the Corrieverse was of the same opinion. However, on Wednesday at the same time that Sarah and Jason were getting married David drove his Fiesta into the canal. To cut an unnecessarily long story short the police gate crashed the wedding and all of Sarah’s family left fearing David had died.

Of course being a cunt David had merely done this to get back at Sarah. A gamble I’m sure you’ll agree but nevertheless that was the reason he did it and it worked. I’ll get to my point shall I?

It now would appear absolutely everybody is feeling sorry for David! Are you all fucking blind? He’s a shit, through and through. A shit without one single redeeming quality. If I was Sarah I would sit in the house playing with my tits all day have dragged him down to the canal and held him under until he stopped breathing.

We’ve come to York for Suzanne’s birthday! I’m sitting in our very nice room writing this post on a stolen wi-fi connection while Suzanne is listening to her iPod at a volume that would wake the dead.

Last night we went to a Chinese restaurant for a spot of tea and very nice it was too. What’s more the lovely ladies in the place found out it was Suzanne’s birthday and brought us a free dessert!

Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because as you know I’m not, however it was all quite bizarre. They came out of the back singing happy birthday but when they got to the name bit they all stopped, one of them asked Suzanne what her name was and then all started up again.

The dessert itself was a banana fritter with a couple of wee blobs of ice cream (strawberry and vanilla, if you’re interested) and to top it off they stuck two birthday candles in the ice cream. This would all have worked had Suzanne liked banana fritters, still she bravely had a bit.

I’m not sure what we’re doing today but I’d guess it will involve vikings, trains and alcohol. I’m sure we’ll also have time to squeeze in a row!

Motorcycles rock, I want to ride them, I’m going to get my motorbike license!

Just thought you’d like to know.