Happy Halloween Ghoulfriends!

The death of Stephen Gately and the rise of public pack mentality

I’ve been biting my tongue since receiving news of Stephen Gately’s death for two reasons. First, I was waiting to see how the media would handle the story. Second, I was waiting to see who would be first to ask a few bloody obvious questions and start the complaints ball rolling. The latter was inevitable, like watching a car crash in slow motion…

Jan Moir’s article on Stephen Gately’s death has attracted 25,000 complaints and counting and she has been vilified for her allegedly homophobic comments, but I detected something much more sinister lurking beneath this whole debate when it hit the headlines earlier this week. Leaving the content of Moir’s article aside (we’ll come to that later) lets start with how the story broke. What really concerned me was the way in which the whole thing kicked off on Twitter. I watched it happen first hand and was amazed at how quickly it spread across the Twitter network. By the time that I had read Charlie Brooker’s first tweet on the subject (which read ‘Jan Moir manages to walk the difficult tightrope between being a bitch and a c**t’ – lovely sensitivity there, Charlie, now what’s that you are saying about causing offence?), clicked the link, read the article and returned to my Twitter page, my news feed was crammed full with fellow twitterers complaining about Moir. Now I’m a fast reader, but that was pretty fast work! Then a number of other celebrities retweeted the link to the article and shortly after, within only minutes, the bandwagon had picked up full steam and was fast rolling out of control. I watched the whole network light up and before long a real sense of pack mentality had set in. Regardless of the article content, the rabid eagerness with which we scrambled to ‘burn the witch’ was pretty scary stuff. Moir herself noticed this, as she pointed out in her subsequent article:

‘Certainly, something terrible went wrong as my column ricocheted through cyberspace, unread by many who complained, yet somehow generally and gleefully accepted into folklore as a homophobic rant. It lit a spark, then a flame and turned into a roaring ball of hate fire, blazing unchecked and unmediated across the internet.’

I can’t say that this sort of outcry was entirely unexpected because for some time now I have observed a worrying change in public behaviour. It is becoming cool to complain. It almost feels as though the public are trying to trump the number of complaints mustered from the previous mass outrage. But why are we doing this?

There have been several incidents in the entertainment business over the last few years that have attracted a large number of complaints. Take, for example, Jade Goody’s argument with Shilpa Shetty in Big Brother 2007? Hands up all of you who registered a complaint about the treatment of Shilpa on BB8? And how many of you actually watched the entire series of BB8? Now I watched that series (it was a slow summer *ahem*) and way, way before the Jade-Shilpa incident occurred I had made up my mind that Shilpa had a seriously self-righteous princess syndrome thing going on. And who knew that the argument was sparked off by Shilpa’s decision to undercook a chicken? In hindsight, I would have reacted in exactly the same way in the face of any potential food poisoning and ‘don’t you know who I am?’ pomposity regardless of my dinner host’s race, colour or ethnicity...only with a little more decorum and a great deal more vitriol. Many felt the same as the backlash on the BB forums and support for Jade was considerable, with even a few BB related celebs throwing their support behind her. And how many folk who were calling for Jade’s head on a pole after her ‘racist attack’ were fawning over her at her funeral?

And then there was the Brand/Ross/Sachs incident. First we were led to believe that the twosome had taunted a delightful elderly actor whose innocent granddaughter had fallen under the spell of lecherous old Brand. Yes, I thought, Brand and Ross should both be castrated for revealing the gruesome details of this liaison to the woman’s grandfather. And sure enough, the complaints came flooding in. Shortly after the story hit the headlines, a number of comedians on both the TV and radio noticeably toned down their acts, clearly afraid to draw criticism while this vast wave of prudishness was washing through showbiz land. I genuinely thought that I would eventually be reduced to Miss Marple, a pack of cards and a sing-song around the piano for evening entertainment. It then transpired that Sach’s granddaughter was a member of the dance group Satanic Sluts and a number of saucy images of her posing half-naked started to appear in the press. Then rumours began to circulate that Sachs was using the incident to jumpstart his acting career. Sure enough the backlash began, a number of celebs spoke out in defence of Brand and Ross and some of those who complained – and I certainly speak for a large number of people here - felt more thoroughly shafted than anything that Brand was capable of.

