Song, by Toad

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I confidently sat down to write my Friday Fives this week and to introduce the Candy Claws‘ virtual tour video only to realise that I have managed to fuck things up.  I am a week late.  For some reason I had it absolutely fixed in my head that it was supposed to be this Friday, so all I can do is apologise profusely to the band and to Kev from Indiecater Records and hope that playing it this week will serve the purpose at least reasonably well.  Honestly lads, for some reason I was convinced it was supposed to be this week, I’m really sorry.

Your job, as readers, is to may up for my idiocy by taking extra time out of your day to listen to Candy Claws’ music and hence try and make my apologies for me.  And buy the album too, while you’re at it – the whole thing can be previewed here and it really is very good.

In other news did anyone see pictures of the Queen getting on a train this morning?  Christ she looks like a fucking bag lady.  I alternate between tolerance of and annoyance with the royal family.  They can be hugely entertaining, and of course they bring money into the country, but we pay for the cunts and frankly I think it’s time we started demanding a little more for our money.

Shortage of teachers or nurses?  Send in a minor royal for a few months to cover.  Traffic lights out in London town, get Phil the Greek to pop round and do the hand signals thing for a while.  Let’s face it, apart from buggering the servant and beating up foreigners he’s not going to be doing anything else with his time.

We could even save the NHS money by insisting that Charles follow his own guidance on alternative medicine.  Deny the stupid old fucker actual medical care and see if his sugar pills and anticlockwise kidney massages cure him of fucking cancer.  No? Good, now we can stop wasting money on them and he’ll be dead so we won’t have to keep repairing him in his dotage like we did the Queen Mum.  Actually, with her belligerence and monumental gin habit, she and Phil the Insulter are the only two I have any real affection for.

So, this is the last Friday Five before Christmas.  I promise to put one up on Boxing Day too, just for those of us who will need the internet to escape the gluttony.  Honestly, how many sherries with boring Uncle Brian can you really handle anyway – you know you’ll need your Five Fix!

1. What use could the Royals be best put to?
2. Favourite Royal (from any nation, past or present).
3. How much of your Christmas shopping remains to be done.
4. At what point does the self-loathing of gluttony kick in for you around Christmas time.
5. Fuck it, link to a silly picture on the internet just for shits and giggles (just paste the URL into your comment – Wordpress will do the rest).

Here is my one and only concession to the world of Christmas.  I tend to avoid Christmas songs, except for Phil Ochs (miserable) and Tom Lehrer (caustic) but for the last Friday Five before the day itself I thought fuck it, why not.  So happy fucking Christmas you fuckers, that’s all you’re getting.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Traveling Salesman’s Young Wife Home Alone on Christmas in Montpelier, VT

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The Felice Brothers – Christmas Song

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Saint Etienne – I Was Born on Christmas Day

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Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol

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Phil Ochs – No Christmas in Kentucky

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Today I am angry at Capitalism.  Partly, funnily enough, I am angry at Capitalism because in many ways I myself am a Capitalist.  The problem I have with Capitalism is not really the theory, but the practise.  So many people and companies who chant the free market mantra simply are not free marketeers.  They want isolationism and protectionism as much as the most paranoid Marxist when it will protect their interests, but they won’t for a second entertain the economic theory behind that sort of behaviour – gosh no!

So there is plenty of paranoid ranting in this week’s podcast, railing against people who talk all Capitalist whilst not actually being Capitalist, people who are moral and honorable in their personal lives but who turn into voracious whores as soon as they put on a suit and, erm, well generally there’s lots of pish to be talked, sorry.

Still, at least it’s marginally better than last week.

Toadcast #66 – The Greedcast

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01. Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (03.27)
02. Billy Bragg – NPWA (16.27)
03. Eric Bachmann – Liars & Thieves (21.30)
04. The Zincs – Moguls’ Wives (28.04)
05. Tom Lehrer – Selling Out (34.24)
06. Depeche Mode – Everything Counts (39.16)
07. The Clash – Bankrobber (45.07)
08. Tom Waits – God’s Away on Business (54.07)
09. Billy Bragg – To Have and to Have Not (65.56)

Brilliant.  In today’s fucking inevitable shitfest of the fucking week, it seems that I am coming down with a nasty flu just in time to go on holiday.  My malingering mistress Mrs. Toad has had the indulgence of missing an entire week of work, only to return to health just in time for two weeks off, the bloody chancer.  I, on the other hand, find myself brewing her particularly virulent brand of flu just in time to ruin my two week break.  Minge.

