I'm doing a massive purge of crap that's I've been hauling from flat to flat for 10 years, and came across some old uni debating stuff, and it reminded me of my old friend Laura - the crazy American-Russian girl who was on my team at Joynt Scroll in 2002. I looked her up on Facebook - she's back in Arizona - and five minutes later, we're in touch. 

That's incredible, when you think about it. I haven't seen nor heard from her for almost five years, she's on the other side of the world and within five minutes I've not only located her, but we're exchanging 'hey, how you doin?' messages. 

Ten years ago that would have been impossible. Five years ago it would have been highly unlikely.

The internet is awesome.

I have the new DVDs by Muse (HAARP) and the Who (Amazing Journey) to watch. Awesome. The first Raid Over Moscow practise on Thursday was a blast. Cool. I had graduation on Friday and didn't trip over on stage. Wicked. KittyHawk played a show last night we weren't really that keen to do, and which was plagued by technical difficulties, but we eventually got the dormant crowd rocking and off their feet and had a brilliant time. Sweet.

Then as we were packing up some drunkard threw a bottle at me, hitting me in the eye, and I spent the rest of the night/morning dealing with policemen and hospital staff who were at best minimally competent, but a better description would be downright rude and offensive.

My favourite part was asking the receptionist if I could have another pen to fill out ACC form as the one I was given didn't work and being told, "The phone is over there, just dial one."

Here... loads, I tell thee...

I rearranged the lounge, so now I can look out the window as I while away my days in front of the computer. Stupid WINZ didn't care about how many jobs I've applied for, they just kept going on about me missing the stupid meeting they never told me I had to go to. Then they put too much money into my account this week, but fuck 'em, I'm keeping it as payment for the hours I have to go in each week till they get me a trolley job at Pak'n'Save.

I keep seeing errors in the SKY TV programming guide, and can't work out why I've been turned down for that job like six times. I've applied for everything even remotely related to anything, and can't even get an interview. Nor can my friend Ange, which is surprising considering how brilliant she is at...  stuff...

tariqa had her exam this morning, so wish her retrospective luck and stuff.

I listened to Easy Tiger for the first time in ages last night, and it was better than I remember. I listened to some of the leaked Chinese Democracy this morning, and damn, it's not like old school G'n'R but it's still pretty damn impressive. Why doesn't he just release it already?

Our car just reached 200,000km, and we're celebrating by getting it serviced.

I handed in my last essay this morning - a light piece on the convergence of the computer gaming industry with other forms of media. Probably my last ever uni essay... ever. Yep.

Now everyone's across the road having celebratory drinks while I'm down in a basement selling Fergie and Gwen Stefani CDs to German tourists. Greeeat.

We've got our first gig in ages tonight though, which will be fun, but means I'm pretty much going to miss out on the last get-together. Ah well.

And I'm getting real anxious about what's next... you know, I did this course to go somewhere other than boring stupid-ass jobs... and I'm nervous about wherever I'm going to end up next. It's scary not knowing - and staying at home every day isn't good for the brain. I end up afraid to leave the house or something.

Okay, this entry went off the rails pretty quickly...

Yesterday was pretty much the best day ever. It was tariqa's birthday, and as she's never liked her birthdays I thought I'd make at least this one memorable and ask her to marry me... and she said yes! Wooooo! So we're now officially engaged. It's pretty awesome.

I got her what Wikipedia calls a "promise ring" - being a poor student still, a proper bling-ring's a little out of the question for now. It's still pretty nice, and has some tiny little diamonds that I'm sure no Africans would have been killed for.

I foolishly updated my Facebook status before getting to uni, so was ambushed by a gaggle of female classmates wanting to know the full story... hamymonkey said it's a genetic thing. Tariqa had a similar situation at work apparently, after one of her workmates caught a glimpse of the new mini-bling on her finger...

I suppose the next step is telling my mum and her dad...

