Posts from January 2006

In January/February 2006 Blog 7 was about Endings

In tribute to Tom drawing NYLPM to a close.

And as a firther tribute to the top 100 tracks of that blog never reaching number 1, we thought it would be good to end the top 13 endings at number 4. But for anyone looking back in the archive and wondering where we might have gone

THE FT TOP 13 ENDINGS: 3. They all died, the cat died
THE FT TOP 13 ENDINGS: 2. The End is the Beginning
THE FT TOP 13 ENDINGS: 1. They all lez up

Barring anyone jumping in and back-dating posts on there, you will NEVER KNOW why these are so great. Or perhaps you will

Reasons I’m Glad I DO Eat Meat #1

In yr face St John!

(OK maybe not – alert readers will be able to spot the exact point at which this human coyote loses me, and I suspect many others…)

Reasons I’m Glad I Don’t Eat Meat, #295835

SOFIA — Bulgarian customs stopped a 75-ton shipment of beef meat from Ireland that may have been frozen since 1984, local media reported on Monday.

See here for more.

Who Needs Europa

When we’ve got our own alien lifeforms right here on Earth? Two enormous lakes have been discovered under the ice sheet that covers Antarctica. Since they were formed as a result of tectonic action rather than being scooped out by glaciers, they’ve probably been down there, laking it up, for millions of years.

And “down there” is really far down — more than 2 miles (3.5 km), so far that it’s warm enough to keep it all liquid.

No one has any idea what’s really down there. But speculation amongst English speakers in the know (i.e. research scientists at Columbia University, the University of New Hampshire and NASA) is that the lakes are probably home to some kind of “extremophiles” — organisms that always have to take things TO THE EXTREME.

Smithswatch

Samuel Smith’s lager range in new twist!

OK in the good old days, now cruelly tooken from us, you had:

AYINGERBRAU = honest yeoman of lagers, man in a box.
PRINZ = vaguely spivvy premium effort with a blue stein.
D PILS = ‘ultra-premium’ 6% loopy juice.

Since the re-brand you now have new ranges:

ALPINE LAGER – this is Ayingerbrau as was, entirely unchanged.
SAM SMITH’S PURE BREWED LAGER – the new SS premium lager, with a big tall stein and special tall glasses. It is not very interestingly designed, to the point of me maybe getting its name wrong. Our best guess was that it is Prinz rebranded, and to be fair Prinz did need a rebrand. Nobody we knew ever drank Prinz so who can say.

And D Pils had vanished entirely, possibly for legal reasons. And that was that –

UNTIL FRIDAY when we noticed a third lager on display – “TADDY LAGER”. Its stein has an olde-tymey picture of some hops or barley or something, denoting its traditional Tadcaster methods. Was it D reincarnated? I craned to look at the ABV – 3 and a bit percent, definitely the weakest lager in the range.

(of course it could be D pils with 50% water added)

So Sams have used their BLOOD MONEY from murdering the fat man to splash out on a whole new brew – initial tasting by Mr Alan suggested that it is very unpleasant. We’ll be keeping our eye open for more own-brand folly from the Tadcaster Tyrants – watch this space.

SCIENTIFICKAL ADVICE: food storage division

imagine you have had many x ppl round one nice eve and served food and out the leftovers in the fridge in tupperware boxes and then went off to stay w.relatives for ten days at WOBs and came back and forgot abt the ANCIENT MUMMIFIED JELLY AND CREAM stored right at the back of the fridge and were anyway superbusy what with tax and a book deadline and a mag deadline and various new year things and you finally got round to it and trepidatiously OPENED THE BOX!!

i. DEAL WITH WHAT YOU FIND IMMEDIATELY however APPALLING, bcz otherwise
ii. THE MOULD SPORES WILL ESCAPE and set up a REVOLUTIONARY COLONIAL GOVERNMENT in OTHER REACHES OF THE FRIDGE

THE FT TOP 13 ENDINGS: 4. The end of the First Pokemon Movie

Because all bets are off in a kids film, the outcome can be more outrageous, whether for good or bad. It’s the free-hand to go that bit further than the adults would stand that can produce a GAINT gem or a GIANT turd.

