fremescent

irritatingly predictable

2008-07-25T20:10:00.002+01:00

Since you started work, I have spent an hour and a half waiting for you to do the weekly update before I could do anything and, as soon as you dropped that sucker in the tray and I had started on it, you were immediately back with three more jobs. I got all of those out of the way pretty smartly and then sat for a more than an hour waiting for something else from you. Why couldn't you have given me the three jobs first? They were obviously ready to go, but no, you had to store them up and wait until you'd fired off the update before you brought them to my desk. Peaks and troughs, boom and bust. Can't we get a little consistency going, or is walking five yards to my office too much of a task for you that you have to give me everything in one go?
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You KNOW I take my lunch at 12, like I have done ever since I started here all those years ago, so why do you insist on placing work in my in-tray at precisely 11:50? And it's not just work that has just popped up. No - it's stuff that you've gathered together since before 11 and held onto until ten minutes before my fucking lunch break.
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Don't think I haven't noticed that you're doing this. Don't think that I can't set my watch by you. Don't think I don't know that when you rise up from your chair at 11:49 that I'm certain that a wodge of jobs is about to be plopped into my intray. I'm onto you, you fucker.
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What do you want? You want me to work through my lunchbreak just to please you? You want to control me and my workflow and my breaks? Tough fucking luck, you nobber.
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Ever wondered why sometimes the printers whir and buzz and print for ages and yet nothing appears in your in-tray for about half an hour? Ever wondered why I hold onto these jobs and give them back to you in a 2 inch thick wodge just five minutes before your 1pm lunch hour?
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That's right - I'm being as fucking petty as you, you twatty, mincing arsehair.

urbane

2008-07-23T20:11:00.000+01:00

"You won't believe this story!" gasped my workmate. "Keith from accounts, right? His friend's friend had a wedding booked at Alton Towers. Well, Alton Towers phoned them up and asked them if they would cancel the wedding, or move it to the next weekend.
Well, his mate said no way, cuz everything had been organised, right?
So, right, Alton Towers then phones him back and says 'How about a new wedding and reception, all expenses paid, but on another date?' and he goes 'No way, it's all been organised'.
Then they phone back and say 'How about a new wedding and reception, all expenses paid, on another date AND your mortgage paid off?'
Well he starts to think and then says 'My mortgage is £250,000, can you honestly pay that all off?'
'No problem, IF you agree to swap dates," they says.
So, right, Keith's mate's mate agrees and a couple of days later he gets this cheque, right? For £250,000!!!!! And guess who it's signed by? Only Mr D. Bleedin' Beckham, Esquire!
Becks wanted the whole of Alton Towers closed so that he could take his dad there for his birthday. So anyway, Keith's mate's mate got that cheque photocopied and framed and it's on his livingroom wall and he paid off his mortgage and had a fantastic free wedding and David Beckham got to celebrate his dad's birthday! Can't believe it!"
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"Naah," I replied. "That story keeps doing the rounds on PopBitch. Someone always posts that they know a friend of a friend whose mortgage has been paid off by the Beckams because they want the same venue on the same date as their friends' friends. It's one of those urban legends."
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"But his cheque's on the livingroom wall!" he argued.
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"Anyone can photoshop a cheque," I countered, knowing that he's well aware of my phearsome photoshopping skillz. "Besides, if all those people had their mortgages paid off by David Beckham, he would be wanking for coins on street corners to try and make ends meet by now."
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"But Keith would know it's true, coz it's his mate's mate, innit?" he riposted. "He'd know about the wedding, surely?"
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"How 'bout this story," I said. "Someone I know saw a burglary taking place just down the road the other day. They called the police who came out 6 hours later to take statements. The guy knew the burglar by name, but when he told that to the police officer he was told 'well, it's your word against his'. When they asked the copper why it took 6 hours for him to turn up, he replied that he's the only copper on duty in the whole town."
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"Naaah. I don't believe that one for a minute," my workmate replied. "That's gotta be an urban legend."

cellular hellular

2008-07-21T19:30:00.004+01:00

Imagine for me if you will, dear reader, that one day you are taking a nice afternoon stroll in the countryside. It's a beautifully sunny summer's day; as you're walking along, the sun glints off something in the hedgerow just ahead and catches your eye. Intrigued, you stop, stoop and discover a mobile phone nestling in the bottom of the hedge. You pull it out and inspect it.
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You are shocked (and slightly pleased) to discover that it is a state-of-the-art mobile phone in almost perfect condition. You look around you to see whether you can spot anyone ahead who might have dropped it, but the field in which you are walking is empty apart from you and a handful of disinterested sheep. So you place it in your pocket and walk on, vowing to decide what to do with it once you are home. You carry on with your walk, which is thoroughly enjoyable, all the while contemplating your next step.
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Once home you spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to turn it on and, when you eventually succeed, you discover that it has 21 missed calls and 16 texts. Unfortunately you can't access the texts as the inbox is password protected. However, the photo album isn't password protected and you scroll through the photographs, feeling a little uncomfortable looking at someone else's personal stuff, but you discover that the phone seems to have been lost by an obviously well-off young schoolboy who enjoyed taking photographs of himself and his friends in mirrors wearing their posh school uniforms. You manage to discover the phone's own number, which - out of idle curiosity - you call with your own mobile only to discover that the number has been taken out of service. You conclude that the person who lost this phone has reported it missing and the network has then killed off the SIM.
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What is the next step, dear reader? Do you contact the number on the back of the SIM card and report the phone missing? Do you take it to the local police station and hand it in, like a good citizen? Perhaps you're of the opinion that if this kid is rich enough to own a £300 5 megapixel camera-phone that is only currently available on a £35 a month contract, he'll be rich enough to jolly well get his parents to bally well buy him another one / get the network to replace it / replace it on daddy's home insurance. Maybe you think he's got what he deserved, that if he took care of such expensive equipment he wouldn't be in this position; perhaps it's taught him a lesson about the value of things, the ungrateful, spoiled little shit.
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So - what would you do?
Keep the phone, get it unlocked, buy a charger off ebay, download the owner's manual off the phone website and stick your existing SIM in it?
Report it missing to the network?
Take it to the police?
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Even though this whole scenario is made up and completely hypothetical and, furthermore, no mobile phones of any description have been found by anyone connected to Fremescent, your thoughts on how to proceed would be much appreciated....

