Back with another one of those Grok-rockin' tweets

The other day, the UK government tested its national Emergency Alerts system. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, millions of mobile phones blared out a siren. The alert might be needed for real one day, in case of fire, flood or Taskmaster going off air.

This was, naturally, a chance for me to be silly. Shortly before the test alert was triggered, I posted this across my social media channels:

Reminder: At 3pm today, the Fat Roland alarm will go off. Please prepare by having to hand an egg whisk, two car manuals and a cone of marbles (medium). No further instructions will be given.

Arf! Silly post, a bit of fun, let's move on.

Except...

Twitter has an AI chatbot called Grok. It likes to go round explaining things as if we were little children. And yes, I'm calling the service Twitter because it's current name makes me, er, cross.

I asked Grok to analyse my Fat Roland alarm post. Actually, that's not quite true: it was less intentional than that. I pressed the little circle next to my post because I didn't know what the circle was, and suddenly Grok whirred into life.

Grok said: "The post by Fat Roland, a Manchester-based musician and writer known for quirky performances, likely hints at an avant-garde sound experiment, given his history with albums like Hounds of Hulme and ties to Electronic Sound, where the listed items (egg whisk, car manuals, marble cone) could serve as unconventional instruments."

Nope. Wasn't even thinking about music. I was picking things out of thin air. Egg whisk. Car manual. Marbles. I am not Delia Derbyshire; I am not found-sounding my way to legendary status. I'm just thinking "marbles" sounds funny here, so let's write that.

Grok continued: "No scientific studies directly apply, but the concept aligns with research on sound art, such as a 2019 study in the Journal of Sonic Studies, which explores how everyday objects enhance auditory creativity, suggesting Roland’s alarm might be a public art installation."

I have never worked in academia, but I'd imagine that response would strike a chord with lecturers marking student essays. "I have no basis for this, but here's something I reckon." Grok was now imagining me winning the Turner Prize for my sound sculpture, in a a devastating critique of the modern milieu lauded in broadsheet magazines everywhere.

Twitter's AI bot wasn't quite done with me yet. It had one final stretch to make, one more overreach to snap another twine of credibility:

"The timing, posted on September 7, 2025, at 11:51 UTC (3pm BST), coincides with global tensions from Israeli strikes in Doha reported on September 10, 2025, adding an ironic layer—could this be a subtle commentary on chaos amidst world events?"

Thanks for the long dash, Grok, that's so very AI of you. Turns out I'm commenting on Israel's genocide now. From avant-garde sound experimentation to an auditory art instillation to critiquing the collapse of world peace. All that from me finding the word "egg" funny, and deciding that "medium" in parenthesis was funnier that "large" or "small".

At the end of the analysis, Grok cited its sources. The first two links were a Roland synthesiser owner's manual and a manual for a rechargeable egg-beater whisk. So many manuals. Grok is your dad, sitting in his stew-stained armchair, paging through an old Haynes manual, flicking to a page all about sprockets, and deciding that am illustration of a Type B reboreable chain sprocket is a comment on the cost of living crisis.

I'd generate another Grok response, however I respect the environment, and encouraging AI data-mining is something that should be done sparingly, like switching off the hall light when not in use, or only flushing after a number two, or only burning tyres on a Sunday.

Further Fats: Totally gay for Scouting For Girls (2011)

Further Fats: Twitter: a pile of collapsed scaffolding populated by only bird crap and rats (2023)

Happy birthday to me and definitely not to Jesus

It's my birthday today, so I should make some kind of public address. Like wot the Queen did, except she speeched herself on Jesus's birthday and not on her own birthday. Did Jesus ever make a speech on the Queen's birthday? No, he did not. Selfish.

I'm 52 years old today. That makes me the same age as the B-52's, or twice as old as Aphex Twin's remix compilation 26 Mixes for Cash. Or four times as old as Blur's album 13. That's how ages work, right?

I can't get much of a music connection about being born in 1973. Gary Glitter was number one when I was born, something I would rather forget. I'm very close in age to the Adolescence actor Stephen Graham, and he appeared in a Deadmau5 video once. But very close is not close enough.

The only music-related thing of significance that happened on my actual birthdate was the release of Lynyrd Skynyrd's long-awaited debut album. Problem is, I know absolutely nothing about that band. I wouldn't know Larry Lynyrd or Susan Skynyrd if they slapped me in the face with a trout.

So on this least remarkable of birthdays, I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that I'm still going  And so is this website. I started this blog when I was in my early 30s. Blogger somehow hasn't disappeared into the same crypt that buried LiveJournal, MySpace or any number of obsolete web services with a scant regard for word spacing.

Wait. I've just thought of one. Energy 52. I dedicate my new age to Energy 52, the trance project produced by Cosmic Baby. I'm going to don my flip flops, slather myself in sun cream, and get sand in my crack to the sound of Café del Mar.

Happy Mar-day.

Further Fats: Because / a melon / only slightly: birthday thoughts (2012)

Further Fats: 50 (2023)

What is the best music ending in the number 5?

Here is the best music ending in 5. It's a list you didn't know you needed but now you very much definitely want a list of music ending in the number 5.

1. Jackson 5
2. Jurassic 5
3. MC5
4. The Furious Five
5. The song 9 to 5
6. Christian rock band Deliriou5
7. Ben Folds Five
8. The tune Take Five
9. Mambo Number 5
10. Stars on 45
11. Maroon 5
...a large gap, then...
92. The 1975

How would I score this list? A mediocre 5 out of 10. There are a couple of glaring omissions, which can be attributed to one of two reasons. Reason one: my research team got kidnapped by aliens halfway through their task. Reason two: There is no research team: I spent five half-hearted minutes on Google before posting, which explains why my list is poor. I'll let you decide which reason is true.

My tens of friends on social media were quick to point out my five-themed failings. Here is a selection of their responses.

Willie said: "Poor old Dave Clark", a sentiment echoed by Dominic, Paul and Tim. My list did indeed lack the Dave Clark Five, a London rock band that took on the Beatles during the British Invasion with hits like Glad All Over.

The Connells' flaccid earworm hit ’74–’75 was suggested by Paul, which is a reasonable shout. The vocal ensemble Apollo5 was offered by Rob, although their version of Only You isn't a patch on the versions by Yazoo and The Flying Pickets. And Miles suggested Levellers 5, a bunch of Lancashire indie rockers championed by John Peel. Quite good suggestions, I think.

