Best Paragraph: the iPod Shuffle

Hat tip to CB over at Monitormix for providing the best paragraph I read today. It's on the very relevant notion: the iPod shuffle.


"The drawbacks of the shuffle feature mean more work for the listener -- and iPod shuffle should be about passivity, about letting go. I suppose that's the crux of the problem for me. In the shuffle mode, I spend most of my time hitting fast forward until I find a song I feel like listening to; I can't help but try to carve out a story. I love contrast and the blending of genres, so it's not about disparity. It is, however, about intention. What iPod shuffle lacks is one of the best parts of a great mix -- album sequence, or a justification for why one song follows another."

I am so very glad to know I'm not the only one who feels some measure of anxiety thanks to this 'feature.'
I concur, I concur.

An Impotent iPhone?

As much as I like and support Apple gadgets and notions, the iPhone just ain't cutting it for me.
I remain a BlackBerry user for a number of reasons, the most important one being: they just work.
Let's hope Steve Jobs figures out a way to make the iPhone the little gadget that could....
And the best iPhone sentence I read today would have to be: "For many people on Friday, the iPhone was the iCan’t."
Read more here.
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Thank You, Michael E. DeBakey

People like Michael E. DeBakey are born to be great. The heart doctor, "whose innovative heart and blood vessel operations made him one of the most influential doctors in the United States, died Friday night in Houston, where he lived. He was 99.
One of Dr. DeBakey’s innovations helped preserve his own life in 2006, when he underwent surgery to repair a torn aorta. He had devised the operation 50 years earlier. He spent months making what he called a miraculous recovery and then returned to an active schedule."
Rest in peace, Michael E. DeBakey
Read more here.
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LCD Soundsystem: What True Music Masters Sound Like

One of the beauties of travel is the ability to spend more time with the iPod and iTrip. Well that and actively trying to convert my person to keep the same album on repeat for, uhm, days. But I digress.
While I knew I already liked LCD Soundsystem quite a bit I am glad to report that that degree of liking is much higher now. As a mater of fact, it's the only band I've been listening to for weeks. And if that doesn't say much about the caliber of their art, I don't know what else to say.


LCD Soundsystem is my current favorite band. Music like this can only come from people who are acutely aware of life on a micro level. Their experience can be viewed in slow
motion. And clearly so.
Their last album made most lists as best album of '07 and rightly so.
Those who enjoy the genuinely existential sound of The Strokes and
everything alternative from Franz Ferdinand to Death Cab for Cutie will
find these guys not only superbly informed bur aesthetically solid as
well. A great, great addition to your music library. Tracks like Someone Great, New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down, and Get Innocuous aren't just good, they're incomparably good.
Here they are live:

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Wanted: It Missed the Mark

While I realize that many people enjoyed this film, I am sorry to say, I didn't. I found it an inadequate mimesis of Fight Club and the first Matrix. The latter are brilliant cinematic contributions, the former not so much.
So, just why did we stay at the theater till the end?
Welt, other than to finish the small popcorn which seemed to enigmatically multiply itself, it was to see the oh-so-little-used German actor Thomas Kretschmann in action. And Jolie. And the talented but bearably awkward James McAvoy.

Wanted is directed by Timur Bekmambetov and other than a great car chase scene in the beginning it's not really worth much. Sorry to say I didn't like. But if you find humor in kitsch plot summaries, supposedly based on the Middle Ages, it might just be something to do when it's much too hot outside.
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