Even more things I've been enjoying recently

Listening to: (There are more things I have been listening to than anything else because I have been doing 'Market Research' for my Dad which involves quite a lot of staring blankly at the computer and typing. It's better with music.)

Antony and the Johnsons, specifically this song.


This song makes me want to produce a film, just so I can use this as the soundtrack for a really sad scene when someone quite important has just died and everyone around is doing that slo-mo "we're fucked without Gandalf" crying. I think it's their best song. It's certainly the only one I can listen to more than once in one sitting, the others tend to get a bit whiney.
By the way I haven't watched the video, but I expect it's really weird.

Siouxsie and the Banshees. I love Souxsie Sioux. She comes across as a bit of a douchenozzle in that Bill Grundy clip, but she was young then and I think we should forgive her. Aaah, I wish it was the 80s so I could be a goth. Not a lame goth, a proper one.
Here is a cover by them. I gather it was featured in a horror film because there's lots of comments on the video that say things like 'OMG THAT SHIT IS CREEPY !1!!!1' Probably Jeepers Creepers, for obvious reasons, but luckily I've never seen that. That would be another thing horror films had ruined for me, along with:

• Being anywhere near a drain (It)
• Showering (It)
• Drinking cups of tea (It)
• Being in a wood (Blair Witch Project)
• Sleeping (Nightmare on Elm Street)
• Lying in bed, not sleeping (The Grudge)
• Being in a room with a blank television screen (The Ring)
• Answering the phone (The Ring)
• Not answering the phone (The Ring)
• Everything (Final Destination)

Here is the video.


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YAPPO (or whatever she says.)

Mumford and Sons, particularly this one.



Oh, this is so good. It also makes me want to produce a film, so I can use this to soundtrack a scene when someone is driving dramatically across a panoramic landscape in a race against time to save someone they love. But then they don't get there in time (the 'Aaaaah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah' bit). But then they realise that there is still hope (the second round of 'Aaah'ing).
Disclaimer: I made a huge mistake in listening to this, followed immediately by 'O Children' by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. NEVER DO THIS! IT IS TOO DEPRESSING FOR A HUMAN BEING TO HANDLE! It pretty much ruined my day. If you listen to this song, you should remedy it immediately with a very happy song. Tina Turner or something.

Yesayer. I saw these at Latitude this year, and thought they were so great I bought a tee shirt, which I don't do very often. Unfortunately it's a bit small because there was nowhere to try it on, but that's another story.
They are good, and BBC 6 Music is all over them at the moment. They're sort of Afro-Poppy, like Fool's Gold. There's probably a more technical term for what they are, but I don't know it.
Here is a song by them:



Reading: 
The Leaky Cauldron's Daily Quotedown to the Deathly Hallows Part 1 film. Pretty self-explanatory I suppose. Ron and Harry's big tiff is going to kill me a little inside. :-(.

Watching:
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. Go and see this! It's brilliant. I wasn't sure initially because lots of critics have given it bad/mediocre reviews. Ignore them, they're lame. Go and see it! It's really funny, and really cool. Especially if you're a twitcher like me. (I tend to get bored sitting still for a long time, and the fast pace helped to remedy this.) And there's a recurring joke with a hat, which I liked. It's very 'Canadian'. I can't really put my finger on what it was, but lots of the jokes reminded me of something a Canadian I used to live with would say. 


Over and out.

A worrying trend

There's a weird thing happening on my friends' facebook photos.
It seems that every week another of my female friends gets a centre parting. Not with a fringe, that's perfectly fine obviously, but a centre parting without a fringe. Where the hell this has come from I don't know, but I do think Alexa Chung might have something to do with it. Which is weird because even Alexa Chung looks stupid with a centre parting, so you wouldn't think anyone would want to copy her.

Even Sienna Miller looks weird with a centre parting.

Here is what I think of the centre parting:
no no no NO NO NOO! 
A centre parting is never okay! Never! It makes you look like Peter Andre! Why would anyone do this to themselves?
DON'T GET A  CENTRE PARTING! EVER!
The end.

Here are some things I enjoy:

Well kids, I've had a blog for a while and I still haven't done the obligatory 'Look at me, I'm a dickhead' post. That moment has finally arrived...

Unfortunately I couldn't make the images all pale and old-looking, but you'll just have to deal with that.

(By the way, I don't actually know who I'm writing to when I say 'Well kids'. I know of two people who read this blog, and only one of them does regularly. Ho hum.)

Dressing as a cat whilst home alone.

Large cardboard tubs of ice cream.

Small tufts of grass that look like hearts. 

I wonder if another dickhead found this before me and coiffed it into that shape? There's probably a blog somewhere with an identical picture. I bet it's a Tumblr though. 

Right I'm off to listen to Fevers and Mirrors and shop for nerd glasses.

Bye!

God I hate yoghurt adverts

Second post in a day! I just had to do two because I saw an Activia advert starring Tiffany from Eastenders. In this advert she is wearing a pair of very unflattering jeans and for some reason loads of people are swarming round her trying to put makeup on her. She says she needs a snack and everyone inexplicably freezes. Then she TURNS HER NOSE UP AT A TIERED CAKE STAND OF REALLY DELICIOUS LOOKING CAKES (Not cupcakes-I have aired my views on cupcakes) AND GOES AND GETS SOME SHIT-INDUCING YOGHURT FROM THE FRIDGE INSTEAD!
Noone, nowhere, would look at a plate of cakes and go 'Hmm, not really what I had in mind, instead I'll have an Activia which is infinitely more tasty'. They might look at a plate of cakes, wring their hands and go 'God that plate of cakes looks delicious, but I'm on a diet so I'll have to have this lumpy poo-yoghurt with a weird tinny aftertaste instead. My life is a joke.'
This low fat yoghurt advert was typical of all low fat yoghurt adverts. In the world of low fat yoghurt adverts, yoghurt is the best kind of food there is. It is better than cakes and pies and mousses and ice cream and tiramisu and strudels and trifles. In the world of low fat yoghurt adverts, yoghurt is just as tasty as these things but it's FAT FREE! so you don't have to deal with the GUILT! YAY!
a) Who cares about fat free anyway? People got over low-fat in the eighties. Now the done thing is to drink a gallon of olive oil everyday, eat 10 bags of nuts and roll around in butter and avocado to keep your skin and hair nice. And avoid sugar, which low fat yoghurts are full of.
b) Yoghurt is not as nice as any other dessert. It is sloppy and doesn't fill you up and isn't real food. It is not a 'treat'. I have a theory that noone actually likes yoghurt, they just buy it because they think it's the done thing. What is there to like about yoghurt? Nothing, that's what.
In the world of yoghurt adverts, not only is yoghurt some kind of heavenly nectar, but eating yoghurt is a social event. Women meet in shopping centres and museums to eat yoghurt, but most commonly they go to each other's houses and all flop around enjoying yoghurts. And all they talk about is how good the yoghurts are. 'Mmmm, tastes like apple pie!'. No it doesn't, though, does it? It tastes like a yoghurt trying to taste like an apple pie, which doesn't taste at all like an apple pie because IT'S A YOGHURT.
If I went to someone's house and they said 'Come in, I'll get the yoghurt!' before handing me a Muller Rice I'd think they were faintly odd. If they had every different flavour of Muller Rice and had put one aside for each of their guests I'd edge out of the house before running home as fast as I could.
But according to yoghurt adverts, when I am in my late 30s, the highlight of my day will be lunchtime. At lunchtime I will fall exhausted into an armchair and think 'Well, after that good hard morning of housework, I really fancy a treat.' Then I will smile wickedly to myself and think 'I know just the thing.' Then I'll pad sneakily to the fridge and get myself a yoghurt. Before I know it all my middle-aged (but still hip) friends will be over in their yoga trousers and mumsy hoodies talking about how fucking great yoghurt is. Better than shopping and sex and fulfilment and everything.

Above is the bleakest yoghurt advert of all time. Not only is the woman really annoying, but her poor bemused husband can't understand how she can be eating all this delicious stuff and not be a fat cow. Joke's on you, bemused husband, because it's YOGHURT! She was talking about YOGHURT all along!

Now I am going to shower and try and scrub off some of the despair watching that horrible advert left me with.