Starting this LJ thing gives me a compulsion to keep it up to date. Just woken up, am completely knackered, have not achieved anything of note in the last 24 hours, but here I am. Ridiculous.

Hm.

I received the results of a tragic Amazon shopping spree on Monday. I read a number of music magazines a while ago (unusual occurence in my life) and decided to buy a couple of CDs on spec, going entirely on the reviews and not “checking first” with either the internet or any friends / acquaintances to makes sure I wasn't making, bad, bad consumer decisions. Similar to the way I used to buy records when I was 15.

CD #1 was by Italian prog metallers Ephel Duath. Prog metal is a strange kind of label, but that's exactly what it is; a record equally divided between jazzy indulgent fretboard workouts and heavily distorted screaming. I find impassioned screeching on records (and there's a lot of it about these days) utterly hilarious… “AAAAGHHHH! I LOST MY KEYS! I CAN'T GET IN THE HOUSE! I CAN'T START MY CAR! HAVING DIFFICULTY FORCING THE LOCK ON MY SUITCASE! WAAAHHH!” It nearly always sounds like a completely phoney, unsubtle expression of faux angst from testosterone fuelled dickheads. Of course there are exceptions. Stretchheads:

They got away with it cos Phil screamed about Long Faced Germans, and bottom operations.

CD#2 was by The Real Tuesday Weld, and I'm still investigating it though first impressions are: fantastically varied and some really beautiful songs.

What else?

and I appear to have synchronised our technology, in the same way that the menstrual cycles of women are meant to lock together when living in the same building. We both got new phones within a week of each other. We both discovered that our Palm organisers (identical) were superfluous at the same time with the advent of iSync and iCal and all that guff. And, in a display of rank stupidity (or lack of communication, I don't know which) his Palm and my Palm have both been put up on eBay with the auctions ending within 10 minutes of each other. Frightening. Where will it all end? Arriving home simultaneously with identical toasters? Calling out simultaneously from opposite ends of the flat “Crayola/Rhodri, come and have a look at my brand new two-photon microscope that combines imaging spectroscopy and fluorescent microscopy to create a revolutionary biology research tool for monitoring cellular metabolism, structures and protein expression!”

Yes. That's when it will end.