Alien Spouse

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock.

I have a song stuck in my head, and it's been there for two days now. 

This isn't in itself unusual, but this particular song is not the usual ear-worm which is generally a snippet of a pop song on a loop.  Nope, this is a short song that I learnt at primary school, and I know it well enough to have a substantial chunk going round and round and round in my head.

Sometimes it's quite nice to know a song that well, strangely for an atheist the songs that tend to stick in my head are the hymns we sang in school assemblies.  I went to an all girl school, so naturally our school hymn was "When a Knight Won His Spurs", how bizarre is that?  Lots of riding through the land with a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand to kill dragons, just what every tween girl is preparing for.  Still it's a pretty good song, with a fun tune and it's not too religious for me to enjoy singing it occasionally still.

But that isn't what's stuck in my head. 

No, right now I'd love to have some giant-killing action in my head, but what I've got is the first verse and chorus of "My Grandfather's Clock".  Have had now for what feels like "...Ninety years without stumbling (tick-tock, tick-tock)..." 

Doc had never heard of it, so I sang it through for him, and he was bemused that it was something that gets taught to very small children in England.  Essentially, for those of you who don't know it, the song is about a clock which is both a grandfather clock and is owned by the grandfather of the title.  The song details where the clock stands (on the floor, because it's too tall for the shelf), the height of the clock (taller by half than the grandfather himself), it's weight (exactly the same as the grandfather) and when it was bought (The very morning that the grandfather himself was born.  This always struck me as an odd time to be shopping for a clock.)

The clock runs for ninety years in the ownership of one man "...his life seconds numbering (tick-tock, tick-tock)..." until it stops "...short, never to go again, when the old man died.".  It's a cheery little number, you've got to love Victorian song-writing haven't you? 

Anyway, I'm going to try and find something to knock that out of my head before I go totally mad.

Come On Ok Go!

Ok Go's third album was released today and my lovely Mum pre-ordered it from Amazon for me, so it is already on it's way.  I am very excited, but also apprehensive.  I have a theory that I call "the tricky third album", which as the name suggests, speculates that it is the third release by a band that is the turning point in a band's fortunes.

The first album tends to have all the songs that the band worked on and honed in live performances before getting signed.  The second album usually follows from the first in quick succession, and would have the material they worked on whilst promoting the first album; it is therefore likely to have strong thematic similarities with the first album, and so if you like the first album then you can be fairly confident of liking the second.  The third album is usually when a band will choose to make changes to their songwriting style, and this can be a gamble.  So I'm on tenterhooks right now, because I adore both of Ok Go's previous CDs, but what if in the four and half years since they released their last album they've become obsessed with bagpipes?  Or kazzoos?  Or choirs of squirrels?

Actually, the last one would be quite fun; let's keep our fiongers crossed for that, if anything.

Wall of Sound.

By the way when we saw Doc's family for New Year's Day one of his brothers gave us a Graduation/Wedding/Birthday/Christmas present that he bought us a year ago and not had the chance to give us. It was a Bose Wave music system, which is a tiny little stereo that Doc has been drooling over for years.

There is really nothing you can give a former sound engineer that will make him happier than really good speakers, that he can then wire up to the TV and every other electronic thing in the house.  The theme tune for "NCIS" rocks even more when you can properly appreciate the bass line, there may have been some dancing.

Location: Lounge. Status: Lounging.

Mono is tedious, but stressing out and pushing myself is not helping; so I am taking the excellent advice of my friend Hillary, and I am having a proper duvet day today for the good of my health.    I have actually got out of bed, and put some clothes on; but they are really comfy warm clothes and I haven't put any styling product in my hair!  Crazy!

The main plan for today is to sleep, but I'm also going to read, knit and play music for Edith to go into kitty ecstatics over.  She particularly loves pop, dance and jazz, preferably with a female vocalist.

If I feel like it later I might even move from the comfy chair to the sofa, but I'm not making any firm plans just yet. 

Seriously, I WILL Faint.

Ok, so my Doctor doesn't think this is Swine Flu or anything H1N1 adjacent, which I am very pleased to hear.  She thinks it might be Mono, which I think is what we refer to as Glandular Fever in the UK.  I know I was tested for that as a teenager, during my summer of mysterious falling asleep bloody everywhere, but I don't think I actually had it.  Do you remember Mum?

Anyway, I was sent for blood tests which are never my favourite thing.  It's a pity, because I have lovely veins and nurses never have a problem actually getting the blood, it's just I get a touch of the vapours.  I hate it, because being my Mother's daughter, I do not like to make a fuss and fainting seems so attention seeking.  I always warn whoever is taking blood that I don't react well, but I tend to underplay it because it's not like I totally freak out at the sight of needles or anything. This time the nurse asked if I'd like Doc C to come with me, and I said yes. The nurse sat me down in a funny little sofa thingy, with arms that folded down in front of me.  There was a very faded sticker of a puppy on the left arm, and I took a couple of pictures of that mainly because I was trying to stay upbeat by not thinking about the whole blood thing.

The nurse very quickly found a good vein, and complimented me on how nice my veins are, so she soon had the needle in and was busily filling up the various vials.  I didn't watch and was talking to Doc C who was literally holding my hand through the whole thing. When she had finished, she took the tourniquet off my arm, and walked my blood around the corner to the lab; just as "Shout" by Tears for Fears started playing on the radio. 

