Size Of An iPod 5

"I Blew My Chances As You Blow Dried Your Hair"




"Goodbye To Cellulite, Hello To Silicone"




"I Try To Laugh About It Hiding The Tears In My Eyes"

Zig Zag Jul 1978 - The Clash & Television

Book Club

Chapter 2: "It is September 2005 and the hand-loom silk weaving industry of Varanasi is slowly rotting away. Over the past five years, as India has opened its domestic market to foreign imports, cheap Chinese silk has flooded in."

Chapter 3: "The skilled trade union man, the barricade fighter who had never been to a public meeting, the mystic feminist from the backstreets; these were the archetypes who made the Paris Commune."

Chapter 5: "Miller wrote that if he had not become a Wobbly, he would have been a criminal. Having left behind religion there was no hell he could be threatened with."

Chapter 9: "But the economic crisis skidded out of control, provoking a currency devaluation and a run on the banks. With unemployment spiralling to twenty per cent, unemployed pickets blocked the highways. Hundreds of workplaces were taken over by their employees in December 2001. 'It was an uprising,' says Godoy."

'Live Working Or Die Fighting' by Paul Mason

That Was Then This Is Now

It looks like the only place you can get this at the moment is via some dodgy torrent. But then perhaps that is as it should be. We are, after all, talking about a TV program broadcast in 1988 about a band that formed in the late 1970's. It's now 2010. The program is 22 years old and the band are over 30. I remember references to the 60's when I was growing up and how far away that decade seemed from, not where I was but when I was. The 80's are now, in reality, further away from me than the 60's felt at the time. The past is an unfulfilled yearning.

The Cure - That Was Then This Is Now - pwd: c4ctusm0uth Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Join the 5 parts of this download together with HJ Split, then unzip and unencrypt with 7zip.

The Wolfhounds - Me (EP)

It's all about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

The Wolfhounds - Me (EP) (Idea IDEAT010 1987) 320kbps Me Hand In The Till Disgusted, E7 Cold Shoulder She's constantly tired - pwd: c4ctusm0uth

Record Mirror 6th Dec 1986 - Harold Budd & Killing Joke

The First Election Debate

It's the Americans I feel sorry for. They have had to put up with this pointless, political posturing for far longer than we have. I'm surprised they aren't all one-armed. From having gnawed the other one off in sheer fucking frustration at the mind-bending dullness of the event.

The build-up went through the usual media frenzy of "history in the making" and "getting to the heart of the issues" but, as is usual with the mainstream, all we were ever going to see was 'spin' subject to strict rules that have been worked out over months. Spontaneous it was never going to be.

When you put three dull, middle aged, white men in suits in a room and ask them to start talking about how best to manage the country, you're hardly likely to get fireworks. But there wasn't even a spark. The audience seemed torpid as though they had enjoyed the pre-debate sedatives a bit too much. The three stooges were exactly as you would expect and host, Alastair Stewart, did his best to punctuate the boredom with periods of irritation. At him.

I sat through the whole 90 minutes - Tweeting as I went - and my prejudice against all three parties remained intact.

There were many comments about the number of times that Gordon Brown said, "I agree with Nick" or something similar and the policy differences, where they were even apparent, amount to little more than managerial nuances. All three men spoke of the bravery of the armed forces with absolutely no mention of when troops would be coming home. All three spoke of cuts in public spending, without a hint of irony given the ongoing military spend, where the only difference was timing. At least Clegg spoke of getting rid of Trident but that was about as good as it got. In the main all three made commitments to the things that they believe people want commitment on. It was ninety minutes of three capitalist parties telling the populace what they believe the populace want to hear. It was a joke. A bad one.

"Hello. I'm a politician and I am so conceited that I believe I know what's good for you. And everyone else. But I am going to sell it to you as though I share your concerns."

Clearly they do not share our concerns. How can they? Cameron at one point said something along the lines of "What family hasn't had to cut back in the recession?" and the Twitter-verse replied with "Yours!" I am sure the same could just as easily be said of Clegg or Brown.

The legitimisation of the charade that is UK democracy is now complete. We have US style TV election debates in a country where there is no discussion of the alternatives. And hence no alternatives to put on the debate. They had the cheek to cover items that the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales handle for those countries but yet no Nationalist MP is invited to take part. Where were the Greens? Hell, while we're at it, where were the BNP?

I think people are fed up with it. I'll happily wager that turnout for the General Election will be the lowest its been for a while (ever?) and the reasons for that aren't going to be cured by more of the same. In the sanitised, anemic world where policy is driven by tabloid headlines and geared towards marginal seats the choices you have had presented to you tonight were actually only one choice: capitalism.

And I shan't be watching the future debates. Life is too short.

The Jesus & Mary Chain - Snub TV

Getting a bit pissed off that virtually all the video stuff I have ripped thus far, and not posted, is already fucking available on YouTube.

