The Lair

I don’t have a legit claim to fame whoredom at the best of times. I am also defiantly un-indie; not made of the stuff that the cool kids listen to. But even by my low low standards, this week’s last.fm artist breakdown is promising to be stellar.

Green Day’s Dookie, Mis-Teeq, REM, Blondie, Keane’s Hopes and Fears, a massive dose of KC and the Sunshine Band and random acoustic stuff on the same playlist.

Oh, and let’s not forget Lionel; who has some truly hilarious tags on his tracks at last.fm… For instance, try “quiplash” on “Three Times A Lady”. Or how about “awful awful awful” on “Hello”. Yeah.

And this inanity is all because I am busy with real life stuff this week and normal transmission is not expected to resume till middle next week. At least you are spared listening to my cuss words when the homebrew media player throws a hissy fit and decides to only play the movie trailer of Casino Royale on a day. Fun times, I tell ya. Bring on the holidays.

Now playing: the Coldplay discography. Because I can. Also because some of the tracks are ok and I had it on my hard disk anyway. Yes, I’m hastily back pedalling from my previously defiant sounding stand, but if it makes it any better; there is also some Travis in there. I’ve listened to Sing half a dozen times thus far, but that might just be Winamp’s dodgy random track math rather than a conscious preference on my part.

Wait. It can’t be the discography because I don’t have the entire Parachutes album. Never mind then. I’m sure some preference model can be built up based on what’s on my Winamp playlist these days – not so much of the usual trance, house stuff since I’m (*sob*) not doing a lot of coding. These days it’s all about the jangly guitars and pianos of Travis, Coldplay and U2. Regrettably, there’s also some James Blunt in there. And some Level 42. And some other stuff like that. Yeah. I just said that on the tubes. I fully expect a Googling in 10 years will come back to haunt me like an old archived political flamewar or four.

I’d bitch more about Kottu’s feed breaking yet again; yet I can’t be bothered. Er. Well, actually considering that I spent about 10 minutes of my life thinking about how to route around the damage of an invalid XML feed yet again, I suppose I can rant a bit. I’m not entirely sure why dodgy chars like & and < aren’t escaped in the feed though. Whenever Kottu encounters one of said dodgy chars, it just seems to crumble like Eddo Brandes crumbles biscuits. (Do I get points for obscurity? I hope not).That’s … as a certain well built character in a TV serial would say … messed up, dude.

I have two more documents to produce and then I can do something fun for a change. Not entirely sure what constitutes my current idea of fun yet, but maybe I’ll chance the Charlie on a Saturday night or something. That should be eventful, if not entirely fun in the conventional sense. Maybe watching neighbourhood farmers pour vast quantities of beer down their necks will amuse me.

Meh. Fix this.

Valleywag has been running a fake word competition all week. A long time ago, my mother gave me a book with various punning neologisms like sarchasm. I can’t remember the title of the book; but reading the entries submitted for the fake words contest brought many a fond memory back.

In no particular order:

Ringtone rage: Violent behavior exhibited by cubicle dwellers, brought about by hearing their colleagues’ ringtones repeatedly. [S. E. August]

Aspergered: state resulting from pouring a lot of time and energy into an obsessive hobby or project, usually pointless to outsiders. [Arnaud Hubert]

BILF: Blogger i’d like to f***. As hot as MILF, except probably younger, and smart enough to blog. [Dan Tam]

Blogna sandwich: Reading blogs on a lunchbreak. [Jim Frost]

Mutual blogsterbation: When two bloggers blog about how great each other is. [Scott Case]

Blamethrower: The flaming of the guilty when projects go bad, and the accompanying Dragonslayer-esque deflection of blame. [Randy Hollingsworth]

Dot Mom: The woman who has a husband whose money she’s using from his Web 2.0 startup to buy the Escalade and keep the nanny around 24/7, even though she doesn’t work. [Rick Dobbs]

Fooky: Having very poor implementation and/or concept to the point of not being usable. Often recognized by all except the founder. Bill thought his idea was great, but we all knew it was FOOKY and wouldn’t last. [Makinde Adeagbo]

Blemeworthy: Worthy of being propogated via blog. By all accounts, Jude Law and Sienna Miller’s makeup sex was certainly blemeworthy. [Michael Krantz]

Typerventilating: Rapidly sending instant messages. Having a panic attack via AIM. [Exa Grubb]

Blogamy: Having more than one blog at a time. [Bill Green]

IMbush: A coordinating attack using instant messenger to beat the truth out of a third party. I admitted to lying to my boyfriend when he and a friend who knew the truth IMbushed me. [Maureen O'Connor]

Blush: A crush on a blogger — a person you’ve never met but whose blog you read. [Natala Menezes]

It would be less funny if I didn’t relate to most of those concepts personally. Also worth noting that Blurf was coined by someone in the neighbourhood – like two years ago.

In other news, I have performed a periodic stock take of my Winamp playlist and discovered Queen’s Stone Cold Classics cohabiting a playlist with Culture Beat and uh.. James Blunt. This may also explain why I’m not using last fm or other social music services. For one, it’s slightly embarassing to let my Winamp playlist be seen in public. Secondly, I think a recommendation service would go slightly mad at my music choices. Yeah. Now I’m listening to Freedom 90. Beyond reform, that’s me.

And finally, I have discovered yet another Firefox extension which may give Chris Pederick’s Web Dev extension a run for it’s money. Firebug deserves just a single word description. Awesome. And you can even disable the irritating error count display without restarting the browser. I’m sold.