Author: Purple Wyrm

A few relatively inane You Tube videos to pass the time until I’m up to making a decent entry…

Andrew Hanson’s Doctor Who Song – From The Chaser’s War on Everything a while back (for the record my favourite script editor is Douglas Adams)

The Kransky Sisters Sounds of Silence – From The Sideshow a while back (not to mention Esk in Queensland)

Steven Fry and Peter Cook on Who’s Line is it Anyway (UK Version) – But you, I fear, are not she.

Right. Now go make your own entertainment! 🙂

I can hereby confirm that the blue dye used in the particular flavour of twisties that “turn your tongue BLUE!” is fully capable of traversing the human digestive system and remaining intact.

More than enough said.

So it’s Monday, and on Monday I allow myself a bag of chips (or something similar) with my lunch, so that my life isn’t an unrelenting, bleak expanse of healthy, low GI eating. I head across the road and am about to grab my usual Red Rock Deli sea-salt crisps, when I notice a new twisties flavour has been released – “tangy cheese”. As a fan of anything tangy and cheese based I figure I’ll check it out.

Cut to half an hour or so later when I’ve eaten lunch and have headed to the bathroom. On washing my hands I notice that two fingers and the thumb of my left hand are an unpleasant shade of blue-green. I try to wash it off, with limited success. On returning to the office I pull the twisties packet out of the bin, and examine it. Blazoned across the front are the words “Turns your tongue BLUE!!”.

Great.

OK, it’s my fault for not checking the packet but I’m now heading into an important meeting with a client looking like a bob-tailed lizard. I’ll be endeavouring to keep my mouth shut for as much of it as possible.

(Very busy at the moment – hopefully I’ll be back to blogging more regularly and about more interesting things soon.)

While vaguely watching Numbers last night (by which I mean NCIS was over and the TV still happened to be on when I was getting ready for bed) I chanced to catch an add for the Channel 10 Late News. I was somewhat startled to hear Sandra Sully read the headline…

Well, frankly, if the South Pacific is brewing up weather systems with severe psychological problems, then I’m glad to be here in the west 🙂

(OK, it’s possible she said “cyclonic” storm and I mis-heard, but then I couldn’t base any witty banter on it could I? And then where would we be?)

OK, so the US Military is developing a robot to carry injured troops off the battlefield. No problem with that.

And they’re giving it a head ‘like a teddy bear’, so as not to scare the injured troops. Right. Well I guess that makes some kind of sense.

And they’ve given the contract to a company named Vecna Technologies.

VECNA TECHNOLOGIES!?!?

This is not going to end well….

The White Stripes’ Icky Thump is first and foremost a Jack White album. Ex-wife/sister Meg White features far less than on previous releases (apparently due to “the lumbago”) and performs on less than half of the tracks. This gives Jack White’s eccentric genius (some would claim blatant insanity) full reign, producing a ‘difficult’ album that may alienate some White Stripes fans. With repeated listening however the album grows on one, and will have many initially sceptical listeners dancing around the room like intoxicated Gibraltan macaques in short order.

The opening track is the by now familiar Icky Thump. The album version however has several differences to the promotional single – most notably the much celebrated stylophone has been replaced with digitally manipulated cow moos. Jack White has explained that this is because cows are black and white on the outside, and red on the inside – unlike a stylophone. There are several lyrical changes as well – ‘learnt to clean up after myself’ has become ‘learnt to clean up after an elf’, which is believed to refer to Jack’s well known hatred of the Lord of the Rings movies.

The second track is titled Clever Hans and concerns a ‘mathematical horse’ of the same name. Jack White continues his habit of calling upon obscure and obsolete instruments by having the baseline performed on a medieval woodwind instrument called a ‘serpent’. This gives the otherwise bright and cheery song an ominous edge quite in contrast to its subject matter. Bridge-Partner/Tennis-Coach Meg White provides ‘clip-clop’ noises on coconuts.

Track number three Overlord of the Wild Blue Sky is a thrilling tale of airship combat featuring a soaring guitar solo. According to the liner notes this was played on a solid aluminium guitar for ‘that authentic airship sound’. The song has been optioned by Paramount Pictures and a movie trilogy featuring its central character (Group Captain Icarus Adler) is expected to commence filming in 2008.

Track number four is a quickly forgettable series of grunts entitled Spice. Rumours that these are in fact samples taken from the digital audio tapes stolen from Sting during the making of the movie Dune in 1984 were quashed by White, who explained that there were in fact simply grunts.

The fifth track Fan Oven Dimensional Portal features the return of confidant/best-buddy Meg White on the drums. It is a much more traditional White Stripes song in the mould of 2001’s Hotel Yorba – in fact some fans claim the main melody is simply Hotel Yorba played backwards and shifted up a tone. Jack has responded angrily to such accusations, but has refused to flat out deny this. Playing the tune backwards does reveal an almost sub-audible repeated chant of ‘ghostly toad’ – what this may mean is anyone’s guess.

Track number six is titled House and has no lyrics apart from a counted intro by Jack. It is a pounding guitar and drum piece with some similarities to Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song, Jack has indicated in the liner notes that this is intentional. In the same notes he suggests that it may be used as the theme music for the fourth season of television’s House MD, however this is widely regarded as a joke.

Sweetness-personified/Queen-of-this-world Meg White performs lyrical duties on track number seven, titled Aka’i. This appears to be something to do with a traditional Japanese folk-tale (or possibly manga comic) but it’s hard to tell as her tender vocal is quickly drowned out by demonic drum and trumpet solos and repeated screams of ‘bastard!’. Many would no doubt prefer to hear her sing, but such is the eccentric genius of Jack White.

