Dis Information, Dat Information

Yes, that's right, peeps. The Sun news(ha!)paper thinks you need to be outraged by this sort of thing. Outrageous!

The Sun thinks that the fact that the only woman who made it into the semi finals of the crappiest gameshow on television was shown on the second semifinal episode when IN FACT she competed in the FIRST one is worth a front-page headline.

The show revolves around people taking on a challenging assault course, and getting fast times to qualify. In fact I trust you'll agree this is a fairly uncomplicated system. In order to appear in the semis this woman beat out a lot of others. Yet the fact that she was shown competing in the second semi rather than the first is an outrageous enough proposition that we need to be told about it, even if we don't watch the show, or even care.

Does The Sun think its readers are so thick that they are unfamiliar with the concept of editing for time? Clearly they must.

And The Sun, who a few short weeks ago were exhorting its readers, trumpeting from the front page, VOTE TORY, telling them that we had to vote Tory or face problems for many years because of the menace of 'Red Ed' (Ed Miliband, Labour Party leader, who is about as red as David Cameron's underwear. Seriously, Labour haven't been a socialist party since the days of Kinnock and the miners' strikes. They're only slightly less right-wing than the Conservatives themselves. The only party with true socialist leanings are the Greens, but that's a different story.)

Poor Ed. Bad photo opportunity plus badly mde sandwich equals front-page gurning and more of The Sun's infamous puns.

 and the trouble that SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon would cause. Basically the message was, we're doing OK on a Tory agenda, let's sign up for five more years of it otherwise Labour will cock it all up for us. This was the headline on Election Day 2015.

You see that 2nd reason? Stop the SNP from running the country? Odd, when you see the front page of The Scottish version of The Sun from the same day...

So The Sun just wants to stir up trouble. And with the Ninja Warrior UK headline, they also want to avoid issues, keep us ignorant. Let's consider the other daily papers' headlines from the same day as Ninja Warrior.

As far as I can see, with one exception (The Star, which is basically a comic anyway) there's ACTUAL news on each cover. Real stories about shit that's going down in the world. So where do The Sun get off telling people how to vote? And what's even more sinister, what is their motive for not reporting ACTUAL news? Why do they want to keep their readers under-informed, uninformed, misinformed and disinformed?

A Conversation With Flaming Schwarzkopf Experience, pt.2 (Plus selected outtakes)

A Conversation With Flaming Schwarzkopf Experience, pt.2 (Plus selected outtakes)

Join us once again for the conclusion (not that there is a conclusion, it just sort of ends) of my chat with Douglas Arthur aka Flaming Schwarzkopf Experience. We talk about his artwork, his relationship with Robert Fripp, and the Cornetto trilogy. We also touch on zombie movies and commercials starring Nicolas Cage. Plus, in the outtakes we talk about bathing dogs, gigs in Seattle and more. Please enjoy.

It's All In How You Look At It

At first glance, this might seem like a normal (if a little tacky) Valentine's bookmark.

But flip it over and...

You have to wonder.



P.S. You have to wonder about this, too...

The Podcast Of Jeff/Into The Unknown: A Conversation With Flaming Schwarzkopf Experience, Part 1

The Podcast Of Jeff/Into The Unknown: A Conversation With Flaming Schwarzkopf Experience, Part 1



I sat down the other day for a long natter with Douglas Arthur, Albany, NY cartoonist and creator and sole member of Flaming Schwarzkopf Experience, a studio project that has thus far yielded several CDs of highly eclectic ambient music. Please, have a listen to our nerdy conversations about experimental mixtapes, Star Wars sound FX and Brian Eno. Part 2 will be coming in about a week.

Puffin' Billy

It wasn't until I started on Monday to edit a Skype conversation (in order to fashion it into a podcast) that I realised how much I breathe through my mouth.

Let me back up a little bit. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing to interview my friend Douglas via Skype on Saturday. We have a lot of likes in common, and we're both a bit long-winded, and so it ended up being a 2 hour and 4 minute chat. Great fun, and I don't know about Doug but I could easily have chatted longer.

By Monday I realised I had a cold. Listening to the playback it was obvious that I was in the beginning stages of it at the time. My breaths were shallow and raspy and quite loud - either that or the internal mic on my laptop is super-sensitive. So I had the unenviable task of editing 2 hours of chatter and somehow removing most of the unappealing bronchial sounds from my end (plus other unwanted extraneous sounds such as my mad dogs barking, Josh stomping up the stairs, doors slamming, etc.).

