The erratic adventures of shay & jax
No-one can deny Feely - he's too damned alpha. Anyway, your hero and mine has instructed me to write a new blog, which is to contain man-faced skanks and steamshit. And who am I to argue? I hope you all had a pleasant Christmas (apart from those of you like Bobs/Dave who lives in some kinda crazy, made up country, and doesn't celebrate it for another day) and, of course, a Merry New Year! Our village pub's fancy dress theme this year was the 1970s, which was annoyingly specific, because if it had just been the 70s, I would have done some 1870s shit. Instead I went as a Jawa. Utinni! I had an enjoyable break, the traditional Christmas cold aside, which I mostly spent watching the darts (big ups to Garry Anderson - Bagel must be very proud) and caning Arrow and The Flash. Utter cheesy nonsense, but fun nevertheless. The final season of The Newroom is up next, then Gomorra. Back to work now, and it's much less horrific than I feared. What's that, you say? Albums of the year? Well, I've been proper crap at listening to new music this year, but the following (IMHO) were all good'uns: Royal Blood by Royal Blood: Big, driving riffs and slightly effeminate vocals. Me likey. Bestiary by Hail Mary Mallon: Classic Def Jux-type Hip Hop which you either love or hate. Needless to say, me likey. The little 50 sample in this track makes me happy. That's Not How You Do That by Jean Grae: A novelty album, yes, but it's had me smiling since the summer. NehruvianDOOM by NehruvianDOOM: MF Doom's name got me to try this one, as I'd never heard of Bishop Nehru. I will be looking out for him in the future, though. Seaside Resort to Violence by Rash Decision: I went to see Monolithian play live, with a bunch of support bands I'd never heard of, and ended up seeing these guys (who have the bass player and vocalist from Monolithian on guitar and backing vocals) play this album, which is an eardrum-melting belter. Drenge by Drenge: Pretty sure this came out at the tail end of last year. So why is it on this list? Because fuck you, that's why! (And also because I didn't hear it until this summer. :P)
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Number 1 in an extremely irregular series: I suppose it's all a continuation of our current obsession of projecting this perfect life to the outside world. Like everyone has their dream job, is married to someone hot, has sex 8 times a week, cooks gourmet shit from scratch every night and then takes in a little light opera. Fucking hell, I figure I'm doing well when I peel myself away from Netflix for an evening. Or, as Killer Mike put it: Apart from the redundant you (which is the fault of the caption guy, not Mr Killer) that seems sensible enough. Life's too short to waste drinking Carling [/beersnob]. I had a little jolly down to Falmouth on Saturday - the location of my stag do and regular beer festivals. The boss had to work for the day in Truro and so, in the interest of showing solidarity, me and a mate sat in a gaming bar, got drunk and played Super Bomberman and NBA Jam. Because that helps, right? More towns and cities need places like the (incorrectly named) 8-Bit Bar. Not only is it stocked full of geeky thrills, they also had good local beers and a couple of very prett-err, I mean helpful barmaids. I need to find more time to game with friends. Okay, so it's not exactly going to save the world, but it's better than watching RuPaul's Drag Race on Netflix... I actually have game-stuff to report too! Shay has recruited the decayed form of Ava Ayling into the new band. Once the ancient spirits of Evil get hold of her, she'll be right as rain! I need a band banner, and advice on a good Modern Rock chain. Two more members TBC dreckly. EXCITEBIKE!! Shay will be learning to play drums, and taking over on the horror-themed tip from V. So far I have vague ideas for songs such as:
Hopefully (and this may be beyond my meagre skills) the songs will not just be gorefests, but also metaphors for RL/Popmundo stuff like our obsession with celebrity, addiction, homelessness and whatnot.
