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NME
notice anything strange about the NME's Greatest Cult Heroes chart? ah, it brings back fluffy memories of when in 1977 chain store WH Smith listed the weekly pop charts in their windows with a blank at #2... The Sex Pistols' 'God Save The Queen' was gloriously absented (in fact, as everyone knows, it should have been in top position); as with the very same WH Smith's, the NME has been so painfully uncool for such a long time that I'm not sure how much vindication can be derived from this, though excuse me for enjoying this fleetingly sweet poetic irony

Webbys
on a vaguely related subject, what exactly are awards for? I'm not entirely sure what prestige means; however, semantic pedantry notwithstanding, yay! VBS's Liberia documentary has won two Webbys!

The Secret Of Scent
ever since starting this infuriatingly good book about the mysteries of fragrances, I've been sniffing around big store perfume departments like a truffle-starved black boar let loose in the woods; despite Luca Turin's slightly condescending literary tone, his scent descriptions are intoxicatingly evocative - I am now not a little impatient for even a four-hour stop-over at Schiphol airport, let alone the dream of one day visiting the Osmothèque in Versailles

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Munich
wonderful week in Munich spent really getting to know the city better than the previous too-short maiden visit - and really, what a marvellously enigmatic place it is, especially outside the busy tourist season; loved the museums, the walks, the markets and their produce, the fresh air, the singular preponderance of single male shamblers, and of course the bierkellers (damn, the Augustiner beer is soooo good, and I don't even like beer)

Mignini and Giuttari convicted
that's the good news; the bad is that while Knox and Sollecito languish in jail, these two bastards are allowed to remain in office pending the duration of their labyrinthine appeals process

Thermal compounds update

we have the tools, we have the technology; we have the innards, we have the operating table - can this be brought back to life, or are the Demon's Souls forever gone?

Cut Hands on CNN
in what seems to be a remarkable coup for Vice, the Vice Guide To Liberia film is now being featured on cnn.com

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More arbitraries from the last week or so.

Surgery Tourism part two
just back from a lovely weekend enjoyed in London - Saturday was spent doing the Wellcome Institute's Euston Road HQ exhibition (Helvetica Design Squad Alert :-(); the highly recommended Hunterian Museum (featuring an unfeasible preponderance of strange things suspended in jars, a unique collection of forceps and scary extraction devices, the skeleton of the Irish Giant, in addition to lots of other seriously weird surgical ephemera); and finally, the Old Operating Theatre near London Bridge, an extraordinary no-concessions bastion to the depressing onslaught of modern day museum culture - fascinating talk and demostrations, freedom to walk around and peruse the quirky exhibits close up, and even a super-quaint bookshop

Amaral said 'fala com', you fucking idiots
tabloid newspaper The Sun is officially the most obnoxious and ugly rag, notwithstanding the UK already having serious competition to that accolade, and you may already know what I think about that most loathsome of institutions that is the BBC: this story is a neat encapsulation
update 16/1/10: add that asswipe Tony Parsons of the Daily Mirror to the above

Thermal compounds
the beloved first-gen Japanese PS3 of this Sony fanboy got the Yellow Light Of Death last night, and now I'm gently assembling the necessary tools to perform open-heart surgery on its sexy innards with the aid of some sticky thermal compounds and a phallic-looking heat gun

Cut Hands update
the film is being premiered on January 19th - canNOT wait to see it; another track added to those already listed:
Cut Hands - Welcome To The Feast Of Trumpets 6:45 (written and performed by W.Bennett, 2010)

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