This Is This

Remember this? The Telephone Rings!*

They wrote back.

Dear Sir

We are very sorry that you were called buy one of our technicians at a very unreasonable hour, this was obviously a mistake and I can assure you we are not in the habit of calling our customers during the night.

As some of our technicians are based abroad, we have a process in place to ensure they check the current time in the customers location before calling. This check obviously didn’t take place on this occasion, and again, I can only apologise for this mistake. All of our technicians have been reminded of the process and the importance of following the guidelines.

Finally, I hope your experience of NETGEAR and its products hasn’t put you off purchasing NETGEAR in the future.

Your Sincerely

Michael Evans
UK&I Marketing Manager
NETGEAR UK

Have a great weekend everyone. I am full of cold and have no laptop and am unemployed for two days before starting new job on Monday.

Change, eh? Things would be the same without it.

…NatWest don’t think a MySpace page is a valid form of ID.

Bastards. 

What? It’s got a photo on it.

I have many nuggets of conversation I have stored up for occasions which will probably never arise. One of these is meeting a rapper whose name is SpeachMark or Rebel or Sandstorm or something. You know the kind of names.

Bumble-B: How you doin’?

Me: Very well. Fine and then some. Hey, do that thing where you turn into a helicopter.

Bumble-B: Say what?

Me: You know, where you make the noise and become something else?

Bumble-B: Yo, I’m jus’ a rap artist, knowwhamsayin’?

Me: I’m sorry, Bumble-B, I thought you were a fucking TRANSFORMER.

He’s probably put a cap in my ass faster that you could say Tupac, but I’d have a laugh.

I have two days left at work and I’m really ready to leave. I’m developing nasty habits, like backannouncing colleagues after someone comes by my desk.

“Simon Peterson there, making a cup of tea. An imposing figure - in the world of online marketing.”

Again, I have no idea what that is about.

A clever headline, perhaps, but nothing on my Dad’s clever headline as he blogs from Casblanca. Also - “Je n’egret rien“.

I don’t know where he gets it.

If I haven’t said it before, read Riviera Writer and Writer’s Moll  as they write from Morocco.

Next week on This Is This: From Hammersmith to White City. Ooooh.

There are two kinds of sexy in my book. It’s not literally a sexy book, this isn’t that kind of website, but figuratively there are two kinds.

First you’ve got your Smouldering Hot Damn Sexy. This is a basic hottest-person-in-the-room thing, pinup he or she that you definitely would. It’s your basic garden-variety sexy.

Then - then - you’ve got the other kind, that’s a Confident But Bored Cello Player Sexy. Oh you so know what I’m talking about. It’s more cerebral, and tends to do more for me. And it’s more of a vibe than a cello thing per se.

Julian Lloyd Webber does not a sexy make. Same with Yo Yo Ma.

–
Flashback
Paris, 1955

Doctor: Congratulations, Ma and Pa Ma, it’s a boy.

Ma Ma: We’ll call him Yo Yo. Yo Yo Ma.
–

Smouldering Hot Damn Sexy: Jenny McCarthy, Kate Winslet, Brad Pitt, George Clooney

Confident But Bored Cello Player Sexy: Julianne Moore, Kate Blankett, Edward Norton, Johnny Depp

People in the latter category are more likely to be described as “beautiful”, or found attractive by straight members of the same sex. They can be older, too. Those in the former tend to be spilling over with busty/cockfest hotness normally associated with incredulous swearing and (in your dreams, loser) actually having sex.

(Seriously, with everything going on in your life at the moment, this is what you’re doing?)

I was at the bus stop this week, reading a book, minding my sweet own, when the guy next to me started whistling.

He didn’t go into song, but every half minute he would whistle the same set of notes about four or five times in a row, without a pause.

I didn’t say anything, because I’m too English sometimes. I don’t know why I was being so typical then; it might have been because I was standing in a queue at the time.

I lowered my book a little and looked up and around with a confused weariness. It’s the look my cats have when they hear the rattle of their cat boxes, which never heralds good news.

If cats had blogs, no happy post would ever start off with: “So I got into my cat box…”

You’ll have to trust me.