Or maybe just gorefests. :P Tomorrow I go to pick up my two-careful-owners Smart Roadster Brabus. Only 7 years old! Oh, I know - the motherfucking glamour, huh? However, I am absurdly excited, as my cars to date have always been fairly hum-drum hand-me-downs from various family members. I'm also going to buy a guitar. Mid-life crisis at 37, I reckon. I figured that I've already done the going bald and getting fat part, so... Okay, I'll stop boring you with my bullshit. Cricket references and HTWs next time, I promise. For now though, I have episodes of Drag Race to watch! Yeesh, typos galore! Anyway... Half a day more of hecticness and I'm on holiday. GET IN!! I'm not jetting off anywhere for the week. In fact I plan to be quite busy, but busy doing stuff I've chosen to do, so happy days. On Friday I'm off to (hopefully) sunny Dartmouth for my mate's stag. I'm the Best Man, and have done a fair bit of running around organising this, but it's all done, and nearly time to get drunk. We're all from working class backgrounds, but all of us went to uni and now work in varying professions. Over time, as we've got older, slower and better off, our various stag parties have got more and more middle class - from the booze-and-strippers tear-up in Dublin's Temple Bar when the first of us got married, to the camping trip to North Wales for the last-but-one one (first thing we did was hit Waitrose for croissants and brie. And booze, obviously.) This decline should culminate at this stag, where the groom has decided that, rather than buy 'comedy' t-shirts, he's getting everyone a cravat for Saturday night. Then again, it is Dartmouth, so I doubt anyone will bat an eyelid. Next week I'll be getting stuff done around the house, walking on the moors, and watching Stage 5 of the Tour of Britain. I'll also be hard in training, because on Saturday I'll be up in Bath, entering the second ever British Beard & Moustache Championships. I don't have a wild and crazy beard, so I will be entering the Business Class category. It's just a bit of fun really, and I'm not expecting to win or place. My barber, on the other hand, is incredibly excited about the whole thing, to the point where he's attending himself, and has been chastising me for not moisturising my beard every day. I'm off for trims tomorrow and next Friday, and I have visions of my sessions in the barber's chair being like this. Then again, as the boss is convinced that we're having a bromance, maybe it'll be more like this... If you see nothing here about Popmundo, the supposed main thrust of this entire blog, it's because nothing is happening there. I'm thinking about starting playing Track King again to while away a lunchtime or two. I'll leave you for now with some of the other staples of this blog: cricket, heavily tattooed women, and music you'll hate. I thoroughly enjoyed the England/South Africa women's T20 game last night. Charlotte Edwards' batting showed everything that guys like Ali Cook should be doing in limited overs cricket - no slogging, manoeuvre the ball into gaps, and run hard. I like Ali Cook a lot, but he needs to figure out that not everything is a fucking test match, and get on with it. I'd sooner see him get 25-30 fairly quickly than 50-70 sloooooooooooowly. What are your thoughts, gentle reader? Yeah, that's what I thought. While looking around for possible rockabilly events to attend (that's my transparent excuse, and I'm sticking to it...) I have recently stumbled across the very lovely Kandy K, an English model who's defected to the States, where she no doubt has a wider choice of rockabilly shows to attend. Expect her to appear as the face claim of one of Rice's bastard spawn sometime soon. You're welcome. And lastly I will leave you with a track that's been in heavy rotation on my Spotify account this week. I've been mostly dealing in words rather than drawings, so there's been lots of bleeps and bloops, and less lyrics. I know, I know: tl;dr. No doubt I will bug you lovely people during my week off, but if I don't it's because I hate you. :)
