electric sheep

hey everyone


just a quick update to say that i am listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack. it is ace.

not much news, really. i seem to be writing again, kind of sort of for myself.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i think i remembered......

did i post here that the 7" of Ian Brown's All Ablaze did indeed arrive?

if not, it is a most ace clear vynil affair. very aesthetic. we should get around to framing the singles and putting them up as planned, but as you can see from the pictures in previous posts, we are a little busy these days!

Baby Update

hey everyone.

ok, let's see if i can post more than one pic in each update first!




well, so far it looks like yes!! we went for the 3D scan today, and all is well. young Napoleon might be one week older than we initially thought, but the due date is still December 15.

the black & white pic is from the "usual" scan, and the colour one is the 3D version, which i grabbed from the DVD we made of it. as you can see, he is looking fine and well!!

not much else to report other than all is well with the baby!!

actually, i think there was something else to say, but i cannot recall what. oh well, if it comes back to me, i shall do another post!!

by the way......

i am sure you can guess on the basis of my last post (the new Franz Ferdinand cd is not released until 3rd October), i have found a WinMX replacement. nice it is, too.

update

hi everyone


well, it was off for another scan today and i am pleased to say that all seems well. have to say and not show this time as young Napoleon Elvis was lying with his back to us, so there was nothing to take a photograph of! all is well, though - growth and development (if that's the right way of saying it) are on course.

we are off for the 3D scan thing tomorrow, one from which he presumably will not be able to hide away. it will be put onto video, and so with some luck i should be able to get some images to post here. if not, expect my apologies to be printed instead.

otherwise, i decided (surprise surprise) to watch the three films which have been made of Bret Easton Ellis novels to date. my opinions, for what they are worth, would be (in chronological book order) :

Less Than Zero : other than another sterling job by Robert Downey jnr, this film is somewhat at a loss and a bit of a mess. it does not know what it wants to be. it picks up some vague thread of a plot from the book and does the best that it can with it. i do not believe that this is the best that could be made of the book, but i doubt anyone will ever revisit it to have another go.

The Rules Of Attraction : outstanding, breathtaking, ingenius filmmaking and it does a damn good job of trying to capture what the state of mind of the book feels like for the reader. well done Roger Avary for the adaptation, and take a bow James Van Der Beek for your exceptional performance as Sean. i only wish all film adaptations of novels were like this, since we live in a world where you have to have film adaptations. good luck, cast and crew, with your efforts to secure funding for filming Glamorama. and the soundtrack is spot on!

American Psycho : oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear. what a mess. Christian Bale was an ace choice as Patrick Bateman, but what on earth is going on here? the violence was clearly impossible to film. instead of coming up with some vague way of referring to the acts, instead we get completely different murders, and a stupid "murder mystery" plot with Willem Dafoe as a detective who, at best, lasted a couple of lines or maybe a paragraph in the novel now being a key character. i thought i was just being harsh the first time i saw it, but the 2nd viewing, a couple of years later, has not helped. dismal, and very annoying.

conclusions? why can't we just have books to read, films to see and never, or rarely should the two meet??

otherwise, i have played the new Franz Ferdinand album, You Could Do So Much Better With Franz Ferdinand, and i am still in two minds about the group. mostly, i think they are ace, but part of me suspects they are just one big lazy Talking Heads / Happy Mondays collision tribute, with a few rifts stolen from Ocean Colour Scene. they are a band that i reccomend you listen to, though.

right, lightning crashes outside, so i had better disconnect the pc.

behave yourselves!!!!

the end of an era

good morning

oh dear, it is bad news for music lovers. after a couple of days of not being able to connect to WinMX, the best source of music on the net, i decided to do some research and see exactly what was going on.

it would seem that WinMX was hit with a "cease and desist" letter, and thus the network is no more. bummer, man, it was a great place to get stuff that you cannot get anywhere else.

i have no problem at all with the legal download places, but they just do not offer the rare, collector's items that fans like me seek. ho hum. something always happens, and i have no doubt that a replacement functions will avail itself sooner rather than later.

not much else right now, but i suspect a really long slow quiet day is imminent. i may well yet add more.

it has arrived

well, today i pretty much listened to The Rules Of Attraction soundtrack on repeat. this evening, and tomorrow and thereafter, it will be Ian Brown : The Greatest that will play again and again and again.

