B 2

Just having a morning coffee break and Queen from our immense 'bibliotheque' gives us 'Radio Ga Ga', and how long ago was that? We listen but don't hear? What does it take to make you hear? Al Gore, a wannabee politician/hero gets the Nobel Prize? The BBC is 'restructuring for the 21st century' and culling heaps of staff, to produce what? A whole fucking nation owns the BBC, and for the best part of a century it has done an excellent job; what pack of finely dressed suits is laying that trip on that nation? And what does anyone care? I had to rely on a BBC transmission from thousands of miles away to be informed of the most important news of my life, and now with the fucking useless satellite coverage, fucking noise/pollution/broadcast TV/radio, and the rest of the crap communications we are sucking up as fast as our vacant heads can suck, (short break?) I'm running out of brain power to remember just where I was; we are going to lose possibly the last decent source of sensible information supply. Who cares? Well, with all this internet connectivity we wallow in, how about surprising me and communicating severally, forcefully and promptly to get these knife hands at the BBC to back off. And to cap a thoroughly flattening day, I watched the technological wonder of an unprecedented amount of remote, overhead camera coverage of an extremely mediocre rugby final, where, thankyou wizards of the remote camera mentality, I was successfully removed from identifying who (you know, faces?) was doing what (yay, slow rotation of the camera, yay!) and it must have cost a bomb. Yeah, 21st century Bozos. (Are you proud of them? Do you enjoy that kind of irrelevant investment in worthless technology?) Nuff said.

A 2

That spastic decoupling from reality; 'Air Guitar' seems to me to be what ambition has become, as talent really disappears from our world propelled by the electronic 'feature creep' of every device offered to elevate our enjoyment of life's experience. OK; Imogen Heap, maybe pulls it off; Tom Waits pulls it all back again. I love music and musical instruments; a Buffet Crampon bassoon, in pearwood, is a thing of absolute joy and beauty, and a Bruno guitar, with its plain wood body painted in 'trompe l'oeil' rosewood grain, adds remarkability to a very plain thing, but to have the talent and sheer ability to get a decent sequence of notes out of either is being drawn away by the electronic marvel of the keyboard/synth, to the detriment of my children, and yours, too I expect. (I see the 'progress' in Korea and shudder for that view of life.) I have more guitars than children, and my children have always been given a copious supply of instruments to enjoy/investigate, but despite being thus encouraged, the violin, cello, oboe, and guitar tuition they have asked for and received has gone nowhere; (I'm told that putting down the violin, doing better at school, and being rewarded with a windsurfer is the way to go...) Now in the fullness of life, they play nothing. Did they really drop this pleasurable study to improve their education? I regret I have more qualification than all but one offspring, and so I regularly address this issue, as a natural observation of the youth of today and society's continued evolution. 'Popstars' is of course a different sort of talent quest, and I leave it to the proponents. My admiration goes to the pair of bods who dreamed the concept up in the first place, and there goes the truth of it; dream something up and make a global hit of it; there will be a short attention span for such stuff, but you'll get your fame better, with a bigger chance, than that clever, clever lady with the cello 'twixt her thighs... Nuff said.