Supermarket Detective

You need to be sharp and alert in Supermarkets.  Rows upon rows of wrapped up convenience, all battling for our attention and all the while, us ailing shoppers are faced with the ultimately banal (yet fiendishly complex) riddle of whether it's more cost effective to buy a 2 litre carton of Tropicana or two one litre ones from an other brand. 

 Sometimes, you will find evidence of a previous customer finding a more cost effective deal for a similar item, say, for instance, in the manner of a discarded 8 pack of Tesco Everyday Value sausage rolls, flung next to an 8 pack of Tesco Finest Lincolnshire Sausage Rolls which happen to be on offer.  In these instances I take on a Jonathon Creek persona and in my head I begin to create a physical and mental profile of the sort of pasty faced twat that would consider Every Day Value sausage rolls in the first place.

 But sometimes the discarded items can really throw you, and you have to use your best detective skills in order to understand the circumstances in which the evidence came about. It can force you to make some informed guesses as to why a Fleetwood Mac - Hits Album can be found with the Unsmoked Gammon Steaks at Lidl in Braintree, Essex.

Meatwood Mac

As you can see in the above photograph, the offender has placed a compact disc containing 'The Hits' of Fleetwood Mac in an area ear-marked solely for pork-based items.  One is left to imagine what sort of tyrant would behave in this manner, but through informed guesses it is possible to come to some conclusions...

Let's firstly imagine the demographic shopping at Lidls, and furthermore the sub-demographic that would also consider buying a Fleetwood Mac album.

• General demographic of Lidl: Frugal, low earning, Eastern European.

• General demographic of Fleetwood Mac CD buyer: Ageing, out of touch, wears Sketchers.

After combining these two demographics i decided the likely offender was the late Pope John Paul II.

Having conclusively worked out that the perpetrator was in fact the recent Bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, the next step was working out WHY he had resurrected and had placed the Fleetwood Mac album upon a box of gammon.

I have come to two possible conclusions:

1. It is a divine gesture - symbolically representative of how western christianity must improve relations with Islam and the east. The pork is an obvious symbol of the conflict, i.e. Islam's forbidden consumption of pork compared to western ideologies that pork is well good.  The Fleetwood Mac album, however, is a symbol of peace, harmony and freedom - note the bird adorning the cover of the album, soaring freely - and symbolizes what can be achieved between the two if they learn to co-operate.
2. He couldn't be fucked to put the album back in the proper place because he had a revelation that Fleetwood Mac are a bit wank and he prefers Razorlight anyway.

Take a look at another piece of evidence i documented on a visit to Waitrose in Brighton, East Sussex.

Crazy in the Coconut

This time the offender has not only discarded a solitary coconut, but also the carrying basket!

I will let you detectives decide the culprit for yourself and the reasons behind this deplorable behaviour! *


*CCTV footage later proved the culprit to be Calvin Harris, who swiftly dropped his entire weekly shop due to his irrational fear of Quavers.

Periods of Time.

I have a theory. It's a little controversial.

I have a theory that girls are better time keepers because they have periods; that their menstrual cycle is a biological clock that makes them more punctual then us phallic lot. When a woman has a period, her body is physically telling her that a month has passed since the last time she rid her clunge of stuff.  Men don't have this, our version of the menstrual cycle is generally set by the sporting calendar - which for football is about 10 months - that's 10 periods for women. So women create a kind of 'dot to dot' of menstrual related circumstances.  Lets imagine a man was left by himself in the north pole where it stays light all day and it is hard to notice the seasons change. After a while he wouldn't have a fucking clue how long he had been stranded for. Now let us imagine a woman in the same circumstance...

"Well, i've had 34 periods so it's been about eeeerm.... 34 months."

Plato's Touch-Screen Cave.

Since 2008 we've been enduring the worst recession in recent history. Money is tight, employment is lower than a 13 year old limbo champion...with low self esteem... living in Lowestoft... and yet Ipad's (and windows tablets) are flying off of the shelves and nestling in the palms of the masses. The ipad doesn't discriminate against any age of user - It's "user friendly". Its ease of use and its sleek design make it very convenient. Great! Older generations can get to grips with it quickly and its intuitive nature makes it a piece of piss for children. And that's what I am uneasy about. I have witnessed children, young children, using them as if it's second nature, and it literally is. Typical organic past times such as painting and drawing and writing are now being carried out on touch screen computers. This commercial just about sums it up really - a woman replaces a girl's art easel with a Windows 8 PC and uses the 'Fresh Paint' app.

