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For all those of you who are nearly as obsessed with music as I am, you will understand, appreciate and appropriately fear the instinct to make lists detailing the endless minutiae of the world of sound.

As such, at the risk of choking on the irony, here’s a top nine list documenting the purpose behind doing top nine lists.

1. Nobody likes a critic

and everyone is one.

Let's talk about something. No? How about nothing? Not that either? Well, fine. I'm really indifferent about the whole thing anyhow.

2. My life is going nowhere.

Band after band is giving it a go. Their dedicated labels putting together promos and press kits to be sent to me in a timely fashion. I sit in my crunchy boxer shorts and focus all my attention on actually caring.

Of course I love music, but there comes a time when I'd really just rather not be wasting away into nothing. Analysis: It passes the time, but sustains only itself. You get hungry in every way imaginable for Spine Torumbs and Gortok to suck because something exceptional will only discourage you further from pursuing your own sound (note: Gortok and Spine Torumbs unfortunately don't suck. On the plus side, though, I completely made them up just now so they're nothing special either).

3. Really, it’s pathetic.

So you hang on to turns of phrase. Like they ever made sex and shelter.

Cleverness is overrated. Saying things are overrated is overrated, but overrating overrating is about 2.5/5. After an exhaustive readers poll, I discovered that you readers don’t really like taking polls at all. You don't like... it’s as though you don’t like me or anything I might, on any given day, stand for.

Why don’t you care about shoegaze? It’s got aesthetic beyond looking at your feet; it’s like having a massive head cold and not really minding at all. Like that point in a fever where you're sure you’re gonna die and it feels pretty awesome. Then there’s that wooziness. Sweet fancy Mariah, I love me a woozy guitar woosh!

4. You, the reader.

Kisses and hugs, hugs and kisses. Flirtations and foreplays and pregnancies. You’re the most important people to a reviewer, who only hopes he or she’s not trying to be your best friend when he or she ALWAYS is.

But you’ve already got best friends. And they’re too busy on Friendster and the ‘blogosphere’ to read us.

But I don’t want to speak for the other writers here since some of them are you.

Or, like some have said, do you just scan the styles/others and glance the rating? I do that a lot myself. Isn’t laziness sweet? It’s the very reason this article’s in list form.

5. Indecisiveness is like the tango of love & heartache.

You just gotta get the steps right, sonny boy. You just got to get the steps right.

6. KILL.

Pick up that garden claw and deposit it in your significant other’s fish belly. Impulsiveness is the only way.

If you doubt this for a second, you may deposit that claw in your own silky fish belly.

You’re hesitating...I don't like it when you hesitate. Because same-old same-old plain-Jane mundane inane desperate noise must cease.

7. Sometimes, when you’re lonely...

You talk to yourself. Just look at writing reviews as a more eloquent way to do this. On the occasion that someone notices, give them that enlightened look. You know the one I’m talking about. The Internet is like a beautiful void sans beauty. So it’s a void. A creamy void. Pick your adjective, in the end you’ll always come back to creamy. And so what if you feel crazy? There's always lucky seven to turn to.

8. ‘Artists’ and without the quote marks.

Because they say you are superfluous. But you ARE, just as they happen to BE. Because they say you undermine the purity of artistic expression. But we only seek to separate the wheat from a sea of no-good chaff. Because they say you play God.

But we were all born playing that one. Because they are what you would be if you could only quell your audio-visual, run like a fool to the vicarious experience of life with daily addictions.

But you muster a solid stanza on Oneida and alleviation is acquired. Real warmth of soul and no need to chase down being inspired (note: the quote-marks artists will talk the most rubbish).

9. ‘Quitters’ and ‘Losers’ do not exist.

You're losing, sure. You're throwing in the towel — I should’ve known. But I won’t mark you for life and neither should you. Even if you did quit reviewing for life, you’d probably go on to something else. So, really, it makes you a know-when-to-move-on-er.

Let’s keep looking at things in different ways until we’re nauseous, make ourselves puke until dry heaving, collapse on the ground and feel a whirling, clammy fever not unlike ‘Blue Skied An’ Clear’ and then, and then, and then.

I hope for reinvention. I pray for it every day. To the god of reinvention. To a blank page, not unlike like this one.

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