This is Pandora, custom streaming internet radio. I shall forgive y'all for not telling me about this long ago. You were all probably too busy filing your nails and winning the lottery and listening to your own particular idiom of musical grooviness to remember that The Kat™ might like to know about Pandora.
That's okay, I can manage.
Thank FSM for a certain Wisconsin blogger, though. She doesn't forget about The Kat™. She mentions Pandora and is even so unbelievably thoughtful as to post a link to it. Alls I can say is some lovely person who shall not be named here but whose initials are Dale-Harriet shall not be forgotten in my will, such as it is. I'm sure she will cherish the semi-petrified bars of lavender soap that will come her way at some unspecified future time when I shall cease to inhabit this mortal coil. The rest of you can just go suck rocks. So there.
Oh, wait, I said this was my holiday present to you. [rewind.]
Go check out Pandora if you happen to be the [only] other person in the universe who hasn't discovered it. Tell it a musical group or song that you like, and it will create a *station* that plays music in the same style as whatever you entered. Their algorithm for selecting music seems quite good. I was joyously surprised by the music that followed my entry of the Rolling Stones -- Tom Petty, Kinks, Creedence, the Velvets, Bob Dylan, Talking Heads, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Who, all groups that are well-represented in my iTunes library although not necessarily by the songs that Pandora played. Songs that were new to me. Songs that were fun to listen to. It will even disclose why it picked a particular song. I wondered about one by a guy named Ronnie Earle, somebody I had never heard of but whose song "My Buddy Buddy" I liked when I heard it. Pandora explains, "Based on what you have told us so far, we're playing this track because it features blues rock, qualities, mild rhythmic syncopation [um, is there any other kind of sycopation in music besides rhythmic? asks The Kat™], thru composed melodic style, major key tonality and electric rhythm guitars." Other songs that I investigated had these and various other features that caused them to be included in this station: electric rock instrumentation, blues influences, subtle use of vocal harmony, extensive vamping, and others.
So far I have the aforementioned Rolling Stone station, a U2 station (unsurprisingly, there is some overlap between those two), a Baroque chamber music station, and a classical Christmas station. Oh, the joy and peacefulness that washes over me as I listen to those last two.
Pandora is free but you must give it your e-mail address. Anybody with a
Yahoo premium account knows enough to create a disposable address for
the purpose; if Pandora's entire existence is aimed at acquiring a mailing list
so they can sell it to entrepreneurs who want me to buy insurance or
enroll in nursing school or enhance my penis or get out of debt free, Boy! are they gonna be disappointed. Hah! Spammers! I'm Yahoo is smarter than you! [raspberry]
* * * *
I had a little problem yesterday.
This lovely beast:
plus an attack of cabin fever led to this:
See that mess of pinkness there at center left? That was the skein attached to the pink and blue and green preemie hat, center. Said preemie hat and skein were left carelessly within En's territory, i.e., on the floor.
"Well, that yarn won't be botherin' ya no more, ma'm. I done killed it fer ya."
Gee, thanks, En.
A quick call to #2 son, on his way home from Minneapolis via Eau Claire, and a replacement skein of Cotton Ease, in Berry, was no longer on the shelf at Michael's but instead coming to live with me. The original skein was so badly tangled not only could I not untangle it, I could not even find the single strand emerging from the ball so I could cut away the mess. I can probably salvage some of it. If I can suppress the rage.
