recepticle=Wednesday, January 26, 2005
i have beautiful eyes
for the love of god, go and check out elle milano, who are totally awesome and totally local to me. totally!
i'm also inviting anyone i know who's also local and cool (so, that would be jon, liam, benson, my band, and of course my chick) to come and see elle milano at the charlotte on thursday 10th of february.
i haven't been this zooped about a band since liam gave me a copy of william shatner's album. actually, that's a lie; last week angel gave me a copy of the arcade fire's album, which is fucking sweet.
so, who's coming?
- posted by lawrie at 4:49 PM ~ comments
Saturday, January 22, 2005
buy our shit! it's real good!
i fucking hate writing copy. when i'm working on a site for a client i usually don't have to worry about it, since they've written their own promotional garbage and i just have to copy-and-paste (after correcting all the spelling errors, pointing out that plurals don't have apostrophes and that sentences should never end in six exclamation marks, no matter how zany you are). but ever so often i get a site that, for the front page at least, is a completely blank page.
this isn't a new problem for me; i always hated writing copy on the rare occasions i had to do it before i decided set the interweb ablaze with my colourized mediocrity. every so often i'd get a phone call from someone asking me to write liner notes for an album, or a biog for their band, or something about their restaurant food no longer containing traces of rat poison, and i'd always accept because i like writing, and i'd apparently forgotten how hard it was. then i'd sit there for five hours trying to write a 150-word version of "we are not rubbish".
the problem with writing copy is the need to promote without sounding pompous, or too impersonal, or too friendly, or like you're actually promoting anything at all. when i wrote for 'hybrid' magazine i didn't have to worry about these constraints; i just wrote invariably offensive articles and reviews and uh... horoscopes. in fact, i managed to reduce our circulation by getting the magazine banned from the local museum because a priest complained about my horoscopes, and a record company called our office all the way from germany to complain about my review of their fucking dreadful compilation (in case you're interested, it was millennium jazz by mole listening pearls). but if your promotional copy inspires similar responses, then you lose the game; no more clients for you.
so, for the wedding photographer i currently have "i can take real good photos of your family who only turned up for the free alcohol, and my soft focus filter helps to make you not so ugly." um... a little help?
- posted by lawrie at 4:28 PM ~ comments
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
design makes me want to die
please welcome angel back to the fore after his seven-year sabbatical away from the internet and civilised life. his site is awesome.
looking at the internet web design section of this year's local yellow pages has granted me an epiphany made up of equal parts sadness and frustration.
if you are spectacularly rubbish at the job that you claim to be your area of 'expertise' - and i mean so achingly, horrifically atrocious that you make my eyes want to grow little legs to clamber out of their sockets with, and tiny arms with which they can karate-chop themselves from their stalks, pausing only to dust themselves down before throwing themselves in a bath of nitric acid simply to erase the memory of your 'work' - then you should be summarily annihilated. by god, preferably.
i realise that not everyone possesses the necessary emotional detachment to be objective and openly judgemental of their own pathetic and futile attempts to colour in a circle and call it a website, which is why i propose a council be appointed to pass judgement on you and score your flesh with a branding iron that reads 'talentless pissmidget'. all of your monetary assets shall then be confiscated to stop you from advertising and propagating your diseased filth, and will instead be divided between donations to the free saddam hussein campaign and being thrown into a bottomless pit lined with the souls of the damned.
once you have gathered your senses, please incinerate them for crimes against my eyes and remove yourself from my field of vision, you pot-bellied creampuff.
- posted by lawrie at 5:22 PM ~ comments
Friday, January 14, 2005
best court case ever
i found this a couple of years ago when it first happened, and thought about it again as i was eating a crumb of cheese with a blob of mustard (a sunny smile for whomever guesses that blatantly obvious late seasonal reference). this is a word-for-word absolutely true court transcript from a british high court case in 2002.
counsel: what is your name?
chrysler: chrysler. arnold chrysler.
counsel: is that your own name?
chrysler: whose name do you think it is?
counsel: i am just asking if it is your name.
chrysler: and i have just told you it is. why do you doubt it?
counsel: it is not unknown for people to give a false name in court.
chrysler: which court?
counsel: this court.
chrysler: what is the name of this court?
counsel: this is no. 5 court.
chrysler: no, that is the number of this court. what is the name of this court?
counsel: it is quite immaterial what the name of this court is!
chrysler: then perhaps it is immaterial if chrysler is really my name.
judge: i think mr. chrysler is running rings round you already. i would try a new line of attack if i were you.
counsel: thank you, m'lud.
chrysler: and thank you from me, m'lud. it's nice to be appreciated.
judge: shut up, witness.
chrysler: willingly, m'lud. it is a pleasure to be told to shut up by you. for you, i would...
judge: shut up, witness.
counsel: now, mr. chrysler - for let us assume that that is your name - you are accused of purloining in excess of 40,000 hotel coat hangers.
chrysler: i am.
counsel: can you explain how this came about?
chrysler: yes. i had 40,000 coats which i needed to hang up.
counsel: is that true?
chrysler: no.
counsel: then why did you say it?
chrysler: to attempt to throw you off balance.
counsel: off balance?
chrysler: certainly. as you know, all barristers seek to undermine the confidence of any hostile witness, or defendant. therefore it must be equally open to the witness, or defendant, to try to shake the confidence of a hostile barrister.
counsel: on the contrary, you are not here to indulge in cut and thrust with me. you are only here to answer my questions.
chrysler: was that a question?
counsel: no.
chrysler: then i can't answer it.
counsel: mr. chrysler, perhaps you will describe what reason you had to steal 40,000 coat hangers?
chrysler: is that a question?
counsel: yes.
chrysler: it doesn't sound like one. it sounds like a proposition which doesn't believe in itself. you know - "perhaps i will describe the reason i had to steal 40,000 coat hangers... perhaps i won't... perhaps i'll sing a little song instead..."
counsel: mr. chrysler, why did you steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers, knowing as you must have that hotel coat hangers are designed to be useless outside hotel wardrobes?
chrysler: because i build and sell wardrobes which are specially designed to take nothing but hotel coat hangers.
