Diary of an up and coming sociopath

So. I guess a retrospective thing would fit nicely here. I’m going to be honest, I don’t generally care about the changing of years, I don’t get sentinmental about a date changing, nor about the beginning of anything new, today is only slightly different from tomorrow, which is only slightly different from yesterday. The fact that the day, month AND year are changing is nothing but maths. However, it does break your life up into nice little segments.

Ergo, a list, of what 2003 will be remembered for.

Starting a blog. It was something of a whim at the time, as much a challenge as anyhing, because I’ve always been hideously bad at keeping any kind of journal. However, lots of my friends had livejournals and being the geek that I am I wanted a slightly less off-the-shelf solution. Not so much that I went ad wrote my own like some people, but enough to download an opensource blog and use it to justify my purchasing of webhosting. Blogging has become a relatively significant part of my life, but I’ll probably talk more about that in a couple of weeks.

Those accursed Job Interviews. I’d almost forgotten, but the job interviews for Kraft spanned a good few weeks of the start of 2003. I’ll always remember leaving the Kraft offices and wondering just how the hell I was going to get back, when I hadn’t noted down the phone number of the Taxi firm. I became grateful for teflon on that day, walking back towards Banbury town centre in the drizzle, the kind of rain that floats in the air and sticks to your face in a fine sheen, that sneaks up on you and suddenly you’re soaking wet without realising how.

3CR in Leicester with Josh and Sam.I wrestled with it, but I choose this gig as my best of the year, and in a year that includes both Radiohead and Placebo, that’s not something to be sniffed at.

Paul and Relly. While I met Paul and Relly in 2002, I will probably remember 2003 as the year that I became friends with them on a proper level. It takes time to form friendships, I’m not the kind of person who’ll meet you once and be taking bullets for you next time we see each other, but Paul and Relly have become, in 2003, some of my favourite people. Even if Paul did send me a video once which contained the most painful and frankly, mentally scarring thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Many times I have abused their hospitality and to be totally honest, the only times I can think that I enjoy and actively assent to being taken away from my computers and DVDs for longer than a day are when Paul and Relly are on the other end of it.

Ian, Rachel, Debbie and Claire. Likewise, I will remember 2003 as the time when living in Oxford got really good. That’s not to say I hadn’t enjoyed it before, but between getting rid of Claire (Who I hated so much I was unable to even find a link to an example where I dwelled on that hatred.) and Debbie, having Ian move in and Rachel move to Oxford, it finally felt like being in Oxford was actually part of my life, rather than somewhere I went to school. That’s not to say Nikki and Tom weren’t good companions previously, it was just nice to be able to operate witha social circle as big as the one back home, for a change.

Seeing Douglas Coupland. He was just a really cool guy. I hope that should I ever become a successful author, I will one day get to do Readings and make Simpsons jokes in front of a room full of adoring fans.

Terminator 3 at Star City. A very cool evening out where me and some of my oldest, best friends went to Nandos, watched the long-anticipated (if underwhelming) Terminator 3 and then shot some pool, and played some arcade games. I don’t get especially excited at the thought of like, a “lad’s night out” but this is the closest I’ll get to that, and it was cool. It’s always funny to make something small like the release of Terminator 3 into a huge event like that.

That Muse Post. Yes friends, it’s always fun to take shots at the internet, but when the internet fights back it does so in the form of death threats and impeachment of my sexual orientation. Still, it’s always good for a few laughs, and months later it’s still receiving comments.

Gamestesting at Aqua. I avoid paid employment if I can, and occasionally, I find it hard to get. This gamestesting job literally fell into my lap and it’s simultaneously eased my life and made it a bit more interesting.

The Networking Poster. Well, we spat in the face of convention. Not just spat, in fact. We were given free reign to create a poster, and create we did! It was alla good idea until everyone turned up with professionally-printed sheets about Bluetooth, and suddenly our comedy Sneakernet option with fluorescent card, data elephant, and CD stuck to the front seemed like we might’ve gone too far. But no! We passed the module, in a flaming plummet of success! And, as a bonus, shown here on public display for the first time ever - the poster itself, both left (Ian top, Tom bottom) and right! (James Top, George bottom)

37 months of romantic union. Though…romantic is a charitable description of how my affection is displayed. Who of the rest of you has managed so long, huh? Losers.

And that’s 2003 for James. Still, most of you know this already, having had everything transcribed dutifully from day to day. The upshot, of course, is that I’d be hard pressed to tell you what happened in 2002, but I remember 2003 like it was yesterday (and some of it was.)

Coming in 2004? I can’t lie, it’s going to be more of the same. You can, of course, expect highlights to be: Graduation, the necessity of getting a job, and moving into a new house, in an as yet unchosen city. Beyond that, I don’t know. I can’t predict the future with a high degree of certainty. There’s only one way to figure out what the future holds, and that’s to go there. Often in some kind of giant time machine, but in the absence of that option, we’ll just have to take the scenic route and go one millisecond at a time. See you people on the other side.

Having investigated Buddhism some more (and if you don’t konw what I’m on about, go back a couple of entries) I tihnk I’ve found the really big flaw. I’m not trying to convert myself or deconvert anyone else, just gain a little understanding about another philosophy and why I agree or disagree. Bear with me:

Buddhism teaches karma, the idea that good acts bring you rewards and bad acts bring you punishments, just the idea that eventually everything comes back to you. It’s probably a good idea to avoid, for now, definitions of “good” and “bad” and indeed, the speculation that a good act can cause a bad thing to happen or vice versa.

Buddhism says that everything is transitory so you should free yourself from the desires of temporary things, posessions, relationships, these things shouldn’t be desired because eventually that causes sufferring, they shouldn’t be desired because everything is temporary - except for identity. Identity is continually reborn in a cycle of suffering and desire, the only escape being to reach Nirvana (the state, not the band) - and there’s my problem with Buddhism. I don’t believe in ressurrection, I don’t think identity is persistent and that in each new life your karma is carried over from the last.

Unfortunately, Buddhism therefore ends up containing one of the central flaws of most religions, the idea that you’ll one day be rewarded for arbitrarily “good” acts you do now. In Christianity, it’s heaven, in Buddhism it’s a life filled with good karma and the chance to attain Nirvana. Both of those things happen after you die, and neither come easily. Since I don’t think we have an eternal soul or that identity is persistent over several lifetimes - as much from total lack of evidence than from the science of it - I don’t see the point of subscribing to Buddhist doctrine.

As ever, the best option becomes to take from Buddhism the better ideas and use them to shape one’s existing philosophies, rather than subscribing to someone else’s. The idea of meditation amuses me because I spend so much time thinking about things anyway, forcing myself to devote specific time to it seems beyond superfluous. The claim seems to be that it just stops the world from getting on top of you and most of the time I find that avoidable anyway, probably because I tend to believe that things mostly work out for the best, so worrying about where you’re going isn’t half as important as how you get there.

With that in mind, of course, I have to question whether “suffering” in the Buddhist sense is even a bad thing. If it promotes personal change then surely that’s positive. I dunno. Dissecting eastern religions is new to me, I’m obviously not as clued up on those as I am the flavours of christianity. Still, I’ve devoted a lot of spare time to looking into it recently and I’m relatively satisfied that I’ve formed some valid opinions. I may have more to say on this yet, though…

Today has been a very active one, as far as the life of me goes. I got mum to wake me up at 10:30, which meant about an hour of confused writhing in a sleepy daze, before I dragged myself out of it and got to work. I say “work”, I mean catching up on all my pre-christmas ebay stuff. I successfully pushed my goal of liberating some of the crap from my ownership, and sent off a couple of CDs, and payment for a 2nd Amendment 6-track.

Once in town, I parked up after much holding-pattern circle driving (for truly it is the idiot who chooses to go into town for a ‘quick’ visit in the middle of the lunch hour…) and then went to the bank. That was relatively painless, but only because I was depositing money rather than withdrawing. I may have, for the first time in over a year, avoided extending my overdraft for the holidays. Joy! Does this mean, perhaps, that I’ve found the correct level of cash flow? Could it somehow be related to doing some work in the last 3 months? Well, I’m not one to speculate. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Let’s not jump to conclusions.

The post office was a much stupider affair. It was packed with all manner of people, making me wonder if Post Offices should be a little larger, and have a café-bar in. They could become real social hubs, you know. I debated, in my brains, the merits of starting up a postal service of my own, that’s entirely computerised. Post offices seem to be horribly inefficient and things like weighing for postage and form renewals could surely be done by some system of computerisation. Then I realised that it’s probably not cost effective to replace the infinitely replacable easy-to-maintain humans with a limited supply of expensive and hard-to-maintain computers. And then I realised that, as I understand, the sending of normal letters actually loses money for Royal Mail so there’s no reason to make it more efficient, because there are other areas worth concentrating on.

