The ever-widening family

You've read Tampon Teabag, the seldom updated blog.

You've listened to Tampon Teabag, the Anal Blast song.

You've watched Tampon Teabag, the very short video clip.

Now, drink from Tampon Teabag: the cartoon mug!

(Nothing to do with me, blame these folks.)

In the key of hard

What does a pianist do once he's mastered Chopin and Rachmaninov? When you've transcribed all of Art Tatum, and played Vladimir Horowitz' arrangement of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 till you're sick?

What's next when settling down to Charles-Valentin Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano (I(i),I(ii),I(iii),II, and III for the fireworks) induces only yawns?

Well, there's Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum (a few minutes from the four and a half hours can be heard here)... but I did that last night.

Michael Finissy's Solo Piano Concerto Number 4 is always good for a grin... and if I'm really desperate there's Stockhausen's Klavierstuck X again, I suppose.

But no. I need a new challenge.

So I'm grateful to Ivan for pointing me towards John Stump's Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz. It's based on a Cro-magnon skinning chant. I'll need to stock up on penguins, though.



Even better, once I've mastered that, there are many more wonderful manuscripts here, here, and here.

The only one which worries me is Ervin Schulhoff's 1919 composition In futurum:

King's Cock

If I was a convicted sex-offender desperately trying to clear my name, I probably wouldn't write and perform songs like this:



That's from Jonathan King's 2008 musical Vile Pervert, viewable here, reviewed here.

Come to think of it, if I was eager to paint myself as the innocent victim of a miscarriage of justice, I probably wouldn't choose Harold Shipman as metaphor for my cruel mistreatment by the media.

I will say this though: being done for fiddling has livened up King's creative output no end. I wouldn't have given his cheesy shite a second thought before. But I'm only 1 minute into Vile Pervert, and he's already got his cock out (followed up with full screen splashes of Jesus and Mother Theresa).

Retreat into virtuality

You may have been wondering where I've been... I haven't been around these parts much, but I've online all right. In fact, I've been online way, way too much.

You know those pasty teenagers who never leave their bedrooms, and spend days at a stretch playing World of Warcraft? Well, that's me that is.

Except that I can't claim youth as an excuse.

And it isn't a fantasy game which has done for me either. I can't be bothered with wizards and elves and that. I prefer game-environments which mimic the real world more closely... I know, I know, why not just go outside?

It's difficult to say. I guess it's the immediate gratification, plus the brilliantly crafted suspense, which just keeps you slumped there, in your chair. There's always a task to complete, and then more to do, more to see, more to experience.

And you get so deeply involved with your game-self, even to the point of feeling responsibility for his fate, almost associating yourself with him: in truth, it stops being a 'game' at this point.

The world I've been immersed in is based around a survival-horror quest, and has been rightly hailed as "probably the greatest adventure game ever created" (although I'm beginning to wish it never had been). It's called Don't Shit Your Pants, and you can give it a try here. Have fun. But please, try not to lose yourself.

[via DJCJD]

Smear-o-sphere

So Paul Staines has exposed Damian McBride as a smear-artist.

...and next week Nick Griffin outs Jim Davidson as a racist, and Colonel Sanders lectures Ronald McDonald on healthy eating.

Last disrespects

A wreath someone took to Jade Goody's funeral. Via B&T.

Corpus Christi versus TV Scoop

Gail Trimble, president of University Challenge's victorious team from Corpus Christi college Oxford, has found herself in the middle of a media simoom thanks to her lightning reflexes and encyclopaedic knowledge of etiolated plants.

Obviously this virtuosic display of natural talent is an outrage, and quite rightly hordes of morons have lined up to denounce her.

The editor of the TV Scoop blog has some sensible thoughts on the situation:

Whatever people may think, one thing has struck me - when I saw her in action for the first time last week, my first reaction was that of a genuine, massively-intelligent young woman who was actually a little bit shy.

We have to remember that she's a (gifted) student who has appeared on a student quiz show, and she certainly didn't ask for this kind of attention.

True. And he carries on:

But that's TV for you - whoever you are and whether you like or not, people are always going to have opinions about you.

That's true too. Even if you're just a contestant on a quiz show, there's bound to be some maniac somewhere who explodes about how he is "enveloped by... hatred" for you. "Not for some time have I been so angry at a complete stranger" as he is with you, the lunatic may say, presumably not having ventured beyond his front door for 20 years.

After 30 minutes watching you answer questions about Hilaire Belloc, he may conclude that you are a "brain-rupturingly irritating and smug... cocky... odious... patronising... social-retard". With no friends. Who got bullied at school. And probably still is.

Believing himself to be psychic, he may claim that he "just knows" that you sneer at thick people ("and by 'thick', I mean people who don't know as much as her, which is virtually everyone").

OK. I'm being unfair. The evidence presented against Gail is pretty compelling:

Trimble even had the gall to dribble a patronising "Oh well done!" to one of her team-mates when they got a question right.

The gall of it!

And TV being TV, it's unlikely to end there. Someone else will probably feel the need to chime in with several hundred words outlining exactly how and why you "ain't sexy", but are a "smug cow".

Not that the arguments aren't carefully weighed: "I hate that this woman seems to think it's all about her. On the other hand, she's not going to get the questions wrong on purpose, is she?"

Gee... I dunno. Can you read the question again?

TV Scoop: by and for fuckwits.