Only gone and got married!

So, last weekend was a big weekend, a very big, life defining weekend.

Last Friday (9/7/11) my wonderful fiancée (is that the right one, I can never remember?? I suppose I wont have to from this point!!) got hitched in front of a MASSIVE crowd of 9 in the Kilvey Room of Swansea Registry Office. Everything went to plan, nothing messed up and even the CDs for the music worked. Magic!

From this point onwards I will be mostly wearing:

The wedding itself, as you'd expect with attendance not making double figures (by choice I'll add we're not hideously unpopular), was quiet and indeed most awesome! Lovely music (Pretenders - I'll Stand By You / Piano Players version of Everlong (Foo Fighters) / Ben Folds - Luckiest), nice setting and of course wonderful other half, who looked gorgeous. Not massive amounts of photos as the outside bit was windy as, but some nice ones. Decent grub after and a few pints. Good day!

The day after it was all action stations to set up the hall for the 'party' aspect, and once again was a cracking night. From my sister-in-law doing a Dolly Parton act, avoiding actually singing any Dolly Parton songs in the process, to seeing the pretty damn decent turn out. I even confirmed the fact that I'm almost tone deaf banging through half of Summer Nights and half of Gold!

Very notable part was though you realise you have some damn good friends and family, donations were generous but more importantly some of the stuff in the cards was pretty damn awesome. Some minorly bizarre (you know who you are!). If I wasn't a horrible heartless shell of a human, could almost had brought a tear to my eye, but I am so... Everyone will be getting thank you cards of course, but if you're reading this. Cheers guys, you rock! Me and Cer were very happy everyone came, joined in and enjoyed. Well I assume enjoyed, I don't people generally don't make that much noise if they're bored.

Brandy Edwards did a sterling pair of impromptu speeches (I promised him none, he was heckled up during the meal, then very harshly called up by my sister in the party, as well as covering the female vocal in Summer Nights when Cerys legged it) and the buffet was awesome, even if I ate hardly any of it. Yes you heard me right, you can put any 'yeah whatever fatty' jokes in the comment section.

People raved on about the royal wedding and it got so much blanket coverage that I got sick of it after 30 seconds. But wedding the like of mine and the 3 other mates I've got getting/have already got married this year happen every weekend. Smaller by a factor of 100,000,000, but honestly wouldn't swap a second of mine for the whole royal faff and bullshit.

The Ben Folds song was perfect to close as (even though I heard very little of it on the way out) I am the Luckiest!

Right enough of this sounding all soft and sentimental stuff. For my next trick I'll stop looking confused at the phone every time I get a text from 'Cerys Driscoll' before going "....oh yeah"

JoCo comes to the UK!

Some very exciting news (I think anyway) broke last night! Jonathan Coulton will be, briefly, in the UK in June! For those who have no idea who he is he's a singer! A singer of a highly geeky nature and to be fair has done some cracking songs in his time. He's best known (among geeks and gamers) for writing the song 'Still Alive' from the quite simply awesome game Portal. He also performs a good version of the song himself (in game it's sung by one of the characters) which is on the official orange box soundtrack. Go find, it's worth it.

Yesterday evening he announced via a blog via twitter (Jesus who would plug a blog via twitter, loser) that he'll be playing 3 dates in the UK! Now, there's no Cardiff date, I'm fairly sure he doesn't know Cardiff even exists and funnily enough he's not down to play Merthyr either. I have thoughts on bands who skip an entire country as I've posted previously. But I have travelled to see the likes on Ben Folds, Green Day, Barenaked Ladies so I clearly will do it. Coulton is playing Bristol so I'm thinking, as it's a small tour, I've never seen him before, I can let this one slide and take a trip over the bridge to see his acoustic delights!

This isn't of course a random trip, he has a new album due out any time now called Artificial Heart, which to be fair I'm also looking forward too. I can only urge everyone to check out his best of, it's surprisingly good, but as he doesn't own it, neither version of Still Alive is included. Valve have the rights as the game publishers.

He's also done a song for Portal 2, I'd imagine to take the same role as Still Alive, and my enthusiasm for this game is very high, as I may have mentioned. Only a 8 days to go! Plus I have to finish Fallout 3 before then!

So JoCo, when are the tickets out??

"I promise that I'll come to Wales"

I'm annoyed!

