Can't believe this has been sat on YouTube for fifteen years and I'd never heard it until today.

Just entered a poetry competition. Don't worry, this will teach me not to be so outspoken about the general state of poetry these days. Every time I've done this for the last year, I've seen the winners and wondered why I honestly thought I was in with a shot of even being a runner-up.

"Ho ho ho remember when we thought Bush was as bad as it got hehehe" narrative always ALWAYS ignores the fact: it's because they were as bad as it was allowed to get THEN. That's how bad they could be at that point and they paved the way for it to be the way it is now. Same as in the UK.

The line between poems people keep recommending to me and internet memes seems to be getting narrower, and trust me, it's not because the Internet memes are getting better.

Also covered lower down the listings: - The Wedding Present with "This Boy Can Wait"/ "You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends" - The Ex with the "Spanish Revolution EP" - Peter and The Test Tube Babies with "Keys To The City" - Watford's The Enormous Room with their flexidisc single

Thank you for all of the donations so far! It means the world to me! We are just £2 away from £400! How cool is that? The money raised will really help people in need 💚 fundraise.dementiauk.org/s/27334/27886

An uncannily relatable one for the Christmas break, this. theonion.com/man-who-got-...

One thing Bluesky has in common with Twitter is that as soon as you reach the magic 1K followers milestone, that's when you suddenly become interesting to loads of spam accounts, influencers and 'self facilitating media nodes'. Not a huge problem, but a weird quirk of both sites.

Tricky call for Farage, this. Which traitorous path will he choose??

If anybody's wondering what the Mr Wishmore jingle I'm on about in that blog entry sounds like, here you go. "Mr Wishmore has a philosophy/ too many people haven't triiied..." The flexidisc has been on my Discogs wants list for years to no avail. youtu.be/pK3Vm8c4vVE?...

Also covered lower down the listings: - The Wedding Present with "This Boy Can Wait"/ "You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends" - The Ex with the "Spanish Revolution EP" - Peter and The Test Tube Babies with "Keys To The City" - Watford's The Enormous Room with their flexidisc single

Trump is probably focused on the money he wrongly thinks he'll make from Venezuelan oil. But he's not a details guy and nobody has thought through the details. Essentially, the US has taken over Venezuela by mistake. Stranger things have happened, but not many. open.substack.com/pub/arthursn...

Blog update: Nick Cave reached number one in the NME Indie Charts in July 1986 with an unexpected cover of Johnny Cash's "The Folk Singer" - resulting in an association with the Man in Black that would last until his passing. It's a faithful version. indienumber1s.blogspot.com/2026/01/82-n...

It does not take a cynic to suppose that Trump and Putin have agreed to "swap" Venezuela for Ukraine, just as Fiona Hill described in 2019. But everything we've seen from Trump & Putin suggests that there are no depths to their own psychopathic cynicism & criminality.

It's scrazy that the foundations of the global drug trade have been revolutionised, but the vague and disingenuous discourse remains the same. A Chinese teenager can flip a molecule in his garage and create a drug so heroically strong that he can export it in tiny, needle-in-a-haystack quantities.

The real reason I collect records....

Rod Stewart's being interviewed on the radio and I always forget he isn't Scottish despite claiming to be, and that he now sounds exactly like Daphne's layabout brother Simon from the later seasons of Frasier.

Today's brief earworm: Something my brain regularly troubles me with - Brian May's strangulated delivery of "You'd be forgiven if you think you were dreaming" in "Driven By You", in which he sounds like a member of Vic and Bob's parodical German rock group Wensleydale Cheese.

On New Year's Day 2024, I woke up from a dream where a publisher asked I'd be hitting my deadline for a book about Depeche Mode's albums. I handed it over to him there and then - "It's already done", I said. I woke up convinced that I had written the damn thing and it was on my laptop. Anyway...

Even if Maduro were a greater monster than Hitler and his overthrow an unalloyed good that might be easily achieved through military action, such action would still require the approval of Congress. Any orders to act absent that approval must be refused by officers of the armed forces.

"Spare him his life from his pork sausages" etc.... #totp

Sorry I missed the intro for this "beautiful song". Is it FR David? #totp

What I love about "Glass of Champagne" is the way Sailor murmur "A little glass of champagne" for the backing vocals, as if the recipient is actually too young to be drinking alcohol. On one level it is a bit sinister, on another it reminds me of exciting family dos. #totp

Given that I've now had it stuck in my head all day, I have to say that: A. It's surprising STYTR wasn't a hit anyway B. The Darkness are one band who could definitely have covered it in the 00s and carried it off. youtu.be/EzLu9UH1XyE?...

