Airborne toxins actually quite pleasant

Musically, May is turning out quite interesting, with new downloads from The Airborne Toxic Event and Jamie Woon (both on recommendation of my new friend the Sunday Times iPad App's culture section), Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky (they just fit together, with thanks this time to eMusic) and Fleet Foxes.

The TATE (as I will abbreviate the first-named band, not being arced to type their full title, which incidentally reminds me of the very odd Mark Wahlberg/M Night Shyamalan movie, the Happening - coincidence?) album 'All at once' is actually really good, even it it does feel like a compilation of stuff by other people, if mainly good ones. The opening title track sounds very Nationalish, with anthematic reach and cool drums (see below), and I really like the following 'Numb', particularly where the rush of the music takes a breath for the line with the title.





'The graveyard near the house' was really nice until my son pointed out how much it sounds like 'Hey there Delilah' by the Plain White Ts. Some songs have a touch of Pogueishness about them, and the singer's voice seems too mutable to get a good grasp on, sounding very different in different songs ('Changing' sounds like a different band entirely, more at home in the UK than the US).   'It doesn't mean a thing' (slightly different version below) ranges from the Pogues to Elvis Costello very cooly within a little over 2 minutes, which is quite an achievement.



It does sound really nice on 'All for a woman' (below), which builds up like a Ryan Adams epic (something like 'Meadowlake street' springs to mind) and 'Half of something else' is really good too.



The album got a very tough review in Uncut for Arcade Fire clonism, but I don't really get that, although I agree that 'The kids are ready to die' is pretty weak. Overall, though, this is one of the best albums I have heard in a while.

Jamie Woon was always a bit of a stretch for me, as the reviews made it sound quite low-key and ambient for me, but a preview on iTunes made me interested, and I quite like his voice, but I am still struggling to really engage in the music, which seems a bit too backgroundy for me, although 'Night air' does stand out.

I didn't get quite as excited as many folks and folkies seemed to about Fleet Foxes' debut, although 'White water hymnal' and 'Mykonos' (first heard on an Uncut CD) were gorgeous, but I did divert some of my eMusic subscription their way based on the reviews of the new album. I really like the simpler more acoustic ones, like 'Helplnessness blues' itself and 'Montezuma', although some of the rest is a bit noodley and dense for me.

I haven't given Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai enough aural attention to review yet, but maybe next time.


Movies-wise, I downloaded 'The girl who played with fire' on Apple TV (first straight download, no PC required!) and made the mistake of picking the English-dubbed version, on which the voices are simply crap, and make taking the whole thing seriously almost impossible. My internet connection dropped around two-thirds of the way through and when it reattached the movie was no longer saved (although I should have had it for 48 hours) but to be honest I don't think I will bother to pay for the rest.

I have also started watching 'Centurion' (I liked Neil Marshall's first two films, 'Dog soldiers' and 'The descent' a lot), and it actually looks pretty good, with some very impressively visceral action, and accents and characters far like the protagonists of Dog Soldiers than what I would have expected for the Roman Empire's finest. 



TV-wise, we have been enjoying 'Boardwalk empire' a lot, and I have watched the first episode of 'Game of thrones', which looks very interesting if a bit mad in the head and off the wall (metaphorically speaking).

Books-wise, just finished Joseph Wilsons book on the nasty tactics of the Bush administration (what a shocker) and just started 'Unscientific America' by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, as I loved Mooney's scary book about how the Bush adminsitration also gave scientists a very hard time, and not just ex-ambassadors ('The Republican war on science').

That's all for now, folks!



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Easter musical eggs

This is a test post using the Blogsy app on my iPad. This is taking a little time to get used to as not quite intuitive but I am gradually getting the hang of it. This combined with my Zaggmate keyboard will hopefully mean the iPad becomes my blogging device of choice, and I might even get back to more regular posts than so far this year (although 2011 seems to be turning into quite the year for quality music).

