A lot of hoo-ha goes on about Beck being a scientologist, when I heard it first it didn’t really add up. Beck’s work just seemed to clash with everything I had heard about scientology. As a matter of interest, has anyone ever heard anyone who isn’t a scientologist say anything good about scientology? South Park is my main education on Scientology and it loks pretty nutsy to me.

I did see a documentary on TV which had first hand witnesses telling how they were used by the ‘religion’, but details are sketchy in my mind at this point.

Tom Cruise being a scientologist I can understand… but Beck? I thought he was super-smart. Then I realised. He’s working undercover.

More Undercover Beck.

As Bif already noted, the Irish Blog Awards have opened the nominations process. We’d like to win an award. We’d like your help.

I already nominated for just about every category I thought we in any way fitted into, but an obvious category for us is ‘most humorous post’.

I nominated several of our cartoons, and I’d love if you could do the same. For one thing, you are probably a better judge than me of what our best toons are.

Please, if you have a moment, have a look through our cartoons and nominate something from the last year.

I nominated a few myself, including ‘Christmas Time‘, ‘A Dry White Seasoning‘ and ‘Spyware‘.

I popped over to ElectricPicnic.ie to see if they had officially announced yet (they hadn’t), but in idly checking the forums I came across this animated gif in someone’s sig - I have no idea who did it but it’s nicely done:

My sister Jane has just started a blog where she intends to blog her artwork, including paintings like the birds shown here, and soft toys she makes.

She’s just started this whole blogging lark and she said to me the other day she doesn’t know how we do it coz her eyes are killing her. I have to admit I noticed my eyesight is getting worse recently and also I notice I get dark circles under my eyes after a few hours of work… but I’m going off on a tangent now…

Anyway, hopefully she’ll be blogging new stuff fairly regularly - I’ll certainly be hassling her to keep it updated, so keep an eye on it. Also the blog might feature videos in the future of some of the soft toys because photos just don’t do justice to such highly original crazy creatures as this guy, or even this guy.

They’re incredibly full of character, I’m sure you get some idea from the photos, but you really see them come to life when they’re waggling their wings or tilting their heads and being given a voice by their creator… hopefully we’ll sort out some YouTube stuff soon.

More traditional type toys are easier to relate to from photos because we’re more used to seeing stuff like them, such as the doll (pictured) Jane created recently called Mopsie, but Jane still gives even traditional type toys far more character most.

Jane may even begin to take commissions for the soft toys, so leave a comment on her blog if you are interested. So far she has produced them as presents and for her own enjoyment, but if you offer her enough money…

I’d love to see some of the crazier creatures mass produced and in the shops…

When Nick Cave released ‘Boatman’s Call‘ it blew me away. I had been a Nick Cave fan for a long time when it came out, but Boatman’s Call felt like something had clicked for Cave and his songwriting had reached a whole new level.

The writing seemed more real, more honest, more personal and therefore more impactful because the emotions rang familiar. From that album forward he seemed to retain what he had found on Boatman’s Call and, for my taste, since then his work has simply gone from strength to strength.

When Beck’s ‘Sea Change‘ came out I had the same feeling - that Beck, already pure genius, had attained new heights.

Both ‘Boatman’s Call’ and ‘Sea Change’ are purported to be albums resulting from break-ups, and perhaps that’s where the raw honesty stems from that makes both albums so damn good.

However, to my disappointement, Beck did not seem to hang on to what he discovered on Sea Change and his next album ‘Guero‘ was a step backwards.

Don’t get me wrong - Guero is still better than most of the crap out there and it grew on me with time, but it initially plays like an assortment of cast-offs from various previous albums.

And now Beck has a new album. The Information .

I wondered if perhaps with Guero out of the way would The Information bring us to new Beckian heights? But the answer is ‘not really’. It may well be a grower, after all I only bought it yesterday, but it didn’t immediately excite or amaze.

Certainly it’s a more solid and coherent album than Guero, but it’s generally familiar Beck sounds with nothing to blow your mind like he has done in the past. But hey, it’s better than Guero which is better than most so that still makes it pretty damn good.

So far my favourite track is the very catchy, simple and effective ‘I think I’m in love’ who’s chorus goes ‘I think I’m in love but it makes me kinda nervous to say so’. Here it is:

Apart from the music, there is another remarkable thing about the album - the cover art. It’s DIY. The cover is a blank math paper type affair, and included with the cd is a sheet of stickers so you can make up your own album art. Brilliant.

If you consider that a significant portion of Beck’s audience will be the type to download music, how do you make a CD desirable? Who wants that plastic taking up real space when the music itself will most likely wind up on your computer and/or mp3 player?

The sticker idea gives the CD a new tangibility and hands-on appeal that gives it back that ‘I want one’ appeal. A quick search on Flickr shows that people have been having fun designing the album cover and sharing their efforts.

The version of the album I bought also comes with a DVD of videos for all the songs - lo-fi DIY type affairs that Beck and pals obviously had a lot of fun putting together, like the video for ‘I think I’m in love’ as seen above.

All in all, I’m glad I bought it - I dished out over 20 bucks for it and I’m not sorry, but I’m still waiting for the next Beck album that will truly blow our heads off.