Friday Booze News

My feeds in Google Reader seem to be informing me it is Friday, as there were quite a few interesting alcohol related posts today. As I'm lazy I'll regurgitate a few here with some witty commentary...

• Did you know the world record for drinking a litre of beer is 1.3 seconds - it is in wikipedia so it must be a FACT! (note the explanation mark). There is your reason why I don't live in a world filled with flying cars, jet packs and robots, right there! As a species we have far more important things to do.
  


• However we are making some serious technological advances in the world drinking. There is a new bar in London (which I will never be allowed in as it will be hideously expensive and I'm not one of the beautiful people) that has a touch sensitive bar to summon bar staff - I predict this will be switched off by pissed off bar staff within five minutes of the bar opening.
  


• Drinking at work just got easier, here is the proof.

Finally here is a picture of a dog in a sock which has nothing to do with drinking, you may want to save this one for a particularly depressing Monday.

*EDIT* I've created a public view of my Google Reader feeds which shows a selection of sites here, for those people scared of RSS readers.

Weekend Activities

• Sleeping - I seem to be averaging about 5 hours a night during the week, so generally weekends involve some catching up. So Saturday was pretty much dedicated to sleep.


• Watching Comedy, specifically Joe Rogan. He is the sort of drug fuelled American comedian I enjoy listening too, he practically had to be dragged off stage due to going spectacular over time, and he does a very unique impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger.


• Finishing off Bioshock on my XBox360 and feeling very smug with myself when I got the 'good' ending by making life difficult and not killing any of the 'Little Sisters'. It's a good game Bioshock, but not perfect. The art direction is fantastic, but at it's heart it's still just a shooter and not the greatest game of all time.


• Spotting Chris Eubank driving his big shiny truck through central London:

...and yes I know, I'm posting this on a Wednesday and the weekend is long gone

Feeling my age part 1

Blimey, Napalm Death's Scum is 20 years old - that doesn't half make me feel old. Let's remind ourselves why this album is so influential with all 1.316 seconds of You Suffer.

Ah, happy days...

Best book title in the world ever?

Fight: Or, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-kicking But Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking

It's written by Eugene Robinson, the vocalist in Oxbow - dare I use the Henry Rollins comparison? Why not? They are both singers who have been known to strip down to their pants while performing, both write, and have both expressed an interest in fighting; plus if I mentioned he is in Oxbow I have my doubts that the few people who do read this blog will know who I'm going on about.

Anyway, judging by some of his previous writing, and of course that title, it could be an entertaining read.

What's in Phil's bag?

I've got new laptop bag, it's made by the same people who make Swiss Army Knives so has some extra unique features such as a secret pocket to keep your knife in and that all important clip so you can hang it off a mountain - obviously that's what swung my decision to buy it...


Anyway, this gives me an excuse to play around with some of flickrs' features and join the thousands of geeks exposing the contents of their bags. If you want to know the sad truth about the somewhat shocking amount of drugs being carried around by yours truly have a look at the far too detailed tagged picture after this link.

Things that I have been doing over the last week

• Watching Transformers: I heard a review on the radio that described it as the best film ever if you could take out all of the dialogue; my personal thoughts are to think of it in the same way as a roller coaster ride, that is it's fast, exciting and has pretty much the same narrative flow as a theme park ride. Just to be clear though, I thought it was fun.
  

• Buying lots of obscure CDs that nobody else I know would like and books that I won't read for month - I'll save details of those up for one of my "I really should write something here"-posts
  

• Spending way too much time playing morally questionable games on my XBox360.
  

• Attending a wedding.
  

• Playing with my Facebook profile too much
  

• Not sleeping properly, not that this counts as news in any sort of way.
  

Oh look! A flurry of activity

Don't worry, it's just me going on those strange CDs I ordered...

Here is my new Sunn O))) CD 'Oracle':


As you can see I got a free poster, a nice big cardboard sleeve and a 12" piece of vinyl too - apparently people used to play music from these.

It has two 'kind of new' tracks; the first one is really a remix of a remix which appears on the Jukebox Buddha compilation. This compilation was based around musicians remixing the loops created by something called the Buddha Machine - think of it as a really lo-fi iPod. for the original remix SunnO))) amplified the crap out of this small plastic box, added some more drones and a hint of Buddhist chanting. For the first track on Oracle 'Belülrol Pusztít' they add some more chanting courtesy of Attila Csihar and some jackhammer courtesy of Joe Preston.

I believe the second track on the CD is a re-recording of a composition they performed originally in a gallery space where the audience was only let in after the band had finished playing... :-|

Anyway, good CD.

Next up: Everlovely Lightningheart - Particles and Fields


This contains a CD-R with one 16 minute track consisting of a gentle mixture of drones, bells and piano. The CD case is hand sewn, covered in dirt and apparently some saliva - you can practically smell the elitism can't you!

I'm not going to post any mp3s from these two CDs as it would be taking the piss slightly, instead I'm going to post some music from these ones:


So, from the top: Hawkwind... No I haven't become a total hippy. There was a fantastic documentary on BBC4 (which you can now find on youTube here) a few weeks back which opened my mind up to this band. The early stuff they did contains plenty of elements I can appreciate: a bit of stoner rock, some very lo-fi experimental electronics, a good old fashioned relaxed attitude to taking heroic amounts of drugs, and Lemmy! So when their live double album Space Ritual got the deluxe reissue treatment and a favourable review on Pitchfork I took it as a sign to dabble in a bit of seventies rock. If you fancy joining in have a listen to this:

MP3: Hawkwind - Born to Go

In the bottom right we have Recoil. Recoil is the solo effort of ex-Depeche Mode band member Alan Wilder, this may seem a bit too clean and clinical for some people but I've always liked his stuff. It's sort of Mississippi Blues with a bunch of samples thrown at it - god help me, a bit like when Moby did Play... but better, obviously

MP3: Recoil - Prey

Finally: Weedeater. This band have either listened to a hell of a lot of Sleep, or consumed many many drugs - the name of the band gives it away I think, plus their Bass Player/Vocalist is also in a band called Bongzilla - I'm fairly sure they may have been influenced by something other than a misspelled Japanese movie monster. The following song may be my favourite, it's quite short, but very loud and the use of the phrase 'Wizard Fight!' is the best battle cry in the world EVER! (capital letters and poor use of the explanation mark are intentional). They also get bonus points for starting all of their loud songs with a wall of feedback.

MP3: Weedeater - Wizard Fight