Yes, I own a copy of this album but I’m not convinced I’ve ever played it. I’ve got it on now as I write this and I know not of these songs. It doesn’t matter. It’s an AC/DC album and you know how they go.
State Of Euphoria – Anthrax
From the opening cello to the finale this is a great album. It was the first Anthrax album I owned and to me it is a complete summation of their style. They are the only band of the big four that I haven’t seen live and I do hope that changes one day.
Be All, End All – great riffs, fast pace, tuneful vocals and changes of pace. Such an excellent song.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind – the second song with a comma in the title and another where the opening riff changes to fast paced melodic riffage. I think Anthrax manage to make excellent pace and riff style changes really well, a great band.
Make Me Laugh – some superb reverse drumming in this and while I know what I mean I’m not sure you will. Doesn’t matter. Pretty sure this song is about evangelical christians screwing money out of people.
Antisocial – not written by Anthrax but by Trust, a French metal band whose music is pretty cool. I think the original is better but this is a great version and brings obscure French rock to the masses.
Who Cares Wins – a lovely acoustic opening heading into lovely ringing chords and finally thrash riffs.
Now It’s Dark – I love this riff. Bouncy and excellent for the pit. The vocals are really melodic and overall this is great. A little bit of swearing too which is always excellent. The change of pace half way is brilliant.
Schism – a great song.
Misery Loves Company – I’m pretty sure this is about the Stephen King book but I’m not really a lyrics man so maybe it’s about something else completely but the book hypothesis seems to work well.
13 -spooky opening, strange sounds, lovely short instrumental.
Finale – The opening sends shivers down my spine, that echoing guitar blat. Lovely. Over, finished, done, gone, out.
Even The Kitchen Sink
I’ve decided that the life of things in a house is around ten years. Things apparently wear out after that length of time or at least the high use things do. Given my hatred of decorating in now comes to the point in the house when I need to make some decisions and get myself prepared to reboot the rooms. I recently noticed that my kitchen sink was dripping water into the void underneath and I found it was the tap causing the issues. The tap was also rusted to the sink quite completely. This necessitated a new sink and tap which I was OK with. I found a sink that was the same size so that hopefully removed the necessity to cut the counter top and with luck the waste pipes would line up well to avoid plumbing issues.
The old sink also had a fresh water tap that I had removed and so it was possibly time to rejig it anyway. All the limescale is me just not having cleaned the sink for a while but there is a lot around the tap and it leaked into the basin but also through into the pipe system. The limescale in this area of the country is pretty harsh and things die after a short time. A friend bought one of those clear kettles to see the water boiling but every week it would need descaling, it’s best not to be able to see these things.
This level of piping is quite frustrating I think. Most of it isn’t used anymore. I used to have a water softener but after a while I noticed that it wasn’t plumbed in correctly so I removed it. There are also spare pipes for cold water access to the bathroom as the hot water pipes to the bathroom were replaced a few years ago. I kind of know what all the pipes do and the ones that aren’t needed are clearly shut off. Oh, and two stop-cocks because apparently you need one before the water meter.
The new sink fitted snugly and that pleased me. There would be less hassle and no cutting of the counter top. The waste pipe could be aligned with a tiny amount of force so officially I have a pre-stressed pipe system, but that stress is low. I did have to cut some of the support wood to get the sink screwed in properly but I’ve been gluing that back and have a plan to secure it more. The new sink feels smaller but I don’t have a huge amount of washing up to do.
Overall this all went well and I will have to start planning the next thing in the house which needs sorting. There’s also the loft and I’ll have to tidy and sort that at some point.
Clean Up
I’m just about to start writing this communication and I have realised the irony involved, however, I shall continue and ignore the double standards I so clearly employ.
As I come out of a two day migraine which was probably required by my body to make me do nothing I have realised a few things. I guess what I mean is that there are a number of things that I knew separately but I have only very recently put them all together to come to a conclusion, which I suspect is that actual definition of how a realisation works.
