Chilly indeed...

Here’s an email I received recently to the AAZ Records email address, from “OKMusic.fm”. The full text follows but basically they’re looking for original songs for a film. You upload your song and you never know, it might be picked to feature in the film. Well, that sounds OK, some songwriter may have just what they’re looking for (if they have a song about "a dog that is left home alone with his best friend Bobby, an eleven year old boy, on Christmas Eve. Together they foil the attempts of a bunch of bumbling thieves"...) But at the bottom of the message it says “If your original work is chosen, there will be no reimbursement”. Now correct me if I’m wrong but I think that means they don’t pay you.

I assume therefore that the actors auditioned for the privilege of being in this film and aren’t being paid? I assume the director, crew and whatnot aren’t getting paid then? I guess the caterers will be there simply for the prestige of working on this film? Or is it just the music that they want for free?

I don’t generally get too arsey in replies to these kind of things (though you wouldn’t believe how many battle of the bands and song writing competitions there are, complete with ‘registration fee' and list of ‘celebrity judges’) but I do write the odd 'I'm afraid Whole Sky Monitor do not enter competitions' and suchlike. So for this one I just said

"You want to use someone's song in a film and "there will be no re-imbursement? I assume the director and actors and everyone else are working for free on this film"?

John AAZ Records

Not particularly clever but you never know, my email might be picked to be read by the director!

Here's the whole email for anyone interested...

Challenge your Skills! Enter the Chilly Christmas Contest!
Have your music featured in the upcoming Hollywood film Chilly Christmas.

This is the chance to make your national debut! Create and upload original
song(s) for a chance to have them featured in the soundtrack for the
upcoming family comedy, Chilly Christmas, staring C. Thomas Howell, Tom
Arnold and Brooke Langton.

Movie description and trailer can be found here:
http://okmusic.fm/events/chilly_christmas

Upload your submissions from July 6, 2012 at 6:00am(PST) ~ July 16, 2012
at 4:00am (PST) and for the possibility to have your song chosen by the
director of Chilly Christmas. This is the opportunity to get your music heard
alongside other major artists, on a scale like never before!
* Submissions must be original work, no covers, re-mixes, etc. **There is no
guarantee that your music will be chosen by the director. ***If your original
work is chosen, there will be no reimbursement.

Get started now and upload your submissions at the Chilly Christmas Contest
page now!
http://okmusic.fm/events/chilly_christmas

Let's try to wound a few eh lads?

While I'm having a pop at the police, have you noticed how they always seem to shoot the 'gunman' dead (whether or not he turns out to be an actual gunman) during those armed sieges you get once in a while? They never seem to wound them these days. I'm not saying the police have a shoot to kill policy but I would like to see a few armed sieges resolved with someone being hauled off to court (via hospital would be acceptable) rather than dead. It may be that death is what notches the stories up the news agenda so I don’t see the non fatalities so much - but they’d surely make the local news? Just saying…let’s try to wound a few eh lads?

A proportionate reaction then...in a bag...

If I was a terrorist I guess I’d have a list of possible targets. Clearly there are ‘prestige’ buildings that if I successfully attacked would attract a lot of attention (assuming that’s what I wanted). There are also high profile individuals and facilities and so on. But bang at the top of my list would obviously be setting off a home-made slow burning bomb in a carrier bag on the cheap bus service from Preston.

I heard a spokesman say that the reaction of the emergency services to an electronic cigarette on the bus from Preston was ‘proportionate’. Yeah right. Decontamination areas, military personnel, police dog handlers, firefighters, armed police and other specialist units apparently. Not to mention searching everyone and closing the motorway for four hours (imagine what would happen to me if I closed a motorway by dicking about to no effect for 4 hours!) And more police and fire vehicles than you thought existed in the world. Give a load of blokes the chance to dress up and order people about and generally go into publicly funded drama queen mode and they'll just love it. And afterwards they can be really pompous and self righteous and refuse to admit that they cocked up big-time. They look like bloody seven year olds…Unless this was cooked up as a rehearsal of course.

Thing is that the whole anti-terror shenanigans is gigantically rubbish on the value for money front anyway. I’m not saying that you should always work every cost out according to how many people are actually saved from death or injury or whatever but there are so many things that could be done with the money that would save more lives –Road safety? Safety at work? The starving millions?

Firstbus driver training

While I'm on about Firstbus, I have one of my usual suggested additions to their driver training course...

...If you see someone running diagonally across the road towards your bus in the rain looking like they're going to run right at you, they're probably just a mad person. Who knows what they might be thinking.

