The Argos Challenge

Here's a fun game for 2 or more players when visiting an Argos store.

Without looking at a catalogue, each contestant must randomly enter numbers into the stock checking console until a real item is found. Whoever gets a result first is the winner. This isn't as easy as it sounds. As an optional extra, the winner gets to own whatever item they found at the expense of the other contestants.

The Ikea Challenge

Here's a fun game for 2 or more players when visiting an Ikea store.

The idea is to collect as many pencils as you can physically hide about your person before you reach the checkouts. Once outside, you each count up your pencils and the one with the most is the winner. As a reward, they get to claim all the pencils from every contestant in the game.

Golden The Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!

I haven't posted here in a while. Not because I'm too lazy (well, that was one factor) but because I've been too busy! I'm going to try and post a bit more often to show what I've been doing. Here is one such thing.

This landmark occasion marks my first album cover. Better than that, it's an album cover for a noisemaker who I listen to regularly, and I really enjoy this particular collection of his tunes. The drawing used here started life as a messy red scribble representing some blood to be placed under a hammer-shaped logo for a fictional metal band. However that didn't look very good and I scrapped it, but mucked about with the splatter in some basic photo editing software (I normally just do stuff with pens) until I came up with the black and white outline shape.

Initially, it looked like an awesome beard. I uploaded it to a popular social networking site and Dressed In Wires himself contacted me to ask if he could use a piece of my artwork for an album cover. I think I suggested the scribble in question as I had no other use for it but I still like it, and it seems to suit his sounds quite well. After I pointed out it's beard-like visage, he sensibly decided to invert it for the album cover. The packaging is hand made by him, with my art on stickers applied to the cardboard case. This is it:

When mucking about with it, I also put two together making a sort of explosion effect. This got used in some teaser trailers for the album which you can see on THIS PAGE where you can also order the album. Get a move on though, there's only 25 of them in total!

There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shrew

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

I seem to have folded into the stereotypical view that a blog is a miserable pile of secrets and taken up poetry.

This stems from waking up at 7am one Friday morning with a misquoted children's rhyme in my head, and found it stupendously easy to add new lines to it. It is currently Monday, so this is how far I've got after a weekend of thinking about this madness.

Essentially this piece is a combination of "There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" and "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly" ...with a bit of a twist. It's very much a work in progress and potentially could go on for a very long time. Let me know what you reckon!

So then, here we go:

There was an old woman who lived in a shrew
How she got in there, nobody knew

The creature was bulbous, his eyes fit to burst
His quality of life was really the worst

As for the woman, she ran out of space
Her objects and trinkets came out of his face

At this point she considered buying a house
But opted instead to move into a mouse

This wasn’t much better and the mouse also died
There simply was not enough room inside

Down by the river, she entered a vole
A little more spacious, but out of control

The poor thing went mental and jumped in a lake
Hitting the bottom, his legs they did break

Still in the water, she discovered a frog
And loaded her possessions into his gob

She struggled a lot to get everything in
Her stuff tore a hole in the animal’s skin

Afloat on the surface, she encountered a duck
At first this seemed like a stroke of good luck

But the duck was soon uncomfortably overloaded
When she was done moving in, the poor thing exploded


To be continued...

The Gentleman Ghost

Recently I was reminded of a small press comic that I have really enjoyed reading several times, entitled The Gentleman Ghost. It is probably my favourite work (so far) of a chap called Jack Fallows, who also runs the small press bit of my local comic shop. His site tells you all you need to know.

Rather than attempt to explain what is so good about the comic, here are some samples taken from his site (click the images to make them bigger):

I particularly enjoy his blow-dried moustache.

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of what the comic is like, and what sort of stuff Jack does. You can buy his stuff here at reasonable prices.

His comic "The Big Bang" is also very good indeed, but the two episodes published so far don't give too much away just yet... I'm sure it will be a masterpiece when it all comes together though!

Green Slime

Recently, it was the birthday of a horrible man named Philip Heckles. Don't worry if you haven't heard of him, I wish I hadn't. He probably doesn't even have a Wikipedia page... Nah he doesn't, I just checked. This is the closest result for some reason.