Now the complaints are flooding in regarding the ‘homophobic’ content of Jan Moir’s article. Homophobes are a pet hate of mine and I’m more than happy to light my flaming torch and storm the castle when faced with anything even remotely homophobic in the media, but there was one thing in Moir’s article that struck a chord with me. It is a fundamental, albeit regrettable, aspect of our humanity that we like to stick our nose into other people’s business. We like to know why marriages break down, or why someone has been seen leaving someone else’s house in the early hours of the morning. Just consider the media interest currently surrounding the separation of Jordan and Peter Andre. And when a celebrity dies we like to know the cause and circumstances of the death, regardless of whether or not we have any right to pry into the private life of another individual. In this instance a pop star has died suddenly at a young age and I expect that many people, including Gately’s own fans, are curious to discover what exactly happened that night. Yes, people can die suddenly of natural causes at a young age and, having had someone very close to me die unexpectedly in their early-thirties, I can accept this as an entirely credible and acceptable explanation. But there has been such a fluster in the media to sugar-coat the surroundings of Stephen’s death that I must confess that it has raised my eyebrows a little. And now further details of Gately’s death are being made public, it seems that things are not as cut-and-dried that the media would have us believe. Talk of drug use and a stranger accompanying Gately and his partner back to their apartment is surfacing in a number of newspapers. Have the public yet again received an ‘edited’ version of events that serves to fob them off with a nice fairytale ending…?

Whatever events took place that night and whoever was present with the couple may be completely irrelevant to the cause of death and Jan Moir may be entirely wrong to speculate that the cause of Gately’s death was anything ‘unnatural’. Certainly the generalisation that a gay lifestyle = a sleazy, hedonistic lifestyle and ultimately = an early death, is more than offensive in itself. And Moir deserves all the fury that she gets in that respect. But I have spoken to some fellow twitterers recently who are offended at the simple fact that she is casting out wild speculations about his death, regardless of her comments on his sexuality. But aren’t we all guilty of this kind of speculation at some time or other? Just consider the death of Michael Jackson. Rumours were in circulation about the circumstances of his death before his body was even cold, but somehow it was acceptable to ask questions about Jackson’s death. Why is that, I wonder? How about all the conspiracy theories that abounded immediately following Princess Diana’s death? And why is it that if, for example, a member of parliament is found dead in the back of a wardrobe dressed in S&M gear then this usually makes for front page news, with graphic colour photos and a cheeky ‘ooer missus’ headline. Why is that ok, I wonder?

Why is it ok to ask questions about certain celebrities and not others? Are we not allowed to ask questions about Gately’s death because he was in a gay partnership? Is that why? If so, will we all be branded as homophobes for asking questions about celebrities in gay relationships in future? Surely not. We are living in the 21st century, not in the Victorian era! If we are to be encouraged to see no distinction between a homosexual relationship and a heterosexual relationship and treat both partnerships equally, then both must be subjected to the same, albeit often vile and intrusive, treatment by the media. If we want to speculate on the breakdown of a gay marriage or the death of a gay celebrity then we must do so in exactly the same way that we would speculate on the breakdown of a heterosexual marriage or the death of a heterosexual celebrity. Surely treating both relationships differently in the media spotlight is keeping homophobia alive and kicking. And Moir obviously feels the hot breath of the thought police breathing down her neck in this respect:

‘Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe? If so, that is deeply troubling.’

I’m sure that there are many individuals out there in the ‘equality business’ who make a decent living out of drawing up fake battle lines and pointing fingers, but there is no need to keep scratching the scab in order to keep the doctors in business. Yes, any articles written with evidentially homophobic content, if that is how it is rightfully deemed, deserve all the complaints that they receive. But our Lord of the Flies eagerness to bay for blood the very second that a celebrity cries ‘offensive!’ also sends shivers up my spine. We fall for it every time and often without giving the matter any serious thought. It seems that the ‘angry mob’ syndrome is kicking into gear a little too often these days and we need to keep a watchful eye on it…

By the way, if you want a genuine reason to light those flaming torches, take a look at this article on Gately’s death in The Christian Voice. Love thy neighbour…?

THE MUSE INTERVIEWS: INVASION

There seems be a lot of love in the room for Invasion, a psychadelic metal threesome from North London who are currently taking the metal scene by storm. Described by NME as ‘pretty much the most exciting thing happening in UK metal right now’, Invasion has embraced a weird and wonderful concoction of drunk metal, psychedelic rock, soulful Motown vocals and a hefty pinch of fantasy and wizardry thrown into the mix.

