CRATE DIGGIN'

stumbled upon this morning: DIGGING INTO HIP HOP (dihh), "an experimental crate digging experience about 90's hip hop", made by some fellow named Valentin Ledrapier. VERY, VERY GOOD. looks beautiful. fun to use. it's dragged up some half-recalled tunes from somewhere towards the back of my brain. and it's introduced me to some gems that had escaped my notice altogether before today. because I'm not cool? because they came out at times when I had no way of being exposed to such stuff (i'm thinking of my Kielce & Kraków days, particularly)? at just about the half-way mark in terms of digging through the first crates put on the site by Valentin, these are my favourites:

• Simplē E: Play My Funk [1994]
• The Deckwrecka: Rice Cakes [1996]
• DJ Krush and Ronny Jordan: The Jackal (The Illest Mix) [1994]
• Das EFX: Jassummen [1992]
• 3 Steps From Nowhere: Pass it On [1993]
• Alps Cru: Intensity [1995]
• The Deckwrecka: Rice Cakes [1996]

oh joyous day, halloo kalay

stitched together a messy little bit of poesy ruddy ages ago - made up of bits 'n' pieces from there and there. there's a britney lyric, of all things, and all sorts of other detritus. some time after making it and putting it up here - sent it off to the good people of HAGGARD & HALLOO, an online and print publication based in Austin. Texas. these guys are PROLIFIC curators of stuff they deem to be creative and contemporary, publishing something new every day since 1999. 

anyhoo, the piece shuffled, finally, to the front of the queue and earlier this month it made it onto the Texans' site, albeit with the line breaks shot to hell, but that's really a minor thing. nice to see it there anyway and you may wanna look at the other stuff there.

spare 3/4 of an hour, mate?

... no?? then don't watch the latest from Back Ya Mouf. those globally expanding, videomagazining, plymouthoriginating chroniclers of the grubby life of alleyways, street corners & railway runners - well, the 7th vol. of their work is FORTY-TWO MINUTES long (the usual is 15). it's the usual sort of stuff, but with a bigger canvas. they Do Not Condone Violent Behaviour or Any Acts Of A Criminal Nature. who does? right? as hinted in the trailer, there's a dash of FCC action and some backchat from THE ARTIST TAXI DRIVER. musicaleclecticismmmmmm. Float Ma Boat and I'll Back Ya Mouf.

PART ONE
pARt two
pT 3.

trainspotting (runners)

always a pleasure to find this blog pimped out or bigged up somewhere nice. very much the case today with venerable scrapbook-cum-blog Hurt You Bad using a number of this is my england pix of FIRST CRAPITAL CONNECT choo-choos bedecked with RUNNERS:

... this is in the wake of the Back Ya Mouf mob doing the same... feelin the love here... 

for the uninitiated, a RUNNER, in this context, is a piece of graffiti seen by the public on a MOVING train. back in the late 1980s, the combined forces of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) had ensured that no graffitied trains were in service across the big apple's subway system. this policy has since been copied elsewhere, with london underground reportedly working to prevent any illicitly decorated rolling stock from being used. if they can't immediately get the graffiti cleaned off of a carriage, the story goes, the tube supremos take it out of service. perhaps the same usually goes for FCC, but Hurt You Bad and The London Vandal have both noticed a lot more runners of late on that part of our SE England railway network and others besides.  the latter blog theorises that this is about the olympic games - i.e. with tourists in town and claims made for the efficacy of our public transport, the train operators have let stock covered in graffiti out of the depot rather than take it out of use and thereby cause delays. as henry the mild-mannered janitor used to say, "could be". tho that said, this is my england has been spotting this stuff fairly regularly since as long ago as november 2011.

look closely at the coffee pot

Dave did this:

... so beau bo d'or did this:

BACK YA MOUF

tags, gags, raps, pranks; bins, sins, tins, dins & wobbly idents by reeky street drinkers; balefulbouncesoundtrack. thus are the videomagazinethingys of Plymouth's Back Ya Mouf; each fizzes on for like 12 or even 15 minutes that you'll never get back so think before watching a whole one; but this more bytesized-trailer for Vol. Seven gives the flava of it. looks like the boys (?) have shifted up from Devon to Londinium as we can see FCC trains and a microsecond of the Artist Taxi Driver; all good:



got time? want to see previous volumes? here they are (yes, #3 is missing)

VOLUME 6
VOLUME 5
VOLUME 4
VOLUME 2
VOLUME 1

fingers in a few pies

the photography here is often of a quotidian bent - the oddness of the familiar, the beauty of the ordinary, the striking nature of the commonplace. sometimes this runs to images that could cause an unbidden pricking of the tear duct, an unexplainable twanging of the strings of the heart. pathos is there, maybe. or bathos. or something. 


there are sites with which this one, then, have something in common - those that aggregate images that are a little bit sad in ways you can't always explain. some invite contributions. this is my england is keen to contribute and offerings of this sort have been accepted at:


Sad Stuff on the Street:

