Martini

stylishbastard @ 2009-11-03T07:16:00

2009-11-03T07:17:18Z

It sounds fucking awful but I am consistently surprised about how difficult I find doing a PhD. I really did think it would be a piece of piss. Ludicrous.

WORKING ALL NIGHT HOORAY

Also have some Spotify playlists -

http://open.spotify.com/user/stylishbastard/playlist/1AeoktQIBN9yNo8x4XtfrB

http://open.spotify.com/user/stylishbastard/playlist/5skGZzbBmpjajV54MO9Mc1

Hooray!

2009-10-26T23:39:39Z

http://open.spotify.com/user/stylishbastard/playlist/6FecdLHCAYIRXEwwCeZqqV

Lots of oddness, bit of soundtrack music and Sparks.

stylishbastard @ 2009-10-12T14:26:00

2009-10-12T13:27:36Z

Friendulum > frenulum

stylishbastard @ 2009-10-12T00:26:00

2009-10-11T23:27:51Z

I am a handsome basty bast There are no two ways about it.

Here's a Spotify mix - http://open.spotify.com/user/stylishbastard/playlist/0kP4FLMGxuEhKC5LlpE8sN

HAY GUYS

2009-10-05T01:00:18Z

stylishbastard @ 2009-10-04T05:45:00

2009-10-04T04:47:24Z

Music soothes me no end. I can't think of anything else in my life...human, animal, vegetable or mineral that I rely on quite so consistently.

Oh look at the sun - it's all a-glow
Slow burning star - sinking low
Heaven knows where you go
Out of sight, out of minds eye, no
Aw such a shame - you must leave

All day long you were a friend to me
Still - the moon's company
Until morning when larks will sing
Horizon´s appointment you'll keep
For sunswept flamingos must sleep

Scenes like these from my dreams
Cover cutting-room floors all over
Warm heart we spin slowly from view
Why are you sad - do you disapprove?
How we've wasted our time

Sunset - end of my day - my decline
Postscript you trace colours the sky
Red-letter light fades, is filed away
Sunburst fingers you raise
One last sigh of farewell - goodbye

This would be quite a good suicide song. I might make a compilation.

stylishbastard @ 2009-10-02T01:37:00

2009-10-02T00:45:39Z

Very little pisses me off more than aggressive stupidity. This morning our landlord's lackey came round to collect the rent, which they ask to be paid in cash via a jam jar left in the kitchen. I asked about what scope there was to do what normal people do and pay via direct debit or cheque and the lackey went MENTAL. It was like I had pissed on his favourite child or something.

Although I more or less got him to agree to come round in the evening before rent is due so we can all pay face to face (rather than have over a grand sitting in the kitchen unattended for hours) it was hard work. Stupid people are often good at arguing, as this video illustrates -

Anyway. I didn't give him any outrage material to work with so that made his bizarre responses even more..well..bizarre. Saying I could be kicked out if I wasn't happy and that I'm causing problems. Asking why I was shouting when I conscientiously kept my voice to a minimum. Real sillyness.

I'm very good at not responding to loudness with loudness and keeping calm in these situations (which pisses people off no end in rows when they're trying to force some kind of cathartic situation that I'm not up for) so he had nowhere to go with it really. After he left the internalised anger and adreneline got let out and I had to march round the flat and grind my teeth a bit. People are endlessly surprising.

stylishbastard @ 2009-09-27T03:31:00

2009-09-27T02:46:00Z

I think all music legends should at some point be forced to write an album like Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen. Only as much affectation as a skeletal structure can handle. Bare, cold and wonderful.

Fucking amazing..

Check out Lady Gaga before she was Lady Gaga!

2009-09-24T22:18:58Z

stylishbastard @ 2009-09-24T15:30:00

2009-09-24T14:31:33Z

Do you think I'd seem like a complete paedophile if I went to the Kelly Clarkson gig?

It's probably a toss up between paedo and underwhelming gay.

WHAT A LEGEND

2009-09-21T23:48:48Z

stylishbastard @ 2009-09-21T00:03:00

2009-09-20T23:04:51Z

I have been slagged off by every age group today. More specifically, my twattish magenta hair has. Two old women smoking outside a pub even debated it amongst themselves.

'I'm glad that's not my son'

I hope she suffers some kind of horrible prolapse.

This video cracks me the fuck up

2009-09-18T23:48:13Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8263899.stm

Brett Anderson - Slow Attack album preview

2009-09-18T02:21:15Z

I am posting this everywhere right now. I've gone on about this before but the only person other than Bowie I would say I am a bona fide Fan for is Brett Anderson. I go back and forth on his objective merits and whatnot but nevertheless he manages to do just enough to keep me in that Fan with a capital F zone. I am deeply excited about the new album after hearing the preview today.

stylishbastard @ 2009-09-10T01:23:00

2009-09-10T00:31:50Z

When we normally think about turning points where different life paths hinge it is usually chance meetings that spiralled into something else, tragic accidents, poetic twists of fate..or other cinematic things that come to mind. I had a potentially life changing moment last night when out drinking with my new flatmates and their friends in that I very nearly shat myself. Physically.

