If you like Orbital’s song Halcyon, this Perfect Moments In Pop feature at Stylus will evoke a blissful, understanding smile. If you’ve never heard the song you will think it’s a pile of shite written by someone on craaayyyzeee mushrooms, but ohhhh, please put yourself in a position to understand. Please.
In other music linkage, oh dear. Ohdearohdearohdearohdear.
Apart from one minor grovel a week ago I’ve mostly refrained from comment on the Asia Weblog Awards 2003. Today, however, I discovered a travesty and must report it.
No, it’s not that my blog isn’t winning. Frankly, I’m ecstatic there are even 36 people who’d vote for me in the first place, and very grateful to everyone who has.
It’s that in the Funniest Blog category, Little Yellow Different isn’t winning. I should say at this point that I don’t know the guy from Adam. I have absolutely no vested interests in pimping his site. It’s just that more than almost any other blog I’ve ever read, this one has cracked me up (as in, it’s laughing-out-loud ha-ha-funny not just minor-internal-titter funny) so consistently I could tell my (currently non-existent) health insurance company about it in a bid for lower premiums.
Seriously. Read this and this and this. Web geeks will like this and this. And then there are his Ernie’s Mom stories. Look, just go.
I obviously don’t check my site counter referrals enough. If enthymeme hadn’t helpfully pointed out that some nice person (who? ‘Fess up!) apparently nominated my site for best Singapore blog at the 2003 Asia Weblog Awards, I would have blissfully continued neglecting this blog in favour of teaching myself Dancehall 101 via Soulseek downloads and this raggalicious thread at I Love Music, as I’ve been doing the last couple of days.
Now I’m under pressure. Of all times to get nominated for a blog award. I live in London for 4 years, writing about my swinging life, deep intellectual thoughts, and ubercool pursuits, and no nominations for anything. Then I return to Singapore, sink into depression, boredom and frivolity, with the nearest things I have to a life being reality TV (last week I even descended to watching Am I Hot, I kid you not) and making love to the Marine Parade library, and pow.
So. Huge sycophantic grin. If you can get past the fact that all the other nominees have, like, good design and good content and are actually complete, unlike my half-arsed straddle between blogging at syntaxfree and everything else still at ineffable because I have just been too crap to transfer stuff over, and if something about this blog perhaps appeals to you a little more than the other nominees do, and if the men in white coats agree to undo the leather straps once you’ve convinced them of all of the above, please vote for me.
If you don’t, I might just take that as a sign that my content doesn’t have enough mass appeal, and start posting pictures of furry baby animals. And porn. And furry baby animal porn. You have been warned.
I think it’s only right given that I’m managing to waste vast swathes of time at a hitherto unimaginable level on the Internet rather than study for my impending exams, that I showcase a site that has been helping me do that.
The I Love Music blog is where I go to find people I’ve hardly ever managed to meet in real life (except Benny, Jeremy, Marten and Michael B, who are now either in different countries or just not particularly accessible) – who are as obsessive about music as me, with similar or far wider eclecticism, but also have a sense of humour and perspective and are not smug loser cocks.
From a thread on Missy Elliot’s Work It:
Imagine the child of Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliott.
— Dan Perry, September 6th, 2002.
a sexy fat guy with dreads in a megaman costume who can’t flow?
— Josh, September 6th, 2002.
Other threads of joy:
y’all ready for this?
Give me MEGA POP BALLADS and give me them NOW!
The Greatest One Line in Hip-Hop History
Did you really feel “welcomed” to the jungle by axl rose, or do you think that was sort of just insincere, halfhearted graciousness?
I clicked on my Activity Log in the Movable Type system out of sheer boredom. Most of the actions it listed are fairly mundane. “Michelle added entry #614.” “Search query for: portishead.”
And then:
2003.09.30 22:39:04
217.148.41.216
Search: query for ‘Hello, Michelle. It’s Bobo the clown’
I believe this is what they call one of those what the fuck??!! moments.
Every now and then I read a Sinfest strip or fifty. Most can be bypassed but occasionally one does deserve to be highlighted. Well, maybe two or three.
Sometimes I wonder why I keep going back there. I think it’s because the chick has great hair.
So the results of the Most Phallic Building In The World competition are out. Just thought you should all know.
Londoners will be pleased to know that our Gherkin got recognised too, as the Best Uncircumcised Building In The World. Makes you swell up with pride, doesn’t it?
When I imported my Blogger content into Movable Type, titles were automatically generated for all my posts from the first five words of each post. I didn’t realize the comic potential of this immediately, but while trying out my new search function I typed in “Alec” and was presented with an array of posts, including those with the following (mostly rather misleading) “titles”:
I’d initially been really excited
I’m less than satisfied with
Alec takes issue with my
Alec does strange things with
I got called a cunt
I admit it, I’m stuck
So there I was, suffering
And today it all ended
Tee hee. It’s almost poetic! (Am I the only one this amuses?) (For the benefit for any friends I haven’t talked to in a while who may start getting worried, don’t worry, we’re still very happily together.)
While doing other administrative exploration, I found this other title I rather like:
Sometimes you think you’ve seen it all and no novelty websites can really amuse you any more. And then you find the Red Meat Construction Set.
I came up with a few, but don’t rate them highly at all, especially next to the utterly twisted brilliance other people have come up with. I think I have a new goal in life, though.
[Note: A good understanding of the Red Meat universe is necessary for full appreciation of the above links. It also helps if you’re a sick bastard.]
Despite having to study an entire Master’s course worth of intellectual property law, mostly from scratch, in five days, I am trying to keep calm. Grooving to mixes from Manitoba and Akufen on The Breezeblock. Splitting my sides at Rent-A-Negro (and revisiting Black People Love Us just to read the stupid people on the letters page who take it all seriously again). Marvelling at this unbearable furriness of being (link found at meish.org). Marking favourite Margaret Atwood poems with paper clips in my book to see if I can find some of them for you online – More and More was all I could find.
I’m gagging for Thursday to come and the exams to finally end, so I can write properly again instead of all this linking, gosh durn it. I’ve never really found blogs that just link you elsewhere particularly interesting, and am rather frustrated that lately this seems to have become one. But any actual writing I might have done would have been brimming over with I-miss-London angst of the “There’s an ad on TV that features London. I miss London. I’m reading the newspapers about the blackout in London. I miss London. I’m watching BBC World and the newsreader has an English accent. I miss hearing the English accent. Whine whine whine!” variety anyway, so count yourselves lucky. When the exams are over I promise to seek a replacement life.