I’ve been spending time trying to change my behaviour for the improvement of my mental health. I have times when the weight of the world rests on my shoulders and I need to learn that there are some things I can do very little about. So, I have stopped obsessing with the news and feeling anger at all the terrible things that are happening. I have removed the Twitter app from my phone and I even deleted two of my Twitter accounts. I’m toying with the idea of deleting the final remaining account but I’m not sure about that yet. I’m failing at overcoming the “sunk Cost” fallacy where I feel that the Twitter account contains details of my life and I’ve put effort into it. However, I don’t look at my historical tweets often and I only check that place once a week or so, primarily to see if Pom has been in touch. The grander idea behind all of this Twitter removal is that no-one else cares what I think. Literally. People might be curious to see my reactions to things but the truth is no-one cares. Chucking ideas and thoughts onto Twitter doesn’t change the world and more than likely won’t change anyone’s mind about anything. It just allows me to join the faux outrage at whatever thing I should be outraged about.
Twitter used to be a place where I kept in touch with friends. But nearly all of them are now connected via WhatsApp! which is problematic in itself but that’s for another time. Oh, I learnt recently that the developers of WhatsApp! came up with the name first and then tried to work out what the app would do. So, the opinions and thoughts of people I genuinely care about are accessible to me via other methods that web based social media. I don’t expect I can change any of their minds about things, we’ve all known each other for too long to know our own thoughts on issues but if I want intelligent conversation then I can chat to them on the messaging app. I don’t need to have Twitter to chat to the few people within my “circle of trust”. By that I mean those people whom I consider to be absolute trustworthy friends. I’m fortunate to have people I trust implicitly and the only downside to those groups is that we aren’t physically close enough to meet up once a month to get wasted.
I’ve been clearing out my email inbox and I have removed all the email subscriptions that I just “mark as read” without even reading them. Why should I get those emails if I don’t care about the content? Am I worried I might miss out on something that I want? Probably but maybe I should wait for the natural processes rather than be pushed into buying something because the marketing department thinks I should. It’s curious that outdoor clothing shops keep sending me emails telling me that this new jacket is great or these shoes are brilliant but I’m expecting my current jacket and shoes to last twenty years. Why would I want to know about more of them?
I’ve cleared out all the cookies within my browsers. This is so that I can refuse all the tracking cookies that come along with visiting most sites. I don’t really want advertisers to know what other things I have looked at. I’ve also been over to turn off the custom advertising that Google wants me to use and while I was doing that I have set a time limit on the browsing data that Google keeps on me. So, this means that I’ve got things in my history in case I need to find them but also anything older than 18 months goes away. If I haven’t looked at something for a year and a half then the chances are I don’t need to keep it in my history.
I’ve deleted the Reddit app from my phone. I found I was spending around thirty minutes a day browsing through Reddit and none of it really added to my life experience. Most of what I looked at was aircraft and things designed to kill other people. I’m having a bit of a break and trying to use my time more productively. Which, I guess, also includes writing this stuff which is read by approximately three people. I found that most of the time I could avoid looking at Reddit but once I opened the app that was at least twenty minutes gone and maybe more if I didn’t keep an eye on the time. It would be a better use of my time if I read Scientific American instead.
I would like to remove or close my Facebook account. But I can’t really. There are two communities I belong to who only seem to use FB. First the 360 Radar bunch use FB as their main way of sending information out to people who contribute. So if there is an update that needs to be completed I need to have access to that information. Also, my friends within the CCF all are on FB and if I want to get in touch with them then I need to maintain that access. I only check my account once a week and that is within a browser that is used only for that. The browser also has add-ons to remove tracking. This way I hope to minimise the information that FB can gather about me, although I suspect I would be rather surprised at what they do have.
I’ve also turned off the Google Advertising customisation options. I can’t quite remember what URL is used to do this but you can access this in your Google account settings. This way, I will no longer see adverts aimed specifically at me. I will just see general adverts. I can cope with that. If I want to buy or spend money on something new then I would like to leave the choices to my own flawed thinking modes rather than relying on someone else to point me in their direction. Yes, I know this whole argument is flawed but it feels good to lower the amount of tracking information that these very large companies keep about me.
Interestingly there is, of course, the problem that this website contains an awful lot of information about me. You can find my interests, purchases, bands, travel and political ideas. But this is a site that I control and the information you see is just the information I want you to see. It is very rare for me to delete a communication and if I adjust them then my policy is to try and make sure that those changes are clear and open. This site also runs counter to the convention that no-one else cares about what I think or feel about the many issues I have written about. Again that is true. But as I say on the homepage, this site is about me and how I think. It’s got nothing to do with looking for approval. I know people don’t care what I think. But for me, this is my diary, sort of.