The end of the FIRST (gulp) Pokemon Movie stunned me and had me in fits. FIrst off the CLIMACTIC FIGHT, then the SACRIFICE and RESURRECTION.

CLIMACTIC FIGHT
This is between a small pink cat that sort of floats about and has a vocabulary of one word “mew”, and a SUPER MUTANT HUMANOID GONZO-PSYCHIC cat that speaks in a BOOMING GROWL of a voice, and says all the great BAD GUY things like “Foolish humans, you cannot stand in my way!!!!!”. So in the “fight banter” you have “WHY DO YOU CARE FOR THESE INSIGNIFICANT CREATURES – THEY ARE THE PAST, WE ARE THE FUTURE. JOIN ME AND WE SHALL CRUSH THEM… OR DIE!!!” which is trumped with a teeny “mew”.

marvellous

SACRIFICE and RESURRECTION
Ash, the human “hero” rushes in “Can’t well all live together?” style, and is killed OMG. All the pokemon cry at the loss and THEIR TEARS BRING HIM BACK TO LIFE.

fantastic

THE FT TOP 13 ENDINGS: 5. The corpse return to life

BOOO! The genre is horror/thriller. It’s Carrie (good), it’s Fatal Attraction (bad). Just when you thought it was safe to relax a final jolt just to leave you a little bit tingly. This has fallen into disrepute of late as a trick that’s too easy, too cheap. BEING CHEAP IS WHAT MAKES IT GREAT. Idiots. Why does everyone think it’s a criticism to say something is “cheap” or “lazy” all of a sudden? I’ll tell you what’s lazy, criticising something for being lazy. SAY WHY AT LEAST. Hoist, petard, etc.

Lazy tricks STILL WORK, and this one is designed to make you laugh as you leave – and that’s no bad thing. Carrie’s arm sticking out of the ground – YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS? someone is being mocked, either the preceding film, or the viewer. Either way you leave with a little grin. What shows that a lazy trick is effective, is that it can be used badly. Fatal Attraction, though it re-ignited a mini-craze for this ending, was a RUBBISH use of it cos it was REQUIRED. Not expected, cos it still managed to shock (oh come on it did, a bit), but the (rubbish) story required a definite end – there was no way “lady who like shagging” was going to end up any other way than 150% dead. Merely ambiguously unconscious/unmoving in the water is insufficient for an audience ravening for closure.

And as the rollercoaster comes gently back to the waiting queue BRAKE..ACCELERATE and stop. Everyone gets off smiling and giggling.

JUDGE DOG DEEB

You’ve met the Judge, now meet the dog! Although frankly I can’t believe that DDD wd have a VEGETARIAN dog – shurely that must be the dread influence of MIMPY MILLS.

8.30 tonight, BBC1, staying-in fans!!

THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT LOST

Spiral Jetty cleanup: Utah officials last month removed several tons of junk from Rozel Point, the area along the Great Salt Lake’s north shore that is home to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.   “Anyone who has made the trip to see the famous Spiral Jetty . . . has passed through the area and certainly noted that it was an eyesore,” says Joel Frandsen, director of the state Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, which supervised the cleanup along with the state Division of Oil, Gas and Mining. Workers removed 18 loads of junk and plugged more than a dozen abandoned oil wells. Salt Lake Tribune

I wrote here a little while back about how the spiral jetty was contained in a failed oil bed, and that the point was that Smithson considered his work in a larger context, of how people interfered with the land, and how it was considered an extension of modernist obsessions with industry. Cleaning it up, making it pristine, is removing the context entirely. The Tribune placed this as a last item in a series of exhibition notes, calls for submissions and minor news, like a “isn’t that nice coda”, ignoring the damage done.