Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansions
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.

-Dylan

Tragedy in Moscow. I remember when a bomb went off in the underground floor of the Okhotniyy Ryad shopping mall next to the Kremlin. This is going to have serious repercussions, with Medvedev speaking in emotive terms.

Blair joins the Fray. Blair praises Brown. Desperate times with desperate measures indeed.

Rooney Injured. Munich pay back for 1999 with 2 late goals to finish 2-1 up in the first leg against Man U. But England fans will be more concerned about Rooney limping off at the end.

Ricky Martin is Gay. Whod’ve known?

I got this film through the post (via LoveFilm) and was disappointed at seeing the title. I didn’t remember choosing it and worse, it was rated 15 (I swore to myself as a child that as soon as I could legally watch 18 Certificate films I wouldn’t bother with any other type. I mean, what’s the point?) so I expected I had added it to my list while having a fit of “Culture Guilt”. This obviously meant the film would be “arty”, which in the world of DVDs mostly equates to ‘boring’.

But I was wrong. This was indeed a rather slow-paced movie, with the one lead actor on screen 95% of the time. But this wasn’t art, it was sci-fi at its simple, emotive best. Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell, an employee of a large organisation working alone on a 3-year contract on a far-side lunar base helping extract helium for use on Earth. He has an accident and then discovers a chilling truth about his existence on the moon. The film is a great example of what can be done with a good storyline. It stays firmly in classic sci-fi territory, but manages not to feel dated at all. I was quite moved by the film and delighted I saw it.

Apparently it’s won Best British Independent Film 2009 (2 wins, 7 nominations), and was nominated for 2 BAFTAs in 2010. Well done Duncan Jones for his directorial debut. All on a budget of $5 mill.

Sam Rockwell is really convincing in his role. And casting Kevin Spacey for the voice of the robotic-servant module GERTY 3000 was sheer brilliance.

Spotted: Best newspaper story headline of the current year (so far) in the free Metro.

Regarding the England Cricket team to line up against Bangladesh –

“Cook copes without Onions”

Captain Alastair Cook was left without bowler Graham Onions after an injury.

“Mesdames et Messieurs, j’ai l’honneur de vais vous presenter le soir de African Soul Rebel.”

Only the greatest night! Like, what, forever!

It was Sunday night at the Bridgewater Hall. As ever, the moment of walking into Manchester’s Crown Jewel of Musical Experiences was one to be savoured. I had Ioan and Jessy for company, and as we sat at our Circle seats I wondered whether the artists I’d suggested we see would be met with approval.

It opened with a bang. The Orchestre de Cotonou, strongly reminiscent of Buena Vista SC and Orchestra Baobab yet memorable in their own right, were groovy and more suited to a open air beach bar where gorgeously honeyed people sip cocktails into the night, swaying along with the palm trees. The horns, the bass, the drums, the big band sound, yeah man. They’ve been going for almost 50 years, and listening to them really felt like a bit of a time-warp. The guys from Benin were over much too soon for my liking.

I’d like to stay positive about the second act, the Kalahari Surfers. I’m assured they played and continue to play a not insignificant role in the political arena of South Africa with regards to the anti-Apartheid movement. However, while listening to them the thought kept occuring to me that three people were jerking off on the stage and expecting me to clap. Perhaps all music doesn’t sound good in the Bridgewater, as I previously thought. I can tell you that their electro-funk / kindergarten-poetry-recital effort certainly didn’t. And talk about stage presence! I was bored so numb I actually closed my eyes and recalled with no small delight a memorable rainy day spent indoors watching paint dry. But the organisers are surely to blame for buying a bull and asking it to give milk.

But perhaps it was a well-engineered pause, before the total immersion ahead.

As we sat down for the third time, we saw musicians enter with the tamalane, flute, djembe and guitar. As they took their places, two lithe girls entered stage left with calabash in hand and walked to the right, the strings started plucking and they opened with the choral ‘Kayi ne Wura’ (Good evening to all).

How would I describe her music? The rythms are mesmerising and primal. And when she, not too often, just opens the throttle and lets rip there’s almost an audible rustle of everyone’s goosebumps across the hall. And the subject is very homely; women and their lot, love and respect. She has always been critical of the treatment given to women in her home-town Bamako, Mali. There is castigation, but there’s also hope. And not understanding a word only made it better.

The time just flew by.