it is a very lavish and smart set, well worth the large amount of cash invested to get it couriered (or however you spell it) here. a great book with an ace essay, some fantastic pictures and comments on each song from The Man Himself.

if there is one small complaint, it would be that possibly his best achievement, the song Shadow Of A Saint, does not feature on the disc. OK, you can't have everything, but why two remixes of F.E.A.R.??? good as the song is, perhaps another example of his genius would have been better?

oh well, not much else to report, obviously. once again, i cannot reccomend www.hmv.co.uk highly enough. their service is impeccable, and their prices are by and large the best out there. give them a try!

but wherever you get it, make sure you get Ian Brown's greatest CD compilation!!

just a thought

did you know that the dude who gets his arm cut off in the first Star Wars film (or fourth, if you are young enough to be watching them chronologically), and as a consequence was the first recipient of "death by light sabre", is the same dude who first gets killed in Highlander? yep, the one who tells Luke "you'll be dead" is the same gent who upsets Christopher Lambert at the wrestling and thus gets decapitated in the car park below it.

not much else to update on at present. i now have the newly (ahem) obtained Rules Of Attraction soundtrack going in the car, and it is ace. i am for some reason quite drawn to the Erasure track on it. ho hum, i am sure it makes sense to someone somewhere.......

dumbing down a dumbed down film

OK, to be fair, Transporter 2 does not pretend that it's going to be some big artistic statement or work of artistic merit. that said, it is just lazy taking a film like Man On Fire, which took itself far, far, far too seriously, and simplifying it even more.

would you enjoy Transporter 2? yes, if you liked the first one. still unsure? then do this quick test and see what the conclusion is "


Question : which is the most ludicrous scenario?

(a) The Driver, needing to get up a bridge, deciding the best approach is to run towards a very moving truck, somehow jump on it, climb up the face of it and get on the bridge off the top of the truck


(b) The Driver perfectly timing a jump so that he is not sandwiched between two cars on a head-on collision course, he being intended as the "meat in the middle"

or

(c) The Driver knacking 20 or so well trained mercenaries with a hose pipe.


Answer : if you are even weighing up any of these options, the film is for you.


otherwise, thank you to Rebekka for leaving a message on this site. nice one, it is always pleasing to learn that not only people visit my page, but that the world at large still appreciates the Happy Mondays!

approx 23 years later...a homage to Blade Runner

well, with some reservations i sought this film The Island out, and we watched it last night.

after a somewhat confusing, ill-defined opening twenty minutes or so, the film settled down to what it would seem it is intended to be - a "kind of" reversal of Blade Runner. i say "kind of" as it fails somewhat to do this. it strips the emotional side away from what would be the 'Deckard' side of the story, focusing exclusively on the 'Replicant', or in this case clones, end of it all. and therein lies a problem - if one side is under explored, what exactly is the point in trying to understand what happened in the other?

in Blade Runner the creations were given memories to develop them and have them function better. in The Island they are merely given a mass hallucination, and when they all of a sudden develop something along the lines of memories that they did not themselves experience, it's pretty much just stated as such and then brushed aside.

overall, The Island has a pretty interesting premise, but, much like something like AI, the story has absolutely nowhere coherent to go and so messes about until it hits a very open ended, almost i, Robot type finale. if nothing else, it at least shows that practically anything Ewan McGregor is in is pretty much watchable. if the option presents itself, though, go watch Blade Runner again instead.

on the note of young Ewan, i seem to have picked up a couple of his films lately. i have Big Fish (excellent) and Young Adam (not seen - looks heavy) sat on the shelf waiting to be watched of re-watched.

also sat on the shelf is, at last, Chaplin, Robert Downey jnr's greatest single performance. thanks Mrs R - looking forward to seeing it again.

oh well, other than Ian Brown's greatest expected to arrive today, not much else to report on!

have a good one......

The Greatest : On The Way

well, i got a most class email today - my Ian Brown greatest hits package has been shipped by www.hmv.co.uk, as well as the CD single of All Ablaze. and the 7" single too, although for some reason they have sent that seperatley. go figure.

we have a couple of 7" singles by the maestro. i believe the idea is to one day frame them or something. they would look class, i guess!

