Home. Good weekend. Knackered. Will blog more tomorrow.
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August 2004
Til Tuesday night, probably. Or Wednesday. Depending. Search parties not required. Thank you for your attention.
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So that's it. Tag. “Finished”.
The last week or so I have been pouring over my screenplay, Tag, trying to make it the best I can make it without a major rewrite. It's not finished – it'll never be finished, not even if it's ever made. But the time has come to abandon it, pretend it is finished, and submit it to the Second Annual American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest.
I think I am happy with it as it stands. I also think that it is a good screenplay, and that it stands a fighting chance of being placed. (Well, I would think that, otherwise I wouldn't now be $40 lighter.)
Please keep your fingers crossed – not for me to win, but for me to find the patience to wait until 01 Feb 05 to find out if I've won.
Ah, hell, by then I'll have the next one written anyway.
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Probably not, considering that I only got it yesterday…
You may or may not know (or care), but I have been yearning after a Mac for a couple of months now. Well, actually it's been about a decade, but it wasn't until I saw Macs in action at BlogTalk that I became totally smitten and decided that a Mac was essential to my future personal and professional well-being.
Thing is, Macs aren't cheap, and I'm not flush at the moment, so I'd put the Mac on hold. Until, that is, a friend of mine offered me his ol' worn-out 15″ G4 PowerBook. Like I was going to say no! The battery is totally b0rked, the firewire is knackered and there is no Airport card, but other than it's just fine and dandy. HD is a bit small, and the processor a bit slow, but it is half the size/weight of my PC laptop, and it's a Mac!
Thus this is my Interim Solution between not having a Mac and having the Mac of My Dreams. I have a couple of people keeping eyes out for spare batteries which actually work, and my friend has located a spare Airport card he is going to send to me, and I have moved my ADSL modem about so that the ethernet cable now reaches (although it also stands a good chance of tripping up anyone who walks in the front door), so I am at least online now. Well, obviously. Wouldn't be posting this if I wasn't. Need to buy a USB mouse on the weekend too – trackpad drives me nuts.
I will still save up for a 12″ iBook/PowerBook, (now I've got a PowerBook I'm kind of in lurve), but at least this means that I won't now be accused of absconding with someone else's laptop every time I go up to London.
*happy sigh*
Oh, and I'm SubEthaEdited up to the hilt! Go SubEthaEdit!
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Oh, what a shock, music sales have gone up in the UK over the last year, and that's not even counting legal download sales.
The number of legal downloads sold in the UK this year has now exceeded two million units, the BPI said. This means sales have increased from a rate of 100,000 per month to 500,000 per month over the past quarter.
Excuse my smugness, but what did I say about downloads affecting sales?
I hope this means the beginning of the end of the music industry's usual stupidness over downloads and P2P. Quit whining, embrace new techology and start looking for ways to create more value for money instead of trying to force people to buy the crap you've been churning out for year upon year in the assumption that music lovers don't notice.
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It's not often that I buy singles. If I like a song I either download it (scream of horror) or get the album. The only reason for buying a single is if the b-side is worth having and usually they're not, they're just a waste of money – who needs some crappy remix or live version of a song you already have?
Admittedly Radiohead used to be very good at producing high quality b-sides, so I do have a lot of Radiohead singles and EPs, up to the point where Thom lost his head somewhere in his own lower intestines.
Thursday I was, as I habitually am, listening to XFM. Their X-List show is an opportunity for listeners to control the play list, (well, only to some extent I suppose. If I rang up and asked for the new Duran Duran single Sunrise, for example, I doubt that they would have it in the building, let alone play it), and some guy rings in to ask for Soulwax. Good call. Excellent band. But he asks not for Any Minute Now, their current single, but for the b-side. Sadly the station doesn't have a full version of the single, but this guy waxes long, eloquently and passionately about how wonderful this b-side is and how they really, really need to get a hold of it and play it.
Normally, I wouldn't take any notice, but the song in question is actually a cover version of Hey Little Girl, by Icehouse. Back in the 80s I used to love Icehouse – I have a ton of their stuff stashed away upstairs in the loft so I was suddenly overcome by a real need… not just a fleeting desire, but one of those overwhelming longings to hear both versions.
I managed to find the original version – I had forgotten was a lovely voice Iva Davies has. It's just beautiful. And Hey Little Girl has aged very well indeed. Some 80s stuff sounds really a bit crap, but although this sounds of its time it doesn't sound dated.
Anyway, I couldn't electronically purloin Soulwax's version, so I did the unthinkable and actually bought the single from HMV online. It arrived through my letterbox this morning, and I stuck it on the stereo as soon as I had opened it.
What can I say? The guy on the radio was right. Not only is it an astoundingly beautiful version, but Stephen Dewaele's voice is so similar to Iva Davies' as to be really very spooky. It's just quite, quite fabulous. Subtle, understated, emotive, delicious. Four minutes of heart-stopping tingle-making bleepy Soulwaxy goodness.
Go buy it.
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See, Joey might well pretend to be some cute Tucows 'Technical Community Development Coordinator', but I know the truth:
The real Accordion Guy
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Last night I had a dream that a very small frog was stuck in my right ear. I couldn't get a hold of it to pull it out, but neither could it wriggle out by itself. It was a bit like having a Babel Fish stuck in one's ear, with all the sliminess but without any of the advantages, the frog being monolingual and all. I woke up with a rather strong feeling of frog-in-ear-ness, and when I fell asleep again the dream just continued. It was so vivid, I still can feel the frog there, wriggling and slimy and cold.
I would tell you to post your analyses in the comments, but on second thoughts, please don't. I'm not sure I want to know what dreaming of having a frog in my ear tells you about me.
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A new-to-me Polish teaching website and a new Easyjet route to Krakow have both been brought to my attention today. It's a sign.
I have promised myself that when I do move back to London, whenever that happens, I will find myself some Polish classes to go to. Still, it'd be nice to get a bit further by myself, but it's just a matter of time. *sigh*
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Expect an audioblog post as and when, oh, and the shoot was a real laugh. (And yes, I know it's Random Acts, not 'bites'. My bad.)
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