At this point I thought that I turned to Doc, and said I feel a bit faint, and just moved into a chair with a slanted back with a bit of help from Doc.  However, according to Doc I looked him straight in the eye said "Tears for Fears... My head feels funny..." and then my pupils dilated and I slumped over sideways.

Poor Doc C was, and I quote, "totally freaked out" and had to shout for the nurse, who came racing back with a paramedic and smelling salts.  Actual smelling salts!  I had no idea those were a real thing that were still used!  They tried to wake me up, and then all three of them moved me to the chair I woke up in.  I had to sit there for a while because my blood pressure was really low (I am, indeed, my Mother's daughter!) and they didn't want me to leave until it got a bit higher.  Well, that and my lips had turned blue, which is never a good look.  After about ten minutes the nurses decided I was recovered enough to let me go, so they sent Doc to pull the car round and walked me to the door.  They told me to go straight home, to rest and drink plenty of liquids.

The really weird part was that I had no idea I had actually passed out.  I thought I'd just got a bit light headed, but it wasn't until Doc told me the whole story in the car that I found out I'd actually lost consciousness.  Weird!

Sugababes 4.0

We really need to discuss the Sugababes, because I'm just not sure they can be called the Sugababes now that Keisha has "left" after 11 years.  This means the band now has an entirely different line up to the original group.

I'm sure you know how this happened, but for the sake of clarity, let's look at it step-by-step (and the BBC have it in pictures too.  Yay!).

1. Keisha, Mutya and Siobhan (3 years)
2. Keisha, Mutya and Heidi (4 Years)
3. Keisha, Heidi and Amelle (4 years)
4. Heidi, Amelle and Jade (Present Day)

Now, to be fair, the most successful combination was the second (Keisha, Mutya and Heidi), and I suppose it could also be argued that after 8 years that Heidi has actually been a Sugababe for longer than original member Mutya, who you can see sang with the group for 7 years. 

However did Heidi ever learn to speak Keisha and Mutya's secret Sugababe language?  Is that something the new girls have received training in at all?  It is intrinsic to the very fabric of the Sugababes that they speak a secret language, damn it!  Assuming that there will be some sort of special secret language coaching for Jade (For the sake of argument lets say that Heidi is up to speed by now and that Amelle has got at least some of the vocab and grammar down by now), I still think there needs to be some sort of concession to this totally new era of Sugababes. 

My suggestion would be that they put the "R" back in "Sugar", and I'm not just suggesting that because it has been bugging me for a while.  Nope.  Not at all.

Chris Williams' Flyers and Posters

The most interesting thing I've seen this weekend was a exhibition of flyers and posters designed by Chris Williams. The only problem was that no photos were allowed in the gallery so I couldn't take any pictures. Hmmm...  Hello internet...

Yay! His press has a website and a

Flickr account! 

Ooh, and an Etsy Shop...

   

Decemberists
Originally uploaded by plasticflame

The Cat Piano

I found an animation on-line today, it's a film noir set in a city of cat musicians and it's amazingly well done.  I particularly love the narration by Nick Cave, and that certainly helps it maintain a creepy tension.

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

Nobody Likes Me Everybody Hates Me, Think I'll Go and Date Avatars.

Scene: This morning on the way to the gym.

Jen: sigh. I have "Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Think I'll Go and Eat Worms" stuck in my head.

Doc: Well I've got "Do You Want to Date My Avatar?" stuck in my head for the 19th day in a row.

Jen: (Heartless laughter, as she was the one who introduced Doc to the song) You are welcome!

And for those of you who don't yet have "...Avatar?" stuck in their heads, here's the video on YouTube.

Come. Join us in repetitively humming the chorus for the next month and a half.

I Survived Tonsillitis. Again.

Tonsillitis (American Translation: Strep Throat) is my Achille's heel and I suppose I've got quite blase about it now.  It's horrible knowing I'll be croaky and exhausted for about three days, but if I get plenty of sleep, drink lots of warm drinks and watch really formulaic detective shows, I'll feel better quickly.

Right on schedule I'm pretty much over my tonsillitis from last week, but one of the problems with having a boss with a medical degree is once I'm back in the office she can explain to me exactly what the problem was and why that can sometimes be really dangerous.  Now the BBC News website have piled on the historical paranoia with recent research which speculates that Mozart died of complications from a sore throat.  I mean, really!  That timing is uncanny!  I still have a slight sore throat and the usual post-illness ennui, so this is not what I need to be reading. 

Mind you I also just started "The Virgin Suicides" and we watched "The Wrestler" at the weekend, so right now what I really need is for cartoon kittens to be streamed into my cerebral cortex, preferably to the soundtrack of a new Ok Go album featuring guest appearances by Kylie Minogue, Tim Curry and Dusty Springfield.

That would be really rocking now I think of it.

John Hughes.

I put together a playlist on 8tracks from sound tracks to some of his classic eighties teen movies.

And yes that is a picture of Anthony Michael Hall with a pen up his nose.  I think John Hughes would have liked that actually.

McGee, Fix It!

I enjoy watching the "NCIS" triple bills after work, because I like the internal dynamics of the investigative team and anything with Illya Kuryakin has to be worth watching.  The only problem is that USA, that's the network it's on, likes to keep their audience on their toes by screening things out of sequence.  Characters die, and in the very next episode they are trading quips with their colleagues again. Doc and I have got reasonably good at spotting subtle indicators to help us roughly position episodes into the overall story arc of the show, which, considering we've never seen them in a consecutive order, is quite a challenge.

