"she's using those number systems from reading blaise pascal. she's making babies for now"
i enjoy that show where noel edmonds asks you whether or not you would like to deal.
i am sure that the decision making process should be based on maths, but have always been frustrated by the fact that - since the deal offered is always less than the expected value of the game - simple probability theory states that you should always decline the deal. i have seen the show enough times to realise that there is almost always a point where the player should have dealt.
i am trying to formulate a strategy based on my new theory that - since the offer is a function of the expected value - the probability of getting a higher offer after the next round is the probability of the expected value being greater.
but the formula is getting more and more complicated and wasting more and more of my time - and i doubt if noel would be impressed were i to ask him to wait for a few minutes while i did some calculations before giving him my response as to whether or not i would like to deal.
sometimes i think that maybe theres an argument for thinking less. certainly the vacuous and thoughtless always seem to be ok, under their own limited definitions
Friday, January 05, 2007
"brain stew" - green day
"my eyes feel like they're gonna bleed"
the first 4 green day albums are some of my favourite records ever. even insomniac which seemed to mostly pass everyone by at the time. i remember how much i was looking forward to the release of nimrod - and even more clearly the numbing sense of disappointment when i heard it. how could a band i loved make something so mediocre?
remember kids - everyone lets you down sooner or later.
i really did wake up this morning with a strange kind of headache - the entire bottom half of my head (a bit like terry nutkins' haircut) - and throbbing eyes. the riff for this song was pounding round and round - occasionally getting to this snatch of lyric then sort of tailing off and starting the riff again.
the first 4 green day albums are some of my favourite records ever. even insomniac which seemed to mostly pass everyone by at the time. i remember how much i was looking forward to the release of nimrod - and even more clearly the numbing sense of disappointment when i heard it. how could a band i loved make something so mediocre?
remember kids - everyone lets you down sooner or later.
i really did wake up this morning with a strange kind of headache - the entire bottom half of my head (a bit like terry nutkins' haircut) - and throbbing eyes. the riff for this song was pounding round and round - occasionally getting to this snatch of lyric then sort of tailing off and starting the riff again.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
"no such thing" - John Mayer
"They love to tell you: stay inside the lines, but something's better on the other side"
I woke up with these two lines from the song in my head. Only these two - not the rest of the song, in which the melody is very different - so I wasn't sure which song it was. They're the kind of lines too, that you can sort of play backwards in your head, and they become all muddy and weird, or sometimes they sound like a broken record.A
So I must have hit the "snooze" button at least a dozen times, because I was supposed to get up at 9 and I only emerged from my dreams at 10.20am. Oh well.
I dreamt that my brother was in prison (originally it was my BF who was in prison for using the word "crack" in an email that he sent from work) and my mum and myself visited him. The prison was at the top of a sandy hill, in the middle of town yet in the middle of the ocean. We were wearing swimming suits and kept climbing up these hills to get to the top, but kept sliding off them (they then became wet), they were like huge tobogans! Once at the top we could buy some wooden dolphin-shaped hairclips made by the inmates themselves.
Did I mention it was my 6 year-old brother who was in prison?
I woke up with these two lines from the song in my head. Only these two - not the rest of the song, in which the melody is very different - so I wasn't sure which song it was. They're the kind of lines too, that you can sort of play backwards in your head, and they become all muddy and weird, or sometimes they sound like a broken record.A
So I must have hit the "snooze" button at least a dozen times, because I was supposed to get up at 9 and I only emerged from my dreams at 10.20am. Oh well.
I dreamt that my brother was in prison (originally it was my BF who was in prison for using the word "crack" in an email that he sent from work) and my mum and myself visited him. The prison was at the top of a sandy hill, in the middle of town yet in the middle of the ocean. We were wearing swimming suits and kept climbing up these hills to get to the top, but kept sliding off them (they then became wet), they were like huge tobogans! Once at the top we could buy some wooden dolphin-shaped hairclips made by the inmates themselves.
Did I mention it was my 6 year-old brother who was in prison?
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
"why can't you behave" - from the musical kiss me kate
"after all the things you told me and the promises you gave, oh why can't you behave"
i don't care how much credibility this loses me - i love kiss me kate. there is no doubt cole porter was a giant of songwriting. i love the campy 50s movie version with its ridiculous brightly coloured costumes. i have fond memories of pit-banding a school performance. i'm pretty certain its my favourite musical (though hedwig is great, and theres probably some others that come close).
