| Oops. |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|07:50 pm] |
Shit. I've not updated here in a month. Damn.
Not that I have anything to say, right enough, but I just realised it's been a while...
Anyhow.
How are you?
Dxx |
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| ...and representing love, of course. |
[May. 17th, 2009|01:43 pm] |
For those of you who ask me every year, pretty much, although I'm pretty damn sure you've watched it streamed already (right, Stacey?):
Lithuania: Will Young channels his inner Marc Almond with a song that rips off Queen from the get-go then descends into utter, utter balls. Even one of his backing singers looked into the camera with despair.
Israel: Apparently being one of Israel's biggest artists is no guarantee of being able to sing in tune. And for all the talk of peace and unity, these two really look like they want to claw each others' eyes out as they gaze meaningfully.
France: I preferred Edith Piaf in that godawful Specsavers advert to this. +1 for botox.
Sweden: Channelling the Diva from the Fifth Element, here comes Malena Erman, captain of the Swedish women's rugby team. Doesn't she look...blonde, in that dress?
Croatia: Whilst he's clearly pleased with his "Shatner as Kirk" boots, Igor is clearly hoping having lots of ladies doing backing singing whilst wearing floaty chiffon that promises leg is going to distract from the anaemic dirge he's come out with.
Portugal: Odd. Ireland tried pretty much this whole act last year and were appalling, but this isn't awful. Yes, it's folky and hokey but, really, do you kick a kitten for being fluffy?
Iceland: Judging by the backdrop, this is music from the forthcoming Disney adaptation of Ecco The Dolphin. Having said that, it's an alright song, and the girl can sing so... ok?
Greece: At the dithco! Seriously, why is this even remotely being taken for one of the contenders? What is Love? Mashed-up with Encore Une Fois may have worked 15, maybe 10 years ago but no, not now.
Armenia: Every year... Another pagan Balkan writhe-fest. All this says to me is "Now, we will sing to the sequin snake god!"
Russia: "Mamo". Oooh mother. You'd think, what with having an oligarch for a daddy, Anastasia could afford to get Primal Scream Therapy somewhere a little less public but, what do I know?
Azerbaijan: If Bollywood ever decide to make HMS Pinafore into a sound and light extravaganza with leads who can't dance, this is what it'll look like... has she forgotten her other stocking?
Bosnia + Herzegovina: The White Parade. You want to know what Kasabian would be like if you heavily sedated them and gave them a wash? Now you know. Go watch Laka again, you know you want to.
Moldova: I'm figuring her mum spent three months sewing those sequins on. Shame. Look, it's heart is in the right place, but it would only really work for me if I were blitzed on the local spirit and they were the entertainment at the big evening of "traditional Moldovan barbeque and cultural experience" I'd booked at the hotel.
Malta: This is your auntie Brenda killing all-comers at the local karaoke. Again. Simon Cowell would always choose the blonde with big tits, though. You know he would.
Estonia: The sort of girl that sees sales of violin-based classical album sales soar among middle-aged men. Or that so successfully advertises "walk-ins welcome" at high-end hairdressers. Singing? Not so much.
Denmark: Is it in his contract that he has to impersonate Ronan Keating too? Incidentally, isn't that the same costume last year's entry wore (minus the flat cap)? Also, I'm pretty sure the other half's mum will have a crush on the entire backing band.
Germany: Look mate, eyebrow wax first, then fake tan. For an act that makes such a big deal out of getting Dita Von Tease on stage with them, they aren't actually using her that much. And listening to them, they really, really should be. If they wanted to win, they should have just sat on the edge of the stage and let her shake her stuff.
Turkey: Never mind the quality, let me hypnotise you with my navel. Thank got Egypt's not an EU member of this belly-dancing shtick would get tedious even more quickly.
Albania: David Lynch directs I Should Be So Lucky. And HDTV is not a good thing for 17 year olds and their complexions. Still, it explains who the Armenians were trying to summon earlier on.