One of my favourite characters is Abby, and I read an interesting interview with Pauley Perrette who plays her, which had this particularly interesting nugget about the character's evolution:

(Oh, before you read this, it helps to know that the creator of the show is Donald P. Bellisario; who also created one or two other things you may have heard of like "Magnum P.I.", Battlestar Galactica", "Airwolf" and "Quantum Leap.  I know.)

Though many describe Abby as “gothic,” Perrette strongly disagrees with this perception.  In fact, her character has the enthusiasm of a cheerleader, though she appears like the opposite of one.

“[NCIS creator] Don Bellisario told me that when he created Magnum, P.I. he wanted to introduce a Vietnam vet who defied the negative stereotype.  So with Abby, he wanted to take an alternative-style person with tattoos and make her someone who is happy, totally put together and successful.  All the script said about her was: black hair, caffeinated and smart… She's completely unaware that anybody thinks she looks weird.  She thinks she looks pretty and never calls herself anything other than happy.  And I fight for that,” she explained.

My heart is oddly warmed by that, it's sweet that Bellisario is trying to show a perkier side to the Goth lifestyle (Much like "Goths in Hot Weather"), and it adds a dimension to the show that I particularly appreciate.

Duck Earphones: I Will Not Give In!

This morning I talked Doc into getting up half an hour earlier, so that we could get to the gym slightly earlier, allowing me to stretch properly, and cool down on the elliptical rather than just counting the walk back to my office.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to get there even earlier, so that I can add in some other exercises too, but if not the elliptical is still helping me get to where I want to be.

I've mentioned before that listening to my own selection of music when I'm in the gym is necessary to make exercising enjoyable, and it's made a massive difference to my motivation.   However, my duck earphones are still refusing to stay in my ears, despite my foam ear plug modifications.  What to do?  Naturally I consulted the internet, and mostly the suggestions seemed to involve buying a different set of earphones.  Which is no fun at all, I like my ducks!

Then I found one very simple suggestion which, if it works, will be fantastic.  Essentially the knack is to loop the earphone wires up behind your ears and over the top to the front, before putting them in.  That should just give them a little bit more support, and stop them falling out whilst I'm running.

I'll try it out on Wednesday and report back!

Reconstructed Duck Earphones.

I have been using my adorable duck earphones every time we go to the gym, and, whilst I still think they are adorable, I have to say it is really annoying that they simply will not stay in my ears.  The pieces that fit in to the ear are sort of hollow cones made out of a thin soft rubber, but the problem is that these just aren't firm enough to support the weight of the ducks when my pace picks up.

I don't like to give up on things though, especially when they are super cute, so I tried to come up with a modification that would solve the problem.

What I came up with was padding the cones internally using the top bits from a pair of foam ear plugs.  All I did was snip the top off the ear plugs with scissors, and then made a hole in the centre.  I took the cones off and turned them inside out so I could get to the tube in the centre, which I pushed the rounds of foam onto before re-fitting the cones back on the ear phones.

They are still very comfortable, and I think the foam helps block out some of the background noise but I won't know until Friday if this solves the problem.  I hope so, because I like these little guys, and they contribute a lot to making going to the gym fun.

Class of '09

This morning we went to our friend Jasmine's high school graduation, which was particularly exciting for me because we don't have graduation ceremonies like this in the UK.  My school had speech day, which the whole school had to attend every year and it was very very dull indeed.  We didn't get to dress up in caps and gowns or anything!

This being a completely new experience for me, I was very interested in all of the details.  Such as the music playing.

Why on earth is the music for American high school graduations Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance"? Which is better known to most British people as "Land of Hope and Glory" and is essentially extolling the virtues of the mighty British empire.  Isn't that a bit of a weird choice?

Anyway...

There were speeches by four of the students, which tended towards the starry eyed, but had the virtue of brevity.  I particularly like the speech that used turtles burying their hatches of eggs as a metaphor for the high school experience.  Which made today the day that the senior hatchlings finally nosed their way out of the sand!

Then every single senior, all 350 of them, walked across the stage to collect their diplomas.  For the audience the high point was obviously when their own special student walked, so the fact that our girl was first was gratifying but meant we then had 349 we didn't give two hoots about.  Which was actually not a problem, because there was more than enough hooting, whooping and setting off of air horns to go around.  All of which was strictly prohibited on the program, but was clearly expected.

The photos above shows the iconic moment of graduation when the caps are thrown in the air at the end, it looked like blue popcorn going off.  I'm particularly impressed by that blue blob way above the students, which is someone's cap!  Afterwards Jasmine told me that they had been askd not to do that, because the caps are actually really heavy and last year two students had their noses broken by flying caps.  Fortunately this year there appeared to be no casualties from the frivolity.

When the ceremony was over, we found Jasmine and mobbed her.  She was probably the only student there whose guests included nine professors from the university they will be attending in the new semester.  I was also very taken with the tassel on her hat because she had swapped the boring standard issue one out for something with a bit of sparkle to it.  Jasmine and I are on very much the same wavelength when it comes to shiny things.

Then we went back to Laura and Randy's to see Jasmine open her presents (ours hasn't been made yet, but she knows what she's getting!), and eat ice cream cake.  The tiny cap on the cake was made from a square of dark chocolate on top of a miniature peanut butter cup.  Adorable and tasty! 

 (It was a very interesting and fun day, but I need a nap now.  Mainly because we went to bed quite late last night assuming we could sleep in this morning, only to be woken up by what I thought was the cats but turned out to be workman fixing next doors roof.  At 7am.  On a freaking Saturday.  Ugh!)

