Profondo Rosso

Here I am outside Dario Argento's shop Profondo Rosso in Via Gracchi in Rome last weekend.

Thanks to an amazing slice of luck the shop was actually in the same street as the hotel my wife and I stayed in on our romantic anniversary weekend in the city.

I'd first heard about this place on an extra feature on the DVD of Phenomena where Dario was seen in his own shop showing Tim Burton around.

The shop itself is pretty small with surprisingly little memorabilia (though I did buy a couple of cool Argento t-shirts). Downstairs, though, is a kind a brick cellar which has been turned into an Argento museum. It costs 2 euros to go down there and they play a commentary (in heavily-accented English for us, which kind of added to the feel) where they've got piles of framed posters and loads of props and FX from Argento films - both directed and produced as Lamberto Bava's Demons and Michele Soavi's The Church are heavily featured.

I really enjoyed the mirror/picture piece from Profondo Rosso itself where the killer's face is pictured as part of a hideous painting which David Hemmings sees in a mirror as he enters the scene of the first murder in the movie. Wonderful.

Seropram Summer

Another uplifting track from our gig at Gruta '77 on 15 October, 2008. Does anyone think it sounds a bit like Ash?

Time off for good behaviour

Time off for good behaviour. You know, be good in jail and they'll let you out earlier. That's what prisoners normally get.

But not Michel Lapointe, aka Big Mike. This drug gang member was released from jail this week because, at 250kg, he was just too large for his cell.

Put him in a bigger cell, I hear you say. And I agree. Why not? Montreal state and a couple of other prisons in Canada clearly disagreed, so they let him go free.

Apparently Big Mike couldn't fit on the chair in his Montreal prison cell and when he went to bed, his body protruded six inches on either side. Wasn't there something about prison being a place to pay back society for the ills you've caused it? Isn't it supposed to be uncomfortable?

So that's it then? For anyone else who wants to get out early the solution's obvious: Eat like a motherfucker!

So what did Big Mike have to say on his release: "I'm going to have a proper bed and finally have a chair I can sit in."

That's nice then. Anything else you want? A full body massage? A tumbler of malt whisky? A new Armani wardrobe? I'm sure the taxpayers would go the extra mile just for you.

In search of the marxist child

Part of an interview with popular scientist and clear thinker Richard Dawkins, author of - amongst others - The God Delusion.

Some say that his views are just another brand of 'faith' - that atheism is a belief system like christianity. Judge for yourself...

A Tim Burton soundtrack

"...un recital soñador, donde la siniestralidad nos envuelve en un humo denso..."

"...potencia controlada..."

Full review of the gig at Musiqueando.

Sarah Palin: Is Africa a country?

Sarah Palin is the Republican "hail mary" that went wrong!

I'm not surprised, though. Americans are generally completely clueless when it comes to the rest of the world. Add to that the fact that she believes the world in less than 10,000 years old and what do you expect?

The stories of her abuse of power to try and fire her sister's estranged stage trooper husband seem like child's play compared to all this.

It's Halloween and I feel like dancing

Without Me You're Nothing

Another video from the deadman gig at Gruta '77 on 15 October, 2008.

Love like Semtex

Infadels just keep getting better and better. I first saw them, randomly, at Benicassim 2005 and then again in Madrid a couple of years ago. Now with two albums under their belt and an energetic live show they're obviously going from strength to strength. Motherfuckers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Photo from the Infadels gig at Moby Dick on 27 October, 2008.

More cunts - Engrish re-revisited

These guys from engrish.com crack me up!

Horsing around

Who knows what the fuck Gracie was thinking about when she did this!

Hating

Our opening number from last week's gig in Gruta 77. More videos to come later!

You are what you search for

Frank Zappa recorded an album in 1981 called You Are What You Is. If the great man were still alive today, maybe he'd give it a slightly different name.

I've quite often wondered who reads my blog, and why. What do they find interesting? The barbed attacks on organised religion? The tongue-in-cheek reporting of ridiculous news and non-news from around the world? Do they like the videos I post from Youtube and my related comments on them?

Some time ago I read a report about how Google had analysed search trends in the US. They took a group of internet users and monitored their search activity over a 6-month period of time - and they discovered something quite interesting.

People try to solve their problems using Google. They type a question into the search engine as if it was some kind of agony aunt. How can I make my boss appreciate my work more? Why doesn't my girlfriend love me any more? Stuff like that. It's an interesting discovery and if you give it a try you'll probably find some "answers" to your nagging questions.

