I should be out tonight in London's fashionable Shoreditch watching former Ride frontman - and shoegazing god - Mark Gardener playing an acoustic set. But I am so very, very tired that I, instead, gave telly a go.
Firstly, the World Championship snooker, which I love. Never, ever underestimate the draw of two pallid, sickly-looking men playing a pub game in front of a thousand men in Hackett t-shirts. Sporting class.
Next was Ray Mear's Bushcraft, in which our chubby hero, while on a canoe journey through some Canadian wilderness, fashioned a paddle from a piece of wood his friend had found, utilising an axe, bandsaw and plane he carried with him. He extolled the virtues of carrying well-maintained tools, telling us that he couldn't express how much easier such a job was made by using the right ones. Then he ate a pancake with a big wooden spoon.
I followed this with the excellent Super Size Me which, if you haven't seen, you really ought to. It's a bit like Jamie's School Dinners with less swearing, but with more self-inflicted heart disease, liver problems, type 2 diabetes, depression and vomiting. Super Size Me feels like a wake-up call for our decadent, greedy and grossly stupid culture but, I fear, those wake-up calls are going to have to keep on coming. It's like we have snooze button on common sense.
Not a bad evening, but I suspect the Sonic Cathedral indie-shoegaze night I missed out on offered a whole lot more and I wished I hadn't been too (utterly, completely fucking) knackered to go. In fact, one person reading this knows just how much. Hello you.
Bed.
Wednesday
In an interview in today's NME, Liam Gallagher shares some pearls of wisdom. Britrock dinosaur he may be, but he's damned good value for it.
His assessment of today's crop of bright young hopefuls can be summarised as follows:
Franz Ferdinand: "He [Lead singer, Alex Kapranos] reminds me of fucking Right Said Fred."
Pete Doherty: "He's fucking in the corner doing smack with a helmet on his head."
Scissor Sisters: "Cunt."
Kaiser Chiefs: "A bad Blur."
Bloc Party: "Off University Challenge."
In fact, the former Mr. Kensit could only find praise for Charlotte Church: "She's got a great voice and she fucking has it."
Priceless.
Lyla is a fucking terrible single, though.
In other news, check the readability of your blog. Oeillade has a Flesch-Kincaid reading ease of 69.03 and a Gunning-Fox Index rating of 8.84. So I'm told.
His assessment of today's crop of bright young hopefuls can be summarised as follows:
Franz Ferdinand: "He [Lead singer, Alex Kapranos] reminds me of fucking Right Said Fred."
Pete Doherty: "He's fucking in the corner doing smack with a helmet on his head."
Scissor Sisters: "Cunt."
Kaiser Chiefs: "A bad Blur."
Bloc Party: "Off University Challenge."
In fact, the former Mr. Kensit could only find praise for Charlotte Church: "She's got a great voice and she fucking has it."
Priceless.
Lyla is a fucking terrible single, though.
In other news, check the readability of your blog. Oeillade has a Flesch-Kincaid reading ease of 69.03 and a Gunning-Fox Index rating of 8.84. So I'm told.
Sunday
This week saw the screening of a party political broadcast by the lovely, cuddly British National Party.
Rather than present anything all stuffy like policies or cogent arguments, those big, silly teddy bears instead chose to brighten up this dreadfully serious election with a good old sing-a-long.
Nick Griffin, their delightful leader, has penned a moving folk ballad about a neglected former serviceman (Frosty) and his only friend, a fox (Corporal Fox, to you). Because it's so good, those adorable skinhead sweethearts thought they'd broadcast it for everyone to enjoy.
Should you wish to sully yourself, here is a link to this hilarious nonsense. Alternatively, you could just go and lick the toilet bowl instead.
In reality, former servicemen do make up a sizable percentage of this country's homeless population. A number of reasons have been put forward for this both by Shelter and the House of Commons Select Committee for Defence, but neither of these bodies, surprisingly, suggested it was because the council had given all available flats to the "Iraqis and Afghans."
