formspring.me

I answered your retarded interrogations, forcefeed me more question-mush (AKA ASK ME SHIT) http://formspring.me/marshallstaxx

MEME

DEM RULEZ:
1. Put your music library on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG TITLE DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

1) IF SOMEONE SAYS, "IS THIS OKAY," YOU SAY?
'These Riots Are Just The Beginning' - And So I Watch You From Afar
Rather apt. If someones does something that I find not OK, I will often riot their face off.

2) HOW WOULD YOU WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
'Pants On Fire' - Buck 65
If my pants were on fire I would remain calm and roll in the snow, which reflects my personality very well.

3) WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
'Industry Insider 2' - Blue Destroy
If my girlfriend was an industry insider, she'd be able to get me free stuff. Don't know about 2 at the same time though.

4)HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
'My First Kiss At The Public Execution' - Blood Brothers
Today, I have neither kissed anyone nor attended a beheading / gaschamber / public stoning. This meme is shitty. Great. Now my iTunes has fucking exploded.

5) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
'Superheroes' - The Toxic Avenger
My life's dream has always been to wear my underpants on the outside of my trousers.

6) WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
'Why Do You Bother eBro?' - Charles Bronson
APATHY FTW.

7) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
'All Night Home' - Sparklehorse
Yes, I would rather stay in all night home watching Total Wipeout on BBC1 rather than see my friends. THIS TEST KNOWS MY MIND.

8) WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
'Put It In' - Toxic Lipstick
Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body, I dunno.

9) WHAT IS 2+2?
'Three' - I Would Set Myself On Fire For You
Holy fuck... this freaked me out a bit. I've got 10,228 songs in my library and this one pops up for this question. Anyway, goes to show that fate / chance is a crock of shit because it can't even get simple mathematics correct.

10) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
'Et Tu Beton' - Daitro
I don't speak French, so this could be extremely profound and I wouldn't have a fucking clue.

11) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU FANCY?
'A Spoonful Of Slurry' - Tera Melos
Oh yeah, baby, spoonfeed me that sexy slurry, watch it dribble down my chin.

12) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
'Touch The Wings Of An Angel' - Indian Summer
If they made a film about my life story it would be about a boy that pulls the wings off angels like dead flies. And Richard Pryor would play me.

13) WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
'Wilmer Valderrama (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Had 2 Wives)' - Loma Prieta
Oh yes, I just live my life totally for the joys of polygamy. By the way, please don't IM me asking to bone your wife whilst you stand in the corner, masturbating and muttering in Klingon. I'll probably say no.

14) WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
'Tigersuit' - Raein
Nothing I like more than my girlfriend dressing up in an oversized Tony The Tiger suit and partying like it's safari time.

15) WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
'Nothing' - Rapider Than Horsepower
Basterts. The feeling's mutual.

16) WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
'A Well Documented Case Of Severe Autism' - Jeromes Dream
Well, this is possible. If I ever get married in a moshpit.

17) WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
'Bluto Fucks Popeye' - The Bloody Beetroots
Why be miserable at a funeral? Stick on this excellent slice of Italo-Dirtybass-Electro and put your hands in the air like you just don't care.

18) WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
'Everybody Fucks With Somebody' - Tarentel
Spot on. Have a gold star.

19) WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
'Day Twenty Four: Gutterbomb Heaven On The Grid' - Trap Them
OK, I admit it. I'm an Al Queda suicide bomber in my spare time.

20) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
'We Are All Accelerated Readers' - Los Campesinos!
I do like to associate with people of a higher intelligence quota. Stupid people shouldn't breed.

SOLITARE

Solitaire makes me want to An Hero.

Yes... Solitaire / Klondike / Patience, that card game so beloved of travellers stuck at airports and your grandmother, makes me want to kill myself.

Each morning, without fail, I whip out my spanking new 120GB iPod (thanks Mum & Dad) on the 55 bus and go to fire up Klondike, the version of Solitaire that come bundled with the iPod software. My finger always hovers for a moment over the clickwheel as horrible, dark memories of playing card-induced pain and suffering flit though my mind. Then I click 'Start Game'.

I see Solitaire not as a simple game or way to pass time whilst waiting for your connecting flight to Helsinki, but as an interactive parable of the futility of Mankind's existence. Yep, you heard me right, PAH RAH BALL.

Each game is a new beginning, brimming with hope and optimism. I set about my task, shifting the stock to the tableau, building the foundations, juggling the cascades, with gay abandon and my mind giddy with possibilities and the sweet promise of success. Then my joy begins to fade as my options are reduced, doors are closed and the route to the finish gradually becomes less clear, until all I see is a thorny web of dead ends and denied freedom. I then begin to realise that the choices I made casually in the past have had a far greater effect than I imagined, effectively hamstringing my progress to a slow grind of scrabbling around in the dirt, desperately attempting to move a 3 of Hearts. All avenues are shut off. There is no success, only failure.

When there are no more cards to be played, the game is over. Only there is no message to tell you this, and you can constantly keep moving cards around and going through the waste pile in utter vain, toiling under the self-imposed pretence that maybe you missed something, a glimmer of hope that maybe you will find the door to completion is still ajar. You have to make the decision yourself to end it all.

To An Hero.

Then it hits me.

Maybe my whole endeavour was futile and in vain. The way the cards were dealt to me right at the start may have ensured that success was impossible. Brainy mathematicians have calculated that the odds of a game of Solitaire being unsolvable from the start are around 10%. So sometimes Lady Luck is a bitch, but 90% of the time my dismal failure is my own doing. The multitude of possibilities and endless permutations reduce my brain to quivering jelly, and I collapse, weeping, to the floor of the 55 bus.

