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Monday 28th April16:50Papal Bull....There's always one that spoils it for the rest of us. There was I happily using my Papal reference when gong for job interviews and this idiot has to go and blow the gaffe. Mind you, what did he expect for 50 quid? A decent one costs at least three times that. Er, so I've heard, apparently. Of course, if he was such a friend of the Pope, why didn't the old pontiff just fix him up a job with the Catholic church in Wales, instead of making him apply to a telecomms company?Mind you, the Pope has just beatified the monk responsible for the invention of cappuccino, so who's to say if he's still got all his own marbles? See here for the full story. Of course, he's not been beatified for the creation of an over-rated, over-priced beverage, but rather in recognition of the other miracles he's supposed to have performed. Still, I'll bet he'll become promoted from "Friar Cappuccino" to "Saint Cappuccino" before long. Interesting to note that this Pope has beatified more people than all his predecessors in the last four centuries combined, isn't it? Do you think that, like A Levels and GCSE's, the pass rate is getting higher as the tests become easier these days? Perhaps, in the future everyone will be sainted for fifteen minutes. Well, I went to see my old mate's band on Wednesday, as foretold in my previous diary entry. It was great to see Ben and catch up on old times, and pleasing to learn that, like me, he still plays some of those old Lost Onus numbers. Mind you, I bet he does it much better than I do. Sadly, I was so excited that I got rather drunk and hence only have a vague recollection of Bushbaby's performance. Ben did dedicate a song to me, but I've no idea which one it was. Ah well, perhaps I'll pop down to London on Wednesday night to catch them again. Might have to stay bit more sober this time though. And remember to copy those old Lost Onus tapes for him. That'll make him sorry. I spent most of this weekend in a bit of a daze after my little smashers, Crewe Alexandra, managed to secure promotion to the First Division. To some extent it was by default as they only managed to get a draw at QPR, but other results went their way, with Bristol City unexpectedly losing at Chesterfield and Cardiff failing to beat Wigan. Well, I'd forecast that Crewe would get a point and that Cardiff would only draw at home to Wigan, but I was expecting Bristol to win, meaning that Crewe would need to draw at home next week to make sure of promotion but for once, things went our way. Hurrah! I can now start planning all those away trips that I'm not going to be able to make next season.... Go on, stick your oar in: Wednesday 23rd April10:45Cry God for Harry, England and St George!Yep, it's St George's Day today. As is the tradition, there'll be no great celebrations, no public holiday, no pub promotions, no nothing. It's almost as if the English are embarrassed at having a patron saint. True, the flag of St George has been the rallying symbol of the English football hooligan for a long number of years, and has also been misappropriated by the racist elements of society, but given that St George himself wasn't English, there is a certain amount of irony in that. Anyway, I think it's a fair indication of the state of the English psyche that there is a reluctance to clebrate their national saint's day. However, I intend to rectify this today and shall be marking the day be indulging in some traditional English pursuits. In the morning I shall be out hunting and shooting members of the lower classes. I shall follow that with a quick burst of Morris Dancing before lunch (fish and chips) and then spend the afternoon drinking Watneys Red Barrel and Double Diamond in a dismal spit-and-sawdust pub. If the weather is fine, I shall also be strolling around the town centre topless, proudly displaying my tattoos, beer belly and man-breasts, Suitably refreshed, I shall venture out in search of curry (chicken tikka masala, of course) before heading to the Man on the Moon pub to see Bushbaby (my mate's band) on tour. Hopefully at the end of the night, I'll still be pissed enough to pick a fight or two. Ah, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war......Go on, stick your oar in:
Monday 21st April20:10"I laughed like a drain"That's probably the sort of movie strapline that Eddie Murphy would kill for, but certainly not the one that producers of risible British musical Julie and the Cadillacs would be pleased with. Full marks to Channel 5 for scheduling this turgid tosh on Friday night/Saturday morning - the dead time when only freaks like me or monged-out clubbers were likely to see it. Apparently, this film went straight to video, but it should have gone straight to Hell. Terrible acting from a cast of largely unknowns, ludicrous Beatles-era rags-to-riches beat group storyline, and the most plodding of 60s-style songs, all combine to make this one of those films that you wonder how it ever got made. Surprisingly, although there was a soundtrack album released to accompany it, none of the songs even so much as troubled the charts. If you ever want to know why the British film industry is in such poor shape, watch this film."It's like Breaking Glass, but set in the 60's. Stars? Yep, I've got Toyah and Victor Spinetti signed up already. Thora Hird'll do a cameo. And so will that bloke that used to do the Blue Riband ads...."Terrible, truly terrible, and not even in a "so bad it's good" way. Avoid at all costs. It makes Absolute Beginners look like a work of genius. Easter? