Posts Tagged ‘Daft’

Regulate explained

Posted 02 Aug 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

This is totally brilliant – someone has taken the trouble to update Wikipedia with a full, clear synopsis and explanation of the the lyrics to Warren G’s still-fresh classic ‘Regulate’. Exerpt below; click here to read the full thing:

“Warren, unaware that Nate is surreptitiously observing the scene unfold, is in disbelief that he’s being robbed. The perpetrators have taken jewelry and a name brand designer watch from Warren, who is so incredulous that he asks what else the robbers intend to steal. This is most likely a rhetorical question.

Observing these unfortunate proceedings, Nate realizes that he may have to use his firearm to deliver his friend from harm.

The tension crescendos as the robbers point their guns to Warren’s head. Warren senses the gravity of his situation. He cannot believe the events unfolding could happen in his own neighborhood. As he imagines himself in a fantastical escape, he catches a glimpse of his friend, Nate.

Nate has seventeen cartridges to expend (sixteen residing in the pistol’s magazine, with a solitary round placed in the chamber and ready to be fired) on the group of robbers, and he uses many of them. Afterward, he generously shares the credit for neutralizing the situation with Warren, though it is clear that Nate did all of the difficult work. Putting congratulations aside, Nate quickly reminds himself that he has committed multiple homicides to save Warren before letting his friend know that there are females nearby if he wishes to fornicate with them.”

Wonderful.

Two unconnected thoughts

Posted 02 May 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General

- I don’t use the chubb lock on my front door; there’s already an outer door to be negotiated, so I don’t feel I need that extra security. Plus, I’m a bit lazy. But I realised something funny the other day, when Vic came round for dinner.

When Vic comes round, she has to be watched carefully, because otherwise she will start opening post and peering into drawers. This time, she successfully managed to get open a letter from my landlord, informing me there’d be a annual check on the property later this month. It ended with a reminder that all locks would be used on departure, so I should make sure I have everything with me to get back in. I realised that there is, in fact, one time when I always use the chubb lock.

Ten times out of ten, on those increasingly rare occasions when I go out and drink so much that I cannot recall getting home, I discover the next morning that I have double-locked myself into the flat. I find this fact, pleasing – somehow I not only always manage to make it home, but take extra care to make myself safe, too.

I’ll be alright.

- Four days since The Guardian announced that it’s backing the Liberal Democrats at the General Election, and I’m still too angry to buy a copy. Apart from occasions when I’ve been out of the country, I don’t think I’ve gone four days without buying a Guardian in at least a decade. I wonder how long this will last.

Preparation and prosperity

Posted 08 Mar 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, General

There’s a lovely bit in the first series of ‘The Office’, where David Brent, in the middle of a performance review, is caught out by Tim, and accused of reading aphorisms from a carefully hidden piece of paper.

“If we’re facing in the right direction”, Brent advises, “all we have to do is keep on walking”

Tim: “Yep, very nice. You’re quite a philosopher”

David: “Well, it’s just that… I think that our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall”

Tim’s patience snaps. “Are you reading these?”, he asks.

David: “Am I what?!”

Tim: “Reading the quotes”

David: “Sort of…”

I was reminded of this watching football on the telly this weekend. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed this, but football commentators make quite a thing of dropping learned references into otherwise anodyne punditry.

On Saturday, I was idly watching Portsmouth – who are currently in horrific financial straits – playing Birmingham in the quarter finals of the FA Cup. Winning the cup nearly bankrupted the club last time they did it (because of all the stratospheric win bonuses in the players’ contracts) but it’s hard not to wish them well at present, given that their fans have so little else to cheer about. And happily, they were 2-0 up after about seventy minutes, at which point I enjoyed the following comment. It’s only really funny, I think, because of the way the sentence is constructed, as if part of a conversation, a spontaneous observation; when it is rather obvious that, in reality, Peter Drury had a few smart comments written down on a piece of paper, and was reading them out.

“I think…”, he said, as if he couldn’t quite remember, “I think it was William Hazlitt who said that while prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater”.

You think it was? If only Gareth Southgate had done a Tim.

Gareth: “Are you reading these?”

Peter: “Sort of”.

priorities

Posted 23 Feb 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, Politics

Not sure where this was originally published, but spotted this on the web the other day. Rather labours a crass point but… I like making crass points sometimes.

votetory

this cruelty called sport

Posted 13 Feb 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Books, Daft, Photos

cats (and their dykes)

Posted 18 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, Photos

Spotted while out shopping in Kemp Town this weekend; marvellous.

running from camera

Posted 17 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Links

A nice little link from the ever reliable GromBlog; this is the Running From Camera blog.

“The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.”

(via)

hobbited

Posted 12 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, General

I don’t really get the whole Lord of The Rings thing, personally – what little affection I have it for it springs from childhood memories of listening to The Hobbit on cassette (although I never got through it), and the animated film from 1978, which scared me senseless when I was young. The Peter Jackson remakes were OK; involving and exciting in parts but desperately over-long and ever so reverential.

But! I am enjoying Natalie Podrazik’s Hobbited Blog more than I can say. Natalie is, unbelievably, just about the last person on Earth who knows nothing about Lord of The Rings, and is thus blogging her first encounter with Bilbo Baggins et al from a position of complete innocence. Her bewilderment and good humour make this an essential winter read. I hope she sticks with it longer than I did those blasted audiotapes.

Here she is getting frustrated with Gandalf.

First of all, Gandalf leads his trusted peers to the woods and proclaims that he’s not going in there with “you people”. He YP’d them! His own crew!

“It is no use arguing. I have, as I told you, some pressing business away south; and I am already late through bothering with you people. We may meet again before all is over, and then again of course we may not.”

