So maybe you were wondering how cold it is? Well, let me tell you. It is too cold. That is how cold it is.

It's the second month of 2006 and, so far, no jetpacks. However, Lancaster now has an oriental-food-type place that is pretty cool. They sell Japanese sweeties! That is probably the most exciting news I have for the last thirty days. Never underestimate my excitement at cute stuff that is also edible!

Other exciting Japanese things - Studio Ghibli are doing an adaptation of the Earthsea stories. That should be nice. I loved the Earthsea books when I was a kid, it was almost physically painful to see what the Scifi Channel did in that TV version they did a couple of years ago. Fucking atrocious. Hopefully the Ghibli effort will be a bit more faithful (or at least try to avoid entirely changing the themes and characters like the Scifi one did). It seems to be being done by Miyazaki's son, which is interesting. Does that mean he's taking over now, or is Miyazaki Sr meanwhile working on something else? I thought his last film, Howl's Moving Castle, was good but not great. It had some really nice moments but overall felt too similar to Spirited Away, which was the better of the two. And despite all the background plot of war and intrigue it didn't have the same sense of excitement that Princess Mononoke did. Oh well, I'm sure the next one will be better.

I really want to go to All Tomorrow's Parties this year, it's got the most exciting lineup I've seen in quite a while. Destroyer, Joanna Newsom, New Pornographers, Shins, Decemberists, Lightning Bolt, Sleater-Kinney... there's loads of bands on I'd like to see. Unfortunately there's basically no fucking way I can go. I'm hoping Destroyer may come on a proper UK tour later in the year anyway. The new album's out soon, and he seems to have a load of other stuff going on too.

My sleep is all fucked up at the moment. Actually that's not true, it seems more normal the last few days. But the weeks before I was finding it harder and harder to get to sleep. I'd end up staying awake till like 6 in the morning and then waking up at 2 in the afternoon, which is obviously a mental way to live. But making myself wake up early in the day to try and force my body back into a normal pattern, I'd just end up feeling monged all day and then still get insomnia at night. The week before I ended up staying up the the whole night as I knew I had to get up early in the morning anyway for band practice. Then this weekend I ended up doing the same thing again on Friday as I had to be up early on Saturday to go do an interview for a radio show. Later on that day I then headed off with Paul, Sian and Tash to Bedworth to see John. We had a nice evening all told but I was fucking broken, I kept falling asleep every ten minutes. I felt like Karl at a birthday party. Curses!

Still, after a zombified Sunday I got to sleep at a normalish hour and have actually managed to be getting my eight hours in a fairly socially acceptable timeslot so far this week. Go me!

Er, that's about it for now I guess. Apart from this. Interesting things are afoot in Superkings land, we are now being managed by Will & Catriona from Feedback and February looks like a superbusy month with all these gigs coming up. And some new songs are filtering through to the set now which is cool, makes me feel like I've achieved something recently.