I wouldn’t ever claim to be a film buff despite the fact that there was a time when I saw every movie as soon as it hit the cinema (a year boarding as a teenager in Peterhead saw to that - nae much tae dee in the bloo toun once you’ve seen the carrots on the beach and counted both the trees). Times move on though and I’ve become a bit more discerning in the 30 odd years that have passed. So much so that I seldom find anything that I really want see enough to drag my lazy arse across town to the multiplex. Son of Rambow was one such film but alas, I never made it before it closed. This is the case for most films I want to see – still haven’t made it to the see The Boat That Rocked yet.
I guess big flat tellys, surround sound and lovefilm.com have filled that gap for me and all the thousands like me who, when presented with the chance to see a movie, end up seeing Marley & me or some ridiculous American teen flick starring the insanely attractive and, only just, post-pubescent face of Hollywood.
Shit, if you could bottle that stuff none of us would ever have to work again.
Just slug back some of the old Cyrus-Efron Elixir and you’re literally shagtastic on a major scale within seconds. Perfect teeth; perfect skin; perfect pecs; lean and mean and hung like a donkey – OK, I guess Miley Cyrus isn’t hung like a donkey but I’m sure you get the picture, which is about as close to reality as some of those movies.
Anyway, finally I watched Son of Rambow the other night and I was reminded of what my childhood was like and more so, what a cosseted bunch our kids are today.
The Nanny State; treated with kid gloves; robbed of their childhood.
All statements we readily drop into conversation when pontificating about our kids and their health, safety and welfare.
Searching online a while back for canoe hire in the West Highlands, I was reminded of the times when, as a kid, I used to go canoeing in an old crapped out wooden canoe that leaked like a bastard. On more than one occasion, along with a couple of mates, I simply had to get out of the damn thing and turn it upside down to empty it before it sank.
We used to go rock climbing in a disused sandstone quarry.
We used to climb trees, make rope swings and create fantasy jungles in the local woods.
We used to set up speedway come scrambling circuits using all sorts of junk to make jumps and obstacles.
I even remember one time, making a jump out of an old panelled door and some paint pots. To make it interesting, someone had the bright idea of setting fire to some of the paint pots at the end of the ramp.
All good clean fun. OK, maybe not clean, but still good fun to a twelve year old.
All of this and not a helmet or knee pad in sight. No life jackets or buoyancy aids
No ropes.
No fear!
All this before Indiana Jones was even a twinkle in Speilberg’s eye.
Admittedly the water was barely deep enough to drown a Chihuahua and the quarried rock face was probably no more than six feet at a time, but hey, we were kids, it seemed huge and wonderfully daring at the time. It was an adventure and nobody got hurt (much).
I do remember though, once skidding my bike a little too horizontally on a bend and ending up with a pebble dashed left leg that left me picking out gravel for days but hey, by the end of that lot I felt like Eddy Merckx, Barry Briggs and the Milk Tray man all rolled into one.
I dare say a lot of the things we got up to were things we weren’t really allowed to do but there was no mention of ‘don’t do that, it might be dangerous’. It was just what we did. We were kids.
Now, we worry our kids’ lives away.
Even now I can’t bear to pull the old pound of bananas on my head yet I find myself berating my youngest for cycling with no helmet.
Statements like ‘at least if she’s upstairs on the Nintendo I know where she is’ are tossed about like feathers in the wind.
Even for adults, the fear of litigation and fatal accident enquiries, borne out of a blame culture, means we can’t hire anything without paying extra for insurance, tuition, safety equipment and disclaimers.
Anyway, enough of that shite.
Went to see Neil Young on Thursday.
No real expectation.
Just thought it was time.
Been a bit of a fan for over thirty years so it had to be done.
I’d heard all the stories like the one a few years back about when he played his entire new album (Prairie Wind I think) track by track then, announcing that the audience probably wanted to hear something they’d heard before, proceeded to play the first track again.
I was well aware of his propensity for 20 minute, meandering guitar solos and I’d heard that he could just go off on a political wobbler.
I’d already missed out on his shows last year but at half a ton for a ticket, AECC or not, concrete floor or not, it had to be done.
This was Neil Young.
The man’s a f4ckin’ legend.
Opening with Hey Hey, My My was a taster for what was to come.
A rampaging slice through forty odd years of rock history.
To sum it up.
Two songs I didn’t know.
One spot of self-indulgence on Down By The River.
A cover of A Day In The Life for an encore.
In one word…
Amazing!
And so the music…
Neil Young – Aberdeen AECC, 24.06.2009
http://www.sendspace.com/file/egonok
And from the night before
Neil Young – Nottingham, 23.06.2009
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jjwp2k
Drever, McCusker & Woomble – ABC Theatre Glasgow
http://www.sendspace.com/file/efoj8w
Pale Saints – The Comforts of Madness
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ihb6ul
Richmond Fontaine – Edinburgh, September 30th 2004
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8boe19
Son Volt 15.02.2009
http://www.sendspace.com/file/hf5r8a
Blind Pilot – Arlington 27.03.2009
http://www.sendspace.com/file/maywdz
Joan Osborne - Live 17.09.1995
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cprsic
Waterboys - Birmingham Humminbird 17.02.1989
http://www.sendspace.com/file/haoah4
Gin Blossoms – Konocti, 22.05.2009
http://www.sendspace.com/file/i9j6zj
Eddi Reader – Stirling Albert Halls, 06.05.2009
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0ydwmp
Del Amitri – Cleveland 1996
http://www.sendspace.com/file/x1rgc0
...and finally, complete with the anthem for Carribean cruise lovers everywhere...
Iggy Pop – Waves Club, Chicago, 1980
http://www.sendspace.com/file/88ioc0
Enjoy
Hooli
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Saturday, 13 June 2009
...ain't nobody who can sing like me...
So my little trainspotting inspired post the other week got me to thinking about Iggy Pop, his insurance ad and what it was that I found so strange about the whole thing.
Not the fact that, at 62 years old, he is too old for the company to actually insure him; not so much that they got some old dude to advertise their insurance; not for the fact that someone whose stage show was frequently known to include self harm, puking or getting his knob out isn’t exactly the most inspiring choice to advertise motor insurance. Not even the fact that he was a one time heroin addict.
Not the fact that, at 62 years old, he is too old for the company to actually insure him; not so much that they got some old dude to advertise their insurance; not for the fact that someone whose stage show was frequently known to include self harm, puking or getting his knob out isn’t exactly the most inspiring choice to advertise motor insurance. Not even the fact that he was a one time heroin addict.
I couldn’t put a pin on it.
I guess they thought he would appeal as a good role model to their target audience, whoever they might be.
It also got me to thinking about the absurdity of Lust for Life being used by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in their ad. Absurd that the clientele on a cruise ship might even know the bare chested and sinewy Mr Osterberg Jr if he were to rise a la Triton from their lobster bisque clad only his transparent pvc hipsters.
Also absurd that the track was spliced to conveniently skip the bits about liquor and drugs, the flesh machine and another striptease. I wonder if any of their cruise clients gave that a thought when they were booking their trip round the West Indies.
Aside from that, I can’t ever hear that song without entering into a Ewan McGregor style rant about choosing life, electric tin openers and the like. I’m actually at the stage where there is a certain synergy between the two. One is synonymous with the other. I hear Ewan’s voice, I think Lust for life. Soon as I hear the beaten out tom-tom intro, I think Ewan McGregor. Presumably those clever chaps at the publicity and marketing department of Royal Caribbean were thinking along similar sort of lines. Somehow, though, it doesn’t work for me.
Think about it.
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a holiday. Choose a cruise on f4cking big boat you can’t afford. Choose lounging around all day between ports with nothing to do except get skin cancer. Choose having nowhere to go except to puke your ringer over the side...
Doesn’t quite work does it?
But get the right song and you can sell cowshit to a dairy farm.
Get your song behind a good advertising campaign and its worth all the air play or playlisting that radio can offer.
I wondered what lengths an artist would go to in order to get their song used in an ad and the lengths advertisers would go to get the right song.
Also the lengths some artists would go to keep their songs off the TV.
I guess they thought he would appeal as a good role model to their target audience, whoever they might be.
It also got me to thinking about the absurdity of Lust for Life being used by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in their ad. Absurd that the clientele on a cruise ship might even know the bare chested and sinewy Mr Osterberg Jr if he were to rise a la Triton from their lobster bisque clad only his transparent pvc hipsters.
Also absurd that the track was spliced to conveniently skip the bits about liquor and drugs, the flesh machine and another striptease. I wonder if any of their cruise clients gave that a thought when they were booking their trip round the West Indies.
Aside from that, I can’t ever hear that song without entering into a Ewan McGregor style rant about choosing life, electric tin openers and the like. I’m actually at the stage where there is a certain synergy between the two. One is synonymous with the other. I hear Ewan’s voice, I think Lust for life. Soon as I hear the beaten out tom-tom intro, I think Ewan McGregor. Presumably those clever chaps at the publicity and marketing department of Royal Caribbean were thinking along similar sort of lines. Somehow, though, it doesn’t work for me.
Think about it.
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a holiday. Choose a cruise on f4cking big boat you can’t afford. Choose lounging around all day between ports with nothing to do except get skin cancer. Choose having nowhere to go except to puke your ringer over the side...
Doesn’t quite work does it?
But get the right song and you can sell cowshit to a dairy farm.
Get your song behind a good advertising campaign and its worth all the air play or playlisting that radio can offer.
I wondered what lengths an artist would go to in order to get their song used in an ad and the lengths advertisers would go to get the right song.
Also the lengths some artists would go to keep their songs off the TV.
Back in the golden days of the Levis ad, many a number one was the product of an advertising campaign.
Marvin Gaye, Ben E King and Percy Sledge all had hits on the back of a pair of denims. Nick Kamen launched a career on the same basis.
We had some classic beer ads with Hipsway, Win, Big Country and Simple Minds.
More recently we’ve had Lucky Jim soundtracking a Kingsmill bread ad, we’ve had Devendra Banhart giving it ‘little yellow spider laughing at the snow’ to an Orange ad and now we’ve got some dumb assed farmer rampaging about the country side with a hen stapled to the back of his quad bike to the iconic strains of Born to be Wild. All to try and convince the public that his eggs are good, happy eggs.
