New piece up on a-ha’s “Scoundrel Days”

Done for the What Was It Anyway? blog, a kind of Stylus successor on a more low key level, but enjoyable. Full piece here. To quote a bit from it:

Somewhere, somehow, there’s a part of me that wishes I was Morten Harket, former Lutheran priest in training, now worldwide pop icon, even if only for a little while, standing above a landscape not dissimilar to the wider-than-widescreen landscape of green fields, distant hills, and blue but cloudy skies on the cover of the album, a fjord behind me or something, filming a video for the soaring title track quoted above and therefore getting the chance every so often to let fly with a huge, pure, perfectly sung, “And SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

You laugh, but you’re not me.

Great album, still.

I seem to be blessed with duck visits

Though really it’s just because it’s spring and ducks are always about, which I like. Mostly I see them on campus because of the nearby wetlands, thus yesterday’s shot — which had left me a little melancholy because said duck had been separated from its partner, who had wandered away to check something out, and it was quacking a bit sadly. (They soon met up and all was well.)

In contrast these two were happily floating around the pool at my apartment complex in the late spring evening being content and enjoying life. And in the same way that I felt a bit melancholy yesterday evening, tonight, while I’m a bit tired, I’m much more content in turn. More tomorrow, when I’m more awake!