Within a democracy, it's important that everyone gets their say, naturally. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes we all have to listen to things we find unpalatable. The plus side of this is that every idiot gets the camera for a bit along with the opportunity to make a tit of themselves, which is at least a little entertaining, even if, as in this case, a viewer can be left feeling as if they need a bath afterwards. Dirty.
Rather than present anything all stuffy like policies or cogent arguments, those big, silly teddy bears instead chose to brighten up this dreadfully serious election with a good old sing-a-long.
Nick Griffin, their delightful leader, has penned a moving folk ballad about a neglected former serviceman (Frosty) and his only friend, a fox (Corporal Fox, to you). Because it's so good, those adorable skinhead sweethearts thought they'd broadcast it for everyone to enjoy.
Should you wish to sully yourself, here is a link to this hilarious nonsense. Alternatively, you could just go and lick the toilet bowl instead.
In reality, former servicemen do make up a sizable percentage of this country's homeless population. A number of reasons have been put forward for this both by Shelter and the House of Commons Select Committee for Defence, but neither of these bodies, surprisingly, suggested it was because the council had given all available flats to the "Iraqis and Afghans."
Within a democracy, it's important that everyone gets their say, naturally. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes we all have to listen to things we find unpalatable. The plus side of this is that every idiot gets the camera for a bit along with the opportunity to make a tit of themselves, which is at least a little entertaining, even if, as in this case, a viewer can be left feeling as if they need a bath afterwards. Dirty.
Thursday
Tuesday
Thicky
If I've learned nothing else today, it's that I can blame the failure of my degree to get me anywhere on the fact that I obtained it from the second worst university in the country.
Thank Christ for that. I was running out of excuses.
Link here.
Shit Pope joke
Also, the conclave of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel have chosen their new Pope. Here's hoping that he turns out to be as quiet and self-effacing as the last one, and doesn't just go off pontificating all over the place...
News
I'm nicer than I used to be. I've organised a birthday bash, bought nice things for people, and apologised for old transgressions. I've supported, helped and been generally lovely. It feels as if I've remembered me.
If I've learned nothing else today, it's that I can blame the failure of my degree to get me anywhere on the fact that I obtained it from the second worst university in the country.
Thank Christ for that. I was running out of excuses.
Link here.
Shit Pope joke
Also, the conclave of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel have chosen their new Pope. Here's hoping that he turns out to be as quiet and self-effacing as the last one, and doesn't just go off pontificating all over the place...
News
I'm nicer than I used to be. I've organised a birthday bash, bought nice things for people, and apologised for old transgressions. I've supported, helped and been generally lovely. It feels as if I've remembered me.
Monday
politicised, briefly:
The Tory Party's policy on immigration is nothing short of a scandal. The last two weeks have borne witness to a sort of backstreet rabble-rousing from Michael Howard that would not sound out of place at a BNP meeting.
Howard's tactic is simple. Attacking such a disenfranchised minority is a filthy, vicious political technique and he should - once this unpleasant campaign draws to close - be brought to task both by the party he has regressed fifty years and the political system his presence disgraces.
He is correct, albeit only semantically, when he suggests that it is not racist to impose limits on immigration. It may not be racist in the strictest terms, but it is pointless, unnecessary and self-defeating for the nation that follows such a path - a xenophobic folly. His is a peculiarly nasty policy predicated on the entirely false idea that economic migrancy into this country is undertaken by foreign nationals solely to take advantage of our social welfare system, to our economic detriment. In reality, migrancy into Britain is of enormous fiscal value - the public purse was swelled to the tune of £2.5 billion in 2002 by overseas workers, a net figure which includes any benefits or healthcare provided in return by the state.
Howard's (and - latterly - that bastion of impotent, middle-English outrage, the Daily Mail's) contention that Britain is becoming swamped by immigrants is Malthusian nonsense. Asylum applications have fallen by two-thirds in the last three years and the backlog of claims sits at around 10,000 (not Mr Howard's claimed 50,000). At the end of 2003, Britain sat 9th in a European league table of asylum applications per capita. We have the world's fourth largest economy - we have around 3% of the world's refugees. The idea that Britain is overloaded with refugees and those seeking asylum is a nasty myth. Howard, and his supporters at Associated Newspapers should be ashamed.
