Showing posts with label American Horror Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Horror Story. Show all posts

Friday 4 December 2020

Here Comes The Rain Again

Today has been cold and miserable out , persistent precipitation that just makes it uncomfortable to be out. Today I took a day off work , got a haircut from my local Turkish Barber Skin Fade which apparently refers to a hair styling technique and Ahmet gave me some very nice Turkish Delight which I have already partaken of.

Today has seen me finish off American Horror Story:Freaks which , although there is a lot of graphic violence as generally more a tragedy than a horror story , despite having the scariest clown I know , and the finale was actually quite uplifting (I think) . I am watching "Prodigal Son" with Michael Sheen sort of stealing it amid a brilliant cast and have now started on "The Frankenstein Chronicles" which is wandering the realms of "Ripper Street".

"Coldheart Canyon" is now finished and I don't remember the rather quiet but still decent ending of another excellent Clive Barker novel. The next one is "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg" by Philip Jose Farmer , a book which I have totally forgotten reading but the title gives you clues.

The rain is still falling and there are rumours of snow, although I haven't seen any yet.

I just realised that because I have had a relatively restful day , I can actually do a blog post and am under no pressure to get up early tomorrow and it is nice to feel completely unpressured.

So I am just left to choose a song to go with this and the simplest option is to go with the Eurythmics one that I stole the title from.

Saturday 28 November 2020

Positively Negative


 For the first time in a long time the temperature was negative this morning, according to my Google Pixel -4˚ Centigrade , there was ice on the car windscreens, and it was inviting me to go out for a walk. I did go out tonight and it was 3˚ Centigrade but actually felt quite warm , and it was 7˚ higher than this morning, but we are not in December yet and I'm not sure if Autumn has become Winter yet , although this tells me that the seasons start o, the appropriate Solstice and Equinox days so Winter starts in about three weeks time on the 21st of December.

Normally by this time I am in bed but need to use the alarm on my phone to get me up tomorrow and it was down to 20% so thought thought I would pen a few lines while it charges.I have also watched the second "Borat" movie which is enjoyably subversive and working my way through American Horror Story:Freaks which is excellent but essentially a tragedy about exploitation, when I finish it that will be up to date on all released series of the show.

Some of the music has been rather good although seventies and eighties classics sit oddly with the fifties timeframe of the series, but go well nevertheless.

So musicwise I have been listening to Thin Lizzy , Stats Quo amd Curved Air on vinyl so will go with "The Rocker" by Thin Lizzy which has one of the best blockriffs (that's a riff played with chords rather than notes) you will ever here. Listen and enjoy Thin Lizzy from their Decca years.

Saturday 17 October 2020

Galivantisation

That word came into my head today, for no particular reason and is probably something to do with the transition for ordered movement to frivolous galivanting. New words are being aded to dictionaries all the time and old ones are being dropped.

I'm quite surprised that I am writing this at quarter to midnight on a Friday night , after a fairly uneventful week, apart form getting the hang of Power Query and using it properly , watching series 1 of "Cobra Kai" which is excellent , and going through the first series of "American Horror Story:Murder House" which is extremely inventive given the limited nature of it's subject.

Tonight I watched "Des" the story of Denis Nilsen , which was unnervingly excellent with David Tennant's Nilsen both reminding me of a work colleague as he talked matter of factly about his murders, it's almost funny , then you realise this happened, reminds me a bit of the intro to "The Death of Stalin", I had the same reaction there.

October has been very sparse for postings , but if you have nothing to write about you have nothing to write about.

I've done little walking, and need to do a final lawn mow for the year if we get a few dry days.

My NAS Network disk I think is dead, so I am going to have a play over the weekend to try and revive, but if not that's my digital music and video collection gone, although I do have backups so it's just a question of setting up a new DNLA server (I sound like I know what I'm talking about). While I did wire all the digital stuff in the house, to me it's just a load of plugs and wires.

I've been listening to a Cherry Red compilation today and it's going for £100 on Amazon, but it's only worth that if someone will pay for it. Anyway I've chosen "XOYO" by The Passage from it which I loved when first heard it on the "Pillows and Prayers" compilation back in th eeighties.

Saturday 9 September 2017

Connections - Would You Push The Button?


Just finished "Escape From LA" and started watching "American Horror Story:Cult" . Both feature an idiot, semi theocratic American President (one has a Trump like character the other has Trump) and at the end of "Escape From LA" Snake Plisken has the opportunity to destroy all electronics (and by logical progression banks and the way society is run) and send the world back five hundred years.

When you see the hysteria and fright and Trump's election victory you feel the world is coming to an end.

Would you press that button? No one would die .. immediately .. but would you want to go back to before computers existed?

