It’s kind of amazing to me how easy it is to be passive aggressive via the internets. You know what I mean. You’re mad at someone and open up a browser and all of a sudden blogs and Facebook and Twitter and who knows what else are screaming at you to vent your feelings by typing cryptic messages into little white boxes. Facebook is always asking you “what’s on your mind?” Twitter wants to know “what’s happening?” And blogs were CREATED for expressing personal opinions in your own words. It seems to take a larger effort to refrain from typing things out of your system than it would be to just tweet “wtf, people???” or change your facebook status to “___ ___ wishes people were nicer.”

I think we forget that this is the equivalent of standing up in front of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people (most of the time including the person you’re mad at) and shouting that you’re mad about what someone did to you.

We forget that we’re not just venting feelings, we’re indirectly slandering the person we’re mad at and inviting others to take up our (self-)justified cause against them.

Sometimes we even forget that we’re hurting the other person personally and making the situation worse. Because they know you’re talking about them.

I don’t mean to sound preachy. I’ve been sorely tempted to do the EXACT same thing, and the only thing that stops me sometimes is thinking about how much I hate it when other people use the internet as a ventilation system. It irks me even when it’s not ABOUT me and I have no idea what’s going on.

I also want to be clear that I’m not angry at anyone at the moment, so this isn’t me talking about how I-wish-I-could-berate-people-right-now-but-I-won’t-because-I’m-too-self-righteous.

The only point I’m trying to make is that the internet is a dangerous place to be when you’re annoyed with someone. Once it’s on the web, it’s hard to take back. It’s good for me to remember.

It’s 2AM, but I can’t tear myself from the computer because of the combined efforts of John Corigliano’s Ghosts of Versailles and a band my sister discovered (meaning “found out about,” not “is now managing”) the other day called Pearl and the Beard. The reasons:

The Ghosts of Versailles is the best. opera. EVER. In my opinion. It’s amazing. It’s probably the first opera I ever saw (when I was maybe eight) and I loved it from the off. It has BEAUTIFUL music. The melodies are lovely and the dissonances are equally awesome and the combination is ASTOUNDING. I was listening to this album earlier and decided to look up Ghosts of Versailles on YouTube to see if I could find “O God of Love” which is the most beautiful, lovely sextet in the history of ever.

I couldn’t find it.

But I did find “They Wish They Could Kill Me” which is the first song Figaro sings. Which is also fun and catchy and beautiful and made me smile.

I wanted to see if anyone was possibly going to perform the opera again, so I looked it up. And found that the Opera Theatre of St. Louis had done it in July.

Crap. I missed it.

So I looked some more and found out that the Met Opera was going to perform it in their 2010/11 season! (yay!) And then found out shortly thereafter that the performance had been canceled due to the economic downturn. (boo.)

So I looked again and found out that the Vancouver Opera is planning on premiering the Ghosts of Versailles in Canada in their 2011/12 season. And didn’t find any sort of information to the contrary. YAY! So long as they don’t turn into stinky cheese heads, it’s going forward. I want to buy tickets NOW. I don’t care how much they are. I’m going to see this opera before I die.

Second source of happiness: Pearl and the Beard.

Emily showed me this video today. It is, in short, made of awesome. Watch it. And after I had done all the Ghosts of Versailles stuff I started listening to some of their other stuff which is also made up of pieces of awesome.

And that is why I am up so late.

I’ve been having a lot of fun putting together a large amount of music for a CD swap someone on the NaNo forums is putting together. I got the first CD in the mail the other day and I love a LOT of the music on there. It’s really fun getting mix CDs from strangers. It’s nice to know you’re not the only one who doesn’t always listen to mainstream music.

We’re hoping to go shopping later today to get pumpkins to carve (yay!) and makeup for my little sister’s goth Alice in Wonderland costume. And also hopefully a denim jacket for my Rose Tyler costume. *fingers crossed*

On an unrelated note, why must the world keep taunting me with snow? It NEVER snows here. I want to see snow. *pout* The day after we left NC it snowed. *more pouting* I hope it snows when we go up to NYC in December. It probably won’t. *uber-pout* Okay. Sorry. I’m done.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of making a blog for a while now. and decided to go ahead and do it. this blog is going to be kind of random, with stuff i do in game, stuff about new patches, and just info i find interesting. lets hope it doesn’t get old to fast

I scrambled outside onto the smoking patio, with the typical 6 minutes to spare before clocking in at work, only to step into the tail end of a conversation that no human anywhere should be having. A woman explaining to fellows about the machanics of ’sucking boogers’ from her child’s sinus passages. She held court, while they sat there, enthralled, or in total disbelief she was progressing down that misguided path of actually explaining; hand gestures included, of how it all worked.

