Thursday, July 31, 2008

It takes a teenage riot to get me out of bed

Woke up with it in my head. Makes me so nostalgic... Sounds a bit muddy here, but anyway, enjoy!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Sheepish

Um, you know when you have a passing random thought? In the past it would have stayed that way, these days you can publish your passing random thoughts to the whole wide world. Which is a roundabout way of saying I'm not seriously considering surgery.

Also considering a little 'irony' flag on some of my posts. I'm clearly rubbish at satire.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

In which I consider a boob job

So in an effort to combat couch potato-ism, I have been swimming at the local pool. Today whilst getting changed, I had a good long hard look in the mirror in the cubicle - did you ever noticehow mirrors in the outside world are somehow much crueller and more harsh than mirrors in your own house? Maybe something to do with the fact that you are familiar with your own reflection at home. It always makes me jump when I catch my reflection unexpectedly in the outside world. Good lord, do I really look like that?

Anyway, there is no denying it, my boobs have begun the long journey south. They're alright, they serve their purpose, but they could look a bit more... happy? There is only so much magic Princesse Tam Tam bras can achieve now without surgical help.

I've never considered it before, mainly for these reasons:
  • Cost.
  • I'm an utter coward, and the thought of someone slicing my baps open with a knife makes me feel all faint.
  • A vague idea that they might explode at high altitude.
  • An even vaguer idea that it's somehow cheating.
  • (There's also the breast feeding argument, but it's looking increasingly unlikely now that I will continue the Black dynasty. Plus you know, breast-feeding is just a patriarchal conspiracy propagated by men who can't be arsed to get up in the middle of the night for bottle feeds.)
Anyway, my vanity is currently doing battle with my cowardice. It's not like anybody ever sees them but me *sniff* but I see them, you know? That's just my confused thinking, thus far. Did you ever consider surgery? What would you do? Or maybe you have strong feelings against it. I throw it open to you, people of the internet.

Monday, July 28, 2008

things I would have held onto if I had known someone was one day going to invent ebay

An Ossie Clark dress (found for £2.99 in the ORT charity shop in Ballards Lane)

An Alaia jacket (found for £6.00 in the All Aboard charity shop on Finchley Road)

The Face magazine all editions circa 1987-1989

Deadline comic (starring Tank Girl) (ditto)

Doh!

You?

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Voyeur


Voyeur, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.



sticker seen near Brick Lane

Saturday, July 26, 2008

In which we mingle with Hoxton Twats

Went out clubbing with Marie. Marie is a beautiful, exotic, model-skinny creature which I guess makes me the dumpy ordinary mate, but it turns out quite fun as everyone assumes she's famous and a kind of sea parts before her on entering bars and clubs as the bouncers wave you through.

It's a rare occasion, & I was interested to see what the kids are dancing to these days in the hottest, coolest, most cutting edge of clubs in all of East London. Do you want to know what the kids are dancing to? I will tell you.

Mother/333
It is early, I grant you, but the DJ is spinning to an empty room techno mashups of... Enya. Yes, that's right, Enya. Enya of the Orinocco Flow. All I remember of Enya is my sister dumping her boyfriend when he gave her an Enya album as a birthday present. There was more unlikely techno tunage - the only one I recall now is Crystal Waters' Gypsy Woman. This is what they're playing in Hoxton on a Friday night.

We remove ourselves to the Electricity Showrooms next door. The basement club is rammed, this is more like it. What are the kids going mad for on the dancefloor? Can it really be...? Yes it is. The kids are going mad for Hall & Oates. Maneater, to be specific. Good lord, have I entered a timewarp? Did the last 20 years never happen? Did they dress up in all their Hoxton finery to come out and bust some shapes to Hall & Oates, really?

(Eventually we give in to the 80s madness and our joy knows no bounds when we find a flashing coloured dancefloor, like John Travolta's on the cover of Saturday Night Fever.)

Friday, July 25, 2008

one word

Meme heartlessly stolen from the King of Scurf:

1. Your cell phone? ancient
2. Your significant other? belated
3. Your hair? disastrous
4. Your mother? shrinking
5. Your father? workaholic
6. Your favourite thing? sleeping
7. Your dream last night? erotic
8. The room you're in? purple
9. Your fear? tictacs
10. What you're not? relaxed
11. The last thing you did before logging on? awoke
12. Where did you grow up? Southgate
13. Favourite drink? vino
14. What are you wearing? vest
15. Your TV? black
16. Your pet? eventually
17. Your computer? dusty
18. Favourite place? bed
19. Your mood right now? pensive
20. Missing someone? sometimes
21. Something you're not wearing? hat
22. Love someone? passionately
23. Your favorite color? purple
24. Kids? dunno
25. Your life? baffling

It really, really makes you think about it when you have to answer with just one word. Good brain exercise. I tag all those lazy arse bastards claiming blog fatigue. Get on with it, you lazy arses.

