greyduck.net

The guy who draws Dork Tower posted a silly meme a few days ago, and I decided to hop on board. (Hey, I haven’t done one of these in a while. I think I’m allowed.) Mind you, I don’t use iTunes (no Ogg Vorbis support) so all I can do is make Winamp jump through the hoops. Luckily I’m already in the habit of using the Media Library…

So here goes:

How many songs total: 5,028
How many hours or days of music: 15 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes
Most recently played: Dodo/Lurker by Genesis
Most played: Integral by Pet Shop Boys (10 times) *
Most recently added: “Version 2.0″ (album) by Garbage **

Sort by song title:
First Song: #1 Crush by Garbage
Last Song: Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: Vitamin C by Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop OST #2 “No Disk,” 0:06) ***
Longest Song: Sasha’s Voyage of Ima by BT (”Ima” CD#2, 42:45) ****

Sort by album:
First album: “10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1″ by Midnight Oil
Last album: “Zone Of The Enders OST” *****

First song that comes up on Shuffle: I’m With Stupid by Pet Shop Boys

Search the following and state how many songs come up: ******

• Death - 9
• Life - 71
• Love - 190
• Hate - 31
• You - 377
• Sex - 9

Most Represented Artist: Genesis (233 tracks) *******

Footnotes:

* I’ve only recently gotten into the habit of using the Media Library. Otherwise there’d be songs with much higher play counts.

** I had to find this the old-fashioned way: Doing a date search in the file directory. Winamp seems not to track my “recently added” very well for some reason.

*** I’d have found the shortest “proper” song in the list, but I ran out of time this morning. The first dozen entries were “non-songs” of one sort or another. So I gave up.

**** Which beat out Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready,” the previous (three) contender(s) (original and two live renditions), by almost twenty minutes!

***** Last studio album, not a single, by a proper band: Worldillia by Porno Graffitti

****** In Winamp, file path and album are included in all searches. These numbers are therefore inflated a little bit. Yes, this annoys me but there seems to be no way to search only in the title of a song. (Argh.)

******* By no means is all of my Genesis music ripped to MP3 or Ogg. The same is true for most of my other favorite artists, actually. That first number (~5000 tracks) would be much, much higher if I really wanted to go crazy with the digital music library…

Ganked from one of my LJ reads, here goes:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on this page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. (I recommend cropping it square, naturally.)

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post link to the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it’s more amusing that way.

(Not bad for just using IrfanView on the laptop, eh?)

I did a meme over at the Ell Jay, so why not do a meme over here as well? You may remember my results from the first Nerd Test; apparently they’ve updated the quiz somewhat.

Well, it took me just about long enough to get to this, didn’t it? I’m going to use Mari’s version as my base, ’cause she based hers off of Lil’s rendition, and the idea is to keep adding on, so… yeah.

Oddly enough, I was able to add on, to the tune of two Stephen King books (I know, I’m as shocked as you are), one Russian literary work (by Solzhenitsyn, who I placed right after Dostoyevsky), and one other additional author because dammit, his stuff is among my favorite reading material of all time (Raymond E. Feist). That way whoever lifts my list will have just that much more material to work with. Cue maniacal laughter, here.

That said, I chose not to add Anne McCaffrey. That’s more work than I really want to go to at this point. Sorry. Anyway, let’s get on with the meme itself, shall we?
Read the rest of this entry »

I think the journey to get this widget was more interesting than what I get out of it in the end. Still, I went to the trouble so here you go:

Cute, eh?

Via everywhere on the Internet, but specifically average bear, comes this “amusing” excuse to exercise my newly-created rock-and-roll playlist…

Instructions: Use your media player set to random to answer the questions with random song titles.