Even if all the hairy arsed bikers who got off to Easy Rider have turned all soft and gotten a free range conscience, I can’t somehow see Steppenwolf breaking back into the charts on the back of that one.
More recently we’ve had Lucky Jim soundtracking a Kingsmill bread ad, we’ve had Devendra Banhart giving it ‘little yellow spider laughing at the snow’ to an Orange ad and now we’ve got some dumb assed farmer rampaging about the country side with a hen stapled to the back of his quad bike to the iconic strains of Born to be Wild. All to try and convince the public that his eggs are good, happy eggs.
Even if all the hairy arsed bikers who got off to Easy Rider have turned all soft and gotten a free range conscience, I can’t somehow see Steppenwolf breaking back into the charts on the back of that one.
I read somewhere recently about an ad for a well known brand of denim wear using Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son and about how, after some judicious pruning of the song’s text, a totally different message was conveyed to that contained in the songs subtext. The All American, flag waving message was clearly in conflict with John Fogerty’s original meaning.
Despite that, and the fact that some people were incensed by the blatant corruption of the songs subtext, surely John Fogerty himself must have felt the message was ok. Either that or he just needed the money.
Someone who probably doesn’t need the money is Bob Dylan, yet recent years have seen him move from a stance of never allowing his work to be used in ads, to a situation where he has had deals with Starbucks, Apple and, most recently, and bizarrely, the Cooperative.
Then we get all the plagiarised attempts to capture that particular mood or to cash in on the success of something that has been deemed off limits.
Take the recent Magnum ice cream ad, surely one of the most blatant rip offs ever.
I guess Jack White wasn’t too bothered by it and, as far as I can tell, hasn’t raised a legal action against the makers.
Tom Waits on the other hand has stood his ground.
In 2000 he refused a Spanish production company the rights to use his song Innocent When You Dream on an ad for a well known German car (the one with the four circles on it). Undeterred, they went ahead, using not his original version but a soundalike.
How the hell does anyone get to sound like Tom Waits?
Gargle with the diamonte shards of a shattered windscreen?
Chain smoke 60 coyote dung and habanero cheroots a day?
Wash it all down with some old Kentucky bourbon laced with nitromors?
You'd have thought if they were going to imitate someone they'd have picked someone, well, someone a little less unique because, lets face, ain''t nobody can sound like Tom Waits.
You’d also have thought they would have known better especially when, after a similar offence, he hit Frito Lays for around two and a half million dollars some twenty years ago but, undeterred, General Motors tried to pull some similar moves.
Needless to say old Tom took them to the cleaners as well, leaving his professional reputation fully intact.
His parting shot –
Needless to say old Tom took them to the cleaners as well, leaving his professional reputation fully intact.
His parting shot –
“I’m glad to be out of the car sales business once and for all”
And so the music...
Billy Bragg – The Woody Guthrie Show
http://www.sendspace.com/file/020bbc
Dylan Earls Court 1978
http://www.sendspace.com/file/24jsg1
the Alarm – The Point Cardiff
http://www.sendspace.com/file/n6lfll
Johnny Hardie & Gavin Marwick – The Blue Lamp
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vjtxs6
Idlewild – Radio Scotland Sessions
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o3ldgd
Pale Saints – In Ribbons
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r471p4
Roddy Frame – Marco’s East Kilbride
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gh147a
Shooglenifty – Live At Selwyn Hall
http://www.sendspace.com/file/d8yng1
James Yorkston – Live at Poisson Mouille
http://www.sendspace.com/file/haafe1
Sea Wolf - Leaves In The River
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1xi2ih
Roddy Hart – Home Tapes
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zn4nje
Joseph Arthur - Brugge
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r6p69r
http://www.sendspace.com/file/020bbc
Dylan Earls Court 1978
http://www.sendspace.com/file/24jsg1
the Alarm – The Point Cardiff
http://www.sendspace.com/file/n6lfll
Johnny Hardie & Gavin Marwick – The Blue Lamp
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vjtxs6
Idlewild – Radio Scotland Sessions
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o3ldgd
Pale Saints – In Ribbons
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r471p4
Roddy Frame – Marco’s East Kilbride
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gh147a
Shooglenifty – Live At Selwyn Hall
http://www.sendspace.com/file/d8yng1
James Yorkston – Live at Poisson Mouille
http://www.sendspace.com/file/haafe1
Sea Wolf - Leaves In The River
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1xi2ih
Roddy Hart – Home Tapes
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zn4nje
Joseph Arthur - Brugge
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r6p69r
Enjoy...
Hooli
Friday, 29 May 2009
...that's like hypnotizing chickens...
“Choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family, choose a f4ckin big television.
Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance.
Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments, choose a starter home, choose your friends.
Choose leisure wear and matching luggage.
Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase and a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose diy and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sittin’ on that couch watching mind numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish f4cked up brats you’ve spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future, choose life.
But why would I want to do a thing like that?
I chose not to choose life.
I chose something else...”
...and the reasons, there are no reasons, who needs reasons when you’ve got in service days?
For anyone outside either the UK or school age parenthood, in service days are slipped in to the academic year indiscriminately under the pretence that they are training days for teachers, all the while catching unsuspecting parents unaware and forcing them to secure some form of alternative child care or take the day off work.
Having decided that I actually quite fancied Friday off, I decided to pick up the child care baton.
Both kids had invited a friend over so the actual involvement from me would extend no further than a little bit of taxiing.
By the grace of a strange meteorological phenonomenon, the sky was a funny blue colour and there was a strange bright orb thing in the sky.
I think the English call it the sun although I might be getting confused with that thing that shines out of Bechkham’s arse.
Anyway, it was 11am, the patio was behaving in its intended sun trap fashion and I had dealt with the chores left for me.
I had my coffee; I had REM on the dock and nobody around to complain about it.
I had some container gardening to do and all the gear at my disposal.
A nice, relaxing day fanned out before me like a big fat royal flush.
All was going well and I was almost finished my planting. The clouds had started to appear but the promised showers had passed me by and the sun continued its thermal assault on my patio.
As I straightened, I actually felt the trickle of wetness run down to the small of my back.
It really was that hot, not a breath of wind, and I was thinking about what I might do in the afternoon.
Beer?
Guitar?
Hammock?
It was all sounding good when the biggest bastard of a black labrador I’ve ever seen saunters into the garden, tramples the shit out of everything then squats it’s big black hairy arse over the lawn and proceeds to squeeze out something resembling an Amy Winehouse hairdo?
What the F4CK!
I chose life without dogs...
I chose life without having to scoop up handfuls of shite with poly bags.
I choose a life where I can post the perpetrators crap through his owners letterbox.
If I thought I could get away with it without the kids, and everyone I know, tarring me with the same shitey stick as Ted Bundy, I would choose the biggest fuck off bazooka and ram it up the arse of every dog that’s ever opened its shitehole over someone else’s property and let f4ck at the scabby little bastards.
And so, in the absence of an Iggy boot with lust for life on it, this is just as good in a different way...
Del Amitri – Chicago 4th July 1994
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7fje8s
Inspiral Carpets – Dung4 Demo Tape
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zpbgbr
Glenn Tilbrook – The Past Has Been Bottled
http://www.sendspace.com/file/95yntc
In Tua Nua – Live In Manchester
http://www.sendspace.com/file/no8i2c
Idlewild – Live At The Garage
http://www.sendspace.com/file/s2u26y
Steve O’Donohue - Live In London
http://www.sendspace.com/file/3y8ft8
Lucinda Williams – House Of Blues
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r6wjfj
Richmond Fontaine – Live in Edinburgh
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r205t4
Whiskeytown – Acoustic Radio Sessions
http://www.sendspace.com/file/p1hfpj
The Aliens – Astronomy For Dogs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xgnrs9
David Gray – Live At Joe’s Pub
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4okluv
and finally, Roddy Frame set from around the time of Stray. Short solo set with guest spot from Edwyn Collins followed by full band set. I Threw it all away doesn't actually belong in this set although it was on the set lits. The recording I have had it and a few other tracks removed because they had been released officially as b-sides. If anyone has it, I think on the Crying Scene single, they can link in comments for completeness sake.
Aztec Camera – Barrowlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zf5su7
Enjoy...
Hooli
Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance.
Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments, choose a starter home, choose your friends.
Choose leisure wear and matching luggage.
Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase and a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose diy and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sittin’ on that couch watching mind numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish f4cked up brats you’ve spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future, choose life.
But why would I want to do a thing like that?
I chose not to choose life.
I chose something else...”
...and the reasons, there are no reasons, who needs reasons when you’ve got in service days?
For anyone outside either the UK or school age parenthood, in service days are slipped in to the academic year indiscriminately under the pretence that they are training days for teachers, all the while catching unsuspecting parents unaware and forcing them to secure some form of alternative child care or take the day off work.
Having decided that I actually quite fancied Friday off, I decided to pick up the child care baton.
Both kids had invited a friend over so the actual involvement from me would extend no further than a little bit of taxiing.
By the grace of a strange meteorological phenonomenon, the sky was a funny blue colour and there was a strange bright orb thing in the sky.
I think the English call it the sun although I might be getting confused with that thing that shines out of Bechkham’s arse.
Anyway, it was 11am, the patio was behaving in its intended sun trap fashion and I had dealt with the chores left for me.
I had my coffee; I had REM on the dock and nobody around to complain about it.
I had some container gardening to do and all the gear at my disposal.
A nice, relaxing day fanned out before me like a big fat royal flush.
All was going well and I was almost finished my planting. The clouds had started to appear but the promised showers had passed me by and the sun continued its thermal assault on my patio.
As I straightened, I actually felt the trickle of wetness run down to the small of my back.
It really was that hot, not a breath of wind, and I was thinking about what I might do in the afternoon.
Beer?
Guitar?
Hammock?
