Author: Ian

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The Golden Age Of Grotesque – Marilyn Manson

I quite like the music of Manson. That’s Manson with an M rather than Hanson with an H. I think this chap’s real name is Brian and he sure knows how to write a good song. Can I tell you the name of a single track on this album? Nope. I can tell you that it’s likely I wouldn’t skip a song if it came on. But this isn’t a band I seek out to play.

I’ve just had a look at the track listing and “This Is The New Shit” is a song I know along with Mobscene. Other than that I couldn’t tell you how these tunes go. I get what Manson is doing. He’s being provocative and pushing boundaries and anything that scares the boomers or adult generation is fine by me – yes I know I’m old but I’m still a rebel at heart. I have heard that recently Manson has been accused of being a dick and while I hope he hasn’t behaved like that – because it is wrong – I don’t think I hold up anyone to hero status because they pretty much always end up letting you down or become dicks.

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The Downward Spiral – Nine Inch Nails

I’m not sure when I first heard this or when I bought it or how I got into Nine Inch Nails. I do know that this album is really important to Smith because of when it came out and what he was listening to in those days. It has less importance for me. That said this is an album of industrial metal that is well worth getting and absorbing. All the songs are multi-layered and every one has a hook for you.

All tortured souls need to have this album. As do all normal folk.

While writing this I’ve been listening to the album and it’s got me thinking why songs are three minutes long. Not all the songs on this album are that long but, in general, why are songs 3 minutes long? Is it that for some deep psychological reason that is the music average of humans? Is it because that’s where the technology was limited in the early days? Films are kinda ninety minutes long. Is that because of technological limitations or is it because that’s a bladder length? I wonder if it’s to do with the standard reel length of old cinema projection systems? We know that CDs hold the amount of data that they do because of how long one of Beethoven’s things is [could be Mozart]. There are too many things that seem to be standardised and the reasons could be lost in history. I think it’s time for me to do some research.

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I Suspect It’s Me

Meaning
Meaning

These roadworks were meant to be completed on a Saturday but as I drove past the sign on Friday it had changed and I just saw the above message. There was bad weather forecast for the Saturday – potentially thunderstorms – but as Saturday got closer the predictions turned to just rain and patchy rain at that. I do suspect that these works could have continued as the rain wasn’t that heavy on said Saturday.

My issue here is that the road sign is ambiguous and I can’t decide if it’s just me or whether the intended meaning is really clear. I know I definitely have a literal language problem and I don’t really like ambiguity in things where the final meaning is meant to be clear. Humans didn’t spend thousands of years developing complex language so that intended meaning could be vague.

Does this sign say that the roadworks are cancelled for 1 day or does it just state the fact that the bad weather will last for one day. I am currently unsure. I suspect it’s the former but it is very unclear. Cancelled is a strange word to use if the roadworks are moved by one day – postponed would be a better word there. A couple of commas wouldn’t go amiss either. So, until I attempt to drive this road a little later today I will not know the answer to my query. Oh, and fuck British Gas.

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Wagyu

You know when something happens and then shortly after another thing happens and your brain goes: there must be meaning behind this. Well, it was a coincidence. There is no meaning behind virtually everything. We as humans are very effective agency seeking lumps of meat. We want there to be reason behind everything and so we seek it out and even put reason to things that deserve no reason. Let’s just make this clear: random shit happens and it happens all the time.

Our lives are affected by random events all the time and we seek reason behind those. We like to lay blame. Even if something is a ten million to one chance of happening on any particular day it will happen about seven times in this country each day. One of those events could make the news and people will think “that seems a rare thing, I wonder what caused it?”. Our lives a made up of us trying to battle the forces of randomness to keep everything constant against a rising tide of randomness.

On Saturday I saw the term wagyu burger while having a meal at the Three Horseshoes in Staplestreet. I hadn’t seen the term before and I was bemused. Then, the next, day while food shopping saw a burger pack labelled as wagyu. Oooh, there must be meaning behind all this. I must insert agency into this situation to surrender myself to a grand plan. I would much rather know that everything is part of a grand plan and that someone has control over all this. I could believe in a god and their plan, I could believe in the illuminati or I could believe in many other things but the reality is this was just random shit. You have to remember that shit happens all the time and it’s no-one’s fault.

