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I have been an active user — and proponent — of Pandora since I first heard of it, back in 2006. Four years later, and I have, I flatter myself, developed a pretty decent understanding of the system and how it works. I’ve got somewhere upwards of three dozen stations, most meticulously maintained — if not always regularly listened to — and pretty good at playing what I designed them to play.

After a furious morning of refining a troublesome station, I decided to post a link to each of my stations, along with a brief description of each, so that other folks can use them as well. Many of the stations, such as “Attack of Googlebot” and “HIGHLANDER! (Mark II)”, were made using interesting methods and techniques, which I describe on each station’s individual page.

If you’d like to become Pandora pals, you can find my user page HERE. Thanks, and happy listening!

“The Fat Man Sings” - Male operatic station. Created to shunt male performances into “Fat Lady Sings”.
“The Fat Lady Sings, mk II” - Second attempt at opera station. Seeded with a Callas aria.
“How Novel” - Novelty music, from the likes of Lonely Island, Steven Lynch, and Flight of the Conchords.
“All Toby, All the Time” - A station created with some favorites of my good friend, Toby.
“Maximum Awesome” - My friend Nathan’s awesome station. The only seeds? “Danger Zone” and “The Final Countdown”.
“Fingerpickin’ Good” - All banjo music. Yes, really.
“Six More Miles (To The Graveyard)” - Think of this as a Hank Williams Sr. subsidiary of “Country for Old Men”.
“Country for Old Men” - Old-school country.
“Broken in All the Right Places” - An electronica station, originally created by my friend, Cap.
“The 4th Branch Radio” - Hip-hop with political lyrics and/or message. Stuff like Immortal Technique.
“I Don’t Mean to Harp(sichord) on It…” - The opposite of what it sounds like. 100% Harpsichord!
“(Old) School is In” - Old-school rap, duh. Run-DMC, Grandmaster Flash, Sugar Hill, that sort of thing.
“Breakups Are Fun!” - Seeded with music from a “breakup mix” I made in 2005.
“On the Rag(time)” - Ragtime music, naturally.
“Attack of Googlebot” - The first station I created with a Google search. “Prominent accordion parts” were involved.
“Hairpocalypse Now” - My 80s-era butt-rock/hairmetal station.
“Djingle Djangle” - A station dedicated to the musical stylings of that immortal badass, Django Reinhardt.
“No Country for Old Men” - New-school, “pop” country. You can take the boy out of the country, but…
“That Green and Pleasant Land” - Folk music from the British isles.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside!” - My Christmas station! Seeded mostly with Rat Packers.
“Our Little Thing” - Music from an old relationship. Mostly stuff like Magnetic Fields.
“The Rat Pack” - Just hangin’ out with Ol’ Blue Eyes, Dino, and Sammy baby.
“Disney & Musicals” - If you can’t figure out what this is, I feel sorry for you.
“A Small Red Station” - A station featuring some favorites of an ex.
“Rock n’ Roll High School” - A station seeded with music that was popular when I was in high school.
“Not Bob” - A station featuring some of my friend M’s favorite artists. Kate Nash and such.
“Powers of Ten” - A concept station: I rotate new seeds when it plays a song I like. No more than ten seeds.
“HIGHLANDER! (Mark II)” - Only one seed allowed! Changes whenever it plays a song I prefer to the current seed!
“Last.fm Top 15″ - Seeded with my top 15 tracks from Last.fm, by playcount.
“In the Speakeasy” - Mostly Prohibition-era music, with some 40s and 50s mixed in.
“The Fat Lady Sings” - My first attempt at an all-opera station.
“Missytron” - Musical favorites of my friend, Missy.
“More Than a Feeling” - 100% 80s. (Yes, I know that “More Than a Feeling” was a 70s song.)
“A Little Bit Faster Now” - My attempt at an up-tempo station. Could probably improve with Google search.
“High-Culture Shit” - Orchestral music. Straight classy, yo.
“Badasshley” - A station I stole from my good friend, Ashly.
“Bluegrasskicker” - All bluegrass, son!
“Bust a Rap in Yo’ Ass” - Hip-hop and Rap.
“Motherfolker” - Folk music. Mostly American.
“Radio Free naporeon” - The grand old man of my Pandora catalogue. A mish-mash of my favorites.