It’s difficult to know where to begin singling out the unique attributes of the band. Maybe the female vocalist Chan Brown, who dresses like a shaman-cum-monk and has a powerful, diva voice that is a satisfying shock to the system in a genre that is dominated by shouty male singers. Or maybe wizard-loving, almost seven-foot tall Marek Steven on guitar. Or red-headed female drummer Zel Kaute who has a penchant for heavy drinking and setting fire to her drums onstage. According to the unwritten laws of music genre mashups, this odd combination of heavy riff driven guitar, sexy soulful vocals and trippy rhythms should be a painful mismatch. But I guarantee that after only a few minutes listening to their debut album, The Master Alchemist, you’ll soon be dancing around the room like a stoned loon. In fact, Invasion provides quite possibly the best alternative to tripping out without taking drugs. And the band also makes the coolest music videos ever. If you don’t believe me, just check out the vid for ‘Follow the Smoke’ from the Conjure War promo. Very. Very. Cool.

I caught up with Invasion guitarist Marek ahead of their forthcoming headliner at the Topman CTRL live gig on 29th October in Birmingham…

Metal, Motown and wizardry sounds a bizarre mix but it’s a truly awesome combination! Did you consciously aim to take the ‘fantasy-soul-metal’ route when getting the band together or did it just kinda happen?

Thanks, no it just happened naturally really. I’ve been playing fantasy orientated thrashy stoner metal for a very long time and have always been open to different types of vocals. I think a lot of stoner and similar metal is ruined by some pretty average singing. It just came from being open minded and us meeting at the right time.

What’s the inspiration behind the band name ‘Invasion’?

We came up with it very quickly as we were after an intense name to suit our vibe. It’s not that original but at the end of the day a name’s a name I guess, and you grow into it as you go on. There are few other Invasion’s out there but I guess we are trying to be THE one.

‘Psychedelic metal’, ‘Soul rock’, ‘trippy thrash’…there is a tendency in the music business to pigeon-hole bands into subcategories, but it’s not obvious where you guys fit in. Did you have difficulty finding your niche on the metal scene at first? And how would you describe your music?

Yeah, genre terms are annoying sometimes but I have to say I do use them a lot myself too. I call us ‘wizard metal’ or ‘drunk metal’ sometimes, that’s pretty funny. I guess I would say we are thrashy stoner-doom with soul vocals. Pretty Sabbathy basically. It’s all good. I don’t mind what people call us at all. But yeah we don’t really have a popular scene we can jump straight into so things are going slowly but surely. More similar bands are around now, it’s cool. It’s fun being the underdog a bit!

I suspect that there are a wide range of musical influences to thank for contributing to your unique sound, but are there any artists in particular that you would single out as a major influence?

For me personally as a guitarist it’s all about Black Sabbath’s early albums. And Metallica. My favourite band is the Californian band Sleep – they rule all. And recently The Sword’s debut album really inspired me to keep the heaviness in my own stuff, it’s a modern classic undoubtedly. There’s a lot of stuff. I grew up with the best classic rock, metal, doom and thrash and that’s pretty much all I still listen to. I’ve been delving into some of the smaller NWOBHM bands recently and they sound really fresh right now.

The band is pretty wizard obsessed! Where did this fixation with fantasy and wizards come from?

I grew up listening to fantasy obsessed metal and my brother was deeply into Dungeons and Dragons and general war-gaming. I quickly got very into too and obviously loved Tolkien as well. I played a lot and started a little Advanced Dungeons and Dragons society in my first year at Uni. I also studied a fairly well known Shamanic Consciousness course there too, and generally I love both wizards as characters in literature and for what they represent in a ‘pagan’ sense (for want of a better word). But yeah everyone is picking up on a lot now which is weird. I want to get a good AD&D group going now actually!

I hear that your debut album, ‘The Master Alchemist’, was recorded in just five days without a sniff of a computer nearby. Would you ever be tempted over to the dark side in future, i.e. to abandon the ‘stripped-down’ rawness of a live take for an over-produced and over-edited, polished sound?

Yeah it was fun but a little intense. They really like you to do stuff in the first few takes and I literally only had time for one or two overdubs on the guitar, pretty insane. I really loved the sound you get in places like that but I would have liked to make it a bit tighter and beefier here and there so I would probably try and compromise next time by waving it in front of a computer for a day or two.

