Friday Night.

While it made me feel quite uncomfortable, I don't really think I have anything to add to the whole Jan Moir/Stephen Gately melee that's flapping all over Twitter and Facebook. Except that if you, like me, are a bit confused by Moir's attempt to draw a correlation between two young men dying and the failure of the Civil Partnership Act, you should go here and say something^[1]. Charlie Brooker's already said the rest and said it funnier.

Fun Fact. If you look at Trendmap, a real-time map of Twitter trending topics all over the UK, '#cunt' is one of the biggest. Go figure.

I went to Paris. You missed me.

^[1] According to comments on Brooker's piece in the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' section (confusing, I know), the PCC won't act on complaints lodged by third parties. Complainants are receiving emails stating that the PCC will not act in response to anyone but Gately's family's request. Is that not spineless?

Tuesday Night.

I left my Polaroid camera in the living room one evening at the flat on Belgrave Road, and when I woke up in the morning this had been pushed under my bedroom door.

I uploaded it to Facebook and I think they've disabled my account because this was flagged as inappropriate content. I will be twenty-one in under a month.

Is it upside down? I can't tell.

Unintentional LOLZ

. . . at chubarama, possibly my new favouritest website, a website "dedicated to the beauty of big men."

Monday's Quotes.

More things that were said.

Rory: "I have to take a certain amount of breaths in each sentence, otherwise I feel like my whole family will die."

Jonathan Ross (to Kate Walsh): "When you were given the chocolate task, you looked really excited. Yasmina looked like she'd been given a phone bill."

note to self: i hate orange.

BACKGROUND STORY: The milkman's daughter told me a story in which she lent a Portuguese family man in her employ - who was having some financial difficulties - two hundred pounds. He promptly pissed off back to Portugal. And the moral of the story is . . .

Joe: "Never trust a Portuguese."

Me: "Oh, harsh?"

Joe: "Well, Maddy McCann still hasn't turned up."

Thursday.

Quotes of The Week:

Grace, at Motion: "Guys, I think I need to go home, I'm dry-retching."

Rory: "You can't punch a cow in the face . . . and spastics are really strong."

Joe: "Yes, I am comparing my sex life to General Motors."

BBC Ad: "Later, Ross Kemp takes on pirates."

Me: "Was that real or did I imagine it?"

Aussie Gemma: "What's that song about the Vegemite sandwich? (sings) He gave me a Vegemite sandwich, said 'I come from a land down under' . . . I fuckin' love that song man!"

Wednesday Playlisting.

Because I fell asleep on Brandon Hill yesterday afternoon (he didn't mind) I'm feeling the burn today. I should probably stay inside out of the sun. This would drive me insane had I not just downloaded a glut of albums and updated my 'Summer' playlist. Look at that, arrived all by yourself. Here it is.

I'm Still In Love With You - Alton Ellis

There are two versions of this that I know of; one with a male singer and one with a female. The female singer is Hortense Ellis, his little sister. Although I prefer her version (I was only having this discussion with Tom last Saturday, he does too), the MPEG I have of that is pretty poor quality; and if you're going to throw on a summer playlist, you need to enjoy it without getting up to fiddle with the gain on your amp. Deckchairs are a bitch to get out of sometimes.

Young Adult Friction - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

This is pretty self-explanatory, it's a tune. I saw them at Dot to Dot but I don't remember.

Boots & Braces - Skrewdriver

There's an equally jaunty track off Voice of Britain called White Power, but for obvious reasons I probably wouldn't put it on at a barbeque.

So Bored - Wavves

Although every track of Wavves' album is a good summery song, I chose this one because it reminds me of Freak Out by Liars - a short, dark, droney surf guitar song. That's how I like them. It reminds me of summers spent listening to a 'surf tape' that I'd picked up in Oxfam, which remains to this day my best ever purchase (30p, and I love Jan & Dean).

N.B. In the 'Related Videos' for this on YouTube, a band called Mayyors comes up. What's WITH that? Is it like everyone calling their band 'Crystal Something'?

HYPNTZ - Dan Black

Saw Dan Black at Dot to Dot too, and his is probably one of the last sets I can remember. Considering he played at 4.30, that's shameful. Anyway, this song was played on Huw Stephens last night and it's epic. Dan Black's pretty good live too, if you get the chance.

Date W/Ikea - Pavement

Pavement albums in general are always a safe thing to throw on on a nice day, and it's hard to pick out just a few tracks if you're making up a playlist. I went with Date W/Ikea from Brighten The Corners, which would probably be an obvious choice for most, but maybe less so than Cut Your Hair - songs always blow up on MTV, and the video for it is quite memorable.

I remember seeing the video for Stereo years ago on MTV, I wonder what happened to that?

