in which we plan a visit to the asylum

Randomly spotted that violin totin' Emilie Autumn is passing through the UK but its Bristol, Wolverhampton and Nottingham - tour dates literally this week.

Fortunately after the tour heads off to about 20 other European venues it then swings back through the Islington Academy in March. We've just jumped on some tickets.

Her industrial strength show is about the strange things that the Victorians and others got up to in the name of art and subjugation.

Ms Autumn and Co. create an evening containing performance art and crunchy gothic music. Theres's barbed social commentary laced with irony as they depict the pre-Raphelite penchant for paintings of women drowning and Ophelia Tours of Asylums.



For the Absinthe flows like wine where I'm going
They say there's a demon
There probably is
But I'll be the end of them
Go on and send for them
So burn me and break me
You know I'll pretend for them
When I close my eyes

the outer edge of sadness

Regular readers of rashbre central will know that this site normally spins positive and has 'there is fun going forward' as something of a catch phrase. As others observe, it's tough to stick with it at this time of year because of that Arnall formula, first introduced here a couple of years ago:

( [W + (D-d)] x TQ ) / (M x NA)

The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed 'quit' attempt (smoking/drinking/popcorn/whatever), (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.

Yup, its the depression formula, used to calculate the most depressing day of the year, which is somewhere between 23 January and yesterday. Some might say its in the period immediately preceding the next pay day.

Most people have broken their healthy resolutions six to seven days into the new year and many of us have eaten our way through the remaining Christmas chocolates and the content of the fridge.

Not to mention the suction sound from the emptying of the bank account, the prompt arrival of the credit card bill and the long delay since that early pay cheque in December.

But there's no place for Seasonal Affective Disorder around at rashbre central. We want formulas for positivity.

We are all singing, dancing and prancing as we realise the rest of the year will be getting better and better.

Out with the bad and in with the good.

....and breathe.

zassenhaus

A more indulgent start to Sunday. Time to grind fresh coffee beans before easing into the day.

Separated from industrious weekdays jostled with metal tubes of transport breathless minute needy.

Sunday can flex more.

An easier beginning, the reliable Zassenhaus, retrieved from my time living in a German apartment. There's a moment for contemplation whilst hand milling the roast for the morning's kick.

Examine the day and speculate the ensuing week. Home much? Yeah. Er, except Sunday (away on business). Thursday (flying around), Friday (team pow-wow).

I'll read the papers today; catch up on some news.

And pack for tonight.

different names for the same thing

I watched that old Nick Hornby film recently. High Fidelity. The one about the record store. And lists.

Then today, I spent about half an hour uploading a few CDs from Christmas into iTunes. At the same time I noticed a build-up of duplicate tracks in the main iTunes listing.

Time to delete a few.

I started by doing it manually. Then I remembered I was using a computer. Download Tidysongs and set it loose.

It found about 1400 duplicates in 10 minutes. All gone now. It wasn't put off by the Bjork "Army of Me" remix collection.

The genre classification wasn't quite so good, putting a number of UK artists into a category called 'Europe' and a few more artists into one called 'Canada'. It also struggled with the album covers, even when it was on a run it would skip random tracks.

Anyway. Back to mainly non-duplicated tunes. With a few random cover-arts.

velcro suit moment

Other folk have been doing the travelling this week whereas I found myself static with an unexpected WAH day today.

The only thing was, that in addition to my meeting in Scotland (this morning) and my meeting in London (lunch time) I had a Big Meeting with New York (late this afternoon). Of course, these meetings were electronic rather that F2F.

I say the Big Meeting was New York, but it was also Sweden, Holland and a few other places. This is where the WAH factor crept in. I should remind that WAH = Working At Home.

That's been me, all day. Online, on the phone, doing stuff. Non client facing. Relaxed dress code.

It was all going well up to the point where I clicked the link for the Big Meeting.

Up booted a nice screen on my PC. And a little video square, which then toggled through Los Angeles, New York, Stockholm, Brussels, Amsterdam and so forth. Everyone was wearing suits. Proper business attire. Looking very business-like.

I was WAH-casual.

I could hear a sort of stabbing dance chord playing in my head. Psycho meets electro trance.

I checked that the little green light hadn't come on above my PC screen. No, the camera was off. I flipped to the edge of the screen.

Clicked the menu.

There were about 20 people on the call and the number was still rising. Only 30 percent had the little video symbol.

I thought to myself, maybe these other voice only people are also WAH today.

I may need one of those standby velcro suits.

And some gaffer tape.

chocolate buttons (or dancing with the moonlit knight)

I was going to write this post about chocolate.

Continuing my occasional obsession with Cadburys.

I wanted to write about the strange economics of leveraged buy-outs. I even started to draw a diagram on a sheet of paper. One with banks gambling with savings.

I wanted to illustrate that if they gained money, then they got a commission. But also that if they lost money they still got a commission.

If they lost lots of money, then the government asked the tax payers to top up the bank again.