doctor my eyes

2008-07-19T11:04:00.000+01:00

Over the past few months I've been stuck in the NHS system trying to get my eyesight sorted out. Almost a year ago I noticed that my right eye wasn't picking up colours the same way my left was, everything seemed a little less vibrant, slightly darker and not as "all there" as the vision in my left.
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After a routine optician's appointment I was referred to a specialist at the not-so-local hospital (the one who asked me to Google my symptoms). Thanks to the ineptitude of the person who wrote the appointment letter I had to revisit the hospital another time because they needed to put drops in my eyes that would seriously compromise my vision and prevent me from being able to drive safely. So, my second appointment with a different specialist resulted in me being told I might have a cataract and then being referred to Addenbrookes in Cambridge for a brain scan. "You can drive there as they don't need to put drops in your eyes" I was told.
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The letter came from Addenbrookes confirming my appointment: "Please do not drive here as we will be putting drops in your eyes in order to inspect them better," it said. So I had to cajole my father-in-law into taking a day off work so that he could drive me there (in the worst rain I've seen). I could have taken the bus or the train, but from my previous experience with my vision after the eye drops went in I would probably have left the hospital and taken a bus to Aberdeen.
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At Addenbrookes I sat with electrodes stuck on my head in a darkened room and spent 45 minutes watching a television that was showing a checkerboard where the black and white squares kept swapping colour. Then I went home.
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Yesterday I had a follow-up at my not-so-local hospital and was told that I didn't have a cataract after all and that the nerves in my right eye were reacting slower and less efficiently than in my left, giving me the dodgy vision.
"There's nothing we can do about it; no operation, no medicine, no corrective lenses, nothing. It's a one-in-a-million thing," the consultant said (in other words "I haven't got a clue"). She put it down to a past inflammation in my eye that damaged the nerve.
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I'm relieved I don't need a cataract op, after reading the helpful NHS booklet about having your lens sucked out of a slit in your eyeball it suddenly seemed less appealing. On the other hand I'm a bit disappointed that I'm stuck with gammy eyesight and the not knowing if it will deteriorate further.
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SO that's my eye story. Learn from me, people - keep an eye on your eyes and if they go gammy, go to your doctor and get messed about by the NHS and end up with no resolution to your problem.

Worlds dullest news item

2008-07-18T22:01:00.003+01:00

Taken from the Autocar RSS feed:
Was that in coins or just a five pound note?

Link's Awakening

2008-07-17T20:42:00.005+01:00

It transpires that two characters from my favourite children's book evah now have their own blogs. Beaver Hateman and his sworn enemy Uncle from the Uncle books by J.P. Martin catalogue their sometimes topical adventures in an online basis. Excellent reading, now added to my linky blog love list.
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Harry - son of former Xtc frontman and Wiltshire-based musical genius Andy - Partridge is a young animator with a shedload of talent. Here's his YouTube channel, I recommend his Chuck's Tux and Bo Starr shorts (rumour has it that not only does he animate these things, he also provides all the voices and the music too). It seems young Harry is on Newgrounds as well, but I haven't checked that out yet.
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Finally, thanks to a link on Pete dot Nu, I've been enjoying the blogging of Bête de Jour, apparently a chap with a faceful of elbows and a crafty way with the English language.

drive like a man

2008-06-13T22:27:00.000+01:00

Many years ago I owned a Fiat Uno 60S. It was incredibly tinny, a little bit rusty, underpowered, but cheeky and enormous fun to drive. It only needed two major trips to the garage for mending.
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The first was a brake cylinder failure that manifested itself at 70mph approaching a busy roundabout on the A1 with a boot full of old wardrobe. The second - and more expensive of the two - was a blocked carburettor that would cause the engine to die at random intervals and regularly prevented any kind of acceleration. When I took the Uno to the local Fiat dealer for the carb problem to be fixed I was berated by the mechanic who told me that I needed to put my foot down and stop driving so "nicely". He reckoned I had coked up the workings of the carb by being too gentle on the accelerator. My excuse was that there was a little "Economy Meter" on the dashboard where the needle would leap into the RED danger zone if you so much as looked at the throttle pedal - I tended to keep the needle in the yellow or green zones for maximum economy. Chastened and a few hundred quid worse off, I vowed to slam my foot to the floor in a Senna-esqe style.
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Yesterday I took my Fiat Stilo into a local repair shop to have the brakes checked. I was getting concerned as they were becoming ever more vague as time went on. It felt like applying pressure to the brake pedal merely resulted in a polite request to the braking system that if it didn't mind and if it wasn't too much trouble, it would maybe consider perhaps slowing the car down to a halt at some point in the next few minutes. I prefer my brakes to be a bit more positive, with a bit of bite and attitude. My brakes were Ronnie Corbett in Sorry and I wanted them to be a cross between Johnny Rotten, Vyvian from the Young ones and Grant Mitchell. I thought, at best, I needed a new set of pads; at worst, it was a new brake cylinder, discs, pads and shoes.
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When I went to collect the car I was told that I had about 90,000 miles still left on the pads. The ABS was fine, the servo was fine, the fluid level was fine, there were no leaks of any description, the disks had plenty of miles left on them. The problem was that the brake pads had "hardened" through lack of use. "Modern cars," the mechanic explained, "are designed for bombing down the motorway at 80mph and then coming to a dead halt. You used to be taught to go down through the gears when you brake, now you're just meant to brake and then change down. With asbestos being banned from brake pads nowadays, they tend to get hard if they're not used enough."
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It turns out that, yes, once again I am driving too "nicely". Where once I had my eye on the Uno's Economy Gauge, now I am mindful of my wife and children by braking smoothly and gently through courtesy. I should have been bombing the Uno around in 3rd gear and arriving at roundabouts in my Stilo in a screaming cloud of acrid tyre smoke and brake dust.
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Last night I took the family to the chip shop and, mindful of the mechanic's advice, braked harshly at every opportunity. The car was dipping and bucking like a demented rodeo bull as I braked ever later at junctions and corners. It was great fun for me, but not so much fun for my passengers, who all complained of whiplash.

