Well folks, it was that time again.  Yes, The PREx called and I heeded.  My tape adapter for my mp3 player has broken.  The cable jiggles channels of sound in and out so I'm stuck on CDs.  If you've sat shotgun in my car recently then you will already have seen what happens when I convert to CDs again.  I try to keep the same amount of music handy.  How many CDs on a 20 gig IRiver?  A lot.  So it's a bit of a mess.  What do I do?  I go get more CDs.

Jelousy and Diamond Autistic Daughters	III Yoshida Brothers	Rock Animals Shonen Knife
Be Careful What You Call Home Paul Duncan	Tales of the Forgotten Melodies Wax Tailor	French Cuisine Alif Tree
Radio Blackout T. Raumschmiere	Blitzkrieg Pop T. Raumschmiere	Spike Elvis Costello

    I can't give a full review right now because... I just got them.  In fact, a good number were random picks so I don't even know what the bands are like.  There is a standout among the new ones, though.  The Yoshida Brothers.  From the sampling that I've had they sound like a pop/jazz group that only performs on traditional Eastern instruments.  And it's good.  The other buys that shocked my socks was the 2 discs from T. Raumschmiere.  I heard a single off of Radio Blackout a few years back, "Monstertruckdriver", and have been dying to get my hands on it but not pay outrageous import prices.  I got these 2 for $1.99 and $3.99.  Not bad.  PREx shall provideth.  The song sounds like a mix between Kish Kash Basement Jaxx and Flood They Might Be Giants.  Having a hard time imagining that?  You should, it's a pretty screwed up combo.  But now I have that song, along with what looks to be the video and 3 or 4 more videos too.  Shiny.

    Ah, the other musical tid-bit I've been talking up: K.T. Tunstall's live performance of "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree".  There it is.  I'm not even gong to include the auto-stream that OurMedia generated because the audio is crap.  She looks a lot like Jewel, so don't be put off by that shock.  The performance is sick.  She has this loop pedal that handles like a champ.  The song sounds, well, not like the album version, but certainly not like it was performed with only her on stage.

Nutty McNut-nut

    As some of you can tell, things have been a little nuts. For instance, take work. When I'm not explaining to a customer that a compilation CD is by different artists, and that all the tracks are not the same, I'm having my car shrink-wrapped. Yeah. Shrink wrapped. For freshness. I have some Polaroids but they aren't scanned yet. I'll let you guys see them later.

    For those of you who I haven't invited yet, Allison is in The Rocky Horror Show. You people should come and see her. And other people. There's sex and cross-dressing and... well, it's Rocky. It's obvious what it has. Come and see it. It's at Villagers Theater. It plays every Friday and Saturday night at 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm. There's a special midnight show on the 24th, but it's already sold out. I told you guys to call for tickets. Anyway, I've been 3 times already and it's really fun. Shout-backs, props, tons of fun. So come. Just call 732-873-2710 to get tickets. To get there just take 1 north to 18 north. Take that to the Easton Ave. exit and take Easton until you get to DeMott Lane. A left onto DeMott and take that down to the Franklin Township Municipal Complex on your right. It's in there. If you want better directions, gimme a call.

    Now, onto my life. I've been re-reading Transmetropoitan recently. The first volume was put together nearly 10 years ago. I remember reading it and thinking, "My god, this city is nuts. Spider is nuts. And the technology is fucking nuts!" There's two main types of future sci-fi. There's satirical and there's prophetic. Hard science fiction tends to be prophetical, predicting the coming of tech. This is Greg Bear, Jack McDevitt and the like. Satirical parodies the present in many aspects. This is stuff like Ray Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem and Yevgeny Zamyatin. Most of Asimov's better work falls into both.
Transmet is satirical. That's why it's so strange that a lot of the tech is spot on. The politics are disgustingly real, but that's the point of the series. There is a presidential race and both candidates turn out to be of equal evil, no lesser. There's corruption; journalism is pressured byy the government to put on a happy face. Religions and cults have turned into the same thing. Sexuality is completely marketed. The society is ours, just louder.
    The tech, though, is also really close. Feed sites, for example, are streaming sources of information. People are out on the streets taking pictures and interviews to put up on feeds. Sometimes real news stories are covered up by the media and only picked up on private feeds. Sometimes these feeds are then bought by mass media and show. Feeds sound an awful lot like blogs, with their rising acceptability in the journalist sphere. The streams are just like atom and rss. What you're reading now. People on the streets writing them and posting? Hi. Feeds picking up news and the media passing? Did anyone out there see news on the Pittsburgh riots after the Superbowl? I bet you only did if you read 'burgh blogs.
    Spider has a set of glasses that take pics. They have an incredible 2 gig storage. At the time that was like talking about a terabyte. Of course, we'll get those soon as well. Pretty much the only thing we're missing are bowel disruptors and foglet communities. The sad thing is that the politics haven't gotten any farther from their cartoonish portrayals.

    I guess I'll close with those two b-sides I promised. These comprise volumes 4 and 5 of my box set. A bit less cohesive as the soundtrack parts, these are just theme comps. Not that I'm knocking them. They're good. So, listen, love 'em and count how many of the bands you never even heard of. I'll put up a track list next time.

4 - B Sides of Off Kilter Folk

5 - B Sides of Camp Await