Linkage – AllOfmp3.com

This business of just linking to stuff is going to get old very soon, but stick with me and enjoy the wild ride into… The World of Interweb Kevin and his 802.11g connection to the world! Me, striding manfully up the beach at Wexford a week ago. I should have been on Baywatch, or Celebrity […]

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This business of just linking to stuff is going to get old very soon, but stick with me and enjoy the wild ride into… The World of Interweb Kevin and his 802.11g connection to the world!

Me, Kevin Teljeur, striding manfully up the beach at Wexford. I should have been on Baywatch, or Celebrity Love Handles.Me, striding manfully up the beach at Wexford a week ago. I should have been on Baywatch, or Celebrity Love Handles. Click image to view larger version…

The last chunk of new music I got my hands on was anKenny Leigh, in poor but contented form after drinking too much on his last night in Dublin. album by ‘Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’ by none other than ‘Clap Your Hands Say Yeah‘, a band who made their name by self-publishing and getting rather famous by being good and getting talked about on the Interweb (as opposed to shagging a music executive and having huge amounts of money poured into advertising their album). Kenny had been going on about them for a while, and then my brother Conor got me the cd, which was good. Very good. My brother Conor Teljeur, being knowledgeable and decisive about something in Wexford a week ago.

Now, I was biased because I hadn’t listened to anything new in a while, and I tend to get blown away by any music that I haven’t listen to over and over and over on my iPod, several times a day for the last four years. This is actually slightly peculiar since I have something like three thousand tracks available to me, at least a thousand of which are not stupid sound tracks or incredibly crap, so I should be able to go and explore some of these. More over, a lot of those are actually sets from full albums (Don’t worry IRMA, I own them and paid far too much for them, as you well know, you cunts.) and I haven’t even ‘ripped’ a lot of my other albums onto my iPod either. Sometimes I even take out my portable record player to listen to my cds; it’s great, having these big plastic disks which you have to swap when you want to hear a song by a different artist. Anyway, I don’t do these things, for whatever reason, and my mind is starved of new music, which is why I get very excited by hearing something new and good, and then I get obsessed with it for about two to three weeks before I go back to listening to the hundred or so songs that I feel comfortable with (You can take that as being too lazy to set up a new playlist. Yes, apathy, my friends!).

A good manifestation of this effect was after I went to the Castle Palooza festical and came across ‘8 Ball‘, an up and coming band with a good sound; I located the website, downloaded the samples, and then listen to the samples over and over and over like some sort of crazed, obsessive loon. I am, possibly, a crazed obsessive loon; that’s not the point. It’s just not healthy and it was clear that new music was required. Also, their album is apparently not available, or out of print, or banned or whatever, one of these things you have to do leg-work for and then be bitterly disappointed.

Before I get to the explanation of where all this is going and the subsequent linkage, there’s something I need to point out (and I do so love a good pointing) which is that I have a habit of endorsing enthusiastically whatever I’m into, or doing at the moment. Five a Side Football, learning Romanian, contracting, premature baldness, masturbation, whatever it is, if I’m doing it then I’m convinced that everyone else should be doing it too because you’ll all enjoy it at least as much as I have. But you knew that, because if you’re reading this then you know me, right? Yeah, I have a post for you on that subject shortly. The net effect is that if I find something I like then I have to tell everyone to get onto that too. If this blog ever started getting read by more than five or so people (make that a tentative six, since we may now reliably have Aideen onboard; time will tell.) then I could make a living out of doing things and then endorsing them. Somehow.

So I needed some new music, and at the same time I have difficulty with going out to a music store, because of all the hassle involved in trying to find a cd, comparing prices, all that. The iTunes online music store is not bad, but it’s a swindle because they’re charging the same as I’d pay for a cd in a shop, but without all the bells and whistles. Some cds, notably a few from Sony, have copy protection, whereby if you put the cd into your Windows PC it installs some software which opens your PC to virus attacks (I’m simplifying here) and then prevents you from copying the music onto your PC, and then onto your mp3 player. So you still need your portable record player, thanks to those stupid cunts. Buy a Mac instead, which allows you to carry on as usual and looks nicer. I want my bells and whistles if I’m paying for them. Or I can go to Amazon or somewhere like that and again, try and get it cheaper by searching around a bit, and then wait a few weeks while they figure out how to get it to me and An Post (our beautifully hopeless local postal service) loses the delivery.