barney and me...

2008-05-30T16:43:00.000+01:00

I came to the Boo Radleys pretty late. A couple of very favourable reviews of Giant Steps made me go out and buy it, I was intrigued by one reviewer's opinion at the time that it was one of the most ambitious records of the year. I'd read enough about them in music rags to know that they kind of fitted in with the shoegazing stuff that I was listening to around that time, so I bought the album without actually previously hearing anything by them.
(sidenote: Do you remember those days? A time when you couldn't just surf to MySpace and listen to a couple of tracks, or watch the band's latest video on YouTube? You would go and buy an album on the strength of a glowing review in Select magazine, a Melody Maker front page colour photo, a brief snippet of a video on The Chart Show or on hearing the end of a track on John Peel? Nine times out of ten you'd be gutted by the utter shiteness of what you'd bought - yes, Thousand Yard Stare; I'm looking in your direction - occasionally you would discover an absolute gem).
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Giant Steps clicked with me on first listen. I understood what the reviewer meant by it being an ambitious record - there were My Bloody Valentine wall of sound guitars, twee indie-jangle moments, Beach Boys harmonies (long before plastering Beach Boys backing vocals over your track was fashionable), wind and horn sections, Burt Bacharach chords, there was even a Casio VL Tone on one track - the guys in this band were obviously trying to do something new, it seemed like they wanted to push their indie/alternative leanings into a new place. It was an album that was on heavy rotation on my CD player for many months after purchase and became one of the "classic" albums in my collection. Such was my enamourment of their stuff that I started buying their singles, their subsequent releases and also delved into the back catalogue.
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Once it was announced they had split, after the rather subdued Kingsize album, my interest dropped off sharply. I didn't listen to them for a good few years, it wasn't until I stumbled across a mention of head Boo Martin Carr's "BraveCaptain" solo project on a blog that I remembered how much I loved their music and dug out their discs for a retrospectacular trip down musical memory lane.
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What a mistake-a to make.
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Listening to Giant Steps now is like looking at an old photograph of yourself from donkey's years ago. You remember when the photo was taken, you thought you looked cool and trendy in those fashionable clothes, how smart that new sofa was and how cutting edge the design on the wallpaper looked; but in reality you look hideously out of date, the decor is shockingly anachronistic and it dawns on you that times have changed and things have moved on in a drastic fashion. Where it once sounded futuristic, forward-looking and in places almost epic in its sweep, Giant Steps now sounds try-too-hard, shambolic and amateurish. The harmony vocals are stumblingly inept, the bass meanders woefully, the guitars sound almost-but-not-quite out of tune, keyboards sound like they're playing a different song to the one in which they feature, the arrangements of horn and woodwind sound really, really hamfisted and the production is kind of tinny.
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Listening to their previous album "Everything's Alright Forever", it's clear that the Boo Radleys weren't a crap band. They sound more than confident and seem comfortable in the wall-of-feedback and distorted guitar thrashing of that album, perhaps the ambitious reach of Giant Steps was pushing them too far, too quickly.
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Having said all that, it's not a terrible album by any stretch of the imagination and it's one I'm glad to have in my collection. Even if it is a bit crap in places. At least it was striving for true greatness, unlike the output of Oasis, Cast or any of those other ploddingly shite indie bands from the same period who seemed happy to just re-hash what they'd done previously.

more fuel me

2008-05-29T20:10:00.002+01:00

So Gordon Brown has travelled back home to Scotland to remonstrate with the oil barons about getting more fuel into the country in order to lower prices at the pump...
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Here's a tip for you, you dour, wrinkly suited, wonky jawed git; lower the 80p duty on a litre of fuel - that will bring the price down a bit, won't it? Someone somewhere (great research I know) calculated that tax on petrol was at 300%. If we were taxed 300% on anything else, there would be riots in the streets, but seeing as we all need our cars we just drop our trousers and bend over so that Gordon and his pal Darling can shaft us a good 'un.
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Grasping bastards the lot of 'em.

