Music For Your Tape Recorder

How fitting that in a year when everything I think about seems to be from a decade ago the average year of release for the below is (rounded up) 2002. Once again, though, the tracks are skewed toward the first half of the year as one album has truly dominated since then, thus I've stuck with 2011's format.

A couple of years back I said there was always a drive toward finding new material and never giving something a second chance and an opportunity to grow on me. Three years ago I bought Be Your Own Pet's two albums, but they never really meshed, though Bicycle survived on my iPod all that time until I decided to offer them a make or break chance to sit alongside the other compact discs. Well now they do. Coincidentally the other album I gave a second chance was Wire's 154 which I obtained that same summer three years ago. Perhaps I hadn't been in the right mood at the time.

Road to Nowhere

Nürburgring map, Public Domain, 1964

Way back when Gran Turismo 2 divided its main screen into North, South, East, and West cities I imagined a future instalment of the series in which you drove to each dealership and the home and garage were actual places and not just menus. When Test Drive Unlimited turned up it should have been my dream made real, but the arcade style of racing doesn't appeal to me especially when it assumes the cloak of realism with licensed vehicles. The fact I was playing the crappy PS2 port at the time didn't help. With the RPG elements present in GT5 it seems like the premier PlayStation racing game missed the boat there, which cannot be true since Polyphony Digital never gets anything wrong. Cue statement contradicting this.

Possibly more annoying than failed shifts stranding you in neutral is GT5's course maker. As with the FIFA series and Subbuteo, some lay the virtual demise of Scalectrix at the likes of the Formula One series and GT. One of the great things about Scalectrix was the freedom to create whatever track layout you wanted - limited by space and budget, of course. I had always wanted to create a bridge span across the stairs of my old bedroom but couldn't given the amount of pocket money I'd have to blow on extra track pieces (the exact same reason I couldn't expand my Lego train set). So you'd think GT5, free of such limitations, could provide an actual course maker and not a random corner generator.

Panic (Hang the DJ)

But the waters... receded

Sextant (NOAA), Public Domain

Predictions of the end-times are likely as old as creation myths as likely as old as history itself. The invention of cinema enabled the depiction of the ultimate dramatic scenario and so it began. The disaster movie as a genre emerged in the seventies (Towering Inferno, et al) as classically narrative compared to their modern antecedents - almost all stories are of characters facing an obstacle they must overcome; in the above case a fire in a skyscraper. They boasted highly popular actors in the lead roles which, like any other film of the era, drew audiences. After Jurassic Park demonstrated the sky was the limit with computer generated imagery the floodgates opened (a metaphor that could actually make an interesting post-modern disaster film about the effect of CGI on film-making). Now there was nothing that could not be depicted. A lot of the modern disaster films since the mid 90s can be attributed to one Roland Emmerich and his little known 1996 film Independence Day. Inevitably someone will chime in with the old adage about how any critique of 'low-brow' movies is a comment on how the critic cannot turn their brain off and just enjoy it. I enjoy Independence Day and I happen to own The Day After Tomorrow (which I last watched on October 30th) despite its ludicrous implausibility. I even have a Steven Seagal movie (Under Siege 2) amongst a home video collection that includes a number of foreign language films, but the film 2012 (dir. Roland Emmerich) is just bad. Not enjoyably bad... and you already know why I'd bring that up three years after release.

Pedal Fury

Clutch disc, Public Domain

As I said in November, I've spent 14 years playing the Gran Turismo series. And as I said in July 2011, for the sake of simplicity most racing games ignore the existence of clutches. Well now let the two combine, for I have spent the last five days getting to grips with the Logitech G27 racing wheel.

One of the reasons for getting a wheel (aside from further immersion) is that for a few months now I've been watching Valdudes' Gran Turismo videos on YouTube and Twitch and secretly coveting a place in a subscriber race (which also explains my venturing into the open lobby). One of the near requirements is a racing wheel, simply due to the greater control over one's virtual vehicle - which is a kind of shibboleth for competent participants. In my own opinion I've mastered the art of driving with the controller. Aside from the joypad being too crude to recover from the majority tailspins, the right analogue stick offers a close approximation of the pedals - I can quite easily feed the accelerator on exits in the absence of traction control (TCS) and graduate the brakes on entry in the absence of anti-lock brakes (ABS). Some people are unbelievably still using the □ and ╳ buttons, and with all the assists turned on the kiddies must think GT is bloody Mario Kart. If you're going to let the computer do everything for you then you might as well play the game in B-Spec mode.