Or I can go here:

AllOfmp3.com
Cheap music to download from Russia!
http://www.allofmp3.com/
Yes, I finally decided to take the plunge and try this site. It sells music (Not quite everything, but a damn good selection.) in almost any format you can think of, and it’s legal. In Russia. So, I went to Russia on the Internet, bought credit, selected the music I wanted, it sent me an email when the site had processed my request and put the files up for me, and I downloaded them! I organised them and put them on my iPod! It was cheap and easy! Ok, almost too cheap, Russia isn’t known for being the most secure place to do business with a credit card (Possibly less safe than Finglas West.) and I was a little disconcerted when the credit card company rang up a few hours later to check if I really intended buying the fissile uranium from Uzbekistan, to which of I course I said maybe, depending on the quality. The site is easy to use, well-designed and clearly secure (You only get one shot at every download, but it hangs on to them until it knows you were successful and only charges when you complete the download) and I’m totally comfortable with using it. This is the way this should work.

I’ll say it again, because I love repetition and over-emphasis: This is the way this should work.

It was cheap, the cost is basically calculated by file-size which is dictated by the quality and format of the files, so an album might work out to between two to five euro, and the processing (they generate the files on demand, depending on if you request a popular format) is fast. The site is something that so many other similar businesses could learn from; it looks great and still delivers the goods. It even has decent preview samples!

I would actually pay even more per album, and with that I’d like a PDF file of the cover and sleeve notes, but the basic principle is great, and this is the way it should work. Everyone could make money off the deal, especially the recording artist, and the losers would be the people who are currently making money by having a big office and a sharp suit; yes, these are also the people who are opposed to a better way of doing business and who will sooner or later find themselves having to adapt to having to work for a living. I mean, it’s a model that works for the guys at the top of the pile, but there will over time be more bands who will move into the new model which makes use of the Interweb and new technologies.

The next discussion would be, how about myspace.com getting into selling music for unsigned bands? That is the begginging of the new model, and they have the money to push it. Bring it on.

Oh, and the music itself.

  • New Order
    Yes, the obsession continues, and my therapist says that listening to some actual albums light help. They don’t need any further introduction.

    • Waiting For The Siren’s Call
      Bloody excellent. Krafty is particulary good, and is why I wanted this album. It’s very good indeed.
    • Power, Corruption & Lies
      Not bad, although a lot of it sounds like variations on ‘Blue Monday’, so I guess that was the sound of the day, or maybe the sample was broken or there was a sort of concept there or something.
    • Substance
      Great stuff in there. Yes please. All the collected singles up to 1987.
  • Goldfrapp
    Didn’t hear too much of their stuff, but apparently they are where it’s at and I decided to taste a bit. They generally seemed to get good reviews, and they have a very reclusive, shy lead singer after whom the band is named.

    • Black Cherry
      Great stuff. Touch of the Gary Numans about it, but he was always top notch, if a bit of a whinger. She really has an excellent voice and it’s great stuff. Harsh electronic sounds with a good beat. It’s definitely ‘different’.
    • Supernature
      The opening track, ‘Ooh la la’ is what sold me on this, and the rest of the album is as good. Fantastic stuff. The sound can be a bit repetitive at times, and it seems intentionally a bit retro. Some great dance tracks, which I like.
  • Snow Patrol
    Oh dear! Material for another post! This is because I went to see Snow Patrol a couple of weeks ago with the Jennifer (I got her tickets some time ago, to cheer her up; she’s a big fan. A very big fan.) and heard the music for the first time. Not bad, and a great live act, which always does it for me.