Both Ian and Jon asked me why I didn't include the cheeky pop scamps Five. You'd think this was a good call, but Five disqualified themselves when they styled their name as "5ive", thereby placing their 5 at the start of their 5.

John Paul suggested the "five" segment for Sesame Street's pinball counting animation. Sarah suggested Enid Blyton's dog-bothering child adventurers The Famous Five. And my cousin Dave suggested "Half of Perfect Ten". All these people should be arrested for crimes against the number five.

I would make this into a series, going through every number in the history of numbers, but I would rather give myself a citrus enema with a carton of Five Alive.

Overall verdict? Five stars. Excellent work, me and my friends.

Happy birthday, Fat Roland (i.e. me)

It's my birthday, so I'm going to write a blog post about absolutely nothing at all, and you're going to read every word and be thankful for it.

I share my birthday with Howard Marks who wrote Mr Nice, the book that Jez is perpetually reading in Peep Show. I also share a birthday with Fidel Castro. I think this means I probably should be arrested for peddling all sorts of naughty substances.

I share a birth date with Alfred Hitchcock. Very pleased with that one. Also with Feargal Sharkey. A bit indifferent to that one. And also with singer-songwriter James Morrison. Crikes, this is getting duller with every sentence.

I am exactly the same age as someone called Eric Medlen, a Californian racing driver who was fairly decent at drag cars. He was also, according to Wikipedia, a champion calf roper. I reckon I could loop a string around a bullock. Dead easy.

My birth date is shared also with Stuart Maconie, he of Radcliffe and Maconie fame, and author of Pies And Prejudice, The Pie At Night and also some non-pie related titles. It's a special delight to share a candles day with another music journalist, so many happy returns to Stuart.

All of which is meaningless, of course. I have no time for astrology, even though I have the best star sign (the one with the lion). Apparently the constellation Leo is something to do with a mythological Greek lion called Nemean that had fur made of solid gold and a brother that was a dragon. Which is true for me too, which is nice.

I should finish with some wisdom, gained from my many years on planet Earth. Um. Don't be an idiot. Be nice to vulnerable people. Fight the fascists. Don't eat more than 12 eggs a day. Be kind to yourself. Embrace every moment, or don't if you need to chill out instead. Always eat more than 12 eggs a day.

Muskering, sorry, mustering up the courage for 2024

Hello, it's Fat Roland here. You can think of me as your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Except without the spiders. Or being in your neighbourhood. And I'm not sure how friendly I am. Am I even a man?

I'm always sceptical about the effectiveness of new years' resolutions, and I certainly didn't have 2023 down as my "stroke year". But let's play some lip service to this annual festival of arbitrary date-based life curation. Here are ten resolutions I have for 2024. And because I like to cheat, I've made a start on some of these already.

Resolution one. Embrace colour. I wore black for years, but the Johnny Cash aesthetic doesn't really suit my mood. I'm not saying I want to look like Timmy Mallett mating with the Teletubbies, but splashes of colour would be welcome in 2024.

Resolution two. Come up with more contemporary references than Timmy Mallett and the Teletubbies. That said, Mallett has an endearing TikTok account. Not sure about the social status of Dipsy's gang.

Resolution three. Build on my amazing day job. This isn't the most exciting of resolutions. It's a bit like a plumber wishing for more pipes. But I enjoy my work at the Burgess Foundation, and I want to push myself to be more efficient and more creative and more of an ultraviolent droog. Watch out for your kneecaps!

Resolution four. Let writing become the fulcrum of my artistic, erm, lever or something. I really should have looked up the word 'fulcrum' in a dictionary before writing this. I continue my scribbling for Electronic Sound, and in 2024 I shall return to writing short stories. Performance is also a Thing in my life, with a capital T, and I'm sure this will happen to. But writing comes first.

Resolution sixteen. (I've lost count.) Get cartooning again. Drawing my eggs on social media (see my previous blog post) was a way back into restarting the broken visual section of my brain. Expect more of this in 2024. Not professionally. Just faffing. Proper good faffing.

Resolution five hundred and ninety six. Be healthy. I did not do a good job of this in 2023. Stupid brain. But this is not just about a better body, although a healthy(ish) lifestyle will certainly help. Better living space, better relationships, better downtime, the whole holistic sausage. No pressure or anything, but if I do not do this exactly right, I will give everyone on earth a million pounds.

Resolution infinity plus three, and this is related to the previous resolution. Don't have another stroke. This seems obvious, but writing this down makes it official. At some point in 2024, my brain is going to read this back and decide, "Yeah, Fats, that's a cracking idea. Let's not have another stroke."

Resolution alpha epsilon followed by the eye of Horus. Social media has become a big pile of meh. This scrolling world of ours is fractured, and any one social media platform is not the behemoth it was. The only way to get traction is to personally fist dollar bills into Elon Musk's trousers on the daily. I will post, of course, because people seem to like it. But... let's hold it lightly.

Resolution a badly drawn picture of an egg. Learn to count. I mean, seriously. I know most of the numbers. Seven. Is seven a number? I'm going to buy a calculator every day until I learn to count to ten.

Resolution ten. Yes! I did it! Carry on blogging. Sorry to disappoint you with this, but this tired old blog will drag itself onwards like a knackered horse attempting a never-ending lap of the glue factory. This has been my worst complete blogging year in history but HEY, I HAVE REASONS FOR THAT. However, this is my home, and this is where my words belong, and I am grateful for your visit.

Happy new year. As Spider-Man would say, to 2024 and beyond!

Pictured: Hyperfuturistic digital 3D rendering of Elon Musk

Further Fats: My New Year: pub, Gorman, egg, pi (2005)

Further Fats: Happy new 2021 Fat Roland (2021)

A yammer about planners and crammers

There are two ways of approaching deadlines. There's planning, and then there's cramming.

Planners will be methodical in their use of time. They will make lists, draw charts and use coloured pens to track their progress. They embrace routine, and know that a little goes a long way. They are the organisation equivalent of Doctor Who's Weeping Angels, slowly creeping forward knowing that they will eventually snog their victim to death. Is that what the Weeping Angels did? I can't remember.

