Listening to Delta Moon - You Got to Move

     Procrastination, it's a wonderful thing. I remember looking for a version of this song:

on guitar, just to see what it was like (After several months working in The Scottish Shop St Andrews where this band was played constantly, on repeat, it was the only one I still liked - I may tell the full story sometime) I got this album, and you know what, I quite like it. It's not necessarily what I would usually go out and buy but right now, it is comfortable music, conjuring images of places I've never been and lives I've never lived (at least not to my knowledge) while I tippity tap away at my laptop, eyes gazing out across the car-park, beyond the energy drink upon my window-sill, to the apartments opposite with the curtains open and the couple about to elope, clothes falling to the floor, one of them is turning their head and looking in shock… my light is on, and I'm staring, unable to take my eyes away, he's right, I gotta move...

Okay, blinds closed, back to the album, it seems somewhat odd to listen to the music with a background of the Dundonian night, Friday night and the sounds of classically trained students roaming the streets, what rubbish, I'm in the West End. Maybe if I close my eyes I can imagine a suitable backdrop… nope, just naked neighbours, oh dear, that's more people alienated (a different set of renters already think I'm a pervert when really I was just smoking out the window and happened to be looking that way, forgot I was staring and next thing I know one of them is lying on the floor, just out of view, poking her head around the curtain trying to see if I was still looking, she should have turned the light off, then I wouldn't have been able to see in… now that does sound creepy.)

I've lost my train of though now, and the album has finished so maybe I shall sign off. I'm glad I have introduced the difficulties and dangers of inadvertent people watching (of which I am a grand advocate, as long as you don't get caught up a tree with your pants down and binoculars around your neck, as they say in those circles). Be careful,as one ferrero roche said to another: it's nutty out there.

Shuffle was invented in a different language...

Since it is still early days I feel more introduction is a good idea, the insanity and sport obsession posts are a good impression of the wildly swinging subject matter that confuses my mind weekly... today I will inform you wonderful people who are so very interested in the nonsense that overpowers me I shall poke and prod you with another one of my great passions, Music!

Time for a little rant, it's not original and probably not funny either but it might be clever or smart, or just silly…

I love shuffle, when you collect music with obsessive compulsive vigour that I do you end up with so many artist's and albums when you only bought the whole thing for one song, but it looked lonely and disorganised. Stick it on shuffle and rediscover old greats, shameful guilty pleasures and god knows what! 

That band that made you feel so cool as a kid and that band that you like because you suddenly discovered a pretty girl liked them and it felt cool to be the only ones who liked them, trading top tens and awesome riffs, the days of Sum 41 and Alkaline Trio, the pretentious self importance, such fun!

But, shuffle is not always your friend, I recently bought a cheap MP3 player after the previous one had an unfortunate accident involving electricities arch enemy, water (they used to be great friends before the great legend Haych-Too-O began spreading E-Lek-Trickery's energy and powers amongst all its friends. But that's a story for another day.) And this MP3 player decides that the shuffle function simple re-orders the files in the same way every time! Four songs in and I switch it to shuffle, it goes back two songs where it likes to start its own little playlist, then song number four, then eight. And no matter where I start the shuffle, or switch in on and off partway through its playlist, it always does the same.

I've spent many hours researching the variable lists and it simply does not put the effort in that I expect of it, now I've resorted to manually switching the order of the tracks just to get some change!

Oh well, I suppose I'll just have to save up and get the old sophisticated silicon fixed...

Welcome to the Tasty Side of the Internet!

So, Tesco are currently press-ganging me into buying posh kitchen knives and other accoutrements via a clever voucher and 70% off scheme. I'm not angry, I love kitchen goodies and I have also screwed their system: you gain a voucher for every £20 you spend and you need five to get 70% off (making the knife, or chopping board or knife block) only a fiver (or £4.99 to be exact) and I've got somewhat excited, it might be the freezer-full of venison or the glass of red wine that I'm drinking (left-over from cooking venison stew!) but I love the kitchen, and cooking and food in general so that is why I have this section, to gorge endlessly on culinary confabulations!

Then again I may just be associating venison with Dire Straits, good album by the way, Money For Nothing, what album were you thinking of?

P.S. Anybody have more vouchers, I think I need another four steak knives, you never know how many people you may have around for steak, or how often you want to eat steak in one day without washing, you never want to run out of steak, or knives to eat them with.

Pizzas, Motorbikes and Vomit-Dodging

What a fantastic start to the day; the sun is shining, well, beaming down with great vengeance and furious anger upon the dew clinging to the blades of freshly cut grass. I repositioned the aerial (yes, we have an analogue aerial for digital TV), lo and behold, an act of divine intervention channelled my muscles and after many months of being forced to watch substandard news, however entertaining, BBC has been regained!

