the uk blog of recycled news, gadget tidbits, new media pipedreams, search engine marketing fluff and record collecting tales.

Monday, March 28

When Nick met Westwood

After 26 hours of bar-whoring myself to Brighton's thirsty, I've finally made it to the end of what has felt like a truly mammoth working weekend with not even a sniff of an Easter Egg - cue sympathetic tears and "aaaaaaah"s all round.

But I'm not really complaining; despite the fact that the pay is frankly a disgrace (four pounds eighty-fucking-five pee an hour), my legs feel like guitar strings tightened to a beyond sensible level, and the fact that I have been forced to listen to some of the most god-awful hip-hop and r 'n'b known to creation while being yelled at by some of the world's most revolting human-beings, when the perks are this perky (scroll down to see picture) the world seems to shine (like you've had too much wine etc...) - note extreeeeeme level of sarcasm in voice.


Sultan of Bling a.k.a. Prize cunt

It's me with Westwood! Ignoring the fact that I look, frankly, pretty much like I felt, how "off the heezy fo' sheezy" is that?

The man, the legend, the dickhead was "dj-ing" at the Gloucester for one night only for the obscene sum of £4000 and I took it upon myself to accost him after his set - which mostly consisted of the most obvious urban floor-fillers (anyone like Murder, She Wrote by Chaka Demus and Pliars?) interspersed with gun-shot effects (to cover the fact that the man is incapable of mixing two tracks together) and shout-outs to the crowd of things like "make some noize if you love Westwood!" and "I want all the ladies in the house with wet pussies to scream!". Eloquent. Articulate. Genius.

p.s. To test your knowledge of the ghettos check out this deezy little quiz I found: http://caseyporn.com/dope_or_wack/

Saturday, March 26

I've been thinking about this...

I own a big pair of Bo Selecta Style headphones that I barely use and have been thinking about getting and iPod Shuffle so surely this is fate....

Own Brand Bourbon Reviews - First in an occasional series

As a few of you may no I'm not adverse to the occasional tipple of the Ole JD and Coke, as I love to live the rockist drink cliche, but unfortunately as I am but a poor student the black labeled stuff from Tennessee is quite often beyond my reach, so I often opt for the somewhat cheaper own brand bourbon alternative.

However this is a bit of a mindfield so I feel I ought to aid those in a similar predicament with a scientific process of evaluating the alternative options. To do this I have come up with a rigorous 5 out of 5 out of 5 scheme. Leading to a maximum possible score of 25*

First up with have Tesco's Smokey Jacks retailing at £9.99 for a 70cl Bottle

Price 4/5
Taste with Coke 3.5/5
Taste Straight 2.5/5
availability 3/5 (prob ought to be higher but there is no tesco in Brighton City Limits)
Ability to pretend is JD 2.5/5 (Similar shaped bottle black label and doesn't taste to different mixed after a few drinks but to the conseseur will always be apparent s the poor mans choice)




*Please note not even JD would reach a 25 score as it would prob rate a lowly 2 or three in the value sub-section

Thursday, March 24

This might bother me if

I were flush enough to afford bottled beer, so while I'm stuck on the dodgy canned lager I won't be needing one of these

Whilst I'm filling you up on the spoofs

Here's a scarily well done Flash trailer for Nathan Barley, its not done by Mr Morris but you do have to think twice..

Beaten to the Punch

Well I've been thinking about taking the htm from the NME.com website and parodying it for ages, but it never got beyond my tentative attempts to replace the text on a beeb parody campaigning for Rageh Omar for President of Iraq, the person behind this is equally unimaginative yet its still quite entertaining

My first post

So here I am, bravely, but tentatively, taking my first steps into the blog of Kelv.

Is this going to be a public arena for the multitude of amusing and inciteful observations I have to make on the world? Will it serve as an outlet for my teen-angst-ridden soul (yes, i realise 20 is a little too old for teen angst) to cascade itself onto an unsuspecting and uncomfortable audience? Will I even bother to add to it? Who can say?

To begin however, I think I will provide y'all with a wee incite into the world of me.

I am a simple man (perhaps "man" is something of a stretch...) of simple pleasures. Without meaning to sound too Julie Andrews, and in no particular order, here are a few of my favourite things....

  • Tea
  • Neighbours (on TV rather than my neighbours in real life who have just recently complained to the council about us making too much noise - miserable fuckers)
  • The pub quiz at The Bear (at which I have a particularly impressive record)
  • Walking along the road listening to my iPod and pretending I'm in my very own music video
  • Taking pictures of people without them realising (I know that sounds somewhat pervy and stalker-ish, it's not meant to - it's just a way of taking pictures of people at their most natural)
  • Going to gigs for free
  • Keira's smile (maybe shouldn't really have put that one but it's true)

Until next time, when I may well add to that list or, if I'm in a particular foul mood, compose a new one of the things that most royally fuck me off, I bid you adieu.

