Yes, in news from the department of waaaaaay-beyond parody, it seems that legendary poodle-headed PhD candidate (Interplanetary Dust…bet he’s great at parties) and histrionic rock guitar god Brian May , CBE, ARCS, FRAS, OMGWTFBBQ, has teamed up with eccentric xylophone-bothering cosmologist/celebrity astronomer Patrick Moore (and some other bloke…) to write Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. The website is fantastic, cos it’s got a bang animation, and everything. It’s interactive. GTFI!
Brilliant though the book (and concept) undoubtedly is, we can’t help wondering if Brian and Patrick ever took time out for some guitar/xylophone jams? They could be the next White Stripes…Bri and Pat’s Cosmic Dust! Really, think about it. I DO hope a tie-in song/song-cycle/terrible musical is in the offing. Brian could recreate the big bang via the overamped sounds of a home-made guitar, while Patrick provides a xylophonic interpretation of how superstrings and M-Branes etc might sound.
I love the world. When exactly did it go completely post-real?
…
"Brian can also be addressed as Dr May since being awarded an honorary
degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Hertfordshire. "
Bwah haha hah! Right you are, pretend Dr May…
University of Hertfordshire. Stop sniggering at the back.
Lastly, you can learn more about Brian’s opinions on everything from Rock to Reality at his interactivewebsite. Did I mention that it is interactive? I did? Oh good….
ilike is another social music sharing affair (like last.fm) which, via an iTunes plug-in, tracks your listening habits and suggests ’similar’ artists you may also, like, like. As long as you don’t listen to obscure minimal techno (apparently). It does seem quite good on indie rock type stuff though, so if that is your bag, give it a go. I was listening to Arcade Fire and it recommended Wolf Parade and Modest Mouse, both of which I already also like. Uncanny.
Anyway, the exciting new thing that ilike does is that it also finds videos on YouTube by the artist you are currently enjoying, which is, like, neat. Is nice? You like?
Great, I take a day off, and I get ill. Marvellous. But at least i remembered to blog. Ha. Going back to bed now, to enjoy those lovely short, repetitive looping dream fragments I always get when I’m unwell. So, this might be an extremely poor and uninteresting post but AT LEAST it is an accurate reflection of my life as it is being lived…
I’d just like to take a moment to thank all my readers in Neu Wulmstorf, Southampton, Cambridge, Wokingham, Oxford, Takatsuki, Hamilton, Glenfield, Melbourne, Mesa, Merced, San Francisco, Vancouver, Port Alberni, Saint Louis, Milwaukee, Markham, Ottawa and London. Thanks. You’ve been a great audience so far, hope we can make this something special.
Yes, I’ve just recently installed google analytics, inspired by the amusing post on same on hooker’s blog, and I can concur that it is pretty sweet to see where your ‘readership’ comes from via dots on a global map. I’ve got a very loyal readership over in Port Alberni, I can tell ya!
I already missed a day in my post-every-day-month. Oops. What happened was, I decided to have a little lie down around 7pm, because I was feeling shite, and then I just fell asleep. Also I was feeling kinda depressed, so, you know, I COULD have hauled myself out of bed to blog at 11:40pm, but I didn’t. Never mind, I’m not actually an official NaBloPoMo-er anyway…
However, not going to let this minor mishap get in the way, nosiree, going to keep on truckin’ and postin’…
Right now, though, you have to read this lovely conversation I had with Mike Lambe.
Woah, It’s 23:39, I’ve just watched two more episodes of the brilliant Wire and I’ve consumed more than half a bottle of rather good Wolf Blass Shiraz Grenache, but it just occurred to me that I haven’t posted yet today. So instead of stumbling off to the land of nod, here I am. How’s that for commitment, hm? Hm?
There seems to be some sort of party going on in the communal kitchen next to our flat, which is LITERALLY almost unprecedented here at Wolfson College, which isn’t exactly renowned for wild late-night hi-jinks, let me tell you (although it is - apparently - the most cosmopolitan college in Cambridge, which is something at least). Hang on, I’ve just checked the Wolfson website and it also claims, rather boldly, to be among the most lively and agreeable of Cambridge colleges. Hm. Well, it’s certainly agreeable, no argument there, but lively? Tish and fipsy! It’s much closer to a trappist monastery than a weimar era burlesque speakeasy, let’s just say. Why, just last night I heard someone outside loudly promising that yes, they would certainly be quiet in just a few minutes, this at around 11pm on a Friday night. That’s about as exciting as it gets round here, let me tell you.
Good lord, I’ve got less than nine minutes to post this in order to maintain my post-a-day-for-the-whole-of-November trajectory, so I’d best curtail the half-cut blathering and hit the publish button some time real soon. I do promise, dear reader, that the quality of posts will improve as the month progresses, rather than asymptotically tending towards zero (quality). I’m sure if you stick around you will be wowed by my boundless imagination, striking wit and devastatingly cogent insights into a variety of matters of no little import. But now I must ascend the (figurative) wooden hill to Bedfordshire and dream sweet, drunken dreams of all my teeth falling out. Bon nuit!
There was a time* when I used to try to read newspaper articles, occassionally in their entirety, but usually just a skim-through to get the gist. But nowadays, what with the ever increasing tsunami of information flooding over us I’ve had to adopt a new news-harvesting strategy in order to feel well-informed, namely reading only RSS headlines. I figure if I read enough headlines I can get a pretty good picture of the way the world is going. Call it pattern recognition if you will. What good does reading the actual article do? That’s just details, my friends, and details are for olde-worlde types who still like to read entire books, as if we have the time for that, when the fish stocks are dying (50 years left, apparently) and George Bush is perceived as greater threat that Kim Jong-Il (yep)? Yes, I’m an RSS bandit and proud of it. William Gibson would surely approve.
I mean, in this day and age you surely have to agree that expertise in some narrow domain really isn’t going to get you that far? Surely it’s better to know just the tiniest amount about a gajillion different things, from which you can infer, unconsciously, the bigger picture about where we are all heading (to hell, in a rocket-powered bobsled, since you ask…) and also perhaps be better prepared for the impending post-apocalyptic scenario in which we will find ourselves (yes, I know that we shouldn’t be defeatist, and must believe that it is not too late to act on climate change, and should be optimistic, and so on…but the pretty much constant drip-drip-drip of massively depressing RSS headlines - see above - gives me cause to doubt. Sorry.)
RSS is just SO perfect for factoid-spouting bullshit artists such as myself - I can come across as incredibly well-informed about current affairs at parties as long as I don’t talk to anyone for more than two minute and, you know, keep the conversation moving.
We can stop climate chaos, apparently. At least icount think so. The icount coalition has organised a big rally this Saturday at Trafalgar Square, London. I’d go, but I live in Cambridge and already commute every weekday to London as it is, so it would be plainly irresponsible of me to attend, unless I cycled down or something, which frankly ain’t gonna happen. Not unless I had a nice new Schwinn electric assist bike, or similar, which I don’t…I don’t even have a saddle on my bike, it broke off. Anyway, if you live in London, why not go along and join the fun?
My lovely, talented sis-in-law Dana is guest blogging this week at Vanderworld, the blog of writer Jeff VanderMeer, where she will tell you stuff about her recently published debut novel The Steam Magnate. Go check it out! Read an excerpt from said novel!
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