One thing which seems quite useful is the ease of embedding Youtube clips, like this one from TV on the Radio:

I discovered TV on the Radio through their last album 'Dear Science', the title of which was almost enough to ensnare me (occupational hazard), which was a case of the least expected like of the last few years for me, as terms like art rock and funk could readily be used to describe it but I still really liked it. I first listened to 'Nine Types of Light' (another cool title) on a train to Dublin by headphones and was to be honest a little disappointed first run through, as it lacked the dramatic punch of 'Halfway home' or 'Dancing choose' (where they added rap to the list of things I did not expect to like in their sound), but a little patience allowed the songs time to grow and breathe, and now I really like quite a few of them. 'Keep your heart' is an obvious one, but 'Will do' (seen above) and the closer (bonus track?) 'Troubles' are really good, the latter in particular a great pop song.

The National keep slipping out great songs, with the last one 'Think you can wait' coming from a film called 'Win win', and being a gorgeous slow burner like 'Runaway' but somehow even nicer, and would not have been at all out of place on 'High violet':

The next one ('Exile Villify') apparently comes from a video game ('Portal 2', about which all I know is that I am pretty sure the original game came bundled with 'Half-Life 2', which gives it immediate credibility in my book, even before The National became involved). I am not sure whether being associated with a video game is either really cool or slightly odd, but as The National can never be less than cool let's assume the former. Anyway, the song is slightly less of an immediate love than the one above, but perhaps it needs more time....



The next music I want to talk about is Glasvegas' 'Euphoric heartbreak' (I can't bring myself to repeat the bizarre titular solidus-assault), for which advance press and reviews had been, frankly, pretty unenthusiastic. I discovered Glasvegas through their debut in 2008, which I actually only bought in its reissue form, when my curiosity was sparked by the review talking about Jesus and Mary Chain meets Phil Spector doing a bunch of Christmas songs (as bundled in the reissue with the debut). While I found some of their slower songs a bit too lifeless, I loved the energy of "Flowers and football tops', 'Geraldine' and the quite astonishing 'Go square go' (the bit where the singer first intones 'Here we f***ing go' is just heard-stopping), and loved the macho sloppiness of 'A snowflake fell and it felt like a kiss' (who could resist that title?). Anyway, the new album came with more health warnings than a pack of cigarettes (somehow that analogy just seemed apt) but my affection for the debut carried me through to trying the new one.

To be honest, it is not as bad as the reviews led me to expect (talk about damning with faint praise!) but there does seem to have been something of the honesty, modesty and raw passion of the debut lost in the process, perhaps due to the inevitable pressures of fame (stories of the bands drug-induced woes invariably feature in reviews and profiles), and the songs do seem a little lost inside huge production (one review compared the sound, unkindly but not necessarily inaccurately, to Simple Minds) and a bit more formulaic and polished. I think songs like 'Euphoria take my hand' (below) could benefit from a more stripped-back sound to bring that wonderful guitar riff out of the swamp in which it has become submerged, while the stand-out 'Lot's sometimes' (also below) just about survives the production and, more fatally, the appallingly placed apostrophe, to deliver an epic builder which comes closest to the spirit of the first album.





I am also thinking about downloading Jamie Woon and Radiohead based on the reviews, and will probably take a chance on Fleet Foxes when the new album comes out (especially as it will be on eMusic), although much of their debut did not really grab me.


In other culture-related news, I am nearly at the end of the second series of 'The West Wing' and it really is the pinnacle of televisual wonderfulness. This has pretty much dominated my TV-watching, so no other DVDs to report on, but a few box-sets lying in need of attention (although I watched and actually enjoyed 'Hellboy 2' on my iPad between some train journeys).

Books-wise, I read another book on Wikileaks (Greg Mitchell's 'The age of wikileaks' - interesting but a bit short and feeling rather rapidly flung-together) and a fantastically ascerbic book about the emergence of stupidity as a major dominating force in American society and politics in particular ('Idiot America: how stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free' by Charles P. Pierce). The latter was simultaneously funny, wise and enraging, with great analyses of the response to 911, the rush to war in Iraq, the Dover Intelligent Design case, climate change and more, starting with a great piece about a creationist museum which features dinosaurs with saddles. Dear lord, need we say any more.

