Listen to this at work, I implore you.

It's Lust & Death's latest - Thursday Takes Its Toll: and it's a challenging one.

Listen to the song here...

Then download it and sing it to your colleagues all day.

It is, of course, Buy Nothing Day today. This is probably not unconnected.

A Thunderbirds Extravaganza

Woah-oh! It's the titles to Thunderbirds! And - you guessed it - they're in foreign again. This time: Japanese - and they've made up a title song to go with it....



No tune like this would be complete without a lyric sheet: so hit "play" and sing along:

sundah bah-doh, ah-oku hikallu hii-lo-y uchu--eh you-keh kaze wo maite
sundah bah-doh, konoyo-no shiawa-seh no tame-eh ni you-keh umi-eh lliku-ni

ah-o-i sora-wo mida-su mono-wa dah-le-kah
yonn-de-illu ano koeh-wa eh-su o eh-su dah

sundah bah-doh, ah-oku hikallu hii-lo-y uchu--eh you-keh kaze wo maite

And, as a kind of detox to all that I give you one of the finest pieces of comedy the BBC has ever made - Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's classic SuperThunderStingCar sketch. Pure genius.

I wish I'd written this song.

Why? Because it's educational. For starters, I'd never realised that, due to it not being a decent habitat for pandas, Bognor Regis is an excellent place to grow cucumbers - and it just gets better after that spiffing opening.

Click here for all your cucumber educational needs - NOW.

Scary stuff

And so straight from sausages to tattooed genitalia.

Welcome to John's website. John, through the magic of tattooing, has had his willy transformed into Puff the Magic Dragon.

This may put you off a meal. Be warned.

A letter.

To Powys County Council Trading Standards

Dear Sir/Madam,
The other day I bought a pack of Welsh Dragon Sausages, and was pretty damned excited at tasting an extremely rare meat. Imagine my disappointment when...

No, I can't keep this up. Apparently a maker of sausages in Wales has been forced to change the name of their pork products because people might think they contain dragon meat. See this article in The Times for details...

"A spicy sausage known as the Welsh Dragon will have to be renamed after trading standards’ officers warned the manufacturers that they could face prosecution because it does not contain dragon."

I may have just lost the will to live. (Link via BoingBoing)

A musical interlude...

It's about time you heard something new from me. Think of it as a healing thing; a kind of We Shall Overcome for the Prozac generation, if you like.

Find Yourself Again

If you listen to this, light a candle and hug someone lonely. For me.

The best album money can't buy...

I'm in posession of a bit of a rarity - something that arrived in the post the other week; and I've been enamoured with it ever since.

I'm a bit of a fan of quite a few MacIdol artists, but there's one or two that really stand out from the pack. One of the less well-publicised of this leading group is the wonderfully generous owner of the Songalong blog, Slumbering.

A few weeks ago, Slumbs asked me about some technical issues regarding putting together an album. I must confess, at this point I got terribly excited - and then I found out that she was putting it together for her "mama-la" as she calls her (what a softie!) for her birthday.

Anyway, I helped her out with some of the issues in my own ham-fisted way and offered swapsies with my album. Slumby refused because "it wouldn't be fair", but as a "thank you" for helping out she said she'd send me a copy. It arrived the other week, amidst the mayhem of getting a new home in order and, she's right: it wouldn't have been fair.

She'd have been ripped off something rotten.

Where most albums I hear are a collection of songs, albeit carefully ordered, we have here a near-concept album of some vision - one woman's rather individual and innocent/knowing vision - that bristles at times with a mordant sense of humour. If Jan Svankmajer was a reclusive female musician from the San Joaquin valley, he might sound like this. I don't know, I'm guessing. I do know I have a stop motion animation video in my head every time I listen to it.

One of the best aspects of Dark Lullabies is that Slumbering knows when to stop. She doesn't push the concept album envelope to breaking point, and she knows she still has a few tricks up her sleeve: not least two of my favourite songs of the year. So she calls the show to a halt, bounces back on as an indiepop princess and... well. This house is brought down every time.

A gothic vision played out in jerky black and white, followed by the gloriously gaudy colours that all the best pop should be splashed with. It's quite, quite wonderful.

It's my copy; and you can't buy it. In a way, that's a tremendous pity.

OK, I can hear Slumbering's objections - there are flaws in the recording, and I can hear them. But then John Lennon used to routinely keep mic pops, flubbed lyrics and the whole nine yards in Beatles songs - far worse stuff than ever surfaces here. So you'll need another excuse, Slumbering.

Of course, if she simply doesn't want to release it, that's fine and I'm cool with that - but quality control is not an issue here. It's quite the statement as an album.

Of course, until it does get released, I have one of the few copies in the world. And you've no idea how smug that makes me feel.

Find out what all the fuss is about by visiting the collection of songs she keeps online; and if Song for my Mama-la doesn't make you melt, then your heart is made of stone.

Come Together (but not yet)

I'm all for change. For instance, I'm as pleased as anybody about the recent mid-term results, and probably distinctly more chuffed than Donald Rumsfeld. So, any chance to effect more change is OK by me.

Especially if it's fun.

So, ladies and gentlemen (and especially the ladies) may I introduce you to Global Orgasm. Basically it's asking you to have an earth-shaker for peace. It doesn't interfere with any plans I might have, so I'm quite happy to join in.

But what is it they hope to achieve? This is what the site says:

The mission of the Global Orgasm is to effect change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy. Now that there are two more US fleets heading for the Persian Gulf with anti- submarine equipment that can only be for use against Iran, the time to change Earth’s energy is NOW! Read more about the fleet buildup here.

The intent is that the participants concentrate any thoughts during and after orgasm on peace. The combination of high- energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers.

The goal is to add so much concentrated and high-energy positive input into the energy field of the Earth that it will reduce the current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world.

OK. I think I got all that. Then I had a look at the science bit:

The Global Consciousness Project (http://noosphere.princeton.edu), Princeton University, runs a network of Random Event Generators (REGs) around the world, which record changes in randomness during global events. The results show that human consciousness can be measured to have a global effect on matter and energy during widely-watched events such as 9/11 and the Indian Ocean tsunami. There have also been measurable results during mass meditations and prayers.

The Zero Point Field or Quantum Field surrounds and is part of everything in the universe. It can be affected by human consciousness, as can be seen when simple observation of a subatomic particle changes the particle’s state.

We hope that a huge influx of physical, mental and spiritual energy with conscious peaceful intent will not only show up on Princeton’s REGs, but will have profound positive effects that will change the violent state of the human world.

No. You've lost me now.

Still, I intend to join in. And why not? What could possibly go wrong?

I'm back

Well, I've moved house, for the second time in just over 12 months - and I've moved across town. Nice place, decent neighbours, all is good. There's a slight lack of late-night shopping options (apart from a 24-hour supermarket), but that means I have to make an effort to be a bit less absent-minded. That's no bad thing.


In the meantime, here's my latest piece of listening pleasure - a fine morsel of listen called No Promises from the intergalactic wunderkinden Lust & Death. Everything about it is fantastic. You must love this song. (Note to self. Always the ampersand. Always.)

Anyway: you can listen to this song here.

Then because you LOVE it so much, you can download it here.

Don't thank me. I just point these things out.