Fanny Lashings and Divers Commentary

Today was the busiest day I've had at work since I started there in October. I was sitting at my desk being all innocent and closing a case when I overheard my name. Oh fuck - now what? I am called over to Scott's desk where Ed informs me that I'm being put in charge of the 10 new guys starting later in the morning. Can you believe that crap?

*Private Hudson voice*
Why don't you put him in charge?!

Upon meeting them, I introduced myself and warned them that I was going to do my best Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket and proceeded to yell, "You are all equally worthless in my eyes!" Yeah, I had a pretty good caffeine buzz going by then. And so my day consisted of a lot of running around asking if user IDs had been setup and being told they had not and helping the new guys setup their PCs. While not a wholly bad experience, it reinforced my desire to stay the fuck out of management. It must be a family thing. My dad was promoted to manager for a short while until he told a customer the truth one day. Back to being a Field Engineer, which, oddly enough, is my current title.

If anyone cares to watch some Jethro Tull concert footage from 1996 (including "Rare and Precious Chain!!), head over to Laufi's site. While I'm on music, I have to admit that I'm back on a Masters of Reality kick. Head over to their website (Flash required) and listen to "The Voice and the Vision" and tell me that it doesn't have one of the most blatantly catchy choruses ever.

"Who's seen the devil?
Not I, Not I
The voice and the vision
Not I, Not I

I've started listening to their Sunrise on the Sufferbus. "Jody Sings" is just so relentlessly upbeat that you can't help but feel good listening to it. The cello is perfect and the harmonica gives you the feeling of a nice summer day spent lying atop a grassy hill watching the clouds roll by.

I was fairly productive this weekend and got a couple music reviews hammered out in a highly caffeinated haze. First let me get Clannad's latest best-of tragedy out of the way. I hated it. Their post-1982 output is the worst Newage pap. Their fantastic voices are lost amidst a miasma of wishy-washy synthesizers that evokes a nice pastoral landscape but little else. Stephen Kent's Oil & Water, however, was pretty good. Kent is a master didjeridu player and, when he isn't trying to inject pop music into his songs, they're quite good. The throat singing on "Khoomei Song" was really neat and "Edge of Three" featured the Rajasthani flute in contrast to the drone of the didj. And "Lookout" is a rockin' little tune that reminded me of a Sonny Terry/Brownie McGee duet like "Whoopin' Blues".

I saw the second new Doctor Who episode, "The End of the World", over the weekend. It had a lot of pluses and a couple negatives. Firstly, the good things. Billie Piper is still hot. There were several funky aliens and the Doctor was humorous. The negatives were that A) it was too short and B) they give a bad Babel fish explanation for Rose being able to hear the aliens speak English. It was too short in that the mystery wasn't given enough time to be very mysterious. It would have been nice to have had more time for the mystery to unfold and keep us in the dark longer before The Doctor comes along and solves it. As for the Babel fish bit, The Doctor explains to Rose, at one point, that the reason she hears the aliens speaking English is that the TARDIS is able to lock into her brain and do the translating. Presumably then, it does the same for the aliens as they can understand her. But why couldn't Rose comprehend the mini-bellboy types? It felt like that scene in The Phantom Menace when The Force loses its mystery and is explained away as being the result of Midichlorians. Those BBC folks in Wales have to leave us long-time fans some cheesiness! I will say that the next episode looks like a fucking blast! It takes place in 1860 and I think Charles Dickens is involved. The preview tagged onto the last episode was pretty cool. There was one scene when this womyn who is possessed or some such thing walks down a street towards the camera with her face lit brightly blue. She opens her mouth and streams of bright blue light shoot out and she screams - it sent a chill down my right arm. A little piloerection action, lemme tell ya.

For anyone who needs a good laugh, check out the trailer for The Vacation. It's a spanking video and it looks to be quite humorous in addition to having some great scenes of womyn having their fannies lashed.