A grand piano to prop up my mortal remains

klepsydra @ 2008-06-29T14:16:00

2008-06-29T13:17:16Z

I'm so allergic to myself

that when I cry

my tears leave acid trails

running down my cheeks

klepsydra @ 2008-06-29T13:28:00

2008-06-29T12:28:35Z

What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

klepsydra @ 2008-06-29T13:22:00

2008-06-29T12:23:10Z

I got wild staring eyes

and I got a strong urge to fly

but I got nowhere to fly to

People who like albums like this will like this album

2008-05-11T14:18:34Z

I adore the unique British band Half Man Half Biscuit, but I would be the first to admit that they aren't for everyone.

Anyone who tells you that they have identified every reference in every HMHB song is lying (or Nigel Blackwell, who writes them -- and I'm not convinced even he could get them all, sometimes.)

Their newest album, the wonderfully (and typically) titled CSI: Ambleside just came out, and I picked it up yesterday at HMV, taking it over to bhata's with me for a first listen. We all agreed it was a thumbs-up and, if anything, even better than its predecessor Achtung Bono. There's a more definite rock groove (apart from one track which comes perilously close to being rap, but amuses nonetheless) and it's perhaps a smidge more accessible than some of their other releases this century, though of course it will still come nowhere within ten miles of denting the charts.

If you've never heard any HMHB, give it a listen.

Oh, and speaking of obscure references... The CD's back cover proclaims that it was 'produced by R M Qualtrough'. This name rang a faint bell for me, and not a musical one either, so I looked further...

And it was as I thought. 'R M Qualtrough' was the false name given by the never-identified murderer of Julia Wallace in Liverpool (HMHB's home town, of course!) back in 1931, a real-life whodunit celebrated at the time, and even now, for its complexity -- Julia Wallace was in some ways the Madeleine McCann of her day. Her husband, an inoffensive little insurance salesman, was lured out of the house by a phone call to sell a policy to a non-existent address, and while he was out searching for it, 'Qualtrough' broke into his house and killed his wife. The police decided that Mr Wallace must himself be the murderer and he was actually found guilty at his trial, but then cleared by the Court of Appeal -- the first such case in British legal history, I do believe. It's all at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herbert_Wallace and http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/wallace.html.

A quick Google suggests that I may be the first on the Internet to nail this little joke by Nigel, and I'm feeling insufferably smug about it. Which is, of course, why HMHB are a perfect band for me.

Lending library

2008-05-05T23:33:19Z

Today's post by the_gneech reminds me: someone out there has borrowed my copy of 'Scream for Jeeves', and I'm blessed if I can remember who. Anyone want to own up? bhata? huskyteer?

Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton

2008-05-01T19:08:05Z

Those of my readers who have a vote today: for goodness sakes, go and use it if you haven't already. Democracy is not an automatic right, and the less we use it the more likely we are to lose it -- you just know Margaret Thatcher would have declared herself Emperor for Life if she had thought she could get away with it.

In the Mayor of London roadshow, after some last minute hesitation (and contrary to what I told mosey_pussycat) I voted Paddick first and Livingstone second, since the smart money seems to be on the election coming down to a two-horse race between Kuddly Ken and Barmy Boris, with second choices making the difference. I hope I'm right, because if Boris Johnson wins on first place votes alone I am going to feel a complete tit. Livingstone has many faults, like all politicians, but he's so self-evidently a superior choice compared to Johnson, who looks and acts like he's just come from midnight mass at St Loony's-up-the-Cream-Bun-and-Jam, that I truthfully cannot see how any person with a grain of sense could think Boris was a good choice (there, that should alienate half my friends list).

As I came home from voting the heavens opened briefly, and left behind this:

A double rainbow, no less. Maybe God was trying to tell Walthamstow to vote for Paddick after all.

A good month for music

2008-04-21T21:29:41Z

28th April 2008: Half Man Half Biscuit release their new album 'CSI: Ambleside'.
19th May 2008: Sparks release their new album 'Exotic Creatures Of The Deep'.
27th May 2008: TV Smith releases his new album 'In The Arms Of My Enemy'.

Just heard Sparks' new single 'Good Morning'. Oh boy it's good!

