I've obviously got the first search in mind ...

327, you've let me down in the past. I've set you small tasks, challenges, if you want to call them that. And you've come up with a range of excuses and let the whole thing slide. What's the point in knowing someone who knows about computer programming if they can't whip something up for you now and again? I mean, it's not like you're doing it for free - all the profits will be split, 50/50. I bring the inspiration, you bringing the typing.
This is one you can do. And it's going to make a bucketload of cash.
It's called Tyoodle.
It's basically Google, but instead of finding amusing cat pictures, it finds that tune that's been stuck in your head for 5 days straight and tells you.

• WHO originally sang it!
• WHERE the fuck it's from!
• WHAT other bands have used the bloody thing as a sample to trick you into thinking that the original artist isn't the original artist!
• ALL of the movies and TV shows it's been used in!

It will have a REVOLUTIONARY selection of inputs ranging from simply typing the tune into the search box:
"Da na na nuh nuh, naa na na na na"

Tyoodle result:
The Entertainer
Scott Joplin

Brilliant!

To a microphone-based query where you can simply sing the tune straight at your computer and Tyoodle will analyse your tune and find your mystery song!

[sings into licensed Tyoodle mic]: Den den den-nah nah nah nah nana/Den na na na naahh

Tyoodle result:
Money for Nothing
Dire Straits

This is also especially helpful for instrumentals. Observe:

[sings into licensed Tyoodle mic]: "bip bop bip bop bip bop bip/bip bop bip bop bip bop bip/bip bop bipa bipa bop bipa bipa bop bipa bipa bop bip"

Tyoodle result:
Popcorn
Gershon Kingsley

Incredible!

Then you just have the link to iTunes or Amazon or both and Cha-CHING! (Tyoodle result: Money - Pink Floyd).

So 327, stop messing around with whatever it is you're doing and spend a weekend getting this thing off the ground. I've already done all the heavy mental lifting, you can just get coding and next winter we'll be warming ourselves with flaming $100 notes.

She knows my music tastes so well that she can direct me to any and every cheap, ring-tone-friendly, auto-tuned knock off I'm sure to love.

The moment I have the house all to myself I ...

... listen to the loudest, beefiest, air-punchiest, dioxygenated-guitar-struminest music possible.

Tuesday is recycling night!

It's fine to become a parent. It's fine to spend Saturday nights watching ABC and trawling through the used cars on drive.com.au looking for a little action (what all the tragically boring parents are doing this generation).

It's not fine to be hassled and haunted by this stupid song for a terrible, sanity-bleeding month some 15 or so years ago ...

... only to have the same Nightly Ghoul of Catchiness haunt me again in the following guise:

It turns out (from my two pieces of research) that all Flo Rida* does is raid the more excruciatingly tragic corners of my music collection for sugar-trash Euro-Disco - Exhibit A:

And rap over the top of it. Exhibit B:

Regardless of whether Kanye West had already dropped by a few years previously ...

... to purloin one of my top ten songs of all time:

All I have to do now is wait for Snoop to drop by with an ounce to trade for this little ditty:

Yes. I have this song.
Yes. I actually (used to) listen to it.

*But seriously, how pleased with himself must Flo Rida have been when he first thought up that name? I would love to have been there, just to watch that glimmer of realisation spread across his face. He'd be there, driving in a lowered cruiser, I imagine. Rolling around the streets of Miami and thinking about his desire to be a rapper and tossing up a few names.
"Big Banga? Nah ... T Dollaz? ... Hmm ... nah ..."
He'd pull up at the lights, along side a bus with a tourist bureau ad on it. "Florida is great!" reads the ad. Soon-to-be-Flo stares at the ad.
"Hey ... 'rida' ... like my ride here - "lo rida" ... heh ... thas' good ... hey ... Flo ... I flow ... my flow is the shit ... Flo ... rida ... Florida ... Flo ... rida ... Flo-rida ... Flo Rida."
He'd be like some Sesame Street Muppet slowly pushing two parts of a word together to make ... one meaning!
"FLO RIDA!" he would yell out. "FLO RIDA! YES!" He'd be beeping his horn, muppets would be waving their arms on little wires and bashing their furry heads up and down and singing songs about how words can be made up of other words.

It would be that awesome.

