Make the Vrrrroosh Noises
I think it’s one of my favourite things about Star Wars – or indeed anything – that Ewan McGregor had to be told to stop making the Vrrroosh noises during filming for The Phantom Menace (see here, towards the end of the first section).
There’s something about that pointless little factoid which makes me giggle, pretty much every time I remember it. Partly, it makes McGregor himself seem like one of us. He’s already talked about how starstruck he was to be involved with the Star Wars films in the first place, but it’s one thing to say it, and quite another to have your childish glee hung out there for all to see. I know nothing about McGregor at all, actually, but I don’t think I want to know anything beyond that one fact, because it makes him something of a hero to me, honestly. I can just imagine the weary voices of the crew every time he did it as well – that dragged out, two-syllable admonishment pronunciation of his name: “Yoo-WUN, fucksake.”
Vrrroosh! You tool! Brilliant.
In other news, Jesus H. Foxx have a couple of demos up from their recent recording escapades. These can be downloaded from their new blog, and enjoyed with a cup of tea and a nice biscuit.
And in yet more hilarious news, Parliament has finally realised that all this money Prince Charles and his band of deluded halfwits insist we spend on homeopathy is basically a total waste of everyone’s fucking time. I tend to think of the National Lottery as a tax on the inability to do basic statistics, and homeopathy is very similar, in that it is at root simply a tax on ignorance.
Basically, there are no ingredients in homeopathic remedies, and they have been repeatedly shown to do absolutely nothing at all. If you buy them, you are being scammed, pure and simple. Like a great many religous beliefs it is easy to wave your hands and ignore it and pass it off with tolerant statements like ‘oh it does no harm’, but it does. Homeopathy is harmless enough in most circumstances, I would agree… unless you are actually suffering from something. If you actually have a disease then this sort of childish nonsense actually does have plenty of potential to cause real harm. Certainly the placebo effect is powerful, so simply believing that you are being given medicine can have a strong benefit, even if you aren’t, but there are two very serious consequences which result from failing to challenge this sort of mumbo-jumbo.
Firstly, it distances us from the real world, from observable, actual effects, and things which actually happen. It damages our ability to actually do good and to progress medicine and to heal people, because that only happens when we study and test medicine using controlled, randomised, double-blind trials, and then throw out the shit which doesn’t work. Giving charlatans who peddle no more than wishful thinking some sort of hocus-pocus shield to hide behind gives large pharmaceutical companies the same get out of jail free card as well. Most of the people who sell you all this alternative bobbins are actually owned by large pharma companies anyway and, frankly, published, peer-reviewed and controlled trials are the only defence any of us has against their avarice. It’s also the only defence we have against wishful thinking, and against the flaws of what we humans rather vainly call our common sense. Or, to put it another way, it’s the only way to tell if something actually fucking works.
Secondly, the more money we waste on shit which simply doesn’t do anything, such as homeopathy, the less we have to spend on employing doctors and nurses, buying actual medicine and other trivial little things like that. Money is a precious commodity in the NHS, and it’s one thing for some idiotic middle-class fuckwit to waste their own money on nicely shaken bottles of water and sugar pills, but it isn’t just their own money which they are wasting.
I would agree with a lot of the critiques of modern medicine, most obviously its corruption by the large companies who seek to profit from its exploitation, but if you think that in any way invalidates its achievements then you are quite simply an idiot. Do you really want to go back to a time when life expectancy was about fortyish and when a simple dental problem could kill you? Do you want Polio back? How about Smallpox? Fucking idiots.
So, from Ewan McGregor making the Vrrroosh noise, to new Jesus H. Foxx songs, to homepaths finally being told to fuck off back to playschool, all in a single post. I have a hangover, and I need a sandwich.
Star Wars Theme
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Having made such an almighty pig’s ear of last week’s listings, I find myself wondering if the gigmosphere really is as thin as it looks this week, or whether I’ve just managed to make another spectacular arse of spotting the good ‘uns again.
Today I’m going to introduce you to a couple of under the radar projects which are both related to Song, by Toad Records bands. In both cases I don’t really know what the future of the respective projects might be, because I don’t know how far either is going to be pushed, but they are both very good and I thought they needed sharing.