I'd even found a roulette wheel graphic.

And then I wanted to show that the same bank could start gambling again. In a no limits way it could lend whatever and wherever it liked.

And get some more commission.

So it could lend to another country. Maybe to an organisation that wanted to buy part of the bank's own country.

Maybe to cheese company to buy, say, a chocolate firm. So the cheese company buying the chocolate company doesn't need to use so much of its own money.

The bank doesn't mind; it gets its commission on its overseas loan and if the deal is risky then the government is a safety net.

My diagram might have got a bit complicated by now. Because if the chocolate company gets bought and rationalised, then there's a few less taxpayers to top things up.

Luckily this won't happen. The politicians have said so.

Mr Brown said yesterday that "We will do everything we can to make sure that jobs and investment are maintained in Britain."

So I've decided to eat some chocolate instead of drawing my diagram.

Nothing to worry about.

door

I'd walked past a number of times and never even noticed the door.

This time we entered and took the steps that led down.

Our little gang took a corner table and the maître d' settled us returning later to explain the menu. He recognised the others and was suitably pleasant as if he also knew me. They'd been working in this area for a while and already determined this as a favourite venue, whereas this would be my first experience.

We selected from the small menu and a choice of wine, suitably decanted then bursting with a richness and fruit.

We'd been working in a hotel room across town prior to this excursion and had prepared the usual charts and diagrams of commerce. Now was a chance to chatter before tomorrow's Big Meeting.

The food was perfectly cooked. The wine sublime. Our small group enjoyed a special magic in this tiny location, which for an off-peak day was still busy at each of its small number of tables.

Much later we climbed the stairs back to what was now a rainy street, with a few taxis waiting across the road to ferry us back to our waiting files and presentations.

ipad is itray

The secret is out.

The new slate computers can also be used as tea trays and will keep the cups warm.

How better to drink chai, than on a slate downloading the latest edition of National Geographic?

Don't tell anyone.

Cadbury's Flake

So Cadburys is to be taken over by the Krafty cheese people - 'chocs away' as I expect it will say in tomorrow's headlines.

I've always admired the Cadbury history, with the Bournville village set up next to the factories in the late 1800s to provide good accommodation and facilities for the workforce. Quaker George Cadbury also pioneered pension schemes as well as joint works committees and medical facilities for the workers.

It's too early to tell what will happen now that the company is to move to American ownership, but I hope that the better principles are upheld.

I can remember a school project involving Cadburys as well as a rather interesting tour of their factory. There have also been a succession of inventive television commercial across the years, with my favourites including Creme Egg.

For various reasons the original Cadbury Flake adverts seem to have disappeared from the schedules.

atavistic avatar assessment

We were standing by the bar chatting.

For the third time in a few days, the subject of Avatar came up in general conversation. Slightly surprising, but each time different people have raised it. First time it was a ‘not sure’ and a criticism about whether the plot was derivative, followed by bemused remarks about the Pope’s criticism and whether it was neopagan.

A few days ago it was someone who has booked to see it at IMAX but has to wait until February because of the demand. I still had only the haziest idea what it was about. Blue creatures in a sci-fi setting defending mineral rights from humans.

The two people I was with at the bar had seen it; another was on their way that very evening.

“Its good”, said the two. “And it's not very violent”.

“Did you see it in 3D?” I innocently asked.

“Yes - there are some amazing scenes like where the gun cartridges eject. It looks as if they will hit you in the eye.”

“Don’t spoil it.” said the other one, “Mind you, those fighter plane Head Up Displays are pretty amazing.”

I remembered that the two non-violent reviewers in front of me both had military backgrounds. In previous lives, one had worked in Afghanistan, and the other had driven Nimrods around.

It's on my list.

Tchaikowsky Piano Concerto and cellphone

Really a belated new year moment, this clip from Amanda Palmer and the Boston Pops, with Amanda playing Tchaikowsky's First Piano Concerto.

Until its interrupted after around 3 minutes by an audience member's cell-phone.

Pure punk cabaret.

There's further insight (and around 200 comments) over at Amanda's blog. Amanda's experimenting with some video blogging too.

And congratulations to Amanda and Neil Gaiman on their recent engagement.

stuck in the middle with you

It looks as if the politicians are about moving into the fight for the middle ground ahead of the next election. I haven't seen any of the photographs of weasels holding children yet, but it can only be a matter of time.

The Labour party has been quick to move towards the centre and to claim to be friends of the middle classes. This break between the Old Labour of Trade Unions and Workers and the New Labour of Ends, not Means was a Blair argument during his reign.

One key element was the removal of the public ownership parts of Labour’s philosophy, but Gordon Brown’s short succession reversed that by dragging all the robber banks into massive taxpayer funding.

What’s upsetting is the cynicism with which much of this is being played. Pump any old pulp fiction to the electorate to stage manage them to vote the right way.

It looks as if we’re going to get months of manipulation whilst a club of spinners scrabble for front seats in the house.