News: Random Bits

Stuff that's been sitting around but hasn't found a themed post.

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  I'm dying to know what the knitter's response was. I would have been tempted to say something like, "No habla dumbass" and kept on knitting.
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  seattle woman: "you look just like kristin hersh" me: "i AM kristin hersh" her: "she's a musician" me: "i know" her: "it's really uncanny"

  — kristin hersh (@kristinhersh) August 24, 2012

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  That person should write *all* movie synopses.
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Minecraft: Ahhh, Kids

Last night I got to ride back and forth to LAX with my friend's 5-year-old. Toward the end of the return trip, he started telling us (me and his mother) about how his brother (he has two, one who is named "Boney" and the other one whose name he doesn't know. He's an only child, by the way) cheats at Minecraft by buying a diamond pickaxe, and how that's cheating.

This was after he taught me a song called "Poop Your Head," which goes something like this:

Shake my booty
Shake my booty
Shake my booty
In your ass

News: Cool Stuff

• "The Wire" considered as a Victorian social novel... instead of one of the most amazing shows ever made for television.
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  see more TDW Geeks
  I make no apologies for thinking this is cool. Ask Brad about the Kirk Mutant Ninja Turtle I gave him all those years ago...
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  see more TDW Geeks
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  see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
  I had to hide this site from my cats, because they're not getting anything that fancy. Except maybe the beer tower.
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  see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
• A ukulele-playing Japanese band consisting of... amigurumi
  
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  see more funny videos, and check out our Yo Dawg lols!

Other: Minecraft Playlist

Certain songs come to mind when I play the game, so I decided to put together a Minecraft playlist of sorts. (Granted, some of the songs in the list didn't "come to mind" spontaneously, but seemed appropriate, since I needed filler.) Divided into three sections, here's the list.

General ambiance:

1. Kristin Hersh - "Coals." Coal is useful, you can burn it. And when you fall off a cliff, trust me, you're gonna crash.
2. Rasputina - "Diamond Mind." Diamonds are the holy grail, of sorts, in the game. They're pretty rare, you have to dig deep, the ore is a pretty blue (although, once mined, they look more like crystal easter eggs), but most importantly, they make the most durable tools and armor. One guy even wrote a song about diamonds:
   
3. Johnny Cash - "Ring of Fire." You can make a kind of ring of fire using perma-flaming tree stumps. Good for keeping the monsters away, but ouch, that hurts!
4. Devo - "Explosions." You can make TNT. Those are generally good explosions, as long as you reach minimum safe distance. Of course, creepers also explode, and they're not as big on minimum safe distance.
5. The Breeders - "Divine Hammer." There aren't actually hammers in the game, but there are axes and shovels and pickaxes which you use to pound on stuff. Close enough. A divine pickaxe is made of diamonds, of course.
6. Meat Puppets - "Lake of Fire." There are plenty of lava lakes (ok, underground they should really be called magma lakes). Just, uh, don't fall in. Because that hurts. Watch out for sparks, too, because they tend to pop out and set you on fire at inopportune moments.
7. Helium - "Skeleton." Yup, there are skeletons and boy, do they want to kill you. And they even make a sound very close to the song's fade-in.
8. Bettie Serveert - "Geek." Because you probably are one if you're playing the game. And those creepers will try to turn you inside out.

Playing the game:

9. Scrawl - "Hunting Me Down." Those monsters are coming for you.
10. Robert Johnson - "Hell Hound On My Trail." Seriously, they're after you.
11. Blondie - "Just Go Away." That means you, creeper.
12. Memphis Minnie - "Call the Fire Wagon." Oops, fell into a lava lake, did you? Well, like Minnie says, there's no fire wagon in this town!
13. The Carter Family - "The Little Black Train." Yeah, you can make your own little black train (ok, it's an iron mine cart, although with a custom texture pack, you could make it look like a train), but I'm thinking more about the one that's coming for you when a creeper turns you inside out.
14. Garbage - "Kick My Ass." They want to.