UNLOVED GLOVE:

more tory cumfaces

If you enjoyed the Many Cum Faces of George Osborne, you may want to check out the gurning expressions of blissful/painful release on the mugs of his colleagues, heroes and predecessors.

bluebird

Seems to be Bukowski day. Having dug up what seems to be Hank's last ever poem, have now stumbled on an ode to the faces and places of California, with images thereof mixed over the words (not read by Bukowski) of his little piece called 'Bluebird':



if this causes tears to prick at the corners of your eyes, you won't be alone in that. it was made by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari, the curators of a project designed to showcase the best of their beloved California. props to them for using the words of California's greatest writer.

sad stuff

see this here... this...
this small mauveish glove discarded among twigs and bark
at the entrance to the park,
it's a sad thing and
a heart string
twinges, twangs and
some little girl's fingers
are frosty nipped
this crisp morning:
"that's it,
i'm not buying you another pair, you
keep losing them, it's
a waste of money,
i'm not made of money, am i? 
i don't care
if your hands are cold, you
have to learn."

not the first time that unhappy discarded objects have shown up hereabouts. we've had:

• another kid's glove
• a stripy scarf
• a fallen angel

... and many more... these gloomy things are at the heart of the aesthetic here.

a kindred spirit, then, is the excellently lachrymose Sad Stuff on the Street - go there and submit yours

dealing in disappointment

Imagine living in one of the most affluent countries in the world. You always have more than enough food to keep you alive and in good health. You have constant access to clean drinking water. Your bodily waste is transported efficiently from your home to a sewage treatment plant that you have never visited. Your home is always warm, well-lit and dry. You are gainfully employed and a system of rules and laws ensures that your employer cannot force you to work in dangerous or insanitary conditions. In every week, you have at least two days set aside for leisure and to manage your personal affairs. A number of additional full days can also be set aside for you to take holidays. If you have children, they are provided with an education and are not expected to work for a living before reaching adulthood. Most of your fellow citizens are essentially law-abiding so the streets of your home town are safer and cleaner than in the towns of most of the world's countries. A number of industries exist purely to provide people like you with things and activities to keep you amused - professional sport, publishing, television, movies, video games etc.

But you are dissatisfied. You are dissatisfied because every day you see images of people whose lives appear to be much more comfortable and interesting than yours. They have more money. They appear to have many friends and to be adored not only by those around them but by millions of strangers whom they have never met. They are better dressed than you, wearing more expensive and well-made clothes, which fit them better and which are combined to form more stylish outfits. They have more attractive facial features than yours - better bone structure, no blemishes, straighter and whiter teeth, better behaved hair. They seem to burst with almost excessively good health and move with graceful ease. They wear wristwatches that cost as much as you earn in a half a year. They drive cars that cost as much as you earn in several years. They live in homes that cost more than you will earn in your whole working life. They are routinely congratulated for even their smallest achievements. They constantly receive compliments. When they express opinions, their thoughts are listened to carefully and shared via newspapers and other media. When they consent to be interviewed, it is inconceivable that they should be asked any questions that might cause embarrassment. To ensure this does not happen, contractual arrangements are put in place and carefully enforced.

You press your nose up against these lives. These lives are played out on your TV screen. These lives are described, down to the most banal detail, in magazines that you can buy in the supermarket, at the petrol station or in the ticket hall of a railway station. There exists a subspecies of journalists, employed only to gush enthusiastically about the minutiae of these lives. All the time. Every day. Over and over.

They look down on your from billboards. They smoulder at you during the advert breaks. You would recognise their voices with your eyes closed. You see their faces more often than you see your own mother's face. You see them thousands of times a day. Millions of times a year. As you drive to work, voices on the radio are chattering excitedly about their lives. When you get to the office, colleagues stand around the water cooler discussing these people's exploits.

On the same day, you are asked two questions. You are able to answer the first question much more confidently than the second one.

1. "Which of the Kardashian sisters is the eldest?"
2. "Can you explain the difference between the terms 'Great Britain' and 'United Kingdom'?"

The makers of numerous products and services imply that a little of the glamour will rub off on you should you spend your money on their wares. So you buy them. You borrow money to buy them. For a long time, you borrow this money in the belief that the next time you move house, the profit you make on the sale of your home will wipe out the debts you have accumulated buying these things. It's like a miracle. You get a modest pay rise. This allows you to borrow enough to afford a bigger home and pay off your credit card bills and personal loans. 

But then that stops working.

Even when it did work, the clothes, cosmetics and haircare products did not have quite the same effect on you as they seemed to have on the people on the billboards.

(video by Jesse Rosten)

fucking bacon

A crack salesman and noted gourmand returned to his desk with a man-sized lunch of fish 'n' chips. A big fan of generous portions of both salt and vinegar on his chips, he nevertheless lamented how soggy that latter condiment had made his meal.

"What I need," he mused, "is a dry mixture of salt and vinegar."

"Like vinegar flavoured salt?" asked a colleague.

"Yeah," came the reply, muffled by a mouthful of damp chips.

