Then The Harp Strings Started Breaking

The Metro reports on a survey to determine which tube line has the most attractive commuters. The Northern Line clinches it, with the Hammersmith & City line losing (the very line I take into work).

More than a third of people thought its combination of ’spiky-haired indie kids’ and ‘hot city types’ gave it the edge over other lines.

I wish I could have read that article this morning, then I could have given you a rundown on the attractiveness or otherwise of my fellow passengers. You see I rarely notice them usually occupying myself with music, books or just staring into space. I don’t do things like reading the Metro, with it’s curious blend of fluff, moral indignation and articles-that-don’t-match-the-headline-in-any-way. Although that has entertaining letters. By which I mean entertainingly stupid.

In fact one of the most horrifying things is if I travel without either book or music. Because everyone is very quiet the only sound is the little tinny beats from people’s earphones and if two people who know each other have a conversation it sounds very loud indeed, although not quite loud enough to promote tutting.

The other day a busker got on and provoked a considerable amount of embarrassment amongst my passengers with his flute. Since I was reading a book and listening to music I was able to totally ignore him. Hooray!

It’s so totally unlike taking the tube late a night, with lairy people galore, and people occasionally using cups as a makeshift toilet, you know that kind of thing.

When I lived in Twickenham, the late night trains were more civilised, or maybe I was just drunker because I regularly used to fall asleep and wake up at Hatton Cross, or even worse, Staines. Although once a group of people I was sitting near who worked for the FT got very excited when they discovered that one of our fellow passengers had won an award for the best restaurant in Staines, a privilege I can only dream of.

I once had the experience of a last train to Shoeburyness. That was interesting.

In either occasion sex is the last thing on my mind.

This bit of the article amused me, though:

For those who did pluck up the courage, among the worst chat-up lines was ‘I bet you’re getting off at Angel’, the survey by Qype found.

(via Going Underground)

You Have The Most Violent Wallpaper I’ve Ever Seen

I’m aware that writing about dreams is second only to posting YouTube clips as the most boring thing to base a blog post around, but I fell asleep on the train earlier and dreamt about Stephen Fry, who told me to, and I quote:

Stop fucking about on the internet all the time

Which was a bit rich coming from him, although I’m sure he does many more interesting things than I do. Anyway (thanks to zenbullets for bringing this to my attention) he has recently done a podcast about Oscar Wilde, which can be downloaded from here.

Enjoy. I am listening to it right now as I type this.

I Have All The Sky Saxon Solo Albums On Tape

Sky Saxon (you’ll be surprised to learn that wasn’t his real name) was a strange fellow. He started off relatively normal, in the 1960s with his garage band The Seeds releasing songs like “Pushin’ Too Hard“.

However later on he became increasingly eccentric, releasing solo albums on battered old tapes to diminishing but cultish returns. A fact parodied in the Pooh Sticks‘* tribute to indie trainspotter-ish record collectors On Tape:

I’ve got Falling and Laughing – the original Postcard version
I’ve got all the Sky Saxon solo albums on tape!

But I digress. My original point was this: in his wilderness years Sky joined a somewhat eccentric religious movement and started to make odd pronouncements.

Supposedly he claimed he had invented the term “flower power”, when it is obviously a slogan of the Bavarian Illuminati.

In a similar vein, Alcuin of York could lay claim to having invented another 60s garage rocker.

My question is this: what would you claim, possible to a somewhat credulous person, that you had invented?

I’m currently pretending I invented Tab Clear and half-day closing on Wednesday.

* Kind of The Archies to the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Velvet Underground. Not to be confused with the game.

I Had No Idea I Teetered On The Edge Of Fashion

When I was a student, I lived in a small flat with three other people, one of whom in the tradition of such places, we rarely saw as he seemed to spend all the time in his room.

As I was the nearest I would often, in the middle of the night, dash across to the bathroom without bothering to put anything on. You see, I’d left my dressing gown at home so I couldn’t put that on before venturing outside my room.

Once I got caught. In my defence, I wasn’t expecting one of the other guys in the flat to be up at 5am on a Sunday morning, but he was going off gliding. So he saw me, naked as the day I was born but slightly hairier,  dashing across to my room and fiddling with the door.

And to my horror, he told everybody about it and I never lived it down during the entirety of my student days.

But I can’t help wondering how he would have reacted had he bumped into me the night before. You see I wasn’t naked that day, I was clad in one of my then girlfriend’s nightdresses.

Now that would have been interesting.

ITN Editors Dictate Our Nations Youth!

One of my most keenly-felt embarrassing moments occur in lifts. Not just due to to the computer voice stating “going down” in such a way I feel I can almost hear the silicon eyebrows waggling.

Picture the situation: you step into the lift and just as the door is closing, someone breathlessly manages to get there in time and apologetically states “3, please”. I press the 3 button and the lift doors close (for some reason 90% of my jobs I’ve been situated on the second floor, I have no idea why) and then we stand there for half a minute in excruciatingly agonising silence, although sometimes there is a trailed off sentence or two.