Reaction shots (aka stages of grief):

15. Boss Hogg - "What the Fuck." Where the hell did that zombie come from? The one that just shoved me into the lake of fire, thank you very much?
16. Nirvana - "Dumb." Nice one, Karen. You just shoved your own ass in the lake of fire.
17. Johnny Cash - "Cry Cry Cry." What you do when you die in the middle of nowhere while carrying a buttload of diamonds. Then kiss them goodbye.
18. Throwing Muses - "Mercury." After you're done crying, you get really pissed off, close the laptop, and vow never to play again.
19. Helium - "Walk Away." But you'll be back.

News: Kristin Hersh'n'Stuff

I've mentioned my favorite musician, Kristin Hersh, in the past. Well, she has a new album, Crooked, coming out (already out in the UK, but as a book(!)) and an autobiography of sorts. I'm too lazy to link. Go to Amazon and look! Anyway, as a "Strange Angel," i.e., a subscriber/underwriter/whatever on her CA$H Music site, I got my copy of the CD in the mail 2 weeks ago, and, yes, I like it, although they always take awhile to sink in. You can (freely and legally) download what is probably my favorite track, at least for now, called "Coals." It has a bit of a country sound. I can almost hear Johnny Cash performing it. Almost.

Kristin has also released a lot of her recent work under a Creative Commons license, as have an increasing number of musicians and artists who want people to be able to build off their work as long as they themselves get due credit. So when ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) sent out a fundraising letter to its members saying that Creative Commons and other groups (like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, hello?) were trying to get rid of copyrights, Creative Commons posted their own response, which Kristin endorsed.

News: More Stuff Than You Can Shake a Stick At, Part II

Geeky:

It goes without saying, the bearded guy is me. Except, well, for what should be obvious reasons, I have no beard.

• The Unix bash(1) shell has now added associative arrays, but I can't help but read the title of this article, "Bash Associative Arrays," and want to start insulting them. "You're just a perl wannabe! And you're just making your interactive shell a memory-sucking hog!"
• Further proof that PowerPoint is e-vil: the Time Square terror suspect lists it on his resume.
• FAQ, complete with totally unbelievable (as in, I don't believe a word they say) official quotes from the company, on deleting Facebook accounts.
• Louisiana is considering a law that would make it a misdemeanor to put anything on the net to embarrass minors. You might say that almost everything teenagers post embarrasses themselves, but fortunately the law was written in such a way that malicious intent is necessary. Or something.

Getting from here to there:

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The WTF list:

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  I lived in Sioux City a couple years when I was growing up. I must say, they had the most excellent sledding in the winter. But seriously, they couldn't get a band together to play the song's music instead of (badly) overdubbing the lyrics on top of the actual song? That song which still evokes memories of the worst of 80s music and music videos in my brain?
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  see more Lolcats and funny pictures
  Vengeance is a dish best served... icky.
• A psychological study says that listening to people on their cell phone is annoying because our brains have to work overtime to fill in the unheard half of the conversation. Yeah, because I'm sure I really would have enjoyed listening to that teenage girl on the bus whining to her mother if I had been hearing both sides of the conversation. "But, Mooooooom, why couldn't you pick us uuuuuuuup so we wouldn't have to take the buuuuuuuuus?" Mom: "Because the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side!"
• Just... WTF polling results.
• Cracked.com does the RIAA's math and finds that your 8Gb music player, fully loaded, is worth over $764 million dollars! Whoa!
• A condominium is proposing taking DNA-fingerprints of all resident dogs to use in finding out which residents aren't scooping their dog's pooping.

And last, but not least, Kristin Hersh's upcoming studio album Crooked is finally winging its way to Strange Angels like me. (What's a Strange Angel? As an artist with no major label backing her financially, Hersh and her manager/husband put together a new business model to fund new music. You can read about it at CASH Music.)

Other: Bitching and Moaning

I'm tired. I haven't been sleeping well lately. And it's making me cranky. Here are some of those things that are just working that last good nerve.