How do you go about the song writing process? Do you sit down together for a head-scratching session or do tracks emerge organically out of jam sessions?

Usually I’ll come up with a couple of riffs - or Zel might have a drum pattern – and we write something very quickly. It usually takes about 30 minutes for some reason. Then we tweak it for a while, often by playing it live. I want to take more time really crafting killer tunes for the second album. I hate it when musicians say stuff like this but I really am excited about it. We have found our sound now, particularly live, and I know exactly what will work now on record. It will be heavy.

‘The Master Alchemist’ is a brief album at only 21 minutes long! Does that make for an equally short live set?

Yeah, we keep it short for sure. We never venture over 30 minutes (unless we are asked to). I really think it’s good to get in and out and leave people (hopefully) wanting more. It’s fun being on stage but sometimes bands don’t actually realise people have had enough and keep playing too long. It kills the vibe slightly. Unless you’re Led Zeppelin, in which case, please carry on…

You’re a spectacularly visual band with shedloads of energy and theatrics on stage; shamanistic outfits, setting the drums on fire and I even hear rumours of a Perspex guitar! If funds, venue sizes and health regulations were unrestricted, what would comprise your ultimate ‘prop toolkit’ to take onstage?

Not sure how spectacular we are but we try and get a vibe going yeah. The Perspex guitar is a super cheap and crap one and I only used a couple of times to be honest but we like to have smoke, subtle lasers and so on, when we can. We were joking about a huge stage show last night actually. We came up with a concept for a full scale fantasy castle front with Zel drumming under the drawbridge and the other rising up through the towers to play on the battlements. With lots of fire of course, and some quality wizard action built into it somehow… yeah anyway, hahaha.

A love of Dungeons and Dragons and thrash metal used to single out individuals as über-geeks back in the day (speaking as a former Warhammer gamer!), but now fantasy and metal are considered cool again! Would you say that the band embraces its geekness or strives for cool?

Yeah, it’s so weird isn’t it? I’m be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed it becoming more trendy in the last few years but it’s literally who I am. I’ve always been a fantasy obsessed metal geek. I’ve come into fashion! I’m starting to enjoy things like the fact girls want to talk to me sometimes now. It really is a huge shift since I was a 16/17 year old kid writing a doom song called Wily Wizard. And it will move on soon I’m sure. Whatever happens I really want quality old school style metal to have a good run of things. I know I’ll be annoyed if doom becomes huge but fuck it, I’d rather listen to people playing that than crabcore or whatever… and yeah Warhammer isn’t my thing but I always loved how visual it was. And Bolt Thrower used some of their artwork – one of the best ever UK metal bands.

What can we expect from Invasion in future? Are you recording new material right now?

We’re recording one classic rock meets doom new track next week that I’m really happy with and we’re planning on having a new album done by very early next year. Like I said I’m confident the second album is going to blow away our first one. We’re doing a UK tour in February, a European tour and SXSW after. It’s a slow process for us but it’s recently picked up really nicely so I’ll enjoy it while it lasts. Happy geek.


Invasion will be headlining the Topman CTRL live gig, taking place on 29th October at the Flapper in Birmingham. Further details of the gig can be found at www.myspace.com/topmanctrl and you can find out more about the band at www.myspace.com/invasion.

Birmingham Topman CTRL gig and Limited Edition Gallows T-shirt Competition

CALLING ALL MIDLANDS LIVE MUSIC FANS!

This month British punk rockers Gallows will be taking the reigns of Topman CTRL and they have hand picked a line-up of hot new bands for the CTRL live gig, taking place on 29th October at the Flapper in Birmingham. Gallows have gained a well-deserved reputation as one of the most vital and exciting bands in the UK and the notoriously outspoken band released their second album, ‘Grey Britain’, earlier this year.

Headlining the gig at the Flapper in Birmingham are NME Future 50 stars, Invasion, an electrifying combination of killer, heavy rock and belting, soulful vocals with a pinch of shamanistic dressing up and a rumoured perspex guitar (!) thrown into the mix. Warming up the crowd on the night will be Soni-Quella, who describe themselves as ‘alternative bi-polar experi-metal’ and sound a little like controllers Gallows themselves, and Shapes, a fiery blend of raging vocals and instrumental noise who have developed a big international following in just over a year of existence.