Oh how I missed the mistakes! The fawning uselessness of Breakfast news, and Declan Curry, I've been watching you at six in the morning for about ten years now! I know every set of news has their own quirks and mistakes, the odd sentimental tones that don't suit the story but I have always found a certain comfort in the BBC news and a cup of tea.

Now onto the other reason this morning is wonderful, as a student I should be really excited about green beer and leprechauns, the beer is teaming up with the sun and they are calling my name, I do love a bit of afternoon drinking, particularly in a large field, music in the background. 

St. Patrick's day also provides one with the opportunity to develop one's skills at the sport of vomit-dodging, a good test of speed and agility, particularly while under the influence (points deducted for bumps and scrapes discovered the next morning). 

However the key event of this weekend for me is the return of the Formula 1 world. Once again I will be excitedly anticipating the next race, reading the news and the gossip as soon as it finds its way to me via my networking tentacles, and once again I will be avoiding the news when the results go up. Having just recovered BBC I made a rookie mistake today; my excitement at watching BBC News suddenly turned into panic as I see Formula 1 scrolling across the bar at the bottom of my screen, I miss the important bit and shield my eyes and succeed in ignoring it for several rounds before… 'Lewis Hamilton takes pole, sharing the front row with Jenson Button'… Yes! Excellent, it may have ruined the suspense but I don't care because that is wonderful news and I'm so excited to watch the qualifying and the race.

Okay, now the childish excitement is over I should apologise for the sport heavy post, for those who are bored I shall place a nice photo so that you may peruse it while I waffle:

 I have always had a passion for motor-racing, so much so that I will happily sit for hours directing pixels around a digital recreation of a real track attempting to better my time, and when I was younger I dreamed of being a racing driver, or a pizza delivery boy… ok I might have to explain that one, I liked motorbikes and I liked pizza, it seemed like a marriage made in heaven, a perfect pairing and a delectable duo all rolled into one. I've also noticed that it was a good dream, if I don't work out at a well paying job, write a blockbuster or win the lottery I can always make my dream come true, also, delivering pizza in one of these would be amazing.

It is a fact well known to those who know it well that music means a lot to a lot of people (and maybe a lot to the alots too, who knows? I don't but this fantastic lady might).

It is important to me, I don't particularly believe in the over-genrefying of things, it gets far too complicated when music evolves and genres don't mean the same thing as they used to, but that's half the fun of language and music itself.

Anyway, this small corner (or divergence, or confluence or any other wonderful descriptive term) of the internet is not here for me to impose my (frankly ridiculous) opinion on what music is awesome and what isn't (well maybe a little bit) but it is a place for music that means something to me.

For example:

Silly music - something to laugh at the ridiculousness of, something horse and lemonade related like this video by this wonderful chap:


Perhaps it is just something that has got stuck in my head and I am attempting to exorcise it via the wondrous power of the internet, a problem shared is a problem halved right?

Or most prominently, I will just something that makes me want to get up and dance, move my feet and show the world how happy I am through the power of expressive dance, you know the sort, where people start looking at you with funny expressions on their faces, attempting to decide whether they should call an ambulance or form a circle and start chanting.

I hope you don't mind the terrible introduction. Let's start with one of my all time favourites, a sign of my continentally and hemispherically unbalanced music collection. 

Australia appears to be sneaking itself into my lists of all time favourite bands, offbeat by offbeat.

Here are The Cat Empire with Two Shoes 

Alternatives

If you have run out of ice cubes, why not use frozen peas. They are a commodity often discovered stuffed in the back of a freezer, locked in time and prisoner to the great crystalline Haych-Too-O (although good friends with the humble chipped potato, unfortunately lost in the great defrost of 99) and provide suitable sustenance and cooling properties. Despite the slightly odd appearance the refreshingly healthy qualities of the species pieopitus pea will rejuvenate even the oldest, saggiest, most tired and sad geriatric liver.

New Beginnings, Old Tipple

  This is bloody difficult, semi-drunkenly I thought it would be a grand idea to put all my nonsense writings up on the internet just to pester all those Google-monkeys out there. I've got to pick a semi-coherant title and a URL too! All I can think of is Colonel Custard and Lieutenant Lee Lemon, and that has nothing to do with my name or my writing, although I do like food… maybe this could work after all.

Edit: I can't even find a picture of myself that doesn't make me look like one of my invented characters mentioned earlier.

And yes, I always say 'grand' after a glass of wine.