I am currently reading a really interesting book about how a new generation of biological hackers are trying to beat major labs at their own game ('Biopunk: DIY scientists hack the software of life' by Marcus Wohlsen), and have also downloaded what looked (from a Kindle sample) very interesting, which is Joseph Wilson's account of the Bush Administration's use of dodgy intelligence (besides their own) regarding Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Niger ('The politics of truth'), which was recently dramatised in the film 'Fair game', which I didn't see.

Technology-wise, I am gradually moving away from hard-copy newspapers, being quite happy to read my favourite bits of the Guardian on the iPhone app I paid for (especially Alexis Petridis' wonderfully caustic culture columns and Peter Bradshaw's film reviews) and I have paid for a trial of the Sunday Times on the iPad (the demise of the Sunday Tribune has left my Sunday reading bereft, and the physical copy of the Times is just intimidatingly huge and induces savage guilt for the environment every time I chuck half its weight in paper, unread, straight into recycling).  The Times app actually works really well, and I am going to pay my monthly sub to read the best bits on screen on a Sunday, as I finally think both subscription and on-screen news papers could actually be the thing of the future.  On the subject of on-screen news, the Irish national station RTE has a news app which is very good (and, at certain times, quite surreal, as in their live blog during this winter's snow storms when the writer inserted many great jokes and off-the-point ruminations into the mundane updates), but the entertainment section is just bizarre; perhaps it reflects how little I dip into a certain fetid corner of celebrity 'news' but recent relevations about how Peter Andre or some other loser fell asleep in the cinema on a date and how some girlyband singer I never heard of had a dream that old-style Irish singer Mary Black released a disco track make me dispair for what passes for entertainment in certain quarters today.

Swerving away to much harsher stuff leads me to a somewhat sombre conclusion to this post, regarding the death of two celebrated war journalists in Libya, including Tim Hetherington, whose 'Restrepo' I watched recently and found very powerful.   The trailer is below:

I have always held huge admiration for war reporters, being constantly aware that every time we see a battle or other hostile situation on Sky News or whatever, there is someone unarmed there with a camera, recording it all for us to watch. This to me is another form of real heroism, and the sad events of last week made me think once again what real guts it must take to do what they have done, and how sad it is when they die in the line of action on our behalfs.  One of the things I read on the Sunday Times app yesterday was a very moving piece by Margarette Driscoll about Hetherington, the roles of war reporters, and the fact that he was far more interested in the effects of war on those caught up on it than the gruesome details which others favoured, which is well worth checking.

[By the way, I gave up on Blogsy part way through this post, when I couldn't work out how to position the video clips reasily, moved onto the Blogpress App, and finished off the polishing (such as it is) on my PC - still a bit of practice to move completely to iPad for posting, alsas.]

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March music madness

There has been a lot of good new music this month, and I almost don't know where to start. It has been a while since my last confession, I mean post, so better get started.

Most recently, I downloaded from eMusic The Rural Alberta Advantage, which sounded good on preview as it sat at the top of their download charts (a recommendation I have come to trust a lot in recent months, after almost feeling like giving up my subscription). 'Departing' is very good, like Deer Tick but with the rough edges hewn smooth and honey poured over the lot. There is a chilly atmosphere from the whited-out highway of the cover, but the drums and piano are really far more upbeat than they at first seem, and there are several really outstanding tracks, including 'Coldest days', 'North star', 'Stamp' and 'Barnes' Yard'.

I found a version of the latter in a record store here:

And a version of 'under the knife' at:



I have still failed to warm to the new Elbow album, which just seems to fade into obscurity in the background when I play it and has never really engaged my ears fully. I do need to give it more of a chance but it feels a struggle with so much else fighting for aural attention.