It was all sounding good when the biggest bastard of a black labrador I’ve ever seen saunters into the garden, tramples the shit out of everything then squats it’s big black hairy arse over the lawn and proceeds to squeeze out something resembling an Amy Winehouse hairdo?
What the F4CK!
I chose life without dogs...
I chose life without having to scoop up handfuls of shite with poly bags.
I choose a life where I can post the perpetrators crap through his owners letterbox.
If I thought I could get away with it without the kids, and everyone I know, tarring me with the same shitey stick as Ted Bundy, I would choose the biggest fuck off bazooka and ram it up the arse of every dog that’s ever opened its shitehole over someone else’s property and let f4ck at the scabby little bastards.
And so, in the absence of an Iggy boot with lust for life on it, this is just as good in a different way...
Del Amitri – Chicago 4th July 1994
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7fje8s
Inspiral Carpets – Dung4 Demo Tape
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zpbgbr
Glenn Tilbrook – The Past Has Been Bottled
http://www.sendspace.com/file/95yntc
In Tua Nua – Live In Manchester
http://www.sendspace.com/file/no8i2c
Idlewild – Live At The Garage
http://www.sendspace.com/file/s2u26y
Steve O’Donohue - Live In London
http://www.sendspace.com/file/3y8ft8
Lucinda Williams – House Of Blues
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r6wjfj
Richmond Fontaine – Live in Edinburgh
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r205t4
Whiskeytown – Acoustic Radio Sessions
http://www.sendspace.com/file/p1hfpj
The Aliens – Astronomy For Dogs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xgnrs9
David Gray – Live At Joe’s Pub
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4okluv
and finally, Roddy Frame set from around the time of Stray. Short solo set with guest spot from Edwyn Collins followed by full band set. I Threw it all away doesn't actually belong in this set although it was on the set lits. The recording I have had it and a few other tracks removed because they had been released officially as b-sides. If anyone has it, I think on the Crying Scene single, they can link in comments for completeness sake.
Aztec Camera – Barrowlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zf5su7
Enjoy...
Hooli
Saturday, 16 May 2009
...wondering which of the buggers to blame...
I don’t know!
I take a couple of weeks off for a sanity check and world goes crazy.
Pigs everywhere.
Now that we’ve got politipiggypox, jordanpiggypox and piggypiggypox, I guess I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.
So what does it all mean?
“the bloodfest has to stop” one minister said, after his expenses details were splattered all over one of the broadsheets like the gore in a John Carpenter movie.
Sweet f4cking mother of suffering, what in the name of the wee man is he on about.
You’d think Freddy Kreuger was rampaging through Parliament decapitating innocent women and children and generally pissing down the necks of his victims.
He needs to trawl his overpaid ministerial arse round some of the country's crime blackspots. Maybe then he'd get a closer understanding of what a bloodfest is really about.
All their dodgy house deals and expense claims.
All their extravagant luxuries donated by the taxpayer.
Are we expected to believe that our beloved parliamentary representatives have unwittingly gotten themselves embroiled in a little bit of a scandal?
Seriously, do they expect us to believe they are the innocent victims of flawed policies and insecure procedures?
If any of us mere peasants were caught with our fingers in the communal cashbox, would we really be so surprised when we were hit with the most severe censure imaginable.
Of course not but the inference from this individual is that he has done nothing wrong and the press are hounding him. If he’s so innocent, why then has he resigned?
For once the press have done the right thing and if, by going for the jugular, they drag down a number of overpaid pompous twats, it’s fine by me.
As far as I can see, it’s quite simple.
A clearly documented procedure backed by a code of conduct. Regulated, not by bought off lap dogs, but by an independent body, unbowing to the slippery antics of those who would claim to be their superiors.
Step outside the lines and you’re well and truly f4cked.
End of career; P45 in the post; appointment with the man in the big white wig; all expenses paid vacation courtesy of Her Majesty; spit roasting in the showers non-optional extra.
Of course that’s never gonna happen is it but the questions now being asked centre around how damaging this will have been, not just for the individuals concerned but also for the parties they represent.
Another way to look at this is the old ‘imagine they gave a party and nobody came’ trick
We’re always being told how important it is to vote. Imagine, with the Euro elections looming, if absolutely everybody boycotted the election and nobody got any votes.
What a f4cking hoot that would be.
Can any of us honestly say ‘I’m voting for Mr or Ms X because I trust them to look after my interests in Europe.
I know that this is guilt by association but let’s face it, if I was Hannibal Lecter’s nephew, would you let me cook your dinner.
Thought not.
Meanwhile, ripping a massive rent through the tabloids this week is the sad news that has rocked the media world to it’s very core.
Poor little Jordyjugs has been dumped by hubby Peter Andre.
Dear God, has little puppy boy finally seen sense.
On a reality TV show, that was the intellectual equivalent of Chat magazine, he hounded someone into a relationship who made her fortune out of flashing tits that invested more in silicone than the entire NASA computer bank. The country drooled, among other things, over her. Did he really think she was his for the keeping.
Soft git.
What did he expect?
Cindaf4ckinrella.
Of course, this could be wrong and possibly unfair to both of them but theirs was not so much a marriage made in heaven as a marriage made in Hello Magazine.
And so, rounding up my suine trilogy, swine flu, mad sow disease, pig fever, H1N1; call it what you will, it stopped the world. Well almost, if you live in Central America.
A few people die in a little Mexican pueblo and suddenly we’re all sprouting curly tails and smelling like Kermits tadge.
In their very own inimitable fashion, the wonderful British press built this up to be something of a global catastrophe but really, who gives a flying f4ck?
It’s not as if it’s aids or hepatitis we’re speaking about here, nor is it the bubonic plague, smallpox or consumption.
It’s the bloody flu for f4ck sake and like MRSA or CDiff, you can pick it up free of charge at any NHS hospital in the country simply by visiting a sick relative.
Spread through an airborne virus by manky bastards who have poor personal hygiene and little or no consideration for those around them, a sensible approach to keeping oneself clean is all that’s required but now, with 27 dead worldwide, just as the press predicted, it’s all reaching fever pitch.
The bollocks it is!
Last I noticed, it didn’t even raise a single mention in the news.
A couple of newlyweds bring back some sniffles with their duty free tequila; next thing my old mate Maxipops is their agent and the story is ready to be sold worldwide.
I watched the two of them on TV the other night spouting all their crap about how bad it was for their families.
Bleuchhh!
Who are they trying to kid.
No doubt they’ll be selling their story for thousands. F4cking parasites!
Movie rights to follow no doubt, cue Brad and Angelina.
In another case, medical staff reported a victim to be suffering mild flu like symptoms while the publicist claimed his 22 year old London client was “in a bad way”
The press ought to know better than to listen to this shite but then, you can only deal with so much truth, then it’s time to make some money.
It’s all about money.
Create the illusion of an imminent pandemic, rope in the unsuspecting public, sell loads of papers.
Make some dosh.
What we have to ask ourselves about this little symbiotic threesome between Clifford, the victims and the press is “where is the real virus here?”
To be perfectly honest, I have a really tough time distinguishing between the three.
And so...
We’ll try for some music.
I would have posted something to reflect my recent gigging but to be honest Blind Pilot, who were third on the bill, were the biggest revelation. Maybe my gigging experiences need to be confined to the smaller venues I’ve always preferred.
Anyway, as I said, some music and not a Counting Crows or Hold Steady album in sight...
...there is only one soundtrack to all thing piggish nonsense...
Pink Floyd - Animal Instincts
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tli80g
...some folky ditties...
Richard Thompson - Atlanta, GA
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iuxgaq
...and more from my fave folk band at their peak. To think Ian Benzie used to sing in my local...
Old Blind Dogs – Close To The Bone
http://www.sendspace.com/file/oxov01
...don’t know what to make of this guy. Times I like him, time I don’t...
Ray LaMontagne - Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mmntfe
...back on tour supporting the Wonderstuff, catch them if you can, Swill and the gang...
The Men They Couldn’t Hang - Live Rarities
http://www.sendspace.com/file/20vy9m
Another Susanna Hoffs collaboration. Predominantly, this is David Roback of Mazzy Starr with bits of Will Glenn from Rain Parade, Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles and many others. Bit of a precursor to the amazing Hoffs / Sweet album Under the Covers...
Rainy Day – Rainy Day
http://www.sendspace.com/file/40flwm
...great album from Motherwell’s Sam Corry and Dan O’Neill. Two guys, great songs, greater harmonies. Saw tehm live a few times in the eighties, quite simply, they were born out of time. In another generation, they would have been huge...
River Detectives – Saturday Night, Sunday Morning
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9zd8yi
...Thom Yorke doesn’t always flick my switches. Sometimes though, the originality cuts through...
Radiohead – The Basement Tapes
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o50buh
...and where would we be without good old Jackie boy...
The Raconteurs – Live In Edinburgh
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sju4nw
pretty unheard of Glasgow? Band Scheme and a weird mix of eighties new rom post punk reggae funk. Figure they just tried to jam every possible influence in there...
Scheme – Black And White
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9jovjv
and finally, to fulfil the request from a couple of weeks ago, at better bit rate and in all their glory,
the best band of the eighties, The Mackenzies
in the beginning...
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – Good Deeds
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jndmt5
then...
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – hammer & Tongs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/50mm4c
...what Shirley did next...
Garbage – Litter From America
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tnnizi
...what Martin, Fin & Kelly did next...
Isa & The Filthy Tongues - Addiction
http://www.sendspace.com/file/06vc0z
As for Big John and Rona Scobie, who knows?
Last time I saw big John Duncan, he was traipsing round Ikea looking decidedly not of a conventional nature. Rona, I think had kids and quit the business but I’m not sure
The Bluebells Young at Heart has just come on VH1 so it’s time to blow.
Cheers and Enjoy...
Hooli
I take a couple of weeks off for a sanity check and world goes crazy.
Pigs everywhere.
Now that we’ve got politipiggypox, jordanpiggypox and piggypiggypox, I guess I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.
So what does it all mean?
“the bloodfest has to stop” one minister said, after his expenses details were splattered all over one of the broadsheets like the gore in a John Carpenter movie.
Sweet f4cking mother of suffering, what in the name of the wee man is he on about.