    • Final Straw
      Jennie Cantwell, being generally delightful and very pleased with herself a few weeks ago in the Stag's Head after Snow Patrol. Good music, but miserable stuff. It’s an album of misery, although the music itself is chirpy enough; I decided to actually listen to the lyrics because Jen talks about it a lot and it seems to have made a big impression on her. Man, I’m going to think long and hard before I buy her an album again, it gets me into all sorts of trouble.
  • Blondie
    Again, if Blondie needs an introduction then you need to get out from under your rock more. Seriously now.

    • The Platinum Collection
      A collection of all the singles, the hits… Forty-seven tracks. It’s probably every piece of music, every squeak, every burp and every fart they ever made. Dear God, what was I thinking. Some great stuff in there though.

Now I’ll have to listen to it all, compile some new playlists, and worst of all clean out the crap. There is a lot of it in there, believe you me.

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Serious

Just a quick post tonight; I’ve been busy again, partly taking some time out to relax, with getting back to work and getting stuck into some freelance jobs, and with setting up my new laptop (which I bought along with some other stuff as part of getting myself set up as a mercenary. Sorry, freelance […]

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Just a quick post tonight; I’ve been busy again, partly taking some time out to relax, with getting back to work and getting stuck into some freelance jobs, and with setting up my new laptop (which I bought along with some other stuff as part of getting myself set up as a mercenary. Sorry, freelance web developer. I did say I’d post about my next few moves, didn’t I? And I didn’t, did I? I even have my company/trading name, the URL has been bought and the hosting paid for… And it’s not Kraton, Defeater of Meat Slugs, it’s a lot less exciting but more useful.

Now, I hadn’t posted this before, and I partly was waiting a little bit, but here it is. Tee, who you’ll either know personally, or know of because you read this site and you know I go on about her from time to time, has put up a moving and honest post dealing with a serious issue on her site, ideasforcheapstuff.com (the site of the three deliciously lickable girls) and it’s something that I think people should read; I should warn you now that it’s serious stuff, and you should approach it with an open mind. I think everyone could learn something from it. The events Tee writes of happened barely a week and half after I met her for the first time, so I got caught up in it all, and it’s touched me too in that sense. Just read it, and think about it, maybe follow the links she gives and hopefully if it helps even one person who reads it then that can only be a good thing.

http://www.ideasforcheapstuff.com/wordpress/2006/06/15/confronting-suicide/

So I’m glad I’ve put that up; please don’t comment on it here, just read it and think about it.

In other news, today was my first day as a contractor for a company I’ll be doing work for over the next while (it’s ‘web stuff’, that’s all you need to know, and it is very exciting stuff to be working on for someone like me.) which was great, although I had to take a lot of technical stuff in and now my brain is full, which when added to what I’ve had to deal with in setting up my laptop (I’d rather punch myself repeatedly in the nuts than install a PC or a Mac for my own use again.) is almost too much to deal with and I’m toying with the idea of turning into a fully-fledged psychopath tomorrow, perhaps murdering some innocent bystanders on my to attacking my colleagues in the office with a chainsaw. Well, I might have considered it, but this evening I saw a Czech movie in the Czech embassy (Thanks for organising tickets to that Michaela!) and it was so remarkably miserable (And believe you me, the Czechs know how to do misery better than anyone, even people from Longford.) that you’d be incapable of harming anyone after watching it. You’d just think about it, and then break down in tears, while nearby children laugh and frolic, unaware of the sheer meaningless misery of life. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but it just seems that the point of view there is that everyone is either a bastard, or a weak fool, and everyone gets what they deserve, or gets betrayed, or things just go pear-shaped for everyone generally. Also try to see a movie called ‘Czech Dream’ (‘Cesky Sen’), where some students get a grant and then set out to make everyone very miserable, even though they were all perfectly happy to start with, just to make a point that they weren’t really all that happy to begin with. I’m being fairly facetious about it, but it’s not far off the mark, and bloody typical too.

