barkingstars

Music

Currently I’m obsessed with this track: Hospital by Madison Cunningham

It sounds to me like she’s taken the verse from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and taken it as the starting point for the chorus, which is genius.

I came across Madison on the XTC fan podcast What Do You Call That Noise. It’s surprising she’s influenced by XTC, however listening to the album reveals that she has a similar appetite for slightly odd melodic choices which really make her stand out from other singer/songwriters out there.

I’m also really taken with Angel by MSPAINT. I love the music but hate the lyrics and vocal. I think the attraction is that I really enjoy hearing synths shoehorned into doing rock, and this somehow makes both sides of that work perfectly together. But boy, those lyrics, uggghhhh….

Books

I’m slowly fighting my way through The Shining. It is, of course, well written, but I don’t think I’m really cut out for horror novels. Even very good ones. Anyway, I have lots of thoughts about it and expect I will write a full post about it.

Films

I watched I, Tonya and really enjoyed it. I wrote a review here.

I also went to the Prince Charles Cinema to see the 20th anniversary re-release of Pride and Prejudice. I wrote a review here

TV

Finished watching The Residence this week, Netflix’s murder mystery. It won’t change the world but it is very funny, and light and fluffy fun.

Started watching the latest series of Taskmaster and the quality remains high. The cast for this one aren’t as famous as previous line ups, but they’re proving to be a lot of fun, with Fatiha being a particular delight.

Podcasts

A few weeks ago I started listening to The New Abnormal because, for some reason, I just keep wanting to listen to people talk about Trump. I know, it’s bad, but that’s where I am right now and I hope I get bored of it very soon. I wasn’t sure about the podcast but I kept listening to it.

Anyway, this week The New Abnormal abruptly stopped and owners, The Daily Beast, decided to go in another direction with it. I don’t keep up with gossip so I have no idea why this happened. I decided to give the first episode under the new regime a go, and, oh boy…

It was probably the worst podcast I’ve ever heard. The host was an English lady with a grating posh accent (I’m English myself and I’m not sure if that makes me more or less biased against her). She has the kind of voice that makes you feel like she is peering at you over the top of her spectacles. She seemed disinterested in politics, but hit a real low when she declared that she was obsessed with who was taking too much ozempic, and too little. Too little ozempic! So we’re doing fat shaming now? She was then joined by a guest who was, unbelievably, Scottish. Does The Daily Beast not have any American’s working for it? How our US brothers and sisters are going to take to this, I cannot imagine but I thought it was a terrible misstep.

Anyway, it was absolutely dire so I gave As The World Churns a go which has the previous hosts doing exactly the same thing as they did before and it seems just fine.

Speaking of US politics podcasts. I’ve been enjoying American Friction for a while but I am finding Jacob Jarvis’ presentation is testing my patience more and more in recent weeks. He sounds utterly bored and keeps going on deliberately asinine diversions. I assume that this podcast is about to go down the dumper just like Paper Cuts, from the same company, recently did and he has completely lost interest.

Rampant consumerism

I’ve had a good week buying second hand stuff this week. I bought a Thinkpad Carbon X1 laptop for £340. I think it’s a bargain for such a lovely, slim, functional piece of kit. I’m currently dual booting Linux Mint and Windows 11 because I want to try Linux as a desktop again, and trying out music production on open source.

I also bought a second hand Novation Launchpad Pro for £150 when new it is about £240. Works great and I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with it.

Rather less excitingly I also bought the O’Reilly book Learning Agile second hand for a fiver (new: £24). It turned up in pristine condition. I’ve bought a few second hand business books and they’re always in great nick, probably because they get bought and never get read.