The Twitter
Posted on | September 21, 2010 | 2 Comments
Tags: crap I've said when half-pissed > mission statement > tweet > Twitter
Stuff That Makes Me Happy: Grinderman 2*
Posted on | September 14, 2010 | Comments Off on Stuff That Makes Me Happy: Grinderman 2*
*There is a sub-header here: Stuff That Makes Me Happy (And Then Incredibly Angry And Frustrated And Then A Bit Happier Again).
Let me expand on that.
Grinderman 2 is the latest album from, funnily enough, Grinderman. And Grinderman, for those not in the know, is what Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds travel under when doing stuff that’s a bit different to their usual stuff. Keeping up? Basically, Grinderman is The Bad Seeds in freakier, crazier, angstier, erection-sporting, garage form.
And it’s brilliant.
The first, eponymous, album was fantastic. All spiky and wrong and beautiful and noisy. I have been looking forward to this, Grinderman 2.
And not just because of the music for this is a rather special box set thing. It includes an actual record. Remember them, big black circles? A record – splendid. It also contains a beautiful, big, booklet full of lyrics and crazy, creepy artwork and a poster, should I want to regress to a troubled teen and decorate my bedroom. Lastly, there’s a CD for those of us who like records but also want to cram the songs into our iPods for out-and-about listening.
That’s where it gets annoying.
The CD won’t read. It’s bolloxed. Computers chew on it for a while before spitting it out, disgusted, and CD players either don’t read it at all or try to play it in a stuttering, indecipherable manner.
I went from being an excited, elated, musogeek to being a furious, angry bastard in the space of a couple of minutes this morning.
Amazon…
This was on pre-order for the last month and it arrived this morning. When I couldn’t play the damn thing, I (incredibly grudgingly) began the Amazon returns process. Having hit a snag along the way in that process (that I won’t go into as I don’t really feel it’s fair to tip off dishonest people to possible ways to scam Amazon), I emailed their customer service.
I then grumped around for a couple of hours cursing Amazon.
That was until, however, I received a response telling me that they’re, very kindly, sending a replacement without my having to go through the annoyance of shipping returns to them.
Result.
I now feel guilty for the plagues, poxes and various sexual ailments I wished upon Amazon. I take them back, cosmos. Please keep them for the next time someone or some corporation annoys me (give it an hour or so).
Let the word go forth from this time and place, Amazon Customer Services have played a blinder on this one and I really appreciate it.
Now, if they can just adjust the glacial trudge of time to speed that period where the package travels through the mysterious realm of the postal system, I’ll be really happy.
Tags: Amazon > Grinderman > nick cave > redemption > The Bad Seeds
Places Where I Virtually Am
Posted on | September 12, 2010 | Comments Off on Places Where I Virtually Am
I’ve recently been indirectly prompted to resurrect my Tumblr, which has lain dormant for quite a while.
In a massively unoriginal fashion, I’ll be using it as an attractive bucket for dumping some attractive (or freakily random) things I’ve found while wasting time that would be better spent working – what did people do to avoid work before the early ’90s? I just want somewhere to shove this stuff so it doesn’t clog up things here, making the place even more muddled and mental.
Anyway, if you like looking at, or reading about, pretty things or weird things or, occasionally, interesting things (though mostly pretty as I like to play an aesthete), do feel free to drop by for a look-see or even to follow me if you Tumbl (is that the correct verb, it’s so hard to keep up). You can find me here: Gerry on Tumblr.
Thanks must go to Astrid for, unknowingly, nudging me to get back on the Tumblr horse. Why not follow her spanking, Tube Tales too. Just do me first though, yeah?
For completeness’ sake, I’ve also got a Posterous thing but really only use it as a middleman to get stuff to this blog while I’m out and about. Anything there ends up here whereas I like keeping the Tumblr stuff separated.
Clear?
Christ, I hope so.
Tags: posterous > social media > tube tales > tumblr > waste of my life
Short Story: In The Belly Of The Whale
Posted on | September 5, 2010 | 4 Comments
My odd little short story, In The Belly Of The Whale, has been published in Schlock Magazine’s latest themed issue, The Sea.
It’s available to view online: Schlock Magazine – The Sea. This link opens a PDF version of the issue which is rather nice. It’s crammed full of stories, with a smattering of poetry and non-fiction. It also has some splendid illustrations from Thom Cuschieri (although my own story is decorated with Behemoth and Leviathan by the wonderful, mad old William Blake).
You can, if you wish, eschew the assembled, PDF version and read my story as a regular, old web page. It’d be a shame though as the magazine looks great.
I’d quite like it if you could have a read, tell your friends, send money, whatever.
Tags: Behemoth and Leviathan > flash > in the belly of the whale > schlock magazine > The Sea > William Blake
IMG: Connolly’s Folly
Posted on | August 29, 2010 | Comments Off on IMG: Connolly’s Folly
Your Opinion Does Not Matter
Posted on | August 27, 2010 | 5 Comments
I have just read a news story on the BBC’s site. As you can see, it’s linked but for those of you too lazy to bother clicking through, the condensed version is ‘according to a YouGov poll, 69% of people questioned want live voting to alter storylines in TV shows’.
People want to have a say in the plots of the TV shows they watch.
What?
Really? But that’s… I mean… What?
In the good old days, the airing of opinions was confined to your dad ranting about some, barely existent, slight over the dinner table while the family avoided eye-contact. If someone wanted to voice their opinions to a wider audience, they either stood on a soapbox with a loud-hailer and got pointed at or scrawled their poorly spelled, poorly considered, non-thoughts on the nearest wall (like the artistic effort in the photo).
