Advice column

If you have been looking for a more vulgar version of The Board, I recommend "We Are Scientists"'s advice column. Also, Franz Ferdinand is coming out with a new album this year! In October.

These shoes have a name

They are called winkle-pickers. I've always wanted to know. They're part of the Mod retro style.

Adventures in Music

Recently I stumbled upon gnod. It's a... an artificial intelligence project? It looks at things people like and makes maps out of them. It's helped me find some cool music. I've also been just looking around for music (on Pandora, on blogs, etc.). So here are the best artists I've heard recently (you can look them up on imeem.com if you want to listen to them, even Rautavaara! If you have problems with imeem, just disable adblock on that site... sometimes there's a price to pay for free music):

• Rautavaara: for people who like the modern side of Shostakovich
• Radio Department: for people who like The Postal Service.
• The Foals: a music child of Of Montreal and Philip Glass? Dude, rad.
  
• Ladytron: think a modern Depeche Mode with a female vocalist. Also, more existential lyrics.
• Origa: Kind of along the Ladytron line, only more Russian and Japanese. She did the opening song for Ghost in Shell... so she's cool.
  
• Laura Veirs: way way cool, think The Decemberists but with a female vocalist (and not as gritty)
• A Hawk and a Hacksaw: Classical folk music? I'm excited to somehow get ahold of their albums. That guy from Beirut has sung with them.
• Devics: I have one of their albums. Great dream-pop (I still don't know what that genre means). It sounds kind of singer-songwriter, but cooler.
• Morcheeba: I found their album Antidote in the BYU library (not to be confused with the Foals's Antidotes). It's... it's got some nightclub-style vocals (not sure what the correct term is, wikipedia says they have blues, pop, rock, and trip hop influences. GREAT). I like their song "Everybody Loves a Loser."
• Gregory Page: He's written some nice ballads and came up on my Beirut Pandora station. His record sounds a little unpolished, but it's a charming sort of unpolished. I'm also amazed at how much of the production he did himself. Let me know if you want to borrow his album Love Made Me Drunk. The only thing I didn't like was the use of flute in one of the tracks. I'm a flutist myself, but I find that a lot of times flute just sounds lame in pop or folk music (sorry... it was a good thought?). Morcheeba used piccolo very effectively on one of their tracks though (it was more of a musical effect than a meldoic part).
  

Guys I am on the path of becoming a snobby music elitist, as we all know that making lists of recommendations is the first step on that primrose path. Yay? Also, feel free to comment with music recommendations. I know ThirdMango sent me a recommendation recently, but I can't remember their name... some European group I think it was. I have yet to check out that Iron and Wine group, and their description sounds cool (folk rock).

Memory loss!

So I was cleaning out my wallet and I found a receipt for $92... I was like, "what the crap did I spend that much money on??" I was a little worried that I had gone out a bought something without my own knowing, or perhaps it was a clue left by my impersonator! So I looked up the company. It was for my glasses. Duh...

Scientific American has an article on blogging: "As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly."

Bahahaha

Purge

Now that I am through with classes, I'm terrified that I'll be bored. I always manage to keep myself busy though - I have lots of books I want to read, movies and shows to watch, instruments to learn, and skills to master (in this case... piano technician skills). I really don't like my job (data entry), but I'm good at it, it pays well, and I currently have no replacement, so I feel a little stuck there.

Lately I've been trying to get rid of clothes that don't fit me... I had all these shirts that were too wide and the sleeves were too short, and I was very glad to purge myself of them. Unfortunately I'm still having difficulty replacing them, probably because I never go shopping for clothes unless I'm at DI. Speaking of which, I recently bought a bunch of cool books at DI for way cheap. Yeats for $1! I am so excited.

I recently finished downloading the docudrama "The Doctor Who Hears Voices." I haven't seen it yet, and I'm afraid it will be really cheesy. I mean, docudrama, come on! It sounds like it's in the same genre as mockumentary or soap opera.