The opening four notes were the same ones of “What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor”

“What shall we doooo…” Like that, only repeated and whistled. “What shall we doooo…” “What shall we doooo…” “What shall we doooo…”

Maybe it was morse code. It was V. I know three letters in morse code: S ( . . . ), O ( _ _ _ ), and V ( . . . _ )

This hardly ever comes in handy, unless you need to send out an emergency in a situation where you can contact your potential rescuers but can’t talk or write, or if you want to tap out the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. You know: Ba-ba-ba-BAAAAA.

Churchill picked it out during the war to proceed his broadcasts because it rapped out V for victory. Also, five in Roman numerals used in music scores is V. Clever, hey? Not really, it was just a coincidence because Beethoven died in 1827 and the electric telegraph wasn’t even invented until 1836, with the code following in the 1840s some time.

The man whistles again.

“What shall we doooo…”

I don’t know, OK? I don’t know “what shall we doooo…” You’re annoying! Keep you’re involuntary outbursts in check OK? Like me, just now.

Or keep them private, like me, just now.

I won an award this morning in an annual competition which celebrates the best English-language Buddhist blogging.

The judges of the Blogisttvas, which I think should be called The Yakademy Awards, thought this post deserved to win Best Achievement with Humor in a Blog Post.

You’d be amazed at the competition among comedy-writing Buddhists. It actually gets quite nasty.

And since we’re here, I’m throwing out a mench to the brilliant Wendy of It’s A Life who picked up Post Of The Week.

Mois je fais un vol de nuit,
pas comme Saint-Exupery,
l’horloge sonne et je m’enfuis
vers le nord tous gris.

—

Time had come for me to fly.
Saint-Exupery or die.
Alarm goes off and so do I.
Northward, grey the heavy sky.

Aside from the Blogisatvvas, this week I have been mostly nominated for Post Of Week by Wendy and Katy of Everything Is A Life and It’s Electric. Big up nuff ting to my home(page)girls.

POTMFW, y’all. Right here.

‘thpeck.

Seriously, yesterday. Slough Freecycle group.

Gerry Mulligan’s baritone sax sounds like nothing else in music. He has made it his own, like Larry Adler on harmonica, or Earl Scruggs on banjo, or Milt Jackson on vibraphone.

He always sounds like an old friend, which in ways this song is, since it always makes me smile. It’s his tune and a collaborative rendition with Johnny Hodges, but the way the baritone creeps in for the solo makes me smile in this song, which is about as cool as anything can sound.

It’s a corny kind of cool. It’s Eric Morecambe. It’s dark sunglasses. It’s half-time optimism. It’s long weekends in the summer whether nothing much happens but it could. It’s a sober silliness.

Listen: Bunny

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

The flight home was delayed which turned us into the last flight out of Nice that evening, when who should be checking in at the same time as me but Little Britain’s David Walliams.

I racked my brains for things to say him, you know, catchphrases just to be annoying. I wouldn’t have done it, but I was killing time but dreaming up scenarios where I could have. “I want that one.” No, although possibly for later if we are in close proximity and choosing something on the plane. “We’re LADIES.” Doubtful, given the current security climate. Oooh, or maybe I could ask if he has any pirate memory games.

No. I had nothing to work with except my pride and decency, and - well - you read this site. So I said nothing while the lady at the desk checked through bags and answered questions apologetically.

Walliams. I thought about introducing myself and Claff Jones. “I have a website called Thas As Thas.”

While I was waiting for takeoff I went to one of the duty free shops to look at a shirt I saw in the window. It was by some bigshot designer label, Hugo Boss, I think. Something expensive anyway, and probably so fancy that I’d think twice before setting off to even buy their after-shave for fear of being, you know, a bit poncy.

I have one smart black shirt, but it’s kind of faded. It’s more John Major than Jonny Cash. Not so much in with the outlaws as out with the inlaws.

To be honest, it’s not my manly apparel I’m worried about damaging. It’s just that I’m not that flash. I don’t buy clothes that make a statement - they’re more likely to have a confession beaten out of them.

I am on fucking FIRE today.

