FUCK!

Seriously, FUCK!

That is all...

Look Over There! A Badger With A Gun!

We've been through a quarter of a month (edit: er, year, obviously) (and how the fuck did that happen?), so it's time for another first line quiz, mainly to buy me time whilst I work on the actual quiz (which will arrive late Wednesday or early Thursday) and keep chipping away at a fairly long album review I'm working on.

Same rules as last time. No artist appears more than once, and the songs are listed in what I think is increasing order of difficulty (which just about worked last time). No googling, but feel free to listen to songs you think are right if you want to check.

Right. Here we go:

1. "Just a small-town girl, living in a lonely world." Journey - Don't Stop Believing (Brutal Snake)
2. "A lovestruck Romeo, sing the streets a serenade." Dire Straits - Romeo & Juliet (Senior Spielbergo)
3. "Two jumps in a week, I bet ya think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?" Radiohead - High And Dry (Jamie)
4. "Transmission third world war third round, a decade of the weapon of sound above ground." Rage Against The Machine - Guerrilla Radio (Chuck)
5. "All is quiet on New Year's Day, a world in white gets underway." U2 - New Year's Day (Jamie)
6. "Home grown, rock to the rhythm and bop to the beat of the radio." Kings Of Leon - Fans
7. "Shiver for me, girl, deliver for me my darling." Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Warm Tape
8. "Before this world starts up again, it's me and night." Jimmy Eat World - Big Casino (Nemain)
9. "Turn me apart and boil my bones, I'll not rest 'til she's lost her throne." The Stone Roses - Elizabeth My Dear (Tomsk)
10. "I look good in a glass pack, I look good and mean." R.E.M. - The Wake-Up Bomb (Jamie)
11. "Cold, cold water, surrounds me now." Damien Rice - Cold Water
12. "A devastating backstroke all the way from France." Vampire Weekend - The Kids Don't Stand A Chance
13. "Elysium, is everyone chipping at your cordiality?" Madness - Elysium (edenspresence)
14. "I can't explain glacial motion, or why Los Angeles don't drop into the ocean." The Presidents Of The United States Of America - Naked & Famous
15. "Take heart, my little friend, and push back your seat." Eels - Daisies Of The Galaxy
16. "I was born in the Merrie City; I've been trying to get out of it." The Cribs - I've Tried Everything
17. "These chords are old but we shake hands, because I believe that they're the good guys." Josh Ritter - Good Man
18. I'm trolling food court for girls, yeah it's the best job in the world. Ben Folds - Rent A Cop (Jamie)
19. "Yes, I'm sorry that I missed you." Midlake - Chasing After Deer
20. "I left my school, I left my job." Belle & Sebastian - Belle & Sebastian
21. I got these thoughts in my head, dirty as fuck and never leaving. Alkaline Trio - Old School Reasons (Chuck)
22. "'36 Hudson in the garage." The Mountain Goats - Broom People
23. "Don't cry my love, don't cry my love, don't cry my love, for all you cannot change." Mark Erelli - Delivered
24. "Well this is easier now, I've found all the pieces I lost in the flood." Frightened Rabbit - Not Miserable
25. "You can call them chronicles, you can call them songs." Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly - If I Had A Pound For Every Stale Song Title I'd Be 30 Short Of Getting Out Of This Mess

The usual bevy of all but useless clues: there are 18 true bands, 4 solo artists, and 3 bands that are clearly just fronts for a single bloke. All 25 vocalists are male. 15 of the songs are by American artists, the rest are either English (7), Scottish (2), or Irish (1). Three titles are actually within the first lines.

The highest score for these things remains 44%, but even by my standards this is a tough set. Get to it.

Tough Beats And Hard Choices

Already this Twitter nonsense has come up trumps for me; thanks to Tomsk I have this fascinating rumination on the current choice facing the Liberal Democrats.

