El Pibe

on wes, only really liked fantastic mr fox before, but loved Grand Budapest Hotel, as i think i mentioned recently. Yeah jeremy, had a very similar reaction from the missus to brazil, clearly not for everyone then. Zero theorem was awful though.

watched zero theorem the other day. despite a great cast and lots of cultural nods, not least to his own masterpiece Brazil, it was just very, very hard to care.

very good article. And judging by its content, I don't think ISIS, IS or daesh give two hoots whether we consider them a caliphate or not, apostates, infidels and pagans that we are. They do and that's rather the point isn't it.

Good old autocorrect

I tried. Hopeless beer the other day. There's a reason why we use hops. It was undrinkable. I think craft is a pretty loose term, but more or less it's about experimentation, breaking with traditional techniques. Like anything where rule breaking, the results are mixed. I really don't like the over strength IPAs, the flavour is just a bit unpleasant if you ask me, but there is a lot of good beer being made these days even if a lot of isn't really very crafty, and after years of lager or a soapy pint of London Pride that can only be a good thing.

ha, it's her!!

yeah, that's my go to pub when I'm in the office. Tuesday lunch if you're about?

but isn't it that, as Bone Box sang, the devil is in the deee-tail? ;)

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 44 or so, I'd say :) oh jaysus, 2 years!!! Which one are the tories again, fianna fail or fianna gael?

Fair enough Titch I don't disagree at all. I don't think it was politics with a big p as such, it was more that we spent a magical year communing with people from across the spectrum, potter casuals who the previous year would have bashed fookin students were suddenly hugging us and us and we'd be joining them on the terraces the next day and we really, briefly, thought the the class system was going and a wave of social unity would sweep away the vested interests of entrenched power. Obviously it was just us fookin students over intellectualising it all, the casuals were just enjoying the drugs, then the bad coke and were soon back to their 10 pints of lager and bashing fookin' students. But again that's the role we were supposed to play wasn't it ;) Miga, I think that was rather my point, or at least i hope it was, probably got lost in the wistful mix somewhere. Brooker's point was that they thought it was a niche comedy about a certain type, but what happened is that charmless, chancer meeja type has become a whole subculture, the rise of the idiots being utterly prophetic, and I think that's what he was lamenting.

what an unpleasant post RPC

I checked out the solo stuff by his backing singer Katie Kim. Rather more off the wall but pretty decent.

oh rosie, you seem to be mistaking getting old for forgetting that you were young. I'm pretty sure most of us expressed ourselves as part of some subcultrure or other, we wore things that we knew to be daft at the time but they were still an important part of ourselves as we forged our identity. We haven't forgotten what we did, the parties, the drugs, the fun stupidity. it's just we've (mostly) moved on a bit. It's the job of the old to tut about the young in a massively hypocritical fashion. If we were all still doing it in a tragicomic parody of dorian gray (keeping a mental image of ourselves forever young whilst our physical aspect chugs toward decrepitude) then it would be us deservfing of others' mirth. I guess my issue with the current expression are two-fold. Firstly the nod to victorian/edwardian england. It annoys me because in a world where we are the closest we've ever been to the workhouses, slums and vast inequality of that era, glorifying the privileged elite by, well, the privileged elite seems to me to be distasteful. Secondly it's the knowing irony. My own era, acid house and early rave, felt like a genuine social revolution. There *was* a genuine coming together across social strata (however brief it lasted until booze, coke and money divided us all again) and we felt we were undermining the brave new world mapped out by thatcher and friedman, we would subvert it through drugs, love and music and it would change us all forever. Yeah it didn't but the naive idealism was heartfelt. I don't like the idea that somehow everything is a joke, cultural bric-a-brac to show society how you're in on the joke and they're missing the point, what we need now more than ever is a fight for social and political change, not finding ever weirder ways to exploit commercialism. If hipsters wore blue overalls with a red book in the pocket whilst having their mioaw miaow and craft beer i think somehw I'd be happier. But it's their world now, and once they've donned their suits and started working for big business, cv replete with all that entrepreneurial experience it won't be long before they're sitting in a suburban pub tutting at the latest daft notions/fashions of the youth of tomorrow. If they weren't I'd be rather concerned. And proof that even grumpy-old-me wore stupid baggy things and had mates sporting pony tails as we gurned and twitched in our yoof....

human nature innit. We all constantly have an internal bubble sort going on as we finely calibrate our position in the world and our relationships to pretty much everything. Currently anyone sporting an outlandish victorian moustache and riding a penny farthing sits below me on my inner-peace ladder, but possibly above me in the doing-something-more-constructive-than-soul-destroying-development-work-for-the-man ladder.

irish chap too, galway i believe.

Some Blue Morning by Galway's Adrian Crowley. It's really rather special. If's up there in quality with a similar aesthetic to the best works by Richard Hawley or Bill Calahan, maybe some Leonard Cohen. SJ, you must have some shurely.

I dipped my toe back in the water. Makes me wish I hadn't missed those weeks *sobs quietly*

specialist

what is a hipster? still best article I've read on it http://potlatch.typepad.com/weblog/2011/03/an-open-letter-to-the-hipsters.html

oh for sure, the hippies with their ludicrous atavistic fashion, their production line individuality and their ability to elicit derisory, judgmental snorts. But at least it was earnest, if misguided, rather than a self-enclosed loop entirely composed of irony.

excellent, cheers Jah. I stumbled upon TV Go Home as I pretended to work in the last months of restructuring at an investment bank, god, 15 years ago?!?!. I remember literally crying with laughter, struggling to breathe and people in the office thinking I'd lost the plot entirely. great quote at the end too "But we are all self-facilitating media nodes now, if only because we all hoot our opinions into the void of social media, vainly looking for affirmation."

we are at war with eurasia, we have always...blah...etc..

kiwi colleague brought these guys to my attenion, very nice and chilled.

"Beseige", about a fiver for PC; marvellous combination of meccano and medieval bloodlust...and exploding sheep http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/19/besiege-physics-puzzler-war-machines/#more-263577

Did people miss MP's second post pun? "two"t. I thought it was quite clever, i might have gone with twonk though as a little lss harsh.