twilight time

It's another pleasant valley Friday. Or something similar, not least because we live on a hill, but the key fact is the Friday bit.

A night or so ago that well-known (insert description here, especially if you happen to be the person in question), F.G. Marshall-Stacks, commented that things were slow chez Stacksville and associated bloggy abodes. A timely comment, as I had got the feeling that things were quiet nearly everywhere.

My online routine each night is to read Crikey (I'm on a cheap bulk subscription organised by Nicholas Gruen at Club Troppo, so I end up paying about the right amount for the proportion of Crikey I actually read - no, I don't care about aeroplanes, the media, bloody football or how many times Kevin Rudd was mentioned in the media cf. number of times for Malcolm Turnbull).

Then I go to Oz Politics to get the headlines on who has been outraged by whom in the previous 24 hours. The names never change and the blog titles are invariably stupidly offensive.

Then I do the rounds of what is in fact a declining number of regular bloggers. And it is quiet. Eerily so. I can say with obvious certainty that since I haven't had to endure John Howard on the teev every day, I've got less - about 100% less - to get outraged about. Kevin mainly disappoints me, his henchpersons mainly amuse me but not enough to write about and Malcolm is a cardboard cutout with risible henchpersons.

So that's mainly why VVB has gone personal, but without the "up close and" bit which invariably precedes any use of the word "personal" that you'll read about in any mainstream media. And I don't pretend that my life is so interesting that...oh forget it.

So it's Friday. Tomorrow I have to take my brand new one of these back to shop where I bought it last weekend, because when I brought it home it developed a buzz in one channel that may or may not be some electrical induction noise or might have been something working loose.

It ain't the greatest brand but with modern electronics, the things this baby can do are amazing. It's been some 25 years since I last owned some electronic keyboards and boy, has the product changed in that time. I bought it to practise actually playing piano - it has what I think is a reasonable weighted key action - but you can make so many noises with it, plus automated bass, drum fills, multiple voices and so on - that you actually don't do the practice you had promised you would. Immense fun though.

So, Friday night music. I couldn't find what I thought I wanted so I went on a little peregrination and came across this - I have the album and it's been one of my favourites since new. I really wish I could have found a stage version.

But I didn't, so here's tonight's concert selection. I hope I haven't used this one before 'cos the song and the lady are absolute favourites of mine. Enjoy, 'cos I know you will!