If You Hold This Post Up To A Mirror, It Makes NO Sense.

I was reading a Mental Floss post about today being the forty second anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper, and they had a link to a website detailing all of the clues that are supposed to indicate that Paul died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike who was also, damn luckily, a soundalike. Rather impressive!  All the more so when when you read the list of 376 clues, and some of those clues actually pre-date the accident.  Were the Beatles clairvoyant, or is there a more... sinister... interpretation... that can be applied?

Actually the "Officially Pronounced Dead?" website, despite being pretty thorough in it's "Paul Is Dead" clue hunting, is maintained by a sensible man; who clearly states in the FAQ that he doesn't believe the conspiracy theory himself, but still enjoys cataloguing all the clues anyway.  It's fun!

However, if you prefer your crazy hot and fresh, check out the PID links page!  There you can find people who really are convinced that Faux Paul, or "Faul" as he is often known by PID conspiracy theorists, has been perpetrating a massive scam for over forty years now.  In fact some speculate that the same person was doubling for both Paul McCartney and Vivian Stanshall.  I heart that theory a lot, I think that one might be my very favourite mainly because how could that possibly have worked logistically?  Hmmm?

Anyway, I know none of this will be news to you, but it kept me hugely entertained through out my lunch hour and made me want to listen to more thing backwards whilst exhaustively examining cover art for those tricksy hidden messages. What I want to know is why there don't appear to have been any easter egg clues hidden on DVD releases, surely that's a missed opportunity right there!

Gleefull.

If you haven't seen it yet, I've embedded the pilot below the jump.  I'm only sorry that Hulu doesn't work outside the US, but hey I can't watch "Eastenders", "Strictly Come Dancing" or, sigh, "The Eurovision Song Contest" (Did Germany really have Dita Von Teese as part of their act this year?  And I missed it?  Damn it all!) on the BBC's iplayer, so I do feel your pain.

So here's the YouTube link to the big finale song.  You are entirely welcome!

The Ups and Downs of Being an Academic.

Doc is in the middle of a end-of-semester final paper grading frenzy.  This is usually unrelenting misery, but occasionally his face will light up with pleasure at what he's reading.  

As happened yesterday evening, when he turned to me and said:

"I love it when a student uses the word 'biaatch' in an essay!"

Which is actually justified in this instance, because it was used in the context of a paper on the aesthetics of hip-hop culture.  That particular essay made him considerably happier than the one page paper that was written in what amounted to text message speak, and should have been ten pages long.

Kirsty MacColl.

Before this evening Doc C had only ever heard the Billy Bragg version of "New England", and was totally unaware of "There's A Guy Works Done the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis".

This has now been rectified.

Duck Earphones.

I did some very satisfying shopping whilst in Philly, as I believe I may have mentioned already.  One of the things I bought was a set of duck earphones.

I would be prepared to bet that right now you are looking at the screen and wondering what a grown woman could possibly want with duck earphones.  I'm sure that you will agree that these are far more sensible than my two other choices, which were a horribly realistic pair of flies or a Barbie pink pig (Left ear head and front legs, right ear tail and back legs).

Really I just wanted some cheap earphones for the gym, so that I don't wreck my good earphones, and these were only $11.

Plus, Hello!  Ducks!

The Difference Between Reality and Imagination.

I didn't go to this exhibition, but I really liked the banner for it.

Of course I mainly didn't go because I would only have been disappointed if the jellybean children weren't skipping around in a circle to the beautiful sound of the butterflies singing.

Pros and Cons of the Gym.

Things I don't like about going to the gym:

1. Getting up super early.
2. My face going red and blotchy, with a lovely sheen.
3. Having to shower in a public space, with only a shower curtain (if I'm lucky) to preserve my modesty.

Things I do like about going to the gym:

1. Getting to my office super early to drop off my none gym stuff, but then leaving straight away.
2. Occasionally changing direction on the elliptical machine is fun!  I don't know why.
3. Watching the calorie counter slowly add up.
4. Listening to my special Elliptical Soundtrack play list.  This morning's work out was scored by Shapeshifters, Take That, Basement Jaxx & The Beastie Boys.
5. Walking across campus in my after-work-out t-shirt, which just happens to be my Harvard T-shirt.
6. Entering exercise points into my calorie counting app on the iPod.
7. An hour after my work out I get to eat a Kashi protein bar (slightly chalky, but still dipped in chocolate!) with a cup of green tea.
8. Feeling super awake for about three hours after getting my heart rate up.
9. Brownie points from Mum, Doc C and my manager.
10. Fitting into my Diva jeans without spilling over, if you know what I mean.

Her Morning Elegance.

I know that many many blogs are linking to this video, but I thought it was something my Mum would enjoy so I am linking to it as well.

A January Monday.

It's my first day back at work after Christmas, and I actually got up at six to do some exercise, feed the cats and make a healthy packed lunch.  2009 is all about forming good habits.  Maybe.

The fur-balls were delighted to be getting food and attention so early in the morning, but Edith seriously disapproved of morning exercise routines.  It was a half hour stretching routine (The DVD I have is essentially this one, I think, but mine is called "A.M./P.M. Stretching", or something.  It's the same instructor), and Edith's contribution was to sit on the mat and attack my feet when I did the leg stretching, and after I'd shooed her away for that, she retreated to the top of the cat tower, where she could get a better view and watched me with a distinct air of "You are clearly doing that all wrong!  Stupid human, you can't stretch properly without a tail."

