When compiling a top 10 list, there’s a big difference between “Best” and “Favorite.” Usually, “Best” implies some sort of objectivity. If I was compiling a Best Albums list, I’d probably include some influential and innovative albums that I never listen to anymore, like the new Wilco or the White Stripes. Instead, 10 albums I genuinely enjoy that have rarely left my MP3 playlist:

Favorite 10 Albums of 2002

Ben Kweller, Sha Sha

Bill Frisell, The Willies

Destroyer, This Night

Dixie Chicks, Home (*)

Mates of State, Our Constant Concern

Mirah, Advisory Committee

Norah Jones, Come Away with Me

Songs: Ohia, Didn’t It Rain

Spoon, Kill The Moonlight

Tori Amos, Scarlet’s Walk

Other Top Album lists for 2002

KALX DJs, CMJ writers and community, Aquarius Records, Spin, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The Onion AV Club, KCRW, TinyMixTapes, Amazon, Rolling Stone, and Uncut.

If you know of any more, please add them below.

Continue reading “Top 10 Albums for 2002” →

After I learn how to binary finger count, I’ll give my friends a high 11111 and flip my enemies the 00101.

For its high wax content, I recommend Jack Handey’s My Best List For 2001.

Continue reading “The National Wax Association” →

This L.A. Craig’s List job listing seeks a professional liar: someone to pretend to be multiple users on a bulletin board, to simulate an active and thriving online community.

“However, these characters must maintain a strong presence on the board so other members feel as if they are genuinely part of their community, thus, creating more activity on the board.”

Someone out there doesn’t quite get it.

I temporarily disabled my firewall today and received this piece of Windows messenger spam: “Stop these annoying messenger ads for FREE and FOREVER! Open your web browser and go to www.FightSpamWithSpam.com.”

It makes sense, I suppose. I’ve seen popup-killer applications advertised in popup windows and e-mail spam filtering software advertised in spam e-mail, so this is the new equivalent. Meta-spam is a simple way to target their demographic, and who cares if it’s evil?

Still, you have to give them credit for their technique; after showing you how to turn off Messenger services yourself, they beg for donations to fund their spamming efforts. (Grrr.)

Does the cover of Joe Clark’s new book remind you of anything? (Hint, hint.)

Back in the 1980s, a few thousand devoted followers of a religious sect called the Church Universal and Triumphant relocated to a 32,000 acre Montana ranch and began preparing for the Apocalypse. Claire Prophet, their aptly-named leader, predicted a devastating Soviet missile attack on the United States set for April 23, 1990. Responding to these doomsday visions, the sect began stockpiling weapons and creating fallout shelters to survive the attacks. (The church still lives on, albeit in a mainstream form.)

Audio recordings from internal church services surfaced sometime during the late-1980s and were released on Faithway International’s Sounds of American Doomsday Cults Volume 14. Unfortunately, the album’s out of print and unavailable through Aquarius Records, but I have several of the tracks in MP3 format (thanks Daryl).

The highlight of the batch is the Invocation For Judgement Against And Destruction of Rock Music (3 MB MP3), a three-minute roster of ’80s rock and pop stars sentenced to eternal damnation for various crimes against God. You might recognize it from Negativland’s “Michael Jackson” off of Escape from Noise, which samples it heavily. Follow the weirdness with this partial transcript.

Continue reading “Doomsday Cult Destroys 1980s Rock” →

The new version of the MAME arcade emulator plays several popular games from the modern era (post-1995) of arcade gaming: Area 51, Cruis’n USA, Cruis’n World, Vicious Circle and Maximum Force. The catch? The Area 51, Vicious Circle and Maximum Force ROM files are over 520 megs each, and Cruis’n USA requires a 4Ghz+ CPU to run at full speed. (In other words, you’ll need a computer that runs at nearly twice the speed of today’s high-end desktop PCs.)

In Bangkok, “Waxy” apparently means “leather-clad briefcase cowboy.”

I updated my Dictionary Domain page, which lists all the remaining available .com, .org and .net domains named after dictionary words.

Domain squatters seem to be releasing plenty of great .org domains. Browsing the list of domains released in the last three months, you can find some gems in the .org namespace (at the bottom of the list). Some that caught my eye: gummy.org, soapy.org (for a SOAP site?), taunt.org, betcha.org (Long Bets, maybe?), desist.org (a cease-and-desist watchdog site?), dimwit.org, redial.org, lowbrow.org, shuteye.org, and upcoming.org. Leave a comment if you register any of them.