A Music Moment...

Sooner Or Later


This video is probably a couple of weeks old, but it's my music moment (for now). You must be special (not in the good way) not to notice the huge amount of irony in this video. 'Sooner or Later' is taken from N.E.R.D's latest album 'Seeing Sounds', which I strongly suggest you buy, as it is near genius. Apart from making good music, these guys have swagger that is on another level (notice Pharrell's Vans? Yeah, I want them too).

Another brilliant N.E.R.D tune taken from 'Seeing Sounds' (one of my favourites) here.

Here's a classic remix of a classic tune. Click!

Express Yourself

A recent study showed that nine out of ten British adults swear everyday, with the average adult swearing fourteen times a day. The study also showed that ninety-four percent of eighteen to thirty year olds don’t mind swearing. But what’s with all the profuse swearing?

I personally don’t swear, I just think there are better words to use than the F-word, S-word, two B-words, or the M’ing-‘effing word. I mean, why use those words when you can say something more intelligent? For example, instead of screaming the F-word if something drops on your foot, why not say ‘balderdash’ instead? Ok I joke, that is a bit impractical, but on a serious note, even in today’s society, swearing still offends many and still makes a bad impression. It’s also displays a lack of command over the English language, as swearing is lazy and abrasive. I think it also restricts coherent expression, instead of telling someone to ‘eff off,’ why not kindly ask them to ‘remove their disposition from the atmosphere as it is adding to carbon dioxide levels and melting the polar ice caps.’ This a) makes you sound more intelligent and b) completely discombobulates the person you are talking to. You could also say ‘go take yourself off a bridge’; this also has the same effect (without making you sound slightly arrogant).

Although I don’t like swearing, I do think Preston have taken it too far. There if you’re caught swearing, they will hand you a fine of eighty pounds. In these times of economic downturn and mass unemployment, a fine of eighty pounds is enough to make anyone scream a few expletives.

But if you do use a plentiful amount of swearwords, try to replace this maladaptive behaviour (psychology term, sorry) with new, inventive ways of expressing yourself.

****

Another thing that really irritates me is the poor spelling, punctuation and grammar that people my age use. Here are the problems with all three:

1) Spelling
Now, I know that many people (including myself) use abbreviated words or phrases to save space on a text message, or simply because it’s quicker to type, but some people go overboard on this, so much so that even I am having trouble reading what someone is trying to say. ‘Can’ and ‘not’ have only three letters so is it really necessary to shorten it to ‘cn’ and ‘nt’? And is it also necessary to replace‘s’ with ‘z’ at the end of words (e.g. iz instead of is)? Another irritating habit among the social networking youth is to drop letters from words, like the ‘h’ from ‘her’, which makes it just ‘er,’ which is…nonsense. An average sentence may look like this: ‘Ey hwz u? im gd hv u spkn 2 er?’ This, over a number of sentences becomes ridiculous and it takes a lot longer to read than it would reading standard English (because your brain is trying to fill in the missing letters like a game of Hangman).

2) Punctuation…
Or rather the excess of it. It’s all over social networking sites. You know what I’m talking about, you see a comment that has an ellipsis that has fifteen dots too many or the really excited person who puts a million exclamation marks after their sentence. This makes the person just look a bit thick. Don’t do it.

3) Grammar
Why is it people insist on capitalising random letters in a word? What does this achieve? A worn down caps lock button? And what’s with the addition of letters to a word? I know someone that adds another ‘i’ to an existing one in a word (so ‘in’ becomes ‘iin’ and so on). When I asked her why she does this, she simply shrugged. It takes extra effort to randomly capitalise letters, or to add another ‘i’. Extra effort to be grammatically incorrect? How backwards is that?

ii mEN hw ard iiz it 2 yoOouSe ******* prpr wrdz????????????????? n nT SwR?????????? ii fiink we shld al tRii ToOo…………………………………………………………SpK BTtA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you can read that, you’re either bordering on genius status, or you actually type like this.

Review: Slumdog Millionaire

I went to see the Oscar-nominated film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ yesterday, and honestly, I can see why it has been nominated for oodles of awards and won many of them. I don’t want to give much of the plot away, because I want you to go and see it. All I will say that the India we see in this film is a million miles from the shiny tourist India we see presented to us on the TV (I’ve never seen so much hardcore hustling in my life).

The acting is brilliant, especially from the two young Jamals. Dev Patel plays a convincing role as the young man who worked his way up from the slums to be on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’. I wouldn’t have guessed he would have become the most famous out of the first generation of Skins, but he fully deserves all the success.

‘Slumdog’ is a simple, yet effective story that by the end will have you smiling. Danny Boyle (the director) is pretty much a genius.

Oh, and watch the beginning of the credits. Jokes.