 

 Is it not a bit sad that this generation of kids might never know what a real brush stroke feels like? Or what paint tastes like? Or how annoyed your dad might get when you paint all over the walls? But it's up to the parents who buy them for their kiddie-winks to decide whether it's sad, and many don't.  Parents who buy their children an ipad (or equivalent) obviously feel that they are aiding their offspring's development, however I feel that these computers could be depriving kids of first hand real experiences too. It's imperative  that there needs to be a healthy balance of doing real things and doing virtual things in a child's development if they are not to become  a socially, mentally and physically stunted being - swiping at their front doors with two fingers to try and unlock them, or pressing a doorbell and expecting an options menu to pop up.

 The more and more social these computers are deemed, the more and more alienated the populous shall become. They are computers after all, but because of their sleek ergonomic design and ability to share just about anything you do with others, dicking about on computers is regarded a social activity, carried out wherever and whenever we please.The reason I started this post about the recession and money being tight was because in reality, ipad's (and the likes of) are an indulgence and somewhat of a luxury. This notion is even supported by the slogan for Intel's 'Ultrabook' range in which they insinuate a tablet is not fundamental but instead an item of gratification. What we want and what we need are often two different things entirely but company's such as Intel are great at blurring the line - even when the slogans make the line blindingly obvious.

POLIO - The Krill Is Dry - EP Review

If you know anything about Polio, you'll know that they don't abide by the status quo in any respect. Infact I'd hedge my bets that they aren't particularly fond of the band, Status Quo - that's how un-status quo they are.

 You might therefore consider Polio as a punk band, which would entail that the band are anti-establishment and reject mainstream tendencies. This is a half-truth. Yes they think everything is bollocks, but the manner in which they do it isn't what I'd deem as punk - it's cleverer than that, infact many / most of their songs consist of very pop and mainstream influences.  For instance, their previous debut EP,  entitled Pig Heart Boy is named after a wanky late 90's BBC television series in which a boy is given a heart transplant to save his life, it worked!...but wait for it, here's the twist, his heart was swapped with a pig's heart!

More ironic citations of popular yet somehow obscure themes are evident throughout their musical oeuvre, starting with the bands very name - Polio ; Thom, Carl and Carlos' previous musical endeavor was a band called 'Fresh Legs'....now compare this with 'Polio', a disease which can severely wither the legs, and you can already understand what direction the band is moving before they've even picked up an instrument. Other obscure pop culture references include mentions of Master Chef and Wes Anderson in their song lyrics as well as track names from their EP's, such as:Razumikhin,  Oliver Cromwell, and Lava.

 With a certain amount of pastiche and irony, Polio's music does what punk music does without being so fucking obvious, and with a few more ideas up their crumb encrusted sleeves. They 'celebrate' pop culture with screams, heavy riffs, sporadic drumming patterns and bizarre breakdowns, all of which create a surreal listening experience - like listening to a gang of clowns make a child laugh and then proceed to throttle the child for laughing.  Unfortunately that listening experience doesn't have a genre, so the most consistent allocation of genre for Polio would probably be 'Mathcore' - although it still makes me feel uneasy to classify them as such. 

Polios latest offering, The Krill Is Dry, is a no holds barred 6 track EP that will leave you rubbing your nipples in delight (or alternatively, shielding your arse in disgust). 

 It opens with an intro track which i always think is a good start because it means that the band actually care about the listening experience of the EP and don't just want to create klub bangerz. 

After setting a foreboding tension with their purely instrumental intro, we are then met with a host of klub bangerz. 

In track 2,  Skooma, the listener is straight away metaphorically punched in the sternum by strong throaty vocals, heavy drumming and thrashy guitar and flows in and out of heavy break downs that culminate in another punch in the sternum to round the track off. This track let's you know that Polio are heavier and more twisted than ever.

The third track, They Came Bounding Over, once again punches the aforementioned sternum and leads to a fantastic middle section (reminiscent of Test Icicles but not as queer), that hardcore lovers could definitely two-step to (but they won't because they are too busy straightening their hair). The track then falls into a dichotomy of weird guitar back and forths and intricate drumming until the track seeps out into a slow and heavy chorus of "HOLD HER DOWN".

Track 4 is called Women that Explode, this song, like many of Polio's songs has swearing in it.


Track 5 - Lava, is named after a crap late night music channel on Sky (channel 378).  However tongue and cheek the song may be, a late verse about the fable of Icarus spat out by Thom genuinely exudes a butt-load of pathos and his muffled screams of "ICARUS" chill to the bone. 

