Musical teasers

It feels like ages since I have done one of these. Then again I have been getting sidetracked much too easily these days, so my focus isn't there for the required time to sit down and jot out a long blog. I think ever since I accidentially erased my Reset blog a week or so back, I just haven't really felt the desire to sit down and go through the motions again.

Still I find myself in front of the computer on a Sunday night/Monday morning with my sleeping schedule all out of whack after doing an overnight last night at the newsstand and knowing I am in at 7am Monday morning, so while I should be sleeping I am very awake, having nodded off for a good 7 hours earlier this evening. So it is either this, work on my last Pogo badge of the week (I have the Hearts left to do) or blog. Actually I have been redoing a lot of badges in Pogo. Seems that you can do a badge more than once, so I have been opting to replay games I like for personal challenges, and when I get bored I reactivate one of the many badges that I have purchased and redo it again as well. That way I get the bonus tokens for rewinning it plus I get to play a game I actually like, as opposed to chasing after a badge in a game I don't care for, like Squelchies.

I should stop myself, as we do have some new people to the site who may not know what I am talking about. Pogo is a gaming site on the web, you pay to play it, either by month or year, and they have probably 100+ different games to choose from. Most of the games have a chance of winning money, though I never have, and award tokens that can be redeemed for a number of things from money raffles to additions to your avatar for the site. In addition, every week they issue certain challenges in a couple of games that if completed will give you bonus tokens. I like playing there, it is a nice little quiet spot when I want to get to get away from the noise of the internet. It is one of the many places I hang out from time to time, and I will sometimes update my progress on this page.

I do lots of things with this page actually, of varying degrees of importance. Since I have a few minutes here, maybe I will tell you about some of them.

Probably the oldest feature to the page would be the Change Meter, which is just a running total of the money I find when I am out and about. It was going to be a study of stuff that people needlessly throw away, as I was intrigued by the number of times in my travails where I would see coins laying on the ground, either intentionally discarded by their owner or dropped by accident and never retreived. Still I wondered how much money I could accumulate from such findings and the change meter was born. The rules are pretty simple, the money has to either be lost or discarded from its previous owner, I can't steal it per se, and it can't be money that was at one time was in my possession. I often use the laundrymat anaolgy when it comes to the change meter, if I find a coin on the floor of the laundrymat, chances are good that I found it so it counts, if I find it in the washer or dryer after taking my clothes out, chances are it was in my pocket already so it doesn't. That being said, I have been adding to the meter quite a bit recently, as a number of people that visit the newsstand often opt to leave the change behind, moreso than I would have thought actually, and it is a newwsstand, it isn'tIlike I am in a job working for tips, so that to me counts as discarded money which also counts. The only stipulation I put on it is that we have one of those penny trays on the counter, so I will not take pennies at work, but any silver left behind is mine. And I have been making quite a bit of money there, at least considering the change meter in the past averaged about $10-$11 a year, yet I have already hauled in almost $14 in the first two months of this year. Yes, for those following at home, we have a new change meter total, as I am adding a robust $4.26 to the kitty, so the new number is $53.65.

Sorry, I stepped away from the blog for a second, I am cooking while I do this and my angel hair pasta just got done. I have been cooking and listening to my launchacast station while I do this. My station is just something I play with from time to time and it is always in a state of tweakage, with me rating more songs and refining the playlist. Between rating albums, artists and songs, I am closing in on 10000 ratings, so I have put a little bit of effort into it. I do cheat a bit, anything I don't like I quickly rate and fast forward to the next song, but stuff I do like I will listen to, time permitting, which time is doing right now, which means I am typing and listening to "Candyman" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, which I always though would have made a interesting choice of music for John Candelaria, former pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who went by the moniker Candy Man. It would have been cool if he took the mound to start the game to that song, but I think his career preceeded the song, which would make it a virtual impossibility to occur.

