Ed Ruscha

Capsule reviews - The End (for now)

So this was my last week in London, for now at least. I'll be back in two weeks, but it still feels like a farewell. For this reason, I had planned a crazy week with music every night. That could lead to one enormous review, but this once, I still stick to the capsule concept. Not because it's 27 degrees outside and I prefer lying in the park with a book, but because I saw the best gig in my entire life this week and all the other things seem rather bleak now. So no long renditions of how much Oh No Ono seem to enjoy exhibiting their Mew and MGMT inspired psychedelic rock; no endless rants about the Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug comedy roadshow (also known as Wolf Parade)  and Spencer Krug's fabulous 80s TV show haircut; no whining about the abysmal support act Crystal Castles ended up with after both HEALTH and Male Bonding were taken of the bill; or even the brilliance of Neon Indian doing Vega tracks as an encore. Even a festival like Stag and Dagger with the likes of Team Ghost (with that other guy from M83), LoneLady, Comanechi, Active Child, The Radio Dept. and A Place To Bury Strangers couldn't measure up to seeing Former Ghosts live. Nope.

The only band that came close was Parenthetical Girls, who conveniently played on the same night at the Luminaire, which I have to say is a great venue. And not just because they tell people to shut up during gigs by writing this on the walls: it's also got a giant disco-ball. And as Zac Pennington said, you can tell if it's a good venue if they let you sing on the bar. As the venue is only half filled, there is enough room for Zac and his freshly painted silver microphone to go about the audience, and even dance in the back where nobody's standing anyway, or hang from the rafters in front of the stage (which is quite up front, so to put it, if you're standing on the front row - though as Zac is blessed with one of the most theatrical faces in human history it's definitely worth the occasional crotch in your face). As the Dance Dysmorphic Tour ends in London, and this end happens to coincide with a certain Steven M's birthday, Parenthetical Girls (who are by the way supported by Former Ghosts's Freddy Ruppert on samples and occasional guitar) treat themselves to some foamy champagne, and us to 'Handsome Devil'. If anyone should be allowed to cover the Smiths, it should be this band.

I can't even begin to describe how very special, and mostly intense, Former Ghosts' performance was. I've seen over 500 bands live (yes, I keep an Excel-file in which I track each and every band I have EVER seen, and no, I don't think I'm OCD), and nothing even begins to compare to Freddy Ruppert. At first, I was a bit disappointed as it was just going to be Freddy Ruppert, no Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) or Nika Roza (Zola Jesus) to back him up, but as it turn out, he doesn't really need them anyway as I ended up just staring at my wall for about an hour when I came home afterwards. I just couldn't do anything else. In a way, his performance reminded me about how it felt to hear patients' stories during lectures in my first years as a medical student: at the end you're not sure whether to applaud since, though it's very brave of them to tell their story to a bunch of barely post-pubescent students who are struggling to keep awake, it sort of feels like you're applauding the fact they've got a disorder of some kind. Freddy Ruppert puts some much emotion into what he does, that the process itself seems to be killing him. After the first song he is already out of breath (which might also have something to do with him beating the drums with a vengeance all Rocky films combined wouldn't even come close to), but he just keeps pushing himself to go even further. As a result, 'New Orleans' seems more like torture than an actual performance (though in the best possible way), and Freddy needs a few moments to regain control of himself before he can even carry on.

I already loved last years Fleurs, which I've now learned contains an epic amount of reverb: if you take out all the instruments and then line up just the reverb, you've got 8 3/4 years of sound. That's just amazing! Some quick calculations have told me that my entire music collection (some 22,000 tracks, roughly) wouldn't even fill two months. And as I need a terrabyte-size external hard drive to accommodate my music, I don't think that's just me.

Live, it's even better, just through the sheer display of emotions. When Freddy tries to announce his last song after a truly amazing 'Mother', he can't even control his voice. He seems at the verge of breakdown, and if what he did wasn't so brilliant, you would want him to quit right now.


(Freddy Ruppert photos by Stella Kowalski, Zac Pennington photo 'lend' from the Flicker stream on Last.FM)

Pavement - Joanna Newsom - Cold Cave

Pavement/The Clean @ Brixton Academy What I like most about Pavement, is that when you google them, you actually get pictures of pavement in London, and that I recognise this as being London-pavement. It also might be an indication that I need to look up just a bit more. I'll start by admitting that I'm not that much of a Pavement fan (neither the band or the pedestrian accommodating kind). Sure, there's some tracks I really like, but their reunion was as big a news story to me as the cheese preferences of Nick Clegg. Wait no, the cheese story was actually quite compelling.

