Well I just got finished with watching this week’s Doctor Who and I can only say that it was the best of the series so far. OK – it was sentimental and we had the return of old characters Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, but it was a return to form I had been hoping for. The story was wafer thin but that wasn’t the point – the point was to illustrate that the Doctor was a man with a past and hopefully all the kiddiwinks will be going off to buy Doctor Who DVDs tomorrow to see Sarah Jane and the Doctor in their younger days. The episode itself had much better pace, used all the characters well and didn’t Anthony Head do a great job of being slimy and malevolent?
Me and The MIssus really enjoyed it and there were a few moist eye moments too. I especially liked the introduction of Sarah Jane, her discovery of the TARDIS and the Doctor and K-9 opening a can of whup-ass on the bat people. And when K-9 reappeared from behind the TARDIS at the end, I was a very happy boy. I knew the Doctor wouldn’t have left him all smushed up. Ooooh…look/…I have reverted back to type – I am an eleven year old boy again.
The only thing I am not happy about is that the series has left me feeling a little confused. I still have the hots for Sarah Jane and she’s only two years younger than my mother. I feel dirty…but in a good kind of way. And heck, I even warmed to David Tennant this week – when he’s not being so flippant and blokish, his serious Doctor persona is quite good.
Bring on the Cybermen, I say!
This is a pic of the new K-9 which is going to get his own kid’s series
Category: Diary
Today was tax self assessment day. OK – I know I’ve got about six months to file the damn thing but I like to get it out of the way and the really great thing about filing a tax return if you are a freelance writer is that you only need to worry about how much money that comes in and your expenses. It’s not like I have to buy a stock of words and phrases from a wholesaler and sell them on, so I don’t have to worry about net and gross and stock costs etc.
Anyway, it is done and it is the only day of the year that I feel vindicated for sitting at home, playing with myself in front of the PC. This year, I surprised even myself and managed to pull in a record amount of cash – the most ever – and it would have been even more if Highbury House hadn’t keeled over and died without paying me. The weird thing is that despite having a bumper year, money seems to be scarce. I don’t get it. The more I earn, the less I have. How does that work? Mind you, when I had a full-time job and was pulling in over £10k more than I am now, I was still rooting around for money in that last week before pay-day, so it seems that the old adage “more money, more problems” might just be true.
In the post: a stock of blank CD-Rs and quad CD cases. Yup – I also need to print/burn a new stock of “Sow’s Ears” because I is sold out and the stock I thought I had, I’d send off the other month. Expensive business having your own independent record label! 🙂 (It’s called Little Lemon Records, by the way)
In order to keep this blog visually stimulating, here’s a picture of Alex the Wonderdog doing what he does best:
And here’s a badly taken photograph of my fishtank – the yellow fishes are mollys and the brown blur in the centre of the pic is a catfish:
Recently I have been having bad dreams. I am not the sort of person to remember my dreams, but my dreams are creeping further into my consciousness. They seem to be insecurity/persecution type of variety and have involved numerous scenarios where The Missus has finally had enough of me and left – which left me waking up feeling thoroughly bereft and miserable for the rest of the day. The most disturbing one was a murder dream in which I killed a man and revelled in it. I think it was a re-run of the dog incident and my mind was trying to fix it with a grim conclusion. There’s nothing more disturbing in having a dream in which you are elbow deep in guts and enjoying every minute of it. That dream really disturbed me. It was a real horror gore show and no mistake. In it, I even got caught by the police and showed absolutely no remorse.
At this point, I begin to wonder if I should start a seperate site where I can write about these things anonymously because you’ve probably all deleted this link from your Favourites list in a frantic attempt to distance yourself from this nutjob. I hate dreams, I really do. The absolutely worst type of dream for me is the night terror which has me running from the bedroom away from an unseen assailant. It was a wonder I never fell down the stairs and broke my neck. But since having Alex sleeping by the side of the bed, those terrors have gone. Strange that…
My right knee is really giving me gip at the moment. It’s really sore and so is my right hip. I think it might have something to do with crossing my legs once too often. Or it might be that I am finally getting old and I am ready for the knacker’s yard. Yup – that’s how I feel.
So in the post I recieve the latest instalment of the Adrian Belew “Sides” trilogy. Now I was going to write a review and say this and write that and point out the other, but I realise that having any kind of meaningful opinion is thoroughly futile these days. However, I will say this: Adrian Belew is a very talented musician who could have distilled the three CDs into a very strong single album – instead we have three wishy-washy CDs. What was that? Three-album deal from Sanctuary and this was a way of fulfilling his contractual obligations? How I could I dare suggest such a thing? The shame, the shame. But there’s some good stuff over the three CDs but as a trilogy it just about hobbles home. Of course, it will have your common-or-garden King Crimson fan flicking their bean in semi-reverential orgiastic pleasure. Oh well, what do I know? Nothing. Just keep yer gob shut Darren and agree with everyone.
