Hark and observe as time flies at an speed so amazing that one might not even notice it lest one pays attention of the ”close” variety. This flying of time takes place all the time. Like this: time flies for a bit, suddenly five minutes are gone and you could swear it was only four. And on a wider scale, suddenly you wake up to notice that several years have crept past while you were enjoying yourself and focusing on other things than timekeeping. I have now diagnosed myself and have a strong reason to suspect that I haven’t really noticed how time has flown recently. Gone are the days when five minutes took at least ten minutes to happen and gone are the days when the journey from morning to evening was something I sometimes regarded with naked fright. Gone are the days when forever seemed like an eternity.

And gone are the days when I used to write this thing called “Pressure Valve”, still up at sinisthra.com, discontinued now for the time being and not very likely to be resurrected ever again, for gone also is too much of the pain and misery that made up the person who wrote it to justify writing anything more of that sort. But I still feel it welling up inside, and I still feel it searching for a way out.

Thus: this. Not Pressure Valve 2.0 but something resembling a more ordinary kind of weblog where I envision myself doing a bit of a babble, gabble, jabber and probably also prattle occasionally, about this and that, with an emphasis on that kind of this but most definitely not this kind of that.

So. Sinisthra. And the flying of time. I have here a very good example of the passing of time in both a short term and a long term period: We just had our first band rehearsals after a year of not rehearsing at all, and I planned to write that we had the rehearsals yesterday, but, as it happens, before I got around to writing about this, time flew for a bit and as of now the rehearsals actually took place a week ago and not yesterday. Still, it was as fun and easy as it always has been, the songs flowed surprisingly well considering some of them hadn’t been played for years and the newest ones felt and sounded magnificent. We were able to finish 80% of the tunes we started when in the past the best scores we’ve managed in finishing-the-songs-we-start department have been at best no more than 74% . This means that as a band we are better than ever, with a 6% increase in betterness after the last time we checked.

In the light of this equation I find it particularly frustrating that two of the most promising record labels I’ve discussed with about Sinisthra have both stopped corresponding with me at the same time. I’m very puzzled by this, to the extent of, despite feeling utterly ridiculous, even checking that my settings for receiving e-mail have not somehow mysteriously changed on their own accord and without me noticing, and of course they hadn’t. I think I’ll wait for awhile and then fall back to Plan B of Getting Someone To Throw Large Amounts Of Money Away In Order To Obtain The Rights To Commercially Release The Not Very Commercial Music Of Sinisthra On Compact Disc. Before falling back to Plan B I only need to devise and outline this plan first. Plan A was “Listen To This! It’s Great Isn’t It! Now Sign Us Without Further Delay!”. Plan B probably needs more cunning ingredients thrown in to succeed properly. We also have a Plan C, the good old “Sign Us Or Your Family Gets It” but I hope things won’t have to come to that because it would create some obstacles to putting forth Plans D and/or E.

THIS WEEKS’ SOURCE OF FRUSTRATION:
The above mentioned Silence Of The Record Labels.

THIS WEEKS’ SOURCE OF DELIGHT:
A gift voucher to a second hand book store. I went in and got a lovely pocket sized hard cover 1962 edition of The Poetical Works Of John Keats. Owning this book has made me very happy person indeed and I haven’t even started reading it yet. I also got The Complete Works Of Shakespeare, printed in 1958 with 1560 pages and have no intention of ever reading it whatsoever. Looks nice on the shelf, though, and now I can stage a Shakespeare play whenever the urge takes me.

THIS WEEKS’ BOOK OF CHOICE:
“Broken Angels” by Richard Morgan. It’s a sequel to “Altered Carbon” which I quite liked and I look forward to liking this one also. I’m one thirds into the book by now but haven’t made my mind up yet whether I’m going to really like it or not. It’s science fiction and I rarely read scifi in English because I tend to lose the thread and my mind starts wandering when the going gets technical and the terms get overtly cryptic.

THIS WEEKS ALBUM OF CHOICE:
“Somewhere But Yesterday” by Citizen Cain, a scottish band influenced and inspired by Genesis to the point of having emulated the whole sound of the 70’s Genesis but not the song-writing quality. This album sounds like a collection of Genesis b-sides, or possibly a Genesis’ imaginary contractual obligatory album recorded after the band has ran out of proper ideas for original songs. This description may not sound too flattering but it doesn’t stop me from occasionally liking the album anyway.

THIS WEEKS’ BOTTLES OF CHOICE:
Serras de Azeitão , another white wine on my quest to find some wines that would taste decent in my mouth. This one comes from Portugal and is nothing to extensively rejoice about, although it’s nothing hideous either. Served very cold, it was fruity and crisp the way I like whites to be but still quite not fruity and crisp enough to make it on my to-buy-again list. The opened bottle spent the night in the fridge without a cork on and tasted better the next day, having lost some of its’ earlier pungency and mustiness. Maybe it needs to be decanted way before serving, although I don’t see much point in decanting white wines. Then again, I don’t know very much about wines at all.
La Borgata Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, very full bodied red wine from Italy, I bought it because it was recommended in various places and because the bottle looked very nice but it didn’t really move me and I don’t think I’ll buy it again. All the reds tend to taste too heavy and dark for me nowadays and this was no exception. When poured it emitted a rather strong and sharp smell of pure alcohol. Luckily this was not apparent on the taste of the wine which was surprisingly smooth but not smooth enough for a whiner like me. Maybe it was served a bit too warm to impress me. I used to swear by the name of Italian red wines but lately I’ve had much better experiences with the new world wines than the European ones.