Mad as a box of frogs

Are you the type of person who'd say "Boo" to a goose?

If "Yes", we want to hear from you!

The Wolfman - Tim Hope

Perusing others' blogs, I came to be curios as to how people add video content.

Turns out it's all too easy!

Thought I'd add Tim Pope's The Wolfman, as it's such a gas.

Thanks to Pat for discovering it and sharing the madness!

The YouTube vid can be found here, in case it's better quality.

I Met Mr. Beam

No, Bean one! Sam Beam, of Iron & Wine fame. It was after a secret gig at The Spitz, which is unfortunately due to close apparently. Sam's probably the closest thing I have to a modern-day music hero, so I was properly stoked to say hello and shake the man's hand and pass a few words before I turned into a babbling word salad.

What a lovely, kindly/twinkly eyed fella! And such lovely, red, long lustrous locks!

Shendor lucked out, pussing out straight after the gig and muttering something about a (ahem!) 5 o'clock start. A flying hog to catch, or some such.

The next night, the 10th August saw friends' band The Throwbacks playing a local pub. I had my 'DJing' debut (playing songs off a laptop that is) under my stage name Mumblin' Jim. Those in the know will, erm, know that that's Jack Nicholson's character Stoney's band in the rather excellent movie Psychout. It was a hoot, quite a few folk came out for it and much mayhem was had there and after back at ours.

I missed some ramblings over some soggy sherbet, having long since traipsed up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire. Probably just as well - that way I can deny all knowledge that someone had the bright idea to dry it out in our microwave, thus effectively turning our kitchen into a crack factory I guess...

Last week saw an unsettling encounter with a small black child down the sports centre.

There I was, minding me own business, getting changed for the gym and this little boy, about 5 or 6 I'd estimate, came up to me.

"What's your name?" asked he.

"[Name]" replied I, "What's yours?"

"Teo," said he (it was pronounced 'Tay-o'), "I bet you won't remember my name," he challenged me.

"Sure I do, it's 'Teo'," I answered, not sure where this was leading.

"Um, what was your name again?" and I replied once again.

Teo proceeded to quiz me on my T-shirt, the Darth Vader topiary one bestowed upon me by kindly unclef, asking what it was.

"It's Darth Vader. Enjoying his garden. You know Star Wars, right?" Teo nodded his awareness of the film. "He's not all badness and evil," I added.

At this point, as I was swapping the Darth tee for a 'Zilla one given to me by my bro many, many moons ago, Teo ran around the seats in the changing room and stopped in front of me. He muttered something, which I couldn't make out and so had to ask him to repeat himself.

"Can I touch your nipple?" he asked.

At this point my brain crashed, caught somewhere between comical wonderment at a child's innocence/randomness and my adultesque sense that this was a horribly wrong question for a young chap to ask of a complete stranger...

"Erm... No, you can't..." I tried.

"Oh..." Teo seemed genuinely disappointed. "Why?"

"'Cos that's a bit wrong" I added feebly.

At this point his mother burst into the changing room (the male changing room, I might add) and beckoned him out.

Teo ran off and I found myself thinking that if I'd consented to the boy's request, the scene greeting his mother could have been quite different: a young boy, touching a man's nipple under his raised T-shirt... Oh, the horror!

I half expected some sort of fit-up job, that the kid had been primed to touch nipples and that his mum was poised in the wings with a camera to snap any unwary individuals in a compromising situation.

I felt violated, a victim of adultophilia, groomed for nipple touching by a pro.

Now you don't see the Daily Mail crowing on about that now, do you?

From London to Glasgow to London to Paris to London to Beirut

Boy, it's been a busy time. A funeral took us to Glasgow at very short notice, back to London and off to Paris the next day. One of us was there for work, the other two pleasure. Highlights included being atop the Tour Montparnasse (the Tour was built by angry Dutch termites during the reign of le Gypsy Kings in the 13th century*) and witnessing a spectacular lightning storm whilst Eric Satie's Lent played on, a head shattering morning after down the catacombs (pic attached, surely one of the most bizarre tourist attractions Paris has to offer), and chancing upon the Pezon family tomb in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Okay, so we didn't actually go to Beirut, but we did go and see the band at Koko. They were grand, as was Koko's alcohol pricing policy: £5.50 for a small, rancid plastic cup of wine, or £3.70 for a can of generic pish lager. For anyone stumbling across this, a word of advice on planning to go to Koko: smuggle in your own booze or take drugs - you'll save a song.

