Boxing Day Excellence (Blog 491)

Today (yesterday at the time of writing), I should be going to a pub lunch with my family! What to do in the meantime? Hm. I could point out what music I’m listening to at the moment. So… right now I’m listening to Lonely The Brave. I love the first track, but the rest of the songs I’m not so sure about. I hate it when that happens, but maybe the album will grow on me. You know what? I’ve only listened to the second song twice now and already I like it more, so there you go, it IS growing. ‘Simon, I would love to know the precise album you’re listening to, to see if the first song really is that good and if the 2nd one is a grower. What is it called?’ An excellent question, I’m listening to the ’What we do to Feel’ LP. The other two albums I bought in Kingston on Monday were ‘The Dream is Over’ by Pup (ironically the most cheerful album of the three) and ‘Sorry for the Late Reply’ by Slotface. The latter album is kind of in the style of Milk Teeth. You know what that suggests? It suggests my indie/emo/punk knowledge is getting more complete as I’m starting to recognise patterns and various traits bands share! Sadly however, I only review metal. But if Metal Rules finally mellows out after about 30 years, I’ll be there reviewing softer music with confidence. If not arrogance.

Would you believe my Metal Rules boss received a good five emails for me to sort through on Christmas day? What kind of person works and sends messages on Christmas? Then I realised I did too and I felt a bit sad. To lighten the mood, let’s watch a documentary about Broadmoor on Youtube. I’ve seen it before but I’ll watch a few minutes anyway. One patient said that he ‘got born into a Satanic family’ but the subtitles said an ‘Italian family’. I’m wondering why the subtitles are linking Italy with Satanism. Sounds kinda offensive to me. The patient then said it would have been better to have killed him than to let him live ‘the abominable life’ that he had. But the subs said ‘adorable life’. Another subtitle said ‘and it pushes brought a saint brush’ which is nonsense obviously, but to be fair I couldn’t understand what the guy meant, either. Imagine the confused reaction a deaf person would have when watching the program. Oh yes and remember when I said it was strange how you have to press ‘C’ on the keyboard to get subtitles, when subtitles has no C in it? C stands for ‘captions’! Of course it does, I feel so stupid now.

As I’ve seen the documentary before, let’s listen to Pup! Oh, it’s not as cheerful as I remember it being on my first listen on Christmas, I guess because I was busy blogging at the same time. Never underestimate the power of ADHD, you have no idea the kind of things I can ignore and misinterpret. Ahhhhh… the second song is a lot more cheerful than the first! Phew, I thought there was something wrong with me. Yeah, track 3 is pretty positive, too. Great stuff, great stuff. Some of the later tracks are more angry than anything but again, there are at least SOME positive vibes, so yeah, I didn’t completely make a large portion of the day up. It makes me wonder why the album alternates moods so drastically, if the music was a person you wouldn’t put up with him. Even so, the album got some pretty good reviews. But… who from? Maybe the reviewer was the guy from the insane asylum who talks gibberish, I bet he loves the music.

Let’s watch a Youtube video about a fight on a bus, I bet that has some interesting CAPTIONS (not subtitles) with all the shouting and all. I’m just saying it’s hard for many people even to hear shouted words, God knows what computers will make of them. Anyway, I’m watching the video now… Ok, it wasn’t shouted but the commentator of the video said ‘tense situation’ and the subs said ‘tent situation’. Oh no, a tent situation? I guess camping brings up strong feelings. Being alone in the countryside at nighttime? Could make you paranoid and aggressive, even just thinking about the situation. Let’s keep watching… The commentator clearly said ‘tirade’ by the subs said ‘tie raid’. You can violently raid a tie shop, but that’s most definitely not what happened in the video.

Ok, my brother’s family DIDN’T go to the pub they just visited me and my dad. A simple Christmas, a cynic could say it was a cheap and lazy Christmas but I was openminded and tried to be positive. One of the first things we all did was open all of the presents. I was slightly self conscious when wrapping them as I didn’t do the most tidy job in the world, the wrapping of the toy doll was completely all over the place but no one seemed to notice. Lucky me, not so lucky for my dad who seemed to take a lot of pride in his wrapping. Nope, no one noticed that either. What did I get? Three CDs and chocolates from my brother. Mmmmm. Ahhhh, my dad didn’t hide my Ferrero Rochet as I claimed a few days ago, he actually gave them to me as a gift. Whoops. All the chocolates were a bit overkill, tbh, it was almost annoying as I felt compelled to eat everything. Not out of politeness, I don’t think I can actually explain. My new CDs are all fairly early on in the alphabet which is annoying from a rearranging everything perspective, but as two of them are very thin, maybe I can squeeze them in my CD rack without having to shift everything else around. Yes, I’m talking about rearranging my collection again, I also talked to my brother about that.

My youngest niece rode her new toy bike around the living room we were all in and my nephew opened my present of a set of small cars. In a way, it was a very mild form of anarchy. Next year I can get the children some Blink 182 CDs, the next year I can get something a little more punky and in the end I can give away some GG Allin music. No only joking, that was a terrible thing to say. I sincerely take that back. I get the feeling a toy dinosaur would have been more appreciated than the baby doll I got the youngest niece, but I did at least get a thank you. Not to my face, it was to my brother’s face, but the words were directed at me in a way and that’s all that mattered. After my dad finally got it to work, we all watched at least some of the new Wallace and Gromit film. I’m sure he pretended not to be able to get it to play at first but I don’t think anyone was exactly devastated by that. I guess the program does have some cool contraptions but not good enough  I suppose. I liked them though. My sister in law said she missed the Gavin and Stacy special episode and as I watched it I had knowledge of the program. Knowledge is power and I could have used my powers for evil by giving spoilers if I wanted to, but I did the right thing and kept quiet.

Near the end of the get together, my sister in law asked if I’ve been riding the bike and I said ‘no’, thinking she was referring to the toy, actually she meant my exercise bike. I thought that was pretty funny. When I stood up as everyone left I seemed to notice that I grew by a centimetre or so, does that sound normal to you? I’m still relatively short it just surprised me that’s all. The last time I noticed something like that happening was when I was in Butlins as a 6 year old, and I seemed to grow a bit in just a day after eating lots of sandwiches. Either I’ve grown or my dad shrunk which I think can happen to older people. I started to feel a bit sick an hour after everyone left, but one day a year feeling sick from eating a borderline dangerous amount of chocolates? I’m sure thats fine. So much so that I planned to continue the binge later on. After that business, I walked the dogs with my dad! Nice walk! I’m not really sure what else to say about it after I blogged about another 3 of such walks so I’ll leave it. After THAT I went to the local petrol station. I didn’t buy MORE chocolate did I? Dear God, no. Although I did get a sugary alcoholic drink which, now that I think of it, is worse. What’s better hash browns or samosas? Tough question. It was so tough I had to buy both. When I got home I continued decimating my Ferrero Rochet as I watched more Youtube. Not exactly a thrilling Christmas, although I did enjoy it. Yeah pretty good! And bye!