You’d think Freddy Kreuger was rampaging through Parliament decapitating innocent women and children and generally pissing down the necks of his victims.
He needs to trawl his overpaid ministerial arse round some of the country's crime blackspots. Maybe then he'd get a closer understanding of what a bloodfest is really about.
All their dodgy house deals and expense claims.
All their extravagant luxuries donated by the taxpayer.
Are we expected to believe that our beloved parliamentary representatives have unwittingly gotten themselves embroiled in a little bit of a scandal?
Seriously, do they expect us to believe they are the innocent victims of flawed policies and insecure procedures?
If any of us mere peasants were caught with our fingers in the communal cashbox, would we really be so surprised when we were hit with the most severe censure imaginable.
Of course not but the inference from this individual is that he has done nothing wrong and the press are hounding him. If he’s so innocent, why then has he resigned?
For once the press have done the right thing and if, by going for the jugular, they drag down a number of overpaid pompous twats, it’s fine by me.
As far as I can see, it’s quite simple.
A clearly documented procedure backed by a code of conduct. Regulated, not by bought off lap dogs, but by an independent body, unbowing to the slippery antics of those who would claim to be their superiors.
Step outside the lines and you’re well and truly f4cked.
End of career; P45 in the post; appointment with the man in the big white wig; all expenses paid vacation courtesy of Her Majesty; spit roasting in the showers non-optional extra.
Of course that’s never gonna happen is it but the questions now being asked centre around how damaging this will have been, not just for the individuals concerned but also for the parties they represent.
Another way to look at this is the old ‘imagine they gave a party and nobody came’ trick
We’re always being told how important it is to vote. Imagine, with the Euro elections looming, if absolutely everybody boycotted the election and nobody got any votes.
What a f4cking hoot that would be.
Can any of us honestly say ‘I’m voting for Mr or Ms X because I trust them to look after my interests in Europe.
I know that this is guilt by association but let’s face it, if I was Hannibal Lecter’s nephew, would you let me cook your dinner.
Thought not.
Meanwhile, ripping a massive rent through the tabloids this week is the sad news that has rocked the media world to it’s very core.
Poor little Jordyjugs has been dumped by hubby Peter Andre.
Dear God, has little puppy boy finally seen sense.
On a reality TV show, that was the intellectual equivalent of Chat magazine, he hounded someone into a relationship who made her fortune out of flashing tits that invested more in silicone than the entire NASA computer bank. The country drooled, among other things, over her. Did he really think she was his for the keeping.
Soft git.
What did he expect?
Cindaf4ckinrella.
Of course, this could be wrong and possibly unfair to both of them but theirs was not so much a marriage made in heaven as a marriage made in Hello Magazine.
And so, rounding up my suine trilogy, swine flu, mad sow disease, pig fever, H1N1; call it what you will, it stopped the world. Well almost, if you live in Central America.
A few people die in a little Mexican pueblo and suddenly we’re all sprouting curly tails and smelling like Kermits tadge.
In their very own inimitable fashion, the wonderful British press built this up to be something of a global catastrophe but really, who gives a flying f4ck?
It’s not as if it’s aids or hepatitis we’re speaking about here, nor is it the bubonic plague, smallpox or consumption.
It’s the bloody flu for f4ck sake and like MRSA or CDiff, you can pick it up free of charge at any NHS hospital in the country simply by visiting a sick relative.
Spread through an airborne virus by manky bastards who have poor personal hygiene and little or no consideration for those around them, a sensible approach to keeping oneself clean is all that’s required but now, with 27 dead worldwide, just as the press predicted, it’s all reaching fever pitch.
The bollocks it is!
Last I noticed, it didn’t even raise a single mention in the news.
A couple of newlyweds bring back some sniffles with their duty free tequila; next thing my old mate Maxipops is their agent and the story is ready to be sold worldwide.
I watched the two of them on TV the other night spouting all their crap about how bad it was for their families.
Bleuchhh!
Who are they trying to kid.
No doubt they’ll be selling their story for thousands. F4cking parasites!
Movie rights to follow no doubt, cue Brad and Angelina.
In another case, medical staff reported a victim to be suffering mild flu like symptoms while the publicist claimed his 22 year old London client was “in a bad way”
The press ought to know better than to listen to this shite but then, you can only deal with so much truth, then it’s time to make some money.
It’s all about money.
Create the illusion of an imminent pandemic, rope in the unsuspecting public, sell loads of papers.
Make some dosh.
What we have to ask ourselves about this little symbiotic threesome between Clifford, the victims and the press is “where is the real virus here?”
To be perfectly honest, I have a really tough time distinguishing between the three.
And so...
We’ll try for some music.
I would have posted something to reflect my recent gigging but to be honest Blind Pilot, who were third on the bill, were the biggest revelation. Maybe my gigging experiences need to be confined to the smaller venues I’ve always preferred.
Anyway, as I said, some music and not a Counting Crows or Hold Steady album in sight...
...there is only one soundtrack to all thing piggish nonsense...
Pink Floyd - Animal Instincts
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tli80g
...some folky ditties...
Richard Thompson - Atlanta, GA
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iuxgaq
...and more from my fave folk band at their peak. To think Ian Benzie used to sing in my local...
Old Blind Dogs – Close To The Bone
http://www.sendspace.com/file/oxov01
...don’t know what to make of this guy. Times I like him, time I don’t...
Ray LaMontagne - Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mmntfe
...back on tour supporting the Wonderstuff, catch them if you can, Swill and the gang...
The Men They Couldn’t Hang - Live Rarities
http://www.sendspace.com/file/20vy9m
Another Susanna Hoffs collaboration. Predominantly, this is David Roback of Mazzy Starr with bits of Will Glenn from Rain Parade, Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles and many others. Bit of a precursor to the amazing Hoffs / Sweet album Under the Covers...
Rainy Day – Rainy Day
http://www.sendspace.com/file/40flwm
...great album from Motherwell’s Sam Corry and Dan O’Neill. Two guys, great songs, greater harmonies. Saw tehm live a few times in the eighties, quite simply, they were born out of time. In another generation, they would have been huge...
River Detectives – Saturday Night, Sunday Morning
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9zd8yi
...Thom Yorke doesn’t always flick my switches. Sometimes though, the originality cuts through...
Radiohead – The Basement Tapes
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o50buh
...and where would we be without good old Jackie boy...
The Raconteurs – Live In Edinburgh
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sju4nw
pretty unheard of Glasgow? Band Scheme and a weird mix of eighties new rom post punk reggae funk. Figure they just tried to jam every possible influence in there...
Scheme – Black And White
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9jovjv
and finally, to fulfil the request from a couple of weeks ago, at better bit rate and in all their glory,
the best band of the eighties, The Mackenzies
in the beginning...
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – Good Deeds
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jndmt5
then...
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – hammer & Tongs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/50mm4c
...what Shirley did next...
Garbage – Litter From America
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tnnizi
...what Martin, Fin & Kelly did next...
Isa & The Filthy Tongues - Addiction
http://www.sendspace.com/file/06vc0z
As for Big John and Rona Scobie, who knows?
Last time I saw big John Duncan, he was traipsing round Ikea looking decidedly not of a conventional nature. Rona, I think had kids and quit the business but I’m not sure
The Bluebells Young at Heart has just come on VH1 so it’s time to blow.
Cheers and Enjoy...
Hooli
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
It's all over now baby blue
Ok.
This is it.
End of the line.
Increasingly over the past few weeks I've been getting less satisfaction from writing this stuff.
Uplaoding has become a nightmare and even downloading has become something of a chore.
Anyone downloading from here will have noticed that all my links have gone over to Sendspace. Simple reason for this is that my RS uploader fell of it's perch some weeks ago.
I have relentlessly tried to fix whatever problem there is with it but nothing is working.
Even consulting the various forums there are on the subject has failed to provide a solution.
Now I'm finding I can barely download anything except from Sendspace.
Rapidshare downloads that used to take a few minutes now take a couple of hours or time out completely.
My connection seems fine and everything else loads fairly quickly, sometimes RS downloads work ok and then nothing so I don't really know what the problem is.
Trouble now is that I don't really care.
There are many ways to string a cat as they say and quite frankly, I can't be arsed with this particular tuning.
Add to that the fact that good old Google have fired off another Cease and Desist notice and quarantined another post in it's entirety all results in a bit of a jaded Hooli.
All I can say now is that most of the time it's been a blast and, although we've been here before and I really appreciated the supportive comments that urged me to continue, now it's over.
I have other things that I should have been doing all along so it’s off to restring some guitars, mandolins and cats.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by and thanks to everyone who commented.
Thanks in particular to Smacky and Landyjon who just kept coming back and were happy to indulge in a bit of banter
Who knows, maybe after a bit of a break, I might find new inspiration but for now…
…here is the last post.
See the smell o’ cabbages first thing in the mornin’
I was reading a book the other day, which anyone who really knows me will tell you, is a strange thing because, as they say in teenspeak, I don’t do lit.
Nevertheless, there I was, for the fifth time this year I might add, reading a book when I get to a great passage in the first chapter about shite and pish and puke, which instantly had me in convulsions.
OK, so there’s nothing particularly funny abour SPP, especially if, like me, you’ve experienced the old salmonella trick where you can project through the eye of a needle from one end and between the Murrayfield posts from the other, but this took on a peculiar humorous slant in light of the fact I was sitting on the crapper at the time.
As I read on there was a bit of descriptive text about the smell and it struck me that smell is something that is quite difficult to describe.
When it comes to senses, everyone can be quite clear about what they like to look at; landscapes, seascapes or skyscrapers; old cars, fast cars or superbikes; bright colours, natural hues or lurid fluorescents; big jugs, little buns or tight butts. Equally, I’m sure we can all be clear about what we don’t like to look at.
Cat’s arses do it for me.
Anyone who’s never owned a cat or isn’t a cat lover will have noticed they way cats always gravitate towards people who are either freaked by them, are allergic to them or just have a plain dislike to them. They can sense it in their evil little Egyptian cat brains and once they have, it’s onto the lap, back arched, tail in the air and a vet’s eye view of their arsehole.
