Really cool idea! But not so smart to try redeeming your free small Slurpee at 3.30pm in Bondi Junction, at the same time as every single school child was trying to redeem theirs.

Started off calm enough.

People started to crowd, push and shove…

Then all fucking hell broke loose, these little fucking kids started rushing the store, forcing their way into the store, breaking shit, shoving people out of the way, all for $1.40 worth of Slurpee, which wasn’t frozen in the slightest as the machine couldn’t handle the overuse.

Today, the 21st of October, 2008, has seen the release of t.A.T.u.’s latest album, Happy Smiles!

The album is available for physical sale in Russia at two Soyuz stores, as well as from t.A.T.u.’s official store. If you are like me, and are unable to purchase the album from either vendors, you are still able to purchase it online from, amazing enough, the iTunes Music Store!

The album is amazing, simply amazing. All the fucking around, all the postponement, all the lack of communication, no longer matters. They have released the album, and it is awesome.

Please support our talented girls by purchasing the album. If you need convincing, or a taste of what $16.99 on iTunes will get you, you can download the album for sampling purposes only from this Mediafire link: http://www.mediafire.com/?yzinnrzdj2j

official press release, posted september 10 on tatu.ru

“Veselye Ulybki” / “Happy Smiles” is t.A.T.u.’s third studio album.

After parting with Universal Music in 2006 and touring Russia as well as playing a set of gigs abroad, in spring 2007 Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova started to record new material. They worked in Germany, the US (Los-Angeles) and in Russia. The release of the new album should have been in December 2007, but Yulia Volkova was expecting her second baby, and it was decided to hold the album until the second half of 2008.

Meanwhile t.A.T.u. released two singles – “White Robe” and “220″. The biggest radio stations refused to play the songs because they “didn’t fit the rest of the playlist”, but videos for these tracks became the most discussed works of Russian musicians not only in their own country, but also in the world and made t.A.T.u. the only artists, whose videos in Russian language were taken in heavy airplay by Eastern Europe music TV channels (Viva Poland, MTV Poland, MTV Baltic, MAD TV Bulgaria, MAD TV Greece). Both videos got into The World Chart Express of MTV Europe in March and in August 2008 respectively.

In May 2008 t.A.T.u. released the most unique maxi-single in band’s history – hyperion-plate “Beliy Plaschik”. The uncensored version of “Beliy Plaschik” video became the main bonus of this double-disc edition. Despite the fact that “Beliy Plaschik” single was available in shops only from 20 May, it appeared on 15th line of Billboard Russia magazine May Album Sales Chart.

“Veselye Ulybki” / “Happy Smiles” is 12 songs, born during 3-year-long silence.

For almost a year a working title of the album was “Upravleniye Otbrosami” / “Waste Management”. But a month before the release – for the sake of ironic smile of those, who understand –the title changed. The essence, however, remained.

Among “Happy Smiles” contributors there are beginners, who were lucky to appear in the right place at the right time (such as Masha Maksakova, a 16-year-old school girl from St. Petersburg; she wrote the lyrics “Beliy Plaschik” is based on). There’re also professionals (Billy Steinberg, an author of the songs for Madonna as well as t.A.T.u. smash hit “All About Us” (2005)); Valery Polienko, the author of the lyrics for “Ya Soshla S Uma”, “Nas Ne Dogonyat” (2001), “Obesyanka Nol” (2005); Sergei Galoyan, a composer of “Not Gonna Get Us”, “Ne Ver, Ne Boysya, Ne Prosi” songs).

In 2009 “You and I”, a movie directed by Roland Joffe, should be released. t.A.T.u. songs from the “Happy Smiles” album will be featured in its soundtrack.

Distributor: SOYUZ
Available at SHOP.TATU.RU

Tracklist:

1. Intro
2. Белый плащик
3. You and I
4. Снегопады
5. 220
6. Марсианские глаза
7. Человечки
8. Веселые улыбки
9. Running Blind
10. Fly on the Wall
11. Время луны
12. Не жалей

You and I, the latest single from t.A.T.u.’s upcoming album Veselye Ulybki (Happy Smiles), has been released for an exclusive 3 day rotation on Russia’s Love Radio.

As well as being released on Love Radio, you can hear t.A.T.u.’s new single on their Myspace page.

Not only can you hear it on thier Myspace page, you can also download it from here. (sendspace link)

I’m personally quite a fan of this new song, and really hope it is an indication of the songs to come!

[SENDSPACE LINK]

I can’t get enough of this song, the Cobra Starship cover, not the Katy Perry original. Just one of the many reasons why Cobra Starship are fucking awesome.

Listen to the song below…

You can download the CitizensFOB mixtape featuring all new material by Panic at the Disco, Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is… and many other Fueled by Ramen artists, for free from Clinton Spark’s website.
[Direct file link]

It is well worth the download.

The above is a QR-Code.

“A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes.” – wikipedia

QR-Codes can be read with any camera phone that has a barcode reader installed. Telstra have started using these codes in their advertising to give users access to free downloads like ringtones and stuff, and all recent Telstra phones have the barcode reader applications pre-installed.

If you don’t have this installed, you can get a similar application for free from BeeTagg.

There are plenty of websites that generate these QR-Codes, which can be used to encode not only text messages, but instructions to tell mobiles to access websites, send an SMS, or make a phone call to a certain number.

This is really really cool stuff, I just stumbled to a page about it, and felt like I should share it with you! Download and install the application to your phone, and test out the online code generators! Talk to other clued-in-about-QR-Code people by printing out your generated messages really big and stick them places!

SMSing on it was incredibly difficult, almost impossible. The keyboard that comes up on the screen is really really small, so unless you have the tiniest fingers in the world, you’re almost certainly going to mash the wrong letters. I think they tried to combat this with some sort of T9-esque predictive text/mistake fixing feature, which would have been great had it have been suggesting the right words…

The menu was pretty annoying to use. The menu on the iPhone I was playing with was really really really cluttered and messy. The “Stocks” button was right at the top of the first page of the menu, yet the button to make a phone call was all the way on page number 3. I’m certain you can reorder the menu, but the fact that the store one was layed out like that was pretty stupid.

Other things that were annoying about the iPhone was the absence of an MMS feature, as well as not being able to capture video, landscape-only video playback, and the price.

There is nothing all that special about the iPhone, the novelty wore off after about 4 minutes, and I’m kind of relieved I didn’t end up getting one.

It was pretty cool, I guess, but certainly not $800 cool.

The choreography may not be the best, but it is, in my opinion, one of their best sounding single releases for a LONG time…

“220 – t.A.T.u.”
Directed by James Cox.

According to Google Video, this is one of the most viewed videos on the internet this week.

Watch it for yourself, have your own thoughts and opinions of the video, and tell me all about them!