The next big advert

I've literally just seen this and had to blog immediately. I was probably the only person who wasn't raving about the Gorilla advert (and wasn't impressed when they tried to recycle it using a different song with the same footage, slowed down), and the dancing trucks one just wasn't as effective. But this, this is brilliant. It's just so random. Watch it, and see what I'm talking about...

P.S: Can any of you clever people work out why whenever I embed videos, it's a bit lopsided (like above)? Get back to me, thanks.

Bits and Bobs: The January scraps

Oh look, it's me...

I’m back! Yes, the exam period is over for now (don’t bother asking how they went, I don’t know), and I’m going back to what I do best… sleeping, eating and, of course, blogging.

Here’s a bunch of mini-entries, stuff I would have blogged about if I wasn’t chained to a textbook, or trying to stay awake trying to learn what Y.A.V.I.S means and how it relates to psychoanalysis (if you don’t know what I’m on about, don’t worry, neither do I).

TV:
I watch a lot of rubbish that is on TV, stuff that rots my brain. It’s great. But even I could not bear to sit down and watch Celebrity Big Brother this year. I didn’t even know who half of them were, and I still don’t. At least Coolio is getting more royalties as radio stations are beginning to play ‘Gangster’s Paradise’ again.

I watched this Panorama programme about youths who had been jailed for murder involving a knife. It was quite sad to watch people who probably weren’t much older than me spend the ‘best years’ of their lives behind bars. And one of them in particular struck me as quite an intelligent person, but yet they still made the stupid decision to arm himself. I still don’t get why young people in urban areas still insist on carrying a knives to protect their area, because, at the end of the day, if the council want to kick you out of your house…they will kick you out of your house.

Mr Motivator is back on GMTV. It’s the nineties again.

Skins, Hustle, Gossip Girl, Waterloo Road and the new generation of 90210 have started, or about to start on TV. I’m too young to know what the old 91210 was like, so I’m watching it with an open mind, I’ve seen the first episode, and it was ok… Who else has noticed that there are a lot of mixed race children in Waterloo Road? Even the extras are mixed race, I actually don’t think I’ve spotted any fully black kids. Here’s proof that mixed race really is the new black (and white).

I’ve been watching a lot of Daytime TV recently, and I hope never to be unemployed. Daytime TV is so, so dire. Jeremy Kyle, Trisha… bad programmes with bad people. I wonder what posses them to actually go on there and air out their problems in front of thousands (thousands, not millions) of people.

I only watched part of the inauguration because another TV was on in my house and I could hear it. How do I feel about it? Fine, ok, whatever. All I noticed was how badly his tie was done up.

I don’t even know what Swiftcover is, but I do not want to be associated with it after this advert. Why couldn’t they make an advert like this brilliant T-mobile one? There’s also an advert with a child proclaiming he ‘wants to do a poo’. Yeah, I didn’t need to know that either…

Music:
The video for Beyonce’s ‘Diva’ is out. See what I mean?

Madonna. No. Stop it. Stop it right now.

Miscellaneous:
It’s the end of January, so you must have given up on your resolutions. I’m clever. I didn’t make any.

So Woolworths has gone. Sad times. I’m going to miss the one in Stratford. It had bright lights and was near one hundred degrees all year around.

Proof that when your parents join Facebook, you should delete your account. Thank goodness mine can barely work a computer.

Another music moment...

“I wanna be rich, and I want lots of money…”

This lyric is taken from ‘The Fear’, the first song off Lily Allen’s second album, ‘It’s Not Me, It’s You’ (released 9th February in the UK). I would have bet a couple of pennies that Lily Allen could not top her 2006 debut, ‘Alright, Still’, and the rest of her songs would be rubbish. But she has proven me wrong. ‘The Fear’ is more of the no-nonsense, honest pop we have come to expect from her, but it is a song that will stay in your head all day, while simultaneously providing a deeper meaning to the song. A lot of people will identify with this song, listen carefully and you’ll understand what I mean. I look forward to listening to more of her new album (and didn’t think I’d say that).

Note: I’m not posting two ‘music moments’ in a row because I’ve run out of things to say already, it’s just because I’m undergoing the torture that is January modular exams, and won’t really be around until late Jan/early Feb. Until then, read this blog, and this blog, ‘cos they’re cooooool.

P.S: For every new tune, there’s an old one. Click!

A Music Moment...

Now, don't laugh when you see what song I'm rating at the moment (yes I know it's a girly song, but I don't care), it surprised me also. There's something about this song that I like, and I'm not too sure what it is. All I know is that it's been in my head for days now. 'Issues', the third single from The Saturdays' debut album, 'Chasing Lights' (I had to Google that, I didn't have a clue what it was called) has good vocals, and hey, they ain't too bad to look at either. I'd rather party with them than Girls Aloud, any day.

For old tunes that are tunes, click here, here, here and here. Thanks F, you reminded me how good these are.