Saw the new Kate Bush video on the TV last week. I wasn’t expecting her to appear in this new video, but I tuned in because I felt it was some sort of event and it was being billed on Channel 4 as a bit event. The video itself was very 1980s. There was a dancing Elvis jumpsuit (circa the “Fat Elvis” period), lots of black and white imagery taken from the song and old Elvis on the mountain, dancing with his reunited jumpsuit. There was also Kate too. Now I was thrilled to catch a glimpse of her again, but in order to hide the fact that Kate, like the rest of us, had gotten older, fatter and wider, decided to mess around with her image, squeezing her slightly so she looked a little slimmer, a little more pinched. The effect left me thinking “what the f*ck?”. It was kind of unsettling to see her pinched face looming into view, looking somewhat alien, looking like her reflection was cast from the back of a spoon. Maybe that was the effect of the video, I don’t know.
On a separate note, I explained to The Missus my sure-fire way of winning money playing Internet Poker. Every gambler has a system and now I have mine. It’s foolproof, but if I told you, I would naturally have to kill you. OK – here’s my secret – don’t lose…in fact, don’t gamble in general unless you can afford to lose. But my system is going to make my fortune. Just you wait until I saunter on by dressed to the nines, looking like the Pimp-Daddy General.
Today, I actually got my hands dirty and did a telephone interview. It was with the guy who designed all the Eurythmics record sleeves. The band have a box set out for Xmas and I am writing something about the design of the set. It was nice to be a proper journo again. Normally, I just write “how to” puff copy for computer magazines but this was nice. This is the second proper interview I’ve done this month. Maybe I should try and dump the computer stuff and move into alternative media streams? Hmmm…might be worth a gamble…
DING, DING, DING…he said today’s hot word “gamble”.
Tonight, I considered doing a podcast for this site. Just me rambling aimlessly into a microphone for several hours in the vain attempt at getting some trendy, iPod-wearing gimp to finally give up on life and throw themselves under the nearest bus. Or I could just have a wank, which is the same thing, really. But hey, I am looking for various ways of getting the LOCK brand out there, so maybe the podcast thing is an experiment worth pursuing. Everyone is doing it, so it must be worth following the flock.
Remember kids, when you run out of steam, follow the guy in front…
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Someone asked me recently if I was still recording any music for a CD and funnily enough I am. While I’m normally preoccupied by eating, sleeping, fucking, wanking, writing and walking that fucking dog, I have been recording too. My approach to music is a bit like me: keep it simple. I believe in creating little tunes that people can whistle and so my music could be described as “basic” in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, I’ve recently finished the end of my album. Eh? How so, Darren? Well I’ve got the first fifteen minutes in the can and I wanted the album to finish with a really uplifting positive piece. And so “Frog & Toad” came about. It’s dancey, you can shake your rump to it and wave your arms around (in fact waving your arms around is very satisfying to this song). There are also two flavours; there’s the keyboard-laden “Nintendo Mix” which sounds like the something from the end of completing Mario Kart and then there’s the guitar mix. Here are the rough working mixes of both:
Frog & Toad [Nintendo Mix]
Frog & Toad [Guitar Mix]
I just received the following email:
Dear sir,
REQUEST FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE, I AM A WIDOW.
I am mrs Vero Koumba. The wife of late Hon. Somogou koumba who was the chairman of mineral resources Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), he was appointed to take control of the management of mineral resources of the country during the time of late president Laurent
Kabila who was assassinated. On 15 of may 2002 my husband fell sick and he was flown to France for treatment and later died of ulcer and he has been buried. During his time because of his position he made huge sum money from the sale of diamond which is the national resources of democratic
republic Congo (world widely known). Before his demise, he deposited one trunk box containing the sum of US$18,000,000 (Eighteen million united states dollars) with the bank in Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire (west Africa).
The money was willed in favour of my only child, one boy and myself as next of kin for the deposit. For your personal verification and confirmation I can made available to you the “Certificate of Deposit” with all necessary document to proof the Authenticity and Genuiness of the fund. In fact, since the death of my husband, his brothers has been seriously chasing me around with constant treats, trying to suppress me so that they might have the documents of his landed properties and confiscate them. They have successfully collected some of his properties, yet they never stopped there. They told me to surrender all bank account of my late husband, which I did, but I never disclose to them this deposit with the bank in Abidjan, cote d’Ivoire,
because this is where the future and destiny of me and my child is lying. The family of my late husband never aware of the secret existing of this deposit and they can never be aware of it. Out of fear, and when the situation becomes on controllable because of pressure on me, my son
advise me to leave immediately and also to look for a trustworthy person, who could assist us in releasing this money for onward transfer into his/her account, thus my main aim of contacting you.
