well, here's a disturbing thing that escaped my attention on that songs of the century list: U Can't Touch This, by M. C. Hammer, is 201 on the list. Mind you, Superfreak, the song that Hammer "sampled generously" from, is not on the list. Also note that being 201 puts U Can't Touch This above such things as "House of the Rising Sun," by the Animals, anything by Jimi Hendrix (including Purple Haze, which isn't even on the list), anything by jazz great Jelly Roll Morton, Miles Davis's Bitches Brew album, and the entire Birdland album. Think about this... that piece of derivative tripe has been given more credit than the entire output of some of the 20th century's greatest talents. Of course, the NEA also brought you Piss Christ, and the RIAA is the organization responsible for shutting down Napster, so maybe I'm not so surprised.

NOOOO!!!
Mame.dk will probably be closing down for good tonight. the best spot for MAME roms. pity. Matt will, no doubt, blame me directly, by virtue of the fact that I linked to it a few days ago in my blog. Yes, I'm sure the two or three of you who stop by to read this so overwhelmed their servers that they are shutting their doors forever. Their news section says that they'd gotten some press lately, too, once on a danish TV show, and once in a british PC gaming magazine entitled PC Format. far be it for me to recommend that you go collect all the MAME roms you can get your hands on, but I think that the archiving of old videogames is important, and I want to see these games get a permanent home. Poor mame.dk. I'll miss 'em.

oh my... the songs of the century, as brought to you by the NEA and the RIAA. Thing that gets me about this, at least 15 of the best "songs" are entire albums. Isn't that cheating? Oh, and why is Mack the Knife attributed to Bobby Darin instead of Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht? That's like letting After the Fire take all the credit for Der Kommisar just because they re-recorded Falco's song in English. And I've got nothing against Cyndi Lauper, but what the hell is she doing above anything by the Beatles???

It's a bad world.

I see from his weblog that James is engaging in some involuntary experiments in sleep deprivation.

so i've been negligent for a day or two. so sue me, metaphorically.

saw something disturbing. I went to diedrich's during lunch. wanted some more coffee so I could buzz my way through the rest of the day. Saw a trophy mom and her friend get out of a little speedster. Both of them had cigarettes, which is their business, but both of them had brought their very small children with them. I watched them get out of the car to finish their smokes, leaving their kids to lock up the car and catch up to them. Then, the trophy mom leaned down to look at something her kid wanted to show her, puffing out a huge cloud of smoke in the kid's face without even blinking. She took another drag and continued crouching, exhaling death into the little bugger while he tried to show off his wooden sword. I'd choke the life out of her if she weren't doing a fine job of that on her own. note to self: if you ever have kids, don't do anything that will KILL THEM.

Everything's better with monkeys.

So... I just got back another draft of something I'm editing right now. The original text used the word "similar" to describe two things. A second draft (sent by external reviewers) changed "similar" to "analogous." We suspect they simply used Word's thesaurus to come up with this word change. Analogous wasn't quite right, though, so we changed it to "comparable" and sent it back to them. We got another draft back... they changed "comparable" to "similar." I'm thinking of changing it to "analagous."


I want to go home.

Blog is becoming...well, not so much an addiction as an obsession. I'm not hooked on doing it, but I'm thinking about it constantly...maybe just because it makes good background noise for my brain. I spend my idle time designing a site in my head so that eventually I can break free of the blogspot address and move this page to its own special place...

On Sunday, I went a little bit insane. My local Super Crown is going out of business. Something about a bankruptcy--Crown is closing several stores out here, and the one nearest my house is one of the casualties. 25-50% off on everything in stock. I spent a lot of money, and I increased my reading list dramatically:

• The History of the Lord of the Rings: J. R. R. Tolkien--His son Christopher has compiled early drafts, rewrites, changes, and notes from LotR together to create this book. At first, I thought it was a history of Middle Earth, but in fact, it is a history of The Lord of the Rings, a history of the evolution and progression of the story itself. Not what I expected, but good. (four-volume set)


• A Storm of Swords: George R. R. Martin--Best fantasy series I've read since Lord of the Rings. This is the third book; I've been desperate to read it since it came out, but it hasn't been released in paperback yet. The hardbound is expensive, but markedly less so at the going-out-of-business rates.


• Screwjack: Hunter S. Thompson--A mad god's collection of short fiction, although it's hard to say whether it's really fiction, given that most of his journalism blurs that line pretty handily, and this book carries the same writing tone as his reporting does.


• The Jungle: Upton Sinclair--This book is largely responsible for reforms in the food industry. I understand that, if I were much of an eater of meat, this book would have put me off it. It has made many a vegetarian, I'm told.


• Mort: Terry Pratchett--I like what I've read of Pratchett, but he has a tough time sustaining my interest. I figure a book about the Grim Reaper oughta be the sort of thing I can stick to.

Like I wasn't short on time already :/