I think I’ve already sent this directly to everyone I really like. Still, in case you were wondering: it’s all done with computers.
(snipped out of the new, beautifully titled Electric Six album: I Will Destroy Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Becoming The Master)
(0)- What the hell is the point of specially engineered footballs to allow for “more control, more goals”? Surely any advantage conferred by such a ball will be conferred to the other team as well?
- My blog is less green now, do you like it?
- It bothers me that children as young as seven roaming a shopping mall alone, dressed like they’re going out to get pissed. I think I’m getting old (at least they’re not on my lawn!).
- Why the fuck is it so fucking hard to find a comb? And where the hell did my comb go, exactly?
- I haven’t written a stupid play in ages, I totally should.
- As Oscar WIlde once said*, hell is other people. Coursework is also other people, therefore coursework is hell. Though this might just be because this particular coursework involves configuring and maintaining a Linux server…
- The new Hot Chip album makes it hard to walk normally in public. This is a good thing.
- I’m back with Safari, because Firefox 2 for Mac is ugly and generally slow. I have high hopes for version 3, but it doesn’t work with the Google sync-o-tron yet, so fuck that.
*He may or may not have also said that hell is going to prison for buggery, historical records are unclear.
Today Apple quietly opened up the UK iTunes store for video. And it’s all at those great prices that the English have come to expect. Let me break it down:
In America a song from iTunes will cost you $0.99 (£0.49), and a video $1.99 (£0.99).
In England the same song will cost you £0.79 ($1.59), which is pretty bad. Anyway, at this stupid exchange rate you’d expect a video to cost £1.59 then, right? Wrong, video’s £1.89 ($3.81).
Wheeeee~
Even with the discounts for buying a whole season it’s rarely cheaper than getting the DVDs off Amazon (money quote: “If I am not going to get the physical box, extras, free artworks etc. then I want to pay a damned sight less than the DVD price.”). The DVDs that you can play in anything, and generally have a higher resolution (typically 720*480, as opposed to a maximum width of 640px for iTunes content).
Of course, the iTunes videos are pristine h.264 from the source, and thus so much better than anything Handbrake will make from the MPEG2 on those DVDs. Not to mention they’ll play without further dicking about on your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. What price convenience?
Yay for close-knit software/device/service ecosystems!
Oh man, Of Montreal were so freaking awesome last night. I can’t believe we went, honestly. Never mind either of us rarely do that kind of thing, we only actually noticed they were playing five hours before the doors opened as we were walking to the cinema. It was in this tiny little venue above a bar, I guess there was room for ~200 people at most?
They were supported by The Video Nasties and The Strange Death Of Liberal England, neither of whom sucked. This was a nice surprise, since the last time I saw a warm-up act that didn’t suck was the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster warming up for Placebo when I was still in school (Placebo, on the other hand, sucked pretty bad that evening).
But yeah, Montreal blew all that came before out of the goddamn water. It was all psychedelic and disturbing, partly from the background visuals, and partly because over the first few songs Kevin Barnes removed layers of clothing until he was performing in a red cravat and a pair of pink glittered y-fronts. Then someone brings a step-ladder on-stage and he climbs on top and dons this bizarre silk clown-outfit-poncho-thing that went right to the floor. I think that was for I Was Never Young? I really don’t remember.
They played some old stuff, some new stuff, the stuff I knew all the words to by heart, and then they finished up with a cover of All Day And All Of The Night that had the crowd going fucking nuts.
From there Helen and I went to The Alley cafe, where it was open mic dub night or something? We forgot it wasn’t Friday though, so it was panic o’clock when we realised we missed the last Red Arrow. Long story short: we’re wandering around and see a bus that takes around an hour just about to leave and leap on just in time.
I love it when a plan comes together~
Today is an awesome day. I started early with my last exam. No lie: I wrote about a guy fucking a sheep. I got some coursework back, it was a high 2:1.
Then it was in to Nottingham to Lee Rosy’s tea shop, where I ate no less than three different types of cheesecake. Also, they apparently host a “Nintendo DS night” – How awesome is that?
Thereafter we progressed to the cinema and saw Magicians, starring Mac and PC. It was terrible, but also very very funny… I’ve not worked that bit out yet. Next, we ate japanese, and now we’re at an Of Montreal gig in this tiny bar called The Social, hence this post’s title. I kid you not: the cigarette machine’s LED readout across the room is scrolling “welcome to the social”, I think they should get in touch with Microsoft’s legal team?
\o/
[edited with links and shit, now I'm at a real machine]
OK, so I didn’t, I read it. In my defence, I’ve been listening to that New Pornographers album and it’s good and stuck in my head.
Speaking of news, this just in: I have “one of those faces” or something. In two days two people I’ve never met before have sworn they knew me from somewhere. One was a random customer at work, the other was a guy at Derby uni’s comic book society. I totally don’t know them, honestly.
Yes, I joined a comic book society at a university I’m not even going to. In my defence, Nottingham doesn’t have one, and even if it did I totally wouldn’t make an extra commute just to talk about comics. As it is the kids at Derby’s are pretty cool, and I got to read the new issue of Hyperion vs Nighthawk a day early. \o/
Speaking of comics, Captain America died today. The issue has out-sold despite being over-printed, re-prints are apparently imminent. Personally, I see two instances of history repeating itself here. Most obviously the hype that surrounded Superman’s death and re-birth – let’s hope we don’t get Electric Captain America! The second instance is what will surely happen if Steve stays dead and he is replaced as Captain America (which will surely happen, since the title sells). In this case I predict a reader-backlash so severe that Marvel has to bring back Rogers Coke-Classic style.