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The Day Is My Enemy – Prodigy

I was really into The Prodigy when they released Jilted Generation and then when they put out Fat Of The Land I was super excited, such a marvellous album. This album was released after those and not one that I bought at the time. I was persuaded back to Prodigy by Shredder and so I got this album to catch up. I honestly don’t think I’ve played it all the way through but individual songs will have been played when my phone is on random shuffle. Here’s the thing. The Prodigy are excellent and the time I saw them at M’era Luna is in the top three for gigs.

Great Stuff.

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ILS

I’ve finally got around to reading the instructions for my T-7 plane in X-Plane. I’m playing around with the beacons and following those as I work my way around Europe coastline cities.

I’m currently in Porto, Portugal and heading south. I haven’t decided whether I am going to carry on to Africa or just do Europe. I have a suspicion I’ll try to get around Africa but I am concerned that the number of airports will decrease quite significantly and I might not want to land in awful countries like Mauritania – look it up it has a terrible record on human rights. I guess I could always land on a carrier, if I can figure out how to put one near to me.

Trying To Get Better At This
Trying To Get Better At This

This is the view I get on my phone. There’s an X-Plane app that connects to the PC and displays certain information. I’m trying to improve my glideslope to landing and this is the first time I’ve used this app. It looks quite good and I get more information than I was expecting. I should be able to use the ILS system within the T7 but although I’m tuning the Nav to the correct frequency it doesn’t seem to be popping up in the HUD. I’ll just have to keep trying.

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NFTR

It’s hard to keep this site up to date with interesting things when there are very few interesting things that are happening. Normally these communications would be full of film reviews and photographs of curious things I see whenever I go somewhere new. But I haven’t been somewhere new in a long time. The cinemas are still closed and possibly won’t open again. Who knows what’s going to happen over the next year or so as the world learns to manage with a pandemic which will always be circulating. I hope that the variations will die down as the cases are reduced, then eventually humanity will have a chance to control the spread of the virus. I am happy that I might never again have to be in the situation where people think I’m weird for not wanting to shake hands with others.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that things aren’t busy. Work is super crazy at the moment while at the same time we are trying to improve the cadet experience within guidelines. Everyone is struggling with balancing responsibilities because of the short sightedness of the government in coming up with a plan for how education should work in these covid times. I mean, they’ve only had a year to get things sorted. You would have thought someone would be able to make decisions and get systems in place but it turns out that when you are just a selfish power crazy person you don’t care about those important things. I’m not sure why people seem surprised to know that Johnson might have lied or said terrible shit. He’s been doing that all his life. This country voted him in and this country deserves what it gets. I just feel really bad for all those who want a caring government.

I’ve been trying to play more computer games or at least try some new ones. I’ve not been getting very far with that though. I’m still playing Gran Turismo a lot and given that I’ve been playing it since 1997 I don’t think that is going to change much. I started playing GT on a PlayStation when I lived in Gillingham and the house own borrowed a PS from his brother and GT came with it. We found we would play and race each other and congratulate when the other managed a lovely drift. The I bought my own PS, which my mother thought was a waste of time, and I played GT and F1 ’97 quite a bit along with a few other games. When the PS2 came out I bought one. Upgraded GT and played on that system. Eventually I bought a network card for the PS2 and played, very briefly, online. I was joining in with some Navy Seal game online where all the players knew the maps and my time alive was very small. I didn’t really enjoy the experience. When the PS3 was released I upgraded and got GT. Somewhere around this time I also started to get steering wheels – not sure if it was PS2 or 3. Clearly, once GT is released on the PS5 I will be upgrading but I’m not going to bother trying to get a PS5 until that point. I’m very happy with my PS4.

I’ve been playing a bit of The Last Campfire by Hello Games. It’s a delightful little puzzle game with some problems that have made me walk away in embarrassment that I didn’t figure them out quickly. I’m hoping to finish the game soon although I have no idea how long it is supposed to take. It’s a lovely little story and looks wonderful.