So um, yeah. There was lots of icing on today's cake too! (that sounded like something Alan Partridge would say, I've been watching far too much).

I handed in two assignments, leaving only a couple more till I'm done... I passed the phone interview and got an in-person job interview at Netguide... I found Civilization IV Complete (with all the addons) has been released, so finally bought it...

Then to top it all off, on the way home, I got to ride in one of them Diplodocus-length bendy buses!!!

What an awesome day.

This is the weirdest thing that's happened to me (without anything really happening to me) in ages.

I had to write one more CityBeat blog entry for my class, so thought I'd might as well go out with a bang... but how weird is that? What were the chances?! Grrr. A rapist? Why, of all things, a rapist?!

I've just written 1300-odd words on an 'ethical dilemma' I had during my course - so I chose the "should I or shouldn't I write about him" situation I had back in April. Nothing else came to mind really - execpt perhaps being told to spam forums for Yahoo!Xtra while on my internship, but I doubt I could've got 1300-odd words out of that without killing someone.


Slow internet sucks. Nothing works.

But in happy happy joy joy news, it's tariqa's birthday tomorrow! I hope you all got her nice presents. And KittyHawk will soon be back up and running, as soon as we can all find a simultaneous gap in our schedules. I wonder how the Polyphonic Spree organise band practises.

I haven't posted in five days, and I haven't done a proper massive life-update in a while... cause, um, yeah. So it must be random links and crap time!

One of the songs from my latest album, Scud Of Freedom, was "Alternative Pop Track of the Day" at garageband.com.

I've taken part in a faintly hilarious Htown discussion on the 'terrorism' raids.

I've started re-recording this album - not in the absence of anything new and unreleased, god no. Just to do it justice production-wise. Half the fun is in trying to work out how I played half the songs in the first place... and I can go hard out on the drum machines and random stuff, throw the digital kitchen sink at it so to speak. The next bunch of songs I want to do really needs proper drums and proper instruments, of which the drums Rob is learning to play now, so maybe later on next year... If I find time before then, through some kind of miracle, or complete breakdown and unemployment, I have a bunch of songs which need industrial treatment...

The new Pluto album, Sunken Water, has been in high rotate here... it's better than P.L.U.T.O, like a combination of the polish from that album and the atmosphere from their debut - and really consistent.

Discovered this website, maybe it's old, I don't know, but I particularly liked this pic --->

Yah. Ouch.

I accidentally renewed my Totalfark membership a second time - which means I've been TF a year now. It's worth paying for for the tech support - faster, more accurate, and snarkier than any official support person could supply.

I'm having trouble believing the US will actually go to war with Iran, too. News agencies have pointed out that the language Cheney and Bush have used recently bears a striking similarity to that they used two months before the Iraq invasion... but personally, something just doesn't feel the same this time. I know with Iraq, we knew for certain six months out it would happen, just not when... to be two months out from a clusterfuck of infinitely greater proportions just doesn't make sense. Nothing much else from Bush & Co does either, to be honest, but that sense of inevitability just isn't there this time. Perhaps if they sent in some UN inspectors to act as canaries in the mine...then I'll start buying shares in Haliburton.

But seriously. if Dubya decided to invade Iran, with a declining military stretched to its limits already, it'll be hilarious and worrying to watch the outcome.

Saw "The Devil Dared Me To" yesterday. With a title like that, I was kind of expecting a continuation and an upping-of-the-game from the Back of the Y guys... Instead, we got a surprisingly polished movie following New Zealand's greatest/shittest stuntman Randy Campbell from birth to inevitable infamy - which I can only assume is a prequel to the TV show.

***SPOILER OF SORTS*** In the film, Dick Johansonson plays more the character I expected of Campbell - the former a complete fucking asshole, the latter a romantic, if naive up-and-comer. Somewhere, in a sequel I assume, Campbell must take on attributes learned from Johansonson, otherwise there'd be a serious issue with continuity... ***SPOILER OVER***

I'm writing about continuity and character issues within a movie made by the guys who wrote and filmed Vaseline Warriors parts I-IV. I must be done.