Enjoy!

Most of you have probably heard — repeatedly — that I spent some time in bonny Scotland, back in the mid-90’s. I have many fond memories of my time there, and most involve my friend and immediate supervisor, Richie. Luckily, through the internet, Richie and I have managed to remain in touch for the dozen or so years since I departed that magical land of haggis, kilts, and bagpipes.

I often mention that, upon first arriving in Glasgow, I spent my first two weeks saying little other than, “Pardon?” The Glaswegian accent is notoriously impenetrable, and I was proud it took only two weeks of stumbling around in complete and utter confusion before I managed to develop a passable ear for it.

Although I may have developed an ear for the accent, it is clear that Google Voice’s wonderful — and often unintentionally hilarious — voicemail transcription service has not, as Richie’s recent message so beautifully illustrates. I would like to point out that it often transcribes messages flawlessly. As you will see below, however, sometimes it does not…

Google’s guess:

Called the. I’m on my way number consulate work. Hey man, or go to corporate overview certain chills buddy bye.

It wouldn’t make you feel any better, I suppose, if I told you that I’ve been writing a lot lately? How about if I added that I’ve been reading in like amount?

No? I hadn’t thought so.

Uggh.

Well, I promise to try to do better in future. Will that do?

Maybe my limbs are made
mostly for decoration,
like the way I feel about
persimmons. You can’t
really eat them. Or you
wouldn’t want to. If you grab
the soft skin with your fist
it somehow feels funny,
like you’ve been here
before and uncomfortable,
too, like you’d rather
squish it between your teeth
impatiently, before spitting
the soft parts back up
to linger on the tongue like
burnt sugar or guilt.
For starters, it was all
an accident, you cut
the right branch
and a sort of light
woke up underneath,
and the inedible fruit
grew dark and needy.
Think crucial hanging.
Think crayon orange.
There is one low, leaning
heart-shaped globe left
and dearest, can you
tell, I am trying
to love you less.

– Ada Limón

So. Passion Pit. Manners. I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to give these guys a listen, but over the last month or so, I haven’t been able to quit this album. And frankly, I shouldn’t want to.

This song, which I blipped yesterday, is one of my favorites on the album. Why am I posting it here? Well, it played as Taters, Lady Taters, Volyu and myself drove through a sunny Saturday morning (to what would be a delicious brunch), and it perfectly framed the satisfaction I felt in that moment, how completely right things are.

My face blew up at such a casual sight,
The smattered colors of ecstatic fright,
The rush above me to oblivion
Outlining wet sidewalks in halogen.

Have you ever felt so goddamned strong?
How come it takes some people so damn long?
He turned to squeeze the lemon juice to rain,
The citrus drawing out the scene in stains…

1.
Where what I see comes to rest,
at the edge of the lake,
against what I think I see

and, up on the bank, who I am
maintains an uneasy truce
with who I fear I am,

while in the cabin’s shade the gap between
the words I said
and those I remember saying

is just wide enough to contain
the remains that remain
of what I assumed I knew.

2.
Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were
gingerly trades spots
with the person you are

and what I believe I believe
sits uncomfortably next to
what I believe.

When I promised I will always give you
what I want you to want,
you heard, or desired to hear,

something else. As, over and in the lake,
the cormorant and its image
traced paths through the sky.

–Troy Jollimore

Need to blog more, and by God, do I have a lot to talk about.

But first, food.

