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Improve your vocabulary with Chinese eBayers

Mar20
2006 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

Ebay Flag

I’m beginning to think the green clarinet was merely the tip of the iceberg of silliness. I nearly fell off my chair laughing at the “new eximious rare larruping blue electric guitar” I came across today. Surely somebody’s taking the extreme mickey? I thought this was a joke, but looking the words up confirmed that they are genuine English. I feel humbled that my vocabulary can be expanded by someone with only a passing acquaintence of the language. Or maybe he just needs a somewhat less eclectic thesaurus.

Personally, I’m going to make every attempt to make use of these eximious words in my everyday larruping conversations.

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I Suck at Singstar

Mar18
2006 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

SingstarI’m not a great singer. I’m not even a good singer. My voice isn’t BAD, but I really need to concentrate to stay in tune, and I don’t feel natural doing it. When I do concentrate and practice plenty, I can record a reasonable vocal for a song. Today I had a shot at the playstation game Singstar. In a nutshell, you sing into a microphone along with a well-known song and the game works out how well you stayed in tune and rhythm. Not very well at all, in my case.

The only song I did reasonably well in was ‘Every Breath You Take’, which I suspect was because I know it fairly well and it is reasonably close to my own limited vocal range. Less successful was ‘Tutti Frutti’, and I totally crashed and burned on ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, but I was trying to sing the female part, two octaves lower than normal, so not entirely surprising.

I found I did better by ignoring the on-sceen guide, apart from the lyrics, as the notes shown are in proportion to the line being sung, so can be two words or a whole sentence; 1 bar or 4. One of those things that is probably easier to follow if you can’t read music. What is interesting, though disappointing for me, is the read-out shows how far out from the notes you are singing. I found that I was wobbling around notes much more than I realised, though once I saw that I was able to address it.

I hope to have another shot soon – I think it could actually be a reasonable tool for improving pitch awareness, and helping my own singing skills (or apparent lack of them).

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Who buys this stuff?

Mar16
2006 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

Green Clarinet

I don’t want to get into the habit of posting items of weird-but-true instruments and other musical items – I’ll leave that to the experts at (the very entertaining) MusicThing and others. I have to make an exception for this, I’m afraid.

The Fluorescent Green Clarinet

Why?

I was trawling around the shark-infested treasure trove that is eBay, looking for a little bargain, when I came across this item. A bright green clarinet. Wow. Got to have one of those! Or not.

The black tube of the beautiful green

The seller, a Mr jianada0377, is from China and has a wonderful way with words. So, once he’s introduced his ‘black tube…’ he goes on to say “If you like Chinese culture and Chinese arts, please don’t miss this item. As you know, the Chinese has long history around the world.” Indeed. I’m sure thousands of years of Chinese culture have passed in order that the very pinnacle of artistic endeavour can be attained by crafting this fine instrument. He sums up by letting us know that “It will bring you and your family happy”. It certainly made me smile. He has a whole range of products, including “The electricity guitar of the elegant white” and “Chinese kissable bran-new superb guitar” amongst others. However, leaving aside the results of an auto-translator gone haywire, it got me thinking.

What self-respecting classical clarinet player is going to turn up for a concert with one of these? Not too many, I’d wager. Okay, what about a jazz clarinettist? Not much more likely, I suspect. Well, it would look eye-catching for a rock clarinettist, but when did you last see one of them? No, nor I. So who is buying these things? Somewhere in China there’s a factory churning the little critters out (just do a search on eBay for “green clarinet”), so there must be a market. And they can’t just be toys – not only do they look like they might actually work, but they cost about £100 or more to post from China to the UK. Yeah, right.

[Update]

Amazingly nobody snapped this up, so it went unsold at £4.99 (plus £150 packaging, of course!). Looks like probably the same guy is (trying to) sell them under various names (just search for “black tube beautiful green” on eBay to see) starting at only 27p this time. “Pay attention to the color and the skill”. Yes, indeed. And where on eBay would you look for this latest little gem? Why, ‘Jewellery & Watches > Vintage & Antique Jewellery > Vintage Costume Jewellery > Pre-1837′ – of course! It just gets better…

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Owner of a Lonely Horse

Aug28
2005 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

Owner of a Lonely Heart

Gotta love kids!

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