Rain

Having just finished reading 'Rain' by Don Patterson I'm left with the all too familiar, slightly bemused, 10,000 yard stare and asking myself what the hell was that. A far more eloquent view of the experience can be found here. However let it not be said that I didn't appreciate it, its just that I'm left feeling incredibly confused (think slowly turning gears and nothing happening).

Speaking of the under appreciated, Kings of Leon have a new album out and it seems to be taking a fair amount of stick. Fair enough the video for Radioactive is incredibly dodge on a Herculean scale dodge but if any other band around produced something like this they would be lauded from a height. I think its half decent and as good as anything this year. Damn the begrudgers!

Islands

24 months behind as usual. Can't stand the haircuts or the look but the music is class.

She Said

After over a year of using Spotify and also with this new iTunes Ping yoke (it sounds like a putter if you ask me) I have began to wonder does anybody find music the old fashioned way anymore i.e. listen to the radio followed by what the fuck was that, not get the name of the band, wait patiently for another two weeks till the song is played again, finally catch the name of the band and then off to Golden Discs!! Very simple process.

Now our music tastes are decided by A] what other people who have listened to this track have also listened to (this is not good damn Amazon) and B] how proficient the DBA who is after creating the system is at linking tables (and this is not an ACCESS tutorial either). Neither options are very satisfactory really.

Below is some good old fashioned music that was once tracked down via the first process outlined above.

Money for Nothing

Well I have read it all now, apparently that giant debt clock in New York is a figment of everyone's imagination and all everyone in the U.S of A has to do is take out a large order from Viking Direct and order a few truck loads of photocopying paper and head off down to the nearest mint. According to Ellen Brown this is an actual solution (well with my hyperbole Irish slanted take on the article removed).

Market jitters may be a hazard, but if the U.S. finds itself with government bonds and no buyers, it will no doubt resort to quantitative easing again, just as it has in the past -- not necessarily overtly, but by buying bonds through offshore entities, swapping government debt for agency debt, and other sleights of hand. The mechanics may vary, but so long as "Helicopter Ben" is at the helm, dollars are liable to appear as needed.

Now I've read the post (see here) three or four times and I still can't make head no tail of it. Is it possible to wrack up that much debt and then use monopoly money to pay the person who holds risk off with it? Surely there is something amiss.


That being said some of the commentators are capable of making sense (popular politics take note!). Anyways it will all probably be traced back to Breton Woods and something to do with the whole supply and demand thing. But  as in all things Dire Straits know best......Money for Nothing.







And just cause I like the song....

Movie Highlight

To close the weekend, the finest five minutes of cinema from the last twelve months... genius.

Ruby are you contemplating?

A typical Sunday afternoon, sitting next to the window listening to the world go by below. It must be symptomatic of a recession that all you can think of is whether traders are charging VAT after you have been to a farmers market and whether all forms of local entrepreneurship are supporting the economy as a whole (especially within the vital cottage industry sector). Of course the revenue may have had officials investigating but I doubt they would have their house that much in order.

All these thoughts of business were brought about after finishing reading my weekends fill of the The Sunday Times. I know its old hat but who on earth thought it was a good idea to charge for online content, it appears that someone really has to sit the Australian down and explain to him the concept of the internet. From what I can see very few people are going to splash out the extra cash just to see David Coulthard drive a very quick car admittedly very quickly around an island where there are no speed limits.Then again maybe I could be wrong and this all very clever with thoughts being to reader demographic, disposable income and possibly some sort offer reminiscent to the chapter in Predictably Irrational.

I always thought any internet site was going to be driven by an advertising lead business model while punters will only pay for specific content, usually in the form of a Forrester Report or The Wall Street Journal. I find it hard to believe that any of the insights provided by the Sunday Times demand an RSS feed into an Executive Information System. Anyway doesn't everyone buy the paper for the magazine type inserts, the presentation cultural material in a fashion that can never be fully captured in a Web 2.0 environment. Although no doubt iPad lovers out there will claim that the device provides an unparalleled user experience and my views are dated and out of sync with the obvious progress being made.

That is enough out loud wondering for one day. In honour of Sunday radio where you are forcibly transported back in the region of three to four decades ala Marty McFly here is the beard himself Kenny Roger and Ruby leave the .22 at home.

Something For The Weekend

This weekend everyone should be listening to the newish Brendan Benson album. Already looking forward to the gig coming up in September. It is amazing that the views are just under 4,000 but there is no counting for taste I suppose.

Europe

Europe, no not that Europe, this Europe, and there is quite the difference too I can. One an eighties throw back while the other is the heaviest book (not in the metaphorical sense) I've read since Denzien and Lincoln and there  love of all things question related. There are times I wonder why history as a subject never progressed for me beyond third year (I think formal education stopped somewhere between the Romans and The Easter Rising) but  on other more lucid occasions I realise that an inability of mine to remember dates would have been a hindrance  in the pursuit of gainful employment in the field of history (or else I could have just purchased this software). Of course that piece of software assumes by definition that time is linear but I think someone famous and kinda clever disproved that. 

Anyways I digress, back to the enormous tome in which a man (Norman Davies) who seems to know everything about everything (seriously the breadth of material is insane from Punk Rock to the War of Independance(British Pathé what a site)) charts a fasinating journey through European history with enough crammed in a single paragraph to keep you going for an age. In honour of all things historical and even though the lyrics are a bit on the mad side here is The Low Anthem and Charlie Darwin.

Its Been A While

To quote good old Staind and some mid 00's emotional rock. Anyways to get back into the whole thing I've decided an acoustic version of Magazines by who else but the Hold Steady. Only six hundred views, sometimes you gotta question the internet's taste in music. But then again sanity is in short supply these days as we all know global warming/climate change isn't actually happening because scientists had an argument over methodology.

Realisation

As always, I am a bit slow on the uptake but the sentiment expressed in Radiohead's song Like Spinning Plates is remarkably similar to the poetry of Seigfried Sassoon. Both written with the same sense of disillusionment, however one  draws from experience while the other from observation, but who says modern artists can't write.