and whyever not

Rules:
1. Put your MP3 player on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write the name of the song no matter what. No cheating!

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
"let me explain", sonny boy williamson ii.


WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
"mater ora filium", the hilliard ensemble.
(i think not...)


WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
"superstylin'", groove armada.
(heh, not really.)


HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
"get out of town", caetano veloso.


WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
"bad luck and trouble", john lee hooker.
(sounds about right.)


WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
"all for one", qntal.
('i must go walk the woods so wild, and wander here and there in dread and deadly fear, for where i trusted, i am beguiled, and all for one.'
yes. yes, ok.)


WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"dancing in my head", the raincoats.


WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
"men of good fortune", lou reed.
(no. except the 'me, i just don't care at all' part.)


WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
"orange ball of hate", the mountain goats.


WHAT IS 2+2?
"i'm going on a journey never to return", t bone burnett.


WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
"walking with a ghost",
tegan & sara.(not that i have a best friend, ha.)


WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"love goes home to paris in the rain", the magnetic fields.
(n/a, but; marry me mr merritt.)


WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
"elephant gun", beirut.
('let the seasons begin, it rolls right onlet the seasons begin, take the big king down.'
this makes me happyish.)


WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"the rain song", led zeppelin.
(bootleg! i am hardcore! 'this is a slow one, it's got nothing to do with being silly'. quoi? non! vraiment?)


WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"prince moth mothy moth moth", autechre.
(really rather insectoid burblings, gurglings and thumps. i wonder what this could signify.)


WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"i put a spell on you", nina simone.
(HAHAHAHA. ahem. ha. hahahhaha.)


WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
"do your best for rock 'n roll", linda thompson.
('the party’s nearly over, the guests are all but dead; take ‘em to the graveyard, lay ‘em down instead.'
priceless. i'll take it.)


WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
ravel's "scarbo".
(frankly i cannot imagine anything better than some excellent classico-romantic piano playing to quickly distract everyone from the main event.)


WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
"four left feet", the ditty bops.


WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"locomotive breath", jethro tull.
(could be worse, could be... halitosis.)


WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
"five years", david bowie.
('i never thought i'd need so many people.'
shoot me in the head.)


WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
"pie jesu", sissel kyrkjebö.
(i see we're still on the christianity theme. for the record, i loathe the sprinkly disney soundtrack effect used for this version.)

gunmetalmouth

Fruit tree, fruit tree
Open your eyes to another year.
They'll all know
That you were here when you're gone.

If I turn the music off I think and that's not good not good at all. So I turn the music back on. I'm afraid that one day I will wake up and find that it stopped working.

i tell you, my eyes are black as iron

Comorbidity is the new black.

Twothousandseven, why you hate my body so.
Not used to long prescriptions or elaborate drug-taking schedules, I invariably fudge up. And then bad things happen.

On the other hand, Fionn Regan's voice, damply resonant.

.

touching from a distance

A review of the new Anton Corbijn film appeared in a recent Telegraph (the Cal one, natch) tabloid edition. I felt vaguely ill the rest of the day, because it seemed to me quite absurd. 'Control' will never be released here - in fact, it's probably out on 'limited release' anyway. Why review it? Here I bite off a long tangential rant on good movies never making it to my city because it's beyond obvious. I've wanted to see 'Control' since I first heard of it a few months ago. Some form of band-related OCD kicking in, no doubt, as I declared myself officially Over Them last year. (New Order is more to my taste right now, shock horror.) But teenage angst is more splendid and memorable than, well, a lot of other, more worthy events in one's life. Do I generalize unfairly? Paint those burgeoning years of indie fandom in too-flattering hues? What could possibly be more depressing than endless afternoons listening to songs like 'Transmission' and 'I Remember Nothing' on repeat, being something surely far worse than being the nineteen year old misfit (id est the nineteen year old underachiever)? Ach. Beware of the cookie cutter.

But it's music. By its very definition - perhaps 'description' suits better - it is life. Signs of, affirmation of, reason for.



And... I'm only doing this because I think the first post on this blog featured a picture of Blixa Bargeld: Einstuerzende Neubauten have apparently released 'Alles Wieder Offen'. That's right, folks, they've been doing this who-needs-a-record-label stuff longer than Radiohead. I have not, need I mention, heard any of EN's new work, but I hope it's a step up from 'Perpetuum Mobile'. They're an interesting example of a (literal-) deconstruction band with pronounced centripetal tendencies. (Oh gosh that sounded so good in a sort of wanky left-field-music-critic way.) I also admire that Bargeld continues to write and perform his lyrics in German - and that, going by translations, they're really very good.