Not that HMHB and TV won't be as good or better, of course. Have some footage of them as well:

HMHB "It's Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas":

TV Smith "Not A Bad Day":

"...myghod that was The Time Monster..."

2008-04-19T00:14:05Z

It's funny how most of the links I seem to be posting here these days are for the benefit primarily of huskyteer. Maybe it's because she's one of my best friends that I never get to talk to these days either online or on the computer.

Anyway... Jon Pertwee is The Prisoner!

As the page itself says, "Utterly pointless but hopefully amusing". And very cleverly done. I like geeky cleverness for its own sake, and this is as fine an example as can be found

...excepting Alice...

2008-03-07T14:28:33Z

I have been off work for two days with a horrid cold and cough. Yesterday I had a sneezing fit so loud and prolonged that it woke sphelx upstairs and behind a closed door. So I've been doing some web wandering, having little energy for anything more strenuous.

I find that Youtube is starting to get like Alice's Restaurant: you can get anything you want there.

This little gem, for instance. I've known of the existence of the song for ages, being a Prisoner buff, but had never actually had the chance to listen to it before. And I certainly never dreamt it had a video attached!

I have a horrid suspicion that that opening riff is lifted from the Spencer Davis Group's "Keep On Running", mind you.

The Times, "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape"

Wolf walk?

2008-03-02T15:53:30Z

(x-posted to spiritfursuk)

Would anyone else be interested in attending the Pink Moon walk on Sunday 20th April at Wildwood Animal Park? (warning -- clicking this link will make your computer howl at you)

I'm planning to go, in any event, and having been before I can highly recommend it. You'll need to book yourself on and make your own way to Kent though.

Roooooad trip!

2008-02-08T22:50:43Z

Most of my friends will know I've been whining and stressing about whether I'd be able to attend Megaplex this year with the ever wonderful crocosaur.

I am delighted to say that thanks to an incredibly cheap fare offer from Northwest (to be found on seat24.co.uk and Ebookers, but not on Northwest/KLM's own UK website...) the answer is yes. (Three hundred pounds return. I didn't believe it either. I suspect it may relate to the fact that Northwest is switching its London-MSP flights from Gatwick to Heathrow around this time; I leave from Gatwick but arrive back at Heathrow.)

I fly into Minneapolis-St Paul on 20th March (Maundy Thursday) and don't leave again till Saturday 5th April, affording me ample time to drive down to Florida and back (picking up Croco in Pewaukee on the way, natch) and still have time and money to do a few fun things down there!

Isn't it funny how having something to look forward to, is the absolute best thing ever at blasting the blues away?

Spreading the bad word

2008-01-05T11:39:48Z

I'm not normally one to join lynch mobs, and I am cognizant of the laws of libel and of the concept of innocence until guilt is proven.

So I've taken the liberty of amending Q's original post slightly.

But I think the meaning remains perfectly clear. I know Q, I like Q, and if Bucky Bunny doesn't find himself on everyone's furry shitlist now, right up at the top in the company of such select rectums as Sibe, Nekobe, Divefox and Tumbles the Stairdragon, I shall be most surprised.

Furs look after one another, sometimes to excess. And one thing you do not do is steal from the furry hand that feeds you.

*****

Bucky Rabbit / Bucky Bunny, A.K.A. Charles Bucchioni is alleged to have broken into the apartment of Quentin Mohos (quentincoyote) and Iddo Geva (falconeio) and stolen all of their games, consoles, hard drives and graphics cards.

The theft was EXTREMELY SPECIFIC. The thief knew exactly how to get in, when they would be gone, how long he had, and precisely where everything was hidden.

Why this happened: http://quentincoyote.livejournal.com/466037.html

ITEMS STOLEN:

2 Xbox 360 and all controllers, memory cards and face plates
2 Sony Playstation II, controllers, & memory cards
2 Ninetendo Wii and all controllers and memory cards
1 laptop hd for Dell Inspiron
1 video card
1 raid card
100 + games for all systems in individual cases
1 40 item Swiss Army knife
Large quantity of quarters and loose change

If you see Charles Bucchioni in possession of any of these items in the NY/NJ/CT area, call the police IMMEDIATELY! Call Detective Debbey McGorty @ 201-863-0881 or 201-319-6044

Charles Bucchioni is a member of the NY Army National Guard, and was supposed to report for duty in October, but may be AWOL. Police are now looking for him.