[ OBLIGATORY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE SHOCKING LACK OF POSTS OVER THE LAST TWO MONTHS ]

If you’ve ever read lorem ipsum before (and let’s face it, odds are real good that you have), you know that I struggle to post when I feel dull, and I am in the middle of good ol’ dull swing right now. I’m like that old guy at the bar who can’t stop talking about something almost malicious in its disinterestingness…like, say, the personal histories of backup infielders who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 - 1955. I can’t seem to string together thirty words to post here without boring myself, let alone less involved observers. Worry not, however. To everyone’s great edification and enrichment, I will force myself to write anyway. I figure, if I have to be bored thinking this crap, why not make you bored reading it? Misery loves company, etc etc.

Personally, I blame the microblogging phenomenon.

At any rate, it occurs to me that I could just use someone else’s amusing writing, in lieu of my own. To that end, here is an excerpt from an email I received this morning, from my friend Toby, describing his harrowing experience traveling from his native Britain to Miami, for his sister’s wedding. The entire email is hysterically funny, and I would not be ill-advised to post the entire thing, but it is rather long, so I will just make do with the final paragraph and postscript. Enjoy.

Long-haul flights are also mind numbingly dull, and when I fly out to Seattle I’m going to try and get an aisle seat. Having a window seat seems like it would be really fucking awesome until you remember that the Ocean is really fucking big and correspondingly really fucking dull (at least from 38000 feet in the air), and that getting to the toilet, or just out into the aisle to stretch your legs, is really fucking difficult. I did get round to watching Liam Neeson Ruins Everyone’s Shit (released under the title “Taken” in some countries), and it was a lot of fun. I also watched Watchmen again and although it doesn’t improve with repeated viewings at least it’s 3 hours long and ever-so-slightly more interesting than staring at the ocean for the same amount of time. Dr. Manhattan’s cock was blurred out, though, which took away a lot of the interest.

P.s. Mountain Dew is like the worst thing ever.

Indeed it is, Toby. Indeed it is.

If you know me (and you probably do), you know how much I enjoy the recent renaissance of Saturday Night Live. The Lonely Island’s “Digital Shorts” are a big reason for that; they are almost always hilariously profane, and are consistently among the best bits of each episode. And although I experienced last night’s short in less-than-ideal circumstances, its jaw-dropping ridiculousness and vulgarity once again makes it one of the highlights of my week.

Normally, when linking a Digital Short, I’d quote some lyrics — or give some backstory — to explain exactly what amuses me about the joke. But this video, the sequel to an inarguable classic, chronicles the world’s two most thoughtful gift-givers…this time, as they plan for Mother’s Day.

Is any further explanation really necessary?

Every so often, just about everyone will find an “ear worm”, a particular song that bores its way so completely into whatever bits of your brain are responsible for storing and collating tunes that it takes days — sometimes weeks — to work its way back out again.

Sometimes, a one of these ear worms sticks around so long that it comes to define a period of your life, tying itself directly or obliquely into handfuls of memories and recollections from that particular time. Sargasso Trio’s “Heels on Fire” did this for me, last spring…and for a number of reasons.

First, story. I mean, the history of this band is great. They met, of all places, in a village brass band, in Norwich, England. Not just any kind of brass band, though…a samba brass band. And this origin definitely — and deliciously — makes itself known in the sound of this song.

Next, tone. I love danceable, catchy music that has both a toe-tapping beat, and a sense of joy, whimsy, and energy. “Heels on Fire” has all of those things, in spades. You often hear it said, and in this case it’s completely true: if you can listen to this song and not in some way dance (or at least move semi-rhythmically), you are dead. Also, I don’t want to know you.

Last (and this is more of a footnote than anything else), it has a kind of adorable video. While I’m sure some people may find it offensive, I will simply let the YouTube poster’s brief description do the talking: “Man freaks out to ‘Heels On Fire’, leaving beautiful shapes and colours wherever he goes.”

And really, how can you not love a song whose video can be so described?

I watch you shake it ’round the room,
Out the window, to the moon.
Everyone here would like a piece of you;
I’m just interested in the way you move.

Sometimes it takes a little push
To get some movement in your tush.
But it’s all worth it when the crowd applauds,
And you just shake your ass and thank the Lord!