Now though. Now…
The internet has given people the idea that their opinions matter. Worse still, they have the idea that others must be made aware of those opinions. Instead of harrumphing behind their newspapers, morons can now post comments at the bottom of Daily Mail articles online so the entire world knows how correct they really are. Instead of sitting down the pub, bellyaching about immigrants eating cats out of wheelie bins, idiots can start Facebook groups calling for the stoning of cat-eating foreign people.
It’s not just the internet, of course. Simon Cowell and his ilk have their culpability in the public’s erroneous inflation of its self-importance. Look at fucking Jedward for proof that democracy doesn’t work.
Instant, opinionated, gratification is already buggering up politics. How many tough decisions get made when the decision makers (who, in the kindest terms, care only about covering their arses) can see real-time disapproval? Don’t get me started on the democracy that put most of these idiots in power in the first place – that’s a whole other can of educationally subnormal worms.
And now they’ve set their sights on TV. Sweet Willmott-Brown, I pray the big TV cheeses don’t hear of this. Plotting by massive, public, moron-committee? No good can come of it.
Mark my, opinionated, words.
And yes, I’m aware of the irony of blogging these opinions. The difference is that I’m right but feel free to tell me I’m worse than Hitler in the comments below.
Tags: BBC > democracy > morons > opinions > TV > worse than Hitler
IMG: Hellfire Club, Dublin
Posted on | August 12, 2010 | Comments Off on IMG: Hellfire Club, Dublin
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: Three For One
Posted on | August 11, 2010 | Comments Off on A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: Three For One
It’s occurred to me that I haven’t done one of these for a while. Well, I say ‘occurred’ but I’ve been all too aware of it over the last month or two. I’ll attempt to get you up to speed a little with a subsection of the books I’ve read since the last book/tea post (that subsection being those that I remembered to take a photo of next to a cup of tea).
First up Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show On Earth. I love Dawkins. I love his passion. And Dawkins is, quite clearly, passionate about his subject matter. That subject matter here: evolution – something about which the prof knows more than a little. Anyone who has read any of Dawkins’ other books will be familiar with his style and won’t be disappointed. He explains everything clearly and makes his science-bits (most of it) easy to read and very entertaining. Getting back to my earlier point, I believe he manages this because of that passion. It’s so obvious that he dearly loves what he’s explaining and also – I think – loves passing on his understanding in the hope that we’ll love it too.
In the wake of The God Delusion, there is an undercurrent of poking at the creationists throughout. I’d hazard a guess that the concept for this book may have occurred during Dawkins’ repetitive debates with creationists during The God Delusion’s book tour.
Whatever, this book is a wonderful, beautiful look at what really is The Greatest Show On Earth. Get it. Read it.
Ah, Douglas Adams, you great and brilliant geek. Reading this was a bit weird for me. As a young man, bemoaning the fact that the girls were just interested in handsome and cool blokes, I read the Hitchhiker’s books. I loved every cleverly-twisted little word of them. I had always intended to move on to the Dirk Gently books but never really got around to it. Oddly however, while reading Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, huge swathes of it seemed incredibly familiar to me. I have no conscious recollection of ever owning or borrowing the book so how do I explain this odd déjà vu? It’s entirely possible, I suppose, that I read snatches of it in a bookshop while killing time. In a friend’s house, perhaps. Who knows? I don’t. Weird.
Oh, by the way, the Dirk Gently stories (and this contains the Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul) are fantastic. Adams makes language his bitch and has it contort itself into unusual shapes for our amusement. It’s not Hitchhiker’s but it’s certainly worth a read.
Yes, like everyone else, I had heard all of the talk of posthumous Pulitzers and of mothers pestering publishers to get A Confederacy Of Dunces published long after the death, by suicide, of its author John Kennedy Toole. I had this book neatly filed in the ‘must get around to reading sometime’ list in my head but never got around to reading it. A couple of weeks ago however, a friend of mine (Aidan – I name him as I’m pretty sure he’s looking for a shout-out) mentioned it and offered to lend it to me. True to his word, he posted it through my letterbox the next day (I was out – he’s not that odd).
Toole weaves a number of characters around the flatulent life of, anti-hero, Ignatius J. Reilly and his unwilling quests for work. Ignatius is over-educated and overweening. His pompous denial of most of his reality, however, makes for a very funny read. Ignatius rails verbosely at (or behind the backs of) everyone he encounters and it was these rants that kept me happy until the characters’ threads met in a nice knot at the end.
Eloquent, funny and slightly tragic, A Confederacy Of Dunces is well worth moving up your ‘must get around to reading’ list. Tell them Aidan sent you.
Tags: A Confederacy Of Dunces > Dirk Gently > Douglas Adams > Ignatius J. Reilly > John Kennedy Toole > Pulitzer Prize > Richard Dawkins > The God Delusion > The Greatest Show On Earth
Lunchtime
Posted on | July 26, 2010 | Comments Off on Lunchtime
An odd turn has left me eating sandwiches in the park with the Office People. I used to be like you, Office People. Now I just have no money instead. I probably drink more tea, though. So, you know, there’s that.
Damn, I’m Deep*
Posted on | July 4, 2010 | 3 Comments
A heart-shaped balloon blew into my yard.
Partially deflated and struggling against a ribbon and plastic weight, it flailed and twisted in the wind.
I watched through the window for a bit before cutting the ribbon.
Then, I watched it float away. Until it was gone.
*I’m exactly like that intense, pot-head, stalker kid in American Beauty.
« NEWER Entries — OLDER Entries »Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and deride my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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