"American [sic] would be a better country if more people listened to music without lyrics."
- Whiskey Before Breakfast

That's the truest aphorism I've heard in a long time. Not that there's anything wrong with lyric'd music, quite the contrary, but music for music's sake is truly fantastic; and I'm sure that listening to it is actively good for your mind. And it would separate the musicians from the pop-stars.

In more deviant-related news, I'm feeling more inspired than I was at the time of my last journal entry (inspiration is a nice feeling) so I've been brushing up on some Photoshop skills in preparation for a space-art project, or something like that. I wish I had a nicer object-modeler/renderer than Bryce Bryce is nice (), but it's not so good for rendering things other than landscapes and really simple objects.

I've also got lotsa uni work on at the moment, as I always do, so I'm not going to be foolish enough to give any kind of eta on that, or on anything else for a while at least.

I've been enjoying the forums recently, though the brief spike in interesting debate seems to have subsided slightly. Oh well, it comes and goes frequently enough

For hilarity, the Ricky Gervais Podcast (if you don't already know about it...).

Speaking of podcasts and of debates, if you're a fan both of science-fiction (as a genre) and of philosophy (as I am); then check out The Sci-Phi Show podcast, along with the associated forums. The show's all about looking at philosophical problems from the perspective of those tackled in science-fiction. The host's a fairly conservative Christian, and this comes across in the way he presents the show, but he's at least totally prepared to talk about the issues at hand. The other members of the (as yet, very small) forum community are also eloquent and capable of holding up a debate. Be warned, though, the podcasts are rather spoiler-y of the fiction in question.

I'm now an officially sanctioned supporter of =dapride! In my opinion, the GLBT-community is under-appreciated; and homophobia, and other similar phobias are the new in-things on the bigotry scene at the moment. All these "God says it's wrong" people need to realise that no matter how strongly they believe, not everyone agrees. All these "it breaks down real marriage" people need to stop living in the past: if homosexuality really does break down marriage (something which I sincerely doubt), then marriage is clearly in need of an update to keep with the needs of the people. Anyway, I liked their avatar.

Listen to MC Frontalot; admittedly he has lyrics, but they're good