earworm and Books Lite and blogs (not just mine)

This was the weekend earworm.  I'm not familiar with a lot of Beck's music, but I had a copy of Midnite Vultures and enjoyed it a lot.  I wasn't too sure I got what he was doing early on, but I always thought he was a cool guy.  I never saw this video before.

I cannot quite figure out why I can embed videos in this blog, but not music.  I'm really not a video person, never really watched many on TV.  I don't need pictures with my music.  I wish I could just post songs, but I guess I should be grateful that at least I can post videos with songs in them.  Is this maybe a rights thing?  Maybe whoever owns Blogger would rather leave the rights issues to YouTube.  (Who does own Blogger?  I've been under the impression somehow that it's a Google thing, maybe because I can sign in with my Google sign-in.  Then again, I can sign in a trillion places with my Facebook info, and they're not all owned by Facebook. Tho I don't really need to know any of this.

I have this Amazon thing where I can list a link to some book or album I've been talking about, and if someone actually clicks and buys the thing, I think I get .00008% of a cent or something.  I've had this for a long time on this blog and the one before it, and I don't think I've ever steered anyone to look at or buy something I've written about and linked to.  (And that's the way it works -- if I happen to be talking about a particularly album or book, I'll link to it on Amazon.  I would never link to something on Amazon and then carry on about it so I could get that sweet Amazon loot.

But this is a justified shout-out to Amazon, because Barry's getting me a Kindle for my birthday, and I'm totally psyched.  I asked for it, because I knew the price had become fairly gentle.  For me, it's something like an MP3 player:  I can totally customize it and have what I really want to have in a very convenient size.  And you can get 3500 books on it.  As someone who's been drowned in books most of my life, the idea of having 3500 books in that little doo-hickey is pretty attractive.  I mean, yes, I love physical books, and there are some I will surely keep.  But I don't like cartons of books, dusty shelves of books, piles of books...I think I'm going to be happy to move over to this technology.  I particularly like the fact that there are a bazillion free public domain books, 'cause I like a good oldie.  Interestingly enough, Robin's husband got her a Kindle too (not a request but a surprise).  The Times ran a story yesterday about how they're predicting huge eBook reader sales for this holiday season, and then a huge wave of eBook buying.  Book publishing is undergoing a sea change now, which started for newspapers and magazines quite some time ago.

Now, when I saw "the Times," I am talking about the New York Times, often called "the paper of record."  It's still a great paper and my hometown paper to boot.  However, despite my repetition of the word "paper," I've been reading it electronically for maybe 5 or 6 years.  No paper.  I do subscribe to a few magazines on paper, mostly because I was offered obscenely low rates:  The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Real Simple and Vanity Fair.  I also get this horrible gossip magazine called OK for free.  They just started sending it to me.  It's way worse than something like People, which is still kind of lame.  At least People has some content that isn't about celebrities.  OK is like Perez Hilton's stupid older brother.

But mostly what I read are blogs.  I've been using a blog compiler for about four years (it was about the only thing I learned in a little class at Penguin called "Web 2.0").  I used Bloglines until a few months ago, when it was announced they were closing down, and moved to Google Reader.  Now Bloglines is not closing down, but I'm already pretty used to Google Reader. 

I subscribe to about 90-odd blogs.  Most of them are not news and political, because I read the Times and CNN.com, plus what other views slip in here and there.  I read maybe half a dozen food blogs (the ones from the Village Voice and from New York Magazine and Serious Eats and (Mark) Bittman, variously restaurant reviews, recipe and cooking, and pretty much everything else about food.

I subscribe to maybe ten music blogs, from which one can unlawfully download music albums -- I mean, which provide links to out-of-print vinyl and live concert recordings that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.

I subscribe to a few New York City history blogs and a Coney Island blog called "Amusing the Zillion."  I subscribe to Perez Hilton and a couple others of his ilk, plus Michael Musto.

I subscribe to more cute animal and kitten foster blogs than I'd care to admit to.  I actually adore the blogs from the people who foster kittens; hands-down favorite is The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee.  Not only does the blogmaster take really great photos, I'm convinced she fosters the most adorable kittens on the planet.

I subscribe to Dooce; I discovered the blog after her initial postings on post-partum depression that I think got her fired from her job.  Mostly these days it's about her kids and her husband and her dogs...it's very ordinary content, even though she has a nice sense of humor, but the whole thing is somehow spellbinding.  Maybe it's baby Marlo's huge blue eyes.

I subscribe to Cake Wrecks (ugly cakes, misspellings, etc) and People of Walmart (really funny photos of actual customers, very bizarre).  And of course I subscribe to Regretsy, the blog that skewers really ugly and dreadful things posted on Etsy (the arts/crafts sale site).  She just posts some actual item from Etsy and then comments.  One of her favorites lately is when an Etsy poster refers to something as "steampunk" when it absolutely isn't.  There are more people doing it than you'd think.  She also features things like horrible paintings of celebrities, and of course most things involving unicorns.  Sometimes you find a painting of a celebrity with a unicorn.

And I subscribe to two comic blogs; I am particularly fond of Natalie Dee.  I have a tee shirt of one of her comics.

This is my own little media patch, a customized magazine rack in small installments. 

And Facebook is excellent for reconnecting with old friends.  Don't care for much else about it, but that much is cool.