Tubular bells 2003! [lurks]

I've been a Mike Oldfield fan since I was a nipper. Well, a teenager at any rate. The first thing I heard was Oldfield's 1974 magnum opus and most famous works, Tubular Bells. It was and remains a joyous expression of the love of music and the timbre of sounds and various instruments. It broke the molds, it reigned supreme in the charts despite being an album length instrumental.
The man became my hero and since then I've collected everything he's ever done. Oldfield is God so it depresses me that so many others have only experienced Tubular Bells. His other words such as Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn and Incantations were only marginally successful. So clutching for that mainstream listenership again, Oldfield authored two sequels. The second fairly average by Oldfield standards, the third being rather more impressive.
His last album out was Tr3s Lunas, an ambient set of works designed to accompany a strange VR type experience which is also on the CD. I haven't had a lot of time for that sort of thing, I'd far rather he got back to writing proper instrumental masterpeices again but we can't always have what we want from our heros, can we?
The reason for this blog is because a few days ago Oldfield released yet another effort in the Tubular Bells camp. This time it's not a sequel, it's the original remade. That is to say it's been completely rerecorded with modern digital techniques which have obviously come a long way in 30 years! Much of the original instruments survive and were used on the remake and it certainly benefits from some more accomplished playing, a little more feeling and flair than the original which was slightly mechanical in note-for-note tones.
Quite simply, this recording is amazing. He has taken a piece of music that I have known intimately, that I grew up with, and then re-rendered it with the improvement in technology, musical ability and the vastness of 30 years of hindsight. The effect is breathtaking. I'm utterly gobsmacked. I can't help thinking now that life is very good indeed. In the few days around my 2^5th birthday I've got a job, seen the Matrix Reloaded, had beers with my mates and obtained an album so beautiful in it's mastery that it's done something that no music has done for years, brought a tear to my eye.
Now you're either with me on this one or you have no idea what I'm talking about. Obviously everyone should buy the album either way. If you haven't heard Tubular Bells (and I find that very difficult to believe), there can be no other way to hear it. If you know it and love it as I do, then this is an essential making excuses at the office and nipping out and buying instantly kind of purchase.
If you're hard up, of dubious moral fibre or want to hear it right here and right now without waiting for it, you can head over to Filesoup, sign up for the forum and take a look in the non-VIP Torrent forum for the Bittorrent of the album although it wont be there for long.
Oldfield is my God, I renounce all others and offer my life at his feet for all eternity.

Asda is teh win! [lurks]

blog 171 was the tail end of a recurring theme of blogs (blogs prior to 150 were lost) concerning online shopping. Basically I had tried the lot. We live in London, we're served by all of the online grocery delivery services, we have no car and I hate pissing about in shops. It was the case of the best of a bad bunch that dictated my continuing patronage of Tesco. They've got a pretty nasty web site that had a number of bugs and the monkeys doing substitutions in store are just plain idiots so you have to disable substitutions and lessening the entire usefulness of the system.
Yet for all that, shopping turned up, it was largely all good. Unlike when I went to Sainsburys and they treated online shoppers as bid-ridden retards and took the opportunity of selecting the absolute oldest, nearest to use-by date, products for anything remotely expirable. It was so bad we ended up having to chuck some stuff out and Sainsburys along with them.
I think I tried something else, I can't recall. It was shit as well. The only one I hadn't tried was Asda. Few days ago I put in a monster order from Asda to celebrate emerging from my great baked-bean era of unemployment.
Now Asda have a strange system that requires you book a slot first but then you can modify your shopping list up until 5PM the day before the delivery. I did that and trawled through my favorites list at Tesco and chucked it all into my Asda basket. Now while their web-site is IE only (sigh) and the shopping list is anything but descriptive, it's quite intuitive to browse through the site, click on stuff and see it appear on the right hand side shopping.
What's more, the way the shelves are laid out and the ease of use and proper results one obtains from searches (again as opposed to Tesco), made it much easier to browse and select rather than stocking up on things I know I want. There was also a fair abundance of pictures of products listed right in the products, as opposed to every 10th thing having an icon you can click on for a picture and better description.
That said, Tescos probably have better descriptions for items when they do have them. A clincher, however, is that Asda are cheaper on the whole - sometimes the same but most of the time a few pence less per item. The delivery fee is cheaper (£4.25) and it goes away completely when you order over a ton, as is right and proper. I ordered just over a ton so I reckon I saved substantially over Tesco.
As for the shopping, a chap turned up in a big refrigerated fan with panels that open to slide out the boxes of goodies. It couldn't really cope with the current heatwave though and much of the stuff was warm but that was hardly usual and hardly a tragedy, the frozen stuff had been kept in a frozen part of the van which also is different from Tesco and Sainsburys which had delivered half-thawed goods.
I noticed that large glass bottles were bubble wrapped. A couple of bottles of wine and a large bottle of olive oil. That's good. Very pleasantly surprised with the substitutions. They had pretty much everything I ordered but substituted 3 smaller bags of frozen chicken breasts for the large one I ordered. Didn't send me Houmous as they didn't have any (I suspect they had Houmous but not proper Kosher stuff, not that I would have cared but they may have decided it wouldn't be suitable to me - fair enough).
The only stupid substitution was caraway seeds for some schwartz mixed spice thing which, err, had caraway seeds in it but was hardly useful for toasting some 5-seed varieties for bread.
Finally, the vegetables. Normally I don't order them from these guys because they're always shit and we have loads of local greengrocers but I wanted to test them out. They were good! I even ordered 200g of fresh pepperoni from the deli and that looks excellent too.
So on the whole, a big thumbs up for Asda. The most inexpensive and so far the best quality of goods and a pretty decent web site to boot. I recommend them based on my experience so far.