Now, I’ll pause. Because if you seriously think this post will delve into ‘Booger Sucking 101′ you’re sadly mistaken. If you’re looking for booger sucking tips, this troglodyte probably has a blog of her own someplace. Go searching.

My general thought would be; is this what we’ve come to? Through the vices that are, MySpace, facebook, Blogs, twitter, etc. and so on. The opening of our personal lives to all that will pay attention has now left the relatively stand-offish place of computer screens, laptops, and BlackBerries, and spread to face-to-face conversation. That would ‘be‘ my thought if by some chance this were some respectable blog that had sponsors or even minimaly-interested readers. It is, however not the aforementioned which leaves me to say…

Whatthefuckyoucrazybitch?!

First off, let’s set aside the actual act of verbally contaminating the airspace with this thought and cut down to the quick of the matter as to WHY you’d subject your child to this act of sinus barbarism. I Googled, as I often do, “cleaning your child’s sinus” and found this as the top result. There’s no mention of ’sucking boogers’ anywhere. I’m guessing because however, or whatever, was used to manipulate the ’sucking’ shouldn’t be inserted into a child’s face to begin with. I have images dancing in my brain of this Trailer-Park-Princess holding down a small child and ramming a turkey baster into her offspring’s proboscis. Pleasant, right?

Yeah, sit on that image for a sec while I light another cigarette.

Then, my thoughts blister foward picturing this kid pinned to the carpet and his/her thoughts; “what in the blue hell did I do to deserve this plastic tube rammed into my face and have it attempt to suck out my frontal lobe?” Well, it probably wasn’t that in depth, it was probably more like; “Holy shit! Quit!”

This thought process is only shoved aside like a circa 1985 rabid shopping-Mommy hot on the trail of a Cabbage Patch Kid by the complete and abject disregard of human interaction protocol. How in the name of all that uses oxygen do you even reach this topic of conversation? Seriously, what could this have been preceeded by? Use of female sanitary products? The shape and texture of your last bowel movement? Being male, and admittedly, being a member of the less socially adept side of our species, I have been privy to many, and I stress many, conversations (most accompanied by alcohol) that are far out of bounds of what would be typically ‘politically correct’. However, I cannot ever remember (see: alcohol) being involved in such a conversation. Especially one that involved kids.

So, after nearly six-hundred words I guess we reach the end of my first blathering back here within the blogosphere. I mean really, this is all written in the hopes it was a turkey baster-like implement. I’ve done my very best in the last couple days since having my morning defiled not to picture this woman doing modified mouth-to-…nose?

Yes, another image for you to dwell on until next time. All comments appreciated, kids.

Later days,
- B.

Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50

Now, I know I played nicey-nicey with the previous parts of this list, and it is certainly true to say that there is barely any real difference between places fourteen and twenty-eight, but at the business end I think that some of it is a bit more definite.  Certainly, having thought it over, I think that Now You Are Pregnant is my favourite song of the year.  How or why it edges out the superb Wonderful Life I couldn’t quite tell you, but I know it would feel wrong to have put them the other way round.

The other rather obvious point that needs to be made is that, of course, I have no objectivity left whatsoever as regards the Meursault album or any of the songs on it.  I didn’t have anything to do with making the thing, of course, but I’ve worked so closely with that album over the course of the last six months or so, since it became a part of Song, by Toad Records, that my relationship with it is totally different to anything else I’ve been listening to.  So I am being honest when I feature Meursault stuff so highly, I’m not lying to you of course, but there’s no way I could be objective anymore.

So here’s the final installment of the Toad Festive Fifty.  DC will be posting his Christmas extravaganza tomorrow, and that will be the last you hear of Toad for a few days.  In between Christmas and New Year I will be going through my album of the year countdown and trying to move Toad over the self-hosting in order to avoid the horrors of DMCA harrassment.  This way I can host the fucking thing in China if need be, and they can all just fuck off.  So Happy Christmas all, and we’ll try and get things up and running as normally as possible right after the changeover.

