Welcome to 1995

1995. What a year. A year when the internet didn’t really exist. No mobile phones. No iPods. No email. No nothing really. Just a soulless existence where you had to actually be on time to meet people and where Blur were preparing to do  battle with Oasis.

Well I’ve been forcibly transported back to that happy year as my iPhone has been sent to hospital.  Apparently they don’t appreciate being watered and my insurance company insists on inspecting its damaged carcass before asking Apple for a new one. For two long weeks I will be incommunicado via a mobile telephony device.  This is the first time for 10 years I have been without a phone for more than one day. This may get difficult especially given I am addicted to all things internets and insist on having a constant soundtrack to my life piped directly into my earholes. Instant cold turkey.  Probably in 5 hours I’ll be curled up in a corner shivering and covered in my own vomit. Or I’ll feel strangely liberated. Maybe this is the very push I need to stop checking twitter every 5 minutes?

Only a very long two week time will tell.

Your message has been reported to ebay

I hate ebay and I hate the touts that extort fans.  I’ve written about it before.  But mainly I hate them because they write in HUGE CAPTIAL LETTERS always centre justified.  So not only do they have 8 tickets to a gig that has already sold out despite only having been on sale for an hour, they have a terrible eye for asthetics.  They are the worst humans.

I decided to take a small stand.  So I sent one of them a message. The kind of message a mother would send to scold a child: ‘you should be ashamed of yourself’ etc.  5 seconds later I get a reply.  ’your message has been reported to ebay’.  That’s the ebay equivalent of ‘I’m getting my dad on you’. Well bring it on fuckos. I’m ready for a fight.

Fuck you media

What a week.

Adam gets blown up in Spooks; Russell Brand resigns due to the whirlwind of Daily Mail style moralising and outrage; and now David Tennant quits Doctor Who. So a big Fuck You to the media post coming up.

Ironic considering I technically am the media, this is the media (a teeny tiny part of it), I work in the media, and generally munch my way through a lot of media all day every day… nom nom nom I go. But today took the fecking arsing biscuit.

Today I was progressing nicely from Denial to Anger to Bargaining in my five stages of grief at the untimely loss of the lovely Adam Carter from Spooks on Monday. I’ve reached Depression now safe in the knowledge that I waited a full year for this episode and it ends with a ridiculously teeny bomb that would have killed hardly any kiddies at all. Fine. Thanks BBC. I’m fine about it really. No no, honestly I am. Liked your CGI car bomb. NOT. But why not have him stub his toe and die of septicemia? Or fall of a step ladder doing some DIY?

Oh then iplayer, who NEVER email me, suddenly decide to taunt me today with the subject line

Will Spooks’ Adam make it out alive?

Well the answer’s no isn’t it? Because IF YOU KNEW ME AT ALL you would know that I’ve already watched both episodes on your stupid yet marvelous iplayer and know that he’s dead, dead, dead. Anyway… ahem. Moving swiftly on.

The whole Russell-Ross-Manuel-affair. I mean blimey. Words (almost) fail me. News coverage has left me despairing and wondering where all the people with common sense have disappeared to. I particularly liked the humourless transcripts printed in The Sun and how the poor girl felt too tramutised to continue her burlesque show in Europe but found enough strength to have a chat to The Sun and The Mail on Sunday.

Oh how the media love a ‘national scandal’ (quote ITV news at 10). Bored newsrooms up and down the land sick to death of the arsing credit crunch, or desensitsed by any number of the horrific wars going on this very moment must rub their hands with delight at the chance to tear down a couple of foolish telly celebrities like a pack of crazed kiddies that have had too much Sunny-D.

Anyway urban blog recounts the whole grizzly affair. Do have a read. And then laugh or weep at the idiocy of it all.

