Sound Round up of the year.

You had the TV best of last time and today is the return of the best of the year in music. There is one change that we undertook at work which means we swapped Kiss FM for Heart so I don't have to listen to awful kids trying to rap anymore. Also its rather weighted towards the last few weeks as some excellent new stuff either was released or was remastered instead. The Smile Don't Get Me Started. Or what Thom Yorke did after Radiohead. Sophie Ellis Bextor and David Arnold As Long As I Belong To You. Been watching the Mog Christmas special and was blown away by the charm of this. Its just a nice song about the cat books a subset of us read growing up. Kerri Chandler Songs about my Dad (Mixmag link but Bandcamp is broken) A tribute to his father, a free download from bandcamp of 73 classic house tracks, mixes and sketches from one of the best. I'm still not through listening to these yet. Modern Analysis Kaotic Dilemma I guess they do make 'em like that now. A big ol tribute to the Belleville Three. Just a love letter to the Detroit sound. Steve Moore Eye of Horus From the Album of the same name. All that I said about the above track being a throwback to the good era of techno can be read here. Freddy Fresh Benevolent A.C.I.D. This is what I mean about last minute stuff. This only came out last week and I only know about it because Fred himself posted it up on Facebook. You want the title track if you have any love of Acid. Epitaph is still the best Freddy Fresh Acid track but, by golly this comes close. Hardfloor Still lost in the Silver box. This is up on Youtube as well and you get updates to Acperience (6+7) along with a few other tracks. Yet more acid and another late entry. Two From Aphex Finally its been a good year for re-releases. Marc Archer's dug out a long lost Nexus 21 album, Orbital have an expanded version of the Green album and there's a 30 anniversary version of S.A.W.2. Complete with soundcloud tracks and that but no N64 soundfont version of Rhubarb. Also all the music from the Merch racks got a digital release last week. So if you want Nightmail or any of the other festival only tracks and don't want to chop off a limb to own it. There up there. All together now, this is the nightmail crossing the border bringing the check and the postal order.

TV round up of the year.

Its this time of year and I've got a round up of all old television I've been watching this year as well as this years Miranda award. David Attenborough and the Sea Monster. Got an hour to watch and want to know why the BBC license fee is semi worth it in 2024. Its this. Two guys find a massive Pliosaur skull on the Jurassic Coast and they piece it together to make a prehistoric sea monster. If you don't have a license then Arrow DL will actually grab this. Food Unwrapped in Korea. I don't like Korea, I think its just a plastic Japan, but I do like food unwrapped, and especially Kate Quilton. So this is my favourite highlight of the year, her and some bender digging up penis worms with some old guy. Its little things that make this what it is. Spike Milligan The Unseen Archive. One of those programmes which takes a look back a comedy legend. Growing up in India he learned how to speak some Indian and there is a nice clip of him talking to an old Indiian guy in the audience of if I remember, this is your life. My notes say he owned a weedle in the 80's and will have to see if I can grab this or recorded it.

Bettany Hughes in Turkey. Forget what the show is but she visits Arlsantepe in Turk-e-yay. Where they look at the motherfucking master sword from the Zelda games. Its not actually but its the worlds oldest sword and has the triforce markings on it. So its the proper Master Sword. Finally the last of the good ones. Michael Palin in Nigeria. A tour of Nigeria. And a focus on all the wrong stuff. I know we are supposed to be looking at the horrors of slave trade, as the beach they were sent out across the atlantic. Something we could have easily avoided just by doing what we did in Australia and send out the native population instead of, well, this. All I could think of is that, there were a heck of a lot of crabs on that beach. Oh and for the sheer coolness of the warriors up at Kano in the north. You want black knights for you DnD campaign, take a look at them warriors Dungeonmasters and say you're not inspired. The Miranda Award for sheer Television barrel scraping goes to. Doctor Who... Where we got rid of Jodie Whittaker and he regenerated into gay Andi Peters. Shit powered baby satellites, evil Drag queens (come on you can do a slasher horror about drag queens make em the next clowns). But mostly for Dot and Bubble a show about being anti racist and white privilege only to find out Stargate SG1 did it a lot better back in the nineties.

Stone Idols.

