>> My CD drive got here earlier than expected.

My pants, they have been creamed.

UPDATE: My pants, they have been soiled unnecessarily.

It turns out that this burner -- let's put it out there for Google, it's the La Cie (or LaCie) d2 52x32x52x CD-RW drive -- is not compatible with iTunes 4.0.1. It connected to my computer just fine, and I've already ripped about a dozen CDs onto my hard drive flawlessly. But it can't burn CDs through iTunes; you have to burn CDs through the included "Toast" software. The problem here is that that means you can't burn .AAC files, the file format sold through the Apple Music Store. The amusing kicker here? This is the only CD-RW drive available in Apple's online and brick-and-mortar stores. They have the usual third-party-product disclaimer attached, but I do find it amusing that their banner music product doesn't work with the only music burner they have retail space for. God DAMN IT.

My timing sucks -- a review was posted to Amazon pointing out this flaw yesterday. The day after I ordered the damn thing.

At the moment, I don't think I'm going to return the drive; this is a software problem, after all, and if Apple releases an OS X or iTunes update sometime soon, it could very easily be patched. But I probably only have a very limited amount of time in which I can return this to Amazon, and I would need to know my options soon... (and don't suggest PatchBurn, I already tried and it doesn't have any drivers that work for this model. Sigh.)

UPDATE UPDATED: According to LaCie tech support, the next OS X upgrade will add support for this drive. The woman I spoke to said support was included in upgrade 10.2.8, but Apple pulled that the other day for one reason or another... hopefully, they'll get it back on track A.S.A.P. and I can be aaaalllll set (That said, I've really hit a wall with hard-drive capacity, so I can't even burn CDs until I have 700MB of disk space free anyway... but hey. Once my new credit card gets here I suspect I'm gonna be irresponsible and get that external I can't stop blathering about). I know that nothing is less interesting than what I'm talking about right now, but at least I've been able to inform you that this story seems to have a happy end, even if I haven't quite gotten to it yet...

>> Tori Amos' Tales Of A Librarian (Best Of) tracklisting:

1. Precious Things
2. Angels (New song)
3. Silent All These Years
4. Cornflake Girl
5. Mary (Re-recorded version)
6. God
7. Winter
8. Spark
9. Way Down
10. Professional Widow
11. Mr. Zebra
12. Crucify
13. Me And A Gun
14. Bliss
15. Playboy Mommy
16. Baker Baker
17. Tear In Your Hand
18. Sweet Dreams (Re-recorded version)
19. Jackie's Strength
20. Snow Cherries From France (New song)

Blah. Whatever, she claims it's "autobiographical" or "tells a story" or something but I just say it's missing most of her best songs, which not coincidentally were singles and are the tracks that people who don't wear homemade wings to her concerts (which is presumably the audience for a best-of) actually know. "Raspberry Swirl," "Hey Jupiter," "Talula," oh why bother it's gonna hurt me. Sure, she had great album tracks that definitely need light shined on them, and since she was never recording "hits" it makes sense to include non-singles, but several of these are just arbitrary. Kooky cover, though. (Note that it only covers the Atlantic years -- Little Earthquakes through To Venus And Back. Nothing from Strange Little Girls or Scarlet's Walk.) It's coming out November 18th, for the record, so while you're in the store picking up Britney's In The Zone (guffaw) you could grab this too, though I can't say I recommend it. If you like Tori Amos, you want her albums. Maybe that's the problem here. Link via No Rock 'N' Roll Fun.

>> Just checking -- it's hella lame to wake up absurdly early and go see R.E.M. on the Today show if you're seeing two of their concerts in the following two days, right? And it's hella lame to say "hella," right? Help me out here.

>> Spotted boarding the 6 train today at 51st St: was that Jason Kottke? I figured it was only a matter of time until I saw a blogger on the street; I did pass Tom on Tottenham Court Road once in London, but I was late for class so I didn't say anything...

>> My life hopefully just got a lot nicer -- I just ordered an external CD-RW drive to replace the busted-ass Combo Drive on this TiBook. (Once again -- I advocate switching to Mac, but get AppleCare!) I pray that it will set up easily and function perfectly and that I will finally be able to put some new damn CDs onto my hard drive -- even though it's nearly full. And speaking of which... next stop, one of these suckers and then all I'll need is a 40 GB muthafucka to have the perfect digital life. I get wet. And yes, I know I blogged about all these things a little while ago, but thinking about them dominates an inordinate amount of my waking hours. Uuuhhhhh mmrrrrmmmbl mmmrrrrrgh.

>> W00t! The Peter Saville exhibition is coming to New York! Talk to Fiona about how cool it was...

