Samuel's Blog

Samuel’s Musician Of The Week

This week I am giving the award to George Ivan Morrison OBE (more commonly known, quite simply, as Van Morrison). Van Morrison is a musician I was thinking about during the week for no particular reason, and the musician that enters my mind every time I think of 2CA’s Leighton Archer, mainly because on a day earlier this year when a nice uplifting song was just what I needed, Leighton was on the radio and he played the feature song for this week, Bright Side Of The Road.

From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
We’ll be lovers once again on the
Bright side of the road

Little darlin’, come with me
Won’t you help me share my load
From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road

And into this life we’re born
Baby sometimes, sometimes I don’t know why
And time seems to go by so fast
In the twinkling of an eye

Let’s enjoy it while we can
(Let’s enjoy it while we can)
Won’t you help me share my load
(Help me share my load)
From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road

And then into this life we’re born
Baby sometimes, baby sometimes I don’t know why, don’t know
And it seems to go by so fast
In the twinkling of an eye

Let’s enjoy it while we can
(Let’s enjoy it while we can)
Help me sing my song
(Help me sing my song)
Little darling come along
On the bright side of the road

From the dark end of the street
(From the dark end of the street)
To the bright side of the road
(To the bright side of the road)
Little darling come along
On the bright side of the road

From the dark end of the street
(From the dark end of the street)
To the bright side of the road
(To the bright side of the road)
We’ll be lovers once again
On the bright side of the road
Well We’ll be, we’ll be lovers once again
On the bright side of the road

We’ll be lovers once again
On the bright side of the road

Samuel

May 20th, 2007 at 06:19pm

On this little portal to insanity

Thanks Thomas, I love the quote, it seems to fit perfectly.

Why does it fit perfectly? Well I can think of two reasons in the last week which could probably summarise it.

I’ll start with the coffee machine at work, I pressed the button to get a large coffee, it made the coffee and then informed me that the dreg drawer was full, so I dutifully pulled out the dreg drawer and noticed that there was barely anything in it…I placed it back in the machine, and suddenly all was right in the world according to the coffee machine. I started talking to it, and informed it, much to the astonishment of those around me, that it was an attention seeker.

Some people think I drink too much coffee, but I was only on my third for the day at the time.

Skip forward to today and, after driving myself mad trying to work out the title and artist of a snippet of music (I’m really bad at that game) I went to the source of my confusion and asked for the title. A short time later I had the artist and title and located a copy of the song in question, namely “Take on me”…I started listening to the song and, a few moments later, recognised the song (I previously didn’t know the title of the song, even though I recognised the music)…I thought “aha!”, at which point I realised that this was the name of the artist as well as my exclamation…my decision from that point was obvious, I had spent far too much time in front of the computer and I better go and vacuum my bed.

Insane? Me? Yep!

Samuel

1 comment May 20th, 2007 at 12:02pm

Coming up on Samuel’s Persiflage #14

Over the last year and a bit I’ve received plenty of feedback, both good and bad, about anything and everything to do with Samuel’s Persiflage. As a result, Samuel’s Persiflage is changing, it’s still the same show, but it’s been tweaked and (hopefully) improved. The first change you will notice is the one you are reading right now.

A few days before a new episode of Samuel’s Persiflage is released I will publish a promo…so here it is, coming up on Samuel’s Persiflage #14.

If the Flash MP3 player doesn’t work for you, click here to download the promo.

Samuel’s Persiflage, hitting the netwaves Tuesday at Midday, on samuelgordonstewart.com

Samuel

May 20th, 2007 at 09:49am

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: David Hicks

I’m pretty sure I used that title last time David Hicks was the focus of the weekly poll, on that occasion we discussed how long it would be until David Hicks would return to Australia, and now it looks like David will land in Adelaide in about three hours. The predictable government bashing statements that we got used to hearing on the news every day a couple months back have surfaced again, but now we have a new controversy for David…the aeroplane he is flying in.

Unfortunately in writing the question I had to choose the tense, and decided on the past tense on the assumption that David will be back in a few hours. I will change it to the future tense if David doesn’t return today.

According to the reports, David Hicks is flying back in to the country on a private jet at taxpayer expense, the cost of which is estimated at half a million dollars. Many of David’s strongest supporters (and I really get the feeling that they are whinging just to detract from the government’s involvement in getting David back, and in effect take full credit for it themselves) claim David should have been placed on a public commercial flight with a security escort, David’s father Terry Hicks even took on the role of psychic, saying that David wasn’t going to do anything.

Personally, I think it comes down to this. David is a convicted terrorist supporter who has spent the last five years in a facility filled with people involved in, and alleged to be involved in, numerous atrocities including September 11. I don’t think there is an airline in the world that would risk having David on their aircraft, not necessarily because of what David might do, but because of what others may try to do to free him from custody. If it were my decision, there would be absolutely no chance of David entering a public airport.

Also, the US government and the Australian government seem keen to keep David’s movements secret (probably for the above reasons), so why would they risk having David on a commercial flight where hundreds of people, including airline staff, would have the opportunity to leak David’s flight details? The same can be said of Terry Hick’s complaint about not being told where and when David will arrive…the governments aren’t telling the media that information, so why would they tell Terry? He would just tell the media anyway.

None the less, it will be quite a funny sight outside David’s rumoured landing site today, Adelaide’s RAAF Edinburgh…all those journalists jumping in to action every time a plane comes near the place.

Last week I ran the following poll:

A fairly predictable response there. The majority of people happy with a pretty good budget, and the rest either a bit miffed about the mandatory election year handouts, or just disagreeing with the government on everything anyway.

For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.

Samuel

May 20th, 2007 at 06:12am