• There are two things about dealing with Unix that I have always considered voodoo: NFS and printing. We have had NFS issues at work which are a nightmare, and at home I have more or less retired my old WinXP box which had my printer hanging off it. Thus, I've had to move the printer to my FreeBSD box. First it kept failing because it didn't have permission to write to the device file. CUPS, you're running as root. Either fix it yourself or tell me that's the problem and prompt me to fix it. Dumbass. It spews so much garbage to its error log file that it took me forever to figure out what it was complaining about.
• Thunderbird. All of a sudden it starts prompting me constantly for my Kerberos credentials. Dude, if the server isn't asking for Kerberos credentials (and it's not), why are you? Piece of crap. It still gets my mail from the server, but the Kerberos window will "hide" and then prevent Thunderbird from exiting without telling me. I got home tonight and it turns out my laptop had been sleeping on the bus because when I thought it was shutting down before I left work, it wasn't.
• That crappy Marmaduke movie. I only learned about it today when there was a commercial for it. While I'm sure the whole script was written by a committee in about 10 minutes, why does the CGI have to look unbelievably crappy? I mean, offensively, rubbing-my-last-good-nerve crappy?
• The major record labels. I'm having trouble finding good music I like. Anything I do find is pretty much on a dinky label. These bigwigs produce lowest-common-denominator music where talent takes a backseat to looks, and then they wonder why people don't want to shell out money to buy the crap. They blame that on illegal downloads, but they'd either have to be idiots or beyond disingenuous actually to believe that themselves. 99.9% of what they put out isn't even worth stealing.
• And why the hell are there practically no self-striping yarns which (a) do not contain wool and/or acrylic and (b) come in something lighter than worsted weight?
• Not having a dishwasher (or a place to hook one up, even). I'm starting to remember some of why my previous forays into cooking died out. Cooking generates a lot of dirty dishes to wash.
• Whatever bug bit me on the shin and made it itch like crazy. Ugh.
• Nickel bra hooks. I have an itch between my shoulder blades now, too.
• Excessively cute cats that just make me want to hug them and squeeze them and love them and call them George, except they really get upset with the squeezing thing, so that just spoils my fun.

News: Week Whatever

Roads and rails:

• The Infrastructurist had a piece on beautiful old American train stations that met the wrecking ball.
• Scientific American columnist Steve Mirsky's piece on stupid things people do while driving starts out with a (somewhat apocryphal) knitting-related story, then moves on to a personal experience in Florida...
• ... which just can't hold a candle to these dumbass Floridians: "Cops: Woman Crashes While Shaving Bikini Line"
• Pretty graphics (ok, the colors are kind of '70s blah) showing the not-so-pretty rates of car-related deaths around the world. I hadn't ever really thought about it, but I guess it certainly makes sense that it can be much more dangerous to drive in poorer countries.

Whiteboard Jungle:

• As a systems engineer, I apparently have the best job in America. Well, if I were employed.
• This is just balloonacy awesomeness:
  

Miscellany:

• A study shows women who drink are less likely to gain weight. Note that the findings apply only to moderate drinkers before you become a total lush. Unless, of course, you didn't start drinking because of the weight thing in the first place.
• German researchers are making advances in voiceless speech pick-up. While it won't be showing up in cell phones anytime soon, we can dream...
• My favorite musician is doing something different for the release of her next album, Crooked. It will come with a 60-page book with photos and essays, and with access codes for on-line multimedia files.

Music: No Rain, All Shine

The Raincoats were scheduled to go on at the Echoplex at 11PM Sunday. I had never been to the Echoplex or its sister club, the Echo. I looked at their little map and it said they were at Glendale Ave & Sunset Blvd in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles. I left about 45 minutes of buffer space to drive the few miles from where I live and find parking, and took SR 2 all the way down until it ended, merging into Glendale Ave. I drove south, on the lookout for Sunset. Then I drove past Echo Lake, which meant I had gone too far. U-Turn. Back up Glendale, looking again. Then I hit the 2 and into Silverlake. Well, that's no good. I pulled into a parking lot and got out my 15-year-old Thomas Guide. GPS is for wimps. My Thomas Guide has never let me down, never run out of batteries, never gotten stolen, and never scared the bejeezus out of me by talking when I thought I was alone in the car. Ok, Sunset was just past Alvarado, and I knew exactly where that intersection was. Oh, and it was called Sunset to the east of Glendale, but Reservoir to the west. Oh, I'd look for both. I then drove down the same stretch 2 more times. WTF? I got stuck in a left-hand turn lane and decided to drive north the next time on the other side of the lake, on what turned out to be Echo Park Blvd/Rd/Whatever. And there, right before me, was Sunset Blvd. I took a left. Then I drove back and forth on Sunset Blvd twice, looking for the damned intersection with Glendale Ave.