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Busy

Me at work, doing my thing; as viewed through my webcam.
Yes, I’ve been busy recently, and although I may have mistakenly given the impression that I quit my job in a particularly dramatic fashion, sticking it to The Man in all my bridge-burning glory (“To Hell with you and your Goddamned job, I’m leaving! And I’m taking Michaela with me!”) it really wasn’t like that, and I gave four entire week’s notice. I also didn’t get Michaela, which was even more disappointing. The next reaction I’ve been getting is generally “Whooo! Must be so awkward to be there after writing all that!” and that hasn’t been the case either. At least, not more awkward than usual, which is actually more than most people would tolerate is one of the reasons I called it a day anyway. So business as usual.

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Yes, I’ve been busy recently, and although I may have mistakenly given the impression that I quit my job in a particularly dramatic fashion, sticking it to The Man in all my bridge-burning glory (“To Hell with you and your Goddamned job, I’m leaving! And I’m taking Michaela with me!”) it really wasn’t like that, and I gave four entire week’s notice. I also didn’t get Michaela, which was even more disappointing. The next reaction I’ve been getting is generally “Whooo! Must be so awkward to be there after writing all that!” and that hasn’t been the case either. At least, not more awkward than usual, which is actually more than most people would tolerate is one of the reasons I called it a day anyway. So business as usual.

I have been taking notes for a big post about what comes next after the four weeks is up, which is next Friday (Parallel got a day for free there, I’m a generous soul at heart) and I think you’ll all enjoy that one no end, especially since it publicly commits me to a particular direction in my life and of course I’ll have to see it through. On the upside, it will hopefully involve a bit more writing and that can’t be a bad thing (assuming, of course, that I actually do the writing). It’s very, very exciting for me right now, and even if things don’t work out, I’ll painstakingly document it here in much the way I don’t get around to documenting anything else, and you’ll all get a kick out of reading about it.

So, in the words of Richard Ashcroft of ‘The Verve‘, “Baby, Oooooooooh ahh yeah, Oh no no no, In my head, My Lord! My Lord! I’m a lucky man, this ain’t no symphony, slip slide slip slide, no no no, yeahhhh.”. If things don’t work out in the coming months I could always find myself the next Verve and write songs for them, it seems like easy work. I’m close to finishing Keith’s site at long last which has proven to be hard work partly because I spent a week and a half which wasn’t otherwise very busy at all fighting spam on this site (automated systems which know how to post comments on sites like this, repeatedly posting comments which are links to insurance sales sites and Viagra) and on the LTD site (check it out to see the most deliciously edible girls in the world, having way more fun than you or I). I eventually got around it but it was hard work, and then of course I started being busy again, and I still don’t know where all this stuff comes from. So I’ll post a link here when it’s done, and hopefully I’ll talk Keith into actually writing on it too.

I’ve been looking at my self-discipline too; I really could be so much more productive but I just somehow am not. I like sleeping. I like taking a walk somewhere. I like taking a moment to sit and drool while making a low humming noise. Stuff like that, I think, which makes life more enjoyable than trying to follow a path in the manner of a whizz-head with an F-15 strapped to his (or her) back. Even so, I should be using the extra time to get some work done instead of surfing the same crap news sites, or trying to by cheap Tadafil, or even chatting relentlessly to Romanian women (although, if you can manage it, it is very entertaining and educational, and winding them up is about as much fun as you can have, short of getting your nads paddled by Oompa Loopas). Speaking of which, I met an actual person on the Internet. I mean, someone I haven’t previously been introduced to by someone I already know, and as a result my English has deteriorated drastically over the last week and a half. My englis, he is not more so good as the time from one day, and you are no understan me soo good as now tehn. I am make her mistak wit the word. Yo are gett this from womans ho speak no englis soo good. You can see where this is going, so maybe if I spend less time chatting, and more time finishing Keith’s site, we’ll all be better off, if not as amused as before. I’ll write some more about this intriguing development very shortly, and the mechanics of meeting people online and in real-life quite shortly, because it ties in with a number of interesting discussions I’ve had recently, and some ideas which developed independently about that and my writing (and for a dramatic change of pace from my previous writings these ideas aren’t about the enslavement of women, or being offensive just for the Hell of it). Yo like wan yo see waht I rite yo abot these thing.