Evil little feline bastards!
This is the reason why I don’t like cats, especially ones with their arses pressed against the rear windscreens of bright fluorescent green sports cars, driven by women with tits like basketballs and complexions like burning rubber that’s been put out with orange sand and a golf shoe.
Similarly, we are pretty clear when it comes to what tickles our tastebuds; beer, wine or whisky; cola, fruit juice or water; coffee, tea or Bovril; Chinese, Indian or Ma’s own; and again, we don’t need a jury to help us decide what we don’t like.
Me, I just can’t go for anything that smells like shite.
Eggs, in almost any form, particularly the high sulphur, yolky variety along with numerous vegetables from the Brassica and Rutabaga families that give off that characteristic peppermint and cabbage shitey yom, when introduced to heat, can instantly trigger my gag reflex.
It actually beats me how we ever managed to convince ourselves that it was ok to eat something that smelled like crap, especially something that looked like a bleached out brain that had been dumped in a bunch of cabbage leaves
Maybe the ancient Greeks were just having a bit of a laugh with us.
In the same way, what we like to feel against our skin follows a similar pattern. Some of us like hairy, some like bald; some like rough, some like it smooth; some like hot and some like cold while some like to be wet and others like to be dry. If you can escape the sexual innuendo and think about it, seldom are we anywhere in between and almost never are we comfortable at both ends of the spectrum.
What we like to hear has pretty much been covered before but smell, now there’s a whole different metaphoric kettle of rancid kippers.
Sense of smell is so variable and even when it works, we can’t agree what things smell like.
My wife would probably agree, unless she was feeling particularly argumentative, that she couldn’t smell a shitey stick supposing it was rammed up her left nostril. I, on the other hand can smell putrefaction a mile off.
Most smells, apart from eggs, I can live with but some things really get to me.
Lemons!
Now I happen to be quite partial to sour things, lemons, limes and so forth but one thing I can’t stomach is the smell of foosty lemons.
One household I regularly visit almost always has a very pungent and acidic waft that I know emanates from the fruit bowl.
A few strategic moves with the apples and oranges and sure enough, festering away at the bottom, a deceased lemon heavily disguised in Penicillin Italicum. The inevitable puffs of blue mould releasing a further acidic assault on my seared nostrils.
Melons are another thing!
Fresh, mouldy or otherwise, to me, they always smell of cat’s piss.
Given that the rest of the family know that any cat that enters the house faces unspeakable things involving Rodger, a baseball bat and some electricity, I know whenever that smell is around that melon is on the menu.
I’m sure by now you’re starting to wonder just what the f4ck the point is that I’m building up to. Well, as I was saying, I’ve taken to reading, generally at the end of the day while resting my butt cheeks over the crapper.
It’s the only time I can get peace and quiet.
There are times when I’ve spent so long sitting there, enthralled by some tale of butchery or murderous mutilation that, on rising to a standing position, I’ve found myself immediately collapsing into the corner like a sack of wet haddock, only realising as I clamber back onto the bog seat that my legs have gone to sleep.
Anyway, the other night, sitting there, locked in mortal combat with my bowels while digesting some very descriptive Christopher Brookmyre, I realised that I was feeling a bit queasy.
Not from the subject matter or from my own stink but from another smell.
Someone had come up with the bright idea of filling the house with air fresheners. You know the sort of thing, looks like glass filled with bright red gel; smells like plastic filled with regurgitated sweets and rotting fruit.
That great artificial perfume that has a particularly nasty knack of fusing with the smell of something foul to produce something much worse.
When I thought about it, these weren’t only in the toilet. They were dotted around windowsills, cupboards even in the bedroom.
Now this came as some surprise as my wife is pretty much a candle fiend.
This extends to the point where she can have anything up to a dozen candles burning around the house in a single evening.
This is clearly some kind of game, like a test for me, just to see if I’m paying attention. Me being the last to bed, I’m sure she thinks if she lights enough of them, I’ll miss one and she’ll have her victory. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve come down stairs in the morning to find the kitchen filled with the scent of mulled wine and forest berries and lit by the faint glimmer of a wax filled glass on top of the hob.
At least now they go on the hob and not on the worktop.
You should see what happens when the heat from a candleholder transfers through the glass, into the formica then forms a bubble underneath which then explodes.
I’m thinking egg in a microwave here…
Speaking of which, being ever the economists, same wife (not that I have more than one) and the teenager decided that it would be a good idea to save all the wax remnants from all the half dead candles and burn it all in an oil burner – I agree, much better than buying new candles all the time and less glass wastage as well.
Unfortunate thing here is that the teenager has obviously been paying attention to the wrong bits of science class while her mother, despite being the product of two eminent scientific minds, clearly didn’t pay attention to any of it.
Using the microwave to melt wax?
Good idea.
Not removing the little metallic disc that anchors the wick?
Bad idea
Realising it was a bad idea but running to get ones mobile and film your own stupidity?
Totally f4cking priceless!
Enter the self-lighting candle.
I was going to add the video clip but like some of my previous posts, it too has been censored
So, as I was saying, house filled with air fresheners, dad out jamming with his mates wife and daughter traumatised by self lighting candle episode, you can see how it all fits together. Clearly the teenager had taken control of the shopping list. And had piled a load of Airwicks into the trolley. Presumably this was as a countermeasure to the melons she had also placed in the trolley, knowing full well I’d come home and start wiring up my baseball bat.
And so, one last stand of defiance...
the music...
Mixed bag of live recordings from Ricky Ross & co
Deacon Blue – Orphans
http://www.sendspace.com/file/lokp9s
Richard Thompson - Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1rqlyz
Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson – Partners In Crime
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4dxuk1
Yello – One Second
http://www.sendspace.com/file/3q9l9n
Sigur Ros – Odin’s Raven Magic - Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/c3dfc3
Idlewild – Tom Morton Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ko45ex
Taste – London Ivasion
http://www.sendspace.com/file/228x3r
Rock Salt and Nails – Live And Hazardous
http://www.sendspace.com/file/04q58k
10000 Maniacs – Human Conflict Number Five
http://www.sendspace.com/file/arw8gw
Kate Rusby & John McCusker - Heartlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/funj8o
Billy Connolly & John McCusker – Billy Connolly’s Tour Of New Zealand
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iib1c4
Port O'Brien - All We Could Do Was Sing
http://www.sendspace.com/file/uyn6w9
Death Cab For Cutie – You Can Play These Songs With Chords
http://www.sendspace.com/file/587gt5
The Postal Service - The District Sleeeps Alone Tonight
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ujil9r
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ww3sgr
The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zioqli
Shooglenifty – Troots
http://www.sendspace.com/file/70bqt2
The Raconteurs – Stubbs BBQ
http://www.sendspace.com/file/weo4k2
Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sjy8q3
Jackie Leven – The Haunted Year Winter
http://www.sendspace.com/file/hjsrft
Blackie & The Rodeo Kings – Swinging From The Chains Of Lone
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e0x1mx
Thanks to you all and enjoy…
Hooli has left the building!
This is it.
End of the line.
Increasingly over the past few weeks I've been getting less satisfaction from writing this stuff.
Uplaoding has become a nightmare and even downloading has become something of a chore.
Anyone downloading from here will have noticed that all my links have gone over to Sendspace. Simple reason for this is that my RS uploader fell of it's perch some weeks ago.
I have relentlessly tried to fix whatever problem there is with it but nothing is working.
Even consulting the various forums there are on the subject has failed to provide a solution.
Now I'm finding I can barely download anything except from Sendspace.
Rapidshare downloads that used to take a few minutes now take a couple of hours or time out completely.
My connection seems fine and everything else loads fairly quickly, sometimes RS downloads work ok and then nothing so I don't really know what the problem is.
Trouble now is that I don't really care.
There are many ways to string a cat as they say and quite frankly, I can't be arsed with this particular tuning.
Add to that the fact that good old Google have fired off another Cease and Desist notice and quarantined another post in it's entirety all results in a bit of a jaded Hooli.
All I can say now is that most of the time it's been a blast and, although we've been here before and I really appreciated the supportive comments that urged me to continue, now it's over.
I have other things that I should have been doing all along so it’s off to restring some guitars, mandolins and cats.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by and thanks to everyone who commented.
Thanks in particular to Smacky and Landyjon who just kept coming back and were happy to indulge in a bit of banter
Who knows, maybe after a bit of a break, I might find new inspiration but for now…
…here is the last post.
See the smell o’ cabbages first thing in the mornin’
I was reading a book the other day, which anyone who really knows me will tell you, is a strange thing because, as they say in teenspeak, I don’t do lit.
Nevertheless, there I was, for the fifth time this year I might add, reading a book when I get to a great passage in the first chapter about shite and pish and puke, which instantly had me in convulsions.
OK, so there’s nothing particularly funny abour SPP, especially if, like me, you’ve experienced the old salmonella trick where you can project through the eye of a needle from one end and between the Murrayfield posts from the other, but this took on a peculiar humorous slant in light of the fact I was sitting on the crapper at the time.
As I read on there was a bit of descriptive text about the smell and it struck me that smell is something that is quite difficult to describe.
When it comes to senses, everyone can be quite clear about what they like to look at; landscapes, seascapes or skyscrapers; old cars, fast cars or superbikes; bright colours, natural hues or lurid fluorescents; big jugs, little buns or tight butts. Equally, I’m sure we can all be clear about what we don’t like to look at.
Cat’s arses do it for me.
Anyone who’s never owned a cat or isn’t a cat lover will have noticed they way cats always gravitate towards people who are either freaked by them, are allergic to them or just have a plain dislike to them. They can sense it in their evil little Egyptian cat brains and once they have, it’s onto the lap, back arched, tail in the air and a vet’s eye view of their arsehole.
Evil little feline bastards!
This is the reason why I don’t like cats, especially ones with their arses pressed against the rear windscreens of bright fluorescent green sports cars, driven by women with tits like basketballs and complexions like burning rubber that’s been put out with orange sand and a golf shoe.