Where Does Time Go?

Part Two of Two.

A Wistful Look, James Carroll Beckwith

He's supposed to be old, like 26.
-The Brain, Brick (2005)

Yes, I did wait a year to use that quote. The previous post tangentially touched on my own pessimistic suspicion that I have missed the metaphorical bus. Like the time I decided to take a real bus home from work four years ago on a torrential day before Christmas - I waited in the rain for twenty minutes (not that it mattered since I had already been in it for four hours at this point) and not a single bus appeared. I was therefore prepared for two to appear at once. It turned out they were cancelled due to the flooding. At other times I instead feel there's enough time to just catch the last one. And yet whenever I take a few moments to just lie in bed and think I glance at the clock to find time is flying and I have somewhere to be - it hardly ever seems to do that illusion where it holds onto a second, but then is there really anything meaningful you could do in a second that would wipe out any death-bed regrets you might have?

While We Miss Chances You Can Almost Hear Time Slipping Away

Part One of Two.

Self portrait, Princess Victoria of Kent, 1835

One September morning eleven years ago David Angell boarded a plane that would lead to his death. On the very same day, due to a sequence of fortuitous mistakes, Seth McFarlane missed the very same flight and Mark Wahlberg cancelled his tickets for that flight at short notice. In another universe where the chain of cause and effect was subtly different; all of them died, or none of them died, or some who died did not and vice versa. When you raise the stakes, the fridge horror of the Many Worlds Interpretation becomes apparent.

Most of us have never dodged a bullet of that calibre, though I don't think it would be unreasonable to say most people have experience of almost being run-over. Not quite the kind of traumatic event that drives a person to madness thinking of all the variables that could have fallen in place and sealed their fate, but with the multiverse theory in mind it becomes apparent that for every recognisable counterpart of yourself that survives a close-call there may be just as many that did not. And now empathically, or perhaps egotistically, your imagination now places you in your other's shoes. For all that you stood outside the path of oblivion you condemned another you to the fate you are so relieved to have been spared.

High School Musical 1 (GA-Slag Finale)

According to the education department, none of what you are about to see... ever happened...

ˍMOIRITAˍ

Starring:
Moira as Rektor Eva McColl
Prij as Che
John McIndöe as Juan Perm-ón
Mr McDougall as Andrea Corr as Perm-ón's Mistress
 Stewart Dent as Class of 2011 Battle Royale Winner
Alan Menzies as Obersturmbannlehrer ab Historie

June 24th 2011
In the Waterfront Cinema the latest movie freezes and the lights come up. The manager enters and speaks to the audience:
"It is my sad duty to inform you that Eva McColl, principal of the school, entered unemployment at 3PM this afternoon."
The crowd erupts in distraught commotion. Amidst this circus our focus falls on straight-faced Che. Oh what a circus...

Ask (GA-Slag FAQ 2)

Prijatelj, Rubberducky, Artemis, Llena, Altavoz

It's hard to imagine things would move on so far that the GA-Slag became part of a different decade. At the time we really were living in the present. By sixth year most of Les Enfants Terribles was in the don't-know-what-we'll-do-after-school class while the majority of the year were in the university application classes. We spent most of that class having a laugh; regularly at the teacher's expense, though she would say at our own expense. It is what it is, and this is the tenth anniversary of the night I was bored and got a freeware FTP application to work and uploaded the familiar black and red image of James Dean Bradfield from the NME. The first rant pre-dates that by almost a full month, but at the time it was being hosted on Stephen's GA-Master site, and so this is really the point at which I took the idea and ran with it. Let's take some questions from the audience...

In Central Europe Men Are Marching

A PROLOGUE TO A SERIES.

The Frankfurt Parliament, Public Domain

In the same year of the publication of The Communist Manifesto the Western hemisphere experienced a wave of revolutionary upheaval akin to contemporary events in the Middle East. The 1848 revolutions were about many things to many people - democracy, nationalism, liberalism, socialism. As I draw my series of essays on my political outlook, in particular the evolution of my relationship with revolutionary socialism (ie, Marxism), to an eventual close after two years; on this national day I look to begin a new series on another of the major ideologies of 1848 - nationalism.

