What happens when Really Bad Musicians get together

Further to my post yesterday grouching about people trying to get into the music industry without knowing the first thing about music: I have today discovered the Shaggs.

They were absolutely brilliant.

Three sisters from a totally insignificant offshoot of Boston, who respectively could not sing, could not play the guitar (or even tune it), and could not play the drums. Forced into the recording industry by an obsessive father. Behold a sample lyric from the song "Things I wonder":

     There are many things I wonder
   There are many things I don't
   It seems as though the things I wonder most
   Are the things I never find out

If you can get hold of the song "My Pal Foot Foot" then you should. It is a thing of wonder.

http://www.shaggs.com/meet_the_shaggs.html

Redressing the balance

The previous entry was a bit negative and misanthropic. So, here is some top advice and positive vibeage for my fellow humans:

1. You will be much happier for much longer if you bend at the knees.
2. If you are incompetent enough to shatter the cork while opening, just shrug, go all the way and push it into the bottle. Then decant the wine through a filter.
3. Self aggrandisement is helpless and transparent. Self deprecation is witless and tiresome. If someone compliments you sincerely, then smile and say "thank you." This is all that is needed.
4. You will buy precious time if your first touch always takes the ball away from the opponent.
5. Recognise your strengths and work with them. Recognise your weaknesses and work on them.
6. Try not to confuse knowledge with intelligence.
7. You will be able to react much quicker if you raise your bat before the ball is bowled.

Thank you.

Why do I have to work with these amateurs?

It has come to my attention that the vast majority of people trying to get into the music industry are complete gimps. Like all the rest of them, I believe that I have something which people should hear. I believe I have a talent and I believe I can touch people with the noises I produce. Etc.

Thing is, every week I meet people who believe exactly the same things about themselves, and in nearly every case, you can tell within a minute that they don't really stand a chance.

Then again, the Stereophonics have had a successful career.

Hmm, well, perhaps you can tell that I spent my afternoon trying to work with yet another singer whose actual knowledge of music or rhythm was precisely nil. Like trying to make a jam sandwich without bread, it's difficult, messy, has no solid base, and tends to go all over the place.

Thing is, this reflects life generally. The vast majority of all people are complete gimps. The vast majority of people who will be voting on 1. the EU constitution and 2. the UK general election will neither have read the details of the constitution nor the policy details of each party. And you can hardly blame them for not reading up on such interminably dull information. But, you know.

To summarise: you should only be allowed to vote if you can show you fully understand what you're voting for. You should have to pass a set of thorough practical, theoretical, physical and mental examinations before being allowed to bring up children. And you should bring bread if you want to make jam sandwiches with me. But the greatest commandment is to bring bread for the jam sandwiches.

There's wimmin's logic. Then there's Just Plain Wrong.

Behold this morsel of wummunly logic which truly surpasseth all understanding.

Ye flatmate likes to keep the hall door closed so that the cats don't go down towards the bathroom and other places they are unwelcome. Today at noonish I woke up, came through it, and left it open.

"You always leave the door open," she informed me, incorrectly. "You know that you left it open and Emmeline (the cat) went into the spare room this morning and pushed your guitar off the bed? It fell onto its strings, I was worried. Didn't you hear the huge crash?"

"No," I said, wondering firstly quite how our 6-month old kitten was supposed to have summoned either the strength or the willpower to push a guitar several times her size off a double bed, and secondly how I had left the door open in my sleep. "I was asleep this morning."

"Well," she continued, " actually I can't remember when it was. But it was you that left the door open."

Can anyone else spot the hole in her argument?

Falling unconscious: not something I recommend

It is relatively simple for anyone under 25 to get free haircuts, if you know where to look. You usually have to agree to some kind of modelling work (read: guineapigging) in return, but often this just involves having your haircut on a small stage in front of trainees or the press. Admittedly, last time it turned out to be a large stage in front of television cameras and 1500 people in some out-of-town conference centre on a Monday morning. But as it was paid, and you got free samples, and there were plentiful female models hanging around, it was ok.

In order to gain my next free cut (pencilled in for the beginning of May) I was required to turn up to the studios today, just off the Champs-Elysées, as a guineamodelpig for a traditional shave. I have always used an electric razor before, but there we are, you should do everything once, and if you don't try it you won't know whether you like it, etc etc.

At this juncture, a number of unfortunate things came in to play. Unfortunately, I had made the parallel mistakes of 1. not sleeping well the night before and 2. not eating much before going. Unfortunately, having someone take an open razor blade to your throat is not yet something I am entirely used to. And, unfortunately, it turns out that my throat is ludicrously sensitive. The blade was chafing against the skin and made a slight cut, next thing I feel is the blood suddenly draining from my face. This is a very weird thing to feel, by the way. Something was clearly Wrong, so I left for the toilets, and reached about halfway down the corridor before the legs went south. I got up and the last thing I thought was a sort of vague "hmm, that's not supposed to happen" before falling over again in much the manner of a new born giraffe. My consciousness was clearly looking for a break, and crashing flat on my face onto the wooden floor gave it the perfect excuse to get out for a bit.