Anyway, I was wondering what to get for him for a short while. He tends to spend money on gifts for others, but I've been a bit skint. So, as usual, it was time for an in-joke present. Easy enough, he's obsessed (and quite rightly so) with this 1968 factual documentary* film theme tune:

...so I did a quick scribble based on it. It looks like this:

The picture is 2 different green inks applied to a piece of A4 size white card with a wooden kebab skewer and a little plastic spray bottle. You may notice I got the quote wrong. That is because I didn't watch the clip before making this, and I didn't really have a plan when I started. Also, the words I use are our own twisted variation of the lyrics**. I painted a nice wooden frame dark green and varnished it to make it look slimy.

That was it basically, present sorted. Upon receiving said gift, his reaction was "it's a picture!"

Well done Phil, your age and intelligence go hand-in-hand.

The Smallprint***:

*Well, 99% of it based on real life events.

**A poor excuse.

***I can't actually adjust the size of small section of text, just the whole article. But you can pretend.

2010 in Music - Releases

I haven’t really sat down and thought about a countdown of top albums this year, but I always make a note of what albums I’ve bought throughout the year (that are released during it) then just mark off what ones were really fucking good… then try to arrange them in some sort of rough order. This isn’t exactly fair as some albums get a billion plays since January, others only get 4 or 5 plays, over the last week! I also decided to combine releases for artists who have proper churned stuff out this year.

Regardless, here’s my attempt to organise some records I’ve enjoyed this year:

1. Astrohenge - Astrohenge

2. Teeth Of The Sea - Your Mercury

3. The Declining Winter - Scenes From The Back Bedroom Window EP

4. The Green Kingdom - Prismatic / Remixes

5. Altar of Plagues - Tides EP

6. Triptykon - Esparistera Daimones

7. Khuda - Palingnesia

8. Working For A Nuclear Free City - Jojo Burger Tempest

9. Cloudkicker - Beacons / ]]][[[ EP

10. d_rradio - Parts / Seasons EP

11. Alcest - Écailles de Lune

12. Gold Panda - Lucky Shiner

13. Brave Timbers - For Every Day You Lost

14. The Moscow Coup Attempt - Transmissions From The End of The World

15. Mass - Paint By Numbers

16. We Are Knuckle Dragger - Doors To Rooms EP

17. Lafaro - Lafaro

18. IO - Materioptikon

19. Dead Meadow - Three Kings

20. Rose Kemp - Golden Shroud

21. Fieldhead - Riser EP / Long Train Journeys / Reference Line

22. Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart

23. The Dark Sky Singers - Like No English

24. Mogwai - Special Moves

25. worriedaboutsatan - Heart Monitor EP

26. 65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway / Heavy Sky EP

27. Wolf People - Steeple / Tidings

28. Baths - Cerulean

29. Admiral Angry - A Fire To Burn Down This World

30. Scott Kelly -The Wake

31. Gallops - Gallops EP

32. These Monsters - Call Me Dragon

33. Unkle - Where Did The Night Fall

34. BXI - BXI EP

35. The Books - The Way Out

36. Mender - The Happy Medium / Resonant Tense EP

37. Quack Quack - Slow As An Eyeball

38. Autechre - Oversteps

39. Silent Front - Dead Lake

40. Drum Eyes - Gira Gira

What have I missed then? I must point out that I didn’t find the time (or money) to buy every album I wanted to, so yes there are big gaps in the shape of God Is An Astronaut, SWANS, Grinderman, Chickenhawk, Humanfly (I only have that album on tape so it’s only had a couple of plays so far), Enslaved, The Phantom Band, Sleepy Sun, Melvins, Zach Hill, Bardo Pond, and so on… I’m still waiting for the postman to deliver the 2010 releases by Talons and Conquering Animal Sound too.

There’s also a load more that I didn’t mention as the list would end up going on forever. A top 40 is already too much to try to figure out! Feel free to discuss any of the records I have or haven’t included.

In 2011 I am looking forward to new releases from Vessels, Manatees, Three Trapped Tigers, Mogwai, And So I Watch You From Afar, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Necro Deathmort, The Pattern Theory, Alright The Captain, Dextro… the list goes on!