2009's better moments #1

Album of the year?  Well, you'd be hard pushed to find a better one than The Phantom Band's 'Checkmate Savage'. In fact you won't find one, so stop looking. Give it up. You're wasting your bloody time.

Click here for the video: Phantom Band - 'The Howling'

The devil sits in the quiet carriage

I got the opportunity to experience the quiet carriage the other day, for the first time ever.

I'll admit, I was a bit giddy with excitement at the prospect of a whole carriage full of middle-aged, miserable, misanthropic pedants just waiting for the opportunity to quote railway by-laws to anyone careless enough to sneeze at a volume in excess of eight decibels.

Thank you First Great Western, but...

I know how to sit down, I know how the sodding doors work, I know what a buffet car sells - there's no need to list every item individually although I thank you for confirming to me that tea and coffee are examples of hot drinks, that cold drinks can be either carbonated or non-carbonated and that possible sandwich fillings include cheese, ham, chicken and tuna,

Lust for insurance

No, no, no, no, no.

Like everyone else, I have long suspected that television commercials are simply the moron’s wet-nurse – a load of half-invented, half-remembered horse shit set to a jaunty musical backing in order to trick us into filling our lives with stuff we don’t need or want.

I am not amazed

I’ve got to be honest, I’m not often amazed. Confused, disinterested, sick to the very core of my cold, dead soul… but rarely amazed.

The music doesn't matter anymore

“Shabba!” yells the man on the radio, in a groundbreaking moment of post-modern comedic clarity. There is a pause. “Shabba!” he shouts again. After a few background laughs, a voice yells “ting!”. More laughs. “Shabba!” yells the man once more, before a button is pressed in the studio, causing another voice to shout “Charlie Murphy!” By now, the laughter in the studio is quite pronounced.

A joke

Quack quack quack quack, quack quack.

Quack quack quack.

"Quack quack quack-quack quack quack quack?" quack quack quack.

"Quack," quack quack quack, "quack quack quack quack-quack-quack quack quack!!!!!!!"

I tell you what, if you spoke duck you'd know just how fucking funny that joke is.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha fucking ha

How much does a cockney pay for shampoo?

Pantene.

I thank you.

They value my call

I've just spent about seven fucking hours listening to some automaton telling me how much they value my call, although that value evidently stops just short of paying someone to actually answer the fucking thing,

Leonard Cohen

I like the fella, but:

"Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free."

I'm afraid I just don't understand this.