The punk spirit lives

Heavy Load is a UK punk band made up of members who have learning disabilities. Even Kylie Minogue loves them.

Shadows on snow

Got a message from a good friend who I haven’t seen in too long the other day, saying he’d eaten a sandwich with my parents in my home town, Alexandra. He’s recently returned from a year teaching in English in Korea. He’s done a lot with his life — including being swept up in a tsunami — since I last saw him during my university years in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Aside from travelling round the world at random, he’s embarked on a number of creative pursuits, including folk-songwriting and photography. I hope he won’t mind me posting the two photos below that he took on his recent trip back to Alexandra (see more at his blog), which was under snow and frost.

Snow. Fancy that.

How do you say ‘bad news’ in Russian?

Shitty news from Moscow. Renegade expat tabloid The eXile is shutting down.

Known for its searing and salacious journalism ranging from voyeuristic coverage of grisly murders to accounts of nights with cheap Russian hookers to incisive diatribes against Middle America, finally, after 11 years of pushing the boundaries of taste, The eXile is being put to sleep.

Editor Mark Ames explains that the shadowy figures of Russian government, under new president Dmitry Medvedev, seem to have taken offence to something and, via an ‘unplanned audit’, scared off the paper’s investors.

Though I haven’t been a regular reader of late, I have a special affection for The eXile, because it was once co-edited by John Dolan (still a contributor, I believe), who long-time readers may recall was one of my most inspirational writing teachers. (Enjoy his review of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces here.)

Perhaps we can convince Ames to move to Hong Kong and bring his paper with him?

Here’s how to improve as a human

Mum sent me an email pointing out that my blog has been quieter than usual, so I figured that, rather than do the sensible thing and reply to her email, I’d get around to updating. (I’ll do the former soon, promise.)

Also, my job these days is sucking up all my opinion-writing energy, so all I have left to offer are waffling inanities, such as this.

Oh, I just remembered something I like doing when I’ve got nothing of import to say: share new music. Wootlashes!

The following links are provided in order to ascertain that I have unassailably awesome taste and am thus irresistible to members of the opposite sex, small radishes, and mosquitoes.

If you don’t love Dan Deacon already, start doing it!

Bon Iver‘s new album, For Emma, Forever Ago, is my current favourite. Go get yourself some ‘Skinny Love’.

You like Brian Wilson, and Animal Collective makes you good dizzy, so you’re also going to be massively into Miracle Fortress. That’s the stuff.

Don’t forget to dig some cool electronica shit without lyrics, just to prove you don’t need choruses to live. Dosh is your new master.

The Whip play ‘Trash’. It is, really, fucking excellent. I am sick of you not getting into it. Do better with your life.

Okay, that’s it. Consider yourself five music videos cooler. I have to log off — I’m getting eaten by mosquitoes.