I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

Watching the old Scorsese documentary of Bob Dylan on playback late in the evening.

It's Dylan's 70th birthday on Tuesday and it was interesting to see the footage of him right back at the beginning.

It's a birthday month around rashbre central too, with new beginnings in the extended family. Emma May is a pretty addition at the current age of zero.

And Saturday we're celebrating Julie's birthday whilst noting card shops doing brisk business for others having birthdays at plus or minus a couple of days from now.

The Dylan documentary starts with observations of those already performing and the way that Dylan picked up his trade. Then the Bleecker Street set commenting on Dylan carrying forward the message from the beat generation. Distilling ideas by observation, literally how the chords were formed and the music plucked. Even I watched his thumb making chords on the E -string.

A little different now, with the virtualisation of much culture for many. There's plenty of tabs of 'e-everything' on Safari, but eMusic, eBooks and eThought are not as direct as Performance.

swagger

The screeching and screeing from the garden was particularly loud this evening as a commotion of newbie starlings more or less tumbled from the bush where they've been keeping a nest.

The birds are already the same size as their parents although they'll use maximum volume to get fed without doing any work themselves.

London is usually associated with pigeons which I regard as the bird for the tourists. A little bit slow and gawking but well suited to photo opportunities.

By comparison the starlings always fly around like formation jet fighters and have a commuter-like sense of purpose.

They hit the ground with a swagger and get right on with whatever they're doing.

directors cut

It will be a while before I have listened to all of the new material from Kate Bush, who has just released an album after a many year gap.

It appears to be re-cuts of a number of her earlier songs plus re-designs of a couple of well known albums.

It's a tricky one to decide whether the original sounds - many of which are quite haunting and instantly memorable - work well in a sudden album makeover.

With live bands its easier, because the variants get played in concerts and the good ones rise to the surface.

I hope there will be some net new material to follow and maybe a tour to try some of it in front of us?

With other artists performing some of Kate's tracks and some listeners not knowing the originals, the press picture is quite apposite. The top picture is Sergei Eisenstein editing 'October' back in 1928.

strange powers

I'm not certain that we needed any more Strange Powers around here but some have arrived anyway.

This is the little DVD from Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, which included some of us chipping in a few dollars towards the project - a bit like that thing with naked wines where you buy the wine when it's still on the vine.

Only this is music.

the sun pours down like honey
the moon runs down like mercury
the stars fall down like money
and you come down to me

and i can't sleep
cause you got strange powers
you’re in my dreams
strange powers

a meeting near scenery

My mid-evening trip to Gloucester worked fine and meant I would be 'in position' for the next morning.

The hotel was in an industrial area and the bar seemed to be filled with people attending a business conference. Unlike my hotel last week, there were no obvious signs of what they were discussing and I decided anyway to head for my room.

My blackberry was flashing and beeping the usual stream of requests, some of which required me to log-on properly to my laptop and beam out various documents. It was already late so I left this admin for the morning.

The morning alarm clock ping saw me configuring the wi-fi to send out documents to Germany and Holland. I was thinking that the 'in room coffee-making' tasted so much better with the milk I'd bought in the nearby superstore the night before.

Then onward to meet colleagues, past a large room seething with delegates for the mystery conference.

My own little team found a small round table to huddle ahead of our unrelated session in a rather more modest room.

By mid-afternoon we were finished and I took the scenic route back, even stopping for a stroll in the hilly bit around Birdlip.

normal day at rashbre central

A pretty normal start today, although I seem to have got distracted at some point, judging by how far behind schedule I'm running at the moment.

There's been early morning texts of good news, noisy visitors and the later discovery that the land-line phone has been broken since last week. Add sitting in front of a Windows screen doing tappy-tappy things.

I've decided to get out of town tonight and so I'm heading for a hotel somewhere around Gloucester before tomorrow's meetings.

at the end of the universe

I spent Saturday evening watching television, right from the excellent tea-time frolics of Doctor Who all the way through to the alien adventures of Eurovision.

One of the shows was set in a kind of space station at the end of the universe. It resembled a late 20th Century dance club. The other show moved it on into something a little more 21st Century.

In the case of Doctor Who, there were plenty of references to other space and sci-fi series in the script as well as self references to old-school Doctor Who. Even a retro control room.

Pleasingly, the characters had a kind of Amanda Palmer meets Danger Ensemble look about them. Not surprising with Neil Gaiman as the writer of the episode.

Gaiman took the Doctor to a Neverwhere outside of the Universe. The Doctor even commented that it was somewhere he'd never been, which is fairly unusual nowadays.

It gave a chance for the plot to move up a level, presumably breaking through a few sealed doors along the way. Once a new piece of fundamental Who-history gets written there is no turning back because the fan-base will have it recorded for all time.

So the Star Whale type construct of riding on a bubble on the edge of the Universe permitted the humanisation of a slightly delirious TARDIS. She (The TARDIS, excellently played by Suranne Jones) then had to rapidly make up for 'lost time' whilst hurling some great one-liners into the script. She simultaneously channeled Queenie from Blackadder whilst stating "Biting's like kissing only with a winner."