Michele has been and gone to Durban. after that and the trip to Cape Town recently, i think young Napoleon has the hang of flying now! it will be Michele's fault if he grows up wanting to be a pilot, an astronaut or, most likely, a human cannoball..

the world offered up in Lunar Park continues to be disjointed, disturbing and depressingly good. none of the books from Mr Ellis can be considered to have a good effect on the reader, and this one is no different at all. i shall continue with it, of course. boundaries are quite pointless if they are never crossed, and Mr Ellis leads the way over them.

do i reccomend anyone else try to read the books of Bret Easton Ellis? not really not really no. by all means have a go. try watching the film version of The Rules Of Attraction. if you can stomach that excellent but toned down introduction, then go for the books. do not approach the novel American Psycho on the basis that the film version was "not that bad, in fact rather tame".

on that note, my parcel of new DVD's arrived today. we watched Whoops Apocalypse this evening. i feared that it might have been badly dated, what with the Cold War finishing off quite some time ago. i am delighted to note, however, that if anything it is even funnier than i recalled. it has Peter Cook in it which is reason in itself to find it, and Rik Mayall is somewhat special as the, well, special SAS leader.

anyway, i guess that's about all to tell for now. it's late, but i am contemplating watching another of the DVD's which landed. it's rather tempting to watch the Hanson brothers cause mayhem in Slap Shot yet again, but there's also The Thing sat there begging to be watched............

go where you're going, say what you're saying, sounds good to me

currently listening to the Happy Mondays. i suppose some would call that ironic for a Tuesday.

lyrical prowess

i have just been listening to a compilation of The Who, made for who (hee hee) is turning out to be a rather good friend. it has given me something of a memory jog, it has.

i once tried to convince a dear Literature Mentor, Mrs G Maddock (i dare not spell her name Glynns incorrectly as she would kill me, oops), that The Who's lyrical skill and prowess was amply displayed in the line "out of my brain on a train" from the song '5.15. laughed? if i recall, she nearly crashed the car, such was the hysterical reaction to my (now as it was then) valid observation.

i do wonder where Mrs M is. i regret not being in contact with her, for she appreciated my worship of Richard Burton a very great deal. perhaps i will try and investigate her whereabouts or locale......

meanwhile, thanks J. for giving me the opportunity to listen to The Who again. i have not played them for a while, and i was sorely tempted to swing my arm about like a windmilling guitar god that Townsend is and always will be.

which kind of reminds me of an unfortunate incident in which i attempted to "do a Roger Daltrey" with a mircophone at a kareoke evening. well, the short is that the waiter was OK and i doubt i would have gone back to the bar again anyway.

i do seem to be getting increasingly nostalgic these days. not sure if it is coincidental or consequential in respect of the imminent arrival of Napoleon. oh well, as it does not seem to be a bad thing, i shall not show too much concern.

in other news, Mrs R decided to sit on the floor and do some work this evening. Mrs R needed my help getting up, so round has she got. hee hee hee hee hee hee and yes she will slap me for this.

be excellent to each other, and if you see Michele about, offer to help her get up!!

quick edit - for some reason this is not appearing on the site. see if reprinting, as it were, does the trick.

Michael Vaughan, my Lord, Michael Vaughan

i hoped, dreamed and suspected we could do it. but i did not believe it until late this evening when we had the urn back.

nice one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you will never listen to George Michael's Faith the same way again

no update really, I was just browsing the net for images for my cellphone wallpaper and found, once again, this very ace and very banned poster for the film version of The Rules Of Attraction.

i am still unsure as to which is the most demented, the film or the novel. get your hands on both if you dare, but consider this a serious warning around the content. a heavy film/book it is, and also the darkest, most depraved work of comedy at the same time.

you may be pleased to learn that, despite my fears in an earlier post, i do indeed have a "sneak preview" (ahem) version of Ian Brown's new single. it is quality.

enjoy the poster, find the film, read the book!!

enjoy the new direction!!

well, i do seem active with this blog today for some reason. either i am inspired by the fact that people are reading it, or i am just bored and have nothing else to do right now.

i finally found the bit to edit that gets rid of my name and profile. for some reason the blogger site insists that my starsign is pisces, when of course it is aquarian. if i get rid of the link to that, it no longer bothers me.