Wednesday, March 23

Why I moved House Last Summer

As some of you may know I moved houses last yearly, mainly because they all left me, but maybe cause I was difficult to live with and one particular housemate often felt the brunt due to, how shall I put it, our differing views on spirituality. But after tour brief MSN convo copied below maybe she was right and I was wrong...


SHE says:hmmm. what are your plans for next yr?

ME says: move to london get job get rich live happily ever after


SHE says:getting rich = living happily ever after...hmmmm?


ME says:not one nesc equals the other but the more money you have the easy you find it to indulge your passions and therefore make you happy surely you'd agree

SHE says:ahahaha. nope. but hey, i'm a christian and thus have higher purpose type morality, so.....yeah.

ME says:ok let me put this another way would you like to be in a situation whereby you could do the stuff you did on your travels without having to find the money to do it

SHE says:ummm.....it would make it easier on me. BUT when is it enough money? like, i'd have liked to not have to have worried about macedonia but maybe then i'd want to go to new zealand as well, or maybe nepal, and maybe i wouldnt have enough, or maybe id like to go to the mooooon....plus, having to pray for the money taught me a lot so i wouldnt have it any other way

ME says:you can pray for money thats where i've been going wrong all these years

It weren't like that when I were young

There seems to be a bit of a weird trend going on in the world of publishing and advertising which I can't quite get my head round at the moment,

First we have


and then we have


Well whats the connection between these two newly lauched weekly womens trashy lifestyle cheap sheets, the horrible rerecoridngs of well known songs to promote them.
Full House is of course much worse because Madness's Suggs is actually responsible for the new version, I'm sure times are hard in the Uggs Family house but really are they that bad?

What ever next the A Hard Day's Fight the Boxing Magazine or Funny for Nothing the Magazine for stand up comics or other actually funny puns...

Thursday, March 17

Is quoting Nathan barley wrong?

Well it's come back to haunt me, taking the piss out of all those Ali G copying kinds who might well have been the kind of characters that were being parodied.

Well right now I feeling i'm doing pretty much the same with Nathan Barley, whether it be "Well fucking Mexico" "Hey Jimmy You Fucking Rapist" or what ever I feel the urge

I know I'm not exactly Nathan Barley Per Se, but I wouldnt say I was a world apart, maybe a little more self aware but then its all Kinda of self conscious in the case of NB

is it right or wrong?

Wednesday, March 16

All Change

Well I feel it's time for a bit of a change at secondhandnews towers, inspired by the so excellent New York, London, Paris Moscow and its team of blogateers I've decided to invite in a few of my dear old pals to join the party.

We'll never be a trashbat.co.ck but we can but try

Wednesday, March 9

Fear of work

I am expecting I'llprob be posting a wee bit more to this dear old blog in the next few weeks, yes its that time again big coursework times. And what better way to avoid work than this...

If of course you're incredibly interested in what I'm doing my dissertations on I thought I'd dive in and tell you...

The one I'm enjoying most and actually enjoying writing and thinking about is for my Cultures Online Course. I don't have a final title yet but at the moment its looking like "Don't call me a rockist: Hierachies of taste in an Online Music Forum"
Those of you familar with ILM (http://www.ilx.wh3rd.net/) will know about rockism inside and out, and basically I thought would be a good laugh to do a dissertation about it, largely so when its all done and finished I can post it up and have it ripped to shreds by people more clever than me, so expect that up on secondhandnews in a few months.

Second up for my Music & Media course I doing something about the death of music as a tangible concrete comodity, which might have a title along the lines of "Last night a mp3 saved my life: Did iTunes Music store keep music a comodity?"
I am having a bit of difficulty getting into this one, largely cause i really enjoying the rockism one and its worth more of my degree, though my tutor (who is know by the japaneese media as Professor iPod) has leant me a really good book called "Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture" by Timothy D. Taylor (which might be on amazon but I havent searched to check) which from the bits I've read of the train before falling asleep on the train to London have seemed really good, and I know once I get in the zone for it I'll be well away.

The final one I havent thought about much even though I've had it since Christmas is my "Is Simon Cowell Real? The cult of the individual in the music industry" This essay and my apparent calm about the fact it won't take me long to complete exemplifies how far I think I've come whilst at Uni, to be able to think (perhaps wrongly) that I know and are able to work efficiently enough that I can knock out a 5000 word essay in no time at all both makes me feel proud and concerned about how seriously I am taking this.