Crammers will leave things until the last minute. A deadline is an abstract concept to be ignored, like death or mortgages or Pokemon. They will wait until the white heat of a deadline is burning their eyeballs before starting a project. And that's when they will do their best work. Like Superman only saving things at the last minute because he suddenly remembers he could rotate the Earth in a backwards direction and therefore reverse time, a chunk of scientific bunkum that would have left Isaac Newton literally spinning in his grave. 

I realise this sounds awfully binary. Planners and crammers. Opposite sides of a coin, like odd socks versus matching socks, toilet roll positioning, Tennant stans versus Smith stans, or techno heads arguing over their favourite Orbital brother.

The truth is, life is not binary. Real lift is nuanced, with gradations of grey, or 'greydations' for short. True joy is found in the inbetween places, in neither one extreme nor the other. How else can you explain the beauty of twilight, the thrill of salted caramel, or your third child who is neither the prettiest not the brightest but, y'know, they're a good kid.

But if we are to buy into the pseudo-psychological device of identifying people as planners or crammers then I am most definitely a crammer. I need deadlines to add spark to my creativity. It's why this blog post exists: I promised that I wouldn't go a month without blogging, and look, here we are, on the last day of the month squeezing out a blog turd before the month is flushed away.

A while ago, I posted about a rather large medical crisis. I am doing well, and my medical stats are good. Last week. my GP rang me to tell me how well I was doing, and how handsome I was, and how if I was to ride a horse, I would ride it brilliantly. Something like that anyway; I wasn't really listening. But yes, I am surviving well. Thriving, even.

This does mean that next month, I am going to step up my creative projects. I am back to full-time at the Burgess Foundation, and I have continued to pen my column for Electronic Sound magazine. In a few weeks, I will step up my commitments by increasing my writing work.

This does mean I'm going to have to learn to plan*. Now that I'm using assistive technology for read and write, and now that I am susceptible to the kind of fatigue that is probably common for people whose brains have exploded, I'm going to have to get organised. Writing diaries, wordcount deadlines, not starting my end-of-year album countdown a few days before the end of the year. Planning, not cramming.

There are three, not two, ways of approaching deadlines. There's planning. There's cramming. And there's planning the cramming, a whole new third nexus of human operation that will (a) blow a hole in all of our existing realities and (b) maybe guarantee that I produce more than one blog post a month.

* "I'm going to have to learn to plan" makes me sound super amateurish, as if I'm careening from one calamity to another. I'm actually an excellent planner. I remember to empty my bin before the bin lorry comes and everything.

Twitter: a pile of collapsed scaffolding populated by only bird crap and rats

Every now and then I will publish a 'my favourite tweets' blog post, because it's easy content and I am so super lazy.

Except, I can't do that anymore, can I. Twitter is now a waste ground, a pile of collapsed scaffolding populated by only bird crap and rats. It's not even called Twitter anymore. It's called Eggs or something. Absolute rubbish.

Which is a shame. I quite liked the synergy between my Twitter feed and this blog. Twitter definitely fed this blog. And sometimes I would fart out a tweet with very little forethought, and that would inspire a blog post.

Facebook isn't in great shape either. Recently I read every single post on Facebook that had ever been published in the history of humankind, and 98% of them were a picture of a cassette tape and a pencil, next to the words "like this picture if you know what the link is". I'm old enough to remember cassette tapes. We didn't use pencils to wind them. We use tape players. They had fast forward buttons. AND a rewind button. Pencils?! Jeez.

And then there's Instagram and Threads and Blue Balls and Mastubate and honestly I can't keep up with the modem world. In my day, the only way you could publish something was to cave ten commandments into a stone tablet then hike up a mountain until you were smited by God.

Good job Blogger is still massively trendy. All the kids are on Blogger. Skateboards, handstands, tank tops, blogs. These are all the cool things that cool kids keep cool to.

Crikes. What a waste of a blog post. This is worse than Twitter. I could have written something interesting, such as the fact that the top seven positions in the current UK singles chart are occupied by women, or how to get Pot Noodle stains out of a vicar's underwear. But no. More semi-translucent thoughts vomited into a cavern of nothing.

I shall end this blog post with a list of my five favourite tweets, although they're not real tweets because I just made them up right here right now.

1. Aaaaargh.

2. Aaaaaaaaaargh.

3. Seriously, is someone going to help me, I'm up to my neck in frogs.

4. Aaaaargh. Why are you typing? Stop typing. The frogs!

5. Oh hi. A frog here. Ignore the screaming. Nothing suspicious going on here. Go about your day. Pay no attention to the millions of frogs with knives. Nope. Everything is normal.

* As of week ending 31 August 2023. In order: Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat (pictured), Taylor Swift, Peggy Gou, Becky Hill.

50

I'm 50 years old today. The full Five Oh. In da club with 50 Cent. 50 wheels on my wagon.

I don't really know how I got here. I started this blog when I was 31. And now here I am, on a diet of coal dust and zimmer frames. I remember when this was all fields.

I'm super grateful to reach this landmark. It is, of course, completely arbitrary. I might as well measure my life in shapes or whisks or Aphex Twin Soundcloud tracks. Still. It's a sense of achievement, like getting your steps in or putting the bins out.

My original plans for this landmark birthday were grand. Go clubbing. Ride on a pleasure cruise. Launch a rocket and punch Jupiter in the face. But I scaled down my ambitions. I've had to make do with drinks with friends, which has been a whole bucket of lovely. Friends are great, aren't they.

Can I derive any special meaning from having my 50th today? Probably not. Barbie Girl by Aqua is currently number 50 in the singles chart, an unwelcome revival prompted by the (very good) Barbie movie. At number 50 in the current albums chart is Legend, the greatest hits compilation by Bob Marley and the Wailers. This all seems suitably old school for an old guy.

How about the number 50 in terms of Warp Records catalogue numbers? WAP50 is the woozy space jam Wilmot by Sabres of Paradise. That'll do nicely. The track is drunken and lazy and atmospheric and giddy, and I shall wish for no better a metaphor.

Orbital's fiftieth album track, if you line up their studio albums on Discogs then do a rough count that might be wrong, is the Ian Drury-sampling bovver boy techno stomp Oi! Maybe that should set my attitude for the next ten years. Lots of stomping. Shouting "hit me!" a lot. Kick up a bit of trouble.