I first heard Oumou from a CD I picked up at Manchester’s Central library. It was a BBC World Music compilation with the soulful ‘Ne Bi Fe’ (I love you), which I shamelessly ripped. It led me to finding the 2-disc compilation album ‘Oumou’, which I treasure. I’ve now bought her new ‘Seya’ album.

Merci beaucoup pour tout.

Dear Valentine,

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Valentine’s Day is just consumerist bullshit,
Now haven’t you got some ironing to do?

Tony “The Lapdog” Blair will be facing questions all day today regarding decisions made to send troops in to invade Iraq. So far the questions haven’t been very probing; he’s been allowed to ramble on about his opinions by a rather deferential Chilcot & Co. and seems to be in control of the proceedings even. Let’s see if he can (ever) be held accountable for his actions and if this time he can call in some favours from his pals in high places (there must be quite a few Lords owing him one) and find a weasely way out.

After all, it might set a bad precedent if our leaders had to explain their decisions..

On another front, can’t wait for Snowboarding Sunday! We shall be visiting the beautiful, staggering slopes of Val d’Trafford and make the run down the bone-crunching Le Chill Factore. Shoop shoop baby!

been out-of-sight-out-of-mind for a while. here are a few snippets, in the order i recall them:

1) avatar. one heck of a film an experience. my first 3D film, IMAXed it and sat with goggles over my customary goggles, and didn’t fidget for the entire two-and-a-half hours or so. more to my surprise, i was told i didn’t even make any sarky comments (obviously apart from identifying, for everybody’s benefit, the analogies being drawn from humanity’s chequered history).

2) dawkins. bought ‘the god delusion’ and the second reading has me thinking that perhaps i’m not agnostic (because i thought a true scientist would not assert an absence of a thing without definitive proof) but athesist (because gods are more hassle to explain than any other hypothesis). jury’s out on that one.

3) m2. got increased memory for my phone/walkman (yes that w word dates me) and am rollicking in choice, choice. no dj in the world would go from toto to chapman, ozzy to police, wishbone ash to e.s.t. also bought again the superlative enigma trilogy album after “somebody” kept my first which i loaned them. “somebody else” should also remember who the annie lennox ‘diva’ cd belongs to, as should “somebody else else” bring themself around to return carl sagan’s ‘cosmos’. you know who you are. the view i take on it (after the initial cussing because of the loss) is “damn, i’ve got good taste for people wanting to keep my books and music”. then i auto-fellate.

4) bulls. will be running with them, or being chased by them to be more accurate. pamplona, ready or not, here we come. anything to avoid being hit, chased, accosted or otherwise molested by tomatoes.

5) ligament. recurring ailment of (what appears to be) the lateral collateral ligament of my left knee due to ice-related slippage.

6) birthday. missed my darling sas’s. what kind of a cad would do that? i mean totally dolally forgot. i was expecting a dressing down, which would be severe. but ‘understanding’? oooh, i’m in for a decade of winters.

7) risk. it’s a strategy game. wine helps the playing. mebbe not the winning therefore it of.

8) scots. more of that should be coming up, watch this url. suffice to say i love them.

and missing the frankie boyle.

I’ve just started reading the first of Sergei Lukyanenko’s trilogy The Night Watch and it is a rip-roaring ride. Brilliant imagination has been melded into the gritty Moscow night-time like it was written at Kurskiy Vokzal at 3 a.m. Readers fond of foreign movies might remember the film ‘Nochnoy Dozor’ (literal translation) based on this book bursting out of Russian cinema in 2004. This is a great bit of mythology worked around a core of realism that is very gripping.

I will definitely buy this in the original Russian (still looking for where to buy it from), as there’s clearly been some loss in translation. And seeing shoddy English such as “…the train was already breaking as it pulled into a station” when I’m only 14 pages in doesn’t build confidence in the rest of the work. I’ve heard said, and agree with the fact that the language a translator is translating into should be their strongest. And with a name like Andrew Bromfield you’d expect the translator to know better. But maybe I should give him a brake (pun intended).

As an aside, I will point out that I rented this book from the library a while ago, and was in no way influenced by the recent spate of teen-vampire mush spewing out of all of Hollywood’s orifices.

Note: in today’s news, Dubai World’s failure to repay its debt has resulted in further loss of confidence in the whole Dubai rollercoaster. To quote: “Dubai could not undermine itself any further as a place not to do business in at the moment,” said Manus Cranny at MF Global. From BBC News, link