Category: Personal

From Shel, a few questions for me about my music collection:

1. Total amount of music files on your computer:
Well…on my actual computer, none. My laptop doesn’t have anything on it, everything is served off of the desktop in my office, with the music residing on an external HD. Bets and I use iTunes to stream to each of our laptops, and also to the Airport Extreme hooked into our surround sound system in the living room.

Well, that was a little tangent, wasn’t it? Ok, so total music available to us in the house is something like 9500 songs or so, about 57 Gigs.

2. The last CD you bought was:
The last actual physical CD? Probably Ryan Adams, Love is Hell part 2. Last album I paid for? Southern Culture on the Skids, from allofmp3.com. Last iTunes purchase? Morrocan Role by Ryan Adams.

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?
In the car on the way to work: Mr. Pitiful by The Commitments.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:

• Round Here by Counting Crows, especially the live versions. The song itself is the first track on their debut album August and Everything After.

  She looks up at the building / says she’s thinking of jumping / says she’s tired of life / everybody’s tired of something

• Wonderwall, by Oasis. Overplayed and saturated beyond belief, this is just nearly a perfect pop song. Both Counting Crows and Ryan Adams have covered it, and it just sticks to my head in ways that I can’t explain.

  Because maybe / you’re gonna be the one that saves me

• Lovesong by The Cure. Reminds me of the terrible and wonderful things about being a teenager, and still manages to be a song about how someone can change your whole world.

  whatever words I say / I will always love you

• Black by Pearl Jam. Another love song, but this one about love that leaves you, and how that also changes the world. I could include a dozen Pearl Jam songs here, but this one was always special.

  I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life / I know you’ll be a star / in somebody else’s sky

• Oh My Sweet Carolina by Ryan Adams. We discovered Ryan late in our tenure at UNC, and this song just seemed written for us. The first time I heard it, I was literally dumbfounded. I just sat there, struck by the beauty and wonder of it, and I bought the CD not an hour later.

  Up here in the city feels like things are closing in / sunset’s just my lightbulb burnin’ out / I miss Kentucky and I miss my family / all the sweetest winds they blow across the South

• Hurt by Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash. Nihlism from the first, and sorrow and regret from the second, just a powerful song. Reminds me of the despair inherent in the human condition, and the pain associated with feeling too much.

  You can have it all / my empire of dirt / I will let you down / I will make you hurt

• Judith by A Perfect Circle. When I’m feeling like I need to get some anger out, or am fed up with the world, this song does it. A paean against religous zealotry, or blindly following any belief system.

  You are such an inspiration / for the way that I would never ever choose to be

Hey, it’s my list. I’m allowed more than 5 if I want. 😛

5. What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?
No idea! I’ll have to think about that.

From the BBC:

Ernst Mayr, the evolutionary biologist who has been called “the Darwin of the 20th Century” has died aged 100.

Mayr was incredibly influential in evolutionary theory, and his definition of “species” is still the most prominent definition in use today for the concept. I read his work extensively while I was doing philosophy of science, and he was truly one of the great scientists of the 20th century. While he can no longer defend his positions, there are generations of scholars that will do his work for him. I can only hope to count myself in that group.

I was just notified that I’m having a mini-review that I wrote published in MAKE, the new magazine/book from O’Reilly. Mark Frauenfelder posted a call for reviews on BoingBoing, so I thought what the hell? Sat down, whipped up a couple hundred words on something, and got word from him yesterday that they were going to run it. What’s the product? Pick up issue two of the “mook” and find out. 🙂

After thinking about it last night, after all the book reviews I’ve written, the academic papers, the random poems that got published during my undergrad days…this is the first piece of writing I’ve gotten paid for. That makes me smile a lot.