The decline of today's youth [muz]

I am well aware that I am perhaps the least qualified member of crosshatch EED to be complaining about the yoof of today, but seeing as no-one else has, I think I'll bitch about it anyway.
For those who haven't seen it, this story typifies what I am referring to. For those too slack to click a link, allow me to summarise: two nine year old girls were arrested by Surrey police for throwing rocks and other miscellaneous projectiles off of a footbridge over the M25. This is obviously quite worrisome to motorists - an impact with a stone at a relative velocity of 70mph or more is not going to do a car any good at all; not to mention what could happen to the driver. The girls in question were later released; their age made them immune to any punitive action the police might have otherwise taken.
This evening, as I was returning from the local sales establishment having purchased various stimulating beverages containing dubiously high amounts of caffeine and taurine, I observed two children, around 11 or 12, standing on the roof of the multi-storey car park near my halls complex. They were randomly bombarding passing cars and pedestrians with rocks, bricks, empty bottles, whatever they had to hand. I considered calling the local police station, but by the time I'd found their number, the hoodlums had disappeared.
Several times, when returning from a night out in Coventry or nearby Leamington, flatmates of mine have been set upon by groups of local youths ranging from 12 to 18. There have been no serious incidents, but one can only wonder how long it will be before this changes. Another indicator of this decline is the fact that the UK has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in Western Europe.
As mentioned earlier, being one of the younger members of EED, I am perhaps not best placed to address the causes of this decline, or what can be done to address it; I have no frame of reference with which to compare today's behaviour and culture. I will leave these questions to my more wise and experienced clanmates. What is the answer? Instituting a curfew? Bringing back corporal punishment? National service? Censoring television and radio? Whatever the case, I think all would agree that something needs to be done soon. This state of affairs is unacceptable.

Taxi drivers with filthy gobs [brit]

Good lord.
Imagine this ok? you've just rounded off a thoroughly pleasant evening with your fellow EED - much beer, sambuca and of course champagne has been had. Merriment and involved discussion covering a gamut of topics has wound down and the simple fact remains; bed beckons, and therefore a taxi is required and in time appropriated from the Streets Of London Town.
Now extend your imagination to a scenario which a comedy writer couldn't create in their wildest dreams.. you've picked the only taxi in Christendom to be driven by Ron McFilth - the world's most right wing, opinionated 'Englishman' who's very existence depends on his ability to use the word 'cunt' every few minutes.
Tony Blair? 'a fucking wanker'. Ken Livingstone? 'a fucking cunt'. Anyone who wasn't legitimately born under the flag of St. George? 'a fucking wanker cunt'.
Initial investigations reveal that this chap was a genetic experiment gone awry; Phil Mitchell added to what sounded like a draft of the new BNP manifesto. Nobody escaped unscathed, and opinions were offered faster than his drunken occupants could absorb. Norris McWerter (he of Guinness Book Of Records fame) has been alerted - nobody, ever, has managed to use the word 'wanker' in place of nouns, pronouns, and verbs in a single sentence.
Until now.
Taxi drivers. Salt of the earth. Cunts.

