Thomas is the sword.
I'm the jelly. The blob of jelly.
Anyway, so I've been neglecting my duties rather badly of late; all seven of you will have to excuse me, I've just been up to my proverbial(s) in coursework and essays. I've genuinely had Gaskell pouring out of my ears for weeks, and she wears petticoats. No, but in all honesty, I'm trying to balance several things on my head at the moment and, well, I wasn't designed for that kind of act. I lack the ears.
I've got a publishing gig for a music website, as well as outsourcing some stuff to my university paper - alleged - and I am desperately trying to get some work done for War Child (google it). Add that on top of my standard university work and occasional (becoming more and more this way) socialising and you've got a mélange of tedium, and a depressingly low amount of blog-time. I will work hard over the next few weeks to rectify this, mainly for my own sanity: the increased writing will merely be a by-product of sorting my life out to a point where I can manage my time effectively. The result will merely be a bonus for myself :). Wow. I should use little smilies more; they're cute.
With that in mind, we shall dip once more into the recesses of my brain, and attempt to dig out something of merit to yarn about. I promise I won't start talking about Christmas, seeing as how it's only the middle of November. I will, however, take a sojourn through a couple of issues which have been playing on my mind recently, and one of those will touch lightly - as a feather - on the x-mas problem.
Facebook. Yes. The dreaded book of faces. A nightmarish concept if you actually sit down to think about it. A book of faces? Sounds positively horrifying, and like the worst movie you could possibly ever make. Apart from New Moon. I digress. I really am loathe to become a heavier user of Facebook, and yet I find myself updating my bits and pieces more and more often; it's like a really rubbish version of crack or something. I've not yet descended entirely into the trite mutterings about how my head is feeling, or how many pints I consumed the previous night. I've managed to resist the "X is wondering how many dots there are on the ceiling". No, I instead have managed to garner this nefarious reputation among my friends. They think I'm a bastard. I simply can't help myself, and I genuinely don't mean to be as cynical or sneering as I come across. I just can't resist answering those kind of posts with answers like "Go do it. It's probably at the right level for someone like you." I deserve to be castrated for some of the elitist crap I spout on there. So, for that, my friends, I apologise sincerely. On the other hand: stop touting mindless drivel and I won't feel obliged to point out how cretinous you sound ;). Hehe, wink.
No, I haven't yet arrived on the dreary platitude of inconsequentiality; I am retaining my sanity for as long as I physically can. No, what I worry about is that I think the only way I can avoid becoming another - ironically - faceless user of 'The Book', I would need to rescind all of my comments, remove all of my information, and catapult my profile back into the cached oblivion of internet-past.
Here, if you'll forgive me, I will gently caress the edges of the Christmas concept. Facebook has officially ruined November for me. I'm not sure if anyone else went through this a few days ago: "The Coke advert has just been on TV. It's officially Christmas." I'll assume that anyone reading this won't have endured that hilarious indictment of stupidity, as their only recourse would have been to garrotte themselves there and then. On that basis, I will contextualise for you. The Coke advert is the one which features the fictionalised red-man prancing around driving a lorry or something stupid; he spreads his philanthropic joy by giving oddly androgynous children glass bottles of coke for them to rot their teeth with. Spreading a little bit of Christmas plaque; necrosis in the stocking of the hermaphroditic kiddies. So, yeah, that's the advert, and each and every year it seems to roll around earlier and earlier. I don't watch a lot of TV, so this probably won't affect me too much, but I am assuming that by the time I have kids - if I have kids - the advert will be on constantly, on all channels, at all times of year, at all times of the day. Fuck this manipulative bullshit please, Coke, just make the advert represent what you truly are, that way at least we'd be able to make our own decisions. I somehow doubt you'd get kids wanting a sip of fizzy-brown if they had to call it that, or some stoned teenagers craving a smokin' can of Coke 'The Drink That Is Basically Water and That Works to Impoverish Nations Internationally. There's Probably Some People's Hopes and Dreams in Here.' Or maybe they would, I don't really know.
Yes. Christmas is not demonstrated by the presence of the Coke advert. It's a tremendously depressing irony that we celebrate the forthcoming event of caring and sharing by lauding the incoming message of spite and belligerent shitting on the the little guy. "Here comes a time for sharing, make sure you all work hard to destroy a few thousand lives." No, I'm kidding. I don't mind Coke really, apart from the fact it tastes as it looks. I merely lament the day when so many people view such a pleasant holiday as one demarcated by the presence of a televisual advertising campaign. I just think that's sad.
So... I've, er, in my litany, I've, er, forgotten what it was that I wanted to discuss next. So instead I will briefly outline why I hate my University 'paper'. I read a copy of it today. Anyone who puts stock by the definitions of words will have to excuse the next few paragraphs; it should be a crime punishable by stoning to use words such as 'writing', 'audience', 'structure' so flippantly to describe this abortion of a 'paper'. My house-mate writes for it, and she does a decent job: her pieces are interesting - if that's your thing - and they're, more importantly, well written, well structured, and well executed. Oh, and before you all get up in arms and start shouting about how I use commas 84% more than necessary, I will, point, this, out, to, you: this is a stream of consciousness diatribe, not a well crafted and proof-read item of copy. So, that's the difference there, thanks.
