From someone who’s made a number of mixed tapes, this is too cute to not share:

[From Laughing Squid]

I may have, on occasion, directed people to various incarnations of Avril Lavigne’s song or video, Girlfriend.

There was a time when I couldn’t go five minutes without hearing that song somewhere, so in order to soothe the growing darkness within me I may have foisted this song on unwitting people (a la rickrolling)

I swear I never meant for this to happen. I didn’t consider the consequences of my actions, and I’m sorry for hurting you internet.

To make up for it I’ll send you to a lovely song that accurately describes our bedtime rituals, 5 More Minutes

Last night we attended a Johnathan Coulton concert, which was utterly fantastic. For those unfamiliar, Coulton is a former software engineer who quit his job to pursue music.

Coulton is charismatic and quirky and the general tone of his music is fun. He still misses the occasional chord, but laughs it off. His show is simple; just him and an acoustic guitar. Though he does break out the occasional odd instrument (a Zen drum?) and have the opening act (the very funny Paul & Storm) assist on backup.

Coulton’s music ranges from the quirky:

• Code Monkey - which as a code monkey appeals to me directly.
• Re: Your Brains - a request from a former d-bag coworker and current zombie for your brains)

To the saccharine:

• I’m Your Moon - a song from Pluto’s moon, Charon, to cheer Pluto up after he’s been demoted to a dwarf-planet.
• You Ruined Everything - a sweet story about how parenthood changes your life.

To the quirky and saccharine:

• The Future Soon - about an awkward adolescent boy who consoles himself that his awkwardness is temporary and that when he grows up he’ll do great things.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorites, Skullcrusher Mountain. A story about an evil genius in love.

Edit: I completely forgot to mention that that fucker Rollroll’d us in the middle of a song with that Zen drum thing. That was hilarious!

Tomorrow Hayden is getting his tongue snipped at 7:45 a.m., not due to his 3 year old style back talk, because he’s tongue tied. We’ve mentioned this before, but tomorrow’s the big day. The procedure is supposed to be pretty simple and painless, but because it’s hard to get a toddler to stay still they’ll likely be putting him under. We’re anticipating there to be much sleeping and cuddling in the hours to follow. Should conciousness be achieved there will be spoiling, pampering, and Hayden has already called dibs on watching The Incredibles; which is his favorite movie to watch…every 5 minutes. Not that I mind as it’s my favorite of his favorites.

So…I haven’t been active here lately. I’ve already been taken to task about the lack of baby pictures. My free time has been absorbed by things that I can’t really talk about here; also Mass Effect. Eventually I’ll get back on track.

In the meantime, here’s a link dump of all the things that have been awesome recently:

• First, go to Google and do a search on “find Chuck Norris” and click “I’m Feeling Lucky”.
• I would totally use this if I were still in school. Text to mp3 conversion site. I could put all my notes on my iPod!
• Happy 50th birthday LEGO!. We will honor you in our house as we honor you 8-9 times a day by building a robot to get bad guys. I love Google’s image today.

• Cloverfield may be the best movie that will make you vomit, but this soundtrack from the party in the beginning of the movie (with mp3s!) won’t. I wanted to be at the party based on the soundtrack alone even with the inevitable destruction.
• Also, in music news Last.fm started allowing full track plays. It’s still a limited number of plays per track, but it makes listening to music on the internet a lot easier.
• I’ve seen a couple of these images around before, but I love this Guide For New Parents.
• It turns out I may have a future in medicine, but if that doesn’t work out maybe I can fit in with these nice people.

Happy Halloween. I’ll be sure to update with pictures and text of our 1.5 hours of suburban adventure this evening. If I’m not too busy playing the Halloween only zombies matches on Halo 3.

In the meantime, here’s some interesting things from the world of awesome music.

Paste Magazine has taken a page out of
Radiohead’s book and adopted a pay-what-you-like ($1 minimum) subscription model.
I went ahead and signed up as each magazine comes with a cd with tracks from great artists as well some new-up and-comers.

From their overview:

Each issue includes a CD with at least 20 handpicked new songs from acclaimed artists like Coldplay, Danger Doom, Fiona Apple, Death Cab for Cutie, Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, Flaming Lips, Ryan Adams and Van Morrison as well as talented up-and-comers who deserve the spotlight. Think of it as a glorified mix tape from your friends at Paste.

