Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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I thought Wire's Red Barked Tree was quite unfeasibly good. It hasn't ended up on too many end-of-year best ofs, though, which is a shame. Here's the tunefully nihilist first track, "Please Take":
and the gothy "Down to This," which reminds just how much early Headless Chickens were influenced by 154:
What else? The Dum Dum Girls second album was fun, but perhaps not that durable. Best track:
I finally managed to catch Kristin Hersh's "Paradoxical Undressing" book tour/live music thing this year, which was great:
Her performance -- "one tiny woman and her guitar" -- to a little audience in a little bookshop in Hertfordshire in January wins my personal live gig of the year award. Sad, sweet, raw, beautiful, and profoundly unsettling: like all of her music. Her book's pretty good, too. -
Legal Beagle: Paula's Peril; or The…, in reply to Danielle,
Is there any MMP scenario in which the voters of Waitakere get to pelt her leopard-skin ministerial car with rotten fruit as it drives humiliatedly out of town? Because that's what I would really, really like.
Perhaps, as she drives away for the last time, Waitakere voters could line the avenues and give her a fitting send-off with this song? Poignant.
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Rachel Prosser,
It's got to be Munted. Nothing else has taken over vocabulary and become mainstream in quite the same way.
Yeah. When my 69-year-old father used it down the phone to me from Christchurch earlier this year, you could've knocked me down with a feather. I asked him how things were in Christchurch: he said simply, "it's munted." Words both failed and achieved spectacularly in that one moment.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to tussock,
Greens. Liberal Left. Get used to it. NB: Labour is a right wing party, just not far right like National.
Oh dear. I suspect a lot of New Zealand Green supporters are going to feel like Liberal Democrat voters, c. 2010, in the not-too-distant future. Many left-leaning LD voters put their fingers in their ears and went "LALALALA" whenever Clegg and his Orange Book mates opened their mouths, and imagined it was still the party of Ashdown and Kennedy. All I can say is: look out. Listen to the change in rhetoric and realize that it actually says something about the way the party will play its electoral cards in the future.
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*A wee footnote to the original post: the cafe in question is Triniti of Silver, not Trinity of Silver. (Used to be my local; great blueberry pancakes.)
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Tamsin6: Which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact he is bezzie mates with the PM. And the rest of that lot ... Cameron shows such a startling lack of judgement in choosing friends and colleagues that I just can’t wait to see who he appoints as his special new adviser on getting us laydees to vote for him again.
Well, 2012 is the centenary of the Titanic sinking. Just sayin'. Cameron's lot do seem rather ... reminiscent ... of a certain set that we thought the events of the early 20th century had taken care of. Maybe we can make this happen again? I have some deck chairs I can donate to the cause.
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Hard News: How long the leash on the…, in reply to Tamsin6,
Yeah, OK. Good point. I was thinking of relegating him permanently to public transport/silence as an end to his particular, sorry little media narrative. But you’re right: really, a fully functional, efficient, cheap British public transport system that worked would be the ultimate rejoinder to his schtick. Sigh. If only.
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Hard News: How long the leash on the…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Better still, how about a 'special episode' where [Clarkson's] licence is revoked for a month? Now that would test his mettle.
Yes! Statically charge him with a Van der Graaf generator so that every time he tries to start a car, it shorts out the ignition! Make him commute every day from Northampton to East London at rush hour. Using London Midland and the Circle and District Lines. Then film the gibbering, tearful, incoherent results.
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Voted at NZ House in London on Wednesday (UK time). Helped out by a cheerful woman with the thickest Waikato accent ever. One of the other scrutineers got very excited when he heard my old address, and asked me if I was a regular at the Backbencher. I humoured him and said yes.
I also overheard two of the scrutineers saying that Wellington Central was by far the most common electorate in the Specials cast at NZ House. Which I guess isn't surprising, but: yeah.
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An attempt at capturing the essence of our new home, March 2011. Central Milton Keynes, Midsummer Boulevard. Photo credit on this one (c) Siobhan K., I think.