Lastly, I got a webcam: k_parallel (at) hotmail.com – yes, you have to be smart enough to decipher the bit in the middle, because I will spammed otherwise.
Me at work, doing my thing; as viewed through my webcam.Me at work, doing my thing; as viewed through my webcam.If you want to have a look at me, in my natural environment, add this address to your hotmail MSN contacts and watch away. I really don’t know why, but you’re welcome to. it only works on my office PC, but when I get my new laptop I’ll have it on most of the time, home or work. You’ll be able to see pretty quickly if the new career is working out or not.

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Cock-blocking beats

I have bigger, more important things to post about than this, but… It is funny and seems to have amused a few people so far. Particularly girls! It’s the kind of thing which demonstrates the cultural divide between the skirted boob-carriers and the trousered cock-wielders; interestingly, and largely by pure co-incidence, I got pulled (or […]

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I have bigger, more important things to post about than this, but… It is funny and seems to have amused a few people so far. Particularly girls! It’s the kind of thing which demonstrates the cultural divide between the skirted boob-carriers and the trousered cock-wielders; interestingly, and largely by pure co-incidence, I got pulled (or forced my way, it’s a moot point at any rate) into a conversation in Kilkenny on Saturday night, at a party, we were all slightly drunk, I’m setting the scene here, bear with me, about gender being a cultural construct. This interesting topic came up because Lise (it’s short for Elisabeth, very important to know that)Lise (who is called Elisabeth Bergin in real life; it's a cultural thing) and Mark (who calls me Chris for some reason) in the cab. Madness ensued shortly afterwards.Lise (who is called Elisabeth in real life; it’s a cultural thing) and Mark (who calls me Chris for some reason) in the cab. Madness ensued shortly afterwards. Click image to view larger version is doing a thesis on this area and had some opinions on the subject to share with group. As usual, so did I, and got stuck in with some opinions of my own, and I’ve actually been thinking about it since. I’ve formed some forceful and no doubt controversial ideas which I’ll happily throw the way of anyone who’ll care to listen, and they’ll get me beaten too. About time, some will say.This single heated conversation had an interesting effect on me in that since then I’ve been thinking more clearly, articulating myself much better and generally been using my mind a bit more. I had, I think, been getting a little complacent. Aren’t young people fantastic?
Props to Lise!
I’ll sum up my view as this; I have a cock. It is not the biggest cock there is, it isn’t always the most reliable of cocks, and certainly not the most beautiful, but it is and always has been there, and I’ve always known what it is there for. Now, I’ll admit that use of it wasn’t something that came naturally to me, but that’s just some technical stuff. I’ve always known what I’ve wanted to do with it, and with girls. I wasn’t taught that. I wasn’t taught to have a cock, and cute pair of nuts to go with it. This is because I am male, and it’s part of the package; I know some males realise early on that the skirted boob-carriers are not for them, but that’s not a cultural thing either, they just know from day one that they are benders and that’s the way it is (I’m not a bender, by the way, in case that wasn’t clear. But each to their own. I’m sure Brokeback Mountain is a great movie.). And the same goes for girls who don’t like the the trousered cock-wielders. Mind you, many a time you can’t blame them really. But being facetious and deliberately offensive aside, my point is that these are not learned things. I am what I am, you are what you are, and these things are decided in a large part by your genes.This whole area of discussion is not unrelated to the very politically incorrect and sensitive discussion about race; suffice to say, some human population groups are genetically predisposed to be better at certain things (by and large) than others. These ‘things’ can be a little nebulous, but sport is a good example of what I’m talking about here, and I won’t go into it any further because it’s a tricky one which I can’t tackle lightly without a little research.