Nevertheless, I was pretty excited about seeing them live, primarily by proxy as everyone ON THE PLANET seemed to think of this as the opportunity of a life time to finally see the BEST BAND EVER live again. Well, I must disappoint them then, I didn't agree. Okay, it was great, starting with the Clean, whom I must admit I've never heard of before. But as people got even more excited about this little London residency when they were announced as one of the support acts (though I must admit that Broken Social Scene caused even more of a riot), I just let myself be dragged along in all the preconcertal bliss. Seeing them live was... alright. They certainly are a threesome of some very talented musicians, but no more than that - though they did appear to have at least one fan who went completely mental when they played what appeared to be their biggest 'hit'.

For me, it's easy to point out the best moment of the evening: 'Frontwards', which is truly the best Los Campesinos! cover I've ever heard. And yes, for just a second I actually did think it was a LC! cover. Silly me. What strikes me most about the rest of the evening, is the lack of enthusiasm in the audience. Sure, there's a small group of fanatics jumping on the front rows, but they're just a very small group in an immense venue like Brixton Academy. And also, they're just jumping, no moshpits or anything else that I'm almost used to happening at every single gig I happen to attend in London. Most people just stand there, with a beer in one hand, like their reminiscing good times. And they might well be, as Pavement's days of fame are now well in the past, as will be the days when their fans used to attend each gig with an attitude that secured at least some mayhem. Or they bought their tickets for the same reason I did when the fourth date of their little residency was announced, thinking: "Oh, well, I might just as well buy a ticket then."

Joanna Newsom @ The Royal Festival Hall Yeah, nice venue, the Royal Festival Hall. A bit less nice is the part where you are not allowed entry into the actual hall when you're just a bit late because someone decided to throw themselves in front of a train. The only comment on Roy Harper that I can make because of this that Joanna Newsom seemed to be absolutely honoured to have him as her support act. And as everything Joanna Newsom utters is an absolute truth, we will take her up on this.

On the day of this performance, the Guardian published an article in which they mockingly named Miss Newsom 'Olde Spice' (as opposed to Arty Spice for Lady Gaga...). I'll let you decided how relevant it is today to keep on handing out Spice Girl-denominators to all female performers, but just this once, The Guardian couldn't have been more spot on. While some may have a slightly Disneyfied view of Newsom , she has got a lot more Grimm brothers spunk to her than you might expect. Although her mere presence is enchanting, it starts to get really interesting when she opens her mouth. That conversing with an audience can be real addition to a performance is more than proven tonight, even though the performance itself is of course even more heavenly.

A downside to every Joanna Newsom performance must be the inability to create a setlist that includes all 'hits' as most of her songs on her three albums easily reach the ten minute mark, resulting in a lack of both 'Emily' and 'Peach, Plum, Pear'. Unforgivable in my opinion, even though her rendition of 'Monkey & Bear' is sublime even without an entire string section, and ''81' and 'Good Intentions Paving Company' might as well be the best new tracks I have heard this entire year. All that's left is to buy a ticket for her show in Amsterdam and hope for the best.

Cold Cave/Factory Floor @ Cargo Every time someone mentions something about Cold Cave, I'm inclined to brag about the fact that I've seen them when Caralee McElroy was still part of the band. That one time, they just seemed to be more of a band than a Wesley Eisold show. Not I don't like the Wesley Eisold show, I even quite enjoy it, it just seems that the others don't really have a function other than provide entertainment in the way that each of them seem to manage to move to a different rhythm of the same song.

The same might be true for Factory Floor: they're just there to fill the stage for half an hour or so. I can't tell how long they've been on there, as I have the faint idea that they played only on song, though others tried to ascertain me of the fact that they could recognise separate entities in the wall of noise created by the threesome. Well, might I congratulate you with that capability then? 

As always, Cold Cave create an even more impressive wall of noise (thank heavens for earplugs!), but this time it is a very melodic one. Last year's Love Comes Close was one of my favourite albums, and still regularly finds its way into my Last.FM stats. The amount of people dancing or even moving at Cold Cave gigs seems to decline however, as has the average duration of a set. Within 40 minutes Cold Cave have finished their setlist, leaving me feeling rather bereaved after having paid £13 to see them. Yeah, okay, they did feature their entire album, but what about Cremations for instance? Or maybe something new? They sure seem to have a lot more of a back catalogue if you visit their merchandise stand (they even have cassette tapes!), so why do they seem to have so much trouble creating a decent set?