More of this sort of thing

I'd just like to applaud the linkee who posted a link on his blog to nekkid pictures of himself. It gave me quite a surprise, and cheered up my morning no end. I won't be linking to that site*




*though I have bookmarked it.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Everything must go

Comes a day when you realise you don't play your records anymore, they've been sitting in a cardboard box in a cupboard gathering dust, along with the speakers, the amp, the busted turntable... They've been superceded by CDs, by MP3s, probably next by a microchip you can slot directly into your brain or something.

So, it's time for the great record clearout. Here, listed for your delight, are the entire contents of my dusty box. Does anyone want them? Or I'll stick 'em on Freecycle...

(NB these do not entirely accurately reflect all my catholic musical taste. Girls have a great facility for suddenly passionately caring about the bands that their current boy of choice are into... I never realised, for example, that I had so many chin-stroking 'nice' jazz albums, for example. Then I remembered who it was that I was trying to impress back in the day.)

Anyway, can't bear to offload them to the charity shop, so they're free to a good home. You will have to pick them up though. Or we can meet and have a drop off. DJ Del, I have put aside the Spacemen 3 for you.

Billie Holiday – The Lady and the Legend

Led Zeppelin 3 – (complete with magic cover!)

PJ Harvey – Dry

The Throwing Muses – The Real Ramona

Astralasia – Sul E Stomp (I’ve no idea)

Jah Wobble – Visions of You 12 inch

The Best of Little Walter

The Pixies – Come On Pilgrim EP

Dinosaur Jr – Bug

Happy Mondays – Step On

Sly and the Family Stone Greatest Hits

Al Green Latest Hits

The Goats – Typical American 12 inch (did I ever post about the Goats? Remind me to sometime)

Urban Species & MC Solaar – Listen 12 inch

Robert Johnson Delta Blues

Throwing Muses – Throwing Muses

Cry Cisco – AfroDizziAct – a house 12 inch which samples The African Queen, I seem to recall.

Happy Mondays – Bummed

Funkadelic – Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow

“i” AR Kane

Spacemen 3 – The Perfect Prescription

My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything

Un-named live album by Spacemen 3

John Lee Hooker – Urban Blues

Led Zeppelin II

The Best of Kid Creole and the Coconuts (he was much underrated, oh look, fuck off, alright?)

Bjork –Debut

Grace Jones Island Life (she was much – oh fuck off.)

Stevie Wonder Innervisions

Sister Sledge Thinking of You 12 inch

Disco Nites – 16 Giant Disco Hits!

Jimi Hendrix Experience – Smash Hits

Atlantic Soul Classics – 16 Hit Tracks

Throwing Muses – House Tornado

Mary Margaret O Hara – Miss America

Portishead – Numb EP

Abba – Greatest Hits

Blondie – Parallel Lines – actually I think I might have to keep this one.

John Coltrane - Giant Steps

Bomb the Bass (remember when they had to change the name during the bombing of Iraq first time around? Also Massive Attack had to change to just ‘Massive’ hahaha!) – Bug Powder Dust 12 inch

Depth Charge – Hubba Hubba Hubba EP

New Order – Blue Monday 12 inch

Lou Reed – Transformers (I’m 15 again! Dancing around Cathy’s bedroom to ‘Makeup’ whilst applying eyeliner very badly!)

Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are you Experienced

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground

Charlie Parker Memorial Volume 3

Elmore James – Red Hot Blues

Definition of Sound – Now Is Tomorrow (remember ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’?)

Tricky – Overcome 12 inch – He looks very fetching in a wedding dress on the cover

Furniture – Slow Motion Kisses 12 inch

13th Floor Elevators – The Bull of the Woods

The Bessie Smith collection

A Tribe Called Quest – Can I Kick It? 12 inch

John Coltrane - Coltrane Jazz

Robert Johnson – King of the Delta Blues Singers

Slanted and Enchanted – Pavement

The Sugar Cubes – Life’s Too Good

Bessie Smith – Empty Bed Blues

John Coltrane – Blue Train

Method Man & Mary Jane Blige - You’re All I Need To Get By

Sonny Rollins Quartet – Worktime

Stravinsky – The Rites of Spring (how did this get in here?)

G Love & Special Sauce – Cold Beverage

L7 – Pretend We’re Dead 12 inch

Fugees Blunted on Reality

Louis Armstrong - Sensational Satchmo

The Breeders – Last Splash

John Coltrane – A Love Supreme

My Bloody Valentine – You Made Me Realise EP

Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland

Spacemen 3 – Playing With Fire

Piano Music of Eric Satie

Portishead – Dummy

The Smiths – Hatful of Hollow

Tricky – Maxinquaye

Joni Mitchell – Blue

Beastie Boys – Ill Communication

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin

Lee Perry – The Heart of the Congos

Red Snapper – Reeled & Skinned EP

New shoes

for the many weddings. No I can't walk in them. I can stand around in them very effectively though.

