I’ve said it before, but bottled water is evil. Kari sent me this link to the Carbon Concious Consumer, an organization working to reduce the usage of bottled water. Click on it and sign up!

Whether you’re a fan or not, go and buy or download the new Radiohead album immediately. Why? Because doing so will help decide the future of how you get your music. Do you want to continue to pay needlessly inflated prices to unnecessary corporations? Do you want to collect more useless plastic boxes? Do you want to marry one company’s devices via their locked-down file format?

Or would you rather pay a reasonable price directly to the artist for a simple, open file that you’ll be able to play on any device, forever? That’s exactly what Radiohead is offering. The album they released today, In Rainbows, is offered directly from their website as a zip file of standard MP3s. The price is definitely reasonable… whatever you decide to pay. Pay nothing, pay $1000, pay anything in between. I “voted” with about $7, because I know that’s way more than they’d by selling me a CD through a label, and it’s way less than I’d pay in the same situation. You can also pay nothing and try the album out. If you like it, pay later. Or don’t.

As far as the music itself is concerned, I’m far from disappointed. I’m a fair-weather Radiohead fan. While The Bends and OK Computer are among my favorite albums and belong in some epic rock hall of fame, the rest of their library varies from really good (Pablo Honey) to intolerable (Amnesiac). This is largely a result from their tendency to vary style and experiment. Each albums tends to have its sound, from poppy rock to noisy techno art school nonsense. In Rainbows is a nice blend of all those soundscapes, and it’s already my third favorite album of theirs after one listen. They had certainly earned my £3.48 by about track 4.

I hope Radiohead’s experiment is hugely successful. The big labels have ignored consumer demands for way too long, and their preference for litigation and prosecution over innovation is disturbing. They’ve had plenty of opportunity to lead the way with non-DRM music. If In Rainbows is successful, they’ll be forced to change their ways or ride them in to the ground.

The new MP3 store from Amazon delivers a perfect modern music retail experience, at least as I’ve imagined it over the years. I like buying my music, but I don’t want more CDs - chunks of plastic that do nothing but sit on a shelf. I like iTunes, but I don’t want DRM, and I don’t want to be limited to one device. Buying MP3s is the perfect solution, and Amazon provides a fantastic user experience to boot.

You first install a small application on your machine. Then you simply browse the extensive online library. Songs are reasonably priced, usually lower than $0.99. Better yet, full albums are usually priced from $7.99 - $9.99. When you find what you like and click to buy it, the Amazon Downloader automatically puts it in your designated music folder, nicely organized, and adds it to iTunes or Windows Media Player if you like.

While they don’t yet have the selection that iTunes offers, at 2.3 million songs and climbing they have tons. The files are high quality (~256Kbps, VBR), standard MP3s. I bought several albums there this weekend, and the whole experience has been incredibly pleasing. I love knowing that the music I paid for will be easily playable on whatever device I happen to have in the future, and I love that iTunes finally has a powerful competitor.

In the past week, I have found four half-empty (or half-full if you like) containers of Coca Cola near the end of our driveway, one 20-oz bottle Vanilla and 3 12-oz cans of Classic. Coke is among my favorite beverages, and as such I’m left to wonder why they aren’t finishing them? And then, why are they leaving them neatly standing on my property?

This week’s edition of Basic Instructions is hilarious.

“Cats do not provide milk or wool or meat.” - Dwight K. Schrute. I love The Office. That line from last night’s season four premiere is so funny, but it’s also the perfect nonsense response to people who ask you if you like cats. Just a couple of weeks ago, Em asked me that very question, and I wish I could go back in time with that line in mind. For the record, I do like cats, I just do not want to own one.

I have not written in a while, but not for lack of things to write about I’m sure. Foremost, Amy and I are finally in our new house. All the boxes are unpacked and things are put away, and it really does feel like home. That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of projects to take care of, namely repainting the Spongebob room or the stucco-on-interior-walls bathroom. But doing those projects should be fun and enlightening, while making the place even more ours.

While unable to quickly sell, we found a great tenant for the condo, and he moves in this weekend. I probably should have listed it for more rent than we are charging, but I’m not disappointed. Within three days of posting it on craigslist, I had shown the place 10 times, turned others away, had three definite offers to rent it, and could have had more. Landlordism is not a mentality I thought I’d take to, but so far so good. Fingers crossed!

I’ll try to post more frequently now that we’re less busy, but if I don’t, you know where to find me.

It’s clearly a slow news day.

Rock stars more likely to die prematurely

I finally had the pleasure of a Fountains of Wayne concert on Sunday. Originally slated to open for Joan Jett at the State Fair, they ended up playing a free show when she canceled. They’ve been one of my favorite bands since the first time I heard they’re infections “Radiation Vibe.”

They played a very tight set featuring almost all my favorite songs (”Girl I Can’t Forget” was probably wishful thinking anyway). Unfortunately, there were quite a few silly frat boys in the party who knew nothing of FoW except for their huge hit single, “Stacy’s Mom” - a great 80s/The Cars tribute. They kept yelling “Stacy’s Mom” throughout the show, going so far as to chant en masse.

Eventually, they played it, and the crowd went nuts in a big pogo party. It was actually a really cool scene, very excited crowd, great music, my sweet sugar on my arm. It was then I noticed the American flag waving through the smoke machine in the distance behind the stage. It cemented it all together for me.

Anyway, the moment the song ended, about 30 of these plaid short/Abercrombie wearing dudes just filed out, missing the best song of the night - “Radiation Vibe” with a medley of 80s classic over the guitar solo. What a bunch of lame-os. I was immediately a reminded of the Homer Simpson moment below, which you know I love especially at tcob.com.

Thanks again to Scott Adams for another great laugh. His post today introduced his readers to a great web comic, Basic Instructions by the soon-to-be-famous Scott Meyer. In particular, he directs readers to this incredibly funny strip about disguising a yawn.

I have this problem all the time. I think it started in college where I was very frequently too tired for my 8:00 AM classes. Lecturing became a mental cue for me to yawn. Now whenever I’m in a situation involving someone talking to me at length, I’ll have the uncontrollable urge to yawn. It’s a frequent problem in meetings.

I must be terrible at hiding it, because Amy always catches me trying and says, “Just let it out; you look ridiculous!” I feel just like the guy in the strip.

Update: He must be getting more traffic than he’s used to, so the site is slow. Wait for it; it’s worth it.