Tales to Astonish!

I’ve mentioned a bunch of times that I’m a big fan of the Rhapsody music service (and I’m still not getting money from them to say that), but back before I had Rhapsody I was using the similarly subscription-based Napster. Years before that, I was using the not-quite-totally-legal version of Napster, where the monthly subscription rate was “lots of hard drive space.” Like most people, I loved Napster and those services for all the free music that they got me.

Looking back over my mp3 playlists, I now realize what Napster was really doing to us all.

It wasn’t just making us media-needy, morally-challenged audio thieves, creating our ethical identities as artist-abusing lawbreakers; it was also destroying our language. Instant Messenger-speak can barely hold a candle to the atrocities committed in the name of mp3-labeling.

I was making a playlist this morning on the train ride to work, and scrolling through the bajillions of songs that I have looking for a particular Flaming Lips song that I hadn’t heard in a long time. I’ve listened to it before on my mp3 player — and I’ve had it in one form or another on my computer for years — but I couldn’t find the damned file. I checked under “F” for “Flaming.” No dice. I checked “L” for “Lips,” just in case, and then of course “T” for “The.” Nothing. I checked under the song title, the album name, and then I went through the “Unknown Artist” category in case it was never labeled at all — nope!

And then, I found it:

“The_Falamming_Lips_12_Tanjerines.mp3″

But that’s not all! I also listened to Phill Colins, the Beesty Boys, and the Pixxies. And Kajagoogoo, which ironically was spelled correctly, but statistically speaking should not have been.

It almost makes me wish I could track down those users that labeled about 90% of the illegal mp3s in the world and levy fines against their spelling.

EDIT: Andy would understand.

Who else here has “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey stuck in their head? Anyone?

How about now that I’ve brought it up?

There we go.

On Saturday night, I made a quick shopping trip to the local pharmacy.

I bought:

And:

So how was your weekend?

You know, somedays I just can’t believe that I found a photograph of the Pope in a sombrero. Maybe there is a God.

Well, probably not. But that doesn’t make it any less awesome. Perhaps, more awesome.Now, back to my “pope AND toga” search.

Every morning I go through my routine.

At 5:30 am (EST), my beautiful faux-antique digital alarm clock/radio starts beeping, and I quickly unfurl my red blanket sarcophogus and in my jammies march over to my desk. I say “march” instead of “stumble” (as I’m sure most people do at 5:30 in the morning), because I’m a morning person and I wake up more or less without difficulty. Once in a while I step on the cat, but I blame that more on the cat than on my being sleepy. Besides, it shuts her up.

(I’m just kidding about that. I would never intentionally step on my cat just because she’s meowing. There are plenty of better ways to quiet the kitten than stepping on her. Marijuana, for instance.)

After turning off the alarm, I flick on the desk lamp, yawn, stretch, and then walk over to the bathroom to pee — again, pretty much following the same exact path that most people do, with the exception that I drink so much coffee and booze that my urine is universal orange like roadsigns and traffic cones and emergency lights. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there have been (to date) zero fatal accidents in my bathroom since I moved in. There was one incident where the Lady attempted to kill me in there, but then I explained that all men do it and ran away before she could hit me.

After that, I walk on over to the kitchen, turn on the stove under my neat-looking tea kettle, and boil myself some water for coffee. I drink instant coffee, since I inherited the capacity to withstand cutting bitterness and acidity from a childhood living near New Jersey. A lot of my friends try to convince me to get a coffee machine, but I usually only finish half a cup before I leave for work, so it probably wouldn’t be worth it. I like that I can make the instant coffee as strong or as weak as I like, which is easier to control than with a Mr. Coffee. Also, I like a little formality in the morning, and while Mr. Coffee is nice, I read a lot of reviews on Amazon that mentioned that after a few mornings together he gets all “Oh, please — call me Jeremy Coffee.” I don’t care for that.

See? So far my morning was pretty much like everyone else’s, but with more red and probably more antiques. And I’m taller than about 95% of the world, so my jammies are a larger size. But basically a perfectly average morning.

Until I zoned out today. Something in my brain turned off (click!) right before I took the kettle off of the heat, probably due to seeing the mess that I’d left in the kitchen from the night before. (Living alone is great for leaving messes overnight. Hoo-boy, is it ever! If you have a messy kitchen counter fetish, I recommend living alone. Please.) Last night I’d made myself a bunch of hot dogs for dinner, and in my hungry zeal I left out the buns and the ketchup and the cutting board for the onion that I like to put on my hot dogs from time to time. So, as I looked over the countertop, it occurred to me like a self-evident truth: it’s time to make hot dogs.

So I did. I opened the fridge, grabbed the hot dogs, and started to broil them in my toaster oven. Then I yawned, and wondered why I was tired. It was like I warped my brain back to six-thirty last night, when I was happy to be home from work and famished. Luckily, my tea kettle started screaming, which reminded me that I was actually supposed to be making my morning coffee, not dinner. But since the hot dogs were already achieving a nice crispy skin, I had a nice big breakfast. One with ketchup and mustard, one with ketchup and relish, and one with ketchup and onions. I suppose I could’ve packed them up and taken them for lunch, but my stomach hadn’t snapped out of ‘dinner’ time, so I ate them.

I am wrong in many ways, but today’s reason I am wrong is that I made hot dogs for breakfast.