Luckily for me, ye olde consciousness isn't used to the great outdoors, became homesick, and returned within twenty seconds or so, accompanied by an inexplicable headache and a great deal of people fussing around and foisting water and sugar in my direction.

I had a nice chat with the three secouristes who arrived to ask me whether I knew what day it was and whether me and my consciousness had a bit of a history. Luckily it was still Monday, and no, this was the first time we'd seriously fallen out with each other. I signed a piece of paper saying that I agreed I didn't need to be taken to hospital. At least, I think that's what it was. Pretty sure it wasn't a death warrant anyhow. And they went on their merry way.

So that was all fun and games. Having discovered where my legs were, I went to get the other side of my face shaved, thanked most of the people in the building just in case any of them had helped me, and prepared to leave - after all, a minor health incident didn't stop the fact that there were things to do. And it can't have been all bad because, as I was leaving, some dude I'd never seen before asked where he knew me from, I pointed out that he didn't, but perhaps he'd seen me in a concert; next thing he leaves me his details and says he wants me to be in a short fillum he's planning to make about a jazz pianist. Probably a dodgy geezer and I should have just taken his card rather than leave my coordonnées with a complete stranger, but then again I still wasn't feeling particularly together at this point*, so give me some slack.

*Shut it. All things are relative.

Went to the bank and discovered that the Esplanade des Invalides was playing host to some kind of classic car meeting. I am no huge fan of road vehicles generally (they are dangerous and smelly), but I can appreciate the merits of two hundred beautiful rally cars - Ferraris, Porsches, Alfas and Lamborghinis - all parked in the same patch at the same time. I didn't have a camera on me, but I can cheat:


This is much the same kind of business as was going on earlier on the Esplanade, except it wasn't raining, which was nice.

The rally turns out to be the Tour Auto Lissac and claims to be the oldest in the world. That's a piccy of last year's event. So know you now.

So that is what happened today, as far as I can tell. Perhaps understandably I have decided to have an evening in.

Drink, feck, girls

I was going to have a quiet night in yesterday, and post some of the usual bitesize musings to Timberblog, but unfortunately there was a further case of flatmate stopped play. Small child had been deposited for 24hrs onto a manfriend of consistantly willing subserviance, and with offspring out of the way, flatmate decided this was time to "party".

Her idea of party = stay at home getting drunk all day.

A complete lack of sense was achieved by about 2pm, there were protracted breaches of personal space by 3, and she reached inarticulate slobbering wreck and general household nuisance status by 5.

It was becoming clear that the best plan for my evening was to Be Somewhere Else, and a swift call to the fabulous Lady Franchester, followed by a quick métro shimmy and deftly-executed gatecrash manouevre, saved the evening. Which doesn't stop the fact that, when I returned home on the nightbus long after midnight, darling flatmate was still moping around and had casually left the gas on in the kitchen. All in all, it was probably A Good Thing I returned when I did, as a large build-up of flammable gas on the bottom floor of a 14 story building is universally considered A Bad Idea.

So thank you Lady Franchester for saving my sanity*, although your subsequent decision to be floating around in a nightie when I arrived at 2 o'clock this afternoon was perhaps a little unorthodox.

*Shut it. All things are relative.

Hi5, sms.ac, and other arse bastards from hell

If people could please avoid signing up to anything like sms.ac or hi5 I would very much appreciate it. Or anywhere else that promotes keeping in touch with friends. It all sounds lovely, yes, but these two in particular are in fact a complete nuisance.

If you come across a site with a suspiciously sunny disposition informing you "this is a great way to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones at the same time!!!!!!!!" (number of exclamation marks varies according to level of insincerity), please please avoid it like the plague, it will more than likely have a nasty habit of ripping all the addresses from your address book and sending unsolicited mail to your soon to become ex-"friends". That is what sms.ac and hi5 do.

1. I am in contact with enough friends already thank you very much and if I want any more I'll find them myself.
2. I do not want my email address bandied about the internet, it's difficult enough avoiding spam as it is.
3. And as for keeping in touch - what have we got the telephone, postal service, blogs, email, and MSN for?

Thanking ye muchly esteemed readership. That is all.

Tembo

This is among the best news stories I have read all year.
(http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk)

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ELEPHANTS' GREAT ESCAPE

Apr 21 2005

SIX elephants rampaged through the South Korean capital of Seoul yesterday, injuring a woman.

