124: Musik, essen und the Lazarus taxon

I didn’t make it through a full day at work today.  Turned up late due to a sudden vomiting attack, and when staring into the sink at the remnants of cheese and mushroom from last night’s pizza I should have cut my losses and phoned in sick.  Instead I braved it and spent the entire time aching, retching and producing stinking burps.  Fortunately it was quiet and I was able to go home to bed, where I drank plenty of water and eventually managed some soup and some crunchy roast corn snacks.  I bought some frozen salt and pepper chicken wings on the off-chance I would want to eat, but was disappointed to find I had accidentally got Chinese flavoured legs and thighs.  That will not do.

 And what exactly is ‘Chinese flavour’?  I’ve had Chinese food before and it has more than one flavour to it.  In fact the umbrella-term ‘Chinese food’ includes more than one type of food.  There is rice and noodles and many different sauces and meats.  And that’s just the sort of Chinese food available in England.  In China they have scorpions and toads and fertilised duck eggs too.  To conclude: whoever is charged with authoring product descriptions for Co-op supermarket is guilty of cultural reductionism and obfuscation.

Chinese flavoured food

 So from my temporary sickbed I have little to report, except that it has a satisfactory comfort level enabling me to make regular transitions into somnia.  It is flanked by a towering Babel of books and looked upon by the world’s window aka the internet.  It’s a pretty safe and sound situ for one to stay and rest.  It’s also the kind of place where I make obsessive-compulsive decisions like writing a daily blog, and my most recent one, to listen to all 1001 so-called Albums to Hear before You Die.  This has the painful inference of having to endure extremely awful ‘really important’ music like OK Computer, Robbie Williams and System of a Down.  But I will undoubtedly find some good stuff amongst the generic stuff you are supposed to like.

Tomorrow I will rise like Lazarus, like Christ, like the Coelacanth, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, like Dumbledore and Harry Potter, like The Terminator, like a zombie with undamaged brain.  I will rise from my bed and go visit my family taking time out to go and see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. It’s going to be legen-wait for it-dary.  Yes, cynical, moaning, grumpy, serious, old before my time me is excited as a school girl about the new movie.  Perhaps not in the same way as a school girl but you know what I mean.  (Who are you anyway?)

Latimeria chalumnae

 Despite the ever present threat of headache re-emerging I have decided to go ahead and stick those earphones in my waxy holes and pump Deutsche Elektronische Musik directly behind my face.  The cavities of my cranium are choc-full of Can, Kollektiv und Amon Düül II.  And there is plenty more where they came from.  The opener to the album, Aspectacle by Can, amazed me by its similarity to Squarepusher’s frikkin auwsum elbum Music is Rotted One Note.  But hell these are long songs; not sure how much more I can take.... just.... one.... more.....