My latest entry for the CityBeat blog is on Scientology - it's even crazier than I remember.

Also, the alt.country music site I did for one of my papers, Alt.Country Calendar, is now online. Of course, it's a little out of date now, but it has interviews with Auckland's Bear Cat and Htown's R William Murphy, as well as reviews of Ryan Adams and The Clientele.

Word.

Question: do most of you read my blog in your friends pages, or come here specifically? I'm thinking of doing a re-design, but is it worth it?

I passed shorthand. Crazy. Shorthand is the paper still freaking out 80% of the journalism majors and grad dips. I don't know how I passed. Based on the two days (the requirement is to pass twice) I turned up and made the grade, the secret to passing is not studying at all, eating toast (and only toast) for breakfast, turning up ten minutes late and finding out what the subject is when you've finally snuck into class and opened your booklet, drinking a Coke Zero during the rehearsal session, cracking lame jokes in between practises, and expecting the worst.

The universe rewarded me by making my new iPod arrive instore (it's been loading songs on from iTunes all night, I'm yet to have a proper play with it) and Chris Knox responding to my requests for a brief interview about the new way the music industry might work. He was cool.

Apple haven't had it all good in my view today though. Their media relations rep in Australia gave me the runaround in relation to parallel importing, answering every single question I had for her with words effective to "take a look at our website" which is not only the complete opposite of what we've been taught to do, but a really fucking lame thing to quote in a news story. And to think the rest of the staff on the way up the call centre ladder to her were so helpful and friendly...

tariqa got an iPod Touch. Oooerr.

So I'm ordering the new Radiohead album as a download, and I get to the pay section. How much do I want to pay? At first I thought, yay, I can get it for like, 1 pence. Then I thought no, Radiohead will then know I'm a cheap bastard. So I thought I'd pay more. Then I thought, but I'm poor. So I won't pay much. But then it occured to me how cool it is they're doing this, and I should reward them. But then the exchange rate might get me, and I'll be paying loads. But if I'm going to pay so little, I'd might as well download it for free. But I really like Radiohead and buy all their albums by matter of loyalty, so I should pay more than zero.

So I pulled a number from thin air - something that wouldn't break the increasingly perilous bank, but that wasn't nothing.



Click for full size.

It's not like they need my money, is it?

EDIT: Here's the piece I wrote yesterday for City Beat, it's now gone live.

I haven't been posting much of substance recently have I? No. Uni is too intense. I don't know how you do it, petrajane. 

And now I have to make blog entries for one of my papers - the first is here. The main page for the site, known as City Beat, is here. We had to submit two this week, our tutor seems to have posted one of mine unchanged, but the other not at all. Obviously he doesn't feel the world is ready for my thoughts on MacGyver.

The one posted is about moving house, so if you want to read about my and tariqa's house move, go there or there.

I think I might watch Apocolypto tonight, as Tariqa says she's bought microwave popcorn.

...that last night the Te Waha Nui team stayed up all night to produce the next issue, after which I went to shorthand and scored 270 words on the test, which is 30 more than our tutor Sarah even reads out.

Then I woke up and thought: "Fuck."

Okay. So what else was I going to write about last night? I had a few things written on my hand, supposedly reminders, today smudged heiroglyphics. Reincin? Remcin? Rezin? I've no idea.

This past week I've been "interning" at Yahoo!Xtra, in their marketing department due to what I've worked out to be a slackness on AUT's behalf. I'm not sure it would have been any better on the editorial side of the open-plan office; my co-Yahoo-er Michelle has complained of a similar monotony. Though while she gets to put together headlines and disassemble press releases, for five days I've been re-sizing pictures of Britney Spears and adding captions of either 30 or 60 characters.

