Alasdair Watson

Last night’s gig was … mixed. The band were very, very good. Beautiful, complex strands of sound shifting around each other, building from whisper to medlodious cacophony. I like the increased vocal element in the new material, as well – it lends the whole thing a bit more clarity, gives the listener a more informed hook into the soundscapes.

So yeah, a good time.

But by the end of it, I was ready to do bloody violence upon half the audience. From the bastards behind us who persisted in talking over all the quiet bits, to the idiots who kept shh-ing people more loudly than the people were actually talking, and most especially to the muppets who kept shouting over Ephrim as he was trying to talk. OK, I’m not sure it was a wholly smart move, trying to bring any level of political opinion into the stage patter, but then, it’s not like they’re an apolitical act. Still, while I don’t expect everyone to agree with them (I don’t entirely agree with them myself), I figure that if I’ve paid the price of admission, I might as well listen to what the man’s got to say. And I would have liked the chance to do that without it turning into a fight between Ephrim and some Kerry supporting fuckwit in the audience. Not a fight, of susbtance, you understand – just a fuckwit who wouldn’t let the poor sod finish a sentence without interruption. Debate, I can handle. Basic rudeness, not so much.

Still, as I said to a friend, the music was great, and the lady violinists pulchritudinous[1], and there’s not a lot more you can ask for…

[1] All women[2] violinists are, in my experience. Why this should be, I have no idea, but I’m not complaining.
[2] The men may be as well, but I’m not exactly sensitive to that sort of thing, and I don’t recall having seen any that stood out…

10 years ago today, Bill Hicks died. His material on the gulf war, on the other hand, could have been written yesterday.

I read in the papers today that the charges against Katharine Gun have been droppped. This surprises me somewhat, as she’s plainly bloody guilty, and as far as I understand these things was largely fighting the case in order that certain evidence would come out in court. The speculation is that the charges were dropped because the government did not want Lord Goldsmith’s advice to the government about the legality of the war on Iraq being published.

This is of course, being denied. But yeah, I think it’s a bit bloody suspicious that the charges were dropped the day after the defense brought their intent to look to Lord Goldsmith’s advice in court. The official reason being given is that there was fear that a majority of 12 randomly selected jurors would be reflexively anti-war, and would acquit on that basis, and thus damage the force of the Official Secrets Act. Personally, I think this is toss – no-one worries about a majority of 12 randomly selected jurors being in favour of legalising cannabis when they’re called on to give a verdict in a trial relating to cannabis, and from my own experience, I can say that a jury is capable of setting aside their own feelings on a subject and coming to decision.

The second gulf war was like the first, only conducted under false pretenses, and quite possibly criminal so, y’know, worse.

There’s a temptation to look back at the past, and say that things for better then. For the most part, I tend to look askance at doing that sort of thing. But christ, a decade on, and not only are we going to war with a man we armed in the first place, but we’re being lied to with impugnity by the people we elect to represent us. And we’re letting them away with it, all while watching the fuckers stripmine our education system and fuck over one of our greatest journalistic institutions. And America looks like it’s going to asked to choose between Skull-and-Bones-man in office, and Skull-and-Bones-man in opposition at the next election, and I just don’t see things getting better for the world any time soon.

And Bill Hicks is still dead.

A virus with fucking shoes, ladies and gents.

Apparently, our home internet should now be twice the speed it used to be, as our 1Mb upgrade has just gone through. Hurrah! So, naturally, I’m going to be in the house with the time to use it for about three hours between now and Sunday. Still, they’ll be three very fast hours. I’ll have to find some large files to download…

Tonight, I am off to Kings Cross to sell my body on streetcorners.

No, wait, that’s not right. I mean, the money would be nice, but I’ve still got my pride. No, tonight, I’m going to see the band with the possibly the strangest name in the world – The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band – I hadn’t intended to go when the gig was first announced, as I felt a bit let down by the Godspeed gig I saw, but I hated the venue, so I figure I’ll give Silver Mt Zion a go, and see if they’re any better live, in a different venue. I feel like a bit of an eejit, though, as I stupidly assumed that I’d have MP3s of their albums and Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s albums on my work machine to listen to today. I don’t. This is stupid, as they’re perfect music to work to, and yes somehow I’ve forgotten to bring them in with me to MP3, and I can’t seem to find anywhere to grab them from on-line.

I’ve also managed to miss the latest Silver Mt Zion album, so I’ll have to see if I can’t pick it up at the gig tonight.