Just at the end, when I was working on creating a good posture for the day ahead, Edith jumped down from the tower and deliberately placed herself back on my exercise mat to throw up her breakfast.

Lovely.  Monday's are just hellish, aren't they?

Over Christmas I did decide that one thing I do need to do in the evenings after work is spend an hour by myself, so I can read books, and listen to cheesy pop music, or do yoga, or drink gin and tonic whilst flipping through a magazine, or paint my nails, or whatever!  By myself, with no-one else in the room.  It occurred to me that when I was commuting I had a solid hour every day to mentally decompress after work every day, and that's not something a ten minute drive home provides me.

So today I took a G&T, a small plate of salsa and tortilla chips and spent an hour reading "Enchanted April", whilst listening to a winning play-list of Roxette, Five, Ant & Dec and Voice of the Beehive.  It was most pleasant.

Edith: A Short Film. ***Featured Post***

Today, instead of taking a photo, I made a short video of Edith being sweet.  This of course means one thing is very clear; Alien Spouse is going to be a crazy cat lady blog for slightly longer. 
Let me give you some background on the film before I embed it.  Edith loves electronic sounds,for example if we access a website with sound on the laptop, or if I put the iPod on speaker, she comes running.  As I said yesterday she was very happy when I was testing out new ring tones for my phone, and actually my current ring tone is Edith purring loudly!

When I got the Voco Alarm Clock for my birthday I was extremely pleased, and I have to say it has to be one of the best ways to be woken up in the morning.  Edith thinks so too.  If she is in the bedroom when it goes off she jumps up on the bedside table to get closer to it. 

The clock also has a relaxation exercise on it, which Edith particularly loves, so I put my digital camera on a tripod, set the clock talking and just waited for Edith to fawn all over the clock.  I'm sorry that the sound isn't better, but if you want to clearly hear Stephen Fry in all his fabulousness it's on the Voco website.

Edith Loves My Alarm Clock from Jen Alien-Spouse on Vimeo.

(Should you be wondering why I chose to post this on Vimeo rather than Flickr or YouTube, the answer is that I spent a couple of hours trying to upload it to either of those and they just would not do it.  Vimeo behaved beautifully and uploaded smoothly, I was very happy.)

Also because this is my first film I am making this a featured post for a week, or until I get over the novelty!

Game Day.

When we got up today the weather was distinctly grey and damp, so I declared it to be Computer Game Day!  So for most of today I have been playing "Teen Titans", and I think my favourite character to play has to be Starfire.  She has some great powers, and I like being able to fly.

I've only seen the cartoon once or twice, but I love the jpop theme tune by Puffy Ami Yumi. 

It's so much fun, and I was very happy to be able to get it from iTunes.  Now that I've read their wikipedia entry, I really want to see Puffy Ami Yumi's own cartoon series.  In fact I think I need to add it to the Netflix queue; Doc C is not so thrilled.

Dr. Pepper's For All!

So Guns 'n Roses released their long awaited new album today.  In all honesty I can't say that this is an event that I would have paid that much attention to normally; however Dr. Pepper's promised to provide all of America (with the exception of Slash and Buckethead, because they are "estranged" from the group apparently) with a can of their delicious beverage if G'nR managed to actually release the album before the end of 2008.  I don't drink fizzy caffeinated soft drinks very often, but when I do my preference is for Dr. Peppers, so I am somewhat interested now.

Well the band did it, so Dr. Pepper's are honouring the promise, and by the way what the hell were the circumstances behind that one?  It's such an odd thing for them to say they would do in the first place, isn't it?  Why would they care?  And who said it?  And why?

Anyway to get the drink you have to register your name and address on their website within 24 hours of the album having been released, and they will send you a voucher. 

Except I can't register. 

I went to the website, and I clicked on the tiny link at the bottom that just said "Free Dr. Pepper", and up came a registration form.  So I filled it in and submitted, but I just got an error message.  I've tried three times now, it's very annoying.  Especially as the countdown clock tells me I only have 7 hours left in which to register!  Damn it!

My First iPod.

I have been wanting an iPod Touch for a while now, and now that I'm working full time again I can actually afford to buy one.  Yay!

There is only one problem: What do I get engraved on the back?  If you buy it from the Apple store directly you can get two lines of text laser engraved for free, which seems silly to turn down, except that I have been trying to decide what I want for nearly a week now.  I think I've got the first line sorted now, but the second line is giving me a bit of trouble.  There is only enough space for 29 characters in each line, and it is really hard to come up with some thing pithy, yet meaningful and/or funny in that small amount of space.

Any suggestions gratefully accepted!

Halloween Records. Want!

I was thrilled when I saw these in a record shop window the other day.  They are, respectively, the soundtrack to the classic vampire time-travel soap opera "Dark Shadows" (I've only seen the remake, but I have heard tales of the originals genius) and a sound effects LP full of bloodcurdling! Terrifying!  Horrific!  "Sounds to Make You Shiver".

As it happens Doc C had the sound effects album as a kid and loved it, which explains a lot about his lack of reaction to horror movies.  I also know someone in London who would probably love the "Dark Shadows" soundtrack on CD, but I doubt an LP would survive the journey, even if he had a record player to spin it on.

I also can only apologise for the glare, Picnik helped dissipate the worst of it but I was craning around a rack of second-hand coats and just could get the right angle to eliminate the glare from the sun altogether.

The Bling Should Have Tipped Me Off.