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again. Well, that's not quite true. I'm sure that if I was working I'd have taken a few days off to see some relative or other. But I'm not, so I had to stay at home to save some money. I did think about going along to the Anti-Huntingdon Life Sciences march in town on Saturday for a bit of light relief, but I don't really have any objections to animal testing. So I was kind of stuck for something to do. Fortunately, I've still got my PC, so I've been playing around with Director and surfing the old Interweb. Ah, it's all go, go, go in my house. At least, it's given me a chance to charge my batteries, so to speak, before making one last all-out assault on the old job market. There were a couple of notable deaths over the Easter period - John Paul Getty II and Dr Robert Atkins. Getty was, of course, the philanthropic Anglophile billionaire, who gave away millions to various worthy and good causes. Strangely, for all the good that his money did, most of the news bulletins seemed to concentrate on his "eccentric" love of cricket. Still, it's sad that he's died, although obviously I'm hoping to be mentioned in his will....On the other hand, there's absolutely no chance that Dr. Atkins will mention me in his will. As is blindingly obvious, I've never followed a diet plan in my life. Atkins originated the low carbohydrate/high protein diet that seems to have been popular again recently. Although not in my house. Go on, stick your oar in:
Wednesday 16th April12:10Move along, nothing to see hereWell, what an unexciting week - I haven't been anywhere interesting, seen anything exciting or even bought any new records from Fopp (my favourite shop, don't you know). I've tidied up the back garden a little bit, worked on a little project of mine and taken advantage of my copious free time to learn a bit more about Macromedia Director. Oh, and I had a job interview, but I haven't heard anything back about that yet. And I got one piece of seriously bad news, but I'm not going to share that.In between pottering around in the garden and house and looking for another job, I have of course been surfing the old Interweb in search of interesting things to bring you. So here are some robot cartoons for your delectation and delight. And here's some not particularly recent news on the lawsuit between the rest of The Dead Kennedys and Jello Biafra. Obviously there are two sides to every story and this side doesn't do Jello any favours. Worth checking out if you're at interested in the Dead Kennedys. Sadly, they've cancelled some of their gigs in the UK, including the Cambridge one. East Bay Ray needs some time sitting by the fire with his pipe and slippers or something, allegedly. On the subject of former "punk rawk" legends taking it easy, it's been nice to see the smiling face and monstrously large neck of Henry Rollins on Full Metal Challenge on Channel 4. It seems a bit incongruous to see the former Black Flag frontman on mainstream television, but if you like cars and extreme engineering the prog is a bit of a laugh. They could probably do with more action and less talking, but it's not that bad a way to waste an hour on a late Sunday afternoon. Er, that's about it then. There probably are one or two other things I should mention but can't think of them at the moment. Oh well, back to the job sections of the papers for me then... Go on, stick your oar in: Thursday 10th April13:45Pondering the importance of "branding"In these days of corporate image and "web prescence", a lot of companies seem to be going out of their way to stamp on websites that they feel are trading on their reputation in some way. The most famous of these is, of course, Stelios Haji-Ioannou,the owner of easyJet, who is laying claim to just about every easy(whatever).com/co.uk site on the grounds that they're trading on his easyGroup brand. And why not? Anyway, bearing that in mind, here's one site that probably ought to be shut down as soon as possible, but won't - Lastminutesermon.com. You might have already seen it flagged up in this Guardian article (where it's (amusingly) linked as lastminute.com), but I only heard about it on the local news a couple of nights ago. I'm sure lastminute themselves aren't going to lose any sleep over it, but I'm surprised their lawyers haven't had something to say about it....I got the albums that I'd ordered from cd-wow, this morning, (along with a rejection letter for a tech authoring job in Letchworth) and was somewhat irritated to find that these are "copy-controlled" and won't play properly on my Windows CD Player. There's a hugely irritating 5 second