REM's 'Collapse into now' has proven mostly worth the listen, and far better on average than the last few have been, but I could probably live without around half the songs. Still, 'Mine smell like honey', 'That someone is you' and 'Uberlin' are as strong as anything they have done for ages.  A studio performance of 'Mine smell like honey' is below:



An Uncut Album of the Month recommendation sent me predictably to the dark world of Josh T. Pearson's 'Last of the southern gentlemen', which really is bleak but beautiful, if lacking the warmth to live up its comparisons to The Boatman's Call. The lyrics are really something in their raw frankness, and 'The honeymoon's great, wish you were here' is just stunning in the picture it paints so poetically, and almost makes the heart break. I wonder if Josh has heard the beautifully sad Billy Bragg song 'Wish you were her', which covers much the same ground but considerably less abrasively. I knew 'Woman when I raised hell' (as seen below) from Uncut' March cover CD (of which more later) but opener 'Thou art loosed' is also brilliant.



On the back of this CD, I actually went and dug back through files off music not listened to in recent times to find Lift to Experience's 'The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads' and gave it a listen for the first time in years and it really doesn't sound like the same person at all, but that still is a greatly weird yet epic album (discovered again through Uncut at the time).

Speaking of Uncut, their March CD 'Homeward bound' was simply stunning and a much-needed reminder of why I have bought every issue since its launch. Beside the aforementioned Mr Pearson, it introduced me to Harper Simon (son of Paul), Simone Felice (the version of 'Union street' is breathtaking, and sent me off to get The Duke and the King, the version on which is nowhere as good - drums far too obtrusive), Michael McDermott (downloaded that CD too - bit MOR but there is something there, even if 'The American in me' is clearly the standout), and reminded me of Peter Broderick. Add in The Tallest Man on Earth, Josh Ritter and Villagers and it is a simply brilliant compilation.

Finally, music-wise for now, and in a very different musical style, and indeed parent decade, I have been quite impressed by Mirrors' 'Lights and offerings'. Let's face it, when every review mentioned some or all of OMD, Depeche Mode, Heaven 17, Tears for Fears etc etc I was hardly going to be able to resist, especially when the iTunes download was an incredibly generous package for a CD which wasn't even full priced, including loads of videos and live tracks. Of course it is not that original sounding, and also sounds quite like Editors in place, but it does what it does rather well, and tracks like 'Into the heart' (in particular, as seen below) and 'Something on your mind' are really strong and stick in the mind for days.



In other cultural news, there have been few movies or DVDs to report on, but have been enjoying 'Shameless' on TV. This is the US version, with William H Macy, not the UK one, and was initially quite a shock to the system, with the raw frankness (Frank-ness?), but the humour and Macy's great face made it watchable and eventually addictive. I have bought the UK series 1 and 2 on DVD and only started to watch, and while the extent to which the remake is really a cover version is surprising, I think the US version will still go down easier, and have a fonder place on my TV. In complete contrast, we have started to spoil ourselves by starting to work through The West Wing again, jumping in for some reason at Season 2, and enjoying what seem to be some of the golden days of the show, with great episodes, the cast all there (including Ainsley Hayes, great for a while before they forgot what to do with her and she disappeared) and Sorkin's writing at its sharpest.

Books-wise, really enjoyed 'The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks', which combined great science writing with a touching and frequently shocking family tale uncovered through some really interesting detective work by a very engaging narrator and writer.  As speculation about Obama's forthcoming visit to Ireland mounts (including a possible trip to Cork), and as sort of a companion piece to The West Wing, I downloaded 'O' (a presidential novel by an anonymous source), which is a barely-veiled account of the Obama team in the throes of forthcoming reelection campaigning - it is readable but not much more than that.  Switching back and forth between that and a book on Pluto's demise as a fully-recognised planet ('The case for pluto' by Alan Boyle) which is a really well written and interesting piece of recent science history.

Other than all of the above, thinking about getting myself an iMac, and using my iPad more and more. Getting the Zaggmate keyboard/case really transformed the functionality of the yoke, and I am now happily typing this on the iWriter app with the greatest of ease. The Angry Birds have gone to Rio, and I am using iDisk more and more as a file storage facility (including movies) and intermediary between PC and iPad, with saving and switching very easy indeed.

So, busy month of March, and more frequent posts in April promised!

