Recovering slowly, still. It’s still a bit painful, particularly if I forget it is and try to move too much or twist at all; and I get tired very quickly, but I’m feeling much better than I thought I would be.
I’ve spent the last couple of days sorting out VPN on this little Ubuntu laptop – which is not easy when you’ve got a rt2500 card and can’t use NetworkManager – but now I can actually get some work done. In the meantime, I’ve been…
- Listening to Momus now he’s making all his Creation stuff free, which is lovely. I’ve admired the man’s blog for a long while, but never got into his music until I got the kick up the arse from "hey, it’s free." I’m aware that his recent stuff is going to sound nothing like this, and that’s a mystery I shall leave to the future.
- Saddened by the death of Majel Barrett Roddenberry.
- Playing Fable 2, a very odd game in which you have to keep having to interrupt your questing to go home, see your family and get a Proper Job.
- Getting random blood tests.
- Losing track of too many serial media – online comics, TV programmes, etc. – to worry about.
- Reading G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, about which there is something very surreal, in an underplayed way; or that could just be the drugs.
Could be worse – you could be at the "office party"… which is a few bottles and people not pretending not to work any more… ;)
Momus’ recent stuff is actually quite decent. He largely moved away from the Pet Shop Boys comparisons in the 1990s, and towards "analogue baroque pop", and a combination of electronics and Vaudeville/music-hall songwriting. A good album to look at would be 2000’s "Folktronic", which is an exploration of the idea of "authentic" folk music in the age of electronic mediation.