Oh Barf

On the way back from a Starbucks run with Sarah and Maria today, I had the absolute misfortune of hearing Jason Derulo make a complete mockery of Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek. According to Sarah, this song has actually been on the scene for quite some time, but as I've made it a habit to avoid the radio, today was my first(and I hope last!) time to hear it.

I cannot believe that the powers that be allowed "musician" Jason Derulo take a beautiful song, cRAP all over it and turn it into what he calls "Whatcha Say."

Ugh.

What disturbs me the most is that the uneducated audience probably thinks he came up with the best part of the song all by himself.

Two thumbs down Jason.
Way down.

Car rant

I really don't like to rant and rave on my blog very often, but I just feel the need to share this today.

It's no secret, I hate my car.
It is always one thing after another with that car. Every time that I get some money saved up for a down payment on a new car, something happens to my car. Most recently it was the flat tire that resulted in needing new tires. Before that, it was the fuel pump. Before that, some jerk lost control of his car and crashed into me, nearly totaling the thing. It just never ends.

Well a little over a week ago the air condition in my car just stopped working. No warning. It would no longer blow cold air, just hot desert air. Sean spent some time researching it and we spent a night looking at it. We ended up deciding something had a leak because we could hear air hissing out somewhere in my engine. I decided to take it in to a shop to get looked at.

The diagnosis?
The condenser has a hole in it.
It is going to cost me $400.
Perfect.

I seriously hate my car and I think it hates me back too.

A rant about your music, but not an attack.

It started when I was myspace obsessive, on that site in every spare moment I had. The option to have a song play on your profile was introduced. Great, I like music, I like to share my musical interest. Not great, the song started automatically when loading the page. My problem with this comes in two parts. First, If I'm on my computer, I'm already listening to my own music. When other music starts playing on top of mine, its hugely annoying and frankly, a little rude. No one likes to be interrupted or spoken over. Second, in my opinion, the majority of the population has relatively lousy taste in music. Keep in mind, this is only and opinion I have. Myspace eventually introduced the option to not play the music until you click play. Great. Fantastic. Thanks myspace for solving that problem.

Now that I've moved on from the myspace obsession to blogging, I've started encountering this problem again, alarmingly more and more frequently. When I'm leisurely reading blogs as I listen to my music, I'm constantly being surprised with other music interrupting my own music. Most commonly, Its from a playlist.com widget. Great. I think its fine that you like music and want to share your favorite songs with your friends/readers. Perfect. I'm not presuming to tell you to stop doing so.

Here is what I think about the widget. I know nothing about playlist.com, but it appears that there is not an option to not automatically start playing music when the page loads. I find this very agitating. I really hope that if this is indeed an option, you will all take a minute to select this option for your playlist if you have one. If not, this is a plead with playlist.com to make this option available. Honestly, without that option, it almost makes me want to move along to some other blog/site without reading what you have to say.

I've been having this particular rant on my mind for a few years now. I've put off sharing it for the reason that I've been worried it would come across as an attack to anyone with music on their website, page, blog, etc. This is not my intent. I simply want to share my point of view so that you might see why some people might not like it. Let me compare it to video ads that start playing on a website you're visiting. Annoying, right?

Counter-point anyone?