pause at about 9 seconds into each track. The CDs do have their own player, fortunately, which does the job, although it's pretty light on features, which is a pain in the proverbial. I have read elsewhere that this player doesn't deliver very good quality sound, but as I've only ever been running MS's own CD player, I can't say I've noticed any difference. (I haven't tried it out with the headphones on yet though). Anyway, I'm going to have to nip off to the newsgroups to find out how to copy these albums (for my own personal use, as I am legally entitled to do) so that they play back through my choice of software not the one forced upon me. And what are these albums? Well, Melanie C's newie, which to be honest I might not bother copying or possibly even listening to again. Well, alright, I might give it another couple of goes to see if it grows on me, but I'd be surprised. It suffers from a lack of tunes, pace and energy. Dull and bland. Perhaps the Spice Girls re-union might not have been such a bad move, love. The other one is Placebo - 'Sleeping With Ghosts'. That's pretty good, although some of it seems a bit tame compared to the live versions. I think it needs a couple more spins though before I can definitely say whether it's as good as any of their previous outings. So that's most of the rest of the day booked up, then. Heaven knows when I'm going to be able to fit in some time for looking for a job.... Go on, stick your oar in: Monday 7th April22:00"You don't remember The Style Council?"Sometimes you just have to get out of the house. And I spent Saturday night having a marvellous time with some marvellous people over at Philippa's house. The long-suffering Tim and Julie gave me a lift out there and surprised me by turning up a bit earlier than I expected. (No offence, guys!). Anyway, I think we all had a smashing time - I know I did - including a rather animated alcohol-fuelled discussion on the musical output of Paul Weller and whether his later stuff is/was as good as his early stuff. Throw in the good food and the constant supply of beer and you can see why I was as happy as a pig in the proverbial. And I didn't even feel hungover the next day. Tired, but not hungover. Anyway, you can all come round to mine when I get a job. Yep, everyone's invited.Good news everybody - Cambridge folk fest have announced this year's line-up. Well, they've announced who is playing but not yet when. You can check out the listings here. Of the all the artists listed thus far, I only want to see Julian Cope and Roddy Frame, and knowing my luck they'll be playing on different stages at the same time. Hopefully, they'll have some listing of who's on when before the tickets go on sale on May 4th. (Hey, isn't that a Jedi greeting? "May the 4th be with you, my young padawan" Sorry, I'll get me coat.) Go on, stick your oar in: Friday 4th April22:00Slow news dayNot much to report really, as there's not been that much happening of note in the fatfakir househould. Tim came round on Wednesday to watch the game of two halves, three G&T's and a white wine for the lady, that was the England vs Turkey match. The first 35 minutes of the game weren't great but from then on England looked the better team. The second-half performance was capped by the BBC choosing to show a close up of David Beckham after he'd scored the penalty, at the precise moment that he was directing a few well chosen words at one of the Turkish players. It was something along the lines of "Fecking pussy. Feck off, you fecking winker" and for good measure he blew a few kisses at him too. Top sporting behaviour, the England captain! Not. Still, they won, which was the important thing. More worrying was the pre-match violence and the racist chants (which we didn't hear on the BBC) during the game. I hope the FA sees sense and decides not to accept it's allocation of tickets for the return fixture in October. The last thing we need to see are England "fans" fighting running battles on the streets of Turkey.How annoying is this? As you regular readers will know, I bought Royksopp's 'Melody AM' CD recently. On visiting Fopp today, I found that not only are they now knocking out for £3 less than I paid for it, but they're doing this on the 'enhanced' double CD version of the album. Gah! Still, they're charging £12 for Placebo's newie so I've ordered that from cd-wow.com for £8.99 before they get banned from trading in the UK (cd-wow that is, not Placebo). The other thing that briefly caught my eye in Fopp was the large pile of books titled Shaky. Sadly this is not the autobiography of the Welsh Elvis Presley himself - Sir Shakin' of Stevens, of course - but a Neil Young biography. What a disappointment. Go on, stick your oar in: Wednesday 2nd April17:30More than just a leitmotifI notice that Russell Grant failed to predict that I would go to see a band that totally rocked last night. Instead of veg-ing out in front of either TV or PC, I was instead grooving on down to the nancy-boy glam-rock of Placebo. I turned up at the Corn Exchange at about 7.30pm and seeing the size of the queues outside, I nipped off for a couple