Curb Season 8

Trailer here.

Be they Blade or be they Owl, regardless of footballing alligiance

Sheffield city council goes over the top in its representation of as many contrasting demographics in one poster as possible.

Power Children's Plastic Urban Cricket Set's solid gold running tips # 2

Distractions. There's nothing more boring than running so you often have to find ways of occupying your thoughts, especially in the early stages before the really digging in begins. I used to go through the plot lines from ER or write jokes such as this one:

Did you hear about the untimely death of the upholsterer?

He had unfurnished business.

Whilst in considerable pain, the thoughts that go through your head can be surprisingly banal. Like remembering that you have to go to bank. This is a good thing. The more your brain thinks about boring things, the better your body can concentrate on running.

Thoughts aside, the finely toned backside of a runner of the opposite sex can do wonders for your focus. Objectifying attractive people can slash minutes off your PB. Just ask Seb Coe. No wait, don't. He'll be too busy with 2012 and all that.

Music is a popular distraction technique but it can get you run over. I'm of the opinion that all this headphone wearing in the public sphere is damaging to society, but that's another thing all together.

So yeah: Rumination and arse. They're my running tips for today.

Power Children's Plastic Urban Cricket Set's solid gold running tips # 1

Disclaimer: The following tips might not make you a better runner and might actually make you a horrible person.

Embrace extremes. I gravitate towards extremes. It's all about addiction. I can binge almost constantly on food and alcohol for a period of up to 6 months with only a handful of runs in all that time, with most of them being mad dashes to the offy before it closes. The amount I can consume in one day is startling and frankly disgusting. And yet I'm strangely proud of my huge appetite. I can eat until I feel really quite ill and then eat some more. This is where extreme lifestyles create transferrable skills for running. To have the determination to carry on through the pain - if ever there was a maxim to define the mental qualities of the long distance runner this would be it. It is a mental toughness that they share with the likes of hot dog eating champions.

When I first got into running I would eat a bowl of muesli for breakfast, an apple for dinner and a carrot for tea and then go running in the evening. It's going from one extreme to another. This is why you get all these cases of unbelievably obese individuals losing over half their body weight using unbelievably restricting diets - It's just addiction transfer. These people clearly have addictive personalities and for many years lard was their vice. But eating little and exercising a lot can become just as addictive. The way I see it everyone's addicted to something you just have to choose the best one for you.

One word of warning: My dad went on the stupid insane extreme route in his youth, eating salad and running 3 hours everyday. And now he can't walk very well. This is what probably isn't said enough - running destroys your legs. So EMBRACE EXTREMES (in moderation).

Memoirs # 11

Having stayed up all night (possibly under the influence), me and my housemate stopped a milk float on our road to ask for 2 pints of milk 3 times a week (or maybe visa versa).
That milk became a financial albatross around our necks. Every week we'd forget about having to pay it. I think eventually we had it cancelled.

Fiction - Big Things

The main medium I use for discovery of new music is the radio, mostly because I'm a lazy, passive consumer - It's hypodermic needle model stuff, I just sit there listening to the radio nodding in agreement.

This is one doing the rounds on 6Music at the moment. It has a great groove and it just rolls by. It's an unassuming groove, and has the understated air of a laid back demo take. Like a good funk record, it's a track where the constituent parts make a much greater whole (!? Rewrite: 'Like all music ever,..'). Each individual instrument is as clear as a bell and the overall effect is bright and not at all muddied. I like to be able to aurally pick apart a track like that. Like the work of Dungen (another radio discovery), the vocals are the worst bit. I would happily listen to it without them.

Also it sounds like exactly the kind of music I imagine myself making. Particularly the guitar line that comes in with the drums at approx 1.29. If this sounds like an odd thing to say then I guess it is.

Seinfeld and The Beatles

I like this photo.

Now if only I could get The Beatles to mock up a Seinfeld photo. For the sake of simplicity George could be George, leaving Paul to be Jerry, John as Kramer and Ringo as Elaine. Or maybe Yoko Ono could be Elaine and Ringo would be Uncle Leo or someone.

I haven't really thought this through. (In reality this topic is open to mountains of discussion).

I was thinking about making a comparison of the Seinfeld and The Beatles because I have mildly problematic obsessions with both. It turns out (fairly unsurprisingly) that it's been done before.

Here and here a couple of examples I have found.

The first link makes a neat little comparison (in it's first few paragraphs) between the two in terms of their cultural dominance of their respective eras.

The second link makes some cross generational comparisons of sitcoms and music artists which by way of summary goes thusly:

I Love Lucy - Elvis Presley, Seinfeld - The Beatles, The Office (USA) - Queen

Now, first of all, being English I have little to no working knowledge of 'I Love Lucy' but if it is anything like Elvis I imagine it was massively culturally important at the time but contains almost nothing of interest for the modern consumer. I'm sure the author reads it a little differently, but I'll go along with it.

Now there is a line in one Seinfeld episode where Jerry says he's never seen a single episode of 'Lucy' (hence destroying this guy's theory of 'no Seinfeld without I Love Lucy') but then he is a fictional character and I imagine Jerry in real life is very well read sitcom-wise. Perhaps an American viewer would be aware of allusions of 'I Love Lucy' in Seinfeld. But anyway, as far as comparing The Beatles and Seinfeld I agree with him.