The only thing I've learned in the first half of my internship is how to cleanly and expertly render a pic at 25 pixels square. Next time I need to get a pic of someone, I'll just ask them to shrink and act pixellated I suppose.

Speaking of crap quality images, I popped out last night, while wearing pyjamas, to dump a couple of bags of rubbish into our bin. 30m away up on the footpath, two women thought this was hilarious, and stopped to take a photo. In the dark. I stopped to wave, but knew they'd missed their chance when a flash went off, 15 seconds later, as I was half indoors and closing the door.

This wouldn't be so odd if they obviously hadn't just walked down from K Rd, where I'm sure they'd have seen stranger things than a guy in his pyjamas dumping some garbage.

In other hilariousness, I gave up on the bus while in Grafton last night, cause due to the molasses of traffic it takes longer to bus from there to here than it does to walk..

It looks like 50 Cent's gonna have to quit making solo albums, as Kanye is kicking his ass in sales. Personally, I'd wish both of them would shut up and die, at least commercially. I suppose I'd keep Kanye around for hilarious interviews and shiat, and no mere bullet can take out 50. But come on. Some shitty Puff Daddy styled rambling over a Daft Punk song, or 17 songs about how many guns some retard has? No thanks.

I was just playing the New Pornographers' Challengers, and sold two copies to two entirely unrelated Chinese couples. The new Go! Team sounds pretty good too, on a first listen. On the other hand, MIA's Kala sounded horrible, but a few chances later, begins to grow on you.

Now that I've got a moment to make a proper entry and the desire to do so, I'm not sure I've got anything to say.

I suppose I'll just do one of them random updates that do a disservice to the term 'blog' then! Not keeping a diary anymore, this is the only way I'm going to know what I was upto when I was this age, when I'm 64 or so.

Okay... We got Muse tickets this morning through the ultra-mega-covert-secret presale thingee. Well, it's not really that secret, and I sent texts to five or six people telling them how to get theirs, so even if it was at 9am, it certainly wasn't by 10. 

For the next two week's I'm going to be interning at Yahoo!Xtra, apparently in their marketing department. I'm not sure how I ended up there and not in news, but with their latest disaster probably not entirely sorted it should at least be interesting.

I'm also working all this weekend, so no break for me till... shit, I don't want to think about it.

Need the money though, as we're moving house in two weeks. I'm not sure I've mentioned that yet, but yeah. Off to Mt Albert to save money, and hopefully bike into town each day and lose some belly. At least that's how I'm justifying continuing to eat crap at the moment.

If you feel like buying me a new iPod, cause mine is dead, I wouldn't mind a 160GB iPod "Classic" as they've been re-labelled. I still prefer to call them Man's iPod, as opposed to the Nano, or Woman's iPod. Tariqa wanting a 16GB Nano or Touch and me wanting the Classic proves my point, and if we're an exception, we're proving the rule that I'm right. Or something.

My Ryan Adams review is now online (opens PDF of Te Waha Nui Issue #19 page 21). My original was over 900 words, believe it or not. Graham Reid (our tutor this semester) helped me hack it down to a manageable 400 or so - "no one cares about this... that's not important... I have no idea what you're talking about here, so it can go.." 

I also did an opinion piece on religion that appears here (once again a PDF) that has apparently caused a bit of a stir amongst the more faithful on the course. They've banded together to write a rebuttal I hear, which should be amusing. Some of them are cool people who enjoy a good debate, but one or two really are so brainwashed, any questioning of their beliefs, or even the very mention of agnosticism sends them into a tailspin of cognitive dissonance.

Alright, I'm off to do a Facebook purity test and continue to lose at Scrabulous.

It's almost been too long since the fact to talk about the Ryan Adams concert hasn't it? Ah well. I've written a massive long review which I'll link to once I know what I'm doing with it (probably using Graham Reid's advice and cutting it in half somehow).

Uni is still hella busy. Hence the lack of posts...

