SpaCeMonKeY UK

My parents are visiting at the moment. They came up (as did my brother) on the occasion of my 32nd birthday! Which was on Sunday. :)

Present haul was pretty good. Rob gave me an iPod dock thing I'd wanted for ages - a Sony one with a DAB radio. Thought it would come in handy to put in the front room. Nowhere near as good sound quality as my CD player with proper speakers, etc, but surprisingly good considering. Other presents included Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (I know it sounds silly with the zombies but any additional Red Dead is well worth it), a Batman graphic novel called The Bat and the Beast, two more Chaos Space Marine bikes and a Demon Prince.

We've also done lots of fun things. Friday night we went to the 50s American Diner, where I had an Elvis Presley burger and a cinnamon caramel cruch biscuit milkshake. Nice. Saturday we went to watch the Leicester Lions vs. the Scunthorpe Scorpions (that's speedway, if you didn't know). Leicester are firmly at the bottom of the league table so it was a surprisingly close match. Could have gone either way right up until the end of the evening. And Sunday I had people round for a birthday tea. So, lots of fun!

Album Project Update! Ok, so in 1989 and 1991 Bowie released two 'Tin Machine' albums, but in 1993 he was back as a solo artist with 'Black Tie White Noise'. I can't say this is an amazing album. You probably won't have heard any of the songs on it before. But it's better than the previous two 80's albums! It just seems more like a David Bowie album, what with its instrumental opener 'The Wedding'. Hooray!

Labels: 1993, Album Project, Black Tie White Noise, David Bowie

So there was a little 'rioting', but not much. Personally I don't think it counted as rioting. Smashing stuff, maybe some looting, but not rioting. As Wikipedia says, "Riots often occur in reaction to a perceived grievance or out of dissent." I suppose it does say 'often'. But the people out there didn't have a particular grievance in mind, they were just out to do some damage. I mean, I saw the damage on Granby Street in Leicester - they'd just smashed random things, like the tanning shop window (because you'd want a quick tan if you were busy rioting all night and unable to get out in the sun during the day) and, oddly, Poundstretcher! Only in Leicester would anyone try to loot Poundstretcher. :)

The police vans were parked in the city centre when I came home, so it looks like they're still on high alert for troublemakers. I can't see an easy solution to the problem. In these problematic economic times the people who are the poorest and worst educated are the ones who are going to find it hardest to get jobs. Without hope, perhaps the most fun you can have on a weekday night is a bit of looting. I don't know.

Personally I know whatever happens to me I have my faith in God to fall back on. So I do have hope. But there are a lot of hopeless people out there. Stopping their benefits isn't going to make them less likely to cause trouble - it'll only make the problem worse! If the welfare state stops supporting those who need it most, when they're already buckling under the strain of things, how is that going to help?

How can we fix this? Sensible economic policy? Less austerity, more common sense? More, well, hope?

Album Project Update! 'Tonight' (1984) and 'Never Let Me Down' (1987). I am grouping these together because they're both scarily 80s. I'm not sure I like them a lot. It's quite heavily produced, synths, etc... just doesn't sound very real. 'Tonight' is memorable to me for 'God Only Knows', which you will probably recognise as a cover. The weird thing is, it sounds like someone doing a really mad David Bowie impression. It's almost laughable! Very odd. 'Never Let Me Down' seems somehow less daft, and has a bit of the old Bowie craziness in the form of 'Glass Spider'. I don't think you'd recognise any of the songs on these albums, though. Probably not a Bowie high point...

Labels: 1984, 1987, Album Project, David Bowie, Never Let Me Down, Tonight

What to say...?

Pregnancy seems to be going ok, have been feeling a bit more cheerful.

Rob's become obsessed by cycling, kept pestering me until I let him buy a bike. It's a Claud Butler mountain bike called a Shaman (apparently a special edition not for sale on the internet). So hopefully he'll be happy for more than five minutes!

Obviously the riots are going on, though hopefully Leicester is sensible enough for nothing to happen here. Heard the police helicopter a minute ago but that often seems to be buzzing around.

Last Tuesday we went to Blaby Golf Centre to play Adventure Golf, which was sort of fun. It's always a bit more luck than judgement!

Went to see the new Studio Ghibli film 'Arriety' at the Phoenix Arts Centre. From the name you might guess that it's their taken on The Borrowers. I really enjoyed it, very well done. But most Ghibli is, I suppose.

Can't think of much else. It's entirely possible I've forgotten some really obvious stuff. But it can't have been that exciting, if I've forgotten it. :)

Doesn't seem that there's a lot to say. Don't want to keep on about baby related things but that is the thing that's most on my mind at the moment! On the baby front, things aren't too bad but last week I was pretty depressed. Annoying, because for the first trimester I was unusually happy. I thought I was just back to normal (I have a bit of a depression issue) but last week was ridiculous. I hate it when people ask why I'm depressed - there's no reason for it, that's what makes it so irritating. Oh well. I expect it's being made worse by hormones (that seems to be the answer to why everything's happening), so hopefully it'll settle down again...

In other news, I suppose the most annoying thing to happen lately is F1 going to Sky Sports next year. It was probably inevitable - the BBC couldn't afford to pay what Bernie wanted - but it's still annoying. At least we'll still get 10 races live, and extended highlights, and it'll be on the radio. I really can't justify paying £30 a month to get Sky Sports. Maybe if I liked 'sports' it'd be worth it, but I only really like motorsports, and the only thing I HAVE to watch is F1. D'oh!

Incidentally, the Hungarian GP was brilliant! Action packed. And Jenson won his 200th GP. Hooray!

I did this day in the life of 400 archaeologists thing on Friday. Basically wrote down what I did for the day. I'm not sure my job sounds that interesting, but I like it. :)

And another Album Project Update - 'Let's Dance' (1983). This is album 15 out of 25. Hmm. Hang on, I think I've been miscounting all this time, I think there are 23 studio albums (if we don't include Tin Machine). So, 8 to go! I really like this album. It doesn't have many tracks, when you look at it - only 8 - but 'Let's Dance' and 'China Girl' are both fanastic. 'China Girl' in particular is brilliantly constructed. It has so many layers, including a bass line that the song just wouldn't work without. And of course there's some excellent saxophone. ;) Great stuff.

Labels: 1983, Album Project, David Bowie, Let's Dance