In other news I think I would like it to be a little warmer than it is currently. I’m fed up feeling cold a lot of the time. Some of this is to do with my office at work having zero heating outlets and also my home heating is shitty because I’ve been waiting FOUR SHITTY MONTHS for British Gas to get their act together and come and fix it. I’ve been mostly annoyed by this while equally feeling as though I’ve been unable to do anything about it. At least I have been able to use the heating, it’s just that the boiler requires some TLC every now and then. I know that British Gas are going to tell me that they were hit by the third wave of Covid and that also their technicians went on strike. This is what happens in business when you under value your staff and put your motivation to shareholder profits before other things.

I am beginning to think that I have too many screens in one room in my house. I know that seems like it shouldn’t be possible but currently the dining room – so called because it has a table – there are four screens. Two 27″ computer monitors attached to the home PC. A 27″ monitor when I have to do work at the table and a 45″ screen on the wall which gets used as a TV when I’m on the rowing machine. Considering this room is really quite small I think it might be overkill, but they all have their uses and I’m not that inclined to remove one. I’ll just have to avoid people seeing the room unless they think I’m too much of a gamer. Which, I’d like to point out, I don’t think I am.

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The Book Of Souls – Iron Maiden

I think I remember that this album was bought for me by JH. I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t think I’ve listened to it. I think generally I’ve moved on and have discovered enough Maiden. The albums produced after the 80s don’t have anything new for me. I know there are a few good songs post 90 by Iron Maiden but I’m not that bothered to discover them. I’m currently going through an “industrial” phase along with aggrotech and EBM. Sometimes I’m sad that the older music doesn’t bother me anymore but at the same time the discovery of new bands really thrills me. I am about to look up one of my current favourite music labels and see what bands on there I’ve not heard before and see if I can buy something.

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The Crimson Idol – W.A.S.P.

I had this album playing in the background yesterday to prepare for writing this communication. It was a W.A.S.P. album and that’s pretty much it. When I was younger W.A.S.P. were a bit of a shock band. They went out of their way to be controversial with their music and their antics. I suppose they were a bit like the Alice Cooper of the 80s but without the higher levels of fame. There are two albums by them that are stunning in my opinion and they are Live . . . In The Raw and Headless Children. I think when you are a stupid teenager this stuff seems edgy and amazing especially the songs: Mean Motherfucking Man, Animal [Fuck Like A Beast] and even D.B. Blues. Don’t get me wrong all of those are very good metal songs in their own right but are made better by shock value. In my current age it’s just rather hard to be shocked.

As for this album, I don’t remember what it was like. It’s W.A.S.P. sounding and therefore listenable.

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Not From ‘Round ‘Ere

It’s in the name but there are problems with people not understanding these things and using the words incorrectly. It’s out job to point out where people go wrong. I don’t think it’s being pedantic, I think it’s making sure that language is used correctly so that meaning is clear. We have developed this vocal ability over the years and created rules so we can be specific in what we mean and the ideas we are trying to communicate. If you can’t be clear in your meaning then you need to change your words so that you are.

The Internet – the physical network of wires and optical fibres that the traffic runs through. Has been around since the early 60s when US Strategic Command wanted a computer network.

Internet Protocol – the rules that govern the movement of information around the internet.

www – world wide web – a mass of documents all linked together with “hyperlinks” creating a web of information. This has been around since the early 90s.

HTML – the language governing linking documents together on the internet, created in the early 90s.

And so onwards for many different terms that people use interchangeably when speaking about computer things but don’t really know what they are talking about. I can cope with it normally but the problem arises when there are specific issues with a piece of equipment when the difference between these terms becomes really important. Just saying it doesn’t work is not that helpful. It is the job of the support person to decode the words used by the layman and ask gentle probing questions to get to the root of the issue.

Visitors
Visitors

The above is a map showing where people who read this shit come from. I do suspect that most hits are not people who actually read this though. I suspect many people accidentally find this site and then don’t care because who would care about the musings of a white male from the UK. This site operates by delivering HTML to a BROWSER via the INTERNET. The HTML is created using PHP and a SQL database. Your BROWSER decodes the HTML and creates the words and images on your screen. blah blah.