My iPod died on the weekend. It's had a good two-and-a-half-year run, but now whenever I turn it on, it has a sad face. I can't make it happy again. Went to buy an 80gb video iPod cause I can't live without one anymore... but even offering to pay a deposit, the finance company declined me! Grrrr. I've never missed payments on an HP or anything ever. Sucks. Now I have to wait a few weeks and save up. But then we're considering moving, so if we do I'll have to wait a bit longer...

But moving if it happens will be to a cheaper place, which is good. With a lawn too, so the cats won't have to journey across the roof of the building to get into the great outdoors, as they currently do.

If you haven't watched the video I linked to the other day (previous entry), I highly recommend you do.

Got another story in the Waikato Times - this one about a high school surfing championship. Mmhmm. This Thursday they're publishing my Brunettes review, and also a review of Scud Of Freedom, my latest recording... which is appearing next to Chuganaut again, as it did in Nexus (a few posts back).

I've got another metric assload of CDs and magazines for sale - loads of guitar/music mags, some computer ones, Top Gear, Listener/Time/New Statesmans, etc etc.

More on the way later in the week. The ones that say "buyer must pick up" I'll make an exception for friends if there aren't too many (postage costs will be included then of course).

Sweet.

Another one in the Waikato Times, this one with a pic but not on the front page - in the arts section. Link goes to the Stuff.co.nz version without the pic. The subs didn't seem to think it was ironic that a deaf mute is being played by a choral singer, and took out the key word of that entire sentence. Ah well. That's their job.

Got a fair few CDs on trademe at the moment, will be adding more when I get the time. Tariqa's probably going to be bringing home a new cat any day now, so we need the money!

My story was on the front cover of the Waikato Times today! Wooo! Here it is at stuff.co.nz. Of course it's not 100% what I wrote originally, but everything has to go through the subs' grinder before publication, can't complain. And check it out - right at the moment it's the top story on the Waikato Times' website.



Who cares about rapists and p-labs anyhoo?

"Sexy sports presenter splits with ref" - the first sentence is enough! I know it's credited to the Sunday News in the small print, but they could at least not put it on the front page of the site if they want to be taken seriously now, huh?

So my week in Hamilton... On the first day, we popped into the Dewar court case in one of Htown's three adjacent courtrooms; it was the first day, and as I'd no idea what this Dewar guy looked like, I thought the guy being interrogated was Dewar. It wasn't, and was boring as fuck anyway, so I didn't really care when I found out it wasn't him.

On the second, we'd been in the Waikato Times office not even an hour and all the computers died. All us newbies panicked, while our tutor said things like, "how'd you have done this twenty years ago?".

A dumb question, cause (a) twenty years ago I was still learning how to tie my shoelaces, and (b) we've never been taught how exactly to go about things without computers. Use phone books? Okay, and what do we say when people tell us what we're asking is on the website? Write it longhand? Yeah, but will they mark it? Etc etc.

Anyway. I interviewed Pedro Carneiro on Wednesday morning, which was kinda cool. Part of me was hoping he barely spoke English so I could get everything down on paper without too much trouble. Turns out he's a fluent speaker, and I'd called him at 10pm (I was told it was 9pm in Portugal). Hmmm. Anyway, he was really cool, and going by his Youtube videos a much better classical marimba percussionist than any I've probably interviewed before.

So over the week I did a story on a high school surfing competition, a brief on APRA, the piece on Pedro, a preview of a play at the uni, and an article on a high school with a record label in Ngatea, which the Times decided to get a photo for - driving a photographer and I an hour each way to cover. I'm not sure which if any of these stories have been/will be published, being back in Aucks, but we'll see. The brief was included on the Ent page on Thursday, the play piece later this week I've been told. Fingers crossed for the rest.

Haha, Dave Letterman's getting ripped apart by someone from HR. He works one hour a day, high blood pressure, and has been with the company 14 years without a promotion. Hehe.

