Summer really has started.

I saw my first bee today.

I also got my railcard for this summer's holiday.

I'm so excited!

By the way, if you haven't already, listen to No Age - they rule.

When does summer actually start? Especially in Britain, this is quite debatable since astronomically it's some ridiculously late date (June 21st officially) that is often far past when summer is thought to have begun. But I think the problem with most people is they cling to a succession of warm weather dates in May/June and instantly think Summer's begun. So what is the best system? Stars or Sun? I think it's the third S.

Shorts.

Everyone associates Summer with shorts, or at least I do. And no matter how hot it is, and no matter what the alignment of the stars is (and also no matter what my local boutique is telling em the season is), I don't feel like Summer has begun until I wear shorts legitimately. Today was that day. My summer has now begun, and because of this, I'm naturally very happy! Summer rules. But this method is pretty flexible, it means Summer starts at different points for different people, and for those that don't own shorts, despite being attirically (?) retarded, they'll never get Summer in all its bare-leg glory. I pity them really. But one thing I don't advocate is clinging on to shorts, i.e. don't wear them when despite your protests, Summer is definitely over - it just looks lame. When the season's passed, put the shorts away, please! No-one wants to see your bare calves out of sync.

Screw flowers, beaches and BBQs, public shins are where it's at! And I am now thankful that my Summer has had the opportunity to begin so early, and I can only hope that others get to share this same feeling, before it's too late.

[NB - The picture above was the fourth one that came up on Google Images when I typed in shorts; mine aren't actually, surprisingly, anything like those.]

[NB II - Mine are light camo River Island cargo shorts. That's right, I'm giving you a taster of my wardrobe online.]

Look, I know it's probably not cool to admit, but yesterday I discovered in my highly cluttered box of games, one that I'd neglected for quite a while: Final Fantasy X.

Anyone that has ever played any of the Final Fantasy games will no exactly what I'm talking about - they're just epic. I started out with the uncomparable VII, skipped VIII because the sword-gun thing looked really lame, had a dabble with IX, but felt that a protagonist with a tail was a bit crap (and also the card games!?!), and have now finally (pun) settled with the awesome X.

This game is horribly addictive and has occupied quite a large portion of my time since I doscovered it. I don't mind though, it's all been worth it! Travelling through Spira as a Guardian to a Summoner so that she may call upon the Final Aeon to defeat Sin and return to Zanarkand has never been this much fun (I remember the last time...)!

Now if you'll excuse me, my overdrive is full, and I have a flying guardian to kill.

So, so sad...

Today I was able to exercise my right to vote for the first (of what I'm sure will be many) time(s). It felt good to actually be making at least a small change in society, in fact my 'influence' extended only to Borough level. There were three parties represented in the parish election: Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and the BNP, with those three plus Labour in the borough vote. I swear that I will never vote for the disgracefully racist BNP - it's groups like that that make me sick to the core to be British. They claim to restore British values, yet none of their 'policies' overlap with my intentions. I absolutely fucking love the multiculturalism of Britain - it makes it so much more interesting and a great place to live. But when narrow-minded white supremacists spout their doctrine, inciting racial hate (helped along by the media), that's when I start to get angry, but not like the Hulk gets angry, more inward. And the worst part is how they claim not to be racists, yet racism is defined as the favouring of one race above another, and they sure seem to favour Brits. Bastards, the lot them. Not much gets me angry, but the BNP, the Ku Klux Klan et al. seem to always get me substantially, how shall I say, annoyed. There we go, I've calmed down now since the start of the paragraph.

Breath.

Is it the desire to destroy?
Is it to feel heat, warmth and security?
Is it to create the destruction that entails?
Is it for fun?
Is it because there's nothing better to do?
Is it to feel powerful?
Is it to assert control?
Is it to prove a point?
Is it to prove something to yourself?
Is it for revenge?
Is it for love?
Is it the same for everyone?
Is it inevitable?
Is it to teach?
Is it to learn?
Is it for a reason?
Is it spontaneous?
Is it a by-gone past time?
Is it instinct?

Perhaps its all, none or a combination of the above.

Perhaps we'll never know.

I love Holy Fuck, and I love Radiohead. I also love Holy Fuck's Remix of "Nude" by Radiohead.