1. The Wave Pictures – Now You Are Pregnant There are so things that make this song as great as it is, but I think the combination of wit and pathos with a slightly obscure, but nevertheless touching storyline pretty much sums up what makes this band great.

And here is your final splendid zip file of Toadly goodness for the season.  Have fun with DC tomorrow, and I’ll be back some time before the new year to tell you which my favourite albums of the year have been.  Happy Christmas Toadlings.

Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Patt 4: 37-50

And so we stumble on to the penultimate post in the countdown to the Toad’s favourite song of the year.  At this point the idea of some sort of hierarchy of love is becoming rather ridiculous.  Do I genuinely prefer Make Another Tree to Frankie’s Gun?  No, of course I don’t.  Do I really get more goose bumps or feel more lightheaded with glee when Out on the Water comes on the stereo, compared to, say, Restless?  No, not in the slightest so what am I going on, here?  Well I don’t know, it’s just a gut reaction I suppose, largely dependent on my mood at the time at which I finally turned a ‘bunch of songs’ into some sort of list.

So don’t take it too seriously, just enjoy that fact that there have been this many brilliant songs released this year.

11. Meursault – Salt Pt. 2 This was actually one of the first songs of theirs that I ever heard, and the album version is just as desolate and lovely.

And of course, the whole lot can be downloaded here as one rather large zip file.  Have fun – I’ll be back with the final batch tomorrow.

Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50

The next installment of late year list-o-rama brings us up to date with the first half of the Toad Festive Fifty. Slightly more, in fact, because I’m gearing up for a top ten, so I’ve cheated slightly on numbers here are there. For those of you who want to make your own lists, see this post for the rules, and get stuck in. The more who take part the better.

One of the things that struck me with this part of the list is the inclusion of a song from the Broken Records Toad Session. Basically, Broken Records would be all over this list, apart from the fact that they were all over last year’s list, as submitted to the Contrast Podcast, and all the songs they released this year are songs I knew from last year. So instead of where they belong, on this year’s list, they are on last year’s list. Later on there are also songs by bands which were released last year, I’m pretty sure, it’s just that I only discovered them this year.

So as well as not being in rigid Order of Toadly Merit they aren’t even in accurate chronological order either. Ah well. You’ll live.

24. Broken Records – Wolves (Toad Session) All of Broken Records’ actual releases this year are songs which I already knew, and so really belong on last year’s Festive Fifty, which seems a bit mean. This was new to me at the time they played their Toad Session in April though, and it’s as marvellous like this as it is when they all go mental together and play it on stage.

25. Withered Hand – New Dawn I am one of the few people I know who took a little while to get into Withered Hand, but I’m there now. Fucking brilliant and, as Bart said: “I think ‘New Dawn’ by Withered Hand is one of the greatest songs about growing old you’re ever likely to hear.”

26. Nicole Atkins – The Way It Is It’s big, brash, camp, glam and… well it’s brilliant, really, isn’t it. I’d never have guessed at the start of the year that I would be capable of getting into something so, er… shameless.

27. Pale Young Gentlemen – There is a Place The way this song breaks from the gentler sadness into that great wash of a string refrain is just genius. Another great song from a truly superb album.

28. Ruth Theodore – Nothing On I was reminded of this by DC on the Waiting Room a couple of weeks ago. I’d forgotten, I’m ashamed to say, just how good this record is and this gorgeous, melancholy song in particular. Imagine if those talky cockney fuckwits like The Allen and Kate Nash were a/ talented or b/ not eye-gougingly annoying, and this is what you’d get.

29. Modernaire – Distraction I got in trouble for posting this electro-pop masterpiece at the time, so I’m going to have another go. If a song from this year was likely to get me dancing then it would probably be this one.

30. Withered Hand – Religious Songs I played this on my show on Fresh Air student radio and my mum emailed into the studio to say how much she liked it. I am guessing that she wasn’t listening to the words all that carefully.

31. MGMT – Time to Pretend It’s mainstream, far too famous and inescapably an instant dance floor classic. And that synth riff is so, so fucking simple. (Actually, do synths have riffs? You know what I mean – the hummy/tuney bit.)

32. Dodos – Fools This is all about the percussion. Even the guitar is played in a percussive manner, and the rhythm of the whole album is phenomenally urgent and infectious.