Earlier this year, Fifty Fifty became the first female K-pop band to score a top ten single in the UK. Cupid is a sickly-sweet slice of Spice Girls-lite pop that, I think, I've heard knocking about TikTok somewhere. I like this much less than the Orbital and Sabres thing. Forget I ever mentioned this.

I feel optimistic about my fifties. Partly because I came through a lot to get here, and I'm grateful for being on planet Earth. And also partly because I have an empty brain and I am easily amused, like a puppy or a jellyfish or Ken from the Barbie film.

Enough waffle about being 50. I've got a pub to go to. I'm going to have 50 pints and them I'm going to have 50 cakes and then I'm going to go to 50 more pubs, because I will double down on this 50 theme until I'm 50 feet under.

Further Fats: Because / a melon / only slightly: birthday thoughts (2012)

Further Fats: Five starring roles in the video for Aphex Twin's On (2018)

Braindance: an update

Hello there, reader. My name is Fat Roland. You might remember me from the blog post that leaked an Autechre album that turned out not to be an Autechre (pictured) album, or that blog post about Guru Josh that got a slightly snarky response from Guru Josh's PR people.

It's nearly two months since I posted about "my personal braindance", a euphemistic name I gave to a stroke that I suffered ten weeks ago. I wrote about my hallucinations, my loss of eyesight and the smattering of internet projects that had to come to an end. Go here to read that blog post.

It has been a while, so I guess we're all due for an update.

There is good news and bad news. Actually, no. There is only really good news. I am doing well. The hallucinations have calmed down, I'm getting better every week, and I've even lost two and a half stone in weight because I'm being a good boy and eating all of my vegetables. I suffer from dizziness and fatigue, but nothing that I can't handle, and even this is improving week by week.

My vision has improved. In that original blog post, I talked about hallucinations of an inter-dimensional bicycle and a dog-walking shrub. Since then, I've had no significant visual disruption aside from small glitches. My knackered brain has clearly figured out how my eyes work. Well done, brain. I'm still using visual aids to read text, but I don't need it all of the time, although I get less worn out if I let the technology do the work.

Another thing that happened to me two months ago, and I didn't mention this originally, is that I was diagnosed with diabetes. Type two, which is twice as cool as type one because that's how numbers work. The undiagnosed diabetes didn't cause the stroke, and the stroke didn't cause the diabetes. They both developed because of my crap lifestyle and being a lardy old sausage.

The medical system is looking after me. I've been to a diabetes support group, I've had personal phone calls from my GP, and on Monday someone's going to put knives in my eyes to see if my brain has fallen out (or something, I didn't read the letter properly). When you have two major conditions, you suddenly get shoved to the front of medical queues. It's like being a celebrity, but almost dead instead of famous.

So yes, things are going well. Hurrah. Worst and best moments, aside from (worst) the stroke and (best) surviving the stroke?

The best moment was when my mates delivered a Cameo message from IndyCar racing driver Romain Grosjean, who had famously risen like a phoenix from the flames in a terrible crash at the 2020 Bahrain formula one grand prix. Romain said some very sweet things which made me cry for joy. I'll post the video one day, if you're allowed to post these type of things.

The worst moment was in the hospital, just a few days after the stroke. The entire ward had just one pillow. One. In the bed next to me was a septuagenarian with a broken hip, so he got the solitary head support. Poor guy. I used my own clothes as a pillow, which is a bit awkward when you only have the one set of clothes and none of the pyjamas fit you. Humiliating. The NHS needs more than claps and rainbow flags. 

I'm doing well. Resting lots, working more, eating boring things, getting stronger. I'm still writing my column for Electronic Sound magazine, and I've still got a hand on the tiller at the Burgess Foundation. Both have been tremendously supportive.

And I might write more blog posts soon. I've been slacking off recently...

Further Fats: I have just burned down my local NHS hospital while listening to Phil Collins on my walkman (2010)

Further Fats: My own personal braindance (2023)

My magical dream: everything's gone all Chris de Burgh

There's an old 808 song about a magical dream that goes:

It's a fantasy taking over your mind 

So let it roll, let it roll with ease

It will take control of the rest of your soul

And explode... into a magical dream

The song about a magical dream carries on talking about the magical dream and how having a magical dream is great because it's magical and a dream. Can't remember the name of the track.

Which brings me to the subject of this blog post. Dreams. More specifically, a dream I had. People waffling about dreams can be pretty dull in the scheme of things, so feel free to scroll off to some more fascinating corner of the internet.

Last night, I dreamed I used a 3D printing vending machine for dresses. A what now? A unit where you pressed a load of buttons and it would spit out a dress. For a women. A proper figure-hugging dress like you see at awards ceremonies.

After scrolling through some templates on the vending machine touchscreen, I decided to get one. The quality of the material looked good. You could choose the strap design and the neckline and any little extras. Lovely.

I chose a red dress. Really red, like Mr Strong driving a fire engine then blushing about it. Soooo red. As Chris de Burgh sang:

The lady in red

Is dancing with me

Bum cheek to bum cheek

At least, I think that's how the song went. Looking at the preview screen, the colour was a bit too blocky, so decided to personalise it with a text pattern. Lots of small white type all over the dress, with the words "Fat Roland" over and over again. FAT ROLAND FAT ROLAND FAT ROLAND.

The machine couldn't handle things, and the text rendered badly. Overlaps, warps, random lines criss-crossing. But then I angled the text at 45 degrees and it was kind of fine. That'll do. If people wanted to read FAT ROLAND, they'll just have to look at it wonky.

At the bottom of the vending machine menu was a big PURCHASE button, alongside the final price including customisations. It would cost £450. Shocked at how expensive this was, I brought my friends in to discuss the wisdom of the purchase. We had a long conversation acknowledging the substandard quality of the final product, even though it was still a preview on a screen rather than the end print. We discussed my financial situation and whether I could afford to take the hit. We also needed to balance that with a need to serve my monstrous narcissism. 

I also asked if this is how much dresses cost in Primark because, as you can tell from all this, I don't buy dresses.

And then I fell into a deeper sleep. Drifted from REM into heavy unconsciousness, any dream sequences fading into darkness. Do we still dream when we're properly conked out? Probably not. My drapery frippery was long lost.