I'm not sure if it was something I'd had to eat earlier, a bad pint, a combination or whatever..but between pubs I had a sudden and urgent need. In the event I arrived at a bathroom and did not shit myself which is in general not something people have cause to consciously consider as a good thing. That said..if I had CATASTROPHICALLY MESSED MYSELF in front of all these new people I think it is safe to say this would have been, to a greater or lesser extent, life changing.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck

2009-09-07T22:20:23Z

I sent an abstract for this Helsinki conference I want to speak at and got this response back from my supervisor, who also happens to be helping to organise it and vet speakers -

Dear Martin
Thanks - I agree, I think you have a lot to say and it will be of interest to a wide range of people.
We'll be in touch in the near future. Hope the moving goes ok.
Bw
Jon

Does that look like a yes? It isn't that clear to me. Does 'be in touch' mean they haven't decided, or does be in touch mean they will have more details about the structure of the conference? Is it a yes? I hope it is. Christ. I feel like I've just been on a date or some shite and am trying to decode what occurred. PLEASE LIKE ME PLZ PLZ

stylishbastard @ 2009-09-07T00:30:00

2009-09-06T23:38:54Z

You know....some cynics say that popular music has lost all edge and is defined by posing, middle class twats with no ideas or guts. I think people are overly nostalgic for the music of their formative years and are blind to the very real heart that pulses in music today, spreading excitement, insight, groove and ambition.

Christ almighty..

I saw Inglourious Basterds tonight and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Particularly Eli Roth, Christoph Waltz and Til Schweiger. I think the use of non-period music, Samuel L., and the usual Tarantino borrowings from other directors was particularly important. It takes on an extra disruptive capacity that serves the anything-can-happen-ness of the plot while exploring the role of media to things that are so big that they become easily totemic - like WWII, and movies that have been based on it since that make claims to veracity, moral or documentary. I'm still digesting it.

Bollocks

2009-09-03T14:24:15Z

I don't normally crosspost from heardinglasgow because most of my FL doesn't speak Glaswegian and the rest are already on the comm. Nevertheless..this tickled me a bit.

Just had a guy come round to do an electricity survey on our flat. He was chatting about how he used a landlord key to access a house once and was surprised to be greeted with a 'stark bollock naked man'. I cooed sympathetically and he added 'just my luck not to bump into a stark bollock naked woman'.

Hmmm.

Can a woman be stark bollock naked? I suppose some transwomen can be without question but that wasn't what he was getting at. I think his phrasing of a desire made it funny regardless. I even had a quick look on wiki to try and find out of bollock naked was a gender neutral term with no conclusion but was reminded of this great part from Richard E Grant's autobiograph With Nails -

'...the actor tells of going to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He notes that this is the place where "Robert Kennedy was shot in the kitchens. Sorry - kitchens sounds like a euphemism for bollocks. He was killed here."

I am not very good at Scrabble

2009-09-01T23:31:49Z

Joan as Policewoman

2009-09-01T06:24:58Z

I do
Want every night
To feel like the eagle in flight
I do
And if you feel like you might
Want to share this with me
Well, I beckon you
To me

This is an attempt to recover
The stone in the gold
And the ice, ever-crystalline
And the oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
That acts like it’s lost it’s place
In this warring world

Listen to me
Stagger into the light
Stagger into the light

Lovely lovely lovely lovely

I made this. Apart from the owl bit.

2009-08-31T00:38:19Z

David Bowie and La La La Human Steps - 1988

2009-08-29T02:45:57Z

Before the advent of youtube I spent quite a lot of money on bootleg DVDs to get hold of this kind of stuff. No regrets. They don't work.

I love David Bowie and this is one of my absolute favourite things he's ever done. I don't think love is too strong a word. I'd give him a lung if he needed it.

Black armband time when he fucks off this mortal coil that's for sure.

I am the epitome of class

2009-08-27T20:58:34Z

Ahurrdurrr

stylishbastard @ 2009-08-27T19:04:00

2009-08-27T18:06:55Z

I enjoy the fact that in the heart of Glasgow's leafy, studenty, middle class-y, bohemian-y, wankery West End there is a coffee shop called Smug. And people go there. Maybe they all really do have insight into what constitutes irony.

Or maybe they're just deliciously oblivious cunts.

stylishbastard @ 2009-08-26T01:12:00

2009-08-26T00:31:19Z

I took this wee photo today on my way back from buying lunch. I didn't manage to capture the effusive flapping and splashing but it was quite a joyful sight in what is ultimately a pretty scummy part of town.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying without any success whatsover (with none anticipated) to get my head around the vastness of the world that is itself a less than microscopic part of a wider, possibly infinite universe.

The mechanics of the little birdies bathing in a dirty street constructed and walked by drunks, fascists, workers, student scumbags and everyone else, and the unwitting potential of these little birdies acting out their biological programming to move me on some emotional level is such a tiny, unimportant, inexplicable (and were it explicable, unnecessarily so) part of the shared experience of existing through time that we, our mums and dads and ancestors and descendents and cats and dinosaurs can't escape willingly and are only subject to as a result of chance and mathematics of godly proportions...and it absolutely does my fucking head in to broach thinking about it.