Asymptomatic

I downloaded a ton of Christmas music today. I've been on a search for Christmas music that is not your standard Bing Crosby/Frank Sinatra fare, something produced by good modern rock musicians.

Berta and I were at the mall one Christmas and had stopped in the Guess store (in which we bought her a slinky dress... I wonder what closet that's in...) and they had the best Christmas music ever. Probably piped in by satellite, it was performed by people who you would hear on the regular radio at the time, not the classic oldies. It was great.

It's not to say I don't like the oldies, I just get tired of hearing the same ten performances over an over. I don't even mind the classic songs as long as they're performed by new artists. Even better would be a unique new song performed by a fresh artist....

Pat was talking to me on IM yesterday about Halo 2, and how he would like to hear real radio shows again.

At first, I suggested investigating podcasts, and I suppose that podcasts aren't exactly what either of us were looking for. No, we both want what I proposed for the Blogathon that never happened.

If you are interested in Halo 2, then unless your head has been smashed under a rock, you will know what Ilovebees is. I mean, you'll know of it, not necessarily understand it. It's some kind of Halo marketing vehicle. Like they need more hype, really....

I don't know.

But now you will all know what the heck I'm talking about. Just download this stinking cheese MP3 and listen to it and maybe you'll think I'm a little less crazy.

Probably not....

I created my profile at Audioscrobbler. I downloaded a plugin for WinAmp that reports every song that I play back to the Audioscrobbler website. It keeps track of the music that I like and lets me find people that have similar musical interests. Potentially.

You need to have 100 songs in the list of songs you've played in order to get recommendations. And since my list only has a few songs in it at this point, I can't get recommendations. I should be able to whip through my collection in short order.

The only thing that concerns me is the huge Tori Amos archive I have on here. (It's 16% of all the music I have on the computer - and that's a very large percentage indeed, when you consider that the next highest, Radiohead, is 3.3%.) I put a few CDs together for Jen, since her brother had run off with her CDs. Anyway, all of the MP3s for those albums are on this computer, including some bootleg stuff I got from Brian, and some other crazy things, like BT's "Blue Skies", which features Tori's custom vocals in its mix. I figure that I'll end up with a ton of recommendations of Lilith Fair chicks....

My CD collection is all blocked away with stuff in the basement from the repairs we're doing down there, so i downloaded Matthew Sweet's "Sick of Myself" (my copy is not this poor - WMA9pro) on a whim. I had the window open and somehow managed to click on the "M"s (don't ask me, I don't know).

After I downloaded it and played a minute or two of it, I looked over to my left and saw the guitar and remembered that it was Matthew Sweet (among some others) that had originally spawned my interest in guitar at all. I picked up the guitar and started to play a little. And I sucked, as usual. Sucked so bad, in fact, that I broke my E string trying to play a D chord. Bah.

So if anyone knows the process (and I suspect that I might have one reader who does) required to most easily fix my poor busted guitar, I'd be much abliged. Right now, I'm going to download some more Matthew Sweet and perhaps some Steve Vai. ...