Avian Flu

So I'm getting quite into this whole 'save the animals' thing after reading 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer. My main objection, if you can call it that, however, was that the book described the situation in the States, which of course is far worse than in Europe.

Well, today Avian Flu (H7N7, the slightly less deadly form of Avian Flu, but still deadly) was found at a chicken farm in Deurne, which some of you might know as the village where I was raised. 28,000 chickens were killed because of this. 28,000 chickens! That's your average amount of football supporters that fit into one stadium! You don't want to be in that situation for too long a time, but it's alright if your dinner spends its entire (but very short) life that way? Seriously, those chickens cannot have had a 'normal' or 'healthy' life anyway. Do you really want to eat these animals? This time they found a disease that could infect humans, but most of the time they have al kinds of others diseases that just don't happen to form a threat to humans as far as we know so it's 'fine' to eat them according to the health authorities. They don't even try to hide this fact from you: everyone knows you should thoroughly heat chicken in order to kill all the bacteria the flesh is swarming with. Is the really the kind of food you want to offer your children? Let alone the antibiotics and other chemicals these chickens, and other factory farm animals for that matter, are filled with.

Everyone knows that what we're doing to these animals is inherently, ethically and morally wrong. But as long as we collectively ignore it, and enough people are still ignoring it, we feel that we're okay with ignoring it. It doesn't help very much that the only people that seem to be calling out for these injustices are the Party of the Animals, who are depicted as being a bit flimsy at the very least, and 'hippy-organisations' as some people call them. I don't really sympathise with either of them, but I urge you to think about this. I also want you to know that 'organic' or 'biologic' meat is not an awful lot better. Most of the time, this just means that they have had other food than just genetically manipulated corn or 'had access to the outdoors' (meaning that they had a window to look at the outdoors).

If I had the opportunity, I would love to do the proper research and make a European version of this truly amazing and eye-opening book, but unfortunately I haven't. So I'm trying to do my bit this way. I'm not trying to make you give up meat, I just want people to admit that factory farming is not right, in whatever light you look at it, and that changes have to made. One way of endorsing this would indeed be to stop eating meat, as I have done, others would be to just be conscious of what you're eating. And maybe eat free range chickens and eggs a bit more.

MWO

I have been president of this group for a year, and member and treasurer for even longer, and I didn't know any of this (except for the last sentence about us quiting).