You bastards with more time on your hands to spend ripping twenty or thirty year old VHS shit need to get out more. Or, at the very least, stop fucking beating me to it.

Anyway.

Here's The Jesus & Mary Chain taken from Snub TV in the early 90s. Both the live tracks, 'Take It' and 'Gimme Hell', are available on YouTube (as you can see from the links) but guess what? I've included the short interview from the start of the piece.

So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

The Jesus & Mary Chain - Snub TV - pwd: c4ctusm0uth

Homage To A Government

Homage To A Government Next year we are to bring the soldiers home For lack of money, and it is all right. Places they guarded, or kept orderly, Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly. We want the money for ourselves at home Instead of working. And this is all right. It's hard to say who wanted it to happen, But now it's been decided nobody minds. The places are a long way off, not here, Which is all right, and from what we hear The soldiers there only made trouble happen. Next year we shall be easier in our minds. Next year we shall be living in a country That brought its soldiers home for lack of money. The statues will be standing in the same Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same. Our children will not know it's a different country. All we can hope to leave them now is money. Philip Larkin

Voter Power Index

Here's the website explaining why a spoilt ballot paper is a perfectly legitimate choice for General Election polling day. If anything, it explains why spoiling your paper is the only choice. Hat-tip to @chris_coltrane for the link.

There's Quite A Lot Of Bad Stuff Written About Me

When you survey the ongoing wreckage that constitutes the UK's General Election for 2010, the first thought that immediately springs to mind is, "You know. There just aren't enough rich, opinionated twats offering up stupid suggestions."

Cue Michael Caine.

Stepping out from David 'Man Of The People' Cameron's shadow like the fellow multi-millionaire he is, he's giving his support to Dave's "non-military", voluntary National Service.

Well surely its not fucking National Service then? Or are we only using the term to get the readers of the Daily Fail Mail on board? They see the words 'National' and 'Service' occurring within the same sentence and immediately start foaming at the mouth in excitement. They can feel their "Why Oh Why" letter taking shape as the smell of burning cortex fills the air.

After all, it's not enough that unemployment amongst 18-24 year olds is particularly acute, with one in five white youths and a shocking one in two black youths not in work or training.

It's not enough either that those who do go to university come out the other end saddled with debt that will be hard to shake off when the best you are offered is unpaid or low paid internships to, try not to laugh, 'kick start your career'. Who would've thought that slave labour was a career choice?

I don't suppose its even sufficient that if these poor unfortunate youngsters are lucky enough, if that's the right word, to join the world of wage slavery then they won't be able to afford a house and that their pensions will be largely worthless.

No, what they really need, is a prick like Michael Caine telling them what's good for them. Just like a politician.

This is the same man that referred, last year, to the unemployed as "three and a half million layabouts laying about on benefits" (that'll be the unemployment career option) while he was "getting up at six o'clock in the morning to go to work to keep them." The same man who lived much of the 70s and 80s as a tax exile - obviously wasn't too keen on 'keeping' anyone then either. And the same man who has threatened to move back to the States if income tax goes over 50%. Well, it's understandable what with him only being worth a paltry £45m.

Maybe he's trying to be the English Sean Connery. He's so fond of Scotland and the SNP that he doesn't even fucking live there.

I will agree with Caine on one count though. We do need to 're-educate these youngsters'. In the ways of self-reliance, self-education, self-organisation and autonomy. Lets give them hope through anarchy.

Artificial Life No.5 - Furyo, James King & The Lone Wolves And Gene Loves Jezebel

Silver Bullet - Snub TV

Continuing Highlander's adventures in TV rips...

An interview with the man that bought you '20 Seconds To Comply' (a classic) taken from Snub TV, again early 1990s. Also has the video for 'Bring Forth The Guillotine'.

Silver Bullet on MySpace.


Silver Bullet - Snub TV - pwd: c4ctusm0uth

Loop - Snub TV

I am in the process of copying a load of dodgy old VHS video tapes to my PC.

It's a long, laborious process involving copying from the VHS to a DVD, then from the DVD to my PC and then splitting the resulting massive mpeg into bite size chunks featuring the bands or music I want to keep and binning the remainder.

So I only want to upload this stuff if people will think it is worthwhile.

I have so far converted a handful to AVIs with the following attributes:

Frame Width: 720
Frame Height: 576
Frame Rate: 25 per sec

The resulting files are about 60M in size for every 4 minutes or so of TV footage. Obviously there is a trade off between quality and size but the bigger the file the longer it takes me to create and upload and the longer it takes you to download.

I'll only be uploading clips that aren't obviously available from YouTube.

As a starter for ten, here is an interview with Robert from Loop taken from SnubTV at some point in the early 90s. It also features the video for 'From Centre To Wave'.

Let me know what you think re quality, size and the rest - AVI or MPEG? Put it on YouTube instead?

Loop - Snub TV - pwd: c4ctusm0uth