Now we have come up on "Stupid Girl" by Garbage, which is appropo for a number of reasons, as the next blog feature we can talk about is the Asshat. This is basically a look back at the past week in the news and picking one person whose stupidity just outshines everyone else. I am an Asshat behind, I didn't post one last week, but I doubt if I would get any objections if I selected the Octuplet Mom. I won't waste anyone's time recounting the idiotic tale, but I will suggest a potential solution, rather than let her live off of the public dole for her now 14 kids, make the fertility doctor pay child support for the 8 he implanted in her after knowing she already had six kids and no job. Problem solved as far as I am concerned. That, by the way is a rarity, usually I just point out the Asshat, not offer a solution to the problem of the Asshat. After all, if I tried to solve every Asshat dilemna, I would have far less time to look at internet porn.

Ah, "Dreamworld" by Midnight Oil, I knew I liked my station for a reason. And I only had to skip one song, a bad ABBA tune, to get to it. I know, some of you are wondering if there is a good ABBA tune, I have always been partial to "Waterloo" myself. Hmm, Abba for Karaoke Friday? There's a thought that brings us to another blog feature, Karaoke Friday, one of the newer recurring features to the blog, where I just pick a song out of my past, search down the video and post it. Because it is karaoke and all, I hunt down the lyrics as well, or at least the best version I can find of them on the web, and post those as well so you can sing along.

"Crucify" by Tori Amos, another good song by my station, though Tori is one of those people that every time I start to like her, she does some crazy thing with her appearance, or records some song that I am left wonedring just what the fuck I was thinking. Probably my favorite stuff form her came back on the "Under The Pink" CD. Of course, by admitting that I like Tori Amos, you should really start worrying just how serious I may be about ABBA and Karaoke Friday.

You'll find that when I put my kind to it, I can actually put forth a lengthy blog about little or nothing at all, as I am doing here quite nicely. There are instances though where someone else's work deserves a more prominent role than my own, hard to believe I know, which has given birth to what I call Stolen Content, in which I just take verbatim was I found and post it on my page, usually with limited commentary by me, as the stolen stuff is the far more important material.

While I am mentioning these blog features, I need to restate something. Some of you have seen the fact that I put Facebook in my links section. I didn't do that out of some love for Facebook, but a friend of mine was trying to set up a page over there and he sent me an invite to look at it. Sadly, the only way I could look at it was to become a member, so I swallowed my pride and signed up. That being said, I am not posting anything over there, so readers of this fine blog have nothing to fear. I set up an RSS feed over there that links back to this page, so people over there can come look at this, but I am not going to be blogging on two sites. I do have a life outside the internet and I refuse to be tied to my computer trying to update 15 different social networking sites. I picked Multiply and this is where I will stay, for as long as they will have me. If someone over there wants to comment over here, they are more than welcome, but I am not going to be running back and forth between the two trying to maintain two different pages.

"Tenderness" by General Public. I told you my station was way cool. I should make a note here that there is a link to this station in my links section, but because of the background theme I chose, the numbers of pages I actually have are almost impossible to see on my homepage, leaving me with the option of changing my theme, which I don't want to do because I like it too much, or just say that you might want to highlight the page to see the numbers of the additional pages. See how helpful I can be when it comes to promoting myself?

Okay, I am at a crossroads here, I could continue mentioning things about this page, but then I will be up all nite and I really don't want to do that. So instead I think I will leave some of it go for the time being and come back to it later, this is what they call a teaser in the business, or a hook, a reason to come back to the page. But if I don't stop now, I will have defeated the purpose of sitting down here, that being to post an actual blog, because I will be too busy typing to actually do any posting, so for the time being we will call this a wrap. If you have questions of the page, I may be inclined to answer them at the next Ask Matt Anything, another recurring feature, which will take place this Tuesday at 9pm EST. Wow, 2 teasers in one paragraph, a personal best for me. Since I can't possibly top that I will quit while I am ahead.