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August 31, 2004

Oh.

There's currently a horrible smell of creamed jeans and damp panties wafting across the blogosphere. It's a laptop on a dodgy hinge people -please get over it ASAP.

by groc at 06:45 PM | Comments (1)

August 30, 2004

Nosh

oh naughty Dr Gillian McKeith. I've seen a couple of her 'You are what you eat' programs on Channel 4 and while I agree with a much of her common-sense recommendations (which amounts to simply saying 'stop eating crap - eat whole grains and fresh fruit and veg. instead'. Well, duh.) when I went digging around the dedicated micro site over at Channel 4 in search of a recipe for an aduki bean casserole mentioned on one show (I heart aduki beans), instead of any proper practical advice, recipes or anything actually useful, all there is to be found a short list of ridiculously exotic and I suppose very expensive grains. Which must have chosen especially for that particular breed of wealthier middle-class person who just can't spend enough money on the bare necessities of life. But it's exactly this which gives the game away, at heart this isn't really a program about good nutritional advice at all - it's more of a freak show in disguise. A neat little piece of cultural slumming/class tourism -where middle class people get to gawp at some lower class fatties and have all their worse prejudices about them confirmed. Come to think of it 'How Clean is your House' and 'Wife swap' serve a similiar function.

All of a sudden I'm left with a nasty taste in my mouth.

by groc at 08:07 PM | Comments (7)

lomotastic

BBC four as part of their photography week repeated their documentary on the lomo* camera.

Handy hint: if you decide to try out Lomography for yourself don't even bother trying to get a secondhand LC-A on ebay - where they're now going for silly prices. Get yourself a secondhand Olympus XA 2 instead- they're a better camera, do the same job and are usually a lot cheaper, more like £20 to £40 instead of £70 and up. I don't quite see why people are paying good money to take what are in essence 'bad' photographs. Successful marketing and cultism I guess. That Lomo cameras now so expensive takes a lot of the fun out it for me.

Anyhow - in a way the mobile phone camera is really the new lomo.

(*in this article the writer has done some slightly sloppy research -the Holga is chinese made not Russian.)

by groc at 02:45 PM | Comments (3)

so that's what happened to

that alternative OS -beOS it became YellowTAB.

by groc at 01:19 AM | Comments (0)

Go Bush Go

No, I mean you really should go*. As far as I can remember no other President in the history of the US has had mass demonstrations like this against them, certainly not so close to an election. In normal circumstances people would just assume they could easily vote someone so unpopular out, but everyone there must suspect that there's still the slim chance he could get a second term, thanks to the miracle of modern technology. None of that dodgy old world style 'hanging chad' stuff that worked so well in his favour last time. People have seen through that one now.

(NY Times article. requires registration - but if you don't wanna and who does-- username: noneofyour password: business --will get you in.)

by groc at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2004

Juno - in lipstick

Glamour (of a kind)
It's a bit of a shame that this head - one of eight which are built into a gate but being at street height gets vandalised while busts of Jupiter/Zeus/Mercury (I know not which -must do research) being higher up remain relatively intact.

by groc at 08:07 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2004

Domo's mad world.

the Donnie meets Domo video. Clicky on Donnie and then on video for halty-pausey Real Player teeny tiny video goodness. (Well halty-pausey on my 'puter coz I've got a P2P program working away in he background. Broadband - feh.) Now how the hell do you capture streaming video again? coz I never managed to work that out. Yet I'm sure it'd be the only way to watch these things properly without them being all halty-pausey. I've not ever had much luck with Real Player. (Ramble ramble.)

by groc at 08:08 PM | Comments (1)

According to

iTunes these are the 25 most played songs I listen to (well, using that program away.)