Boy am I happy with this discovery!

Check it out here (Top of the list).

Enjoy!

[Written in Rome, Italy: 21/03/2008]So far I've paid anything between nothing and €1.50 for a humble espresso, and from my taste observations, the free one came out on top, with the expensive one right down at the bottom. In fact, it would appear that there is a degree of inverse proportionality between price & quality. Why this is so, I can only speculate. However I will hypothesise using the two extreme, paid examples: an 80c shot fro the renowned Tazza D'Oro and a €1.50 abomination from a tourist trap.

Now Tazza D'Oro is a big place, able to serve many people at any one time, and no doubt its barista are pumping several hundred shots a day. Perhaps they charge so little as an added incentive to come; not just quality, but cheap also. And by pumping hundreds a day, they will no doubt accumulate a sizeable profit. As for the expensive one, I said it was in a tourist trap so it will no doubt be expensive. But unlike the specialist Tazza D'Oro, this place was a souvenir shop, a newsagent & a café - all presided over by the same person. With experience I've found these sort of small establishments to be very keen to clinch profit wherever possible, and overcharging for an espresso is no doubt an extension of this. (N.B> Assuming that £1.20 is an average U.K. espresso price, €1.50 is about on a par with that). But they won't be reliant on coffee to boost their income and so they will be less likely to centre their business plan around it.

As for preparation, the only difference was in the machines: Tazza D'Oro had electric machines and the tourist trap had a hand pump, which I'm told are inconsistent and when in the wrong hands (as I'm sure they were that day) they can produce terrible espresso. But apart from this, preparation was identical. What most shocked me was the obvious disregard for certain practices that were drilled into me as a trainee barista. Offence one, they banged the coffee from the portafilter and that was it - no brushing away of the previous coffee's traces or washing... just bang and reload: like a gun. Offence two: they didn't wash through the pumps between coffees, meaning they would probably accumulate dirt over the course of the day. Saving the worst for last however; offence three: grinding the bag of coffee all at once, implying that thew portion going into your shot had probably been ground hours ago and had since gone stale. As for tamping, that involved a brief touch of the portafilter against a flimsy, plastic dish attached to the grinder.

Yet even the worst is far superior to any found in the U.K. Which leads me to conclude that two factors affect quality: blend of beans and number of shots pumped a day.

Tazza D'Oro is owned by a third generation barista (or some intense lineage anyway), who blends, roasts and grinds all his own coffee less than 10 metres away from where it will be sold. The recipe of the blend is over a century old a a closely guarded secret (so I'm told). No wonder that with sub-standard preparation, this was a superior shot. The tourist trap probably bought in its beans either from a local distributor or a major company (e.g. Illy) and the mass production no doubt involved will have hindered the taste from being fully realised.

As for the latter variable, it is said that Guinness should only be drunk when you can see at least one other person drinking it. This is because, by allowing a relatively continuous flow through the pipes, it is prevented from going stale and flat and is poured in its optimum condition. From experience (there goes that experience again...), espresso seems to follow a similar trend. A machine used hundreds of times a day will pump far superior coffee to one used infrequently.

These observations are based on two days in Rome and one day in Sorrento. I therefore finally conclude first off, that Italian coffee is far superior to coffee bought elsewhere. Secondly, a cheap espresso will probably be better than its more expensive counterpart.

[My excuse for coming to an abrupt and unnatural end is that while I was writing, the bus was pulling into my stop, and obviously I had to get off. My apologies.]

For a guy who was John Coltrane's drummer of choice, it seems to be quite difficult to find any information on Rashied Ali.

Scour Google and all you'll usually find is credits off Coltrane albums, most notably his duet with Ali: "Interstellar Space". Yet this guy pretty much single-handedly laid the foundations for free-jazz 'rhythm' that has held strong over the next four decades.

Yet for some reason, his Internet outputs are limited to a couple of YouTube videos, a MySpace page and a couple of online articles.

Shame really.

As I'm sure you are all able to observe some kind of media outlet, it is by no means an assumption to say that the situation in Tibet is very apparent. Tibetan protesters, peacefully opposing decades of vicious Chinese rule are being brutally struck down and having their basic human rights stripped.