So for anyone wondering why I haven’t set up my own postal system, that’s it.

I later picked Nikki up from work and we went to the Supermarket so that I could do some shopping. I actually managed to buy some food for the week, though when I got home I realised I’d bought Turkey steaks. Like I haven’t had enough turkey recently… Oh well. We watched some more of Angel series 1, and then eventually I took her home.

That’s about it for the day. I watched more Futurama. My 2-episodes a day rule recently became a 4-episodes a day rule, which I unfortunately then exceeded. I have self restraint but when Futurama commentaries are involved, who wants it?

I don’t have much to say today, just went round Dad/Nan’s and had some kind of traditional Postmas beef dinner. Suddenly after Christmas everyone gets sick of poultry.

However, fans of my metaphysical and existentialist pretentiousness will be pleased to hear that I’ve suddenly written volumes about the stuff over on Rachel’s Livejournal. It’s mainly about Buddhism, but there’s a little about pragmatism in there too. I’d replicate it here, but it’d need so much rewriting if removed from the context it was created for, what’s the point? Just click up there.

Proper updates return tomorrow, I expect.

Well, Christmas is over. At least, I think it is. For all intents and purposes. I was quite surprised we still had the tree up when I went downstairs, actually. Today in town the shops still persisted in pumping novelty Christmas songs into our brains so I’m not entirely sure my admittedly rash assumption that the holiday is essentially over has reached everyone. Maybe we need a new name for the bit between Christmas and New Year’s, where people swap unwanted gifts and spend excess money before the sales begin in earnest. I can only think of “Postmas” but that’s not very good.

It was a terrible feeding frenzy today, of consumerism and money spendage. I find such things increasingly distateful, there’s a neocapitalist ideal somewhere I’m struggling to reconcile with such rampant displays of property pursuit but I become more and more disdainful of the whole process of extracting money from an overly stupid public. I’m still relatively certain a free market is a good idea, but I think the problem with the system is actually the people. If we could just bypass them everytihng would go smoothly. I believe Communism and the like have similar problems, actually, this is why I tend to abandon the pursuit of political ideals. No situation is ever ideal.

Anyway, that said, I did manage to further contribute to the world of literature by purchasing myself a copy of “If nobody speaks of remarkable things”, mentioned a few times previously. I’ve been reading Kate Atkinson’s “It’s not the end of the world” which is turning out quite nicely, the first 3 stories are all good but I’m wondering if there isn’t maybe a touch of surreality for the mere sake of it. I’m wondering if continuing to read will reveal a set of common themes but right now I’m left with the impression she attempted to write 3 Sci-Fi novels and got stuck after the opening act. I’m not sure if anyone else sees it like that, though, the problem with people who don’t normally write genre fiction is that when they start doing it everyone goes “wow” and somewhere, Phillip K. Dick rotates slowly in his grave. However, the ideas are good and the writing solid, and I’m glad to have made a change by getting books by new authors, all too often I get caught up in the “tried and tested” pattern whereby I only buy things by people I know and like, or that have been proven good over time, and it’s good to attempt to break that framework for a while. I never got around to reading the older books I brought back home with me, but after I’ve read these two, I’ll head back to more historically prestigious pastures.

After dropping Nikki and Jo back home (for they were in town with me too) I came back, made food, watched some more Futurama - the commentaries are as funny as the episodes - and then X-Men 2. It really is a good film, and I’m relatively upset it’s not going to be until 2006 that the next one comes out. But I’ll live.

Today I discovered the true meaning of Boxing day. It’s not, as some may believe, anything to do with boxing things. Nor is it to do with the gentleman’s sport of boxing. Nor, indeed, does it concern the 1900 Boxer Rebellion of China. It’s so people with more than one sat of family to oblige can have two christmases. I guess. A fine pseudochristmas it was too, let me say. I got up around midday, which isn’t exactly anything new, dropped Rob off at Dad’s, then made my way to Nikki’s, where I distributed her and her family’s presents, and then we went to Nan’s. On the way, I bought some petrol because for some reason all the petrol stations closed down at about 7:00pm on Christmas Eve and I was totally unable to get any, severely restricting my movements in recent days. I just know there’s a moral or social comment trying to get out there, but I’d really rather avoid it for now.