Of course at work we also analyse this kind of thing for our website. We do Search Engine Optimisation to try and improve our ranking on keywords that we think people are looking for - and that relate to us - in order to get increased traffic to our website.

So I thought I'd do a little analysis of my own based on all of this. I had a look at my blog stats and the keywords people had searched for in Google when they found me.

So what did I discover? What were they looking for? My barbed attacks on organised religion? My tongue-in-cheek reporting of ridiculous news and non-news? The videos I post from Youtube?

Nope.

"Tattoed cunt" and "laxative challenge" (and derivatives thereof) both figure at the top of the list.

My question is: Does this say something about them or me?

Back to the thematic drawing board I think.

Welcome to Saudi Britain

This video was recently banned and then reinstated by Youtube. Apparently lots of muslims find it offensive. I think the fact that some people say they are 'offended' by something is never a good reason for censoring it. Indeed, if you listen to what this guy has to say, it's actually quite scary - and something that I wouldn't like to see happen where I live.

The definition of light-hearted

According to the Reverend Dr Peter Mullen, homosexuality is "clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease".

Mullen, who is rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, and looks suspiciously like actor Steve Pemberton from The League of Gentlemen, blogged these words the other day.

"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals," he went on to write, "to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS."

The rector, who has also written for The Torygraph, insists that he meant no harm: "I wrote some satirical things on my blog and anybody with an ounce of sense of humour or any understanding of the tradition of English satire would immediately assume that they're light-hearted jokes."

Light-hearted indeed. The very definition of, if you ask me.

Midnight in Madrid

A couple of shots from my band's gig last weekend in Sala Midnight. Deadman will be back on stage on 15 October in Gruta 77's concurso de rock. And it's free.

What's your favourite colour, baby?

Living Colour live at Sala Heineken in Madrid on 23 September, 2008. Rock gods.

Free speech for the dumb

In the spirit of healthy debate and "teaching the controversy", a Turkish court has banned internet users from viewing the official Richard Dawkins website after a Muslim creationist claimed its contents were defamatory and blasphemous.

It's amazing how people like this can exist in the modern world.

I guess Dawkins must get called blasphemous a lot, considering his somewhat radical views and reputation as Darwin's enforcer. But I don't think he'd ever advocate banning, gagging or silencing his critics.

In reality though it seems that Adnan Oktar thinks that Dawkins has insulted him in comments made on forums and blogs. Check out Dawkins' "insults".

Istanbul's second criminal court of peace banned the site earlier this month on the grounds that it "violated" Oktar's personality. I've had a look at the story and subsequent comments and I'm not really sure about the allegations.

True, a lot of people mention how Oktar has been found guilty of creating an illegal organisation, and a lot of people speculate about the actions of that organisation, including rape and extortion. He is appealing the verdict. Does this mean he should be treated as innocent until proven guilty, or is he just doing what everyone does when convicted - appeal to slow down the legal process?

Oktar, a household name in Turkey, has used hundreds of books, pamphlets and DVDS to contest Darwin's theory of evolution.

In 2006 his publishers sent out 10,000 copies of the Atlas of Creation, a lavish 800-page rejection of evolution.

Dawkins, one of the recipients, described the book as "preposterous". On his website the British biologist and popular science writer said he was at "a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the 'breathtaking inanity' of the content."

It is the third time Oktar and his associates have succeeded in blocking sites in Turkey.

In August 2007 Oktar persuaded a court to block access to WordPress.com. His lawyers argued that blogs on WordPress.com contained libelous material that the company was unwilling to remove.

Last April, he made a libel complaint about Google Groups, which was subsequently blocked.

He failed to ban Dawkins' book The God Delusion in Turkey after a court rejected his claims that it insulted religion.

So, free speech for the dumb anyone?

Holiday in Cambodia

Weird how one train of thought leads to another. Having posted the snippet below I had the line "But your boss gets richer off you" going through my head. Then the melody came, then the next line: "Well you'll work harder / With a gun in your back / For a bowl of rice a day," and who else could that be but the truly amazing Dead Kennedys?

I first got into these guys when I was like 15 - I still have a clear vinyl of Fresh Fruit For Rotten Vegetables sitting in my parents' loft - and I've never looked back since. It's intelligent music. I only wish I'd seen them live when Jello was still involved....

The rich get richer

A little factoid that jumped out at me off the screen as I was reading the latest Lucy Kellaway column from the FT:

When CEO pay in the US was made public 15 years ago, they earned about 70 times the average worker’s pay. Now they earn 300 times as much.