&#39;huge, queer and tawdry&#39; but &#39;much admired by the public&#39;

what, you act like the hivemind isn't a good thing (borg!!!)

worcester sauce flavour crisps num num! but not as good as seabrook.

snow - this is nuffin! this is SPIT!

From:

Says Miss 'How Have You Not Frozen To Death?'! Yes, I would like more, and some proper settlement, but in the meantime I'm enjoying this.

From:

i didnt say it wasnt cold i said its not really proper snow!

rain > snow, really.

snow can feck off.

From:

It is proper snow, there's just not enough of it!

And shh, you're just bored of snow because you surfeited on it when young!

From:

it's too heavy to be real snow. or something. gah i'm f#cking bored of it. summer now please!

From:

carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

ms bec well and truly on the money, i HATE snow. it's like rain BUT YOU GET COLD AS WELL, rubbish.

From:

thank you!!!! hooray, all these pro snow postings are giving me teh rage!

From:

atommickbrane.livejournal.com

I dunno. That poem has given me the name of my experimental sine wave modulation slo-fi band.

Slo-fi! I bet no-ones used that term for YEARS.

From:

That looks more like a spam subject line to me...

From:

ksta.livejournal.com

I have writ you a pome about pangolins what is better than the other one you has aforementioned.

It can be declaimed, or singed.

Pangolins.

Pangolins,
Pangolins,
it sounds a bit like
mandolins.

Crunchier than
a biscuit tin.
I need a case
to put one in

stuffed.

-the end-

From:

This is indeed the best poem about pangolins I have seen today. Thank you.

From:

beingjdc.livejournal.com

Hah. My first verse that I was writing before I read the comments is exactly the same as yours.

From:

ksta.livejournal.com

clearly you have been spending too much time in the copmany of great minds, such as mine.

From:

ksta.livejournal.com

company, there.

From:

carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

i am at home today and saw the whole of livingstone's press conference on news24, it was well weird, it was almost like he was trying not to cry or explode or something all the way through...

...although i am thoroughly enjoying "ah no, but it is YOU who are the fac!st, rac!st scumlords, mail newspapers" aspect of the whole thing...

From:

To be honest, if I were facing the accusations he has, over the comments he made, I'd be on the verge of exploding too.
"I WAS RUDE TO A STANDARD REPORTER! DID I MISS THE MEETING WHERE THAT BECAME A BAD THING?"

From:

carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

yes, i imagine there wouldn't had been all this fuss if he'd just said "fvck off, you scum sucking cvnt-face" or similar.

From:

Well, in the same way that he didn't know this chap was Jewish, he'd probably have been unlucky enough to discover that the reporter in question had recently had experimental reconstructive surgery using vaginal cells to rebuild his face, and that to nourish this he was obliged to drink pond froth through a straw.

From:

I don't think anyone thinks that's a bad thing, or that Ken was wrong to diss them, it seems the furore is still about the fact that Ken has inadvertently offended (some of) the Jewish community with his comments, and people think he should apologise for that specifically, not solely for his altercation with the photographer.

From:

"In a statement made at City Hall he said he did not mean to offend London's Jewish community"

Plenty of Jewish community figures were quoted in the papers as not being offended. And some people will take offence at anything - cf Brass Eye.

From:

At the risk of incurring the wrath of

666inmyheart in particular, what I've heard of Hood has just bored me. They seem to belong to the tedious, unimaginative post-rock school where, like Mogwai, the height of ambition is to take a bog-standard indie pop tune, makes it instrumental, slow it down and just double it in length, rather than really push any sonic or emotive boundaries. Tell me if I'm wrong though!

For anyone who wants to explore music outside the realm of the traditional four minute pop song, may I recommend - off the the top of my head: Calexico, Ulrich Schnauss, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, late Talk Talk, Global Communication, No-Man, Mew. And the brand new album from Engineers. And, of course, MBV and Slowdive.

From:

They're not instrumental, though! Or at least, not exclusively. I like them because they don't sound quite like anything else, but I've yet to find a better way to describe them.

I heard some Calexico round

vivid_blue's on Sunday. It was alright. Boards of Canada bore me, as does most Aphex bar 'Come To Daddy', and you can shove your shoegazers up your @rse.

No-Man are corking, though. Well, the two tracks you burned me were. But then one of those was a fairly traditional pop song...

From:

Yeah, those two No-Man songs were from the early days when, as is always the way, their record company forced them to be more commercial and saw them as having hit singles (unsurprisingly they got a fair bit of press in Melody Maker at the time). But their later stuff is more experimental...the songs being often longer and quieter but very beautiful too.

What I like about the shoegazers (well, Slowdive essentially, plus a handful of tracks by Ride, MBV and one by Chapterhouse) is that they take the blueprint of 'experimenting with guitars, sounds and textures' but apply that within the context of actual brilliant pop songs, so you get the best of both worlds.

From:

...except for the almost total absence of any brilliant pop songs from the history of shoegazing. I'll give you maybe one track by Ride as OK, plus some Curve if you include them.

From:

I can - Pearl by Chapterhouse, say, or nine of the ten songs on Slowdive's second album.

I'd wager you've not actually heard much shoegaze stuff. I mean, can you even name one Slowdive song? And can you honestly say that you've heard anything they've done either more than once or sufficiently to give a critical opinion of it? And can you say that your views are in no way coloured negatively by general bad press the group got at the time and/or Richey Manic's Hitler comparison?

Now he's in a different group - Mojave 3 - songwriter Neil Halstead has been getting the acclaim he deserves for nigh on a decade now. As always, a lot of this kind of thing is to with perceived fashionability.

From:

I heard Slowdive a few times; Robin was a fan and sometimes used to play them to me. Until my pleas for mercy got too much, that is. I can't name any of their songs, but I can remember the general sensation.

I got a MBV compilation from another friend, hoping I'd see what all the fuss was about. I never did. Though it was better than Slowdive.

From:

Oh well, fair enough; you've had more exposure to them than I expected.

Obviously the melancholy in their music didn't get you like it did me (without wishing to be obvious the concept of emotionally resonant music is particulary subjective); they'll always be one of my most treasure bands and affect me in a way that no other group does.

I should definitely discuss it with Robin next time I see him though.

From:

atommickbrane.livejournal.com

Ah. Tell me more of Ulrich Schnauss, I'm hearing lots of whispers about him but nothing that solidly coheres to make me want to bother hearing anything. I'm interested though.

From:

He's not original in any way, but does what he does very well, particularly when remixing other artists (e.g. Longview, Zephyrs, HRK, Depeche Mode; his recent version of the latter's 'Little 15' is his highest profile one yet and v recommended as a good starting point).

Essentially it's gorgeous ethereal electronica that to me sounds like Slowdive merged with Boards of Canada. Or Global Communication.

From:

rentaghost31.livejournal.com

Pram and Hood played Belfarce last week. I didn't realise till afterwards.

From: