Silly Kissers - "You Don't Love Me". There's a note in the log-book here: But for true inspiration, walk across the highway, through the woods to the cliff's edge, heave stones into the air and listen to them clatter all the way to the forest floor below. This sounds good. I tie my shoes, fasten my sleeves. I go out, across the highway, through the woods, to the cliff. Under the cliff there's a nightclub. I notice because I can hear it. I stick my head over the edge, stare underneath - see the glitter-lit cave. It is a complicated procedure, getting from the cliff-face to the nightclub directly below. But once I am inside I walk down the passage, filled with watery distant beats, faint music, into the vast, pyramidal interior of the mountain. The walls are shiny black. The underside of the peaks - where it's all snow & ice, outdoors - have been painted silver. There are disco-balls. The dance-floor isn't very busy. Some abstract painters, a couple of trombonists, a gaggle of 19-year-old ballerinas drinking fuzzy navels at the bar. The beats aren't any more forceful now that I'm here, in the centre of it. But I get them. I get their remove. My heart's somewhere else, after all. I move my feet, swivel on heels, try not to catch anyone's eye. I sing to the hearts of the mountains, in a silly voice, but truly. [MySpace / playing MEG Montreal on July 31]

Danny Kaye - "Bloop Bleep". When I downloaded this song I hoped that it was about robot language (the language I speak when I am talking like a robot, to the irritation of roommates). It is not. It is about a dripping tap. That is okay - Danny Kaye is probably my favourite actor in the world. Here he sings about a dripping tap, about the girl next door, about unrequited love and insomnia. He weeps. He mixes nonsense and jazz. Like Bill Cosby, like James Joyce, he's discovering a new way of saying the stuff that all of us have known. [buy]

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My favourite web-comic is Angry Octopus, created by a man named Mike and his 8-year-old-ish daughter, Zoe. There are only a few strips so far. The concept is: in every strip, the octopus ends up angry.

[photo is "Light Breakfast", by David Sykes]