Someone was seriously messing with my brain. Oh, and did I mention I still had that headache from the day before, although slightly less onerous.

I stayed on Sunset the second? third? time long enough to hit the Silverlake district from another angle. Then, boom, there's the Silverlake Lounge. See, here's the thing. Several years ago, Julius and I went to see 50' Wave at the Silverlake. I hadn't been there before, and I'm not sure if Julius had, either. The place has no parking, so you kind of have to meander through the small neighborhood streets. I was driving, and I kept getting confused because I'd be driving on the back streets that were on the same side of Sunset as the club, and all of a sudden, I'd hit the intersection with Sunset across the street from the club. Call me slow, but it took me a couple times to realize I'd been driving under Sunset via an underpass.

Back to Sunday night. I'd been at this for nearly 45 minutes now, and I was getting frustrated. I briefly considered just going home at that point, but no, I was not going to let these dumbass streets get to me! I checked the Thomas Guide one more time; the next street after Glendale was Lemoyne. I would just park at Lemoyne and figure out the rest. I parked in a free-at-this-time-of-the-night public lot on Lemoyne on the block just south of Sunset, and started walking west. At what should have been the corner of Sunset and Glendale, I realized I was on an overpass and looked down 20 feet to see.... Glendale Ave. Well, hello. I realized that Sunset and Glendale don't actually intersect, although they do temporarily share the same x-y map coordinates. Sunset's z-coordinate is about 20' higher than Glendale's. Goddamned overpass. Screw you, Sunset Blvd! I looked around and it looked like the only way down was by a stairway on the other side of Sunset. I was about a block either way from a crossing, but there were almost no cars at this time of night on a Sunday so I jaywalked. The stairs smelled somewhat, um, rank, but they got me down and I crossed (legally) and found the Echoplex. I hadn't looked at the clock in my car when I got out, but it was probably about 5 minutes past 11.

You may have confused me, but you did not break me, you absurdly laid-out streets!

The song that had been playing when I got out of my car was "No Looking." The song that was playing when I walked into the club was "No Looking." I circled around to where I could see. I asked someone and she said that she was pretty sure that they had just started.

I won't go into too many details about the show. It was great. Yes, there were some forgotten lyrics and mistimed entrances, but I was amazed at how sparely-played instruments could still seem to fill so much sonic room (and I'm not talking about volume, because any band can crank it up enough to make you deaf). It was much, much more enjoyable after the "hip" couple that had been standing in front of me, talking to each other the first 20 minutes or so finally left, about the same time that the people who were clearly not either there to see the Raincoats or to try to seriously appreciate music they had never heard had cleared out.

At the end of the show, Gina Birch announced we could get their lovely buttons and that she and Ana da Silva would sign records over at the little merch area. A couple dozen people clustered around, that gleam in our eyes. The band was helping break down their stage equipment, so we all waited patiently. I got my t-shirt (women's cut, yay!) and free button. Many people bought the newly-repressed vinyl LP of the first album, something that seemed sadly but perhaps intentionally ironic given that Kurt Cobain's quest for the same in the early 90s led him to da Silva's door. Of course, it just didn't seem quite the same given the thing has a barcode now, something the originals would not have had over 30 years ago.

I was spacing out and someone laid their hand on my shoulder to walk by. I looked. Ana da Silva had just touched my shoulder! She had started signing things and I waited while she wrote a book on one person's LP, and I got her to sign the liner notes I had grabbed from my Moving cd. Gina Birch was further down and chatting with people. I got in the quasi-line. When I got to her, I told her I had also looked for my Hangovers cd so she could sign that, but I hadn't been able to find it. Then I told her, "I love 'I Hate You!'" referring to one of the songs from the Hangovers record, and then not sure if she knew what I meant. She laughed. She hesitated, trying to decide what to write. I laughed when I saw. "I'm sorry, that's so stupid, but I didn't know what to write!" "No, I love it!" And I do.

Metro Journal: Oct 10 Forecast for No Raincoats

As I'd mentioned, the amazing Raincoats were finally on their way to California for the first time to perform in the Part Time Punks Festival on October 11. I got my ticket right away. I also put myself on the Part Time Punks mailing list so I could keep up with new information on the show. Well, turns out, they had scheduled an afternoon "party" on the roof of the Standard Hotel downtown for the day before, and saying that, among others, the Raincoats would be there to sign albums. I've never been one for fandom, as it requires too much energy for the net effect of looking like a total dork, but I really had nothing better to do, and it was free.

Of course, Saturday morning I woke up with a nasty headache. I took an Excedrin. A couple hours later, no real improvement. I figured maybe getting out and walking around in the, um, "fresh" air of downtown Los Angeles might help, so I went ahead with my plan. The trip, with about ½ mile walking at each end, just took two buses. Waiting for the second bus, the 90/91, on Glendale Blvd, I think I just missed the previous one by a few minutes, because I ended up having to wait almost half an hour, their frequency on Saturdays. When it came, even though there was a woman in a motorized wheelchair waiting at the stop, a rather barrel-chested middle-aged woman stood directly in front of the doors. Um, that's not the way it works. Everyone else stood back, because wheelchairs always go on first. The driver waited the better part of a minute for this woman to get the clue that she wasn't going to open the door until she moved, but that didn't happen. She opened the door, immediately started lowering the ramp, which beeps when it's on, and still the woman wasn't quite getting the clue until the driver told her to move. Geez. The bus was standing room only, but it cleared off several stops later and I settled down to read my book.

Downtown, I got off at Hill & 6th, and then had to walk a bit up to the Standard on Flower. I went in the lobby and took the elevator + stairs to the roof. I had never been there before, and I was struck by how Painfully Hip the place was trying so hard to be. The pretentiousness did not help my headache, with different lighting and colors around every corner. The room numbers were on fake "Hello My Name Is" stickers. As soon as I walked onto the roof, a security guard told me I needed a wristband to be on the roof at this hour (it was 3pm... WTF?) and I could get one at the valet parking area. So, I went down, found the valet parking entrance, and asked for a wristband for the roof. They didn't even ask for ID or anything, so I fail to see the point.

The roof is a pool/bar area. The Part Time Punks people had their DJ and sound system set up. I'm not going to go into design details of the roof, but again, Painfully Hip. I talked to a few groups of people, including three tourists from Greece who were hotel guests. We talked about how nice the weather had been the last few days, how it was impossible to enjoy the beaches around here after growing up with, for me, beaches on the East Coast, and for them, in Greece, where the water and sand are so much cleaner and the water warmer. They were on their way to going skydiving for the first time, so I wished them luck.

Still, I had the headache, and there was no sign of any Raincoats. I walked around a bit, checking out the view. I saw this beautiful mosaic pyramid that I'd seen a couple times before, but never remembered to figure out the building it was on. When I got home, I finally looked it up, and it's the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Right behind it, to the left, is the tallest building in Los Angeles, now called the US Bank Tower, previously the First Interstate Bank building. However, to me, it will always be the First Intercourse Building, although probably not for the reason most people might think.

The sun had fallen behind the building and the air up on the roof was getting cool. Still no Raincoats. Still no real abatement of the headache. I decided to go home, avoiding the walk back to Hill, instead walking the 3 blocks to the closest Red Line station, where the clock said it was about 4:30, and taking that to Hill & 1st. I was kitty corner from the stop when I saw the 794 go by. Oh, well, I could take the 90/91 again. Crap, I saw it coming down the block. I still had to cross Hill when it got to the stop. The crossing light changed and it was still there! I sprinted across and the driver waited for me. Yay! Seriously, it's all courthouses and office buildings for a several-block radius, so I would have been bored (and chilled) having to wait another half hour.

And once I got home, I took more drugs and still with the headache.

Other: Yeeee-haw!

One of my favorite bands of all time, the Raincoats, has apparently reunited, at least long enough to play a few shows. Including one just a few miles away! They'll be playing at the Echoplex on Sunday, October 11, as part of the Part Time Punks Festival.

The Raincoats formed in London during the punk explosion of the mid-70s. Several young women, mostly local art students, figured if all these men could form a band, why couldn't they? And since most of those male punks couldn't play instruments, it didn't really matter if most of these women couldn't either. And while they embraced the punk DIY-and-screw-anyone-who-doesn't-get-your-music aesthetic, if they were trying to sound like the men around them, it doesn't show. In the end, they just don't sound like anyone else, and if they do, it's because those people were trying to sound like the Raincoats.

They put out several albums over the next few years, finally disbanding in the mid-80s. While they never had commercial success, they become highly influential. That might have been that, until one day in the early 90s when a young man walked into a London shop where founding member Ana da Silva was working to express his love of the band's music and to ask if she had any copies of their out-of-print LPs to replace the ones he had worn out. Kurt Cobain wrote up the meeting and the band's importance to him in the original liner notes for Nirvana's Incesticide album. (You can stop reading that about the time he starts talking about what an honest and wonderful wife he has.) He eventually got the Raincoats to tour with Nirvana and helped get them a record deal with his label. They put out an EP and an album of new material, in addition to re-issuing the older recordings on CD. The band dissolved again after that, although core members Gina Birch and da Silva still remain more musically active.

So, anyway, yes, I already have my ticket.

Other: Name That Obscure Tune!

Yup, still bored. Came across this unattributed meme which requires... reader participation!

*** Rules Clarification ***

Ok, to clarify, I did that shuffle play thing and wrote down the first sentence from the first 26 (should have been 25 but I can't count) songs that I got. You, The Reader, are supposed to try to guess the song and artist for each quoted line and post your guesses in the comments. No cheating via search engines. If someone gets it right, I mark it off the list.

Rules for the blogger:
1. Music library on shuffle, etc. You will use the first 25 songs your player plays.
2. For each song, post only the first sentence of the lyrics. (You may wish to write down the name of each song on a post-it note on your monitor, next to the one with your passwords, your ATM PIN, your Social Security number, etc.)
3. If the first sentence contains the song title, blank it out with "___"
4. If someone guesses correctly, mark that song as identified by editing the original post.

Rules for guessers (readers):
1. No Googling the lyrics! You either know it or not. I suppose you could listen through your entire music library to see if they're there, though.
2. Post your guess (artist and song title) in the comments. Anonymous cowards will be mocked.

Now, as I have all of about 3 loyal readers these days, and that's counting each cat as ½ depending which one is in my lap or sitting next to the keyboard while I'm typing, and I have a rather narrow and sometimes obscure collection, this should take awhile. Or maybe I'll post the link to a Kristin Hersh fan site in which case probably 90% will be answered in no time. Anyway, here we go...

1. "Oh, please don't be so careless with your glances."
2. "So you're going cross-country, you're leaving me again."
3. "Start with your fingers they finger the chain that carries you home in our evenings." "Beestung" by Kristin Hersh, answered by shythylacine on the Wild Vanilla board.
4. "Orange and blue green and pink, I see you in everything."
5. "When you're stuck like glue, ___, when you need some goo." "Vaseline" by Elastica - brightyellowboi
6. "Toil toil toil til I get sick, I try reverse, but I'm not that quick" "Huffer" by The Breeders - brightyellowboi
7. "The night of the blackout I thought I'm your protege, sticky with the heat and getting stronger every day." "Sally is a Girl" by 50' Wave, again answered by shythylacine on the Wild Vanilla board.
8. "Like honey in my mouth, gold golden going down. I shudder with wonder at what we will feel like together."
9. "Bits and pieces of love for you, so sweet and simple yet, I'm frightened by the way you feel." "Trouble" by Lisa Germano - Wojtek over on Wild Vanilla
10. "Love is a burning thing."
11. "Am I o.k. to feel this way today?"
12. "Toe to toe, dancing very close." "Rapture" by Blondie - moschops on Wild Vanilla
13. "I could be a smack freak and hate society." "Hate My Way" by Throwing Muses - brightyellowboi
14. "You're so right, he can swim, he can breathe underwater." "Start" by Throwing Muses, shythylacine again!
15. "Tell me, milk cow, what on earth is wrong with you?"
16. "I was looking through the portholes out in ___, wondering what the hell I'm going to do."
17. "The wall is high, the black barn, the babe in my arms, in her swaddling clothes, and I know that the sky will split and the planets will shift."
18. "I have two heads, where's the man he's late?" "Devil's Roof" by Throwing Muses - brightyellowboi
19. "You can't depend on anything really, there's no promises, there's no point."
20. "For a moment I smelled the parlor where we had the last connection with your life."
21. "Don’t know what’s eating me today, I’m not in love, I’m not missing anyone"
22. "It start at the top now it's spiraling down."
23. "Well I drink and I cry, clench your fists, grit my teeth, lotta smoke, wipe my eye"
24. "And all that matters in the end's all the good times that have been."
25. "Walking on his highways, we leave the land and float inside the dark, black water."
26. "I have a ___ nailed to a cross on my apartment wall." "Fish" by Throwing Muses - brightyellowboi

Oops, I lost count and accidentally did 26. But the last one's a gimme, right?

