i-madness

Remember this ? Where you put your ipod on shuffle and see what song titles come up to answer the questions ? I decided that this Saturday morning was time for a revisit. I've added, it seems, quite a bit of music since 2009. I admit as well to being an ipad 2 holdout: though ever fiber of my tech-loving being desired the ipad the minute rumors of it began to emerge, I have held fast to waiting for at least the second incarnation (this wait and my lack of patience helped by generous visits to the Apple store to play with the thing). Yes, if I had real patience, I would wait for 2.5 or 3.0, whatever one will emerge with the usb, the retina display, the sd card slot, or even the new Thunderbolt (usb, I gather, may not last much longer). So, yes, I confess, I have reached some personal limit, and I will foolishly purchase the transitional device: my techno-wonder, my gadget lust, can wait no longer. All this, I sigh, because my eyes are too old to enjoy the ipod touch, hence this little revived meme is brought to you via an ipod classic, you know, the kind with a hard drive and a click wheel. I admit, I admit, I have no issue with the ipad being, as some keep wailing "just a glorified ipod touch." I'm happy that the ipad is as big as a picture frame and that I can bluetooth a keyboard to it. My eyes are happy. My senses are stimulated. Okay, enough. Ironically, having planned now for a year (or since the original one came out) to stand in line for the ipad 2, I will be out of the country on the day it comes out. And I want a black one. So I will have to wait some more. I also had no patience, literally, to revisit all twenty-odd questions for a remix of this meme, so I picked the ones that were the most interesting last time or to which I got the least satisfactory answers on the first go. I still have the same fear that Christmas songs may overwhelm the mix. But we will see. If one pops up, I'll note it but go on to the next... Post-experiment notes: there were still too many Christmas songs; I noted them in some places, but the pile up was too long elsewhere, so I just moved on. The opener, "How do you feel today ?" is also fairly apt: I have a lot to do. So it's been nice to pause here and be a little silly. Contemplating this as an actual playlist, or even how it would have sounded it I'd let this all play, doesn't conjure up a soothing set of tunes or any kind of coherent experience. Still, I may cue it up and let it play while I'm doing some housework this morning. I'll let you know.

1. How do you feel today ? Situations (Jack Johnson)
2. How do your friends see you ? Ain't No Cure for Love (Leonard Cohen): this is really funny, considering that I am in love...
3. What do you like in a girl/guy ? I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash)
4. Where will you get married ? And She Was (Talking Heads) Parse That Please. I would like to know
*When Will You Get Married ? (I added this): Life Effect (Stars) Disappointing answer !
5. If someone says, "Is this ok ?", you say: Georgia (Ray Charles)
6. What would best describe your personality ? Cycles (Rickie Lee Jones): Ooh. That could be true !
7. What is your life's purpose ? [Winter Wonderland, Eddie Higgins + 3 more Xmas Songs. Skip] You Belong To Me (Kate Rusby)
8. What is your motto ? 15 Step (Radiohead)
9. What do you think about often ? Rock, Salt, and Nails (Kate Wolf). Metaphorically, I think I can see this...
10. What is your life story ? Calendar Girl (Neil Sedaka). Deadlines, deadlines...
11. What do you think when you see a person you like ? Little Island (Randy Newman). Interesting
12. What will they play at your funeral ? Someone Else's Life (Josh Radin). Funny. Not as funny as last time (Belly: Feed the Tree)
13. What do you think of your friends ? Mercy of the Fallen (Dar Williams).
14. What is the one thing you regret ? Suit and Tie (Suzzy Roche) Oh him. Just kidding.
15.. What makes you laugh ? Ponytail (Panda Bear) eh.
16. What makes you cry ? Germs (Yeasayer): can't argue with that !
17. What's the worst that could happen ? Muengue Mwa Ndolo (Coco Mbassi) Can anyone translate this ? I would like to know.
The next song was "Grazed Knees" (Snow Patrol): I'd settle for that.

New Additions

Not the cups. I'm still feeling a little snarky about the whole collecting/curating "trend" I was talking about a few posts ago. I realized that leaving my blog, hmm... unattended for some time has been akin to leaving the house while on extended travels elsewhere. I have returned refreshed (if, let me confess, somewhat worn by little --metaphoric-- earthquakes at Greenhouse City and, well, something else, but we'll not go there), but my home here had gotten dusty: some broken links in my blog roll (fixed or removed), and because middle age has set in and I seem to need everything in one place, some additions of new items to my lists, some that I had mentioned in earlier posts but now do not want to back track to find, and others found via other blogs that I'd rather have right here. The others are Finnish. I am not, not an ounce, not a genome, anything Finnish: it is really more of an obsession with sound and winter: I love the sound of the language. I can count to twenty and say "hello" on a good day, and have memorized the word for cat, kissa, like our word "kiss" with "sah" (double consonants pronounced separately) because I love those creatures mightily, but that is all. And I do like a wintery landscape, as those who have been following since this post have likely noted. So in addition to Dave in Suomi and Daydreaming in Helsinki (sidebar) who have stopped writing (but who am I to judge ?), I've added a few that I've been reading (Finland for Thought and Life in Finland), as well as Hel-Looks, a blog that tracks what people are wearing on the streets of Helsinki. Aside from things Finnish, there is January Magazine (literary), sans everything (literature and Canadian politics-culture respectively), A Cat of Impossible Color by Andrea Eames, a Zimbabwean born writer who now lives in Austin, TX (I have no idea how I found that blog. I just like it). Under my "Good Things" Listings (I know, I know: I should think about recatagorizing these, but not yet), there is Read Free Books Online , a site that offers all kinds of books to read (not to download, usually). I have a hard time reading novels online; my eyes get tired enough from reading blogs and work, but there it is, and it is marvelous. Also Next American City, which thinks hard about living well and green and on bicycles and in what a city ought to be. As for "Opus is Gone," I checked. If you click on the "letter" that now pops up, explaining that Opus is napping, you will go to Berkeley Breathed's page, where you can find information on his other work as well as Bloom County and its sequel. I guess Flawed Dogs created some controversy, as it seems to be a children's book, but the cruelty that some people perpetrate on animals (dog fights) is described in details too disturbing for some. It's another post, how we've defanged fairy tales (literally) and taken out the scene where Bambi's mother is killed (see here, eg), etc., but thinking about Breathed's book brought this all to mind again. And then there is his art, which is, well, poignant and funny all at once. So that's the round up.

I could get all meta-narrative, meta-blog post about a post that is still riding on some snark about collections and then presents a collection of links, but we won't do that. I'm more in the mood to think about the egregious number of parentheses in this post, but it seems to suit: this post is a parenthesis of sorts, a nice pause to just sit down and look.

As for my 'art,' ahem, Corel Painter is really quite the thing, isn't it ?