![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Aliens, spiders, music, banks
Sep. 25th, 2009 12:57 pmI didn't do that 'what are people's misconceptions about me' meme a couple of weeks back, because for the most part: I'm not going to know them; or correcting them would make me sound like a tool; or correcting them would be strategically mistaken. But, I imagine it might surprise people that 'til ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xandratheblue showed me a couple last night, I'd never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone. 'Treehouse of Horror' and other pastiches, sure, plus more 2000AD Future Shocks than I care to number. Even a couple of episodes of the godawful revival of the rip-off Outer Limits (yeah, you may control the horizontal and the vertical - but I control the Off switch, suckers). I was on to 'The Eye of the Beholder''s twist within five minutes - because I've grown up with all those twist endings The Twilight Zone helped inspire - but it was still brilliantly executed, for the most part; the budget must have been tiny but the script and the camerawork meant that didn't matter. Just a shame they let in touches of 1984 melodrama when they could have kept the world looking exactly like USA 1960 except for that one little detail. But the McCarthyite paranoia of 'The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street' was simply perfect. Must investigate further, so thank heavens for the internet, eh?
Lots of spiders about this Autumn, apparently. "Just leave them alone and they will leave you alone", says John Partridge of the British Arachnological Society. So, if I climb through a stranger's window and then run around their house, or simply lurk in a corner looking sinister, I am leaving that person alone, am I?
Into Central on Wednesday, where under louring skies I realise this is my first time out since The London Paper folded, so as people trudge past me with their freesheets, they're all reading the same one. The one which, of the two rags (both fairly poor, obviously) takes the markedly more negative approach. And even if the cheerier one had triumphed, that uniformity would have felt like a tiny tick forward on the Doomsday Clock (exliontamer suggests that anything can seem apocalyptic if the headphones soundtrack it that way, but I was only listening to the new Madness). I'm headed for Pure Groove, allegedly a record shop but in fact a cafe/bar which also sells a bit of music - like so many artists, they've clearly realised that the sale of physical copies of music is not where the money lies anymore. The set-up is fairly Nathan Barley, especially the support act (transvestite riot grrrl would have been a brilliant idea, 15 years ago), but I'm there for Gyratory System who have no apparent connection to all this - or indeed, to any other context of which I'm aware. I don't know whether nobody else makes stuff like this, or whether it's just that I don't hear it, but it's an utterly new sound to me. The first track is the best bits of Spirtualized without Jason Pierce whinging over the top; the second sounds like some funky seventies film themes remixed without the kitschiness that usually entails; the third mixes bits of both and then somehow sounds vaguely Egyptian too. Great stuff.
One side effect of the banking crisis, and the banks' refusal to mend their ways even when underpinned by our money, and the government's refusal to make them, is that now when you get a mail like this:
Dear Friend
I am Garry Loopy,Manager Bank of scotland.A muitinational company opted an overdraft from our bank and was over invoiced with six million pounds so i wish to transfer the funds to your account for both of us.
write me via: garyc1908@live.com. for details
Best regrad.
gary loopy
...it no longer seems that implausible that the muppet running a major bank might a) have English of that standard and b) regard this as sound banking practice.
xandratheblue showed me a couple last night, I'd never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone. 'Treehouse of Horror' and other pastiches, sure, plus more 2000AD Future Shocks than I care to number. Even a couple of episodes of the godawful revival of the rip-off Outer Limits (yeah, you may control the horizontal and the vertical - but I control the Off switch, suckers). I was on to 'The Eye of the Beholder''s twist within five minutes - because I've grown up with all those twist endings The Twilight Zone helped inspire - but it was still brilliantly executed, for the most part; the budget must have been tiny but the script and the camerawork meant that didn't matter. Just a shame they let in touches of 1984 melodrama when they could have kept the world looking exactly like USA 1960 except for that one little detail. But the McCarthyite paranoia of 'The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street' was simply perfect. Must investigate further, so thank heavens for the internet, eh?Lots of spiders about this Autumn, apparently. "Just leave them alone and they will leave you alone", says John Partridge of the British Arachnological Society. So, if I climb through a stranger's window and then run around their house, or simply lurk in a corner looking sinister, I am leaving that person alone, am I?
Into Central on Wednesday, where under louring skies I realise this is my first time out since The London Paper folded, so as people trudge past me with their freesheets, they're all reading the same one. The one which, of the two rags (both fairly poor, obviously) takes the markedly more negative approach. And even if the cheerier one had triumphed, that uniformity would have felt like a tiny tick forward on the Doomsday Clock (
exliontamer suggests that anything can seem apocalyptic if the headphones soundtrack it that way, but I was only listening to the new Madness). I'm headed for Pure Groove, allegedly a record shop but in fact a cafe/bar which also sells a bit of music - like so many artists, they've clearly realised that the sale of physical copies of music is not where the money lies anymore. The set-up is fairly Nathan Barley, especially the support act (transvestite riot grrrl would have been a brilliant idea, 15 years ago), but I'm there for Gyratory System who have no apparent connection to all this - or indeed, to any other context of which I'm aware. I don't know whether nobody else makes stuff like this, or whether it's just that I don't hear it, but it's an utterly new sound to me. The first track is the best bits of Spirtualized without Jason Pierce whinging over the top; the second sounds like some funky seventies film themes remixed without the kitschiness that usually entails; the third mixes bits of both and then somehow sounds vaguely Egyptian too. Great stuff. One side effect of the banking crisis, and the banks' refusal to mend their ways even when underpinned by our money, and the government's refusal to make them, is that now when you get a mail like this:
Dear Friend
I am Garry Loopy,Manager Bank of scotland.A muitinational company opted an overdraft from our bank and was over invoiced with six million pounds so i wish to transfer the funds to your account for both of us.
write me via: garyc1908@live.com. for details
Best regrad.
gary loopy
...it no longer seems that implausible that the muppet running a major bank might a) have English of that standard and b) regard this as sound banking practice.