Brooklyn Phone Call - All Girl Summer Fun Band

Cute song, and how bad do you want to be in a band called 'All Girl Summer Fan Band'? Me too.

God Has Voice, She Speaks Through Me - CocoRosie

Going to put this out there. If you don't like it, you can bat it right back. CocoRosie are honest-to-God fruitcakes. I think that's what I like about them. Read this interview if you don't believe me.

Blister In The Sun - Violent Femmes

This got used on some advert not too long ago, so most people will know if it comes up on a shuffle, but generally are not too aware of Violent Femmes. Way underrated. This song: not so much. Almost bored of it now.

I Don't Like You - Sacred Mushroom

Darren came to see me the other day with a bag of CDs, as usual, and I picked this one at random to rip to iTunes. Would have done them all, but it takes so long - did it always take this long? Goddamn. Anyway, it turned out to be a pretty good album, somewhere between the regular Blues influences and Haight-Ashbury bands.

Others that nearly made it, but aren't worth talking about, but are TUNES:

You Left The Water Running - Barbara Lynn (my favourite recording of this song)

1979 - Smashing Pumpkins (a classic)

Mom's Mercedes - Shudder To Think (a dusky evening track. mazin.)

Mexican Teenagers - Kaki King (reminds me of newer Breeders stuff)

Day N Nite - Kid Cudi (a guilty pleasure? Fuck it, I'm putting it out there)

Prismatic Room - Crystal Stilts (droney voice but I like slide guitar - saw at Dot to Dot too)

I'll Be With You - Black Lips (for the same reason, but it's dangerously Roy Orbison)

On a final note, I just downloaded the new Tortoise album - Beacons of Ancestorship - because it was mentioned over at Pretty Goes With Pretty, and Tortoise are one of those bands that I just don't think of unless someone mentions them to me, or they come up on a shuffle, and I remember how much I like them. Anyway, I'm really enjoying it. The CD looks really cools too, if you buy it it comes in a "4-panel mini-LP style jacket." Whatever that is.  

Books, boozing and a last season on Belgrave Road.

The carpet outside my bedroom door is wet. While scrubbing it (or sponging it halfheartedly) I wondered how many more times this will happen. At Christmas, it was Geordie vomit. Tonight I threw condiments at Rory. Unfortunately he also knows how to throw.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I just finished this book.

It made me cry like a child.

(An aside about the book, before the tangent: I did enjoy it. I didn't enjoy it as much as Everything Is Illuminated, of course, and it only goes to fuel my theory that the modern author of the modern novel (him! her! their six-hundred-page epics!) should be put out to stud after their first, but it was still as diverting as anything else I've got on at the moment. One troubling issue for me was all the space-filling pictures, however.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with Grace last night about Philip Ridley books, books for children with names like Meteorite Spoon and Zinderzunder. I re-read Vinegar Street, one of his later ones, quite recently and noticed that about 75% of the books was just onomatapoeic words in different fonts splayed across the page like old Roger McGough Pie In The Sky-era kid's poems. The plot only lasted about 80 pages, in 16-point type. He must've been laughing all the way to the bank.

I don't know that the pictures don't add anything to the book. They definitely don't take anything away. I was just surprised is all, and probably wouldn't have thought about it if they weren't.)

The family saga seems a fashionable sort of book to be writing these days. I'm not exactly in touch with literary trends, I usually read books some few years after they reach a certain level of acclaim. The best example of this is probably Drown by Junot Diaz, which I thought a great little secret find until I realised it was published in 1996, and most people were over it. Whatever.

Anyway, his Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is also one such book; Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, another that I enjoyed; White Teeth I was really into when I was younger and was probably the first example of this kind of book that I enjoyed; and perhaps the ultimate example, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

One Hundred Years . . . is a solid contender for my favourite book of all time. It pretty much steals your life after you break through the first chapter; for weeks after, if you tried to talk to me about someone not in the book, I'd just look at you blankly.

I know I'm covering no new ground with this (I like a book that other people like too, and I wrote something on the internet about it, how novel), but it's filled half an hour and now I'm sleepy. I am decided: after I finish revising Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin (what drivel - what slush) for my Am. Lit. exam at the end of the month, I'm re-reading it.

(from Shuiji Teryama's Japanese adaptation of One Hundred Years . . .: fucking surreal)

(書を捨てよ、町へ出よう)

(Throw Away Your Books! Run Into The Streets!)

One thing about One Hundred Years . . .; I can never work out if the Buendía family tree that is printed in the first few pages of my edition is necessary. My first (and only, so far) time reading the book, I spent a lot of time flicking back to it with my thumb in the page, to see who was who. Not only is this bad for the spine of a paperback, it's highly distracting.

I've also been lent Y: The Descent of Men by some Professor of Genetics chappie, Steve Jones. This book's hard going. I prefer the comic.