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New music nirvana

I am curently dipping in and out of Richard Lederer's highly entertaining book 'Crazy English' (the case is strongly made on every page of how true the title is) on iPhone/Kindle and have just read about all kinds of phobias I didn't know existed.  These include things like 'cheruphobia' (gaiety - see Esben and the Wich below), 'tomophobia' (surgical operations - who doesn't have this?), 'verbaphobia' (fear of words, especially that one), 'tapinophobia' (small things - like what?) and 'erythrophobia' (the colour red - presumably not just the Krysztof Kieslowski film?).

However, I have been thinking of a new one for which there may not (yet) be a name, i.e., the fear that there is music out there which you would absolutely love but you just haven't met it yet.  Even with Genius and Amazon recommendations and previews on iTunes there is just too much music for one person to monitor casually, leading to he aforementioned fear, which I propose to name ignotacaramusicaphobia (from a haphazard Latin construction of words for unknown, beloved and music - you would never tell I lacked a classical education, would you?).

Anyway, this was brought home to me again this week when, in a need to finish my eMusic credits before they ran out at the end of the month, I took a hasty chance on two albums that had been near the top of their most downloaded charts for ages but about which I knew precious little.  Oh, and they were both by Swedish artists, which did not fill me with extra enthusiasm.

The first was 'The wild hunt' by The Tallest Man on Earth (who, from video evidence, is presumably in hiding from the enforcers of the Trades Descriptions Act), and I bloody love it.  Mostly acoustic guitar matched with an unusual voice most frequently compared to Bob Dylan but far less whiny and more generally joyous.  I found some clips online, starting with the one below:



I also found this clip of a live version of my favourite on the album, 'Burden of tomorrow':



Also from the chilly northern land which Steig Larsson would have me believe is full of very strange and rather dangerous individuals comes The Radio Dept, who eMusic also taunted me with for some time before I secumbed and downloaded their most recent album ('Clinging to a scheme').  This is quite different, but the songs are lovely in a very 'sensitive end of the 80s' way, although the heavily treated vocals which are frequently distorted place an emotional barrier for me: still, very interesting and worth a listen, and the live clip of 'You stopped making sense' below gives a flavour of what is to be found:



From a very different musical place, in fact Brighton I think, come the marvellously named Esben and the Witch, who I had taken acute note of in the preview-of-2011 articles due to the references to Goth and Banshees and old-style doom and gloom (the black-clad skeletons in my 80s closet rattling), and I bought the album 'Violet Cries' (could two fantastic albums with 'Violet' in the title in consecutive years be possible?) on iTunes.  I must admit, I love 'Marching song' below (particularly the drumming in the first section, mad video by the way) but the rest of the album has yet to really grow on me, but I will persevere:



The other major (re)discovery of the month was The Decemberists on the back of great reviews (including album of the month) for 'The king is dead' (he managed to hide for over 20 years after the Smiths killed his missus...), and it is a great album, and far more accessible than I had ever found their stuff before, and I had tried (although 'Sleepless' off the 'Dark was the night' compilation was gorgeous).  There is an undoubted feel of 'lets mix REM plus the Waterboys in a blender and record what spews out' (particularly the former in the intro to 'Calamity song' and the latter in the outro to 'Rox in the box', through the [probably traditional originally] air of 'Raggle taggle gypsy'); having Peter Buck on board legalises the REM lifts, and Gillian Welch and Laura Viers add that feminine touch from time to time.  Anyway, it is a really easy-listening nice album (and I mean that more positively than it might sound) and my favourite track is probably 'Dear avery' as seen below:



I also found a clip featuring my two other favourites, 'June Hymn' and 'This is why we fight' below:



So, all in all, a very good month for music.  I also tried to expand my musical pallette by experimenting with Kanye West ('Fantasy') and Plan B ('Strickland Banks') but, while both had tracks that really grabbed me (particularly 'Lost in the world', 'Power' and 'All of the lights' on the former), I do not think this signals the start of a major musical migration.  I also tried some EP stuff by James Blake (bit too minimalist for me, however good the reviews of the debut full album might be), and got a real unexpected pleasure from Cee Lo Green's 'The lady killer' (I do love that voice and something about the energy of the music just overcomes my natural resistance to such material).   I also have downloaded but need to listen more to Joan as Policewoman and Anna Calvi (having discovered 'Suzanne and I' thanks to Uncut, this remains the stand out on the album for me, as seen live below, with the great drum and guitar intro preserved):