ligfest or lovefest

2008-05-29T02:41:00.000+01:00

So Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 Monaco F1 Grand Prix on Sunday and declared it the highlight of his career.
Bless.
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During the podium ceremony the television cameras panned around the masses of grinning McLaren mechanics, lingering on Hamilton's father Anthony and brother Nicholas who were understandably overjoyed at Lewis' win. Standing next to them was Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Diddly Squit (or whatever he's decided to call himself this week) giving it large with the tough-guy rap-star hand gestures, basking in reflected glory.
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Earlier, during his pre-race gridwalk, Martin Brundle chanced upon the only one who could sing in the Pussycat Dolls - it wasn't particularly hard for her to catch his eye, what with the frontless/backless dress she was spilling out of. It turns out that she was there as a guest of Lewis Hamilton (although Martin was convinced she was his new girlfriend). So, not only was there major rap star and international business conglomerate P.Diddly as a guest of Hamilton, there was also a Pussycat Doll there as a guest of Hamilton. I swear at a previous race, perhaps not this season, there were countless shots of Anthony Hamilton in the pits watching the race alongside his apparent best mate rap star Pharrell Williams.
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I find it a little hard to take Lewis Hamilton's 'ever so 'umble "I grew up on a Stevenage Council Estate and I'm really normal, just ask all my normal mates who I hang round with all the time doing normal things" ramblings when I see him rubbing shoulders with International Superstars at grands prix. Rumour has it that he also invited Daniii Minogue along to the Monaco Grand Prix whilst also "dating" an International Supermodel. Look, you're either a normal bloke who just happens to be a successful motor racing star, or you're an international jetset playboy who rubs shoulders with the rich and famous; you can't be both, Lewis me old mate.
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It makes me wonder whether he would get the same attention from all these international global megastars if he was just a token black guy tooling around the back of the grid in an uncompetitive car. I can only think that the answer would be "no". He'd probably have minor celebs who are already F1 fans hanging around with him, but not people as Internationally famous as P.Doddy and *ahem* her out of the Pussycat Dolls.
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So who's doing who the favour? Is Lewis helping their profile by inviting them to the enormous schmooze-fest that's the Monaco Grand Prix - or are they just ligging off him because he's a successful black guy in a sport awash with obscene amounts of money, where image is everything in the paddock (not necessarily on the racetrack - just look at Robert Kubica's hairstyle or Nick Heidfeld's beard) and hanging around with the top guys guarantees you a good time at someone else's expense? Are they raising his status by associating themselves with him? Is it all just one great big horrendously artificially shallow, false, mutual ego-wank where no-one comes out of it looking all that good?
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I think we all know the answer to that last question.

douze point

2008-05-28T21:29:00.000+01:00

Last weekend's Eurovision really stirred up a hornet's nest didn't it? Poor Old Terry Wogan was almost sicking up into his pint of Bailey's as the high scores came rolling on in for the Eastern Bloc countries. Powerful Russia - with its vast reserves of oil, gas and tactical nuclear weapons - came first with a song performed by a Russian superstar, that was co-written with a bloke that wrote with Britney Spears and was produced by the people that make workboots - Timberland.
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Much has been made of the tactical voting, that the Easter Bloc countries are voting for each other in a show of either fierce loyalty, political expedience, or to thumb their noses at the rich nations of Western Europe. This doesn't really explain why Greece did so well, coming in third as they did and how Norway made it into the top five.
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Not much has been made of the fact that the song we entered was pretty poor, all credit to Andy Abraham for a spirited performance, but he was flogging a dead horse before he even got the first verse out. On first listen it only took me until the end of the first chorus to twig that it was just a re-hash of Madonna's "Express Yourself" produced and arranged in such a way that it sounded painfully out of date. In its defence though, it was light years better than the screaming angel/devil effort from Azerbaijan, the positively archaic Croatian entry and the desperately wacky "I'm mad, me" Spanish song. It certainly didn't deserve to finish behind those truly awful efforts, but finish last it did - alongside the quite capable German effort (which would have done better if the girls had sung in tune with the backing track) and the Polish girl with the enormous gums - all of which were significantly better (in my opinion, of course) to a lot of the dross and dreck further up the results table.
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A lot of animosity towards the contest also stems from the fact that it's partially funded by the BBC and - thanks to the unique way in which the BBC is funded - we are in effect all paying to be snubbed and humiliated by Georgians, Macedonians and Serbs. What isn't made clear is that the BBC puts just over £100,000 towards the contest - that's probably substantially less that what it costs to pay Wogan to stay at the Eurovision venue for a week and commentate; it's more than likely about 10 minute's worth of Jonathan Ross or a couple of hours of Graham Norton. Put it this way - a thousand people have paid the whole of their licence fee towards the Eurovision Song Contest, the rest of the country got it for free. The BBC piss away considerably more of our money on the useles dripping bell end that is BBC Three with its endless repeats of Two Pints Of Lager, yet nobody whinges about their licence fee being wasted on that load of old dribbly cocked unfunny nonsense.
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Probably what sticks in the collective British throat is our blinkered belief that we are still the best nation in the world for pop music and yet we can't win a stupid music contest against stupid countries who've never produced a world-famous, multi-million selling act. We gave the world The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Rod Stewart, George Michael. The Wombles, Chas 'n' Dave, Simply Red, The Reynolds Girls, Northern Uproar, Cast, Oasis, Menswear. What multi-platinum selling, arena filling world beater has Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia given the world? Why, we should get 12 points from every nation just for inventing pop music in the first place. How DARE these upstart Eastern Bloc countries take the piss out of us like this? Don't we give hundreds of thousands of our jobs to Latvians, Estonians and Poles? And this is how they repay us??? The flaming cheek of it! How DARE they?? Perhaps we're just not as good as we think we are, maybe our national taste in music is as completely alien to Azerbaijanis as their shrieking, wailing effort was completely alien to our ears. Maybe we're seriously lacking a perspective on what constitutes European musical taste these days.
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Poor Old Terry Wogan reckons he might not be coming back. He says it's up to the British Music Industry and the European Broadcast Union to work together to come to some kind of arrangement that will ensure that Britain will once more be crowned winners of Eurovision and all those stinky, sneaky, tuneless Eastern European countries are deservedly relegated to the bottom half of the boards in the semi finals. (Well, that's how his comments come across to me).
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In reality, it's all just a load of old nonsense. Eurovision is a bit of fun, a bit of fluff. A nice, yearly diversion from those phone vote scam programmes that now infest our Saturday night television schedules. People are taking the whole thing way too seriously - including Poor Old Terry Wogan.
It's not war.
For some viewers it may be about national pride, but for me it's just a couple of hours of light entertainment. I'll root for the song I reckon is best, regardless of whether it comes from Britain, Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia or Crete. This year, the best song came 19th, performed by a man who entered the stage on a golf buggy, whose backing singers were women with beards. Stand up France, I salute you, vous etait le robbed!

