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As part of adjusting to this 9am - 1pm work routine (which may turn into a permanent thing but I haven’t heard yet so we’ll wait and see) I’ve noticed that when I get home around 1.30 my mind treats it as the “end of the day” despite having only worked for four hours. So I have a bit of food, putter on the ‘puter for a while and at around 5pm start feeling a little sleepy. This, of course, is a bad thing. If I do try and get 20 winks they turn into 20,000,000 winks, because I’m shit like that, and I end up not getting a decent night’s sleep. So to try and rectify this I’m experimenting with a brisk walk as soon as I start getting dozy using the camera as motivation to do so. I’m drip-feeding the photos into Flickr (most will end up in the Bournville set) but this one came out very nicely:

I always like that moment when you see something you know really well from a completely different perspective. If I manage to keep this afternoon walk thing up I expect this to happen a fair bit. Maybe I’ll even hit that magic moment with that darned Rest House. Such an icon and so hard to shoot right…

On my journey to work there’s a rather steep hill which appears just as I’m getting to my destination in a most annoying fashion, but the thing about hills is while they’re a bitch to go up they’re triffic on the way down. This particular one also has a slight bend it in and not much traffic so speeding down it in top gear with my peddling failing to gain traction is great fun with the added bonus of being able to take the subsequent not-so-steep hill without changing down. There’s something very rewarding about getting to the top of a slope and realising you’re still in maximum gear rather than having had to click down.

But today, as I began my descent, a strong gust of wind hit my body slowing me down. While it did mean I didn’t make the next hill in top gear it wasn’t the end of the world, but it did get me thinking, not for the first time, about that bane of the all-weather cyclist - the wind.

What is it with wind anyway?

Sure, I understand the basic principles involved - that warm air rises causing cold air to rush in and fill the gap, hence wind - but what gets me is how something strong enough to physically move massive objects can be invisible.

Of course, air has form, being made up of, primarily, Nitrogen and Oxygen atoms, and it’s these, when put under pressure, which are slowing me down. I get all that. I just can’t get my head around the fact that I can’t see it.

If you get hit by a thing with a significant amount of force you’d expect to be able to look at that thing, but one of the most powerful manifestations of energy around is completely, utterly invisible to the human eye.

It sure do weird me out.

Okay, I’ll own up. One of the reasons for my lack of blog postage was discovering Veronica Mars, a television program originating from the United States. It’s being broadcast on some cable channel over here but naturally I acquired copies via the BitTorrent network. However, unlike most shows I didn’t have any obligation to feel like a rip-off pirate or to come up with whiney justifications about how I wouldn’t have watched it on broadcast or paid for the DVDs, because while viewing it I was exposed to countless adverts, not in the act-breaks which were edited out as usual but within the show itself.

Product placement is nothing new (it’s always entertaining how ubiquitous Apple computers are in TV world even though they always seem to be running the Animated Graphic Operating System) and can lend a sense of reality to the proceedings, but in Veronica Mars what used to be a glimpse of something has been developed into full-on endorsement. I first noticed it in an early episode where two of the characters were driving around. Suddenly there was a lull in the script, a moment of contemplation punctuated by the line “I really like this song”, drawing the viewers attention to a track by The Postal Service ostensibly playing on the car stereo. Later on two characters exchange email addresses both @aol.com, someone thanks god they “TiVo’d it”, a class has a competition for finding information on Google, cars are specifically identified by make and, most amazingly of all, Apple computers (as favoured by the resident cute geekette named Mac) are shown actually running OSX. And that’s just what I can remember.

It helps that Veronica Mars is a high-school based drama based in a city with stark divide between the very rich and the very poor so the former have access to all the cool gear and given that teens do tend to define themselves around music (insert obligatory MySpace reference here) and cutting edge “stuff” it doesn’t disrupt the show too much despite the audacity of it, but it does signify an interesting trend in that the appearance of all these things are blatantly paid for. It’s like the producers know that given their young demographic a significant number of viewers aren’t going to watch it as broadcast. They’ll be downloading it or watching it time-shifted on TiVo without the ads or, eventually, watching a DVD years in the future. For this audience the adverts that traditionally pay for the show are non-existent, but the show itself, if popular, will be around forever.