Start Something – Lostprophets
How do you review an album you really liked and has great music but the lead singer was convicted of many sexual offences involving children?
Stand In Line – Impellitteri
I have spent ages trying to remember who lent me the tape of this band back in around 1990. I know it was a friend of SR and I also know which shop this person’s mother ran but I just can’t remember her name. I’m genuinely not sure why this was leant to me but I do know that I really liked it. It’s got a particular 70s rock fantastic feel to it especially with the vocals. There’s a cover of Since You’ve Been Gone which wasn’t really needed but it’s ok and rocked-up quite a bit. There’s also the “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” which, I think, annoys the shit out of me. This album is kinda what would happen if Yngwie J Malmsteen got hold of some of your favourites.
The album opens with an ominous bell tolling introduction to “Stand In Line” which contains the lyrics “in front of the cigarette vendor”, who does that? “Secret Lover” is a speed assault on melodic rock and works, I think. I like the bass sounds. “Tonight I Fly” chucks along and hits all the right early 80s sound points, the verse sounds slightly discordant but over this is a good song. “White and Perfect”, is this about cocaine, Jesus, white people? Oh, it’s about British colonialisation of Africa and India, but the bad bits. “Leviathan” I do like the operatic feel to this one. “Goodnight and Goodbye” doesn’t really stand out and along with “Playing With Fire” closes out the album.
This is the last, alphabetically, of the three Impellitteri albums I have. It is the best of those as the others are, amusingly, incredibly religious and while that doesn’t necessarily make an album bad it does not make it any better.
Stacked Up – Senser
Holy Shit – This Album!
This album changed my views on music. Most of the music I have ever listened to has been recommended by Smith. He says stuff, I listen and then I like. Our journey through music together has been one of the defining relationships of my life. Without him I wouldn’t have discovered or even felt comfortable liking most of the music I do. I was in the second year at university when this recommendation came through to me. I think the thing that this album had was raging guitars along with some electronica songs and sampling etc. It’s a complete and utter game changer for me and stunning. I have loved this album since then. Why is it that the best albums are written by musicians with a left-leaning political bent?
So, the lead singer rap/sings his way through the songs. There’s another vocalist who is female and sounds amazing. Heavy guitars. Superb bass work. Drums that sound a little “Manchester” but that’s forgivable. Flutes! Sampling. Everything is here. This album is a real good one for chilling out and laying on the floor in the dark with sunglasses on.
I’ve seen this band twice and I think I wish it was more than that. I saw them in Southsea and also at The Underworld. Both times I really enjoyed it.
I might have been obsessed with some of the Eject remixes and I’ll mention them later.
States Of Mind – Electronica opening to a heavy wavy riff with rap singing over the top. The chorus swaps things around to calm glow. The band use bass only and guitar only well. Even the change of key does not make me cringe as it does in most other songs. I guess this song is about how we should change our programmed prejudices. Brilliant.
The Key – This song canters along with a rolling bass line and power chords ringing out. It has all the elements of Senser here with samples, scratching, funky sounds at points, haunting vocals from Kerstin.
Switch – The metal feel softens with this song as the guitars are mostly high pitched and wavy. Lots of programming used in this one with a rolling bass line as the main feature for me.
Age Of Panic – Straight from the start you know this is high tempo. Great build up to the main part of the song, another one with screamy high pitched guitar lines. The chorus for this one increases the bass line to assault your ears. It’s great.
What’s Going On – Heavy opening riff that dissolves into a beat with flute. The production on this one focuses less on the guitars and hits home with bass and electronic sounds.
One Touch One Bounce – This almost seems a non-song and comes over as the first attempt at calming electronica. This allows you to breathe in the centre of this album.
Stubborn – more rolling bass lines [I’m very jealous] then the guitars and vocals join a great riff. This song has a gorgeous bit in the middle with a mixture of sounds to set the ears afire.
Door game – The flute opens to a decent beat with different sounds and structure. There’s an off-beat hi-hat which is lovely. No heavy guitars in this one so a change of pace.