The Apprentice finally saw Syed getting the Royal Order of the Boot last night. He’d dodged the bullet for too long, but I will miss his peculiarly entertaining brand of B.S. I actually felt sorry for him on the boat trip when I saw his face drop and he came unravelled when he realised that Paul Tulip had got the advantage over him by using the ship’s TV station. The next show should be interesting when it is whittled down to just the final two: it sounds controversial but I can’t see Ansell or Tulip making in the cut as one is ineffective nice guy and the other one is full of the brown stuff. My money is on an all female finale with the mighty Badgertron bludgering her way into the Brentwood HQ of Sugar Esq.
Meanwhile, I have come to realise that there’s quite a few different versions of the song “Music for a Found Harmonium”. Now I am a big Penguin Cafe Orchestra fan (the band that originally recorded the song) and it seems that the track, although written by Simon Jeffes, has fallen into folklore and some believe it is a traditional Irish reel. Indeed, a number of Irish folk acts have recorded the song and I’ve even discovered that has recently been covered by former Robert Fripp students The California Guitar Trio. Their version isn’t bad, but isn’t a patch on Irish folk supergroup Patrick Street’s version – they just lack the passion of their Irish cohorts or the sunny jauntiness of the original performers. Jeffes is my musical hero of mine and when I discovered that Jeffes had died of a brain tumour in late 1997, I burst into tears like a big girl. You see, I do have a heart and emotions.
So the other day, I sat down to do some recording with my guitar. Now my guitar is a Godin XTSA (that’s so the Googlers come) and has this acoustic transducer pickup. I use it with a Korg PX4A acoustic guitar processor pedal and it makes a very nice combination. So I sat down and I started doing some recording and then the batteries in the Korg unit packed up. So I trotted down stairs to retrieve 4 AAA batteries from the cupboard and get back to it. Then I noticed that my guitar was acting up. Everytime I hit the strings hard, a strange buzzing would happen, almost as if there was a loose wire or something. I immediately panicked and began systematically working through the signal chain to make sure no cables were damaged. I swapped guitar leads several times and the noise still ocurred. This lasted about an hour or so, with me faffing about with cables, until the thought struck me that the Godin uses a battery for its active electronics. So I checked my instruction booklet for the guitar and lo-and-behold, the cause of the buzzing noise was the kaput battery. Of course, a visit to the battery cupboard revealed that I didn’t have that particular battery in stock (you know one of those small square ones with two pin connectors). So that put paid to that because by now the shops had closed and it would have to wait. So on Saturday a visit to Woolworths was in order and after handing over my £3.49 (OUCH!) I got my new battery. With the battery replaced, the Godin was fine. Then I reached for my E-Bow and guess what? Yup – no battery juice left. It takes one of those self-same square batteries as the Godin!
Now for another tale of spooky synchronicity. Wooooh! I am not a big fan of the FriendsReunited website, but very occasionally (about every 3-6 months) I have a little browse on it, but none of my schoolpals who I want to contact are actually on it, so it is a supreme waste of time for me. However, my half sister has an entry on there and I check up on her to see how she’s getting on. Well, it surprised me that her latest update was on that very day – the 20th. How’s that for spooky, eh?
Today, I have to install a 32″ Digital TV for The Missus’ grandmother after her last one went a bit wonky. Should be fun – I just love tinkering with that electronics stuff.
Yesterday, the sun came out (finally) and we saw this an ample excuse to go to the pub, soak up some rays and get nicely toasted in all sense of the word. It was good to flex my cider muscle again and I managed to catch some sun on my face. We left prematurely though as a group of loud, obnoxious men sat at a table near us. They spoke rather loudly about how they had been stopped by the police and how the police had no right to search them or arrest them for swearing, even though the car that had been travelling in lacked any road tax, mot or insurance. It could be in the post, they reasoned, and so this made it perfectly acceptable to be driving in their vehicle. How dare the police do their job? Then the conversation moved onto other matters and the word “spade” entered my earshot – they were not referring to the garden implement by the 1973 derogatory term for a black person. This was my cue to move because I was likely to say or do something I would regret and get another beating. So I made a comment about feeding time at the zoo (because the racket was almost cacophanous now as they got excited about berating the performance of various black football stars who had been played that afternoon) and left the pub in the best manner I could think, doing an impression of a chimpanzee. This made The Missus laugh a lot, but no-one else seemed to notice my monkey impression. Oh well, what can you do about it? This underlying racism that pervades the white scum that lives in Loughton is depressing me greatly. With the council elections coming up, I can see the BNP capitalising on the ignorance and sheer stupidity that clouds the area. My mother reckons that all the locals here are inbred and that’s why they are so stupid and racist. Could be a good reason for it.
