Talk To Rex

MoveOn.org’s advert for Obama. Finally, they’ve done something that doesn’t make me cringe.

On the train home last night I leafed through a copy of the Evening Standard and noticed the following article on page 3:

That’s right, they’ve devoted a full page to a story about how nothing happened yesterday morning when the CERN scientists turned on the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The photograph has the dramatic caption “Time bomb”, going on to qualify it with “passers-by join Evening Standard writer Terry Kirby as Big Ben strikes 8.30 today and nothing happens”.

Indeed, the Terry Kirby goes into a great deal of detail about how nothing happened. Not only that, but he seems to have been the only person around who thought it might. “In Parliament Square, as Big Ben counted down the minutes to what could have been the Big End, there was no sign of nervousness among the citizens of London.” No, really??? You mean people weren’t standing weeping, or huddled together like in the end of the world sketch from Beyond the Fringe? What were they thinking?

The story gets even more wilfully undramatic as it goes on: “Lithuanian building worker Silvester Sutas, 30, when asked if he was waiting for the end of the world, replied: “Actually I’ve been waiting to go to work on a building site”.

It is clear by this stage of the article why Terry Kirby is not writing Hollywood screenplays, if not exactly why he’s still working as a journalist – although perhaps the Evening Standard is a special case, where the journalists are it seems encouraged to fill a lot of space saying nothing. Yet perhaps Kirby hoped there was going to be a story, maybe even the biggest ever – you can sense a great deal of disappointment in his final sentence, “It was going to be another normal day in London”. And it has to be said that if Terry Kirby turned up at Parliament Square hoping to write about the end of the world, it does show rather a lack of foresight.

I had ever such a good time at the Proms last night, listening to an inspired combination of Ralph Vaughan Williams (favourite of Classic FM listeners), Holst (his Planets Suite, almost certainly in Classic FM’s “top essential classic classics of all time” list), and as the filling in this Classic FM junky sandwich, Xenakis – who pretty much epitomises the phrase “plinky plonky music”. Although in this case it was more like bashy crashy music, as six very talented percussionists thrashed the hell out of an array of big bits of metal.

As the audience reviews show, the reaction was divided between those who pretended to like it because they think that’s the cultured thing to do, and a rather bigger demographic who were horrified by the affront to their senses (to somebody on a diet of smooth classics at teatime the work was basically the aural equivalent of hardcore pornography).

Anyway, I’m a real life working composer now so I can say what I like: it was bollocks. Brilliantly performed, noisy and occasionally exciting bollocks for sure, probably unbelievably clever bollocks as well knowing Xenakis – but bollocks nevertheless, and although it didn’t irritate me as much as smooth classics at teatime, I did find the whole thing rather an ordeal.

Still, I’m delighted it was in the programme and it’s just the kind of thing the Proms needs. Listener Nicholas Sayer (who needs to learn the “i before e” rule) may claim “peices like this […] will only generate polite applause”, but he couldn’t be more wrong – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of music at the Proms whip up such a reaction, at least outside the Last Night. My companion (who was of the opinion that we should spend the whole section of the concert in the bar) and I entertained ourselves by counting the number of people making a dash for the exit during the work; we counted 134. That’s enough people to fill the Wigmore Hall. (Maybe that’s where they all went, desperate for a fix of Schubert or something more palatable.)

It’s a super way to spend a concert and I highly recommend trying it next time there’s a piece of Xenakis at the Proms, or maybe Stockhausen or Nono. You can decide on other things to count as well – we didn’t really start counting “number of times one piece can go up and down a xylophone” until too late in the movement, but we did count Gratuitous Lighting Changes: 4 (they’re clearly taking the previously mentioned gay clubbing approach to ambience to a new level) and Cries of Despair: 1.

That’s right, a man let out an agonised scream about five minutes into the concert (I’m sure you’ll hear it if you listen again). And that surely is another sign that it was something rather special.

60th Primetime Emmys coming up (and you can vote for a couple of categories) – but am I the only person who thinks the logotext makes it look like “EMMYs: Goth Primetime Emmy Awards”?