Finally on the plane, the pilot makes a clear pronouncement that I don’t understand. Something about batteries not working and engineers struggling with the problem all day. Struggling is not a word you want to hear when you get on a plane.

The takeoff was fine but I kept thinking that if we did go down, it would be “Hey, did you hear about David Walliams? Man, yeah, plane crash.” As if dying screaming in a ball of flames isn’t bad enough, it must suck balls to die in an event in which a celebrity buys it, because you know that any hack reporting the crash will look at the passenger list for anyone remotely famous. “Holy fuck! Timmy Mallet. Timmy Mallet Mallet? Timmy Mallet ‘Mallet’s Mallet‘ Mallet?”

And then anytime anyone you knew in the realm of the living mentioned it they would get “Didn’t someone else die in that? Yeah, who died in that? Some presenter person who used to be on the telly. I mean obviously they used to be, but a long time before the crash. No, don’t tell me. I’ll get it in a second.”

After we landed and limped towards the gate at Heathrow, the pilot said sorry for the delay and complained about the “faulty” aircraft. Before takeoff, he played down a minor electrical fault, and after we landed he berated a “faulty” plane.

Still, better late than never.

“Computer says no.”

Damn.

I used to think that awards were shallow and meaningless, and then I was nominated for one and I discovered they were real and added meaning to any form of self expression.

So god-damn, slap my arse and bring me the thumbs of Paul McCartney while you check out this website’s nomination for Best Achievement With Humour in an English-language Buddhism blog (specifically) in this year’s Blogisattva Awards

So I’m flying down to France and there’s a spare seat between me and this other guy, and without saying a word we gradually start to share the space us as a dumping ground for our stuff.

Mine - Book (The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally), ipod, the notepad I’m writing this in, pencil.

Him - Passport, Daily Mail, electrical laptop computer

On my tray is a bottle of white wine, a chocolate bar and a sandwich so old that it’s coming back into style

I am fast becoming a fan of Thomas Keneally, whose book Flying Hero Class, I read when I was a teenager, before fame struck. For him, I mean. I’m kind of a late bloomer. The book is a comedy about a plane carrying an Aboriginal dance troup which is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Twenty years later, his book Schindler’s Arc was turned into a film and the rest is Nazi studies.

I think he’s one of the few authors who can do it all. He has written Lincoln’s autobiography, a book about the Irish potato famine and a historical fiction novel about the American Civil War. No small achievement, especially when you consider he’s Australian.

OK, that was below the belt. There are many brilliant Australians whom I admire. Clive James is an exceptional writer. One favourite phrase of his when he was describing the Cultural Revolution in China of which he said that Mao’s reign of terror lasted as long as it did because in those days bad news didn’t travel any further than a scream. Also read this poem he wrote for his dad, who died when the plane carrying him home from World War 2 to his family, and the son he never met, crashed just after takeoff.

Peter Singer is an Australian whose book Practical Ethics crowbarred me into vegetarianism. He’s a cross between a madman and a genius, controversial but brilliant. He argues the case for all kinds of things in a way so convincing you find it hard to imagine you are being swayed.

Example: A newborn baby is not a person. You learn to become a person through experience, but breathing and eating does not make you different from any other sentient beings until you can apply knowledge and personality.

He argues against the sentimentality in that the state should not decide whether a baby whose every breath will always cause it to suffer should live or die.

He calls chickens “non-human animals” and says that if you’re going to eat any meet, you should go for pig, but I can’t remember the reasons why.

Anyway, I don’t agree with all of his views, but I am swayed by his eloquence. As opposed to this, where I don’t say anything much controversial, and in none too highfalutin talk.

Good to be back though. D’ja miss me? Didja? Huh? Didja? Huh? Didja?

Don’t answer that.

Tomorrow: The flight home.

As an aside, I am a distant relative of Australian artist Rex Battarbee - we share a common great great grandmother from Cheshire. There’s a resemblance in the picture there which might be imaginary, but he was influencial in the career of Albert Namatijira, deservedly the most famous Aborigine painter, so I’m claiming some of the pride.