Similarly, we are pretty clear when it comes to what tickles our tastebuds; beer, wine or whisky; cola, fruit juice or water; coffee, tea or Bovril; Chinese, Indian or Ma’s own; and again, we don’t need a jury to help us decide what we don’t like.
Me, I just can’t go for anything that smells like shite.
Eggs, in almost any form, particularly the high sulphur, yolky variety along with numerous vegetables from the Brassica and Rutabaga families that give off that characteristic peppermint and cabbage shitey yom, when introduced to heat, can instantly trigger my gag reflex.
It actually beats me how we ever managed to convince ourselves that it was ok to eat something that smelled like crap, especially something that looked like a bleached out brain that had been dumped in a bunch of cabbage leaves
Maybe the ancient Greeks were just having a bit of a laugh with us.
In the same way, what we like to feel against our skin follows a similar pattern. Some of us like hairy, some like bald; some like rough, some like it smooth; some like hot and some like cold while some like to be wet and others like to be dry. If you can escape the sexual innuendo and think about it, seldom are we anywhere in between and almost never are we comfortable at both ends of the spectrum.
What we like to hear has pretty much been covered before but smell, now there’s a whole different metaphoric kettle of rancid kippers.
Sense of smell is so variable and even when it works, we can’t agree what things smell like.
My wife would probably agree, unless she was feeling particularly argumentative, that she couldn’t smell a shitey stick supposing it was rammed up her left nostril. I, on the other hand can smell putrefaction a mile off.
Most smells, apart from eggs, I can live with but some things really get to me.
Lemons!
Now I happen to be quite partial to sour things, lemons, limes and so forth but one thing I can’t stomach is the smell of foosty lemons.
One household I regularly visit almost always has a very pungent and acidic waft that I know emanates from the fruit bowl.
A few strategic moves with the apples and oranges and sure enough, festering away at the bottom, a deceased lemon heavily disguised in Penicillin Italicum. The inevitable puffs of blue mould releasing a further acidic assault on my seared nostrils.
Melons are another thing!
Fresh, mouldy or otherwise, to me, they always smell of cat’s piss.
Given that the rest of the family know that any cat that enters the house faces unspeakable things involving Rodger, a baseball bat and some electricity, I know whenever that smell is around that melon is on the menu.
I’m sure by now you’re starting to wonder just what the f4ck the point is that I’m building up to. Well, as I was saying, I’ve taken to reading, generally at the end of the day while resting my butt cheeks over the crapper.
It’s the only time I can get peace and quiet.
There are times when I’ve spent so long sitting there, enthralled by some tale of butchery or murderous mutilation that, on rising to a standing position, I’ve found myself immediately collapsing into the corner like a sack of wet haddock, only realising as I clamber back onto the bog seat that my legs have gone to sleep.
Anyway, the other night, sitting there, locked in mortal combat with my bowels while digesting some very descriptive Christopher Brookmyre, I realised that I was feeling a bit queasy.
Not from the subject matter or from my own stink but from another smell.
Someone had come up with the bright idea of filling the house with air fresheners. You know the sort of thing, looks like glass filled with bright red gel; smells like plastic filled with regurgitated sweets and rotting fruit.
That great artificial perfume that has a particularly nasty knack of fusing with the smell of something foul to produce something much worse.
When I thought about it, these weren’t only in the toilet. They were dotted around windowsills, cupboards even in the bedroom.
Now this came as some surprise as my wife is pretty much a candle fiend.
This extends to the point where she can have anything up to a dozen candles burning around the house in a single evening.
This is clearly some kind of game, like a test for me, just to see if I’m paying attention. Me being the last to bed, I’m sure she thinks if she lights enough of them, I’ll miss one and she’ll have her victory. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve come down stairs in the morning to find the kitchen filled with the scent of mulled wine and forest berries and lit by the faint glimmer of a wax filled glass on top of the hob.
At least now they go on the hob and not on the worktop.
You should see what happens when the heat from a candleholder transfers through the glass, into the formica then forms a bubble underneath which then explodes.
I’m thinking egg in a microwave here…
Speaking of which, being ever the economists, same wife (not that I have more than one) and the teenager decided that it would be a good idea to save all the wax remnants from all the half dead candles and burn it all in an oil burner – I agree, much better than buying new candles all the time and less glass wastage as well.
Unfortunate thing here is that the teenager has obviously been paying attention to the wrong bits of science class while her mother, despite being the product of two eminent scientific minds, clearly didn’t pay attention to any of it.
Using the microwave to melt wax?
Good idea.
Not removing the little metallic disc that anchors the wick?
Bad idea
Realising it was a bad idea but running to get ones mobile and film your own stupidity?
Totally f4cking priceless!
Enter the self-lighting candle.
I was going to add the video clip but like some of my previous posts, it too has been censored
So, as I was saying, house filled with air fresheners, dad out jamming with his mates wife and daughter traumatised by self lighting candle episode, you can see how it all fits together. Clearly the teenager had taken control of the shopping list. And had piled a load of Airwicks into the trolley. Presumably this was as a countermeasure to the melons she had also placed in the trolley, knowing full well I’d come home and start wiring up my baseball bat.
And so, one last stand of defiance...
the music...
Mixed bag of live recordings from Ricky Ross & co
Deacon Blue – Orphans
http://www.sendspace.com/file/lokp9s
Richard Thompson - Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1rqlyz
Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson – Partners In Crime
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4dxuk1
Yello – One Second
http://www.sendspace.com/file/3q9l9n
Sigur Ros – Odin’s Raven Magic - Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/c3dfc3
Idlewild – Tom Morton Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ko45ex
Taste – London Ivasion
http://www.sendspace.com/file/228x3r
Rock Salt and Nails – Live And Hazardous
http://www.sendspace.com/file/04q58k
10000 Maniacs – Human Conflict Number Five
http://www.sendspace.com/file/arw8gw
Kate Rusby & John McCusker - Heartlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/funj8o
Billy Connolly & John McCusker – Billy Connolly’s Tour Of New Zealand
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iib1c4
Port O'Brien - All We Could Do Was Sing
http://www.sendspace.com/file/uyn6w9
Death Cab For Cutie – You Can Play These Songs With Chords
http://www.sendspace.com/file/587gt5
The Postal Service - The District Sleeeps Alone Tonight
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ujil9r
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ww3sgr
The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zioqli
Shooglenifty – Troots
http://www.sendspace.com/file/70bqt2
The Raconteurs – Stubbs BBQ
http://www.sendspace.com/file/weo4k2
Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sjy8q3
Jackie Leven – The Haunted Year Winter
http://www.sendspace.com/file/hjsrft
Blackie & The Rodeo Kings – Swinging From The Chains Of Lone
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e0x1mx
Thanks to you all and enjoy…
Hooli has left the building!
Saturday, 18 April 2009
...you walk into the office where the boss is making passes at the young girls on the floor...
We humans, being predisposed to vanity and exhibitionism, are masters at the art of making fools of ourselves. No other animal gets close. No matter how many clips Harry Hill or Les Dennis churn out that leave the kids rolling around on the floor, it’s us humans who are the biggest idiots. It’s probably just as well because who knows where we would be if we didn’t have our own embarrassment to keep our feet firmly planted on the ground.
Sitting here, jabbing away, being distracted by the abysmally embarrassing antics of the idiots on Britain’s Got Talent ???, it strikes me that I’ve never done anything that truly embarrassed me. I never got the whole bit on the side, or flirting with the lassies at work stuff. I see people do it and frankly, I'm embarrassed for them. Sure, I’ve made a twat of myself a few times but I’ve never been the type to get embarrassed, probably because I’ve never put myself into a situation where I was unable find an excuse for twattiness.
I do remember one time, aged about 13, in the midst of a Glaswegian winter, a mate and I went for a spot of snowballing at lunchtime. Being a bit of a growing lad at the time, the inevitable happened when I rashly stooped to scoop up a fresh handful of snow. Rrrrrip. The forgiving nature of my school greys gave up as their seam split from bollocks to waistband.
Ach well, not to worry, it was a Friday and it was sports that afternoon. Bit of a haul down of the blazer, some strategic schoolbag strap adjustment and I’d make it to the gym without getting caught. Quick change, then run home in my footy kit.
What I hadn’t bargained for was some smart arsed teacher deciding we should be doing some Scottish Country dancing because it was getting close to Christmas.
Scottish Country Dancing...
With girls...
And my Ys hinging oot the arse o’ ma breeks!
Another time recently, hill walking around Glen Mark, my eldest daughter and I stopped to fool around beneath a waterfall. Just the usual stuff; chucking stones, flicking water at each other. Eager to show her that my tales of having an affinity with the land weren’t just a pile of pish, I skipped nimbly from rock to rock. Rock to rock. Rock to heather bank. A heather bank that was deceptively overhanging the water. Down I went through fistfuls of heather and bracken.
The Mighty Sploosh.
It was only when the ice-cold water slapped me in the bollocks that I got the strength to pull myself to the bank.
Then there was the time in my late teens when, as a keen photographer, I was chasing a midsummer sunset up the coast, trying to catch that crucial moment when the light was just perfect, the dying glow, perfectly reflected between the water and the evening mist as it rose from some inshore freshwater pools. Another couple of minutes and it would be gone. Just enough time to get over that fence, set up the tripod and squeeze off that killer shot. Quickly slinging my gear over my shoulder, feeling pretty good about it all, I grabbed the top wire of the fence, pulled back and catapulted myself over to the other side and straight into my waist in a foul, gaseous and rancid smelling peat bog.
Fortunately, no-one was around to see me squelching my way back to the car.
All pretty tame stuff.
Always on my side, the built in defence mechanism, the reflex that wakes you from a dream just before you die. Strangely, dreams are where I find most of my embarrassing moments. The old ‘naked in the street’ scenario or the recurring dream where I have to chase to catch a flight only to get to the airport with no passport.
Anyway, last week’s trip to Birmingham turned out to have a bit of an unexpected twist.
