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This comes from the Cat Empire blog:
Later, we found some Cheetos in the vending machine backstage. Remember Cheetos? If you're in the USA you probably won't be impressed. But I'm pretty sure we haven't had Cheetos in Australia for about 20 years. Just when I started to think Cheetos had become passe on this side of the Pacific, Pat proved me wrong when he revealed his Cheetos TATTOO.

Arcade Fire: Funeral: Pitchfork Record Review

Arcade Fire: Funeral: Pitchfork Record Review
Two things I implore all of you to get from the internet; this review, and the music of this band.
- From the review, " We are not the first, or the last, to be confronted with this dilemma... a type of universal disaffection synonymous with drowning." More
- And from the band: " Somethin' filled up - my heart with nothin', someone told me not to cry.
But now that I'm older, my heart's colder, and I can see that it's a lie."




I discovered the band when U2 played the song Wake Up as the intro to their recent Australian Vertigo concerts. This song, played to a stadium over the largest speaker-stacks I ever hope to see, moved me nearly as much as the U2's all-powerful first song. (Shame for them that my first response when seeing their live show is to go by the background music, but they'll cope).

I now own the only two albums this diverse Montreal mod-rock group has released, Arcade Fire (below) and Funeral (above).



With compelling basslines, all their songs run headlong into a furnace of piano and rhythm. The lyrics are invariably complex and bleak, but the advanced musical arrangements have optimistic rises to match the falls, and are as close as rock may get to classical composition. Delicate and propulsive - a little like Nick Cave's latest Abbatoir Blues.

Why Everyone hates parenting, except celebrities

Koch named the nation's top notch dad - National - smh.com.au: "'I love being a dad,'' David Koch said in a statement. 'Someone once said to me 'enjoy your kids when you're young because they only get worse!'. 'How wrong they were. I have as much fun with my kids now that they're adults as I did when they were little."

I always did like Kochie.

But sadly, these comments are the antithesis of those offered to my wife and I since we announced we were expecting. We were and are thrilled to be having children. It has been a long and hard road. It is nothing short of a gift.

[ Some background: We took around 20 months to fall pregnant. When we did, my wife had a full molar pregnancy, which is a complicated and potentially cancerous form of tumour that forms in the uterus - in place of a child. This, as you can imagine is traumatic, even beyond the severe and under-appreciated trauma of a 'normal' miscarriage. ]

So, to now be told;
"get all the sleep you can"
"make the most of your last few months of freedom"
or that children are variously; inconvenient, painful, noisy, an error...

It is not just unhelpful and rude, it is as damaging as it is ludicrous!
I have lived for thirty years, so I have had enough sleep-ins.
Nor can I enjoy the sleep I am having now, any more.
We know children act childishly, they are dependent on their parents for attention, are a distraction from going out and will mean a major life change. This is what we have been aiming for, just as all our parents did too, at some point.

The strange thing is that since we have had this happening, I have come across a few big names acting more like loving parents than most people I know.
David Koch - just named Aussie Father of the Year - and much maligned new dad Brad Pitt!

Brad Pitt has said publicly this week that he loves raising children and is considering a fifth!

I always did like Brad. Especially in Kalifornia. And Kochie has always worn his fathering badge on his sleeve.

I hope and plan to be a father who doesn't criticise his children behind their backs, nor regret having children to pregnant couples (of all people!)

As a final quote, I read recently Johnny Cash's autobiography.
In it, Cash believed, "bragging about your kids is one of the most wonderful feelings you can have in life."

I always did like Johnny.