The sixth and final track of the EP is entitled Low Self Esteem Week and begins with a purposefully tinny solo drum intro, met with Polio's self confessional, funny and sarcastic lyrics, and the recurring gang vocals that have been put to good use throughout the EP.   The track ends with a two minute instrumental decline which acts as the EP's outro, and just like the intro, it ends with a curious a sense of foreboding, which will leave you feeling paranoid and insecure, like a 13 year old girl that has just had her first period whilst listening to Nirvana.

you can buy the EP here it's fucking great! 

We have now truly entered the digital age.

We are shifting so far into a digitally orientated world that I'm pretty sure my cock and balls have turned into 0's and 1's.  There is no greater sign of the times than BBC's recent termination of the long running clunky, Lego inspired information service known as Ceefax.  The service began in 1974 as a popular anytime information service and eventually became obsolete and ended up only being used by dithering old people who smell like rust and people who accidentally lent on their TV controller.  My personal experience of Ceefax were of it's overnight broadcasts complete with terrible porn-jazz music.  I would get up really early as a kid and just watch Ceefax and graze on cereal, waiting for heavily stereotype driven cartoon Hammerman to air, starring an animated MC Hammer and his magic talking shoes that would turn him into the superhero "Hammerman" when he wore them. Or  alternatively on another channel, I could watch a blue hedgehog that was really fast and enjoyed chilli dogs ... but that one was just fucking stupid and unrealistic.

I feel a little bit sad that Ceefax has gone, but i can't really justify why it should survive. Ceefax had been a dormant gene in the genetic make up of what we now call the Digital Age. A throwback from a previous generation that no longer has a use in its new modern environment of high speed internet connections, smart phones and Shake-Away milkshakes.

This screen shot illiterates how boring this man called John is.

I reported the comment on grounds that he sounds really boring and if you look you'll see he's inciting boringness among at least 28 other people.

Here's some Ceefax "Chillin' Out" music incase you had forgotten its genius.

Of more importance than my last post, here's what my cat typed whilst walking on the keyboard:

Im pretty sure my cat wasn't looking for H&M Jimmy choo. Just a reminder that for all google's knowledge and prowess, it doesn't know if i'm a human or a cat, which it makes it stupid. I am an Iams cat! LOL, GUFFAW!

Lactose Intolerance

My blogging service provider, Eblogger, gives me analytics such as how many people view my blog.  The number doesn't shift much, it's mainly you occasionally looking at it every so often in a blue moon on a gap year whilst sewing wings on little oinklets whilst reciting the 37 proverbs of Wengal McSummary.  The idea behind these blogs have been to create something completely of its own ilk. I want it to be that little bit of oregano floating in your otherwise tomatoey tasting italian dish which you learned from Jamie Oliver, but with swearing in it. The oregano is swear words. Arse piss.

 Sainsburys are mates with Jamie Oliver.  D'ya reckon he gives a shit about healthy food or just about having Jamie endorsed chain restaurants? I wonder if those restaurants use Sainsbury food coz Jamie likes Sainsbury's loads, or whether he doesn't care or know what goes in the food at all. Does he care about school dinners, or is he once again the face or the ambassador for another annoying campaign? Having been served food during the Jamie Oliver spear-headed school food initiatives, let me tell you it was fucking dire!    As a genuine school goer whose one solace in an entire day of Victorian style school teaching was lunch time, to have something with sugar or calories taken from you and instead replaced by expensive cardboard tasting items, was depressing.  This campaign was, (in corresponding terms of schoolboy propensity's),  what Maggie Thatcher was to the Mining Industries. It felt shit. We knew the government didn't want us to eat Turkey Twizzlers, but that made this novelty meat all the more alluring, and made the government seem like dicks. If the government wanted future votes, all Tony Blair had to do was feed us a shit load of mechanically removed meats or sprinkled doughnuts and we would be feverishly voting for Labour and licking its would be sticky iced bun fingers. Instead David Cameron is lapping up all the milk which should be packaged in cartons and drunk by school kids. The conservative party won't serve kids milk because Maggie took the milk away in the first place, and the liberals will only suck the teet of the conservatives to get their milk coz they like the taste.

And apparently the dairy producers are losing money because supermarkets aren't paying them enough per pint... how long until milk is imported to the UK from foreign lands? I think i'm a bit lactose intolerant so i say fuck to all of it, im sick of weening from teets, im going to drink water coz its neutral. I might buy a bottle of water for whatever ridiculous price they now cost just so the bottle ruins the earths atmosphere and kills hummingbirds and bottle nose dolphins and eventually eradicates the human race... that way i wouldn't have problems drinking milk and being school tardy.

fuck off