Self Portrait

stevie copy, originally uploaded by Waka Jawaka.

I've signed up for this new-fangled Flickr thingy. $20-odd for unlimited Photo storage can't be bad. I've often argued that, in this increasingly digital world we inhabit, cheap, easy online storage was an absolute nailed on requirement. Flickr is a step in the right direction. Nice one as they say 'round these parts.

It's just a question now of uploading the zillions of snaps one feels absolutely necessary to take these days, simply because there are no longer processing costs to take into account. Eeeh, processing? D'yer remember the frisson of excited anticipation as you gazed upon your prints fresh from the Chemist? No Max Spielman, Photobox or owt like that back when photography was still incomprehensible to 9/10ths of the population. Developer, fixer, red lights; a monochrome world. Hours spent manipulating enlargers and paper and making sure the timings just right.....hours it took, hours.

These days you plug your camera into your PC and off you go. Within minutes your snap can be printed in glorious technicolour, posted to a website for the world to see or manipulated to such an extent that it is unrecognisable from the decisive moment when the shutter did its job.

It's a digital world.

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Dearest and I hosted a Greek night chez nous on Saturday night. Six good friends drinking fine wines and eating what can only be described as a fabulous meal. We both did our bit, but the stifado I produced was spot on. The Greek salad was crisp and fresh and wonderful, the stuffed vine leaves were superb and the garlic and rosemary potatoes melted in the mouth. Magnifique!

The evening's music was provided by my laptop randomly extracting stuff from over 3500 tracks on my hard disk via iTunes. The visualisation option provided psychadelic swirling patterns, drenched in colour, to entertain the aging hippies amongst our happy band of brothers and sisters.

We did consider making it a proper Greek night by forbidding toilet paper from the toilet but I suddenly realised that it would be me acting the 'maid' and disposing of the soiled material the day after.

Hmmmm....as someone, somewhere once said: Fuck that.

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Y'know, a couple of weeks ago I was waxing lyrical on how the inclusion of downloaded tracks could possibly change the nature of the charts as it would take into account the hitherto insignificant musical tastes of the computer literate. Well I was right. Unfortunately rather than grown up, literate rock though, we have a bloody ring tone. Am I dreaming? Am I dead? I may as well be because through all the shite I have lived through - from "Shaddap-a-ya-face" to "You Need Hands", I always believed that we were evolving into artistically aware consumers who could cut through the shit and home in on the sublime.

So much for my analysis.

A ring tone. A fuckin' ring tone.

*Stares into the middle distance, pulls on a can of Oranjeboom and quietly despairs*

Don't It Always Seem To Go..You Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone

I had occasion to visit Manchester centre on Saturday. A trip to the Gent's outfitters being the order of the day and, naturally, Dearest tagged along to make sure I didn't return with garish jewjaws masquerading as apparell. No purple satin flares for me this time then....but my time will come. I've worn them before and I'll wear them again. But anyway, I digress.

As we shuffled from car to store we passed a good old-fashioned Mancunian pub that has graced Great Ancoats Street as long as I can remember, and I can remember this one longer than any other because it was the first pub name I actively took an interest in. It was called the "Land 'O' Cakes".

As a kid I naturally assumed that the place would be awash with Battenburg, swiss roll and angel cake. It took a lot of persuading to disabuse me of this dream. But still, it's a great name for a pub. How many pubs go by such a moniker the length and breadth of the British Isles? Not a lot - if any I would've thought. Not a boring Royal Oak, King's Arms, Gardener's Rest, Church Inn and the like, but the Land O Cakes. Certainly not a manufactured Bag O Shite name like The Fox and Firkin, Slug and Lettuce, Rat and Drainpipe or the ubiquitious Waxy McFergal's Auld Irish Muldoon's Picnic bar.

The Land O Cakes. Unique and instantly recognisable to anyone of Mancunian origin.