Thanks to Adam Buxton of Adam and Joe fame.

When Ben Folds played in London after this single came out, there were people in the crowd playing air piano to their mates. Twats, granted, but you get the idea.

Here’s the anti-slacker, neo-indie anthem that’s a toungue in cheek ribbing of the alternative scene. And all that without guitars. It shouldn’t work. I say that a lot about the songs on here. This site shouldn’t work when I think about it. I shouldn’t work.

I like this song because it goes really far out of its way not to be alternative. Backing vocals punch in with barks of “get down”. Oh, and the “DING!” after they sing “It’s industrial”. You’ll hear it.

Plus it’s got real handclaps and that’s often a good thing.

There was a girl who passed me by
she gave a smile, but I was shy
and I looked down, so down

Listen: Underground

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

There’s bitter wind blowing through west London this morning, but it’s OK because at the end of the day I’m getting on a plane and flying south towards the sun.

Technically, at the end of the day I’d be flying west towards the sun, but I was using artistic licence, which is often 90 degrees of course.

So the next few days’ posts are scheduled ahead, because I don’t know if I’ll get online while I’m gone. The weekend song tomorrow, and it’s a good one. I was singing it this morning on the walk to Marks & Spencer to buy breakfast and lunch, which was 1 3 bean wrap, 4 all-butter croissants, chocolate covered peanuts. (mmm - fats, carbs and sugars) That’s one three bean wrap, not a thirteen bean wrap. That would just be fussy. Surely that was obvious, otherwise I would have counted the peanuts and posted the total here - scary!

Anyway, I was singing the impending song and as I walked towards the door when noticed there was a lady walking behind me. I panicked and wondered if I would pretend I had not actually been singing and was on my phone or even an unseen mobile headset, halfway through a conversation. I considered doing this:

“ (singing) ‘We can be happy, we can be happy, we can be…’ (talking, though in a slightly singing way at first just to ease in and demonstrate not-madness) Yes… Um… croissants. Or pains au chocolat, which ever you prefer. No, it’s pains au chocolat, not pain au chocolats. Like courts martial. And I love you.”

That last sentence was a masterstroke, because not only would it prove that I was not mad, but it would suggest I was in a stable relationship. The kind where I actually sing and do the shopping for us. Oh, I was a catch all right. Don’t you mind me. Meal for one, is it? Tra-la-laaa.

But I realised she was too close and saw me not on the phone and singing so I didn’t do that. Ah well.

So I guess what I’m saying that today I will eat a lot of junk food and then go on holiday.

OKthen,haveagoodweekendbyeeee!

Filed under: Slacking, Alienating Readers, Pedantry

Now everyone knows how I feel about Monty Don. This is no secret.

A A Gill asked recently what’s not to like about a man with two first names, and when you consider that both of those are abbreviations, that’s just chumminess on a new scale.

Montague Donald? You really want to get right in there and cut those extra bits back fairly hard, stick them on the compost and you’re left with something really quite fascinating.

Have you ever noticed how much he says “fascinating”?

And despite all this:

It just doesn’t seem right. 

 There is a project to put together a book on behalf of the War Child charity, which helps young people who have been affected by conflict and poverty.

Bloggers are invited to submit a piece for the book, which you can read all about here. It’s kind of like the Shaggy Blog Project I was a part of last year, but with the theme being something you have been through that you want to share.

That’s a big part of having a personal web space, so it you are a blogger and want to be considered, write a piece fewer than 1500 words and send it along.

The bloke with the ‘tache,
I kicked his fucking head in.
What? He shagged my bird.

—

A quiet weekend.
Mark nicked a Nintendo Wii.
Out of crystal meth.

—

Gold bought from Argos
shines almost as brightly as
my XR3i.

The other day I asked if there was anything you wanted me to write about. Actually, that’s misleading. It was Monday, just one of several days of the week.

You replied literally in your twos, which was near enough silence indicate that:

a) you don’t really care what I write, but read anyway (and thanks)

b) you know I’ll write anyway and do my little monkey dance no matter what you say

But it’s cool either way. I have lots to say. I haven’t jumped the shark yet, although I am going downhill in a bathtub.

