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!

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.

No? I hadn’t thought so.

Uggh.

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

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…

But first, food.

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.

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?

Also, the advent of Twitter hasn’t exactly stoked my desire to write full-length blogs.

So what news have I, from the last three months or so?

In a word, Aleena. Although she met an unusually large number of my friends (in other words, you), I spoke about her very, very little. I highly doubt very many people — even those who met her — have actually heard even half of the whole story. So here it is, folks, the narrative of Aleena and Eric.

Now, some of you might know that Aleena was my first date after Emma and I split for good following the holidays. Right from the start, “our thing” was kind of odd. A good bit of our first date, for example, was spent listening to her detail the many reasons I would be wise to avoid dating her: “I’m fickle. I lie. I cheat.” As it would turn out, I only ever had experience with the first. At any rate, the date was…odd. We spent about three hours at the bar, then went back to her place for perfectly platonic Guitar Hero-ing. The next morning, she invited me over and made me some amazing Eggs Benedict.

Aleena and I met online, which is not what I would consider standard for me, despite my having met a couple exes in a similar manner. Yet even online, our interaction was different than what I’m used to. When I casually asked her to entertain me with a story, anticipating perhaps some embarrassing tale from her childhood, she responded instead with what became the first installment of a dual-narrated story of a librarian and a detective/thug (found HERE, HERE, and HERE). That unanticipated but impressive bit of cleverness and creativity went a long way in shoring up my interest, even long after the storytelling stopped. It also served as a sort of Cliff’s Notes for things near to her heart: small towns, cabins in the woods, jobs involving learning and helping other people find what they’re looking for. Oh, and the occasional drink.

Things with Aleena were…well, they were in a constant state of flux, much like the woman herself. After a week or so of hanging out following our first date, we decided we weren’t really interested in each other romantically. We still hung out, though, and it wasn’t long before we fell back into an intentionally vague, semi-romantic friendship. This pattern of splitting and reuniting would continue right up until our last, final split. Neither one of us was used to having someone so close and so available, I think, and our shared interests combined with our modest demands and complementary natures to generate a sort of romantic gravity, which — time and time again — pulled us back into each other’s arms, and which, sadly, also precludes any sort of non-romantic relationship between us.

She represented a huge departure for me, in many ways. First, I introduced her to many of my friends (some of whom we spent quite a lot of time with), despite my standard habit of compartmentalizing my social and romantic lives as much as possible. This was AMAZING! They loved her and she loved them, and it was extremely fulfilling to me to see her engage them so handily and happily. Next, she wasn’t my “type”, just as I wasn’t hers. This proved another wonderful experience, though, as when I really grew to appreciate and respect her deeply, she became as much my “type” in my eyes as anyone I’ve ever met.

I never expected to fall in love again so soon after Emma. I certainly never expected it with Aleena, who totally backed into it, through many isolated episodes of endearment and affection. When I really realized the depth of my feelings for her, in early April, I was taken by surprise. But it was a pleasant surprise, and despite the recent turn and the eventual outcome, I do not regret it.

We shared a lot of great experiences, stories, fantasies, and dreams. We had a mutual love of Jeopardy!, SNL (I’M ON A BOAT!), “hangover brunches”, Northern Exposure, and booze of all varieties. We made crazy plans…some involving “treeboathouses”, roadtrips to Roslyn, and — in one touching email — leaving Seattle to teach at a rural school somewhere together. But really, we just took it really, really easy, most times, and enjoyed each other without expectation or complication.

I did my part to torpedo the relationship, just as she did. Most especially, my reaction to her recent “down time”…when her depression began to wear me down, I compensated with a thickheaded need to overtalk every single issue I perceived in our relationship. And I of course compounded that by beginning to see issues in pretty much everything. Ooops.

At any rate, taken all-in-all, Aleena was a funny, amusing, engaging person, a wonderful companion with whom I enjoyed a great deal in common, and someone who is most likely far more intelligent and creative than either she or those around her might realize. Our ridiculously complementary natures made pretty much any shared activity both highly amusing and fantastically relaxing. I never really felt I had to watch myself with her, and she felt likewise; we were able to “be ourselves” around each other very quickly, which I think is new for both of us. She is a people-pleaser to the bone, and it seems to me that nothing makes her happier than to make a friend, partner, or loved one smile, laugh, or feel loved and appreciated. To complete the canvas, however, she is also a fickle, indecisive, erratic person, and someone who is capable of being both dishonest and extremely shallow (although I honestly believe she both recognizes and hates those aspects of herself). A person of extremely generous spirit, she also struggles constantly with her habit of putting others’ needs before her own, and sometimes overcompensates with resentful jags of nitpicking or selfishness. The two biggest issues I had with her were fairly major, sadly. First, her fear of making people unhappy or putting them out makes it extremely hard for her to ask for or accept support when she needs it; during a recent period of work, school, and family stress, she became intensely low, but hid it as much as possible from even the closest of her friends. In other words, she pushes everyone away, but invariably feels lonely and unloved because of her self-imposed isolation. Second, in a sort of correlate of the first, she struggles with openness about things that are angering or upsetting her, which causes her to avoid problems or — often — lie about them outright, in a sort of “wait-and-see-if-it-goes-away” approach.

So no, Aleena — “Leensy” — was not perfect. She’s a lovely, hilarious bundle of vulgarity, goodwill, and generosity, who’s simply out of practice in relationships, and whose overwhelming concern with maintaining the goodwill of others just presents a few roadblocks to happy ones in her future. She’s a tenacious little number, though, who underestimates her own faculties…I have every confidence she’ll end up with the happiness and fulfillment she so richly deserves.