33. Shearwater – Rooks Never heard of these guys, but my 4AD/Matador PR pal has come through with a few great ones this year. Despite the rising loveliness, there’s a suppressed aggression to this whole album. It’s largely under control on this song, but you can hear moments when the horns announce themselves that tell you what’s lurking beneath the surface. So it’s lovely, but just slightly disturbingly so.

34. Nicole Atkins – Neptune City Broadway indie, I suppose it’s feasible you could call this. This song is pretty much Mrs. Toad’s favourite all year, I think.

35. The Left Outsides – The Third Light The Eighteenth Day of May didn’t die for no reason, thankfully. Out of the ashes have emerged The Left Outsides, who released this. It would be a good enough song anyway, but that fiddle refrain is the absolute clincher.

36. Sparrow & the Workshop – Magic Tricks Percussion “like a rolling train” is how Jill described this. And you know, she’s right. This band almost lead with the drums and let the guitar provide the texture, and the results are fucking amazing. Just about the find of the year.

Once again the whole lot can be downloaded in one handy zip file. Click here for that, and enjoy.

Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50

Here is the official beginning of Christmas List season, here at Song, by Toad. If you want to get involved and write your own list, then please do. Go here for more details. The more of you that contribute to that the better the results we will get, so don’t be shy.

This is the first quarter of my Festive Fifty for 2008. I will also be preparing a list of my twenty favourite albums, but I might just neglect singles and EPs this time around. If you disagree with anything then do get stuck in, but bear in mind that this is far from a definitive ranking. Ask me on another day and Pictish’s brilliant I Don’t Know Where to Begin could easily be in the top five. Ask me in four months’ time and it would probably be all-change again.

37. Pale Young Gentlemen – Kettle Drum (I Left a Note) This whole album was an absolute joy, and the ‘we could talk for hours, or even not at all’ line is a gem. Sheer, easy, gentle loveliness.

And here’s the whole bloody lot as a single zip file – may take a while to download.

You know, it’s getting on for the tail end of November and I have barely even sulked at the early arrival of Christmas shit everywhere and that Noddy Holder garbage on the stereo in every fucking shop in the city. Given that I detest all of these things, why am I not hating them so much as usual? Easy – they are simply being ignored; passively boycotted, if you like.

I fucking detest vast amounts of Christmas. The obligation and guilt-based shopping the shallow acquisitiveness, the competitive exhibitionism involved in showing just how well you ‘do’ Christmas and all that other shit. The relentless marketing in particular makes my anus bleed.

I do love Christmas though. Or, bits of it. And for some reason, partly because Mrs. Toad can’t stand it either and partly because I have slowly tried to train the family into neither giving nor expecting presents, those bits seem to be winning, recently. We just haven’t been anywhere near the shops to be annoyed by the whole thing.

Neither Kate nor I have much interest in special occasions. We don’t really observe one another’s birthdays, we have never bought one another much of anything for Christmas, and we might – might – go out for dinner on our anniversary, but that’s about it. Basically, we are just a couple of reactionary misanthropes who don’t like being told when to do anything – including doing something special for one another.

But Christmas is a little different, I suppose because of the nature of the Pagan festival from which it originates. In the depths of the dark and cold (and wet, more often than not, here in Scotland) there is something bloody brilliant about lighting the fire, closing the doors and refusing to interact with anyone other than your very nearest and dearest for a week or two. We had some roast chestnuts on Princes Street the other day.

It’s the personal side that I’ve always liked though. We’ve never had big parties, just spent a long, quiet time together as a family (usually four of us or less) and played lots of tunes, cooked together, read books and just recuperated from the year. It’s an incredibly nourishing thing to spend quiet time with the people who love you the best. This year we’ll probably order a goose to roast on the day, but I reckon most of the holiday will be spent troughing like porkers. Mostly we’ll stay in, not talk to people, and just spend some time together doing not very much at all. Add in the fact that the meals are special, the cold outside and warm inside makes the setting as comforting and cosy as possible, and the fact that I’ve been so busy this year we’ve hardly had a moment to ourselves and I find myself looking forward to Christmas enormously. It’s not even December yet and I am ‘ready’ – bloody hell! And I don’t even care about the carnival of capitalist masturbation that I am going to end up pretty much ignoring.  Two weeks! Me and Mrs. Toad! And no-one else! Wheeee!

We might even do you all an anti-Christmas podcast if you’re really, really fucking nice.

King Creosote – My Favourite Girl