Entirely Unrelated Notes

A few weeks back, I bought an external hard drive for the PC at home, primarily to allow me to move more of my CDs onto digital storage which, in turn, gives the iPod a vaster library to pull from.

Late last night/early this morning, as I was taking a break from rubber-cementing Jolee's science project onto the cardboard display (Apple's Changing Colors: No Matter How You Slice Them), I added more music, surpassing the 9000 song mark with Living Colour's Vivid LP. My iTunes now surpasses 40 MG which means, in turn, my iPod is now 2/3rds full.

I know, whatever.

Anyway, the shuffle gave me an interesting mix this morning, and uncannily threw in a heavy metal song as I was standing in line at Starbucks realizing I hadn't heard any metal. I was going to list the songs, but I scrolled past the first selection and the shuffle reset, but I will tell you I had a healthy mix of jazz from Chet Baker and Bill Charlap, some Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix, a little Lucinda Williams (the only remotely "country" singer I truly enjoy), Jimmy Page with the Black Crowes, the aforementioned metal song "Poison" by the band Venom, and a few other selections.

The crowning moment came in the middle of the list with the full-length version of the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," which, as was recently reiterated to me in old friend Jeff Chang's highly-acclaimed book Can't Stop, Won't Stop, is the literal flash point for the mainstream acceptance of hip-hop. I still remember trying, as an adolescent and listening to KIKI, island radio, to write down the lyrics as they poured out of my boombox.

On an entirely unrelated note, I finished Nicole Krauss' History of Love (previously mentioned here) this morning. Overall, quite enjoyable and recommended, although I was left wanting more, despite knowing why I wasn't getting more. It seemed a little too dangly.

On another entirely unrelated note, I also finished the third installment of Patricia Cornwell's At Risk, a weekly fiction feature in The New York Times Magazine. Loyal readers may recall I posted about the inaugural feature, a story by Elmore Leonard, which ran from September through December. I highly recommend following this, either in print or on-line here.

And on one last entirely unrelated note, I found one of my old posts linked to another blogger's post, from way back in September '05, in BillyBlog's infancy. There's something somewhat validating about seeing your creation linked in another person's blog, especially if you don't know them. The post is here, and I am linked among several others in discussing the Best American Poetry series.