I'd like to thank the members of the Academy..and my parents...and my wife...

29 Jumaada al-THaany - 1429 A.H.

Our good friend, Singing Bear, has deemed this blog worthy of an Arte Y Pico award. Cheers, Bear! He was part of this blog-team for a while, after also being part of my muso-blog, Pond Of Tunes. He's started up a few of his own solo blogs, the latest being the most cool Tiz Yer Tiz.

It's suggested that the receiver of the "Arte Y Pico" award present it to five other blogs. My list will be:

1) Cheek - My old friend Mark D. has been reporting from the heart of Minneapolis, Minn. for seven (count 'em, seven) years now. Like me, he was also part of the Triptych Cryptic collective for a time. The topics he touches on are wide-ranging and his writing seems top-notch to me. He also writes reviews for PopMatters and a few other sites. Do yourself a favour and head over to "Cheek"--I don't think you'll be disappointed.

2) Magick River Blog - I first met Antares M., who writes the "Magick River Blog", through cyber-space, when he found a post from my first solo blog, 21st Century Schizoid Man. The post was about Dr. Strangely Strange, the Irish psych-folk group. He e-mailed me and asked for a copy of some of their lyrics - which I provided (I was so excited that someone besides my really close friends were actually reading my blog!). In any case - we stayed in touch and Antares let me know about his blog when he fired it up. If you want to know what's really going on in Malaysia right now, politics and cultural-wise--this blog is the place to go. He also posts about a lot of other things..music, art, conspiracies...many many others. The content of his blog always seems excellent and Antares is a genuinely cool cat. Give him a visit, he deserves it.

3) Mr. Axl's Lovely Potato Farm - Axl (nee Paul Askew) and I used to work together in my short-ish tenure at the HMV in Oxford a couple of years ago.. He always made me laugh with his witty banter and turned me on to a number of great bands/artists that I would never have known. Sadly, I needed more cash and HMV's strange working regimens weren't really my bag, man--so I left. I still socialise a bit with Axl through Facebook and when I found out he had started a blog--I became a regular visitor. He posts a lot about music--usually ripping into some band that the NME has seen fit to idolise for a month or two, or some wanky crit-types who hype these bands. There's other stuff, too...his musings on his thoughts while bored at work, his "million-pound" ideas and loads of other funny commentary. One of Oxford's finest.

4) Only Maybe - Ths blog was created 3 years ago as an outlet for sombunall of the Maybe Logic Academy students. Over time the team has become a core of Bogus Magus and Bobby, with others contributing a piece here and there (including your humble blogger typing this). O.M. has now been incorporated into the main MLA on-line campus and it looked as if the blog was going to be left to drift into cyberspace, but some new posts have kept it alive...for now. The content..well, head over there a take a peek..some mind-blowing posts, for sure!

5) 10 Zen Monkeys - Another collective blog, to which the great R.U. Sirius sometimes posts. A lot of skewed pop-culture stories and some wry observations. I don't stop in there as often as I'd like, but when I do, I always find something interesting.

There's the round-up. I do like all of the other blogs in my blog-list and it was tough picking five out to nominate. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to link to the original site that hosted the award--you can find it here (it's a knitting site in Spanish...and I took French in high school..d'oh!). See you at the after-party!