There he is, Monsieur Pezon. I took a pilgrimage back to Père-Lachaise cemetery after failing to clock his name. Who was this dude? Why's there a sculpture of him riding a lion on his tomb?!

My interest peaked, I headed back to find out more the next day, an-foot trip of about 6 hours...

Look at him: rolling into the party and announcing: "You look surprised to see me... On my lion."

Web searches to try and find out more have yielded precious little. BBC info on the cemetery said only that the sculpture is of "lion-tamer Jean Pezon, riding the lion that ate him"...

It doesn't sound too much like he rocked at his job...

I will endeavour to find out more...




* This is a Zealey Fact^® **




** This fact may not be a fact

Scrub the poop deck, scurvy dogs!

Included here, a picture of the ©opyright Pirate, our team mascot. I work for a publishing company, one that decided to shell out thousands of pounds to capture a load of data in XML without attaining the author's permission up front.

They were quite surprised when he said "No".

I'm amazed that my company makes any money. They seem to get by by buying out the competition and established products, which is just as well because their own projects are supremely shit!

They're the publishing equivalent of Star Trek's Borg, only fatter, lazier and more corporate. At least with the Borg you know what you're getting, in a "Resistance is futile' does-what-it-says-on-the-tin stylee. With my managers it's all "synergies", "paradigm shifts" and things so wholly impenetrable and wankspeak as to be unrepeatable.

Oh, and the Borg get results. You can't knock 'em for that.

Latest gripes include this whole green guilt trip the government are trying to put us good people on. We didn't build the consumer, waste-heavy dystopia we live in, and now we're getting a conscience-bashing from The Man.

Don't get me wrong - I'm down with green issues, but until big business takes a proper interest and changes its evil, energy-guzzling ways, I don't see how us little people are going to save the planet. That shouldn't stop us from trying, I s'pose...

So, in the interim I'll continue to recycle my baked beans tins and the like...

Who Wants To Be... My Dinner

Gaze upon my Photoshop powers, ye mortals, and despair!!

Tarrantula has been scuttling around my dreams for some time.

In front of a live studio audience, he offers me cheques of increasing value in exchange for my firstborn child.

"I dunno, Chris. £500 doesn't seem like much for my son and heir to my empire..."

"Do you want to phone a friend?"

"No, I don't think so. There's no-one on my list who'd be able to answer this one..."

"A thousand?"

"Nah. I've come a long way, had a lovely day, but I think I'll keep my son, thanks very much."

"Is that your final answer..?"

As shiny, viscous liquid rolls down Tarrantula's fangs, collecting in swelling beads at the tips I'm not sure if it's poison or saliva...

I don't really dream about Tarrantula. But I do enjoy a bad pun.

I have hopes that Chris Tarrantula will live on in CD covers and, maybe, the dreams of others.

Who knows? Perhaps if we all believe in him hard enough, he'll be summoned into existence like the thingy is Stephen King's It. I'd be more inclined to watch Who Wants To Be A Millionaire were it hosted by Tarrantula. It'd spice up proceedings considerably, I suspect...

Pour Some Sugar On Me

Some things I've learned in the last 24 hours:

1. A "glaring of cats" is a proper collective noun

2. I like the sound of a clump of shampoo bubbles hitting the shower flower and being broken up by the jets of water: it sounds like monged applause.

3. Working weekends ain't as bad as I thought.

Sir Alan should be protected as an endangered species and made to live in a cave (preferably transparent) within London Zoo. I think he'd do a top job of acting all grumpy when being pelted with monkey nuts hurled by naughty school kids. A petition should be drawn up forthwith.

Shipman's Shopping

Hard to believe the gig and Scotland visit were already 2 weeks ago, which all went without incident or injury. Work's been all whirlwind, heat and flash, leaving little time to grab a few thoughts between the latest issue du jour.

It was great seeing the kids, with much excitement about forthcoming child (and a subsequent TummyTub, or 'Baby Bucket' as we prefer, misdelivery adventure). Preparations for the soon-to-be-extended family move along apace and all is shaping up very nicely.