Who called this mission to order? Gandalf. And he’s ditching the crew. Sup with that? What about wolves? What about trolls or goblins? He took the wicked swords AND the horse from bear-man and made everyone else return their ponies, and now he wants them all to march into a deep dark forest and maybe he’ll see them on the other side. Can they walk around? Yeah, but its hundreds of miles, Gandalf says. Hmmm, how does that phrase go, again? “F*** you. No smiley.” I think that’s it.

By the way, just remembered that I had two goldfish called Bilbo and Baggins when I was a kid. Over the years, however, their names evolved into, er, Fish 1 and Fish 2. There’s another example of me not giving Tolkein due reverence. Fish 1 lived longest but then developed some kind of weird growth and got all listless. Those were dark days.

fun with string

Posted 31 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

(via)

changing opinions

Posted 30 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

Julie Bindel is easy to admire – a courageous, dogged fighter for women’s rights and relentless campaigner against men who abuse women – but rather hard to like. The Guardian has been running a series of columns recently which describe the things its respective authors have changed their mind over during the 2000s. Bindel’s contribution reveals that she, over the last decade, has learned that it’s possible to be friends with men. It’s really rather shocking that this realisation has come so late, and while I’m glad for her, it’s hard not to wonder if the problem is not that, as she suggests, men are intimidated by her sexual politics, but rather that she’s not a very friendly person. Towards the end of the article she reveals that she’s even had a male friend over for dinner, as if this represents incredible progress. It’s a world-view I don’t recognise.

As often happens, she gets a bit of a kicking in the comments, which probably just confirms her distrustful attitude towards men. Nevertheless, the following comment made me laugh out loud.

dealing with camera loss

Posted 29 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

This is quite sweet – a pictorial guide to avoiding camera loss. Really not a bad idea at all. Thinking back, given the many things I’ve mislaid over the years, I don’t think I’ve lost a camera yet. Give it time.

mystical animals

Posted 15 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

For reasons I don’t understand, I just seem to be getting an enormous amount of spam comments at the moment – it’s really annoying. If I snap and turn on the comment verification thing soon you’ll have to forgive me. In the meantime, some – some – of the spam is charming enough to let slip through the net.

to be or not to be

Posted 14 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Books, Daft

Perhaps I’m softening in my old age – not sure I’d have spent much time watching youtube videos of cute kids a few years ago – but this is just lovely. The actor Brian Cox coaches a 30 month year old toddler to recite Shakespeare. Extremely sweet.

joy diversion

Posted 08 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, Music
(via)

jenga dog

Posted 14 Nov 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, Photos

Possibly I have too much time on my hands.

design for life

Posted 02 Oct 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

Anyone else falling rapidly in love with French designer and all-round-genius Philippe Starck, courtesy of the BBC’s ‘Design for Life’ programme? I am – it’s great value TV (essentially The Apprentice for designers) and I think Starck is the most charming man in the world. He is a force of nature; imitating a klaxon when he enters a room, milking his heavy French accent for all it is worth, and coming up with adorably eccentric soubriquets left right and centre (describing evolution, he declares that “to start weez, we wazz bacteria! Zen feesh. After, we become frog! It ees not exactly ze real story. But eet’s close!”).

Best of all is the way he fires people. No agressive finger jabbing, no scorn. Instead he merely saunters over, shrugs apologetically, and gently delivers two warm, deadly kisses, one to each cheek. Mwa Mwa. You’re fired.

You can catch up on iPlayer.

dog playing pool

Posted 11 Sep 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft, Video

I think possibly the two minutes I just spent watching this video were the happiest two minutes of my life.

geographical ignorance

Posted 10 Sep 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

Overheard on the train this morning.

Tall, feckless youth: “Did you see the football? Fucking qualified for the World Cup!”
Short, feckless companion: “Did we?”
Tall youth: “Yeeeah. Thrashed Croatia. 5-1.”
Short companion. “Who are Croatia?”.

How do you answer that?

snow angels

Posted 10 Sep 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Daft

I’ve not seen his later films, but I’m a massive fan of the two early movies by the American writer and director, David Gordon GreenGeorge Washington and All The Real Girls (which I’ve written about before). Since those films Green has made a couple more indie pictures and a couple more which suggest he’s keen to move in to the mainstream: he’s currently making a stoner comedy starring Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman. Having lost track of his films somewhat, I just took a quick look at Wikipedia to see what I’ve missed, and noted that he made a film in 2006 called Snow Angels, starring Sam Rockwell (who was excellent in Moon) and Kate Beckinsale. Anyone seen it? Worth seeing?

Anyway, curious about it I just flicked over to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and read a few user comments. This one delighted me – I love it.

“The only problem I found with the movie was that its setting was a bit confusing. There were scenes where the characters used cell phones, and others where there were those record players for LPs. But other than that, the movie was flawless.”

Mobile Phones and record players. Can any of my clever readers solve this complex chronophysical puzzle?

currently listening

Posted 18 Aug 2009 — by Jonathan
Category Currently Listening, Daft

1. Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue LP
2. Delorean – Ayrton Senna EP
3. The Antlers – Hospice LP
4. Yacht – See Mystery Lights LP
5. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca LP

Ah, not really. The above are all hip albums I’ve read about on the web in the last week or two. Out of a vague sense of duty, I downloaded ‘em. But I can’t really be bothered to listen to any of them. Here’s what I’m really listening to.

1. Blur
2. Old mp3s of the Adam & Joe show.
3. The new Noah and the Whale LP
4. Music from John Hughes films
5. …er. Radio 4?

I realise that this feature works better when I’m motivated to listen to music. Having a dry patch at the moment, clearly.