Here is a small but varied selection of songs all somewhat referring to the sea, either literally or metaphorically:

Morcheeba – The Sea.
(From the album Big Calm, 1998.)
Wonderful groovy but calm pop song which provides both a rather realistic view of the crowds on the beach and a dreamy reflection of summer days by the sea.

Spitz – Umi o mi ni ikou.
(From the album Mikazuki Rock, 2002.)
A typical Spitz song that is all happy and optimistic on the surface but makes you feel aware of worries and slight troubles if you read between the lines.

Maximo Park – The Coast Is Always Changing.
(From the album A Certain Trigger, 2005.)
The band’s debut single; also to be found on their debut album. I love the lyrics because they are realistic and witty (‘Age makes no difference till you open your mouth.’) but also quite poetic with the sea as a symbol of life and of what lies before you.

blur – Clover Over Dover.
(From the album Parklife, 1994.)
A very beautiful melancholic little song from one of the most important albums of the 1990s.

The Verve – Lucky Man.
(From the album Urban Hymns, 1997.)
The exact antithesis of Clover Over Dover by blur – but just as beautiful, of course. It doesn’t mention the sea directly, but it’s as graceful as a bird floating over the endless blue of the sea.

Interpol – Take You On A Cruise.
(From the album Antics, 2004.)
Dark, sensual and sexy, like the majority of songs by this band.

The Coin Locker, my former MP3 rotation site, is now a fully integrated part of coinlockerbaby.org, my blog. This allows me to update with new songs whenever I want to via my blog’s user interface. Just like in the past you’ll be able to access all MP3s I post at http://www.coinlockerbaby.org/coinlocker. As a reader of my blog, you will see every MP3 post as a regular new blog post. Or you can view all MP3-related posts by selecting the category “MP3s/Song Samples” on the left.

My musical preferences aren’t limited to certain genres or the fact that a band is signed to an indie or a major label. Reflecting my personal taste in music, most songs uploaded are by British and American rock/guitar pop bands; there’s also the odd mainstream pop song and a bit of electronica and Japanese stuff whenever I feel like it.

Files will remain online for as long as I like. Try a link; if it doesn’t work anymore, the file has already been deleted.

The usual rules apply. Delete after 24 hours if you do not own the actual CD. BUY the CD if you like what you hear because this is a vital way of supporting the artists!

[Music: Hard-Fi - Stars of CCTV]

Oh my God, I can’t believe that in just a few hours, I’ll be holding my very own copy of The Half-Blood Prince in my very own hands!!!

That was my Harry Potter anticipation message. It makes me sound 100% more excited than I actually feel :( Ah no, it’s not that I’m not looking forward to it. I’ve just been too busy to feel any sort of excitement because of the fact that yes, July 16th is almost here…

In other news, I’m getting rid of the Coin Locker as a separate site. It’ll become a fully integrated part of coinlockerbaby.org instead which makes it easier to post as many songs whenever I want to as part of my blog.

It just makes me so angry! Why?

At the moment, there’s no definite answer as to who carried out the attacks but it’s quite clear that it must be some sort of Islamist organisation. So why London? Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against the war in Iraq in the streets of London. Millions of people have been voicing their opposition to the active role of the British Army in the so-called war against terrorism.

I am very much aware how much injustice people in countries like Afghanistan or Iraq have to witness every day. But why keep on going down that spiral of violence and carry out such an absurd act of injustice? There has to be an end to this monstrous “clash of cultures” or “war of religions” and one side has to be the first to make a step in that direction by putting down their arms. You cannot keep on killing innocent people, your so-called enemies. They are people just like you and you cannot kill them. It is wrong, it is unjust and it is inhuman.

Tony Blair isn’t Britain. He is not the sole representative of the will of every single person living in Britain. The British government isn’t Britain. The government of any democratic country doesn’t represent the whole country, only its majority, and many times not even people who elected the government agree with the decisions the respective government makes. How many people were killed or injured in those explosions that weren’t content with the way the government handled the war against terrorism? (”War against terrorism” – what an awful phrase! “Fighting fire with fire” is more like it.)
What do you want? Make people elect a government that tolerates religious extremism and terrorism?

If you do not believe in values like diplomacy and finding peaceful compromises, if you have to kill people of other beliefs than yours because tolerance is not a known value in your culture, then simply do not come to Europe or America. Leave us alone. Let us live peacefully with people from all races, religions and cultures because we tolerate each other. Let us have our way of life. No race, no religion and no culture is better than the other. We know that and we want you to realise the same and let us live without fear and terror.
If the Western world is oh so decadent and arrogant, why carry out such barbaric acts against it? It’s disgusting, it is stupid and it is absolutely abominable.

I have to admit I’m a bit of a procrastinator, especially when it comes to work that doesn’t have a fixed deadline. I prefer deadlines because at least I can feel a certain pressure that prevents me from delaying things too long.
I also like lazing around, doing things I like, especially in the summer.
This year, I’ve tried to put myself under pressure to work hard. I’ve set myself fixed hours for work, for studying Japanese for the entrance exam (I’m panicking at the mere thought of it; there’s so much I still need to practise) and for reading books in preparation for university. When I didn’t have that sort of schedule and spent my days mostly procrastinating and doing very little ‘important’ things, I always thought I could get so much more done if only I’d work harder. But I was wrong! The day hasn’t even enough hours to do everything I want to get done even if I spend every waking hour on them! Stress! Panic! Where’s the 36-hour day? (Oh, I have a feeling even that wouldn’t be enough…)

Inspite of what I just wrote, I’m enjoying this fabulous summer quite a lot. I love lying in the grass and watching the birds speed through the sky. (They’ll have flown south by mid-August.) And eating copious amounts of ice cream with my sister. (The only not so healthy thing I’m eating at the moment, but isn’t summer all about ice cream?)
So obviously, the current layout of this site is my Real Life turned digital, an embodiment of the summer of ‘05.

When I was picking redcurrants with my grandmother and my mother on Sunday, it felt like, if I closed my eyes and opened them again, I’d find myself back at the age of 4. A pity my sister wasn’t there, it would’ve made the flashback perfect. Ah, summer.
My grandmother is okay, I suppose. As was to be expected, the chemotherapy is a lot worse than the operation itself. She’s prone to infections now that her immune system is under such heavy attacks every three weeks. And she’s not nearly resting as much as she should. She’s like a little child in that respect; she’d actually have to collapse to realise she’s straining her body too much. But on the whole, things are looking much much better than 2 months ago.

I realised this whole cancer craziness has affected me a lot. For example, I’ve become a real health freak when it comes to food, even though it doesn’t have to do anything with cancer directly. And it’s not that I’d been living on junk food before either. I never understood how people could actually drink cola everyday of their lives when it mainly consists of sugar and artificial ingredients I wouldn’t want to have inside my system; or eat pre-packaged food from certain multi-national companies that consists of at least 10 times more chemicals than there are in my little cousin’s chem lab kit. I just want to make sure that the food I eat is almost 100% natural (as far as I can control that) and I live on a healthy diet. We are what we eat, after all.
So yeah, I can add another item to my list of obsessions XD