[the following day...]
counsel: are you serious when you say that clients of yours drink from their own minibars in their own bedrooms in their own homes?
chrysler: certainly. and just as in a hotel, they grumble about the price and size of the bottles, and the absence of ice.
counsel: so why don't they get a proper fridge in their bedroom?
chrysler : because then it wouldn't be like a hotel.
judge: tell me, mr chrysler, do these businessmen of yours also have gideon bibles by their bedside at home?
chrysler: many of them, sir.
judge: and where do you get the gideon bibles from?
chrysler: alas, they, too, have to be taken from hotels.
judge: then why are you not also up on a charge of bible-stealing?
chrysler: because the bibles do not belong to the hotels. they belong to the gideon society. and the gideon society has decided not to prosecute me, but to forgive me and tell me to go and sin no more.
judge: and have you sinned no more?
chrysler: alas, no.
- posted by lawrie at 5:09 PM ~ comments
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
it had to happen
yesterday morning, at 4.37am, i received a cease-and-desist order form the dmca, which stands for the digital and mechanical copyright army, i think. it was regarding the '/sounds' directory on indextwo where i had a tiny selection of mp3 rarities, including my very own dark house remix of the 'i love horses' jingle.
although they didn't go into specifics about which track had caused them to suddenly rape my digital asshole, i have a feeling it was 'saturday sun' by nick drake. you see, 'saturday sun' is quite possibly my favourite nick drake track ever, and i've had it online for over a year. i was into nick drake long before itunes offered him up as a meal to all the emo kids a couple of months ago; since 1997 in fact, when a friend bought me 'an introduction to...' for my birthday.
ever since itunes started offering nick drake tracks for download, i've been receiving a ton of hits from search engines like alltheweb, altavista and something called 'google' from people looking for nick drake media. it was only through this that i discovered that these services (google not included) offer a media search, so you can find wavs and mp3s and illegally download them. why do they do this? doesn't this mean that these search engines are condoning (and indeed encouraging) the highly illegal black art of piracy? haven't they seen the commericals put on before a rental film? "piracy funds organised crime... piracy funds terrorism."
so if you downloaded 'saturday sun' from indextwo, one of the most beautiful songs ever written, then you were also giving millions in donations to al qaeda and practically drawing them a flight path from iraq (because that's where they live now) to big ben.
so, click here to download an mp3 of the greatest cover ever recorded; nina gordon does 'straight outta compton'.
- posted by lawrie at 2:50 PM ~ comments
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
worrying corn snacks
i just found a 'joke' on the back of a packet of wotsits. it goes:
q: what goes 'aaaaaaaaa'?
a: a sheep with no lips.
i'll admit that it made me laugh, but it was the kind of nervous tittering sound you make when you're not entirely sure if the man with the axe was joking about what he did to your loved ones. the problems with this joke are fourfold, but since the disturbing imagery it conjours is clearly the most obvious problem of all, i shall recount the other three.
1. it requires a basic understanding of the science of phonetics (or the art of ventriloquism), since 'b' is one of the few consonants that you can't pronounce without your lips. your nephew might laugh at the idea of a sheep without lips, but he probably wouldn't entirely get the joke. and then he'd have nightmares about lipless sheep.
2. there are a few too many 'a's in there for it to be your basic sheep's bleat. when drawing a picture of your house with your disproportionally large mummy and daddy standing outside and a sheep in the garden, the sheep is usually saying "baa". perhaps "baa!" if it's excited. which leads leads me to the conclusion that this sheep is, in fact, screaming because it's had it's lips ripped off.
3. if you were to tell this joke to someone, as opposed to writing it down on a napkin and handing it to them, it would be completely rubbish. if you said "what goes 'aaaaaaaa'?", the other person might say "is it someone going for a check-up at the doctor's?". but for it to actually sound like a sheep, and thus make sense, you would have to add some bleating, which would most assuredly prompt the other person to guess "a sheep that can't pronounce it's 'b's for some reason?"
wotsits: if i want cheesy corn snacks, i'll call you, but you don't do 'funny' very well. in the meantime, i shall continue to make my own small golem from blu-tac.
- posted by lawrie at 1:28 PM ~ comments
Monday, January 03, 2005
i wish it could be christmas every fucking day
who wants to know what i got for christmas? what's that? everyone does? well then, click here to see the thirty dvds i got! admittedly, half of them i purchased myself with the various vouchers i received, but if you don't think every single one of these is an excellent piece of cinema then you are wrong and stupid and rubbish. and you'll shortly be homeless. and dead. bitch.
- posted by lawrie at 9:36 PM ~ comments