Meenzer

Might have another pop at an Aussies-and-gayers-stranded-in-London meetup this Saturday.

Lanky Birthday!

It's midnight, I'm dashing off the work I should have done at 6 or so, soothing my soul with a long drink in the process... Elliott Smith - Figure 8 seems adequate accompaniment.

Dire Straits - So Far Away I am my dad.

It'll rot your stomach before it kills you. I've got girl flu Pah! Merely a mild case of the DEADLY MAN FLU I've had for the last YEAR. Well, week and a half.

Knowing south-eastern trains, it probably improves the ambience...

Fine by me. I'm all for art that makes you think, or even just laugh at how ludicrous it is. Beats the "Ooh, it's another portrait of an aristocratic gentleman with a silly moustache/a peasant woman feeding the chickens/an obscure Dutch river" approach any day.

Räikkönen and personality in the same breath. There's a first time for everything.

You forgot "He reminds me of a girl I knooooooooooooow" etc.

It's not that simple, though, is it? Surely one of the main benefits of the whole download "revolution" (cough) is that it gives artists the ability to release material at their own will, i.e. as individual songs, "EPs", "albums", indeed in whatever form or quantity and at whatever stage of production they desire, irrespective of record company parameters and timelines of the "album and four single releases with diminishing chart returns" variety? It might well still be the case that a lot of bands, particularly those signed to major labels, still adopt (or are forced to adopt) "one album every 18 months and a couple of tours" (say) as the timeframe that dictates their actions, but we're still in the early days of the digital music age, so I don't see any reason why the trend shouldn't keep moving in a more random and free direction.

Ironickle title alert!!!1!

Devin Townsend/Ocean Machine - Biomech

The best posts are always the ones that state how pointless the thread they're posting in is. I feel it really raises the bar. True, but metal is an aggressive form of music where it's about the riffs and the rhythm as much as anything else, so the fact that some metal bands come up with pretty bog-standard lyrics is about as newsworthy as "Titus Bramble has a fat arse". There's good and bad in any genre if you go out looking to find whatever suits your argument.

Achtung Kinder - Mark Vernon Is A Gay

I love Steve Watson's "whee, we're all going to slide along the ground in a mass celebration... oops, no we're not" after Albert's goal

It's not so much that I think it's all thrash metal or cock rock, just that it's all noisy shit. Oh baby, pleeeeeease... give a little respe-eeeecct... tooooooo-oooooo heavy metal There's something not quite right about a gay man taking the piss out of me about Erasure. While defending heavy metal? I'll admit it's not your everyday scenario... You'll be talking about football next. And you'll be rattling on about which players have the sexiest legs.

It's not so much that I think it's all thrash metal or cock rock, just that it's all noisy shit. Oh baby, pleeeeeease... give a little respe-eeeecct... tooooooo-oooooo heavy metal There's something not quite right about a gay man taking the piss out of me about Erasure. While defending heavy metal? I'll admit it's not your everyday scenario...

It's not so much that I think it's all thrash metal or cock rock, just that it's all noisy shit. Oh baby, pleeeeeease... give a little respe-eeeecct... tooooooo-oooooo heavy metal

Well OK, it was the production that made the drums sound like dustbins rather than the drums themselves. Either way, you'd expect someone like Ulrich to notice/care. I got Napster-banned from my favourite PC in the 24-hour labs at uni for downloading Metallica stuff. Bastids.

Ruined by tbh.

Sunna - One Minute Science

http://simcity.ea.com/play/simcity_classic.php ...sort of.

It's pretty grim here too. I'm going London-Edinburgh by train later today, so I'll wave at you through the drizzle...

We had two season tickets between my parents and me at the time, and it was my turn to sit it out. Fortunately, my mother being the borderline gloryhunter that she is, the memory of the trek to London for the Charity Shield humiliation a few months earlier was enough to persuade her to let me go in her place. I remember saying to my old man at half-time that I still reckoned it was a case of "next goal wins" - didn't expect the win to quite turn out like that, though.

10 years ago this afternoon, shirley? (I wouldn't normally be quite this pedantic, but it is you, Craig... )