April 26, 2004
Reunion
Finished the DipSing exams on Friday (passing, however, is a huge assumption I'm not willing to make right now), hopped on a plane that very night and have resumed my perfect London life right back where I left off. Saturday lazy lunch, Covent Garden girliness, coffee at Paul's with Nav, dinner and drinks in Brixton with Nick; Sunday mass at Newman House, Spitalfields Market trawl, lazy afternoon in Hyde Park with Russ and Dave, Múm gig at night. London is as beautiful and bizarre and all-out wonderful as it has always been, and the part of me that loves comfort zones wishes I had just decided to spend the entire 15 days here instead of attempting to explore new parts of Europe I haven't been to yet.
There's so much more I was meaning to write today, but Russ is waiting patiently for our precious Russ'n'Michelle time to start, and I don't want to lose any of that. I think we'll do a Regent's Canal walk today.
I've been told by other people who studied overseas and have since had to return to Singapore that as time passes, you gradually begin to accept that you're back, and that part of your life is over, and Singapore isn't really that bad. Unfortunately, this has obviously not happened to me yet. Being here only reminds me just how much Singapore sucks donkey bollocks in comparison. I have not felt so happy, so sad, so thoroughly alive for months. And Alec hasn't even arrived yet! (Later today. I can't wait!)
April 20, 2004
Going Native
Me: So before I bought the camera, we walked around all the different shops selling it to compare prices, and see who would throw in more extra stuff.
Alec: Like a free travel bag?
Me: No!
Alec, stifling laughter: Or, say, a free radio alarm clock?
Me: NO! Relevant stuff like CompactFlash memory cards!
Alec, chortling out loud: But wouldn't you prefer a free calculator watch?
Me: RRRROWR.
Even given the fact that Alec reads Talking Cock more than I do, the scary extent to which he is in touch with the Singaporean psyche still suggests he has not actually been in Ireland these past few months, but has instead been living a secret existence in a 3-room flat in Toa Payoh.
April 19, 2004
Radio Ga Ga
Matt asked for Internet radio links, an area I am willing and able to help with, given that I listen to all my music via the Internet these days (okay, okay, MTV too) due to the total banality of Singapore radio.
Matt-specific links:
- Last FM: A great range of material and stations. From Aphex Twin to Emmylou Harris to Miles Davis to Portishead to Sonic Youth to you get the picture.
- Videos from the Montreux Jazz Festival, including performances by Radiohead, Mogwai, Jimi Tenor and Big Band and, er, The Stereophonics if you like them. :P (I haven't had time yet to see The Roots, RJD2 and Yo La Tengo performances, but certainly will at some point. Also Flavor Flav just for the fun of it!)
- Not quite radio, but I don't suppose you'll say no to a mindbogglingly large array of obscure Radiohead mp3s
- John Peel on Radio One
- D*I*R*T*Y for a large archive of mixes, including sets by DJ Shadow vs PC (and many other Solid Steel mixes), Matmos, Four Tet and Susumu Yokota
- The Breezeblock on Radio One
- Spank Radio: Lots of indie, mostly okay. Playlist includes Rachel's, Polvo, Red House Painters, Interpol.
- Anything on 1Xtra, where I wander from dancehall show to drum'n'bass show to garage show like a country bumpkin in a vast amazing city of utter joy.
April 18, 2004
Nothing's Coloured That Impossibly Red
Not To Mention Love: A Heart For Patricia (David Clewell) is a love poem I rather like.
"Here, the heart is the heart, and isn't
a fist or a flower or a smooth-running engine
and especially not one of those ragged valentines
someone's cut out, initialed, shot full of cartoon arrows:
the adolescent voodoo of desire. Here nothing's colored
that impossibly red."
April 15, 2004
Unlikely Budget Destination
Just bought my travel insurance. According to the brochure, I pay higher premiums for travelling to Europe than I would if I were going to Iraq.
April 11, 2004
They Didn't Use To Call Me Brainy Smurf For Nothing, You Know
Today's links-as-substitute-for-actual-content post will delight many and bore just as many. It represents a surprising break from tradition in that it a) contains no musical content whatsoever b) contains some vaguely intellectual content and c) contains some vaguely intellectual content authored by me.
- Going straight is a fascinating Guardian article about reparative therapy used to "cure" homosexuality and the ex-gay movement in America. It even manages to be fairly balanced, although this lapses somewhat in the last three paragraphs.