Police caught five of the animals, which escaped from an amusement park, but one was still on the loose.

One elephant charged into an alley near a school and hit a 52-year--old woman with its trunk. She was being treated in hospital.

The creature was trapped in a garden.

Police said three of the hungry elephants were in a restaurant and one was being held at a police station.

The sixth had not been found.

Top of the popes

The election of a new pope appears to have created some excitement in that whole Catholic world there. Apparently he is a bit of a conservative sort of guy, and this has split reactions within the church. Here are two sample reactions, which differ slightly:

"When I met him I liked his clarity of expression, his rare intelligence, his extraordinary deep knowledge, his extraordinarily deep faith - and at the same time he has a way of talking to you in a simple language." - Stanislas Lalanne, French Bishoppy Dude.

or, alternatively,

"It seems that he is too conservative. Hopefully the Holy Spirit can help him change. We expected a person like John Paul. Somebody who could give the Church alternatives ... open the Church to the world, look more at reality." - Jurandir Arauj, Brazilian Bishoppy Dude.

Now, you may be thinking, the Brazilian dude has a point - a 78 year old conservative German is unlikely to improve the image of the church with today's yoof. I myself am inclined to agree with this.


Nun too happy with that decision.

Now, Mr Arauj is a Catholic bishop. So we can assume he believes in an absolute truth as outlined by Catholic doctrine. Thus, we can also say that he believes that God is almighty, omniscient, etc etc and that God's way is the only way etc etc blah. Now, continuing with our Catholic doctrine theme, whose hand is it that guides the conclave and helps them choose the new pope? Right, God. So if you don't like the choice, you're up against, er, God, and absolute truth, and a couple of other fairly hefty things that a bishop wouldn't really want to be up against.

Oh dear. And yet he sounded so rational and sensible only a paragraph ago.

This is a good illustration of why I find organised religion a little problematic.

And the problem is not with the choice of pope. The problem is with people such as Mr Arauj, who want to elect a dude to tell them what to do, but then want to dictate what he tells them to do.

I cater for the casual visitor

Blogs are only successful when you post lots of porn, or lots of photos of kittens. Hence:


Emmeline the kitty and Robin the kitty

Emmeline features remote control purring. The mere thought that she is about to be stroked will put her into paroxysms of purrful delight.

An excuse of sorts

I reserve an entire afternoon to help my flatmate start translating her 30 page thesis into English (=> two months' rent wiped out => helpful) and whaddya know, she gets a phone call from a manfriend at 1pm, and shoots out of the front door. This leaves me with nothing to do, and a tremendous smell of freshly sprayed perfume. So I am engaged in internetty activities - namely, hunting flats, hunting jobs, and deciding I needto organise some kind of online presence. Whether this is really a valid excuse to start a blog is up to you, the viewing public, to decide.

It's not that I don't have a job. I have four at least. No, wait, five. But there are always other things to try out.

A début rant

I have recently become both ludicrously excited and quite irritated at the upcoming release of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a major motion picture, or as I call it, a fillum. The book is among the most fantastic things in the world ever. Fact, not opinion. So I am pleased that, after a good quarter century of people entering the room and breathing, the steak is finally cooked*.

*this is a reference.

However, despite an April release date in UK and US, it's not coming out in France until August. This is a point of irritation for people who live in France and can't wait to see the fillum, frog sample me. Even the United forking Arab flying Emirates* get to see it by June.

*censored for strong language and possible incitement of racial hatred.

Seventhly, Marvin is Wrong. Behold:



Marvin as he appears in this year's fillum version of The Hitchhiker's Guide

Thank you to Disney for investing in the project and making it happen, but did you really have to disnefy Marvin? He is not cute. He is not loveable. Nor should he follow your mouse around like he does on the official movie site www.hitchhikersmovie.com - he has a brain the size of a planet, he is not a puppy dog. And Alan Rickman's voice is also Wrong. Marvin should have a doleful mechanical voice (if possible), but instead he conjours an uncomfortable image of professor Snape in a dwarf suit.

Having said that, the rest of it looks fine, judging by ye trailers. Mos Def is not exactly ginger haired and lanky, but you can't have everything. And Zaphod's two heads probably would have been a little too difficult to juggle for an entire feature length thingy.

All trailers, and plenty of piccies, available at the Official Site

Right, let's get the ball rolling

Jumping on the blogwagon:

Initial post that gives the impression I haven't quite got to grips with technology. Check. Irrelevant photograph of household pet. Check. Usage of thinly disguised real names. Check. This is a blog.

This is also a test, but a more interesting one

Robin the alcoholic footballing kitty

Photo courtesy of Sarah. I know about 37 Sarahs but presumably she'll work out who she is.

Test post

First post. Just checking this is as simple as it looks.