The Ghost In the Machine
This is what you get when you go out surfing the stranger corners of the Interwebs without adequate protection. I caught a meme from marchwarden23!
THE RULES:
Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line (or first and second line if it's completely impossible) from the first 30 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike out the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own!
This one has mutated a bit though. Rather than being a reflection of my musical taste (concering which, I will just point out in passing, if anyone feels the need, that there are three e's in "execrable"), I present this particular piece of memeage as a tribute to my personal mp3-and-associated-open-source-formats player.
Here it is
It is a Samsung iRiver, inherited from The Daughter after the lure of newer and shinier Samsung technology caused her to discard it like a used tampon mp3 player. This is an entirely free-range device, completely unfettered by the corporate hell that is itunes and it's proprietary-format bullying, but it does have a few endearing, personal quirks; It interfaces very nicely with Maude, my main Linux 'puter, by which I mean I have finally got the hang of the command-line only software. (graphical-user-interfaces? who needs 'em?). It does occasionally, and without any apparent provocation, suffer a spontaneous corruption of its database resulting in the display reading entirely in Chinese characters, but a quick fight to the death recalibration with the aforementioned software usually sorts it out. I thought I'd broken it the first few times this happened, but I mentioned it to The Daughter and she just shrugged and said "... yeah... it does that sometimes."
Under its protective rubber coat it is battle-scarred, and fitted with a replacement battery from Ebay in an entirely non-matching colour. Its 6GB hard drive contains whatever music I have miraculously managed to get onto it from a collection of stuff gleaned from the Interwebs from as far back as 1999 and currently spread across several networked computers.
And, of course , like all such machines it has the ability to play this collection of songs in a random manner. Which it doesn't. Because along with the quirky software and Korean hardware, this little machine also contains the spirit of Gimlet the Gremlin.
Gimlet the Gremlin originally inhabited a disc-playing mp3 player (remember those?), another cast-off, inherited from G, an early-adopter of the Latest Thing who, back in the nineties had discarded the disc player in favour of a cutting-edge hard drive mp3 player which was approximately the size of a packet of Pocky. We used the disc player in the car, despite the fact that it was terrifying motion-sensitive and had to be either cradled breathlessly in the hands or packed into a nest of foam padding in the glove compartment where it skipped, stopped, and - just occasionally - played, and it had a random-play function which we naively expected to, well, play the tracks on a random basis, but it soon became obvious that there was a guiding spirit within the machine which had definite preferences when it came to certain tracks. Serious scientific research led us to conclude that this was caused by the presence of Gimlet the Gremlin within the bowels of the machine.
The disc player has long since retired and ascended to Silicon Heaven, but much to my annoyance delight, I discoverd that Gimlet had relocated to the iRiver and from within its depths continued to redefine the concept of "random" Mostly this expresses itself by a tendency to over-enjoy a particular artiste, as is in evidence on the list below. Many a day I am treated to nothing but Pavarotti, but on this occasion the Big Man was nowhere in evidence - in fact, I let the thing play on for an hour or so after the 30 tracks, and no tenor of any variety appeared, which has to be a first for Gimlet. I think he knew he was going public with this one, and was going for the rock audience. Here's the list anyway - If anyone feels a surge of kindred spirt with Gimlet and recognises some of the track, feel free to jump up and down excitedly. The thrilling reveal will follow in a day or two...
1 "From a distance the world looks blue and green and the snow-capped mountains white,"
2 "Can you feel their haunting presence? Can you feel their haunting presence?"
3 "Not for a moment it crossed his mind, he's never stopped to see the mess he leaves behind."
4 "I noticed tonight that the world has been turning while I've been stuck here dithering around,"
5 "Nella fantasia io vedo un mondo giusto,"
6 "Your empty walls, your empty walls, Pretentious attention Dismissive apprehension Don't waste your time On coffins today"
7 "There's nothing wrong with me There's something wrong with you There's something wrong with me I hope your stepson doesn't eat the fish When we're crying for our next fix"
8 "Oh it's been too many times and I can't go back. Night bars, guitars, rundown motels like shacks"
9 "I like black and white, dreaming in black and white"
10 "I left my conscience like a crying child, locked the door behind me put the pain on file"
11 ""All the stars upon the sky, they will faint and fade away, all the galaxies above will disappear and fall astray"
12 "Declare this an emergency, come on and spread a sense of urgency"
13 "Dusk is dawn is day, where did it go?
14 "In the early morning rain, with a dollar in my hand,"
15 "For today, we will take the body parts and put them on the wall"
16 "I'll wait here, you're crazy, those vicious streets are full of strays"
17 "You sit there in your heartache waiting on some beautiful boy to save you from your old way"
18 "I need, I feel a love, you love to love the fear I never want to be alone, I've forgotten to."
19 "Now is the solstice of the year. Winter is the glad song that we hear."
20 "Oh, don't it hurt deep inside to see someone do something to her. Oh, don't it pain to see someone cry, oh especially when someone is her"
21 "She would never say where she came from, yesterday don't matter cause it's gone"
22 "Once, I had a dream, and this is it"
23 "Psycho. Groupie. Cocaine. Crazy."
24 "You talk like Marlene Deitrich and you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire"
25 "A fool in love, a crazy situation, her velvet glove marks me down and down and down"
26 "My cock is much bigger than yours!"
27 "Another head hangs lowly, child is slowly taken"
28 "What I choose to do is of no concern to you and your friends"
29 "Don't leave me in all this pain, don't leave me out in the rain"
30 "I don't believe I went too far, said I was willing, willing, willing,"
And one bonus track. Anyone else willing to own up to remembering this one?