We’ve neglected to really do any Christmas shopping as yet, but we actually have a tree for the first time since we’ve been together and trees sort of demand presents, so despite the fact that we generally don’t bother we may actually make an exception this year, if just to avoid being stared down by a stupid fucking fir tree draped in tat.

On the subject of presents, actually, a friend of mine asked a question once that rather amused me.  You know those Americans who insist on pronouncing presentation as if it were written preesentation?  Well what do they give each other at Christmas, preesents?

And, just to be even more crap, I have a festive joke for you as well, and what a special one it is:
Q: How did Luke Skywalker know what his dad was getting him for Christmas?
A: He felt his presents!

And oh how we laughed.  So welcome to Friday Fives again, and please do take the opportunity to delurk and save us from ourselves.  And anyone who wants to suggest next week’s five, email me at the address on the contact page.  Enjoy, and happy Christmas.

1. Favourite comment of the year on Song, by Toad.
2. At what time do you hit the pub today?
3. What’s the state of your Christmas shopping?
4. What will be the defining sin of your Christmas, sloth, gluttony, covetousness, or something else?
5. What percentage of your Christmas holiday will actually be your own, to do with as you please?

Phil Ochs – No Christmas in Kentucky Thanks DC.

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Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol

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Tom Waits – Silent Night/Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis (Live)

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Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Cold White Christmas

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Christmas in Nevada

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In order to get into a good mood for this weekend, how about some reasonably good news from the European Parliament? This recent vote slaps down the recent threats by ISPs to simply disonnect people accused of naughty file-sharing. The joy of this is not that I am necessarily in favour of completely unrestricted file-sharing of any and everything, but that if you are going to threaten something as drastic, in the 21st Century, as cutting off someone’s internet access then you had better have some independent oversight of this kind of decision. Law enforcement, basically, should be performed by law enforcement agencies, not by ISPs at the behest of the companies who give them most of their high value content.

It’s weird, here in Europe we seem to be stuck in between the Mercans and the Middle East at the moment, with moves like the one above which come dangerously close to mimicking the dangerous American taste for completely unaccountable law enforcement, which basically means no law at all. The on the other side, we’ve got the crazies in the Middle East trying to get the Declaration of Human Rights to include fucking idiotic clauses that state that it is a violation of someone’s human rights to have their religious sensibilities. Without wishing to offend anyone’s religious sensibilities, fuck you, fuck your infantile fairytales, and fuck right off and snivel yourself to sleep in the dark of your bedroom, coddled in your childish fantasies that we have some sort of privileged places in the universe, that anyone gives a fuck about your fucking feelings and that you won’t die and rot like every other living thing on Earth. You fucking baby.

I give the Americans a hard time over their dismantling of the rule of law in their own country, something we dismayingly seem to be trying to mimic on our side of the pond, but honestly, their freedom of speech laws, and specifically the First Amendment, would be very, very welcome in amongst all this craziness. I am reminded of the quote from legal scholar Ronald Dworkin: “the only right you don’t have in a democracy is the right not to be offended”. Quite. Fucking. So.

Anyway, it’s Friday, and we are having a half day here at Proper Job in order to go out for a meal this afternoon and then get biblically rat-arsed in the evening. So Izzy, if you’re reading this, beware of dribbling design engineers stumbling about your pub at about eight o’clock. Feel free to sling us all out – we’ll probably deserve it.

So without further ado, here’s your Five for Friday.  Please take the opportunity, and try and treat the subject matter with some creativity – calling Christians a bunch of cunts isn’t very imaginative:

1. Cause some religious offence.
2. Cause some political offence.
3. Cause some musical offence.
4. Cause some national offence.
5. Cause some cultural offence.

That should do it – jihad by Saturday.

Tom Lehrer – National Brotherhood Week
Yukon – Sweden
Slow Club – Apples & Pairs
Yo La Tengo – Little Eyes
The Fiery Furnaces – Inca Rag/Name Game

Fear not, this isn’t quite as horribly overbearing as it could have been. The ranting is actually fairly under control, and the self-important pontificating not quite as reckless as it could so easily have been, partly because I wasn’t quite as liberal with the gin as I have been in the past.

The reason it’s called the Popecast is because of this amazing little story about Catholics in the States issuing death threats to a kid who took a communion wafer out of the church with him.  The hilarious PZ Myers then got involved, threatening to show them what real desecration would look like, and the pandemonium reached all new levels of shrillness.