whether

2008-05-28T14:38:00.002+01:00

Thanks a bunch, weather. Recently we've had a run of days of consistently dry and fairly warm weather and then, the moment the country needs three decent days, we get bloody October in the arse end of May. Is this how it's going to be from now on? Random days of good weather in between huge blocks of chill wind and sideways rain?
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"Oh but it's good for your garden" you whine in reply. Is it good for the garden that your unseasonably high winds have blown all the leaves off the neighbour's tree and now my lawn looks like the middle of autumn? Is it good for the garden that my fence is wobbling thanks to your recent gales? Oh it's good for the garden inasmuch as my kids can't go out and play on it during half term, that's really good for the garden isn't it? Instead they're driving their mum bonkers because they're cooped up and bored. Yeah, thanks a bunch, weather.
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Tell me. Is it going to carry on in this unremarkable, grey and cold fashion for much longer? I have a holiday booked for next month you see. I don't want to spend it cooped up in a bloody caravan, freezing my nuts off at night listening to the rain rattle on the roof til the early hours of the morning. I want to go out on the beach without being shot-blasted by clouds of 80mph horizontal sand, trust me - nobody feels good walking hunched up along a beach in a massive raincoat with the hood up. I want the holiday you see in the telly ads - all blue sky, summer clothes and fun - not overcoats, umbrellas and 400 games of Scrabble in a caravan with the gas fire on, frustrated because you could be doing this at home at no cost.
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So, get your act together, weather. Get this summer sorted out quick sharp, otherwise there's going to be trouble...

update

2008-05-27T18:37:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago my colleague and I were called into our department manager's office and told that one of us would be made redundant. We would be given a consultation period to consider what to do & to find alternative ways of saving our jobs. After that, both of us would have to re-interview for the existing job which was almost, but not quite, the same job that we were already doing. This re-interview comprised a fortnight long project the details of which are too tedious to go into here, but the upshot was that at the end of that fortnight period we would have to present that project to the board of directors. We would then be judged by the board and the winner of the competition (for that's what it really was) would be announced in the afternoon of the final day.
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Suffice to say, after much heel-dragging by my colleague, I am still in work. The last month has been one of extreme mental stress and anxiety. We were working alongside each other throughout the consultation period and would discuss matters without actually giving away to each other what our plans were. I spent most of the time trying to guess what my workmate was going to do whilst simultaneously trying to keep schtum about my own plans. I lay in bed most nights mulling over ideas for my project and even jotting some ideas down in the middle of the night.
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That's more than likely the reason it's been so quiet here on Fremescent these last few weeks. I've been too frazzled to actually think about writing a blog post, my nails have been chewed down so much that it's been uncomfortable to type.
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Today I started in my almost-new position, relieved that I still have a job to go to. Perhaps updates will increase on this here blog, too. Just don't hold your breath...

predict me don't

2008-05-06T19:08:00.005+01:00

As part of our celebration of the May Day Weekend, we decided to clear out the garage on Bank Holiday Monday. Since we moved into this house two years ago, the garage has become some kind of nether-world where things are placed in the vain hope that they will somehow disappear of their own volition. As time has gone on, it's been increasingly difficult to actually get into the garage as there are piles of boxes, old furniture, old appliances, gardening implements and general junk that seem to have multiplied asexually, like giant junk snails.
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So, with the sun shining and the kids happily arguing about who gets to be Player One on Shadow The Hedgehog in the house, we dragged everything out of the garage and into the back garden. We found boxes upon boxes of videotapes, bric-a-brac, computer junk (a box that seemed to be full of serial cables) and one box containing numerous shredded carrier bags and a plastic toy petrol tanker beside which a mouse had made a little nest. The mouse was still there and stared, panic-stricken, as I took his house to the bottom of the garden and released him with a vigorous shake into a bed of nettles.
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I was delighted to discover two boxes stuffed full of CDs. I recalled that I once made a commitment to myself to rip all of them to mp3 for storage purposes, but somehow got sidetracked when Mrs Fremescent decided she didn't want untouched cardboard boxes full of old mid-to-late 90s indie CDs cluttering up the lounge. So yesterday, in the pleasant May Day Bank Holiday sunshine, I sat on the garden bench and set to work sorting the disks into "keep" and "chuck" piles. Covermount disks from magazines were instantly relegated to the chuck pile without much any whatsoever, most of these disks contained the kind of sub-par, monotonously predictable and tedious dross that killed off my interest in music in the late 1990s early 2000s - Northside, Cast, Marion, Oasis, Sleeper, Suede - that sort of thing.
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There was one freebie disk that caught my eye, though. A 1999 covermount disk which proclaimed itself "The Best Album Of The Next Century EVER!" from an awful "futuristic" videogame menu style photoshop cover. I was intrigued and opened the case up to see whether the person who compiled it was a prescient genius who could have predicted the emergence of the new century's biggest bands like Keane, Coldplay, Muse, Lily Allen, Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse and her clone army of "teenage girls with 50 year old black woman voices".
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Here, then is the track listing:
Terrorvision - josephine
Delirious - see the star
Vast - somewhere else to be
Space Raiders - disko doktor
Wilt - working for the man
Sound 5 - heavy transit
The Paradise Motel - hollywood landmines
A - foghorn
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Apart from Terrorvision I've heard of none of these artists, have you? So this must be the worst "best of" CD ever made. Hopefully the person who compiled this got the sack as soon as the century turned. Thing is, I'm too scared to actually listen to this... one day, when I've plucked up the courage, I'll do a review of it.

