Some writing about some blogs

Blogs on my Google Reader list that haven't been updated in ages.
Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Miss Field
postSupportMike
It's a blog.
Just Emi
Shaun's Eyes

What happened to them? Are the blogs dead? Who knows. But I enjoyed reading them once.

I really appreciate it when Nick and Bron update. They provide honest and interesting posts, and I like reading them. Writers should be partially judged on whether people like reading them - in my opinion, anyway. Some people think writers should be judged on their content, which is definitely true. But to me, being able to write means you know how to convey information. And having great content but making it impossible to understand is not what it means to be a writer. So yes, Nick and Bron are good at this blog game.

I just randomly discovered this blog, on Jolly's blog roll. It's called The Procrastinatrix. She writes well. I really liked the post on Ben Folds, because I love Ben Folds (his version of Bitches Ain't S*** is the catchiest, most explicit, misogynist, ridiculous, awesome rap song ballad you've heard). But I especially liked this post on finding clothes for curvy women. Having sisters and a girlfriend and female friends, I am aware of the dilemmas. It's not easy. I come from the opposite spectrum, so as a man who has no hips, I constantly struggle to find shorts that will stay up without using a belt (and really, who uses a belt with shorts...). Anyway, have a read, see what you think.

Favourite random rap lyrics... and a rant.

I love this lyric from As Real As It Gets, from Young Jeezy's verse

And if you just tunin' in, let me explain
You know i keep that 47, Uday Hussein

Who name drops Uday Hussein???? That's awesome. Watch the song live at the BET Awards here. For those who don't know, Uday was the son of Saddam. And the subject of a terrible Martin Molloy pun - his band was supposedly called Uday and the Blowfish.

And I love this bit from Swagger Like Us, from Lil Wayne's verse

No one on the corner has swagger like moi,
Church, but I'm too clean for these boi
I require, what I desire,
I got stripes, A-di-das

When they performed it at the Grammys Wayne, Kanye, Jay and T.I. all pointed at Wayne's shoes, which I thought was a nice touch. It's the details that matter :)


And I can't believe I haven't heard this before, but here is Jeezy's My President Is Black, which was released in support of Obama's presidential campaign. It's damn catchy! "My president is black, my Lambo's blue...". I linked to the explicit version because I hate listening to rap songs where they arbitrarily take out words that might be naughty.


Actually I do have a bit of a rant about this. Songs like Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind talk about oral sex and drug taking quite explicitly, but it's sung quite fast, and it doesn't get blanked out on radio. What about I Touch Myself by the Divinyls? That's played all the time on the radio without any editing.

Yet a rapper says something like this:

Have you ever popped champagne on a plane
While getting' some brain
Whipped it out, she said "I never seen snakes on a plane"

And when it was played on Australian radio there was a reference to champagne and then two blank lines. Now maybe you think it should be bleeped out, and that's fair enough. But what about this?

She says she lives for me, Ovation
She's got her own motivation
She comes round and she goes down on me

or

Smiling in the pictures you would take
Doing crystal meth
Will lift you up until you break
It won't stop

Which song do you think go bleeped out? Kanye's Good Life or Third Eye Blind's Semi Charmed Life? The one that made stupid jokes about penises on a plane? Or the one that talked about doing crystal meth? The rest of those lyrics are here.


Well that wasn't meant to be a rant, but it turned into one!

MAJOR LINKAGE

"Do you have any cool sites to visit?"
"I'm insulted! Of course I do. I'm leaving. Good links, sir."
"But I just..."
"I SAID GOOD LINKS."
-------------------------------------
- Good article from Slate about why newspapers aren't doing as badly as you think. And makes a mention of how a lot of online analysis of newspapers is based more in hope than on fact.
- A growing number of divorced or single mothers are choosing to move interstate to be with men they met on the internet, causing problems for the children's father(s).
- This is how I think a lot of people feel about Mac users. "Go back to your house. I know, you've got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There's a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute monster."
- Some great stuff happens when you put geeks and mountains of geeky data in a room together. With some Doritos. And Mountain Dew.
- I don't know anything about New Zealand's Next Top Model, but what I do know, I learned here.

Three good TimesOnline articles
- What it feels like to grow up with prostitutes. An English woman tells of growing up in a house where her mum rented rooms to ladies of the night.
- How gangs in the UK are learning tactics from The Wire. Great read.
- The story of a sex worker in the poorest suburb of Calcutta. Not graphic, but kinda painful to read.

Never let anyone say I don't give the good links! Especially if you like being informed about interesting things.

More Altavista searches!

Okay, so maybe these are just Google searches that found my blog. But whatever!