100 things I hate about the tube

* Work in progress *

1. Smelly people
2. Smelly people's armpits in your face
3. Other people's armpits in your face
4. Weekend closures
5. Severe delays
6. Minor delays
7. Signal Failure
8. Track replacement work
9. "The Gap"
10. Delays due to a person under a train
11. Delays due to The Ashcloud (WTF?!)
12. Bums sleeping on the tube
13. Bums playing guitar on the tube and asking money for it
14. Bums playing guitar on the tube and not asking for it
15. Bums just asking for money
16. People on the platform blocking the exits so you can't get out
17. People on the platform getting in before they let people of the tube
18. People who think there's just enough room left for them to get on
19. People who think there's just enough room left for them and their suitcases to get on
20. People who think there's just enough room left for them and their children and buggies to get on
21. Children who forget to get of with their parents and cry
22. Children who cry
23. Children who scream
24. Children think they can climb on me
25. People who faint on the tube
26. People who are sick on the tube
27. People that cough in my face
28. People that sneeze in my face
29. People that cough at the back of my head
30. People that sneeze at the back of my head
31. Little people that cough on my coat
32. Little people that sneeze on my coat
33. Dirty old men who make the eyes at me
34. People who try to read along with the newspaper I'm reading
35. People who don't let me read along with the newspaper they're reading
36. Tropical temperatures on the tube
37. The wind when you go up the escalator at Camden Town
38. The Saturday escalator-closures at Camden Town
39. The Sunday entry-closures at Camden Town
40. People who stare at you
41. People who stare back at you when you stare at them
42. People with loud music
43. People who smoke
44. The colour of the Piccadilly and Victoria lines (Tories!)
45. The extra bit of the Circle line which is not a circle
46. The lack of black on the Northern line
47. The lack of pink on the Hammersmith and City line
48. The immense distances you have to walk to change at King's Cross
49. The part where the Northern line doesn't go to Liverpool Street
50. The bleeping light when my Oyster Card auto top-ups
51. People who keep standing in front of the entry gates when their Oyster Card/ticket doesn't work
52. People who stand still when they get of the escalator
53. People who stand still, deciding to go either right or left, at the bottom of the escalators at Camden Town
54. The last train
55. The lack of night trains
56. The 'Seek Assistance' notice when you really don't need assistance
57. People who just arrived at Heathrow on the Piccadilly line who keep sniggering at the mention of 'Cockfosters'
58. People with large suitcases who put them in the middle of the aisle
59. People with large suitcases who put them in front of the doors
60. The ridiculously large amount of Health & Safety warnings
61. The 50% discount on penalties if you pay within the first month
62. Pee smell
63. Smoke smell
64. Random horrid smell
65. Having to wait longer than 3 minutes for the next tube
66. The lifts at Goodge Street
67. The lifts at Mornington Crescent
68. The separate tube stations for the Northern and Bakerloo line at Elephant & Castle
69. The Waterloo & City line (if it exists)
70. People who press the 'open' button to open the doors
71. People who do not manage to stay on the right side on escalators
72. People who do not get 'Keep Left' signs
73. People who do not get 'Keep Right' signs
74. Groups of Spanish tourists who do know when to get off the tube
75. People who count down the stations till they have to get off
76. People who keep looking at the tube map to see where they are
77. People that keep that bags on the seat next to them
78. Dogs on the tube
79. Fat people who think they can squeeze in
80. People who keep the doors open
81. Stations flooding when it rains
82. People thinking the train will stop at Warren Street despite posters and at least 5 announcements that it won't
83. Trains saying they go to Morden that actually go to High Barnet
84. Overground being closed for half a year
85. Boring advertisements
86. Having to wait at Camden Town because all the next trains go to Morden via Bank and I want to go to Kennington via Charing Cross
87. Having to wait at Camden Town because all the next trains go to Kennington via Charing Cross and I want to go to Morden via Bank
88. The amazingly detailed and up-to-date descriptions of what they're doing when someone has jumped in front of a train
89. The absence of trash cans
90. The presence of trash
91. Couples
92. Old people who want you and no one else to give up your seat for them
93. Other people who won't give up their seat for old people
94. People that hold on to me in stead of the railing when the tube starts moving
95. Tourists who don't get that there's no money left on their Oyster Card
96. People that fart
97. People that stand in front of me while I'm sitting who fart in my face
98. People who stroll through tube stations like it's a park. IT'S NOT! Now bloody move!
99. Having to move to the front of the carriage because the last set of doors will not open
100. Having to move to the rear of the carriage because the first set of doors will not open

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

That was quite a moving week, wasn't it? With the elections and not knowing what is going to happen next: did David Cameron win the elections as his party has the largest share of seats or did he lose since he hasn't been able to create a majority, something that hasn't happened for 36 years? And which losers (as it's quite clear both Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown lost) will now form a goverment? Luckily, there's always music to keep your mind of these nasty thoughts.

Best Coast/Yuck/Philadelphia Grand Jury @ Mme Jojo's Something 'light' to start of this week of musical madness: 6 gigs in one week again, and I don't get to see everone I'd like to! First choice to make is whether Best Coast and Yuck are preferred over High Places and Bachelorette, and it turns out they are. Before said bands are seen in a live setting that is. Philadelphia Grand Jury - or Philly J's, as they'd like themselves to be called (I guess they've realised that lengthy names only really work on Sufjan Stevens albums) - are a great opening band. They're energetic, don't seem to give a fuck (excusez le mot) that absolutely no one is there to see them play and just go for it, ending with a rendition of Jay-Z's 99 problems which I actually don't hate. Good for them!

Yuck, a band who have been on the receiving end of some good old blogosphere praise lately, fail to leave a real impression that lasts after having seen the rest of the bands I have seen this week. The same holds true for Best Coast. Their set is rather messy, with the three band members having different ideas about what the setlist looks like, though they do seem to have copies of the same thing. Bethany Cosentino just doesn't seem to care that much about what we think of what she's doing on stage. And was that drummer the girl from Vivian Girls? It's been bothering me all week!

The National/Buke and Gass @ The Electric Ballroom Now there's a name that causes me to drop everything and delve into that emergency fund I've created in case David Bowie ever decides to do live gigs again - and if he were to do so (Glastonbury's birthday is coming up, rumours are still alive and strong), could he then please wait just a couple more weeks so I can replenish this fund of mine?

