About a dozen different interpretations of “Berlusconi” also pepper the list  thanks to this curiously popular article, which has probably only gathered so many hits because I’m the only person on the internet who can be bothered to spell his name correctly. Even the spell checker asks if I’m trying to spell ‘wanderlust’ when I spell out the slimy pervert’s name. I also pity the gentleman who queeried the subtlety of spotify adverts with the term “spotify adverts are too in your face“. Poor guy, the world of free internet music is clearly an invasive and dangerous place.

Moving onto some terms that are quite perfectly linked with the blogs content, the following charmers almost single-handedly prove a point I was making in my article about Southend-On-Sea: “racism in southend“, “southend racist“, “too many niggers in southend“, “why is southend so racist?” and the even classier “two guys fuck a girl in southend on sea“. What a nice place. For some reason I am not swayed by the valiant counter-arguments in the comments section of that that article, it has generated more race related search terms than a post I knocked up about the BNP.

Onto lighter subjects, I can only feel sorry for the origami enthusiasts who stumble upon the site in search of ‘paper airship instructions‘, and the more extreme folder – obviously in need of medical attention; “airship paper cut“. I just hope he’s ok. The equally bewildering “how to pose with a guitar” and assumedly related “gitarren pose” search terms regularly appear in a variety of languages, yet I don’t recall writing an FAQ on how to look good with an axe.

The search term list is one of the most hilarious tools on a wordpress blog, there’s no doubt about it. If a queery isn’t utterly dumbfounding then it’s usually a clear advert that people need to learn how to use a search engine. I shall leave with this simple poser, which might just’ve actually linked to an article that helped: “Why is the Quake II soundtrack so damn good?“. Tell me about it, son!

Artist: The Black Dog
Album: Further Vexations
Genre: Electronica, IDM

As this picture exemplifies quite beautiful, it is IMPOSSIBLE for British electronic musicians to look cool. Think of the greats, Fatboy Slim would look more at home behind an IT help desk, Squarepusher has the look of a creepy uncle you keep your girlfriend away from at family functions, whereas if you ever saw Richard D. James on the street you’d probably call the police immediately, whether he was anywhere near that girls’ school or not. If they don’t look like they’re having trouble fitting comfortably into their skin, then they almost definitely struggle not to look like dads who’ve picked up a bunch of strange machines that make noises on eBay.

The boom of electronic music in the nineties ensures that anyone who latched onto the genre during its heyday is now at least ten years older than they were when they first shredded the decks in search of pulsating beats. I can’t deny the deep-down feeling of confusion I feel when seeing that a wicked electro track has not been composed by some twenty-something, anti-social drug-dropping lunatic in his bedroom, but instead by a refined pair of gentlemen who probably have teenage children by now. Anyway, I digress…

The Black Dog along the way has contained multiple musicians. For their most recent 2009 release, Further Vexations, Ken Downie and the Dust brothers, Martin and Richard are the chief creators. In 1995 two members of The Black Dog left to form Plaid, another worthwhile electronic band, and for some reason the two bands are often confused as being the same thing.

Further Vexations is an excellent electronic album. I usually find that modern electronic music has a tendency to rhythmically pulsate itself into the background too easily, with not much going on for the listener to enjoy. This is not the case, and the album starts with the lively Biomantric L-if-e, which is one of the highlights on the album. Checking the odd press release for the album brought to my attention the fact that this album is supposed to be a protest at the increasing Orwellianisation of Britain. I can’t say I really felt anything like whilst listening too it and the album is less eerie than they might think. In parts it is just beautiful, it’s not something that would work very well as a Half-Life 2 soundtrack, for example, because of the cheery hopefulness it conveys in many songs.

Other personal highlights on the album include North Electronic Soul [Part III] and Skin Clock, two songs that are instantly appealing to the extent that even my brother wanted to know what they were when walking past my desk. He listens to L’il Wayne…

I went back and listened to some previous Black Dog releases and found them to be enjoyable, but slightly over-complicated and ‘intense’. It was much more difficult to pick out the melodies in Radio Scarecrow (often lauded as The Black Dog’s greatest work to date) than it is in this beautiful release. Furthermore, being released in 2009, it marks the third month in a row that I’ve actually listened to something relevant and up to date! I’ve yet to find it on any compulsory album of the year lists though. That’s a crying shame.

