IkoStar

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

“June Chadwick” is in fact the solo project of Andrew Harrop (aka Basil Clithopps) of well-known seminal 70’s punk combo “Basil’s Randy Grandbag”. While still recogniseable in certain respects, this new album is a more considered body of work - a marked departure from his more forthright (and quite possibly turetic) material… into quieter - and undeniably darker, waters.

The project is a musical aduration to his first childhood sweetheart who he started stalking at the age of seven, and who later went on to marry David St Hubbins (who became famous in his own right many years later). This is an album of songs documenting the 10 year period of Andrew’s life falling apart around his (now rather famous) ears as June drifted further away… up to London while Andrew stayed behind in Woking.

It leads us with a sparse and simple (though undeniably painful to listen to) beauty, through landscapes of uncertainty and doubt and into the darkness (that is forever Surrey) beyond - a period in Andrew’s own life of almost total withdrawl into a dream-world, reminiscent in many ways, of World of Warcraft. It doesn’t end there though - eventually we emerge with Andrew into the light of self-realisation - a redemption of sorts as this snapshot of very English youth draws to a close, and manhood (after a fashion) begins.

Glib though it may be to say it now, Andrew’s loss has been the world’s gain - this is as viceral, incisive… and yet as delicate a journey upstream into the back-waters of the human condition as has ever been gifted to us. Andrew has lived it so we don’t have to. We owe him.

He is a master of his art, and this is a masterpiece.

Never give up.

With special thanks to Oneluvgirl

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacequeen/2180907467/

Just because it’s only ’stuff’ doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it while I have it - Candi Hodge

Ok yesterday I said I was going to release this little anti-procrastination system I’d built… and I will, I will… but first here’s a pro-pro-pro-pro-pro-PRO-procrastination system written by apple and some people over here, where you can demo phones, which is pretty cool I suppose. It doesn’t work in Opera though, and I mainly use Opera.

So there you go. If someone really had a lot of time on their hands they could write a generic, fully-fuctional skin/interface so you could have your iphone actually on your PC, or anything else with a screen.

That would be cool. Maybe.

This a picture of Connifer Jennily smoking and driving a car.

I like Connifer - she’s probably my fav movie star-ess apart perhaps from that massive blonde fairy off Lord of the Rings, and the blonde Australian one in King Kong. (and Chloe Sevigny - especially in Tree’s Lounge)

In real life she doesn’t actually smoke. Or drive a car, or look as fucked up as this etc… But that’s ok. I can drive, and I don’t actually smoke either (unless I’m horrendously drunk) and if her fucked-upness is genuine, then I still have quite a lot of prozac that I don’t know what to do with now that I’ve completely lost the thread with regards when I’m supposed to take then next one, according to the formula I devised here. (the formula I devised). So like… it could possibly be THE most ideal match that I’ve ever had anything to do with. In a long time.

She was in Dark City, which is like K-for Cool and that one with David Bowie in it, which was something to do with kidnapping a baby and there’s this bit in it where he’s singing “baby baby baby” while holding an actual baby, which is wrong on so many levels I can hardly believe it… but I expect that’s at least partly where Michael Jackson got his idea from when he had his photo taken with the beatles.

So yea. Whatever. Tomorrow I’m going to release a web app that I wrote to help me stop procrastinating.

Like so many brave young men of my generation, I have to take chemicals to stop myself from going insane.

No more. I’ve decided it’s time I came off prozac… and I’m going to wean myself off it gradually - using the formula below

Which by my calculation means that I’ll take the last one in about 3012, by which time I’ll be saner than the rest of you put together.

Bastards.

OneLuvGirl has recently done the world a most excellent service by translating The American Film Institute’s top 100 films from PDF, which is rubbish, to HTML. And they are:

1. CITIZEN KANE
2. THE GODFATHER
3. CASABLANCA
4. RAGING BULL
5. SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
6. GONE WITH THE WIND
7. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
8. SCHINDLER’S LIST
9. VERTIGO
10. THE WIZARD OF OZ
11. CITY LIGHTS
12. THE SEARCHERS
13. STAR WARS
14. PSYCHO
15. 2001: A SPACE ODDITY
16. SUNSET BLVD.
17. THE GRADUATE
18. THE GENERAL
19. ON THE WATERFRONT
20. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
21. CHINATOWN
22. SOME LIKE IT HOT
23. THE GRAPES OF WRATH
24. E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL
25. TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD
26. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
27. HIGH NOON
28. ALL ABOUT EVE
29. DOUBLE INDEMITY
30. APOCALYPSE NOW
31. THE MALTESE FALCON
32. THE GODFATHER, PART II
33. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
34. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
35. ANNIE HALL
36. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
37. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIFE
38. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
39. DR. STRANGELOVE
40. THE SOUND OF MUSIC
41. KING KONG
42. BONNIE AND CLYDE
43. MIDNIGHT COWBOY
44. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
45. SHANE
46. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
47. A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE
48. REAR WINDOW
49. INTOLERANCE
50. THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
51. WEST SIDE STORY
52. TAXI DRIVER
53. THE DEER HUNTER
54. M*A*S*H
55. NORTH BY NORTHWEST
56. JAWS
57. ROCKY
58. THE GOLD RUSH
59. NASHVILLE
60. DUCK SOUP
61. SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS
62. AMERICAN GRAFFITI
63. CABARET
64. NETWORK
65. THE AFRICAN QUEEN
66. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
67. WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLFE?
68. UNFORGIVEN
69. TOOTSIE
70. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
71. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
72. THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
73. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
74. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
75. IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
76. FORREST GUMP
77. ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN
78. MODERN TIMES
79. THE WILD BUNCH
80. THE APARTMENT
81. SPARTACUS
82. SUNRISE
83. TITANIC
84. EASY RIDER
85. A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
86. PLATOON
87. 12 ANGRY MEN
88. BRINGING UP BABY
89. THE SIXTH SENSE
90. SWING TIME
91. SOPHIE’S CHOICE
92. GOODFELLAS
93. THE FRENCH CONNECTION
94. PULP FICTION
95. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
96. DO THE RIGHT THING
97. BLADE RUNNER
98. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
99. TOY STORY
100. BEN-HUR