>> Allow me a moment of grotesque, vitriolic irrationality:

The entirety of the literary heritage of the American Puritans -- especially their poetry -- should be wiped from the face of the Earth. It has nothing to bring to society and should be burned, in public, accompanied by the shouts and cheers of a populace newly liberated from the tyranny of their fucking moronic ancestors.

Can you tell I have a paper due tomorrow? Can you guess what it's about?

>> 
Truly amazing old health & fitness pamphlet for boys and men. Via Ultrasparky, who already highlighted the best page and I had to settle for sloppy seconds.

>> Something Awful whips up a batch of parodies of the new iPod ads. Many are very, very superior. Via Infovore.

>> What a strange, strange evening.

A kid in one of my classes told me that Rufus Wainwright was going to be playing an in-store gig at a Barnes & Noble on Sixth Avenue, which of course intrigued me, as I previously worked for his management (and very nearly bought his new CD today; I held off to price-check it at Virgin as opposed to Tower. For the record, Tower has the better deal, and the places on St. Mark's might be still cheaper). So I ducked home to my dorm to check that the B&N was where he said it was; outside the door to my building, Fab Moretti from Da Strokes and, of course, Drew Barrymore were chatting to the firefighters across the street. Craziness. (That's 40% of the Strokes I've seen on the street now).

The real craziness came when I set out for the Barnes & Noble a few minutes later and saw them again in a completely different place (18th and Broadway) squatting in front of a shoe store, talking to a photographer and -- I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong here, but don't hold me to it -- John Bruce from While You Were Out. I mean, what the fuck? If it was him, his hair is more grey in life. Y'know, because petty shit like that matters.

So I got to the Barnes & Noble and there's a line snaking all the way through the store (it's only about twenty-five minutes till showtime anyway). I figured I would just poke my head into the music department, say hi to the people I know from MCT, and get back out of there, but once they spotted me, they drafted me in to "bodyguard" Rufus as he walked through the store, because I am big and tall. So I met Rufus (again) and strode imposingly behind him as we wound our way through the less-visible, less-crowded aisles of the store on the way to the stage. Then I got to watch the set from the little roped-off management section, which I was not expecting. And it was quite lovely -- I really need to go pick up the album now and so do you. The fine folks at MCT claimed they would give me a copy if I stopped by the office, but...

OK, side note: I'm fascinated by the music business, and am still seriously considering it as a career option, but there are a few fundamental problems with my personality that I think would keep me from being successful in it. One is that I am not outgoing at all, and am very very bad at schmoozing people up and doing basic social lubrication, which is 50% of the work in the music industry -- metting people, "getting to know them," and filing them away for future reference/contact/exploitation. I am shit at that. And the other problem is that I'm also very, very bad at the "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" school of human interaction. I just scratch backs and feel horribly uncomfortable asking for anything in return. Which is the other 50% of the work in the music industry. (OK, there's loads more to it than that, but those two concepts are absolutely fundamental.) So basically, I'm not really comfortable swinging by MCT's offices just to pick up a free CD, since in my mind, if what I did tonight was worthy of reciprocation, then they already paid me back by letting me watch the show. Conjoin that with my heartfelt belief that if I like a CD, I should buy it, and you've got an idea of how awkward this feels. I know how unbelievably tragically lame I sound here, but this is something that's fucking with my head pretty hardcore at the moment in relation to what I'm capable of in my possible future career. So as petty as it seems, it's kind of a big deal.

Anyway. It's been a weird fucking night. I bought Elvis Costello's North and Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, though, so at least I have fine music to close it out with. Man, I am such a lame-o.

>> Whoa, new Missy Elliott album on November 25th - This Is Not A Test. It's shocking how many artists who released my favorite albums of 2002 are pumping out another this year -- David Bowie, Andrew WK, Elvis Costello, Missy Elliott... Craziness.

And I'm only passing this on in the event that you haven't seen it, because you ought to: What happens when you play Radiohead for fifth-graders and ask them to draw pictures about it. It's amazing. Via, well, everyone and their brother really.

Speaking of music... Josh wanted to go to the Knit-Out this afternoon in Union Square, so I tried to be a good boyfriend and accompany him, but I was quickly hounded away from the event by the sweet acoustical stylings of a woman singing songs about knitting. I saw what her name was, but I've forgotten, which is unfortunate as she was truly, truly astonishing and the public must know about her. Really, she sang songs about knitting. Well, they often used knitting as a sexual metaphor. To wit: "Why don't you let me measure you some time? I could work out your gauge. Come on, cast on to me..." The mind, it boggles, it boggles in all directions and in every way. (After taking momentary shelter at Barnes & Noble, I returned to the Knit-Out after her set was over and rejoined Josh, where I continued to be supportive. I think.)

