Some sort of windup

Hello here is my GDPL thing or whatever its called.  Its cunting EU law to put this dis lamer up, up.  If for whatever fucked up reason you want to follow then do so, I collect jack shit from you, If you still wish to follow me welcome aboard, if not fuckety bye.


I always wanted to do a sweary disclaimer like that, for the site. Would you like our cookie acceptance thing here goes.  This bastarding site uses fucking cookies. Are you OK with that shit. 

Worse this is not what I wanted to talk about.

We had our PC borked by the new creators update for Windows 10 and for a while we were without a mainline PC. This includes my aunts old Laptop which is more trouble than its worth and a found Laptop that runs linux.  Ever try linux, its serviceable I suppose but everything is open source so don't expect the mainline programs you use to be supported unless you install windows via Virtualbox or use WINE.

The case in point is this, I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of useful programs on Linux store (or whatever that I'd wish to use).  These are displayed here in decreasing usefulness,

VLC, Simple scan, GIMP, Libre Office and maybe Clementine or Krita, things with mostly good design except GIMP which at times is bastard obtuse.  What I would do for a modern DPaint for any system. 

Missing in action are but available XNView MP an excellent picture viewer that should be standard in any OS and Foobar 2000 which sadly isn't ported to linux but remains the best audio player I've used.  Top tip if your audio player wants me to make a playlist or import a playlist then were done.  I listen to CD's and import files individually or in small batches.

Finally there are those things that are designed by blind spastics, but because Linux they are system tools.  This includes Blender and Audacity but also includes most audio players which is why Clementine and VLC are excluded from the list.

Blender is a mix of renderer / animation package / video editor chained to a front end cobbled together from bits and pieces of a Picasso painting such is the level of obtuseness on display.

Audacity is an audio editor which thanks to playthrough mode allows you to capture stuff from real hardware and listen at the same time.  Just don't expect to edit anything as the controls are worse than useless, yes it has a nice load of effects to apply, but its moot if the whole experience is akin to editing with mittens on.  I have a paid version of Goldwave which is a dream to control and edit with its not multi rack like some but for my purposes streets ahead of Audacity. 

It shouldn't be this way, if you want linux to succeed you'll need to make more user friendly apps  programs to lure the punters in or at least Wine less painful.

Peace out.

Royal Wedding

I for one I'm glad this is over and that.  Its not that I don't like em, in fact I like the queen and such and have written about Princess Kates tits before, but fuck me, didn't it go on and on.  Had to resort to plugging in my headphones and blotting it all out, its the only way. 

They had a big screen up of this bastard too, in the town and a carnival atmosphere and its totally horrible.  Blanket wall to wall coverage, it reminds me of when children in need is coming up with the amount of ads you see of it.  Souvenir issues and the like, my favourite so far is the hideous swimsuit with Harry's chin acting as a sort of ginger minge substitute.

Ginger Minge

Mum of course has been watching it just to see what kind of dress Megan was wearing and ripping into  posh spice for looking like a corpse at a funeral.  But me its either shitposting or trying to ignore it completely (and failing).

Spooky Tape

Its Eurovision time again and Israel won it with what looks like Bjork Circa Homogenic era.  But we are not here for Bjork or Eurovision we're here because of a tape.

I don't know if I've ever talked about this before but we absolutely looked forward to going to my other aunts place at Dover.  It was a really old house based on the priory part of town and it was massively packed out with stuff and antiques over every surface.  The garden was similarly overgrown and there was talk of bodies being found  buried in the back yard (happily of long dead monks).  They had a well / pit by the back door which was cool.

Part of this is a spooky tape found chucked over their back wall when we went down for one of our rare visits. It was black with some paint on it and while I was certainly into my tapes back then this didn't get played for a while so when I did get round to play it it was certainly a shock. 

There was a creepy voice on it and such which was really spooky, we forgot about it but not before copying a hardcore compilation onto it sometime in 92.  We found it sometime later and with more of a tolerance of creepy shit decided to give it a listen.  I think it was recorded from a TV show or some sort which was cool, as the only thing I can remember it saying was Coming after you Stephen.  I'll have to dig it out and digitise it sometime when I'm done with my records.

We need to talk about Apu

So this has come around again, Apu from the Simpsons is apparently voiced by a white guy.  Specifically Hank Azaria who is the voice of chief Wiggum among others (Wiki says  Superintendant Chalmers too, he of the enjoyable luncheon meme) but not Mr Burns as I originally thought. Apparently being a white guy and voicing an Indian character is bad mmkay and you should really give it to an Indian guy because current year and such.

It was always an odd thing to see Apu growing up.   Him behind the Kwik E Mart counter was such an English thing, as there is always an Indian run Corner Shop here.  I never saw any Indians on US TV growing up (what imports we got back then), never any allusions to curry or any other south Asian cuisine and certainly never any Gurdwara or Hindu Temple let alone a small shrine to Ganesh that Apu has in his shop 

I didn't really care about this to begin with, as to be honest, the Simpsons has been dead to me for ages.  Its gone from a definite stop everything and tune in to Sky One at 6:30 to a gradual levelling off of interest, to plain indifference once the new season comes on Sky.  In fact replace Simpsons with Sky one and you'd have my reaction to the channel itself but that's beyond the point.

To be honest Apu was one of my favourite characters along with comic book guy and Lionel Hutz (voiced by the much missed Phil Hartman) he was always treated fairly and off all the characters seemed to have the better deal.  I grew up around a big Indian community and hung out with the kids at school and  no one really gave a fuck about his race or that.  (they mainly argued religion and the perennial shitness of the England cricket team as a bonus I learned a few curse words in Urdu which is nice).  Its only recently that its become a problem, and which I give you this conundrum.

Even if you get an Asian guy in to voice act, you'll have to keep his accent the same.  Because if you weren't born here (and I remember the episode where Apu takes his citizenship test) you'll keep your accent no matter what.   His kids though should be more American than the Americans as they're born here, just like it is in real life.