Anyway, at Nan’s I set up the Freeview Digibox Dad had bought them. He and Rob had been trying but totally confusing the issue, and I corrected things in about 3 seconds. Say what you will about my academic or social skills, but I can configure electronics in record times. It makes me wonder why people have so much trouble really, surely the easiest thing to do is read the manual and follow the instructions on-screen. This case was a little more than that but I speak generally.

Having set up the TV, it was time for food. I ate much and even got half a turkey worth of cold meat out of the bargain, which will serve me well in the coming days. After a while, Dad went home so Nikki, Rob and I hung around an played Scrabble. I won all but one game by a wide margin, except the last which I lost by 5 points. I don’t want to obsess too much over the game, though. In the rules itsaid something like “250 Scrabble Clubs across the country with 5000 regular players!” which made me think that for a game so well known, 5000 really is a tiny amount of people who care enough to play competitively. Bunch of goddamn geeks.

Anyway, as predicted, today’s gifts were…eclectic. I received: 1250g of Dairy Mlk, a Yard of Chocolate Fingers (4×150g), 2 Chocolate Oranges, A small 2004 diary, some Gel Pens, a set of Dominoes, 3 large chocolate coins (because all I really want at Christmas is chocolate and money, so they got both ;-) a park of socks, some lynx, (and this is where things get bizarre) some shampoo, some shower gel, and not one, but 2 tubes of toothpaste. The story behind those last couple of items is not that I’m some kind of filthy unwashed hygieneless human, but that they like to buy things I can use so I can spend money on myself instead of buying toiletries and occasionally, stationary. Fair enough, I guess. Out of the crackers we pulled, I got a semidecent screwdriver set and a decent pack of miniature cards, which are too small to do anything with, I guess, but maybe I could give them to a midget.

I dropped Nikki back in the evening, and sat and watched a bit of “Meet the Parents” in which Ben Stiller gets placed in all sorts of artificial and overtly embarassing situations. It’s the kind of humour I really hate, which is disappointing because Meet the Parents had such a good concept but they totally blew it with cringe-inducing scenes of horrendousness.

Soon I have to haul ass to the bank with my Christmas monies so that I can start to buy things again. I’ve got some eBay stuff to sort out, as well, and comics to collect. But unfortunately, tomorrow heralds the threshold for when I have promised myself I’ll start the dissertation/project. So I guess I’ll start researching that over the weekend. Still, I really can’t start that until I’ve finished Futurama DVDs, can I?

Anyway. Because I keep forgetting I’ll say now: I passed all my exams, even networking. Maths wasn’t as good as I hoped, HCI was about as expected, and networking was a bad mark, but better than the fail I believed was unavoidable. The final marks were BBC, respectively. I’m indifferent to them, to be honest. I could’ve done worse, but I would’ve preferred a little better.

Still, that’s all over and we rush, full steam ahead towards 2004 and, god help me, a further two new sets of exams.

With all my misanthropic ranting done, I’d like to focus on the more immediate effects of the day. At this point, I’ve pretty much received the larger presents, tomorrow we’ll spend some time at Nan’s and get a few smaller gifts but this here is the bulk of it. Most of it I expected, some of it I didn’t, and it occurs to me I didn’t get the Hulk DVD, which I’ll probably now buy off eBay. I did, however, get:

Futurama Series 2 DVD set (Grandparents) & Futurama Series 3 DVD set (Mum/Terry) - They were on sale in HMV, so I got both. Twice the watching time, since the commentaries are great. Practically speaking, it means I can chuck a whole new bunch of DivX-on-CD copies into storage and use their space in the CD wallet for better stuff, and that I’ll have less space on my bookshelf.

X-Men 2 DVD (Rob) - A chance to finally scrutinise that last scene. Much better film than the first, I’ll probably watch it very soon.

Tenacious D DVD (Nikki) - Permanent memory of the very concert I was at. Plus there’s a whole “extras” DVD I haven’t even prodded yet. Rob and I watched the first half of the concert while Mum and Terry cooked food.

“It’s Not the End of the World” by Kate Atkinson (Jo) - Read the first story in this, because it was short. It’s unusual to say the least, but I’m enjoying it a lot. With my newly procured monies I will also buy the other book I want, and then these two will comprise the first of 2004’s new ventures into bookreading.

Simpsons Trivia Quiz Book (Nikki) & Simpsons Desktop Calendar (Mum/Terry) - For to battle it out with other Simpsons quoting housemates for dominance. Also represents, with the Futurama DVDs, that Matt Groening is possibly gaining off my Christmas as much as I am.