checkin

2008-04-30T20:08:00.004+01:00

I am still here. There are things with massive consequences going on in my life at the moment, things I cannot blog about until they are done with, things that are taking up 90% of my brain power (allowing the other 10% to wonder where I put my shoes). Blogging is the least of my worries at the moment, but - as you might have noticed in the title - there's always a little time in my life to design a new header graphic.

smellen

2008-04-14T20:13:00.001+01:00

This morning I came downstairs to find the floor was sporting its customary cat turd 2 inches from the litter tray (which is a damn sight better than the occasional 6 inch wide lake of cat piss around the litter tray). I grabbed some wipes and cleaned it up, stuffed the shitty wipes in the bin, set the litter tray outside the back door and promptly washed my hands. The stench of cat droppings diminished somewhat, but somehow still hung in the air.
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I had my breakfast, fed the kids, brewed up a cuppa and went upstairs to get myself ready for work - the smell of cat shit still hanging around. I scrubbed my hands hard with Imperial Leather, rinsed and repeated. I doused them - and myself - in aftershave. The smell of cat shit was still lurking. I checked my feet, they were clean, checked the rest of me - I was clean.
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I set off for work and the smell of cat shit was in the air. I checked the bottom of my shoes - clean.
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I got to work and the same stench was there. I checked my shoes again, checked my hands, checked my face in the bathroom mirror, checked the carpet around my desk, checked my desk, checked my keyboard & mouse. All were clean, but still this same stench of cat turd remained.
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Do I smell of this morning's cat shit or is it all in my head? Is it a stench that only I can smell? I once read a Philip K Dick novel where one of the characters suffered from a psychological condition called "Phobic Odour". He was convinced that his physical odour was repulsive to all and sundry, despite the fact that he washed himself vigourously as often as he could. For a while afterwards, I believed that I too stank the place up and took great pains to ensure I didn't offend, odour-wise (in my defence I was in my early teens and a bit of a twat to boot).
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So, have I developed a phobic odour? Damn you, Philip K Dick; damn you, our badly-aiming cat.

trike!

2008-04-10T20:14:00.001+01:00

I was watching an old, old episode of Top Gear on the Freeview channel "Dave" last night. You could tell it was old, Jeremy Clarkson was thin and had hair. So, anyway, they ran this little segment on some three wheeled car that was designed to lean like a motorbike through corners. Richard "The Ham and Pickle Sandwich" Hammond gleefully leaned it hither and yon around loads of leafy country lanes whilst achingly hip (for about six years ago), adrenaline pumping music crashed about loudly in the background.
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I sat there thinking "who on earth - apart from an achingly hip, successful motoring broadcaster with exceptionally white teeth, a £500 haircut and money to burn - would buy such a pointless vehicle?" and as the breathlessly exciting exterior shots gave way to adrenaline-pumping in-cockpit shots of Richard "The Ham & Cheese Roll" Hammond driving, or shots from cameras mounted on the exterior of the three wheeler, a little voice in my brain started to whisper "You see that 3 bed semi he's just passed? You know that 3 bed semi. See that tree? You know exactly where that tree is... Look at the curve of that road... you know how it feels to go around that curve..." and, just as the segment ended and the now in-studio Richard "The Hammond" Hammond started burbling to Thin Jeremy Clarkson about how great a car it was to drive, I stood up and shouted "OOH! OOH! IT'S... IT'S... OUR TOWN!! THEY FILMED THAT IN OUR TOWN!!! TOP GEAR WERE IN OUR TOWN!!"
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Luckily, nearly all of the items that have ever appeared on Top Gear are available on YouTube and it was only a matter of moments before I was watching the whole thing again on the PC, pausing the action at significant moments to point out blurred trees and half-obscured junctions to my barely interested family and painstakingly explaining where exactly in town these shots were filmed. I was actually excited by the thought that Top Gear had come to my town. Once. About six years ago.
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I must get out more...

facepub

2008-04-04T19:12:00.000+01:00

I guess it's a sign that you're getting old and out of touch when you walk past a local pub that has a large "Join Us On Facebook" poster in its window and you wonder why on earth anyone would want to either:
a. Add a pub as a friend on Facebook
b. Bother with Facebook in the first place.

