Deadpan Conversations With Shop Sales Staff, Vol 10

Scene: A cornershop, not too far from Alexandra Palace. L & I, thirsty, decide to get drinks - 'Bina for me, Coke for her. On looking at the coke lid (to try and work out what language of coke is being drunk) we find out it passed its sell-by date in Sept 2004.

Me: This coke I've just bought - it's passed its sell-by date.
Shop Guy: Hmm. [Frowns. Discusses in foreign language with his superior, who goes off to the fridge. He roots about for a while, then produces another bottle]
Me: Thanks. Hey, this one is expired too. Look - March '05.
Shop Guy's Superior: Hmm. [Goes back to fridge. The floor behind him is now covered with bottles of coke from the fridge. Continues to root around. Eventually returns with a third bottle, which is in date.]
Me: Thanks.
SGS: Hmm. [Surveys shop, now covered with past their sell-by bottles of coke].

The moral? Stock rotation, my son, stock rotation.

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Also, have just booked a cottage holiday near Beer. I've been promised that the transport links will be awful.

J.I.M.P Part II

OK, quickie here: The excellent J.I.M.P mp3 didn't appear on this page, following technical incompetence on my part (disconnecting from the computer while it was uploading, like the dial-up fool that I was). My band is now broad again (it's this wide), and you can find it further down the page or at this page. Message ends. Enjoy!

Classic Album Disappreciation

A friend has recommended the following pastime. It combines rudeness, kicking sacred cows in the udders, and using databases as they were not designed. It is, ladies and gentlemen, Classic Album Disappreciation.

Using Amazon, search and find yourself a Classic Album, one that perceived wisdom holds sacrosanct, say, anything by the Beatles. Now, the reviews at the bottom generally wax enthusiastic about how this album or that album redefined music for a generation, created complex audio sculptures, opened listeners' ears up to new influences, blah-de-blah-de-blah. What you want to do, if you're playing Classic Album Disappreciation, is to click the 'See All 226 Reviews' button near the bottom. Then, from the little drop-down box, select 'Show Lowest Rated First'. Then pour yourself a large port and lap up the mixture of bile, hatred, accurate insights into overrated albums, libel and poor syntax.

Think of it as an antidote to Mojo and Q.

Thank you Jamie.

Below are (sometimes selectively edited) extracts from some of the one-starrers.

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The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

This is not the Beach Boys. It can't be. Why? No beach songs!

Maybe the problem is me.

C'mon people! I have around 2000 Rock albums in my collection and I would never placed this not even between the top 100.

Britney Spears albums have great production.

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Television - Marquee Moon

IVE always been convinced THAT TELEVISION were REALLY no better than a HIGH SCHOOL SEVENTY PSYCEDELIC, third rate amateaur bar band like AWFULL.

BULLOCKS!!! Clean out your ears and stop being so pretentious.

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Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks

Don't buy this album unless your a big fan of slow accoustic guitar songs without any depth.

whining/whaling/screeching/yelping and nostril-itis.

Terrible, terrible work! One of my worst purchases, I think.,

I'm all up for excusing lyrical hemmaroids

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Beatles - White Album

I even say it is a discraze.

The White Album at one time was great. But grow up people, it is 2005, this album is a relic, not a classic.

a) inexcusable
b) repettattive
c) boring

It is dangrous and emptyheaded

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Nirvana - In Utero

Nirvana didn't define a generation, it lowered the bar for generations to come.

The online rhyming dictionary can make better plays on words than Cobain does.

This isn't party music by any means, who would want to hear 'Rape Me' at a party? Why couldn't Kurt just lighten up once in a while?

Kurt thought he could not only get away with releasing an album not finished enough for fans, but he also half arsed the inside graphic design (actually, he co-half arsed it).

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Also, it can be extended to become Classic Novel Disappreciation, which is fun.

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JD Sallinger - the Catcher in the Rye

First of all, there is the repeated swearing. I'm not usually bothered by this. Stephen King uses quite a bit of cursing, for example, but his stories are still interesting. This book, however, swears so much that the book would probably be twice as short if you took them all out. Every other word seems to be "g-dd--n or a variation of it.

There is also the repitition of the phrases "____kill(s) me" and "phony". Now, this wouldn't seem so bad at first. But believe me, you have NO IDEA how incredibly annoying that gets after a while. I actually started to cringe whenever those phrases were coming up, and I'm not exaggerating. Take out those two phrases plus the swearing, and this book is reduced to about 1/4 of it's actual size - maybe less.

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Let me know what You, The People, can come up with.