Other: R-Rated Soundtracks

I'm bored (still), and I came across a slightly different Your Life As A Soundtrack on puchitomato's blog. For reference, puchitomato is the creator of the Happy Poo pattern, based on a Japanese character she found.

This is basically the same as the first one I posted, with a few differences, like a sex scene. The rules are the same as the first one I posted, if worded a little differently, but for reference, here they are.

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't skip the song just because you don't like it either!

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

1. Opening Credits
2. Waking Up
3. First Day At School
4. Falling In Love
5. Losing Virginity
6. Fight Song
7. Breaking Up
8. Prom
9. Life
10. Mental Breakdown
11. Driving
12. Flashback
13. Getting Back Together
14. Wedding
15. Birth of Child
16. Final Battle
17. Death Scene
18. Funeral Song
19. End Credits

Here I go, Karen, the R Rated version:

1. Opening Credits: Helium - "Medieval People"
2. Waking Up: Bettie Serveert - "John Darmy"
3. First Day At School: Beth Orton - "Daybreaker (Four Tet Remix)"
4. Falling In Love: Kristin Hersh - "Sinkhole"
5. Losing Virginity: Liz Phair - "Fuck and Run" (um... there's the R rating right there)
6. Fight Song: OP8 - "It's a Rainbow"
7. Breaking Up: The Raincoats - "Don't Be Mean" (heh)
8. Prom: Tanya Donelly - "Acrobat"
9. Life: Liz Phair - "Headache" (yup, that's about right)
10. Mental Breakdown: Lisa Germano - "Dig My Own Grave"
11. Driving: Dressy Bessy - "Better Luck"
12. Flashback: Lucinda Williams - "Hot Blood"
13. Getting Back Together: Mary Margaret O'Hara - "To Cry About"
14. Wedding: The Raincoats - "Love a Loser" (ouch)
15. Birth of Child: Robert Johnson - "Kind Hearted Woman Blues"
16. Final Battle: Belly - "Are You Experienced" (a horrible cover, BTW)
17. Death Scene: Memphis Minnie - "Please Don't Stop Him"
18. Funeral Song: SF Seals - "Janine's Dream"
19. End Credits: Cat Power - "Empty Shell"

Other: Your Life As A Soundtrack

I don't even remember where I found this, but it's been going around the web a long time. I posted it on the old throwingmusic.com board¹ a year or so ago and there were some great fits.

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool - first songs only

• Opening Credits
• Waking Up
• First Day of School
• Falling in Love
• Fight Song
• Breaking Up
• Prom
• Life is Good
• Mental Breakdown
• Driving
• Flashback
• Getting Back Together
• Wedding
• Paying the Dues
• The Night Before the War
• Moment of Triumph
• Death Scene
• Funeral Song
• End Credits

Here's what I came up with the first time:

• Opening Credits: Fastbacks - "I Know"
• Waking Up: Faith No More - "We Care A Lot" (only had it because it was in a Rhino box set, I swear)
• First Day of School: Lead Belly - "Irene"
• Falling in Love: Lisa Germano - "Fun, Fun for Everyone"
• Fight Song: Bettie Serveert - "Captain of Maybe"
• Breaking Up: Throwing Muses - "Dovey"
• Prom: Belly - "Lilith"
• Life is Good: Elastica - "Stutter"
• Mental Breakdown: Blondie - "I'm Gonna Love You Too"
• Driving: Patti Smith Group - "Poppies"
• Flashback: SF Seals - "Still"
• Getting Back Together: 50' Wave - "Dog Days"
• Wedding: OP8 - "OP8"
• Paying the Dues: Throwing Muses - "Calm Down, Come Down"
• The Night Before the War: Sonic Youth - "Kissability"
• Moment of Triumph: Lucinda Williams - "He Never Got Enough Love"
• Death Scene: Throwing Muses - "I'm Alive" (I swear!)
• Funeral Song: The Raincoats - "You're A Million"
• End Credits: Carter Family - "Gospel Ship"