- Random surfing of the UCL Law Faculty site recently yielded an online version of the UCL Jurisprudence Review 2002, in which my dissertation was published. It basically involves me analysing Jeremy Bentham's treatise which denounces the French Declaration of the Rights of Man as a load of shite, and concluding that he rocks. I wouldn't actually recommend it unless you're also a jurisprudence nerd.
- Achtung Baby! blog has an mp3 of Nabokov himself reading from Lolita. Excuse me while I scream like the total groupie I am.
- I lied. This last link isn't intellectual. It's about boobs.
April 9, 2004
Liturgy Of The Norman Mailer Word
My first Norman Mailer book since giving up on The Armies Of The Night in disgust is The Gospel According To The Son, which is either very appropriate or somewhat blasphemous to begin reading today, judging from its first page:
"While I would not say that Mark's gospel is false, it has much exaggeration. And I would offer less for Matthew, and for Luke and John, who gave me words I never uttered and described me as gentle when I was pale with rage. Their words were written many years after I was gone and only repeat what old men told them. Very old men. Such tales are to be leaned upon no more than a bush that tears free from its roots and blows about in the wind."
April 7, 2004
SUXORS
There I was all smug because I managed to be on-the-ball enough to get tickets to see Múm at the Old Vic (well, to get Russ to get tickets) the day after I arrive in London. And then I found out about this, conveniently organized for when I've fucked off to Krakow. Not living in England any more really sucks.
When something sucks this much, only novelty mp3 downloads can cheer me up, which is why it was fabulous to have found:
- The Darkness covering Radiohead's Street Spirit (look for the link on the page, I'm not sure if they'd like it if I linked directly to the file)
- 12 different versions of Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice including one by Stephen Hawking's computer voice
- The Pixies doing Manta Ray live with the "HOO HOO, HOO HOO, YEAH!"s high and querulous rather than the rather more muscular tone they have on the record. (Okay, the last one isn't really a novelty mp3, but I just generally have an insatiable appetite for all things Manta Ray.)
April 6, 2004
These Boots Were Made For Alt-Country
Word to Adidas for using Calexico's very lovely song Pepita as the background to their ad featuring big sports names running with Muhammed Ali. I'd have used Quattro instead, because it always makes me think of being borne across a vast expanse of night clouds at exhilarating speed with my bare feet skimming their cool damp surfaces, and that seems to be a fairly nice mental picture to have associated with sports shoes, given that my usual mental picture associated with sports shoes involves heat rash and a general longing for death. But Pepita's cool too.
April 3, 2004
When Exams Attack
Studying will really really begin tomorrow. For real. Really.
Unfortunately, going by previously established patterns, dear Reader, this probably means you're in for a rather slow 3 weeks. No more of my rapier wit and irresistable personality! No more visceral vignettes of my swinging rock and roll life! Indeed, my friends, you will have to get by with my usual exam output of unrestrained music geekery, pointless links collected during hours on end of study avoidance surfing, and most certainly nothing even remotely intellectual.
So, pretty much the same as what you've always got here, just with even less of a life than before. Sigh. Here's a little taster:
Music Geekery
Newly arrived from Django, yay!
- Bubba Sparxxx: Deliverance
- Dirty Three: Whatever You Love You Are
- Aereogramme: A Story In White
- Lewis Parker: Masquerades And Silhouettes
- Bedhead: What Fun Life Was
- The Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone
Pointless Links
In honour of For Alec, who had his first actual bout in a boxing ring a few days ago and wisely decided not to tell me about it until after the fact: Mike Tyson Quotes.
Here's one I'd like to highlight for you, you big dolt no one in particular, because of course I'm totally cool about the fact that my favourite nose in the world could quite possibly have been broken before I got the chance to see it again - "I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain."
Nothing Remotely Intellectual
I certainly never kept my Will Young mania a secret on this site during the original Pop Idol, and I see no reason to be shy about my commitment to its American franchise. This Ryan Seacrest fellow is a poor substitute for Ant and Dec, and I like Pete Waterman so much more than the painfully inarticulate Randy Jackson, but at least sexy Simon is still around, and getting sexier by the episode. Oh, and GO FANTASIA!
April 2, 2004
Do You Want Fries With That?
Given my recent tendency to make posts which embarrass my long-suffering boyfriend with their indecency, I put a lot of thought into writing an entry which was the very soul of propriety and restraint. But then I checked my referral logs and found I was number 2 on the Internet for, er, this.