Sure it's raining and they're on foot and there isn't another bus even due for half an hour (if it's running at all) but what other explanation could there possibly be for someone running towards your bus like that? They'll be as mad as those people who stand in rows at those metal posts at the side of the road who wave at you after you drive past. There are so many mad people out there.

To be fair, not all Firstbus drivers are like this, just too bleedin' many...

It's them again...

Further to my complaint to Firstbus about their inability to run a bus service resulting in me having to walk home more than 3 miles from town recently...Well, I did get an apology. It kind of read 'driver sick, blah blah, vandalism blah, late running blah blah, roadworks blah blah'.

Here are a couple of things they didn't say but are certainly true - well, they certainly don't seem to be offering me any money back for a start. They blithely say that they 'could not provide any immediate replacement drivers' without saying why. I think I know why, it's because it costs money to provide relief drivers and this might rather thin out their cash cow if they did. They mentioned the Woodpecker junction roadworks which have apparently been 'having a serious affect on our services'. This'll be the junction that the traffic was flowing through easily as I walked it. The same junction that slows the buses going the other way by a couple of minutes in the rush hour and the way I was going not at all so far as I've noticed.

Anyway, if you know anything about Firstbus or use the buses at all you'll know that they're well, a bit rubbish at running a 'service'. This is because they're not really trying to. Running a service (which, incidentally is good for the local economy and all that) costs money but they're profit driven and not service driven. And they charge a lot.

So long as we get the trams at the end of our raod by the end of 2007 as promised I'll be happy...Doh!

Cuddly Cuddly Cuddly

Gogs the Whole Sky Monitor drummer is “the drummer from Cud”! I’d forgotten this reference. It was used in the NME years back to slag off indie-ness and to denote thirdrate-ness of the 'bloke in a band' variety. And now Gogs our drummer (i.e. Whole Sky Monitor's drummer) is that man! He’s been on tour being, er the drummer from Cud!

I should mention that Gogs is not third rate...(insert your own joke here anyone who knows him)

Brest of Bittish

Telling you a bit late now really but I missed the old Jubilee thing (by being out of the country on holiday - best thing to do of course). When I got back in 'the aftermath' everyone in the big supermarket (Tescos since you ask, home of the indestructable cheese) was racing around like idiots buying improbable amounts of ‘stuff’.

The only difference to the ‘normal’ universe I’m used to was that all the stuff they were buying had a Union Jack printed on it (pedants may tell me that it’s the Union flag not the Union Jack or something but who cares really…) How British can all that stuff actually be?

I think the answer is ‘this is the sort of stuff that the British buy, so let’s put a flag on it’. If you thought I was cynical, may I present Capitalism!

Hypno gastric band

I saw an advert for the 'hypno-gastric band' in a free mag today. I'd have been so pleased if it had been a bunch of spooky fat men. But it's clearly not. Thing is that I thought that fitting a gastric band was a major operation involving y'know, hospital and surgeons and whatnot. So how on earth can you fit one by hypnosis!?

I think the answer is that 2 of the 3 words they use to describe their thang are nonsense. You don't. It's not a gastric band at all.

I want a hypno electric drill...

Like, 2 whole hours man!

Hey! I just played for over 2 hours at Kirstall Abbey without repeating myself! Blimey, that looks like a Tweet doesn't it?

I was doing the 'busking' thang (which isn't busking really as I pretty much only do me own stuff and don't do requests of any kind - just so as you know...) I think I played everything off my 'A' list and most things on the 'B' and 'C' lists. The idea is to kind of stay 'match fit' (ish) for future gigs. I did have the crutch of a music stand with some lyrics on though, so I suppose that's a bit of a cheat. I didn't use it for any of the A list though.

Got there a bit late due to a broken door lock and a missing music stand. Anyway...I played songs (2 covers to be fair, actually 3...) for over 2 hours and didn't run out. This isn't much of a big deal for a 'hardworking band' but it's a lot for me. So there! I would have carried on but it rained at the end (heavily) and my gazebo was invaded.

OK, so I might have found that para button - which I may have to re-set for every post...we'll see...

Paragliding

I'm getting really annoyed with Blogger as it won't show spaces between paragraphs. I've searched 'help topics' and whatnot but can't find anything - this is rubbish!

It's them again...

