scottyboy

...Or the weekend after. Anyway: (I listened to each track probably a couple of times piecemeal and not really in order.) Home is the pick of the bunch, as is, for me. It has a strong Elliot Smith vibe (well, I had one album of his); the guitar sounds are all pleasant and fit together nicely, and the soft vocals just gel in a way that they don’t on the other tracks. The strumming, which could otherwise get repetitive, is broken up nicely by the more post-rock swells (maybe something to look at for the other tracks, see further down). Warpaint has the most potential for me, and maybe the most to critique. I like the guitar work: it’s pretty powerful sounding and atmospheric over the whole track. The vocals, not so much: at some points the lilt of the vocals hit nicely, but most of the time the lo-fi half-spoken sounds don’t gel with this big, pretty slick sound-scape, and are a distraction. Maybe you can improve the performance and/or tweak the vocals to more occasional ornamentation, but I think this is the one that could most use outside help - a singer; or keys might work as an alternative lead. Similar is Roses, The Roses, although not as extreme (compared to Warpaint): the sounds are nice, but not quite as potent and epic; while the vocals are not great, but not as much of an annoyance. A few similar criticisms for the other tracks. Parts of The Great Wave scream like you’re channelling the Hendrix-mode chord melody (or chords and melody) thing, then it veers of into pretty insipid strumming and vocal-led singer-songwriter territory. And You again has not unpleasant but too-repetitive strumming and not enough movement in the chords, nor in the structure/ general vibe. Tried a Little Witchcraft is similar-ish: the first half of this is, personally, pretty much a dirge and probably my least favourite part of the album. The guitar freakout that comes in brings in some welcome soul, but doesn’t go far enough for me. I think you should maybe go all Dave Navarro and just let rip. No? Maybe build up some of the wider soundscapes of the other tracks; either way, going back to those arpeggios just when the track seems to have gotten going feels like a lame anticlimax. Iron - the lyrics here are intriguing, but again the strumming, while initially nice enough, quickly bores, along with the unvarying vocal style. The Words - This has a somewhat different feel (you mentioned doing more of this as a separate project). There’s a bit too much distortion, and whatever other filtering, on this, for my taste; and the vocals sound suspiciously like they’re just being buried. There are some pleasant guitars - with the FX dialled off a bit and a dedicated singer this could be more listenable, if probably a bit MOR for my liking. * Overall some good stuff, and a lot of potential, for my tastes. My advice would be to maybe get a keyboard if you can’t get a singer (which would seem to be the obvious move, if at all possible). And maybe working on the classic chord melody game (or some Wes-esque bits of jazz; I don’t mean turn into jazz, just some more melody and movement in the chords) could giver the weaker, strummy bits a nice boot up the arse.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/07/sports-direct-agrees-back-pay-deal-with-hmrc-minimum-wage?CMP=fb_gu Some fuel for the Mike Ashley hate fire...

Kimbo Sliced or heart attacked

I've had a listen or two. Not typing my comments up on a tablet, though; probably next weekend.

I've been meaning to resurrect this too, as I've discovered I like podcasts, and that it's hard to find consistently good ones. I don't like monologues either, I don't think, as it seems to be just audio blogging. I was going to recommend Radiolab - its Galapagos episode was one of the first and best I listened to, even though it starts out with about the worst thing (describing a giant tortoise) imaginable for audio-only. I'll plug some other episodes when I'm back at a PC. There's an American football one I remember thinking people on here would like. I also listen to SYSK - there are some great ones (IMO, pretty much stuff Josh, the sharper tool, likes: the environment or space, the Big Bang one being a good example) and a lot of OK ones. The best and most consistently excellent one I've found is called Sinica; but it's "'about' something" ("current affairs in China") and unless you're semi-seriously into it, probably not. A lot of others which are one-offs (in terms of my listening) on particular topics... Maybe a longer shot but taking recommendations on general or serious stuff on Asia, geography, environment, pop (or not so pop depending) other science, history, or maybe just any leads on anything less pop culture or comedy (occasional YouTube stand-up is enough for me).

