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Friday, November 29, 2002
Friday, November 29, 2002
"Face transplants will be technically possible within six to nine months." Bagsie Ewan McGregor's.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 00:31
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Randy = overjoyed. It appears that Cathal Coughlan released a new album in July of this year. Why was I not informed? That the man receives absolutely no publicity of any kind is a real crime - I'm going to have to chuck a beginners guide to Coughlan up here soon. In the meantime, check out these links (you can download his first solo album from the link above, but - apart from a couple of tracks - it's not very good. Far better to try and get a copy of Black River Falls or the Fatima Mansions' Viva Dead Ponies):New album at Amazon (includes a couple of reviews)
Guardian review of a recent gig
Evil Music
Cathal's home page (same as link at top)
A Pack of Lies
A 'Black River Falls'-era interview I've said this before, but you need this man in your life. Flux, you're getting some of this stuff in the post.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 17:04
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Today's starter for ten: have Sainsbury's fucked up my company pension? I quit on the 25th of August this year and wanted to know about any possible penalties should I choose to defer it for a while (which, not having a job and not being able to afford a private pension until I start earning again, at least fourteen months in the future, I have to do). Filled in the requisite forms, sent them off to the pensions office.Eight or nine weeks later and I've still not had a reply. So, I 'phone them up this morning. Explain the situation. The woman on the other end puts my details into her computer to bring up my records and...
"Can you hang on a minute please, Mr Shankland?"
"Yeah, no problem."
Voices in the background. A minute or so later...
"Um... are you alright hanging on for another couple of minutes, Mr Shankland?"
"Sure."
More voices.
"Mr Shankland?"
"Yep?"
"Er... I'm going to have to get back in touch with you later on today, if that's okay. Our manager isn't here at the moment."
"Um... ooookay." So, the later 'phone call. I'm not in, but someone is and they take a message for me. There's no explanationas to what the nature of the problem is - and it's fairly obvious that there is a problem - but assurances are issued that I'm not the only person it applies to. Whatever it is, I'm going to have to have a meeting with one of their main guys about it sometime in the next week and a half. Maybe it's something simple. It doesn't sound like it is - a face-to-face meeting almost confirms that we're talking a major problem here - but maybe my gut instinct is wrong. But I can already feel my blood boiling at the thought that that fucking company have screwed me over again. I've quit for a number of reasons, onw of the main ones being that they're a horrible, horrible organisation to work for. I want as little contact with them in future as possible. And now it looks like they've fucked my pension up. I'm absolutely fucking spoiling for a fight. Bring it on...
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 15:57
Catastrophe. I've hit my daily posting limit on the Underground. I quite honestly never thought I'd see the day that happened, but then I never accounted for getting the digital shits like I have this week. And I missed this morning's meteor shower :(
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 12:02
Monday, November 18, 2002
Monday, November 18, 2002
It's growing. That's now five hits from searches for various takes on 'Myra Hindley conspiracy' and one from 'Myra Hindley lesbianism'.
*Sigh*
I'm now going to increase my readership in one simple sentence: Porn cock pussy fucking nurse XXX hot licking anal cheesestrings.
Results tomorrow...
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 22:34
Co-inkydink strikes. Checking out the Hindley link below to make sure that it works, one of the other results is to none other than Mr Jay Babcock's Invisibles annotations site. Weird.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 20:34
Watcher Website - UFOs & the Bible: Conspiracy & End Time Prophecy. Entertaining! Makes me want to bring my old Pop Conspiracy Zero site back to life. Hmm...
A big cry of "what did I tell you?" in honour of today's pillock link referal : Myra Hindley conspiracy. People = idiots.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 20:27
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Sunday, November 17, 2002
This is just getting daft now. I think I'm addicted. Check out Skee-lo vs The Beatles and Ol' Dirty Bastard & Kelis vs All Saints. Wish my 'Net connection was quicker...
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:48
Further to the first of this morning's posts: Signs of Allah - shame they don't have the images to go with the stories.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:45
Courtesy Magic Cornflake's:Eminem vs Basement Jaxx vs Michael Jackson and
Destiny's Child vs The Cure Fucken aces.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 19:22
Brown?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 04:05
Millions, my fiends! Millions!
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 03:22
Today's forecast: Solar X-Rays - Active. Geomagnetic Fields - Quiet.Brought to you by the slightly frightening people at Rense.com. Why is it almost impossible to find sites that deal with the kookier edges of forteana, but which don't also let themselves get bogged down in this kind of hateful shit? Check it: I was born in 1949. My formative years coincided with a successful campaign to destabilize society by promoting lesbianism (using �feminism� as a front.) Specifically, my generation was programmed to believe that woman and men are not only equal but also the same. And... Domestic violence laws prevent men from exercising the leadership that most women actually want. Speaks for itself, really.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 03:22
Holy chapati, Batman! I hope there's a site somewhere that collates all of these incidents. The best one is still the name of God appearing in a sliced tomato.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 03:14
Saturday, November 16, 2002
Saturday, November 16, 2002
Fancying an old style, patented Randy Banana Rum Milkshake, am gutted to discover a lack of both ice cream and bananas in the house. Shellshocked, use Nesquick banana powder instead. And... it works (albeit to a lesser extent than the proper recipe)!Plans to incorporate chocolate digestives into the mix should go ahead asap, possibly by turning the proper recipe back into an ice cream. Then I shall take over the universe and make my millions! Millions, I tell you! YAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:56
Due to a lack of home 'Net access last year, the whole bootlegging phenomenon passed me by. I loved the whole idea behind it, but lacked the means to hear any of the tracks that people were banging on about. Attempting to make amends now makes me desperately unfashionable, I realise. Arses to that - bootlegs remain a triumph of imagination and enthusiasm over... something else, not as good (look, this is the third update in the space of ten or so minutes, what do you expect?).And I know that everyone's already heard most of these, but going round my head right now are: Bowie vs Pink (cheers Flux)
Destiny's Child vs Nirvana
Eminem vs Britney Spears
Missy Elliott vs Joy Division
The Cure vs Madonna Linky I love being a year behind the times...
