Butterfly Assassins

Combining up-tempo guitar riffs with c lassical piano and violin,this Chicago 4-piece are by far the best new band I've heard in months.I stumbled across them completely at random at FreeIndie.com,where the description,"If Mozart were into emo music,he would have been a fan of Butterfly Assassins" caught my eye..."If it's good enough for Mozart,it's good enough for me!",I saids,and boy was I right.Sounding exactly like Muse would if they and Arcade Fire were melded together in some bizarre accident,they write little 4-and-a-half minute concertos that sound so operatic and polished you feel they would be better off writing real real c lassical music,albeit with the standard depressing emo lyrics.

"Prelude No 1 In D Minor" and "Little Violin" have gotten almost exclusive play on my Creative Zen for the last 2 weeks,and if it wasn't for the fact that I am completely broke I would have bought their EP(self-titled and self-released),forced all my friends to listen to it and made them buy it too by now.

I expect nothing but massive things from this group,and am anxiously waiting for them to grow big enough to tour internationally and arrive in a unsuspecting venue near me.Seriously,I actually drool at the thought of it!

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Seriously.Any attempt to make an interesting topic(i.e. one that doesn't involve religious intolerance,political bashing or "Wut iz youar shoo-size?") is completely ignored,or,worse,dragged back down to the same level as everything else.Alright,I always knew OT was a cesspool of mindless drivel,but it was never THIS bad.Don't know why I bother...guess I'm masochistic deep down.Maybe I'll try and find some intelligent discussion in System Wars...

Alright,I know I've said it several times before,but I'm back.Hopefully this time I might be around for more than a few weeks before disappearing again,although it has to be said I don't think my latest 6 month absense has been my fault.The last 6 months have seen an unfortunate,albeit unavoidable sequence of events;

1.The house I was living in got broken into while everyone was away one weekend.Amongst other things,my PC,stereo,DS and MP3 player were taken.Yeah,it's the suck.I'm pretty calm about it now,but at the time you couldn't speak to me for about 3 weeks I was so enraged.Every one of my sentences for about a month contained an expletive.I was very,verry upset,is my point.Did the police recover ANY of our stuff?Did they f***.

2.Due to financial difficulties,the landlord was forced to sell the house and all 7 of us,including his son,were forced to move out.Now,on top of the burglary,I was pretty damned depressed at this point,as would be expected.I loved that house;wireless internet,2 microvaves,dishwasher,washing machine,2 Sky+ boxes...that was incredible for a student house..but hey,maybe I'd find something like that elsewhere,eh?

3.Not bloody likely.Due to the influx of immigrants Ireland has experienced in the last few years,housing near my college is now extremely scarce.So much so that I could not find a single room available anywhere ner the college.Not one.Seeing as there was no way I could afford to live closer to the city,I had to move back in at home,and commute to college every morning.Which meant being up at 7 to catch a bus,and not home til 8PM most mights,exhausted usually.They have to be some of the most depressing days of my life.Contact with my friends was cut to almost nothing,due to all our busy timetables.And the fact the broadband connection at home was acting up meant I was reduced to dial-up.VERY SLOW dial-up.It took 2 minutes to open Google,never mind anything else.It took a good hour to access e-mail,forget about anything else.

4.After a horrible semester,I decided to spend my summer in New York.Queens,to be exact.Best summer of my life,which I felt fate owed me after crapping all over me for so long.I'm pretty sure I can't talk about most of what I did here on GS without risking banage,so I'll leave it to your imaginations.Oh,and the nearest internet cafe was 17 blocks away.And I don't miss the net THAT much.

So here,at long last,I am.Now what the hell have I missed?What words am I no longer allowed to say,and who that I know has been banned?Info please,people,it's been so long I think I've forgotten how teh internest work!

What have I been up to for the last 5 months?Bullet point time!

• Bought an MP3 player.

• Started taking driving lessons;21 is embarassingly old to be learning!

• Been bitten (hard) by the anime bug;Code Geass,Bleach,Elfen Lied,Death Note,FLCL,Ouran High School Hosts Club,anything by Miyazaki,Steamboy,Gundam,Neon Genesis Evangelion,they are like crack to me now...I must have spent 600 Euro on anime in the last 4 months alone,much to the bemusement of my siblings and friends,and the confusion of my parents!

• As I already said,gave up smoking but then started again in less than 2 weeks...I am quite weak willed,unfortunately.

• Been naked in public 4,count em,4 times...I am such an attention seeking loon in a crowd of people,it's disgusting!

• Realized that a friends g/f is perfectly suited for me,and she realized it too...same obsessions,wierd sense of humor,penchant for the "No-Pants-Dance" (Patent Pending)...we are now best friends...Wierd how the cookie crumbles some times,aint it? :)

• Found that porn no longer does anything for me.Nothing.At all.I'd rather read a good book.