Going downhill in a bathtub - (exp.) To play to one’s strengths by reverting to type. Origin: veteran sitcom Last Of The Summer Wine regularly used the device to fulfil its definition as a “comedy” to commissioning editors. Whenever plots were faltering and scripts dried up, cast members would routinely climb in a bathtub and literally go down a hill. Laughs or not, the series has run for thirty years.

I don’t understand why people watch LOTSW. Maybe it’s a loyalty thing, like supporting a crap team. I supported a crap team for years, but they are good now and they were great before, and that’s the whole glory and madness of sport fandom. You have aspirations; faith, even.

I could say I support Everton religiously (by that I mean it’s divisive, it lets me avoid reality and I blame them for all my problems) but watching a television show in the hope that they’ll hurtle downhill in a bathtub to a laughter track is no way to live, OK?

It’s no way to live.

Let’s go outside, yeah? Get you some fresh air.

Shhhh.

This morning

Colleague: See that Heather Mills is representing herself.

Me: Madness. You don’t take on Macca’s laywer by yourself. He’s going to make her look like a mad cow.

Colleague: True.

Me: Which isn’t that hard, to be honest.

Colleague: No.

Me: They will eat her alive. She doesn’t have a leg to stand on.*

And since I’m going to be sued, can I also say that Amy Winehouse winning five Grammies last night is rubbish. I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that she has been in the news so much lately. Like how the Dixie Chicks cleaned up with best song and album last year with a substandard effort after their Bush comments, but the CD before, called “Home”, won nothing but country music category gongs. I’m not saying these people are trying to get in the news to sell records, but the judges lean towards people in the news because it makes the awards look edgy. Rubbish. When are the Bloggies? Because I’m not feeling so good.

*There goes my Blogisattva, by the way.

—
Do you like nice conversations?
Conversation
Bored
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation 1
Conversation 2
Wrong
Conversation This Week, Part 2
Conversation This Week, Part 1
Talking Like A Superhero At Work
What Are You Saying? 

Hey ho you. Back with the heavyweight jam this Monday, feeling good in the sunshine and wondering what to write about, and you know what? Fuck it. You tell me what to write. It’s not all about me on this site, ask away.

Go on, anything at all. This site is a collaborative effort and who says it should all be about me? There’s no “I” in Cliff. Actually there is, it’s right smack in the middle. What I mean is there’s no “one” in Jones. No, but physically, I mean. At least not at the time of writing.

Go on, what do you want to know?

Can I also say though: you’ve been a great reader today. Seriously, thanks. Today especially, though - this post. Really good reading.

Ideas? Psshya… I’ve got loads of them. I just thought - um - you might want to… ask me something.

And then I, you know, write about that thing.

I like the lazy melodic beauty of this song. Also her voice. I say “her” because I can’t bring myself to type her name with the small letters. That’s just arse.

I will pronounce it how you like, but don’t ask me to defy punctuation because of your individual whims. It’s like company names, where their offices insist that journalists write the organisation names in small letters. When that happens, as a hack I will go out of my way to put their names in headlines just to make the lowercase letters look stupid.

Or companies that insist on punctuation in their name, like Yahoo!. That looks stupid, so again, that will go in a headline. “Microsoft To Buy Yahoo!?”

I’m getting sidetracked now because if my own grammatical hangups and that’s not right, for the 12.5 per cent of people who visit this site for the Weekend Song.

It used to be about the music. I’ve changed, man.

Can you offer some assistance.
Let me in on how, for instance,
I should be convincing you to sway.

Listen: You’re OK

—
Related pages
Weekend Song archive

“It’s a clerical error,” says Bill Gates
by CLIFF JONES

Microsoft bosses were said to be furious after a typographical error lead to a dot com share frenzy on the tech stock market after the Seattle software giant announced it was making a bid for eighties synth-pop duo Yazoo.

The band, whose hits include Don’t Go and Only You, were said to be “delighted”. Alison Moyet and Vince Clark are no strangers to overnight success, but the latest announcement could make them extremely rich as co-founders and sole proprietors of the band.