Then a light bulb appeared above the salesman's head. "I should make that," he exclaimed. "That's a cracking business idea. The market for that would be huge. Loads of people like the taste of vinegar but don't want soggy chips."

"I hate to break it to you," another colleague chipped in, "but it already exists. It took me about ten seconds to find it online."

Malt Salt, it turns out, is just one of a number of products developed by the seasoning geniuses of J&D's Foods of Seattle, Washington, USA - and the vinegar-flavoured condiment, by dint of not tasting of bacon, is not really part of the firm's core range. Founders Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow, after all, have developed an obsession for the taste of bacon and have gone on a mission to find ever weirder applications for the uniquely distinctive flavour of the cured pig meat. Often without actually using real bacon, it should be stressed. Some of J&D's products are, incredibly, even certified as Kosher.

The pair started out with just $5000 that Lefkow had won by submitting a winning entry to America's Funniest Home Videos. The bar must have been set pretty low for that particular episode of the show because Lefkow's clip of his son knocking a baseball at him is not exactly a rib-tickler.

From these humble beginnings, the self-styled Bacontrepreneurs have built an empire founded on the strong sales of Bacon Salt (bacon-flavoured powdered condiment) and whose range now includes:

• Baconnaise - bacon-flavoured mayonnaise
• Bacon Pop - bacon-flavoured popcorn
• bacon-flavoured croutons
• bacon-flavoured gravy

But these are the more pedestrian examples of working to realise the vision expressed in the company's slogan (Everything should taste like bacon). When really thinking out of the box, Esch and Lefkow have come up with truly outré offerings. These include:

• Mmmvelopes - envelopes with bacon-flavoured glue
• bacon-flavoured lip balm
• Bacon Lube - a bacon flavoured/scented massage oil and 'personal lubricant'

The last item in the list is real. Really real. What next? Bacon-scented anal beads? Bacon-scented condoms? Bring it on.

debts, goodwin, nana

that man (woman?), that persistent camden sloganeer,

he (she?) has been at it again, aiming barbs

at fred the shred and those who suggest

that blighty is in debt

like never before

yeah, yeah, anyway...

like the little sticker says

"WHERE'S NANA?"

not one english person on this bus

so we all get worked up and wordy

about the latest hoo-ha,

but sometimes lo-fi satire

really hits the spot

a first world pain

Are you one of the 320,830 people who follow @FirstWorldPains on Twitter? If not, you might like to. It's instructive.

From said Twitter account there emanates an endless stream of the kinds of complaints that only those of us who live comfortably in developed countries have the opportunity to make. It's like when you hear someone describing it as a "nightmare" when their favourite flavour of yoghurt is out of stock at the supermarket or when their flight to a holiday resort is delayed for a couple of hours.

Some samples

• My parents are threatening to take away my 2012 Cadillac Escalade if I don't get at least a C in all my classes.
• I ran out of USB ports on my laptop.
• I bought an iPad app for my cat to play with and he does't like it. 
• I have more shirts than hangers. 

You can even submit more first world pains if you want to.

A first world pain is affecting this is my england today. Suddenly, Blogger.com is reducing the size of uploaded pictures. It's a nightmare! A fucking nightmare!

Sunday 27 November: nice big picture in the light box

Thursday 1 December: shitty little picture in the light box

the whole bloody lot

For the umpteeth time, the multi-coloured proprietress of kinky-cultural site Bearded Eloise has been kind enough to get excited by a bit of this is my england poesy to stick it up at her place. This time she went for the recently hatched BOMB THE PAST, a short tale of t-shirts and memory decay. Cheers, my dear.


Any road up, do take the time to have a gander at Emily's other wares. She's recently been encouraging her readers to send in tales of their various sexual peccadilloes. Whips, chains, the whole bloody lot, as someone once said. If that's your bag, you should have a look, I suppose.

PROPS FROM/TO WASAPIX

WasaCom is a firm that aims to combine Swiss quality with Italian creativity and is active in multimedia content, web design and related fields. They operate a network of nice-looking blogs, including the picture-aggregation site WASAPIX.COM. This now recommends this is my england, describing it as "one of the best UK blogs around" and commending this site for its "positively colored urban visual emotion".

this is my england is happy to return the compliment, suggesting that readers have a good look around the SITUATIONALLY SUBJECTIVELY SUGGESTED goodies there.

tumblin'

this is my england is now mindlessly reblogging superficially attractive but meaningless images with the best of 'em. see. follow. like. reblog. repeat ad nauseum. then come up for air.

a thing all rough and longish haired

Right out of nowhere that (currently) turquoise-barneted webmistress Emily (sometimes AKA Isis Vox) of Bearded Eloise fame has approached this is my england asking for permission to reproduce one of this site's numerous POMES. Permission duly granted, it can be seen over at Emily's place right now.

Do have a peek at some of the other stuff there.

they might glare at you

Seen in shop windows already: masks, witches' hats and all that. Pomona. Parentalia. Samhain. It's coming. So get ready for back-to-back horror movies and the neighbours' offspring bothering you for sweets. Here is your Halloween playlist, courtesy of Guru Productions: