Lazy Rhymes

Okay, today is a two-post day because Take a Walk on the Wild Side just came up on my iPod when I was shuffling songs. I do like that song, but I have always been really annoyed by the bit that goes:
'But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head'.
Argh, the rhyme of 'head' with 'head' just slices right to my core!

Then I got thinking about other songs that do that, and realised that there are actually quite a few. The first one that springs to mind is War Pigs:
'Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses.'
Now, not only is that lazy but it's quite forced as well. At least 'even when she was giving head' kind of fits in with the rest of Take a Walk on the Wild Side- it's about the antics of a wild transvestite (I think), and giving head is something a wild transvestite would probably do. But the witches simile is just a bit weird. I know they mention sorcerers later in the verse, but I can't help thinking that they did that after thinking 'Hmm how can we follow up that weird witches simile we had to shoehorn into the first couple of lines because we are too lazy to even look the word 'masses' up in a rhyming dictionary?'. Sort it out Ozzy.

Then there's The Beatles. Even The Beatles are not above this.
'Hey Jude, don't make it bad,
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.'
Come to think of it, why did I think the Beatles would be above this? The entire chorus of Hey Jude consists of the word 'Nah'!

Oh god, and then there's that horrible HORRIBLE Kid Rock one that samples Werewolves of London and had a midi of Sweet Home Alabama as the chorus and was all over the radio a couple of years ago...
'We were trying different things
And we were smoking funny things
Making love out by the lake to our favourite songs.'
Go and die, Kid Rock. Your songs make me sick, and the mental image of you making love with anyone out by a lake makes me want to do an Oedipus and gouge my eyes out.


Last one I can think of is Light My Fire:
'Come on baby light my fire,
Try to set the night on fire.'
...I can't think of a witty comment to round this off. So...er...

Then there's The Hardest Button to Button by the White Stripes.

'It didn't last long, because I stopped it,

I grabbed a rag doll and stuck some little pins in it.'

I am kind of inclined to forgive the White Stripes because I am sure they probably put that in in a sneery kind of way. 'Our percussion is as lazy as our rhymes, we just can't be bothered to be rock stars because we are too cool'.

So what have we learnt today? That a lot of songs have lazy rhymes in them, but that sometimes it is acceptable. I am going to start collecting these and writing them down whenever I hear one.

Lotte Reiniger

Ack, I'm moving to Madrid on the 2nd of January! I have so much to do: flat-hunting, Spanish-learning, wardrobe-paring, Christmas-related activities.
So naturally I find myself watching early 20th century stop-motion animation.
This is Lotte Reiniger, who was a German film director and artist from 1918 onwards. She used shadow puppets.

I love love love fairy tales and folk tales, and I really like the way these have been done because the silhouettes are so intricate-looking and the scenery seems to have loads of depth even though it's only 2-dimensional. I think a still from one of her films would look really cool on a t-shirt, and might have to make myself one.
Anyway, off to learn some Spanish. Over and out.

This film looks just awful!

Well, I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 on Friday and yesterday (yes, it is that good, but that's not important right now.) As you would expect, there was a wide and varied selection of trailers before the film. One for Tron, which looks quite clever because Jeff Bridges plays a younger version of himself in it. One for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I might go and see because I have a weird thing for Prince Caspian. One for Meet the Parents: Little Fockers which I won't go and see because it looks dreadful and their only joke is still that 'Focker' sounds like 'Fucker'.

And THEN. THEN there was this trailer. (I can't embed it.)
It's a film about a train that is unstoppable. Presumably in the same way that the Titanic was unsinkable, because obviously it's going to end with the train being stopped. But this is no ordinary unstoppable train. Oh, no. This is train with HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS on the back. 8 trucks full of hazardous chemicals to be precise! OMG, how could this get any worse?

Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. You know that unmanned train with no airbrakes and 8 trucks full of hazardous chemicals on the back of it? Well it's zooming towards a train full of cute schoolchildren! Oh, and when it stops the chemicals will cause a big explosion that will kill everyone.

Who will stop this unstoppable train? Not the corporate fatcats. They're so out of touch with the real world of  real men and real trains, they just sit in their ivory towers and talk about profit and loss. The only hope for this trainload of schoolchildren and the residents of the towns, which for some reason don't seem to be being evacuated from what I can see from the trailer, is two gritty men. On the surface they might seem a little rough round the edges. They make jokes about daycare centres and retirement homes. They wear awful plaid. But both of them have a heart of gold. They love their families (you can tell because they kiss pictures of them), and they are willing to put their lives on the line to stop this unstoppable 'bitch'.
Perhaps my favourite moment in the entire trailer comes at 2:09. I really hope that it is preceded by this:

'As the police it's our job to stop this unstoppable train, but I'm stumped. How are we supposed to stop it?'
'I dunno boss, maybe we should consult an engineer or someth-'
'LET'S SHOOT AT IT!'
'Good idea, Lenny. Let's shoot at it. Why didn't I think of that? You're a smart kid.'

I also like the moment in which it states that the film is based on true events. If it has anything but the most tenuous link to anything that has ever happened, ever, I will literally eat my hat. I will get my woolly hat, put it in my mouth, chew it and swallow it. How could an unmanned train with no airbrakes and hazardous chemicals on the back ever end up zooming towards a train full of schoolchildren? How would that happen? Who would be stupid enough to allow that to happen? More importantly, if it ever had happened, wouldn't I have heard of it somewhere before?