The situation is by no means new, but at this moment, given the current media attention and the onset of the Olympics, the time is most suitable for taking action. Avaaz have currently got a petition going online asking the Chinese president Hu Jintao to decrease the military force used in Tibet and to hold talks about the situation.

What are they going to do with the signatures? By Monday they are aiming at having 2 million signatures (they currently have 1.2 million), the list of which will be delivered to Chinese embassies around the globe along with the requests of those who signed the petition.

This is a rare opportunity to evoke change in Tibet, and I ask you to please, take 30 seconds out of your time to follow the link below and sign the petition, and also please tell your friends, this is really important and there are millions out there who would be grateful for your support.

Thank You

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/

Although three months after the day itself is perhaps a little too late to be discussing Christmas presents, yesterday I discovered that a certain present had suddenly become much better than originally perceived.

Whilst browsing the forums of AbsolutePunk I decided to go have a look at The Graduate's section, where previously the nice guys in the band had put up their Horror Show EP for free download (I know that's how I got into the band). Well at Christmas, they had put together a 5 song EP called Evergreen that was available through iTunes as a present to all the fans. I'd listened to the tracks on their Myspace when they first announced the EP, but hadn't given it much thought after that. That was until I got to their section on AbsolutePunk and noticed their new EP was up for free download as well!

The EP itself is very low-key and contains, as previously mentioned, 5 songs - three of which are acoustic versions of tracks from their album Anhedonia. When I thought that the impact of these songs could not be increased, I was gravely mistaken for the EP itself is worth all the effort if only just to hear the new version of "The City That Reads".


It's lovely when bands just keep on giving and that's why it's much nicer and fulfilling when championing smaller bands, bands that feel the need to do such things in order to make their fans happy, as opposed to laying off for a couple of years then trying to stage a comeback using weak new material, as opposed to larger ones.

As for giving it away for free, this shows that the band are more committed to having their music heard, than to having their pockets lined, and this to me signals the mark of a true artist - one that aims to have their work seen/heard/felt whatever the consequences; sometimes they may get lucky and receive a profit, other times ridicule may be flung their way but it takes a true artist to neglect this, when the value of their creation is being compromised because of it. This alludes back to my previous post on Selling Out.

Well since it's nearly 2am, I think I better stop and get some sleep. But as my final thought:

DOWNLOAD THE EP - YOU'LL LOVE IT!
[click here]

Thank you and good night.

So right now I have just finished watching, back-to-back, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and "The Shining" and having only seen him previously in "Anger Management", it appears to me that although skilled at what he does, Jack Nicholson plays very similar characters.

In "One Flew Over..." he plays a man balancing on the boundary between sanity and its opposite. Where Nicholson thrives is his ability to play a neurotic character, but still to maintain an edge of doubt, i.e. that he could be perfectly sane. His characters are cynical, and from what I've seen, he likes to do little fidgety extras (according to the making of "The Shining"). I have no problem accepting the fact that certain actors have certain 'trademarks' and quirks. But surely acting is the art of convincingly being someone else?

I know (from watching "Fame") that actors are meant to project a little bit of themselves onto the part itself, but when it gets to the point where you know exactly what the character will be like, purely based on the choice of actor, it gets a little annoying. For example: Samuel L. Jackson seems to always play some kind of irate black guy and Adam Sandler - the mumbling idiot with a heart of gold.

I agree that these actors are hired because of their suitabilities to fit into certain roles, but surely the great skill comes when an actor can apply him or herself convincingly to a part, however strange and unnatural it may be to them. For in the end, this is the art of acting. Some actors will no doubt choose this road, always on the look out for challenging new roles that will marginally widen their acting vocabulary, whereas others will develop skills in their niche roles and become increasingly proficient in them.

My conclusion, as to which one I prefer, is still unsure, since I think that both are equally valid paths to go down, however if it were me - I think variety would be of more interest to me.

For the record, though, for anyone who has seen "The Shining"; what's with the bear?

Well it was just over 6 years ago when a certain pair of buildings was brutally attacked, providing the trigger for what later became known as "The War On Terror".

Well it was just under 5 years ago that continuing with this war, and having already fruitlessly occupied Afghanistan, the US decided to go full steam ahead into an Iraqi invasion - without UN backing.