Norway: This'll win. Other half called it about two months ago and I haven't seen anything that's even remotely likely to challenge that. Still, he's probably a wee shit who'll score women, drink and free upgrades on internal flights on the strength of this until he goes mad, gets fat and dies in an orgy of low-grade cocaine and overweight Latvian prostitutes.
Ukraine: A bizarre Mad Max Thunderdome/Stringfellows hybrid. My most pressing issue - who was singing while she was drumming? Strike 2 for Botox.
Romania: Graham Norton reckons the girl with the mike is a ringer of sorts. Poor Romania, they don't have a girl who can be both pretty and able to sing at the same time? Um... did she just sing "my boobs are ready to blow?" A career in Romanian Playboy beckons, methinks.
United Kingdom: I'm pretty sure Lord Turnipface used to use more than one line of lyrics per song. Yes Leona Lewis is really big right now, but do you have to plagiarise that whole deal quite as shamelessly? Ouch - looks like she just took a b(l)ow to the chest.
Finland: If Bucks Fizz reformed and attempted to get down wit da yoot. And burning oil drums are soo street. That's got to be strike 3 for botox. Possibly strikes 4 and 5, too.
Spain: Well, after her high marks in the rumba, I think the judges scores might be a bit of a let-down for Miss Soraya... Sarah Harding after rehab.
Apologies for pretty much no activity of any kind recently. In my defence, I have been stuck in bed for the last three days sick with food poisoning.
Dave xx |
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| Writer's Block: Swine Times |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|06:42 pm] |
No. I have absolutely no plan for avoiding contagion or dealing with quarantine beyond doing exactly what I always do, although I am tempted to take one of the paper face masks from my work and draw a wolf's muzzle on it. Because, you know, werewolves are the new vampires. Or something.
What I do have a plan for is completely ignoring any hysterical, irresponsible and deliberately scare-mongering news stories about swine flu. Aside from ignoring or omitting most of the facts, these pieces come across as being more like the world's biggest PR stunt by a pharmeceutical company since Viagra?
In summary, Charlie Brooker should be given a syringe full of ebola and let loose on the world's media, threatening them with real sickness if they try and freak-out the public more than they already are.
Dave xx |
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| Carried away by a moonlight shadow. |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|09:52 pm] |
So my sister and nephews are heading back to Turkey.
This is probably for the best, as I was finding baby puke not entirely repugnant and would die from exhaustion if I had to spin the elder brother round one more time...
This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while, though you have to persevere with it for a short while as it is rather geeky. But, come on, shadows on Saturn's rings?
Dave xx |
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| You will be violated. |
[Apr. 7th, 2009|07:17 pm] |
Yeah, so that "a post tomorrow thing" didn't work out so well, huh? Suffice to say that Poland was great and stuff...
Anyhow - catching-up time.
Two weekends ago, we went to the Doctor Who exhibition in Kelvingrove. Geekiness comes easy to me, so I was pretty much in my element, even if the Tom Baker lookalike was... not particularly similar to Tom Baker in any way, shape, form or, indeed, species.
Nevertheless, much oohing and ahhing and sniggering was had (a kid using the Dalek voice changer started screeching about NOT. BEING. PENETRATED!) and lots of lovely photos were taken.
Just the one for you here (I'll post the rest on my flickr when I've renewed my account):
Then this weekend, we both met my new nephew (Ayhan Arif Koc, in case you're wondering) and went on a little archaeological expedition. OK, so we didn't go out with that in mind, but when we started finding bits of 100 year old clay pipe and stuff lying around, we had to keep looking. Don't ask me if half this stuff is even remotely important, interesting or old, but it looks cool:
Dave xx |
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| Krakow revisited. |
[Mar. 23rd, 2009|09:09 pm] |
OK, I've left a recap of our trip to Krakow way too long, but I'll do my best to catch up now.
