Usual Bilge

I'm really pleased that I have now managed to forget to smoke for a full 3 weeks. Not only no cigarettes but also no "NRT" : 40 fags a day to no nicotine at all, cold turkey. And successfully for 3 weeks now.

I have obviously already spent the £191 I've saved up to this point... which leads me nicely to music. I have been quite restrained recently in my music purchases, especially since Music Zone (recently AKA Fopp) went bust, but I have been feeling that I needed some more prog in my life. In the first instance I purchased a Line 6 Toneport GX. However, my guitar playing is not, after a mere 20 years or so practice, up to prog (or much else, frankly.) Therefore today's prog recommendation is not me playing my latest masterpiece, but "Dream Theater" and their latest prog-metal (with a nod to Muse on at least one track) effort "Systematic Chaos".

On a non-prog front, today's other CD acquistition is the latest album by the mighty Orange Goblin. This viciously chilled out band should be enormously successful but won't be as "vicious" and "chilled out" in the same description is generally seen as unlikely. Add metal into the recipe, season with a healthy respect for the progmasters Pink Floyd, bake for a while at gas mark Black Sabbath, and then serve garnished with a dash of the blues, and sadly the chances of Orange Goblin laying waste to the mainstream are unlikely. A pity.

Ooooooh...

...crikey, I appear to have continued to forget to smoke. It's heading for a week now. That must be what those feelings much like a large excavator with spiky wheels driving around inside my skull are trying to remind me about.

Lonely as a cloud...

I appear to have failed to smoke any cigarettes since last Friday. This oversight, aside from leading to some strange headaches, hot flushes, etc, has also left me quite a few pounds (cash money pounds, not the weight variety) better off, and, as I was strolling around at lunchtime today (in Windermere - but not this far on this occasion - rather than Birmingham today for a change) I also appear to have regained some sense of smell. I was able to detect at some distance the odour of chips and could also tell that the person sitting directly behind me on the train back to Oxenholme was eating beef flavour crisps (every silver lining has a cloud, eh.)