Even when they throw in an extra day in the year it still proves to be too much of a Goliath to conquer – reading 20 books.

So as per always, I’ve got one new year’s resolution and that is:

To read 20 books!

Footnote:

To timeously do administration and those dishes before my kitchen gets Withnailian its appearance.

The wheel turns, even for Australian cricket who’s cricketing team dominated the sport for a generation providing it with a new impetus as a result of their trademark edgy brand of cricket which encapsulated, quick scoring, managing and transferring pressure and a Brady Bunch of confident and colourful personalities.

Ricky Ponting to his credit manfully continues to prevent this wheel from turning at a pace which day brings night but perhaps his 99 runs in the second test symbolises that coming up short, that decline. In previous years that one run short would have been what the opposition captain would have been left to lament in a quiet dressing wondering how to effect the necessary changes to ensure victory sometime in the future.

And the game is also about losing, something that is not reserved entirely for the opposition although you would have to go back to Richie Richardson’s West Indies in 1992-93 who last won a Test Series, Down Under, to remember what it must have felt like if you are an Australian and who can remember the 90s except Ricky Ponting today.

For South Africa, the series thus far has been a process of conquering that mental block that is Australian cricket characterised by many turning points. The one for me that stands out is a change in team dynamic embodied by the selection of players from previously disadvantaged communities.

This team may go on to be a champion team and that champion team is now successfully drawing on all of the resources of the country, it’s taken a generation for that wheel to turn. When Ashwell Prince returns to the team together with Hashim Amla, JP Duminy and Makhaya Ntini this representation will be at its most pronounced and visible which will create new role models for the next generation of emerging players whose hereos will be ‘a Smith or a Kallis or a Amla or a Duminy’.

But we are not there just yet, it requires another 153 runs, some concentration, some sunny weather and the belief that dreams can be attained even in the early hours of morning when almost all is asleep.

The last push before the world finally slows down for a little bit.

Today most places, not all places, close for business at one o’clock, to give the people who work during this period a chance to either conclude the last minute details; the slightest a window of opportunity, or to put their feet up and have a quiet cup of tea; an interlude of relaxation before the festivities begin.

I’m in the latter camp, my slippers are on my espresso is made and the television is on mute.

A quiet time for reflection, they say at this time, ‘all is forgiven’ and people are welcomed back to the fold.

It’s been a few weeks now since my younger brother announced that he was going to get married, it wasn’t unexpected but it was a little bit of a surprise. We have got different energy, different personalities, we share different interests and now different time zones yet we do have a bond. He is down for Christmas with his fiancée and two things struck me besides a growing maturity, the first almost surreally is that he has a plan, they have a plan, he became they and there is a plan which they would like for their lives to follow. The second was that, just like this was her first Christmas away from her family so we would not be sharing every Christmas together in future and how that would sentimentally affect the two people, our parents, who have tried to make this a special time for us, for as long as I can remember, we’ve been extremely lucky in that way.

The world changes, there is not much you can do about it but sensibly adapt and keep hoping that those good things find the people that matter, in his case the gains easily offset the losses, too strong a word, it’ll just be different.

And now as the moment draws ever closer let me wish you: Here’s hoping you get lotsa useful gifts, that the mistletoe is always in your favour and that the Christmas is both memorable and more importantly merry.

This is an extract from Pop Matters which reads like something out of a John Hughes movie or Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity which is probably why it gets the nod.

  Pop Matters Picks – The Best Indie Pop 2008 by Dave Heaten  [10 December 2008]

There are many bands making music by their own means, on their own terms, enough so to be labeled “independent”. But in today’s music-industry climate, what does that independence mean?

I live for new bands, for keeping up with music on a ground level, where people are making music and packaging it up themselves, or having friends do it. There are many, many bands making music today by their own means, on their own terms, enough so to be labeled “independent”. But in today’s music-industry climate, where a record contract isn’t as valuable or even necessary as it once was, what does that independence itself mean? What does it tell you about the music?