Mainly, I think it's bang on, and the biggest evidence of that is that it isn't pretending the answer is a simple one, something an awful lot of people both in the Guardian and amongst politics-savvy American progressives seem desperate to convince us it is.

I've been talking about this political clusterfuck for the last couple of days with anyone who'll listen, and I've still got no idea as to which the best way to go is. I'm not sure about LimDemVoice's argument that staying out of a coalition is problematic because it implies we're putting party ahead of country - that's a charge that we're going to get battered with whichever route we take - but even so I don't know whether I'd recommend allowing a minority government.

In fact, the closest I can offer to anything approaching a considered opinion is pretty bleak and distressing (why change the habit of a lifetime, I guess). We may have to stop viewing this choice with an eye on avoiding disaster, and accept that the disaster is already inevitable. When historians sit down to discuss the moment the Liberal Democrats were humbled for - well, you pick it; months, years, decades - they won't talk about this weekend. They'll talk about Thursday. Not to be too doom-laden, or anything, but we may already be dead.

I'm exaggerating. A little. Probably. I think. But the point remains. We may not literally be about to die, but the metaphor is still uncomfortably close. While that gives me no idea as to what we should be doing right now, it does mean we need to frame our consideration in a slightly different way. Inevitably, my thoughts turn to Dr. Henry Philip "Hank" McCoy - still the superhero I would most like to be by several light-years - and his suggestion to Jamie Madrox on how we deal with knowing we have lost. "So we just lay down and die?" "Good Lord, no. I'm not recommending that. For my part, I intend to die standing up. And singing the Marseillaise."

How about it, Mr Clegg? Wanna die standing up and singing? Only, people are kinda waiting for you to call the tune.

Desperately Seeking Susan

Life has been getting in the way of the kind of constant and ludicrously overblown analyses of each twist and turn in Doctor Who that I like writing so much (though I'm not too big of a man to admit that some of the amusement has faded now it's no longer being written by a man I strongly dislike). That's unlikely to change today - I have plans to actually be active, and hopefully burn away some of the excess corpulence Operation: Lake District Liver Death has resulted in - but I thought I'd point out this excellent article by John Seavey on the relationship between the Doctor and his companions, and why the contemporary interpretation is so questionable.

Like all the best articles, I wish I'd written it; especially since there's so much there that has been nebulously floating around my head for a while now. I would like to point out though that Rose was running from something when she joined the Doctor: her boring life and lukewarm relationship [1]. I acknowledge up front that that isn't a particularly strong reason, from the perspective of the metaphor, though I think you'd have to stretch it far further for more than one companion from the classic series if you wanted it to fit - what exactly was Liz Shaw running away from? - but it's still there.

Anyway, that's a minor detail. The whole post is most definitely worth a read.

[1] As a sidebar, how has it taken until now for me to start thinking about how the Cinderella story of the first two seasons requires Rose to leave her working class black boyfriend for a white middle-class man with time-travelling bling? Is that what's been bothering me so much about the first half of Season 2? That Mickey keeps getting used as shorthand for the mundane, pointless life she's trying to escape in the Doctor's space-jag? That her black ex (yeah, not officially ex, but that's just because she was too damn egomaniacal to cut off any potential source of pathetic fawning) represents the baggage she's desperate to leave behind now Mr Received Pronunciation Time Lord is on the scene? That he's the literal manifestation of her fear that she's going to be dragged back to the crushing mediocrity of her shop job?

Mickey's not the tin dog, he's the chime at midnight. I mean, I'm 100% sure that it's just coincidence , but... damn.

Five Things...

...I learned during my 157 hours of gleeful debauchery in Coniston.

1. I am now officially the man in Team Goat whose job it is to deal with stray dogs. Naturally, this position is something that bothers me not at all.

2. It's true what they say about academics. Just because a man has a PhD, it doesn't follow that he can catch a rabbit. Especially when all he's using is an overturned bin tied to a bright orange line of wire. It was also baited with radishes, which I might also have a problem with, but since the bin itself seemed to frighten off all the local lagomorphs, I guess it doesn't really matter.