The thing that really got my goat about all this was not so much that Catholics took offence, but more the level of the hysteria and the language of persecution.  It was honestly described as kidnapping and as a hate crime by various loonies, and there was nothing like enough ‘Oh fucking grow up and get the fuck over it’ being said.  People seem to be seeking all sorts of odd legal protections for their crazy superstitions these days, and I am flabberghasted that a particular kind of idea is being so fucking mollycoddled as to be deemed immune from criticism and contempt.  Come on, people, fuck your religious convictions and learn to deal with the fact that most of the planet thinks they’re crazy – and that applies to atheists as well.

Anyhow, I promise this doesn’t take over too much of the podcast, and that the music is given plenty of space to breathe.

Toadcast #33 – The Popecast

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01. Half Man Half Biscuit – Vatican Broadside (00.07)
02. Beck – Profanity Prayers (02.27)
03. Punch & the Apostles – Nouveau Gypsy (10.20)
04. I Said Yes – The Town Crier (15.07)
05. Albert Hammond Jr. – GFC (20.47)
06. Bonnie Prince Billy – So Everyone (23.51)
07. Tom Lehrer – Vatican Rag (33.53)
08. The Savings & Loan – Catholic Boys in the Rain (37.12)
09. Derek Meins – The Gin Song (42.57)
10. Holly Golightly & the Broke-Offs – Devil Do (48.47)
11. Ghostkeeper – Solid Gold (56.02)
12. Forest Fire – Fortune Teller (60.44)
13. Silver Jews – Strange Victory, Strange Defeat (70.22)
14. Sparrow & the Workshop – Magic Tricks (77.55)
15. The Just Joans – Hey Boy, You’re Oh So Sensitive (79.43)
16. Roy Zimmerman – Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual (85.41)
17. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Evening Mass (97.16)

And just for the fun, here are the two silly songs for you to download:
Tom Lehrer – Vatican Rag[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/TheVaticanRag.mp3]
Roy Zimmerman – Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/RoyZimmerman-TedHaggardIsCompletelyHeterosexual.mp3]

Right, I’ve slagged off the whole boiling lot in my previous post, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that I hate Christmas with a passion, and in many ways I do. But Christmas is, believe it or not, my favourite time of year in many ways.

Are you surprised that a bad-tempered old cynic such as myself should make such a statement? Well probably not, because there’s a pretty obvious vein of romanticism close to the surface which my regular readers will have had no trouble noticing.

When my family do Christmas we do indeed buy presents, but not particularly expensive ones. There’s usually a couple of books to be found around the tree, some music (mostly from me), some worthless but nevertheless rather lovely rubbish from a junk or antiques shop and a small handful of daft but thoughtful things that for some reason or another made us think of the person in question during the year. We don’t spend much, but we do tend to bring nice things for each other.

What really makes Christmas for me is the peace and quiet and the cosiness. We cook, a lot. The meals are long and prepared with care. Two or three people spend most of the day cooking, and then we sit down in the evening with candles and the fire lit and spend about four or five hours eating and chattering (see pic, top). During the day we shop for the next meal, and walk in the countryside (we tend to spend Christmas out in France but if we’re in Edinburgh, as we will be next year, we’ll probably go for a walk down by Cramond or in the Botanics, if they’re open).

There’s lots of music, from my Mum’s classical to my brother’s jazzier stuff, to my Dylan and Waits, but all of it is cosy , downbeat and emotionally solid, without being miserable. Mum gets quite keen on having lots of traditional, hand-crafted decorations, Mrs. Toad spends a little too extravagantly on wine, I joust with Mum for control of the stereo, Dad reads his books and my brother makes sure he re-visits all his childhood rituals with all of us – walks with Dad, long late night chats with me, flavoured with new music and gin, and cooking with Mum.

So as much as I loathe what Christmas is, I absolutely love what we do with it. We eat, we relax and we spend time together. The cold and dark and the fire make it all very slow-paced and quite magical, and generally one of my favourite times of the year. How can you build a proper family if you don’t do this – take time to be together, to talk and to do things as a group? We’re not even remotely religious, but it’s times like this we reaffirm all those ties and relationships and traditions that make our family so close, and despite the horrors of the tinsel and the shopping frenzy around us, I wouldn’t swap our family Christmases for anything.

If this doesn’t bring a tear to your eye then you have no soul worth saving:  Tom Waits – Take it With Me
Sheryl Crow – Home (Yes, Sheryl Crow)
Evan Dando – All My Life
The greatest and truest christmas song of all time, and yes I did post it last year, deal with it: Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol