I managed to miss an especially pointless meeting tonight. The Respect party annual conference is coming up, where policies will be debated and ammended. Which means some of us going as delegates feel obliged to suggest new policies or changes to existing ones. Which means we hold a local meeting to discuss suggestions for policy changes to be suggested and discussed at the national meeting. If you see what I mean.
Anyway, in my view Respect has quite enough policies, especially for a party that has no chance of putting them into effect. It is I suppose better than the major parties, where policies are declared by the leaders and debated tokenistically if at all by the members at conference. But it does make Respect look less like a vibrant new party with genuinely progressive policies, and more like a bunch of quibbling navel-gazers.
Though the meeting was officially about policy, the big topic of discussion was probably the same as the newspapers. Seven MPs have resigned in protest simply over Tony Blair being still around.
For years Blair has had zero grassroots support and party branches have been empty. Last month it became common knowledge that his own cabinet collegues disliked his policies and authoritarianism - and these people are in the cabinet because of their gung-ho support of Blairism. Yesterday he refused once again to discuss stepping down at any point, and today seven career politicians publicly declare they can't work under this man.
It's hard to think of a single New Labour policy that hasn't been a complete disaster - from the NHS through Education to Iraq. It's long past time to go.
After a night's careful work with screwdriver and installation discs, my two computers are now working perfectly. I'm afraid to use them in case it makes them go wrong again.
I'm getting to grips with Nuendo, which is probably the most powerful integrated studio software in the world, and the one with the daftest name. It's designed mainly for scoring film music, but with plenty of functions for small fry like me who just want a stable sequencer that supports automated VSTs and audio multitracking.
Sonar and Cubase will do the same jobs quite adaquately, but I'm not fond of the way either of them make you work.
Two rediscoveries.
The first is the debut album of a band called Laptop, which I borrowed in 2000, ripped to MP3, and promptly forgot about. Listening now, it's like Human League singing Neil Merritt - synthpop with the kind of sarcastic, self-doubting lyrics you'd only expect to hear in a British accent, though it's American.
The second is the entire computerised Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, given free on a disc with a magazine in 1999. It's searchable by word, anagram, phonetics and rhyme - so I've been using it as a rhyming dictionary.
I was especially impressed by Laptop's cover of Still Rock and Roll to Me, given a backing and tone of voice a million miles from Billy Joel's nievely cheerful version. So, with my electronic rhyming dictionary, I started work on a version of my own:
What's the problem with the pace I'm pumping
Can't you tell it's been done before
What's the problem with the bass I'm thumping
Don't you know I'm a meeja whore
A whole lot of makeup and a little bit of dental
You spend a lot of money and you go a little mental
Everybody's talking 'bout the hip hop
Don't stop, still rock and roll to me
What's the problem with the drugs I'm making
Can't you see that my life's a wreck
What's the problem with my smug pisstaking
I'm a rebel till I cash my cheque
You take a golden oldie and you loop a little sample
You snort a wad of cocaine and you set a bad example
Smash hits, off tits, sad gits, remix
Still rock and roll to me
Yes, well. Some of the rhymes are quite clever, at least.
CW has gastroenteritis. Yes.
He is, as he puts it "shitting out satan", and most likely he caught it from me after I thought I'd got rid of it. I wonder which kiss was the infected one.
Brilliant lyrics. Best laugh of my day.
ReplyDeleteThanks MJ. I didn't start out to write a comic versions, it just sort of....went that way of it's own accord.
ReplyDeleteSomeday I'll send you an album of me singing. Promise. Or possibly threat.