I'll oblige with a once-over then, as far as I can... I didn't like it much. With just a guitar and vox there's not much to criticise, but the progressions just didn't grab me. It has more of a Green Day vibe, than, I dunno, Hamell on Trial (which is about the only acoustic-punk-social-commentary thing I can reach for that I like; not sure which you're going for). Veering perilously close to just-not-my-cup-of-tea, but it might just be that, there you go... If this is intended for a full electric band I think it might need that on the demo even to get a sense of the final work. Didn't catch much of the detail in the lyrics, but just "Question Everything" seems a bit myopic and ham-fisted - didn't intrigue me much; great lyrics are a bonus for me though, and those alone wouldn't be enough without noises pleasant to my ear.

I've read American Psycho a few times, though not for more than a decade. The first time I was 15, maybe 16, and while I basically got the humour and the point, I didn't really enjoy it - a bit too deadpan over the whole novel and some of the writing (more the sex scenes where no one dies, weirdly) made me legit quesy. I had a flatmate at uni who was a huge fan of the film version and in my last year I read it a couple more times for my dissertation and liked it a lot more - I also just spent a lot of time just picking passages at random and getting lost in them. That passage above in which he's parading around with a severed head on his cock made it in to my undergrad dissertation; can't remember what I said about it... Regards the end: it's pretty much impossible to tell between 1 and 2 (in those spoiler tags). I tend to prefer 2. I don't think 1 even occured to me until the guy I mentioned above pointed it out as the obvious one (in the film version it's a lot more strongly implied that 1 is what's going on, IIRC). Maybe try and check out Glamorama and Imperial Bedrooms if you enjoyed American Psycho. Easton Ellis ended up being one of my favourite writers back in the day, on the strength of American Psycho and Glamorama (which I read just the once, can barely recall at all; but I do remember liking first time and more than American Psycho, initally at least). Imperial Bedrooms is more recent, and short and sweet (or dark and disturbing, but readable). His first couple (less than zero and The Rules of Attraction) I didn't care for.

I saw that people have been saying Bob Hoskins has just died, too; but I remember that one. Not entirely sure what happened with the Harris link, but I think it was just in the sidebar while browsing BBC; I thus assumed it was recent, and it's like a year and a few days old so I didn't notice. And it was 5 am. Oh well.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32495447

I'd hazard that for any one "classic", one can actually find loads of people who think it's shit - e.g. I read Madame Bovary ("an almost perfect novel", says that headteacher in The Sopranos, who gives a copy to Carmella) last year and thought it pretty meritless; while (e.g.) I'd say that The Old Man and the Sea is indeed one of the best English-language pieces ever published. I'd think that the acquisition of "classic" status probably involves acquiring a following of some combination of writers, critics and buyers and maintaining it over time: there's that notorious quote (to which Google is refusing to swiftly give me the person who said it, so maybe it's apocryphal, I dunno), “A classic is any book that stays in print [over say 50-100 years or more]”. That's maybe just parroting what's above; but I'd also say that best-seller and/or critics' darling status isn't essential. Dickens, say, (OK fact check this one) was hugely popular with readers/buyers but not by critics; and conversely, A Confederacy of Dunces, say, wasn't even deemed worthy of publication until well after the author died. (Probably loads of similar examples - e.g. Bach and Shakespeare supposedly not being even celebrities, let alone regarded as the-bestest-evah until after they died). With something like The Old Man and the Sea (and, e.g. Kafka, Carter) there's also the influence they've had, and been able to have in way that others might not. Like Hemmingway's style is stripped down and probably involved keeping it simple and cutting things out. So someone can actively imitate that, keeping it simple and reducing the amount of ink spilt, in his own writing. And contrast that with, say, Martin Amis, or Tom Wolfe, who are virtuoso prose stylists (in terms of wit and so on), and write big tomes which capture the zeitgeist of huge cities (London and New York) from multiple angles and characters (the literary version of The Wire, as think of it) and that's probably a lot harder to incorporate as an influence. Eh, Amis and Wolfe have also written modern classics, but I think the pared-down stylists probably had it easier in terms of attracting followers and imitators. And thus classic status. As you were....