But then he says The Office is like Queen. He ranks The Office (USA) his favourite sitcom of all time, so we must assume he holds Queen in equally high esteem. Now I have been known to enjoy the pompous stylings of Queen in the past but to say their better than The Beatles...well for me his theory falls to pieces. I would be prepared to give The Office a chance if he just said 'This is my favourite sitcom, you should check it out', but knowing that he ranks Queen above The Beatles, I can't help feeling his sitcom barometer must be a bit broken. How can I trust his judgement after a something like that?

Besides, he completely ignores Arrested Development. Are they the Radiohead of sitcoms? Perhaps as far as comparisons go, assigning sitcoms their equivalent music group is probably about as wanky as it gets. I'm beginning to think so.

If only I had the patience, skill and inclination to do so, I would now post a crudely put together photo of The Beatles heads superimposed onto the Seinfeld gang just to make up for wasting your time.

Lost all his amethysts

The above URL (taken from a nonsense lyric from 'The legs of fifty spiders', a nonsense song penned by PCPUCS himself) has taken on a brilliant new meaning, one that I wish I had intended all along.

Apparently, the Ancient Greeks and Romans thought amethysts would protect them from drunkenness and wore them to prevent intoxication. According to Wikipedia, (and I hope I'm not being duped here) the word amethyst comes from the Ancient Greek 'amethystos', basically translated as 'not intoxicated'.

So the above title is saying my protection from inebriation is at zero. I have no chance, I'm done for. It would've been a little cooler if it was more like 'Threw away all his amethysts' - a more impassioned 'throw caution to the wind' kind of thing. But then I guess I probably lost the amethysts the last time I got drunk.

10 easy ways of making people think you're crazy

1. Wear a coat indoors all the time. This is simple but effective. People no longer trust your judgement at all after one day of indoor coat wearing.

2. Fall off the back of your chair. Ideally executed in large gatherings of contemporaries e.g during a lecture at a centre for learning. Done properly it should elicit absolutely no reaction from those nearby. Raising concern from others means you have fundamentally failed to pass yourself off as a) mental b) dead or c) attention seeking. No one in their right mind would ever have anything to do with someone in their wrong mind.

3. Move around glasses, pepper mills and other dinner table fixtures during a meal, shout "Checkmate!" and leave. I don't know if this one needs explaining.

4. Doing any normal activity in a squatting position. Just think about it. Eating + squatting = Loopy, Wedding Procession + sqautting = Crazy loco, Open heart surgery + squatting = plain stupid, Filling in your tax returns + squatting = a bit uncomfortable etc. Squatting regresses you back to your chimp beginnings. The fact that shitting in a bush is the only justifiable reason for a human to take up a squatting position says it all really.

5. Drawing on yourself in felt tip. If ever there was guiding principle for being a loon it's that 'Mildy errant childish behaviour as a child = criminally insane behavior for an adult'. (See also: Sticking things in ears.) Writing expletives or apocalyptic messages will add extra helpings to the crazy.

6. Sticking things in ears. This can be anything really, pencils hit home the point a little to obviously for some people's tastes, so consider subtler items such as washing detergent or Ferrero Rocher. Those aiming for the more extreme end of the spectrum work with a variety of minerals such as amethyst or iron pyrite. Of course with substances such as these your commitment to 'crazy' has to be weighed up against how prepared you are to permanently damage your hearing.

7. Develop an obsession. This again is of your own choosing. Some people like to stalk certain individuals and fantasize about subjecting them to all manner of depredation, but it can be equally insane to develop an unhealthy fascination with a television sitcom. Everyone is always a little freaked out when you know every single line of the programme - it's incredibly effective.

8. Talk to yourself on the bus. A classic, really. I would've been branded insane for leaving it out. Chuntering about the state of the transport executive and yet another rise in fares is a good place to start, but by the time you reach the terminus try to ensure you are incoherent and dribbling.

9. Make lists. Live your life by meaningless lists. In a list of hobbies put 'Making Lists' as your No 1. hobby. Force these lists on other people and threaten them with savagery until they produce a counter-list. Publish them in a public forum and watch how people avoid you even more.

Cellar

I find the mess in the cellar pleasing.

It looks like the day after a party. But the party is 20 years long and no one's sobering up any time soon. Instead of being half-empty cans and pools of sick the items down here include old bathroom tiles, cricket equipment and brass instruments from the long-defunct local church marching band down the road.

There's a perambulator chassis and crates of VHS tapes.

There's receptacles of differing kinds - beer bottles, plant pots, frying pans.

There's mouldy tents and fossils found at Scalby Mills.

The debris piles up as items fall out of day-to-day use upstairs and they come down here to die. It's not a party for inanimate object youths. It's a hospice for inanimate object pensioners. What the hell am I saying, it's a fucking cellar.

Anyroad, here's the photies:

Drums, Drawers, Amp, Keyboard.

Mess.

Pots and Wellies.

Trolley, Tyre, Bedframe, Tent.

Receptacles.

Lamp plus Two.

Drums, Tiles, Umbrella, Amp, Keyboard 1.

Drums, Tiles, Umbrella, Amp, Keyboard 2.

Drums, Tiles, Umbrella, Amp, Keyboard 3.

Stepladder, Beach Wind Shield, Orange jacket left by workman 15 years ago.

Light.