Here is The Stone Idol Hardy boys mystery, and the point where I think the whole series jumped the shark. Wiki says its brought about by the popularity of Indiana Jones, but it really doesn't fit in with that. No tomb raiding or mysterious artefact apart from the aforementioned stone idol. Just a wild goose chase and two different stories that don't really gel together. There are at this point no differences between the US and UK texts. All spellings and terms are the same. So it's a choice of if you want either Mystery number 63 or 65. The story starts off with a newspaper advert and a number for the boys to call. A Mr Kimberley of South American Antiques reports that a stone idol from Easter Idol has gone missing. The boys travel to Chile where South American Antiquities have their headquarters and with a cryptic clue find it hidden behind a painting in the head office. And there it all unravels as its stolen again and they chase it across the Andes, take a break to work on a case for their dad in the Antarctic before heading back to Easter Island where the Idol is recovered. I won't spoil the end but it's a nothing mystery and for me jumps the shark. It seems that whoever ghost wrote this read Thor Heyerdahl's Aku-aku. So you get some facts on Easter Island and a visit to see the famous Moai Heads. I know this would carry on for 120 or so books give or take. But in the UK where the series ended with the 87th, this is the equivalent of the last season of a popular show where they officially ran out of ideas. Anyway both can be found for reading here US and here UK.

Doing a feminism

There is a few weird stories in the Mail (no surprise there then.) that revolve around sex and that. One is about men not calling out the men who had sex with Lily Philllps, and the other is why does misgoyny still exist in France because Madame Pelicot and something something about a sex club nearby. You know my thoughts on this by now. I'm not antipron by any means and that.So we'll tackle them in order. Because it seems no matter what a woman does voluntarily these days its always, always not her fault if it goes tits up. I've seen Lily Phillips porn (its on the main TGP sites and not just Onlyfans) and she's actually quite posh with the accent and that, I'll give a solid good luck to you, girl. I've sadly read the article and while it does blame the men it also goes after slapheaded pimp and closet bender Andrew Tate. She's also shocked that it's not the flasher mac brigade but normal run of the mill men who sign up for this. Oh there is plenty who will call out Andrew Tate, and who think he's a joke. Incidentally his server got hackedwhich Malwarebytes are calling hilariously insecure, just like the simps and chumps that fork over money to hear this mid atlantic voiced gimp, voice his dubious lines about women. The other one is a strange apples and oranges type affair a swingers club / private members type club with single men paying a premium. And it's of course in France and is being compared to the Gisele Pelican case where she was drugged and taken advantage by her husband and willing men. Its a swingers club with a gang bang night, everyone there is a consenting adult and paid to get in, definitely not the case with Madame Pelicot. Like I say, you know my stance on porn, I'm all for it, I get none as it is. So this is my sex life. I maybe a self loathing incel but the women who do the whole porn thing I'm all for. EDIT. As this post is officially in the shitter with Google. You may as well have a bonus vid on Tate's server woes here. Oh and Mr Pelican got 20 years in jail along with 50 yes 50 other men. He's lucky France doesn't have the death penalty any more.

Is the alt right, all right?

Been reading a lot of alt right stuff on X (side note, I remember this being the US equivalent of E's back in the day, maybe that's what it takes to read what's left of twatter now.) and they're losing it over Reform not being hard enough on immigration and stuff, whereas before they were happy with them and it makes me wonder, what does the alt right / far right or whatever they call themselves actually want. Oh I know its sending them all back, but there's degrees of sending them all back. Me personally, I have this mantra of people come and people go, and want the levels to be at the level when John Major was in power. But others its no immigration at all. So I'm saying this for a friend, what is it you wan't regarding incomers and the like.

Vanishing thieves

Book 64 here in the UK. A nice tale about the boys going to L.A. to track down a 1913 Liberty Head nickel once owned by Chet Morton's Uncle. The Vanishing thieves part comes from a sub plot where a car theft ring is stripping cars down for parts and Chet's Cousin Vern has his car stolen. A few times they try to catch them at it but in all cases the gang disappear and set up shop elsewhere. And finally seeing as Joe Hardy is tipped overboard by the thugs and is rescued from a shark attack by a pod of dolphins, this is officially where the series jumps the shark*. A good tale with a good balance between numismatics and car theft and its not often you can say that. You can read the original here and the UK version here there is no difference between the two sadly. *The actual place where the series jumped the shark is The Stone Idol a nothing burger of a case where the boys travel to Antarctica for reasons.