A modern Christmas carol

The Marleys were drunk to begin with. Remember this, or nothing else which follows will seem fantastical....

Cheers for a great day, everyone!

myTunes v.2007

It's coming round to that time of year again, so here's my semi-annual "best of" list. It's a mixed bag, genre-wise, but all damn fine tunes. A few of these tracks are from 2006 but I only heard them this year, so no nitpicking, please.  I haven't put these songs in any real kind of order as I only heard a few of them recently and don't know if the attraction is an aural infatuation or a musical match made in heaven.

Comments are not only welcomed but encouraged. If you've got a tune you really liked from 2007, let me know. I'm a music junkie, always looking for my next fix.

Singles

1. Mark Ronson - Valerie (Feat. Amy Winehouse)
2. Silversun Pickups -Lazy Eye
3. Justin Timberlake - Lovestoned
4. Mark Ronson - Stop Me
5. Peter Bjorn And John - Young Folks
6. Sons & Daughters - Gilt Complex
7. The Manic Street Preachers - Autumnsong
8. Arctic Monkeys - Fluorescent Adolescent
9. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
10. Regina Spektor- Hotel Song
11. Dizzee Rascal feat. Lily Allen - Wanna Be.
12. Kate Nash - Foundations
13. Snow Patrol - Signal Fire
14. Josh Ritter- Right Moves
15. Foo Fighters - The Pretender
16. The Killers - Tranquilize (featuring Lou Reed)
17. Dan Le Sac - Thou Shalt Always Kill
18. Nas - Hip-hop is Dead
19. Bloc Party - Flux
20. Idlewild -No Emotion
21. The Courteeners -Acrylic
22. The Manic Street Preachers - Your Love Alone (is not enough)
23. Hard Fi -Can't Get Along Without You
24. Plain White Tees - Hey There, Delilah
25. Jenny Owens Young - Fuck Was I Thinking
26. Dan Le Sac - The Beat That My Heart Skipped
27. U2 - Window in the Skies
28. Kanye West - Stronger
29. The Fray - How To Save a Life
30. Ash - Polaris
31. The Bastard Fairies -Whatever
32. White Stripes - Icky Thump
33. Scissor Sisters - I Don't Feel Like Dancing
34. Mika -Grace Kelly
35. Kaiser Chiefs - Angry Mob

Albums

1. Josh Ritter - The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
2. Amy Winehouse -Back to Black
3. Mark Ronson - Version
4. Silversun Pickups - Carnavas
5. Manic Street Preachers -Send Away The Tigers
6. Quentin Tarantino - Deathproof OST

Erection day

Today marks the culmination of the presidential election campaign, when Korean voters go to the polls and choose the man who will lead Korea to nirvana and world domination for the next 5 years.  The conservative GNP's Lee Myung-bak is certain to be elected, barring an unexpected meteor shower or The Host(괴물) rampaging through downtown Seoul; the only guesswork that remains to be done is regarding the margin of victory.

Now, those of you who reside in the Land of Morning Calm will be as stunned and shocked as I was to hear the words Korea and corruption mentioned in the same sentence [Editors note: I think you used up an entire year's worth of your sarcasm quota with that one], but given the sheer volume of accusations flying around, a casual observer could perhaps conclude that the two words go together like kimchi and jigae. To call the campaign underhand and dirty is a fair bit of an understatement. There have been more dirty tricks and mudslinging than a catfight royal rumble in a pigsty.

And of course, there has ben much civilized debate...

On Friday, legislators attempting to vote on whether or not to reopen the investigation into the frontrunner, Lee Myung-bak, who had earlier in the week been cleared of stock market manipulation, became involved in a series of scuffles when rival GNP lawmakers attempted to stop the vote by occupying the chamber.

GNP lawmakers tried to block access to the speaker's podium in the National Assembly using sofas, metal bars and chains, while their UNDP rivals used their hands and power saws (!!!) to hack through the barriers,

Feckin' POWER SAWS? Looks like the legislature have been playing one too many games of DOOM, as one wag already commentated.

More details can be found here.

Can you imagine something like that in the halls of Westminster or Congress?  It would definitely be way more of a spectator sport than watching some 70-year old politico trying to filibuster for 23 hours solid or enduring the 'hilarity' of David Cameron and the Conservatives haw-hawing the "right honorable gentleman Gordon Brown" during Prime Minister's Question Time.

While it'd be hard to picture British MPs - John "2 Jags" Prescott  excepted -  getting stuck in, Washington has former wrestler Jesse Venture in the Senate and of course, the Gubernator, Ah-nold Schwarzenegger. I can definitely see those two kicking some serious butt.

Winter wonderland

A beautiful pic of City Hall and the skating rink, courtesy of Robert Koehler over at The Marmot's Hole. Nip over there and have a look at the high-res version.

 

Static in your attic

I'm getting really tired of being zapped in the winter months. The combination of extremely dry weather and static-generating fabrics is leading me to develop a Pavlovian fear of touching things.

Yesterday, while visiting the Seoul Bike Show with some friends, was a particularly bad static day. The carpet on the floor of the convention center was acting as a veritable Van der Graaf generator . Add in a bunch of metal bike frames acting as potential earthing points and hey, presto! - a recipe for more shocks than a Korean election campaign.

This never used to happen to me in Ireland. The damper climate, perhaps? But since moving here, it's become a perennial problem for me. Doors, escalators, shop counters, even once while kissing my then-girlfriend hello (actually, that last one was kinda cool- a genuine literal spark in the relationship - so strike it from the list).

I'm at a loss to figure out a solution. Maybe I should get one of those anti-static strips they stick on the bottom of expensive cars. Any readers 'suggestions' as to just where I can shove a lightning rod will be met with an appropriate degree of disdain.

I'm an indie Indy kid

 

Please. please, don't let it be terrible.

Ghetto scrabulous

I've recently installed the Scrabulous app on Facebook so if anyone fancies a game, send me a challenge request and I'll get right back to ya.

Nothing but the tooth

Dentists are trigger-happy, or pliers-happy, or whatever the equivalent term is. Yesterday's trip to the surgery just confirmed it in my mind.

All was going well until the dental nurse tried to numb up the right-top side of my mouth. Somehow she was under the impression that I was getting all my wisdom teeth out, not just the last annoying bottom one. Getting teeth out is bad enough when there's no alternative; getting out teeth unnecessarily - at 145k a pop, might I add - crosses several lines of unacceptability. She called in the dentist over and he agreed that I could keep my top row of pearly whites intact. Phew!

The extraction was both swift and painless. Score one for the good guys.

On my way out I tried to get the tooth as a souvenir, but between my Novocain-induced slurring, and the receptionist's and my rudimentary command of each others' languages, the message got lost. She thought I was trying to book an appointment to get out the last pair of wisdom teeth and began leafing through the appointment book. Deciding that I'd rather be toothless in this case than toothless in the proper sense, I beat a hasty retreat.