'Cept it's not called the Land O Cakes now. Where the words "Land O Cakes" were embossed into the very fabric of the building, some arsehole of a "developer" has attempted to apply whitewash and rewrite history. The pub has rebranded itself "Lord Atterburys" or something, certainly something without an apostrophe anyway, and has "Business Opportunity for Let" boards festooned from each vantage point.

Arf!

The gentrification of central Manchester has, post bomb, rippled to the outskirts of what we would term the City centre. The Northern Quarter north of Picadilly was the last area to be engulfed - as it were - by new money. Ancoats is currently undergoing the Urban Splash treatment. Apartments reclaimed from long derelict mills and places of worship, regeneration of council housing and local businesses. A sense of bridging the past with the present. Ancoats - the world's first industrialised, urban 'village' - bequeathing its original bricks and mortar to the future.

In the middle of all this - betwixt the Northern Quarter and Ancoats, lies the Land O Cakes "Lord Atterburys Business Opportunity for Let".

I'll guarantee you this. Whoever reopens this place will ditch the Lord Atterburys bollocks and revert back to the Land O Cakes - a name that has graced a pub on this site since at least the 1750s. And no doubt the ad-exec who comes up with this innovative rebranding will be hailed as a cutting edge genius and people will talk of meeting in the Land O Cakes again instead of Lord Atterburys (like they ever did!)

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I've still not heard whether I will be allowed to leave my place of employ with a semi-decent buttie. The Ivory towers are chock full of middle and upper mangement attempting to figure out how to leverage us lesser beings across more accounts for less money. It's not easy at the top - honest. For a start off you've got to understand what fuckin' "leverage" means in relation to human beings. Today I was working away at a new account I have recently been leveraged onto, when I get a phone call from some management lickspittle requesting my presence at another account I had recently been leveraged to. "No can do" quoth I, "I'm in the process of "delighting" a customer here" (a good 20 miles away on the other side of Manchester). Cue much gnashing of teeth on the other end of the phone and questions like "can't you do something remotely?" Well, possibly, but given the fact that I an employed to sort the stuff out that requires a deskside visit, aka "the stuff that can't be done remotely", I'd guess the answer to that question would be no.

So I end up listening to a resigned voice on the other end of the phone accepting what I have said but also letting me know that it was all somehow my fault that I couldn't be in two places at once.

Well cheers mate. You'll go far because you certainly motivated me today.

*rubs temples with forefinger and thumb, closes eyes, purses lips and mutters "prick"*

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Sunny Greece in two and a half weeks. Can't wait. Question is 'should I take my WiFi enabled laptop' in the hope that there is a rogue WiFi network either in the hotel or nearby?

Decisions, decisions.

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******ADDENDUM****** Congrats to Liverpool and, especially, to Mr Alfred the OK. I don't know what Benitez said at half-time but, bugger me......

Waiting in Vain (aka You Never Give Me Your Money....)

Well, I've still not had an official reply regarding my request for redundancy. I have worked out what it will cost them to be rid of my dissent under my terms and conditions (94.5 weeks' pay to be precise), and I do believe I will be refused because they are wanting to show savings within this fiscal year. That would obviously mean that anyone qualifying for more than 52 weeks' won't save them a penny. We'll see.

The boss and I had a clear the air talk and all's well there at least. He once again made his point and added that whatever I did would make precious little difference to the faceless number-crunchers crunching their numbers on their number-crunching machines. I told him I was fully aware of that, but it had done me good and possibly saved me from a heart attack under the pressure of having to keep my mouth shut. So, good, solid health reasons for fighting back. Fuck 'em.

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I see Peter has aggravated an old knee injury as a result of his repeated ascents of that big hill in Edinburgh. I know how he feels. Peter's put a pound or two on. In the six weeks or so since I went tits up, the general slowdown and incapacity forced on me by my ankle/foot has resulted in half a stone suddenly appearing on a figure that hasn't been described as svelte since the early 80s. C'est la vie.

