Closure. That's a healthy state to aspire to, isn't it? Therefore, and since I'm feeling re-inspired by Anna's current "You ask, I answer" exercise - which was in turn inspired by my own long-abandoned effort - I shall once again attempt to answer the questions which you asked me five months ago.

OK, hit me.

Question 9.
Vaughan asked (with rather more topicality at the time):
If you could choose one British pop act of the past decade to represent the UK at Eurovision, who would it be - and why?

Aha! An easy lob. There can only be one answer: the MIGHTY Girls Aloud. But only on condition that their entry was written and produced, like nearly all of their singles to date, by the pop genius that is Brian Higgins of Xenomania. The hooks, the looks: oh, it would be a stroll in the park for the lot of them.

Question 10.
Vaughan also asked (with seemingly as little topicality then as now):
Would you and K consider offering photographic greetings cards for other times of the year apart from Christmas?

(If you're wondering what Vaughan means by this, then look here and here.)

How timely you should ask.

Last Christmas, we had fully intended to issue a photographic greeting depicting the two of us staring forlornly into space at opposite ends of the bench on the village green, adorned with the caption "We're the only Gays in the village." But, you know, pressure of deadlines, blah-di-blah.

You can therefore imagine our outrage at discovering, only this week, that Sky One will shortly be screening a reality TV series called The Only Gays In The Village, in which comedian Scott Capurro and three other as yet unidentified Urban Celebrity Poofs are sent to live in a farmhouse in rural Derbyshire for a few weeks - with the inevitable Hilarious Consequences, no doubt.

Yes: our entire existences have been pitched - pitched, I tell you! - and turned into mass entertainment.

So no, there will be no more photographic greetings. At least, not without full international licensing deals.

Question 11.
Finally, Vaughan asked:
From your extensive music collection, what five CDs would you save in the event of some natural disaster striking your home?

Firstly, let's assume that the same natural disaster has also wiped out the country's entire CD manufacturing and distribution networks, while still leaving the rest of our infrastructure intact. Because, love them as I do, I have never become sentimentally attached to a CD in the way that I was once attached to vinyl. A vinyl album or single is almost a living, breathing life-form in its own right (and my, isn't the CBT therapist going to have a field day with that one), whereas a CD is just an inert - and entirely replaceable - software delivery system.

(Besides, which home are we talking about? Rock/dance/back catalogue lives in Nottingham, whereas soul/funk/jazz/world/latin/acoustic/downtempo stuff lives in Derbyshire. When we moved out there, I actually went through my entire album collection, separating them into "Urban" and "Rural" categories. Well, wouldn't anyone?)

I'm playing for time, because this is a nigh-impossible question.

Hmm.

OK.

Well, I wouldn't have much time to think about this, would I? So, in the spirit of the Mad Dash that would ensue, I'll give you five off the top of my head.

Kevin Ayers - Joy Of A Toy.
The The - Soul Mining.
Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man.
Ultramarine - Every Man And Woman Is A Star.
Maxwell - Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite.

Something for most occasions there, I think.

Minty - That's Nice (1996)

(As requested by Bebs and noodle.)

"God is dead - that's nice! Sunglasses worn on head - that's nice!"

Like Gina X before it, this is - how can I put it - not necessarily for everyone. (More pretentious art-fags who can't sing, in other words. And hurrah for that.)

After an even longer gap than usual, I've updated the "We Listen" chart on the sidebar. As ever, hover your mouse for pithy capsule reviewlets.

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Update: Thanks to Meg for pointing out that the aforementioned "pithy capsule reviewlets" are in fact UNREADABLE to users of the Firefox and Mozilla web browsers.

This is because, although Internet Explorer cheerfully allows you to add as much mouseover text as you like, this is NOT STANDARD, and NOT WHAT WAS INTENDED FOR LINK TITLES. It is therefore WRONG, and further evidence of the INSIDIOUS EVIL THAT IS MICRO$... no, I'd better stop right there.

Anyway. The long and the short of it is that both Firefox and Mozilla only allow a maximum of, I dunno, about 50 characters or so for link titles. (Sorry, but I can't be arsed to Google for the exact figure. There should be an acronym for this, shouldn't there? CBATG. Yes. I shall deploy it forthwith.) Of course, this limit is ENTIRELY REASONABLE, and QUITE ENOUGH FOR ANYONE THANK YOU, and helps to STAMP OUT the insidious CURSE of Link Title Abuse, and... sorry. It's the pills. (*)

Anyway. There was a time, not so very long ago, when my reaction would have been: pah, who cares about these arriviste, pissant little browsers anyway? If you'll pardon my French. However, and to my slight surprise, my referral stats show that a whopping 13% of my current readers have now switched to Firefox or Mozilla. (Further evidence of the MASSIVE GRASSROOTS REBELLION that threatens to OVERTHROW THE SUFFOCATING GRASP THAT HAS... no, really, I'm OK.)