health search string

2008-03-25T20:06:00.001Z

So I went to the hospital this morning to have something looked at by a specialist. After I described my symptoms he scratched his head and then said "I've never heard of that in 20 years of practicing medicine." Later, after a few quite uncomfortable and apparently fruitless examinations, he turned to his pc and said "I know - we'll Google it!" and then spent 10 minutes trying different search strings to see if my symptoms popped up in the results. He then explained that the British Medical Journal had reported that Google is "getting so good" that people can accurately diagnose their own illnesses by typing in their health woes.
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Just before I left his consulting room he advised me to do some Googling myself and, if I discover any information about my symptoms, bring the info with me on my next appointment.
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It's only going to be a couple of years before everyone has a Medibot in their front room.

carded

2008-03-02T21:20:00.002Z

So I called up the Credit Card company on Friday afternoon to "activate" my new "card" that had "arrived" in the "post" earlier in the day. Firstly, I had to talk to a machine and enunciate. each. number. of. my. new. card. very. very. carefully. The machine then put me through to a very strangely voiced man whose sentences always ended sounding like a question? It got quite annoying very quickly? I felt like slamming the phone down? But I didn't? But eventually I wish I had?
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Anyway, he pointed out that I didn't happen to have any Identity Theft Protection on my brand new credit card and then went to great lengths to describe to me all the horrors that await me should my identity get thefted, each of which were kind of phrased as a question. So, I would get a free copy of my credit rating, a printout of my financial details that are (apparently) freely available on the web to idle surfers, my own dedicated team of Identity Theft investigators, a special super-secret password that I use when making transactions so that retailers know it's really me (and if the password isn't given then my card company immediately send a virtual SWAT team in to swipe my card details to safety) and an identity theft case worker. If I took on this Identity Theft Protection on my card, he almost guaranteed me immunity from online fraud. Then he casually added that it was only £69 a year.
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ID Theft is supposedly - outside of a major accident, death of a loved one or severe illness - the worst thing that can happen to you, can really blight your life and knacker your credit history. It's allegedly unstoppable and untraceable and yet my credit card company has a system that can prevent it - BUT AT A PRICE.
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Recently, I overheard a conversation at work where one of my colleagues was describing how they had their identity stolen and the thief took out a massive loan against their name. Their bank is refusing to investigate and are simply threatening them with court because they are refusing to pay the debt off. Apparently the police don't want to know and some "expert" they talked to basically said that the rules and laws governing online banking are so lax that thieves can drive a stolen truck through them. It beggars belief that there are systems in place that can combat this kind of thing and yet we're being blackmailed into paying a premium for them. It's kind of like having a police force, but then having to pay them an extra monthly fee in case you get burgled, assaulted or murdered. That's the beautiful face of capitalism at it's best, I guess.
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Financial Institutions: If you can stop ID Theft, then why don't you just stop ID Theft, instead of selling it to us as an optional extra, you tight-fisted money-grabbing bastards?

Quake 3

2008-02-27T20:10:00.004Z

In the early hours of this morning I experienced my third earthquake. This was easily the biggest of the three, sufficiently large enough to make Mrs Fremescent sit bolt upright in bed and half shout "What the HELL is that???". Me, being an old hand at the old tectonic shift business, just listened to my guitar case gently knocking against the chest of drawers as the ground beneath the house rumbled and muttered "Snearthquake" in my half sleep.
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Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning, this was all that was left of our house:

Brit rhymes with...

2008-02-20T20:08:00.002Z

I was planning to live blog The Brit Awards tonight, but after the opening with Mika - the Tesco Value Scissor Sisters - and then Ozzy and Sharon Osborne introducing Chris Moyles I've already reached my limit for cunt toleration, so I shall be stopping right here.

scary town

2008-02-13T20:14:00.002Z

With the schools all on half term this week the roads have been virtually empty when I walk to work. The morning streets in town are almost deserted too, save for the same old bloke hanging around outside the Abbey building society with his paper, the lanky haired dude unloading countless flat screen tellies from the delivery lorry into ~~Dixons~~ Currys Digital and the guy from the record shop speeding down the pedestrianised area in his car. Otherwise the high street is also empty. So the walk into work is rather pleasant, no sauntering school kids to try and navigate - trying to second guess their Brownian Motion style of pavement walking is hard work and often I'm tempted to just cuff them out of my way as I stride purposefully towards my place of employ.
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Unfortunately, the walk back home is less enjoyable. After 4pm during term time, the town is infested with the posho kids from the local private boys school and girls school who insist on gumming up the high street in large crowds loudly braying to each other in clipped tones - it's a two minute walk from both schools into the town centre so they traditionally spill out into the path of proper shoppers. But during half term things are very different. The posho kids are nowhere to be seen, they're replaced by the kids from the local Comprehensive schools. Instead of the dull dark blue uniforms of the private school kids, these ones are dressed in off-duty striped hoodies and low-slung jeans, monochrome outfits with bright accessories - neon scunchies, shiny fake bullet bets, brightly coloured hi-top trainers, luminous plastic hoop earrings - the trashy goth look seems to be in.
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There's a marked difference in the behaviour of these two groups of kids - as I said before, the posho kids congregate in large herds, braying at each other loudly but mostly in a good natured way. The comprehensive kids are equally loud, but are foul mouthed and threatening. There's a definite sense of unspoken menace around the numerous feral groups as they shout expletive ridden challenges to other groups. which are challenged back with equally foul language. The two clans eye each other suspiciously and honk threats at each other like Matalan-clad Meerkats hepped up on alcopops. The whole atmosphere of the town centre has changed - it's not a nice place to be.
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Yesterday I wandered past one such group that had gathered outside a local pub (its "over 21s only" sign obviously working wonders), one girl was shrieking at the top of her voice at a girl in another group across the road, every other word an F word as she ripped the crusts off her whitebread Tesco sandwich and threw them down on the cobbles as if they had disrespected her mother. "I'LL EFFIN 'AVE YOU, YOU EFFIN CAAAH!" she bellowed, to which her opponent across the way offered a similarly Neanderthal retort. The group of boys and girls bristled and gathered around her as if they were planning some kind of attack.
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I hurried past, trying not to attract their attention and was glad to get away, only to notice other threatening looking cliques of similarly attired rat children spattered around the high street like the remnants of some pre-digested Saturday night post-pub kebab.
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Usually I hate the posho kids with a vengeance; they clutter up the otherwise broad high street, making navigation awkward; their clipped tones and moneyed braying rubbing their parent's conspicuous affluence in your face, but at this precise moment I'd rather have to put up with them than groups of menacing street urchins that seem to be only a Stanley knife's blade away from real trouble.