in the context of the show this song is pleading and desperate - even in that painfully old-fashioned way that ann miller sings it. in the context of an earworm it appeared while i was desperately trying to make my baby daughter stop crying, which is stupid in a lot of ways. firstly because pretty much all the song's lyrics except the title were irrelevant or inappropriate to the situation. but mostly, i think, because she is far too small to know that she is misbehaving - she was just trying to express whatever was making her upset in the only way she knew how. sometimes i really feel like screaming about my hassles too. usually i just write about them
i don't care how much credibility this loses me - i love kiss me kate. there is no doubt cole porter was a giant of songwriting. i love the campy 50s movie version with its ridiculous brightly coloured costumes. i have fond memories of pit-banding a school performance. i'm pretty certain its my favourite musical (though hedwig is great, and theres probably some others that come close).
in the context of the show this song is pleading and desperate - even in that painfully old-fashioned way that ann miller sings it. in the context of an earworm it appeared while i was desperately trying to make my baby daughter stop crying, which is stupid in a lot of ways. firstly because pretty much all the song's lyrics except the title were irrelevant or inappropriate to the situation. but mostly, i think, because she is far too small to know that she is misbehaving - she was just trying to express whatever was making her upset in the only way she knew how. sometimes i really feel like screaming about my hassles too. usually i just write about them
"closer than close" - rosie gaines
"lets get close, closer than close, closer than you could ever imagine us"
i hate this song.
i hate that it was stuck in my head, just the hookline round and round and round.
i hate even more that i had to try to find out what it was in order to blog it
i do not wish to dignify it by spending any more time on it
i hate this song.
i hate that it was stuck in my head, just the hookline round and round and round.
i hate even more that i had to try to find out what it was in order to blog it
i do not wish to dignify it by spending any more time on it
"do you remember the first time?" - pulp
"but you know that we've changed so much since then, oh yeah we've grown"
when i was in junior school i had a thing for a girl named carly halpin [if you've just googled yourself, hi, its been a long time]. at the time i was far too young to know what love was, and probably too young to even know what fancying someone was in any significant way, but my memory of her is that she was really cool and quite pretty [is that the start of a life pattern?]. looking back more recently at an old class photo she seems, to my cynical adult eyes, a fairly unremarkable 11-year-old girl but at the time i was kinda smitten. not in that mawkish-ignorant-impression-of-a-romantic way that would, in my later high-school life, cause me to make a twat of myself repeatedly, but in a vaguer, perhaps truer, way of thinking she was great and wanting to be a better, closer friend with her.
did the following happen in real life or did i dream it? it seems simultaneously so ridiculous and so plausible. perhaps some of it is truth and the rest embellishments. perhaps theres no such thing as truth anyway.
in my memory it was the summer after i left junior school on yet another saturday evening i was sat in with my family - trying really hard to enjoy watching noel's house party (which was pretty new at the time) or something similar - when the phone rang. at this time it was a sound that barely touched my consciousness since it never heralded anyone wanting to speak to me - except that this time my mum shouted that it was for me. still mostly stunned at the fairly alien concept i pressed the receiver to my face - and was promptly nearly deafened by background party noise. amidst the kerfuffle a voice i couldnt be sure i recognised said something like "is it true you fancy carly? do you want to go out with her?" my emotional immaturity - amplified by shock, confusion, disbelief, fear that it was some sort of trick and fear of looking stupid - could think of no appropriate response except to mumble something incoherent, gently put the phone down (in my memory this happens in slow motion - like a really bad horror movie cliche) and walk back to the lounge to continue numbing my brain with tv pretending the whole incident hadnt happened.
the more i try to remember it, the more certain i'm becoming that it really did happen.
i'm pretty certain she has changed as much since then as i have, though i have no idea whether she went on to be something great or just another girl with a croydon facelift, and i have no idea if it was a cruel trick or some genuine offering of an opportunity, and i have no idea if she will ever read this. but
carly, for the record, i'm sorry.
when i was in junior school i had a thing for a girl named carly halpin [if you've just googled yourself, hi, its been a long time]. at the time i was far too young to know what love was, and probably too young to even know what fancying someone was in any significant way, but my memory of her is that she was really cool and quite pretty [is that the start of a life pattern?]. looking back more recently at an old class photo she seems, to my cynical adult eyes, a fairly unremarkable 11-year-old girl but at the time i was kinda smitten. not in that mawkish-ignorant-impression-of-a-romantic way that would, in my later high-school life, cause me to make a twat of myself repeatedly, but in a vaguer, perhaps truer, way of thinking she was great and wanting to be a better, closer friend with her.
did the following happen in real life or did i dream it? it seems simultaneously so ridiculous and so plausible. perhaps some of it is truth and the rest embellishments. perhaps theres no such thing as truth anyway.