More info on the featured bands and further details of the event can be found at the Topman CTRL Myspace page.

The Geek Muse is hoping to catch up with some of the bands playing the CTRL Live gig and also speak to Gallows on their current US tour, so watch this space for interviews!


COMPETITION TIME! WIN A LIMITED EDITION GALLOWS T-SHIRT

To celebrate Gallows taking over Topman CTRL in October, Lags from Gallows has designed a strictly limited edition t-shirt (and I mean seriously limited – there are less than fifty in existence in the world and they will not be available in the shops!).

The Geek Muse is giving one lucky fan the chance to win one of these limited edition Gallows t-shirts. To enter simply email your name, address, email and size you require, with Gallows Competition as your subject line to thegeekmuse@gmail.com

Entries close at midnight on Friday 31st October. One winner will be selected entirely at random and contacted via email. This competition is open to UK residents only.

Santa Claus is coming (a little too early) to town

Who - WHO - suddenly decided that we are in the Christmas season?! Last night I saw two Christmas adverts on TV – one for furniture and one for air freshener – both with animated snowmen, Christmas jingles and the whole ‘Santa Claus is coming to town!’ jolly vibe. And today I’ve just returned from a shopping trip that can only be described as ‘festive’; mountains of stolen, mulled wine and boxes of shortbreads wrapped in tinsel in the supermarket, woolly coats and thick tights in various ‘winter’ colours in the clothes shop and packs of Christmas cards stacked to the rafters in the window of the newsagents. Even the chemist is selling Rudolph and Father Christmas shaped bottles of bath oil.

Now I love Christmas as much as the next person, but it’s still early October! Did I miss the global decision to upgrade Christmas ahead of Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night on the calendar? And, most importantly, are we all in a hurry to dig out our old, drab and over-sized jumpers again? My summer wardrobe has had nowhere near the airing that it deserves and I am clinging to the desperate hope that we can still wring a few more warm days out of 2009. But it seems that God is on the side of the early-Crimbo brigade too. A number of friends have commented that this week has been cold, dark and… well… Christmassy. Last night I flicked the house lights on at 6pm because it was way too dark to see anything in my front room and I confess that I have switched the heating on three times this week. I’m even considering recovering several pairs of leather and suede boots from atop of the wardrobe to ensure that my toes will be toasty when I pop out to the shops.

If marketing-land has decided that it is now officially Christmas-time and God thinks that it’s right about time for winter, then I might as well resign myself to it. They probably have some kind of Faustian deal going on between them anyway. Maybe I would be more inclined to accept that Summer 2009 is over if it had lasted just that little bit longer, but it feels as though we are seeing less and less of the sun each year. In fact, if summer-time is to be limited to two weeks in mid-August in future, then please point me in the direction of how to get this global-warming scenario off the ground. I might invest in a huge, gas guzzling 4x4 and install a smoke belching coal fire just to give it a shove in the right direction. Parched land and arid deserts all year round? I’ll take a dozen please!

Merry Christmas all... *sigh*

Derren Brown = Family Guy?

Well here’s something you don’t see every day. Derren Brown (the illusionist, mentalist, entertainer...yadder yadder...) doing an impression of Stewie from Family Guy! (although it is a little Prince Charlesy…). Mind control device accidentally switched to reverse, anyone?



*big grin* What a perfect way to soften the blow of the epic fail that was the finale of the recent The Events series (always pleasing to learn that you’re partially human after all, Derren, there’s hope for the rest of us now…). Derren is consistently great entertainment and if you are one of the few people on the planet that has never heard of him before, then crawl out from your cave or from where the psycho killer is holding you and take a look at some of his previous work at the official site.

It’s not fair and it’s really not ok: Lily and the file sharers

My Twitter feed has been snarled up recently by a huge influx of propaganda, self pity and false rebellion from one person in particular. Lily Allen. She has been spouting nonsense about file sharing for an insufferable amount of time now, so yesterday I did the decent thing and ‘unfollowed’ her. Boy oh boy is my life peaceful now…

I’m not inclined to go into the pros and cons of file sharing, but let me give my credentials to ‘cast the first stone’. No I don’t share tracks over the Internet, but I’ve borrowed albums made by previously unknown bands from friends and grown to become huge fans of that band, subsequently spending big money on merchandise and tickets to live gigs. Would I have taken a punt on buying a random album from an unknown band? No. Is the band financially better off since I borrowed that album (which I have since bought a bloody expensive limited edition version of)? Yes. More exposure = more fans = greater income. So where’s the problem, Lily?

