Dammit, Jannit

There was a Power cut this morning at 0030, and another at 0200. Which rather interrupted TV and computer activities, but gave me time to sit in the dark working out chord structures for a song I'm thinking of covering.

I've never actually covered a commercial song before. I mean, one that's written and performed by paid professionals, and published to be sold on the market - a song you'd expect to find sold in a record shop.

So what's the song? Science Fiction, Double Feature - the opening song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Though I have no plans to do my RifRaf impersonation on it.

Incidentally, Strict Machines have been toying with the idea of covering Don't Dream It, Be It.
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Branch SWP meeting last night with discussion about the conference I missed.

From a low turnout of 300, 57 votes for John M's wakeup call disguised as candidacy isn't such a bad result. It shows there is some awareness that there are problems with current habits of optimism.

One odd side issue is a young comrade who wrote up his own (hostile) impressions of the conference, and posted them to a bulletin board before the party's official report was published. He was publicly censured, and his branch stiffly warned.

What the hell is that all about? The SWP is supposed to be open, accountable, democratic and honest. Now it's effectively forced out a member for what was at the most a minor breach of etiquette.

Anyway, the concensus here is that George Galloway's appearance on Big Brother really is as badly thought out as it seems. He didn't reckon on housemates who (inevitably) didn't understand or follow politics, Channel 4's (entirely predictable) censoring of the few political discussions he did have, or the public perception that being in a dumb TV show, cut off from events, isn't the place for a serious politician. Well, duh.

Perhaps if he'd thought to tell the leadership of his own party of his plans, they'd have warned him of what would happen. But he really seems to regard Respect as his band of loyal followers - as though he made their activity possible, and not the other way around.
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I've switched from Explorer to Firefox. So now pages display correctly, most popups are blocked, and I can configure the browser better.

I can't actually deinstall Explorer (thank you, Microsoft), but it's gone from the desktop. Now I just need to find a good email reader - I'm not too fond of Pegasus or Agent, but there's plenty out there to try.
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I've found a series of articles on sound synthesis at the Sound on Sound website. There must be over sixty of them, and the one's I've read so far have been very useful. They occupy the often neglected space between 'elementary' and 'advanced'. The lack of good 'intermediate' source materials is one reason it's so difficult to progress beyond basic understanding.
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Police are questioning the head of the Muslim Council of Britain for making homophobic remarks on radio 4. The police show no inclination to question members of the tory party who hold the same views, or the BNP, who are much worse.

Abu Hamza, the leader of Hizbut-Tarir, is on trial for soliciting murder and incitment to racial hatred. Or to put it another way, a miniscule and isolated sect with neither the facilities nor the will to turn it's mad rhetoric into action, is being identified with the whole of Islam.

Oh, and the BNP, who are pretty big on incitement to murder and racial hatred, are still being left alone. Anyone would think all this was really about religion or something.