Ben Folds is one of my favourite artists, he's clearly a talented man and put son one hell of a show. Over my time I've travelled twice to Manchester and once to Bristol to see him. That's quite a few miles.

Imagine my joy when on his last UK tour (some time ago now) in Bristol, after being heckled from a good proportionally Welsh crowd, he promised, no sang, next time he'd come to Wales. Plus of course with everything these days the evidence is on youtube (I'm the one who put it on there)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szBp2JwanSE (1100 hits woo hoo)

Well today his long awaited tour dates came out. Dublin, Glasgow, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Southampton, then on to Europe. Notice anything missing? Not even close, not even Bristol this time. Well thank you very much Mr Folds, this time you can shove your tickets up your Southampton.

It's an increasing trend, bands just don't play in Wales. Are the 'good' people of Cymru not worthy of the music? Are we all so poor we can't pay the ticket prices? Are we so far down the M4 people don't even know we exist? Well this Welshman has had enough, I'm not going to see him or anyone else who isn't close by. I know there's an element of cutting my nose off to spite my face but screw it. If more people had this attitude maybe we'd get better service down here.

Mr Folds your sans one fan, and based on your album sales last time, you need every one you can get.

You can guarantee we'll get the friggin X-Factor tour and Westlife and the like though.

Pay Day!

Woo hoo it's pay day! This signals a very special time of the month, there's a gap, not a huge one but a gap nonetheless, between the 28th (Pay Day) and the 1st (Bill Day)

During this little period it's like living in a whole new financial bracket, the bank looks healthy, you don't feel a sense of intrepidation on approach to a cashpoint. The bank itself saves a fortune on red ink, but it's not all environmentally friendly as they tend to use more black.

Then the first comes round... Direct Debits shrink the balance back to where I belong and things return to normality and instead of marching into <insert generic game shop here> and demanding a latest release, it's back to hanging round in the preowned section or gazing through the window longingly like Charlie Bucket in the Roald Dahl classic. Gamestation have asked me not to, apparently my saliva running down the window doesn't help their sales.

Now don't get me wrong I'm not on the breadline, work doesn't exactly pay me money I have to carry home in my diamond encrusted wheelbarrow, but it's enough (Anyone wanting to offer me megabucks leave a comment, I'll have my people call your people... OK I have no people but if it creates the right image I'll get my mum to call and pretend she's my PA).

Speaking of stuff I can't afford, has anyone seen the new keyboard add on for Rock Band? Looks mighty classy, but is weighing in at £110 with the game. Looks like it's going to be a choice between that and Natal/Kinect (£120). I'll prob go for the rock band, Kinect still seems slightly gimmicky to me, despite a wise mate singing its praises. Plus the other half (an accomplished guitar hero player herself will love it, as she's also a piano player!) The clincher would be releasing some Ben Folds for it. Do it harmonix, do it now!

Anyway, I better be off, it's getting to the busy part of the train route and some stinking hobo will sit next to me at any moment doubtless.

Catch ya later!

Is it really so hard??

I've done the who customer facing job thing a few times. A few years behind a bar, can't avoid the customer there. A few years delivering pizzas, can't avoid the customer there. A move to a call centre and then a call centre complaint handler, can't see them but can hear them, so can't avoid them there.

Luckily (depending if you enjoy that kind of role I suppose) those days, for now at least, are behind me, but I'm still close by. Right, pointless opening? Maybe, but it does set a scene that I have some experience in service.

My point is, why do I seem to encounter incompetence or downright laziness wherever I turn? I'm not going to comment on the service the company I work for gives, too many people have hung themselves like that, I'm neutral on it, as it should probably be in my kind of job (still complaints but backroom complaints), but I can at least say I always tried my best when I was customer facing.

But of late, everyone seems to conspire against being as helpful as they can. My first rant is against Plusnet, a perfectly adequate company if you never have to communicate with them. I recently moved home (or am in the process of, see earlier blog) and out Internet provider, having never caused us hassle before was going to accompany us. Went to the website to change the address and... nope can't do it online... annoying but oh well to the phone I go, and I wait, and I wait... Now Plusnet's opening hours quite closely match my working ones and they don't do weekends, so my big chance to ring them is my breaks and a chunk out of my lunch, none of these are long enough time periods to get through.