Now all I need is someone to carry me around.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Waiting for Tiscali *

What do you mean, connect your modem? My modem is fully connected.

Flashing red signal. DSL connection: idle.

What can you do on your computer when you have no broadband? Re-discover the delights of Solitaire. The Queen of Clubs is giving the Queen of Spades evils. The Jack of Diamonds is winking at me. 9 hours of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies hold music later... I’m in the queue, then my mobile credit expires.

A charming man in Scotland with the kind of Edinburgh accent that could soothe a tiger with a toothache tells me he’s TV, not broadband, he can’t help me. A techie boy with a Scottish accent. I’d happily chat to him all day just to hear his voice, and nearly ask him out.

9 hours of Handel’s Water Music later, Ankor (?) in India, sticking closely to the script and uttering ‘Not to worry’ ten times, tells me since I changed my phone number, my broadband connection has been terminated. I will need to phone a different number to let them know my new phone number. Surely I could just email them…? Oh, but I have no broadband. Duh.

It’s fine, it’s fine, I can do without it … can’t I?

OMIGOD I CAN’T I AM AN ADDICT AND I NEED HELP



* apologies to Samuel Beckett

Monday, July 21, 2008

Twenty-seventeen

It's my birthday. Send me money. *



'He's got a chain of flowers... and sews a bird in her knickers'. Bravo, Björk !

*Not really. You're all invited to birthday drinks. Bottoms up!

Friday, July 18, 2008

Sampler


You know what this means. Oh yes.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Some art

Went for a walk with Señor Bandito, and this is what we saw:-
















Friday, July 04, 2008

My baby's so vain, she's almost a mirror...

Taking a break. Back shortly. In the meantime, I leave you with this.

She makes me feel so ugly
My heart is really on its knees
But I keep a poker face so well

That even mother couldn't tell


Shivers, Boys Next Door

Look at baby Nick Cave! So cute! Little chuchi face. (Unlike now, old cadaverous face.)

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Plungering

Once when a teenager, our friend D was hanging around the house bored on a Sunday. He had a plunger in his room (his dad had recently been doing some plumbing repairs in the bathroom) and idly stuck it onto his forehead like a dalek, as you do.

When he finally prised it off, the suction had created a huge red circle on his forehead which remained highly visible when he woke up on Monday morning, so he had to bunk off school lest he risk social pariah-dom for the rest of his schooldays.

This episode led to the word 'plungering' entering our common language. (The opposite to 'plungering' was 'ulcering' which is self-explanatory.)

God, I'm bored. Where's a plunger when you want one?

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Weddings

3 on the horizon. Possibly more. Lord help me.


Why must they do it? Why? Whatever happened to good old living in sin?

Wish it would snow

Snow

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Halp

Hating work at the moment. * (I know this is in direct contravention of everyone's blogging advice. Can't help it.)

Hate it forwards, backwards, sideways, every which way. Hating it passionately. Hating it seriously. Just hating it.

What else can I do? What what what what?





* I know I'm not alone in this. Just check out the TES message board, it's filled with the likes of us desperate to escape.

Getting away with it

I never realised how weird-ass the English language is until I started teaching it. Take phrasal verbs. I didn't even know they existed, we imbibe them with our mother's milk but they cause your average English language learner nightmares, there's whole dictionaries dedicated to them. Do you know what they are?

Okay, imagine that you are explaining the verb 'run'. Simple enough, you might mime someone running to your foreign student, easy, they understand run.

Then they show you a sentence that has utterly baffled them in this English book they're reading, it says 'We've run out of coffee.' They still have the image of someone running in their head, and it makes no sense. Following the verb with a preposition changes the meaning utterly - here 'to run out of' means 'to finish' (to which your poor student might say,'Then why can't you just say finished'?)

Consider these:

Run into (to meet)
Run up (to make)
Run through (to practice)
Run down (to insult)
Run off (to print)
Run on (to talk a lot)

Or these -
get into classical music (enjoy)
get up the nerve (summon)
get round to it (procrastinate)

and my personal favourite for confusing foreigns

get away with (to escape without punishment)

'You know, it's like a thief who escapes without punishment, he gets away with the money' you explain.

They just about grasp that as an expression, but then they read 'Kylie Minogue is the only woman in her thirties who can get away with gold lame hotpants' and they give up in despair and decide to go and learn Japanese instead, it's easier.

Talking of getting away with it, one Tony Parsons book is set in a language school. He has a beginner Japanese language student utter the phrase 'Don't take it out on them.' Not just a phrasal verb, but one followed by two prepositions. Tsk tsk Tony.