Looks like Virgin Radio UK is going to be just Chris Evans and a load of voice-tracked presenters hardly anyone has heard of. From the latest Popbitch newsletter:

podcasts

I've actually just gone away to find out if anyone ever did cover It Bites "Still Too Young To Remember" in a pop style, as it feels completely plausible, but obviously nobody has. A possible tip for all you music business moguls out there looking for your next hit.

Dreamt last night that I was in The Works and found an old annual of a flop boy band called Bonce who were cartoonish "bad boys". Their arch enemies were Take That, or "Toke Fat" as they referred to them. Their biggest hit was a number 27 harmonised cover of It Bites "Still Too Young To Remember".

You'd think the British government (and everyone else still using X for 'reach') would not want to be known to be frequenting a platform that carries and actually generates child porn. And yet they keep posting there.

It's New Year, so time to look back and forward. These are 10 things I think we need to recognise in 2026. It’s a response to what I think are profoundly damaging mistaken assumptions I’ve heard and read from practitioners, journalists, and analysts in 2025. Warning: very long🧵

Just going to have another crack at spreading the word about this one, because the sound of the group is so bloody naggingly familiar. If you didn't listen when I posted it last time, have a quick go at identifying them.

Also found out today that the inventor of those whacky X Ray Specs novelty toys which were continually advertised in children's comics was a regular financial contributor to the KKK. God knows why I'm pulling so many of these rocks up. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_...

Sometimes during the post-Christmas down period, I find myself wondering about internet eccentrics of yore, and I remembed Scottish indepedence activist Peter Dow. You may remember him from this: www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-worl... What's he done since, you may wonder. Well...

These are the main problems London has at the moment, and don't let anybody kid you otherwise. I will also add that the largely non-white working class area I used to live in was far friendlier and more supportive than the supposedly "lovely" middle-class town I'm now in.

heykidsrocknroll.etsy.com is back, back, back! And for a limited time you can use the code MISERICORD for 10% off EVERYTHING! Treat yourself! Feed the machine!

Okay, I will preface this with the GIGANTIC disclaimer that I promise I know how this looks, and I *swear* this is not personally motivated: If you have an old #LiveJournal account, and it has things you still care about in it, download it or import it to Dreamwidth SOON. Details:

Sober thought following last night's NYE television - it surely can't be that expensive to try harder than this? Clive James' end-of-year summaries didn't look like high-budget spectaculars yet still hung together brilliantly. Last night's TV had an indulgent 'will-this-do' end-of-term feel.

Who at the BBC went "You know what would be great for a New Year vibe? The Kooks" and wasn't immediately yeeted out the building...

listening to the platitudes about togetherness and inclusivity as they set the london fireworks off, i was thinking both of how hokey they sound - the world is always much more messy than that - and also how much i will miss them if we get a farage sponsored fireworks display come 2029

I want Charlie Higson's testcard suit!

Just established for the first time that The Kooks are definitely not singing "I know, she knows, I'm not from the rustic". I always knew they probably weren't, I just couldn't be sufficiently arsed to find out.

Some fine news as we go into 2026 (although if this were Twitter, I'm sure the bots would flame me for saying so). www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/2573075...

Stories among staff at the BBC about what an arsehole Jools Holland is to work with are legion, and he adds absolutely nothing to New Years Eve. Why are we still doing this?

I see the Hootenanny is filled with people who were last famous 10-30 years ago. An interesting technique.

He’s just had his two-minute call for the live opening titles of Corrie.

Blog update: As The Mission rebounded to the NME indie number one spot in July 1986, we look at who featured lower down, such as: - Bogshed with "Morning Sir" - Age of Chance - The Creepers covering Brian Eno - Play Dead - That Petrol Emotion indienumber1s.blogspot.com/2025/12/80b-...

One of the things I find strange about ordering clothes off Vinted is that as soon as you open the package, you're hit with a whiff of somebody else's washing powder and fabric conditioner. It's as if you've just accidentally taken someone else's jumper from the launderette.

Out of curiosity, I just ran a few paragraphs from The Butchering Art through an AI checker and it got flagged: 88% AI. This book was released in 2017, and AI machines were subsequently trained off it. How many writers are getting flagged for AI because of the literal theft of their work(s)? Insane.

One comment I keep seeing on social media: "Politicians just aren't very knowledgeable on [topic] anymore" - referring to anything including science, arts & culture, education, healthcare. The more I think about it, the only things left they seem to excel in are Finance and Law.

As somebody else has pointed out, what's most stunning about these charts is Starmer's Reform voter approval rating has barely budged, despite all his hard work. There's no pleasing some people.