Category: from the blogroll

Musical matters

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Thanks to the wife Skypeing friends in the UK, when I came to use Harold this evening, I found the chunky Skype headset still plugged in. Bonus.
Whilst I look pretty daft beneath said headset (but there’s no-one here to see me anyway), it provides surprisingly good sound quality and since I don’t get as much chance to listen to decent music as loudly as I would like to, I’m taking the opportunity to get reacquainted with Koosh’s favourite man, Jared Leto, and his 30 Seconds to Mars cronies.

This in turn brings back memories of My Cokefest and that in turn reminded me of Koosh’s heartfelt plea to her readers to not join the Facebook group concerned with objecting to those local residents who complained about the noise of this years event. Still with me?
I was going to show you that post, but she’s deleted it. Shame.

My wife, 5 months pregnant and a self-confessed hater of “shouty music” spent 12 hours in the burning African sun that day, listening solely to “shouty music” and humouring me as Matt Bellamy dissolved me into a quivering jelly of raw emotion.  Such is love. Unconditional love. (Me and the wife, not me and Matt.)

Or so I thought.

It turns out that there was (at least) one condition. A biggie. And yes, in exactly a fortnight’s time I will be at Grand West Arena watching (and – sadly – listening to) James Blunt. Through gritted teeth, I admit that it could be worse. But not even my wife, despite her bizarre musical tastes, would stoop so low as Sicky Dion or we wouldn’t be married.
“Are you a Sicky Dion fan?” was usually my second question to any eligible young lady, right after “So, do you come here often?”. Best to get those awkward and embarrassing things out of the way as soon as possible.
So there you have it. James Blunt. I wonder if I can sneak my iPod in?

Meanwhile, I’m sat here waiting for my download of MGMT’s brilliant Oracular Spactacular to complete. Specifically the Flaming Lips/Polyphonic Spree-esque Time to Pretend with its übercatchy keyboard riff. Here, in a Fleet of Worlds stylee, is the video for your perusal. Enjoy.

P.S. If you have 102MB of bandwidth to spare (i.e you’re not in South Africa), a hi-res copy of this video is available here (right click/save target as). Awesome.

“My most important reader is me”

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Why do we blog?

It’s a question that many inferior bloggers attempt (and fail) to answer on an all too regular basis (along with an annoying tendency to use the word “musing” far too often).

Brian Micklethwait* knows why he blogs:

… every so often I have to remind you people that my most important reader is me, in a few months or years time … This will warm the cockles of my faltering heart, the way me burbling on about the Cold War ending, and what a Good Thing that is, never could. Oooh. I see that in April 2008, I was of the opinion that the Cold War ending was Good. Well, twiddledidee.

Brian’s music storage challenges continue in his brilliantly and descriptively entitled Exciting Posting About Shelves, but aside from showing off his new CD rack, he also hits the nail right on the head as to one reason why I’m writing what I’m writing.

Well, twiddledidee.

* certainly not an inferior blogger.

“The stress is crushing”

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It’s amazing what I put myself through for you guys. I think that if I wasn’t the model specimen of prime physical fitness which I obviously am, then I would surely be suffering some sort of health issue or other related to producing this literary Manna which you so enjoy optically devouring. I put it down to my diet which consists solely of bananas, pizza and Castle Milk Stout and my rigorous exercise regime of Playstation football. I have thumbs of steel.

Anyway, why am I telling you this? Well, I went here and found this:

“The trouble with a personal brand is, you’re yoked to a machine,” said Paul Kedrosky, a friend of Mr. Malik’s who runs the Infectious Greed blog. “You feel huge pressure to not just do a lot, but to do a lot with your name on it. You have pressure to not just be the C.E.O., but at the same time to write, and to do it all on a shoestring. Put it all together, and it’s a recipe for stress through the roof.”

And Mr Malik claims that he suffered a heart attack due to blogging stress. Although:

Paul Walborsky, the chief operating officer for Mr. Malik’s company, Giga Omni Media, played down stress as a factor in Mr. Malik’s health. He noted Mr. Malik’s incessant smoking of cigars and cigarettes was a more likely cause.

I think that the astute Mr Walborsky has hit the nail on the head there. This blogging thing isn’t actually so difficult.

You should try getting Mansfield Town through to the Champions League final on FIFA 2007 while eating a banana. Then you’d know stress.