Living Wake for Herr Sennheiser

He is dying. My constant companion is dying.
I hate headphones, but I have loved these ones. My lugholes are large and slightly downturned, so that consequently I have spent my life jamming undersized earbuds into my ear holes to make them stay (and no doubt making the problem worse).
These ... these headphones are different. These are soft, beautiful ear-goggles. Sound quality like a hammer made of solid gold glitter wielded by a funky god.
Yes - I have to endure walking the streets with a tyre clamp strapped to my head.
Yes - for some reason the cord is three metres long.
But it was worth it. I now have trouble hearing in ambient environments, but it was still worth it.
Once I was sitting at the bus stop and a bike courier almost flipped over the front handlebars stopping in front of me.
'Are those HD 457s?' he panted.
'Yes.'
'How are they? I'm really thinking of getting some.'
I actually took them off and let him listen.
'These are awesome!' exclaimed the quickie-post cowboy. 'Just like all the magazines say!'
I smiled, and readied myself to spring at his shaven legs, just in case he tried to burn off with my babies.
'I'm gonna get some right now!'
And he was away in a cloud of deep heat and urgent letters.

This is quite a regular occurrance. Men stop me in the street, dudes with black greasy hair and square handbags make complicated pointing gestures at our ears when I'm wearing them and I actually have to take them off if I'm ever going into Dick Smith (or any other business where Men Who Know A Thing Or Two About Sound Quality congregate). 'Oh yeah - my dad had Sennheisers ...'

Alas, the once-mighty HD 457s are dying. And perishing the worst kind of death for a headphone: the single earphone loose wire.
You start out noticing a lot of cross-fade in your music choices.
Then it develops into some very creative channel selection, bordering on the abstract, until ... that one day ... you know this song plays out of both ear phones ... you touch the plug ... the ear phone works ... then stops ... then works ... stops ... crackles ... works ... stops ...

And on and on it goes. It still works, but only if you hold the wire in a special way and tilt your head and don't move. It's the worst way to die. I'd rather they were run over by a truck.
Especially after holding my neck stiff for an hour on the bus this morning pretending that everything was just fine.

***
The Wrestler - A quick review
The finest performance by the back of an actor's head I have ever seen.

***
GTH - Ashleigh. And Adam gets one point and a further ten if I see the t-shirt. Twenty if wearing the t-shirt at Wimbledon. Kath was going to lose points, but I decided that watching Federer cry because he lost like the perfect sportsman he is was reward enough. Old Man Dom might have received a point if he had had the (peach) stones to comment instead of just emailing.

Blip blip beep boop

I've got a Xmas party to help cater, I start a new job in less than a week, I have two book reviews for good grown-up books to write, one of which I haven't read yet, I'm supposed to cook tea, care for my wiff and edit my book but all I want to do is listen to Daft Punk's Alive over and over and over again.
I haven't been obsessed with an album since ... hmm ... Tool's 10,000 Days, which I had to listen to about a dozen times on and off before I found myself waking up at night with strange guitar riffs grinding down my cerebellum. Alive is an instant classic. I am absolutely smitten. I just sit here with my ridiculously large headphones clamped to my noggin, bopping my head, tapping my feet, missing phone calls, ignoring family members, waving my arms in the air like I've got two handfuls of glowsticks, a tummy full of ecstasy and a calendar set permanently to 1999. Aw Yeah. I robot dance while washing up. I actually sat Mele down, of all people, put the headphones on her head and tried to get her to nod her head in blissful appreciation of what is essentially the sound of twelve million mobile phone rings played simultaneously through really loud speakers. To her credit, she was very polite about it.

What was your latest music obsession? Not crush - I'm talking lust, people. Points go to most embarrassing story and/or worst taste in music. Bear in mind this will judged by a man whose musical taste reaches its pinnacle at Daft Punk and Underworld, a man to whom novelty songs are equal to songs whose lyrics do not contain punchlines, a man to whom lyrics have no meaning.

***

Many kind thanks to Myninja, Kath, LC, 327, Moify, Captain T and Tess for uniting the blogging world with the real and coming along to hear Mele and I read at Wordfire last night. For all those bloggers who are also large fans of Kath and Myninja's work, I can reveal that in person they are both devilishly handsome individuals and having them in the audience was as gratifying as it was daunting.

Photos pending spousal consultation.

***
GTH - Points go to River for giving me the giggles with her wonderful Hydrantophiliac vignette. Honourable mention to the often silent, but always correct Will for being so amazingly spot-on with his art identification.

When the naughties have died and been reborn in a premature haze of nostalgia marketing and retro-dollar love-ins, I will feed my progeny for generations to come with my one-hit-wonder super group: 'Youtube Sensation'.

Thing a thong!

This song isn’t one of my favourites. It isn’t by a favourite band, it doesn’t ever feature on my favourite playlists, my iTunes playcount tells me that before tonight, I’ve never listened to it all the way through ...