Now imagine the same situation with somebody who’s famous. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.

Luckily today’s celebrity encounter took place outside.

I was walking along the road in my lunch hour shoving an avocado and mozzarella baguette into my mouth when I saw Sir Trevor McDonald walking the other way.

I thought I should shout something at him, like:

The magazine show that you front has a slightly more sensationalistic approach than the equivalent shows on the BBC.

or, more succintly:

Bong!

But I didn’t, and he walked past with his two friends laughing at some joke or other. So I returned to my baguette.

*cough* This Is What Passes For Real News – *sneeze*

Have you ever coughed in the middle of sneezing or vice versa? Or have you ever done that annoying think where you call someone a prick, for example, whilst you’re coughing in an attempt to disguise what you’re saying.

If so, the Daily Mail want to hear from you, probably with a view to stringing you up in due course. Take the recent news story about some 15-year boy who pretended to sneeze and wipe his hand on the back of David Cameron’s jacket. Now if I had been there, I would have applauded him until my hands were sore. But this is Daily Mail land here so the headline states:

Nabbed: The yob who used back of Cameron’s coat as a handkerchief

Overkill much?

The tone of the story is typical Mail from the use of the outraged onlooker, reference to the youth’s “aspiring musician” status and being expelled from two schools, not to mention the horror that his mother is unemployed (you know if this had been a story about some respectable teenager his mother would have been a “housewife”) and his father is a retired disk jockey. And then this:

He said his musical and fashion inspiration is the junkie singer Pete Doherty.

“But I don’t like all his drug taking.”

I personally think the Mail are disappointed that there were no hoodies involved as per the previous “incident” they reference in the article.

The one thing I don’t understand is that from the footage, it is obvious that he didn’t really sneeze and was just pretending. I think this has got to be one of the greatest non-stories ever covered by the Mail.

But the comments, oh for the love of God, the comments:

Disgusting little toe rag, he should have the cost of having the suit cleaned deducted from his ‘job seekers’ allowance.

- Chris, N E England

Fifteen year old on job-seekers allowance (nice scare quotes by the way). Nice to see Chris actually read the article in question.

What a charming little oik. His parents must be so proud of him and it makes me wonder where my taxes go and also of all we hear about the next generation being so deprived and having so many problems. Before the human rights rubbish took over he would have been clipped round the ear and that would have been the end of it. As it is he will probably be treated as a “hero”..

- J.M. Battershill, Mitcham

I’m not sure where tax-payers money comes into it. Or indeed human rights. Or indeed anything.

If he’d hit Cameron in the face with a cast-iron frying pan their reactions could not have been any worse. Thankfully there’s this one.

This dirty, disgusting, unemployable thug should have been incarcerated on the spot. And the young lad who wiped snot on him should have been given a medal.

- Josh, London

Maybe there is hope in the world after all.

Get Your Grim Robes, You’ve Pulled

Separated at birth, perhaps? Drone merchants Sunn O))), whose mystikal master is Kliff Burton:

and the KLF, money burners and country-music collaboraters extraordinare

Well, I thought the photos looked kind of similar anyway, although they looked more similar in my mind.

If you can name the link between the two bands, you win an as yet undetermined prize.

Reasons Why Blogging Is Better Than The Sinister Facebook Number 129,234,911

There are several people who are my “blogroll buddies” who I have also befriended on the sinister Facebook: home of sheep-throwing, scrabble rip-offs, poking, stalking and the destruction of nature.

It would appear that Patroclus, Annie Slaminsky and myself are seemingly unaware of the correct etiquette of Facebook profile pictures, opting instead for the type of profile picture common on blogs (if an actual photo is used for an avatar) with our faces somewhat obscured.

Aren’t we enigmatic? And as a direct result, cool? (natch)

(Mr. Blue Cat uses a more traditional Facebook picture but then he is a celebrity and is therefore absolved)

The Moldy Peaches: A Study In Binary Opposition

In their seminal text, Steak For Chicken, Port Towsend duo The Moldy Peaches explore a number of themes which bear closer examination.

Throughout where the sung lines differ, I have indicated Adam Green’s lines in red and Kimya Dawson’s in blue. Now on with the text.

The composition begins with a lightly plucked acoustic guitar, which resolves into a strum, backed with brush drums.

Mardi Gras came and went
All my money has been spent
How am I gonna pay the rent?
Sitting on your face Sitting on my ass

Here the Moldy Peaches invoke the image familiar to many: in an attempt to satisfy their hunger for instant gratification they have found themselves short of what they need for the necessities of life; in this case a roof over their heads. Note the differing reactions of the two protaganists: sex and laziness respectively.

Who mistook the steak for chicken?
Who am I gonna stick my dick in?
We’re not those kids, sitting on the couch.

