Anna Nicole Shitty Music

Today I'm going to talk mainly about my favourite place in the world: Britain. Britain has been called many things: a far-away colony, a damp little island, an empire, THE empire, and my personal favourite:

Britain, Britain, Britain. Why would you ever want to leave? Anybody who goes on holiday abroad is a traitor! I bloody love it here! Bloody love it! We produce the best films, the finest cuisines and our dogs are relatively rabies free. And this is all thanks to the peoples of Britain. Let us look at them in this program in which we now look at them now. Boom, boom, shake the room! - Tom Baker

That is an introduction from an episode of the hit sketch comedy show Little Britain. As noted heavily in the show, Britain is full not only of culture and history, but also idiots. Case in point: This news story from Britain's Guardian newspaper. Following on the heels of the Jerry Springer opera, which was the subject of an asinine obscenity lawsuit, one of the creators has decided to make a musical about Anna Nicole Smith's life. My only response is "ALKDSJFAKLSJDFALKSDFALKS" as that is what happens when I bash my head upon my desk without first moving my computer out of the way.

I'm glad I don't have to say, "This has got to be the stupidest idea for a musical ever," because I already know about the Jerry Springer and Batboy musicals (which incidentally had a long run on the West End). Granted, apart from stupid shit like this, the West End has Shakespeare plays and long-established old-ass musicals that most people have seen in one way or another before. When I was there, I saw Chicago and Fame, both of which are American. I didn't see any Shakespeare because ... well, I'm an idiot. I went for the cheap and easy ones I already knew about instead of LEARNING something about acting.

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Other topic: Who doesn't know "Muzak"? It's a widely-known term for that crappy music they play at every department store, mall, grocery store, and most other public places. They used to play instrumental shitty versions of shitty pop songs, until they got the idea to play the shitty songs themselves. They are the reason you hear crap like the Dawson's Creek song in the mall, and ... probably the only reason anyone under the age of should-be-dead-by-now heard even one Barry Manilow song before he started getting blown by Pop Idol contestants. At the risk of ripping off Best Musical Ever Sweeney Todd, "But not for long ... "

Muzak, based in North Carolina (reason 47,827 not to visit the American South), has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Apparently they owe between $100m and $500m. The CEO believes this will give the company* the chance to regain control of their finances and continue torturing people with good taste worldwide. Or, the way it was put in El Reg: Muzak says that its "sensory experiences" reach 100 million people each day. That should be a fucking war crime.


*hideous conglomeration of auditory shit
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Now playing: Dogma Free America - Episode 76.5--Dogma Free America
via FoxyTunes

iTunes-related OCD

I'm not really sure what gets into me sometimes. Every so often I will be in an excessively weird mood. I just finished organising, collectivising, and Album-artworking my iTunes library.

Yes, iTunes automatically organises tracks and downloads album artwork, but I listen to enough slightly obscure stuff that iTunes doesn't know where to find the artwork. Not to mention tracks I get from friends, from mix tapes, improperly labelled tracks, and really old random techno music from my first year in university, when I downloaded most things that popped up when I searched "techno" (half of that shit has never been properly labelled).

So anyway, I was organising, artworking, etc. I have no idea what causes me to do this. Is it because I just ripped a Black Sabbath album and it couldn't find the artwork? That makes sense; I had to go find it anyway, so I might as well keep wiki-searching and GISing all the other stuff. But that's not it, because when I put the entire Star Wars Trilogy of NPR dramas, I didn't think to properly title the tracks or relabel each disc so I only had one bit of artwork for the whole thing (instead of Star Wars The Radio Drama 1, it would be Star Wars The Radio Drama). (This blog is shaping up to be exciting as fuck this year, innit?) For Talib Kweli's Beautiful Struggle I got it from a friend, and some of the tracks weren't titled, and it took me six months to title them.

I guess I get into organisational moods, rather than being organised all the time. This makes me wonder if my New Year's Resolution to save receipts that could conceivably be work- or school-related so as to tax-deduct them will amount to anything past this weekend? I mean, I manage to let the dishes pile up in the sink until there aren't any cups and I want a glass of milk, I let the dustbin overflow until I have more than one aluminium can to throw away, and let's not even talk about the state of the floors in my flat. But every couple of weeks (sometimes once a month, it depends) I will go NUTS with cleaning.

This could be why I never gave a shit at Best Buy. When we were slow, they had us dust whatever surface we could find. We were occasionally so slow we had to dust the pegs upon which things hung. PEGS! Things that have next to no surface area on which dust can collect! And yet, we were supposed to dust them. I never got into it. I always half-assed the job, even after having to do it every day one week. I just didn't give a shit. Meanwhile, at my current job, I'll pile up returns on the small counter space until I can't put anything else there, and then when I get a free moment, I'll move that shit to where it belongs.

I'm not sure how it works, but maybe it has to do with it being on my computer. I flip out if I can't permanently delete things. I'm constantly trying to keep my hard disk more than 50 GB free. The only cleaning items I buy and use reliably are monitor wipes and canned air.

Or it could be that Liz was playing the second most boring bit of KOTOR II again and I needed something to occupy my fingers and brain.

How are the mighty fallen

I want to hang Paul McCartney.

In my defence, this is not a recent development. I've wanted to hang that twit since I first heard "Hey Jude" and "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" back to back. But his latest album, Memory Almost Full just takes the di'kutla cake.

The only reason I have any measure of familiarity with any of his post-Beatles work aside from the Christmas song he did, Live and Let Die, and Band on the Run is because I work at a bookshop. We have a very large CD collection as well though, and we have a muzak system. We used to be able to select our music based on whether it was something we liked and thought other people would like as well. Lately, we got a new manager who believes we should only play between four to six tracks from a selected twelve albums.

This would be okay to me if it was shuffled. I've made mix tapes with less diversity than our current playlist. However, all selections are played in 4-6 song blocks, which repeat in the same order. Which brings me to Sir Paul. Macca's latest album is one of the twelve current discs in the cycle. He's got a few decent songs on the record, but not the track our Macca Block starts with. This track is titled "Nod Your Head".

An iTunes search reveals "Nod Your Head" is also the title of songs by Will Smith, Ava Johnson, 617, Spun, the Kongregashun, and Neph-U feat. Dem Hoodstars. I would not listen to ANY of them. Macca's is no different. Contrary to my desire to avoid the hell out of this song, I will include lyrics to illustrate my point.

If you really love me baby
Better than staying in bed
If you really love me baby
Nod your head

...

Nod it up
Nod it down
Side to side
Round and round

What the hell happened?!

I'm not saying Macca knows how to write good lyrics. I never would say that, for want of never being called a stupid fucking liar. All you have to do is listen to "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime" and you'll know "Nod Your Head" is kind of a step up. But I honestly think it's a direct result of giving up drugs. That or it's a leftover of all the drugs. I'm betting the latter, honestly, because "Yesterday" was good. "Ob-la-di" was when we knew it was all going to end in tears. But "Nod Your Head" is simply inexcusable. Its only saving grace is that it's two minutes long. But that doesn't help, because next in the queue is "House of Wax", which is all manner of cliché.

Just retire, old man. Even Pete Townsend doesn't make new music anymore. He knows he's past making anything good, and he never made anything particularly great in the first place. Just effing retire.