Category: Life
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Preaching Around The Bush
At the risk of triggering a Dixie Chicks-like backlash, I have to say that George W. Bush is an absolutely appalling public speaker. I’m not saying I necessarily agree or disagree with his policies – as a non-US Citizen (albeit a Permanent Resident) I’m fairly ambivalent to the whole U.S. politics thing – but he really cannot speak for toffee. Every time I’ve seen him on television, he has ummed, ahed, and erred (!) his way through his speech. (For a great example, see What’s Wrong With Bush?.) Despite almost always reading straight from his notes (or autocue) he delivers each speech as… Read more
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They’re not “just doing their job” – they’re scamming us
So last week, coming back from the Black Angels gig, I got pulled over by the police. I shouldn’t be surprised – I seem to average one ticket a year, and I’d made it to December (actually, November 30th) without getting a ticket so it was about time. What was a surprise is that this wasn’t for speeding! (That radar detector I have is turning out to be money well spent.) This ticket was for “failure to signal” when I turned a corner. That’s right. It was for not using my indicators. At half past midnight, at an almost deserted intersection. … Read more
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Beginning To See The Light
OK, maybe it’s time to admit that I’m finally too old for all of this. Last night I went to see another band – The Black Angels – and I’m starting to feel like I don’t belong. It’s not the music. The band were excellent, and I was shuffling along as enthusiastically as the next person (apart from the guy who was flailing his arms around wildly and making guttural grunts of appreciation at the end of every song, but I put that down to his superior drug intake and not the quality of the music – he would have… Read more
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A Year With Last FM
In a post a year ago I described a recently-published chart of ‘best ever’ albums that claimed to be the most accurate as it was based on historical sales. I posited that a chart based on what people were actually listening to would be better, although this would be impossible to obtain. In that post, I hazarded a guess (by way of example) that the 10 albums I listened to the most were: Radiohead OK Computer Desaperacidos Read Music Speak Spanish Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited Jesus and Mary Chain Darklands At The Drive In Relationship of Command Pleasure Forever Alter Oasis… Read more
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Geek Tragedies
A couple of weeks ago, my PC died (again). This is a major catastrophe in our house, what with the kids and Webkins, and the wife and on-line shopping. In theory we can access the Internet via the PlayStation 3, but actually doing so is an exercise in exasperation – the browser window is either too big or too small (you can’t get it to simply re-scale for the TV size the way HTML should), and entering even the shortest URL via the controller is truly painful (and the PS3 refuses to recognize my (non-Sony) bluetooth keyboard). A life without… Read more