I decided my life merited a sequel, and the second one had some uncanny fits:

• Opening Credits: The Raincoats - "In Love"
• Waking Up: The Hangovers - "I Feel Like" (actually works well... "The day just gets up and hits you")
• First Day of School: Kristin Hersh - "Nerve Endings"
• Falling in Love: Beth Orton - "Concrete Sky"
• Fight Song: Liz Phair - "Mesmerizing"
• Breaking Up: The Hangovers - "I Hate You" (awesome)
• Prom: Beth Orton - "Shopping Trolley"
• Life is Good: Mary Margaret O'Hara - "Have You Gone"
• Mental Breakdown: 7 Year Bitch - "The Midst" (perfect - "I need some chemicals, I'm too emotional")
• Driving: Boss Hog - "Texas" (I'd be driving the hell out of Texas)
• Flashback: Gillian Welch - "One Monkey"
• Getting Back Together: Sam & Dave - "Sweet Home"
• Wedding: Barbara Manning - "B4 We Go Under"
• Paying the Dues: Ruby - "Heidi"
• The Night Before the War: Generation X - "Your Generation" (from the Rhino punk box set)
• Moment of Triumph: Bettie Serveert - "Crutches" (hmmm... Pyrrhic victory?)
• Death Scene: Throwing Muses - "Shark/White Bikini Sand"
• Funeral Song: 50' Wave - "Glory Weed"
• End Credits: Jenny Toomey - "Patsy Cline"

Well, I'm really bored, so almost exactly a year later, let's see what I get. Call it "Karen: The Remake."

• Opening Credits: Babes in Toyland - "Mother"
• Waking Up: Liz Phair - "Ride"
• First Day of School: Bettie Serveert - "Geek" (Spot on!)
• Falling in Love: Danielle Howle and the Tantrums - "She Has a Past" (A little too spot on...)
• Fight Song: Rachael Yamagata - "The Reason Why"
• Breaking Up: Kristin Hersh - Untitled (On Sky Motel)
• Prom: X - "Soul Kitchen"
• Life is Good: Scrawl - "Out of Mind" (Seems like this should be the next one...)
• Mental Breakdown: Elastica - "Vaseline"
• Driving: Lisa Germano - "Cry Baby"
• Flashback: Throwing Muses - "Red Shoes"
• Getting Back Together: The Hangovers - "Sorry" (actually more about failing to get back together - "Sorry doesn't mean a thing anymore")
• Wedding: Cat Power - "Peking Saint"
• Paying the Dues: The New Pornographers - "Jackie, Dressed in Furs"
• The Night Before the War: Gillian Welch - "Wrecking Ball"
• Moment of Triumph: The Breeders - "Drivin' on 9"
• Death Scene: Throwing Muses - "Hate My Way" (guess I really must have...)
• Funeral Song: Kathleen Edwards - "Sweet Little Duck"
• End Credits: Lucinda Williams - "2 Kool 2 Be 4 Gotten" (rewl!)

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¹They changed forum software/hosting last year and the old posts were, I believe, lost. I had some funny signatures in there!

Other: Music!

I haven't really talked about specific music before. I've been listening to Kristin Hersh in her various musical incarnations for about 15 years now, ever since Heather-who-gave-me-a-cat-once loaned me Throwing Muses' album The Real Ramona. Tom-who-can't-believe-Spoon-weighs-16-pounds was asking me about decent online Kristin Hersh videos he could use to carry on my now-lax efforts at proselytizing. This site has the official video of the permanently-in-limbo Throwing Muses playing last month in Sydney. The sound and video quality are excellent, and they play some songs I am pretty sure I have never heard live and in-person (and still haven't because, duh, I wasn't in Sydney), including "Devil's Roof," "Limbo," "Mr Bones," and "Finished."

I also stumbled across this excellent clip of Kristin playing "Sugarbaby," one of my favorite tracks from her most recent solo album, Learn to Sing Like a Star.