Make Some Noise, You Crazy Llamas

Not much to say at the moment, but I have to draw your attention to this:-

Online Stylophone

If you have your computer near anybody else, annoy them immensely by using this. All the time.

(via the Guardian)

Alternatively, vote in the Popbitch Animal of the Year 2008.

My money is on the puppies. Just saying, like.

Vote early, vote often!

To Each According To Their Contribution Of Guitar Parts

I was planning to write a post about the new Guns ‘n’ Roses album, the band holding a place in my heart roughly equivalent to other things I heard for the first time in the playground in the mid-80s. You know, like the Justified Ancient of Mu-Mu. Or Laura Brannigan. Or one of about eight million novelty records.

I was pondering if the title, Chinese Democracy, meant that Axl Rose was a revionist or an anti-revisionist, as I’d failed to determine which was which. So I thought I’d look it up on wikipedia.

As is so often the case, I got caught up reading page after page on the subject on communism of which there is a surprisingly large amount on wikipedia.

Now I know there is a popular image of left-wing activists forming party after party and spending more time in-fighting than organising a revolution, but I never realised how far it went.

For example in this country, not generally a county known for revolutionary socialism, in 1920 there was:

• The British Socialist Party. Wiki warns us that they are not to be confused with the Socialist Party of Great Britain or the Socialist Party (England and Wales).
• The Communist Unity Group. They were part of the Socialist Labour Party.
• The South Wales Socialist Society. Formerly known as the Rhondda Socialist Society. They often sided with the Workers Socialist Federation.

A year later there were some more:

• Communist Party (British Section of the Third International). They featured, amongst others: the Gorton Socialist Society, the Manchester Soviet, Stepney Communist League and the Labour Abstentionist Party.
• The Communist Labour Party. From Scotland.

I should mention at this point that Lenin hasn’t even died yet. Later on of course we get social-fascists, “cunning enemies… they are called Trotskyists” and the Committee to Defeat Revisionism.

The Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) makes an appearance in 1968, with wiki helpfully reminding us not to confuse it with the Communist Party of Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) or with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

My head now hurts.

Do you get the feeling every possible permutation of “Britain”, “Great Britain”, “Socialist”, “Communist”, “Marxist-Leninist” and “Revolutionary” must have been at some point an actual communist party?

One can only imagine what it must have been like in France or Italy where they actually had quite a lot of communists.

Of course, no discussion of such things is complete without the obligatory link:

A Taste Of Honey

I have a rather annoying cough at the moment. You know, the one where you have a tickle in your throat and spend an annoyingly long amount of time letting out little coughs that won’t go away.

Most annoying.

I always call these coughs “anti-theatre coughs” because you’d last about five minutes in a small theatre if you were coughing like that before you annoyed everyone in sight and were asked to leave.

Theatre featured again as I made myself a lemsip and realised that I was drinking it ignoring the mug’s handle and was instead wrapping both my hands around the cup to gain maximum warmth, a bit like an actress in a kitchen-sink drama about real people in real situations.

Which I don’t want to resemble.

I’d much rather be Maggie the Cat.

I’m Going To Keep My Scarf On Until Mid-December

To prevent me turning into a comatose zombie in front of the television (or alternatively a slightly more interactive zombie in front of the computer) I like to step outside of an evening and see what has been happening in my neighbourhood.

These last couple of days have been so cold though, I’d not exactly been taking lengthy strolls: it’s more a case of going to the nearest shop, avoiding standing near the refrigerated sections and returned home as quickly as my legs can carry me.

The satisfaction of stumbling into a warm flat, throwing my coat down on the nearest bit of floor and doing something really classy like, I don’t know, eating a lifetime’s supply of peanut butter,

whilst taking in the newest medical-related drama is hard to be beat. But in order to do it you have to go outside first.

I slipped on my coat, thrusting my hands into the ample pockets and heading down the stairs and out of the door.

It. Is. Freezing, I thought, heading down the street. I noticed what looked like a small pool of someone’s saliva in the light of someone’s street lamp.

Two Australians passed me as I headed for the main street. They were wrapped out warm, which just proves how cold it was. Australians seem to me to be dressed even in the height of our winter, which is much colder than theirs, in T-shirts and flip-flops. I’m not sure why.

“I’ve come all the way from fucking Earl’s Court…”

It was definately too cold to go anywhere, so I went to the nearest shop and paced up and down the aisles for a while, before I left with some hummus.

I’m Going To Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Novel

As usual, for the month of November, I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month, despite not being a member of the nation in question.

And as usual, I have totally failed to keep the momentum going and will no doubt fail to produce the requisite 50,000 words before the end of the month. Same old situation really.

I have been scribbling bits of this novel down when I get a chance, typing on the computer, writing on notepads, spare pages of my diary, a ledger book, index cards, bus tickets and so on but I haven’t really done enough to claim I’ve written a novel during the month of November.

Also my novel seems to be distincly lacking in overarching plot. (Without excellent one-liners sadly)

And all the chapters are pithy and short.