>> I saw, and enjoyed, Lost In Translation last night and, like everybody else, I recommend that you go see it, too. It's quite far from perfect -- Kevin astutely points out some of the main flaws. But I liked it a lot nonetheless, and was willing to forgive some of its more irksome points as being moments of intensely personal detail slipping in, which I'll take over generic rent-a-trope cliche anytime.

Go see it, it'll open near you soon enough I expect. Bill Murray and Scarlet Johannson are both absolutely superb and their performances completely make up for the gaps (and glaring problems) that the script occasionally leaves in their characters. (And what a soundtrack too, though that's not 100% a good thing.) Yeah, it's good shit.

>> It's National Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day. Can we please get some government recognition for this? And shouldn't we have held off until the release date of Pirates Of The Caribbean on DVD?

In its honor, I've told the best pirate joke I know on Metafilter.

UPDATE: Sigh. I appear to have double-posted with that joke. Serves me right for skimming the thread at double-time; I was on my way out the door to work...

>> What a day. What a day, what a day, what a day.

Late for class, did a paper wrong, started a new internship (V2 Records), bought something I shouldn't have, went out of my element, and did something I should have done a long, long time ago.

And I'm too tired for details (and in some cases, they're inappropriate), so feel free to file this one under "self-indulgent venting" with all the rest.

>> Amusing journal entry from Moby:

the other day i did an interview with fox news about my support for john kerry. fox news is traditionally quite conservative and right-wing and i think that they were annoyed with me when i said

'even most of the republicans that i know think that george bush is doing a terrible job as president'.

and

'by any objective and non-partisan criteria it's obvious that george bush's presidency is bad for america.'

so perhaps to express their pique(in a 'fair and balanced' way, mind you...)they reported that my 1999 album 'play' has sold almost 10,000 copies. i wonder how factual they are regarding other things that they report? maybe this is where george bush gets his information when he talks about 'the nation of africa'.

(For the record, Play has in fact sold several million copies.)

>> This is very upsetting: JetBlue, previously my favorite airline, has agreed to test an extremely invasive identity-confirmation program for the Office of Homeland Security -- the "red light / yellow light / green light" system you may've heard about by now. (Click on "How CAPPS II Works" in the sidebar of the site, and ignore the slightly overheated rhetoric on the linked page.) Time to fly someone else home for Thanksgiving. Via Kottke.

>> MORE GREATEST HITS CRAZINESS!!! The Pet Shop Boys announce the tracklisting for PopArt (Due Nov. 24 in the UK) on their official website:

DISC ONE ("POP"):

1. Go West
2. Suburbia (Video Edit)
3. Se A Vida E (That's The Way Life Is)
4. What Have I Done To Deserve This?
5. Always On My Mind
6. I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing
7. Home And Dry
8. Heart
9. Miracles (New song, lead single, produced by Adam F)
10. Love Comes Quickly
11. It's A Sin
12. Domino Dancing
13. Before
14. New York City Boy (U.S. Radio Edit)
15. It's Alright
16. Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You)
17. A Red Letter Day

DISC TWO ("ART"):

1. Left To My Own Devices
2. I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore
3. Flamboyant (New song)
4. Being Boring
5. Can You Forgive Her?
6. West End Girls
7. I Get Along (Radio Edit)
8. So Hard
9. Rent
10. Jealousy
11. DJ Culture
12. You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk
13. Liberation
14. Paninaro '95
15. Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)
16. Yesterday, When I Was Mad
17. Single-Bilingual
18. Somewhere

BONUS DISC ("MIX"): (PSB's favorite third-party remixes:)

1. Can You Forgive Her? (Rollo Mix)
2. So Hard (David Morales Red Zone Mix)
3. What Have I Done To Deserve This? (Shep Pettibone Mix)
4. West End Girls (Sasha Mix)
5. Miserablism (Moby Electro Mix)
6. Before (Danny Tenaglia Classic Paradise Mix)
7. I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore (Peter Rauhoffer New York Mix)
8. New York City Boy (Lange Mix)
9. Young Offender (Jam and Spoon Trip-o-matic Fairytale Mix)
10. Love Comes quickly (Blank and Jones Mix)

"The U.S. release date for PopArt has not been decided yet." Translation: "Chris Conroy will spend something like $40 to get it on import, and then he will discover that it's copy-protected like Disco 3 was in the UK, and he will be very, very angry."

The scant bones to pick: Where are "Absolutely Fabulous" and "London"? The latter is forgettable, and I know the former is kind of despised in some circles, but c'mon, be complete -- those are the only two missing singles. Well, that and "Was It Worth It?", the Discography bonus track. (All of those can fit on two CDs if judicious edits of the songs are used, I have a playlist on my iPod to prove it... of course, there wouldn't be room for these two new songs. Go figure.)