As the European Union appears to be unfurling and prominent independence movements are afoot in Scotland and Catalonia; it seems relevant to discuss ethnicity and nationalism. The primary aim of the series will be to identify the origin of national identity - the interplay of history, geography, culture, and language in binding populations together in shared character. In the same vein as my political series this set on nationalism will start with a republished college essay - in this case an essay on Bismarck's role in the unification of Germany from HND History. While it doesn't deal with issues of national identity, it does discuss the historical processes that led to the unification of one of Europe's last fractured lands into a great power.

From The East / From The South

Chevrolet Camaro Z28 1969

In the fourteen years I've played the various instalments of Gran Turismo I've never really taken a shine to American cars. The first game was heavily skewed towards Japanese makes and even skewed toward particular models - just how many Skylines is enough? GT is often cited as a cause for increased grey imports at the turn of the millennium and back then it was all about Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions, Subaru Imprezas, and Nissan R34 Skylines. My dream car at the time was an Impreza 22B. Being twelve years old at the time, the closest I could get to that dream was a treasured copy of Car magazine with the 22B as its cover story ("Catch 22-B"). The Japanese four doors that were dominating rallying at the time were seen as powerful and nimble yet practical family cars. In comparison, the American manufacturers (the Big Three: GM, Ford, Chrysler) had split personalities across the domestic and international markets. General Motors and Ford had their autonomous European operations, and whilst some of their modern models were present in GT2 (Astra Touring Car, Ford RS2000), domestic US models were largely absent and thought of as gas-guzzling lumps of metal that could just about turn left if given enough space (ie, NASCAR). There were really only two US performance vehicles that could rival the Japanese domination - the Chevrolet Corvette C4 and the Chrysler/Dodge Viper GTS, which was really only one until the C5: the Viper.

Martinis, Girls, and Guns

SIS (MI6) Building, radim99, 2007

It seems these days that blockbusters don't just sink or swim anymore, but get stuck in a critical limbo. This year alone there have been three films that come to mind that have had mixed reception: (the pretentious and insubstantial) Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, and most recently Skyfall. I cannot discuss the new Bond film without first covering a little bit of (personal) history of the series. A little bit, or maybe seven hundred words...

Heimcomputer

Commodore 64 startup screen

Back in April I mentioned that back in 1998 (this sounds recursive) I had stumbled on some VBScript examples on my old Aptiva. In much the same way any opportunity to learn French in school was quashed by the limited scope of phrasebook teaching and the absence of anyone to actually speak to in the language, my exposure to VBScript yielded nothing more than the usual surface familiarity. When the PlaySation 2 launched Sony tried to pass it off as a computer by bundling YABASIC and thereby secure certain tax advantages. I recall the official magazine had a programming column for a short time, but copying the text via controller was as tedious as filling out a form for tax relief. I only bothered trying it once with a program called RAINDROP - still on my memory card, 66KB last edited 13:57 April 7th 2002 - which rendered an effect that looked like raindrops in a puddle. A fairly underwhelming reward for the effort.

As Heaven is Wide / Of One Skin

Utrecht Iconoclasm, 2003, Arktos

I haven't written about theology in some time. When I started this blog theological argument was something I was quite driven by. In fact, argument of any kind appealed to me when I was eighteen. I was interested in revolution but not so much the meaning of the revolution. My series of political essays over the past two years has attempted to explain how my ideas have matured and evolved, but the same is also true of my thoughts on theology. This is not coincidental as religion has historically been substantially entwined with politics - consider that the House of Lords is divided between secular and spiritual peers. My opposition to the emergence of elites from intermediary positions is as true of politicians as it is of the clergy. Just as I've come to develop an idea of political self-representation I find a parallel in the concept of the universal priesthood.

Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family

Arirang Mass Games - North Korea, 2011, Joseph A Ferris III

Six years ago when I had a brief interest in short wave radio I picked up Voice of Korea a few times and was fascinated by this window into the bizarro-land of North Korea (or the People's Democratic Republic of Korea as it likes to be know, a string of words that somehow manage to reflect reality by an astonishing 0%). At the time my general impression of the North was that of an amusingly backward Stalinist state that acted up a bit on the world stage but was otherwise harmless and so I thought about writing into the station to receive a token marking my reception of their broadcast. Seeking the station details led me to a friendship association site which was run by a shady individual with connections to the North and the more I read this about character and the general behaviour of the DPRK outside its own borders the less I thought writing to them was a wise idea.

Sojourn II: There Were Always Dreams of Leaving

We're moving out, 2009, Sint Smeding

It's been two weeks since I came back from London and I've had time to reflect on the trip and also where I want to go next. If you want to take that as literally seeking a destination then I guess that would be New York City as one of the earliest films I can remember is Ghostbusters and dozens of other films over the years have impressed parts of the city in my mind (nearly all of which are in Manhattan, so I apologise to the other four boroughs). My thoughts about where to go next are actually life questions. The sojourn down south was one of three desires that arose earlier this year. You could call them goals or aims, but I've never thought of myself as pursuing very clear objectives which is why I've always had a problem answering questions about the extent of my desires - which sounds too passionate but intentions sounds too immediate so I'll roll with the former. The issues raising themselves mark this as a 'quarter life crisis'. I thought I'd gone through a quarter life crisis back when I started flunking college in the early days of the blog though in hindsight it bears more resemblance to angst, still how I went through it did warrant calling it a crisis. On the other hand whilst what I'm describing now is far more contemplative than a mental car crash, it is far more of an actual attempt to find personal direction in my twenty fifth year. Thus, this post is labelled as if it were the second part of the London travelogue.

Sojourn I: London Calling to the Faraway Towns

Big Ben from the London eye, Prij, 2012

It's been a long time since I've gone away on holiday. Four whole years. When in May the opportunity arose to travel down to London for a few days in the near future I figured I should take it. After all, I end up sleeping through most of my time off work when I'd really like to be doing something. Plus it gives me something to write about and travel writing seems to be quite popular with whoever reads this blog. For some as yet undiscovered reason my outbound travelogue from 2006 is the most popular post on this blog with well over a hundred hits from South Korea. Personally I prefer the inbound post, but either way travel writing is something I enjoy doing in the vein of Round Ireland with a Fridge and if a post about me making eyes with a girl in an airport cafe can be the most popular post, then let me witter on for an easy few thousand.

Learn to Fly

Fireman Sam 2, Myrrien, 2008

After playing a racing game like Gran Turismo 5 I'm always drawn back to Grand Theft Auto for the freedom of the road. After finishing Le Mans I went back to messing about in GTAIV but became bored of going on rampages and aimlessly driving about (especially since it lacks the expansive countryside of San Andreas). I used to do the taxi missions for some mindless escapism in SA, but IV removed that gameplay mode so having completed the vigilante missions and quite enjoyed playing the police I was reminded of back in the days of Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear there was a total conversion mod (The Temporary Tango) that completely flipped the game on it's head. Rather than playing the titular antiterrorism military unit you became the terrorists whom you combat in the first half of the game. It was very weird to gun down the good guys in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and didn't get any less disconcerting through the other missions. I then wondered if someone had similarly flipped GTAIV around. Although no-one has made a true total conversion mod that presents Niko's story from the perspective of law enforcement (because that's quite an undertaking), there is a mod that uses the Rockstar Advanced Gaming Engine as a foundation for something like a police force simulator - LCPD First Response.

It's No Game

Beijing 2008 sponsors @ April 2007, xiaming

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

-Juvenal, Satire X

I think it's about six years since I ditched television and I've even stopped watching the few shows that I used to keep up with by streaming or downloading (South Park, Top Gear, et al), so surely I needn't say I haven't watched the Olympics or the Paralympics. I'm aware that under new laws such action is now classed as treason (and you're not allowed to link to the IOC if you have critical words to say), but Benedict Arnold becomes a hero when you cross the right border. When the Arab Spring hit some of the Gulf States the monarchic governments decreed more bread for the people, not unlike Ceaușescu's ad-libbing mere days before his execution, but aren't they forgetting the circuses?

It's My Party

I've often thought of 7 as my lucky number, or at least something of a favourite. I write 7 with a line through the vertical on recommendation after my poor legibility in fourth year maths mixed it up with 2. The reason I shoehorned that memory in is because the blog is seven years old today.