I was messing around when I got up this morning, and I looked over the top of the stairs down to the living room where the cats were and I called down "Good Morning Ladies!  All the ladies in the house say mew!".

And, right on cue, Nancy ran up the stairs mewing at me. 

Clearly someone is a fan of hip-hop; or she thought I was going to feed her - One or the other.

Ngaio Marsh 15: Swing Brother, Swing.

Ahh! Lovely! I find this fabulous image so soothing after yesterday's eyesore.  And I love the frock that the woman is wearing on this cover, it's so gorgeously fifties in shape and a beautiful colour too.

As I am sure you would immediately guess from the cover art this particular mystery is set in a jazz club, and it is a really fun plot.   

Ngaio Marsh 8: Overture to Death.

There really isn't much to say about this cover, except to note that we are back to the non-dancing penguin and the more friendly looking of the author's portraits. 

As to the book itself I must mention that this has to be one of my favourite of Miss Marsh's murder scenarios, because it involves the miss-use of a meccano set (although she doesn't use that brand name, it's clear that's what she's referencing) and a village hall piano.  Genius!

A Dia De Los Muertos Wedding.

This is the super cool present that Laura and Randy brought us back from Mexico. 

As you can see it is a framed Day of the Dead Wedding Tableau.  Doeasn't my Cabaret Singer Day of the Dead figure look absolutely delighted to have an audience?  I think that maybe she's about to swing onto the Shirley Bassey Medley.

Brain DJ.

This morning I was perusing Fabulon on the laptop at home before we left for work (If you don't know Fabulon I should say that it's brilliant, with the occasional not entirely safe for work moment), and Doc C likes to read that over my shoulder, so we both ended up watching an early 80s music video from someone called Ellen Foley.  The video was weirdly great, the song not so much our cup of tea and inevitably the chorus got stuck in Doc's head.

As you know the only way to get rid of a song stuck in your head, is either to hear it again or listen to something even more catchy.  It was therefore my job to find another, more acceptable, ear-worm to replace the song I'd inadvertently jammed into the Doc's cranium, and so on the way to work I played a carefully selected play list of songs.  To kick off I went with The Red Hot Chili Peppers version of "Love Roller-coaster" (which has an excellent use of kazoo), followed by as much of the latest Kylie album as we could fit in, making sure we heard both "Two hearts" and "Boombox" because they are quite possibly the ear-wormiest.

It was a very fun journey to the office today.

Live & Direct Jam.

One of the local second hand music shops let people put up flyers advertising shows, and I noticed the other day that most of them have been torn down recently.

I'm not sure if that's just because it's the summer, and whilst college is not in full swing there aren't many bands playing locally or if it's because the shop has just changed ownership.

Either way I liked all the torn posters, and rusty staples. 

Musicals ROCK!

Over the weekend I watched "Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog" (which is no longer streaming for free, but you can download it from ITunes.  and I might just have to) and "Mamma Mia", the tunes from both of which are on random shuffle in my head. 

For the whole of this morning when I haven't been singing about how my freeze-ray will stop the world, I'm humming the chorus to "Does Your Mother Know".

This is MUCH more fun than it sounds.

Beep-Beep Beep-Beep Yeah!

I took this picture on our way home when we were stopped at the lights.  I took it to record that humongous Beatles bumper sticker, mainly because I find it a bit odd that The Beatles are still so freaking huge over here.

In the UK you can easily go for months without hearing a Beatles song; here I think my record is about a week.  It's a Fab Four fixation, and just walking down the street today we were subjected to "When I'm 64" played far too slowly by a school band busking on the high street.  I never had particularly strong feelings bout the mop-tops, but now, frankly, I am getting really quite sick of them.

There I've said it.

Anyway, Doc C pointed out that there was in fact another bumper sticker on the left hand side of the (here blacked out) number plate.

Those would be metallic relief bumper stickers depicting Uzi machine guns.

How weird is that?  "All We Need is Love" and some serious firearms?

Mid-Week Rocking.

Doc C and our friend Tom are rocking out this evening.

Which means I get to lounge around and watch "Shear Genius".

Hoorah!

The Girl Who Owns Everything.

A couple of days ago a car pulled up to the house on the left of our house, we'd been told this was essentially used as a holiday cottage by the owners and also that their daughter would sometimes show up for the weekend with friends.  We are fairly sure that this was one of those weekends.

Yesterday morning as we were leaving for work we saw the daughter whilst she was out walking her slightly aggressive dachshund, and I was very careful to smile nicely and say hello to her.

Last night the kids (there were now two girls and two boys) decided to turn the stereo all the way up, and at around twelve thirty Doc C decided to ask them to turn it down, mainly so we could establish some ground rules right from the get go.  Our theory being that if you don't complain about the noise straight away, it makes it increasingly difficult because you've never mentioned it previously.  We weren't asking them to turn it off, just to turn it down so we couldn't hear it in our bedroom and could go to sleep.  Considering that since we've been here we've heard not a peep from the three students, and their menagerie (Three dogs and four cats) on the other side of us, we thought this was an entirely reasonable request.

At first things didn't go well.  Doc C explained that the music was pretty loud in our house and that we had recently moved to get away from noisy neighbours so this was unacceptable, but all of the kids were really drunk so they started to argue.  After a few minutes of the daughter saying essentially "Well, I own this house, and I can do what I like here", one of the boys decided to chip in with "Yeah, and it's Friday night!  Don't be a dick".  At which point Doc C said "Fine. I'll just call the police, you little brat" and came back to our house.