in my memory it was the summer after i left junior school on yet another saturday evening i was sat in with my family - trying really hard to enjoy watching noel's house party (which was pretty new at the time) or something similar - when the phone rang. at this time it was a sound that barely touched my consciousness since it never heralded anyone wanting to speak to me - except that this time my mum shouted that it was for me. still mostly stunned at the fairly alien concept i pressed the receiver to my face - and was promptly nearly deafened by background party noise. amidst the kerfuffle a voice i couldnt be sure i recognised said something like "is it true you fancy carly? do you want to go out with her?" my emotional immaturity - amplified by shock, confusion, disbelief, fear that it was some sort of trick and fear of looking stupid - could think of no appropriate response except to mumble something incoherent, gently put the phone down (in my memory this happens in slow motion - like a really bad horror movie cliche) and walk back to the lounge to continue numbing my brain with tv pretending the whole incident hadnt happened.
the more i try to remember it, the more certain i'm becoming that it really did happen.
i'm pretty certain she has changed as much since then as i have, though i have no idea whether she went on to be something great or just another girl with a croydon facelift, and i have no idea if it was a cruel trick or some genuine offering of an opportunity, and i have no idea if she will ever read this. but
carly, for the record, i'm sorry.
"Maybe tomorrow" - Stereophonics
"Maybe tomorrow... I will find my way home"
So I was going to talk about how last week, on the long journey from Shrewsbury to Ipswich (or was it from Soham to Bristol?), Noel Gallagher was on radio one and my boyfriend and I had a discussion about who was who in Oasis. We couldn't remember, you see. "I'm sure Liam is the leadsinger, cause this one (on the radio) doesn't have much of a nasal sound to his singing". The discussion went on for, oh, at least 20 minutes, before the boyfriend admitted he knew NOTHING and I won. Little pleasure in winning that one, as who cares about Oasis nowadays? Probably quite a number of people still, but I'm not included in the lot. Oasis is so last century.
Anyway, I was going to talk about Oasis, then when I looked up the lyrics for "maybe tomorrow" I realised that the song was actually by Stereophonics. The voice singing in my head changed slightly.
I used to like Stereophonics a lot.
So I was going to talk about how last week, on the long journey from Shrewsbury to Ipswich (or was it from Soham to Bristol?), Noel Gallagher was on radio one and my boyfriend and I had a discussion about who was who in Oasis. We couldn't remember, you see. "I'm sure Liam is the leadsinger, cause this one (on the radio) doesn't have much of a nasal sound to his singing". The discussion went on for, oh, at least 20 minutes, before the boyfriend admitted he knew NOTHING and I won. Little pleasure in winning that one, as who cares about Oasis nowadays? Probably quite a number of people still, but I'm not included in the lot. Oasis is so last century.
Anyway, I was going to talk about Oasis, then when I looked up the lyrics for "maybe tomorrow" I realised that the song was actually by Stereophonics. The voice singing in my head changed slightly.
I used to like Stereophonics a lot.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
"goodbye yellow brick road" - elton john
"when are you gonna come down? when are you going to land?"
i love south london. theres a part of me that worries that that might be a shameful thing to admit, but to me there has never been a question mark over it as a place to live. i carry its accent on my voice and its fingerprint in my brain. if only there were more tube stations it would be perfect. no, actually thats rubbish - its actually a bit crap, though i am convinced that pretty much everywhere else is at least as crap. its a homely sort of crap. you forgive its many flaws because it seems to hold you comfortingly and apologetically in its figurative embrace. i'm not trying to come over all "under the bridge" but lets face it, its better than la.
but despite this affinity, when it came to moving back to the smoke after those years of living away from it there was more than a flutter of trepidation. maybe this was because moving away had symbolised a break for freedom - freedom from parental control, freedom from becoming a local stereotype, freedom from all the haunting memories of the negativity of high school experience. like the baby pterodactyl in those mawkish "land before time" movies or the sheep in the monty python sketch, maybe i hadn't been flying so much as falling, plummeting with my eyes shut to convince myself that the wind rushing past my ears was the result of glorious forward momentum, destined to crash land back where i started while the face of gravity mocks me for failing to avoid my destiny of failure.
or maybe theres a sort of success in finally being able to admit:
i love south london
i love south london. theres a part of me that worries that that might be a shameful thing to admit, but to me there has never been a question mark over it as a place to live. i carry its accent on my voice and its fingerprint in my brain. if only there were more tube stations it would be perfect. no, actually thats rubbish - its actually a bit crap, though i am convinced that pretty much everywhere else is at least as crap. its a homely sort of crap. you forgive its many flaws because it seems to hold you comfortingly and apologetically in its figurative embrace. i'm not trying to come over all "under the bridge" but lets face it, its better than la.
but despite this affinity, when it came to moving back to the smoke after those years of living away from it there was more than a flutter of trepidation. maybe this was because moving away had symbolised a break for freedom - freedom from parental control, freedom from becoming a local stereotype, freedom from all the haunting memories of the negativity of high school experience. like the baby pterodactyl in those mawkish "land before time" movies or the sheep in the monty python sketch, maybe i hadn't been flying so much as falling, plummeting with my eyes shut to convince myself that the wind rushing past my ears was the result of glorious forward momentum, destined to crash land back where i started while the face of gravity mocks me for failing to avoid my destiny of failure.
