My Last.fm profile is now over 2 years old, meaning it has collected my listening habits for the past 2 years every time I play a song. The grand total, as of this writing, says that in that 2 year span I’ve listened to 20,657 songs. I put together a list of the Top 10 Most Listened Songs based on this information, and I’m glad to see how it illustrates how broad my listening taste is.

1. The Shins - Phantom Limb: This one surprised me, because even though I’ve liked a couple of Shins songs before, their newest album just blew me away. It came out of nowhere and dominated my playlist, and this song rocketed to the top of my most listened to list. I swear, my liking this song has nothing to do with the subject matter - two lesbians. Honestly!
2. The Hold Steady - Banging Camp: This was a weird one. I had not realized that I listened to this song so much until I saw it at the top of my list. “Huh.” I said. It’s a great song, and the fact that it has an AC/DC-like riff probably has something to do with it, as I always enjoy some good old AC/DC.
3. Neko Case - Hold On, Hold On: Another weird one for me. Seeing a pattern here? The thing is, I’m not big on country, but Neko Case’s voice latched onto me when I first heard her, and I was hooked ever since. In fact, Last.fm lists her as my most favorite artist. Oh, and she’s a sexy redhead, to boot.
4. Art Brut - Moving To L.A.: Like The Hold Steady, the lead singer doesn’t really sing, but talks in a conversational tone in their song. Art Brut is full of tongue-in-cheek songs dripping with irony, which is right up my alley, and Moving To L.A. is solid proof of that. And if you ever want to hear a humorous take on erectile dysfunction, their song “Rusted Guns of Milan” does just that.
5. Muse - Feeling Good: A great cover of Nina Simone’s song, Muse does it in their usual style of falsetto rock. I love the original, and I love this cover, as well.
6. Postal - Angel Pumping Gas: The lyrics is so utterly simple, yet perfect. I can vividly imagine myself taking place, a beautiful woman pumping gas, swooning you off your feet, even though it was such a brief encounter. I always play this when I’m feeling whimsical.
7. My Morning Jacket - Gideon: The best live band today doing the best live version of the best song to do live. Got it? Good.
8. Kamelot - Farewell: The song to rock out with your … err, well, yeah, you get it. When noone’s looking, I pretend I have long hair again and bring out the metal in me to bang my head to this song.
9. Band of Horses - Funeral: It starts off soft and mellow and then wails into an angry anthem, with the lead singer’s strong voice carrying you into the song.
10. The Postal Service - Such Great Heights: A timeless song that is bloody difficult to get tired of. It fuses electronica with pop so good, that it feels pretty natural, and it does it with a feel for the 80’s style of synth music.

I’ve developed an odd new interest, at least for me.  You see, for as long as I could remember, I had this adverse reaction to watching any movie made before 1980.  Sure, I’ve seen a few good movies made in the 70’s, but I always hated the old-timey look, the acting style, dress style, hair style, music selection, and so forth.  I just couldn’t stand it.  It got worse the further back in time the movie was.

Lately however, I’m finding myself on AMC and MoviePlex, watching some old movies.  The other day I saw Anne of the Thousand Days, which came out in 1969, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The acting, the dialogue, writing, everything was great, and I enjoyed the whole movie.  Then I saw Cowboy, released in 1958, and even though I’m not big on Westerns, this one had great dialogue, action, and acting.  You’d think with such a generic, simple title it’d be hokey or stupid, but it wasn’t.  I was pleasantly surprised.

So now I find myself staying on these channels more often than not, whereas before I’d skip right past them without a second thought.  I told my dad about this, and asked if it was a preliminary sign of a mid-life crisis, and all I got was a scoff.  In any case, here’s to old, but great, movies.

My roommate doesn’t eat pork (something about swine in Bible = no pork) and so when someone gave her a huge pot roast, she went out and buried it. I didn’t know this, she never mentioned it to me.  One day one of our cats killed a rabbit and left it on the front porch.

So I called her up and said the cat killed a rabbit. She tells me to bury it. I’m a wuss, I hate dead animals, but I gave in, got the shovel and managed to flip the rabbit onto the shovel. Our yard is about 2 acres, it’s pretty big, so I walked around for a while, trying to find a dirt patch where the dirt is soft so I didn’t have to work up a hernia trying to dig up a hole. I find one place, so I started to dig up dirt.

