21Dec2011 1200: Greenery

WELP looks like no snow on Christmas. This is straight-up the most bizarre winter I've seen in Fargo, ever; worse than last year's record snows, worse than any sudden fifty-degree drops in temperature. And the worst part is that I can't enjoy the warm weather. There's this distinct sensation that winter isn't missing. It's lurking.

Everybody hide your wallets, the holiday Steam sale is here! I'm only in for $5 so far, but that's because I own oh so very many video games already. Steam is expanding on their brilliant "win free stuff for buying cheap stuff" sale mechanic, finally bringing an urgency and weight to cheevos. These gift-cheevos are pushing me to boot up games I haven't played in months: the best one so far is to open up Psychonauts and set a squirrel on fire with your mind. I will be well-supplied with laptop fodder during my holiday sojourn in Poor Internet Land.

I am exceptionally wary of any guy billing himself as "Kid" anything. It is usually early-90s rap that I do not enjoy; yes, this includes Kid Rock. [Kid Savant - 4 Years] is not 90s rap! It is 80s rock. I am trying to pin down exactly which singer this singer sounds exactly like, but it's eluding me. Joy Division? No. This is going to bug me all day.

[Jonathan Wilson - Desert Raven] starts off with weird noises and beeps. Not in a cool Daft Punk kind of way, but in an annoying "I am the future of 70s prog rock" kind of way. After he gets that out of his system he segues, with a blatant non-segue, into an "I am the future of 70s soft rock" ballad. America (the band) salutes you, good sir. You're doing the Joker's work here. In fact, in retrospect even those annoying beeps are part of the Steve Miller package. And I say in retrospect because the song is eight goddamn minutes long, more than enough time to look back fondly on the song while still listening to it.

After the sharply-defined nostalgic texture of the past two songs, [Cass McCombs - The Same Thing seems a comparatively limp quiet rock song. Any number of animal-named indie bands have written any number of songs like this. I won't bother to delete it, but it's not exactly burning up my earholes. I like the synth, though.

14Dec2011 2000: Turtledoves

07Dec2011 2130: The Last Moment

Oh jeez oh no tomorrow my career path goes before a group of outside users for the first time. It's a wickedly informal thang but 2100 on the night before is the perfect time to panic. It's going to crash! CRASH!

Over the weekend I heard from an old GerbilMechs fan that he hadn't known that 52 Yo Mama and Bloot had started, specifically because this page never got updated with a link. Dirty little secret of GerbilMechs is that I have no idea what my password used to be, so I couldn't update it even if I had remembered. I'm amazed that it's even still up; the rest of gogeek is long dust. So anyway: yes 52 Yo Mama is up, and as great as it is that I have one confirmed reader I'd be doing this anyway. Stories build up pressure until they threaten to burn a hole in my forehead. This plan always results in a solid script and dated references.

For example, just wait until you see what I have planned for Semantic Princess! Woohoo, hilarity ensues. I have this parody of Green Lantern, except he's purple. Haha, just think how stupid that would be! DC would never do that! :(

[Childish Gambino - Bonfire] is an "I'm awesome" rap that is terrible. I get the feeling that this is supposed to be a parody of rap -- which I am all for -- but Amazon saw fit to release the radio edit. Radio edits always always sound stupid.

[Laura Marling - Sophia] starts out as a solo acoustic folk effort and is merely okay. Don't worry, Laura is intentionally hiding her voice during that part. After a minute it kicks into a higher gear and becomes good, and at the three-minute mark it builds again and becomes a pretty great country-folk jam. Folk is rarely better when layered with multiple guitars and a chorus...but country needs all the help it can get.

[Bombay Bicycle Club - Shuffle] is some indie guys doing some feel-good pop. I know I have tons of music like this already, but Bombay Bicycle Club manages to not exactly sound like any of them. The song itself wasn't doing anything for me, but it was amusing to listen to the vocalist resolutely not pick up his pace for the insistent piano riff. Then I saw that the song is supposedly six minutes long. Turns out that the track actually cuts off at 3:55. I don't know what Amazon did to ruin the mp3 tag, but at least there's not two minutes of silence at the end. Or another two minutes of that piano.