The George Lite Zone

Surfing the web in search of Hawkwind lyrics, as you do, I stumbled across this little piece of classic 'Wind on John Moules myspace account http://www.myspace.com/johnmoules . A most excellent page, check it out. It should be linked to by any self respecting Hawkwind blogger. There's also a nice piece of Girschool footage embeded there too. ...we're born to erase, all of your days....

Every once in a while a novel comes along that perfectly captures the spirit of the age. It's a time when violent crime is on the rise with murder the new currency on the streets and hate and intolerance the new religion. Inner city dwellers hide in their homes in a state of paranoia not knowing if the next rap listening hoodie they see will be the one to stick a knife in their gut. Welcome to Britain in the 21st century. And so on to the book in question, Hater by David Moody . Imagine a world where this state of random violence is taken to the next level, a world where ordinary people transform into psychopathic killing machines for no apparent reason. Given the nickname of Haters by the media they could be anyone, your friend your wife, even your children. One minute your nearest and dearest, the next your impromptu executioner, or you theirs. Society falls apart and paranoia rules the streets of fear. What do the government know?, what's going on? and who's going to tu...

For some reason the continental Europeans have a thing about cows, cows on the ceiling , painted cows, and in this case stuffed cows outside of restaurants. Spareribs anybody?

Speaking of Forest, after the unmitigated bollocks that is The Damned United, it's nice to get a balanced view of the man who was God, Mr Brian Clough OBE. The glory day's when Old Big 'Ead and Saint Peter (Taylor) ruled the world are sadly long gone now, but hopefully this documentary will bring back the memories of arguably the greatest football manager the world has ever seen. In addition walking on the Trent and being able to turn water into Shipstones, Cloughie had the ability to take an average player and make him good, a good player and make him great and a great player...wow!!! So do yourself a favour, tune in to ITV1 tonight at 10:35 and witness the story of a legend. It's the greatest story ever told. Come on you Reds !!!

Wee Billy Davies, Nottingham Forest manager and ex-Par, has expressed an interest in bringing Dexter to the city ground. Fantastic !!! Since the departure of Stuart Pearce the city ground has been missing a Psycho on the books. A quality hatchet man, someone to carve up the opposition defense and stick it to them. A bit of fire power from someone who shoots on site can't be beat. Psycho killer. Quest que cest? Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better than marvelous Marvin. The opposition beter run, run, run, run, run, run, run, away...

To show what a caring nation they are, the South African Football League decided to organise a peace conference ahead of the next World Cup. Fantastic, an opportunity to let the doves of peace fly across the African Savannah. The trouble is that the doves in question were shot down in the night before they could so much as squawk. At least the one baring the Dalai Lama's visa was. Apparently it's not in South Africa's best interest to allow Tibet's spiritual leader and Nobel Laureate in for a conference that had the blessing of the Nobel committee. Thabo Masebe, spokesman for President Kgalema Motlanthe said that "South Africa thinks that, if the Dalai Lama attended the conference, the focus would shift away from the World Cup.". What the smeg has the world cup to do with peace? It has got an awful lot to do with commercialism and high finance. Which dovetails quite nicely with the South African government playing kiss ass with the Chinese authorities. At leas...

In the British Waterstones in Brussels last week I came across a copy of The Food and Cooking of Belgium by Suzanne Vandyck . Starting off with a description of Belgian culture and the history of Belgian food, it moves on to 60 superlative recipes. Clocking in at 25 Euros however, I deferred purchase until I got back to the flat and paid a quick visit to good old Amazon. And so, a week later I decided to start off with one of the countries signiature dishes, Flemish-style beef stew with beer. The beer used was Chimay Brun and a glass or two were also drunk with the meal. As were two more bottles of that god of beers, Westvleiteren. I finished off with a pear tart purchased from my favourite Brussels patiserie and some Neuhaus chocolates. Recipe now posted on Greasy Truckers Party Food . Eet Smakelijk!

So Apple's new OS for the iPhone will feature cut, copy AND paste !!! Jeez that's phenomenal, the advances in mobile technology never cease to amaze me. The Apple tech guys really pushed the boat out with that one. Whatever next. Perhaps the next version will have a piece of string tied to the top, and some kind of quick release mechanism to facilitate a rapid exit from your hand. With those two key pieces of hardware in place they can really go to town with drag and drop functionality.