Leaving work today, I got within sight of my bus-stop just in time to watch my bus pulling away. When I reached the stop, I discovered that there wasn’t likely to be another one for at least fifteen minutes. Bollocks to it, I thought. I shall walk along the route until another bus comes. Note: not run, not jog, just walk.

Approximately half an hour later, I overtook the bus that I had seen pulling away, and indeed, waited for five minutes at the next stop along for it to catch up with me.

The congestion charge zone isn’t big enough, or the price isn’t steep enough. One of the two. It’s complete insanity that it should be faster for me to walk two miles than take a bus. I can understand the need to own a car if you live out in the countryside, or want to go out there, but if you’re within the six zones of London transport, why in christ would you drive *inward* into London? You might as well walk…

But I’m pleased with myself, so I’m writing about it. After some effort, I’ve got the ‘Now Playing’ feature back on Black Ink – or rather, replaced it with a ‘Recently Played’ feature. It’s a bit egocentric, thinking that anyone gives a toss what I’ve been listening to, but so’s the whole damn site, and I mostly did it for the technical challenge.

This sounds pretty trivial – after all, there are tools that’ll do it for you if you use WinAmp on the PC, or iTunes on the Mac. But I, of course, am a difficult bastard, and use iTunes on the PC, so instead of being able to get nice little application to do it for me, I’ve had to cobble together a means to take the XML that you can generate with iTunes, parse and sort it, and dump it out. The sorting was the biggest bastard, and still isn’t perfect, as the most recently played is actually at the bottom of the list, but if I want to keep the ‘Recently Played’ function on iTunes useful, and not limited to the last five tracks I’ve played (and I do) I’m going to have to live with it, until I can be arsed to re-write the thing from the ground up.

Which I’d like to, because at the moment, it’s completely custom to the way I want it to display on my site, rather than being generic, but it’ll wait until I have a week or so spare.

Counties I have visited

After a fairly last minute decision, I wound up at B-movie last night, and as per, it was ace, although it means that I am almost certainly not clubbing tonight, unless I drink enough to override my good judgement. Yes, I am a big wuss.

Completely missed spotting winterthing while we were in the club, and so when she wandered past while I was waiting for a night bus, I thought “Nah, couldn’t be”, forgetting, of course, that the world is always smaller than I think. Collapsed into bed and fell asleep watching Spaced at just gone three, which is, I think, the fastest I’ve made it back from Kings Cross…

Leaving for the V-lantines massacre at some point soon, honest. As soon as I feel able to move my neck…

Tried Bison for lunch. Wasn’t really terribly impressed – it was nice, but I prefered the other interesting meats I’ve had at the gastropub, I think. The spinach was the nicest spinach I’ve ever had, faint praise though that is.

In a staggering move, I’ve actually had really good customer service from BT. Our ADSL has been moved to our new provider, and when I phoned BT to confirm that my old account with them had been closed, the man on the other of the line noticed that they’d take a payment for a month’s ADSL yesterday (I knew it’d happen and was OK with it – just an unfortunate coincidence of dates) and he didn’t think this was terrbily fair, given that I’d essentially paid for a month’s BT ADSL, only to use less than 24 hours of it before switching ISP, so it’s going to be refunded to me apparently. Result.

Gosh, my life’s exciting.

Edit: Del, here’s the link to Paul’s review we were talking about last night.

I’ve mislaid my Kodo CDs, which is annoying, because after seeing them on Friday, I really want to listen to them some more. There was a bit more flute/dance Kabuki type-stuff this time out, and I confess, it’s more the drumming that I go for, but still, massively impressive. I see there’s a DVD of this tour coming out later in the year, which will be very cool, because while the drums sound good, it’s the sheer physicality of the performance that’s most impressive – in particular, the second half closer as two mad bastards beat on a taiko drum that’s bigger than they are, using sticks like baseball bats.

Went out round town on Saturday, looking for a new bag. Failed to find one, although I did get a new shirt. The met up with Gordon and fire_sermon for dinner at Garlic and Shots which was a bloody good laugh.

Spent most of yesterday in bed, because I didn’t have anything pressing to do. So I finished Be My Enemy (which, truth be told, I was a little disappointed by, although the bit with the chef made me laugh like a drain, which I suspect means there’s something very, very wrong with me), and watched Plunkett and Macleane, which I’ve always liked a lot more than the film probably deserves, but hadn’t watched in a while. I suspect I’ve mislaid my copy of the soundtrack as well, which is annoying.