This could've been a post about how miserable I was. But y'know what? Bad day, I defy you. Six things that are making me happy today!

1) Bon Jovi, because Iron Maiden may be my all-time favourite band, but Bon Jovi were my first favourite band and they still make me smile when not much else can. I am going to be unashamedly sappy and make you all listen to Thank You For Loving Me. And also It's My Life, which is very appropriate to my current mood. ^_^

2) Being into the Good Bit of my 2009 WWE calendar, ie the last five months which consists almost entirely of my favourite Superstars. This month, I have Edge smirking from my bedroom wall. There are so many worse ways to wake up than this. ^_^

3) Equilibrium, who are brilliant. I'm particularly in love with Ruf in der Wind, which is the wildest dancing song I've heard in forever. Seriously, if I put this on and shut my eyes I can feel the whole sky spin above me - it's amazing. ♥ (For the German speakers on my friendslist, here are the lyrics - and if anyone has time to poke them, I'd love to know roughly what they mean! ^_^)

4) Text from Mum, to say that the tiny stray black kitten who was outside their house at the weekend has been reunited with his owners! ^_^ I'm so relieved. Tiny kitten was very tiny, should not have been out on his own!

5) My headcast. No special reason today, I just love all of them very much and they make my life a better place by leaning over my shoulder and poking me. ♥

6) And finally, as if to justify my decision not to whinge, I got a phone call right after I started this post to ask if I wanted to come and view more houses! ^_^ Why yes, I do. Excellent!

Laters,
Rath

"Universe," said I, waving a hand from the depths of a half-proofread treatise on analytical theory, "everything sucks. I'm feeling bitter and resentful and nothing looks fun. Cheer me up!"

"No problem," replied the universe, riffling through its box of LPs (which, as we all know, is of infinite dimensions and contains every song ever written in all possible realities). "Here, you might try this."

"^_^!"

"Also, for the record, Gödel's incompleteness theorems are exactly the kind of kneecap-shot theoretical result you love. Go look it up."

"^____^!!!"

"You're welcome. ^_^"

There we go, all better now. Who says there's no benevolent Providence? ^_^

Laters,
Rath

Bon Jovi, Heartbreak Eyes.

This apparently is a lost demo from the first Bon Jovi album. The user who posted it has a ton of similar outtakes, demos and so on (man, gonna be here all night!), but Bon Jovi has a particular place in my heart, so this is something a little special for me.

Cos... one of the fucked up things, for me, about the invention of sound and video capture technology is that even while it gives us chance to have the past at our fingertips, it really rams home the fact that you can't have it all, ever. There's more material already on record than any one person could ever sift for everything they wanted to hear, and much of it locked in vaults or forgotten in attics where you couldn't get to it anyway; and that's before you start asking for the stuff that wasn't caught on the magic reels, the one-nights-only that nobody taped, the old episodes that the BBC threw out. The rehearsals where someone achieved that one perfect riff while the deck wasn't running.

And even what we do capture and get to general release, is never the same as being there. This is why I love eighties hair metal videos and watch them with tears in my eyes; they're like tiny perfect splinters, sent shattering to the winds when the nineties put a sledgehammer through my sonic birthright and sent the pieces flying through time on the precarious wings of VH1 Classic and fans' old tape collections. And somehow, miraculously, they survived until now, twenty years later, they can embed themselves under my skin and dump their small cargos of preserved light and sound and beauty into my veins. I'm staring through a Youtube-sized, pixellated window into an age that doesn't exist any more and probably never did outside the daydreams of a pack of fluffy-haired adolescents in tight trousers, and it hurts so much to know that it was broken before I ever got there - but I can never stop hunting for more pieces.

...maybe some part of me still does believe that one day I'll find them all and be able to put it back together. *soft smile*

Rath