dsng.net - the daryl sng blog

Cover versions I am looking for - anyone wants to trade? The Merrymakers, No More Lonely Nights Celia and the Mutations, Mony Mony Tom Petty, Leave Virginia Alone (okay, this is the original, insofar as he's the songwriter - did he ever record his own version of this song?) McAlmont & Butler, Back for Good Shinehead, Billie Jean Cathode, Maneater Juliana Hatfield, Only Love Can Break Your Heart The White Stripes, I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself Aretha Franklin, The Weight The Flaming Lips, Can't Get You Out of My Head The Fastbacks, Waterloo Sunset Behemoth, Hello Spaceboy Kings of Convenience, Free Falling Matthew Good Band, Enjoy The Silence

T-shirts! Get your Even Jesus Hates Creed T-shirts! Such a great slogan. Now if only people started making Hang Chad Kroeger Ts.

Does it seem like the British forces are doing quite well in a purely military sense? They seem to be getting the bad assignments (Basra, Umm Qasr), and lookie here, they got a general . Phonetic question: in Arabic is the sound represented in writing by "Q" really the aspirated [k] sound? I'm guessing it is. On a completely different note, woohoo, a new White Stripes album ( Elephant )! And it comes with a cover of "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself", presumably a campy-funny one since I can't imagine trying to top the Dusty Springfield version. Mmm. It's just a shot away... it's just a shot away.

As for what I think about the Anglo-American war with Iraq, I remain agnostic. Or rather, torn. As Edward Lempinen's piece in Salon.com puts quite lucidly, the fact is that anti-war protestors are not offering alternatives to the human rights violations committed by the Saddam regime. (George Orwell, ever quotable in such situations, writes that "the writings of younger intellectual pacificists... do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States". " Notes on Nationalism " is a nice short piece that's always worth a read.) I admit I remain completely suspicious of Dubya: I don't believe at present in the al-Qaeda / Saddam links, and I'm not sure how much of the war is due to a need for disarmament, how much a desire to impose a democratic regime, and how much the cold calculus of capitalism. Even so, the fact is this war could have positive human rights consequences, intended or

In a fit of extreme geekiness , this log has been rewritten to perform a server-side include using PHP. So http://www.dsng.net/blog.php also works to get to this page. And, continuing my penchant for random links, here's a snowdome that's done like the Biblical plague of locusts .

So a friend of a friend of a friend had a spare ticket to see the Stones . A spare ticket worth $275 American. So I can now say that I have, indeed, seen the Rolling Stones, up close and personal. Charlie Watts was stoic as ever; Keef was dressed like a bag lady and used a purple guitar I've never seen him use during "Satisfaction". It was good. A raunchy spectacle, which is just as it should be - animations of topless women, tornadoes of confetti, giant inflatable women that looked like they were, um, pleasuring themselves with the flagpoles they were carrying. What else to report? Most of the favourites got a run-through: Brown Sugar, Start Me Up, You Can't Always Get What You Want, Sympathy For The Devil, Honky Tonk Woman, Street Fighting Man, Satisfaction. Would've Liked To Hear: The Last Time, Miss You, Salt Of The Earth, Angie, Paint It Black, 19th Nervous Breakdown, Sister Morphine. And would've liked more bass on the sound system. But all quibbles, all

So my new Oscar conspiracy theory is that since everyone is so obsessed with making the thing come in on time, this year they decided to favour people who were likely to be no-shows: Roman Polanksi, Eminem, Miyazaki. Of course, the fact that all of those three were the best in their category might have a little to do with it too... Oh, and the archive is finally working, thanks to me finally figuring out what was wrong with my Blogger settings.

Like I said previously, perhaps one of the best things about the end of the dot-com (never ever "dot.com", which is garish) dream will be the demise of the "@" sign as a substitute for the word "at". Companies that used the @ always seemed a bit like a dad who talks about Michael Jackson (or Marilyn Manson?) in an effort to show he's "with it" - trying too hard, and too behind the times. Farewell, and good riddance. Anyway, on to more serious topics. I was thinking about how despite the posthumous canonisation of John Lennon, the unbridled id of Lennon wasn't the sole talent in the Fab Four. How does anyone deal with his solo work? I know "Imagine" moves lots of people, but I find it a tune of maudlin sentimentality. And that's the best of the Lennon solo canon? I think the maudlin is what I rail against most in music. (Apropros aside: Celine Dion Must Retire For Real.) But does time wash over maudlin tunes, coating them

Had a lovely chat with my friend Jiaying yesterday about, amongst other topics, architecture and design in Singapore, and we were discussing the upcoming One North (I think it has some pretentiously punctuated version of its name, "one.north" or the like), which is a Zaha Hadid space, if I'm not wrong. We talked about the names of the One North buildings - e.g. there's a "fusionopolis" where people can be "fusionairies". Now, this murdering of the English language has got to stop already! Don't people have instincts about what sounds aesthetically pleasing? It smacks a little of Trying Too Hard To Be With It. Especially when, of the big tech companies I can think of, not many have forced faux-trendy names - Sun? Oracle? Dell? All very pleasing to the ear. Even Yahoo!'s name is a literary reference. And it hasn't escaped my attention that the ones with names that tried too hard - anything with an "@" sign (Excite@Home), an &qu