Penny For Her Thoughts

The past week has been really interesting on the new music front.

No Doubt, the band that has been elusively described as "ska punk" for as long as I can remember, as well as the one with the coolest lead singer ever, have released a new single called Settle Down:


It is amazing. I didn't realise how much I missed Gwen Stefani's blond hair, red lips, and awesome stage persona until I watched this video. Also, her outfits are as crazy as ever. I love it all.

The song is incredibly catchy, and has some of that old school/reggae "Hey Baby" flavour to it. And I want a mosh pit in a truck at my 21st birthday party. I just don't see how else to show people a good time.

Kimbra, who collaborated with Gotye on Somebody That I Used To Know, has released a single of  her own, also titled Settle Down:


I heard it on the radio, and immediately wanted to know whose voice it was that was singing to my life this way.
The Stepford-baby vibes in the video are so intriguing…

I hadn't been over to my favourite time-wasting site in a while, so I decided to click through to explosm.net and browse some Cyanide and Happiness comics.

Pick Up Lines for the Modern Man




What do they say about Beauty and its Beholder...?




Anything You Can Do



You Are what You Eat...?






I'm forever indebted to my second year Social Psychology lecturer, who revealed this gem of a satirical comics website to us all last year.

A good chuckle (and sometimes an indignant grunt, or a disgusted gasp) are always good for lifting one's mood.

German publisher Gerhard Steidl is reported to have said that his favourite smell was that of a freshly printed book. While this may seem a little bizarre, as most people would probably site aromas from food or flowers as their favourite smells, Steidl was able to convince a perfumer and a couture giant to humour him on this one, and together with the international design and style magazine Wallpaper, they made Paper Passion.


Wallpaper magazine has an annual Handmade issue, which showcases a selection of innovative and hugely impressive works of art that push boundaries and bring the fantasies of free-thinkers to life.  This year, following inspiration from a scene in How to Make a Book with Steidl, Handmade approached Steidl and asked him to work with avant garde perfumer Geza Schoen on a challenge to bottle the scent of a book that has just come off the presses. Steidl in turn recruited an old friend of his, Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld, to design the packaging and come up…

I have said many times before, but YouTube really is amazing. This Afrikaans version of Shaggy and Ricardo "RikRok" Ducent's 2001 hit, It Wasn't Me just made my day.


He translated the entire song into Afrikaans, then gave a pretty good performance- lollipop in hand, and a few teeth unaccounted for- and I think he's just a superstar! (Those look like travel brochures in the back- did someone corner him for an "audition" in a tourism office...?)

I must admit that some of the lines were a little lost on me, because the coloured Afrikaans dialect is so different from the textbook stuff we learnt in school, but I got the gist of it.

Even if you don't understand a word of Afrikaans, you can play this video over and over again on a bad morning- it will lift your spirits right up!

For months I was seeing pictures like this on blogs:





I always wonder "how do they do that?" Well, I read about a website that helps people to make their own .gif images.
I don't really have any pictures of myself doing anything in sequence, like a dance move or anything, but I did manage to make this:


It isn't going to go viral, or anything, but I might do this more often to add a little variety to this page.





















*M.I.A and the dancing friends found at A Few Loose Screws and Miss Milli B respectively.

I endorse almost anything that Pharrell is involved in, and this song just has signs of his production all over it. Leah has signed a joint recording contract with L.A. Reid's Epic, Jermaine Dupri's So So Def, as well as Pharrell's I Am Other labels, and is currently recording her debut album.


I really like this song. The lyrics, her styling and that walk-in closet dance scene all remind me of the girl I want to be When I Grow Up: confident, sassy, streetwise, and stylish. That's a lot to put on a 4 minute video, but the aim of showbiz is to sell a dream, and I am spending my last on this one.
Good job, Leah. I look forward to seeing more from you in the future.