And speaking of Discography... WHY IS THIS NOT CHRONOLOGICAL? I guess they didn't want it to seem like they were just attaching a bonus disc to Discography, but fuck, dude, if ever a Greatest Hits collection was nearly perfect, it's Discography... The "Pop" and "Art" distinction between the discs was made by the Pet Shop Boys themselves, but frankly, it seems completely arbitrary. Psssh.

Oh whatever, I'm excited anyway.

>> Never, ever buy Picante Beef Top Ramen again. Ever. My lips are going to fall off they hurt so bad. IT'S A BIT SPICY.

Found via Google: The Top Ramen Tasting Party. Plain ol' Chicken remains my favorite, but I think I'll try that Cajun Chicken...

>> Wow. I don't know if I could possibly want these more: The Director's Label DVDs, which collect the music video works of Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry (respectively). The Spike Jonze edition goes on sale this month. Damn. Wow. Damn. (Click the covers to watch trailers.)

>> Heads up, NYU kids: The Bottom Line is being threatened with closure. And yes, NYU is its landlord. (Don't rush to villify them, it is a complicated situation, but... everyone should know. Write a letter or something...)

>> Horrifying article on how the Patriot Act is being misused not to prosecute terrorist activity, but ordinary crimes:

North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months. Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.

Like what, fucking Coca-Cola?!?!? This is why the Patriot Act was not a good idea, people... I'm not trying to be sympathetic to meth dealers here, but this is a blatant violation of fundamental civil rights. It's bullshit, pure and simple. ARGH. And yes, I do seem to be becoming more politically charged, don't I?

>> A couple quick plugs for friends:

The talented Lisa (star of my Fall 2002 fiction workshop) has a four-part article running at dailygusto.com that you should check out, entitled My Unglamorous Life As A Milliner.

Also, my friend Len's band, Paris Grey, is playing CBGB's Downstairs on Friday. I'll just reprint the announcement in their e-mail, because it amused me:

COME SEE PARIS GREY PLAY ROCK AND ROLL!
THIS FRIDAY, AT 7:30 PM, AT CBGB'S DOWNSTAIRS, FOR FIVE DOLLARS!  

PARIS GREY IS ANGRY!
PARIS GREY IS SYMPATHETIC!
PARIS GREY IS HONEST AND IN TUNE!
PARIS GREY IS LOUD, BUT NOT SO LOUD THAT YOU CAN'T HEAR THE SINGING!  

SEPTEMBER 19TH AT 7:30 AT CBGB'S! 
PARIS GREY IS HERE, AND ROCK AND ROLL IS ALIVE!

So that should set the tone. See you there?

>> New Teen Girl Squad! New Teen Girl Squad! (It's not as good as #3, but then, what could be.) (And before you ask, no, I don't think anything else on the site is funny. Except maybe "The Ballad Of The Sneak.")

>> Well, that didn't take long: Zwan have apparently broken up. Surprise! Billy Corgan claims he is now "ready for a solo career." Surprise! Eh, the album was just all right anyway, so I guess I won't shed too many tears... y'never know, though.

>> OK, so this article in the New York Times on the culture of copying (DJ culture, to quote Neil Tennant?) isn't great (though it is interesting), but these paragraphs were superb:

Nearly 70 years ago, the critic Walter Benjamin addressed the aesthetic limitations of the copy in a famous essay about photography and authenticity, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Benjamin argued that even a perfect copy lacked the contextual meaning of the real thing. Since then, postmodern critics have developed dense theories of simulacra, bricolage and pastiche that could daze a tuna at 20 paces.

Now the bricoleurs are living next door, and they look nothing like the monographs said they would. "Somehow I don't think it comes from avant-garde theory," said Louis Menand, author of "The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America." The KaZaA community can burn "All About the Benjamins," the song or the movie, without the endorsement of Walter.

"They wouldn't say it's all a simulacrum anyway," Mr. Menand said. "If they could say that they wouldn't need to copy their papers online."

Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, and just for the record, if any of you out there have copied papers from the Internet, then I'm sorry, but you're a moron. Probably an unpopular stance to take these days, but it's true. There's a big difference between "source material" and just plain repurposing...

>> Art Spiegelman, the creator of Maus, has done a comic about the World Trade Center disaster and the years that have followed -- and nobody in the U.S. will publish it. Argh. (Via LinkMachineGo)

>> Greenpeace obtain memo from Exxon-funded corporation to White House Environmental Council. In which it is made apparent that the White House asked Exxon to sue the EPA and suppress a report on climate change.

The funny thing about this is, it'll get no larger press coverage whatsoever. We've always known the Bush administration was in bed with oil companies, so really, what does having proof do for us? There are two State District Attorneys on this right now, but I guarantee it will go nowhere.