Track number eight is the touching My Collar, sung from the viewpoint of an S&M enthusiast whose dominatrix has quit and taken over a fast food franchise. This song includes some of the wittiest lyrics on the album – comparing bondage equipment to various kitchen implements – although it may put you off hamburgers for quite some time.

The final track is listed as Bush, but is in fact quite clearly the Black Eyed Peas’ My Humps speeded up by 50%. Whether this is some kind of obscure political statement, or due to an unnoticed accident with the mixing deck is hard to determine.

Many excited rumours have been circulating concerning a hidden track – titled The Gardner – somewhere on the album featuring vocals by Jim Morrison. This can be located by playing 33 seconds into track number 3, then hitting the back index button 87 times. Unfortunately it turns out not to be a song, but a recording of Jack White yelling abuse at his gardner – a man sharing the name of the late Doors frontman – for a straight 18 minutes. Why Jack saw fit to include this on the album is hard to say, but it may have something to do with his upcoming court case against Hyperion Gardening Services of Nashville Tennesee.

Overall Icky Thump is well worth a listen and a good investment for that jar of pocket shrapnel you’ve been saving for a special occasion. Even if you don’t enjoy Jack White’s musical stylings it should (with sufficient amplification) be of use for repelling birds, rats and other vermin, which is well worth the cost in itself.

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I just spent a week struck down with an extremely nasty bowel condition that was almost certainly salmonella (I was meant to phone up for the test results yesterday but forgot). This meant a week off work, but I couldn’t actually do anything constructive with it because of constant hydrogen sulphide eructations (that’s eructations you illiterate sniggerers down the back, look it up!), vomiting reaching level 8 (or ‘Exorcist’) on the Stamford Emesis scale, and the need to rush to the bathroom every fifteen minutes day and night. I’m thankfully much recovered now and decided to celebrate by throwing together an entry in Triple J’s pre-review Icky Thump competition, which I have included above (a chance to write authorative sounding gibberish and win a stylophone? Wild horses couldn’t stop me! 🙂

It should be noted that everything in said review is utter nonsense and – despite appearances – I actually quite like the White Stripes. And let’s face it, Jack White should record a thrilling tale of airship combat sometime. After his acting turns in various movies (most notably Cold Mountain) he could probably play Icarus Adler in the movie adaption too! 🙂

Back to the office tomorrow to catch up on all the work I’ve missed. Sigh.

Good News: The Howard Government is still trailing miserably in the opinion polls – meaning we might finally be able to shift them in this year’s election. This will give us the exciting opportunity of being screwed over by a new bunch of people in new and exciting ways!

Bad News: The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics (one of the most Godawful depressing songs of all time) has been stuck in my head for the last three days straight. I may need to apply liberal doses of Limbonic Art to get rid of it.

Indifferent News: The recharge port on my mobile phone has busted, rendering it useless. On the upside this means I’m not contactable for support after hours. On the downside people I actually want to talk to may be trying to call me, and getting annoyed because they think I’ve got it turned off.

Weird News: I just got a spam email from ‘Bernard Black’. When fictional British TV characters start spamming you, then it’s time for drastic action of some sort 🙂

An exchange witnessed on the train to work this morning…

It’s time’s like that that you realise women really do get the short end of the stick sometimes. I mean she was perfectly safe physically (there were a whole bunch of people listening to the conversation who would have stepped in if things started heading in that kind of direction) but it must be horrible to not be able to ride the train without being harrased by weirdos pestering you for dates, no matter how rarely it might occur.

Jericho is back on tonight, although they’ve put in on at 9:30. It’s just as well Spooks ended last week, or I’d be torn. Truly torn! Oh, and it looks like Channel 10 has got Torchwood (they’ve started a teaser campaign about “Captain Jack Harkness – the man who cannot die!”), which is odd because I would have expected the ABC to pair it up with Doctor Who. Oh well, as long as they don’t put it on opposite Doctor Who I’m happy.

Although on the subject of Spooks I do have to complain about whoever does the subtitling (it’s nit-picking rant time, so please feel free to skip this paragraph :). In one of the episodes earlier this season one of the team (it takes me ages to learn characters’ names in shows I’m afraid) is infiltrating a people smuggling operation while masquerading as a Circassian Arab. He’s in the back of a truck with a bunch of other refugees and manages to establish a bit of trust with them by giving an old man some of his water. One of the others then asks him (I think this is what they ask, it was a few weeks ago) where he’s from – in Arabic. The problem? It’s subtitled as “Were are you from?”. Were are you from? Were? I mean honestly!! When the BBC (is Spooks BBC? I’ll assume it is) can’t manage to subtitle in the Queen’s English then what is the world coming to?! Hrumph!!

OK, rant over 🙂

Well my lunch break is now also over, so back to work. Ho hum.

OK I’ve decided I’m going to try and write a bit each day this week, to get back into the blogging thing. So tonight I though why not point people towards Dresden Codak? This is a rather fine webcomic that has only recently settled down into having a storyline – rather than displaying a bunch of brilliantly illustrated and thought provoking non-sequiturs, often to do with philosophy and such.

You’ve got to love a comic that can come up with a phrase as brilliantly anti-romantical-cynical as “my heart is nothing more than an engine forged from the remnants of a dead star” 🙂

Not to mention the entire concept of Dungeons and Discourse 🙂

Read them all!

OK, going to watch TV now.