When I finally started waking up, a couple of minutes before my alarm, the dream briefly returned. The discussion with my friends was just finishing. Had they really stuck around all this time? I had opted to not buy the dress because that was the pragmatic and grown-up thing to do. The sense of making a decision made me feel assured as I started my day back in the real world.

Which is why I'm writing this blog post in my usual rags, and not crammed into a red dress looking like Elmo with haemorrhoids.

Token November post with added Subway shutter

I can't let November pass by without at least one blog post, so here's what I've up to this past month (or so). Think of it as a show-and-tell although I'm not going to show you anything, and what I tell you will be pretty dull.

Plaid played the White Hotel in Manchester. It's a no-frills venue that makes you feel like you're about to get murdered by a Tesco Value murderer. But the sound system's great, the staff are lovely, and there's always a nice crowd. Highlight was the dizzying peaks of C.A. from their new album Feorm Falorx.

I nuzzled my nozzle in nostalgia at the Warehouse Party's Hacienda 40 bash. Orbital, 808 State, Graeme Park, Happy Mondays, Justin Robertson, K-Klass, Jon DaSilva, A Guy Called Gerald. It kind of boiled down to a warehouse full of men dancing like Bez, but there were lots of fun chats, and Orbital were all kinds of ace.

The Delightful Sausage delighted me for a second time this year when I saw their Nowt But Sea show again. The friendly farce is shot through with daftness and nods to classic TV comedy tropes. Amy and Chris are so good together, and there's an extended reminiscence by Chris which I just think might be genius.

With a clutch of cartoon cats, I read a co-written story with my embarrassingly talented writing buddy David Hartley. Fellow scribe and word-reader Adam Farrer sums things up pretty nicely when he posted on Instagram: "Got to hang out with some brilliant folks, sold some books and saw @fat_roland dressed up in a cardboard disguise, reading a story off the back of a cat’s head. It’s all I wanted from today."

Oh and I took a selfie in front of a colourful shop shutter (see above). I think it was a Subway. It was very late at night and colder than a whittler's canoe.

Not a bad November-ish overall, hey.

This got me: the infuriating pizza pop

There’s an advert that is getting on my wick. It’s twisting my melon. It’s doing my noggin in.

I don’t want to mention the brand because I don’t want to give them clicks. It’s a pizza company. They’re named after the table-top game in which you link together spotted tiles. You know the one. Stand the tiles vertically then watch them fall over one after another. Yes. That pizza company.

The advert appears when I watch YouTube on my mobile phone, or on any device that hasn’t got an ad-blocker. It’s maybe only ten seconds long, but it’s a lot. A LOT. I’d embed it for you, but I can’t find it on YouTube. Let me describe it.

It leads with rhythmic music: staccato percussion that sounds like a woodblock pinball machine. Cue a meaningless montage of pizza images. Once the rhythm has looped, it adds on more percussion, as if a drum kit is trying to hump another drum kit. More meaningless images. As it reaches its conclusion, it coalesces into an urgent tick-tick-tick climax.

And then it commits a cardinal sin.

The final sound is meant to be one last percussive hurrah, like the closing bwoom in the Countdown clock music. The sound is someone popping their mouth with a finger. Like you do when you’re imitating a balloon pop. Puffed cheek, pursed lips, finger in and *pop*. Except the finger-pop is not in time. It comes in slightly early, just before the 1-beat of the 4/4 rhythm. It’s meant to sound offbeat and syncopated, but it just sounds like a mistake. Jarring enough for me to vomit up my pizza.

I know commercials are meant to be in-your-face. And this kind of straight-jacket techno is not unusual in idents. There’s another advert that’s meant to feel trip-hoppy but it just sounds like someone’s copied-and-pasted from sample pack. An audio shrug. I get it. Remember the Babylon Zoo advert disappointment in which the glorious spacy techno turned out to be indie sludge? Electronic music succumbed to capitalism a long time ago.

But this ad is infuriating. It has me jabbing the ‘skip’ button in the same way I dive for the tuning button whenever the Archers theme tune comes on. Not that I listen to Radio 4 much anymore: I’m a podcast earwigger because I’m cool and trendy.

I’m also annoyed at their “We got this” slogan. While recognising the importance of not being prescriptive about grammar, especially when it comes to representing idioms from minority cultures, this is just dumb. That phrase is nothing to do with pizza or what they do as a company. It’s ad execs throwing a scrabble set into a toilet bowl and apple-bobbing for the fewest letters possible.

I’m also annoyed that I’ve ordered so much pizza, I’m being bombarded with pizza adverts left, right, centre and everywhere else. Serves me right for accepting cookies. Computer cookies, that is. The last thing I need after a pizza is even more dietary trash.

So there you go. My rant about an advert. This blog provides cutting edge content. Next up, I’m going to write a diatribe about people commenting on YouTube vid***POP***

See? It’s annoying, isn’t it. 

I am a Mancunian and yes you can taste my honey

I am, it has been rumoured, a Mancunian. This means I was born in Manchester, which famously invented Vimto, the computer, and mouthy lead singers who say "sun-sheeiiine" instead of "sunshine".

What Manchester might not be as famous for is the apiarian emblem of the worker bee. The Victorians invented this when their graphic design department was trying to come up with something to represent Manchester's industrial ambitions. They made a coat of arms with bees buzzing around the globe. Cute, if impractical for international trade.

There are bees everywhere in Manchester. On the street furniture. Sprayed onto walls. Actual bees. I do like the symbol of the bee. It reminds us of the mill workers in the olden days who used to dress in stripes and suck on flowers. Even today, if you squeeze a Mancunian, a little bit of honey comes out.

Other cities' emblems are much worse. Birmingham is just a pile of spaghetti to represent its road system. No sauce, no nothing. London has a corgi driving a red bus. And Glasgow has a man screaming into a drain. Lovely, but not as good as Manchester.

This vague bee blather was inspired by this bee design on Manchester Metropolitan University's student union building. It doesn't quite work because the lines are too thin, and are lost amid the brickwork. But I like the idea of students getting bee-indoctrinated. I imagine tannoy announcements calling people "busy bees" while everyone works in hexagonal hive pods.

I'll leave you with one of my favourite bees. This is Are You Okay by Mason Bee, who is not a bee but is also very much a bee. Enjoy.

Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011)

Further Fats: The cowardly Arena attack won't stop Manchester buzzing (2017)

17 interesting postman trousers: a contractually obliged blog post

I haven't blogged all month. And I'm okay with that. Blogging is yesterday's news, like reel-to-reel tape recorders, castles and the Bubonic plague.

Of course, I started the month with good intentions. I had lots of blogging ideas. So many great ideas that if I listed them now, you would cry well into the night. But like an over-worn pair of underpants, they slowly sagged at the seams and fell to the ankles of lost memories.

Still. Here I am. Blogging. I'm sat on my sofa with a half-eaten pack of Fruit Pastilles and my washing machine chugging away in the background. I genuinely don't know where this blog post is going. I should come up with a click-bait title. Fat Roland blogs: what happened next will amaze you. 17 interesting things I found in my toilet. You won't believe what my trousers just said to the postman. That kind of thing.

I feel itchy when I don't blog. I've been doing it most of my adult life, so even if I'm just being silly about Ed Sheeran or MC Hammer or whatever, it definitely feels like some kind of foundation stone. An unbloggy Fat Roland is a sad Fat Roland.

But I'm not sad this month. I've been a busy boy, so I'm going declare this past month a blogging holiday. And all the weeks I didn't blog before that: they were blog hols too. And blog holidays are allowed. The only reason why I'm writing this post now is so I've published something in the month of March, and I don't look back in a few years' time and feel disappointed at my blogless month. But hey. I'm still on blogging holiday. Look, I'm wearing a sombrero and drinking a pina colada. Holiday.

Tomorrow is different. Tomorrow is April. I need to get back to blogging in April. If I'm not posting sixteen blog posts a day throughout April, I am a failure of a human being. Every blog post will have complex diagrams and be translated into four different languages. It'll all be in 3D and also rendered as a liquid. It's going to be the best wordings on the internet ever. No pressure.

It's weird how well Blogger works for me. I'm not interested in its custom domains or its new themes. I just want a nice plain design that I can Photoshop into looking a bit better. It's immediate and encourages play: a sandpit of a writing environment. Blogger has served me well for the past, approximately, 17 and a half years.

Okay. I've written some words. I'm going to put a picture at the top. What would you like? A hippopotamus, you say? Sure, you can have a hippopotamus. That's do really well in the Google rankings. Ahem.

Further Fats: Defending blogging against Blogger (2010)

Further Fats: Blog your spleen out (with added Balki) (2014)

A finger of Fudge is not enough

I felt a bit unsettled the other day. Something at the back of my mind, niggling me like an annoying puppy or a ghost. I get these moments more frequently as I get older, and I have to stop to assess my general state before continuing with my day.

I realised I was fretting over whether a finger of Fudge really was just enough to treat a child, or whether or was just a bit stingy, what with increasingly affordable modern gadgets available on the high street.

You know how the advert goes, right? If you're reading a Blogger blog, you're totally old enough to remember the song in the Cadbury's Fudge commercial. Supposedly, a finger of Fudge is "just enough until it's time to eat", which is essentially advocating chocolate dessert before the meal.

And do you know what? I'm in favour. It's a long time since I've fingered a buffet, but I love going to an All You Can Eat place and alternating between sweet and savoury. I reject John Shuttleworth's philosophy in I Can’t Go Back to Savoury Now that you can't return to a shepherd's pie once you're halfway through a treacle sponge. Mix and match. Use the same spoon for both.

The Fudge song describes the chocolate bars as "very small and neat", which is true. They are incredibly small, which brings me back to my main concern that they're too small. Not quite enough to give anyone a treat. You'd have to follow it up with a Boost or a Toblerone or an entire chocolate egg. Sorry, did I type "or"? I meant to say "and".

So anyway, that's what's been bothering me recently. The miserable months of January and February are definitely getting to me. The highlight of the past few months was when I ate Mentos and drank Diet Coke and didn't explode. Harrumph. What an insufferable drudge. Why can't we have six Augusts?

I need a new project. Maybe I should watch some Cadbury's adverts to get some ideas. I could become a drumming gorilla. Shove a flake in my mouth dead sexy-like. Perhaps I should become a Milk Tray man, parkouring over wheelie bins without dropping a single Hazelnut Swirl.

Jeez. Next time I get a niggle in the back of my mind, I won't stop to think about it. Did I want to be writing about Fudges? No, I did not. Damn you, brain.

This post is not sponsored by a chocolate company. Honest. *jumps naked into a bath of Minstrels*

Further Fats: Spoons! Marshmallows beware! and other conspiracy theories (2006)

Guess a word, any word, no not that word

Everyone's into the daily word guessing game Wordle. Half my Twitter feed is people posting their Wordle results. There hasn't been an online puzzle this popular since I posted a close-up body part and people had to guess if it was my ear or my warts.

For the unaware, Wordle is a bit like hangman, but you have to guess a five-letter word each time. You enter letters and the puzzle tells you how close you are to the correct ones. It has words like QUERY and DADDY and FARTS. It's nice and simple, and all credit to software guy Josh Wardle for creating a truly viral hit. Yes, the game is a letter-changed twist on his name. It could have been called Jash, I suppose.

You can post your daily results on social media, although to avoid spoilers, you can only post your answers as plain coloured squares, with the letters taken out. No, really. It's like being shown some meat at the supermarket, and when you ask what it is, they just say it's "some meat".

Of course, anyone who plays Wordle is a sad loser with nothing better to do with their time. Have I played it? Heck yes. I need to beat all my loser friends. I've even played the limitless version where you can load new games until your thumb falls off. Best correct streak so far is 57. But yes, sad losers, all of them. Ahem.

I'm glad the puzzles are only five letters long. I can't think beyond the fingers on one hand or beyond the toes on one foot or beyond the nipples on one nose. We need a game for five-lettered electronic music acts. Yello. Bjork. Diplo. Plaid. Fluke. Clark. Tycho. Bibio. Teebs. Unkle. As One. Tosca. Zero 7. 3OH!3. Chase out of Chase & Status. Jeez, it's really difficult to think of five-letter electronic music acts.

Since lockdown, I've embraced word games. This blog turns 18 years old this year: I'm not the spring chicken I once was. I'm a withered old cockerel. I'm convinced I'm going to wake up one morning and my brain will literally be a cabbage. And not even a good cabbage: one with browned leaves and loads of fungus and it's 14p in Sainsbury's. So I play word games to keep me sparking along. BRAIN. WORKS. MAYBE.