It's soooo annoying though. For all intents and purposes I am mobile again, however after too much driving or walking I am reminded that all is still not well and it is fucking frustrating. As Peter has pointed out, a good cardio-vascular workout gets the endorphins coursing through the body. Calories are burned, stresses are zapped and you feel good about yourself. Having to sit with foot up, surfing, watching, listening and reading is making me feel lethargic and pissed off.

[joke]I'll be going to Lourdes for a cure next.[/joke]

But sometimes, just sometimes, I realise just how lucky I am. In the first place I was able to take three weeks off work on full pay, I was able to be seen and 'treated' fairly quickly by the NHS and free XRays were available to ascertain exactly what my problem was. As I sit and think about these 'blessings', I realise that each and every one of them are available to me as a result of folk with Socialist principles who fought and suffered through the ages to establish what we have - flawed though it is.

Before I get castigated for not giving Liberals the due they deserve for the Beveridge Report which laid the foundation for the Welfare State, I need to say that I consider Liberals to be caressed by the hand of socialist tendencies also. (Small 's'). I know this much, there were no fuckin' Tories arguing for basic rights such as these. 'Nuff said.

Cheers lads and lasses. I've got a funny feeling I'm going to be utilising what our forebears fought for a lot more in the future.

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I've got to admire the MP for Baghdad South after today's tour de force. He wiped the floor with those ill-prepared, puffed-up, wastes of space on Capitol Hill. I was waiting for the sucker punch. It never came. It was a disgrace. Love him or hate him, it was riveting politics. I'm listening to a US commentator on Radio 5 Live at the moment, and it sounds like they are gob smacked. I loved the way he pointed out that their intelligence stated he had had "many meetings" with Saddam, to which Galloway established that he had met him twice - the same number of times that Rumsfeld had met him.

Quality. It is lovely to see self-important politicians being made to look foolish by self-important politicians. Fratricide, yer can't beat it can yer?

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I see Tony the religious has got his "Incitement to Religious Hatred" shoe-horned into the Queen's speech today. Fair enough. I don't have a problem with that. I happen to think that ALL religions are props for the inadequate and they have enough problems without people inciting others to hate them, consequently I feel hating them, and exhorting the killing of them is wrong.

I do think however, that any perusal of exhortations to hatred and murder over the years would show that there is probably a significant weighting towards blokes in robes castigating "non-believers" rather than vice versa.

What is worrying about this - and I'm with Rowan Atkinson here - is that laws already exist to deal with this type of thing.

Could OccupiedCountry find itself in the dock in a few years time? Does OccupiedCountry's ridicule of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the rest run the risk of the thought police of New Labour turning up on my doorstep, skull cap, fish-symbol and Koran in hand, inciting people to hate the non-religious with all the fervour of the Quivering Brethren. Time will tell.

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I didn't go to Eastlands on Sunday. I let Dearest have my season ticket - it's too far a walk to and from the stadium for my bolloxed ankle/foot. The last time I did it I suffered for a week. So I missed the drama, the agony and ecstasy of almost making it to Europe, and the subsequent disappointment. Ahh well......here's to next season for Psycho's Blue and White Army.

There's a Little Black Spot on the Sun Today...

Up betimes (thanks Sam) and off to the local hospital, a place I fear I've seen just a little too much of lately. A blood test pour moi this time. A test for "liver function". A test that obviously has me fearing the worst. But then again....I'm gonna live forever.

Aren't I?

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And then off to work. That place where, at present, there is little work to be actually done. Not because there ain't none, but because the company we were outsourced and sub-contracted to has sub-contracted the work we did to a company that does it cheaper than we do. Suddenly we are being observed by vultures fresh-faced MBAs who think we were born yesterday. I know writing when it's on the wall, and I'm looking at it right now.

The truly ironic thing about the 'success' of this transition, is that the sub-contractors to the sub-contractors have not, as yet, in over four months of winning the contract, actually completed a single task without one of us having to finish it for them. Guess that's why they're so cheap eh? On paper though, it looks like they're friggin' great and we're sat around doing sweet FA.

