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...

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?

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

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.

I just don't know what to do with myself

Well another day and more general nonsense, I've got into my head this rather weird regime whereby if I manage to get some work done I reward myself, normally its get the essay done then visit KFC, well today I added my favourite Saturday morning activity into the reward. I visited the British Heart Foundation Record and Book Store.

Well as usual I found myself rummaging through the records most vinyl snobs wouldn't touch with a barge pole. Non mint covers, non-rockist mojo approved acts so it was a veritable gold mine of the tat I find myself loving.

First up is the self titled album by The Communards, for my sins I love a bit of Jimmy Sommerville (Pun intended, but not excused) I've got Sonia by old DJ buddy to thank for that, back before she went of to the climes of Russia she forced upon me the diabolical Bronski Beat Marc Almond cover version of I Feel Love week after week, so I blame her, though in all seriousness I think they were an underappreciated act in need of some critical reappraisal.

I picked up Johnny Hates Jazz - Turn Back The Clock, I'm not really sure why as I know a grand total of nowt about them, but post-purchase research seems to suggest they quite similar to a lot of the new romantic stuff I listen to only with out the well known hits, Just put it on now and doesn't sound to bad if a little dated, but then its 16 odd years old.

And from one silly named eighties act to another, this one managed by Sharon Osbourne so make of that what you will. Orchestral maneuvers in the Dark - The Pacific Age which is apparently their bland sell-out record, So I'll prob really like it.

I got my first album by the Eurythmics which surprised me when I thought about it, considering how prolific they were woulda thought I'd have acquired something of theres by now, but now I have got Be Yourself Tonight, which has got Heaven Must be Missing an Angel which isn't too bad a track so the album might be alright.

I got EMF - Schurbert Dip which is strached to pieces but seems to play alright, and it's got unbelievable on it which I might go down quite well on Saturday night.

I got the got the dyslexic-tastic Color Me Badd - CMB which not only features I Wanna Sex You Up but closes side one with I Wanna Sex You Up (Reprise) so it bodes to be a classic.

Also in the bag of goodies was Simply Red - A New Flame, Rod Stewart - Foolish Behaviour, Diana Ross - Why do Fools Fall in Love, The Pretenders - Get Close, Neil Diamond - Jazz Singer, Lionel Ritchie - Can't Slow Down, Thompson Twins - Quick Step & Side Kick, Yazz - Wanted and last But not least the wonderful Love Classics performed by The London Symphony Orchestra includes a boombastic cover of Stairway to Heaven, Purple rain with the vocal melody played on harmonica, Lady in Red and 22 others.

I need to get out more...

back with a whimper

Well I'm finally back to Brighton, and with being back in Brighton comes the free gifts of a unlimited internet connection and far to much free time, so hopefully with it should come an occasional post to this very location.

Christmas and the New Year weren't particularly eventful, it wasn't just socks and new years with Jools Holland but it wasn't exactly unending hedonism and exciting gifts I never knew I wanted but loved more than life itself, though I did get the Great Rock Discography by Martin C. Strong and the Record Collector Valuable Record Guide, both of which are brilliant and both might have superceeded the Guiness Book of Hit Singles as my favoured religous text.

I've found myself up in London for a few days last week, was quite an interesting experience, and it made me realise how little I know about Classical music and Jazz. It seems my three K-Tel records of rock and soul music covered in a classical style by the London Symphony Orchestra just didn't cut it.

Don't really know where to start with it all, might spark up UBL and Limewire later or just keep an eye open on my vinyl hunting journeys. So if any of you are jazz fiends do drop me a line with some tips.

oh and check out spice hopefully I might have a few tees up for sale on there soon, but you'll no doubt hear about that soon if it comes to pass.