Daily Express
May 17 2013

“My job used to be finding good singers. Now I just have to find good-looking singers.”

A music producer talking to the inventor of Auto-tune. Seventeen years of cheating or a creative tool.

Source

 As my partner commented quoting Dr Fox’s ill advised autocue reading on Brass Eye “There’s no scientific proof for it but it is fact” .

The BBC slightly blurring the line between news and fiction when listed under the most read items of the day.

It’s hard to wipe from my memory the time I found approximately twenty sachets of medicinal powders intended to help ease constipation wrapped tightly in a rubber band in my bag with the attached note from my Mum saying “thought you might find these useful”. It makes me wonder sometimes quite what my parents think of me let alone the possibility that I may give the distinct impression to anybody that meets me that constipation may be a large part of my life’s journey.

The latest booty is presented here…

An unused miniature shoe polisher circa who knows when), Two unused complimentary matches, one from The Scarlet Coat Restaurant in Bristol (circa 70′s?)and the other from The Green Park Hotel Harrogate (circa early 80′s?).

I managed to avoid a 1990′s vintage edition of the Viking Direct catalogue on this occasion.

It’s been a long time since ITV got serious about weekday comedy. Vicious has seemed to divide opinion. It feels old fashioned in many ways. Some are uncomfortable with Derek Jacobi’s decision to play it screamingly camp and there was in the very first episode a very poorly judged gag about being raped uttered by Francis de la Tour’s character.

That aside it’s a campy bit of fun with two very well known actors, Sir Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi, who also happen to be gay playing a long term gay couple with bitchy lines for laughs. It’s a series of very fixed scenes. Very much like watching a play. So it’s old fashioned in that sense but why blow the budget on elaborate exterior scenes when it’s all about the verbal wordplay between two people.

Shame about the call on the rape line.That really was out of order for me.  But so far it’s way better than the lamentable The Wright Way, Ben Elton’s latest offering over on the Beeb which really does smell of old mothballs (sorry Mr E- time to collaborate perhaps?).

I often have a lot of appreciation for somebody that ploughs their own furrow artistically. I was reminded of Sexton Ming via a Resonance FM podcast recently.

Ooookaaay.

The Northampton Chronicle and Echo
Apr 11 2013

It would seem that Northampton council have been using a council flat to store tools for eight years. Makes a mockery of the bedroom tax somewhat. Only discovered due to a freedom of information request seeming.

Source

My ongoing recent musical choices from Thisismyjam. Yes my musical choices are that questionable. Feel free to say hello if you’re on there.

I finally got around to backing up my old Posterous blog contents in advance of their closure at the end of the month. It was fun while it lasted but I’ll probably integrate the contents into this blog eventually. Goodbye Posterous. You took the money and ran. That seems to be all it’s about these days.

Mind you it’s a salutary reminder not to rely too heavily on services that can all too easily be withdrawn whether it’s for email, blogs or online storage. 

Still at least they made the download available. So many services just assume all our content belongs to them.

I’ll put the contents in the fridge for now.

Back in the 80s I can recall reading a snippet about a service in the United States that allowed the embedding of a small TV monitor in a burial headstone that could be activated to play a piece of video that told the tombstone curious about the life of the deceased. No doubt an unwieldy and costly service back then when screens were not flat and storage media was tape or a bespoke laserdisc.

Now it strikes me that narcissism can outlive death as our digital footprints leave their indentation on the beach of online data where they are gradually eroded by the continual tidal impact on new daily information or preserved by loved ones left behind. A family legacy that can’t be hauled along to the Antiques Roadshow for valuation- “I found this in the attic but have no idea what it is”…”I believe these were called memory sticks and people once saved their private information on them”…”private information? Gosh. How quaint”.

Surely a modern equivalent to the TV-in-a-headstone would be a url or better still a QR code engraved into the headstone.

Either way our inconsequential thoughts live on long after our physical presence has withered away.

Image by Karthic R via this creative commons licence