Christie's recently outraged the Chinese authorities with the sale of two bronze animal heads looted from Beijing over a hundred years ago. Jackie Chan called it shameful and plans to make a movie about the recovery of Chinese art treasures. And right they are too, after all it's wrong to steal something from a nation. If your going to steal some cultural icon's don't mess around with a few statue's, do what the Chinese did and steal the entire country. Hey, Tibet must have thousands of sacred statues lying about, I'm sure Sothebies would be only too happy to cut a deal and sell them on to the highest bidder. Then there are 2 million Tibetans. I'm sure there are modern slavers that'd want a piece of that action. Alternatively the Chinese could be given back their animal tat and the Tibetans could be given back their country and their spiritual leader. A rabbit and a rat for a Lama sounds like a great art deal to me. Especially as the latter is an origina...

Lost Jimmy's post on Hawkwind songs covered by Motörhead has put me in the mood for a little light Motörwind music. Here's the band at full speed playing their title track with Phil Lynott just before his death.

And finally Cyril. One last post for the week. Visiting my old mucker Steve Green's blog, The Shaddow Library , I was reminded that Critical Wave is back. Then Originally published between 1987 and 1986 this fine Science Fiction and Fantasy review originally ran to 46 issues and featured contributions from such genre luminaries as Mike Moorcock, Stephen Baxter, Iain Banks and Dr Doom himself, Graham Joyce. Unfortunately this labor of love spiraled into a financial black hole with the editors reluctantly closing the project down. Fade to black... And Now ... Cue Angus Young guitar riff . Critical wave is back; back in black. In the words of the editors, "Resurrected and refocussed for the new centur y" ( was that your comment Steve? If so I think you've been watching too many 1920's German gothic horror films ). Do yourself a favor and check it out at efanzines.com , you know it makes sense. Catch the wave . It's the wave of the future. Just smile and wave ...

Walking from De Broukere towards Boeurs after part two of my weekend filmfest, I noticed two large mean looking dudes baring in on a wee slip of a lass a bit further down the street. Thinking that something was amiss I watched proceedings to see what developed. It soon became apparent that the girl in question wasn't happy with the two hemming her in to stop her progress. A quick look around showed that for once there wasn't a cop in site, so I continued to watch with the thought that if things deteriorated I might have to go Clive Owen on their ass. Fortunately she eventually managed to barge past the two potential miscreants vanished in the direction of Gare De Nord. With their badgering of the lady, I think like Mr Owen I can state that I'm not afraid of badgers. Unlike this estimible actor however, I think I'll wrap up the weekends blogging with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.

Having still got 3 films left on my UGC pass and only a week left before it expired, I decided to head for the cinema this weekend. Push Saturday night at the movies and first out the blocks was Push. Take a bunch of people with various Psi powers, a shadowy organisation tracking them down with their own Psi Warriors, and what have you got, Heroes season one or a martial arts packed Heroes wannabe set in Hong Kong that's about as unoriginal as they come. Boasting a plot with more holes than a tetley teabag, Push is a brain dead piece of crap where the only thing of note is that they put Dakota Fanning in a whore length skirt for most of the film. This has led to much discussion in the forums of IMDB about using a child in this manner. Then again Jodie Foster was only 13 when she made Taxi Driver and was portrayed in a similar style. Then again, Taxi Driver was a classic film and not a chop shlocky action fest. On the plus side, Fanning's performance was pretty good and the acti...

What happens if you take a touch of Free, throw in a dash of Led Zeppelin and stir in some Guns and Roses for good measure? Has anyone got the answer?

So here I am, Friday night in Brussels, just having drunk a bottle of the greatest beer in the world, listening to U2s latest album "No Line On The Horizon". I purchased the aforementioned shiny disk of joy on the back of a 5 star review in Q Magazine. I used to have a policy of buying 5 star titles from this estimable tome as a matter of policy. Over the years this has led to some great purchases of releases from the likes of David Byrne, Razorlight, Jet, The Killers and Muse. In this case the 5 stars were augmented by a claim from the magazine that their latest release is their best album to date. Given this claim, and a liking for previous stuff from Dublin's finest this latest purchase was a gimme. And so on to Brussels a glass of Westvleiteren and Bono the Edge (on the edge of time) and co. giving it some via my MacBook Pro and a set of Logitech speakers. The verdict... fecking excellent. Unlike previous U2 albums, this one is a slow burn, taking time to wiggle it...

A blonde and a lawyer are seated next to each other on a flight from Edinburgh to Stockholm. The lawyer asks if she would like to play a fun game? The blonde, tired, just wants to take a nap. Politely she declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The lawyer persists and explains that the game is easy and a lot of fun. He explains, "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me £5.00, and vise versa." Again, she declines and tries to get some sleep. The lawyer, now agitated, says, "Okay, if you don't know the answer you pay me £5.00, and if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500.00." This catches the blonde's attention and, figuring there will be no end to this torment unless she plays, agrees to the game. The lawyer asks the first question. "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The blonde doesn't say a word, reaches into her purse, pulls out a £5.00 bill and hands it to the la...