Of course in this case a plethora of product placement isn’t overly intrusive. In fact it’s oddly refreshing to see teenagers using and referring to products and services as they would in the real world - that weird-assed search engine Willow used in Buffy always struck me as unrealistic, regardless of all the vampires and demons about the place. Of course for something like Battlestar Galactica you’d be hard pressed to push anything other than a recruitment advert for the US army and, flashbacks aside, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for character endorsements on the Lost island so the scope for this kind of advertising is somewhat limited.

Oddly, given my somewhat aggressive stance on advertising, I don’t feel that strongly about this, possibly because in order for it to work it can’t be allowed to disrupt the show itself, especially when dealing with a savvy media-literate audience. My main problem with adverts is how they jump up and scream in your face at the most inopportune moments. Here they just float around adding a bit of depth (or shallowness) to the characters, occasionally functioning as devices to push the plot along, and since the plot is all in these sort of things that’s not a problem.

As for the show itself, Veronica Mars is okay. It could be described as a bit like Buffy with a dose of Beverly Hills 90210 (which I’ve never seen but you get the idea) crossed with Raymond Chandler lite. The script is occasionally very funny and the plot torturously complicated owning a lot, methinks, to 24. It also does that “series arc” thing with everything leading up to one big conflab, which is nice and keeps the attention. I wouldn’t recommend it unreservedly but if you like this-sort-of-thing then this is a good example of that.

Christ, I’m on a drought! Four posts to this blog in the last fortnight and only two of them actually had any real writing in them. Not sure why exactly - the usual excuses are just excuses and not having anything to write about is no excuse for not blogging. It was suggested to me that the adjustment into actually having a routine in my life might have something to do with it, but whatever, it doesn’t matter.

What I do know is this anticyclone of meh will break sooner or later (this may even be the start of it, who knows?) but the silence was deafening even me.

So, what have you been up to? Feel free to use the comments to plug whatever you’re involved with. I’m genuinely interested and will post the ones that grab my eyeballs in the blog proper.

Zowee loo blup roo dabba dobba yap tizzle? Duh zingle quabblewow. Waggle blab? Woogle quabble dubbadang, “blo duh zip zang,” yap The Flaming Lips slop yada Birmingham Academy bleeb-wow April 24th doo loo! Gobble doo hum plop-zingle!! Hum shnozzy wooble nizzle dabba yap blong. Zongle crungle weeblewiggle, “blup loo ho wiggle,” ho wow zangle dilznoofus zip cringle-wubble…bling roo boo! Blip shnozzle boo blong dee weeble? Yap blabbing tang wuggle jingle yap blap. Flanging dang woogle!

Boo dongle …blobbing jangely wackodong. “Zip zangle loo?” blip Wayne Coyne doo dubba duh bang crangely blobbloo, ha zungle quabble roo bloobing zunkcringle flib. Dee fluppity blippity bleebing loo slop zap twaddling blangtwaddle. Shrubbery wiggle? Zip bleebing blobbing crungely boo flab ho bluppity dazzleflap. Zangle flibble? Blong yip izzle flub? Nip flong yap flib crangely jinglehizzle, bam dong cake zip blappity bleebzunk blung. Bing loo tizzle dee whack bleep zip tongle?

Plop zang flobblap, “ding nip yap shnizzle,” da zong wobble nip zangle-blap…tizzle zap doo! Yip flibbing dubbaweeble! zoom shnozzle dee wow floo shnuzzle hum flub. Nip jangely plop flib dingle zip flong. Yap zongle dee wooble tangity bananaramablee, nip waggle floo zap jongely doofwiggle quibble. Ha ingle…shizzely raz-ma twaddleslap. Flang dazzle do-da roo crangleflib??? Zip dingely blatwiddle! Blee! Roo zuppity cringely flopping hum ongle duh blappity noodleflib.