What is frustrating about this whole issue is that it is not the up-and-coming amateur bands that are making all the noise about this, it’s the mega bucks earning chart-toppers that are throwing all their toys out the pram. And we all know what happens to greedy children, don’t we? First off, there was Metallica. Their vitriol directed towards file sharers was not what I expected from a hard-living, f**k the system, rebellious rock band. The second that their hard veneer split in half to reveal an unpleasant side to the band, my Black album was firmly slung to the back of a drawer.

Now it’s Lily Allen on a one-woman vendetta, enlisting major bands to support her war against the file-sharers. I could cope with the ‘I’m fat’ Myspace thing (everyone has a self-esteem wobble now and then) but, to top it all off, now it’s the ‘I’m quitting music forever’ line. It smacks of the ugly kid at school who threatens to kill himself so that all the girls will tell him that he’s handsome. Please Lily! You are teetering precariously on the spoilt wingey brat precipice already. For God’s sake don’t wrap the rope round your neck and kick the stool out too!!

And not only is she throwing her own weight behind this campaign, but she’s dragging a number of decent bands down with her. I really hope that none of my favourite bands sign on the dotted line…I would hate to view them in an unfavourable light just because of one little girl’s weekend project…(on that point, please don’t do it MUSE. I love your music and I would hate to reconsider…)

Still, at least while she’s on Twitter she’s not in the studio producing god-awful albums…*pats her on head*…


Thanks to fellow blogger Gamma Goblin at Riemanns Cut for the link to the Open Letter to Lily vid below…

Metal vs String: The rock/metal violinist debate

If there’s one thing that I am, well *was*, pretty sure of in life it is this; violins and rock music do not mix. And I don’t mean synth strings in the background of an 80s soft-rock anthem, that’s fine. I mean the violin as the main instrument, as a replacement for vocals.

Now, as a violinist myself, I gave the whole rock/metal-violin thing a fair hearing. I shamefully admit to owning a copy of Finnish rock group Apocalyptica’s Plays Metallica by Four Cellos album (Metallica, incidentally, lends itself pretty well to the cello…*ahem*). I even own a Bond album…somewhere…and then there was Escala, the group of violinists that auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent in 2008. Bond and Escala followed a carbon copy format; a group of pretty girls in tight dresses that looked kinda posh but played the violin rather too fiercely and passionately for a bunch of ‘nice girls’. Both groups seemed to have the whole package and certainly looked good on TV, but the act wore thin very quickly (it’s always a bad sign when I blank out only two minutes into the performance and find myself admiring their shoes…). The problem with girly-rock-violinist groups is this; switch off the TV and switch on the CD player and what you are essentially left with is very samey, aggressively played lift music. Jive Bunny for classical music lovers who want to show their ‘racy’ side (oo-er!).

But having given up hope of anything decent coming to the fore, I was forced to re-evaluate my opinion recently when watching a video of violinists Jennifer Lynn and Christine Wu performing ‘Toxicity’ by System of a Down. Pretty cool stuff….



Woohoo! At last! Rock violin that a) sounds great, and b) doesn’t involve classy-looking chicks swanning around in Blade-Runner gear trying to look hard (for those of you who are not familiar with the original track, you can find the vid here). Now I’m inspired to dig out my electro-acoustic from the back of the wardrobe (assuming that the fawns that live in there haven’t put it on e-bay) and transcribe a little Rammstein or Led Zep for the next local church musical soiree (some Cradle of Filth would fit in wonderfully after the Bach Partita and before the Mendelssohn…)

Flipping the (curse)bird

Yes, yes, I know it’s not big and it’s not clever….

If you ever find yourself sat at computer on a Friday afternoon, feeling a little downcast and waiting for the weekend to kick in, then cheer yourself up with Cursebird!

Cursebird is a ‘real-time feed of people swearing on Twitter’. It not only displays a live feed of tweets sent by irate tweeters but also rates the frequency of swear words used. There are some absolute comedy gems on there that are guaranteed to raise a snigger in even the most po-faced party-pooper.

(Interestingly, according to the site I ‘swear like Eric Cartman’ and rank 905, 760th worldwide on frequency of swearing. That’s pretty respectable. Mother would be proud…)