Buke and Gass, hailing from Brooklyn, are opening for The National. And they may just be the next Sufjan Stevens, but absolutely no one wants to listen to some experimental guitar jingle jangling whilst waiting impatiently for their favourite band (we can soundly establish The National being the favourite band of every single man in the audience - and I say man as at least 90% was male). I don't even feel like googling their names as even writing about this makes me anxious about getting to the bit where the National actually come in. Oh I even love reliving the anticipation! The eloquence of Stephen Fry and Joanna Newsom combined wouldn't suffice to describe the brilliance of the National in a live setting, but I will give it a try.

And enter dramatic walk-in music... Lights are dimmed and the shared excitement becomes almost tangible as the eight (!) men that make up the National on this tour enter the stage and take up their positions while Matt Berninger pours himself a glass of wine and takes some time to tape his lyrics to the floor (surprisingly, nobody shouts "The English are waiting" during this interval). As this is the first official gig to promote their fifth album High Violet, this entire album is featured on the setlist, starting with 'Anyone's ghost', which of course everyone knows by heart already. Matt Berninger even faintly tries to excuse us by mentioning the album was streamed on NPR, before exclaiming that he doesn't care anyway (and why should you as everyone single person in that room was intending to rush to the nearest record on the day it was going to come out?). 'Afraid of Everyone' is next, and sounds remarkably likes the first song. Any initial disappointment is however erased from the minds of the audience by the sheer brilliance of what is to come: 'Secret Meeting', 'Bloodbuzz Ohio', 'Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks' (I've been singing this al week in the shower), 'Slow Show', 'Mistaken for Strangers' and 'Squalor Victoria'. OMG. I absolutely broke at 'Slow Show', only just managing not to turn into a complete blobbering mess, to be topped by 'Mistaken for Strangers' and maybe the best ever version of 'Squalor Victoria'. And at this point, we're not even halfway through the setlist.

One could accuse the National of being a band that depends on sad songs, leaving you bereaved and disheartened, but as Matt kindly explains before 'Sorrow', that is quite the opposite of what they intend. By singing about these sad things, you manage to give them a place which results in an uplifting feeling. A statement with which I can only concur, especially when 'Apartment Story' is next. I'd like to stay in that rosy-minded fuzz for days to throw in a cliché. The National's closing statement starts with 'England', which is of course absolutely fabulous to hear while you're in England, but can't quite measure up to 'Abel' or 'About Today'. And can I add a note to my future husband here, saying that he might be obliged to get married to this song? (so I like 'Slow Show' better with the whole "I wanna hurry home to you" bit, but "I made a mistake in my life today" is probably not a sentence you would like to hear that day - but maybe I have given this just a bit too much thought given that I'm single and years away from getting married anyway).

But of course there is also an encore, a four track long one even! 'Runaway', a song that did not quite work for me on the album, is truly great in a live setting. But then again, it's followed by such utter brilliance that it does seem to be a bit bleak in hindsight. 'Fake Empire' and 'Mr November' are the obvious choices and although you know exactly what to expect, you are completely blown away. Matt jumps in the audience during 'Mr November', seemingly to get to every single person in the audience as he manages to get to the farthest back of the venue, ending up screaming "I'm Mr November! I won't fuck us over!" whilst standing almost next to me. Amazing, my life is complete (except for seeing Mr Bowie life, but that's only a minor glitch by now). He manages to get back to the stage to start singing 'Terrible Love' only to immediately dive into the audience again. For me, Mr November is still the better track, and has more energy to really end on a high, but as I touched Matt Berninger (twice!) I did that anyway. Oh, now to wait for the chance to see them again!

The National/Buke and Gass @ The Royal Albert Hall But wait, I can see them again! And the very next day, as their Electric Ballroom gig was just a warm-up for this event at the Royal Albert Hall. Another option would have been to go see Deerhunter, but with The National that's just not really a choice. This time round, I'm not as deprived as the day before, so I can actually manage to listen to Buke and Gass, who are quite good (though certainly not the new Sufjan Stevens). It's all a bit experimental, similar to Wildbirds and Peacedrums, but with a bit less jazz and a bit more country (luckily only a bit).