A couple of minutes later there was a knock on our door, and it was the daughter.  "Umm, I'm sorry about that.  I'll turn it down, although it was, like, only half way up actually.  I guess these walls must be paper thin, huh?"

Oh, did someone just notice that their underage friend was completely off her face, and would that get you all arrested?  Hmmm?

Friday Night Pride.

Last night we went to the opening night music festival of Pride, and our friend Crys was the opening act.  It was great to see her play live, and we really enjoyed her set.

It was a really nice evening, and the event was on the patio of one of the larger local hotels, so we were able to sit and enjoy the dusk whilst we listened to the bands.  It was really relaxed, there was even someone's pet Alsatian roaming around, meeting everyone and keeping an eye on the perimeter.  True, there was a policeman on duty hanging around the ticket desk, and it has to be said he didn't look very comfortable, but it must have proved to be one of the easiest days of work he'd ever had.

You can't really see it in this photo, but on the back of my hand is a a very faint purple smiley face stamp.  It was to indicate that I had shown my state ID and had therefore proved I was old enough to drink.  Duly stamped, I drank one bottle of Newkey Brown.

I was particularly impressed with the flier, which I think looks great, and the venue had co-ordinated multi-coloured banners and even tea-light holders with the silhouettes on, so it felt very cohesive and put together.

Tonight there is a dance, which we are also planning to go to.  I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to get totally over-dressed.  After all, if you can't pile on the jewelry for Pride, when can you?

 

Alien Spouse Supports Gay Pride!

This weekend is Pride, and it will be our first Pride in North Carolina.  Bearing in mind last year we were working in Leicester Square, right behind the main stage and therefore utterly surrounded by the fabulousness that is London Pride, it's going to be very interesting to see how they do things round here.

There seems to be a lot going on and we are planning to attend some, but probably not all of the events.  There are quite a few that our friend Crys will be playing at, and we haven't heard her perform before, so we definitely want to catch that.

Our attendance will be to show our support for the local Gay community, naturally, but I really wish that I'd thought far enough ahead to have ordered myself a Pink Jack Flag in time.  Ah well, next year!

The Doors (1991)

Now we have cable one of the fun things is just being able to click through the channels until we find something to watch.  That was how we came to watch Oliver Stone's "The Doors" (1991), which shouldn't be called "The Doors" at all, because it is totally focused on Jim with the other guys being lucky if they are in the background of a shot of him.  Instead the film should be called "The Lizard King", or perhaps, to be more accurate, "Oliver Stone has a Big Man Crush on Jim Morrison".

Still it's fun to watch, and we happened to switch on during quite possibly my favourite scene of the whole film which takes place just after Morrison quits film school and before they form the band.

Ray Manzarek (played by Kyle MacLachlan, in a series of shockingly bad wigs) is sitting on the beach with Jim Morrison (Played by Val Kilmer), and persuades him to sing some of his lyrics.  Jim is hesitant but then does sing, and Ray is very impressed by the lyrics Morrison has written.  Manzarek then says "Let's get a rock and roll band together, and make a million dollars!".  And they wander off down the beach discussing Aldous Huxley, and immediately come up with a band name having only just decided to even form one.

And in the next scene?  Voila, instant band! Just add water!

We never get any back story at all on Robbie Kreiger (Played by Frank Whaley) and John Densmore (Played by Kevin Dillon), I'm not even sure their full names are mentioned at any point.  Even better the first time we see a newly formed The Doors they are in rehearsal, and Kreiger's first line is to say that he's written a song,  Naturally, he starts to play "Light My Fire", and Jim starts to sing it until Ray stops him saying "Give me five minutes to work out an intro".   Then it literally does take him about 2 minutes of screen time to come up with that massively complicated organ solo!   

Then through the magic of a montage sequence it is revealed that (SPOILER!) the song is a massive hit, and The Doors are stars.  It has taken ten minutes.

The End.  (Except for the second half of the film which is about all the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll that leads to Jim's death at 28.)

MP3 Wars.

I've mentioned before that the Doc and I don't have particularly similar taste in music; I will happily sing my way through the entire score of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer:  Once More With Feeling" (aka the musical episode), where as the Doc usually wants to listen to something altogether more sombre.

The Bean, my faithful MP3 player, has become less of pariah having proved it's worth on long car journeys, but it's still tarred with the brush of my taste in music.  It was inevitable that Doc C would fight back by getting his own MP3 player, and when Amazon sent him a gift certificate for some reason he spent it on a 4G Sandisc.

His new office is right across the hall from mine, and I can hear him right now downloading Metallica (which apparently has similarities to classical music in terms of it's structure and complexity, I wouldn't know I just want James Hetfield to stop yelling at me.), and other such things.

I find that I am feeling an odd need to stick up for the little Bean against this new competition.  The Bean may no longer be in production, it can only hold 1G and it doesn't have a big enough screen to show photos or videos; but it has got an in-built pop-out USB connector which means I never have to look for a stupid cable.  That to me is priceless.

Bleeding Ears.

One of the things that really bugged us at the old flat was that the girl downstairs would blast music unexpectedly at all hours of the day or night.  She seemed to only own three CD singles, and we could never decipher what songs they were because all we could hear through the floor would be a thumping bass and the highest notes of the vocals.  I know I've mentioned this before, and now we've moved out you would think I could move on but I seem to be suffering from post traumatic stress. 