I was reading it with a face somewhat akin to the face you would expect to pull when sitting on an overly-large dildo for the first time. You could have shoved a table into my mouth without even a wince from my end. So to speak. I was genuinely staring into the mouth of the devil; aghast at the utterly diabolical level of proofing that clearly hadn't taken place. I don't really blame the 'journalists' for their efforts: most people don't have a good grasp of grammar -- oh, I've remembered what I want to discuss after this: the Oxford comma, remember that -- and most people struggle to speak coherently. No, I blame the subs and the editors. Oh, and I blame one of the journalists. She's an idiot. In a piece which referred to comments made by an MP, who said that too many students couldn't "speak or write properly", the author made around three elementary mistakes in the first paragraphs. Parentheses left wide open, commas missed so subject became confused with verb, two colons preceding two quotes; only one of them used correctly. In short, it was shit. Sorry, hun.
Last of all - because I've been chatting away for way too long now - I want to just briefly (I promise) prognosticate about the British thought on the Oxford Comma. For the uninitiated the Oxford/serial comma is the punctuation mark which you place before a conjunction in a list. For instance: Jack, John, and James/Jack, John and James. I find it strange that, in Britain at least, the latter is deemed correct, whilst the former is seen as incorrect. Grammatically both are acceptable - in contemporary circles - and I personally think the former is much more aesthetically pleasing. In terms of pragmatic usage, too, the former makes more sense: when you read out loud you surely pause between each item?
It irritates me that I repeatedly get pulled up on my use of the serial comma; when to me it's entirely acceptable in any writing, including academic. That's just a niggle though I suppose. It's not really a major moan like the two above.
I promise I will try a bit harder to keep my verbiage spouting. Incidentally, Wikipedia have raised 0.05m USD in just under 6 hours today, as far as I can tell. That's really impressive. I also had a quick look through the comments section and found something which I feel is important to share:
"When referencing from wikipedia cite the reference, not Wikipedia."
Smart person. Tight bastard, though.
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Have some N-Dubz review:
N-Dubz: Against All Odds
Against All Odds is the second outing from Camden-based N-Dubz, the moniker of three South London school-friends. Following on from the... somewhat unexpected success of their first album – Uncle B – the trio have switched record labels, taken a strongly bouncy route, and released the new LP. Evidently, someone at All Around The World records has bored into my brain; scooping out my apathy and replacing it with instant enjoyment. Yes, against all odds, I am struggling to get Against All Odds out of my head.
Scouting around doing some research for this piece, you notice two things: the years preceding 2007 were pretty uneventful for any real success and that they’ve all got silly nicknames. Dappy, Tulisa and Fazer, however, have skipped headily away from the hackneyed pseudo hip-hop beats of their first average release and fallen heavily into the mainstream. I’m not sure how this is going to sit with fans of the first trip down synth-street, but for a new convert it’s enjoyable, if a little shallow.
With a bit of messing around with format, the record is superbly produced and follows the archetypically stylish route of the alternative follow-up. It’s got an intro, and an outro, it’s got lashings of well-known hip-hop stars: Playing With Fire Ft. Mr. Hudson, the stand-out track on first listen, or Suck Yourself Ft. Chipmunk. These aforementioned lashings, however, strike a somewhat discordant note; the mish-mashing of commercial floor-fillers and mellowed out solo tracks just don’t slot together that nicely. It’s hard to gauge of the mood of the album because it’s bouncing all around the different areas of your head: “You’re up. Quick. Slow down. Faster. Harder. Gently!” It doesn’t make any sense at all.
Before I drag myself unwillingly away from the criticisms, I must first point out two of the greatest lyrics of all time which feature on this album. The first is the one you’ve probably heard being blared out of Citroen Saxo’s at 3am on a Tuesday morning: “I’ve been searching all over Facebook, and I can’t seem to find you”. Call me cynical but to me this is just pandering to a hoard of screaming thirteen year old fan-girls; just as rockers in the 70’s would stir up crowds by saying the town name over and over again, this seems hollow and superficial. Not to mention utterly terrible. Somehow it doesn’t come close to my second favourite, though: “Never have I seen a man run that fast, I’m surprised that he never done a poo-poo.” Ha-ha-ha. It’s fantastically stupid. Whereas the former is a depressing indictment of vacuous idiocy in the teenage generation, the latter is a sublime self-parodying prod at the needlessly sexualised and disgusting lyrical wanking featured so prominently in mainstream hip-hop. That or they’re truly that stupid.
So, yeah, it flips from cacophonous to silence at the blink of an ear-lid, it’s fairly shallow, and probably a bit rushed, but it’s just so damn hard to dislike it. Playing With Fire swoops effortlessly from soaring vocals to grimy allusions of unrequited love and self-torture; lay over some Mr. Hudson and you’ve got an undeniably winning combination. Suck Yourself, the ‘duet’ with Chipmunk (you might know him as the one who wants to kill himself) is incredibly well put together for a record of this speed. Yeah you have to ignore the lyrics – unless you enjoy “nigger, nigger, nigger” (paraphrased) – but that’s not too hard to do, the tune is so much more interesting. No one can understand Londoners anyway.
Before I finish myself off (yes, I enjoyed it that much), I should give special mention to two of the other tracks: No-one knows, and Number 1 (N-Dubz Remix). The former is a dreary, windswept council estate ballad; crepuscular and hauntingly beautiful. This could be the stand-out track of the album, if you ignore Hudson. The latter gets mentioned because... as far as I can tell it’s the same track as on Stryder’s debut. Granted they collaborated on it, but I find that a little strange nonetheless.
So what do I think? I think it’s good. It’s not going to revolutionise anything, I don’t think it will sit well with devout fans of the harder first-album, but I think it’s the right move. It’s safe: interesting collaborations, moderately adept solo efforts, beautiful production, and tightly structured. Think of it as the opposite of the first album; this one will fade into the annals of nothingness after thirty or so listens, whereas the first took that long to sound good.
It probably won’t draw in the accolades as Uncle B did, but for a follow-up it ain’t not too bad at all, bruv.
7/10
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