which, reminded me of this video:

and this one:

And while it doesn’t seem like any of this is worth a post, I’ve really got to start doing more with this blogging thing. I’m still thinking of going back to tumblr.

Link: http://52murders.tumblr.com

Then the finger arrived.

It was wrapped in a note that made it clear that if the ransom wasn’t paid soon, more pieces would follow.

Her mother was distraught at the thought of her child being disfigured in such away.

Her father was furious at the gall of these low down criminals.

The police were ashamed at not taking the threat more seriously.

Only the private detective remained cool.

“Well, I don’t see there’s a problem,” he said, lighting a cigarette and pouring himself a drink. “Just keep them waiting and eventually… y’know…”

Everyone stared at the PI.

“What? You’ll get her back… and you won’t have to pay a cent!”

American Horror Story has been packed with so many cliches that it’s difficult to explain the programme’s appeal. Perhaps it’s the fact that it really is packed. Everything happens in such a short space of time that it becomes ludicrously entertaining. I’ve watched the first three episodes and already it feels like a whole series’ worth of events has taken place. It’s freebase horror, rather than the slow release opiates I usually prefer, but it’s so over the top that it’s difficult not to be drawn in.

Done a bit of the theatre this week by going to see The Queen of Spades at the Arcola. In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that this wasn’t the plan and that I had been intending to see Phaedra Wept by Sarah Kane, but that was sold out of pay-what-you-can tickets. So, there was this instead. Truth be told, I was kind of relieved not to see the Kane play, as it seemed pretty fucking miserable. Queen of Spades wasn’t miserable, exactly, but it didn’t really warm the cockles of the heart. An adaptation of a Pushkin short story, it’s a three hander told in rhyming couplets.  When my companion and I left the theatre our reactions were almost identical and can be distilled down to: “well, I’ve seen worse…”

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, is a few years old, but the questions it raises about sexism, homophobia and violence in hiphop music are still very relevant. Unfortunately, my answer was to break out the old NWA albums and crank up the most offensive tunes I could find. Still, the documentary’s worth a look, if only for Busta Rhymes ducking the issue of homophobia in hip hop. It also reminded me of a unconfirmed rumour that flew around a while ago that Method Man and Redman, as well as being musical collaborators and bezzie mates, were in fact doing it on the sly. It should be pointed out that I don’t know if it’s true and that it also made My Mate The Rapper blanch at the thought, which is why it bears repeating.

Sunday turned into an unexpected Shatfest, when I found myself listening to this album (Spotify link) and reading Star Trek Memories, the introduction for which is so hyperbolic that it’s impossible to resist reading further.

Now I boldly go… into the bathroom, stumbling to the sink, where a sting of cold tile and a splash of cold water shock me at both extremities. The cobwebs finally begin to dissapate. I find my toothbrush, and in my hearly awakened state, I even manage to load it up. I now pause to admire my neatly symmetrical blob of tartar-control goo, lean in over the sink, look up into the mirror and come face-to-face with my own image, which scares me.

…My wrinkles, I muse, have been well earned, and they provide visual evidence of a career crammed with wonderful memories, and a life that’s been extraordinarily rewarding, both personally and professionally.

It’s not quite up there with Alan Partridge ending every anecdote with “needless to say, I had the last laugh”, but it’s a close second. And, to quote Shakin’ Stevens, it’s “lovely stuff”.

I’ve never read a Tom Clancy book before (although I’ve played the games that allow you to fight for America’s oil interests overseas) and on a whim, I picked up Dead or Alive from my local Sainsbury’s. It’s unclear whether it’s actually written by Clancy – he seems to have transformed himself into such a brand that he no longer actually has to write his novels – but it’s pretty much what I expected in that it’s slightly to the right of the Kaiser. Despite his inroads into videogames and his love of surveillance technology, I don’t know if Clancy’s embraced the web and social networking to its fullest. A shame, because his love of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) could make him the first novelist to truly make good use of Twitter. 140 character chunks could make his Republi-run-and-gun tomes shorter and punchier. Whole chapters could be digested to single tweets:

SAM KOs USAF F16. Pilot MIA in UAE. CIC OKs CIA LZ

Leaving Clancy and his cohorts to repeat USA-USA-USA for the remaining 500 pages.

“Blankets” by Craig Thompson was a little more contemplative. It’s one of the those long, deeply personal comics about awkward young men who can’t express their feelings. Ten years ago, I would have lapped it up. Nowadays, I don’t have quite so much patience and found myself skipping through it quite rapidly. It did make me think about how I read comics, however. So long as the art isn’t horrible, I really won’t notice it. The art isn’t horrible in “Blankets” – a lot of it is really quite lovely – but I found myself flipping quickly through even the most beautifully illustrated pages. I’m clearly an ignoramus.

The latest Nerdist Writers Panel featured Jon Enbom and Rob Thomas, who created two of my favourite series in the past few years – Party Down and Veronica Mars. Having been through both those series several times, I went back to Thomas’ first series, Cupid, which had two incarnations, one in the late 1990s and one in the mid 2000s. It’s a high concept idea – possibly crazy man thinks he’s the god of love and has to get 100 couples together in order to return to Mount Olympus. It’s easy to see why it appealed to network execs, but it never quite works and I found myself wishing for a composite version that pairs that bloke off Larry Sanders with that woman from Studio 60. But that doesn’t exist.

So I’ve been consoling myself with Living Room Songs, a lovely collection of chamber music pieces written performed by an Icelandic bloke in his living room. There are seven songs to download for free. It’s been helping me write when I don’t want to, which is more than I can say for a certain other Icelander, whose latest album isn’t doing that much for me. Anyway, the first one’s embedded below. If you like, visit the site and download the whole lot for nish.

Q: Does this mean quantum physics is a) wrong, b) stupid or c) proof that God exists, is watching all of us and forcing the universe to compress into a single choice which we all witness?

A: All three (probably simultaneously).