(Here comes the techie bit.)

Luckily for me, the software I use to record Skype calls records the outgoing mic on the left channel and the incoming sounds on the right channel. So once I had edited out all the ums and ahs and sniffs and repetition, leaving me with an hour and 50 minutes of usable audio, I was able to split the two tracks of audio (which are saved as a stereo mp3) into two single mono tracks. I then took my audio and opened it in a separate window so I could hear clearly where all the heavy breathing and other noise was and de-amplify those particular sections by about 20dB. I managed to do that this morning. I then took the finished audio and re-joined it to the audio of Doug talking. Now I have a clean copy, I can carry on editing, adding music, intros etc. and it is my sincere hope to have it ready by the weekend.

However, we still have the issue of my breathing. I am asthmatic as I think I've told you all before, and I am an inveterate snorer which causes me no problem at all, but causes other people endless grief. 

I never even knew I was a snorer until I went on a school trip to France and shared a 3-person room with my mates James and Rupert. The first morning I awoke with the pillow on my head - I had sadly kept them awake without being aware of it.

My second wife used to adopt the technique of poking and prodding and using her well-manicured nails in the manner of a woodpecker on the side of my head. However, this method only resulted in me getting angry at her more than anything else. So I used to sleep on the downstairs sofa quite frequently.

Laura makes me sleep on my stomach - which I think is a slight improvement, but it's not my preferred mode of sleeping because in order to be comfy I have to have my hands under the pillow or my face, which can mean I find it hard to get my head in a comfortable position, or that my hands will go to sleep. I like sleeping on my back or my side. 

When I lived for a short time in a Salvation Army Shelter (in late 2009), I shared a dorm with 8 other guys. They hated it, and would jog my bed to wake me several times a night. One of them even took me to a CVS pharmacy to purchase one of those anti-snoring sprays, but those do not work on the kind of snoring I have.

The only thing that will work is one of those chinstraps that stop your mouth from falling open in your sleep - don't believe me, just try making yourself snore with your mouth tight shut. Trouble is, I have chronic rhinitis and never really have a snot-free day, so making me sleep with my mouth closed would be like drowning for me - I wouldn't be able to breathe clearly through my nose.

Plus, as I believe I have mentioned a time or three, I am a chubby guy. This fact in itself makes any bronchial issues a person has ten times worse. I know I need to lose weight, but first you have to remove all temptation from me. And I work in a convenience store where I am surrounded by chocolate and many other snacks. I feel like I want to start a Kickstarter campaign to pay for me to spend a month on a health farm where I get to eat nothing but nettle broth and sliced cucumber.


Little Britain - Bubbles DeVere by eric-hope

Into The Unknown 8

Into The Unknown 8

More musical gems from places as diverse as Japan, France, and Minneapolis.

Track listing:

Young The Giant - Cough Syrup
Guantanamo Baywatch - Do What You Want
Guiville ft. Sanna Hartfield - Love You
Like This Parade - How The Light Can Fall In So Many Ways
Like This Parade - I Talk To You, Woo
Kid De Luca - Lambo
Iji - Hard 2 Wait
Janine Villforth - Relief
Red Baraat - Bhangale (Nick Catchdubs' Bhangin' Remix)
The Liminanas - Je Suis Une Go-Go Girl
Roslyn Moore - The Burbs
Funkshone - The Strut
Lori B. ft. Nocera & Montanari - There Must Be An Angel
Suzie Suh - Waste Of Me
LTPIMO - Surf Vibe Fantastic People

If you want to contact me about the show, or want me to play some of your music (if it's good, that is), write me at jeff@tenterden.co.uk.

Into The Unknown 7

Into The Unknown 7



Another healthy dose of underground music for your dining and dancing pleasure.



Track listing:



Kinski - Flight Risk

Alcatraz Electro ft. Bentcousin - Under The Sun

'Allo Darlin'- Half Heart Necklace

Bentcousin & Jef Kearns ft. roryp - Brighton Lights

Dorey The Wise - True True

Evans The Death - Sledgehammer

Johanna Warren - True Colors

LetKolben - Metamorphosis

Sages - Lets

Look Mexico - Don't You Dare

Marsheaux - Now This Is Fun

Samm Henshaw - Redemption

lolademo - Stain On Your Jeans

Bentcousin & Guiville - Stop The City

Dutch Uncles - Upsilon (deadbear remix)