Brian Eno and Damien Rice - Together At Last

Yes, it's been a long time. What can I say? I've been up late watching the cricket, which doesn't leave time for the important things in life like posting to blogs and sleeping. Stupid cricket.

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This morning, I've become mildly obsessed by the fact that Brian Eno wrote the startup jingle to Windows 95. That's Brian Eno as in ex-Roxy Music, creator of strange pop music and a man utterly unafraid of pretentious twittering. Anyway, he wrote the start-up sound to Windows 95, which is fair enough. However, I think we've all overlooked the fact that it's possibly the worst piece of music ever written, with the exception of the Intel dur-der-duh-dah! sound that produces a Pavlovian desire in me to go out and strangle people whenver I hear it. You can reminisce about the fun of the Windows 95 start-up sound by clicking here, and remember that this noise indicated that you had a twenty-minute window in which to work before your computer would crash horifically. Ah, them was the days.

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Attribution alert: I'm grateful to my better half for drawing attention to the truly nosebleedingly bad lyrics of Damien Rice. It's possible to get away with bad lyrics if you bury them down in the mix with a good dose of rock and/or roll, but if you're a heart on the sleeve singer-songwriter, then frankly, you're setting yourself up for a whole heap of mockery. Take, for instance, "The Animals Were Gone":

Woke up and for the first time the animals were gone
It's left this house empty now, not sure if I belong
Yesterday you asked me to write you a pleasant song
I'll do my best now, but you've been gone for so long

The window's open now and the winter settles in
We'll call it Christmas when the adverts begin
I love your depression and I love your double chin
I love 'most everything that you bring to this offering

and it continues, much in the same vein (that is, badly).

It remains to be seen, however, if the promising inverse talent that he is can ever top "Older Chests" from the first album:

Older gents sit on the fence
With their cap in hand
Looking grand
They watch their city change
Children scream, or so it seems,
Louder than before
Out of doors, and into stores with bigger names
Mama tried to wash their faces
But these kids they lost their graces
And daddy lost at the races too many times

He is aware that you're allowed to rewrite and edit lyrics before recording them, isn't he?

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Anyway, that's it from me, because I'm covered in paint. Sorry!

Shoesy-Shoesy

After buying some new shoes, my anticipation heightens until I can get them home, open up the box, take the shoes out, put them to one side, root around in the box until finally I come across the small packet labelled 'Silica Gel'. Every time, though, I am thwarted and disappointingly have to put it to one side and start lacing up the shoes, because, every time I get the silica gel packet, I'm confronted with the spoilsport words, 'Do Not Eat', ruining my fun. Bah.

Even worse is the only instruction: 'Throw Away'. So blunt that you daren't disobey it. It's the only thing standing between me and a cupboard full of hoarded silica gels that I'm not allowed to eat.

Each time I get new shoes, I also get to remember with fondness how lacing up your shoes in a non-approved fashion-failing way would be merely the prelude to ridicule and abuse as a child. If you were looking for a positive thing to say about bullying, you can definitely say that it instills a sense of correctness and attention to detail in the victim.

Ah, shoes. They sure are evocative things. Just be glad I haven't gone on about shoe boxes yet.

Box Stupid 2

While casually destroying the planet by using paper tissues, I noticed that Kleenex have chosen to mark their fiftieth anniversary of destroying the planet by having a big swirly badge that says "50 Years of MANSIZE STRENGTH".This is the sort of thing that my email spam filter would make short work of. It'll only be a matter of time before we're fitted with eye-spam filters that just leave a fuzzy indistinct patch where otherwise would be "50 Years of MANSIZE STRENGTH".

Project: Do you know someone who is or is about to become a 50 year-old? Why not print out the second photo, and cut it into a badge for them. (Note: Please ensure that the recipent has achieved fifty years of MANSIZE STRENGTH before giving this gift, as the incongruity of a badge saying "50 Years of MANSIZE STRENGTH" on a woman or weedy man will cause laughter and may spoil their otherwise special day).

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Yep, I've not been up to much recently. Except for dressing up as a pirate, but that's nothing unusual when you frequent Dressing-Up-As-A-Pirate parties, is it? (Photos in comments to previous post. I'm feeling too too exhausted to cut and paste the addresses again).

