Haiku.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,
fucking fuck fuck fucking fuck,
oh fuck, I’m 30.

Old Phone Notes #6.

Yes, I'm picking this back up. Been quiet for a couple of weeks coz of college deadlines, getting issue 2 of my zine sorted and helping with bits of an event a mate of mine is organising.

The next lot are from when I went to Tate Modern a while ago. They're things I particularly liked.

One was the piece "How It Is" by Miroslaw Balka. This was basically a massive box which you could walk into. When you did, you found yourself in almost absolute darkness. It was something that caused a quite intense physical reaction, as all other senses suddenly became heightened and you shuffled your way through this box not seeing people until you were just about to walk into them. Even then, you sometimes did. I went in there about 4 times, and the first time I did it was completely disorientating. By the fourth time I was sort of used to it. It was odd though. Each time made me feel something different. By the end I was really enjoying the sensory depravation. I don't want to sound like a total wanker, though I am aware that I probably already do, but it really made me think about perception and also what it is each of the senses does.

Okay I'll stop that now. Sorry about that.

Next one is the name Ed Ruscha. The work I saw of his was photos, I think of Los Angeles and mountains, with text written over the top of them. I can't remember what I specifically liked or wanted to say about him, but I have enjoyed looking at his stuff on Google Images, so that's fine by me.

Same goes for Georges Braque, who I also noted down but can't specifically remember why.

Next, "Ghost Without A Shell."

This is a multimedia project in which a series of artists were given a character from a Japanese manga (NOT "Ghost In The Shell" though, so don't get fooled by the title) that the people behind the project had bought the rights to. The artists each created a piece of artwork which were then compiled into the exhibit. The people behind the project then signed the rights of the character over to the character itself, effectively killing the character off. The pieces then work as a sort of epitaph. I found the idea really interesting. I seem to remember a couple of the pieces not working for me at all, but generally really liking it.

Sorry for a lack of basic info. I dunno, if you think it sounds interesting, look it up.

Lastly, Picasso - "Seated Nude."

This is a painting that I particularly liked and couldn't get a postcard of in the gift shop.

Here it is. I love it. I think there's something really striking and interesting about it.

(image taken from tate.org.uk)

And with that, I end this post.

Guilty Pleasures.

Now, in theory I don't believe in guilty pleasures. Surely with everyone having different tastes and points of view, anyone should be allowed to like pretty much anything, right? (I say "pretty much," because I think there are a couple of things, murder being one example, that it is not okay for people to like doing.)

However, in practice this just isn't so. I find myself reacting to things that people like with a sneer. If someone says to me, for example, that they like the band Scouting For Girls, my immediate reaction is "Why the fuck do you like those talentless, irritating wankers?"

But really, who am I to talk? I like Simply Red, for God's sake! I, like every single other person in the world, am really in no position to judge.

And yet I do. I can't help it.

Generally speaking I've become better at this. Not just in terms of not judging others for their terrible tastes, but also being okay with admitting my own to others.

There is one thing that never ceases to cause embarrassment though.

Disco.

I love disco.

Proper, tacky, 80's disco.

You say this to people, and they laugh. They think your taking the piss or, even worse, you like it ironically. Eurgh.

Well, I do not like disco ironically. I like disco full stop. There are few genres of music that make me smile the way that disco does. It is seriously fun. When done well, disco makes it impossible to not in some way move to.

This must be part of why I love it like I do, because I absolutely love dancing.

Anyway, I'm not going to waffle on about this, because all I will do is repeat myself quite a lot. I will just leave you with one of my favourite 80's disco songs. This makes me happy. It also makes me want it to be one o'clock in a dark room with me getting my dance on to it. It is really tacky and really fun and I love it.

Whatever.

Olde Phone Notes #5

This one is a bunch of place names I noted down on the way back to Oxford from Sweet G's 30th Birthday weekend. It's not that I found them funny or cute or anything like that. I just, slightly patronisingly, found something really charming and quaint about them. Like they were stuck in a time period of about 200 years ago. Yeah, that does make me sound like a bit of a wanker, but read these and tell me there isn't something nice and old fashioned about them:

* Piddlehinton
* Troy Town
* Poundsbury
* Briantspuddle
* Sturminster Marshall
* Corfe Mullen
* "Chop & Ale House"
* Canford Bottom

And along with those I noted a place called Zelston, which to me sounds like the name given to a planet in some equally absurd sounding quadrant of space in a 1970's tv sci-fi drama series.

