You are allowed to enjoy this…

Oooh…this is good. It is the trailer to the movie version of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. OK – it’s only small, but I am sure a larger version will be out soon. It makes the film look OK-ish.

Meanwhile, the fascists are abroad. Last night, really quietly, as so not to even alert the hyper-sensitive hearing of Alex the Wonderdog, six copies of the same leaflet came a-fluttering through the door. They were from the BNP – the British National Party, our resident fascist, racist clique of “politician” bully-boys. This leaflet was decrying the fact that the local library was going to be knocked down so that Epping Forest College can expand (don’t worry the college will be paying for a new, revamped library to be built inside the college grounds).

The BNP don’t like this. The BNP don’t like Epping Forest College because a number of ethnic minorities attend and they have video footage of “asian youths” fighting and beating white people up. “Do they expect old age pensioners to run the gauntlet of fear in order to get into the new library?” asked the leaflet.

By playing on people’s racist tendacies and massaging their fears, the BNP win again. The sad fact of the matter is that the other political parties in the area are so apathetic, they don’t even bother to doorstep opinion. The BNP go out in force – suited and booted – and fill the OAP’s heads with tales of miscreant, ethnic youth. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that all the whitey kids are running amok, terrorising the neighbouring shops and attacking local bus drivers. Convenient, eh?

I would love to catch one of these scumbags posting the leaflet through my door just so I could call them a fascist. FASCIST! I would shout. But they act with stealth. The last time I did manage to catch a leafletter, the BNP had employed their own eight-year-old children to do the task. Shouting fascist at an eight-year-old doesn’t seem that appealing. When their local politician did eventually doorstep me last year, I was so enraged it was all I could do to screw up his leaflet into a ball and throw it in his face, before asking him to get off my doorstep. There’s one thing I cannot stand is narrow-minded bigotry and there is no place for it in the 21st century.

Now this brings me onto my next point. I’ve been a supporter of Ken Livingstone for as long as I can remember (ahhh, the glory days of the GLC) but my support for him has recently been withdrawn. Recently, at a party paid by the London taxpayer to celebrate the 10th anniversary of gay MP Chris Smith’s “coming out” (I kid you not, this was a real party and while I have every admiration for Chris Smith, I don’t see rhyme or reason to why ever Londoner has to pay for a boozey night out for him and his pals to celebrate his first excursion from the closet – it’s just an extreme waste of texpayer’s money. Couldn’t they have just gone to the local pub and paid for it themselves?), Ken Livingstone was approached by a reporter from The Evening Standard who wanted to hear how the party went. Old Ken then began to lambast him, accusing him of being a Nazi. When the reporter revealed he was Jewish and offended by these remarks, Ken kept up the harrassment and compared him to a “concentration camp guard” and “only doing it because it was paid to do it”.

Now I boggle at this. Ken Livingstone is supposed to be a left-winger (like me) but where the fuck does he get off behaving like that? Now Ken won’t apologise. He says all those Evening Standard reporters are Nazis…well he didn’t feel that way when he was working as a food critic for the ES when he wasn’t mayor. Hypocrite! He won’t apologise because if he apologises he won’t mean it. What a total useless bastard…

So the fascists are abroad and racism creeps up when you least expect it. I don’t fear the black man or the asian or the Jew. I still fear whitey because in my 33 years walking London streets, the only trouble I’ve ever had has been from white people. I nearly got beaten up on the tube once because I had long hair (ahhh, those were the days) and now the kids shout at me when I am walking the dog because I have no hair (you just can’t win). So keep you eye out for old whitey because he’ll fuck you up real good.

Bang, crash, wallop! The noise from the roofers intensifies. It’s really hard to concentrate with the noise, but I am sure it will be over soon (despite the fact that the roofers only seem to work on a one-day-on, two-days-off rota).

The recordings keep on coming and I’ve recorded a little piece that I’ve magically glued to the rest of the music. This track is two acoustic 6-strings, two acoustic 12-strings and my bass (and a bell at the end).

So we are up to nine minutes of stuff for “Fragments”. 🙂

Meanwhile, another poor soul has bought a copy of Sow’s Ears and I’ve been making more money via Real Rhapsody and NetMusic. Jeez – people are actually paying to hear my music. What the hell is wrong with the world?