However, there are still things that occur every year that niggle, things I should’ve become immune to over the passing years, but still manage to get under my skin thanks to their annual consistency. The following list is one of inevitable occurrences that probably seed the wave of cynicism that tsunamis all over my pals every year.

1. Secret Santa

I think of myself as a pretty chilled out guy, it takes quite a lot for pressure to breach my layers of barely-penetrable armour and make me stressed. However, one thing guaranteed to rile me every year is the prospect of Secret Santa. I have NEVER once picked the name of someone I like out of the hat! The concept of buying gifts for your workmates is unappealing at best, but when you’re slapped with a miserably low budget and told to buy something for the new guy, the misery is accentuated ten-fold. Do you go for something heartfelt? funny? clever? or home made? Either way it doesn’t matter, whatever you receive in return will be an absolute disappointment. When five pound coins sellotaped to a piece of card is the best gift option available, you know you’re working on a flawed concept. And it never stays a secret!

2. Cocacolonisation

When I was about ten years old I used to love the Coke lorry adverts. Then again, I was also madly in love with Chun Li from street fighter, and she wasn’t even real – I just didn’t know any better. Now when I watch the adverts I feel nothing but contempt. The concept of a thousand lorries thundering through a small village is actually not very appealing at all, let alone Christmassy. Coca Cola is a heinous, morally bankrupt company that’s made a living through selling a sugary poison to fat kids around the globe, thus the beverage has no discernible link to Christmas whatsoever. Surely I’m not alone in this line of thinking? Well apparently I am, as this facebook group and its 40,000 drones suggests.

3. Christmas Adverts

The one guarantee at Christmas is that rubbish will be sold in bulk to losers. But for losers to buy your rubbish, you need to advertise your rubbish. What better way of connecting with the losers than to pretend you ‘know what it’s like‘ at Christmas! Yeah, let them know you’re just one of them, trying to survive the festive season! Phrases like ‘It’s too early for Christmas ads‘ in your early Christmas ads and ‘we know the shops are a nightmare!‘ while telling people to go shopping is a sure fire way for people to embrace your product. It’s like you’re psychic!

4. The Christmas Number One song

It’s a time of year for novelty songs, charity songs, and corporate-funded cover versions to dominate the charts. The popular music scene barely does itself any favours at any other time of year, but the complete cut-and-paste certainty of an X-Factor winner taking the number one spot every year is surprisingly depressing. The realisation that the UK populace is comprised of an easily-manipulated hive mind is as frightening as the soulless whining that constitutes the inevitable X Factor song. If Rage Against the Machine aren’t Christmas number one this year then we might as well all give up and go home.

5. People complaining about Christmas films!

This one I can’t abide, at all! It’s Christmas! The only acceptable time to watch a Christmas film is between December 1st – December 25th. After that they shall remain in a dusty cupboard until next year when the FUN will repeat itself. These films aren’t there to make you laugh any more, you’ve seen them too many times, it’s just about the conveyance of entertainment and festive warmth! Unfunny but entertaining, they’re like an episode of Scrubs. And why do people always forget that Die Hard is an excellent Christmas film!?

6. The weather

It used to be that the weather forecasters gave us the odds of seeing a white Christmas throughout December. Now they don’t even bother as there’s little-to-no chance that snow will fall on Christmas day. In fact, snow will not arrive at all until March, or some other unpredictably useless time of year. That puts an end to visions of cosy fireside warmth then, I’ll stick with a cold-blasted face and blistered lips then.

7. Pre- vs. Post-Christmas prices

What a piss-take the January sales are. Why not have December sales? You’d shift more or your stock and people would have a better time all round at Christmas. But no, ripping people off at the most stressful time of year and ensuring that novelty Christmas items are still stocking your shelves during mid-March is surely a much better option! Christmas decorations are the worst. Overpriced shimmering tat, that for two weeks of the year has a welcome place in every home and every year you tell yourself to buy the decorations in January for next year, but it just doesn’t happen. You’re such a let down.

8. People refusing to buy things online

Play.com and Amazon.co.uk will ship just about any DVD, game, electronic gizmo or book that a man can think of, and they’re much better stocked than any highstreet shop. Cheaper too! Why then does it take half an hour to even find the end of the queue in HMV, no matter how close to Christmas you are? If people weren’t so petrified of technology then I could stroll into HMV on Christmas Eve after a day of hectic shopping and treat myself to a DVD in peace!

