recommended site

Misplaced review

Posted on September 6, 2024September 5, 2024

I understand that the posts I do about music don’t often hit everyone’s spot.
That’s ok. I get it.

But this one might be different if you’re willing to do a bit of looking through this Youtube or Spotify catalogue.

I spotted this on Instagram, of all places. And the caption was:

I listened to this, and so now you have to.

And I get that different people have different opinions on things (see above), and that’s (mostly) ok, but wow.

For me, this is really, really beautiful.

The ending. Goosebumps.

I thought that I’d shared something from PMJ on here before, but if I did, I can’t find it.

Maybe I thought I should, and then something important happened.

Sorry.

Postmodern Jukebox, also known as Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, is a rotating musical collective founded by New York based pianist Scott Bradlee in 2011. Postmodern Jukebox is known for reworking popular modern music into different vintage genres, especially early 20th century forms such as swing and jazz.

It’s important to understand that not everything makes sense when converted to 20’s and 30’s jazz. But when it does… it really does. Habits works. Black Hole Sun works. The Smiths in country style – amazingly – works. Creep is – of course – hypnotisingly beautiful.

The huge range of artists they cover, the varying sets and costumes, the occasional monochrome, the special guest artists on each track, the different genres employed. It all adds to a pretty cool listening and viewing experience.

There’s even one for the TA (if he’s got this far!)*.

Give it a go.

Youtube channel.
Spotify link.

* Let me know, hey? 😉

Worst lines

Posted on August 28, 2024August 28, 2024

The winners of the 2024 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Awards have just been announced, and many of them (and the (dis)honourable mentions and runners-up) are pretty good.

Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels.

As someone once said: “Deliberately bad writing requires a special talent.”

It’s true. But interestingly, I have no special talent at all.
All the stuff on this blog is entirely accidental. Just variable fortune and the occasional evening filled with Castle Milk Stout with which to distractedly guide my typing fingers.

Anyway, back to the BLFA, and, as you might expect for the highest (only?) awards for this particular genre, they’re bad.

You’ll need to have your brain fired up and be in the right mood (receptive and ready to work through some mental calculations) to enjoy the lot of them before you click that link, so I recommend taking it a bit at a time.

They’re not going anywhere.

And I could list them all here, but I’m not going to. Still, here are a couple of favourites to get you in the mood.

Cthulhu awoke from loathsome dreams of gangrenous decay and the foul stench of congealing viscera, lifting his pulpy, misshapen head to find what foolish supplicant had roused him to yet another age of fear and creeping dread, but found his bloodthirst unslaked, having been brought to consciousness not by horror-filled screams of human sacrifice but by his little sister’s overly dramatic wail of “Cthulhu’s touching me!” from her side of the family station wagon’s back seat.

If broken hearts were made of simple syrup, and shattered dreams were made from white rum, and agony and despair came from ¾ ounce of lime juice, freshly squeezed, and three mint leaves respectively, then Mary Lou just served up a mojito cocktail straight from the ninth circle of hell when she told Ricky the baby wasn’t his.

And these weren’t even their best in class. So click through and enjoy.

On Connections

Posted on August 19, 2024August 19, 2024

Mmm. I haven’t played the NYT Connections game for a while, but while other members of the family were at piano class, I thought that I’d give it a go. And it was while I was doing that, that I found this article by Connections editor, Wyna Liu.

This isn’t a new article: it’s a year and a bit old, but it does make interesting reading. Because it does rather make it seem like Wyna came up with this revolutionary idea of how to make the game work:

There would have to be a mix of categories for the game to feel challenging and satisfying. That’s where the puzzle element could come in: Some categories might be defined by their use of wordplay — palindromes, homophones, adding or dropping letters and words — rather than the literal meanings of the words on the cards. I saw three areas of potential difficulty that could be adjusted: the familiarity of the words, the ambiguity of their categorization and the variety of the wordplay.

But if you have ever watched Only Connect, the TV quiz show which began in 2008, then you’ll already have been enjoying “Connections” as “The Wall” for 15 years before NYT and Wyna began their version.
And they “saw” how to make it harder a long time before she did.

If there is a regular criticism of Connections, it’s that many of the answers are rather America-specific: baseball team nicknames or supermarket mascots; stuff that anyone outside the US wouldn’t know. But although it attracts an international audience, it’s an American site, and there’s ample opportunity for you to learn stuff about America from the internet.

Equally though, there was surely plenty of opportunity for Wyna and the NYT to know that “Connections” already existed. And I’m not saying that it was trademarked or anything – as far as I know, there’s no legal axe to grind here – just that pretending that it was a concept that they came up with… well… that’s a bit much.

Still, I do occasionally go and get my Connections fix. And when I need some more, I go to Puzzgrid, which… er… also pre-dated Connections. And why makes no bones about where it got the idea from (and pops a subtle dig at the NYT):

And why not go and enjoy the original on Only Connect, since it has just begun its 20th series?

Other Only Connect posts on 6000 miles…
Other Puzzgrid posts on 6000 miles…

Wednesday ephemera

Posted on June 12, 2024June 12, 2024

Several bits of small stuff to share, so here it all is.
Knock yourselves out*.

Things are going all right

After yesterday’s post, this:

That’s quite a movement, ironically suddenly making illegal “small boat” immigration across the English Channel a whole lot harder.

Home Affairs is a mixed bag

Two tweets, just a few pixels apart on my laptop screen:

and:

And yes, I’ve experienced both ends of this spectrum.
Delightfully astonishing at the one end, but oh so frustrating at the other.

SA Mpox outbreak causes first death

Indeed:

Nothing to panic about here, but certainly one just to keep an eye on…

Explore your adventurous side

A recent advert on the web:

Ah yes. The silver self-defence spike. A true Camping and Outdoor Essential. And… does it really say “Thank you for choosing [manufacturer]” on the lanyard? That’s amazing.

I despair

A local page I follow on Facebook got hacked and started posting all sorts of weird stuff, including (but not limited to) a lot of AI generated content resembling American cities. In fact, the only local thing it posted was this range of images depicting (allegedly, at least) Cape Town, some lions in the Kruger, and some KhoiSan rock art in an ancient cave.

The worst bit was the comments though, with people from Cape Town fawning over the picture of their city. And this, despite all those new mountains, the sun setting on the wrong side, and that frankly weird extension bit coming out of Green Point.
Compare and contrast…

Also, while we’re on the subject, that is clearly not KhoiSan rock art, and WTF has happened to those lions? Our jobs are safe from AI for a while yet. But whether our lives are safe from idiot commenters on Facebook… well… that’s another story.

Winter in the vineyards

In more genuine pictures of Cape Town…
We took a walk around Groot Constantia a few days ago, and it was lovely.

Go and see more of the yellowing vines and lush, green grass on Instagram. And drop a follow if you haven’t already. Thanks.

* simply a turn of phrase, not an instruction.