Last night saw a reunion with some Kiwi pals, and the exchange of various 'philosophies' that included Jim Davidson being God's favourite comedian and ponderings over what would happen if one mixed viagra and rohypnol. The latter could become a popular underground cocktail, perhaps called Lady's Favour?

Find myself drawn to the work of Joanna Newsom at present, which I'd previously/hastily/erroneously dismissed as warbly fey nonsense. Really rather beautiful in places and making it on to my recommends 'top 10 of now'. Okay, so a 2 album entry is a bit of a fudge, but hey! So do me.

Dannii is coming...

Watch out for him.

Seriously. Watch out.

Scared Stiff Little Fingers

March 17th looms, which can mean only one thing...

The 'Annual Pilgrimage' to Glasgow's Barrowlands to see Stiff Little Fingers!

Being the only Englishman in Glasgow's east end, on St. Patrick's Day, at an Irish punk band's gig filled with pished Celts, is something I find a little disconcerting to say the least...

I liken myself at this event to a fox, having hired a crappy hound costume from a bargain-basement fancydress shop, trying to pass itslef off as a member of the pack during a hunt.

Ach, I do 'em a disservice! Last year was my first time at the gig, and it was a hoot. The atmosphere was great, the band better, and we all had a jolly good time. The scariest thing was the initial queue to get a beer: the bouncers marshalling us as we all shambled nearer the bar were a frigtfest. If you so much as stepped out of line by half a foot, you'd get barked at and have one of them in your face in a trice. Think Rab C Nesbitt crossed with the "Get-in-the-back-of-the-van!" cop from Withnail and I, sporting DMs and no hair, and you're pretty much there (ah-ha! Stereotypes ahoy!).

If you happen across this, and happen to attend the gig, look out for me.

I'll be the one saying "Aye" a lot and trying my best not to appear to be English. If you see a Hugh Grant-alike attempting one of his 'foreign' accents, wearing a rock tee-shirt... That'll be me.

The tiger lays down with the orangutan...

.








...and SimiUndead was born.
It started out as an innocent e-mail to our various work addresses, but soon spiralled out of control and a pitch for a new film was hatched.

My girlfriend, after sending the link to this BBC news story commented that the orangutans would have to be separated from the tigers, lest the latter's killing instincts kicked.

I said that they should be encouraged to ride the tigers, so that they could have majestic mounts, which led to speculation that this is probably a similar scenario to how Planet of the Apes started out...

The theory of an impending Zombie Apocalypse was supplanted by that of an Orangutans-riding-tigers Apocalypse.

But then we thought, "Hell, why not have both?"

SimiUndead

"In a ruined city, lost to men, rank upon rank of gleaming-armoured orangutans atop their huge, rippling-muscled feline mounts await the call to charge into the moaning grey mass of the putrid, cannibal undead..."

Thanks to unclef for the blog title, film title and tag line. Dang, why does he have all the good ideas? I'm just dead weight.

Anyone interested in green lighting this script should drop us a line.

We're available to roll as of next Wednesday.

We have [some of] the technology to make this blog better...

Added an mp3 player today, a surprisingly painless procedure. Have to admit that actually finding code to make things happen, since I sorely lack the skillz myself, has proved to be a bit of a hassle.

The nice people at myflashfetish have thankfully done the work for spanners like me, so check 'em out if you don't have the know-how to make your own player. I hope to refresh the tunes fairly regularly, until I've mastered podcasting at least.

The picture was taken in Southend one time.
Madness that cheap can't be passed up.

Welcome to the ebyss!

It's high time I got around to posting, so thought I'd begin with something safe: a picture of my cat.

Named Ginja, he's a marvellous beast with a list of perversions that include a taste for garlic and getting hopped-up on bleach. My girlfriend thought I should clarify that last sentence: we don't feed him bleach, in case anyone fancies shopping us to the RSPCA. He's just rather fixated by the smell: something about the chemicals drives him loopy, appears to have the same effect as catnip. Likewise chlorine - you have to be careful post-swim that he doesn't take a nibble at your hand/leg.

On one occasion, when my girlfriend caved into to his incessant hasslings for food and told him "Okay, but only a spoonful" he responded by saying "Rrrrrronly a spoooooful?". Ginja has been careful to hide his speech abilities since that day.

Anyhoo, enough banalities for now.

I'm hoping to use the ebyss to learn a bit more about web technologies.

Over coming months and future posts I hope to share a few loves, particularly music.