At Last...

...a President who can keep to a beat.




Americans are so funny- somehow it just turned into Cinderella with Beyonce cast as the fairy godmother!

Shoot me...

...if I ever say the words “I don’t suffer fools gladly”

Is there some sort of Sayings Shop which you visit at the age of 30 where you are granted permission to suddenly slip this expression into everyday conversation? 12 year olds just can’t get away with saying it.

I especially hate it when people choose this expression to define their personality- like in Big Brother audition tapes- you have 1 minute to describe yourself and you choose to make yourself “stand out” with an overused phrase that you probably dont know the meaning of anyway, but heard your mums friend say once.

It’s up there with “I’m MAD me!” errr...you can’t call yourself mad- that negates the madness!

You heard her - she's got her boobies

How come no-one ever told me about Nina Simone before? She's like a ye olde Lauryn Hill- amazing.

Speaking of whom....

It doesn't happen very often...

....but there are those rare occasions when the cover is better than the original.

Like thus....

Al Green - How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (Bee Gees)



Stevie Wonder - We Can Work It Out (The Beatles)


Radiohead - Nobody Does It Better (Carly Simon)



Fugees - Ready Or Not (Jackson 5)



Magnet - Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan)




Nina Simone - I Put A Spell On You (Screamin Jay Hawkins)





David Bowie - Wild is The Wind (Johnny Mathis)





Travis - Hit Me Baby One More Time (Britney Spears)




Anthony & The Johnsons - Crazy In Love (Beyonce Knowles)




James Morrison - Come Back And Stay (Paul Young)

Stevie Forever

I just love the way he says Halloween

I'm walkin here, I'm walkin here!

Who knew?

I always assumed that he was singing about his sister (as you would), but I just read that it's actually a tribute to Boy George.

Anthony has said that as a transgendered child he felt completely lost until he saw the cover of a Culture Club album and felt that in Boy George he had finally found someone who would understand him- a "sister".

Awww- I like this interpretation.

Either way- it's a great song and encapsulates how I feel about my three sisters- no other song can make you appreciate a sibling more.

Sorry to go all emo on ya, but...

...I could talk all day about funeral songs. Here are some of my current faves.

Enjoy- and take note should I be struck down in the middle of the night...

Right, now we are all suitably depressed...tell me your songs to die for?

O to be a Tennis Ball...

Is it wrong that I like it when he says "you shut your mouth woman"?

I guess we'll just have to adjust...

So...2009 is the year we grow up. Well in essence the year Spence becomes an Animation Genius and I attempt to support us both. Oh my ACTUAL God.

This is something I've been putting off for a while. I somehow equated bills and pensions and TV licenses with the death of my childhood.

I've been reluctant to excel at an office job for fear of becoming one of those people who answers their phone on the train and says "Darling, we simply MUST do lunch". Do you think those people were ever children? To me work is like joining the army. You get up early and put on a uniform and march out there to kill the enemy that you used to love, the world of the "imagination".

For the last few years I have been "temping" in various HR-type jobs. When I tell people this I get "the smile" you know where their mouths make the right shape but their eyes are saying a whole different thing.

People tend to think that I am somehow selling myself short, that because Spence is so ambitious, I have somehow closed the door on my own aspirations to allow the way for his. The truth is despite going to uni (maybe because) in all honesty I HAVE NO AMBITION CAREER-WISE. Also I am clinically lazy.

There's a great freedom in acknowledging this, putting your hands up and saying "I still don't know what I want to be yet", so for all you little pods out there who haven't found your calling yet it really is ok. Anyway, the saying "A Man is his Job" is nonsense. So half the population are therefore "memos, deadlines and pivot tables"- thrilling stuff!

But we must get jobs or we don't eat. And I am generally a fan of eating- THAT I do know. So we must all agree that this illusory world of important work and money is actually real. We must agree that it is real in order to stay motivated and out of jail.

True, it is sad and in part involves having to renounce who you really are. But we get our kicks where we can- like the glimmer when you find a kick-ass colleague (yes you, Ms Welsh) who "gets you" and helps to numb the numbness with humour. Or when you are on the commute to work and see some graffiti on a bridge saying "GO ON. CALL IN SICK". Music helps too...

Wake Up
The Arcade Fire

Somethin’ filled up
my heart with nothin’,
someone told me not to cry.

But now that I’m older,
my heart’s colder,
and I can see that it’s a lie.

Children wake up,
hold your mistake up,
before they turn the summer into dust.

If the children don’t grow up,
our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We’re just a million little god’s causin rain storms turnin’ every good thing to rust.

I guess we’ll just have to adjust.

With my lighnin’ bolts a glowin’
I can see where I am goin’ to be
when the reaper he reaches and touches my hand.

With my lighnin’ bolts a glowin’
I can see where I am goin’
With my lighnin’ bolts a glowin’
I can see where I am go-goin’

You better look out below!

So Spence, in the words of Cary Tennis, this year "We are our own saviors. We are our own heroes. And that is as it should be! We will figure it out, and on the other side of this, we will emerge beyond this bloated adolescence of ours into adulthood."

I generally make it a rule to...

...dislike Tom Cruise, but I must say he's rather good at simultaneously running and shouting