boston: where commuting's not a chore, it's an adventure!

Bostonites have 30 words for snow. Unfortunately, almost all of them are four letters long and would cause your internet profanity filters to reject my journal, so i can't list any of them.

(Aside: it's a myth that Eskimos have 30 or 100 or whatever words for snow. For one thing, there is no "Eskimo" language or people; there are the Aleuts, Yupiks, and Inuit. Their languages do not have "words" in the same sense as English. But in any case, they have about the same variation in their descriptions of snow and frozen water as English.)

Aaannnnyway. On the advice of cowgrrl I picked up a pair of Yaktrax. Now i walk on smooth sheets of solid ice with the greatest of ease! Actually, soft powdery slushy ice is more dangerous for me now. Unfortunately, it doesn't make the bus move any more quickly...

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A couple more of my favorite artists have new albums out.

On the first listen i didn't really care much for Duran Duran's Red Carpet Massacre. It's not Astronaut, which was a strong, consistent album. But it's grown on me, and i can say i like much of it.

Duran Duran had almost completed an album, when they decided to try a different direction to come up with a hit. They turned to hip-hop producer Timbaland, and decided they liked the new sound so much they ditched the material they'd been working on for months, which angered guitarist Andy Taylor so much he re-left the group. Much of the new album bears the musical stamp of Timbaland and his protege Danja; and yet, a lot of it sounds reminiscent of their early sound.

Like a lot of their albums, it's very hit-and-miss; some songs work, some don't. The production is a bit minimalist, and the opening songs "The Valley" and "Red Carpet Massacre" have kind of a rough edge. The songs vary quite a lot in sound and tone - from the catchy "Box Full o'Honey," which would have fit quite well on one of their early albums, to "Skin Divers," which sounds like nothing else they've done before. These four, BTW, are my favorite songs on the album.

In contrast, i liked Seal's System right away. It's his most accessible album in a long time. Seal has personally compared this album to his debut, and critics seem to agree, though to me it felt more like the smooth funkiness of his second album. There isn't really a bad song here; it's high-volume feel-good dance music; my favorites are "Loaded" and "The Right Life." There are nods to earlier parts of his career: "System" reminds me of "Human Being;" "Rolling" is reminiscent of ballads like "People Asking Why;" and "If It's On My Mind, It's On My Face" recalls the frenetic energy of his early hit "Crazy."

cowgrrl and i finished watching Torchwood - glad we hung in there, the season got much better as we progressed! And now we're on Doctor Who Season 3. We're planning to catch "The Golden Compass" soon, when we can.