and so it is, the colder water

For some time -- for a long time -- it's been obvious that any semblance of blogging here has long since evaporated. Given that I've been rethinking what, how and where I should blog, or indeed if it's worth doing so at any semi-personal rather than semi-professional level, this is probably a good time to wind things up here.

So as a parting post, given my abiding preoccupation with today's date as an anniversary, I thought I'd try my hand for the first time in about five years at a proper mixtape-style playlist. I guess it should be on Spotify, or Muxtape, or somesuch; but as I haven't got to grips with these platforms, you'll have to make do with random and probably transient links to YouTube, Last.fm, and the odd recourse to song.ly's "don't ask, don't tell" engine.

If anyone who does have a working Spotify account - or something analogous - feels like actually building a playlist for the track listing to follow: drop me a line in the comments. And then maybe you can buy me a banana daiquiri for an encore...

---

Twelve Years On

A new day has dawned, has it not?

A. C. L. Blair, Friday 2nd May 1997

Side A: Diving For Dear Life

1. Once Upon A Time In The West - Enrico Morricone
   [3:43] (youtube)
2. Dad's Gonna Kill Me - Richard Thompson
   [5:15] (song.ly)
3. Luka - Suzanne Vega
   [3:48] (youtube)
4. The Lonely - British Sea Power
   [5:08] (youtube)
5. Flamboyant - Pet Shop Boys
   [3:34] (last.fm)
6. Shoplifters of the World, Unite - The Smiths
   [2:57] (youtube)
7. Lost A Friend - James
   [3:42] last.fm
8. Shipbuilding - Elvis Costello and The Attractions
   [4:53] song.ly
9. Roads - Portishead
   [5:05] (last.fm)
10. Wise Up - Aimee Mann
    [3:31] (youtube
11. No Surprises - Radiohead
    [3:48] (last.fm)
12. The Living Dead - Suede
    [2:48] (last.fm)

Side B: While The Calendar Fades

1. Pigs on The Wing (pt. 1) - Pink Floyd
   [1:30] (song.ly)
2. The Resurrection Men - Thea Gilmore
   [3:15] (last.fm but with no public copy as yet)
3. Nothing Ever Happens - Del Amitri
   [3:54] (last.fm)
4. All This Useless Beauty - Elvis Costello and The Attractions
   [5:05] (youtube, live version)
5. Funny Time Of Year - Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man
   [6:48] (last.fm)
6. Losing My Religion - Nina Persson & Nathan Larson
   [4:16] (youtube)
7. You And Whose Army - Radiohead
   [3:10] (song.ly)
8. This Mess We're In - P. J. Harvey (feat. Thom Yorke)
   [3:57] (last.fm)
9. Glory Box - Portishead
   [5:00] (last.fm)
10. Glory Days - Pulp
    [??] (last.fm but no album version as yet)
11. A Day In The Life - Beatles
    [5:05] (youtube)

made weak by time, but strong enough in will
to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

Dr. Frasier Crane, leaving the building

there will not be a send-off, a funeral or mass

and it will not say goodbye,
just like it didn't say hello

do I even need to read Kafka?

It shouldn't still surprise me to learn that the Bush administration's use of Guantanamo was contemptuous and contemptible. So how come it makes me so angry? It's the Dead Parrot again...

and malt does more than Milton can

An auld acquaintance one claimed these guys wrote music which was touched by a sense of holiness: not in any sanctioned religious sense, mind, but I think I know what she meant. Anyway, with the hopes and fears of all the years brought to the fore -- at least, in the small selection of news and comment I read -- by Obama's coronation, finding the following video seems an apt reminder that the waste remains and kills.

Look Betty, don't start up with your white zone shit again

Happy New Year to anyone reading. As I find Auld Lang Syne mildly depressing, I give you a song of joy with which to sing in 2009.

Doorway Into Reading Businesspark

I wanted to post a YouTube clip from Mock The Week (series 6, episode 9), where about five minutes in Frankie Boyle muses on how not to read Narnia to your children. (He's wrong about the LHC, though.)

Sadly, there seems to be no copy available. So on a more elevated note: via Blood and Treasure, a cautionary tale for those who would enlighten or redeem us.

"You brought two too many"

Disquieted lately: soothed by selected elegies, including the Frank/Harmonica theme from Once Upon A Time In The West.

Decided I had over two hours to kill, and watched the film as an attempt at aesthetic detox. All is now well.

Can't help wondering, though, why I'd feel slightly uneasy if younger folks' equivalent will be Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which are obvious successors in their fusion of homage, subversion and knowing melodrama, but have less resonance for me.

So now, am mildly disquieted. Bugger.