Hal's Friday Evening Blog Review #12 - The Snob Log

I was worried for a little while today that I wouldn't actually be able to find a blog to comment on using the trusty 'blogs recently posted to' link on Blogger that wasn't a corporate advertising front, or similar piece of crap. I guess many people have something better to do on the last Friday before Christmas than post to their blog. But finally I was lucky enough to find The Snob Log. This is the (copious) thoughts of a guy from Kentucky who "presently works for a large midwest utility" as "is not too fond of hurricanes". Well that really narrows it down. I was impressed by the very latest post - 'The Carpet Crawlers'. An obvious Genesis reference for those in the know, and indeed the accompanying picture is from the sleeve of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. If I was my mate Benny Voller, I'd say that was one of the great rock double albums. F*** it, I'm not Benny, but I'll say it anyway. The actual post is a rather involved tale of a bungled carpet installation, but better this kind of fussy detail than the platitudes you get in the kind of blogs that say, "Hi I'm Wayne and this is a picture of my fiancee and this is a picture of my dog and this is when we went on holiday to Niagara falls..." we've all read that kind of shite, and at least Snob Blog is a bit more quirky than that.

This guy obviously likes Genesis a lot - there is a picture of bassist Mike Rutherford with the double neck bass and lead guitar combo he used on tour in the seventies here. The other main obsession of this blog is bad smells in the workplace. One of the weirdest comments I've seen in a while is:

work for a company with a large, diversified work force. What that means is we hire people who eat the weirdest shit I have ever seen in a Tupperware container.Co-workers have left Tupperware lying around the break room and kitchenette filled with what resembles a one day old babies' first bowel movement. If that is not bad enough, they will then put it in the microwave uncovered, and nuke it on high for 45 minutes! When they are done, they remove the container and leave a thin layer of this bubonic concoction all over the inside of the microwave.

Which makes me wonder what this guy eats. Tuna sandwich every day maybe? Seriously, 'in your nose' food in the workplace can be a problem - at my previous place of work there was a guy who used to microwave whole bulbs of garlic and put them in his salad. The kitchen really used to reek after lunch but the guy looked about 15 years younger than he actually was, so it must have done the trick in some way. If they had enforced it as some kind of office policy for everyone then I reckon no-one would have noticed the smell - at least, within the office. Garlic's like that.

I have some sympathy for the chap's anti-Mac stance, though:

CDuring my years as a tech writer I was forced to use a Mac and it proved to be a real pain in the ass. I also hate their condescending commercials... I have declared our house a "no pod" zone.

Right on, kid! F*** Apple, f*** ITunes and f*** DRM. (Reminds me a bit of a great story in a biography of the rock band The Cure I read years and years ago: The Cure were on stage just before Robert Palmer at some rock festival in Europe in 1980 or thereabouts. They had overrun their time and the Robert Palmer roadcrew were motioning in increasingly agitated fashion that they should get off the goddamn stage. Anyway, bassist Simon Gallup went up to the mike and said, "F*** Robert Palmer! F*** Rock'n'Roll!" and they then went into a slow version of 'A Forest' that lasted about 20 minutes. It must have been an all time highpoint in postpunk. Of course the joke is that within about 4 years of doing that, The Cure then mutated into the same kind of "rock'n'roll" they had told to f*** off, but that's money vs principles for ya. Would be nice if a young up-and-coming group playing before The Cure at a festival next summer could shout "F*** The Cure! F*** Rock'n'Roll!" and then play a 20 minute version of "World War", "Meathook" or one of the other early songs. But it seems unlikely. )

Anyway there is plenty more on this blog I could tell you about, but it's probably more exciting if you discover the rest for yourself, and I found my Cure story more entertaining anyway. So on that topic, I will leave you (possibly for the last time before Xmas? Dunno yet) with a searching question:

Whatever did happen to Laurence Tolhurst?