In truth, Americans abroad are generally much more civil and respectful than my own countrymen (when they’re not rolling in humvees, at least), but in a shameless attempt to cash in on the Americans-are-retards stereotype, and thinly veil blatant xenophobia with light humour, I’ve compiled this list! Here are the top five mispronounced locations I get asked to point hapless Americans (at least one a week). It really grinds my gears!

5. Plaistow

4. Tottenham Court Road

3. Southwark

2. Trafalgar Square

1. Leicester Square

Artist: Beirut
Album: Live at the Music Hall of Williamsburg
Genre: Balkan, Folk

Last month, I conveniently had the opportunity to write about my ‘favourite band of all time’, Do Make Say Think. Having the chance to wax lyrical about my favourite artists was the reason I started this monthly feature, but in restricting myself to new listening experiences I’ve automatically cut out the albums that are my favourites already. Maybe I’ll go back and spew superlatives over them at a later date, but fortunately over the last two months I’ve picked up new albums by BOTH of my favourite artists. In reality, both Do Make Say Think and Beirut contend a two-horse race for my ‘most listened to artist‘ spot, and this week it’s Beirut’s turn in the limelight thanks to a live album they’ve recently released.

Live at the Music Hall of Williamsburg is the succinctly dull titled album in question and it’s worth it alone for the novel tracks it contains that don’t appear on Beirut’s previous two studio releases. It doesn’t sound at all like a live album, there is no generic roar of a crowd at every lull in the music and the instrumental on display is studio quality. The man behind the band, Zach Condon just seems to exude happiness as he gallivants across Europe, performing in indie cafes and underground smoking clubs, and this is apparent when you hear his interactions with the crowd.

Beirut sounds like a whimsical Balkan carnival and their previous two studio albums are filled with ingenious songs that make everything seem well in life. An intense listen to either Gulag Orkestar or The Flying Club Cup often makes me want to drop everything in life and just jump on the first Eurostar to Paris, before embarking on some carefree journeying across eastern Europe. And imagine what such a trip would consist of? Grumpy old men in flat caps regaling stories of the war, beautiful Italian goddesses toiling on farms and covered in mud, Mediterranean towns who all come together for a feast in the town centre, accordion players bustling through German markets and Romani women telling your fortune as you wonder along with their travelling wagon trails. Well, at least that’s what I assume Zach Condon has been doing over the past few years of his life and it’s the romanticised impressions of simple European life that his music inspires that’s to blame!

This album is nowhere near as monumental as any previous full-length by Beirut, but the fact it’s a live album and only contains two songs from those former releases means it’s crammed with new tunes I’d never heard before. The two highlights for me were The Concubine and My Night With a Prostitute from Marseille. They instantly struck me as brilliant and did little to dispel my idea that Zach lives in a constant state of reminiscence about his time in Europe, and that he can conjure up a song expressing his memories at the drop of a hat. He’s an extremely talented musician, and a sickeningly young one at that. Here’s to another 50 years of brass-based brilliance.

Since not-so-humble beginnings in 2004, the show has metastasised into an all consuming Saturday night staple, shedding newspaper articles and redundant ‘Xtra’ shows all designed to create a social frenzy around a handful of talentless dogs and line the pockets of the world’s most uncharismatic tosser.

The X Factor is undoubtedly the worst show on television and serves as a vehicle for media mogul Simon Cowell to breed a pop-star via over-exposure to the general public. For what seems like an entire year, The X Factor plagues our screens and is separated into two distinct formats. First, the four judges span the width and breadth of the country, screening hundreds of thousands of hopefuls, before secondly whittling down the list to twelve finalists that compete in a knockout competition.

The first episodes are forcibly enjoyable thanks to some excruciating quick-editing and dramatic background music which splices the countries most hopeless singers/pranksters in with the odd contestant who can actually sing. The tremendous effort the show goes to in order to highlight these jokers only accentuates how unimportant the ‘musical talent’ element of the show is. The entertainment officially ends when the show graduates into its second format, in which the judges choose twelve final acts (based on approximately three performances) to represent them in the run up to the final. It usually becomes painfully obvious that the judges have often chosen awful singers at this point, but after such a laborious and obviously inefficient screening process they have no choice but to stick with them in a bid to save face.

