As I haven’t been doing a lot of stuff, here are some useful links to help those who might be feeling a bit disconnected at the moment.

* CND are looking for 50 more people to agree to break the law by signing this pledge.

* “If a car is stolen, it can be fitted with a computer to enable it to be tracked – so why not apply the same principle to finding missing children?”

* I like this site about bikes, not least because it pointed me to this barcode generator.

* Sarah Hepola sent us a postcard on her travels that she writes about.

* I love Radio 3, especially since I got their downloads to work properly. There’s Wauvenfold and Lonesome Organist live sets, plus a Bjork interview for starters. [She got burgled, you know, but the stories aren’t interesting]

* RTMark, which I found in our links database has more great ideas than you could ever do justice to.

* And if all that’s not enough, this link takes you to any recently updated weblog. See? Try again. Look! it’s different.

The Morning News have remembered how to be funny and witty and silly. I mean I really liked the new articles stuff and all the contributors but I missed the personal edge and the little anecdotes of what stupid stuff they’d been up to. It was like diskant without ME. And, ahem, who could imagine that? So hurray hurray, as I already said, for Letters From The Editors, Rosecrans and Andrew, both of which made me laugh out loud. I am officially jealous of the illustrations idea as well.

That’s the only hurray hurray news for today I’m afraid. The rest of my time is being spent riding the giddy rollercoaster of emotion all the way through frustration, depression, doom, gloom and the painful sparks of dashed hope. Otherwise known as trying to get your email via a proxy server. If anyone would like to come round and kill me then feel free. Or help me, that might even be better. That’s also a roundabout way of saying, ‘yes I am ignoring all your emails but not deliberately’.

audiogalaxy has had its ass kicked.

FREE reading material at that! First up the London listings guide Probemusic has had to give up the big newspaper style and is now an A3 folded glossy leaflet thing. It’s no bad thing though as now it’s easier to read and none of that inky fingers trauma. It’s still got the usual London gig listings, recent live and record reviews and unsigned artist spotlight and this issue here is even better than usual as it has excerpts of an interview with Mr Steve Albini [the full interview is here]. Well worth picking up if you’re out and about in London or send a cheque for £4 to Probe Magazine Ltd, 1st Floor, 94 Ermine Road, London, SE13 7JR and they’ll post you out the next twelve issues.

Also of some interest is IF e-zine. They’ll send it straight to your inbox every month so you barely have to lift a finger and you’ll get news, articles, interviews and reviews of gigs, records and demos. You can read past issues here and also sign up to receive the new issues.

I tried to make the effort and be anti-Jubilee today by wandering over to Glasgow Green for the Citizens, Not Subjects event. It was a perfect day for the park and I was looking forward to seeing James Kelman and just sitting about in a sunny park scowling at policemen. But we arrived to a small group of people half-listening to some other people babbling on about Scotland and how great it is to be scottish and reading excerpts of god knows what written in auld scots. I am scottish, I’m a member of the Scottish Socialist Party and I’m a long time socialist. However, I don’t think Scotland is a wondrous place and I don’t feel any greater affinity with other scottish people over my english friends. So get over it already. We decided to duck into the Winter Gardens for a while and see how things were later. I can’t believe I haven’t been to the Winter Gardens before, they were ace! Loads of cacti and banana plants and other tropical big-leafed fantastic plants with a clunky board path, tropical temperatures and some interesting wee exhibitions hidden in the back all about the history of Glasgow Green and the city itself. I sat for a while and immersed myself in leaf patterns and warmth. Mmmmm. When we returned outside it was to discover more excerpt reading and even worse some acapella singing of heavy duty protest songs. As we left we pondered the thought that pro-Jubilee street parties were probably more fun since at least they’d have music and cake. I’m not saying they should have got Le Tigre style outfits and dance routines but a summer park event aimed at families should have music and fun above all else.

You might have noticed the new issue of the diskant ZINE isn’t up yet so if you’re lacking something to read then I recommend you stop by The Morning News. Not only have they been putting up some great articles recently but they’ve also been involved in a collection of writing called Manual. You can download the whole thing as a PDF and I second their suggestion that you print it out and read it away from your computer [especially if you can use the printer and paper at work hoho]. You get seventeen little pieces of writing with a How To theme. A few do this as a semi serious advice giving article such as How To Organize Your Record Collection (I order mine almost exactly by the ‘Conveniently’ method described) and How To Start A Dialogue With A Complete Stranger (pretend to get hit by a car, good call!) and others in the form of short fiction. Favourites of these include the touching and subtly detailed How To Perform A Card Trick and the cutely sadly funny How To Unsuccessfully Woo Your Roommate’s Future Husband. Most if it is damn good stuff though so go get it and go read it.

