09 28th, 2008| 
A wise, bearded man once told me that I’m responsible for less than 7 percent of the posts on this blog. And as one of three contributors, that struck me as a tad low. So I’m back to juke the stats and pad my own numbers.
I have two things I want to address today. One is music-related, though I’ll not offer any original insight into any music of any kind. And the second is a matter of life, death and prosperity in the face of both.
The music.
A wise, mutton-chopped bartender told me the other night about The Music Genome Project at pandora.com. I’m probably way behind on this revelation. And if you already know about the site, skip this part of the post and check out the second topic below.
It’s basically a personalized radio station. You start out with one artist and it will pull up songs from that artist and then experiment with similar-sounding stuff. You give it the thumbs up or thumbs down and it redefines your palette, for lack of a better term. You can throw in your own artists to further shape your profile.
I’ve been tooling around with it for just under a half hour and it’s already pulled up half a dozen artists I would have entered (The Mountain Goats), aren’t at the top of my list about but really like (Brother Ali), or had never heard before, but enjoy (Copperpot).
The problem I’ve come across is that my bizarre, minute-by-minute swings in musical taste lead me to adding a lot of weird artists and giving the OK to far too many questionable songs. Cake anyone?
A word of warning - you can only skip so many songs in an hour.
It’s an interesting way to expand your library, kill time at work and pretend like you’re connected to the music scene. It is a little creepy, Big Brother-esque though.
Example: My station pulled up “Just What I Needed” by The Cars. Why, you ask? Pandora supplies this answer:
Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features electric guitar wall-o-sound, call and answer vocal harmony (antiphony), extensive vamping, major key tonality and electric guitar riffs.
I had no idea I like major keys as opposed to minor. I always liked to play minor scales back in my musical days. They sounded Egyptian. I guess I don’t like to listen to them. What the hell is wall-o-sound?
Adding artists to my personalized station has quickly turned into a game for me, where I try to outsmart the station and make it melt down. I got a few rap songs in a row, which were all good, but I then decided to add Johnny Cash, The Kinks and Elliott Smith to my artist list to see what it would do.
I got DJ Krush. Thumbs down. Boring as hell but since I had already skipped through a few songs I couldn’t get rid of it. I guess I could have just muted it, but I didn’t think of that until The Remains came up next. (Girl… I want … to be with you.)
Don’t fuck with the machines.
Now for the serious stuff. This is a scary time we live in. From terrorism to nuclear proliferation to stock market fluctuations to Sarah Palin, we could very well be on the brink of disaster.
So, do as the Boy Scouts do and be prepared.
Come up with a good looting plan. Have a multi-purpose weapon/smashing tool (7 iron) to fight off the hordes of panicked idiots fleeing the cities and crack open the front of your nearest Best Buy.
But don’t just fill up on flat screens. There may not be power at your house/lair. Stop by Home Depot and grab some generators. Pick up some tools and hardware to fortify your place.
And don’t forget the booze.
It’s nice to be in the rarified air above 8 percent. Feels good. Feels right.
My genome just spit out Crazy by Gnarls Barkley.
Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features gospel influences, classical influences, electronica influences, an emotional male vocal and a heavily embellished melody.
I think my genome thinks I’m gay.
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Tags: looting, the machines