I couldn’t pass that up.

In other music news, LaLa, as made internet famous by rescuing indie rock radio bastion WOXY.com, will soon be releasing their completely free and completely legal music service.
They will allow you to stream any track available for free and will offer the ability to purchase downloadable versions or cds. They’ve already got 2 of the 4 major labels signed on and are in negotiations with the other 2. Here’s hoping they get a number of indie labels as well!

Oh, also if you ever wanted a Robin Sparkles concert tour shirt, you should check this out.

As promised here’s the
Indie Rock Baseball review of Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City

1. Song For Clay (Disappear Here) - single
   no runs, man on first, no count
2. Hunting For Witches - ball
   no runs, man on first, 1 ball
3. Waiting For The 7:18 - ball
   no runs, man on first, 2 balls
4. Prayer, The - single
   no runs, man on first/second, no count
5. Uniform - single
   1 run, man on first/second, no count
6. On - ball
   1 run, man on first/second, 1 ball
7. Where Is Home? - single
   2 runs, man on first/second, no count
8. Kreuzberg - ball
   2 runs, man on first/second, 1 ball
9. I Still Remember - single
   3 runs, man on first/second, no count
10. Sunday - single
    4 runs, man on first/second, no count
11. SRXT - ball
    4 runs, man on first/second, 1 ball

Final score: 4 runs, 2 on base, no more at bats.

I’m impressed. Not a strike in the whole cd, and I can see a lot of these improving with multiple listens.
I can completely recommend picking up this cd if you like indie rock.

Shuller pointed me to this concept called Indie Rock Baseball.

It goes like this:

* You start with two outs and no one on base.
* Each time you skip to the next track without finishing the one you were listening to, that’s a strike.
* Each time you finish a song, that’s a ball.
* Each time you actually *like* a song, that’s a hit. Naturally. Or a single, if you prefer. This also resets the count (as would four balls). Now you would have a runner on. Another hit (or walk) would advance the runner, etc.
* There are multi-base hits for songs you really like. It does help open things up, but please use sparingly, as we don’t want these things to end up being just another bunch of lopsided Yankee-Devil Ray games.
* A runner scores from 2nd on a hit. I guess this would also imply a runner on 1st would score on a double. Use your best judgment.
* Once a record reaches three strikes, it’s OUT. Of your CD player (or preferred music player).
* Otherwise, you post the result (e.g. 1 run, 2 left on base).

I decided to use this to review the new Rilo Kiley cd.

1. Silver Lining - single
   no runs, man on first, no count
2. Close Call - single
   no runs, man on first/second, no count
3. Moneymaker - single
   1 run, man on first/second, no count
4. Breakin’ Up - ball
   1 run, man on first/second, 1 ball
5. Under the Blacklight - single
   2 runs, man on first/second, 1 ball
6. Dreamworld - single
   3 runs, man on first/second, no count
7. Dejalo - strike
   3 runs, man on first/second, 1 strike
8. 15 - ball
   3 runs, man on first/second, 1 ball, 1 strike
9. Smoke Detector - strike
   3 runs, man on first/second, 1 ball, 2 strikes
10. Angels Hung Around - ball
    3 runs, man on first/second, 2 balls, 2 strikes
11. Give a Little Love - ball
    3 runs, man on first/second, 3 balls, 2 strikes

Final score: 3 runs, 2 on base, no more at bats.

All in all a good score for any cd I think, but a bit less than I’d expect for Rilo Kiley. There are no doubles in here, which is unusual. I’d say their previous albums are half doubles, with one home run at least.

I just picked up the Bloc Party album that came out in February. I’ll take a look at that in the next day or so.

Every month some group or individual puts out a collection of 120 Indie/Rock tracks. It is a great way to get exposed to some really high quality music that you might not hear elsewhere, especially now that woxy.com’s format seems to have changed.

I generally find about 50 out of the 120 songs appeal to me and I usually find a few new favorites each month.
For example, right now I’m listening to a wonderful song by Sandi Thom, I Wish I was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair).
I also discovered a new artist (to me) that I really enjoy here, Regina Spektor, among many others.

If you’re looking for new music and having trouble finding it, this is a great place to work.
I’ve even setup an RSS feed in my Google Reader to tell me when there’s a new playlist for the month!