3. Possibly the only way to improve upon a cream tea is to replace said tea with beer. Scones, butter, jam, clotted cream and a pint of bitter is an experience not to be missed, though in truth is possibly also an experience not to be repeated more than once a year if you value your heart valves.

4. Grizedale visitor centre is guarded by one of the best sculptures I've ever seen:

From where I was standing it looked like it didn't have a head, which serves me right for not walking over there to take a closer look. The surrounding forest is teeming with stuff like this, from fairly standard things like steel owls and wood foxes, through to what looked like a lion-fish carved from rock, and a terrifying giant metal fly that I couldn't even look at. Shudder.

5. Barley wine. It's delicious. It's nutritious. It's almost invariably fatal. It doesn't so much go to your head as break into your skull and wreck up the place. Even I, unrepentant follower of Bacchus that I am, dared have more than one pint every couple of days, which should give you some idea of what we're dealing with here. I'd drink battery acid if you mixed it with midori and stuck a cocktail umbrella in it.

Special bonus learning: my friends are awesome.

Views At A Distance

Much as I am enjoying a week of unremitting debauchery, it feels kind of wrong not to be commenting more on the first general election to turn up during the existence of this particular slice of the blogloaf.

Still, the best laid plans, and so forth. And no amount of wishing things were otherwise is going to make me any more sober. I shall therefore limit myself to saying: "Good luck". Things are liable to get a good deal worse from here on out; the most interesting discussion to be had might very well be by how much.

Like I said. Good luck. Let's get this over with.

What My Downtime Looks Like

The scene: Pinshitter, Kitten-Breaker and our hero are watching the snooker final.

PINSHITTER: Dott's gone to pot.
SPACESQUID: Don't make me come over there and slap you.
PS: I'm just saying; it's all gone wrong. I guess that's what happens when your manager resigns.
SS: His manager resigned?
PS: He manages Higgins as well.
SS: Ah. That must be pretty difficult for the Wizard of Wishaw, huh? "I can't tell you why I was in Kiev, or in that hotel, but I promise I haven't done... wait, my manager's resigned? Er... look, kittens!"
KITTEN-BREAKER: Aw, kittens? That would convince me!
SS: So as long as the snooker authority's membership is made up entirely of you, he'll be completely fine.
K-B: Excuse me? I'd make an awesome head of snooker! I'd start each match with a Wheel of Fortune... wheel, and if it landed on "kitten" then half the balls on the table would be immediately replaced with kittens.
SS: So it's a foul for missing, hitting the wrong ball, or injuring a kitten?
K-B: Yes. But if you can persuade a kitten to enter a pocket of its own volition, then that would be fine.
SS: The kittens are coloured?
K-B: Each player will bring their own white kitten to the table. There'd be a certain amount of animal husbandry involved.
SS: So the plan is to herd cats with another cat. What could possibly go wrong?
PS: How do you colour the kittens?
K-B: Dye, I guess.
PS: I suppose pink would be the easiest.

Pause

SS: There is no way I want more details on that.
PS: I just meant that you could shave them.
SS:... OK, I confess that I was imagining something much worse.
PS: Let's give it a try. Right now.
K-B: Oh, you know any 24 hour pet stores in Coniston, Pinshitter?
PS: There's the garage down the road. It sells charcoal.
SS: And thus by extrapolation, immature cats?
PS: I accept that it's a long shot.
K-B: It is not a long shot, Pinshitter! It's imbecilic beyond mortal ability to express!
SS: Be fair, Kitten; that's at worst the eighth most stupid thing he's said all day.
PS: Which makes it a personal record.
SS: True, though I'm not sure that's something you want getting around.

Pause

K-B: I really want a kitten now.
PS: And I really want to shave it.
SS: And I really want to stop recording this conversation.