Bouba Diop and Knots

Can't really explain adequately, but I've developed a mild obsession with Bouba Diop from Fulham, the Premiership also-rans. Why Papa Bouba Diop? Is it his giant loping gait as he surges forward from defence? Or is it the fact that his name sounds like the noise you get in arcade machines when you get an extra life? (Clue: it's the second one.) Apparantly his nickname, according to the official website is the frankly unlikely 'Wardrobe'. I fear the explanation of this, frankly, and will not be delving any deeper.

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Also on a football bent, mainly just to piss off those of you who dislike football (most people I know), Roy Keane, currently Sunderland manager, is busy practising tieing the world's largest tie knot. For Roy to stand out amonsgt the already noted for their large-knottedness breed of footballers, it's clear testimony to his fearless professionalism that he has to be the best at what he does, even if this is just tieing his tie. What a pro.

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Sorry, that's a lot of football, really. Pretend they're pirates if that helps.

Conversations I Didn't Have With Shop Assistants vol n+1

Scene: At the desk at an electronics shop, waiting for the Chip and PIN machine to confirm my credit-worthiness.

Electronics Shop Assistant One: Well, I ain't being discriminatory or anything, but you won't know what it is...
Electronics Shop Assistant Two: I might.
ESA1: Alright then. It's like a cross between a lychee...
ESA2: Right...
ESA1: ...and an apple.
ESA2: An apple?
ESA1: An apple.
ESA2: Oh.
ESA1: See what I mean? Knew you wouldn't've heard of it.
ESA2: What does it taste like?
ESA1: Oh man...
ESA2: Hmm?
ESA1: It tastes like a cross between...
ESA2: Yes?
ESA1: ...a cross between an apple and a lychee.
ESA2: Oh.

There's probably a word out there for the feeling that you get when you wish you had asked someone what the name of the fruit they were describing was but didn't. However, I don't care what that word was. I just want to know what the name of the fruit was. What was it? WHAT?

Tony Blair and the Flight of Fancy

You know when you half pick up on something, and then don't want to know any more because it will inevitably spoil the magic as you learn more and find out that it's not actually as interesting as you first thought? Well, probably not, because that's quite a badly written sentence, but I am currently amusing myself with the news that there's a memo been leaked that supposedly planned for Tony Blair to make appearances on Blue Peter and Songs of Praise. Unfortunately, I already sort of know that this is to 'secure his legacy' and ease transition for the next leader of the party, but I'd love it if this were the contingency plan for all national emergencies. Say there were a chemical leak in the North Sea that threatened coastal communities and devastated fishing stocks? Get Tony on telly quick! He can be squeezed into the Blue Peter, between a segment on the Romans and the putting of the tortoise into the cardboard box of hibernation. Perhaps he could get into a centurion costume? Great. Were there to be mass rioting gutting Birmingham and spreading to other cities, perhaps he could pop into Songs of Praise, and, on acoustic guitar, belt out some rousing hymns to steel the reserve of the terrified populace?

Stupid truth. Always getting in the way of my whimsical fun.

On the Perils of Being a Stevenage Borough Fan; Dancing

Right, you work-shy fops, everyone have a good bank holiday weekend? I watched the increasingly infuriating Stevenage Boro valiantly fight their way from being 2-0 up after 12 minutes to draw 3-all for the second time in three days. It's these kind of things that make people go all crazy. If you hear of anyone embarking on a rampage through Stevenage town centre hurling heavy blunt objects from a vintage French bicyle, don't report me to the police. I've had a hard time of it, and I'm too beautiful for prison.

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Watch this, it's a good representation of how I think I dance:

Raisin Wheats, My New Breakfast Fear-eal

My breakfasts just got a whole lot more soul-curdlingly terrifying. I decided to switch from Special K (which features aspirational air-brush renderings of the womanly curves I could hope to achieve if I chomp my own weight in the stuff) to Kellog's Raisin Wheats. I didn't look closely enough when picking it off the shelf and now I have to look at this every morning. The anthropomorphic embodiment of the cereal is known as Mr Wheat ("May I call you Wheaty?" "NO! I AM MR WHEAT! ADDRESS ME AS SUCH!") and looks like the trunk of a particularly knarled ancient oak. He appears, sad mismatched eyes imploring, on the back of the box pleading with you to eat what can only be his children.

I think I'll have some toast.