Kablammo!

Happy birthday, Matt.

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say ay oh way oh, ay oh way oh.

Song of the Moment: «Basket Case» — Green Day

Apparently nothing all that bad came from my decision to rip some 30 of my CDs to --aps VBR MP3s last night instead of studying for the Space Dynamics midterm I had today. I’d have probably fared even better if I hadn’t stayed up procrastinating for the 26 hours immediately prior to the exam, but all things considered it went pretty well.

EAC does an astonishingly good job of ripping music from woefully mistreated CDs, even CDs that have been scratched and abused to the extent that they’re no longer opaque throughout, meaning that they have undergone significant and irreparable data loss. It’s no exaggeration to say my mind is boggled by just how skilled this program is. Plus it’s free!

Liina: thanks again for that WHFS Just Passin’ Thru CD. Although it just sat around for a few years without being fully appreciated, today I realized just how good it is. Hell, it even has everybody’s favourite lead singer of the Lemonheads acoustically covering everybody’s favourite alliteratively-named insane drunken country musician.

Song of the Moment: «The Streets of Baltimore» — Evan Dando

Well I’ll be damned. It looks like Nina Jelen’s big brother Ben Jelen is in the process of making it big; you know, appearing on VH1 and that kind of thing. Good for him? Je crois que oui. “Come On“, which appears to be his ‘big song’, unfortunately sems to be Lite-FM-bound, but that could just be the production. Nobody needs that kind of string presence in a pop song. Judging from the comments on this blog, though, that sappiness might just be Ben’s ticket for the gravy train to… gravytown.

In other news:

• When will people learn to not trust the internet? After they got fired from their cushy jobs at a TV station, no doubt.
• Spam turned 10 yesterday. And today all my email consists of crap like “YOU WON A FREE VACATION” and “”want something?^ zyjhdfae”. Whee.
• My iRank is probably even lower than my PageRank. epenis--;
• Gates: ‘I Am A Stupid Nerd’. It costs money to send physical postage, and yet proportionately I get just as much physical spam as electronic. Donate computer time to distributed computing projects? That’s your prerogative. Force people to do so in order to be able to use email, one of the oldest uses of the intarweb? That’s bullshit. Who decides what projects are valid recipients of computer time, anyway? What if I think an X-Box decryption project is what I want to support, Bill?
• Lucasarts: ‘We Are Smacktards!’

Song of the Moment: «Superfly» — Curtis Mayfield

Maybe I’m crazy, but I’m thinking that TV needs a show called “Prognosis: Murder”, possibly starring Dick Van Dyke. If he has an evil twin, that would be even better choice.

Song of the Moment: «I’m Not the Droid You’re Looking For» — Grand Moff Tarkin

Last night I had several dreams, but one in particular stood out and stayed with me after I awoke. In the dream, I had gone to a party at a friend’s house and stayed the night. The next morning, I couldn’t find my special class ring. I searched high and low, and accused all the other partygoers of horrible theft, but my search and my inquest were both equally fruitless. Everybody who was there was concerned and helpful at first, but grew exasperated and indifferent as I became an angrier and more pushy jackass with each successive wasted minute of my futile pursuit.

Then, in the dream, a sudden realization stopped me in my tracks like the Enola Gay stopping this wristwatch: I had dreamed the ring. The ring was a fiction created by my drunken mind the night before, and I had awoken from the dream within a dream, and been unable to explain why it was not on my finger, where I distinctly remembered placing it.

Immediately upon coming to the conclusion that I had been dreaming, I awoke, glanced over at the class ring sitting stoically on my shelf, and fell back asleep.

Song of the Moment: «Do You Believe Her?» — The Raveonettes

Today is the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks (December 16th, 1961 – February 26th, 1994). It’s been a long ten years. Granted, I didn’t know who he was until maybe six years ago, but that’s beside the point. If you have never experienced the genius, the madness, the hilarity, the bitterness, or the purple-veined-dick jokes that are Bill Hicks, you owe it to yourself to find some of his material and listen to it.

Never the type to ask, “What’s the deal?” Bill was nonetheless the kind of guy who really made you think about what was going on. His material on the Gulf War was absolutely spot-on, and interestingly enough, the jokes worked just as well the second time around. You don’t even have to change the names.

What a ham-fisted tribute this turned out to be; I’m ashamed of myself. Just go listen to Bill’s bit on the Gideons. OK? I mean, fuck.

Song of the Moment: «Happiness Is A Warm Gun» — The Beatles

So today I got a letter in the mail. Not just any letter, this one said, in clear bold sans-serif type, “IMPORTANT: SETTLEMENT MATERIALS ENCLOSED,” and came with a check for $13.86. All I had to do was enter my name into some website a few months ago. Full text of the letter is as follows:

February, 2004

Dear New York Music Purchaser:

As Attorney General for the State of New York, I am pleased to enclose payment for your claim in the settlement of the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation. This lawsuit was brought by the Attorneys General of 43 states and three territories and by counsel for Private Class Plaintiffs on behalf of purchasers of music CDs. In accordance with the terms of the court-approved settlement, payment is being made to music purchasers who filed a valid and timely claim.

Whether you filed your claim online at the settlement web site, www.MusicCDSettlement.com, or by mail, the attached payment represents full payment of your portion of the Settlement. Please note that the attached payment instrument must be cashed by May 20, 2004.

It is a pleasure to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion and to return value to consumers who purchased CDs while the challenged pricing policies were in effect.

Eliot Spitzer
Attorney General of New York

I got free money in the mail, and all I had to do was be gouged by the RIAA! Time to get back to the important task of listening to music that’s not affiliated with the RIAA.

Song of the Moment: «The Lover» — Love In Reverse

Idiotlist? Idiotlist.

• Black and white make grey. And as it turns out, stuff like “Glass Onion”, “Savoy Truffle”, and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” make astonishingly good backing tracks for rapping over.
• This monstrosity fucking reeks of bourgeois. The only even remotely worthwhile thing about it is its color; “Utility Cream” is the awesomest name ever.
• Give a bunch of fifth-graders markers and Radiohead, and you’ll find that a girl named Hannah will draw you an uncannily accurate assessment of why I like Radiohead so much.
• THIS is why I like the internet.

Song of the Moment: «Molotov Cocktail» — Diablo Project

Amazon.com seems to have a slight problem with dates.

Song of the Moment: «Don’t Forget to Breathe» — Beulah

Is air supposed to come out of my left eye when I blow my nose? This is starting to freak me out.

Anyway, it’s time for another idiotlist, I suppose; I remain too lazy to bother to explain things in any detail or to write in complete sentences.

• This is a little old, but that didn’t prevent me from laughing out loud at it.
• It’s too bad eBay keeps cancelling auctions like this one.
• If you can sing this, you’re a god on earth.
• Same goes for playing this, especially on the trumpet.
• More reasons to abstain from antibiotics.

And now I need some sleep. Stupid common cold.

Song of the Moment: «Piano Sonata nr. 15, Part 2: Andante» — Ludwig Van