Friday, July 22, 2005

Shallout

On Shallow's current chillout tape:

Side A
At the River - Groove Armada
Polaris - Zero 7
Home Videos - Blu Mar Ten
Tune for Jack - Lemon Jelly
Sunset Door - Mike Oldfield
Space Walk - Lemon Jelly
Ce Matin La - Air
The Staunton Lick - Lemon Jelly

Side B
Ramblin' Man - Lemon Jelly
In Time - Zero 7
King Raam - Lemon Jelly
The Shark - Bonobo
Maya Gold - Mike Oldfield
Nice Weather For Ducks - Lemon Jelly
Optigan 1 - Blur
Neon Lights - O M D
Island - The Edge (on The Captive soundtrack)

It's a careful interleaving of ultra-chilled songs with slightly warmer material. They're all what I call 'bright chill', that is to say they have a bit of authority compared to 'dim chill' which, while it might calm you down, won't cover up your neighbour's drum and bass session.

Island is a great track to finish off any compilation. But it's the best one on The Captive soundtrack. Don't bother getting the album in hopes of finding a better song.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Shallow and the half good book

Definitely a case of To Be Continued... - a lot of setup for the final book. Too much stuff we're told about but not shown. And mealy-mouthed use of the word 'bathroom' to mean 'toilet'. That's particularly annoying given that JKR was quite happy to call a toilet a toilet during the many lavatory-based Moaning Myrtle scenes in Chamber of Secrets.

Only an 'Acceptable' grade for this one, I'm afraid.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Shallow didn't do it

In The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show Bart's made to berate the Comic Book Guy for criticising the 'worst episode ever'. He claims that CBG has no right to criticise the producers because 'They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free'. The Simpsons is not free. When it was on BBC2 I had to pay for it through the licence fee. If I still watched it on Channel 4, I'd have to pay for it when I bought products featured in the 200 advert breaks they cram into each episode.

And while I'm on, in Brother Where Art Thou, Herb is quite wrong to punch Homer after his concept car causes Herb's business to collapse. Herb explicitly told the employees who he set to assist Homer not to question Homer's decisions. The fault therefore lies with Herb in allowing someone with Homer's lack of experience to take important decisions. Homer should have punched him right back.

And another thing. Homer shouldn't have allowed Apu to call Marge a bitch in Marge In Chains. The least he should have done is withhold his custom from the Kwik-E-Mart in future.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Reincarnation warning

If reincarnation happens, and you can be randomly reincarnated anywhere on earth, these are your likely future nationalities:

















NationalityChance (per cent)
Chinese19
Indian14
American4.2
Indonesian2.9
Brazilian2.4
Russian2.4
Japanese2.0
Bangladeshi1.9
Pakistani1.8
Nigerian1.5
Mexican1.4
German1.3
Vietnamese1.1
others < 1% each45