In matters of non-musical culture, I haven't got to the cinema at all, nor seen any noteworthy DVDs, but have started to watch and am enjoying the sleazy charm of 'Shameless' (the US version - I have never seen the British version); I always loved William H. Macy and his performance, while far in tone from his previous work, still retains enough charm to give an interesting centre to the series, which looks worth future support:



I am also filling my Sky-plus box with the fruits of the new Sky Atlantic channel, and have lots of Boardwalk Empire and Curb your Enthusiasm, and more, waiting to watch.  Books-wise, I am in English-language mode, between the aforementioned Lederer plus the heavier but still fascinating and thought-provoking 'The stuff of thought' by Steven Pinker.  I also have just opened a Facebook account for the first time, and am just starting to wonder what do do with it.....

That's it for now, more to follow soon.


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Phosphorescent escape from Irish gloom

Okay, firstly it has been waaayyy too long since a last update, but better late then never and I have a lot to catch up, to be divided over a few posts I guess.  I am also taking the opportunity to test to see how the new Writer app works in terms of allowing me to type more fluently on the iPad. Seems pretty good so far!  The last few posts have been concert reviews, and I still plan a roundup of the year's music, movies etc, so I am just going to get stuck in.

Music

I realised I had some live clips I never put up from my amazing December gigs (Arcade Fire and The National), namely those I took of Phosporescent supporting the latter.  I had downloaded two albums by them (Here's to taking it easy and the Willie Nelson covers album) and quite a few tracks had favourably caught my ear (as opposed, I guess, to roughly grabbing it and yanking it half off my head), so I was quite interested to see them live, and they were certainly interesting.  The front man, Matthew Houck, initially seems hewn from the same kind of backwoods log as Bonnie Prince Billy in appearance and manner, but has a really distinctive voice which was lovely in concert.   His band looked kind of hairly and scraggly (with a particularly demented pianist), and sounded a lot louder in the loud bits, and quieter in the quiet bits, but there was generally a leaning in the direction of loud more than seemed apparent on record.

Anyway, the first of two clips is of my favourite of their songs, 'Rainbow parade':



While the second is the lovely if somewhat intruigingly named 'Picture of our torn up praise':



There is no doubt, in reflection, that 2010 was more like the inspiring 2008 than the insipid 2009 for music, with a lot of long-lasting favourites.  Number one of course must be 'High violet' by The National, although I must admit that this album perhaps did not entirely survive the forensic analysis I applied before and after its release, to the extent that it feels somewhat like a machine I took apart so drastically that it never quite reassembled into a coherent functioning whole.  It is hard to explain my relationship with this album, which is still head and shoulders above almost everything else for a long time, but somehow it remains a little spoiled by my own dumb failure to allow it a chance free from weighty expectation and dissembly. 

Most pleasant surprise was 'The suburbs' when Arcade Fire finally bludgeoned me into submission, and plain and simple pop joy (with attendendant goofy grins and addicted humming) of the year was 'American slang' by the Gaslight Anthem.  Other highlighted pleasures included the Drums, and Josh Ritter, while reissue of the year was the unexpected motown-flavoured pop masterpiece of Springsteen's 'The promise'.  Disappointment of the year was probably 'Contra' by Vampire Weekend, although this did yield the fantastic 'Giving up the gun'.  Gig of the year was clearly The National in the Olympia.

I didn't actually get much for a few weeks around Christmas, but made up for it in the last week by starting 2011 off in determinedly different style by downloading or being given Adele's '19' (I do like her voice), Kanye West's 'Fantasy' (my most radical departure, perhaps ever), Plan B (surprising but perhaps less so after mad Kanye) and Cee Lo Green (something about that voice!).  Comments on all will follow.
Albums currently being considered include those by The Decemberists, Iron & Wine and Anna Calvi for a start. Hopefully 2011 will be two good years in a row.