• I now prefer working to attending college.I never would have thought this would happen!

• Blew up my comp...Well,the mobo and the hard drife were fried,there was no actual "explosion" as such,but I prefer the way I describe it.

That's all I can think of now,If I remember anything else I'll edit this later.Peace out! :)

...Then I wouldn't have had to spend this long away from GS.I can't believe my last blog entry was in September...I can't even remember what I did in September,apart from grow a beard and give up cigarettes for 9 days.Now I'm gonna see whats new around here,and catch up with everyone I haven't seen in so long...See ya around,lads and lasses!

http://www.miniature-earth.com/ It's quite informative...

It is unlikely any of you guys knew this,but I was at Radiohead last Thursday! I didn't say it to anyone because I didn't know I was going until the night before...A friend had to pull out,so he gifted his ticket to me.What a nice guy,eh?...Pretty lucky for me,too,as I was seriously considering talking the day off work in protest of my non-attendance...Instead I had to call in sick,as I was over 200 miles from work,in a bunk in a hostel!:P

It's been over two years since I last saw Radiohead,and it was nice to see that they still put on a hell of a show.Opening with Airbag and The National Anthem really set the pace for the rest of the night,pretty much all the classics,plus a few new ones for good measure...Just was incredible,Climbing Up The Walls was beautiful,if a little unexpected,and Pyramid Song had me rapt with awe...the new ones are good portents for the next album,too,especially Bangers and Mash(love the title!).

Beck was supporting,and what little I saw of him was really enjoyable,especially the puppet show which I am sure will be up on YouTube or something bofore long.He finished on E-Pro,which is my favourite  of his,so it was nice to dance like a goon whilst I tucked into my chicken baguette!

The atmosphere around the place was really nice and relaxed,with everyone drinking their little plastic glasses full of Heineken and white wine...far classier than you get at festivals!

My only gripe was with the bus service to the gig...Dublin Bus had put on a shuttle bus service to it,which was nice of them,but they took the most abvious(and therefore,most traffic-light filled and busiest) route to get there,with the result that an 8 kilometre journey took an hour and 45 minutes...Stupid,really,but what can you do?

Afterwards,there was the obligatory "session" with the boys,but I'd best not say how that ended up...I'll just use the words "gatecrash","prostitute","policeman" and "petty vandalism"...That should sum it up nicely enough!:P

Well,kinda... Anyways,me and my friend Brian were driving home Saturday evening,and neither of us had had much sleep the night before.It's about a 2 hour journey back home,and I was drifting in and out of sleep the whole way...until,with about half an hour to go,we arrived onto the motorway outside Limerick,the city I study in...We were still cruising along at about 100 kph,when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the car was drifting right,towards the side of the road. Wow,Brian must be really tired too,his drivings all over the place,I thought to myself...Then I noticed we were still drifting,now on the grass verge,about to hit the crash barrier! So I screamed at Brian,and he jerked the wheel away from the barrier,but not until after we had hit it,broken off the mirror and smashed the drivers side window!We careened across two lanes of traffic and slowed to a stop at the other side of the road. It seems Brian had fallen asleep momentarily,and those 3 seconds were all we needed for that to happen.I can't believe how lucky we were to come out of that relatively unscathed...Lucky I was awake after an hour and a half asleep,lucky that the front of the car didn't catch on the crash barrier and spin us around,or tip us over,and lucky there was no-one in the other two lanes beside us at that particular moment. Brian had his face torn up a bit from the broken glass,but luckily he didn't get any of it in his eye.He was in a really bad way after we pulled over,shaking and crying,wiping the blood out of his eye with a t-shirt,but somehow I remained extremely calm,which I also can't believe.I just spent the next 10 minutes trying to calm him down,telling him it was OK,it could have been a hell of a lot worse,it could have happened to anyone...I spent the rest of the journey acting like normal.I didn't think it was that big of a deal.Until I got home,when all of a sudden I started shaking... We had to travel that road again last night,to get back to where we both work,and we actually found the side mirror...smashed to pieces,obviously,but it was still there,along with a lot of glass...Seems kind of funny to us now(in a morbid kind of way),but it really does make me think how easy something like that can happen,and how damned lucky I am to have the time here that I do...I really feel good about everything today,and I have never been as happy to wake up for work than I did this morning! I've heard friends of mine talk this way about accidents that they've had,but I've never been able to appreciate fully what they were talking about until now... I don't really know what to say after that...I don't think I have the words to express how I feel... Anyways,I hope you guys had good(read; boring) weekends!:P

Do not drink 2 bottles of red wine that you got on special offer at the supermarket,then attempt to sing Motown classics from your rooftop at 2 AM on a Sunday night,when you(and your neighbours) have work early next morning. Only bad things can happen to you. Just FYI... *shudder*

Damn it,I almost wet myself...in fact,I think I did a little... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbHF3XwSJJk