I'm highly susceptible to suggestion. Say something that includes a phrase or even a word from a song I know well and suddenly I'm singing that song - though sometimes it takes me a while to backtrack my thinking patterns to figure out why. When I read a review that sounds good, I'll likely get the item from the library or, more likely, I'll buy it. This includes music especially. Even music I haven't heard! If the review makes it sound like something I might enjoy, I'm there. I'm always on the hunt for that next CD I'll listen to endlessly in the car.
Long story not so short, I read a review of a new rock/pop duo out of Australia (I think) and couldn't resist. The cd is the Secret Life of...the Veronicas! How could I pass that up?
I've only listened to one runthrough, but I have to say I like. They've been compared to Avril Levigne and Veruca Salt and I can definitely see that. In fact, sounds like their producers have worked with everyone from Madonna to Avril and that can't be a bad thing. Not sure what song will be a favorite yet, but the cd is definitely going to be in the player for a while.
Back in the day (early 90's) I worked at a library branch and got to be friendly with a fellow Anne McCaffrey fan. Every time I'd see her we traded notes on the latest science fiction we'd read and whatever Anne M. stuff that came up. Though we only spoke across a check-out counter on her weekly visits to the library she came to trust me enough to tell me her deep dark secret. With a group of friends she'd created a fan 'zine devoted to the dragon worlds of Anne McCaffrey! Wow! A self-published magazine devoted to new tales of the empathic dragons and their humans. Who'd a thunk it?
The rest of this walk down memory lane has long since faded. The Pop Tart certainly never submitted any of her own stories to the 'zine. 'Course not. That was someone else and if you have copies, they're fakes.
TPT's efforts aside, ever since then I've been fascinated with the idea of 'zines and in this electronic age, fanfiction. Man the good, the bad and the ugly is all out there. And truly much of it's so bad it's good. Want examples? Check out Godawful Fan Fiction . With everything from Shakespeare to Lord of the Rings, the reviewers have got the worst covered - seems a lot of Mary Sue's want to get with Legolas. Go figure.
I was going to post about award shows tonight but just got through doing an IM chat with my sister and mom and thought I'd talk about that instead. I've never been a big fan of the chatroom idea. Too many people talking in sentences that say nothing. Working in a public library and seeing the purile things typed by the teens sort of turned me off chat.
Change came recently when my nephew left for Iraq. Before he went we got him a laptop and he's able to do chat online. So now I'm joining the text message world, kicking and screaming I'll admit. My sister and her son can talk via their computers with built in microphones. I have to type as I listen to them. Strange, I gotta say. Feels like I'm a deaf mute talking to hearing, speaking people as I type. Which in a weird way is what writing a blog sometimes feels like. Is anyone hearing me right now? I wonder. What a big silent world it is.
I digress. What I wanted to say is that I'm now a converted fan of the IM possibilities. My sister can talk to her son almost daily though he's half a world away in one of the most dangerous areas of the world (Taji - where Bob Woodruff and his cameraman were hurt). She has the comfort of hearing his voice at frequent intervals and even my mom (his grandmother) has joined in. Though somehow all we get are growls from her mic, she's trying. I'm trying to convince myself it's her dial-up and not operator error.
Next time I see those kids in the library with their inane online chatter, I'll no longer sneer. Though my nephew has to pay $75 for 100 hours of internet time on his laptop (don't get me started on the army charging so much!) he can talk to his mother whenever he has some time off. That's a very good thing.
So right now I'm going to go back to noodling around the net while I wait for my nephew to knock on my virtual door.