“It’s really just a two-person line-up,” said keyboardist Vince Clarke, who has just announced a reunion tour scheduled for June.

Microsoft would not confirm how the typo came about, but sources close to the company said its own spellchecker was to blame.

However the mistake happened, the City was engulfed in rumours of rival bids for eighties pop bands, with lawyers at Google frantically putting together a rescue package for ELO Time Warner.

Yesterday we had the Negative Music Quiz, where I posted all the songs I own that begin with the word “don’t” and you had to guess the artists.

There were a lot of grey areas here, because some songs were standards which had been recorded by a lot of people, and some songs have the same names. Songs like The Power Of Love is one (although not in this list - Ed). Other song titles get confusing, too. Nirvana had Something In The Way, as did Human Nature. George Harrison wrote Something, which started “Something in the way she moves”, while James Taylor wrote “Something In The Way She Moves” which starts “There’s something in the way she moves.”

George Harrison came up with his title in 1969 after hearing the James Taylor song which was the first single off his first album which he recorded on the Beatles’ Apple label. But that’s cool, because Taylor’s song was originally called I Feel Fine but he changed it after he heard the Lennon/McCartney song of the same name. Still with me?

I think what I’m trying to say is that it all worked out, everyone became famous and bought big country houses except for John Lennon who instead went for an apartment and got shot.

Anyway, enough of my yammering. I’m sure you’re hankering, or, dare I say, jonesing, for the answers.

1. Don’t Bang The Drum, The Waterboys
2. Don’t Be Afraid, Colin Hay
3. Don’t Cha, The Pussycat Dolls & Busta Rhymes
4. Don’t Cha Wanna Ride, Joss Stone
5. Don’t Cry, Guns N’ Roses
6. Don’t Cry Sister, J. J. Cale
7. Don’t Dream It’s Over, Crowded House
8. Don’t Ever Leave Me, Keith Jarrett
9. Don’t Feel Right, The Roots
10. Don’t Get Carried Away, Busta Rhymes
11. Don’t Go, Yazoo
12. Don’t Know How, Joss Stone
13. Don’t Leave Me Now, Pink Floyd
14. Don’t Let Me Down, The Beatles
15. Don’t Let Me Down, Harry J Allstars
16. Don’t Let The Sun Down On Me , George Michael & Elton John
17. Don’t Lie, Black Eyed Peas
18. Don’t Look For Me, Jeffrey Foucault
19. Don’t Look Now, Creedence Clearwater Revival
20. Don’t Make My Brown Eyes Blue, Jolene Parsons
21. Don’t Mess With My Man, Irma Thomas
22. Don’t Phunk With My Heart, Black Eyed Peas
23. Don’t Put All Your Dreams In One Basket, Ray Charles
24. Don’t Say Nothin’, Will Smith
25. Don’t Smoke In Bed, Julie London
26. Don’t Stand So Close To Me, The Police
27. Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, Michael Jackson
28. Don’t Stop Movin’, S Club
29. Don’t Think Of Me, Dido
30. Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, James Taylor (Dylan cover)
31. Don’t Wait, J. J. Cale
32. Don’t Wait Up, The Twang
33. Don’t Want To Know, John Martyn
34. Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely, Hüsker Dü
35. Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing, Stevie Wonder

Yes, I own all these songs. I am a complex and flawed human being who believes that variety is the spice of life. Also cinnamon. Mmmmm, human beings.

Also, I missed out Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight, which is a beautiful song by a singer called James (Reader’s voice: “Bloody”) Taylor.

“Go awaaaay, then damn you. Go on and do as you pleee-eeease. You ain’t gonna see me gettin’ down on my knees.”

Carry on.

“I’m undeciiiiiiided and your heart’s been divided. You been turning my world. Up-siiiide. Down.”

Tomorrow: The Replacement of Magenta Catridge
A Comedie.

“Doolyeee doo doop weedoo doo-doo.”

Music unites us. It gives us a sense of self and belonging. It connects us to our dreams and brings us closer to the world. It’s astonishing what songs can do - they are like snowflakes, in that no two are the same until you try to describe them, and when you do, you understand them less.