Anyway. If you scroll once more down to the bottom of the "We Listen" chart, you will now find a link to a separate page, constructed especially for the New Warriors of the Firefox Revolution, in which all the pithy capsule reviewlets are displayed as proper text.

(Although I have to say that extracting the text from the link titles and forcing them into the clear light of day felt somehow very wrong. This is because the text was specifically composed to be read in subversive little pop-up windows, and not as actual attempts at proper grown-up reviews. I think the word you're looking for here is "precious".)

(*) Not really. Instead of wearily reaching for her prescription pad, my utterly wonderful GP is referring me to a cognitive behavioural therapist. Which is actually what I was hoping for all along.

Over at Guild Of Ghostwriters, Demian is running a quite wonderful Doodle-Blog Guest Fortnight. Contributors range from leading lights of The Hand-Illustrated Weblog Movement (oh yes) to those who "claim they can't draw".

Into which latter category I would firmly place myself. Well, why not judge for yourselves?

(There's also a full-sized version here, if you can handle a 250k image with no problem.)

Although absent-minded at the best of times, my levels of scattiness now appear to be going through the roof. Especially in the mornings.

On arriving at work yesterday morning, I realised that my mobile was still sitting on the chest of drawers in the hall, and that my pen was sitting by the PC in the study. Having administered a suitably painful self-kicking, I then booked a taxi (at 11:40) for my dental appointment (at 12:05). Remembering last week's unfortunate little debacle (actually, let's not), I repeatedly reminded myself about this all morning - and, miraculously, managed to get myself out of the office on time. (Even if this did involve walking out halfway through a complex technical dicussion which I myself had instigated just five minutes earlier.)

However, my sense of triumph was somewhat dampened when, upon presenting myself at the dentist's reception desk, I discovered that I was a full day early. The appointment had been correctly entered in my diary; my only problem was being unable to differentiate between the "Tuesday" and the "Wednesday" sections on the same page. (Do you ever get that? No, thought not.)

In the bathroom this morning, I started the day by cheerfully moisturising my entire face with hair cream. (Wella "polishing cream", to be exact. Awfully good stuff. For the hair. On the face, it causes a mild stinging sensation. To say nothing of clogging up the pores.)

In the kitchen, I added milk to my tea from the half-emptied carton, poured out my cereal (Special K, as always), then calmly went back to the fridge, took out and opened a fresh carton, and poured that onto my cereal. Only then did I notice both cartons on the work top, gazing at me with that peculiar baffled expression that milk cartons sometimes have. (We'll get to the delusions in another posting.)

Naturally, this left me so traumatised that I left the house without my diary. The diary which contains the time of today's dental appointment. Which, equally naturally, I had already forgotten. Thank God I remembered my phone, then. (Although remembering the phone also required an extra-special effort of conscious will, so determined was I not to repeat the mistakes of yesterday morning.)

It usually gets better after lunch.

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This morning, I think I might some need extra help. Tell you what: if you read this posting in time, and if you have EITHER my work e-mail address OR my mobile number, then PLEASE E-MAIL ME OR TEXT ME AT 11:30 (UK TIME) TO REMIND ME TO GET THE BLOODY TAXI ALREADY!

Thank you, my little online support group. Thank you indeed.

(*) I also - and I swear this isn't a contrived stunt - forgot to give this post a title before posting. Quod erat demonstrandum, and all that.

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Update for a concerned Karen: I made the appointment 15 minutes early, and eventually saw the dentist 15 minutes late, giving me ample time to catch up with the fascinating world of men's lifestyle magazines in the interim. I've gone off my dental practice; they've been taken over by a national chain, whose overriding motive is pure profit. All the nice folksy "don't eat sweets, kids!" posters have been taken down in the waiting room, and replaced by pictures of glamorous young models saying things like "Teeth whitening is so easy! I only wish I'd done it earlier!" And my reassuring, diligent old dentist has been replaced by a shifting stream of perky new dentists in their mid-twenties, who obviously see the place as a staging post on the way to greater (i.e. non-NHS) things. Also, these perky new dentists don't see fit to sully themselves with mundane tasks such as scaling and polishing any more. Oh no. Instead, they farm that sort of stuff out to a separate (and private) hygienist, who charges 30 quid a session and "recommends" that I visit her every three months, if you please. It's all part of a VAST PLOT by EVIL CORPORATE HOMOGENISING BASTARDS who are SUCKING THE... sorry, should I be saving this stuff for 10pm on Friday nights?

This is kinda weird, and kinda exciting, and wholly unexpected: I'm currently listening to fellow blogger Sasha on BBC Radio Five Live, where she's guesting on Matthew Bannister's talk show. You can listen live until 1am via this link, and for the next 24 hours via this link. Oh, and the webcam's on - see below. (Sadly, she's got her back to us. That's mystique for you.)