Feel free to sneer at my tragic unhipness (since I know you will anyway.)

by groc at 12:07 PM | Comments (4)

piano piece

mmmmm'kay. This is just for the two people who expressed an interest. One of my passions is for piano music and I've found it lurking in the most unusual of places.

by groc at 04:31 AM | Comments (4)

August 27, 2004

the iPod generation

---

gggrrrr Nero 6. So you spend time sorting the files you want to copy into a DVD you let it determine maximum burn speed, you let it do a simulation which it claims successful and after all that it still fails on the actual burn. Twice. With the same totally cryptic error message. Grrrrr.

by groc at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

Does you people

out there like it when I put up musics -or are you just not bothered, and I'm just wasting me bandwidth?

by groc at 02:04 AM | Comments (2)

August 26, 2004

Pod pod pod

coincidences - I'd been thinking about doing an iPod people photoshoppy thing and even before I'd done any image research on Google for Invasion of the Body Snatchers -the sci-fi channeladvertises having the 3rd remake* on tonight at 10pm. Then when I do get to doing the Googly image research thing - I find this blog entry. DJing with an iPod. Hum. Years ago I had the idea of a "silent disco" - one where everyone came with their own Walkman (remember Walkmans?) that way everyone could enjoy their own personal music without having to suffer having someone else's (a DJs) taste inflicted on you. You could even with the right headphone socket doubler share your music with someone else... and best of all you could have actual conversations with other people without having to scream into their ear...

(*which is not a particularly good film by any means.)

by groc at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)

bruup bruup

Mobiles have become the 21st century equivalent of the Swiss Army knife. Apparently.

by groc at 07:05 PM | Comments (1)

de-clutter and then what?

So. There's all these programs on TV of which Life Laundry is only one, encouraging/badgering everyone to be ‘ruthless and clear the clutter’ out of their lives, but how are we supposed to reconcile this new artificially prompted urge with the glaring fact that there simply isn't anywhere to actually put all that amount of stuff once it's been reclassified from being merely clutter to unwanted waste?

by groc at 04:42 AM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2004

a bigger splash

a bigger splash

water wet - some people learning the hard way.

by groc at 06:41 AM | Comments (0)

the futur -proper

I look at these lovely things and I can't help thinking that the iPod is soooooo over. In a few years time when these new gadgets are ubiquitous people will be looking back to this time and going 'what the hell were we thinking'.

iPods are to the early 2000s as flares were to the 70s, padded shoulders and big hair were to the 80s and the smiley t-shirt to the 90s.

by groc at 05:23 AM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2004

Gen X

So please, be a monster.

by groc at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

Please - think of the kittens

Please feel free to copy and send this graphic to anyone who's a flagrant heartless kitten-killer.

At the time of writing 83 kittens where killed here alone. This has got to stop people!

---

Anyway iPods look positively dreary compared to this gorgeous piece of kit. [via Gizmodo.] The iPod is bland retro 70s white plastic naffness -while this is BladeRunner/Alien/Matrix 80s cyberpunk. Much cooler in my book.

by groc at 06:54 PM | Comments (4)

cormorant

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Blimey -Ilford in trouble?

by groc at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2004

human rights and Tory wrongs

Don't you start getting used to any of those new-fangled European human rights you think you might have living here in the UK, because as soon as the Tories get back into power they're planning on taking them off us again. The twunts. All of which begs the question 'Why haven't we got a proper written constitution?' And what the hell does "too many spurious rights" mean exactly. Makes me wonder how long it'll be before they have a go at bringing back slavery.

by groc at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

waaaaaant

neeeeeeeed.

by groc at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

---Brains---

After watching 'Night of the Living Dead' and "The Return of the Living Dead" again on TeeVee recently I had the notion of getting around to revisiting my Zombie Drag Queen idea. But after a bit of picture research - I quickly realised I needn't bother.

I have to say, except as a form of living history, I don't really understand the point or appeal of the traditional drag act. I don't understand the miming, the need to berate and insult the audience, or why the offensive 'blue' Bernard Manning style jokes, the over-the-top make-up and wigs, the parodying of women's fashions of yesteryear, nor the out and out misogyny. I also resent the unspoken implication that all gay men are somehow less than 'real men' (whatever that means) and are therefore closer to being women. (How tediously binary.) To me all this together makes for a less than appealing package, so just why is it supposed to be all so hilariously funny?