Anyway... the trip to Htown wasn't all work. Which doesn't mean the rest of the time was all fun. We stayed at the Ascot Lodge Motel; my room, and I suspect the others, had no internet, a shower whose five streams you couldn't position yourself in at once, and a Gideon Bible. Our tutor stayed across the road at the Kingsgate Hotel, which you can tell was awesome just by comparing the names.

My best attempt at entertainment alone involved hooking up my iPod to the TV, which for some reason only played the left channel, or playing mp3s off the laptop, which due to my lack of mp3s (AAC for the win) and desire to use the memory-limited laptop for getting thrashed at Civilization wasn't anything to rave about.

I went out one night and played pool with Rob and Jennah which was fun, and the night ended earlier than we wanted cause everything in Htown shuts early on a Tuesday; no bowling and video games for us.

On Wednesday we (the students) went out as a group to Barzurk, the gourmet pizza place. I think I was the only one who actually ordered a pizza. Anyway, it was an enlightening evening; it seems the young 'uns, predominantly those in the 3rd year of their degrees, want to forgo an honourable career in exchange for a money-grubbing career in PR, and the older ones, predominantly us in the grad dip course, intend to go into proper journalism. Strange, when you think at first it'd be the older ones who have degrees and go back to uni that'd be doing it for sanity and non-ideological reasons.

But you know, come the end of the course, we'll see what jobs are available...

Anyway, one particular student really ground my gears on the trip, but in that 'I find it amusing and a little frustrating while she gets completely riled up' kind of way. Cutting a long story short, she's a loud, incessant, rejects-anything-that-doesn't-sound-right to her kind of person, but not in that persuasive and admirable... sort of way. More in that intolerable, loud for the sake of it, inarguable... kind of way.

I remember last semester at the marae trip, after standing up for five minutes talking about how much Jesus meant to her, how angry and offended she looked after I spent my minute or so explaining why I was agnostic.

The most ridiculous part of the whole non-debate (at a pizza joint, for god's sake) was the moment she leaned past me and said directly to the girl to my left, a Christian who'd this far not disagreed with anything I'd said, "well we're not afraid to die, cause we know where we're going, eh?"

Quietly afterwards (and some even during), the others at the table (including she to my left) pretty much all agreed it was not a done deal Christianity was 100% correct, even if it was their faith.

I'm not sure if it counts for anything that she didn't stay with us for the entire trip, instead choosing to commute from Auckland to Hamilton every day, at her own expense, rather than spending three or four nights with us open-minded scum.

But the night was fun, regardless of how it comes across now. I do enjoy prodding and egging along people with bizarre opinions without giving too much of a shit myself where we end up. If I come out of it understanding another point of view a bit better that's great, if I disagree with their reasoning and they come out of it better understanding my point of view that's even better. If what they're proposing is blatantly absurd and they refuse to budge, the more ridiculous I can show their position to be without getting amped up myself, well that's a night well spent.

To counter-act her pro-Jesus bias and balance out the universe, as all good journalists are meant to do, I then thought I'd steal a bible. What could be worse than committing a supposed crime with the very word of God? As it turns out, most things are. One was left in the drawer in my room making it easy, but a quick glance at wikipedia suggests those who planted it wanted me to 'steal' it. Ah well. I'm sure when I'm done it'll make a good table leveller, projectile, fire, or something.

Court reporting lessons start tomorrow. Bed, I think.

