How to Find New Music

I love music. Sometimes I get in the mood to just sit and listen to music and do nothing else. Here are 10 ways to start finding new music if your current playlist is getting old.

1. Look for artists you have no clue about. If you subscribe to Yahoo Music or even just have iTunes installed, you can listen to clips of songs. Pick songs or artists you've never heard of before. Usually within 10 seconds you can decide whether or not you like a song. Sometimes you find songs you never would have known otherwise.

This is how I discovered Vivian Green.

2. Listen to streaming radio stations. Even if the station isn't playing your favorite song every five minutes, if you listen long enough you'll start noticing that there are a couple that you start to like.

I started becoming a Ciara fan this way.

3. Watch videos online. Often if you make a visual connection to a song you'll appreciate the song more. I notice this happens for me with upbeat songs when there's dancing.

The Pussycat Dolls are helped by their videos.

4. Ask your friends what they're listening to. I have a friend from high school who occasionally sends me email messages with nothing but an artist and a song in it. She has different taste than I do, but sometimes he hits one that's good.

I started listening to The Perishers after getting a recommendation this way.

5. Watch American Idol. Everybody's doing it and occasionally there's a song you've never heard before by an artist that you either forgot about or never knew existed.

KT Tunstall became a favorite after a contestant last season sang Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.

6. Ask your parents what they listened to when you growing up. You might recall hating what they listened to when you were a kid. But now you might actually like their old favorites because you've been subliminally hit by the music years ago.

I dig 60's music and R&B because of this.

7. Browse the charts. At billboard.com you can check out the latest charts and even past ones. This is a great way to see what songs your local radio stations AREN'T playing and what you might like. It's also a good way to go back in time and remember songs you used to like, even if they're only good for one more listen before you're sick of it again.

Oh Micky, You're So Fine anybody?

8. Don't watch MTV. There's never any music on there anymore. Check out VH1 in the morning or late at night. Or just watch streaming videos on Yahoo or AOL.

Evanescence was a good find for me this way.

9. Look for soundtracks to your favorite TV shows. TV shows like Grey's Anatomy are starting to put together soundtracks with songs from new artists. Occasionally I hear a song and I'm like, "Where have I heard that before?" Then I realize it was on during a scene in one of my favorite shows.

The Grey's theme song is great -- Cozy in the Rocket by Psapp.

10. Check out the original artists on remakes. Often if you like a remake of a song (sometimes you don't even know it's a remake!) then you might like the original artist too. You might discover a new favorite even if the song isn't a remake but parts are used as hooks in new songs (like the Black Eyed Peas using Lisa Lisa's I Wonder if I Take You Home in Don't Phunk With My Heart).

I recently started listening to Joni Mitchell because of Sarah McLachlan's remake of River.

Do something productive with punitive damages.

Okay, so this woman just won 1.7 million for being spanked at work. I can't wait for the strippers to line up at law offices and file similar claims.

Part of that verdict included 1.2 million in punitive damages which are designed to punish the company / defendant such that the financial burden will either discourage future problems like this or put the company out of business if serious enough.

I hate the idea that people who file the complaint get their hands on punitive damage awards. I understand the lost wages, emotional distress, etc. But why can't we send punitive damages into a big national pool of funds that can be used to improve our society -- for example, we could pay teachers more.

I did a quick search for punitive damage sums and totals, and the numbers are staggering, even for the "sample" cases drawn from California court system from 1991-2000, the sum of punitive damages for about 460 cases was approximately $6.4 billion dollars.

Now we all know who pays these awards, don't we? It's the consumers who end up paying higher prices for everything so the companies can afford to pay these judgements. So as consumers, why can't we rally against giving this money to the individual plaintiff and instead use it for something good?

Being a Slob is Healthy

My house is far from spotless. Not like haz-mat dirty, but not shiny. I get sick MUCH less than my friends who are obsessive compulsive about cleaning their homes with chemicals and anti-bacterials. Hmmmmmm.....I'd rather have a dirty counter than be spewing flu vomit 2-3 times a year.

And I might just be onto something...

Yahoo Music Upgrade Blows

I was just getting used to the somewhat tedious functionality of version 1.0 when they came out with 1.1, which tried to fix some of the illogical things in the previous version. But it's funny, now that the old version is gone, I miss it.

I'm having trouble learning the new playlist and "Now Playing" feature which seems to add an extra step to the "click on a song in your playlist to start playing from that song" desire. So you have to click "Play your playlist" so that all the tracks appear on "Now Playing" and then you have to click on the song from that list. This is stupid.

Also, my connection to songs that I haven't actually downloaded is SLOW as beans sliding down a mountain. The launchcast transitions are bumpy too.

Grrr...