>> Hallelujah! We could all use some good news today, right? Well here it is: No Doubt are releasing a Greatest Hits collection on November 11th (10th in the UK). (In a post on their website, Tony Kamal refers to it as Singles 1992-2003, we'll see if the title sticks.) I can think of no other '90s-started band better-suited to the medium of the hits collection than No Doubt. Though there are a whole lot of contemporary bands with three or four albums who could put together some pretty amazing-sounding singles discs -- Garbage, Weezer, and the Foo Fighters, for example... Anyway, this is going to have two new songs on it (don't they all?), including a cover of Talk Talk's "It's My Life." "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" is sadly not terribly likely, but one can hope anyway.

Speaking of greatest-hits collections, I might as well do a round-up of the artists I follow who are pumping one out this fall/winter/Christmas season. It's an impressive list, roughly in order:

• Chemical Brothers - Singles 93-03 on Sep. 30;
• Suede - Singles on Oct. 20 in the UK (no US release date at the moment);
• R.E.M. - In Time: The Best Of 1988-2003 on Oct. 28;
• Underworld - Anthology 1992-2002 on Nov. 4;
• No Doubt - Singles 1992-2003 on Nov. 11;
• Tori Amos - (Currently untitled Best-Of) on Nov. 18;
• Pet Shop Boys - Pop Art (Two-disc comprehensive set, not just their uncompiled 90s hits) sometime in mid-November.

I'm probably going to be buying all of these. I know that probably sounds very silly to a lot of people, since most of these only have a handful of tracks I don't own, but after some of the posts I've put up here about Best-Ofs in the past, it shouldn't really be surprising. There's a lot to be said for a good highlights compilation.

>> Foreign Views Of The U.S. Darken Since Sept. 11:

In Europe overall, the proportion of people who want the United States to maintain a strong global presence fell 19 points since a similar poll last year, from 64 percent to 45 percent, while 50 percent of respondents in Germany, France and Italy express opposition to American leadership.

Many of the difficulties predated Sept. 11, of course. Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, listed some in a recent paper: "Economic disputes relating to steel and farm subsidies; limits on legal cooperation because of the death penalty in the United States; repeated charges of U.S. `unilateralism' over actions in Afghanistan; and the U.S. decisions on the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court and the Biological Weapons Protocol."

"One could conclude that there is today a serious question as to whether Europe and the United States are parting ways," Mr. Sandschneider writes.

From this point of view, as he and others have said, the divergence will not be a temporary phenomenon but permanent.

A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a growth of anti-American sentiment in many non-European parts of the world. It found, for example, that only 15 percent of Indonesians have a favorable impression of the United States, down from 61 percent a year ago.

Indonesia may be especially troubling to American policy makers, who have hoped that, as a country with an easy-going attitude toward religion, it would emerge as a kind of pro-American Islamic model.

But since Sept. 11, a virulent group of extremists known as Jemaah Islamiyah has gained strength, attacking in Bali and Jakarta and making the country so insecure that President Bush may skip it during an Asian trip planned for next month.

It's getting harder and harder to remember September 11th as a tragedy, without thinking of the two years that have followed it as a potentially much greater one.

And Stuart's on to something: this is not satire.

I don't want to be insensitive and detract from the memory of the thousands of innocent lives we lost that day. But every time I turn on the news, all I can think about is how many more we're going to lose if this keeps up...

>> So I guess I'm just condemned to get horribly depressed, for dozens of reasons, on this week every year now, huh? Makes sense. September 11th, 2002 -- yes, 2002 -- was one of the worst days of my life. Patterns in nature everywhere...

>> I held off the link for a couple of days in order to let him find his feet, but now I simply must tell you that my boyfriend, Josh, now has his own weblog -- cultivatedstupidity.com. It's basically a mediablog, but with his... distinctive... slant. Go give him some hits, will ya? Oh, and I did the design, so if it looks poo in your browser, let me know how so I can try to do something about it... (he did that strangely excellent graphic, though, so don't pat me on the back for it.)

>> Full-length studio version of R.E.M.'s "Bad Day" being streamed by Netscape. Hot. Right from the go I like it -- it's interesting to see Stipe attacking one of their old-timey never-ending vocal lines for the first time in years (this tune eventually metamorphosed into "...End Of The World..." when they first tried recording it), and there are all kinds of poppy little flourishes to love, like, for example, Mike Mills' dead-on-as-always backing vocals. Ah, R.E.M., I love you so fucking much, and I'm sorry I forgot for so long... (Speaking of "Bad Day," everyone's linked to this now but you should visit MorningTeam.com, the companion website to the upcoming "Bad Day" video which should be very fun indeed, picking up on the song's theme of satirizing media outlets and their lockstep with the government...)

>> Well, Cameron foolishly asked for an update on my personal life, so here goes.