There are exceptions to this of course - over the years I've liked Lily Savage, Regina Fong, Dame Edna Everage, and Divine but then these people were/are much more character actors than drag acts and there was also David Dale who as a reaction against the old school did a 'punkier' far more edgier take of the whole thing.

by groc at 07:52 AM | Comments (2)

August 22, 2004

why?

Why do so many people insist on taking pictures of their iPods and posting them up on the interglobalwebnet? Why? when all iPods look exactly alike.

Don't they know whenever someone puts up a picture of their iPod on the internet -god kills a kitten!

by groc at 12:14 PM | Comments (2)

stakeout

via dykes do digital freezepop's stake out.

Also from dykes do digital -this label.

by groc at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2004

sunset

sunset.

by groc at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

stormclouds

stormclouds

yesterday's storminess

by groc at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

worrying

I know with all the dedicated hardcore cultists out there I'm probably alone on this one - but sometimes Apple really scares me.

by groc at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2004

pagans

We're still pagans at heart.

by groc at 01:52 AM | Comments (2)

August 19, 2004

dan clone

dan clone

I caught sight of this chap at this year's Brighton homosexualist Pride thingy.

It worried me somewhat.

by groc at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)

August 18, 2004

Tuesday's walk

another walk with my camera.

by groc at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)

Mary, Mary

something I've heard about, and read about and really want to see is Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

That and a few of the Saturday morning episodes of PeeWee Herman's Playhouse.

Isn't this sort of thing what bittorrent was made for?

Apparently not. Grumble grumble...

Dammit - I should be given my own cable/satellite channel.

by groc at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2004

meat is muuurder

But, but, what are the future generations of Atkin dieters and unhealthy Burger bar people going to eat? Each other? Mmmmm a slice of soylent green anyone?

by groc at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)

Warning or prophecy?

Portugese Big Brother winner in suicide bid. (Don't worry I'm not taking about Nadia.)

by groc at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2004

putting the mental into fundamental

After reading this is it any wonder that I've long seen fundamentalist Christianity as a form of mental illness?

by groc at 07:05 PM | Comments (3)

August 15, 2004

mmmm portable

I've seen the ads for these things on the kid's cartoon channels, a 'toy' portable video player. Want.

by groc at 05:50 PM | Comments (3)

August 14, 2004

talking of Jack

and then I stumbled upon this. My eyes! My eyes!

---

Oooh -here's a book I want.

by groc at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2004

be seeing you

Readng this sort of thing 1. 2. makes me realise just how much of 'The Prisoner' was based on fact.

by groc at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)

Redrum Redrum

damn. I'm going to have a track down a copy* of it now I've read this and this.

coincidently a few days ago I was image googling for 'that' iconic image from the film -I had the notion of turning BB 5 Michelle into Jack. Maybe I will still.

*But I want it dirt cheap. Coz I'm poor and I can't afford it at new rippoff prices.

Weird. About half an hour later I'm looking through an old copy off the Guardian (last weeks dated the 5th Aug) which I hadn't even opened yet and on one of the pages ----there's Johnny. being used to illustrate some (in truth rather silly) mathematical formula researcher has worked out for horror films. Freaky.

by groc at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)

---, bothered and bewildered

I'm sure I've pondered on this before. Nicole as Samantha -mmmmmm. This one could go either way, but given Hollywood's track record with these things...

But why, oh why can't they get into their heads that instead of tampering with tried and true classics they should be taking any one of those thousands of old BAD movies and BAD TV series and using them to remake into GOOD new movies.

Oh look it's T4 right this second. Yay.

by groc at 08:22 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2004

junk TV and junk food

welcome to my world.

allow me to add my own observations:

1. TV has only itself to blame, how many programs are there being made these days that actually require your full attention? Even most dramas now lazily recycle themes, plots and stereotypical characters and other clichés to such an extent you only need half a brain to watch them. I haven’t watched any soap for years but back when I was an addict I was tortured by how a simple enough plot line would be stretched out as long as possible in order to fill the available time, and nowadays all the soaps are on even more nights a week than when I stopped following them. So I dread to think what they must be like by now. (No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.) If you have satellite/cable then the vast majority of channels to be found are either complete and utter junk (shopping, games, dating, soft porn), or repeats of repeats of repeats of the old tried and true ‘classics’ which you’ve likely already seen so many times before -you don’t have to pay much attention to, or there’s the music channels -which is merely radio with visuals.