What does next year have in store for me?
Candle (”just take this candle / it’s the one you gave to me / it has enough light / just enough to torture me” … Oh, goody.)
What does my love life look like?
Airhead (I’m sorry, what? Apparently this meme hasn’t met my girlfriends.)
What do I say when life gets hard?
Concrete (”Concrete you don’t free my soul” … I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.)
What do I think of when I get up in the morning?
Get Down Make Love (Er. Ahem. Never you mind, you sickos.)
What song will I dance to at my wedding?
Behind The Wheel (Wedding? Hah!)
What do I want for my career?
Army Of Me (”you’re on your own now / we won’t save you / your rescue squad / is too exhausted” … This meme isn’t exactly batting cleanup, is it?)
Favorite saying?
Diamonds Aren’t So Hard (It’s one of my favorite tracks on Tony Banks’ “Bankstatement” album, but as a saying? Not so much. “So come with me / where dragons rule the air / and diamonds aren’t so hard to find…”)
Favorite place?
Whoah (”whoah oh / don’t wanna see you back here again / whoah oh” … Well, I’m bewildered. How about you?)
What do I think of my parents?
You May Not Be Released (One last Oils song for the list. So much for Winamp’s randomizer. Note my lack of comment on the actual song selection…)
Where would I go on a first date?
Heat (”better run while you can / better set the tall sail / better make deep cover / before the boys have you nailed” … What any given Jethro Tull song has to do with dating is anyone’s guess, let alone this one from the spy-movie-themed “Under Wraps” album.)
Drug of Choice?
Flames (”when I am with you / there’s no reason to pretend that / when I am with you / I feel flames again” … No additional comment should be necessary, especially if you know the rest of the lyrics. Ahem.)
How do I describe myself?
Going Under (Last summer, maybe. Since last fall I’ve been trying to come back up again…)
What is the thing I like doing the most?
King Nothing (”wish I may, wish I might / have this wish, I wish tonight / I want that star, I want it now / I want it all and I don’t care how” … Look, I don’t know. I just like that snippet of lyric.)
What is my state of mind like at the moment?
Anybody Listening (”is there anybody listening? / is there anyone that sees what’s going on? / read between the lines / criticize the words they’re selling” … Maybe “at the moment” isn’t accurate, but… sure.)
How will I die?
I Don’t Care Anymore (”I won’t be there anymore / get out of my way / let me by / I got better things to do with my time / I don’t care anymore” … Er, huh?)
Song they’ll play at my funeral?
Metropolis (”there’ll never be another quite like you / I’m so involved with everything you do / don’t say nothing good will ever come of this / don’t say the damage is worse than it is” … Well, it could’ve been worse. Hmm.)
What song will I put as the subject?
San Jacinto (”we will walk - on the land / we will breathe - of the air / we will drink - from the stream / we will live - hold the line”)

Well, everyone else is jumping off the cliff doing one of these so I might as well join in. Mind you I will probably just leave the silly thing in this entry so eventually it’ll scroll right off the main page…

Create your own visitor map!

I have some non-meme content in the works, but I’m not promising a delivery time. Thank you for your patience while I get my life back in order.

Via your average bear:

Bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein (No, but I have read Time Enough For Love as well as Job.)
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson (I’m sorry, folks. As a card carrying techie I’m supposed to love this one, but I just couldn’t get into it. Gibson’s style annoyed me.)
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (I tried, Lil’. I really, really tried.)
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey * (Pern books are my anti-drug. Well, at least up through Skies. After that, fuggeddaboutit.)
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson (Donaldson’s only enjoyable work is the Mordant’s Need set, and maybe the Gap series if you like really grim Sci-Fi.)
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams *
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice (Oddly enough, I read Queen of the Damned first. Take pity on my soul.)
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny (No, but I’ve read the Amber series. Ugh.)
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke *
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven (It’s on my list.)
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien (I own an old, old copy… thanks Dad!)
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks (At least, I vaguely recall having started it once. Maybe I even finished it. Hmm.)
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Happy 2007, everybody. I know, I sort of left things hanging around here for the last few days of 2006 but when you get right down to it, there wasn’t much to say. I don’t want to look back on that particular run of twelve months. Not that it was all bad. Some of it was quite good. However, long stretches of it were absolutely dreadful. So, good riddance.

And now for something completely silly. At one of my favorite website stops I found an amusing new toy. I plugged in a specific (and perhaps unsurprising) sequence of letters and what follows are many of the results. Please note that I’ve taken a bit of liberty with the formatting, using the two separate words or my Internet nickname form depending on which amuses me more. (It’s all about my amusement, dammit.) Can you name the movies?

• I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I’ve been seeing this grey duck.

• Why don’t you come up sometime and see GreyDuck?
• We’ll always have GreyDuck.
• Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a grey duck.
• You had me at ‘grey duck’.
• I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old grey duck for dinner.
• I always say a kiss on the hand might feel very good, but a grey duck lasts forever.
• You can’t handle the grey duck!
• Love means never having to say you’re GreyDuck.
• We can’t stop here. This is grey duck country.
• Gort! Klaatu barada GreyDuck!
• It is too late, my grey duck is in your veins.
• That grey duck is the pure, physical manifestation of Sadako’s hatred.
• There is a grey duck coming. Are you sure you’re on the right side?
• I am the author. You are the grey duck. I outrank you!
• I feel the need - the need for GreyDuck!
• Soylent Green is GreyDuck!
• I love the smell of grey duck in the morning.
• Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to grey duck.
• I say we take off and nuke the entire grey duck from orbit.
• If you build it, GreyDuck will come.
• Hasta la vista, GreyDuck.
• I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little grey duck, too!

I love that last one! After all, I am “the little grey duck.” Ha!

Just in case I don’t come up with real content today, I present the following.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: The Right Reverend Karel the Indefatigable of Fishbourne Sneething Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

In the immortal words of… somebody or other: “Bow down now before me!”