iTunes Game

I was at work today listening to my iPod. I was listening to something by Janis Joplin when I noticed how much the song reminded me of Florence and the Machine. I've also had a song by Fall Out Boy stuck in my head, so I decided to see if I could set up a playlist where each song logically followed the one before, either by similar chords, themes, or just sound alike. I successfully did this. I then decided to expand this method to see if I could bridge from that song to others that I randomly think of. I did this for a bit, then realized that I was at work, but had been playing with my iPod for the last half an hour. I mentally made up the following game, then decided to try it out when I got home.

The iTunes Game

1. Open iTunes, put your library on shuffle
2. Play a random song and put it in a new playlist. Move on to the next song, and add that song to the playlist. Repeat until your playlist is six songs long.
3. Figure out a series of songs that each follow from each other to make a flowing sequence from the first to second song.
4. Repeat for songs 2-3 and on and on until the entire playlist is connected.

Here's the playlist I just generated. Songs are in bold are the six random ones I had to connect between.

1. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - Arcade Fire
2. Blinding - Florence and the Machine
3. When the Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin
4. Live and Let Die - Guns N' Roses
5. Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr.
6. Party Out of Bounds - The B-52's
7. Hornets! Hornets!
8. These Are My Twisted Words - Radiohead
9. A New Machine - Pink Floyd
10. Hide and Seek - Imogen Heap
11. Laughing With - Regina Spektor
12. Gotta Get Drunk - The Little Willies
13. Beer - Reel Big Fish
14. Wrong Way - Sublime
15. C'mon Girl - The Red Hot Chili Peppers
16. Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
17. Lovers (Live A Little Longer) - ABBA
18. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
19. Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution - AC/DC

I give myself bonus points for getting from ABBA to AC/DC in one step

St. Matthew's Island: A Modern Parable

I heard about this story recently. The more I've thought about it, the more I've realized how much significance this has to various issues with modern society. I won't dwell on it, draw your own conclusions.

St Matthew's Island was an island off the coast of Alaska, deep in the Bering Strait. The island was populated almost entirely by lichen and other plant life. A few mice and foxes made up the entire mammal population. On rare occasion, an ice flow would allow a polar bear to visit the island, but even when this would happen, with no prey on the island no polar bear would not last long.

In the early 1940's the United States was fighting World War II against Japan in the Atlantic. Faced with the possibility of conflict expanding to the North Atlantic, the United States decided to set up a manned LORAD station on the island to monitor any future ship movements in the area. The intent was to periodically ship provisions to the island to keep food supplied to the crew. However, due to the war, the United States knew that the possibility existed that one day a situation could develop which would cut off this food supply. With no food supply native to the island that could support humans, a small herd of 29 reindeer was brought with to hunt should the need ever arise.

In 1945, the war ended and the LORAD station became unnecessary. The crew was loaded up and the station abandoned. The herd of reindeer was left behind.

The reindeer did quite well on St. Matthew's Island. While a nearly endless field of lichen would not feed military personnel, it was perfect for the reindeer. There were no predators to speak of, and no other large mammals to compete with for the food supply.

The reindeer's population exploded on the island. On occasion, biology teams would visit the island. By the late 1950's, the population had increased from 29 to 1,350. In 1963, the population topped 6,000.

That was it, though. It took about twenty years for the population to expand from nearly nothing to thousands. Once the population reached this level, however, the bubble burst. The supply of lichen gave out. After two decades of growth, it took only two years for the population to drop back down to only 43. Of these 42 were female, and the only male was found to be infertile. After a few more years these reindeer, too, would die off.

Like I said, I don't intend to elaborate on the possible significance of this story to society today. The meager few followers I have to this blog are smart people. Just give it some thought.

Justin Bieber

I don't consider myself to be a hateful person, and as far as music goes, I take pride in my open-mindedness. All of this is a little contradicted by the default position I've taken by hating Justin Bieber for the mere fact that he is Justin Bieber.