In 2008, I’ve found myself again gravitating to bands not because I perceive them to be revolutionary, nor because they’re hip, and not even just because they follow a DIY path. I find myself gravitating to bands because of their songs. I find myself once again in awe at the craft of building a pop song, of thinking up a melody, writing some words, and singing them so other people can listen to them obsessively, get to know every second, share them with friends, bring them along on road-trips, put them on during breakfast and lunch and dinner, and linger over them when they should be sleeping.

That isn’t to say that the 10 albums I chose as my favorite indie-pop albums of the year don’t possess a sense of style. Each of the 10 is an album with its own personality, its own way of speaking, made by a band that has built its own unique approach to pop music. Style goes hand in hand with songwriting. It isn’t an end in itself. That’s part of why these songs have the air of music that will last, maybe not for pop-music historians, but for listeners, for music fans.

1. The Lucksmiths – First Frost

I can think of no other band that writes melodic pop songs as articulate about everyday life scenarios—cities, the weather, wasting time, interactions between friends and lovers—as the Lucksmiths, and they keep getting better at it as the years pass. What’s more, their music is getting more attractive to the ears. Each of their last three albums has represented a strengthening and filling-out of their sound. First Frost is touched by driving rock, stately folk, tender soul, and a blast of noise, even. And all the while this sounds like the Lucksmiths we know and love. Within these songs people travel, get drunk, grow together and grow apart. None of the stories are unnecessarily over-dramatic, but rather thoughtful, detailed, and recognizable. That real-life familiarity may be why their albums are so easy to listen to over and over again, to live with…  

I agree with the number one pick, they do sound like the Smiths and make for perfect summer, rainy day nodding, give Good light and California popular song a try.

But pick a number between 2 to 10 and insert the latest Stereolab…or you can just see what else Pop matters have to say.

 

It serve me right for faffing about while I could have pro-actively been filling those Christmas stockings, I had lots and lots of time to avoid the last minute Christmas shopper and the holiday chaos caused by vagrant teenage malling.

After finally collating my gift list, I’ve been on a little mission impossible which encompasses quietly slipping into and out of stores, hoping only to be accosted by prettiest of shop assistants who purport to knowledgeably repeat product specifications to me. Is this what models do I’d be thinking or is she just getting into character and before any conclusion can comfortably land, I’d be pushed out of the way by a father, his two daughters and that second credit card.

My problem, is largely one of inertia, I just can’t get into the holiday strut, when I’m moving, I like to keep going and that slowest of walks with the petulance for awkwardly stopping in the most inappropriate places raises my temperature. The strut which is additionally characterised by a drunken, drifting, slant sometimes left, sometimes right and always it would seem just as you are trying to skip passed.

But doggedly I have got it all done, I’m done, all I need to do is wrap a few things with last year’s wrapping paper but mostly I don’t since all I’ve got for my friends, thankfully they drink, is wine and they get to select the bottle of their choice with all the left overs returning home with me in a doggy bag.

Aarh Christmas hey, you gotz ta love it, even in a recession, it’s still feels the same…thankfully.

This is how it happened. I had been having all sorts of hassles with my blog’s B2Evolution template, lots of little things but by far the most annoying was that the text often didn’t stay in the posting window. I thought that some of these glitches would be eradicated in the next version, so I went into Bluehost and saw that there was indeed a new version of B2Evolution available, and at that fateful moment I decided to upgrade.

The system does an automatic backup and then punches in the new template after which I guess content is linked but I got a HTTP 500 error, apparently a skin could not be found, was the helpdesk’s explanation.

So stuck with a dilemma of trying to find and correct the problem which I did for a few hours with some more helpdesk correspondence, I knew that I was faced with that decision and cutting your losses is never easy but I removed the new installation, deleted a few files and tried again. This time a got the blank template but I thought that since I was changing my virtual space, that I may as well try WordPress. I think B2Evolution is better but maybe better is just a case of more familiar.

It’s difficult knowing that 600 posts are stuck in a tar file format which is of no use to anyone, and that those archives now reside on some portable hard drive, I promise that I will warn you the next time I that try to be so very clever.

I do suspect that jumping from version 1.92 to version 2.42 was too big a migration and the system hemorrhaged a little.

Fall down five times get up six