My recollection of the last time I went to Britain’s second city was an 8 hour overnight drive in a borrowed Fiat Uno, arriving at such an unreasonably early hour that we had to wait in the car until we were sure our hosts had woken up. I remember watching a Scotland / Australia World Cup qualifier then heading into the Bull Ring. This had been hailed by our host as the last line in shopping. Well, it certainly was the last line in something but I’m still not sure what. Having gotten hopelessly mangled by the road system around Aston University before heading out in the evening for some beer and a curry, I wasn’t wholly impressed.
My memories weren’t on the side of poor old Brum but as it had been a good twenty five years since my last visit, I was prepared to be surprised.
And so it went, surprised I was. Old Brumsville was great. Great shops. Great curry in a little place above the canal. Great bus service. Shame about the hotel beds but hey, that’s the price you pay for great beer prices.
Standing at the airport check in, silently aggrieved at the fact that the website said “online check in from 36 hours before departure” yet still showed the flight as being closed right up until I finally got checked in only two hours before leaving for the airport, I handed over my boarding cards. I noticed the oddly puzzled look on the attendants face. The fact that she was looking to and fro between her computer screen and my assembled paperwork signalled that something wasn’t quite right but then I thought, well, this is what they do. They are trained to check and double check and make absolutely sure that everything is in order.
The fear of terrorist activity has ensured that our ground staff are trained to look impassive when challenged and to look challenged when impassive. From the way she kept looking around her, from side to side, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what was going on and was somehow doubting her own assessment of the situation, I could tell that natural human behaviour had taken over and that this was no manifestation of some training school role play. After some consultation with her colleagues and some double checking against our reservation code on the website it became obvious something is wrong. Somehow, somewhere between me navigating through their website and reaching the desk, there had been one enormous f4ck up.
She was quite clear on the fact that the first flight was not for another three hours and that the date on our reservation was the 6th. Checking the hotel reservation revealed a similar conclusion.
We had indeed booked to depart on the 6th with our first night’s accommodation also on the 6th.
Why, oh why then, were we standing there, in the middle of Aberdeen airport at 11.50 on Sunday the 5th.
How could we have all got it so wrong?
Now, the natural thing would be to take it out on someone else, nearest and dearest perhaps, or maybe indulge in some fruitlessly argumentative stance with the poor unsuspecting desk attendant but no, for some reason, I found it all quite hilarious.
Nothing like making a tit of yourself then laughing at yourself to keep it all real.
And now some music...
The Modern Lovers
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4wtokm
Death Cab For Cutie – Th ePhoto Album
http://www.sendspace.com/file/56gw1b
The View – Live At Glasgow Barrowlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ze0fdm
Ian McNabb – Before All Of This
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zjd20x
Ian McNabb – Live At Life
http://www.sendspace.com/file/g4c5dm
Holly Golightly & The Broke Offs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mvifk3
John McCusker – Goodnight Ginger
http://www.sendspace.com/file/s1x532
Sigur Ros – Hlemmur
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e1wp3w
Aidan Moffat - I Can Hear Your Heart
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ygm0i0
Malcolm Middleton – Sleight Of Heart
http://www.sendspace.com/file/la6meq
Arab Strap – Live In Belfast
http://www.sendspace.com/file/z5ex0q
Natalie Merchant – Live at the Joint
http://www.sendspace.com/file/czjvvd
Various – Rubber Folk
http://www.sendspace.com/file/otmv86
Boo Hewerdine – A Live One
http://www.sendspace.com/file/g8rzmi
Kate Rusby & John McCusker – Heartlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/huiklk
Green On Red – Live At The Rialto
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ghurho
Neil Young – Prairie Wind Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6ahs68
Enjoy
Hooli
Sitting here, jabbing away, being distracted by the abysmally embarrassing antics of the idiots on Britain’s Got Talent ???, it strikes me that I’ve never done anything that truly embarrassed me. I never got the whole bit on the side, or flirting with the lassies at work stuff. I see people do it and frankly, I'm embarrassed for them. Sure, I’ve made a twat of myself a few times but I’ve never been the type to get embarrassed, probably because I’ve never put myself into a situation where I was unable find an excuse for twattiness.
I do remember one time, aged about 13, in the midst of a Glaswegian winter, a mate and I went for a spot of snowballing at lunchtime. Being a bit of a growing lad at the time, the inevitable happened when I rashly stooped to scoop up a fresh handful of snow. Rrrrrip. The forgiving nature of my school greys gave up as their seam split from bollocks to waistband.
Ach well, not to worry, it was a Friday and it was sports that afternoon. Bit of a haul down of the blazer, some strategic schoolbag strap adjustment and I’d make it to the gym without getting caught. Quick change, then run home in my footy kit.
What I hadn’t bargained for was some smart arsed teacher deciding we should be doing some Scottish Country dancing because it was getting close to Christmas.
Scottish Country Dancing...
With girls...
And my Ys hinging oot the arse o’ ma breeks!
Another time recently, hill walking around Glen Mark, my eldest daughter and I stopped to fool around beneath a waterfall. Just the usual stuff; chucking stones, flicking water at each other. Eager to show her that my tales of having an affinity with the land weren’t just a pile of pish, I skipped nimbly from rock to rock. Rock to rock. Rock to heather bank. A heather bank that was deceptively overhanging the water. Down I went through fistfuls of heather and bracken.
The Mighty Sploosh.
It was only when the ice-cold water slapped me in the bollocks that I got the strength to pull myself to the bank.
Then there was the time in my late teens when, as a keen photographer, I was chasing a midsummer sunset up the coast, trying to catch that crucial moment when the light was just perfect, the dying glow, perfectly reflected between the water and the evening mist as it rose from some inshore freshwater pools. Another couple of minutes and it would be gone. Just enough time to get over that fence, set up the tripod and squeeze off that killer shot. Quickly slinging my gear over my shoulder, feeling pretty good about it all, I grabbed the top wire of the fence, pulled back and catapulted myself over to the other side and straight into my waist in a foul, gaseous and rancid smelling peat bog.
Fortunately, no-one was around to see me squelching my way back to the car.
All pretty tame stuff.
Always on my side, the built in defence mechanism, the reflex that wakes you from a dream just before you die. Strangely, dreams are where I find most of my embarrassing moments. The old ‘naked in the street’ scenario or the recurring dream where I have to chase to catch a flight only to get to the airport with no passport.
Anyway, last week’s trip to Birmingham turned out to have a bit of an unexpected twist.
My recollection of the last time I went to Britain’s second city was an 8 hour overnight drive in a borrowed Fiat Uno, arriving at such an unreasonably early hour that we had to wait in the car until we were sure our hosts had woken up. I remember watching a Scotland / Australia World Cup qualifier then heading into the Bull Ring. This had been hailed by our host as the last line in shopping. Well, it certainly was the last line in something but I’m still not sure what. Having gotten hopelessly mangled by the road system around Aston University before heading out in the evening for some beer and a curry, I wasn’t wholly impressed.
My memories weren’t on the side of poor old Brum but as it had been a good twenty five years since my last visit, I was prepared to be surprised.
And so it went, surprised I was. Old Brumsville was great. Great shops. Great curry in a little place above the canal. Great bus service. Shame about the hotel beds but hey, that’s the price you pay for great beer prices.
Standing at the airport check in, silently aggrieved at the fact that the website said “online check in from 36 hours before departure” yet still showed the flight as being closed right up until I finally got checked in only two hours before leaving for the airport, I handed over my boarding cards. I noticed the oddly puzzled look on the attendants face. The fact that she was looking to and fro between her computer screen and my assembled paperwork signalled that something wasn’t quite right but then I thought, well, this is what they do. They are trained to check and double check and make absolutely sure that everything is in order.
The fear of terrorist activity has ensured that our ground staff are trained to look impassive when challenged and to look challenged when impassive. From the way she kept looking around her, from side to side, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what was going on and was somehow doubting her own assessment of the situation, I could tell that natural human behaviour had taken over and that this was no manifestation of some training school role play. After some consultation with her colleagues and some double checking against our reservation code on the website it became obvious something is wrong. Somehow, somewhere between me navigating through their website and reaching the desk, there had been one enormous f4ck up.
She was quite clear on the fact that the first flight was not for another three hours and that the date on our reservation was the 6th. Checking the hotel reservation revealed a similar conclusion.
We had indeed booked to depart on the 6th with our first night’s accommodation also on the 6th.
Why, oh why then, were we standing there, in the middle of Aberdeen airport at 11.50 on Sunday the 5th.
How could we have all got it so wrong?
Now, the natural thing would be to take it out on someone else, nearest and dearest perhaps, or maybe indulge in some fruitlessly argumentative stance with the poor unsuspecting desk attendant but no, for some reason, I found it all quite hilarious.
Nothing like making a tit of yourself then laughing at yourself to keep it all real.
And now some music...
The Modern Lovers
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4wtokm
Death Cab For Cutie – Th ePhoto Album
http://www.sendspace.com/file/56gw1b
The View – Live At Glasgow Barrowlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ze0fdm
Ian McNabb – Before All Of This
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zjd20x
Ian McNabb – Live At Life
http://www.sendspace.com/file/g4c5dm
Holly Golightly & The Broke Offs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mvifk3
John McCusker – Goodnight Ginger
http://www.sendspace.com/file/s1x532
Sigur Ros – Hlemmur
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e1wp3w
Aidan Moffat - I Can Hear Your Heart
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ygm0i0
Malcolm Middleton – Sleight Of Heart
http://www.sendspace.com/file/la6meq
Arab Strap – Live In Belfast
http://www.sendspace.com/file/z5ex0q
Natalie Merchant – Live at the Joint
http://www.sendspace.com/file/czjvvd
Various – Rubber Folk
http://www.sendspace.com/file/otmv86
Boo Hewerdine – A Live One
http://www.sendspace.com/file/g8rzmi
Kate Rusby & John McCusker – Heartlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/huiklk
Green On Red – Live At The Rialto
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ghurho
Neil Young – Prairie Wind Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6ahs68
Enjoy
Hooli
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
...decency and honesty, the things that folk depend on...
Ah well, don’t say you weren’t warned.
Seems the trouble is just beginning for those nice chaps at Google.
Less than a week after its UK launch, the complaints started rolling in.