Simon just mentioned The Internet Archive which is a website that archives past versions of websites. Sniggering at early basic HTML Amazon was all very amusing until we both had the same idea of looking for diskant. Simon’s not been here that long though so wasn’t able to dig as far back as I was and here we have diskant as it was in October 1999!! Note our catchy address of diskant.future.easyspace.com, classy banner ads and boasting of ‘Over 100 Links’. Awww. For me, this is somewhat like stumbling across some high school essays – I’m cringing over my awful web design skills and remembering the trauma of Website of the Month. Dear oh dear. I’m just grateful there’s no evidence of the very first incarnation of diskant which was similar but all the text was in size 4 and we only had three websites.

But what strikes me more now is actually how little diskant has changed in those two years. We’re still yellow, we still have a very similar logo [though it’s not showing up], the diskant icon at the bottom of the page hasn’t changed a pixel and we still cover the same themes. Yet it seems like forever ago.

Haha. Remember when the Mogwai website used to look like this? Sadly I couldn’t find any examples of the icky fleshy pink version.

It’s been banished from my 3 cd changer. We need a break. I need to see other people. I haven’t sickened myself of an album through overplay in ages but I was really starting to get sick of the more poptastic tunes on ST&C – Baudelaire and Relative Ways in particular.

I do find myself more and more concentrating on three cds at a time plus one record as befits my stereo. The vinyl is usually something I can stick on to get overexcited about before I leave the house – Le Tigre‘s first album at present – while the cds tend to be one rock, one downbeat and one electronic. I’m getting very predictable. Unwound are my rock cd at the moment and also my new heroes. I’ve liked Unwound kind of absent-mindedly for the last few years but they’re gradually edging into my top bands evah! list. It’s the guitars – they fill my heart with joy and my eyes with tears, if you want to be cheesy about it. That Death Cab for Cutie album is providing some quiet moments although I can see it being swapped back to the Papa M album very soon. The DCfC just seems so flimsy and mimsy and lacking in anything solid and still too much about mittens! But I can’t stop playing the thing either. Damn them. The electronic one arrived this morning and is the new thing by EU. It’s in a perfectly circular plastic cd case which is a design marvel but I’m not sure if it’s good or if I like it. The music however I do like – it’s all twitchy and fluid and mmm.

I really recommend you go read some of the new articles on The Morning News as they are all really good, particularly this one. And let’s not forget Tangents [which I did, now added to our links on the side as it should be] which is always excellent, particularly Alistair’s blog and this article about Friends Reunited. I should register there while I can brag about my super-popular web empire and my work for crazy Texans. And also while I am actually still in employment…

Went to see Fridge last night. Very good. Forgave them some freejazzy noodlings I wasn’t in the mood for when they finished by building up this driving track over about 20 minutes at the end. Highest marks go to the bass player’s Tshirt with blood under the armpits, though.

Having lots of fun playing with this cutup machine that The Morning News pointed me at. Sometimes it’s like a truth machine, sometimes just funny. I used it on a message* from the man who owns me for 8 hours a day and he says “I look forward to $7.8 billion.”

[* if anyone can tell me what “leverage” is supposed to mean as a verb, I’d love to know…]

– People willing to spend £22 [TWENTY TWO POUNDS!] on the first single by The Strokes. It doesn’t even have a proper sleeve or anything. Best retrieve my copy from the immense diskant box of review stuff then
– Thinking of bidding on something and discovering it’s being sold by someone you know
– Thinking of bidding on something and discovering that Simon Minter is already bidding on it.
– Discovering yourself on page 23 of the ‘Records > 45 RPM > Other’ section at half past eleven on a Friday night.

If you find my life somewhere I’d quite like it back…

This isn’t music related, BUT I’m posting it because I don’t whether to laugh or cry. An article at GNN links to websites called activistcash.com and consumerfreedom.com. I feel so much safer after learning that they are standing up for my rights against nannies funded by big businesses. Such shocking revelations as: Ben&Jerry’s gave some activists $100k to deface billboards! PETA are vegans! Some people are on the board of more than one group! Greenpeace have offices! And of course the ELF are the American al-Qaeda. (It stops getting funny there)

Also follow the link to the original article and see businesses described as “powerful” (her quotes not mine, like it’s only allegedly true).

I don’t really have to say who funds these websites, do I?