Never Clever

That the words above Jesus’ cross did not indicate the incident took place in Rhode Island. I’m not sure why I thought this would have been a plus.

I’ve been playing around with MusicIP Mixer based on Chris’ recommendation. After getting through the “Oh my word, this is sucking up all the processing power of this monstrous computer” while it indexes and “validates” your music, it does a really interesting job, finding similar songs across all sorts of genres, albums, artists. In trying to share this wonderful news with the world, I exported one of the playlists, but iTunes just dumps it out as a tab-delimited text file. There’s not much I can do with a file like that on this machine; because Google Docs has gotten so good, I haven’t bothered to dig out a copy of MS Office. So I threw it into Google Spreadsheets to see what would happen. Bastards auto-magically imported it into a perfectly formatted spreadsheet without that interim Excel step where you do the machine’s job and say what it’s delineated with, if there are headings, etc.

Unlike Google, MusicIP isn’t perfect yet. It brings in more of the exact same artist/ album than I’d like. It has a slight case of feature-itis: I don’t need to play the songs in it, I don’t need another MP3 tagging solution (and I’m guessing most of the target audience already has an incredibly anal tagging plan* in place). And I’d like to be able to pass it multiple songs from different artists, but that’s just me thinking as a person. How the hell does the machine know what x songs have it common? That’s what it’s supposed to be doing for me. Watch it take over my sonic life.

* Apologies to anyone with a non-music incredible anal tagging plan.

you don’t know me as well as you think.

This might be enough for me to forgive them for what they did to me in Rock Band with “Electric Version”.

It doesn’t bubble up to consciousness very often, but Christ I worry I’m forgetting something. Every day I’m going to forget the permission slip and have to slog through a phonics workbook while everyone else goes to the Museum of Science. It probably drives being anal retentive; if everything’s put away, no way to miss what needs doing. I mention this because the driveway’s threatening to wash away and there must have been a Saturday in June I could have prevented this but sat on the porch drinking beer instead.

To future self: continue to buy high-quality beer to justify this sort of thing.

Streamed here. Join me in crushing their servers, won’t you? That video still weirds me out. At least it’s a semi-original spin on the Dylan ripoff.

My mom tells the story of kicking my grandfather, a cop, out of the room whenever they watched Dragnet because he’d constantly be yelling at the screen. I think I’m next for that treatment with Lost. The problem’s not really Jack, who’s Big Twist is that a well-to-do, masterful surgeon was a better person and happier wrecked on an island. Because I don’t think he was a better person. He seems to be a shrill, inconsistent jerk there too. I will admit I can’t stand his alcoholism is used to indicate this hero can’t cope with the normal world, the vodka-in-the-morning-OJ just a variation on Rocky Balboa’s raw eggshake.

It’s not the fact my first thought after parachuting onto an island, meeting the natives and being stabbed by the natives would be, “OWIE OWIE, THIS JOB SUCKS” instead of “I bet this ragtag bunch of idiots has at least three Proudfoot-class Human Prey trackers. Better make a dummy trail.” Or that one and a half of those trackers would consider it. And have to follow their instincts in private because they were born a woman and thus incapable of making decisions on the island. Even though they’re smarter and cooler.

It’s the appearance of the guy from The Wire. I don’t say it like that because I’m too lazy to IMDB his name, but because that’s what it felt like, like a young kid trying to make up a bedtime story, “And then the guy from The Wire showed up! And he had a Jet Ski! And you were there!” Just like when they hired Brian K. Vaughn as a writer. Like if you walked into the show planning room, there’s no paper on the wall listing “What Happened on the Island”, just a long list of “Things We Think Are Cool”. And they’re only 15 minutes ahead of me. I’m waiting for Craig Finn to be the pilot of the rescue boat. Or for them to hire Steven King to write an episode where Charlie hooks up with other famous dead musicians to cover all of Vampire Weekend’s Blue CD-R.

It makes me think of friends in NYC who try to drop their City Mouse Science in These Modern Times, when you have to say, “Yeah, it’s 2008. We have the Internet. I’ve heard that band too. Yup, I’ve known about that trend for 3 weeks now as well. Sorry.”