Now everyone knows the arguments for and against the invasion, by now they have become tiresome but the point of this post is not to repeat the millions of previous anti-war blogs and sites out there, but to suggest a reflection upon the thousands of lives affected by the conflict. How many people are now worse off than before the war either emotionally, financially or physically?

And could the estimated $2 Trillion have been put to better use? For example, to maybe provide aid where it is needed and not conflict where there is potential profit. Burma is a good example, as is Africa, but that's so 1980s.

Basically there's a hell of a lot happened in that area of the middle-East and estimates show that there will be more activity for years to come, as the country is in no state to be left unoccupied.

I feel a bit helpless. All that could have been said has been, all that has been done has been and unfortunately now we are left with a country in turmoil and feasible solution.

The Iraq War? What a waste.

Inspired, having recently attended a talk on the topic, I have now taken up juggling as a very minor hobby and found that it is in fact quite enjoyable.

It would appear that the art of ball-tossing is not as simple as it at first seems, since timing and quality of throw are very important factors. For example, when I was learning, the balls thrown from my left hand were always the ones that I dropped implying a bad throw on this side. However once this was remedied, I found myself able to keep three balls in motion for a little longer, then a little longer, until now I am reasonably comfortable at keeping the standard 'juggle' going over limited periods of time. Only once this has become more comfortable, will I then venture into the new and unseen ground of tricks.

To get to this stage has taken me in total, one hour's worth of actual juggling time, which is not that long in terms of acquiring a new skill. Is it worth it? I hope so, since I have been told on a number of occasions that for some unknown reason, I appear to be the sort of person that can juggle so as not to disappoint, I have now learned.

Any updates on my juggling will hopefully come soon.

Just a quick one.

Recently I have been getting more and more interested in the avant-garde: music, art, dance, sound etc. but I found very few resources for it online.

That is until I discovered www.ubu.com which is an online encyclopedia of the underground and experimental. It even hosts lots of rare videos, such as documentaries on John Cage, Derek Bailey and it hosts MP3s as well as essays written by composers to accompany their music.

I've already 'wasted' hours of my life their, time to pass on the baton.

So my last post pointed out the features of the leaflet that I got through my door, in this post I aim to highlight the network of organisations that are associated with producing leaflets of this kind.

My leaflet in particular was commissioned by a group known as the Preston Pals, who claim to "campaign on behalf of the indigenous community". After learning the origins of the leaflet, I began to do some research on the Internet, starting by typing in simply Preston Pals on Google. The following website was the top result:

http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com/2007/03/preston-pals-battle-has-begun.html

Not the name of the post: "The Battle Has Begun"; and this is about a group who claims on their leaflet to be "committed to the principals of non-violent democratic resistance". For a supposedly peaceful group, they slip in a lot of military-esque words into their materials: "Islamic Invasion" then on the site, there are claims that Europe is being conquered. They also spread lots of lies, for example, they quote a section of the Koran, that seems to imply that it is Islamic duty to fight against the non-believers. What they fail to include however is the part that talks about how violence is a last resort, and that Holy War is only viable when the opposition are oppressing the Islamic religion, i.e. outlawing its practice. One of the worst things that I found was a comment on this very page of the blog. It read:

"and I feel it's my duty to kill all Muslims, bring the Holy War on I say!"

A harsh statement written in response, no doubt, to the title of the blog entry: "Muslims' duty to kill the Infidel"

Next up is The Green Arrow, just check out the URL:

http://isupporttheresistance.blogspot.com/

"I support the resistance?" What resistance? Are you trying to conjure up some kind of ethnic struggle in order to justify your violent language and harsh words against Islam? The tag line of the website reads: " We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children". Now these guys know how to highlight a word, and that is by capitalising it - which is used generally in the Bible ("Him","His","Lord" etc.) as a sign of respect and to make the subject seem very important. I'm white, with a lower-case w. I'm ashamed that these people are on their hate-campaign, supposedly for my benefit. I love the fact that Britain is as Cosmopolitan as it currently is, what better way to learn than from the many people that grace our isles, who are from overseas and from different cultures. If these people don't like this and what to keep their own ethnic culture (if this is my ethnic culture - let me deny my skin-colour and heritage right now!) then they ought to just live in a white-supremacist commune and let other people carry on enjoying the many benefits of having a multicultural society.

