Ornoth

Okay, I'm applying some originality here. Took the 30-song meme (post the first line of 30 shuffle songs so people can guess what they are), and modified it to suit my own evil porpoises.

Took the first 30 (mostly) coherent sentences from shuffle, then ordered them a bit creatively, and what follows is the result. I must say, I have a number of songs with particularly intriguing lyrics! So what does the pod say to me?

RATED R FOR EXPLICIT LANGUAGE

Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste. I am W O O O. This speech is my recital. The autonomous Commie republic, which is part of the Russian federation, is situatied in the far northwest of Europe, and spreads up to the arctic part of the Ural mountains. Now we're up to our long-distance dedication and this one is about kids, and pets, and a situation that we can all understand, whether we have kids, or pets, or neither. I don't want to live in a world of darkness. Will these dreams still follow me, out of dark obscurity? Woke up this morning and I looked outside. Big lizard in my backyard; can't afford to feed him anymore. Shout! Was ist los mit dir mein Schatz, uh-huh? Found an earring; where's my sponge? Aw, you've had all the breaks. Never lose my wallet; it would put me in a spot. I know this girl -- a hard rocker -- you couldn't stop her if you tried. Dig, if you will, the picture of you and I engaged in a kiss. Funk me baby... Stereotomy: we can make it forever. Well... once is never enough; never is and never was, uh-huh. Stop wasting my time. You got a little dick and, motherfucker, I don't think I can cope with it. Leave my monkey alone. Breathe! One good thing about music: when it hits you feel no pain. Love to hear the ping go off in my ear. A wah-do-dem a wah-do-dem-dem-dem. Fame, fame makes a man take things over. The stove, the stove, the stove has come alive. Born to love volcanos; seen 'em on PBS.

I know it’s tedious to read about everyone’s end-of-year natterings, so I’ll keep mine brief.

Having just gone through a very difficult period, I’m naturally inclined to write 2005 off as just a series of very painful events. However, when I went to make a list of the good and the bad, I discovered a very surprising and substantial imbalance toward the good. This year in particular this list seems to really help keep things in perspective.

So here’s my lists:

The Bad		The Good
Puggle’s sudden death Inna’s hospitalization Abandoning my graphic design certificate program The damage done to my ceilings by leaks in the building’s A/C system Having to send back my new Dell laptop as defective The brouhaha with my bike shop over replacing my headset Early-season difficulties on the bike due to my back and seat I never had the time to get started in sea kayaking this year		Got a new job and began making money again DargonZine went back into circulation, printing the first half of the long-awaited Black Idol story arc, our most ambitious collaboration ever Those included “Liberated Hope”, a two-chapter story of my own Made a ton of positive progress in incorporating Buddhist philosophy into my life Bought a very nice brand new road bike Realized a longstanding dream by taking the train up to Portland, Maine and biking from there to Augusta Had three pieces of artwork displayed publicly at my art school’s senior show Met several prominent personalities, including Benoit Mandelbrot, Greg Hawkes, Ajahn Brahm, and Terry Pratchett Had a tremendously enjoyable and successful Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride Attended a pleasant Dargon Writers’ Summit in Traverse City, Michigan Learned how to do my own artistic bookbinding Went for a schooner ride in Camden, Maine with my brother Began attending friendly scotch nights and picked up a rare bottle of Port Ellen at a local tasting Got back into the swing of playing Diplomacy and learned how to play the excellent game Settlers of Catan Got back into and put in a good showing at some friendly poker games, then had a very profitable blackjack outing at Foxwoods Got the bloaty-ohs attending my first Scooper Bowl: an all-you-can-eat ice cream charity event Bought an iPod Nano Joined the ACLU in response to the US government’s unabashed assault on human rights both domestically and abroad Had a fun time showing my friend Tasia around Boston

So that’s the scoop. As you can see, the positives far outweigh the negatives, even if there were a couple really, really terrible things that happened this year.

The past couple weeks have provided some interesting noise for thought.

Although I’ve always thought of our culture as primarily visual, a confluence of events has convinced me that the attention of my ears is more hotly contested than my eyes. Here’s a few of the events that brought this to the fore, out of the background noise:

As soon as they came out, I picked up one of the little iPod Nanos. I’d avoided the bulky form factor of previous iPods, but the Nano really suits me. Now I walk around with about 120 albums worth of music in my pocket.

Once I fired up the accompanying software, I discovered iTunes’ sharing feature, which allows you to play music from other local network users’ collections. That provided access to a considerable quantity of additional audio material at work.

Soon after that, I was introduced to the magic of OurTunes, a Java client that allows you to not just listen to others’ music, but to snag it, so that you can load it onto your own iPod. So I did some plundering. It was just like the fine old days of AudioGalaxy, when I sampled all kinds of different reggae artists before going out and actually buying CDs from the artists I liked.

I also started looking for podcasts: RSS feeds of regular audio programs. I found Negativland’s weekly “Over the Edge” radio program out of Berkeley’s KPFA, and several really exceptional sets of Dharma talks. Suddenly, I found myself having real difficulty keeping up with the flood of several hours of incoming audio programs per day!

As if all that wasn’t enough, my employer decided to reward us by giving us receivers and a free year of Sirius satellite radio. While radio has limited appeal to me (since I don’t spend long hours in a car or anything), they do have one feature that piques my interest: live broadcasts of virtually every NBA game. Of course, that’s one of those things that, like NASCAR, might be appealing in the short term, but probably has an overall negative impact on my quality of life.

With all this audio-related stuff going on, I find there’s more things competing for my auditory space than my visual space, which seems curious to me. I’m not sure that’s ever been the case before.

And, of course, there’s the irony of Apple introducing a video iPod at this time, as well. I’m curious to see whether it takes off or not. Is there something inherent about audio that makes it more desirable to port around than video? I guess we’ll just have to wait and… hear.