Tagged by mightygodking, 7 songs I am digging right now, in no particular order:

1) Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah (oringial version). Talking about it on tyrell‘s LJ today reminded me just how much I love the original. I like the secularised version that you generally hear as well, but there’s something magic in the lines “There’s a blaze of light / In every word / It doesn’t matter which you heard / The holy or the broken Hallelujah”. “There’s a blaze of light in every word”. Fuck, I love that.

2) Flogging Molly – May The Living Be Dead (In Our Wake). “And the ghosts of our souls thanking Christ we’re alive.” Screamed out to that foot-stomping beat, it’s a fantastic affirmation of love and joy. Again, from tyrell‘s discussion of love songs earlier in the day.

3) The Go! Team – Ladyflash. Brilliant pop, electric and spiky made entirely from jangly sounds and bubblegum.

4) Carter USM – Let’s Get Tattoos. It’s bloody good, daft, fun. It’s straightfoward teenage take-on-the-world shouty music.

5) Firewater – Dark Days Indeed. “We walk but once among the living/so no regrets and no forgiving”. Rules to live by. It’s also a bloody good “cheer you up” tune, all footstomping percussion and carnival sounds.

6) Johnny Boy – You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve. I can never decide if I wish they’d put an album out, or just leave me with this one, perfect, pop song.

7) Menlo Park – Big Black Smoke. I just love this. It’s hard to articulate, it’s just sleazy and loud and fucking aces.

Because I’m not just interested in nice things: my nohari window.

My Johari window. I’m always curious about this sort of thing…

1) Settling for second. “Settling” full stop. If it’s not good enough to be your first choice, then why are you fucking bothering with it? Are you seriously telling me that despite that fact that you’ve only got one go at this, you’re willing to populate your life with substandard experiences, people or things? Are you seriously telling me that you can’t find something else to occupy you, in another avenue of life that *is* your first choice?

2) Lack of ambition. Related to the first. I don’t expect everyone to be the best at whatever it is they do. But I expect them to be the best they can, and to strive to better themselves, daily. Again: we’ve only got one lifetime. What’s the point of hanging about?

3) People who want to be famous. I have no problem with anyone who wants to be at the top of a profession where fame is a side effect. Acting, being in a band, film-making, writing, being an artist of any kind: this is good shit. It’s people communicating what’s inside their heads. It’s imagination made manifest in the world. It’s what makes us human, rather than animal, and anyone that encourages more of that is a hero in my book. But if you’re just doing it in order to be famous, or because it’ll give you an easy life, then you should fucking stop now, because you’re devaluing the contributions of people who actually have something to say at worst, and at best, you’re taking up airtime/attention span that could be used for something good. (This is why I hate boy bands and the like – these are not people who have something to say. These are idiots who want their fifteen minutes and an easy life. It is not a co-incidence that Robbie Williams and Will Young have both grown on me as time has passed, and they’ve started to speak for themselves, while just about anyone else that’s come in to the culture by their route is still on the “castrate with rusty implements” list. Warhol was full of dangerous ideas, and that whole fifteen minutes business may have been the worst…)

4) People who can’t communicate. If you’re speaking to me, you’d better be lucid. If you’re writing, you’d better be able to spell and punctuate. I don’t expect everyone to be perfect at it all the time (christ knows, I’m not by the time I’ve had a few drinks) but if you’re asking for my attention, you’d better be able to do something with it.

5) Lies. I don’t mean the little white social ones that stop us all from killing each other. I mean big ones of sort that politicians come out with, or like creationism. Again: who has the time to waste?

6) Things Not Working Properly Even After You’ve Given Them A Good Thumping.

7) Thinking about things I hate. Life’s too short. (But I’ve written this now…)

Left the office early, for a job interview, and am home a lot sooner that I might otherwise be, so I’ve got time to do a pointless meme.
1. How can I tell if you are angry?

It’s this or sleep. I hate sleep.
So instead I indulge my need to talk about myself

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. – Macbeth.