The unwillingness to start a new book while awaiting one which will only cause its abandonment

[alexsarll]

Why do I persist in giving each sorry reanimation of the Manics cadaver a try? I suppose this time I have the excuse that JDB's solo album was pretty good (even if that was precisely through its distance from the Manics template), and Nicky's live show amusing in its way. But 'Your Love Alone Is Not Enough'...for all that the 'back to what they do best' talk is even more desperately emphatic than usual this time around, this single is clearly Simple Minds covering 'Help'. It is, quite simply, a disgrace. Please, chaps - stop while we can still just about remember that you meant something once.

Full details on the Parkland Walk plans here - I found the URL on a discarded letter beside the Walk, so clearly it's letting me know not to worry. They seem both sensitive and sensible; I'm just a little miffed that I've never been privileged to see any of the slow-worms which apparently live along one stretch.

I know there's been a bit of a retro crime revival recently - witness all those neo-mediaevalist protests about 'blasphemy' last year - but I was still surprised and almost touched to receive a European lottery scam by post. How delightfully old-fashioned!

Right, so Mars is warming up alongside Earth - but for demonstrably Martian reasons, namely dust storms, rather than because the same solar activity is affecting both planets. Doesn't that seem slightly odd? Let's be quite clear, I'm not saying that human-culpable carbon dioxide et al aren't warming the Earth, because I'm not insane and/or in the pay of Big Oil. Nor do I have any reason to suppose that dust storms and consequent colour changes aren't warming Mars - it reminds me of Daisyworld, but that's no objection. It's more that if two adjacent planets are both warming up for totally separate reasons...well, that's the sort of thing which makes me wonder if something Big Picture is going on, like when two totally different characters published by the same comics company start being taken grim'n'gritty in separate ways by their writers.

Comments

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

Of course, global warming might be a huge irrelevance if we all disappear into a black hole come November as tonight's Horizon expands on.

I quite like that Manics song actually, although obviously it's not a classic or anything. Still way better than what passes for indie pop these days, mind.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I did wonder how they sold that to their bosses. Sure, I don't really look at all the possible side effects on medication I take, but even a small risk of 'disintegrating the whole local astronomical area' would give me cause to pause.

The Manics are clearly better than the Arctic Twang View, but then so is dysentery. Modern indie, even if one excludes eg Patrick Wolf, can still offer us the Long Blondes, Franz Ferdinand...even 1990s are out of sight of that sorry dirge.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Alternately, maybe we can harness the power of that black hole to become Lords of Time!

(unless it's my liking the 1990s which you consider to presage the End)

[cappuccino-kid.livejournal.com]

Played with them last year. Dire, dire, pub-rock tribute.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Up to a point, but they remembered to write some tunes this time out.

If there turn out to be exactly 51 other earths, it might even be enough for DC to claw back some market share from Marvel. Might.

[guntrip.livejournal.com]

Sadly, that Manics single is one of the best tracks on the album..

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I find this worryingly plausible. Certainly the B-sides were even worse.

[guntrip.livejournal.com]

The only thing that counts as passable is the title track, the rest is a bland, overproduced mess. There's also a cover of Working Class Hero on it, which although my download leak didn't have, I can't imagine is anything other than dreadful.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, I'm not even keen on Marianne Faithfull's version of that, and I love her. Also, the Hefner album to which I'm listening is currently on a cover of the Specials' 'Monkey Man'. This is making me feel very, very anti-covers. And I speak as someone who loves both bands.

Ooooh, but now they're doing the Human League and it's much better...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Some of global warming on earth is down to the sun being a bit hotter over recent years. Thing is, it's not going to get cooler for ages, so actually, far from meaning that we can all stop worrying, it means that we need to alter our behaviour which causes the human-induced part of it by more than we thought we did if we want to stop it being as serious as we fear.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

While that's a useful corrective to some of the nonsense talked on the issue, at our current tech level I don't much fancy the idea of going up against a star...

[icecoldinalex.livejournal.com]

slow-worms! SLOW-WORMS! Alex we need to organise a slow-worm hunt!

[icecoldinalex.livejournal.com]

ALSO! did i ever draw your attention to this? The Turks make all the best films...

GUINEA PIG DOOM

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

That looks truly awesome.

But while I can sympathise with your enthusiasm, I cannot countenance a slow-worm hunt. They are noble, peaceful creatures; if they wish to reveal themselves to us, they shall choose their moment. The most we can do is keep an eye out.

Re: GUINEA PIG DOOM

[icecoldinalex.livejournal.com]

well, that's what my hunt would have entailed really, so its all good!

[blanche-carte.livejournal.com]

What a marvellous title. Where did it come from?
(I would love it to be the definition for a single word in an obscure east european language.)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Just my sentiments while pondering what to put in my bag for today, though I did wonder whether The Meaning of Liff might have a more succinct term for it.

Neither of the likely interruptors has arrived yet, of course.