"Blake, we have entered the Geltorg quadrant and should be arriving at the planet Zelston very soon."
"Understood. Orac, can you calculate the make up of the atmosphere on Zeston's surface?"
"Jesus, Blake, can't the universes most advanced super-computer take a nap every now and then?"
"Just do it, Orac."

Errrrrrrm..... Yeah.

Old Phone Notes #2, 3 & 4.

The next note was two quotes:

"Ugly sex is hot."

"I always go back to spit roast."

I can't entirely remember this, but I think my mate Anna who used to be on my college course said these. We were in a pub with another college mate, Humphrey. Think I just wrote them down because they made Humph and I laugh quite a lot.

Then comes:

"OLAibi"

I think this is a Japanese band I read a bit about in 'Wire' magazine that I wanted to listen to. Hang on...

Yes they are. And they "...feature members of OOIOO and Boredoms." Ooooooh. YouTube time.

First video: They're playing live. They're all wearing deer masks. Two people playing ikembes, two people playing glockenspiels, one person playing bongos. Quite mellow and hypnotic. I like it.

Second video: More live footage. More percussion heavy, similarly hypnotic groove music. I like this band.

Then:

"Boregore."

Someone once described this as "Really filthy sounding dubstep" to me and I never got round to checking them out. Let's go.

First song, 'Guided Relaxation.' Yup. The description seems accurate.

Second song, 'Ice Cream.' Starts off a bit tamer and with a really irritating vocal, but starts getting pretty filthy about halfway through.

Third sing, 'Act Like A Ho.' See second song, but with filth starting about a third of the way through.

To clarify, filth here refers to distorted, squelchy sounding synth.

Hmmm, they do all kind of sound a bit the same though. Shame. Not enough to make me think this is someone I'll carry on looking out for.

Old Phone Notes #1.

I've been trying to work out what to write on here for a while now. Quite a few times I've started a post and decided that I actually don't want to write it and so delete it. I can't even remember what any of them were about now.

Anyway, this means that it's been back to this blog looking a bit sparse. Today though I was in the pub with m'college colleagues Adam and Humph, when they started having a massive conversation about the programme 'Smallville.' Not giving a toss about Superman in general (I could just never really care about him) I decided to sort out the problem of my phone running out of memory. I discovered a ton of notes I'd left myself and never chased up on, written about or whatever it was I was meaning to do with them. I wrote all these notes down in my diary and am going to write about these notes on here. This is the first part of this potentially tedious project.

(Is it a project? I don't know, but if I call it one it might make it sound like a more interesting prospect to work and read through.)

The first note said:

"Techno Welshpool."

Now, I actually remember exactly why I made a note of this. I was watching 'Final Score' or the Sky Sports equivalent one day at work and they were including results from a Welsh football cup, and this team called Techno Welshpool came up. I thought it was the best name I had ever heard of for a football team. I imagined it would be the kind of name a European dance act would adopt. I imagined they would sound quite a lot like the band Scooter.

I Googled Techno Welshpool and found that a site called fanchants (dot) com has lyrics to a chant of theirs. It goes:

"Techno, techno,

Yeh techno, techno,

Yeh we are Techno Welshpool yeh!!!!!!!!!!!"

This has made me think even more that a European dance band really should adopt it as a name. If someone had said to me that those were the lyrics to a Scooter song, I would've believed them. Someone needs to snap this name up while they can.

Why not? We've had football team band names before. Saint Etienne, Kaiser Chiefs, and the first time I went to Paris, there were posters advertising a (then) new album by a band called Astonvilla. I never got round to hearing what they sound like. Maybe I'll look them up on YouTube now.

Oh. They sound like boring, middle-of-the-road rock. How disappointing. Oh well...

So there you go. That's why I noted that down. I reckon I've been meaning to write about that for about three years. And I've been meaning to hear what Astonvilla sound like for longer than that.

This phone notes thing already feels like a good idea. Which probably means it'll be tedious from here on. I do hope not.

P.S. Google also told me that the official name of Techno Welshpool is actually 'Technogroup Welshpool Town F.C." and that they are called this due to the fact that they took on the name of their sponsors. That's pretty weird. I mean, imagine if Manchester United suddenly changed their name to Aon F.C. ...