Cut down 9 lbs of stomach fat every 11 days by obeying this 1 tiny rule

In case you aren’t aware, that’s a calorie shortfall of around 2800 kCal per day, or more than you eat. So the “1 tiny rule” is: eat nothing. Or possibly: buy a knife.

The world’s first USB-charged vibrator disguised as lipstick is now available. Which is, I guess, great (although I’m not sure how subtle plugging a lipstick into your laptop is – we probably need a new disguise for vibrators). But why can’t it also have remote control via the USB connection? Nothing complicated is required, and given the Nabaztag is only about twice the price, it should be possible to do it for under fifty pounds. USB control would make it pretty easy to connect up for teledildonics, at a comparable price to the Televibe, and cheaper than the Sinulator. But, you know, easier to write software for.

And it’s called Mia. Aww, how cute.

Or, if they didn’t actually plan to blow them up, they at least thought about them a bit. I don’t have to wonder, though, with a Unesco report saying Britain’s monuments are under threat from new developments – maybe we should have just let them.

But anyway, they’re clearly guilty of something. Conspiracy to murder in some cases… plotting to cause a public nuisance in others, which I’ll sharply refrain from commenting on.

As he says, you don’t see (or hear) this too often on acoustic, but he’s done it anyway, and frankly it’s just a whole lotta fun.

I might have made a few mentions of Ambassador Property Management, the people who “look after” 2 Victoria Street in Cambridge and for the last two years have literally allowed myself, Chris and Alastair to drown in our own shit, whilst metaphorically screwing us with our pants on.

Last week the three of us finally said goodbye to Victoria Street, as I took up residence in Bedford and Chris and Alastair moved into a house less likely to spew excrement. And so we also said a sad farewell to all the lovely folk at Ambassador, in particular a man called Graham who seems to have been behind most of the screwing.

Perhaps we should have predicted that he wouldn’t be able to resist slipping out his metaphorical cock and giving us a sneaky last screw as we walked out of the door. As indeed he did. When Graham begrudgingly wrote us each a cheque for the return of our deposits (in full, because try as they might they couldn’t find anything to blame us for), he apparently decided to deduct the sum of £36.11 to cover the cost of transferring the money into their bank account.

To cover the cost of transferring the money into their bank account!!!

I mean – WHAT????? Is that legal? Does it even make sense? Is it one of the costs listed on their website? No it bloody isn’t.

The fact that it’s such a relatively piffling amount doesn’t make it any less infuriating, because it is clearly Graham saying “I can still screw you with your pants on, even if I can’t get my dick in very far this time” – and I have spend the best part of today seething with rage at this arbitary and entirely questionable charge.

Though it occurs to me that since I am no longer reliant on Ambassador for a place to live, there is nothing stopping me from popping in there when I’m next in Cambridge and, if not actually screwing them with their pants on, giving them a demonstration of how it feels to have shit sluiced all over you. So if any of the lovely folk at Ambassador are reading (as I believe some of them have taken to doing, presumably on the look out for something libellous – sorry guys, it’s all undeniably accurate), you can expect a visit from me some time in the next few weeks and you might want to bring a change of clothes to work with you.

Or alternatively write me a fricking cheque for £36.11…

Ken Campbell should be above the fold. (He should have been for most his life; certainly his obituary deserves to be.) Most newspapers are instead pushing Sarah Palin’s daughter being pregnant which, while news, is unlikely to actually change the world much (for once the rational voices are coming from mid-right Conservatives). Perhaps more worthy of discussion is where in hell she gets her children’s names from.

More important than Google’s announcement of a new web browser is the awesome comic introducing it, drawn by Scott McCloud. Also: Chrome? You have to wonder where Google gets its names from, too.

“Gene limiting commitment” (although that’s not exactly what it is) is probably more important than raunchy footage of Marilyn Monroe (no, that’s not exactly what it is either), although the BBC seem to disagree at the moment. At least we know where Monroe’s name came from.