Things are going OK. My classes are going fine -- Am. Lit is still intriguing, as is the Joyce Colloquium, and neither have really overpowered me with work yet (though Am. Lit has come close). I had my fiction workshop today, and a crappy exercise I banged off an hour before class ended up being quite a crowd-pleaser, which was nice, since I expected it to stiff. (Note that I said it was a crowd-pleaser -- that doesn't mean it was any good.) And I also had my voice class today, in which I think I'm doing better than I could've reasonably expected myself to. Which is a huge confidence-booster.

I'm currently in the process of applying for an internship at V2 Records, so we'll be hopeful about that -- they've got a bunch of fantastic artists and I'd like to see things from the other side of the fence after my experiences with a management firm. Cross your fingers for me.

My roommate is... all right. For a variety of reasons I think he's an assassin for the Russian mob. I could be wrong. In any event, I've barely even spoken to him, he's out of the room all the time, but when he is in the room he has a tendency to blast absolutely hideous pop-trance MP3s (without headphones, natch -- whenever there's another person around I always use headphones, but not everyone is so considerate, I guess) so that's no big loss. I'm wary about writing about him here, but he doesn't know the site exists yet and, judging by the level of intimacy we've established thus far I don't foresee myself telling him about it anytime soon. So I won't worry. Haven't told him I'm gay yet, either, but we'll get to that I suppose.

I bought Andrew WK's The Wolf today, obviously, but his concert tonight is sold out. He's playing literally feet from my dorm and I won't be going. Which is my own damn fault since I procrastinated on finding out about tickets until, well, today. Sigh. I also bought The Raveonettes' Chain Gang Of Love, having only heard "That Great Love Sound" which I absolutely fucking adore. It's like the Jesus and Mary Chain never broke up and drafted Hope Sandoval in as a full-time backing vocalist. This is a very, very good thing.

So yeah: that's life. Settling into the scholastic rhythm, feeling temporarily confident in my abilities in various quarters, running out of money at an alarming rate but when am I ever not?

>> An American National Theatre?!? YES PLEASE!!! The National Theatre was one of my absolute favorite things about London...

>> One of many reasons to regret not having read Ultrasparky for a while: in a (fascinating) recent post on NYC's water & sewer piping systems, he namechecks the Morlocks. :::swoon::: My kind of guy.

>> And it's official: The top-of-the-line iPod (40 GB) now has more file storage than my Powerbook (30 GB). Which is less than eighteen months old. SIGH. And can I just go on record as saying that my seventeen-month-old iPod is thirty-five fucking gigabytes smaller than these new ones?

I feel like spending a disturbing amount of money on new hardware for this computer. That's a bad sign. It needs a new CD drive anyway, as this slot-loading combo drive (DVD & CD-RW) is failing on me -- again, less than eighteen months after I bought it. I love this computer dearly, but if you're thinking of making the switch to an Apple computer, GET THE APPLECARE PROTECTION PLAN. I know it's expensive but IT'S WORTH IT. The hardware components of Apple computers do not appear to be 100% reliable, and it can only be to your advantage for them to be replacable at any time.

That one's kind of a life essential. But I also want an 80 GB external hard drive for my music, and, of course, a 40 GB iPod. Those, I fear, are luxury items and cannot really be justified. But they'd be sooooo nice.

Oh, by the way, anybody with a new-generation iPod with dock connector -- can you actually now make playlists on the iPod, without having to do it in iTunes? Because that is very, very hot indeed.

>> All Hail The Ice Queen: A surprisingly excellent piece on Bjork at Salon -- at first you'd think it's just another of those fluff pieces about how great she is, but the author's actually going quite a bit deeper than most writers bother to with Bjork, and it certainly got me interested -- no mean feat, since I've spent the last two years or so being deeply frustrated and even infuriated by Bjork, not enjoying her music at all. In the last couple weeks I've felt the stirrings of curiosity, a fleeting desire to put her records back on. This piece crystallized that in all kinds of interesting ways. (Requires a Salon Daypass, you hopefully know how to get one of those by now)

>> Excellent, though shortish, piece in the New York Times about Outkast and how they are not, not, not breaking up. By the way, "Hey Ya" is mmmmaybe the best single of 2003. Yes, I'm looking at you, "Crazy In Love." You were getting kind of long in the tooth anyway.

>> Kylie Minogue's new single, "Slow," comes out Nov. 3 in the UK. No release date set for her new album, which the Neptunes were at one point rumored to be/have been working on but that hasn't been followed up on. "Slow" was co-written by Emiliana Torrini of The Two Towers "Gollum's Song" quasi-fame. (My boyfriend really likes that song. Why? I do not know. But I won't question it.)