Compared to the first day of their duo of London dates, this one was both better and worse. Better in that the sound quality was much improved (in the Electric Ballroom the bass started resonating every time they used an Em chord - which they use a lot), but it was seated. And yes, everyone was standing by the third track, but only in front of their neatly arranged chairs. Not that it really mattered, 'Slow Show' still shattered me to pieces. As this night was supposedly 'the real thing' Matt Berninger refrained from taping his lyrics to the floor. Oh, and if only he had! Twice they attempt to play 'Baby, we'll be fine' but both times Matt forgets his lyrics and they then just abandon the whole thing, leaving me feeling a bit bereaved as it might have been the second track of the evening that I hadn't already heard the night before. The other one being 'All the Wine' in the encore, which is similar to the one the other night. But as it is election night this time, 'Mr November' just gets that bit of extra meaning, getting everyone's hopes up to seeing Nick Clegg getting his way when they get home. Again, Matt goes for the audience, and even tries to get to the circle seats on the first floor, but only his microphone manages to get there (kudos for the amazingly long cable). This night, 'About Today' is the show stopper, and how much more befitting it is than 'Terrible Love'! And how disheartening to go home and see a blue picture of England indicating the Tories are winning...

Rob Ince's School for Gifted Children: Module one (featuring Prof Brian Cox, Marcus Brigstocke, Simon Singh, Adam Rutherford, Tim Minchin and others) But hey, lighten up! There's always comedy to make one feel better, and if you combine that with a load of science you've certainly got my attention (oh, I wish I was an experimental high energy particle physicist). Though to be honest, I only bought a ticket in the first place because Prof Brian Cox was on the bill, and I am absolutely in love with his pronunciation of the word 'wonderful' (he said it at least twice, so I got my money's worth). Without really going into details, as I am aware that comedy for science geeks has a very limited audience and would probably only work in London, I would just like to say that I was completely blown away and might have to start reading everything Carl Sagan has ever written. The picture on the right came up twice during this night. Carl Sagan called it 'The pale blue dot'. It was taken by Voyager 1 in 1991 as it was leaving our solar system and shows the earth suspended in a ray of sunshine. It shows the immense fragility of our planet, but at the same time that pale blue dot is the place where all our heroes have lived, all our wars have been fought, our entire history has happened (the actual quote is much more eloquent, but I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of the Sagan book yet). Also, it was absolutely heart-warming to spend this night in room full of hopeful LibDem voters (go Evan Harris!).

Foals/Jonquil @ The Ansom Rooms (Bristol) Yeah, I can be short on this: whereas the former night was spend in the company of LibDem voters, 95% of the audience in Bristol wasn't old enough to vote. Also, Foals played the EXACT SAME SETLIST AS IN KINGSTON! I could, much to my own annoyance, predict each and everyone song. So this was the last time I've seen them, and Jonquil weren't my thing either (bit of a Vampire Weekend/Foals mix). Best bit was seeing what Ed Droste would look like if he hadn't been awake for five consecutive weeks - and may I say that is pretty fine? Oh, if only I had gone to the Pavement is rad day at the Windmill in Brixton, they had a free bbq!

PS. Bristol is very nice though. Do go to Start the bus, they've got excellent hippy burgers.

PPS. And for those of you who notice that I've mentioned six gigs but only have written about five: well, the last one was one of my flatmates performing at the Wigmore, which apparently is a really big deal. But as I was fighting to not fall asleep, others were fighting to keep in their tears. So I don't think I could write anything sensible about that one.

ENGLAND YOU'VE LET ME DOWN!

Right now, it's looking like the Tories are going to win.

Riots have already broken out in Hackney, people have not being allowed to cast their vote for various reasons, votes by post have been lost...

Hopefully this is all just a bad dream and Labour and LibDem will have decleared a shared victory by the time I wake up tomorrow.

*Morning update*
This is all so unreal. I don't know anyone who was gonna vote Tory. Everywhere around me there's a sense of utter disappointment and disbelieve. This was supposed to be an election bringing change, LibDem was going to 'win'. Not the elections, but for the first time a third party would have a profound influence on the results. As it turns out, they've lost seats. The fact that it looks as if there is going to be a Tory government makes me feel almost personally defeated (and I may have already made my first reference to the Tatcher years...)

Revising my paper

I did actually write some bits of it myself...

More Twitter stuff

With no HIGNFY happening this week to make room for the Prime Ministerial Debate, Ian and Paul make the most of their day off

I love how Matt Berninger can sing the most ridiculous nonsense and still make it sound like the most profound truth

Daleks get everywhere

Some random websites:
Humour, according to Microsoft
How to make any website look like it was made by a 13-year old in 1998
When cyclists have too much time on their hands
Or surgeons
Or birdspotters

And the Beeb's answer to one of the GREAT questions in science: what is out there?

Well, rather a lot.