The problem with homework, and feel free to disagree with me here, is not in the doing, but in the getting done. By Which I mean (sacrificing clarity for pith) that I have an assignment due in two days that I could finish in no time if I could overcome the massive hurdle of actually starting it.

Learning Jacques Brel songs will not help me to pass my Australian Literature unit.

However! I have gotten my dad's Father's Day presents sorte-out, which is nice. I couldn't afford to get him a decent birthday present, and you have to buy too many different people gifts at Christmas to be able to afford to get anyone anything especially fancy, but I managed to buy him (across several weeks):

1 - The Berlin Trilogy - The three late-70s David Bowie albums, starting with Low and ending with Lodger ("Heroes" comes between them), which are all pretty great. Dad loves Bowie, but he's only really familiar with the guy's early 70s work. I a rectifying this! He will know the joys of the synthesiser and the gated snare!

2 - A bottle of Brown Brothers Riesling. Is this a good Riesling? I know that Riesling is good, and I remember my mum often speaking fondly of Brown Brothers, but I'm not sure. It'll be better than most of the stuff he drinks, anyway. My dad is of the "5 dollar mixed red" school of wine drinkers. The weird thing is, if he likes the wine and drinks it all on the day, he'll end-up tipsy and I'll be angry at him because of it. I guess I am sowing the seeds of my own destruction? I guess I will at least get a glass?

Speaking of wine, cheap or otherwise, I went to an art show on Friday, as required by one of the assessment elements in my Literature and Philosophical Contexts class. We have to take one of the paintings, associate it with one of the cities in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and write a creative response tackling both the meaning of Calvino's city and the broader philosophical theory of the unit. This is part of a journal that I have to finish by the end of next week, but haven't started yet. I guess I am usually this slack, and seem to be managing alright, but that's because I usually dedicate a straight, fevered 16 hour stretch the day before something is due towards getting it finished, thus making-up for lost time. Not working is a boon.

Anyway, wine. I was always under the impression that you got free wine at art shows. This is not the case. It probably wasn't very good, anyway. But I did get to see my tutor in a suit.

I've got a cold and a mild case of melancholia. I want to spend all day in the shower, but that's irresponsible, and this horribly modern house hasn't got a bath.

Also I picked-up a copy of Dusk At Cubist Castle by the Olivia Tremor Control. I thought it would be like Neutral Milk Hotel because it's from the Elephant 6 Collective, and called "Dusk At Cubist Castle". Instead it's a pretty interesting mix of ultra-accessible Beatles/Beach Boys/Zombies-style pop, and a bunch of crazy krautrock experimental pieces and out-there psychedelic drone. It's really good, but since I rarely get the urge to listen to the Beatles and I really wanted something messier and more twee, I'm a little miffed. I have a three disk changer so I may have to jam it between Odyssey and Oracle and Pet Sounds and see what happens.

It's kind of crazy to think anything pre-dating In The Aeroplane Over the Sea would sound much like In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, though. God I love that album.

Also, lately I have been listening to vast amounts of Shoegaze. I even made a compilation of it. I gave it to someone but I'm not sure who actually ended-up with it. For all I know it's down the back of a couch in the lecture theatre. But my point is that Slowdive are one of my new favourite bands. It's really beautiful stuff that's very heavily indebted to folk, dub, country, late My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins. I suppose most shoegaze is indebted to the later two, but anyway. The disappointing thing is that, following the release of Pygmalion, this really beautiful ambient album (think a more formless, less jazzy Talk Talk) that they did with Brian Eno, the band sort of split apart and then reformed with a new name (Mojave 3 - because there are three of them, and they live in a desert?) and an interesting, but not really that captivating alt-country sound. So I guess that's disappointing.

Also "When I Die" by Lush is the prettiest song.

I should go and make a soup or something. I make pretty good soup.

Or start a music review site.

Tags: david bowie, father's day, galleries, homework, shoegaze, soup, the olivia tremor control
Current Music: the olivia tremor control - dusk at cubist castle