Sleep Dealer

red bridge, the|G|TM, 2009

Hard to believe it's two years since Inception was released. I know what you're thinking - was Cobb still dreaming? Well at this point I'm not sure it's that important or even worth debating, despite my previous intention to write an analysis that really got into the story. In the same way 2001: A Space Odyssey has been interpreted as a metaphor for film-making, Inception was early on described as Christopher Nolan's film about the art of film. The cut to black can be read either way and argued about for all time to the pleasure of Warner's DVD division, either way it marks the end of the film and the end of the film as our shared dream. In Nolan's words (my emphasis):

I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me - it always felt like the appropriate "kick" to me.

Regardless of which is the true narrative of Inception, it brought lucid dreaming into the popular consciousness which can still be seen two years on. And two years on I'm marginally closer to lucid dreaming.

Then The March Led To Assault

Part One of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, February 2006

Let it never be said I'm not in it for the long haul. January marked nine years on NationStates and six on CyberNations (never the twain shall be mentioned on respective sites). In these online games two or three years are the equivalent of real world centuries; so not only am I old, I'm very old, and old people like to tell stories. When I republished my NS memoirs back in 2010 I stated that I didn't believe I had much to say when it came to my time on CyberNations as a member of the New Pacific Order. However, when the NPO marked it's sixth anniversary in January, I and twenty-five other senior members were asked by the media corps to comment on the evolution of the alliance in those years. As the oldest remaining member and fifth oldest nation in the world, I realised the more I responded with claims to have nothing interesting to say the more I started alluding to actual opinions and insights into those six years.

The Rising Tide to New York City Did They Ride Into The Street

Send us your brightest, your smartest, your most intelligent,
Yearning to breathe free and submit to our authority,
Watch us trick them into wiping rich people's asses,
While we convince them it's a land of opportunity.

JULY IV
MDCCLXXVI

Engraving on the Statue of Happiness, GTAIV

Twoism

I miss the peace of fishing like when I was a boy.

- Marko Ramius, The Hunt for Red October

Captain Ramius was an old submarine commander who had spent too many years at sea waging a pointless and inglorious pseudo war to maintain the balance of power. This has next to nothing in common with what I'm about to say. I miss the peace of delivery on a Saturday morning. It's now eight months since the Delivery Methods Revision and this week marks five years since I started the job.

Risky Ride

Peugeot 908 on Ligne Droite des Hunaudières

Last summer I was busy catching up with Gran Turismo 4 and wrote that the endurance races offered there represented the apex of the racing simulation. Well now I've caught up to Gran Turismo 5 and there's a new apex. I'd actually been waiting for the price to drop but the PS3 was sitting idle for weeks at a time and I had a week off coming up, so I decided £15 wasn't really that much - the original GT cost me (read, parents) £40.

Drive Forever

Drive By Shooting : Electric, drp, 2004

I should be writing - I'm off work for a week, but it's the same old. This time three years ago I remember just driving for hours on end. I had completed San Andreas for the nth time and would leave the disc in the PlayStation for months on end. I used to put it on around midnight when everyone had gone to bed and blast down the country roads in an Infernus for three to four hours just listening to music. Unlike Two Lane Blacktop, the sound never cut out and the film never disintegrated. The endless road provided endless opportunity to glance in the rear view mirror until I became bored of being bored. Then a realisation hit me and I scribbled a few hundred words. I never published it because I didn't like that realisation. So I picked up the controller and just kept driving.

I'm currently seven and a half hours into Gran Turismo 5's rendition of 24 Heures du Mans. For now I have a goal, but I'll be searching again when the clock comes full circle. Open road. Let's just go. Drive forever.

[188]

You Spin Me Right Round

Rear cover art (G, Garbage, 1995)

The final track of the album fades out. The laser assembly returns to its starting position with a whir and the disc slows to a halt. All that remains is the faint hum of the speakers. The disc ejects and you place it back in the case, glancing at the artwork before slotting it back into the rack.