I’ve got this cognitive disorder where my mind shuts off when it sees any movie older than about 1964. Whenever I see a top x movies list the first thing I do is look for “Some Like It Hot”, and if it’s there, I stop reading.

Not this time though - because I was faintly appalled by the numbers of films here that drop below my highly arbitrary low-water-mark… Who was this list put together by? A load of old-age pensioners? I mean I’ve been to film school etc, and I know Hitchcock wrote the book (and invented the grammar). and it’s blasphemy to say that “actually, I think that’s kindof crap now”, and this will garuntee you fail the course, but it’s really time someone called Empror’s New Clothes on this one. This list is a septegenerian back-slappers nostaligia trip.

The numbers break down as follows:

20s - 3
30s - 12
40s - 11
50s - 16
60s - 17
70s - 20
80s - 8
90s - 11
00s - 2

So there you go kiddie-winkies. 80% of the best movies were made before you were even born. Anyone who’s made a movie in the last 10 years or so? Sorry. Your movies simply aren’t as good as the ones they used to make in the 1930s.

1) There is some sort of radioactive accident in a germ-warfare lab and the mutant cockroaches escape and terrorise downtown New York.

2) In 2008, Extra-terrestrials completely ignore us, even more than they did in 2007. In spite of this, numerous sightings are like… “seen” everywhere, especially over Washington, but the only photos that are taken are really blurry.

3) The Internet becomes sentient and takes over all the nuclear bomb computers and then declares war on humanity. After that it makes awesome bio-robots that can travel in time and make all the phones ring at once.

4) A giant asteroid nearly hits the earth, but some spacemen go out and blow it up before it gets here… apart from one little bit, which hits downtown New York, and yellow cabs go flying through the air in slow-motion, which is awesome.

5) A killer disease wipes out just about everyone and the survivors go on a massive looting spree in downtown New York. Eventually they realise that possessions aren’t what really matter in the end - what does, is the people that love them etc… Who are all dead, so like, whatever. On with the shopping LOL.

6) The entire planet floods and all the people that survive wind up living on boats and drinking this really evil moon-shine distilled out of their own piss. The baddies are on oil-tankers and are bastards and it was probably them that caused the flood in the first place. Cunts cunts cunts. Their boat will probably blow up… and this one guy at the end will be going down the beach and find the statue of liberty buried in sand. He will have a nice chick though, so yea. Result.

7) A beast rises up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy, And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority, LOL.

A small child manages to outwit some burglars intent on pinching his parent’s stuff while they are out irresponsibly enjoying themselves.

9) Yea, ok, whatever.

10) At the end there’s a massive party and everyone gets pissed up, and then counts down until 2009… which will turn out to be pretty much the same as 2008, which was in the end kindof the same as 2007… and you know what? I can’t remember what happened in 2007, and it was only about 4 days ago.

These predictions are based on a series of visions I had over the festive season.

I had to come back from the caf early today because my gazillion dollar Sony noise-cancellation headphones have stopped working.

I don’t use them to listen to music… most of the time I play Chatterblocker… an application that plays background noise specifically designed to block out other people talking.

Welcome (again) to the age of information overload. We need earlids… or more specifically, we need some way of drowning out other people’s phone calls, other people talking talking talking, other people eating, other people breathing, other people’s silence… and most of all, other people’s children.

Because let’s face it possums, let’s finally say that which Must Not Be Said… other people’s children are complete and utter cunts.

It’s not surprising people have stopped having them… I mean when you see what other people have lumbered themselves with, why in the name of all that is holy would anyone want that? This is why the dinosaurs died out… it wasn’t because of a flood or an asteroid or whatever - it was more of a lifestyle choice, and sitting in the caf today, I find it hard to believe that little pterodactyl children could be any more irritating than the ones at the table next to me, so I suspect we’ll be heading the same way.

Mind you, Susan’s kid is ok (in fact Susan’s kid is excellent. She hates me (not dissimilar to Susan herself in some ways)). The rest are a fucking pain in the arse.

So headphones have become an utter necessity - they’re the only things standing between humanity and extinction, and mine are broken.

Still, whatever. Here’s a picture of Susan. She’s my first girlfriend and my best friend… and if there’s anything Susan hates, it’s having her photo taken and put on the internet, so now she’ll hate me even more.