"mdma got you feeling like a champion" meaning
This is a line from Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind, and it's in the verse where he talks about the city as a corrupting influence. MDMA, or Ecstasy, is a drug with some hallucinogenic properties, and usually gives the user a feeling of euphoria. So in the context of that verse, the New York City resident has taken some X and is feeling awesome.

kick to the nads
Ah yes, the good old kick to the nads. If you haven't been on the receiving end of one of these, count yourself lucky. Any bloke can tell you it's a horrible experience. For those who don't know, "nads" are a guy's balls. And a kick to them is painful. It's like feeling horribly sick in your stomach, but with shooting pain fanning out in every direction. And the pain sits a bit lower.

lion wing and lion with wing
I'm going to group those together. I assume they might have been looking for info on Gryphons. Or maybe the Lion King? Or maybe lions who know Wing Chung Kung Fu???

johnny teflon with mariah carey nsw?
Hmmm.... ummmm.... no idea on this one. Maybe they were looking for something Not Safe For Work (NSFW)? Or maybe she's coming to New South Wales with the aforementioned Johnny Teflon? I don't know much about the latter. But I'm pretty sure you could find some NSFW shots of Ms Carey on the web somewhere, if you were prepared to look hard enough (I'm not).

opposing viewpoints for u2's pride in the name of love
No idea how this person found me, but they spent 10 minutes looking around the blog. Hope you liked it, mystery U2 person! As for Pride (In The Name Of Love), I have a couple of things to say.
1) Great song
2) Seems to be about sacrifice
3) And a bit about dying for a cause
4) Martin Luther King and Jesus get mentioned
5) John Legend's version is fantastic

lyrics "speech first of all I want to thank"
This is the opening line to Jay-Z's And The Winner Is. First of all I wanna thank my connect - the most important person with all due respect.

de shannon - home and away
No idea who this is. Can anyone help?

AND NOW
Yes, yet another series of boob-related searches.

busty black women
celebrity busty bikini
natalie tran cleavage

The first one is easy to fix - Beyonce.
Second one? Hmmm... I've got it! Try The Sun.
And finally, the lovely Natalie Tran. She really is great. Check out her videos on YouTube. I'm not going to help anyone find her cleavage though.

The Catch Up

So I've been catching up on the internet today while I'm back in Hobart for a flying visit. A couple of things.

I love it when the Fug Girls have Jennifer Lopez on. The posts are hilarious.

Kanye posts a link to a day spa (that's d-a-i-y-e) straight out of Zoolander.


Speaking of Kanye, he's gone back to posting pics of girls again, although this time without the "Where are you Yeezy??" captions. I'm not sure what that means. He stopped posting pics of them for a while, but it seems like he's back with a vengeance.



This may scar you for life, but you can buy actual ladies underwear with Robert Pattinson's face on them. Yes. YES. IT'S TRUE.

Back to Kanye for a second, here's Spike Jonze slapping him in the face.

Behind the Scenes With Kanye from We Love You So on Vimeo.

Here's a really good article about working down a coal mine. I went down Beaconsfield Mine recently. It was a weird experience. I could have been 10m down a tunnel... but I was 1.2km straight underground, with 20-30km of tunnel above me.

Brett Geeves = Blogging Genius

My main man Brett Geeves gets some media attention thanks to AAP.

You can read his latest entry, posted on my birthday, here.

Favourite quote:
"I would like to quickly acknowledge Peter English for giving this blog a good plug in a Cricinfo article he wrote about a fortnight ago. Speaking to Peter was like chatting to an ex girlfriend. Once you get past the flirtatious eye contact and the wandering hands, it turns into a pleasant experience!"

Brett Geeves - BG - Blogging Genius or Bowling Guru?

Almost famous

Some famous people I've interviewed.

1. Ricky Ponting
2. Peter Daicos
3. Brendan Fevola
4. Wil Anderson
5. Ricki-lee Coulter
-------
6. A lot of AFL footballers

My favourite? Ricki-lee, of course! I think she's awesome. Always have. She was great on Idol, got dumped in a terrible, terrible shock, and sings like an absolute weapon. And she's the first ever covergirl on Ralph magazine to be size 14 (ie, she's about normal for an Australian woman, except that she's also quite tall). I love seeing her do well. Fev was an interesting one. I interviewed him in his hotel room, while he was lying on his bed playing online poker on his laptop. He was good to chat to.

The one that got away
Shaun Micallef, in my first week as a journalist (I was still on trial!). I was meant to interview him but his publicist said he was running late and had to rehearse, so I ended up having a crappy interview with a local flackey about the arts program or something boring. If I'd been even slightly more experienced I would have got it sorted so I got the interview. However I had been a (trial) journalist for all of five days. So sadly I didn't to interview one of my favourite ever comedians.