31 "Down in the meadow where wind blows free in the middle of the field stands a lightening tree"
THE RULES:
Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line (or first and second line if it's completely impossible) from the first 30 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike out the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own!
This one has mutated a bit though. Rather than being a reflection of my musical taste (concering which, I will just point out in passing, if anyone feels the need, that there are three e's in "execrable"), I present this particular piece of memeage as a tribute to my personal mp3-and-associated-open-source-formats player.
Here it is
It is a Samsung iRiver, inherited from The Daughter after the lure of newer and shinier Samsung technology caused her to discard it like a used tampon mp3 player. This is an entirely free-range device, completely unfettered by the corporate hell that is itunes and it's proprietary-format bullying, but it does have a few endearing, personal quirks; It interfaces very nicely with Maude, my main Linux 'puter, by which I mean I have finally got the hang of the command-line only software. (graphical-user-interfaces? who needs 'em?). It does occasionally, and without any apparent provocation, suffer a spontaneous corruption of its database resulting in the display reading entirely in Chinese characters, but a quick fight to the death recalibration with the aforementioned software usually sorts it out. I thought I'd broken it the first few times this happened, but I mentioned it to The Daughter and she just shrugged and said "... yeah... it does that sometimes."
Under its protective rubber coat it is battle-scarred, and fitted with a replacement battery from Ebay in an entirely non-matching colour. Its 6GB hard drive contains whatever music I have miraculously managed to get onto it from a collection of stuff gleaned from the Interwebs from as far back as 1999 and currently spread across several networked computers.
And, of course , like all such machines it has the ability to play this collection of songs in a random manner. Which it doesn't. Because along with the quirky software and Korean hardware, this little machine also contains the spirit of Gimlet the Gremlin.
Gimlet the Gremlin originally inhabited a disc-playing mp3 player (remember those?), another cast-off, inherited from G, an early-adopter of the Latest Thing who, back in the nineties had discarded the disc player in favour of a cutting-edge hard drive mp3 player which was approximately the size of a packet of Pocky. We used the disc player in the car, despite the fact that it was terrifying motion-sensitive and had to be either cradled breathlessly in the hands or packed into a nest of foam padding in the glove compartment where it skipped, stopped, and - just occasionally - played, and it had a random-play function which we naively expected to, well, play the tracks on a random basis, but it soon became obvious that there was a guiding spirit within the machine which had definite preferences when it came to certain tracks. Serious scientific research led us to conclude that this was caused by the presence of Gimlet the Gremlin within the bowels of the machine.
The disc player has long since retired and ascended to Silicon Heaven, but much to my annoyance delight, I discoverd that Gimlet had relocated to the iRiver and from within its depths continued to redefine the concept of "random" Mostly this expresses itself by a tendency to over-enjoy a particular artiste, as is in evidence on the list below. Many a day I am treated to nothing but Pavarotti, but on this occasion the Big Man was nowhere in evidence - in fact, I let the thing play on for an hour or so after the 30 tracks, and no tenor of any variety appeared, which has to be a first for Gimlet. I think he knew he was going public with this one, and was going for the rock audience. Here's the list anyway - If anyone feels a surge of kindred spirt with Gimlet and recognises some of the track, feel free to jump up and down excitedly. The thrilling reveal will follow in a day or two...
1 "From a distance the world looks blue and green and the snow-capped mountains white,"
2 "Can you feel their haunting presence? Can you feel their haunting presence?"
3 "Not for a moment it crossed his mind, he's never stopped to see the mess he leaves behind."
4 "I noticed tonight that the world has been turning while I've been stuck here dithering around,"
5 "Nella fantasia io vedo un mondo giusto,"
6 "Your empty walls, your empty walls, Pretentious attention Dismissive apprehension Don't waste your time On coffins today"
7 "There's nothing wrong with me There's something wrong with you There's something wrong with me I hope your stepson doesn't eat the fish When we're crying for our next fix"
8 "Oh it's been too many times and I can't go back. Night bars, guitars, rundown motels like shacks"
9 "I like black and white, dreaming in black and white"
10 "I left my conscience like a crying child, locked the door behind me put the pain on file"
11 ""All the stars upon the sky, they will faint and fade away, all the galaxies above will disappear and fall astray"
12 "Declare this an emergency, come on and spread a sense of urgency"
13 "Dusk is dawn is day, where did it go?
14 "In the early morning rain, with a dollar in my hand,"
15 "For today, we will take the body parts and put them on the wall"
16 "I'll wait here, you're crazy, those vicious streets are full of strays"
17 "You sit there in your heartache waiting on some beautiful boy to save you from your old way"
18 "I need, I feel a love, you love to love the fear I never want to be alone, I've forgotten to."
19 "Now is the solstice of the year. Winter is the glad song that we hear."
20 "Oh, don't it hurt deep inside to see someone do something to her. Oh, don't it pain to see someone cry, oh especially when someone is her"
21 "She would never say where she came from, yesterday don't matter cause it's gone"
22 "Once, I had a dream, and this is it"
23 "Psycho. Groupie. Cocaine. Crazy."
24 "You talk like Marlene Deitrich and you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire"
25 "A fool in love, a crazy situation, her velvet glove marks me down and down and down"
26 "My cock is much bigger than yours!"
27 "Another head hangs lowly, child is slowly taken"
28 "What I choose to do is of no concern to you and your friends"
29 "Don't leave me in all this pain, don't leave me out in the rain"
30 "I don't believe I went too far, said I was willing, willing, willing,"
And one bonus track. Anyone else willing to own up to remembering this one?
31 "Down in the meadow where wind blows free in the middle of the field stands a lightening tree"