or maybe theres a sort of success in finally being able to admit:
i love south london
"everything's just wonderful" - lily allen
"ba ba ba ba ba ba. ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba"
sometimes a song runs out of words and you have to say what you want with a solo. sometimes you need to keep singing but dont have the words to continue the thought - but if you go "ba ba ba" in the right way it still means something. sometimes you just sing noises cos its fun. sometimes you get a song stuck in your head but cant remember the lyrics - which is ok if the bit stuck there doesnt have any.
i think it's voltaire's "candide" that deals with the philosophy that we live in the best of all possible worlds (i'm not sure though, i gave up well before the end - if books were only 1 page long i would be incredibly well read). it seems to me to be obviously rubbish, but from time to time all of us, like lily allen, need to belive some positive rubbish to get us through
incidently - why no third l?
sometimes a song runs out of words and you have to say what you want with a solo. sometimes you need to keep singing but dont have the words to continue the thought - but if you go "ba ba ba" in the right way it still means something. sometimes you just sing noises cos its fun. sometimes you get a song stuck in your head but cant remember the lyrics - which is ok if the bit stuck there doesnt have any.
i think it's voltaire's "candide" that deals with the philosophy that we live in the best of all possible worlds (i'm not sure though, i gave up well before the end - if books were only 1 page long i would be incredibly well read). it seems to me to be obviously rubbish, but from time to time all of us, like lily allen, need to belive some positive rubbish to get us through
incidently - why no third l?
"magic johnson" - the red hot chili peppers
"[dum-dum-da-da-dum] MAGIC JOHNSON"
before they were a yawnfest band serving ignorant preteens the same one ballad and one funkpop bounce over and over, before either of the albums that could justifiably claim to be their best - but slightly after that whole socks-on-penises thing - this song was a minor album track that most people forgot about as soon as "nobody weird like me" kicked in. but theres something about the chorus riff that is ear glue.
as a palace fan, i was always slightly disappointed that this never became a chant for andy johnson whilst he plied his trade with us. i guess too few of the holmesdale end faithful were aware of late 80s alternative rock. the poor ignorant fools.
before they were a yawnfest band serving ignorant preteens the same one ballad and one funkpop bounce over and over, before either of the albums that could justifiably claim to be their best - but slightly after that whole socks-on-penises thing - this song was a minor album track that most people forgot about as soon as "nobody weird like me" kicked in. but theres something about the chorus riff that is ear glue.
as a palace fan, i was always slightly disappointed that this never became a chant for andy johnson whilst he plied his trade with us. i guess too few of the holmesdale end faithful were aware of late 80s alternative rock. the poor ignorant fools.
"teenage rampage" - the sweet
"come join the revolution, get yourself a constitution...."
the power of historical hindsight renders this one of the least effectual rabble-rousing songs i've ever heard. maybe im well past teenagerampaging now, but even when i was a teenager i liked the idea of a teenage rampage far more than i liked this song - but like many sweet songs the chorus is a catchy beast.
it amazes me that my yearning for things to be different - my sympathy for revolution - only manifests itself in the most ineffectual of ways. in that sense i guess i'm a long way short of a teenage rampage. my revolution is barely prepubescent and my rampage fairly embryonic. i care but im too lazy to do anything about it. its the modern social disease.
the power of historical hindsight renders this one of the least effectual rabble-rousing songs i've ever heard. maybe im well past teenagerampaging now, but even when i was a teenager i liked the idea of a teenage rampage far more than i liked this song - but like many sweet songs the chorus is a catchy beast.
it amazes me that my yearning for things to be different - my sympathy for revolution - only manifests itself in the most ineffectual of ways. in that sense i guess i'm a long way short of a teenage rampage. my revolution is barely prepubescent and my rampage fairly embryonic. i care but im too lazy to do anything about it. its the modern social disease.
Monday, January 01, 2007
"a girl like you" - edwin collins
"this old town's changed so much, don't feel like i belong, too many protest singers, not enough protest songs"
when this was one of those pleasant-enough-but-radio-saturated indie songs that characterised the mid 90s i could take or leave it, but when i heard him play it acoustically for an xfm session, where he dumm-ed the guitar riffs, it was strangely haunting - especially this third verse.
and its still true now - maybe it always was
when this was one of those pleasant-enough-but-radio-saturated indie songs that characterised the mid 90s i could take or leave it, but when i heard him play it acoustically for an xfm session, where he dumm-ed the guitar riffs, it was strangely haunting - especially this third verse.
and its still true now - maybe it always was
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