In light of recent events…

… the event in question being me having watched the final episode of Wonderfalls, I will now list what I consider to be the best five TV shows of the last few years (if not ever).

In this post I will just list the five with plans to discuss them in more depth in posts of their own soon.

Top Five TV Shows

5. Wonderfalls
4. Deadwood
3. BSG (I will not be discussing this on LJ, as I have agreed to do an episode by episode review for ASif!)
2. Twin Peaks
1. Carnivale

I am sure lots will disagree with me but hey, you have your own LJ, put your own five on there! (Actually do, as I’d be very interested in seeing them.)

(note to self: I have started using semagic for posts now, meaning that music is song and not album, as previously listed)

Changing of the guard

Today sees Nyssa Pascoe, depart from her role as web-design and support at the company.

Nyssa was vital in seeing the current Morrigan Books site off the ground and has helped so much with the company behind the scenes too.

We are sad to see Nyssa leave and wish her all the best in her future pursuits.

Taking over the role is the talented Jenn Moffatt, who has been very involved in the setting up and design of the new ezine from Morrigan Books, The Morrigan. More on that very soon!

Good luck Nyssa and welcome Jenn!

__________________________________

(cross posted from Morrigan Books)

Therapy, eighties music style (free gift included)

I realised one of the things that was depressing me a lot about 2008 was my lack of compilations. I really do get a kick out of making them and I really noticed that this weekend when wedschilde put her compilation up and after receiving a wonderful CD in the post from a close friend a couple of days ago.

I’ve been playing a lot of nostalgia tunes of late and decided that I would like to try and come up with an eighties mix that said something about my misguided youth.

When compiling them I realised that this mix wouldn’t mean a lot to anyone but me and so I decided to do voice extras for each track, where I discussed each song and why it was there.

For those wanting the compilation it is below:

Memorabilia – Mark’s Eighties Trip

and for those also wanting my reasons for those tracks:

Memorabilia – In words

Have fun and I’d love to know what you think!

Take that, kilo! (Or rather Bike session #13 = Kolmården – ferry – Östra husby)

After a week of no exercise, I was really starting to feel it get to me a bit and decided to make up for it in style…

Simple mathematics

Put a kilo on this week.

Didn’t go out on the bike once this week.

Just out the door now for a long one.

Questions about Films? Of course I’m in!

1. One movie that made you laugh: Arsenic and Old Lace. It is, without doubt, one of the funniest films of all time

2. One movie that made you cry: The Shawshank Redemption. There are two scenes in that film where I sob my heart out (I don’t watch it in front of too many people).

3. One movie you loved when you were a child: The Wizard of Oz (same as goth_huntress) I still do incidentally.

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once: Batman Begins (thought I’d go for the most recent one)

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it: Major League (it’s so bad, it’s bad)

6. One movie you didn’t like: Only one? I’ll go for The Kite Runner (most recent)

7. One movie that scared you: The Omen (original)

8. One movie that bored you: Forrest Gump (easily the worst film ever made)

9. One movie that made you happy: The Dark Knight (cause it’s just lovely)

10. One movie that made you miserable: The Wind that Shakes the Barley

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see: Veronica Guerin – I mean it’s Schumacher, he’s bloody awful! 

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with: R2D2

13. The last movie you saw: The Dark Knight

14. Movie you can’t wait to see: Burn After Reading

Twittering on…

• 20:59 Typesetting my arse off! #

Can my life get any more gripping?

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The new me?

Well I had the haircut and decided to get rid of the beard at the same time, so I look quite a bit different than I have for a few months.

Sent off two stories this week. Yes, the writer who is not writing has been submitting! Well truth be told one I wrote about two years ago, it got an honourable mention in a competition (we can’t all win vases!) and since then I have tweaked and played until it resembles something I like now. Well that and five people have looked at it and torn it up and made me re-write it!

The other was a piece of flash fiction after a nudge from that Stoke bloke (oh I love that!)

mylefteye

. He gave it a bit of a griddle, after

amandapillar

and

petekempshall

had given it their treatment.

gerardbrennan

then came up with some advice and hey presto, it’s off now!

And the biggest news of all is that there is maybe a blogging career on the horizon again for

etina

! Yes, a certain wife of mine has gotten the bug once more after seeing her sister and brother-in-law throw themselves into it.

So if you are interested to hear about brothers being murdered, children being born, Sweden and Swedish, living with an annoying publisher, etc. then you know who to friend don’t you? Psst, give her a nudge too, just to set her off!

I need a break and so why not a Depeche Mode one?

A few months ago a close friend asked me to list the five best Depeche Mode albums.

I, of course, jumped at the chance and had a think about which five to choose. For no reason other than the above mentioned and because I’ve been listening to them a bit recently I thought I’d go through the process again, with absolutely no memory of what I chose last time (I’m sure it can’t be that different though).