Fair dos. Wiki actually (as I type this...) has him dead (based on CNN and ultimately US officials), as it did when I made the above post; but I did see that when you posted, the death date was gone from Wiki (whilst still talking about him in the past tense, amusingly enough). This being Wiki, people are arguing about it and changing it in real time. Daesh/IS are denying he's dead and have provided some photos which sceptics have stated/shown (I'm not interested/well-informed enough to know which) are years old (if he were alive, he's hardly going to call a press conference and invite CNN, I guess). The US military/intelligence/officials seem convinced they hit and at least vegetebalised him in that airstrike, and that (or because) he literally hasn't been heard from since (seems they intercepted and listened in on his comms as a matter of course) that airstrike, before which they got last minute info about his whereabouts. With Jihadi John there was a few months of silence between the pretty-sure-we-got-him announcements and the obituary from Daesh, so dunno what to make of this. I've very much inclined to think he's dead for real, this time (and tbf apparently he's been falsely reported as dead a few times) contingent on what I said comms/intelligence being legit. Otherwise, interesting point generally - I'd considered putting Mullah Omar (ex-head honcho of the Taliban) on my list for multiple years, but didn't because it seemed he was pretty much like a ghost in how secretive and (presumably, thus) how sheltered he was. And then last year the Taliban came out and said he was dead, the twist in the tale being that he'd died up to, what was it?, 2 years earlier. So what'd have happened if I picked him, say, last year?

Noted the recent discussion about Chinese football and Eupraxia's post in particular, and disagreed that it was really about "industry" and "money"... https://next.ft.com/content/3a4b5e92-e5e4-11e5-bc31-138df2ae9ee6 Skim read this, and there's some talk about "investing in trying to get Chinese fans into pay-per-view-football" but yeah... I'd say the splurging in the Chinese leagues is party the same as corrupt oil barons and sheiks splurging on prestigious playthings/moneysinks in the Premier (and to a lesser extent French?) league(s), except that many Chinese want prestigious things in China, because that's just how they roll; partly because Xi Jingping says he likes football and wants to host, and then win a world cup; and then (the only rational part of all this) is that apparently the J-League, lightweight though it's probably viewed in the West apparently had a A HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS correlation between Japan (national team) going from nobodies to at least regular World Cup fixtures.

Though on that note, Abu Omar al-Shishani is (pretty surely...) dead. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/14/politics/u-s-confirms-death-of-isis-operative-omar-al-shishani/index.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_al-Shishani Definitely had an unnatural causes one now.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35899711 Kapow. Not one of the ones I picked it seems, though.

I have only a few variations. Stuff like this site, Wikipedia, or whichever bullshit needlessly requires a sign-up, I have just the one weak password, sometimes with a number added (if I were to get hacked and my account terminated on any or all of these it wouldn't be a huge deal; nevertheless it's never happened). For my email, banking, etc. luckily I still don't use that many of them (here in Poland everything is done in cash anyway. Pay an electricity bill by direct debit? Mobile phone contract? Ha!), so I have a few variations of l33tsp34k gibberish, sometimes combined for 2-step logins. But yeah, agreed; in not-Poland, too many passwords, too many plastic cards.

Dunno for sure, but yeah, I'd have thought a noise gate to be the simplest solution to this problem. There might be some unwanted side effects, though, depending on what your style is; like if you want ultra-sustain, once the note fade to a certain level (depending on the settings) it'll just cut out.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35739447?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook not dead yet, but...