Invented Words : Competitivity and Detailedly

Okay, sometimes I just can't immediately find the "right" word and I spit out something that is totally NOT a word but whomever I am speaking to knows what I'm talking about. So here are a few that have become part of my creative vocabulary:

Competitivity
Obviously you know what this means. The proper word would be something like competitiveness, but that's just not very much fun. Plus I think my word rolls off the tongue with a little more fun.

Detailedly
I was trying to think of "thoroughly" when I came up with this one, but I like mine better, especially if you scrunch it into three sylables like "DE-TAILD-LY" at which point it becomes almost as much fun to say as "doily."

UPDATE: March 2, 2006. I found out that Competitivity seems to be a popular word amongst European English speakers. But detailedly remains a non-word even though others have coined it before me, namely Chinese english speakers posting questions on message boards like, "Can someone explain this to me detailedly?" At any rate, I registered the domain name detailedly.com so we'll see what happens.

Blog Navigation Frustration

I don't read my own blog so forgive me for not having the feature I am about to complain about.

But does anyone else find it difficult sometimes to find the link to get to the "Next Page" of blog websites? Take for example the Business Opportunities blog which I read a few times a week. When you get to the bottom of the page, you'd think that you'd want to read the "Next Entries" as if you were paging through a book. But alas you need to click on "Previous Entries..." to get to the next page of articles.

This seems counter-intuitive despite the fact that it does make sense if you look at the blog on a timeline.

But reading blogs is just that...READING. And with most things we read, it's right to left, flip the page. Right to left, flip the page. (Unless you're reading Hebrew.)

Many blogs also hide their "Next" links or "Archive" links and that's frustrating too. I have had this "Navigation Frustration" many times in the last few months since I started reading blogs more frequently.

NBC Sucks

I've decided NBC Sucks ass. First it can't do anything to save its crappy sitcom situation and now it hacks through another olympics, giving us nothing different than in previous years. Same filler, same crap, same announcers, same crap.

If I hear Dick Button tell me one more time on 11 hour tape delay why someone's inward death spiral is so bad because the chick's ass sticks out too far, I'm going to hit something. The real injustice isn't that Olga Russiankova's hiney protrudes, it's that almost every other country in the first world gets access to live Olympic video and we don't.

Give us live coverage of the Olympics in 2008 or I'll never watch any of your cut rate sitcoms ever again just even to give them a chance.

It's irritating enough to be 5 hours behind the East coast, but it is literally half a day before the event coverage gets broadcast in Hawaii. What's worse is this:

1. Canadian TV is broadcasting live.
2. The closest Canadian city is about 6 hours by plane away from Honolulu.
3. If someone recorded 3 hours of coverage, burned it to DVD, and put it on the next flight out to Honolulu, it would get here approximately 2 hours before it would show up on TV here.

Isn't that ridiculous?

But then again, I'm sure some NBC thugs are at the airport doing secret screenings of people's DVD carry-ons so that none of their precious crappy coverage gets impeded upon by "pirated" copies of ice skating and skiing.

It's insane that in a world where emails fly across the world in nanoseconds that we cannot get video coverage in real time (even when I'd be willing to pay for it.)

Sorry. I really have a gripe about this.

Do you chew along to the music?

I do.

I just noticed this when listening to a song with an acoustic guitar in the background. While eating dinner I observed my chewing was in sync with the guitar strumming. I wonder how long I've been doing this and never noticed. I guess if I listen to less music, I'll lose that extra weight I've been carrying around.

Planned News

Is it any coincidence that suddenly Donald Trump and Martha Stewart are having a "war of words" regarding the failure of her Apprentice and dwindling success of his just a week before the debut of his new season? I think not.

It was more than a few months ago that both shows ended and we did hear some things about how Martha's show didn't do that well. I didn't really care then and I don't really care now. But a couple crafty press releases and a letter signed by Donald and suddenly there's this drama again.

So much for the saying that time heals all wounds. I think it's safe to say that many lawsuits, engagements, marriages, and divorces between celebrities are all manufactured simply to get a press release out there. I suppose even publicists need to earn their money sometime.

But it's so disappointing that this fake news ends up hitting the front page of Yahoo under "Top News" stories. Leave me alone Donald.

Google has a Problem Deleting Things

First it was gmail with it's message deletion feature that would just dump your message in the trash can and leave it there. Now it's Adwords and their "Delete Campaign" feature that's bugging me.

If you decide to "Delete" a campaign, it actually leaves the campaign in th elist and says, "Campaign Deleted." If I wanted it to still be on the list, perhaps, hmmmm, I dunno, maybe I wouldn't have DELETED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

They say that you need to be smart to work at Google, which is probably true. But I just don't get this logic. Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand why "deleting" something doesn't actually do so.

I know google changed gmail's trash feature, but not before I paged through 10,000 junk emails and deleted them page by page by page from my inbox and THEN from the trash. Hopefully they'll change this sill feature too.