1. Black Celebration
I’m not sure this one is the best but it’s been my favourite for quite some time, not least for the fact that it has my favourite ever Depeche Mode track, Stripped, on it. It starts wonderfully, with Black Celebration being one of my favourite intros of all time. In kicks Fly on the Windscreen, after that intro and this really is a powerhouse of a track. It’s a darker period of the Mode’s history and some of the lyrics eloquently show that. They get all political too, with tracks like New Dress, having a very obvious dig at the press affecting the running of Britain. And that is not even mentioning that this is the album that houses Question of Time and Question of Lust, easily two of their best songs. I never tire of it and I can’t see it ever being knocked off its lofty position here.

2. Violator
This was a renaissance for the Mode, coming back after an absence and producing some of their best stuff ever. In fact I believe this is their best album in terms of quality, as it just brims with great songs from start to finish: Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence, perfect pop singles, whilst Waiting for the Night is one of the most beautiful songs in their discography. It opens exquisitely with World in My Eyes and ends even more perfectly with Clean. Man this album is fantastic!

3. Music for the Masses
I was so so excited about this album prior to its release, buzzed as I was by Strangelove‘s brilliance and it didn’t let me down (heh – I love my Depeche Mode in-jokes!). It’s got a couple on it that don’t pass the DM grade for me, Sacred, easily one of their weaker tracks. However, this album has Little 15, Behind the Wheel, and Nothing, and with the two aforementioned singles it means you are getting one fine album for your money.

4. Some Great Reward
I don’t think this album was in the five last time because I had given my copy away and had not listened to it for a while. I think this album is Depeche at their best, when they are at their most popular. I don’t think it comes anywhere near to the previous three but it has charm and it has character. If you ignore Lie to Me (as I try to), you have to remember that this is the album where People are People, Master and Servant, Somebody, and the gorgeous Blasphemous Rumours live, and most people actually have one of those four (usually People are People) as their favourite Depeche Mode song. The only songs that come anywhere near are: Just Can’t Get Enough (one of my least favourites) and Everything Counts. Like I said it doesn’t have the impact of the other three but it’s wonderful nonetheless.

5. Construction Time Again
I wanted to say Ultra, I was going to say Ultra, why did I say this one? Well I went for this because again, like number four, it takes us back to a time of Depeche Mode in their ascendancy and does it bloody well. It has Everything Counts on it and it has Love in Itself but it’s a couple of album tracks that elevate its position for me and they are Pipeline, more for its quirkiness than any real quality and Two Minute Warning, which was Alan Wilder’s brief moment in the limelight (and a jolly fine one in my opinion)!

Although two of my favourite Mode songs are Leave in Silence and See You the latter easily one of the best pop songs of all time), I just felt that A Broken Frame was missing something.

And we won’t talk of Speak and Spell or Exciter will we? No… good…

Somewhat of a catch up

I realised this morning that my live journal involvement has been rather lapse, owing to probably the biggest week of Morrigan Books‘ existence so far. We are just finishing off the three books that will be launched in England and Australia over the next two months and all the inevitable tweaking is taking time.

They are looking rather impressive though and I have to admit that the Morrigan Books team impresses me more and more daily. They are all so committed and so focused in every area of the company and make it an absolute joy to be doing this!

Maddoc is just amazing me more and more too. We had a faint hope to have him potty trained before baby two came along and he has not only done that but he no longer has a nappy in bed at night either – the boy is two years and four months old for crying out loud! Not that that is so impressive when you think of parents who stopped the nappy routine after a couple of months but hey, I’m over the moon!

His language is all over the place in such a cool way now as he uses Swedish grammar, combined with English and Swedish to get the message across. My current favourite is ‘doggen kommer’, which means ‘the dog is coming’. He really should say ‘hunden kommer’ but dog is a pretty solid word in Maddoc’s vocabulary (as is ‘car’).

I was asked to copy a DVD yesterday, which could only be viewed on a computer. It is a filming of Fuat in a conference in Australia. Whoever did the DVD has copied it onto the disc in such a weird format that you have to use explorer to open it and view it. I just took the video_ts files and added them to Nero and Robert was suddenly my mother’s brother.

Double checking it on the TV screen made me cry. I mean I had my brother-in-law there, right in front of me, talking about how his research has taken so long and will continue to.

Etina and I had a sort of date on Tuesday, as it was seven years to the day since we had gotten engaged and she agreed to see The Dark Knight with me. We chatted afterwards about the tragedy of Heath Ledger and my thoughts went to the Oscars. If he is nominated, then many are going to see it as a sympathy vote for his family. The truth is he deserves to be nominated. His performance was fantastic and even though I enjoyed Nicholson’s joker in Batman, Ledger’s performance reminded me of all the things I loved about the character in the comics. Fantastic, absolutely fantastic and so so saddening that he can’t reprise the role.

The film was extremely enjoyable too and I heartily recommend it to one and all.

Right off to typeset, you know how I love it so…

(many thanks to goth_huntress for showing me the magic of semagic as this thing kicks Live Writer’s arse!)