After about 5 shovelfuls, I hit something. I bend down and peer in the hole, and to my horror I see something pink, fleshy, and rotten. “Oh crap, a human brain!” I’m seriously freaking here, all those horror movies I ever watched are catching up to me. I run in the house and call my roommate, and told her what happened. In the middle of the story, she starts laughing. “Of all the places, you had to pick a spot where I buried a pot roast 4 months ago? That is really funny!” I’m not laughing, I’m still trying to shake off the heebie jeebies.

The funny thing is, apparently I didn’t pack the dirt in the hole enough or something, because the next day an animal had dug up the spot and ate up most of the rotten, raw pork.  Yummy!

A few weeks ago, there were police, a firetruck, and an ambulance outside a house right down the road from my house.  When questioned by the police officer to see if they could get a lead on the investigation, it turns out a guy who lived there with his mom was attacked by a robber when he walked in on the heist.  The robber struck him on the back of his head so hard, it gave him a concussion and he wasn’t coherent to the investigators for days.  The whole neighborhood was nervous after this attack.

Recently in a local newspaper article, it was mentioned that the investigation was closed and the case was solved.  As it turns out, the guy who was struck by the robber, was losing his girlfriend and in a desperate bid to get her to feel sorry for him and not leave him, he paid someone to attack him and stage a robbery.

I was speechless, when I read that.

Since it was his first offense, he didn’t go to jail.  I assume he likely got community service and probation.  What they should’ve done was had him hand over his Man card, because what he pulled was just … well, pathetic.  The woman must be pretty amazing.  Maybe she has huge … tracts of land?

A month ago, I noticed a serious degradation in my vision.  While in the bathroom one day, I closed my right eye and and nearly panicked.  I could barely see out of my left eye;  everything was very blurry, and I couldn’t see any details.  My right eye, while also sporting bad eyesight, was the only thing that was keeping me from being able to read.

At first I thought it was an infection, but after a week it didn’t go away.  Our eyes are amazing healers, and can heal very fast.  So I decided to go to an ophthalmologist and find out what was going on.  As it turned out, there is heavy scarring on my eyes, more so on my left eye.  The scarring were caused by a bunch of tiny blood vessels forming on the back of my cornea, blocking my vision.  The ophthalmologist couldn’t even get a reading on my vision because of this.

He mentioned that if left unchecked, I could go blind.  I was given steroid-infused eye drops to take for a week and then come back.  After a week, the blurriness went away and my vision improved considerably.  I was quite relieved.  He recommended eventually to have laser surgery to remove the blood vessels at the base, then a cornea transplant, which he said my eye will at first reject.  Once it did, then I would get another cornea transplant.  He felt this would be a suitable long-term plan for my eyesight.

Meanwhile I’m still taking the eye drops for a month to keep the inflammation at bay.  However I find myself lying awake at night wondering if I was going to eventually end up blind, and if so, how I would handle it.  What would my life be like?  Would I handle it admirably, or would I fall into a dark hole I’ll never get out of?

I’m a creature of my senses, they are the only things that make sense to me in life, and the only things I fully trust.  I just can’t imagine one being taken from me without feeling a deep despair.

Sometimes I wonder if, because of my music listening habits, I have become an elitist music snob. I’m always sneering at any artists on MTV, or the current popular Billboard chart toppers. However, according to this site, I am ~30% mainstream. What it does is take my listening habits from Last.fm (which records every single song I’ve played since August 2005, and takes into account how many others also listen to the artist in my Top 50 list. Then it computes everything together and finds my mainstream percentage.

I like to think that I have a healthy balance between good mainstream and indie music.

Also, I know it is surprising to see Neko Case way up there, but I went through a spell there where I listened to nothing but her for months. It’s about the only “country” I’ll really get into these days.

I just uploaded my DeskShot.

I spend a lot of time on and around computers. I fix them for other people for money. I use mine for entertainment, watching widescreen movies, playing the latest games, and listening to music. I use mine for research and learning, and for communicating with friends and family. I use mine for working on web designs and posting my blog, occasionally. I’m always tinkering with my setup, whether it be my desk or inside my computer.

My computer is overclocked so much, pushing it beyond its official limits, that it puts out so much heat. I had an elaborate venting system put in place; an aluminium tube from the back of the computer and a fan in a plastic box that pushes the hot out through a hole in the wall that leads outside.

Here’s a shot of my desk, available at DeskShot where you can show off your desk:

The idea behind DeskShot is to upload a picture of your desk and get feedback from others, while also perusing pictures of others’ desks to get ideas for your own. For example, the lamp behind my monitor pointing upwards at the wall to create ambiance in the room was an idea I took from another person’s setup. You can also tag your picture, pointing out certain items on/around your desk to visitors.

This is a post paid for by ReviewMe, talking about DeskShot.