Hodge podge

I hate the fucking washing machine and to keep balance in the world, it hates me back.

I overstuff it with all kinds of crap, hoping it will wash everything I put in, whether that be one t-shirt or twenty.
I treat it like a slave and I am the master of the manor, expecting it to do what it's told, to quiver before the orders I spit in its direction.
And it punishes me by dying my white Efterklang t-shirt grey, my beige Bonnie Prince Billy t-shirt blue and various other items a colour not too far away from the original but far enough away that it just looks a bit 'off'.
Then when it begins to wash, it makes horrendous clunking and whirring noises like it's blurting out, in a bastardised Johnny 5 voice, 'Adam, come and look at me, I'm about to burst and spill your formerly-known-as-white t-shirts all over the floor'.
Clunk, clunk, parp, toot, rattle and eventually crrrrash.
I do go and look and I stand like an idiot waiting for the fateful click so I can open the door and then see there is nothing wrong. It mocks me.
I hate you, washing machine.
I've also just discovered that the dog intensely dislikes me singing along to the new Antony and the Johnsons song, 'Epilepsy is Dancing', which I am singing alot at the moment.
It gives me a chance to do frighteningly warbly acrobatics with my vocal chords.
I put on a fabulous falsetto, a kind of English accent, a wobbly vocal effect and sing the already strange lyrics while prancing about the kitchen in a fey, highly questionable ballerina dance that I imagine Antony and his Johnsons might do if they were performing it in my house.
'Caaaaaaht me eeeeeen quadraaaaantssss, leeeeeave me in da cwornnaaaaaahhhh'
Try it, it's fun, I can assure you. Very liberating.
Finally, I saw a great headline (yes, being a sub ed makes me a headline nerd) the other day, from an American paper I think.
It was a picture of a forlorn looking 12 or 13 year-old boy, in black & white, and the headline was:
BULLY NOT SO TOUGH AFTER BEING MOLESTED
Methinks the sub editor was, possibly, bullied at some stage, no?
And lastly, it's my birthday tomorrow so I shall leave you with the song I shall be listening to: Run DMC's Peter Piper. Download it. It's a classic.

Syriana's script vs. The Script

So now in the middle of Syriana on RTE, I am subjected to an item on The Script recording their new video. Because they have the financial clout of Sony behind them, they warrant a place on the national news as they commit the video for their new heinous aural atrocity to film? As Eddie in Bottom once pointed out, I would rather have a pineapple inserted violently into my rectum.
What a load of cock. Yes, they are easy targets and slagging them off is as obvious as saying 'red bull coke tastes like metal vomit' or 'the tyrannosaurus rex had small arms' but why does this need to be on the news; even as a late night 'squirrel in a miniature speedboat' moment?
And in the middle of Syriana too? Clooney's finest moment and a wonderful film that demands a second and third viewing. A film that never panders to the viewer, never spells things out and has Matt Damon explain, in one succinct delivery, the reason why war happens in the Middle East. Brilliant stuff.
In other news - and news that by now is old and boring - State mag is going free from next month. The blog buzz around this today has been interesting as people banged on about, among other things, journos at State having to take a possible paycut. Poor them. I work a day job for wages and do my Drop-d/Connected/and soon Analogue work for nada but the love and respeck, so I'm afraid I don't have sympathy for any paycuts.
Yes, yes that's bitterness, of course.
I dream of the day that hard cash is included as one of my motivations for doing all that writing.
Hard cash and love: two wonderful components vying for top spot...some day.
Actually Film Ireland pay me (God bless the movies) so there is a positive.

Sunshine

Does anybody get that 'holiday' air floating around today and yesterday?
It feels like we are all wrapping up on our last day at school and arranging that final game of football on the school grounds before we all split up for a few months....
Then I read Charlie Brooker's piece in d'Guardian from yesterday and he makes sure I spend some time ruminating on the subject of our lives as zombies and our lack of action/motivation regarding the surrounding world and the inherent problems of it. He also makes me acutely aware of my tongue being in my mouth. It's a really uncomfortable thing to suddenly be aware of your big, lolling tongue bouncing around in your gob and now I'm gonna spend the day with no mouth-comfort at all.
And there was me about to get all 'Ron Manager' on it. Small boys, jumpers for goalposts..
I'm gonna dig out a summer song and put it up here later on. Any suggestions?

Actually, I found one...