Skeeve enters that difficult age [brit]

Fellow clanmates, fellow internet surfers, and anyone else.. pay heed!
A few days ago, the clan witnessed a spectacle of almost biblical proportions; first there was the parting of the Red Sea - then came news that Half Life 2 is going to rock - and *then* Skeeve committed two funnies to the mailing list.
We realised of course, instantly, that something was wrong. Skeeve doesn't make funnies - he sends sarcastic remarks from his Blackberry. This is his calling, his raison d'etre. So what was up?
Easy. As revealed yesterday over a few swift halves, Skeeve turned 30 today. He has entered that difficult age, where sarcasm can only give way to increased funnies.. so all together now - HAPPY BIRTHDAY WELSH* CUNT0R! :)
*He's not Welsh. No, really.

An orgy of toys [slim]

What a night! Big box full of red hot sex arrived from Dabs.com. First out was my new Palm tungsten t. Cor its small, as you can see from the pic. Genuinely palm sized, even in its natty leather case. I've owned a palm pro in the past, and liked it, but found the screen and connectivity options a bit shit. And I can't be doin with batteries. This palm has a 320x320 colour screen, bluetooth, and it charges sat on its cradle. First impressions are that it's a sturdy little thing, fast, and comes with a bevvy of applications that are going to take some time to sort through. More later no doubt!
Next out of the box was a spare hotsync cradle. Yawn! Ok last out of the box was a nice new TFT screen for the shuttle. In case you missed out on my shuttle enthusing in the past, this machine sits near our TV in the living room, it does kids games, it does the wifes work, it does divx, dvd and mp3. It rocks. It's now got a 15' TFT attached to it that also takes composite and svid in. So when the wifes must watch Carol Cunting Smylie destroy peoples homes, I can plug me Cube or PS2 into the TFT and rock on without bleating. Only cost 180 or so from Dabs, and for a couple of quid more you can add a tuner and turn it into a sexy flat screen TV.
And in an amazing act of self control, I actually managed to put all these toys aside, and go out and watch a bit of the TT practice laps. I swear I forget just how fast these mad bastards go until you get out and see them up close. See that big long straight in the first pic? Well here's what it runs into. Spot the gravel run off? No, I don't either. They're fuking mad!

Weapons of Mass Constriction [am]

Well last night, we came, we saw and we 0wned ourselves through the medium of beer. When it comes to swinging the mighty pooning stick of self-twonking, we rock and of course, of a wednesday night, there's nothing we like better than rocking hard. Am, Lurks, Dr Dave, Spiro, Skeeve, Vagga and Jay exchanged a few insults in the clan's spiritual home, The Dickens, and awaited the entrance of mobile redwood and nu-media guru The Brit. Amazingly he came and even more amazingly he held in his size fourteen paws The Rugby Shirts.

The Rugby Shirts! Oft told were tales of the mythical Rugby Shirts which had entertained children at their mother's knee through generations! A beautiful chimera, a fabled mirage, the Rugby Shirts of half-light and rumour. 'The Rugby Shirts!' the populace of the Dickens cried as one (although it might have been 'did he just call him a luckbard?'). We steadied our drinks. Strong men gazed at the heavens and pretended grit was in their eye. The Rugby Shirts!

Well reporting in, one has to say they're very swish indeed. The coloured check is actually very nice indeed - the grey and blue are the sort of colours that you'd grab if you saw on the shelf cos they are just better than 'normal stuff' and the stitching of the logo etc is absolutely top notch.

Dr Dave immediately divested himself and slipped into a medium and showed it off. Now, Dr Dave is a man of precise demeanour and a trim fella with it. Looked at another way, it could be said that he makes a twiglet look like a beach ball. His medium clung to his manly b-splines and the logo shone. The not-exactly-house-sized Spiro slipped into a large and declared that he made it look good. After the cessation of coughing and clearing of beer from the table, it was agreed that Spiro was not to tell any more funnies.

'Here's yours' said The Brit 'They didn't do XXL's'. He handed me an XL. I looked at the good Dr and the Cornishman and had the beginnings of a small doubt. I fingered the cloth. It stretched. Now inbetween the toasting of crumpets, dewy green lawns, Sunday cricket, ironed broadsheets and brogues, there's something slightly worrying to my concept of englishness in a rugby shirt that stretches. Regardless, we consumed beer, we laughed ourselves silly and returned home.

12.30am, my gaff, the hall landing. A couple of points of information were established. Rugby shirts now stretch. This is fashion. I am therefore old. Things that stretch are designed one size too small. Am is not an L that thinks it's an XL when an XL wasn't an XXL. Whether in the mirror or looking down, it is now clear this torso should not be clung in Weapons of Mass Constriction which in this context probably are banned by international treaty. Oh dear.

The rugby shirts are incredibly fine. But mine's going on the wall of my den. Until at least someone hides really rather a large number of pies.....