To some that would be very tempting. Debts and fortunes would be wiped out. Tracking of personal data would be gone. We would have to start with pencil and paper on everything.

Seriously though I would be tempted I would be too scared of losing all the good things along with the bad things. Think how health and life expectancy has improved. Would you want to lose that , and the conveniance of power at the flick of a switch?

I think not , but if that decision was in the hands of a thoroughly disillusioned person , they just might.

Kate Tempest's "Don't Fall In" is appropriate for these observations. Sorry if I have depressed or upset you but the leaders of the UK and the USA don't exactly inspire me at the moment. Hopefully this will change sooner rather than later.


Somewhat Unusual


Nothing major but I had completed my steps by about two of the clock today without really trying to do any walking, I really wish I could do this every day as part of my routine, so that I didn't really notice I was doing it.

I amd still reading the Jordan Ellenberg book but it is more about poll s and statistics and the only relationship with maths is that numbers are used in both areas .

As I write this I am listening to my favourite Jean Michelle Jarre album "Equinoxe" with an 'e' on the end but he is French in the best possible way. The son of Maurice Jarre the film composer (who is responsible for a hell of a lot of major film scores from "Lawrence of Arabia" to "Ghost") so music runs in the family. I remember seeing the Millenium Concert in Egypt with Giant Penguins and lots of other idiosyncracies (is that the way you spell it, the spell checker seems to be on leave at the moment). I don't know if it's available to buy but I have included the Youtube video , two and a half hours if you have an evening or train journey to spare.

Anyway Todays album of the day was "Ooh La La" by The Faces, while some of the songs are dated by the time "Silicone Grown", "Just A Honky" lyrically dodgy but musically excellent , others stand the test of time very well such as the title track , "Cindy Incidentally" and "Flags and Banners".

So anyway it's time for tea and to finish "Escape From LA" before starting the lastest "American Horror Story". That's my Saturday evening sorted, hope yours is great too.

Sunday 13 November 2016

Rush Makes Formula One Watchable - #ALifeInNumbers #50



Well it's Sunday evening and this weekend has included a lot of catch up TV mostly involving lot's of gore, violence , and shouting, but that's enough about the election fallout. Though the reality has been American Horror Story (Roanoke not  the election) , Ripper Street , Arrow and the excellent Rush about Niki Lauda and James Hunt. I must say I do find Formula One (and virtually anything that has things running round a track) incredibly tedious but Rush is a truly wonderful film.

The weather has been most depressing, drizzling greyness and I have a garden covered in leaves that I could do with clearing but it's far too wet to do anything with it, and as it is going dark at around 4 pm I'm not sure I will get to do it til next weekend.

So back to #ALifeInNumbers and we hit 50 today. I am sure there are lots of possibilities but I have gone for the raucous "50 Foot Queenie" by Polly Jean Harvey. It's her second entry but she is one of my favourite singers, and this will certainly blow any cobwebs away. Not music to drift off too, but it's something from one of our most original talents.

So enjoy the weekend as it drifts away and prepare yourself for the challenges of this week.

Thank you for reading my friends and feel free to follow me by email.


Friday 28 October 2016

Copping Out With The Electric Light Orchestra - - #ALifeInNumbers #38



When I'm tagging posts I am sometimes very surprised at the things I've written about. Going back I find some very short posts , maybe about twenty words. The thing is a blog is a diary and sometimes you may not have much to say but still want to record it for one reason or another. Here is my first ever post that states what I wanted to do with this blog and I think it's grown a bit since then and now each post gets around fifty hits which is nice (though I don't know how many are robots). I love it that a core of friends visit and so are reading my thoughts and putting me right when I need it.

Anyway we  hit number 38 and this is one of the many cop outs as Dave pointed out, but this one was decided fairly early on, and it's an amazing record, which I bought as soon as I heard it. The Electric Light Orchestra was conceived by Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood to continue where the Beatles left off after "Strawberry Fields" and "A Day In The Life" which was rock and popular music where the orchestra became and integral part of the piece.

The Electric Light Orchestra are responsible for what is still my second favourite album ever "El Dorado" and that was after Roy Wood had departed but prior to them hitting paydirt with "A New World Record" and "Out Of The Blue"

Anyway the song I've chosen is "10538 Overture"  because it does contain "38". It starts with that huge descending guitar arpeggio / riff  (lifted by Paul Weller for "Changing Man") then joined by the muscular string section (led by a hirsute Roy Wood on Cello if I remember rightly).  So you can enjoy this , because this is what the ELO were formed for, but I think they lost their way after "Face The Music" The video is from 1972, and the masks are very worrying given that I've been watching the current series of American Horror Story (My Roanoke Nightmare).

Anyway this month has seen the most posts I've ever done in one month and there's still three more days to go. So have a great Friday my friends, the weekend is almost here.