On a separate note, one of my lifelong ambitions looks as if it will come to fruition. Yesterday, I purchased tickets to see the last night of Tom Jones at the MGM Grand. Oh yes, boyo!

Just saw this story and thought I’d add it to the pile. Not only did it made me wince, the line about the lady trying to swallow the item in question tipped me over the edge. Enjoy!
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/16520235?source=PA

It’s not often that you get something for nowt. But this morning I read that BT (my ISP) are going to upgrade my connection to 2Mb for free – the catch is that there will be a usage cap. What the heck, I’ll be able to get up to my nefarious deeds at twice the speed now! 🙂

http://www.vnunet.com/news/1161158
Meanwhile, I have found the ideal website for Alex the Wonderdog. He loves nothing more than to boistrously rip to shreds his favourite teddy bear. So this website is for him.

Today, I discovered that there was a 7.40 in the morning. The work on the neighbour’s roof has begun. Our local council has decided to spend its budget to replace ALL the roofs of all the council-owned property in the area. While I had no issue with the council when it replaced all the steel-framed windows with double-glazing a few years back (hey, the majority of the council tenants are little old folk who need to be kept warm), I do object to these roofs being fixed. Most of the roofs in the area were in good condition, despite being 50 years old, and so I can’t see any point in it.

Meanwhile the roads and pavements, which I and the majority of non-council tenants (and council tax payers) use are in a terrible state of disrepair. It’s really bad and I cannot find one square meter of pavement down our street that isn’t cracked – meanwhile the roads are more suited to 4×4 drivers!

So anyway, bang, bang, crash, crash. Woof! Woof! It’s hard to concentrate with the noise, but it has subsided now. Meanwhile, I’ve been a naughty boy and ordered some gear to upgrade my PC. Old components will soon be winging their way out of the door via a crafty eBay sale. What would we do without eBay, eh?

Meanwhile, whilst reading Billboard magazine and eating Rice KrispiesTM for breakfast, I spied the following picture. I thought I would share it with you because I quite like the Gibson “Playboy” guitar featured in the pic. It’s tasteless custom guitar design that you don’t see that often.

All together now…
“I wonder if she comes with the guitar?” 🙂

I don’t like my postman. There’s just something about him I just don’t like. I don’t like the way that when he knocks and I open the door, he’s always halfway up the path. He knows that I am ALWAYS here, so why does he always feel the need to flee as soon as he’s rung the door-bell? I don’t like the way that he cannot seem to figure out that letter shaped items can be fitted through that letter shaped hole in the door and if he has anything larger than a standard envelope he has to knock. He can’t gently fold envelopes in half and post them that way…nooo, he has to knock. And when I open the door, he’s always halfway up the path as if I am the one who has taken ages to answer the door.

Of course, I could just be obsessing about the postman, but I miss our old, efficient postman. The one that DIDN’T post our credit card through a someone else’s door in a completely different street. It was only that person’s kindness that meant we weren’t victim to some horrible credit card fraud. Of course, this kindness is a favour that goes back to last summer when some naughty postman decided to post ALL of the post for that neighbouring street through our letterbox. We then became temporary post people that afternoon, returning errant letters to their rightful owners. Now that favour has been repayed, gawd knows where our post might end up next time.

Gee – I am gibbering.

So I decided to blow the dust of my various instruments and gizmos and twiddle with some knobs. Yup – I have started to record music again. Yes, my intention is to produce yet another CD. You’d think I’d find a new hobby, wouldn’t you? But the way I look at it, you’ve got to use it or lose it. And if I don’t record, my rationale would be that I would have to sell my equipment – and I like it too much to do that.

So here is a little edit of something I am working on. At the moment, the CD is provisionally titled “Fragments” and I want to do a “Textures II” type of thing and glue lots of disparate musical bits together and make them fit. The second piece in the chain is my stab at electronic music. Eeek!

On a separate note, I got paid for some work I did last August. Hurrah! Plus, I made another $12 selling tracks via iTunes. I love iTunes. 🙂