Has anyone been following the USoE treasure hunt that Muse have been holding? My soul is literally being sucked out by this thing.

It has been the most epic, amazing, enjoyable, frustrating week ever. And now this last wait is actually killing me. No one actually has a clue whether USA should recognise the United States of Eurasia or not, but there has been an extension of the deadline and Zane Lowe has mentioned he's waiting on the resistance to get the last part of USoE but... The urge to resist is incredibly strong.

Muse must have expected something like this to happen - after all they couldn't possibly have ignored all of the calls for resistance on their site, forums and Twitter - so they must have a back-up plan in action, or at least be prepared to turn around and say No, actually, you all fail!

There's so much paranoia and hype going around, and everyone has spent the last week thinking and overthinking things, so what was a simple concept has turned into notihng short of chaos.

In the end, though, right or wrong, you can't knock the unity in the fans that this has created. Matt truly has inspired a resistance. Whether that was truly his intention, or whether his own love of conspiricies and politics has backfired, I don't know. But it's been bloody fantastic.

Just... Thank God I'm not the one who has to make the choice.

Matt, Dom, Chris... Thanks so much for such another bloody brilliant treasure hunt. Fellow members of the Resistance... Well done for sticking to your guns. Right or not, it's been an epic event and you guys are awesome.

Tuesday 10th November 2009: Birmingham NIA

MUSE

Mashing the refresh button for half an hour after the pre-sale tickets went on sale was horrifyingly tense. Thank you, Smidge, for continuing on after I had to go to work. I'd actually already phoned in to say I'd be late after I accidentally slept through my alarm. I thought that sounded a bit better than I'm buying Muse tickets, work will just have to wait. So chuffin' excited. :D

I had to go for an interview for my passport today and after all the questions I was asked and my sometimes rather faltering answers, I'm not even convinced I am me anymore.

Oh well, guess I'll have to wait and see if they let me have one.

Really, though, it's daft. I am me. I have been me for 24 years now. It's just... trying to convince someone of that fact is really kind of peculiar.

On one of the poorest weeks of my life, Muse have just announced their new tour dates. Tickets go on sale on Friday so I know where all my wages are going to go... I'm determined to go the Birmingham gig on the 10th October - providing, you know, I can actually get tickets - with the Smidge. It'll be nice to not have to travel all the way to London for a gig (not that I mind for you, obviously, Miyavi).

Speaking of, he posted a new song on his MySpace yesterday and, my god, it's amazing. It sounds similar to what he was writing for This Iz the Japanese Kabuki Rock, which was a bit of a surprise as I felt he might have gone back to his indies roots and done something a little heavier. Either way, hearing his voice again was... mind-blowing. I still can't get over the fact that I have actually seen him live. Seriously... I have no more words.

Also, x_g_revo_x seems to have accidentally turned into a Muse-only graphics community. I'm really terrible when I get caught up in a love of mine. My obsessive personality can be slightly debilitating at times. I'm having so much fun with my Muse love that To the Soul (of which there is now two pages sketched out) is sitting there, just looking at me with a disappointed look on its face. I promise you, dearest comic of mine, I am getting round to drawing more of you. It's just... I want to draw a Muse doujinshi so bad. I doodled Matt and Dom earlier - looking nothing like themselves to be honest but, as I've always said, I can only draw youths, not actual men - and it's really made me want to draw something a little more... epic. Belldom, obviously. Perhaps a period AU piece. Matt in a Victorian tailcoat. Mmm...

Okay, completely going off on a tangent. I think I'd better leave it at that.
Night x

I finally have broadband.

I cannot tell you how much this excites me.

The reason I haven't been around much recently is because of complete and utter Internet death. My mobile phone, which used to act as my modem, refused to cooperate anymore so I've been stuck without it for the last couple of weeks. Luckily, I was already in the process of getting broadband so the transition hasn't really taken that long.

It's really fantastic to be able to sit here and download a 150+MB file in a matter of minutes. It's sheer heaven. But the amount of time I've been wasting on YouTube frightens me. It doesn't help that I'm in the throes of Muse obsession so I've just been watching loads of live clips and interviews and random videos of Matt giggling in that wonderfully endearing way of his...

And speaking of, I have a new layout. Oddly enough, it features said band and said man. I've become quite fond of graphics-making recently (x_g_revo_x), this layout being my favourite. Matt Bellamy is just... Guh.

I can't remember what swept me up in Muse-adoration this time. All I know is that I've loved them for ten years and that seems really weird to me. It doesn't feel like they've been around that long, or that it's been so many years since I first heard of them and fell in love with Matt in the video for Uno. All I know is that I cannot wait for their new album and that I will be going to see them when they tour this Autumn.

Oh, and that leads me in nicely to say that the tickets have arrived for the Miyavi gig in October. I really can't believe he's coming back to the UK already. I thought that, especially with how things are in his life / career at the moment, if he did decide to come back at all, it certainly wouldn't be this year. In any case, I am so excited. I really can't believe that I've seen An Cafe (twice), Plastic Tree and Miyavi already, and now I have the chance to see the man himself again. If you'd said to me a year and a half ago that this would happen, I would have laughed in your face. I am really quite disappointed I missed Mucc playing, though. I managed to pick up a copy of shion in Nottingham on Friday, which was a fantastic experience. There's something amazing about being able to go into a record shop in England and buy a Japanese band's album. Though it did make me all the sadder that I missed them when they played here. If they come back, I'll be straight there.

In other news, my older sister's coming down with her family for my dad's 60th birthday in June so I'll get to see my adorable baby niece again. I'm not broody, I've never been the maternal type, but since she was born I've discovered that babies are actually really cute. I'm sorry, though, nature - I fail.

So there we go, a little update for you. Not very exciting, I admit, but really the rest of my time has just been taken up with work, lots of work, doodling, listening to music, going out for lunch with the Smidge, day trips, laughter, silliness, Resident Evil 5, family, rain and chocolate cake - which is fun, but not really worth writing about in great, eloquent detail. I guess I'll just have to find something amazingly exciting to do that I can regale you all with. Oh, now that's a shame.

I'm going to catch up on my f-list now and see what people have been getting up to. You don't realise how many posts you read until you miss a couple of weeks and have to go back pages and pages to catch everything. LJ, or rather all you guys, are really awesome.