Today's Muse: This Horrid Blister on My Toe - Damn Boots.

I laugh at you, you whom searches HMV's metal section, and complain it is inadequate. I LAUGH.

I will not explain why I laugh. Just understand that I laugh. It could be that I laugh at your futile attempts, or perhaps that you actually go to HMV expecting to find obscure metal, or that you think that for music to be good it must be obscure. It could also be that I simply like laughing. I'll get back to you when I subside.

Unrelated to my laughing: I was browsing the said section at said store (Found a spiny little specimen, going very cheap. Much glee ensued.) when behind me two middle-aged punks - complete with tattoos, bandannas plaid shirts and rounded bellies - paced the length repeating over and over: "Poseurs! Fucking poseurs!", and grinning as though they had said something of such superb intelligence that they had suprised even themselves.

Who knows what they were referring to? The selection of CDs on sale? The people browsing the racks?

It's always a tad disheartening to see something obscure reach popularity, isn't it? Suddenly this band you've listened to since they were (figuratively) in diapers has kids, kids clamouring for their CDs.

It's actually kind of a litmus test for sussing out insecure individuals on the internet; they list their music interests and then very quickly put the disclaimer: I listened to them way before they got famous.

My own experiance: I once heard MSI courtesy of this girl from drama. Several years later I heard they released a new music video, which I got off the net. I dug up their 2005 release from under stacks of Metallica at Borders. I played it on endless loop.

I loved it. I wanted to share it with the world, or so I felt. I convinced one friend to take a listen, and she liked it. Then she told someone else. And so on.

Suddenly it seemed as though everyone was talking about MSI. Singing Stupid MF (badly) at lunch. And through it all I started thinking: Maybe I should have kept it to myself.

There's this misplaced sense of, perhaps, belonging that comes with the whole shit. The feeling of belonging to this secret club hardly anyone knows about, or understands. Some argue this is classic individualism, but I can't help but disagree.

I haven't even scratched the surface; I've walked drunk all over it. Some of these ideas are being used in An Exercise in Obsession (which happens to be going well). We could go so many places with this starter - criticism of subcultures (individual or collective?), the "Popularity=Sellout?" debate, and er, that chap downstairs ought to get new swim shorts.

I feel rather iffy today.

Exam results out on Friday. Be still, heart.

I mean it, shut the fuck up.