A thousand things

The new Spoon album is out in three months (May 10), but if you know the right people and grease the right palms you can listen to it right now until you can buy a copy of yr own. (key word = BitTorrent) I've heard most of the songs live in the last year or so, listening to it now for the first time.

Beck, on the other hand, is officially past his prime. He had a good 10-year run, better than the Velvets.

Last weekend I bought myself an extravagant gift (hint = rhymes with 'Bly-pod'). I'm not going to stop buying CDs, and it's impossible to put even half of my collection on it, so i'm just using it for all-time personal favs (that reminds me, gotta put the first VU album on there) and to test new things that have been hanging round my hard drive for a year. (lots of early bowie, Hunky Dory rules, plus finally listening to Gang of Four (1981?), new one called Bloc Party, lots of Galaxie 500, the elusive first Gossip LP, the Microphones 'the glow pt. 2', about half of the Annie record, brian eno, the new furnaces EP compilation, the last new pornographers, thriller (fuck you corey feldman), tender trap, ted leo) . I spent most of last week at work secretly researching my impending purchase, came away with more knowledge than the bearded moron at the Apple store, but works fine anyway, though the headphones hurt my ears sometimes, all my good ones are too big, but after 4 days I've been wishing the commute was longer.

Speaking of the work, I now have officially have health insurance. Also have received my second paycheck, without incident. Still awaiting various official mailings that should have came weeks ago however. So work is good for money, but not much else aside from giving me red eyes and headaches. And boredom, like I said I waste a large amount of my day, I don't really have any real responsibility (yet?) and my 'training' has been completed, apparently, leaving me to do a few mindless tasks interspersed with 3 hours of surfing the web (must have hit N-Rohan.com about 75 times a week looking for an actual post of substance only to be continually disappointed). I'll start posting from work I guess, I've gotten quite adept at quickly switching to an excel spreadsheet if someone's walking by.

Now, obviously, I'm not very happy with the job status at the moment, I don't enjoy being a lazy slacker (except from 1998-2001, those were great times), but I really don't have much choice at the moment. If I'm assigned something I do it, and in the meantime can find certain things I can do to keep myself semi-occupied; but I'm not working hard at all, and most days seem less like working and more like attempting to make time go faster. I've heard I'm getting lots of responsibility in the next few weeks, enough to make me cry myself to sleep and hate work with a passion. So that should be nice.

So otherwise, fancy downtown restaurants the last two nights have been great, but nights out leave me exhausted, especially when surrounded by doctors. No offense, doctor-readership. This morning I was a wreck, foolishly decided to counter with office-brewed coffee, which was the worst coffee-based experience I've ever had and certainly not how I had hoped. I'm just now recovering, 12 hours later.

Tomorrow I'll finally see 'Sideways.'

Well, new Spoon (album's called Gimme Fiction) is good after one listen, their longest record, as unclassifiable as their last. I read somewhere (somebody's blog??? some webzine reviewing 'around the sun'?) that suggested Spoon's core due of Britt Daniel/Jim Eno should produce the next R.E.M. album. That will never happen, but it's actually kind of awesome to think about.