That email sounds pretty IELTS 5 Polish to me; brutal if that's a native English speaker. Bit late but Student Loans are also a pet hate of mine. If you are overseas and trying to just start paying again, I'd have thought the easiest thing is just to mail them the overseas form with your bank details and let them figure it out. This sets up a direct debit, and supposedly it'll get stopped if you pay everything back (with the UK employer-pays system, people can just keep paying thousands OTT until someone finally notices). I also have no idea how much I still owe them. Once upon a time I could log in to the, I think SAAS website, but not SLC's; it seems to assume that you have an account, and when I still had my student ref no (or whatever) it seemed ready to mail me a forgot-password, but then kept asking security questions about my "spouse", which I don't have, nor have ever had :S. I've actually had a contact email, but like you said it's of no use - I called them once and they pretty stated that they had received email from me and had ignored it, and didn't mention the pointed questions I'd asked them about the website. Imbeciles. These days I just play their preferred bullshit snail mail game. Everything takes months across the continents and half the time goes missing, and I have no idea if they are looking for me or how angry they are, and they don't seem to get anything I send them.

and I'm that Korean girl. At weekends at least.

(I haven't read Battle Royale but) Japanese is notorious for having relatively few sounds and tonnes of homonyms (in actual Japanese one can tell the difference because the logarithmic/"Chinese" characters are different; which obviously get dispensed with in translations).

I've read (finished) 0 thus far

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Scalia

I wavered about wading in back there, and there was maybe a post deleted and everyone converged in the end... but I think a simpler way to have put the black vs white "power" (not that the qualitative contextual and historical arguments don't have merit) is just that the latter is pretty much a euphemism for "white supremacy" (there's also "white nationalism", supposedly more respectable sounding, though sounds pretty transparently vile to me). Whereas "black power" isn't. And then, there is something else called "black supremacy"; nasty in theory but not so scary (to Anglo-Americans anyway) for obvious reasons. [and now I've finished typing this Stroopy might've said the same thing. Oh well.] The Nazi antiques bit I thought was a more interesting discussion. (I've never listened to Motorhead, other than Ace of Spades, and didn't know about his predilection for Nazi stuff.) Pretty much like Alkaline: I think it's perfectly fine to buy Nazi whatever to put in your house for the same reason you might go look at it in a museum: education, and the atmosphere/feeling that comes with seeing physical evidence that this shit all really happened, way before you were here and that it was much bigger than your puny self (and doesn't have to be WWII ofc.). (I think I'll just leave the purely-for-aesthetics question). But putting it on a t-shirt, let alone on your album cover (sans irony, satire, at least), which pretty much anyone is going to take as a statement of some kind... uuuuhhh, no. I don't really agree with Ca-gere's (and maybe Alkaline's) assessment that time elapsed since mentalist-genocidal-conquest is the main factor in whether or not collecting related antiques, propaganda, and whatever other artifacts, is offensive or not. One of them perhaps, but I think bigger ones are geography and cultural perception, who shafted whom (and who benefited or suffered in turn) and who read and got angry about whom/which. And then who you ask. I'd go with Ca-gere on Genghis Khan being a Hitler-league arsehole, but it is possible to make a defensible case otherwise (see bottom. Huge embedded vid. Dunno how to fix. Ouch. Sorry). India is a notorious case of much of the populace thinking Hitler's-not-such-a-bad-guy-really; but here in Poland, they don't exactly view him as EVIL INCARNATE either, which I hazard may have something to do with the conquest of France (liberty, equality) being the beginning of the end of a colony (I think the French, in Algeria, gave the Khmer Rouge - what do we think of those guys? - a run for their money by some particular measure (I will dig up a ref before definitively making a cunt of myself). (Khmer Rouge era cash is one of the more available historical artifacts from this part of the world). And while a Westerner probably can't get away with wearing a Hitler t-shirt in public, I once saw a friend (who I thought was A GBOL in every other way) wearing a Mao t-shirt (every bit as bad as Hitler, and then some IMO) purely for "aesthetic" reasons. No one else saw the problem. I think I made a point there. Maybe. Carry on. .

[I think, no, it has to be a shared word, but previous incidences seem to indicate that etiquette is to keep going in the case of an invalid answer, within reason. And I see an opportunity for another Satch answer. So:] Joe Satriani - Flying in a Blue Dream

Joe Satriani - The Crush of Love