Middle Grey

Of Mice and Stardust

Listening through the previews at the iTunes Music Store, Modest Mouse's _Good News for People Who Love Bad News_ sounds interesting. It even sounds like the epic albums of decades ago where artists were less likely to vomit a bunch of disparate crap onto a disc than carefully arrange an album as a whole. One song leads into another, and it is good. By and large they've certainly developed a sound of their own. But then there's the amazingly popular _Float On_, which is constantly on the airwaves in Phoenix. I was listening to The Edge when I heard it the first time, and just stared at the radio for a moment as I was sitting in the parking lot. The Edge is playing David Bowie? Bowie recorded another album already? Did I die and get sucked into an alternate dimension? The song ended, the DJ announced the track information, and it was Modest Mouse. But it sounds -- to me at least -- a *lot* like some of Bowie's work. If they weren't actually trying for the sound, it's a case of freaky happenstance.

Wonder No More

In their continuing trend of killing the good shows, Fox has cancelled the critically acclaimed and spiffy Wonderfalls effective immediately. Last Thursday's episode -- only the third or fourth aired -- was its last.

Even more interestingly, Fox is apparently trying to pretend the show never existed at all, as nearly every trace of it on the Fox web site has vanished.

Damn. I liked the show. It was quirky and had heart. And it wasn't another horrible bastard child of the "reality" genre. Not many shows are actually capable of making me laugh out loud anymore (and particularly not Fox's overplayed "LOL Sunday" line-up), but Wonderfalls did. Every episode.

In its place starting this week? The Swan, another banal reality show. If Joe Millionaire and American Idol had an orgy with Extreme Makeover, you'd get The Swan. It's stupid, it's shallow, and it's oh-so-Fox's-target-demographic.

$20 says Eliza Dushku can't save Tru Calling either. I give it a month to live. Frankly, I'm surprised Arrested Development is still around, but then again the execs might just be afraid of Ron Howard.

(CNN via Whedonesque)

Lingual Interest

English has a distinct lack of truly interesting words. Sit through a couple decades of English courses, and you learn useful words like notwithstanding. If you're lucky, you might pick up the most interesting word in the language: onomatopoeia.

In one semester of an introductory art history class, you get cool words like sfumato and chiaroscuro. Sure, we Americans have ungodly long words like antidisestablishmentarianism, but where's the fun in that word? It sounds like the verbal equivalent of retching. It doesn't easily fit into conversation. You can always turn a conversation to art, but to establishmentarianism? I think not.

Antidisestablishmentarianism, coincidentally, was the word my mother gave me when I was studying for the spelling bee in third grade and wanted a really hard word. Rather disappointingly, it was long rather than hard (that sounds awful out of context, doesn't it?), and I successfully spelled it upon my second try. To date, I have never used it in conversation nor heard it used. Even our freakish words get no love.

Statistical

Out of curiosity, I've been letting a statistics package run over the site's access logs since the beginning of the year. I finally remembered I'd done so today. Now then, let the analysis of this month's traffic to date begin. Browser |Internet Explorer 6 | 167 | 61% | |Safari | 58 | 21% | |Internet Explorer 5 | 22 | 8% | |Netscape Navigator 5 | 22 | 8% | |Konqueror 3 | 1 | < 1% | |Opera 7 | 1 | < 1% | Operating System |Windows | 205 | 75% | |Mac | 67 | 24% | |Linux | 1 | < 1% | Screen Resolution (Top 4) |1024 x 768 | 138 | 50% | |800 x 600 | 85 | 31% | |1280 x 1024 | 18 | 6% | |1600 x 1200 | 8 | 2% |