Yeah, my titles still suck. Really thought about offing V last week and concentrating on Shay. Then a friend suggested that I could turn Vera into Ellis, and effectively make V an NPC. This confused my tiny, over-stressed mind somewhat, but I can see what she's getting at. As a playing character V has probably run her race; I don't see her getting back on the road again, and as she's not song writing for anyone or, well, doing anything what's the point? Anyone that wants to 'talk' to her could still do so via PMs, but realistically she'd fade away and eventually die. Ellis as a more prominent character could well be an abject failure, but you don't know until you try, and the only other way to try would be to adopt a kid and wait forever for it to grow up. That said, it would leave a lot of in-game mess that would bug the hell out of the anal retentive in me: song history, showing up in other people's bookmarks, that sort of thing. I'm going to hedge my bets and fish for adoptions. If anyone knows of anyone who wants to get rid of an older kid, let me know. Also, and excuse my ignorance, but is there any way to make characters older, or is that not really a thing? I guess option three is kill V and Shay, get a new character and then resurrect them as Rice has done, which will cost me about £15. Hmm, decisions... Of course, probably the most sensible option is that if I CBA with V why would I with Ellis, so I should just do nowt. Knowing how fucking lazy I am, this is probably what will happen, rendering this whole blog post even more drivelly and pointless than normal. :) I read an interesting interview with ?uestlove of the Roots (and yeah, I'm being an Indier-than-thou dick by spelling his stage name the way it used to appear on the liner notes of Roots albums in the late 90s/early 00s - so what? :P) Firstly the SoundClash sounds like it might be a reason for me to watch MTV for the first time in forever (I watched one episode of Death Valley a few years back, quite liked it, and then promptly forgot about it - might have to catch it on Netflix). Secondly, it's an interesting take on cultural (mis)appropriation. Now I could probably write reams of bullshit on this ("please god, no!" -Everyone) but I'll try and keep it short. For most of the time when I was growing up and listening to rap it was pretty underground. You had the brief spells of chart success, and you had radio-friendly acts, but for the most part people liked a handful of rap songs, or one or two acts rather than Hip Hop in a wider sense. I'll admit that the current explosion of rap's commercial success does give me Hipster-twitches, and I have sneered at all the pale youths in the current scene. Or, to quote fellow whiteboy Vinne Paz: "I'm from a time where every song was righteous/ Before rap was just a swarm of white kids". That said, humanity has always adopted other cultures, whether that's Kublai Khan adopting elements of Chinese culture and forming the Yuan dynasty, or the Rolling Stones covering Muddy Waters. I don't think there's anything wrong with white artists performing musical styles of black origin. I think there's a lot of noise about what is 'white' music or 'black' music, and I'd rather just hear good music, but I'm also self aware enough to realise that it's pretty easy to say that as someone that isn't watching their culture get co-opted. And there's the thing; Iggy Azealea doesn't seem self-aware enough to recognise what a massive bump she gets from being a blonde-haired white girl, why fans of genre that, rightly or wrongly, celebrates 'realness' might get annoyed with an Aussie rapping in an Atlanta drawl, or why reasonable people might be a little ticked at all the racist bullshit she tweeted. Newsflash Izzy: just because you weren't famous when you said it, doesn't mean it doesn't count. Anyway, after reading the article, I figured I may as well listen to the song. Hmm. Suffice to say she's not the next Jean Grae. Fuck it though, pop music has been more about image than content for as long as I can remember, and clearly lots of people do like it. Then again, I'm sure lots of people thought that nice Mr Hitler would be good for Germany. Still, she should probably go listen to some Jean Grae to learn about the Twitter timeline... And just because we haven't had any heavily tattooed women lately, here is Miss Grae, aka my wife when I grow up (around about the time I hit 70, I reckon): Oh, and before anyone asks, Clair won't mind - she'll be married to Chris Hemsworth by then! :D
Whilst having a bit of lunch on Thursday I listened to an interview with Arsenio Hall where he pointed out that he thought Vanilla Ice was a fantasist and a bit of a bellend. No great shocks there then. But, for reasons best known to themselves, some clown had posted a rant about 'some chick' who gets naked and then doesn't want to have sex. His complaint seemed to be that if you don't rape her she'll tell all your girlfriends that you're not a real man, and if you do rape her you will, quite unreasonably, be arrested and thrown in jail.
