John Walker's Electronic House

Heavens to Betsy, we’re back. After a very well earned and enjoyable break, Rum Doings returns with a fifty-sixth episode.

We discover the reasons behind little finger etiquette, recall Christmas, irritating anachronisms, and flu vaccines. John’s hatred of chickens is exposed, Nick proves he’s the same as Naomi Wolf, and Jesus sends John to hell. We introduce a new law, and then go on something of an extended rant about train-based digital displays. And Argos.

Tweet it, Facebook it, ask strangers on Formspring about it. And please really do. If we don’t get a million listeners in this episode, I’m going to kill Nick. And writing a review on iTunes brings us more attention.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e56.mp3]

Not all albums are good all the way through, and nor indeed can I always be bothered to find out. These were the songs that most infiltrated my 2010, despite their not all being released in 2010. I’m not going to play by your “rules”. Kieron plays by rules, and has posted his top 40 here. I had heard three of the songs before yesterday. I bet most of them feature bleepy-bloopy noises and shouty 20-something girls wearing school uniforms. And Dan’s top 10 is always worth reading, and he’s an endless source of great music tips (even though he likes that awful Best Coast album).

Please let me know the songs I should have included below.

SONGS

Janelle Monáe – Tightrope (Letterman version)

She may have the most distractingly annoying hair of all time, but this is an enormous, epic song, and I think the Letterman performance is the definitive version. It’s as classy as Frank Sinatra without the malevolent evil, and unquestionably boosted by the presence of a Muppet playing lead guitar. And clearly any performance can only be improved by a hooded Sean Combs bringing out a cape. I’ve yet to listen to the whole album, but recently learning that it’s the second in a series of concept albums about robots suddenly makes me a lot more interested.

(continue reading…)

As space year 2010 winds down to a drizzly end, it seems only appropriate to tell anonymous people the things I liked during its reign. Sausages ranked highly. Other things were more specifically associated with the year. They include:

ALBUMS

It’s been a funny year for me with albums (which is exactly what I said last year). My go-to artists are all on off years, but for Cloud Cult. No Mountain Goats, no new Nick Cave (I’m pretending the Grinderman album didn’t happen), no new Rural Alberta Advantage nor Rock Plaza Central. But fortunately there was lots that was great. Here’s the ones I can remember because Spotify doesn’t have a stinking memory, and I accidentally switched off Last.fm scrobbling.

Please comment with whatever albums you think I should have included.

Links are to Spotify.

Sleigh Bells – Treats

There exists a special category of music that only appears during the correct alignment of the planets at the correct temperature at the correct barometric pressure. It’s an album that both Kieron Gillen and I like. He tends to like bleepy-bloopy music with shrieking girls, or boring over-produced pop. I tend to like nice music with nice singing. But then there comes a band like Sleigh Bells, who combine the two, without letting either side down. It’s bleepy and bloopy, shouty and poppy, and it’s brilliant. Its brilliance peaks with Infinity Guitars, whose hyperbole doesn’t end with the title. Then Rill Rill sounds like a Motown R&B cover combined with a girly indie single from 1993. It’s oddly hardcore, and yet incredibly delicate. It understands the importance of a heavy bass pound sat behind chirpy J-pop ditties. It can’t be forgiven for spelling a song “Straight A’s”, but that ignored it’s an utterly splendid album that unites the world in disharmonious harmony.

(continue reading…)

City Link, the UK parcel delivery company, is abysmal. It’s predictably abysmal. A typical conversation with friends:

“My parcel’s not arrived.”

“City Link?”

“Yeah.”

Everyone knows they’re hideous. Everyone you ask has a City Link horror story. Searching the internet and you’ll find so many tales. Many people I know, including me, have been unambiguously lied to by City Link. “We put a card through your door when there was no response,” they say, when they’ve been nowhere near the house and certainly not put through a card.

And yet so many major companies still use them despite there being so many far better, far more reliable companies offering the same service. Including, terribly, Amazon.

(continue reading…)

Episode 55 of Rum Doings sees a sleepy John and Nick not discussing something something something. But instead chatting about the weather.

In an episode recorded before John died of the flu, we take leave of our senses and embrace Winter by drinking neat Pimms. We then consider Christmas meals, the reality of Father Christmas, and how to spend the season. And other Christmassy matters. With excellent impressions of the Queen.