Today it came to head and my boss and I had a slanging match because I had the temerity to call it like I saw it. He said I was out of order. I said I'll be fucked if I'll sit here mute while some incompetent twat steals my livelyhood and, moreover, my pension. He said I shouldn't have said that in front of the customer who, once again, had come to ask us to finish the job. Decorum? My arse.

I've applied for my redundancy. In the meantime, I'll turn up and play the game. I've had enough. I'm only fifty, I'm sure I can keep body and soul together somewhere for the next fifteen or twenty years.

Always assuming my liver's OK that is.

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In the middle of all this, I get a phone call from my Mam. The local social services have arranged for a few handles, bath chairs and such to be installed in their flat to help my rapidly decaying Dad to perform his ablutions with a modicum of dignity.

A merry duo turned up today to fit said artifacts and promptly drilled through a water pipe. They then had to call a plumber. It put me in mind of that Flanders and Swan song "The Gasman Cometh". Naturally my Mam was at the end of her tether. It never rains but it pours.

A little verbal molly-coddling and she's OK. I phoned later, the plumber had been and all was sorted. Still, it shouldn't happen should it?

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So, all-in-all a shit day from dawn 'till dusk. After our evening meal I retired from the hurly burly of Eastenders and Holby City and whatever and retired to my eyrie to play some blues on Bella - my Fylde Acoustic and put some more pressure on my liver.

After a while I fire up iTunes and search for the masters: Robert Johnson first, Peter Green closely follows before the floodgates open and those flattened sevenths reverberate and the sorrows of the world are expressed before the inevitable resolution as we return to the root. *Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!*

Music, any music, always helps - even Rap. At least I can concentrate on the bass. Benny XVI disagrees with me however. In this month's Word magazine, the playful pontiff is quoted thus: "Rock music is the vehicle of anti-religion".

Well, all I can say is: "You obviously haven't acquainted yourself with the world of blogging yet then, have you holy fadder?"

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Music is a fact of life. A fact of nature. Music exists everywhere. From the mewling infant to the death rattle of the toothless crone. It's all around. The traffic in the street, the call of market traders, the wind in the wires, the cry of the curlew as well as the thumping bass of a thrash metal band. It's just as valid in "Honky Tonk Women", "Mistletoe and Wine" or something by the Wu Tang Clan as "To Be a Pilgrim", Gregorian Chant or something by Harry Secombe. And, get this, it's all the work of human beings. Not God. Not the fuckin' Devil. And it's certainly not an Earthly expression of the battle between the two.

Essentially it all about how we deal with this veil of tears. Life and death, love and hate, beginnings and endings - it's all there. And it's got fuck all to do with old, celibate (*sniggers*) men telling us what is and what should never be.

A Genesis and Revelation of our own without a grown man (*sniggers again, but more loudly*) in a dress interfering.

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Still, all my woes pale to insignificance after reading Mike Da Hat's weblog.

Chin up Mike.

Fools Rush In.....

Quick update. At 3:00am it looks to me that there is a defined North/South divide. In the North the anti-Labour vote is going to the the Lib Dems, in the the South (East) it's going to the Tories.

Selfish bastards.

Anyway.......we'll see.

G'night everyone, everywhere.......

Music is my first love....

I've recently discovered a fabulous place called www.artistcollaboration.com which, on account of the marvellousness of t'internet, allows musicians from all round the world to collaborate on each other's musical ideas. You can add a bass part here, drums there or guitar over yon. Fabulous. Some of it is a little amateurish as can be expected with most things on the 'net, but some of it is of a quality not far removed from the stuff you hear on your wireless.

Ahh God, would that such arenas had been available back when I was a thrusting, guitar-weilding, testosterone-filled fledgling bluesman - who couldn't play the blues, but would have sold his soul to the Devil in order to do so. No argument. "Me? Play the Blues like Clapton? Johnson? Rory Gallagher? Brownie McGhee? Errrr....where do I sign?"