2. The pervasiveness of advertising -especially on the non-terrestrial channels. Ad breaks have slowly crept up to lasting five minutes at least four times every hour. That is a long enforced break in concentration and it’s a long enough period of time that you can easily listen to a song, read a few web pages, etc. while waiting for the programme to resume. TV commercials may well make money for TV channels -but in actuality they are just stealing time from us if we bother to pay much attention to them. This especially applies when it comes to the cheaper, nastier low-production value advert -such as those for home loans and insurance. Those are so insulting on so many levels they should be made illegal.

3. If you want to concentrate on watching something at home - a TV series or a film these days you’re far more likely to watch it on DVD -which being free from commercial breaks allow you to concentrate properly.

(Wonder if there will come a time when you’ll get series and films going straight-to-DVD?)

4. As for the obesity factor. Where to begin. It’s a given that most people are over worked, and work quite ridiculously long hours -who’s got the energy to go for any sort of physical exercise after that? Gyms are very expensive and crowded, rather unpleasant places to go to if you aren‘t expressly into that sort of thing. (All gyms make their money by selling expensive memberships to people -who with all the good intentions, join -only to give up going after a few months. But then -forever labouring under the delusion they’ll ‘get back into it soon’ allow the direct debits on their memberships to continue -forever. Great scam. If you own a gym it’s being given free money. Literally.) Then there’s the Fear of the outside world. We have a media that presents us with a world where paedophiles, muggers, junkies, terrorists lurk around every corner waiting to pick you off, you’re best staying in at night where it’s safe. If you go out, only do so in the car.

All the wrong foods are cheap, plentiful and easy to prepare. How about subsidizing healthier foodstuffs? Why are fresh fruit and vegetables (-especially organic produce) the most expensive things in any supermarket? They should be the cheapest things there surely?

In short: as with the media as with our food -we’re currently drowning in a sea of quantity not quality.

We can thank the various corporations for giving us what they spend rather a lot of time and money telling us we want for that.

Funny old world innit?

by groc at 06:20 PM | Comments (3)

Whatever happened to

Frank Chickens? Well one of them married a spaceman.

---

when software goes crufty.

by groc at 04:33 AM | Comments (3)

August 11, 2004

Honey,

I ruined the house. Yes, Naomi, yes you certainly did. Can you please stop painting everything beige and magnolia now? and omigod - that leafy wallpaper was disgusting. And mmmm, an all beige dining/computer/kid's playroom - I'll repeat for emphasis -kid's playroom, I certainly hope that was hard durable easily washable beige paint. What did she say earlier in the same episode about show-rooms and staging? I'm sorry, but looking at the pictures on the offical website I have to say it -Noami's finished make-overs look -all a bit bland and soulless. They don't look quite so bad on TV but still...

Well I'm now over-loaded up to the back teeth with this current flood of cheapo TV programmes where bossy over-bearing experts storm into hapless proles homes and start ordering them around. Yet there seems to be no end to them being churned out. What to wear, what to eat, how to clean, how to decorate, how to this, how to that. With each programme on whatever network all too happy to steal from each other from the already tiny pool of ideas that there is. What can't you clean with white vinegar? How many walls can you paint in bland neutral shades, how many queer men does it take to change a light bulb? Aren't rubber gloves with fur and feather trims unhygenic to the max?

Over on Channel 5 I caught their new home improvement programme 'How not to decorate' where bossy overbearing Justin and Colin do the Naomi on some other proles. This programme at least has the factor of ending with a return to the scene of the crime to see what the tasteless ingrates had done to their new dream homes. It's here you can see where real life has started to creep back on their somewhat impracticable designs. As an example in the last programme I saw how Justin and Colin got mightily upset to see a cat's litter tray and empty cat food tins in the bathroom (point taken -why not feed the poor cat in the kitchen?). Having successfully banished the cat out of the bathroom - in the return footage they got equally outraged and horrified to see that the litter tray had been moved into their conservatory dining room. Like, hello. The family had a pet cat - where is the poor little fucker supposed to go? Did they design a special cattery place where it could live and have it's litter tray? No. Had they given a second thought to the family cat? Obviously not. Pheh.