And then someone called him a beta fag. *le sigh* Now let's put aside the fact that any woman that changes her mind during a sexual encounter is probably quite unlikely to be sitting around drinking coffee with friends the next day going "and the fucking little beta fag didn't even slap me around and rape me! Where have all the real men gone?" What exactly does being an alpha/beta male have to do with being a bit rapey? And yet it was brought up because certain kinds of men feel the need to constantly make out that they are peak of masculinity. And it does my fucking head in. Now look, I don't have any problems with masculinity. I'm a short, fat hairy dude with a beard - no-one is ever likely to accuse me of metrosexuality. I grew up listening to hip hop and hardcore punk, two musical styles not exactly renowned for for being overwhelmed with touchy-feely New Man types. Even so, it seems that cult of the alpha (and the closely linked cult of the Dominant) is everywhere at the moment, with a small but vocal collection of numpties opining on how all women are bitches and sluts (presumably this does not include their mums, but I suppose you never know) and the relative merits of creatine brands, brah. That'll push humanity forwards then. And yes, the cult is alive and well in Popmundo. Think about it: how many male characters are handsome, sauve, dominant, infallible and hung like a babies arm? Too many, that's how many. And it doesn't seem to matter whether the writers are male or female. At least we are, thankfully, relatively free of the more aggressive kind of meatheat - small mercies. Okay, rant over I guess. There's nothing wrong with a well written alpha male, although they are probably going to be an pretty unlikable character. But, hey, it worked for 50 Shades and Banshee, right? The problem (in inverted commas - it's probably only a problem for grumpy bastards like me) is when they are presented as good guys rather than deeply flawed. That's having your cake and eating it. Right! Enough of that! First person to call me a beta fag gets a biscuit. Shay and V have been a little sleepy the last few days because I have either been drunk or asleep (or lifting, or fucking bitches brah!*) Those 'let's pop out for a quick pint' evenings are deadly... I promise to be a little more talkative next week. You must all be over-joyed... :P * If the boss sees that, I'm going to get such a whithering look... Yes boss. Been a slow week or so for me Popowise. Busy, busy, busy in work, so the time I've been signed in to Ppm has mostly just been spent titting about rather than indulging on anything really constructive, band or RP-wise. Ho hum - it's a marathon not a sprint and other glib clichés. The only two things of real note that have happened were Shay officially friend pwning Joni, and admitting to Irish that he was in love; both of those things would probably have been fairly obvious to those paying any kind of attention (so not Joni then...) anyhoo. Anything else of note? Well, I've had a very enjoyable Bank Holiday, drinking and walking in the sunshine, and eating good food in good company. I apologise for not being about much to talk to you guys on Skype, Popo and whatever, but you know I love you guys too. I'm sat here listening to stuff I already own on Spotify, which has been the subject of interesting and heated debates among artists and fans for a while now. I know that listening to stuff you already own is not really the point - Spotify exists so that nice middle class people like I have become can assuage their guilt while still jacking artists by listening to the fruits of their hard work for a pittance. Even so, I'd say that I mostly use it for listening to stuff that I own on CD or in digital format because it's almost all in one place, relatively normalised, and easy. I also use it listen to albums that I've been waiting for through reading the music press and following artists on various social media. Decent independent record stores are few and far between these days, so I don't have many places to go and listen to stuff to decide whether I want to own it or not. While Spotify's payments are ridiculously low, I figure that something is better than nothing. Besides, if I like the album I'll buy the digital format (tiny miner's cottages do not lend themselves to large vinyl or CD collections) - and then listen to it on Spotify. :P Lastly, and this happens all too irregularly, I use it to discover new music. I listen to a couple of good punk and metal radio shows that keep me reasonably well in the loop on those scenes. I'm struggling a hip hop show that doesn't feature a DJ that makes me want to smash up and burn down a city or two, so apart from recommendations, the related artist and radio features on Spotify are my only link to stuff I may not have otherwise heard. Lately though, it's been more useful in rediscovering albums that I haven't listened to in a while. In the last few weeks I have remembered just how good the Dust Junkys were (apologies for the Grooveshark link - the only YouTube vid I found was choppy as hell), how dope Royce was when he first dropped, that I still love Everlast's solos stuff, why I like the Dead Kennedys more than Black Flag, and that this is still one of my favourite riffs ever... (Rumours are that the dead boys are back together - that would be good.) (Alas no video of Jello Biafa jumping around with his shirt off - sorry Bagel.) (I was very tempted to put his acoustic version of Jump Around here. Fuck you, it's good!) ("I got dirt done in my past I know y'all sweat/ I got regrets older than some'a you so-called vets")
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WTF?!This site contains out-of-character information for characters and events in the MMO Popmundo, as well as general navel-gazing and apologies for never updating. "If you are offended by words like: Shit! Bitch! Fuck! Dick! Ass! Whore! Cum!" Ice-T
Who the Hell?!
The author is a professional person in his mid-30s, old-school Hip Hop head, Punk Rock fan, Plymouth Argyle supporter, comic book reader, and general lo-fi nerd. He lives in the countryside with two cats and newly-wed wife, all of whom seem to be above him in the pecking order. He is a big fan of tea, fig rolls, H.P. Lovecraft, facial hair and quiffs. While MPB robbed him of his quiff-rocking dreams, he does sport a dope handlebar moustache. Categories
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