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The Best Of Coal Chamber – Coal Chamber

I saw Coal Chamber at Download in 2013 and I remember thinking they were ok. I did note that they had a female bass player and I was impressed with her leather coat. Now, before I Google images to see how my memory matches up to reality we could have a discussion about how memory works. But maybe I’ll leave that for another time. The short version is that memory doesn’t work the way you think it does and is quite fallible.

Chela Rhea Harper
Chela Rhea Harper

OK, so it wasn’t a leather coat but rather a denim outfit. I was close. I suspect I conflated my memory of Coal Chamber and Gary Moore from a Wembley Arena gig back in the early 90s when he came on stage in a glorious long leather coat.

You know when you buy a “best of” and then you do sometimes wonder. If this is the best then was is the rest like? I would say the first four songs on here are really good. But after that I’m not that fussed by them. I think it might be something to do with the sound of this band. It has a Korn feel to the sound and I’ve never quite got on with that. I’m not sure why given that I have been having an industrial revival recently. The overall sound of this band just misses me.

The song Sway contains lyrics from the 1984 single “The Roof Is On Fire” by Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three. I guess for shocking the establishment it works perfectly.

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Finally Somewhere Else

I actually drove out of the county of Kent for the first time since last August recently. I didn’t go far, only across the Thames to Essex but it felt like a whole new place. I think I’ve been separated from Essex for long enough now that I don’t really have any urges of “home” when I go there. I do look around the village and think it’s very pretty but all around it’s changed so much with building and “improvements” that it’s not the Essex of my childhood anymore and I don’t feel that romanticism. I did go for a walk with the family and we went to some lovely local reservoir lake things. It was pretty and the sun was shining.

My Homeland
My Homeland

As much as I’ve labelled that picture as my homeland curiously I didn’t even know these lakes existed for all the time I lived in the village. I had never explored them as a child. Doesn’t really matter. It just adds to the alienness of wandering around somewhere so familiar and yet so different.

As a slight contrast I did find this work of art on a walk around the lake area near me in Kent. I have to say it is stunning. I’m not entirely sure about any of it though. I’m a republican and couldn’t care less about what happens with the royal family. It does appear that this picture has likened Kate to the virgin mother of Jesus and quite literally sanctified her in image. It’s such a strange sight and one of conflicting impressions.

I'm Just Not Really Sure What
I’m Just Not Really Sure What

Does this image mean it was paid for by arch royalists? If so then I’m not sure why the person in the image isn’t part of that bloodline – I guess the child is [?] assuming it’s actually one of Kate and William’s children. I honestly don’t know. I also feel that the people who did this are particularly on the right of politics as that is what I mostly associate that particular colouring of cloth in the background. This image has me conflicted in many many ways.

Heading just a few miles from the graffiti we see other iconography in the local friars. Now, it turns out that the monastery near where I live isn’t a monastery it’s actually a friary. It also turns out there’s a difference. Let’s make this clear here. Monks are selfish twats who give their lives over to serving and praying to god. Friars are less selfish twats who give their lives over to serving god while at the same time being allowed out to do things in the community. So, friars are the better of the two wastes of time. I guess anything which has use to the community is better than a thing which does not.

Iconic Stuff
Iconic Stuff

This image has another mother and child in a system which allowed rape, slavery and murder of the right people. Is Mary crying in this image? Perhaps she’s upset at the lack of consent for her pregnancy – which makes god a rapist. If you look at the bottom images on the front of the alter it looks like there is a snake climbing a crucifix which I suppose I understand and then there is also a badly drawn T-Rex with a halo! I know it’s a sheep but it’s much more fun to think of it as a terrible lizard. Damn, I wish I had looked more closely at this when I was there. Perhaps I’ll pop back for another look soon.

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The Best Of 1980-1990 – U2

I think I bought this is around 1996 or so. I got this album in a moment of weakness I think. I don’t like U2. I don’t really like their music. I don’t really like them. I just remember having a conversation with MD after I bought it and he was surprised. I genuinely can’t remember when I last played this album.

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The Age Of Nero – Satyricon

I got this album as I think this band were going to play a festival I was booked to see but that ended up being cancelled. Not sure I’ve ever played it. I seem to recall that the music was quite dark metal-goth. Not my thing really.