>> Universal Music Group plans to drop its suggested retail prices from $18.98 to $12.98, hoping that stores will then price their discs around $10. The change is supposed to begin October 1st. If this actually happens, consider me gobsmacked and ecstatic...

>> I cannot fucking believe that it's only 3:00 in the afternoon. It feels like I've been awake forever (mainly due to a scheduling mistake that gave me an hour and forty-five minutes of free time that I didn't think I had).

Anyway, so I've now had all of my classes for the first time. A run-down of the experience thus far:

• Colloquium: James Joyce -- Very excited about this one. We're not reading Finnegan's Wake, which is 15% disappointing and 85% reassuring. There's a lot of secondary material involved, which is daunting, but in an appealling way (Keep in mind that everything daunting at the beginning of a semester is exciting; by three weeks in, it's disspiriting and annoying). It's also in Ireland House, which is a fascinating little building at the bottom of Fifth Avenue (its address is, actually, One-Half Fifth Avenue which I find hilarious). When you walk in the door, it's like a tiny lepruchaun mansion... it's hard to describe, but there are three levels of the building right in front of you in a scale that makes you think the world has shrunk by 50%. It's like walking into a Grant Morrison Invisibles panel drawn by Phil Jiminez. Or an explicable MC Escher sketch.
• Advanced Fiction Workshop -- This, sadly, I'm less optimistic about. We've only met for thirty minutes -- haven't had a full two-hour and forty-five-minute workshop yet -- but the atmosphere just isn't good. That's probably a premature judgement, though, since I haven't seen anyone's writing yet, and the configuration of the room we meet in is kind of murderous. There's no central table to sit around, and we spent the entire introductory class with the chairs in rows instead of a circle, which totally killed any sense of community. My one legitimate worry so far is that the professor said she doesn't give us back our papers with her written comments on them, which I've always found to be extremely helpful. Grrr. I just remember that right off the bat in my last workshop, I could tell something was going on -- everyone in the room seemed to have some kind of spark in their eyes and something to prove (and not in that intellectually empty, purely self-centered sense that I already gleaned off of one or two people in this workshop). There's no magic happening in this workshop yet, and so it's hard to get excited about it...
• Group Voice -- Jackie was taking this, and after I had to wrangle through two cancelled classes I gave up and enrolled in this for the two credits I needed to keep my financial aid. Of course, I've always wanted to do something along these lines but never had the guts, so having a support-friend was enough to get me to commit. So far it's... intriguing. I've already learned a fair bit, but who knows what the results will be (or how long my interest will hold)... our first assignment is to learn a 19th-century Romantic piece by Schubert. In German. And did I mention that I can only barely read music?
• American Literature I -- the professor described this as "Boot camp for English majors" and judging from the things I've heard from previous students, that's not far off. We already have about a hundred pages of reading to do for the next class (all various essays from or about the period of initial colonization). Again, at this stage in the semester the challenge it represents is exciting and galvanizing, but I don't know how long I'll hold out. It's at 9:30 in the morning, it's a lecture, and it's my only class Monday morning, so God knows that's a bad combination when it comes to prospective truancy. It is the last of my required English-major courses, which is nice. And our T.A. seems really sharp and was uniquely intelligible in the way he conducted our mini-recitation this afternoon, so that's definitely reassuring -- my experience with T.A.s in previous English-department core classes has been very, VERY lacking.

So here's hoping. I'm starting to worry about my education -- what have I really learned from all this? -- and my answer is "Not enough," so having a challenging semester sounds like exactly what I need...

>> Outkast and Missy Elliott do tracks for Gwen Stefani's solo album (which isn't finished, has no intended release date, may be a collective hallucination induced by swamp gas, etc.). Hot news anyway. (But not as hot as the idea of her collaborating with Duran Duran!!! DO IT DO IT DO IT!!!)

And oh hell, let's just make this a music round-up, since I don't want to clutter up the frontpage with one-link posts when I have other things to write about. If this story about Coldplay's Will Champion is accurate (which, since it's in the UK Sun, I'm on the fence about), then he is a tremendous cock on a level heretofore unprecedented and it almost gives me a sour feeling about the entire band (at least, how they're handling success). Of course, it should tell you something about the Sun's journalistic integrity when the article ends with the line "Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin is dating Gwyneth Paltrow" when neither of those two people had anything to do with the incident described; they just wanted to mention that again... anyway, link via The Modern Age.

Also, I know I linked to Matthew's R.E.M. post earlier, but you should go back over there and read the comments, in which he says something my soul has yearned to scream at the world for years. You'll be able to tell what that is.

And the new Basement Jaxx song with JC Chasez on it, "Plug It In," is good, but it really isn't great. I'm sorry, everyone. I know you love it, but it just ain't tickling my happy spot the way "Romeo" or "Where's Your Head At" or "Red Alert" or "Rendez-Vu" do... I think, perhaps, because it's trying waaaaay too hard to be Basement Jaxx-y and doesn't have the simple pop elegance of the aforementioned tunes. Ah, whatev'. I do like it fine and will be picking up the album as soon as it is physically and commercially possible to do so...