LoEG Vol. 2 Hardback (Nikki) - A pretty damn classy version of a pretty damn classy graphic novel. I shall re-read both series back to back now, for a maximum LoEG experience. Also considering buying the DVD for the film, even if it was a little dodgy.

Disc Shooting thing (Nikki’s Mum) - For shooting housemates when they beat me at Simpsons trivia.

Much needed socks (Mum/Terry) & Much needed pair of jeans (Mum/Terry) - Because I hate buying clothes for myself and somehow managed to end up with only one pair of jeans that was wearable in public, and occasionally not enough pairs of socks to last through until the next wash day, forcing an immadiate washing. Admittedly, I have pairs to last me about 2 weeks but sometimes that’s how long it takes to accumulat enough whites for washing. And I wish I didn’t hear middle age creeping in at the edges there.

Amounts of Chocolate (Mum/Terry/Nikki’s Mum) - Enough to keep me going until, well, next week, I guess.

£210 cash (Dad/Mum/Terry/Other Grandparents) - Almost a month’s rent gratis. It’s going straight in the bank come the 27th, at which point I’ll pay off my debts, renew my hosting (runs out on the 28th!) amd wait for Janaury and my new loan payment, though, I do also have a couple hundred to come in for work done.

But of course, this isn’t really what today has been about. The true meaning of christmas: How close you come to throwing up pure turkey. Today it wasn’t very close, because we actually ate a castrated Cockerel. Nikki told me the name of such a beast but I can’t remember it. I’m not entirely sure how a castrated cockerel differs from a normal cockerel and indeed, how that differs from a Hen especially, there’s a slight difference in texture and taste between Hen and Cockerel, but Cockerel and de-knackered Cockerel? I don’t have a clue. It was nice all the same, and I plan to eat more later when the hunger relapse sets in.

It’s been a relaxed day, anyway. Got up at about 11, opened presents, grandparents came round, sat and talked for a bit, they left, Rob and I watched Tenacious D, then we all had lunch. I phoned Nikki, and then at about 4 we went round Dad’s for an hour and a half, before coming back so Rob could watch Eastenders, so I came up here, watched some Futurama and got this blog entry done. That’s the day so far.

I believe I get the award for most predictable entry title of the year.

Well. In many ways I think I should have something more inspiring to say on Christmas Eve, but then I’m not a christian and the date is pretty arbitrary, so maybe it’s good that I don’t. In a religious sense, I’m much more interested in the way Christmas and easter and all those kind of religious festivals simply hi-jacked existing pagan holidays, leading to a mish-mash of Christian and pagan traditions that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Christmas trees with an angel on top. Mistletoe next to the nativity. One day I’ll get around to researching it more.

I guess Christmas has long since ceased to be of any specific religious importance, anyway. It’s more about the forced giving of gifts and spreading of goodwill. Arguably, I could do without it. Something I have noticed is that around Christmas, I suddenly become a lot poorer, like all my budgetting for the year would be more or less fine provided that I wasn’t expected to buy everyone a present to celebrate the birth of a deity I don’ believe ever existed. Maybe the financial situation will change when I get a job, but it’s just as likely to get worse as I meet more people. I successfully abandoned the giving of Christmas cards a few years back, and I’m kind of trying to start a tradition whereby no-one buys me things I haven’t asked for, because more often than not they’re things I don’t need or want, and I just have to kind of chuck them in a corner somewhere. That sounds ungrateful I’m sure, but over the past few years I’ve been doing my best to keep the amount of superfluous junk I own to a minimum and for that reason, next year I’ll be distributing a list that says “Something off here, money, or nothing please.” Rob and I have a good thing going where we tell each other what to get and we get it, and it saves a lot of stress and bother.

And with that, it’s only a short leap towards everyone just buying their own christmas presents, meaning everyone gets what they want, and no-one buys more than they can afford. I do profit from christmas in the long run, usually, so I’m actually being relatively selfless here. I’d sacrifice the amount of decent presents I get over what I would normally buy myself in order to dispense with the hassle and hypocrisy of the season. Commercialism this forced actually makes even I, a staunch capitalist, feel quite ill. I remember 2 years ago being in the Oxford Disney store shortly before Christmas and feeling most nauseous.