<emo>First I slept in a bit longer than I wanted cause tariqa left a bit late and I didn't realise what time it was, then I couldn't get the laptop to record the interviews from my dictaphone, then when I could, the laptop's battery run out part way through so I had to do it again, then I got to uni and everyone was talking about a party they all went to on the weekend that I wasn't invited to, then the computer I logged onto's sound wouldn't work so I couldn't transcribe my interview Bomber and Thane Kirby from Alt TV, then I realised I'd left my notes from Alt TV at home, so I came home to get them and realised I'd also forgotten to return Tariqa's library book, so I grabbed that and went back to uni, then I realised I'd left the notes at home again, so I went home again after dropping off Tariqa's book and a DVD at work after I returned the case for Smokin' Aces with the wrong disc, then the printer wouldn't work properly so I installed the new one we got with the new laptop, then I went back to uni and couldn't find the library (see below), when I did the lady at the copy centre wouldn't let me use my own coloured paper in the cheap photocopiers and made me pay the expensive rate for their 'service', then she didn't copy what I wanted copied properly so had to do it again with a selection of different coloured paper of her choice cause I wasn't allowed the colours I wanted cause they are 'more expensive', despite the fact I'd supplied my own paper and was paying the more expensive rate for their 'service', then I couldn't find my class cause the AUT campus, which our class hardly ever steps foot in, is a maze of stairs and passageways and levels and things, and at one point I found myself on the marae, and the way out was padlocked, so I had to go the long way, then it turned out I'd gone to the wrong room, and when I found the correct room no one was there, so I went back to the newsroom and found a few people who said class was brought forward an hour, but no one told me, so I missed out on finding out who exactly I'm spending next week in Hamilton with or what transport/accomodation/etc we've organised, so I transcribed the notes and went home, then went to open my notes only to find no office or word software is installed on this laptop, and I still can't find my Gary Numan review on Stuff.co.nz, and the luna spark website was down cause too many people have downloaded my new album.</emo>

Okay, that last thing's probably a good thing, in some ironic way. It's back up now.

As for the library, you know you're living in 2007 when... you're in your second semester of uni and you don't even know where the library is exactly cause you've never used it. And you know you're an amateur musician when the first time you use the library, it's to photocopy album covers.

And as a reward for getting through all that emo, here's my aforementioned new album. Read about it on the website. I'm too bleh (that's like blah and meh, their powers combined) to go on about it right now. Open Office just finished downloading, so I'm going to go install that. Then watch Mythbusters instead of writing the news story. This semester is going to be hard.

Uni is so busy this semester. SO busy. I've still not done much, due to the deer-in-the-headlights effect of it all. Starting tomorrow I'll be working on my first story, Alt TV's live search for a new presenter. Then I'm stuck :p I've been allocated the role of online editor for our newspaper Te Waha Nui though, which means I get to avoid most of the tedious (in my view) work involved in running the actual paper. The site is www.tewahanui.info - I haven't had time to set up this year's stuff yet though. Next week - perhaps.

I've been listening to my new album around the place to get an idea of how it sounds on different systems, and was blown away when I put it on the awesome system we have at work (after close, of course). It sounds soooo much better than everything I've done before, even The Siren and THLF from May. It actually sounds better, production-wise, than a lot of stuff we sell in the store...  For the first time with one of my recordings I suppose you can't tell it was done at home, in a few weeks, at almost zero cost... I need to shoot a video for one of the songs, probably either Thrill Of Your Life cause it sounds like Weezer and is loud, simple and catchy, or The Pressure Is On Us, cause it's probably the best recording and has my best attempt at a David Gilmour guitar solo. Here's a preview of The Pressure... 

I'll have links to download the whole album later this weekend. Currently still in bed, Scully's been a bit naughty this morning. He's in the lounge crying cause I've shut him out of the bedroom.

New Order are continuing without Peter Hook, which is even odder than Guns'n'Fucking'Roses without Slash. But all might not be lost - his new band, Freebass, is him, Andy Rourke from the Smiths, and Mani of Primal Scream/Stone Roses - ALL PLAYING BASS GUITARS. Get it? Three bass? Free bass? Jebus. It'll either be completely rubbish or totally awesome.

Something that amused me - the external link on the wiki page for Freebass named "Mani/Primal Scream/Freebass latest" actually links to a John Squire fansite. Sneaky!

Saw Knocked Up earlier in the week. It's pretty good. Might see Blades Of Glory later today, then maybe to Galatos to see Liam Finn.