Being sick is terrible. I’ve been fighting something nasty since Tuesday. Luckily the worst was out of the way fast — after recording a 101 degree temperature Tuesday night, the fever subsided and I’ve slowly returned to a state that’s manageable. I was still a bit stuffed up on the 25th, but by 10pm all that was left was sniffling and the occasional cough — my regular voice was back.

When I compiled my original Best Of 2008 list last December, it was a snow day. The sky dropped about a foot, maybe a foot and a half of fluffy white stuff and we lowly sub-compact drivers could go nowhere. Between ranking albums and locating album art, I took a stroll around town with my camera. The above image comes from that trek. Overall, I was pretty happy with last year’s list but, in revisiting all the albums from 2008, I now see quite a few …

Do you want to know something I completely object to? Of course you do—if you’re a regular reader you probably long for me to go off on a rant about something negative. So… listen up: I strongly believe that those who say Oh, nothing good has been released this year have a vastly distorted vision of reality. Their folly is that they don’t expose themselves to that which is new. Take, for example, A Certain Feeling by Bodies Of Water (MySpace)—this album is absolutely brilliant!!!