The only reason I am tempted to see this film is an experiment to see if it is actually the worst film I have ever seen. It'll take a lot to beat the constant wanking-jokefest that is Stuck on You, but I reckon there's a chance it will.

National Poetry Day

Hooray for National Poetry Day! I like poetry, because I did English. My official favourite poem is Lullaby by W.H Auden, but there are many others that I like, depending on my mood. Here are some:

• For a morbid mood, Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith is always good. It's something you should quote mournfully in a black turtleneck. I remember reading a book at school in which a girl left this as a suicide note, which is nice. Can't really remember anything else about the book, not even the title. 
• For a 'classical' mood, I do rather like a nice bit of Sappho. (I'm not pretending I can read ancient Greek or anything- I can't.) I particularly like this one, although I can't find the translation that I like. I'm not keen on the ones where the translator has tried to use flowery language to convey the ancientness of it all. First Love by John Clare has a similar 'Love isn't wonderful, it's shit and it makes your body go all weird' attitude, which I like. Bizzarely enough I find it refreshing, even though Sappho wrote ages and ages and ages ago.
• On the subject of Sappho, Lesbos by Sylvia Plath is pretty good. I've always wondered why it's called what it is, which I know is probably obvious and makes me really dim for not knowing. Perhaps it's because she's jealous, and that Sappho poem I just linked to was about being jealous. Who knows? It's very angry in any case. Very very very angry.
• For a violent sort of mood, Ted Hughes' Lineage is also pretty good. Oh, I do like Ted Hughes. Sorry Sylv. (These bullet points are linking together quite nicely aren't they? I didn't plan this.)
• If I am not in the mood for horrible vitriol or depressing suicide poems, which occasionally happens, I like Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh. Apparently she hates it, but I think it's nice. Very optimistic.
• He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B Yeats is a pretty pleasant love poem. I did read a terrible, terrible Mills & Boon novel in which one of the characters quoted it though. This put me off slightly.
• Still I Rise by Maya Angelou is a BRILLIANT 'defiant mantra' poem. The last line should be 'YEEEEEEEEEAH!' It's like an eloquent version of that Chumbawumba song. 
• I'm going to round this off with a couple of 'quirky and obscure' poems. This and this are great, and very underrated, which is a shame.

Phew, what a trip through my taste! I have missed many other things that I like out, but I reckon all of my favourites are up there. Poems I DON'T like tend to be ones that are too lengthy (never have the patience for them), ones that are about nature (yawn), and more traditional love poems.
Anyway. Happy National Poetry Day!

Hello?

"This week, Matthew, I'm going to be... a receptionist!"


And boy, has it been fun. Answering the phones, filing, binding, getting paid, all that kind of stuff.

We have a system on our phones, whereby if someone is calling you internally you know who is ringing you because their name flashes up on the phone. This is useful because it means that instead of answering in your very best phone voice every time, just in case it is a client, sometimes you can let go. Instead of saying 'Hello, blah blah world trade?' or 'Good afternoon, blah blah world trade?' you can say ''WAZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAH' or 'Oh what NOW Katrina? Didn't I tell you I was BUSY doing the BINDING. God.' Or, more commonly, 'Hello.'

The difference between 'Hello.' and 'Hello?' is that when I say 'Hello.' the person on the other end of the line knows I know it's them. When I say 'Hello, blah blah world trade?' I say it like a question because I don't know who is on the other end of the phone. It is like saying 'Welcome, who are you?', but in a more polite and socially acceptable manner.

This distinction is very important. I caused a huge amount of confusion today by answering the phone to the CEO, who I knew was the CEO because I could see his name, with 'Hello?'. I think it came out like a question because he scares me and I wanted to sound helpful. Anyway, he thought that I didn't know who he was and said 'Oh hello it's blah O'blah here.' He also thought that I answered the phone to everyone with just 'Hello?' which obviously isn't allowed when you are a receptionist. So that weeny little change got me in trouble!

I have also begun to think about how I answer my mobile. I still always say 'Hello?' even though I normally know who is calling as my phone tells me. Why do I do this? Why do I not just say 'Hello.' like at work?

My theory is that this habit is a legacy from the days before mobiles, when you genuinely didn’t know who you were answering the phone to. I wonder if, in 20 years’ time, we will still say ‘Hello?’ upon answering the phone. Maybe we need to get a new word altogether.

As any smartarse worth their salt will tell you, Thomas Edison made ‘Hello’ the standard word for a telephone greeting. (The word did exist before then as well. If any smartarse tells you it didn’t they’re NOT worth their salt, whatever the hell that means anyway.) But that phone was one of those old crackly ones with a turny dial, not one of our sleek, sophisticated new machines. Now we have 3G and touchscreen and Caller ID and hold and all that stuff on our phones, greeting people as if you don’t know who they are seems a bit outdated. Our new word needs to be brisk and modern. And it needs to be easy to say. People these days barely seem able to cope with saying more than one syllable per word. (Seriously, the amount of people who shorten my name to ‘Luce’ when I have just met them is astounding. They don't seem aware that it makes them sound like a 'hey I'm hip' teacher or a sinister man with a beard at the bus stop. Shudder.)

Anyway, I’m going to advocate the word ‘Hi.’ It’s informal and annoying, but it’s easy and impossible to say as a question. Go on, try saying ‘Hi’ like a question. You can’t. So that settles it.

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.