So, all that said, there are certain things which while in theory they are cultural issues, I think that evolution and the biology of gender means that there are things which women can’t understand. At all. If you went back in time (or to New Zealand) and explained the offside rule to Maximus Decimus Meridias then I think you’ll find that he would find the time (in between defeating the Germanic hordes) to say “Ah yes, of course, that’s entirely reasonable. Good idea, too!” and he’d be right. It’s a man thing. Girls… Well, you know, the offside rule. That’s the way it is.

This came up when having to explain ‘cock-blocking’ to a finite but seemingly endless number of Romanian women after some of the frenzied commenting on my previous post regarding my going to teach Engleza in Romania, where I had to use the term (in jest, of course) about the women who teach in… It’s a long story. Read the post and the comments to see what I mean. Anyway, here’s my explanation, if you don’t like the semi-official version.

If a guy has an interest in a girl and is trying to chat her up then the cock-block is an attempt to foil the chat up, usually by a friend of the girl (male or female). Sometimes it’s a friend of the guy, who himself has an interest in the girl, or is just very socially inept. If the guy doing the cock-blocking is a friend of the girl, then he is probably cock-blocking in order to keep the girl to himself. On the other hand, if it’s a girl, then she is misguidedly trying to protect her friend from having a good time (or she wants the guy to herself).

Now, entirely hypothetically, let’s say I express an interest in Angela, who is a friend of my friend Jen. However, Jen isn’t happy about this, because she doesn’t want me to get lucky with Angela (perhaps, because it would be awkward, especially if I was only interested in Angela for casual sex), so Jen has to do something to prevent me from getting Angela’s attention. For example, she might loudly ask me in front of Angela if my syphillis has cleared up yet, or if my wife is coming over to join us. Of course, there is the bungled cock-block, whereby for example, Jen may try to block me by saying to Angela “Dude! He’s so not clever, he just lost €9,000 in a stupid investment in some company!”. But Angela might think that there must be more where that came from and be encouraged rather than discouraged… Thus a bungled cock-block. Dude! This would make it very hard for me to ‘get lucky’ with Angela, hence the term ‘cock-block’, because my cock has almost literally been blocked.

Well, I thought I should share these thoughts with group. I’ve been beavering away on posts to finish the Vienna trip write-up (with some truly scandalous and epic stuff in there), the Devon trip write-up (complete with pillow-heads) and Kenny’s birthday. And now also the epic Kilkenny trip, as well as a million other things I’ve seen, done and farted in the general direction of over the last few weeks. I have to finish Keith’s site too, for then I will have a third site out there which I’ve built on top of WordPress, the same fantastic free software which makes this site possible…

(edited on 19th April 2006 to add the bungled scenario. Pretty important possibility, I believe.)

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Guinness

Me, all fuzzy and wearing The Hat, which makes me irresistable to all women. Even hairy ones. Click image to view larger version Guinness is great; you drink it, and then all too late you realise what it’s doing to you, but it feels so damn good, you just can’t fight it… The downside is […]

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Me, Kevin Teljeur, all fuzzy and wearing The Hat, which makes me irresistable to all women. Even hairy ones.Me, all fuzzy and wearing The Hat, which makes me irresistable to all women. Even hairy ones. Click image to view larger version

Guinness is great; you drink it, and then all too late you realise what it’s doing to you, but it feels so damn good, you just can’t fight it… The downside is that I haven’t had a day without alchohol since last Thursday, which is a lot less good.

Today was interesting, to say the least. I had to write off a ridiculous amount of money (if you crashed your car you would lose this kind of money), but I got a job offer from Romania! Just one line on Messenger really could have some very far-reaching effects on my life over the coming year, and hopefully be a very positive development. So shouts out to Oana, Moni and all their crew in Timisoara!

What a day though. I’ll finish the posts on my recent travels over the weekend, and put those photos up too. Unmissable stuff, I can tell you now!

(Edited on 12.04.06 to add the image)

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