Jarvis Cocker - ‘Running the world’ | Jarvis Cocker - ‘Black magic’ | The Yeah Yeah Yeahs & Etienne DeCrecy - ‘Fast hearts (Eve Massacre mix)’ | Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - ‘Ramblin’ Man’ | Spoon - ‘I summon you’ | The Vaselines - ‘Molly’s lips’ | Pavement - ‘Cut your hair’ | Jeff Tweedy - ‘Please tell my brothers’ | Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - ‘House fire’ | Johnny Cash & the Tennessee Two - ‘Get rhythm’ | Matt & Kim - ‘Yea yeah’ | Trail of Dead - ‘Stand in silence’ | Mazzy Star - ‘Be my angel’ | Big Star - ‘I’m in love with a girl’ | Fujiya & Miyagi - ‘Cassette single’ | The Teardrop Explodes - ‘Treason’ | Thee Headcoats - ‘We hate the f*ckin’ NME’ | Dead Kennedys - ‘MTV get off the air’ | Charles Douglas - ‘Ganapathee’ | Fields - ‘Brittle sticks’ |The Fabulous Rudies - ‘99 Luftballon’ |  Thea Gilmore - ‘Ever fallen in love’ | Zombina & the Skeletones - ‘Where is my mind’ | Beth Orton - ‘Sisters of mercy’ | Tori Amos - ‘Sweet dreams are made of this’ | St. Fiachra’s Junior School Choir - ‘The sweetest thing’ |

Jarvis Cocker - ‘Running the world’ (karaoke version!) | Scanners - ‘Lowlife’ [.mov] | Zero-7 - ‘Futures’ [.mov] | Jamie Lidell - ‘The city’ [.mov] | Rinocerose - ‘Cubicle’ [.mov] | Gnarls Barkley - ‘Gone daddy gone’ [.mov] | Coldcut w/ Roots Manuva - ‘True skool’ [.mov] | Massive Attack - ‘False flags’ [.mov] | Dressy Bessy - ‘Electrified’ | The Replacements - ‘Kiss me on the bus’ (Paul Westerberg + dungarees + original ‘Mats line-up = brilliance) | The Replacements - ‘Bastards of young’  (that video) | The Replacements - ‘Achin’ to be’ | The Replacements - ‘Goddamn Job’ / ‘Junior’s got a gun’  |  The Jesus and Mary Chain Riot (’my favourite colour is gold’, almost Dylanesque)

I’m thinking of starting a whiparound to try and get Jarvis Cocker on the honours list. I just need to know what the going rate is.

Joi Ito’s World of Warcraft guild We Know use Second Life to plan Warcraft raid strategies and review raid performances. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of this …

Meanwhile, the taxmen are trying to get their heads around taxing ‘virtual’ income.

How not to lie with statistics. How to lie with statistics (recommended reading, published in 1954).

Boots: 128MB Sony MemoryStick (largest capacity in stock), 54.95

Argos: 256MB Sony MemoryStick, 49.99, 512MB Sony MemoryStick, 79.99

Approximate distance between entrances: 20ft

So, does this mean that nobody’s buying their memory sticks in Boots, because the price is prohibitive? Or that retailers are employing a ‘let’s see what we can get away with’ pricing approach? I wonder …

It does seem very reminiscent of the approach to house pricing in Ireland these days. But yet people keep on buying because, y’know, there’s no such thing as an economic cycle. Or interest rates. And the old rules don’t apply because we finally found the crock of gold and the good times are here forever. And the fact that one in eight jobs in this country is in the construction sector is immaterial of course, because the blessed property market operates in a vacuum. We’ll just keep building those houses and filling them with immigrants, right. They just better be immigrants earning six-figure salaries, of course.

Banks moving out of property in a big way ("AIB agrees record €360m sale leaseback deal for HQ extension … by far the largest property transaction of its kind ever in the Irish market" [Unison, use Bugmenot for access]) isn’t really important, though. What would mortgage lenders know about the direction the property market is moving in anyway? Sure they’re even paying first time buyers to take out mortgages now. What could possibly go wrong? Of course, we all know the market prices are being driven by a scarcity of supply, so we should really ignore this CSO report from April [PDF] which states that "approximately 275, 000 residences were vacant at the time of the census". Those crazy statisticians must have been at the crack pipe again.

Edit:  Another chart I came across. Double the EU average and a-rising. Inextricably linked seems to be the most accurate prase. Irish people not suckers at all. 

It’s a shame that this idiotic spending spree may very well negate any of the positive effects of the large inflow of capital into this country over the past decade. All gleefully encouraged by lending institutions and politicians’ builder (sorry, developer) friends.

Haven’t had time to dig out some stuff for a while. As noted below, these links tend to die quickly.

Grant Lee Philips - ‘Boys don’t cry’ | The Wedding Present - ‘Where everybody knows your name’ | Yo La Tengo - ‘Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind’ |  Nina Nastasia - Brad haunts a party’ | Joan of Arc - ‘Trial at Orleans’ | Sunset Rubdown - ‘Stadiums and shrines’ | The Big Sleep - ‘Murder’ | Iron & Wine - ‘The trapeze swinger’ | Black Box Recorder - ‘The English motorway system’ | Sparklehorse - ‘Shade and honey’ | Sisters Love - ‘Give me your love’ |  

Beastie Boys - ‘Holy Snappers’ | Edith Piaf - ‘La vie en Rose’ | The Vader Sessions | ‘Science and the soul: J. Robert Oppenheimer and Doctor Atomic’ | ‘Consequences of the war on terrorism’ (needs RealPlayer) | Spaced, episode one, series one

… but the results are just amazing. "This exercise is a very superficial introduction to what a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine is thinking when they look at your tongue." Emphasis mine.