My Shame...

This post needs a soundtrack:

The Angels of Light - Shame

OK, onwards to my dirty, shameful confession:

After years of moaning about iPods being essentially wrong I have succumbed and I'm now the owner of an 80GB iPod. After drowning my old mp3 player I've been trying to get through the last couple of weeks with a 1GB memory card and my phone and frankly it's not working. I'm constantly having to shuffle mp3s to and from my phone, and the battery life is crap.

So why an iPod? Well, I have about 55GB of music on my hard drive, I buy over 100 CDs a year and download almost as many, I need capacity! As far as I can see there isn't anyone else making mp3 players with anywhere near my storage requirements.

Good points so far:

• Syncing with iTunes went very smoothly
• It does look lovely
• It is very loud, which is useful as I seem to be half deaf.
• The 'On-The-Go' play list thing is a good idea.
• Sounds better than my phone

Bad points:

• I have a feeling deleting content will be a pain
• The EQ setting is a complete waste of space, none of them are any good.
• Sound quality is nowhere near as good as my old mp3 player.
• Whilst the 'On-The-Go' play list is inherently a good thing, why can't you add things to it from the Now Playing screen? (this could just be ignorance on my part)
• You can only change the volume on the Now Playing screen as far as I can work out.
• Very easy to skip over the item you wanted to select with the wheel thing.

Da Da Daaaaaaaaa!

Instructions:

1. Get a glass of milk or some other drink that is not completely clear.
2. Take mouthful of your chosen liquid - do not swallow!
3. Make sure sound is turned up on your PC
4. Click on the above embed flash movie a couple of times to get it going.
5. Laugh so hard that liquid squirts from your nose.
6. Clean up mess.

My Foot

Apparently I have Pes Cavus - the exact opposite of flat feet. Another deformity for the collection.

Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown

I went to the third night of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown festival last night, bit of a surreal sight witnessing Mr Cocker introducing two pretty extreme metal acts - but then again I applaud his openminded attitude.

The first band to play was Chrome Hoof - Christ, where do you start with them... Some pictures maybe?

This picture should give you a fair indication of the band; think of a really tight, highly talented funk band who have been listening, and appreciating, a fair amount of death metal. Or maybe imagine Slipknot if they finally got in touch with their female side and let a bit of glitter into their lives:

This is there 12ft metal goat effigy, it was a bit more impressive than this picture implies:

And here is one of their dancer's, I'm amazed she got through the set without collapsing - the thought that must have been running through every hot-blooded male mind (and maybe one or two broadminded female ones) in the audience was: "I bet she goes like the clappers"

Other highlights: the bit where the two dancers murdered the string section, the bit where the guitarists got out the BC Richs and the bass player donned a Spartan helmet to run through some quality metal, and maybe the bit where the strange bloke in the comedy Scottish wig who came on to sweep the stage mid-song.

A band to watch I think, they will appeal to people who like bands like The Go! Team, or maybe !!! but who yearn for a touch of metal in their lives.

Anyway, onwards to Sunn O)))

This was their stage set-up:

The usual wall of amplifiers, a Moog and then a few instruments which I haven't seen them use. They had someone on Rhodes piano, which added a really odd jazzy feel to some of the music; they also had someone who spent the first half of the set tapping on a guitar with a violin bow, and the second half of the set they had him playing on what looked like a traditional pair of DJ decks, I think he may have been playing them at 0.5 RPM though.

The main focal point though was their vocalist Attila Csihar:

Admittedly if you are going to stand on a smoke filled stage directly above green spooky lights whilst wearing robes and what may or may not have been a fake blond wig, you are going to end up being the centre of attention.

For the second half of the set he came back on wearing a sack, as you do:

I'll be brutally honest, tonight Sunn O))) probably dragged there drone metal thing on a bit too long, when a show ends with the entire band lying down on the stage you get the impression that maybe everyone is getting a bit tired and should go home and get some sleep.

Not to say it was bad, the fact that it was a seated venue gave you that extra interaction with the music as you felt the bass in a very real and physical way! And I quite liked some of Attila's invocating, its just that the set could have done with being about half an hour shorter.

So that's my opinion of the night, I've got a few more pictures here if you want.

My Next Phone

The Sony Ericsson W960

Touch Screen... check!
Wi-fi... check!
Smartphone... check!
Bluetooth stereo... check!
Decent amount of memory... check!
Will make the owner more attractive to women... I see no reason why not!

And let's be perfectly clear on this, I saw it first - if anyone I know gets one of these before I do they will be hunted down and punished.

Oh yeah!

Ha!

Well you're wrong there Grasshopper! I don't live with my Mum, and my Dad's dead.

/trails off into quiet contemplation...

This is from Great Lakes Avengers a rather silly comic book from a couple of years ago written by the same chap who wrote some of the She-Hulk books I got obsessed with a few weeks ago. It has the same sort of approach to Marvel canon which I liked about She-Hulk - I for one can't think of many other Marvel Super Hero teams with a character like Squirrel Girl.

More moaning...

...and as much fun as reading comic books can be my weekend should consist of other activities.

Right, that's enough - no more moaning!