I Have Moved

Last time. This time. This blog has no time. Left.

93 Years On

I know what it looks like – I got a new blog, made all kind of crazy promises and then abandoned it after a few weeks. Well, it’s true. It’s all true. Kind of.

I’ve been building another website for myself you see – one that stuffs everything into one conveniently WordPressed place; the blog, the photos, the videos, plus my CV and some work things too. I’ve also set up an alter-ego blog for the more slanderous stuff (sometimes it’s best if you don’t shout about stuff too hard when it’s your real name up there; it has a habit of coming back and biting you as I’ve discovered recently) but that’s not really active yet either.

The eventual site will be like the Geocities homepage that I had many moons ago when the internet was all clear and Google was just a noise babies made. It’ll be a place to direct folks to for my freelance work, plus a personal collection of all I’ve written and published over the past few years. I’m not as arrogant as to assume anyone would be genuinely interested in all that, I just like the idea of hoarding and collecting it all together for my own personal edification. In years to come I direct my kids to a certain web address and say “look children, conclusive proof that your father did absolutely fuck all with his life other than bitch and whine and make smart arsed comments on the web. At least he had the foresight to put it all in one place, huh… now, which of you can lend me a tenner for some booze?”

Once everything is up and running you will be the first to know. I promise. In the meantime for those of you who’ve been wondering where I’ve gone on Watch With Mothers can rest assured, I’m still there. Same but different.

Finally here’s a spot of evidence that I’ve been doing something productive with my time; the new music video for Digitonal entitled ‘93 Years On.’

Making Clouds

A part time magician / special effects performer has invented a machine which can blow fake cloud shapes into the atmosphere… read the story here. I think they’ve really missed a trick here by announcing it publicly – it could be far more use if no-one knew about it and then they just suddenly started appearing.

Imagine the situations – a desperate criminal on the run is compelled to turn themselves in when they see a cloud shape of their mother looking disapproving in the sky, or an image of God hovers above a fundamentalist compound, or armies are forced to stop shelling each other because images of their leaders hugging suddenly comes between them… personally I’d like to float an image of Jesus Christ over the Vatican, or perhaps a spaceship above the Scientology HQ. Y’know… really fuck with some people’s heads.

Toyboize

Ewen Macintosh has a new web comedy series up on DailyMotion called Toyboize – it’s a documentary on a reformed boyband and their attempts to remake it big. It’s extremely funny and they’re putting a video a day up on their channel here and their website here.

In my humble opinion this is the funniest as songwriter Tim cracks under the pressure to come up with new lyrics.

Love Music / Hate George Lamb

It’s nice to see that many other people also think that 6 Music’s resident fucktard George Lamb is a waste of space. There’s a fair few signatures on the Get Lamb Out petition, and Viz have been steadily taking hits at him for a while now, as viewed above. It’s not that he’s a horrible person, just a fucking useless one… and his appointment as fucktard in charge of pointless celebrity promotion on Big Brother just illustrates how he’s not really suited to a station that’s meant to be all about music.

I like 6 Music – I know alot of people have an issue with it, and maybe for good reason – but I really like it. They play the music I like, have DJ’s who actually care about the music they play and have a generally relaxed and charmed outlook – apart from between 10 and 1 each weekday when they turn it over to an ironic haircut who shouts stolen catchphrases and displays his basic ignorance for the whole world to hear.

The dude is a total fucking tool. It’s nice that he wants to be just like Chris Moyles – and good luck to him – but could he kindly please do it at some other station where the average 15 year old listener will think that repeatedly yelling ’shabba’ is a) really funny and b) really new. 6 Music has Lamacq, LaVerne, Merchant, Riley, Charles and Buxton and Cornish to name but a few – all educated and funny people who are a pleasure to listen to (although Craig Charles’ funk patter can get too much too easily) but George Lamb just drags them down.

Can’t we have just one station that doesn’t feel obliged to a have a celebrity worshipping, catchphrase chanting, joke stealing, audio gurning, Chris Moyle wannabe on it’s staff? It would seem not, because then they might not get the Big Brother audience tuning in to hear him recycle material Comedy Dave threw out and requesting replays of the new Coldplay single. The sooner he gets promoted to Radio 1 and out of the ears of actual music fans the better…

Ways to Amuse Yourself at the Checkout

Firstly, find a checkout that has a minimum of two people waiting to be served and has as fewer number of customer item dividers as possible.

Secondly, place you items on the conveyor belt without using a customer item divider. Your items should be close to the person in fronts shopping, but not so close that they could be thought of being in the same order.

Thirdly, stand back and watch as the person in front becomes increasingly concerned by the proximity of your items and resorts to fervently checking the belt every few seconds to make sure nothing has slipped down and bridged the grocery gap.

Fourthly, mumble a cursory thanks as they grab an item divider and plunge it between the two orders the very moment one becomes available.

Fifthly and finally; marvel at your ability to entertain yourself despite the overbearing threat of exasperated boredom.

Reasons the World is Fucked Up Part One

Let’s face it, we’re screwed. The forces of reason and logic have been banished forever from the world and we’re left with nothing but despotic egotists playing a game of one-upmanship to see who can be a better pious war criminal. It’s bad enough that the USA is currently in the hands of a born again retard hellbent on the total domination of Christianity – but now we have to put up with the insufferable tonguespeakings of a political fugitive.

