unpopular

Lucy's off to join the Climate Camp.

I never knew about That London

I was just pottering about on Amazon, looking at Peter Ashley’s Unmitigated England books (the books of the marvellous blog), when I noticed one of the recommendations was Christopher Winn’s I Never Knew That About London. Which I initially read as I Never Knew About That London... Speaking of which, we will be up in That London this weekend. Check my Unpopular Twitterings for our whereabouts and opportunities for beer and/or coffee and stimulating conversation. (please note, stimulating conversation may not actually be possible, depending on degree of beer/caffeine consumption).

So Snow Leopard appears on Friday. I’ll be in London, so will I be camped outside the Apple store waiting for the release? Well, no, but I might be tempted to drop in on Saturday to pick up a copy, despite the fact that we will no doubt get our free licences at school in the next couple of weeks... The one thing that I am most looking forward to is the support for Exchange, which should mean that I can ditch Microsoft software for good. No more juggling between Mail, iCal and Entourage. Hopefully... If it all works as expected. I also finally stopped using Word recently too - fed up with the seemingly unfixable trait of dumping a ton of crappy formatting code into my blog posts. So it’s Pages ahoy. I especially like that ‘full screen mode’ in Pages. Keeps away all the distraction of other things on the screen so it’s just you and the words. Kind of reminds me of typing on a manual typewriter, which I guess is the whole point.

Sorry, this has been a really crappy post, hasn’t it? You can blame the fact that I’m listening to The House Of Love for the first time in many years... I remember the album with a vague fondness (from, when was that, 1988?) but so far it’s doing very little for me now. I have The House Of Love and Isn’t Anything inextricably linked in my head. Seems to me that one of those records has aged immeasurably better than the other. Oh, and McGee’s ‘sleevenotes’ for The House Of Love are almost hilariously dreadful. Notice I said ‘almost’ hilariously...

success criteria

When, eventually, we get some new/old bookshelves for The Garden Room, I have a feeling that we may decide to have a small cull of the book collection. This blog post gives some excellent success criteria for a successful purge. Maybe I should adapt the criteria for CDs, as it seems to me that I’ve come across a whole lot of discs during my recent epic ripping adventure that I’ve been close to throwing in the ‘charity shop’ pile.

Wine destroys the memory

My mom reads my blog. Isn’t that great? I think it’s great. No, really, I do. I mean, a blog isn’t a diary anyway, so it’s not like it’s Lindsey’ parents sneaking into her room in Freaks and Geeks to read her private teenage thoughts and feelings, is it?  Sometimes though my mom feels the need to apologise for reading, and sometimes I apologise back for my occasionally colourful language. It seems like a fair trade.

Now, much as I think it’s great that my mom can keep up with what I’m dithering about doing via this blog and Twitter and Flickr and whatnot, there are times when I hate the Interweb with a passion. Times when it all just feels too much. Too many connections. Too much information. It can make you feel lonely as hell. Mostly though it’s terrific. All that story-telling. All the news that’s fit to sing. Ideas running around barefoot and drawing pictures in the sand. Making it up as you go along. Leaving signs and ciphers. Nods and winks.

I was just writing about this in an email, in response to a blog post about those very ideas. That idea of constructing an identity through status updates and online playlists – the apparently contradictory fear of expressing ‘real’ emotions and feelings to people in private and yet simultaneously expressing those feelings in a hyper-mediated manner in public. And also being utterly knowing about that contradiction; indeed embracing the very conflict as part of the deal and knowing it is something to be played with. Also, there is something about the public / private interface that’s intriguing. Those nods and winks going out into the public sphere, missing their mark and being misinterpreted.

Because, you know, sometimes a mix tape is just a mix tape. Sometimes a status update is just a status update. Sometimes a line from a song is just a line from a song.

At Swim Two Birds – ‘Wine Destroys The Memory’

A word from the wise guy

Just in from the folks at Your Heart Out:

The tenth issue of Your Heart Out is now available to download for free. Affectionately known by the codename: Folklore. That's folklore as in the study of traditional beliefs or at least beliefs popularly held. That's folklore as in new perspectives, invectives and necessary mischief. Or to put it in more conventional terms, the new issue features Postcard's last stand, UK hip hop's winning hand, folk, blues, bossa and beyond ...

 
In a climate where culturally the shutters have come down, and accepted truths remain accepted truths, hopefully YHO has a role to play in shaking things up a little. So please spread the word, before they run us in.
 
You'll always find us at www.yrheartout.blogspot.com
 
And don't forget our London songs project at www.thelondonnobodysings.blogspot.com

Going through 'g'

Going through 'g', originally uploaded by unpop.

I just pre-ordered Tim Footman’s The Noughties 2000-2009: A Decade That Changed the World from Amazon UK. Apparently customers who shopped for Tim Footman’s The Noughties also shopped for: Pregnancy for Modern Girls: The Naked Truth About Being Pregnant by Hollie Smith and Baby Nose Clear (nasal aspirators).

Oh, they also shopped for Tim’s book about Leonard Cohen, but that’s not as bizarre/amusing.

Hooptedoodle

I can’t say I’m a great Elmore Leonard fan, but his ten rules of writing (as linked to by ET this morning) are quite compelling and entertaining. I’ll be flicking back to those when I embark on my NaNoWriMo effort in a couple of months. It also occurred to me whilst in the bookstore this morning that James Sallis has surely written some kind of similar ‘rules’ for writing. There is nothing more than an obscure memory that suggests this, which inevitably means he has probably written no such thing, but what the hell. I just felt it suddenly necessary to remember James Sallis. His sole tome on the ‘crime’ shelves (the extraordinarily fine ‘Ghost Of A Flea’) looked quite forlorn this morning and I was sorely tempted to buy it regardless of the fact that I have it already. I often get that impulse in bookstores; the urge to ‘rescue’ favourites from the shelves. Used to get it occasionally in record stores too, but I can’t even remember the last time I was in a real record store, which probably says a lot about how times change and all that. In fact I’m sorely tempted to dig out all of Sallis’ Lew Griffin novels and give them another spin. They were superb pieces of writing, weren’t they?

Dartmoor ponies

Dartmoor ponies, originally uploaded by unpop.

Also on the moor were the obligatory ponies. You can just see Haytor in the distance. At least I THINK that's Haytor... This little dude was very friendly. I apologised for having no apples or sugar cubes in my jersey pockets, but he let me stroke his lttle nose regardless. Bless.