We got into our hostel late on Tuesday night, mainly thanks to a couple of girls who noticed our furtive glances and hopeless pointing into the distance and figured we were tourists. They sorted us out with directions and one of them even went so far as to get off the bus a stop early and show us where to go. Which was nice.
Our hostel room was in the attic, which seemed a little bit Anne Frank at first but turned out to be great, seeing as it was quiet, had a viewish and was framed by hundred year old beams. It was called the Pigeon Coop which, I guess, made sense of a sort.
When we got up and had finished breakfast, we ventured out into the rain. Rain and snow were the default weather settings on our visit. Never mind, let's move on.
Krakow gets older and more ornate the closer in to the centre you get. Where we were based there was an over-riding sense of being in a 1960s council estate or 1980s East Germany. Moving towards the town square, the general architecture got closer to something I described to K as being like "Copenhagen after a war". I think I used a more diplomatic turn of phrase on Flickr and used the term "faded glamour". Krakow is a Miss Havisham of a city.
Fortunately, both K and I love decaying glamour and architecture and taking a ludicrous number of photos of said decay.
(Incidentally, one of the buildings we passed on our way into the city had a different sort of decay - the University has a bloody nuclear reactor in it...)
( Let's just cut this here before it fills up your entire friend's list. ) |
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| Back From The Eastern Cold Front |
[Mar. 13th, 2009|09:38 pm] |
Proper update tomorrow, probably, but I'll leave you with a quick picspam for now:
Also, I'm an uncle again :)
Who wouldn't love two excuses to buy dragon snowglobes from Krakow?
Dave xx |
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| Writer's Block: More Island Time |
[Mar. 3rd, 2009|07:52 pm] |
1) A Ray Mears book. After all, if I don't have something like this, I'm not going to hang around long enough to read any of the others, now am I?
2) Hal Duncan's Vellum. Given years of solitude, I might actually begin to understand what the hell he's on about. Plus it's a bloody long read.
3) Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Still my favourite book (and I will never understand how it didn't make it onto this list).
4) Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Now, if I could only find a conch shell...
5) Gray's Anatomy - I've always been interested in both how the body works and drawing, plus there's the added bonus of being able to use it to pick the choicest cuts of meat if someone else happens onto my island and... well...meets with an accident.
Didn't quite make it onto the list: Heart of Darkness - I'd struggled with that damn book for years and years, starting it three times at least. Finally, I took it as my only bit of holiday reading to the quiet area of Turkey where my sister lives. It worked - I read it. I still don't know why I bothered.
Dave xx |
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| You wouldn't think me excessively girly if I scream, would you? |
[Feb. 26th, 2009|06:45 pm] |
The other half just confessed to having a crush on the young unplugged Joe Biden. She conveniently ignored the picture of George H. Bush where he looks suspiciously like one of her long-standing crushes: Matthew Modine.
She may hate me a little now I've pointed that out.
After rereading Watchmen for the umpteenth time in preparation for the film's release, I've been buying a few more comics. I just finished reading Jamie McKelvie's Suburban Glamour and it's lovely.
OK, that's a horribly twee and uninformative description, but it's simple, truthful, funny and clever and reads like My So Called Life written by Neil Gaiman and set in some dark, dank corner of Southern England that's really not all that bad once you get past, you know - everything.
Incidentally, does anyone else think that Franklyn looks really, really good?
I must say, though, that it's definitely about time the latest issue of Phonogram came out. I'm jonesing, I tell you.
Oh, and before I forget, here's another Dr Sketchy's sketch:
Dave xx |
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| Get your leather on. |
[Feb. 18th, 2009|09:51 pm] |
Couple of random links:
1) The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs' single rocks. Seriously, it's the sort of thing that makes me dance exuberantly in a club* sober. (Not that I need to be drunk, but I need to be... lightly oiled?**)
2) If you're going to make a fan film based on a computer game, you couldn't get much better than this - Escape From City 17 (based on Half Life 2).
3) Felted sparkly wombs are wrong.
4) Not creepy, but definitely NSFW - Dinosaurs ******* Robots. So wrong it's ....well, actually, it is pretty wrong...