If you have any information on Charles' wherabouts, call Iddo Geva @ 646-296-6565 or Quentin Mohos at 917-596-7329, or call Detective McGorty @ 201-863-0881 or 201-319-6044.

THIS IS TIME-CRITICAL! PASS THIS AS FAST AND AS FAR AS POSSIBLE.

PLEASE REPEAT THIS IN YOUR JOURNAL. THE THEFT WAS EXCEPTIONALLY SPECIFIC AND CHARLES BUCCIONI HAS THE KNOWLEDGE TO HAVE STOLEN THESE ITEMS.

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj92/accordionhero/buckyposter_1_full-1.jpg

Stolen from everybody and their dog

2008-01-04T22:33:38Z

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way:

Band meme

2007-12-10T15:21:44Z

Swiped from (in order) loganberrybunny, gothicat and rockwolf; apparently originated by someone called Shirik.

Go to Wikipedia and click on 'random article'; that's your band name.
Click again; that's your album name.
Click 15 more times; those are the tracks on the album.

Band: Pediatric Oncology Group [[Like it!]]
Album: Christopher Wunderlee [[Also not a bad name]]
Track 1: Tony Azevedo
Track 2: Prescot Railway Station [[Didn't Paul Simon write...?]]
Track 3: List of Sloops of War of the United States Navy [[Sounds like an instrumental]]
Track 4: Ampelakia
Track 5: Moon
Track 6: Iliotibial Tract
Track 7: Bajaur
Track 8: Norwood, Bronx
Track 9: Badminton House
Track 10: Sascha Breuer [[I think this may be our Blur-stylee singalong track for some reason]]
Track 11: Andres Franzoia
Track 12: Yours for the Asking
Track 13: Crazy Daisy Nightclub
Track 14: Ph. D.
Track 15: Wasatch Front 100 Mile Endurance Run

...

Special Hidden Track because I've not seen anyone else do one yet in this meme: Energy Budget

The return of the living nannies

2007-11-30T00:49:01Z

I wish this was a hoax, but it doesn't seem to be.

Criswell predicts that there's going to be a huge hoohah over this as soon as people start to realise this system is now implemented.

If I were a true libertarian anarchist, I would encourage everyone to flag up every one of their friends' public posts in order to render the system unworkable. But as ever I'm just a wimpy liberal and I must shy away from any such act of civil disobedience.

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more

2007-11-20T22:03:40Z

An unexpected highlight of my recent US trip was the discovery and exploration of an abandoned farmhouse in north-west Wisconsin.

For once I remembered to take photos.

For best results, view with smart-ass comments enabled.

(Oh, that's tailstalker in many of the shots.)

Newsbiscuit for the win!

2007-10-30T19:38:44Z

Warning: link contains puppies! (Safe for work and everything.)

"Essex criminals slam 'rubbish dog fight'"

I'm always a sucker for a book meme

2007-10-04T18:49:16Z

And this one from loganberrybunny is no exception:

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk [*] to those you've read more than once. Underline what's on your 'to read someday' list.