Peanut Head – Another excellent bass line with a cantor gait. This song has a more funky feel. The structure of the songs starts to feel “Senser” by this song. Middle sections with drums and samples, build up with bass and guitar intros building to the last section of the song.
Peace – This is an important song because it calms you before the next. It soothes you into careful breathing, such loveliness.
Eject – This song. This MF song. Upbeat. Rattling guitars. Galloping through the verses and I can imagine the crowds bouncing together and then moshing as the chaos increases. This song feels just as relevant to me today as it did twenty five years ago. We are all conditioned to to this thing, to work, to accept what we have. It’s time to Eject the power.
No Comply – Thrash speed and a massive antifa anthem. This song links more politics with lyrics and hits home with explanations of how racism is created in people. Fantastic song.
Worth – After the last two songs of high intensity this one lets you down calmly. It’s a fantastic outro to a fantastic album. I still want to play the whole thing at incredible volume.
I wrote about Elect EP in 2014 and to me that feels quite recent! I must be getting on a bit. This album is a good one for the car Mr O.
My Happy Zone
Yes, I know I shouldn’t be this obsessed and my mental health would be better if I didn’t beat myself up like this but I am happiest when my mass satisfies the following inequality:
80<= M < 82.5
The units in this are kg. I think that 82.5kg is equivalent to 13 stone. This seems a reasonable target to maintain. In 2011 I was 95kg when I weighed myself, which was once. From 2012 to 2014 I hovered around the 82kg mark and was mostly happy with that. I seemed to add an average of 1kg each summer holiday and that I will put down to excessive alcohol ingestion in Germany! By the end of 2016 I was hitting 88kg and kept telling myself that I was happy with that but I don’t think I was. I know I eat a lot when I am unhappy or stressed or just mentally fucked. While that small amount of enjoyment may be justified the larger scale of things means I am more unhappy at the gaining mass situation that the short term happy gains of stuffing my face. Since 2016 I’ve tried at times to lose the mass and kinda struggled down to 85kg which I could accept.
At the beginning of 2020 I was somewhere around the 88kg mark again. Then we were hit with the lockdown and while I was exercising I was eating a lot and I filed that excess under the “strange times it’s ok to eat” section of my brain. I was also drinking some beer each day. I think I was still physically fit but I was getting heavier. My running became much more effort and I couldn’t run up the Downs without walking some of the way. I went for a run with Smith and I felt embarrassed at how often I needed to stop whereas he didn’t and I think that sunk home that I needed a goal and to lose weight.
I started recording my food and exercise properly and also measuring my mass. Whilst I’m not obsessive about it I do try to be honest and record what I eat. It’s the only way I can lose mass. If I’m in the mood to not record stuff, then that means I’m eating too much. Which in turn mostly means I’m unhappy which causes me to eat which makes me unhappy etc. I will say that losing mass is one of the hardest things I have ever done and it’s not like it’s just a case of stopping eating. At the most basic level it is exactly that, just stop eating. But if it was that easy then people wouldn’t be fat and the world would be healthy. There are a huge number of psychological, social and financial factors which affect people’s ability to lose weight. It’s not a simple thing. There is also a tendency for society to blame those who are fat for their fatness. Again, it’s not that simple.
When I’m happy I can control what I eat and I can exercise and maintain a healthy weight. When I am unhappy I eat a lot, care less about myself and generally put on mass which, in turn, makes me unhappier. This is a hard thing to do. I have learnt over the last ten years how to manage my emotions a little and how to cope through tough times. I consider the current times [lockdown, Covid, not having been anywhere for about a year] as tough times. The stresses on society and the stresses I feel make me more happy that I’ve managed to maintain my mass. I’m currently still trying to shift the two kilograms I added at Xmas and I will. But it’s a slow process and requires me to run. When losing mass I know that once I hit around 85kg the dieting along won’t help much and I need to burn that fat off by exercise. So, I maintain my food intake and I convert the fat into carbon dioxide. As I get fitter my body becomes more efficient at using energy and so annoyingly I have to exercise more to convert the same amount of hydrocarbons. This is why I’ve tried running up the Downs from river level!