erm, this does make my page somewhat anonymous, save the name of the thing. ho hum, any strangers stumbling by are welcome to leave a comment!!

right, will try to make a substantial, interesting post in the near future.

test sort of a success

hmn, well, this blogger for word thing might be OK, but going on the lack of a Stone Roses picture in my first attempt with it I guess I cannot upload pics this way. ho hum, the inability to put the images exactly where I want is somewhat annoying.

that said, if I do a check and find the pic has turned up, nice one!!

not a great deal to add at this present moment in time. we are both feeling better, although it has to be said I was in bed by 10 last night, which meant that I was up at around 6am. hence me fiddling with the internet and playing about with things like this “blogger for word” device.

I checked in on my order at www.hmv.co.uk and it’s a mix of good and bad my 7” and CD single of All Ablaze are sat in a courier bag waiting to go, also waiting for Ian to finally release the Greatest CD. I wanted them all shipped at once – it’s 15 pounds a go, so it kind of makes sense to wait! and yes I have been looking for a “sneak preview” version, and no I have not found it. at best I found a few seconds of the song, plus a streaming video that did not play so well via my 56k modem.

oh dear, this programme capitalises the “i”, something that I do not like having here.

I somehow doubt that I will be able to use this new software at work, since we can barely use anything on our PC’s let alone install anything.

oh well, let me play around some more, see what I can come up with………

testing Blogger for Word

Just a quick test to see if this “Blogger For Word” programme will make my life easier. If it does, there should be an image of The Stone Roses with this text.

The Return Of The Manics

a touch unexpectedly, it has to be said, the Manic Street Preachers have returned with a new song, "Leviathan". it's for the War Child charity album, link above. you can buy this and other tracks for 99p a go. be warned, though, the server they appear to have is as close to a modern day ZX Spectrum as you can get and it takes ages to download the track you want.

what do i think of it? i think it's a nice gesture for a good cause, helping raise money for the only true innocents of war. if they released it as an actual single, then the conversation is different. it would be a sign of the end of the band. it would be "Manics have lost it" everywhere. ho hum.

otherwise, Michele and myself are ferociously ill at present. well, not quite so ferocious anymore. i seem to have bounced back OK after flirting with some form of bronchial infection, Michele has indeed been diagnosed with Bronchitis. the medication does seem to be working, though, and her and young Napoleon are feeling better.

on that note, since there are a number of people i am aware of reading this site of mine, thanks again for the concern and help!!

as usual, of course, my method of self-healing involves taking all sorts of concotions and mixes of medication. it fixes me up good and proper, but it means a night of lurid hallucinations and fever. i do not think i will delve into what ran through my mind all last night, but at least it works. the short of this would be, then, that Lunar Park has been left unread for a couple of days. if i am already spinning in my mind and have lost control of what is real and what is not, i do not forsee Mr Ellis' self-imposed similar circumstances assisting me right now.

right then, let me go off and take some more pills, thrills and bellyaches, as well as possibly give another spin to this Manics track.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!

not quite an exit, but close to it

Hi there


wow, two updates in the space of a week, i must be feeling saucy or something!

actually, not a great deal to comment on, except reading Lunar Park as much as i can. it's going rather well thus far, i must say. there are some disturbing references to his previous works, and this idea of his to fictionalise himself and make Brett Easton Ellis the protagonist is paying off.

those of you who are more enthusiastic about my own writing will be delighted to hear that around about page 30 of Lunar Park i felt a real urge to start writing again. no promises but i have some ideas kicking around.

anyway, that's about all i can say.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spring

Hello everyone, thanks for sticking with me and checking in long enough to read and see if i have done any updates!

well, here's a pic from a surprise baby shower our friends Michelle, Barry, Julia, Clive and Les threw for us. it involved a fair amount of dressing up, and me drinking Indian Beer from a baby bottle.

nice one guys, thanks for the effort!!

meanwhile, the whole of the inside of our house has been rennovated, and looks very smart indeed. walls painted, ceiling fixed up and touched up and all that stuff. it's just a matter now of putting everything back together like it was!!

i have commenced reading Lunar Park. it is all that i wanted it to be. nice one Mrs R for buying it for me.

OK, that will do that for now!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!1