Eggs, Nutters, Football and Bees - How They Are Related

In Sainsbury's yesterday, browsing the cut-price Easter eggs, when a large jovial nutter walks up to me:

Large Jovial Nutter: They can't give those Easter eggs away to us now, can they, eh?
Me: [Shakes head, adopts mock sombre look]
LJN: Eggs!
Me: [Intently studies ingredients in Easter Eggs, discovers largely consistent of chocolate]
LJN: [Swaggers off down aisle, singing loudly] Let's all got to Tesco's/Where your mum gets her best clothes/La-la-la-la...

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Cycling past some kids outside a school yesterday, who were kicking a ball around. Well, at each other. A girl gets hit, and, in that voice normally reserved for saying, ummm-telling-on-you, she says, 'You - can't - hit - me, I've got AZ-ma!'

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I'm terrified of bees now, after seeing a documentary last night about how terrifying bees are. I'm going to give up honey, just in case the bees, as I suspect is inevitable, use the incredible collective intelligence of the hive mind to rise up and take over, and then demand retribution.

On the other hand, both 'bees' and 'honey' are inherrently funny words, which make me giggle like a child when I hear them. What am I to do?

The Service is Currently Busy - Please Try Again Later

Yep, failing to get Glastonbury tickets is FUN. It's in fact the best fun you can have without going three seconds without clicking 'refresh' on you browser. Honestly, I'm having so much fun I might BURST. Into FLAMES.

Sob.

Clean Out Your Lug 'Oles

An exclusive here that I'm proud to present:

It is traditional for popular heroes to be commemorated in folk song. Or, in this case, to be commemorated in hip-hop. The legend of my conspicuous consumption has been given musical form by the shadowy figures MC Shazmeister feat. DJ Wrongspeed. Anyway, without further ado, here it is:

Download J.I.M.P on .mp3 approx 1.7MB

I'm bloody honoured me, I am. It makes me want to go shopping.

What's Currently Scaring Me

Gmail keeps adding more storage space! I thought I was doing ok in filling it up, but the bugger's only gone and added 225MB more. Now I look back, and it's 229MB! It's going up by the second! If my calculations are correct, my gmail account will expand to fill the universe by about next Thursday, which will mean we'll be squeezed out of this universe, and into another one. Cautious estimates indicate that this universe is likely to be filled with unicorns and chocolate fountains, although this is of course subject to availability.

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Further to my geeky bus reminiscing, C is looking into buying us a bus to travel to Glastonbury in, and to cause even greater parking problems in North London from www.ensignbus.com. I'd like a red one with stripes. And I'd like to be the conductor. NO TALKING ON THE BUS! NO FEET ON SEATS! Oh yeah.

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Now it's 1232MB. [Shudders]

All the News That's Fit to Make Up

RML2644.

I guess today is the last day the the Routemaster, the big old red hop-on, hop-off, risk death in doing so bus, is serving the 19 bus route from Finsbury Park. Far be it from me or indeed anyone on the internet to make up news without first having checked it, but on my route into work I was photographed an unusual number of times by the herds of nerds who lined the streets as I cycled by. Initially, I just thought they'd mistaken me for Dr Green off ER, but then I realised they were actually shooting the large piece of mid-twentieth century technology chugging away behind me (NB this photo is not the bus that followed me, it is merely illustrative of what a bus looks like).

(I've now checked, and yes, my suspicions were correct, and you can read in perhaps more detail than you'd like here.)

It is a sad day indeed for people who mourn the passing of things that aren't there anymore that used to be. I'll miss the way I could jump off at the bakery if the traffic was right, saving valuable pastry-seconds. I'll miss the way you could leap on it when it was actually moving quite fast and feel that you'd acheived something heroic. I'll miss the fact that the seats weren't wide enough for the arses of people now, and trying to squeeze in next to a fatty was something to be avoided. I'll miss that it struggled with even the slightest incline. I'll miss the conductors, who ranged from surly through to avuncular, and especially the one who would spend his whole day singing at the top of his voice. Never more shall we hear the phrase, 'Any more fares?' condensed to a guttural 'Armf!' I'll miss the arguments people would have with the conductor ('How can you be full? You've just let four people off?').

Ooh, I've just nostalged.

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Listening to the radio this morning, aware that it's April Fool's Day, I was trying to work out what the joke story traditionally inserted into the real news stories was. It's some sick individual indeed on the Today programme who considers the upcoming death of the Pope to be suitable to put in as a joke. Although perhaps they might not choose to lead with the joke story, and spend five minutes interviewing Cardinal "Insert Every Irish Name Under the Sun Here" Cormac Murphy O’Connor. Perhaps it was the article about the manned trip to Pluto that George Bush is launching.