I am probably killing my record player playing a bent record. I don't think I would've noticed except that the needles bobbing up and down... I really need to get all the Cure albums on CD, because every so often I need to geek out and play them again. I can't play the music videos anymore either, because they're only on tape and we no longer have a VCR!

Oh, technological progress. And of course it would only actually skip-and-repeat on my favourite song.

This is the latest lot of Mello drabbles... One Amazing Thing is inspired by an EE Cummings poem (Sweet Spring). Which is not my favourite EE Cummings poem, but it's up there. Who needs a one word prompt when you can turn it into a whole poem? And M, Not the Famous Detective probably only makes sense if you've read Another Note.

( One Amazing Thing - prompt 2, spring )

( And Then There Was One - prompt 13, decisions )

( M, Not the Famous Detective - prompt 19, famous )

( Just Nightmares - prompt 37, monsters )

I listened to this album again yesterday, in the hopes that it had gotten better in the time since in came out. No such luck. It still fails to feel like an album to me, rather than just a collection of songs - and there's a whole bunch of them towards the end that are of so little effect that I can't even be bothered hearing them.

Now, I probably shouldn't critisise them for trying a new direction, but to many of the songs sound like bits from other bands, and I can pick a different influence for every song. Muse already had a sound, and it seems telling to me that this album got the best reviews from people who, previously, didn't like them.

I like the last song, and maybe the first four songs. I especially like 'Starlight', which seems to me as if it is about the effects of time dilation on human relationships. But you probably have a different interpretation. Sadly, few of the lyrics are sufficiently oblique for my tastes. But that's just me; I prefer metaphors to bluntly making a point, when it comes to songs.

Probably it's the songs that talk about space I like most. Because I am a geek.

So, sorry album, I really wanted to like you, but I think I'm going to have to just pick and choose.