There's one kind of word game I won't do. Cryptic crosswords seem to follow some kind of arcane rule set only communicable by invisible semaphore. I think this is only played by people who understand cricket. Like most cryptic noobs, I can get the anagram ones, but I come unstuck pretty quickly. That said, I once got 13 correct answers in the Private Eye crossword: I felt superhuman. Maybe I was just possessed.

Yazoo! I thought of another one! Plone! Sasha! Cylob! They're coming thick and fast now. I can actually literally feel my brain getting younger. Quick, let me post these names on my Twitter feed but only as anonymous coloured squares. I'm sure everyone will appreciate that.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: N is for Nintendo (2010)

Further Fats: Flatulent balls – lockdown thoughts and a cartoon of a bull (2020)

A pressing problem: trouble at t'mill for vinyl production

The vinyl production industry is in meltdown. Which could be a good thing if melted vinyl records made crude oil or liquorice. But it doesn't. This means trouble, with Mixmag saying the industry is in "a state of chaos".

I'm planning on buying my mates 37 copies of Ed Sheeran's new album for Christmas. That's 37 vinyl copies to each friend of Ed's =. That's his album name, by the way, not a typo. My pals are going to love me, especially as each one will be individually wrapped in three rolls of toilet paper.

However, there's trouble at t'mill. Are records made in mills? No idea. Anyway, due to extreme weather, staffing shortages, a lack of raw materials, and vinyl now outselling CDs for the first time in history, it's taking longer than ever to get a record pressed. Especially if you're a small label in a queue behind a mass-producing major label. Vinyl production seems to have more delays than a dub reggae remix of the band Delays. 

This means consumers may be waiting a long time for their vinyl. A bunch of mums aren't going to get their Abba or Adele for Christmas Day, leaving weird Uncle Derrick to recreate entire albums on the spoons.

It's really unfortunate for small independent labels, who pride themselves on high quality product that's now in an endless queue behind some dreary Pink Floyd special edition. And with Brexit making Bandcamp sales to EU customers uneconomical, they're having to work harder than ever to make any money. 

Sorry, that last paragraph was all serious. Erm. Sausages. Clowns. Cats falling off tables. Phew, saved it. 

The Mixmag article suggests solutions might be found in an increase in pressing plants, the revival of dubplates, and a more creative approach to physical releases. However, electronic music duo Posthuman seem to have a more pragmatic handle on things, saying the whole thing will burn out soon:

"As soon as it isn’t profitable, [the major labels] will jump ship just like they did before. There has to be a saturation of Led Zeppelin and Elton John B-sides where the public will just say ‘enough is enough, we’re not buying any more’. I don’t think this crisis will last for much longer.”

I'm off to record a cover version of Ed's album on my cassette player. Piano, Casio keyboard, trumpet, kazoo. No spoons. I'll copy it across on the tape-to-tape bit of my old hi-fi unit. If I set it to double-speed, I'll easily have a load of toilet-rollable copies done by Christmas. Sorted.

Further Fats: A creative meltdown means horrible bowls and don't you forget it (2012)

Further Fats: Do you remember the first time (with your own money)? (2019)

Wipe that smile off your face: ravers go right wing

Have a read of this article by music writer Harold Heath about the UK dance scene's uncomfortable dalliance with the far right. Go on. Have a read. What do you mean you haven't read it yet? Read it. READ IT.    

In the article, he outlines the bizarre phenomenon of the acid house movement being co-opted by anti-lockdown protesters. The anti-establishment attitude of rave culture seems to link all-too-neatly into anti-vaxxers railing against the status quo. Not actual Status Quo. Just the general status quo.

A few weeks ago, I witnessed an anti-lockdown protest in Manchester. The posters and t-shirts were full of conspiracy theory nonsense. Their main symbol was the yellow smiley face. This left me pretty shocked and not very smiley at all.

Obviously, I was more horrified that so many people want the virus to run amok among the most vulnerable in our society, but hey! Don't use our smiley face. It's OUR smiley face. That gaudy vacant fake emotion is reserved for us ravers, not keyboard warriors on day release.

Those Little England Brexiters probably don't even know what the symbol stands for. Peace, love, unity and having fun? They wouldn't know those words even if they were tattooed on the massive snowflake that replaced whatever brain they used to have. Yeah, I can do mixed snowflake metaphors too. I thank you.

Of course, not everyone who is anti-lockdown is right wing. But these kind of protests definitely lean towards a political side. Folks frothing at the mouth about "face nappies" are a virus-filled sneeze away from the grim world of self-serving libertarians falsely claiming victimhood, through to the uber-grim underworld of full-on anti-Semitic conspiracists. Yeeps, keep it light, Fats.

It's not possible to be a clubber and be right wing. Simply not so. I'm sure there are conservatives that go to Creamfields, which totally destroys the opening point of this paragraph. But the very act of clubbing is a political statement. Just ask John Major, whose government legislated against repetitive beats.

As Heath reports: "There are a set of shared values around tolerance, inclusivity and community, born in the very earliest days of disco, that run through the DNA of house and techno that we like to think we all share."

Although the disruption to the dance music industry has been difficult for those trying to make a living from promoting, performing and hospitality, going on Covidiot marches is the antithesis of what the dance music scene should be about.

I would have left my blog post there, but something else just happened. Something awful. And alluring. But mainly awful.

I won't post the video here, but at the time of writing, the internet has been reeling at a recording of Pob-faced Tory Michael Gove clubbing in Aberdeen. Proper going for it, he was. In his suit. You can look it up on an internet near you.

Look at him dancing. Writhing, gurning, waggling his arms as if trying to bat away poor people asking for money. I can't stop watching: I'm repulsed yet strangely turned on. Ooo, flip my second home, Michael. Pull out of my EU, why dontcha.

Gove has clearly done a biscuit tin of eckies and will no doubt be a member of Kicks Like a Mule by the end of the week. What? Oh, right. My legal department has advised me to tell you that Michael Gove has definitely never taken ecstasy and instead spends his days hoovering up crystal meth like any self-respective Tory.

Phew.

Smiley face image: Bob Bob on Flickr

Further Fats: This is not an analysis of the EU Referendum (2016)

Further Fats: Does Donald Trump listen to music? (2017)

This is not an interview

Hello, Fat Roland. Thanks for joining us.