Another thing about this site is that it actively endorses the BNP - one of the worst organisations to have ever assembled within the British Isles. Unfortunately, they hold quite a lot of influence in my local area, and I am constantly met with people of a similar mindset that occupy the town I live in. Maybe racism (which is what all this inevitably is), is confined to only certain areas, and maybe it is part of local micro-culture. I know for a fact that I feel it is very strong in East-Lancashire.

These are just two examples of the growing number of British websites that act in similar ways to the infamous KKK (Ku Klux Klan), and the fact that there are so many scares me. I am just thankful that these people are in the minority, and that not everyone shares their fundamentalist views.

If you would like to research more, then I suggest you use the greatest asset to have ever been created, with regards to research, and that is Google. Try it, and you'll be hooked. I know I am, even if it does lead me to such hate-fueled sites.

So I've had a very bad week. Two things have happened to me, which I'm not going to lie, have not been pleasant and I refuse to share them over the Internet. But even after all that, I just got home tonight to find one of the most racist things that I've ever had the displeasure of laying eyes on posted through my letter box.

With no paraphrasing whatsoever, here is the headline of the leaflet:

I noticed this the first time I donated, and got in an arguement about it, but then last week I received an invitation to a group on Facebook dedicated to righting this apparent wrong. Again tonight, as I went to donate, I brought the issue up with one of the nurses and had a discussion (much less an argument) about it this time.

The issue is basically that practicing (i.e. sexually active) homosexuals are banned from ever giving blood.

Now on the surface this is completely and utterly wrong. Blood is supposedly in short supply, so to outcast a group of society that for the most part will be suitable donors seems illogical. And the stereotyping mindset that accompanies a statement as bold as the one that "people who are homosexual probably have AIDS" is backwards and akin to saying all Africans live in mud-huts, and probably have AIDS as well. Also, all blood is routinely checked for HIV, Hepatitis and a batch of other conditions, which could jeapordise the health of the receiver substantially, so if any blood did have AIDS, they wouldn't use it anyway, and that person would be struck off the register - gay or otherwise. So why is it that their sexuality is important?

This is where the nurse actually produced a reasonable response. She said that after drug users (who are banned anyway), AIDS is most prominant within the gay community, and that there is whats called a window period of the condition, where it does not show up at all. So by combining these two, they say that it is the safest and most efficient option to just exclude donations made by homosexuals.

I've lost half a litre of blood tonight, so I'm not in any mood at the moment to say which side I agree with more, although I do fell there are some very interesting arguments from both camps.

Hope this gets some debate started.

Tonight I found myself underneath the railway tracks in Leeds for the 2nd time out of 5 this week, and the lineup involved four of Britain's best up-and-coming indie troubadours. So to describe them and their sets, I'm limiting myself to one sentence each. Here goes!

The Attika State were a reassuringly good rock band from none other than The Office hometown, Slough.

Furthest Drive Home, who are usually reasonably epic on record were a little bit of a let down live.

Tellison were absolutely amazing, and one of the best live acts I've seen in a long time - major respect goes to them for writing their set list on paper plates!

The Maple State were a tad monotonous and dull, lacking mid-song banter for the most part.

Since I decided to start blogging everday through February (or thereabouts, no thanks to BT), I've had time to think over some of the aspects of this, as I am now halfway through the trial.

Firstly, I enjoy the writing side of it and I enjoy just putting my thoughts into words for someone (or no-one) to read. The fact is that I'm proactively putting stuff down, sometimes on random things, for people to read and I enjoy sharing any obscure, irrelevant or useful scraps of information that I may have.

Secondly, I like the challenge of having to come up with new topics constantly, it gives me an outlet for some of the random research that I do on the internet and sometimes even just for myself, it lets me organise my thoughts. Sometimes I've begun to understand a subject better, only during the process of writing up a blog about it.

It's only a short set of observations, but predominantly I want to to keep this up and even after February, despite my doubts that I'll be doing it everyday, I aim to carry on blogging quite regularly, unlike my sporadic contributions towards the start of its existence.