But never mind the lies and the flawed economics. In Mr Howard's world, are we also to ignore the immeasurable social and cultural benefits of an open, multi-ethnic society? Do we, as a nation, want to live in a Britain where diversity is cherished and a friendly, confident welcome can be extended to those who have chosen to make a life for themselves and their families here? Or would we rather our children grow up in a country where different cultures and accents and skin colours are treated with suspicion, where a siege mentality borne of fear of anything different is encouraged and where a human being's value is dictated solely by their impact upon the public purse, or even an uneven assessment of that impact?
Thankfully, it appears that Labour will win the forthcoming election and Howard's own brand of fear and loathing won't find a home in this country's government. Nevertheless, the true damage of this insidious, opportunist campaign will not be known for some time. Howard has shown that, bubbling under the surface, there are genuine racially-inspired tensions in British society - like it or not, he's struck a chord. How Britain deals with that remains to be seen. I can only hope that we choose a path of rational debate and consideration, rather than the rancorous, populist spite that has made headlines for the Tory Party over the last fortnight.
The Tory Party's policy on immigration is nothing short of a scandal. The last two weeks have borne witness to a sort of backstreet rabble-rousing from Michael Howard that would not sound out of place at a BNP meeting.
Howard's tactic is simple. Attacking such a disenfranchised minority is a filthy, vicious political technique and he should - once this unpleasant campaign draws to close - be brought to task both by the party he has regressed fifty years and the political system his presence disgraces.
He is correct, albeit only semantically, when he suggests that it is not racist to impose limits on immigration. It may not be racist in the strictest terms, but it is pointless, unnecessary and self-defeating for the nation that follows such a path - a xenophobic folly. His is a peculiarly nasty policy predicated on the entirely false idea that economic migrancy into this country is undertaken by foreign nationals solely to take advantage of our social welfare system, to our economic detriment. In reality, migrancy into Britain is of enormous fiscal value - the public purse was swelled to the tune of £2.5 billion in 2002 by overseas workers, a net figure which includes any benefits or healthcare provided in return by the state.
Howard's (and - latterly - that bastion of impotent, middle-English outrage, the Daily Mail's) contention that Britain is becoming swamped by immigrants is Malthusian nonsense. Asylum applications have fallen by two-thirds in the last three years and the backlog of claims sits at around 10,000 (not Mr Howard's claimed 50,000). At the end of 2003, Britain sat 9th in a European league table of asylum applications per capita. We have the world's fourth largest economy - we have around 3% of the world's refugees. The idea that Britain is overloaded with refugees and those seeking asylum is a nasty myth. Howard, and his supporters at Associated Newspapers should be ashamed.
But never mind the lies and the flawed economics. In Mr Howard's world, are we also to ignore the immeasurable social and cultural benefits of an open, multi-ethnic society? Do we, as a nation, want to live in a Britain where diversity is cherished and a friendly, confident welcome can be extended to those who have chosen to make a life for themselves and their families here? Or would we rather our children grow up in a country where different cultures and accents and skin colours are treated with suspicion, where a siege mentality borne of fear of anything different is encouraged and where a human being's value is dictated solely by their impact upon the public purse, or even an uneven assessment of that impact?
Thankfully, it appears that Labour will win the forthcoming election and Howard's own brand of fear and loathing won't find a home in this country's government. Nevertheless, the true damage of this insidious, opportunist campaign will not be known for some time. Howard has shown that, bubbling under the surface, there are genuine racially-inspired tensions in British society - like it or not, he's struck a chord. How Britain deals with that remains to be seen. I can only hope that we choose a path of rational debate and consideration, rather than the rancorous, populist spite that has made headlines for the Tory Party over the last fortnight.
Tuesday
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