JoeBaldwin's New Writeups

Meat Is Murder (idea)

2005-12-31T16:21:26Z

Steven's whines could be heifer's cries
Farther runs the screaming crowd
This horrible guilt trip must play
This horrible guilt trip must play
A song for no reason
And a song for no reason is MORRISSEY'S
And the songs you find poignantly wry
Are not musical, funny or nice
They are songs for no reason
And songs for no reason are MORRISSEY'S
And the disc that so tortures my ears
Is MORRISSEY
And the record you painfully spin
Is MORRISSEY
Do you know how CDs are pressed?
Plastic forced to become Meat is Murder
It's not "comforting", "cheery" or "kind"
It's vibrating air and the horrible sound
Of MORRISSEY
It's not "natural", "normal" or kind
The songs you find poignantly wry
The pain in your ears
As you flee from the sound
Of MORRISSEY
NO, NO, NO, IT'S MORRISSEY
NO, NO, NO, IT'S MORRISSEY
Who…

Waitrose (person)

2005-12-27T00:11:12Z

Waitrose is one of the big supermarket chains in Britain, formed in 1904 by Wallace Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor. It is currently owned by the John Lewis partnership (which took over control in 1937), which all employees own shares in; effectively, the employees own the company (handily stopping the company from being bought out). Their current market share is currently around 3%, due to a number of factors (they are commonly known as a very upmarket and expensive store, a stereotype which isn't completely wrong). The first Waitrose supermarket was opened in 1955 (after the Lewis buyout) in Streatham in London.

Waitrose caters to the same upper-middle class demographic as Marks and Spencers. Their slogan is "Good food, honestly priced", which is a frankly fantastic way to cover up the fact that practically everything in there is ludicrously expensive. They sell some pretty damn good stuff…

broken blossom (thing)

2005-10-19T23:34:18Z

It's quite rare that you get a full album for free from the Internet legally. It's even rarer that you find a fantastic one on a par with most big label artists. broken blossom is just that.

The album

broken blossom by Schlock! (real name Gianluca Licciardi) is a concept album which is available for free download and redistribution at the Internet Archive's Open Source Audio project (link). The music itself is classified as electronic, and owes quite a lot to Aphex Twin, The Postal Service and their ilk. One track (the only one with any discernible lyrics), "INCOMPLETE...", sounds a lot like The Bends-era Radiohead, but that is basically the only link to that genre in the music.

Also on the download page is a 1MB PDF file which contains art and seemingly impenetrable lyrical fragments related to the theme of the album (this is another similarity…

Podcast (idea)

2005-05-23T05:47:08Z

Podcast is, quite frankly, the most annoying fucking buzzword in the history of the universe. Much like warblogging, new media and other trendy terms deliberately applied so that people can think their pathetic blogs about their sex lives and cookie-cutter anti-Bush opinions mean something to the world, Podcast has all the simple elements of an annoying buzzword:

Current fad or craze: Pod, Blogging
Something extraneous that somehow differentiates it from all the other buzzwords about this fad or craze: cast, war

The worst part about these stupid, annoying buzzwords is that they get spread around by disreputable technology journals and subsequently get hyped to absolutely insane levels by the media (who spin what is, in essence, a bunch of sad, pale lonely geeks sitting in front of Winamp and Sound Recorder, playing their own personal selection of…

OK Computer (thing)

2005-05-21T16:57:59Z

OK Computer was Radiohead's third studio album in four years, released after Pablo Honey and The Bends, the latter of which garnered a significant amount of critical praise, although it has to be said, not nearly as much as OK Computer.

When it was released, OK Computer was almost universally lauded (although some, as noted above, heralded it as "More music to slit your wrists to", completely missing the point to the whole frickin' album), and has come first in various "Best Album Ever" polls ever since, most recently on the British TV channel Channel Four (full results). Many called it the defining album of the 90s.

Five places below OK Computer in the C4 list is Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, an equally defining album, and an easily recognisable one (it has been estimated that one in every 14 people below the age of 50 in the USA owns a copy of DSotM), if not for the…

TCP (thing)

2005-05-20T20:27:25Z

TCP is a mild antiseptic, produced and sold in the United Kingdom by Pfizer. The brand name comes from its chemical name, which is trichlorophenylmethyliodisalicyl. The liquid form of TCP is probably the most well-known brand of antiseptic in the UK, and its distinctive sweet, medicinal odour can be identified by many as the generic smell of antiseptic.

TCP is available in 100ml, 200ml and 500ml bottles as a clear yellow liquid. It is also available as a cream and as throat lozenges.

The instructions on the TCP bottle say that TCP can be used on the following conditions:

Sore throats - Gargle a solution of TCP with 5 parts water twice a day. Do not swallow.
Mouth ulcers - Dab undiluted three times a day.
Cuts, grazes, bites and stings - Dilute 1 part TCP with 1 part water and apply freely. (TCP may be used undiluted in an emergency).
Boils, spots and pimples - Dab undiluted once every four hours.

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