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Posted on 01.24.06 by Widge @ 2:06 am
It's funny…I find out after Monday's over that Monday, January 23rd, is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. I'd vote for April 15th, myself, but regardless, my most depressing day of the year started off with finding out Needcoffee's been nominated for a Bloggie for Best-Kept-Secret Weblog. So that's incredible. Our readers are amazingly wonderful people, no matter what the rest of my staff thinks about them. I kid. Mostly. So if you like our stuff, since NC is our biggest One Tusk hydra-head, please give us a vote. In other news, I'm working on a new short story, independent of Something Else, that has a working title of "The Invasion at Nick's Place." Don't ask. Lastly, latest amusing song I recommend to you is "Plea From a Cat Named Virtute" by the Weakerthans. Found yet again thanks to Goose at Veritas Lux Mea. Get the info there. Filed under: General BS
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Posted on 01.21.06 by Widge @ 3:37 am
Well, it's new to you…Issue #4 was half-finished when I pulled the plug on Next Wave the first time around. So you're seeing pages I wrote over five years ago. Pleased as hell to finally be putting them online. So enjoy. In music news, discovered and recommend to you Tom Vek and his song "C-C" (found here) along with Carpark North's "Human" (found here). The latter song starts off sounding like something odd from the 80s, but just bear with it. Filed under: General BS
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Posted on 01.19.06 by Widge @ 2:53 am
I put up audio versions of the first two episode of Something Else a day ago, and got buried under something…so didn't post the headsup here. So…headsup. Also, the latest chapter of Overkill is up. Lastly, whatever you do, stay the hell away from The Hype Machine. It's a gigantic audio blog aggregator that churns out a couple hundred MP3s a day that I feel compelled to download and sample. It will consume your world. And your ears. Best so far is Chixdiggit's "I Remember You." Found that via Veritas Lux Mea. That and a picture of midriff licking. Just don't go to the site while nuns are watching you netsurf and you'll be fine. Anyway, stay away from that aggregator, no matter what you do. It's a timesuck of unbelievable proportions. You've been warned. Filed under: General BS
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Posted on 01.15.06 by Widge @ 11:24 pm
So I receive this e-mail from TagWorld that trumpets their new music service.
I go back to my TagWorld account which I haven't touched in two months and upload a song. You can create a player that people can use when they go to your TagWorld site with whatever playlists you want, apparently. I was trying to figure out how they can get away with letting me run a pirate radio station through my TagWorld site, which is, of course, exactly what I wanted to do. However…here's what I found in the press release, though: Users can even upload their own copyrighted music and create customized playlists, including songs from TagWorld artists. (Any such music uploaded by a user is currently only available to stream back for that user's own listening pleasure.) 834 artists is nothing to sneeze at, surely. And they get points for allowing their music to be used on the site (though, for example, Postal Service only appears to make two songs available), but "unlimited" does not equal "834 artists which have made arrangements to let you stream their stuff." At least not in my book. And how helpful is it to upload songs that I own if only I can listen to them? I have a laptop, I have an iPod, I pretty much have music on hand 24/7. I wish they had been upfront in their e-mail so I wouldn't have wasted time going back to the site only to learn that it wasn't as "advertised." So yawn. Wake me when Beta 3.0 is up. Filed under: General BS
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Posted on 01.04.06 by Widge @ 4:55 am
For December: 10. "Dive For You" - Boom Boom Satellites In other news, Episode 48 of Something Else is complete and should be up tomorrow. Filed under: General BS and Something Else
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Posted on 12.18.05 by Widge @ 11:40 am
Can you hear Warner Music's teeth grinding as they look at this? Google might help them sell some music! Or generate some interest in their dying industry! It links to lyrics sites AND online music stores! Oh Christ, the humanity of it all… Found via MetaFilter. Filed under: General BS
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Posted on 12.15.05 by Widge @ 10:23 am
"Do not try and change radio. That's impossible. Instead…only try to realize the truth." The News Blog has an interesting overview of how radio is following in the path down which television has already gone: we pay for television because we want what we want. Just like some folks pay for Tivo (and other such services) because we want what we want when we want it. I forget how long ago I read this in Wired, but the line (or at least a reasonable facsimile) stuck with me. The article was about satellite radio, and said we'd pay for radio because of the same principle that made us pay for cable TV: a free service can suck so bad you'll be willing to pay for it. Setting aside the fact that a paid service can work around the FCC and their idiocy (only for now–the decency loons are going to go after all that next, no doubt), I'm wondering how many people listen to radio like I listen to radio: I roll my own. For example, I took an Airtran flight recently on one of their planes that comes with XM Radio in every seat. I unplugged my headphones from my iPod, plugged them into XM, went through all hundred channels, thought "Well, that's nice," and went back to my iPod. As is in evidence by this site, if nothing else, I'm a control freak. I don't want somebody else telling me what to listen to. I also wonder about these studies showing that people only have a hundred songs they listen to. Can this be accurate? I have 4500+ songs on my iPod at any given time (out of the 8000+ I have ripped thus far), and sure, if I'm not in the mood for B. B. King or System of a Down at a particular moment, I'll hit skip. There are certain songs I listen to more than others. I sometimes get a hankering (yes, I said hankering) for a particular artist or genre. But for the most part, I'm content to sit back and let my own personal radio station, WIDG, do its thing. If somebody only has a hundred songs in their listening queue, that's sad. But if you've got a wide array of listening options, Shuffle Songs is a wonderful thing. Filed under: General BS
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Posted on 12.02.05 by Widge @ 6:32 pm
10. "The Hit Song" - DJ Format As a musical aside, on the mashup front–which consistently surprises me by getting me to listen to shit I never thought I would otherwise–I mean, who knew you could get me to actually like Christina Aguilera if you splice her with Living Colour?–two of my favorite mashup maestros have new shit: Smash (who's back from his retirement, so that kicks ass) Filed under: General BS
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John Robinson is a writer of prose, poetry and comics who also writes under
the pseudonym of Widgett Walls.
This is my latest book. Short stories written especially for you, or at least someone who reminded me a lot of you at the time.
