pogoism

You’ve got to hand it to Lady Gaga – she knows how to make money from the gays.

1. Catchy chorus that’s barely audible? Check.
2. Some words spoken in badly pronounced French? Check.
3. Hideous costumes? Check.
4. Drag queen look? Check.
5. A dance routined that easily perfected by baby-gays on YouTube? Check.
6. Claps? Yep.
7. Risque part with fireworks bra and dead body? Check.

It’s quite a good song though, isn’t it…

Btw, did I mention she’s releasing a new “album”, even though it’s essentially her old album with some new tracks tacked on?

1. Florence and the Machine’s album. I heard it at a friend’s house a few weeks ago. Go listen to it on Spotify. I dare you not to fall in love with the track “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)”.

2. The Thick of It on BBC Two. I’ve never watched this show before. It’s Armando Iannucci’s satirical political comedy. Sort of like The Office, only less difficult to watch, and funnier. It follows the Department for Social Affairs and Citizenship, and it’s head Nicola Murray. Currently trying to get my hand on the first 2 series…

3. Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. Great biography of Abraham Lincoln. Wanted to find out more about him, as Obama has styled himself as a modern day Lincoln. Still plowing through it (it’s long), but it’s a great and easy read.

And what I didn’t like…

Voter’s repealing the gay marriage law in Maine. One day, hopefully, the bigots will disappear and realise that to deny happiness and equality to people is, frankly, sickening.

ARGH! Ok, this video is really hard to find and embed on blogs. So, just go to YouTube and search for “Cheryl Cole X Factor Fight for This Love” and I’m sure you’ll find it. Not sure why Cheryl’s record label are so opposed to free publicity, but whatever…

Woot!

… it’s make good pop music. (And universal healthcare).

Every time I hear a Regina Spektor song, I get a little nostalgic. Some of my happiest memories from my first 2 years in Belfast were spent listening to her music.

Her songs seems so simple, and yet when you listen a little harder, the lyrics often hit home, hard. Her new song, the first track to be taken from her upcoming album, Far, is a fantastic example of this. Take a couple of minutes out and listen:

Laughing With

After the jump, some more Regina Spektor…

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Freemasons (feat. Sophie Ellis-Bextor) – Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer

David Guetta (feat. Kelly Rowland) – When Love Takes Over

These are fantastic! A guy called Michael Gregory has been using a nifty piece of software called Auto-Tune that alters singer’s voices to create the perfect pitch, and has been doing it to news clips to create these videos. They’re really, really good – go watch!

Reno is great for 2 things – eating out and drinking. There’s not a whole lot else to do, other than snowboarding in the winter and kayaking in the summer, so in the last few months I’ve been to a lot of restaurants. But in my 9 months here, I haven’t found anywhere that has totally satisfied me, until yesterday.

I (foolishly) walked home from work yesterday, all the way up McCarran, on the hottest day of the year, so by the time I got home, I didn’t really fancy cooking. After looking up Bavarian World, and discovering they had very little in the way of non-carnivore food, I remembered Naan and Kabab. It advertises itself as a Mediterranean restaurant, but the name and the font on their signs is a give away that it isn’t.

It’s Middle Eastern food. I can see why they wouldn’t want to market themselves in this way, this is America, after all. But don’t let that put you off, this place is delicious. Alonso and I started with the veggie combo, which was dolmades (rice stuffed vine leaf), falafel, hummus and baba ganoush (mashed eggplant). For main course, I had the prawn kabab, and Alonso had the salmon kabab. The prawn was delicious, perfectly cooked and flavoured. The salmon one… not so much. We finished all that off with baklava. Amazing food, and all for less than the price of sushi too! The service here is fantastic, even for American standards – at one point the chef (Chef “Maurice” – not his real name…) came round, and asked us how our meal was. “Good enough to tell your friends?” before thrusting some business cards in our hands!

Go try this place if you haven’t already. You won’t be disappointed.

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I got my list of possible final year projects this week. Out of a list of 90, I have to somehow whittle them down to 10, and rank them in order of preference. That’s going to be a long task, as I have do at least a little bit of background reading for each project I’m interested in. I’ve got until August 10th to do it though, so it’s not so bad.

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As I’m sure didn’t pass you by (unless you’re in America), Eurovision was today. I love Eurovision. It’s camp, it’s ridiculous, it’s trashy, and it’s over the top. Yet, bizarrely, it makes me proud to be European. My national identity is something that I’ve been thinking about for the past few weeks. I’m thinking about coming back to the US to do a PhD program, and after that probably settle here, but in order to do that, at some point I’d have to become a US citizen, and possibly surrender my UK citizenship. After some though, I decided I didn’t really want to do that. I’m proud to be from the UK. Yep, it certainly has it’s faults, but being a UK citizen also makes me a citizen of Europe. Being from Europe is something I’m extremely proud of – it’s such a vast place, full of different cultures, people, languages and opportunities, something America will never be, no matter how hard it tries.

Oh, and by the way, how did Germany do so badly in Eurovision? They had Dita von Teese for heaven’s sake! And why did the UK give Turkey 12 points?! Am I missing something? Those water things from the roof were amazing too.