The older generations oft pine for the crackle of vinyl and the large elaborate cover art, and I sympathise as someone who has undergone the rite of digging through parents' vinyl collection. Our attitudes to distribution media are more tied up with memory and nostalgia than any qualitative superiority as some audio enthusiasts are always attempting to prove. Whilst technological progress enables me to carry one and a half thousand songs on my old 8GB iPod Nano, which is a hell of a lot more than the 8 track decks my Dad remembers, my own musical experiences in the 90s bind me to the compact disc.

A Design For Life / The Messerschmitt Twins

Electron micrograph of Bacteriophages, Public Domain

Today is exactly a decade since I finished my first play of Metal Gear Solid 2. Or it would have been if I had finished this for the 17th of March.

To begin with, we're not quite what you'd call human.

Back in the 90s I had a lot of shareware and (unbeknownst to me) pirated games. When the PS/1 was replaced with an Aptiva in 1998, I set about porting my stuff via floppy disk. The instant A Drive engaged the screen cut to a blue and red DOS prompt warning me that a virus had been detected. To put it mildly, this was not the most encouraging thing to happen with the brand new computer, as I had a legacy of breaking the old one. This was my first experience with an anti-virus programme and I had never even considered that all those dodgy floppies might be riddled with anything other than the files I put on it. The particular viruses that were detected by Norton (of cross-armed fame) are long forgotten, but in the following years I was captivated by the idea that there's something almost alive in the digital world - unseen technological analogues to our organic processes.

And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)

PART TWO OF A SERIES.

Corporate (red)washing, jonathan mcintosh, 2007

Some have never had it so good. You might be mistaken for thinking there was an economic crash not four years ago and that we are living in a recession, but that's because you aren't the 1%. As we saw abroad and now domestically, a leaderless movement has now come to prominence. If successful in nothing else, Occupy has brought home the message of wealth inequality through the 'We are the 99%' slogan. The extreme inversion of the scales in the economic clout of the top 1% versus the remaining 99% betrays an uncomfortable truth about our egalitarian and meritocratic societies - that we are actually living in plutocracies. The egalitarian and meritocratic principles of western society are what comprise The American Dream, and yet like a dream we think we're awake. Eisenhower may have warned us about relations between the state and private contractors during the heights of the New Deal society, but Franklin D Roosevelt spoke in 1938 of a more elementary danger that "among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing". If some members of society have greater private power than others then it logically follows that others have less power. This is the very basic fact that underpins the subversion of liberal democracy.

The Street Parade (Rock The Casbah)

PART ONE OF A SERIES.

President John F. Kennedy, The COM Library, 2009

Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793, but regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty for ever.
- Albert Camus, The Rebel, 1951

2011 was by all accounts the most unpredictable year since 1989. A revolutionary wave began sweeping away the Western puppets, just as the Eastern Europeans sent the Soviet puppets to the ash-heap of history. Stability for stability's sake was once the mantra that subjugated the Middle East until the suicide of one man seemingly instigated what neither international free trade nor exiles or internal opposition could persuade. I originally intended to examine the preconditions of these revolutions, but that continues to be a work in progress if not a mystery for future historians. What I have noted, however, is that this wave that has rippled through the Middle East, and other regions to varying degrees, has for the most part been leaderless. When I last wrote a political post in November 2010, the eve of events in Tunisia, I specifically rejected cadres as essential or desirable to revolution. The absence of commanding individuals in Tahrir Square or elsewhere appears to have shown spontaneous and leaderless movements are possible - though the effectiveness of these versus the militarised rebellion in Libya or Syria is yet to be settled.

Don't Believe a Word

mirrors_2, ze1, 2003

I've always taken exception to the idea that you should do something you enjoy professionally. If I was to work as a freelance writer, for instance, I would have starved to death long ago even if I set my own deadlines. I could invoke that old Douglas Adams' quote again, but I wouldn't want to look like I'm trying to boost the word count - even though I just have without quoting it. I specifically put a 'Scheduled Posts' gadget on the blog to try and hold myself to my own weak promises and perhaps, I hoped, the Russian web crawlers that read this blog so often might demand that the Buffy The Vampire Slayer post I've been putting off and on for four years now actually turn up in January 2012 like I said on the 31st of last month. Surely that's why they keep viewing that post fifteen times a day, to communicate in the only way they can? I can't imagine it's because they like what I wrote - it's a bloody list of songs I liked last year.