Dec 31, 2007

And the winner is "I am a blithering hypocrite and you should pap me on the nose with the back of a spoon"

While I continue to search for my work / life balance, here's what has tickled or tackled me in the last 12 periods.

Oh and unlike last year, don't expect a 'record of the year' post. Most of this is about me, myself and what I've written, and my favourite things about me and myself and what I've written. You have read this blog before, right?

My DJ moment of the year: I've DJed less this year than you've had hot McDonald's chicken nuggets (they don't exist), but the impromptu gig at the Greenbelt festival has to lay the smack-down on anything I've ever done.

My video post of the year: It's stupid to take credit for plonking down a signpost towards other people's work, but then again I am a DJ. Here is the link which made me realise there wasn't such a difference between the Scratch Perverts and Delia Smith.

Blogs I have enjoyed with my eyes, part one: Here are five blogs that struck me in 2007. Like a freight train. And while my head is flung 600 yards down the track, let me reassure you I have missed a lot of favourite blogs off this list. But here goes the list, including links to their most recent entry. James and his blue cat was The First Blog I Ever Really Got Into, and while we're at it, Patroclus brought a beautiful humanity to the blogocube. Chinglish went round in linguistic circles while Fiction Bitch dotted the js and crossed the eyes. Nine Tenths Full Of Penguins made so many of my best moments of 2007 happen due to his annoying persistence of organising things.

My own blog post of the year: Stupidly prophetic because HMV went on to sell some of their Fopps and the Klaxons scooped the Mercury, and a notch above the rest because I don't know any other blogs that used the phrase "Fopp's flopped shops", my favourite post this year is I'm Quietly rooting for the Klaxons but this is a post about Fopp's flopped shops and not the bloody Mercury Prize.

My own phrase of the year: Because it projects the false impression I am a humble monk-like gentle giant and not an egotistical fame-felching starfucker, my piece about r 'n' b rises to the top for the opening phrase "I am a blithering hypocrite and you should pap me on the nose with the back of a spoon". It's amazing what a nonsensical word can do to a sentence; just ask Anthony Burgess.

Blogs I have enjoyed with my eyes, part two: Five more doozers, whatever a doozer is. No-one could touch George Monbiot for making me think until it hurt, so thank goodness for the soothing You Have Got The Wrong Person who, quite simply, got the wrong person. Get Weird Turn Pro pressed a cultural ear onto the tracks of electro funk-daddiness. Cultural Snow pimped his book (and my blog, to my surprise) and was still interesting. And the Manchizzle did what the Guardian says it does on the tin.

Other crap: It's has been my first good year for a long time. I went to counselling and it changed my life. I had the privelege to work at Greenbelf FM. I got too fat. I got lucky and paid off all my debts. I've already mentioned the Greenbelt gig. My cat turned 18. I forgot people's birthdays. I became Formula One pundit for a local radio station. I bought red trainers. I got a new job for the first time in nine years. I saved someone's life because I remembered my first aid course from years ago. I worked my bum-bum off at Refresh FM and loved every minute.

And now it's that part of the post where I put my self-centredness to one side and start awarding prizes to other people. Sorry? What's that? I've exceeded my 2007 bandwidth?

See you on the other side.