So after trying for a couple of days I go "Screw you Plusnet I'm cancelling, Sky can do my broadband!" I go to their website and... phone or post cancellations only. Now they do have a online help thing and I post on there, want to cancel can't get through on the phone can you please call me, to which they reply, you have to phone. Yes I know this but I can't. There's no email option.. to an ISP...

Their response to this query was OFCOM make us give you two options, and phone and post are the two, the slowest and the one they can charge for. It may be compliant to their regulatory body, but it's doing enough to get by and still being as obstructive as they can, obviously cancellation isn't ideal for them. Stuff them I've logged a complaint with their ombudsman (CI something or another) and notified OFCOM of my thoughts. That'll make them sit up and take note... or not.

Next on the list, and the last one I'll mention today (ooooooh it's a long long list) is KFC. Specifically KFC Merthyr sodding Tydfil. Now I love Merthyr, it's my homeland, but we have a habit of doing things half arsed, the number of times McDonalds staff haven't quite comprehended 'No cheese', shop staff not quite sure of what's going on, that kind of thing. But tonights KFC incident did my swede right in.

I arrive late, I've been painting, I'm hungry, the OH is hungry, we want 2 fillet meals. But they have no bread... oh (partial) burger place has no bread, not a good sign. OK the OH has crispy strips and I decide on a toasted twister meal. But because of the time (As you can see the bread fairy had already been) they couldn't toast it, so it was really just a twister, for the same price. But I was hungry and it was 35 yards to McDonalds and I didn't have the patience for the cheese argument tonight, so I took it. Then it took 10 minutes to arrive (it's late.. blah blah) I mean I understand they want to go home closing time, but if you're not willing to offer the service til closing time, change the closing time. Rather than my boring soggy wrap I'd rather they would have said, sorry we're closed.

On the up side, I picked up Lonely Avenue by Ben Folds/Nick Hornby today. Give or take one stinker it's damn good, in particular From Above, delightful song. I would recommend it to anyone. Oh and for the record the HMV staff who served me was a dream, not that much can go wrong scanning a CD...

I might get perfect service somewhere tomorrow, but as Ben sings and Nick wrote, "You know what hope is? Hope is a bastard"

Night!

Am I getting old or is music getting crap?

Or possibly both...

One thing is for certain, I am getting older. By no means am I old and I don't think I'm majorly close minded about new music, films etc, infact some of my favourite films have been of the last few years, but of late I can't help but think music is shite.

As I'm typing this I'm also nosing through the top 40 UK singles chart, yes I know that's a gauge of popularity not quality, but people must believe in the quality to buy is surely. All I seem to be seeing contained within said charts is a combination of reality TV stars, rappers talking about 'da club' some rude things they'd like to do to a possibly uninterested female, and celebrities with questionable musical/vocal talents that 12 year olds seem to like/want to be.

It's not all hell, the script are bearable and the manics make an appearance in the top 30,, but even they seem to be trying too hard to sound like what they think people want. Lads, I have Everything Must Go (and what an album!), if I want to listen to that I will, do something else!

I heard recently about what will be, for all intents, the death of Red Dragon FM in Cardiff, can't say I was even vaguely disappointed. The dull radio station with its 5 track playlist will not be a loss to me. I seem to these days not even be able to listen to radio 1, as they play the same repetitive style of music, then the ego fuelled DJs rave on about how great they/it is. Don't even get me started on Moyles rant (newsarse didn't use my story, but a slightly better one, I'll post my effortlater) ! Thank god for little stations such Nation Wales for keeping the rock alive, and I even find myself listening to Radio 2 to seek out decent songs.

Fair enough the 'bangin tunez' is a legitimate genre, people obviously like it, so it deserves a place on the airwaves, but why does it dominate so? It makes me think of request shows where people ring in and request songs off the playlist the station has played 12 times already that day. Do they like it cos it's good, or do they like it cos it's all they know?

Next week sees the release of Lonely Avenue by Ben Folds, an unusual collaboration between him (one of my favourite musicians) and one of my favourite authors Nick Hornby. It should be an absolute treat, but I can tell you now there will be 0 airplay for him and not many more sales. I encourage everyone to check him out, he's on iTunes, spotify etc no doubt.

At least I know I'll be able to get the album without risk of it selling out.. (yes that means an actual CD)

Later!