This morning on the way to work I was thinking of a cool idea for a poster. It would be an intricately hand-drawn map, populated completely with fictional places from music. (The New Pornographers' Myriad Harbour was playing when I thought of it, and aside from the fact that that song is sublime, it would also be a great name for an actual harbour.) Then I was thinking about that Elvis Costello song that goes, "So they came from Ugly, Texas, and from Nameless, Tennessee..." I can't tell you how many SimCities I've built that were named one of those two things.

Actually, I can't think of any others. This might not be as good an idea as I had first assumed. Desolation row, maybe, but is that a region of a town? Like cannery row?

Searching for this topic led me to The 7 worst fictional towns in America. I've often thought that the town where Miss Marple lives (in the Agatha Christie mysteries, which I used to read compulsively) has got to be one of the worst places in the WORLD to live, with a death rate of around 15% a year. Along with Sunnydale, California, of course.

This would also be a good time to mention the rocklopedia fakebandica, the ultimate reference work for fictional bands. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that every fake band I can think of is in there.