I've been lax at keeping my blogs going, so to get back in the mood I thought I'd try this iTunes meme from chaletian.

My iTunes shows just how big and varied a music fan I am. I make no apologies.

Length of Songs: 59 Days (!)

Sort by Song Title:
FIRST: (A) Touch Sensitive by Super Furry Animals
LAST: 99 Red Balloons by Nena

Sort by Time:
SHORTEST TRACK: Home Of Rock (Dialogue) 00:05 by Steven Wright (from the Reservoir Dogs OST) - actually there are hundreds of others but most of them are miniscule noise samples from the home demos I do.

Shortest Actual song: Miracle Cure (00:12) from Tommy by The Who

LONGEST Track: En Attendant Cousteau (46:56) by Jean Michel Jarre
Actual song: Karn Evil 9 (29:38) by Emerson, Lake And Palmer

Sort by Album:
FIRST SONG: Exit Stage Right by Badly Drawn Boy (from "About A Boy")
LAST SONG: Sleep Don't Weep by Damien Rice ("from 9")
This assumes I ignore all the tracks without an album title.

First 10 Songs that Come up On Shuffle:

1. "If I Survive" by Hybrid (From "Wide Angle")
2. "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" by Scott Walker
3. "Join Together" by The Who
4. "Frog's Legs and Dragons Teeth" by Bellowhead
5. "There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards" by Ian Dury And The Blockheads
6. "Pale Shelter" by Tears For Fears
7. "New Lace Sleeves" by Elvis Costello
8. "Live And Let Live" by LOVE
9. "Let There Be More Light" by Pink Floyd
10. "Clash City Rockers" by The Clash
    

Search...
“Sex” : 65 (including the whole of the Albums "Sextet and "Futuresex/Lovesounds" as well as "Blood Sugar Sex Magic")
“Love” : 647
“You” : 1073
“Death” : 12
“Hate” : 11
“Wish” : 17










So there it is. Should give you some idea of the breadth of my tastes anyway. See you soon.

A

Oh, Hellcakes!

I love compound nouns - hellcakes is just one of the highly descriptive and often highly offensive ones I've come up with.

The last post I made (on Jacko) contains so many grammatical errors it is deserving of such a noun.

I have left it alone since it is my sheer exasperation and speed of typing that caused them rather than alcohol or stupidity - there was a lot of rewriting of half sentences that were too cruel and these rewrites were done in a very short space of time.

If anyone feels the need to mock me for it, the comments section exists for just such a purpose!

A

Oh, stop it! MJ attracts the latest in the line of Grief Tourists

I have no problem with Michael Jackson, believe me. Off The Wall is a great album despite some of the soppy love song nonsense.

But surely, SURELY this story is done with now?

Here is a concept - if you were all big fans of MJ already, why the hell didn't you already own Man In The Mirror? Or Billie Jean? or Thriller for that matter?

The answer to this question is of course what I call, rather obviously, "grief tourists".

These people who have no personal interest in the deceased Nor indeed did many of them care enough to follow him closely nor even more bravely took the financial and credibility hit that would be buying the woeful "invincible" album.

All of a sudden these zero relations are crying in the streets, contributing messages of loss to phone ins, shocked and stunned at their loss and spend hours a day bemoaning the unfairness of the world that costs famous people their lives at regular intervals.

Then they buy his records.

I OWN two of his records and I haven't felt the desire to listen to them since his death. First of all, his death has not changed how good they are - and at their best they remain undeniable classics. Secondly, I know them pretty much back to front anyway, since I listened to them while he was STILL ALIVE!

My only idea here is that the record buying public are either buying these records out of guilt or some kind of feeling of grievers' minimum knowledge obligation

ie: "I'm saying his death has really affected me, but I can't hum the bridge to Man In The Mirror, I know - I'll download it and pretend I knew it all along"

Everyone who was alive and sentient in 1997 recognises the parallel with Princess Diana here - she was a desperately unhappy celebrity, though almost certainly less damaged mentally than Jacko was, and her death seemed equally as sudden and unexpected. I recall, despite only being 16 at the time, the sheer ludicrous snowballing of grief from people who probably wouldn't even have recognised "the people's princess" if she bought a bag of Quavers from their corner shop.

They'd probably have mistaken her for Jill Dando or something.

But they saw others on the news crying and laying flowers, and suddenly everyone had to do it. Seriously - you weren't properly grieving if you didn't go down to the Queen's house and littering.

So why does humanity do this?

When I attended the funeral several years ago of a distant relative, I felt like a fraud for standing there since I knew virtually nothing about the deceased, and in perpetual terror that someone would ask me what she was like or something. Sure I was sad that many people I knew were sad and had lost someone, but just how involved could I feel in the death of that one person?

It seems that these "grief tourists" have no such reticence. Urged on by a media now obsessed with lionising a man they tried to destroy a couple of years ago they are force fed the concept that public displays of grief for a man you didn't know are not only OK, but expected of you.

And what do they get out of it? The core of many human aims - in-group acceptance. Suddenly, it's very fashionable or "normal" to love Michael Jackson and everything he did. Suddenly rather than the weirdo loner who has been repeatedly accused of being a highly disturbed child molester he becomes instead The King Of Pop - an icon of the modern age and a hero for a generation.