of beers, figuring that the queue would die down in a while and the support band wouldn't start till about 8-ish anyway. Well, I was right about the support band and wrong about the queue. I didn't get in the venue till about 8.30, by which time The Faint were finishing their set. They were "alright, but a bit samey" according to the girl in the seat next to me. I was a bit disappointed to miss them as I've heard mixed reports and wanted to judge for myself. However, Placebo made up for that by delivering a pretty much perfect set - a fine mix of new and old stuff, and well balanced between the slower and more upbeat material. They opened with 'Bulletproof Cupid' and a dazzling light display whilst the band was in darkness and then followed that up with 'Allergic (To Thoughts of Mother Earth)'. After that my grasp on the set list gets a bit shaky. There was plenty of new stuff mixed in with tracks from the previous three albums. There were a couple of things I was surprised they played - 'Lady of the Flowers' for example - and a couple of things I was surprised they didn't - no 'Nancy Boy' or 'Brick Shithouse'. They did a gorgeous slow version of 'Teenage Angst' which blew me away. And they finished the second encore with a rock-solid version of 'Where Is My Mind?' by The Pixies, which even had me up and "rocking out". Which must have been slightly worrying for the rest of the balcony...I've only a couple of minor quibbles, apart from the terrible manner they were dealing with the queue. First, why was everyone so young? They made me feel sooooooo old. Oh wait, I am. Secondly, I appreciate that you were enjoying the gig, love, but I didn't spend £16.50 on a balcony seat so that I could spend the evening staring at your arse. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice arse, and in other circumstances I'd pay good money to stare at it, but that wasn't on my 'To Do' list for last night. If only I'd had the foresight to swap my balcony ticket for a standing one - I'm sure at least one of the touts ouside would have done that deal for me - I could be moaning about staring at the back of someone's head instead... Anyway, top night out and I'd thoroughly recommend it, if it wasn't for the fact that the rest of the tour is pretty much sold out. Go on, stick your oar in: Tuesday 1st April09:15Sshh, don't tell anyone........but I not only did I actually buy a lettuce yesterday, I have also eaten some of it. Admittedly, I had to smother it with melted orange chocolate and fresh cream, but I did manage to find a way of incorporating greenery into my lunch. Yes, I realise this is going to ruin my reputation somewhat, but don't worry, gentle reader, it was only some lettuce. It's not like I've started eating fruit and stuff. Oh, and I lied about the chocolate and cream - I'm saving those for the carrots.....I noticed something else a bit strange whilst I was in Tesco buying my lettuce (No, I really did buy a lettuce. What do you want, pictures?) Now, I'm not a particularly big fan of cheese these days but I do enjoy some occasionally and one brand that I like is McLelland's Seriously Strong Cheddar. (By the way, if you visit that site, don't click on the X. There is, in police parlance, nothing to see here.) Anyway, in Tesco you can buy the 250g block for £1.63 and the 500g block for £3.45. There's a special no-prize for the first person to spot what's wrong with that picture. Yep, it's 19p cheaper to buy two 250g blocks rather than one 500g block. In fact, at the moment it's 95p cheaper as Tesco are doing a deal where it's 'buy two for £2.50'. Before anybody starts, I do understand the concept of loss leaders, so that deal doesn't strike me as unusual, but from what I recall, it's always been cheaper to buy two smaller packs than one large one. Perhaps I ought to write to Tesco and find out what the deal is with their pricing policy. You know, I'm beginning to feel like Dirk Gently, Douglas Adams' holistic detective (yep, he wrote stuff other than Hitchhiker's Guide), who regularly read his horoscope in the paper despite the fact it was purposely written to annoy him. Old Russell Grant this week seems to be having a pop at me with the opening of this weekly forecast: You're endlessly comparing yourself to others, and of course you're coming out on the losing end.Well, what are you trying to say, Russ? I don't measure up, so to speak? Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough! And while we're on the subject: Something smaller than yourself, a child or possibly an animal, will come to you seeking comfort and solace and you can allow yourself to get close to them.Let's face it - you're pretty much on a winner there. There isn't that much that is bigger than me. So, I'll be on the lookout for anything smaller than a mountain gorilla that looks a bit downcast, shall I? Actually I shouldn't really have a go at dear, old Russ as he has at least been a bit more accurate than some others, such as Mystic Meg, for example, who forecast a pay rise for the week I was made redundant..... Go on, put your oar in:
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