All out for now.

It is often said that there are only two types of music: good and bad. However recently after listening to quite a lot of minimalism, I've been getting the comment that "This isn't music at all" - especially during the more noise orientated sections of some of the pieces.

Well in the following video, experimental composer John Cage and avant-garde multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk talk about sound and the validity of it outside of a musical context. They discuss if all sound is music, or if in fact music is music, and also if silence exists.

A famous story is when John Cage, on his quest for silence, went into the anechoic chamber at Harvard, a room which absorbs 98% of all sounds - theoretically silent. However while inside, Cage could hear two sounds, a low on and a high one. It turn out that the high one was the sound of his nervous system, and the low one was his blood in circulation. This lead him to conclude that the only silence msut be in death. Quite morbid, but true.

But anyway, here's the video. Please take the time to watch it and open your mind up to the possibilities of sound.

Valentine's Day is traditionally for lovers, but this one was owned by Buckinghamshire's finest, Tonight Is Goodbye. They may be pop-punk, but they're damn good, and especially refreshing after standing there watching 2+ hours of absolutely shite bands. Here's a rundown of the gig:

Now this was a crap band: The Element. The guitarist looked exactly like your run-of-the-mill-token-2005-scene-kid-gone-wrong: tight low waist jeans with rips in the knees, black Van's slip-ons, tight black t-shirt, eyeliner, black nail-polish, non-matching fingerless gloves and dyed black hair in that style. Yes, it had all gone wrong for this kid. But let that not detract from the point that this was a sloppy, boring waste of my twenty-minutes.

Band Vs. DJ were marginally better, and they started out sounding really promising until about to applaud what I thought was their first song, I realised they were in fact on their fifth. It was dreary lad-rock with a bit more energy, and guitars that were tuned in between every song while the drummer spoke some crap. They probably deserve more credit than I gave them, but I was exhausted after the first band.

Lower Case And Capitals only played three songs, therefore they're not even worth a review.

Finally, a good band came on in the form of Attack Attack. These guys came from South Wales and opened with a very strong song. I don't know the name but the main hook was "Let's get this whole thing started" and I feel sorry for them; the crowd consisted of a hell of a lot of 15 year old fan-girls not wanting to get anything started other than their sex-lives. Thier final song started with quite a ferocious drum beat, prompting the guitar player to demand a circle pit. Two people then came to the front, collided and that was it... circle pit and Attack Attack over. Now onto the main act:


I can only describe TIG's 30 minute set in one word: energetic. They bounded onto that stage with so much vigour it actually got the whole thing started. Opening with recently recorded "Beauty & The Beast" they played on every stereotype, but they're so good. Musicwise, their melodies cannot be criticised, and neither can their lyrics which at times are reasonably poetic (and not in the typical teenage-angst stylee). It's quite clear to see thats these young men have got quite a career ahead of them, so long as they keep up what they're doing now.

My advice? Buy their EP... now!

Well, what can I say except that I was disappointed.

I expected, from one of the most raved about films of the year something exceptional, something a little different. What I got was some weak songs played over an overly gothic Victorian London with some comic throat-slitting thrown in for good measure.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but when I left the cinema, I didn't feel satisfied. It was akin to going to a really good restaurant (supposedly), having a pretty average meal then still feeling hungry afterwards.

This blog is still fairly short, because I haven't managed to get hold of BT yet and my modem is looking likely to cut-out any second. And no, I haven't learned how to draft blogs so I can upload them later.

Unfortunately, the blogging everyday in february idea hsa been put on hold, because as an internet service provider, BT can't do their job properly and my modem is more off than on. I should really contact them about it...

But anyway, I'm not going to write anything substantial when I have no idea when the internet will disconnect, so I will hopefully be back on writing form soon.

However, please have a read of some of my previous posts and let me know what you think.

Until then, "skirts and tights baby, tights and skirts".

My Grandad often used to recite the following bit of verse to me, so now it's is my turn to recite it to whoever reads this. It's from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, a collection of poems written by the Persian astronomer Omar Khayam, dating from around the start of the twelfth century. Be warned, this is deep...

The moving finger writes; and, having
writ,
Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.
Nor all thy tears wash out a Word of it.