The other day I sent a colleague a link to this, which was the first time I saw Rage Against The Machine on TV in 1992. I was blown away. Tom Morello was a freak of nature and a force of it at the same time. His mastery of the guitar was the product of a kid who has spent far too much time up in his bedroom, and Zack de la Rocha’s outbursts indicated that he had not spent long enough in his.

But we put our headphones on, and when they hit the second verse we turned to each other with a look like we’re going ninety miles and hour.

Music rocks. Especially rock music. I get my rocks off at how much rock music rocks.

On Friday I promised the Negative Music Quiz, where I post all the songs I own that begin with the word “don’t”, and true to my word, fuck me, here it is.

Negative Music Quiz 

1. Don’t Bang The Drum 
2. Don’t Be Afraid
3. Don’t Cha
4. Don’t Cha Wanna Ride
5. Don’t Cry
6. Don’t Cry Sister
7. Don’t Dream It’s Over
8. Don’t Ever Leave Me
9. Don’t Feel Right
10. Don’t Get Carried Away
11. Don’t Go
12. Don’t Know How
13. Don’t Leave Me Now
14. Don’t Let Me Down
15. Don’t Let Me Down
16. Don’t Let The Sun Down On Me
17. Don’t Lie
18. Don’t Look For Me
19. Don’t Look Now
20. Don’t Make My Brown Eyes Blue
21. Don’t Mess With My Man
22. Don’t Phunk With My Heart
23. Don’t Put All Your Dreams In One Basket
24. Don’t Say Nothin’
25. Don’t Smoke In Bed
26. Don’t Stand So Close To Me
27. Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough
28. Don’t Stop Movin’
29. Don’t Think Of Me
30. Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right
31. Don’t Wait
32. Don’t Wait Up
33. Don’t Want To Know
34. Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely
35. Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing

Answers on a post comment.

Score
1-7 Don’t you come back no more, no more, no MORE, no more
8-14 Don’t call me daughter
15-21 Don’t have much money, but boy if I did
22-28 Don’t need no education
29-35 Don’t go changing to try to please me

Answers tomorrow

I tend to be fairly measured in my stuff. I think things through a lot and weigh up consequences of the things I do. Or don’t do, mostly.

I even waste a good deal of time thinking of things that my never happen and how I would deal with them just in case they ever did. Lately as I faced redundancy from my current employer, I became a bit of a nightmare to my nearest, if not dearest, as I wondered what I was going to do next and how things would pan out.

Pan schman, as regular readers will know that things worked out OK, and I’m off at the end of this month and to join a new job at the BBC.

I have been informed of their blogging policy and it looks like I’m going to have to tell my manager about this site if I indentify myself as an employee of BBC News. Seeing as I’ve done that already, I will probably blurt it out on my first day. I’ll be on my fourth coffee of the day, and confess loudly “I’VE GOT A BLOG!!!” to an unsuspecting group of colleagues, five per cent of whom will think privately, “He’s done what?!”

They may already know. Or maybe not. I mean, who googles their employees or colleagues before you they actually start? That’s just crazy. (OK, I may have done this, but it was for a bet. Once. And I was drunk. And like, really stoned and shit?) Of course, I have thought of this already, which is why I took my name off the description and The Data Of Meta which accompanies this site.

See? Always thinking. While this is a decent attribute, it doesn’t really mark me out as what the young ladies might call, I believe, “a catch”.

I don’t rush out and buy flowers on a whim. I will use price comparison websites and read customer reviews. I make Norway look impulsive.

I’m not looking to be a catch anyway. Fuck catches. Catch THIS. No, I’m fine right here with my little patch of blog. Maybe a tune here or there, a little bagel recipe maybe.

Oh, that reminds me, Wendy followed the recipe I posted in “How To Cook Perfect Bagels The This Is This Way With Cliff Jones” and lived to describe the whole experience in her excellent collaborative food (not) blog, A Lard Off My Mind. As promised, anyone who cooks bagels and posts about them gets a mench, so get a load of Wendy’s bagels. OK, double entendres aside, it’s a great blog. Please read it and get a lard on.