Live Stream the Olympics

I have watched about 2 hours of NBC olympic coverage in total over the last week. Normally, I am an Olympic freak. But now it's too easy to get results online even when you are not looking for them. So I don't feel compelled to watch something that I already know about.

NBC offers lame video clips of events that are even more delayed than their primetime coverage. But why is it that almost EVERY country in Europe has live streaming video on the Internet of the Olympics and we get SHAFTED here in the U.S..

I tried just about everything short of getting a broadband account from a Norweigian Internet Service Provider, but I couldn't get around the technology blocking us from opening up the foreign web streams of the olympics.

I turned off my Javascript. Sifted through HTML source to get direct feed links. I've done endless Google searching for workarounds. But nothing.

When is NBC going to pull their heads out of their butts and realize I'd pay $10 for live streaming access to the Olympics just like I'm sure hundreds of thousands of the rest of us would? Hell, I'd pay $19.95.

Stupid News: The Olsen Twins

One of the "Top News" stories on my Yahoo page just now was how the Olsen twins will wear some lame designer's gowns. First of all, this is no more top news than the fact that I had diarrhea last night after eating too much chocolate.

Second, I really STILL cannot get over how obsessed we are with these celebrities (or how obsessed the media makes us think we are). I hate it when I even spend two seconds thinking about what a celeb is wearing or what they are saying on a talk show. I am getting to the point where I feel ashamed to even glance at the TV anymore.

Lastly, the obvious question is how these anorexic chicks can actually keep a dress on their bodies.

Alternate Government

Wouldn't it be interesting if there was an alternate government that simulated its own legislative session and used existing laws as a basis for making adjustments in the best interests of this country?

Then at the end of the year, one could do a side-by-side comparison of what was accomplished by each government -- the real one and the fake one.

Naturally you'd have to start all over with a new mess each year, or you could keep the alternate simulation going and see what new problems arise and need to be dealt with once the old ones are solved.

Josh Groban song sounds like Loretta Lynn

My extremely random music collection played the following two songs back-to-back:

1. Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter
2. Josh Groban: You Raise Me Up

The melodies sound very much the same to me.

Does anyone else agree?

Kimberly Stewart: Who the ???

Clearly we are starting to learn that if you are born of famous egg or sperm, you're an instant celebrity. How unfortunate for us.

I saw a link on Yahoo to join the fun and "Help Pick Kimberly Stewart's Grammy Dress."

Are people really that bored that they click and vote? I mean seriously, what HAS this chick ever done? I can't name a thing. Maybe I'm disconnected, but the only thing I know about her is that she evolved from Rod Stewart's splooge.

So she joins the chain of famous kids with questionable talent, if any: Paris Hilton...Nicole Ritchie...the list goes on. Sometimes I really do wish that California would fall into the ocean.

American Idol Comments

I think there are few things left in the world that it seems alright to make fun of. One of these is fat people. Simon has made some very direct comments about weight this season, although not specifically to the contestants. After someone large leaves the room he will comment "Do we have a big enough stage?" or "The food bill alone will kill us."

Second to the fat jokes are the ambiguous sexuality jokes. These seem fine to air as well.

I don't know if I am just getting old or what, but I used to think that words are just words -- get over it. I mean, I'm fine with jokes about myself or my disability -- but I can't help but think that permission is granted to society to continue to ridicule overweight people or sexually confused people as long as TV keeps showing it.

But then again, would AI be as funny without them? I can't say I didn't chuckle at these things...but I am a level headed person. I wouldn't say things like that to people. Others would, and that's what's scary about it.

Noise makes me crazy

There are some contractors outside grinding down the edges of my neighbor's granite counter tops. For those of you who hate the dentist, imagine your teeth getting grinded off.

I don't know why, but noise beyond my control is extremely irritating for me. I sometimes question whether I'm partially autistic or something because literally the thing that agitates me the most is noise.

I remember being a kid and my mom would pound her way though our stash of pots and pans searching endlessly for the right one while the metal clanked and crashed. It seemed like she could never find the right one and sometimes it seemed she was doing it on purpose.

It also bugs me when people bang cupboards in the kitchen or slam drawers. You know precisely the kitchen raping that I am talking about -- when you just can't find the thing you're looking for and suddenly you might as well be playing percussion for Motley Crue.

By far, the most irritating noise is the weed wacker before noon on a weekend. I take that back. A weedwacker ANY TIME is the noise most likely to cause me a heart attack. This noise is precisely the reason I do not and will never keep a gun in the house. It would be just too easy to shoot the thing.

But not all noise is bad to me. If the noise has a rhythmic quality, even if it's something pounding or scraping, as long as it has a semblance of regularity, it doesn't bother me. After a while it seeps into the background.

I tell you, that nothing inspires me more to make a ton of money so I can live smack in the middle of 100 acres of land where the only sound I hear that's beyond my control is the rain falling on my roof.