As part of the second round, the contestants must butcher their way through sixty second lounge-music versions of popular songs in a bid to claim the public vote. During this stage of the competition, the gutter press puts all important news on hold and instead prints reams of slanderous lies about the contestants, based on the smallest of mannerisms and public appearances. This ensures the continued popularity of the programme and provides an unneeded and unwarranted monetary boost to Simon Cowell’s Scrooge McDuck vault. Thanks to the continued ignorance, stupidity and shamelessness of the general public, a winner is chosen, who then goes on to claim the Christmas number 1 single before fading into complete obscurity.

A completely ridiculous aspect of the show is how totally unqualified the judges are to pass comment on the contestants. Each judge has absolutely no discernible talent of their own other than to exploit flash-in-the-pan acts, as proven by their complete inability to maintain the careers of past winners, and by their insistence on miming whilst performing live themselves. How can someone who’s profession is a singer, mime their way through a show before chastising the contestants on their singing ability? Of all the acts managed by the judges through recent history, not a single one has ever been a credit to music or their profession. Given that one of the four judges actually owns the show, his opinion is worth more than the others’ combined, thus the illusion of some sort of judging democracy is a total farce.

The most vulgar and despicable facet of the show, however, is the fact that hundreds of hours of auditions and dramatic editing are pieced together in order to find someone who cannot write or perform their own songs. If this is truly the kind of talent that the music industry wants on board after such a long and laborious search, then it is doomed that the industry is. If you’ve ever found yourself seriously gripped by this facade then you are utterly wasting your time and ears. What a disgrace.

It took a drunken conversation with a colleague to bring this to my attention. His words flowed through me as if I was standing atop Mount Sinai, and made me realise that no matter how much time and effort I ever put into planning a celebration, the outcome would be out of my hands. His quote, word for word:

“New years eve parties always follow the rule of three: you only get one decent night out in every three years.“

It wasn’t met with much opposition and it seemed everyone around the table agreed. In my experience, new years eve parties have the undeniable reputation of being complete and utter let-downs, but I wondered how concrete this theory could be? I analysed my past experiences and they are inelaborately summed up in this helpful list:

Wowza! My new years experiences agreed with the formula with eerie perfection. 2009 was an event I expected to end in total failure as I sat in fancy dress and traversed the entire width of London to attend a house party hosted by a girl I’d never met. Fast forward a few hours and we were welcomed with open arms, destroyed the alcohol supply, cleaned out the food reserves, turned the front lawn into Bastogne under a hail of ill-advised fireworks and flares, then showed a disgraceful disregard for other people’s property by dragging our drunken, muddy, befacepainted ox of a friend around the nicely painted white interior of their house. Little did I know the fates had aligned in my favour and it was to be a banger no matter what happened!

It doesn’t bode well for this year though, an average night out on the cards. I might as well save a bit of cash, stay in, watch Eurotrash and complete old computer games like I did during the days I wasn’t old enough to drink! Let’s hope this theory isn’t water tight.

The franchise has a reputation of being completely average after all. My particular favourite eye-roller is the scripted events that would make a slapstick writer cringe: > *Mount machine gun with infinite ammo* > *Thousands of enemy troops pour out in a convenient enfilade* > Genocide. Or how about: > “Don’t shoot that dog” > *Shoot Dog* > *Pack of rabid dogs spawn in and maul you to death*. I know I could never conjure such innovation from the deepest realms of my creativeness. If I was to review CoD 4: Modern Warfare in five words I’d say thus: “Don’t spend money on it“.  That’s hardly given me the motivation to rush out at midnight and snap up the sequel. Oh well, each to their own I guess.