We ponder turkey, writing with pens, and the transmogrifying nature of Quality Street. We then proceed for forget the names of everyone ever. And discuss the theological implications of God’s not having a beard.

Tweet it, Facebook it, ask strangers on Formspring about it. And please really do. I’d like to see a spike in our listener numbers. And writing a review on iTunes brings us more attention.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e55.mp3]

As I graduate from a flu so strong that I needed help to sit up, to a cold where my lungs and throat are in more pain than I know what to do with, leaning on my desk to stay upright simply because I’ll overdose myself on the pharmacy of drugs surrounding my bed if I have to lie down any longer, it’s comforting to know that I can still get furious about the mind-numbing incompetence of weather forecasting.

Sure, I’ve gone on about this a lot, and certainly I appear to be among very few who care, but in a world where people are increasingly calling bullshit on the various woo remedies and snake oils, it infuriates me that weather soothsaying escapes any scrutiny.

I think the only way to communicate the level to which it is palpable nonsense is to show not how the weather is incorrectly predicted, but how the predictions don’t even agree with themselves from the same source. So for today’s example, here’s the BBC’s current predictions for the weather for Bath tomorrow, Monday 20th December. First of all, the day’s breakdown:

(continue reading…)

This week, in a 54th episode of Rum Doings, we don’t discuss: Is it finally time to say a fond farewell to the sell-by date? But we do start arguing about coats and umbrellas.

We consume prana, and biscuits. And then we are inspired to chat by the waiting questions on John’s Formspring. And that’s all the information you get, as since recording John’s got flu and his hands and everythings hurt.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. And please really do. I’d like to see a spike in our listener numbers. And writing a review on iTunes brings us more attention.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e54.mp3]

And I was nearly on my way to bed before 1am before I saw this link. Yesterday, the BBC reporter Ben Brown took on his toughest target yet, the man with cerebral palsy dragged from his wheelchair by police during the student protests last Thursday. And although that sounds like sarcasm, it turns out to be true. While it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to make a man like Brown look like an idiot, Jody McIntyre does it with grace and intelligence completely undeserved by the moronic anchor.

Here’s the full interview, which unfortunately contains quite a few skips:

So in the footage we see a man sitting in his wheelchair, barely moving, being attacked by four police officers. Two in full riot gear, because you can never be too careful with those CP types. One drags him across the road by his arms, dropping him on the tarmac. This is the second time that evening that McIntyre has been dragged from his wheelchair, the first time also hit with a truncheon. But this was the time it was filmed.

Perhaps I’m mad from keyboard fumes, but this strikes me as a story about police brutality. But that’s not how crack journalist Ben Brown saw it. This was his chance to get a confession out of one of the most dangerous rioters of them all.

(continue reading…)

Nick Clegg, before the election, via Labour Uncut.

I don’t know what to do with the rage I’m feeling.

At a certain point, smashing buildings and throwing rocks is the correct response.

Like any sentient human, I’m an enormous fan of Monty Python. But more than that, I adore Terry Gilliam’s films. Brazil is, in my correct opinion, the greatest film ever made. And Labyrinth, written by Terry Jones, is probably the best children’s film ever. So the opportunity to interview Jones and Gilliam was a bit of a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me.

I was there for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, as they’re promoting a forthcoming Facebook game called The Ministry Of Silly Games. On the train on the way there I was trying to work out what questions to ask. I was determined that I not ask the most obvious questions, but the situation made that pretty awkward. It’s fairly obvious that everyone would ask them if they played games, what they thought of games, etc. And that seemed the right thing to ask on a site about games, at an event to promote games.

Then of course there’s Python. I recently watched a six hour documentary in which all five of them were interviewed at great length, and I cannot imagine another question about the series or films that ever needs to be asked. Either you ask the most repeated and obvious questions, or you ask about something incredibly obscure that they’ve likely forgotten in the 40 years (erk) since.

But then it occurred to me. If I had the chance to meet Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, what questions would I want to ask them? So I wrote some of those questions down. Clearly I was tempered not only by only having ten minutes, but also by there being both of them there. It would have been inappropriate to ask Gilliam specifics about his films, or ask Jones about which area of history he intended to explore in his next book/series. They needed to be questions both could answer. And who on the planet knows more about imagination and silliness? So it was on those subjects I chose to focus. I’m really pleased that I did.

You can watch the interview on RPS, or below.

(continue reading…)