After that, some more cider in our own suntrap of a back garden before tea-time and Dr Who. This week’s episode “Tooth and Claw” left me dumbfounded. Not because it was brilliant, but because it was complete and utter toss. OK – all sci-fi is complete and utter toss – it is the nature of the beast – but the complete lack of plot development, the rushed feel of the story and the jokiness between the Doctor and Rose (especially after one character is eviscerated by the werewolf) left me a bit wanting. Compared to last season, this has been a big disappointment. Come on – next week’s the return to form, no? We’ve got Sarah Jane Smith and K9 to look forward to. My fingers and toes are crossed.
Next week in The Sun, you can collect a whole heap of promotional Dr Who DVDs. I’ll be cutting out my coupons and collecting. Won’t you? 😉
Finding titles for these entries are getting tougher. Of course, I want to keep you all entertained and I don’t want to repeat myself, but how to keep the titles fresh and engaging? So I thought I’d type something I did which has absolutely nothing to do with this blog entry. So there you go – if you read any weird titles that bear no relation to the following text, it is because I’m bereft of ideas and have fallen back to just stating the bleeding obvious.
In the post: a cheque for a fairly significant sum of money. However, this is no cause to celebrate as this has been earmarked for HM Taxman (or as we refer to them in this house: that money grabbing, cock-sucking, ass-sniffing, son-of-a-bitch whore-chasing cuntbucket who’d sell his own daughter to the highest bidder just for the fun of making an extra penny). Excuse that last outburst, it was a nervous tick. I could have used even fruitier parlance, but I didn’t want to frighten the horses. Anyhoo, when you live in a country where our tax money is squandered at ever opportunity – and don’t even get me started on the local council, grrrr – it is only natural to be a little upset when money you need is taken from you and given to someone who is just a freeloader. Oh my, I’ve just turned into a Tory – get the bolt gun and pierce my brains this very minute.
So there’s nothing more saddening to have a sum of money that could ease your immediate problems, but it is out of reach. Now I know what the tramp feels like when he stars in through the restaurant window, watching the bourgouisie quaffing their in-just desserts. Remember, it’s not what you do, it’s where you are born and who you are born to that counts. Poor hard done by Darren. Pull yourself together, you whinging pansy and get a grip man.
Brrrrrr – that’s better. Grip established. Whinge terminated.
Last night, over dinner, I subjected the Missus to the worst 45 minutes of her life. I previewed the first 32 minutes of the next CD and some off-cuts to her. I must admit that it all sounded rather good glued together and I can’t wait to get it all finished. What do they say about pride before a fall? Oh dear. You’ve heard some of the CD already through the various MP3s I’ve posted here, but this is a cleaner, more finished version. It’ll be good, I promise. Cross my heart and swear to die. Just need a name for it though. Still stumped with that one.
Today, I sold out again of my mega-compilation Sows’ Ears & Silk Purses. I’ve got some copies I made last year to send over and I think I’ve sold near 50 copies all together, which isn’t bad considering I am a completely musicless nobody with no talent or ear for a tune. Ho, ho, ho – con of the century, I say. But I’ve not had any complaints. Again, I think I’ve about broke even on that particular title – but it is expensive to put together as it is 4-CDs and the postage to the US costs a flipping fortune.
When talking to the Missus, we discussed the podcasts things I do and she asked me about traffic. I honestly don’t know how many people access those files, so I put a secret podcast file up to see exactly how many people dowload it without any prompting or links from this page. Some of the podcast files have had nearly 500+ accesses, but that’s difficult to quantify because people could come to them via other sources, such as search engines or whatever else. Anyway, it should be interesting to get some kind of initial figure. My first and only video podcast has been particulary well received with 850 access from Video Google and well over 150 access direct form this site. Not bad, I say.
OK – I know it is wrong to laugh at other people’s misfortune, but there is something about this news story that tickled my funny bone. It’s not the fact that the lady fell into the volcano, but the way the incident was described in court.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/4927502.stm
It reminds me of that old, old joke. You know, the kind of joke that has whiskers on it.
Two men are talking in the pub and the first man reveals that he’s been married three times, but is now a widower.
“You lost three wives?” asks the second man, “That’s terrible. How did they die?”
“The first one died after she accidentally ate some poison mushrooms,” the first man explains.
“And the second?” asked the second man concerned.
“It was a terrible thing. My hobby is rambling, you see. And my second wife, she ate some poison mushrooms too,” replied the first man.
“Oh my, that’s terrible luck,” replied the second man. There’s a long pause before he asks, “So what happened to the third wife?”
“She died of a fractured skull,” explained the first man, supping from his pint before adding, “The stubborn cow wouldn’t eat the mushrooms…”
Meanwhile, The Missus continues to make me do work… 🙁 Ahhh, mon petit champignon…