>> Via Fluxblog (fast becoming my greatest-hits-berating partner-in-crime) is the tracklist for R.E.M.'s new Warner Bros. Greatest Hits album, In Time (October 28):

1. Man On The Moon
2. The Great Beyond
3. Bad Day (New song)
4. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
5. All The Way To Reno
6. Losing My Religion
7. E-Bow The Letter
8. Orange Crush
9. Imitation Of Life
10. Daysleeper
11. Animal (New song)
12. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
13. Stand
14. Electrolite
15. All The Right Friends
16. Everybody Hurts
17. At My Most Beautiful
18. Nightswimming

This is sort of old news (a few days); I'd been checking Murmurs pretty religiously but it had gotten lost in the shuffle of my routine-change.

I actually think it's not a bad line-up, but it is lacking several of the hits -- most egregiously, as Matthew already pointed out, "Pop Song 89" and "Shiny Happy People," either one of which should have replaced "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" (which I often forget was even a single). I can't fault most every other choice, though; probably because R.E.M. have a fuck of a lot of good songs. They could have easily done a superbly listenable double-disc best-of for this era alone -- "Country Feedback," "Strange Currencies," "Drive," "Lotus," "Bittersweet Me"... and those are just the missing singles! I haven't heard "Bad Day" or "Animal" (have been holding out until I can either hear a studio version, or a right-in-front-of-my-face live performance) but do, again, agree with Matthew (and most sane people) that new singles shouldn't be on Best Ofs; they're just taking up vital historical space and it's arguable how much good it does in terms of jacking up sales -- the hardcore fans are always going to buy the Best Of anyway, and the casual record buyer in the MP3 era certainly isn't picking up an album for one song anymore...

On the subject of anthologizing "this era alone," it does bother me a bit that In Time only covers the Warner Bros. years (obviously, since Warner's the one putting it out); I hope they have a notice somewhere on the packaging that says "For earlier material by R.E.M., please refer to the compilation Eponymous on IRS Records" or something like that. Though of course you know there won't be such a notice, since it doesn't earn Warners a penny. I just hope the casual fan doesn't pick this up, go "Where's 'End Of The World' and 'One I Love'?!?" and then put it back on the rack for being incomplete.

There's still a disc of bonus material (in the limited edition) yet to be revealed, but I will say, provisionally, that I like this disc much better than the travesty of U2's Best Of 1990-2000 which has not appreciated with age. Anthologizing is difficult work, and you're never gonna get it any better than the playlist on your iPod, but I think the quest is worth attempting anyway.

Oh, and I really like "E-Bow The Letter" and "All The Right Friends." So Matthew and I don't agree on everything. (Otherwise I'd just steal his RSS feed and syndicate it as my blog.)

>> Wow. So there's pr0n spam in the comments of the entry about my dog dying.

I'm not sure if that's truly fucked-up or really, really hilarious. I don't know how it got there -- are there bots that can spam-post comments now, or did some asshole have to cruise in here, choose an entry to post this stuff in, and pick the one about A DEAD FUCKING DOG?!? Or is it just beautiful cosmic irony?

In any event, I've deleted it, but I've saved the evidence. See for yourself. Just... just wow.

>> Rufus Wainwright on "gay hell" in the New York Times.

Mr. Wainwright, who is gay and has been out since he was a teenager, was not always convinced of that. Methamphetamine is one of a number of drugs — including ecstasy, cocaine, K (or ketamine, an anesthetic) and alcohol — to which he has turned over the years to bolster his confidence and to propel his quests for anonymous sex. Despite creating a body of work whose central theme is the search for true love, he has never been in a serious relationship, a consequence, he says, of having been raped by a man he picked up in London when he was 14.

Typically in recent years, he would get high, go online to discover willing partners and arrange meetings. Eventually Mr. Wainwright found himself drawn to a subterranean world that he described in the most lurid terms as a "gay hell."

"I'm not talking about a bar in the meatpacking district," he said.

In a strangely awkward tone-shift: I've been having to tell everyone I know who would care about this face-to-face, so I should just blog it and save myself some trouble: There's going to be a Hedwig And The Angry Inch tribute album for charity, with a load of great people on it -- Rufus does "Origin Of Love," and there are two new Hedwig songs (!?!) on it too. Should be very interesting indeed -- comes out October 21st (Same day as The Strokes and Basement Jaxx, so you'll be in the CD store already... might as well pick it up). Cyndi Lauper and The Minus 5 doing "Midnight Radio"? You know that's ace!