The Sun newspaper prides itself on supporting ‘Our Boys™’ and has thus decided to blow this story out of all proportion in a smear attack against the man opposing their chosen party at the next general election. There’s nothing surprising about that I guess, but how exactly did their sister paper (owned by the same News Corp) choose to honour Remembrance Sunday? After all, it’s a time when no person on the planet will ever debate the sacrifice made by soldiers whose lives were lost in wars throughout the ages. It’s the perfect time to write a sympathetic and grateful epitaph to all those who have died, so that we all may live. At least, this is what you might think would happen. Instead, this is how the news of the world decided to honour the war dead:

The News of the World decided to better Gordon Brown’s personalised letter to a grieving widow by slandering the father of a football player. Make no mistake all you non-Englishmen, Terry’s dad isn’t some sort of celebrity, he’s simply the father of a football player. Above this infinitely profound story, next to the mast head, a picture of a half-naked, insufferable waste of carbon and her equally unimportant partner. Just to remind you, this was on REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY. If you were wondering how the paper chose to honour the national day of mourning, well they had a picture of a poppy substituted in for the letter O in News of the W’o'rld.

The size of the poppy graphic was smaller than a £1 coin. If my maths is up to scratch, that equates to less than 7cm². I’m sure our boys will be dead chuffed by the deeply respectful 0.05% of front page space they’ve earned via decades of selfless sacrifice on the day of mourning.

Maybe the prime minister should be able to write properly considering he’s… the prime minister, but I still think a hand written letter is a bit more personal than trying to slander the reputations of people humanity on the whole couldn’t care less about. Isn’t their entrapment of a drug dealer a police matter? It certainly isn’t national news, just like the bag of silicone which took pride of place above that story. There are few things in life I find more dumbfounding than the rolling ignorance of Sun readers. These papers were released consecutively, just a day apart, yet nobody has even considered the flagrant disrespect shown just 24 hours prior by the same news corporation whose bullshit they’re lapping up.

Maybe, instead of slandering the prime minister, the papers could’ve shown a little bit more respect themselves. I personally couldn’t think of anything more disrespectful than knowing I gave my life for a nation obsessed with celebrity gossip and amorality. Imagine looking down and realising you died so that people like Jordan could live? I’d be begging for a refund.

In response to its ailing situation, the company has attempted to ‘modernise’ with the introduction of sorting machines that are more efficient and quicker at sorting letters than human hands. This may lead to people losing their jobs, or at least losing hours, and thus the response of the unions has been to go on strike for two days. I quite simply cannot believe the audacity of a decision like this.

In what kind of world do they think we live in? If a business is not performing then surely it cannot continue to operate at the same standard with reduced profits? If a company is driving itself into the ground, how can you argue that they are not warranted to make changes? It utterly defies belief that ‘modernisation’ has resulted in a strike for so many reasons that, for the benefit of the word count, I wont even bother to list them.

Hilariously, the national strikes have resulted in only a 40% reduction in daily deliveries, due in part to the replaceability of postal workers with temps. There are millions of unemployed people in England right now who yearn for the opportunity to perform a days work, yet Royal Fail staff decide to walk out on their jobs. All they have achieved is national repugnance, as well as displaying how utterly dispensable they are to the organisation in general. If it wasn’t illegal, I’d love to see every striking worker sacked and replaced with one of the unemployed people in the country who warrant and deserve the opportunity to work. Imagine if the people with precarious job security had actually learned a trade with non-transferable skills instead of being post-GCSE scrubs who just show up and slot right in to one of the country’s easiest and non-taxing jobs.

The service that Royal Mail provides has declined drastically over the years, with the price of stamps and postage soaring exp0nentially and the delivery times retreating from brisk, useful early morning times to lethargic and lazy mid-afternoon hours. Why are we paying more money for a service that has become less efficient? If Royal Mail implements machines to do a great chunk of the dogsbody work, surely that frees up funds that would otherwise be wasted on man hours. Might it even see a reduction in the cost of postage as a result?

Imagine if the pharmaceutical industry suddenly decided to strike because machines manufacture more drugs, more efficiently and precisely than human hands? Hell, this word processor sure is more nifty than my free hand, so maybe we should refuse to ever work at a PC again as well? It’s such an inexplicable reason for union action that it makes anger ferment inside of me. With any industrial action you can usually see an angle that the workforce is coming from, but this has to be one of the most misguided, counterproductive and repulsive reasons for strike action in recent history.

The decision to strike will resort in a further lack of faith in the service, which will ultimately see another drop in activity and profits, and further need to make cuts and modernise. It also proves that just about anyone is capable of delivering mail and that thousands of auxiliary workers are waiting and able in the wings to take the job of any troublesome mailman. What a brilliant outcome, an unquestionable victory for the strikers. I’m sure it’s just what they wanted.