We Say - You Pay

2008-02-06T20:06:00.000Z

Was I imagining things this afternoon, or did OFCOM just announce that thanks to dodgy phone in scams on Deal or No Deal and Richard and Judy, Channel Four have to cough up £1.5 million to pay their fine?
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Nope, it happened last month, but Channel 4 just broadcast the OFCOM findings in the ad breaks of Deal or No Deal and Richard and Judy this afternoon.

tunage

2008-02-06T19:34:00.000Z

I haven't written about music round these parts for quite a while, possibly because there's been precious little good music to get enthusiastic about or, conversely, I've been pretty unenthusiastic about music for quite a while.
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Anyway, I seem to have regained my interest in music and have a few recommendations to chuck out to my two readers and Google's army of spiders. First off, now that the lists of 2007 have been compiled ignored and relegated to January's archives in most other blogs, I will give my favourite albums of 2007.
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Office - A Night At The Ritz
In September, arty alt-rockers Office produced this shiny, glitzy, glam wall-of-sound album. With its trousers nailed firmly to the mast of the good ship "alternative music" it still succeeds in not really sounding like any of the other passengers on that particular vessel (who all want to be Joy Division). Yes, there are occasional jerky guitars and pointy rhythms, but there are also stomping pianos, girly backing vocals, twinkly keyboards and layered vocal harmonies to balance them out. It sounds like Phil Spector going mental inside a glitterball. Sometimes the lyrics are too self-consciously arch, but they still successfully fit with the general feel of the album. The songs on this album stuck in my head for months on end. Recommended if you like your guitar-pop songs loaded up with enormous hooks and melodies that hang around like a particularly eggy guff under the duvet when you're trying to get to sleep.
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Radiohead - In Rainbows Disk 1
I guess this album features highly in most "best of" lists for 2007, it could be seen as a lazy choice, but I reckon it deserves to be there. I've seen this unfairly described by other bloggers as a "return to form", but I can't figure out when Radiohead were supposed to actually lost their form. Was it because they failed to produce "OK Computer 2 - Fatal Exception Error"? Whatever, this album kind of gathers up all the guises of Radiohead, from their stripped-down Pablo Honey beginnings, the aural soundscapes of OK Computer, the sequenced ProTooled mayhem of Kid A & Amnesiac and mashes them all together to produce an album that's at once classic, futuristic, contemporary and experimental. What is clear from listening to this album is that Radiohead aren't interested in being cool, fashionable, hip or trendy. They're not interested in anything but making music that pleases themselves.
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Cardiacs - Sing To God Part 1
I eventually got my hands on this release late last year and found that huge chunks of it took over my brain. Manhoo is possibly the nearest thing to a pop song that they've ever made and coupled with Bellyeye, Fiery Gun Hand and Fairy Mary Mag constitute some of the best Cardiacs stuff, ever. Recommended if you like bonkers "prog rock meets punk on a wonky merry-go-round" music.
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I guess it's pretty sad that for a whole year I've only really enjoyed three albums.
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Other Bits
Following a link from Graham Linehan's blog, I fell in love with Ordinary Song by The Little Ones, a gloriously catchy slice of sunshine. The other tracks on their MySpace page are equally as catchy, so much so that I might just invest in their album when it comes out.
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Elsewhere I've been investigating the radio function on my iTunes installation at work. So far, thanks to the web radio station Morow.com, I've discovered that all Italian Prog Rock bands want to sound like 1972 era Genesis. There also seems to be a preset on modern Prog Rock guitarists' effects pedals that means that all their guitars sound the same, regardless of what band they're in. Similarlt, all the drummers use the same drumkit and try to use every single cymbal within a bar. They should listen to a bit of vintage Phil Collins or Bill Bruford to get a sense of what NOT to put in a song.
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If your taste is for music of a more alternative/indie bent, then might I suggest checking out CBC Radio 3 - home of indie/alternative music from Canada. From listening to this station for a couple of hours I have discovered the marvellous Miracle Fortress whose Hold Your Secrets to Your Heart is positively luminous, the excellent Weakerthans and the furiously oddball Hot Springs.
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CBC Radio 3 is free from the curse of R&B and only occasionally dips its toe into the world of rap, maybe there's a smidgeon of too much folk/bluegrass for my straight white European tastes, but on the whole a ten minute wodge of CBC Radio 3 easily contains more good music than a whole 24 hour stretch of BBC Radio One. Canada seems to be producing some pretty good acts, there are the obvious clone bands who sound like Coldplay or Foo Fighters, but there seems to be a whole scene of interesting original music being produced over there that should by rights be reaching a larger audience than caribou, polar bears, blokes in check shirts and penguins of their native great white north, eh.
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Music!!