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:43
Meet AIBO's younger, less pleasant brother. Go! Go! Super Banryu!
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:18
Allow me to be the among the first to put forwards a Myra Hindley conspiracy theory (because it's bound to happen sometime in the near future and it might as well be me as some other loon) - Hindley is alive and well, relocated with a new name. Govt face humiliation when the Home Secretary's involvement in the eltering of her sentence is deemed unlawful, face "public outrage" (copyright UK tabloid press) if she's released back into the community, find themselves in a no-win situation. Easiest solution? Pretend she's died.
Of course not. Mind you, I'm not naive enough to believe that similar thoughts haven't gone through the heads of certain interested parties over the last couple of years.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:15
Monday, November 11, 2002
Monday, November 11, 2002
Ah, hell. Critical faculties at an all-time low. Have this instead:Grand Drive's new album - good, but not as good as the previous two. Suffers from a bad case of laurel-sitting. Er... on. Ms. Dynamite's A Little Deeper - very good. Love the absolutely ridiculous It Takes More (Bloodshy Main Mix). Alubum as a whole drops off a little bit towards the end. Add N To (x)'s Loud Like Nature - terrible. That joke isn't funny any more. Doesn't have the verve of the first three albums, instead sounding like the worst moments from the lacklustre Add Insult to Injury. Time to either get a new idea or get out of the business and become the accountants you were probably meant to be. Squarepusher's Do You Know Squarepusher - hit and miss. Title track = excellent. The rest = so-so. Not a patch on Go Plastic. For some reason, haven't given the second, live CD a listen through yet. Looking forwards to the new Godspeed... album, getting Donnie Darko and the first series of Twin Peaks on DVD and a huge Dork-fest when Evan Dorkin's Hectic Planet and Dork collections arrive (although the Dorkin stuff is coming from Amazon US, so I'm not likely to see it for at least a month). Bored. Plenty of work for university to be getting on with, although none of it's exactly interesting. Main bit - write a report for a hospice manager, describing the new system that my company's going to put into place for hir and the way we'll go about it. Enthralling! I could - and perhaps should - spend this time chucking some new features into the prototype ordering and sales system I've created for an imaginary fancy dress hire shop, but I've already put some gold-plating in and am wary of over-egging the pudding. See? Even you're bored by it. Pah.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 01:28
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
First things first: the link to Plums' blog has - finally - been updated.
Now then... those albums.
The Sugababes' Angels with Dirt Faces kicks off with the Are Friends Electric?-based Freak Like Me, which, as a statement of intent, is always going to be a difficult track to follow (they pulled the same stunt on the first album with Overload). Sticking it at the start is either amazingly brave or completely idiotic. Luckily, the majority of the rest of the songs on offer stand up extremely well. A couple of slight duffers pop up - Virgin Sexy's very deliberate, very obvious message-based lyrics come across as slightly embarassing, perhaps the one moment on the record where the trio step dangerously close to traditional 'girl group' territory. It's also the only track that makes me realise that I'm really not in the target audience for the group. Other than that, the rest of the songs on offer beef this up to one of the albums of the year. Supernatural has the same heavy yet clipped beats that run throughout, tied into a pounding march, the chorus turning into a full-on chant. The title track is pretty much perfect, exuding style and cool from every note, its component parts tied into three minutes that define everything that's brilliant about pop (note: you get a video for this with the girls helping the Professor save Townsville from evil robot raindrops when you go to the PPGs movie, which is aces). The world needs Switch released as a single soon, the rubber electrofunk (Copyright me, last week) demanding its own dance.
The sound of the group has changed so much since the debut - One Touch was very close to being over-produced. There were moments where the fact that you were listening to songs that had been... processed rather than simply recorded became obvious and threatened to undermine the quality of the writing. That's not to say that the first album was poor - far from it - or that the new one is necessarily better. Where Angels... scores points for presenting a more focussed definition of what the group is about, it loses them in its relative lack of variety when compared with its predecessor. Still, Sugababes are pretty much the best group in British pop right now and I doubt that situation's going to change any time soon.
How good is this record? Answer: Shape rips Sting's Shape of my Heart and still sounds good.
Tired. Must finish this off tomorrow.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 01:25
Monday, November 04, 2002
Monday, November 04, 2002
Been a very busy bunny recently, something which doesn't look likely to change in the near future. On Saturday, however, I did manage to find the time for this:
The only good photo ever taken of me? Definitely. Mainly because it looks absolutely nothing like me. The horns, by the way, were suction cap jobs, leaving two huge puckered lumps either side of my head. Attractive.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 18:32
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Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years. Fire a volley |