I really should delete Solitaire from my iPod's HDD, as getting depressed and existential on the morning commute to work isn't too healthy, but I'm a sucker for the eternal punishment.

AYKROYD

Saw the wonderfully named Danananaykroyd play last night at the Lexington in Islington. This must've been about the sixth or seventh time I've seen them play this year, so safe to say I'm pretty much a cock-slurping groupie fanboy.

They were fantastic, as usual, and it's a real close call between them and Throats (who I'm seeing play a show in Beyond Retro on Saturday) as to who are the best live band in the UK right now. Their set was joyous, the happy cries of "YAY! WE DID IT!" from the band everytime they clattered to the end of a song was endearing. The WALL OF CUDDLES was a loved up twist on the popular moshpit activity named the WALL OF DEATH, where instead of kicking the shit out of eachother, the kids hugged eachother to death.

The two singers spent half the show in the midst of the crowd, and by the time most of the band had stripped of their shirts, the dual screaming vocalists really reminded me of The Blood Brothers (RIP) although a closer referance point to their sound is the missing link between Black Flag and The Polyphonic Spree. By the end of the set I was punching my chest, hollering my voice hoarse and giving hXc salutes, so I guess I had a fantastic time.

If anyone is reading this (not that ANYBODY reads this shit) who took photos of the show, please leave a retarded comment letting me know where to find them on teh internets.

If they play somewhere near you, make sure you catch their carnival of all-or-nothing funtimes.

BREAKER

All bodies break
And the blood just spills and spills,
But here we sit debating math.

It's such a shame
My hand it kills and kills,
There's got to be an end to that.

Choices seem so clear cut at the time. The act is easier than the aftermath, the strike of the blade easier to deal with than the cleaning up of the bloodstain. Aww fuck, stop being so emo.

In other news, I have to stop listening to so much Low. I think I'm gonna go watch Hitman and see some heads explode in sniper-rifle induced crimson gore fountains.

SOUP

My brain feels like a jackhammer has pulverised it and smeared the resulting mess across the interior magnolia walls of my skull.

It was a HEAVY weekend. Stuff happened.

So I am trying not to think too much and occupy my mind with numbingly mudane tasks and thoughts.

Mundane task for today - create a new site structure for the research pages of the website. My day is fully stuffed with rearranging web pages about PARP Inhibitors and Nipple Fluid - A Key To Earlier Detection.

Mundane thought for today - inspired by an uninspiring conversation in my office today... "Do you eat or drink soup?". The general concensous was that it depended on the use of cutlery and the overall consistancy of the soup being consumed.

ENTHRALLING.

WOE

Thought I'd start using this blog to share some music, as my shitty life is too boring to write about on a regular basis.

First up is Woe, a band from Southend, UK, that I played guitar and Korg for. We were active from 2000 to 2004, and recorded two LPs, the first of which, Last Stop, I'm posting here. Last Stop was the 15th record to be released on Walter Schreifels' Some Records, and they have a pretty good band biography up on their site.

Woe were a blend of noise, punk and bad jazz. The songs were dirge-like improvisations based around a single idea, rhythm or riff. The closest reference point to me is the 'inbetween song noise parts' on Fugazi's Red Medicine.

DOWNLOAD.

FASHION

Today I had to meet a deadline reskinning the FTBC website, because the current design I had to knock together in two days due to the fact the design agency we comissioned fucked up the build beyond belief. If you have two days to build a site with a fully fuctioning online store that works, believe me, aesthetics kind of go out the window.

When it comes home each evening from the world wide web, gently sobbing and with snot bubbling from it's wonky nose, I coo into it's ear "Yes little website of mine, you may be ugly as sin and all the bigger sites tease you about your sticky-out ears and your goofy overbite, but at least you have a fully fuctioning shop section. They can never take that away from you."

So my baby is going under the knife, and will emerge after the weekend with perfectly constructed HTML, beautifully sculptured CSS, and a killer rack of 36DD tits.

PECADILLOES

Today, I was standing at the window of my office, gazing down at the restless throng of High Holborn below, when I spotted a strange looking gentleman waiting at the traffic lights to cross the road.

The guy was in his mid to late 50's with a thatch of pure white hair on his head. He was holding a black leather suitcase. He was peering down the road through his horn-rimmed spectacles waiting for a gap in the traffic to cross the road. Nothing peculiar there. He was wearing black hold-up stockings, frilly black french knickers, a black lacy bra and patent high heels. And nothing else.

My jaw dropped and I actually rubbed my eyes, blinked, then looked again to make sure I wasn't still hallucinating from that gram of horse tranquilliser I dropped last night. He was still there, striding across the street and heading into the lobby of the Citadines Hotel, attracting various odd looks from the passers-by.

I rushed to my desk, grabbed my digital video camera, and stood at the window focused on the hotel door for about 15 minutes, hoping that he would emerge so I could catch him on film, post it to YouTube and become an internet phenomenon.

Sadly, for both me and him, he obviously had some important business to attend to in the hotel and after 15 minutes of holding the camera my arm went numb.

London, you are fucking weird, but I love you.

MIDGET

Just finished watching "In Bruges" and thought it was the best movie I've seen since "No Country For Old Men". It's dark, hilarious, violent, emotional, intelligent and bloody, often all within the space of 3 scenes. It also features an egomanical midget snorting shitloads of cocaine whilst eulogising about race-war to a half-naked Belgian prostitute. How can you not like that?

Will probably not win any Oscars, like it deserves to, because:

A: It's set in Europe, and features mainly European actors.

B: Every American character is either ridiculed or killed, or both.

Go see it now... In Bruges gets 10/10.