My pleasure. I've always wanted to appear on this talk show.

It's not a talk show. Tell us what you've been up to this month.

I've been busy. I was the venue keyholder for a polling station. I went to the cinema for the first time in ages. I saw Judas And The Black Messiah, which was great. I bought a Playstation 4, long after it was cool to buy one. A chat show, then? Is it a chat show.

Nope. Is it right you had a gig? With a socially distanced audience?

Game show?

Just answer the question.

Yes, I had a wonderful time at Making Waves: Queer Edition, a cabaret night for Pride In Trafford. I did some silly cartoon things that involved gay pop anthems, a comedy strip tease and an unexpected Annie Lennox.

That must have been strange, being in a room with an audience.

Not at all: it was lovely. I'm going to guess reality show. Quiz show? I'm not sure what other kinds of shows have interviews like this.

Did you have to put much work into the performance?

Tonnes. That's why I've not blogged much.

What's a blog?

I'll explain later. There was quite a bit of new material so I spent a lot of time on props and making new music. And just the basic writing, of course, which takes forever. What with me being an artiste and all.

Erm. I suppose. And do you have lots more gigs coming up?

Is this a roast? Like they do in America? I've heard about those.

No, it's not a roast.

Oh. I'll answer the question, then. I don't have much in the pipeline. I'll be doing the Sunday Assembly on June 27th. I'd love to be booked for more stuff, performing and compering, but there aren't that many things going on just yet. Things will get busier as we continue this rocky road out of lockdown.

It's a soap opera.

What?

It's not a a talk show or a game show or a roast. It's a soap opera.

I don't...

This isn't an interview. It's a script for a soap opera.

That doesn't even make any sense. In form or content. It's clearly a question and answer session.

Yes. Like a melodrama. You're the hen pecked husband, I'm the wronged wife looking for revenge.

That sounds terrible. I'd like to go now, please.

Thanks for joining us, Fat Roland. Have you anything you'd like to plug?

Yeah. Your face. WITH MY FIST.

Ha ha ha! Brilliant roast.

What?!

Happy new 2021 Fat Roland

Happy 2021, idiots.

Yeah, you heard. I called you an idiot and you can do nothing about it. This is the new me: confident, assertive, dominant, and wearing a special hat that says "I am the best".

In previous years, my new year's resolutions have been pathetic. Staying off Facebook, answering emails more quickly, being nicer to dogs, that sort of thing. Those resolutions are for small-minded losers. The new me, the 2021 me, is going to have a big mind.

Everything is going to be bigger.

Strap in, because these ten 2021 resolutions are so full of confidence, they're going to blow your socks off. You have rubbish socks, by the way. Yeah, you heard.

Resolution 1:
Beat Gary Kasparov at chess

I reckon I can take him. I watched that chess drama with the gaudy wallpaper and I'm an expert at chess now. The castle goes down the edges, the donkey does a sideways jump like it's avoiding an ants' nest, and the tall one just stands at the back and does nothing. Easy. Once I've trounced him at chess, I'm going to destroy him at Ludo.

Resolution 2:
Become a superstar DJ like they had in the 90s

I mean, how hard can it be? Stick a cassette tape on, pretend to move all the knobs, move the vinyl back and forth while saying "wickedy-wah", get on the front cover of Mixmag. I'm going to wear a tie-dye shirt with smiley faces on. The only song I'll play is Doop by Doop.

Resolution 3:
Populate Mars

Pretty simple. Buy a nice house on Mars, preferably near a newsagents and a well-maintained public leisure centre. And then populate the planet by either sexy bonky times or a mass cloning programme. I've not worked out the details: my many offspring can sort that out. I'm sure my logic's pretty solid on this one.

Resolution 4:
Patent a two-tier urinal system

Men! Fed up of queuing for a wee in public toilets? Want to avoid todger-tinkling tailbacks? I will invent a two-tier urinal system to speed things up. I can't reveal too much for intellectual property reasons, but Tier One is "Measured Micturition", which involves a tape measure and a waterproof notepad, and Tier Two is "Splash And Dash" which involves standing in the doorway and arcing over the loo queue. Just hand me my million pounds now, Dragon's Den.

Resolution 5:
Host the 2021 Olympics

I will become an Olympic host, just like a country. I don't know if we're due an Olympics this year: Sebastian Coe won't return my calls. But I will totally host it single-handedly. I might not have stadiums (the correct plural of which is "stadiumii"), but I can run around my living room in jogging bottoms balancing an egg in a ladle. Not a real egg, obviously, I'm not stupid.

Resolution 6
Become the world's tallest man

I'll just stand on some bricks or something.

Resolution 7
Win all the marathons

All of them. London, Munich, Sydney, Bhutan, everywhere. Eddie Izzard did loads of marathons because standup comedians run about a lot on stage, so it was a natural progression. I don't want to do any actual running: I'm pretty sure if you bung the finish-line marshals a few quid, they'll plant a few bogus "this way" signs so my competitors get lost and/or fall into a crocodile pit.

Resolution 8
Become 'Back Flip Guy'

Just imagine. I'm in a board meeting. Some suit is pointing at figures on a white board. The big boss at the head of the table asks for blue-sky thinking. I do a back flip right out of my chair, and everyone says it's "well skill" while doing the gangsta hand-snap thing. Hey! I'm the Back Flip Guy! It's what I do! See also: AA meetings, supermarket queues, rollercoasters, egg-ladle racing.

Resolution 9
Invent Star Wars

Do you know how much money Star Wars made? It was like a thousand pounds or something. I'm going to get rich by inventing Star Wars, although I'd get rid of all those little furry animals and the droopy-faced racist guy and all the robots and anything to do with space. It's basically going to be a dozen films of me sat in my pants playing computer Solitaire. The merch is going to be amazing.

Resolution 10
Use the word "horse" instead of other more useful words

My final resolution is going to horse your brain. I'm going to horse a seventy-foot horse in front of a crowd of horse, while horse-rope walking across a huge chasm which is horse metres high. Everyone will totally horse, and within horse weeks, horse will ask me to horse a horse, with horse horse and horse. Horse horse ladle, horse, horse on horse horse. Horse— (that's enough horsing around - ed)

Further Fats: Top ten ways to write a top ten music list (2012)

Further Fats: The only new year list that counts (2017)