Designer living spaces are all very well for glossy magazine photo spreads -but for your actual functional day-to-day living in? It's way too impractical. Even Anne 'House Doctor' Maurice conceeds that one. But I'm getting the impression from TV that we're all expected to start living like that, but it's a sure path to neurosis. Is it any wonder Doctors are handing out prozac prescriptions like sweeties? All this for the sake of a few TV producers filling up air time and TV channels as cheaply as possible. Sigh.

by groc at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

Dean

I ordered this book and it arrived today. I'm already about 5 chapters in. You'll only be able to find this on ebay, apparently no mainstream publisher will touch it for fear of falling foul to the wraith of the Endemol lawyers.

by groc at 08:27 PM | Comments (5)

other people's pikturs

(a bunny and a brazen hussy! NSFW)

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want!

by groc at 05:58 PM | Comments (1)

art

"We really are too depraved and idiotic as a society now for art".
Matthew Collings

by groc at 01:30 AM | Comments (3)

August 10, 2004

blah de blah blah

Blah blah blah report says music downloads don't affect CD sales, blah blah blah sales are going up, RIAA goes 'ooooh that's all lies'... blah blah.

by groc at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2004

beardy

Don't know who he is - but he made a good piktur.

Taken at this year's Brighton homosexualist Pride thingy.

by groc at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

pen

A gallery of pics taken with Olympus Pen (half frame) cameras. Love the 'Japlish' captions.

by groc at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)

August 06, 2004

the biggest thing

I'm looking forward to in the end of this year's Big Brother -is not having to suffer those bloody irritating TalkTalk ads. That irritating jangly guitar jingle, that smug frontman, the useless funny-as-a-car-crash-in-which-your-lover-and-your-whole-family-dies 'comedy' sketches --aaaaargh. Why hasn't the marketting/advertising world learnt yet that that being annoying isn't the best way to promote anything. Sigh.

Nadia will win, Dan will come second (that's what he's hoping for) and if there's any justice in the world Shell third and Jason fourth - how the hell did he get so lucky to be still in there? Bizarre, bizarre and bizarre.

by groc at 06:11 PM | Comments (3)

wing it

wing

Originally uploaded by groc.

they're not so small and fluffy anymore, but I still think they're cute.

by groc at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

August 04, 2004

chip shops

My local chip shop has this life-sized fisherman outside - so I was surprised to his his identical twin brother out in West Worthing - judging by the pair of kids' trainers he or the fish he's holding must've eaten a small child. Then a cartoon fish wearing a boater, bowtie, a jacket and an apron, what's that about?

by groc at 03:19 PM | Comments (1)

August 02, 2004

arssse

Am I the only one to have noticed the not-so veiled homophobic comments directed at Dan spouted by both Victor and Jason throughout the whole of this year’s BB? Of all the housemates he’s been repeatedly singled out by those two as a ‘brown noser’, an arse-licker, etc. etc.

(Watch out for tonight's glove puppet show from Jason.)

I mean I can’t say I’ve ever seen Dan being ingratiating to anyone in the house myself, but that‘s obviously what they branded him as -just so they can get in those arse-related insults at every opportunity. Lovely. This being on the acceptable side of saying what they'd really like to call him -the dirty arse-bandit queer. This being all the more ironic coming from Jason being the housemate who’s made the biggest fuss and show of his gluteus maximus.

by groc at 09:02 PM | Comments (6)

August 01, 2004

cobwebs!

Have you seen BB today? There's giant cobwebs everywhere - black widow Michelle must have left them all before she left.

I couldn't help noticing today that -rather predictably, the Sunday papers were full of 'exclusives' with the cheap whorish chav trollop.

by groc at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)