Consider my situation as a widow and come to our rescue, Now that I have no ground in the family of my late husband any more, I will offer you 15% as a reward for assisting us as the remaining part of the money will be used for good investments in your country under your care and for the
education and up-bring of my child when the money arrive your destination.
Kindly reply me Immediately through this my email address/ ( vero_koumba7@yahoo.fr )upon receipt of yours of this message, indicate your willingness through my Email and feel free to feed you with more information and modality of this transaction. This business is smooth, secured, risk-free and all arrangement has been concluded for a successful transaction. Most important, the is one of the
bank here in Abidjan cote D Iviore .
Yours Sincerely
Mrs Vero Koumba
Ooooh, I think I know what I am going to spend my share of the money on. Whooo-hooo! I am rich beyond my wildest imaginations!
My other Internet regret is based upon all the time I have wasted pursuing those minor wastes of time. Whether it is music websites, surfing, news browsing or just faffing abuout, I constantly wonder how much time I have lost when I could have been doing something productive. So for me it is an embarrassment that I have somehow become addicted to certain elements of the WWW. It’s tough. At least if you watch TV every night there’s a chance that you might catch a documentary or a science programme and actually learn something. With the Internet, the majority of it is a complete load of toss. So why do I come back? Why do I need to feel connected?
I don’ know. I just don’t know. Sometimes I find its pervasive quality very, very scary indeed.
Maybe I am addicted? I know the odd time when I can’t access the WWW I get a little tetchy, you know. But these feelings pass. I need a holiday. I need to get away from this LCD cyclops sucking my soul out through my sore eyesockets. Gah! Gibber! CROAK!
Hey, I’ve just found out that some podcaster out there liked my Thing-ummi-Jig track so much that he decided to use it as playout music on the weekly podcast he publishes. You can check him and the podcast here:
http://sinceretheory.net/weblog/index.php/2005/10/podcast0010
In the post: The 21st Century Guide to King Crimson, Part II
I did a little monkey dance around the kitchen when this arrived, much to the amusement of The Missus. She wanted to film it for the website, but I declined because I look unshaved and even more like a monkey than usual.
Looking back, it’s hard to remember what life was like before the Internet. I remember I first became exposed to the murky world of the web around 1996. It was a lot different then: there was no MP3 files, no P2P file sharing, no rich media, not a lot really, just a load of text. My first experiences of net life were quite exciting and I got involved with the relatively niche “chat” community that was being run on MSN. It was cool to talk to people around the world, but it was here that I learnt that nothing is ever what it seems. It was also my first of two net regrets.
While chatting, you make a circle of virtual friends and certain people become “closer” to you than others. At one point, I was spending a lot of time chatting to one woman. At the time it was all a thrill and I was flattered that someone on the other side of the world could find me interesting enough to want to talk to me. However, things progressed in a direction I had not envisioned and before I knew it, this person had found out where I was working in London and was sending me packages of love letters and photographs, etc.
As you can imagine this is very embarrassing when you open a Fedex package expecting it to be work related and something unexpected drops out onto your desk. I quickly realised that the web had lead my up a dark alley and I need to back-pedal ASAP. OK – I wasn’t exactly innoncent in all of this as there had been a level of reciprocated virtual flirting, but I didn’t expect the full stalker treatment. It was revealed that this woman had spent in excess of $60 to track me down and more money sending the stuff to me. Long phones calls came into my office, again at my embarrassment and this woman threatened suicide if I stopped talking to her. With those words and that threat, I told her I could no longer speak to her, because it is not good to be put at the end of an ultimatum like that. My gamble paid off and this woman didn’t kill herself. I heard that she found someone else to hook up with. And to think she wanted to leave her husband and child to be with a dopey old, limey, eh?
Well that got your attention, didn’t it? That is my standard warning about the Internet. Sometimes it is very hard to have any perspective because unlike real conversations where you can read body language, facial expressions and timbre of voice, you have no such cues on the Internet. Whereas you might think something is a big joke, the person at the other side of the world is weeping into a hankie believing all is real. Like that story I just told. I just made that up to illustrate a point. Or did I? With the Internet, you never really know…
On the other hand, the Internet has enabled me to do a lot. I’ve managed to torture the world with my excrusiatingly dull music and learn an awful lot of useless facts. Without the Net, would my life be any less richer? Who knows? It’s hard to say, it’s become so pervasive. For me, the Internet has partly replaced the radio or Teletext as an information source. But it is so much more than that.
If you get your fingers burnt, you tend to withdraw somewhat and that’s what I did. There are a lot of strange people out there who use the Internet has some kind of support network. This is great if you can manage it. Personally, it has never worked for me as I have only ever found one other person out there willing to give me any support, but that’s beside the point. I am working towards my other big regret…