Allegedly, they were forced to remove images of a man standing outside a sex shop in Soho and a man giving it the big boak in Shoreditch (expect they call it puke down there).
Google claim the number of images they have been asked to remove is "less than expected" but surely if they expected to have to remove images, they should have avoided using them in the first place.
Anyway, as I was saying last week, it’s not the stuff you can see that is the problem, it’s the stuff you can’t.
The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), which is an independent foundation type thingy for researching into policies about information, published a report (ah yes, may old favourite, recent studies and independent reports raises its scabby head again).
This was aptly titled the Database State.
In a press statement, they identified 46 government databases that were "fundamentally flawed and almost certainly illegal". If used in conjunction with each other, it is claimed that these could have a "serious impact on citizens’ privacy".
Never mind though, at least it’s nice to know that those funsters in Whitehall have got national security under wraps even though Big Brother really is watching and knows everything about you, me and the grubby looking dude in the flats who gets all those weird looking visitors at odd hours.
Pardon me for being as paranoid as a baboon’s arse in a dildo factory but isn’t this getting a little too close to a chip in the back of the neck?
The systems questioned by FIPR are so invasive that they are almost certainly in contravention of European Law and the European Convention of Human Rights.
The trouble is that the information is so readily available and we gladly pass it on to almost anyone just as readily as we part with our cash.
We all have a National Insurance number; almost every one of us has either a passport or a driving licence. Most of us, with the exception of a few eccentric old grannies with very thick mattresses, have a bank account and the really lucky ones who still have a job, pay tax.
Who handles all of this stuff?
Ah yes, that would be the government.
Add to that all the electronically encrypted cards, chip and pin, CCTV, telephone, e-mail, chat rooms and internet shopping.
It all adds up to a not so very tidy little pack that tells Big Brother exactly what you’ve been up to.
It’s only when you actually use this assimilation of data that there starts to be a problem.
For instance, there may some of us who like a bit of adventure in our lives. Maybe go play with Mischa the bear in the taiga or do a bit of backpacking in Northern Africa. Bit of trekking in the Himalayas or maybe head off to Pakistan or the Persian Gulf for a holiday, get friendly with some of the locals and get snapped on a shooting range. Maybe go to see Mickey Mouse another time, get a speeding ticket on I 95 heading north from Fort Lauderdale. We might even know what happens when you combine fertilizer and old engine oil then introduce it to an ignition source or perhaps we have a nice job in a chemical factory. Some of us might be of Russian or German extraction or maybe of Asian ethnicity.
I guess you can see where this is going – before long, the extradition papers are drawn up and it’s off to Cuba for an extended holiday dressed like Tangoman.
No executive class transfer.
No inflight movie.
No drinks at the bar and definitely no cigar.
Because everything is now electronic, all this information is not just there, it's readily available at the touch of a keypad. When it is used without consent there has to be a pretty damn good reason for it and that reason has to be legally justifiable, necessary and proportionate.
I’m sure all those nice civil servants in their crisp black suits and bowler hats are doing the decent thing and leaving all this stuff well alone but remember the secret terrorist documents left on a train; remember the data stick with everyone’s tax details found in a pub carpark; remember the child benefit records containing recipients banking details that became lost in the post.
Doesn’t exactly inspire faith in the system does it?
Never mind though, we’ve got the good old National Identity Register to look forward to. Once that kicks in, everything else will be irrelevant. It will stand there, like a big overgrown mutant version of one of those washing whirlies, festooned with everyone’s dirty laundry, hanging there, for all to see, tagged OPEN ACCESS.
The big question now is if, like the National DNA database which allowed the police to hold DNA of everyone, charged or otherwise, that they ever took into custody, this all turns out to be one enormous great woolly mammoth of the albino variety, deemed illegal by our lords and masters in the European Court, what happens to the data, the software and the hardware that they can’t use.
The only safe and sensible, decent and honest course of action is to purge and destroy all the data that has no relevance.
Can you really see that happening?
No, thought not, but who really owns the data?
You and I!
Who is it that pays the salaries of the government and the police?
You and I of course!
Who paid for all the sophisticated technology and computer hardware to hold all this stuff?
Yep. That would be you and I also!
So, quite naturally, who has to pay for putting the whole manky affair in order?
You got it. You and I, the taxpayer!
Ian McNabb – Northwest Coast
http://www.sendspace.com/file/899i75
Ian McLagan – Never Say Never
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jdw3rh
Ally Kerr
http://www.sendspace.com/file/65zklt
John Cooper Clark – Ou est la Maison du Fromage
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u8mk7d
Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8g0m2m
The Blue Nile – Peace At Last
http://www.sendspace.com/file/y8edkv
Big Country – Rarities IV
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sx3tvn
Chris Difford – Last Temptation of Chris
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1qfg4a
Roddy Frame – 40 days of rain
http://www.sendspace.com/file/izkt73
All Time Quarterback – All Time Quarterback
http://www.sendspace.com/file/kpwlu6
Blackie & the Rodeo Kings - Bark
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ypk7i4
Bryan Ferry – BBC Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7c291p
Enjoy
Hooli
Seems the trouble is just beginning for those nice chaps at Google.
Less than a week after its UK launch, the complaints started rolling in.
Allegedly, they were forced to remove images of a man standing outside a sex shop in Soho and a man giving it the big boak in Shoreditch (expect they call it puke down there).
Google claim the number of images they have been asked to remove is "less than expected" but surely if they expected to have to remove images, they should have avoided using them in the first place.
Anyway, as I was saying last week, it’s not the stuff you can see that is the problem, it’s the stuff you can’t.
The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), which is an independent foundation type thingy for researching into policies about information, published a report (ah yes, may old favourite, recent studies and independent reports raises its scabby head again).
This was aptly titled the Database State.
In a press statement, they identified 46 government databases that were "fundamentally flawed and almost certainly illegal". If used in conjunction with each other, it is claimed that these could have a "serious impact on citizens’ privacy".
Never mind though, at least it’s nice to know that those funsters in Whitehall have got national security under wraps even though Big Brother really is watching and knows everything about you, me and the grubby looking dude in the flats who gets all those weird looking visitors at odd hours.
Pardon me for being as paranoid as a baboon’s arse in a dildo factory but isn’t this getting a little too close to a chip in the back of the neck?
The systems questioned by FIPR are so invasive that they are almost certainly in contravention of European Law and the European Convention of Human Rights.
The trouble is that the information is so readily available and we gladly pass it on to almost anyone just as readily as we part with our cash.
We all have a National Insurance number; almost every one of us has either a passport or a driving licence. Most of us, with the exception of a few eccentric old grannies with very thick mattresses, have a bank account and the really lucky ones who still have a job, pay tax.
Who handles all of this stuff?
Ah yes, that would be the government.
Add to that all the electronically encrypted cards, chip and pin, CCTV, telephone, e-mail, chat rooms and internet shopping.
It all adds up to a not so very tidy little pack that tells Big Brother exactly what you’ve been up to.
It’s only when you actually use this assimilation of data that there starts to be a problem.
For instance, there may some of us who like a bit of adventure in our lives. Maybe go play with Mischa the bear in the taiga or do a bit of backpacking in Northern Africa. Bit of trekking in the Himalayas or maybe head off to Pakistan or the Persian Gulf for a holiday, get friendly with some of the locals and get snapped on a shooting range. Maybe go to see Mickey Mouse another time, get a speeding ticket on I 95 heading north from Fort Lauderdale. We might even know what happens when you combine fertilizer and old engine oil then introduce it to an ignition source or perhaps we have a nice job in a chemical factory. Some of us might be of Russian or German extraction or maybe of Asian ethnicity.
I guess you can see where this is going – before long, the extradition papers are drawn up and it’s off to Cuba for an extended holiday dressed like Tangoman.
No executive class transfer.
No inflight movie.
No drinks at the bar and definitely no cigar.
Because everything is now electronic, all this information is not just there, it's readily available at the touch of a keypad. When it is used without consent there has to be a pretty damn good reason for it and that reason has to be legally justifiable, necessary and proportionate.
I’m sure all those nice civil servants in their crisp black suits and bowler hats are doing the decent thing and leaving all this stuff well alone but remember the secret terrorist documents left on a train; remember the data stick with everyone’s tax details found in a pub carpark; remember the child benefit records containing recipients banking details that became lost in the post.
Doesn’t exactly inspire faith in the system does it?
Never mind though, we’ve got the good old National Identity Register to look forward to. Once that kicks in, everything else will be irrelevant. It will stand there, like a big overgrown mutant version of one of those washing whirlies, festooned with everyone’s dirty laundry, hanging there, for all to see, tagged OPEN ACCESS.
The big question now is if, like the National DNA database which allowed the police to hold DNA of everyone, charged or otherwise, that they ever took into custody, this all turns out to be one enormous great woolly mammoth of the albino variety, deemed illegal by our lords and masters in the European Court, what happens to the data, the software and the hardware that they can’t use.
The only safe and sensible, decent and honest course of action is to purge and destroy all the data that has no relevance.
Can you really see that happening?
No, thought not, but who really owns the data?
You and I!
Who is it that pays the salaries of the government and the police?
You and I of course!
Who paid for all the sophisticated technology and computer hardware to hold all this stuff?
Yep. That would be you and I also!
So, quite naturally, who has to pay for putting the whole manky affair in order?
You got it. You and I, the taxpayer!
Ian McNabb – Northwest Coast
http://www.sendspace.com/file/899i75
Ian McLagan – Never Say Never
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jdw3rh
Ally Kerr
http://www.sendspace.com/file/65zklt
John Cooper Clark – Ou est la Maison du Fromage
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u8mk7d
Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8g0m2m
The Blue Nile – Peace At Last
http://www.sendspace.com/file/y8edkv
Big Country – Rarities IV
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sx3tvn
Chris Difford – Last Temptation of Chris
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1qfg4a
Roddy Frame – 40 days of rain
http://www.sendspace.com/file/izkt73
All Time Quarterback – All Time Quarterback
http://www.sendspace.com/file/kpwlu6
Blackie & the Rodeo Kings - Bark
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ypk7i4
Bryan Ferry – BBC Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7c291p
Enjoy
Hooli
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