CONTORTED PASTA

Earlier this year, my faithful companion and beloved entertainer passed into disability: the first-generation iPod Nano which I'd received for Christmas in 2006 stopped talking to my computer. Tried changing the USB port, and the USB cable, to no avail ... I've replaced it with a slightly newer one which is doing well, but the old one is still functioning perfectly aside from the inability to update it, and has a lot of good stuff on it, so I'm reluctant to throw it away, and that gave me the idea of The Wandering iPod.

Here's how it would work. If you'd like to listen to the 4GB of quality audio, either comment or send me your email address. I will make a list, contact Person 1 to get a mailing address, and send the dear little thing in the mail; when Person 1 is done with it s/he lets me know and I get them in touch with Person 2, to whom they send it on, and so on. Now, this would all be on the honour system because I have no way of policing the participants, and it would be dependent on each person to hand off the iPod instead of, say, losing it at the back of a drawer somewhere, but if we could get it rolling this could be a really fun thing and an interesting permutation of the 'sharing economy' or whatever they're calling it.

The contents of the iPod are ( behind this cut: )

As I said, the iPod functions well – it plays everything it's got, the buttons all work, and I'd swear it holds a charge better than my new one – but there is a fault on the screen which looks like some liquid crystal cells got crushed and then leaked in either direction. It's smaller than I drew it and the menus are still readable (in fact, being so used to it, I often don't even see it) but it is a flaw. I will send it with its magnetically closing leather case so it won't suffer any more damage.

Comment here or email twirly noodle at gmail if you're interested in joining in!

When I was growing up, we had our handful of family Christmas recordings, but the one which was Christmas was a little black cassette tape with 'XMAS' written on a white label in red felt-tip pen. My parents had recorded it before I could remember; it was essentially a mixtape of favourite pieces from friends' and relations' Christmas albums, and was a mix of traditional carols and early music, which bore no resemblance to anything recognizably 'Christmas' but picked up the association by context. Mannheim Steamroller and Celine Dion entered our house down the line, and Janice's harp CD took over as my mum's favourite thing to put on when she was feeling seasonal, but childhood imprinting dies hard and this tape still reigned supreme in my personal Christmas canon.

A few years after I left for college my dad converted the tape into MP3s and burned a CD for me. I ripped it and spent a couple days learning the noise reduction tool in Audacity to cure the tracks of tape hiss, and patched that bit in 'The First Noel' which was swapped with the other side of the tape. The playlist (never shuffled, of course, because these songs have an order) has been on my iPod every Christmas since. I never thought I'd ever be able to track down the original recordings because there was no surviving record of what they were ... but I have just discovered a pristine digital copy* of my favourite track, which I listened to so many times I knew exactly how long to press 'rewind' to hit the beginning of it again:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

One down, thirty to go. Actually, less than that now, this album has at least four of the pieces on the tape. Score!

Needless to say, I've never seen the point of modern Christmas music and find most of it really annoying, nevermind 'Christmassy.' Thanks, little black tape, for yet another disconnect from society! I don't know the words to 'Frosty the Snowman' but I can hum 'Conditor alme siderum' like nobody's business.

*as opposed to seventh-generation LP > cassette > MP3 > CD > MP3 > noise reduction filter > MP3

J'ai écouté à Radio-Canada ces semaines pour obtenir un sens(?) pour le français, avant Noël avec ma famille Québecoise, et heureusement j'ai assez de la langue pour retrouver ce chanson:

( Watch me struggle with translation! )

And on the English side:
So the world's ending on Friday, right? Right? There's an Ideas program for that. Specifically, everything you need to know – and lots of stuff you probably had no idea about but is pretty darn interesting – about the Mayan calendar, its uses, cycles, applications, history, etc. Give it a listen while you still have a chance!

(Har har)

This has been an interesting year of self-discovery. Earlier, I inadvertently developed a catchphrase ('I strive for accuracy in all things'), which got me worried a bit about encroaching supervillainy. And now, thanks to the insanely talented and prolific Sarah Slean, I have an anthem:

( Lyrics )

She always has the right song that I find just at the right time ... it's starting to freak me out a little, actually.

