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The Long Blondes show...I'm glad I went, but it was in some ways a frustrating experience. The set was understandably heavy on the new material, and while I suspect I'll grow to love it all, smoother sound and all, I didn't know it yet. And being heavy on that meant they were light on material from Someone To Drive You Home, one of the best albums of recent years. I was discussing this with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stephens and exliontamer afterwards, concluding that the problem was that they didn't play 'You Could Have Both', against which you have to remember that the vast majority of concerts in the world also fail to include 'You Could Have Both'.
Though it might help that the vast majority of concerts in the world also don't have Kid Acne supporting. Goldie Lookin' Chain except not funny (or, if you don't like GLC, 'even less funny') - comedy rappers coming from the school of comedy which thinks that simply mentioning a certain class of retro artefact is, in and of itself, hilarious. Please die now.
The budget was predictably depressing, with the party of the working man cutting corporation tax by a quarter, raising duty on booze and fags and announcing yet more measures to force the unwell back to the coalface.
In other government idiocy news, even compared to her colleagues Margaret Hodge is really quite impressively stupid. She is suggesting, as a new idea, libraries in shopping centres; Haringey already has one, plus one in a leisure centre. Better yet, she suggests that libraries should maybe draw in new audiences by stocking comics!*
The vast majority of the libraries I've used in the last 15 years - and there have been a lot, over many authorities - already stocked comics. The trend over time has been for that range to deepen and expand. Our libraries are in the hands of someone who clearly hasn't the faintest clue about them.
It's not great, is it? But off on the other side of the world, I did find one small good news story to offset some measure of the despair.
Have finally remembered to stop Facebook's Bookshelf from sending me impertinent emails. Yes, I have been reading The Pickwick Papers for longer than a week. It's 800 pages long and I've had various other books on the go, AS YOU WELL KNOW. Well, that was your last such irritating jab. Now all it needs is a fifth button on its recommendations, for 'Yes, I Have Already Read Another Edition Of This Book, I Told You As Much'. You'd think it would spot where titles are identical, wouldn't you? But I suppose it considers that 'identical' is just one step on from 'similar', and 'similar' makes for good recommendation - especially when you're dealing with someone who has 19 volumes of Ultimate Spider-Man on his shelf.
*I'm leaving to one side the question of whether comics are actually any good for attracting new readers in the first place, though if you read certain comics sites too much you may take it as a given that they don't. In my experience of my fellow browsers, it's usually a pretty even mixture between fans reading the stuff they couldn't be bothered to buy, and kids plucking superhero stuff out pretty much at random.
stephens and exliontamer afterwards, concluding that the problem was that they didn't play 'You Could Have Both', against which you have to remember that the vast majority of concerts in the world also fail to include 'You Could Have Both'. Though it might help that the vast majority of concerts in the world also don't have Kid Acne supporting. Goldie Lookin' Chain except not funny (or, if you don't like GLC, 'even less funny') - comedy rappers coming from the school of comedy which thinks that simply mentioning a certain class of retro artefact is, in and of itself, hilarious. Please die now.
The budget was predictably depressing, with the party of the working man cutting corporation tax by a quarter, raising duty on booze and fags and announcing yet more measures to force the unwell back to the coalface.
In other government idiocy news, even compared to her colleagues Margaret Hodge is really quite impressively stupid. She is suggesting, as a new idea, libraries in shopping centres; Haringey already has one, plus one in a leisure centre. Better yet, she suggests that libraries should maybe draw in new audiences by stocking comics!*
The vast majority of the libraries I've used in the last 15 years - and there have been a lot, over many authorities - already stocked comics. The trend over time has been for that range to deepen and expand. Our libraries are in the hands of someone who clearly hasn't the faintest clue about them.
It's not great, is it? But off on the other side of the world, I did find one small good news story to offset some measure of the despair.
Have finally remembered to stop Facebook's Bookshelf from sending me impertinent emails. Yes, I have been reading The Pickwick Papers for longer than a week. It's 800 pages long and I've had various other books on the go, AS YOU WELL KNOW. Well, that was your last such irritating jab. Now all it needs is a fifth button on its recommendations, for 'Yes, I Have Already Read Another Edition Of This Book, I Told You As Much'. You'd think it would spot where titles are identical, wouldn't you? But I suppose it considers that 'identical' is just one step on from 'similar', and 'similar' makes for good recommendation - especially when you're dealing with someone who has 19 volumes of Ultimate Spider-Man on his shelf.
*I'm leaving to one side the question of whether comics are actually any good for attracting new readers in the first place, though if you read certain comics sites too much you may take it as a given that they don't. In my experience of my fellow browsers, it's usually a pretty even mixture between fans reading the stuff they couldn't be bothered to buy, and kids plucking superhero stuff out pretty much at random.
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