This isn't much fun I know but here's my (very measured I felt) complaint to Firstbus from today...My personal theory is that the drivers get behind schedule so they let them turn off the lights and bugger off back to the depot to avoid paying them overtime. There's often a 40 minute gap in the period between the daytime and evening timetable. So you wait 45 minutes for a bus that's supposed to be 'every 10 minutes or less' just as everyone is trying to get home and when one does finally arrive it sits there waiting for time, it being, presumably, the first bus of the evening timetable.

They can blame the traffic all they want but I think someone should make them act like they had some responsibility to run a service and to get people to the places they've usually already paid to get to. I hate Firstbus and their contempt for anything but making money out of their monopoly service...Anyway,like I say, I thought this very polite - think of what I could have said!

Dear Firstbus. I bought a Dayrider today - and have just walked all the way home from the Headrow in Leeds City Centre! I wanted to get a 49, 50 or 50A bus but you weren't running any.

I got into town at about 6.30pm (changing from a number 2 from Middleton) and walked along the route (which I know well) until getting home (about 5 minutes from the nearest stop on Easterly Road) at just before 8 o'clock. In all that time not a single bus passed me. I waited for short periods at the Playhouse, Quarry House, St James's, the end of Harehills Road and the bottom of Easterly Road. There were even buses showing as being due (eventually) on the 'TV' screens but none arrived and none passed me.

Even following the evening timetable there should have been at least 4 buses in this time! Too often there's a gap of around 40 minutes between buses at this time of day (and sometimes buses that had clearly been on the route are suddenly 'out of service' despite the fact there hasn't been one for ages) but this was an exception even by your low standards.

I know there will be traffic problems etc that you can't predict but there were certainly no road delays along this route between town and Dib Lane. I think you should run a regular service and I think you should run all the buses on the timetable. It surely must be possible to get relief buses running or relief drivers called in or whatever.

I don't think having a gap in the timetable for an hour and more when people are trying to get home is acceptable. I bought a Dayrover with the reasonable expectation that there would be buses running along this route at a busy time of day to get me home. This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happenend and I'm fed up of it. I don't want to be offensive but I think this is taking the Mickey.

I think you should at least give me part of my Dayrider money back. That cost me £4.60 on bus 37116 (service 13) at 8.39am - tkt no 34077.

Yours sincerly

John Parkes

Bloody Blogger!

Shit! They've been messing about with Blogger and I can't find anything. And gaps between paragraphs don't seem to be possible anymore. Why can't people stop changing stuff and pretending it's 'improvement'

Cheese, Doctor Tesconstein?

I thought we had a rogue batch of Tesco’s ‘Value’ cheddar cheese recently but it turns out that Tesco’s ordinary ‘Mild Cheddar’ is also weird and unnatural.

Thing is that Tesco’s cheese appears to be indestructible and could perhaps be used as a building material in sub-Saharan Africa. IT WILL NOT MELT! On toast it sits there and goes brown but stays stubbornly in the shape in which it was cut. Cut it into small chunks and boil it up with milk in a saucepan and you get white sauce with rubbery chunks in. Try making cheese sauce in the microwave and the milk boils away while the cheese sits there like rubber coated single Lego bricks. I guess this means that the emulsifier is cheaper than the cheese (as well as being indestructible). Or that Tesco’s customers have been complaining that their cheese keeps kind of like, melting on their ass and this is kind of like, bad? But I’ve lived for decades with the belief that cheese is something that melts when heat is applied. And now the rules have changed and I'm left angry and confused.

Another plank of what I had fondly believed was 'reality' is torn apart by capitalism. Mind you, I’ve also believed that politics was about changing things and that unopenable packaging would give way to practical, ergonomic designs. And I still know people who think that ‘juice drink’ is juice and that what appear to be slices of ham (or whatever) are actual slices of ham (or whatever). To finish on an optimistic note, I did have the little red stripey bit successfully open a KitKat once...

Hold the bus!

Yikes! Freaky! If you’re a bus user you’ll know that feeling when a bus engine stops. There’s a shudder, an unnatural silence and a slight feeling of dread. It generally means the driver will soon appear on the stairs to tell you why the bus isn’t going any further and you’ve got to get off and wait for the next one or whatever. On occasion the bus driver stalls the bus. When it happens more than once you sit there and wait for the driver to make a call and give up because there’s summat wrong with the bus. You feel like the steerage passengers on the Titanic who have realised that the engines have stopped (see, I told you the engine had stopped!) and that they can’t necessarily believe the reassurances anymore.

