MJ invalidated

i hate the whole 'i don't see why i should mourn him more than i should more a stranger' thing when a someone famous dies, just as much as the other predictable reaction of 'omfg you must mourn'. i mean... a royal or a sleb sure, but michael jackson actually had talent... once... i guess he technically died a long time ago and you should mourn people incrementally as they get less good. that seems a lot fairer.

i fear the worst when thatcher dies...

it's like everyone's gone crazy for drugs

chris t-t - why acid is great

badscience - colum on drugs

mind hacks - i've hidden the drugs inside this political football

xkcd - addiction

all in the same week. freaky, man.

jokes you get about 10 years later

"...all... hopla!"

this was referenced in an alexi sayle song of his 'all new alexi sayle show' when i was a wee one, in which rudolf and all the other neglected fantasy figures round up the other reindeer. i never realised.

but what a quote... i'd been enjoying nina simone's cover, but she changes it to 'when shall we kill them?' not 'which shall we kill?', and drops the hopla for some reason. it's available on the watchmen soundtrack, or my spotify playlist, over there ->

i think i might change my name to hopla.

loads of my friends have moved into this area

(theo)(demo)

production notes:
all tracks were first take, except the vocal; i left the first vocal take way down in the mix, it makes everything sound worse.
the main riff gets swamped out by the peripheral guitars towards the end, unfortunately.
it was mainly an excerise in seeing how the guitar parts and lyrics, based on a diatribe i overheard on a bus, i was playing around with fitted in with the tune, written by ian, which we'd been fiddling with in practice. hey look, collaborative song writing. we're a real band.

monster season

godzilla: got about 45 minutes in, and got bored, even though the monster had just showed up and starting munching trains. it didn't seem any more impressive than the mad, dull, hypothesising about dinosaurs under the sea. it came free with the guardian so i thought it was meant to be a classic or something?

jabberwocky - i really really liked this 1977 gilliam, even though it was a bit aimless. m'lady found it completely boring, wheras i loved the cynicism, the vision, the homemade feel to it, and some of the occasional laughs. it was very him, and i like him, so i liked it. it's really misanthropic; michael palin plays his usual fool, surrounded by everyone in the world who hates him, until by chance his fortune changes causing him to be universally adored - it's such a sad film. the girl he loves hates him, until he kills the dragon, and when she finally agrees to marry him - only for his fame and fortune - he is forced into marrying the princess. i love how it rages against the randomness, the unfairness, and the meanness of the world.

the call of cthulhu - fun, jolly attempt at adapting the lovecraft short story in a 1920s style. shame you can't film non-euclidian geometry - r'lyeh didn't look right, but couldn't. it was very brave, DIY, and indie. they managed to extract the racism, but in doing so filmed an all-white cast, which misses the point..?
on a related note - this puts the willies up me. partly because it emenates from lovecraft's placing of r'lyeh.

jokes pour out of me like piss

which member of the who was the biggest love rat?

Roj adultery.

en route

what do you get if you mix judith kerr and little richard?

the tiger who came to tea frutti.

vote!

i don't know who to vote for tomorrow. my heart says green, as trumpeted by the groaner, and again, but there was this scary piece that turned me off them a bit. maybe it's selectively quoted, but if they do want to put homoeopathy on the nhs, they clearly don't understand the science that's so important for a truly green world and can only fail. sure, all the parties are flawed, but i'd be afraid to give my heart so gladly to people who believe "when the drugs have been in use for many generations, as with many natural medicines, the need for statutory control is diminished. Measures will therefore be taken to protect the availability of established herbal and homoeopathic remedies, subject to basic safeguards." of course they're safe - they don't do anything.

i had to dig quite deep to find that quote - and ignore plenty of good stuff about acquiring real drugs for the nhs more cheaply, right to die, free dentistry... the damage is really in this lay scientist piece, which the lib dems come out of pretty well. mmm.
anyone got any opinions i can borrow?

first game named from a half man half biscuit lyric?

"Bin men thin men lexicographers
squid yes; not so octopus"

from 'them's the vagaries'

HAT RID

how tall is a three foot boy stood on a fireplace?

three feet and a hearth.