I don’t have very much to say. It’s very very hot here and I can’t fit in the fridge so my mind is starting to shrivel like a salted snail.
What I have discovered this month, however, is that the 9th movement of Messiaen’s Turangalila symphony lasts exactly the same length as it takes to suck a tic tac until it’s all gone. Suffice to say I found the 9th movement very boring. Tubas don’t play in the 9th movement.
There is no more to say until the temperature drops.
So here’s a picture of Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears

Goodbye etc
(If you can fit in your fridge, let me know)

I was thumbing through a copy of the Spectator today and thinking about the ever widening cloud of nonsense that hangs over modern politics, and I went on to think about Spin and the frequent distortion of the facts that Spin Doctors present to the public, and how, increasingly, the image is everything. I don’t want to drone on about David Davis or Tony Blair, because quite frankly it’s all seven kinds of fried tosh. I will instead refer to perhaps the greatest failure of the Spin Doctors; the worst reinvention since someone handed Anne Widdecombe the hair dye.

I’m talking of course about Dr Robotnik, arch nemesis of Sonic The Hedgehog. Now, frankly, what this man is a doctor of completely escapes me, but why he hasn’t been struck off whatever mental register he was put on is a mystery. Clearly his warped, twisted psychosis was formed around the same time that his hair started growing out of the sides of his nose (glowing red with clear signs of alcohol abuse) and his eye sockets widened far beyond the capacity to contain his very small eye balls. I use warped and twisted with reason, as it appears that Dr Robotnik, clearly not happy with whatever inner city GP practice he was scaring the shit out of, began stealing small animals and placing them in the empty metal shells of dangerous robots, with the sole intention of murdering a bright blue talking hedgehog. But this image started to become a problem for Nik Robotnik, so he needed his image changing; he needed a bit of help from the Spin Doctors to shift public attention away from animal cruelty. Did it work?

Did it fuck.

Here we are presented with the new “Dr Eggman”. Now I understand the shift away from “Robot” but I mean really. Look at the man! He already looks a bit like an egg both from a torso and cranial point of view, so actually changing your name to Egg Man is just mental. It’s like Ray Charles changing his name to Professor Noeyes.
The nose side-hair seems to have gone into overdrive and the small metal breasts that have been glued to his head do absolute nothing for the image. He has no knees, he looks like a pedophile from space and, if i’m not mistaken, he has not genitalia. Now if you ask me, and I’m almost certain you’re not, that is not the public image I would have chosen to distance myself from a reputation for being a maniac.

Keep on keeping on
Smamms

Nostalgia is a dangerous word to smack about at the best of times, but especially when you’ve only occupied your small space on the earth for less than, say, 35 years as I have. Nostalgia is more a pastime indulged by those with more authority, more experience at being alive, fatter bellies and a longer history of bad haircuts. Perhaps there should be a law: only the over 50s can use sentences such as “Whatever happened to..” or “Back in my day they made them 10 times stronger and 4 times longer” etc. I simply don’t have the ammunition to fire out those sort of wisdom pellets. “I remember when a Busted single took 6 hours to download” just doesn’t hold the same weight does it? I am, however, looking forward to my infirmity when I can use the phrase, “Well it was back in ought 5, when twenty pounds would you get ya a trip to the moving pictures and two cheap women to watch them with.”

I digress. Nostalgia is on my mind because I wanted to share a little story about a Spanish composer, nine tuba players, a lake and a poor sense of balance. It was the summer of ought 6, when the skirts were high and the prices were low. There was a war on, but we made the best of it and kept our British stiff upper thighs. The tuba department of the Royal Northern College of Music was asked to perform a new piece of music by a composer whose name seemed to be “3″. We were cautious at first, not wanting to sully our fine reputation as sophisticated tuba players, but then we found out there was £50 in it and as many pork pies as you can fit in your hat, so we agreed. The day of the performance came and we were summoned to a park in the middle of the Mancunian “safe zone” (needing only our stab vest and a few simple smoke grenades just in case). Not wanting to blind you with science, I’ll skip the intricacies of the composer’s instructions and will lay them out very simply.

“I would like you to play random notes every few seconds for about 30 minutes”
“Oh and you’ll be in rowing boats”
“Wearing capes”
“And masks”
“With a lantern”
“Bobbing up and down”
“Looking like a twat”
Well the cheques had been written and I was already wearing a cape and mask purely by coincidence (as was the fashion of the time) so off we went and in we got.
You get to do a lot of thinking when you’re at one with nature; the water of the lake lapping against the smooth wood of the boats; the gentle creaking of the oars; the haunting parp of the occasional tuba echoing on into the midnight air. I thought a lot that evening, as I adjusted my mask and stared at the young woman who was rowing me round a lake as I played random notes into her face. I remember thinking: “This, my friend, is why nobody wants to sleep with you.”
And in many ways I was right. And in case you think I’m lying:

I’d like to take two and a half moments, if I may, to talk about door etiquette. I know, I know, everyone’s banging on it about it these days – it’s replaced Bulgarian agricultural policy as the top subject for bar room banter. But I’m going to talk about it anyway, and have already used up some of my two and a half moments staggering apologetically to the point, and for that I apologise.

There a two large, rather cumbersome glass doors at the entrance to my building (the Keith Chegwin Memorial Hospital For The Frequently Bewildered)* leading to a reception area, then a further two doors leading to the courtyard. The heavy nature of these doors amplifies the common, often ridiculous social spastications that make up door etiquette (or DE, or D’). There are 2 primary DE issues, and they are these:

1. You return home from ASDA, laden with plastic bags, brimming over with fragile foodstuffs and bottles of barely legal Polish vodka and, unable to tackle the normal processes of door operation, rely on the person in front of you to continue holding the door open. They don’t, and, as you lie on the floor, covered in broken biscuits and shattered dreams of dinner, bleeding from a door to the face, you ask yourself why, exactly he was holding it open in the first place. Was it malice? Was he the man whose Mondeo you were sick on on the way back from Dave’s party? Is he wreaking some sordid, door based revenge for a crime you remain in ignorant confusion about? Or is he just a stupid sightless wanker? We may never know.
2. You see someone approaching, perhaps an attractive member of the opposite sex with whom you have ambitions of horizontal horseplay. In an overwhelming show of chivalry in the face of heavy doors, fueled by sexual appetite and the desire to make her day just that little bit easier, you swing the door open with the casual ease of a modern day Hercules, resist the urge to salute her beauty, and await her acknowledging smile with heartracing luster . But oh no, alas alack and blow me down sideways: you’ve misjudged the distances, and far from the appreciating grin of a potential nighttime companion, you’ve forced her to run up the steps, breaking her casual stride with the enforced come hither door opening of a potential rapist. Damn your poor spacial awareness, damn your misplaced courtesy and damn your lonely single bed ridden hide.

Was that two and a half moments? Perhaps not, certainly not when you include this little momette that is plonked so subtly at the bottom here. Quite frankly though I shall retain my guilt, as I am new to this world of the blog and am still feeling my way around the nodules and nodes, tabs and tags that adorn this vomit of words like unfathomable baubles. You see, I didn’t want to open with ridiculous mutterings of welcome to readers’ eyes that may not even exist. So I used a crooked metaphor to enter this world of opinion and spleen.

And for that I apologise.

Ta ta