Last Christmas there was an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage that really bothered me, and I couldn't quite figure out why. Well, I knew what triggered it: Mark Gatiss was on as one of the guests, and he brought his delightful mix of wry humour and dark fantasy, but it seemed to me that when he played either of these cards, they shut him down. In listening to it again, it's not quite as obvious as it was the first time, and perhaps it is a fault of the final edit or my reading too much into it, but my first impression was very definitely that it went ( like this: )

I quite like The Infinite Monkey Cage. It's an occasional series on Radio 4 that serves science and comedy like bangers and mash. I love science, and I love comedy! It's a great match! Its hosts are a particle physicist* and the comedian who delivers my very favourite bit ever done on the ignorance of the creationist/intelligent design crowd. It brings on interesting ideas and interesting guests. Obviously TIMC has a heavy atheist bent but that's fine; 90% of my friends are atheist or agnostic and I don't believe that's a coincidence.** That is not what bothers me – what bothers me is the belittling way they dismiss anything ... else. It wasn't just that it was Mark Gatiss they were dismissing (though that was part of it, I'll admit), but the coldness of their reaction to his bit of fun. It is a science show and they don't have time to get into the unscientific – there is a running thing about avoiding philosophy – but a bit of banter harking to the tropes of sci-fi, a genre which at its best is about the interplay of science and philosophy, is that so bad that you can't even run with it a little? Why even bring Mark Gatiss on the show if you recoil from the slightest glimpse of imagination?
*to whom I do a terrible disservice in that comic; he's actually the one who delivers the technical information about teleporting, but I went for a cheap parroting of Alistair McGowan's impression of him on The Now Show. I haven't even seen the show where he allegedly goes on about how amaaazing the universe is!
**I mean, not in a 'divine plan' kind of way, namely that I find the company of such people vastly preferable to the alternative, in general

( And then Tealin brought out the big words and smashed things with her brain hammer. )

I really need to do a centenary update, but I don't think I have the brainpower for it right now.

Most of the time the audio links I post are to radio shows, but this week it's been all about discovering new music.

Forest Mountain Hymnal's Fitcher's Bird - If you miss Halloween already, here's a nice collection of spooky and macabre little songs. I got this link one night and spent all the next day listening, then bought the whole thing, and it's been stuck in my head ever since.

On Wednesday we had a screening for Une Vie de Chat, one of the films eligible for this year's Best Animated Film – I'm glad I caught it, not just because it was a thoroughly entertaining film that I might not get to see any other way, but because its soundtrack was great!

I caught Sarah Slean's interview on Q (Nov 9) and was pleasantly startled to learn I've missed a whole load of new songs from her since 2007, a year which was practically defined for me by Orhpan Music. I set about listening to clips on YouTube and have bought another album, though I'm going to wait till I'm next in Canada for the newest one as it is, hmm, actually available there. In the meantime, my two favourite post-2007 songs:

I'm jotting this down mostly for my own nefarious purposes reference, but I thought others might be interested in the idea, especially as it might relate to storytelling (in any medium) as much as music:

Paul Robertson, violininst: So is part of the value of the experience for us, the performer or the listener, actually the challenges of unpacking the meaning -- I mean, is that part of the process that makes the music special, do you think?

Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education: Absolutely. If it was all clear the first time, you'd do it, and you might want to listen to it a few times, and try it a few times, but then you'd want to go on to something more important. If the challenge in front of you is too great, you become anxious, and I could easily see a fledgling violinist or fledgling audience member finding some of these solo later works of Bach to be too challenging. And maybe we could say that the greatest works of art, the ones we come back to over and over again, we find additional challenges in them, as we mature and grow. I guess Bach hit the right combination, because here we are several hundred years later, still intoxicated by what he'd accomplished.

From The Innermost Master, a program on finding hidden intricacies and meanings in Bach's solo violin partitas. There's also an interesting bit on music not necessarily pointing to a specific emotion so much as describing 'the feeling of the feeling.' Link works till Sunday.

I think I am in love with E minor. Also: the term 'positive gloom.'

I kind of wish I had perfect pitch so I could tell what percentage of my favourite songs are written in this key ...

I also wish I had a succinct way of explaining to 'normal' people why I enjoy melancholy music so much. Occasionally I meet others with the same musical tastes, and none of them have a way of explaining it to the major key masses either. I am not a sad person. It is not because it is, as a former roommate put it, 'music to slit your wrists by' – in fact, it's music not to slit your wrists by, because it takes the edge off feelings of frustration and anxiety and generally wishing the world would just shut up and leave you alone. It's contemplative, and quieting, and cleansing in a way, like a long hot soak in the tub. A soak in the tub sans toasters and hair dryers, I might add.

Here, have possibly my favourite Decemberists* song, and imagine it's raining on a Saturday in February when you don't have anything pressing to do. Is it E minor? I don't know. It works for me.

*or 'the Depressionists,' according to my dad

I figured this out this afternoon and thought I might as well share, because life is just more fun when you have Sherlock's Adventure Time theme stuck in your head.



Proof my musical education has not gone entirely to waste – with suggested fingerings for violinists! I apologize for errors in notation; theory was never my strong suit. Too much like math. Circle of fifths, WTF, just gimme some music to play. (You may have noticed I am not a professional musician.)