Limited Sympathy

No it's not the band name of one of Uncle Mex's Dutch Electro-pop outfits nor one of those emo pish groups so frequently featured on Kerrang!...I sat with it on all day and the ratio was - Pish 98% Adverts for pish 2%. My brother Danny would turn in his grave... if he were dead.

No the title refers to my recent bugbear, Advertising. Hammond has just been on tv advertising Morrisons butcher counter - The soundbite towards the end says they'll help you find the right cut...oh for the want of a consonant.

After his accident he was the public darling but now I reckon that the Hierarchy of Top Gear is (and remember all those muppets clamouring for Clarkson to be London Mayor) is May, Clarkson and a distant 3rd place for the Hamster.

May, whose rightful catchphrase is "as you'd expect I'd done this properly" is a man who knows the value of a Shed, all great inventions came from men in sheds and he has a deep respect for history and engineering - truely a man's man.

Also on the no sympathy front are the bimbo supreme (Joint winners again this year) Price and Katona. Have it all then manage to turn public opinion against yourself.

I have to give some sympathy to my neighbour, 2 mins before the end of the Celtic - Hearts game and I turn the radio off once again disappointed by yet another lacklustre performance only to be startled by animalistic screaming - I kid you not we are talking primal rage bellowing to an uncaring sky.

Yeah he's a Rangers fan. I take little joy from the 2-1 result as I worry about the fact I have such a fuckwit living near to me and mine.

So there are some ill formed thoughts from me, Rick? your turn!

I'm (not) worth a million in prizes...

Brrr, it's awfy cold in here. Jeepers, posts on this blog are as rare as Accies home wins versus Hibs. Oh, guess that's my cue, then...

Watched the Mercury Music Prize coverage on Beeb Two last week. Not a great selection this year, it has to be said. Or any other bloody year for that matter. Still, I do like that La Roux elpee - it has taken a bit of a caning for being a putative reprise of yon early eighties synthtastic business such as Yazoo and the Human League but it sounds to the big man here much more like the classic burbly, bleepy, beauty of Yamaha AY-8192 8-bit chip music goodness as made by the sainted Follin, Whittaker and Jochen Hippo Hippel...

Anyways, I digress. I hate the fucking Mercury Music Prize. What offends me here about that, the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys and any other cringe-making, toe-curling luvvie jolly up is the notion of snooty wanker powered, panel-based prize giving in general. I don't mean the kind of thing for sportsmen, or folk who have earned a direct reward for some quantifiable achievement like winning a grand prix or the British Open or the friggin' Derby or summat. No, what I mean is the back-slapping horseshit served up by judging panels of industry "experts" who get to tell us what we should think about who was the best director, what was the best movie, what was the best album and who has the nicest tits. (shurely shome mishtake - ed)

Who the fuck are these people ? And what gives them the brass balls to think that they have any more insight into the picking of random winners in arbitrary categories than the great unwashed who actually buy (erm...) all the shit ? It wouldn't be quite as bad if the winning selection was based on straight, unbiased opinion. The reality is that practically every award in popular culture is pre-filtered through an ugly stew of favouritism, trend pandering, and a billion sundry hidden agendas...

The choice of Mercury winner this year was emblematic, a heady cocktail of insipid, coffee table hip-hop destined to soundtrack a million white, thirty-something, middle class lives for one year only until consigned to the landfill with all the previous year's detritus. Nae harm to the lassie herself, mind, it's not her fault, it's the corporate suits deciding that it's her turn to get the golden finger (erm...) while the rest get the shaft. Bah, ball-less, soulless, suckers of Satan's cock each and every last fucking one of them.

Anyhoo, here's some "nice" music that won't be winning any Mercury Music prize this or any other year. Yes, I know it sounds like a scalded cat lurching violently across a hideously scratched BBC Radiophonic Workshop elpee, but I like that kind of thing, alright ?

They'll be crying on the streets of Skopje tonight...

Just a short one ahead of Schottland's game versus Macedonia this afternoon. The news that the blessed Faddy is in the starting line-up has given me a wee lift, as has the fact that the weather in Glesga is reassuringly piss-awful. Yup, dull, dour, dreich, and generally very Scottish, here's hoping it'll give the dark-blue warriors a wee bit more of a home advantage as we slalom our way to a glorious victory and are finally rampant on the road to Soot Effrikkka. I fucking wish. At least G. Caldwell isnae playing so we aren't already looking at clawing back from being an own goal down and could well finish with all eleven men on the park...

Anyhoo, I fancy it to be either 1-0 or 2-1 to the bravehearts, no gubbing on the horizon. Though, one way or t'other, I, personally, will be getting absolutely hammered...

Update : At the age of 33, Alexander of Macedonia cried salt tears because his team had just been reamed by the Scots. James McFadden is only 26...

Update II : At the age of *mumble mumble*, Mexy of Massivedongia cried salt tears because his team had just been pumped by the crazschy Dutsch. Uncle Mex is only 26 (okay, okay, give or take a feckin' decade, cheeky bastiches)...

(with due respect to the original from Lord Sidney of Waddell)