To get some idea of what it was like I'd suggest that you clamp a stereo speaker to the ceiling of the room directly under your bed.  Make sure that the stereo is turned up as high as it will go, and it needs to make the bed literally shake to be truly effective.  Then set the stereo to play music at random, but preferably very early in the morning or really late at night.  Extra points if you work out an algorithm that ensures that although the music doesn't play every night, but it will always play on nights when it is particularly important that you get a good nights sleep, say the night before a job interview or an international flight.  Now live with that for eight months.

It's actually only today that I've realised that one of the songs was "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis.  I rooted for Leona when she was on "X Factor" and I was delighted when she won, but the negative associations that I now have with her career making international hit are very strong.  It now sets off a Pavlovian reaction, which finds me automatically reaching for my ear plugs.

Banjo!

We live in North Carolina, so at some stage it was inevitable we would end up seeing a band that features a banjo.  So we decided to jump at the chance of seeing a band built around a hip-hop banjo player, Turbo Pro Project, because, come on, hip-hop banjo player!

The set was a mixture of their own songs with covers, and it included the classic dueling banjos, but it was the banjo versus a DJ on decks.  It was really fun.

The gig was in a local bar, and I had the odd feeling that I'd somehow been transported back to Islington or Hoxton; if I'd been bonked on the head at some point in the evening, I would have been seriously confused about where I was.  It was mainly that the atmosphere was the same, but the clothes were pretty much the same too.  True there were a couple of people wearing cowboy boots, and one guy wearing a really hideous polo shirt covered in Louis Vuitton logos; but apart from that it was eerily similar to the last time I was in the Hope and Anchor.  This might not seem like a particularly big deal, but fashions are usually noticeably different between NC and London, so it was really eerie to see a crowd of people dressed in a what looked quite European clothes.  I began to wonder if a branch of H&M had secretly opened that I was unaware of.   

Fortunately there was one major difference though; the security at the H and A had a proper ink stamp to stamp on the back of your hand to show you'd paid to get into a gig.  In NC it's a circle drawn on the base of your thumb in permanent marker.

Runnin' With The Rainbow Unicorn...

Now that we have TV again, after over eight months of deprivation, we are enjoying our increased entertainment privileges immensely.  I won't bore you with the lists of things we've been watching, but with a ridiculous number of cable channels to choose from there is always something good to watch. 

The only fly in the ointment is that I find the ad breaks incredibly annoying, because they get slotted in at really weird points, and interrupt the flow of the shows.  I particularly hate the commercial break which is about a minute before the end of a programme, designed to force you to watch the adverts to catch just a couple more jokes in the sit-com you are watching before the credits roll.  I really hate that, it drives me crazy.  The adverts themselves are really odd too, I will never get used to all the commercials for prescription medicines.  In the UK you will see ads for over-the-counter stuff like head ache pills or allergy remedies, but these are adverts which urge you to "...ask your doctor if blah-blah is right for you" and then go on to list a horrifying list of side effects.  It is deeply strange to me, that man would ingest a pill that specifically states in it's promotional material that it must not even be handled by women because it will do something horrendous to them.

When not grousing about advertisements, Doc C is all about the various documentary channels, and can always find time to squeeze in some of the channel devoted to Congress.  Apparently you can watch Congressional Hearings and White House Press Statements, which he finds thrilling.

Now I enjoy a good documentary as much as the next girl (except I now tend to be scanning for archive footage that I recognise from my old job...), but my true loves are the cartoon channels.  It's nice to catch up with old favourites like "The Fairly Odd Parents", "Spongebob Squarepants", "Catscratch" and "Hey Arnold!", but we are also finding new treasures like "The Mighty B".  I'll link to a clip from "The Mighty B" after the jump, it's a song which Doc and I have been singing the chorus to for about three days now.

Enjoy.

Coffee Table

This is our new coffee table doing what it does best - Holding an entirely random selection of our stuff about a foot above the floor.

If you go to the Flickr image (I've set it so when you click on this photo it'll take you straight there!  The wonders of the new Typepad compose page are manifold!), I may have gone mad with the labels function.  But that is what it's there for after all.

Day Trip: Day Five

The first rule of road trip is: There must be tunes.

The second rule of road trip is: There. Must. Be. Tunes.

These discs are the Doc's, and they live in the CD holder on driver's side shade. He also has roughly two million Interpol CD's.

I have The Bean. It is freshly loaded with brand new Kylie.

This will be a good road trip.

Road Trip: Day Four

In this photo you can almost see a badge that's in one of the cup holders. It says "The Glow". I assume that's a band name.
I found this on the ground at a car wash, and I picked it up mainly to see if it glows in the dark, but I keep forgetting to check if it does. A road trip seems like the perfect time to test that theory!

The New Kylie Album! Squeal!

Poor Doc C!

It can't be easy being married to me sometimes, he was thrown out of the house this morning so I could work out and when he came home I had Kylie's new album playing.  He's now expected to listen to it with me and discuss the various pros and cons of the tracks.

The man is a professionally trained musician, with a deep interest in jazz and punk and he somehow managed to marry to a disposable Euro pop fiend.  Not that I don't appreciate Minor Threat or Charles Mingus obviously, I just prefer to be able to bop along to something perky.

This is only my second listening to "X", but so far I really like some of Miss Minogue's new songs.  It's true that a couple are quite derivative, but there are a few winners.  My favourite lyrics so far are "Drop your socks and grab your mini boom box!" which is quite brilliant, and gets repeated several times.  I also love that she once again mentions putting on her best dress, because I think it's very sweet that Kylie has a best dress.