Ouch!

That's not just my reaction to the BBC's dreadfully punning title, either.

Singing in the pain

Read it & flinch (especially if you're a bloke!)

That's Conny, not Connie

Conny Bloom is the guitarist with Ginger and the Sonic Circus. That would explain all those odd hits Google kept coming up with!
Here they are, anyway:

Conny used to play with The Electric Boys & Hanoi Rocks.
Couple of links here:
MySpace
Homepage
Suppose I ought to be studying, really............

Those nice young men....

Here they are:


http://www.cremaster.org.uk/Frameset.htm

Only they didn't have that body paint on last night.

Actually we ran into them (not literally... we stepped aside!) beforehand, not realising who they were - we thought they were probably headed to a punk gig further up the road. Apparently they were on Channel 4's Human Canvas not long ago.

Strangely fascinating :-)

Ginger Rocks!

Been back from Nottingham for hours & head's still full of music :-)

The Ginger gig was all I'd hoped for & more. For a start, it had moved to a smaller venue, so it was Joseph's Well over again, like they were playing for a bunch of friends (which we are...). But instead of being halfway back, we were three feet from the stage - bliss!

Stood politely through the first support act (rather strange) because that's what Ginger's fans do... stood fascinated through the second support, feeling worryingly unsqueamish as the two nice young men stuck bits of metal through themselves, while a woman of restricted growth (is that the right term?) wandered round the stage in a gasmask (well, it was Ginger and the Sonic Circus).

Ginger's main set was amazing. Two full hours of blistering happy bittersweet rock - they were never going to get through the whole of Valor del Corazon, but we had a rich selection, some banter & jamming, & a glorious 29x the Pain for any old Wildhearts fans (ie 95% of the audience) while the two nice young men popped back to have smoke blown through their heads...OK, you had to be there :-)

Must note the eye candy in the form of Swedish lead guitarist Connie Bloom, sporting Jack Sparrow style beaded dreadlocks....

Age just didn't matter. Ginger made some throwaway remarks about how even Grans are signing up to his MySpace site now, but there were old be-leathered rockers & barely-legals, all united through a common love of this man's music.

(Mind you, they say you're as young as the (wo)man you're feeling, but I'll spare you the antics of one of my companions!!)

You either "get" Ginger, or you don't, but if you do, you're probably hooked for life.
Who else could belt out a lyric like "There's a smell, and I can tell, it's the stench of a lonely man, rotting inside of his shell" & lift a roomful of people into sheer joy?

Cheers, Ginger :-)

Vodka & Red Bull

Seems to be what they're consuming in the BBC News Online office! "Red Bull 'masks alcoholic effect'" it says...


Here's a normal quote, as used on their pages:


Here's the one in this article:


Hic!

Phew!

Well, got my first H806 assignment submitted at 23.29 on cut-off day (what is it I'm always telling my students about not leaving it till the last minute?!). To be fair, I had submitted it at teatime, then realised something I'd missed out. The experience has been interesting, to say the least..... even found myself missing the good old essays that provoked so many expletives on previous courses. At least I know what an academic essay is supposed to look like!

The course designers clearly expected this to be a traumatic experience - instead of the "reading week" or "writing week" that many other OU courses provide for students to complete their TMAs, this one has a recovery week after the TMA!

Random Story Generator

Stumbled across this one whilst researching for my H806 TMA (no, really...) & just had to share. You too can be a Surreal Creative Writer!

The funny glass

One day there was a nicotine-stained keyboard. The nicotine-stained keyboard was quite content to live in a ashtray and eat mountains.
Suddenly, there was a fluffy knocking sound coming from the brandy. The keyboard jumped in fright. It decided to shiver to the cloud, and got there just in time to see a funny glass standing there! The glass waved a tenacious phone and the keyboard turned into a grey dictionary. One quite unable to blink!
The glass shimmered and disappeared, leaving a few bubbles in its place. The dictionary picked up the bubbles and popped one into her ear. The gift of speech befell the dictionary, who exclaimed,
"What a original day! I think I shall pick people!"
Off went the grey dictionary, bouncily running and skipping, finally tripping on a pedantic happiness and toppling headlong into a nicotine-stained smoke. Needless to say, it succumbed to a warm-hearted death.
The moral of this story?
If you are thinking of becoming a keyboard, never open a cloud until you are sure there is no funny glass lying in wait.
Above all, live melodramatically. The people you eat may be your last!

Busy girl!

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned on my other blog that daughter #3 was taking part in a learning workshop with the BAAT's Roy Paget. This event has been reported in the school's newsletter.

This week she was also part of the award-winning stage crew in the local heats of Rock Challenge.



She'll probably be mad if she sees this post.......

Blogs under threat

I'n blogging this here, because it's far too important to be tucked away in the academic discussions on my H806 blog.
Thanks to my fellow student Lesley for finding this.

Will Richardson, self-styled "blogvangelist" & promoter of blogs & similar internet technology for enriching classroom learning*, reports a very disturbing development in some USA school districts. School networks been blocked from accessing any material on blogs - where pupils were publishing their projects, interacting with fellow pupils around the world, having fun while they learned together in a way that prepared them for the 21st century world.

Not only that, but it seems the ban extends to any site that's 'within three clicks of a porn site'. As Richardson comments, all this does is demonstrate the ignorance of those issuing the rules, since Google gets you there in two...

Have a look at the unfolding story & see if it makes you gape in disbelief the way it did me.

I've been shut down
The "3 click rule" challenge
It gets worse

So here we are, on the verge of a revolution in communication & learning, & the next generation is being shut out of it? In the land of the free? Yeah, right.

*Here's a UK-based project of his:
Back from Britain