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On one of my days off I decided to re-organise our lounge; I had a pair of Sony TL-140 speakers which are... inconvenient. They’re big, they make lots of noise, and they don’t sound horrible, which is fine, so far as it goes, but at the better part of a metre and a half tall they require a chunk of floor space to stand up, and that floor space is at a premium; moreover, since we don’t really crank music up especially loud in there (unless Maire is having other musos around) it seems a bit of a waste, really.

So away they went, and I rolled in a pair of nice wee bookshelf speakers from downstairs that were both criminally underused, and, frankly, way too small for the room they were in. They fit, on the other hand, perfectly in the dining room.

The most interesting thing about the whole shuffle, though, is not the way the room is now infinitely more pleasant and usable, but in order to see that the speakers were OK for the room I sat down and listened to a few albums the whole way through, which is something I haven’t done for a while, for the most part; in the era of mix-and-matching piles of FLACs, and listening to music while working or playing games or whatnot, it’s been a long time since I’ve just sat in a room, queued up a CD, and listened the whole way through, and man it was nice. Really, really nice.

Listening: Phil Ochs. Ten Cents a Coup seems as relevant as it did thirty years ago; one can only hope that Cheney and Bush ends up coming to as sticky an end as Agnew and Nixon; Cheney is certainly corrupt enough to embarrass even one of Agnew’s rather low personal standards. Also, the smarter-than-they-seem Transvision Vamp. Of course, they would have looked smarter if Wendy James hadn’t done her best Madonna impersonation around the time Madonna was busy dissapearing up her own arsehole and making bad music.

You know you’re prevaricating from Real Work when you spend your time wiring your new house with Cat 5 cable instead of unpacking, and thinking about how to represent which portions of the property you own on a Web page rather than updating the ol’ resume.

I’ve been discovering Phil Ochs over the last few days. Most excellent folk musician. Which may not be everyone’s schtick, but I’m fairly impressed. His adaptation of “The Highwayman” is very good indeed; and most of his social commentary songs are witty and amusing. Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon covered his “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” on “Prarie Home Invasion”. Aside from orthodox folk, he does a good line in ragtime and spoken blues.