1984*
Aeneid, The (Not as good as Homer, if you ask me)
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela's Ashes: a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
Blind Assassin, The
Brave New World*
Brothers Karamazov, The
Canterbury Tales, The
Catch-22
Catcher in the Rye, The******* and one white tree. A classic deserving of the name.
Clockwork Orange, A
Cloud Atlas
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Confederacy of Dunces, A
Confusion, The
Corrections, The
Count of Monte Cristo, The
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
~~Dune~~ (I'm with you on this one, Logan)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma (A level set text. Annoyingly winsome.)
Foucault's Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein (yes, I know. Shocking of me)
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
God of Small Things, The
Grapes of Wrath, The
Gravity's Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver's Travels (Political satire rarely ages well)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, A
Historian, The: a novel
Hobbit, The*
Hunchback of Notre Dame, The
Iliad, The
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences* (by coincidence, reread today on the train)
Inferno, The
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Kite Runner, The
Les Misérables
Life of Pi: a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mists of Avalon, The
Moby Dick
Mrs. Dalloway
Name of the Rose, The
Neverwhere (Couldn't get into it somehow)
Northanger Abbey (Emma was bad enough...)
Odyssey, The
Oliver Twist
On the Road
Once and Future King, The
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Hundred Years of Solitude
~~Oryx and Crake: a novel~~ (Never, never, never! It has no talking squids in outer space!)
People's History of the United States, A: 1492-present
Persuasion
Picture of Dorian Gray, The
Poisonwood Bible: a novel, The
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A
Pride and Prejudice
Prince, The (Simon rates this highly)
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Satanic Verses, The
Scarlet Letter, The
Sense and Sensibility
Short History of Nearly Everything, A
Silmarillion, The (Actually, Logan, I read it cover to cover before my teens...)
Slaughterhouse Five
Sound and the Fury, The
Tale of Two Cities, A
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Risibly badly written and plotted)
Three Musketeers, The
Time Traveler's Wife, The
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island* (Arrrr, Jim lad.)
Ulysses
Unbearable Lightness of Being, The
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down* (Mais bien sur!)
White Teeth
Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values (Another of Simon's I've not got round to)

The decline and fall of Auntie Beeb

2007-10-03T20:05:29Z

I went to the BBC website just now to see what news I could find about the upcoming British postal strike.

Answer: there wasn't any. (News, not strike).

However, there was this news story: Leapfrogging mayor injures woman dressed as tomato

What is the world coming to?

Praise be!

2007-09-29T15:08:53Z

I HAVE HOME EMAIL AGAIN AT LAST NO THANKS TO YOU DEMON INTERNET YOU BUFFOONS.

This means that I may once again be contacted at the dear old address of klepsydra (at) spottykitty (dot) net. At least I hope so...

As for my last entry, sphelx didn't know who George Formby was. He knows now!

Sausages turned out nice again!

2007-09-28T18:32:22Z

Wouldn't it be an interesting alternate universe if, instead of the George Foreman Grill, we had the George Formby Grill?

This is Radio KPSY signing off.

2007-08-31T01:25:13Z

It's 2.23am. The movers are coming at 9am. Not quite everything is packed, but the few remaining odds and sods can wait till the morning.

I don't expect I shall be online again until I'm ensconced in the new house.

Goodnight America, whatever you are.

Precognitive dream... again?

2007-06-30T11:37:49Z

I had an odd dream last night where I was staying in an upper story apartment with slycat and some other people I can't remember.

We decided we were in the mood for some comedy and couldn't decide exactly what. I remembered that I had a tape of Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound in my car, which I'd taped off Radio 4 ages ago, and ran downstairs to get it. Had to rummage about a lot before I found it, and I woke up before I got back up to Slycat with it.

Then I woke up, and went to the Radio 4 website to listen to The Now Show, and hang me if they aren't having a series of plays and interviews to celebrate Tom Stoppard's 70th birthday. I know how I'm going to be spending some of my weekend.

Tom Stoppard is easily my favourite modern playwright, and if you're not familiar with him I urge you to remedy this. (Though you may well be familiar with him without knowing it -- as well as plays like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, he did the screenplay for the film Shakespeare in Love.

I do indeed have that tape of The Real Inspector Hound, though I haven't had a car with a cassette player in it since Boxing Day 2005. Funny how long it takes my subconscious to catch up with reality sometimes.

As if the Stoppard festival weren't enough, Radio 4 is also doing a programme by Michael Flanders' daughter (he of Flanders and Swann fame, the closest England got to an answer to Tom Lehrer) about her father. If you're not familiar with Flanders and Swann, I urge you.... oh, you know what I'm going to say, don't you?

Hazel considered this lot briefly...

2007-06-14T18:18:26Z

loganberrybunny, and other aficionados of rabbits and rabbiteering, may be interested to learn of the existence of dailybunny. I am soooo signed up.

Dang it

2007-06-10T16:00:56Z

Either the Internet is being weirder than usual, or else GarouMUSH and American Riviera MUSH are both down.