Finally, I’d like to forgo the myths of Santa, and other related stuff. I know I use the word “joyless” to describe myself a lot and this isn’t exactly doing anything to dispell that, but really, what purpose do they serve? To bring magic and happiness into the hearts of young children everywhere? Oh, please. I don’t even remember as far back as when I believed in Santa, and I’m sure all it did was damage me in the long run. A nice disappointment built up for a few years before the truth comes out. Better not to bother in the first place and instill a sense of superiority in the child as they realise that they are old and smart enough to handle a truth kept from so many others.

Well, I guess that’s everything dispelled. Except the food of course, I like that. For reference, the Reformist James Hunt Christmas would do without most presents, without cards, without Santa or Rudolf, and with plenty of Turkey. It would involve a day of sitting around with your friends/family talking, watching crap TV and playing crap board games, after which everyone would go home and we’d never speak of it again. Decorations are optional.

Now that I think about it, this model fits entirely with the christmas meal we had a few weeks ago in Oxford, which I enjoyed it a lot, so there’s obviously some basis for this working. I don’t think the celebrations should be fixed to any specific date, so much as “at some point in December”. Not that Decembers specifically important, it just seems like if you’re going to choose an arbitrary point on the calendar it might as well be when everyone’s cold and miserable and, it’s close to the end of the year.

Somehow, I think I’m relatively alone in my views.

If I worked in the Sex industry, would I be as interesting? I’m not entirely sure we want to find out. It’s not often I link to other people’s blogs, unless I know them, because I’m wary of sending people to far superior writing and showing myself up as amateur and uninteresting, but this is just too good not to share. She won the best written blog category of the Guardian British blogging competition.

Seems as I just bought the most number of singles today that I’ve bought in years, I’m going to do a quick opinion-based review of them.

The Delays - Hey Girl
Well, I’ll be honest. I don’t really like the Delays, but given I’ve seen them live a bunch of times (supporting Easyworld) and the single was 50p I decided it couldn’t hurt to try it. Turns out it could. I actually prefer their current single, Long Time Coming, to this. The vocals seem to alternate between high-pitched and gravelly, and are usually layered so that you can’t understand what’s being said anyway. The track seems really short too, but that’s possibly just because it doesn’t vary much. The B-Side “Whenever you fall I die” is slightly better, a bit more straightforward actually, but not so good that I’d have paid £2 for this package.

A - Good Time
I’m not sure if this is CD1 or 2 of the EP. A have put out some good songs in the past but I’ve never been especially into them. I don’t like this song as much as some, but once the corus gets going it becomes quite listenable. It’s less heavier than Nothing, less poppy than Starbucks, and was featured on the Nokia 3300 advert for about 3 seconds. I’m feeling this is worth my 50p. The first B-Side is a live version (from Download 2003) of what I assume to be an album track called “Six o’clock on a tube stop.” It’s also pretty good, I think I might even prefer it to the A-Side, but I think I’d like a studio version a lot more. I’m not a fan of live recordings to be honest, they often sound a little too raw. The last B-Side is called “Full Pelt.” It’s not as good as the previous 2 tracks, but still not bad. It’s a little nondescript, unfortunately, which is something A seem to suffer from a bit. Definitely worth the money, though it’s not the kind of single I’ll be desperate to hang onto next time I have a clear out.

The Mars Volta - Inertiatic ESP
Now, this is excellent. 50p for a single I already wanted to buy but couldn’t find. The title track actually includes about half of Son et Lumiere too. This is by far the best title track of the three CDs I bought, it’s not really any competition. I’d say it’s a strange choice for a single but it’s probably the only album track noth short and full enough to make a single. I love the cover art too. Those bumps are little lice. The B-Side is a session version of Album Track “Roulette Dares” which I believe follows Inertiatic on the album. I guess they’re trying to maintain the concept album structure despite being forced to release a single. It’s a bit disappointing, really, merely an okay version of a good track. There’s a good amount of improv and deviation from the recorded version, which is really the point of TMV live, so that helps it be a good B-Side. It’s also almost 10 minutes long, which is a decent length for an entire single, let alone 1 track. Finally, this package also includes a limited edition postcard containing cover art from the album, which is always a good way to bribe people.

Okay, so I admit the ultimate outcome of that review was slightly biased by the fact that I was already trying to buy the TMV single, but then I gave the others fair chance to prove themselves. I wouldn’t have paid full price for either of the first two, nor would I in the future based off these releases alone. Having said that, I did buy them now, which is more than can be said for the Stereophonics single which, at 50p, still cost about 2 pounds greater than the amount I’d have taken one home at. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and hey, maybe I can flog them on eBay for twice the price one day.