Here the Moldy Peaches bemoan the lack of cooking and culinary knowledge amongst the young people of today, explicitly separating themselves from “those kids”. Note also the rhythmic similarities between “steak” and “stick” as well as “chicken” and “dick in”.

My former life, I was a high roller My former life, I had a sister
Walked around in a diamond stroller I abused her and I dissed her
Found my calling as a part-time bowler She got swept up in a twister
Traded my wife in for a new three holer First I laughed and then I missed her

Note here the fracturing of the narrative. While Green boasts of his material wealth in his former life and makes a possible crude sexual pun comparing his significant other to a bowling bowl – the three holes possibly being significant, Dawson alludes to sibling rivalry and possibly in a subconscious reaction to her guilt imagines her sister being driven away by a twister in a similar manner to The Wizard Of Oz. Only after this happens is she allowed to admit her guilt.

Who mistook these baths for showers?
Who fucked up that leaning tower?
We’re not those kids, sitting on the couch.

Again the Moldy Peaches bemoan the lack of cultural sophistication amongst their contemparies, with the “fucked up leaning tower” a possible allusion to castration anxiety.

Oh get on a greyhound and ride away
Live on birthday cake each day Different dreams than yesterday
Tell your grandparents that they’re gay Tell your grandma, you’re okay
Steal their money and run away Kiss her cheek and run away
Cuz me and my friends are so smart
We invented this new kind of art We invented this new kind of dart
Post-Modernest Throwing Darts Hit A Bulls-eye, cut a fart
Smoking crack and cutting…crack

Here the narrative fragments yet further, with the stanza length different to previously. Throughout this stanza Green generally taking the more puerile and childish approach using homosexuality as a pejorative and boasting about consuming narcotics, despite his previous protestations about the attitudes of the young, perhaps he is attempting to have it both ways, evidenced by his reference to post-modernism. Dawson does eventually make a reference to flatulence, co-incidentally at the same time Green boasts of his post-modernism in the field of sport.

Who mistook this crap for genius? Who is dancing on the ceiling?
Who is gonna stroke my penis? Who is gonna hurt my feelings?
We’re not those kids, sitting on the couch.

Here Green references the “secret meaning” behind all art: self-promotion (tempered with self-deprecation) and sex. Dawson instead throws in a reference to Lionel Ritchie and references the darkness behind Green’s crudity.

Oh people are shiny like a brand new book Even your mother is a crook
But if you get a closer look But if I get a closer look
There’s shit on every hand you shook There’s shit on every road you took
If you don’t believe me, look at your hand If you don’t believe me, read the book

The symmetry of the narrative is important here, the book reference moving across and the nigh-on simultaneous scatology.

Who made all these things for killing? Somebody’s making a killing
Who’s pussy hole needs filling? Who’s empty heart needs filling?
We’re not those kids, sitting on the couch.
Who mistook the steak for chicken?
Who am I gonna stick my dick in?
We’re not those kids, sitting on the couch.

For the final chorus a explicit reference is made to the connection between disordered sexuality and violence. Also Dawson sings about her “dick” which I assume is a reference to the phallus.

Next week: “The Kingdom of God is Within You: Religion, Lust and Disappointment in Beat Happening’s Angel Gone.”

When I Look Into Your Marvellous Eyes, I Remember That I Have Some Laundry To Do

I have long been of the opinion that I am no good at any kind of fetishism, sexual or otherwise. The problem is simply that I am far too indecisive. If you have any kind of all-consuming quirk, you generally know by the onset of puberty, but I had no such revelation. Therefore my stock line is “I’m not so much vanilla as skimmed milk”.

If sex and violence use the same part of the brain, then I think sex and drugs do too. After all they are usually paired together in what is usually referred to as the Dury triptych.

When I was around 14, somebody handed me a cigarette. It didn’t have much effect, it didn’t even make me cough like it does on the telly and in films and books, which disappointed me. Therefore I didn’t become a smoker, not because I didn’t like it, because I guess only about 5% of teenagers actually like smoking, but because it was all too much hard work for very little return.

Picture the scene: you are a teen who has decided to start smoking. First of all you have to chose a brand (where I grew up everyone was into Lambert and Butlers – classy) and then you had to go to the shop and buy some, hoping the whole time that you’d get served. And what was the net result: standing on a street corner trying to look grown up. If cigarettes got you high, I’d understand a lot more why people bother smoking.

Not long after that, someone passed me a bifter. Now that was even more hard work. Okay, it did make you sleepy and giggle a bit, but you had to go and buy rolling tobacco and papers (thus the same problems outlined above) and then find someone willing to sell you some weed and then you had to sit there and “skin up”, which is far too much like hard work and then you get all paranoid on your way home than you stink of smoke and what will your parents say and such things.

This must be multiplied by a million if you have some unspeakable sexual quirk (or even a speakable one). Far too much hassle in my opinion, I think I’ll stick to what I know.