It hit me the other day as I was reading through some of it. Oh dear, I haven’t written a novel at all, I’ve just been writing a blog. A fictional blog. I could call it a blog novel, if I wanted.

Even more disturbingly, but not really surprisingly really, the narrator is worringly similar to me. Okay, he does a different job and is around 24% more creepy, but he lives down the road from me and knows several people who resemble people I know quite a lot. Some of his musings sound similar to something I would say, very similar. He is more of an old-school diary style blogger it would appear however, and is less concerned about remaining aloof and enigmatic and removing the “I” from the whole enterprise.

One particular chapter (or post as I suppose they should be called) was, despite being fictional, so close to what I would do in the same situation just reading it back was astonishingly embarassing, like farting in a crowded room and being unable to pretend it was someone else.

I may put some excepts up here, when I haven’t got much to say, and pretend they’re really about me and see if anyone notices.

I can’t help thinking Movember would have been a better bet.

Personally I Find A Banjo A Far More Expressive Instrument For Improvisations

Guitar bores often annoy me. Of course, I should by law mention that some of my best friends are guitar bores, which they are of course. But they still annoy me, when they talk about guitars.

Guitar bores are marginally better than car bores, mainly because guitars are much better than cars. But they still talk a stream of words that make little sense to me: I can never remember which is a Stratocaster and which is a Telecaster for instance.

The kind of thing you can find them talking about can be sampled by looking at the Strat’s wikipedia page:

3 or 2 single coils, with the latter having a humbucker bridge pickup, with the exception of the Acoustasonic Strat, the only acoustic Stratocaster. There are also select models that come with HSH and HH pickup configurations.

That doesn’t mean anything to me. Anyone like to enlighten me?

Also guitar bores tend to have annoying rockist tendencies. Disco doesn’t suck, and just because music was made with the help of a computer it does not make it less “authentic”, whatever that means.

Still a guitar bore has saved the day in the comments from this YouTube video from Slash and Perla Ferrar protesting against Proposition 8.

YouTube videos tend to have the most moronic comments anywhere on the interwebs, and this one is no exception.

Read them! Yes read them and weep. Except for this one.

Slash still using his Chris Derrig copy here… that’s his favourite guitar

Steamen, I salute you.

(via No Rock And Roll Fun)

Can’t Tell The Boys From The Girls Anymore

According to GenderAnalyzer:

We think http://oyebilly.wordpress.com is written by a man (65%).

Only 65%? Bah… *throws away pink gin*

Does the GenderAnalyzer think that you’re a boy or a girl? And is it right?

(via Bloggerheads)

Update: Marie has some more.

Last Tango In W12

I was in the shop the other day and I remembered that I needed some sort of butter, or in this country at least, medium-ranking margarine.

So I bought some.

As one does.

Little did I know that one of my flatmates would buy some the very next day. On the 2 for 1 offer.

And then, the next day, the same thing happened with a different flatmate. It was the same 2 for 1 offer as well.

So we have so much butter at the moment we might as well attempt to write speeches in the style of Hermann Goering.

But nobody please mention Marlon Brando.

I Thought The Violent Roadkills Were Much Better Before They Sold Out

From the Wire’s review of the latest Squarepusher album:

I once knew an Underground Resistance obsessive who, whenever I bought up anything on Warp – Plaid, Plone, Boards of Canada, even Autechre – would shake his head and just murmer “kitsch… kitsch”

An admirable sentiment, I’m sure you’ll agree. Trashing another person’s musical tastes, especially accusing their beloved musicians of “selling out”, “going commercial”, or worst of all, horror or horrors, making music that might appeal to teenage girls.

I know because I used to do it. When I was at school, a film called The Doors was released and proved to be inexplicably popular amongst my peer group and others who weren’t even there for goodness sake. The music became popular too.

Research in those pre-interweb days was tricky, but it was very satisfying when someone asked me if I liked the Doors to reply dismissively “Oh no, I much prefer Jefferson Airplane.” This was a tricky choice since they did turn into 80s mulleted stadium nightmares of course. Far better to plump for Pearls Before Swine. Or, even better, the Godz. (though they often got confused with metallers of the same name)

This got boring for me quickly though and I eventually went completely the other way in an irritating attempt to be different. I remember once singing the praises of rubbish 3rd-rate Steps rip-off Scooch. (before they sold out and did Eurovision of course)

Which is just silly.

One Man Guy

I was watching the legendary late night political show This Week featuring Andrew Neil with Corin yesterday, as I have done on numerous occasions, but never with Blue Nun being drunk while watching. Well that would be silly wouldn’t it?

In a report about the recent US Presidential elections (yes, I know, apparently there’s recently been one, I haven’t heard anything about it, oh no) Rufus Wainwright and Moby featured, presumably in the role of vaguely progressive people who would now be creaming their pants at the result.

Corin said to me “Who is that guy?” (referring to Rufus) “He’s like an American version of Gok Wan…”

I resisted the temptation to splutter in indignation. He’s just one of the members of the most dysfunctional family in folk music after all.

And besides which he’s Canadian-American. Whatever that means.

But he is a gayer. Which I think was what was being alluded to.