If even half the people who claim to have thought of him in such a way actually did, he would probably have been a lot more secure and perhaps his death would have been avoided, and can you really look me in the eye and say it was unexpected?

Even so, these grief tourists are less annoying than those on Twitter who were kicking out Jacko death jokes within moments of the announcement that he had died, perhaps even before his body had cooled. These people really do need a kick up the backside. At least wait until he's had a post mortem!

I sum up those first few hours after his death like so:

"Miserable, deeply disturbed abused child dies. World laughs."

This was not our finest hour.

A

Now I'm back, from outer space.

Actually, I've never been away, I've just allowed other parts of my life to take over my routine, so the movie reviews over at the sister site, and mindless meanderings here have not been forthcoming.

Did you both miss me?

In fact, the only place I've been regularly posting is TWITTER, and my last 25 posts at the moment (whichever moment it happens to be) will appear now on this blog over there ---->

For those wo receive my blogs via email, bad luck. You'll have to actually visit my site to see the tweets, if that's your thing, but that's where they are.

I'm undecided on Twitter at the moment. I have nothing to sell, and I'm not a celebrity, but I have a few conversations with people on there I wouldn't normally become "facebook friends" with because I don;t actually know them. Many of these posts are board game related.

An interesting thing I saw on Twitter ast week was just how fast people started making fun of Michael Jackson's death. I was seeing horrible jokes at his expense certainly before his corpse was cold, and I think this may be the downside of Twitter.

It gives you the chance to share in people's internal monologues - the problem being, of course, that people aren't used to censoring their internal monologues so you sometimes get mindless, pointless mental meanderings (like many of my posts) or things that seemed funny in the posters' heads only to find they'e not so funny out of context or without inflection.

I treat Twitter in two ways - first as a genuine micro blog - I tweet often about what I'm doing, watching or thinking. Secondly to respond to others' POV and micro blogs. I am never going to be interested in it as a self promotion tool or as an information gathering medium (although that was how I heard of MJ's death - I double checked it on the news just in case it was a wind up) and there are many irritating market research bots and sex site linkers getting in the way.

So I'm undecided. We shall see if I keep it up.

Anyway - here's to some happy tweeting, and thanks for reading (if you still do)

A

I'm afraid of Americans

Bowie reference aside, and taking into account the editing choices that can be taken, I was still horrified by a quite astonishing clip from Fox news shown today on Jon Stewart's "Daily Show".

In a particularly daft and tasteless rant, a defence pundit stated, well, you can see below. DO bear in mind that Stewart's show is a comedy programme and I'm sure this is edited for dramatic effect, but the guy clearly calls for an attack on America.

FOLLOW THIS LINK AND JOIN ME IN INCREDULITY

I apologise for the advert beforehand, but that's the internet for you.

Er... I don't normally post links to videos since it's not a big thing for me, but I didn't think my quoting could do this justice. Is there any version of our planet on which this isn't hideously inappropriate?

And this isn't some half arsed small audience talk show on a small station - this is prime time FOX news. Boy am I glad I have only two channels full of 24 nonsense to watch.

A

Well, aside from the obvious fact that odour control cat litter is less effective at odour control than the wooden kind not a lot has been going on in Algo world recently.

Many factors contribute to this lack of reportable activity. Here's a list;

• I was recently given a huge pile of books by our neighbour who is moving out. They are RPG rulebooks and I've been flipping through them when normally I would have written on my blogs.
• I have been up against it with these cats. The mum and older daughter are ready to be rehomed, but noone is taking them - this means I have to spend a lot of time looking after 5 reasonable sized cats and the resulting mess and hygiene challenges.
• I've had a little more work than usual recently, though this is no excuse since I can email posts to my blogs and have a mobile with email capability.
• The freaking heat! This was even more of a problem until this week since I was under orders to not cut my hair or shave until I had done my days on Harry Potter. This is no longer an issue since I won't be in Harry Potter because my (background) part has been cut.
• Desperate searching for jobs.
  
• I've been more than a little victim of a recurrence of past problems.

So there we go - while you've been wondering why I didn't write a rant on MPs expenses (boring - already done to death by others) or the Scottish Church having to vote on whether to allow a homosexual to hold office (they were overwhelmingly in favour) that is why.

Hopefully more posts should be appearing soon.

For now, though, I have to feed the cats for the fourth time today. Sigh.

A

I looked up Sophies Choice... this isn't as bad.

I am officially a cat owner.

Here's what we agreed - we'd keep two of the kittens, one would go off with the mum and his big sister to a lovely new home.

Only, well, when it came to it I had real trouble choosing which one would go.

We were always going to keep Tiny (or The Bandit) since there's no way one could give up a cat you raised by hand from birth, but the other two are more problematic.

Dimitri (who used to be Smokes) is fairly docile and likes to be held a lot more than Bootsy does, who is a bit fraidy, but has, in my opinion, tonnes more personality and a penchant for standing up on two legs and setting about himself with double handed slaps etc.

They're both lovely.

So what do you do?

Here's my advice. DON'T try and make the decision while sitting in the room with them playing around your feet - it's just too hard.

What decision did I make? That should be patently and embarrassingly obvious.

A