Would I be happier ignoring my mass? Do I put too much pressure on myself regarding this single factor and do I deny happiness by eating sensibly [and quite boringly at times]? I do not know. If I am not obsessive about my mass then I will eat too much. I will put on weight and there will be health effects – heartburn etc. Also, certain uniform items for my cadet career will become either too tight or not fit at all and I am not buying another set of mess dress. So, I sigh. I plan my food out. I exercise. I tell myself I’m good at 81kg and I have the control over my impulses. I have pride in my mass. Losing mass is bloody hard work and maintain it is . . . . manageable. Mind you, I still order a kebab every now and then and I eat a packet of biscuits sometimes.
The World Championships
I’ve been meaning to write something about the NFL on here for a long time. I love American Football and I know that a lot of UK people don’t really get it. They say stuff like “but you’re allowed to throw the ball” and “watch rugby it’s not for girls in pads”, you know things like that. I’m also a bit of a stickler for being correct in language and so when people ask me about football I ask them which code. This doesn’t not normally end well because I use the term “soccer” for Association Football and that in generally disliked in the UK. I mean, it’s the most correct term for that particular game but you know British people! When I’m not at a live match I watch the NFL using their Gamepass App.
Sidenote: I dislike the term App. I think you’ll find the thing is a program or Application or Executable file but “App” seems lazy. This is similar to my dislike of the term “folder” for a directory but I’m old and the world moves on.
Gamepass on a browser, on iOS and PS4 works really well. By really well I mean it works. There are some silly things which you would have thought a massive organisation would have fixed like which PS4 buttons can be used for fast-forward etc. But, once you accept some of the basic issues the app seems to do what I want. The Android version though is a piece of shit. There is no option on the Android platform to hide the finals scores of matches. WHO WANTS TO KNOW THE SCORE BEFORE YOU WATCH A MATCH? If I know the result of a match I can’t watch it. The match is spoilt. If I want to watch a match using my [quite expensive] Android TV box then I have to hold my hands up in front of my eyes as I browse the matches hoping that I cover the part of the screen where the scores appear. I tend to use the PS4 instead because I don’t have to blind myself.
At the end of each broadcast there is a warning from the NFL declaring that any use of the imagery and descriptions thereof is a breach of copyright or something like that and so this really made me want to get permission to write about something I had watched on Gamepass. I wrote to the NFL and I got a load of legal waffle back which, I think, says that I can write about things I have watched online as long as it’s not for profit. This little site is definitely not for profit and so I am going to write a little and risk the wrath of the NFL.
“You may use the Services and the contents contained in the Services solely for your own individual non-commercial and informational purposes only. Any other use, including for any commercial purposes, is strictly prohibited without our express prior written consent. Systematic retrieval of data or other content from the Services, whether to create or compile, directly or indirectly, a collection, compilation, database or directory, is prohibited absent our express prior written consent.” – I’m pretty sure that this part means I can write something here as I won’t be making any money off it.
Superbowl 55. The “World” Championship. Which is a bit like me saying I’m the world champion of racing from my lounge to my kitchen as I’m the only person able to partake in that particular activity.
I haven’t yet watched LV on the full replay and I will at some point [even though I know the result] but I have watched the full live action replay of all the action [this show is 40 mins long, which means for a game of 1 hour I’m being shortchanged]. I can say the following with confidence. The Kansas Offensive line was terrible [maybe the Buccs were amazing] and Mahomes wasn’t protected at all. The O-line broke so often that Mahomes was under so much pressure he just couldn’t land many passes. This wasn’t his fault. He also threw some amazing passes under pressure and I was very impressed with him. To win a Superbowl with different teams is impressive and so I will acknowledge that a certain person has done well. I still don’t have to like the cheating fucker, but I can say I’m impressed.
KC seemed to give up an awful lot of yardage through penalties and I’m not sure if these were called for as I haven’t watched the full match. But maybe the KC defense was getting frustrated which would make sense. Maybe I’ll check back here once I’ve seen the full replay.
Spreading The Disease – Anthrax
I think I bought this album for the song Armed and Dangerous. I haven’t really listened to it that often. For some reason the early Anthrax stuff doesn’t quite work for me! Not sure why. I think this is one I’m going to have to play over this week to get used to and observe properly.