Well how about that, Howard’s actually had a defeat in the Senate. Maybe there’s hope for civilisation yet.
Anyway I’m going through various personal crises (dagnabit, is that the plural of crisis? That’s what I mean anyway) which is why there haven’t been a whole load of updates recently. But I thought I’d better keep the side up a bit with a few observations.
Like Helen’s birthday for instance. Happy birthday! 🙂 We had a fairly shambolic webcam conference for her party yesterday – apparently the technology isn’t quite reliable yet. But at least I was able to watch her brother John eat an apple. That sounds ridiculous but think about it. Twenty years ago if you said you’d be able to use a common household appliance to watch someone on the other side of the planet eat an apple in real time they’d think you were crazy, wouldn’t they?
Or the Killers. The boys from Vegas have released a single from their upcoming second album called When You Were Young. This is not in itself a great song, but it punches well above its weight with absolutely spectacular construction. There’s a driving beat, a catchy riff, synth strings, female backing vocalists, a quiet bit in the middle and the lyrics mention both Jesus and the Devil – and they’re all put together with esquisite timing. It’s the best pop-rock song I’ve heard in years – I could easily listen to it at least five times in a row without getting sick of it at all 🙂
In other music news I never realised what a (OK, hideously unfashionable opinion coming up here 🙂 fantastic song Moonlight Shadow by Mike Oldfield and Maggy Reilly is. Again it’s really well constructed and there’s a fair bit of Dire Straits style guitar work going on so I was pretty much guaranteed to like it anyway.
Another couple of recent musical discoverys are A New England by Billy Bragg and Another Sunny Day by Belle and Sebastian. The former has some really clever lyrics, my favourite being “it’s wrong to wish on space hardware”. The second sounds really happy and catchy, but is actually rather melancholy – I listened to it too much over the weekend and ended up rather depressed, so be warned 🙂
Oh, that’s right, Channel Ten’s fantastic new reality show Yasmine’s Getting Married lasted all of four episodes before getting axed (ha!). But what’s better is they’ve replaced it with Futurama! That’s right! Futurama in prime time! It’s a miracle! Of course it’ll only last until they get the next season of The Biggest Loser or something together, but we can enjoy it in the meantime.
OK, that’s all rather incoherant isn’t it? I’d probably better go to bed before it gets worse 🙂
