art & music is on my mind ....

Today's inspiration: Jonathan Jones' Art blog on the Guardian website.

All of his ideals about artists are pretty amazing, lofty and inspiring. But when he mixes up music - and one of my favourite bands, no less - with talk of art, I'm always particularly interested and intrigued.

Not to mention, the talk of late 70's/early 80's Britain is pretty much the most melancholy time I can imagine, what with Thatcherism at it's height and all the degradation it produced.

His other recent posts on Rothko and religion are pretty great too.

Enjoy.

Espana vs Italia?

Oh, how much do I LOVE the Guardian? I should really be doing reading for my second European Studies tutorial tomorrow, but I can't resist an update on the other countries. We focus on the Balkans, Turkey, and Russia in this semester, however here's an interesting story about how Spain is overtaking Italy in the progressive/wealth stakes in Europe, much to the Azzuri's disgust. So why - still! - can I not study Spanish at University? In Perth, at least. Here's hoping I hear back from the Hispanic club I signed up to the other day with news of their language classes, yay! OK, back to the books ... well, back to some Cutters work actually. Bah.

The man is a genius

Charlie Brooker once again finds the time wax lyrically on another stupid bureaucratic ideal, the idea of a Smoker's Permit. I need to find more time to devote to reading all Brooker articles, for at least they will keep me sane in this horrendous city. I spent 45minutes this afternoon waiting at a bus stop listening to the inane goings-on of a bunch of (mostly private) high school children and I wished on a number of occasions that I was either dead, drunk or at least in the possession of my iPod so I could stop listening to them. I shan't be travelling on public transport again without it, I think it's a necessary weapon to remove society from my surroundings. How awful is that? And snobbish? My goodness, if I spend any more time in Sholl Avenue, I just may end up voting Tory sometime soon ...

And whilst I'm ranting, I was very frustrated yesterday to not be able to use an ampersand character in the labels for my post. I can't be bothered emailing Blogger about it as I'm sure it won't get me anywhere, but I don't understand their need to policy the use of punctuation in labels. Surely a search engine that can read punctuation exists? Actually, I'm probably just expecting far too much of the world as per usual.

At least I had two good meetings today, my professional support network has dropped from three to two, but they were both encouraging and excited for me today with the job and study news. Now, if I can only just avoid M&D until Kel comes to pick me up, it will be a happy day.