Last but definitely not least the wonderful, charming, delicious, funny, and other superlative adjectives but not forgetting beautiful David Tennant is quitting Doctor Who. We all knew this. We all knew that Moffet taking over would mean a whole change of, well everything. But to announce it today of all days? That’s just bad form. If there are any Kurt Cobain style suicides tomorrow I wouldn’t be surprised. But that would probably only end up buried on page 7 while the braying idiots spew righteous venom about Brand quitting all over the front pages while the world rolls on towards catastrophic climate change, or bankruptcy. But who cares about that boring news? LOL!!??!!1one!!. Fuck you media

Going to gigs

Currently there are 85 entries on ebay for Eddie Izzard tickets mostly being offered from ‘power-sellers’ or professional ticket touts. This makes me so angry on a number of levels:

1. Buying tickets to a relatively popular gig is a coronary inducing easy-jet style scramble. Eddie Izzard is a prime example: a 21 night show ’sold out’ in under two hours. Minutes later no less than 80 ebay entries appeared with claims of ‘ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT SEATS! A GREAT XMAS PRESENT’. Yes thank you kind tout what a lovely Christmas present; I was trying to buy them myself but so kind of you to offer me yours instead.

2. For popular gigs that ’sell-out’ in a blink of an eye the re-sell prices are eye-wateringly extortionate. My great Christmas present can set you back £200 (each). I’ve seen tickets claiming to be front row selling for £600 each (10 times the actual price).

3. Gigs that sell out this fast don’t actually sell out at all. My Friday night Mogwai adventure sold out pretty rapidly yet there were masses of empty seats on the balcony.

4. Because ebay profits from this they won’t do anything about it. I bet a vast proportion of their sales come from this market rather than the ‘ooo, I’m clearing out my attic’ market.

There are many other reasons that make this desperately unfair to the fans. I won’t get to see Eddie Izzard this November and I can bet you there are empty seats every night because of this problem.

The only event that does anything about this is Glastonbury who make it impossible for people to resell their tickets. Are they applauded? Of course not. What happened instead? It took months to sell out as well it should and everyone deems Glastonbury a failure because nobody wants to go. Utterly depressing.

Things that annoy me

1.  Physically impossible to get into without a lot of swearing and industrial strength hydraulic cutting tools like what firemen use in car accidents plastic covered items such as x-box wireless adapters

2.  Once sprung from its plastic prison, setting up wireless network for x-box live.  What a fecking nightmare.  I’m good at following instructions.  I’m good at ‘boy stuff’ like computers and map-reading but this is beyond a joke.  I am still unable to enter all the correct information before the fucker wants to test the connection.  Once it tries to connect and finds it can’t, it forgets what I’ve told it.  I want to cry, die, or murder indiscriminately without mercy.  Which I would be able to if I could GET THIS BLOODY THING TO WORK.

Why I’m sitting in a darkened room on a Sunday and not outside in the sun like the rest of humanity is for another post.  Just to say that at this precise moment I hate just about everything and everyone.  

Filming them, filming us

Interesting film from Current_TV about the potential for confusion about the rights to take pictures and film on the streets.

What I found most disturbing was the aggressive questioning of the ‘police officer’. He eventually gets fed up and tells the man to shut up. Horrid and all too familiar of those drunk on power. More on my own run in with the law at a later date.

I don’t need a nanny thanks, I’m 27.

People moan about the nanny state, etc. Me? I don’t really mind that much being told how much veg I have to eat to stay alive, how much salt will kill me, to look both ways before I’m run over, but this is the final straw.

My iPod has colluded with my headphones for no other reason than to make me almost loose it on a crowded train. If I want to deafen myself with thumpy drums and Thom Yorke’s wailing then I should bloody well be allowed to do it right? Wrong. My favourite loud track didn’t even get loud enough to drown out that bloody patronising train lady telling me where I’m going, to mind the gap, and to watch out for unattended packages every 30 seconds . A far as I remember the last package that exploded on public transport was very much attended. Anyway I digress.

I tapped the + sign in frustration but it refused to budge louder than dinner party ambiance. Then I tried to trick it by turning it down and then up again slowly. No such luck the smug bastard. I contemplated hurling it out of the window but thought better of it – I paid 70 quid for those Bose headphones and this is how they repay me? They think they’re doing this for my own good? For the good of my hearing? Bollocks. They’re doing it to piss me off.

Trouble is they seem enforce their fascist volume control policy totally at random so the next track nearly did deafen me as Beck’s timebomb exploded in my ear canal.

Go fuck ya headphones!