And we got a good backstory about the theft by the TARDIS of the Doctor "Back in the Day". I'm a great believer in Time stopping everything happening at once, so it's probably fortunate that most of this happened outside of the main Universe.

That way we didn't all suffer from a catastrophe that would create tears before bedtime. Although, it has to be said that the end of the episode created a tear-jerking morph of TARDIS back to being the soul of the machine.

The tears in the following programme were somewhat different as we watched the transition of Europop to европоп.

Yes, the Russian bloc have it.

My own more trippy tastes were towards Moldova's Zdob şi Zdub or even the Irish Jedward entry, both of which featured Pop, strange headgear and whirly lights. Instead, after hours of sonics and two many Screwdrivers, we had a largely forgettable win from that epicentre of pop culture Azerbaijan. At least they dressed up.

I decided to clear my mind of all of this today and took out on my bicycle, finding myself in a Forest by a River. There was a Pond as well.

I may need help.

Oh, Crumbs!

So much for stealth.

I actually bought the orange packet last weekend.

But only opened it today. Quite carefully.

Immediate problem.

Crumbs trickled from the tear-around strip.

I moved the packet to clear the crumbs.

A single hobnob fell out.

More crumbs.

I picked it up carefully.

Crumbs now reaching to the floor.

This was getting out of control.

I placed the hobnob onto a surface.

Cleaned the crumbs.

Picked up the hobnob.

A ring of crumbs.

Maybe it was Time To Walk Away.

I looked behind me.

A trail. Crumbs on the carpet. Crumbs on the sofa.

This hobnob was going down fighting.

internet closures for the weekend

My last few work days have included a particular spice, but because of my own rules about the content of this blog, I won't be able to say too much.

I'm usually quite good at predicting moves and outcomes, but on this occasion it's all taking a life of its own. I timed some parts of it for this weekend and my phone has been blipping away with texts and emails.

In the meantime, another work assignment has arrived, which means I'll be extremely busy next week. But I have to throw the big weekend switch at some point.

Reminds me of that button to turn off the internet.

cupboard consequence

I still have a link to last.fm here on rashbre central, and it still keeps a tally of tracks that get played on some of the rashbre central iTunes.

Today I noticed that its been mysteriously recording a whole series of Britney Spears tracks being played, although I can't remember listening. It turns out it was the fault of the New Cupboard.

It was delivered a couple of days ago and required placement in a room. This meant moving a few things including the television's computer. I realise that I'd somehow replugged it without checking what it was doing, and its started working its way through the alphabet of songs. Its only in the 'Bs' but has been playing tracks for a few days, undetected by me.

It was only when Britney's Toxicity track caught my eye that I spotted what has been happening. Still, if you've not heard the bedding track remix of Toxic by rashbre central (circa 2005) then here it is.

spread

This week I'm dealing with Helsinki and Houston, which is quite a timezone spread. The worst meeting scheduling was for 23:30, which was a tiny bit late to start a decent conversation.

The theory is that everyone can get together and have a single conversation, but sometimes it simply chops the debate into several smaller pieces. It's still possible to get the big picture, but it can also be somewhat filtered.

So I'll admit I'm thinking up some new plans at the moment, beyond inventing the 25 hour day.

...And I do realise that there's around 31 hours in the day already, if one follows the sun in the right direction.

But I suppose there's always a risk of going around in circles.

trashed laureate

A new form of Poet Laureate was created a few days ago, with the Trashed Laureate moments at the recent Trashed event. A simple process to collect lines, blend them together and create a single work, with the best lines awarded a laureate-like bottle of port.


[1] I want to live a million more lives;
dine with a million more people, say to each;
show me the workings of your world, 
before this one winds down.

[2]The house sags on itself as clumsily as a southpaw’s scribblings,
[3]The sky-blue of the china lay scattered;
[4]If you didn’t associate with anyone who’d done a bad thing…
you wouldn’t know anyone at all.

When you shout it makes me horny.
With a great aplomb, the frozen lugworm 
grew a third nostril and besmirched 
the bowl of peanuts with a large ironing board.

[5]The cymbals hiss, the dragons bliss 
soaring high the clouds do die.
Cornice gleam is cornish ice-cream
[6]Alluring, alliterative alliance of arts.
We toss our syllables towards the stars…

Hand in a Jar.
No ideas spring to mind, I’ve scoured the thoughtscape of my mind
Oh well least I tried, now be a good sport 
and hand me that port 

[7]Motors drone, lights shimmer
An ancient story Arcs through the night.
[8]Life is about randomness, it makes my soul shine.
Amazing, grazing its all about dazing
The beast of uncertainty stands before my eyes 
should I walk the right or be the man whom I despise?

[9]Make wine & drink the music.
Paint a beat and make a picture.
Oop, my soup is gloop!
[10]Ten green bottles, preening on the walls.

When you shout it all feels better

[1  Poet Laureate Winner : Jake Campbell]
[2 Claire Thomas]
[3 Viccy Adams]
[4 Rob John Waters]
[5 Andrew Sclater]
[6 the incomplete poet R.Viglionisi]
[7 Ben H]
[8 Sandra]
[9 Abraham Lincoln]
[10 Steve R]