dead brains don't dance

We're just back from Night Shift, the Circomedia year-end show at Bristol Old Vic. An excellent night-themed night, and recommended to all if you're in the area and can get a ticket for tomorrow or Saturday.

NOTE: there are a couple of brief strobe lighting sequences; slow and short as such things go, but be warned if that's an issue.

I've uploaded as much as I'm likely to of my photos from Friday at Wychwood Festival to flickr, starting here (the Värttinä picture is from Saturday).

Most of the images on flickr are annotated; but, largely repeating myself here, we heard:

A trio consisting of a Madagascan guitarist, a Zimbabwean bassist and percussionist from... somewhere else. They were a last minute substitute for the billed Candido Fabré y Su Banda who were a no-show for some reason - I don't know who they were, but the music was very fine indeed. And, as they started playing, the rain stopped, the sun came out, and a double rainbow arched right over the stage.

Into the big top stage where the Jim Moray 4 was setting up; it Boded, and when they came to play the Boding came into its full and foul fruit as the ego/emo collision slumped unpleasantly over the audience. It would be hard to imagine anyone further up their own bottom, frankly. Imagine Peter Hammill at his most maudlin with absolutely none of his lyrical, musical or performing saving graces. We slipped outside to find...

...Radio Tarifa, who could not in any way have presented a greater contrast. Joyous, sleazy Spanish noise, led by a guy with truly extraordinary stage presence. Terrific stuff. And they were clearly having fun: an antidote indeed.

Back to the big top after consuming some rather fine North African fud, for The Earlies. Oh dear. Think earnest early Floyd rip offhomage, possibly mediated by Porcupine Tree along the way. They appeared utterly joyless, and what might otherwise have been (but emphatically wasn't) a charmingly vague grasp on playing as an ensemble. Enough. Out again to the main stage.

The Matthew Herbert Big Band. I really don't know what to say, except go and see them; certainly the high point of Friday, quite possibly (with Värttinä) the high point of the entire weekend. Insane mutant big band glory would easily have been enough to earn that recommendation, but when they used massed, synchronised shredding of copies of the Daily Mail as a percussion instrument I think my grin widened to the point of permanent damage to my facial infrastructure. I wish we'd seen the set from the start (we'll certainly be seeing them again at the next opportunity), and they were cut short far too soon by the 11pm curfew.

And so to bed (or sleeping bag, rather).

Our experiences on Saturday and Sunday will follow when I can find the time to type them and add the photos to flickr.

We drove to Tintern this afternoon, in the rain promised by the forecastersblazing sunshine.

Hardly any of the photos I took there of the Abbey are worth pursuing - mostly because of crap photographer, but also crap camera (nasty lens artefacts), and running out of battery without bringing a spare.

I'll probably upload a few to flickr later, but the best pictures of the day were the two I took in passing of our pnod, and the mad sex orgy in progress thereupon...

Whatever; we had a good, if slightly overheated, time on our Out. And organic vanilla ice cream. And a nice cup of Assam. Which is the main thing, I suppose :)

[Edit: rampant idiocy of poster (at least partially) corrected]

OK, ramtops posted me a flickr invite; I had to succumb at some point...

Well, ramtops and I have done our small part in attempting to rid the worldparliament of the vile Dr Fox.

In other news, our garage is nekkid to the world as the builders have finally turned up to re-roof (and re-window) the thing. Iggy is discombobulated as he's lost his sunkiss'd skritching surface. Hopefully, the new roof will be on before the weather god notices, but I'm not optimistic.

Unlocks door, pursued by Slitheen, with Sonic Pen

"Mickey luv, the world is in your pens. Fire."

9 is Pauline, so... Doctor/Mickey. Has to be.

Here are my results for that political quiz (via nostalgia_lj, ramtops, burkesworks and no doubt loads of other people I haven't got to yet).

Unsurprisingly, I'm hanging way out there on t'left, though less so I think than I should for the second axis. I'm less than happy with some of the questions and the assignment of values to their answers: issues are conflated on which I hold contradictory views. For example, any question on the free movement of jobs or of labour has to be answered in the context of imbalances in power, economic wealth and social conditions between countries and the corporations that straddle them. There are so many distortions and inequities around that it's impossible to answer a single, unqualified, question with any accuracy or honesty.

The axes of measurement seem arbitrary and oddly chosen to me too. I can't see either why a social axis like rehabilitation<=>retribution is joined with internationalist<=>Eurosceptic or, even more, why economic principle and the Iraq war are associated.

Whatever. It's still interesting.

The usual accusation against cartels is of price-fixing: coöperating in gouging the customer whilst pretending to be in competition.

Courier companies have their own variant: a conspiracy of incompetence and contempt. None of them provide anything resembling a decent service; none of them employ people or (presumably) provide a working culture that gives a flying fuck about even the barest hint of customer service. Choice: shit:A or turd:B.

Today's case in point is Amtrak. Nothing unusual at all; just another driver who couldn't be arsed to get the box out of the van and just slipped the card through the door without even ringing the bell. ramtops rang their office: the droid at the other end couldn't even be bothered to argue and just told us that we can pick up at 5:30 this afternoon.

For context, the delivery is a 1u rack server, so a little awkward to carry, but not exactly back-breaking.

Bastard fucktard arsewits, the lot of them.

I wonder if anyone is offering odds on whether last year was the last US presidential election?

With the Constitution being dismantled and the independence of the Judiciary being attacked, it's all looking increasingly flaky.

Still, God no doubt created Dubya in his own image, so all will be well.

OK, the old scrote is dying, and I guess a fair number of people across the world actually care. Even in spite of the number of HIV/AIDS and Hep cases he's responsible for, the number of unwanted pregancies, and the number of women killed or maimed by botched, illegal abortions.

But do we, a presumed non-Catholic country even to the extent that we qualify as "Christian" in any sense of the word, have to have the main morning news programme on the Home Service totally dominated by the imminent demise of just one pope. I don't think so.

Remember girls and boys: every woman, man and child on this planet is a pope (or mome, if preferred), so when this one finally screams his last and flaps away on his little black leathery wings we don't need a conspiracy of cardinals to "elect" another reactionary, misogynistic fucktard in Rome.

Enough.

[ETA: twistedchick, as a Catholic, posts some pertinent points on the succession]
[ETA2: here's minkboylove being far more articulate ('cos she can write, and I can't :) on the same subject]