clearing out my bookmarks

I love following the trail of blogs, it's what the internet does best. I started with my own, noting I'd been quoted on Bush on Silent Words Speak Loudest (thanks Ben), along with, amongst others, Bob Mould, whose blog I haven't read in a while. He writes,

"One day passes, and not much changes. I suspect it will be that way for a while. Once the slide begins, though, it will be noticeable, and hard (but not impossible) to reverse. Our leader has been handed the receipt. He sees it as a mandate. I am fearful for the young men of this country."

Bob leads me away in another direction; to a New York Times article about 'Rockism' - the system of denegrating pop by its perceived shallowness. The author, like me, doesn't seem to hold much truck with it (take your Wellers and your well-meaning, furrow browed men - it's always men - away).

"could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world?"

On the other side, we hear, are the "The pop star, the disco diva, the lip-syncher, the "awesomely bad" hit maker", and I read that and I think, these are my people...

Here's a test. Think 'Great rock music', then 'great pop music' - and tell me which thought is stolid, sweat-drenched and reductive.

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Elsewhere (let's clear out my pile of links), Philip Pullman doesn't interest me that much, although I had a stab at - and admired aspects of - his His Dark Materials trilogy. Nevertheless, it's interesting to hear that he's writing a fourth (oh, that kind of trilogy), and enjoyable to see that he thinks Bush would make an ideal villain. Story here, and extract below...

"Bush has this baying certainty and has imposed this fervent zealotry," said Pullman, whose books have been condemned by church groups for attacking organised religion and decrying autocracies that brook no argument.

"The Christian right in America is the mirror image of the Islamic fundamentalist," he said

Something tells me that last quote will go down a storm, stateside.

Staying with (or returning too, given the tone of Assistant blog recently) fundamentalism, I feel duty bound to pass on this link, which contains, I'm told, Bit Torrents of the recent BBC series 'The Power of Nightmares' - useful stuff for people like me who missed the first one, videoed the second, and then - before I had the chance to watch it - videoed over the second with the third. Incidentally, Homer Simpson and family are back on tonight (or else, Doh). All we need now is someone to tell me what the hell Bit Torrent is. I read that you can now download Football Manager 2005 on Bit Torrent too. Now, call me sharp, but I think we're talking something a teensy bit illegal here, no?

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"We surely risk being washed away by a sea of bile"

Not my words, reader, but the words of blogger Stephen Newton. He's not talking about the Daily Mail's 'The Moral Majority are on the March' headline, but about the fact that blogging is 'a fad that's peaked'. It's an interesting post. I reckon he's wrong.

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If you go here, and have realplayer (which I don't), you can listen to a whole bunch of Julian Cope compiled mixtapes. The Krautrockshow one looks pretty reliable, and you'd have to be mad not to feel excited at the prospect of an hour long mix of 'lost music from Denmark'.

Talking of music from the peripheries, we go back to John Peel. I spotted an MP3 over at Submit Response the other day and bookmarked it - I'm so glad I did. It's a compilation of wonderful Peel moments which remarkably, all originate from the same, somewhat slapdash programme. As Jack says, only Peelie could get away with making such a hash of it.

Here's the MP3.

Strangely, considering the subject matter, I just made a Peel-esque mistake while piecing together that link. In other words, I accidentally clicked on it by mistake while pasting it in, before getting up to grab a book from a shelf. When I returned, I found the voice of Peel echoing quietly, gravely from my computer. Several people nearby had pricked up their ears. It was an odd, sombre, funny moment. I clicked the volume off and no-one said anything.

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I'm doing Nanowrimo this year - though I won't get much done if I keep staying at work late to write my blog. Tying the two together, the following article might be of interest:

Blogger Knowledge: Blogging your novel

Don't worry. I won't inflict that one on you.

Time to go and catch my train.