TV

In the weeks before Christmas, I really enjoyed 'The Walking Dead', which came to a halt after far too few (i.e., six) episodes, but had good characters (Egg from the classic This Life as a southern US cop!), good action, and scary zombies.  Definitely hope this got good enough ratings to warrant another (longer) series:



I also watched some of the sixth season of the US version of 'The Office', which I have always enjoyed and really see as something which now exists in its own right completely independent of its British parent, of which it is the bastard offspring that has gone off to make its own cocky way in the world.    Finally, working through box sets, I watched the again truncated entire life of 'Firefly', which was really a very strange mix of western (with eastern overtones) and Star Wars, like the original Lucas-Kurosowa mythological blend had been fed once more into a mad blender and mixed up to see what would slurp out.  Very odd, but very funny in places and probably worth more of a life-span than it got.  I must go back and watch 'Serenity' again, which I saw quite a few years ago and own on DVD.....

Books

It has been a busy month or so for books, with several on the go, and an unplanned shift back to the physical object as opposed to the virtual version.  First was a book on some particular individuals who have contributed overly notably to the recent tragic and spectacular demise of the Irish country.  The title, 'Wasters', says it all, and it chronicles an entirely depressing set of chancers, crooks and incompetents, which only feels progressively sadder these days as the impact of the damage down by these same losers leads us through simply bizarre days of Irish politics, to the point where it simply is not clear who, if anyone, is in charge any more.
In years to come, a new edition of Jon Ronson's 'Them' might include profiles of some of the same feckers, seen correctly through the lens of history as just as mad as the bizarre cast of characters featured in this edition, from conspiracy theorists caught up in actual conspiracies to the recurrent shadowy figures of the supposed secret rulers of the world, i.e., the Bilderberg group.  This is a slim but entertaining and sometimes sad and slightly scary book, a few years old at this stage.  I also read an entertaining if short book called 'A mathematician reads the newspaper' which collats a series of columns by a US professor of maths of misunderstandings of mathematical principles throughout media and politics; interesting an thought-provoking.

I also took on a major project on Kindle of 500,000 words by David Thomson, 500 each on 1000 movies - that is a lot of small screens of text!  What most shocked me about this was how many of the films I had never even heard of (at least 25%), and how man of them were from before 1940 or so. I estimate I have seen around 20% (at a generous estimate) of the books he discusses, which is tough when Thomson's style is unapologetically to assume the reader has seen the film in question, and to often jump straight in to some particular aspect of character or plot; I guess 500 words would suggest the straight-jacket of a brief symposis, which he clearly avoids, but it makes it hard to keep up somehow, although his fluent prose and eccentric turn of phrase make the effort worthwhile.  One thing that strikes me quite forcefully is to wonder how anyone could realistically find many of the more obscure ones he mentions, which led me to wonder how many old films even appear on TV any more, even allowing for how many channels that now exist. 

I am currently reading Steven Pinker's 'The stuff of thought', a complex treatise on the relationship between language and human thought which covers a lot of ground and veers wildly from the very funny (lots of movie references to keep me happy) to deep and serious considerations of specific details of grammar I didn't even know existed.  Learning a lot from this one!

Okay, there are a lot more things to talk about, including the slim few movies I have seen, Apple TV and more, but these will appear in future posts.

A lot of the distraction in recent weeks, particularly the last 2 weeks, has been the slow disintegration of my country's government, and the stripping bare of the sheer vanity, venality and incompetence of those in charge, and the lengths they will go to to remain so.  It certainly is a trying time to be Irish right now, as everyone who reads this, wherever you are, knows exactly how f***ed we are and how stupid we look. I am far from understanding most of what is going on, but as far as I see it, a small number of selfish bastards, in government and in banks, have led us into a deep dark hole from which there is no easy escape, and now no-one is prepared to take responsibility, and all semblance of order or sense at the top has simply evaporated.   Those who have caused the problems are turning on each other and the result is ghoulishly fascinating, and I have become addicted to political columns, TV and news shows and sites like never before. It would be great sport if it was happening to someone else.

And on that bleak note for a nonpolitical blog (although right now in Ireland everyone is political because everyone is in trouble) I will leave it.

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