In lieu of anything fantastically interesting happening over the last few days (apart from long lost lover Mel and her husband turning up on Saturday and having a cuppa and a wee chat while their car tyre deflated in our driveway, and M's sister Gaynor, husband and two boys arriving later the same day to stay for a week, and me starting work in the evenings helping do up Mags and Simon's renter-outer cottage before they go mad with the workload and me suffering my usual Concrete Paranoia (I'm never convinced it will set) and Daisy just noticing she is two and has become a hellion at bed times - they are SO not fun at all at the moment. Screaming, shouting, crying, hitting, etc. etc. What happened to my darling wee daughter?).
In lieu of anything else fantastically interesting happening over the last few days here's a quick rundown on what I've been reading listening too watching etc. this weekish. (Exciting stuff eh?)
I spent some time the other night watching the the Free-To-Air Playboy channel (that's 912 on Sky to save you looking it up) which is full of infeasibly smooth, shiny women taking their clothes off in slow motion, having showers without getting their hair wet, and occasionally licking each other. I'm sure these aren't real women. They are far too smooth and symmetrical and the whole thing looked like a car commercial. It was like watching Ferraris washing themselves. Dove cosmetics adverts are sexier, honest!
Today I have been mostly listening to Takeshi Terauchi And The Bunnys (sic) - Twangy fuzzy-guitar Japanese surf music which I downloaded from somewhere in here onto my phone which I then plugged into the stereo in the kitchen. "Here" is New York radio station WFMU's blog which, over the last few weeks, has been the source of much of the weird and wonderfulness that has been filling my ears. I love music that is both at the same time familiar and new, MFMU is providing me with loads to choose from - last night for instance I discovered a Dub Reggae version of Dave Brubeck's Take Five, a native American chanted version of the Flintstones' theme song - and, well, so on, and so on. It's familiar music strained through some heavy duty wrongness filters. Takeshi Terauchi is just sublime - imagine Dick Dale playing the theme tune for The Water Margin, or Monkey. Or even better imagine the soundtrack for a 1960s Japanese cop show: HokkaidÅ-Five-O - "Book 'em, Mariko!".*
I'm currently reading The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka 1904 1924 - but only when I am not reading trashy SF novels - OK, I'm not reading the Kafka at all. It's just sat by the side of the bed waiting for me to admit that I am not going to finish it. Every now and then i have this need to prove that I am not a total mushbrain and read something what has got a bit of litrichure an that. (A bit like my "I must watch fewer uttershite SF movies" resolution.) Kafka is not turning out to be a good read. Great opening sentences. Boy could he write a mean opening sentence. Like this one from The Metamorphisis:
Great opening! Unfortunately it's all downhill from there. Umptyump pages later Gregor gets bored with being a verminous bug and dies. Well fuck me sideways. Apparently the umptyump pages were full of "stunning psychological, sociological and existential angst" - all of which passed me right by. I just kept thinking "Will someone in this book please DO something recognisably interesting!" It's teenage wank. Kafka, like James Dean, Kurt Cobain and other iconic rebels without a clue, made the brilliant career move of dying youngish - or at least having spectacularly underachieved in their lifetimes.
Back to the Bug Eyed Monsters slavering over the perfectly rounded, Ferrari like breasts of an elderly scientists' beautiful daughter - but who's this racing to her rescue in his atomic powered underpants? It's ace newspaper reporter and interplanetary Polo Champion - Brick Chinstrong! Hurray! Something happened. It may be shit - but something happened!
I like things to happen - especially if they are fantastically interesting.
* I know Mariko is a girl's name but I love it. When I get reincarnated as a Geisha I want to be called Mariko. (You never know). If we have another child and it's a girl guess what she will be called if I had my way - or Siobhan, I like Siobhan too. Lousy name for a Geisha though. Or maybe both...
In lieu of anything else fantastically interesting happening over the last few days here's a quick rundown on what I've been reading listening too watching etc. this weekish. (Exciting stuff eh?)
I spent some time the other night watching the the Free-To-Air Playboy channel (that's 912 on Sky to save you looking it up) which is full of infeasibly smooth, shiny women taking their clothes off in slow motion, having showers without getting their hair wet, and occasionally licking each other. I'm sure these aren't real women. They are far too smooth and symmetrical and the whole thing looked like a car commercial. It was like watching Ferraris washing themselves. Dove cosmetics adverts are sexier, honest!
Today I have been mostly listening to Takeshi Terauchi And The Bunnys (sic) - Twangy fuzzy-guitar Japanese surf music which I downloaded from somewhere in here onto my phone which I then plugged into the stereo in the kitchen. "Here" is New York radio station WFMU's blog which, over the last few weeks, has been the source of much of the weird and wonderfulness that has been filling my ears. I love music that is both at the same time familiar and new, MFMU is providing me with loads to choose from - last night for instance I discovered a Dub Reggae version of Dave Brubeck's Take Five, a native American chanted version of the Flintstones' theme song - and, well, so on, and so on. It's familiar music strained through some heavy duty wrongness filters. Takeshi Terauchi is just sublime - imagine Dick Dale playing the theme tune for The Water Margin, or Monkey. Or even better imagine the soundtrack for a 1960s Japanese cop show: HokkaidÅ-Five-O - "Book 'em, Mariko!".*
I'm currently reading The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka 1904 1924 - but only when I am not reading trashy SF novels - OK, I'm not reading the Kafka at all. It's just sat by the side of the bed waiting for me to admit that I am not going to finish it. Every now and then i have this need to prove that I am not a total mushbrain and read something what has got a bit of litrichure an that. (A bit like my "I must watch fewer uttershite SF movies" resolution.) Kafka is not turning out to be a good read. Great opening sentences. Boy could he write a mean opening sentence. Like this one from The Metamorphisis:
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.
Great opening! Unfortunately it's all downhill from there. Umptyump pages later Gregor gets bored with being a verminous bug and dies. Well fuck me sideways. Apparently the umptyump pages were full of "stunning psychological, sociological and existential angst" - all of which passed me right by. I just kept thinking "Will someone in this book please DO something recognisably interesting!" It's teenage wank. Kafka, like James Dean, Kurt Cobain and other iconic rebels without a clue, made the brilliant career move of dying youngish - or at least having spectacularly underachieved in their lifetimes.
Back to the Bug Eyed Monsters slavering over the perfectly rounded, Ferrari like breasts of an elderly scientists' beautiful daughter - but who's this racing to her rescue in his atomic powered underpants? It's ace newspaper reporter and interplanetary Polo Champion - Brick Chinstrong! Hurray! Something happened. It may be shit - but something happened!
I like things to happen - especially if they are fantastically interesting.
* I know Mariko is a girl's name but I love it. When I get reincarnated as a Geisha I want to be called Mariko. (You never know). If we have another child and it's a girl guess what she will be called if I had my way - or Siobhan, I like Siobhan too. Lousy name for a Geisha though. Or maybe both...
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