Abracadabra funky yip slopcake??? Blabbity bleepwooble. Hum slop dee tongle tongity yadawhack, yip tang flibble roo izzle zongblup meep. Dabba dee quibble zap blip-razzle!! “Zip flib nip?” blab flobtang. Ling blung shizzle roo zung fling ongle yap cringle. Blong zap dingle-blob. Zap flabbing dubba zingle zungle boo blob. Hizzle zowee ting a boo blabdingle??? Ha zupping blabbity nippy hum zonk bam blobbing shnazzledobba.

Wobble boo shnaz zip bleep hizzy da flip? “Da flibble loo?” woggle. Waggle bizzle razzblab, “woggle nip zip woggle,” da The waggle dongle hum funk-jangle…wibble da roo! “Doo tongle ha?” jingle . “Yip meep ha?” shnizzle hizzyfunk. “Loo blob loo?” flang. “Da zangle zap?” blo. Jingle yip blip-wobble. Quabble boo blup loo quabble dang ha fling? Zip blobbing dingely flabbing loo wibble hum bleepity crongleblong.

Funk blip flubbing loo flapslop??? Bleep! Zip flangity floppity zang a roo zowee nip zonkity zanglezungle. Wiggle bam dabba? Wooble yap slappy bleewoggle. Jingle ha shnozzle bam flub-flang!! Funk dabba bam zungle roo zowee? Shnizzle nip flongity rizzlemeep. Hizzy nip dang yap crongle-bleeb!! “Zip bling da?” crangle shnozzledingle.

Tangle razzle dingle zap bleeb ingle wuggle boo woogle. Hum blongity gobbleabracadabra! “Ha quibble yap?” shnuzzle. Boo tingity izzle flobbing ha shnoz roo zappity flingdizzle. Dang ho quibble blop. “Yip dee?” shizzle Wampi. “Boo funk zip?” blip quibblezing. “Zip shnoz ho?” dongle quabbleblab. Ho funk You…flungity sloppy shnazzlebling. Dee ting a woogleflab!

Thanks to Blippity Fling-Flang for helping put the indescribably wonderful into words. I may write a proper review once my head stops spinning but don’t hold your breath. Gig of the fucking century!

So I popped along to the Sunflower Lounge on Smallbrook Queensway for the inaugural night of Robot vs Dinosaur and it occurred to me that I don’t often go to these sort of things, club nights based around a loose theme that don’t take place in nightclubs, but this one seemed worth supporting, not least because if it does prove popular they’re looking to expand into putting on actual gigs. The music promised to be a load of stuff I liked along with a bunch of things I suspected I’d probably like and proved to be fairly accurate, if quite hard to pin down. These genres of music can quite comfortably sit together but once you bring in any descriptives or examples, such as “electronica”, “post-analogue” or “blippy bloopy noise” you start excluding whole chunks. It’s probably best described as that weird but nice music you hear when you’re sitting in your mate’s living room, the guy with the “eclectic” tastes. Or if you are that guy, it’s the sort of music you wished they played at clubs rather than going for the most tedious common denominator. Above all the music didn’t operate in an exclusive manner. Aficionados could sit and chinstroke while the rest could treat it as interesting wallpaper, which is how it should be.

The living room vibe a fairly accurate description of how the thing felt making the event a much more convivial than is usually the case. I was struck by how a gap was being filled for people who explore the interesting edges of the Birmingham music scene, giving them an actual club in the social sense. I’m quite interested in the establishment of nodal points within wider scenes which serve to filter out the crud (trust me, it’s slightly more fascinating than it sounds) and this seemed to serve that purpose well. Any flyers for gigs picked up there would come with an implicit endorsement of quality, for example.

Personally I had some nice chats with Alex, Matt, Chloe and Seb who organised the thing with Ben, who turned out to be in The Hubble Constant and have one of my photos of them on their MySpace page. Some other connections were discovered on my return home which confirmed what I already knew - the Birmingham music scene is as intertwingled as world of bookselling, and in many cases overlaps.

So, a good night (with a fair turnout for a new event on a rainy Wednesday) which I’d recommend for a drink and a chat or some hardcore networking, whichever floats your boat. I took a bunch of photos, ostensibly for Seb to use, and I was fairly happy with a few which you can find here.

[Update: I've added another 10 photos which Seb wanted copies of. Same link]