Anyway, yesterday I got on a bus and it kept stalling. All the time. After a while I realised it was one of those clever engines that stops at traffic lights to save fuel. So that’s good really. However, like a 2 year old who keeps jumping at every bang on bonfire night I couldn’t shake the feeling of ‘oh bugger, I’m going to have to get off the bus’ every time it happened. It was just weird and unnatural. This was of course a posh bus. I should have known that the posh bus would be on the X98 route from Wetherby and not the scum buses they run from where I live. But perhaps it’s to do with the fact that it’ll stop less on route so it makes more sense to use clever engine stop bus on this route. Nothing to do with a poorer service for the poor areas. Maybe.

But don’t go running away with the idea that I’m being easy on Firstbus. They still just stop all the buses that are running late during the rush hour so there’s a 40 minute wait until the evening timetable kicks in and they can run the usual 50% of the buses that are scheduled. Then of course that bus waits for time everywhere because it’s the first one to be running to timetable. So it sits there with 500 people on it while the other buses put up the ‘out of service’ sign and bugger off back to the depot. This clearly saves Firstbus money. Still, we’ll have trams down the end of our road by the end of 2007. And if that goes tits up we’ll at least have the cut-price trolleybus. Or maybe we’ll just have toss all…

Baby, you're moving way too fast!

There’s been a lot of talk about petrol prices recently. People want the government to cut the duty, delay increased duty, release stocks and whatever else. It's damaging the recovery / economy blah blah blah. Well I have a way you can cut 15% off your fuel costs, particularly on long journeys – JUST SLOW DOWN!

I drove darn sarf this last weekend and got well over 50 mpg both ways (in a 7 year old Ford Focus C-Max fact fans - not very rock and roll I know...) I’ve experimented with this. Driving at a steady 65ish I get about 43 mpg on a jourey over about 50 miles. At 50-55 I can get about 51-52 mpg. That’s more than 15% less fuel. So if you’re paying £1.40 a litre, take the equivalent of about 22p a litre off. On me. For free. JUST SLOW DOWN! It takes a bit longer but what’s so important about what you’re up to anyway, bloody Jeremy Clarkson? Just cruise along between 50 and 55 mph, take it easy, reduce the stress.

Here’s the disappointing thing though. Everyone is, so they say, suffering from high fuel prices, no-one has enough money for petrol, everyone is hurting apparently - yet everyone has got money to burn up and down the motorway at 70 mph.

Guess how many other people joined me saving a pile of money in the slow lane? About 2 other people. over 2 days driving maybe half a dozen. Weirdos. Like me. No-one else gives a toss about the environment or their own pocket. They're too busy racing to the next gridlock. Or they're stupid and / or ignorant. I find this really depressing.

So next time you hear about people not having any money or being forced by PC governments to be ‘green’ and how the nanny state is taking over and all that stuff just remember – people in cars have money to burn and they don’t give a toss. You're one of them probably - and you're an idiot!

Tickled pink

Down Leeds Market today there was a stallholder shouting out “Maungy Twats, 3 for a quid!”

This amused me no end.

If you were wondering – I think it was packets of mange tout he was flogging.

The right sort of chaps!

Talking of Nelson Mandela...If you ever start thinking that Mister Cameron and his ilk seem OK sorts of chaps I'd like to remind you of something.

Back in the 80s you'd see Conservative students (and other Tories no doubt) walking about in 'Hang Nelson Mandela' badges. I wonder if they'll be wearing them at his funeral? I wonder if anyone has any pictures of members of the current government wearing said badge? - I bet some of 'em did! Point this out and I bet they'd be mortally offended.

I think this is illustrative of the modern Conservative Party. They were students then, they're in goverment now.

Chavs - Read it!

Here's a simple one...Read 'Chavs, the Demonization of the Working Class' by Owen Jones. In my opinion it's around 97% spot on. It rings with the sound of nails being hit on the head. It really is about bloody time somebody said this stuff.

I have a couple of tiny criticisms. But then I bet Nelson Mandela picks his nose or something so let's stay with the big picture - read it! Forget the 3%, get fired up by the 97%.

Autobot Unmoved...

I replied briefly to the email advert from Vistaprint. In response to their invitation to "Make your own home stationary" I replied "My home is already stationary thanks" and signed it.

I was rather hoping for a confused reply - but of course they only send out emails and don't reply to them as is the modern way. Actually, I did get a reply from their 'autoresponder' suggesting I call customer services. I am tempted, but I have fluff to pick out of my navel - I nearly put 'naval' for a joke. I found a Youtube clip on 'Naval piercing'. Gawd preserve us.

I'm paranoid now that I sound like Mister Cleverclogs the spelling nerd. I return to my original point though that a stationery company should be able to spell the word stationery...