I shall now fling a terrible navel-gazing trivia question into the void. Which bands alongside Joy Division form my personal (un)holy quintet of Bands From Manchester Whose Songs I Have Played On Repeat During Endless Miserable Afternoons? (And No, It's Not Bleeding Oasis.)

rabies parachutes

This is the exact moment I was supposed to have turned into a vegetarian. It is a highly self-conscious moment, a moment that announces itself as poignant and epiphanic. I am standing with my mother, we are up to our wrists in potatoes, rotating, scrutinizing, our hands are dusted a soft yellow, the man sitting behind the dizzying mounds of potatoes is discreetly scratching his crotch. We fill up one of the plastic baskets with hand-picked tubers. Their eyes are winking at me. We know we'll end up with some rotten ones anyway. Or maybe we won't. I am too cynical sometimes. On the other side of the potato seller is the man with his cage bursting with chickens. There is a boy beside him, together they are a well-greased, blood-slicked machine. The boy lops the dirty white wings off with two motions Hemingway would have given his arms for. The squawking amputated chickens are thrust at the man, who bends them over something and hacks their heads off. The bodies catch up a little late, pretending to swim free-style in the ripe air of the market.

Do you see the poignancy?

Do you?

I was supposed to have been transfixed by the brutality of this sight. 'Never again,' I was supposed to cry (on the inside), 'Shall I assist in the perpetuation of this brutal cycle of violence and genocide.' I was supposed to dream of dancing headless chickens, to drop my fork in horror the next time I laid eyes on the corpse transformed, marinaded and paraded, flesh unto meat, and quiver like a good little consumer whose ignorance and hypocrisy had been exposed.

Why am I writing this when I haven't finished my final piece for college?

Perhaps I shall write about headless wingless chickens.

Perhaps I shall write about potatoes.

Perhaps I shall write about how hard it is to be a vegetarian.

The reason I don't write here

is that I hate everything else I've written here. I think I will delete everything. A fresh start. I have a new camera. Afraid to even start looking at the user manuals yet, this is the most intimidating mass of technology I have held in my hand. So many fiddly bits, what if I click the wrong one? What if I ruin it on the first day. Hello anxiety disorder. I will take pictures of factories. And crows. A series on crows. I made friends with one when I was fifteen. He would peer at me from up on the windowsill and purr when I sat down to my lunch. I always shared. I would like to take pictures of people at university but I think I'm too shy to dare. But maybe this is what a camera is for? A kind of courage, once removed.

The new Babyshambles: I like the jazzy songs. I like that Pete is pulling himself out of the mire. 'There She Goes' is still one of my favourite tunes, I love the shuffly beat to it. I love that clearly it is about Carl - the Northern soul reference seals it - and shut up shut up it is not about anybody else.

"Your joys are counterfeit"

I love misreading things. One of my more peculiar hobbies, I am told, although I think it is something people simply don't admit to. You have to cultivate whatever talent you have for a truly fruitful and substantial experience. And so, while reading an Alan Garner interview, the exquisite expression failed Triassic scarp. Can you imagine a more complete failure? Discredited to the very bones of the earth. Too bleeding lazy to even stand up straight, a geological slouch, a Mesozoic mess, pitiably stoical in its inadequacies. Come to think of it, maybe it collapsed, couldn't take all the environmental abuse. All it had really wanted was to be a nice safe boring plateau. And what was up with all those flying dinosaurs, anyway? If you think your life is sad, spare a thought for that towering natural edifice of crumbling hopes and dreams.


Quote of the day (not that there is such a tradition around these parts): "They wouldn't let me onstage because I'm a girl" - Kim Gordon, on turning up late for the Sonic Youth set at Coachella '07.

lkdjslkj;lkfjdlkjfd;lk

Somany toomany somany things. Somany. Sounds like a soap. Somany Moisturizing Body Soap. Or tiles. I think there actually are Somany tiles. Somany things include a sixtieth birthday (plees, let them eat cake), the usual disarray of knee-tremblers (out of the gutter, ok?) on the world news, my own dillicate constitution, boogeriffic EXAMS.

So what do I do? Naturally I draw crap. Aw, innit cute.

Free drinks for ladies with deez nuts.

And you thought 'Trespassers Will Be Prostetuted' was funny.



Found this on the corner bracket above the phone, which means I owe my father thanks for saving it from the indiscriminate maw of the rubbish bin.

Is it not brilliant and beautiful and life-affirming? Are you not suddenly eager to seek out this resort and spend all your hard-earned (or hard-wheedled) money on its various delectables?

This may be a good place to announce my Official Position on Engrish. I must respectfully disagree with everyone who has suggested that being a connoisseur of Engrish is a subtle or blatant form of racism, of making fun of those who do not know that hegemaniac tongue well enough to produce boringly correct slogans and signs. I love mistakes. I love the accidental misreading, the typo, the freudian slip. I love Engrish for what it finds in translation. I love its pokerfacedness, its spirit of joyful (in)appropriation*, its excesses and abscesses.

Viva la Engrish! Long may the Cuntry Club prosper as a haven for cunning linguists across the world.



* Ha! test-driving the jargon.

falsa larm.

I do not like the new blog anymore.
So it is now the ex-blog.
My new new blog is the old blog.
Id est this one.
My drawing blog also lives.
Alleluia!

I glanced at the previous entries.
They are childish!
And exasperating!
And about as profound and moving and well-executed as Donald Trump's haircut!

Alas, they must remain.

I have taken this up again partly because I am now in a course called 'Writing in Practice' at college.
And partly because I can't wait to fill a speck of the internet with more of my rubbish.

It is a noble plan, and effective immediately.