To find out what song I’m talking about, please visit poetquib.com where I’ve been asked to write the weekly rave about a special song. Which obviously doesn’t seem that special from the above description, but trust me, I pull it back in fine style.

Music: Proof that nobody is ever cool

Recent conversation with Triton's annoyingly-talented 13-year-old sister, Izabella:

We are looking through her iTunes music library, which she has recently replenished with a bag of CDs donated by yours truly.

Izabella: So, what's your favourite band?
Franzy: Uh ...
Izabella: Or bands, whatever
Franzy (Thinking in high gear of something he has been listening to recently that throw a thoughtful curve-ball to a school-cool 13-year-old who is into music): Oh ... um ... ah, okay, how about this: lately I've been listening to ... Timbaland.
Izabella (polite smile): Right.

While I find Timbaland's production work quite interesting in the way he uses odd samples and unique beat structures and often very dance-hall/techno sounds, there is no denying the fact that he has boosted the careers just about every bubbly pop artist around. He is in no way cool, hip or attached with any cultural cred whatsoever. And thus, neither am I.

And so, without further ado, I present two music videos for your delectation. Neither of them relate to Timbaland, but both are worth watching.

It might help to imagine the "Green and Groovy" one going for the neck.



Thanks to Jimmythins for putting me onto what could be the song of 2008. Already. Boop-a-doop-a-doop!




***

Why, oh why is the Fringe parade always on a chilly, rainy evening? I'm almost glad that Mele isn't feeling well so that we get to stay at home ...

***

GTH - Milly Moo (aka Kath Lockett) for her stories of sweat.

*Tag* I'm it.

Memes are always a bit naff. And I'm actually quite bad at them. But, at the end of a long day of advanced bogonics (you'll find out what that means in due course), it seems like the perfect wind down. Milly Moo has tagged me and I accept the challenge!

1) Eight things I am passionate about:
The people I care about
Writing
Cooking
Music
Travel
Happiness
Comics
Stories

2) Eight things I want to do before I die:
Go to Japan and eat the cuisine.

Go to Scandinavia in the winter.
Eat an entire pig.
Own a Nissan Skyline despite how embarrassed or mockful everyone I know and love will be.
Drive a Ferrari. Fast.
Publish a(nother) book and have it not be trashed as badly as I have trashed others.
Get my PhD.
Cook for someone famous. (I'm scraping the barrel here).

3) Eight things I say often:
Fuck.
Motherfucker.
Champ.
Chief.
No.
Bro.
Yo.
Hmm.

4) Eight books I've read recently:
The Cursed.
My Swordhand is Singing.
Lemon!
Extra Lemon!
Dreamrider.
The Trial of Colonal Sweeto and other stories.
The Arrival by Shaun Tan.
Monster Blood Tattoo by DM Cornish.

5) Eight songs I could listen to over and over:

Blue Monday by New Order
Jambi by Tool
Know Your Enemy by Rage Against The Machine
Got Glint? by The Chemical Brothers
Nessun Dorma as sung by Pavarotti
Rez/Cowgirl (live) by Underworld
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk (I liked it way before Kanye mashed it up)
In White Rooms by Booka Shade

6) But if I were doing a triple CD set, I’d include (8 x 3 = 24)
I mentioned above that I was passionate about music, so much so that I don't believe that I can restrict I my music taste to 24 songs within an efficient time limit. That is, if I were to do justice to this question - whittling down my favourite music to just 24 - I would not be doing justice to the other things that I am passionate about: writing, friends, family, cooking. It would be a full time job and one for which I would not get paid. And after all that, I couldn't possibly do justice to my passion for music by cutting it down to 24 songs. Sorry.
Next!

7) 8 things that attract me to my friends:
They laugh at my jokes.
They tell good stories.
They are all very successful.
They are all part of me.
We agree on most things, but thankfully not all.
They still surprise me.
Most of them can juggle to a certain extent.
They would say the same things about me.

8) 8 movies I've watched at least into double figures
Life of Brian
The Holy Grail
Wayne's World
The Meaning of Life
Terminator 2
Star Wars
... and that could be about it. Which is surprising, because I'd always rather watch a movie I've seen before than one I haven't, but I suppose my saner friends have restrained me from the kind of madness that takes this practice into double figures.

So who do I tag?

327
Lion - Welcome to Blogworld, buddy. Here's something naff for your second post!
Jimmythins - Something to do until those movies get posted
Sf_dtail_49
Jono


***

GTH - Will of the 'not public' profile has taken the first cherry from his tree! It was indeed from the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art. And as I explained, this was an illegal photo (see previous post's comments about museum guards and life-sized porcelain sculptures of Michael Jackson and Bubbles). Welcome Will, to the honour wall!