Update, Bigger Update, Biggest Update

Dear god, two months since the last post. At least I have something to show for it.

Firstly, my team (South Korea) made it to the knockout stages of the Pop World Cup. The effervescent "Gee" by Girls' Generation is currently locked in a tough round-of-16 contest with a South African house track. You can vote on that match for the next few days here: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/04/pop-world-cup-2010-round-of-16-match-2i/

I also presented a paper at this year's Pop Conference a couple of weeks ago, about 50 Cent's latest video game and personae in hip-hop. The panel itself went great, and I loved hanging out with fellow writers/academics/nerds in Seattle; my paper is probably going to see print in slightly different form soon, but for now here's the abstract (out-of-date or frantically revised in various places).

The most momentous update is that, as announced on Zoilus, I'll be joining my friends Carl and Margaux at a new group blog. It looks like we're going to launch that within the next month? I plan to keep writing about comics and music primarily, but I want to experiment with different subjects as well; there will probably be cross-posting over from there, Gutteral remaining the home for ridiculously niche posts like this one. As soon as the new site goes up, you'll hear about it here (well, actually you won't, because we'll be pressing random buttons and tinkering pre-launch first, but still).