Blair has finally admitted that he’s all about the Catholicism and he wants to set up an interfaith institution to bring the world together. Is it just me, or is that just about the worst fucking idea you’ve ever heard – a man responsible polarising the religious world by a creating a series of persecuting hate-laws, not to mention the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and he’s going to unite us all in faith…

Let’s be blunt about this. Tony Blair is a war criminal; he’s an oppressive, profiteering corporate apologist who is literally responsible for invading and occupying a sovereign nation in the pursuit of oil. He has reduced personal freedoms, increased the national threat and made a personal fortune off it. He should be arrested and tried for crimes against peace, not given high-ranking jobs and blessed with a FUCKING FOUNDATION IN HIS NAME!

In the interview linked to at the top he says “The worst thing in politics is when you’re so scared of losing support that you don’t do what you think is the right thing. What faith can do is not tell you what is right but give you the strength to do it.”

So let’s get this right; the world was opposed to him, his country marched in their millions to object to his warmongering and his colleagues resigned over his choices – but he had a imaginary voice in his head telling him that bombing brown people on the other side of the world for money was the right thing to do. Take the word ‘God’ out of the equation and the man is clinically insane… yet for some inexplicable reason he is celebrated and rewarded.

And worst of all – above all else – he’s now a fucking catholic. Of all the religions to swear allegiance to, he’s picked the most oppressive, most sexist, most homophobic, most racist and most bigoted. Quite how this is the path of peace is beyond me – perhaps he’s planning on promoting peace to those who don’t get pregnant out of wedlock, or to those who aren’t gay, or to those without wombs, or aren’t AIDS riddled Africans. The idea that this man – who’s wife only last week claimed he was a socialist as opposed to elitist warmonger – can bring peace and harmony to the faiths would hilarious were it not so offensive. The only possible reason I can think of for his Catholic allegiance is that it’s the only religion that could possibly offer solace for the monumental amounts of guilt he should be carrying.

Tony Blair is a despised human being – despised by the Arab world for an illegal war that has all but destroyed their region, despised by much of his country for a cowardly mismanagement of civil liberties and despised by the rest of them for being Bush’s ass relief and leaving an incompetent sour faced accountant in charge.

He deserves to be dragged before the courts charged with crimes against humanity, not be gifted the image of a problem solver and child embracer. He believes in ghosts and goblins and gods and faeries – he takes his marching orders from an omnipotent deity who sits on his shoulder urging to him to do whatever he thinks is right no matter what the world may say against him. He’s a madman set lose on the world, and since we appear to have given him these powers we get everything we deserve.

Monbiot.com

“On Wednesday 28th May 2008, I will attempt a citizen’s arrest of John Robert Bolton, former Under-Secretary of State, US State Department, for the crime of aggression, as established by customary international law and described by Nuremberg Principles VI and VII.”

Read more at monbiot.com, and the permalink is here. That man’s a genius.

Buy a Car, Get a Gun

US Car Dealer in Free Gun Offer – from the BBC.

“He added that the promotion was inspired by recent comments from one of the Democratic nominees for the presidential election, saying: “We did it because of Barack Obama.

“He said all those people in the Midwest, you’ve got to have compassion for them because they’re clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive. We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns.”

If going to church every Sunday and carrying guns isn’t what is meant by the term ‘clinging to guns and religion’ then would somebody kindly explain to me exactly what the fuck is…?

Owner Mark Muller said: “We’re just damn glad to live in a free country where you can have a gun if you want to.”

That maybe the case, but doesn’t anyone else see a slight distinction between the right to defend yourself and the right to receive a gun as a promotional gift? Guns and cars together – brilliant – why not throw in a bottle of malt liquor and some crack cocaine while you’re at it? Make it an all-for-one death frenzy?

365daysofstatic

It’s been almost a year since I last played live with 65 and I’m beginning to really miss it. There’s no great reason why it’s been that long – just a combination of timing, of money, of workloads and the fact we’ve not been able to get together to plan the development of them yet. They will return at some point, but we want them to be brand new and utterly amazing, and this takes time.

The video above was shot by the authoritive Johnny Carbon on the Destruction tour last May, and it’s a really good example of why the visuals compliment the band. The crowd aren’t going nuts, which is a shame as there’s no better way to enjoy this band then in a mosh pit, but the effect of the huge screen is really quite something – and this was also one of the rare occasions in which the lighting engineer understood what we were doing.

I may only be pressing buttons, but there’s alot to press and the timing is quite an art and, basically, it’s the closest I’m ever going to get to be a rock star. Actually, correction, the closest I ever got to being a rock star was when me and Isobel cameoed in Kerrang. Who’s that good looking couple in the background… well I never!

The boys are out in the US with the Cure at the moment, playing insanely short sets to insanely large crowds. I’ve been fortunate enough to have toured Europe, Russia and Japan with them but – wow – a stadium tour of the US? I guess I’ll have to wait until they headline Madison Square Gardens themselves to do that one…

Apart from the live shows the best thing about touring is the experience; the people, the situations, the conversations, the random moments and marvelling at the sheer bloody luck to be paid to do what you love, with the people you love, and to do it all over the world. I feel honoured and blessed to have done it at all, but damn I want to do it again.

Medlo vs 65 will most likely return at some point, until then you can read about their adventures on the road here, and enjoy this other video with the band and a huge fucking screen.