This brings me to the internet. I was going on stumbleupon this morning and I came across a Yahoo Answers question:

Who is better, Justin Bieber or Jimi Hendrix?

The asker then went on to describe why Justin was better, citing the following reasons:

1. Justin is an amazing guitarist
2. Justin is an incredible singer
3. Jimi is old

There was more in there, as I knew that this was either being written by an ignorant 11 year old fan girl or a 32 year old male troll. Either way, I wasn't going to let this besmirchment of one of my favorite artists of all time get to me.

As it turns out, tonight Mr. Bieber competed in some celebrity basketball game today, and actually did quite well. A friend of mine commented about this, and added that he didn't understand what all the hatred of him was about.

My first impression to this was "Oh come on." Everyone knows why everyone hates Justin Bieber. Then I stopped to think:

Do I really hate Justin Bieber, or am I just doing what's mainstream to Indie culture? Have I just become a mindless sheep in a different flock?

I ran a google search for Justin Bieber. One of his songs was in the results, so I gave the clip a listen. I mean a good listen, paying attention to the lyrics, melodies. I tried my best not to jump to the conclusion I came in with.

I was still repulsed by the song. The vocals were clearly autotuned. The melody consisted about 3 notes. The lyrics were nothing original, just the same feel good lovey dovey crap you see everywhere.

I do need to concede, however, It is definitely no worse than the rest of the Pop genre.

My thoughts now shifted to the Yahoo Answer post. He's a good guitarist. There was no evidence from the clip I listened to that he played his own guitar. Be it a troll or a preteen girl, that poster at one point had seen Bieber play (and somehow came to the conclusion that it was better than Hendrix, but that's another story). Another google search led me to the following youtube video.

Please watch it, give it a chance, it is important to the rest of my narrative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsBq92Mselk

There are two important things to take from this video:

1. Justin Bieber did, in fact, play guitar. I have a feeling Hendrix would have been able to manage either of the two chords used, but I digress. Justin was willing to put himself out there with a guitar and play it himself. It was definitely not the hardest song to learn, but compared to the rest of his genre, he was head and shoulders over the competition.
2. There was no autotune in this acoustic performance. I went in expecting this to be the opportunity I was looking for to prove he couldn't sing without it. I was proven wrong. His voice wasn't the end all, but it was good. He was definitely a tenor, but who knows, he may be able to actually hold his own.

So after looking into it a little more, I will concede that I no longer hate Justin Bieber. His music is still not my taste, but he may have potential yet. Perhaps in a few years he will move on from his current record label or make some type of career change that will allow him to stop producing the canned air he's doing now and start actually making music. Perhaps I could even enjoy him.

There you are, Justin Bieber. I do not hate you.

P.S.

Point by point I'd like to quickly rebuke the posting on why Bieber is better than Hendrix. If I don't, it may dwell on me...

1. Justin is an amazing guitarist: I have already addressed this and won't waste time here rehashing
2. Justin is an incredible singer: On a purely technical rank, this actually may be true, but the amount of soul and spirit in Jimi's vocals proves he actually means what he says. This is not present, and is in fact deliberately removed whenever autotune is applied.
3. Jimi is old: Jimi died at the age of 27. He was never old.

Sidenote: Spell Check thinks Bieber should be corrected as Bier. Hendrix is in it's dictionary.

The Perfunctory "Sorry I haven't update my blog more" blog post

I have slipped out of the habit of updating this thing, apologies. As you'll see, I've got a couple things to add today, but first, Some random thoughts:

1. After nearly two decades of being a Mac fanboy, my day has finally come. It vindicates years of being a Mac in a PC world that Mac is finally coming out on top.
2. I flipped on some Netflix SNL just now, it's the 2008-2009 season. God I miss the 2008 election season.
3. My couch and futon are both repaired. I kick ass.
4. I've been to Las Vegas, NV and Paducah, KY. Vegas was nothing more or less than what is expected, but what happens in Paducah stays in Paducah.
5. Keenan is doing well, what the hell happened to Kel?
6. That's it for now.