R.I.P James Brown 1933 - 2006

The Godfather of Soul passed on in the early hours of the 25th of December, he had been ill with Pneumonia. May the good Lord give his famiy fortitude to bear the loss.

Another pipeline blast

See what fuel scarcity has caused, 200 to 500 people have died senselessly as a result of another pipeline blast in Abule Egba. Recall a similar incident that occured earlier in the year at Inagbe Beach? Saw pictures of it in Time Magazine, gruesome. I tire o!

Up to 500 killed in Lagos fuel blast reuters.com

Where art thou?

I am upset, I spent the whole of last night trying to find the 'A Matter of Fact' album by Vertical Hold. Specificaly I was dying to listen to 'Seems you are much to busy'. I have checked everywhere, iTunes didn't now who they were, neither did Walmart or BMGMusic, though Walmart and iTunes had stuff from M People. I wasn't really expecting a match on BMGMusic ( a Sony Music company) because Vertical Hold was signed to A&M Records and their latest album was released in 1995. I don't know if A&M Records has a 'BMGMusic' thing going on, anyone? Finally a match on MusicMatch and AOL Music unfortunately both of them did not have the album nor the songs available for download (bummer!) I was especially annoyed with AOL Music. The way they displayed their search results, one would have thought that once you sign up for AOL Music Now, you would be able to atleast play the song if not buy/download it. Although Yahoo! Music also had a match for Vertical Hold I could neither buy/download or listen to it. The best they did was offer links to user stations who had rated the artist. After streaming music (good music I must add) for like 3 hrs I had to give up. Amazon and Ebay had used copies of the cd for sale and I will probably be going that route once I move in January. Gosh I could just scream, the more this album eludes me the more intense my desire to get it!

What kind of race is this?

I am not even going to pretend to understand Nigerian politics, aside from the fact that we are horribly divided along tribal lines (which never ends well) nothing else makes sense. This past weekend political parties held their presidential primaries with interesting results. Buhari secured the ANPP ticket (no suprise there), Atiku the AC (an amalgam of AD and PDP rejects) ticket (in my opinion that pretty much puts an end do his dream to rule from Aso Rock) and Yar' Adua the PDP ticket suprise suprise. I haven't been following Nigerian politics as closely I used to so I was really suprised to learn this to me the guy came out of nowhere. So what happened with all the people throwing their hats in the ring, notably IBB? With all the noise that had been made I thought he would have left the primaries and moved straight to Aso Rock. I am assuming he is rather content with the role of king maker for now. I hear that Yar'Adua has a good record in Katsina as the incubent governor. I wonder what good that ecord will do once/if he gets into Aso Rock. Not much if the puppet masters are as rotten as we know them to be. God help us all.

The gift of music

I do not recall the last time I received a christmas present so you can imagine how pleasantly suprised I was over the weekend when I received an early one - an 80 GB IPod! I went visiting with a friend who owns an extensive collection of jazz cds. Now anyone who knows me knows I absolutely LOVE music, I have an extensive, very eclectic music collection to prove it. I wish I could say that I actually paid money for every piece of music I own alas I have to admit I have in the past hooked up to Kazaa, audiogalaxy etc. no more now though, I have joined BMG. Like any audiophile worthy of the name, I have been dreaming of owning an IPod. I actually came this close to buying one just before I moved in June, but it was hot and I knew my conscience no go gree me. When I started work, I came even closer to buying one considering the fact that the bus ride was long and since I can't read in a moving vehicle listening to music was the only option I had to pass time, that or sleeping. This was a really tough decision for me to make believe it or not; listen to music or sleep seeing that I love to do both not simultaneously mind. At the end of the day, the costs involved swayed my decision in favour of sleep. Seriously I felt it would be frivolous of me to get one at that time, and I promised to buy one in January. When I started going to the gym I once again considered buying one, the Shuffle this time but decided against it since it doesn't have an FM radio an important feature at the gym so I can listen to the TV as I work out on the treadmill. So I am in my friends car on our way from the airport and I look in the back and it is full of cds as usual. Then it hits me I have neglected to pack the most important thing on this trip; my external hard-drive for the purposes of ripping cds. I then berrated myself on my sensiblity. If I had not been so sensible about the whole thing I would have bought my IPod ages ago and I wouldn't now be morning all the music I would have to live without till I either buy the cd's or visit again. I voice my error and my friend is like you don't have an IPod I am like no, but its on my to buy list along with the Canon Rebel XT. We start to talk about other things and like 15 mins later he said he had a suprise for me. I thought he was building a house or something and as soon as the thought formed in my head I dismissed it, how would that be a suprise for me. I really hate suprises (my gbeborun side) and I tried to get him to give me a hint all to no avail. I decide to not push it, I will see the suprise soon enough. After lunch he says he has to run an errand and the next thing I knew we were driving up to Circuit City. Do I dare dream? We go in and he leads me in the direction of the IPods, I didn't know what to say, I did say thank you though and excellent place to start to show appreciation. 3 days later I am still basking, why is that I am wondering. I guess the fact that I did not see it coming made it such a nice suprise, that and the fact that my music collection was now finally playable wherever, whenever. Now that I have nailed the IPod, guess what item got bumped to top priority on my wishlist? The Canon Rebel XT!