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That One Night – Live In Buenos Aires – Megadeth

This album made me re-evaluate my relationship with Megadeth. I’ve always liked Megadeth but this album helped me rediscover all the great songs and how they varied them slightly for live performances. I love this album. I will admit that I skip some of the newer songs because I only have so much time and brain space for new songs. I’m not bothered by the songs:

Blackmail the universe
Die dead enough
She-wolf
Reckoning day
Return to hangar

But I absolutely love the following songs:

Set The World Afire
Wake Up Dead
In My Darkest Hour
Hangar 18
Tornado Of Souls
Symphony Of Destruction
Peace Sells
Holy Wars

It’s such a shame that Dave got religion as it would be awesome to hear the band play The Conjuring.

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O-AZ

Yesterday I had the first part of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine against the SARS-Cov-2 virus. I was expecting to feel rough today but so far I do not. It’s been around twenty four hours and all good at the moment, perhaps later today will be rough as fuck. I’ve read and heard on podcasts about people’s reaction to the vaccine and so I’m curious to see how I react. The most important thing is to get vaccinated and help reduce my reaction to getting Covid.

There are some things we don’t yet know about any of the vaccines. What we do know is that they don’t stop you getting Covid-19 but they do minimise your reaction to it. It’s highly likely you won’t be hospitalised if you get the real virus. We don’t know if vaccinated and infected people are still contagious and we don’t know how long the vaccine lasts and we don’t know if it helps you recover from all the Covid variants. But we do know it stops you being hospitalised if you catch Covid. So, while we don’t have the data yet on various aspects of the vaccine we do know it lowers your chances of dying from the virus. Seems a good idea to get vaccinated because your chances of dying of something else while waiting to be vaccinated are higher than the chances of you dying from the adverse reactions to the vaccine.

In the mean time here’s a video taken from inside the Prius as I did a lap of the Brands Hatch GP circuit. It’s a four minute lap time, roughly, which is amusing as it should be closer to one minute forty had we been allowed to race. However, that’s not the point. I’m happy to leave my racing to playing Gran Turismo.

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Irritating But Ultimately Not Too Much Of A Problem

When I started writing album reviews the aim was to always have something to write about. I can’t always have a polemic ready to go and publish on this glorious site. I would like to be that person but I also feel that my writings or attempts to express my thoughts would be diluted if I wrote too much about society and politics etc. So I decided to write about music and rather than have me concentrate on every band in a particular order I chose to describe my relationship with each album I own in alphabetical order. This would mean that the artists are mixed up and it’s a pseudo random order for the reviews. I would normally be surprised by what I had to write about next – screw Led Zeppelin for naming their first four albums numerically but I don’t own number 3 so I guess I saved myself some work there.

When I started doing the reviews in 2013 I think I was using the order of albums on my phone and the iOS system doesn’t really include the “The” at the beginning of an album name. So the list is ordered by whatever the name of the album is subtract the “The” at the start. This makes sense and works well. At some point over the last nine years I started using the Sonos App to get the albums alphabetically. Now Sonos does not remove the “The” from the start of the album name and so somewhere my system of ordering the albums changed from one system to another.

So now I have to see what album is next on my list in the Sonos program and then check whether I have already reviewed that album and then write or not-write depending on what result I get when I search this site. See, it’s a little irritating but easy to solve and while I’m miffed at myself I’m not bothered particularly. Once this round of album reviews is over I’m going to start a new list covering the aggrotech and EBM stuff that I’ve bought since 2013 but I have searched this site and some of those have already been reviewed and some have not. So it’ll be a similar issue when that happens, if that happens. I’m not sure how many albums there are to go but I guess I’ll finish them at some point.

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Ten – Pearl Jam

Hmmmm. How to write this without annoying the legion of fans that Pearl Jam have? Well, it’s not a problem as these communications aren’t seen by more than about ten people. There are people for whom Pearl Jam are a fantastic band and produce brilliant music. Then there are people like me who think it’s ok but I rarely play any songs from the album. This music just doesn’t affect me.

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Temper Temper – Bullet For My Valentine

I’ve see this band. I’ve even enjoyed some of their songs and if they come on when I’m in the car I don’t normally tend to skip. This album is playing now and, while it isn’t terrible, I don’t think it’s something I would put on deliberately. It’s not that good.

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