I'd have killed to be able to play the blues like Joe Brown never mind Eric Clapton. Actually that's unfair to Joe, in retrospect I think he's a lot better than I thought he was in the arrogance of my youth when I still knew everything.

As the years have sped by at the speed of fucking light passed, technology has enabled the bedroom musician to produce stuff worthy of Top of the Pops, Later with Jools Holland and the late, lamented OGWT. And now we are able to emulate the superstars of 10 years or so ago by laying down bass on a track recorded in Caracas 24 hours ago. This time no young men or women risked their lives couriering the tape from airport to recording studio though. All you lucky young uns have got the rest of your lives to dive into this technology - a technology no longer tied to the restrictive unexpressive boundaries of MIDI Get on with it. Learn, grow and overthrow the Corporate shacklers once and for all.

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Via Artist Collaboration, I came across this guy. Steve Unruh is a part time musician who writes and plays all his own stuff. Drums, bass, guitars, violin, and the rest. Progressive Folk Rock he calls it and I guess if you wanted to put a label on music, that's probably as near as damn as it is to describing it. You can download a free sampler CD of his output over the past eight years or so. G'Wan. It's worth a shot - you might love it. So burn it to a CDR. You might hate it. So delete it. But bear in mind that no one but the artist benefits. No oleaginous be-suited lickspittles, no CEOs, no meeja types.

I've got a feeling that Kaptain Kobold might just be interested. (tip: Listen to the longer tracks - though all of it is good, but especially "Breaking Free Part Three" - quality. Nothin' more to be said. Let me know what you think.). T'internet. I love it.

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Well I see four times winners of the European Cup (these days called the Champions League for some reason, don't know why, the year United won it they qualified by virtue of being runners-up to Arsenal. Odd that), have got a chance of making it five.

I wasn't that bothered who got there really. If it had been Chelsea, all the Reds round here would have been bitter and discontented anyway, but now we know it's Liverpool, there's gonna be some extremely angry United fans that I know wittering on about 'flukes', 'goals that should've been disallowed' and how Man U's lifting of the Cup back in '99 was somehow better than all the times Liverpool have won the self same trophy during the years when it was a proper knock out tournament for champions.

C'mon Liverpool.

Ain't No Sunshine

Bank holiday weekend. The portents were good.

"It's going to be frigging glorious this weekend" spake the overpaid tossers we call weathermen and women. Rain, sleet, wind, cloud: the lot. All in a three day window. Perfect.

This was the weekend Eldest had his housewarming and barbecue. A great evening all round (apart from the reluctance of anyone to man the barbie. ten or twenty years ago the blokes would have been queuing up to play with fire, act Ray Mears-ish and sort the burgers - these days we're not so bloody stupid).

But yeah, a great evening with a 'beach party' theme which made for some odd sights (me included). A laptop plugged into Eldest's stereo system provided the sounds. MP3 coming of age? Possibly. The place was also awash with iPods, iRivers, Creative Rios and a thousand other variations on the art of digital music.

Quite interesting as well because this week Coldplay became the first British band to enter the US charts in the first week of their single being released since The Beatles with Hey Jude back in '68. This coincides with the Yankee charts finally embracing the download phenomenon and including tracks purchased this way.

Now this could profoundly affect the type of music we see in the top forty in the near future. There are profound shifts in the popular music paradigm occuring here. Since the late eighties at least, the type of consumer who forks out for the type of single that'll end up in the charts has tended to be a pre or just barely post-pubescent female. MP3s, WMAs, OGGs and the like tend to be downloaded by males over the age of 25. They don't consider them to be singles, but rather just another track that they like. And it's blokes over the age of 25 who have the plastic disposable income and access to the internet in such numbers that can make a difference.

So Top of the Pops just might become interesting again - for a short while at least.

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Ahh well, time to take the shit machine for her evening crap. Hope you all had a good 'un.