5) Brick icicles. The incredibly odd aftermath of Russian munitions tests.
Dave xx
*OK, from the title of this entry I may have implied an entirely different sort of club to the ones I normally frequent...
**Um, again with the clarification. I meant alcohol. Promise.
No really, I did. I wouldn't go to a club involving leather and needing lubricat... I'll just stop now, I think. |
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| Snow day. |
[Feb. 9th, 2009|10:11 pm] |
Fair to say it was snowing yesterday night, wouldn't you say?
And, even thought it's horribly out of focus, I really like this shot:
A couple more here.
Dave xx |
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| Take a Walk on the Wild Side. |
[Jan. 31st, 2009|10:05 pm] |
For some reason, the other half and I spent a good two hours wandering through Possil today. The fact that we made it out alive and refrained from sampling any of the local heroin is a testament not only to our courage and resolve, but also to our ability to ignore hysterical stereotypes of the neds people living in the poorer areas of Glasgow.
They have some really cool buildings there too, although the best was the site of a school plumped on top of solid rock that looks like a miniature Edinburgh castle minus the tourists and yodelling weavers you get on the Royal Mile.
And this mural was pretty good too - although it's worn away a lot in the past 20 years:
 .
Other than that, all is well - surviving work; eating well (damn, parsnip cake is good - though beetroot-chocolate cake is better) and grabbing free books. Unfortunately, my own lack of creative success bit me on the ass when I saw an exhibition in the Lighthouse by an old classmate.
Ah well, I'll just pretend I'm a late developer or something...
Dave xx |
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| Hart break. |
[Jan. 18th, 2009|09:02 pm] |
I'm slightly disappointed that no-one on my friend's list (well, the uk ones anyhow) have expressed their sadness at the death of Tony Hart.
The man was a legend.
And, in Morph he had the best sidekick since Muttley.
Seriously, I think Tony Hart got me into art more than anyone else and it's his fault I spent most of my life wandering around acting pretentious at art school or acting pretentious wishing I was still at art school.
I've decided (after the cultural vacuum that was 2008) I should try and read a lot more - I'm not doing badly, seeing as I'm on my fifth book of the year so far, but one can never have enough reading material. We went on a bit of a book-hunt yesterday with gave me a new China Mieville, Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker and Rider-Haggard's Quatermain.
Yes, I'm a sci-fi geek, so what?
Dave xx |
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| New Year, Old Attitudes. |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|10:44 pm] |
Some things that are irritating me so far this year:
1) The Israeli army's repeated attempts to turn every person in the world against them (aside from the religious zealots living in illegal settlements within mortar range)*
2) A Happy New Year post on io9 unleashes a war of words, ideologies and stupidity plus why is it ok for a 34 year old but not a 26 year old to play a 900 year old fictional character? Grow up yourselves, you silly people.**
3) The credit crunch.
I know how much money you people spent at christmas, don't blame me if the gloves you practically tore in half with your chubby, grabbing fingers are no good to you - you don't have a receipt so piss off. Yes, you can speak to a manager, no problem only, bear in mind, I'm right and you're wrong so you're only wasting more of your lunch hour.
4) ITV2.
Is it really necessary to show nothing but the three Fast and the Furious films three nights running? Does anyone want to see them three times in one lifetime, never mind in one week?
5) Demons (The new Buffy/Angel/Torchwood/Neverwhere/Hollyoaks pastiche).
When the one good thing about your show is Mackenzie Crook playing a decidedly Neil Gaimanesque grotesque***, it's probably not a good idea to make him deader than Milo Ventimiglia's career will be when Heroes ends.
Anyhow, other than that this year's been good so far, cheers****.
Dave xx
*And no, that definitely doesn't mean they deserve to be shot at, but that still doesn't make it alright to blow up civilians.
**io9 became a battleground for humourless christians (those two words are not mutually exclusive, I hasten to add); borderline racists and the forces of good (me, amongst others).