See what I’m doing, I am bribing people with food in order to get traffic back to this site? Literally, “Will blog for food”.

The thoughts expressed here are my own and not those of the BBC. Many of them weren’t even my own, originally. Or thoughts, as such.

UPDATE: Happy Mardi Gras - it’s hard to believe that three schoolgirls and some drums can sound this good.

What is a boxer and also a refreshing tea that improves circulation which has been shown in some studies improve your memory?

Rocky Biloba.

You love it. You clearly, clearly, love it.

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Sweet Jesus
Really Awful Joke Alert
Shrink Joke
Sunday Crap Joke Alert
Inexcusably Poor Taste Joke

I saw this earlier in the week and wanted to share it.

And, ummm, that’s it.

-Oooh, except… No, that’s it.

Oh yeah:

Sam’s getting competitive with the video blogs after me going on location.

There are a few songs that mention the song style throughout the tune (Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang, Heavy Duty by Spinal Tap, Glamorous Indie Rock And Roll by The Killers) but none do it as convincingly as this.

Not only is the song called Boogie Music, but the topic is the boogie music, it’s in the style of boogie music,and there’s even a bit at the end explaining the benefits of boogie music.

The track is so laid back and hard at the same time and no one on it is the world’s greatest musician, but that doesn’t matter. There’s a fill which I love about two minutes in, where the drummer hits it so right, it sounds like he forgets to come back in, or he’s dropped a stick. It’s great, anyway. Plus Bob “The Bear” Hite has a great soul voice. Possible the greatest white soul singer of modern times until Daryl Hall came along.

Boogie music has a pretty sound.
It might even turn your head around.
Yeah it might turn your head around.

Listen: Boogie Music

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Related pages
Weekend Song archive

If there’s one things for self-indulgent than writing about myself, it’s writing about my dreams.

Dreams in which I am being selfish. Two things. Three - dreams in which I am selfishly finishing the Great British Novel.

Now, obviously I don’t write the Great British Novel for another nine years, but I was doing it in my dream. I was on the last sentence, when I was called to accompany some friends to a toy store, where they were accepting some kind of award.

I was writing the novel on a kind of handheld computer that looked like it was made by Fisher Price. Think Blackberry meets Speak And Spell. Regardless, it contained all but the last sentence of my latest novel. OK, let’s face it, my only novel, but the Great British Novel nonetheless.

I was on my last sentence - and it was a doozy - when we were summoned for the photocall for the prize to be awarded. I was so wrapped up in finishing the book that I posed for the picture with them and the toy store owner, as I typed the last words into the handheld computer.

I thought the last sentence was so brilliant that nothing else mattered. In the morning, all I remembered about the story is that either I myself or something in my control had gone higher than anyone or anything else could. I wrote the last sentence down when I woke up, because it was so clear in my head. In the dream, while I was having my picture taken, I kept repeating it to myself so I wouldn’t forget it and I could type it into the computer later, which is why is stuck in my head after I woke up:

Lofter and more lofty still; it was ever thus.

I remembered in the dream wanting to use a word other than “higher”, and also I didn’t want to repeat it twice in one sentence, which is how I ended up with “more lofty still”.

I kind of like it, but I’m not sure I would want to read all the words preceeding it.

Before I go, a couple of other things, more points of order really which I should have mentioned at the start.

1. A Lard Off My Mind - which fast on its way to becoming the UK’s number 1 lifestyle/weight loss/comedy crossover and breakthrough weblog in the British Female Group Blogger category. It’s very good.

2. This Is This Recommends - a selection of things endorsed by me. I came up with that title. (note to self: Add ALOMM to Recommended listings)

Anyway, look at that - it’s Friday. At least three readers of this site have said they are going to make bagels over the weekend, which is great, because I always suspected this site had some practical uses. Free mench to anyone who gives it a go and posts the results online. Also, Weekend Song as ever will feature. That much we do know.

Come back next week, when you’ve got the Negative Music Quiz, in whch you have to guess the artist of every song I own that begins with the word “Don’t”. (There are over 40 of them)

Have a great weekend.