*** I particularly liked the scrimshaw nose.
****Unless lj gets shut down and you never get to read this... |
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| If I'm bored in 2009 I'll sort the links out. |
[Dec. 30th, 2008|07:15 pm] |
I guess, seeing as the end of the year is nigh, I should post some sort of 2008 recap...
Oh well:
Film
I've been really, really lax this year, but Hellboy 2 was the prettiest film and Robert Downey Jr can do no wrong. Unless he's on drugs, obviously, but let's not go there again, eh?
TV
Dead Set made me look forward to a new series of Big Brother, right up until the moment I realised that the advent of a new round of boredom with intermittent hand-jobs probably wouldn't herald the zombie apocalypse. We can but dream, I guess.
Music
Holy crap but I've clearly been listening to nothing this year. I'm sitting and thinking and realised I don't even know what the last album I bought was, never mind when I bought it. Dizzee Rascal's cover of That's Not My Name was fantastic, though.
Books
I loved Jan Kærstad's The Seducer (and am currently reading The Conqueror) and appreciated both The Road and Blood Meridian immensely (though I don't think they're the sort of books you enjoy, really). Let the Right One In was great and Children of Men was disappointing.
Everything else
Dr Sketchy's is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off - although someone else does take theirs off, so I'm not sure that counts.
Denmark proved that it can be something other than really, really cold. It can be really, really hot too. My other half needs to keep me appraised of meteorological phenomena in Scandinavia, I think.
My nephew (soon to be joined by another) is a smart cookie. He also likes being a pirate. And dragons. Though he doesn't like them breathing fire. I sorted that one out, though - I asked him how else toast got made. I like the idea that every time he sees a toaster, he's imagining a little dragon inside...
Damn, now I've said that, I've got some sort of bastardised scene from the Flintstones playing out in my head and frankly, that will not do.
Doctor Who rocked and, if the other half and I were right about the identity of the new Doctor, we shall crow at you until you hit us in the mouth. Promise. Unfortunately, we won't make any money out of our cleverness but what's new there?
Enjoy yourselves people,
Dave xx |
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| A pastie is for life, not just for christmas. |
[Dec. 23rd, 2008|06:21 pm] |
Yes I'm lazy, but I couldn't leave you without at least one post before christmas.
And it's got tassles, not bells on:
 
Go here to see more of my Dr Sketchy's sketches.
I confess I've been very lax about posting here due to my ever so slight addiction to playing Travian, which has taken (literally) days of my life over the past year. Yes, it's a lot of numbers on a screen with precious little action normally, but it's horribly compelling after a while - so much so that my other half got involved with daily maintenance of my ever-growing empire.
And the dawning sense of horror that accompanies a little countdown to an attack hitting you at 4 in the morning is difficult to describe unless you're a bit tragic; a bit geeky or, well, me.
Anyway, that's all over now, so I can dedicate a little more time to you, my special seasonal elves.
Not that I've got much to say, or anything, but have a christmas card (and no, it's not that one where you click the sky to make it snow, honest).
Oh, this headline made me think of some sort of scenario where Pope Benedict sat in front of his archbishops like Winston Chruchill, puffing on a cigar and growling something about "fighting them on the beaches" (of Brighton, obviously). He's a bit of an arse, really, isn't he?
Dave xx |
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| Well, I've got the beard and the saintly demeanour... |
[Nov. 29th, 2008|09:12 pm] |
I'm now officially as old as Jesus was when he died. This had better not be a sign. If any of you have a fondness for kissing and man-on-man action, you'd better stay away.
And no, to that section of my friends list - that doesn't mean slashfic writers... although, seriously? Anne Rice is not a good author. Really, she's not.
One of my many and varied rather good indeed presents.
In other news, I'm a total bloody enabler. Honestly, I bring it on myself. Thanks to me, the other half now has 200+ vintage buttons to craftify...
I make a rod for my own back sometimes.
Dave xx |
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